-3
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 BNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELES
 
 BY JOHN HASTINGS TURNER 
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 A PLACE IN THE WORLD 
 SIMPLE SOULS 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
 
 WHERE 
 YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 " True happiness lies in a very few things . . ." 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1922 

 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 Published May, 1922
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 2133173
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The sea front at Whyticombe is just like any 
 other sea front. At high noon the asphalt, as if 
 from sheer softness of heart, admits the indent of 
 hundreds of holiday shoes. In the evening, these 
 little human pits become hard impressions, as if 
 desirous from sheer kindness of recording for all 
 time the signet of the holiday makers, who patronise 
 the tiny place. Yet they make their mark for 
 twelve hours at the most, until, in fact, the next 
 day's sun cynically wipes them out with the fleecy 
 and baffling pattern of other pairs of feet. 
 
 Even the great white cliff at the end of the sea 
 front is not as permanent as it tries to appear. 
 There are visitors at Whyticombe who remember 
 it when the line from the head, where the coast- 
 guard's cottage lies, ran down to the rocks, truculent 
 and defiant, like the ram of a monster battleship. 
 The patient, sardonic English Channel has broken 
 the pride of the cliff, chipped away her defiant prow, 
 and left her, still showing an obstinate sky-line to 
 whomsoever does her the kindness to look up, but 
 pitifully dismembered beneath and last insult of
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 all the subject of a notice board set up on the 
 beach and bearing this legend: "This cliff is dan- 
 gerous" . . . 
 
 Charles Cutman who was smoking an after-din- 
 ner cigar on the front, and who was one of those 
 who had known the great white cliff in the days 
 of her strength and pride, gazed upon the crippled 
 edge, unkindly outlined by the August moon, and 
 felt vaguely depressed. 
 
 "Time has defeated you," he murmured. "Time 
 and tide" he threw away the end of his cigar and 
 rose. 
 
 "Time and Tide," he murmured again as he 
 turned back towards his hotel, moved by emotions 
 which his straightforward cast of mind found quite 
 impossible to dissect. 
 
 "Funny," he laughed to himself, "I suppose we 
 all of us feel like writing a book sometimes it 
 wouldn't get very far!" he paused, "and I dare- 
 say that's lucky," he added suddenly. 
 
 Looking up he saw the lighted window of his 
 room. Emily, he thought, was getting into bed. 
 Next door was another lighted window. That was 
 Harold's room . . . Harold must have aban- 
 doned his game of bridge earlier than usual 
 
 Cutman suddenly wheeled round and looked out 
 again to sea. A soft swell was purring cruelly upon 
 the shingle; "wearing down the pebbles all the 
 time, wearing them down ever so softly." 
 
 Too gently and lovingly for complaint. He
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 thrust his hands into the pockets of his dinner jacket 
 and turned towards the steps which led up to the 
 recently installed swing doors. On the second step 
 he hesitated. Something seemed to be whispering 
 in his ear "Look at the cliff I look at the cliff! 
 look at the cliff." 
 
 Charles Cutman found his heart beating very 
 fast. For a moment he was astonished; it was just 
 as if he was afraid of something. 
 
 Then, in a flash, like a sudden and unexpected 
 message on the telephone, he knew what that some- 
 thing was. He wa.s afraid to look at the cliff. He 
 could not tell why. Anyway of course it was 
 absurd and yet he hesitated. Then, what he had 
 been taught to call his "manhood" asserted itself. 
 Really, it was childish deliberately to look at the 
 cliff because he thought he was afraid. Such stupid 
 ideas must simply be ignored. 
 
 He entered the hotel, prepared to convince him- 
 self that he had fought down a morbid and unprofit- 
 able moment. Fighting against this assumption was 
 an uncomfortable idea that a fellow of the down- 
 right nature which, of course, he knew himself to 
 be, would have taken up the challenge looked 
 again at the broken cliff and damned it heartily. 
 Charles Cutman, who was fifty-six years old and 
 had made a very comfortable living at the Bar for 
 a period which now seemed to all intents and pur- 
 poses eternal, felt a professional aversion to such 
 sudden and unreasoned emotions.
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Yet he did not go straight upstairs. Instead, he 
 started down the passage towards the smoking 
 room. Peter Margett and Owen Weare, friends of 
 many years standing, would be certain to be there. 
 They would be almost equally certain to be talking 
 about golf. 
 
 He felt he would very much like to hear old Peter 
 and Owen talking about golf . . . even their 
 own golf. When he entered the smoking room he 
 found that it was empty. To-night, its familiarity 
 seemed more insistent than ever before. Every 
 August for twenty-six years he had been to the 
 Beach Hotel at Whyticombe. 
 
