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 FELIX 
 
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 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT H ICHENS 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 pubUs;^fr0
 
 Copyright, 1902 
 
 by 
 R. S. HICHENS 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Published in May, 1903
 
 To 
 
 A. E. H.
 
 AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 'TT^HE Author wishes to acknowl- 
 edge his indebtedness to Dr. 
 Henri Guimbail, of Ivry-sur-Seine 
 for the account given of the proceed- 
 ings in a certain house in Paris.
 
 FELIX 
 
 THREE YEARS IN A LIFE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHEN Felix had passed his eighteenth birthday he went 
 to France to finish his education. He was a very agree- 
 able, gentlemanly boy, apparently free from any strong vices. 
 He was fairly good at games and rode well. As a rule his 
 manners were lively. He had many Irish relations. Most of 
 them he had never seen, nor had he ever set foot in Ireland. 
 But his agility of mind and fluency of speech, his rapid sym- 
 pathies and fluctuations of mood, were un-English. Far back 
 in the family, on his mother's side, there was a strain of 
 Spanish blood. 
 
 Possibly from some Spanish ancestor Felix inherited his 
 large and piercing dark eyes. He was tolerably handsome, 
 and very attractive in appearance. His figure was tall and 
 slim. By the time he was eighteen he was over five feet 
 eleven in height. He had a well-shaped head, a neck rather 
 long than short, and small, but decided features, neither 
 aquiline nor retrousse. People always remarked that he had a 
 * very mobile face.' If they disliked him they occasionally 
 expressed themselves rather differently, and declared that, 
 when he was talking, he grimaced. Certainly he often be- 
 came excited in conversation, and sometimes fell into exag- 
 geration both of speech and manner. But exaggeration was 
 really natural to him, and he did not know how to hold his 
 features still in a petrified expression when he was pouring 
 out what was in his mind volcanically. His hair was excep- 
 tionally thick, smooth, and dark brown. He was imitative 
 as a child, and much given to the worship of people in whom 
 he noticed any peculiarity. A maiden lady with a limp, who 
 lived near his home, received the compliment of an answer- 
 ing limp from Felix, whose legs, unlike hers, were perfectly 
 
 A
 
 2 FELIX 
 
 straight and of precisely the same length. A gentleman, 
 dowered with more than a touch of St. Vitus's dance, found 
 many of his sudden starts and unearthly twitchings most ac- 
 curately reproduced by the attentive little boy, who watched 
 and followed him with a perseverance that was born of un- 
 divided admiration. Afflicted persons such as these two 
 moved romantically through the imagination of Felix. Their 
 bodily infirmities seemed to him emanations from highly 
 original minds, manifestations of temperaments both daring 
 and unique. He was disappointed in his parents and only 
 sister, who declined to show any originality of a similar kinci. 
 At the age of eight he fell madly in love with a little girl. 
 Her only attraction was a tremendous squint. Just when 
 they were about to become engaged, her mother summoned 
 an oculist, who, by a slight operation, corrected the squint. 
 He also, by the same operation, killed Felix's passion, and 
 the affair w-as promptly broken off. 
 
 Felix's father, Mr. Wilding of Hill House, Churston Waters, 
 Kent, was a country squire. He died when his son was 
 barely sixteen. He was a clever man, full of humour, with a 
 quick temper, a kind heart, and a great love of the country 
 and of simple people, though he was by no means simple 
 himself. His intellect was excellent, and his mind decidedly 
 complicated. But he was a lazy man, and fond of the peace- 
 ful routine of country life. Apart from sport, his greatest pas- 
 sion was music. This led him sometimes to London to hear 
 some great artist. But he never stayed more than one night 
 in town, and invariably thanked God lustily for being back 
 again in the country. His intellect, good as it was, was not 
 too good to believe in a God. For years he read the lessons 
 admirably in the parish church, and taught the choir to sing 
 with sincerity of expression and a correct appreciation of 
 time. If, however, they took a chant too fast or a hymn too 
 slow, he lost his temper in the face of the congregation, and 
 had been known to make no uncertain sound upon the wood 
 of his pew with his clenched fist. Then the alarmed organ- 
 ist heeded, and the singers, fixing round eyes upon the musi- 
 cal squire, hurried or slackened, following the domination of 
 his outstretched arm. 
 
 He died of influenza and pneumonia, and left enough 
 money to bring in two thousand five hundred a year. By 
 his will this sum was divided equally between his wife and 
 his two children. But Mrs. Wilding had entire control over 
 it till the children came of aa^e.
 
 FELIX 3 
 
 The death of his father startled Felix painfully. He had 
 never before known the crude definiteness of personal sor- 
 row. Hitherto his griefs had been vague and his beliefs 
 childish. By the open grave of his father he wondered, for 
 the first time, what followed earthly life, and was by no means 
 certain that descriptive hymns were true. The choir sang at 
 the funeral. They were lost without their teacher. In their 
 emotion they forgot his directions. They dragged the 
 funeral hymn. Even while his tears were falling, Felix, who 
 inherited the dead man's love for, and understanding of 
 music, noticed this, and it added enormously to his misery. 
 More even than the sight of the coffin it made him realize 
 that his father was gone, or was no more. The hymn was 
 long, and the choir sang slower and slower, obedient to the 
 impulse of regret. Felix clenched his hand, and longed to 
 beat the right time as his father used to beat it on the pew. 
 He felt as if he owed it to his father to do this. But Mrs. 
 Wilding took his hand in hers and held it. His sister, who 
 was eighteen, and by far the best soprano in the choir, 
 sobbed in her corner. Felix wished that she would sing, and 
 for a moment felt quite cruel to her. But at last it war all 
 over. Even a wrongly rendered hymn is not everlasting. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding and her children stayed on at Churston 
 Waters and faced their new life. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding faced it bravely. She was a very quiet woman, 
 one of those women whose beliefs are absolutely sure and 
 whose lives are entirely sincere. Nothing could ever make her 
 deviate from the truth as she knew it. She had told falsehoods 
 occasionally by mistake. She was incapable of telling a lie 
 purposely. Dishonesty was so unnatural to her that she could 
 hardly understand it. She read about it sometimes in the 
 newspapers as she read wild romances, and with scarcely more 
 belief in it than in them. No one could be more easily 
 cheated. She had confidence in most people, judging them by 
 herself, but she was not deeply attached to many people. Her 
 family were so much to her that the world was very little. 
 Such a woman does not marry a man without loving him sin- 
 cerely, and Mrs. Wilding had adored her husband. She was 
 essentially a simple woman, and loved the country. The noise 
 and bustle, the gaieties, intrigues, scandals, and excitments of 
 a great city would have been both wearisome and alarming to 
 her. Now and then, during her husband's lifetime, she went 
 up with him to attend a Saturday ' Pop,' or to see an exhibition 
 of pictures. Before these events she did a little shopping,
 
 4 FELIX 
 
 bought a new hat or some furs — always with her husband's 
 commanding assistance — or went to Hanover Square to be 
 looked at by the dentist. She also took her children, trem- 
 bling, to this functionary, and once or twice to a doctor. But 
 it was seldom indeed that she passed a night in town. She had 
 no love, no hatred either, of the theatre, but it was always un- 
 pleasant, and even distressing, to her to be in a crowd. Her 
 home was everything to her, and there she worked really hard, 
 taking infinite pains to make it ideal for the three beings 
 whom she loved more than, perhaps, they always fully realised. 
 She was a very nervous woman, was afraid of burglars when 
 her husband was away for the night, could seldom be induced 
 to get into a boat, and perpetually expected railway accidents 
 when she was travelling in the train. 
 
 Extremely handsome in middle age, she had been quite a 
 beauty in her youth. Very tall and straight, her figure had 
 never lost its shapeliness, but remained almost as shm as a 
 girl's when she was no longer young. Her features were 
 noble, small, and delicately aristocratic. Her hair became 
 grey when she was thirty-five. She had not married till she 
 was thirty, and when Felix went to France she was over fifty. 
 Her eyes, like his, were large and dark, but they entirely 
 lacked the eager, piercing quality so noticeable in his and were 
 soft and very gentle in expression. Her manner was usually 
 calm and quietly dignified. She had all her life been entirely 
 free from self-consciousness and shyness. She was not a 
 talkative woman, but she did not mind that, for she was accus- 
 tomed to live with great talkers. Mr. Wilding was a man who 
 demanded a good listener. Felix was a tremendous chatter- 
 box ; and Margot, his sister, had generally several things she 
 wanted to say when her brother allowed her to be heard. So 
 Mrs. Wilding had found her quiet habit by no means unwel- 
 come to those about her. They relied unsparingly upon her 
 sweet and untiring attention. Had she been obviously unin- 
 terested in their remarks on any subject, the shock to them 
 would have been as if the heavens had fallen. Probably 
 neither of her children had any notion how implicitly they 
 confided in their mother's devotion to them. Man seldom 
 thinks about the firmness of the earth on which he walks. _ 
 
 Margot Wilding was not at all like Felix. She was a genial, 
 countrified girl, plu^np, brown-eyed, and with a sweet voice. 
 By nature lazy, like her father, she had occasionally sudden 
 spurts of energy. She was very intelligent, but had no taste 
 for acquiring knowledge. Although she had enough brains to
 
 FELIX 5 
 
 understand the writings of clever men, she usually read trash. 
 She looked robust, having a tall, well-developed figure, bright 
 eyes, and abundant hair, but she was not very strong, and 
 sometimes had headaches, and those fits of apparently unrea- 
 sonable depression that come from a weak nervous system. 
 She was very sensitive, had little will but some obstinacy, and 
 the warmest heart in the world. Her chief talent was her 
 music. Her voice was beautiful in quality, and had been care- 
 fully trained by her father before he died. Afterwards she 
 occasionally had lessons, and practised by fits and starts. 
 She could easily have sung twice as well as she did, but for an 
 amateur she sang remarkably. Creative talent of any kind 
 she entirely lacked. She adored her brother, who ordered her 
 about sometimes, and was often irritated by her lack of per- 
 severance, but who would have felt lost without her. 
 
 Long before his death Mr. Wilding made his wife promise 
 that if he died before she did, she would not wear widow's 
 weeds for him. He said they made the nicest and most mod- 
 est women look like adventuresses. Mrs. Wilding could 
 hardly have looked like an adventuress in any costume, but 
 she kept her promise. It cost her a great deal to keep it. 
 Indeed, although she never said a word to anybody about it, 
 only after one of the hardest mental struggles of her life did 
 she give her orders for the dress and bonnet she wore at her 
 husband's funeral. There was no crape upon them. No 
 widow's cap covered her grey hair on that terrible evening 
 when, in the house that seemed now so utterly desolate, she 
 took her place at the dinner-table with her two children after 
 her husband's body had been lowered into the grave. It 
 would have helped her to endure her loss if she might have 
 commemorated it as other women commemorate their losses. 
 She supposed that she was very silly to feel this, but she did 
 feel it acutely. That night, in her lonely bedroom, she cried 
 and prayed, and wondered whether she could go on living with- 
 out her husband. For the moment even her children were like 
 shadows to her. But she never let them know it, and after- 
 wards they became more to her than they had been during her 
 husband's lifetime. For she determined, with the beautiful 
 strength of a simple, good woman, to be doubly valuable to 
 them now ; to blend, if she could, a father's influence with a 
 mother's. 
 
 She wondered how she could accomplish this ; and often, 
 when she was alone, tried to imagine what a good father was 
 exactly to his children, what he supplied them with that a
 
 6 FELIX 
 
 mother could not give. But she was not very imaginative, and 
 had to abandon this pathetic attempt to think herself into a 
 man's nature. Finally she resolved merely to be very broad- 
 minded, especially in regard to Felix. Men's lives were not, 
 and could not be, so sheltered as women's, she said to herself. 
 Women need not, and ought not to know of many things which 
 exist in life. Men must know of them and face them, as the 
 soldier faces the enemy. She believed it to be her duty, now 
 that her husband was dead, to be before her son in knowledge, 
 as ills father would have been, so that, if he came to her in a 
 man's difficulty, as he would have gone to his father, she might 
 be able to help him. Here, however, she found herself per- 
 plexed. It was manifestly impossible for her to gain by per- 
 sonal experience the knowledge that it was so desirable for her 
 to have. She had to go to books for it. This she did. From 
 the time when Felix was sixteen to the time when he went to 
 France, Mrs. Wilding read a most varied selection of treatises 
 and novels bearing on the relations between fathers and sons. 
 She read them secretly. They were not allowed to lie about 
 the house. She did not always understand them. Sometimes 
 they shocked her. But when this occurred, she was very strict 
 with herself, saying to herself that they would certainly not 
 have shocked a father reading them. Finally she hoped that 
 she was sufficiently informed to give a manly helping hand to 
 her boy if he should ever ask her for it. 
 
 Churston Waters was a small village in one of the most 
 beautiful parts of Kent. The country it stood in was genuine 
 country, not yet spoilt by the mistaken ardours of man for 
 setting God's work in order. There was nothing wild or pas- 
 sionate about it. It was sweet and serene, and looked safe 
 and cosy. Bicyclists complained that it was hilly. Walkers 
 found it quietly varied and full of charming nooks, like a 
 pretty, old-fashioned house. The land was rich. Woods 
 abounded. The grass grew thickly in the rolling meadows, 
 and the dales in spring were crowded with wild flowers. Cow- 
 slips streamed over the sunny banks. The hedgerows shel- 
 tered modest multitudes of violets, and even the depredations 
 of greedy school-children scarcely seemed to lesson the yellow 
 squadrons of the daffodils. 
 
 Hill House stood, rightly, on the top of a steep hill that lay 
 between high and sloping banks. It was close to a yellow 
 church of modern date, and was an unpretentious building, 
 partly old and partly new. Mr. Wilding had added to it 
 considerably. The drawing-room, dining-room, and three or
 
 FELIX 7 
 
 four of the bedrooms dated from 1800, and had low ceilings 
 and uneven floors. The windows of these rooms were lat- 
 ticed, and the walls of this part of the house were densely 
 covered with ivy and, here and there, with wild roses, clematis 
 and pirus japonica. There was no drive to the house, which 
 fronted the highroad, standing at an angle, and opposite to a 
 second road that wound, between tangled hedges, to a farm. 
 Behind the house, and to the left of it, was a large, informal 
 garden containing many noble old trees and a famous collec- 
 tion of roses. A great yew hedge sheltered it from the eyes of 
 people looking up to it from the hill road. Beyond the garden 
 the fields sloped gently to a narrow dell, through which a very 
 small and surreptitious stream ran lethargically, and without 
 making any indecent noise. On the right of the house was a 
 walled yard, containing dog-kennels, a pond, and stabling 
 for five horses. 
 
 The church was so near that the bells seemed to ring in the 
 garden, and the voices of the choir singing could sometimes 
 be heard in the drawing-room. Both Margot and Felix were 
 disagreeably affected by the bells, whose chimes, especially 
 after dark, made them swim in a limitless sea of melancholy. 
 They dreaded Thursday nights, when the village bell-ringers 
 assembled to practice terrible 'bob-majors' and other musi- 
 cal combinations provocative of despair. Mrs. Wilding, on 
 the other hand, loved the bells, and indeed everything con- 
 nected with the church. When she was upstairs reading 
 secretly Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, or one of her other 
 Felix books, she often opened her window to hear them more 
 plainly. But she never did this when it was at all cold, for 
 she was extremely nervous about every one's health, includ- 
 ing her own. Felix, who loved teasing people, sometimes 
 reproached her with her fears of illness, saying that they were 
 unworthy in a Christian woman. Mrs. Wilding responded by 
 telling him to 'button up' his chest when he went out, or 
 going into the storeroom to compound a certain cough mix- 
 ture with which she loved to dose herself, her family, and all 
 the parish. The parish liked it because it was very sweet and 
 treacly. Felix took it when Mrs. Wilding thought he was 
 going to have a cough, because he had been accustomed to 
 take it ever since he could remember, and had never known 
 it to do him any harm. He considered it as part and parcel 
 of his mother, like the black icewool shawl she always carried, 
 or left about and sought for. She very easily took cold, and 
 had a strange faith in the protective powers of this shawl,
 
 8 FELIX 
 
 which was perforated with holes innumerable, and, being also 
 very small, hardly seemed likely to keep bronchitis at arm's 
 length. Faith, however, in connection with a material object 
 can work wonders. Mrs. Wilding generally had a slight cold, 
 but without her shawl and her belief in it she might never 
 have been free from one. 
 
 Feli.x went to a preparatory school near Ascot till he was 
 fourteen, and afterwards to Rugby. At both he did fairly 
 well. He might have done much better had he not begun to 
 love the arts at an age when most boys know nothing about 
 them. A passionate devotion to Schubert and Beethoven 
 interfered to some extent with the affection his masters 
 desired to direct towards C?esar and Ovid. A pianoforte 
 recital, such as he occasionally went to with his father, excited 
 him for weeks. But Caesar left him very cold. Algebra 
 absolutely congealed him. He was frankly a fool at mathe- 
 matics. For classics he had a certain amount of talent and 
 some, but not a great deal of, love. History he hated, unless 
 it was concerned with the personal romances of the dead. 
 The advance or retrogression of nations, their fighting in old 
 wars, their mercantile pursuits and financial affairs, their 
 weapons, the spreading of their borders, the size of their 
 armies and navies, their changes of belief or stern steadfast- 
 ness in faiths, their domestic circumstances, their public 
 virtues, all these facts came before a scarcely concentrated 
 mind when they presented themselves to Felix. He did not 
 want to dive iuco antiquity through the medium of books, or 
 to rake too sedulously among the ashes of the past. But 
 certain dead and imagined people found in him a lover. 
 
 He worshipped Dante as much as he loathed Oliver Crom- 
 well. Charles the Second was to him the most fascinating of 
 all the kings of England, Ulysses the most dear of all wan- 
 derers. As a boy he cared more for poets than for warriors, 
 and felt himself more in sympathy with minds daring in 
 thought than with bodies daring in action. Such a sympathy 
 being rare among boys was naturally looked upon askance 
 by masters. They endeavoured to stamp it to death with 
 heavy hoofs. It lived on nevertheless. There was much 
 elasticity in Felix. 
 
 He was remarkably quick in acquiring modern languages, 
 and had a musical ear and a power of imitation which helped 
 him in their pronunciation. Anything connected with ma- 
 chinery he abhorred. Only something like necessity brought 
 him at last to a comprehension of the details of the bicycle.
 
 FELIX 9 
 
 His powers and impotence of memory were a perpetual puzzle 
 to his teachers. Things that he cared for, that moved, 
 excited, surprised him, he was unable to forget. Things that 
 seemed to him dull, pale, ugly, without being in any way seiz- 
 ing or horrible, he was equally unable to remember. He 
 could not retain facts that most people know simply because 
 it was considered the proper thing to know them. And so 
 his ignorance often astonished those who were a thousand 
 times more stupid than he was. He had none of the ardent 
 desire to be what is called 'well informed,' which flames in 
 the breasts of the totally unoriginal. In this respect he was 
 indeed peculiarly shameless, and he was capable of confess- 
 ing without a blush that he did not know the date of William 
 the Conqueror or the favourite colour of those unbridled 
 worthies, the ancient Britons. 
 
 His examination papers offered up to the eyes of his pre- 
 ceptors a strange mixture of neatly put facts, brilliantly 
 written reflections, and gross, unpardonable errors, and those 
 who taught him were alternately delighted by his cleverness 
 and driven to despair by his apparent incapacity. Although 
 Felix was in many respects unusually sensitive, he often 
 seemed strangely indifferent to the opinions of his school- 
 masters. This indifference sprang from the root of his cos- 
 mopolitanism. Some people who have not travelled are 
 nevertheless perpetually conscious of the existence of the 
 great world that lies beyond the limit of their sight, beyond 
 the borders of their country. Though they dwell within nar- 
 row boundaries they are acutely aware that they are narrow, 
 and wish for their enlargement. At heart they are cosmopoli- 
 tan. Felix was one of these. Unfortunately, the men who 
 instructed him, although excellent and educated, were men 
 whose opportunities of coming into touch with all sorts and 
 conditions of minds had been limited. Some of them were 
 clever, but they were — or seemed to Felix — devoid of any 
 large aspirations, and absurdly contented with their rather 
 humdrum lot. He thought of them as circus-horses, canter- 
 ing gently round and round, and kicking up with their well- 
 trained hoofs nothing but sawdust. It was a pity that the 
 teacher with whom he had most to do chanced to be a prig, 
 who honestly, and with his whole heart, believed that Ox- 
 ford was the world, and that the world was Oxford. The 
 man who had not been to Oxford was to this admirable dul- 
 lard an altogether unfortunate and inferior being, deprived 
 inevitably of grace and culture, one who could never hope to
 
 10 FELIX 
 
 hold his own worthily, or to be upon equal terms with those 
 who had been duly crowned and sceptred by the great Uni- 
 versity. Even at Cambridge men he could but sniff. True 
 culture, he conceived, came not from there. Realising that 
 Felix was not an ordinary boy, he endeavoured to obtain what 
 he would have called *a right influence ' over him. The 
 influence he obtained amounted to this, that he planted in 
 Felix's mind a rigid determination never to become an 
 undergraduate. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding was upset when she heard of this determina- 
 tion. Her husband had been at Oxford. So had her father, 
 who was now dead, and her two brothers. She thought that 
 every boy ought to go there unless his people were too poor 
 to send him. At this juncture she endeavoured to play a 
 father's part, assisted by recollections of her private library. 
 She tried to speak to Felix with the authority and passion 
 of a paternal old Oxonian, presenting diligently the inesti- 
 mable advantages of an Oxford education. Naturally she 
 failed. Felix listened, at first with surprise, at last with un- 
 disguised amusement, to her unconvincing arguments, and 
 his final, ' Why, mater, what on earth can you know about 
 it?' was a question her own heart had already answered. 
 For she was generally truthful even to herself. 
 
 At the end of their rather complicated conversation Felix 
 expressed a strong desire to be allowed to go to France when 
 he left Rugby, in order to study there the French language, 
 which already he began to love. 
 
 INIrs. Wilding was not one of those good Englishwomen 
 who think that the Devil, at an early stage in his career, 
 became naturalised as a Frenchman and went to live perma- 
 nently in Paris. In her youth she had been a good deal in 
 the south of France and had made many French friends. 
 She had, indeed, very pleasant recollections of the country. 
 But she was certainly startled by her son's request. Soon 
 after it was made she went upstairs to her bedroom, whose 
 windows looked out over what she called the ' church- 
 garden ' to the church. It was the summer vacation. The 
 weather was warm and still. She sat down alone by the 
 open lattice, laid her icewool shawl on the sill within easy 
 reach of her hand, and began to think this matter out. 
 
 What would Felix's father have said to it ? In any diffi- 
 culty Mrs. Wilding always sought to realise the probable, 
 or possible, workings of the dear dead man's mind. And 
 when she failed in that endeavour she would have recoiirse
 
 FELIX 11 
 
 to books, make as it were an amalgam of the minds of many 
 father s, three-quarters of them fictional, and, in a sort of 
 plural impersonation, look upon the doubtful matter with an 
 eye shrewd, so she hoped, as the eye of all paternity. 
 
 To-day, gazing out over the narrow lawn, the thick yew 
 hedge, and the deeply sunken road beyond it, to the church- 
 yard with its carefully shaven grass and rows of graves, she 
 recalled her husband, whole, to her mind. That was easy, 
 since he lay in her heart always. She saw him again in the 
 sunshine, drew him into this old-fashioned, fragrant room, 
 which had once been his as well as hers, and asked him 
 silently to speak. Under the latticed window martens were 
 flying. Maxwell, the sexton, was doing something with a 
 spade among the humble green graves of the poor. He 
 whistled as he worked. There was a low and shifting music 
 of bees from the wild roses which clambered on this side of 
 the house, and a dull noise of wheels from the hidden road. 
 It died away down the steep descent. 
 
 The dead man would not speak to-day to the woman who 
 loved him. It seemed to her as if he looked at her steadily, and 
 she saw in his eyes that, despite his old love for her, he had, 
 and could have, no more concern with life. He had passed on 
 and there was no real returning, even in thought, or in prayer, 
 and for a moment. And she fancied that perhaps it was faultily 
 weak of her to cry so often to him silently for assistance. She 
 wondered, too, as she had sometimes wondered before, wheth- 
 er'any selfishness of those on earth can effect the completeness 
 of the happiness of those in heaven, whether the pleading ap- 
 peals of souls still earth-bound, and so often inevitably har- 
 assed and unhappy, can trouble or touch with a momentary 
 chill anxiety the serene souls of those whom God has blessed 
 by taking them to Himself. She wished she could know. But 
 the mere doubt caused her to think of herself as almost a wick- 
 ed woman, one who had sought to trouble the peace of saints. 
 
 With an effort that hurt her she forced herself to turn away 
 from the dead man, even to make a conscious endeavour to 
 repel him. She had called to him, and it seemed to her that he 
 had heard her, but that he could not reply. Is it not cruel of 
 mortals to bring home to spirits their impotence by imploring 
 them to do what they may not, cannot do ? With this question 
 trembling in her Mrs. Wilding rose suddenly from her chair by 
 the window. The action broke the spell her gentle imagina- 
 tion had been weaving, and just then the voice of Felix called 
 to Margot from the garden. The brother and sister were go-
 
 12 FELIX 
 
 ing out riding together. Mab, Felix's mastiff, barked loudly 
 from the yard. She had seen the horses brought out from 
 the stable and was excited at the prospect of a run. Mrs. 
 Wilding began to consider earnestly Felix's proposal that he 
 should go to France. 
 
 It is a mistake to believe that mothers who love their sons 
 instinctively understand them. They understand part of them, 
 perhaps. They know certain, even many things of and in them. 
 But they often come to closed doors, whether they choose to 
 say to themselves that the doors are closed or not. If Mrs. 
 Wilding had thoroughly understood Felix she might have been 
 able to forecast how this contemplated sojourn would be likely 
 to effect him, whether it would change him, and, if so, in what 
 way. She felt she could not tell. And, because she could not 
 tell, she was frightened to let him go. Once more her reading 
 failed her at the critical juncture. She was amazed at the use- 
 lessness of books for a moment, and then, in another moment, 
 was blaming her own stupidity. She was a very humble 
 woman, never concious of any power of intellect in herself or 
 any beauty of nature. The only thing she was conscious of 
 was that she earnestly wished always to do right. 
 
 In the evening of that day after dinner Felix returned to the 
 charge, and his mother, not having been able to make up her 
 mind what a father would have said in answer to so excited and 
 impetuous a demand, granted it with many internal misgivings. 
 So, when he was eighteen and a half, Felix went to France. 
 His mother, through a friend, heard of a charming old French 
 lady who had a house buried in the flowery depths of the 
 garden province of Touraine. The old lady's income was 
 very small, and she received English people who wanted to 
 acquire the most perfect of French accents, and who were 
 not afraid of simplicity and quiet in a place many miles from 
 a railway, and even lying quite off the highroad. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding thought that Felix could come to no harm at 
 La Maison des Alouettes.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FELIX'S life in France delighted him. At first he was 
 boyishly enchanted by the novelty of it. On his way 
 to La Maison des Alouettes he spent one night at Tours, stop- 
 ping at the Hotel de Bordeaux near the station. It was 
 early summer, and the weather was already warm. On the 
 evening of his arrival he went out for a walk, wandered through 
 the narrow paved streets among the tall grey houses, gazed up 
 at the twin towers of the Cathedral of Saint Gatien, and finally 
 found his way to the Loire. Here he stayed till it was quite 
 dark. There had been much rain that spring, and the river 
 was in flood and flowing rapidly. Its breadth astonished the 
 boy. All along the banks people were fishing. Seen from a 
 distance they looked like dolls leaning over the shadowy 
 water. A bugle sounded from the barracks, and from the wood- 
 ed island beyond the bridge came the melody of a Viennese 
 waltz tune played by a string band. The river eddied round 
 the stone piers of the bridge with a dull, sucking murmur. 
 Some soldiers went by, and two women in white caps, with 
 enormous frills and long white streamers. A pretty little girl, 
 bareheaded, and dressed in a pale-pink cotton frock, came up 
 to Felix and offered him roses from a big basket which she 
 carried on her arm. While he was buying some the sound of the 
 band on the island, which had died away, stole again over the 
 water. It was playing a Hungarian tune full of shuddering mel- 
 ancholy and fire. The dolls on the high banks of the river bent 
 over their thin black lines, and the sky grew darker, Felix was 
 filled with a rapture that was chaotic and half painful. All the 
 beauties, the mysteries, the passions, and the sorrows of life 
 seemed suddenly to flow together, and to pass murmuring 
 through his heart as the river passed murmuring through the 
 arches of the bridge. Tears sprang into his eyes, and he 
 longed to do something great, to create something or to help 
 somebody. But the longing, though violent, was vague. It 
 was like a fluid that cannot be grasped. It swept on and away 
 into the darkness, and Felix thought that he could hear the 
 whispering voice of it dying down in the dimness of the night. 
 
 13
 
 14 FELIX 
 
 The band on the island ceased from playing, and he turned to 
 go back to the hotel. He descended the Rue Nationale, 
 walking slowly. The pavement was thronged. Young men 
 strolled along with short black cloaks hanging from their 
 shoulders. Women passed with flowers stuck into their hair 
 and thin shawls over their arms. Felix thought of his mother's 
 icesvool shawl, and felt abruptly homesick and lonely. Pres- 
 ently he came to some cafe's. They were brilliantly lit up. 
 Inside them waiters with short bristling hair and white aprons 
 hurried to and fro, jingling cups and glasses, and shouting 
 ' Via, Moftsieur r Out in the air stood many little tables 
 People sat by them smoking short, almost black cigars, and 
 drinking coffee and mysterious liquids that Felix had never 
 seen before. In front of one cafd he hesitated. He thought 
 of sitting down, of ordering something and staring at the 
 passers-by like the other customers. But he walked on. He 
 felt suddenly uncomfortable in the midst of all these stran- 
 gers, and as if they were hostile to him and he were hostile to 
 them. The sensation died almost as soon as it was born. 
 When he reached the Place by the Cafe de I'Univers, and saw 
 the fountain playing and the trees, he resolved to join the 
 drinkers and smokers, though, being alone, he could not share 
 their vivacity. He sat down by a table on the pavement and, 
 after some consideration, called for an absinthe. When it was 
 brought, and he had sipped it, he thought it disgusting. He 
 did not finish it, but sat looking about him. Two men close 
 by were playing dominoes. One was quite young. He wore a 
 short black beard. His face was deadly pale, and there were 
 blue rings round his eyes, which looked feverish and tired. 
 He talked incessantly, and Felix noticed that his hands, which 
 were horribly thin, trembled almost as if he had palsy. To 
 Felix in his ignorance, this man appeared to be a sort of in- 
 carnation of the life of cities and of their vices. He imagined 
 him going at night down side-streets into extraordinary 
 houses, gambling, cheating, getting drunk, making love to 
 other men's wives. And he examined him with a sort of half- 
 respectful curiosity mingled with disgust. The man, who was 
 a commercial traveller afflicted with chronic dyspepsia, went 
 on pla\ing dominoes without taking any notice of Felix. 
 Occasionally he sipped some lager beer from a tall glass which 
 stood beside the domino-box. He was really quite respectable, 
 a good citizen, and an ardent admirer of Drumont, whom he 
 looked upon as the highest type of .patriot. He made Felix 
 think for the first time with definiteness of a town life and of
 
 FELIX 16 
 
 what it must be like. The pallor of the commercial traveller's 
 face continued to excite him for many minutes, and the rat- 
 tling of the dominoes on the marble-topped table sounded in 
 his ears like the murmurs of a dissipation which he knew 
 nothing of. 
 
 Presently he heard a church clock strike ten. He paid for 
 his absinthe, knocking on the table with the knob of his stick 
 to attract the attention of the gar^on, and got up to go back 
 to the hotel. Just before he turned the corner by the Hotel 
 de rUnivers he glanced back at the fountain and noticed 
 the great statue of Balzac. It loomed up in the faint light 
 cast by the lamps with a bulky impressiveness which attracted 
 Felix strongly. He retraced his steps till he stood before it. 
 Although he had never read one of Balzac's books, this effigy 
 of the famous man who had been devoured by a genius that 
 was almost like a vice within him, compelling him to defy 
 the laws of health, stirred Felix strongly. In the rather 
 theatrical illumination and blackness produced by the 
 lights of the cafe and the masses of trees, the face of the 
 statue looked heavily powerful and ruthless, like a face that 
 confronts everything in the world without fear, without pity, 
 but with a penetrating determination to know the truth, 
 Felix stayed for several minutes to gaze at it, and it made him 
 feel very acutely how little he knew of the truth of anything. 
 His youth and ignorance oppressed him. He resolved to 
 come back and see the statue in daylight, and on the morrow 
 he returned. Again he received from it the same impression. 
 
 La Maison des Alouettes stood on a hill quite alone. An 
 avenue shaded by two lines of tall poplars, and running at 
 right angles to the highroad, led to its iron gate, which was 
 set in a big white wall. The house was an old farmhouse 
 covered with creepers, which reminded Felix of those which 
 grew on the walls of his home. Small windows peered out 
 from the mass of greenery, and were protected from the fierce 
 suns of summer by striped awnings fastened to iron rods 
 painted white. Behind the house was a bowery garden 
 stretching up a gentle hill, and in one corner of it, sheltered 
 by trees, stood the remains of an old ruined chapel, almost 
 concealed by the green mosses which clung to the crumbling 
 stones. The nearest village, Artannes, was several kilome- 
 tres away, and the peace of this country flooded with tree 
 and plant life was profound and unchanging. On still days 
 the ringing of the distant Angelus bell could be faintly heard 
 from the court, and at night hidden frogs gave forth their
 
 16 FELIX 
 
 glassy note, and the night-jar whirred. The cows lowed in 
 the yard beyond the farm-buildings, and Brisa, Madame Ber- 
 nard's little Maltese dog, barked at the bats which flew low 
 over the yellow gravel. A verandah ran along the front of 
 the house, and here Madame Bernard's guests used to sit to 
 take their coffee and improve their French accent after din- 
 ner at half-past six. Felix loved these quiet evenings of sum- 
 mer. The talk was often gay, for Madame — or Grand'mbre, 
 as nearly every one called her — thought it incumbent upon 
 her to be very conversational, and, despite the many mis- 
 fortunes and sorrows with which fate had tried to overwhelm 
 her, preserved a great vivacity of spirit. In the occasional 
 pauses of the talk the silence was like a soft green liquid, 
 bathing the dwellers in La Maison des Alouettes, and flowing 
 out over the sloping vineyards to the river, which ran through 
 the valley between forests of enormous rushes. Even the 
 stars that twinkled over the garden province looked blessedly 
 countrified, Felix sometimes thought. He wrote home en- 
 thusiastic descriptions of all the rural joys. This was in his 
 first summer. He had quite forgotten the pale face of the 
 commercial traveller at the Cafe' de I'Univers, the sound of 
 the rattling dominoes, and all his thoughts of towns that night. 
 There were two other boys in the house learning French, 
 and in August two girls, sisters, twenty and twenty-two re- 
 spectively, were added to the party. Various expeditions 
 were made. Madame Bernard mounted into an old waggon- 
 ette, from which she chaperoned her five guests, who rode 
 their bicycles, going slowly to suit the paces of the fat, white 
 horse. In this fashion the neighbouring country was dis- 
 creetly scoured, and many of the chateaux were seen. Felix 
 loved the chateaux. Their beauties, fashioned by the pious 
 dead, touched him strangely. Their gardens filled his heart 
 with 'the sound of Time's footsteps. In one there was an 
 old, uncovered well. He looked down into it, and saw water 
 dripping from the edges of the stones, and these drops 
 seemed to him like the tears of the things that remain for 
 the men and women who must pass so quickly away. Some- 
 times he went off alone for long tours on his bicycle. And 
 he was very happy on these solitary excursions. 
 
 When the autumn of his first year in France was dying into 
 winter, he one day set out for a walk by himself. He was 
 now Madame Bernard's sole guest. The two sisters had 
 only come out to spend a summer holiday, and the two boys 
 had gone back to England in October, magnificently im-
 
 EELIX 17 
 
 proved in French, and lustily blessing Grand'mere. They 
 were to enter at Scoones's. Felix did not miss them much. 
 He had got on with them quite well, but he had not found 
 them very interesting. They were, in fact, ordinary, good- 
 tempered, healthy English lads, fond of what they called a 
 ' lark,' and ' up to anything '. Felix liked a lark too, but he 
 had other tastes which they did not share. He enjoyed bicy- 
 cling with them, or going on the river with them. But their 
 perpetual society was scarcely stimulating. On parting they 
 had all sworn to meet again in England, and have a ' rare old 
 spree ', Meanwhile Felix and Grand'mere were en tete-a-tcte. 
 To-day Grand'mere was confined to the house with a chill. 
 
 It was the first really cold day of the winter. There was 
 the breath of frost in the air. The vines slept in the hard 
 brown earth, and the river flowed sullenly between the dis- 
 coloured and shivering reeds. As Felix turned out of the 
 avenue into the highroad he saw a solitary water-hen steer- 
 ing through the leaden flood, which broke into tiny ripples 
 round its feathery breast. In these ripples there was a faint 
 and momentary hint of light. The bird disappeared in the 
 shadow of the further bank. Felix stood for a moment 
 waiting to see it come out into the main stream. But appar- 
 ently it preferred to stay under shelter. He buttoned up 
 his coat and proceeded on his lonely walk. 
 
 The aspect of the country had suddenly changed. Hitherto 
 it had looked like a great, rich, tangled garden in which 
 everything grew rankly, abundantly, pushing its way to the 
 air and the sun with an almost violent disregard of its neigh- 
 bours. Even in the dying autumn Felix had not been con- 
 scious of the greatness of the transformation that was active 
 around him, among the woods, in the deep meadows, along 
 the hillsides, in the gardens of the frugal, steadfast peasants, 
 and by the borders of the river. He had watched the chang-- 
 ing hues of the leaves, and had rejoiced in the pageant that 
 went gorgeously before the oncoming car of death. But 
 now he stood by the car. During the last few days a wild 
 wind had been blowing in the valley. It had shaken the 
 leaves from the trees. The poplars stood bare along the 
 white road. The hedges were half naked. It was impossi- 
 ble to imagine the big grapes bulging with their sweet juices 
 in the vineyards, which had an aspect of surely abiding bar- 
 renness. And the sky was heavy with clouds. Mists lay 
 wreathed among the aisles of the woods above the orange- 
 tangle of the rotting ferns, and by the river. The green
 
 18 FELIX 
 
 silence of the summer had flowed away to some far-off garden 
 of the sun. Yet there was beauty in this cold, still empti- 
 ness, dignity in the brown slopes of the vineyards, and in the 
 sternly naked trees, which showed the delicate perfection of 
 their limbs distinctly now that their leaves were gone. For 
 the first time in his life Felix asked himself the question. Is 
 there any ugliness in Nature, in any season, if she has been 
 left unaltered by the hand of man ? And he was aware that 
 in this absence of any attempt at decoration, in this fadmg 
 away of colour, there was loveliness; loveliness in this dull, 
 grey sky dashed with long lines and gashes of white, in the 
 paler greys and the browns of the trees, in the faint grey 
 greens of the grasses and of the biamble leaves, in the white 
 of the road, which was more blinding and less mysterious 
 than the white of the broken patches in the sky. 
 
 Presently the road sank between high, crumbling banks of 
 brown earth. It was impossible to see far here, and Felix 
 was glad. He liked the sudden dimness created by the 
 tangle of the trees that spread away and upward on either 
 side of him. His intention was to continue on the road which 
 led eventually to Sachet. He had some idea of visiting the 
 cure there, with whom he sometimes fished, and perhaps of 
 strolling through the garden of the chateau where Balzac 
 once rose in the noon of night to work till the noon of day. 
 But presently he saw a little path winding to the right among 
 the tree trunks. Although he had often walked this way he 
 had never noticed it before. And as he was repelled by the 
 present aspect of the open country, and found it almost hor- 
 rible in its sickly intensity, he resolved to follow the path 
 which was sheltered in its beginnings. He therefore turned 
 from the road and disappeared among the trees. 
 
 The path, though narrow, was very definite, and no doubt 
 led either to another country road or to some woodman's or 
 keeper's hut in the forest, which stretched for a long way 
 here. Felix followed it with a certain curiosity, wondering 
 whether he would come to the home of a solitary at its end, 
 whether he would find some one with whom he might break 
 the spell of the white silence that was so suffocating. The 
 twigs which lay here and there on the path crackled under 
 his feet, and the yellow and bending ferns shook feebly as he 
 brushed against them in passing. To right and left of him 
 he saw the mysterious vistas of the forest, full of the debris 
 of the autumn which the rains of winter had not yet turned 
 to the utter rottenness so longed for by the tranquil ground.
 
 FELIX 19 
 
 The wayward bushes hunched themselves together in un- 
 natural shapes, and the curious parasites of the trees clung 
 and crawled about the gnarled bases of the trunks. Mosses, 
 showing gleams of the palest yellow among their green, up- 
 turned their queer little horns like tails of angry scorpions. 
 A strange bramble, with leaves whose under sides were claret- 
 coloured, flourished sturdily, holding its own where all else 
 bowed to the growing will of winter. And here, among the 
 trees, Felix mingled the breath that came from his lips like 
 smoke with another breath that was not in the open country, 
 a breath cold, vital, and deep-drawn, issuing from the lungs 
 of the woods. 
 
 The path wound on and on, but no habitation appeared, nor 
 even a clearing marked by the stacks that proved the wood- 
 cutter's labour. Felix began to despair of coming upon the 
 solitary, whose presence he suspected, and whom he wished to 
 see. Perhaps this path existed only for the passage of those 
 who mark the trees, or was trodden by children seeking wild 
 flowers in the more gentle days of the year. Every moment 
 he said to himself that he would stop and turn back, but the 
 path tempted him forward. It curved, and he felt that he must 
 just see what lay beyond the curve, or it sank down into a 
 depression, and he thought that he must explore that nook ere 
 he went homeward. At length he heard among the trees a soft, 
 shuffling sound as the smaller twigs bent and cracked. He 
 looked up. Heavy snowflakes were falling. He made up his 
 mind to retrace his steps, and was actually swinging round to 
 do so, when he saw a thin spiral of blue-grey smoke rising 
 among the trees and the white flakes. There was a hermitage 
 here. He had not been mistaken. He walked on and, in two 
 or three minutes, came to a small open space in which stood a 
 low white cottage with a sloping roof covered with slates. 
 Two or three hens were scratching and pecking before the 
 door, which stood half opened, showing the pale glimmer of a 
 just-born fire ; and as Felix approached, a small yellow dog, 
 whose pointed nose was in ill accord with a drastically curled 
 and pug-like tail, stepped leisurely out intothe air, lifted up its 
 voice and uttered a tiny but very piercing bark. The glimmer 
 of the fire was suddenly hidden, the yellow dog's tail wagged 
 without uncurling, the door was pushed more widely open, and 
 a small, and apparently very old man appeared, bending for- 
 ward his head and peering out tlirough the snow. 
 
 Felix drew near and saluted him. Certainly he was very old. 
 His small face, covered with a brownish-yellow skin that
 
 20 FELIX 
 
 looked almost like leather, was seamed with deep wrinkles. 
 His lips were folded inwards, and moved incessantly under a 
 bristling white moustache, in which two or three black hairs 
 still sprouted in a curiously unnatural manner. His pointed 
 chin, beneath which the skin hung loose in bags, was graced by 
 a fierce little imperial. Uader a very overhanging forehead 
 and dense, tufted eyebrows, a pair of small, attentive, blue 
 eyes looked out with a keen and almost hectoring gaze. His 
 figure was slight but sturdy, though the back was perceptibly 
 curved outward between the shoulders. His hands were wide 
 and covered with immense veins. He wore an old, patched 
 blouse, dark blue in colour, and a pair of neat black trousers of 
 some stout material and rather oddly cut. They were elabo- 
 rately rolled up at the bottoms, showing peasant's boots with 
 gigantic soles and toes turning upward. When Felix saluted 
 him this old person stood with one hand upon his wooden front 
 door and bowed. After bowing he coughed twice, and his 
 cough sounded ceremonial. 
 
 ' Can you tell me where this path will take me, if you please 
 Monsieur ? ' said Felix in his best French. 
 
 ' It ceases here, Monsieur,' replied the old man politely, in a 
 high, thin voice, which reminded Felix of the voice of the little 
 yellow dog. 
 
 Felix saw that the path did not continue beyond the cottage, 
 round which the forest stood grimly receiving the benediction 
 of the snow. The little yellow dog, bracing all the muscles in 
 its thin body tightly, came smelling assiduously round his 
 boots, with an air of stern and legitimate inquiry. 
 
 *Back,Honord ! ' cried the old man. 'Is Monsieur a bone, 
 then?' 
 
 The dog took no notice of this injunction, but continued 
 its investigation of the boots with an ardour that became 
 asthmatic. 
 
 'You call him Honord? ' said Felix. 
 
 ' Yes, Monsieur.' 
 
 ' It's a fine name,' said Felix, thinking of Honord de Balzac. 
 
 The old man, who had hitherto maintained an attitude and 
 expression of rather dignified reserve mingled with cour- 
 teous inquiry, suddenly looked cordial. All the innumerable 
 wrinkles in his small face deepened as he smiled, and the tuft 
 of his imperial thrust itself forward, while his lips stretched 
 themselves till his mouth became enormous. He pushed back 
 the stout wooden door, and Felix saw the flames of a log fire 
 beginning to mount merrily from a stone hearth up a wide
 
 FELIX 21 
 
 chimney. Meanwhile the snowfall was becoming dense, and 
 his hands were wet with the cold flakes which melted as they 
 touched him. 
 
 ' Will Monsieur step inside ? ' said the old man. ' I live here 
 quite alone but for little Honore and the little Marthe. 
 Back, Honore ! Leave the boots of Monsieur.' 
 
 Felix took off his cap and entered. He found himself in a 
 good-sized and very clean room, which appeared to be the sole 
 room in the cottage, for there was only the door by which he 
 had come in, and it was evident that both the cooking and the 
 sleeping of the owner took place here. On either side of the 
 hearth were a few plain pots and pans. Some bottles of wine, 
 without labels, stood in a corner behind several logs of beech. 
 An open press, painted a chocolate colour, disclosed a quantity 
 of cloth neatly folded. On a round table, by which stood two 
 chairs with arms and straw bottoms, lay some cloth cut into by 
 a huge pair of tailor's shears, which reposed beside it among a 
 quantity of tags and snippets. Other remnants had fallen to 
 the red-brick floor, which was partially covered by two or three 
 rough straw mats with green edges. At the back of the room 
 opposite to the hearth stood a big wooden bedstead without 
 curtains, containing a mighty feather-bed, on which was 
 perched an inflated duvet with a red cover from which several 
 bits of grey fluff were trying to escape. Above the bed was a 
 bookshelf made of deal, hung upon two nails by strong cords 
 which passed through two holes drilled in the deal. Along 
 this bookshelf was ranged a large number of books, all of the 
 same height, and all bound in the same way in green boards 
 with red lettering on the backs. A tiny tabby-cat sat near 
 the fire, hunched up, and staring at the flames rather sourly 
 with green eyes in which were many little dark specks. It 
 did not even look round when Felix came in. This was the 
 little Marthe. 
 
 ' Ah, Monsieur,' Felix said to the old man, who hastily set 
 one of the straw chairs for him, and closed the door on the 
 snow, ' I see you are not idle here in the forest ? ' 
 
 * No indeed, Monsieur,' he replied, brushing the snippets of 
 cloth deftly together with his large-veined hands, and carry- 
 ing them and the piece from which they had been clipped to- 
 wards the press. ' I have plenty to do indeed.' 
 
 * You are a tailor, Monsieur ?' 
 
 The old man had his back to Felix at this moment, and was 
 putting away the cloth, bending down so that his head covered 
 with short, fierce-looking, grey hair, was nearly concealed by
 
 22 FELIX 
 
 his round shoulders. But at the question he turned sharply 
 round, drew himself up, threw his chest forward, and, spread- 
 ing out his hands in a fiery and dramatic gesture, exclaimed : 
 
 ' Monsieur, I am the tailor of Balzac ! ' 
 
 ' The tailor of Balzac ! ' repeated the boy, completely 
 puzzled. 
 
 ' The same, Monsieur,' said the old man, who seemed, with 
 every passing second, to increase in dignity and pride. * You 
 have, perhaps, heard of him. Very well, I who speak to you — ■ 
 I am he ! ' 
 
 'But ' said Felix, * Balzac has been dead for — oh, for ever 
 so many years.' 
 
 The old man advanced from the press to the fire, always 
 with the same theatrical and striking manner, as of one con- 
 scious that on him are focussed the astonished and admiring 
 eyes of a universe. His movements were almost processional, 
 and he again uttered his little dry cough, covering his pursed- 
 up mouth with his right hand, then once more stretching it 
 forth to emphasise his remarks. 
 
 ' Monsieur supposes me to be young?' he said, arriving at 
 the hearth and standing still with his right leg slightly bent. 
 
 Felix hardly knew what to reply. The question was 
 obviously absurd, and was possibly intended to be so. Yet 
 the intonation of the hermit's voice was not definitely ironic, 
 and the expression that emerged from the embrace of his 
 wrinkles, which seemed to Felix to become incessantly more 
 numerous, appeared to be one of earnest inquiry. 
 
 ' I cannot guess your age,' Felix said, with an attempt at 
 boyish diplomacy. ' But surely Balzac ' 
 
 * Monsieur, I am seventy-five.' 
 
 'Indeed. As much as that ? ' 
 
 ' Seventy-five, Monsieur. Judge then whether I am speak- 
 ing the truth when I say that I am Balzac's tailor.' 
 
 ' Oh, Monsieur, I did not doubt you for a moment. I was 
 only surprised and interested.' 
 
 The old man looked gratified, and straightened his leg with 
 a sort of military abruptness. 
 
 ' All the world is surprised, Monsieur. It is not every day 
 that one can see the tailor of Balzac. Pemit me to offer 
 you a glass of wine.' 
 
 Felix was about to decline this suggestion when the old man 
 hastened to the corner in whicli the array of bottles stood, 
 selected one, and, returning to the table, set it down with
 
 FELIX 23 
 
 such obvious hospitable anxiety that he thought it more 
 polite to accept. 
 
 ' There are glasses in the press,' added his host. * Very 
 good glasses. They came from Tours, where one can buy 
 everything of the best.' 
 
 Moving with remarkable agility he produced two thick 
 goblets mounted on fat stems, rubbed them carefully inside 
 and out with a duster, uncorked the bottle, and poured out 
 some red wine. 
 
 * We will drink to him. Monsieur,' he said solemnly, lifting 
 his glass in an almost religious manner. ' To the greatest 
 man who ever lived, him for whom I made trousers without 
 feet — Monsieur Honore de Balzac' 
 
 Felix, who was on the point of raising his glass to his lips 
 when the old gentleman came to the conclusion of his 
 exordium, very nearly dropped it. But the piercing blue eyes 
 which were fixed upon him startled him into self-control. He 
 only spilt a drop or two. 
 
 ' Trousers without feet. Monsieur,' repeated the old man, 
 setting down his glass, and smacking his lips loudly several 
 times. ' This wine comes from Vouvray, I assure you.' 
 
 *It is very good,' said Felix. 'Excellent,' 
 
 * It is not worthy of him, but it is quite pure. The vine- 
 yards of Vouvray are famous.' 
 
 'Then you knew Balzac ?' asked Felix. 
 
 ' How could I measure him. Monsieur, if I did not know 
 him?' 
 
 The old man, who had been preparing to sit down, thought 
 better of it, stood up straight, and struck another attitude, 
 holding out both his arms and raising his enormous, tufted 
 eyebrows. Two or three drops of wine hung at the left-hand 
 corner of his mouth. His eyes began to shine with excitement. 
 
 ' How could I set down the length of his immortal legs, the 
 size of his calf, the span of his waist, if I did not know him ? 
 Monsieur, I have touched him. I have touched a god. Did 
 I drop the tape ? Certainly not. But who might not have 
 done so ? I should not have blamed myself. No indeed, I 
 should not have blamed myself at all. But I said to myself, 
 " Courage, Louis ! This is a great day for you. Do your duty 
 well, and you will have something to be proud of all the rest 
 of your life." I seemed calm, Monsieur. It might have been 
 you I was measuring, it might indeed.' 
 
 Felix was captivated by the old man's transparent pride. 
 And then, too, he remembered how he had stood before
 
 24 FELIX 
 
 Balzac's statue at Tours, and how it had impressed him by its 
 power, and given him a knowledge of his own ignorance. 
 This odd meeting in the snow began to interest him and to 
 awake his instinct for romance. But he felt ashamed of never 
 having read one of the books written by this old peasant's 
 idol, and hoped sincerely he would not be brought to 
 acknowledge the fact, which, he was certain, would render 
 him a contemptible object in his host's eyes, 
 
 ' Do sit down and tell me about Balzac, Monsieur,' he said. 
 ' You can't think how interested I am.' 
 
 At this moment the cottage door, which had been insecurely 
 latched, opened slightly, showing a narrow section of the 
 outside world partially veiled by the softly and swiftly falling 
 white flakes. Honore set up a shrill bark and ran towards the 
 aperture. The tailor hastened to the door, looked out, shut it, 
 cried to Honore, ' To the hearth, little monster ! What, you 
 imagine robbers ! There's naught here to take except the 
 cloth. To the hearth — quick, little devil ! ' and came back to 
 Felix. 
 
 ' Monsieur, I have seen him writing,' he exclaimed, while 
 Honore lay down by Marthe, rolled over on his side, present- 
 ing his yellow stomach to the fire, and uttered a loud sigh. 
 ' It was in the garden of the Chateau of Sachet yonder.' 
 
 He sat down, grasping the arms of his chair with both hands 
 and lowering himself with a precaution which made Felix 
 suddenly realise his great age. 
 
 * I was a young man then, and the best tailor in the country 
 — out of Tours. My breeches were talked of by the people 
 for miles. And then, too, I played the fiddle for the dances 
 at the village fairs and the weddings. Oh, I was a gay fellow, 
 but directly I took my shears in my hand as grave as if I had 
 never been out of a churchyard. For the tailor who laughs 
 over his cloth. Monsieur, is the creator of scarecrows.' 
 ' I am sure he is. And Monsieur de Balzac ? ' 
 ' He used to stay at the chateau. Often had I seen him in 
 the village, walking fast, his eyes everywhere. Such eyes. 
 Monsieur! Brown, and they noticed everything ! Nut a fowl 
 ran across the road but he watched the way it ran. Not a 
 turkey poult gobbled but he stopped to hear it. The country 
 folk thought nothing of him. They are uninstructed, Mon- 
 sieur. They have the brains of hens. If you carried them 
 upside down it would not hurt their heads, believe me. But 
 I knew Monsieur Balzac's worth. Why, bless my soul, had 
 I not read ? '
 
 FELIX 25 
 
 'Yes, yes, you were not like the others, I see,' interrupted 
 Felix hastily, fearing a dissertation by which his ignorance 
 might be exposed. 
 
 ' Indeed I was not. Monsieur. When I saw Monsieur 
 Balzac pass my door I trembled, I said to myself, " Think, 
 Louis, if he should put you in a book ! Bear yourself well. 
 Mon Dieu ! Make a good appearance ! " And I would stand 
 thus, Monsieur, with my shears in my hand, to show I was 
 no idler.' 
 
 The old man got up, grasped his shears firmly, holding 
 them with the points upward, and stood by the table in an 
 attitude of violent industry. He was unself-conscious as a 
 child relating some great adventure. 
 
 ' And did Monsieur Balzac notice you ?' 
 
 ' He did. Monsieur. One morning — how I can remember 
 it ! — I was making a coat for Gaspard Vivier, the miller. 
 He's dead long ago. He was too fond of his glass. I was 
 making him a coat, and all of a sudden something stood be- 
 tween me and the sunshine. It was Monsieur Balzac. There 
 he stood in my doorway and said not a word. I saluted him 
 respectfully, and would have set a chair for him, but he 
 shook his head and signed to me to go on with my work. 
 Monsieur, I assure you I was all in a sweat, and could not 
 remember whether it was the seam or the button-holes I was 
 doing, or whether indeed I was not cutting out the flaps for 
 tail pockets. — I should tell you that Gaspard would always 
 have tail pockets, and big ones too. — It was in summer. 
 The sun was shining, and wherever I looked I could see 
 naught but Monsieur Balzac's shadow on my floor. Moii 
 Dieu! What a head it had, to be sure! And no wonder. 
 The head of the shadow was just by the legs of my table. I 
 shall never forget it.' 
 
 Drops of perspiration stood on the old man's brow above 
 his tufted eyebrows. He wiped them away with the back of 
 his flat thumb and continued : 
 
 'However, I went on with the coat, though what I did to 
 it the Lord knows. And all of a sudden I saw the head on 
 my floor move away from the table leg just like a thing run- 
 ning. Then I dropped my shears and said to myself, " Louis, 
 he thinks you're a maker of scarecrows. He'll put you in a 
 book, and he'll put you in as a scarecrow maker." I could 
 have struck myself. And that night I could not sleep. It 
 seemed to me that I heard voices crying, "Scarecrow 
 maker!" and saw fingers pointing — Monsieur, it was ter-
 
 26 FELIX 
 
 rible ! But ' The tailor had depressed his whole body 
 
 and hunched his round shoulders to express the depth of his 
 self-contempt and humiliation. Now he suddenly shot up to 
 his full height — 'But, Monsieur, next day there came a mes- 
 sage from the chateau that I was to go up and measure 
 Monsieur Balzac for a pair of breeches.' 
 
 On this conclusion the old man's voice rose up to the 
 voice of a bird. He leaned over the table, put his two large 
 nands on it, and stared into the face of Felix triumphantly. 
 
 * A pair of breeches. Monsieur ! ' he repeated loudly. 
 
 Felix was carried away as by some startling situation in a 
 drama. Despite the sense of humour which prompted hirn 
 to laughter, he felt inclined to applaud. The old man had a 
 remarkable power of evoking a scene, Felix had been in 
 the tailor's shop, had seen the shadow of a mighty fame 
 darkening the poor man's sunlight, the shining shears click- 
 ing in the nervous hands, the murder done on the miller's 
 festival coat. And now the tragedy swept to this golden 
 ending. He felt the glory like a warm garment flung over 
 him. 
 
 ' Bravo ! ' he cried. * Bravo, Monsieur ! ' 
 
 ' Monsieur,' retorted his host, * you are a brave ! Permit 
 me to grasp you by the hand ! ' 
 
 And he seized Felix's hands in both his own, which were 
 trembling violently. 
 
 Felix was suddenly afraid that his old age was paying a 
 heavy price for his triumph, and would have broken in upon 
 his speech to let him rest, but he was now fully launched. 
 Only some natural phenomenon, an earthquake, a water- 
 spout, or the frenzy of a storm leaping upon the cottage, 
 could have given him pause. 
 
 ' Monsieur,' he continued, still in a queer, high voice, 
 'again I passed a sleepless night. "Merciful heaven!" I 
 kept on thinking, "if I should go wrong with the tape ! If I 
 should squeeze the legs of Monsieur Balzac by cutting the 
 breeches too small, or give him a migraine by making them 
 too large." (For I must inform you. Monsieur, that if the 
 legs of trousers are too wide at the bottom the wind will find 
 its way up them, and, by causing the liver to take cold, 
 may very well affect the head of a customer.) The notion 
 that any action of mine might upset such a world-wise head 
 as Monsieur Balzac's threw me almost into a fever. How 
 could I know that the trousers were to have no feet ? No 
 one had told me. How, therefore, could I suppose it ?'
 
 FELIX 27 
 
 He stopped for a moment. His little blue eyes fiercely 
 demanded a reassuring answer. 
 
 * Of course you couldn't,' Felix said quickly. 
 
 ' No. I knew you would say so. Well, when morning 
 came I can tell you I was in a fine state, and when I set forth 
 to the chateau, I walked like a man going to the guillotine. 
 My tape was in my hand, and I kept on saying to myself, 
 *' Courage, Louis, courage ! " This I repeated till I got to the 
 chateau. And there they said to me, " Go into the garden, 
 Louis. Monsieur Balzac is in the garden writing." " Writ- 
 ing ! " I said. " Then let me go home. If Monsieur is writ- 
 ing " " No, no, you are to go into the garden. And mind 
 
 you are quick with the trousers. Monsieur Balzac is in a 
 great hurry for them." Monsieur, I went into the garden, 
 and there, away to the left, just where the ground dips, under 
 a tree, sat Monsieur Balzac' 
 
 The old man paused. He seemed overcome by his recollec- 
 tions. The fire and almost intemperate vivacity in his small 
 blue eyes died out slowly. He stared as if he watched some- 
 thing deeply interesting. 
 
 * Monsieur, it was true, he was writing. There was much 
 sun that day, but he sat just in the shade and could look out 
 over the garden. On his right hand was a little table, smaller 
 than mine. It was all covered with paper. Monsieur Balzac 
 was not sitting before it like another man would. No, no ! ' 
 
 'But how did he sit, then ?' 
 
 ' Like this.' 
 
 The old man eagerly pulled his chair forward till it was 
 beyond the table, stretched his right arm back till his hand 
 reached the table, and made a violent motion of writing. 
 
 * That was how he wrote ? ' 
 
 *And he never looked at the paper. Monsieur. All the 
 time he wrote he stared at the garden like this, as if he saw 
 people walking in it.' 
 
 The tailor glanced wildly about the room, like one watch- 
 ing the movement of a live thing between his chair and the 
 wood fire. While he did so he continued to agitate his hand 
 furiously upon the table. His long nails made a dry, tap- 
 ping sound. 
 
 ' That was how he wrote, without ever looking at the paper. 
 Monsieur, he could see his people all about the garden. His 
 eyes were so wide open they were terrible. I did not know 
 what to do. I did not dare to interrupt him, but he caught 
 sight of me standing there, like a dog that is ready to run all
 
 28 FELIX 
 
 ways from fright, and beckoned me to come nearer. I came, 
 grasping my tape and still repeating to myself, "Courage, 
 Louis, courage ! " Well, Monsieur, I had to make haste, I 
 can tell you. He stood up with the pen in his hand, and then 
 it was that I measured him — the greatest man of France.' 
 
 ' And did he say anything to you ?' 
 
 When I had measured him I would have shown him some 
 of my samples. I thought he would wish to choose a mater- 
 ial. But no, he would not look at them. *' Something warm " 
 was all he said. And then. Monsieur, he added that they 
 were on no account to have any feet, 
 
 ' But what do you mean by that ? ' 
 
 ' They were to have no openings at the bottom for the feet 
 to go through, but were to be closed quite up like two sacks. 
 I could not understand it, but I did not venture to say a word 
 except, "As Monsieur wishes! As Monsieur desires!" 
 How I was going to make them I could not tell at all. But I 
 bore myself as if I had already made many trousers without 
 feet for all the countryside, and was in no way disturbed. 
 When I was going I bowed profoundly. But, Monsieur, I 
 was so distracted that I forgot my tape. Think of that I I 
 lift it lying on the table, where I had put it down in my agi- 
 tation. I did not find this out until I had reached the ter- 
 race, and then ' 
 
 He paused, shook his head several times, and made a 
 clicking sound with his tongue against his lips. 
 
 ' You went back for it ? ' 
 
 ■' Monsieur, I did, on my toe-tips. Monsieur Balzac was 
 aga^n writing and staring at the garden. I crept up behind 
 the table, as a rat creeps to food in the kitchen when the cook 
 is by. My tape lay under a sheet of paper. For a moment 
 I did not dare to take it. My hand was trembling. But 
 Monsieur Balzac did not seem to see me. At length I 
 stretched out my hand and seized my tape. But the sheet of 
 paper rustled, and suddenly Monsieur Balzac looked round. 
 There were great lines all across his forehead, and his eyes 
 were bloodshot. Then, Monsieur, I— I ran as the hare runs.' 
 
 ' You ran away ? ' 
 
 'To my shame. Monsieur, I did. But I made the trousers. 
 They had no feet, and Monsieur Balzac always wore them at 
 night when he was writing. That was what he wanted them 
 for. He did not wish to put on shoes, and when he got up at 
 midnight he would slip at once into my trousers with only 
 his stockings on. And when he passed through the village
 
 FELIX 29 
 
 afterwards he would always nod to me, and sometimes he 
 would say " Good-morning ".' 
 
 The tailor was silent, wiped the perspiration from his brow, 
 drew from beneath his blouse an enormous cotton pocket- 
 handkerchief, and blew his nose sonorously. Then he turned 
 towards the bookshelf. 
 
 * There I have all his books, Monsieur. As Monsieur Bal- 
 zac's tailor, it is right that I should have them, is it not ? ' 
 
 ' Quite right,' said Felix. 
 
 It was beginning to grow rather dark in the room, and such 
 illumination as there was came rather from the flames of the 
 fire than from the dying daylight at the window. Felix 
 glanced towards the bookshelf. The long line of books, 
 whose dark-green backs now began to look almost black, 
 fascinated him. He thought of the rugged statue of the man 
 whose brain and whose soul were bound up in them. 
 
 ' You have read them all ? ' he said. 
 
 * All, Monsieur.' 
 
 The old man went up to the shelf, gazed at his treasures 
 with romantic eyes for a moment, then returned and stood 
 before the hearth close to the little Honore, who was snoring 
 faintly with wide-open eyes. His small and spare figure was 
 lit up by the wood fire behind him. He stood with his feet 
 wide apart, holding up his blouse with his veined hands, and 
 in the triangle formed by his legs and the floor Felix saw the 
 golden and red flames playing round the logs which, in places, 
 were charred and grey. One solitary and small flame was 
 pale blue. It hissed faintly. A little, thin jet of smoke, like 
 a feather, rose behind it. Marthe was still hunched up on 
 the hearth, gazing sourly at the fire with her spotted eyes. 
 There was a moment of silence, and in it Felix suddenly 
 realised the isolation in which the cottage stood, the dim 
 forest all round it, the softly falling snow. When the old 
 man stopped speaking the quiet was intense. Felix felt as 
 if he and the tailor were two figures in an old picture, a 
 picture in which the flames defined the edges of mystery, 
 and the black shadows were dramatic, seeming to reveal as 
 well as to hide. And with them, in this old picture, was 
 surely the spirit of the statue of Tours It seemed to the 
 boy suddenly as if the tailor's acquaintance with Balzac 
 were his acquaintance also, as if he had seen the bloodshot 
 eyes roaming over the garden, following the activities of the 
 brain-creatures in the strong sunshine of France. He 
 glanced again at the line of books, and was filled with a
 
 30 FELIX 
 
 violent longing to read them. The old man followed his 
 eyes. 
 
 ' Monsieur,' he said, ' after I had seen Monsieur Balzac, 
 those books drove me from my village to Paris. I was seized 
 with a restlessness that was, I assure you like a devil within 
 me, I kept thinking, " Shall one man know everything, 
 another nothing ?" Sachet became horrible to me. Then, 
 too, I thought the man who is good enough to be the tailor 
 of Balzac is surely good enough to make trousers for any 
 one in Paris. I shut up my shop and I started for Tours. 
 From there I went to Paris/ 
 
 ' And how did you get on there ? ' 
 
 ' Monsieur, I almost starved. In Paris they did not want 
 me. When I explained that I was Balzac's tailor they 
 laughed at me. I made some trousers for one or two, but. 
 Monsieur, they did not give complete satisfaction. I cannot 
 tell why. To me they seemed well cut. The material was 
 stout and good. Still they were not to the taste of Paris. 
 At length I had no money. I had no customers. I was 
 obliged to return. I was ashamed too, for, in going, I had 
 said to everybody, to all the village. Monsieur, that I should 
 make my fortune in Paris. I feared the laughter of the 
 hen-brained, Monsieur, it was poor-spirited of me, and I 
 came to live away from them in this cottage, which was 
 once a wood-cutter's. That is many years ago, and the 
 people round are glad now to have their clothes from me, 
 and have ceased to laugh at me for going to Paris. But I 
 stay here. When I am alone here I sometimes read my 
 books, and then I see again the streets of Paris and hear 
 the voices of Paris. Ah, Monsieur, it is in great cities that 
 the heart beats strongly and the brain is full of thoughts. 
 Here, in the forest, there is nothing but the trees and the 
 silence.* 
 
 He went over to the door and opened it, letting the edge 
 of his blouse drop. 
 
 ' Look, Monsieur ! Listen ! ' 
 
 He stood away a little from the door to. let Felix see. The 
 afternoon was fading into evening, and the square vision of 
 the forest without was extraordinarily wan and ghostly. 
 The trees looked soft and thin, languid under the cruel 
 attack of the new weather. A wind was rising as the day 
 died. The white flakes spun in it across the aperture of the 
 door, and in the combination of the rapid movement and the 
 utter soundlessness of them there was something peculiarly
 
 FELIX 31 
 
 uneasy and desolate. One or two shafts of reddish-yellow 
 light from the fire pointed across the brick floor to them 
 like fingers. And the moist and frigid breath of the forest 
 penetrated through them slowly, like a sad live thing, striv- 
 ing to edge its way among a, multitude of tiny, but obstinate 
 enemies towards happiness. In the shadow by the door 
 stood the bent form of the tailor peering out. 
 
 * Nothing but the trees and the silence. Monsieur,' he re- 
 peated. ' Nothing but that. And yet, far away, what a 
 world there is ! Mofi Dieu !' 
 
 He shut the door sharply, crossed the floor rapidly to the 
 bookshelf — his big shoes clattering on the bricks — took down 
 a volume, opened it, and thrust it into Felix's hand. 
 
 'There! there !' he exclaimed, and again there was the 
 bird's note in his voice. 'Think of it all. Monsieur ! Think 
 of it all ! ' 
 
 Felix looked into the book. The title of it was Illusions 
 Perdues, 
 
 He read a page and then another. He forgot the forest, 
 the snow, the darkness coming on, the old man regarding 
 him attentively from the fire. 
 
 In his ears there was no longer silence, but the hoarse 
 roar of the huge and flowing tides of life.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FROM the day of his visit to the cottage in the forest Felix was 
 conscious of a change within him. Something in his nature 
 which had been sleeping woke. He could scarcely have named 
 it even to himself. It was, perhaps, as if his ears, formerly deaf, 
 had been partially unsealed, and now heard for the first time 
 clearly the deep and strong pulsation in the heart of life. He 
 began to listen to it with an attention that was passionate, and 
 to wonder whether, as he grew older, it would seem to beat more 
 powerfully. Looking backward over his few years in the world, 
 he was able to recall two or three occasions when he had per- 
 haps heard this significant and central sound, but so dimly that 
 it was more like an echo than a voice, more like the music of an 
 imagination than the music of a great truth. One of these 
 occasions was the funeral of his father, when for a moment he 
 hid almost forgotten his grief in anger at the faulty performance 
 of the village choir. Another had found him alone upon the 
 bridge at Tours, listening to the murmur of the river beneath 
 the arches, and to the wail of the band upon the island. On a 
 third he had gazed in the night at the statue of Balzac. 
 
 He came back through the snow from the tailor's cottage with 
 one of the green volumes, carefully wrapped in a remnant of 
 cloth, in his hand. It was La Cousine Bette, selected by him at 
 hazard as the volume of initiation. The tailor had begg-d Felix 
 to enter at once into a close acquaintance with his idol, and had 
 shown an almost childish and very simple pride in being able to 
 confer so memorable an honour as introduction upon his grate- 
 ful guest. All the way home through the forest Felix had heard 
 ringing in his ears the words of the ardent old fellow, ' Shall 
 one man know everything and another nothing? ' He believed 
 that he had drawn very close to that cry of the ignoiant heart in 
 the night beside the statue at Tours, and he wondered whether 
 he would always repeat the feelings and desires of others, 
 whether it were possible to do anything else even once in a 
 lifetime. He could not tell. He could not tell anything. And 
 
 82
 
 FELIX S3 
 
 he felt burdened, crushed by his new knowledge of his vast and 
 echoing ignorance. 
 
 When he reached La Maison des Alouettes, Grand'mere had 
 gone to bed. Her chill had weakened her, and the evil change 
 in the weather had had a bad effect upon her condition. He 
 went upstairs, found her drinking tea, which she never took but 
 as a medicine, bade her good-night and came down to a lonely 
 evening. The wind continued to rise, as if stirred to action by 
 the obstinate falling of the snow. After dinner Felix drew his 
 chair to the fire in the little drawing-room and, observed by the 
 photographs of Grand'mere's whiskered husband and two bland 
 daughters in garden hats, saw the curtain go up on La Comedie 
 Humaine. Just before he went to bed, at an early hour of the 
 morning, he looked out into the garden. It was covered with 
 snow. The wind whistled over it. He felt as if the snow, and 
 the wind, and this prospect empty of houses were a dream, as if 
 Paris were the only reality. 
 
 In his quiet home life at Churston Waters Felix had been 
 happy. He had enjoyed his schooldays well enough. His 
 summer in France had brought with it new and delightful 
 sensations, a feeling of emancipation, of being out in the world, 
 of standing on the edge of a lifetime and looking towards long 
 vistas of experience. But hitherto fate had set herself to 
 encourage rather the simplicity that was in him than the subtlety. 
 His mother and sister were simple people, natural in their 
 habits, their desires, their expression of them. The sweet calm 
 of the country enveloped and influenced their souls. They 
 moved in it as in their appropriate element. And Felix had 
 always felt truly at home with them, although his temperament 
 was different from theirs. He, too, had an ardent love for 
 nature. Without analysing the fine sanity of nature he had 
 drawn that sanity freely into his soul as a man draws the pure 
 air of sea or mountains into his lungs. He was, so far, whole- 
 some-minded and wholesome-bodied. But he was secretly more 
 impetuous than he knew. From this secret impetuosity came 
 his curious and apparently unreasonable melancholies and his 
 tendency to exaggeration. Till now, circumstances had, upon 
 the whole, been sedative in his life. The chime of his mother's 
 influence had rung to him with the chime of the church bells, 
 yet without depressing him as they did. Her quiet piety and 
 unwavering belief in things unseen, her appreciation of and 
 trust in the goodness and honesty of those about her, had been 
 so constant that they had seemed to her children rather main 
 attributes of humanity than qualities peculiar to her. Public 
 C
 
 34 FELIX 
 
 school life had not shattered the fine image of man she had set 
 up in the heart of Felix. The brotherhood of boys in England 
 is usually a brotherhood of frankness, creating hardihood rather 
 than hardness, breeding a quick reliance rather than a slow 
 mistrust. 
 
 La Comedie Humame set Felix face to face with an undreamed- 
 of world, with a world whose tragic fires lit up the whole arena 
 of his imagination. And the place in which he came to know 
 these crowds of aident people, these fiercely striving and pas- 
 sionately greedy financiers and journalists, these envious poli- 
 ticians and thirsty poets, these cocottes devouring society, and 
 patient, betrayed women, whose very virtue was often sad as an 
 epitaph upon a tomb, assisted, by its unwavering peace, their 
 violent effect upon his mind. At first he was shaken by their 
 intensity, and almost appalled by their activity in deeds. Their 
 extraordinary and persistent energy seemed to him as engrossing 
 as the feats of a superb acrobat, but scarcely more normal. He 
 had never met such human beings, and, in the beginning of his 
 acquaintance with the great comedy, he doubted whether they 
 ever had been met with by any one. But by degrees he was con- 
 quered by the genius of the author and acknowledged silently 
 that such people had lived, were living now. He was convinced. 
 He felt 'in his bones' that though this might not be truth as he 
 knew it, yet it was truth. 
 
 When he had come to this conviction he was enormously 
 stirred. Great literature seldom puts into us what we do not 
 possess already, but it very often wakes that which is latent 
 within us. In Felix it woke a sudden passion for the life of 
 cities, for the tumult of a crowded existence, for the ardour of 
 striving wills, for the melancholies and the joys of the streets. 
 When the spring came again to the garden province, and the 
 airs were once more gentle, he often retreated into the ruined 
 chapel with one of the green volumes which the tailor was so 
 ready to lend. He had carried a garden-chair there, and in the 
 shadow of the crumbling, moss-grown walls he read for hours. 
 The pale sunbeams of the budding year lay sometimes across 
 his page. Tiny insects moved mysteriously through then- jungle 
 of shaking creepers above his head. A bird alighted on a 
 pointed stone in the arch of a shattered window, watched the 
 student with round, shining eyes, tipped its tail at him im- 
 pertinently, and flew away. The sound of the distant Angelus 
 bell came up the valley to him faintly, hinting that there was a 
 calm God above all these raging men, in whose strange lives he 
 was plunged, whose crimes and passions he watched as through
 
 FELIX 35 
 
 a microscope. Sometimes Felix did not hear it. Sometimes he 
 heard it and shivered. One day he asked himself why this 
 voice of the bell seemed to him frightful, penetrating, like a 
 silver ray, through the red and dusky fire of the lights of Paris, 
 why this thought of a God watching over the world struck 
 through his heart like the cold blade of a dagger. But he did 
 not find the answer to his question. And again he bent over 
 the page. 
 
 He and the little tailor had become great friends, and Honore 
 no longer barked when he heard Felix's step upon the narrow 
 path in the forest. Felix often sat by the table watching the 
 old man's large hands, furrowed and twisted with age, busy with 
 the cloth, cutting out, sewing, patching. He grew to look upon 
 the tailor with a curious interest that was almost reverential, 
 thinking of him often as one of Balzac's characters set before 
 him in the flesh. For must not this creator of a gigantic popula- 
 tion, this mighty painter of crowds, have seized upon all those 
 whom he met and compelled them to be his models? Felix 
 often questioned the tailor about his life in Paris, and the tailor, 
 whom conversation almost intoxicated, launched forth with 
 fervour on this congenial subject. Felix mentally compared his 
 account of the city with the many accounts of it given in the 
 Comedie Humaine. Despite the fact that it was the place of his 
 starvation and most utter misery and loneliness, the tailor wor- 
 shipped Paris and could never speak of it but with ecstasy. 
 Again, in his talk, Felix felt the strange attraction of crowds 
 and of the infinite possibilities of adventure that lurk in cities. 
 In London he thought, or in Paris, each morning brings its 
 exciting vagueness, a vagueness alive with conjecture. And 
 each night — what do the nights bring? 
 
 The tailor's life in Paris had been scarcely romantic. He had 
 lived wretchedly amid squalid surroundings, had toiled at his 
 trade, and, too often, had failed to find the customers he so 
 energetically sought. He had known scarcely any one, or had 
 any gaiety or pleasure even of the poorest and most humble 
 kind. But, in narrative, uplifted by an imagination almost 
 Gascon, he managed to place his poor existence among romantic 
 lights and to surround it with a certain glamour of excitement. 
 And had he failed to do this, Felix, steeped in the genius of 
 Balzac, would have done it for him. The lonely cottage often 
 held strange colloquies. The clicking of the great shears made 
 an accom;)animent to the long solos of the tailor and the soft 
 purring of Marthe and the thin snore of the little Honord, 
 mingled with the questions and the tirades of Felix, who often
 
 36 FELIX 
 
 got excited, and poured forth from the depths of his complete 
 ignorance rhapsodies on life in the great world. 
 
 Meanwhile calm nature was developing in the forest all 
 round the two enthusiasts. The pale smile of little leaves ran 
 over the faces of the trees. Among the mosses, damp with the 
 tender dew of spring mornings, tiny flowers appeared, lifting 
 cups of the softest colours toward the delicate skies that arch 
 the youthful year. Blithe blades of grass pushed up in the 
 shadowy glades and in the clearing before the tailor's house. 
 In the nights delicious showers fell like benedictions, and the 
 bright mornings brought with them a harvest of sunbeams 
 which waked in all the birds the strong spirit of utterance. 
 They sang on and on till it seemed as if only ia silence could 
 they ever know fatigue. 
 
 Felix scarcely noticed the spring this year. His mind was 
 fermenting, and he looked inwards upon himself, seeking him- 
 self, striving to find himself among the hurrying figures of the 
 Comedie Humaine. Which of their passions were his also? 
 Which of their desires flamed in his soul? Which of their 
 loves would one day be his ? With what type of man or 
 woman was he most earnestly in sympathy? He continually 
 asked himself these questions, and he thought that when he 
 could give an honest answer to the last he would be nearer to 
 a right knowledge of himself than he had ever been. But as 
 yet he had not been able to give this answer. His sympathies 
 changed and flowed this way and that, now circling about one 
 character, now about another. Sometimes he was amazed to 
 perceive how great was his power of forgiveness, how difficult 
 he found it to condemn. He had never chanced to hear the 
 saying that to know all is to pardon all, but the truth that lies 
 behind it rose up spontaneously within him. Yet, is not the man 
 who is constitutionally unable to condemn the human being 
 who does a base act unrepentantly of necessity a weakling and 
 unworthy? 
 
 Felix debated this question many times in reference to one 
 of Balzac's characters, the Baron Hulot. 
 
 This man, and the frightful ruthlessness with which the 
 author presented him, fascinated Felix. He followed that 
 libertine career with an excitement which almost frightened 
 him, and when the last sordid, coarse, and brutal act was accom- 
 plished, and on the eyelid of the heroic dead woman, who had 
 been a martyr to her husband's ruling passion, glittered a tear, 
 — the tear she had not shed in living — Felix was conscious of 
 an exultant sensation. This exultation was caused, he felt, not
 
 FELIX 87 
 
 only by the grim and ferocious genius of the writer, but by the 
 completeness of the man written about, by his supreme inability 
 to change. He could not behave decently. Had he been 
 translated to the Heavenly City, he would have wandered 
 through its streets seeking the attic chamber of a soubrette. 
 There was something triumphant in such persistence of evil 
 in a human soul, something almost sublime in this powerless- 
 ness to stop short, to become different, to be influenced. 
 
 One day, when he had been saying this to himself, Felix 
 suddenly thought of his mother. 
 
 Her face, and the grey hair that crowned it, her large, gentle 
 eyes that could not look unkind, rose up before him. It 
 seemed to him as if he gazed on her for the first time with a 
 consciously appraising glance, as a man may examine a stranger, 
 closely, importunately. Balzac was teaching him to analyse 
 human beings, and he began by trying to analyse his own 
 mother. That seemed cruel. But he was rapidly passing into 
 a mental region in which cruelty had a very definite and almost 
 honoured place. In thinking thus closely and analytically of 
 his mother the first thing that struck Felix was how very little 
 she knew of life. He compared her quiet existence with many 
 of the existences in the Cotn'edie Huniaine, and it seemed to 
 him that she had never truly lived at all. She had never been 
 out into the great world, mingled with its drama, looked upon 
 its fierce griefs and fiercer pleasures, shared its voracious 
 passions. No ; she had seen the quiet years go by in the 
 house upon the hill, had listened at her window to the chiming 
 of the church bells, had talked with the country neighbours, 
 whose limitations Felix now began to perceive with piercing 
 keenness. 
 
 How would she look upon the sinners in the wild comedy of 
 life? 
 
 Hitherto Felix had been accustomed to listen to his mother's 
 advice with a certain reverence and generally to accept it, 
 relying upon the instruction which he had supposed inevitably 
 to walk hand in hand with age. He now felt sure that he had 
 made a gross mistake in supposing that anything of that kind 
 is inevitable. A boy of sixteen may know far more about life 
 than a woman of sixty. One thing was certain. His mother 
 could know scarcely anything. Her ignorance must really be 
 profound. He felt himself pitying her. Presently he began to 
 wonder whether she had any idea how ignorant she was, 
 whether she regretted it, whether she had ever, as a girl or as a 
 quite young married woman, wished to know the truth of life,
 
 38 FELIX 
 
 or whether she had consciously shrunk from such knowledge. 
 And then he remembered remarks he had heard her make, 
 which showed that she considered it the duty of a good woman 
 to reject much knowledge ; for instance : ' There are many 
 things one does not wish to know,' and ' It is much better not 
 to know that certain things exist,' Once he had been thought- 
 lessly ready to agree with her. He felt sure that he would not 
 be able to in future. At this stage in his life it seemed to him 
 that to see the truth of everything quite clearly was vitally 
 important, was indeed the first duty of a real man or woman 
 who declined to be a shadow. Thinking thus, he wondered 
 whether, when they met again, he would not be obliged to put 
 his view of this matter before his mother in opposition to hers. 
 The idea of doing this excited him, and he often turned it over 
 in his mind, imagining scenes in which he brilliantly combated 
 the objections which came flowing freely from her limited 
 appreciation of the root-facts of humanity. How she believed 
 in people and how she believed in God ! He began to try to 
 dissect these two allied beliefs, and asked himself which was 
 the child and which the parent. No doubt she saw God's 
 image in her acquaintance. Had she numbered the Baron 
 Hulot among them, would she have found it also in him? 
 Felix smiled at the thought. 
 
 He naturally employed what he supposed to be his now 
 carefully sharpened and finely tempered faculty of observation 
 in his daily life. Grand'mere was committed by fate to his 
 dissection. He set to work upon her with extraordinary vivacity 
 and self-confidence. 
 
 She was a sweet old woman of whose past life Felix knew 
 but very little. She had been born and educated in Russia, 
 had eventually married a rich merchant, a Frenchman, who 
 was living in Petersburg, had come with him to France and 
 settled in a fine chateau on the banks of the Loire, had given 
 him two children. So much of fact Felix knew. He also knew 
 that Monsieur Bernard had eventually lost nearly all his money 
 and died, that Madame Bernard had been forced to leave the 
 chateau and retire to La Maison des Aloutttes, where, ever since, 
 she had eked out her painfully modest income by receiving — 
 well, in fact, Felixes. Madame Bernard was now sixty-two. 
 Her face was brown, puckered, lit by brilliant, almost black 
 eyes, and framed in quantities of snow-white hair on which she 
 never placed a cap. She preserved a very great vivacity and a 
 captivating air of youth. Her energy was abnormal. She cooked, 
 gardened, marketed, gave French lessons, in summer walked every
 
 FELIX 39 
 
 morning to the river, and ducked herself bravely in the shallow 
 water under the shadow of the rushes. Her manners were 
 frank and full of delightful homeliness touched with something 
 spiritual. The expression of her face was obsjivant, motherly, 
 fearless, even when it was sad. Every one liked her. Felix 
 almost loved her. But he began to dissect her. 
 
 He who takes the scalpel to the corpse feels very superior 
 to the corpse. Felix soon began to feel very superior to 
 Grand'mere. He was too gentlemanly a boy to show it in- 
 tentionally. It is certain that he must have wished to conceal 
 it. But Grand'mere was after all a Frenchwoman and had 
 her little intuitions. She was mightily amused by the change 
 she noted in her guest, the new relation that began to exist 
 between herself and him. It woke her up like a flirtation 
 and seemed to set a late lark singing in the twilight of her 
 nature. From the throne of her age and many sorrows she 
 bent down to play with Felix. While he was trying to dissect 
 her, she was metaphorically dancing round him. She saw the 
 scalpel, but he did not see the dance, so her secret gaiety 
 encountered continually his public seriousness, and La Maison 
 des Alouettes held for a time a quite excellent little comedy, 
 in which, if he had but known it, Felix came off second best. 
 
 The result of his dissection of Grand'mere, which was no 
 dissection, was that, after a time, Felix put down the scalpel, 
 ticketed the corpse, and laid it solemnly away, while Grand'- 
 mere was laughing in her corner. 
 
 'Woman. Old. Kind-hearted. Amusing. Knows little of 
 life. Easily contented. Enjoys trifles. Never thinks of the 
 great problems by which w^e are all surrounded. Is engrossed by 
 the small things of the day. No reader of character because 
 she always looks on the bright side of things. Has little idea 
 what the world is like. Probably never thinks about it. A 
 good cook. A delightful hostess. As fond of cold water as 
 an Englishwoman. A perfect grand'mere.' 
 
 Something like that was Felix's secret report upon the corpse. 
 And yet he was not a fool. He was only a boy whom life had 
 not had time to educate and who thought he was educated; 
 something like the learned man who lives between book-covers 
 and pronounces judgment on the nations and the spheres. 
 
 If he could have seen into Grand'mere's heart, if he could 
 have wandered for a moment in her mind — say when she lay 
 sleepless under the faded red canopy of her bed at night ; if 
 he rould have heard the prayers she said to the Virtan, the 
 confession she made to the cure of Artannes; if he could have
 
 40 FELIX 
 
 followed, with silent foot, her dreams waking or sleeping, he 
 would have hesitated long before he undertook again to label 
 any woman. 
 
 Once or twice Grand'mere was tempted to show him the true 
 face of his ignorance. But she refrained. She remembered 
 the joy of her own young simpUcity and the bitterness of its 
 passing, and she let him keep his sensation of superiority. 
 
 Having thus comfortably dissected Grand'mere, Felix plunged 
 once more into the Humaji Cofnedy. 
 
 Before the time came for him to leave La Maison des 
 Alouettes he had read the whole of it. When he had done 
 this he felt as if he were an elderly man burdened with 
 enormous experience, having passed along all the paths of 
 life, talked with all the pilgrims by the way, seen the most 
 secret workings of their hearts, followed the footsteps of their 
 passions, divined if not observed every action they had per- 
 formed. He thought of the souls of the pilgrims as interior 
 palms, on which each deed committed had traced a tiny line, 
 of himself as the unerring palmist reading the lines and telling 
 the pilgrims precisely what they were. And his pilgrims were 
 very much astonished when they learnt from Felix what they 
 were. They had really not known till that very moment. 
 
 The tailor, of course, had long since given up his soul, mind, 
 character to the inspection of his frequent visitor. There was 
 a fiery simplicity in him, and he did not dance, like Grand'mere, 
 while he was being dissected. Instead, he talked of Balzac and 
 of Paris. He had almost renewed his youth in the joy of 
 sympathetic intercourse with one to whom he had had the 
 privilege of revealing the glory of his idol. Felix's young 
 worship of Balzac revived his old adoration. He was never 
 weary of repeating the history of his measurement of the 
 novelist and describing the exact shape of the celebrated 
 trousers without feet. And Felix did not tire of listening. He 
 always hoped for some new detail, and plied the tailor with a 
 thousand questions. 
 
 One afternoon, when the time was drawing near for Felix's 
 final departure from La Maison des Alouettes, he sat smoking a 
 pipe in the doorway of the cottage in the forest. His old host 
 as usual was at work, cutting out a Sunday coat for Monsieur 
 Camusot, the barber of Sachet. It was the month of April and 
 the day was warm. The light that streamed across the clearing 
 was pale and chequered, for there were many clouds in the sky, 
 fleecy and white, robust-looking too, full-bellied monsters that 
 moved slowly before a light wind, or lay gathered together in
 
 FELIX 41 
 
 squadrons on the western verge of the blue, as if waiting to show 
 their glory as the sun went down. When the sun was hidden 
 for a moment the aspect of the clearing changed, not violently 
 but with a sort of secret gentleness. The many shades of colour 
 in the piled-up trunks of trees recently cut down grew slightly 
 darker. Browns with a hint of red in them were invaded by a 
 suggestion of black. Whites that had been silvery and shining 
 became dulled and grey. The pointed blades of grass, that 
 sprouted vagrantly, and sometimes in isolation, here and there 
 among the tangle of low-growing and sparse brambles, looked 
 more wan and companionless, and the narrow sections of space 
 between the stems of the growing trees more mysterious and 
 exciting, yet infinitely more dismal. A dusky shadow, that was 
 yet far away from darkness, stole over everything, like the sound 
 of a remote and nearly suppressed grief gliding into the ears and 
 calling a heart from its complete happiness. 
 
 Felix was watching these changes through the door of the 
 cottage. The shears clicked behind him, and he heard the 
 creaking and constant shuffling of the tailor's shoes on the brick 
 floor. Neither he nor the tailor had spoken for some minutes. 
 A critical moment for the coat had arrived. This kept the 
 proud workman silent. And Felix was idly and half dreamily 
 fascinated by the woodland vision under the lights and shades 
 of spring. The continual changes in it, and the slightness of 
 them, rocked his mind as if in a cradle that was pushed by a 
 tired foot. There was magic in the subtleties of nature in the 
 forest under this clouded sky, but it was a very quiet magic that 
 made no nerve tingle, no pulse beat. 
 
 The tailor dropped his shears on the table and sighed. Felix 
 looked round. 
 
 'What's the matter? Anything wrong with the coat?' 
 
 *No, Monsieur.' 
 
 •Then why do you sigh like that?' 
 
 ' Monsieur, I am old. When you are old you will often sigh 
 without requiring a reason at the moment. There is enough 
 reason in the world for more than all our sighs, and tears too, 
 believe me.' 
 
 The tailor was standing by the table with his hand resting 
 heavily upon it. He looked weary. There were two or three 
 drops of perspiration on his forehead. 
 
 'The old man's sorrow comes to him with the spring,' he 
 added, leaving the table and coming forward to the open door. 
 •That's the time when age calls out in him.' 
 
 Felix suddenly felt more keenly the fascination of the season
 
 42 FELIX 
 
 and of this hour in it, because they brought sadness to his 
 companion. His heart was flooded with the glory of be- 
 ginning. 
 
 'Ah, but spring is beautiful,' he said, with a touch of cruelty. 
 
 'We don't like to leave it. Monsieur,' said the tailor simply. 
 
 The sun was now out, and a bird, perching on a log of poplar 
 that lay on the ground c^uite near to them, uttered three times a 
 shrill, sweet note that was like a call, and flew off into the forest. 
 Its flight was low till it was out of the clearing. Then it rose 
 sharply, and disappeared among the summits of the trees. 
 
 ' And to be left alone is sad too. Monsieur,' the tailor con- 
 tinued, after a slight pause. ' I think of that to-day.' 
 
 Felix understood that this was an allusion to his departure. 
 He both eagerly anticipated and dreaded the day of his going. 
 He had learnt to love La Maison des Alouettes and France. The 
 valley through which the river ran was to him now like his own 
 garden, the forest as a grove within it. And he looked upon 
 this little gnarled old man with the shears as a friend and as 
 something more, one who had taken him to a window through 
 which he had gazed out and seen a great panorama of life. He 
 had the quick affections of a sensitive and imaginative boy. 
 These made him sorry at the thought of bidding good-bye to the 
 tailor. But he longed to plunge into the crowd, to exchange the 
 role of spectator for another more worthy of a man. 
 
 ' How long exactly were you in Paris, Louis ? ' he asked. 
 
 'Eleven months. Monsieur.' 
 
 *I shall be longer, much longer in London,' said Felix. 
 
 'Monsieur is going to live in London?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'And what will you do there. Monsieur?* 
 
 * I don't know, Louis. But I 'd like to do something 
 tremendous. Anyhow, I 'm determined to meet the people who 
 are doing great things. By Jove, I 'm determined to see them 
 and spend my time with them, not with the drones.' 
 
 ' And I shall see no one. Monsieur. And I shall die here 
 in the forest.' 
 
 One of the great white clouds went over the sun. Another 
 followed and another. The tailor stared across the clearing. 
 
 ^ Mo/i Dieu I how dull and quiet it is ! ' he said. 
 
 'Why don't you go to live in the village?' 
 
 ' Among the hen-brained ? No, thank you, Monsieur.* 
 
 'They would be belter than nobody.' 
 
 ' Monsieur, I have the habit of being here.* 
 
 • Yes, but '
 
 FELIX 43 
 
 *The old man is like the yellow snail, Monsieur, and his habit 
 is like the house of the snail. I shall stay here.' 
 
 ' I '11 write to you from London,' said Felix, feeling rather 
 important. 
 
 ' Monsieur is very good. I hope Monsieur will be very 
 happy.' 
 
 ' Louis, I shall be happy if I can get to know a great deal. 
 Only that can make me happy.' 
 
 ' A great deal about what, Monsieur ? ' 
 
 'About men and women.' 
 
 ' Ah, you would be like Monsieur Balzac, whom I measured 
 for trousers without feet. And you think that to know a great 
 deal about men and women will make you happy ? ' 
 
 'Yes, I feel sure it will.' 
 
 ' Maybe, maybe. But there is much evil in them.' 
 
 * I don't mind that. It is part of the scheme, you know.' 
 
 'What is the scheme. Monsieur?' 
 
 'What has to be in the world.' 
 
 There was a silence between them. Then Felix said, ' Louis, 
 the first day I saw you I remember your saying to me, "Shall 
 one man know everything, another nothing?" If I can't know 
 everything, at least I mean to know much. Some day, perhaps, 
 I '11 come back here to you and tell you — well, I '11 tell you ' 
 
 ' Tell me you are happy. Monsieur. That 's what I '11 wish 
 for you, that you may come back here and tell me you are 
 happy.' 
 
 A few days afterwards Felix bade good-bye to the old man. 
 It was evening when he gained the edge of the clearing on his 
 way home to La Maison des Alouettes through the forest. He 
 stopped for a moment and looked back. The tailor was 
 standing at his door, bending forward to see the last of his boy- 
 friend. Marthe sat near him, hunched up as usual with her 
 tail tucked under her. The little Honore was busily smelling 
 round the edge of a pile of brushwood. In the sky a bar of 
 pale-pink cloud-films was extended above the tall trees. A 
 crowd of small birds, black as ink, made a pattern beneath it 
 as they flew to some distant place hidden in the breast of the 
 night. An inexpressible peace had descended upon the clearing, 
 which was bathed in a faint and quivering yellow light, pensive 
 and almost unreal in its delicate loveliness. 
 
 Felix waved his hand. The large hand of the tailor shot up 
 la reply, and the little Honore, supposing that a stone had been 
 thrown for him to fetch, ran forward barking, then stopped with 
 one paw uplifted. Felix wavc-d again. Suddenly he felt an
 
 44 FELIX 
 
 intense reluctance to leave this quiet hermitage. He wondered 
 whether he would ever come back to it, and what he would 
 have to tell the tailor if he came. 
 
 As he went on he sighed. There was something strangely 
 beautiful in the silence to-night. A damp smell came to him 
 out of the inmost recesses of the forest. Looking up he saw 
 through the trees the evening star and the ethereal crescent of 
 the new moon. 
 
 Was there a human comedy being played in great cities far 
 away? He felt to-night as the wide world held but a trinity 
 of individualities : God, Nature, himself.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FELIX arrived at Churston Waters on a Thursday after- 
 noon. His mother and sister were standing at the 
 hall door with glowing faces to greet him, and as he kissed 
 them he forgot France, all the plans he had been forming, 
 all his hopes for the future, in the comfortable joy of being 
 once more at home with his own people. At tea in the 
 familiar low-roofed drawing-room he looked at them with 
 eager, inquiring eyes. His mother was totally unchanged, 
 calm and gentle as usual. Her face was lit up by a shining 
 happiness which made her seem quite young. Felix smiled as 
 he noticed her icewool shawl lying on the sofa beside her 
 when she sat down and took up the silver teapot. He was 
 glad to see it again, and felt inclined to pick up the dear old 
 thing and stroke it. Then he glanced at Margot, who was 
 sitting in her characteristic position, which he remembered so 
 well, squarely on her low chair with her small feet slightly 
 turned in. Her sensitive, brown eyes were fixed ardently on 
 her brother, and when she met his eyes she blushed. He was 
 conscious of her shyness, and suddenly began to share it. For 
 a moment he could think of nothing to say. Mrs. Wilding 
 distributed the teacups quietly. Margot, having begun to 
 blush, became quite violently red. Felix looked away from 
 her towards the latticed windows, which were shut. 
 
 'Why, mater,' he said, 'it's quite warm to-day, and we 
 aren't getting any air. Shan't I open one of the windows?' 
 
 'Well, I don't know. The wind's in the east, Felix,' said 
 Mrs. Wilding with some hesitation. 
 
 ' But there isn't any wind. Have you got a cold ? ' 
 
 'A slight one. But you might open the far window in the 
 other room.' 
 
 Felix got up to do it, and Mrs. Wilding picked up her shawl 
 and put it round her shoulders. When he had opened the 
 window, Felix leaned out of it for a moment to look at the 
 familiar garden. The lawn had just been mown in honour of 
 his arrival, and was bright green. He longed to pass his hands
 
 46 FELIX 
 
 over it. Early roses were blooming along the narrow gravel 
 path by the house, and the great fuchsia stood by the oval seat 
 under the yew-tree drooping its red tresses. The laburnum 
 swayed gently in the breeze, which was not in the east as 
 Mrs. Wilding supposed, but which blew, on the contrary, from 
 the west. Swallows were darting about with the whimsical 
 vivacity that makes them so youthful a feature in any landscape. 
 Over the great yew hedge the yellow church gleamed in the 
 sunshine. Its bell chimed the half-hour. Carriage wheels 
 sounded on the hidden road, and from the village school came 
 a confused and faint noise of children's voices. How different 
 it all was from France. There was another flavour here. La 
 Maison des Alouettes was more utterly retired and peaceful than 
 Churston Waters, yet to Felix at this moment it seemed as if 
 nothing could be more cloistered from the turmoil of the world 
 than his home. The sounds of life he heard accentuated his 
 feeling of remoteness from the cries and footsteps of what he 
 called mentally real life. Those voices of the children pro- 
 claimed the gaiety of utter ignorance. Felix listened to them, 
 he fancied, as the old Faust listened to the music of youth and 
 of jocund labour outside his study window, with a mingled 
 pride of detachment and thrill of envy. How little they knew, 
 and wanted to know, those children ! 
 ' Felix, you'll catch your death of cold.' 
 
 His mother spoke. He laughed, and came back to the 
 tea-table. Margot was still rather red. She looked down into 
 her teacup. 
 
 ' It 's all just the same,' said Felix. ' Not a thing altered.' 
 'You have grown broader, Felix,' answered his mother. 
 *You sit up better than you did.' 
 ' I 'm a man now, you see, mater.' 
 * How is your French ? ' 
 
 Felix said a few words quickly in that language. Mrs. Wilding 
 replied fluently, but her son noticed that her accent was exceed- 
 ingly British. Margot did not venture into the conversation, 
 aUhough she was decidedly good at languages. She was fright- 
 fully diffident, and inclined to think herself a fool at everything. 
 This little episode broke the slight constraint which had begun 
 to prevail in the family circle, and Felix, who was always stirred 
 to unusual vivacity by tea, began to hold forth with all the 
 volubility and emphasis that were natural to him. In France 
 he had caught the trick of gesture, and this made the contrast 
 between him and his mother and sister the more striking. He 
 had just begun his second cup of tea and third tirade on the
 
 FELIX 47 
 
 delights of foreign life when the butler opened the door and 
 announced : 
 
 'Mr. Bosanfield.' 
 
 Margot's round cheeks bloomed out anew, as she and her 
 mother exchanged a hurried glance, and a tall clergyman came 
 in, dressed in a neat, black, bicycling costume, with a jam-pot 
 collar, and holding a soft black hat in his hand. Felix got up. 
 He felt vexed. Mr. Bosanfield was a stranger to him. The 
 name had been mentioned several times by Mrs. Wilding and 
 Margot in their more recent letters ; and Felix remembered that 
 the clergyman had been described as the new rector of a church 
 in the neighbouring town of Frankton Wells, by his mother as 
 a very conscientious, hard-working man, and by his sister as 
 the possessor of an excellent tenor voice. Felix looked at 
 him while he shook hands with Mrs. Wilding and Margot. 
 
 He was evidently not old, perhaps thirty-six or seven. His 
 face was clean-shaven, brick-red, and resembled the faces of 
 men bred up among horses. The nose was hooked, the mouth 
 firm and intent, the hair black and retreating from a high 
 forehead. The eyes were small and grave, dark grey in colour, 
 and overshadowed by penthouse eyebrows, which reminded 
 Felix of the eyebrows of Balzac's tailor. The ears were large 
 and slightly pointed like a fawn's. His manner was staid and 
 definite, and his actions were noticeable for their finished 
 deliberation. He came into a room as if he had previously 
 thought the matter of the best way to come into a room 
 thoroughly out, and had decided, for all time, how he meant 
 to do it. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding, who seemed for the moment distinctly less 
 calm than usual, introduced Felix to the clergyman, who shook 
 him by the hand in rather a peculiar way, gripping him with 
 a tight pressure that struck him as oddly full of will and 
 meaning. 
 
 'Ah, you are the son who has just been Hving in France,' 
 the visitor said, in a voice undoubtedly tenor. 'Very glad to 
 welcome you home again.' 
 
 He sat down next to Margot. Felix was surprised by his 
 remark. There was a suggestion of intimacy in the way it was 
 made, a definite attempt to draw near. Margot was sitting 
 with her feet turned in more than usual, and looking frightfully 
 uneasy. Mrs. Wilding poured out some tea for the visitor. 
 Her hand shook perceptibly. 
 
 * I came back to-day,' Felix said, rather coldly. 
 
 * To-day — yes. I heard you were coming. I once took a
 
 48 FELIX 
 
 fortnight's bicycling-tour in France with a brother-clergyman. 
 A pleasant enough country. A pity it is Catholic. I can't say 
 I liked the look of the priests at all.' 
 
 ' One of my best friends in France was a priest,' said Felix. 
 
 'You did not think it dangerous to have close intercourse 
 with one on the wrong side?' 
 
 'The wrong side ! ' 
 
 ' Holding a wrong faith ! ' 
 
 'I can't say I did. Besides, I ' 
 
 Margot moved on her chair, and Mrs. Wilding broke in with 
 her gentle voice, 
 
 ' The cure of Sachet seems to have been very kind to you, Felix.' 
 
 ' He was awfully kind. A jolly good fisherman too.' 
 
 *A good fisherman, was he?' said Mr. Bosanfield, sipping 
 his tea and looking, Felix thought, increasingly like a groom. 
 'We English clergymen haven't much time for that sort of 
 thing. But I remember noticing that many of those French 
 priests seemed to have nothing to do.' 
 
 ' Oh, I think they work quite as hard as country clergymen in 
 England,' replied Felix. 
 
 He felt suddenly pugnacious, ready to defend France and 
 all her people against any one who dared to attack them, but 
 most especially against Mr. Bosanfield. 
 
 'Do you? Then their time is well occupied,' answered the 
 visitor. 'You must be very thankful to be back in your own 
 country.' 
 
 ' I felt quite at home in France,' said Felix. 
 
 He saw a faint quiver at the corner of his mother's lips, and 
 quickly added : 
 
 ' But I was very keen to see my people again. I 've been 
 away from them a long time.' 
 
 ' It seemed very long to us,' said Mrs. Wilding, looking at 
 her son with a mother's eyes. 
 
 Margot did not join in the conversation. The clergyman 
 frequently looked at her. Each time he did so Felix was 
 conscious of an increasing hostility against him, 
 
 ' I always think we are better in our own country,' said 
 Mr. Bosanfield. ' It suits us, and we suit it. There is too much 
 restlessness nowadays. People go too far afield. They are 
 scarcely ever satisfied to stay where Providence has placed them, 
 and to do their duty quietly.' 
 
 'Well, but surely people who are satisfied to do that often 
 get awfully narrow,' exclaimed Felix, all his nature rising up 
 against the insularity of these remarks.
 
 FELIX 49 
 
 *It is better to be what is often erroneously called narrow 
 than to be unduly pleasure-loving,' returned Mr. Bosanfield 
 with unimpassioned firmness. 
 
 After saying this he closed his mouth with a snap, and looked 
 as if he were just going to begin grooming a horse. 
 
 Felix felt quite hot. 
 
 * If one has anything in one it is natural to wish to know a 
 great deal of life,' he said, with considerable emphasis. ' It all 
 depends what sort of nature one is born with. Some people 
 can squat eternally in the same place. Others would go raving 
 mad if they had to. I know I should.' 
 
 'Some of the wisest of men scarcely travelled at all,' remarked 
 Mr. Bosanfield calmly. 
 
 ' I think they 'd have been still wiser if they had,' answered 
 Felix, in a rather piercing voice. 
 
 'Felix is young, and young people like to see the world,' put 
 in Mrs. Wilding gently. 'Margot dear, Mr. Bosanfield has 
 finished his tea. Would you like to show him your pansies?' 
 
 Margot turned scarlet, looked guiltily at her brother, got up 
 and went rather awkwardly out of the room followed by the 
 clergyman, who said in a deliberately nonchalant voice near 
 the door : 
 
 * I want to take a few lessons in gardening. My flowers do 
 very badly at Frankton Wells.' 
 
 The door shut. A moment later Felix saw the upper halves 
 of his sister and Mr. Bosanfield pass by the drawing-room 
 windows. The clergyman's bust glided smoothly across the 
 range of Felix's vision, as if it were fixed upon a pedestal that 
 rolled on castors. When it was gone Felix looked at his 
 mother. 
 
 ' Mater, I hate that man,' he said. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding was evidently much pained. 
 
 'Hush, Felix, you don't know what you're saying,' she 
 answered. 'He's an excellent man. When you know him 
 better you '11 think so.' 
 
 ' D' you know him well ? ' 
 
 'Yes, very well indeed.' 
 
 Felix was silent for a moment. Then he exclaimed : 
 
 'Why's he come over to-day? Why does he stare at Margot 
 like that ? ' 
 
 ' I want to tell you. That is why I sent them into the garden.* 
 
 The truth of the matter suddenly flashed upon Felix. 
 
 •Good God, mater!' he cried, 'you don't mean to say he's 
 in love with Margot 1 * 
 D
 
 50 FELIX 
 
 ' Felix, please don't use that expression. I know you intend 
 no harm, but we shouldn't bring the name of God into ordinary 
 conversation like that, I think.' 
 
 'I beg your pardon, mater. But you don't mean that ?' 
 
 •Mr. Bosanfield loves Margot. I couldn't write to you. It 
 has only just happened.' 
 
 * Happened ! What 's happened ? Margot can't possibly ' 
 
 'Felix, he's a good, sincere man, and Margot loves him very 
 much.' 
 
 Felix felt as if all that had been firm and settled in his life 
 were falling to pieces with uproar. 
 
 ' Margot love a man with ears like that ! ' he cried, far from 
 his sense of humour. ' Bigoted too, and — what does it matter 
 if France is Catholic? And then all that rot about the priests 
 being lazy and looking horrid, as if all priests were alike! 
 Mater, you mustn't let her. Why, it 's too beastly ! The very 
 first day I come home ! ' 
 
 He felt fearfully excited, and as if a cruel injury had been 
 done to him. Mrs. Wilding put her hand gently on his arm. 
 
 'I was afraid it would upset you, Felix dear,' she said. 'I 
 knew you'd be very much surprised. But I had to do what 
 was right. You wouldn't have wished me to act unfairly to 
 Margot ? ' 
 
 ' Do, mater ! What d'you mean ? What have you done?* 
 
 'As they both love each other they naturally ' 
 
 'You don't mean to tell me they're engaged ! ' 
 'It only happened yesterday. I did not think I ought to 
 refuse. My boy, do try to think a little of your sister.' 
 ' Good God ! ' Felix said again. ' Good God ! ' 
 He walked away to the window and stared out into the 
 garden. Everything he looked at seemed to have changed, to 
 have become ugly and dreary. He whistled mechanically the 
 tune of an old French song Grand'mere was fond of playing at 
 La Maison des Alouettes. All the muscles of his body felt 
 contracted. Then he stopped whistling and again repeated, 
 ' Good God ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding was dreadfully distressed. She had been 
 thankfully happy to welcome her son to his home. Felix, in 
 his eager gaiety of youth, had no idea of the pain his long 
 absence had caused her. Every day she had missed him, 
 thought about him, prayed for him. His return had been to 
 her as a great festival. Tears had rushed to her eyes when she 
 stood at the hall doer and saw him driving up the road past the 
 village school. He and Margot were everything to her. That
 
 FELIX 51 
 
 his first day at home should be marred cut her to the heart. 
 She did not know what to do, but she got up from her sofa and 
 followed him to the window. 
 
 ' My dear boy,' she said, ' I want you to remember that I 
 shall lose a great deal in losing Margot, but it would be very 
 wrong of me to interfere between her and a right happiness.' 
 
 ' Margot married to that brute ! ' said Felix, biting his lips. 
 
 'Please don't, Felix.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding took out her handkerchief and furtively wiped 
 her eyes. Felix began to feel hot and angry against his mother. 
 
 ' A clergyman too,' he said. ' A clergyman ! ' 
 
 At that moment he realised for the first time how much he 
 had changed while he had been in France. He had begun to 
 learn that there was in his nature something which absolutely 
 forbade him to accept as certainly true anything which he had 
 not investigated and proved to his own satisfaction to be true. 
 He thought that clergymen did that more often than other 
 people. 
 
 ' I would rather see Margot the wife of a good clergyman 
 than of a man in any other profession,' said Mrs. Wilding, with 
 her habitual sincerity which never deserted her. ' Surely no- 
 thing can be finer than to devote one's life to furthering the only 
 true knowledge of God.' 
 
 Felix felt as if he were a clever, grown-up person listening to 
 the opinions of a child who had never been out of the nursery. 
 
 'Oh mother, what nonsense!' he said. 'Why, three- 
 quarters of the clergy are only what they are because they 
 happen to be the sons of clergymen, or to have been taught that 
 the English religion is the only proper one. You yourself would 
 have been as ardent a Roman Catholic as you are a Protestant 
 if you 'd had Roman Catholic parents and married a Roman 
 Catholic husband. The only true knowledge, you say ! And 
 who knows what the only true knowledge is? You don't. 
 Margot too ! Why, she has hardly seen anything, and you let 
 her marry this ridiculous, n;irrow-minded — oh, in two minutes I 
 found out what he was, just the very sf^rt of man I hate. Poch ! 
 judging France from a fortnight's bicycling-tour with a brother- 
 cler<:;yman ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Winding's soul was filled with fear. 
 
 ' Felix, did that priest you know try to influence you ?' she 
 asked. ' I know priests often ' 
 
 ' No, no, no. He nlways talked about carp and fishing-tackle. 
 Mother, you don't understand me a bit, or what I mean.' 
 
 'Have you changed, then, so much while you have been
 
 52 FELIX 
 
 away?' Mrs. Wilding asked, with a sudden heart-sickness, a 
 keen anxiety. 
 
 Fehx turned from the window and looked at his mother. 
 
 'Have I?' 
 
 The question was addressed rather to himself than to her. 
 
 ' Yes, I have changed — awfully.' 
 
 * But why, Felix ? What has ? ' 
 
 * I '11 tell you some time, mater, but not now.' 
 
 He noticed the scared expression in her face, the tears swim- 
 ming in her beautiful eyes. 
 
 'There, dear old mother,' he exclaimed with a pang of 
 compunction, ' don't be upset. I 'm all right. A boy can't 
 always stick in the same place and have the same ideas. He 's 
 got to develop into a man.' 
 
 He gave her a rather rough and boyish kiss. 
 
 'There's a lot in life women don't know about — at least a 
 great many women. But Margot — it's all rot, mater, about her 
 loving this fellow. How can she know? Why, she's been 
 boxed up here all her life and seen nobody.' 
 
 ' Nobody ? But we have a great many friends, and ' 
 
 * Oh, country friends ! ' 
 
 ' Well, but we are country people, Felix.* 
 
 A strong feeling of impatience rose in him. 
 
 ' If we are we needn't be vegetables. We needn't shut our 
 eyes to all the facts of life, and judge a nation from the seat 
 of a bike. Margot will never be happy with a country parson 
 like that.' 
 
 He felt as if his sister must be as himself in essential feeling, 
 whether she realised it or not. 
 
 ' I don't like to hear you speak against the clergy, Felix.' 
 
 'They're so easily contented.' 
 
 ' But surely that is a great blessing for them.' 
 
 'Mater, my point of view's so different from yours, so — so 
 different. I shall speak to Margot. I '11 make her understand 
 what a fool she 'd be to rush into a thing like this before she 
 knows anything Has he got any money?' 
 
 ' He has his living.' 
 
 ' What is that worth ? ' 
 
 * Three hundred a year, I believe.' 
 
 ' And how much has he got of his own ? ' 
 
 * I 'm not sure. I dare say he has something.* 
 
 'But you don't know? You've never asked him? And 
 Margot has between eight and nine hundred a year. Mater, 
 you are as innocent as a baby.'
 
 FELIX 53 
 
 At this moment Felix's mind was filled with many recollec- 
 tions of the eternal financial scheming in the Comedie Hiwiaine, 
 His poor mother's simplicity and trustfulness seemed to him 
 quite pitiable. 
 
 ' But I don't understand what you mean, Felix. You surely 
 would not accuse a clergyman of ' 
 
 He patted her on the shoulder, and burst out laughing. 
 
 ' Poor old mother, I see I shall have to take care of you and 
 of Margot too. You don't suppose a man is turned into a saint 
 by the act of taking orders, do you ? Why, you might as well 
 say that a thief could change his nature by becoming a police- 
 man. My dear mater ! ' 
 
 Margot and Mr. Bosanfield appeared again at the window. 
 As they passed Margot cast an anxious glance at Felix, whose 
 keen irritation returned directly he saw the clergyman's brick- 
 red face and thick eyebrows. 
 
 'You won't say anything, now, Felix,' exclaimed Mrs. Wilding 
 nervously, ' You won't show Mr. Bosanfield that ' 
 
 ' Mater, I hope I know how to behave like a gentleman.' 
 
 Margot's eyes questioned her brother as she re-entered the 
 room followed by her lover, who carried a small bunch of 
 purple and yellow pansies. But Felix looked away from her. 
 He was making an effort. 
 
 * I think I ought to be going, Mrs. Wilding,' said the clergy- 
 man. ' It is choir-practice niyht, and this week we are being 
 very ambitious. We intend to do Spohr's "Praise His Awful 
 Name" as our anthem next Sunday evening.' 
 
 ' Oh, how I wish I could hear it ! ' exclaimed Margot, as if 
 carried away by an irresistible impulse. 
 
 Then she looked very uncomfortable, like a person who has 
 made some dreadful mistake. 
 
 'Why not come over?' said Mr. Bosanfield, looking at Mrs. 
 Wilding. 
 
 ' I 'm afraid we mustn't do that,' she replied. ' I never take 
 the horses out on a Sunday, and besides I think it is hardly 
 right to go gadding about when one's own church is close by. 
 It might hurt the rector's feelings and set a bad example in the 
 parish. 
 
 'You are quite right,' said Mr. Bosanfield. ' But you always 
 think of everybody and everything. It is certainly very painful 
 for tlie shepherd to see his flock straying away from his ken.' 
 
 During this short conversation Felix felt as utterly detached 
 as if he were listening to people talking a laiiguage he could not 
 understand. He thought of France, of his collcquies with the
 
 54 FELIX 
 
 tailor, of his mental life in the ruined chapel with the Baron 
 Hulot, the Pere Goriot, and how many others. He heard the 
 sound of the Angelus bell ringing far off in the distant valley, 
 and remembered how it had sometimes recalled him from the 
 existence of dreams and made him feel cold and afraid. Now 
 he longed to hear it really, not only in fancy, and he knew that, 
 could he do so, he would think its little voice most sweet. The 
 group of three people in the low-ceilinged room seemed to have 
 nothing to do with his real self. Even the old tailor had 
 understood him more than they could, had been more akin to 
 him. The clergyman was turning his bunch of pansies round 
 and round between his long, reddish fingers. He looked 
 steadily at Felix with his small, firm eyes. 
 
