Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson (page 5)

needed her, as he had never felt the need of anyone before; his nature clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for light and air. He had no concern with anyone but her–her only–and he could not let her go. It was not love; it was a bodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading that another person should be able to exercise such an influence over him, that there should be a part of himself over which he had no control. Not to see her, not to be able to gather fresh strength from each chance meeting, meant that the grip life had of him would relax–he grew sick even at the thought of how, in some unknown place, in the midst of strangers, she would go on living, and giving her hand and her smile to other people, while he would never see her again. And he said her name aloud to himself, as if he were in bodily pain, or as if the sound of it might somehow bring him aid: he inwardly implored whatever fate was above him to give him the one small chance he asked–the chance of fair play.

The morning passed, without his knowing it. When, considerably after his usual dinner-hour, he was back in his room, he looked at familiar objects with unseeing eyes. He was not conscious of hunger, but going into the kitchen begged for a cup of the coffee that could be smelt brewing on Frau Krause’s stove. When he had drunk this, a veil seemed to lift from his brain; he opened and read a letter from home, and was pricked by compunction at the thought that, except for a few scales run hastily that morning, he had done no work. But while he still stood, with his arm on the lid of the piano, an exclamation rose to his lips; and taking up his hat, he went down the stairs again, and out into the street. What was he thinking of? If he wished to see Louise once more, his place was under her windows, or in those streets she would be likely to pass through.

He walked up and down before the house in the BRUDERSTRASSE, sometimes including a side street, in order to avoid making himself conspicuous; putting on a hurried air, if anyone looked curiously at him; lingering for a quarter of an hour on end, in the shadow of a neighbouring doorway. Gradually, yet too quickly, the grey afternoon wore to a close. He had paced to and fro for an hour now, but not a trace of her had he seen; nor did even a light burn in her room when darkness fell. A fear lest she should have already gone away, beset him again, and got the upper hand of him; and wild schemes flitted through his mind. He would mount the stairs, and ring the door-bell, on some pretext or other, to learn whether she was still there; and his foot was on the lowest stair, when his courage failed him, and he turned back. But the idea had taken root; he could not bear much longer the uncertainty he was in; and so, towards seven o’clock, when he had hung about for three hours, and there was still no sign of life in her room, he went boldly up the broad, winding stair and rang the bell. When the door was opened, he would find something to say.

The bell, which he had pulled hard, pealed through the house, jangled on, and, in a series of after-tinkles, died away. There was no immediate answering sound; the silence persisted, and having waited for some time, he rang again. Then, in the distance, he heard a door creak; soft, cautious footsteps crept along the passage; a light moved; the glass window in the upper half of the door was opened, and a little old woman peered out, holding a candle above her head. On seeing the pale face close before her, she drew back, and made as if to shut the window; for, as a result of poring over newspapers, she lived in continual expectation of robbery and murder.

“She is not at home,” she said with tremulous bravado, in answer to the young man’s question, and again was about to close the window. But Maurice thrust in his hand, and she could not shut without crushing it.

“Then she is still here? Has she gone out? When will she be back?” he queried.

“How should I know? And look here, young man, if you don’t take away your hand and leave the house at once, I shall call from the window for a policeman.”

He went slowly down the stairs and across the street, and took up anew his position in the dark doorway–a proceeding which did not reassure Fraulein Grunhut, who, regarding his inquiries as a feint, was watching his movements from between the slats of a window-blind. But Maurice had not stood again for more than a quarter of an hour, when a feeling of nausea seized him, and this reminded him that he had practically eaten nothing since the morning. If he meant to hold out, he must snatch a bite of food somewhere; afterwards, he would return and wait, if he had to wait all night.

In front of the PANORAMA on the ROSSPLATZ, he ran into the arms of Furst, and the latter, when he heard where Maurice was going, had nothing better to do than to accompany him, and drink a SCHNITT. Furst, who was in capital spirits at the prospect of the evening, laughed heartily, told witty anecdotes, and slapped his fat thigh, the type of rubicund good-humour; and as he was not of an observant turn of mind, he did not notice his companion’s abstraction. Hardly troubling to dissemble, Maurice paid scant attention to Furst’s talk; he ate avidly, and as soon as he had finished, pushed back his chair and called to the waiter for his bill.

“I must go,” he said, and rose. “I have something important to do this evening, and can’t join you.”

Furst, cut short in the middle of a sentence, let his double chin fall on his collar, and gazed open-mouthed at his companion.

“But I say, Guest, look here!. . .” Maurice heard him expostulate as the outer door slammed behind him.

He made haste to retrace his steps. The wind had dropped; a fine rain was beginning to fall; it promised to be a wet night, of empty streets and glistening pavements. There was no visible change in the windows of the BRUDERSTRASSE; they were as blankly dark as before. Turning up his coat-collar, Maurice resumed his patrollings, but more languidly; he was drowsy from having eaten, and the air was chill. A weakness overcame him at the thought of the night-watch he had set himself; it seemed impossible to endure the crawling past of still more hours. He was tired to exhaustion, and a sudden, strong desire arose in him, somehow, anyhow, to be taken out of himself, to have his thoughts diverted into other channels. And this feeling grew upon him with such force, the idea of remaining where he was, for another hour, became so intolerable, that he forgot everything else, and turned and ran back towards the PANORAMA, only afraid lest Furst should have gone without him.

The latter was, in fact, just coming out of the door. He stared in astonishment at Maurice.

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Maurice, without apology. “Shall we go? Where’s the place?”

Furst mumbled something inaudible; he was grumpy at the other’s behaviour. Scanning him furtively, and noting his odd, excited manner, he concluded that Maurice had been drinking.

They walked without speaking; Furst hummed to himself. In the thick-sown, business thoroughfare, the BRUHL, they entered a dingy cafe and while Furst chattered with the landlord and BUFFETDAME, with both of whom he was on very friendly terms, Maurice went into the side-room, where the KNEIPE was to be held, and sat down before a long, narrow table, spread with a soiled red and blue-checked tablecloth. He felt cold and sick again, and when the wan PICCOLO set a beer-mat before him, he sent the lad to the devil for a cognac. The waiter came with the liqueur-bottle; Maurice drank the contents of one and then another of the tiny glasses. A genial warmth ran through him and his nausea ceased. He leaned his head on his hands, closed his eyes, and, soothed by the heat of the room, had a few moments’ pleasant lapse of consciousness.

He was roused by the entrance of a noisy party of three. These were strangers to him, and when they had mentioned their names and learned his, they sat down at the other end of the table and talked among themselves. They were followed by a couple of men known to Maurice by sight. One, an Italian, a stout, animated man, with prominent jet-black eyes and huge white teeth, was a fellow-pupil of Schilsky’s, and a violinist of repute, notwithstanding the size and fleshiness of his hands, which were out of all proportion to the delicate build of his instrument. The other was a slender youth of fantastic appearance. He wore a long, old-fashioned overcoat, which reached to his heels, and was moulded to a shapely waist; on his fingers were numerous rings; his bushy hair was scented and thickly curled, his face painted and pencilled like a woman’s. He did not sit down, but, returning to the public room, leaned over the counter and talked to the BUFFETDAME, in a tone which had nothing in common with Furst’s hearty familiarity.

Next came a couple of Americans, loud, self-assertive, careless of dress and convention; close behind them still another group, and at its heels, Dove. The latter entered the room with an apologetic air, and on sitting down at the head of the table, next Maurice, mentioned at once that, at heart, he was not partial to this kind of thing, and was only there because he believed the present to be an exceptional occasion: who knew but what, in after years, he might not be proud to claim having, made one of the party on this particular evening?–the plain truth being that Schilsky was little popular with his own sex, and, in consequence of the difficulty of beating up a round dozen of men, Furst had been forced to be very pressing in his invitations, to have recourse to bribes and promises, or, as in the case of Dove, to stimulating the imagination. The majority of the guests present were not particular who paid for their drink, provided they got it.

At Krafft’s entry, a stifled laugh went round. To judge from his appearance, he had not been in bed the previous night: sleep seemed to hang on his red and sunken eyelids; his hands and face were dirty, and when he took off his coat, which he had worn turned up at the neck, it was seen that he had either lost or forgotten his collar. Shirt and waistcoat were insufficiently buttoned. His walk was steady, but his eyes had a glassy stare, and did not seem to see what they rested on. A strong odour of brandy went out from him; but he had not been many minutes in the room before a stronger and more penetrating smell made itself felt. The rest of the company began to sniff and ejaculate, and Furst, having tracked it to the corner where the overcoats hung, drew out of one of Krafft’s pockets a greasy newspaper parcel, evidently some days old, containing bones, scraps of decaying meat, and rancid fish. The PICCOLO, summoned by a general shout, was bade to dispose of the garbage instantly, and to hang the coat in a draughty place to air. Various epithets were hurled at Krafft, who, however, sat picking his teeth with unconcern, as if what went on around him had nothing to do with him.

They were now all collected but Schilsky, and much beer had been drunk. Furst was in his usual state of agitation lest his friend should forget to keep the appointment; and the spirits of those–there were several such present–who suffered almost physical pain from seeing another than themselves the centre of interest, went up by leaps and bounds. But at this juncture, Schilsky’s voice was heard in the next room. It was raised and angry; it snarled at a waiter. Significant glances flew round the table: for the young man’s outbursts of temper were well known to all. He entered, making no response to the greetings that were offered him, displaying his anger with genial indifference to what others thought of him. To the PICCOLO he tossed coat and hat, and swore at the boy for not catching them. Then he let his loose-limbed body down on the vacant chair, and drank off the glass of PILSENER that was set before him.

There was a pause of embarrassment. The next moment, however, several men spoke at once: Furst continued a story he was telling, some one else capped it, and the mirth these anecdotes provoked was more than ordinarily uproarious. Schilsky sat silent, letting his sullen mouth hang, and tapping the table with his fingers. Meanwhile, he emptied one glass of beer after another. The PICCOLO could hardly cope with the demands that were made on him, and staggered about, top-heavy, with his load of glasses.

But it was impossible to let the evening pass as flatly as this; besides, as the general hilarity increased, it made those present less sensitive to the mood of the guest of honour. Furst was a born speaker, and his heart was full. So, presently, he rose to his feet, struck his glass, and, in spite of Schilsky’s deepening scowl, held a flowery speech about his departing friend. The only answer Schilsky gave was a muttered request to cease making an idiot of himself.

