The Oyster

by Peer

CHAPTER XII

"I fear it is unlikely, Madame. I am very sorry." Dr Legrand put his capable finger-tips together, looked sympathetically at the tall, golden-haired Englishwoman who had come to consult him.

"The child died, then, Madame—that another is so important?" he asked kindly.

Esmé flushed scarlet. "It—yes—I lost it," she said bitterly, her eyes filling with tears. "I lost him. And I am not likely to have another?"

"Frankly, no, Madame. But you are young. Madame is nervous, says she cannot sleep without something. Give the something up, Madame; there is a little death, a little madness, bottled in each innocent dose. Go to the country, live in the open air. Get Madame's nerves well, then perhaps your wish may be realized."

Esmé sat silent, growing sullen, raging at fate. Why should this be? Why had she been treated so cruelly?

If—oh, if! The word which makes our sorrow into madness—that word "if." If she had known, had guessed, what the future would bring.

As she sat there fuming it did not come to her that the great scales of the world weigh and adjust; that for sinning we are punished, either by the bitterness of our own remorse, or by something withheld. Right holds its steady poundage, while wrong flies upwards, light of weight and false.

A mother had sold her child, carelessly, heartlessly, that she might enjoy her life. What did it matter? Children were easy things to find if one wanted them. And now she sat baffled, miserable, the price no use to her, spent before it came, yet did not blame herself, but cruel chance.

"Well"—Esmé got up slowly, putting the great man's fee on the table—"bon jour, Monsieur."

"Adieu, Madame." He took the dry hand kindly. "It was no doubt the loss of the boy which has made Madame nervous, not well. It has preyed on your mind, Madame."

"It has," she rasped out bitterly, "and always will. Well, adieu, Monsieur."

Dr Legrand wrote an entry in his book: "Mrs Eva Smith of West Kensington, London."

"And yet," he said to himself, "she looked more angry than sorrowful."

Pulling down her thick veils, Esmé followed the man-servant across the hall. She had dressed very plainly, hidden her face by thick black gauze and net.

A little dark man was coming on to the steps, whistling cheerily. Seeing him Esmé started and jumped into her waiting taxi.

The little man passed her, went into the doctor's, as one who had an appointment. For a moment he, too, had hurried, but the taxi had sped past him.

"A cher Nonno," he cried, gripping the Frenchman's hand.

"A la bonne heure, Luigi."

"So Milady Blakeney comes to consult you," Luigi said. "She passed me."

"Milady Blakeney? No! A Meeses Smith, of Londres, a handsome creature, but artificial, racked by late hours and chloral."

"It was so like Milady," Luigi said. The doctor's consulting hour was over; the two were at leisure. "I attended her. A fine boy."

"Yes." The Frenchman appeared to be very interested in his finger-nails. "Yes—there were no complications, were there?"

"H'm!" Luigi Frascatelle sighed. "She came through well. But—I did not tell her—there is never likely to be another bambino." He dropped into medical explanation, gave a few details.

"Never," said Luigi. "But why tell her?"

Legrand took up his book. "Mrs Eva Smith, of London," he said thoughtfully. "H'm! She was dark, this milady?"

"Dark? No, but fair as the angels," exclaimed Luigi. "Golden-haired, splendid. Each year the Sposo, Sir Blakeney, sends me a gift from the boy. It is good of them to remember."

"Oh!" The French doctor closed his book. "Then it can't be," he said to himself, "since the boy is alive. But"—he looked again at the entry—"from what you tell me a second child would be a practical impossibility," he said.

"Well, it is so," answered the Italian.

"And, in this case, also. Yet the boy is alive. Come, Luigi, out. I shall be in London next week at the great Conference, but I leave happily my patients to you, mon ami."

Esmé, once again Mrs Carteret, lay sobbing on the high narrow bed in her room at the Meurice. She would never be rich now; her heartache never stilled. Wild schemes went drifting through her brain. Could she do as Denise had done? No, for Denise was rich, and to cheat one must have money. Half-maddened, she buried her hot face in the pillow; then would spring up with clenched hands, railing against the world.