 ' I hope to welcome you to the rectory,' he said, ' and to 
 show you our church. It is really a pretty one. Norman Shaw 
 designed it, and we have a Kemp window that is, I take it, an 
 excellent specimen of his work.' 
 
 'Thank you,' Felix said. 
 
 'Perhaps when you are riding or bicycling you will look in ?' 
 
 'Thanks very much. It's very good of you.' 
 
 Mr. Bosanfield turned away, with the air of a man who has 
 done the exactly right thing in the exactly right manner, shook 
 hands carefully with Mrs. Wilding and Margot, and bade them 
 good-bye. Felix accompanied him to the hall door, where his 
 bicycle was standing against the stone wall that skirted the high- 
 road as far as the stables. Mr. Bosanfield bent down to arrange 
 the clips on his neat and narrow black trousers. Having done 
 this he returned slowly to an erect posture, and put his soft 
 black hat on his head, pulling it well down by the brim. Under 
 the hat his face looked different, less horsey, but older and 
 plainer. He laid his left hand on the seat of the bicycle and 
 grasped Felix's hand with his right. 
 
 ' Well, good-bye to you,' he said, with calm heartiness. * I 
 am very glad we have met at last.' 
 
 Again Felix was conscious of his determination of will and 
 intention to draw near, and felt the recoil within himself. 
 
 'Thanks awfully. Good-bye,' he replied, with an attempt at 
 careless ease. 
 
 Mr. Bosanfield wheeled the bicycle out from the wall, put 
 one foot on the step, hopped three times, and mounted. There 
 was character in each of his hops. Felix noticed that. He did 
 not even hop anyhow. Felix looked after him till he was a 
 black doll on the white road, like the black dolls who bent in 
 the night over the river Loire. As Felix turned to go back into
 
 TELIX 55 
 
 the house he recalled the strange sensation wlvch had filled his 
 heart as he heard the distant music on the island mingling with 
 the murmur of the water r )und the piers of the bridge, the desire 
 which had come to him to do something great, the flood of 
 beauty, mystery, passion, and sorrow which had swept through 
 his soul, murmuring its message. 
 
 Mr. Bosanfield was glad that they had met each other. What 
 was the good of their meeting? He was hurrying home to his 
 choir practice, and he was doubtless quite contented and entirely 
 wrapped up in the forthcoming performance of ' Praise His 
 Awful Name' on Sunday evening. Well, well ! 
 
 When Felix came into the drawing-room Mrs. Wilding was 
 holding her icewool shawl over her mouth while she shut the 
 window he had opened. Margot was at the piano turning over 
 some music, and looking nervous. She started, when her 
 brother entered, though she must have expected him. 
 
 'Margot,' he said, 'come for a walk round the garden. I 
 haven't seen it yet.' 
 
 'Yes, Felix.' 
 
 She left the piano slowly. Her round face was full of humility, 
 and her voice sounded quite obsequious. Mrs. Wilding looked 
 from one to the other of her children, but she did not say any- 
 thing, and they went out together in silence. When they were 
 in the garden Felix said abruptly, 'Mater's been telling me.' 
 
 'Telling you! O Felix, you don't mind? You aren't 
 angry ? ' 
 
 ' But that isn't the question. I 'd give everybody the right 
 to act as they please, yes, everybody.' 
 
 He was suddenly amorous of the gospel of freedom, which he 
 had scarcely thought about till that moment. 
 
 'Would you? I suppose everybody should be able to know 
 what they — to know themselves,' Margot said eagerly, though 
 vaguely, and still in the obsequious voice. 
 
 'That's just it,' Felix said. 'They should, but more often 
 than not they know nothing about themselves.' 
 
 ♦Don't they?' 
 
 *I found that out in France. When I went to France I had 
 literally no idea of what I was really like.' 
 
 'Hadn't you? Well, but how odd ! ' 
 
 * I don't believe it 's odd at all. I believe most of us are 
 hideouslv ignorant about ourselves. I expect you are for one,' 
 
 •Oh, can I be?' 
 
 ' It 's not difficult,' Felix said, with a kind of elderly sarcasm. 
 'But I can tell you it's a bad business to alter your whole life
 
 56 FELIX 
 
 before you know what you really are, and so what you really 
 want. I shouldn't care to do it.' 
 
 ' 1 'm nearly twenty-three, you know,' said Margot anxiously. 
 
 She divined what was coming. 
 
 ' You look about eighteen.' 
 
 'Still, I shall be twenty-three on my next ' 
 
 'And with the sort of life you've led,' interrupted Felix 
 inexorably, 'it's next to impossible that you can form a right 
 judgment of a man. What do you know about men?' 
 
 'What do I know? How do you mean? I've met a good 
 many men.' 
 
 'Yes, at tennis-parties, village concerts, out at dinner. Do 
 you suppose men show what they really are when they're in 
 society? How can you get into a man's mind, or see the work- 
 ings of his nature, when he's talking a lot of twaddle that he 
 thinks will please you at the moment, or smiling to satisfy a 
 number of old women who 'd die of horror if they knew what 
 he was really like?' 
 
 Margot began to look very perplexed. 
 
 ' But you talk as if all men had something dreadful to hide,' 
 she murmured. 
 
 'And so most of them have,' answered Felix, with emphatic 
 sincerity. 
 
 Suddenly he thought of the commercial traveller of Tours. 
 Ah ! he understood now what the lives of such pale men were 
 like. He began to feel quite fatherly to Margot, and all his 
 irritation had disappeared. 
 
 ' My dear child,' he continued, ' if you could only realise how 
 difficult men are to read, you wouldn't rush into a marriage with 
 one, I can tell you.' 
 
 Margot blushed at this allusion to her love affair. 
 
 ' I don't know about rushing,' she began in a low voice. 
 
 'How long have you known Bosanfield?' 
 
 'Ever since he came to St. Mary's, about six months.' 
 
 'Six months! How old is he?' 
 
 'Thirty-six and a half.' 
 
 'So there are just thirty-six years of his life that you know 
 nothing about.' 
 
 'Oh, but, Felix, you don't suppose he's ever done anything 
 dreadful ! Why, he's a clergyman, and ' 
 
 ' There you go, just like mater ! ' 
 
 'Like mother?' 
 
 'She's been talking as if a man who is a clergyman couldn't 
 do anything wrong.*
 
 FELIX 67 
 
 'I'm sure Ste — I mean Mr. Bosanfield — couldn't.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 ' Because he 's the most conscientious man I ever met,' cried 
 Margot, suddenly losing her nervousness. ' He thinks of nothing 
 but what's rigp.t.' 
 
 'Then he's a jolly shallow thinker,' rctorled her brother. 
 
 ' But he 's very cle\ er indeed.' 
 
 ' How d' you know that ? ' 
 
 ' He did splendidly at Oxford.' 
 
 ' Is that why you want to marry him?' 
 
 'No — of course not,' said Mar|.,ot, looking down at the gravel 
 walk, on which they were slowly pacing, between the short, stiff 
 rose-trees with their little labels. 
 
 ' Then why ? ' 
 
 'Oh, Felix ! Why does any one want to marry anybody?' 
 
 'Come now, Margot, you don't mean to tell me that Mr. 
 Bosanfield is your hero of romance ! ' 
 
 ' I think he's the best man I ever met.' 
 
 Felix began to chafe under this continual setting of moral 
 excellence before all other qualities. It seemed to him that 
 both his mother and sister were exceedingly limited people. 
 
 'Dear me! Virtue isn't everything!' he cried. 'Some of 
 the stupidest and most boring souls in creation keep the Com- 
 mandments.' 
 
 ' Mr. Bosanfield isn't stupid or boring,' said Margot, getting 
 hot. 'He's very intelligent and well informed.' 
 
 'I know exactly how it is. You're so pleased with him for 
 loving you that you think he's a paragon. That's a woman 
 all over.' 
 
 ' It 's not that at all.' 
 
 ' You're not pleased with him?* 
 
 'Yes, but ' 
 
 ' Then it is that. And if some arrant rascal had fallen in love 
 with you, it would have been just the same. My dear Margot, 
 I know you. You're so humble that any one who showed he 
 thought a lot of you would carry you off your feet directly. 
 You think nothing of yourself, and you've no more will-power 
 than a baby. I'll bet anything that at this moment you're 
 feeling positively grateful to Bosanfield because he's said he's 
 in love with you.' 
 
 The conscious expression in his sister's rosy, round face 
 showed him that he had hit the mark. 
 
 ' I knew you were. Good gracious, Margot, I wish you 'd 
 think a little more of yourself. You're worth twenty Bosan-
 
 68 FELIX 
 
 fields. But you're just like mater in all those ways. I never 
 saw such humble people. He's not humble.' 
 
 * He 's not at all conceited. But naturally in his position 
 of authority ' 
 
 ' Authority ! A rector at three hundred a year's position of 
 authority ! ' 
 
 ' Well, it is. He has to arrange and direct ' 
 
 'Performances of "Praise His Awful Name" and Mothers' 
 Meetings. I know. If you marry him you'll live a limited life, 
 you'll have a squeezed intellect, you'll be contented with a 
 twaddling, little existence.' 
 
 'You're very unkind,' said Margot, almost in tears. 'It's 
 not a twaddling, little existence to be a rector's wife. One can 
 be very useful and do — do a great deal — of — of good.' 
 
 She gulped, and looked so frankly miserable and hurt that 
 Felix felt a moment's compunction. 
 
 ' Don't cry about nothing, Margot,' he said. 
 
 ' How would you like it if I were to speak as you do about 
 somebody you cared for?' she asked piteously, 
 
 ' I was only saying what's true.' 
 
 'But you don't know him. How can you? You've only 
 seen him for a quarter of an hour.' 
 
 ' Quite enough too,' said Felix. 
 
 He honestly believed that he knew the clergyman through 
 and through. Margot had a tremendous opinion of her brother's 
 cleverness. She was, indeed, vaguely inclined to think that all 
 men were clever in a way. Cleverness seemed to her an attribute 
 that went with their sex. But to-day she showed, for her, 
 unusual tenacity. 
 
 'It isn't enough at all,' she answered. 'Why, just now you 
 said I couldn't know what Stephen was like in six months.' 
 
 ' Stephen ! ' cried Felix, feeling as if he had been stung. 
 
 * Mr. Bosanfield.' 
 
 ' That's different. You 're a girl without any knowledge of life/ 
 
 ' But you ' 
 
 ' Mirgot,' Felix said impressively, ' I 've been to a public 
 school and also to France.' 
 
 ' I know you 've been to France, but only to a tiny little place 
 with scarcely anybody there.' 
 
 Felix smiled rather loftily. Was not the crowding population 
 of the Com'edie Humai}ie there? ' 
 
 ' In that tiny little place, as you call it, I learnt more about 
 life than you'll ever know if you become Mrs. Bosanfield,' he 
 answered. 'You — Mrs. Bosanfield !'
 
 FELIX 69 
 
 Margot was overwhelmed with confusion and with something 
 else by his last two words. She looked at him with eyes which 
 had become suddenly so expressive that they startled him. For 
 a brief instant, as he met them, he felt as if his sister were an 
 utter stranger to him, a stranger complicated, ardent, even 
 mysterious and elusive. Then she dropped her eyes, hesitated 
 for a moment, and hurried away to the house without another 
 word. 
 
 Felix stood still. There was a small William of Orange 
 rose growing on a tree close to him. His eyes fell on it. The 
 leaves of it were sincerely green, delicate, comprehensible. 
 The petals, curling slightly outward, were pale at the edges, 
 but lower down deepened in colour till the closely guarded 
 heait of the rose became a mystery of brownish-orange, and 
 seemed to have a fragrant bloom of sensitive fire. Was a woman 
 like that, and did he only see, as a rule, the pale edges of her 
 petals? Was Margot like that? As he stood there looking at 
 the little rose he felt stupid and curious, consciously boyish for 
 an instant too. All the knowledge he had seized out of the 
 pages of books slipped away from him as water slips out of 
 a glass held obliquely. But even while he was doubtful about 
 Margot, he felt certain that he knew all about Mr. Bosanfield.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IT seemed to Felix that evening as if he were a stranger in 
 his own home. He stayed out in the garden for a long 
 while after Margot left him, and when he came in she had gone 
 to her room to dress for dinner. His mother was just going to 
 follow her when Felix appeared in the drawing-room, looking 
 unusually dull. 
 
 ' I don't know how it is, mater,' he said at once, ' but I 
 don't seem to understand Margot a bit as I used. I think she 's 
 altered somehow.' 
 
 ' Women always alter when a great affection comes into their 
 lives,' replied Mrs. Wilding quietly. 
 
 ' A great affection for that man ! ' cried Felix, ' Mother, you 
 and she must have lost your senses ! ' 
 
 He turned and went out of the room. Mrs. Wilding's calm 
 acceptance of the situation made him feel almost violent. He 
 had been accustomed to feel that he was a ruling spirit in the 
 household since his father died. Nominally of course his 
 mother had always been in authority, but Felix, during his holi- 
 days, had generally had his own way in almost everything. His 
 mother and sister were such quiet and unselfish people, and till 
 now his desires had been so boyish and legitimate that it had 
 been seldom indeed necessary to thwart them, and without such 
 necessity Mrs. Wilding was the last person likely to assert her 
 authority. As to Margot, although she was sometimes what her 
 brother called 'mulish,' especially when there was any question 
 of her exerting herself very actively, the occasions on which 
 she had set up any opposition to Felix's will were rare indeed. 
 Most only sons alone in a house with women become instinc- 
 tively autocratic. To-night Felix was conscious of the internal 
 irritation of the Grand Turk gently resisted if not defied by 
 members of his harem. 
 
 Just as the Wildings were sitting down at the dinner-table the 
 church bells began to ring. 
 
 •Oh, 1 say — is it Thursday ?' excbimed Felix. *0f course it 
 
 60 -
 
 FELIX 61 
 
 is. 1 do hate those bells. They might have let me off on my 
 
 first night at home.' 
 
 One of his black melancholies began to steal over him. The 
 way had been prepared for it during the afternoon, and the bell- 
 ringers, unconsciously, set it in motion towards its victim. Mrs. 
 Wilding talked cheerfully instead of, as usual, listening with un- 
 tiring interest and patience to the talk of others, but she got little 
 response from either Felix or Margot. The one was frankly 
 gloomy and taciturn, the other nervous and constrained, and the 
 persistently chiming bells seemed, even to Mrs. Wilding, to 
 create an uneasy and melancholy atmosphere in the dark 
 summer night. Her imagination could not join the imagination 
 of her son in fantastic promenades about the black places of the 
 earth, or, with Margot's, sit down almost sulkily to brood, but she 
 too was sensitive in a high degree. Beneath her calm and 
 motherly air she concealed a deep capacity to feel, and her 
 tenderness for her children was so great that no mood of theirs 
 could fail to affect her intimately. To-night she had put on her 
 best gown. Some black tulle was twisted deftly, almost coquet- 
 tishly, in her beautiful white hair. At her neck she wore the 
 finest jewel she possessed, a big diamond set in green enamel, 
 from which hung three large and shapely pearls. These little 
 preparations had been made not all from vanity, but solely to do 
 honour to her boy. So simple was she that she had thought of 
 them for days before his arrival. She had even, in spite of the 
 uncomfortable events of the afternoon, carried them out with 
 some eagerness and, perhaps, a womanish idea that Felix, 
 noticing her in the garb of festivity, would be won from his 
 vexation, that his pleasure in being once more with those who 
 loved him and set him on high would conquer the angry sur- 
 prise roused in him by the news of his sister's affection. If she 
 had indulged in hopes she was deceived in them. Before the 
 end of dinner she felt that her moderately smart dress was almost 
 ridiculous. She had ordered the butler to open a bottle of cham- 
 pagiie, and had intended at dessert to drink Felix's health. But 
 when the fruit was handed round she looked at the two gloomy 
 and abstracted faces on either side of her, and at first had not 
 the courage to do it. The unwonted efforts she had made to 
 start subjects of conversation during the meal had tired her 
 physically and mentally, but she still patiently exerted herself to 
 be bright and cheerful, and bravely struggled against the pain 
 which the demeanour of her children set in her heart. The time 
 came, however, when she could think of nothing more to say. 
 Such invention as she had was exhausted. Margot scarcely
 
 62 FELIX 
 
 opened her lips. Felix could not be persuaded to take any 
 interest in the affairs of the village and of the neighbours, or to 
 relate any of his adventures in France. His mother's excursions 
 into the realms of more formal and less intimate conversation, 
 her mention of music, her allusion to a new book, were unattended 
 by a better fortune. At last silence fell. Mrs. Wilding sup- 
 pressed a sigh. The bubbles of champagne were winking at the 
 brim of her glass. They recalled to her the gracious joy of 
 yesterday, the exquisite anticipation of her son's arrival. Now 
 he was here, cold, distant, almost hostile in his manner. Her 
 mouth trembled, but she controlled herself and again sought for 
 a topic of conversation. She could not find one, and the silence 
 continued, broken by the bob-majors from the belfry. Margot, 
 who had been eating a pear, finished it and laid down her knife 
 and fork. There seemed nothing more to wait for. Mrs. Wilding 
 looked at her glass again and summoned up her courage. 
 
 ' I — I think we should drink your health to-night,' she said 
 gently, looking at her son. 'Come, Margot.' 
 
 She lifted her glass, and with a smile that was very near to 
 tears, sipped the champagne and bowed to Felix in the old- 
 fashioned way. Margot, growing red, hesitated, and finally 
 drank some wine too without looking at any one or saying a 
 word. Felix compressed his lips, and tapped his hand, the 
 fingers of which were tightly folded together, on the table. 
 
 'Oh, thanks, mater,' he murmured gruffly. 'You needn't 
 bother.' 
 
 He seemed displeased by the little attention. Mrs. Wilding 
 got up from the table. 
 
 ' You will find a box of cigarettes on the sideboard,' she 
 said. * I got them from the stores. I hope they are what you 
 like. The man told me gold-tipped cigarettes were the most 
 popular, so I got those.' 
 
 'Oh, I expect they're all right. Thanks.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding went into the drawing-room followed closely by 
 Margot, and Felix sat down gloomily to smoke. The bells were 
 still ringing. He felt suicidal. The whole atmosphere was 
 antagonistic to him to-night. He longed to leave the house 
 and the place at once. The thought of the railway station with 
 its bustle and lights, of the whistle of the engine, of the rushing 
 motion of the train, of the arrival on Dover pier, of the sight of 
 the sea and the faint cliff-line of France, stirred in him a longing 
 that was akin to the longing of a prisoner to escape from his cell. 
 He was even amazed at the violence of the sensation that he 
 was in a sort of prison, here in his home with his mother and
 
 FELIX 63 
 
 sister. He was no longer thinking about Mr. Bosanfield and 
 Margot, but was concentrated upon himself. The ego which 
 returned in him to Churston Waters was different from the ego 
 which had gone in him to France. Surely it was quite different. 
 The environment in which he had been born and brought up 
 had become unsuited to him, or rather he must have become 
 unsuited to it. His mother's little attentions at dinner had 
 made him feel awkward and irritable. Her conversation had not 
 roused in him any desire to talk. What did it all mean ? 
 
 He listened to the bells. There were eight of them, and they 
 were good ones, clear and powerful. He had always disliked 
 their sound at night. Now he hated it. He connected them 
 with churchy things and churchy people, with young ladies 
 decorating a pulpit, with an organist practising hymns, with 
 black-coated clergymen who hated priests, and talked of the 
 right faith and the wrong, like Mr. Bosanfield. And he seemed 
 like a man shut up in a box, unable to catch a glimpse of the 
 great stretching life outside. Vaguely he longed for bigness — 
 of action, of idea, conception. Judgment. Was he not sur- 
 rounded by the infinitely small ? The conversation in the 
 drawing-room at tea-time with the clergyman had been simply 
 pitiable. Yet had his mother noticed, shrunk from the 
 pitiableness of it? And Margot? Why, she was actually eager 
 to draw closer to the pettiness from which he recoiled, to lose 
 her identity in it. And his mother was apparently satisfied with 
 her decision. 
 
 Felix wondered what his womenkind were really like. In the 
 afternoon he had said to his mother that he would make Margot 
 understand. What? His point of view. He began to realise 
 the difficulty of performing that feat, and his depression deepened. 
 The clock on the mantelpiece struck the half-hour after nine, 
 and the butler looked in at the door to see if he could clear 
 away. Felix got up reluctantly to go to the drawing-room. He 
 found Margot reading a book, his mother doing some embroidery. 
 As he came in Margot laid her book down. Because he had 
 nothing to say and felt uncomfortable, Felix picked it up 
 and glanced at the title. It was Hints to Church Workers, by 
 One of them. He looked at the flyleaf. On it was written in a 
 precise but niggling hand: 'To M. W., from Stephen Bosan- 
 field.' He pressed his lips tightly together, and a sudden 
 obstinacy rose up in him. He knew his sister's will was a weak 
 one. He believed that his own was strong. He meant to find out 
 how strong it was, but not to-night. The bells had ceased. It 
 was very quiet in the low room, as quiet as in the little salon at
 
 G4 FELIX 
 
 La Maison des Alouettes. He sat down by his mother. His 
 new determination had suddenly banished his melancholy. Till 
 bedtime he talked quite cheerfully, and Mrs. Wilding went 
 upstairs to her room at half-past ten happier than she had been 
 since her son's arrival. 
 
 She depended so entirely upon her children for her happiness 
 that they could easily be her enemies, almost her destroyers. 
 
 In the morning Felix meant to deliver battle to his sister. 
 The issue could surely not be doubtful. He had only to lay 
 before her clearl\-, eloquently, some of the knowledge of life he 
 had gained while he was in France. He had only to point out 
 to her how impossible it was that she could know herself yet, or 
 what her nature required to make it contented. As he un- 
 dressed he felt quite buoyant. He had opened his window. 
 Scents came in to him from the dark garden. The creepers 
 raised their leaves above the window-sill as if to peep at him. 
 They seemed like old friends. As he looked out he could see 
 the yellow paths on which he had toddled as a child and leaped 
 as a boy. They were faint threads in the gloom. He heard 
 the deep voice of Mab barking in the yard, and the rattle of her 
 chain. His mare, Mayflower, was doubtless munching com- 
 fortably in her warm loose-box. The church clock struck, and 
 he remembered hearing it as a little boy, when he had waked in 
 the dead hours of night. It had frightened yet fascinated him, 
 then. He had imagined a personality connected with it, some 
 sleepless and melancholy being, that lived alone in the church- 
 yard and did strange things when all the blinds were drawn in 
 the village and no one walked along the roads. How often his 
 mother had banished his fears, comforted him, explained things 
 to him. She had known so much more than he did once. He 
 knew so much more than she did now. So he believed. That 
 was pathetic and almost monstrous. It occurred to him that, 
 since fheir respective situations were now reversed, he ought to 
 be tender to her ignorance as she had once been tender to his. 
 On that thought he fell asleep. 
 
 The next morning was brilliantly fine, and the sight of the 
 sunshine made Felix feel hard as the scents, the darkness, the 
 sound of the church clock on the previous night had softened 
 him and filled him with gentleness for the stupidities and 
 narrowness of humanity. He went down to breakfast in a 
 determined and rather pugnacious mood, and began the day by 
 laughing at his mother's fear of sitting with the French window 
 of the dining-room open. At eleven Margot and he decided to 
 go out riding. He was astute, and did not give her a hint of
 
 FELIX 65 
 
 what was before ber. His careless brotherly manner put her at 
 her ease, and the breakfast was a far gayer meal than the dinner 
 of the previous day had been. Mrs. Wilding, wrapped in her 
 shawl — for Felix had carried his first point, and the window 
 stood open — smiled happily behind the silver urn. The only 
 wrinkle in her roseleaf was that Felix had not been down for 
 family prayers on his first day at home, but she had no inten- 
 tion of alluding to it. After breakfast Felix said to his sister : 
 
 ' How 's your singing ? ' 
 
 'Oh, pretty well, I think. I've learnt several new German 
 songs lately.' 
 
 ' Have you been practising your exercises regularly ? ' 
 
 Margot hesitated, and began to look guilty. 
 
 'Not quite regularly.' 
 
 *How often?— Three times a week?' 
 
 'Hardly so often as that.' 
 
 'Have you ever practised them at all?' 
 
 'Sometimes.' 
 
 'Once a month, I suppose. Well, I must say!' 
 
 He went off to see the horses. 
 
 'You really ought to do your exercises oftener, Margot. 
 Felix is quite right,' said Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 Margot, who had shown some inclination to grovel before her 
 brother, suddenly shrugged her shoulders petulantly and made 
 a clicking sound of intense irritation. She hated being ' spoken 
 to' by any woman, even her mother, but could hardly be made 
 angry, though she could be hurt, by a scolding from a man. 
 She had never asked herself why this was. But self-examination 
 was not a natural process to her. Going upstairs rather lethargi- 
 cally she went into the morning-room, reluctantly opened the 
 piano, and set some music before her. When Felix came back 
 from the stables he heard her singing scales, and smiled. The 
 sound of those scales was a good augury for the further triumph 
 of his will over his sister's. 
 
 When Margot and he were in the saddle a wave of complacent 
 cheerfulness ran over him. He felt like a conqueror, as so 
 many male nobodies do in their own homes. Mrs. Wilding 
 watched them start from the hall door, and they were soon in 
 the green shadow of the country lanes. Every bank and hedge, 
 every cottase, almost every tuft of grass and clump of fern was 
 familiar to Felix. The country people they met along the road 
 saluted him with smiles and keen glances of curiosity. He 
 noticed both with pleasure, and hugged himself in the thought 
 that the real, the vital change that had taken place in him was 
 E
 
 66 FELIX 
 
 known fully as yet to no one but himself. The villagers, the 
 labourers, could only mark that his shoulders were broader than 
 formerly, that a small moustache gave manliness to his face. 
 
 ' Shall you ride with Mr. Bosanfield when you are married, 
 Margot?' Felix said suddenly. 
 
 Margot was startled by the abruptness of question and 
 assumption. She jerked the curb and her cob began to prance. 
 
 'Bad for Robin's mouth that !' Felix remarked. 'Shall you 
 ride with him?' 
 
 ' I — I don't know that he rides,' she answered, bending down 
 to quiet Robin and hide her confusion. 
 
 'Can't he?' 
 
 ' I suppose he can, but riding isn't everything, even if he 
 can't.' 
 
 ' At any rate he bikes, so you can go on a tandem together to 
 missionary meetings and parish teas. That '11 be jolly.' 
 
 Margot said nothing. Felix stole a glance at her and con- 
 tinued mercilessly : 
 
 ' But don't ask him to take you to France for the honeymoon, 
 whatever you do. Stick to England and avoid the dangers of 
 the priesthood. And, above all, never try to know anything 
 about the world that lies outside the parish of — St. Martha's, 
 is it?' 
 
 ' St. Mary's.' 
 
 ' Be narrow, my little sister, or you '11 never get on with 
 Stephen Bosanfield.' 
 
 ' I don't wish to go to France ever, if it makes people come 
 back changed and — and unkind,' murmured Margot. 
 
 ' It 's you that 's changed ; wanting to leave us for a fellow you 
 know scarcely anything about.' 
 
 'You wouldn't care about my leaving you,' said Margot, 
 suddenly brightening up and speaking almost eagerly. 
 
 She was singularly free from vanity, but she adored feeling 
 that any one liked her. 
 
 ' That's all you know about it,' responded her brother artfully, 
 
 ' Do you mean you would care ? ' 
 
 'Suppose I said I did, what then?' 
 
 Margot was already looking at him with grateful eyes. 
 
 'You seemed so happy to be away. I hardly thought * 
 
 she began. 
 
 Then she stopped. 
 
 *I was happy in a way — yes,' Felix said. 'You see, men are 
 not made to be always in one place, even with the people they 
 care for. Movement braces them up, I suppose. Anyhow,
 
 FELIX 67 
 
 they need it, most of them. But all the same, you know, they 
 don't care to come home and find their sisters keen on rushing 
 off to live with total strangers.' 
 
 'It isn't fair to put it like that,' said Margot, half vexed, half 
 delighted, and wholly confused. 
 
 'Especially,' continued her brother, 'when they have learnt 
 that to live rightly one must live cautiously.' 
 
 ' You keep talking as if you had learnt so much in France,' 
 said Margot. ' But how could you in a little house buried in 
 the country?' 
 
 Suddenly Felix felt an impulse to tell his sister the tale of the 
 world he had found in the forest, hidden in an old tailor's hut. 
 But would she understand? He glanced at her, wouciering. 
 Her rosy face looked a picture of countrified innocence and 
 health. The expression on it, which had suddenly become 
 cheerful, was simple, not subtle. She looked intelligent and 
 submissive, but not imaginative or ardent. Felix wondered very 
 much whether she had any of his impulse, whether, if she had it 
 not, he could give it to her. Suppose now, while they rode 
 through the shady lanes, he pitted Balzac against Bosanfield. 
 That would be a tourney indeed. He resolved to sound the 
 trumpet as a signal to the dead novelist and the live clergyman 
 to take to the lists. Balzac was French, too. That made the 
 affair the more entertaining. 
 
 'Margot,' he exclaimed, 'I'll tell you how it was I got to 
 know so much and became so different while I was in France. 
 Perhaps you won't understand, but still — it all began with a 
 statue.' 
 
 'A statue?' echoed Margot in a puzzled voice. 
 
 *Yes. A statue that stands in an open space backed by trees 
 and fronted by a fountain, the statue of one of the greatest men 
 who ever lived.' 
 
 Their ride was a long one. Mrs. Wilding became quite 
 anxious about them. The luncheon-gong had sounded half an 
 hour ago, but there was no sound of horses' feet on the road. 
 Just as two o'clock struck they rode up. 
 
 ' My dear children,' said Mrs. Wilding, 'where have you been? 
 You haven't had an accident?' 
 
 ' No, mater. But we went to Sheerwater Forest.' 
 
 * All that way ? ' 
 
 ' It suited what I was talking about,' said Felix. ' Didn't it, 
 Margot?' 
 
 His voice sounded triumphant. Margot looked excited and 
 nervous.
 
 68 FELIX 
 
 'Yes,' she replied in a secretive voice. 
 
 'And what were you talking about?' asked Mrs. Wilding, aa 
 they went into the dining-room. 
 
 ' Oh, all sorts of things — serious things,' answered Felix in an 
 off-hand voice. 
 
 His mother understood that youth loves to keep its secrets 
 sometimes and said no more. She was far too dutiful to strive 
 to pull down the barrier that stands between rising and sinking 
 generations. When Felix found himself alone with her for a 
 moment in the afternoon he said : 
 
 ' Don't be too sure that Margot will marry that man Bosan- 
 field, mater.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding looked utterly astonished. 
 
 ' But, Felix, she has promised to.' 
 
 ' It isn't given out.' 
 
 ' Surely that makes no difference.' 
 
 * All the difference in the world. I 've been talking to her 
 to-day.' 
 
 ' But she loves him. She told me so.' 
 
 * I dare say she did. Margot 's only a girl without a will of 
 her own. She 'd say anything a man asked her to say. You 
 must know that.' 
 
 ' But if she has changed her mind it is terrible. Thinlj of 
 that poor man.' 
 
 ' Pooh ! he '11 get over it all right. A chap like that hasn't 
 the sort of nature that dies for love. Let him marry a Sunday- 
 school teacher.' 
 
 Felix spoke airily. He was revelling in this first definite 
 exercise of his will. Mrs. Wilding was surprised by the hard- 
 ness of his tone and manner. If what he said were true, and 
 Margot were already wavering, it seemed to her that the whole 
 family would be disgraced. Her son's flippant treatment of so 
 serious a matter shocked her. She was on the point of expressing 
 her emotion when she remembered her resolution made on the 
 day of her husband's death, that henceforth she must not allow 
 full play to all her woman's impulses, but must be broad-minded 
 and serene, judging things as far as possible from the man's 
 standpoint. Felix was growing up. Perhaps it was not in 
 youths of his age to comprehend the tragedies of the affec- 
 tions. She must not blame him. But she felt that she ought 
 to try and explain what she conceived to be the situation 
 to him. 
 
 ' Felix,' she said very gently, 'sit down for a moment.' 
 
 He flung himself down near her, looking gay and mischievous.
 
 FELIX 69 
 
 His dark eyes were shining, as hers never shone, with a Hght 
 that was impudent in its vivacity. 
 
 ' Now, mater, it 's no use your holding a brief for the parson,' 
 he exclaimed. 'He's old enough to take care of himself.' 
 
 ' I am not holding a brief at all. I only wish that we should 
 all do what is right and honourable. And I know you wish 
 the same.' 
 
 ' Of course. It would be jolly wrong and dishonourable for 
 Margot to marry a fellow she wasn't really in love with. Now 
 wouldn't it?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Well, my blessed old mother, she's no more in love with 
 Bosanfield than I am with Banbury Cross.' 
 
 ' Are you sure, Felix ? ' 
 
 'Certain. Why, in half an hour I turned her right round 
 and ' 
 
 'Yes, but you know that Margot is easily led, and that she 
 never could resist you.' 
 
 Felix smiled complacently. 
 
 ' She can be as obstinate as a mule when she likes. Look 
 at her exercises. She won't practise them steadily whatever 
 I say.' 
 
 ' Ah, but that 's a trifle. In important things she can't make 
 up her mind.' 
 
 ' Then I '11 make it up for her. In fact I 've done so, and 
 I've decided that she has decided not to marry ' 
 
 ' Mr. Bosanfield,' said the butler, opening the drawing-room 
 door. 
 
 Both Mrs. Wilding and Felix flushed red. The clergyman 
 came in calmly. Felix was struck by his complete self-posses- 
 sion. Though possibly narrow, he was certainly not weak. He 
 looked at them both with his small, steady eyes, and evidently 
 did not fail to note their confusion. Felix wondered whether 
 it was his observation of their discomfort which led him to 
 open the interview with a very startling remark. 
 
 * I thought it only right and proper,' he said, as he shook 
 hands cordially with Mrs. Wilding, ' to take the first oppor- 
 tunity of furthering my acquaintance with your son in my new 
 character. Yesterday, when I was here, he probably did not 
 know that I am his future brother-in-law. To-day I have no 
 doubt he does.' 
 
 He grasped Felix's hand and sat down beside him. Felix 
 gasped. He felt as if he had received a stinging blow in the 
 face. But even while he staggered under it he was aware of
 
 70 FELIX 
 
 a queer thought that flashed through his mind. It was — 'This 
 man will certainly be a bishop if he lives.' Mrs. Wilding, who 
 was no dissembler, had become quite pale. She looked at her 
 son without saying a word. And just then, to complete the 
 awkwardness of the situation, Margot came in carrying a case 
 of music. When she saw who was there she let the case fall. 
 Mr. Bosanfield sprang to pick it up, 
 
 ' I have come to receive your brother's congratulations,' he 
 said, taking her hand possessively. 
 
 Then Felix understood that he had been far less astute than 
 the clergyman, who had evidently divined that there was an 
 enemy in the camp, and resolved to attack him vigorously 
 before he was prepared for the battle. 
 
 Margot was frankly petrified. She cast a beseeching glance 
 at her brother, but Felix was staring out of the window. 
 
 ' Let me put your music on the piano, Margot,' continued 
 Mr. Bosanfield. 
 
 Felix jerked round on his chair and looked at him almost 
 menacingly, while Margot meekly watched him laying down 
 the case. 
 
 ' Your son does know ? ' continued Mr. Bosanfield, addressing 
 Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 'Yes, I told him yesterday,' she answered truthfully. 
 
 ' I dare say you were surprised,' said Mr. Bosanfield to 
 Felix. 
 
 ' I was very much surprised,' he replied, with almost fierce 
 bluntness. 
 
 ' I can hardly expect you to be delighted, since I am a 
 stranger to you. But I hope, and think, that when we know 
 each other more intimately, as no doubt we soon shall, and 
 when you are able to see how well fitted your dear sister and I 
 are to make each other happy, you will rejoice with us as your 
 mother already has.' 
 
 ' My mother has rejoiced, you say?' Felix exclaimed abruptly. 
 
 For the first time in his life he felt as if his mother were his 
 enemy. 
 
 ' I naturally was glad in Margot's happiness, Felix,' Mrs. 
 Wilding said anxiously. 
 
 Felix, who had been thinking rapidly ever since the clergy- 
 man had come into the room, and who had by this time 
 completely grasped the situation and comprehended the tactics 
 of h's opponent, was filled with a boy's fury. He said to 
 hims If that he was being made a fool of. His heart beat fast 
 with excitement, and he was filled with a passionate disregard
 
 FELIX 71 
 
 of the convenances^ of consequences, of the feelings of his 
 people, 
 
 'Margot doesn't know whether it will make her happy to 
 marry any one,' he said in a loud and uneven voice. 'She 
 told me so this morning when we were riding in Sheerwater 
 Forest.' 
 
 There was a dead silence. If Felix had been quite truthful 
 the form of his statement would have been slightly different. 
 It was really he who had repeatedly insisted to Margot that she 
 did not know what would make her happy. Eventually she had 
 vaguely agreed that it was possible to make mistakes as to one's 
 feelings. Her lover turned towards her. 
 
 ' You said that to your brother ? ' he asked. 
 
 His voice was quite firm. 
 
 ' Margot, you know you * 
 
 But here Mrs. Wilding broke in with unusual authority. 
 
 ' Felix, I think Margot ought to answer for herself,' she said. 
 
 Felix bit his lip and was silent. He looked at his sister, 
 whose eyes were fixed imploringly on Mr. Bosanfield. 
 
 'Come, Margot,' the 'clergyman said quietly; 'you owe it 
 to the man who loves you to be quite frank. Do you think 
 you were making a mistake when you accepted me as your 
 future husband?' 
 
 ' No,' she murmured. 
 
 'Then your brother must have misunderstood you this 
 morning?' 
 
 • I only meant that — that it is impossible absolutely to know 
 beforehand what — what is going to bring one happiness. I did 
 say that, Felix.' 
 
 ' Oh, I don't care what you said,' he answered brusquely. 
 
 He sprang up and went out of the room. He had read his 
 defeat in his sister's eyes.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 FELIX had returned from France feeling vaguely that the 
 knowledge he had acquired there must make a consider- 
 able difference in his home relations. He had meant to show 
 his mother and sister how simple they were; to make ihem, 
 perhaps, self-conscious in their ignorance. He had laid 
 plans, calm in the youthful certainty of his own superiority. 
 That certainty he still possessed ; but the plans were shat- 
 tered by the introduction of Mr. Bosanfield into the family 
 circle, and by the definite defeat he had inflicted upon Felix. 
 For his marriage with Margot was assured from the moment 
 when he gave battle openly to her brother. Margot, having 
 been forced to take a line, showed unexpected firmness of 
 purpose. Doubtless she was comfortably aware of the 
 unyielding nature of her clerical ally, and also, as Felix 
 soon perceived with wondering contempt, she was very much 
 in love with Stephen Bosanfield, and showed her affection 
 with a mingled shyness and pride which were transparently 
 childish and countrified. She was, in truth, overwhelmed with 
 humble surprise and gratification at finding herself loved. She 
 had not dared to expect such a joy, having a most pitiful 
 opinion of her attractions. The tender triumph that con- 
 sequently invaded her soul enabled her even to brave the 
 dissatisfaction of Felix with a certain wavering hardihood, 
 once she had finally cast in her lot with the determined 
 clergyman. 
 
 Mr. Bosanfield was very determined. Having routed the 
 enemy in the first engagement, he lost no time in endeavour- 
 ing to persuade Mrs. Wilding and Margot to fix the wedding 
 day. Felix made no attempt at opposition. He would not 
 enter into the matter at all, but kept himself entirely aloof 
 from the question, much to his mother's distress. In vain 
 she tried to draw him into the family conclave, to consult 
 him as the man of the party who would naturally be looked to 
 for a decision by the women. Felix replied curtly : 
 
 • Settle it all your own way, mater. I don't care what you 
 
 72
 
 FELIX 78 
 
 do. They can marry to-morrow as far as I 'm concerned. It 
 makes no difference to me.' 
 
 He isolated himself as much as possible at this time, was 
 continually on horseback, and strove to live in himself and, by 
 laying plans for the future, to get away from the present. 
 
 The future — that was his companion while he rode, singing 
 to himself the silent songs of freedom. For as soon as Margot 
 was married, he meant to tell his mother of his resolve to go 
 to London and live there. Had it not been for the turmoil 
 created in her simple life by Margot's engagement and the pre- 
 parations for her marriage, Mrs. Wilding would no doubt have 
 thought it her duty to discuss with Felix the subject of his 
 career. Indeed, even in the midst of her preoccupation, she 
 found time to think much and anxiously of her son. But his 
 vexation at the marriage had rendered him so unapproachable 
 that she timidly put off any discussion, lest she might seem 
 desirous of forcing an intimacy which he seemed at present 
 determined to avoid. Mrs. Wilding was exquisitely sensitive 
 although she seemed so calm, so definitely English. Since 
 his return her son had chosen to play the part of a stranger in 
 his home. He treated his mother with formality, Margot with 
 indifference. Mrs. Wilding excused his conduct with the pas- 
 sionate generosity of a mother, telling herself that it was really 
 prompted by his affection for his sister, and consequent, almost 
 angry, distress at the prospect of losing her. When the blow 
 had fallen, when that which was now impending became an actual 
 fact, she trusted, prayed, that Felix would resign himself with a 
 good grace to the inevitable, and that at least she would feel at 
 ease with him once more. At present she found herself foiled 
 in every gentle attempt to draw near to him, to be to him what 
 she had once been. AH naturalness, all comprehension, all quiet 
 cheerfulness had departed from their intercourse since the day 
 when Mr. Bosanfield had established his position in the house- 
 hold as Margot's future husband. 
 
 In France Felix had meant to tell his mother of the change 
 in him, to explain to her how it had been brought about. He 
 had intended boldly to attack her ignorance with his knowledge. 
 If he had done so Mrs. Wilding might possibly have been 
 alarmed, and would most certainly have been worsted in argu- 
 ment. But at least she would have had the satisfaction of 
 feeling that her son trusted her; that if he was changed, 
 he wished her to comprehend his transformation. Margot's 
 engagement kept him silent. He felt too hostile, too wronged, 
 to speak. At this time he would rather have talked intimately
 
 74 FELIX 
 
 with one of his mother's servants than with either of the women 
 who loved him. 
 
 The old tailor alone with his books in the forest was far 
 nearer to him than they were or ever could be. So he told 
 himself, forgetting, in his impatient anger, a thousand sweet 
 circumstances of his old child-life, circumstances slight, ordin- 
 ary, perhaps even trivial, but which bind far closer than we 
 often realise our hearts to the hearts of those whom we speak 
 of carelessly as ' our people.' 
 
 His relations with his future brother-in-law were frigidly 
 polite and as perfunctory as he could make them. Stephen 
 Bosanfield, however, gradually discovered to him a character of 
 such singular self-possession and vigorous, if narrow, pertinacity, 
 that Felix, half unconsciously, began to feel that this deter- 
 mined priest had a certain force which compelled at least some 
 answering respect. 
 
 He several times joined Felix in walks, and talked with 
 cheerful dryness about France, the differences which he sup- 
 posed to exist between different nations, and the curious habits 
 and customs of those who were not so fortunate as to have been 
 born and reared in England. Felix responded with equally 
 dry civility. On the dampest day dust surely circled about 
 the walkers. Felix, at any rate, fancifully perceived it. He 
 thought of his long conversations with the tailor. Now he knew 
 fully how much he had enjoyed them. Yet his sister loved, 
 actually loved this man with the red face, the intent eyes, the 
 pointed ears. 
 
 These ears attracted and held the attention of Felix more 
 than the discourse of their owner. Mr. Bosanfield had a power 
 of moving them slightly up and down, sometimes together, 
 sometimes separately, and a habit, probably quite unconscious, 
 of putting this power into action. There was, to Felix, some- 
 thing very disgusting in this trick. He was continually on the 
 look-out for it, and one day spoke of it to Margot. 
 
 ' Why does Bosanfield wag his ears like that? ' he said. 
 
 ' What do you mean, FeJix ? ' said Margot, with anxious haste, 
 and a sort of quick, soft defiance. 
 
 'You know well enough, Margot. He's always doing it. 
 But I suppose you don't mind it as you 've chosen to spend 
 your life with it. I couldn't.' 
 
 ' We all have — have little habits of our own.* 
 
 • Of course ; but thank Heaven we don't all wag our ears.' 
 
 ' I 'm sure Stephen scarcely ever ' 
 
 •Oh, don't let's talk about it!' cried Felix impatiently,
 
 FELIX 75 
 
 suddenly becoming aware of the futility, almost the idiocy, of 
 the conversation, and hating himself for having begun it. *I 
 expect we are one and all descended from monkeys, and 
 oughtn't to be too particular. Oh, 1 know you are going to say 
 that Stephen never could have been descended from a monkey. 
 Well, perhaps he is the great exception, and that's why you 
 adore him. Fix the wedding day and get it over.' 
 
 He ran out of the room before she could reply. Outside 
 the door he asked himself whether he was an imbecile to be so 
 vividly affected by such small things, such trifles. But were 
 they trifles? He began just then to understand that to be 
 observant adds to the pain of life. Margot could not certainly 
 be observant. And his mother? But by this time he was in 
 the stables and began talking horses to the groom. 
 
 The wedding day was fixed for the first week in August. 
 Felix kept himself apart from the preparations, and in con- 
 sequence Mrs. Wilding had to work very hard, organising, 
 arranging, inviting. She was not a strong woman. A little 
 assistance from her son would have been very grateful to her tired 
 body, but far more grateful to her mother's heart. This period 
 was a period of great sadness for her. In losing Margot she 
 was losing her constant companion. When her husband died 
 a terrible loneliness had come down like a cloud upon her, and 
 in the first agony of that loss she had thought that she tasted 
 the ultimate bitterness of desolation. But then she had her 
 children. They were very young, still deliciously dependent 
 upon her, ready to confide in her. She knew quietly that she 
 was intensely necessary to them, and that knowledge gave her 
 strength, even joy. Now she began to think that she was no 
 longer necessary to them or to any one. Margot had found a 
 lover who was soon to be a husband. That was natural, and 
 Mrs. Wilding, always pathetically unselfish, stifled her pain 
 and really rejoiced with her child. But P^lix — he had found 
 nothing, and yet the mere fact of his years now seemed to set 
 a barrier between him and his mother. She felt as if she were 
 in his way. Felix thought her unobservant, crudely attributing 
 all the observant power of the family to himself, but she was 
 acutely conscious of his new young disdain of her intellect, of 
 her simplicity, and, being so humble, instead of condemning him 
 for it, thought that no doubt it was inevitable now that he had 
 grown up. Silently she acquiesced in this supposed natural law. 
 She did not murmur against it for a moment. But there was 
 an ache in her heart as she concerned herself with the endless 
 details of a big country wedding, and, as the day drew near, she
 
 76 FELIX 
 
 felt so tired that sometimes she could scarcely see the cards on 
 which she was writing invitations, or the presents which she 
 was taking out of their boxes and coverings. 
 
 Mr. Bosanfield was most dutifully affectionate to her. He 
 always treated her with marked respert and solicitude, and 
 sometimes irritated Felix by showing iicr an anxious polite- 
 ness which set his own carelessness in an unfavourable light. 
 He sprang to open the door when she was leaving the room ; 
 arranged a footstool for her feet when she sat down ; put the 
 icewool shawl carefully round her shoulders if she said that it 
 seemed a little colder than usual — which she very often did ; 
 brought her the newspaper or sought for the book she was read- 
 ing. She thanked him most gratefully. But how she wished 
 that these little attentions had come from Felix. From him 
 each one would have been a precious gift. 
 
 The intense feeling of reserve which dominated Felix through 
 all this period prevented him from doing these very small and 
 simple things, not because he thought them unnecessary — at 
 heart he could not be anything but a gentleman — but because 
 in doing them he w;)uld have had the sensation of drawing near 
 to his mother. And something autocratic in his soul bade him 
 be a solitary in this home which, he told himself, no longer 
 suited him. The buzz of preparation which pervaded the 
 house, a homely, eminently human buzz, had the same sort of 
 effect on his mind as frost has on a flower. When he over- 
 heard his mother talking with the maids about the amount of 
 table-linen that would be wanted for the wedding breakfast, 
 or speaking to the builer about the silver, or the wine, to the 
 gardener about the flowers for the decorations, to the cook 
 about cakes and puddings, his lips curled with a sort of superior 
 disgust at which he himself was faintly astonished. The atmo- 
 sphere of the whole business was fiercely antagonistic to him. 
 He longed to fight his way out of it all. He shut himself up 
 for hours in his room, and plunged once more into the Comedie 
 Hutnaine. But as he turned the pages of that murmuring 
 book of life, he found himself longing for his old reading-place; 
 for the ruined chapel in the garden of La Maison des Alouettes, 
 the little, stealthy, busy insects moving patiently through their 
 quivering minute jungle of creepers, the birds that perched on 
 the arches of the shattered windows, even the sound of the 
 Angelus bell. The bell of the yellow church across the road 
 chimed. He heard it impatiently. 
 
 •Mary,' said his mother's voice somewhere in the house. 'Maryl' 
 
 * Yes, ma'am,' replied a servant's voice.
 
 FELIX 77 
 
 ' How many of those damask napkins have you ? We shall 
 want ' 
 
 Felix stopped his ears. 
 
 ' London — London — London,' he repeated through his teeth, 
 shutting his eyes tightly. 
 
 In the darkness his will had made for him he saw again the 
 great river at Tours, the dolls on its banks bending above their 
 thin black lines, the crowded mass of tree-tops on the island 
 where the music was. How fast the water ran between the 
 arches. He heard again the bugle from the barracks, and, once 
 more, all the beauties, the mysteries, the passions, and the 
 sorrows of life seemed to flow together and to pass murmuring 
 through his heart as the river passed murmuring through the 
 arches of the bridge. And he longed with a vehemence that was 
 fierce to get away from this house in which he was born, to go 
 out — far, far out — and find beauty, mystery, passion, sorrow. 
 It never occurred to him that possibly it is not always necessary 
 to travel on distant roads to meet them face to face. His youth 
 was fascinated by the idea of remoteness with which he connected 
 romance. He chafed when the arrival of certain g'Jc ~ts who 
 were to stay in the house for the wedding obliged him to come 
 out of his shell and play the part of host. But he endeavoured 
 to console himself by the thought that now it would soon be 
 over and he would be free. 
 
 On the night before the marriage there was a big family-dinner, 
 to which, as well as various Wilding relations, and one of Mrs. 
 Wilding's brothers, Stephen Bosanfield's father and mother 
 were invited. Felix prepared to go down to it as an acidulated 
 martyr to the stake. Poor Margot was in a condition of rather 
 painful excitement and nervousness. She was, though so humble, 
 exceedingly self-conscious, and her devouring anxiety to find 
 adequate favour in the sight of Stephen's kith and kin rendered 
 her at this juncture dewily agitated. As she dressed for dinner 
 she felt that her personal appearance was most ridiculous, and 
 that no energy of intellect or brightness of talent made amends 
 in her for her extraordinary lack of beauty. How Stephen could 
 have succeeded in caring about her amazed her more than ever. 
 She greatly feared that his family would be even more astonished 
 at his achievement than she was. Her round cheeks were 
 flushed, and she was almost tearful with modesty when at length, 
 qfter many meek and self-condemnatory looks into the glass, 
 she turned to go to the drawing-room. On the landing outside 
 her bedroom door she came suddenly upon her brother, who, 
 immaculately dressed, was on the way down.
 
 78 FELIX 
 
 * Oh, Felix ! ' she said, starting. 
 'What's the matter?' 
 
 * I didn't know you were there.' 
 
 She saw his bright eyes fixed on her critically with a brother's 
 look. 
 
 ' Do I — do I look very bad ? ' she murmured. 
 
 * Bad ? No, very nice.' 
 
 He spoke kindly. A sudden softness had come to him 
 unexpectedly at the sight of his sister on this last evening of 
 her maiden life. He looked into her intelligent, anxious brown 
 eyes, and a number of confused, childish memories passed, 
 tangled, through his mind swiftly. He remembered going out 
 to pick periwinkles in spring with Margot ; having the measles 
 with Margot ; playing at bears with her and an anaemic house- 
 maid long since dead ; being slapped by her for disobeying some 
 autocratic command, given by her in very early days, when she 
 was wont to presume on her more mature age ere she grew up 
 into her present humble-mindedness. It was all over, that 
 time. 
 
 ' Dear old Margot,' he said in a low voice, still looking at 
 her. 
 
 The dim, familiar landing seemed to him just then to be 
 bathed in an atmosphere profoundly pathetic. They were both 
 enveloped in it. Margot's round face worked. A sort of anxious 
 hesitation, mingled with almost childlike pleasure, appeared on 
 it. Two tears fell on her cheeks. 
 
 'Oh, Felix!' she said in a husky voice, *I did so want — it's 
 awful leaving you, and I thought you didn't mind.' 
 
 She kissed him awkwardly, but with a sort of passionate 
 gratitude, then hurried back into her bedroom to try to recover 
 herself before going downstairs. And, standing alone on the 
 landing, Felix felt again, as he had felt one day in the garden, 
 that there were mysteries hidden even in his own sister, that 
 even such transparent simplicity as hers floated above strange, 
 almost impenetrable reserves. 
 
 He went down slowly. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding was already in the drawing-room with two or 
 three guests who were staying in the house : her brother, an 
 Indian judge home on leave, handsome but sun-dried, with keen 
 eyes and a slightly legal manner ; his daughter, who was going 
 to be a bridesmaid, but took the honour coolly ; and a female 
 cousin, devoted to good works, but singularly incapable of 
 arranging her hair in any known, neat, or fashionable style. 
 Mrs. Wilding's face was pale, and her soft eyes were full of
 
 FELIX 79 
 
 sadness and fatigue. But she made a brave effort to seem cheer- 
 ful, and FeHx did not notice anything amiss. He joined in the 
 family talk, self-consciously dutiful, proud of his internal 
 boredom. When Margot came in three or four minutes later 
 she glanced at him with shy consciousness, but he did not look 
 at her, and soon the arrival of her fiance with his parents 
 monopolised her attention, and threw her into an agony of 
 deprecating vivacity. 
 
 Even in his first moment of fury against Margot's parson — as 
 he called Stephen Bosanfield to himself contemptuously — Felix 
 had not thought him otherwise than a gentleman, and his father 
 and mother, though exceedingly, perhaps needlessly, respectable, 
 were quite presentable. 
 
 His mother was rather markedly clerical. She had, no doubt, 
 moved so perpetually in high Anglican circles that she felt 
 priestly despite her sex and the homilies of St. Paul. Her 
 husband, a capacious archdeacon, with a cathedral beard, though 
 obviously an excellent and truly moral dignitary, was slightly 
 less orthodox in appearance than his admirable wife. The sense 
 of humour denied to his son was apparent in his gently twinkling 
 eyes. 
 
 Stephen Bosanfield was calm, precise, intent as ever. Evidently 
 he was not a man to be upset by so correct an incident as a 
 marriage, even though it was his own. Felix glanced at him 
 with some amazement. His decent phlegm was really almost 
 impressive at such a time. It was quite unnecessary for Margot 
 to be so anxious about herself since her lover was so obviously 
 convinced of the excellence of his choice. Yet she was anxious. 
 At this moment she was busily engaged in smiling nervously, yet 
 hopefully too, at her future father-in-law, who, with benign 
 urbanity, was giving her certain directions for the keeping of 
 Stephen in proper order. Felix heard his gentlemanly bass 
 voice saying : 
 
 'You must not let him run wild about the parish on any 
 account.' 
 
 ' Margot's reply was hasty and voluble, and complicated by 
 ingratiating laughter. The archdeacon evidently understood her 
 nervousness and forgave it. Mrs. Wilding and Mrs. Bosanfield, 
 sitting side by side on a sofa, were conversing amicably. The 
 latter had jet-black hair arranged in glossy bands, a brick-red 
 complexion like her son's, and prominent eyes that looked 
 ritualistic. Her mouth was very small and her lips pouted, 
 giving to her face a slight expression of peevishness, as if she 
 wanted to scold some one. She had been born in a cathedral
 
 80 FELIX 
 
 close, and had lived most of her life in one, and was proud of 
 it. At present she was speaking about choir-boys and their 
 ways. It was quite evident that what she did not know about 
 choir-boys was not worth knowing. She threw in one or two 
 maxims in which the proper mode of dealing with church 
 organists was as it were crystallised, then passed on to a ripe 
 consideration of the minor canon's career and duties. Felix 
 realised from which side of his family Stephen inherited his 
 self-possession and lack of humour. Mrs. Wilding listened to 
 the words that came from the little pouting mouth with the 
 gentlest attention, and Stephen stood by, his long, reddish hands 
 folded across his straight black coat, an expression of filial 
 satisfaction upon his face, which, as always, looked half clergy- 
 man's half groom's. Time wore on, yet dinner was not announced. 
 Felix, who was hugging himself in a sort of ecstasy of superior 
 boredom, went up to his mother and said in a low voice : 
 
 'Aren't we ready for dinner?' 
 
 'We are waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Ismey,' she replied. 
 
 ' Who are they ? ' 
 
 'Friends of Stephen's.' 
 
 At this moment the drawing-room door opened and the butler 
 announced : 
 
 ' Mr. and Mrs. Ismey.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding got up from her sofa, and Felix turned towards 
 the door expecting to see more people from precinct, close, or 
 rectory. In the bustle and hurry of the wedding preparations 
 his mother had evidently forgotten to mention that these friends 
 were coming. The butler stood on one side, and a satirical- 
 looking woman walked slowly in, followed by a tall, middle-aged 
 man, with thick, wavy, grey hair and melancholy eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey looked perhaps thirty-two years old. She was 
 about the middle height, very sUm, very well made, with 
 beautiful hands and feet. Her face was certainly not handsome, 
 but it was expressive and entertaining. The eyes were large 
 and hazel, yellowish, that is, with dull, greenish-brown rims, 
 vivacious and shining, vet critical if not cruel. Her nose was 
 rather long and slight y turned up. Her mouth was not small 
 but it was prettily curved, and she had lovely little teeth. Her 
 eyebrows were very thick and straight. Her hair, too, was very 
 thick and light brown. It was done on the top of her head and 
 puffed out at the front and sides, and Felix noticed that each 
 hair looked independent and alive, as if it was naturally 
 rebellious, but for to-night was governed by the dominating art 
 of a singularly clever coiffeur. She was dressed in a very
 
 FELIX 81 
 
 perfectly fitting but plainly made dress of dull green-and-gold 
 brocade, and carried a very large green-and-gold fan half open. 
 As she shook hands with Mrs. Wilding she apologised for being 
 late. 
 
 'You see we are strangers in this neighbourhood,' she 
 explained; 'and the porter at the hotel said it would only 
 take twenty minutes to drive from the Wells here. We were 
 credulous. I am so sorry.' 
 
 Her voice was light and clear, rather drawling and composed. 
 Mr. Ismey, with a sudden and very sweet smile, which some- 
 how made him look even sadder than before, added his 
 apologies to his wife's, and Mrs. Wilding introduced Felix 
 and Margot. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey, who had glanced round the drawing-room with 
 an air of unexpectant scrutiny, ran her eyes over Margot's 
 shining, anxious face with quick carelessness, while she mur- 
 mured a word of polite congratulation on the approaching 
 wedding. But when Felix was presented to her she looked at 
 him very differently. As he held out his hand, and her eyes 
 first met his, their expression was languid, though direct, as if 
 their owner could not help being observant, but was far from 
 being disposed to take the slightest interest in any one at Hill 
 House. Directly she saw Felix fully her face changed, 
 brightened. Sharp interrogation shone in her eyes, interroga- 
 tion so humorous, so searching, that Felix felt himself blushing 
 boyishly, and was angry with himself. They had no time to 
 talk, for dinner was immediately announced, and he was 
 obliged to offer his arm to Mrs. Bosanfield and escort her to 
 the dining-room. She waddled in walking, being plump, held 
 her back very straight, and looked as if she were heading some 
 ecclesiastical procession. Felix wished her at Jericho, and 
 groaned in spirit at the prospect before him. He was surprised 
 and uneasily delighted when, on sitting down at the head of the 
 long table, he found Mrs. Ismey on his other side. She had 
 come in with the Indian judge. She glanced at Felix whimsi- 
 cally as she unfolded her napkin. He thought she was going to 
 speak, but just then Mrs. Bosanfield addressed him, and he had 
 to turn to her. 
 
 ' You are fortunate in being so near the church,' she said. 
 
 Her voice was firm and decisive, issuing sharply from her 
 little pouting mouth. 
 
 'Yes,' said Felix, 'we aren't far.' 
 
 He felt the rejoinder was inept, but he did not care. He 
 knew instinctively that good Mrs. Bosanfield and he could have 
 r
 
 82 FELIX 
 
 nothing in common, and judged any effort to draw near to her, 
 
 or to be entertaining in her conversational mode, foredoomed to 
 failure. She sipped her soup in a very practical manner, nip- 
 ping the spoon tightly, and keeping the little finger of her right 
 hand stiffly extended. 
 
 ' Do you intend to enter the church ? ' she inquired, rolling 
 her prominent eyes round the table in a glance that seemed 
 to demand forthwith their final confession from those she 
 looked at, 
 
 ' To-morrow ? of course. I am going to give my sister away,' 
 returned Felix in amazement. 
 
 He had not been able to get out of this very uncongenial 
 duty, although he had only agreed to perform it with cold 
 ungraciousness. 
 
 'You don't grasp my meaning,' said Mrs. Bosanfield with a 
 brief and patronising smile. 'I intended to ask if you were 
 going to take orders.' 
 
 ' I ! Oh, dear no ! ' said Felix, speaking rather loudly in the 
 shock of his surprise at any one supposing such a thing possible. 
 A second later he realised that of course Mrs. Bosantield knew 
 nothing whatever of him or of his character. There was more 
 than a shade of disapproval in the glance she now cast at him. 
 So many of her relations had become clergymen, and she had 
 moved so perpetually in clerical society all her life, that Felix's 
 exclamation, conveying as it did a hint of contempt, struck her 
 as wellnigh sacrilegious. 
 
 'You do not feel able for it, I conceive,' she remarked, 
 pouting her lips to a glass of sherry. 
 
 ' I 'm afraid I should not be very successful as a clergyman,' 
 said Felix, recovering his equanimity, ' I doubt if I could 
 preach.' 
 
 ' Preaching is not everything a clergyman has to do,' said 
 Mrs. Bosanfield educationally. 
 
 ' Oh no, of course not,' Felix assented, inclined to wish it the 
 one thing no clergyman ever had to do under any circum- 
 stances. 
 
 'Stephen is an excellent preacher,' continued Mrs. Bosan- 
 field, placing her fish-knife and fork neatly side by side on her 
 plate, and tucking in her chin. ' I shall not be surprised if 
 they make him a bishop in the end. Very fortunate for your 
 sister if it should prove so.' 
 
 ' Very. I do hope it may,' replied Felix. 
 
 He often imitated unconsciously. If he saw any one fre- 
 quently make an odd gesture he could scarcely help reproducing
 
 FELIX 83 
 
 it. And now, in replying to Mrs. Bosanfield's ambitiously pious 
 aspiration, without being aware of it, he adopted her clipping, 
 yet churchy mode of speech. She stared at him for a moment 
 attentively, then said, ' Time will show,' in a finishing manner, 
 turned to the rector of the parish, who was on her other side, 
 and began to pronounce authoritatively on the special qualities 
 necessary to the making of a successful missionary to the 
 Chinese. 
 
 For a moment Felix sat looking straight before him down the 
 table. He caught a glimpse of his mother's white hair between 
 the silver candlesticks and the red roses. She was talking to 
 Mr. Ismey, whose melancholy eyes were turned in his direction. 
 Her son guessed that she was saying something about him, and 
 wondered what it was — not that it mattered. He felt strangely 
 detached from all these family doings, almost as if he were a 
 changeling dropped down into this room, familiar though it 
 was to him. Margot was speaking eagerly yet shyly to Stej.hen 
 Bosanfield, occasionally darting conscious glances at the other 
 guests to see if they were noticing her — adversely, no doubt. 
 Her fianc^ was eating some sweetbread with calm precision, like 
 a man fulfilling a duty with the unimpassioned dexterity that 
 comes of long thought and practice. As Felix glanced at him 
 he indulged in his favourite trick of moving his ears. Felix set 
 his lips together and stared hard at him, seized by a sort of 
 angry fascination. He saw Margot married to those ears, 
 living with them for the rest of her days, his sister with whom 
 he was so intimate, and yet whom surely he scarcely knew 
 at all. A sort of perplexity overcame him. The phantasma- 
 goria of human relations rendered him dizzy. What do we all 
 mean to each other ? He wondered. Everything and nothing. 
 
 ' Won't you speak to me at all ? ' said a drawling clear voice. 
 
 He started. Mrs. Ismey was looking at him with a half- 
 smile. 
 
 * I beg your pardon.* 
 
 'You feel very much out of it, don't you?' she continued. 
 
 Felix felt confused, but when he met her odd, yellowish eyes 
 he was conscious of a sense of ca7naradei-ie, and thought that if 
 he got to know this stranger well he could be very much at his 
 ease with her. 
 
 ' What makes you think so?' he asked, lowering his voice. 
 
 'Know so, you mean.' 
 
 ' Oh, but you can't know, Mrs. Ismey.' 
 
 He began confidently, ended with diffidence. 
 
 'You disapprove of family functions, so do I. Uneasy
 
 84 FELIX 
 
 geniality pervades them. They are a foretaste of — wait, don't 
 be shocked — I was only going to say Christmas.' 
 
 ' I didn't suppose ' 
 
 ' Indeed you did. So you really are the son of the house. I 
 can hardly believe it.' 
 
 She was looking at him critically. There was nothing on her 
 plate. Every one else was eating. 
 
 * Don't I look as if I was ? ' 
 
 ' No. Are you going to give your sister away to-morrow ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' How interesting. I shall watch your performance with the 
 keenest solicitude.' 
 
 Felix scarcely knew whether to laugh or to feel vexed. It 
 startled him to find his thoughts being accurately read by a 
 total stranger, whose thoughts he was unable to read in return, 
 and he glanced at his companion half-scared, half-excited. 
 How pretty her hair was. He admired her eyebrows very 
 much too, but found the shape of her nose distinctly dis- 
 appointing. 
 
 ' Yes, everybody thinks that,' she said. ' It 's very hard for 
 me, but I can't help it.' 
 
 This time Felix was thoroughly taken aback, and showed it 
 in schoolboy fashion. 
 
 ' I wasn't at all thinking — I mean I don't agree at all with — 
 with — that is ' 
 
 ' Never mind,' she interrupted indulgently. ' I 'm not sensi- 
 tive. In fact, I 'm rather conceited than otherwise, and believe 
 that my good points outweigh my bad ones. Let 's change the 
 subject. Isn't Stephen Bosanfield sublime to-night? He's the 
 most self-possessed man I know, and I never can make up my 
 mind whether his self-possession springs from his limitations or 
 his talents.' 
 
 She had lowered her voice, but still spoke with the drawl. 
 Felix began to like it, and to feel as if she and he were apart 
 from the rest, from the feeding, contented family-party, in a 
 world of their own, rather startling, but decidedly invigorating. 
 
 ' You think the former, I know,' she added quietly. 
 
 By this time Felix was thoroughly roused. Her impudence 
 bred an answering impudence — impudence of self-defence — 
 in him. 
 
 'No, I don't,' he said boldly. 
 
 'So you can lie,' she remarked, 'and quite well too, without 
 the passing tremor that is so traitorous to the desire to be 
 sinful. Be careful, Mr. Wilding ; that faculty may lead you
 
 FELIX 85 
 
 far into the unknown when you 're — well, shall I say out of 
 leading strings ? ' 
 
 ' Well, you are — you are jolly ' 
 
 'Jolly what?' 
 
 'I mean, you don't care what you say.* 
 
 * As long as I am speaking the truth,' she said maliciously. 
 'No, thank you.' This was to the butler, who offered her 
 another course. 
 
 ' You aren't eating anything,' exclaimed Felix anxiously. 
 
 The welfare of this curious person suddenly seemed to him 
 of the greatest importance. 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'But why not?' 
 
 ' Simply because I 'm not at all hungry just now. I dare say 
 I shall eat in the night.' 
 
 ' What 1 in bed ? ' said Felix, with very youthful bluntness. 
 
 * Exactly, in bed. Are you shocked? Well, so is Mr. Ismey. 
 At least he used to be. I shall never forget the first time he 
 found an anchovy sandwich under my pillow in the morning.' 
 
 ' Ah, I see you 're laughing at me, but I don't mind. 
 Besides, I think you laugh at everybody.' 
 
 'So you're turning thought -reader. But doesn't Mrs. 
 Bosanfield want to say something to you about church con- 
 gresses?' 
 
 Felix glanced round quickly, but Mrs. Bosanfield merely 
 pouted her lips at him and turned again to her rector. He 
 heard her saying : 
 
 'The case of a precentor is very different. I have met 
 precentors all my life, and I have always found them unduly 
 musical. They are prone to exalt the quality of sound emitted 
 above the sentiment which prompts the utterance. I would 
 far rather hear a hymn sung out of tune by one who truly 
 means it than the most perfect warbling by an inattentive 
 chorister.' 
 
 ' What a pity you are not one of the cloth,' said Mrs. Ismey. 
 'Then you could engage her attention, or even sing a hymn 
 with her out of tune.' 
 
 ' I 'd far rather engage yours. 
 
 'Well, you do.' 
 
 ' But I feel you 're criticising me, and laughing at me all the 
 time.' 
 
 He spoke half sorely. She was such a very cool hand. 
 
 'Not all,' she replied. 'I have my moments of mental 
 repose and gravity, I assure you.'
 
 86 FELIX 
 
 ' Are you ever serious ? ' 
 
 ' Never at a family-dinner. On such an occasion frivolity is 
 one's only salvation.' 
 
 Felix saw an opening here to ask a question that had been 
 puzzling him a good deal. 
 
 ' May I — d' you mind my asking you something? * he said. 
 
 ' No — so long as it isn't my age,' she replied. 
 
 * Mrs. Ismey ! As if I should ' 
 
 'You recognise that my maturity puts such an idea out of 
 court. Well, what is it?' 
 
 'Are you Stephen Bosanfield's old friend?* 
 
 'What do you suppose?' 
 
 'Why — that your husband is.' 
 
 ' Yes. His mother was an intimate of Mrs. Bosanfield's, and 
 was devoted to your future brother-in-law. My husband and he 
 have been quite like relations all their lives. So here we are, 
 down from London to bless the nuptials.' 
 
 ' You live in London ! ' said Felix with deep interest. 
 
 ' Of course, Green Street, Park Lane. Don't you know who 
 my husband is ?' 
 
 ' No. Ought I to ? You see, I 'm a — we 're awfully out of 
 everything here.' 
 
 ' Are you ? Still, I suppose books penetrate even to this 
 remote region — thirty miles, isn't it, from the metropolis?' 
 
 ' Books ! ' exclaimed Felix with growing excitement, ' Is he 
 an author?' 
 
 ' Heaven forefend ! I don't want to leave Green Street for 
 West Kensington. Haven't you heard of Ismey the publisher?' 
 
 ' Ismey — of course ! ' 
 
 'Well, we are Ismey. Impressive, isn't it?* 
 
 To Felix it was very impressive, but, meeting her humorous 
 eyes, he suddenly did not care to acknowledge that, to him, it 
 was an event to meet the head of a great publishing-house ; 
 one who must be in perpetual and close relations with those 
 mysterious beings who, like Balzac, created populations and 
 played upon the hearts and imaginations of the world. Still, 
 he could not quite stifle his excitement and curiosity, though he 
 did his best to control them. 
 
 'Then I suppose you know a great many writers?' he said, 
 trying to speak indifferently. 
 
 ' Oh yes — far too many.* 
 
 *Too many? ' 
 
 * They seldom shine in conversation.* 
 'Still, you know they are clever.'
 
 FELIX • 87 
 
 • My dear boy ! what do you mean ?' 
 
 She was smihng mischievously over her square of tablecloth, 
 on which was no plate. Now she opened her fan and began to 
 use it rhythmically. 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' she repeated. 
 
 Felix felt a little nettled. 
 
 •Why, that they've got brains, of course,' he exclaimed. 
 
 'The power of moving a pen, often ungrammatically, over 
 foolscap does not always imply that. But are you a worshipper 
 of lion-cubs?' 
 
 ' I don't know. I mean I 've never met any, but I certainly 
 have — well, I suppose you'd call it worshipped some one who 
 wrote.' 
 
 'And who's been nice enough to stop writing?' 
 
 * He 's dead,' Felix said abruptly. 
 
 Suddenly his imagination flew back to Tours, and he saw the 
 statue in the twilight. He forgot to be sensitive any more in 
 the presence of this cynical observer. His self-consciousness 
 departed, driven out by the real enthusiasm that burnt like a 
 fire within him whenever he thought of the magician who had 
 opened to him the gates of the world. And, turning on Mrs. 
 Ismey with sparkling eyes, he said almost defiantly : 
 
 'And I do worship him, whether you laugh at me or not.' 
 
 The smile on her lips became suddenly less satirical and 
 much more kind. 
 
 'Who is it?' she asked quite gently. 
 
 ' Balzac,' said Felix. ' I 've been living in France, you know, 
 near Tours.' 
 
 ' The very land of the magician ! ' she said with vivacity. 
 *That accounts for it' 
 
 ' For what ? ' asked Felix. 
 
 ' Oh, many things ; why it struck me as so strange that you 
 should be the son of this house for one. So you love Balzac. 
 Which of his books have you re? 1 ? ' 
 
 'All of them.' 
 
 She examined him with an attention that seemed profound. 
 
 'All? How old are you?' 
 
 'Twenty.' 
 
 *And how much of life have you seen — actually seen for 
 yourself? ' 
 
 Felix looked a little shamefaced, 
 
 ' How much? Oh, well— scarcely any, I suppose. I 've just 
 been to school — Rugby — and here, and in France — quite in the 
 country.'
 
 88 FELIX 
 
 She looked pleased. 
 
 'Delicious,' she said. * What a debut \ It ought to be 
 eccentric and superb.' 
 
 She was silent, with her eyes on him. Her thick eyebrows 
 were drawn together. She looked quite dreamy, Felix thought. 
 Yet her gaze was piercing. Her last words had roused all the 
 romance in him, and some of the latent vanity of untried youth. 
 The sound of them was musical and sonorous to him, and 
 suggested a pageant of beautiful grotesques. 
 
 There was a rustling movement in the room. Mrs. Wilding 
 was getting up. The intent look died out of Mrs. Ismey's eyes. 
 She shut her fan. Already Mrs. Bosanfield was waddling to- 
 wards the door, her plump bosom protruded, her chin tucked 
 in. Dinner had rendered her priestly pursiness more striking 
 than ever. Mrs. Ismey leaned towards Felix. 
 
 ' Go and make friends with my husband,' she said. 
 
 She followed Mrs. Bosanfield, looking, Felix thought, like 
 Circe in the wake of Mrs. Trimmer. He had no notion what 
 Mrs. Trimmer had looked like when she inhabited the flesh 
 and wrote her history, but the name suggested to him some- 
 thing English, orthodox, that wore a white pork-pie cap, waddled, 
 and knew all about precentors. 
 
 When the door shut behind Margot, who was the last of the 
 little procession of women, Felix obeyed Mrs. Ismey's injunction, 
 and, carrying his glass of wine with him, went to sit down 
 beside her husband. Stephen Bosanfield promptly closed in 
 on Mr. Ismey's other side. The archdeacon and the Indian 
 judge had already fallen into a desultory conversation on the 
 disadvantages of black blood, and the grievous events that 
 follow on mixed marriages in the far East. The archdeacon 
 stroked his cathedral beard, the judge crumbled his bread 
 between his lemon-coloured fingers, sipped his port, and became 
 informing. He had dined well, and his imagination began to 
 glow gently as it played about the hot Indian plains. Felix 
 was half inclined to listen, but Mr. Ismey greeted him with : 
 
 ' Your mother has been telling me about your stay in France. 
 So you wouldn't go to Oxford?' 
 
 * I didn't care to,' answered Felix, feeling suddenly shy. 
 
 'Well,' said Mr. Ismey kindly, 'if the disinclination was 
 strong, probably Oxford wouldn't have done very much for you.' 
 
 'Oh, but surely that might have been the very thing to make 
 it doubly admirable,' said Stephen Bosanfield, pouring some 
 water into a wine-glass. ' Discipline is always so precious.' 
 
 Felix darted an impatient glance at him.
 
 FELIX 89 
 
 *Ah, Stephen, you always adored the hair shirt,' said Mr. 
 Ismey. ' But whether the hair shirt, worn in early youth, is 
 calculated to foster the saint in a man or to create the mis- 
 anthrope depends, I suspect, upon the nature that wears it.' 
 
 ' Do you think so ? ' Stephen said with, to Felix, very un- 
 expected mildness. 
 
 Mr. Ismey evidently had some influence upon the uncom- 
 promising priest. As to Felix, already he felt drawn to this 
 melancholy-looking but handsome man, who surely understood 
 him. 
 
 ' I do,' Mr. Ismey answered. ' And even in much later life 
 discipline, as you call it, might easily tend to the embittering of 
 a nature.' 
 
 He sighed, then suddenly seemed to put away some sad 
 memory or fear that was assailing him. 
 
 ' What part of France were you in ?' he asked Felix. 
 
 Felix told him. The shadow came again over his face. 
 
 'Ah, I have made the pilgrimage to Tours,' he said slowly. 
 
 ' Didn't you meet your wife there for the first time, Francis?' 
 Stephen asked rather abruptly. 
 
 'Yes, in the hotel. She was touring with Lady Caroline 
 Hurst among the chateaux.' 
 
 Mr. Ismey's voice had slightly altered. It sounded harder, 
 Felix thought. 
 
 ' I met Lady Caroline once,' Stephen said ; ' at your house, 
 if you remember. I can't say I liked her.' 
 
 ' She is a woman typical of her day.' 
 
 'If she is typical,' rejoined Stephen, in his most narrow and 
 firm manner, 'the day must have come to a pretty pass.' 
 
 Felix suddenly felt certain that he would like Lady Caroline 
 immensely if he knew her. 
 
 Mr. Ismey looked at Felix, who was listening to the con- 
 versation with his usual ardour. The bright eyes of the boy, 
 his air of vivid alertness, seemed to strike the older man. 
 
 'And what are you going to do with your life?' he asked 
 kindly. ' Something definite, I feel sure.' 
 
 Felix longed to give some expression to his passionate desire 
 to grasp hands with the great world, but the prim red face of 
 Stephen subdued him. He could not speak before that con- 
 scientious spectator, so he only answered, rather shortly, and 
 with a slightly awkward air: 
 
 • Oh, I hardly know yet. You see, I 've been back a very 
 short time.' 
 
 ' No doubt you will want to take your mother's advice in the
 
 90 FELIX 
 
 matter,' said Stephen, finishing his glass of water, and dabbing 
 his Hps with a napkin. 
 
 Felix was on the point of saying brusquely, *No, I shan't,' 
 but he checked himself in time. 
 
 * Of course, when the moment comes, I shall talk it over with 
 her,' he said. 
 
 'The advice of such a mother could not but be invaluable,' 
 continued Stephen, placing the napkin, neatly folded together, 
 on the table and clasping his hands across his chest. 
 
 This second remark irritated Felix so much that he could not 
 resist his inclination to show his vexation. 
 
 ' Even the best woman in the world may not be able to judge 
 for a man,' he said rather hotly. 
 
 'You think not? Well, all I can say is that I would rather 
 take my mother's opinion on a point than that of any one I 
 know,' returned Stephen equably. 
 
 'Surely it depends on what the point is,' said Felix. 
 
 But here Mr. Ismey broke in gently and turned the con- 
 versation into another channel. Nevertheless, when the men 
 got up to go into the drawing-room, Felix was still fuming, hot 
 with a most useless resentment against the unimpassioned priest. 
 
 They found Mrs. Bosanfield seated on the sofa beside Margot, 
 quite evidently engaged in probing to its depths the character 
 of her future daughter-in-law, who in an obsequious attitude, 
 and with eyes that begged frantically for a favourable verdict, 
 was replying with uneasy volubility to her searching questions. 
 Mrs. Wilding and Mrs. Ismey were sitting together at a little 
 distance. The latter looked decidedly bored, and turned round 
 eagerly to welcome the arrival of the men. Felix went up to 
 her at once. He remembered afterwards that all the other 
 people in the room seemed to him like pale shadows from which 
 she stood out with an extraordinary sharp clearness and meaning. 
 His mother smiled at him gently. There was a sort of pleading 
 for some filial attention in her great, soft eyes, but he did not 
 notice it. Mr. Ismey and Stephen began to talk to her. Mrs. 
 Ismey got up. 
 
 ' What dear old-fashioned lattice-windows you have here,' 
 she said. 
 
 She moved towards the farther one, which was partly open. 
 Felix followed her. As she passed a mirror he saw that she 
 turned her head and glanced into it quickly. Reaching the 
 window, she put her right hand on the sill and looked out. 
 
 'There's moonhght,' she said. 'And, oh, what a delicious 
 garden 1 '
 
 FELIX 91 
 
 Felix suddenly felt proud of his home. 
 
 'Do you like it?' he asked, standing beside her. 
 
 The thick yew hedge that grew along the high bank of the 
 sunken road looked as black as ebony in the night, and almost 
 as unyielding. The short grass of the smooth lawn, which 
 stretched from it to the narrow path of pale-yellow gravel that 
 ran by the house, was silvered by the moon and chequered by 
 the steady shadows of the tall old trees. There was no wind, 
 not even the lightest breeze. The outline of the church, where 
 Margot would be married on the morrow, was defined against 
 the cloudless, black-purple, night sky. Bats were wheeling 
 about. They came swiftly out of the obscurity of the trees, 
 slanted downwards across the radiance of the moonlight, circled 
 round, and returned into the darkness, as if disappointed in some 
 anxious, perpetual quest which could only be followed surrep- 
 titiously. 
 
 ' Would your mother think me very unconventional if I asked 
 to go out into that paradise just for a moment?' said Mrs. 
 Ismey, half turning towards Felix, still with one hand on the 
 window-sill. 
 
 'No. Oh, do come out!' he answered eagerly. 'I should 
 love to show you the garden.' 
 
 Because she called it a paradise he felt that indeed it 
 was one. 
 
 ' Mother,' he exclaimed, ' Mrs. Ismey wants to see the garden.' 
 
 'What, dear?' said Mrs. Wilding, stopping in her talk with 
 Mr. Ismey and Stephen Bosanfield. 
 
 ' May I just have a peep into your garden ? ' said Mrs. Ismey, 
 coming down the room. ' It looks like enchanted ground 
 to-night.' 
 
 'But aren't you afraid of catching cold?' said Mrs. Wilding. 
 * It's always so damp at night.' 
 
 ' Nonsense, mater — damp ! Why, it's as dry as a bone.' 
 
 'I'm impervious to cold. Am I not, Francis?' said Mrs. 
 Ismey to her husband. 
 
 ' I dare say,' he answered gravely. 
 
 ' Well, do put on my shawl, at any rate,' said Mrs. Wilding, 
 with the most genuine solicitude. 
 
 Felix saw Mrs. Ismey look at its thin blackness with humorous 
 dismay, but she took it at once and put it over her shoulders. 
 
 ' There ! ' she said. ' Now I 'm safe. Thank you so much. 
 Which way is it ? ' 
 
 ' I '11 show you,* said Felix engerly. 
 
 He was longing to be out in the silence of the garden, ard
 
 92 FELIX 
 
 was in dread lest any one — his uncle, perhaps, or the archdeacon 
 — should offer to join the party and destroy all possibility of 
 pleasure. Under the influence of this fear he opened the door 
 into the garden hall with extraordinary quickness, and looked 
 into Mrs. Ismey's face with such beckoning anxiety that she left 
 the drawing-room like a flash. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' she whispered, as he swiftly shut the door. 
 'What's the matter?' 
 
 ' I didn't want any of the others to come. That 's all. We 
 go through here.' 
 
 As they stepped out on to the gravel, she said plaintively, 
 'But how selfish you are. I wished the archdeacon to come.' 
 
 ' Not really ? ' 
 
 •But I did!' 
 
 ' Archdeacons and moonlight don't go well together,' said Felix. 
 
 He was feeling pleasantly audacious and happy. This even- 
 ing, which he had expected to be so wearisome and trying, was 
 turning out one of the most interesting of his life. There was 
 a heat of eagerness in his soul. A flood of activity, mental and 
 physical, seemed to well up in him, prompting him to energies, 
 but of what nature he could not tell. He only knew that, as 
 when he stood on the bridge over the Loire, he had a violent 
 desire to accomplish something, to find an outlet for his abrupt 
 and vehement ardour. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey looked at his eyes with her curious yellowish ones, 
 and said : 
 
 ' Why, what is it you want to do ? ' 
 
 Felix struck his hand down against his side with an almost 
 comically young action. 
 
 'It's too much — you're always knowing what one 's feeling, 
 like that,' he exclaimed. 'Why should I want to do anything? ' 
 
 ' I don't know. It 's inappropriate of you on such a night.' 
 
 'So it is,' said Felix, suddenly realising the patient peace of 
 nature. 
 
 Under the great yew-tree, by the fuchsia it guarded, there 
 was a wooden seat curved in horse-shoe form. Mrs. Ismey 
 noticed it. 
 
 *I am going to sit there,' she said. 
 
 She moved along the path. Felix listened to the noise of her 
 green-and-gold dress on the gravel. It made a sudden diminu- 
 endo as she stepped on to the close-shaven lawn to gain the 
 seat, but still a delicate sound accompanied her. And he 
 thought how fascinating the sound of a woman is. He followed 
 lier, walking on tiptoe unconsciously, in an effort to be as
 
 FELIX 93 
 
 ethereal as he fancied her to be. She sat down, and at once 
 took off the icewool shawl. 
 
 'It was so sweet of your mother,' she said. 'But I really 
 don't need it.' 
 
 'You are much prettier without it,' Felix said. 
 
 But he did not look at her bare neck and bosom just then. 
 It seemed to him that it would be hasty and obvious to do so, 
 and like all other men. She was in the deep shadow of the yew 
 now. Only the tips of her shoes, which were embroidered with 
 gold, were reached by the moonlight because she stretched them 
 out to it. The shawl made a black blot in her lap, and her 
 hands, lying lightly on it, were as white as pearls. It was at 
 them that Felix looked. He did not want to touch them. 
 
 'To feel active, impetuous on a night like this is to feel 
 antagonistic to nature,' Mrs. Ismey said, resuming the thread 
 of her former words. ' Lots of people, especially men, live in 
 perpetual antagonism with nature. But are you one of them ?' 
 
 Felix began to wonder. 
 
 ' I hardly know,' he said. I hardly know what I am. But — 
 no, I don't think so.' 
 
 He stopped, looking down at the moonlit lawn. 
 
 ' Perhaps I am, though,' he went on. ' For sometimes extreme 
 quiet, or some very faint noise, like a river, or — or a woman's 
 dress rustling, makes me want to do some great deed. ' Isn't 
 it idiotic?' 
 
 At the end he had become self-conscious, and now glanced 
 at her anxiously, expecting the satirical demon that lurked in 
 her to peep out at him, 
 
 'I suppose it's never idiotic to want to do something great 
 unless you sit down to go on wanting,' she remarked. ' Do you 
 mean to do that?' 
 
 'Think about efforts instead of making them?' 
 
 * Exactly.' 
 
 ' I hope not.* 
 
 He was aware now that, with Mrs. Ismey, he felt far less 
 sure of himself, of his intelligence, his acuteness of observation, 
 his male superiority — and superiority to many males — than he 
 often did. 
 
 'You are uncertain about yourself. That's clever of you,' 
 she said. 
 
 'Clever! Why?' 
 
 'Very young people are generally quite certain about every- 
 thing, but especially about themselves. Oh ! ' 
 
 The exclamation was caused by the voice of the church clock,
 
 94 FELIX 
 
 whichbegan slowly to strike ten. They both listened till it ceased. 
 Felix stole a glance at his companion's face. He could not see 
 it very well. The shadow was too deep. But it seemed to him 
 that there was an expression of uneasiness or of acute impatience 
 on it. Yet that there should be was so unlikely that he thought 
 he must be mistaken. Doubtless the shade of the yew-tree 
 threw a strangeness upon her. When she spoke again he felt 
 quite certain it was so, for her voice was light and composed 
 as ever. 
 
 'I like uncertain people,' she said. 'And I believe women 
 often do. They are attracted most by men on whom they can't 
 rely. It's part of their general supreme idiocy.' 
 
 ' Oh, I say — you are hard on them, though.' 
 
 He glanced at her again, and again her eyes seemed to him 
 almost fierce with some desire, some anxiety. This time he 
 could not convince himself that he was tricked by the darkness, 
 and he began to feel uncomfortable, almost nervous. And now, 
 too, he thought, perhaps led by his nerves, that there was an 
 echo of Mrs. Ismey's face in her voice — the thing heard repeating 
 the significance of the thing seen. 
 
 ' We are idiots,' she said. ' We prove it by our actions every 
 day, every hour, by our marriages and our breaking of them, 
 our faith and our suspicions, our fickleness and our absurd 
 clinging to gods with whole bodies of clay as well as feet, our 
 renunciations and our — the things we seize on.' 
 
 She had put up one hand to her neck, and she now let it 
 slide softly over her bosom to the edge of her low bodice, 
 pushing her fingers down a little below the stuff. 
 
 'Oh, Mr. Wilding,' she said, 'I wish you would just go and 
 look in for a moment at the window. I 've got a sudden ridicu- 
 lous desire to know what they are all doing.' 
 
 'Of course I '11 go,' Felix answered, a good deal surprised. 
 
 The request was so very abrupt, and rather odd, too, he 
 thought. He got up and went towards the window. While he 
 was going, some impulse made him turn round to look back 
 across the moonlit grass at his companion, and he saw her bend 
 down swiftly, eagerly, without getting up from the bench. The 
 moon shone for a moment on her hair as she threw her head 
 forward in making the movement. Felix turned away and went 
 on. He had an odd idea that she had got rid of him intention- 
 ally for an instant. But why? There was a sort of passion in 
 the vitality of the movement he had just seen. It aroused a 
 strong burning curiosity in him. So sure did he feel tliat — 
 why, he could not imagine — Mrs. Ismey had only sent him to
 
 FELIX 95 
 
 the window in order to be alone, that he scarcely looked in. 
 He waited for two or three minutes on the path and then 
 returned slowly. She was leaning against the back of the seat, 
 not quite languidly, but as if she were expectant of a languor 
 which had not yet come upon her. She did not fail to question 
 Felix about the family-party, and so minutely that he began to 
 suppose his suspicion had been wrong, and that she had really 
 been inquisitive as to the proceedings in the drawing-room. 
 He answered as best he could. 
 
 ' Oh, you 've dropped that blessed old shawl,' he said presently. 
 
 ' No, have I ? ' 
 
 He picked it up. 
 
 ' Yes. I suppose it was when you leant forward.* 
 
 •I!' 
 
 He thought her voice sounded sharp. 
 
 'Yes,' he said. 'Just after I started to go to the window.' 
 
 ' Oh, of course. I wanted to feel whether the grass was 
 damp. What your mother said, you know. It was quite dry.' 
 
 Felix touched the lawn with his left hand, which was on the 
 side away from Mrs. Ismey. There was dew on it. They sat 
 in silence for several minutes. She seemed to have lost some of 
 her vivacity, and Felix was plunged in an excitement of thought 
 which led him down blind alkys. The sound of a chord struck 
 on the piano in the drawing-room startled him. It seemed 
 intensely artificial heard out of doors. Mrs. Ismey moved 
 slightly on the seat. A bat crossed the space of moonlight in 
 front of them, descended, and flew round and round close to 
 the grass. Tlie sound of the piano continued, and then Margot's 
 voice was audible. She sang a few notes and was joined by a 
 tenor. She and Stephen Bosanfield were uniting in a most 
 domestic English duet. The latter sang neatly and with some 
 skill. Margot's quality of voice was deliciously pure. But there 
 was an absence of passion, of excitement, which irritated I'clix 
 at this moment. He did not stop to think that any violence 
 would have been unsuitable imposed upon the very respectable 
 composition they were inter]. rcling. Selfishly he craved for a 
 volume of sound that would fit in with, or interpret, his mental 
 condition. He would have liked a languid and mysterious air, 
 — Indian, perhaps— growing gradually into excitement like a 
 cleverly written story. The English words, which he could 
 hear distinctly, worried him. They were so quietly and un- 
 meaningly sentimental, so humdrum in their decent baldness. 
 But no doubt they were very correct, fitting the occasion. 
 Indeed, he presently began to think that they were mildly
 
 96 FELIX 
 
 prophetic of the married life of the two people who warbled 
 them, pleasantly, carefully, rather inflexibly. 
 
 'Who is that singing with Stephen Bosanfield?' asked 
 Mrs. Ismey, 'Your sister?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'It's quite delicious,' she said. 
 
 He looked at her in surprise, and saw that her eyes were 
 shut, and that her attitude was that of a woman resting 
 volu[)tuously in a condition of the most perfect physical and 
 mental ease. She was leaning backward and sideways, one 
 arm outstretched along the curved wooden rail of the seat, and 
 as he looked at her she let her head droop till her cheek rested 
 on this arm. She sighed. 
 
 ' Delicious,' she repeated. * Like a dream. I could listen to 
 it for ever.' 
 
 The respectable English voices went peacefully on inter- 
 preting the respectable English music. Felix listened, and 
 watched his companion, and felt confused. It seemed to him 
 unnatural and disappointing that Mrs. Ismey should be affected 
 in this way by the very sounds that fought against a similar 
 mood in him. He was almost angry with her. Then it 
 occurred to him that she might be acting. He knew — none 
 better, for he had studied the lives of all the Balzac women — 
 that women of the world are enormmisly deceptive. Of course, 
 at this moment Mrs. Ismey was being deceptive. He resolved 
 to show her that he was no fool, young though he was. 
 
 'Why do you tell fibs?' he said. 'You know you hate that 
 music. Why, it simply slaps the night in the face.' 
 
 'Hush!' she said softly. 'Don't. A speaking voice hurts 
 me.' 
 
 Felix felt hot all over. She had said the words so exactly, 
 as if she really meant them, that he had the sensation of being 
 thoroughly snubbed. But the slim figure, leaning sideways, 
 seemed to him deliciously graceful and sleepy. The posture 
 of it, too, expressed, he fancied, a sense of intimacy with him. 
 He gazed at her, and his momentary anger died away, and he 
 began to wonder what beautiful women look like when they 
 are asleep — surely very pathetic and eerie. It struck him that 
 he had never seen a woman asleep. What thousands of things 
 he hnd never seen, and so had to see. That was both dreadful 
 and glorious. 
 
 The music stopped. After a moment Mrs. Ismey lifted her 
 head from her arm, and sat up, placing her hands palm down- 
 irards on the seat. She was looking straight before her, and
 
 FELIX 97 
 
 moving her Ups, but without opening them. And that action 
 gave to Felix a most forcible impression of a person struggling 
 to wake up, to come back out of a dream. Some one looked 
 out from the drawing-room window. Mrs. Wilding's voice 
 said : 
 
 ' They will catch their deaths of cold.' 
 
 'Valeria!' called a man's voice. 'Valeria!' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey got up slowly, stood for a moment resting her 
 hand on the back of the bench, and then moved across the 
 grass followed by Felix. 
 
 ' Well ? ' she said, reaching the path by the window. 
 
 Mr. Ismey was looking out. 
 
 'The fly has come,' he said. 
 
 He drew back into the room. Mrs. Ismey looked at Felix. 
 Her expression was much less vivacious than it had been at 
 dinner, but a little light of humour flitted across it as she 
 said: 
 
 ' It seems rather hard to drive away from Paradise in a fly, 
 doesn't it?' 
 
 Her remark finished in a stifled yawn. 
 
 ' Forgive me,' she added. ' I am a little tired after the 
 journey down.' 
 
 'Ah, and you ate nothing ! ' Felix said, almost reprovingly. 
 
 'I shall eat in the night.' 
 
 In the moonlight he thought he saw a sudden gleam of quick 
 anticipation dawn and die out in her eyes. 
 
 When the guests who were not staying in the house had 
 gone, Mrs. Wilding bade good-night to the others. She looked 
 almost haggard with fatigue, but still tried to be bright in her 
 gentle way. As she was going slowly upstairs with Margot she 
 turned to Felix, who was lighting his bedroom candle in the 
 hall, and said to him : 
 
 'Can you come into my room for a minute, Felix? I won't 
 keep you.' 
 
 ' All right,' he replied. 
 
 His voice sounded rather ungracious. He was longing to be 
 shut up in his bedroom alone with his thoughts. 
 
 'Well, mater, what is it?' he said, a moment later, entering 
 the long low room which looked on to the churchyard. 
 
 Margot was there standing by her mother. There were tears 
 in her eyes. Mrs. Wilding, too, looked deeply moved. 
 
 'We only wanted to say good-night to you here, Felix,' she 
 said. 'You see this is the last night we three shall be together 
 as — as we have been. The old times are over now.' 
 
 G
 
 98 FELIX 
 
 Margot kissed her brother. The tears were running down 
 her face. 
 
 'Good-night, dear FeUx,' she whispered. 'Thank — thank 
 you for everything.' 
 
 ' God bless you, my boy,' said his mother, also kissing him. 
 ' I pray that some day you may be happy in the same way as 
 Margot.' 
 
 Felix put his arms round her, thinking of his dead father, of 
 all his mother had lost. Her pure and perfect unselfishness 
 went home to him just then. It hurt him, and made him 
 wonder if he would ever have the courage and the nobility, 
 when his time of the joys of youth was past, to lead a new life 
 in the hearts of others. He did not believe he could. The 
 idea even held something horrible to him. He went out and 
 left his mother and sister together. And he shut the door 
 softly, as men shut the door of a shadowy church when they 
 leave it.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 TWO days had passed since Margot's wedding. Mrs. Wilding 
 and Felix were alone in Hill House. Their guests having 
 gone, they were able fully to realise what sort of pap the 
 departure of Margot had left in their lives. Felix felt that the 
 gap in his was unexpectedly large. In his home he was quite 
 lost without his sister. He had never known Hill House with- 
 out her. She had always been very much at his service. He 
 had been accustomed to hear her clear voice singing in the 
 mornings, to ride with her, to scold her, to stir her up. Her 
 very Inziness- had become dear to him. He knew it now, and 
 missed that which had daily aggravated him. What his mother 
 missed he did not think about. He was wholly intent upon 
 himself, wholly resolved to get away as soon as possible from 
 this altered house, in which there was an atmosphere which 
 made him think unpleasantly of age, and of the changes brought 
 by passing years. 
 
 The last thing Mrs. Ismey had said to him, before she drove 
 away after the departure of the bride and bridegroom, had 
 been : 
 
 ' Au revoir, Mr. Wilding. Come to see us in London if you 
 are ever there. We shall be settled in Green Street by the first 
 week in October.' 
 
 He could still recall her exact expression as she spoke, 
 turning sideways in the carriage, her eyes sparkling with 
 pleasure at the prospect of escaping from a function that must 
 have bored her very much. She was dressed in pale blue, with 
 a blue-and-white hat which Felix thought most marvellously 
 impertinent, and she looked rather like a beautifully arranged 
 doll prepared for a bazaar. But, when she smiled, her face 
 held nothing of the petulant vacancy of a doll. Mr. Ismey at 
 her side seemed almost inappropriately melancholy. He was 
 very kind, however, and erhoed her invitation with meaning. 
 
 'Yes, come and see us,' he said. 'And if I can do anything 
 for you in town I shall he glad to. You are Ste['hcn'.s hrother- 
 
 08
 
 100 FELIX 
 
 in-law now, and he is my oldest friend. I might be able to 
 help you.' 
 
 Felix wondered at his evidently strong regard for Stephen, 
 then accounted for it by remembering the fact that they had 
 known each other all their lives. Apparently people who have 
 known each other all their lives are forced by some mysterious 
 process of nature to be at the least vaguely attached. This 
 marriage, which he disliked, had brought Felix one advantage, 
 his acquaintance with the Ismeys. He meant to improve it. 
 As he knew so few people in London, he found himself in- 
 carnating the women of the great world in Mrs. Ismey. Much 
 of what he had imagined she had doubtless experienced. In- 
 stead of fancies she had records. He wondered what her great 
 friend. Lady Caroline Hurst, was like. He wondered — well, he 
 wondered very much about Mrs. Ismey. There was something 
 in her that put his soul on the qui vive. At the beginning of 
 October she would be settled in London. He resolved to be 
 settled there too by that time. As what? In what capacity, 
 what profession? He did not trouble very much about that. 
 He was young. There was time enough — time enough for 
 everything except sitting still with folded hands in the house at 
 Churston Waters. 
 
 Now that Margot was gone, and Mrs. Wilding found herself 
 alone with her son, she felt nervous. Their new relation was 
 that of strangers, who were nevertheless intimate. FeUx's lapse 
 into tenderness on the night before the wedding had been b'lt 
 a momentary lapse, not the beginning of a settled policy of 
 gentle consideration for this very lonely woman who was his 
 mother. The barrier was still there between them. She was 
 conscious of it, and more acutely now that they were by them- 
 selves. In her silent and concealed grief for the loss of Margot 
 she felt timid. Painfully aware of her deep sensitiveness and 
 dependence, she was unusually anxious to seem cheerful and 
 not to be a drag upon her boy. Never before had she realised 
 so thoroughly the gulf that lies between youth and age. Now 
 it seemed to her as if her years and fatigue were almost crimes, 
 things to be ignored if possible, hidden. Sincere though she 
 was she began rather helplessly to try to play a part. She 
 strove to appear lively, vigorous. But her face was pale and the 
 words came with difficulty. The exertions she had made in 
 settling the details of the wedding must certainly have tried her 
 severely. A heavy exhaustion rested upon her and would not 
 be banished. She feared it made her very dull. 
 
 'Mater,' said Felix, when they were alone together in the
 
 FELIX 101 
 
 drawing-room after their rather silent dinner, 'I suppose eight 
 hundred a year 's enough for one person to live upon very well, 
 even in a big town, isn't it?' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding, who was knitting, looked up from her work. 
 There was an expression of anxiety in her dark eyes. 
 
 'Yes, I suppose so, Felix,' she answered. 
 
 She paused a moment, then she added gently : 
 
 'Of course city life is much more expensive and much less 
 wholesome than life in the country.' 
 
 'That's so like you, mater, talking as if everybody got into 
 debt and died young in London.' 
 
 *I didn't mean to say that. Still ' 
 
 • I know, mater, you think every one ought to live just as you 
 do. But you must see that I can't.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding suppressed a sigh and answered cheerfully : 
 
 ' I am not quite so stupid as I may seem. Of course you 
 have your life before you. Mine is behind me. But what is it 
 you want to do?' 
 
 She laid down her knitting. Instinctively she felt that a 
 decisive moment had arrived, and tried to summon up the 
 father in the bosom of the mother. 
 
 ' In a few months you will have your own money, as Margot has 
 hers,' she went on. 
 
 Felix was looking excited. The prospect of having his own 
 fortune and being his own master stirred him to elation. What 
 would he not be able to do in a few months? 
 
 'Yes, I know,' he said. 'Well, mater, I'd better say it at 
 once — I want to go and live in London.' 
 
 He looked his mother full in the face, half defiantly. Her 
 eyes met his gently. There was a slight mist over them, for 
 this was a very bitter moment to her. 
 
 ' You are tired of the country, Felix ? ' she said. ' Your — your 
 father was so fond of it.' 
 
 'I want to do something.' 
 
 •You don't think you would like to try ' 
 
 He interrupted her quickly. 
 
 ' I know. You're going to say farming. I 'd rather be dead 
 than be a farmer.' 
 
 'What do you fancy?' she asked, with apparent calmness. 
 
 'As I shall have a certain amount of money — enough to keep 
 the wolf a long way off— I should like to go in for something 
 artistic, something in which I m'pht make a name for myself.' 
 
 *Do you mean music or painting?' 
 
 'I'm not sure it won't be writing.'
 
 102 FELIX 
 
 'You don't think you could write best in the quiet of the 
 country?' 
 
 'No, mater, I don't. You forget I've got to see life, to know 
 men and women. But you don't understand, and I can't 
 explain. You see you've never had the chance of knowing 
 much about things. It's different for women, some women. 
 Of course there are people like Mrs. Ismey.' 
 
 'Do you think they are the liappiest women?' said his 
 mother. 
 
 'Oh, I don't know that happiness is the one aim of life,' said 
 Felix airily. 
 
 He stopped, then added abruptly: 
 
 'I say, mater, d'you like Mrs. Ismey?' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding hesitated a moment. Then she answered, 
 trying to put some cordiality into her voice : 
 
 ' I like her well enough.' 
 
 'That means you don't like her,' cried Felix hotly. 'I knew 
 you didn't. I felt it.' 
 
 'I don't dislike her at all,' she replied, very gently. 'I 
 scarcely know her. She is very kind and pleasant, and very 
 amusing.' 
 
 ' Oh, don't try to get out of it, mater. You 'd never hit it off 
 with her. She'd shock you, of course.' 
 
 ' I dare say she would find my company very dull. I have 
 lived so quietly that I suppose I seem behind the times. She 
 is a clever woman, probably, and accustomed to be with clever 
 people.' 
 
 ' I want to be with clever people,' said Felix. 'And for that 
 I must go to London.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding took up her knitting again and bent over it. A 
 dull red flush appeared on her face and spread to her neck. 
 Still keeping her eyes down she said, with a sort of delicate 
 attempt at being off-hand : 
 
 'There are a few months till you come of age, Felix.' 
 
 ' Yes, I know,' he answered, with impatience. ' Oh, I do wish 
 I was twenty-one to-day.' 
 
 * I think that — I dare say it is trying for you to lose Margot 
 and to see her in possession of her money before you are. I — 
 I should not like you to feel as if I were standing in your way 
 at all, and so you can have the use of such money as you need 
 for any reasonable purpose. I believe your father would have 
 wished that.' 
 
 'Oh, mater!' 
 
 An emotion he could hardly have defined or explained surged
 
 FELIX 103 
 
 into the boy's heart. Oddly enough it was half painful. Yet 
 there was an exultant joy in it too. 
 
 'I hi pe and think I can trust my son not to make any evil 
 use of his father's gift,' Mrs. Wilding added, in a low voice. 
 
 ' Mater, you are a brick,' said Felix. 
 
 His voice was husky for a moment. Indeed, he felt suddenly 
 as if he could cry. 
 
 'I must go and have a smoke in the garden,' he exclaimed. 
 
 He rushed off into the darkness. When he was gone some 
 tears dropped among some dropped stitches. The long drawing- 
 room, the world, were very lonely to the mother. She wondered 
 whether she was doing right, whether she ought to withhold 
 the money till Felix was of age. She was full of fears for him 
 in his freedom. Perhaps she was weak, but the sensation of 
 standing in his way by an exercise of authority, of knowing him 
 kept unwillingly at her side by lack of the means to leave her, 
 hurt her horribly. She shrank under this idea as under a blow. 
 Felix wished to go away from her and to stay away from her. 
 Yet he had only just returned after a long absence. It was that 
 absence which had given him his new taste for living his life 
 without her. A secret wound bled in Mrs. Wilding, but she had 
 not a moment of unkind, even of sore feeling against her boy. 
 She kept on telling herself that all this was natural, inevitable. 
 But that night, when she was alone in her bedroom, she pressed 
 her face against her pillow and cried long and silently. And 
 she wondered in her heart-sickness why^ — ? Why are life, love, 
 youth as they are? She wondered till her head throbbed and 
 ached, and the tears were burnt up as if by a fever flaming 
 behind her eyes. 
 
 In his room Felix, too, lay awake and saw in the darkness the 
 glad processions of London, arranged, perhaps, by a Parisian 
 master of ceremonies, dressed by Parisian costumiers. Mrs. 
 Ismey walked in them as one very sure of herself. He was 
 there too. But not his mother, not Margot, not Stephen Bosan- 
 field. What a strange and varied crowd it was. From the 
 houses on either side people looked out and showered down 
 flowers. And Felix thought that his name was on their lips. 
 
 He forgot one book of Balzac, the first that he had looked 
 into — Illusions Perdues. But if he had remembered it he would 
 have felt no fear of the future just then. The world had been 
 made for him as woman was made for man — sometimes to be 
 man's mother. 
 
 The first week in October found the leaves being swept from 
 the trees by an autumn gale and Felix in London.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HE came up with his mother. Mrs. Wilding made the 
 effort against his expressed desire. She said cheerfully 
 that she wished to settle him in and to see his new home. 
 There had been much discussion about that home and about 
 money matters generally. The withdrawal of her children 
 from Hill House made it necessary for Mrs. Wilding to reduce 
 her expenditure there. She had a little money of her own, 
 as well as her third share of her husband's fortune, but this 
 was not enough to keep the establishment going on its former 
 scale. The house was hers absolutely, and when she first 
 heard of Felix's plans for the future she considered whether 
 she ought not perhaps to give it up, and to take a smaller 
 one more suited to a solitary woman with a moderate income. 
 But she had taken deep root in her home. All her most 
 sacred associations clung around it. Here she had been a 
 bride, a mother, a widow. Here she had known in their ful- 
 ness two kinds of love. Here she had wept. Even her 
 tears — perhaps, indeed, those most of all — held her fast to 
 the place with invisible threads. She could not bear to go. 
 She resolved to sell such outlying land as there was, retain- 
 ing only the garden, to have fewer servants, and only to keep 
 one horse. 
 
 Felix was horrified when he heard of these proposed 
 changes. The heavens seemed falling. He argued hotly 
 against alteration in the way of life at Hill House. But Mrs. . 
 Wilding was gently firm. 
 
 ' I cannot afford to live alone as I have lived with Margot 
 and you,' she said, * It would be very wrong and selfish in 
 me. Indeed, I ought to save money.' 
 
 'Why?' exclaimed Felix. 
 
 'Some day you may wish to follow your sister's example,' 
 she answered. ' A little extra would come in very useful 
 then.' 
 
 ' But the horses ! You must keep them, mater. I shall 
 always be running down and — one horse ! It's preposterous ! * 
 
 Finally Mrs. Wilding agreed to keep one carriage-horse for 
 her own use and a saddle-horse for Felix, His remark about 
 
 104
 
 FELIX 105 
 
 ' running down ' influenced her powerfully. A sudden cheer- 
 fulness was born in her. Frankton Wells was only about an 
 hour by train from London. There was nothing to prevent 
 Felix from coming often, perhaps even once a fortnight. 
 
 * You might come pretty often for the Sunday ? ' she sug- 
 gested tentatively. 
 
 ' Of course I will — nearly every week, I dare say,' Felix 
 answered. 
 
 He was full of gay excitement and could afford to be 
 genial. For the prison doors were opening and freedom was 
 very near. 
 
 Nevertheless the necessary discussions with his mother 
 about London arrangements tried him sorely. They made 
 him feel his youth. He wished to grasp firmly his manhood. 
 Desiring knowledge so ardently, it was unpleasant to him to 
 be made to understand his ignorance. He knew nothing of 
 money matters. Even the frequent and elaborate financial 
 arrangements and expositions which occurred in the pages of 
 his deity had not made him practical. For a moment he 
 wondered that Balzac had done so little for him in this direc- 
 tion. Then he told himself that he was by nature an artist, 
 and that artists are seldom practical. His mother en- 
 deavoured to be so. Indeed, at this juncture she made a 
 call on all her powers, and even sought in her brain and 
 heart for worldly wisdom. 
 
 The great question was how and where Felix was to live. 
 Mrs. Wilding thought it would be best if he became a ' pay- 
 ing guest' in some nice family. But he would not hear of 
 this. He was resolved to live alone, either in rooms or in a 
 bachelor's flat. At first he had wished to choose some Bo- 
 hemian quarter of the town. Wild visions of a London 
 Quartier Latin floated before his eyes. He even persuaded 
 Mrs. Wilding to let him go up to London for a day to have a 
 look at Soho. He came back with one illusion lost. Never 
 had Hill House seemed to him more charming than on the 
 evening of his return from the regions round about Shaftes- 
 bury Avenue. The dreariness, the dirt, the narrow blackness 
 of the alleys swarming with miserable-looking foreign exiles 
 had depressed him to the soul. Yet had he read of them in 
 the pages of Balzac they would have filled him with desire. 
 The teeming life of them would have seemed glorious. He 
 did not think of that, but only that he would rather die than 
 live anywhere near Soho. St. John's Wood occurred to him. 
 Vaguely he recalled some talk he had heard of an artistic
 
 106 FELIX 
 
 colony established on breezy heights there, of musicians, 
 painters, authors, actors, a happy coterie of intellectual and 
 Bohemian creatures crammed with talent and with bonhomie. 
 But his mother, also vaguely, thought ill of the neighbour- 
 hood. She was sure she had heard that it was either un- 
 healthy or wicked, she was not sure which. Finally, since 
 Felix would not hear of entering a family, she suggested 
 writing to Mr. Ismey, to ask his advice. By this time Mar- 
 got and Stephen Bosanfield were settled in the rectory house 
 at Frankton Wells, and Stephen said he was sure his friend 
 would be delighted to help in the matter. Felix at first 
 shrank from the idea of owing anything to Stephen. On the 
 other hand, he was fascinated by the notion of getting into 
 communication with the Ismeys. The latter feeling tri- 
 umphed. The letter was written by Mrs, Wilding under the 
 close supervision of Felix and sent. After an interval of a 
 few days an answer came from Mr. Ismey, who was in France 
 at di plage. It was cordial. It suggested Felix's looking at 
 some small flats he knew of in Victoria Street, at Wellington 
 Mansions, asked what profession he was going to take up, 
 whether he meant to read for the bar, to go into business, or 
 what. Felix persuaded his mother to let him reply to this 
 letter, and in his answer could not prevent more than a hint 
 of his secret ardour for fame and an artistic life appearing. 
 He wrote, in fact, like an enthusiastic boy glowing at the 
 prospect before him. At the end he ventured to send a mes- 
 sage of remembrance to Mrs. Ismey. A second letter speedily 
 arrived from Mr. Ismey, and one that set Felix's heart beat- 
 ing fast. It suggested that Felix was as yet very young for 
 the writer's career, that it would probably be some time be- 
 fore he could make his way — if indeed he were destined to 
 succeed in doing so, on which Mr. Ismey was not in a posi- 
 tion to pronounce any opinion — and that, in the meanwhile, 
 perhaps he would like to have some employment which 
 would at least bring him to the portals of the temple of litera- 
 ture, and in which he might make acquaintances likely to be 
 of service to him hereafter. If this were so, Mr. Ismey told 
 him to call at the publishing-office when he came to London, 
 and added that there might be some post vacant there which 
 he could fill. 
 
 When he had laid down this communication Felix felt as if 
 his dearest wishes were on the point of fulfilment. But a 
 thought still more exciting and inspiring rushed into his 
 mind. He divined the influence of Mrs. Ismey in the letter.
 
 FELIX 107 
 
 Then, though she had laughed at him, she had seen that he 
 was not quite stupid, not quite ordinary. She had some faith 
 in him. A rapture of self-confidence filled him. He felt like 
 a conqueror. When his mother had seen the letter she re- 
 joiced too. She had been much afraid of Felix's going to 
 London with no definite occupation in prospect. Dreadful 
 accounts of the fates meted out to idlers in great cities had 
 recurred to her mind and thrilled her with alarm. Now 
 there was a reason for her son's departure. He was to work, 
 to be under supervision. She felt greatly comforted. A 
 small furnished flat was found in Wellington Mansions, It 
 cost three guineas a week, and service was included. This 
 would do for a beginning. Later on Felix might take and 
 furnish a flat of his own if he found that a London life really 
 suited him. The beginning of October came, and with it 
 the moment for the plunge. Then it was that Mrs, Wilding 
 announced her intention of accompanying her son to London. 
 
 * I can stay at the Grosvenor Hotel for one night,' she 
 said^ ' and settle you in.' 
 
 Felix protested quickly. He scarcely knew why. It was 
 not entirely because he did not wish to have his mother with 
 him for that first London evening. Indeed, now that the 
 moment for his debut had arrived, he was angrily aware of a 
 slightly sickening sensation of melancholy at the prospect of 
 living for the first time quite alone. But he remembered 
 Mrs. Ismey's words, that this debut would be 'eccentric and 
 superb.' Now there is nothing eccentric and superb in 
 travelling to town with one's mother, dining with her in an 
 hotel coffee-room, and being ' settled in ' by her with ma- 
 ternal injunctions and advice as to the avoidance of draughts, 
 the keeping of early hours, and the eating of wholesome and 
 nourishing food. So Felix protested. Yet he did so half- 
 heartedly. He was surprised to find that he secretly wanted 
 his mother to come, that there was something in him which, 
 at this moment, stretched out hands as if to cling to her. 
 His consciousness of this desirous, clinging, childish thing 
 — a soul within his soul — made him feel very reserved and 
 shy with her as they journeyed up to London together. He 
 hardly spoke to her at all, but read papers or looked out of 
 the window. His good-bye to Margot and Stephen Bosan- 
 field at the rectory had been quite cordial. Margot seemed 
 supremely happy as a married woman, although very self- 
 conscious in her new state. Stephen, too, seemed rather less 
 dry since he had become a liusband, and Felix now felt
 
 108 FELIX 
 
 bound to accept him as one of the family. Besides, he ap- 
 peared at present in a more important light. The boy could 
 not help thinking of him as the intimate friend of Mr, 
 Ismey, could not fail to understand that the clergyman was 
 not above returning good for evil. He had expressed the 
 greatest gratification at Mr. Ismey's proposition, and had 
 discreetly concealed his surprise — if he felt any — at Felix's 
 desertion of his mother so soon after Margot's marriage. 
 