 Not twenty-six years, surely? . . . Yes, it was 
 twenty-six. He stretched out his hand to the table 
 by his side and drew away a paper at random. It 
 was the "Devon Gazette". His eye, aimlessly 
 roaming over the print, noted an Otter Hunt near 
 Tiverton, a distribution of prizes at a Horticultural 
 Show, held apparently at a place called Shute. He 
 put the paper back and the action jerked his mind 
 into asking how often he had picked up the "Devon 
 Gazette" in that room and put it back on its table. 
 
 His self-imposed virility snapped at him. Why 
 the Devil shouldn't he have come to the same room 
 for many years? "You are merely working your- 
 self into a mood," he told himself, "and you are 
 far too old for moods." But this stimulant, this 
 deliberate attempt to shout down and bully his 
 emotions, to which indeed he had long since become
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 seasoned, had no effect and he was plunged deep 
 into his 'mood' when he rose and stared frowning 
 into the glass. He could find no reasonable motive 
 for his state of mind (and to Cutman 'reasonable' 
 was very nearly synonymous with 'legal') and he 
 almost hoped to discover one in the glass. 
 
 Now the mirror over the smoking room mantel- 
 piece was one of those very disconcerting reflectors 
 which throw back an absolutely detailed inventory 
 of a face. 
 
 Looking glasses are many and various as the 
 human species. The Queen Anne specimen in the 
 dressing room tells quite a different tale to that 
 which the white enamelled variety in the bathroom 
 recounts, on the next morning walk, disgruntled, 
 from that unsatisfactory interview with the bath- 
 room glass, and the Queen Anne specimen will still 
 be found to perform her kindly office. There is, of 
 course, some scientific explanation for these dis- 
 crepancies, but, for all that, the more satisfactory 
 inference is that one glass is more human than 
 another. 
 
 Charles Cutman had never been a handsome 
 man: he had never experienced a moment's anxiety 
 about his face. Indeed, he would have considered 
 any anxiety on this score a very serious reflection 
 on his character as a reputable male animal. Still, 
 the mirror in the smoking room at the Beach Hotel, 
 as he put it to himself, was "damned uncom- 
 promising."
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 He wondered whether Emily Cutman saw those 
 horrible affairs under his eyes, and the withering- 
 apple appearance of his neck. 
 
 No. Emily wouldn't notice that. He had lived 
 with her long enough to know that she was one of 
 the kindly sort of looking glasses. But that, he 
 thought, as he stretched out his legs towards the 
 crinkled paper in the fireplace, was a damnable con- 
 ception of a wife. And he didn't look on dear old 
 Emily like that of course he didn't. 
 
 Curse this mood ! Why on earth were not Peter 
 Margett and Owen Weare in the room talking 
 about golf? It was what one had a right to expect 
 of one's old friends ; that they would talk of golf, 
 or bridge, or the Near East, or the rate of Ex- 
 change, whenever these antidotes to actual life were 
 required. 
 
 Charles rose and sighed. On his way out of the 
 room, he again caught sight of his face in the 
 unfriendly glass. 
 
 "Well, there it is," he muttered, "I am fifty-seven 
 and I look fifty-seven it's a rotten tragedy that I 
 don't feel fifty-seven!" Thus he went upstairs to 
 his bedroom, wrapt about with self-pity. 
 
 Peter and Owen should have been in the smoking 
 room when he wanted them. And the white cliff 
 he could have sworn that it had crumbled still fur- 
 ther since last year. Beastly depressing. What on 
 earth had possessed him to go and sit on the front 
 all alone after dinner?
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 He undressed himself in the tiny room which led 
 out of his bedroom, laid his studs out carefully in 
 a line with his watch and his pocket book, and 
 started to brush his teeth. The water was cold and 
 uncomfortable. His pang of irritation was momen- 
 tary, for he remembered that this was the summer 
 holiday and he must expect to be uncomfortable. 
 They had come down to Devonshire from Waterloo 
 only the day before, and he had been uncomfortable 
 from the moment he had started to pack his bag. 
 Indeed, he had been more or less uncomfortable 
 every August for twenty-six years. 
 
 He plastered another unnecessary layer of car- 
 bolic upon his teeth and shivered. Of course, 
 Harold had been a great help at Waterloo. Oh, 
 yes, his boy had always been a great help : he felt 
 cheered at the idea of how great a help his boy 
 was. Yet, possibly, had Charles known it Harold 
 had been the greatest help during the first few 
 hours after his birth, when the new life had seemed, 
 in some mysterious way, to give a fresh impetus to 
 the original honeymoon feeling between himself 
 and Emily. 
 
 After those first inspired hours, there was a great 
 deal of Harold, but never quite the same thrill from 
 his mere being. There was Harold going to his 
 first school, Harold passing an examination into his 
 second school, Harold being confirmed, an incident 
 which his father found himself unable to regard as
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 the crisis which Emily, apparently quite sincerely, 
 considered it to be. 
 