This was going rather too far; but no one protested, except Ford, the pianist, who said in English: “Speesch? Call that a speesch?”

Furst, inclined in the first moment of rebuff to be touchy, allowed his natural goodness of heart to prevail. He leaned forward, and said, not without pathos: “Old man, we are all your friends here. Something’s the matter. Tell us what it is.”

Before Schilsky could reply, Krafft awakened from his apparent stupor to say with extreme distinctness: “I’ll tell you. There’s been the devil to pay.”

“Now, chuck it, Krafft!” cried one or two, not without alarm at the turn things might take.

But Schilsky, whose anger had begun to subside under the influence of the two litres he had drunk, said slowly and thickly: “Let him be. What he says is the truth–gospel truth.”

“Oh, say, that’s to’ bad!” cried one of the Americans–a lean man, with the mouth and chin of a Methodist.

All kept silence now, in the hope that Schilsky would continue. As he did not, but sat brooding, Furst, in his role of peacemaker, clapped him on the back. “Well, forget it for to-night, old man! What does it matter? To-morrow you’ll be miles away.”

This struck a reminiscence in Ford, who forthwith tried to sing:

I’m off by the morning train,
Across the raging main—-

“That’s easily said!” Schilsky threw a dark look round the table. “By those who haven’t been through it. I have. And I’d rather have lost a hand.”

Krafft laughed–that is to say, a cackle of laughter issued from his mouth, while his glazed eyes stared idiotically. “He shall tell us about it. Waiter, a round of SCHNAPS!”

“Shut up, Krafft!” said Furst uneasily.

“Damn you, Heinz!” cried Schilsky, striking the table. He swallowed his brandy at a gulp, and held out the glass to be refilled. His anger fell still more; he began to commiserate himself. “By Hell, I wish a plague would sweep every woman off the earth!”

“The deuce, why don’t you keep clear of them?”

Schilsky laughed, without raising his heavy eyes. “If they’d only give one the chance. Damn them all!–old and young—-I say. If it weren’t for them, a man could lead a quiet life.”

“It’ll all come out in the wash,” consoled the American.

Maurice heard everything that passed, distinctly; but the words seemed to be bandied at an immeasurable distance from him. He remained quite undisturbed, and would have felt like a god looking on at the doings of an infinitesimal world, had it not been for a wheel which revolved in his head, and hindered him from thinking connectedly. So far, drinking had brought him no pleasure; and he had sense enough to find the proximity of Ford disagreeable; for the latter spilt half the liquor he tried to swallow over himself, and half over his neighbour.

A fresh imprecation of Schilsky’s called forth more laughter. On its subsidence, Krafft awoke to his surroundings again. “What has the old woman given you?” he asked, with his strange precision of speech and his drunken eyes.

Schilsky struck the table with his fist. “Look at him!–shamming drunk, the bitch!” he cried.

“Never mind him; he don’t count. How much did she give you?”

“Oh, gee, go on!”

But Schilsky, turned sullen again, refused to answer.

“Out with it then, Krafft!–you know, you scoundrel, you!”

Krafft put his hand to the side of his mouth. “She gave him three thousand marks.”

On all sides the exclamations flew.

“Oh, gee-henna!”

“Golly for her!”

“DREI TAUSEND MARK!–ALLE EHRE!”

Again Krafft leaned forward with a maudlin laugh.

“JAWOHL–but on what condition?”

“Heinz, you ferret out things like a pig’s snout,” said Furst with an exaggerated, tipsy disgust.

“What, the old louse made conditions, did she?”

“Is she jealous?”

There was another roar at this. Schilsky looked as black as thunder.

Again Furst strove to intercede. “Jealous?–in seven devils’ name, why jealous? The old scarecrow! She hasn’t an ounce of flesh to her bones.”

Schilsky laughed. “Much you know about it, you fool! Flesh or no flesh, she’s as troublesome as the plumpest. I wouldn’t go through the last month again for all you could offer me. Month?–no, nor the last six months either! It’s been a hell of a life. Three of ’em, whole damned three, at my heels, and each ready to tear the others’ eyes out.”

“Three! Hullo!”

“Three? Bah!–what’s three?” sneered the painted youth.

Schilsky turned on him. “What’s three? Go and try it, if you want to know, you pap-sodden suckling! Three, I said, and they’ve ended by making the place too hot to hold me. But I’m done now. No more for me!–if my name’s what it is.”

Having once broken through his reserve, he talked on, with heated fluency; and the longer he spoke, the more he was carried away by his grievances. For, all he had asked for, he assured his hearers, had been peace and quiet–the peace necessary to important work. “Jesus and Mary! Are a fellow’s chief obligations not his obligations to himself?” At the same time, it was not his intention to put any of the blame on Lulu’s shoulders: she couldn’t help herself. “Lulu is Lulu. I’m damned fond of Lulu, boys, and I’ve always done my best by her–is there anyone here who wants to say I haven’t?”

There was none; a chorus of sympathetic ayes went up from the party that was drinking at his expense.

Mollified, he proceeded, asserting vehemently that he would have gone miles out of his. way to avoid causing Lulu pain. “I’m a soft-hearted fool–I admit it!–where a woman is concerned.” But he had yielded to her often enough–too often–as it was; the time had come for him to make a stand. Let those present remember what he had sacrificed only that summer for Lulu’s sake. Would anyone else have done as much for his girl? He made bold to doubt it. For a man like Zeppelin to come to him, and to declare, with tears in his eyes, that he could teach him no more–could he afford to treat a matter like that with indifference? Had he really been free to make a choice?

Again he looked round the table with emphasis, and those who had their muscles sufficiently under control, hastened to lay their faces in seemly folds.

Then, however, Schilsky’s mood changed; he struck the table so that the glasses danced. “And shall I tell you what my reward has been for not going? Do you want to know how Lulu has treated me for staying on here? ‘You are a quarter of an hour late: where have you been? You’ve only written two bars since I saw you this morning: what have you been doing? A letter has come in a strange writing: who is it from? You’ve put on another tie: who have you been to see?’ HIMMELSAKRAMENT!” He drained his glass. “I’ve had the life of a dog, I tell you–of a dog! There’s not been a moment in the day when she hasn’t spied on me, and followed me, and made me ridiculous. Over every trifle she has got up a fresh scene. She’s even gone so far as to come to my room and search my pockets, when she knew I wasn’t at home.”

“Yes, yes,” sneered Krafft. “Exactly! And so, gentlemen he was now for slinking off without a word to her.”

“Oh, PFUI!” spat the American.

“Call him a liar!” said a voice.

“Liar?” repeated Schilsky dramatically. “Why liar? I don’t deny it. I would have done it gladly if I could–isn’t that just what I’ve been saying? Lulu would have got over it all the quicker alone. And then, why shouldn’t I confess it? You’re all my friends here.” He dropped his voice. “I’m afraid of Lulu, boys. I was afraid she’d get round me, and then my chance was gone. She might have shot me, but she wouldn’t have let me go. You never know how a woman of that type’ll break out–never!”

“But she didn’t!” said Krafft. “You live.”

Schilsky understood him.

“Some brute,” he cried savagely, “some dirty brute had nothing better to do than to tell her.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the painted boy.

Furst blew his nose. “It wasn’t me. I was mum. ‘Pon my honour, I was.”

“My God!” said Schilsky, and fell to remembering it. “What a time I’ve been through with her this afternoon!” He threatened to be overcome by the recollection, and supported his head on his hands. “A woman has no gratitude,” he murmured, and drew his handkerchief from his pocket. “It is a weak, childish sex–with no inkling of higher things.” Here, however, he suddenly drew himself up. “Life is very hard!” he cried, in a loud voice. “The perpetual struggle between duty and inclination for a man of genius . . . !”

He grew franker, and gave gratuitous details of the scene that had taken place in his room that afternoon. Most of those present were in ecstasies at this divulging of his private life, which went forward to the accompaniment of snores from Ford, and the voice of Dove, who, with portentous gravity, sang over and over again, the first strophe of THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER.

“A fury!” said Schilsky. “A . . . a what do you call it ?–a . . . Meg . . . a Meg–” He gave it up and went on: “By God, but Lulu knows how! Keep clear of her nails, boys–I’d advise you!” At this point, he pulled back his collar, and exhibited a long, dark scratch on the side of his neck. “A little remembrance she gave me to take away with me!” While he displayed it, he seemed to be rather proud of it; but immediately afterwards, his mood veered round again to one of bitter resentment. To illustrate the injustice she had been guilty of, and his own long-suffering, he related, at length, the story of his flirtation with Ephie, and the infinite pains he had been at to keep Louise in ignorance of what was happening. He grew very tender with himself as he told it. For, according to him, the whole affair had come about without any assistance of his. “What the deuce was I to do? Chucked herself full at my head, did the little one. No invitation necessary–a ripe plum, boys! Touch the plum–and off it tumbles! As pretty a little thing, too, as ever was made! Had everything arranged by the second meeting. Papa to set us up; house in New York; money IN HULLE UND FULLE!”

At the mention of New York, the lean American looked grave. “Look here, you, don’t think you’re the whole shoot because you’ve got a wave in your hair!” he murmured in English.

But Schilsky did not hear him; his voice droned on, giving the full particulars of this particular case. He grew momentarily opener.

“One no sooner out of the door than the other was in,” he asserted, and laughed long to himself.

For some time past, Maurice had been possessed by the idea that what was happening concerned him very nearly, and that he ought to interfere and put his foot down. His hands had grown cold, and he sat vainly trying to speak: nothing, however, came, but little drunken gulps and hiccups. But the first mention of Ephie’s name seemed to put new strength into him; he made a violent effort, and rose to his feet, holding on to the table with both hands. He could not, however, manage to attract attention; no one took any notice of him; and besides this, he had himself no notion what it was that he really wanted to say.

“And drowns his sorrows in the convivial glass!” he suddenly shouted in English, at the top of his voice, which he had found. He had a vague belief that he was quoting a well-known line of poetry, and, though he did not in the least understand how it applied to the situation, he continued to repeat it, with varying shades of fervour, till some one called out: “Oh, stop your blasted rot!”