 The train by which they travelled ran into Charing Cross 
 station soon after half-past four in the afternoon. It was a 
 wet and blustering day, and the station square looked infin- 
 itely dreary. Rows of hansoms and four-wheelers endured 
 the rain. The cabmen sat humped in shining mackintosh 
 capes. The horses drooped their heads. Moisture glistened 
 upon the paving stones. The corduroy worn by the per- 
 spiring porters gave out a suffocating smell. Mud was lifted 
 from the road by the wheels of passing omnibuses and dis- 
 tributed impartially upon the hurrying and preoccupied 
 foot-passengers. Even the eternal noise of the city sounded 
 damp. The Wildings engaged a four-wheeler with a red- 
 faced driver, who looked fairly sober but as if he wished he 
 were drunk. Felix had a great deal of luggage, and Mrs. 
 Wilding, seated anxiously inside the cab, issued through the 
 doorway directions as to its disposal, or expressed the fear- 
 ful certainty that much of it was lost. Her manner was 
 very definitely that of a country cousin. The porters smiled, 
 and Felix, standing on the pavement, reddened and wished 
 his mother would be quiet and leave things to him. He 
 thought she was making him ridiculous. At length every- 
 thing was arranged and he was about to tip the porters. But 
 he found that he had no small change, and was obliged to 
 ask Mrs. Wilding for some. She was warmly muffled up in 
 a cloak and had her icewool shawl wound about her throat. 
 She could not find her purse, and had to get up in the cab in 
 order to seek for it. This was a matter of time, and Felix 
 stood at the door, flanked by porters, and scarlet with vex- 
 ation and impatience. He felt as if the eyes of all London 
 we're upon them. Mrs. Wilding, bending forward, dived 
 into the back recesses of her costume. Her shawl fell off 
 on to the greasy stones. 
 
 'For God's sake make haste, mater !' whispered Felix 
 fiercely snatching up the shawl. 
 
 When the porters had at length been paid, and the cab 
 rattled slowly down the incline to the gates, the perspiration
 
 FELIX 109 
 
 stood on his face. He turned his shoulder to his mother 
 and glared out of the window, which was open. 
 
 ' I think perhaps we had better have the window up,' said 
 Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 ' Why on earth ? ' 
 
 * It is dreadfully damp.* 
 
 * Well, if you want us to be suffocated ! ' he retorted. 
 
 He pulled the window up with a jerk. It stuck. At that 
 moment Felix felt as if he could dash his hand through it. 
 He struggled with it, but in vain. 
 
 ' Never mind,' said his mother. * Perhaps it is better to 
 have some air.' 
 
 Her voice sounded rather tremulous. She put her shawl 
 over her mouth and leaned back in her corner. Felix did 
 not speak to her once till they were in Victoria Street, which 
 looked excessively dark and dreary. Then he said, without 
 turning to her : 
 
 ' Hadn't we better go on to the hotel first ?' 
 
 * Oh no, I should like to help you to see to all your things.* 
 
 * There's nothing to see to.' 
 
 ' They might knock about the trunks carrying them up. 
 They are very careless with things in London.' 
 Felix suppressed an exclamation. 
 
 * And then I thought, perhaps,' Mrs. Wilding added, with 
 a little attempt at brightness, ' my son would give me a cup 
 of tea in his new home. I should like to be your first guest. 
 I think it would help me to realise your life in your flat and 
 to feel that you were comfortable.' 
 
 She paused ; then, as he made no answer, she added : 
 ' Do you mind, Felix ? ' 
 
 * Of course not, mater. But I should have thought you'd 
 rather have gone to the hotel first.' 
 
 He felt the crude ungraciousness of the reply, but, for the 
 life of him, could not be cordial. Strange to say, as the cab 
 drew near to Wellington Mansions he began to feel almost 
 stiff with self-consciousness. He looked at the dark, wet 
 street full of people whom he had never seen before, and a 
 sort of dread came over him, an apprehension of he knew 
 not what. The cab stopped, then turned to the left under 
 an archway and stopped again. 
 
 ' Ought we to get out ?' asked Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 * No — it's the horse. It's afraid of the court.* 
 
 A man in uniform came out of a door, ran to the horse's 
 head, and led it forward into a court surrounded by higli
 
 110 FELIX 
 
 buildings. In the middle of the court was a fountain falling 
 into a big basin full of water. The horse's feet slipped on 
 the wet asphalt, and Mrs. Wilding, who was very nervous 
 when driving, uttered a cry and caught hold of her son. 
 
 ' For goodness sake, mater, don't ! Do remember where 
 we are ! ' Felix exclaimed, hastily disengaging his arm. 
 
 The cab had drawn up before a door on the left, and the 
 man in uniform opened the cab door and touched his peaked 
 cap. Felix nodded, and jumped out with an effort at non- 
 chalance. He did not offer to help his mother although he 
 wanted to. He looked sideways at the man in uniform and 
 took out his purse. 
 
 ' I'll pay, Felix,' said Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 She had the money read)^ and gave it to the cabman. He 
 looked at it and said it was not enough. Felix hastily gave 
 him another shilling. The luggage was taken down, and the 
 attendant pushed back a sliding-door, pressed a button, and 
 showed a small lift lit by electricity. 
 
 ' Oh, I can't go in that,' said Mrs. Wilding hastily. 
 
 * Nonsense, mater ! Do get in ! ' 
 ' No, I couldn't,' 
 
 * There's no danger, mum,' said the attendant, concealing 
 a grin with his hand. 
 
 ' Get in, mater. Everybody uses ' 
 
 But fear gave Mrs. Wilding firmness. 
 
 ' I'd much rather walk,' she said. 
 
 And she turned and began slowly to mount the narrow 
 and curving stone staircase. 
 
 ' I suppose the lady ain't accustomed to London, sir,' said 
 the attendant to Felix. 
 
 ' Yes, that is— yes, no.' 
 
 He pursued his mother and caught her up. 
 
 ' Mater,' he said, ' I do wish to goodness you wouldn't go 
 on like this. You make me ridiculous, and I have to live 
 here. You might remember that.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding stopped for a moment. She was very pale. 
 
 ' I am very sorry, Felix,' she said, ' I dare say I am very 
 foolish.' 
 
 ' Yes, you are,' he answered, almost brutally. 
 
 He was tingling, and felt sure the lift-man was laughing at 
 them both. They reached the third floor, and entered the 
 flat in silence. The attendant had turned on the light in the 
 passage and sitting-room. The luggage was quickly brought 
 up by a strong-looking lad in shirt-sleeves, and deposited in
 
 FELIX 111 
 
 the bedroom. Mrs. Wilding's bag was set down in the pas- 
 sage. She had walked to the sitting-room window and was 
 looking out into the darkening court, round which appeared 
 lights from the windows of other flats. Tears made them 
 seem blurred and confused to her. Then they all ran 
 together and went out. 
 
 * You want tea, mater, don't you ?' 
 
 With a great effort Mrs. Wilding forced herself to reply in 
 a steady voice : 
 
 ' Thank you, Felix.* 
 
 She turned round and sat down on the small sofa, taking off 
 the icewool shawl and unfastening her cloak, while Felix order- 
 ed the tea. The man went away. 
 
 ' I'll just go and see to the luggage,' Felix said. 
 
 He went out to the bedroom leaving his mother alone. A 
 black melancholy was on him. Instead of the exultation he had 
 expected to feel on taking possession of his London home, he 
 was conscious only of misery and desolation. He hated him- 
 self for his rudeness to his mother. He longed to throw his 
 arms round her, to kiss her and beg her pardon. Yet he could 
 more easily have thrown himself out of the window and dashed 
 out his brains against the asphalt of the court. Why ? He 
 did not know. There were within him mysterious forces 
 which he obeyed. As yet he was too young to sit down and 
 marvel at or try to defy them. After waiting a few minutes 
 in the bedroom he pulled himself together and went back to 
 the sitting-room, resolved to be pleasant and cheerful and play 
 the host in a right spirit. The tea-tray was already there on a 
 table against the wall and his mother was sitting near. She 
 smiled at him as he came in, and a sort of passion of wonder 
 at the simple, unerring goodness of her nature swept through 
 his soul. But he still felt shy at entertaining her and could 
 think of nothing to say. She insisted on his pouring out the tea, 
 and declared it was very good. They sat opposite to one 
 another. Mrs. Wilding looked about the little room and made 
 some comments on it. Certainly it was not at all ugly. There 
 were a piano, a sofa, a large divan under a white bookcase, a 
 writing-bureau, two good-sized armchairs. The walls were 
 pale green with a white dado, and a shelf on which were rang- 
 ed a number of blue-and-white china plates. Several good en- 
 gravings hung below them, and some prints of hunting and 
 coaching scenes in the old days before the railways. Above the 
 bureau squatted some grotesque Chinese idols. They were 
 rickety and had bits of folded paper stuck under them to pre-
 
 112 FELIX 
 
 serve their equilibrium. On a little table stood a number of old 
 silver dishes, pincers, snuffers, and boxes. The electric lights 
 burned brightly and there was a small fire on the hearth. 
 
 ' When you have put out your photographs it will look quite 
 homelike,' said Mrs. Wilding, with an attempt at cheerfulness 
 which was pathetic. 
 
 Felix felt a lump rise in his throat. 
 
 ' What a contemptible fool I am ! ' he thought. 
 
 ' Have some more tea, mater ? ' he muttered. 
 
 * No, thank you.' 
 
 There was a silence, through which crept the distant hum 
 of damp London. 
 
 ' Well, I suppose I ought to be going,' said Mrs. Wilding at 
 length. * You will want to unpack.' 
 
 ' Yes, I suppose so.' 
 
 She began to spread out her cloak. 
 
 ' Perhaps I could help you ? ' she suggested, almost timidly. 
 
 * Oh, no thanks. It would tire you.' 
 
 ' Then I'll go to the hotel and rest a bit before dinner. 
 What time would you like to dine ? ' 
 
 ' Oh — well, eight, I s'pose.' 
 
 She put on her cloak and got up. 
 
 ' I say, mater,' Felix said suddenly, * the electric light 
 makes people look awfully white, doesn't it ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, I suppose it does. I hope it is good for the eyes. 
 May I just peep into your bedroom ? ' 
 
 ' Oh yes, do. It's all right — jolly small, of course.' 
 
 She went out into the passage. 
 
 ' I hope the drains are good,' she said anxiously. 
 
 ' Sure to be.' 
 
 * If you notice anything you must tell me, and I will have 
 a man ' 
 
 'Now, mater, I won't have you spending a halfpenny on me, 
 after giving me all this money before the time ! ' 
 
 Tears — were they, could they be of gratitude ? — came into 
 her eyes. She said nothing, looked into the bedroom, felt the 
 mattress and the sheets, and cast a long look round. Here her 
 boy was going to sleep, far away from that long, sweet-smelling 
 room in which she slept, that room in which, when he was a 
 little child, she had so often heard in the night his humble little 
 pipe : ' mother ' — or perhaps ' father ' — * I thought I heard a 
 noise ! ' Her heart ached with longing for the past when he de- 
 pended entirely upon her. Now he was her gift to this huge 
 city. As she stood there, her hand on the coverlet of the bed,
 
 FELIX 113 
 
 she felt as if she were all a living prayer for him. He, too, 
 stood by the door looking at her. What was he thinking 
 just then ? 
 
 ' I'll ring for the servant, mater. He'll get you a cab and 
 take down your bag. But of course I'll come down and see 
 you safely out.' 
 
 ' Oh, no. It's such a long way,' 
 
 * Rot. I can come up in the lift. I'm not nervous.' 
 
 He forced a laugh. It was difficult, for that was really 
 his hidden apology. 
 
 * I shall stick your photograph up in the middle of the 
 mantelpiece,' he added, and cleared his throat. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding looked at him and pulled down her veil over 
 her face. 
 
 After a rather silent dinner in the coffee-room of the 
 Grosvenor Hotel that evening, Felix set out to walk to his 
 flat. It was no longer raining, but the ground glistened 
 with wet under the rays of the lamps. The roads were 
 muddy. All the people who were walking, except the poor- 
 est and the soldiers, carried unfolded umbrellas ready for 
 use. At the corner, by Victoria, the omnibuses were dis- 
 gorging their loads, the newsboys were hoarsely crying false 
 news of a sensational nature, pedestrians were hurrying to 
 catch their trains, and strange and evil-looking loiterers 
 were waiting about, intently watching the darkness as if each 
 moment they expected it to bring them some horrid gift. 
 
 Felix looked eagerly at the sordid pageant of the misty 
 night. It seemed to him both dreary and exciting, full of 
 possibilities which were vague but which stirred his imagina- 
 tion like music. He had come out from the hotel in a highly 
 strung, nervous mood. Just before he started his mother 
 had said a few words — she thought such as a father would 
 have considered it his duty to say in similar circumstances — 
 about the dangers that encompass a lonely life in a great 
 city. For a moment Felix was secretly amused. Did he not 
 know them all in the pages of Balzac ? But the amusement 
 faded almost at once in an emotion which seemed to prove 
 him still a child at heart. When he said good-night to his 
 mother, and she wished him happiness, success, goodness in 
 his new life — wished them rather falteringly in the hall of 
 the hotel — a sense of fear and of desertion overcame him. 
 He put on his coat, took his hat and umbrella, and watched 
 her — having again refused to trust herself to the machina- 
 tions of a lift — slowly going up the broad staircase to her
 
 114 FELIX 
 
 numbered bedroom. Her well-known figure looked oddly 
 out of place in that caravansary, and the new loneliness of 
 her life suddenly came home to him. He felt like a deserter. 
 She reached the first landing, looked down over the balus- 
 trade and smiled at him. And again he thought how terribly 
 white people become under electric lights. There were two 
 or three German-Swiss waiters standing about, and he made 
 a rather self-conscious and shame-faced gesture of farewell. 
 His mother disappeared down the corridor. She took away a 
 good deal with her. He felt that, and went out into the 
 night rather like a lost child. Then the excitement of his 
 freedom mingled with the nervousness of his loneliness, and 
 threw him into a curious condition which was not without 
 fierceness. All his faculties were singularly awake. His 
 brain was alert to think, his heart to feel. His eyes were 
 everywhere, observing keenly, swiftly, darting from one ob- 
 ject of the night to another to make a prey of all figures and 
 events. The gift of manhood is meant to be used, he told 
 himself, not to be kept in lavender. There was joy in that 
 thought. Yet there seemed a great deal of sorrow in the 
 night with him too. All things, many of them in opposition 
 to each other, were mingling together and forming a great 
 and strange chaos like a huge, round globe which was noth- 
 ing and everything. He did not know whether he was 
 miserable or happy. He knew only that he was almost hor- 
 ribly alive in this mist, and noise, and light, and darkness. 
 
 The shriek of an engine came from the station. It made 
 him start and realise the tension of his nerves. He crossed 
 the road, and took his way along the curving pavement which 
 skirts the road between the paling of the station yard and 
 the underground railway. Just beyond, where a second road 
 cuts across at right angles to Victoria Street, there is a large 
 public-house. On the far side of Victoria Street is the 
 Standard Music Hall. Although Felix and Mrs. Wilding had 
 not had very much to say to one another, he had stayed late at 
 the hotel, putting off the moment of departure, perhaps be- 
 cause he felt it would be a little difficult for both of them. 
 It was now past eleven o'clock, and as he reached the pavement 
 in front of the public-house the audience began to stream 
 out from the music-hall. He stood still to watch them. His 
 curiosity was aroused. Most of them were lower middle- 
 class people, shopboys and shopgirls, clerks, bookies, soldiers 
 with their sweethearts or their ' pals.' Many of them, on 
 getting into the air, stood still to light pipes or cheap cigars.
 
 FELIX 115 
 
 or to exchange loud remarks. Some turned into a public- 
 house by the music-hall. Others crossed the street to catch 
 omnibuses, or to go into the gin-palace by which Felix was 
 standing. Through the doors, when they swung open, the 
 broad red backs of soldiers in uniform w^ere visible in the 
 glaring light, and wreaths of smoke circled and dispersed 
 above the rows of glasses, the bottles, the gold-lettered bar- 
 rels, and the handles which were perpetually being pulled 
 down by tall women with tired, saucy eyes and curling fringes. 
 
 Felix moved on a few steps till he was exactly opposite to 
 the music-hall. Then he stood still once more and looked 
 across at the gaily lighted entrance. 
 
 ' Seen the show to-night, guv'nor?' said a powerful voice 
 at his side. 
 
 He looked quickly round, startled at being addressed in 
 such a place and at such a moment, and saw that his interlo- 
 cutor was a short, square-shouldered man of about thirty years 
 of age ; neatly dressed, like a workman, in corduroy trousers, 
 with large flap pockets, which were kept closed by buttons, 
 square-toed, wrinkled boots, a short, speckled coat and waist- 
 coat of some rough material, a flannel shirt and a cap, from 
 which appeared a straight lock of brown hair which had 
 evidently been sedulously curled at the edge round a wet 
 finger. About his bronzed, bull neck was knotted a bird's-eye 
 handkerchief, and in his ears were narrow gold, or perhaps 
 brass, earrings. His face was short-featured and resolute, ab- 
 solutely unself-conscious and unsmiling, with a prominent 
 chin, a small mouth, and bright, staring, brown eyes set deep 
 in his head under short, dense eyebrows. He was smoking a 
 clay pipe, and had his hands stuck into his pockets. His 
 wrists, which were exposed to view, were brown, thick, and 
 very muscular, and his whole appearance suggested industry 
 linked with unconceited self-respect. 
 
 ' What show ? ' Felix asked. 
 
 He liked the look of the man, and it emphasised his new 
 freedom to talk to a total stranger encountered thus in the 
 street. 
 
 The man took one broad hand out of his pocket, removed the 
 pipe from his little mouth, and pointed with it to the music-hall 
 across the way. 
 
 * Over yonder,' he said. 
 
 * No,' said Felix. ' Is it a good show ? ' 
 'Whopping,' replied the man, with laconic gravity.
 
 116 FELIX 
 
 He smoked for a moment imperturbably, and Felix was just 
 about to bid him good-night and walk on when he said : 
 
 * See that name on top ? ' 
 
 'Where ? ' said Felix, wondering what he meant. 
 
 He pointed once more across the road to a huge placard 
 outside the hall, on which the names of the performers were 
 inscribed in red on a white ground. Felix looked and made 
 out the words ' Happy Hal Blake ' at the head of them, 
 
 ' Who's that ? ' he asked. 
 
 The man pointed his pipe at his broad chest, keeping his 
 bright, sunken eyes fixed on Felix. 
 
 * You ! ' said Felix, astonished. 
 
 The man was entirely unlike his idea of a music-hall 
 performer. 
 
 ' I'm Happy Hal,' replied the man, always with gravity. 
 •A month since I was just Hal Blake working on the new 
 harbour at Dover. And now I'm Happy Hal and top the 
 show.' 
 
 His staring eyes seemed to require some expression of 
 opinion on this transformation. Felix would no doubt have 
 thought it his duty to give one, but at this moment he was 
 jostled by the end female of a line of four feathered girls who, 
 with linked arms, were giggling their way towards the Vaux- 
 hall Bridge Road. She winked at him with preternatural sly- 
 ness, as if they had been secretly concerned together in a 
 hundred cunning deeds, uttered some remark in a piercing 
 soprano voice, gave her united companions a violent tug, 
 which set the whole lot laughing convulsively, and disap- 
 peared with them, struggling, round the corner. 
 
 ' Can't — can't we go into the public-house and sit down for a 
 moment ? ' said Felix, 
 
 As he spoke the lights of the music-hall went out. 
 
 ' Well, I am a bit dry after singing,' said the man. 
 
 'Let me give you something to drink.' 
 
 ' Thank you, sir, I don't mind if I do.' 
 
 Felix felt excited. To his raw youth this episode was an 
 adventure. He turned and went into the public-house, fol- 
 lowed by the man. It was thronged, chiefly with soldiers, but 
 they found a bench to sit down on, beside a table near which 
 was placed on the sanded floor a spittoon. 
 
 ' What will you take ? ' 
 
 ' Pint of stout-an'-bitter, if it's all the same to you,' 
 answered the man. 
 
 Felix ordered that nectar for them both, lit a cigarette, and
 
 FELIX 117 
 
 glanced eagerly about him. At last he was in the midst of a 
 London crowd, at last he was face to face with life, and saw 
 town-bred men taking their pleasure. The noise in the public- 
 house was very great. Everybody seemed to be talking. 
 The soldiers stood together in knots, treated each other and 
 bellowed. It seemed to Felix as if in that moment they were 
 trying to throw off, almost angrily, all the accumulated burden 
 of discipline which lay heavily upon them in barracks. 
 Among them some civilians looked rather mean and solemn. 
 A stout woman with a broad, brick-red face stood with a 
 small man before the counter and drank some beer. She was 
 dressed in heavy black with a large bonnet, and perspired 
 freely as she lifted the glass with cushioned fingers to her 
 mouth. The small man whose mouth was twisted into a meek 
 expression, looked at her patiently while she drank, as a child 
 might look at a monument. Two or three painted girls peeped 
 in furtively through the swing-doors. A roar of laughter 
 came from the soldiers. 
 
 ' A noisy lot, ain't they ?' remarked Happy Hal calmly. 
 There was something very individual about him, a firm direct- 
 ness that struck Felix as singularly characteristic and decent- 
 minded. His glance was unyielding but not bold. All his 
 movements were calm and simple. Several of the people in 
 the bar evidently recognised him, and now the red-faced 
 woman, breathing heavily, looked round at him, threw back 
 her bonnet-strings, and fixed her small pig's eyes upon him 
 as if fascinated. She had just come out of the music-hall. 
 Happy Hal took no sort of notice of the attention he attracted, 
 but repeated again : 
 
 * A noisy lot.' 
 
 * I suppose people like this generally make a row at night in 
 London,' said Felix. 
 
 He was thinking of the giggling girls, the female counter- 
 parts, he supposed, of the roaring soldiers. The man an- 
 swered, * Yes, a row,' using the workmen's adjective, 
 
 then pulled himself up short and begged pardon. 
 
 ' Oh, it's all right,' Felix said with a smile. 
 
 'We don't mean nothing by it,' said Happy Hal. ' But if 
 you'd been on the Dover Harbour you'd be the same, I'll 
 lay. Things is just 'abits and don't mean half what partic'ler 
 parties says.' 
 
 ' Yes. And so you're new to London ?' 
 
 * Right out of the Mint, sir, as you might say, like a Christ- 
 mas tanner. It's funny how things comes about. Why
 
 118 FELIX 
 
 am I Happy Hal and top the show ? Why, because an old 
 gent had a bit of a cold and come down to the Dover Bur- 
 lington to chuck it.' 
 
 ' What old gentleman was that ? ' Felix asked, with genuine 
 interest, 
 
 ' Why, the party that runs half the London halls, they do 
 say. Puckle, they call him, old Joe Puckle. Know him, 
 guv'nor ? " 
 
 ' I can't say I do.' 
 
 ' New to London, same as me, ain't you ?' 
 
 Felix rather reluctantly acknowledged the damning fact. 
 
 ' Ah. Every one knows old Joe Puckle.' 
 
 Felix found himself wishing to goodness that he did. 
 
 ' Well, sir, old Joe he come strolling along by the harbour 
 getting the air, and what should he do but hear me singing 
 " Annie Laurie " while I was heaving up the blocks. First I 
 give it 'im — unbeknownst, of course — in the one voice, and 
 then I up and gave it 'im in the other.' 
 
 ' What ! Have you got two voices ? ' 
 
 Happy Hal looked at Felix with his steady, bright eyes, 
 
 ' Ah, to be sure, you said as you was new to London,' he 
 rejoined. 
 
 Felix felt slightly irritated. 
 
 ' Well, but ' he began, rather hastily. 
 
 ' Fm Double-voiced Hal, the Dover Nightingale, in the 
 ads., sir, and earning my ten quid a week. They give me a 
 trial and I took on. Old Joe, he brought me to London, and 
 when they wanted me to dress up he says, " No," he says, 
 " let the boy come on as he is " — of course after a bit of a 
 clean-up and a bath — " and just stand there nat'ral and give 
 it 'em." I just stood there nat'ral and give it 'em, sir, and 
 they swallowed it the same as I swallow this stout-an'-bitter. 
 Here's to you, sir.' 
 
 He made away with it and sat staring steadily at Felix, as 
 was his habit when he had finished what he would have called 
 his ' say.' 
 
 ' You're in luck, then,' said Felix, looking at him with real 
 respect and curiosity as a popular public performer, 
 
 ' Ah. I'm going to the Palace presently, and if I take on 
 there I'm made. Then I'll fetch up the kids and the missus.' 
 
 ' Then they are at Dover still ? ' 
 
 'Ah, and in a fine taking over daddy's being the Dover 
 Nightingale, I can tell you. Well, guv'nor ? ' 
 
 His intonation suggested that he thought it time to be
 
 FELIX 119 
 
 going. Felix got up and they made their way out, much 
 stared at by the soldiers. As they passed the red-faced 
 woman in the black bonnet, she said to the little man, in a 
 thick, shrewish voice : 
 
 ' There, what did I say ? It is 'im, I tell you, it is 
 'im!' 
 
 She rotated, so that she might observe them_ going out. 
 Her mouth gaped, and the tiny eyes looked out of their rolls 
 of fat with a greedy and stupid excitement. 
 
 * I dig in Emily Street,' said Hal, when they were on the 
 pavement. 
 
 ' And I go that way,' rejoined Felix, pointing to Victoria 
 Street. 
 
 Hal began to relight his pipe with deliberation. When he 
 had made it draw thoroughly he said : 
 
 ' Funny our meeting like this and both new in London, ain't 
 it?' 
 
 * Yes, very.' 
 
 ' You're making a start here too, are you ? ' 
 
 'Yes, I'm making a start too.' 
 
 ' funny our meeting,' repeated Hal, again quite un- 
 consciously repeating his adjective. ' I wish you luck with 
 it, guv'nor.' 
 
 'And I wish you the same.' 
 
 'London's a rum place and no mistake about it. When I 
 made to come up the missus didn't like it. Afraid of the 
 dangers of it, she says. Dangers for a chap like me ! ' 
 
 For the first time he smiled slightly. Felix thought of his 
 mother's fears. 
 
 ' Dangers,' repeated the man. * Not likely ! ' 
 
 His fixed look seemed to include Felix in his prophecy. 
 He put up his hand to the long curl respectfully. 
 
 ' See you again some day, guv'nor,' he said. 
 
 * I'll come to hear you sing,' Felix replied heartily. 
 
 ' Right. I come on at the half after ten, after the boxers, 
 and I generally stand on the kerb and have a look at my name 
 on the board as they're coming out. Good night, guv'nor.' 
 
 'Good night.' 
 
 Happy Hal walked sturdily away, and was lost in the 
 crowd. Just as he was disappearing the red female in the 
 bonnet came waddling heavily past, attended meekly by the 
 little man. She was still breathing hard and persi)iring, and 
 Felix heard her say excitedly : 
 
 ' I don't care, I tell yer it 7vas 'im ! '
 
 120 FELIX 
 
 Felix felt that he had made acquaintance with one who, 
 in a humble way, was famous. 
 
 He began to walk slowly towards the flat. The little con- 
 versation he had had, the companionship of a moment, had 
 cheered him. Already London seemed different, more fa- 
 miliar, less terrific. He thought about Hal Blake, and de- 
 cided that he had never seen anybody who looked more 
 calmly respectable, more thoroughly equal, in a simple 
 manner, to the facing of anything in the way of danger. 
 Decision, sobriety, straightforwardness were written all over 
 the man. And yet ' the missus ' was afraid for him. Fear 
 is doubtless a habit of many women. So Felix supposed, 
 rather majestically, as he strolled on, mentally connecting 
 his mother with this humble Dover wife whom he had never 
 seen. Women sit afar, poor souls, in country places, and are 
 afraid — of what ? They don't know. Of vague, shadowy 
 phantoms. 
 
 A sudden pity for women came to Felix, and made him feel 
 tremendously manly and capable. After all, he said to him- 
 self, woman with all her charm and swiftness is inferior to 
 man. Her timidity alone would make her so. 
 
 The hum of London began to sound to him like a song of 
 man's triumph, a song of the triumph of young men with the 
 world at their feet. 
 
 If the old tailor of Balzac could see him now, emancipated, 
 his own master, standing on the verge of the shining thing 
 called life! And in the darkness Felix saw again the clear- 
 ing in the forest, the firelight dancing over the letters on the 
 green backs of the books, even the little Honore, yellow and 
 pertinacious, and the little Marthe gazing into the flames 
 with her spotted eyes. 
 
 He entered the court, and passed up the dimly lighted 
 staircase till he reached the third floor. 
 
 Then he used his latch key for the first time with a feeling 
 of triumph. But when he was in the flat alone he sat down 
 in the little sitting-room and fell into a dreamy mood. The 
 Chinese idols, propped up with their wedges of folded paper, 
 stared at his grave face with their sightless eyes, and he 
 stared back at them, but without seeing them. For now, 
 for some reason that he did not try to make clear to himself, 
 his spirit had flown to France, and was trying to commune 
 with the old master of the cottage. So vividly did Felix 
 realize the tailor, and the familiar surroundings in which he 
 lived, that it seemed impossible that the tailor should not be
 
 FELIX 121 
 
 aware of this night of debut. Perhaps he was aware of it. 
 Perhaps even now he was sitting before his hearth, his tufted 
 chin drooping forward upon his breast, thinking of his boy- 
 friend, who was standing on the brink of the stream ready 
 for the plunge into it, for the shock of contact with the wa- 
 ters, for the battle with the currents in its depths. 
 
 Felix, in fancy, saw him. Honore was sitting by his foot, 
 and the little Marthe approached, holding her tail high and 
 purring as she 
 
 A slight but near noise startled Felix. His sitting-room 
 door was open ; he went out into his passage and stood still 
 to listen. This time he heard distinctly a cat mewing some- 
 where, and so deep had been his dream that for an instant 
 it seemed to him that he heard the voice of Marthe. Then 
 he smiled at the delusion, went to his front door and opened 
 it. A large black cat was crouched outside. When she saw 
 Felix she stood up, arched her back, and staring straight be- 
 fore her with her yellow eyes, which seemed looking inward, 
 and which in the semi-darkness appeared to be enormous, 
 rubbed her head against his leg and purred with all her 
 might. He bent down, called her Marthe, and stroked her 
 gently. She purred louder, and lifting her tail towards 
 heaven, tried to edge her way into the flat. But Felix 
 pushed her very softly and carefully out, and shut his door. 
 
 He went to his bedroom and began to undress. When he 
 was just going to get into bed he thought he heard the cat 
 mewing again faintly. He felt rather lonely on this first Lon- 
 don night. He hesitated for a moment, then went again to his 
 front door with the intention of letting the cat in. But when 
 he opened the door she was not there. He was absurdly 
 disappointed. He stepped out into the corridor, and even 
 descended a few of the stone steps to look for her. 
 
 But, though he waited a long time, she did not return.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THREE days after his arrival in London Felix went to 
 Green Street to call on Mrs. Ismey. Those three days 
 had been both desolate and exciting. The sensation of 
 loneliness, of being deserted by humanity, which he felt at 
 moments in his flat, when he sat down to his solitary meals, 
 or came in at night and had no one to say 'Good night' to 
 before he went to bed, gave way to an ardour of youthful 
 pleasure and interest as soon as he was in the streets among 
 the hurrying crowds. He observed everybody and every- 
 thing with keen excitement, but he did not analyse what he 
 observed very closely. The analytic mood would have 
 required of him more concentration than he had to dispose 
 of just yet. His faculties were ranging feverishly over a 
 wide field, and settled on no flower or weed for any length of 
 time. 
 
 Strangely, he thought, now that he stood face to face with 
 freedom and with life, the Balzac mfluence seemed to decrease, 
 to ebb from his mind. The Human Comedy^ which had 
 played such a great part in his soul, which had been so terri- 
 bly real to him that, at moments, it had been as his own long 
 and fulfilled existence, now loomed less large before him. 
 Its events were less full of significance for him, its figures 
 less alive and potent. At La Maison des Alouettes he had 
 felt that he was filled with all possible knowledge of men 
 and women. Even at Churston Waters his sense of power 
 to judge, which belongs to the human being peopled by 
 experiences, had been solid and enduring. But now there 
 were moments, and not a few, when the Balzac figures faded, 
 the Balzac knowledge, which he had supposed to be his 
 knowledge also, became but as a crumbling sand foundation 
 on which his ignorance was striving in vain to find a foothold. 
 
 Even his cynicism, once so happily complete, now not sel- 
 dom played him false. He found himself instinctively in- 
 clined to believe in the rectitude of those about him, instinc- 
 tively surprised and pained when anything occurred to give 
 a shock to such belief. 
 
 An attendant at the Mansions, a middle-aged man, had 
 
 122
 
 FELIX 133 
 
 done two or three errands for him, and had been very civil. 
 One night, as Felix was coming home from a theatre, he saw 
 this man reel out of the bar of a public-house decidedly- 
 drunk, maudlin, and singing a doleful song. He was as- 
 tounded. When he got into his flat he asked himself why he 
 was astounded because a man in that class, when off duty, 
 took a glass too much. He sought to reason almost angrily 
 with his astonishment. Yet it remained, and, when the next 
 morning he saw the man in uniform, sober, respectful, ready 
 to go on more errands, was companioned by a disgust 
 which, he thought, had something cowardly in it. 
 
 Another evening he came home in a hansom, and, on reach- 
 ing Victoria Street, gave the cabman, so he thought at the mo- 
 ment, a shilling. Before the cab had driven away he discovered 
 that he had inadvertently given him half a sovereign. He knew 
 this, because he knew that he had had only half a sovereign 
 and a shilling in his waistcoat pocket, and he at once told the 
 man of the mistake. The man promptly produced a shilling, 
 and swore most positively that it was the coin just given to him 
 by Felix, who said nothing more, but was again conscious of a 
 sensation of amazement which he felt to be both ludicrous and 
 inappropriate. Had Balzac then taught him that he lived in a 
 world in which poor men never drink and never cheat ? Or had 
 he something in him, some seed perhaps of youth, which was 
 persistently and irretrievably credulous ? He wished he had 
 some one to talk to, some one of whom he could ask questions 
 without fear of ridicule. He had a few introductions to people 
 in London, but he had resolved that his very first visit should 
 be paid to Mrs. Ismey. Nevertheless he did not wish to seem in 
 too violent a hurry to go to the house in Green Street. That, 
 he thought, would be boyish and wanting in dignity. So he 
 spent three lonely, but exciting days, and then set out. 
 
 When he reached the house a pale man-servant opened the 
 door and told him that Mrs. Ismey was at home. He felt a 
 thrill of pleasure as he stepped in ; but when he had followed 
 the servant up a broad flight of stairs to the first floor, he 
 heard a sound of women's voices talking vivaciously, and his 
 pleasure faded in nervousness. She was evidently not alone. 
 I'he servant opened a door and announced him, but appar- 
 ently was not heard, for as Felix entered the room the voices 
 went on talking. One said : 
 
 'Oh, it might happen a hundred times under any man's 
 eyes, and he would never suspect it.' 
 
 The other, Mrs. Ismey, replied :
 
 124 FELIX 
 
 ' Perhaps under the eyes of ninety-nine men, but the hun- 
 dreth — Mr. Wilding.' 
 
 Felix came forward, feeling almost guilty, as if he had been 
 caught eavesdropping, Mrs. Ismey was sitting on a large 
 sofa in the middle of the room, sideways, and facing the 
 guest to whom she was talking. She did not get up, but 
 smiled and held out her hand cordially. 
 
 ' I am very glad to see you,' she said, in the well-remem- 
 bered, drawling voice, 'I call you my strange debutant.^ 
 
 ' I hoped you wouldn't mind,' Felix said, taking her hand, 
 'as you told me to come.' 
 
 ' Mind I If you hadn't come the first day I should have 
 put ashes on my head in the modern manner — gone into 
 mauve, which quite becomes me. Let me introduce you to 
 Lady Caroline Hurst.' 
 
 Felix, who had felt rather uncomfortable at Mrs. Ismey's 
 allusion to the first day, turned eagerly to the other lady. He 
 saw a rather tall, muscular-looking, darkish woman, with a 
 thin body but a decidedly fat face. Her eyes were grey-blue, 
 very light in colour, narrow, long, and surrounded by tiny 
 wrinkles slanting downward to the cheeks, upward to the 
 prominent temples. Her nose was short and straight, impu- 
 dent in line. Her mouth was firm, and she had two dimples, 
 one on each side of it. These did not give to her face a genial 
 expression, as dimples often do, but were rather like deep 
 dents made by a drill, slightly disfiguring and sinister. Her 
 complexion struck Felix as extraordinary. At first he thought 
 it was a dull white, but immediately afterwards he noticed a 
 strange pinky — he could hardly call it pink — look about it, a 
 sort of dim flesh colour, oddly unnatural and rather disgust- 
 ing. There was a kind of puffy self-possession in her whole 
 aspect. Yet, as has been said, her figure was thin. She had on 
 a black toque with a white veil pushed up from the face over it, 
 a plain black dress and white gloves. In her ears there were 
 pearl earrings. On her lap lay a horrible-looking, little, black 
 dog, with short, bristling hair and cropped ears. Felix 
 thought she was the coolest woman he had ever seen. Utter 
 carelessness of other people's opinion was stamped upon her. 
 How ? Where ? He hardly knew. But her mere attitude on 
 the sofa seemed to him a defiance flung at the wills of the 
 world. The way her hair was done and her hat was set upon 
 it was insolent. One of the arms was stretched out and the 
 hand was closed tightly on a sofa cushion. And the hand was 
 autocratic. There was strength in her, the power of a
 
 FELIX 125 
 
 thoroughly devil-may-care temperament. It was impossible 
 not to recognise that at a first glance. She looked about 
 forty years old. 
 
 When Felix was introduced she nodded to him, rather as a 
 young man might nod to a boy, stared him full in the face, 
 and said, in a musical voice : 
 
 * Are you the Balzac boy ? ' 
 
 * Yes,' said Felix, startled, ' I suppose I am.' 
 He glanced at Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 Lady Caroline said nothing more, but stroked the bristling 
 hair of the horrible-looking little dog, and still kept her light 
 eyes fixed on Felix. He was quite unable to decide what she 
 was thinking about. Certainly she was thinking very busily 
 and clearly about something. Her silence was extremely sig- 
 nificant, and he felt embarrassed. Mrs. Ismey made him sit 
 down near her to the right of Lady Caroline, who showed no 
 desire to join in the conversation that immediately took place, 
 but who was evidently listening to it attentively and critically. 
 
 As yet Felix had scarcely looked at Mrs, Ismey or at her 
 drawing-room. He had not had time. There was something 
 about Lady Caroline that was engrossing. But now he gave his 
 eager, young attention to his surroundings and to their mis- 
 tress. He was always very quick to notice any special feature 
 in a person or in a room. Mrs. Ismey seemed to him at a first 
 glance slightly less notable in London than in the country; not 
 less charming, but less strikingly peculiar. His imagination 
 often jumped to exaggerated similes. So now he said to him- 
 self that the difference was like that between a firefly seen 
 darting to and fro in a provincial English house, and the same 
 firefly seen in a West Indian forest. The firefly had appeared 
 to him at Churston Waters in the former environment. He now 
 saw it in its natural home, and could conceive that there might 
 be more fireflies in the neighbourhood. 
 
 And the home of the firefly ? Mrs, Ismey's drawing-room 
 was, almost inevitable, like many other drawing-rooms. It 
 was very full of pretty furniture and pretty trifles. 'I'iiere were 
 no photographs. That was a peculiarity of it. Round the 
 room, to a height of three feet from the floor, there was some 
 beautiful, pale, yellowish-brown, polished wood. Above it the 
 walls were hung with silk that seemed shot with a number of 
 tints of pale green, yellow, and brown. The curtains at the 
 windows were very heavy and primrose coloured. All about 
 the room were scattered silver trifles and ornaments. There 
 were some ivories of martyrs and saints in anguish on one
 
 126 PELIX 
 
 table. On another lay a quantity of miniatures and enamels. 
 There were two grand pianos. Palms towered in the corners. 
 Felix thought it a lovely room, then noticed with surprise in 
 the midst of its beauties, and close to the sofa where Mrs. Is- 
 mey was sitting, a table whose cover was stained with ink. 
 On this table stood a solitary teacup and saucer, the saucer 
 half full of milky tea, in the centre of a turmoil of ink-stained, 
 paper-covered novels, bent quill-pens, and blotted scraps of 
 note and manuscript paper. There was also a blotting-book 
 drenched in ink, on which lay a half-eaten biscuit, the crumbs 
 of which were freely scattered about. A large scent-bottle 
 with a gold stopper stood sentinel beside it. Such a table in 
 such a room was like a ragged tramp in a palace, Felix thought. 
 He gazed at it with amazement. The half-eaten biscuit might 
 have been gnawed by a rat. Perhaps it had been brought in 
 for Lady Caroline's black dog. Then he glanced up into Mrs. 
 Ismey's hazel eyes and saw the satirical look in them he re- 
 membered so well, and had so often thought about since the 
 night before Margot's wedding. 
 
 ' Yes, I'm very careless,' she said. ' But you must put up 
 with it as my husband does.' 
 
 Felix turned scarlet, and was, as usual when with her, just 
 about to protest he scarcely knew what, when she went on : 
 
 ' Are you a tidy boy ? Don't tell me. Yes, I expect you 
 are, for you always look as if you came out of a bandbox, and 
 yet you're not the least little bit finicking. And there are so 
 many finicking men in London. Do you know any men in 
 London yet ? ' 
 
 Felix was on the point of saying no, when he remembered 
 Happy Hal. He could not help smiling as he thought of him 
 in Mrs. Ismey's drawing-room. 
 
 ' Now, what are you laughing at ? ' she asked. ' Every 
 laugh in life should be shared. That is the perfect altruism.' 
 
 *I was thinking that I do know one man in London,' an- 
 swered Felix, still smiling. 
 
 ' Well ? And what is he ? ' 
 
 * A double-voiced nightingale.' 
 
 ' Explain.' 
 
 Felix related his interview with the music-hall star. When 
 he had finished, Lady Caroline, who had sat all the time in 
 motionless silence, remarked : 
 
 ' To-day's Thursday. To-morrow and Saturday I'm dining 
 out. Sunday's a dead-letter-day in England. On Monday 
 I'll take a box at the Standard and we three will go to hear
 
 FELIX 127 
 
 the man. You will both dine with me first in Great Cumber- 
 land Place.' 
 
 * Oh, thank you ! ' said Felix, delighted, 
 Mrs. Ismey, however, looked rather doubtful. 
 
 * How am I to get rid of Francis ? ' she said. ' You don't 
 want him, I suppose ? ' 
 
 * I don't ask him. I won't have him.' 
 
 Felix sat amazed at the authoritative bluntness of this, to 
 him, entirely new specimen of womanhood. But it left Mrs. 
 Ismey, who was doubtless accustomed to it, entirely un- 
 moved. 
 
 'I'll find something for him to do,' she said, * or something 
 may turn up.' 
 
 ' If the man sings really well, and looks out of the usual 
 mould, we'd have him back to supper afterwards,' continued 
 Lady Caroline. 
 
 ' Oh, but he's ' began Felix. 
 
 She cut him short with the emphatic remark. 
 
 * I've got no Francis, thank Heaven.' 
 
 ' Haven't you ? ' said Felix uncomfortably. 
 ' No, I'm a spinster,' 
 
 'Don't glory in your shame, Carrie,' drawled Mrs. Ismey, 
 rather maliciously. 
 
 Lady Caroline ignored the thrust, and continued : 
 
 * I actually am what three-fourths of the women in my set 
 secretly wish they were. I'm free.' 
 
 Felix saw a strange expression flit across the face of Mrs, 
 Ismey at the last word. It suggested to his mind intensely 
 bitter incredulity. It was gone in an instant. 
 
 * Married women are forever talking about freedom,' Lady 
 Caroline went on. 'Why? Because people usually talk 
 about what they don't possess. Paupers talk about money, 
 cowards about bravery. What's your pet subject ? ' 
 
 The question was put to Felix with exceeding abruptness 
 and the light eyes stared hard into his. He hesitated and 
 glanced towards Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 'You want a woman to tell you !' said Lady Caroline. 
 'She's bound to tell you a lie.' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey laughed lightly. A sudden impulse to be pre- 
 posterously truthful came to Felix. 
 
 'I'm afraid my favourite subject's myself,' he said. 
 
 Lady Caroline brushed her hand the wrong way over the 
 black dog's back. A dull growl was heard. 
 
 'And are you a good topic of conversation ?' she inciuired.
 
 128 FELIX 
 
 She did not smile as she asked the question. She had not 
 smiled once since Felix came into the room. 
 
 'I'm afraid — I don't suppose I can be,' he replied. 'I 
 suppose I'm' too young.' 
 
 ' You must be very young if you think that old age is a 
 good bone for conversational gnawing.' 
 
 As abruptly as she had opened the talk with him she 
 closed it, and, turning to Mrs. Ismey, said : 
 
 ' We'll play that Rheinberger, and then I'm off. Come 
 along.' 
 
 She got up, throwing the black dog in a heap on the floor, 
 and walked to one of the pianos. 
 
 'I'll play first,' she remarked. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey cast a whimsical look at Felix. 
 
 ' Forgive me ! ' she whispered. 
 
 ' Oh, I'd love to hear it,' he replied eagerly, standing up. 
 
 ' Let him smoke, do,' said Lady Caroline, with her back 
 turned to them. 
 
 • Do smoke,' said Mrs. Ismey, with humorous obedience. 
 
 ' But in your drawing-room ! ' 
 
 ' We both do it.' 
 
 ' Thank you. Then ' 
 
 He began to light a cigarette, while the two women sat 
 down at the two pianos and arranged their music. Then 
 suddenly he said to Mrs. Ismey : 
 
 ' But can't I turn over for you ?' 
 
 'Me?' said Lady Caroline. 'No, thanks. If you want us 
 to appreciate you just sit quiet and smoke. It will be all 
 over in a quarter of an hour. Now then ! ' 
 
 She began playing an ingenious extempore prelude in G 
 minor, the key of the duet. The black dog set up a howl. 
 She instantly got up, lifted it by the scruff of the neck, dis- 
 appeared with it into an inner room, in a moment returned 
 without it, sat down and resumed her prelude. Not a muscle 
 of her fat face had changed during this proceeding which, 
 why he scarcely knew, made a very powerful impression, 
 that was rather horrible on Felix. She finished the prelude, 
 looked round at Mrs. Ismey, said sharply * Now ! ' and they 
 began the duet. 
 
 Music nearly always had an exciting and stimulating effect 
 upon Felix. When he heard it he longed to make an effort, 
 in what direction he knew not, to accomplish something, of 
 what nature he could not tell. It also stirred within him 
 the sleeping dogs that the timid wish to leave to their sleep.
 
 FELIX 129 
 
 and that even the more fearless watch uneasily when they 
 begin to move, to shake themselves, to show the light in 
 their strange and animal eyes. 
 
 But to-day he had special cause for excitement. Both 
 these women, with whom he found himself alone, and, he 
 felt, in a sort of definite intimacy created by this calm re- 
 sumption by them in his presence of their normal life without 
 him — both these women had strongly marked personalities. 
 He was intelligent enough to feel instantly the intelligence 
 of others, and, as he was inclined to shy at stupidity, so he 
 was moved to fly at and cling to the reverse. At this period 
 of his life it seemed to him that cleverness never moved 
 without its child, sympathy, and the presence of sympathy 
 set him in a glow, fierce and ardent as the flame in the heart 
 of a fire, if — and this was odd, perhaps, in him — it was the 
 sympathy of those set naturally by fate outside his intimate 
 life's door, so that they could not claim to enter as a right. 
 The sympathy of his own people was like daily bread, and 
 different, not exciting. 
 
 Felix felt that both these playing women were very intel- 
 ligent. Mrs. Ismey he supposed, without exactly asking 
 himself why, to be brilliantly clever. From the first moment 
 of his seeing her he had thought of her as a brilliant woman. 
 Her satirical self-possession, her odd habit of replying to 
 merely mental questions, or alluding calmly to the unuttered 
 comments of the soul, had startled him at once into an en- 
 thusiastic belief in her brain power. In the fascination 
 which she had exercised over him from their first meeting 
 there was a mingling of several elements. He felt that she 
 had what he had never encountered before, a chic mind. 
 Had he been obliged to define what he meant by chic he 
 would have said — well, he himself wondered what he would 
 have said. One thing that is certain, he thought, is that 
 nothing stupid can be chic. 
 
 Lady Caroline Hurst was not chic. She showed no pliancy, 
 no consciousness of others in relation to herself. There was 
 a certain ruthlessness in her demeanour that seemed to 
 Felix to be Russian. He had never met a Russian, but that 
 was what occurred to him. There was something almost 
 barbarous about her, something cold, strong, carelessly de- 
 fiant. When she picked up the black dog by the scruff of 
 its neck he felt that she could vivisect it without turning a 
 hair. But he felt also that she would perfectly understand 
 what were its sensations while she was doing so. He knew
 
 130 FELIX 
 
 that she was clever, though she had not said a clever thing, 
 or wished to, since he had come into the room. That she 
 had not wished to was a sign of her intelligence, he thought, 
 and also showed to a certain extent its nature. 
 
 In both these women he knew — ves, somehow he knew — 
 that there was something, even much, that was sympathetic 
 to him. He was surprised to find he had this conviction 
 about Lady Caroline. For, in a way, she repelled and half 
 disgusted him. Her face was unbeautiful in contour, in ex- 
 pression, but especially in colouring. Her manners were 
 certainly not charming. What was it in her, then, that com- 
 ing out of her towards him attracted some part of him so 
 strongly ? Perhaps her lack of conventionality, her love of 
 freedom. Perhaps her total indifference to his possible 
 thoughts of her. Perhaps — he could not tell yet. He might 
 never be able to tell. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey had a charm that any man might be conscious 
 of. Her clothes were lovable, for one thing. He remem- 
 bered the rustle of her gown in the garden that night. Even 
 that was individual. 
 
 He had lit his cigarette, and sat down in an armchair from 
 which he could see the faces of both the players, Mrs. Ismey's 
 best. She played well, quite brilliantly. But Lady Caroline 
 played better still. He noticed that at once. She had the 
 authority of a good professional, Mrs. Ismey the deftness 
 and light-hearted ingenuity of an accomplished amateur, not 
 untouched by a certain inconsequence and volatility which 
 were absent from Lady Caroline's interpretation of her music, 
 Mrs. Ismey's face changed often while she played, but nevei 
 looked severe. It was always the face of one engaged in a 
 pastime. Lady Caroline's was heavier and more stony than 
 it had been before, and scarcely changed at all. But it re- 
 minded Felix of the face of the statue at Tours, and he 
 thought that in its immobility it was profoundly intelligent. 
 
 The second movement of the duet was a canon in which 
 Lady Caroline gave out the theme, which was immediately 
 echoed by Mrs. Ismey. The melody was delicious, flowing 
 limpidly without strain, as if it had gushed out of the com- 
 poser as a stream gushes out of the earth in a sylvan place. 
 But, while he listened to it, Felix fell into an odd train of 
 thought, which was directly caused by it, yet which partially 
 diverted his attention from it. This canon, and the way it 
 was performed, seemed suddenly to make clear to him some- 
 thing that he must have previously thought without knowing
 
 FELIX 131 
 
 he thought it. That was exactly how it seemed to him. It 
 gave him an insight into the relations of these two women 
 whom he scarcely knew. Lady Caroline on her piano com- 
 manded, Mrs. Ismey on hers obeyed. The former called 
 the tune, saying ' Do this ! ' the latter instantly did as she 
 was desired to do. In such a canon for two pianos the one 
 must inevitably be the echo of the other. Felix knew this, 
 knew that his imagination might be playing him absurd 
 tricks. Nevertheless, as Lady Caroline struck out her 
 phrase authoritatively, and Mrs. Ismey, an instant later, 
 struck out its echo in her more suppliant fashion, he found 
 himself forming two words with his lips : ' Master — Servant.' 
 The third movement carried his mind away from considera- 
 tion of the possible human relations existing between the 
 performers. He listened to it as he had often listened to 
 music before and enjoyed it with a less restless brain and 
 heart. Directly the last chord was struck the faint sound 
 of a very ugly and vicious wailing penetrated into the room. 
 
 * Heavens ! Chicho is completely out of the key,' said 
 Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 She struck an A natural, as if she were giving the note to a 
 violin. The hideous wailing was renewed more loudly. Lady 
 Caroline got up. 
 
 * He's in a vile temper to-day,' she said. 
 ' Why ? ' 
 
 'He wants something he hasn't had,' Lady Caroline 
 answered. 
 
 As she spoke she glanced at Mrs. Ismey, and Felix saw a 
 sudden expression, which seemed to him to be one of disgust 
 mingled with a tinge of amusement, come into the latter's face. 
 But she only said : 
 
 ' Oh, I see.' 
 
 Lady Caroline pulled on her white kid gloves, and as she 
 did so turned to Felix. 
 
 'Don't forget Monday,' she said. 
 
 ' No. It's most awfully kind of you to ask me.' 
 
 'Dinner at a quarter to eight. I suppose that will do. 
 When does this fellow come on ? ' 
 
 ' Not till half-past ten, 1 believe.' 
 
 ' Oh ! then we'll say eight. My number in Cumberland 
 Place is one hundred and seven. If you've a bad memory 
 write it down. Good-bye.' She nodded carelessly, turned to 
 Mrs. Ismey, said ' No Francis, mind ! ' and walked into the in- 
 ner room. An instant later she came back, carrying the
 
 132 FELIX 
 
 little black dog under her left arm, and went out at the draw- 
 ing-room door without addressing another word to either of 
 them, or even looking at them. 
 
 When the door shut with no uncertain sound, Mrs. Ismey 
 said to Felix carelessly : 
 
 ' Of course you're fond of dogs ?' 
 
 Felix was devoted to dogs, but he had conceived a perfect 
 horror of Lady Caroline's, This horror was just then par- 
 ticularly strong upon him. He replied, therefore, with a tinge 
 of hesitating doubt : 
 
 ' Oh yes, of course. Who isn't ? ' 
 
 'Chicho is Italian. What d' you think of him ?' 
 
 *0h — well, I know nothing about him. But — he's a rum 
 little chap, I think. Isn't he ? ' 
 
 The boyishness of the remark seemed to please her. 
 
 * How old you make me feel,' she said, smiling. ' Never mind 
 Chicho. We'll have tea, and talk over your de'but.^ 
 
 * Oh, but don't have tea for me. You've had it already.' 
 She looked at the dirty tramp of a table and at him, opened 
 
 her lips as if she were going to say something, then shut them 
 and touched a bell. A footman came. 
 
 * Take that table away, please, and bring tea,' she said. 
 The man went out, carrying the litter. When they were 
 
 again alone Mrs. Ismey sat down on a sofa, leaned her head 
 back against a cushion, and looked at Felix for a minute or 
 two in silence, but not as if she were observing him. Then 
 she said : 
 
 ' Now I've got something to say to you. If you've taken 
 your Balzac to heart it oughtn't to surprise you. I must tell 
 you that I, too, know my Comedie Humaine very well indeed. 
 You've read it as a boy. I read it as a girl — and many other 
 things girls don't generally read. Perhaps I shall judge your 
 actions rather shrewdly, Mr. Wilding ; judge them, too, in 
 relation to this odd education — if it is an education — of yours. 
 And I shall very soon see ' 
 
 She stopped. Felix felt as if everything in him had been 
 suddenly waked up. He sat down quickly on a low chair just 
 opposite to her, and leaned forward with his hands clasped 
 and dropped down between his knees. 
 
 ' What } See what ? ' he asked eagerly, and quite fearlessly, 
 like a boy. 
 
 ' How much, after all, a human being can learn from a series 
 of books in the way of worldly wisdom. Just that. Now, 
 how much do you think ? '
 
 FELIX 133 
 
 Suddenly Felix reddened, remembering that there had been 
 many moments when he had felt as if he possessed all, 
 absolutely all, worldly knowledge. 
 
 ' You mean without experience of his own ? ' he asked, with 
 some hesitation. 
 
 ' Yes. You've had absolutely none — you say ?' 
 
 * None,' he said humbly. 
 
 It seemed to him almost shameful to have had none. 
 ' Well ! ' she said, ' aren't you going to answer my 
 question ? * 
 
 * It's rather difficult to, but I suppose one ought to be able 
 to apply a good deal of book-knowledge to real life, if the 
 books one has read are true to life.' 
 
 ' Ah !' 
 
 She spoke the word with an intonation which gave him no 
 clue as to whether she agreed or disagreed with his remark. 
 Was it silly ? He wondered. He felt very doubtful of him- 
 self with her. After a pause, which seemed to him long, she 
 lifted her head from the cushion, sat straight up, and said : 
 
 ' You remember the letter my husband wrote to you ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' he answered eagerly. ' And I've been wanting ever 
 since to thank you ' 
 
 'Me!' she interrupted, 'Why?' 
 
 ' Why, because, of course, I knew directly that you had ' 
 
 ' My dear boy, I had nothing to do with the letter. If I 
 had had it would never have been written. That's Irish, but 
 true.' 
 
 Felix felt as if he had been plunged into cold water. 
 
 ' Oh, I thought — I thought, of course ' he began. 
 
 ' In your generosity you gave me the old-fashioned role of 
 good fairy. No. I said just now I had something to say to 
 you. It will prove to you at once how utterly wrong your 
 idea was. You wrote, didn't you, to say you would be de- 
 lighted to go into my husband' office if a place could be foimd 
 there for you ? ' 
 
 *Yes,' he said, wondering. 
 
 ' I want you to refuse to do that.' 
 
 Felix said nothing. In the first moment'of suprise he felt 
 crushed, liked a man whose career is suddenly swept away 
 from him. She saw his'obvious confusion and distress, for his 
 face showed them vividly, as it showed nearly all his feelings. 
 
 ' Forgive me for asking you,' she said, with a gentleness 
 that he had never noticed in her before. * As far as the 
 money's concerned such a post isn't necessary to you, is it ? '
 
 134 FELIX 
 
 ' Oh no. Not at all,' he replied quickly, reddening. ' I 
 wasn't thinking of that.' 
 
 ' You needn't explain that you weren't — to me,' 
 
 There was a touch of satire in her voice. 
 
 ' I had to ask,' she continued. ' If that is so, then you can 
 do what I want. Will you ? ' 
 
 ' Of course I will.' 
 
 ' And you won't say a word to my husband, or to any one. 
 of our having talked this matter over.' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' It will be our secret.' 
 
 As she said the last words she looked into his face, and, for 
 the first time with her, Felix felt the man in him stronger than 
 the child, felt that she was depending upon him, trusting to 
 him. This sensation changed him at once from a depressed 
 boy into an exultant youth. He forgot th probable, the 
 certain awkwardness of the position in which Mrs. Ismey was 
 calmly placing him, without explanation. He was only con- 
 scious that a fascinating woman, who knew all the things he 
 did not know, was relying upon his honour, was sharing with 
 him a secret. And he was glad as he said, ' Yes, our secret.' 
 
 As he spoke the drawing-room door opened and Mr. Ismey 
 came in. In a flash Felix was conscious of the extreme dif- 
 ficulty — yes, in a small way the difficulty was extreme — in 
 which he was placed. He jumped up from his chair feeling 
 like a criminal. Mr. Ismey shut the door and came up to 
 him with an outstretched hand. 
 
 ' What, Wilding ! ' he said. ' I'm very glad. We expected 
 you this month.' 
 
 Just then the servant returned with the tea. He put it 
 down on a table by Mrs. Ismey's sofa, arranged everything 
 with quiet precision, and went out. His entrance had made 
 a momentary diversion, and enabled Felix to notice the un- 
 ruffled calm of Mrs. Ismey. She smiled at her husband and 
 said : 
 
 ' You see he has kept his promise and paid his first visit 
 to us.' 
 
 * Capital,' Mr. Ismey said cordially, sitting down opposite to 
 his wife. ' I have been thinking about you since I have been 
 back at the office.' 
 
 Felix felt horribly uncomfortable, so much so that he was 
 physically affected. When Mrs. Ismey gave him his tea-cup 
 he took it with a hand that was slightly trembling. He saw 
 her lips press themselves together, and cursed himself. What
 
 FELIX 135 
 
 a pitiful display he was making. And she was so perfectly 
 cool, almost miraculously cool, he thought, as many men have 
 thought about many women in such hole-and-corner crises. 
 
 ' It's awfully good of you,' he said gruffly, in a manner not 
 his own. 
 
 ' Valeria, this tea is terribly strong,' Mr. Ismey said. 
 
 * I like it strong,' she answered. 
 
 *I know you do, but, as you drink so much tea, it is very 
 bad for you.' 
 
 She slightly shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 * Let me give you some hot water, then,' she said. 
 
 'Yes,* he replied, holding out his cup. 'But put some in 
 yours too.' 
 
 She said nothing, but Felix noticed that immediately after- 
 wards she drank a cup of tea to which she had not added any 
 water. 
 
 ' How are all your people, and how is Stephen ? 'Mr. Ismey 
 said, turning again to Felix. 
 
 The peculiar sadness which Felix had noticed before in his 
 expression was still there. Some melancholy had apparently 
 stamped its sign-manual upon him, some permanent melan- 
 choly. 
 
 'They are all well, thank you,' Felix answered, still 
 uneasily. 
 
 * And the marriage is a success, I am sure.' 
 
 * Oh yes, I believe so.' 
 'Stephen will be a good husband,' 
 
 ' Stephen is a pearl above price,' said Mrs. Ismey, without 
 a shade of irony. 
 
 Mr. Ismey glanced at her quietly. As he did so she 
 poured herself out another cup of almost black tea and began 
 to drink it. He looked away. 
 
 ' How is the fiat ? ' he asked Felix. ' Do you feel at home 
 in it yet ? ' 
 
 ' Well, perhaps hardly that. But it's just the thing for me. 
 It was awfully good of you to take so much trouble, and we 
 are — we are tremendously obliged to you.' 
 
 The cordiality which he threw into his voice sounded to 
 himself unnatural, because he was trying to make it do a 
 double duty. He knew that, later, he would be forced to 
 seem strangely ungracious, even ungrateful. 
 
 'You will feel far more at home when you are settled down 
 to work, Mr. Ismey said, with a kindly meaning that made 
 Felix feel hot. 'There's nothing like work for making men
 
 136 FELIX 
 
 feel at home in strange places, or the want of it for making 
 them feel quite homeless anywhere.' 
 
 ' My dear Francis, you ought to have entered Stephen's 
 profession.' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey spoke very sweetly and simply, with a bright 
 smile at her husband. He took no notice of her remark, and 
 did not look as if he had heard it. 
 
 'You will find that, Wilding,' he continued. 
 
 ' I'm sure it's much better to have something to do,' said 
 Felix. 
 
 ' It's a curse not to,' said Mr, Ismey rather moodily. 
 
 ' Dear me ! ' said Mrs. Ismey. ' Then are all of us poor 
 idle women cursed ? Do you include us in one comprehen- 
 sive damnation, Francis ? ' 
 
 ' I was speaking of men,' he said quietly. 
 
 ' Are we so different that what is a curse to them is a 
 blessing to us ? ' 
 
 ' I did not say idleness was a blessing to anybody, but it 
 is probably more natural to you than to us. An idle man is 
 contemptible. An idle woman may at least be charming.' 
 
 ' Mv husband is really one of the old-fashioned men who 
 would' like to see their womenkind always busy about the 
 house,' Mrs. Ismey said to Felix. ' Counting napkins and 
 putting labels on preserve pots. Now I should make mis- 
 takes in my addition, and think honey was marmalade. 
 That is where progress is taking the female sex.' 
 
 Mr. Ismey smiled. 
 
 ' I cannot conceive you in the role of the good housewife, 
 Valeria,' he said. ' But now, Wilding about our business.' 
 
 'Our business?' Felix echoed, stealing a quick glance at 
 Mrs. Ismey, who was glancing dreamily towards the window 
 as if she had abruptly fallen into a reverie. 
 
 * Yes ; when are you coming to pay me a visit at the office ? * 
 
 ' I — I could come any day.' 
 
 'To-morrow morning, for instance ?* 
 
 Felix felt his heart sink. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said. ' But I don't want to bother you.' 
 
 ' I don't ask you to come to bother me, but to help me.' 
 
 ' I — I'm afraid I could not be of much use,' Felix said. 
 
 Mr. Ismey seemed suddenly struck by the discomfort of 
 his manner and looked at him rather narrowly and Felix 
 fancied, with a kind of severity. 
 
 ' If I were you,' he said, with a good-nature which Felix 
 feared was prompted by a secret contempt, ' I would make
 
 FELIX 137 
 
 up my mind that there was a great power of being of use 
 both to myself and others in me. To have that feeling and 
 to be able to rest upon it is to be halfway to success.' 
 
 'Francis, I was right,' interposed his wife. 'You could 
 completely cut out Stephen.' 
 
 ' I feel sure that in the office you will be able to do good 
 work for the firm,' said Mr. Ismey, ignoring the interruption, 
 'And that it will be fortunate for us in the end to have you 
 in your beginning.' 
 
 Felix understood the delicacy which prompted the remark, 
 the desire that he should think that any obligation there was 
 would be equally divided. Considering Mr. Ismey's position 
 and his there was a very charming tact shown towards him. 
 He felt it painfully, but a secret sense of guilt, which it was 
 very evident was not shared by Mrs. Ismey, prevented him 
 from being able to show anything but discomfort. 
 
 'I'm glad if you think I could be of any use,' he began, 
 and then stopped short, wondering if he were not accept- 
 ing the post he had just promised Mrs. Ismey to refuse. 
 
 'You're most awfully good to me,' he concluded, lamely 
 but with genuine feeling. 
 
 As he said the last words he got up to go. Mrs. Ismey 
 said good-bye to him with something of the sweet brightness 
 she had shown towards her husband when she was compar- 
 ing him to Stephen. And Felix, remembering it, felt as if 
 he were being punished, whipped with a silken thread that 
 hurt because of the intention with which it was used. Mr. 
 Ismey went with him downstairs to the front door and 
 there shook him warmly by the hand. 
 
 ' Good-bye, my boy,' he said. 'And good luck in London. 
 Come to Norwich Street, Strand, to-morrow at twelve.' 
 
 ' Yes. Thanks very much. You are good to me.' 
 
 When Mr, Ismey re-entered the drawing-room he said to 
 his wife : 
 
 'That's a highly strung, odd boy.' 
 
 But she was lying down on a sofa, reading a volume of 
 French poetry, and did not seem to hear him.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FELIX walked home that day by Hyde Park Corner and 
 Grosvenor Place. It was growing dark and he went 
 slowly. For the first time since he had been in London he took 
 no notice of the life in the streets. His thoughts were not at 
 work on those about him, but were still in Green Street. They 
 had plenty to do there. He was conscious that he had been 
 spending his time with three human enigmas. He did not yet 
 understand one of them, not even Mr. Ismey. His relation 
 with his wife was not clear to Felix at all, nor the reason of the 
 perpetual sadness in his eyes. What sort of man was he? A 
 good man, Felix thought ; kind-hearted certainly, chivalrous. 
 The last adjective came, but perhaps only because of his appear- 
 ance. There was something distinguished about him. He was 
 so tall, and his rippling, iron-grey hair was so thick. Felix fancied 
 he must have a great deal of secret pride, of the pride that is in 
 a man like a pure, keen breeze in a chamber. There was aristo- 
 cracy in his reserve. Instinctively Felix respected him. And 
 Mrs. Ismey in her own home? Doubt and confusion assailed 
 the boy. She was charming, but her self-possession was almost 
 terrible to him. Why did she coolly take away his career from 
 him? Now that he could not go into the office of Ismey and 
 Co., he felt sure that if he could go into it he would become 
 famous, a power in the world. Vague but essential glories 
 floated about that office like a halo. Depression seized him. 
 What was he to do? Mr. Ismey's remark about work making 
 men feel at home in strange places struck him as profoundly true. 
 But he was condemned to feel homeless. Laziness in this great 
 city, in which he knew scarcely any one, would be horrible. Sud- 
 denly Churston Waters appeared to him as the cosiest, happiest, 
 safest place in the world. There, if he went out, he met people 
 who had known him all his life. He was somebody. Here he 
 was a drifting atom . . . Lady Caroline Hurst and the little 
 black dog. The little black dog was a fourth enigma, canine. 
 Why was it abominable to him, a lover of dogs ? He did not 
 
 188
 
 FELIX 139 
 
 know. But he did know that he would hate to be obliged 
 to touch it, that to have it on his knees would give him the 
 horrors. He shuddered when he thought of contact with it. 
 Already its mistress was a power in his mind. And there his 
 attempt to analyse the impression she had made upon him 
 ended. There was strength, power in her. That was all he 
 could tell yet. He felt very lonely that evening and slept badly 
 when he went to bed. 
 
 On the following morning he got up feehng very nervous. 
 The awkwardness of his position quite overwhelmed him now 
 that the interview with Mr. Ismey was so near. He did not 
 know what he could say in excuse for his apparently inexpli- 
 cable conduct. It was his nature to long to appear in a favour- 
 able light before any one for whom he had the least liking or 
 respect. Now he was going forth to earn the contempt of a man 
 who had shown him peculiar kindness. It was not his fault, yet 
 he felt like a criminal. 
 
 He reached the office in Norwich Street, Strand, before twelve 
 o'clock, passed through a large swing door, and found himself in 
 a huge, high room, across which, from wall to wall, ran a broad 
 counter with a flap of wood which could be lifted at will 
 to permit people to pass. Behind this counter were several 
 tables at which men sat preoccupied with various tasks entirely 
 mysterious to Felix. The walls of the room were lined with 
 bookshelves to the ceiling. Each of these shelves contained a 
 quantity of copies of one book, whose name was printed on a 
 big, white card nailed overhead. Under the name of the book 
 appeared the name of the author. When Felix came up to the 
 counter, with some hesitatir-n, a young man with fair hair and 
 pince-nez got up from the nearest table and approached him. 
 
 ' Can I see Mr. Ismey ? ' Felix asked. 
 
 ' If you will give me your card I will find out,' replied the 
 young man formally. 
 
 Felix gave his card ; the young man glanced at it, went to a 
 tube that hung against the wall, took it off its hook, blew 
 through it and listened. After a second he put his lips to it, 
 said something which Felix could not hear, and listened again. 
 Then he put the tube back on its hook, turned round and said 
 to Felix, 'Will you please come this way?' at the same time 
 lifting up the wooden flap of the counter. 
 
 Felix follo.ved him among the tables, whose owners did not 
 glance up, through a doorway and up a flight of stairs, at the 
 top of which were three more doors. One of these was open, 
 and on it was fastened a largj card bearng the name : ' Mr. King
 
 140 FELIX 
 
 Marshall.' When he saw it Felix was conscious of a thrill of 
 excitement, for King Marshall was one of the most notorious 
 and brilliant novelists of the day. He was also reader to Ismey 
 and Co., but this Felix did not know. The clerk showed Felix 
 into the sanctum of Mr. King Marshall, which was empty, said, 
 ' Will you kindly sit down here for a few minutes ? ' and went out, 
 shutting the door. 
 
 Felix looked round with a sense of awe. The room was very 
 plainly furnished, and his attention was most attracted by an 
 immense writing-table which stood in the middle of it, covered 
 with typewritten manuscript. On a blotting-pad lay a large 
 sheet of foolscap nearly filled with writing in a tiny, neat hand. 
 As he was glancing away from this for fear of seeing words 
 not meant for his eyes, the door opened and a man walked 
 quickly in. 
 
 He was small and slim, with a large forehead, thin hair^ once 
 blond, but now turning grey, and very large, fiery, brown eyes, 
 which looked both fierce and melancholy. Not only his face 
 but his whole body expressed nervousness and a sort of sad 
 energy — impetuosity shadowed with tears. When he saw Felix 
 he looked surprised. Felix felt all the uneasiness of a sensitive 
 intruder. 
 
 ' I came to see Mr. Ismey,' he said, springing up from the 
 chair on which he had been sitting. ' They showed me in here.' 
 
 'Oh, sit down, sit down,' said the man in a weak voice. 
 
 He went up to the writing-table, sat down on the revolving 
 chair which stood before it, and began to look over the type- 
 written manuscript. But perhaps the presence of a stranger 
 altered his purpose, for, after two or three minutes, he laid it 
 down and turned his fiery eyes on Felix. He looked at him for 
 a long time — at least it seemed to him a long time — and at 
 last said : 
 
 ' Are you joining the band of writers already ? ' 
 
 'No — at least I haven't begun to write yet,' answered Felix, 
 who suddenly felt as if he had always meant to be a writer, and 
 would rather die than be anything else. 
 
 ' But you intend to, I suppose ? ' said the man, still looking at 
 him with a sort of vague melancholy under which there was 
 latent fire. 
 
 ' I should like to. I want to. But I don't know whether — 
 I mean I dare say I have no talent,' Felix answered. 
 
 A conviction that this man must be King Marshall thrilled 
 him with excitement and enthusiasm. The man sighed, 
 whether wearily or impatiently Felix could not tell.
 
 FELIX 141 
 
 'Do you know how to find out whether you have talent or 
 not?' he said after a minute. 
 
 ' By trying to write and ' 
 
 'No, no.' 
 
 ' How ? ' exclaimed Felix. 
 
 His self-consciousness and dread of being in the way suddenly 
 left him. 
 
 ' Try to see what is, and to think about it naturally.' 
 
 ' Is that difficult,' Felix ventured to ask. 
 
 * Very, very difficult. To many people, I suppose, it is quite 
 impossible. They either cannot see, or they see double, or 
 they see men as trees walking. And what they see inaccurately 
 they think about with affectation. Their minds are as artificial 
 as many of the poor women whom one meets here in London, 
 trying to give mother Nature the cold shoulder. They are 
 as afraid to be natural, even by themselves, as to go naked in 
 Regent Street. If you can convince yourself and the un- 
 afi"ected that you can see what is as it is, and think about it 
 naturally, you have talent. And then, if you come to write, try 
 at first to do one thing only, try to tell the truth. When you 
 are sure that you are able to tell the truth, try to tell it beauti- 
 fully—but not till you are sure.' 
 
 The door opened, the clerk reappeared. 
 
 ' Mr. Ismey will see you if you will come this way/ he said, 
 looking towards Felix. 
 
 The man at the writing-table nodded and picked up a sheet 
 of manuscript. Felix, with a sinking heart, followed the clerk. 
 
 'Was that Mr. King Marshall? ' he asked in the passage. 
 
 ' Yes,' said the clerk. ' I didn't remember he was here to-day.' 
 
 He showed Felix into a large light room with brown paper 
 covered walls, on which were hung quantities of caricatures and 
 portraits of men of the day. In this room Mr. Ismey was 
 standing. 
 
 'Capital!' he said, shaking hands with Felix. *You are a 
 punctual man. That 's right.' 
 
 ' I 'm afraid I was rather too early,' said Felix. 
 
 Now he was actually with Mr. Ismey he felt like one about to 
 be executed, and could not look him in the face. 
 
 ' Sit down,' said Mr. Ismey, sitting down himself near the 
 window, 'and we'll get to business at once. I have a great 
 deal to do to-day. Now ' 
 
 But Felix, with a sort of desperate courage, interrupted him. 
 
 ' Please I want to say something,' he began, speaking with 
 awkward haste.
 
 142 FELIX 
 
 Mr. Ismey looked rather surprised. 
 
 ' Well, what is it? ' he asked, crossing one leg over the other, 
 and resting his hands, palm downwards, on the arms of his chair. 
 
 'Since — since I've been in London I 've been thinking things 
 over,' Felix said, looking away from Mr. Ismey. ' And I — I 've 
 decided to — to do nothing definite for just a few months. You 
 see' — he stole a glance at Mr. Ismey, and thought he was 
 looking rather stern — 'it's all quite new to me, and I feel I 
 don't ri^ally know at all yet what I wish to be and do. I hope 
 you understand. I don't put it well, I know.' 
 
 ' Oh, then you have changed your mind ? You don't want 
 to come to us ? ' 
 
 Mr. Ismey's voice was quite kind, but somehow it made 
 Felix feel most awfully ashamed of himself. 
 
 ' It isn't that,' he said. ' I quite understand — I mean I know 
 what a great chance it is to be allowed to come here. I can't 
 say how grateful I am to you for all your kindness.' 
 
 ' Never mind that. But you have decided not to come?' 
 
 The absurdity of vehement expressions of gratitude, com- 
 bined with a definite refusal to take advantage of the opportunity 
 for which he was offering up thanks, struck Felix forcibly. 
 
 • I think I 'd rather wait and just make up my mind what I 'm 
 fitted for,' he answered, trying to assume a calm and common- 
 sense tone. ' You see I 'm very young, and it 's awfully difficult 
 to know in a moment what one really wants to make of one's life.' 
 
 *Yes, it is difficult,' said Mr. Ismey, still kindly. 'Well, I 
 won't keep you. Let us see something of you in town. Can 
 you come and dine one night ? ' 
 
 'Oh, thank you very much. I should like to immensely.' 
 
 Mr. Ismey thought for a moment. Then he said : 
 
 'Come on Monday night, will you?' 
 
 * Oh, I 'm most fearfully sorry,' exclaimed Felix, feeling that 
 he was being forced by cruel circumstance to seem anxious to 
 avoid all Mr. Ismey's extreme kindness. 
 
 ' Why ? What 's the matter ? ' 
 
 'That night, only that one night, I am engaged. I have 
 promised to dine with Lady Caroline Hurst.' 
 
 ' Oh,' Mr. Ismey said. 
 
 This time his voice was unmistakably grim, and when Felix 
 looked at him his face was grim too. He returned Felix's 
 glance, opened his lips, and was certainly on the point of saying 
 something abrupt and very decisive. Felix knew that by his 
 whole expression, which had suddenly coarsened, and by the 
 curious bitterness of his eyes.
 
 FELIX 143 
 
 •With Lady Caroline Hurst,' he said. 'So you- 
 
 He had spoken with harsh roughness, but suddenly he stopped 
 speaking, leaving his sentence unfinished. 
 
 ' We must find another night,' he said, after a pause, coldly. 
 * Well, good-bye.' 
 
 * Good-bye,' said Felix. 
 
 Mr. Ismey walked with him to the door and opened it; just 
 as Felix was going out he laid his hand on the boy's shoulder. 
 
 ' Don't stay long in London without finding some work to do,' 
 he said. 'And be very ' 
 
 He hesitated. His expression was so strange that it startled 
 Felix. There was something like agony in his face. His eyes 
 were very wide open and dilated. 
 
 ' Don't be deceived in people if you can help it,' he said at 
 length. 
 
 He lowered his voice and almost muttered : 
 
 'But you will, of course you will.' 
 
 He took his hand from Felix's shoulder, and Felix went out, 
 wondering.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THAT evening Felix wrote to his mother. He felt both 
 excited and depressed. His morning had been so dis- 
 agreeable that his whole day lay in shadow. He had not 
 known what to say to Mr. Ismey. He did not know what 
 to write to his mother. At one moment he thought of packing 
 his bag and catching the afternoon train to Frankton Wells. 
 The idea of the quiet, low-roofed drawing-room was pleasant in 
 his mind. But he dismissed it. He dreaded his mother's 
 questions, her astonishment. Both would be so natural and 
 so intolerable. He would, perhaps, be driven to lies. That 
 thought sickened him. So he wrote, and, being in this unquiet 
 and desolate mood, wrote abruptly to say that he had decided 
 not to enter the office of Ismey and Co. at present, but to 
 'look about' him — the vague phrase served as well as another 
 — before settling down to any business or profession. He 
 added that he had explained matters to Mr. Ismey that 
 morning. 'Mr. Ismey,' he wrote, 'quite understands the 
 position. After all, I am awfully young, and it's safer to look 
 round before getting involved in anything that I mightn't like, 
 or be suited to, in the end.' 
 
 He knew the letter was disingenuous, but that he could not 
 help. When it had gone he pulled himself together, and took 
 himself to task for his depression and confusion of mind. He 
 felt that both were unworthy of him. When he sat in the 
 ruined chapel of La Maison des Alouettes, when he talked with 
 the tailor in the forest, he had felt that he had the temperament 
 of a conqueror held in leash by circumstance. London was to 
 be his prey, not he London's. Now was he to sink down under 
 the first blow, to be discouraged by the first occurrence which 
 he could not immediately understand? He was resolved to 
 apply his knowledge persistently, even coldly, in the conduct 
 of his life and in his relations with the men and women of this 
 new world. And he thought of King Marshall's words, which 
 were surely a sort of summing-up in little of the great life-task 
 of the dead man who had first waked him to the glory of the 
 
 14A
 
 FELIX 145 
 
 sunrise and to the blackness of nights without a star. It was a 
 grand and sufificient duty to learn to see, and to think rightly 
 about things seen. A long lifetime was too short for clear 
 vision of even a few of the teeming facts of existence. He 
 resolved to be impassioned in his search for truths, to be 
 fearless of them when they were terrible, to be tender to them 
 when they were weak, to be their bold cavalier when they were 
 joyous. That was the part of a man in the world. That should 
 be his part. Already he was face to face with a mass of facts 
 which he was as yet unable to comprehend. He did not know, 
 he could not divine why Mrs. Ismey had required of him the 
 act of abnegation which he had accomplished. He resolved 
 that he would know her secret reason. Surely his obedience 
 armed him with a right to this knowledge. She might not 
 recognise it. That was to be proved. He longed to bridge the 
 gulf of time which lay between him and Monday. 
 
 When Monday came at last it brought a long letter from his 
 mother. She was evidently in much anxiety at his unaccount- 
 able volte-face, and could only look forward with alarm to the 
 prospect of his idleness in London. Indeed, she expressed 
 herself with quite unusual decision, and begged Felix to go to 
 Mr. Ismey, and say that he had reconsidered the matter, and 
 wished to be admitted to the office. Separated from her son, 
 and freed to some extent by her complete loneliness from the 
 influences which her affections rendered so potent, Mrs. Wilding 
 was now playing a father's part with some real conviction. She 
 saw clearly that idleness in London must be bad for a boy of 
 Felix's age, and seeing this she suddenly, urged by fear and a 
 loving sense of duty, woke up into a sort of gentle manliness. 
 Felix was quite amazed by the definiteness of the letter. It 
 rendered his position still more awkward. Mrs. Wilding made 
 one mistake. She put a postscript, which ran as follows ; 
 'Stephen came over just after I got your letter. He is much 
 surprised that you should have refused Mr. Ismey, after being 
 so anxious to go to him. He cannot understand it any more 
 than I can.' 
 
 This mention of Stephen threw Felix into a condition of 
 acute irritation. As he dressed to go to Lady Caroline's dinner 
 he felt angry, even with Mrs. Ismey. This sensation was only 
 fleeting, but it left behind it a definite resolve to find out why 
 the sacrifice he had made had been required of him. 
 
 He reached Great Cumberland Place punctually, and was 
 shown by a man-servant into a small room at the b:.ck of the 
 house on the ground floor. While he waited there for Lady 
 K
 
 146 FELIX 
 
 Caroline he examined this room shrewdly, for of course he 
 knew from Balzac that it is possible to learn much about the 
 creature from the creature's shell. , And, first, he found himself 
 wondering why Lady Caroline chose to live in such a big house 
 alone. He did not know that it had been left to her by her 
 father, and that she only went on living where she had always 
 been accustomed to live. So he judged that she was fond of 
 space, and was fearless. Timid women are afraid of empty 
 rooms and gaping corridors at night. 
 
 He gathered further that Lady Caroline was an untidy woman. 
 The room was in considerable disorder. Upon an open piano- 
 forte a quantity of loose music was scattered. On two of the 
 chairs books and magazines were lying. A pair of embroidered 
 Turkish slippers stood near the fireplace, one with its toe, the 
 other with its heel presented towards the flames. A man's 
 smoking-cap — at least Felix thought it must be a man's smoking- 
 cap — lay on a table beside an open silver box half full of 
 cigarettes. On one side of the fire there was a gigantic low 
 couch littered with cushions, and dented in the middle, as if it 
 were lain upon incessantly. There were more books on a wicker 
 table close to it. Felix glanced at two or three of them. One 
 was De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater. Another was 
 a medical book. A third was a large volume on Nightmare and 
 Its Causes, by a Frenchman of whom Felix had never heard. 
 There were heavy red curtains over the windows and the (me 
 door. Red silk covered the walls. The light in the room was 
 very faint, coming only from the fire and from one small lamp 
 with' a dark-red shade. The furniture looked disarranged, as if 
 it were often pushed about, as if no chair, no footstool, no small 
 table had any fixed abiding-place. Felix gained an impression 
 that the owner and occupier of this room was eccentric, change- 
 able, now lazy, now energetic. Just as he was thinking this 
 Lady Caroline came in. 
 
 She looked sleepy and old, much older than she had looked 
 at Mrs. Ismey's four days ago, and wore the same black gown 
 she had worn then, with the same pearl earrings in her ears. 
 She had on a big black-and-pink hat, and carried in one hand 
 a veil and two large pins set with pearls. 
 
 ' Well, here you are ! ' she said, in her usual informal manner. 
 'Valeria hasn't turned up yet. But she's always late.' 
 
 She shook Felix listlessly by the hand, went over to the 
 mantelpiece, where there was a narrow, long mirror, put the 
 veil and pins down, and stared at herself moodily in the glass. 
 Then she yawned drearily and turned round.
 
 FELIX 147 
 
 'I've been in bed all the afternoon,' she said. 'Just got up.' 
 
 *0h, I hope you're not ill,' said Felix sympathetically. 
 
 '111! Why should I be ill?' 
 
 Her voice sounded irritable. 
 
 ' I only thought as you said you 'd been in bed.' 
 
 'Well, I was up all night. One must get some sleep. I 
 shall be all right after dinner. There's too much light in this 
 room,' 
 
 She went to the lamp and turned it down, then came back to 
 the fire. 
 
 ' My dying remark — if I 'm so garrulous as to make one — will 
 be the reverse of Goethe's,' she said. 
 
 As she spoke she yawned again, this time brutally, as if she 
 were grossly enjoying a pleasure. Felix had never been with 
 any one, man or woman, who seemed so entirely careless of the 
 presence of others. Even when Lady Caroline spoke to him he 
 felt as if she were talking as people talk to themselves when 
 they are walking alone in the dark. Yet he was conscious of 
 being oddly at home with her, and she interested him intensely. 
 She seemed to him to be really what is often called ' a character,' 
 not z.poseuse, but a natural original. 
 
 ' I shan't give Valeria much rope,' she said, after a pause 
 which Felix did not try to fill up. ' Another five minutes and 
 then — oh, here she is.' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey came in, also wearing a hat and looking, Felix 
 thought, comparing her with Lady Caroline, young and fresh 
 and charming. She made no apology for being late, and Lady 
 Caroline said nothing about it. Indeed, she scarcely said 
 anything at all. When Felix shook hands with Mrs. Ismey he 
 read gratitude in her eyes, and understood that she was thanking 
 him for the sacrifice he had made. Her glance made him glow. 
 The ability to do something for a woman of the world gave him 
 the sudden satisfactory sensation of being a man of the w orld. 
 
 Dinner was annonnced, and as they walked through the hall, 
 in which a large Spanish dish of charcoal was burning, Lady 
 Caroline said to Mrs. Ismey : 
 
 'Was Francis at all tiresome about your coming?' 
 
 'No. I can't say he often is tiresome. Pride is one of his 
 virtues. I can conceive his murdering me, but not scolding 
 me.' 
 
 'A lesson for you,' said Lady Caroline to Felix, as they sat 
 down at the dinner-table. 'If you want to win a wife's respect 
 murder her, if you like, but don't scold her.' 
 
 'Scolding, certainly, is awfully undignified,' he answered,
 
 148 FELIX 
 
 thinking, with some shame, how often he had indulged in 
 something very hke it at home. 
 
 ' Most men have no idea of human dignity,' returned Lady 
 Carohne. ' That is to say if they are thoroughly civilised. 
 Civilisation tends to destroy dignity. The old territorial 
 magnate was a savage compared to the modern London man, 
 but he was ten times more dignified. It doesn't much matter.' 
 
 As Felix listened to her drowsy and musical voice he 
 wondered whether anything mattered in her opinion. There 
 was a certain amount of light shed over the round dining-table 
 by a lamp which hung from the carved wooden ceiling, and he 
 could see her face more clearly than in the other room. Again 
 he noticed the peculiarity of her complexion. To-night the 
 faint and disagreeable pinkness spread up to her eyes. Even 
 the many little wrinkles round them were tinged with it. The 
 skin under them hung loosely in bags. He thought she looked 
 unwell, but as if she did not care whether she were well or ill. 
 As he glanced away from her he saw Mrs. Ismey's intelligent 
 eyes fixed upon him. He devoted himself to his soup, wonder- 
 ing whether as usual she had read his thought. Neither Lady 
 Caroline nor Mrs. Ismey took soup, and as the dinner went on 
 Felix often found himself eating alone. Both his companions 
 drank champagne, but they seemed to have no appetites. 
 Between the courses Lady Caroline smoked cigarettes, slowly, 
 as a man smokes, not excitedly, like so many women. She 
 began to look slightly less sleepy. Mrs. Ismey, from the first, 
 was in a lively mood. Felix found her occasionally sub-acid 
 gaiety, the airy, irresponsible, yet quite unfoolish charm of her 
 manner, brought into high relief by the proximity of Lady 
 Caroline, whose curious, puffy heaviness was an admirable foil 
 to it. He thought he had never seen two human beings more 
 essentially different than these two women. To-night Lady 
 Caroline made him think of an animal which had been hiber- 
 nating in some dark hole during a long winter, and which had 
 just emerged, bhnking, into a forgotten wor'.d. Mrs. I?mey was 
 like a satirical nymph dressed in the latest fashion. Yet there 
 were moments in which he felt that they were alike. In what 
 way he could not tell. Once, when they were both looking 
 serious, he told himself that there was some furtive similarity in 
 their faces. Again, he fancied that occasionally there was a 
 trick of manner which linked them in 1 is thought, an odd, 
 sudden indifference, an inconsequence — he did not know. 
 Perhaps all women, simply from the fact of sex, were as much 
 alike at moments as these seemed to be. Or did they even
 
 FELIX 149 
 
 seem? He was uncertain. He wondered wlicther they were 
 very fond of each other. He supposed they must be. They 
 were evidently very intimate, and had been for a long time, 
 before Mrs. Ismey's marriage. To FeHx they seemed on 
 off-hand, casual terms. And yet, as there were moments in 
 which he fancied a similarity of face or manner between them, 
 so there were moments in which he seemed to divine some 
 strong link that bound their diverse natures together, secretly 
 but firmly, a link which they were so keenly aware of that they 
 had no need to use in ordinary life the civilities, the tendernesses 
 which are as the small change of the affections. 
 
 When Mrs. Ismey was with Lady Caroline she seemed to 
 Felix slightly more of a nonentity than when she was away from 
 her, and yet more physically charming. Lady Caroline was, 
 he felt sure, the leading spirit of the two spirits. And he thought 
 again of the canon played upon the two pianos. 
 
 * You are thinking a great deal about us to-night, Mr. Wilding,* 
 Mrs. Ismey said towards the end of the dinner. 
 
 She spoke gaily, yet with a faint shadow of suspicion too. 
 
 'If I am, isn't it natural ?' asked Felix, who already felt far 
 less shy than when he first arrived in London. 
 
 ' Yes ; it is natural to think about us — but how ? ' she 
 replied. 
 
 A look that was half mischievous, half inquisitive, had come 
 into her face and made it almost childish. 
 
 'What does it matter how he thinks about us,' said Lady 
 Caroline, ' or how we think about him ? I 'm sure he doesn't 
 care.' 
 
 ' I am sure he does,' said Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 ' Nonsense ! Do you care ? ' Lady Caroline asked Felix, 
 fixing her light eyes, which were still rather dull with the 
 shadow of sleep, on him. 
 
 ' Yes, I think I do,' he answered, almost ingenuously. * I 
 should like you to like me.' 
 
 'If I didn't like you, you wouldn't be sitting at this table,' 
 said Lady Caroline brusquely. 'Think what you please about 
 me. People's thoughts about me don't affect me at all.' 
 
 'If you are a monster you shouldn't show it,' said Mrs. Ismey 
 quickly. 
 
 An expression that was both angry and helpless had suddenly 
 come into her face. 
 
 'You ought to care what some people think,' she repeated 
 insistently. 
 
 Lady Caroline turned and looked her full in the eyes.
 
 150 FELIX 
 
 ' Well, I don't,' she said. * I don't care what any one thinks.* 
 
 Her musical voice had become quite harsh. Felix felt as if 
 he were witnessing an affray. He did not understand the cause 
 of it at all, but he heard the clash of weapons, and saw gleams of 
 anger and of determination in the eyes of the combatants. 
 
 Then were they enemies these two, not friends ? 
 
 'Come,' said Lady Caroline, after a moment of silence, 
 during which Mrs. Ismey looked down at her plate with her lips 
 pressed tightly together. ' If we are going to hear this double- 
 voiced nightingale we ought to start. I ordered the brougham 
 at a quarter to ten.' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey got up quickly, as if movement were a relief 
 to her. 
 
 ' They '11 bring you your coffee here,' Lady Caroline said to 
 Felix. 'Join us in five minutes, will you ? ' 
 
 She treated him very much as a boy, and he noticed it, but 
 did not mind. He felt sure she wished to be alone for a 
 moment with Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 In the brougham he sat opposite to them on a little seat 
 which could be let down flat against the front of the carriage, or 
 pushed up and made firm on a pivot. In this seat, being tall, 
 he found that he was uncomfortable unless he leaned forward. 
 The night was dark and rather foggy, but the many street lamps 
 and the passing carriage lamps cast gleams of light upon the two 
 women as they sat side by side opposite to him. And he saw 
 continually the lights, diminished, dancing in their eyes. They 
 were too indolent or too sensible to attempt conversation, and 
 Felix was glad of that. He looked at their eyes furtively, and 
 thought what wonderful books the eyes of women are. Presently 
 he was aware of a perfume in the carriage. It was faint and 
 sweet. It made him suddenly feel sad, and vaguely amorous. 
 Also it seemed to deepen his sense of the mystery there is in 
 women. He could not tell whether the perfume was carried by 
 Lady Caroline or Mrs. Ismey, but he thought it was probably 
 Mrs. Ismey's. It was not quite like the perfume of any flower. 
 He imagined it a scent of the East. It was languid and very deli- 
 cate. He shut his eyes to draw it more acutely into his nostrils, 
 and the sadness, and the pleasure of being sad, deepened in him 
 until tears came into his eyes. He wondered why. He wondered 
 what it all meant. And then again 1 e looked at the eyes of the 
 two women, and he thought that Lady Ciroline's were fierce and 
 dull, and that Mrs. Ismey's were brilliant like yellow precious 
 stones. And he begin to dream ab ut them and their eyes, and 
 to we.ive romances in which they figured with him. And these
 
 FELIX 151 
 
 romances were wild and sad, and quite impossible, as wild and 
 sad and impossible as the London streets would be if they, and 
 their figures, and the incidents which take place in them, were 
 imagined instead of actually existing. Eut a carriage can roll 
 through them, and so they are prosaic — to some people. Felix 
 sighed when the lamps of the Standard Theatre glittered on his 
 face. 
 
 When they were inside and had reached their box they found 
 that the house was cram.med with a lower middle-class audience. 
 Girls with black cloth jackets, and hats covered with cheap, un- 
 natural flowers and bright-coloured ribands, sat with glasses of 
 beer on little stands before them, and giggled and talked with 
 young men who wore caps and smoked cigars, or with soldiers 
 in uniform. Elderly women in bonnets were there with solemn 
 husbands in square-toed, creaking boots. There were many 
 boys of from fourteen to twenty years old, who had made up 
 parties to have a night out. They were in high spirits, sang 
 the choruses of the songs with vigour, and made loud remarks, 
 as befitted connoisseurs of feminine beauty, when a lady came 
 on to the stage dressed in a Duchess of Devonshire hat, a golden 
 wig, a parure of false diamonds, and a set of pink-and-silver 
 tights. The lady smirked at them with an air of mechanical 
 naughtiness, wagged her legs and sang about champagne, which 
 she described as a wicked beverage that was very attractive 
 to her Satanic nature. She was an immense success, throwing 
 her hearers into ecstasies, in which they felt as if they too had 
 shared in all the sinful joys of Moet et Cha?idon. 
 
 Lady Caroline looking, Felix thought, uncommonly like a 
 tired image, leaned her arm on the Itdge of the box, listened to 
 the song with apparent attention, and when it was over said : 
 
 'This sort of thing makes me feel as if I were steeped in 
 wickedness. What innocents the working classes are. They 
 evidently think it a delicious crime to drink a glass of champagne. 
 Just look at those boys, wriggling with criminal apprcr iation.' 
 
 The next turn was a boxing competition. A large, thin 
 youth with a melancholy, pale face, and a very fat dwarf, with 
 rosy cheeks and preposterously developed biceps, were the com- 
 batants. The dwarf had the best of it. His agility was extra- 
 ordinary, and made the audience rock with laughter. He bobbed 
 under the melancholy youth's guard and played a perfect 
 rhapsody upon his pallid features. He hit up and caught him 
 under the chin, sideways, and nearly l)roke his jaw. Every one 
 was sincerely pleased. Finally he made a running leap and 
 knocked the pale youth out. The house rang with cheers.
 
 152 FELIX 
 
 Mrs. Ismey looked bored. She was sitting to the left of Felix, 
 who was between her and Lady Caroline, and she leaned back 
 in her chair and scarcely glanced at the stage. Once or twice 
 he turned towards her, wlien he was pleased and amused, and 
 met eyes which made him feel very young. Once he said: 
 
 ' You think I 'm an idiot to laugh. I know you do.' 
 
 * No. I am wishing I could,' she replied. ' If you couldn't 
 laugh, do you know that you would be only half as attractive as 
 you are ? ' 
 
 He felt self-conscious and pleased. Did she think him 
 attractive, then? In what way? He longed to ask her, for he 
 knew nothing about his attractiveness : in what it consisted, how 
 it acted, and on what sorts of people. Any Sandhurst boy 
 could have given him a liberal education on that subject. 
 
 ' Now we shall hear your friend,' said Lady Caroline to Felix. 
 
 ' Happy Hal's ' number had gone up. Felix felt nervous and 
 extraordinarily anxious that Hal should sing well and be success- 
 ful. The orchestra played some bars of ' Sally in our Alley,' and 
 then Hal walked quietly on to the stage dressed in his work- 
 man's clothes, with his cap on his head, and the brown curl 
 sticking out from under it. He looked, as he came on, as if he 
 were walking alone in a field on a fine day. The audience 
 applauded. He stood facing it with his hands in his flap 
 pockets, and began gravely to sing in a clear, tenor voice. It 
 was a very agreeable, natural voice, produced with ease and 
 apparent simplicity. All the time he was singing Hal looked 
 calmly at the crowd, without any shyness and without any con- 
 ceit. He might have been looking at the grasses and buttercups 
 in his field while he sang to please himself. And this absolutely 
 quiet self-possession, that did not know it was self-possessed, 
 made his performance original and charming. All the 'Sallies' 
 in the theatre liked him without knowing why. When he came 
 to the last verse of the song he stuck out his chin, rounded his 
 little mouth, and sang it in a loud, penetrating, soprano voice 
 ending with a soft, high note that was almost bird-like. The 
 applause was tremendous. He took off his cap and showed his 
 round, bullet-shaped head, covered with close-cropped, brown 
 hair. But his gravity never changed, nor the odd, ruminating 
 expression of his bright eyes. He stood there calmly while the 
 orchestra played a bit of 'Tom Bowling.' While he was singing 
 it he saw Felix, and gazed at him steadily, as he had gazed at 
 him in the street. 
 
 'He is an odd chap,' said Lady Caroline. ' We will have him 
 home to supper.*
 
 FELIX 153 
 
 Mrs. Ismey looked amused. 
 
 'Those corduroys in Great Cumberland Place ! ' she said. 
 
 'Why not? They'll make the house look almost respectable. 
 Go and catch him, will you ? ' she added to Felix. 
 
 Hal had finished his 'turn ' and was staring solemnly at the 
 delighted audience cap in hand. 
 
 ' Yes, certainly,' said Felix, rather amazed at this freak, and 
 wondering whether Hal would come. It did not seem to occur 
 to Lady Caroline that he might refuse. 
 
 Felix made his way out into Victoria Street, crossed it, and 
 stood on the pavement facing the theatre where he had made 
 Hal's acquaintance. After waiting about five minutes he saw 
 Hal coming towards him, walking with his feet rather wide apart, 
 and with his clay pipe stuck into his mouth. When he saw 
 Felix he touched his curl without smiling. 
 
 ' Good evening, guv'nor,' he said. 
 
 ' Good evening,' said Felix. ' Your singing is simply capital.' 
 
 'They swallow it all right,' responded Hal. 'There was a lot 
 wanting to treat me to-night, soldiers and young chaps out of 
 shops. But I wasn't taking any.' 
 
 He puffed at his pipe, and stared across at the placard on 
 which the names of the performers were printed. 
 
 ' Name looks well, don't it, guv'nor? ' he said after a pause, 
 pointing with his pipe. ' Still on top.' 
 
 ' Splendid ! ' said Felix. ' I say, you saw those two ladies 
 with me in the box? ' 
 
 ' Was there two? I didn't take partic'lar notice.' 
 
 ' Yes. Well, one of them told me to ask you if you would 
 come to her house to-night to supper.' 
 
 Felix was surprised to find that he felt exceedingly diffident 
 in approaching Hal with Lady Caroline's invitation ; much more 
 diffident than he would have been in asking a man in his own 
 class. 
 
 ' Couldn't do it, guv'nor,' said Hal gravely. 
 
 'Couldn't you? But — but why not?* 
 
 ' The missus has come up.' 
 
 * The — your wife ? ' 
 ♦With the kids.' 
 •Really.' 
 
 'Ah! She got that anxious down to Dover about father 
 she couldn't slick it. So up she came. Women is like that 
 Feared of the dangers o' London.' 
 
 He stared at Felix. 
 
 • Dangers for me ! ' he said. ' Funny, ain*t It? '
 
 154 FELIX 
 
 'Yes. So you really can't come to-night?' 
 
 'Couldn't do it, guv'nor. Why, she's waiting supper for 
 me!' 
 
 Evidently he thought the last statement was absolutely con- 
 clusive. Felix felt that it was quite useless to attempt any 
 pressure. And, indeed, such was the quiet influence of Hal's 
 unwavering decision of manner, that Felix unconsciously fell 
 in with what was obviously his view, that a man whose wife was 
 'waiting supper' for him could not even discuss the possibility 
 of remaining away from home, and breaking bread in the house 
 of strangers. 
 
 ' I see,' said Felix. ' Of course you can't come.* 
 
 ' odd if I could, guv'nor, wouldn't it?' rejoined Hal, 
 
 his favourite adjective. 
 
 'Well, good night,' said Felix heartily. 'We all enjoyed your 
 singing.' 
 
 ' Good night, guv'nor.' 
 
 He looked very hard at Felix and then said : 
 
 'Very glad to see you at lo Emily Street, guv'nor, any time 
 you 're passing. Excuse the liberty. But you could see the 
 missus and the kids now if you was to come.' 
 
 ' Thank you very much. I will come. I should like to.* 
 
 'Right. Any day you're passing.' 
 
 He pulled his curl, and walked quietly away, puffing at his 
 pipe. 
 
 Felix went back to the theatre. 
 
 ' Well, where is he ? ' asked Lady Caroline. 
 
 Felix explained the position of affairs. 
 
 'So I'm refused!' said Lady Caroline, looking exactly the 
 same as she did when she said 'Where is he?' 'Come along, 
 Valeria. We three will have supper, anyhow. I ate nothing at 
 dinner.' 
 
 Felix began to suggest that perhaps he had better go home as 
 it was so late, but Lady Caroline cut him short. 
 
 'Oh, nonsense. And besides you must see Valeria safely to 
 Green Street afterwards.' 
 
 'Oh, I shall be delighted,' said Felix honestly. 
 
 While they drove back to Great Cumberland Place Lady 
 Caroline talked a good deal. As the night wore on she was 
 gradually becoming more lively. She was evidently amused by 
 the ' Happy Hal ' episode. 
 
 •The man 's a character,' she said. 'That chin of his means 
 a lot. What does he earn ? ' 
 
 • I believe he said ten pounds a week,' said Felix.
 
 FELIX 155 
 
 ' Five hundred a year. For a workman he 's a millionaire. 
 I wonder what his London mhiage is like under the circum- 
 stances. It ought to be worth seeing. Do you suppose he 
 lives as if he still had thirty shillings a week, or as if he were a 
 rich man ? Consider that chin and tell me.' 
 
 Felix considered Hal's chin, but could not form an idea. 
 
 ' He has invited me to pay him a visit,' he said. 
 
 'Go,' said Lady Caroline. 'You'll be rewarded. Here we 
 are.' 
 
 When they came into the light of the hall Felix noticed that 
 she looked younger and much less fatigued, almost like a 
 different woman. Indeed, the contrast between her present 
 appearance and her appearance at dinner was quite extra- 
 ordinary ; almost unnatural, he thought. At the music-hall he 
 had been too intent on the performance to observe her much. 
 So now the transformation seemed to him to have taken place 
 in a moment, and to be feverish. When they were at supper, 
 and she had sent the man-servant out of the room, which she 
 did almost directly, her animation, born out of the most ruthless 
 and unashamed fatigue, the very nakedness of mental ennid^ 
 quite amazed him. She was talkative, and seemed now fully 
 conscious of the influence of her companions, fully conscious of 
 herself in relation to them. And when he heard her talk thus 
 Felix began more thoroughly to understand why she was powerful, 
 a personality that would make itself felt in any company. 
 
 She had a certain grimness of humour which was like the 
 humour of a man who has seen so much, and at such close 
 quarters, that he has become both sardonic and careless, but 
 who cherishes quietly that internal smile in which the cynic 
 warms himself. She also evidently had knowledge of many 
 kinds, and showed it in haphazard fashion, as if entirely free 
 from any desire either to impose it upon, or to share it with 
 others. As he listened to her, Felix did not label her worldling, 
 though she was certainly free, even audaciously free from 
 religious prejudices, and seemed to yield obedience to no code 
 of morals, or even of honour. Once or twice she spoke with 
 obviously unassumed carelessness of things which most women 
 think of as important, if not as sacred. Thus she alluded, 
 almost with disgust, to the idea of motherhood, and seemed to 
 think any kind of domesticity a horrible shackle on individual 
 freedom. Felix wondered, youthfully, if she were a wicked 
 woman. She could not be a good one, he thought. She 
 puzzled him. At one moment he felt that there was something 
 hateful in her, at another that she had a strong attraction for him.
 
 166 FELIX 
 
 Mrs. Ismey was permanently fascinating. But then she cared 
 to be fascinating. 
 
 Both women ate more than at dinner, and when they got up 
 from the table it was past twelve o'clock. Lady Caroline led 
 the way to the room into which Felix had been shown on his 
 arrival. A large fire was burning in the grate, and the atmo- 
 sphere was very hot. The lamp with the red shade was burning 
 dimly. 
 
 ' Make yourself at home,' said Lady Caroline to Felix. 
 •Smoke — a pipe if you like. I don't mind.' 
 
 Felix wondered if she ' minded ' anything. 
 
 She touched a bell. The footman came. 
 
 'Bring Chicho, please. You've put everything ?' She 
 
 glanced round and saw a little table covered with bottles, 
 glasses, and boxes. — 'Yes. Then when you've brought Chicho 
 you can go to bed.' 
 
 ' Thank you, my lady.* 
 
 Felix felt sorry when he heard her order. The thought of 
 the little black dog repelled him. He had quite forgotten 
 Chicho till Lady Caroline mentioned him. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey had sat down near the fire. She held an unlighted 
 cigarette in one hand, and was stretching out her other hand 
 for a box of matches. The firelight danced over her face and 
 made her bright, individual hair glitter. 
 
 ' How is Chicho ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' Oh, very happy. At least he was when I left him. We '11 
 see when he comes.' 
 
 This time, as when they had spoken of the little dog before, 
 Felix noticed something strange in their manner : in Mrs, Ismey's 
 a sort of disgust and amusement mingled, a sort of curiosity 
 too ; in Lady Caroline's a brutality, and — well, he could only 
 think of the word, relish. 
 
 ' Has Chicho been ill?' he asked. 
 
 He heard a soft laugh from the sofa where Mrs. Ismey was 
 sitting. 
 
 ' Oh no,' Lady Caroline answered. ' But, you know, dogs have 
 their moods like human beings. Haven't they, Valeria?' 
 
 'Chicho certainly has — now,' Mrs. Ismey replied. 
 
 She sighed. Felix looked quickly towards her, and thought 
 he detected an expression of pain on her face. But if it were 
 so, the expression died at once in a smile. 
 
 Just then the footman came in, carrying the little dog rather 
 gingerly, as if afraid of being bitten. Lady Caroline lifted 
 Chicho into her arms and bent down with him to the fire. The
 
 FELIX 157 
 
 yellow glow from the flames shone over her fat face and the 
 bristling coat of the animal, which blinked, as if sleepy and 
 dazzled by the light. He seemed to be in a better temper than 
 when he was in Mrs. Ismey's house, but Felix still felt a horror 
 of him. He could not understand the sensation, which he 
 had never felt for any dog before. 
 
 But Chicho was not like other dogs. 
 
 'He's dreamy to-night,' Lady Caroline said. 'I'll put him 
 in his basket. You see how dreamy and soothed he is,' she 
 added to Mrs. Ismey, holding Chicho towards her. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey leaned quickly backward. 
 
 'Yes, yes, I can see quite well,' she answered hurriedly. 
 *Put him into his basket.' 
 
 Felix was sure that she shared his repulsion. Her movement 
 and the tone of her voice showed it. 
 
 Lady Caroline went to a corner of the room, bent down, and 
 came back without Chicho. 
 
 A shuffling noise was heard, followed in a moment by a sigh. 
 Chicho was evidently settling himself again to the sleep from 
 which he had been wakened.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IT was two in the morning when Felix came out upon the broad 
 step of Lady Caroline's house and whistled for a hansom. 
 His cheeks were flushed. His eyes sparkled. His whole body 
 was alive with the peculiar and feverish vitality that is born out of 
 the dark hours and never visits man with the sun. No cabman 
 responded at first to his call. He blew the whistle again and 
 waited. The broad thoroughfare was dim and silent, but a long 
 way off he saw lamps moving to and fro by the Marble Arch. 
 The night breeze, which stirred softly, was full of the soul of 
 autumn and of distant places. It was here, surely, to touch his 
 cheek and depart. He felt its cool, moist fingers and shivered. 
 The tonic purity of this breeze startled him as the sound of the 
 Angelus bell heard in the garden of La Maison des Alouettes 
 had startled him. He whistled again, long and shrilly. At last 
 a cab came at a gallop, and drew up with a jerk before the door. 
 Felix stepped back into the hall. Mrs. Ismey, wrapped in a 
 long coat, lined and trimmed with fur, and with a high fur collar 
 standing up round her face and hair, was standing at the door of 
 the boudoir, talking earnestly in a low voice to Lady Caroline, 
 who stood leaning against the wall with her hands behind her, 
 and looking down at her feet. Felix waited. He did not like 
 to interrupt them. The soft murmur of Mrs. Ismey's voice 
 reached him. She had a great deal to say. He glanced at the 
 faces of the two women. They looked very grave in the faint 
 light of the hall. Mrs. Ismey stopped speaking at last. She 
 put up her right hand, with a very natural gesture, and rested it 
 on Lady Caroline's shoulder, as if to emphasise something, at 
 the same time looking up into her friend's face. Lady Caroline, 
 whose eyes were still cast down, shook her head without speaking. 
 Mrs. Ismey made some quick, brief remark. Lady Caroline 
 shook her head again. Then Mrs. Ismey dropped her hand and 
 glanced towards Felix. 
 
 ' Oh, is the cab there ? ' she said. 
 
 *Yes,' Felix answered. 
 
 *Then I '11 come. Good night, Carrie.* 
 
 158
 
 FELIX 159 
 
 'Good night/ 
 
 Lady Caroline came lounging to the door and shook hands 
 with Felix. 
 
 'Come and see me,' she said. 
 
 ' Thank you, I will. I have so enjoyed this evening.' 
 
 She seemed quite struck by the energetic sincerity with which 
 he spoke. 
 
 * Well, then, you must come and have another,' she said, 
 almost genially. 
 
 A faint smile deepened the little holes on either side of her 
 mouth. 
 
 Felix helped Mrs. Ismey into the cab and gave the address 
 to the man. As they drove away he took off his hat to Lady 
 Caroline, who was standing on the step looking, he thought, 
 profoundly unconventional. 
 
 Directly they had started Mrs. Ismey said : 
 
 ' I don't want to go home for a few minutes. I want some 
 air. Tell him to drive a little way down the north side of the 
 Park.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Felix eagerly. 
 
 He told the man through the little trap, and fancied he saw 
 a grim smile on the shadowy section efface above him. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey sighed. Felix felt the warmth of her long coat 
 against him, the softness of the sables. He noticed again the 
 faint perfume he had smelt in the carriage. It was hers. then. 
 Now it seemed to be gradually dying away, like some withdrawn, 
 languorous melody, pushed towards silence by the light fingers 
 of the breeze. And the perfume and the breeze were surely in 
 antagonism, and communicated to him a sense of struggle, 
 which was sad because it seemed to be of the essence of life and 
 inevitable. He did not know it, but he must have sighed too, 
 for Mrs. Ismey said : 
 
 ' Do you feel unhappy — you ? ' 
 
 * I don't know. But why shouldn't I ?' 
 'What can you have to be unhnppy about?' 
 
 'Well, but I don't think one always wants a reason,' said 
 Felix. 'Sometimes some little thing, like this coming suddenly 
 into the air after being shut up in a room, makes me feel quite 
 different. Don't you find that too?' 
 
 Instead of replying to the question, she said : 
 
 ' My dear boy, if you want to be happy don't let yourself be 
 imaginative.' 
 
 ' But isn't it best to let oneself alone, and b(; just what one 
 naturally is?' said Felix, thinking of King Marshall's brief
 
 160 FELIX 
 
 discourse, which had made an immense impression upon 
 him. 
 
 'You are going to aim at being natural in London?' 
 
 ' Is it ridiculous?' 
 
 ' I should rather call it audacious. Of course there are natural 
 people in London as in other places.' 
 
 'Lady Caroline is one, I think,' said Felix. 
 
 'Yes, Carrie is certainly that, wh;itever else she may be,' said 
 Mrs. Ismey in, Felix thought, a slightly constrained voice. 
 
 There was a moment of silence. Then she added with an 
 obviously forced flippancy : 
 
 ' But natural Londoners usually live in Bedford Park and 
 don't count very much, except to themselves.' 
 
 Felix felt sure that, when she said this, she was trying to hide 
 a mood that prompted her to say something serious, perhaps 
 even violent. 
 
 ' Isn't that the real thing, though?' he answered. 'To count 
 very much to oneself? I don't mean to be conceited, but to 
 be ' he hesitated. 
 
 ' Go on,' Mrs. Ismey said. 
 
 He thought that she moved slightly as she spoke, and that 
 her coat felt warmer against him, and that he smelt the perfume 
 more distinctly. 
 
 ' I mean to be all right to oneself, to feel that one is being 
 one's true self — isn't that the chief thing ? Oh, I can't say it 
 properly.' 
 
 He felt angry at the awkward sound of his own words. 
 
 'Whatever species of animal that true self is?' she asked. 
 
 There was an ironical bitterness in her intonation, but he 
 scarcely noticed it, for his mind was intent now on the subject 
 they were discussing. He thought suddenly of Baron Hulot, 
 and instantly he remembered the glow of painful enthusiasm 
 that had swept over him when he reached the end of La Cousine 
 Bette. 
 
 ' By Jove, yes ! ' he exclaimed, with an almost passionate 
 energy. ' Whatever it is.' 
 
 'You boy ! ' said Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 There was a slight break in her voice. 
 
 •Ami?' 
 
 * Don't you know it? Don't you rejoice in it?* 
 
 • Rejoice in it ? Why should I ? ' 
 
 'Never mind. But tell me this. Could you feel admiration 
 of, or even devotion to sheer wickedness, if it was not artificial 
 — a studied or cultivated wickedness — but thoroughly of the
 
 FELIX 161 
 
 nature, deep-rooted and strong — specially that, strong? Could 
 you?' 
 
 An unusual eagerness had come into her voice. 
 
 ' I wonder,' said Felix. ' I believe — yes, I believe I could,' 
 he spoke half doubtfully — *at least I suppose I could if I met 
 such wickedness in life, because I did when I met it in Balzac. 
 And I felt there that it was life. It startled me, you know. I 
 don't believe I could have thought of such a horror for myself. 
 But when Balzac did I felt — "there's something positively 
 glorious in it." ' 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 * Is it very mad of me ? ' he asked. 
 
 * I dare say. But it 's rather natural. Boys are often like 
 that ' 
 
 She broke oflF. Then, with a sudden, piercing bitterness she 
 added : 
 
 * And girls too.' 
 
 Felix turned half round, startled, and gazed at her. All her 
 face was framed in the collar of soft fur, on which her round, 
 white chin rested. Her body, wrapped in her coat, looked very 
 long, narrow, and straight. And she was smiling. What an 
 enigma she was, 
 
 'Oh, I do so wish I could understand you!' he exclaimed 
 impetuously. 
 
 ' Do you?' she answered. 
 
 He had not changed his position, and was still looking 
 eagerly into her face when a curious and horrible alteration 
 came over it. Apparently she had made an immense effort to 
 smile, and wished to continue it so long as Felix was looking 
 at her. But his boyish curiosity outstayed the welcome her 
 power could give it. The smile flickered away. Her face 
 became first grave and then, abruptly^ grotesque. She was not 
 really a pretty woman. She was only a woman who knew how 
 to look pretty, and she lost the knowledge under the influence 
 of emotion. Felix felt almost frightened by her ugliness now, 
 as her mouth twisted to one side, showing her teeth pressed upon 
 the under lip. She put up her hand swiftly to her face. 
 
 * Look the other way ! she said, in a quick, uneven voice. 
 Felix obeyed instantly. He was glad to obey, but though he 
 
 no longer saw her he felt her body shaking against his side, and 
 though he heard no sound he knew she was sol>bing. He 
 longed to speak to her, to say something, anything that would 
 show his sympathy. He did not understand, he could not 
 conceive the cause of this sudden outburst from a woman so 
 
 L
 
 162 FELIX 
 
 thoroughly, even unusually self-possessed. But, without under- 
 standing, he could pity from the bottom of his heart. It seemed 
 to him a long time before he heard her say : 
 
 'Tell the cabman to turn round, please.' 
 
 Felix obeyed. 
 
 'I want to go to Wigmore Street.' 
 
 * Wigmore Street ! ' said Felix, in astonishment. 
 
 ' Yes. Number ' 
 
 She gave a number. 
 
 Felix told the man to drive there. He was utterly bewildered. 
 What could she be going to do at such an hour of night ? They 
 drove on for some time in silence. Felix looked out into the 
 road. It was utterly deserted. Beyond the tall iron railings lay 
 the blackness of the park. He could see the leafless branches 
 of the trees which lined the path running parallel to the road. 
 They looked most abominable, he thought, sinister and desolate. 
 Their nakedness was hideous in the night. When the branches 
 were still they were like something seen in a nightmare. When 
 they moved it was as if one woke and found that the nightmare 
 was a reality. 
 