Her boy, her boy! who would have meant so much to her. Her baby, ill-used, neglected!

There is no sorrow so bitter as that of a sin which has failed to succeed; no remorse so biting as that which eats with decayed teeth, which whispers as it grows painfully, "I come from your own fault."

Esmé got up at last, powdered thickly and carelessly, put away her plain gown and got into a blue velvet, pinned on a huge hat, and went down to tea.

She could think no longer. A bunch of pale mauve violets tempted her. With her fair hair, her done-up skin, her brilliant gown, men turned and stared and drew their own conclusions.

Esmé wanted new gowns. Denise owed her money. She drove to her dressmaker's.

But Madame Lilie was cool, unenthusiastic. Madame Carteret's accounts were over-difficult to get in.

"If Madame would pay cash, but certainly. But otherwise money was scarce. English accounts so ver' difficult to get in. For cash there were one or two gowns."

With deft hands Madame showed a model of emerald velvet, bizarre, remarkable, but exquisite in its supple grace. Another of sapphire cloth. An evening gown of chiffon and satin, clinging, opal-hued.

The three could be supplied—they would fit Esmé easily—for one hundred and twenty pounds for cash, with jupons to match thrown in.

Esmé was going to the Holbrooks. She must wear her old clothes; and Dollie Gresham would be there, and Denise.

"You know that I would pay you," Esmé flashed out. "It is nonsense. I could send you half in a month."

Madame grew cold again. After all, the blue was almost sold to a customer, but as Madame had come all the way from Londres, bien! she had showed it.

It was in Esmé's mind to lose her temper, to call the woman insolent and suspicious. But the three models lying together, green and blue and shimmering opal, held her tongue.

She would come back to-morrow, buy the gowns; she had meant to leave next morning, but she would not.

It was dusk outside, and cold; she hurried on to the Ritz.

A stout man, barring her path, swept his hat off to her, murmuring some words.

"Monsieur!" Esmé said haughtily.

"But, Madame"—the man's French halted. "If Madame would come to tea with a humble admirer—"

"Monsieur!" she stormed, hurrying on across the open space in front of the huge hotel. The man followed her, apparently unabashed, into the lounge, his eyes fixed admiringly on her.

With a little gasp of relief Esmé saw a man she knew, Sir Thomas Adaire—a round-faced, jovial youth, with cunning blue beady eyes, and a distorted imagination.

"Don't make a fuss," she said, "but that dreadful person is following me."

The stranger sheered off rapidly, with a smile of understanding more insulting than his pursuit.

Sir Thomas, ordering tea, first called the unknown an impossible bounder, and then let his blue beads rest on Esmé with some surprise in them.

"Don't exactly wonder either," he said. "Dress very fine, ain't it? Hubby over with you?"

"No," Esmé answered, irritably.

"Oh!" A comprehensive pause. "Let me know when to sheer off then. I'm doing nothing. Just over to look round. Lots of things to look at, eh? over here. Same sort look like peaches in the apple-house over in London."

Sir Thomas drank his tea. Esmé knew that in his shrewdly lewd little mind he quite believed that she had come to Paris to meet someone—looked on it as merely natural. Sir Thomas knew one code of life, and love had never come to make him wish he had not believed in it thoroughly.

He talked on lightly; with him no wife was faithful, no man a keeper of his marriage vow. He told of little scandals pleasantly; they were nothing in his eyes.

"She was very nearly caught that time. Dicky Margrave rolled up quite unexpectedly and milady had the forbidden fruit in her boudoir. She told him to turn his back and take off his coat, and clean the windows. 'Horrible mess in here, Dicky,' she said. 'Man's just finishing the windows. Come to the library.' The forbidden one walked out boldly two minutes later."

"But the servants?" said Esmé.

"Oh, if they tell, they go; also, they won't get other places; they keep quiet all right. Betty Margrave told me that herself. She's got Dicky in order now; he's afraid of reprisals about Caromeo."

So from story to story, a male Vivien carelessly blackening reputation.