He laughed hoarsely at this, could not check himself, and was so exhausted when he had finished that it took him some time to remember why he was on his feet. Schilsky was still relating: his face was darkly red, his voice husky, and he flapped his arms with meaningless gestures. A passionate rebellion, a kind of primitive hatred, gripped Maurice, and when Schilsky paused for breath, he could contain himself no longer. He felt the burning need of contradicting the speaker, even though he could not catch the drift of what was said.

“It’s a lie!” he cried fiercely, with such emphasis that every face was turned to him. “A damned lie!”

“A lie? What the devil do you mean?” responded not one but many voices–the whole table seemed to be asking him, with the exception of Dove, who sang on in an ever decreasing tempo.

“Get out!–Let him alone; he’s drunk. He doesn’t know what he’s saying–He’s got rats in his head!” he heard voices asserting. Forthwith he began a lengthy defence of himself, broken only by gaps in which his brain refused to work. Conscious that no one was listening to him, he bawled more and more loudly.

“Oh, quit it, you double-barrelled ass!” said the American.

Schilsky, persuaded by those next him to let the incident pass unnoticed, contented himself with a: “VERFLUCHTE SCHWEINEREI!” spat, after Furst’s gurgled account of Maurice’s previous insobriety, across the floor behind him, to express his contempt, and proceeded as dominatingly as before with the narration of his love-affairs.

The blood rushed to Maurice’s head at the sound of this voice which he could neither curb nor understand. Rage mastered him–a vehement desire to be quits. He kicked back his chair, and rocked to and fro.

“It’s a lie–a dirty lie!” he cried. “You make her unhappy–God, how unhappy you make her! You illtreat her. You’ve never given her a day’s happiness. S . . . said so . . . herself. I heard her . . . I swear . . . I—-“

His voice turned to a whine; his words came thick and incoherent.

Schilsky sprang to his feet and aimed the contents of a half-emptied glass at Maurice’s face. “Take that, you blasted spy!–you Englishman!” he spluttered. “I’ll teach you to mix your dirty self in my affairs!”

Every one jumped up; there was noise and confusion; simultaneously two waiters entered the room, as if they had not been unprepared for something of this kind. Furst and another man restrained Schilsky by the arms, reasoning with him with more force than coherence. Maurice, the beer dripping from chin, collar and shirt-front, struggled furiously with some one who held him back.

“Let me get at him–let me get at him!” he cried. “I’ll teach him to treat a woman as he does. The sneak–the cur–the filthy cad! He’s not fit to touch her hand–her beautiful hand–her beau . . . ti . . . ful—-” Here, overpowered by his feelings, as much as by superior strength, he sank on a chair and wept.

“I’ll break his bones!” raved Schilsky. “What the hell does he mean by it?–the INFAME SCHUFT, the AAS, the dirty ENGLANDER! Thinks he’ll sneak after her himself, does he?–What in Jesus’ name is it to him how I treat her? I’ll take a stick to her if I like–it’s none of his blasted business! Look here, do you see that?” He freed one hand, fumbled in his pocket, and, almost inarticulate with rage and liquor, brandished a key across the table. “Do you see that? That’s a key, isn’t it, you drunken hog? Well, with that key, I can let myself into Lulu’s room at any hour I want to; I can go there now, this very minute, if I like–do you think she’ll turn me out, you infernal spy? Turn me out?–she’d go down on her knees here before you all to get me back to her!”

Unwilling to be involved in the brawl, the more sober of the party had begun to seek out their hats and to slink away. A little group round Schilsky blarneyed and expostulated. Why should the whole sport of the evening be spoilt in this fashion? What did it matter what the damned cranky Englishman said? Let him be left to his swilling. They would clear out, and wind up the night at the BAUER; and at four, when that shut, they would go on to the BAYRISCHE BAHNHOF, where they could not only get coffee, but could also see Schilsky off by a train soon after five. These persuasions prevailed, and, still swearing, and threatening, and promising, by all that was holy, to bring Lulu there, by the hair of her head if necessary, to show whether or no he had the power over her he boasted of, Schilsky finally allowed himself to be dragged off, and those who were left lurched out in his wake.

With their exit an abrupt silence fell, and Maurice sank into a heavy sleep, in which he saw flowery meadows and heard a gently trickling brook. . . .

“Now then, up with you!–get along!” some one was shouting in his ear, and, bit by bit, a pasty-faced waiter entered his field of view. “It’s past time, anyhow,” and yawning loudly, the waiter turned out all the gas-jets but one. “Don’t yer hear? Up with you! You’ll have to look after the other–now, damn me, if there isn’t another of you as well!” and, from under the table, he drew out a recumbent body.

Maurice then saw that he was still in the company of Dove, who sat staring into space–like a dead man. Krafft, propped on a chair, hung his head far back, and the collarless shirt exposed the whole of his white throat.

The waiter hustled them about. Maurice was comparatively steady on his legs; and it was found that Dove could walk. But over Krafft, the man scratched his head and called a comrade. At the mention of a droschke, however, Maurice all but wept anew with ire and emotion: this was his dearest friend, the friend of his bosom; he was ready at any time to stake his life for him, and now he was not to be allowed even to see him home.

A difficulty arose about Maurice’s hat: he was convinced that the one the waiter jammed so rudely on his head did not belong to him; and it seemed as if nothing in the world had ever mattered so much to him as now getting back his own hat. But he had not sufficient fluency to explain all he meant; before he had finished, the man lost patience; and suddenly, without any transition, the three of them were in the street. The raw night air gave them a shock; they gasped and choked a little. Then the wall of a house rose appositely and met them. They leaned against it, and Maurice threw the hat from him and trampled on it, chuckling at the idea that he was revenging himself on the waiter.

It was a journey of difficulties; not only was he unclear what locality they were in, but innumerable lifeless things confronted them and formed obstacles to their progress; they had to charge an advertisement-column two or three times before they could get round it. Maurice grew excessively angry, especially with Dove. For while Heinz let himself be lugged this way and that, Dove, grown loud and wilful, had ideas of his own, and, in addition to this, sang the whole time with drunken gravity:

Sez the ragman, to the bagman,
I’ll do yees no harm.

“Stop it, you oaf!” cried Maurice, goaded to desperation. “You beastly, blathering, drunken idiot!”

Then, for a street-length, he himself lapsed into semi-consciousness, and when he wakened, Dove was gone. He chuckled anew at the thought that somehow or other they had managed to outwit him.

His intention had been to make for home, but the door before which they ultimately found themselves was Krafft’s. Maurice propped his companion against the wall, and searched his own pockets for a key. When he had found one, he could not find the door, and when this was secured, the key would not fit. The perspiration stood out on his forehead; he tried again and again, thought the keyhole was dodging him, and asserted the fact so violently that a window in the first storey was opened and a head thrust out.

“What in the name of Heaven are you doing down there?” it cried. “You drunken SCHWEIN, can’t you see the door’s open?”

In the sitting-room, both fell heavily over a chair; after that, with infinite labour, he got Heinz on the sofa. He did not attempt to make a light; enough came in from a street-lamp for him to see what he was doing.

Lying on his face, Krafft groaned a little, and Maurice suddenly grasped that he was taken ill. Heinz was ill, Heinz, his best friend, and he was doing nothing to help him! Shedding tears, he poured out a glass of water. He believed he was putting the carafe safely back on the table, but it dropped with a crash to the floor. He was afraid Frau Schulz would come in, and said in a loud voice: “It’s that fellow there, he’s dead drunk, beastly drunk!” Krafft would not drink the water, and in the attempt to force him, it was spilled over him. He stirred uneasily, put up his arms and dragged Maurice down, so that the latter fell on his knees beside the sofa. He made a few ineffectual efforts to free himself; but one arm held him like a vice; and in this uncomfortable position, he went to sleep.

Part II

O viva morte, e dilettoso male!

PETRARCH.

I.

The following morning, towards twelve o’clock, a note from Madeleine was handed to Maurice. In it, she begged him to account to Schwarz for her absence from the rehearsal of a trio, which was to have taken place at two.

GO AND EXPLAIN THAT IT IS QUITE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO COME, she wrote. LOUISE IS VERY ILL; THE DOCTOR IS AFRAID OF BRAIN FEVER. I AM RUSHING, OFF THIS MOMENT TO SEE ABOUT A NURSE–AND SHALL STAY TILL ONE COMES.

He read the words mechanically, without taking in their meaning. From the paper, his eyes roved round the room; he saw the tumbled, unopened bed, from which he had just risen, the traces of his boots on the coverings. He could not remember how he had come there; his last recollection was of being turned out of Krafft’s room, in what seemed to be still the middle of the night. Since getting home, he must have slept a dead sleep.

“Ill? Brain fever?” he repeated to himself, and his mind strove to pierce the significance of the words. What had happened? Why should she be ill? A racking uneasiness seized him and would not let him rest. His inclination was to lay his aching head on the pillow again; but this was out of the question; and so, though he seldom braved Frau Krause, he now boldly went to her with a request to warm up his coffee.

When he had drunk it, and bathed his head, he felt considerably better. But he still could not call to mind what had occurred. The previous evening was blurred in its details; he only had a sense of oppression when he thought of it, as of something that had threatened, and still did. He was glad to have a definite task before him, and went out at once, in order to catch Schwarz before he left the Conservatorium; but it was too late; the master’s door was locked. It was a bright, cold day with strong sunlight; Maurice’s eyes ached, and he shrank from the wind at every corner. Instead of going home, he went to Madeleine’s room and sat down to wait for her. She had evidently been away since early morning; the piano was dusty and unopened; the blind at the head of it had not been drawn up. It was a pleasant dusk; he put his arms on the table, his head on his arms, and, in spite of his anxiety, fell into a sound sleep.

He was wakened by Madeleine’s entrance. It was three o’clock. She came bustling in, took off her hat, laid it on the piano, and at once drew up the blind. She was not surprised. to find him there, but exclaimed at his appearance.

“Good gracious, Maurice, how dreadful you look! Are you ill?”

He hastened to reassure her, and she was a little put out at her wasted sympathy.

“Well, no wonder, I’m sure, after the doings there were last night. A pretty way to behave! And that you should have mixed yourself up in it as you did!–I wouldn’t have believed it of you. How I know? My dear boy, it’s the talk of the place.”

Her words called up to him a more lucid remembrance of the past evening than he had yet been capable of. In his eagerness to recollect everything, he changed colour and looked away. Madeleine put his confusion down to another cause.