 He shivered. 
 
 ' Why do you do that ? ' said Mrs. Ismey, almost in her usual 
 voice. 
 
 'I don't know. It's the cold, I suppose.' 
 
 'When we get to Wigmore Street I don't wish you to get out 
 of the cab.' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' Just sit still. I shan't be long.' 
 
 She stopped speaking. Then she went on : 
 
 'Of course you think this very odd, but it isn't really. I'm 
 only going to a chemist.' 
 
 ' Oh, you 're not ill ! ' 
 
 He looked at her again. The ugliness had not quite left her 
 face, whose features looked much harder than usual, but there 
 were no traces of tears. 
 
 'I don't feel particularly well. But it's nothing to bother 
 about. This chemist knows me and can give me something to 
 do me good.' 
 
 'I see.' 
 
 ' I may be with him a few minutes.' 
 
 *0h, I don't mind how long I wait,' said Felix earnestly. 
 •Please don't think about me. I'm only awfully sorry for you. 
 I mean your being ill Hke this.' 
 
 'You're a kind, dear boy,' she said.
 
 FELIX 163 
 
 She put her gloved hand on his for a moment. Felix felt his 
 pulses beating and the blood rushed to his forehead. He kept 
 his hind quite still under hers, and thought how wonderfully 
 light a woman's hand is. Mrs. Ismey's was almost like a bird 
 resting on him, and when she took it away he felt as if he saw 
 the flight of the bird. They were in the dark streets now. The 
 cabman elected to reach Wigmore Street by a tortuous slum, 
 that looked like the back of a mews. He turned several sharp 
 corners. One of the wheels grazed a post. Mrs. Ismey shut 
 her two hands down tightly on the apron of the cab. 
 
 ' I 'm abominably nervous to-night,' she said. 'Why does he 
 go this way? Oh, we are close now.' 
 
 The cab stopped at last before a silent, shuttered house, at a 
 corner. One light burned behind a red glass lamp. Under it 
 there was a bell-handle. Mrs. Ismey got out of the cab quickly 
 and furtively. 
 
 'I won't be long,' she whispered. 
 
 As she stepped in front of Felix to reach the pavement she 
 had touched his hand again. She rang the bell. There was a 
 long interval of silence. Felix heard the cabman clear his throat 
 and shift on his perch. The horse drooped its head and the 
 reins hung loose. Mrs. Ismey, who stood with her back turned 
 to the street, pulled the bell again, and Felix saw her lift her 
 face as if she were looking up at the windows of the house, 
 which were all dark. A feeble gust of wind came down the 
 street. It caught a bit of white paper and sent it creeping over 
 the pavement. Felix followed it with his eyes. It stopped, 
 shook, crept on again, like a livid thing that was alive. He saw 
 Mrs. Ismey's arm move violently as she pulled the bell for the 
 third time. A minute or two elapsed. Then the door opened 
 noiselessly and the vague figure of a man partially appeared. 
 Mrs. Ismey made a forward movement. The figure disappeared. 
 She followed it and the door shut noiselessly. 
 
 Felix began to feel as if he were in a dream, and although 
 nothing dreadful had happened, he felt as if the dream were 
 very horrible,fullofblackness,hiddcn things, despair. The silence 
 of London by night appalled his imagination. This crowd of 
 tall, dark houses, stretching away on all sides, voiceless, 
 mysterious, sent a cold shudder through him, now that he had 
 seen one of them open, like a creature with a mouth, and 
 swallow up Mrs. Ismey The vague figure of the man suggested 
 formless terrors to him. ^Vhat manner of man was he? Was 
 she safe shut up there with him? The time seemed very long. 
 What could be happening ? The red lamp was like a bloodshot
 
 164 FELIX 
 
 eye keeping watch before an ambush. He heard the cabman 
 moving about and coughing. The horse shook itself as horses 
 shake themselves when they are frightfully over-tired. There was 
 a sound of distant footsteps far down the street. They were quick 
 and pattering and drew rapidly near. Felix hoped Mrs. Ismey 
 would not come out till they had passed. He hated the idea of 
 her being seen by any one coming from that house in the dead 
 of the night. Presently the footsteps stopped. Felix listened, 
 but did not hear them again. He wondered why they had 
 stopped, whether some one was standing near in the dark, waiting, 
 as he was waiting, to see the door of the black house open. 
 After a minute or two he began to feel certain that some one 
 was watching. He leaned forward over the apron, which he had 
 closed after Mrs. Ismey got out, turned his head and looked 
 down the street in the direction from which the sound of the 
 footsteps had come. But he saw no one, nothing but the vista 
 of the street, the two lines of houses drawing together in the 
 distance, the two lines of lamps diminishing in the darkness. 
 
 All the rest of his life he wondered, now and then, who had 
 pattered down Wigmore Street that night, what manner of human 
 being, intent on what nocturnal errand. 
 
 As he leaned back once more in the cab the chemist's door 
 noiselessly opened again, and Mrs. Ismey glided swiftly out. 
 Felix hurriedly pushed back the apron. She was by his side in 
 an instant. 
 
 ' Now, Green Street,' she said, in a low voice. 
 
 As they drove off the chemist's door closed. This time Felix 
 had seen no vague figure in the aperture. The opening and 
 shutting were apparently autcimatic. Mrs. Ismey did not speak. 
 Nor did Felix. He was sitting by a mystery, but it was no 
 business of his to ask questions of the mystery. He had quite 
 forgotten that he had meant to find out from his companion 
 why she had required of him the sacrifice of a possible career. 
 All thought of his affairs, his life, had left him. He was pre- 
 occupied with hers. Neither of them said a word till the cab 
 turned into Green Street. Then Mrs. Ismey moved to put her 
 hand into some recess of her long fur coat. She drew it out 
 holding a latch-key, and then looked at Felix. Her eyes were 
 shining. 
 
 'It's hardly necessary to ask you, I know,' she murmured, 
 ' but I don't want you ever to mention my visit to Wigmore 
 Street to-night. People always think such absurd things about 
 one's health — especially husbands.' 
 
 ' Of course I never will,' said Felix.
 
 FELIX 165 
 
 The horse stopped. 
 
 'Good night,' she said. 'You 've been very nice to me. No, 
 sit still.' 
 
 She squeezed his hand, putting the palm of her hand upon 
 the back of his, and closing her fingers for an instant till they 
 were in his palm. And, somehow, this farewell seemed to 
 Felix almost like a caress, and quite different from the con- 
 ventional touch of hand with hand. 
 
 A moment later she had vanished into her house without 
 looking back.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 IN the dawn of that morning Felix sat writing to his mother. 
 He had found it impossible to go to sleep. Indeed, when 
 he lay down in bed, the excitement of his mind increased. A 
 torrent of thought rushed through his brain and he felt like one 
 hot with fever. He got up again, dressed, walked about his 
 little sitting-room. The Chinese idols, propped up with their 
 wedges of folded paper, stared at him with their narrow eyes, as 
 if humorously surprised by his nocturnal activity. Felix thought 
 sarcasm lurked in their immobile faces, and remembered the 
 satire in Mrs. Ismey's eyes on the evening of his first meeting 
 with her. He had been half afraid of her then. He had never 
 thought that he could pity her. Yet now he did pity her. For 
 what? He did not know. But he felt that there was something 
 dreary and dreadful in her life. That ugly change in her face, 
 a change which she had wished to hide, could only have been 
 caused by some deep-seated, strongly rooted ill. He wondered 
 what that ill was, whether it was physical. Perhaps she suffered 
 from one of those torturing bodily persecutions which render 
 the lives of so many human beings a burden. If so, did Mr. 
 Ismey know it ? Was it, perhaps, that knowledge which had 
 set the perpetual sorrow in his eyes? With an almost furious 
 rapidity Felix reconsidered the whole of his short acquaintance 
 with Mrs. Ismey, searching for the truth of her grief. He 
 recalled the curious incident in the garden, when she had sent 
 him away for a moment to look in at the drawing-room window. 
 He had never understood that, nor the very marked physical 
 change which had followed her instant of solitude. Under- 
 stood ! What did he understand in her? Anything? Once 
 
 more an almost passionate anger at his ignorance surged into 
 his heart. To get away from it he sat down to write to his 
 mother. 
 
 At least he understood her. The thought of her simplicity 
 was soothing just then, and presently brought back to him some 
 of the old, pleasant sense of superiority which had been his 
 companion at La Maison des Alouettes when he dissected 
 
 160
 
 FELIX 167 
 
 Grand'mere, and, later, at Churston Waters. And, being 
 soothed, he wrote a letter that was not wholly impatient. 
 Nevertheless it was firm. He said to his mother — he thought 
 in very convincing and excellent language — that a man must 
 stand or fall by his own will, that he must be a free agent if he 
 is to be a man at all, that he cannot be governed in his choice 
 of a life by women if he is to preserve his self-respect. Not even 
 a mother can think for him. The burden of the letter was 
 ' Trust me.' Perhaps because he was really tired, though he 
 did not know it, and in a condition of nervous excitement, 
 Felix was carried away, intoxicated by his own prose. At any 
 rate his letter seemed to him a most manly and even touching 
 composition. He begged his mother to learn to rely on him a 
 little more, and said that, if she did so, he was the more likely 
 to prove himself worthy of her reliance. It was difficult, he said 
 further, to do what was right if one were always suspected of 
 being about to do what was wrong. As he went on, developing 
 this idea in the small and silent hours, he came to think that his 
 mother had really injured him in her thought and that he was 
 being almost nobly magnanimous. Without conceit, he felt as 
 he sealed the letter that he was a fine fellow. He had not 
 forgotten to say that Stephen was not his ruler, and must not 
 interfere in his affairs. The labour of composition left him 
 conscious that the night was meant for rest and was over. He 
 undressed, went to bed, and at last was able to fall asleep. When 
 his servant called him he felt as if the night had only just begun, 
 sent the man away and slept again till nearly one o'clock. He 
 had breakfast instead of lunch, and faced a day that seemed 
 thoroughly disorganised. He longed to go and call on Mrs. 
 Ismey, but did not like to, fearing to be intrusive or a bore. 
 Finally he went out and left cards on three sets of people to 
 whom he had introductions. It was only four o'clock when this 
 social task was accomplished, and as he walked away from the 
 third house, which was in Cadogan Square, he was suddenly 
 overwhelmed with depression at having no tie of work in London. 
 It was awful to think of drifting on, perhaps for months, with 
 no regular occupation to fill his day and make the evening a 
 delightful contrast of ease. He remembered, actually for the 
 first time, that he had never asked Mrs. Ismey that question, 
 why she had deprived him of the advantage offered to him by 
 her husband. Should he go and ask her now? He stood for a 
 moment at the corner of Sloane Street hesitating. Then he 
 made up his mind that he had no right to call again so soon, 
 that it would be a solecism, and would perhaps be regarded as
 
 168 FELIX 
 
 evidence of his lack of acquaintance with the rules of London 
 life. He began to walk home drearily, but when he reached 
 Victoria Street a happy thought struck him, and made h'.m feel 
 quite cheerful. Why not call on Hal Blake? This time he did 
 not hesitate, but turned at once in the direction of the Vauxhall 
 Bridge Road. After walking for two or three minutes he asked 
 a policeman the way to Emily Street. 
 
 'Second turn to the left, first to the right, and first to the left 
 again,' said the policeman in a loud bass voice, without glancing 
 at him. 
 
 Felix followed the direction, and soon found himself in a 
 quarter of London that was obviously free from any tyranny of 
 fashion. 
 
 Emily Street lies in a region at the back of Victoria Street 
 close to the Vauxhall Bridge Road. It is a narrow and rather 
 squalid thoroughfare, depressing but not wicked in appearance. 
 A sort of pained respectability seems stamped upon it. The 
 flat, mean houses with their dim windows, their dingy doors and 
 furtive little areas, are almost exactly alike. Here and there one 
 has been freshly painted, and looks outrageous among its 
 discoloured brethren, like some over-dressed intruder at a 
 funeral. In the glass fanlights above the doors may be seen 
 many dirty cards with 'Furnished apartments' printed upon 
 them, for Emily Street is one of the refuges of solitary men with 
 small, steady incomes, clerks in city ware'nouses, shorthr.nd 
 writers, shopwalkers in ' Emporiums,' those unmarried workers 
 of the lower middle-classes who swarm in great cities and who, 
 having aspirations and being exceedin;;iy respectable, like to 
 live in what they call a 'first-rate neighbiurhood' and to have 
 a 'good address.' There was no doubt that 'Emily Street, 
 Victoria, S.W.' looked very well on a piece of notepaper, and 
 gave a sort oi cachet to the man entitled to print it on his cards, 
 if he had any. Yet Felix, accustomed to live in a pretty country 
 place and to look out on gardens, found himself wondering, 
 as he walked down it, how any human being could select it 
 deliberately as a home. Victoria Street was d/eary, perha} s, 
 but life flowed perpetually through it. The bu&tle of a main 
 thoroughfare vitalised it. In Emily Street there was a sort of 
 stagnant calm, a childless, dingy peace which was like a heavy 
 weight. 
 
 He walked to number ten, and knocked upon a weather- 
 stained door, which had once been chocolate coloured. There 
 was no answer. He knocked again, and pulled at a handle 
 which protruded from the area railing. A bell rang in the
 
 FELIX 169 
 
 narrow basement and, in a moment, he saw a head crowned 
 with a filthy cap pushed into view from, presumably, the kitchen 
 window, and a lantern-jawed girl's face turned towards him with 
 an expression of sluttish curiosity. After an instant's pause, 
 and before he had spoken, the head was slowly withdrawn, and 
 presently a slouching and uneven step was audible in the passage. 
 The door was opened and the lantern-jawed girl, who was attired 
 in a very dirty print dress, stood in the aperture. 
 
 ' Can I see Mr. Hal Blake ? ' asked Felix. ' Is he in ? 
 
 'Yes,' replied the girl, in a husky alto voice, 'he is in.* 
 
 She evidently had a severe cold. 
 
 'Can I see him?' repeated Felix. 
 
 The girl examined him with the acute suspicion that springs 
 from lack of intellect. 
 
 'Well, I dunno,' she said at last. 'Are you from the 'alls?' 
 
 ' No. Mr. Blake asked me to call.' 
 
 'Oh, then I'll see.' 
 
 The girl sneezed violently, turned round, sneezed again with 
 her back to Felix, went slowly up the narrow staircase and 
 disappeared. In two or three minutes she returned, stopped 
 on the stairs directly she was in sight, and called out : 
 
 ' You can come up.' 
 
 Felix obeyed the bronchial injunction, and was speedily 
 ushered into a typical London chamber by the sneezing servant. 
 It was what is called by landladies the ' double.' In the front, 
 looking forth upon the joys of Emily Street, was a good-sized 
 parlour, which communicated by folding-doors with a bedroom, 
 whose one window peered out upon some dingy, lost region 
 given over to paving-stones and despairing cats. On the parlour 
 side of the folding-doors hung, against the yellow wood, a pair 
 of white curtains of imitation lace, made in some stiff and 
 uncompromising material, and looped with brown bows. There 
 was a cottage piano, and a set of furniture consisting of a sofa 
 and two armchairs, upholstered in much rubbed and disfigured 
 brown plush with a yellow trimming of tags and balls. In the 
 centre of the room stood a solid square table, covered with a 
 green cloth and bearing proudly the weight of some unknown 
 green plant, whose two spiky leaves aspired from a black china 
 pot on which sprawled a pattern of pink cabbage roses. Pushed 
 in to this table were several hard chairs. Beyond it, against the 
 wall, was a sideboard decorated with two tarnished salvers. The 
 wall paper was brown, with a yellow pattern of jiagodas upon it. 
 On cither side of the small, round top of each pagoda were two 
 yellov\ b'rds with hooked noses, in flight. Th.ere were three
 
 170 FELIX 
 
 prints upon the walls. One showed a stout lady in a pelisse 
 and white stockings being upset out of a coach upon a desolate 
 moor. Another represented John Gilpin at the most acute stage 
 of his troubled career. The third was a portrait of Qir<=en 
 Victoria riding with the Iron Duke. 
 
 Felix waited. His sense of the joy of life was decidedly on 
 the wane. The folding-doors were ajar, and he could not help 
 hearing a slight rustling and sound of suppressed whispering in 
 the inner room. He fixed his eyes upon the lady in the pelisse, 
 whose mouth was a round O of agony, and thought how ghastly 
 existence must be in such a room. 
 
 ' Glad to see you, guv'nor,' said a firm voice, and Happy Hal 
 emerged from the inner room and shut the folding-doors 
 carefully behind him. 
 
 Felix felt a sense of relief. He shook hands with Hal, who 
 looked at him with an unflinching serenity which, apparently, 
 never changed. 
 
 'Sit down, guv'nor,' continued Hal, placing one of the arm- 
 chairs before the grate, which was filled with a white-and-gold 
 paper parasol. ' Glad to see you.' 
 
 Felix sat down and Hal took a seat opposite. He had dis- 
 carded his workman's costume, and wore a black-and-white 
 check suit and brown boots. 
 
 'Ah,' he continued, seeing that Felix had noticed this fact, 
 'funny thing, ain't it, guv'nor, the missus can't get used to it. 
 Every ni^ht, when I puts on the others to go to the Hall, she 
 says, "Hal," she says, "now you're yourself." But, in my 
 position, it don't do to go walking about London in 'em, does 
 it, guv'nor?' 
 
 He spoke quite without conceit, with an air of simple 
 knowledge of his situation. 
 
 ' Certainly not,' said Felix. ' And how does your wife like 
 being in London?' 
 
 Hal pursed up his small mouth and slightly shook his cropped 
 head. 
 
 'She doesn't like it?' 
 
 * Well, guv'nor, you see she 's strange to it, and she ain't got 
 the hang of it yet, as you might say. She 's that confused with 
 it she gets angry like. And then she will have it as London 's a 
 wicked place.' 
 
 Hal paused. His large, brown hands were lying upon his 
 sturdy knees, palm downward. He lifted one of them and 
 dropped it down again on his check trouser. 
 
 « A wicked place, guv'nor,' he said, using his adjective.
 
 FELIX 171 
 
 Felix could not help smiling at his earnestness. 
 
 'Well, I suppose it is,' he said. 
 
 'And ain't there any wickedness in Dover?' asked Hal. 
 'Ain't there, guv'nor?' 
 
 'Oh, of course there is.' 
 
 ' That 's what I tell her, guv'nor. I says to her, " Go where 
 you will, Anne," I says, "there's wickedness." But there, she 
 will have it there's no wickedness like there is in London.' 
 
 ' Perhaps she '11 get more accustomed to it presently,' said 
 FeliX) in an almost severely grave voice. 
 
 ' That 's what I says, but she says, " I don't want to get used 
 to no wickedness," she says. Funny things women.' 
 
 Hal heaved a sigh. His face wore always a calm and rumin- 
 ating expression, but it was evident that he was slightly worried. 
 Felix was about to offer some further attempt at consolation 
 when the folding-doors were opened a very little way, and a 
 small, thin woman initiated herself into the room with a sort of 
 fluttered precaution, as if, though under some compulsion she 
 presented herself to the view of the two people in the parlour of 
 the ' double,' she wished to remain as unobserved as, under the 
 circumstances, was possible. 
 
 Mrs. Blake was one of those extraordinarily respectable-looking 
 little women who are only found in so-called humble life. No 
 lady, however virtuous, however self-respecting, could have 
 achieved her peculiar expression of wary decency, could have 
 moved with the pinched and cautious propriety which was 
 characteristic of her. She was a clean, careful, conscious little 
 body, with smooth brown hair and small pointed features of the 
 nut-cracker type, neat and not inexpressive, anxious but not ill- 
 natured grey eyes under faint, light eyebrows, small hands and 
 feet, and rather sharp shoulder-blades and elbows. Many 
 women of her type look shrewish. Mrs. Blake looked merely 
 as if she were, by nature, highly strung. 
 
 When she saw Felix she dropped a small curtsey, and smoothed 
 the front of what was evidently her best gown, a lavender merino 
 with a wandering white riband on it, with anxious fingers. Felix 
 got up quickly and shook hands with her. He did not exactly 
 know why, but he felt at once a strong sympathy with this 
 small, spare hostess in her furnished London parlour. Perhaps 
 he guessed how much more at home she used to feel in her 
 Dover kitchen. Hal said, in his powerful voice, ' Mrs. Blake, 
 guv'nor,' and they all tliree sat down again facing the white-and- 
 gold paper parasol. Mrs. Blake looked at it firmly, and kept 
 on smoothing the lavender merino with her small hands, which
 
 172 FELIX 
 
 it was easy to see had had plenty to do with the washtub fn 
 former days. 
 
 ' I 've been hearing your husband sing,' said Fehx, to begin 
 conversation. ' He sings splendidly.' 
 
 ' Hal was always a musician, sir,' said Mrs. Blake, in a thin, 
 company voice. 
 
 'His singing must be a great pleasure to you.' 
 
 *Yes, sir, we all set great store by it,' said Mrs. Blake. 
 
 She gave a slight cough, folded her hands and added : 
 
 'At Dover, sir.' 
 
 'Now, Anne,' said Hal, with a tinge of reproach in his 
 pleasant voice, 'you know it ain't no different here.' 
 
 ' I didn't say so, Hal. I said to the gentleman we all set 
 great store by your singing at Dover. And so we did.' 
 
 Hal seemed about to say something, for he opened his mouth, 
 but he closed it again without uttering a word. Mrs. Blake 
 fixed her anxious eyes firmly on the paper parasol, and added 
 reflectively : 
 
 ' I 'm sure your mates thought the world and all of you at 
 Dover, Hal.' 
 
 'There's more to think about me in London, Anne,' said her 
 husband. 
 
 ' Maybe there is and maybe there isn't,' she replied. 
 
 ' She can't see as how it 's more when folk like a chap in 
 London, guv'nor, than what it is when thev like him in Dover,' 
 said Hal, addressing himself to Felix. 'But there is a differ- 
 ence, ain't there?' 
 
 'Oh yes, Mrs. Blake,' said Felix. 'When London likes any 
 one it means that he would be appreciated anywhere in the world.' 
 
 Mrs. Blake looked quite unconvinced, but she replied respect- 
 fully, though formally: 
 
 ' I 'm very glad you say so, sir, and if it pleases Hal for 
 London folk to come after him.' 
 
 'Anne will have it that I like 'em staring at me as they do, 
 guv'nor,' interposed Hal. 'It ain't a bit of good me telling 'er 
 as it's part of the show. I can't sing to 'em from behind the 
 " drop," can I now?' 
 
 ' Oh, come, Mrs. Blake, I 'm sure you 're really proud of your 
 husband's making such a success up here,' said Felix cheerfully. 
 
 He felt that Hal looked to him as an ally, and relied upon 
 him to bring Mrs. Blake to a proper appreciation of their 
 admirable situation. 
 
 ' Why,' he continued, 'just think of what it means. Think of 
 the money he earns.'
 
 FELIX 173 
 
 'Yes, I know, sir,' she replied, still in the same unconvinced 
 voice. 
 
 She shot a glance of mysterious and complicated suspicion 
 towards the door, looked at her husband, pursed her lips and 
 said : 
 
 'That girl don't bring the tea, you see, Hal.' 
 
 ' Now please don't order anything for me,' Felix began. 
 
 'We hope you'll take a cup of tea, sir,' said Mrs. Blake, with 
 a sort of steadfast hospitality. ' Not as we get it here like I can 
 make it, though I says it myself.' 
 
 'Her brew is Ai, sir,' threw in Hal, evidently anxious to pro- 
 pitiate his wife. ' But, as we are now, I don't like her going 
 down in the kitchen.' 
 
 'Oh, I wouldn't go, not in this kitchen,' said Mrs. Blake, with 
 sudden vivacity. ' I never knew any girl to be so slow, Hal.' 
 
 At this moment there was the sound of a clattering of crockery 
 and a stumbling step outside. A pause followed, and a pro- 
 longed fumbling at the handle of the door. Mrs. Blake tucked 
 in her lips, till her mouth looked like a purse, drawn together in 
 the old-fashioned way by a riband. All her features seemed to 
 Felix to become suddenly more nut-cracker in type. 
 
 'Why ever don't she come in, Hal?' she inquired, as if asking 
 for information about some savage animal from the keeper of a 
 menagerie. 
 
 He made a movement as if to get up, but before he could do 
 so the door was burst open, and disclosed a view of the back of 
 the slatternly servant, with the worn heel of the slipper which, 
 with the foot inside it, had just been applied to the wood, 
 presented uncompromisingly to the eyes of the assembled com- 
 pany. Mrs. Blake turned down one corner of her mouth, and 
 cast a look of searching interrogation at her husband, while the 
 servant swung awkwardly round, and shuffled into the room 
 bearing a japanned tray, which she set down with a bang and a 
 rattle upon the table. She then, after a loud sneeze, proceeded 
 to the sideboard, opened a drawer and extracted a tablecloth. 
 
 'Why ever don't she lay the cloth before setting that down 
 there ? ' whispered Mrs. Blake to Hal. ' She '11 only have to take 
 it — I never knew such a gal to sneeze.' 
 
 The servant was delivering herself of a striking, and even 
 sensational demonstration, while shaking out the cloth in airy, 
 round-backed waves. Having at length in some degree re- 
 covered herself, she advanced to the table and began to put the 
 cloth on it. Mrs. Blake's face was a study during this pro- 
 ceeding. A keen severity appeared upon it, combined with a
 
 174 FELIX 
 
 fastidiously critical expression which quite transformed her, 
 turning her — so FeHx thought — into a being ahnost painfully 
 intelligent. The servant, who was evidently quite unconcerned, 
 obsessed by her tremendous cold, laid the cloth up to the tray, 
 and then paused, snuffling, to consider what course to pursue, 
 whether to remove the tray to the sideboard or to heave it up 
 and get the cloth under it. 
 
 ' Whatever 's she going to do now, Hal ? ' whispered Mrs. Blake. 
 ' Why ever don't she ? ' 
 
 At this moment the girl came to a decision, lifted the tray 
 partially up with one hand and shoved the tablecloth under it 
 with the other. Some tea ran out round the lid of the over-full 
 teapot and slopped into the tray. 
 
 'T'ch, t'ch, t'ch, t'ch,' went Mrs. Blake. 
 
 She was turning to cast-iron. The girl set the table, slightly 
 protruding her tongue as she calculated the distances that ought 
 to stretch between the plates. When she had finished she said, 
 in the husky alto voice : 
 
 'Tea 's ready.' 
 
 * Wherever 's the buttered toast, Hal?' said Mrs. Blake to her 
 husband, still in the same stage whisper. 
 
 It was evident that she regarded the girl as some strange and 
 untoward phenomenon, as to whose habits and customs she 
 could not even make a guess, whose reasons for doing or for 
 leaving undone this or that were altogether beyond her. 
 
 'Where's the buttered toast, Mary?' asked Hal. 
 
 The girl glanced round the table with a lack-lustre eye. 
 
 'Ain't I brought ut?' she said. 
 
 ' No, you ain't ! ' said Mrs. Blake sharply, addressing her for 
 the first time. 
 
 ' I s'pose I must a' left ut in the kitchen, then,' responded the 
 girl without emotion. ' I '11 go and see.' 
 
 She made a fatigued exit. 
 
 'Why ever should she leave it in the kitchen, Hal?' inquired 
 Mrs. Blake. 
 
 ' I dunno, Anne,' said Hal. 'But she's got a bit of a cold. 
 Will you sit to the table, guv'nor ? ' 
 
 They all three drew up to the table. Mrs. Blake was at the head 
 of it before the plated teapot. It was evident that she was far 
 too deeply < gaged in the exercise of the critical faculty to take 
 any share for the moment in general conversation. It seemed 
 to Felix that her thin figure had grown thinner, her small, 
 pointed features sharper under the stress of the mental activity 
 which consumed her at this, to her, most painful moment. She
 
 FELIX 175 
 
 lifted the Hd and darted a piercing glance of inquiry into the 
 pot. There was a silence while the two men watched her. 
 Then she dropped the lid and said to Hal : 
 
 ' If she hasn't left in this morning's leaves, Hal !' 
 The criminal laziness of London was surely summed up and 
 securely enshrined in that one sentence as uttered by Mrs. 
 Blake. There was no more to be said, and Hal evidently knew 
 it, for he formed his lips into a round O, as if about to whistle, 
 fixed his bright eyes on his wife, and shook his bullet head 
 without a word, while she, with a face of stone and the rigid 
 hand of utter disillusion, poured the black and stewy liquid into 
 three cups and added sugar and milk. As she finished, the girl, 
 once more a-sneeze, re-entered with a plate containing buttered 
 toast cut into lozenge form. She put it down on the table and 
 then glanced at Mrs. Blake. 
 
 * Wotever is ut ? ' she said. 
 
 She obtained no reply. Mrs. Blake was entirely concentrated 
 upon the toast, which seemed, from the moment of its advent, 
 to exercise a species of awful fascination over her. She looked 
 at it from various angles, and each glance appeared to deepen 
 the impression which it had made upon her. Of the nature of 
 that impression there could scarcely be any doubt. Even the 
 girl was struck and slightly awed by her demeanour. 
 
 'Wot's wrong?' inquired the girl, again protruding her tongue 
 and beginning to squint. 
 
 Mrs. Blake diminished the size of her mouth till that feature 
 was infinitesimal. 
 
 ' Ain't I cut ut right ? ' continued the girl. ' Don't ut do ? ' 
 
 ' It '11 have to do,' said Mrs. Blake, with an awful look at the 
 girl. 
 
 ' Well, that 's 'ow I always cuts ut,' said the girl, with a certain 
 doggedness. 
 
 ' I dessay,' rejoined Mrs. Blake, in a thin voice. 'I dessay.' 
 
 * 'Ow would you want ut ? ' continued the girl, squinting more 
 than ever. ' Would you 'ave ut cut round ? ' 
 
 ' Never mind,' said Mrs. Blake, looking at Hal as if to draw 
 his attention to her Christianity. ' It don't matter how I 'd have 
 it. It don't matter at all.' 
 
 'Oh, very well,' said the girl sulkily. 'I'm sure some's 
 diflficult to please.' 
 
 She turned, and went out sneezing. 
 
 When the door was shut Mrs. Blake handed the toast to 
 Felix, who took two slices with a deliberate, and perhaps slightly 
 forced air of satisfaction.
 
 176 fp:lix 
 
 'Why, Mrs. Blake,' he said, 'I'm sure it's very good. After 
 all, whatever way it 's cut it tastes the same, doesn't it ? ' 
 
 But here Hal interposed with an air of conviction. 
 
 'The missus is right, guv'nor,' he said. 'There is things as 
 they don't know in London. It should be cut in rounds.' 
 
 This definite backing-up of her opinion had a mollifying effect 
 upon Mrs. Blake, and conversation became slightly easier. 
 Felix asked after the two children, and was told that they were 
 asleep in the next room. 
 
 'You see, guv'nor,' explained Hal, 'my coming back of a 
 night disturbs 'em. They can't make out what Daddy's up to. 
 At Dover me and the missus was mostly abed come nine.' 
 
 ' And now if you don't have to start out come ten,' said Mrs. 
 Blake with a sniff. ' Nice hours they keep in London.' 
 
 This remark led to a more open discussion of the metropolis, 
 and drew from Mrs. Blake some expression of her fears for Hal 
 in his new profession. 
 
 ' It 's the drink I 'm afraid of, sir,' she explained frankly to Felix. 
 
 ' Now, Anne,' said her husband, ' you know I never take a 
 glass too much.' 
 
 'Not yet you don't, Hal,' she assented. ' I know that. But 
 who's to say you never will, with one wanting you to take a 
 glass here and another there. You say yourself as it 's drink, 
 drink, drink at the Halls, and every feller there ready to treat 
 you if you but say the word.' 
 
 'Ah, but I don't never say the word.' 
 
 ' Not yet you don't,' said Mrs. Blake, with significance. 
 
 She was evidently by nature an anxious little body, who had 
 been thrown into a permanent condition of acute uneasiness 
 by the abrupt change in her husband's fortunes. Felix, who 
 honestly felt sure that her fears were groundless, strove to 
 reassure her, and even told her of his mother's fears for him. 
 
 'You know, Mrs. Blake,' he said, 'your husband and I came 
 up to London nearly at the same time.' 
 
 ' You 're not at the Halls, sir,' said Mrs. Bkke. ' Are you ? ' 
 
 Felix could not help smiling. 
 
 'No. But I'm certain there's no more danger for him in 
 London than there is for me. We'll both make our fortunes, 
 and th-'n my mother and you will be obliged to own that you 
 needn't have been so anxious about us.' 
 
 He spoke cheerfully, but at that moment he was secretly 
 envying Hal, who had a position, a profession, success, all that 
 tends to make a man at home in a great city. Then he got up 
 to go.
 
 FELIX 177 
 
 'Oh, I'm sure, sir,' said Mrs. Blake respectfully, 'for a 
 gentleman like you London is the proper place. I hope you 
 don't think as I ' 
 
 * No, no. But I 'd answer for your husband as I would for 
 myself. And I hope he 'd do the same for me.' 
 
 Hal looked quietly gratified. 
 
 ' The missus '11 settle down all right presently,' he said. 
 
 He smiled for the first time since Felix had called, and added : 
 
 'Miss your kitchen, don't you, missus?' 
 
 Mrs. Blake looked down and twisted the front of the merino 
 dress between her fingers. Her pointed features began sud- 
 denly to work. Felix hastily, but with warm cordiality, bade 
 her good-bye, and promised to call again. He felt his sympathy 
 with her deepen. Standing there in the ugly room, which 
 symbolised her rise in the world, but which she evidently 
 regarded with wonder and alarm, she looked very forlorn. The 
 fact that she had on her best gown intensified the little tragedy. 
 A tear fell on her thin cheek as she dropped her small, respect- 
 ful courtesy. 
 
 ' Thank you, sir,' she murmured. 
 
 Hal escorted Felix to the door. He was evidently concerned. 
 
 ' She don't cotton to London, guv'nor, and that's the truth,' 
 he said. ' Even the ten quid a week don't seem to make it up 
 to 'er for leaving Dover. You see, she was born and bred 
 there. She 'd rather have me back at the harbour and lose the 
 money, I do b'lieve — funny, guv'nor, ain't it ? ' 
 
 As Felix walked away he was conscious that Hal's final remark 
 accurately summed up a good many situations. When he 
 reached home he found a letter lying upon his table. The 
 envelope was covered with spots of ink. He opened it and saw 
 Mrs. Ismey's name at the end. The letter was an invitation to 
 dinner. 
 
 ' Dear Mr. Wilding, — I have a kind of intuition that you 
 may call to-day, but in case you don't, and to be properly 
 formal, I send this to tell you that my husband and I hope you 
 will come and dine next Saturday at eight. Mr. Marshall, the 
 novelist, is coming, and one or two others. Whnt do you say? 
 You see, my husband isn't mortally offended by your refusal to 
 become office-boy! — Yours very sincerely, Valeria Ismev. 
 
 ' J^.S.—I love driving at night with the right person.' 
 
 Felix flushed as he finished reading the note. He laid it 
 down. Then he took it up again, and sat for a long time 
 
 M
 
 178 FELIX 
 
 holding it in his hand. The writing was extraordinary. At first 
 he thought that it was Uke the caligraphy of some one who had 
 written in sleep as people talk in sleep. The lines were uneven. 
 Some sloped up, some down. Several words were illegible. 
 He guessed what they were from the context. The half-formed, 
 straggling letters suggested terrible weakness, weariness. There 
 were many ugly smears of ink too. He remembered the tramp 
 table in Mrs. Ismey's pretty drawing-room. This note must 
 have been written on it. But that table and this infirm writing, 
 disfigured by black stains, seemed so unlike her that he imagined 
 her dictating the note to some half-tipsy amanuensis. 
 
 Then he thought of the nocturnal visit to Wigmore Street, 
 and was filled once more with a vague feeling of uneasiness.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 FELIX had thought of going home to Churston Waters 
 that week from Saturday to Monday. Mrs. Ismey's note 
 drove the idea away at once. He wrote an acceptance of 
 the invitation, and then once more went out, simply because 
 he felt utterly restless. That peculiar^ uneasy desire for per- 
 petual movement which invades so many souls in great towns, 
 and which is so painful because it is so objectless, was beginning 
 to steal through him. It was a very black evening, still and 
 sombre, and, as he walked, loneliness seemed to close in on 
 him like darkness on waste land. A fierce longing seized him 
 to have some occupation in this mighty city seething with 
 occupations, to have some task, however hard, however fatigu- 
 ing, to which he would go each day, to which he would be 
 obliged to devote that energy of youth which was gathering in 
 him, was rising like water behind a dam. The omnibuses 
 rolled by. They were crowded with workers going home to 
 their earned rest : with tired clerks and city men, with plainly 
 dressed girls and women who gained their livelihood by their 
 own efforts. The sight of those working women made Felix 
 feel ashamed, effeminate, unworthy, and undignified. God had 
 not given to him the temperament of the idler. Suddenly he 
 knew that, knew it so absolutely that his heart cried out to him 
 against his life, and grew sick within him at the thought of its 
 continuance. Mr. Isiney was right. Work is a guardi;in angel. 
 Work turns the wilderness into a garden. Work sometimes 
 does what even love cannot do, rof)ts a man firmly in his place 
 in the world, and gives him the blessed sensation: 'This plot 
 of ground in the wide immensity of earth was meant for me to 
 grow in.' 
 
 To-night Felix wanted to take root, to grow. The desolation 
 of his idleness tortured him, as he walked onwaid in the dark 
 among the crowd of the workers, who had finished their long 
 day of energy and were looking, as tliey had a right to look, 
 gladly towards their rest. 
 
 Without being conscious of the direction in which he was 
 
 179
 
 180 FELIX 
 
 going, he had nearly reached the Wellington Club when a smart 
 young man, who had just comt; out uf it, looked at him ca.^ually, 
 stared at him more closely, then hurried up and touched him 
 on the shoulder. 
 
 ' Wilding ! I say, Wilding ! ' 
 
 Felix stopped, startled. He stared at the young man, and 
 was transported to La Maison des Alouettes, for it was Hugo 
 Arliss, one of the two boys who had come out to learn French, 
 and had departed to go to Scoones. Felix felt glad. 
 
 Arliss had developed. He looked quite inordinately fashion- 
 able, and had, Felix thought, the air of a completed man of the 
 world as he stood there on the pavement. 
 
 * Who 'd have thought of seeing you ? ' he said. * When did 
 you come up ? ' 
 
 Felix told him. 
 
 ' Oh, you 're quite new to the little village, then ! ' 
 
 'Yes,' Felix said, feeling very new. 
 
 'Like it?' 
 
 If Felix had put the question to himself a minute before he 
 would probably have told himself, in answer, that London was 
 a sad, dreary city and that he hated it. Contact with a friend — • 
 Arliss was a friend at this moment, very much a friend — had 
 transformed it in an instant. 
 
 ' Yes,' he answered. ' Don't you ? ' 
 
 ' Rather ! I '11 walk your way. I say, where do you hang 
 out?' 
 
 Felix told him. 
 
 'I'm in Park Place, St. James's. Awfully convenient. It's 
 jolly lucky for us that our people don't live in town.' 
 
 'Why?' Felix asked. 
 
 'Why? Well, old chap, you'll know before you've been 
 long in this blessed village, I can tell you. But I 'm not going 
 to tarnish your innocence.' 
 
 Felix felt that his question had been wholly unworthy of him 
 and of the Com'edie Humame. He changed the subject quickly. 
 
 ' And how do you like Scoones ? ' 
 
 ' I 've never been there.' 
 
 ' What ! ' said Felix in amazement. 
 
 ' No, thought better of it. When I came back from France 
 I met a pal who was going in for scribbling, and he put me up 
 to a much better thing. You know at Scoones you have to 
 work a good bit. Now I 've got into a shop ' 
 
 ♦Shop!' 
 
 * Actor's lingo, old boy ! Translation — a milieu, where I 'm
 
 FELIX 181 
 
 settled for a year, so as not to frighten my people with the 
 horrid suspicion that I 'm loose on the town, and where I can 
 work or not just as I like. I 'm a sucking Kipling ! ' 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' exclaimed Felix. ' Are you trying 
 to write novels? ' 
 
 'Trying! I like your impudence. No, I 've not got to that 
 yet But I 'm at a school of journalism learning more than how 
 to spell, I can tell you. Why don't you join the merry band, 
 ten till four, or eleven till three, or twelve till one if you prefer 
 it? Sam 's not particular.' 
 
 ' Who on earth is Sam ? ' 
 
 ' Our leader, our lecturer, our inspirer. He leads us in the 
 ways of Froude, and teaches us how to emulate Macaulay. 
 He is as wise as a nest of serpents, and as harmless as an aviary 
 of doves. And his coats ! Gad, you should see his coats ! ' 
 
 Felix burst out laughing. Arliss's animal spirits were infec- 
 tious, and the idea of him being trained for authorship as a colt 
 is trained for a nervous lady to ride tickled Felix's sense of 
 humour. 
 
 ' I 'm sure they can't fit better than yours,' he said. 
 
 Arliss looked frankly delighted. 
 
 ' You think so ? Well, if you like I '11 introduce you to my 
 man. He'll take you.' 
 
 ♦ Take me ? ' 
 
 'Yes, because your figure's all right. He won't have any- 
 thing to say to a narrow chest or round shoulders. I know a 
 fellow who 's at Sandow's school in Ebury Street training for all 
 he 's worth to get into Hollamby's good graces.' 
 
 ' But about this other school?' said Felix. 
 
 A hai)py thought had darted into his mind. He fancied he 
 saw a way of salvation by walking in which he might escape 
 from the dreary waste in which at present he found himself. 
 
 'Well — I say, what are you doing to-night?' 
 
 * Nothing.' 
 
 'Then come and dine with me at the Bath Club at half-past 
 seven. After dinner I 'm obliged to work.' 
 
 His round, rosy, boyish face suddenly assumed a grotesquely 
 exaggerated expression of earnest and depressed gravity. 
 
 'What, you work at night?' cried Felix incredulously. 
 
 Arliss heaved a deep sigh. 
 
 'Samuel makes me, old ruffian ! And to-night it's something 
 specially difficult.' 
 
 ' Why, what is it ? ' 
 
 ' I 've got to spend a couple of hours at the Pav.'
 
 182 FELIX 
 
 ' The Pav. ? ' 
 
 ' The Pavilion Music Hall, my neophyte. And to-morrow I 
 have to enshrine my impressions in a chatty, bright article such 
 as would rejoice the readers of the Daily Telegraph. Beastly 
 hard, isn't it?' 
 
 Felix laughed again. Arliss echoed him, and the dinner baigain 
 was struck on the spot. 
 
 When Felix was once more alone, he began eagerly to con- 
 sider this new idea. It came in a golden light to him. A most 
 beneficent Providence had surely brought about his meeting 
 with Arliss that evening. The thought of work, of having a 
 place to go to each morning, an end in view, a number of young 
 companions to exchange ideas with wrought him up into a state 
 of enthusiasm. London suddenly appeared to him as a blessed, 
 even as a cosy city. He looked at the returning crowds of the 
 workers, and they were no longer people apart from him, to be 
 envied from afar, but his brothers, his listers. The fact that he 
 had never seen Sam, that he knew nothing of his qualifications 
 to be a guide in the ways of literature, of his honesty of purpose, 
 or indeed anything about him save that he wore wonderful coais, 
 did not trouble Felix at all. Sam was a lifebuoy flung by Arli.-^s 
 to him alone in the great sea. He had the power to grasp the 
 lifebuoy, and he meant to use it. 
 
 There was much to think of to-night. He hurried home to 
 dress for dinner, feeling as if all the lives in life were seething, 
 burning, blossoming in his one body. What a glorious thing 
 excitement was, and such a sense of acute vitality. He added 
 more fuel to the furnace of his desire that evening with the 
 jovial Arliss, and learnt more about the coats of the inspiring 
 Samuel. The next morning, at about twelve — having already 
 despatched a letter to his mother to tell her of his new project 
 — he went by the underground railway to the Temple Station, 
 got out there, and in five minutes was standing before the big 
 building, full of various offices, in which Mr. Carringbridge 
 instructed his pupils. The school was on the third floor. Felix 
 went up in a lift, which was controlled by a very impudent- 
 looking, and exceedingly fat little boy, with curly, fair hair, who 
 was attired in a blue uniform, and who hummed continuously as 
 he allowed the cord to quiver between his dirty fingers. When 
 the lift stopped, he gave a smirk, and pointed down a corridor to 
 a door, half of which was ground glass. On the glass was 
 painted in huge black letters : ' Mr. Samuel Carringbridge's 
 School of Journalism.' Felix wondered what the fat little boy 
 meant by the smirk as he walked down the corridor. When he
 
 FELIX 183 
 
 reached the door he knocked on the wooden n^argin that framed 
 the ground glass. He i card a huljbub of V( ices beyond, and a 
 peal of laughter. No one told him to come in, so he knocked 
 again much harder. This time a loud, bass voice roared out : 
 
 ' Come in ! ' 
 
 He pushed the door, and found himself in a big room, furnished 
 with three long tables and a qnr.ntit\ of chairs, on which were 
 sitting in various attitudes of meiry idleness several young men, 
 who all stared very hard at him as he entered. Most of them 
 were smoking. Several had pens in their hands. Felix thought 
 there must be about ten of them, but he had no time to count, 
 for one of them, a youth with a waxy white complexion and 
 sand-coloured hair, got up at once and said to him mellifiuously : 
 
 'Do you wish to see Mr. Carringbridge ?' 
 
 'Yes, please,' said Felix. 
 
 ' I will inquire if it can be managed,' said the youth very 
 gravely; 'if you can put up with my leaving you for just one 
 moment?' 
 
 He spoke the last sentence with an air of earnest inquiry. 
 
 ' Oh yes, I can, thanks,' replied Felix, feeling much inclined 
 to laugh. 
 
 ' And if you don't mind using another person's chair, mine is 
 quite at your service,' added the youth politely. 
 
 As he said the last words he lifted up the chair from which he 
 had just risen and dropped it down behin-d Felix, just touch- 
 ing his calves. 
 
 ' By the mere depression of your body you will be on it now,' 
 he remarked, with an air of gentlemanly and quiet satisfaction. 
 Then he bowed, and walked demurely through a doorway, that 
 was set in a wooden screen some six and a half feet high at the 
 left angle of the room. 1 his screen protected a door on which 
 he was immediately heard to knock. 
 
 ' Come in ! ' called a very suave, sweet voice. 
 
 The command was evidently obeyed, for Felix heard a soft 
 murmur of two voices. He had sat down on the sandy youth's 
 chair, and looked round at the young men, who were now 
 all bending over sheets of foolscap, and were either writing 
 busily or thinking profoundly with pens in their hands. Hugo 
 Arliss was not among them. Perhaps he was taking a holiday 
 after the hard work of the previous evening. Felix thought 
 that most of Mr. Carringbridge's pupils looked gentlemanly and 
 agreeable. One, however, specially attracted his attention, not 
 because these pleasant qualities seemed to attach to him. This 
 was a man who looked about forty, with an extraordinary face,
 
 184 FELIX 
 
 very dark and lined, and covered with bristling whiskers and 
 moustaches of a reddish-brown hue, which contrasted oddly with 
 the black hair on his head. His nose was enormous, and the 
 bony structure at the bridge was unusually prominent. He had 
 on a long, black frock-coat, with paper protections over the 
 sleeves, and was writing violently. Just in front of him on 
 the table lay two tomatoes and a small open box of chocolate 
 creams. While Felix was observing him with some astonish- 
 ment the ultra-polite youth returned. 
 
 ' Pray step in,' lie said. ' Mr. Samuel Carringbridge is most 
 anxious to make your acquaintance.' 
 
 Felix saw a broad smile on almost every face in the room as 
 he got up and went behind the screen. And this plural smile 
 seemed to be the crescendo of the fat little lift-boy's smirk. 
 
 Beyond the screen was a most co«;y room, not very large, but 
 very well furnished and full of books, and in this room, with his 
 back to a fire and an immense cigar between his brilliantly red 
 lips, Mr. Samuel Carringbridge was standing with a welcoming 
 smile upon his face. The whole world seemed smiling in and 
 around this school of journalism, and Felix was impelled to do 
 the same without exactly knowing why. 
 
 Mr. Samuel Carringbridge was a magnificently preserved man 
 of about fifty, five feet five inches in height, with beautiful, 
 brilliant dark eyes, exquisite teeth, a lovely complexion like 
 a healthy baby's when it has just been lifted out of its morning 
 bath, and a smile that made one think of a plate-glass window 
 glittering in the beams of the sun — say at Brighton. He was 
 very well made, plump and gently rounded, but far from fat. 
 His features were handsome. His nose made some people 
 think that there might possibly be a Jewish ancestor somewhere 
 in his family tree. His hair and moustache were slightly flecked 
 with grey, and the ends of the latter were deliciously waxed, and 
 formed two tiny points almost as sharp as needles. His hands 
 were ivory white and dimpled, with coral-coloured, shining nails ; 
 and he wore the most perfectly cut grey tail-coat, the most deli- 
 cately warm buff waistcoat, the most shapely grey trousers, and 
 the most superbly varnished patent-leather boots Felix had ever 
 seen or dreamed of. As Felix came in he took his cigar from 
 his lips, blew forth a little ring of grey-blue smoke, that har- 
 monised admirably with the colour of his coat, and bowed. 
 
 ' You wish to see me ? ' he said, in a sweet, purring, and very 
 low voice. 
 
 * Yes, please.' 
 
 Mr. Carringbridge, with an almost catlike delicacy and lithe-
 
 FELIX 185 
 
 ness, drew a most tempting armchair forward to the fire, gently 
 shut the door, said ' Pray sit down,' and immediately sat down 
 himself opposite in another armchair, placed the tips of his 
 white fingers together, looked at Felix with his radiant dark 
 eyes and smiled encouragingly. 
 
 ' Mr. Hugo Arliss told me about your school,' Felix began, in 
 an usually low voice, and feeling soothed almost as if by a 
 narcotic. 
 
 ' Mr. Arliss, a charming, gentlemanly, intelligent fellow. I 
 am very attached to h-im,' said Mr. Carringbridge, aspirating 
 the * h ' with a peculiar precision, as if he knew that there were 
 in the world barbarians who left out their ' h's,' and was deter- 
 mined to make up to that letter for their neglect so far as it lay 
 in his power to do so. 
 
 ' I met him in France,' said Felix. 
 
 ' Delicious country,' said Mr. Carringbridge with tender 
 enthusiasm. ' Do you speak French ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Ah, what an advantage to you! Every one should speak 
 French. How fortunate for you, wonderfully so indeed ! If 
 you were a journalist you would be a blessing to Reuter.' 
 
 Felix began to feel pleasantly warm and self-contented. 
 
 'Arliss advised me to^to see if I could enter at your school 
 for a year,' he said. ' I am very keen on trying to write.' 
 
 'It is a great profession. Tlie journalist is a power. His 
 name may not be on the lips of the nations, but he can alter 
 the destinies of the nations. Ah well, I must not let my en- 
 thusiasm carry me too far into the Asiatic realms of eulogy. 
 You know my terms?' 
 
 Felix jumped — the last sentence came with such mellifluous 
 abruptness from Mr. Carringbridge's bright red lips. 
 
 'No. Arliss didn't ' 
 
 ' Dear careless fellow. One hundred guineas, payable to me 
 on the day I sign the agreement. You merely hand me your 
 cheque and I bind myself forthwith to give you the advantage — 
 if it be one, possibly not!— of my personal teaching and ex- 
 perience for one whole year, and to allow you the free and 
 unfettered use of the writing-hall you have just passed through. 
 I also give you ink ' 
 
 A generous smile illumined his face. 
 
 'It's awfully good of you,' Felix had murmured, before he 
 knew that he was going to murmur anything. 
 
 ' But not pens and paper. I find young men prefer to consult 
 their personal taste in those matters, and therefore I give them
 
 186 FELIX 
 
 free scope. About ink there is less divergence of opinion, and 
 mine, I believe, gives general satisfaction. I am glad if it is so. 
 I never drive the young.' 
 
 'No?' said Felix. 
 
 * Never. I lead them, perhaps. I show them what a man 
 can do, has done. You see the volumes on that table?' 
 
 Mr. Carringbridge indicated with his snowy forefinger an oval 
 table of walnut wood, upon which lay a number of very large 
 books bound in red leather. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Felix. 
 
 ' Those contain the leading articles written by me for the 
 Daily Recorder during twenty-five years of active journalistic 
 life. My pupils can read them at any time.' 
 
 ' You must have worked tremendously hard,' said Felix, 
 counting the volumes. 
 
 There were eight of them, and they were tremendously fat. 
 He felt almost awe-stricken. Mr. Carringbridge indulged him- 
 self and Felix in a lotus-eating smile. 
 
 ' I have been through the mill,' he replied lazily. ' I have 
 seen, known, handled life myself, and have presented it to 
 others in a series of pictures glowing, I hope, with actuality. 
 Life, I suppose, has few secrets from me.' 
 
 An expression of serene innocence had stolen into his face. 
 Felix now began to notice a very characteristic habit of his, a 
 habit of apparently contradicting his words by his looks. If he 
 spoke of energy he usually looked lethargic. If he talked of 
 life having no secrets from him, his eyes became like those of 
 an ignorant saint. 
 
 ' If my pupils like to take me as an example they would do 
 well to follow,' he continued, ' they can. I come up from 
 Brighton every day by the nine o'clock train. But I never 
 drive them. I trust them. I rely on them. I give them com- 
 plete liberty. When do you propose to come?' 
 
 Again Felix jumped. Mr. Carringbridge's transitions were 
 abrupt, and seemed to be emph.ipi-ed by the fact that the purr- 
 ing sweetness of his voice did not alter when he changed the 
 topic of discussion. 
 
 ' Oh, I thought at once,' Felix said. 
 
 'You have your cheque-book with you?' 
 
 'Oh no.' 
 
 ' If you like to hand me a cheque to-morrow morning you 
 can enroll yourself among my pupils to-morrow morning. 
 Here is my prospectus ' — he handed a paper languidly to Felix 
 — ' study it if you like. Everything that is stated there is youri
 
 FELIX 187 
 
 for one year for one hundred guineas. I sit here during each 
 day at the absolute dispcsal of my pupils. They are at liberty 
 to come in— after knocking — at any and at every moment. My 
 only wish is to serve them, to place before them, if so desired, 
 not otherwise, the ripe fruit of a mind stored with twenty-five 
 years of experience. But I do not force them. You can pay 
 me a hundred guineas, sit in that room for a year, and only 
 exchange a "good morning" with me, if you are a damned fool.' 
 
 He cooed the concluding words and got up softly. 
 
 * If you like to come here to-morrow and give me a hundred 
 guineas you will find me sitting here quite ready to receive 
 them,' he said kindly. 
 
 'Thanks very much,' Felix said. ' It 's awfully good of you.* 
 
 ' Not at all. And if you prefer to stay away, I wish you all 
 success and happiness.' 
 
 He beamed on Felix with the tenderest cordiality, clasped his 
 hand with fingers as soft as satin, and conducted him gently to 
 the door. Opening it, he let in a roar of conversation, which 
 abruptly ceased as he preceded Felix into the ' writing-hall.' 
 There he once more pressed his hand in full view of the young 
 men, 
 
 ' Good-bye, good-bye, Mr. Wilding,' he said. * It has been 
 a great pleasure to see you here.' 
 
 ' Good-bye. Thank you very much,' said Felix. 
 
 Mr. Carringbridge released his hand and he made his way out. 
 As he pushed the farther door he glanced back, and saw Mr. 
 Carringbridge standing just in front of the screen, with his white 
 hands partially inserted in the pockets of his lovely grey trousers, 
 puffing volumes of smoke from his excellent cigar, and smiling 
 radiantly as his lustrous eyes rested upon the assemblage of his 
 pupils, who were all bending over their foolscap most busily at 
 work. 
 
 The two tomatoes, which had been lying on the table in 
 front of the man with the black hair and the brown whiskers 
 and moustaches, had disappeared.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 FELIX was unable to make up his mind whether he liked 
 or disliked Mr. Samuel Carringbridge, but he was quite 
 decided to join his school, and directly he reached home he sat 
 down and wrote a second urgent letter to his mother, asking her 
 to let him spend a hundred guineas of the money which would 
 so soon be his, and giving her an animated description of the 
 advantages he would be certain to gain by being with a man 
 who had had twenty-five years' experience of journalistic life. 
 At the end of the letter he dwelt diplomatically on the amount 
 of work he meant to get through at the school, and the nice- 
 looking set of fellows there. He did not allude to the individual 
 with the tomatoes. He wound up by begging his mother to 
 send him the cheque by return of post, so that he might enter 
 upon his career at once. He went out and dropped the letter 
 into the box himself, and then, after a second of hesitation, he 
 entered the post-office and sent the following wire : 
 
 'Seen Carringbridge year at the school one hundred guineas 
 only if can send at once can start to-morrow Felix.' 
 
 The idea of spending even three or four more days drifting 
 idly about London was intolerable to him. His mother would 
 receive his first letter telling her of his meeting with Arliss that 
 afternoon or evening. She might possibly fall in at once with 
 his views. If so, he could begin work to-morrow. He longed 
 to. He felt as if he could not wait even for a moment. 
 
 On the following day when he came in to breakfast he found 
 a letter from his mother lying on the table. He tore it open. 
 A cheque for a hundred guineas dropped out. Felix uttered a 
 joyous exclamation. His future was settled. His desire was 
 satisfied. With radiant eyes he began to read the letter. It 
 was a very anxious missive, full of doubts and fears. Mrs. 
 Wilding was evidently much perplexed and undecided as to 
 what she ought to do. She had only received her son's first 
 letter and telegram, and now made many inquiries about Mr. 
 Carringbridge. Was he a gentleman? Did he seem to be a 
 good man ? She had never heard of him. She agreed with
 
 FELIX 189 
 
 Felix that it was far better for him to have some regular work, 
 but she again expressed regret at his having refused Mr. Ismey's 
 offer, and wondered if it were yet too late to ask him to renew 
 it. She ended by referring to Felix's former letter begging her 
 to trust him, and said that of course she did so. ' But,' she 
 added, ' you know, Felix, however strong we may think ourselves 
 we are all easily led away from the right path. It is very difficult 
 to do right for all of us.' As a proof that she did rely upon her 
 son she enclosed the cheque he asked for, but urged him not 
 to spend the money unless he felt quite certain that Mr. 
 Carringbridge's school was really a good sort of place, and that 
 his pupils were desirable acquaintances. 
 
 'You dear, timid, old mater!' Felix said to himself with a 
 gay smile, as he finished reading the letter; 'how Sam would 
 laugh if he knew how frightened you are of his influence over 
 your little boy. As if he'd have any, except about writing.' 
 
 He waited impatiently till half-past ten o'clock, and then 
 hurried off to Ellbridge Buildings, as the huge tenement in 
 which Mr. Carringbridge had set up his school was called. He 
 carried with him his mother's cheque, a packet of foolscap paper, 
 a blotting-book, and a quantity of quill pens. For ink he 
 trusted, as he knew he might, to the generosity of the master. 
 The same fat little boy whom he had seen on the occasion of 
 his former visit took him up in the lift. This time Felix thought 
 he looked, if possible, more impudent. In other respects he 
 was unchanged. He stared with his bold blue eyes at the brown 
 paper Felix carried and said, in a squeaky, child's voice : 
 
 ' Come to stay, 'ave yer ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Felix. 
 
 The fat little boy chuckled. 
 
 'Sam's doing jolly well this term,' he remarked. 'I *ope 
 'e'll give me a better Christmas-box than 'e give me last year, 
 that's all.' 
 
 And he let Felix out with a hopeful wink. 
 
 When Felix reached Mr. Carringbridge's door he pushed it 
 and went into the school without knocking. He found only 
 four of the pupils assembled. The man with black hair and 
 brown whiskers, who was, as before, writing furiously, the sandy 
 youth, a tall, thin young man with a single eyeglass, very smartly 
 dressed, and Arliss. The latter greeted his appearance with a 
 sotto voce war-whoop, sprang up from the end of the table where 
 he was sitting, and wrung him warmly by the hand. 
 
 'Come to sign, seal, and deliver?' he cried. 
 
 Felix acknowledged that such was the case.
 
 190 FELIX 
 
 * Capital ! ' said Arliss. ' Let me introduce you to Mr. 
 Singleton and Mr. Harry Cleave' — the tall young man and the 
 sandy youth nodded politely — 'and Mr. Paul Chalmers.' 
 
 Felix turned towards the man who was writing furiously, but 
 received no recognition. 
 
 'He's too inspired to notice you,' said Arliss. 'Now if you 
 were a tomato ' 
 
 At this moment the click of an opening door was audible. 
 Mr. Singleton and Mr. Harry Cleave grasped their pens, and 
 Arliss moved swiftly towards the wooden screen, reaching it 
 exactly as Mr. Carringbridge emerged, exquisitely dressed in a 
 delicate brown frock-coat and trousers, a pale pearl- coloured 
 waistcoat, and the most elaborate brown-satin cravat Felix had 
 ever seen. He was, as usual, puffing at an excellent Havana, 
 and carried in one white hand some sheets of much-blotted and 
 corrected manuscript. 
 
 ' I was just coming to tell you that Mr. Wilding wished to see 
 you, sir,' said Arliss. 
 
 A radiant smile illuminated Mr. Carringbridge's handsome face. 
 
 'I am delighted to see h-im,' he said, extending his hand and 
 pressing Felix's tenderly. 'One moment. Mr. Chalmers — 
 Mr. Chalmers!' 
 
 He slightly raised his voice, but still kept it very sweet. 
 
 Mr. Chalmers looked up from his writing in a manner that 
 was half dazed, half frenzied. Mr. Carringbridge beamed at 
 him and handed him the blotted manuscript. 
 
 'It is very clever, Mr. Chalmers,' he said, with pearly dis- 
 tinctness, 'very clever and subtle indeed, but it is not suffi- 
 ciently actual. When I said ' Write upon the morals of Babylon ' 
 I did not mean the Babylon of Semiramis but the Babylon of 
 John Bull. The latter is of immediate, the former merely of 
 archaic interest. We must not be archaic h-ere.' 
 
 He gazed upon his pupils, as if to impress this important 
 fact smilingly upon them, then he added : 
 
 ' But it is very clever, Mr. Chalmers. It shows great dili- 
 gence. We will talk it over thoroughly after lunch. Now, 
 Mr. Wilding, if you please.' 
 
 And while Mr. Chalmers stared at him with dazed and 
 violent eyes he turned gently round to escort Felix to the inner 
 chamber. When they reached it he said : 
 
 ' A very persevering man Mr. Chalmers. He was a piano- 
 tuner.' 
 
 ' What ! ' said Felix, with difficulty repressing an inclination 
 to laugh.
 
 ,FELIX 191 
 
 * A piano-tuner, but was left what he names, I think, "a little 
 windfall" by an Australian aunt, and now proposes to take 
 to literature. Well, I shall not prevent him. His industry is 
 an example to us all. Sit down, my dear Mr. Wilding.' 
 
 Felix sat down and at once drew out his mother's cheque 
 and laid it upon Mr. Carringbridge's table. 
 
 *I — I came to bring you that,' he said, reddening slightly, 
 and feeling em'-arrassed, as he always did when he had any- 
 thing to do with money matters. 
 
 Mr. Carringbridge took up the cheque and examined it with 
 the most serene complacency. 
 
 'You have made your decision. Ah! May I ask whose 
 signature this is?' 
 
 ' My mother's, said Felix. 
 
 ' You have your mother still ! A merciful thing for you.' 
 
 He spoke rather abstractedly, while he folded up the cheque 
 and put it into a crocodile-skin cse edged with silver which he 
 drew from an inner pocket. Then, with a sudden but always 
 suave decision, he said : 
 
 ' We will complete the agreement at once. Will you kindly 
 read this while I call Mr. Arliss.' 
 
 He lianded to Felix a document printed on stiff parchment- 
 like p:iper, and, getting up, moved quietly to the door. Felix 
 glanced hastily over the document, which set forth thnt Mr. 
 Samuel Cariingbridge having duly received from — here there 
 was a blank for a name — the sum of one hundred and five 
 pounds bound himself for the space of one year from — a blank 
 for a date — to teach and instruct the said — to the best of his, 
 Mr. Carringbridge's, ability, in all the elements of journalism. 
 What these elements were was then set forth. At the bottom 
 of the whole rigmarole was a place for the signature of Mr. 
 Carringbridge and a witness. Mr. Carringbridge, returning 
 followed by Arliss, promptly signed his name in a bold, cltar, 
 flowing hand. Arliss signed his below. The blanks in the 
 document were filled up, and in about a couple of minutes it 
 was tenderly handed to Felix by Mr. Carringbridge, with a 
 happy smile and the purred remark : 
 
 ' You are now a member of my school.' 
 
 'Thank you very much,' said Felix. 
 
 Arliss had returned to the outer room and Felix stood by the 
 table, wondering what he was expected to do. He looked at 
 Sam — he was Sam to Felix now, henceforth and for evermore — 
 an 1 Sam looked at him. 
 
 'Can I do anything more for you, Mr. Wilding?' he said.
 
 192 FELIX 
 
 *You know you have only to command me. I come up here 
 
 every day from Brighton simply and solely to place myself at 
 the disposal of my pupils.' 
 
 'Well, I — would you mind just explaining to me a little what 
 sort of thing I had better begin with?' said Felix, wondering 
 how much initiative he ought to display in these, as it seemed 
 to him, very peculiar circumstances. 
 
 'You wish me to put you au coiiranfi Sit down, my dear 
 Mr. Wilding. Sit down and let us have a chat together.' 
 
 He closed the door with an air of comfortable satisfaction, 
 and sank down in his chair as if he had at length reached a 
 moment of life for which he had long been earnestly hoping. 
 Blowing forth a cloud of cigar smoke, from which his beautiful 
 eves and rose-coloured, smooth cheeks presently emerged as the 
 sun emerges from behind a mist most softly beaming, he began to 
 speak in a clear voice, with a delicate and yet animated precision. 
 
 'The journalism of to-day, when it is worth tuppence-half- 
 penny—sometimes, I regret to say, it is not worth that sum — 
 is either a brilliant revelation to the public of the actual, or an 
 ingenious appeal to the imagination of the masses. In order to 
 be a successful journalist, Mr. Wilding, you must either be an 
 observant person or an accomplished liar. I advise you to 
 make up your mind as soon as possible which you mean to be. 
 I was both, and for some years made two thousand per annum. 
 But the effort to be both is too great for many people, and, 
 therefore, I usually advise my pupils to make a choice. 
 Mr. Chalmers has chosen to be an observant person, and I 
 am at present engaged in endeavouring — I hope with moderate 
 success — to train him to see what comes within the range of 
 his vision. He goes to the Law Courts, to Madame Tussaud's, 
 to the Park, to the pit of Drury Lane, to Piccadilly Circus, 
 and records, or tries to record, what he sees in these great 
 centres of legal, Sunday-school, fashionable, popular, and 
 vicious Hfe. The clever journalist must know how to play 
 upon the fears of his country. Try to learn how to frighten 
 people, and your editors will cherish you. The alarmist earns 
 a big salary nowadays. I know a man who has made many 
 hundreds of pounds by writing about the downfall of England. 
 The downfall of England is his speciality ; but I do not re- 
 commend my pupils to specialise while they are with me. At 
 the beginning of your career learn to range freely over life. 
 Study every kind of life. Go into the palace, if you can gain 
 admittance — it is your business to gain admittance into im- 
 possible places — go into the butcher's shop. Wherever you
 
 FELIX 193 
 
 are, whatever you are doing, be on the watch. If you are being 
 thrashed — which Heaven forbid !— study your sensations. What 
 is pain? What is humihation? What is cowardice? If you 
 are being embraced, I advise a precisely similar mental attitude. 
 What is affection? Why does the meeting of lips give pleasure? 
 What is pleasure? Analyse — analyse every one and every thing 
 that comes within your purview. Analyse the girl you are 
 making love to. Analyse yourself. Analyse me. Try to be 
 pictorial and vivid in your writing. Choose striking forms of 
 expression. Never be tame. In journalism it is not a crime to 
 be vulgar. Far from it. But to be tame is a crime. Nobody 
 ever earned a good income in journalism by being tame. The 
 journalist must know how to be sensational. If he does not, 
 he will only earn a comparatively small sum. Modern papers 
 live greatly by their sensationalism. And by sensationalism 
 I do not merely mean blazing accounts of murder, arson, rape, 
 and robbery. Many religious papers exist by being sensational 
 about ritualism, bishops, the supposed spread of atheism, and 
 the machinations — also very often supposed — of the Jesuits. 
 Others thrive on the manufacture of political sensations. 
 Others exploit literature and so forth. There are many fish 
 in the sensationalist's net. I could be sensational upon any 
 subject, as you will see if you care to glance at my articles. 
 Foment the public passions, then lull them to rest. If you 
 read the most successful newspapers you will find that they are 
 continually engaged in these two processes. Why? Because 
 the public likes it. It is agreeable to the public to be first 
 righteously angry and then righteously good-tempered. The 
 first causes it to feel virile, the second saintly. Be an oppor- 
 tunist. The journalist need have no convictions, but he must 
 seem to be made of nothing else. You need never be sincere, 
 but you should always write as if you were. The art of 
 journalism is like the art of acting. It is the art of successful 
 simulation. Its tears are such as flow at the behest of a 
 vegetable which I need not mention. Such tears make, as a 
 rule, quite as much effect on the public as those caused by 
 genuine sorrow. The public likes humbug. Every editor who 
 is worth his salt is aware of this great fact. Give the public 
 what it likes; humbug, Mr. Wilding, humbug, ionjours humbug. 
 But be very careful to choose the humbug that is popular at the 
 moment. Sometimes it is the humbug of jingoism. Sometimes 
 it IS the humbug of commercialism. Sometimes it is religious 
 humbug. Sometimes it is the humbug of England's mission of 
 spreading light in the world. Sometimes it is the humbug of 
 N
 
 19 1 FELIX 
 
 some fat moral idea, some round O of virtue. Study the art of 
 humbug in the speeches of our great pohtical leaders. They 
 will be your best guides in that direction. Learn how to 
 utilise the pathetic stop on the organ of journalism. The 
 public is never so happy as when it is being sentimental. For 
 this reason it enjoys reading florid accounts of starvation 
 towards Christmastide. That is a great yjart of its notion of 
 that splendid piece of humbug " A Merry Christmas." Therefore 
 mix a certain amount of wretchedness with your geniality from 
 time to time. Cultivate a literary love of sport ; there is a 
 legend that we are the only sporting nation. Always respect a 
 legend. You need not respect much else. Read Froude, read 
 Macaulay, read me.' 
 
 Here Mr. Carringbridge, who had been speaking with extreme 
 rapidity, but pellucid distinctness, paused and smiled gently and 
 confidingly at Felix, who sat almost hypnotised by his wondrous 
 flow of words. 
 
 'Do you wish to ask me anything?' he said softly. 'Can 
 I make any point more clear to you ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, thank you. No, I think it 's all quite clear,' replied Felix. 
 
 *Be light, be bright, be forcible, be fiery. Do you know 
 many women ? ' 
 
 The question was very suave. 
 
 'Not many in London,' said Felix. 
 
 ' Get to. Women are by nature humbugs, and very accom- 
 plished ones. They can teach you much. You cannot begin 
 to study women too early. The journalist must know women. 
 Now, would you like to write an article? I don't press it, mind. 
 You can go into the next room, if you like, and sit there for a 
 year without writing one word.' 
 
 *Oh, but please I wish to work.' 
 
 'Then I shall not prevent you. Go into the next room then, 
 my dear Mr. Wilding, and write me an article upon the 
 "Blessings of Humbug." Make it fifteen hundred words in 
 length. Divide it into three parts. Let me have an opening 
 on humbti in general, a middle on special forms of humbug, 
 and a su nming-up on the advantages accruing to humanity in 
 the mass ^rom the practice of humbug in all its various forms. 
 Au revoii ' 
 
 He stretched out a white hand, picked up Truth, and Felix 
 left the room. 
 
 When he reached the ' writing-hall ' he found that four or 
 five more pupils had arrived, and were busily engaged in 
 smoking, talking, and reading the daily papers. He was
 
 FELIX 195 
 
 cordially greeted by those whom he knew, and introduced to 
 those whom he did not know. Then Arliss showed him a 
 place where he could sit, and he unpacked his parcel of writing 
 materials. 
 
 'Whew!' said Arliss. ' Going to grind?' 
 
 Felix laughed. The idea of grinding in such an atmosphere 
 of cheerful idleness seemed sufficiently absurd. 
 
 ' I don't know about grinding,' he said. ' But I suppose I 
 must do something. Besides, Sam 's told me to write an 
 article.' 
 
 Mr. Harry Cleave showed the most sympathetic interest. 
 
 'What on?' he inquired seriously, sitting down on the table 
 by Felix's inkpot, and lighting a cigarette. 'Women?' 
 
 'No ; humbug.' 
 
 ' The same thing,' murmured Mr. Cleave, in the midst of a 
 roar of laughter from the other pupils. 
 
 ' Good old Sam ! ' exclaimed Arliss. ' Don't I know ? The 
 blessings of humbug. Three parts: the general, the particular, 
 the peroration, fifteen hundred words. Glorious! we've all 
 done it. But I say, Wilding, you can't begin now. It 's lunch- 
 time.' 
 
 ' What, already ? ' said Felix. 
 
 'The Law Courts' clock has struck one,' said Mr. Singleton, 
 screwing his eyeglass into his left eye, and beginning to look 
 hungry. 
 
 ' And here 's Samuel,' added Cleave. ' Hush ! ' 
 
 The door clicked and Mr. Carringbridge appeared, crowned 
 with a shining top-hat, and carrying in his hands, now clothed 
 in pale-brown subde gloves, a gold-headed cane and a fresh 
 cigar. He beamed on his pupils, and went smoothly out 
 without saying a word. 
 
 'He's gone to the Savage,' said Arliss. 'Come on. Wilding. 
 Come, Singleton.' 
 
 He caught up his hat. As he did so Mr. Paul Chalmers 
 rose from his seat, wiped his brow with a red pocket-hand- 
 kerchief, took the paper protections very carefully from the 
 sleeves of his long frock-coat, put on a very badly brushed silk 
 hat with an abnormally wide brim, and tramped out. 
 
 'He's gone to the Vegetarian Restaurant,' said Cleave to 
 Felix. 'He eats vegetables for the good of his brain, sups on 
 bread and milk, and writes all night. God bless him! I'll 
 join you if you'll allow me.' 
 
 They lunched in a large restaurant close by, where Arliss and 
 his companions were evidently well known. All the attendants
 
 196 FELIX 
 
 were waitresses, in black gowns and smart white caps and 
 aprons. They were not shy, and seemed to be on most familiar 
 terms with Mr. Carringbridge's pupils. A table in a corner had 
 been kept for Arliss, and by it, in an attitude of saucy self- 
 consciousness, stood a short, plump, fair-haired girl with round, 
 blue eyes, chubby lips, and a large, fluffy fringe. She was their 
 waitress, and was formally presented to Felix a« the 'Babe.' 
 This young lady showed great complaisance. She made Felix 
 take a seat in a corner facing the room, inquired after his health, 
 wished him success in the journalistic career, and promised to 
 do anything that lay in her power to assist him in the study 
 of women. Felix was most grateful, more especially when 
 Singleton informed him that the 'Babe's' intellectual powers 
 were remarkable, and that she always helped him with his 
 articles. 
 
 ' Do you write many ? ' said Felix. 
 
 'One every month,' returned Singleton solemnly, putting up 
 his eyeglass to examine his mutton cutlet with mushroom sauce. 
 'Slow and sure's my motto, and Sam knows it.' 
 
 The discussion of Sam was most animated. Felix did not 
 know what he thought of him. Was Sam a serious cynic, a 
 genial wit? Did he really care whether his pupils got on, or 
 was he merely a good-natured humbug intent on spending the 
 evening of his days in the maximum of comfort procured by 
 the minimum of effort ? 
 
 Mr. Singleton, who seemed to be of a somewhat melancholy 
 temperament, shook his head gently in answer to Felix's ques- 
 tions, and murmured something vague about the mysteries in 
 the heart of man. 
 
 'Oh, cheer up, do, Mr. Singleton,' said the 'Babe.' 'Sam's 
 done a lot for you, I 'm sure. Why, but for him you might 
 never have seen me. And there's a loss for you.' 
 
 Cleave considered Sam to be ' as clever as he could stick.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Felix. ' But does he teach one much ? ' 
 
 'That depends on one,' replied Cleave. 
 
 ' Exactly,' said Arliss. ' If you bother Sam you can get a lot 
 out of him.' 
 
 'Then I shall bother him,' said Felix. 
 
 Mr. Harry Cleave looked at him very seriously over a glass of 
 lager beer. 
 
 ' If a second Paul Chalmers is added to the school I feel 
 convinced that our little Samuel will succumb,' he said, in an 
 anxious voice. 
 
 ' Why ? ' asked Felix. ' Does Chalmers bother Sam much ? '
 
 FELIX 197 
 
 * Much ! ' cried Arliss. ' Never leaves him alone for a minute. 
 Chalmers shows up an article a day as regularly as clockwork. 
 But it 's Sam's own fault. He oughtn't to have taken Chalmers.' 
 
 ' Why ? ' 
 
 'Because Chalmers is an idiot. Poor chap ! He 's awful, of 
 course, but I declare I pity him, sweating away like that and all 
 for nothing. He '11 never get on. Why, he 's forty already and 
 can't get near a grammatical sentence.' 
 
 ' And he won't have the " Babe's " help,' added Singleton, with 
 mournful regret. ' I offered it to him, and he told me he didn't 
 consider it would be honest of him to accept the assistance of a 
 woman ; as if woman wasn't brought into the world expressly to 
 be of assistance to man.' 
 
 At this point the 'Babe' intervened and, in the liveliest 
 cockney manner, began to combat Singleton's conception of the 
 intentions of Providence in creating Eve. Mr. Harry Cleave and 
 Arliss joined in, and the lunch concluded in a perfect hubbub 
 of slangy merriment and obvious repartee, of which latter the 
 'Babe' proved herself to be an accomplished mistress. 
 
 When Felix reached his flat that afternoon he was in splendid 
 spirits. The light-hearted gaiety of youth which prevailed in 
 Sam's school was infectious. Mr. Paul Chalmers was the only 
 member of the little community who did not succumb to it. 
 But then he had been a piano-tuner for more than fifteen years. 
 Felix had not, and was a happy victim to the epidemic. He 
 liked Sam. He liked Arliss, Cleave, Singleton — everybody. He 
 had already asked the 'Babe' to tea and she had most demurely 
 promised to come on a Saturday, if she might bring another 
 girl as a chaperon. And this coming into contact with other 
 young lives seemed to Felix to have set him on his feet in 
 London. Henceforth he was at home. He had something to 
 do, somewhere to go each day. He was part of an intimate and 
 lively community, not an intellectual one, perhaps, but that did 
 not matter. The sprite which has its throne in the heart of 
 youth governed him just then, and gaiety of mind seemed more 
 to be desired than even romance with all its tender troubles. 
 
 He sat down at his writing-table and began an article on the 
 'Blessings of Humbug.'
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 BY the end of the week he felt quite an old stager at Sam's, 
 and was on terms of good-comradeship with all the 
 pupils. They were a pleasant set of fellows. When Felix had 
 vouched for them to his mother he had not lied. There was 
 not one whom he disliked. On the other hand there was not 
 one whom he thought likely to prove specially interesting. The 
 gaiety which prevailed in the ' writing-hall ' was infectious. He 
 joined in it with a light heart. But already he could not help 
 feeling at times a faint contempt for the lack of energy, of am- 
 bition, of grip in his companions. They seemed to expect life, 
 like a rising wave, to carry gifts to their feet. Only one seemed 
 to realise that it is a tight-fisted miser from whom it is necessary 
 boldly to wrest most of the things worth having. And this one 
 — Felix understood the irony of the situation — who did realise, 
 who had a grim purpose and the power to make an effort, was 
 without the talent to compel. Paul Chalmers was a dogged 
 man. He set his teeth and toiled. He was thorough. He 
 grudged no labour. He gave to the life he had chosen all he 
 had to give. But it was not enough. 
 
 Attracted by his oddity, Felix quickly contrived to break down 
 the barriers which Chalmers's shyness and furious industry set up 
 between him and the rest of Sam's pupils. He found the ex- 
 piano-tuner sensitive to sympathy. Angular, gauche, he was 
 yet a man of much feeling. A little kindness touched him, 
 and though his response was scarcely graceful it was obviously 
 sincere. He told Felix of his hopes for the future, and even 
 was won over to show two of his articles. Felix read them on 
 Friday evening and thought them hopeless. Chaos brooded 
 over them as it brooded over the waters ere the days of creation. 
 The lack of education was naturally apparent, but there was also 
 apparent a lack of everything which makes for success in litera- 
 ture : originality, clear sight, lucidity, definiteness. Chalmers's 
 compositions were formless, muddled both in thought and ex- 
 pression, common and totally uncertain in aim. When Felix 
 read them he felt sad. When he gave them back to Chalmers
 
 FELIX 199 
 
 and met his fierce, inquiring, middle-aged eyes he felt sadder 
 still. 
 
 He was angry with Sam for having taken Chalmers as a pupil, 
 and on Saturday morning, when he was having an interview 
 with his smiling preceptor, could not help hinting that he 
 thought it was unlikely Chalmers could ever succeed as a writer. 
 
 ' Let us hope for the best, Mr. Wilding,' said Sam blandly. 
 *I always do. Mr. Chalmers has perseverance and ambition. 
 Let us hope for the very best.' 
 
 'But are perseverance and ambition any good without talent?' 
 said Felix. 
 
 'They are better with it,' replied Sam, 'undoubtedly. But 
 who is to say that Mr. Chalmers is without talent?' 
 
 Felix felt rather snubbed. He wondered whether he had 
 talent. If he had would it not be difhcult to develop it among 
 that chattering crowd? He had not Chalmers's power of con- 
 centrating himself on his work in the midst of noise. Chalmers 
 was entirely oblivious of those around him. With some fruit, 
 some tomatoes, some biscuits ranged before him to supply 
 occasional stimulus to brain and body — he had strong views on 
 diet, and worked on a regimen — he wrote for hours without 
 lifting his eyes or uttering a word. To attract his attention it 
 was necessary to touch, or even to shake him. Then he would 
 look up, dazed, like a man roused suddenly from a deep sleep. 
 Felix could not help hearing the conversations which went on 
 around him, and which continually suggested to him trains of 
 thought quite foreign to the subject with which his pen was 
 dealing. Sometimes, in these moments of not wholly unjileasant 
 distraction, he was sharply conscious of the confusion of life, of 
 the everlasting eddies in the stream, of the diverging currents 
 which make it so difficult to steer a course. Would he ever 
 even know what he really thought? He wondered. The 
 certainties of the boy at La Maison des Alouettes were being 
 taken from him by the four winds and by all the hurrying 
 waves. 
 
 He felt different from Sam's pupils in many ways, but most of 
 all in one. They seemed to want so little. He knew he wanted 
 so much. A kiss from the 'Babe' delighted Singleton. Arliss 
 was satisfied with a very ordinary ' spree.' Harry Cleave spent 
 half his time in the devising of elaborate practical jokes. Even 
 the great Samuel appeared to be quite contented to sit day after 
 day in his cosy sanctum, reading the I'apers, smoking cigar after 
 cigar, and blandly dropping words of honeyed worldly wisdom 
 into his pupils' ears, Felix wondered if he were solitary in his
 
 200 FELIX 
 
 greediness for life, for something striking, great, romantic, even 
 bitter, something that would make him feel, ' I have seen the 
 hidden goddess. I have touched hands with the Fates. I have 
 heard a voice from the centre of things, from the darkness and 
 the heart of the world.' Was he any nearer to the centre, to the 
 heart of things here and now than when he sat with the tailor by 
 the fire, or looked out with him upon the coming of the spring? 
 He was just beginning to learn that man is a pursuer from the 
 cradle till he sinks into the grave. 
 
 It happened that on Saturday night, when he was going to 
 dine with the Ismeys, he was in a fiercely animated mood. This 
 mood had been brought on by work. He had spent the after- 
 noon shut up in his flat alone, striving for the first time to write 
 an imaginative story. While he dressed for dinner his brain 
 hummed, so he felt, with thoughts. They had surely voices and 
 murmured. One called to him, and another. Each was anxious 
 to claim his attention, to seem worthy, to find favour in his eyes. 
 The fighting thoughts in the brain are terrible egoists. And 
 each one longs to live. When he went down into the air he 
 found the night was cold. As he drove towards Green Street 
 this coldness of the atmosphere rendered him more acutely aware 
 of the heat and the fire within himself, of the strange and 
 mysterious ardour of his own personal life. The processions of 
 thoughts in his mind, the processions of feelings in his heart, 
 bewildered him. He looked at the hurrying figures of the streets, 
 half seen in the waxing and waning lamplight, and the strange, 
 and almost terrible idea struck him that enclosed in each one 
 of those innumerable, flitting shapes were such processions, 
 infinitely multiplied. There was a sort of beginning of madness 
 in the mental contemplation of one such human fact. People, 
 people, people — and in each person a crowd. A crowd of 
 thoughts moving towards action ; a crowd of loves and hates and 
 resistances and acquiescences. Terrible, frightening vitality of 
 the world. 
 
 The cab stopped. He saw a strip of carpet, an open door, 
 footmen, lights. It was time to cast away this mood. He 
 sprang out. 
 
 When he reached the drawing-room he found Mr. Ismey there 
 with three people : Mr. King Marshall, a small elderly lady with 
 white hair and very neat, aristocratic features, and a pale, 
 youngish man, with a bald head and light-brown moustaches 
 turned up at the ends. Mrs. Ismey was not in the room. 
 Felix wondered if she were ill. Mr. Ismey, who looked, Felix 
 thought, worried and careworn, greeted him kindly and pre-
 
 FELIX 201 
 
 sented him to Lady Enfield, and to the pale man with the bald 
 head, whose name Felix did not catch. 
 
 ' Mr. King Marshall and you have met already, I think,' 
 he said. 
 
 'Yes,' said the novelist, in his thin, melancholy voice. 
 
 He shook hands gently with Felix, and began to speak to him 
 about autumn effects in great ciiies. His mind was evidently 
 full at the moment of this subject. When he paused for an 
 instant Felix heard Mr. Ismey apologising for his wife's absence 
 to the other two guests. 
 
 ' I don't think she has been feeling very well to-day,' he said. 
 * She was lying down and got up a little late to dress.' 
 
 Lady Enfield expressed the hope that she was fit to come 
 down to dinner. 
 
 ' Oh yes. Her maid tells me that she is all right now. It 
 was only a severe headache, I believe.' 
 
 The pale man began to speak about neuralgia with a very 
 strong, but pretty, foreign accent. Felix, in a low voice, inquired 
 his name of Mr. King Marshall. 
 
 ' That is Antonino Marza, the Sicilian poet,' he answered. 
 
 Felix looked at the pale man with sudden, deep interest. 
 Although still young — perhaps thirty-eight or thirty-nine — he 
 had already a cosmopolitan fame, and his works were read in 
 translations in most European countries and in America. His 
 face was plain, but his eyes were intensely animated, and he 
 spoke with great rapidity. Lady Enfield was evidently much 
 interested in him. She kept her light blue eyes fixed upon him 
 all the time he was speaking, and her face, which was like a 
 cameo, kept changing delicately in obedience to his changing 
 words. 
 
 The door opened and two ladies came in, one behind the 
 other. The first was a small, very handsome, blonde woman, 
 who looked like a Milanese ; the second was a typical British 
 beauty of the lean, fair, well-bred species, with wavy, thick, brown 
 hair, parted in the middle and growing low on the forehead, a 
 radiant complexion, and clear, brown eyes, full of purity and 
 courage. Felix took a great fancy to her on the spot. There 
 was something about her that suggested clear, runnmg water in 
 sunshine, mountain breezes over heather and the light-blue skies 
 of spring. Mr. Ismey, after he had greeted these guests, began 
 to look preoccupied. He called the butler to him, and said a 
 few words in a low voice. 
 
 ' I don't know, sir,' answered the man. 
 
 'Go and see,' said Mr. Ismey. 'Say that *
 
 202 FELIX 
 
 At this moment Mrs. Ismey came in hurriedly. 
 
 ' I must apologise,' she said, going up at once to Lady Enfield. 
 ' I am utterly ashamed of myself, but I had a frightful headache 
 this afternoon, lay down in the dark and eventually fell asleep. 
 My maid forgot to wake me.' 
 
 She shook hands with every one and answered their inquiries 
 with a languid smile. 
 
 ' The headache is quite gone. If only you will forgive me 1 
 shall be perfectly happy.' She greeted Felix last. As he took 
 her hand he thought she looked as Lady Caroline Hurst had 
 looked when she came lounging into the boudoir. There was a 
 tired, fixed expression on her face. Weariness floated in her 
 eyes. She screwed them up as if the light hurt them. Felix 
 noticed Antonino Marza staring at her with a strange expression 
 of sarcastic interest, which made him feel angry, as if some one 
 had laughed at one of his secret thoughts. Dinner was an- 
 nounced at once, and they went in. Mr. Ismey took in Lady 
 Enfield. Marza was with the blonde woman, who seemed 
 intimate with him and talked to him in Italian. Felix was intro- 
 duced to the English beauty and asked to take her down. Mrs. 
 Ismey followed with King Marshall. The English girl's name 
 was Miss Hartfield. She was as natural as she looked, and 
 began at once to talk quietly to Felix in a limpid, soprano voice. 
 Lady Enfield was on Felix's other side. Marza and his com- 
 panion were opposite. They were still conversing in Italian. 
 Felix thought it an exquisite language. He had never heard it 
 spoken before. Mrs. Ismey and King Marshall sat in silence. 
 She looked exhausted with fatigue and plainer than Felix had 
 ever seen her look before. She was dressed in white, and wore 
 long, white gloves, which she did not take off to eat her soup. 
 She spoke to one of the servants, who brought her a liqueur 
 glass filled with a liquid that looked like brandy. She sipped 
 it, turned towards King Marshall, and, with the air of one making 
 an eff"ort, began to talk to him. 
 
 Miss Hartfield was a charming companion. Felix found her 
 cultivated, peculiarly well bred, and ready to be pleased. They 
 got on well and talked about various things : scenery, music, 
 finally literature. She was evidently an ardent reader, but said 
 that she often felt ' out of it ' in London because she could not 
 enjoy unpleasant books dealing with painful subjects, or dissect- 
 ing evil characters, even if they were exquisitely written and 
 perfect in form. Thus she had a horror of Guy de Maupassant's 
 most brilliant work, Bel Ami, and acknowledged that she had 
 stopped midway in it and had never finished it. The only book
 
 FELIX 203 
 
 of Zola's which she could endure was Le Rcve, and she admitted 
 shrinking from the merciless genius of Balzac. King Marshall 
 overheard her saying this and broke into the conversation. He 
 evidently knew Miss Hartfield well, and spoke to her in an 
 almost paternal tone. Truth, he said, was the only quality 
 which she ought always to demand from an author. Her 
 remarks showed lack of courage. She replied that she loved to 
 read truth, but it must be the truth of goodness, of purity, of 
 bravery, love, endurance of sorrow, not the truth of all the 
 degrading qualities, of all the hideous crimes present in life. 
 Marza, who had been listening to her for two or three minutes 
 with obvious intentness, took the part of King Marshall, but at 
 once showed, Felix thought, a marked preference for the truth 
 of evil over the truth of good. He spoke with an extraordinary 
 bluntness, but at the same time with a great deal of subtlety on 
 the value, the superb value he called it, of black in life, literature, 
 painting, music — for he spoke of the different colours of different 
 sounds, and combinations of sounds, as if they were acknow- 
 ledged by every one. Without black, he declared, life and the 
 arts would be intolerable. The reason why the popular con- 
 ception of heaven was so loathsome to really artistic people was 
 because black was banished from it, and nothing left to appeal 
 to the mind's eye but a horrible yellow nightmare, bathed in 
 eternal light, glittering like the crystal globe on the top of a 
 child's Christmas-tree. 
 
 ' And yet you come, like me, from the land of the sun, Nino, 
 said the blonde woman, whose name was Mrs. Creshet. 
 
 'It is the land of the cypress too,' he answered, 'and the 
 land of old cities. Have you ne^er adored the black that is in 
 Italy?' 
 
 Lady Enfield, who was charming in her love of cleverness, 
 but who was anything but clever, said in a sweet, frail 
 voice : 
 
 'Certainly black is very becoming. I think pretty women 
 look their worst as brides. Is that what you mean, Signor 
 Marza ? ' 
 
 Marza replied by a suitably inane compliment to pretty 
 women. 
 
 'They always look delicious at a funeral,' he murmured, 
 showing his beautiful, white teeth. 
 
 Mrs. Creshet glanced at him and laughed. When she did 
 so, Felix thought she looked wicked, and as if the wickedness 
 in her were reaching out a hand to a brother in the poet. Lady 
 Enfield proceeded to a discussion of black gowns. She could
 
 204 FELIX 
 
 evidently only think of colours in relation to clothes. Mr, 
 Ismey, who kept perpetually stealing strange glances at his 
 wife, gave Lady Enfield his attention to set Marza free, and the 
 poet, looking at Miss Hartfield, plunged again into the topic of 
 the value of black. After a minute or two he exclaimed : 
 'I cannot say what I want in English. It is dreadful.' 
 
 * I understand French,' said Miss Hartfield. 
 
 'And you,' suddenly exclaimed Marza, looking at Felix, 
 *do you understand French?' 
 
 Felix reddened with surprise and pleasure. He felt himself 
 to be such a nonentity that it delighted him to find that this 
 great man cared whether he was one of his comprehending 
 audience or not. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said with diffidence, ' I do.* 
 
 * Bien I ' cried Marza. 
 
 He continued his harangue in French. King Marshall began 
 to fidget and to crumble his bread into tiny pellets. Every one 
 was listening to Marza except Lady Enfield and Mr. Ismey, who 
 still spoke about black gowns. Now and then Miss Hartfield 
 broke in, also speaking French. Once she said : 
 
 ' You go too far, Signor Marza. You revel in what is horrible. 
 You are morbid.' 
 
 'Ah,' he said vehemently, 'that is the eternal accusation 
 which is launched against me. To be able to penetrate deep 
 into the diseases to which human nature is liable is not to be 
 morbid.' 
 
 As if instinctively he turned towards Mrs. Ismey when he said 
 this. Her face suddenly twitched as if she had St. Vitus's 
 dance, and an expression that was like an expression of fear 
 came into her eyes. 
 
 ' To be clairvoyant is not to be morbid,' he continued, still 
 looking at her. 
 
 'Do you claim to be clairvoyant? ' she asked. 
 
 'Yes,' replied the poet boldly. ' Especially when lam with 
 women.' 
 
 ' And yet women like you ! ' she said. ' Isn't that strange ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said Mrs. Creshet. ' We love what we fear.' 
 
 Mr. Ismey stopped talking to Lady Enfield. The turn the 
 conversation was taking seemed to arrest his attention. 
 
 ' Only that ? ' he said in French. 
 
 There was something startling in his intonation. Everybod} 
 felt it, except apparently King Marshall, who was still crumbling 
 his bread into pellets. 
 
 * Only that ? ' repeated Mr. Ismey.
 
 FELIX 205 
 
 * Do you ask your wife or me ? ' said Mrs. Creshet, with a faint 
 malice. 
 
 'You, Mrs. Creshet,' he answered quickly. 
 
 ' Well, I doubt if any woman could truly love a man whom 
 she felt that she could never fear under any circumstances,' she 
 said. 
 
 'But perfect love casteth out fear,' said Miss Hartfield, in her 
 quiet voice, which seemed always to have the sun on it. 
 
 'So the Bible says!' Marza exclaimed, with obvious bitter 
 sarcasm. 
 
 Lady Enfield looked rather shocked and rather confused too. 
 Marza turned to King Marshall. 
 
 'What do you say, my dear master? ' he asked, still speaking 
 French. 
 
 King Marshall looked up from his bread-crumbs like a man 
 startled. 
 
 Well ? ' said Marza with insistence. 
 
 ' Truth,' answered the novelist vaguely in English. 'Truth — 
 we must seek only that, only and always that.' 
 
 He gazed down again at his bread-crumbs. 
 
 ' But, my dear Mr. Marshall,' said Mrs. Creshet in English, 
 *we are coming to you to ask you what is the truth on this 
 subject. You were listening, weren't you ? ' 
 
 She spoke rather impertinently and challengingly. 
 
 'Certainly, certainly,' he replied. 
 
 'And you grasped our meaning, of course?' 
 
 Felix wondered what she meant. King Marshall looked her 
 full in the eyes. 
 
 'Naturally,' he said, after a moment of marked hesitation. 
 'But the truth is difficult to come at in a moment.' 
 
 He turned to Mrs. Ismey, and began speaking to her rather 
 hurriedly about some political topic of the moment. All the 
 rest of the evening Felix noticed that he seemed constrained and 
 ill at ease. 
 
 Felix was deeply interested in Marza. The Italian was 
 evidently a pagan and rejoiced in it. There was in his con- 
 versation a curious mixture of brutality and delicacy which 
 fascinated Felix. His intellect was obviously as subtle as his 
 nature was animal. When the ladies had gone into the drawing- 
 room he spoke with more unabashed freedom on various subjects 
 not usually discussed at dinner-parties. He spoke in English, 
 at the special request of Mr. Ismey, who declared that his 
 French had become shaky, and that he was only at ease in his 
 own language. Mr. King Marshall said very little, and Felix
 
 206 FELIX 
 
 was an enchanted listener. He remembered saying to the tailoi 
 in the forest that he would go to London, and that he would get 
 to know the people who were doing things, who were influencing 
 the minds and the hearts of the world. Now he sat with two 
 famous men and heard them talk. He could hardly believe his 
 own good fortune. Eagerly he drank in everything Marza said. 
 The poet made him feel as if life were a flower given to a child 
 to pluck to pieces. When the last petal had been examined, 
 and the heart of the flower stood on the stem utterly unprotected 
 by leaves, then it was time for the child to die. How many 
 petals had he plucked? Not one, he thought. He was stirred 
 by a longing to rush out into the night, to grasp the flower, to 
 tear off" the first petal. Marza roused in him the destructive 
 passion. He did not notice King Marshall looking at him 
 intently with his fiery, brown eyes. Marza often addressed his 
 remarks to Felix. He seemed to enjoy the obvious, enthusiastic 
 interest of the boy. 
 
 It was rather late when they went up into the drawing-room. 
 They found Mrs. Creshet looking frightfully bored on a sofa 
 beside Lady Enfield, who was busily talking about bonnets. 
 
 'But, my dear Lady Enfield, what are bonnets?' Felix heard 
 Mrs. Creshet say, as he came into the room. ' Have I ever 
 seen one? Do explain. Of course I know a hat. But what's 
 a bonnet?' 
 
 Lady Enfield, who always wore bonnets despite the tyranny 
 of fashion, looked like one suddenly confronted by an idiot. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey, who was talking to Miss Hartfield, presently 
 called Felix to her with a glance. He sat down beside her. 
 King Marshall joined Miss Hartfield. Mrs. Ismey still looked 
 tired and unusually plain. White did not suit her, Felix thought. 
 
 ' Is this your first dinner-party in London? ' said she. 
 
 * Yes,' he answered. 
 
 * Have you enjoyed yourself? ' 
 
 ' Enormously,' he exclaimed with enthusiasm. 'I have never 
 enjoyed anything so much before.' 
 
 'You find Signor Marza interesting?' 
 
 'Intensely. But who would not? How wonderfully clever 
 he is.' 
 
 ' He is too clever,' she said, lowering her voice. 
 
 ' Oh, but how can any one be that ? ' 
 
 •Lots of people are, believe me. Take care you never 
 become so.' 
 
 'I!' said Felix, with genuine humbleness. 'There's no 
 chance of that.'
 
 FELIX 207 
 
 * I don't know.' 
 
 She looked at him with her weary eyes. Felix suddenly 
 felt compassionate. 
 
 ' Are you really feeling better ? ' he almost whispered. 
 
 'Oh yes.' 
 
 She moved, as if shaken by some intolerable sensation. 
 
 ' This roorh is very hot,' she said. 
 
 She began feverishly to pull off one of the long, white gloves 
 which she had kept on the whole evening. Felix watched her 
 doing it with eagerness. Everything that a woman of the 
 world did interested him as nothing else interested him. Her 
 arm was beautiful as it slipped into view. Its warmer white- 
 ness was made more lovely by the whiteness of her dress. He 
 longed for the moment when he would see her hand. Sluwly 
 she pulled the long glove lower till her wrist was bare. Felix's 
 eyes began to shine. He bent a little forward. Then, 
 abruptly, he turned away and looked at the other people in 
 the room. He felt quite sick, almost as if he had seen a 
 crime committed. 
 
 He longed to say, 'For God's sake put on your glove again.' 
 
 Her hand was horribly dirty, more filthy, he thought, 
 than the hand of any poor working woman that he had ever 
 seen. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' she asked. 
 
 He turned to her again, but kept his eyes away from her 
 hand. He hesitated. He wanted to tell her that she did not 
 know — that she had, by accident, forgotten to — no, it was 
 impossible; he dared not. He felt that he would never be 
 forgiven. 
 
 ' Nothing,' he answered. 
 
 She looked quite calm. Evidently she had no idea what 
 was the matter. 
 
 At this moment Lady Enfield got up to go. Felix was 
 thankful. There was a general movement. He said good-bye. 
 
 ' Come to see me to-morrow afternoon,' Mrs. Ismcy said, 
 touching his hand with that dreadful hand. ' That is if you 
 wish to conform to the strictest etiquette.' 
 
 ' I will,' he said. 
 
 He was glad to take his hand away, and yet she charmed him 
 always. He only felt that she had made a dreadful mistake of 
 which she was as unconscious as a child, and he longed to 
 tell her of it and to protect her from any one knowing it but him. 
 When he saw her shaking hands with her other guests he almost 
 shivered with anxiety.
 
 208 FELIX 
 
 Marza bade him good-bye cordially. 
 
 ' I am at the Carlton Hotel,' he said. ' Come in one after- 
 noon to see me. I am in London for a month to arrange about 
 producing a play here next summer.' 
 
 Felix thanked him and promised enthusiastically to call. As 
 Felix was leaving the house King Marshall joined him. 
 
 * Shall we walk a little way together? ' he said. 
 
 ' May I walk with you ? ' said Felix, almost intoxicated by his 
 good fortune, and wondering why such men cared to have any- 
 thing to do with him. ' Oh, thank you.' 
 
 They set out towards Park Lane. The night was starless and 
 rather cold. King Marshall said nothing, and Felix did not 
 venture to start any conversation. So they walked down Park 
 Lane till they were near to the corner of Piccadilly. Here the 
 novelist stopped. 
 
 * We shall have to part in a moment,' he said. * I am going 
 to the Devonshire Club, and I believe you live in Victoria 
 Street.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Felix. 
 
 'Well, I wish to say something to you.' 
 
 He paused. Felix wondered very much what was coming. 
 
 * Do you remember what I said to you at Ismey's office about 
 truth ? ' 
 
 * Yes, I shall never forget it.' 
 
 * To-night at dinner I was led to tell a falsehood.* 
 ' A falsehood ! ' repeated Felix in amazement. 
 
 ' Yes. I do not speak French, or understand it when it is 
 spoken. I was, therefore, unable to know what was being 
 said at dinner. When Mrs. Creshet appealed to me I said I 
 did know what had been said. I was ashamed to acknowledge 
 the truth before a brother-author much more accomplished than 
 myself.' 
 
 He stopped. Felix said nothing. He had a lump in his 
 throat and could not speak. After an instant King Marshall 
 added : 
 
 ' I was the son of a very poor man of humble origin, and was 
 therefore denied the education of a gentleman. In consequence 
 of this I do not know a great many things that the people I now 
 meet do know. I believe I heard Mr. Marza asking you to 
 visit him ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Felix. 
 
 ' I wish, when you go, you would kindly explain to him what 
 I have just told you. You will be doing me a great favour. 
 Will you do it ? '
 
 FELIX 209 
 
 * But ' Felix murmured. 
 
 His cheeks were hot. 
 
 'Please do,' said King Marshall. * And say I asked you to.' 
 Felix looked at him. 
 
 * Yes, I will,' he said. 
 
 •Thank you, my boy. Goodnight.' 
 
 The novelist shook his hand and walked slowly away. Felix 
 looked after him. He wore a cloak. His small figure, from 
 which the cloak swung as he moved, soon disappeared in the 
 darkness. 
 
 Felix made a movement to follow him. But then he refrained. 
 He was a boy and did not want to ' make a fool of himself.*
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 NEXT day, for the second time, Felix was alone in a room 
 with Mrs. Ismey. He went to see her expectantly, 
 though why that mood possessed him he scarcely knew. She 
 was in the drawing-room sitting at the piano. Several wax 
 candles were burning, and a fire was lighted on the hearth. 
 Near it stood a tea-table. As he came in Felix noticed that 
 there were only two cups on the pretty white-and-green cloth. 
 The low sound of the piano filled the room and seemed to add 
 to its beauty. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey did not get up when she saw him, but went on 
 playing, and said to him, through the music she made : 
 
 ' I am so glad you regarded strict etiquette.' 
 
 Felix came up to the piano and stood by it looking at her, 
 but not where he could see her hands. He was afraid to see 
 them after last night, and yet he longed to. She was playing 
 without notes. He did not know the composition, which was 
 whimsical and sad, barbarous too, he thought. He guessed 
 that it was written by a Russian. 
 
 ' How much do you care for music ? * she asked, just loud 
 enough to be heard above the sound of the piano. 
 
 ' Intensely,' he said. ' It makes me feel so many things.* 
 
 'What things?' 
 
 * As if I could do what I can't do.' 
 
 *And what is that?' 
 
 ' I never know. Music makes me feel, but it doesn't make 
 me know.' 
 
 She stopped speaking. He was glad. He wanted to watch 
 her and to listen. She looked quite childish at the big piano, 
 he thought, and much prettier than she had looked on the 
 previous night. But she did not look well. There was some- 
 thing haggard and nervous in her face, and even in her attitude. 
 Was she, he wondered, trying to be herself the David to her own 
 Saul ? Her hazel eyes shone in the candle-light under her thick 
 eyebrows, and were almost as yellow as a cat's. They had 
 a strained expression. They looked like sentinel eyes on guard 
 
 210
 
 FELIX 211 
 
 in the dark. To-day the way she played was not like Felix's 
 con<eption of her. It was, he fancied, more like Lady Caroline's 
 playing. Perhaps it only seemed to be so because Lady 
 Caroline was not there to overshadow her. The music was 
 very interesting, and continually increased in interest as it drew 
 towards an end. The wandering fragments of melody were 
 drawn towards the main stream. That which had been a 
 little difficult to understand became plain. Felix began to lose 
 himself in the happiness of hearing when, abruptly, Mrs. Ismey 
 stopped on a chord which had no finality, but which demanded 
 another chord to follow it. She got up from the piano and 
 went towards the fire. 
 
 'Oh, why do you do that?' asked Felix, feeling physically 
 hurt. ' But it 's horrible to stop like that in the middle.' 
 
 ' It 's tea-time,' she replied, touching the bell. ' Come and sit 
 down.' 
 
 He came away from the piano slowly. He was almost angry 
 with her. 
 
 * It 's horrible of you to do that,' he could not help saying. 
 She looked at him, and sat down by the tea-table. 
 
 * Why, what a sensitive boy you are,' she said. ' I believe 
 you 're in a rage with me. Yes, you are in a rage.' 
 
 He forced a laugh. 
 
 ' No, indeed, I 'm not. But why did you stop?' 
 
 * Because I was tired of going on. That 's one of my faults. 
 I can't finish things. I 'm a miserable, inconsequent woman.' 
 
 ' Are you miserable ? ' he said, as if he meant it. 
 
 Just then the butler came in with tea. Mrs. Ismey made no 
 reply till he had gone. Then she said : 
 
 'You must not ask me questions.' 
 
 Felix had sat down opposite to her. He loved being thus 
 alone with her. 
 
 ' I won't do anything you dislike,' he said. 
 
 She began to pour out tea. 
 
 ' Perhaps you couldn't,' she answered. 
 
 ' I wish I knew when you mean what you say and when 
 you don't,' he said. ' But I scarcely ever do.' 
 
 She gave him his cup and took her own. She sipped her 
 tea and stretched out her hand to the sugar-basin. For the 
 first time he glanced at her hand, and at once a happy look 
 came into his face. 
 
 ' Now, why do you suddenly look so pleased?' she asked. 
 
 Felix reddened. 
 
 ' You don't want me to know the reason,' she added.
 
 212 FELIX 
 
 ' No, I don't,' he said boldly. 
 *Was it something about me?' 
 
 * Well— yes.' 
 
 * I wonder what. I can't guess.* 
 
 ' It is almost the only thought I have ever had with you 
 that you haven't guessed, I believe.' 
 
 ' Then I understand you better than you understand me? ' 
 
 'Of course you do. Sometimes I think that I scarcely under- 
 stand any one except my own people.' 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 * Stephen — you count him as one of them now, I suppose? ' 
 
 ' Oh, Stephen ! ' exclaimed Felix. ' I understood all about 
 him after I had been with him for five minutes. But he is 
 cut on a pattern, isn't he ?' 
 
 ' I dare say. But perhaps I am too. Quantities of women are. 
 
 * I am sure you are not. Nor is ' 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 * Well, go on,' she said, almost curiously. 
 ' I was going to say Lady Caroline.' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey drank her tea slowly and put down her cup. 
 ' Carrie interests you,' she said, in her most drawling voice. 
 'She interests you very much.' 
 'Yes, I think she does.* 
 
 * More than I do?' 
 ♦Oh no.' 
 
 ' As much ? ' 
 
 ' You both interest me more than any two people I ever met 
 before,' he said, half evasively. 
 
 ' Don't class me with Carrie,' Mrs. Ismey said quickly, and 
 with some bitterness. ' We are quite, quite different.' 
 
 ' Of course I know you are,' he exclaimed. 
 
 ' And yet you think of us together. Yes, I know you do. I 
 felt it the other night. That 'snot clever of you ; not at all clever.* 
 
 ' But isn't Lady Caroline your greatest friend?' Felix said. 
 
 Again he was conscious of hostility in Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 * My greatest friend ! ' she said. ' Carrie ! ' 
 
 She poured herself out some more tea. The action, perhaps, 
 gave her time to think, for when she went on speaking her 
 manner was more guarded. 
 
 ' I suppose she is,' she said. ' Certainly I know her more 
 intimately than I know any other woman. So if great knowledge 
 is great friendship — well ! ' She shrugged her shoulders. ' It 
 is a question with some people, I believe, whether any woman 
 can have a great friend in any other woman. I wonder what
 
 FELIX 213 
 
 Signer Marza would say on that subject. He has studied it, of 
 course, as he has studied all subjects connected with us. Hateful 
 man !* 
 
 Felix was startled by the vehemence of the last words. 
 
 ' Do you mean that ? ' he asked. 
 
 'Yes, I do,' said Mrs. Ismey, this time with unmistakable 
 feeling. ' A man who can allow his intellect to govern his heart, 
 even to hold the reins of his animal passions as Marza does, is 
 hateful. His intellect is never, never at rest. Even his intrigues 
 are only so many lessons in the lore of women. And the 
 women not only give them but pay for them too. Ironical, 
 isn't it?' 
 
 ' You mean he is always studying human nature ? ' asked Felix. 
 
 She could not have introduced a subject which interested 
 him more. He forgot to drink his tea as he listened to her ar d 
 looked at her face, which was very expressive in the quiet light 
 of the wax candles and of the fire, a still red fire in which no 
 restless flames danced. 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'But does that make a man hateful?* 
 
 ' To a woman, do you mean ? ' 
 
 'Well, yes. I think I meant essentially hateful really, but 
 let 's say to a woman.' 
 
 * Yes, it does, because it makes him cold and makes him 
 cruel. Many women have loved Marza, but scarcely one who 
 has not learnt to hate him in the end.' 
 
 'And yet,' Felix said, 'I should have thought that studying 
 human nature like that might make a man more tender instead 
 of more cruel. Mightn't it? Suppose he found out beauties 
 in a character which he had never suspected before?' 
 
 ' What do you think of this tea? ' said Mrs. Ismey. * It is a 
 mixture of Ceylon and China tea. Do you think it 's good ? ' 
 
 Felix grew hot. He felt as if she had slapped his face. She 
 spoke with butterfly inconsequence, brushing away the topic in 
 which his mind had been plunged as a housemaid brushes away 
 a cobweb from a dark corner. He made no reply. Her eyes 
 were wandering all over the room, like a child's when it is bored 
 by a lesson, and searches aimlessly for some distraction, a fly 
 on the window-pane, or a sun-ray on the white ceiling. 
 
 'My husband has gone down to Windsor,' she continued. 
 
 'Has he?' Felix replied with difficulty. 
 
 'Yes, to see a novelist about some book he's bringing out. 
 Well, what have you been doing to-day? Have you been to 
 church ?
 
 214 FELIX 
 
 She looked at him now. She was evidently quite unconscious 
 of the vexation she had caused by her inconsequence. 
 
 * Yes; I went this morning.' 
 
 * Where did you go ? ' 
 
 It was so obvious to Felix that she didn't care, and was merely 
 speaking for the sake of speaking, that he answered : 
 
 ' I don't think it matters much, does it ? ' 
 
 Directly he had said the words he thought, perhaps, he had 
 been unpardonably rude. But he felt on wires. All his nerves 
 were tingling. 
 
 ' Did you say St. Paul's, Knightsbridge ? ' she replied. 
 
 Again her eyes were wandering about the room. Felix put 
 down his cup and got up quickly. The movement attracted 
 her attention. 
 
 ' Why, what are you doing ? ' 
 
 *I — I ought to be going,' he said stiffly. 
 
 All the young blood in him felt congealed by her careless 
 inattention. 
 
 ' I am boring you,' he added. 'And I don't wish to bore you 
 any longer.' 
 
 * My dear boy!' she said. 'What utter nonsense! Why, 
 what's the matter?' 
 
 She got up quickly too, and stood quite close to him, looking 
 up into his face. 
 
 ' What have I done ? ' she said, putting her hand on his arm 
 lightly. 
 
 ' Nothing. But I am boring you,' he persisted. * Let me go.' 
 
 He felt that he was behaving like a boy instead of like a man. 
 He could have struck himself for his boyishness, and yet he 
 could not behave in any other way. 
 
 ' But I won't,' she said. ' Why, I am keeping out all callers 
 this afternoon simply to have a good talk alone with you.' 
 
 ' Not really ? ' 
 
 ' But I am. Do you suppose no one comes to call on a 
 Sunday afternoon ? ' She moved lightly and swiftly to the bell 
 and touched it, then held up her hand. * Now just wait and 
 you shall see.' 
 
 They waited in silence. Felix looked at her as she stood 
 by the bell, with her arm stretched out in a soft attitude of 
 expectation. The butler came. 
 
 'Has any one called, Henry?' she asked him. 
 
 •Yes, ma'am ' 
 
 * Just bring up any cards that there are — since we have been 
 having tea.'
 
 FELIX 215 
 
 The man went out and returned in a moment, carrying several 
 cards on a salver. Mrs. Ismey took them. 
 
 'You can go.' 
 
 The man left the room and shut the door. Then she came 
 up to Felix. 
 
 'There,' she said, giving him the cards, 'there are the 
 proofs of my desire to have a quiet talk with you.' 
 
 Felix looked at the cards. One bore the name of Antonino 
 Marza. 
 
 ' Aren't you satisfied ? ' she said. 
 
 She spoke really as if she cared what he felt. And what he 
 felt was that he would like to kiss her hand, which was so 
 beautiful to-day. 
 
 ' But how can you want to be with me ? ' he murmured. 
 'I'm a boy — I know I 'm a young ass and I must bore you. 
 You're accustomed always to being with such brilliant men, all 
 these writers and poets and critics.' 
 
 * And could I trust one of them to drive me where you drove 
 me the other night?' she said. 'Marza uses his intellect too 
 much with a woman, but you use yours too little. Now ' 
 
 She looked at him and at the chair he had been sitting on. 
 All his anger was gone. He was in a sort of turmoil of con- 
 fusion and happiness. When he had sat down he said : 
 
 * I can't think why you 're so good to me.' 
 
 'I have smothered you with benefits, haven't I?' she 
 answered. 
 
 She looked at him as she spoke and, when she had spoken, 
 screwed up her eyes. As Felix grew to know her better he 
 found that this was a trick of hers. When she did it she looked 
 like some sort of queer, fascinating animal that was sharp as a 
 needle, full of lightness, humour, and coquetry — perhaps a 
 squirrel. The very deliberation of this trick increased its fascina- 
 tion for Felix. Now that she had persuaded him to stay she 
 did not seem to have anything particular to say to him. He 
 could not help noticing that this afternoon her mind was a 
 vagrant. She was unable or unwilling to pursue any subject 
 for more than two or three minutes. Directly he began to be 
 interested in it she tired of it. In any other person this incon- 
 sequence would have irritated him. He could not have borne 
 it in his mother, for instance, or in Margot. But Mrs. Ismey 
 actually charmed him by this very inconsequence now that he 
 was prepared for it. He thought of it as part of her elusive 
 nature which he could not understand. And then it was com- 
 bined with intelligence, not with stupidity. She did not fly
 
 216 FELIX 
 
 away from any question because she was puzzled by it, or knew 
 nothing about it. At least Felix thought not. Often, indeed, 
 she left a topic only after she had slain it with a word, or held 
 it up to a dry light of ridicule which exposed, to his eyes, its 
 meagre little skeleton. Her quickness of mind delighted him. 
 He was not wholly disinclined just then to believe that swiftness 
 was depth. 
 
 When the clock struck six he got up to go. 
 
 *What are you doing ?' she asked. 
 
 * I ought to go. I have been here two hours.' 
 
 * Have you? Wait a moment. Just ring the bell twice, with 
 a little pause between.' 
 
 Felix did so, wondering. 
 
 ' I am going to lend you a book of Marza's,' she said, 'trans- 
 lated into French. It will show you that I am right in saying 
 he is a hateful man.' 
 
 At this moment the door opened and a maid appeared. Felix 
 hardly knew why, but he looked at her closely and with interest. 
 She was a tall girl, apparently about twenty-four, with a round 
 pale face, black hair, and small, dark eyes. She was plainly 
 dressed in black, without a cap or apron. Her expression was 
 oddly emotional for a maid's, and she had very pretty, small 
 hands. Felix saw her look at him swiftly and curiously, and 
 instantly look away. 
 