Esmé told him so, growing impatient.

"Bless you! who's got 'em nowadays? We only treasure visiting lists," he mocked.

After a time Esmé talked herself, found herself enjoying the ever-pleasant task of pulling our friends to pieces, added a new whisper or two for Sir Thomas to elaborate.

"Just left the new Penelope, haven't you?" he said. "Denise Blakeney—she's into the starch bag after several years in hot water. No one but Cyrrie now, and he—well, he was always a gorgon husband. Saw a parson gazing at Denise last month at her big garden-party. 'There is a model of English wifehood, of truth and purity,' he said to something in brown muslin, whom I fancy was his wife."

"And if he knew," flashed Esmé, indignantly, and stopped.

"Knew what?" Sir Thomas grew interested.

"A little secret." Esmé's face grew grave. "Pah! if we all knew each other's secrets. If you knew mine and I yours."

"Haven't got any," he said comfortably. "Secrets are the kind of things you've to keep a flat for and a motor which they drive some other fellow out in. A day's amusement is my sort. But—you—you're a bit of a Penelope yourself, Mrs Carteret."

"Anything else is so stupid," said Esmé, laughing.

Sir Thomas, falling into complete bewilderment, asked Esmé to dinner when he found she was really alone. To forget her misery she was hilariously gay, telling smart little stories, flashing out sharp speeches, amusing the little man immensely.

"Kind of woman you don't know what to make of," grumbled Sir Thomas. "Lets you kiss her ear in the taxi, and gives yours a verbal boxing when you suggest supper in a quiet room. Gets herself up to look like what she's not, and is frightfully offended when she's taken for it. Tires one's eyes, that class of cipher. We'll read plain print again demain, thank the Lord."

Folly would never be Esmé's refuge; she sat in her room, her sleeping draught ready, wondering what life would be like if, for mere amusement, she had been what Sir Thomas took her for. There was not even a pretension of affection, but merely: "We are well met. You are pretty, your skin is soft, your eyes are bright; let us see how much joy we can steal from Time's storehouse."

"There must be crowds of people who are like that or he wouldn't think it so natural," said Esmé. "I believe Dollie wouldn't care—or Denise, once—but I—I could never forget my miseries by becoming a beast."

Then, soothed by the drug, she slept soundly, to wake with a parched mouth and heavy head, and lie tossing feverishly because her tea was late.

There were the three dresses. Fretting for them—more because she wanted to fret than because she really wanted them—Esmé went to the telephone.

"Is that Madame? No? Well, give her a message. Tell her I'll send over a cheque for those dresses from London. To alter and keep them for me—Mrs Carteret."

It was a weary journey back. When thoughts would come crowding in bitter array. If there was never to be a child, then they would never be rich. Only a week before Bertie had told her plainly that they could not go on spending so much. Here again Esmé blamed someone else. If Denise would only pay her regularly, it was all Denise's fault. There was two hundred owing now, since June. The thousand pounds vanished so easily. Dresses, bridge, furs, so many things that Esmé wanted, could not do without. If Bertie knew that besides what he knew to be spent she was using this other money, too.

If Denise would only pay up her debts for her, let her start fair again! Esmé looked sullenly at the calm sea. If not she would threaten to take the boy—she would take him. He would forget it all in time. Then, with a shiver, she thought of the telling, of the scandals, of tongues wagging, of the proving and altering, and, she was not pitiless, of Denise Blakeney's complete undoing.

Denise was still in Scotland. Rashly, pressed by her desire for the dresses, Esmé made up her mind to write.

Bertie met his wife at Charing Cross. With her irritable mood making her observant, Esmé noticed that his light overcoat was shabby, that he lacked smartness.

"Oh! Bertie!" She kissed him, eagerly glad to see him, always hoping to find comfort in his love. Then the barrier which her secret made rose, drearily, between them. They had so little to talk about now, so little in common.

"That coat's shabby, Bert. You must get a new one," she said impatiently.

"Not just now," he answered; "it's all right."