 Later, Harold at Oxford: Harold with ridicul- 
 ous phases and ideas Harold reading books 
 which his father had never heard of, books written 
 by men ten or fifteen years older than himself 
 books which Harold called "great" ; finally, Harold, 
 more or less grown-up, good-mannered, getting on 
 quite adequately in the Chambers where his father 
 had placed him altogether to be sure, satisfactory, 
 respectful, kind unconsciously, in fact, making it 
 evident every minute of the day that Charles 
 Cutman, in all likelihood, was going to die, some 
 thirty years before he did and was, to that extent, 
 so far out-of-date and so far to be respected. 
 Lately, the father had noticed when Harold 
 was in a particularly healthy mood, that his son 
 would address him as 'sir.' There was the luggage 
 at Waterloo, for instance. He had experienced 
 some trouble with a fool of a porter, and Harold 
 had been at his elbow. "Don't bother yourself 
 about it, sir," Harold had said, "I'll see the stuff 
 in " 
 
 He remembered answering: "Right-o! Harry" 
 and returning to Emily, in the corner which he had 
 found for her, with a vague sense of defeat. 
 
 Charles Cutman swilled his face in cold water 
 according to his custom, and knelt down to say 
 his prayers. He had said the same prayers 
 
 8
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 mechanically ever since he had first gone to school. 
 They still included the honourable mention of aunts 
 whom he had forgotten even his grandfather was 
 automatically recommended for mercy though no 
 one knew better than Charles, how little that 
 recommendation was deserved. The entire cata- 
 logue had become a ritual in exactly the same sense 
 as the locking and bolting of the front door. In a 
 way, it locked and bolted himself, being part of the 
 hundred and one little mechanical pieces of his life 
 which caused him to continue as he was supposed 
 to be supposed to be, that is, by the Cutmans who 
 were still living and, especially, of course, by 
 Emily. 
 
 He went into his bedroom, picking his way care- 
 fully in the dark, in case she should wake, and 
 approached the bed. 
 
 Why did Emily always sleep with the eiderdown 
 half over her face? So damned unhealthy! 
 
 He removed it very gently, very tenderly. Then, 
 without a sound, he crept in beside her and putting 
 out the light, lay listening to the insidious purring 
 of the sea. 
 
 A quarter of a century ago there had been adven- 
 ture in the life of Charles Cutman the adventure 
 of uncertainty even of improbability. A young 
 man, settled through a lucky friendship, in the 
 Chambers of a successful barrister who was, even
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 then, on the point of taking silk, he could see no 
 reason to suppose that he would ever make a living 
 at the Bar much less a living which must suffice 
 for three. There had been unexpected chances, 
 friends in need, bits and pieces of incredible fortune, 
 narrow squeaks which had come out the right way, 
 a hundred and one unforesoon happenings which 
 had built up the present Charles Cutman, Esq., 
 Barrister-at-law, with a very permanent and sub- 
 stantial practice, solid enough to warrant a house 
 in Wilton Crescent and all that that implies but 
 somehow or other without adventure any more. 
 With the security of his present position he would 
 like to have kept the almost intoxicating gamble, 
 the gay optimism of his early days. Now there 
 was little left to be optimistic about. Actually, that 
 element in his life had ceased when he became 
 engaged. He had been accepted by Emily and the 
 last big thrill was behind him. The succeeding 
 years, bringing change in the ideal that he had 
 wooed, new burdens and new responsibilities, had 
 found him always kind, always sympathetically 
 efficient in his changed position. He was, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, perpetually paying back what he owed 
 for the joyous moment of that original thrill. 
 
 There is a type of man, unimaginative and 
 always suspicious of pioneer w,ork in any form, 
 dumbly grateful perhaps, for any little emotional 
 excitement which comes his way, but accepting with- 
 out question the ultimate and possibly dull develop- 
 
 10
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 ments therefrom. He believes his villa to be the 
 finest in the row, and his sweet peas the finest in 
 the land as for his morals, his method of life, 
 and his system of educating his young these are 
 the finest in the world. And, indeed, this is beyond 
 question, for they are all that his world contains. 
 This type of man is, luckily, in the majority. He is 
 essential to the well-being and the stability of the 
 universe. Unfortunately for himself, Charles Cut- 
 man was not of this kind. He was not, it is true, an 
 imaginative man, and temperament would be the 
 last misfortune with which to credit him, but his 
 mind was sufficiently active to produce vague fits of 
 uneasiness, such as that which the spectacle of the 
 crumbling cliff had brought to birth. He never 
 traced these to their origin. They generally came 
 on in the evening and Charles was wise enough 
 immediately to go to bed. He was a good sleeper 
 and never dreamt of the worries of the day. To 
 this discipline he had deliberately trained himself 
 in his young and struggling days, for the habit of 
 dreaming a day ovef again is one which tends to 
 make the odds too t>ig. So he never allowed the 
 sun to go down upon his wrath. Indeed, he seldom, 
 knew what his wrath was about. 
 