“Never mind, it’s over now, and we won’t say any more about it. Sit still, and I’ll make you some tea. That will do your head good–for you have a splitting headache, haven’t you? I shall be glad of some myself, too, after all the running about I’ve had this morning. I’m quite worn out.”

When she heard that he had had no dinner, she sent for bread and sausage, and was so busy and unsettled that only when she sat down, with her cup before her, did he get a chance to say: “What is it, Madeleine? Is she very ill?”

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, she is ill enough. It’s not easy to say what the matter is, though. The doctor is to see her again this evening. And I found a nurse.”

“Then she is not going away?” He did not mean to say the words aloud; they escaped him against his will.

His companion raised her eyebrows, filling her forehead with wrinkles. “Going away?” she echoed. “I should say not. My dear Maurice, what is more, it turns out she hadn’t an idea he was going either. What do you say to that?” She flushed with sincere indignation. “Not an idea–until yesterday. My lord had the intention of sneaking off without a word, and of leaving her to find it out for herself. Oh, it’s an abominable affair altogether!–and has been from beginning to end. There’s much about Louise, as you know, that I don’t approve of, and I think she has behaved weakly–not to call it by a harder name–all through. But now, she has my entire sympathy. The poor girl is in a pitiable state.”

“Is she . . . dangerously ill?”

“Well, I don’t think she’ll die of it, exactly–though it might be better for her if she did. NA!. . . let me fill up your cup. And eat something more. Oh, he is . . . no words are bad enough for him; though honestly speaking, I think we might have been prepared for something of this kind, all along. It seems he made his arrangements for going on the quiet. Frau Schaefele advanced him the money; for of course he has nothing of his own. But what condition do you think the old wretch made? That he should break with Louise. Furst has told me all about it. I went to him at once this morning. She was always jealous of Louise–though to him she only talked of the holiness of art and the artist’s calling, and the danger of letting domestic ties entangle you, and rubbish of that kind. I believe she was at the bottom of it that he didn’t marry Louise long ago. Well, however that may be, he now let himself be persuaded easily enough. He was hearing on all sides that he had been here too long; and candidly, I think he was beginning to feel Louise a drag on him. I know of late they were not getting on well together. But to be such a coward and a weakling! To slink off in this fashion! Of course, when it came to the last, he was simply afraid of her, and of the scene she would make him. Bravery has as little room in his soul as honesty or manliness. He would always prefer a back-door exit. Such things excite a man, don’t you know?–and ruffle the necessary artistic composure.” She laughed scornfully. “However, I’m glad to say, he didn’t escape scot-free after all. Everything went well till yesterday afternoon, when Louise, who was as unsuspecting as a child, heard of it from some one–they say it was Krafft. Without thinking twice–you know her . . . or rather you don’t–she went straight to Schilsky and confronted him. I can’t tell you what took place between them, but I can imagine something of it, for when Louise lets herself go, she knows no bounds, and this was a matter of life and death to her.”

Madeleine rose, blew out the flame of the spirit-lamp, and refilled the teapot.

“Fraulein Grunhut, her landlady, heard her go out yesterday afternoon, but didn’t hear her come in, so it must have been late in the evening. Louise hates to be pried on, and the old woman is lazy, so she didn’t go to her room till about half-past eight this morning, when she took in the hot water. Then she found Louise stretched on the floor, just as she had come in last night, her hat lying beside her. She was conscious, and her eyes were open, but she was stiff and cold, and wouldn’t speak or move. Grunhut couldn’t do anything with her, and was mortally afraid. She sent for me; and between us we got her to bed, and I went for a doctor. That was at nine, and I have been on my feet ever since.”

“It’s awfully good of you.”

“No, she won’t die,” continued Madeleine meditatively, stirring her tea. “She’s too robust a nature for that. But I shouldn’t wonder if it affected her mind. As I say, she knows no bounds, and has never learnt self-restraint. It has always been all or nothing with her. And this I must say: however foolish and wrong the whole thing was, she was devoted to Schilsky, and sacrificed everything–work, money and friends–to her infatuation. She lived only for him, and this is a moral judgment on her. Excess of any kind brings its own punishment with it.”

She rose and smoothed her hair before the mirror.

“And now I really must get to work, and make up for the lost morning. I haven’t touched a note to-day. As for you, Maurice, if you take my advice, you’ll go home and go to bed. A good sleep is what you’re needing. Come to-morrow, if you like, for further news. I shall go back after supper, and hear what the doctor says. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Madeleine. You’re a brick.”

Having returned to his room, he lay face downwards on the sofa. He was sick at heart. Viewed in the light of the story he had heard from Madeleine, life seemed too unjust to be endured. It propounded riddles no one could answer; the vast output of energy that composed it, was misdirected; on every side was cruelty and suffering. Only the heartless and selfish–those who deserved to suffer–went free.

He pressed the back of his hand to his tired eyes; and, despite her good deeds, he felt a sudden antipathy to Madeleine, who, on a day like this, could take up her ordinary occupation.

In the morning, on awakening from a heavy sleep, he was seized by a fear lest Louise should have died in the night. Through brooding on it, the fear became a certainty, and he went early to Madeleine, making a detour through the BRUDERSTRASSE, where his suspicions were confirmed by the lowered blinds. He had almost two hours to wait; it was eleven o’clock before Madeleine returned. Her face was so grave that his heart seemed to stop beating. But there was no change in the sick girl’s condition; the doctor was perplexed, and spoke of a consultation. Madeleine was returning at two o’clock to relieve the nurse.

“You are foolishly letting it upset you altogether,” she reproved Maurice. “And it won’t mend matters in the least. Go home and settle down to work, like a sensible fellow.”

He tried to follow Madeleine’s advice. But it was of no use; when he had struggled on for half an hour, he sprang up, realising how monstrous it was that he should be sitting there, drilling his fingers, getting the right notes of a turn, the specific shade of a crescendo, when, not very far away, Louise perhaps lay dying. Again he felt keenly the contrariness of life; and all the labour which those around him were expending on the cult of hand and voice and car, seemed of a ludicrous vanity compared with the grim little tragedy that touched him so nearly; and in this mood he remained, throughout the days of suspense that now ensued.

He went regularly every afternoon to Madeleine, and, if she were not at home, waited till she returned, an hour, two hours, as the case might be. This was the vital moment of the day–when he read her tidings from her face.

At first they were always the same: there was no change. Fever did not set in, but, day and night, Louise lay with wide, strained eyes; she refused nourishment, and the strongest sleeping-draught had no effect. Then, early one morning, for some trifling cause which, afterwards, no one could recall, she broke into a convulsive fit of weeping, went on till she was exhausted, and subsequently fell asleep.

On the day Maurice learnt that she was out of danger, he walked deep into the woods. The news had lifted such a load from his mind that he felt almost happy. But before he reached home again, his brain had begun to work at matters which, during the period of anxiety, it had left untouched. At first, in desperation, he had been selfless enough to hope that Schilsky would return, on learning what had happened. Now, however, that he had not done so, and Louise had passed safely through the ordeal, Maurice was ready to tremble lest anything should occur to soil the robe of saintly suffering, in which he draped her.

He began to take up the steady routine of his life again. Furst received him with open arms, and no allusion was made to the night in the BRUHL. With the cessation of his anxiety, a feeling of benevolence towards other people awakened in him, and when, one afternoon, Schwarz asked the assembled class if no one knew what had become of Krafft, whether he was ill, or anything of the kind, it was Maurice who volunteered to find out. He remembered now that he had not seen Krafft at the Conservatorium for a week or more.

Frau Schulz looked astonished to see him, and, holding the door in her hand, made no mien to let him enter. Herr Krafft was away, she said gruffly, had been gone for about a week, she did not know where or why. He had left suddenly one morning, without her knowledge, and the following day a postcard had come from him, stating that all his things were to lie untouched till his return.

“He was so queer lately that I’d he just as pleased if he stayed away altogether,” she said. “That’s all I can tell you. Maybe you’d get something more out of her. She knows more than she says, anyhow,” and she pointed with her thumb at the door of the adjoining PENSION.

Maurice rang there, and a dirty maid-servant showed him Avery’s room. At his knock, she opened the door herself, and first looked surprised, then alarmed at seeing him.

“What’s the matter? Has anything happened?” she stammered, like one on the look-out for bad news.

“Then what do you want?” she asked in her short, unpleasant way, when he had reassured her.

“I came up to see Heinz. And they tell me he is not here; and Frau Schulz sent me to you. Schwarz was asking for him. Is it true that he has gone away?”

“Yes, it’s true.”

“Where to? Will he be away long?”

“How should I know?” she cried rudely. “Am I his keeper? Find out for yourself, if you must know,” and the door slammed to in his face.

He mentioned the incident to Madeleine that evening. She looked strangely at him, he thought, and abruptly changed the subject. A day or two later, on the strength of a rumour that reached his ears, he tackled Furst, and the latter, who, up to this time, had been of a praiseworthy reticence, let fall a hint which made Maurice look blank with amazement. Nevertheless, he could not now avoid seeing certain incidents in his friendship with Krafft, under a different aspect.

About a fortnight had elapsed since the beginning of Louise’s illness; she was still obliged to keep her bed. More than once, of late, Madeleine had returned from her daily visit, decidedly out of temper.

“Louise rubs me up the wrong way,” she complained to Maurice. “And she isn’t in the least grateful for all I’ve done for her. I really think she prefers having the nurse about her to me.”

“Sick people often have such fancies,” he consoled her.

“Louise shows hers a little too plainly. Besides, we have never got on well for long together.”

But one afternoon, on coming in, she unpinned her hat and threw it on the piano, with a decisive haste that was characteristic of her in anger.

“That’s the end; I don’t go back again. I’m not paid for my services, and am under no obligation to listen to such things as Louise said to me to-day. Enough is enough. She is well on the mend, and must get on now as best she can. I wash my hands of the whole affair.”

“But you’re surely not going to take what a sick person says seriously?” Maurice exclaimed in dismay. “How can she possibly get on with only those strangers about her?”

“She’s not so ill now. She’ll be all right,” answered Madeleine; she had opened a letter that was on the table, and did not look up as she spoke. “There’s a limit to everything–even to my patience with her rudeness.”

And on returning the following day, he found, sure enough, that, true to her word, Madeleine had not gone back. She maintained an obstinate silence about what had happened, and requested that he would now let the matter drop.

The truth was that Madeleine’s conscience was by no means easy.

