Chapter III

THE house was crammed as they came into their box at twenty minutes past eight.

" This is what Jim calls Sawdust/' said Nevill. " We shall have ten minutes of it, after all."

"Sawdust!"

" Yes; don't you know the smell of it in a circus? It's... it's a kind of symbol for anticipation. Jim always insists on getting to entertainments about ten minutes before they begin. He likes to sit and smell and watch horses' feet under the flap. I entirely sympathise."

Enid nodded emphatically.

" I quite see," she said. " But it's rather subtle."

" Not in the least too subtle for Jim.... My word! what a packed house! "

As he leaned forward and surveyed it from the seat furthest from the stage, with Enid next him, then Algy, and then Mrs. Bessington — (Mrs. Bessington always desired to be as close as possible on every occasion) — he began to perceive that there was another kind of Sawdust too that he was enjoying. It was inexpressibly delightful to be here with Enid — actually sitting next her, drawing her cloak off her shoulders over the back of the chair, making small remarks when he wished to. He would have about three more months Sawdust and then the curtain would go up. And... and they would be both on the stage as well as in front. It would be a dream come true for once.... He could hear Mrs. Bessington's voice rumbling alway to Algy....

" Why, there are the Heckers," said the girl suddenly.

Nevill followed her eyes, and there indeed they were, in the stalls below — both with that extremely finished and adequate appearance which Americans in London always have. Mrs. Hecker's costume caught the eye at once; it was largely orange in colour — what there was of it. Mr. Hecker looked as if he had been born in his clothes, and had had them ironed on him every morning and evening ever since, with a continuous replacing of their wasted tissue. Mrs. Hecker was inspecting people slowly through a lorgnette: Mr. Hecker held the opera-glasses ready for her when the curtain should go up.

Enid's face suddenly dimpled with laughter.

" I wonder what Selva will have to say to her," she said. "What will the message be to her, right here and now? "

" It's a responsibility for Selva," said Nevill. " If she only knew. She's an Australian, isn't she? "

"She'll be equal to it," said the girl. "Yes: I believe she is."

" You met her in Rome, didn't you? I mean Selva."

" Yes, at the Heckers'. Don't you remember? You couldn't come."

" She's perfectly extraordinary, isn't she? "

Enid hesitated.

" I know you'll hate what I'm going to say "

" Go on."

" Well; men always think so. Of course, I see her power; but — but I don't think it's of a very high sort. Well; you'll see. Certainly she holds the house."

" She's got her house, anyhow. That's one thing. What is she like to talk to? "

" I hardly spoke to her," said the girl indifferently.

Then the orchestra began; and Nevill took up his pro-gramme.

The programme was of that kind that Selva had made famous. First, it cost a shilling; and there were no advertisements at all, beyond the announcement of the plays in which Selva would appear, with their dates. Most of them were of the usual kind — La Dame aux Camelias, La Tosca — and so forth. But to-night she was playing Margaret, " a Comedy for Men," written, it seemed, especially for her by an Australian dramatist.

The programme proceeded to give an " interpretation " of the play, of the kind generally associated with concerts and the performance of Beethoven's sonatas. It was indescribably solemn and reverent, like the handling of a fragile piece of china by a connoisseur. It gave the most precise account not so much of the play itself as of its " symbolism," and informed the audience carefully of the emotions which were proper for them to feel at each point.

" Margaret," herself, it seemed, stood for Womanhood; and Womanhood for a Tragedy that to the rest of the world was a Comedy. The writer of the programme — probably James Daniells himself, the author of the play — was just tactful enough; he argued that there were no doubt various opinions — quot homines tot sententice — but that on the whole it must be confessed that Woman even now had not risen to her proper place in the world; that she tended to become either the toy or the drudge of man. (At this point he quoted some lines from Locksley Hall and some more from The Princess.) This play, then, was intended to set out the Tragedy of Womanhood; but the audience were entreated, ironically, to remember that it was only a Comedy for Men. In the First Act they would be invited to witness a perfect domestic circle — the Man, the Woman and the Child — sanctified by Holy

Matrimony. (Here the writer permitted himself a sneer or two at the Christian religion.) In the Second Act they would see the old foundations of human instinct emerging; the Man beginning to assert himself, as he always did; and the Woman struggling to keep pace with his impossible demands. For " Margaret " was the social inferior of the Man; he had married her, telling her that she would take his place in Society, cheating both himself and her. In the Second Act, therefore, this begins to come out. " Margaret," who loves like a Woman — idealistically, spiritually, exquisitely — finds that the Man's love is not like hers. She has begun to lose her freshness while the Man is merely maturing: she makes one or two little social mistakes. Well; there is an explanation; and a reconciliation.