"It's not right." Esmé felt that he was hitting at her extravagances. "You shall get one. I'll buy it for you, Bert."

"Millionaire," he mocked. "Have you got some secret fount of money, Es? You never have enough to buy your own things, child. And—the doctor, Es—Legrand?"

"Says I'm to drink milk and eat turnips and pray," she said bitterly, "and live in the country, and sleep on ozone, and so forth."

"And—if you would?" His voice grew eager. "Oh! Esmé, if you would—just you and I together again."

The tenderness in his voice was forced there, stilling thoughts which would not sleep; he assured himself that with a fresh start, without perpetual extravagance and excitement, he would feel the old passion for his wife wake in him. Fresh air and exercise would banish the memory of the companion whose presence he longed for so much now.

"Come to Cliff End, Butterfly. Try it as a cure, with me as chief physician."

London, huge and splendid, flitted by them as the taxi rushed to the flats; the streets called to Esmé; the restaurants were lighted up, glowing golden behind their portals. She thought of the whimper of the wind, the thunder of the surf against the rocks; the dreariness of the country.

"I couldn't," she said at last; "the man doesn't understand. Town's my life, Bertie; all my pals are here. No, I couldn't."

"It will have to be Town with a difference very soon," he said, sighing.

Economy again—money; he thought of nothing else. She was not back five minutes and he was preaching at her. He could look up what he'd paid for her clothes last year. It wasn't so much. "And I'm better dressed than rich women," stormed Esmé, hysterically. "You might be proud of me instead of grumbling—always grumbling."

The taxi stopped at the door of the tall buildings. There was no home in it to Bertie. The hall porter greeted them. The lift took them upwards to their flat, past other flats, and then into the pretty rooms.

Marie was ready waiting, supplying the petit soins which Bertie had forgotten.

"Pauvre Madame is tired." Marie had a cup of coffee with but just a soupçon of eau de vie. The bath was prepared. She hovered round Esmé, getting a soft wrapper, soothing jangled nerves. Marie was a treasure!

Esmé took up her letters. Bills, invitations, more bills, a scrawl from Dollie asking them to dinner. Esmé had forgotten her ill-humour.

"Bertie, we're dining out—telephone to Dollie. Yes, I said we'd go."

Dollie Gresham's was better than dinner in the restaurant, or brought up by a flat-faced German to their dining-room. Bertie distrusted the tinned soup, the besauced entrées and tasteless meat. He was glad to go out. Esmé had told him nothing; he was hurt and would not show it.

"Ring up the coupé people, Marie. Dollie may be going to a theatre, Bert."

"We must owe them a fortune," was on Bertie's lips, but he stopped. To even ask if a taxi would do might disturb peace.

Dollie wanted them for bridge. Her little dinners surpassed Esmé's now. They were a party of eight, Dollie's bitterly clever tongue keeping away all fears of dullness.

"Cousin May was here to-night, Esmé; she came from Paris to-day also. She saw you there—at the Ritz, having a dinner with blue-eyed Tommy. You heard some pretty tales before that evening was over, Esmé. Let's have them now."

"Am I to undermine the peace of this dinner-table?" Esmé's wit was fairly ready, and she watched with a smile as women flushed and men looked uncomfortable.

"Unsavoury little dustman," said Bertie, sharply.

Esmé had not told him of her dinner. His look at her made the table know it, and gave them something to talk of afterwards.

"Sly Esmé, setting up as such a model too. And Tommy of all men. She was a friend of Jimmie Helmsley's once, too; don't you remember he dropped her for the Chauntsey girl?" people whispered. The teeth of Society loves a bone of scandal to crunch.

After dinner Bertie cut in at Dollie's table, and as her partner found himself absent, playing badly, losing tricks carelessly.

"I'm really sorry," he apologized, as their opponents went across for sandwiches. "I'll wake up now."

"You're out of sorts," Dollie said kindly. "What is it?"

"Debts," he said wearily. "We're the old proverbial china crock, Mrs Gresham, trying to swim with the brass one. What does it cost a woman to dress, Mrs Gresham?"