She had gone to see Louise on that particular afternoon, with even more inconvenience to herself than usual. On admitting her, Fraulein Grunhut had endeavoured to detain her in the passage, mumbling and gesticulating in the mystery-mongering way with which Madeleine had no patience. It incited her to answer the old woman in a loud, clear voice; then, brusquely putting her aside, she opened the door of the sick girl’s room.

As she did so, she utttered an exclamation of surprise. Louise, in a flannel dressing-gown, was standing at the high tiled stove behind the door. Both her arms were upraised and held to it, and she leant her forehead against the tiles.

“Good Heavens, what are you doing out of bed?” cried Madeleine; and, as she looked round the room: “And where is Sister Martha?”

Louise moved her head, so that another spot of forehead came in contact with the tiles, and looked up at Madeleine from under her heavy lids, without replying.

Madeleine laid one by one on the table some small purchases she had made on the way there.

“Well, are you not going to speak to me to-day?” she said in a pleasant voice, as she unbuttoned her jacket. “Or tell me what I ask about the Sister?” There was not a shade of umbrage in her tone.

Louise moved her head again, and looked away from Madeleine to the wall of the room. “I have got up,” she answered, in such a low voice that Madeleine had to pause in what she was doing, to hear her; “because I could not bear to lie in bed any longer. And I’ve sent the Sister away–because . . . oh, because I couldn’t endure having her about me.”

“You have sent Sister Martha away?” echoed Madeleine. “On your own responsibility? Louise!–how absurd! Well, I suppose I must put on my hat again and fetch her back. How can you get on alone, I should like to know? Really, I have no time to come oftener than I do.”

“I’m quite well now. I don’t need anyone.”

“Come, get back into bed, like a good girl, and I will make you some tea,” said Madeleine, in the gently superior tone that one uses to a sick person, to a young child, to anyone with whom it is not fitting to dispute.

Instead, Louise left the stove, and sat down in a low American rocking-chair, where she crouched despondently.

“I wish I had died,” she said in a toneless voice.

Madeleine smiled with exaggerated cheerfulness, and rattled the tea-cups. “Nonsense! You mustn’t talk about dying–now that you are nearly well again. Besides, you know, such things are easily said. One doesn’t mean them.”

“I wish I had died. Why didn’t you let me die?” repeated Louise in the same apathetic way.

Madeleine did not reply; she was cogitating whether it would be more convenient to go after the nurse at once, and what she ought to do if she could not get her to come back. For Louise would certainly have despatched her in tragedy-fashion.

Meanwhile the latter had laid her arms along the low arms of the chair, and now sat gazing from one to the other of her hands. In their way, these hands of hers had acquired a kind of fame, which she had once been vain of. They had been photographed; a sculptor had modelled them for a statue of Antigone–long, slim and strong, with closely knit fingers, and pale, deep-set nails: hands like those of an adoring Virgin; hands which had an eloquent language all their own, but little or no agility, and which were out of place on the keys of a piano. Louise sat looking at them, and her face was so changed–the hollow setting of the eyes reminded perpetually of the bones beneath; the lines were hammered black below the eyes; nostrils and lips were pinched and thinned–that Madeleine, secretly observing her, remarked to herself that Louise looked at least ten years older than before. Her youth, and, with it, such freshness as she had once had, were gone from her.

“Here is your tea.”

The girl drank it slowly, as if swallowing were an effort, while Madeleine went round the room, touching and ordering, and opening a window. This done, she looked at her watch.

“I will go now,” she said, “and see if I can persuade Sister Martha to come back. If you haven’t mortally offended her, that is.”

Louise started up from her chair, and put her cup, only half emptied, on the table.

“Madeleine!–please–please, don’t! I can’t have her back again. I am quite well now. There was nothing more she could do for me. I shall sleep a thousand times better at night if she is not here. Oh, don’t bring her back again! Her voice cut like a knife, and her hands were so hard.”

She trembled with excitement, and was on the brink of tears.

“Hush!–don’t excite yourself like that,” said Madeleine, and tried to soothe her. “There’s no need for it. If you are really determined not to have her, then she shall not come and that’s the end of it. Not but what I think it foolish of you all the same,” she could not refrain from adding. “You are still weak. However, if you prefer it, I’ll do my best to run up this evening to see that you have everything for the night.”

“I don’t want you either.”

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders, and her pity became tinged with impatience.

“The doctor says you must go away somewhere, for a change,” she said as she beat up the pillows and smoothed out the crumpled sheets, preparatory to coaxing her patient back to bed.

Louise shook her head, but did not speak.

“A few weeks’ change of air is what you need to set you up again.”

“I cannot go away.”

“Nonsense! Of course you can. You don’t want to be ill all the winter?”

“I don’t want to be well.”

Madeleine sniffed audibly. “There’s no reasoning with you. When you hear on all sides that it’s for your own good—-“

“Oh, stop tormenting me!” cried Louise, raising a drawn face with disordered hair. “I won’t go away! Nothing will make me. I shall stay here–though I never get well again.”

“But why? Give me one sensible reason for not going.–You can’t!”

“Yes . . . if . . . if Eugen should come back.”

The words could only just be caught. Madeleine stood, holding a sheet with both hands, as though she could not believe her ears.

“Louise!” she said at last, in a tone which meant many things.

Louise began to cry, and was shaken by hard, dry sobs. Madeleine did not look at her again, but went severely on with her bedmaking. When she had finished, she crossed to the washstand, and poured out a glass of water.

Louise took it, humbled and submissive, and gradually her sobs abated. But now Madeleine, in place of getting ready to leave, as she had intended, sat down at the centre table, and revolved what she felt it to be her duty to say. When all sound of crying had ceased, she began to speak, persuasively, in a quiet voice.

“You have brought the matter up yourself, Louise,” she said, “and, now the ice is broken, there are one or two things I should like to say to you. First then, you have been very ill, far worse than you know–the immediate danger is over now, so I can speak of it. But who can tell what may happen if you persist in remaining on here by yourself, in the state you are in?”

Louise did not stir; her face was hidden.

“The reason you give for staying is not a serious one, I hope,” Madeleine proceeded cautiously choosing her words. “After all the . . . the precautions that were taken to ensure the . . . break, it is not all likely . . . he would think of returning. And Louise,” she added with warmth, “even though he did–suppose he did–after the way he has behaved, and his disgraceful treatment of you—-“

Louise looked up for an instant. “That is not true,” she said.

“Not true?” echoed Madeleine. “Well, if you are able to admire his behaviour–if you don’t consider it disgraceful–no, more than that–infamous—-” She stopped, not being able to find a stronger epithet.

“It is not true,” said Louise in the same expressionless voice. But now she lifted her head, and pressed the palms of her hands together.

Madeleine pushed back her chair, as if she were about to rise. “Then I have nothing more to say,” she said; and went on: “If you are ready to defend a man who has acted towards you as he has–in a way that makes a respectable person’s blood boil–there is indeed nothing more to be said.” She reddened with indignation. “As if it were not bad enough for him to go, after all you have done for him, but that he must do it in such a mean, underhand way–it’s enough to make one sick. The only thing to compare with it is his conduct on the night before he left. Do you know, pray, that on the last evening, at a KNEIPE in the GOLDENE HIRSCH, he boasted of what you had done for him–boasted about everything that had happened between you–to a rowdy, tipsy crew? More than that, he gave shameless details, about you going to his room that afternoon—-“

“It’s not true, it’s not true,” repeated Louise, as if she had got these few words by heart. She rose from her chair, and leaned on it, half turning her back to Madeleine, and holding her handkerchief to her lips.

Madeleine shrugged her shoulders. “Do you think I should say it, if it weren’t?” she asked. “I don’t invent scandal. And you are bound to hear it when you go out again. He did this, and worse than I choose to tell you, and if you felt as you ought to about it, you would never give him another thought. He’s not worth it. He’s not worth any respectable person’s—-“

“Respectable!” burst in Louise, and raised two blazing eyes to her companion’s face. “That’s the second time. Why do you come here, Madeleine, and talk like that to me? He did what he was obliged to–that’s all: for I should never have let him go. Can’t you see how preposterous it is to think that by talking of respectability, and unworthiness, you can make me leave off caring for him?–when for months I have lived for nothing else? Do you think one can change one’s feelings so easily? Don’t you understand that to love a person once is to love him always and altogether?–his faults as well–everything he does, good or bad, no matter what other people think of it? Oh, you have never really cared for anyone yourself, or you would know it.”

“It’s not preposterous at all,” retorted Madeleine. “Yes–if he had deserved all the affection you wasted on him, or if unhappy circumstances had separated you. But that’s not the case. He has behaved scandalously, without the least attempt at shielding you. He has made you the talk of the place. And you may consider me narrow and prejudiced, but this I must say–I am boundlessly astonished at you. When he has shown you as plainly as he can that he’s tired of you, that you should still be ready to defend him, and have so little proper pride that you even say you would take him back!—-“

Louise turned on her. “You would never do that, Madeleine, would you?–never so far forget yourself as to crawl to a man’s feet and ask–ask?–no, implore forgiveness, for faults you were not conscious of having committed. You would never beg him to go on loving you, after he had ceased to care, or think nothing on earth worth having if he would not–or could not. As I would; as I have done.” But chancing to look at Madeleine, she grew quieter. “You would never do that, would you?” she repeated. “And do you know why?” Her words came quickly again; her voice shook with excitement. “Because you will never care for anyone more than yourself–it isn’t in you to do it. You will go through life, tight on to the end, without knowing what it is to care for some one–oh, but I mean absolutely, unthinkingly—-“

She broke down, and hid her face again. Madeleine had carried the cups and saucers to a side-table, and now put on her hat.

“And I hope I never shall,” she said, forcing herself to speak calmly. “If I thought it likely, I should never look at a man again.”

But Louise had not finished. Coming round to the front of the rocking-chair, and leaning on the table, she gazed at Madeleine with wild eyes, while her pale lips poured forth a kind of revenge for the suffering, real and imaginary, that she had undergone at the hands of this cooler nature.

“And I’ll tell you why. You are doubly safe; for you will never be able to make a man care so much that–that you are forced to love him like this in return. It isn’t in you to do it. I don’t mean because you’re plain. There are plenty of plainer women than you, who can make men follow them. No, it’s your nature–your cold, narrow, egotistic nature–which only lets you care for things outside yourself in a cold, narrow way. You will never know what it is to be taken out of yourself, taken and shaken, till everything you are familiar with falls away.”