 He is not, therefore, on this occasion, to be 
 imagined as having gone through the aforesaid 
 analysis of the waning thrill. He was merely puz- 
 zled at this sense of depression on the first evening 
 of the holidays. Well, he argued, it may have 
 
 II
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 been the railway journey, or perhaps an earlier re- 
 action than usual he remembered that fearful 
 holiday reaction which he had experienced as a boy, 
 after the perfervid celebrations of the end of a 
 term ... or possibly it was his stomach. There 
 is something very indigestible about a meal on a 
 train. He would go to the chemist's and buy some 
 salts in the morning. Excellent things salts . . . 
 then he would have a round on the links in the after- 
 noon. With Peter Margett, perhaps ... or bet- 
 ter, a foursome, with old Weare and Loxbury. It 
 was a mistake to overdo one's exercise at the begin- 
 ning. There was the fourteenth hole to theorize 
 about, all over again ... it was a bogey five . . . 
 absurd ... he had never actually done it in four, 
 himself . . . but that was not enough to prove any- 
 thing and Peter's argument had been ridiculous. 
 He'd show Peter why again, tomorrow. If one 
 got a long drive away up beyond the cliff slope, and 
 then took a cleek . . . 
 
 Ten minutes later Charles had laid his cleek shot 
 dead and holed out. Emily stirred uneasily and 
 woke. Ah! she thought, of course they were by 
 the sea. Then she discovered that it was not the 
 sea but Charles, snoring; a seraphic smile on his 
 face. He had just told Peter about his three at the 
 fourteenth. 
 
 "Adenoids," muttered Emily, "but it's too late 
 
 nowl" That was Emily. 
 \ 
 
 12
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Beach Hotel was very quiet; the little town 
 was fast asleep. The world might have been dead 
 save for the tireless purring of the obstinate little 
 waves upon the shingle, rubbing away patiently at 
 the pebbles, gradually making them all round and 
 uniform, in Nature's tidy way. Of course, some of 
 the bigger fellows, with great jagged edges and 
 unreasonable knobs, took a great deal of argument 
 before they came into line. But the waves mur- 
 mured to one another 'stick to it stick to it' and 
 then a bigger wave would come along chock-full 
 of encouragement, so that the sea never despaired 
 not even of the cliff. 
 
 Harold Cutman was the first to come down the 
 next morning. He was at the moment going 
 through a really vicious attack of health mania. 
 He was morbidly and horribly healthy. Indeed, he 
 was almost disappointed in the fact that cold water 
 is not so cold in the summer. His bath had been 
 a failure. However, he had stood on the beach in 
 a coldish wind in his wet bathing dress and by dint 
 of perseverance, had succeeded in getting properly 
 chilled through, so that his attitude at the break- 
 fast table was that of a virtuous Tarzan. 
 
 "Hello, sir!" he said to Gabriel Loxbury, who 
 
 13
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 was the next of the party to come in, "been in the 
 sea?" 
 
 Loxbury regarded him with the faintly sarcastic 
 smile which had been his greatest asset in life. It 
 enabled him to make the most offensive remarks, 
 and always to withdraw, in case of disaster, by 
 saying they were meant in fun. He had known the 
 Cutmans, the Margetts and the Weares ever since 
 they had been young married couples, and he had 
 offended them all three mortally, on an average, 
 three times a year. Yet, somehow or other, he had 
 always been forgiven, for except in the things which 
 he said, he was of a kindly nature and in his way, 
 rather disconcertingly wise, and he always remem- 
 bered to send the children something extraordinarily 
 well thought out, at Christmas ; moreover, the wives 
 were sorry for him because he was a bachelor. 
 It was an obsession with Emily Cutman, for instance, 
 that the bedding in Loxbury's flat was in a perma- 
 nent state of damp and corruption. And there was 
 a kind of tradition that he was lonely fostered, 
 perhaps, by his reputation for cynicism. As a mat- 
 ter of fact, Loxbury probably had more and closer 
 friends than any average man is entitled to, and it 
 is very doubtful whether he had ever felt con- 
 sciously uncomfortable in his life. 
 
 "The sea is for the young, Harold," he said, "like 
 all boisterous things." 
 
 "Boisterous! Why it's like a mill pond," re- 
 turned the young man. "Not a single wave to give
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 you a real shaking-up," he added regretfully. 
 
 Loxbury picked up the menu. "Have you studied 
 this important question yet?" he asked. 
 
 "Certainly, I have," said Harold, "I'm as hungry 
 as Tantalus I'm going to have a couple of 
 sausages and a fried egg!" 
 
 "You are as desperate as Tantalus too, then?" 
 smiled Loxbury. "I think an egg lightly boiled 
 for me. And I must ask for some red pepper ! It 
 counteracts an egg in a wonderful way." 
 