 * Alice,' said Mrs. Ismey, ' I wish you would go to my bedroom 
 and see if you can find a green-and-white covered book. It is 
 one of Antonino Marza's, and is called Centre. I believe it is 
 on the table by my bed.' 
 
 ' The one I put the food on at night, ma'am, or the other?' 
 said the maid. 
 
 A perverse look came into Mrs. Ismey's face. 
 
 *The other, the other ! ' she said hastily. 
 
 Alice went out. 
 
 ' But I thought you said it was in French?' Felix said. 
 
 ' So it is, but I have had it rebound, and kept the original 
 Italian title. I like it better than Les Cendres: 
 
 They waited for Alice to come back. She was rather a long time. 
 
 •She can't find it, I suppose,' said Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 'Is she nice?' Felix asked. He felt interested in the maid, 
 though he had no idea why. 
 
 'Alice?' 
 
 *Yes.' 
 
 'She's a clever lady's-maid, and very devoted to me, but 
 she's got faults. If one trusts her completely, and makes
 
 FELIX 217 
 
 her feel it, she will do anything for one ; but if one tries to keep 
 anything from her she can be perfectly horrid. Her motto 
 must be " All in all or not at all." Hush !' 
 
 Alice came back carrying the book. 
 
 ' What an age you 've been ! ' said Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 ' I couldn't find it, ma'am.' 
 
 • Why, surely it was on the table.' 
 
 *No, ma'am.' 
 
 'Where was it, then?' 
 
 Alice looked at her mistress in silence. 
 
 'Oh, never mind,' said Mrs. Ismey, ' as long as you've found 
 it. That will do.' 
 
 She took the volume and the maid went out. 
 
 'Read that,' Mrs. Ismey said. 'And learn from it how not 
 to treat a woman.' 
 
 She gave Felix the book. It had an exquisite binding of 
 white and green, tooled with gold, and with a gold pattern of 
 palm leaves, but on one side of it there was a large red stain. 
 
 ' Oh, look ! what a pity ! ' Felix exclaimed. 
 
 Beauty wounded always hurt him. 
 
 'It 's red ink,' he added, after examining the cover. 
 
 ' Well, it can't be helped.' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey spoke with complete indifference. As Felix 
 took her hand to bid her good-bye, she said : 
 
 ' By the way, what are you doing with yourself in London?' 
 
 Felix told her about joining Sam's school. Although they 
 had spent two hours together he had forgotten to mention it 
 before. She had made him think of her and forget himself. 
 
 ' Mr. Carringbridge ! ' she said. ' Oh, I have met him.' 
 
 ' Do you like him ? ' 
 
 ' He 's very intelligent,' she answered. ' So you 're with him.' 
 
 She sto"d near the door at which he was going out looking at 
 him thoughtfully, almost suspiciously. 
 
 'What is it?' he asked, with keen interest. 
 
 'Oh, I was only thinking that there are a great many 
 influences at work on yon now besides the Balzac influence,' 
 she answered. 'There 's Mr. Carringbridge's, King Marshall's ' 
 — Felix hnd toM her of his interview with the novelist in Mr. 
 Ismey 's office, but not of the novelist's subsequent confession — 
 'my husband's perhaps, Carrie's ' 
 
 'And yours,' he said. 'Yours.' 
 
 She touched the book he was holding carefully. 
 
 'And now Marza's. I wonder if I am wrong to give you 
 that book. Never mind.'
 
 218 FELIX 
 
 Felix had thought of going again to church that evening. 
 The habit of church-going clung to him still, and, besides, he 
 loved church music when it was good. But now he was eager, 
 having met Marza, to read Cenere. Directly he got home he 
 began it. He read till late in the night and finished it. While 
 he was reading it, still more when he had finished it, he under- 
 stood Mrs. Ismey's denunciation of the novelist. It was the 
 history of an intrigue between a man and a woman of talent, 
 an intrigue apparently begun by both under the influence of 
 real passion. But the man was an incurable egoist. He con- 
 sidered everything in life strictly in relation to himself. He 
 appreciated everything simply as it affected him. His worship 
 of self was a monomania. He justified it in everlasting tirades, 
 immensely subtle, immensely brilliant, and immensely abomin- 
 able. The woman acquiesced for a long time in this self-worship 
 of her lover, but at last she could bear it no longer. She, who 
 had for so long sacrificed herself, at last woke to the conscious- 
 ness of what was due by her to herself. She turned upon the 
 man, poured out her soul in a speech of impassioned invective, 
 and left him, so she said, for ever. At the close of the book, 
 after striving in vain to endure a solitary life, she crawled back, 
 like a dog, to the feet of the man, begged his forgiveness, and 
 entreated to be permitted to enter his life once more, since she 
 could not exist without him. But the man declared that he 
 had learnt that it was possible to live without her, to live for 
 and in art, in art which cannot reproach, which cannot make 
 scenes, which can satisfy, uplift, soothe, and permanently inspire 
 passion. He had learnt that he could only be unselfish for that 
 one mistress's sake, and that only in such unselfishness was he 
 really happy. He refused to receive the woman back. She 
 threw herself into the Tiber. In the final pages the hero, in a 
 most exalted cerebral condition, was engaged in planning a 
 monument to her memory, which, in its exquisite beauty, was 
 to surpass all the monuments of the past. In impassioned 
 language he described it to the sculptor who was to carry out 
 hisideas as his tribute to the only woman who had ever loved 
 utterly since the beginning of time. But it was impossible not 
 to realise that he really thought of it as a lasting memorial, not 
 of his grief, or of his adoration of the creature who had died for 
 him, but simply of his superior taste and culture. When he was 
 dust men would point to it and murmur his name, while the 
 woman to whom it was nominally raised would be forgotten. 
 And why not? She had only known how to love another, 
 while he, the man, had known how to love himself.
 
 FELIX 219 
 
 Felix was startled, was almost dazed by the continual 
 brilliance of the book. The intimate knowledge of an almost 
 endless variety of subjects shown by the author astounded him. 
 The poetical beauty of the descriptions, the heat and eloquence 
 of the love-scenes, fascinated him and stirred him. But the 
 egoism of the hero disgusted him, and it seemed to him that it 
 was the egoism not only of the hero but of the hero's creator. 
 This pitiless selfishness was, he felt certain, the pitiless selfish- 
 ness of Marza himself. And all his young sympathies were with 
 the wretched woman and against the man for whom she died. 
 
 Yet as he undressed to get into bed his intellect fell on its 
 knees before Marza. It was only his heart that rejected him. 
 
 After he had put out the electric light, he lay awake for some 
 time. In these last two days he had begun really to feel some- 
 thing of that which he had expected to feel in the centre and 
 the heart of the world. The torch was being set to that fire 
 which had been laid within him by invisible forces, by forces 
 which, despite his bringing-up in a religion, he felt that he 
 could not guess at. His intellect was waking up. Would his 
 heart slumber on? He did not ask himself the question. But 
 he was conscious of the various influences which Mrs. Ismey 
 had spoken of, and knew himself to be sensitively responsive to 
 all influences. 
 
 The boy, who had been so imitative of the physical peculi- 
 arities of others, was now set face to face with a far more subtle 
 temptation than that of rcjiroducing any bodily grace or afflic- 
 tion. Would he be able to resist playing the monkey to the 
 minds of others ? Would he be strong enough to keep his soul 
 a free thing ?
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 ON the following Saturday Felix had resolved to go to 
 Churston Waters. He did not know, during the week, 
 whether he wanted to go or not. His mother had not said any- 
 thing about it, though she had written expressing her gladness 
 that he was happy at Sam's. She had not said anything, but 
 Felix, when he had read her letter, felt something of her loneli- 
 ness. He realised her by herself in the house which had been 
 the home of her husband and children, of all she loved in the 
 world. The gentle cheerfulness of her letter did not deceive 
 him. She spoke of going to bed very early ' now.' That last 
 little word, which had surely slipped on to the paper almost 
 involuntarily, told a good deal of the desolate evenings when 
 the darkness fell, of the solitary dinner, the empty drawing-room 
 afterwards. And then his mother was so nervous. He had 
 never thought of that before. She was afraid of burglars. Any 
 noise in the night which she could not understand sent terrors 
 trooping through her heart. Now she slept all alone on the big 
 landing, from which opened the rooms Margot and he had 
 formerly occupied. 
 
 ' Poor old mater ! ' he thought. ' It is a beastly shame your 
 being all by yourself.' 
 
 He sat down and wrote to say that he would come by the 
 early afternoon train on Saturday. When he sealed the letter 
 he felt magnanimous. Sam had told him to analyse himself, 
 but it never occurred to him to analyse that feeling. He 
 worked rather hard that week. He resolved that he would not 
 be one of Sam's 'damned fools,' and in spite of the merry chaff 
 of his light-hearted companions he used a great deal of Sam's 
 ink. His meeting with King Marshall and Marza had fired his 
 young ambition. They had not risen to be powers in the world 
 by smoking cigarettes and telling funny stories. He took 
 Chalmers as an example in diligence, and was generally con- 
 demned by his fellows as a ' blasted sweater.' Sam, whom he 
 bothered almost as much as did the ex-piano-tuner, smiled upon 
 his efforts most serenely. 
 
 220
 
 FELIX 221 
 
 * There will be no need for you to acquire short h-and, Mr. 
 Wilding,' he said one day, after reading one of Felix's articles 
 and showing him how much better it might have been if it had 
 been written, say, by Mr. Samuel Carringbridge. 
 
 This was a high compliment, since it implied that Felix 
 would be able to earn his living in journalism without being a 
 reporter, if he had to earn his living at all. 
 
 'As to whether that is obligatory on you of course I have no 
 idea,' Sam added, after a radiant allusion to the poor circum- 
 stances of the average youthful journalist. ' Do not tell me, I 
 entreat. My business is not with the private affairs of my 
 pupils. I have only to endeavour — when they wish it — to so 
 train them that they will be able in the future to avoid actual 
 starvation.' 
 
 He smiled meditatively at his exquisitely varnished boots. 
 
 ' I have managed to avoid it someh-ow,' he added reflectively. 
 
 Felix had now read some of his articles, and admired his 
 mastery of buoyant prose. There was little delicacy in his 
 writings; but there was force of a sometimes rather vulgar kind ; 
 there was picturesqueness, rhetorical eloquence, and a great 
 deal of humour and sarcasm. His emotional flights did not 
 touch Felix. The want of heart in them, to which he had 
 himself indirectly alluded in his lecture on the art of journalism, 
 kept Felix's heart from any response to their highly coloured 
 fervour. 
 
 Now that he knew Sam better, he admired his intellect more. 
 His shrewdness was quite uncommon. His self-possession was 
 illimitable. His smiling contempt of humanity was at least 
 entertaining, for he included himself in the population of the 
 world. But in all the greater qualities — in sincerity, pity, charity, 
 love — he was, or appeared to be, entirely wanting. He was 
 lazy and dazzling and beautifully dressed. 
 
 Felix rather liked him, but did not stop to consider whether 
 his influence would make for good or evil if it were felt at all. 
 
 Her son's letter announcing his arrival on Saturday drew a 
 response from Mrs. Wilding so full of genuine, almost thankful, 
 happiness, that Felix felt a warmth in his heart as he read it. 
 He began to look forward to Saturday. His mother suggested 
 that probably he would like her to invite Margot and Stephen 
 over to dinner. The thought of Stephen annoyed and chilled 
 him. But he must see Margot, and now, he supposed, it was 
 impossible to see her without seeing her husband too. That 
 angered him. Why on earth cnuld she not have gone on being 
 Margot Wilding? As he wrote a postcard to his mother to say
 
 222 FELIX 
 
 that he hoped she would invite his sister and brother-in-law, he 
 condemned in his heart his sister's incomprehensible love of 
 change. He never thought of his own. 
 
 ' On the Thursday afternoon of that week, after leaving the 
 school, he called at the Carlton Hotel and asked if Signor 
 Marza were at home. He felt very diffident, even nervous in 
 doing this, although the poet had told him to come. Perhaps 
 he would not have called had it not been for his walk with 
 King Marshall and the latter's confession. He was conscious 
 of a sort of latent fear of Marza since he had read his book, 
 Cenere. He was afraid of his genius as he had never been 
 afraid of the genius of Balzac. For Balzac presented human 
 beings working out their fates. Marza presented surely himself, 
 working out his own egoism, while the lamps of poetry, learning, 
 passion, pathos, burned to light him at his task. 
 
 Felix's card was taken up while he waited in the vestibule. 
 Many people came in and out, left cards, took the keys of their 
 rooms, spoke to the men who stood behind the counters looking 
 composed and indifferent. The women who came were all very 
 smart. They walked carefully as if almost afraid of their 
 elaborate costumes. Felix recognised one as a well-known 
 young actress. She wore an immense hat which was covered 
 with black feathers. They protruded over the brim, curling 
 inwards as if trying to touch her painted and pov/dered cheeks. 
 As she entered the vestibule she glanced quickly round with 
 her bright, artificial eyes to see if she were being noticed. One 
 of her hands was bare, and covered with rings. The pink nails 
 of the fingers were so highly polished that they glistened. She 
 took a key from the attendant and rustled out. As she passed 
 Felix she glanced at him with a sort of sly defiance. He was 
 wrapped in a cloud of perfume. He looked after her feeling 
 half fascinated, half sickened. 
 
 In two or three minutes the man to whom he had given his 
 card returned, and asked him to come up to Signor Marza's 
 room. They mounted in a noiseless lift, went down a long 
 corridor with a thick carpet, past brown doors with gilt numbers 
 and many piles of huge trunks, turned a corner, and came to a 
 door on which the attendant knocked. After a moment he 
 opened it, and showed Felix into a sitting-room which was full 
 of roses. They stood in jars on a writing-table near a fire, on 
 another table covered with books and newspapers of different 
 countries, on the high mantelpiece, on two cabinets which were 
 loaded with china and signed photographs and bits of old 
 silver. Felix thought he had never seen so many roses in a
 
 FELIX 223 
 
 small room before. A large cage was placed on a stand near 
 the drawn window-curtains. The door of it was open, and the 
 cage itself was empty. When he had come quite into the room, 
 Felix saw that two canaries were flying about in it. One 
 fluttered over his head, alighted on the pole from which the 
 curtains hung, and observed him with its round, bright eyes. 
 It turned its little narrow head about swiftly on its supple neck, 
 as if in a paroxysm of observation. There was a door in the 
 wall on the left hand opening into a second room, and Marza 
 came in from this room almost immediately. 
 
 He had on a black silk smoking-jacket unbuttoned, and held 
 a very long and large cigarette in his hand. The attendant was 
 just going out as he entered, and as he shook hands with Felix 
 he glanced hastily round the room. 
 
 'Are both the birds here?' he said to Felix in French. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Felix. 
 
 'Where is Caterina?' asked Marza. *! can only see 
 Peppino.' 
 
 'There,' said Felix, pointing to the little vagrant on the 
 curtain-rod, who was still turning her head this way and that 
 with a ceaseless swiftness. 
 
 Marza looked relieved. He smiled. Directly he smiled he 
 was charming. Like many Sicilians he smiled with his eyes. 
 The lower part of his face scarcely altered, but southern 
 sunshine came out in his eyes, and little lines of gaiety and 
 kindness appeared on his cheeks beneath them. 
 
 ' I am so afraid of their escaping,' he said. ' Do sit down.' 
 
 ' I hope I am not disturbing you,' Felix said, sitting down in 
 a chair near the fire. 
 
 ' Not at all. Peppe ! Peppe ! ' 
 
 He held out his hand to Peppino and chirruped. When he 
 did that he looked like a boy, almost like a child. The little 
 bird would not come to him. He tried to persuade Peppe, throw- 
 ing himself into the task with an abandon that fascinated Felix. 
 He whistled shrilly, bending forward and holding out his arm 
 like a branch for the bird to alight on. A wooing expression 
 came into his face. It was obvious that his whole heart was 
 summoning the bird. At length, after chirping once or twice 
 as if in reply to him, and fluttering his pale-yellow wings 
 anxiously, Peppe flew to him and perched on his slioulder near his 
 neck. At once Caterina, as if seized with jealousy, flew down 
 also from her curtain-rod, and alighted on his outstretched arm 
 close to his wrist. He glided towards the cage, looking at Felix 
 sideways with a cautious smile that hardly dared to be a smile
 
 224 FELIX 
 
 lest it should frighten the birds away. At that moment Felix, 
 aware of his briUiant intellect and of his fame, and a witness of 
 his utter lack of self-consciousness and almost absurd triumph 
 in his power over the naughty canaries, was completely fas- 
 cinated by him. Having reached the cage Marza put in his 
 arm through the door, dipping it down so that Caterina's tufted 
 head should not touch the wire. She fluttered up, and began 
 quickly pecking at some seed. Then Marza, with a most 
 delicate swiftness, lifted his hand to his neck, imprisoned 
 Peppino lightly, put him too in the cage, and gently shut the 
 door. 
 
 As he came to sit down by the fire he looked radiant at his 
 success. 
 
 * Do have a cigarette,' he said, handing one to Felix. *I may 
 talk to you in French I know. You are not ignorant of it like 
 that poor Monsieur Marshall.' 
 
 Felix flushed. 
 
 'You know Mr. Marshall does not understand French?' 
 
 ' Naturally. That is why I spoke it so much the other night. 
 If I had talked in English he would have been shocked, he 
 would have contradicted, have argued, have ruined my effect 
 with his heavy pessimism. His ugly blackness would have 
 spoilt all the loveliness of mine, as his dreadful books spoil all 
 the loveliness of love, despair, everything he writes about.' 
 
 Felix was shocked at hearing such a man as King Marshall 
 spoken of with such utter contempt. 
 
 ' But how did you know Mr. Marshall couldn't understand 
 French ? ' he said. ' He asked me to tell you.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! Well, I suspected it. I spoke a sentence. He 
 began to crumble the bread. I knew.' 
 
 Felix thought he was disgusted by the blunt cruelty shown by 
 the poet. Yet afterwards he knew that Marza had fascinated 
 him so much that he had not been really disgusted. To sit 
 with Marza was like sitting with the south, with the fire and the 
 radiance of summer, where the shadows are the shadows of old 
 olive-trees, and the silence is the blue silence that falls from 
 cloudless skies. 
 
 'It is so easy to know,' he continued. 'And yet there are 
 people, like my Lady Enfield, who sit as if they had seen 
 Medusa when one shows any knowledge. It would be strange, 
 if anything were strange. But nothing is after one has lived 
 for twenty — ' He looked at Felix, stopped, then corrected 
 himself with mischief that was meant to be obvious — ' thirty 
 years.'
 
 FELIX 225 
 
 * A good many things seem strai.^e to me,' said Felix. 
 
 It made him very hai)py to speak French again, and almost 
 transported him to La Maison des Alouettes. 
 
 'The right hand of Mrs. Ismey, for instance,' said Marza. 
 
 Felix started as if he had been struck hard with a whip. 
 
 'Or Mr. Ismey's eyes,' Marza continued, smiling again with 
 his eyes as he had smiled over Caterina and Peppino. ' They 
 do not seem strange to my Lady Enfield, because she does not 
 see them. But you do. That is why I asked you to come and 
 call on me. So many people call upon me in London. They 
 come because I am so celebrated, and they think me a monster. 
 Every one speaks against me and is anxious to know me. I 
 shall not stay long. I never stay long among the barbarians. 
 And you live among them, I suppose. Do you like it?' 
 
 'But do you mean that London is a city of barbarians?' 
 said Felix. 
 
 He was glad that Marza had so rapidly passed on from his 
 startling remark about the Ismeys, and yet longed to be able 
 to question him. It was evident that the poet had in a moment 
 pierced to the heart of things in that household. All that had 
 so puzzled Felix must be clear to him. Directly he realised 
 this Felix was conscious of a sudden thrill of anger. He did 
 not know why he was angry. As he sat with Marza his emotions 
 came and went without his really comprehending why. 
 
 ' To me it is as New York is, and Chicago, and even Boston 
 with its childish happiness and pride in its own culture. Boston 
 is Uke a httle boy that has on kid gloves for the first time. It 
 runs about showing them to all the servants. London has no 
 gloves on, but it claps its big red hands quite shamelessly and 
 thinks its toilette is complete. You should live in Rome, and if 
 you cannot do that, in Paris. Why don't you?' 
 
 'Well, you see 1 have my mother,' said Felix. 'She lives in 
 England.' 
 
 Marza lit another of the long cigarettes. He stood up to do 
 so, as the matches were on the mantelpiece, and when he spoke 
 again he remained standing. Felix noticed that his fingers were 
 very pointed and that his wrists were abnormally small. He 
 was a man with little bones, but he looked immensely active. 
 Not only his eyes and his features but his limbs were full of 
 intelligence. 
 
 'Why will the young generation allow itself to be hobbled by 
 
 the old?' exclaimed Marza, using the French word, entravcr. 
 
 'It reminds me of the one goat in the herd — there is always one 
 
 —the naughty goat which, unlike the others, loves to investigate 
 
 P
 
 226 FELIX 
 
 that part of the sunny hillside which is far away from the goat* 
 herd's piping, the goat that is tired of the sound of the tarantella, 
 and so has its front and hind legs tied together with a frayed 
 cord. You are tired of the tarantella. Of course you are. But 
 you let the old generation hobble you with the frayed cord. It 
 is such a pity !' 
 
 When Marza said 'It is such a pity!' an expression that 
 seemed to be an expression of real grief came into his face, and 
 he stretched out his left hand towards Felix with an appealing 
 gesture. Felix sat looking at him in silence. His last words 
 had made a deep impression : 'You are tired of the tarantella.' 
 Felix did not know Sicily. The whole simile, the little picture 
 so swiftly painted in words, was definitely Sicilian. And yet how 
 perfectly it suggested to Felix his own experience at Churston 
 Waters on the evening of his return from France. The taran- 
 tella had been piped to him then, the tarantella of the English 
 country village where he was born. The old generation had 
 piped it to him and he was tired of it. He wanted something 
 new, something different. He Ionised to wander further up the 
 mountain-side. As he sat thinking this, and still haunted by 
 the sound of the poet's words, which floated in his imagination 
 like music in the air, his face must have been expressive of his 
 thought, for Marza said : 
 
 'You have wished to wander. You wish to wander still.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Felix. 
 
 He began suddenly to feel that at last he was with some one 
 who really understood him. Marza, by his words, but still more 
 by something indefinable in his personality, called to the gates 
 of the boy's soul all the romance that lay hidden in the dark 
 places behind them. His power of doing this was the cause ol 
 his power over women. He was not at all handsome, but those 
 who were with him invariably forgot to think about that. They 
 had no time to notice the glass since the flame that burnt 
 behind it was so vivid. 
 
 'Well, do what you wish. Get away from the tarantella. 
 Don't think it your duty to stay listening to it for ever. The 
 cord is frayed. Break it. I never hesitated to do so. That is 
 why the old generation hates and fears me. Take note of this. 
 If you hear me discussed in the world where people read and 
 think you will always hear the old people, the generation that 
 has said its say, and done its work, and made its impression, 
 denouncing me. When I have a moment of dismay — all 
 artists have such moments — when for an instant I doubt whether 
 I have any value, whether I have any power to bring forth what
 
 FELIX 227 
 
 is fresh, whether I have any progressive faculty, that is, I listen 
 to the denunciations of the old generation and I take courage. 
 The measure of the old generation's hatred of me is the measure 
 also of my value for the new.' 
 
 He suddenly lifted both his hands to his lips and, with his 
 pointed fingers, violently twisted up the ends of his moustache. 
 The gesture was pugnacious. Felix felt tremendously excited. 
 To sit alone with a man of Marza's fame, and to hear such 
 intimate talk as this, was for him a most glorious experience. 
 The obvious audacity of the poet's mind enthralled him. Marza's 
 freedom seemed for the moment to be his own freedom. The 
 sound of the door into the corridor opening gave him a painful 
 sensation. It was followed by a rustling noise. Felix turned 
 round, saw a lady coming into the room, and sprang up. 
 
 The visitor, who had evidently let herself in with a key which 
 she was holding in her gloved hand, was very young, apparently 
 a girl of about seventeen, and extremely beautiful. Felix 
 thought that she too must be a Sicilian like Marza. She had an 
 oval face, lit up by immense dark eyes, in which light seemed 
 swimming, a childish, rather helpless, but lovely mouth, and 
 thick, wavy, dark hair. Her figure had all the thin, flat grace 
 of scarcely budding youth, that grace which makes old and 
 experienced goodness feel full of tenderness and fear. When 
 Felix saw her fully he felt sure at once that she had been born a 
 woman of the people, although she was beautifully dressed in a 
 sable coat, with an exquisitely impudent little black hat, under 
 the curled-up brim of which was tucked a vivid scarlet flower 
 against her hair. Maiza did not seem at all surprised by her 
 entrance. 
 
 ' Ah, Nunziata,' he said, coming from the fire to take a small 
 parcel which she was carrying from the girl's hand. ' What is 
 this? Another jewel ? You should not buy jewels without me. 
 You know your taste is — well, uncertain.' 
 
 He smiled at the girl with a sort of half-contemptuous, and 
 yet affectionate indulgence, put up his hand and gently touched 
 her soft, round chin. She niade a little motic at him. 
 
 'Let me introduce Mr. Wilding to you,' said Marza. 
 
 He still spoke French. 
 
 The girl looked at Felix and nodded, prettily but carelessly. 
 
 ' It is hot in here,' she said to Marza in bad French. ' I must 
 go and take off my things. ICxcuse me, please ! ' she added to 
 Felix, with a smile which lit up all her face. 
 
 Her manner was fascinating, and yet there was something 
 common, something fainily coarse in it which startled Felix.
 
 228 FELIX 
 
 She went up to the cage of Peppino and Caterina, knelt down 
 swiftly, with the delicious suppleness of youth, took a bit of 
 sugar from between the bars, put it into her mouth, and pressed 
 her face against the cage. The two canaries came sidling along 
 the perch, looked away from the sugar, turned swiftly, pecked at 
 it, and looked away again. Felix thought he had never seen 
 anything more nervousiy coquettish. The girl laughed, got up 
 with a sort of languid strength, smiled at Felix again, and went 
 into the inner room, eating the sugar. He heard her rustling 
 about there, and opening and shutting drawers. He wondered 
 very much who she was. Perhaps she was Marza's wife. Felix 
 did not know whether he was married or not. 
 ' Isn't she beautiful ? ' Marza said. 
 
 * Yes, very,' Felix answered. 
 
 Something in the intonation of the poet's voice when he said 
 that suddenly made Felix feel sure that the girl was not his 
 wife. 
 
 'She's quite clever, too,' Marza continued. 'And yet — well, 
 in spite of all I have shown her, all I have taught her, I shall 
 not be surprised if some day she marries a handsome peasant of 
 her own country, Girgenti. Or she may drift through the half- 
 world. They generally do when they have such faces as hers. 
 But — I don't know. Nunziata has something of her native soil 
 in her. I believe she will go back to Girgenti.' 
 
 ' Nino ! ' cried a soft voice from the inner room. 
 
 * Yes,' said Marza, going towards the door. 
 
 * I am going to change my gown. Just shut the door.' 
 Marza looked into the room, said something which Felix did 
 
 not hear, laughed, and shut the door. Felix said : 
 
 ' I 'm afraid I have stayed an awful time. I must be going.' 
 He spoke in a constrained voice. He felt fearfully shy and 
 guilty too. Why he felt guilty he never knew. But he did, and 
 he knew that he must be looking guilty as he spoke. Marza did 
 not try to detain him. 
 
 'Good-bye,' he said. 'And do not think yourself bound to 
 keep on listening to the tarantella. Do not think yourself 
 bound to do anything that you hate. Every time we do any- 
 thing that we hate we do ourselves an injury. We cut our- 
 selves with knives and lancets, like those mad priests of Baal, 
 whom no God answered.' 
 
 While he said this he looked very grave. His pale face was 
 even earnest. But directly he had finished speaking the little 
 lines formed themselves in his cheeks under his eyes, and the 
 eyes themselves smiled.
 
 FELIX 229 
 
 Felix turned away, but, as Marza was shutting the door, he 
 glanced back and saw for an instant the many colours of the 
 roses which were scattered about the room. They symbolised 
 for him just then the many colours in the poet's life. As he 
 went slowly down the corridor he still felt guilty, as if he did not 
 wish to meet any one's eyes, even a stranger's. His memory was 
 full of the sound of the girl's rustling in that inner room, of the 
 sound of drawers opening and shutting, and of a soft voice 
 calling 'Ninol'
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 WHILE Felix packed his bag on Saturday morning he felt 
 as if years had passed since he had seen his people 
 and Churston Waters. He threw in his things quickly. He 
 did everything more quickly in London than in the country, 
 though he was not aware of it. As he pressed down his clothes 
 he thought of Marza and of the girl who had called ' Nino.' He 
 had been thinking of them a great deal since Thursday. Marza 
 was to him half a hero, half a villain. Whether the heroic or 
 the villainous half attracted him most he could not tell. He 
 wondered what Mrs. Ismey would think if she knew about the 
 rustling in that inner room. Would she be shocked ? He 
 longed to find out, but he knew very well that he could not 
 speak to her about such a subject without being again over- 
 whelmed by the feeling of guilt which had overtaken him in the 
 corridor of the hotel. There was confusion not only in his 
 brain but in his heart, and a great longing for — there he stopped. 
 He did not know what he longed for. But since Thursday 
 he had been painfully restless and uneasy. It was impossible 
 for him to settle to anything. He had done scarcely any work 
 at Sam's. Arliss and the rest had been able to welcome him to 
 their idle conclave. He had made more noise, had chattered 
 more than any one. Yet all the time he had been thinking what 
 babies they were. Only to Paul Chalmers had he said anything 
 about Marza. When Chalmers heard the poet's name he 
 looked up from his writing with a start. He and Felix were, for 
 the moment, alone in the writing-hall. The other pupils had 
 not come back from lunch. 
 
 ' Marza ! ' Chalmers said, mispronouncing the poet's name ; 
 'd'you say you 've met him, Mr. Wilding?' 
 
 Chalmers always prefixed Felix's name with Mister, although 
 Felix had begged him not to. 
 
 * Yes. Have you read anything of his ?' 
 
 •Ay,' Chalmers replied. 
 
 He seldom said yes. He helped himself to a large chocolate 
 cream out of a pink cardboard box and began to munch it,
 
 FELIX 231 
 
 staring at Felix very hard with his large eyes, which were both 
 fierce and sad. 
 
 'Ay,' repeated Chalmers. 'You see, Mr. Wilding, one must 
 keep abreast of the — the — of the ' 
 
 He hesitated, and began to look angry and confused. 
 
 'What's the word I mean ? ' he said, as if to himself. 
 
 'The times ?' suggested Felix. 
 
 ' No, no — the — of modern thought, you know.' 
 
 »0h, the trend.' 
 
 * Ay, that 's it. Well abreast of the trend of modern thought. 
 I always read of a night. I 've been through Ibsen, I 've been 
 through Tolstoy, and now I 'm going through this one in the 
 translation. It don't do to get behind the trend of modern 
 thought, Mr. Wilding, not if you want to make a name, that is.' 
 
 Felix looked at the big, dreary, anxious face, at the paper 
 protectors over the wristbands of the rusty frock-coat, and 
 suddenly felt as if he could howl. 
 
 ' No, no,' he said, 'of course not.' 
 
 He turned away, took out some manuscript and began to look 
 over it. He wished he had not mentioned Marza to Chalmers. 
 The latter went on staring at him for two or three minutes, then 
 seized his pen again and began to write violently, murmuring 
 over the words half aloud as he put them down in a large, 
 copperplate hand, with many deep black curls and dashes. 
 
 Chalmers and Marza ! Two ambitions ! Now Felix put his 
 black silk socks into a corner of the bag, looked round to see 
 whether everything else was in, locked the bag, strapped it, 
 stretched himself and went to the window. There was a clock 
 in the court. It was just one. His train started at two-thirty 
 and he meant to lunch at the station. There was plenty of time. 
 But he felt in a hurry, and decided to have a cab called and to 
 start at once. He walked into the sitting-room, went to the 
 tube by which he communicated with the servants in the base- 
 ment, and was just putting his lips to it when there was a knock 
 at the door. 
 
 'Come in ! ' he said, looking round. 
 
 The porter appeared. 
 
 'There's a lady to see you, sir.* 
 
 * A lady ! ' said Felix, surprised. ' Is it my mother?' 
 He felt suddenly as if it must be. 
 
 'No, sir, a youngish lady,' said the porter. 'She's waiting 
 downstairs to know if you 're in. She wouldn't give no name.' 
 Felix wondered who it could be. 
 'I 'm just going to the station,' he said.
 
 232 FELIX 
 
 •Yes, sir. I told the lady I thought you was.* 
 
 'Never mind. Ask her to come up.' 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 The man went away and Felix stood where he was, still 
 wondering very much who the ' youngish lady ' could be. He 
 thought of Marza's companion. But it was impossible that she 
 would call on him. Mrs. Ismey ? No, he felt quite positive it 
 was not she. He heard the rustle of a dress. 
 
 ' The lady, sir,' said the porter's voice. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey walked in quickly. Directly the door was shut 
 she held out her hand and said : 
 
 ' Did you guess who the nuisance was ? ' 
 
 * No,' said Felix. ' I 'm awfully glad to see you.' 
 
 * What a little duck of a room, all green and idols, just what I 
 love.' 
 
 She walked round it, touched the ornaments, looked into the 
 mirror, then at Mrs. Wilding's photograph, which stood in the 
 middle of the mantelpiece. 
 
 ' Your mother ! ' she said. 'What a good one. It's a dear 
 face.' 
 
 She took it up, then immediately put it down again. 
 
 ' I don't know why, but good people always photograph better 
 than wicked ones,' she said. 'I suppose wickedness is more 
 elusive than virtue.' 
 
 Her voice sounded flippant. Her whole manner was fidgety, 
 and made Felix feel what he called jumpy. She was dressed in 
 a pale-blue cloth gown trimmed with fur, and wore a white veil. 
 As she stood by the mantelpiece for a moment, with her back 
 turned to him, Felix noticed that the veil was very badly tied, as 
 if it had been put on in a great hurry. One end hung down 
 and moved with the movement of her head. At one side of the 
 veil, too, there was a rent. Felix longed to tell her of these two 
 facts. He began to feel as if her appearance were of great 
 importance, and hated anything in it which might be censured 
 by an unfriendly critic. He was very glad that Marza was not 
 there to notice the veil. 
 
 'What's the m;itter?' she suddenly said, turning round. 
 
 'Nothing,' he exclaimed with uneasy emphasis. 'Do please 
 sit down.' 
 
 ' No, no. I want you to take me out to lunch. Will you ? ' 
 
 ' I shall be delighted, but — I say, will you mind very much 
 lunching at Charing Cross?' 
 
 ' Charing Cross ! ' she said. ' My dear boy 1 ' 
 
 She looked whimsically surprised.
 
 FELIX 233 
 
 *No, no. It doesn't matter. Of course you wouldn't care to. 
 It was only that I have to catch a train at half-past two. I 'm 
 going down to my mother's.' 
 
 'Well, but there 's plenty of time. We can go to Prince's and 
 you can easily manage it. Send on your luggage and tell the 
 man to bring the ticket to Prince's.' 
 
 * Yes, of course. I '11 get my hat.' 
 
 Suddenly he stopped as he was near the door. 
 
 ' What is it ? ' she asked very sweetly, with that sort of 
 definite sweetness which often covers feminine irritation. 
 
 'These clothes. I can't go with you in country clothes.' 
 
 'Nonsense. They suit you. Get your hat. The carriage is 
 waiting.' 
 
 Felix hurried into his bedroom, feeling half delighted, half 
 uncomfortable. He loved the way she took possession of him, 
 simply loved it. She seemed to look upon him as her property. 
 That suggested an intimacy which set him in a glow. And yet 
 he was a little uncomfortable. That train — his mother would 
 probably drive to Frankton Wells in the carriage to meet him. 
 He did not wish to lose the train. But, as Mrs. Ismey said, 
 there was plenty of time if they went at once. He caught up 
 his hat and gloves, whistled for the porter, gave directions about 
 taking the bag to the station and bringing the ticket to the 
 restaurant, and then hurried back to the sitting-room. Mrs. 
 Ismey was looking into the court, holding back the little, dull, 
 green blind which was stretched across the lower half of the 
 window with one hand. 
 
 'Ah!' she said. 'Good boy! Don't be afraid, you shall 
 catch your train. I know how disappointed your mother will 
 be if you don't.' 
 
 'Well, you see, she might drive to the station to meet me 
 and ' 
 
 ' I know. I like you for thinking of her. Come along.' 
 
 Felix wondered why, as he followed her out of the flat, he felt 
 like a muff. Certainly she could not have wished to make him 
 feel so, and yet he fancied that he detected a touch of lively 
 malice in her voice. When they were in the carriage, which was 
 a brougham, she began to chatter. She hardly let him say a 
 word while they were driving through the streets, but talked on a 
 number of subjects which had no connection with each other, 
 dropping each one almost as soon as she had taken it up. 
 There was no drawl in her voice. She spoke with unusual 
 quickness, but also with unusual emptiness, as if every subject 
 were eqi ally devoid of interest to her, and she were only speak-
 
 234 FELIX 
 
 ing because she disliked silence, not because she really wished 
 to say anything. Perhaps for this reason her talk made Felix 
 feel unusually stupid. As they were going into Prince's he 
 again noticed the rent in her veil and the loose end. They 
 quite spoilt the otherwise charming effect of her costume, and he 
 fancied that the loungers in the vestibule, even that the atten- 
 dants, noticed them and thought as he did about them. He 
 explained to the porter that a man was coming presently with a 
 luggage- ticket for him, left his name, and they walked into the 
 restaurant. It was not yet very full. They got a table against 
 the wall, halfway down the room. Mrs. Ismey sat down, took 
 off her veil, and glanced round with a sort of swift, searching 
 nervousness. Her eyes looked faded and smaller than usual. 
 If eyes could be shrivelled up, like old tired bodies, Felix 
 thought that would be the best description of their appearance 
 to-day. Having glanced round, she saw him watching her, and 
 screwed up her eyes at him deliberately, with that sort of odd, 
 almost animal roguishness which he had noticed in her two or 
 three times before. 
 
 ' I like you best in country clothes,' she said irrelevantly. 
 
 She began to crumble her bread although she had not yet 
 taken off her gloves. Felix felt as if he could not talk. He 
 had nothing to say, perhaps because he felt that she was not in 
 a mood to attend closely to anything, or play the listener's part. 
 She took up the menu. 
 
 'Are you hungry?' 
 
 •I don't believe I am very,' Felix said. 
 
 She was again looking about the room, and he, thoroughly 
 stirred to restlessness by her restlessness, did the same. 
 
 'Why, there's Lady Caroline !' he said. 
 
 'Where?' said Mrs. Ismey hastily. 
 
 *A long way down the room, at the end behind you, with 
 somebody.' 
 
 ' A man or a woman ? Where is she ? I don't see her.' 
 
 She turned round on her chair to look behind her. 
 
 ' A woman with grey hair.' 
 
 ' I see. Mrs. Bertold. They don't see us. Don't you think 
 Carrie looks horribly ill ? ' 
 
 She was still turning round. 
 
 ' I don't think she ever looks very well,' Felix said. 
 
 Almost as he spoke he thought he was saying a stupid 
 
 The waiter handed them hors d'oeuvre. Mrs. Ismey helped 
 herself to a sardine.
 
 FELIX 235 
 
 •Oh, then you've noticed what a curious colour she generally 
 is?' she said. 
 
 She was quickly unbuttoning her gloves while she spoke. 
 
 ' Carrie — well, Carrie smokes too much,' she continued. 
 
 She looked at Felix, as if to note what effect this statement 
 would make upon him. It occurred to him that she was treating 
 him like a baby, to whom you say airily that the moon is made 
 of green cheese. Yet Lady Caroline did smoke, and too much 
 smoking is bad for the complexion. 
 
 ' I would rather die than have a complexion like that,' she 
 &dded. 
 
 She laid her gloves beside her plate and picked up a little 
 fork. Felix looked at her hands and became hot. He 
 longed to cover them up, to beg her to put on her gloves again. 
 She had evidently no idea what was the matter, and ate her 
 sardine quickly. 
 
 ' But you don't think I ever could, do you?' she asked. 
 
 With an effort Felix answered : 
 
 *Is there anything peculiar in Lady Caroline's complexion?' 
 
 He began to eat too, keeping his eyes averted from her 
 hands. 
 
 * Why yes, everybody notices it.' 
 
 She helped herself to some sole. Felix stole an anxious 
 glance at the waiter. The man's face was imperturbable. He 
 came round to Felix and bent down with the dish. As soon as 
 he had gone Mrs. Ismey continued : 
 
 'And talks about it. Numbers of people have asked me why 
 she is that strange colour. Of course I always say I don't know.' 
 
 She had broken up her sole into small fragments. Now she 
 pushed them about her plate and laid the fork down. 
 
 ' I think for a friend one ought to say what one can, don't 
 you ?' she said. 
 
 She leaned back in her chair and looked at Felix with those 
 curiously faded eyes. 
 
 ' I don't quite understand,' he said. 
 
 He was thinking so much about her hands that his attention 
 was not fully grasped by what she was saying. 
 
 'Of course not. Why should you?' 
 
 She was silent for a moment. Then she said: 
 
 'And yet I'm sure Carrie wouldn't care if you did. She 
 really doesn't care what any one thinks of her.' 
 
 'But why should she? What I do, I mean. 
 
 'Well, I don't know. I should care much more what you 
 thought about me than what most people do.'
 
 236 FELIX 
 
 Felix was almost surprised at the thrill of pleasure he had. 
 Suddenly all his feeling of stupidity, all his painful preoccupation 
 disappeared. 
 
 * Not really ! ' he exclaimed. 
 'Indeed I should.' 
 
 'Then would you, would you ever ?' he hesitated. 
 
 'What?' 
 
 'Would you ever let me say something to you that other 
 people wouldn't dare to say ? ' 
 
 He was thinking of her hands and half wondering at his own 
 boldness. 
 
 ' Perhaps. But what sort of thing ? ' 
 
 She was looking at him quite curiously now, leaning one hand 
 on the white tablecloth beside her plate, on which lay the fish 
 she had taken and had not eaten. Suddenly Felix took a bold 
 resolve. 
 
 ' Do, please, put on your gloves,' he said, with a sort of half- 
 pleading, half-masterful bluntness. ' I like you better in your 
 gloves to-day.' 
 
 Directly he had spoken panic overtook him. He thought 
 perhaps he had forfeited her friendship for ever, that he had 
 said the unpardonable thing. He did not dare to look at her. 
 There was a silence between them for a moment. In it he 
 heard her moving. When he glanced up again she had both 
 gloves on. She looked quite unembarrassed. 
 
 ' I want to have some white wine,' she said. ' Do order some.' 
 
 * I beg your pardon,' Felix exclaimed, with profound contrition 
 which sprang from great relief. ' What can I be thinking of 
 to-day ? ' 
 
 He called the waiter. 
 
 ' I can't always read your thoughts,' she said, with a smile. 
 
 As he ordered the wine she again turned round to look 
 towards the table where Lady Caroline was sitting. The room 
 was rapidly filling up now. Mrs. Ismey had to lean sideways 
 to catch a glimpse of her friend. Presently she nodded. 
 
 * Carrie has seen me,' she said. 
 
 The waiter filled her glass, and she began instantly to sip the 
 wine quickly. 
 
 'Poor old Carrie!' she added. 'D'you know, I think she's 
 really taken a fancy to you.' 
 
 'Oh, has she?' Felix said, delighted. 'But I can't think 
 why she should.' 
 
 It always pleased him very much to hear that any one liked 
 him.
 
 FELIX 237 
 
 • If she has,' Mrs. Ismey went on, with an air of thoughtfulness. 
 *I wonder whether — I wonder if ' 
 
 She paused, looking at him as if she were considering some- 
 thing, and trying to make up her mind. 
 
 ' I wonder if you could help her.' 
 
 *I ! Help Lady Caroline !' Felix said, in utter astonishment. 
 
 'Yes. But I don't suppose you could. Besides, you don't 
 know what's the matter. If you could do anything I'd tell 
 you — at least I think I would.' 
 
 Felix was entirely mystified. He could not help feeling 
 rather curious. He had always dimly suspected that there was 
 something strange in Lady Caroline's life, something that set 
 her apart from ordinary people, but he had no idea what it was. 
 Sometimes he had thought it was only the fact that she had a 
 strong character and an amazing fund of indifference to the 
 opinions of others. These words of Mrs. Ismey's made him sure 
 that there was something else. At this moment one of the 
 porters of the restaurant came up to him, holding his smart cap 
 in one hand and a piece of thin paper in the other. 
 
 'A man's just left this for you, sir,' he said. 
 
 'Oh, thanks,' said Felix. 
 
 It was his luggage-ticket. He took it and put it into his 
 pocket, glancing at the clock. The hands pointed to twenty 
 minutes to two. The waiter handed Mrs. Ismey some cutlets. 
 She took one and began to cut it up into minute pieces. 
 
 ' I know I could trust you never to breathe a word,' she 
 continued. 
 
 She spoke in such a low voice, and there was such a buzz of 
 conversation from the many people at the innumerable tables 
 round them, that Felix could hardly hear her. He was obliged 
 to lean forward. She did the same. 
 
 ' I 'm not a bit hungry,' she said, pushing her plate a little 
 away from her. ' I never am in the middle of the day. You 
 go on eating and I '11 talk.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Fciix. 
 
 He began to eat his cutlet. 
 
 'Carrie's life is being ruined, simply ruined, by what she's 
 doing,' Mrs. Ismey said, still in a low voice. 'I've done every- 
 thing I can. I've almost forfeited her friendship by wliat I've 
 done to try to stop her. I 've even put myself into the most 
 false positions — you rememl er that night when I made you 
 take me to that chemist in Wigmore Street?' 
 
 'Yes,' said Felix, wondering. 
 
 • I went there to try and du something for her.*
 
 238 FELIX 
 
 * But you ' 
 
 * I know,' she interrupted. * I told you it was for myself, that 
 I was unwell. I did that to screen Carrie.' 
 
 It occurred to Felix that it was rather strange, if this were so, 
 that Mrs. Ismey should be so open at this moment. 
 
 'You 're wondering why I should say anything now,' she said. 
 
 He realised how dangerous her swiftness of apprehension 
 was, while it attracted him almost more than anything else in 
 her. 
 
 ' Yes, I was,' he answered simply. 
 
 As their intimacy grew he was becoming much more frank 
 with her. And he thought that she, too, was becoming very 
 frank with him. 
 
 'I almost wonder too,' she said. 'But somehow — well, since 
 that night I have felt that a woman might rely on you, although 
 you are such a boy.' 
 
 At that moment Felix felt as if he actually loved her. 
 
 'Thank you,' he said, with a sort of eager earnestness that 
 was very young. 
 
 ' And it 's rather bad having to act for another woman without 
 being able to say a word to any one, especially when you feel 
 that whatever you do you are doing no good at all, that you are 
 of no use. I can't tell my husband. He hates Carrie and she 
 hates him.' 
 
 She poured some more wine into her glass. The waiter had 
 darted forward to do it, but she took no notice of him. 
 
 'That makfs it so difficult for me,' she continued. 'My 
 husband and my greatest friend. You can understand.' 
 
 'Yes,' Felix said. 
 
 He was filled with sympathy for her. 
 
 ' I was travelling in France with Carrie when I first met my 
 husband. People are so odd. I really believe sometimes that 
 jealousy is the guiding spirit of the world.' 
 
 ' Oh, but that would be horrible ! ' exclaimed Felix. 
 
 'Does that make you think it must be impossible? You 
 forget your Balzac' 
 
 Felix blushed. She screwed up her eyes, looking at him with 
 a sort of gay kindness. 
 
 'But I've noticed that London has begun to blot out the 
 Comedie Hutnaine^ she said. ' Now, hasn't it ? ' 
 
 'Perhaps it has,' he acknowledged. 
 
 ' When one acts in a play one forgets the play one has merely 
 read.' 
 
 'Yes, I suppose so.'
 
 FELIX 239 
 
 The continuous buzz of conversation in the restaurant, the 
 movement of the many waiters, the sight of numbers of people 
 whose faces were strange to him, these things bred excitement 
 in Fehx, who was utterly unaccustomed to restaurant life. His 
 mind felt very keen but not concentrated. Everything struck 
 him as looking and sounding rather unnatural. The expres- 
 sions in the women's eyes were surely artificial. Even the food 
 he was eating tasted deliciously odd, and the murmur of the 
 many voices was both frivolous and mysterious in his ears. No 
 wonder that this city, with its innumerable hands, wiped out the 
 writing on the slate. 
 
 ' This ice is delicious,' Mrs. Ismey said. 
 
 'I can't think how you live,' he answered. 'You never seem 
 to eat anything solid.' 
 
 ' Women don't need so much as men — in that line.' 
 
 'Don't they? I shall never understand women, except just 
 two.' 
 
 'And who are those lucky ones?' 
 
 'Why, my mother and sister.' 
 
 ' Oh ; but suppose I try to make you understand Carrie 
 better,' she said, returning to their former subject. 
 
 'Wouldn't she mind?' he asked. 
 
 His curiosity was fully roused, but he felt a great delicacy in 
 being let into Lady Caroline's secret by another woman. That 
 was, perhaps, hardly right, hardly chivalrous. 
 
 'Suppose even that she did ! Would that matter much if it 
 was a way of helping her? ' 
 
 ' I would do anything in the world ! ' Felix said, with sudden, 
 warm enthusiasm. 
 
 The idea that he could help two such women as Lady Caroline 
 and Mrs. Ismey thrilled him. They knew everything he did 
 not know. The doors still shut to him had, no doubt, long 
 been open to them. Yet, he was a man, and men were surely 
 meant to help women. Perhaps even in his ignorance he was 
 stronger, more capable than they were, without knowing how or 
 why. Mrs. Ismey, perhaps, could tell him how and why. 
 If so, he would surely be a fool to try to stop her. He resolved 
 quickly to leave himself quite in her hands. 
 
 'Tell me just what you like,' he said. 'Ask me anything 
 you like.' 
 
 'I don't feel as if I could go on being alone in this thing 
 any longer,' she said. ' And since the night when you drove 
 me to Wigmore Street I have felt as if I would rather tell you 
 than any one. Some men would have been so horrid. They
 
 240 FELIX 
 
 would have asked questions, or thought something dreadful of 
 me. It was such a strange thing to do. Any one might liave 
 imagined — but you didn't. I went to that chemist to beg him 
 not to sell Carrie any more morphia.' 
 
 ' Morphia ! ' said Felix. 
 
 ' Hush ! Be careful ! Somebody might hear us. Yes. She 
 is ruining her life with it, and that night — well, you remember 
 when you were waiting at the hall door and she and I were 
 talking?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' You must have noticed how earnestly we were speaking. I 
 had my hand on her shoulder.' 
 
 ' I did notice.' 
 
 ' It was something that happened then which made me feel 
 as if I couldn't wait, as if I must try to do something that very 
 night. I couldn't make up my mind. You see I didn't know 
 you so very well then. All the time we were driving I was 
 trying to decide what to do. At last I resolved to go to that 
 horrid man.' 
 
 ' The chemist ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' It was awfully good of you,' said Felix. ' It was splendid of you.' 
 
 He remembered the dark, blind house, and how she had 
 stood on the pavement alone ringing the chemist's bell, the 
 stealthy opening of the door, the half-seen figure, her disappear- 
 ance into the murky gloom, the interval which seemed so long 
 before she came back. 
 
 ' I couldn't have slept if I hadn't done it,' she said. 
 
 ' Will you take coffee, sir ? ' said a voice with a strong foreign 
 accent. 
 
 Felix started. 
 
 *I — will you have coffee?' he asked Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 *Yes, Turkish coffee, please.' 
 
 Just as Felix was ordering it he thought of the time. He 
 looked at the clock. The hand pointed to the half-hour. 
 
 ' Oh ! ' he exclaimed involuntarily. 
 
 'What's the matter?' 
 
 'Only— nothing really — but I've lost the train.' 
 
 'Oh, I am so sorry,' Mrs. Ismey said. 
 
 She spoke with the sweetest earnestness. 
 
 ' It 's all my fault. But you 've been so kind that I 've been 
 selfish. I really forgot.' 
 
 'Please, please don't. It doesn't matter, if I can send a 
 telegram to my mother.'
 
 FELIX 241 
 
 'Get a telegraph-form quickly,' she said to the waiter. 
 
 While he fetched it she went on saying how vexed she was. 
 Felix begged her not to mind. The man brought the form, and 
 Felix wrote a hasty wire saying he would come down by the 
 next train. 
 
 'Does it matter so very much?' Mrs. Ismey said. 'I feel 
 quite guilty, spoiling all your plans with my miserable little 
 affairs. I 'm afraid a woman can be very selfish — when she 
 comes across a man who isn't.' 
 
 She looked at him gently. 
 
 ' Please, it's quite all right,' he said. 
 
 He was too deeply interested in what she was saying to care 
 if he missed a dozen trains now. The waiter brought the coffee. 
 
 'Light your cigarette,' she said. 'You'll forgive me more 
 easily when you 're smoking.' 
 
 She drew out a little gold matchbox that hung on a thin chain 
 with some pretty, absurd charms at her side, lit a match, and 
 handed it to him. As he took it eagerly he thought of Marza 
 and of the rustling in that inner room, and he felt as if he 
 understood Marza much better to-day than he had before, and 
 even as if he were more like him. She began to sip her coffee. 
 
 'Does — does Mr. Ismey dislike Lady Caroline because he 
 knows ? ' Felix asked in a low voice. 
 
 He looked across the long room as he spoke and caught a 
 glimpse of Lady Caroline, who was leaning one arm on her 
 table, and talking with apparent earnestness to her companion, 
 a very smartly dressed, middle-aged woman, whose hair was grey 
 in front and dark at the sides. 
 
 ' Oh no. He never liked Carrie from the first.* 
 
 ' But hasn't he an idea ? ' said Felix. 
 
 He was thinking of his interview with Mr. Ismey in the office, 
 and of Mr. Ismey's curiously bitter, almost violent expression 
 when Lady Caroline's name was mentioned. 
 
 'I don't think so. Why? Do you think he has ?' 
 
 A piercing look suddenly darted into her eyes, and she 
 glanced at him with the most narrow, eager scrutiny. 
 
 ' No, I don't know at all. How could I ?' 
 
 'Of course not.' 
 
 She began to sip her coffee again. 
 
 'It's terrible for me,' she said, after a moment. 'Seeing the 
 gradual degringolade of my best friend. It's a perfect night- 
 mare.' 
 
 'It must be horrible,' said Felix. 
 
 He looked again towards Lady Caroline, examining her with 
 Q
 
 242 FELIX 
 
 the most profound interest. A cloud of tragedy seemed floating 
 round her, in the midst of which his imagination was flying Hke 
 a bird. He could not see her expression very well. She was 
 too far off. But even from that distance she looked notable. 
 There was a boldness in her attitude, in a gesture which she 
 made while she was speaking, which marked her out from the 
 crowd of women drinking coffee and chattering with the men, 
 who were smoking cigarettes. 
 
 'And she looks so strong,' he could not help saying. 
 
 ' Strong — Carrie ? ' 
 
 'Yes. But no one who was strong could be a victim to a 
 thing like morphia, could they ? ' 
 
 'Why not? In a way Carrie is strong. She will do what 
 she chooses, and nothing in heaven or earth can stop her.' 
 
 ' But how did you think I could possibly be of any use, then?' 
 Felix asked, wondering. 
 
 ' I don't know. Drowning people catch at straws.* 
 
 ' But you're not drowning.' 
 
 She laughed quickly. 
 
 ' I ! No. I talk nonsense. But Carrie 's got on my nerves. 
 You must have noticed how nervous I am to-day.' 
 
 Again the sudden, narrow look of scrutiny came into her 
 eyes. 
 
 ' Haven't you ? ' 
 
 ' I thought you didn't seem quite the same as usual,' Felix 
 answered. ' But then, perhaps, it 's ridiculous to say "as usual" 
 about you.' 
 
 'Why ridiculous?' 
 
 ' Well, because you are changing all the time, aren't you?' 
 
 As he was actually answering her question memories of the 
 many differing women he had seemed to see in her came to 
 him : the gay, sarcastic woman with bright and observant eyes; 
 the languid woman in the garden at Churston Waters, moved 
 to such strange emotion by a dull duet ; the woman by the 
 tramp table ; the woman who stole furtively into the chemist's 
 house; the woman whose face twitched as she listened to the 
 harangue of Marza. 
 
 * A woman like my mother never seems to change,' he added. 
 ' But you are never quite the same as you were yesterday. I 
 can't make it out.' 
 
 She laughed lightly. 
 
 'Shall I try to be?' 
 
 'No, don't,' he answered hastily. *I do wish I could help 
 you now, though.'
 
 FELIX 243 
 
 • So do I,' she said. 
 
 This time there was an unmistakable thrill of earnestness, 
 almost of passion, in her voice. It was a voice that meant 
 more than it said. 
 
 •But I suppose ' he began. 
 
 ' Hush ! ' she whispered. ' Ah, Carrie, we spied you in the 
 distance ! ' 
 
 Felix started. He had not seen the approach of Lady 
 Caroline. He jumped up, feeling as if she must know what 
 Mrs. Ismey and he had been talking about. 
 
 'The food's quite good here to-day,' Lady Caroline said. 
 
 She stood in the midst of the crowd, looking rather as if 
 she were made of stone. Felix glanced at her furtively. Now 
 that he knew so much about her he thought her peculiar 
 complexion more dreadful than ever. That pinkiness in it was 
 vicious. Fatigue seemed brooding over her to-day, and yet 
 she looked strong, as if she could do things, as if she had a 
 constitution able to defy excesses which other women would 
 sink under. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey greeted the woman with the black-and-grey 
 hair, and Lady Caroline, turning to Felix, said : 
 
 ' Let me introduce you to Mrs. Bertold. Mr. Wilding — 
 Mrs. Bertold.' 
 
 Mrs. Bertold, who had a wandering, society eye, and an 
 aimless but well-meaning manner, bowed. 
 
 'London's quite fiUin' up,' she remarked, in a voice empty 
 of all significance. 'There's Lady Stuckfield. Who's she with?' 
 
 ' I don't know,' Felix answered, feeling hopelessly ignorant, 
 and thinking about Lady Caroline, with a kind of mingled 
 horror and attraction. 
 
 ' It looks like Sir George Bray. No, it isn't. The moustache 
 is too white. Not Harry Wilmer, is it ? ' 
 
 She held a glass to her pale eyes. Lady Caroline and Mrs. 
 Ismey were exchanging some words in low voices. Felix only 
 heard one. It was 'Paris.' 
 
 'Yes, it is Harry Wilmer,' continued Mrs Bertold, with a sort 
 of cotton-wool animation. 'Good figure, hasn't he?' 
 
 'Yes, very,' said Felix, trying to m:ike out which of the 
 innumerable men in the room she was talking about. 
 
 'A pity his wife's such a horrid woman, isn't it?' 
 
 •Yes.' 
 
 'Her ridiculous passion for ermine's simply ruinin' him. 
 Of course one can understand it. But still — even ermine isn't 
 everythin', is it ? '
 
 244 FELIX 
 
 'No, indeed.' 
 
 'There's Milly Emphage. What a hat! She will go to 
 Rosa Croix for hats. Such an insanity !' 
 
 At this moment Lady CaroHne interposed. 
 
 ' We must be off,' she said. ' We are going to a concert. 
 Good-bye.' 
 
 She stared Felix full in the face with her light eyes. 
 
 'I shall be in on Tuesday afternoon at five,' she said. 'You 
 like me, don't you ? ' 
 
 ' Lady Caroline ! ' 
 
 ' Never mind whether you do or not. Come in on Tuesday.' 
 
 ' Do you like her ? ' said Mrs. Ismey, as soon as they had 
 gone. 
 
 ' I think I do in a way. I don't quite know what it is, but 
 — she 's so blunt, isn't she ? And in her it is attractive.' 
 
 'Is it? Well, I suppose we ought to be going too. I'll 
 drive you to Charing Cross.' 
 
 'Oh no, you mustn't. Let me take a cab.' 
 
 ' Indeed I shan't. Besides, I 've got something to ask you on 
 the way.' 
 
 ' What is it you want to ask me ? ' Felix said, when they were 
 once more in the brougham. 
 
 'Something very unromantic* 
 
 She put on the white veil. 
 
 ' Something that may surprise you very much. Don't mind 
 refusing me.' 
 
 'Of course I won't refuse. Is it — is it anything to help 
 Lady Caroline? ' 
 
 'You mustn't ask any questions. Could you possibly, just 
 for a week till next Saturday, lend me a hundred pounds ?' 
 
 Felix was so surprised by such a request from her that he 
 felt almost as if he must have heard wrongly. It was impossible 
 that she could be in a money difficulty. Ismey and Co. was 
 such a great firm, and so notoriously rich. 
 
 ' A hundred pounds ? ' he repeated, in quite a dull, inter- 
 rogative voice. 
 
 ' Never mind. If it 's the least awkward * 
 
 ' No, no, I didn't mean that ! Of course not ! ' 
 
 But even while he was speaking he realised that he would 
 have to ask his mother for the money. 
 
 ' I only want it for a week, and I don't wish to ask my husband 
 for it. I had no idea till — well, till very lately that I should 
 need it, or, of course, I could have taken it out of my pin-money.' 
 
 Felix felt certain that she wanted the money for Lady
 
 FELIX 245 
 
 Caroline, and that Lady Caroline must have spoken about the 
 matter in the restaurant. Yet that was very strange too, for 
 surely Lady Caroline was an absolutely independent woman 
 with a large fortune. 
 
 ' I '11 be only too delighted to lend you the money,' he said, 
 trying to speak naturally, but feeling very uncomfortable for 
 her, since he realised acutely how uncomfortable she must be 
 feeling. 'It's only — I shall have to ask my — I shall have to 
 get it from my mother.' 
 
 'Oh, that's impossible,' Mrs. Ismey said. 
 
 She spoke rather sharply. After an instant she added 
 gently : 
 
 * I mean if you have to tell her that it's for — well, for me.' 
 The way in which she said this made Felix absolutely positive 
 
 that the money was for Lady Caroline, and that Mrs. Ismey, 
 for her friend's sake, was putting herself into this very painful 
 and false position. An ardent admiration for her, an ardent 
 desire to serve her filled him. 
 
 ' I '11 get it without saying a word,' he exclaimed. * I '11 just 
 say I want it. That will be true. I do want it for you.' 
 
 'Thank you.' 
 
 She touched his hand with hers. He looked at the glove 
 on it, felt half inclined to withdraw his hand, then that he 
 was a brute for the feeling. She left her hand on his for 
 quite a minute while they drove on, and at the end of the 
 minute his pulses were beating, and he had quite forgotten 
 that brief instant of repulsion. He ventured to press her 
 hand very gently with his, and, while he did so, he thought 
 of the girl rustling about Marza's inner room and opening 
 and shutting drawers. There was emotion in his eyes. Just 
 for that moment he felt as if he were a man with great powers, 
 as if he were a brute too; and then, immediately, as if he were 
 an anxious boy again. 
 
 She took away her hand lightly. 
 
 'Will you be quite perfect, and send me a wire directly 
 you know whether you can arrange matters with your mother ?' 
 she said. 
 
 •Yes, yes, I will.' 
 
 * To-night, do you think?* 
 
 *Yes, I'll ask her to-night. Almost directly— when I'm 
 twenty-one it '11 be all right. I shall be quite my own master 
 about things of that sort.' 
 
 They were just turning into the station-yard of Charing Cross, 
 'Don't think badly of me for this,' she said. 'Will you ?*
 
 246 FELIX 
 
 'Badly!' he exclaimed. * Do you suppose I can't guess 
 why ' 
 
 ' Hush ! ' she interrupted. ' You aren't to guess anything.' 
 
 The last thing she said, as he stood on the station pave- 
 ment among the jostling porters, was : 
 
 * And if it 's all right could you let me have it by Monday ? ' 
 
 'I'll send it by post to-morrow,' he replied. 'Don't be 
 very angry with me, but I do understand why you want the 
 money, I do really.' 
 
 She only smiled faintly. 
 
 He knew that she was determined to guard the secret of 
 her friend.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 IT was a quarter to five, and quite dark, when the train in 
 which Fehx travelled ran into Frankton Wells station. 
 When he came into the station-yard and looked about he could 
 not see the carriage. No doubt it had met the train he had 
 missed. He hoped his mother had not come in it. He 
 engaged a fly and started, in rather a depressed mood, upon 
 his lonely drive of over three miles. The lights of the country 
 town — how countrified it looked to him after the London 
 streets — were soon left behind, and the grey horse jogged 
 slowly along the roads between the hedges and the flowerless 
 banks. Felix had had the fly opened and, as he drove, he 
 looked out gloomily enough at the yellowish-white road, the tall 
 trees, the empty fields. The excitement h j had left behind him 
 made the quiet of this country, wrapped up in the autumn 
 evening, seem so profound as to be almost unnatural. Even its 
 familiarity did not render it companionable. He shivered and 
 wished himself back in London. Now that the heat of his 
 afternoon mood had passed he dreaded having to ask his mother 
 for that cheque for a hundred pounds directly he arrived. She 
 would have been disappointed by his not appearing in time for 
 tea. It would seem ungracious to speak on money matters so 
 soon, especially as he had just received the cheque for a 
 hundred guineas to pay Mr. Carringbridge. The arrangement 
 between them till he came of age was that Mrs. Wilding 
 defrayed all the expenses of the flat, and that Felix had an 
 allowance of seven pounds a week paid weekly. When it had 
 been settled that he should live in London, she had been 
 ready to make over to him his whole fortune. But in his 
 enthusiasm at the lil)erty he was gaining, and his gratitude 
 for her self-sacrifice, he had preferred to have an allowance. 
 The seven pounds a week had seemed riches to him then. Mrs. 
 Ismey's sudden request made him think that he had been very 
 short-sighted. However, it could not be helped. He would 
 have to speak about the cheque directly he saw his mother, so 
 
 247
 
 248 FELIX 
 
 that he might be able to fulfil his promise to wire to Mrs. Ismey 
 that night. 
 
 The fly-horse went very slowly. It was half-past five when 
 at length the lights of Churston Waters began to shine through 
 the darkness, and the fly turned into the long, straight road 
 which led by the schools to Hill House. As it rolled past the 
 high yellow wall of the yard Felix heard the loud barking of 
 Mab and the jangle of her chain. He glanced up at the 
 windows of the new part of the house and saw the white cap 
 of one of the maid-servants. She had evidently heard the 
 wheels and was looking out. He pulled off his gloves. The 
 fly stopped before the front door, which was immediately opened 
 by the butler. As Felix got out, and before he had paid the 
 fly-man, he saw his mother's figure in the hall. It looked very 
 tall and black in the lamplight. He paid the man quickly and 
 stepped in, greeting the butler with as much cordiality as he 
 could manage just then. 
 
 * I 'm awfully sorry, mater, about being so late,' he began 
 at once. 
 
 She kissed him eagerly without a word. 
 
 ' It was most unlucky, but I couldn't help it really. You 
 didn't go to the station, did you ? ' 
 
 ' Never mind. So long as you have come ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, I say, you did go ! What a beastly shame. Did you 
 wait on the platform in all this damp?' 
 
 'Oh, I was well wrapped up and kept my shawl over my 
 mouth.' 
 
 They were in the long drawing-room now. The fire was 
 blazing, the tea-table was drawn up by it. Felix began to feel 
 more cheerful. He stood by the fire warming his hands. 
 
 'You had better have your tea at once or it will spoil your 
 dinner,' said Mrs. Wilding. 'We are dining at a quarter-past 
 seven to-night. I hope you won't mind.' 
 
 ' Well, but why ? ' 
 
 ' Because of Stephen. You see to-morrow is Sunday, and he 
 has the early celebration. He never goes out on a Saturday as 
 a rule. He likes to stay quietly at home and think over his 
 sermons. But he made an exception for you.' 
 
 She spoke brightly, yet Felix felt annoyed. 
 
 'Oh, all right,' he said. 'But I'd better not have much 
 tea, then.' 
 
 He sat down near his mother. 
 
 ' Have you had yours ? ' 
 
 • Yes.'
 
 FELIX 249 
 
 She gave him his tea and some muffin, and sat looking at him 
 while he ate and drank. 
 
 ' I did not get your telegram till I had got home from the 
 station,' she said. 'And then it was too late to send back the 
 carriage. I am sorry you had to take a fly.' 
 
 ' What did you think when I didn't come ? ' 
 
 ' I did not know what to think. I was dreadfully afraid that 
 perhaps you had had an accident. I thought you might have 
 been run over.' 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 'What nonsense, mater !' 
 
 ' What was it ? ' she said. 
 
 Felix felt rather uncomfortable. 
 
 'Well, I — I was out at lunch and made a mistake about the 
 time. I had no idea it was half as late as it was. I 'm afraid it 
 was carelessness — partly. I am most fearfully sorry.' 
 
 He was thinking of the cheque and the telegram he had to 
 send. There was not much time. 
 
 'You see,' he went on, 'London's so noisy and big, and 
 there's such a lot to do in it, that it's easy to make a mistake 
 or forget things. And then it 's difficult to calculate distances 
 and all that. I won't do it again.' 
 
 'Never mind,' his mother said again cheerfully. 'What does 
 it matter?' 
 
 She did not even hint at her disappointment. Felix glanced 
 at her gratefully and also a little nervously. She had her 
 icewool shawl over her shoulders and wore, as usual, a very 
 plain black dress. Her face was pale, but her large and gentle 
 dark eyes looked very happy, and very good, he thought. 
 There was no arriere-pensee in them, nothing to doubt, or 
 wonder at. They were as candid and pure as a child's, but 
 they were not childlike. The look of a woman who has suffered 
 was in them always, but of a woman whose suffering has never 
 made her rebel or lose her faith. For a moment Felix thought 
 of his drive with Lady Caroline and Mrs. Ismey, and of the 
 dreams their eyes had given him, dreams born of the ignorance 
 they made him feel, whicli widened the borders between which 
 imagination walked. When he looked at his mother's eyes 
 how well he understood her. Imagination had no room for 
 tortuous and delightful courses. 
 
 ' It seems to me so long since you were here, Felix,' she said. 
 ' But then my life is so very quiet now. Do the days pass 
 quickly in London now you have your work?' 
 
 ' Yes, awfully fast. But all the same it seems to me ages
 
 250 FELIX 
 
 since I was here. I say, mater, I 've never thanked you about 
 the school and all that.' 
 
 'I hope you really like it?' she said. 
 
 ' Rather ! ' said Felix. ' I think it will do me a lot of 
 good too.' 
 
 She had not alluded to her surprise and disappointment over 
 his refusal of Mr. Ismey's offer. He thought of that and again 
 felt grateful, realising that she gave him his freedom without any 
 reserve. But this very sense of gratitude made it the more 
 difficult for him to do what he had to do. 
 
 ' Will you have another cup ? ' she asked. 
 
 •No, thank you.' 
 
 The clock struck on the mantelpiece. The voice of the 
 church clock echoed it. 
 
 ' Six already.' 
 
 He got up and again stood by the fire. 
 
 ♦ Mater ! ' 
 •Yes,' she said. 
 
 • You 've been tremendously good to me about money and 
 — look here, I 'm not going to be extravagant in London. I 
 promise you that.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding smiled. Her face was very serene to-night. 
 It was long since she had had a moment of such happiness. 
 This change from her new loneliness carried her back to the 
 old days when she felt that her home was indeed home, con- 
 taining all that made earth lovely for her. 
 
 ' I am sure you will be careful,' she said quietly. 
 
 'Yes. But you know just at first ' he stopped. Pre- 
 varication literally stuck in his throat when he looked at her. 
 
 ' Mater, I want to ask you a great favour,' he said bluntly. 
 
 ' Why, what is it? ' she said, pleased at the thought of being 
 able perhaps to show the happiness his coming had given her 
 by doing something definite for him. 
 
 'I want you — could you be most awfully kind and let me 
 have a hundred pounds, a hundred pounds extra, I mean, as 
 well as what I have every week? ' 
 
 He felt sordid as he heard himself say it. The fact that the 
 money was not for himself seemed to make no difference. He 
 stood looking down at the hearthrug. Mrs. Wilding was very 
 much surprised, and her surprise woke up vague fears. London 
 again presented itself to her mind as a monster, dnngerous and 
 alDnormal. Once more there came to her the feeling that she 
 had a double duty towards her boy now that he was fatherless. 
 Her natural instinct was to preserve intact the sweet atmosphere
 
 FELIX 251 
 
 of happiness in which she had been rejoicing, to tell Fehx 
 quickly he should have the money, and say no more about 
 the matter. But would that be right ? Would not a father's 
 experience have suggested the need of some inquiry? Seven 
 pounds a week, in addition to the expenses of the flat, was a 
 very liberal allowance and should surely be much more than 
 enough for Felix. 
 
 ' Can you, mater?' 
 
 Felix's voice was rather hard. He was so uncomfortable 
 that he looked stern. 
 
 ' You could not tell me what you want the money for ? ' Mrs. 
 Wilding suggested gently. 
 
 Felix felt the red mounting to his cheeks. The awkwardness 
 of his position made him angry. 
 
 ' I 'm afraid not,' he said. ' I don't see — I mean, surely you 
 can trust me. I 'm not going to do anything awful with the 
 money.* 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 ' Really, mater, I do believe you 're always ready to think 
 I 'm anxious to do something shocking. It is too absurd.' 
 
 ' No, Felix, it isn't that at all. Only, you see, a hundred 
 pounds is a large sum in addition to the money you have each 
 week, and I know there are many temptations in London ' 
 
 'Oh!' he exclaimed, with a long, angry breath. 'To hear 
 you talk, mater, one would suppose I was gambling and 
 drinking, and going on like the boy in the picture-book, who 
 began in the church choir as an angel and ended on the 
 gallows. Why, look here, I can give you back the money in a 
 week. I only want it for a week. That 's all. If you think 
 it's such a crime to spend a hundred pounds now ' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding got up, quickly for her, and went to her 
 writing-table. A sudden feeling — wrong and weak, perhaps, 
 she thought afterwards — had come to her that she could not 
 let anything stand between her and her son to-night, that she 
 could not allow the peace and happiness in which she was just 
 beginning to rejoice to be marred. She took out her cheque- 
 book from a drawer, and began to write a cheque. Her move- 
 ment had stopped Felix's outburst. He saw what she was 
 doing. 
 
 ' Thanks, mater,' he said. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding blotted the cheque, got up, and gave it to him. 
 She did not say anything. 
 
 'Thanks awfully,' Felix muttered, as he took it. 
 
 He put it hastily into his pocket.
 
 252 FELIX 
 
 * Is it safe like that?' said Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 *0h yes, of course. I 'm just going out to look round.' 
 
 * Wrap up well. Put on your coat. It 's very damp.' 
 ♦Yes, I will.' 
 
 He went off to the village post-office to send the promised 
 telegram to Mrs. Ismey. Then he visited the horses and Mab, 
 and walked round the damp garden in the dark. He felt more 
 comfortable alone after what had happened. Money matters 
 were loathsome, he thought. He hated discussing them, 
 especially with his mother. And from his feelings now he 
 suddenly felt able to gauge Mrs. Ismey's when she asked him 
 for the cheque. How she must have disliked doing it. He 
 knew it was for Lady Caroline, and vaguely connected it with 
 the revelation that she took morphia. Perhaps people who 
 took morphia did wild things with money and got into 
 difficulties even when they were rich. When he remembered 
 the big house in Great Cumberland Place it seemed very odd 
 that he should be giving financial help to its mistress. He 
 stayed out in the garden till it was time to dress for dinner. It 
 occurred to him that it would be kinder to go back to his 
 mother, but, after the money incident, he knew he should feel 
 ill at ease with her. 
 
 When he reached his bedroom he found her just coming out 
 of it. 
 
 ' Hullo ! ' he said, with off-hand cheeriness. 
 
 'I was just seeing if you'd got everything,' she said. 'You 
 like the fire, I hope.' 
 
 ' I should think so.' 
 
 •Welcome home, my dear boy,' she said. 'It is such a 
 comfort to have you again.' 
 
 She kissed him. There were tears in her eyes. 
 
 ' I hope you will be able to come pretty often,' she added. 
 'It makes the house so different.' 
 
 It was the only expression she allowed herself of her grief in 
 her new life which was so unlike the old. And when she was 
 alone in her room, putting on her black silk evening-gown, she 
 wondered if she were not inclined to be a tiny bit selfish, per- 
 haps, a little inclined to try to monopolise her boy. She 
 resolved that she would never press him to come home. She 
 would leave it entirely to him. 
 
 At a quarter-past seven the hall-door bell rang and, in a 
 moment, Margot and her husband walked into the drawing-room. 
 FeHx had just come down and was standing with his mother by 
 the fire.
 
 FELIX 253 
 
 Margot wore her wedding-gown turned into a dinner-dress. 
 She came in looking very happy and rather shy. Stephen 
 stepped behind her with an air of calm and comfortable pro- 
 prietorship. After Margot had kissed her brother warmly, 
 Stephen and he shook hands. 
 
 ' I am glad to see you back,' said Stephen, with his decent 
 air of saying what was appropriate. ' You must be glad to 
 get out of the London gloom in this weather, especially for the 
 Sunday.' 
 
 ' I 'm glad to be here, but I don't know that London is any 
 worse than the country in bad weather,' said Felix. 'There's 
 always plenty to do there at any rate.' 
 
 Dinner was announced. 
 
 'Will you give your arm to the bride, Felix?' said Mrs. 
 Wilding, with a happy smile. 
 
 Margot blushed, and Felix suddenly felt exactly as if he were 
 made of cast-iron. He had thought that he would have a great 
 deal to say to his sister, but he felt like a stranger with her now 
 that she belonged to Stephen. Their intimacy rose between 
 him and Margot like a stone wall. The clergyman looked as if 
 he had been married all his life, as if he had been born married 
 to Margot. And not only that. He was not merely the con- 
 tented husband in Hill House, he was also the happy and 
 respectful son. It seemed to Felix that while he had been in 
 London his mother and Stephen had learnt to understand each 
 other with a quiet completeness unknown to them before. 
 Stephen seemed more than one of the family as he sat at the 
 dinner-table peacefully supping his soup. He was like all the 
 ancestors and descendants of the Wilding stock rolled into one 
 decent-minded, self-possessed clergyman. When Felix looked 
 at his brother-in-law he felt as if he himself were an outsider, a 
 vagrant, not a Wilding at all. 
 
 'And how are things in London?' asked Stephen, when 
 the fish was handed round. 'Do you feel yourself at home 
 there yet?' 
 
 *0h dear, yes, quite,' answered Felix. 
 
 ' Not a little strange and confused at first, trying to find your 
 way about the streets?' 
 
 This little sketch of his situation in the metropolis pre- 
 sented itself to Felix as a gross and unpardonable cari- 
 cature. 
 
 ' I don't feel at all strange or confused,' he replied. 'I don't 
 know why I should, exactly.' 
 
 ' Oh, well, you see you are country bred,' returned Stephen.
 
 254 FELIX 
 
 with the calm aplomb of one resting upon the granite foundations 
 of undoubted fact. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Margot. 
 
 Since her marriage she had lost something of her anxious 
 dependence, acquired something of matronly ease. It did not 
 amount at all to dignity as yet, but it was sufficient to surprise 
 and irritate Felix, who was ready to feel personally injured by 
 any change wrought in his sister by Stephen. This little inter- 
 jection of Margot stung him. 
 
 * I didn't know I was a bumpkin,' he exclaimed. ' But 
 perhaps I am without knowing it.' 
 
 ' On no, Felix,' said his mother. ' Now I feel lost in London, 
 and all the noises confuse me. If I had to spend a month there 
 I don't know what I should do. The air makes me feel breath- 
 less, and I am always afraid of being run over.' 
 
 ' Oh, you 'd soon get accustomed to all that,' said Felix 
 shortly. ' It really is a great mistake to live too much in the 
 country. It gives people wrong ideas of things and absurd 
 notions about life in towns.' 
 
 All the time he was speaking he was thinking what Marza 
 would feel if he were at Hill House that night, Marza who called 
 London a city of barbarians. 
 
 ' I should like to see all the capitals in Europe,' he added, 
 looking rather defiantly at Stephen. 
 
 It was outrageous that he, who had sat with Marza and 
 received the confession of King Marshall, men famous in the 
 world, should be represented as tottering, anxious, even terrified, 
 about the streets, trying to get accustomed to the sound of the 
 omnibuses. Pshaw ! 
 
 His mind had already, in its usual fashion, exaggerated the 
 thing that vexed it. 
 
 'How does the school suit you?' asked Stephen, changing 
 the conversation with a quiet deliberateness that made Felix 
 feel small. 
 
 ' Very well, thanks.' 
 
 'Yes, do tell us something about it,' said Mrs. Wilding, 
 with a sort of anxious cheerfulness. 'Are the other pupils 
 nice ? ' 
 
 'Yes, they're all right.' 
 
 He felt an invincible reluctance to talk about any part of his 
 life in London. It was quite reasonable that his people should 
 wish to know something about it. He knew that. And yet he 
 felt almost a physical disinclination to discuss or describe it. 
 
 ' How many of them are there? ' said Stephen, taking a small
 
 FELIX 255 
 
 help of roast-mutton, and slightly moving his ears in the way 
 Felix so much disHked. 
 
 'Oh, I don't know. About fourteen, I should think.' 
 
 ' I am longing for you to write a book, Felix,' said Margot. 
 'I know you could.' 
 
 She spoke eagerly and, for the first time, with the complete 
 naturalness and open admiration of the sister of former days. 
 If Stephen had not been there Felix would have been pleased, 
 but he always felt self-conscious with the clergyman. 
 
 ' It's not so easy to write a book,' he said. 
 
 *A book worth writing,' assented Stephen. 'There is some 
 sad rubbish written nowadays, and the strange and regrettable 
 thing is that the writers often become quite well known. Only 
 yesterday I was reading a review of a book by an Italian author 
 in the Discriminator. It is evidently the most wicked nonsense 
 and was completely condemned. Yet the critic spoke as if the 
 author had become quite a famous man.' 
 
 'Who was the author?' asked Felix quickly. 
 
 ' I believe he is called Marza. The name of the book was a 
 very foolish one, I thought, and did not certainly suggest a 
 subject at all likely to do good to any one.' 
 
 ' I remember you told me,' interposed Margot, in eager agree- 
 ment with her husband. 'It was Ashfs. And the critic said 
 that such ashes were fit only for the dust-bin.' 
 
 Felix's cheeks flamed with contempt and anger. He quite 
 forgot any dislike he had felt to the book, any consciousness he 
 had had of Marza's egoism, selfishness or morbidity. At that 
 moment he was as indignant as if his dearest friend were being 
 attacked, and the lawless liberty, the frank defiance of Marza's 
 life and thought were entirely glorious to him. That a Stephen 
 Bosanfield should venture even to express an opinion on a 
 Marza struck him as a crime. 
 
 'I have read the book and it is splendid,' he exclaimed. 
 'Simply splendid. And I know Marza too. He is the most 
 delightful man in the world.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding and Margot looked astonished. 
 
 ' How did you come to meet such a man?' said Stephen, 
 showing also some, though much less, surprise. The Discrimin- 
 ator seemed, I thought, to hint that he was a person without re- 
 ligion, who led, and even inculcated, a very unseemly sort of life.' 
 
 'Oh, unseemly!' cried Felix, 
 
 In that word all that he was ready to rise up in arms against 
 seemed enshrined as in a dreadful casket of mean and miserable 
 design.
 
 256 FELIX 
 
 'Why, I met him at dinner at your own friends!' he added 
 triumphantly. ' I dare say Mr. Ismey published the English 
 translation of that very book.' 
 
 ' Perhaps so. I did not look to see,' said Stephen. ' I am 
 afraid Francis is sometimes a little too much influenced by his 
 wife in what books he publishes. She has very odd ideas.' 
 
 He shut his mouth with a snap. 
 
 * She 's got brains, thank Heaven ! ' said Felix, almost fiercely. 
 
 Some evil angel was surely tempting his brother-in-law to 
 touch on every subject which could lead to controversy. 
 
 'She seemed to me to be very clever,' said Mrs. Wilding, with 
 obvious anxiety to restore calm to the conversation. ' I dare say 
 she is often a great help to her husband.' 
 
 Felix laughed. He could not help it. His mother's attempt 
 to turn Mrs. Ismey into a sort of pattern wife struck him as 
 singularly ridiculous. He thought of his visit to Marzn. 
 Merciful Heavens ! How true had been the poet's remark 
 about the sound of the tarantella and the frayed cord. What 
 on earth could his mother and Stephen understand of him, or 
 of the young generation that lives in cities, that is keen of 
 intellect, and passionate of heart, and hot with desire, that 
 looks up and sees how huge is the flank of the mountain, that 
 realises how short is the time for wandering. He forgot that he 
 had felt constrained and guilty with Marza, nervous when he 
 peeped, as it were, into the poet's intimate life. Everything 
 that was in him just then seemed pouring, like some furious 
 torrent, towards the realm where such men live in freedom, and 
 in contempt of all opinions save their own, 
 
 'I don't know whether she's a help to her husband or not,' 
 he said ; ' but at any rate she reads books for their literature, 
 not for their moral. Why, if the moral of a book makes its 
 merit, I suppose the Fairdiild Family is a great work.' 
 
 He laughed again, briefly, looking at Stephen. 
 
 'Literature ought to do good,' said Stephen, with calmness, 
 even with a certain air of authority. ' If it does not it is certain 
 to do harm. And all that does harm is more than worthless ; it 
 is wicked.' 
 
 Felix opened his mouth to make a vehement retort, but just 
 as he was going to speak something in the assured and almost 
 phlegmatic expression of his brother-in-law's brick-red face 
 struck him and he remained silent. What was the good of 
 putting forth his views in such a circle? He could see by Margot's 
 eyes that she was hanging on Stephen's words. His mother no 
 doubt agreed with them too. Of course she did. He began to
 
 FELIX 257 
 
 hate the very idea of all that did good. And what was good? 
 Had not the brain a right to the food it craved for as well as 
 the soul? And was it to be fed everlastingly on milk for babes, 
 or Bosanfield's food for parishioners? The soul calls most 
 loudly for love, human or divine. But does not the brain call 
 for the many clashing wonders of life that it may review them, 
 at least, ere it reject them ? 
 
 For the rest of dinner Felix felt as if he were sitting with three 
 enemies. The talk was uneasy and was chiefly carried on by 
 Mrs. Wilding and Stephen. It often fell on parish concerns. 
 When at length Mrs. Wilding and Margot went into the draw- 
 ing-room Felix was obliged to come out of the shell into which 
 he had scornfully retired. 
 
 'Will you smoke ?' he said to Stephen. 
 
 ' No thanks, I never do,' replied his brother-in-law. 
 
 ' Well, I will if you don't mind.' 
 
 He lit his cigarette, wondering what on earth they could find 
 to talk about. 
 
 'How do you think your dear mother is looking?' said 
 Stephen, playing with a dessert-knife, which he kept on lifting 
 about an inch from the table and then dropping. 
 
 ' Oh, all right, isn't she ? ' 
 
 ' We thought she was rather pallid lately.' 
 
 *But she always is pale. I don't see any difference.' 
 
 * I am glad to hear it. We were afraid perhaps the dulness 
 of being alone here was preying a little on her spirits.' 
 
 It immediately occurred to Felix that this might be meant for 
 a covert rebuke to him. If so, he thought it came peculiarly ill 
 from the man who had taken away Margot. 
 
 'But I suppose she sees a lot of Margot, doesn't she?' he 
 said, in a strained voice, shooting a hostile glance at his brother- 
 in-law, who was gazing meditatively at the table, and still 
 fidgeting with the dessert-knife. 
 
 ' Naturally, a good deal. But of course Margot has got her 
 duties now.' 
 
 'Why, what duties?' 
 
 * At home and in the parish.' 
 
 'I should think her duty to her own mother would come 
 before her duty to the parish,' said Felix. 
 
 The sound of the word parish began to make him sick. 
 
 'One has to make certain sacrifices for the common good,' 
 returned Stephen. 'Inclination cannot always come first. If 
 it did we should have no missionaries nnd no missionaries' wives. 
 The Bible itself teaches us that family ties are not everything.' 
 
 R
 
 258 FELIX 
 
 Felix was staring at his brother-in-law's hand, as it mechani- 
 cally lifted and let fall the silver knife. Why was it that 
 Stephen said and did everything that most acutely irritated him? 
 This little movement alone drove him almost mad. He looked 
 away and made a sudden, violent resolve to be calm, even 
 philosophic. After all, what did it matter ? Stephen would 
 have nothing to do with the conduct of his life, thank Heaven, 
 so it was folly in him to allow himself to be made so easily 
 angry. 
 
 ' I should think it might be very interesting to be a missionary,' 
 he said, with the intention, fortunately realised, of giving Stephen 
 a conversational lead. 
 
 Henceforth, during the short time they remained in the 
 dining-room, the talk, or rather Stephen's monologue, flowed. 
 He was well informed on missionary enterprise and, as he pro- 
 duced his knowledge, forgot to fidget. Felix appeared to be 
 listening to him attentively. In reality he was thinking, with a 
 sort of libertine's relish, of the life — so mercifully different from 
 that now being exposed — to which he would return on Monday. 
 
 When he was alone with his mother, after the punctual de- 
 parture at ten o'clock of Margot and her husband, he could not 
 resist saying : 
 
 * Mater, if I lived with Stephen for a hundred years I should 
 never find a subject we could agree on. It seems awfully odd 
 to me that my own sister can be married to him.' 
 
 ' Oh, but Felix I am sure you would agree with him about 
 many things.' 
 
 ' Never, never. I expect you will be shocked at what I 'm 
 going to say, but I can't help it.' 
 
 'What is it?' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding was sitting by the fire. She looked very tired, 
 but Felix did not notice it. He was not tired. 
 
 ' The more I live the more it seems to me that religion 
 narrows people and squeezes up their intellects.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding did not say anything for a minute. An anxious 
 expression came into her face, but quickly died away as she 
 summoned that carefully sought-for father's spirit to her aid. 
 
 'I am not clever,' she said at length, 'and you are.' 
 
 ' Rot, mater ! ' cried Felix, in a voice that protested but did 
 not sound ill-pleased. 'I wish to goodness I was.' 
 
 'But don't you think,' she continued, 'that it is dangerous to 
 put the intellect before everything else? I sometimes fancy 
 that quite stupid people can tell things just by their hearts that 
 very clever people could never guess at with their heads. It is
 
 FELIX 259 
 
 a great help to many of us if it is so. And if it were not we 
 might even be turned away from our behef in God by a brilliant 
 man or woman who did not beheve in Him. But how impossible 
 that is.' 
 
 'How do you know?' he said, with good-natured mischief. 
 'Has any one ever tried to make you an atheist?' 
 
 ' No. But nobody could.' 
 
 • You conceited old mater ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding smiled. This little talk by the fire, free, un- 
 restrained, brought her a happiness she had not known for a 
 long time. She had her boy to herself and he was being natural 
 with her. 
 
 'I hope not,' she answered. 'But I think God teaches us 
 much more through our hearts than perhaps we often realise.' 
 
 ' Well, but then if you love anybody very much you ought to 
 be able to understand them.' 
 
 ' And don't you think it often is so ? ' 
 
 'H'm! No, I don't think it follows. But you're tired and 
 you ought to go to bed, instead of sitting there arguing away 
 into the watches of the night.' 
 
 It had just struck him that his mother was pale and that, 
 despite the happy expression in them, her eyes looked very 
 weary. Their parting at his bedroom door was comfortable in 
 its equality of two affections, a rare thing, anti when Felix was 
 in bed he was conscious of an unusual sensation of serenity, 
 security. The enclosed garden was outside his window instead 
 of the London street haunted by unknown wanderers. And 
 just across the landing was a possession — a heart that loved him 
 completely. Deep was the silence. In it, ere he fell askep, he 
 felt rather like a child again. The little talk with his mother 
 had banished a sensation of dawning jealousy, which he had not 
 acknowledged to himself, but which had nevertheless been 
 stirred up in him by the sight of Stephen's family air in Hill 
 House. Deep was the silence, deep as the silence of the forest 
 near La Maison des Alouettes. He shut his eyes and called up 
 the tailor's hut. How wonderful his life, with its changes, was 
 to him. Just before sleep came the thought, silly he told him- 
 self, with drowsy incredulity of his own mental statement, that 
 no other life could seem quite so wonderful to the human being 
 living it as his life did to him. 
 
 When Felix and his mother came in after morning church the 
 next day the butler, with an air of rather deep importance, as if 
 the bearer of possibly fateful tidinc^^s, walked into the drawing- 
 room with a salver on which lay a brown envelope.
 
 2G0 FELIX 
 
 ' A telegram for you, ma'am,' he said. 
 
 ' A telegram on Sunday ! ' said Mrs. Wilding, in some as- 
 tonishment. 'What can it be? I hope nothing dreadful has 
 happened.' 
 
 She looked at the envelope, then opened it quickly. As she 
 read it Felix watched her with some curiosity. He wondered, 
 too, why his mother should have a telegram on Sunday. He 
 never remembered such a thing happening before. As his 
 mother read a look of great surprise, even a startled look, came 
 into her face. She stood for a moment as if hesitating. Then 
 she said : 
 
 ' I am very sorry, Felix. I have made a mistake. This must 
 be meant for you.' 
 
 Felix turned scarlet. A sudden suspicion of what the tele 
 gram might be darted into his mind. 
 
 ' For me ! ' he said, holding out his hand, and trying to look 
 indifferent. 
 
 * Yes. There was only " Wilding " on the envelope.' 
 
 She gave him the telegram, and added : 
 
 ' I will go up and take off my things.' 
 
 She went out of the room at once. Felix read : 
 
 'You dear boy such a weight off my mind to know it can be 
 managed love Valeria.' 
 
 ' Love — Valeria.' And his mother had read it ! He had felt 
 guilty as he came out of Marza's room at the Carlton, but now — 
 His whole body tingled. His sensations were so many and so 
 mingled that, at first, a consciousness of hot, dull confusion 
 dominated him. Then he longed to start off at once for 
 London without seeing his mother before he went. But he 
 must see her. He must sit down and go through lunch alone 
 with her. He stared at the envelope. Yes, there was only 
 ' Wilding ' on it. Why had Mrs. Ismey been so careless ? He 
 felt a sort of fury at her carelessness. He read the telegram 
 again and was amazed at the wording of it. ' Love — Valeria.' 
 What must his mother think? What did he think himself? He 
 said to himself that of course Mrs. Ismey had been carried 
 away by an impulse of gratitude. After all he had been able to 
 do something for her and to do it promptly. He crushed the 
 paper up in his hand and ran up to his bedroom. 
 
 Cold water was what he wanted before he faced his mother at 
 lunch. 
 
 When the gong sounded he came down. He wondered 
 whether she would make any further allusion to the telegram,
 
 FELIX 261 
 
 and tried to decide what to say if she did. But he did not 
 arrive at any conclusion. As he entered the drawing-room 
 where she was waiting for him he stole a hasty glance at her. 
 She looked calm and not specially troubled, he thought. He 
 did not know what he had expected her to look like. At lunch 
 they talked, but without any of the freedom and comfort of the 
 preceding night. Felix felt stiff with self-consciousness and 
 constraint. He was thankful when the meal was over. 
 
 'Are you coming to afternoon church?' his mother asked, as 
 they were getting up from the table. 
 
 'Yes— no. I don't know that I shall. I think I '11 take Mab 
 for a run in the valley,' he answered hastily, longing to be alone. 
 ' Don't wait for me if I 'm late.' 
 
 Solitude was a necessity to him just then. As he started out 
 for his walk with the mastiff he stopped at the village post-box 
 to drop into it an envelope containing the cheque endorsed and 
 addressed to Mrs. Ismey. He had not written even a note. 
 He did not know what to say, so he said nothing. Church was 
 over and darkness was falling v/hen he came back from the 
 valley. On the road he passed several rustics going to their 
 homes. They were all dressed in their best clothes, and walked 
 with a sort of lolloping stiffness, holding their arms well out from 
 their sides. Although the evening light was faint, and they only 
 saw him for an instant, it seemed to Felix as if they divined at 
 once the turmoil of his mind. 
 
 Near the school three youths went by. They were laughing 
 lou ly, guffawing with the countrified abandon which suggests a 
 sort of heavy, and almost innocent, impropriety. Felix looked 
 round when he had passed them, and saw that they were staring 
 after him and that they had stopped laughing. He hurried on. 
 At that moment he longed for the huge secrecy of London, and 
 had an absurd, an almost mad sensation of being a criminal 
 standing under an electric light. He cur^^ed himst If for what he 
 called his rawness. It was unworthy even of a schoolboy, and 
 he was a man. 
 
 'Must you really go back to-morrow?' his mother asked at tea. 
 
 * Yes, I 'm afraid so.' 
 •By the early train ?' 
 
 * I think I 'd better. If I don't I shall be late at the school.' 
 'Very well. I'll order the carriage,' she said quietly. 'Do 
 
 tell me a little al)Out the school. I really know nothing.' 
 
 This time P'elix was thankful to talk about Sam and the pupils. 
 His mother sat on the sofa listt ning. Presently she said : 
 
 * I think I must put my feet up.'
 
 262 FELIX 
 
 ' Why ? Are you tired ? ' 
 
 ' I am rather. Sunday is a tiring day.* 
 
 She lay down, spreading a rug over her feet. 
 
 ' I say, mater, you aren't seedy, are you ? ' he said. 
 
 • No, I don't know that I am. But I get tired rather easily 
 It is old age, I suppose.' 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 'Nonsense — old age ! Why, you are quite young still ' 
 
 ' I don't feel young,' she answered. ' But I cannot expect 
 to. I am really very fortunate to have such good health as 
 I do. Tell me a little more about Mr. Carringbridge. Should 
 Hike him?' 
 
 There was always supper on Sunday at Hill House instead 
 of dinner, in order that the servants might have less to do. 
 When it was over the hands of the clock pointed to half-past 
 nine. Felix was starting at a quarter-past eight on the following 
 morning. 
 
 ' I shall go to bed early,' he said, ' so as not to be sleepy 
 to-morrow morning. Breakfast at a quarter to eight, I suppose ?' 
 
 'Yes. I have told the servants. Your visit has gone so 
 quickly.' 
 
 ' I '11 come again very soon.' 
 
 At ten, just as they were preparing to go to bed, Mrs, 
 Wilding said, as with an effort : 
 
 ' Felix.' 
 
 ♦Well, mater?' 
 
 'I have something to say to you.' 
 
 Instantly Felix felt as if his whole nature stood to arms. 
 He knew, rather than guessed, that his mother was going 
 to speak about the telegram. 
 
 'Why, what is it?' he said. 
 
 ' I have been thinking most of the day whether I ought to 
 say anything about it or not,' Mrs. Wilding said, still speaking 
 with an obvious effort; 'but you — you have no father now, 
 and that is a terrible loss to a boy on the threshold of life.' 
 
 ' I 'm old enough to take care of myself,' Felix said coldly. 
 
 He longed to get away and to be alone, shut up safely in 
 his bedroom. Mrs. Wilding did not say anything more for a 
 minute. She was struggling against her desire to keep silence 
 altogether. At last she said : 
 
 • As you know, I read that telegram to-day quite by accident.* 
 •Well?' 
 
 • I am very sorry I did read anything of yours.' 
 
 • It doesn't matter. Why should it ? '
 
 FELIX 263 
 
 He spoke defiantly now. 
 
 'I do not say it does. Still — Felix, now you are alone in 
 London, I hope you will be very careful with — with women.' 
 
 Mrs. Wilding's voice faltered slightly. A flush had risen in 
 her pale cheeks. In her whole life she had never before felt 
 such painful discomfort. 
 
 ' I don't know what you mean,' said Felix. 
 
 'That was— that telegram was not quite ' 
 
 ' I can't discuss that telegram, mater. I 'd better tell you 
 at once. You ought never to have opened it.' 
 
 * How could I know ? ' she said simply. 
 
 * I don't say you could. But anyhow, the least you could 
 do, having opened it, was to say nothing about it. I should 
 have thought you 'd see that. There is such a thing as a sense 
 of delicacy about people's private concerns.' 
 
 It was the most brutal thing he had ever said, but he was 
 too hot, too quivering with sensitiveness and reserve, to under- 
 stand the brutality of it. He wanted to protect his reserve 
 at whatever cost. 
 
 'Good night, mater. I 'm off to bed,' he said. 
 
 Without kissing her, or touching her hand, he left the 
 room, went upstairs, and was quickly in his bedroom behind 
 a locked door. 
 
 At half-past eleven, when he was lying awake, and still quiver- 
 ing like a horse lashed with the whip, he heard a gentle tap 
 at the door. He did not answer. The tap came again, and 
 he heard his mother's voice say : 
 
 ' Are you awake ? It 's mother.' 
 
 He guessed that she could not sleep till she had wished him 
 good night. He had no fear of her again alluding to the tele- 
 gram. But he could not reply. He did not feel exactly angry. 
 
 He simply felt that, after what had occurred, he would rather 
 die than be kissed by his mother. So he made no answer, and 
 lay perfectly still. 
 
 After a moment he heard a very faint rustle on the landing, 
 and presently the sound of a door closing. She had gone 
 back to her room. 
 
 He lay awake, wishing that he could have brought himself 
 to endure her kiss.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 FELIX had secretly hoped that his mother would not be 
 down the next morning to bid him farewell, and that he 
 would be able at the last moment to rush into her room with 
 all the traveller's hurry, give her a hasty kiss, and be off with 
 few words and fewer glances ; but when he came into the dining- 
 room at a quarter to eight she was already there, sitting in her 
 place before the silver tea-urn. He kissed her quickly and 
 standing rather behind her. 
 
 ' You oughtn't to have got up,' he said. 
 
 * I want to see as much of you as I can,' she replied. * And 
 I shall have all day to lie down in afterwards.' 
 
 The words struck him for a moment. He felt the acuteness 
 of the difference between her life and his, the emptiness and 
 the solitude of the one, the fulness and the companionship of 
 the other. 
 
 ' I wish you would have some one to stay with you,' he said, 
 drinking his tea as if he had no time to lose. 
 
 ' Oh, I am very well as I am,' she answered. * I do not 
 care for many people and a visitor might find it dull.' 
 
 And again a vision of a grey life dawned in his imagination. 
 It died out when he was in the carriage. He drove himself 
 in the dogcart, and turned, as he started, to flourish his whip 
 to the black figure standing on the doorstep. Just at that 
 moment the vision was very clear within him and stirred some- 
 thing in his heart. But his mare trotted briskly in the sharp 
 morning air. The country things stood round in the light, 
 tremulous mist to greet him. And beyond them, the way he 
 was going, was London with all its bells, its cries, its incidents. 
 The vision faded as the mare pulled against the rein, and the 
 fluttering touch was removed from his heart. 
 
 Youth had its way. 
 
 He forced himself to work at Sam's, and the excitement of 
 his mind — for now he was near the sender of the telegram and 
 full of vague, yet acute, anticipations — helped him to do what 
 was for him good work. There was energy, blood in it, young, 
 
 264
 
 FELIX 265 
 
 careless fire, and the pulse of a racer quickening to the post. 
 For the first time since he had been at Sam's he felt that he 
 had grip, scme'.hing at least of power. In the late afternoon, 
 when many of the pupils had hastened to their idleness, he 
 showed up what he had done to Sam. That serene personage 
 was seated by his delicious fire — his fires were always perfect, 
 precisely suited to the temperature, never suggestive either of 
 the grey ashes of regret or of a place predestined to the wicked 
 — smoking a cigar as usual, and reading a volume of Froude 
 with tender appreciation. He turned his head as Felix came 
 in with his manuscript, and, seeing it, extended a soft, white 
 hand. 
 
 'Sit down, Mr. Wilding, while I read it,' he murmured. *I 
 will read it now. I am staying in London to-night to make a 
 speech at a Savages' dinner.' 
 
 Felix sat down in great delight. He had written in a glow 
 and longed for a judgment. Sam put on his pince-nez. He 
 only used them to read manuscript. Looking at Felix over the 
 gold rims of the glasses with his radiant eyes he said : 
 
 'Take a cigar, Mr. Wilding, if you want to please me.' 
 
 'Thank you awfully,' said Felix, surprised at the honour, 
 which had never before been conferred upon him. 
 
 He took one, lit it, and found it most excellent. He sat in 
 attentive silence, looking into the neat, clear fire while Sam was 
 reading. The rustling of his pages as they were turned by the 
 soft, white fingers, gave him a pleasant little thrill. In the 
 falling twilight the bourdon of the traffic of the Strand seemed 
 to him very musical. He was glad to be back in London. Its 
 activities fed him with the food his soul demanded. To its 
 cries an essential cry in him responded. Not silence but sound 
 was the thing his youth desired, not peace but the strivings of 
 energy, the movement onward, the mighty flowing of the torrent 
 into the gulf of the future. 
 
 Sam laid down the manuscript, took off his pince-nez^ and 
 looked at Felix through the smoke of the two cigars. 
 
 'You will certainly get on, Mr. Wilding,' he said. 
 
 *Do you think I shall?' Felix said eagerly. 
 
 •I do not think. I say you will certainly get on. With you 
 it is merely a question of time, and questions of time are soon 
 settled. I am not quite sure that you will get on as a 
 journalist.' 
 
 'Oh, but how then?' 
 
 'You have a good deal that the journalist need not have. 
 You could deal with psychology — later — more powerfully even
 
 266 FELIX 
 
 than with incident. By incident you may take it that I mean 
 just now the figures carried out by the dancers in the masque 
 of life.' 
 
 He paused with a smile — his leading-article smile Arliss 
 irreverently called it. Rhetorical interrogation was conveyed 
 by it, the happy question, 'Am I brilliant?' 
 
 'But that power, being more profound than the merely 
 descriptive power that finds food for its energies in outward 
 things, develops more slowly. Youth shows in such writing 
 as you care for, and undertake, more clearly than it would in 
 writing of lesser quality. Live, be greedy of experience. I 
 dare say I gave you that advice when you first came. I usually 
 do give it. But to you, now, I give it with special knowledge 
 of your aptitudes. If you dig deep you will certainly find 
 water-springs.' 
 
 He smiled again on Felix's enchanted silence. 
 
 'Are you cultivating the society of women?' he purred. 
 
 The blood mounted to Felix's forehead. 
 
 'I know some,' he replied. 
 
 * Ah ! I once met an Englishman who spoke very perfect 
 French. I asked him how he had arrived at such perfection. 
 " By the only possible way," he replied. " Instead of a mistress, 
 I took a maifresse." I fear he must have been a libertine. 
 Still, do you know, Mr. Wilding, there was a good deal in it, 
 there was really a good deal in it. Are you acquainted with 
 any clever women ? I do not mean bluestockings ; I mean 
 what I say — clever women.' 
 
 ' Well, I — I know Mrs. Ismey,' said Felix, half reluctantly. 
 He did not wish to mention her, and yet he was driven to. 
 
 * The wife of the publisher ? ' said Sam. 
 •Yes.' 
 
 * I have met her.' 
 
 He sat looking at Felix in a twinkling silence which, to the 
 boy, was enigmatic. 
 
 'She is quite worthy of your study, quite capable, I should 
 say, of assisting you to a more profound psychology. Good- 
 bye. I will go through the article with you bit by bit to-morrow. 
 To do so now would take the edge off our sensations, and I 
 always hesitate to take the edge off anything.' 
 
 Felix went out and left him by the neat, clear fire, smiling. 
 
 ' You clever brute ! ' Felix muttered to himself outside the 
 door. 
 
 He always left Sam with that sort of feeling, nor was the noun 
 malignant. It stood for Sam's contented cynicism, analytical
 
 FELIX 2G7 
 
 faculty and lack of expectation. He was surely never disap- 
 pointed. For what did he expect of any one, even of him- 
 self? 
 
 In the writing-hall Felix found no one but Paul Chalmers, 
 and he was shutting up his manuscripts in a shiny black bag, 
 and putting the pink lid carefully on the round box of cream 
 chocolates from which he sought inspiration. 
 
 ' Which way are you going ? ' Felix asked. 
 
 He had no idea where Chalmers lived. 
 
 ' I shall take a 'bus from the corner by Charing Cross, Mr. 
 Wilding,' said Chalmers. *I always think it clears the brain to 
 take a short portion of exercise after labour, the labour of the 
 intellect, I mean.' 
 
 He put on his enormous top-hat, and lifted his bag from the 
 table. 
 
 ' Shall we go together as far as Charing Cross ? ' said 
 Felix. 
 
 He was conscious of a need of companionship, of intercourse 
 just then, for he was feeling rather exultant. 
 
 * With all the pleasure in life, Mr. Wilding,' replied Chalmers. 
 'After you.' 
 
 I'hey were at the swing door. When they reached the Strand, 
 they found a slight fog brooding over its turmoil. Chalmers 
 at once called Felix's attention to it. 
 
 'Turneresque effects, Mr. Wilding,' he remarked. 'Bits of 
 Mr. Whistler all round us, ain't — aren't there? I take note of 
 •f all as I go. Mr. Carringbridge advises the procedure. 
 ' Everything," he says, " is provender to the active mind." I 
 never cease to endeavour to keep mine active.' 
 
 He walked with a loose, baggy sort of stride, which was rather 
 grotesque, and, as he spoke, swung out one hand, covered by a 
 purplish-brown kid glove, lined with wool, and edged with a bit 
 of ragged fur, in an awkward gesture that made Felix feel almost 
 ashamed for him. There was something tragic about Chalmers, 
 the tragedy of a commonplace, ineffcrtive mind struggling to be 
 important and masterly, yet haunted by an anxiety which was 
 very near to humbleness. Felix was specially conscious of it 
 to-day, because he was specially conscious that he really had 
 some of the power which Chalmers struggled fer, as a man 
 entombed in a narrow well struggles to lift himself somehow, 
 anyhow, to the light. 
 
 'Activity is the great thing,' continued Chalmers, shouldering 
 his way through the thronging pedestrians upon the narrow 
 pavement, 'and the steady acquirement of useful knowledge.
 
 268 FELIX 
 
 Do you go much to the reading-room of the British Museum, 
 Mr. Wilding?' 
 
 ' I have never been there,' said FeHx. * I say, don't bother to 
 call me " Mr." Wilding.' 
 
 'That makes one conscious of the smallness of one's powers,' 
 said Chalmers. * And yet comes the thought afterwards — what 
 man has done man can do.' 
 
 He shook his head. Felix could not help observing that he 
 was hoping to be leonine. 
 
 *And so one strives, keeping in mind all them — those that 
 have striven in the past.' 
 
 Felix was almost irresistibly moved to have it out with 
 Chalmers, to be truthful with him, to tell him, ' Look here, you 
 are aiming at a target you will never hit.' But his companion 
 was in an unusually talkative mood, and continued : 
 
 ' Oh Mr. Wilding, you don't know what life is to me now. 
 Piano-tuning is a dreadful business, it really is. All them— 
 those years I spent at it seems like a sort of nightmare now, as 
 I might say. Day after day getting instruments in tune, and 
 feeling all the time as one was made for better things if one but 
 had the chance to strike at them. Often and often, when 
 running up a scale, have I known I was unsuited to the profes- 
 sion. And yet I was in great request for the job. But now I 'm 
 in the right line, and I can put my heart in it. I don't speak 
 like this to every one, Mr. Wilding, but you have been so kind 
 that I do feel I can open out a bit to you.' 
 
 How could Felix speak the truth to him? After all, he was 
 so eager to succeed that perhaps he — no. But there are some 
 hair-shirts that certain people cannot put on. The hair-shirt of 
 truth-telling to Chalmers was too rough for the skin of Felix. 
 
 'You know I wish you success,' he said, with a forced energy. 
 
 He watched the lanky figure mounting to the summit of the 
 'bus, pursued, as it seemed, by fluttering coat-tails. 
 
 ' Poor chap ! ' he muttered, as he turned away, after receiving 
 a last sweeping salute from that expressive gloved hand. 
 
 He felt more pity for Chalmers than he had felt for his 
 mother when he left her on the doorstep that morning after his 
 constrained farewell. 
 
 When he reached his flat he found a letter lying on his table. 
 He picked it up quickly and looked at the direction. It was 
 in Mrs. Ismey's handwriting, and though he was in a hurry to 
 see what the letter contained, he could not help stopping for a 
 minute to stare at the address. Why did she write like that? 
 If writing expresses character, surely hers must be strangely
 
 FELIX 269 
 
 weak, strangely marred in some way. And yet that was not the 
 case. Her relations with Lady Caroline showed determination, 
 strength. He had been utterly wrong in his thought of the two 
 playing women. The voice which had whispered within him 
 ' master — servant ' had told a lie. Lady Caroline's was the weak 
 nature. How people tricked him ! He opened the letter, which, 
 like the address, was written in the feeble, half-illegible, and 
 straggling hand, now beginning to be familiar to him, 
 
 'You DEAR, KIND BOY, — How Can I ever thank you? Come 
 to see me at once. I shall be in to-day at five. You don't know 
 what you have done for a hard-up being. Now if you don't 
 come to-day I shall go into mauve. 
 
 'Excuse great haste. Love and thousands of gratitudes. — 
 Yours, V. I. 
 
 'P.S. — God bless you. I will never forget your generosity. 
 
 V.' 
 
 When Felix, with some difficulty, had made out the meaning 
 of the note, he caught up his hat and, in a moment, was on his 
 way to Green Street in a hansom. As he was driving down the 
 street he met a brougham with some luggage on the top going 
 towards Park Lane. The face of a man appeared at the 
 brougham window, lit up for a moment by the ray of a lamp. 
 Felix thought it looked like Mr. Ismey's face, but he was not 
 quite sure. He reached the house and rang the bell. The 
 man-servant evidently expected him, and showed him up at 
 once without waiting to be asked if Mrs. Ismey was at home. 
 The drawing-room was empty. 
 
 ' I will tell Mrs. Ismey you are here, sir,' he said, going out. 
 
 Felix waited for some time. He walked about the pretty 
 room, glancing at the pictures, the ornaments, the books. There 
 were many of the latter lying about. All of them were modern 
 books, just published. He read the titles of some, and even 
 glanced into them. But he was restless with anticipation, and 
 he wondered how people can sit down with the noise of London 
 in their ears, their minds full of the thoughts, the myriad 
 thoughts that come out of their hiding-places in great cities, to 
 plunge into the minds, the thoughts of others. 
 
 When Mrs. Ismey came into the room at last she came in 
 quickly, with an expression of contrition on her face. 
 
 'Forgive me,' she said. 'You are so late that I thought you 
 were not coming, and had gone up to put on mauve. You see
 
 270 FELIX 
 
 I am wearing it still. I did not dare to keep you waiting while 
 I changed.' 
 
 She was, in fact, wearing a mauve tea-gown, which Felix 
 thought quite lovely, and she, too, looked prettier than he had 
 ever seen her look before. There was a delicious colour in her 
 cheeks. Her beautiful, live hair seemed shot with the hues of 
 light. Her eyes were shining with vivacity, and had, he fancied, 
 something of a child's eagerness caught in them. And her 
 hands — well, her hands were exquisite to-day. As he took 
 one shyly in his he longed to kiss it. 
 
 * Why are you so late ? ' she asked, sitting down on a 
 sofa. 
 
 She touched the sofa and smiled at him, screwing up her eyes. 
 He sat down beside her. 
 
 * I was working hard.* 
 'Oh, working !' 
 
 Her voice sounded half mischievous, half vexed. 
 
 'You men have so many things that interest you,' she 
 continued. ' I believe if I were to die you would go down to 
 that school of yours on the day of my funeral.' 
 
 ' I cannot imagine you dying,' Felix answered. 
 
 'Can you imagine me going to Paris?' 
 
 *To Paris?' he exclaimed. 'Are you going away?* 
 
 'Would you mind if I did?' 
 
 To-day she had returned to the light, drawling, half-mis- 
 chievous banter which had mystified him on the evening when 
 he first met her. It made him feel his youth now as it had then. 
 
 ' Oh, you know I have my work. You have just said so,' he 
 answered. 
 
 ' Don't fight me with my own weapons,' she said. 
 
 Her manner was as radiant as her appearance. There was 
 a strong flush in her cheeks now, and her odd, hazel eyes 
 sparkled with an almost fierce vivacity. 
 
 *I thought I met your husband just now,' Felix said. 
 
 'Probably you did. He was starting for the station.* 
 
 'Then he is going away too?' 
 
 ' Yes, for some time. He goes to Berlin first — some conference 
 — then to Rome. Business of course. I should feel horribly 
 lonely here without him, and so — yes — I am going to Paris, 
 with Carrie — to get gowns for the winter.' 
 
 The last words tantalised Felix. He knew they were meant 
 to tantahse him. She was not going to Paris only to get gowns. 
 She had some other project which excited and pleased her, some 
 secret project. And it was that which had set the flush on her
 
 FELIX 271 
 
 cheeks and filled her eyes with dancing fire. Her heart was 
 certainly glowing with anticipation. 
 
 'You always play with me,' he said. 
 
 He scarcely knew why, but suddenly he felt miserable, alone, 
 and ridiculous, as if he were so young or so stupid that nobody 
 could think of sharing anything with him, either a pleasure or 
 a pain. 
 
 ' You treat me as if I were still a schoolboy.' 
 
 He let his voice be angry. 
 
 'I!' 
 
 * Yes, you. It isn't fair.' 
 
 Even as he said the words he thought how like an angry 
 schoolboy's they sounded, and was furious with himself. 
 
 'You forget that I'm nearly twenty-one,' he exclaimed, 
 speaking to get away from that last sentence of his and to blot 
 it out from her memory. ' I may be young, but I 'm not a boy, 
 and I don't see why you should always treat me as if I were one.' 
 
 With every word he spoke the sense of wrong grew stronger 
 within him. 
 
 ' I hate it ! ' he exclaimed. 
 
 Her face had quite changed. The radiance went out of it, 
 but not the air of keen life. In her eyes the sparkle of joy was 
 replaced by a sparkle of- — was it tenderness? 
 
 'You are wrong,' she said, quite gravely. * I have treated you 
 as a man.' 
 
 'When?' 
 
 'One doesn't borrow money of a schoolboy, or trust him with 
 the sad secret of a friend. You are treating me unjustly.' 
 
 Felix said nothing. His wound still hurt, despite the salve 
 she had just applied to it. 
 
 'You ought to see that.' 
 
 ' Perhaps.' 
 
 He spoke reluctantly. 
 