"It costs Esmé about fifteen hundred a year," said Dollie, shrewdly. "Claire is ruinous now. Never an evening frock under sixty, and the etceteras at so much an ounce. Then Esmé's furs are all new. She's a bad little lady going to Claire, and Lilie in Paris."

"Fifteen hundred!" Bertie laughed. "No, about three; and it's far more than I can manage."

"Three—grandmothers!" observed Dollie, blandly. "You see Claire's little bill and tell me then. You're very extravagant children. Esmé paid those electric people fifty pounds before you left London, and taxis are just as good."

"Fifty pounds!" Bertie shuffled the cards silently. He had not given Esmé fifty pounds for the garage. He certainly did not pay Claire's bill. His payments had been to big drapers, and to a tailor.

A sudden sickening doubt was assailing him. Was Esmé getting money he did not know of? Was he one among the hundreds of fooled husbands? He flung the thought away, and turned to the game, and played carefully.

But on the way home the thought returned.

"Esmé, we must pay these people," he said, trying to speak carelessly. "Not let it get too high."

"Oh, I sent them a sop to Cerberus months ago—a big one."

"But—I never gave it to you."

"No." He saw her hand move impatiently. "No, it was bridge winnings, I suppose. Or when Poeticus won the Hunt Cup. I forget."

Suspicion is a seed which, sown, grows, and will not be hoed up. Bertie came into his wife's room as she lay asleep, and looked sadly at her pale face. There was a small room next door, lined with cupboards; he went to it, opened the doors, saw the shimmer of satins and silks, the softness of chiffon and lace, the gleam of rich embroidery—dress upon dress. He had loved to see her well dressed, and not dreamt of the great cost of some of these mere wisps of evening gowns. Sixty pounds! Bertie shut the doors, feeling mean, as if he had spied, but he was not satisfied.

Had Esmé some way of getting money? Instead of sleeping, he did accounts; got up frowning, to go to sleep at last in the grey bleakness of an autumn morning, to wake with the little parasite, suspicion, gnawing at his heart.

He went into his wife's room after his breakfast; she did not come down for hers now. Esmé was up, her golden hair loose, waiting to have some brightening stuff rubbed into it.

She was bending over her jewel-case, choosing a necklace and pendant to wear.

"This clasp is loose, Marie; the clasp of these sapphires"—Esmé held up a thin chain holding together little clusters of sapphires and diamond sparks. "It's—oh! you, Bertie!"

"That's new, isn't it, Esmé?" He took the chain from her.

"New—if a year old is new."

"And this"—he snapped open two or three cases, holding glittering toys. "I didn't give you any of these, did I?"

Esmé moved impatiently. "Paste," she said suddenly. "Parisian! I can't go about always wearing the same old things, so I am foolish, and get these."

"Oh, paste!" He was putting back a pendant when he looked at the setting. Surely paste had a backing, was not set clear.

"They're wonderfully done," he said gravely. The satin lining of the case bore a Bond Street jeweller's name.

"Oh, wonderfully." Esmé snapped the case to. "And I get the cases so as to deceive my friends' maids. Run away, Bertie, you worry me standing there."

He went slowly. Esmé was lying to him. The things were real. Her jewel-box was full of new toys and trifles; he began to realize that her dresses were magnificent.

Her letters lay in a litter on her bureau, some half-opened, all tossed about as if they had worried her. One long slip oozed from its envelope, with a huge total at its foot. It was a bill for new furs. Another thick envelope bore the word "Claire" on the back.

A man has a right to see his wife's bills. Bertie took out the letter.

Madame Claire begged immediately for a cheque on account. She really must have a few—Bertie turned white—a few hundreds. A smaller slip of paper was enclosed. Amount of account furnished, three hundred and ten pounds. Yellow evening gown, lace overdress, seventy pounds. Blue tea gown, forty pounds. The total was for five hundred pounds.

Bertie laid it down with a sick feeling of despair. He could not pay this. It was impossible. Five hundred pounds to a dressmaker. Dollie Gresham had been right in her estimate. He sat looking at the dull blue of the drawing-room carpet, sat thinking hopelessly.