 A sort of indeterminate bustle, like a light wind 
 through corn, signalled the entrance of Emily Cut- 
 man. She had a way of coming into any room as if 
 about to attend a Cabinet meeting. Ever since the 
 rearing of her one child she had seemed convinced 
 that there must always be something extremely 
 important for her to correct, or arrange for, or 
 prevent. Her son was twenty-seven, but she had 
 never for a moment regarded him as grown-up. As 
 for Harold himself, he was very fond of his mother, 
 and was moreover, kind by nature so that he never 
 allowed her to see that he was alive to her rather 
 absurd behaviour. She had a habit of speaking 
 quickly and jumping from one train of thought to 
 another without a signal of any kind. Conse- 
 quently her conversation was somewhat difficult to 
 follow and her husband made it a rule only to con- 
 centrate on the last sentence of any remarks she let 
 fall. She smiled quickly to Loxbury and turned to 
 Harold with a complete change of expression. To 
 
 15
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 one who did not know her she might now have been 
 in a state of anxiety only to be occasioned by the 
 certain imminence of some frightful disaster. 
 
 "Harold," she said, "you have been in the sea! 
 I am quite certain that you are not dry!" 
 
 "Dry as a bone, mother!" he returned. "What's 
 become of father?" 
 
 Emily, with a little jerk of the head, like a bird 
 looking for food on a lawn, dashed off into another 
 worry. 
 
 "Most annoying !" she said. "He forgot to pack 
 his safety-razor. Of course, he has his ordinary 
 one it's been in his dressing-case for years but 
 I wouldn't let him use that. Never touched! No- 
 body knows what might be on it Dr. Weare was 
 talking about Streptococci only the other day what 
 large families they have, you know . . . but it's 
 like Mr. Margett talking about finance. I can't 
 contend with more than four noughts. Of course, if 
 we'd had Jeyes' or something to wash it in but, 
 then we haven't and it's probably septic now, or 
 whatever it is in hospitals. So he's gone up the 
 street in rather a temper, I'm afraid but what 
 could one do, Mr. Loxbury? don't you think so?" 
 
 Loxbury had no very clear notion of what he was 
 meant to think, so he contented himself with a non- 
 committal nod and remarked: "Very much wiser." 
 
 "I don't know who packed the roll of rugs," went 
 on Harold's mother, with another bird-like shake 
 of the head. "I know it wasn't I. Did you, 
 
 16
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Harold? Charles says he things Parkin did, but 
 it's very unlike Parkin. We've had him for years 
 well, isn't it?" 
 
 Harold saw that he was addressed and rallied his 
 senses. He realised that there had been some fur- 
 ther disaster here. 
 
 "What has happened, mother"? he asked. 
 
 Emily dashed at her story again. 
 
 "If it was Parkin, someone will have to speak. 
 So careless ! Besides, look at the prices of things 1 
 It's not like the old days. Why, in my mother's 
 time you could get quite a good one for seven-and- 
 sixpence less, if you didn't mind a common handle. 
 Twenty-five and eleven I gave for mine or rather, 
 Charles did. It was a present of his, and of course 
 that makes it worse. I never thought of that! I 
 wonder if it was Parkin?" 
 
 She paused, convinced that she had made per- 
 fectly clear the fact that Charles' walking-stick, 
 through careless packing, had been thrust through 
 the silk of her parasol. Dr. Weare entered the 
 room at this moment, his wife close behind him. 
 He was fifty years old, and on his holiday, always 
 looked more like a prosperous farmer than a doctor. 
 The face, which, under his professional top-hat 
 looked ordinarily healthy, took on the appearance 
 of a red November sun in his holiday surroundings. 
 He wore the most striking of golfing suits, with the 
 most blatant of tassels appearing from underneath 
 the tops of his stockings. A slight tendency to
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 corpulence which, in London and a morning coat, 
 was considered merely to give him dignity, now 
 seemed to reveal itself as a really stupendous 
 paunch. He was proud of his bucolic disguise in the 
 country, as if it was a kind of protective colouring, 
 and he aided and abetted it in every way he could. 
 Only his hands, which were delicate and nervous, 
 betrayed the fact that he was not what he took so 
 much trouble to appear. His wife was almost a 
 complete contrast to him. Her figure had remained 
 the same as it had been when she was a girl. A 
 little thin, a little spare about the shoulders, with a 
 well poised head and a pair of rather wonderful 
 eyes. Her face had at one time been the perfect 
 oval of one of the Florentine Madonnas, but her 
 mouth was thin and the passage of time had rather 
 enhanced this. Her eyes, however, remained the 
 same, large and of a curious kind of blue which 
 appeared sometimes as steely and hard, and at 
 others as infinitely soft, yet never seemed actually 
 to change at all. They were less like human eyes 
 than two aqua-marines set in the brownish-gold of 
 her long eyelashes. She reminded some people of 
 Burne-Jones: others of Botticelli's calm and yield- 
 ing women, others of the more subtle Leonardo da 
 Vinci. To a stranger, the most noticeable thing 
 about her was her amazing silence. She would sit 
 in a mixed company where all manner of subjects 
 were being discussed, laughed over, or debated even 
 with acrimony, without once opening her lips. Her 
 