In the Third Act, the exquisite point of the Comedy begins: for, after another gaucherie on Margaret's part — an impulsive act founded on generosity of character — the Man begins to find sport in watching her make an exhibition of herself: he leads her on to commit social blunders, out of a devilish kind of cruelty; he laughs over her with his friends. She knows nothing of this. A friend of her husband's makes mock-love to her, with the husband's approving delight; she takes him seriously, and begins to love him in return. Then — the catastrophe; she confesses to her husband; and is met by his brutal indifference. It does not matter to him what she does; she has already ruined him and dragged him down in the world. The scales fall from her eyes; and she perishes by her own hand.

Such was the outline of the story. To call the programme priggish and pedagogic would be to pay it a considerable compliment.

Nevill wrinkled his nose, as he finished it.

" The man's a bounder," he said under his breath; as the curtain brightened suddenly and the talking stopped.

At the end of the First Act Nevill leaned back with a sigh of pleasure; and turned to Enid. Talking had burst out in an excited roar suddenly and loudly all over the house, mingled with ecstatic clapping. He turned back again to the curtain as Selva emerged all alone to take the applause; and began to clap, himself, smiling.

Selva was a tall and very nearly gaunt-looking woman, made up to the eyes. In herself she was nothing. She had quantities of brown hair, probably a wig; there was nothing remarkable about her figure; her face, seen now against the brutally bright drop-curtain with the footlights immediately beneath her, was sharp and imperious and evidently middle-aged. But, in the piece, she had been exquisite. She had not merely resembled, she had simply incarnated a young wife, very simple, adorably natural, passionately proud of her husband and child. Nothing particular had happened; persons had been introduced who, to those who had read the programme, were significant of what was to follow; the general lines had been sketched. But the overwhelming charm was in the picture of a perfect domestic happiness. Selva's little cry of delight as her husband comes in from hunting; the way her eyes follow him; his obvious love of her, with scarcely a touch of patronage — it was these things that a tremendous genius had transfigured. There was probably not a romantic girl in the theatre who had not seen the enacting of her own hopes; there was not a married man who did not feel tenderer towards his wife. The thing had been as light and delicate as a summer morning. The " husband " had been quite adequate; but it was Selva who had been the very heart of all the emotion. She was recalled twice; and Nevill marvelled.

" My dear/' he said, " I don't know what you mean. Surely that was simply perfect."

Enid smiled a little.

" Oh! I don't deny her power," she said. " Did you see "

"What?"

" Nothing."

Nevill began to examine the people again.

He felt wonderfully elated; for he was conscious, as everyone is conscious when he is entirely satisfied with a new experience, that that was exactly what he had known all along. He had not put it like that before, certainly, but it was what he had always meant. Hartley — to come down to concrete facts — Hartley would be just like in a year or two: a scene of perfect comradeship and passion and peace. He wondered what it was that Enid meant in saying that although Selva had power it did not seem to her that it was of a very high order.

" I say, old man — Beg pardon, Miss Bessington — I say, What about a cigarette? "

Nevill looked round. He did not in the least want a cigarette. But really Algy deserved it. He glanced at Enid.

" Yes, do," she said. " And you might see what Mr. Hecker wants if you can find him. He's been trying to attract your attention."

" She's great," began Algy, when they got outside.

" She's magnificent "

" I meant Mrs. Bessington," explained Algy. " I've had her entire married life laid before me. And she wants to know why I'm not married myself. I couldn't hear a word they were saying on the stage. But I suppose it's all right? "

It was not so easy to find Mr. Hecker. The passages were thronged with men; and the clink of glasses grew louder as they advanced. A positive roar of voices greeted them as they pushed open the door of the restaurant. Nevill looked round. And then Mr. Hecker was on him.

"Great, isn't she?" he said. "Pleased to see you, Sir Nevill.... And you, sir — " (Nevill introduced Mr. Lennox). " My wife wants to know if you can come and meet her at the ' Cecil.' She's coming to us on Saturday afternoon. No matinees on Saturday, you know. Much too select. Tuesdays and Thursdays are her days.... Try one of these cigarettes: they're straight from Samos."