 'I believe you are angry with me just because I am happy 
 to-day,' she said abruptly. 
 
 As she spoke he knew that she spoke the exact tiuih. It was 
 something in her evident joy which had vexed him, because it 
 seemed to remove her from him, to carry her away into a region 
 beyond his reach. 
 
 'No, I want you to be happy, of course,' he said grimly. 
 
 •Shall I tell you why I am happy?' she asked. 
 
 She leant a little towards him quickly, almost like a child 
 does when it is in such delight that it longs to seize hold of 
 the nearest person, to have the human contact which gives such
 
 272 FELIX 
 
 vital evidence of the human power to double joy by sharing it. 
 And, when she said that, he was suddenly happier. 
 
 'But I know,' he answered, still keeping his hard manner, yet 
 all ready to melt. 'It is because you are going to Paris — to 
 buy new dresses.' 
 
 ' It is because I am going to Paris.' 
 
 'I say I know it is.' 
 
 *I shall buy new gowns there, of course. A woman who goes 
 to Paris and comes away without having bought new gowns is 
 not a woman but a monster. But it is not that which makes 
 me so happy. No, no, it isn't that.' 
 
 All her extraordinary vivacity had come back. The fire of 
 joy blazed up again in her fiercely. 
 
 'What is it?' he asked. 
 
 The fierceness of her joy waked in him a fierceness of curiosity 
 to know why it came. 
 
 ' I am going with Carrie. I am going to cure Carrie.' 
 
 *0f— of ?' 
 
 'This morphia habit which is killing her. There is a man in 
 Paris. I heard his name some time ago, but when my husband 
 is in London I am not free. He hates Carrie so much that he 
 would be furious if he thought I was travelling anywhere with 
 her.' 
 
 'But Lady Caroline comes here and you go to her?' 
 
 *Yes. He allows that. He has to. But he would never let 
 me travel with her.' 
 
 ' But how strange ! ' Felix said. 
 
 He spoke with conviction, and had the sensation of walking 
 in darkness, conscious of a maze of subtle motives, whose 
 threads he was unable to trace either to the centre from which 
 they sprang, or to the verge towards which they radiated. 
 
 'You think so? He met me first when I was travelling with 
 her.' 
 
 ' Well, but — but he loves you.' 
 
 In her last words he had altogether failed to find the reason 
 he sought. He showed that he had bluntly. She only smiled, 
 but in the smile there was a sadness which made him wonder 
 whether there was not some tragedy in this pretty house whose 
 nature he had never even dimly suspected. 
 
 ' I am stu!)id,' he exclaimed. ' You must think me stupid.' 
 
 *No, but I think women often expect in men the sort of 
 cleverness which men never possess. I have to deceive Francis. 
 He will not know I have been to Paris with Carrie. Do you 
 think it's wrong?*
 
 FELIX 273 
 
 She was speaking eagerly again, with an intense eagerness 
 which was Hke heat puffing into the room. 
 
 ' I don't know,' FeUx said. ' It 's rather dreadful having to 
 tell lies to anybody one cares for, I think.' 
 
 She looked anxious, keenly anxious. Every expression, every 
 movement, every word of hers this evening had an edge to it, 
 sharp like the edge of a well-tempered dagger. 
 
 'Yes, isn't it? I hate it so. If I tell a lie I feel at once as 
 if I had dwindled down into something dwarfish and deformed. 
 But, think, this is for Carrie, for my oldest friend, to save her 
 really from ruin. I can't tell you everything. It would take 
 too long, and besides I don't think I ought. It 's too terrible. 
 When morphia once gets hold of any one ' 
 
 She stopped, with a sort of catch in her voice. 
 
 *No, I can't go into it. But if something isn't done, Carrie 
 is doomed. Now if anything I can do can save her, oughtn't 
 I to do it?' 
 
 Felix had quite lost his pained sense of being a boy now that 
 he was being consulted as a man. 
 
 *I suppose you ought,' he answered. 
 
 'Even if to do it I have to deceive my husband and risk 
 my own happiness. For if Francis ever found out — but don't 
 let us think of that!' 
 
 A sort of shudder ran through her body. The vivacity of 
 all her emotions was so great that there was something almost 
 melodramatic in her manner. And this seemed to grow as she 
 talked, as if talking increased her powers of sensation and filled 
 her with a sort of light, heady intoxication. 
 
 'I think there are moments in one's life when one ought to 
 shut one's eyes to possible consequences and go blindly forward,' 
 she went on. 'Blindly, blindly.' 
 
 She shut her eyes, as if to revel in the luxury of darkness 
 and of movement in it. 
 
 ' That 's what I mean to do now. I '11 shut my eyes and save 
 Carrie.' 
 
 ' But don't you ever think of yourself?' Felix said, wondering. 
 
 It struck him as intensely strange that he should come upon 
 a virtue of his mother in Mrs. Ismey. They were so unlike 
 that it seemed almost impossible that they could touch at any 
 point. 
 
 'What woman does when she really cares?' said Mrs. Ismey. 
 'And I do really care for Carrie.' 
 
 With an abruptness that was fearful to Felix she burst into 
 tears. The change from joy to grief startled him so much that, 
 S
 
 274 FELIX 
 
 for a moment, he sat quite still listening to her sobbing. She 
 turned her head away from him, took out her handkerchief, and 
 held it pressed against her face just under her eyes. Her body 
 trembled convulsively. 
 
 * Don't,' Felix said. 'Don't!' 
 
 It was all he could say. Very shyly he moved nearer to her 
 on the sofa, held out his hand to touch her, then drew it back. 
 
 'What is the matter? Why do you cry? Can't I do any- 
 thing?' 
 
 For the first time she pressed the handkerchief actually against 
 her eyes. 
 
 * No, no, it 's all right. I 'm foolish,' 
 
 She turned towards him again. Her face was still slightly 
 distorted by the spasm of grief, but already she had begun to 
 smile, though tears stood in her eyes. 
 
 ' All this worry about Carrie has wrecked my nerves,' she said. 
 'That is the truth. I am going to Paris as much for my sake 
 as hers, so I am not unselfish.' 
 
 ' I think you are, very.' 
 
 ' No, no, I 'm not. How foolish you must think me, crying 
 like that for nothing at all. And I had just been so happy.' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 He could not find anything to say. He was feeling too much 
 and too confusedly. 
 
 'It just occurred to me how awful it would be if this man 
 couldn't do Carrie any good. He 's a hypnotist.' 
 
 'A hypnotist? ' 
 
 'Yes. If she can give up her will to his it may all come right. 
 His charges are awful, but to cure her would be worth any 
 money.' 
 
 Felix suddenly realised why Mrs. Ismey had asked him for 
 that cheque. It must be to pay this man; doctor, hypnotist, 
 whatever he was. Mr. Ismey must have decided rather suddenly 
 on his journey abroad, leaving the way to Paris open for the 
 two friends. The moment had to be seized and, for some 
 reason, Lady Caroline could not lay her hand on this large fee 
 just at the instant when she wanted it. He began to see more 
 clearly into some things which had puzzled him. 
 
 ' When do you go ? ' he asked. 
 
 *On Wednesday.' 
 
 'And shall you stay long?' 
 
 ' No, only till Saturday I think. I must be back. Francis 
 will expect letters from me, and I can't post them in Paris, 
 and I don't care to send them under cover to be posted in
 
 FELIX 275 
 
 England. Oh, it 's horrid, isn't it, to be deceitful, however good 
 the cause? ' 
 
 Just before she said that Felix had been thinking that it was 
 horrid. Mr. Ismey's face had come to him, with its dignified 
 expression and its sad, almost bitter, eyes. It was the face of 
 a very 'straight' man, he thought. 
 
 ' Sometimes I think I '11 give it all up, and give Carrie up 
 too,' she exclaimed, watching him. 'She doesn't really want 
 to be cured. She loves it too much for that.' 
 
 'What is there to love in it?' asked Felix. 
 
 Curiosity about this strange morphia fascination was beginning 
 to dawn in him. 
 
 ' Why ! ' she began eagerly, leaning towards him while her 
 face lit up as it had not lit up since she burst into tears. 
 
 'Every ' She checked herself sharply. 'Well, according to 
 
 her, it must be an exquisite sensation. She has told me all 
 about it. I'm quite learned on the subject. It's rather 
 curious, isn't it, being steeped in knowledge of a thing you 
 simply loathe and have a horror of? She will talk about it 
 incessantly. That's one of the symptoms of her kind of case, 
 I believe.' 
 
 Felix thought of Lady Caroline, as he had seen her and 
 known her. It was strange to hear her spoken of as a 'case.' 
 He still felt a reluctance to learn her secret, combined with a 
 desire to know it in all its fulness. The two sensations were at 
 war, and now one made a bid for victory. 
 
 'Perhaps — I say, d'you think I ought to hear all this?' he 
 said. ' You know if I could do any good it would be all right. 
 But could I?' 
 
 'I've thought of it all,' Mrs. Ismey said, with unusual deter- 
 mination. 'Perhaps it's selfish and weak of me, but I do care 
 for your good opinion.' 
 
 'Mine?' he said, moving a little nearer to her. 'But, you 
 know ' 
 
 'I know very well I might lose it, as things are, unless I told 
 you the truth. When one is acting f(.r any one in Carrie's 
 condition, trying to save her, one gets mixed up in all sorts of 
 things, and with ail sorts of dread I'ul people. If I am perfectly 
 sincere with you, I feel that you at least can never mistake my 
 motives.' 
 
 'But, then, why not tell your husband?' said Felix. 
 
 He said it moved by the desire we sometimes have to lay a 
 whip across our shoulders instead of the soft shawl they crave 
 for.
 
 276 FELIX 
 
 'Why !' Mrs. Ismey exclaimed, almost with a touch of irrita- 
 bility. ' Because I will never give Carrie away to any one who 
 hates her. Surely you can understand that.' 
 
 She had spoken almost sharply, and apparently recognised 
 that she had, for she added : 
 
 'She likes you, and you have told me you like her.' 
 
 * I think I do,' Felix said. ' In a way. But ' 
 
 'Yes, you will say. Is that a reason for my being so frank 
 with you ? Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps nothing would be a 
 sufficient reason. Well, listen to the honest truth. I couldn't 
 go on any more without telling some one. I couldn't tell my 
 husband. I couldn't tell a woman, for I wouldn't trust any 
 woman on earth with a secret.* 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 ' Because I wouldn't. So I told you. And now, I believe, 
 you despise me for ' 
 
 Her eyes were again full of tears. Seeing them, Felix's last 
 scruple was swept away. 
 
 'I could never despise you,' he said quickly. 'I, despise 
 you ! How can you say such things ? You make me 
 ashamed.' 
 
 He looked at her in a way that seemed almost to startle her, 
 and they were both silent for a moment. During that moment 
 the spirit of youth, of joy, dawned in her again. Despite her 
 strange passion of tears, her nervous irritability, happiness was 
 certainly hovering about her Jieart to-day. 
 
 'Don't let us talk of it any more,' she said. 'Perhaps I 
 ought not to tell any one. You have more sense of honour than 
 I. But then you are a man. Don't think ill of me. Perhaps 
 this Paris trip will put everything right. If it does I will never 
 speak about this craze of Carrie's again. It will be cured, and 
 we will forget it. But one thing I shall never forget, your 
 darling kindness and goodness to me.' 
 
 Felix blushed. 
 
 'Oh, that's nothing,' he said hurriedly. 'Please don't.' 
 
 'But it is a great deal. You got my telegram. I wired 
 directly I could.' 
 
 'Yes. It was good of you. But, I say * 
 
 'Well? What is it?' 
 
 'You know you forgot to put my name in the address.* 
 
 She looked astonished. 
 
 'I didn't. Why, if I had you could never have got the 
 telegram.' 
 
 ' My Christian name, I mean.'
 
 FFTJX 277 
 
 *Did I? But ' She looked at him. 'Your mother 
 
 opened it ! ' 
 'Yes.' 
 'What did she say?* 
 
 * Nothing — then.' 
 *But afterwards?' 
 
 ' Very Httle. I dare say she was astonished.' 
 He was looking at her with a sort of nervous, hot question in 
 his eyes. 
 
 'You see you telegraphed so — so kindly.' 
 
 * I telegraphed just as I felt. I was a fool to be so truthful. 
 D'you know, Felix, I sometimes think that a woman who tells 
 the truth is fit only for a madhouse. It 's all very well for men. 
 People expect truth from men. From women they don't. 
 And if you give people what they don't expect from you they 
 nearly always hate you.' 
 
 She had called him Felix. His mind was more fixed on that 
 word than on the rest of her sentence. Yet she had spoken his 
 name so lightly, with such a careless sort of familiarity, that he 
 was not sure whether she even knew that she had spoken it. 
 If she had said it unconsciously perhaps the tribute was the 
 greater, the sense of familiarity shown more deep, worth more 
 to him. He had no time to wonder, for just then the drawing- 
 room door opened, and Mrs. Ismey's maid, Alice, came in. 
 
 She wore a black felt hat and a black jacket. When she saw 
 Felix in the room she stopped by the door, and said : 
 
 ' I beg pardon, ma'am. I thought you were alone.' 
 
 •Never mind,' said Mrs. Ismey. 'Mr. Wilding will forgive you.' 
 
 She glanced at Felix. 
 
 'Of course !' he said. 
 
 He looked at Alice as she came forward very quietly and 
 gave a note to her mistress. The maid interested him. There 
 was something striking in her personality. Even her softness 
 and silence made a strong impression. Mrs. Ismey took the note. 
 
 ' Wait a minute while I read it, Alice,' she said. ' You '11 
 let me, won't you ?' 
 
 She looked at Felix. 
 
 'Oh, please read it,' he said. 
 
 She tore it open. Alice stood waiting with her hands folded. 
 She gazed at the carpet. Felix wondered very much what she 
 was thinking about. It struck him afterwards that he had 
 seldom wondered what a servant was thinking about before. 
 When Mrs. Ismey had finished the note she looked radiant 
 
 'We are going to-morrow ! ' she said.
 
 278 FELIX 
 
 'To ' Felix began. 
 
 He stopped abruptly. Perhaps Alice did not know about 
 the Paris trip. 
 
 ' Paris — yes,' said Mrs. Ismey. ' D' you hear, Alice, to- 
 morrow morning by the ten train. You haven't much time.' 
 
 ' I can manage easily, ma'am.' 
 
 ' Very well. That will do.' 
 
 The maid seemed to Felix to hesitate for a moment. She 
 stole a glance at him, and an odd idea came into his mind that 
 she wanted to say something to him. Then she went out of the 
 room rather slowly. 
 
 ' I ought to go,' he said. ' You must have a lot to do.* 
 
 ♦ Yes.' 
 
 She had got up, and as he came to her to say good-bye the 
 intense brilliancy of her appearance, caused by the animation 
 in her eyes chiefly, but also by the suggestion of readiness for 
 activity in her pose, made an impression on him that was 
 startling. 
 
 ' You are happy ! ' he said. 
 
 * Yes,' she answered, giving him her beautiful hand. ' Happy, 
 happy ! Paris seems to me to-night to be the promised city, 
 as Palestine was the promised land. It 's absurd, isn't it? But 
 you — you know the reason.' 
 
 The pressure of her hand seemed to sting him. 
 
 'Come back on Saturday,' he said. 
 
 Suddenly he saw London an empty city, with streets full 
 of hollow echoes, deserted houses, sad squares like roofless 
 sepulchres. 
 
 ' Do come back then.' 
 
 She only smiled, but there were light and fire in the smile. 
 As Felix came out of the room, and was just going to descend 
 the stairs, he saw the black figure of Alice. She was on the 
 landing above him, and was looking over. He thought she was 
 there for him. But how could that possibly be? Almost at 
 once Mrs. Ismey followed him out of the drawing-room. Alice 
 disappeared silently. 
 
 'Thank you, thank you, thank you ! ' Mrs. Ismey said. 
 
 She took his hand again, pressed it almost feverishly, and 
 began to go quickly upstairs as Felix went down. When he 
 was in the hall he heard her voice call : 
 
 ' Good-bye !' 
 
 He looked up and saw her head. It was thrust forward over 
 the banisters. She made her odd, animal face at him and 
 vanished.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 LADY CAROLINE did not forget that she had invited 
 Felix for Tuesday. She wrote him a blunt little note 
 saying that she was ' off to Paris,' and that she was sure he 
 wouldn't break his heart over the disappointment. 'Besides, 
 who knows whether you meant to come?' she concluded 
 abruptly. One thing in the note surprised Felix. She said, 
 'I expect we shall be away for a fortnight.' Evidently, then, 
 Mrs. Ismey had not yet told her friend that she was obliged to 
 come back on the Saturday. When Felix had finished reading 
 the note he laid it beside one of Mrs. Ismey's and examined the 
 two calligraphies with a profound interest. They brought again 
 to his mind the canon played on the two pianos. Lady Caro- 
 line's handwriting was large and bold. It sloped slightly 
 upwards. Each word was perfectly clear and looked manly. 
 There was not a blot or smudge on the envelope. How 
 strangely deceiving are the very thingg by which people are 
 inclined to judge character. Felix stared at the strong hand- 
 writing, and knew it was formed by the hand of a woman in the 
 core of whose nature lurked a fatal weakness ; at the feeble, 
 straggling, blotted letters, and knew they were set down on that 
 smudged and crumpled paper by a woman of strength and eager 
 purpose, full of the desire to save, full of the bravery of self- 
 sacrifice. These things, which men call signs, symptoms of the 
 condition of a character, the state of a soul, are then merely 
 lies? They are not only inexpressive of truth, but are actually 
 expressive, apparently, of truth's opposite. 
 
 He put the two notes away in a drawer. And again he was 
 assailed by an overwhelming sense of the confusion of life. 
 
 That week, for the first time since he had been in London, he 
 
 wrote to the tailor. The letter was a long one, and very frank 
 
 as a self-revelation. Felix indeed treated tl;e tailor rather as 
 
 over-burdened hearts often treat the void, confessed to him 
 
 comfortably through the grille of space. This little old man of 
 
 a different nation, companion of the trees, the plants, the sylvan 
 
 voices of France, unseen and far away in his quiet hermitage, 
 
 27y
 
 280 FELIX 
 
 had given an impulse to the English youth, was now the con- 
 fidant of the results proceeding from that fierce gift. The 
 letter was vigorous and sad, for, in the writing, a curious 
 enthusiasm took possession of Felix, mysterious to him and 
 edged with the gloom of city shadows. Trying to set down 
 London on paper woke up his mind to a knowledge of what 
 London's impression upon him had been. There was — he knew 
 it as he wrote — a great melancholy in its excitement, like the 
 murmur in the heart of a sunlit sea. But there was a joy in it, 
 too, not to be found elsewhere, the joy that men find in every- 
 thing that interests them deeply, that demands investigation and 
 whispers, ' I have my secret.' 
 
 It was far easier for Felix to write to the tailor than to his 
 mother. He did not pause to wonder why. 
 
 He anticipated the arrival of Saturday with eagerness. Already 
 he had become so accustomed to the companionship of Mrs. 
 Ismey, that her absence from London made a startling difference 
 in his life. He realised this thoroughly the very day she went. 
 Although he did not see her go, her face at the window of the 
 gliding train, he knew she had gone as if all London told him. 
 There was a difference, an emptiness. The edge of things was 
 blunted for him, and he felt dull, and much stupider than 
 usual, as if his intellect depended upon her and was hobbling, 
 deprived of a necessary support. He was angry with himself 
 for feeling this, but as the days went by the sensation increased. 
 Each morning, when he came into his little room for breakfast, 
 he looked anxiously for a letter from Paris, and when he did not 
 find one was painfully disappointed, painfully disinclined to face 
 the incidents of the day. Friday came and he had had no letter. 
 Evidently she would not write at all. On Sunday he would see 
 her and reproach her. Yes, he would certainly reproach her. 
 After all that had occurred — her revelation of the reason for this 
 Paris expedition, the money transaction, the incident of the 
 telegram — she might have written to him once. She owed him 
 at least a word, and her silence was cruel. Sometimes he made 
 excuses for her. He told himself that she had been too much 
 occupied with the bitter problem of Lady Caroline's rescue to 
 spare a moment to him. But he always returned to his indigna- 
 tion. She might have written if she had cared to. 
 
 On Saturday he found upon the breakfast-table a big envelope 
 sealed, and directed to him in Mrs. Israey's illegible and 
 irregular handwriting. He tore it open eagerly. A second 
 envelope fell out. It was un.>'aniped, and was directed to Mr. 
 Ismey at an address in Rome. Felix looked at it in astonish-
 
 FELIX 281 
 
 ment. Why should she send it to him? Was it a mistake? 
 He thrust his hand into the first envelope, pulled out some 
 sheets of thin foreign paper, and bigan to read them. But the 
 business was a difficult one. Mis. Ismey had apparently 
 written with a quill pen, and in a tremendous hurry. Tiie letter 
 was an illegible, blotted scrawl, almost impossible to decipher. 
 Even after he had pored over it for half an hour there were 
 words, even sentences, that Felix could not make out. It was 
 written, too, all over the place. There were scraps in the 
 corners of one sheet which required other scraps to make them 
 intelligible. But these other scraj's, ends of sentences only 
 begun, Felix could not always find. He had never before seen 
 a letter that was such a chaos. The ink had soaked through the 
 flimsy paper so that the words of one side of a sheet were, as it 
 seemed, reflected mistily among the words of the sheet's other 
 side. The attempt to make the chaos coherent was a madden- 
 ing task. Only his intense eagerness to be in communication 
 with Mrs. Ismey, to know everything she had in Paris wished 
 him to know in London, induced him to persevere in the effort 
 to comprehend. When he had at length come at the greater 
 part of her meaning, bitter disappointment overwhelmed him. 
 She was not coming back that day. On Sunday she would not 
 be in Green Street. Lady Caroline had been right. They were 
 to spend a fortnight in Paris. Mrs. Ismey gave a strong reason 
 for this change of plan, and also for a task, horribly repugnant to 
 him, which she confided to Felix with a string of apologies and 
 regrets. The cure of Lady Caroline, she wrote, was trembling 
 in the balance owing to her friend's disinclination to be snatched 
 from the grip of the vice she loved. It was a battle between the 
 will of the doctor and the will of the patient. Lady Caroline 
 had been so far yielding that she had allowed the doctor to see 
 what he could do. She had permitted Mrs. Ismey to put her 
 into his hands. But she could not be induced to make a 
 deliberate effurt to submit to his influence. On the contrary 
 she resisted it violently with all her force. Mrs. Ismey said 
 that she could not write an account of all that was going on, but 
 Felix would understand what a miserable condition of anxiety 
 she was in, at one moment on the verge of hope, at another 
 inclined to despair. Nothing but her determination to save her 
 friend from utter physical and mental ruin would induce her to 
 descend to the subterfuge which was necessary, if she was to 
 remain longer in Paris and give Lady Caroline a last chance. 
 And then came the request before which Felix felt everything 
 that was decent in him flinching. She asked him to stamp the
 
 282 FELIX 
 
 letter to her husband, which she enclosed, and to post it for her 
 in the cU^trict to which Green Street belonged. She ended with 
 messages which made the boy's cheeks burn, assuring him that 
 she looked upon him as her only friend and protector, that she 
 confided utterly in him, that she knew how he would hate doing 
 what she asked, but that she dared to ask him since he alone 
 knew the reason of the odious deception which she was forced 
 to lend herself to and involve him in. 
 
 * I know how you will loathe doing it,' she wrote, ' but just 
 think how far worse it is for me. I tell a lie to the man who 
 believes in me. My whole nature revolts from doing it. And 
 yet, when I look at Carrie, I cannot hesitate. Nor could you if 
 you were here, if you could know, could see all that is going on. 
 Over and over again I have thought of throwing it all up, of 
 coming straight back to London and cutting myself once and 
 for ever adrift from Carrie and all the horrors of her life. But 
 then something steps in, something stronger than I am, and 
 prevents me. Call it love, folly, friendship, what you like, I 
 can't resist it. I feel that I could ruin myself to save her. 
 Don't think me mad. Pity me. Help me. Something in my 
 heart tells me that you will. If you don't — well, then Carrie is 
 lost. For there is no one I can trust but you, and if you fail me 
 I must come back. And if I leave her here in Paris, which 
 is the very paradise of the morphifiomanes, she will simply go 
 under for ever. You'll say that I might bring her back. Yes, 
 but uncured? Vnx \n z.n i?npasse. Help me ! ' 
 
 The letter was almost hysterical. WhaX could be going on in 
 Paris ? Felix felt inclined to travel there that day and bring 
 Mrs. Ismey home. He hated to think of her exposed to strange 
 and terrible circumstances such as she hinted at. His imagina- 
 tion could not tell him what they were. He was in the dark, 
 but the mere look of her letter now seemed to make him realise 
 at least something of the confusion and misery of her present 
 existence. Then he thought of Lady Caroline. What a traitor 
 to truth her appearance was. That expression of power was a 
 lie, that dominant pose a lie, that autocratic glance a lie. Only 
 the weariness, the occasional indifference to outward things, the 
 moody silences, the stony gravities of her told something of the 
 truth of her body and of her soul. A slow jealousy of her began 
 to stir in him. For was she not tearing Mrs. Ismey's life to 
 pieces? For the first time he woke to a consciousness of the 
 many Molochs of the world, those who demand and obtain 
 human sacrifices. Lady Caroline was one. And he understood, 
 or began to understand, the terrible fact, which can also be so
 
 FELIX 283 
 
 magnificent, that each human life is like an organ set in a body, 
 and affecting, in its disease, the whole body. Just then the 
 mysterious and ordained dependence of the human being upon 
 the human beings surrounding it shocked and almost terrified 
 him. 
 
 He looked at the envelope addressed to Mr. Ismey which 
 was lying on the table. Lady Caroline's disease, spreading, 
 eating its slow way through invisible tissues, reached that man 
 in Rome and reached him, Felix, sitting in his little room in 
 London. He took up the letter and mechanically weighed it in 
 his hand. What could it contain ? Lies. That was certain 
 and inevitable. If, under these circumstances, Mrs. Ismey 
 wrote to her husband, she could only write lies to him, lies 
 describing her supposed life in London, the supposed doings of 
 London days. It was too degrading. His hand felt hot with 
 shame as it held the letter. And was he to put the necessary 
 finishing touch to the low plot by posting it ? He was so 
 young, and had been brought up in an atmosphere so singularly 
 truthful that such an act revolted him, created within him a 
 species of nausea of the soul. The white refinement of his 
 youth, of whose cleanness and sensitive delicacy he was generally 
 quite unaware and, when he berame faintly aware of them — as, 
 for instance, when a girl's soft voice called Nino, and guilt shone 
 in his face — was unable to understand, trembled and shrank 
 away from the little and very simple deed that was required of 
 him as if it were a great crime. The idea, old-fashioned, worthy 
 of his mother cradled in the simplicity of country life, came to 
 him that he had eaten Mr. Ismcy's bread and salt and was now 
 to betray him. He said to himself that he could not do it, that 
 he would not do it, and he took the letter, locked it up in a 
 drawer, and sent a telegram to Paris : 
 
 * Do not ask me to do that come back at once much better 
 Felix.' 
 
 He put his Christian name without thought that he was 
 putting it. To do so was natural. She had signed her blotted 
 letter, Valeria. That morning he spent at Sam's school in a 
 turmoil of excitement which he only controlled with difficulty. 
 It seemed to him as if the pupils must see what was passing in 
 his mind, almost as if they, too, must be involved in the 
 circumstances which were at the same time oppressing and 
 stinging him. The gaiety of Arliss, the airy and satirical 
 gravities of Harry Cleave, Singleton's vague worldliness, even 
 the desperate determination of Paul Clialniers, and the smiling
 
 284 FELIX 
 
 calm of Sam surprised him again and again. Yet why should 
 they be different because he was? He rather hated them 
 because they were not. 
 
 In the afternoon he left early and hurried home, expecting 
 to find a telegram. There was one lying on his table. He 
 tore it open. 
 
 ' For God's sake post it you would if you knew all post it 
 St it Valeria.' 
 
 As he was standing with the thin paper in his hand there was 
 a knock at the door, and his man came in. 
 'Another telegram for you, sir,' he said. 
 'Thanks,' said Felix quietly, holding out his hand for it. 
 
 * Post it my dear boy if you have the faintest friendship for 
 me everything depends on it for God's sake do this one thing 
 for me I will never forget it love Valeria.' 
 
 There was something very vital in these two cries from Paris. 
 As Felix looked at them he seemed to hear Mrs. Ismey's voice 
 uttering them, to see her face as he had seen it in the cab that 
 night before she told him to look away. He went to the 
 drawer in which he had locked the letter to Mr. Ismey and 
 took it out slowly. He meant to post it now. He knew quite 
 well that he was going to post it. But when he saw the letter 
 he reddened, standing there by himself. There was a pricking 
 in his skin. He was thankful no one was in the room to 
 look at him. And then, immediately, he was profoundly 
 thankful for something else, thankful that he had not entered 
 the office of Ismey and Co. If he had he could never surely 
 have posted this letter. It seemed almost as if Mrs. Ismey 
 had foreseen that these circumstances were going to arise when 
 she asked him to give up the career her husband had offered 
 him. He remembered that she had never yet told him why 
 she had required that sacrifice of him. Since he had joined 
 the school, seen another career before him, felt firm ground 
 beneath his feet, he had bt en less anxious to know her reason. 
 New interests had blotted out the old anxiety. But now again 
 he longed to know. Had she — could she have had — some 
 intuition of the turn that things would take ? 
 
 She was very clever. Once she had advised him to guard 
 against too great cleverness. She had spoken of it as if it were 
 an evil thing. He began to see her menning. But she, if she 
 indeed showed a shrewdness that seemed perhaps opposed to
 
 FELIX 285 
 
 honour, was after all exerting herself with an unselfish aim that 
 made for nobility. He thought of that moment when she had 
 shut her eyes, and spoken of going forward blindly, regardless 
 of consequences. Was it easier for a woman to do that than 
 for a man ? Perhaps. As he went out to post the letter to Mr. 
 Ismey, when he stood before the box in Green Street and posted 
 it, Felix felt that he too had shut his eyes and was in darkness, 
 a darkness that might be felt. 
 
 That evening a third telegram arrived from Paris : ' Have 
 you posted it Valeria.' The answer was paid. Felix wired 
 back : ' Yes Felix.' 
 
 On Monday he received a second long and frightfully illegible 
 letter from Mrs. Ismey, imploring his forgiveness for having 
 dared to ask such a sacrifice from him, and thanking him again 
 and again in almost frantic terms for having posted the letter. 
 She entered at length into the moral aspect of the question, and 
 quite amazed Felix by the accuracy with which, in Paris, she 
 had divined the workings of his mind in London. Her power 
 of thought-reading, which had surprised and, while it confused 
 him, had delighted him from the first moment of his acquaint- 
 ance with her, did not desert her in this complicated phase of 
 her existence. Indeed, she seemed more startlingly intuitive 
 now than ever before, as if her troubles whipped up her intellect. 
 He replied to her letter at length, acknowledging that all she 
 had thought had been right, and urging her to come home 
 While he wrote the slow jealousy of Lady Caroline, which he 
 had already felt but dimly, grew in his heart and seemed almost 
 to guide his pen. Why should she be allowed to wreck the life 
 of another for the gratification of a hateful passion ? It was 
 cruelly, foully unjust, he thought. But what a strong, shining 
 sense of friendship and its duties Mrs. Ismey must have. He 
 saw Lady Caroline, while he wrote, black ; Mrs. Ismey white 
 like an angel, and then grey like an angel dragged in the dirt. 
 For there are surely acts that cannot be done for whatever 
 cause without leaving a stain upon the doer of them. 
 
 The reply to his letter was another enclosure for Mr. Ismey 
 in Rome, with endless excuses and apologies. Felix posted it, 
 as he had posted the first. He felt that it would be absurd, 
 having sinned once, to refuse to repeat his sin. Yet he rebelled 
 even more violently this time than he had before, so violently, 
 indeed, that he wrote to Mrs. Ismey refusing to be the medium 
 of any more deception. The letter was masterful intone. He 
 had never dared to assume such autocracy towards her in their 
 previous relations. But now he was driven by a feeling of
 
 286 FELIX 
 
 shame and personal degradation. His heart was hot within 
 him, and he wrote ere the kindled fire had time to die down. 
 When the letter had gone he thought it over and was 
 afraid. Perhaps she would never speak to him again. Per- 
 haps he was a fool to be governed by such feelings. He 
 knew he had a tendency towards exaggeration. Did he 
 exaggerate now ? He looked mentally at Mr. Ismey's position, 
 at his own, at the intercourse which had taken place between 
 them, the kindnesses which now jangled about him like chains. 
 No, he had not exaggerated. He felt that if he had to write 
 to Mrs. Ismey again now he would write the same letter. His 
 feelings stood. But he had a great fear that she would hate 
 him. And if she hated him it seemed to him that his world 
 would crumble about his feet. For even what he had done for 
 her, and the anger he felt against himself for having done it, 
 seemed to draw him towards her, to strengthen the strands of 
 their friendship. 
 
 She did not answer his letter, but two days afterwards she 
 returned from Paris. She had been away just thirteen days. 
 Almost directly she arrived she sent a brief note to Felix 
 asking him to come and see her. When he read it and knew 
 that she was in Green Street, close to him, that he had only to 
 take a cab and he would be actually with her in a few minutes, 
 he felt almost bewildered. How would she greet him ? Her 
 note gave no indication of her feelings towards him. It was 
 signed V. I, He turned it over in his hand, threw it down, and 
 started for Green Street. 
 
 He fancied that the man-servant who let him in looked at 
 him curiously, and that a faint smile dawned for a moment on 
 his usually well-governed lips. Did he know of all that had 
 been happening ? Of course not. And yet, as Felix mounted 
 the stairs, the horrible idea came to him for the first time that 
 Mrs. Ismey was to a certain extent in the power of this man, of 
 all her servants. There was not one in her household who did 
 not know what her husband was not to know, that she had been 
 absent from home while he had been away. How abominable 
 that was. 
 
 When he came into the drawing-room Mrs. Ismey was there, 
 lying down on a sofa in a shadowy corner. Only one electric 
 light was burning on the piano. Felix had never before seen 
 the room so dark. As the man-servant went out he came up 
 to the sofa nervously. She remained lying down. She had on 
 a red dress. He supposed it was a tea-gown. It was long and 
 flowing and did not define the figure, and he thought that kind
 
 FELIX 287 
 
 of dress, so loosely made, gave to the wearer of it the look of 
 an invalid. Pillows were banked up behind her head. Even 
 when he came close to her he could not see her with real dis- 
 tinctness. The room was too dark. Some strong perfume 
 floated about her. It was delicious but almost stifling. 
 
 ' You see I have obeyed,' she said, holding out her hand. 
 
 He took it, and sat down on a low chair beside the sofa. 
 
 ' Obeyed ? ' he asked. ' But — what do you mean ? ' 
 
 ' I have come back.' 
 
 Her voice sounded thin and exhausted. There was no 
 resonance in its timbre. It was husky. 
 
 ' Yes, but ' 
 
 ' Well, didn't you tell me to come back ? Have you for- 
 gotten that letter you wrote already ? ' 
 
 He looked more closely into her face to see whether she was 
 angry. He could not tell by her voice. That only sounded 
 tired, thoroughly tired out. 
 
 'But weren't you coming?' he asked. 'Weren't you coming 
 anyhow? ' 
 
 Even her face did not tell him what he wished to know. 
 Something — the shadow on it, perhaps, or the way her hair was 
 done, more loosely, more untidily than usual — made it look 
 haggard and drawn and old. Yet there was colour in her 
 cheeks, colour that was feverish, he thought, almost artificial in 
 its brightness. 
 
 ' No, But for your letter I should have stayed on, I should 
 have struggled on to the bitter end, till I had to come back to 
 meet Francis.' 
 
 ' But then she — Lady Caroline isn't ' 
 
 He hardly liked to speak of her, and brought out the words 
 falteringly as if he were speaking of a great criminal. 
 
 'I don't know. I don't believe so. And now I hardly seem 
 to care. Your letter was very cruel, but it made me look the 
 truth in the face and feel ashamed. You are right. I ought 
 never to have gone. I ought never to have put my friend 
 before my husband. But I was carried away. You don't 
 know — no man can ever know — how we women are the slaves 
 of our affections. No man is. A man can always stop and 
 think a thing out. But we pay, we pay ! ' 
 
 She moved restlessly on the sofa, with a peculiar, abrupt 
 restlessness almost as marked and odd as that of a child. It 
 seemed to indicate not merely a mind, but also a body intensely 
 ill at ease. 
 
 ' I say, you aren't ill, arc you ? ' Felix said abruptly.
 
 288 FELIX 
 
 '111? No! What makes you think so?' 
 
 She turned as if to approach her face to his, but then 
 checked herself and drew a little further away. 
 
 ' I don't know. I 'm glad you aren't.' 
 
 'I 'm not ill, that is, I haven't caught anything,' she went on, 
 with a little bitter laugh. ' But you can hardly expect me to 
 feel robust after all I 've been through. I 'm not made of iron.' 
 
 Her words, and the way she spoke them, made him feel 
 suddenly that he had been as cruel as if he had struck her. 
 
 'Oil do, please, forgive me,' he exclaimed. 
 
 He put out his hand nervously, yet impulsively, and laid it 
 on the edge of the sofa just touching her dress. 
 
 ' It is good of you to take any notice of my letter and not to 
 be angry with me. After it had gone I was awfully afraid. I 
 thought — I didn't know — I thought perhaps you'd never speak 
 to me again.' 
 
 'And if I hadn't?' 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 'Would you have cared?' 
 
 After a silence she heard him say, in an odd, cold voice : 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 His face was hot, his whole body was hot when he said that. 
 He was very glad now that the room was so dark. She said 
 nothing, but again moved on her pillows, ungovernably, as if she 
 had felt something run over her. When she was still, he said : 
 
 ' I couldn't go on with it, I simply couldn't. So I had to 
 tell you. I wrote rather in a hurry. I 'm afraid perhaps I 
 put it rudely.' 
 
 'You just put the truth and it looked just what it was — 
 ugly. It 's the first time I 've ever acted such a hideous lie, 
 and it shall be the last. But sometimes — d' you know sometimes 
 I think that even my moral sense will be sapped, is sapped 
 already by all I have had to see and know.' 
 
 She turned towards him now, lifted herself up, and rested 
 her cheek on her hand, supporting herself on her elbow. 
 
 ' If you knew all I think you would forgive me,' she said. 
 
 ' But I — there 's nothing for me to forgive. And besides 
 you did it from the noblest motive.' 
 
 ' Yes, the motive was good. After all, Carrie has been a 
 friend to me in many ways.' 
 
 After a little pause, during which she kept her eyes on him 
 as if she were considering narrowly whether to say something 
 to him or not, she went on, in a voice which suddenly sounded 
 less tired:
 
 FELIX 289 
 
 'You have no idea how morpliia dominates her. Till I went 
 with her to Paris even I did not know.' 
 
 ' But tell me something about it. What do they do?' 
 
 He thought her face looked brighter in the shadow, and 
 guessed that the idea of being able to speak frankly to some 
 one was a relief to her mind. 
 
 'It's extraordinary,' she exclaimed, with something like 
 vivacity. ' You will hardly believe it if I tell you. But this 
 morphia craze is spread secretly all through modern society. 
 Dozens of well-known London women could no more get on 
 without their piqure than you and I without our cigarette or 
 our cup of tea. And in Paris it 's ten times worse.' 
 
 'I've seen things about it sometimes in the papers,' said 
 Felix. 
 
 ' The morphia habit is far more prevalent even than they 
 say. Apparently people begin to inject either because they're 
 bored or miserable, or because they feel over-tired, or out of 
 sheer curiosity. Carrie confessed to me that she did it simply 
 to know what the feeling was like, whether she would have 
 delicious dreams. She wanted to experience what the German 
 doctors call Eiiphorie.'' 
 
 'What's that exactly?' asked Felix, deeply interested. 
 
 ^ Bien-etre. We all want to experience that, don't we?' 
 Again she made a violent movement. A sort of shudder ran 
 through her body. 
 
 'Yes, I suppose so. But when she began did she have 
 dreams ? Was she happy ? ' 
 
 ' Surely the far door is open,' Mrs. Ismey said. 
 
 Felix was surprised by the abruptness of the remark. 
 
 'I don't think so.' 
 
 'I seem to feel a draught. Just go and see, will you?' 
 
 Felix got up, traversed the long room and turned the corner 
 into the second drawing-room. The door was shut. He came 
 back. 
 
 'No, it isn't open,' he said. 
 
 ' How odd. I certainly felt a draught. I 'm so sorry.' 
 
 ' Was that why you shivered ? ' 
 
 ' Did I shiver ? ' she said. 
 
 There was a sort of exquisitely contented surprise in her voice. 
 
 'But surely you knew you did?' he said. 
 
 'No. I'm quite warm now. It's comfy in here, isn't it? 
 Just you and I together.' 
 
 Felix was infected by the lazy serenity with which she spoke. 
 He looked round the room. It was deliciously pretty in the
 
 290 FELIX 
 
 faint light. In the distance the fire danced, lighting up the 
 soft, warm hues of the wood with which the walls were lined, 
 the shot silk above it. The heavy, pale-yellow curtains shut 
 out London, the dark streets, the cold. He looked at her as 
 she lay back on the great sofa against the pile of cushions and 
 wondered why, when he came in, he had thought she looked 
 old. There must have been some odd, disfiguring shadow across 
 her face, for now it seemed to him quite childish. Yes, it was 
 like the face of a happy child. 
 
 'Yes, it's splendid being here with you,' he said, drawing a 
 little closer to her without knowing he did so. ^ Bien-eire 
 for me.' 
 
 ^ Euphorie, bien-etre,'' she said, with a sort of almost drowsy, 
 joyous languor. 'We all seek that here in the world in our 
 different ways. Poor old Carrie sought it in that way, through 
 \ht ptqureJ 
 
 ' And did she have it ? ' 
 
 'Oh yes. Carrie has had intense pleasure. She's often 
 described it to me. The first time she made a piqure she 
 injected a demi-centigramme.' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey lifted up her arms and clasped her hands on the 
 cushions under her head. 
 
 ' They say that as a rule after the first injection people suffer, 
 that they only begin to feel the Euphone after several injections. 
 But Carrie felt it after the very first.' 
 
 ' What was it like exactly? Did she tell you ? ' 
 
 The faint light, the strong perfume that floated round Mrs. 
 Ismey, and this conversation, with its mingling of horror 
 and unnatural happiness, woke up all the imagination, all the 
 curiosity, even much of the poetry in Felix. 
 
 'She felt an exquisite languor, she told me, as if she lay in 
 a world all flooded with gold into which sorrow had never 
 entered. Just to lie still in such a world was Paradise, and 
 she wanted to lie there without making a movement or uttering 
 a sound through all eternity. That was her Euphorie, endless 
 repose with endless, calm consciousness. Artivities seemed 
 ridiculous. And so they are. She had untroubled peace.' 
 
 ' And did it last long ? ' 
 
 'For some hours at first.' 
 
 *But now ' 
 
 'Oh now, it's quite different. A demi-centigramme would 
 have no effect on her at all. I should think not ! ' 
 
 She laughed, and her laugh sounded almost joyous. 
 
 * D'you know where I found her one day in Paris ?' she said.
 
 FELIX 291 
 
 «No. Where?' 
 
 *In the house of a morphineuse? 
 
 ' A tnorphifieuse ? ' 
 
 'Yes. You have no idea what a rage for morphia there is 
 in Paris. I didn't know till I went there this time with Carrie.' 
 
 'But didn't you go because she could be cured in Paiis?' 
 
 'Yes, of course. Barreille, the man for that sort of thing, 
 practises there. But he practises in Paris because Paris is the 
 centre of the cult.' 
 
 ' How horrible ! ' said Felix. ' A cult for m.orphia ! ' 
 
 'Yes, isn't it. Everything that can tempt the vwrphinomane 
 is to be found in Paris. The morphineuse is an old woman who 
 makes a profession of injecting morphia into the smart women 
 and the demi-mofidaines who frequent her house. These 
 morphineiises are, some of them, very rich. The one Carrie 
 went to is.' 
 
 ' But how did you find out she had gone? Did she tell you ?' 
 
 'No. If she had I should never have let her go. I found 
 it out through Alice.' 
 
 'Your maid !' said Felix, thinking of the quiet girl with the 
 emotional face whom he nad seen twice. 'Then she knows.' 
 
 ' She has to know. One day I was obliged to go out to the 
 dressmaker. I left Alice with Carrie. Barreille told me Carrie 
 was not to be left alone just then. He had seen her once. 
 While I was at the dressmaker's Alice arrived. She was in a 
 fearful state. She told me Carrie had insisted on leaving the 
 hotel directly I had gone. Alice accompanied her. They 
 drove to the house of this morphi7Kuse, and Carrie went in 
 leaving Alice in the coupe. Then Alice came to fetch me.' 
 
 'And you went?' 
 
 'At once.' 
 
 The lantruor was going out of Mrs. Ismey's voice. She began 
 to speak with animation, as if her story excited her. 
 
 ' We drove into a quarter of Paris I had never seen, a 
 horrible, dreary quarter beyond Montmartre, and came into a 
 dreadful-looking street — Alice had taken the address down — 
 and stopped before a court. Then we got out, walked into 
 the court and down a narrow, dark passage open to the air, 
 and came to a mean, little door. It was all very mysterious 
 and frightening, but it was exciting too. You can understand 
 that?' 
 
 'Rather!' said Felix. 
 
 'There was a cord hantiin^i beside the door. "Wc have to 
 pull that, ma'am," Alice said. I pulled it and heard a bell
 
 292 FELIX 
 
 ring inside the house. After a minute or two the door was 
 opened by a woman. She had a complexion just hke Carrie's, 
 and a black dress. No cap. She didn't look like a servant, 
 but more like a woman who shows you to your seat in a 
 theatre. "What do you want?" she said. I told her I wished 
 to come in. "Where's your billet d" entree V Of course I 
 hadn't one, and I was obliged to say so. She refused to let 
 us in.' 
 
 ' What did you do ? ' asked Felix eagerly. ' Weren't you 
 afraid ? ' 
 
 He felt passionately interested. 
 
 'No, not afraid. By that time I felt I could face anything 
 to get Carrie away. I was determined to get in. I took out 
 my purse. "No, no," the woman said. "If madame has no 
 billet d'entree madame cannot enter." " Do you think I am a 
 police-agent?" I asked. "Madame cannot enter!" repeated 
 the woman. She began to close the door, but I put in my 
 foot ' 
 
 ' You are plucky ! ' said Felix with enthusiasm. 
 
 He looked at her almost with amazement. It seemed 
 wonderful to him that the vvoman who lay there against the 
 pile of cushions, with her hand's clasped behind her shining 
 hair, and all the thousand pretty things of her home about 
 her, could show such determination, could penetrate into the 
 squalor of a low den of Paris, fearless of danger, heedless of 
 the possible horrors it concealed. 
 
 ' Well, how could I leave Carrie there ?' she said carelessly. 
 
 'And you got in ?' 
 
 'Yes. But I had to act a part.' 
 
 ♦What part?' 
 
 ' I had to pretend that Alice and I were clients as they call 
 them, that we had come to have injections.' 
 
 'You! How atrocious ! ' 
 
 ' It was the only way. I said I had a friend there. I gave 
 Carrie's name, and Alice told the woman that she had left 
 Carrie there. The woman went away, and after a few minutes 
 came back and let us in. We went up a lot of steep stairs. 
 They were very dark. Presently we got into a corridor. Alice 
 was awfully frightened, but I didn't care a bit. I was too 
 interested to see what it would be like. At the end of the 
 corridor there was a big, hideous room. This was what they 
 call the salle de reception. D' you know, it was like a sort of 
 dream there. This huge room was only lit by a great fire, 
 a great red fire burning at one end. There were heavy curtains
 
 FELIX 293 
 
 over the windows, and the only furniture was a number of broad 
 divans ranged all along the walls, which were covered with some 
 dingy paper with a horrid-looking pattern — snakes, or leaves 
 or something — I couldn't see properly. Quantities of great 
 cushions were scattered over these divans, and on them were 
 sitting and lying women — the morphinomanes. There must have 
 been eight or nine of them. Of course they were all different, 
 and yet, in a way, they were all alike. They were all alike 
 because they were all waiting to have the morphia put into 
 them.' 
 
 ' How disgusting ! ' exclaimed Felix. 
 
 'They were sitting or lying there almost like dead people, 
 staring at each other in the firelight with hollow, expressionless 
 eyes. Such eyes ! They seemed to be looking out of caverns 
 at something a very long way off. Two or three of these 
 women were trembling, almost as if they had convulsions. One 
 kept on opening and shutting her two hands as if she were 
 keeping time to music. Another was holding an unlit cigarette 
 between her teeth and stretching out her arms. There was 
 a girl in one corner crying dreadfully, almost howling. She 
 terrified Alice.' 
 
 'And you?' 
 
 'No, I wasn't a bit terrified.' 
 
 She spoke almost gaily, and with a sort of light-hearted 
 excitement. 
 
 ' I wonder you weren't,' Felix said, with an earnestness ot 
 surprise that seemed to strike her. 
 
 ' Of course I hated it,' she said. 'But it wouldn't be true to 
 say I was frightened. Once I saw the howling dervishes at 
 Cairo. Well, I felt just like when I saw them — as if it were a 
 sort of dreadful show.' 
 
 'I see.' 
 
 He began to understand. 
 
 'I believe you would have felt the same,' she added. 
 
 ' I dare say I should.' 
 
 'There was one woman who was beautifully dressed, a real 
 mondaine of Paris. She had torn open all the front of her 
 gown and — but I can't tell you everything.' 
 
 'No, no,' said Felix quickly. 'And Lady Caroline?' 
 
 'She was there, sitting by quite an old woman with white 
 hair. I went up to her. Alice wouldn't stir from the door. 
 She lost her head. I went to Carrie and asked her to come 
 away. I begged and prayed her to come. She wouldn't. The 
 other women took no notice of us. They were all looking
 
 294 FELIX 
 
 towards one side of the room where there was a door partly 
 covered with a curtain. I found out afterwards that this door 
 led into the room of the morphineuse. I made quite a scene 
 with Carrie, but it was all no use. She only pushed me away, 
 when I stood in front of her, and said, " Let me see the door, 
 will you ? " At last I was in despair, and I went back towards 
 Alice. I don't quite know what I meant to do. I think I 
 meant to make Alice try if she could persuade Carrie. But 
 there was no time, for just then the door of the morphineuse 
 opened.' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey paused. Felix could see that her eyes were 
 gleaming with excitement. As she went on with her story her 
 vivacity of manner had increased. She was sitting almost 
 upright against the cushions, and pressing them with her twc 
 hands. 
 
 ' A lot of light shone in all over the room, and a woman came 
 towards us. Oh, Felix, she looked so happy ! Perhaps it was 
 the contrast between her and all the other women that — no, it 
 wasn't, though — anywhere you would have been struck by her. 
 She walked as if she was on air, so easily and lightly, and she 
 looked as young as a schoolgirl. Her lips were bright red, and 
 her eyes were shining. But I had hardly time to see her, for 
 all the women sprang up from the divans like mad creatures, 
 and rushed towards the morphi?ieuse, who came to the threshold 
 of the room just then. They were all screaming to her to let 
 them come in next. They cried out, "It's my turn ! It's my 
 turn!" They even pushed against each other, and tried to 
 drag each other away so as to be first.' 
 
 ' Not Lady Caroline surely ! ' said Felix, scarcely able to 
 believe that she was speaking the truth. 
 
 'Yes, Carrie was one of the most violent.' 
 
 ' And the morphinetise — what was she like ? ' 
 
 ' She was a wrinkled old woman. She had a lamp in her 
 hand and a dirty shawl wrapped round her, and she stood 
 there looking after the woman who had just come out with a 
 smile, as if she was pleased at the result of what she had 
 done.' 
 
 'Old beast!' muttered Felix, under his breath. 
 
 'She didn't take the slightest notice of all the screaming, 
 hustling women at first, but when she did she chose Carrie.' 
 
 'And you couldn't do anything?' 
 
 ' I tried to. But if you had seen those women ! They were 
 ready to tear each other to pieces. I was frightened at last, 
 and i ran back to Alice. As the door of the morphineuse shut
 
 FELIX 295 
 
 I heard Carrie saying, "Three piqures, Madame Virginie, 
 
 three piqures. You know you ' and that was all. I 
 
 went down to the coupe and waited there. And Carrie came at 
 last.' 
 
 There was a long silence between them. Mrs. Ismey lay 
 back again. Her face was turned towards Felix. 
 
 'It's just like a nightmare,' he said at length. *If any one 
 but you ' 
 
 *You wouldn't believe it?' 
 
 *I don't think I could. It seems so impossible that — that 
 women who are ladies could ever be like that, unless they were 
 really mad. And they aren't mad. Why, I suppose if I were 
 to meet any of those women away from the morphineuse I should 
 never guess there was anything the matter with them.* 
 
 'Probably not.' 
 
 •Why do you smile?' 
 
 'I smile 1' she said. 'What do you mean? I didn't 
 smile.' 
 
 'Oh, I beg your pardon. It must have been the flicker of 
 the fire.' 
 
 'Yes. I am not inclined to smile over such horrors.' 
 
 She sighed heavily. 
 
 'And Lady Caroline has come back with you?' 
 
 'Yes. Barreille seems to have done her some good. She 
 has diminished the amount she injects. But it won't last. 
 The only real chance for her would be to be shut up. And 
 she'll never consent to that. Bareille told me she ought to go 
 into one of those homes. There are several. There's one at 
 Charenton and another at Ivry-sur-Seine. He told me all about 
 the treatment. It was very interesting.' 
 
 Felix had just been thinking how deeply interested she 
 evidently was in the horrible subject they were discussing. 
 But he understood her interest, for he shared it. Everything 
 that dominates has some fascination. He said so to her now, 
 moved, he did not know why, to explain her attitude of mind 
 and his to themselves. 
 
 'That's exactly it,' she answered eagerly. 'It would be 
 strange and almost unnatural if I were not interested in a thing 
 that has taken absolute possession of a woman so strong as 
 Carrie. She would sacrifice everything, love, honour, even a 
 life I believe, to obtain a supply of morphia if she were without 
 it. D'you know, if I were to try forcibly to keep her from it 
 I am sure she would kill me in order to get it.' 
 
 'But then she is mad.'
 
 296 FELIX 
 
 * No. You could not get a doctor to say so. Besides, really, 
 she isn't. You know she isn't.' 
 
 'She always seems to me clever and strong,' said Felix. 
 
 He was thinking of Lady Caroline as he had known her. It 
 was almost incredible to him that she could turn into one of the 
 furies at the house of the morphifieuse. 
 
 *I shall never, never be able to read people,' he added, in a 
 sort of almost despairing outburst. 'It does make life hateful 
 all these hidden things. It is as if we were always wandering 
 about in a London fog.' 
 
 'Ah, but some people let us understand them. Some people 
 want to be understood. You shouldn't say that.' 
 
 By the way she spoke he knew she alluded to herself and 
 him. 
 
 ' Do you really like me to understand you ? ' he said, almost 
 wistfully. 
 
 'You know I do. Haven't I confided in you?' 
 
 * Yes. That is true. And yet ' 
 
 ' What more can I do ? ' 
 
 'There are things — will you let me ask you something?' 
 
 ♦Yes.' 
 
 ♦Why didn't you wish me to go into your husband's office?' 
 
 ♦I didn't me n to tell you, but you have done so much for 
 me that I owe it to you now. It was an utterly selfish motive. 
 I thought — I don't know why, for I scarcely knew you — but I 
 thought some day I should want a friend, a friend who would 
 be absolutely free to help me. I required help, and there was 
 something about you, something good and straight and manly — 
 I don't know. We women don't reason when we choose. We 
 just see and choose. I chose you. Are you angry ? ' 
 
 ' Angry ! ' he said. 
 
 He could not have spoken a second word at that moment. 
 He clasped his hot hands tightly together on his knees. 
 
 'And because I chose you I wanted to keep you free. If 
 you had been in my husband's office you would have been 
 bound to him, to a certain extent. I felt your sense of honour. 
 They say women haven't got any.' 
 
 'That isn't true,' he said quickly and almost hotly. 
 
 'I hope not. At any rate, honour or not, what I felt was that 
 if you had accepted a sort of career at my husband's hands, you 
 could never have taken Carrie's side if it came to a question of 
 helping me for her — as you did with those letters. Oh, I'm a 
 fool, I 'm a fool, and perhaps I 'm wicked. But I knew and 
 loved Carrie before I ever saw my husband. It 's abominable,
 
 FELIX 297 
 
 but I can't help putting her first somethnes, and all the 
 more because he's as straight as a die and she's all wrong. 
 One seems to owe more somehow to the sinner. You '11 
 hate me.' 
 
 'Hate you!' he said. 
 
 As he spoke he had a feeling as if a flame went over his body 
 seeking the way to his heart 
 
 It found the way.
 
 CHAPTER XXIIl 
 
 WHEN Felix left Green Street that evening he felt as if he 
 had been baptized into manhood. Hitherto, perhaps, 
 he had played at being a man. He had said to himself that he 
 was a man. But he had said it with a lurking doubt. When, 
 at La Maison des Alouettes, he finished reading the Comedie 
 Humaine he gloried in his knowledge, putting it in the place of 
 experience. He exulted. That was a boy's act. He knew 
 that now. He laughed at himself as he went home. He 
 remembered the days in the chapel, his thoughts there, his 
 dissection of Grand'mere, his emotion at the sound of the 
 Angelus bell. What a boy he was then. Perhaps even about 
 Grand'mere he had been wrong. But no. There are in the 
 world some sweet, simple, transparent souls, with depths per- 
 haps, but depths so calm, so serenely clear that the gaze can 
 plumb them as it can plumb the depths of the Ionian Sea near 
 shore in still weather. Thank God for such souls. Grand'mere, 
 his mother, Margot — he thought of them that night with a 
 certain gratitude. 
 
 Felix was strong and still that night and very grave. Mrs. 
 Ismey had found him good, straight, manly. She, so full of 
 instinct, had, when she first saw him, chosen him as the man 
 among men upon whom she could rely. She had asked a 
 sacrifice of him to keep hmi her friend without dishonour. He 
 told himself that. He did not say to himself with as little dis- 
 honour as possible. Her choice, the sacrifice he had made, her 
 return, the revelation which had followed it, all these things had 
 gone to the making of the man whose name was Felix. But the 
 baptism — that was with fire. 
 
 In the moment of Mrs. Ismey's taking possession of him, 
 coming into her kingdom of him, Felix felt that he took posses- 
 sion of himself, came into his kingdom of himself. It was a 
 tremendous sensation. He did not analyse it much. He did 
 not think very much just then. But as the athlete, at the end 
 of a long course of training, feels the iron of his muscles, 
 Felix mentally felt the iron of his manhood. And he said to 
 
 298
 
 FELIX 299 
 
 himself with some wonder, but not with wonder only, 'This 
 is I.' 
 
 Mrs. Ismey, with the supreme cleverness that belongs to 
 many women when they deal with human relations, taught him 
 to love her face by telling him to look at his own. It was the 
 subtlest touch upon the string of vanity. 
 
 After that night, when other days dawned with all their sounds 
 of work and pleasure, Felix knew more than that he had been 
 baptized a man. The flame found its way to his heart and he 
 saw it burning there without shame. He felt that he loved Mrs. 
 Ismey, but he had no consciousness of anything disgraceful in 
 such a love. He did not even go so far as to mention to him- 
 self any such word as Platonic, or to call up the figure of Mr. 
 Ismey, either in an enemy's pose, or in the drearier attitude of 
 one feebly acquiescent in an undignified situation. 
 
 Whether Mrs. Ismey knew of his love or not he did not at 
 first ask himself. Probably he felt sure that she did know. It 
 would have been strange if she, who divined so often his slightest 
 thoughts, had remained in doubt about a feeling connected with 
 herself which governed him. For he was governed. The 
 secret impetuosity, from which had sprung the ardours and the 
 melancholies of the child, the instinct of worship which had 
 caused the little boy to imitate the bodily afflictions of others, 
 and to adore that which was peculiar and not wholly natural, 
 without realising its peculiarity, its distance from nature, these 
 dominant traits in his character now asserted themselves as they 
 had never asserted themselves before. Mrs. Ismey was the first 
 woman outside of his family-circle who had treated him as a 
 man, who had clung to him in difficulties, confided in him, 
 relied on him. Even without her charm her action might have 
 bound him to her. With it there was steel in the strands. 
 
 Having given up one thing for her, the place in the office of 
 Ismey and Co., Felix woke to the lust of self-sacrifice. He loved 
 her, he told himself, for all she had done, was doing for Lady 
 Caroline. And he — it was the child's trait repeated with a 
 difference in the youth — longed to imitate her efforts of un- 
 selfishness. But at first the lust went almost unfed. Strangely 
 enough it was his mother who made the sacrifice he longed to 
 offer up on his own account. That hundred pounds, not paid 
 back on the Saturday, was not paid back at all. For a week or 
 two after she returned from Paris Mrs. Ismey forgot to mention 
 it. Felix remembered it, because he renicnibered his promise 
 to repay his mother on a certain day, and found himself in a 
 difficulty. After the incident of the telegram, and still more
 
 300 FELIX 
 
 now that he had become conscious of all he felt for Mrs. Ismey, 
 any discussion between his mother and him with regard to the 
 money would be intolerable. For this reason above all he 
 longed to pay it back. He could not. And this fact kept him 
 from going home. He said to himself that he could not endure 
 to go home till the money was paid, till the score was clear. 
 His mother would not speak of the matter, probably, but she 
 would be thinking of it, wondering about it, remembering that 
 telegram signed with Mrs. Ismey's Christian name. He grew hot 
 at the thought. Already, perhaps, his mother was imagining, 
 certainly she must be imagining all sorts of things about himself 
 and Mrs. Ismey. That cursed telegram ! It and its result 
 seemed to vulgarise the great friendship which was doing so 
 much for him. Again and again, in the light of his new know- 
 ledge of himself, Felix rehearsed that horrible little scene in the 
 drawing-room of Hill House when Mrs. Wilding had warned him 
 against women. Women ! She must have meant Mrs. Ismey. 
 And it was she, not he really, who had given Mrs. Ismey that 
 money. He would be twenty-one in January. Then, if Mrs. 
 Ismey had not returned it before, he could pay it back at once. 
 
 But meanwhile ? Even if he saved out of his allowance it 
 
 would be utterly impossible to get such a sum together before 
 he came of age. He had to break his word to his mother. 
 That was bad enough. But he had also to write and apologise 
 for breaking it. He did so. While he wrote his cheeks burned, 
 and he was conscious of a sensation of anger against his mother. 
 The letter was brief, the allusion to the money very brief. He 
 simply said he was ' most awfully sorry,' that he had felt abso- 
 lutely certain of paying the money back on the Saturday, and 
 that he hoped to do so almost at once. His mother's reply 
 made him very much ashamed of that unreasonable sensation of 
 anger. She wrote that the money was really his and that there 
 was no necessity to think any more about it. She did not ask him 
 when he was coming home. During these weeks before Christ- 
 mas he began to notice that there was a great lack of vivacity 
 in her letters. She wrote very often, generally three times a 
 week, but she seemed to have little to say, and what she had to 
 say was expressed without any vigour. The letters were tired 
 letters without being actually sad. She alluded to the persistent 
 blackness of the weather, said she could get out very Httle, that 
 it was cold for driving, and so muddy in the lanes that it was 
 very fatiguing to walk. She had a cough. Once when she 
 wrote she had been in bed for two days. She thought she had 
 caught a chill coming from church one Sunday afternoon.
 
 FELIX 301 
 
 Felix hoped she was not going to become a malade imaginaire. 
 He urged hei in his letters not to coddle herself, but to get out 
 and take plenty of air and exercise. 'That's what you want,' 
 he wrote. 'You wrap up far too much and shut yourself in- 
 doors. No one can feel strong if they lead an unwholesome 
 life.' And as he wrote he wished he could give everybody 
 plenty of common-sense. At such moments he knew he was so 
 full of it. ' Don't be always on the sofa ! ' was another of his 
 maxims for home consumption. 'There's nothing on earth so 
 enervating as perpetually lying down on a sofa.' 
 
 When he went to call on Mrs. Ismey he nearly always found 
 her stretched on the big sofa in the pretty room in Green Street. 
 But that was quite different. The attitude suited her. Her 
 shining hair looked deliciously alive against the pale cushions 
 with their attenuated colours. Felix had only once seen her 
 walking out of doors. She was not one of the athletic sister- 
 hood. She never went to Prince's except now and then to sit 
 at a tea-table and look on at tlie skaters. She never rode or 
 danced, or in fact made any bodily exertion as far as he knew. 
 It never occurred to him that she ought to, or that she was 
 neglecting one, and an admirable side of life. He had always 
 been accustomed to see her in a pretty room, surrounded by 
 flowers, books, music, tea-cups. So, while he almost hotly 
 advised his mother to take plenty of exercise in the raw air of 
 the muddy country lanes round Hill House, he loved to find 
 Mrs. Ismey reposing in her dimly lit drawing-room, which was 
 always kept very warm and very scented. 
 
 One day she alluded to the money which had not been paid 
 back. She had just been speaking of Lady Caroline, and of the 
 terrible confusion into which those who took drugs always 
 allowed their affairs to get. He guessed why, immediately 
 afterwards, she thought of the cheque he had given her. 
 
 ' I am so ashamed,' she said, 'about that money. Every day 
 I have expected to give it you, and every day ' 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 'Well, if I could tell you all I don't think you would blame 
 me. I dare say you are surprised, seeing how we live, that I 
 should be unable to find a hundred pounds, but ' 
 
 ' Don't, don't explain!' he exclaimed. 'I understand perfectly.' 
 
 'No, but you ought to know more. It isn't fair. I feel 
 sometimes as if I were a sort of cheat when you are sitting here, 
 when you see all these flowers and new books. You must say 
 to yourself: "If she liked she could pay me.'" 
 
 'No, never.'
 
 302 FELIX 
 
 'Ah, but you are chivalrous, the most chivalrous man I ever 
 met. The truth is, it is Francis who is rich, and — well, if I want 
 money I have to explain why I want it. I can't tell lies easily. 
 If I could I should have a much better time. I wanted that 
 hundred pounds to do something he would never have con- 
 sented to. As I wouldn't tell him a lie I couldn't ask him. 
 But sometimes now I think there would have been less wicked- 
 ness in telling a lie to Francis than in breaking a promise to you.' 
 
 Tears suddenly came into her eyes. 
 
 *I do hate to seem to play you false,' she said. 'It makes 
 me feel so little and mean.' 
 
 ' But you know I understand about the money. You must 
 know that,' he said, 
 
 ' I don't wish you to understand about it,' she said. ' I am 
 very extravagant.' 
 
 He laughed. He knew so well she was playing a comedy of 
 selfishness for his benefit to conceal her virtue which he adored. 
 She could read him. He began to read her. It seemed to him 
 that since the evening when they met after her return from Paris 
 she was very much clearer to him. The flame in his heart lit up 
 the places which had been so dark. She was less of an enigma 
 than she had been, and, because he felt that, he was far more 
 at ease with her. But he was not without anxieties on her account. 
 
 The boy dawning into a man among all the sensations in the 
 armoury of the soul loves most the protective. Felix felt that 
 since he was Mrs. Ismey's greatest friend and confidant he 
 ought to protect her if, and when, she required protection; and 
 heoften felt, during those weeks between her return from Paris 
 and Christmas, that she did require protection. Her readiness 
 for self-sacrifice in regard to Lady Caroline was too great. In 
 this friendship her impulsiveness broke all bounds. 
 
 Since he knew that he loved her he became more observant, 
 not less, of her. That was absolutely characteristic of him. 
 She noticed the change. 
 
 'You are always watching me,' she said to him one day, 
 almost uneasily he thought. 
 
 He looked rather uncomfortable. It was quite true, but he 
 had not meant that she should see it. 
 
 * Well,' she went on. ' You don't deny it ! ' 
 
 * I can't,' he said. ' Are you angry with me ? * 
 
 *No. But why do you watch me? Is there anything odd 
 about me ? ' 
 
 * Odd — how do you mean ? You are not like other people.' 
 *Yes, I am.'
 
 FELIX 803 
 
 She really spoke with some irritation. 
 
 'Why, what difference is there between me and other women?* 
 she went on. 
 
 ' I think you are different in — oh, in ever so many ways.* 
 
 That was true. He did find her strange. Her moods altered 
 rapidly and almost inexplicably. Sometimes he found her dull, 
 weary, almost stupid, unable to be interested in anything, or to 
 pursue any topic of conversation. She would lie on the sofa, 
 while he sat by her, staring into vacancy with eyes devoid of 
 expression. If she talked she glanced aimlessly from one 
 subject to another. If he talked she would sometimes interrupt 
 him with mal-a-propos remarks. Or she would repeat the same 
 remark again and again, each time apparently quite unconscious 
 that she had made it before. He guessed then that she was 
 painfully preoccupied with Lady Caroline's condition ; that her 
 friend had startled or disgusted her by some fresh outbreak or 
 vagary of a disordered mind. Once or twice he had asked her 
 if it were not so, and she had been obliged to acknowledge the 
 accuracy of his suspicions. But there were other moments 
 when she was startlingly gay and brilliant, full of animal spirits 
 and of almost rollicking merriment. She showed then extreme 
 interest in every subject which they discussed. His slightest 
 remark grasped her attention or appealed to her imagination. 
 She was the most perfect listener in the world and, he thought, 
 the most delightful talker, by turns. Any one who sat with her 
 at such moments would have pronounced her an optimist of the 
 most light-hearted type. She saw everything en rose, was con- 
 fident that the sorrows of the world were only for the moment, 
 that black would fade out of life, that everything which seemed 
 crooked would be straight in the end. Even Felix could not 
 go as far as she went into the regions of delicious certainty, of 
 vivacious faith in the destniy of happiness which awaited the 
 individual and the race. Then he knew that she had a hope of 
 Lady Caroline's salvation. And her ajjpearance altered in the 
 same way, and almost as markedly as her moods. Sometimes 
 she looked ill, faded. Her skin was dry and stretched. Her 
 eyes seemed to Felix to be shrivelled in her head. They looked 
 smaller than usual and fainter in colour. The fires in them 
 were extinguished. There were tiny lines about them and about 
 her mouth, the lips of which were parched and pale. At other 
 times she was radiant. He seemed to be sitting with a girl, 
 fresh, dewy, with sparkling eyes and that definite expression 
 of youth about the mouth which art fails to imitate with all 
 its ingenuities. Then her lovely hair, which, he fancied,
 
 so 4 FELIX 
 
 grew more thickly every day upon her beautifully shaped, small 
 head, was a perfect frame to her face. But wh^^n she looked 
 ill there was something strange, even something horrible in 
 its abundance, its individuality, as if it stood aloof from 
 her, refusing to have part or lot in the transformations she 
 underwent. 
 
 These changes, of which he knew he understood very well 
 the cause, awoke in Felix that protective instinct so cherished 
 by youth on the verge of manhood, and also another feeling 
 akm to jealousy. Mrs. Ismey, in her unselfishness and her 
 sensitiveness, allowed herself to be really at the mercy of Lady 
 Caroline. That was what Felix felt, what he began internally 
 to protest against, for her sake and — perhaps, but he did not 
 say so to himself — for his own. 
 
 He had seen nothing of Lady Caroline since she had come 
 back from Paris. Now that he knew so much about her a 
 sort of horror of her had taken possession of him. Mrs. Ismey 
 did not try to dissipate it. He recognised that she was certain 
 of the uselessness of any such attempt on her part. 
 
 'I think if Lady Caroline asks me to go to see her I'll 
 make some excuse,' he had said to her. 
 
 ' If you really feel like that ! ' was all she answered. 
 
 But he knew she understood. Lady Caroline sent him two 
 invitations. He pleaded other engagements, left his card at 
 her door, and there was an end of the matter. He did not 
 meet her at Mrs. Ismey's, and guessed that Mrs. Ismey arranged 
 matters so that he should not. It was an evidence of her 
 delicacy of feeling. Besides the repugnance which he felt 
 towards Lady Caroline, there was something else which pre- 
 vented him from wishing to meet her. It seemed to him that 
 he knew too much about her, that to be with her now would be 
 almost an indecency, to accept her hospitality a sort of outrage. 
 He could not regret knowing what he did, since without such 
 knowledge he could not know Mrs. Ismey rightly ; but he could 
 keep away from her. She was far too careless a woman to 
 bother about any one, and when one day Mrs. Ismey said to 
 him, ' I believe Carrie 's forgotten your existence,' Felix was not 
 at all surprised. 
 
 ' I sometimes wish you had forgotten hers,' he said. 
 
 As usual she was lying down on the sofa. Felix had called, 
 as he often did, after leaving Sam's school. To-day she was 
 looking ill and haggard, and was in melancholy spirits. 
 
 •Why?' she asked, without curiosity. 
 
 * Because I think you are too much her slave.'
 
 FELIX 805 
 
 His blunt remark seemed momentarily to rouse her, even to 
 startle her. 
 
 ' I — Carrie's slave ! ' she said, almost as if she were alarmed. 
 ' I ! What nonsense ! ' 
 
 She began to laugh rather unnaturally. 
 
 'Through your affection for her, I mean,' Felix went on. 
 
 As he looked at Mrs. Ismey's white, weary face and hollow 
 eyes the anger and jealousy of Lady Caroline, which had 
 been smouldering in him, began to glow. 
 
 'You are so wrapped up in her that everything she does 
 affects you, not only your spirits but even your health. Vour 
 unselfishness is splendid, I know. Don't think I don't feel 
 that. But — I say, don't be angry with me — unselfishness in 
 regard to her may be selfishness in regard to others.' 
 
 ' What do you mean ? What others ? ' 
 
 The animation had died out of her face and manner already. 
 
 'Well, your husband, for instance,' said Felix, a little dis- 
 ingenuously. He paused, and then added, ' And perhaps your 
 other friends.' 
 
 'Oh.' 
 
 She spoke the word so dully that he wondered if she had 
 heard what he had said. He began to hate Lady Caroline. 
 
 'You don't care what I sa\ !' he exclaimed. 'You don't 
 care for anything when you are thinking about her. Some day 
 you'll make me feel about Lady Caroline as — as your husband 
 feels.' 
 
 'I can't help it if you do,' she replied, still in the same dry 
 and feeble voice. ' What does it matter ? What does anything 
 matter? ' 
 
 He looked at her curiously. Although he had often been 
 struck by her violent alternations of mood and aj)pearance he 
 did not remember ever to have seen her look so haggard, so 
 finished, as she looked this evening. 
 
 ' You are ill,' he said anxiously. 
 
 'No.' 
 
 She moved on the sofa. He saw a glint of light on some 
 small object which slipped from her dic^s and fell on to the 
 floor. 
 
 • You 've dropped something,' he said, bending down to pick 
 it up. 
 
 Suddenly she showed animation. She sat up quickly. 
 
 'What?' 
 
 She began to feel in the front of her dress. 
 
 'It's only a cigarette-case. Lut what a beauty.* 
 U
 
 306 FELIX 
 
 ' Give it me,' she said, taking, almost snatching it from him. 
 'You might let me look at it for a minute,' he said. 
 She seemed to recover herself. 
 ' I 'm nervous to-day,' she said. 'Here.' 
 And she held it out to him, but with a sort of reluctance, 
 he thought. 
 
 ' Why, how heavy it is,' he said, weighing it in his hand. 
 It was made of gold with a raised gold monogram. 
 ' Awfully heavy,' he repeated. 
 
 * Yes, really it is, I scarcely ever use it.' 
 
 She held out her hand for it. He gave it to her. 
 
 ' I keep it here,' she added. 
 
 She had hanging at her side a gold chatelaine, and now she 
 fastened the cigarette-case on to a gold chain. 
 
 ' I didn't know you had that,' he said. 
 
 'Oh, I have lots of idiotic things. Every woman has,' she 
 answered. 'We are all of us babies.' 
 
 * I believe Lady Caroline gave it you,' he said slowly. 
 ' Why do you think so ? ' 
 
 'I don't know. Did she?' 
 
 * Yes, she did. She got it in Berlin. The Germans are fright- 
 fully clever in making things of that kind.' 
 
 Felix was silent. He did not know why, but this small, trifling 
 incident made him feel miserable and hopeless. Afterwards he 
 supposed that it was the thought of Lady Caroline which had 
 affected him. He longed to tear the pretty gold case off Mrs. 
 Ismey's chatelaine. 
 
 ' I must go now,' he said. 
 
 And he got up and went. She did not try to keep him. That 
 night he understood something of Mr. Ismey's melancholy and 
 even bitterness. Mr. Ismey had returned from abroad, and 
 Felix occasionally met him, but not very often. He was much 
 occupied by his great business. When they did meet, he was 
 always very kind, but Felix was conscious of a deep reserve in 
 his kindness, and never had the sensation of knowing what he 
 was really like. Perhaps it was Felix's imagination, but ever 
 since he had become the great friend of Mrs. Ismey he had 
 fancied a barrier rising between him and her husband. This 
 was strange because he was utterly free from any sense of guilt 
 in his affection. His love for Mrs. Ismey was of such a nature 
 that had her husband guessed it he might well have loved Felix 
 for it. Felix did not understand why, but there were moments 
 in which he felt as if Mr. Ismey, in some surreptitious, hidden, 
 complex way, was the enemy of his wife. Mrs. Ismey had never
 
 FELIX 807 
 
 hinted that it was so. At least Felix could not remember that she 
 had. She seldom talked about Francis, and when she did, it was 
 generally in connection with Lady Caroline. INIr. Ismey had 
 never repeated the touch of unreserve, almost of violence, which 
 had startled Felix in the ofifice. But Felix never forgot it. Since 
 Mrs. Ismey had told him of her husband's hatred of Lady 
 Caroline, he knew that he ought to accept that — if he were 
 simply reasonable — as an explanation of the incident. Somehow 
 it did not seem explanation enough. That Mr. Ismey was fond 
 of his wife Felix felt convinced, that he was unhappy in his life 
 was plain to Felix. His eyes spoke and his whole expression. 
 Yet Mrs. Ismey always talked as if she were fond of him. Was 
 Lady Caroline the whole cause of the unhappiness? Felix 
 began to think of her, with his usual imaginative exaggera- 
 tion, as a black figure scattering dust and ashes upon the hearts 
 of men. 
 
 Yet he did understand, to some extent, Mr. Ismey's 
 melancholy and bitterness, for if he, only a friend, was often 
 painfully conscious of Mrs. Ismey's obsession by Lady Caroline's 
 affliction, which obsession seemed, at moments, to put her into 
 a region where no love, no sympathy could approach to affect 
 her, how far more painfully conscious of it must a husband be. 
 
 The season before Christmas in London is a season of small 
 dinners. The Ismeys, who knew an immense number of the 
 clever and intellectual set, the set which is interested in literary 
 affairs, and in all matters connected with intellectual progress, 
 in new ideas, new mental departures — if there are such depar- 
 tures — dined out perpetually. And sometimes Mrs. Ismey, 
 when Felix found her in one of her depressed and exhausted 
 moods, attributed her condition to e7iiitii brought on by her 
 social obligations. 
 
 ' One always has to be on the high horse,' she said one day, 
 'up to the mark with all these people. They are so pre- 
 posterously clever that they make life a burden. I often wish 
 Francis were a nobody instead of a great publisher. It bores 
 me to dine out so much. I would far rather go to a music-hall 
 with you. To struggle with such a crowd of great editors, 
 authors, and critics is like endeavouring to negotiate Niagara in 
 a pierced barrel.' 
 
 * You are equal to anything ! ' he said. 
 
 He had a profound belief in the quickness of her intellect, 
 when she was not brooding over Lady Caroline's disordered 
 affairs. Then she showed — not stupidity, never that — but a 
 lack of continuity of mind, a lack of concentration and of
 
 308 FELIX 
 
 interests which were certainly trying. He wondered whether 
 she only allowed him to notice this because he was so intimate 
 with her, or whether other people, people she met in society, 
 observed it sometimes too. If so, not knowing as he did the 
 reason for it, they must surely be surprised and confused by it. 
 
 He had been introduced to some of her acquaintances, 
 but he only knew them slightly, and he would never have 
 dreamed of talking her over with them even had he known 
 them well. 
 
 In December, not long before Christmas, the Ismeys gave a 
 big reception after a dinner-party. Felix was among those 
 invited to the reception. When he arrived at the house soon 
 after eleven he found the drawing-rooms already full of people, 
 some of whom he was acquainted with. He saw King Marshall, 
 with his nervous, small figure and glowing, melancholy eyes. 
 Lady Enfield anxiously listening to clever talk, and smiling to 
 cover her lack of comprehension of it, Miss Hartfield, Mrs. 
 Creshet, the Italian woman who had married an Englishman, 
 and who was the friend of Marza. The poet, and no doubt his 
 pretty companion also, had long since left the city of the 
 barbarians. Felix had never seen him again. 
 
 Felix only spoke for an instant to Mrs. Ismey, but as she 
 took his hand she whispered : 
 
 ' You will see Carrie to-night.' 
 
 She said it, he fancied, with a sort of gay, almost childish 
 mischief, and made what he now called her 'squirrel's face' at 
 him. She was apparently in good spirits. Felix was startled 
 by the idea of meeting Lady Caroline, and felt that it would 
 be an event. But perhaps she would not speak to him. He 
 wondered. While he was talking to Miss Hartfield he saw her 
 come in. She was alone and, as always when he had seen her, 
 was dressed in black. But to-night she wore a quantity of 
 fine diamonds. He forgot what he was saying to Miss Hartfield 
 while he looked at her. She was in no way changed. Her 
 complexion was still abominable. Perhaps in the glare of the 
 many electric lights it looked worse than usual. The strange 
 wrinkles near her eyes, the deep dimples on each side of her 
 mouth, struck him forcibly, as when he had first met her, and 
 the contrast between her rather fat face and her thin, almost 
 manly figure. But there was something in her air, her way of 
 moving, which he could not help admiring, and more now that 
 he saw her in a smart crowd. She was perhaps an ugly woman, 
 she might be called a horrid-looking woman, but she was un- 
 mistakably a somebody.
 
 FELIX 809 
 
 * You know Lady Caroline Hurst ? ' said Miss Hartfield. 
 
 •Yes,' Felix answered, with an almost guilty start. 'Do 
 you? ' 
 
 ' Slightly.' 
 
 He thought her voice was suddenly cold and that her clear, 
 English face had grown grim. 
 
 'Do you like her?' Felix asked. 
 
 Directly he had said the words he wished to recall them. 
 The question was too blunt. She felt it, no doubt, for she 
 looked slightly surprised. 
 
 ' I know her so very little,' she replied. 
 
 FeHx was conscious that she had answered his question. Mr. 
 Ismey was speaking to Lady Caroline, welcoming her. What 
 an ironical situation. She stared at him with her ruthless, 
 light eyes as she answered him without a smile. Felix thought 
 of her fighting her way among the furies to the threshold of 
 the room of the morphineuse. She fascinated him. He thought 
 of Baron Hulot. Was he fascinated by the live woman as he had 
 been by the creation of Balzac, and for the same reason ? He 
 wondered. He was glad that a diplomatist, with a bald head 
 and a discreetly slight smile, spoke to Miss Hartfield at this 
 moment. He wanted to be free to watch Lady Caroline. She 
 talked to several people, as she made her way further into the 
 large drawing-room. One of those who addressed her was a 
 Roman Catholic priest, a famous preacher. Felix wondered 
 what he was saying. She moved her chin upward. It was 
 very strange. She certainly looked a strong woman, strong, 
 dominating in character. Although he knew what she was he 
 could not, as he looked at her, believe in his own knowledge of 
 her. Presently she saw him staring at her. He reddened, 
 feeling guilty. She nodded, continued to look at him, and 
 almost immediately made him an autocratic sign to come and 
 speak to her. He obeyed, feeling half glad, half afraid, and 
 wholly excited. When he had edged his way through the crowd 
 to her she said : 
 
 'Well, here you are ; rejoicing in the mob, I suppose ! ' 
 
 He murmured something, he hardly knew what. 
 
 ' You 've given me up,' she continued, looking him full in 
 the face. 
 
 ' Oh, I was awfully sorry not to ' he stammered. 
 
 She interrupted him. 
 
 ' Nonsense. You didn't want to come and so you refused. 
 Very sensible of you. If everybody behaved like that — I 
 invariably do — there 'd be more happy people in London than
 
 310 FELIX 
 
 there are. I refused to come to-night, yet here I am. I 
 wanted to see how Valeria looked made up.' 
 
 Felix returned her fixed stare with a sudden boldness. He 
 was so angry that all his confusion vanislied. 
 
 'What's the matter?' she said. 'Are you going to knock 
 me down ?' 
 
 There was a kind sound in her voice which had not been in 
 it before. 
 
 'I know what it is,' she went on. 'You haven't noticed that 
 she is made up, and you are going to tell me I 'm a liar. My 
 dear fellow, it isn't worth while. Say so to a man if you like. 
 He'll believe you. Why shouldn't she make up? She looks 
 delicious.' 
 
 Felix followed her eyes. She had turned them away from 
 him now. He saw Mrs. Ismey at a little distance. There was 
 a charming colour in her cheeks, not strong, not at all artificial- 
 looking. It was as delicate and fresh as the hue in a fair girl's 
 face, one of those bhmdes with a clear, white skin, blue eyes, 
 and hair the shade of yellow that one sees in a corn-field. 
 Could it be artificial? He did not remember that he had ever 
 seen her look quite like that before. 
 
 'Now,' continued Lady Caroline, ' I 'm going to talk to some 
 one else. You 're hating me too much to be able to amuse me. 
 But my house is still open to you. Unless I hear from you I 
 shall expect you to lunch on Sunday at two.' 
 
 She turned her back on him. 
 
 On Sunday at two he vvas in Great Cumberland Place, knock- 
 ing at her door. He did not know exactly why he was there. 
 He had not told Mrs. Ismey that he was going, or even that he 
 had been asked to go. No expectation of meeting her there 
 had brought him. Vague ideas, vague defiances, a sort of 
 crowd of shapeless thoughts, intentions, hopes, fragmentary, 
 wild ghosts of the mind led him, perhaps. He did not know. 
 But he was there. While he waited in the cold winter weather 
 on the step before the big door, which the servant had not yet 
 opened, a strange idea flashed across his brain. 
 
 'If Mr. Ismey were different from what he is, less something 
 — reserved, proud, sensitive — he might be standing where I 
 am now.' 
 
 He had seen Mrs. Ismey once since her party, but only for 
 a moment. Her face was grey, tormented. Her eyes were red. 
 The maid, Alice, was with her in the drawing-room. When 
 Felix had been shown in she had looked away and, keeping her 
 face turned from lum, h^d sa'd :
 
 FELIX 311 
 
 'I did not mean even you to come in today. I have a 
 horrible attack of neuK;'.L;in. Please forj^iAc nie, and go.' 
 
 Her voice had frighten- d him, and he bad left the room with- 
 out a backward glance. But, as he stood on the step of Lady 
 Caroline's house, he remembered that moment, and the pro- 
 tective instinct was very strong in him. He did not know what 
 he was going to do, but he felt like a combatant on the eve of 
 a battle. 
 
 A man opened the door. Felix was shown into the small 
 room which was evidently Lady Caroline's 'den.' She was 
 there alone, standing by the fire with a book in her hand. 
 
 ' Hullo ! ' she said. ' Lunch, Henry ! ' 
 
 'Yes, my lady.' 
 
 She and Felix shook hands. As they did so Felix thought 
 of the money he had lent. How extraordinary life was ! He 
 heard a dog bark and started. It was Chicho, who peered 
 at him with beadlike, black eyes over the edge of his basket. 
 
 ' We are lunching alone,' said Lady Caroline. ' Did you 
 expect a party?' 
 
 Felix did not ki ow whether he had expected one or not. 
 She did not wait for him to answer. 
 
 'I thought of asking Valeria,' she continued. 'And then I 
 decided not to. Two women overwhelm one man. Besides, 
 I want to know you.' 
 
 The man-servant reappeared. 
 
 ' Luncheon is served, my lady.' 
 
 'Come along,' said Lady Caroline. 'We 'Uleave Chicho in 
 here.' 
 
 Felix glanced at the little dog as he followed her. Chirho 
 was lying with his black muzzle resting on the red, cushioned 
 edge of his basket, staring at the stranger. He did not seem to 
 wish to follow them. Felix thought of the scene at the house 
 of the morphinetise as he walked across the hall behind Lady 
 Caroline, looking at her tall, upright figure. In the dining room 
 there was an electric bell let into the floor by Lady Caroline's 
 chair. She could press it with her foot when she wished to 
 summon the footman, who did not stay in the room, but came 
 in with each course, handed it, and then at once went out. 
 
 ' I object to have a servant's mind communing incessantly 
 with mine — and yours,' Lady Caroline said. 'Henry is pro- 
 bably as clever as cither you or I, but his cleverness trots on a 
 different level. What made you come to-day ?' 
 
 She stared at him calmly, and apjarcntly without curiosity, 
 from her place immediately opposite him.
 
 312 FELIX 
 
 ' I don't know,' Felix answered. 
 
 He did not mean to be rude, he did not even feel as if he 
 were being rude. Her bluntness was so natural that it 
 summoned bluntness in him. The answer seemed to please 
 her. 
 
 ' No more do I,' she said. ' Unless it 's because I meant you 
 to come.' 
 
 That sounded like a challenge. 
 
 'You used your will to bring me?' Felix exclaimed. 
 
 Afterwards he wondered why he had been able to behave as 
 he did behave that day, but he did not wonder when he was in 
 the house. 
 
 ' You think my will would be strong enough ?' she asked. 
 
 He looked at her without shyness but, remembering all he 
 knew about her, with a great deal of wonder. 
 
 ' I don't know what to think about your will,' he replied. 
 
 It was the exact truth. 
 
 'Nor about me,' she said. 'But do you know what to think 
 about any woman ? ' 
 
 'Yes, I do.' 
 
 He thought of Mrs. Ismey, of Margot, of his mother. 
 
 'I don't,' she said. 'I don't know what to think — we are 
 using words loosely — I don't know how to know, that 's more 
 like it, any human being. In the first place — it's a firstrate 
 beginning to the whole matter — I am a stranger to myself.' 
 
 There she stopped. 
 
 ' Do, please, go on,' Felix said earnestly. 
 
 Already she had lit up all his young mind. 
 
 'About myself?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' You urge me to what we all adore, blatant egoism ! ' 
 
 He could not help smiling. She was certainly refreshing. 
 
 'Well — your boldness deserves its terrible reward — this is 
 what I guess about the stranger. The stranger is a child — or 
 rather a middle-aged woman — of the age. She lives conse- 
 quently for herself. She faces the enigma of life without armour. 
 In warfare armour has gone out of fashion. Lord Kitchener 
 doesn't dress up in chain-mail. No more do I. (Let 's drop 
 the affectation of the third person.) It 's diabolically difficult 
 to be out of the mental mode. I 'm in it. I wear no armour 
 of belief. I have no religion. I live for life here, life in Great 
 Cumberland Place, life in Paris, not life beyond the Woking 
 Crematorium. Are you horrified ?' 
 
 'No.'
 
 FELIX 313 
 
 'Thank — funny, I nearly said thank God! — thank you for 
 your intelligence. You feel I 'm just speaking the truth. And 
 the man who is horrified at truth is the greatest of all fools, 
 and unworthy of his manhood. I cling to no dream, but I 
 deny no possibility. I read Omar every morning in bed, but 
 not to cry over him, though he's the saddest man that ever 
 thought. I read Tolstoy too. He makes me cry, if you like. 
 And yet the glory of his madness is like the glory of the 
 setting sun.' 
 
 Her voice was musical, but her face was like the face of an 
 image. Why, how, did she grip Felix, move him so strangely 
 that, at her last sentence, he felt tears rising in his eyes? 
 
 ' I can't help feeling inclined to laugh,' she continued, ' when 
 I see the very young generation, not only in Russia, falling on 
 its knees to worship a thing that sets.' 
 
 ' But it 's the earth that ' 
 
 * H'm ! A sun that allows itself to be dominated by the 
 earth ! ' 
 
 Henry came in with a fresh course. 
 
 ' D' you like this salad ? ' said Lady Caroline. 
 
 'Yes. It's delicious.' 
 
 Henry went out. 
 
 ' I live for salads, not for eternity,' she said. ' There you 
 have the legend of my egoism and of a million other egoisms. 
 But I live so because it 's the only way I can live. Free- 
 will is what schoolboys call "a whopper."' 
 
 ' Don't you think you do harm ? ' 
 
 'People ought to know how to take care of themselves. 
 Would you call upon a whale to pick its way among whitebait ? ' 
 
 Again the thought came to Felix that Lady Caroline was a 
 sort of monster. And yet she seemed to him essentially unmelo- 
 dramatic and, somehow, very human. 
 
 'That sounds conceited,' she added. 'But I believe I am 
 conceited. Again because I 'm a child of the age. I 've told 
 you something of what I know about myself. It's a good deal 
 like what I know about the peoi)le I meet, my dearest friends : 
 that they go to Paquin or Whitcley for their clothes ; that they 
 have Roman or Grecian, or — poor souls ! — merely English noses ; 
 that they "attend," or don't "attend" church, and so on. 
 Myself is the greatest stranger to me in all the narrow, narrow 
 world. Now I'll stop boring you. Egoism is, after all, the 
 most deadly of the deadly sins. That 's why we cling to it. By 
 the way, I was idiot enough to begin this monologue by saying 
 that I wanted to know you ! '
 
 314 FELIX 
 
 A faint smile deepened the little holes by her mouth. 
 
 * You make me feel an awful fool,' exclaimed Felix. 
 
 'Sorry! Why?' 
 
 ' When I was — a few months ago I felt as if I knew every- 
 thing.' 
 
 ' But don't you now? You ought to. You 're hardly of age, 
 I suppose ?' 
 
 ' I shall be twenty-one in January.' 
 
 ' Far too young to feel anything but a learned Methuselah. 
 Valeria must have been educating you.' 
 
 The blood rushed to Felix's cheeks, the old, silly feeling of 
 guilt to his heart. And, instantly after it, came a feeling of 
 anger. The shapeless ghosts, which had floated about him 
 as he stood on the doorstep, began to take form, to emerge 
 almost clearly out of the void. 
 
 ' Has she taught you to think, for half a second, that you 
 know her?' continued Lady Caroline. 
 
 ' I know enough to — to admire her character very much,' 
 Felix said. 
 
 ' Well ? ' said Lady Caroline, after a short silence. 
 
 But he did not know how to go on. What could he say of 
 all he longed to say? He could not tell Lady Caroline what 
 Mrs. Ismey had told him. And, without telling her, he could 
 not draw a sword in Mrs. Ismey's defence. Yet, when he 
 remembered the misery in her face which he had caught a 
 glimpse of at the drawing-room door, the agony of mind which 
 he had been witness of on more than one occasion, he was 
 inclined to forget all social hindrances, all the fetters in which 
 the 'gentlemm' instinctively dances — as a rule unconscious of 
 them — and to speak out what was in his heart, passionately, 
 furiously almost. 
 
 ' You may ! ' Lady Caroline said, as the starter of a race says 
 *Go!' 
 
 'You — you don't know what ' 
 
 He had spoken the words very slowly and hesitatingly. Now 
 he stopped dead. 
 
 'Let's clear the ground,' Lady Caroline said. 'Valeria's 
 been telling you a lot about me lately.' 
 
 Felix looked away from her. He did not know whether he 
 minded or not, but he felt as if he could not look at her just 
 then. 
 
 'Did you suppose I didn't know it? Why, at first, you 
 took a decided fancy to me. An invitation from me pleased 
 you. Something has changed all that. What? Of course
 
 FELIX 315 
 
 Valeria. She s been describing my supposed vices. For 
 instance, she has told you I take morphia.' 
 
 Felix said nothing. He could not speak. All this was so 
 utterly unexpected by him. He had just time for the thought, 
 * She 's going to deny it,' when she continued : 
 
 ' Perfectly true. I do take it, as I take salad. I don't think 
 it necessary — indeed I should think it vulgar — to go about 
 London informing people of all my habits. But I am not in 
 the least ashamed of being fond of morphia. Why should I be ? ' 
 
 Felix looked at her again now. She was gazing at him with 
 her usual calm self-possession. 
 
 ' Why should I be ? ' she repeated. 
 
 * I don't know,' he answered. 
 
 'At the same time Valeria ' 
 
 'She — she did it from the best motive,' said Felix quickly. 
 
 He never thought of lying for Mrs. Ismey. Lady Caroline 
 had spoken with so much certainty that a lie would have been 
 useless. And then he was not fond of lies. 
 
 'Oh.' 
 
 There was not a trace of bitterness in her voice, but there 
 was some irony. 
 
 'Really she did,' he insisted. 'I don't know why, but she 
 thought — she hoped ' 
 
 He stopped. Sitting there with Lady Caroline, his eyes upon 
 hers, he could not tell her that Mrs. Ismey had thought that 
 he might help in some way. In what way could he help? 
 What influence could he have with a woman like Lady Caroline? 
 
 'What did she hope?' 
 
 Being rather desperate he became more frank. 
 
 ' I say,' he exclaimed, almost with impetuosity, 'since you've 
 spoken of it, let me just tell you tliat I 'm sure you don't, you 
 can't know the harm you've done Mrs. Ismey.' 
 
 For the first time since he had known her Lady Caroline's 
 face changed abruptly and became highly expressive. She looked 
 surprised, more, utterly a^^tonished. 
 
 'Valeria has ' she began. She stopped. 'What harm?' 
 
 she asked. 
 
 ' I don't believe you have any idea how much she cares for 
 you,' said Felix. 
 
 'Well, but what harm ?' 
 
 ' Harm to her mind and her health.' 
 
 The surprise, which had been dying out of her face, returned 
 to it. 
 
 •Then she has told you everything?'
 
 316 FELIX 
 
 * Yes — I don't mean about you, but about herself.' 
 
 'About herself! How strangely frank. And what do you 
 think of it?' 
 
 She looked at him with open curiosity. 
 
 ' I think that, for her sake, you might — it would be most 
 awfully good of you to drop it,' he said boldly. 
 
 He was thinking only of Mrs. Ismey now. Lady Caroline 
 had offered him a chance of helping the woman he loved. He 
 could not be such a coward as not to avail himself of it, defying 
 conventions. 
 
 'Drop it? drop morphia !* 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' But what earthly good would that do to Valeria now ? ' 
 
 ' Why, every good. Surely, surely you must know, you must 
 see how it's ruining her life, her happiness, even her health.' 
 
 ' What ? ' 
 
 'Your taking morphia.' 
 
 ' My taking morphia ! ' 
 
 ' Yes. Oh, but I see that you don't understand in the least 
 how much she cares for you. Perhaps she conceals it from you, 
 but she has let me know it.' 
 
 ' Look here,' said Lady Caroline, with sledge-hammer blunt- 
 ness, 'just explain to me what Valeria has let you know. 
 Possibly I 'm in the dark. I begin to think I am.' 
 
 ' She has let me know that your taking morphia preys upon 
 her mind to such an extent that it is ruining her whole life,' said 
 Felix, with responsive bluntness. 
 
 There was something in Lady Caroline, something manly, 
 which made it possible for him to speak to her now as he might 
 have spoken to a man. 
 
 'And that is all she has told you?' 
 
 ' Yes, of course with some details ' 
 
 *0h, trust a woman to go into details !' she said, again with irony. 
 
 ' But that 's what it comes to. O Lady Caroline, I haven't 
 the least right — not a shadow of a right, I know — to say a single 
 word to you on my own account. I would never dare. But if 
 any one loves you, don't you think that fact makes you owe them 
 something? If only you'd give that up she — Mrs. Ismey — 
 would be a different woman.' 
 
 She was quite silent and sat motionless, looking at him with 
 her intent, light eyes, from which the little lines drooped 
 towards her almost livid cheeks. 
 
 ' You know as well as I do how she 's suffered 1 ' he exclaimed, 
 goaded by her silence. ' You know what she did in Paris.'
 
 FELIX 817 
 
 'What did she do?' 
 
 Still there was irony in her voice. 
 
 ' When she went to that house to get you to come away from 
 the 77iorphineuse. Think of her in such a place ! ' 
 
 All the love of the boy was up in arms now. The protective 
 instinct broke loose and ran into the light. 
 
 * Ah, she 's told you of that too ! ' 
 
 * She trusts me,' he said, as if that were a full answer to all. 
 'She trusts you,' repeated Lady Caroline. 
 
 Surely there was pity in her voice when she said that. Felix 
 even thought that there was pity in the eyes that were still gazing 
 at him so steadily. Pity ! What did she mean by it ? 
 
 'You don't believe it ! You think I'm too young!' he 
 exclaimed. 
 
 'I think a woman would do very well to trust you,' she replied 
 quietly. 'Very well indeed. You don't want anything more?' 
 
 ' More?' he said. 
 
 ' To eat ? To drink ? ' 
 
 *0h. No thanks.' 
 
 'Let's come into my room, then.' 
 
 She got up and led the way. In the hall the footman met 
 them. 
 
 ' Mrs. Bertold is in the drawing-room, my lady.' 
 
 'Oh.' 
 
 She turned to Felix. 
 
 ' We must go up there, then,' she said. 
 
 But Felix felt that he could not face the petrifying inanity of 
 the woman with the pepper-and-salt hair. 
 
 'I— d'you mind if— I think I ought to be going,' he stam- 
 mered. 
 
 'Good-bye,' she said. 
 
 She grasped his hand, very cordially it seemed to him. Then, 
 while he went to look for his hat and coat, she walked up the 
 broad staircase.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 FELIX did not see Mrs. Ismey again before Christmas. 
 She was taken ill. She wrote to him from her bed that 
 she had caught a severe chill, and that the doctor had ordered 
 her not to leave her room for several days. The note was very 
 short. He guessed at most of the words. For a moment he 
 was conscious of a sense of relief. When he was at Lady 
 Caroline's, confronted with her imperturbable bluntness, he had 
 bc'cn impelled to speak the truth. She— he told himself after- 
 wards — was almost indecently free from subterfuge. There was 
 something savage even in her virtue. And so there had, per- 
 haps, been some thoughtless haste in this. When he considered 
 what he had done he began to wonder whether he had not 
 betrayed Mrs. Ismey's confidence. Perhaps she would be 
 angry with him, would feel that she could not trust him any 
 more. The anxiety he underwent made him begin to realise 
 more fully the strength of his affection for her. All that was in 
 him, all himself, seemed dependent upon her. There was some- 
 thing terrible in that fact. He dreaded, while he longed for, 
 their next interview. Her illness postponed it indefinitely. For 
 the chill did not pass away quickly. Christmas Day drew near 
 and she had not been able to come downstairs. He got another 
 smeared note from her : ' I 'm horribly ill. V.' It came on the 
 seventeenth of December. The weather was black and grim. 
 He breakfasted with the electric light turned on, and felt as if 
 he read her scrawl by night. His heart stood still. What did 
 she mean ? Was there any danger? When he called to inquire 
 the man-servant told him that she would have to ' keep her bed ' 
 for some time. 
 
 'But — but is there any danger?' he asked, trying in vain to 
 read the imperturbable, pale face that looked so unmeaning. 
 ' I couldn't say, sir. There 's two doctors comes every day.' 
 Felix stood there for a moment. He could not go in. He 
 felt as if he could not go away. The footman remained in 
 polite silence in the doorway, like a statue, immobile, without 
 expression. 
 
 818
 
 FELIX SI 9 
 
 *I suppose Lady Caroline Hurst has seen her?* Felix said at 
 length. 
 
 i- occurred to him that he might get the full information his 
 heart cried out for through her. 
 
 ' Her ladyship has not been, sir.' 
 
 •Not at all?' 
 
 •No, sir. Not at all.' 
 
 Felix turned away. It struck him as most extraordinary that 
 Lady Caroline should not have called. He had not seen her 
 since he had lunched in Cumberland Place. Nor did he see 
 her before Christmas. But he met Mr. Ismey late one after- 
 noon in Piccadilly and stopped him. 
 
 ' Ah, Wilding,' Mr. Ismey said, ' how are you going on ? ' 
 
 • Quite well, thanks,' Felix answered. ' But — I say, I hope 
 Mrs. Ismey is better?' 
 
 Again he saw the look of concentrated bitterness, which had 
 startled him in the office, come into Mr. Ismey's face. It was 
 as if a mask were torn oif from features distorted not only by 
 grief, but by something more horrible than grief, anger, a sort of 
 dreary rage. It passed away almost at once. 
 
 ' My wife is suffering a good deal,' he said. * I'm afraid she 
 may have to be worse before she is better.' 
 
 They said good-bye and Felix walked on. 
 
 • Worse before she is better.' It was a commonplace phrase, 
 one often used in connection with illness. Why had it sounded 
 so cruel as it came from Mr. Ismey's lips? A sense of horror 
 struck through Felix's heart. Wild, absurd ideas came into his 
 brain, that they were doing something to Mrs. Ismey, that her 
 illness had been artificially created, that they were torturing her 
 
 in some way, that He knew he was unstrung, and tried to 
 
 stop his imagination, but he was haunted by fears. Thougli 
 they were formless, perhaps because they were formless, they 
 were terrible. Just before Christmas he inquired again in 
 Green Street. 
 
 ' Mrs. Ismey is very bad, sir,' said the footman calmly. 
 
 With that sentence stamped on his heart Felix had to go home 
 to spend the ' genial season ' at Churston Waters. He would 
 rather have spent it alone in London, but he felt that he must go 
 home, that his mother would be cut to the heart if he did not. 
 Since he had come to live in town he had only been home once 
 for two nights. In his mother's last letter she had written : 'I 
 suppose I shall see you at Christmas ? ' Even in the preoccupa- 
 tion of his grief and fear for Mrs. Ismey, Felix had been conscious 
 of some at least of the loving anxiety which lurked behind that
 
 320 FELIX 
 
 phrase. Yes, he must go down to Churston Waters for Christ- 
 mas. He wrote that of course he was coming, and he went. 
 He took presents with him, bought hastily at the last moment, 
 for his mother, Margot, and Stephen. Having delayed going 
 till further delay was impossible, he arrived on Christmas Eve. 
 The weather was dreary. Rain fell steadily from a sky covered 
 with leaden clouds. The air was full of a cold dampness that 
 seemed charged with maladies like the casket of Pandora. 
 Railway traffic was disorganised, and the train by which Felix 
 travelled was an hour late. He found the carriage waiting for 
 him. The coachman handed him from the box a little note. 
 He read it, holding it against the carriage lamp. 
 
 'Welcome. I wanted so to come and meet you, but I am not 
 feeling very well, and cannot venture out in this weather for fear 
 of taking a fresh cold and not being able to go to church with 
 you to-morrow. Love. — Mother.' 
 
 He thrust it into his pocket, shut up his umbrella, and got 
 into the carriage. ' Not feeling very well — fear of taking a fresh 
 cold.' It was pretty obvious to Felix that his mother was fast 
 developing into a hypochondriac. These vague phrases showed 
 it, this anticipation of possible illness. She was always looking 
 forward to physical calamity, always not doing something 'for 
 far of a possible bodily result of an unpleasant kind. Rather 
 f-eble and cowardly that. A real, terrible illness, such as Mrs. 
 Ismey's, was a very different matter. His whole being went out 
 in sympathy to her, but his mother's little colds and incessant 
 precautions irritated him. He resolved to beg her, in schoolboy 
 phrase, to ' buck up,' to show some courage. That was what 
 she was wanting in — courage. Women often became confirmed 
 invalids from brooding over their health, and incessantly 
 coddling themselves. 
 
 As he drove on he saw Frankton Wells blurred by the 
 heavily falling rain. The shops were brilliantly lit up. Those 
 occupied by butchers, with open fronts, displayed gigantic 
 joints of meat decorated with sprigs of holly, and bearing 
 placards announcing that they were cut from ' Prime ' oxen. 
 In the poulterers' windows squadrons of turkeys attracted the 
 gaping attention of multitudes of soaked rustics, who had 
 tramped in from the country districts to buy such ' Christmas 
 Fare' as the condition of their finances would allow. Upun 
 the glistening pavements of the old-fashioned streets anxious 
 women, swat^hed in unfashionable waterproofs, scurried by, 
 protected by umbrellas, and carrying strings of parcels covered
 
 FELIX 321 
 
 with brown paper, discoloured and spotted here and there by 
 the raindrops. Many of them were accompanied by excited 
 children, whose youthful ardour, wrought to fever-heat by the 
 nearness of the approaching festival, rose triumphant over the 
 depressing influences of the villainous evening hour. 
 
 Felix remembered very well his own childish pleasure in 
 bygone Christmases, and wondered at his vanished self. To- 
 night, the lighted shops, the mighty joints, the holly, the 
 placards, the scurrying wet crowds intent on present-buying, 
 all seemed to combine deliberr.tely in an effort to create a false 
 atmosphere of artificial geniality, artificial goodwill. Even the 
 wet, blank darkness of the country was less depressing than 
 the meretricious bustle of the country town. He thought of 
 the morrow with its services, the decorated church, the greetings 
 of the neighbours, the Christmas dinner with its blazing plum- 
 pudding and possibly crackers at dessert. Well, he would 
 have to get through it somehow. It would pass. The moment 
 must inevitably come when it would all be over, and he would 
 be free to get back to London, free to go to her door and gkan 
 some scanty news of her condition. 
 
 Suppose she were to be dead ! He had never thought of 
 that before. With that thought came Hill House, his mother's 
 affectionate greeting in the holly-bedecked hall, the servants' 
 'The compliments of the season to you, sir!' his bedroom with 
 more holly. Life has some dreadful moments, some dreadful 
 decorated moments. 
 
 After that Christmas was over Felix often wondered what 
 must have been the exact impression created by him on the 
 people he met. He must surely have seemed a little mad to 
 them all : to the elderly clergyman, the village doctor and his 
 sprightly wife, who was always perky even if she were only 
 saying thnt there was 'a good deal of bronchitis going about'; 
 Miss Crooks, the authoritative spinster who had 'had charge' 
 of the chancel decorations of the church since the beginning of 
 time, and who would brook no word of advice on her 'scheme' 
 even from the rector himself; the village schoolmaster, the 
 organist, all the good creatures — that was what Felix mentally 
 called them — who had known him, and whom he had known, 
 since he was a small boy in the days of buttonholes and bead 
 rings. His profound depression must have amazed their 
 determined seasonable geniality. No doubt he had struggled 
 against it, but he felt sure that the struggle had been in vain. 
 Tlie bitter mockery of Christmas to him must liavc been 
 guessed at by them, secretly denounced by them perhaps as 
 
 X
 
 322 FELIX 
 
 profane, irreligious. Irreligious ! Yes, he supposed he was 
 that. Whether owing to London influences, to Marza's bold 
 paganism, Mrs. Ismey's complete ignoring of religious subjects, 
 Lady Caroline's calm agnosticism and lack of all faith in a 
 ' life beyond the Woking Crematorium,' or to some mysterious, 
 and perhaps brief, change in himself independent of those with 
 whom he had been recently thrown, Felix was struck this 
 Christmas with overpowering force by the emptiness, the un- 
 meaningness of praise and worship. The religion in which he 
 had been brought up, instead of helping him out of his 
 melancholy, thrust him deeper down in his gulf of despair. 
 
 He got up early, and went before breakfast with his mother 
 to the "first celebration. The rain had ceased, but the ground 
 was soaking wet, and a white mist hung above the graves in the 
 churchyard. After the service was over his mother, who was 
 very much wrapped up, said to him in a low voice : 
 
 * I thought we would just go for a minute together to ' 
 
 Her voice failed. She gave a slight cough. They went out 
 to the corner in which his father had been buried beneath an 
 old yew-tree. A wreath of hothouse flowers had been placed 
 at the head of the grave, evidently that morning. They were 
 perfectly fresh. Felix <iid not know that his mother hid been 
 out before the pale dawn had fully broken to lay them there. 
 He stood with her for a minute or two looking at them, and at 
 the plain granite cross on which they rested. He glanced 
 sideways at his mother. Her lips were moving, and her eyes 
 were full of tears. He knew that she was praying, and for a 
 moment he thought of uttering a prayer for Mrs. Ismey. But 
 somehow the idea seemed ridiculous. What was the good of 
 prayer? His mother prayed, but did she think? Marza was a 
 thinker. Felix felt sure he never prayed. At breakfast his 
 mother talked cheerfully. The giving of presents was to take 
 place in the evening when, of course, IMargot and Stephen were 
 coming over to dinner. Felix got through the day somehow. 
 He heard the Hallelujahs, in which the shrill voices of the 
 school children were piercingly audible. He received and 
 returned the Merry Christmases of the neighbours. He forced 
 himsflf to smile. And he felt as if there were an iron band 
 round his heart. His sorrow, his anxiety, and his new lack of 
 all vestige of rehgious feeling set him more utterly apart from 
 his mother than ever before. He honestly tried to draw near 
 to her, conscious tnat the day must be a sad one for her, 
 although, since that brief moment by the graveside, she had 
 seemed calm and cheerful in her always quiet way. But the
 
 FELIX 323 
 
 effort was useless. He kept renieinhcring those words of hers, 
 spoken during his last visit: 'Felix, now that you are alone in 
 London, I hope you will be very careful with — with women.' 
 If she knew what was in his heart, the flame, what would she 
 think ? How would she feel about it ? Even if he explained — 
 if he could ever bring himself even to try to explain — the p;:rity 
 in the intensity of his feeling for Mrs. Ismey, his mother would 
 not understand. He said so to himself. She would be shot ked. 
 She would say that Mrs. Ismey was a mairied woman, that such 
 an affection could only be dangerous, that though it might not 
 seem so now, in time it would prove to be so ; it would lead 
 
 him on, it would Oh, he knew all she would think and 
 
 say. Her religious prejudices would rise up — like weeds, he 
 tiiought. How far away he was from her since the flame had 
 found the way to his heart ! 
 
 There was no difference, no slightest quarrel, no unkind word 
 belween them that day, but there was — what? Space like the 
 space of a great desert that never has been, that never can be, 
 traversed by anything that lives. He saw that space, as a 
 traveller who looks out upon a waste of the Sahara, and can 
 see no green shadow of an oasis in the distance of the sands. 
 Did she see it? He told himself that of course she did not. 
 
 He always knew what the few transparent souls were feeling, 
 although he migiit be in the dark about the rest of the world. 
 
 In the evening there was the Christmas dinner. There were 
 crackers at dessert. When two or three of them had been 
 pulled the presents were given. Stephen gave Felix a volume 
 of Wor^isworth's poetry. Mar^^ot gave him a walking-stick, his 
 mother a very fine reproduction of Watts' 'Love and Death.' 
 When Felix had taken it out of the wrappings in which it was 
 carefully enveloped, and saw what it was, and realised all it 
 meant for him that ni^^ht, he had great difficulty in preserving 
 an appearance of outward calm. 
 
 ' I thought you might hang it on your wall in London,' his 
 mother said. 'I have always been very fond of it, and so was 
 your father.' 
 
 'Thanks very much, mater,' he replied. 'It is very fine.' 
 He set it down with a rather trem])ling hand on the dining-room 
 floor leaning against the wall. But, before he went to bed, he 
 returned to the dining-room to take it upstairs with him. The 
 evening passed away without any special incident until it was 
 nearly time for Margot and Stephen to go home. Then Margot 
 said to her brother: 
 
 'Oh, Felix, we heard this morning that Mrs. Ismey is
 
 324 FELIX 
 
 seriously ill. Did you know it? Mr. Ismey wrote it to 
 Stephen in his Christmas letter.' 
 
 The blood rushed to Felix's face. He wondered if he would 
 ever conquer that hideous, degrading habit of blushing. 
 
 'I — I knew she had been unwell,' he said. 
 
 His face grew hotter and hotter till he felt as if he were on 
 fire, and he went on speaking hastily, as if words would form 
 a sort of veil to cover his misery and agitation. 
 
 * I haven't seen her for some time. She hasn't been out, I 
 believe. You see, the weather in London has been so awful. 
 It started with a chill, didn't it?' 
 
 He looked at Stephen. He was torn by the longing to ask 
 exactly what was in Mr. Ismey's letter. 
 
 * A chill?' said Stephen. 
 
 Felix thought his brother-in-law's voice sounded unusually 
 grim and odd, in some furtive, some secret way, as if he wished 
 and intended it to be ordinary, but was governed, prompted, in 
 spite of himself, to hint at some feeling he would have been glad 
 to conceal. 
 
 'Yes, a chill. I know it started with that. Perhaps it has 
 developed — has it developed into something else?' 
 
 ' Mr. Ismey didn't say exactly what was the matter. Did 
 he, Stephen?' said Margot, with a well-meaning assumption 
 of interest which did not hide real and perfectly natural 
 indifference. 
 
 Stephen hesitated to reply. That was obvious. A ghastly 
 idea came into Felix's mind that Mrs. Ismey was dying, and 
 that Stephen did not like to say so. He remembered that 
 Mr. Ismey and Stephen had been brought up together, that 
 there was a strong link of affection between them. What more 
 natural than that, in his trouble, Mr. Ismey should have made 
 Stephen his confidant? Suddenly Felix felt a profound interest 
 in his brother-in-law. But how could he dare to show it? 
 
 'Francis said nothing about a chill,' Stephen answered at 
 last. 
 
 His voice was odd, constrained. Even Mrs. Wilding noticed 
 it. She glanced from him to Felix. 
 
 ' I am very sorry,' she said. ' It is specially sad at Christmas- 
 time.' 
 
 ' I don't see why,' exclaimed Felix. 
 
 He spoke almost fiercely. Every one looked startled, as if he 
 had said something dreadfully heartless. 
 
 ' I mean,' he explained, trying to control the agitation which 
 had burst forth in spite of himself in his last remark, ' that it
 
 FELIX 825 
 
 seems to me the illness of anybody one cares for is equally sad 
 at any time of the year. But I dare say Mrs. Ismey will be all 
 right again soon.' 
 
 He said it as a statement, not as a question, but he looked 
 at Stephen with narrow, piercing anxiety. Stephen said nothing. 
 He sat gazing into the fire with his hands on his knees, his long 
 clerical coat drooping towards the carpet. On his red face there 
 was surely a stern expression. He had not expressed any 
 sorrow at Mrs. Ismey's illness. Again Felix thought of Mr. 
 Ismey's remark, ' I 'm afraid she may have to be worse before 
 she is better,' and of his wild fears for Mrs. Ismey. As he stared 
 at Stephen they returned. There was something mysterious 
 about this illness, something that had to be hidden, something 
 cruel. And Stephen knew what it was. 
 