 18
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 hands would be folded on her lap, her head a little 
 forward, but only her eyes seemed to be following 
 the conversation. Whether Loveday Weare was 
 bored on these occasions, or whether it was simply 
 that she had nothing to say, none even of her friends 
 had ever been able to decide. Religion, children, 
 politics, Art, everyday life no one knew what she 
 thought of any of them. Cutman, indeed, had con- 
 fided to Emily that it was his private opinion that 
 Loveday Weare was simply a fool, but Emily, who 
 was almost insanely loyal when an old friend was 
 in question, had told him that his opinion merely 
 showed that he had no imagination. On the other 
 hand, it is difficult to imagine that Emily Cutman 
 had very much insight into the character of Love- 
 day Weare. But, of course, with women you never 
 can tell . . . 
 
 As far as household matters were concerned, and 
 the well-being of her husband, Mrs. Weare was 
 every bit as efficient as Emily. 
 
 She was also passionately fond of dogs: alto- 
 gether, rather a baffling personality. 
 
 "Well, here we all are again!" exclaimed the 
 doctor. "I wonder what Whyticombe would do 
 without us I And, upon my soul," he added, "I be- 
 lieve it's the same table as we all had last year." 
 
 "Yes, it is," answered Harold, "I don't know 
 about anyone else, but I'm as hungry as a bird in a 
 frost!" 
 
 "You've been in the sea already?" said Weare. 
 
 19
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "And why not? Youth can afford to take risks !" 
 
 Loxbury smiled. "Do you think they could afford 
 to take the risks, Owen, if they knew?" he asked. 
 
 "Knew what?" queried the doctor. 
 
 "That nature, like a first-class tailor, only insists 
 upon the bill being paid when one is fifty !" 
 
 Emily Cutman broke in breathlessly. "That's 
 why people call you a cynic," she said, shaking a 
 finger at Loxbury. "Yes, they do! I don't know 
 what you meant, but you couldn't really have meant 
 it that's what a cynic is isn't it? Well, why say 
 the things? That's what I am always telling 
 Charles, though of course he's not a cynic. But on 
 Sunday mornings he has the most extraordinary 
 views about everything. But then men do. Oh, 
 Harold, would you have sausages as well?" 
 
 This last, as Harold gave his order to the waiter. 
 Emily had no idea that in the one sentence she had 
 entirely blotted out from everyone's mind her pre- 
 ceding remarks. So it was that she went straight 
 on with her peroration. 
 
 "That's what I always say about cynics, don't 
 you, dear?" 
 
 Loveday Weare turned her great eyes on Emily, 
 and nodded slowly. The silence of Mrs. Weare, 
 thought Loxbury, was only completely understand- 
 able when she was dealing with Emily Cutman. 
 
 "Here's Charles," said the latter, as her husband 
 appeared in the doorway, shaved and rosy, "let's 
 start breakfast I" To Emily, her husband's appear- 
 
 20
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 ance was always a signal that whatever was in hand 
 at the moment could go forward. She would never 
 have thought, for a moment, of starting her break- 
 fast without him. Charles said his "good-morn- 
 ings" and took his seat, whereupon a breathless 
 silence ensued. It was as though some sign was 
 expected, the absence of which would prove a bitter 
 disappointment to the people round the table. 
 
 "Well," said Charles at last, "here we all are 
 again same old room, same old table, same old 
 people I" He paused. Evidently the expected had 
 not yet happened. "It's a wonderful day, too," he 
 added, and Harold started to smile. "What's the 
 proverb?" went on his father. "'Fine first day, 
 fine all the way!' " 
 
 The doctor banged on the tablecloth childishly 
 with his fork. "He's said it," he shouted, "he's 
 said it!" 
 
 Mrs. Weare smiled at her plate. Emily turned 
 eagerly to the doctor, 
 
 "Was there a bet about it?" she asked. 
 
 He nodded. "I had ten bob with Harold and a 
 pound with Peter," he said triumphantly. 
 
 Charles turned to him. "May one ask, Owen," 
 he said, with an assumption of enormous dignity, 
 "what exactly one has said, to warrant the payment 
 of these vast sums of money?" 
 
 "Why, the proverb, Dad," broke in Harold, 
 "that's been your first remark here for the last three 
 years!" 
 
 21
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Three? Seven or eight, rather I" amended the 
 'doctor. 
 
 "Has it?" said Emily. "Do you know I'd never 
 really noticed it !" 
 
 "But then you know father so well, mother," 
 Harold leant across the table to her. "You never 
 notice anything he does because you're so used to 
 him!" 
 