He was just the same — alert, trim, self-effacing, and intelligent. He belonged to Mrs. Hecker, wholly; just as if he were her electric brougham. Nevill could not conceive of him as possessing an independent existence.

" I shall be delighted," said Nevill.

" And bring your friends along if they'd care to come. I'll send them a card. Care to come, Mr. Lennox?"

Mr. Lennox said he would care to come very much indeed. Had Mr. Hecker known Madam Selva long? And would he have a drink?

" No, thanks, sir. No drink — Mrs. Hecker — she doesn't like that — between meals; and, upon my word, she's right. Yes: we've known Madam Selva since last fall. Ran across her in N'York. She's great."

When they got back to the box, Enid was leaning back silent; and Mrs. Bessington was reading her programme. But the latter laid it down resolutely at the sight of Mr. Lennox....

" They want us to go and meet Madame Selva on Monday. He said they'd send a card round. I gave them your address."

Enid looked at him, nodded, but said nothing. Then again the curtain brightened; and the talking sank to a great silence.

When the Second Act ended Nevill's eyes were full of tears. He did not consider himself emotional; but it had been simply poignant. The act had ended, as has been said, with a reconciliation; but it was a reconciliation that could not last: the characters of husband and wife were essentially diverse — not complementary but antagonistic. The end was inevitable.

" I suppose there's no hope at all," he said, smiling. " I mean, I should be better pleased if the play was unconvincing— if I could feel that it didn't really happen so, but that the author made it up."

Enid looked at him.

" I can't feel it like that," she said. " I seem to see through her all the time. It isn't Margaret at all, to me. It's Selva. And — and I don't like Selva."

" Oh! dear me! " said Nevill.

Enid laid a hand on the edge of the box.

" She's made up quite intolerably," she said.

" But, my dear girl, what else could she do? She must be forty- five! "

" Then she shouldn't play a girl of twenty-two."

Then Algy, with the expression of a drowning man, caught his eye again....

Ill

As Nevill, after the final fall of the curtain, followed the ladies down the thick-carpeted corridor, he was moved down to the very bottom of his soul.

The tragedy had come swift and inevitable as a hammer falling rapidly.

The Third Act had begun quietly, as a lull before the storm breaks. It had opened with a little dinner-party that went well. Margaret, obviously a little anxious, had managed matters satisfactorily; but it was her very anxiety that had provoked her husband's wrath; and this wrath had been precipitated by a little tale told to him by his friend over the wine. Then it was that he had resolved at least to get his sport out of her; and the fiendish little plot had been arranged for her humiliation. In the second scene of the act the man had begun to make mock-love, very deftly and persuasively; and Margaret, smarting from her husband's attitude, had been tempted to yield to him.

Then, in the third scene came the catastrophe. She had told her husband with a horrible simplicity of all that happened — overwhelmed with contrition, yet with a piteous kind of hope that even this confession would mend matters; and he had burst into dreadful laughter; telling her to her face, first, that anything she chose to do would be indifferent to him, that she had already spoiled his life by her ill-breeding and her empty indiscretions, and, finally, in a burst of contempt that he had known all the while of what was happening, that his friend cared nothing for her, and that the thing was a mere comedy.

It was then that the climax of Selva's acting had come. Up to that point she had been the simple girl, striving to become, for her husband's sake, a woman of the world. Then, in silence, with the stage empty of all figures except hers, the audience had seen that development of character which should have taken five years, compressed into ten minutes. She had grown into a woman fierce and disillusioned; she had seen her spoilt life, in a vista, and that it was incapable of mending: then, yet more swiftly the primitive passions had surged up and she had seen that life with such a man — that life even without him now — was intolerable. The child had come in to prolong the agony; and the chord had hung suspended. Without the programme it might well have been thought, at any rate at first, that the child's influence might prevail. Then with a real horror, the audience had perceived that one pose was surcharged on another; that Margaret, deadly quiet and controlled, was soothing the child, merely that he might not be terrified; that her mind was made up and that her intention would be carried out. And the child too suspects there is something wrong: and once more, with an appalling self-control, his mother reassures him. The child is at last taken back to bed; then with a swiftness, at which the audience held its breath, she gets out her husband's revolver, and, without hesitation or faltering, shoots herself through the head. As acted by Selva the story was overwhelmingly convincing. So ended the comedy.