Then Esmé, in dull blue-green, masses of black making a foil to her fair skin, came back. A faint perfume clung about her, nothing emphasized, but the memory of sachets or little pieces of perfumed skin sewn into her dress.

The necklace of small sapphires and diamonds glistened at her throat. She was humming gaily, ready to write to Denise.

"Esmé!" Bertie raised his white face.

"Bertie! Have the Germans taken London, or is Lloyd George made Regent? Or—you're not ill, Bertie?"

"We can't go on, Esmé," he said. "I saw your account on your bureau there. Esmé, I can't pay it, unless we sell everything—go away."

He saw her hand clench, but she did not look at him.

"How dared you pry?" she began, then checked herself. "Paul Pry!" she mocked. "Paul Pry! But I can pay it."

"You? How?" he asked, getting up.

"How? I've won a lot lately," she said, after a pause. "I got some tips. I can pay it, Bertie."

"You've got money to your account, then?" he said, for he knew that she was lying again.

"Not now."

"Bookmakers," said Bertie, "pay on Mondays. Who is your man?"

"Oh! don't bother, Bertie." Her hands shook as she began to write. "Denise did the bet for me. I'm writing to ask her to send it on now."

"Oh!" he said, more quietly still.

"I backed first one and then another," she said; "got it that way. So don't fret, Boy."

"But if you had not won," he said softly. "The account is not new, Esmé."

"I chanced it! I let the winnings go on to other gees." He could hear the anger rising in her voice. "I chanced it. Don't bother now, I'm writing."

"But I must bother, Esmé. We can't go on like this. We're getting poorer every day. If we had a child things would be different, but as it is Hugh Carteret will leave me Cliff End and what he allows me now—four hundred a year."

"And you'll be Lord De Vinci," she said.

"With a title and two mortgaged places, and every penny left to the girl. Esmé, if you can't pull in we must give up London."

"Not until London gives me up," she flashed out. "Leave me my own affairs, Bertie. If I make a bit it doesn't hurt you. You don't have to pay then."

"You're mad, Butterfly," he answered, "to dream of living by backing horses. Look here! Nothing's ever been the same since I went away that time. Esmé, we're young. Let's start again." He came nearer her.

If he had taken her in his arms she might have fought down the restless demon of anger and resentment which was tearing at her. But he did not touch her.

"Start in a sand castle by the sea," she mocked, "with limpets for friends and neighbours." And then suddenly her self-control gave way. She burst out hysterically and told him he wanted to make her miserable, to imprison her in the country; cried tears of sheer peevish temper; swore that all the world's luck was against her; that she had no pleasure, no real fun; that even a few rags paid for by herself were grudged to her.

After a little Bertie turned away, went out so quietly that she did not hear him go, and left Esmé raving in an empty room, until Marie with a tabloid came to soothe and comfort.

Bertie walked swiftly across London, up through the roar of Piccadilly, with its motor monsters, diving, stopping, rushing, with its endless flight of taxis, its horse vans out of place in the turmoil. It was cold, a thin rain falling; he walked on to narrower streets, and came to the grey, dull square where Estelle lived with her aunt. It was London at its dreariest; smoke-stained old houses, blinking out at a smoke-grimed, railed-in square. A few messengers delivering meat at area doors, a few tradesmen's carts standing about, now and then a taxi gliding through, spurning the thin slime of the quiet street. Decorous, old-fashioned carriages were drawn up at some of the doors, with large horses poking miserably at their bearing reins, and getting their mouths chucked as they did it by obese and self-satisfied coachmen. The self-centred life of a colony of quiet people was making its monotonous way from free lighting to lights out. People who lived next door and never knew each other, who revolved in their own little circles and called it living. Perhaps lived as happily as others, since to each their own life and drawing of breath.

"Was Miss Reynolds in? Yes?"