 Loxbury cut in suddenly. "Now, that really is 
 cynicism," he said to Emily. 
 
 "I should not have called Harold a cynic," 
 snapped Cutman. "He's past that stage by seven 
 years ! Peter Margett's very late !" 
 
 The fact that Weare and his boy and Margett 
 had made a bet on his idiosyncrasies rather annoyed 
 him. He knew that it was an unreasonable annoy- 
 ance and hoped that no one noticed it. Of course, 
 everyone did, except, equally, of course, Emily. 
 But dear old Cutman! They all knew how easily 
 annoyed he was, and how equally easily pacified. 
 
 Joan Margett who came in with her daughter, 
 Alison, possessed an outward appearance which was 
 uncompromisingly uninteresting. All her features 
 seemed dull and without life, especially her mouth 
 which somehow managed to produce words with 
 less movement than appeared possible. Perhaps in 
 compensation for this immobile manner, her hands 
 and her method of using them in conversation were 
 quite amazingly expressed. She came from the 
 Highlands, and had inherited from some remote 
 
 22
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 ancestor an utterly irrational strain of almost 
 savage imagination. She would, for instance, pro- 
 duce entirely unexpected emotional viewpoints of 
 natural objects, which she would embody in some 
 short, breathless sentence, so picturesque, so vivid 
 that it seemed to her listeners as if it must be a 
 quotation from a classic. But it never was, for Joan 
 Margett had not read the classics. She possessed 
 in her nature, this curious sense of colour colour 
 in everything words, music, character, life. As a 
 girl, she had written verse written it because it 
 had been a natural expression of her self as 
 natural as the movements of her hands. Then, in 
 middle-age, she had realized that verse, which re- 
 mained in little notebooks, locked up in the drawers 
 of her bureau was just a trifle sterile. Moreover, 
 Peter Margett, who was the editor of a Sunday 
 paper, had once read some of them and, quite 
 kindly, had stamped them as unmarketable. 
 
 Therefore, one winter afternoon, Joan had col- 
 lected her notebooks and burnt them. Not, how- 
 ever, before she had recited many of her poems in a 
 whisper to herself, accompanied by those vivid 
 hands, and told herself that they were good. Still, 
 they would never see the light and they were futile. 
 So they died. The practical and the poetic were in 
 equal parts in her nature. Since the funeral pyre 
 of these early efforts had been consumed, she had 
 written no more. It did not appear to her worth 
 while. Still, she could not prevent those sudden 
 
 23
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 emotional word pictures which seemed every now 
 and then to leap to her lips, like stars shooting 
 down the sky to meet the horizon. She was no 
 poseur, and, truth to tell, had she had time to think, 
 she would probably never have given utterance to 
 half the remarks which seemed to make everyone 
 else silent and even uncomfortable. But the damage 
 was always done before it could be stopped, and so 
 Joan Margett had the reputation amongst her 
 friends of being a little odd much odder, for 
 instance, than Loveday Weare, whom everyone 
 privately regarded as a fool, which was really very 
 unfortunate for her, since, if she had been a man, 
 her silence would probably have been taken as an 
 indication of great wisdom. But somehow women 
 are never supposed to be wise, and of course, if 
 you are just clever, you talk a great deal. . . . 
 
 Alison Margett was highly intelligent and ex- 
 tremely athletic. She would discuss quite ade- 
 quately with her father the policy of his paper, and 
 could remember accurately what she had read in 
 its contemporaries. To Peter Margett, naturally, 
 this appeared the best possible form of intelligence 
 and he was extremely proud of his daughter, though, 
 in truth, he knew little about her. But he made a 
 point of asking her opinion upon matters of public 
 interest in the presence of other people. If ever a 
 question of Art was under discussion he would pay 
 his wife the compliment of asking for her views, but 
 joan seldom rose to the bait. She had the natural 
 
 24
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 shyness of those who know they are apt to be be- 
 trayed into real emotion, and so she hated nothing 
 so much as an argument. As for Peter himself, he 
 was a very successful editor, and might from sheer 
 ability, have become something really worth while, 
 but for a deplorable trait in his nature which made 
 him invent facts in support of his favourite 
 theories a trait which, having been in operation 
 for thirty-odd years, had now left him sincerely 
 convinced of these self-made facts and, on any gen- 
 eral subject, entirely biassed and unreliable. But 
 he was kind, jovial, and outside his own pet illusions, 
 tolerant, and his club considered him an "awfully 
 good fellow." 
 
 He came into the room now and joined the others 
 at the breakfast table. Weare hailed him with a 
 shout. "You've lost your money, Peter," he said. 
 
 "Good old Charles," chuckled Margett, "by the 
 law of averages I made certain he'd miss it this 
 year!" 
 
 "H'm!" grunted Charles. "By any law of prob- 
 ability you'd imagine Mrs. Weare would have 
 burnt the doctor's ridiculous stockings before now!" 
 