It is astonishing how an emotional stimulus, if only deep enough, stirs up a hundred dormant thoughts which, critically considered, have no kind of connection with the thought which arouses them. So it was with Nevill. Objectively taken, there was nothing whatever in common between the play he had just witnessed and his own life — except, indeed, that the play turned on the relations between husband and wife. Not one of the elements or circumstances which had developed the situations on the stage, was present, so far as he knew, in his own relations with Enid. Yet, for all that, his emotions and passions were all astir, as birds when a gun is fired. Vague ideas of sacrifice and love, and the possibilities of tragedy if the conditions of these were not observed, circled about his soul. (Mrs. Bessington, he understood, was talking to him over her shoulder; he assented smilingly; but he could not catch more than one sentence in three.) He felt he must talk very hard to Enid, indeed. He felt that there was a large number of things that must be discussed; but he could not probably, if questioned, have given any coherent answer as to what these were.

There was the usual uncomfortable pause before they could get their motors. (He was to go home in his own, dropping Algy on the way, and the Bessingtons were to go back in theirs.) Algy volunteered to go and look for them; and Mrs. Bessington, of course, with a vague desire to be helpful, followed him out a few steps under the glass porch, and stood looking about, in the very middle of the steps, hindering everyone. Nevill drew Enid aside behind the fastened-back glass doors. They had that littfe space to themselves.

" It's astounding," he said. " By the way, will you be able to come and meet her? "

Enid glanced at him.

" You want to, so much? " she said.

" Why, of course I do," said Nevill. " I want to take her to bits and see how it's done. I want to see how she holds her teacup and whether she crosses her feet when she sits down, and — and the whole thing. She was three separate and distinct people this evening, and yet they were all Margaret. My dear — you must see what a wonder she is! "

" I see her power perfectly," said Enid, in a rather high voice, " but I don't think she's Margaret. By the way, it's an impossible play."

" I should have said so if I hadn't seen Selva act it," said Nevill.

She let her eyes rest on him a moment, as if appraising him. It was as she had looked at Frascati once or twice.

" Yes? " said Nevill.

She laughed softly.

" Are all men like you? " she asked. " Do none of you see through that kind of thing? "

Nevill really was a little pricked.

" My dear girl, if you don't see that she's a genius, I — I despair. Oh! don't be tiresome, please. I assure you she's great."

For an instant he thought she was annoyed. Her eyelids came down a little and her mouth grew grave. Then again she laughed, naturally and easily.

" Well, most people seem to agree with you, certainly," she said.

Then Mrs. Bessington was seen through the glass door, with her lips still moving, to be turning her eyes this way and that. Nevill looked out to the front, and there was Algy at the door of the Bessingtons' motor.

" Come in and have a drink," said Nevill twenty minutes later, as the motor drew up at the door of the Elizabeth Street house. (Algy had, of course, refused to be set down when the time came, and said that he would walk home.)

" Well, do you know, I think I will," he said, as if he were deciding some important point. " Talking makes me thirsty," he added, as an afterthought. " I mean being talked to. Besides, I want to hear what the play was about."

" Now tell me the whole thing," he said, when he was settled in a deep chair in the library. " That clean-shaven Johnny was her husband, wasn't he?"

Nevill assured him that he was right.

" Well; that's all right then. I got that between times, so to speak. And the other Johnny — I couldn't make him out at all. He was after her, wasn't he? "

" That was the idea," said Nevill; " at least "

" That's good enough for me, then. Well, I thought her ripping "

" Who — oh! Selva, you mean. Yes; she's all right, isn't she? "

He found it difficult to attend to Algy, so violent was his preoccupation — a preoccupation, curiously enough, with the thought of Enid now, rather than of Selva. For somehow it appeared to him that Enid was just a shade displeased with him, and that this had shown itself, not indeed in anything she had said, but by a kind of faint film over her manner as he had seen the two ladies into their motor, and wished them good-night. It was very slight — so slight that he was not at all sure whether it were not sheer fancy on his part; and it was this doubt that preoccupied him. For he could not imagine, if it were so, what was the matter. Certainly he had praised Selva; but then Selva was a genius; there was only one opinion on that point. Was it conceivable that the girl did not like his going out between the acts, both times, for a cigarette with Algy? But she had urged him to — besides — it was incredible, anyhow. Was there a single piece of negligence anywhere on his part? He ran his mind back over the evening.... He could remember nothing that was at fault. It must be — if there were anything in it — that she did not like his not agreeing with her about Selva. But how could he agree? There was only one opinion.