She laughed; but tears were near at hand. Madeleine had turned her back on her, and stood buttoning her jacket, with a red, exasperated face.

“I shall not answer you,” she said. “You have worked yourself into such a state that you don’t know what you’re saying. All the same, I think you might try to curb your tongue. I have done nothing to you–but be kind to you.”

“Kind to me? Do you call it kind to come here and try to set me against the man I love best in the world? And who loves me best, too. Yes; he does. He would never have gone, if he hadn’t been forced to–if I hadn’t been a hindrance to him–a drag on him.”

“It makes me ashamed of my sex to hear you say such things. That a woman can so far lose her pride as to—-“

“Oh, other women do it in other ways. Do you think I haven’t seen how you have been trying to make some one here like you?–doing your utmost, without any thoughts of pride or self-respect.–And how you have failed? Yes, failed. And if you don’t believe me, ask him yourself–ask him who it is that could bring him to her, just by raising her finger. It’s to me he would come, not to you–to me who have never given him look or thought.”

Madeleine paled, then went scarlet. “That’s a direct untruth. You!–and not to egg a man on, if you see he admires you! You know every time a passer-by looks at you in the street. You feed on such looks–yes, and return them, too. I have seen you, my lady, looking and being looked at, by a stranger, in a way no decent woman allows.–For the rest, I’ll trouble you to mind your own business. Whatever I do or don’t do, trust me, I shall at least take care not to make myself the laughing-stock of the place. Yes, you have only succeeded in making yourself ridiculous. For while you were cringing before him, and aspiring to die for his sake, he was making love behind your back to another girl. For the last six months. Every one knew it, it seems, but you.”

She had spoken with unconcealed anger, and now turned to leave the room. But Louise was at the door before her, and spread herself across it.

“That’s a lie, Madeleine! Of your own making. You shall prove it to me before you go out of this room. How dare you say such a thing !–how dare you!”

Madeleine looked at her with cold aversion, and drew back to avoid touching her.

“Prove it?” she echoed. “Are his own words not proof enough! He told the whole story that night, just as he had first told all about you. It had been going on for months. Sometimes, you were hardly out of his room, before the other was in. And if you don’t believe me, ask the person you’re so proud of having attracted, without raising your finger.”

Louise moved away from the door, and went back to the table, on which she leaned heavily. All the blood had left her face and the dark rings below her eyes stood out with alarming distinctness. Madeleine felt a sudden compunction at what she had done.

“It’s entirely your own fault that I told you anything whatever about it,” she said, heartily annoyed with herself. “You had no right to provoke me by saying what you did. I declare, Louise, to be with you makes one just like you. If it’s any consolation to you to know it, he was drunk at the time, and there’s a possibility it may not be true.”

“Go away–go out of my room!” cried Louise. And Madeleine went, without delay, having almost a physical sensation about her throat of the slender hands stretched so threateningly towards her.–And this unpleasant feeling remained with her until she turned the corner of the street.

II.

On the afternoon when Maurice found that Madeleine had kept her word he went home and paced his room in perplexity. He pictured Louise lying helpless, too weak to raise her hand. His brain went stupidly over the few people to whom he might turn for aid. Avery Hill?–Johanna Cayhill? But Avery was occupied with her own troubles; and Johanna’s relationship to Ephie put her out of the question. He was thinking fantastic thoughts of somehow offering his own services, or of even throwing himself on the goodness of a person like Miss Jensen, whose motherly form must surely imply a corresponding motherliness of heart, when Frau. Krause entered the room, bearing a letter which she said had been left for him an hour or two previously. She carried a lamp in her hand, and eyed her restless lodger with suspicion.

“Why, in the name of goodness, didn’t you bring this in when it came?” he demanded. He held the unopened letter at arm’s length, as if he were afraid of it.

Frau Krause bridled instantly. Did he think she had nothing else to do than to carry things in and out of his room? The letter had lain on the chest of drawers in the passage; he could have seen it for himself, had he troubled to look.

Maurice waved her away. He was staring at the envelope; he believed he knew the handwriting. His heart beat with precise hammerings. He laid the letter on the table, and took a few turns in the room before he picked it up again. On examining it anew, it seemed to him that the lightly gummed envelope had been tampered with, and he made a threatening movement towards the door, then checked himself, remembering that if the letter were what he believed, it would be written in English. He tore it open, destroying the envelope in his nervousness. There was no heading, and it was only a few lines long.

I MUST SPEAK TO YOU. WILL YOU COME TO ME THIS EVENING? LOUISE DUFRAYER.

His heart was thumping now. He was to go to her, she said so herself; to go this moment, for it was evening already. As it was, she was perhaps waiting for him, wondering why he did not come. He had not shaved that day, and his first impulse was to call for hot water. In the same breath he gave up the idea: it was out of the question by the poor light of the lamp, and the extraordinary position of the looking-glass. He made, however, a hasty toilet in his best, only to colour at himself when finished. Was there ever such a fool as he? His act contained the germ of an insult: and he rapidly changed back to his workaday wear.

All this took time, and it was eight o’clock before he rang the door-bell in the BRUDERSTRASSE. Now, the landlady did not mistake him for a possible thief. But she looked at him in an unfriendly way, and said grumblingly that Fraulein had been expecting him for an hour or more. Then she pointed to the door of the room, and left him to make his way in alone.

He knocked gently, but no one answered. The old woman, who stood watching his movements, signed to him to enter, and he turned the handle. The large room was dark, except for the light shed by a small lamp, which stood on the table before the sofa. From somewhere out of the dusk that lay beyond, a white figure rose and came towards him.

Louise was in a crumpled dressing-gown, and her hair was loosened from its coil on her neck. Maurice saw so much, before she was close beside him, her eyes searching his face.

“Oh, you have come,” she said with a sigh, as if a load had been lifted from her mind. “I thought you were not coming.”

“I only got your note a few minutes ago. I . . . I came at once,” he said, and stammered, as he saw how greatly illness had changed her.

“I knew you would.”

She did not give him her hand, but stood gazing at him; and her look was so helpless and forlorn that he grew uncomfortable.

“You have been ill?” he said, to render the pause that followed less embarrassing.

“Yes; but I’m better now.” She supported herself on the table; her indecision seemed to increase, and several seconds passed before she said: “Won’t you sit down?”

He took one of the stuffed arm-chairs she indicated; and she went back to the sofa. Again there was silence. With her elbows on her knees, her chin on her two hands, Louise stared hard at the pattern of the tablecloth. Maurice sat stiff and erect, waiting for her to tell him why she had summoned him.

“You will think it strange that I should send for you like this . . . when I know you so slightly,” she began at length. “But . . .since I saw you last . . . I have been in trouble,”–her voice broke, but her eyes remained fixed on the cloth. “And I am quite alone. I have no one to help me. Then I thought of you; you were kind to me once; you offered to help me.” She paused, and wound her handkerchief to a ball.

“Anything!–anything that lies in my power,” said Maurice fervently. He fidgeted his hands round the brim of his hat, which he was holding to him.

“Won’t you tell me what it is?” he asked, after another long break. “I should be so glad, and grateful–yes, indeed, grateful–if there were anything I could do for you.”

She met his eyes, and tried to say something, but no sound came over her lips. She was trying to fasten her thoughts on what she had to say, but, in spite of her efforts, they eluded her. For more than twenty-four hours she had brooded over one idea; the strain had been too great; and, now that the moment had come, her strength deserted her. She would have liked to lay her head on her arms and sleep; it almost seemed to her now, in the indifference of sheer fatigue, that it did not matter whether she spoke or not. But as she looked at the young man, she became conscious of an expression in his face, which made her own grow hard.

“I won’t be pitied.”

Maurice turned very red. His heart had gone out to her in her distress; and his feelings were painted on his face. His discomfiture at her discovery was so palpable that it gave her courage to go on.

“You were one of those, were you not, who were present at a certain cafe in the BRUHL, one evening, three weeks ago.” It was more of a statement than a question. Her eyes held him fast. His retreating colour rose again; he had a presentiment of what was coming.

“Then you must have heard—-” she began quickly, but left the sentence unended.

His suspicions took shape, and he made a large, vague gesture of dissent. “You heard all that was said,” she continued, without paying any heed to him. “You heard how . . . how some one–no, how the man I loved and trusted . . . how he boasted about my caring for him; and not only that, but how, before that drunken crowd, he told how I had been to him … to his room . . . that afternoon—-” She could not finish, and pressed her knotted handkerchief to her lips.

Maurice looked round him for assistance. “You are mistaken,” he declared. “I heard nothing of the kind. Remember, I, too, was among those . . . in the state you mention,” he added as an afterthought, lowering his voice.

“That is not it.” Leaning forward, she opened her eyes so wide that he saw a rim of white round the brown of the pupils. “You must also have heard . . . how, all this time, behind my back, there was some one else . . . someone he cared for . . . when I thought it was only me.”

The young man coloured, with her and for her. “It is not true; you have been misled,” he said with vehemence. And, again, a flash of intuition suggested an afterthought to him. “Can you really believe it? Don’t you think better of him than that?”

For the first time since she had known him, Louise gave him a personal look, a look that belonged to him alone, and held a warm ray of gratitude. Then, however, she went on unsparingly: “I want you to tell me who it was.”

He laid his hat on a chair, and used his hands. “But if I assure you it is not true? If I give you my word that you have been misinformed?”

“Who was it? What is her name?”

He rose, and went away from the table.

“I knew him better than you,” she said slowly, as he did not speak: “you or anyone else–a hundred thousand times better–and I KNOW it is true.”

Still he did not answer. “Then you won’t tell me?”

“Tell you? How can I? There’s nothing to tell.”

“I was wrong then. You have no pity for me?”

“Pity!–I no pity?” he cried, forgetting how, a minute ago, she had resented his feeling it. “But all the same I can’t tell you what you ask me. You don’t realise what it means: putting a slur on a young girl’s name . . . which has never been touched.”

Directly he had said this, he was aware of his foolishness; but she let the admission contained in the words pass unnoticed.

“Then she is not with him?” she cried, springing to her feet, and there was a jubilation in her voice, which she did not attempt to suppress. Maurice made no answer, but in his face was such a mixture of surprise and disconcertion that it was answer enough.