 The butler entered to say that the fly had come for Mr. and 
 Mrs. Bosanfield. Margot got up. As she did so, despite his 
 desperate preoccupation, it occurred to Felix that, since he had 
 last seen her, she was altered in some way. She looked different. 
 She said good-bye. 
 
 ' Take great care of yourself, dearest mother,' she said, as she 
 kissed Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 Felix very nearly interposed with his lecture against coddling 
 and being hypochondriacal, but he restrained himself. He 
 would speak to his mother about that on the morrow. He 
 followed his sister and brother-in-law into the hall, put Margot's 
 cloak round her, and then went to help Stephen with his large, 
 black garment, which was batlike and voluminous. A desperate 
 desire haunted him to get a word alone with his brotherin-law. 
 But even if he did, what could he say? He could not ask to 
 be told all that was in a private letter. 
 
 ' Good-bye,' said Stephen, placing his soft hat firnily on his 
 head, and pulling the brim down till it almost touched his bushy 
 eyebrows. 'Won't you ride over to see us to-morrow?' 
 
 ' Oh yes, do, E'elix ! ' said Margot eagerly. * You haven't been 
 for so long.' 
 
 'Bring the mother,' added Stephen. *I know she will not 
 want to be separated from you more than she can help. Come 
 to luncheon or tea.' 
 
 'Thanks very much ; I will certainly.' 
 
 Felix spoke quite as eagerly as Margot. The morrow might 
 bring him an opportunity of speaking to Stephen alone, of 
 getting somehow — he had no idea how — to the bottom of this 
 mystery. 
 
 On Boxing Day the weather was again deplorable. The rain
 
 326 FELIX 
 
 had returned. It was falling steadily before breakfast, and 
 continued to fall steadily all the morning. 
 
 ' I am grieved that you can't get out,' said Mrs. Wilding. 
 'It is very dull for you.' 
 
 ' Oh no, mater. Besides, we are going over to see Margot 
 this afternoon. That will be something to do.' 
 
 On the previous night he had told his mother of the invitation. 
 
 'Don't you think you had better put it off till to-morrow?' 
 said Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 ' But I 'm going back to town to-morrow.' 
 
 'Oh, I see,' she said. 
 
 He stole a glance at her. She was not looking at him but 
 at the fire. 
 
 'Well, then, you must go to-day, I suppose.* 
 
 'You'll come too.' 
 
 ' I don't think I dare.' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' 
 
 ' It 's so wet.' 
 
 'Now, mater, what does that matter in a shut brougham?' 
 
 ' It is the getting in and out I am afraid of.' 
 
 Felix felt acutely irritated. His painful anxiety for Mrs. 
 Ismey, which had an edge put to it by this day of forced inaction, 
 this day in which the dreary hours crawled by like things heavy 
 with age, turned him easily to anger. In thought he compared 
 Mrs. Ismey's perhaps desperate condition with his mother's 
 perfectly normal health ; his fears for Mrs. Ismey with his 
 mother's fears for herself. 
 
 'Afraid of!' he exclaimed. 'Really, mater, I can't under- 
 stand you. It is odd that religious people should always be 
 trembling at the idea of the smallest illness, much more of 
 death. What on earth is the good of having any belief at all 
 if it can't prevent you from being such an awful coward? I 
 wonder what you 'd be like if you were ever really ill ! ' 
 
 ' As she is,' he added mentally. 
 
 'Perhaps I am a coward,' she answered gently. 'But I do 
 take cold very easily, and ' 
 
 'Cold! But what does a little cold matter? The fact is, 
 mater, that now you're here all alone you do nothing but sit 
 over the fire and think about yourself, whether you've got 
 rh's and whether you've got that. If you so much as sneeze 
 you fancy you 're going to die to-morrow. You should go out. 
 You should occupy yourself. There are enough complaints 
 in the world as it is without bringing on imaginary ones by 
 brooding.*
 
 FELIX 327 
 
 She said nothing. Her silence irritated him still more. 
 
 'Don't you see I'm right? Don't you agree with me?' he 
 said. 
 
 ' I dare say sometimes we do think too much about ourselves,' 
 she answered. 
 
 ' I am sure you do,' he said. 
 
 In the afternoon at half-past three she came into the drawing- 
 room with her cloak on, and her icewool shawl wrapped round 
 her throat. 
 
 'Oh, you're coming!' he said. 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' That 's right. If you had me here always to order you 
 about you 'd soon be in firstrate health. It 's all imagination.' 
 
 His utter helplessness in one direction made him glad to feel 
 his power in another. If he knew nothing rightly about Mrs. 
 Ismey's terrible condition, at any rate he knew all about his 
 mother's fanciful complaints, and could prescribe for her. 
 
 They drove through the rain to the rectory at Frankton Wells. 
 Margot, who was in the drawing-room when they arrived, seemed 
 very much surprised to see Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 'Oh, mother, I never thought you 'd venture,' she said. 
 
 'Why not, Margot?' said Felix. 'You mustn't encourage 
 mater. I 've been telling her she 's developing into a regular 
 hypochondriac. She does nothing but sit over the fire and 
 wonder when she's going to die. It's absurd.' 
 
 ' But, Felix ' Margot began. 
 
 Just then Stephen came in. Tea followed. All the time 
 they were talking about little family, parish, and country a(Tairs 
 Felix was burning with impatience to be alone with Stephen. 
 He stole glances at his brother-in-law's well-meaning groom's 
 face, and thought how strange, how atrocious it was that Stephen, 
 who cared nothing for Mrs. Ismey, who even probably disliked 
 and disapproved of her, should know the secret of her condition. 
 It began almost to seem to Felix as if Mr. Ismey and Stejihen 
 were conspirators, as if Mrs. Ismey were a victim in their hands. 
 As the visit drew towards an end he grew more and more 
 excited, more and more anxious to be left alone with Stephen. 
 He was thankful when Margot asked her mother to come into 
 the next room with her for a minute. 
 
 ' I want to show you some work I 've been doing since you 
 were here, mother dearest,' she said. 
 
 As she spoke she looked at Mrs. Wilding. There was a flush 
 on her face. Again Felix thought that somehow she had 
 changed. Mrs. Wilding returned her look, got up, and they
 
 328 FELIX 
 
 went out together. Stephen followed them with his eyes. An 
 odd expression came into his face as he did so. Felix noticed 
 it and wondered what it meant. It was, he said to himself, a 
 very human look. The clergyman disappeared in the man. As 
 Stephen watched the two women just then he might have been 
 a labourer, a soldier; he might even have been a ne'er-do-weel 
 to whose heart a tender feeling had come. 
 
 When the door was shut he said to Felix : 
 
 'What a good woman the mother is. I never felt how 
 precious goodness is till lately and through her, not even with 
 my own dear mother. For she has not had to face so much, 
 through the mercy of God.' 
 
 Felix was so thoroughly accustomed to the idea that his 
 mother was a good woman that his 'Yes, I know,' was perhaps 
 rather perfunctory. He was longing to make the most of this 
 opportunity of being alone with Stephen. They sat silent for 
 a moment. Then Felix said with some nervous hurry : 
 
 'Awfully hard lines on your friend having Mrs. Ismey laid 
 up, isn't it ? ' 
 
 The human look disappeared from Stephen's face. 
 
 ' Francis has had a good deal to bear in his life,' he replied. 
 
 Felix instantly felt intensely hostile to his brother-in-law. 
 
 ' Well, after all, it 's Mrs. Ismey who 's suffering most now,' 
 he said. 
 
 'Physically,' said Stephen. 
 
 ' Physical suffering 's hardly a thing to laugh at when it brings 
 a — a person to death's door,' said Felix, almost trembling with 
 the anger he did not dare to show. 
 
 'Let us hope, for her sake, that Mrs. Ismey will recover,' 
 responded Stephen. 
 
 There was a marked emphasis on the ' for her sake.' 
 
 Felix bit his lip. At that moment he could have struck 
 Stephen. Only his overpowering desire to know the exact truth 
 of Mrs. Ismey's condition prevented him from some outburst. 
 After an instant of silence he said, with an attempt at careless 
 curiosity : 
 
 ' Does— do the doctors think she 's likely to recover?' 
 
 'I believe they consider it possible.' 
 
 The door opened and Mrs. Wilding and Margot came in. 
 Felix was obliged to drive away with his mother not merely 
 unsatisfied, but with all his fears increased tenfold. He scarcely 
 spoke on the way home. At dinner and afterwards in the 
 drawing room he was gloomy, morose. When his mother 
 addressed hiai 'ne scarcely seemed to hear her. Once or twice 
 he contradicted her rudely. When she bade him good-night
 
 FELIX S29 
 
 and kissed him tenderly, he shrank obviously from her caress. 
 All the time he was thinking, *If she should die, if she should 
 die.' That night he felt as if his whole life had been lived since 
 he had known Mrs. Ismey ; as if, before he knew her, he had 
 been like the little children, who regard the sun or a puddle in 
 the road with the same gaze of dull, staring wonder. 
 
 His mother was a shadow to him, something far off from his 
 life. When she kissed him he thought of Mrs. Ismey's lips. 
 Perhaps already the pallor of death was upon them. 
 
 The next morning he caught the first express from Frankton 
 Wells to London. He did not even try to conceal from his 
 mother his intense eagerness to leave her and be again in town. 
 When the carriage had driven away from the door she went 
 slowly upstairs to her bedroom. Some hours passed before she 
 came down. At luncheon the butler noticed that she was looking 
 * mortal bad,' as he said afterwards to the other servants, and 
 that she hardly ate anything. 
 
 'She's moping,' was the general verdict, 'after Master Felix.' 
 
 All the domestics at Hill House, in general conclave as- 
 sembled, agreed that it was a sad pity to mope. 
 
 ' Life 's too short for it,' observed the upper housemaid, who, 
 having recently become engaged to the rector's gardener, was an 
 impassioned optimist for the moment. And the turkey and 
 plum-pudding devoted to the appetites of the servants' hall still 
 holding out bravely against the repeated assaults made upon 
 them, there was not one to say her nay. 
 
 Felix was to be twenty-one in the third week in January. He 
 wrote to his mother from London that he would not be able to 
 come down to spend his birthday with her. He had too much 
 to do, and he thought that, after one had reached a certain age, 
 'birthdays are a mistake.' A letter from Margot, soon after he 
 had expressed this opinion, wished him very, very many happy 
 returns of the day, and told him : ' We are afraid poor mother is 
 sadly disappointed at not having you with her for it. She does 
 not say so, but we can't help seeing it by her manner. She 
 seems to have no spring lately, no life for anything.' 
 
 Felix tore up the letter directly he had read it, and threw it 
 into the fire. 
 
 'Wei' he exclaimed half aloud. 'We! I know who is 
 teaching Margot to lecture me.' 
 
 Ever since that short conversation with Stephen about Mrs. 
 Ismey's illness Felix had disliked him more tlian ever. He almost 
 hated him. And now, in his mind, he connected Stti)hcn not 
 only with Margot, but also closely with his moil <r. lie thought 
 of them all as adverse to ' It was evident to him
 
 830 FELIX 
 
 that Stephen had considered that it would not be a disaster, 
 but — yes, he was not exaggerating — almost a benefit, if she did 
 recover. A benefit to whom ? He must have been thinking of 
 Mr. Ismey. And what Stephen thought Margot thought. As 
 to his mother she had never liked Mrs. Ismey. She had never 
 taken to her. Had she not said as much long ago after Margot's 
 wedding? And no doubt since she had opened that telegram 
 her utterly unreasonable dislike had increased. But women 
 always hated women. It was useless to expect generosity from 
 one woman towards another — except from Mrs. Ismey. He 
 thought of her noble, self-sacrificing devotion to Lady Caroline 
 with tears in his eyes. 
 
 She still continued to be very ill, and this illness of hers, the 
 mystery surrounding it, Stephen's cruel words, the bitterness of 
 Mr. Ismey's manner when Felix had asked him for news, Lady 
 Caroline's neglect of her friend, all these things combined to fan 
 the flame in the heart of Felix. He felt as if, but for him, Mrs. 
 Ismey would be alone in the world. Just before he came of age 
 this suspicion of her solitariness in suffering was changed into 
 something like certainty by a fact that startled him by its shame- 
 less indit!'erence. Mr. Ismey again went abroad. Felix, when 
 he inquired in Green Street — he did so nearly every day — was 
 told of this by the servant, a new man whom he had not seen 
 before. 
 
 ' The doctor still comes every day, sir,' the servant said. 
 ' But I think Mrs. Ismey must be a little better, for Mr. Ismey 
 went abroad last night for some time.' 
 
 'Mr. Ismey has gone abroad ! ' said Felix. 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 The footman looked surprised. Felix turned away. He 
 longed to force himself into the house, to make his way to Mrs. 
 Ismey's sick-bed, to tell her that there was at any rate one person 
 in the world who cared, who cared too much, whether she lived 
 or died. It was horrible, abominable. To be married to her 
 and to leave her like that ! He thought of Mr. Ismey's face. 
 He had looked at it and said to himself that it was the face of a 
 good, a straight man ; reserved perhaps, proud, but sensitive, 
 kindly — in fine, a gentleman's face. What was one to judge by 
 in the world ? What was there that did not deceive ? And then 
 he thought again of Stephen, a clergyman, devoted to the service 
 of God, pledged therefore surely to mercy, to pity. Yet the 
 human look had died out of his eyes when he spoke of 
 Mrs. Ismey. He was the friend of Mr. Ismey, and Mr. Ismey 
 must be the enemy of his wife. He could not leave her like 
 this unless he were the enemy.
 
 FELIX 331 
 
 All this time Felix did not call on Lady Caroline. She was 
 included among those against whom his heart waged war, and 
 she had not repeated her invitation to him, although she had 
 parted from him with apparent cordiality. 
 
 His birthday passed. On it he received a long and tender 
 letter from his mother, and also a present, the ring which his 
 father had always worn. 
 
 He was now master of his own money and had his own bank- 
 book. The first cheque he wrote was made out to his mother, 
 and was for a hundred pounds. It seemed to him that, when 
 he had posted it, he breathed more freely. There was some- 
 thing in being twenty-one. A Rubicon was crossed. He felt 
 more of a man than ever. Arliss had put him up for the Bath 
 Club, and just about this time he was elected a member. He 
 dropped in there often after he had left Sam's and had made 
 inquiries in Green Street. To distract his mind, still obsessed 
 by Mrs. Ismey's prolonged illness, he began to go in for gym- 
 nastics. He returned home in the evening, or at night after 
 dining at the Club, tired out ; and his sleep, which had been 
 disturbed by his anxiety, became calmer, more prolonged. At 
 Sam's he worked hard, and he felt that he was making progress, 
 that he was gradually obtaining more mastery over the use of 
 words, was learning how to express his thoughts with greater 
 clearness and finer simplicity than at first. Yet, whatever he 
 was doing, even if he were doing it with diligence, with will, and 
 with success, something within him was detached, aloof. And 
 this something seemed to be for ever standing upon the door- 
 step in Green Street, listening for sounds from wiihin the house 
 where she lay ill. 
 
 The news he had of her was better towards the end of January. 
 She was recovering, the servant said. For some time she had 
 not been allowed to read letters, but now she might. Felix 
 wrote to her. One morning in February his heart stood still, 
 and then beat furiously. On his table lay a letter from her. He 
 took it up carefully as if it were a precious thing, and looked at 
 it as a man looks long at an exquisite ])icture or at a jewel. 
 Her handwriting, instead of being more feeble than usual, was 
 certainly stronger, clearer. He had never received a letter from 
 her addressed so firmly and so legibly. She must be astonish- 
 ingly better. When he opened the letter he found that it was 
 also quite legit)le. Each word was formed and finished. There 
 were none of the usual straight lines and abbreviations, none of 
 the usual blots and smudges. It is true that the letter was very 
 short, but it contained everything for him. It asked him to 
 ^ome and see her. He went that day.
 
 332 FELIX 
 
 As he walked up the street he felt nervous and shy. Perhaps 
 her ilhiess had altered her. Perhaps, after this long interval, 
 during which their intercourse had been interrupted, she had 
 changed. He might find that their intimacy was broken. They 
 might have nothing to say to each other. Would she be still in 
 bed or on the sofa? And her looks? No doubt in her face he 
 would find something of the horror of her illness still lingering. 
 He must be prepared for that. He must not expect her to look 
 charming, to have any light in her eyes, or life in her manner. 
 At this moment he quite forgot how often he had sat with her 
 and seen her looking ill from worry. 
 
 The servant let him in. It seemed very strange and eventful 
 to step once more into the hall, to mount the stairs. Would 
 the footman stop at the drawing-room door, or go on to the next 
 floor, where probably her bedroom was? He stopped on the 
 first landing, opened the drawing-room door, and announced Felix. 
 
 Felix went in, walking with precaution. He felt inclined to 
 hold his breath — till he saw her. But when he saw her his 
 doubts and fears, his shyness and almost awkward timidity 
 vanished. She looked so startlingly well. 
 
 She was lying on the sofa as usual, and had a book in her 
 hand, which she laid down as he came towards her, turning to 
 him with a smile. Her gown was pale green and fitted tightly 
 to her figure. There was nothing that suggested the invalid 
 about it. She could have walked out in it. 
 
 * But — but how well you look ! ' was all he could say, while he 
 took her hand. ' How well you look ! ' 
 
 'Do I?' 
 
 'But — but it's extraordinary !' 
 
 As he gazed at her clear eyes, at her soft, fresh-looking skin, 
 at her rosy, moist lips, it seemed to him that he had been 
 tricked, that she had never been ill at all. 
 
 ' Why extraordinary ? I 'm not ill now. Sit down. My dear 
 boy, what's the matter? Are you petrified?' 
 
 He gave a great sigh and sat down, still looking at her with a 
 sort of fascinated amazement. She made the squirrel's face at 
 him, screwing up her eyes. That seemed to break the spell. 
 He laughed. 
 
 ' Oh, I am glad ! I am glad ! ' he exclaimed. 
 
 And he sat there in silence staring at her, almost like a little 
 boy. She laughed too. 
 
 * You would make even a woman of a certain age feel young,' 
 she said. ' Where 's your top ? Don't you want to play with it ? ' 
 
 And he had thought that perhaps their intimacy was broken 1 
 He had prepared himself for — idiot !
 
 FELIX 833 
 
 * Oh, I 'm such an ass ! ' he said fervently. 
 'No doubt, but why?' 
 
 ' If only you knew all I have been thinking as I walked up 
 the street ! ' 
 'Tell me.' 
 'And all I 've been thinking while you 've been ill.' 
 
 * Life is short. Still, tell me as much as the Judgment Day 
 leaves us time for.' 
 
 He told her some of his thoughts. She listened. Sometimes 
 she smiled, sometimes she laughed. But presently the gaiety 
 died away from her face and she looked grave. Carried away 
 by his surprise and joy in finding her so well, his former sus- 
 picions seemed to Felix so absurd that he began to recount them 
 to her, to make a joke of them. 
 
 ' I thought — I hardly know what I thought,' he said : ' that 
 you had been made ill deliberately, that you would never have 
 been ill at all if— if ' 
 
 'If what?' she said. 
 
 The sound of her voice startled him. 
 
 ' If What 's the matter ? ' he said. 
 
 'Nothing.' 
 
 'But you look angry.' 
 
 She smiled suddenly. 
 
 'No, I'm not. Don't be so imaginative. It's tiresome. 
 Go on.' 
 
 But he could not go on. 
 
 ' No,' he said. ' I am talking nonsense.* 
 
 ' But I want to hear it.' 
 
 'No, no,' he repeated. 
 
 The expression he had seen on her face had warned him that 
 to speak, as he had been about to speak, of his wild suspicions 
 of her husband, even to laugh at them and ridicule himself, 
 would be injudicious if not unpardonable. He was thankful he 
 had stopped in time. 
 
 ' Who did you think had made me ill ? ' she asked obstinately. 
 
 'Nobody. But what was it?' 
 
 ' I told you. It was a chill.' 
 
 Felix thought of his brother-in-law's odd, constrained manner 
 when it had been suggested that Mrs. Ismey's illness was the 
 result of a chill. What could have caused it? 
 
 ' I am afraid you have suffered terribly,' he said. 
 
 'Suffered!' 
 
 A dreadful expression flitted across her face. Felix supposed 
 it must be caused by the mci..ory of the pain she had endured, 
 but it looked like an expression of hatred.
 
 334 FELIX 
 
 'We won't talk about it,' she said. ' What *s the use ? It's 
 over and it shall never happen again.' 
 
 ' You speak as if you knew you could never be ill again in 
 that way,' he said. 
 
 'I do know it.' 
 
 That seemed utterly impossible to him. There was some- 
 thing implacable in her manner. In her convalescence she was 
 surely changed. He seemed to detect a strength of character 
 in her, a something almost fierce, which he had never been con- 
 scious of before. But it must always have been there. Had 
 she not put in her foot to force an entrance into the house of 
 the morphmeuse. 
 
 She smiled, changed the conversation, and seemed gay once 
 more. She asked about all that Felix had done, about his work, 
 about the people he had met. 
 
 'You haven't seen Carrie, I suppose?' she asked presently. 
 
 Felix remembered that he had a confession to make. 
 Yes, once. I went to luncheon with her.' 
 
 'To luncheon?' 
 
 She looked surprised, and not very pleased, he thought. 
 
 'Yes. It was just after your party.' 
 
 ' Oh ! Were there many people ? ' 
 
 'No. Only she and I.' 
 
 ' You and Carrie alone ! How did you get on ? ' 
 
 'Very well.' 
 
 'I'm glad of that.' 
 
 Her voice did not sound as if she were really very glad. 
 
 'I haven't seen Carrie once since I have been ill,' she added. 
 
 'I think she might have come,' he said, with sudden heat. 
 
 *0h, it was not her fault. Poor old Carrie.' 
 
 ' Wasn't it ? I suppose the doctor ' 
 
 She interrupted him. 
 
 'I always tell you everything, so I may as well tell you this. 
 She didn't come because my husband has forbidden her the 
 house.' 
 
 ' Lady Caroline — forbidden ! ' 
 
 It seemed to Felix to be an outrage. 
 
 ♦Then he's ?' 
 
 ' Yes. He 's found out all about the morphia,' 
 
 ' But not about — he doesn't know about Paris?* 
 
 'Yes, he does.* 
 
 ' How awful ! ' 
 
 Felix was thinking of her situation. But now he thought of 
 the letters and grew hot.
 
 FELIX 886 
 
 •And the letters?' he said. 
 
 'You don't suppose I gave you away ! ' 
 
 When she said this she made him feel as if, for a moment, he 
 had been a cur. 
 
 ' Did you notice that a new man opened the door to you 
 to-day?' 
 
 ' Yes. I 've seen him once before when I inquired.' 
 
 'The other one was given warning.' 
 
 ' Was it he— did he ? ' 
 
 Felix could not get the words out. The whole thing seemed 
 so low, so abominably common and vulgar. 
 
 'He was treacherous. He told Francis I had been away 
 from home, and the whole thing came out. Francis had 
 always hated Carrie. There was a frightful row. It was partly 
 that which made me ill. I have gone through a good deal, 
 Felix.' 
 
 ' How I pity you,' he said in a low voice. ' Was your husband 
 very angry ? ' 
 
 Instead of replying she asked him a question. 
 
 'Do you remember my saying once that I could imagine 
 Francis killing me but not scolding me?' 
 
 'Yes. It was on the day 1 dined with you at Lady 
 Caroline's.' 
 
 ' I did not know then how true a thing I was saying,' she 
 replied. 
 
 Again the dreadful expression went across her face. Felix 
 knew now that he had been right when he had suspected that 
 there was a mystery about her illness. Fie was sure from the 
 way she spoke that her husband was concerned in it. But how? 
 Could there have been a scene of violence? Could Mr. Ismey 
 have ? 
 
 He drew his chair close to the sofa on which she was lying. 
 
 ' Look here,' he said. ' I don't want to seem curious, but has 
 there been anything — I mean, do you want some one lo protect 
 you? Because, if you ever do, you know I would do anything 
 — anything for you.' 
 
 He had never before come so near to telling her that he 
 loved her. 
 
 ' I think you would,' she said. ' I don't know wlictlier some 
 day I mayn't ask you to do a great deal — one never knows. 
 My husband ' She hesitated. 
 
 Felix felt that she was on the verge of an outbreak. There 
 was fire in her eyes. Her hands began to tremble. She clasped 
 them together.
 
 336 FELIX 
 
 * I feel very differently about Francis from what I did before I 
 was ill,' she said at last. 
 She spoke quietly, but there was a depth of hatred in her voice. 
 ' How strange of him to leave you. Wasn't it ? ' 
 ' I made the doctor tell him to go,' she replied. 
 There was a silence between them. It seemed to Felix as 
 if he had just seen a tragedy enacted in the pretty room where 
 he was sitting, as if he had seen her struck down. He was 
 fearfully excited. He longed to get up and perform some 
 physical act in defence of her. He did not dare to look at her 
 lest she should see too much in his eyes. At that moment his 
 feeling for her changed. Something of the intense purity went 
 out of it, something of savagery entered in. It had been very 
 boyish in its almost cold chivalry and lack of sensuality. Now 
 the desire to fight for her brought with it a faint, as yet a 
 very faint, stirring of the possessive instinct which lies at the 
 root of most men's love. She was the first to speak again. Her 
 voice and manner had quite changed as she said : 
 
 'Well, what did Carrie and you find to talk about together?' 
 
 She spoke lightly in a voice of society, but his reply at once 
 drove her back to a much graver mood. It seemed as if their 
 first interview was not to be untroubled. 
 
 ' We talked about you,' Felix said, resolved to make a clean 
 breast of the matter. 
 
 He would rather have lied to his mother than have lied to her 
 that day. 
 
 ' We talked about you, and I 've been wanting ever since to 
 tell you what we — that is, what I said. I think perhaps you'll 
 be very angry.' 
 
 He looked at her anxiously. He was really wondering how 
 she would take his confession. 
 
 ' Why ? What did you say ? ' 
 
 She spoke quickly, uneasily. 
 
 ' I told her what you had told me about her.' 
 
 It sounded to his own ears awful, put in that naked way, and 
 he hastened to add : 
 
 * She knew already that you had told me. She said so, and 
 of course I had to acknowledge the truth.' 
 
 She had opened her Ups while he was speaking, as if to 
 interrupt him, but when he said the last words she closed them 
 again, and lay there looking at him with steady eyes. 
 
 ' You would not have had me lie about it ? ' he said. 
 
 ♦Oh no.' 
 
 The words sounded bitterly ironical.
 
 FELIX 837 
 
 'Would you have had me lie?' he asked. 
 
 'I said no. No, of course not.' 
 
 This time she spoke as if she meant what she said. 
 
 ' And when I had told her that I knew about — all about the 
 morphia, I begged her to give it up for your sake. I tried to 
 make her understand the truth.' 
 
 ' What truth ? ' 
 
 'Why, that her way of life was making you ill, through the 
 anxiety and fear, and the ' 
 
 'You told her all that?' 
 
 'Yes,' he said, growing more confident now that the confes- 
 sion was out at last. ' And I showed her how appalling it was 
 for you to be led into such places as that den in Paris in order 
 to persuade her ' 
 
 'But, Carrie,' she interrupted suddenly, as if almost in spite 
 of herself. ' What did Carrie say ? ' 
 
 'Scarcely anything.' 
 
 It struck him now how little she had said. 
 
 ' Well, but what did she seem Hke ? What did she look like ? ' 
 
 He thought for a moment. 
 
 ' I hardly know ; but I remember it seemed to me as if she 
 pitied ' 
 
 'Me!' 
 
 ' No,' he said slowly. ' Me.' 
 
 'Pitied you!' 
 
 'It was very strange. I can't think why.' 
 
 He looked at her. She shut her eyes at once and lay back 
 on her cushions. 
 
 ' Oh, you 're tired,' he exclaimed. ' I 've tired you ! ' 
 
 'Yes,' she said, keeping her eyes shut. 'You see we've 
 talked so much, and about such dreadful things.' 
 
 'Shall I go?' 
 
 She shook slightly, as a person shakes who is suppressing 
 laughter. 
 
 ' Yes, go now. Good-bye.' 
 
 Her voice quivered and broke. She touched his hand. He 
 got up quickly. 
 
 ' Good-bye,' he said. ' You 're not feeling very bad, are you ? ' 
 
 She did not answer, but again she shook against the cushions. 
 He went out. 
 
 'She couldn't — she couldn't have been laughing,' he kept on 
 saying to himself as he went down the stairs. And when he 
 was in the street he thought: 
 
 'Or was she crying?' 
 Y
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 ONE day very early in March Felix received a note from 
 Mrs. Ismey to say that her husband, who had returned 
 from abroad soon after her recovery, had gone up to Scotland 
 for a week on business, and that she meant to run down to 
 the seaside. 
 
 Felix had noticed that her beautiful look of health, which 
 had so delighted him, had died away, that the physical 
 and mental irregularities, which had puzzled and distressed 
 him in the past, began to present themselves once more. She 
 said in her note that she was 'feeling seedy' and thought the 
 sea air would pick her up. She was going to take Alice as a 
 companion, and had written for rooms to a quiet little hotel 
 on the south coast at a village called Eldon Sands. Did Felix 
 think there was any chance of his being able to join them 
 from Saturday to Monday? She would love it if he could, 
 and it would cheer her up. She was depressed, and hated the 
 noise of London. 
 
 Felix was enchanted. He had not seen Mrs. Ismey in the 
 country since the day of Margot's wedding. Visions of the sea, 
 of sunset over flat sands, of isolation with her in a beautiful 
 solitude filled with the music of nature, with the freshness of 
 nature's breath, the calm of nature's repose passed through his 
 brain and thrilled his heart. He telegraphed that he would 
 come, and on the Saturday he got into the train and, with a 
 sensation of joy that was almost exultant, saw the dingy platform, 
 the red-faced porters, the empty luggage-trucks disappear in the 
 murky greyness of the London atmosphere, saw the pale fieKls 
 come up on either side of the train to greet him, brown plough- 
 lands curving under a quiet, whitish sky, cottages standing alone 
 among the leafless trees which would soon be budding, roads 
 like narrow ribands winding away into the low, rounded hills, 
 or stretching across plains on which the tiny figures of labourers 
 moved like busy dolls. 
 
 It was afternoon and drawing towards twilight. An infinite 
 delicacy was alive in the pensive radiance, when, through the 
 
 338
 
 FELIX 889 
 
 thin screen of narrow clouds, the sun sent a trembhng beam 
 whi( h rested, with a sort of humble cheerfulness, upon some 
 enipiy garden, village green, or leafless orchard, reminding Felix 
 of tiie ethereal radiance which had stirred in the bosom of the 
 forest when he bade good-bye to the tailor. Then he had felt 
 as if the wide earth held but a trinity of personalities : God, 
 nature, himself Now, leaning out of the window, he set his 
 face towards the sea and thought of a woman. 
 
 What would she be like by the sea? 
 
 It seemed to him that the wave and the solitude would set the 
 seal on their great friendsliip, which had been waitir g, like a 
 thing held in abeyance, for this event of which he had never 
 dreamed. Never once had he thought of being alone with her 
 in a country place, of being out with her under the stars as he 
 was with her in the garden at Churston Waters, on the night of 
 their first meeting. Why had he been so thoughtless, so un- 
 imaginative? Was theirs to be a mere drawing-room intimacy? 
 Had it not begun under the sky at night? And he remembered 
 the strange, uneasy flight of the bats across the shaven lawn. He 
 remembered how the moonlight caught her hair when she bent 
 down so suddenly after he had left her. That night she had 
 been mysterious to him. Would she be mysterious to him again ? 
 
 The twilight began to enclose the quiet country. Lights shone 
 in the cottages. The world was surely very full of silence and 
 of dreams. 
 
 When the train ran into the tiny station of Eldon Sands Mrs, 
 Ismey <ind Alice were on the platform to meet him. Mrs. Ismey 
 was in country clothes. She had on a short gown of some woolly 
 material, dull blue in colour, with a thin line of dark red in it, a 
 little blue-and-red toque with a scarlet upstanding feather on 
 one side, brown boots, and brown suede gloves. She carried a 
 walking-stick in her hand. Felix looked at her eagerly. He 
 was so accustomed to see her lying down on a sofa that this was 
 a new and exciting experience. Alice stood a liltle way off while 
 they exchanged greetings and looked towards the sea, which was 
 tunil^ling in foam upon the flat yellow sands. When Felix wished 
 her good-evening she murmured a respectful reply. 
 
 He thought she was the most subdued girl he had ever seen. 
 
 * We will walk to the hotel. It is close by,' said Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 They set out, followed by Alice and by a porter carrying his 
 bag. Eldon Sands was really a solitary place. Felix saw that 
 at once, and was glad. There was tl.e small, neat station, with 
 its brown doors and red-tiled roo'', a few bungalows with wooden 
 shutters closely drawn across th^ir windows, a larye shed which
 
 340 FELIX 
 
 contained a lifeboat, some fishermen's cottages, and the hotel. 
 Sandbanks lay around, covered with dry, pale grass which 
 trembled in the keen breeze blowing over the flats. 
 
 ' What a little place !' he said joyously. ' How did you find 
 it out ? ' 
 
 'Through Alice,' she answered. 'She comes from an inland 
 village near here.' 
 
 ' It 's glorious air ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, and so quiet. All the bungalows are shut up, and there 
 are only three people in the hotel.' 
 
 ' I wonder you aren't bored,' he said. 
 
 He looked at her curiously as she walked beside him on the 
 road, which was covered with small pebbles. It was growing 
 dark, but he could see that her face was thickly powdered. The 
 contrast between the powder and the place made him wonder 
 still more why she cared to come here. 
 
 'I could stay here for ever,' she answered. 
 
 * Alone with Alice ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'How extraordinary !* 
 
 'There's no one to interfere with me here,' she answered. 
 
 When she said that there was almost a fierceness of joy in her 
 voice, and he knew that she was thinking of her husband. They 
 reached the hotel, which stood at the very edge of the sands 
 and at the end of the road. There was no highway beyond it. 
 No traffic could pass its windows. Only the sea came up at the 
 flow of the tide to break in long lines of foam against the sand- 
 banks which stood guard over it, and the winds blew about it, 
 wailing shrilly in the night. 
 
 ' What a place to be in with you ! ' Felix said, as they came 
 into the little lighted hall. 
 
 He was almost overwhelmed by the strangeness of it, and felt 
 as if he had run away with her, as if they had left London 
 and the tragedy of her life there for ever, as if she belonged to 
 him. The loneliness of the place, the sea, the sound of the 
 blowing winds, the darkness coming down over the fiats 
 strengthened, gave fibre to their intimacy. 
 
 ' Why, how your eyes are sparkling ! ' she said to him. 
 
 They were standing at the foot of the staircase waiting for the 
 porter to come in with his bag. The manageress of the hotel, a 
 tall, ladylike-looking woman, was at the end of the corridor by 
 the front door. A countrified lad, dressed in a livery with 
 shining buttons, passed t'nem and disappeared into a rocm on 
 the left. Felix caught a glimpse of pale-yellow walls, snowy-
 
 FELIX 341 
 
 white wooden pillars, small tables with shaded lamps, a section 
 of a great bow-window, across which short yellow curtains were 
 drawn. On the walls there was a brightness thrown by the 
 leaping flame of a hidden fire. From the darkness outside came 
 the soft and heavy sound of the sea. 
 
 *I feel happy,' he answered simply. 'But — I say, how your 
 hands are trembling.' 
 
 ' It 's the cold wind,' she said hastily. ' I '11 go upstairs and 
 change my gown now. They '11 show you your room. Dinner 
 a"; seven.' 
 
 She disappeared up the narrow, pretty staircase, which curved 
 sharply to reach the landing above. 
 
 The hotel had been built by a clever architect as his private 
 house, and had been afterwards enlarged. It was extraordinarily 
 homelike, quiet, and pretty. There was no bar. The rooms 
 were low, with big window-seats and latticed window-panes. 
 The furniture, the wall-papers, the chintzes, the china jugs and 
 basins in the bedrooms were all charming and delicately fresh. 
 Felix was enchanted. He felt as if he were in a very comfortable, 
 though simply arranged private house. When he pushed open 
 his window he smelt wet seaweed, and saw the red gleam of 
 a revolving light far out at sea. He drew in his breath with 
 a gasp of pleasure, as if he were drawing joy into his lungs and 
 heart. The wind was strong, and it was a dark night. He 
 could just see a white blur where the foam of the waves was 
 breaking on the sands. At that moment he was conscious of 
 the glorious mystery, the ineffable, unfailing magic of nature, 
 inexhaustible, irresistible. He was conscious of joy in natuie 
 and also of sorrow, as he had been conscious of them when he 
 stood upon the bridge of Tours. And the sorrow seemed as 
 beautiful to him, as necessary as the joy, for without it there 
 would have been less of mystery. The scent of the sea and the 
 sound of it were full of under things, that could only be felt, 
 and could never be explained, responding to the murmuring, 
 subterranean voices in the heart of man. 
 
 He went down filled with a longing for sympathy, for expres- 
 sion, for — 'What do I want really?' he thought to himself. It 
 was surely something that must be for him alone and yet for 
 the whole world. But how could that be ? There was a sort 
 of beautiful confusion of night and of sea in his lieart. 
 
 They dined together at a little table in the bow window 
 and near to the fire. As they sat down Felix noticed that 
 Mrs. Ismey's face was painted as well as powdered, and that 
 her eyelashes were tinted. This gave her an unnatural cxpres-
 
 342 FELIX 
 
 sion which at first he hated. The three other people whom 
 she had spoken of sat at some distance away in the large, low 
 room, which was full of oases of light from the shaded lamps. 
 One of them was an oldish man with an ascetic face, who was 
 by himself. The other two were women, thin, inexpressive, 
 dressed in black, evidently sisters. 
 
 'They are of the wandering spirit genre, Mrs. Ismey mur- 
 mured to Felix. ' I heard them talking once.' 
 
 * What about ? ' 
 
 ' Different kinds of tea.' 
 
 The delight of being alone with her soon made him forget 
 that unnatural expression which had startled him. They did 
 not talk very much, but he thought that they were more intimate 
 in the silences, when they watched the firelight dancing on the 
 yellow walls, and heard the murmur of the sea. After dinner 
 the two sisters wandered out. They both walked slightly side- 
 ways, looking on the ground as if searching for a pin. The man 
 with the ascetic face lit a cigarette, sighed, asked the waiter to 
 light up the billiard-room, and disappeared. A moment later 
 the click of the balls was audible. 
 
 ' We'll have coffee here by the fire,' Mrs. Ismey said. 
 
 There were two large armchairs near the hearth. The 
 countrified waiter brought a basket table. 
 
 ' Light your cigar,' she said. ' Not a cigarette to-night. That 
 is for London. A cigar suggests leisure.' 
 
 ' Yes, I know exactly what you mean,' he answered. ' I am 
 happy to-night.' 
 
 He struck a match. The waiter put their coffee on the table, 
 and went out, shutting the white door. Felix sat down in one 
 of the armchairs, but Mrs. Ismey remained standing by the fire. 
 She was dressed in grey, with long tight-fitting sleeves which 
 partly covered her hands. She put the coffee-cup on the high 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 ' You are always happy, I believe,' she said, in the drawling 
 voice which he had learnt to love. 
 
 ' Oh no, I 'm not. And I could be horribly unhappy.' 
 
 'If what?' 
 
 He looked up at her from his low chair. Her last words had 
 made him realise sharply just what made his happiness that 
 night — isolation with her. 
 
 ' Don't you know ? ' he asked. 
 
 Something in him seemed to be trembling. She shook her 
 head. The firelight was surely entangled in her thick and 
 shining hair.
 
 FELIX 845 
 
 'How can I ? ' she said, lifting her coffee-cup and saucer from 
 the mantelpiece. 
 
 He heard the distant sound of the sea, the voice of the wind 
 round the house. He remembered the solitude of the flat sands 
 outside. Everything seemed far away from them, and he 
 resolved to tell her. 
 
 ' If I were to be separated from ' 
 
 He never finished the sentence, for just then an extra- 
 ordinary thing happened. She was holding her saucer in one 
 hand and lifting her coffee-cup to her lips with the other. 
 Suddenly both her hands seemed to lose all power, to become 
 nerveless, dead things. They dropped down. He saw them 
 hanging at her sides, the cup and saucer smashed to fragments 
 on the floor. A dark stain of coffee disfigured the front of her 
 grey gown. For a moment he did not move. He was frightened. 
 He did not feel at all as if he had seen a trifling accident, but 
 as if he had been abruptly brought face to face with some 
 tragedy of illness. Then he sprang up. 
 
 'How stupid of me,' she said indifferently. 'Just ring for 
 Alice, will you ? ' 
 
 He rang the bell. 
 
 ' Your dress is awfully spoilt, I 'm afraid,' he said, still feeling 
 frightened. 
 
 ' Oh, it doesn't matter.' 
 
 Evidently she did not mind at all. The waiter came in. 
 
 'Take that away, please,' she said, pointing to the broken 
 china ; ' and ask my maid to come to me for a minute.' 
 
 The waiter looked at the china, then at Mrs. Ismcy, and 
 afterwards at Felix. There was an expression of almost abject 
 surprise on his face. Felix noticed it and thought how odd, 
 how very unnatural it was. The lad knelt down, collected the 
 china, and went out, still looking stupid with amazement. 
 
 ' How — what happened ? ' Felix said. ' You aren't ' 
 
 'My hands were cold,' she replied, interrupting him. 'Oh, 
 Alice, just wipe my gown, will you?' 
 
 She sat down as she spoke. 
 
 The maid had appeared at the door. She came forward, took 
 out of her pocket a silk handkerchief, bent down, and wiped 
 the place where the ugly stain was. When she had finished she 
 looked at Felix for a moment, and went out of the room without 
 a word. He stared after her. 
 
 'What an odd girl Alice is,' he said. 
 
 • Why odd ? ' 
 
 •I don't know. But she looks as if there was a lot in her.'
 
 344, FELIX 
 
 'Oh, sne 's a clever maid,' said Mrs. Ismey, in a dismissing 
 voice. 
 
 She began to talk about the sea. All the evening Felix was 
 self-conscious and uneasy. He kept looking at her hands. 
 Had she dropped the cup to prevent him from saying what he 
 had been going to say ? Or was she ill ? Or — what was the 
 matter ? His sense of the delicious peace of Eldon Sands had 
 left him. 
 
 On Sunday there was a blustering March wind. Mrs. Ismey 
 did not come down in the morning. She sent a message to 
 Felix by Alice to tell him that she would see him at lunch. 
 He was disappointed. 
 
 ' She isn't ill, I hope,' he said to Alice. 
 
 The maid fixed her small dark eyes on him. 
 
 * Mrs. Ismey doesn't generally come down in the morning, 
 sir,' she answered, after a slight hesitation. 
 
 Felix felt as if she wished to say something to him. He 
 remembered how he had seen her looking over the staircase at 
 him one night in Green Street when he was leaving Mrs. Ismey, 
 and was inclined to ask her if she wanted anything of him. 
 But she turned away and went out quietly. 
 
 Now he knew that it was Mrs. Ismey's habit to remain in 
 her room during the morning he did not mind so much. He 
 went out and took a long walk on the sands. The wind 
 filled him with a feeling of exultation, and he drew in health 
 with the scents of the sea. When he returned to the hotel he 
 was in almost wild spirits. He longed to sing, to shout, to 
 perform some physical feat. All the boy in him bubbled to 
 the surface of him. He bounded upstairs to wash his hands 
 before lunch, his cheeks glowing with the breath of the wind, 
 his body warm with exercise and tingling with life. While he 
 was in his bedroom he heard the gong sound below in the hall, 
 and ran down eagerly. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey was waiting for him by the window of the public 
 drawing-room. The grey light of the sunless March day fell 
 upon her face, and, as he looked at it, Felix felt his animal 
 spirits die away. It seemed to him as if he had never seen her 
 clearly before, in the cold, searching illumination of the naked 
 day, and as if to do so were a revelation. In London she had 
 often looked ill, weary, worried, as if life were not treating 
 her kindly. But he had been conscious that a cloud or a 
 shadow lay over her, and a cloud or a shadow pass away. 
 Now there was something fixed, irreparable in the languor 
 of her pose, the unnatural hopelessness of her expression.
 
 FELIX 845 
 
 Her face was made up, but in the little wrinkles which he 
 saw near her eyes, in the fainter lines by her mouth, there 
 was surely a hint of the curiou-^, ugly pink which had so dis- 
 gusted him when he first saw Laay Caroline. A violent 
 perfume filled his nostrils. It stole from her. He had come 
 in with the odours of the sea caught in his hair and clinging to 
 his lips, on which the salt films rested. At this moment he 
 was almost riotously in love with nature, and this artificiality 
 which confronted him suddenly repelled him. He longed to 
 strip it from her, as one strips an ugly mask from a beautiful 
 face. 
 
 ' What is it ? What is the matter ? ' she said. 
 
 ' I — I was only thinking that 1 wished you had been out with 
 me this morning,' he answered. 'Oh, it's glorious! Such a 
 wind ! It seems somehow to put one right, to teach one what 
 one ought to want — no, not that, what one really has wanted 
 always without knowing it. You must come out with me this 
 afternoon.' 
 
 He suddenly felt pitiful over her. 
 
 ' I 'm going to take you in hand,' he said, ' and be your 
 doctor.' 
 
 ' My doctor ! ' she exclaimed. 
 
 Her voice startled him. It was fierce. 
 
 ' But — I only meant ' 
 
 ' I know. But if you had been as ill as I have you wouldn't 
 say such things lightly.' 
 
 She seemed quite upset by his chafifing remark. 
 
 ' I believe you hate doctors,' he said, as they went towards 
 the dining-room. 
 
 ' Oh, I don't hate anything. It isn't worth while,' she 
 answered. 
 
 There was a profound indifference in her voice, and when 
 they sat down to lunch her face was inexpressive. Her anger 
 had passed away with startling swiftness. As their table was 
 m the bow-window the light fell fully upon them. Almost 
 imm-. diately she said : 
 
 'The li^ht hurts my eyes. Do draw one of those little 
 curtains. Yes, that one — no, more. That 's much better.' 
 
 ' Are your eyes bad ? ' he asked anxiously. 
 
 ' No, not really. But I hate a glare.' 
 
 She talked very little at lunch and ate scarcely anything. 
 She was abstracted and almost dreamy, and he, feeling so 
 vigorous, so much as if he were arm-in-arm with nature, grew 
 more pitiful over her.
 
 346 FELIX 
 
 *I think I know what it is,' he said. 'The air here is so 
 strong that it upsets you at first, because you hardly ever get 
 any air.' 
 
 'Perhaps it is that.' 
 
 * You '11 come out with me this afternoon.' 
 « I '11 see.' 
 
 She did not speak either gaily or reluctantly, but with a sort 
 of odd indifference, as if she hardly heard him. And this made 
 him more determined to take her out and make her drink in 
 the tonic of the wind. 
 
 ' Now you are to come out,' he said, about half an hour after 
 lunch. 
 
 He had been smoking, while she sat in an armchair by the 
 fire with half-closed eyes, talking to him listlessly as if her 
 mind were intent all the time on something far away. 
 
 * But it 's so windy,' she said. 
 
 * All the better. The tide 's a good way down and the sand 
 is as hard as a billiard-table. Do come. You '11 love it.' 
 
 ' Very well,' she answered. ' And I '11 tell Alice she can go 
 out too.' 
 
 She went upstairs, and came down in about ten minutes with 
 a fur coat on and a thick veil tied over her face. 
 
 ' But you '11 be suffocated in that ! ' Felix said. 
 
 « No, I shan't.' 
 
 ' And, besides, I can't see you. Do take it off.' 
 
 Now he had begun to exercise authority over her he became 
 rather intoxicated by his sense of manly power. When she 
 obeyed him she seemed to belong to him. 
 
 * But the light hurts me.' 
 
 ' Only at first. You '11 get accustomed to it. I 'm really 
 going to reform you. Now I 'm with you in the wilds I begin 
 to understand how wrongly you Uve.' 
 
 He spoke almost chaffingly, but he was speaking what he felt 
 to be the truth. She lifted her hands and slowly took off the 
 veil. He saw that since she had been upstairs she had put 
 more powder on her face. 
 
 'You want the wind,' he said, looking at her with a sort of 
 critical and half-rebuking tenderness. 
 
 They set out towards the sands. 
 
 The sea was a good way down and the tide was falling. Long 
 lines of surf chased each other before the wind, were shredded 
 out into spare, tattered edges of white, faded in shallow water, 
 and were succeeded by other anxious waves, whose turn for 
 death had come. Seagulls flew sideways low in the sky.
 
 FELIX 347 
 
 On the horizon there was a faint lemon colour against the 
 grey. 
 
 'Isn't it splendid?' Felix said. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey was walking rather feebly, bending forward to 
 meet the wind, and sinking at each step in the soft shingle 
 which preceded the firm sands. She looked like a person 
 struggling to perform an unaccustomed feat, rather pathetically 
 incapable. 
 
 ' Do take my arm,' Felix said. 
 
 'I ' 
 
 Her low voice was lost in the wind, but she took it. They 
 gained the hard sand and walked on more easily. Felix did 
 not speak again for some time. The touch of her hand, the 
 warmth of her arm against his stirred him and made him wish 
 for silence. He felt his strength and her weakness of body, 
 and longed to put his arm round her. His love suddenly 
 became physical, startlingly so. At that moment for the first 
 time he sinned in desire against Mr. Ismey. It seemed to him 
 that she must know that he had sinned, and he looked down 
 at her, half expecting to see in her face her knowledge. The 
 wind seemed to have accentuated her features. Her cheek 
 bones looked more prominent, her eyes more hollow than 
 usual. There was a dark, bluish tint beneath them. Her lips 
 were pale and shut firmly together, and her whole aspect was 
 piteous and compressed. 
 
 ' I believe you hate this,' Felix said. 
 
 'It's too windy,' she answered. 'It tires me. Let us turn 
 back.' 
 
 He obeyed her in silence. His feeling of power had left 
 him. Her weakness governed his — could he call it strength ? 
 
 As soon as they were in the hotel once more she went 
 upstairs, saying she would come down to the public drawing- 
 room almost directly. Felix went in there to wait for her. 
 The two sisters, whom he had seen at dinner, were sitting by 
 the fire knitting in two armchairs. As he came in they glanced 
 up at him, looked at each other, and dropped their prominent 
 eyes upon their balls of worsted. Their faces were grim, as if 
 they had just seen something shocking. He took up a paper, 
 sat down at some distance from them by the window, which 
 looked out on the road of shingle and the sands beyond, and 
 pretended to read. In reality he was wondering what the lives 
 of such women were like. Some, many minutes passed, yet 
 Mrs. Ismey did not come down. He began to feel restless, 
 presently almost angry. All the morning she had been secluded.
 
 348 FELIX 
 
 Was she going to remain in her room all the afternoon ? If so, 
 it was hardly worth while asking him to come. What could she 
 be doing? One of the sisters had a soft, husky cough. It 
 began to get on Felix's nerves, to irritate him acutely. Each 
 time she coughed he felt as if it was more unpardonable of 
 Mrs. Ismey to leave him alone like this. He tried to fix his 
 attention on the paper, which he held in front of his face so as 
 not to see the balls of worsted. Would she never come ? She 
 had spoilt his walk. Now she was going to spoil his whole 
 day. Another ten minutes passed. He was hot with im- 
 patience. It seemed to him that the two sisters knew that he 
 was waiting for her, and were full of sly, malicious amusement. 
 The click of their knitting-needles tormented him by its 
 monotonous persistence. He longed to tell them to go out 
 and walk in the wind. Presently he resolved that he would 
 not wait any longer. He would go to the billiard-room and 
 knock the balls about. Perhaps the man with the ascetic face 
 was there and would play a hundred up with him. Anything 
 would be better than sitting with these two observant mutes in 
 the black dresses. He threw down the paper, and was just 
 getting up to go, when he heard the faint sound of shingle 
 grating under footsteps outside. He glanced out of the window 
 and saw Mrs. Ismey hurrying towards the beach. She was 
 alone, and had on her hat but no jacket. Her dress blew out 
 in the wind. She crossed the road, walking lightly on tiptoe 
 like a person anxious to make as little noise as possible, and 
 gained the loose sand at the place where they had been that 
 afternoon. There she bent down and went forw ,rd as if she 
 were searching for something. She had a stick in her hand, 
 and he saw her moving the stones with it. After watching her 
 for a minute he hurried out of the room. 
 
 The two sisters exchanged glances of virginal pity, and the 
 one with the cough sighed. 
 
 Then they began to talk together softly. 
 
 When Felix reached the hall he caught up his overcoat, put 
 on his cap, and went out, shutting the door with difficulty 
 behind him. The wind blew every moment more strongly. A 
 gale was evidently coming up as the day drew on. He saw 
 Mrs. Ismey farther down the beach. She was still bending 
 towards the sand and turning over the stones with her stick. 
 There was something anxious in her attitude, and as he went 
 towards her she made a violent movement, like a person in 
 anger or despair. Althougli his boots crunched on the stones 
 she was too absorbed to hear them. Only when he put out his
 
 FELIX 349 
 
 hand and touched her did she notice him. Then she started 
 and turned round, showing a face that frightened him. There 
 was a fixed expression of almost furious distress in her eyes, 
 and it did not change when they met his. 
 
 'What is it?' he said. ' What is the matter ? You will catch 
 your death of cold.' 
 
 He put his coat round her shoulders. 
 
 'I've lost something,' she answered. 
 
 And the horrible anxiety of her eyes was audible in her 
 voice. 
 
 ' What is it ? Let me find it for you.' 
 
 'Yes, do look. It's that cigarette-case Carrie gave me. I 
 had it with me when we were walking, and now it's gone, it's 
 gone.' 
 
 There was an accent of despair in her voice. 
 
 ' Look, look ! ' she continued. ' It was here we were walking. 
 You see our footsteps in the sand.' 
 
 And she again bent down, and began searching in the loose 
 sand and among the stones. She turned the latter over feverishly 
 with the point of her stick, and kept moving forward, taking 
 small steps. Felix joined in the search. Her face and manner 
 had alarmed him. There was something almost ferocious in 
 her anxiety, something crazy, something — he could not help 
 saying this to himself against his will — wicked. She took no 
 further notice of him for a long while, but several times he 
 heard her say, 'Where is it ? Where is it?' 
 
 'You are sure you had it with you when we were walking?' 
 he asked at length. 
 
 'Yes, yes, quite sure, quite.' 
 
 ' On your chatelaine ? ' 
 
 'No, it was in the front of my gown, tucked in. Where can 
 it be ? Where can it be ? ' 
 
 It struck him as strange that she carried a cigarette-case in 
 the front of her gown. 
 
 ' Look here,' he said. ' You go in and leave me to find it. I 
 know you hate the wind, and besides ' 
 
 'No, no. The wind's nothing. You would never find it. 
 Don't talk to me.' 
 
 She spoke angrily like a person losing all self-control. Felix 
 went on searching for the lost object in silence. He was hurt 
 and perjjlexed, but lon^'ed to restore her to content. The wind 
 blew so violently that it was difficult to see well, and the sand- 
 grains, carried on it, pricked his face, stung his skin like myriads 
 of insects. At length he began to feel tired out with the inces-
 
 350 FELIX 
 
 sant bending forward, the incessant staring which the flying 
 sand-grains made so painful. 
 
 ' We shall never find it in this wind,' he said. * The sand 
 must have blown over it and hidden it. Do give it up.' 
 
 'I won't!' she exclaimed bitterly. *! tell you I must 
 find it.' 
 
 ' But ' 
 
 She turned on him savagely. 
 
 'How can I look when you interrupt me?* she cried out. 
 ' Go to the hotel and find Alice. Send her here. If she isn't 
 in, wait till she comes in, and send her at once. Go, go ! ' 
 
 Felix went away without another word. He felt as if she had 
 struck him, hurt to the soul. He was utterly confused by her 
 manner, and the fierce wind added to his confusion and misery. 
 When he reached the hotel, he asked the waiter if Mrs. Ismey's 
 maid had come in. 
 
 ' No, sir,' said the lad. ' She hasn't been gone out long.' 
 
 'Please tell me directly she comes in, directly — mind.' 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 He paused, then added with evident curiosity: 
 
 ♦Can't the lady find it?' 
 
 •Has she told you?' said Felix. 
 
 ' Yes, sir, and the housemaid. She 's turned out all her room, 
 and I 've been all over the stairs to see for it. I s'pose it 's 
 worth a lot. I never see a lady in such a taking. Why, she 
 seems pretty near crazed.' 
 
 ' I 'm in the billiard-room when the maid comes in,* said 
 Felix curtly. 
 
 He went there, sat down on the divan which skirted the end 
 of the room, and waited. A long time passed. It was actually 
 an hour, but it seemed to him like a whole afternoon. All the 
 time he waited he listened to the wind. He felt like a man 
 who has received a wound in the dark, and who does not know 
 its exact nature or why he has received it. He did not think 
 much, but he suffered a great deal, and he felt as if he were 
 on the edge of greater suffering, and as if he were also on the 
 edge of complete understanding. He would see the wound 
 in the light, would probe it himself, would know why he 
 had received it. He was certain of that. All the rest was 
 uncertainty. 
 
 'You wished to see me, sir?' said a faint voice. 
 
 Felix started. Alice was standing there, dressed in a plain 
 black hat and jacket, and looking at him with her small, steady 
 eyes.
 
 FELIX 851 
 
 'Oh— yes/ 
 
 He got up. 
 
 * Mrs. Ismey is out on the beach.' 
 
 ' By herself, sir?' 
 
 Alice looked very much surprised. 
 
 ' She wants you to go to her at once. She *s lost something.' 
 
 ' Lost something, sir ? What is it ? ' 
 
 'A cigarette-case that Lady Caroline ' 
 
 Felix stopped short. Alice's face had suddenly changed. 
 She looked alarmed. Felix came nearer to her. 
 
 ' Alice,' he said, ' what is really the matter ? You know and 
 you must tell me.' 
 
 He spoke authoritatively, not curiously. He could not tell 
 why, but this matter, apparently so trivial, loomf^d upon him now 
 like something large, terrible, of profound importance. 
 
 ' Oh, sir,' the maid answered, ' surely you can guess by this 
 time ! ' 
 
 There was pity, but there was also something like contempt 
 in her voice. 
 
 ' Guess ! ' said Felix. ' What do you mean ? What is there 
 to guess?' 
 
 Alice hesitated. 
 
 •I'm sure I wouldn't give my lady away,' she murmured at 
 length, ' not for anything. But — well ' 
 
 She stopped. 
 
 'Tell me,' Felix said. * Tell me.' 
 
 'Why, sir, Mrs. Ismey keeps her morphia in that cigarette- 
 case. If she don't find it I shall have an awful time with her 
 to-night.' 
 
 ' You — you liar ! ' said Felix passionately. ' You liar ! ' 
 
 He raised his hand as if he were going to strike her. But 
 suddenly a floodgate seemed to be burst open in his brain and 
 to set free a torrent of memories. His hand dropped to his 
 side. 
 
 'I beg your pardon, Alice,' he said. 
 
 He went over to the billiard table, rested his elbows on it, 
 and hid his face in his hands. Two burning tears forced them- 
 selves between his eyelids. 
 
 Something within him, far away in a dark place, something 
 inevorable kept saying to him, 'It's true, it's true.'
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 LATE that evening, long after the dinner-hour had passed, 
 and the two sisters had ghded sideways from their table 
 to take up again their knitting in the public drawing-room, 
 Felix was walking heavily on the sands in the direction of the 
 hotel. He had been out alone for hours, he did not know how 
 many. He did not realise now what time of night it was, 
 scarcely even that it was night. But he knew it was very dark 
 and very cold, and that the wind was howling. He knew, too, 
 that the lights which he saw in the distance shone in the house 
 from which he had fled when Alice hurried out of the billiard- 
 room. Yes, his going had been a flight. He had stumbled 
 down the corridor, turning his face to the wall, almost like a 
 child, when he came upon the waiter, who stared after him with 
 a sort of sheepish amazement. Mechanically he had caught up 
 his cap from the peg on which it was hanging, and had seized 
 the handle of the hall door. It was a patent handle. He tried 
 to turn it in vain. He struggled with it, striving to keep back 
 the scalding tears which mounted to his eyes as if from some 
 reservoir of bitter waters hidden deep in his heart. Then he 
 heard the heavy patter of the waiter's feet coming along the 
 passage and made some frantic movement. The door burst 
 open. He felt the wind on his face, down which the tears 
 were running despite his efforts to drive them back to their 
 sources ; and he fled, keeping his eyes turned away from that 
 dreadful searching figure on the beach, fled past the bungalows 
 with their closed shutters, and the lifeboat shed, and the fisher- 
 men's cottages, in front of which lay brown nets w lighted down 
 with stones from the slope of shingle. He skirted a sandbank, 
 and the place to which he had travelled so eagerly only the day 
 before was hidden. He was alone with the grey sky, the grey 
 sea, and the truth. 
 
 He faced them desperately, almost brutally. He stared upon 
 the truth as a man staring at a hideous naked figure, marking 
 every ugly blemish, every revolting detail. And presently the 
 truth seemed to hypnotise him as an object presented con- 
 
 852
 
 FELIX 353 
 
 tinuously to the eyes hypnotises the gazer. He knew that he 
 was still looking at the truth, but it changed. Sometimes it 
 seemed enlarged, sometimes diminished. Sometimes it vanished. 
 Yet it was there, like a dreadful thing concealed for a while by 
 gathering darkness. 
 
 He walked on and on along the lonely sands, and at first he 
 was filled with a vague intention. He meant to get away from 
 the hotel, to put ever-increasing stretches of sand between him 
 and it, and that which was going to happen in it to-night. The 
 maid's last words haunted his mind. Their simplicity, their 
 colloquial vulgarity made their power. Each time he thought 
 of them, repeated them to himself, his imagination conjured up 
 some fresh scene of terror. He saw that which had been his 
 holy of holies turned into something dreadful as a brothel, filthy 
 as a church which human deeds have made a shambles. 
 
 And then he hastened, and was again conscious that he was 
 in flight. 
 
 The darkness came down and the tide began to flow. He 
 heard its voice in the night coming up the sands slowly, 
 persistently, but he heard it I'ke a partially deaf man. His 
 senses seemed to him to have been injured by the knowledge 
 which had come upon him. He remembered reading once in 
 a newspaper of a great explosion which had made some men 
 blind, others deaf, others speechless. Surely he was one of those 
 men. He touched himself and fancied that even his sense of 
 touch was affected. Then he burst out laughing all alone in the 
 dark. How ridiculous life was ! He went on and on. Perhaps 
 he would have walked on all night had he not presently come 
 to a river which found its way into the sea a few miles from 
 Eldon Sands. He had set his feet in the water before he knew 
 that there was a barrier to his further progress. 
 
 The river was wide at its mouth and flowed rapidly. Here 
 and there its current was diverted by low sandbanks, and there 
 was a scurry of foam where it met the advancing waves of the 
 sea. Gulls were flying low over the waters, and far off the red 
 eye of a lightship winked. Felix stood still looking at the 
 river which forcibly changed his pur[iose. The farthest thing 
 that he could see or imagine was the red eye of the lightship, 
 and, for a moment, all he felt was that he wished to be on the 
 other side of the river able to pursue his journey towards it. 
 Surely it was at the end of the world, and l)eyond it there was 
 nothingness, tiie precipitous darkness of annihilation. 
 
 But there was the river. He drew back and turned round, 
 setting his face towards the other darkness in which Eldon 
 z
 
 354 FELIX 
 
 Sands lay hidden. And then suddenly, and for no apparent 
 reason, he resolved to go to the hotel, to see her, to tear to pieces 
 the veil, so ragged now, which still hung between him and the 
 whole naked horror of the truth. A sort of savage instinct 
 possessed him, a dogged brutal determination to go down into 
 the uttermost recesses of his hell. 'The truth! the truth!' he 
 kept repeating to himself, as he walked heavily along the sands 
 and drew near to the hotel. 
 
 It was nearly ten o'clock. There were no lights in the fisher- 
 men's cottages, but in the hotel there were lights. One shone 
 in an upper window. He thought it was the window of her 
 bedroom. What was going on there? When he was actually 
 outside the hall door he felt physically afraid to go into the 
 hotel. He stood for some minutes trying to collect himself. 
 The dogged brutality had abruptly left him. He felt that his 
 courage was an out-of-doors courage, that once enclosed within 
 the four walls of a house his nerves would betray him. At last 
 he pushed the handle. But the door did not yield. It was 
 evidently locked. He waited again and then pulled the bell. 
 After two or three minutes he heard steps, bolts being shot back. 
 The door opened, and he saw the lighted hall and the waiter 
 peering out at him. He looked past the waiter. He did not 
 know what he expected to see. 
 
 ' Oh, it 's you, sir ! ' said the lad in a surprised tone. 
 
 'Yes,' Felix said. 
 
 He stepped in softly and listened. He did not know what 
 he expected to hear. The waiter shut the door and shot the 
 bolts again. 
 
 ' Dinner 's over long ago, sir,' he said. ' We didn't know 
 where you was.' 
 
 ' No,' Felix said. 
 
 He stood in the hall looking at the waiter, as if he expected 
 to read the history of what had taken place during his absence 
 in the lad's eyes. 
 
 ' What time is it ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Just on the stroke of ten, sir. I suppose you want something 
 to eat?' 
 
 'Yes, I suppose so,' Felix said. 
 
 ' There 's the cold beef from ' 
 
 'Yes, yes. That'll do.' 
 
 He took off his cap and hung it on the peg. 
 
 ' Is — has everybody gone to bed ? ' he asked slowly. 
 
 *I don't think as ' 
 
 Just then there was the rustle of a dress coming along the
 
 FELIX 855 
 
 corridor and Mrs. Ismey appeared. Felix turned round and 
 faced her. 
 
 * I '11 go and put out your supper, sir,' said the waiter. 
 
 Felix did not hear him. He was looking at Mrs. Ismey 
 stupidly and blatantly. She was smiling brightly at him. 
 
 ' Have you been out to bathe?' she said in the drawling voice. 
 ' It wasn't very kind of you. I had to dine all alone.' 
 
 ' I see,' he said slowly, ' I see you 've found it.' 
 
 'The cigarette-case. Yes. I was in a dreadful state about 
 it. Carrie's present, you see. I '11 come and sit with you while 
 you eat.' 
 
 She turned round and walked towards the dining-room. Felix 
 followed her. It was very strange, he thought, her slim figure 
 looked as graceful as usual, her thick shining hair as live and 
 beautiful. When he came into the dining-room, and saw her 
 face in the lamplight, it seemed untroubled. Her eyes met his. 
 They were tired eyes, but they did not look like guilty eyes. 
 
 ' I '11 sit by the fire,' she said. 
 
 She ensconced herself in one of the armchairs while he sat 
 down at the table. The waiter brought in some cold beef cut 
 on a plate, some beetroot, some yellow pickles in a glass jar, a 
 loaf of bread, and the half-finished bottle of wine they had had 
 at lunch. 
 
 'Is there anything more you want, sir?' he asked. 
 
 ' No, thanks.' 
 
 'You wouldn't like some cheese?' 
 
 'No, thanks.' 
 
 The waiter went out, trudging sturdily over the polished 
 wooden floor in his soft slippers. Felix took up his knife and 
 fork and began mechanically to eat. He kept his eyes fixed on 
 his plate. 
 
 ' Where did you go?* he heard Mrs. Ismey say. 
 
 *To the river,' he replied. 
 
 'The river ! I didn't know there was one. Is it far?' 
 
 ' I don't know.' 
 
 'I thought you 'd got tired of me and eloped with somebody.' 
 
 He went on eating, and looking at the grey-blue pattern on 
 his plate. 
 
 'The wandering spirits were tremendously surprised to see 
 me at dinner all by myself.' 
 
 ' Were they ? ' 
 
 He pourecl out some wine, drank it, and filled his glass again. 
 
 'Yes. D'you know, Felix, I believe they think ' 
 
 'Don't call me that,' he said.
 
 856 FELIX 
 
 He drank the second glass of wine. She was silent for a 
 moment. Then she said : 
 
 * But I always do. Why not?* 
 
 He got up and rang the bell without answering her. 
 
 ' Bring me a glass of brandy, please,' he said, when the waiter 
 came. 
 
 *A liqueur glass, sir?' 
 
 ' Yes. And you can take away. I shan't eat anything more.' 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 He came to the fire and sto 'd there in silence till the waiter 
 brought the brandy. Mrs. Ismey did not say anything either. 
 When Felix had drunk the brandy tlie waiter began to clear 
 away. He was rather slow, but at last he had finished, gone out 
 and shut the door. Then Felix said : 
 
 ' Look here — I know.' 
 
 He spoke in a hard, unboyish voice, looking straight into the fire. 
 
 ' Know ! ' Mrs. Ismey said. ' What do you mean ? Are you 
 angry with me because I sent you in to fetch Alice this 
 afternoon ? ' 
 
 ' I know that you take morphia,' he said. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey began to laugh, as if she were really amused. 
 
 ' My dear boy ! Why, what ' 
 
 ' Stop that ! ' he said brutally. ' How dare you laugh ? ' 
 
 In the last sentence his voice lost its hardness and began to 
 quiver. 
 
 ' I can't bear it,' he said. * I can't bear it ! If you laugh I 
 shall— I shall ' 
 
 He stopped speaking and clenched his hands together. Sobs 
 rose in his throat, but he choked them down. He heard a 
 sharp rustle, as Mrs. Ismey got up from her chair, and felt two 
 hands laid on his arm. 
 
 ' Oh don't — don't ! ' he said brokenly. 
 
 'Btit, Felix, you are mad ' 
 
 Suddenly he looked down at the hands that were holding him. 
 They were filthy. Pie seized them. 
 
 ' Look ! ' he said. ' Look ! and don't tell me any more lies.' 
 
 She stood there staring at her hands, which he held up near 
 to her eyes. He let go of them at last and they dropped to her 
 sides. 
 
 Don't tell me any more lies,' he repeated. *I love you.' 
 
 He had never thought that if he told her his secret he would 
 tell it like that. She moved away from him, sank down in the 
 chair from vfhich she had just got up, and began to cry, weakly, 
 despairingly, almost as a baby cries when it is feeble from
 
 FELIX 857 
 
 suffering which it cannot express in words. Presently he looked 
 down at her. Siie had partially turned in the big chair, so that 
 she had one shoulder against the back of it, and her face pressed 
 sideways upon the cushion. Her body shook slightly. Those 
 horrible hands, protruding from the sleeves of her pretty gown, 
 lay palm downwards against her knee with the black nails 
 exposed. He looked at them and repeated with wonder : 
 
 'Yes, I love you.' 
 
 How could that be true, that thing incredible? And yet it 
 was true. He did love her, now, at this moment. And he had 
 presumed to think that he understood men, women, perhaps 
 even himself. She went on crying. Presently she moved one 
 of her hands, and began to feel at the back of her gown. She 
 drew out a tiny pocket-handkerchief edged with lace and put it 
 up to her eyes. He smelt perfume, the same curious perfume 
 he had smelt when he drove with her and Lady Caroline in the 
 brougham to the Standard Music Hall. It had given him dreams 
 then. It filled him with remembrances now. While he looked 
 at her he saw something gleam in the front of her dress. He 
 bent, then knelt quickly down on the floor by her and put up his 
 hand to her bosom. She turned sharply and clasped her two 
 hands over his. 
 
 'What are you doing?' she said between her sobs. 'No — 
 no ' 
 
 But he overcame her with his greater strength, drew the 
 cigarette-case from its hiding-place, and thrust it into his pocket. 
 When he came into the hotel he had not known what he was 
 going to do, he had not known even fully what he felt. Now, 
 suddenly, he knew, knew how much he loved her, in what course 
 his love would lead him. 
 
 'Give it me back,' she said, with a sort of broken fierceness. 
 'Give it me back !' 
 
 ' No,' he said. 
 
 She was sitting up in the chair, leaning forward to him with 
 her hands stretched out. 
 
 ' It's mine,' she said. ' You can't keep it. I will have it.' 
 
 He went to the window, opened it swiftly, and flung the 
 cigarette-case far out into the darkness. She had followed him 
 and uttered a cry which s(jundcd like a cry of despair. Just 
 then the door was opened and Alice came in. She heard Mrs. 
 Ismey's exclamation. 
 
 *0h, ma'am, what is it?' she said, coming (juickly forward. 
 
 'He's thrown it away 1' Mrs. Ismey cried out, in a terrible 
 sharp voice.
 
 358 FELIX 
 
 Felix was shutting the window. 
 
 'Sir,' said Alice, 'what have you done?' 
 
 'Right,' he said. 
 
 The maid seemed startled by the authority of his manner. 
 Although terribly, even passionately excited, he spoke with a 
 sort of iron calmness. The boy in him had vanished. His 
 manner, his look, the sound of his voica — all were manly, 
 dominating. Mrs. Ismey, whose face was distorted with agita- 
 tion, and marred by the tears which ran down leaving channels 
 in the paint and powder on her cheeks, glanced at him sideways, 
 and then suddenly turned and went out of the room. Alice 
 made a movement to follow her. 
 
 'Stop, Alice,' Felix said. 'I must speak to you.' 
 
 ' I '11 come back, sir,' she answered. 'But I must see where 
 she goes. You don't understand.' 
 
 She hastened after Mrs. Ismey. Felix remained by the 
 window. There was a wide wooden seat under it, and he sat 
 down, rested his head in his hands and shut his eyes. There 
 were pulses beating in his temples and in his eyelids. After two 
 or three minutes he heard a slight noise and glanced up. The 
 waiter was looking in at the door. 
 
 * I beg pardon, sir,' he said. ' I thought you was gone, and 
 came to see to the lamp.' 
 
 ' Go to bed if you want to,' Felix said. * I 'm sitting up a 
 little longer. I '11 put it out.' 
 
 'Thank you, sir. Then I will go.' 
 
 He concealed a yawn with his broad, red hand and dis- 
 appeared. When Alice returned she found Felix still sitting by 
 the window. She came into the room leaving the door wide 
 open. 
 
 'You might just shut the door, Alice,' he said. 
 
 ' No, sir, I can't. Everybody 's gone to bed, and I must leave 
 it open to hear if she comes down. She's locked herself in her 
 room now, but she might.' 
 
 He shivered. 
 
 ' No wonder you 're a bit upset, sir,' said the girl, with quiet 
 sympathy, coming up to the table. ' But you shouldn't have 
 done it.' 
 
 ' Done what? ' 
 
 'Thrown the stuff away.' 
 
 ' It 's killing her,' he said slowly. ' Isn't it ? ' 
 
 ' I know, sir ; but she 'd die if she was cut off from it. She did 
 very near die at Christmas, and then there was the doctors with 
 her, and it was done gradual.'
 
 FELIX 859 
 
 Felix was silent for a minute. His lips felt dry and paralysed. 
 At last he said : 
 
 'Sit down, Alice, please. I must talk to you.' 
 
 ' Very well, sir. But please to come nearer the door so as I 
 can hear if she should try to get out.' 
 
 Felix got up. He carried two of the dining-room chairs to 
 the door, and they sat down close together where they could see 
 the dark corridor in which the waiter had extinguished the 
 lamps. 
 
 'Alice, I want you to tell me everything,' he said, in a low 
 voice. ' I think I have a right to know, because, perhaps, I can 
 help.' 
 
 The maid looked at him with her small, steady eyes. 
 
 ' I 'd thought of that, sir,' she said. ' I nearly spoke up to you 
 more than once.' 
 
 ' I remember,' he said. 
 
 Everything in the past was becoming clearer now. 
 
 'She seemed to think a lot of you, and I didn't know what to 
 do. I was so afraid of Mr. Ismey finding out.' 
 
 'But he did find out.' 
 
 'Yes, sir, at last through that Paris business. I told my lady 
 he would, but she was crazy to go.' 
 
 ' Why ? ' 
 
 ' Why, to visit them morphia clubs as they call them. What is 
 it, sir? You do look white.' 
 
 'Nothing. Go on. And she — Mrs. Ismey, went to those 
 places?' 
 
 'Yes, sir. One day her ladyship — Lady Caroline, sir, and 
 me — had to go after her to get her away. She wouldn't come, 
 though. There's no doing anything with her wlicn she's got 
 one of her morphia fits on her. You wouldn't believe the 
 change.' 
 
 ' I saw her to-day on the beach. 
 
 'She's like a mad thing. When Mr. Ismey found out — he'd 
 been suspecting something wrong, oh, for ever such a time, but 
 didn't know what it was — he called in the doctors and jiut her 
 under treatment. He said if she didn't go under treatment he'd 
 leave hei, and she was that afraid of the scandal she give 
 in. They did it, sir — the taking away of the morphia from her, 
 — gradual, but even with that she nearly died. You never saw 
 anything like it. I pitied her, sir, with all my heart I did. The 
 sickness was something awful, and the cold. We used to heap 
 her with blankets, and have the fire blazing day and night, but 
 nothing would do. She was shivering, and her teeth chattering,
 
 360 FELIX 
 
 and her body all gooseflesh, as you may say, and screaming out 
 that there was ice in her very bones. And sometimes she'd 
 yawn — that was awful, sir — for hours at a time, and nothing 
 could stop it. Her face was that twisted up she didn't look her- 
 self. Her own husband wouldn't have known her. She mi^^ht 
 have been any old woman. And then she'd seem as if she was 
 going right out. That was when the circulation went wrong. 
 She 'd be all in a sweat from top to toe, and nearly suffocating. 
 I had to hold her up on the pillows like you might a baby. 
 And there was other things, worse than that, that I couldn't tell 
 to a gentleman. But it was hell for my poor lady, sir, that it 
 was. Mr. Ismey he went away at last. He couldn't stand it, 
 hearing her crying and shrieking out for the morphia hour 
 after hour. The doctors made him go. And doesn't she hate 
 him now for what she went through? Sometimes, I think, if 
 she could get the chance, she'd kill him, and I believe he 
 knows it too.' 
 
 Alice was silent. She looked through the doorway into the 
 corridor, listened, then got up and stepped out. Felix watched 
 her in silence. He felt stupid, like a man who has overtaxed 
 his brain by work. 
 
 'I thought I heard her, sir,' said Alice, coming back. 'But 
 it must have been fancy.' 
 
 'Wasn't she cured ?' Felix asked with an effort. 
 
 'Just for the time, sir. But now it's as bad as ever, and 
 worse, as if the being without had given her an appetite ae you 
 may say. I don't know what to do with her. The dirt k some- 
 thing dreadful, and tearing her dresses to pieces, and the 
 breaking most everything she touches. Why, even the servants 
 here are asking what it is. And she don't care now whether 
 the needle's clean or not. She's in a shocking state, sir. She 
 couldn't never wear a low dress again. And her money — why, 
 she 's borrowed even of the men-servants to pay that chemist 
 where she goes in Wigmore Street. And now, as often as not, 
 when she takes the morphia she'll leave the needle in. She 
 never used to do that.' 
 
 ' Leave it in ? But — no, never mind. Don't tell me.' 
 
 He bei^an to feel physically sick. Alice looked at him with 
 compassion. 
 
 'It used to turn my stomach, sir, too,' she said. 'And no 
 wonder.' 
 
 ' But Lady Caroline ? ' Felix asked. ' She doesn't — does she 
 take morphia?' 
 
 'Lord, yes, sir, regular. Why, it was she put my lady on to 
 it at the first.'
 
 FELIX 8G1 
 
 * Ah, it was she!* 
 
 A flash of happiness, almost of triumph, came to him. After 
 all Mrs. Ismey had sometimes told him the truth ! 
 
 'Yes, sir. But her ladyship's quite different from my lady, 
 and only takes a little, just the same each day, and never 
 increases. And my lady wouldn't have any one know what 
 she 's after, not for all the world. But her ladyship almost glories 
 in it, as you might say. If she had her way she 'd make every 
 one do as she does. Why, she's taught her maid, Mrs. Smart, 
 to inject the filthy stuff. And the dog — but you've seen the 
 dog, sir?' 
 
 ' The dog ! ' Felix said. ' Chicho — d' you mean Chicho ? ' 
 
 A feeling of horror came over him such as he had not felt 
 before. 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 ' But what ? Go on, go on, I tell you ! ' 
 
 'Her ladyship gives it to the dog, sir, regular.' 
 
 Felix had become deadly pale. He got up hastily, went over 
 to the window, threw it open and leaned out. The strong sea 
 air blowing upon his face, the wide darkness that held the sound 
 of the sea, the knowledge of night, nature, stars, eternal things 
 that came to him as he pushed aside man's barrier, one of the 
 many which he sets up between him and that which he cannot 
 understand, were so blessed to Felix just then that he longed to 
 be one with the mysteries of God, to be dead for ever to the 
 mysteries of men. But, almost like the unborn child in the 
 womb of the mother, the love stirred in his heart, as if it 
 stretched itself, pushed softly against the surrounding walls. 
 
 He turned back into the room. Alice was just going out at 
 the doorway. 
 
 ' I hear her, sir ! ' she whispered to him. ' She 's coming 
 down. I thought she would.' 
 
 Felix held up his hand to stop her, and went quickly over 
 to her. 
 
 ' D' you hear, sir ? ' she whi'^pered. 
 
 Felix listened, and heard a very faint, stealthy noise, a creak 
 of wood yielding beneath some light pressure, and then, in a 
 moment, another sound which he did not understand. 
 
 ' She 's ])ulling back the bolts, sir ! Let me po ! ' 
 
 The maid darted out into tlie blackness of the corridor. 
 
 There was a sound of struggling, then of a loud shrill scream- 
 ing. Felix put his hands over his ears, and turned his back Wo 
 the open door. 
 
 But that ch'M ofliis <^tirred again in i*s prison. 
 
 He dropped his hands and followed Alice.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 BEFORE Felix left London for Eldon Sands he had invited 
 Paul Chalmers to dine with him in his flat on the day of 
 his return, the Monday. He wished to encourage Chalmers, to 
 cheer him up. Things were going very badly with the ex-piano- 
 tuner. His year at Sam's school had come to an end just before 
 Christmas, when his smiling preceptor had most happily bowed 
 him out to his fate in the world of literature. Sam had been 
 very agreeable at this last interview, but he had not given 
 Chalmers any introductions to editors. 
 
 ' Knock at the door, Mr. Chalmers,' he had said. ' Keep on 
 knocking at the door. Make them feel that they can't get on 
 without you. Bother them. I did, and here I am to-day. Why 
 should not you be here to-morrow ? ' 
 
 He sank down in his easy-chair and returned serenely to 
 Carlyle's Miscellatties, while Chalmers put on his big top-hat, 
 packed his manuscripts into his shabby bag, and tramped out to 
 meet his future. 
 
 That future did not promise to be very bright. For more 
 than two months now he had been trying to make the news- 
 paper proprietors and the editors of London feel that they could 
 no longer get on without him. He found them strangely 
 unaware of their necessitous condition. Not one had waked to 
 the great fact, that Mr. Chalmers's presence in his office was the 
 only thing which could save his newspaper from the ruin im- 
 pending. Chalmers had knocked at the door and been bowed 
 into the street. He had endeavoured to ' bother them.' Pos- 
 sibly his methods were not sufficiently aggressive, or were too 
 little enticing. Certainly they were not successful. His Aus- 
 tralian aunt's windfall was on the point of exhaustion, and he 
 had gained no footing in the literary, no standing room in the 
 journalistic world. His articles, written daily, had been daily 
 rejected. He had not earned one penny since Sam's door 
 swung back behind him. Unfortunately he could not afford to 
 wait for an income. Matters were becoming desperate with 
 him. One day he happened to meet Felix in the street, and 
 
 862
 
 FELIX 863 
 
 Felix, struck by the flaming anxiety in his curiously expressive 
 face, and guessing its reason, invited him to dinner, with some 
 vague, kindly intention of trying to make him a little happier, 
 of 'cheering the poor chap up.' Between the giving of the 
 invitation and the dinner happened the incidents at Eldon 
 Sands. From those incidents Felix travelled, on the Monday, 
 to take up again his London life. When he reached his flat and 
 saw on his writing-table his engagement-list, with Chalmers's 
 name against that day, he sat down hastily to put him off. But, 
 as he drew the telegraph-form towards him, he thought of a 
 lonely evening, of what it would mean to him just then. He 
 sent no telegram. At eight the table in the little sitting-room 
 was laid for two ; at five minutes past eight the Chinese idols 
 saw the rather elaborate entrance of Chalmers in peculiar 
 evening-dress. 
 
 He shook hands with Felix nervously. His precarious posi- 
 tion and utter lack of success had greatly increased his natural 
 sensitiveness. He had been so often shown into the street that 
 he could not help being on the defensive, even with one who 
 was obviously his friend. To-night, at first Felix was not obser- 
 vant. Chalmers seemed to him a gaunt and rather ridiculous 
 shadow, for a moment the nearest to him of the shadows of life. 
 All that he hoped for from Chalmers was an evening's faint 
 distraction. In the beginning he had invited him with the 
 intention of trying to detach him for a little while from his 
 sorrows. Now he found himself sick with the desire to be — not 
 comforted, that was totally impossible — driven away for a short 
 hour from the tragic spectre which had travelled with him from 
 Eldon Sands. He had been disposed to play the comforter, 
 but that was long ago. 
 
 They sat down at the small oval table. Chalmers was dressed 
 in a glistening suit of broadcloth, with a ribbed shirt-front and 
 a made-up tie. From his ill-fitting waistcoat escaped the end 
 of a voluminous red silk pocket-handkerchief. His shirt-cuffs 
 were fastened with huge metal buttons, on which appeared 
 Britannia's head. Felix noticed none of these details. The 
 horror of the night was still upon him like a thick cloud, in 
 which all the world was involved. 
 
 'How are you getting on?' he said to Chalmers presently, 
 trying to force himself to be curious at least, if not to care. 
 
 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Wilding,' replied his guest, with an attempt 
 at ease and cheerfulness, 'pretty middling, pretty middling. I 
 take it that no man can expect to make his mark right away, as 
 it were.'
 
 364 FEMX 
 
 He shot his cuffs, and stroked his red-brown moustaches and 
 whiskers with large nervous hands. 
 
 ' Patience, Mr. Wilding, patience is what we want. The 
 strong man is ever patient. Is not that so? ' 
 
 ' I dare say,' said Felix. 
 
 * Look at Carlyle, at Mr. Brov, ning, and many another. Did 
 they reach the goal at once ? No, no. And should we, you 
 and I, Mr. Wilding, be ' 
 
 ' Look here, Chalmers,' Felix suddenly interrupted, in an 
 odd, hard voice. 'Some time ago I met King Marshall.' 
 
 'Mr. Marshall, the celebrated writer of books, Mr. Wilding?' 
 
 ' Yes. And d' you know what he said to me, what advice he 
 gave me about life? He said : "Try to see what is and to think 
 about it naturally." ' 
 
 ' My idea precisely, Mr. Wilding, my constant endeavour.' 
 
 ' Look the truth in the face. That 's what we 've got to do. 
 Look it in the face for others, but most especially for ourselves.' 
 
 Most certainly, Mr. Wilding. I am of the same opinion, I 
 do assure you.' 
 
 ' Well, and Antonino Marza said to me another day : " Don't 
 think yourself bound to do anything that you hate. Every time 
 we do anything that we hate we do ourselves an injury."' 
 
 ' No doubt, Mr. Wilding, no doubt of it at all.' 
 
 ' Ah, bur. don't you see that King Marshall and Marza are in 
 conflict ? ' 
 
 ' Two such great men, Mr. Wilding ! Oh, surely impossible ! ' 
 exclaimed Chalmers, beginning to look confused, and to pat the 
 tablecloth with his bony fingers. 
 
 ' Yes, they are, for to three-quarters of us there is nothing 
 more hateful than looking the truih in the face. Which of us 
 does it ? Which of us is not afraid to do it ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, I hope not, Mr. Wilding, I hope not, truly.' 
 
 ' Chalmers,' said Felix, with a hot earnestness which startled 
 his guest, ' I 've seldom known what the truth is in my life, and 
 sometimes, when I have, I 've turned my back on it. I 've 
 glozed it over. But something's just happened— never mind 
 what — which has changed me most awfully, and changed me for 
 ever. I don't know a bit what it's made, or going to make of 
 me, but I do know that King Marshall must be right and Marza 
 wrong. We've no business to shut out from us everything that 
 we hate, never to do what we hate doing, when to do it v. ould 
 make what is true clearer. Now I W% done that before and J 
 meant to do it to-night.' 
 
 ' I beg pardon, Mr. Wilding ? '
 
 FELIX 865 
 
 'I meant to gloze over the truth with you.* 
 
 'Indeed, Mr. Wilding ! May I ask how so?' 
 
 Chalmers drummed more feverishly upon the tablecloth, and 
 rolled his great eyes anxiously. Felix glanced at him and then 
 looked away. If he had not been suffering so much himself he 
 could not have gone on, but to-night he felt a sort of desperate 
 desire to torture himself still more in the cause of truth. He 
 was full of a wild, an almost frantic horror of lies. He knew 
 he had originally invited Chalmers to dine with some vague 
 intention of buoying him up with soothing words. Liar ! He 
 called himself that now as he thought of this intention, and he 
 put it aside with a sort of angry vehemence. 
 
 ' Chalmers,' he said, ' I 'm going to hurt you. You '11 have to 
 forgive me. I 've been hurt myself by the truth before now. 
 Tell me, since you left Sam's you haven't got on, have you ? ' 
 
 Chalmers's strange and violent face began to twitch, but he 
 still strove to preserve his rather extravagant air of leonine 
 intellectuality. 
 
 ' We must give it time, Mr. Wilding,' he began, with a sweep 
 of the hand. 'We must ' 
 
 ' You haven't got on ! ' 
 
 Chalmers sat back in his chair. An abrupt, piteous expression 
 came into his eyes. 
 
 ' Well, no, truly, Mr. Wilding,' he said, looking down. 
 
 'Honestly, do you think you ever will? do you think you are 
 fitted to ? ' 
 
 ' I — I — certainly I — we all have our moments of doubt, Mr. 
 Wilding, but we must not give way to them. All great men * 
 
 ' Yes. But you and I aren't great men, Chalmers, and we 
 know it. We are small men, very small.' 
 
 He spoke the last words with a bitter em[)hasis. Chalmers 
 was silent. He sat there with both his large, knotted hands 
 lying on the table on either side of his plate. His face looked 
 suddenly old and desperate. 
 
 'Mr. Wilding,' he said at last, in a loud and faltering voice, 
 ' I can't go back to tuning, I really can't. My soul turns right 
 from it, that it does. I may not be as gifted as some ' 
 
 'Do you think you are gifted at all,' Felix interrupted, 'for 
 literature ? ' 
 
 ' Don't the love of it mean something, Mr. Wilding ? ' 
 
 ' The love of a thing doesn't necessarily mean that one is 
 gifted to understand it. I know that well.' 
 
 'I can't go back to the tuning, Mr. Wilding, I really can't!' 
 Chalmers repeated, with a sort of terror which, to some people,
 
 S66 FELIX 
 
 might have seemed ludicrous, considering its cause, but which 
 was not ludicrous to Felix. 
 
 ' Isn't it better to do the thing one can do well than to try to 
 do the thing one has no power to do ? ' said Felix. 
 
 Afterwards at a great crisis he remembered saying those 
 words, and grew hot with shame at his own ignorance of him- 
 self, at his audacity in daring to speak as he spoke that night to 
 Chalmers. 
 
 ' Chalmers,' he continued, ' you '11 never succeed as a writer. 
 Sam knows it, the whole school knows it, and you know it too. 
 That's truth. Look it in the face.' 
 
 Chalmers dropped his head till his chin touched his breast. 
 
 'Then am I to go back, Mr. Wilding?' he said huskily. 
 'Am I to go back truly to tuning? ' 
 
 If anything could have seemed strange to Felix after the last 
 night at Eldon Sands, that evening's intimate talk with Chalmers 
 would have seemed strange. He would formerly have thought 
 it impossible that two human beings so different could have 
 been brought into such complete accord for a time merely 
 because each was stricken by sorrow. The barrier having been 
 broken down Chalmers revealed to its depth his hitherto secret 
 misery at his own utter incompetence for the career to which 
 all his ambition flowed. He was grotesque in revelation, but 
 he was so sincere that Felix was not conscious of that. They 
 talked for a long time, and Felix, while giving sympathy, felt as 
 if he were receiving it. He wondered afterwards at that, for he 
 did not reveal his sorrow, did not tell Chalmers that there 
 seemed to him that night to be a mighty cloud in the room, a 
 cloud in which lights were dim and even sounds were muffled. 
 At last, when the clocks were striking twelve, Chalmers got up 
 to go. Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead. He wiped 
 them away with the red silk handkerchief. 
 
 'I'm afraid I've kept you very late, Mr. Wilding,' he said 
 apologetically. ' But — well, I do get carried away so by any 
 kindness. I 'm sure I ask pardon.' 
 
 Felix felt a lump rise in his throat. He choked it down. 
 
 'It's all right, Chalmers,' he said. 'But about kind- 
 ness — that 's utter rot. I feel as if I 'd been rather a brute to 
 you.' 
 
 'Telling me the truth. Well, sir ' 
 
 'Don't call me "sir"!' 
 
 * Mr. Wilding, truth is sometimes hard, and no mistake about 
 it. To face the tuning again ' 
 
 He had on his overcoat, and was holding the big top-hat in
 
 FELIX S67 
 
 his hand. His feverish eyes stared fixedly at Felix with a sort 
 of haggard appeal. 
 
 'It ain't — aren't much to look forward to in a lifetime truly,' 
 he said. 
 
 Felix felt the hopelessness of many men's lives very strongly 
 at that moment. He was just going to speak, to make some 
 perhaps floundering attempt at honest and common-sense con- 
 solation, when there came a tap at the door. 
 
 ' Come in ! ' said Felix, startled at any one's wishing to speak 
 to him so late at night. 
 
 The door opened and the night porter appeared. 
 
 'Excuse me for interrupting you, sir,' he said, 'but there's 
 a woman downstairs wishing to speak to you.' 
 
 'A woman !' 
 
 He thought of Alice. 
 
 ' Did she give any name?' 
 
 ' Yes, sir, the name of Mrs. Blake.' 
 
 'Mrs. Blake?' 
 
 For a moment Felix did not remember that he knew any 
 one of that name. Then suddenly he thought of Happy 
 Hal, and his thin, piteous little wife. It must be she. But 
 what could she want? Why did she come to see him at mid- 
 night? 
 
 ' Ask her to come up,' he said to the porter. 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 'And just take this gentleman down with you in the lift.* 
 
 He shook hands warmly with Chalmers. 
 
 * Do come and see me again,' he said. 
 
 'Oh, thank you, Mr. Wilding. I will truly.' 
 
 The porter had left the room. Chalmers was already near 
 the door. 
 
 'And — I say, Chalmers, the truth is hard, I know, and bitter 
 to face, but don't tliink you 're the only one that 's got to show 
 courage. There 's something very bad in front of me too.' 
 
 ' I 'm sorry, Mr. Wilding.' 
 
 'And — well, Chalmers, I fancy that everybody who shows 
 courage gives courage to others. Don't you think so? Let's 
 both try to have pluck.' 
 
 'I will try, Mr. Wilding. Thank you kindly. I'm sure I 
 shall never forget ' 
 
 He stopped speaking, stood for a moment, then threw up his 
 head with the old leonine air and strode out of the room. 
 
 'Poor chap ! ' Felix muttered. 
 
 He felt sincerely grateful to Chalmers, for, in trying to help
 
 368 FELIX 
 
 him, he had certainly helped himself, in confronting the sorrow 
 of another he had gained in power to confront his own. 
 
 ' Mrs. Blake, sir,' said the night porter's voice. 
 
 There was a pause. Then Happy Hal's wife crept, rather 
 than walked, sideways into the room, with her head drooped 
 and her eyes fixed on the carpet. The n'ght porter stared after 
 her with bluff surprise, went out and shut the door. 
 
 ' Mrs. Blake,' said Felix. * I 'm glad to see you. Do please 
 sit down. What is it?' 
 
 He held out his hand, but Mrs. Blake did not take it. 
 Perhaps she did not see it. She looked thinner, more meagre, 
 more plaintively respectable than ever. She wore a small black 
 bonnet, and a black shawl pinned across her flat chest. Re- 
 maining where she was, close to the shut door, she dropped a 
 curtsey. Her hands were hidden under the shawl, but by a 
 slight, continuous movement of it Felix knew that they were 
 trembling. 
 
 'There's nothing wrong, I hope?' he said quickly. 
 
 A thin sound came from the little woman. It was almost 
 like the whimper of a small dog. 
 
 ' Come and sit down by the fire and tell me what it is,' Felix 
 said. 
 
 He put his hand gently on Mrs. Blake's arm and led her to 
 a chair. She sat down modestly on the edge, swallowed, and 
 then said in a low, formal voice, which quivered once or twice 
 and almost broke : 
 
 ' I 'm fair ashamed, sir, to come and disturb a gentleman at 
 this time of night.' 
 
 ' Nonsense. I 'm glad to see you. How is your husband ? 
 All right, I hope?' 
 
 Mrs. Blake swallowed again. Felix could see her throat, 
 which seemed to him almost as narrow as a bird's throat, 
 working. 
 
 ' Sir, it 's — it 's Hal as I 've come about,' she answered, after 
 a moment. 
 
 'He 'snot ill?' 
 
 Suddenly Mrs. Blake broke down and began to cry softly. 
 Even her grief was strangely subdued and respectable. Tears 
 rolled down her thin cheeks to her pointed chin, and dropped 
 off on to the black shawl. 
 
 'What is it? Try to tell me, and if I can do anything, 
 I will.' 
 
 'It's Hal, sir,' she said at length, gulping down her sobs. 
 'I'm in great trouble about him.'
 
 FELIX 869 
 
 *He is ill, then?' 
 
 'No, sir, but —but it all come about just as ever — as ever I 
 thought it would. Why did we go from Dover? Why did we 
 go from Dover ? ' 
 
 The tears ran down again. 
 
 'He's got into difficulties?' asked Felix. 'But I thought 
 he was doing splendidly. I saw his name on the bills at the 
 Palace. I 've been meaning to come and see him, but — well, 
 I 've had so many things.' 
 
 ' It isn't money, sir. No, sir, it 's — it 's the drink.' 
 
 * The drink ! ' exclaimed Felix. ' You don't mean to say that 
 Hal's been drinking?' 
 
 'Drinking something dreadful, sir. I always was afraid for 
 him, sir. And I was right. It come on gradual like. I won't 
 say as it was his fault. But they was always wanting to treat 
 him, one and another. You see, sir, his being a famous man, 
 as you may say ' 
 
 ' I know.' 
 
 'Well, they pretty nigh made him drink whether he was that 
 way or not. And the end of it was he got a taste for it, and 
 ever since it's been something shocking. I 've had to send the 
 children away, back to my mother at Dover, for I couldn't have 
 them there to see — to see ' 
 
 Her voice was drowned in sobs. 
 
 'And we always so respectable!' she murmured through 
 them. ' Up till now.' 
 
 Felix felt deeply sorry for her, but his chief sensation was 
 one of sheer amazement. He thought of Hal, of his resolute, 
 serene face, his straightforward eyes. Mrs. Blake's assertion 
 seemed incredible. Yet it must be true. Her grief was pain- 
 fully genuine. 
 
 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Awfully sorry. I never could have 
 believed that your husband would fall into that.' 
 
 ' I was always afraid, sir, always.' 
 
 Just then Felix remembered how he had mentally laucihed at 
 Mrs. Blake's fears and at his mother's, how he had pitied poor, 
 timorous women. He felt his cheeks getting hot. 
 
 'But now,' he said quickly, eager to get away from his 
 thought, 'has anything happened to-night?' 
 
 'Yes, sir, or I would never have ventured to ' 
 
 'Look here, Mrs. Blake,' Felix interrupted, 'your husband 
 was my first friend in London. If I can do anything I shall be 
 glad, and I won't have you apologise. What's the matter?' 
 
 ' Well, sir, lately I 've been trying to keep Hal straight by 
 
 2 A
 
 370 FELIX 
 
 going to the hall and meeting him when he come out. It 
 wasn't at all what I 've been accustomed to, sir, standing of a 
 night-time out in the street, and with all sorts of women. Well, 
 sir, you know what London is of a night, a fair disgrace ! But, 
 however, I put up with it for Hal. Sometimes he 'd come with 
 me and sometimes he wouldn't, but I was always there ready in 
 hopes of him, sir. And I will say for him he 's never lifted his 
 hand against me, not when he knew what he was doing.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Blake ! ' said Felix. 
 
 He felt inclined to put his arm round those thin shoulders 
 protectively. 
 
 * No, sir. But lately he 's nearly always refused to come home 
 after his turn, and left me there in the street while he 's gone 
 off with some of his new pals, sir. Now and again I 've thought 
 to give up going for him, but then I thinks. No, he 's naught 
 but me. Sir, I mean to care to keep him decent and as he 
 was.' She choked, drew one thin hand, wrinkled by the soap 
 and water of the washtub, from beneath her shawl, passed it 
 across her eyes, and continued: 'So I sticks to it, sir, though 
 night after night I 've had to come home alone. This evening 
 I went, but it started raining, so I went inside the house, 
 thinking to sit till Hal's turn come, and then go round to the 
 stage door, as they calls it. Well, sir, Hal never come on.* 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 ' That 's just it, sir. I went round to ask, and they told me 
 as he 'd come to the theatre drunk. They 'd tried to turn him 
 away, but he wouldn't go. There was a fight, sir. Hal is strong ' 
 — a momentary flash of wifely pride illumined her misery — 
 * there ain't many like him for that. He set about one of the 
 stage hands, and the end of it was the police was called in and 
 — oh, sir, they 've locked him up.' 
 
 At this point Mrs. Blake, forgetful in her shame and despair 
 of what was due to the proprieties, and to a ' real gentleman, 
 gave way utterly. Her thin features were contorted, tears 
 streamed from her eyes, and she wrung her small, wrinkled 
 hands. 
 
 ' I didn't — know — where to look for help — sir,' she sobbed, 
 *so I come to you. Oh, sir, can't you speak up for Hal, can't 
 you, sir? Oh, sir, get him away from prison and make him go 
 back to Dover, sir. Let us be as we was, sir, do let us be as 
 we was.' 
 
 Felix bent forward and laid his hand on hers. One or two of 
 her tears fell upon his hand. Was that a baptism ? 
 
 ' Do — do let us be as we was, sir,' she sobbed once more.
 
 FELIX 871 
 
 And Paul Chalmers had just carried his grief into the night, 
 a grief arising from that very necessity, to go back and be as 
 he was. 
 
 ' How strange it all is ! ' Felix thought, touching the moisture 
 on his hand. 'What does it mean? And why has it all come 
 to me at once?' 
 
 He contemplated a Trinity of Sorrows — Chalmers's, Mrs. 
 Blake's, his own. 
 
 ' Do, sir — do let us be — be as we was ! ' 
 
 She pleaded with him almost as some despairing women plead 
 with God, with him — Felix, who had been so deceived. She 
 relied upon him who could surely no longer dare to rely upon 
 himself. He sat there, and heard her sobs and the distant roll 
 of London's midnight traffic. 
 
 'Can I really do anything for anybody?' he thought. 
 
 No answer came for a moment. He seemed to confront 
 the void in which the world was spinning.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 MRS. WILDING wrote often to Felix. She spoke in her 
 letters of the dawning of spring. She said that the 
 dreariness of winter was passing. She did not beg him to come 
 home, but in her descriptions of the growing charms of the 
 country was only half hidden her yearning to see her son. If 
 he would not come to be with her, perhaps he would come to 
 see the earliest flowers beginning to peep out in the brown 
 earth. As a little child Felix had loved the spring. The 
 ferment of nature had been reflected in his youthful heart and 
 brain. Mrs. Wilding remembered it. She remembered indeed 
 everything connected with her children. And now, in her 
 letters, she alluded to the old times, to spring expeditions in 
 search of the first violets, the first periwinkles, to the emulation 
 between Felix and Margot as to who would find the first 
 primrose of the year, to their joy and interest in the young 
 lambs. 
 
 But Felix confronted the void. Out of the darkness there 
 came to him cries that were as the cries of helpless, storm- 
 driven creatures being hurled towards terrible abysses. He 
 seemed to see pale, frantic hands raised in wild gestures of 
 appeal. The pity of the world — he really meant London when 
 he said to himself the world — got hold of him. It was as if he 
 sat upon some dominating height and contemplated it, as if no 
 one but himself had ever contemplated it before. Face to face 
 with the tragedy of Mrs. Ismey, the tragedy of himself, his 
 mother's letters struck him as decidedly trivial. All this talk 
 about the prettiness of spring, all these old, childish memories 
 roused little interest, little emotion in the serious man who was 
 waking to a strange knowledge of the frivolous, ignorant boy 
 that he had been. Of course his mother could not be expected 
 to realise that the perennial changes in nature were matters of 
 small moment to one who was diving deep into the tragedies 
 of human beings. She lived apart from such tragedies. He 
 thought of her almost as some elderly, good nun, cloistere>i in 
 a calm retreat where nothing of danger, of evil could approach 
 
 872
 
 FELIX 373 
 
 to disturb the profound peace. She had time to meditate, time 
 to watch a snowdrop come up, or a crocus hft its yellow head 
 to the pale sun, time to tell him of these trivial and inevitable 
 events which each new spring-time saw. But he had work to 
 do in the world. He felt as if all London were calling on him 
 for help, clamouring to him for assistance, and he wrote short 
 answers to his mother's letters, and gave no hint of running 
 down to see for himself the garden beauties she described. He 
 said to himself that he must not leave his post even for a 
 moment. From that hour of night when he followed Alice into 
 the dark corridor of the hotel at Eldon Sands, his soul was 
 concentrated on one thing, the rescue of Mrs. Ismey from the 
 vice which governed her. 
 
 He found time to speak the truth to Paul Chalmers. He 
 went with weeping Mrs. Blake to bail out her husband. He 
 exerted himself to persuade Hal to give up the career which, 
 though it brought riches to him, was bringing also destruction 
 upon him. But, whatever he did that wag not connected with 
 Mrs. Ismey and with her vice, he did with a sort of dogged 
 resolution, but without real, live energy. Gradually, while he 
 contemplated the dark void, the vague crowds of helpless, 
 storm-driven creatures grew pale as ghosts and vanished. He 
 saw only one. Could he rescue her? 
 
 But first he had to rescue something else. 
 
 Among the horrors of that night of knowledge one stood out 
 more vital than all the others. When Alice told him about 
 Chicho, Felix went to the window. If he had not been able to 
 get air at that moment he knew that he must have been ill. 
 Even the crumbling of his beliefs, the realisation of the 
 persistent and invariable deception which had been given to 
 him where he came for truth, even the cruel blow upon his 
 heart, could not turn his mind from the animal which was 
 helplessly involved in this evil, deliberately forced to become 
 what others at least chose to become, exercising their free 
 will. That night when he leaned out, and met the wind, and 
 saw the stars, he knew that he had to take Chicho away from 
 Lady Caroline. 
 
 Felix loved animals. There were a few things which his 
 imagination boggled at, things which he knew happened in the 
 world, but which utterly puzzled him, because he was totally 
 unable to conceive of the nature capable of bringing them 
 about. One of these things was cruelty to a dog. When he 
 read or heard about murders, even of a very foul kind, he felt 
 that, however vaguely, he could in some degree imagine why
 
 374 FELIX 
 
 they had been committed. One human being can wrong 
 another. Jealousies can arise between one human being and 
 another for worldly reasons, for reasons of passion. The 
 murderer he could conceive of, the vitriol-thrower even, the 
 thief, the cheat, the deseiter, the betrayer. But he could not 
 conceive of the nature that can take pleasure in torturing a 
 dog. And he always knew that, were he an autocrat, he 
 would have the man who persecuted an animal strung up to the 
 nearest tree. 
 
 So he knew that he had to take Chicho out of the power of 
 Lady Caroline. He considered h )w he could do this. At first 
 he thought of going to Great Cumberland Place, asking for Lady 
 Caroline, telling her why he had come, and demanding the little 
 dog. There would be a boldness in that, an audacity which 
 might appeal to her. She was bold, audacious. But then, he 
 thought, if she refused to part from Chicho? What could he 
 do? And of course she would refuse. She would, perhaps, 
 have him turned out of the house. Or she would merely laugh 
 at him as a silly boy who was vapouring wildly in an effort to 
 play Don Quixote. Would it be better to try to make her see 
 the loathsomeness of what she was doing, the utter cowardice 
 of it, the — yes, the pitiful dishonourableness of it ? For a humin 
 being can be dishonourable to an animal. He might plead with 
 her. But if she were capable of doing what she had done she 
 must surely be incapable of understanding the horror of it. 
 The morally blind cannot be made to see in a moment by a 
 miracle. And Felix contemplated Lady Caroline in thought 
 with immeasurable wonder. Her conduct to Chicho seemed 
 to him inexplicable, opposed to her nature as he had read it. 
 She was tyrannical, no doubt, careless of the world's opinion, 
 selfish perhaps, vicious certainly. Her creed was 'each for him- 
 self.' She was disposed to let the weak go to the wall. She 
 was even wicked, he supposed. For had she not led Mrs. 
 Ismey into ruin while pretending to be her friend? Yet she 
 had fineness in her, a true sense of honour. He could not doubt 
 it after her silence under his attack upon her on behalf of Mrs. 
 Ismey ; her resolute preservation of the secret of her friend. 
 How could such a woman, with all her evil faults, descend to 
 such a depth? He did not know. 
 
 A doctor could have told him, any doctor who had studied 
 the ravages of morphia in the modern world. 
 
 Felix was obliged to endure his ignorance and to wonder. 
 That fact did not turn him from his purpose. He was going 
 to rescue Chicho. And, at last, as it seemed to him likely,
 
 FELIX S75 
 
 almost certain, that any open, honest attempt to do that must 
 be frustrated by Lady Caroline's indignant or laughing refusal 
 to give up her victim, he resolved to ster.l the little dog. He 
 knew this would be difficult, but he intended to do it, and, 
 therefore, did not choose to allow to himself that it might be 
 impossible. It was simply a thing that had to be done, there- 
 fore a thing that could be done. But how? 
 
 He had not seen Lady Caroline since the day when he lunched 
 with her. Once he had been to Great Cumberland Place to 
 leave his card. He resolved to go again. He did not know 
 what he was going to do, how he meant to get hold of Chicho. 
 But he wanted to be inside that house. It seemed to him that 
 some opportunity might arise to carry out his purpose. He 
 would learn, perhaps, when Chicho was let out for a run. The 
 butler might tell him. Lady Caroline might drop a chance 
 word. At any rate he would go. He resolved to be very much 
 on his guard if Lady Caroline were at home. He would not 
 allow her to suspect his discovery at Eldon Sands. If he did 
 she might — he almost guiltily told himself this — suspect that he 
 had some enmity against her, some secret purpose in coming to 
 see her. So, full of cautious resolution, and beset by a strange 
 feeling that he was something between a fine fellow .ind a 
 criminal, he set out for Lady Caroline's house on the Wednesday 
 after his return to town. He had nc^t seen Mrs. Ismey since he 
 returned, although she had followed him with Alice on Monday 
 evening. But he had seen Alice once at his flat. Alice was in 
 his pay now, and sworn to carry out his orders when possible, 
 and to tell him if it were not possible to carry ihem out. 
 
 As he drew near to Lady Caroline's door he found himself 
 walking furtively, with the step of a thief, he thought. And now 
 that he was so close to the house which he intended to rob he 
 be.uan to realise more fully than before how extraordinary, how 
 outrageous even, his intention was. Would it not be better to 
 follow up his first idea, to tell Lady Caroline the whole truth, to 
 trust to audacity and his own hot sincerity of feeling in this 
 matter? Boldness, when complete, often means complete 
 success. He knew this. But then he thought of Lady Caroline. 
 She was nut like other people. He could not imagine dominat- 
 ing her audacity with his. When he reached thu house he was 
 in a state of indecision, and he resolved to wait before deciding 
 what to do. If she was at home he would make up his mii d 
 what course to take when he saw her. He rang the bell. The 
 servant came. Her ladyship was at home. Felix scarcely knew 
 whether he was glad or sorry. He felt very uneasy, and his
 
 376 FELIX 
 
 nerves were quivering with excitement as he followed the man 
 into the boudoir on the ground floor. 
 
 'I will tell her ladyship you are here, sir,' said the man, going 
 out and leaving him alone in the room. 
 
 He looked round. Now that he knew the truth of Lady 
 Caroline and Mrs. Ismey, the room, which had always seemed to 
 him strange, seemed to him horrible. The darkness of it — as 
 before only one lamp with a red shade was burning, and the red 
 curtains were already drawn — was evil, the aspect of disorder 
 suggested to him the movements of delirium. He glanced at 
 the great sofa near the fire, and imagined women lying upon it 
 steeped in the false dreams, the brief and fading ecstasies of 
 morphia. A low, dull sound made him start violently. He did 
 not know what it was, and looked round quickly. The noise 
 was repeated, and this time, being on the alert, he recognised it 
 as the growl of a dog. It must be Chicho. In the flickering 
 obscurity he did not see the little creature. He snapped his 
 fingers and said, in a low voice, ' Chicho ! Chicho ! ' He heard 
 the growl again. It was louder now, and he was able to locate 
 it. He went softly over to the corner of the room behind the 
 big sofa and found Chicho lying there in his basket, v/hich was 
 half covered in with cane, and was lined with red flannel. His 
 small body, thatched with thick, bristling, jet-black hair, looked 
 almost like a dark shadow in the gloom. His chin was resting 
 on the basket edge, and his glassy black eyes stared at Felix 
 with a sort of dull surliness, while he growled again. Felix 
 stood looking at him. He seemed weary and spiteful, scarcely 
 wide awake, but just suiificiently conscious to be stirred by 
 enmity. Felix bent down with the intention of touching him, 
 stroking him, but Chicho drew back his lips, showing two rows 
 of small teeth. And just then the man-servant returned. 
 
 ' I 'm sorry, sir,' he said. ' But I made a mistake. Her lady- 
 ship has gone out.' 
 
 ' Oh,' said Felix. 
 
 He hesitated, looking at the man. It occurred to him that 
 the opportunity to do what he intended to do had presented 
 itself unexpectedly soon. He must grasp it. 
 
 ' Perhaps I can write a note and leave it for Lady Caroline ?' 
 he said, 
 
 'Certainly, sir. You'll find writing materials here, sir.' 
 
 He showed a table near Chicho's basket. 
 
 'Thanks. Don't trouble to wait in the hall. I'll leave the 
 note here and let myself out.' 
 
 ' Thank you, sir.'
 
 FELIX S77 
 
 The man, who had waited on Felix when he dined and lunched 
 with Lady Caroline, went softly out and closed the door, leaving 
 Felix sitting at the writing-table. As soon as he had gone Felix 
 wrote the following note ; 
 
 ' Dear Lady Caroline, — I called to see you this afternoon, 
 but have missed you. If you had been at home I might have 
 asked you something. I don't know. As you are out I am 
 venturing to follow my instinct. That tells me to become a 
 thief and to steal Chicho. Do not look for him. You will not find 
 him. I don't ask you to forgive me. I don't think there is 
 much to forgive, really. You will understand why I have done 
 this. But please believe that when I accepted your kind 
 hospitality I did not know. Felix Wilding.' 
 
 He was going to be a thief, but, at least, he would tell her that 
 he was one. Some boldness in him went out to encounter hers. 
 He put the note into an envelope, addressed it, laid it on the 
 table, then went to the door, opened it slightly, looked out and 
 listened. There was no sound. He could not see the whole of 
 the hall, but apparently the servant had gone away. If not he 
 must be waiting by the front door. That was possible. Felix 
 resolved to make sure and went out softly. The man was not 
 there. Felix returned quickly to the room and approached 
 Chicho's basket. When he had first seen Chicho he remembered 
 feeling that to touch the little dog would be horrible to him. 
 Then he did not know the truth. Now that he did know it the 
 sensation of horror was still very strong upon him, but with it 
 was blended a sensation of pity which was stronger still. 
 
 'Chicho! 'he said. 'Chicho!' 
 
 Chicho growled feebly, sulkily. Felix touched him. The 
 black hair along the middle of his back bristled up, and he 
 showed all his teeth as if he were going to bite. 
 
 'Chicho! Chicho!' 
 
 Felix put his left arm round the little dog and lifted him out 
 of the basket swiftly. Chicho growled more fiercely, struggled, 
 but lethargically as if his limbs were inert and refused to obey 
 fully the angry temper that smouldered within him. He turned his 
 head from side to side, and tried to set his teeth in Felix's hand. 
 His writhing body made Felix almost sick as he felt it against 
 his arm and side. He longed to drop Chicho, to get away from 
 him and never to see him again. The dog was disgustingly un- 
 natural. But he conquered his rejiulsion, hurried through the 
 hall to the door, opened it with some difficulty and stepped into
 
 378 FELIX 
 
 the street. Just as he did so he felt a sharp pain in his hand. 
 Chicho had his set teeth in it. A little blood trickled down. 
 
 ' Poor Chicho ! Poor Chicho ! ' Felix whispered. 
 
 It was strange and spiteful to wound your rescuer ! But how 
 common are such wounds, how often given ! 
 
 Felix he'd Chicho fast and hurried on. And as he went he 
 kept on feehng the trickle, trickle of the blood. 
 
 When he reached home he sent for a doctor and had the 
 wound in his hand cauterised. Then he sliut himself up with 
 Chicho. The disgust which he had formerly felt for the little 
 dog began to vanish now that Chicho was at his mercy. An 
 intense pity took its place, mingled with an intense interest. In 
 watching Chicho's misery he thought he realised what Mrs. 
 Ismey's must be. In curing Chicho he felt that he would give 
 strength to his hope of curing Mrs. Ismey. Her treachery to 
 her friend, her blackening of her husband's reputation, her end- 
 less lies to him, the hideous condition of body and mind into 
 which she had fallen, the dirt, the destruction, the degradation, 
 all these Felix found himself able to forgive more completely 
 now that he possessed Chicho, and was setting out to give him 
 what had been taken from him — health, naturalness. For in 
 contemplating the faint craziness, the physical and mental 
 wretchedness of the dog, he began to understand in what a grip 
 the woman must be held. Something of that which Alice had 
 told him, something of that which he had vividly imagined when 
 he heard, above the roar of wind and sea, Mrs. Ismey's cries in 
 the night, after she had been forcibly removed from the door of 
 the hotel and made to re-enter her room without the poison she 
 was seeking, he now saw for himself. He was shut up with a 
 victim. 
 
 He put the little dog on the divan and covered him with a 
 rug. Chicho refused all food, would not touch water, and still 
 manifested a feeble vindictiveness to his rescuer, a vindictive- 
 ness which his half-dreamy fatigue prevented from becoming 
 savage. He seemed very tired, and lay growling faintly, and 
 staring with sickly malignity at Felix. Presently he closed his 
 beadlike eyes and seemed to fall asleep. He remained motion- 
 less on the divan, and Felix heard the sound of heavy and 
 regular breathing. 
 