Estelle was dusting the china in the big, brown-hued drawing-room, an appalling museum of early Victorian atrocities, with efforts of the newer arts which followed the cumbrous solidity; pieces of black and gold, plush monkeys clinging to worked curtains, fret-work brackets and tables covered with velvet sandwiched in here and there.

Estelle dusted an offensive bronze clock with positive loathing. It was a gouty effigy of Time, clinging to his scythe because he must have fallen without it, and mournfully accepting the hour-glass set in his chest, which held a loudly-ticking clock of flighty opinions and habits; evidently, judging by his soured expression, a cross to the holder. Two large vases containing dyed pampas grass guarded each end of the mantelpiece; two others held everlastings.

Estelle had once said that the room inspired her with a deep longing to throw stones there, so as to break some of the monotony.

Mrs Martin, her aunt, padded softly in each morning, moving pieces of furniture back to their exact places if they had been stirred by visitors, patting the muslin antimacassars, pausing every time at the doorway to remark, "Is it not a charming room?" and then padding out again—she wore velvet slippers—to sit in the room at the back and stitch for the poor. Mrs Martin had reduced dullness, skilfully touched up with worthiness, to a fine art.

She gave Estelle complete liberty, because, behind her conventional stupidity, she herself had a mind which imagined no harm, a child's mind, crystal clear of evil thoughts. She had married, been widowed, lived blamelessly. The swirl of London was part of the newspaper world, "which everyone knows, my dear, the compositors make up as they go on," she told Estelle, "except of course the divorce cases, and no doubt half of those are not true."

The most blameless daily which could be procured was taken together with the Athenæum and the Sunday Chronicle.

"Oh, I shall throw them some day," said Estelle aloud to the vases.

"Who is that, Magennis?" said Mrs Martin to the butler. "Captain Carteret! I trust he has come to arrange an outing for Miss Reynolds."

"He does that often, 'e does," said Magennis, as he went back to his pantry. Magennis had not a mind of crystal purity. When he was younger he had been pantry-boy in a large country house.

"Bertie! What is it?" Estelle dropped one of the smaller vases. It crashed on to the silver brightness of the polished fender, making a litter of bright-flowered glass and crackling everlastings.

"It's broken," said Estelle.

"And so am I." Bertie crossed the room and took her hands. "And you cannot ever mend the vase, Estelle, but I wonder if you can mend me."

Estelle turned very white.

"I'm tired," he said drearily. "I feel as if the fates had drubbed me mentally, until my sore mind aches. We'll get another vase, Estelle"—for she was picking up the pieces with shaking fingers. "And I tell you, I have come to you to be mended," he went on, almost pitifully.

"But I—what can I do?" she whispered.

The room faded; she saw the open sea shimmering blue and green and opal; she felt again the love she had hoped she had fought down and put away.

"You can stop pretending," he said. "You can give me a little comfort, Estelle, a little love. I have lost faith in everything except you. And—I love you, Estelle," he added gravely.

The rush of mingled joy and sorrow made the girl gasp.

"But Esmé?" she whispered.

"Esmé was a will-o'-the-wisp—a false light on a marsh. You are the solid world. Estelle, I don't know where I am. Esmé has made a fool of me—and I can never care for her again. Will you help me—or see me go to the dogs alone?"

The cunning of man, turning the mother-love in woman, which he knows is stronger than passion, to his own ends. Man triumphant, merry, full of strength and hope, she may resist; but man broken, pitiful, needing her, is irresistible.

Bertie had sat down on the brown sofa; he was looking at her with dazed eyes.

"I'll help you, Bertie. I'll be all I can ... as your friend ... remember, only as your friend."

"Child, do you take me for a brute?" he said, as he drew her down beside him.

Poor Friendship, lending his cloak once more, standing mournfully as Love flings it over his pink shoulders; knowing so well how the god liked to hide and mock beneath the solid folds.

"Oh! I am so tired, Estelle," said Bertie.

Friends only—the cloak held firmly. But friends' lips do not meet with a thrill of joy; friends do not know the unrestful happiness which came to these two as they sat hand-in-hand—their two years' sham fight over.