She remained standing, with her head bowed; and Maurice, who, in his nervousness, had gripped the back of his chair, held it so tightly that it left a furrow in his hand. He was looking into the lamp, and did not at first see that Louise had raised her head again and was contemplating him. When she had succeeded in making him look at her, she sat down on the sofa and drew the folds of her dressing-gown to her.

“Come and sit here. I want to speak to you.”

But Maurice only shot a quick glance at her, and did not move.

She leaned forward, in her old position. She had pushed the heavy wings of hair up from her forehead, and this, together with her extreme pallor, gave her face a look of febrile intensity.

“Maurice Guest,” she said slowly, “do you remember a night last summer, when, by chance, you happened to walk with me, coming home from the theatre?–Or have you perhaps forgotten?”

He shook his head.

“Then do you remember, too, what you said to me? How, since the first time you had seen me–you even knew where that was, I believe–you had thought about me . . . thought too much, or words to that effect. Do you remember?”

“Do you think when a man says a thing like that he forgets it? “asked Maurice in a gruff voice. He turned, as he spoke, and looked down on her with a kind of pitying wisdom. “If you knew how often I have reproached myself for it!” he added.

“There was no need for that,” she answered, and even smiled a little. “We women never resent having such things said to us–never–though it is supposed we do, and though we must pretend to. But I remember, too, I was in a bad mood that night, and was angry with you, after all. Everything seemed to have gone against me. In the theatre–in . . . Oh, no, no!” she cried, as she remembrance of that past night, with its alternations of pain and pleasure, broke over her. “My God!”

Maurice hardly breathed, for fear he should remind her of his presence. When the paroxysm had passed, she crossed to the window; the blinds had not been drawn, and leaning her forehead on the glass, she looked out into the darkness. In spite of his trouble of mind, the young man could not but comment on the ironic fashion in which fate was treating him: not once, in all the hours he had spent on the pavement below, had Louise come, like this, to the window; now that she did so, he was in the room beside her, wishing himself away.

Then, with a swift movement, she came back to him, and stood at his side.

“Then it was not true?–what you said that night.”

“True?” echoed Maurice. He instinctively moved a step away from her, and threw a quick glance at the pale face so near his own. “If I were to tell you how much more than that is true, you wouldn’t have anything more to do with me.”

For the second time, she seemed to see him and consider him. But he kept his head turned stubbornly away.

“You feel like that,” she began in slow surprise, to continue hurriedly: “You care for me like that, and yet, when I ask the first and only thing I shall ever ask of you, you won’t do it? It is a lesson to me, I suppose, not to come to you for help again.–Oh, I can’t understand you men! You are all–all alike.”

“I would do anything in the world for you. Anything but this.”

She repeated his last words after him. “But I want nothing else.”

“This I can’t tell you.”

“Then you don’t really care. You only think you do. If you can’t do this one small thing for me! Oh, there is no one else I can turn to, or I would. Oh, please tell me!–you who make-believe to care for me. You won’t? When it comes to the point, a man will do nothing–nothing at all.”

“I would cut off my hands for you. But you are asking me to do something I think wrong.”

“Wrong! What is wrong?–and what is right? They are only words. Is it right that I should be left like this?–thrown away like a broken plate? Oh, I shall not rest till I know who it was that took him from me. And you are the only person who can help me. Are you not a little sorry for me? Is there nothing I can do to make you sorry?”

“You won’t realise what you are asking me to do.”

He spoke in a constrained voice, for he felt the impossiblity of standing out much longer against her. Louise caught the note of yielding, and taking his hand in hers, laid it against her forehead.

“Feel that! Feel how it throbs and burns! And so it has gone on for hours now, for days. I can’t think or feel–with that fever in me. I must know who it was, or I shall go mad. Don’t torture me then– you, too! You are good. Be kind to me now. Be my friend, Maurice Guest.”

Maurice was vanquished; in a low voice he told her what she wished to hear. She read the syllables from his lips, repeated the name slowly after him, then shook her head; she did not know it. Letting his hand drop, she went back to the sofa.

“Tell me everything you know about her,” she said imperiously. “What is she like?–what is she like? What is the colour of her hair?”

Maurice was a poor hand at description. Questioned thus, he was not even sure whether to call Ephie pretty or not; he knew that she was small, and very young, but of her hair he could say little, except that it was not black.

Louise caught at the detail. “Not black, no, not black!” she cried. “He had black enough here,” and she ran her hands through her own unruly hair.

There was nothing she did not want to know, did not try to force from his lips; and a relentless impatience seized her at his powerlessness.

“I must see her for myself,” she said at length, when he had stammered into silence. “You must bring her to me.”

“No, that you really can’t ask me to do.”

She came over to him again, and took his hands. “You will bring her here to-morrow–to-morrow afternoon. Do you think I shall hurt her? Is she any better than I am? Oh, don’t be afraid! We are not so easily soiled.”

Maurice demurred no more.

“For until I see her, I shall not know–I shall not know,” she said to herself, when he had pledged his word.

The tense expression of her face relaxed; her mouth drooped; she lay back in the sofa-corner and shut her eyes. For what seemed a long time, there was no sound in the room. Maurice thought she had fallen asleep. But at his first light movement she opened her eyes.

“Now go,” she said. “Please, go!” And he obeyed.

The night was cold, but, as he stood irresolute in the street, he wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He felt very perplexed. Only one thing was clear to him: he had promised to bring Ephie to see her the next day, and, however wrong it might be, the promise was given and must be kept. But what he now asked himself was: did not the bringing of the child, under these circumstances, imply a tacit acknowledgment that she was seriously involved?–a fact which, all along, he had striven against admitting. For, after his one encounter with Ephie and Schilsky, in the woods that summer, and the first firing of his suspicions, he had seen nothing else to render him uneasy; a few weeks later, Ephie had gone to Switzerland, and, on her return in September, or almost directly afterwards–three or four days at most–Schilsky had taken his departure. There had been, of course, his drunken boasts to take into account, but firstly, Maurice had only retained a hazy idea of their nature, and, in the next place, the events which had followed that evening had been of so much greater importance to him that he had had no thoughts to spare for Ephie–more especially as he then knew that Schilsky was out of the way. But now the whole affair rose vividly before his mind again, and in his heart he knew that he had always believed–just as Louise believed–in Ephie’s guilt. No: guilt was too strong a word. Yet however harmless the flirtation might have been in itself, it had been carried on in secret, in an underhand way: there had been nothing straightforward or above-board about it; and this alone was enough to compromise a young girl.

The Cayhills had been in Leipzig again for three weeks, but so occupied had Maurice been during this time, that he had only paid them one hasty call. Now he felt that he must see Ephie at once, not only to secure her word that she would come out with him, the following day, but also to read from her frank eyes and childish lips the assurance of her innocence, or, at least, the impossibility of her guilt.

But as he walked to the LESSINGSTRASSE, he remembered, without being able to help it, all the trifles which, at one time or another, had disturbed his relations with Ephie. He recalled each of the thin, superficial untruths, by means of which she had defended herself, the day he had met her with Schilsky: it seemed incredible to him now that he had not seen through them instantly. He called up her pretty, insincere behaviour with the circle of young men that gathered round her; the language of signs by which she had conversed with Schilsky in the theatre. He remembered the astounding ease with which he had made her acquaintance in the first case, or rather, with which she had made his. Even the innocent kiss she had once openly incited him to, and on the score of which she had been so exaggeratedly angry–this, too, was summoned to bear witness against her. Each of these incidents now seemed to point to a fatal frivolity, to a levity of character which, put to a real test, would offer no resistance.

Supper was over in the PENSION, but only Mrs. Cayhill sat in her accustomed corner. Ephie was with the rest of the boarders in the general sitting-room, where Johanna conducted Maurice. Boehmer was paying an evening visit, as well as a very young American, who laughed: “Heh, heh!” at everything that was said, thereby displaying two prominently gold teeth. Mrs. Tully sat on a small sofa, with her arm round Ephie’s waist: they were the centre of the group, and it did not appear likely that Maurice would get an opportunity of speaking to Ephie in private. She was in high spirits, and had only a saucy greeting for him. He sat down beside Johanna, and waited, ill at ease. Soon his patience was exhausted; rising, he went over to the sofa, and asked Ephie if he might come to take her for a walk, the next afternoon. But she would not give him an express promise; she pouted: after all these weeks, it suddenly occurred to him to come and see them, and then, the first thing he did, was to ask a favour of her. Did he really expect her to grant it?

“Don’t, Ephie, love, don’t!” cried Mrs. Tully in her sprightly way. “Men are really shocking creatures, and it is our duty, love, to keep them in their place. If we don’t, they grow presumptuous,” and she shot an arch look at Boehmer, who returned it, fingered his beard, and murmured: “Cruel–cruel!”

“And even if I wanted to go when the time came, how do you expect me to know so long beforehand? Ever so many things may happen before to-morrow,” said Ephie brilliantly; at which Mrs. Tully laughed very much indeed, and still more at Boehmer’s remark that it was an ancient privilege of the ladies, never to be obliged to know their own minds.

“It’s a libel–take that, you naughty boy!” she cried, and slapped him playfully on the hand. “Ephie, love, how shall we punish him?”

“He is not to come again for a week,” answered Ephie slily; and at Boehmer’s protestations of penitence and despair, both she and Mrs. Tully laughed till the tears stood in their eyes, Ephie all the more extravagantly because Maurice stood unsmiling before her.

“I ask this as a direct favour, Ephie. There’s something I want to say to you–something important,” he added in a low voice, so that only she could hear it.

Ephie changed colour at once, and tried to read his face.

“Then I may come at five? You will be ready? Good night.”

Johanna followed him into the passage, and stood by while he put on his coat. They had used up all their small talk in the sitting-room, and had nothing more to say to each other. When however they shook hands, she observed impulsively: “Sometimes I wish we were safe back home again.” But Maurice only said: “Indeed?” and displayed no curiosity to know the reason why.

After he had gone, Ephie was livelier than before, as long as she was being teased about her pale, importunate admirer. Then, suddenly, she pleaded a headache, and went to her own room.

Johanna, listening outside the door, concluded from the stillness that her sister was asleep. But Ephie heard Johanna come and go. She could not sleep, nor could she get Maurice’s words out of her mind. He had something important to say to her. What could it be? There was only one important subject in the world for her now; and she longed for the hour of his visit–longed, hoped, and was more than half afraid.