 He took up a book and tried to read, but his mind was pre- 
 occupied. He laid it down again and sat staring at the little 
 black body on the divan. The wonder of life was enclosed in 
 that, as it was enclosed in him, in Mrs. Ismey ; the mystery, the 
 energy, the power to love and hate, something of God, some-
 
 FELIX 379 
 
 thing of Devil ; something so inclusive that in watching it, in 
 ministering to it, he felt as if he drew nearer to the woman he 
 condemned, pitied, loved, almost as if he kept vigil by her sleep. 
 Are all lives cradled in each life? Are we all, we and those 
 whom we often call the lower animals, more nearly akin to each 
 other than we know ? He wondered, and was almost surprised 
 to find that the mere fact of life existing in anything placed that 
 thing, in his thought, beside the woman he meant to strive for. 
 She had wronged him, Chicho had wounded him. What did it 
 matter? He looked at his hand, he looked into his heart. 
 What did it matter? There is something within us that takes 
 no account of the gall and the wormwood ; something which, 
 in the liigh moments of life, finds that the small becomes the 
 blessedly invisible. 
 
 Presently Chicho stirred uneasily and woke. His waking was 
 horrible, as is the waking of a human being diseased by morpliia. 
 As he returned to consciousness he was evidently gripped by 
 fear, by an intense nervous inquietude, by a frantic desire for 
 shelter and for obscurity. Opening his eyes, he glared first this 
 way and then that, turning his head rapidly from side to side as 
 if keenly aware of some threatening danger, and undecided 
 whether there was still time to escape from it, or whether he 
 must prepare to attack it. He growled, then whimpered pite- 
 ously, moved on the divan, and began to endeavour to get off it 
 on to the floor. He raised himself upon his fore-paws, but his 
 hind-quarters seemed to be partially paralysed. They collapsed 
 under him, and he could only draw them very slowly along the 
 cushions as he wriggled forward. His appearance, as he did 
 this, was abominable. The semblance of a dog seemed to drop 
 from him. With his staring eyes, his grinning jaws, his un- 
 natural gait, his cowed and yet malicious expression, he looked 
 like a hyaena, at once savage and fearful. Felix was seized with 
 sickening disgust for a moment, but he overcame it, got up 
 quickly and tried to soothe the little dog. His effort was use- 
 less. Chicho did not seem to hear his voice or to recognise 
 that he was there. Still shrinking, quivering, turning his head 
 from side to side, the animal gained the edge of the divan, fell, 
 rather than jumped, from it on to the floor, crawled to an arm- 
 chair, disappeared beneath it, and lay there shuddering and 
 faintly barking. It was evident that, waking suddenly, he hated 
 and feared the light. 
 
 She, too, hated and feared the light. Felix remembered 
 drawing the curtain at Eldon Sands, remembered how often he 
 had found her stretched upon the sofa in the perfumed obscurity
 
 380 FELIX 
 
 of the drawing-room in Green Street. Would he ever be able 
 to take her out with him into the air and the sun? Would she 
 ever face the wind and the light of the open heavens fearlessly 
 again ? 
 
 He tried to coax Chicho out, but failed in the attempt. And 
 a sort of heavy, leaden fear entered into his heart. 
 
 But in the morning he felt happier. The little dog looked, 
 he thought, more natural, less malignant, less cowardly. Seeing 
 him now in the daylight Felix noticed that he was horribly thin, 
 and tried eagerly to make him eat. But he still refused food, 
 though he feebly lapped a little water out of a saucer set down 
 on the floor. Having done this he dragged himself again to the 
 armchair, and concealed himself in the darkness beneath it. 
 Only when he was in darkness did he seem to be at ease. 
 
 She was like that too. Felix began to realise the fact that 
 morphia creates monsters, morphia-people to whom all that the 
 healthy and the normal think of as natural is intolerable, 
 morphia-people who flee the light like criminals, who flee the 
 truth as if it were a consuming fire. 
 
 ' Poor Chicho ! Poor Chicho ! ' he said, as he saw the little 
 dog cowering in the obscurity. 
 
 But he was thinking of her. 
 
 That morning at breakfast he had two letters, one from his 
 mother and one from Lady Caroline. He opened the latter 
 eagerly. It was very short : 
 
 'Dear Mr. Wilding, — Come to see me. Come either to- 
 morrow morning at twelve, or to-morrow afternoon at four. 
 
 ' Caroline Hurst.' 
 
 What did she think of him? What did she intend to do? 
 How would they meet? An intense excitement seized him, a 
 desire to fight. He longed for action. In idleness he was 
 haunted by the tragedy of his disillusion, by the spectres of the 
 lies he had clung to, taking them for truths. Hope goes hand 
 in hand with action. He resolved to be with Lady Caroline at 
 twelve. Then he opened his mother's letter and read it slowly. 
 When he had finished it he laid it down on the breakfast-table 
 and sat for a long time. He scarcely knew what he was feeling ; 
 surprise, a sort of wonder which he knew to be ridiculous? His 
 mother told him that Margot was shortly going to have a child. 
 Margot was going to be a mother. Margot ! Now he knew 
 why he had been dimly conscious of a change in her. He 
 understood the meaning of the expression which had come into 
 Stephen's face, the very human expression. Margot — a mother !
 
 FELIX 881 
 
 He had been very close to her. Now, surely, he was very far 
 away. She was walking along mysterious confines. He, too, 
 was near to mystery, the mystery of his love, and pity, and for- 
 giveness. His mother spoke of her anxiety. He was very 
 conscious of that anxiety in reading the letter. Margot had 
 never been particularly strong. 
 
 Suddenly Felix lost that sense of being very far away from 
 his sister. He thought of her illness, her pain, almost as if 
 they were going to be his own. He remembered that moment 
 upon the landing before the marriage dinner; the anxious, 
 tender look in his sister's intelligent, sensitive brown eyes. How 
 grateful she had been to him. And why? Simply because he 
 showed for a moment that she had meant something in his life ; 
 that her going left an empty space. Since her marriage, in his 
 mind and heart he had almost ignored her. Now he was 
 suddenly conscious that she was his sister, and that he had a 
 feeling for her which he could never have for any other human 
 being. When he thought of her suffering, perhaps dying, it was 
 as if his flesh were thinking as well as his spirit. 
 
 They two had come from the same place, and they two alone 
 of all the world. 
 
 Chicho whimpered in his hiding-place, and Felix remembered 
 Mrs. Ismey. Was life opening out before him, or was death 
 closing in about him? He did not know, but he seemed to be 
 in steady movement towards a crisis. His mother's letter, the 
 knowledge and the emotion it brought, accelerated the move- 
 ment. She spoke in it of death, gently, sincerely, as if she had 
 been thinking about it a great deal. 
 
 Felix threw the letter down on his writing-table almost 
 impatiently. T 'sh ! Children were born into the world every 
 day by thousands and the mothers lived. Of course Margot 
 would live. 
 
 He did not mean to go to Sam's that day. He had Chicho 
 to tend and Lady Caroline to see. His hand throbbed rather 
 painfully. As the morning wore on Chicho showed great un- 
 easiness and distress. He crept out from the darkness under 
 the chair, and crawled about the room from corner to corner as 
 if seeking blindly for something. His breathing was short and 
 convulsive. There was a look of agony in his glassy eyes. At 
 first he avoided Felix, but presently he came to him, .s(|uattcd 
 sideways on the floor near him, and stared up at him fixedly as 
 if claiming something from him. He whined pitcously and 
 began to scratch the car[)ct with his fore-paws. His hind- 
 quarters still seemed to be partially paralysed.
 
 382 FELIX 
 
 Felix was filled with a sickening knowledge of what he was 
 seeking. 
 
 Chicho sat there staring up and scratching on the carpet, as 
 if he thought the poison he was dumbly asking for lay concealed 
 in some hole beneath him. His tongue lolled out. He looked 
 no longer vicious, but piteous, distracted. Felix felt his heart 
 harden against Lady Caroline. 
 
 When he reached her house at twelve, having left Chicho 
 locked up in his sitting-room with a plate of food and a pan of 
 water, he entered it with no feeling of fear, no sense even of 
 uneasiness. She was waiting for him in the boudoir. The 
 man-servant, who stared at Felix with an expression of eager 
 curiosity, went out, it seemed almost reluctantly, and left them 
 together. Lady Caroline did not shake hands. She was sitting 
 on the big couch by the fire. When the door shut she said : 
 
 'Sit down.' 
 
 Felix took a chair. He had brought in his hat, and set it 
 down on the floor beside him. 
 
 ' You know I can have you up ? ' Lady Caroline said. 
 
 * For theft. Yes, I know.' 
 'Where is he? ' 
 
 • Chicho ? In my rooms.' 
 *Is he suffering?' 
 
 'I'm afraid so.' 
 
 She was silent for a moment. Then she said : 
 
 ♦You know all about Valeria? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Who told you?' 
 
 'We were staying at Eldon Sands. She lost the cigarette-case 
 you gave her. Then I made Alice tell me.' 
 
 ' I see. That was how it was. I knew it must happen in the 
 
 end. And of course Alice told you everything. Poor ' her 
 
 voice was becoming compassionate. She suddenly checked 
 herself. 
 
 ' Well, what do you think of me?' she asked calmly. 
 
 She stared at him with her long, light eyes. She did not 
 look curious. There was very little expression in her puffy, 
 almost livid, and yet powerful face. 
 
 'Why did you do it?' he said. 'Why did you? It was 
 cowardly.' 
 
 She leaned back till she was able to rest against the raised 
 end of the couch. 
 
 ' It was cowardly,' he repeated. ' And you weren't meant to 
 be a coward.'
 
 FELIX S83 
 
 * I don't believe I was,' she said. 
 
 She was silent again, and seemed to be thinking deeply. 
 Presently she said : 
 
 ' Look here ! I 'm the last woman to make excuses for my 
 acts, but you don't know what morphia means to some of us, 
 many of us, modern women without professions, without beliefs. 
 Morphia makes life possible.' 
 
 'Hideous !' he said. 
 
 ' Possible. It adds to truth a dream. What more does 
 religion do ?' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' he exclaimed. 
 
 ' I shock you. What I mean is that truth alone is both not 
 enough and far too much for us.' 
 
 'It's the only thing,' he said vehemently. 'The only thing!' 
 
 * Each of us must add to it his or her dream, believe me. 
 You will add yours. I have added mine. I make my life 
 possible by taking morphia. I don't disfigure my life by 
 taking it.' 
 
 'You have disfigured hers.' 
 
 'Yes, because she has no strength.' 
 
 He thought of the canon played on the two pianos. 
 
 'She has let it dominate her and carry her away, as nearly 
 every one does who takes to it,' continued Lady Caroline. 
 
 'You knew that and yet you made her take the first step.' 
 
 'Yes. In those days I didn't care. I had a strong will, and 
 the strong will is rather ruthless generally. I had found a 
 pleasure. I passed it on. I couldn't help passing it on. Oh, 
 I'm really morphia mad, I suppose, although I never exceed 
 my daily allowance.' 
 
 She laughed, without mirth, ... laid her hand on a book 
 which was lying on a table near her. 
 
 'This book is written by a French doctor,' she said, 'on 
 morphia in modern life and its "victims." I'm in this hook. 
 I began to read it last night, and found myself described in it, 
 though the man's never seen or heard of me. I 'm a morphia- 
 type. Pleasant, isn't it ? There are two kinds of morphia 
 maniacs — the mysterious, and those who are apostles. The 
 former lie about their habit and conceal it. The latter boast 
 about it, and are persecuted by an incessant, restless desire to 
 spread it, to innoculate others with it. Valeria's in this book, 
 and so am I. Valeria has always been imitntive. When I 
 added my dream to the truth I wanted her to do the same. I 
 didn't realise how far she would go.' 
 
 ' And you didn't care 1 '
 
 384 FELIX 
 
 ' Not then. It wasn't in me to care then.' 
 
 'Then!' he said. 'Why do you say "then"? It isn't in 
 you to care now.' 
 
 ' I don't know that,' she said. 'You remember the day you 
 lunched with me?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' That day I wished I had let Valeria alone. I wished it 
 badly.' 
 
 'But why that day?' 
 
 ' Well, when you said " she trusts me," and I knew how 
 much, I thought to myself that but for me she might never 
 have told you all those lies. And all those lies seemed a pity, 
 told to you.' 
 
 She spoke in her usual bluff, abrupt way. There was 
 nothing tender in her voice, but she did not look at Felix. 
 
 'You're rather a good chap,' she added, after a slight pause. 
 ♦You can keep Chicho.' 
 
 ' Lady Caroline,' he said, 'why aren't you a splendid woman?' 
 
 ' Because I have no beUef in to-morrow,' she said. 
 
 They were both silent. Felix felt clearly now what he had 
 felt dimly before, that Lady Caroline would certainly have been 
 a fine fellow — yes, just that — if she had not been such a rascal. 
 The slang of his earnest, boyish thought suited her. 
 
 But Chicho ? 
 
 ♦ How could you do it to a dog?' he asked. 
 
 ♦ I know. How could I ? This book has told me. This 
 doctor knows. I have my nature and my morphia-nature. 
 My morphia-nature makes me pass on my — well, my addition 
 to truth. I have to. The desire is irresistible.' 
 
 Her face changed. Felix thought it gleamed, as a red coal 
 gleams when you fan it. 
 
 ' But that is madness ! ' he exclaimed. 
 
 'Is it? Yes, I suppose it is. There's a good deal more 
 madness abroad in modern life than most of us suspect. But 
 I 'm sane enough to let you keep Chicho, sane enough even to 
 be glad you 've got him.' 
 
 When they parted they shook hands. 
 
 ' Promise me one thing,' Felix said as he was going. 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'If you ever see her you'll — you '11 go back on what you 've 
 done. You 'U try to stop her ? ' 
 
 ' D' you mean to say you could trust me to do that, if I 
 promised ? ' 
 
 'Yes, I thiakso.'
 
 FELIX 885 
 
 'All rieiht. But I shan't see her. Mr. Ismey would kill me 
 if I did.' ^ 
 
 ' Mr. Ismey !' 
 
 ' He 's a man.' 
 
 Her voice sounded something like a schoolboy's when she 
 said that. 
 
 'And besides — you say you care for truth?' 
 
 • Yes, rather ! ' 
 
 'Then— it's too late.' 
 
 Felix felt as if a stone fell upon his heart and crushed it. 
 He made no answer and went out slowly. 
 
 When he got home he found that Chicho had eaten a morsel 
 of food. The little dog whined feebly when he saw Felix, and 
 crawled, almost eagerly, towards him. 
 
 'Chicho, get well, get well!' Felix whispered to him 
 passionately. 
 
 He bent down and stroked Chicho with the hand the dog 
 had bitten. 
 
 • B
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 FELIX resolutely put away from his mind Lady Caroline's 
 last words. Perhaps the cure of Chicho helped him to do 
 so. He called in a *vet.', who examined the little dog care- 
 fully and then looked curiously at Felix. 
 
 ' Have you had this dog long, sir?' he asked. 
 
 * No,' said Felix. 
 
 * You don't know what's the matter with it, I suppose ? ' 
 'And if I do?' 
 
 The man said nothing for a moment. 
 
 ' Had him from a doctor, sir ? ' he asked at length. 
 
 ' No.' 
 
 'Well, some one's been trying experiments on him. Very 
 nasty ones too. You'd better let me have him with me for a 
 bit. I think I can get him right for you. But it'll take a 
 little while.' 
 
 'Cure him,' said Felix. ' And I'll give you what you like.' 
 
 The ' vet.' looked surprised at his hot earnestness. When 
 he took the little dog away with him Chicho showed uneasi- 
 ness. He evidently wished to stay with Felix. 
 
 * You'll be very kind to him ' ' Felix said. ' You'll promise 
 me that ? ' 
 
 ' Lor' bless you, sir, yes. He'll be all right with me when 
 he's settled down. It's only the leaving you he don't like.' 
 
 ' I know.' 
 
 He felt very lonely without Chicho ; but a few weeks later, 
 when the little dog returned, he was triumphantly happy for a 
 moment. Chicho was transformed. For the first time Felix 
 saw in him the amorous gaiety of the normal dog, eager for 
 kindness, and rapturously delighted with any attention. 
 When he was first put down in the room he seemed a little 
 doubtful, a little timid. He cowered humbly when Felix bent 
 to stroke him. But as soon as he felt secure of affection his 
 spirits revived and completely overcame him. He burst into 
 shrieking barks, tore round and round the room, jumping on 
 and off the chairs and divan, rolled over on his back to be 
 
 386
 
 FELIX 387 
 
 stroked, and seemed almost hysterical with joy and confi- 
 dence. His tail wagged ceaselessly, and his paw was con- 
 tinually extended to be shaken. 
 
 The transformation was so wonderful that Felix dared to 
 hope for another transformation, which seemed sometimes to 
 be beyond hoping for. 
 
 Is not freewill the Devil's gift? Often Felix asked him- 
 self that question. He asked it of himself again as he car- 
 essed the leaping, writhing little dog over whom he had played 
 the autocrat. She had that gift, and how was she using it ? 
 
 Mr. Ismey was perpetually away from London. It was 
 evident that he knew of his wife's relapse, that he was keeping 
 away from her deliberately. He had made his effort and it had 
 failed. Now what was he doing ? What did he mean to do ? 
 Felix guessed that he was travelling about with his despair, 
 that he carried in his heart Lady Caroline's words : 'It's too 
 late.' 
 
 Was it too late ? 
 
 Only now that he came to fight Mrs. Ismey's vice, did he 
 begin fully to understand its power over her. Lady Caroline 
 had told him that Mrs. Ismey was a morphia-type, one of the 
 mysterious. Alice told him the same thing. Mrs. Ismey's 
 desire for concealment amounted to a mania. Even now that 
 his eyes were at last open to her true condition she continued 
 to pretend. Only her pretence took a different form. She 
 acknowledged that she had fallen into the morphia habit, but 
 she declared that she had given it up. The occurrences at 
 Eldon Sands had, she said, brought her to a knowledge of the 
 danger she was in. For that night had been a tragic one. 
 The hotel had been roused by her struggle with Alice, by her 
 screams. The two sisters, the manageress, the servants, had 
 seen her forced away from the hall door and up the stairs to 
 her bedroom. 
 
 'The horror of it all has cured me for ever,' she said to 
 Felix in London. ' Can you wonder ? I loathe the very idea 
 of morphia now. I would rather die than touch it.' 
 
 She spoke with so much conviction, and looked at him with 
 such sincere eyes, that for a moment he believed her. 
 
 'And besides,' she added, looking down, 'now I know 
 that — now you have told me — well, you understand what I 
 mean, I feel that I would do anything for you. A woman is 
 so helped by having some one who really cares. It makes 
 all the difference to her.' 
 
 ' But he cares,' Felix said.
 
 388 FELIX 
 
 ' Not as you do,' she answered, with a quick glance at him. 
 ' With him it isn't what the woman does that matters, it's 
 what his wife does.' 
 
 She had never told Felix plainly what she felt towards him, 
 and he did not know. Sometimes he thought she loved him. 
 Sometimes, more often, he thought she had become incapable 
 of love, that morphia had affected not only her brain but her 
 heart. Alice stood for the truth to him. The crude, hard 
 ' determination to look truth in the face, even if his eyes were 
 blinded by it, remained with him and did not falter. Through 
 Alice he knew that Mrs, Ismey lied to him every day. Some- 
 times he wondered pitilessly how that feeling in his heart 
 could continue to live on under the blows that fell perpetually 
 upon it. Why could she not slay it ? At moments he was 
 ashamed of its incapacity for death. But there were other 
 moments in which he gloried in that incapacity, and dreamed 
 of her final salvation through it. Could not a love which was 
 able to endure her lies, her constant, restless endeavour to 
 trick it, her limitless deception, and those other horrors which 
 come in the train of morphia : dirt, carelessness in dress, in- 
 describable disorders of existence and of health, some of which 
 cannot be wholly concealed — could not such a love conquer 
 even such a tyranny as that of thepigurel 
 Alternately he hoped and he despaired. 
 He would not leave London. 
 
 Even the strange and tender thoughts which had come to 
 him when he received his mother's news about Margot found 
 no more footing in his mind. It seemed as if he had no longer 
 any capacity which was not pressed into Mrs. Ismey's service. 
 He strove for her and had no force for any other battle. 
 
 But one day he was utterly sick at heart. His love, his 
 strife, everything seemed to him vain. 
 
 It was an afternoon of May, the month in which the birth 
 of Margot's child was expected. The sun was shining 
 brightly. The air was full of spring, even the air of the great 
 city. The windows of Felix's flat were opened, and the roar 
 of the season's merry traffic in Victoria Street filled his little 
 sitting-room. Chicho was curled up on the divan, dreaming 
 comfortably with half-shut eyes ; but Felix sat there alone, 
 with his hands dropped down between his knees, staring at the 
 carpet. He had never before felt so hopeless, so utterly 
 wretched, not even when Alice told him the truth in the 
 billiard-room at Eldon Sands. 
 
 All his endeavours had been useless. Mrs. Ismey's passion
 
 FELIX 389 
 
 for morphia was rapidly increasing. Alice found it hopeless 
 to struggle with her, impossible to contend against her almost 
 ape-like cunning. 
 
 'Unless she's locked up, sir,' the maid had said to Felix, 
 * she'll find the means to get the filthy stuff. She bribes the 
 men-servants to bring it her when I'm not by. She hides 
 it in places you'd never think to look in. It's no use, sir. I 
 can't keep her from it. I'm tired .out with trying, sir. I've 
 done my best and you know it, but I think I shall go.' 
 
 * Alice ! ' he exclaimed in despair. 
 
 The maid looked down. She was very pale, and there was 
 a dogged expression on her face. 
 
 ' I'm sorry, sir,' she said, ' but I don't think I can stand it 
 any longer. And — well, sir, there's a young man who wishes 
 to marry me.' 
 
 'Oh.' 
 
 ' And he says he won't wait for me any more. I'm sorry, 
 sir, but I'm afraid I shall have to go.' 
 
 ' What will become of her ? ' 
 
 'Who's to say, sir ? ' 
 
 So long as Alice remained with Mrs. Ismey Felix felt that at 
 least there was some one perpetually near her who was fight- 
 ing against her tyrant. But Alice was going. Her de- 
 parture seemed the beginning of some fearful end. 
 
 ' What am I to do ?' he thought. * What can I do ? ' 
 
 His brain was dull with misery, dull and heavy. The street 
 noises sounded to him far off, and very sad. The soft spring 
 sunshine on his face was like a sickly glare to him. Vaguely he 
 felt that everything in humanity, everything in nature, was 
 joyless, if not actually hideous. Helplessness and wickedness 
 lay like a cancer at the heart of the world. He was tired out 
 with it all. He was without strength. There was no efficacy 
 in him. Dully, as he sat there in the sunshine, he thought of 
 many things, like one at the end of a long and ill-spent life. 
 He thought of his arrival in France, of his young eagerness 
 in facing that which was new. What a boy he was then, and 
 what a fool every boy is ! Those keen feelings he had — they 
 were dust flung by some malign Creator into the eyes of his 
 heart. Yes, they were dust ; dust the sadness that seemed 
 beautiful ; the romantic passion so vague,yet so strong ; the 
 longing to do some great deed, to help some one, to be kind 
 or noble, that had flowed over his soul when he heard the 
 water murmuring round the arches of the bridge, and the dis- 
 tant music on the wooded island, as the twilight sank to
 
 390 FELIX 
 
 darkness. Then he had longed to accomplish a great deed 
 — now he had tried to do a small one. And how utterly he 
 had failed. Dust ! Dust ! 
 
 He thought of his days in the forest. He saw it again as 
 he sat there by Chicho. Bars of sunlight lay over the Chinese 
 idols. With their narrow, satirical eyes they had watched the 
 opening of that flower which was surely withering already, 
 withering in the cruel spring. How he had longed for life, in 
 the forest ! The tailor had found life hard in Paris, but Felix 
 had never thought it could be hard for him in London, He 
 meant to do so much, to learn so much. And he had learnt 
 that he was powerless to accomplish the only thing he cared 
 for ; and what had he done ? He had saved a dog from an 
 ugly fate, and had perhaps helped to save a man. For Chicho 
 lay there dreaming happily, and Hal Blake, moved at last by 
 the misery and prayers of his wife, and by the representations 
 of Felix, perhaps too by his own natural good sense, which 
 drink had not yet wholly drowned, having terminated the 
 contract which bound him, had not entered into another. He 
 had agreed to take a short holiday, and to go down to Dover 
 to spend it with'the kids,' Somehow Felix fancied that he 
 would stay there. Once more in the old place, among the 
 old ' pals,' with a happy wife and the children he had missed, 
 once more by the familiar sea and the white cliffs, it was not 
 unlikely that he would forget his brief spell of fame. And if 
 he did not, perhaps he would be forgotten. Already he was 
 less of a sensation than he had been, and his manager talked 
 of his keeping out of London for a time and trying a tour of 
 the provinces. To-day Felix chose to place him with Chi- 
 cho in safety, and, contemplating them in thought, to say, 
 ' That is what I have done.' And he said it bitterly. It was 
 something, but how little. Dust ! Dust ! 
 
 The tailor had told him that, if he ever returned to the 
 forest, he must come back and say that he was happy. That 
 could never be. And, as he sat there, he thought that he would 
 never go back to the forest, would never see the tailor again. 
 To do so would surely be intolerable, even as the tailor's 
 return from Paris had been intolerable. The tailor fled from 
 the comments of the neighbours. Felix wished that he could 
 flee from the comments of his own soul. Dust ! Dust ! Im- 
 potent creature ! He thought of himself fired by Balzac with 
 wild ambitions. Had he not been as the silly housemaid who 
 is fired by the Family Herald \v\X.h. the ambition to wed an 
 Earl ? His flaming heart of old time seemed to him vulgar as
 
 FELIX 391 
 
 an illuminated hovel, in which the radiance reveals the decay, 
 the emptiness, the grimy corners where the cobwebs hang. 
 
 He remembered the sound of the Angelus bell, and how it 
 had struck in his fancy like a silver ray across the dusky fire 
 of the lamps of Paris, and how, sitting in the ruined chapel 
 of La Maison des Alouettes, he had been filled with terror at 
 the idea of a calm God watching over the frantic and aimless 
 activities of His creatures. Was there such a God ? Was 
 He looking down at Mrs. Ismey hiding the morphia needle 
 beneath some fold of her torn gown, or sitting up in her dis- 
 ordered bed, when Alice slept, to feed her wounded body 
 with the poison that was destroying it ? 
 
 Why not? Such a God, so calm, would be a suitable 
 figurehead for the irony of things. 
 
 Chicho moved, raised his black muzzle, growled. Felix, 
 who had been bending forward, as despairing people do, 
 lifted himself up with an effort. There was a tap at the door 
 and his servant looked in, 
 
 ' Will you see a lady, sir ? * 
 
 ' Who is it ? ' 
 
 The man handed him a card. 
 
 ' Mrs. Francis Ismey.' 
 
 The card was covered with brown smears. 
 
 'Yes,' Felix said. 
 
 In two or three minutes Mrs. Ismey walked in. Felix saw 
 at once that she was under the influence of morphia. She 
 was dressed in a black gown, the skirt of which was caked 
 with dry mud. Her hat was pushed on one side of her head. 
 Her hair was untidy. She had no gloves on, and her hands 
 were filthily dirty and covered with rings, whose jewels em- 
 phasised their degradation. Felix noticed that her boots were 
 not properly buttoned and did not match. She was smiling 
 dreamily as she came in. Her face was daubed with paint, 
 very badly put on. She looked terrible ; ill and fantastic, 
 but contented, abominably contented in her dirt and disorder, 
 as if she were a pretty woman exquisitely conscious of her 
 own beauty, and of the perfection of her toilet. 
 
 Chicho barked violently when he saw her, as he would 
 have barked at a tramp. 
 
 Felix laid his hand on the little dog and held him down. 
 The servant stood for a moment by the door, staring at Mrs. 
 Ismey with a faint and knowing smile. Then he went out. 
 Chicho kept on barking furiously. 
 
 * A dog ! ' said Mrs. Ismey slowly. * You've got a dog ? '
 
 392 FELIX 
 
 Evidently she did not recognise Chicho. Felix picked 
 him up and carried him out into the bedroom. 
 
 ' What are you doing ? ' said Mrs. Ismey's voice behind 
 him. * What are you doing with that dog ? Doggie ! Doggie ! ' 
 
 Felix turned hastily round from Chicho, whom he had put 
 down on the bed, and found Mrs, Ismey coming in at the 
 door. There was still a smile on her painted face. She looked 
 as if she were feeling sly and jocose, and were just about to 
 do something which she considered funny and surprising, 
 
 Chicho's hair bristled up and he showed all his teeth. 
 Felix laid his hand lightly on Mrs. Ismey's arm to lead her 
 back to the sitting-room, but directly he touched her she 
 shrank away as if she felt an intolerable pain. 
 
 * Don't ! ' she said, ' Don't ! ' 
 
 Felix had noticed recently that she could not endure him 
 to clasp her bare hand. Once, when he had pressed it in meet- 
 ing her, she had started violently, and immediately after- 
 wards he had seen drops of perspiration rolling down her face. 
 Now the smile had left her lips and her hands were shaking. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon ! ' he exclaimed. ' Have I ?' 
 
 * It's brutal to do that to me ! ' she interrupted excitedly. 
 Her face was contracted. 
 
 ' I brutal to you ! But I scarcely touched you !' 
 
 * It hurts me to be touched ! ' 
 
 He did not understand how painfully sensitive the skin of 
 the habitual morphia-taker becomes, but he saw that she had 
 really suffered under his hand, and felt tender over her. 
 
 * Forgive me ! ' he exclaimed. ' Forgive me ! You know 
 it was an accident. I only want to save you from pain and 
 suffering,' 
 
 ' Pain and suffering — oh yes ! ' 
 
 They were in the sitting-room now. He shut the door. 
 
 * How dreadful this glare is ! ' she said. 
 
 * I'll pull down the blinds,' 
 
 He went over to the windows. Meanwhile she sat down 
 on the divan, and stretched out her arms. She began to 
 yawn. Felix drew down the blinds. They were white and 
 did not shut out the sun very well. The room remained light. 
 
 'Will that do ? ' he asked. 
 
 She tried to stop yawning and to answer him, but could not. 
 He glanced at her, saw what was happening, and looked 
 down. There was a silence of two or three minutes, broken 
 twice by attempts on her part to speak, attempts which were 
 immediately smothered. At last she got up, still yawning,
 
 FELIX 393 
 
 walked to the window and back again. Her hat had fallen 
 quite to one side. She kept on lifting and dropping her arms. 
 Then she put up one hand to the front of her dress, and be- 
 gan trying to unbutton it with trembling fingers. 
 
 ' Let me — let me get you something/ said Felix. 
 
 A. rush of heat went over his body as if he stepped into a 
 hothouse. 
 
 ' Some tea ? ' 
 
 She nodded. She was still walking about. He rang the 
 bell, and when he heard the servant coming, hurried to the 
 door and gave his order, 
 
 *As quickly as possible !' 
 
 * Yes, sir.' 
 
 He heard the man speaking to some one on the landing out- 
 side, and the sound of a laugh. A sort of desperation came 
 into his heart, a longing for violent action. When he came 
 back into the room Mrs. Ismey was sitting down again on the 
 divan, leaning against the cushions as if she were utterly 
 exhausted. She had stopped yawning. Her face had become 
 extraordinarily inexpressive and rigid, and she seemed to know 
 that it had, for when she saw Felix she made a violent, fleeting 
 grimace, a sort of fierce muscular exertion to look normal. 
 
 ' We shall have the tea in a moment,' he said, trying to 
 speak easily. 
 
 'How cold it is to-day ! ' she replied, in a dull voice. 
 
 ' But it's the hottest day we've had ! ' 
 
 ' No, it's bitter, like winter.' 
 
 She shivered. He noticed that, despite the paint on her 
 cheeks, she looked to-day like an old woman. In her face 
 was plainly written the story of her mania. Here and there, 
 where her skin was not painted, it showed a hideous leaden- 
 grey hue. There were deep and long wrinkles round her eyes. 
 The eyes themselves were hollow, devoid of light. They 
 scarcely looked human, for no soul seemed to gaze out through 
 them. Felix thought they were like the windows of a deserted 
 house in which the shattered glass had been replaced by boards. 
 
 'What made you think of coming to-day ? ' he asked. 
 
 He did not know what to say, how to look natural. There 
 was despair in his heart, and a sort of physical fear of her 
 which he had never felt before. At this moment her feeble- 
 ness disappeared. With a brus(iue movement, like the 
 movement of a strong woman, she got up and once more 
 began to walk about the room, smiling. 
 
 'What made you ?' he asked again.
 
 394 FELIX 
 
 ' I'll tell )'0u presently,' she replied. 
 
 * Did you know Alice had a young man ?' she added incon- 
 sequently. 
 
 Felix said nothing. But his physical horror increased, 
 and his imagination, too, began to shrink as if it longed to 
 escape into some distant region. 
 
 She stopped in front of him. 
 
 ' Yes, Alice has a young man, and she's in love with him.' 
 
 The servant came in with tea. While he was placing it on 
 the table Mrs. Ismey went on speaking. 
 
 ' She's madly in love with him= D'you know Felix, I 
 really believe that she'd ' 
 
 'That's all right ! ' Felix said in a loud voice to the man. 
 'I'll arrange it. That will do.' 
 
 ' Felix, are you listening ? I say, I'm almost certain ' 
 
 ' I know all about it,' he said, still in the loud, uneasy voice. 
 
 The servant went out, as if reluctantly. 
 
 ' I must take off my hat,' she said. 
 
 She took it off and laid it down on the divan. Her hair 
 was very untidy indeed. She put up her hands to arrange it, 
 but only increased its disorder by her trembling movements. 
 
 ' Alice is so much in love,' she continued, still smiling, 
 'that she wants to leave me and be married. Isn't it silly 
 to want to be married ?' 
 
 He was just going to give her a cup of tea, but, noticing how 
 her hands were shaking, he put it down on the table near her. 
 
 'When does she think of being married ? ' he asked, trying 
 to speak very calmly to keep her calm. 
 
 ' Directly.' 
 
 ' She is leaving you directly ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 The smile left her lips and her face became rigid again, 
 and almost without expression, like a mask on which a faint 
 look of empty fatigue has been painted. 
 
 ' But — but what will you do without her .? ' 
 
 For answer she suddenly began to cry feebly. 
 
 ' Don't,' he said, feeling pitiful again directly, and losing 
 his disgust and physical fear. ' Don't ! What is it ? ' 
 
 ' I don't want to be left alone. I'm afraid to be left alone.' 
 
 She went on crying, and made no attempt to hide her face 
 or to dry her tears. She cried, looking at him. There was 
 something dreadfully unnatural about that. 
 
 ' You are not alone. I — I would always do anything for 
 you.'
 
 FELIX 395 
 
 She stopped crying abruptly, came to the divan and sat 
 down close beside him. 
 
 '■ Dear Felix ! ' she said. 
 
 A sort of vague, amorous sweetness floated over her. 
 
 ' Will you do something for me ? ' she said. * Will you 
 really ?' 
 
 She put out her hand to touch him, but quickly drew it back. 
 
 * No, no, that hurts ! ' she murmured. ' But will you .'' ' 
 
 * What is it ? ' he asked, fixing his eyes on her. 
 
 * Will you — could you lend me a hundred pounds ? ' 
 
 She tried to make her squirrel's face at him, but her 
 features refused to obey her desire. The only result of her 
 effort was a slight distortion of her mouth. 
 
 ' Why do you want it .-' ' he said almost sternly. 
 
 * Don't be angry. If you only knew ' 
 
 * Tell me why you want it .'' Is it to go to Paris again ? ' 
 She hesitated. 
 
 ' Yes,' she said at last, with an air of sincerity. 
 'You tell me that !' 
 
 * I — I want to go to Barreille.' 
 ' Barreille ? The doctor?' 
 
 * Yes. Oh, Felix, the longing for morphia won't go, won't 
 leave me. I never take it, you know I don't. I'd rather die. 
 But I can't help longing for it. And I think if only I could 
 see Barreille he might take the desire away.' 
 
 She spoke with a sort of simple earnestness, looking at 
 him narrowly to see how he took her words. And he looked 
 at her, and, when she was silent, sat for a moment in silence. 
 The knowledge that she was lying seared him like hot iron 
 pressed against the live thing that was his soul. 
 
 'Will you do it?' she said, still with the vague amorous 
 sweetness and the intent eyes. 
 
 ' Do it ! ' he suddenly exclaimed, with a sort of fierce firm- 
 ness. ' I'll do anything if you will Look here ! I can't, 
 
 I won't endure it any more. If he — if your husband has given 
 it all up, I'll be stronger than he. I'll fight you, for yourself. 
 I'll win you for yourself. He despairs, Alice despairs — then 
 they don't love you — they can't. But you shan't go down, 
 you shan't go under. There is a chance, there must be a cure.' 
 
 'A cure ! But, Felix, it was I who ' 
 
 'Hush! Hush! Don't lie any more! My God, why 
 can't you stop lying to me ? I know why you want to go to 
 Paris — to visit those cursed clubs. But you shall go to Paris. 
 I'll take you. I'll take you to Barreille myself. I'll watch
 
 396 FELIX 
 
 you. I'll never leave you for a moment. You shan't trick 
 me. Oh, I've been a fool. I've left you in other people's 
 hands. I've trusted you to Alice because — I've thought of 
 the world, what was possible, what people would say I And 
 now I see you there — oh, it's too horrible, too abominable ! 
 But now I know what to do. I'll throw everythmg to the 
 winds and save you myself, I'll be with you. I'll watch you. 
 I don't care for anything — I'll ' 
 
 A passion of energy, of excitement, of reckless, furious 
 determination flamed up in him. He wanted to sweep her 
 husband, Alice, every one away from her, to have her to 
 himself that he might act, dare, command, tear her vice out 
 of her, cut it out as the surgeon cuts out a tumor that is 
 eating into the tissues of the body and drawing near to the 
 sources of life. 
 
 A tap at the door broke in coldly upon his vehemence. 
 For an instant he could not trust himself to answer it. He 
 could only stop speaking abruptly and sit in quivering, 
 apprehensive silence. The tap was repeated. He forced 
 himself to say ' Come in ! * The lift man appeared. 
 
 ' If you please, sir.Mrs. Wilding to see you ; your mother,sir.' 
 
 ' My ' 
 
 He did not finish the sentence, for the man stood aside, 
 there was the sound of a dress rustling in the little passage, 
 and then Mrs, Wilding walked in. She was pale, so pale that 
 Felix noticed it even in that moment of amazement and utter 
 confusion. 
 
 ' Mater ! ' he stammered, springing up, and instinctively 
 placing himself between her and Mrs. Ismey. ' You in 
 London ! ' 
 
 The lift man disappeared. 
 
 ' Oh, I didn't know you had any one with you, Felix,' said 
 his mother. 
 
 ' Oh yes, Mrs. Ismey,' Felix said, with an almost convul- 
 sive attempt at naturalness and ease. 
 
 He moved to allow his mother and Mrs. Ismey to meet. 
 The latter had put on her hat quickly, fastening it anyhow 
 on her disordered hair. Felix was filled with a sick conscious- 
 ness of the extravagance of her appearance. She assumed a 
 fixed smile. 
 
 ' Such a long time since we met ! ' she said to Mrs. Wilding. 
 
 The smile disappeared, and her face assumed its rigid 
 look of a mask. 
 
 * Yes,' Mrs. Wilding answered.
 
 FELIX 397 
 
 ' Sit down, mater. You're just in time for tea,' Felix 
 exclaimed, pulling up a chair to the little table. 
 
 He scarcely knew what he felt. His head was buzzing and 
 his hands were frightfully hot. 
 
 * Sit down, mater,' he repeated mechanically. 
 
 Mrs. Wilding sat down in silence. She had looked at Mrs. 
 Ismey for a moment and then turned away her eyes. Felix 
 began to pour out the tea. 
 
 ' I'd no idea you were coming up,' he went on. Why 
 didn't you let me know ?' 
 
 He felt that anything was bearable but silence. 
 
 ' I only decided to come this morning,' said his mother. 
 
 It had struck him that she was terribly pale. Now it struck 
 him that there was a strange, unnatural sound in her voice. 
 It scarcely seemed to be the voice he knew so well. There was 
 something odd about her altogether, but he did not know 
 exactly what it was. 
 
 * You aren't fond of London, I fancy?' Mrs, Ismey said. 
 * Aren't you — I mean, are you .'" 
 
 She was smiling again. 
 
 ' No, not very,' Mrs. Wilding replied. ' I find it tiring.' 
 
 Felix saw her look for a moment at Mrs. Ismey's hands, at 
 her hair. A sort of wondering expression came into her white 
 face and died away directly. 
 
 ' Dear me ! How funny ! ' Mrs. Ismey said. 
 
 She began to laugh. 
 
 * How funny ! ' she repeated, in a stifled voice. * Isn't it, 
 Felix ?' 
 
 She went on laughing till her aimless mirth became intoler- 
 able. Felix, with a scarlet face, began to speak to his mother, 
 trying to ignore Mrs. Ismey in the hope that she would re- 
 cover herself. 
 
 'All right at home ?' he said. * How's Margot ? ' 
 
 'Pretty well,' his mother answered. 'But, of course, just 
 now ' She stopped. 
 
 She was trying to drink her tea, but it seemed as if the 
 sound of Mrs. Ismey's laughter prevented her. She put her 
 cup down uneasily. Felix saw her shut her eyes for a mom- 
 ent, as people sometimes do when they are undergoing some 
 strain that is almost unbearable to nerves or heart. She 
 sighed, as if she were opi)ressed both physically and mentally. 
 
 'What do you find tiring?' exclaimed Mrs. Ismey, in a 
 voice still shaken by merriment. 
 
 ' Oh, it's the noise of the traffic and all that,' Felix answered
 
 898 FELIX 
 
 hastily. ' London is tiring, you know, especially to people who 
 aren't accustomed to it. Are you going?' 
 
 She had got up suddenly. 
 
 ' Yes,' she answered. 
 
 Her mouth gaped. The hideous, convulsive yawning was 
 beginning again. He hurried to the door and opened it. 
 
 'Good-bye,' Mrs. Ismey said to Mrs. Wilding, in a half- 
 suffocated voice, * I 'm so to have met you again.' 
 
 She held out her dirty hand, and, just as Mrs. Wilding was 
 going to take it, drew it away. 
 
 ' Don't forget about coming to Paris,' she said to Felix, 
 speaking slyly and like a person in a great hurry. 
 
 It was the last thing she was able to say before the incessant 
 yawning swam over her voice like a sea, drowning it. She went 
 out of the room holding up her arms. The lift man was outside 
 on the landing. 
 
 ' Take this lady down, please,' Felix said. 'And if her carriage 
 isn't there' — Mrs. Ismey made an obvious, violent effort to 
 speak, but could not — 'put her into a cab and tell the man to 
 go to looB Green Street, Park Lane.' 
 
 He saw her step into the lift. It sank. He saw her painted 
 face, the mouth wide open, descend, disappear out of his sight. 
 For a moment he leaned against the iron cage. Why had his 
 mother come up to-day? He felt angry with her, as if she had 
 come up to spy on him. He was not himself. The turmoil in 
 his heart, love struggling against despair, the desire to redeem 
 against a sort of frenzy of disgust, that was partly physical, drove 
 his brain beyond the confines of pure reasonableness. There 
 are moments when a man is so tormented by circumstance that, 
 though not mad, he is no longer natural. His normal power of 
 control, his normal faculty of seeing things as they are, of under- 
 standing rightly what they mean to him and to others — these 
 things are sapped in him. So it was now with Felix. As he 
 stood there on the stone landing, leaning against the iron cage, 
 he felt as if he were on the \ erge of some outburst, or some 
 breakdown ; as if at a word, a touch, he might burst into tears 
 or i;ito fury. If he could only be alone, quite alone, even for 
 five minutes ! He felt as if he could not go back to his mother, 
 as if, unless he could be alone, something frightful must happen 
 to him. He stared into the well of the lift, and still seemed to 
 see a painted face yawning as it went down, down into Hell. 
 No, no. Again the heat of desire rushed over him. He was 
 going to save her. He was born for that. This strange love, 
 resisting such hideous attacks, such squalid outrages, was given
 
 FELIX 399 
 
 to him for that. But — his mother. He gazed almost fearfully 
 at the open door of the flat, at the passage. She was waiting in 
 there for him. What was she going to say, to do? If she 
 spoke of Mrs. Ismey, if she tried to advise him, to play the 
 mentor, he did not know, but he thought he might do something 
 horrible — turn his mother out with a fury of words, or — he did 
 not know. Vaguely he prayed for self-control, he prayed to be 
 allowed to feel natural. At last he came away from the cage 
 and re-entered the flat. He shut the front door. As he diii so 
 he heard Chicho whining in his bedroom. He listened for an 
 instant and then walked quickly into the sitting-room. He 
 wondered what his face was like. 
 
 His mother was still sitting by the tea-table. She had not 
 drunk her tea. He saw that. He seemed to see everything, 
 to be unnaturally observant at that moment, unnaturally alive. 
 
 'Well, mater, I was mostawfullv astonished to see you,' he said. 
 
 ' I did not know I was coming till this morning,' she answered. 
 'I came up with Stephen.' 
 
 ' Stephen ! Where is he, then r ' 
 
 ' He had some things to do. I expect he will meet me at 
 the station and go — go home with me.' 
 
 Her voice trembled slightly as she said the last words. 
 
 'You— -I suppose you couldn't come down to-night?' she 
 said hesitatingly. 
 
 ' Where ? Home ? Oh no, I 'm afraid I couldn't possibly,' 
 he exclaimed (juickly. 
 
 The idea of a journey with his mother and Stephen, of a 
 dinner with his mother, a long evening, was horrible. He could 
 not stand it, and he added decisively : 
 
 ' It 's out of the question. I 'm sorry, but I 've got an engage- 
 ment to-night.' 
 
 'You — you couldn't possibly give it up?' 
 
 There was a strange sound in her voice. He noticed it again. 
 Her persistence too was odd, not like her. 
 
 'I say, is there anything wrong with Margot?' he asked. 
 
 'No. Of course we arc very anxious about her, but every- 
 thing seems to be going pre tty well so far.' 
 
 ' I can't ome down to-night. I say, you've never drunk your 
 tea, mater.' 
 
 'Haven't I?' 
 
 A sort of blank look came into his mother's gentle face, the 
 look that often precedes a fainting fit. It passed away quickly. 
 She lifted the tea-cup and si[)|icd her tea. 
 
 'What time is it?' she asked.
 
 400 FELIX 
 
 Felix took out his watch. 
 
 ' Half-past five. What train d'you mean to catch?' 
 
 He was really longing to be alone, and was thinking what a 
 relief his mother's departure would be, but he did not mean her 
 to know it. That she had sensitively understood was shown by 
 her next words. 
 
 ' I won't keep you, Felix. I know you always have a great 
 deal to do. I can wait at the station easily.' 
 
 She began to feel for her icewool shawl, which she had laid 
 down when she came in. It was lying on the edge of her chair, 
 but she could not find it. Her hands looked confused, and as 
 if they were groping for something in the dark. 
 
 ' Oh, it 's all right, mater. There 's no hurry. Drink your 
 tea, do.' 
 
 ' Where is my shawl ? Oh — was it there ? I didn't see. 
 Thank you.' 
 
 He had given it to her. She put it round her throat and 
 got up. 
 
 ' I say, don't hurry off like that. Mater, I didn't mean I had 
 anything now, only that I was engaged to-night.' 
 
 In spite of his almost furious desire to be alone, he began to 
 feel compunction. He had not seen his mother for so long, 
 he saw her so seldom, that he knew he ought not to show what 
 he was feeling. To do so would be cruel. Yet he could not 
 help knowing that he must have done so. 
 
 'You must drink your tea properly and have something to 
 eat,' he exclaimed. 
 
 ' No, I couldn't eat anything, but I '11 just * 
 
 She began to drink the remainder of her tea standing up 
 She finished it hastily and put down the cup. 
 
 ' I ought really to catch the six o'clock train from Charing 
 Cross,' she said. 
 
 'Did you arrange to with Stephen?' 
 
 ' Not exactly. No. But I expect he will be there for that 
 train. We were to take our chance of meeting. He had to go 
 to the Church House.' 
 
 'Oh.' 
 
 Her last sentence, the ideas it called up, made him feel that, 
 at any cost, he must be alone. He could not endure clerical 
 talk at that moment. He forgot his mother and thought of 
 himself, and his last ejaculation was frigidly cold, meant to 
 repel Stephen and Stephen's affairs from the conversation. 
 
 ' Well, I 'm — I 'm glad to have had just a glimpse of my son,' 
 said Mrs. Wilding.
 
 FELIX 401 
 
 She tried to smile brightly but her lips began to quiver. She 
 turned away. After an instant, she said : 
 
 *I see you've hung up the picture.' 
 
 ' " Love and Death " ? ' he said. ' Yes.' 
 
 His voice was very cold. That picture meant too much to 
 him just now. 
 
 ' Love and — death,' Mrs. Wilding repeated. 
 
 She turned round. Her eyes were swimming with tears. 
 
 ' Look here, mater,' Felix said, ' L see what it is. You 're 
 working yourself up into a panic about Margot. That's silly. 
 Think of the millions of ' 
 
 ' Yes, yes, I know.' 
 
 ' But you are. That 's always your way. You spoil your life 
 by being so timid about everything, always fussing about your 
 own health and ' 
 
 ' Now I must go,' she said. 
 
 Her voice was very odd, he thought. It was very odd, too, 
 the way she interrupted him, she who was always so gentle, so 
 patient a listener. 
 
 •Well, do try to be less nervous,' he said. 'You'll be twice 
 as happy.' 
 
 He opened the door. Mrs. Wilding looked all round his 
 little room again, slowly, almost like a person who is taking a 
 silent farewell of something. She stumbled as she turned to 
 go out at the door. Felix put out his hand, but drew it away 
 when he saw she had recovered her footing. When they were 
 in the dark passage she said, in a low voice : 
 Felix.' 
 
 'Well, mater?' 
 
 'I want you — will you do something for me?' 
 
 ' Of course, if I can. What is it ? ' 
 
 'Were you going to Paris?' 
 
 'Surely it doesn't matter whether I do or not,' he burst out 
 hotly. 
 
 In a moment he felt on the verge of his self-control and as if 
 anything might happen. 
 
 'Surely, mater,' he continued, raising his voice without know- 
 ing he was doing so, 'surely I am my own master now. At the 
 age of ' 
 
 ' I only wanted to ask you not to go just now.' 
 
 Her voice sounded half ashamed. 
 
 'Really, mater, I don't see why. If I go, it will only be for 
 a few days. Everybody runs across to Paris. It's no farther 
 than——' 
 ac
 
 402 FELIX 
 
 ' I know. Never mind. Good-bye, my dear, dear boy.* 
 
 He had opened the front door and let in the light from the 
 landing. His mother lifted her face to kiss him. Her cheeks 
 were wet with tears. He wondered why. He wished she would 
 not cry so easily about nothing. He bent down, rather reluc- 
 tantly. She kissed him long and passionately. It was he who 
 drew away his face. He went towards the cage to touch the 
 bell for the lift. But suddenly he remembered. 
 
 ' Oh, you're afraid of — but didn't you come up in it?' 
 
 'Yes. I met the conductor at the bottom, and — and I 
 remembered you didn't like my walking.' 
 
 ' It is nonsense, but if you 'd really rather * 
 
 'No, no. It isn't so bad as I expected.* 
 
 The lift rose. 
 
 'Good-bye,' she said. 
 
 She looked at her son, then stepped in a little nervously. 
 
 ' Good-bye, mater. All right.' 
 
 The man palled the cord and the Hft sank down. As it went, 
 Felix saw his mother's large, dark eyes gazing up to catch the 
 last glimpse of him. There were still tears in them, and— he 
 thought — a strange, intense look that he had never seen in 
 them before, that he had not thought they could hold. It was 
 a yearning, even a passionate look. 
 
 It almost frightened him, though he did not know why. A 
 sudden impulse came to him to run down, to meet her at the 
 bottom, to say — but what more had he to say to her? Besides, 
 it was too late. She would be out in the street. She would 
 have taken a cab and be gone. Of course she would. 
 
 Yet he did go down some steps, driven by this impulse. 
 Then he stopped and mounted slowly. 
 
 Why had she looked at him like that? Some words from the 
 Bible came into his head: ^The Lord tur?ied and looked upon 
 Feier: 
 
 ' What is the matter with me to-day? ' he said to himself. 
 
 He let Chicho out. The little dog jumped up at him eagerlv 
 and licked his hands. Felix pushed him away. He kept 
 thinking of, and even repeating to himself, those words : 
 
 ^The Lord turned and looked upon Peter. ^ 
 
 Why had he thought of them. What had they to do with 
 him and with his mother?
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 MRS. ISMEY had said to Felix, 'Don't forget about 
 coming to Paris,' and she had said it after his onthurst, 
 an outburst in which, however confusedly, however brokenly, 
 he had poured forth his soul. She took him at his word, then. 
 She tacitly abandoned her practice of trying to surround her 
 vice with mystery, of warring eternally against truth. She 
 accepted him as her protector, and put herself in his hands. 
 He was glad. For the fact of her doing so surely, in a manner, 
 pledged her at last to be truthful with him. In his joy over 
 this Felix asked himself whether the reason she had given for 
 her proposed visit could have been the true one. Could she 
 have really meant to visit Barreille on her own account? If 
 so — but no, he would not be a fool, he would not believe it. 
 Alice was truthful, and he knew, from Alice, the web of deceit 
 which Mrs. Ismey was for ever spinning. Morphia bred in 
 her a passion for subterfuge. It had become an instinct in 
 her to pretend that she had given up the mania which governed 
 her whole life — an ineradicable instinct. He must not shut 
 his eyes to that. Though he loved her he must watch her as 
 one would watch a kleptomaniac or a lunatic, always be doubt- 
 ful of appearances, always be on his guard. He must not 
 ho[)e for rock on which to rest the tired feet of his love. Some 
 day, perhaps— but not yet. 
 
 Still, she was coming with him to Paris. 
 
 He meant to do as he had said, to be with her always in 
 Paris, never to leave her unwatrhed. If there was scandal, 
 let it be as poisonous as it wru hi. Let it e\ep blacken her 
 reputation. He would avoid that if he could. He would be 
 as careful, as chivalrously careful, as was compatible with the 
 end he had set himself. Rut his resolve to savf her was a hard, 
 almost a brutal one. He thought of her as he had last seen 
 her in dirt and degradation, laugl^ed at by servants, jeered at — 
 he guessed, he knew it — by the (hogs of London in the streets, 
 wondered at by his mother. And, when he thought of her 
 thus, called up the vision of her fearful hands, which had once 
 
 MS
 
 404 FELIX 
 
 been so beautiful, of her painted, yawning mouth, of her hollow, 
 faded eyes and disordered hair, he said to himself that he was 
 right to be audaciously fearless of the world to achieve his surely 
 splendid aim. Mr. Ismey had apparently abandoned her in 
 despair. Then he, Felix, would take his place — he would at 
 least cherish her in sickness. He wished for nothing more. 
 There was nothing physical in his love now. How could there 
 be? Since the moment on Eldon Sands when she took his arm 
 Felix had never thought of her in that way. The foulness of 
 her fault at least kept his love strangely pure, strangely free from 
 the promptings of the flesh. 
 
 Now that his resolve was taken he could not wait. It must 
 be carried out at once. That night he wrote to her suggesting 
 that they should start for Paris on the Thursday morning. It 
 was then Tuesday. She replied, in a blotted, almost unreadable 
 scrawl, that she could not be ready until Friday, and that she 
 wished to go by the night train and boat. He guessed the 
 reason of this. She would not face daylight. He yielded to 
 her wishes. On Wednesday evening, just after he had written 
 to say so, Alice called to see him. Since she had told him that 
 she meant to leave Mrs. Ismey Felix had felt differently about 
 her. He could not be quite reasonable in his love and unhappi- 
 ness. It was difficult for him to see Alice's point of view, and, 
 in his heart, he condemned strongly her resolution to give up 
 her place, and faintly mistrusted her despite the proofs of good- 
 will that she had given in abundance by her conduct both to 
 Mrs. Ismey and to him. Yet he was glad when he heard her 
 name. It was necessary for him to see her in order to get 
 Barreille's address. In a former conversation with her he had 
 made himself certain that Barreille was a great specialist in 
 morphia cases, that he had achieved cures where other doctors 
 had failed, and that he Uved in Paris. INIrs. Ismey sometimes 
 mixed a little truth with her lies, truth that she thought could 
 not interfere with the passion to which her life was devoted. 
 
 * I wanted to see you, Alice,' Felix said, when she was shown 
 in. ' I 've got several things to say to you. Please sit down. 
 Oh, but first tell me what you've come for.' 
 
 The maid sat down with her usual quiet primness. 
 
 ' Well, sir, I wanted to see you before I went,' she said, in her 
 low, and yet rather emotional voice, which matched the expres- 
 sion in her pale, round face. 
 
 ' You are really going soon ? ' 
 
 'Yes, sir. By the time my lady comes back from Paris I shall 
 be gone — if she goes to Paris.'
 
 FELIX 405 
 
 •She is going,' Felix said shortly. 
 'So you say, sir.' 
 
 Felix opened his lips to make some hasty remark, but he 
 checked it. 
 
 * Go on, please, Alice,' he said quietly. 
 
 ' Well, sir, I know you think rather bad of me * 
 
 She stopped. 
 
 'No, Alice.' 
 
 *Yes, sir, you do, for going like this and leaving my lady.' 
 
 ' I would rather you stopped, certainly,' he said, with the 
 determination to be strictly reasonable. ' But I know I ought 
 not to expect you to sacrifice your future prospects. And I 
 know of course, too, that — well, that you have a great deal to 
 bear, and that it may be wearing you out.' 
 
 ' I think it is, sir; but it's not only that, nor Robert — that's 
 my young man, sir — saying he won't wait no longer. No, sir; 
 but I want to leave, I don't want to be sent away.' 
 
 ' Sent away ! ' he exclaimed in surprise. ' But who should 
 send you away ? ' 
 
 ' Mr. Ismey, sir.' 
 
 * Mr. Ismey ! Has he come back ? ' 
 *No, sir, not yet.' 
 
 ' But — but I thought he had given the whole thing up I' 
 'Sir, d'you know Mr. Ismey well?' 
 
 * Not very well, no.' 
 
 'There 's a lot in him, sir, for all he seems so quiet.* 
 
 Felix remembered that he had always wondered what Mr. 
 Ismey was really like, and had never felt as if he knew, 
 
 'Yes ? ' he said, to make her go on. 
 
 'He's not the gentleman to give a thing up, sir, not when he 
 carts.' 
 
 ' And does — does he care very much ? ' 
 
 Felix hardly knew what answer he wished to have to his 
 question. 
 
 'Sir, he loves her. That's the truth of it. And she's break- 
 ing his heart.' 
 
 She was silent. Felix said nothing. He had not expected 
 this conversation to be momentous. 
 
 ' He had his try, sir, and when it didn't do and he saw her 
 getting bad again, he went away. But I know him, sir, and I 
 know he '11 come back. Mr. Ismey 's proud, sir. For months 
 he knew there was something wrong with my lady and her lady- 
 ship — Lady Caroline, sir — and he wouldn't say a word nor try 
 to find out what it was. He's not one to spy, sir. Where he
 
 406 FELIX 
 
 loves he's one to trust. He would trust her, sir, too long. 
 That 's where his fault was.' 
 ' I understand,' Felix said. 
 
 He thought of the wedding dinner at Churston Waters, of the 
 scene in the office. 
 
 • But now he knows, sir, he '11 never give her up. He'll come 
 back soon. She don't think it, but he might come any day. 
 And when he does come he '11 send me off.' 
 ' But why should he do that ? ' 
 
 ' Well, sir, he was nearly doing it when he first found out, 
 because I knew it and never told him. He would have, only I 
 begged so hard to stop, and I think he saw I did care for my 
 lady and wanted her to get right. I 've never pandered to her, 
 sir, though I haven't been able to keep her off the filthy stuff".' 
 
 ' I know, Alice, I know.' 
 
 ' But when he gave in about letting me stop — "Alice," he said, 
 "if she gets bad again, you'll go. She shall have a keeper." 
 Sir, I shall never forget the look in his eyes when he said that. 
 He went red all over his face and then as pale as a cloth. But he 
 would say it again. " She shall have a keeper," he said. And 
 what he says he '11 do. So what with that and Robert, I 'd 
 better go, sir.' 
 
 ' I see. Yes, I suppose you had.' 
 
 Felix spoke slowly. What he had just heard moved him, 
 seemed to bring his feet to the edge of an abyss. He was con- 
 scious of being near a void, dark, unfathomable. He looked 
 into it but could see nothing. 
 
 * I 've a note from my lady, too, for you, sir.* 
 
 'Oh.' 
 
 He took it, opened it, read it. 
 
 ' D' you know what this is ? ' he said to Alice. 
 
 ' She wants you to give her the money, sir, for Paris ? ' 
 
 •Yes. She says she has none at all, that she will be ashamed 
 to have to ask me for it for every little thing on the journey.' 
 
 ' Don't give it her, sir. Don't give her a penny.' 
 
 ' I won't' 
 
 ' If you do she'll trick you somehow, sir. She'll get away to 
 those clubs. She means to. That's why she's going.' 
 
 Felix's face grew hard. 
 
 ' Give me the address of that doctor, of Barreille,' he said. 
 
 When Alice had gone he sat down to think. Again he looked 
 into the void and saw nothing but darkness. He thought of 
 Mr. Ismey and what Alice had said of him, that his wife was 
 breaking his heart. He loved her then, he loved her too. But
 
 FELIX 407 
 
 had he not abandoned her ? Alice said that he would come 
 back, that he would not give in, that he would fight the curse of 
 his life and Mrs. Ismey's again. Yes, Alice said so. But was 
 it true ? Besides, Mrs. Ismey hated him now. He had no 
 influence with her. She hated him more than she hated any 
 other human being. And why ? 
 
 When he came to that the darkness of the abyss seemed to 
 clear a little before Felix. He saw something that made him 
 wish almost for blindness. He shut his eyes. He turned away. 
 He would not see. 
 
 It was arranged that he should go with Mrs. Ismey to Paris 
 on Friday night. They were to meet at Victoria Station half 
 an hour before the train started. Felix had wired to Barreille 
 to make an appointment, and had received a reply. Mrs. 
 Ismey did not know this. Felix understood now that it was 
 necessary to fight her with her own weapons. He could no 
 longer dare to be perfectly frank with her. She had received 
 his refusal of the money calmly, even sweetly. 
 
 ' It was only that I didn't want to bother you for trifles,' she 
 had said. 'And — and it seems so preposterous that I should 
 have nothing, when my husband is a rich man.' 
 
 'Yes, I know. But it will be all right. I '11 see to everything 
 for you,' Felix answered. 
 
 'You 're always so good to me,' she said. 
 
 She tried to force her rigid face into a smile, but her eyes 
 looked malignant. 
 
 That was on Thursday, the last time he was to see her before 
 they met at the station. 
 
 On Thursday night he scarcely slept at all. He wns naturally 
 excitable, and events now made for excitement in his life. As 
 he lay there in the dark, hearing Chicho's regular breathing, he 
 remembered his many thoughts of Paris. Not London, but 
 Paris, had been the first city of his dreams. Of Paris he had 
 first heard the stories that set his brain on fire, and his heart 
 longing for a greater life than he had ever known. The lamps 
 of Paris had first gleamed across his imagination, the voices of 
 Paris had first murmured in his ears. That evening— that first 
 evening, he called it — when, in the hut in the forest, he heard the 
 huge and flowing tides of life, they rolled upon the Paris streets. 
 
 Now he was going there. But how ? Strange would be his 
 pilgrimage, far stranger than the tailor's. He would not starve, 
 it was true. His body would not starve. How would he 
 return ? He dared not look forward. Yet he was resolute. 
 One thing above all others now gave fibre to his resolution, the
 
 408 FELIX 
 
 knowledge that Mrs. Ismey hated her husband because he had 
 fought against her passion. He, FeHx, was about to do the same 
 thing. He might earn the same reward. He risked so much 
 that the face of Mr. Ismey did not rise up out of the void to 
 look upon him and to reproach him. The fact that in going he 
 threw the dice for his happiness or misery gave him the sense 
 that he was doing right. She had to be saved. Who would dare 
 to say that he had no mission to save her? 
 
 He fell asleep towards morning. 
 
 On Friday he was terribly restless. He could not be still. 
 When he had packed he did not know what to do, how to pass 
 the hours. At length he resolved to go down to the school, to 
 force himself to work. He had been neglecting Sam lately, but 
 Sam did not mind. When he did present himself Felix was 
 always greeted with the same sweet smile, the same purring 
 welcome. Probably Sam thought him a 'damned fool' But 
 then he thought that of so many people. He was a believer in 
 Carlyle. Felix carried out his resolve. He went to Eldridge 
 Buildings, chaffed and laughed with Arliss and the other pupils, 
 wrote part of an article, and had an interview with Sam at the 
 end of the afternoon. 
 
 * I shan't be here, sir, for a few days,' he said, when he was 
 going. 
 
 Sam smiled indulgently. 
 
 'You are about to take a little holiday, Mr. Wilding? Well, 
 why not ? A holiday clears the mind, restores the tired intellect.' 
 
 Felix reddened ; the sarcasm was sufficiently apparent, though 
 very soft and sweet. 
 
 ' Where are you going ? Scotland ? Morocco ? Germany ? ' 
 
 He waved his white hand as if to indicate the globe. 
 
 •To Paris, sir.' 
 
 'Paris. A very informing place. I know Paris inside out. 
 Every journalist ought to. You are very wise to go ther e. 
 Paris widens the horizon. Paris — I might almost say — compl etes 
 the education. Paris and a woman — what more can you want 
 to put the finishing touch on mind and h-eart ! ' 
 
 The words seemed ominous to Felix; he hardly knew why. 
 When he left Sam's school he did not go back at once to his 
 flat. He felt as if he could not bear to be shut up in his little 
 room. So he went to the Club, stayed there some time, and 
 then walked to Victoria Street across the Park. When he 
 reached Wellington Mansions it was half-past five. He meant 
 to be at Victoria at half-past seven. He had still two hours, but 
 he had to dine. That would take up some time.
 
 FELIX 409 
 
 'There's a note in your room, sir, marked "Urgent,"* said the 
 lift man as Felix was going up. 
 
 Felix guessed at once it was from Mrs. Ismey, Perhaps she 
 was not going. Perhaps Mr. Ismey had returned home unex- 
 pectedly. 
 
 ' When did it come ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' It must be a good hour and a half ago, I should say, sir,' 
 replied the man, opening the iron door to let Felix out. 
 
 ' Chicho all right ? ' he asked, as he put the key into his door. 
 
 'Yes, sir; seems settling down nicely.' 
 
 •That's good.' 
 
 Felix had given the little dog to the porter to be taken care of 
 during his absence in Paris. He shut the door and hurried into 
 his sitting-room. The note lay on the table. He picked it up 
 eagerly and looked at the handwriting. It was his mother's. 
 His mother's ! The envelope was unstamped. He examined 
 it. It had not been through the post. She was in London, 
 then. His mother in London again ! And why should she 
 
 write? Why should she not come if she He tore the 
 
 envelope open. 
 
 •5B Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square. 
 ' Friday, 3 P.M. 
 
 ' My dearest Boy, — I am in London, here. You will be 
 surprised, I know. I wish very much to see you at once. Can 
 you come ? I know you will when I beg you to. We might 
 have — (here two words were very carefully and completely 
 erased) — tea together. Come at once if possible. I might not 
 be able to see you late. Please try to. — With fondest love. 
 Ever your loving Mother.' 
 
 Felix stood with this note in his hand. He read it two or three 
 times. What did it mean ? His mother was staying in London 
 then, staying — but she hated London. She never stayed in 
 London. And how odd her coming away from home now that 
 Margot needed her so much ! '51? Henrietta Street, Cavendish 
 Square.' Was it a hotel? Was she with friends ? Cavendish 
 Square ! That suggested doctors. Could Margot be ill? Could 
 his mother have brought her up ? 15ut, if so, would she not have 
 told him that Margot was with her ? He could not make it out at 
 all. He looked at the clock. Twenty minutes to six. He must 
 go at once, of course. He had not so very much time. Only 
 an tiour and fifty minutes before he had to meet Mrs. Ismey at 
 Victoria Station. He wished his mother had not chosen to-day 
 for coming up. Well, he would keep his eye on the time.
 
 410 FELIX 
 
 He went out, hailed a hansom, and told the man to drive to 
 5B Henrietta Street. There was a scud of rain coming on, 
 and the sky was dark. When he reached Hyde Park Corner 
 carriages were pouring out of the Park. The hoods of the 
 victorias were up, for the first drops began to fall. It was cold, 
 too, for May. Felix thought of Mrs. Ismey, then of his mother. 
 He could not imagine her spending a night in London, and all 
 by herself. Surely Margot must be with her. Well, he would 
 »oon know. Here was Cavendish Square. He saw a bath-chair 
 go by on the pavement. A woman dressed in a nurse's costume 
 walked beside it holding up an umbrella. The thin, drawn face 
 of a young man looked out from under the hood of the chair. 
 Felix saw his eyes. They had a dazed and wondering expres- 
 sion in them. Felix thought they were like the eyes of a 
 little, young dog that has been cruelly treated, but is at last 
 beginning to know what kindness means. Here was the 
 corner of Henrietta Street. The cabman drove a little way 
 down the street, and drew up before the door of a good-sized 
 house. Felix jumped out, paid, and rang the bell. 
 
 Now that he was standing before the door he was more 
 amazed, more curious than ever. It seemed impossible that his 
 mother was really here, in this grey street, behind this dark- 
 green wood and ground glass painted deep red and blue. He 
 glanced at his watch, and thought of the station and Mrs. Ismey 
 meeting him there. The door was opened by a tall woman in a 
 black dress, with a white apron, and an oddly shaped white cap 
 tied under the chin with white strings. 
 
 • Is Mrs. Wilding here?' asked Felix. 
 
 • Yes,' said the woman. ' Will you please give me your name? ' 
 
 • Felix Wilding.' 
 
 The woman smiled slightly, as if she felt a sort of kindly 
 pleasure on hearing the name. 
 
 ' Oh yes,' she said. ' You 're a little late, but will you come 
 upstairs ? ' 
 
 She turned round. Felix followed her wondering. What 
 was she ? A servant ? She did not speak like a servant. 
 There was something almost authoritative in her manner. 
 They went up to the first floor. On the landing the woman 
 turned round. 
 
 ' One more flight,' she said. 
 
 And again she smiled with a sort of gentle, a sort of reassuring 
 kindness. 
 
 They reached the second landing, and she knocked upon a 
 door. Felix heard a voice say, ' Come in.* It was his mother's
 
 FELIX 411 
 
 voice. The woman put in her head and said something. Felix 
 could not hear what it was. Then she drew back and said to 
 him : 
 
 ' You can go in now.' 
 
 As he passed her she looked at him, and it seemed to him 
 that there was a great deal of meaning— of kind, even of 
 tender meaning, in her eyes. He walked into the room, 
 and she shut the door behind him quietly. He found 
 himself in a good-sized, comfortably, but plainly furnished 
 bedroom. The curtains were already drawn, and it was lit with 
 electric light from one burner. On a large bed his mother was 
 lying outside the counterpane, fully dressed. She had a little 
 Bible, that he knew well, open in her hand. But she was not 
 reading. She was lying turned on her side, gazing eagerly 
 towards him as he came in, and raising herself up on her elbow. 
 She looked just as usual, less pale than when she had come to 
 tea at Wellington Mansions. 
 
 'Mater!' he said, coming up to the bed. 'Why, what on 
 earth are you doing here ? ' 
 
 He bent down. His mother stretched up to him and kissed 
 him. 
 
 'Oh, I am so thankful you have come ! ' she said in a broken 
 voice. 'It was getting so late that I almost thought — I was 
 almost afraid you had gone away. And if you had ' 
 
 She stopped sp'^aking. 
 
 'No, but I was out. I started directly I had your note. 
 But what 's the matter ? Is Margot here ? ' 
 
 He was not surprised to see his mother lying down. She 
 often did that. 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Well, but then ' 
 
 * There 's an armchair,' his mother said. ' Quite a comfortable 
 one. Sit down in it. They will bring tea in a moment, but I 
 want to have a little talk with you first.' 
 
 She had looked almost as if she were going to shed tears, 
 but now she was smiling gently. 
 
 ' I don't know that I want tea,' Felix said. 
 
 He spoke stiffly. It had sud'Ienly occurred to him that 
 perhaps his mother had come up with the intention of prevent- 
 ing him from going to Paris. She might have tliought it over 
 when she was alone in the country and resolved to act firmly. 
 Suddenly he felt sure it was so. She hated London. What 
 else should bring her? 
 
 'I haven't very much time either,' he added, under the
 
 412 FELIX 
 
 influence of this new and disagreeable idea. 'It s a pity you 
 happened to come up to-day because I 'm going to Paris to-night 
 by the boat train.' 
 
 He stopped. His mother said nothing. A very sHght 
 tremor went over her face, upward from lips to eves. 
 
 ' But why are you here, mater? ' he added. ' Why aren't you 
 staying in a hotel ?' 
 
 ' Felix,' she said, speaking very quietly in a low voice, ' I 
 haven't been feeling very well lately, not for some time.' 
 
 ' Haven't you?' he said. 
 
 He was sitting in the armchair by the side of the bed. He 
 pulled the chair a little nearer without knowing that he did so. 
 Often he began to lecture his mother upon the danger of 
 becoming hypochondriacal when she spoke of her health. To- 
 night something prevented him from doing that. 
 
 * Haven't you, mater ? ' he repeated. 
 His eyes were fastened on her face. 
 
 ' No. I didn't know quite what it was. I had a symptom — 
 it rather troubled me. So I called in Doctor Manton and told 
 him about it, and he advised me to come up and consult a 
 specialist, Doctor Egerton Smith, in Harley Street.' 
 
 ' Is that why you 're here ? When are you going to see him ? ' 
 
 * I went to see him the other day before I came to tea with you.' 
 'What did he say?' 
 
 Felix spoke quickly and leaned forward in the chair. 
 ' Felix, dear, he examined me, and he said he could do nothing 
 for me.' 
 
 There was a silence. Then Felix said : 
 
 *Do nothing — but — mater, what did he mean?' 
 
 * He thought the — what I suffered from — had been allowed to 
 go too far. I asked him if nothing could be done. You see, it 
 was all so sudden — I could hardly believe that — well, he said 
 he could do nothing at all. And so I came away.' 
 
 Felix felt that he had turned absolutely white. He felt that 
 his lips were white. He did not try to say anything. 
 
 'After I had had tea with you I went home with Stephen. I 
 told him in the train what Doctor Egerton Smith had said. 
 Stephen thought I ought to take a second opinion. But I did 
 not want to. I felt sure from what the doctor had told me that 
 it would be no use, that nothing could be done. However, 
 Doctor Manton agreed with Stephen. He insisted on bringing 
 me up to-day to see Doctor Henry Wyles. I saw him this 
 morning at twelve. He kept me a long time, and then sent for 
 a very famous young surgeon, Mr. HilL*
 
 FELIX 413 
 
 * A surgeon ! ' Felix whispered. ' Mater ? ' 
 
 'They had a consultation, and decided that it was perhaps 
 possible to save my — to do something for me — if it was done at 
 once. For a moment I refused. You know I am rather a 
 coward. I felt as if I would rather — I mean, I hardly felt as if 
 I could go through it. But then I thought I ought to for — well, 
 
 you see, there is Margot, and ' She broke off and looked 
 
 iilently at Felix. 
 
 He did not say a word. 
 
 ' So I decided that I would have it done. This house belongs 
 to Doctor Wyles, and — and they will do it here to-morrow 
 morning at nine. That is why I asked you to come. I wanted 
 to ' 
 
 She stopped speaking. The tremor went over her face again. 
 There was a dead silence. Before either of them broke it a tap 
 came at the door. Felix sprang up. He walked across the 
 room away from the door and came to the drawn curtains. He 
 heard the door opening, and the rustle of a dress and the clatter 
 of china. He pulled the curtains violently apart, pushed aside 
 the blind, and looked out of the window. 
 
 He saw nothing. 
 
 Presently — it might have been after years — he heard his 
 mother saying : 
 
 ' Felix ! ' 
 
 He did not turn round. It seemed to him as if he tried to 
 and failei. 
 
 'Felix, dear.' 
 
 He tried again and succeeded. He saw a tea-table standing 
 between the empty armchair and the bed, on which his mother 
 was still Ijing, and he went towards it and her. As he went he 
 was moving his lips and attempting to say something. When 
 he reacheo the side of the bed, so that he was touching it, he 
 stood still and looked down on his mother. She tried to raise 
 herself towards him and held up one arm, supporting herself on 
 the other. Her expression was an embrace. He took no 
 notice, and she dropped her arm and sank back on the bed. 
 As she did taat he saw the lift at Wellington Mansions descend- 
 ing with her. He saw her being carried away, out of his sight. 
 Suddenly he threw himself down on her violently. 
 
 ' Mater ! nater ! ' he cried out. ' Mater ! ' 
 
 He caught hold of her and shut his eyes, pressing his face 
 hard against her breast. 
 
 ' Mater 1 ' he said. ' Mother ! '
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 AT a few minutes after seven o'clock that evening Fel'x 
 came out of the bedroom in Henrietta Street and began 
 slowly to descend the stairs. When he reached the first land- 
 ing he had to pass an open door. He turned his head away 
 from it and quickened his steps, but a woman rustled out, 
 looked over the balusters after him, and then called, in alow 
 but distinct voice, ' Mr. Wilding ! ' Felix went on tiK she 
 called again, and then stopped on the stairs but did not turn 
 round to see her. It was the nurse who had let him in, and who 
 was the matron of the nursing-home in which his mother was. 
 She came quickly downstairs till she reached him. Then he 
 half turned, but kept his eyes on the ground. 
 
 * Oh, Mr. Wilding,' she said, ' I only wanted to say a word. 
 You're coming to-morrow, are not you ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' he said. 
 
 ' I'm glad of that. To feel you are in the house will cheer 
 your mother up. She was longing for that.' 
 
 ' I'm coming,' he said. 
 
 ' Do you think you could manage to come by a quarter or 
 twenty minutes to nine, so that I should have time :o let her 
 know you are actually here before it begins ? ' 
 
 ' I'll come at half-past eight.' 
 
 * Thank you.' 
 
 The nurse paused a moment. Felix knew she was looking 
 at him with gentle kindness and sympathy. 
 
 ' Don't be too much upset, if you can help it,* she said at 
 last. ' Dr. Wyles says there is a real chance foi her. And 
 she's so brave. I've been telling her all about it this after- 
 noon. I couldn't do that to some people. But she wished to 
 know. I've never had any one so brave in the home all 
 the time I've been here.' 
 
 Felix nodded. He went down a step or two, while the ma- 
 tron stood looking pityingly after him. Then he turned round. 
 
 ' D'you know that I've called my mother a coward ? ' he said. 
 
 ' Oh, Mr. Wilding ! ' said the matron, startled. 
 
 414
 
 FELIX 415 
 
 * Yes, often.' 
 
 * That was before you knew what your mother was ? ' said 
 the matron gently. 
 
 * Yes,' he answered. * Before I knew.' 
 
 'We'll look for you at half-past eight to-morrow. Don't 
 be downcast.' 
 
 * Good night,' he said. 
 
 In a moment she heard the hall door shut on him. 
 
 When he was in the street he stood still. He knew he had 
 to go to Victoria to meet Mrs. Ismey and tell her that they 
 could not go to Paris. He knew also that he had not much 
 time. It was past seven already. Yet he waited. He did 
 not feel as if he could go away from this house, leaving his 
 mother there alone, lying on that bed waiting for the night 
 — and the morning. She had always disliked London so 
 much. Just then that thought made everything seem more 
 terrible. If only it could have been at Hill House. If she 
 could have been in her own room, with the garden outside, 
 her own servants about her, Margot not far off. He looked 
 up at the house to the second-floor windows and put up his 
 hand to his face. It was icy cold. 
 
 An empty hansom came slowly down the street. He made 
 a gesture to catch the cabman's attention and got in. 
 
 ' Go to looB Green Street, Park Lane,' he said, 'As quick 
 as you can.' 
 
 It was just possible that Mrs. Ismey might not have 
 started, that he might be able to stop her. He hoped so, as 
 much as he could hope anything. The idea of a great rail- 
 way-station, lit up, was frightful to him. People would be 
 able to see his face there. The cabman drove on as fast as 
 the traffic would let him. Felix leaned back in a corner of 
 the cab, stiffening his body and stretching out his legs. He 
 knew that it was very likely that he had seen his mother 
 alive for the last time. And not two hours ago he had not 
 known that she was ill. Not two hours ago he had been the 
 son who was always ready to laugh at her ailments and 
 sneer at her as a coward. 
 
 He shut his eyes. He saw her lying outside the bed in 
 Henrietta Street, turned toward the door so that she might 
 see him coming in. Then he saw her in his flat, standing 
 up and hastily finishing her cup of tea, because he had let 
 her see that her company was irksome to him, and that he 
 wished to get rid of her when she came to him after receiv- 
 ing her death warrant from Dr. Egerton Smith.
 
 416 FELIX 
 
 When he thought of that he did not wonder that his eyes 
 were incapable of shedding any more tears. But he did 
 wonder that the pulse of his heart could go on beating 
 regularly. 
 
 He remembered many other things too ; almost every oc- 
 casion, he thought, when he had been unkind to his mother, 
 when he had trampled upon her unfailing love, when he had 
 faintly jeered at her always humble advice, and had shrunk 
 from her anxious tenderness. 
 
 How had he been able to do it ? What a mystery that was 
 to him now. For he knew how intensely he had really been 
 loving her all the time : all the time that he seemed to be 
 ignoring her, forgetting her, pushing her out of his life, 
 denying her access to his mind, refusing almost brutally the 
 soft advances of her influence. Yes, all the time he had 
 been loving her intensely. It was as if he had been at the 
 other side of the world from himself, loving her. 
 
 And now, perhaps, it was all over. He had just said 
 good-bye to her without speech, kneeling at the side of the 
 bed. He had held the body that was to be lacerated in a 
 few hours, lacerated by men whom he had never seen. He 
 had felt its life, perhaps, probably, for the last time. He had 
 received, perhaps, the final kiss of his mother's soul. At this 
 time to-morrow night it was most likely that people would 
 be coming to him for directions about her burial. 
 
 ' But she knows now,' he said to himself. ' She knows 
 about me now.' 
 
 He kept on repeating that to himself mechanically, and 
 trying to gain a little comfort from it. He had forgotten 
 why he was driving and where, forgotten what he had to go 
 through before he could shut himself up and be alone. 
 
 ' Isn't this it, sir ?' 
 
 ' Isn't this the house, sir ? ' 
 
 ' Oh — what — are we ? ' 
 
 He stumbled out of the cab, and was just going to ring 
 the bell of Mrs. Ismey's house when the hall door was 
 opened by Alice. 
 
 ' Alice ! ' he said. 
 
 'I saw you out of the window, sir,' she said, 'and — but 
 whatever's the matter ? ' 
 
 * Has Mrs. Ismey gone yet ? ' 
 
 ' Sir, what is it ? Oh, sir, has anything happened to my 
 lady ? '
 
 FELIX 417 
 
 She caught hold of his arm. Felix took her hand away 
 gently, 
 
 'No. I haven't seen her. Then she has gone to the 
 station ? ' 
 
 * Yes, sir.' 
 
 He began to turn away, but the maid stopped him. 
 'Sir,' she said, * Mr. Ismey is coming back to-night. We 
 don't know what time, but he's coming.* 
 Felix stood still. 
 
 * To-night !' 
 
 * Yes, sir.' 
 
 * Does she know it ? ' 
 
 * Yes, sir. She's in an awful state to get away. She knows 
 what he'll do when he does come.' 
 
 'Alice,' Felix said, ' Mrs. Ismey won't go to Paris to-night. 
 I'm not able to take her.' 
 
 The maid looked surprised and anxious. 
 
 'You can't go, sir ?' 
 
 *No.' 
 
 'But then — oh, sir, you'll have a fearful trouble with her 
 when she finds out. You'll never get her to come back here 
 now Mr. Ismey's coming home. She's mad to be away from 
 him.* 
 
 * I can't take her to Paris.' 
 
 He stood there on the step, and Alice stood in the doorway 
 looking at him with her small, steady eyes, which were alight 
 with curiosity. 
 
 ' Fm afraid something dreadful's happened, sir,' she mur- 
 mured. ' You do look bad.' 
 
 'I'll bring her back, Alice. I promise that,' he replied. 
 
 He crossed the pavement and got into the cab. 
 
 ' Go to Victoria,' he said to the man. ' London, Chatham, 
 and Dover station.' 
 
 The man drove off. Alice stood watching the cab disap- 
 pearing down the street. When it was out of sight she shook 
 her head, sighed, and went into the house slowly. 
 
 Felix gave himself up once more to those visions which 
 broke upon the twilight and faded away—visions of his mother 
 and of himself, as they had been together. 
 
 One came now that had not come before. He saw her 
 knocking at hisbedroom door in the night at Churston Waters, 
 the night of that Sunday on which Mrs. Ismey's telegram had 
 arrived. She could not sleep because he had parted from her 
 in anger. He was awake in his bedroom. Tic heard her
 
 418 FELIX 
 
 knock and held his breath and did not answer. Now he saw 
 her cross the landing slowly and go into her room. When 
 she was there he saw her praying — for him. 
 
 He did not dare to pray for her. All the angels were surely 
 doing that to-night. 
 
 The cab drew up at Victoria Station. A porter detached 
 himself from the line of waiting men and came forward. 
 
 * Any luggage, sir?' 
 
 Felix shook his head. When he had paid the cabman he 
 walked into the station. First he went to the Continental 
 booking-office. There were several travellers waiting their 
 turns by the wooden barrier. Others were sitting on benches 
 against the wall, looking watchful and vexed. But Mrs. Ismey 
 was not among them, and he made his way out on to the plat- 
 form. There was a glare of light from the long bookstall. 
 Smoke rose from the engines drawn up under the domed roof. 
 One whistled piercingly. Felix thought it was like a person 
 screaming, or an animal under the knife. It began to let off 
 steam with a fierce, hissing noise. The jets of white vapour 
 gushed out from the painted iron, obscuring the air. Felix 
 felt dazed. He thought he was looking about for Mrs. Ismey, 
 but in reality he was standing still and staring vacantly before 
 him, lit up by the burners on the bookstall. When a hand 
 touched him he started violently and turned, expecting to 
 see Mrs. Ismey. 
 
 ' Stephen ! ' he said. f 
 
 It was his brother-in-law, who had come up, as he knew from 
 his mother, with her and Doctor Manton, and who was now 
 going back to Frankton Wells to be with Margot, whose con- 
 finement was expected immediately. In their last interview — 
 perhaps their last on earth — his mother had told him of Ste- 
 phen's great and delicate tenderness to her in these days of 
 agony. He had been the only relation to whom she had told 
 the truth. For she feared to reveal it to Margot in her pres- 
 ent condition. But for Stephen, Felix knew that his mother 
 would have been utterly alone that night with her tragedy, 
 that night when he — her son — had almost pushed her out to 
 face approaching death amid the bustle and the roar of a city 
 full of strangers. He had not known. For how could she 
 tell him ? But she had told Stephen. Stephen had been to 
 her what he — Felix — should have been, and was unworthy to 
 be. And the clergyman had entirely put aside his own anx- 
 iety about Margot. He had even insisted on coming up to 
 London again with Mrs. Wilding, and, when the new decision
 
 FELIX 419 
 
 was taken, had offered to remain in London during the oper- 
 ation, to stay in the room with her if the doctors would per- 
 mit it, and if his presence would be any comfort to her. 
 ' Margot would wish it if she knew,' he had said. 
 
 All this Felix was aware of, and thought of with bitter 
 shame, as he looked at Stephen's grave, brick-red face, over 
 which his black hat, pulled down to his eyebrows, cast a 
 shade. 
 
 ' What, Felix ! ' said his brother-in-law, grasping him by the 
 hand. ' I am glad to see you here. I have been having some 
 food in the restaurant, and am going to the other station. 
 Are you looking for me ? Did she tell you — did the mother 
 tell you I should be here ? You have seen her ? ' 
 
 'Yes. I didn't know. But — I'm glad, Stephen.' 
 
 He wrung Stephen's hand. 
 
 ' Isn't she brave ? ' Stephen said. 
 
 Felix felt his lips beginning to quiver. He knew he could 
 not talk about it. 
 
 ' We must be like her,' Stephen added quietly. 'As far as 
 we can.' 
 
 ' Stephen,' Felix said, with a great effort to be calm, ' I 
 want to speak to you. You've helped her — you've — you've 
 been all that I ought to have been to her.' 
 
 * No, Felix. She had not told you.' 
 'No.' 
 
 He paused. 
 
 ' She didn't tell me,' he went on huskily, ' because she 
 couldn't. She could tell you. I've — I've been a beast to her, 
 and you've been a son. Thank you, Stephen.' 
 
 He wrung his brother-in-law's hand again roughly. Ste- 
 phen returned the grasp. 
 
 ' Margot doesn't know,' he said. ' We dared not tell her 
 till the child was born.' 
 
 ' I know. When ' 
 
 ' It may be to-morrow.' 
 
 * To-morrow — how strange ! * 
 
 If the birth, the death, should be on the same day ! He 
 met Stephen's eyes, and saw again that human look which 
 had struck him in them once before. 
 
 ' Will you send me a wire to-morrow when it is all over, 
 when the result is certain ? ' said Stephen, 
 
 ' Yes, at once. Oh. Stephen, if — if ' 
 
 He stopped. He was beginning to tremble as he stood 
 there among the hurrying people.
 
 420 FELIX 
 
 * She is brave,' Stephen said. * And, Felix, she is prepared.' 
 Felix nodded. 
 
 ' Good night. Thank you, Stephen.' 
 
 He watched his brother-in-law's precise, black-coated fig- 
 ure disappear in the throng. He had forgotten why he was at 
 the station, but now that he was left alone he remembered, 
 and moved away. The glare from the bookstall was becom- 
 ing intolerable to him. He thought everybody on the platform 
 — the porters, the guards, the newsboys, the anxious passen- 
 gers, must see in his face all that was passing in his mind 
 and heart. He went towards the lower end of the platform 
 where it turns at right angles by the restaurant and the bar. 
 Possibly Mrs. Ismey had dined at the station. He pushed the 
 swing-door of the restaurant and went in, braving the light. 
 At the tables in the boxes many people were sitting, eating 
 with an air of preoccupation and hurry. Cooks in white 
 jackets and caps were grilling chops and steaks on a gridiron 
 at the end of the room, turning them deftly with long forks. 
 A stout man with red hair, evidently from the city, was sol- 
 emnly examining a huge haunch of mutton from which a 
 waiter had just lifted a big silver cover. 
 
 ' Looks prime,' he said. * Much fat, is there ? ' 
 
 * A very nice lot of fat, sir ; very nice indeed,' said the 
 waiter, in a soft, sweet voice. 
 
 'I'll take a cut. Give it me from here,' 
 
 He pointed to the mutton with his thumb. His eyes began 
 to glisten. Felix turned and went out. He could not see Mrs. 
 Ismey. It seemed very strange to him that all these people 
 could sit down and eat. Just as he was coming out of the 
 restaurant a porter approached him. 
 
 'Beg pardon, sir/ he said. 'Was you looking for a lady, a 
 lady as is going to Paris by the boat train >' 
 
 'Yes,' said Felix. 
 
 * I think it's the one I've put in the train, sir — a lady with a 
 thick veil, sir. She's expecting a gentleman very like you, 
 sir, and sent me to be on the look-out.' 
 
 ' She's in the train already ?' said Felix. 
 
 'Yes, sir. But her luggage isn't registered, because you'll 
 have to show the tickets. But I've put the " Engaged " on 
 the carriage, so nobody'll get in. This way, sir.' 
 
 The man was very obsequious. He evidently scented a good 
 tip, and was smiling broadly as he led the way to the platform. 
 Felix followed him. The train for Dover was drawn up op- 
 posite to the bookstall and was filling fast. As Felix passed
 
 FELIX 421 
 
 along the carriages he saw^ladies settling themselves down for 
 the journey with rugs, newspapers, and books ; men lighting 
 cigars or standing up to put their hats in the racks and pul- 
 ling travelling-caps down over their eyes ; maids handing in 
 dressing-cases and jewel-boxes, thin and dreary-looking valets 
 ministering to their masters' wants. A smart ticket-collector 
 with a peaked cap was talking to an old gentleman who car- 
 ried a mustard-coloured shawl over his left arm. A rosy- 
 cheeked boy wheeled along a stand on which small pillows 
 were arranged. Porters hurried by pushing trucks piled with 
 luggage before them, and ejaculating in loud, inexpressive 
 voices : ' By your leave, please ! by your leave ! ' Departure 
 and travel seemed hanging, seemed throbbing in the murky 
 atmosphere. 
 
 * This is the compartment, sir ! ' 
 
 The porter stopped before a first-class carriage, on the 
 windows of which were pasted placards with " Engaged " 
 printed on them. Behind the windows the blinds were drawn 
 down. A pile of luggage stood on the platform by the door. 
 Felix looked in. In the far corner facing the engine was a 
 woman, wrapped up in a long fur cloak and closely veiled 
 Her back was turned to the door, and Felix could not be 
 certain that it was Mrs. Ismey's. She was tapping her hand 
 nervously against the glass. 
 
 ' Here's the gentleman, ma'am ! ' said the smiling porter. 
 
 The woman turned round. 
 
 * Felix !' she said. * Oh, how late you are ! I didn't know 
 what was the matter. Have you taken the tickets ? We 
 shall have to take one or two extra, I suppose, to keep the 
 carriage. My luggage is outside on the platform, that pile. 
 Give the man the tickets, and let him register it and all 
 that. Get in ! Get in ! ' 
 
 She spoke in a rapid, nervous voice, through the thick veil 
 which obscured her features. 
 He got into the carriage. 
 
 * Have you the tickets, sir ? ' began the porter. 
 'No.' 
 
 ' Well, but then for goodness sake get them ! ' said Mrs. 
 Ismey, still in the same quick, impatient voice. * Get out and 
 take them, and then we can have the door shut. Get out ! 
 Make haste ! ' 
 
 The blind of the open door was drawn down, and fastened 
 at the bottom. 
 
 ' Hush ! Wait a moment ! ' Felix said.
 
 422 FELIX 
 
 He made a strong effort to collect his mind, sat down on 
 the seat opposite to her, and leaned forward to her. 
 
 * I've got something to tell you,' he said, in a low voice, so 
 that the porter might not hear. 
 
 ' Well, get the tickets first, and then you can tell me. I 
 wish to have the door shut at once.' 
 
 ' But we can't go to Paris,' he said. 
 
 ' We — what ! ' she cried sharply. 
 
 She lifted her ungloved hands to her veil, and pushed it 
 up sideways, showing three-quarters of her face, grey, livid, 
 and twitching as if with a fever of excitement. 
 
 ' What's that ? ' 
 
 She looked as she had looked on the beach at Eldon Sands, 
 when she was searching for the cigarette-case, haggard, 
 ferocious, and half crazy. 
 
 ' I can't go to Paris. I'm so sorry. It's not my fault. 
 Something — something very dreadful has happened. My 
 mother ' 
 
 'Your mother! What has your mother to do with us? 
 How can she prevent our going ? Your mother ! Why, you 
 don't mean to say 
 
 ' Hush ! My mother is very ill in London- 
 
 ' You've promised me, you've pledged your word, 
 you've ' 
 
 Felix got up, went to the carriage door and shut it on the 
 astonished porter. As the blinds of the carriage had all 
 been drawn, Mrs. Ismey and he were now absolutely alone 
 and unobserved in the dim light that gleamed from the roof. 
 The long shriek of an engine sounded in the distance. Mrs. 
 Ismey beat her hands in the air. 
 
 * You've got to come ! ' she exclaimed excitedly. * You've 
 promised me, you've pledged your word, and I hold you to it!' 
 
 ' Listen to me,' he said, speaking very distinctly. ' My 
 mother has come up to London to undergo a terrible oper- 
 ation. She is in a private hospital, and the operation is 
 to-morrow morning. It is a matter of life or death. Now 
 you understand why I can't go.' 
 
 ' You've promised me. You've brought me here. I've 
 been waiting here an hour. I've had to arrange every- 
 thing ' 
 
 She spoke as if she had not heard what he said, and with 
 increasing and ungovernable excitement, 
 
 ' Do you understand what I am saying?' he said, quietly 
 but rather loudly.
 
 FELIX 423 
 
 *I know. I dare say your mother is ill. She looked ill 
 the other day. But she'll get well. It'll all come right. We 
 aren't doctors. We can't help her. Go and get the tickets. 
 Go at once. * 
 
 * I can't go,' he said. 
 
 A flush appeared on the livid grey of her cheeks. 
 
 'You must get out,' he continued. 'I'm terribly sorry. I 
 only knew to-night.' 
 
 ' I won't get out ! ' she cried furiously. ' How can you ask 
 me to when you've brought me here ? I will go to Paris. I 
 will go.' 
 
 * It's impossible,' said Felix. ' Now come, please.' 
 
 At this moment the porter opened the door of the com- 
 partment. 
 
 ' I beg pardon, sir,' he said, but if this luggage is to be 
 registered ' 
 
 ' It is to be registered ! ' Mrs. Ismey cried out, turning to 
 the door. * Go and register it to Paris ! ' 
 
 * But the ticket, ma'am ' 
 
 Felix began to grow desperate, but he still looked and 
 seemed calm. 
 
 'Wait ! I'll arrange it,' he said to the porter. 
 
 ' I can't leave my mother,' he whispered to Mrs. Ismey. 
 ' You know it. I — I may never see her again.' 
 
 ' Nonsense ! You're talking rubbish. She's exaggerating 
 just to keep you in London. She hates me, and she's ' 
 
 'Be quiet ! ' he said. 
 
 His voice was suddenly fierce. 
 
 ' Oh, I know mothers ! ' she cried, pushing her veil higher 
 up on her white, furious face. ' They're always like that, 
 always afraid their sons are getting into mischief. She's 
 laughing at you and pretending ' 
 
 He sprang up and put his hand over her mouth. 
 
 ' I won't allow you to speak of her ! he said passionately. 
 
 She writhed on the seat, and threw her head back to get 
 free from his hand. 
 
 ' Give me the money, then, give me the money ! ' she burst 
 out frantically. ' I'll go alone.' 
 
 He thought of the reason why he had meant to take her 
 to Paris, and a sudden passion of pity drove out the jiassion 
 of anger that had been in his heart an instant before. 
 
 'No,' he said gently. 'You can't go alone.' 
 
 ' I can. I will. I never wanted you to come. You'd only 
 be in the way. 1 hate you. (iivc mc the money ! (iive nie 
 the money ! '
 
 434 FELIX 
 
 Two or three people had joined the porter at the door of 
 the carriage. 
 
 ' Hush, for God's sake ! There are people ' 
 
 * Give me the money ! I haven't a farthing. Give me the 
 money ! ' 
 
 She thrust out her hands to him furiously, 
 
 'Hush! Don't!' 
 
 He caught her hands in his. She screamed as if fire had 
 touched her. He let them go. 
 
 ' Don't touch me I Give me the money ! You shall ! I 
 will have it ! I will, I ' 
 
 A crowd was gathering. A bell rang. A voice shouted 
 some words monotonously. They were taken up by another 
 voice farther down the platform. 
 
 * Come,' Felix said. ' You must come.* 
 
 Now he felt absolutely calm, rigid, determined. He did 
 not care for the crowd. He did not care for anything. He 
 meant to take her home. 
 
 ' No, no ! Then I'll go without the money, if you're so 
 mean — if you're such a ' 
 
 He was standing up. He took hold of both her arms as 
 gently as he could. She screamed again. The crowd began 
 to murmur and to press closely round the door. Some one 
 said : 
 
 * Fetch a policeman.' 
 
 'Come,' Felix said, trying to lift her from the seat by force. 
 She struggled, and uttered shriek upon shriek. 
 
 * Let him get in ! ' said a voice in the crowd. 
 
 * Don't push ! ' said another. 
 
 *What does he want ?' cried some one. 
 
 'Let me pass, please. I am her husband.' 
 
 It was Mr. Ismey who spoke — clearly, with a sort of cold 
 defiance and pride. 
 
 Felix looked round and saw a tall figure getting into the 
 carriage. Under the ray of the lamp he met the eyes whose 
 deep melancholy had once made him wonder. He did not 
 wonder now. Mrs. Ismey saw her husband. She shrank 
 back in the corner of the seat, pressed her head against the 
 cushion, opened her white lips and cursed him. 
 
 ' Thank God, you are here ! ' Felix whispered. * Help me ! * 
 
 But Mr. Ismey took him by the arm. 
 
 * Go away,' he said, with a sort of pitiful sternness. ' Go 
 away. This is no matter for a boy. You can do nothing here.* 
 
 Felix stood for a second looking into his eyes. Then he 
 left the carriage without another word. He pushed his way
 
 FELIX 425 
 
 out into the jostling, staring crowd. He did not see their 
 faces or hear what they were saying. But, behind him, he 
 heard a woman's screams. 
 
 And he pushed his way out through the crowd, using his 
 body forcibly. 
 
 When he was beyond the station he stood still. He was 
 feeling dazed and helpless. The night was fine now and 
 warmer. Stars twinkled in the clear sky. He looked up at 
 them and drew in his breath with a sort of sob. Then he 
 walked on slowly towards Victoria Street. At first he did 
 not notice anything, but when he reached the pavement 
 opposite to the Standard Music Hall, the lights from it strik- 
 ing on his eyes woke a keen recollection in his mind. He 
 remembered his first night in London, his walk home from 
 the Grosvenor Hotel, his talk with 'Happy Hal,' all his 
 thoughts and feelings, with a clear vividness that was start- 
 ling. Hal had asked him if he was * making a start ' in Lon- 
 don, and when he said yes, had wished him ' luck with it.' 
 And after Felix parted from Hal, as he strolled towards 
 Wellington Mansions, he had thought about women, about 
 the fears of women, and he had pitied them rather contempt- 
 uously. After all, he had said to himself, woman is inferior 
 to man. Her timidity alone would make her so. 
 
 He had said that. 
 
 And now he felt as lost, as helpless, as despairing as a lit- 
 tle, homeless waif thrown upon the world without a friend. 
 
 And to-morrow ? He dared not look forward to to-mor- 
 row night. He dared not pray. It seemed to him that 
 he was unworthy and unfit for anything, most of all for 
 prayer. 
 
 He felt like the little child he had once been, who had 
 waked in the night, and cried out, ' Mother ! ' Yes, he was 
 that little child. That same cry echoed now in his heart, 
 in his soul. She alone could comfort, protect him, be strong 
 for him, she who was lying on that bed in that strange house 
 waiting for the dawn. 
 
 * Mother, ' he whispered. ' Mother ! ' 
 
 All that night he lay awake, thinking of that word almost 
 stupidly, forming it with his lips mechanically, seeing it 
 before the shut eyes that were pressed against the pillow, 
 hearing it said by the pulses beating in his body, pulses that 
 shook him in the dark. 
 
 She who, among strangers, was waiting for perhaps her 
 last si-nmons f)n earth, and praying for her chiUlrfn, had 
 her triumph then in the heart that had striven to deny her.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 ON the following morning, as eleven o'clock was striking 
 in the church steeples of London, one of the clerks in 
 the Vere Street post-office saw a tall, well-dressed boy come in 
 at the swing-door. A good many people were in the office at 
 the moment, and the boy stood looking dazed by the bustle 
 and noise around him. There were two patches of vivid red 
 on his white face. His eyes shone feverishly, and he looked 
 intensely self-conscious, so much so that the clerk's atten- 
 tion was attracted towards him. After standing still for a 
 minute he came up to the counter from which telegrams are 
 sent, glanced at the clerk, looked quickly away, as if to 
 meet human eyes was intolerable to him, pulled a form 
 towards him and began 'to write. 
 
 He wrote slowly. When he had finished he felt in his 
 pocket and found half a sovereign. He felt again, but 
 apparently could not find any other coin, for he put the half- 
 sovereign down on the telegraph-form and pushed it under 
 the grille which divides the clerks from customers. The 
 clerk took the form, and began to count the number of 
 words, reading them as he did so. 
 
 ' Rev. Stephen Bosanfield, St. Mary's Rectory, Frankton 
 Wells, Kent. — It is over, was terrible, but doctors say suc- 
 cessful ; she is still unconscious ; am going back now to wait 
 till she knows. — Felix. 
 
 ' What 's that word, sir ? ' asked the clerk, looking up with 
 his pencil against the last word. 
 
 But the boy had disappeared. 
 
 The clerk stared at the half-sovereign. 
 
 ' And only one-and-fourpence-halfpenny to pay ! ' he mur- 
 mured. ' Well, I 'm sure ! ' 
 
 He picked up the half-sovereign and smiled. 
 
 438
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 ON an evening of August in that year Felix arrived in 
 Tours, He was alone. He went to the Hotel de Bor- 
 deaux, got rid of the dust gathered during the hot journey 
 from Paris, dined in the long and narrow salle a manger with 
 a heterogeneous collection of travellers, mainly French, and 
 then strolled out into the town. The weather was superb, 
 voluptuously warm. Thousands of stars showed themselves 
 serenely in the sky, which looked, Felix fancied, unusually 
 near to the earth. The rows of trees along the wide avenue, 
 which stretches down the hill from the canal to the place of 
 the fountains, were heavy with leafage. Beneath them 
 walked a merry population, accompanied by many a little 
 dog : stout fathers and mothers, small girls with pigtails, 
 small boys with close-cropped hair and partially bare legs, 
 grisettes with brilliant dark eyes, broad bosoms, and white 
 caps with frills, short soldiers smoking cigarettes, workmen 
 with flat caps and striped shirts, carrying their coats slung 
 over their shoulders, and walking heavily and loosely in 
 their wide trousers. The soft air was alive with French 
 chatter. A priest went by in a long black soutane and a 
 broad-leaved black hat. Before the hotels the chefs and 
 their assistants lounged in tiieir white jackets, with the 
 sleeves turned back from their wrists, enjoying their release 
 from the suffocating kitchens, and gossiping gaily about the 
 passing women. The fountains played in their basins among 
 the brilliant flowers. Lights gleamed from the cafds, between 
 the painted tubs of evergreens. 
 
 Felix did not stop in any caf6. He had an end in view. 
 He turned up the Rue Nationale, walking more quickly now 
 that he found himself between tall houses, and presently 
 came out on the broad space where the carriages stand, ami 
 saw the Loire, the bridge, the bathing establishments, like 
 long boxes floating in the water, the snakes of lamps 
 stretched upon the side of the hill beyond the river. A 
 bugle rang out from the barracks. He stood still to hear it. 
 As he walked, ever since he quitted the hotel, he had been 
 trying to do a difficult thing, to regain an old impression. 
 
 427
 
 428 FELIX 
 
 He wished to-night to renew in himself the mind of his 
 youth here on his first evening in France. He wanted to 
 revive the bygone fragrance of his dreams which, like a sub- 
 tle perfume kept in an unstopped flagon, had evaporated in 
 the wide winds of life. But, while he was walking, he had 
 failed in his effort. Succeeding events thronged around 
 him, whispering of the differences they had sown in his 
 nature, whispering of the plants that were springing up and 
 changing the face of it. He had tried to recall the old Felix 
 and had been companioned by the new. 
 
 The voice of the bugle wrought a miracle, as music so 
 often does. As he heard it ring out in the starry darkness 
 he was conscious of a resurrection, silent but complete. 
 The graves gave up their dead within him ; hooded figures of 
 the boy 's hopes, wonders, longings, determinations stole 
 forth. 
 
 The people of the town went by intent on their evening 
 business or pleasure ; the women and the soldiers, the loung- 
 ing boys and leaping children. They only saw a stranger, 
 an Anglais, standing to stare at a fragment of foreign life. 
 They did not see the yawning graves, the hooded figures 
 stealing out. 
 
 Presently Felix moved. He walked on to the bridge and 
 leaned over the parapet. The river was not in flood. It had 
 been a dry summer in Tours, and the water had sunk low in 
 its bed. But it still ran with force and swiftness between 
 the arches of the bridge, still eddied round them with a dull 
 sucking murmur. And the fishermen were there, as of old, 
 upon the banks, like dolls leaning over their thin, black lines. 
 Upon the island the masses of the leafy trees towered som- 
 brely towards the stars. Among them scattered lights 
 shone faintly. A band was playing in some hidden place. 
 Felix heard it as if from another world. 
 
 Once more he was gripped by the boy's acute conscious- 
 ness of the mystery in life, in the life of man and the life of 
 nature, and each seemed in some strange way to reflect or 
 echo the other. He gazed across the hurrying river, and 
 felt that in his soul, too, there were dark places like the 
 dark places of the woods ; and there were murmuring waters 
 and there were scattered stars. He looked down. How 
 fast the water flowed. And with it once more, many pas- 
 sions and many sorrows seemed to flow together, and to pass 
 whispering by, on to some distant ocean of which he had 
 never seen the foam or heard the wave. Again longing was
 
 FELIX 429 
 
 born in him ; but it was more timid tnan it had been, more 
 self-conscious, more wistful. For now he knew the measure 
 of his impotence. Ah, yes, he knew it. And the hooded fig- 
 ures sought their graves. And the new Felix stood there 
 gazing down on the dim river. 
 
 He had striven and failed utterly. His self-conceit of old 
 days here in France reared itself up before him like a mon- 
 ster in the night. Yet he was resolved that his defeat 
 should not render him weak. He would strive again, and, if 
 it was to be, suffer again as a man. His wounds, by their 
 throbbing, should nerve him for the fight. Of his pain he 
 would make a friend. In his disillusion he would seek for 
 the true courage, the courage that is born not of ignorance 
 but of knowledge. 
 
 He had left his mother at Churston Waters. Her recovery 
 had been slow and difficult, but very happy. She was feeble 
 even now. But she was at peace. When Felix said good-by 
 to her she was lying on the sofa near the open window of the 
 drawing-room. Margot sat near her. Margot's baby-son 
 was tucked into the hollow of her arm. Chicho lay at her 
 feet. And her white face was serene, even though tears 
 shone in her eyes as she kissed Felix and watched him go. 
 They understood each other now, and that was beautiful to 
 the mother, more beautiful, perhaps, than Felix could ever 
 realise. 
 
 Mrs. Ismey he had not seen again. But he knew that she 
 was in this very country of France, a patient in a home for 
 the victims of morphia at Ivry-sur-Seine. 
 
 Presently he left the river, and walked back through the 
 long, cheerful street to the Cafe de I'Univers, He sat 
 down at one of the little tables. A garfon came, and he or- 
 dered something, he scarcely knew what. He only wanted 
 to sit there quietly and to think a little under the stars. The 
 statue of Balzac loomed up near him in the mystery of the 
 night. He looked at it, and remembered his fancy about 
 the face, that it was confronting everything in the world 
 without fear, without pity, but with a penetrating determina- 
 tion to know the truth. Then he thought of King Marshall, 
 of Antonino Marza. Many men sought for truth, but to 
 each one surely truth seemed a different thing ; to one sad, 
 to another glorious, to another terrible, to another merely 
 sordid. And then he thought about the boy who had sat in 
 the ruined chapel reading La Comniic Iluniaine, and who had 
 triumphed in the knowledge that it brought him. What can
 
 430 FELIX 
 
 bring true knowledge ? He asked himself that question. 
 Suffering, love, or only death ? Suffering, he thought, can 
 bring some. Love can bring much. And death ? He knew 
 his mother in that moment when he knew that death stood 
 beside her. Perhaps death would tell him everything. But 
 he wished to live, though he so wished to know. For youth 
 was in him. He wished to live, but he resolved that he 
 would be like the Arabs, utterly fearless of death. Is it not 
 only the coming of the truth ? 
 
 The domino-players left their tables. The lights went out 
 in the cafes. The garfons took off their aprons, and came 
 forth transformed into the night, with soft, black hats upon 
 their heads, and cigars in their mouths. 
 
 And Felix walked slowly to the hotel. He thought of 
 Paul Chalmers, who had gone back to his piano-tuning, of 
 Happy Hal, who was once more singing soberly with his two 
 voices on the Dover Harbour Works, persuaded by his little 
 wife to relinquish the dangerous path to fame, of his mother 
 at rest in her long bedroom looking over the garden and the 
 churchyard, of Chicho with her. 
 
 And then he thought of a woman shut up from the world 
 at Ivry-sur-Seine. 
 
 All this was life. And what did it mean ? And to what 
 end — or beginning — would it come ? 
 
 The night, forsaken by men who gave themselves to sleep, 
 strove to tell Felix. It seemed to him as if every star were 
 a word trembling upon its lips. 
 
 Two days later he bade Grand'mbre * au revoir ! ' and set 
 out from La Maison des Alouettes into the forest to visit the 
 tailor. He had written to tell the old man he was coming. 
 Somehow he did not feel inclined to take him by surprise. 
 Had things been different, perhaps, — but not now. 
 
 His heart was very full as he followed the familiar path, 
 and thought of that first day of winter so long — it seemed — 
 ago. He had promised the tailor to come back, triumph- 
 antly he had promised. Gaily he had said that he was set- 
 ting forth into the world to know, and that he would return 
 to tell of his knowledge. Well, here he was returning. As 
 he wound among the great trees, crushing the twigs beneath 
 his feet, brushing aside the hardy, obstinate ferns, he was 
 oppressed for a moment by a rising bitterness. Now that 
 he was once more here, where he had formed such mighty 
 hopes, egoism rose up in him. Self-pity woke in his heart.
 
 FELIX . 431 
 
 'Why was I born to suffer and to fail, to be tricked and de- 
 luded where I put my trust, to be impotent and to be shown 
 my impotence?' he thought. And he heard again Mr. 
 Ismey's last, stern words, and he saw his youth for a moment 
 tarnished irreparably, iDeyond recovery. Its beauty was 
 marred. He imagined it a perfect statue which had been 
 thrown down from its pedestal and broken. Yet was it ever 
 perfect ? Is perfection a gift of God to the newly born, or 
 is it a thing to be won, hardly,at the end of a lifetime, or of 
 many lifetimes ? And even then, when it is won, is it not 
 still a gift, like the little cross the king pins on the soldier's 
 breast. 
 
 He wondered, how he wondered ! 
 
 But the path widened. The spaces between the trees 
 grew greater. He saw the clearing, the cottage. A shrill 
 bark rose up in the quiet air. It was the welcome of the 
 little Honore, who ran forward curling his tail tightly, and 
 treading on the tiptoes of his yellow paws. The cottage 
 door quickly opened and on the threshold appeared the bent 
 figure of the tailor, holding his shears in his large-veined 
 hands, and peering out under his tufted eyebrows. A 
 strange, boyish happiness burst up suddenly in Felix's heart. 
 He hurried on, came up to the old man, seized his hands. 
 
 The shears fell to the ground with a clatter. Felix felt 
 the fierce tuft of the tailor's bristling imperial upon his two 
 cheeks. Once again the pointed nose of the little Honor^ 
 explored asthmatically the mysteries of his boots. He 
 laughed aloud and broke into a torrent of speech. 
 
 But later, when he entered the cottage, he grew grave. 
 
 * Ah, Louis,' he said, ' I see you have kept the books.' 
 
 ' But naturally, monsieur ! ' cried the tailor, who was rum- 
 maging in a corner of the chamber with his back turned to 
 Felix. 'They are my only companions, but for the little 
 Honord and the little Marthe. How should I not keep 
 them ? ' 
 
 ' You don't think they are dangerous, Louis ? That books 
 may be enemies rather than friends? Did you not tell me 
 that those books drove you to Paris, and that in Paris you 
 starved ? ' 
 
 And he thought of his own starvation. 
 
 'Monsieur,' said the tailor warmly, 'would yon have a 
 man, when he writes, think all the time of the little men who 
 may read him ? Would you have had Monsic-ur de P.al7.ac 
 cease from writing, lest the little dwarf who measured Inm
 
 432 FELIX 
 
 for trousers without feet should be moved to set forth and 
 starve in Paris ? Oh, la, la /' 
 
 He turned round and came up to the table, holding a flat 
 bottle in his large hands. 
 
 ' No, monsieur, no ! If the little are turned to folly by 
 the writings of the great, believe me it is the fault of the 
 little. And now a glass of wine, monsieur. A glass of the 
 wine of Vouvray to drink to your return ! ' 
 
 He uncorked the bottle, poured the wine into two glasses, 
 gave one to Felix and took the other himself. Felix felt the 
 irony of the situation. 
 
 ' To the health and happiness of monsieur ! ' said the tailor. 
 
 He was about to lift his glass to his lips, but suddenly 
 an idea seemed to strike him, for he put it down, paused and 
 looked at Felix with his old, but still keen eyes. 
 
 ' Monsieur said that he would come back and tell me — ah, 
 many things of the great world. Is it not so?' 
 
 ' Yes, Louis.' 
 
 * And I replied, " No, but monsieur must come back and 
 tell me he is happy." Well, monsieur?' 
 
 'Well, Louis ?' 
 
 * Before I drink will not monsieur tell me ? ' 
 
 He stood with his leg slightly bent, waiting by the table. 
 
 Felix hesitated. In that moment of hesitation many mem- 
 ories coursed through his mind. — He wandered upon the 
 beach at Eldon Sands in the dark, fearing to go back to the 
 hotel. He heard the scream of a woman as he pressed on- 
 wards through a staring crowd, a crowd staring at her degra- 
 dation. He saw a haggard face looking out of the window 
 of a house that was a prison. 
 
 Could he ever be happy till he knew that she was saved, 
 cured of the vice that laid waste her life, Mr. Ismey's life, 
 that had so cruelly dealt with his own, tearing from him the 
 sacred trust of youth ? 
 
 He opened his lips to speak, to tell the tailor that he could 
 not give him the required signal for the toast. But suddenly 
 there came into his mind a saying, He did not know where 
 he had heard it, or where it came from. This was the saying: 
 
 ' Happy is the man who has a good mother.^ 
 
 He hesitated no longer. 
 
 'I am happy, Louis,' he said. 
 
 The tailor raised his glass. 
 
 ' To the health of monsieur ! ' he cried. * To the health of 
 Monsieur F^lix ! '
 
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