Then, with one of those inconsequent acts of the will that people make in order to quiet uneasiness, he decided that he was being foolish; and that nothing whatever was the matter with Enid, unless perhaps she were a little tired.

Then he suddenly yawned uncontrollably, and became aware that he was very tired himself.

Algy rose promptly to his feet.

" Good-night, old man; I'm off. After that, you know "

" I'm sorry," said Nevill. " No; sit down again. Have another whisky? "

" Couldn't dream of it. No; I'm going. Is that a programme? Let's have it, will you? I must mug it up. Never do, you know, to have seen Selva and not to know what the play was about. Good-night, old man. Thanks very much, and all that. No; don't ring. I'll let myself out."

" See you on Tuesday, then."

" Well, if I actually said so " said Algy.

Nevill felt entirely disinclined for sleep when the boy had gone, in spite of his cavernous yawn just now. It was the kind of weariness that leads to mere inertia — that holds one in a deep chair, always considering the duty of going to bed, yet hindering one from performing it.

It was a quiet studious-looking room — this in which he sat — in which no one ever studied. The walls were lined with locked bookcases, whose contents, enclosed in brass lattices, were of a discouraging character. Hansard was there — row after row of him — bound in neat leather with white labels: there were such works as Agricultural Dictionaries, volumes of dreary travels, bound pamphlets, some eighteenth century poets, volumes of divinity, portfolios of engravings, tied together with green ribbon bows. On the tops of these bookcases stood plaster casts of Greek philosophers; let into panels over the fireplace was an oil-painting of nymphs disporting under very heavy-looking trees.

Yet the room was very pleasant. It had a deep Turkey carpet, a large sensible leather-covered table with solid carved chairs; the mahogany furniture was highly polished; there were fine brocade curtains, drawn back now from the tall windows to let the cool air in. On the table lay a heap of illustrated papers, and the tray with siphons and whisky.

It was very quiet here, too, since it looked on to the garden of the house, and the noise of London was no more than a distant rumble like the sound of waves upon a beach.

Here then Nevill sat and thought, too weary to move.

Presently, in spite of that faint preoccupation which, driven from the foreground of his thoughts, still occupied the background, he began to think of Hartley.

He had been there last night — at this very hour — sitting up in the hall. Aunt Anna had gone to bed nearly an hour before. He had sat up there, smoking and looking forward to the next day. All the lights had been turned out except one; he had turned this out himself and groped his way upstairs in the dark.

What an enormous while ago it seemed!

And then suddenly he began to long for it — to long for it, not as it had been last night indeed, but as it had been three weeks ago — on that first evening, for example, after Enid had come. It had been exactly perfect: they had played foolish games in the hall — the three of them, and Mrs. Bessington, murmuring sentences from time to time, which occasionally he had answered, had regarded them over her knitting. Of course, it was simply delightful to be up here and Enid only two streets away. (He was to look in next morning, by the way, and see if any appointment had been made by the lawyers.) But London somehow did not seem an ideal background. It was a shade too feverish; the Academy had been oddly fatiguing; Selva, though stimulating, had been a little exhausting too. This very room in which he sat had not the cool spaciousness of the hall at Hartley. Open windows in his bedroom, presently, would not be the same as those open windows that looked out on to the grey moonlit fans of the cedars on the lawn....

So his thoughts moved on — as if they were very nearly external visions that passed before him, rather than as ideas generated by himself — as his drowsiness increased.

And then, suddenly, in a great flush Romance poured back — that Romance which Selva had illuminated by her genius....

He saw himself again in that splendid comradeship which had dawned on him for the first time in connection with a woman, when he had begun to understand Enid. He saw how ludicrously he had been at fault just now, when he had conceived, even as a doubtful possibility, that she was a little displeased with him. How could she be? For the understanding was perfect.

Again, then, he saw himself and her, not merely as husband and wife, but as comrades, neither of whom could have a thought or a desire of which the other was not aware; and this comradeship was now Romantic in an even higher sense than he had imagined. For he had seen Passion as well to-night; and in its rosy light every cooler relationship glowed transfigured — it had been, in that play, a Passion that held tragedy, and a Passion that, under these particular circumstances, could have no issue but one. Well; but his own had no tragedy in it, because the relationship was perfect. It was not to be the mating of two hopelessly dissimilar characters, but of two who, in the great and fundamental things, were (as he had told Aunt Anna) absolutely one. There could be no tragedy there.... What, after all, did externals matter? How could it matter whether they were here or at Hartley; in this cauldron of suppressed and seething life which was named London, or in the cool spaces of Hartley, with the cedars and the hall and the river and the pavilion — that dear home of his, of which Aunt Anna was so graceful a symbol?