III.

Since her return to Leipzig, Ephie’s spirits had gone up and down like a barometer in spring. In this short time, she passed through more changes of mood than in all her previous life. She learned what uncertainty meant, and suspense, and helplessness; she caught at any straw of hope, and, for a day on end, would be almost comforted; she invented numberless excuses for Schilsky, and rejected them, one and all. For she was quite in the dark about his movements; she had not seen him since her return, and could hear nothing of him. Only the first of the letters she had written to him from Switzerland had elicited a reply, and he had left all the notes she had sent him, since getting back, unanswered.

Her fellow-boarder, Mrs. Tully, was her only confidant; and that, only in so far as this lady, knowing that what she called “a little romance” was going on, had undertaken to enclose any letters that might arrive during Ephie’s absence. Johanna had no suspicions, or rather she had hitherto had none. In the course of the past week, however, it had become plain even to her blind, sisterly eyes that something was the matter with Ephie. She could still be lively when she liked, almost unnaturally lively, and especially in the company of Mrs. Tully and her circle; but with these high spirits alternated fits of depression, and once Johanna had come upon her in tears. Driven into a corner, Ephie declared that Herr Becker had scolded her at her lesson; but Johanna was not satisfied with this explanation; for formerly, the master’s blame or praise had left no impression on her little sister’s mind. Even worse than this, Ephie could now, on slight provocation, be thoroughly peevish–a thing so new in her that it worried Johanna most of all. The long walks of the summer had been given up; but Ephie had adopted a way of going in and out of the house, just as it pleased her, without a word to her sister. Johanna scrutinised her keenly, and the result was so disturbing that she resolved to broach the subject to her mother.

On the morning after Maurice’s visit, therefore, she appeared in the sitting-room, with a heap of undarned stockings in one hand, her work-basket in the other, and with a very determined expression on her face. But the moment was not a happy one: Mrs. Cayhill was deep in WHY PAUL FERROL KILLED HIS WIFE; and would be lost to her surroundings until the end of the book was reached. Had Johanna been of an observant turn of mind, she would have waited a little; for, finding the intermediate portion of the novel dry reading, Mrs. Cayhill was getting over the pages at the rate of three or four a minute, and would soon have been finished.

But Johanna sat down at the table and opened fire.

“I wish to speak to you, mother,” she said firmly.

Mrs. Cayhill did not even blink. Johanna drew several threads across a hole she was darning, before she repeated, in the same decided tone: “Do you hear me, mother? There is something I wish to speak to you about.”

“Hm,” said Mrs. Cayhill, without raising her eyes from the page. She heard Johanna, and was even vaguely distracted by her from the web of circumstance that was enveloping her hero; but she believed, from experience, that if she took no notice of her, Johanna would not persist. What the latter had to say would only be a reminder that it was mail-day, and no letters were ready; or that if she did not put on her bonnet and go out for a walk, she would be obliged to take another of her nerve-powders that night: and Mrs. Cayhill hated moral persuasion with all her heart.

“Put down your book, mother, please, and listen to me,” continued Johanna, without any outward sign of impatience, and as she spoke, she drew another stocking over her hand.

“What IS the matter, Joan? I wish you would let me be,” answered Mrs. Cayhill querulously, still without looking up.

“It’s about Ephie, mother. But you can’t hear me if you go on reading.”

“I can hear well enough,” said Mrs. Cayhill, and turning a page, she lost herself, to all appearance, in the next one. Johanna did not reply, and for some minutes there was silence, broken only by the turning of the leaves. Then, compelled by something that was stronger than herself, Mrs. Cayhill laid her book on her knee, gave a loud sigh, and glanced at Johanna’s grave face.

“You are a nuisance, Joan. Well, make haste now–what is it?”

“It’s Ephie, mother. I am not easy about her lately. I don’t think she can be well. She is so unlike herself.”

“Really, Joan,” said Mrs. Cayhill, laughing with an exaggerated carelessness. “I think I should be the first to notice if she were sick. But you like to make yourself important, that’s what it is, and to have a finger in every pie. There is nothing whatever the matter with the child.”

“She’s not well, I’m sure,” persisted Johanna, without haste. “I have noticed it for some time now. I think the air here is not agreeing with her. I constantly hear it said that this is an enervating place. I believe it would be better for her if we went somewhere else for the winter–even if we returned home. Nothing binds us, and health is the first and chief—-“

“Go home?” cried Mrs. Cayhill, and turned her book over on its face. “Really, Joan, you are absurd! Because Ephie finds it hard to settle down again, after such a long vacation–and that’s all it is–you want to rush off to a fresh place, when . . . when we are just so comfortably fixed here for the winter, and where we have at last gotten us a few friends. As for going home, why, every one would suppose we’d gone crazy. We haven’t been away six months yet–and when Mr. Cayhill is coming over to fetch us back–and . . . and everything.”

She spoke with heat; for she knew from experience that what her elder daughter resolved on, was likely to be carried through.

“That is all very well, mother,” continued Johanna unmoved. “But I don’t think your arguments are sound if we find that Ephie is really sick, and needs a change.”

“Arguments not sound! What big words you love to use, Joan! You let Ephie be. She grows prettier every day, and she’s a favourite wherever she goes.”

“That’s another thing. Her head is being turned, and she will soon be quite spoilt. She begins to like the fuss and attention so well that—-“

“You had your chances too, Joan. You needn’t be jealous.”

Johanna had heard this remark too often to be sensitive to it.

“When it comes to serious ‘chances,’ as you call them, no one will be more pleased for Ephie or more interested than I. But this is something different. You see that yourself, mother, I am sure. These young men who come about the house are so foolish, and immature, and they have such different ideas of things from ourselves. They think so. . . so”–Johanna hesitated for a word–“so laxly on earnest subjects. And it is telling on Ephie–Look, for instance, at Mr. Dove! I don’t want to say anything against him, in particular. He is really more serious than the rest. But for some time now, he has been making himself ridiculous,”–Johanna had blushed for Dove on the occasion of his last visit. “No one could be more in earnest than he is; but Ephie only makes fun of him, in a heartless way. She won’t see what a grave matter it is to him.”

Mrs. Cayhill laughed, not at all displeased. “Young people will be young people. You can’t put old heads on young shoulders, Joan, or shut them up in separate houses. Ephie is an extremely pretty girl, and it will be the same wherever we go.–As for young Dove, he knows well enough that nothing can come of it, and if he chooses to continue his attentions, why, he must take the consequences–that’s all. Absurd!–a boy and girl flirtation, and to make so much of it! A mountain of a molehill, as usual. And half the time, you only imagine things, and don’t see what is going on under your very nose. Anyone but you, I’m sure, would find more to object to in the way young Guest behaves than Dove.”

“Maurice Guest?” said Johanna, and laid her hands with stocking and needle on the table.

“Yes, Maurice Guest,” repeated Mrs. Cayhill, with complacent mockery. “Do you think no one has eyes but yourself?–No, Joan, you’re not sharp enough. Just look at the way he went on last night! Every one but you could see what was the matter with him. Mrs. Tully told me about it afterwards. Why, he never took his eyes off her.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are mistaken,” said Johanna earnestly, and was silent from sheer surprise. “He has been here so seldom of late,” she added after a pause, thinking aloud.

“Just for that very reason,” replied Mrs. Cayhill, with the same air of wisdom. “A nice-minded young man stays away, if he sees that his feelings are not returned, or if he has no position to offer.–And another thing I’ll tell you, Joan, though you do think yourself so clever. You don’t need to worry if Ephie is odd and fidgety sometimes just now. At her age, it’s only to be expected. You know very well what I mean. All girls go through the same thing. You did yourself.”

After this, she took up her book again, having, she knew, successfully silenced her daughter, who, on matters of this nature, was extremely sensitive.

Johanna went methodically on with her darning; but the new idea which her mother had dropped into her mind, took root and grew. Strange that it had not occurred to her before! Dove’s state of mind had been patent from the first; but she had had no suspicions of Maurice Guest. His manner with Ephie had hitherto been that of a brother: he had never behaved like the rest. Yet, when she looked back on his visit of the previous evening, she could not but be struck by the strangeness of his demeanour: his distracted silence, his efforts to speak to Ephie alone, and the expression with which he had watched her. And Ephie?–what of her? Now that Johanna thought of it, a change had also come over Ephie’s mode of treating Maurice; the gay insouciance of the early days had given place to the pert flippancy which, only the night before, had so pained her sister. What had brought about this change? Was it pique? Was Ephie chafing, in secret, at his prolonged absences, and was she, girl-like, anxious to conceal it from him?

Johanna gathered up her work to go to her own room and think the matter out in private. In the passage, she ran into the arms of Mrs. Tully, whom she disliked; for, ever since coming to the PENSION, this lady had carried on a kind of cult with Ephie, which was distasteful in the extreme to Johanna.

“Oh, Miss Cayhill!” she now exclaimed. “I was just groping my way–it is indeed groping, is it not?–to your sitting-room. WHERE is your sister? I want SO much to ask her if she will have tea with me this afternoon. I am expecting a few friends, and should be so glad if she would join us.”

“Ephie is practising, Mrs. Tully,” said Johanna in her coolest tone. “And I cannot have her disturbed.”

“She is so very, very diligent,” said Mrs. Tully with enthusiasm. “I always remark to myself on hearing her, how very idle a life like mine is in comparison. I am able to do SO little; just a mere trifle here and there, a little atom of good, one might say. I have no talents.–And you, too, dear Miss Cayhill. So studious, so clever! I hear of you on every side,” and, letting her eyes rest on Johanna’s head, she wondered why the girl wore her hair so unbecomingly.

Johanna did not respond.

“If only you would let your hair grow, it would make such a difference to your appearance,” said Mrs. Tully suddenly, with disconcerting outspokenness.

Johanna drew herself up.

“Thanks,” she said. “I have always worn my hair like this, and at my age, have no intention of altering it,” and leaving Mrs. Tully protesting vehemently at such false modesty, she went past her, into her own room, and shut the door.

She sat down by the window to sew. But her hands soon fell to her lap, and with her eyes on the backs of the neighbouring houses, she continued her interrupted reflections. First, though, she threw a quick, sarcastic side-glance on her mother and herself. As so often before, when she had wanted to pin her mother’s attention to a subject, the centre of interest had shifted in spite of her efforts, and they had ended far from where they had begun: further, she,