Then, in sudden contradiction, he began to think of the most light externals of them all, of Enid's blue filmy gown and the row of sapphires, the blue flowers in her hair, her clear pallor, the glance of her eyes as, now and again, he had met them with his own.

Mr. Charleson gave quite a start as he came round the screen and saw Nevill lying there in the deep chair. He had made certain, as he said to Mrs. Ferguson next morning, that Sir Nevill had gone to bed and left the lights burning, as young gentlemen will, without ringing the bell. He advanced a step, and coughed discreetly.

There was no movement on that sleeping face. The young man was lying back, his head drooping on one shoulder, his arms dangling down over the sides of the wellpadded chair. He looked dead tired.

Mr. Charleson coughed again.

Then he put his hand discreetly on his master's shoulder.

" Beg pardon, Sir Nevill."

"Eh?"

Nevill had sat up suddenly, bewildered with the sudden awaking: he looked blankly at the servant.

"Eh?" he said again.

" Beg pardon, Sir Nevill; but it's gone twelve. And not hearing the bell, I thought "

"After twelve, is it? I've been asleep." He stood up as he made this brilliant discovery.

" Beg pardon, Sir Nevill, but you look very tired, Sir Nevill," proceeded Charleson, who, while not daring yet to aspire to Masterson's familiarities, occasionally was a little paternal. " Better go to bed, Sir Nevill."

Nevill stretched elaborately.

" Quite right, Charleson, as usual. By George

Charleson waited.

" I do feel cooked."

" First day in London, Sir Nevill. What time in the morning "

" I think we might say nine. And breakfast in my room at half-past."

Yes; certainly this bedroom was not like Hartley. In Hartley one could move about freely: there was a wide space between the mirror and the bed, where one could even do exercises before one's bath, if one was in a virtuous and strenuous mood. But here — scarcely. He remembered Algy's confounded clumsiness before dinner. And a looking-glass too, of all things.

The rumble of the streets too was far more considerable here even than in the library. Elizabeth Street itself was fairly quiet; but from the thoroughfare which led to Victoria a hundred yards away, life was in full movement. He could hear the run of wheels, the hooting of a motor — all the more distracting since they were not quite continuous.

He undressed slowly, yawning again once or twice, and got into bed. The very sheets felt different. They had not that same sweet country smell that his sheets had had last night.

Then he switched off the light and arranged himself. How dog-tired he did feel, to be sure.

Enid.... That was the point. He would see her to-morrow. He would think about her now.... Enid....

Enid was perfect next day. She said she would certainly come and meet Selva again; that Selva, whatever one might think of her acting, was a great personality.

" You weren't angry with me yesterday? " she asked, looking up at him from her low chair, with a touch of pathos that went straight to Nevill's heart. She did look a shade paler than usual.

" Angry! With you! Why "

He went off into a torrent of expostulation.

" That's all right," she said. " I knew it must be so; but I was foolish. Nevill "

"Yes?"

" You will tell me, won't you — just as we agreed — when you're — you're not quite pleased with me? "

" Why, my darling "

" But you will? "

" Of course I will."

She nodded.

" That's all right then."

" And you must keep your side of it too," he said.

" Well, if you really wish it "

" Of course I do. That's a part of the arrangement. I shouldn't dream "

" Well, I will then....- Oh, dear me! "

"What is it?"

" I feel tired. I — I didn't sleep very well last night. I was anxious. I thought I'd done something "

Nevill was overwhelmed with shame; particularly when he remembered that he himself had fallen asleep in his chair.

" I'm a brute," he said. " Look here, I must make a confession "

She smiled up at him.

" Go on, my dear."

" I slept too well; I fell sound asleep in my chair. Charleson woke me up and sent me to bed."

" You poor dear! You did too much. You're not strong, you know. No more headaches? "

" Oh, no! And please remember, I'm quite strong always— as strong as a horse. I am, you know."

She sat still in her low chair, looking at him. Then she lifted her arms a little.

" Give me a kiss," she said. " I heard the bell go. That'll be the lawyer."