 "Charles," said Emily, "that's very unkind very 
 unkind. I don't like the tassels, but then who am I ? 
 After all, if it gives pleasure to anyone to have 
 tassels, why not? Besides, I daresay they are 
 garters, really. Of course, if things are quite use- 
 less, only women ought to wear them, I suppose 
 though why, I can't quite $ee, can. you?"
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 She turned quickly, in her bird-like way, upon 
 Loxbury, who, unfortunately, had automatically 
 ceased to listen the moment that Emily had started 
 talking. 
 
 "Weare's stockings?" he queried, desperately re- 
 calling the thread of the conversation. "Isn't it a 
 natural reaction to the spats which are part of his 
 bedside manner?" 
 
 Loveday Weare's curiously low-pitched voice 
 seemed to come from somewhere outside the group 
 at the table. 
 
 "You may like it," she said, "or you may not like 
 it : but it's no more silly than a tie round a collar." 
 
 Alison Margett broke the pause. "You wouldn't 
 like a man without a tie," she said, "a naked stud 
 is a horrible sight." 
 
 Mrs. Weare smiled at her and nodded. "Yes," 
 she said slowly, "it's the same sort of idea that 
 makes men want to cover up their braces ... 
 but I don't know that it is really so healthy an idea 
 as everyone thinks!" 
 
 "You see," Loxbury broke in, "one's instinct is 
 to cover up any article of clothing that is actually 
 doing something." 
 
 'That's true,'" said Margett, "very true; caging 
 in the engine; concealing the secret. Think of a 
 clock 1 There's always something indecent about 
 glass sides! Hide the works! It's an instinct I" 
 
 Peter Margett always seemed to carry on a con- 
 versation in headlines. 
 
 26
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "But the works of a clock," interjected Joan 
 Margett, "are hidden because of the dust . , . 
 the dust," she repeated, as if to herself. 
 
 Vaguely everyone felt that there was something 
 deep, something very well thought out behind her 
 contribution, and it resulted in switching off that 
 topic of conversation as one switches off an electric 
 light. 
 
 Mrs. Margett was always finding that she had 
 this effect, and she could never discover why. As a 
 matter of fact she had always made the mistake 
 of imagining that when men and women said things, 
 they were expressions of considered conviction. 
 Now she realized that she had again been the cause 
 of what she privately had christened "nasty pocket 
 of silence." Indeed, the bump of an aeroplane in 
 an air-pocket seemed very comparable to the con- 
 versational bump of which she, so often, appeared 
 to be the cause. 
 
 It was Dr. Weare who regained control. "Are 
 you going to bathe this morning, Alison?" he asked, 
 "or aren't you yet feeling sufficiently declimatized 
 from Kensington?" 
 
 Alison laughed. "I like to keep my body ready 
 for the sea at any minute," she said, "even in Ken- 
 sington." 
 
 "Hear! Hear I" Harold put in, and his mother 
 smiled at him as if she was entirely in accord with 
 this athletic ideal, though in point of face, she was 
 
 27
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 just a little shaken at the notion of any woman men- 
 tioning her body at all. 
 
 Peter Margett nodded. "Yes," he said, "quite 
 right. Always ready for anything especially 
 nature. Al in C3 surroundings ! Big idea though 
 Alison probably doesn't know itl" 
 
 "And moreover," broke in the purring voice of 
 Loxbury, "it will make Peter's seat on the shingle 
 seem so much more comfortable, to see his daughter 
 looking thoroughly wet in the sea !" 
 
 "Charles Cutman laughed. "You're a horrible 
 old cynic, Loxbury," he said, "and you've no right 
 to say anything as true as that during the holidays !" 
 
 "True? Rubbish! " Margett's staccato voice 
 broke in. "Loxbury's world is a microcosm. It is 
 bounded on the north by his valet, on the south 
 by his Valet, on the east by a bottle of old Cham- 
 bertin, and on the west by a glass of '65 Brandy. 
 How should he know anything about the sea?" 
 
 "You'll never be anything else than a club-type, 
 Loxbury," laughed Weare. 
 
 Emily Cutman intervened quickly. "That's very 
 cruel, Dr. Weare," she said, "very cruel. I am 
 sure you didn't mean it. I can't imagine how men 
 can be so unkind to one another. But then, of 
 course, they often fight, don't they? Well, of 
 course, not our class of men, but they all have some- 
 thing in common. I suppose it's the animal: but 
 perhaps it isn't anyway, don't Jet's argue about 
 
 28
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 it! Men seem to argue for ever. It is such waste, 
 don't you think?" She turned to Loveday Weare 
 with this last question and that lady nodded very 
 deliberately, then suddenly looked up. 
 
 "I don't know after all, dear," she said. "Per- 
 haps, from our point of view, it lessens their powers 
 of exhaustion I" 
 
 "Exhaustion?" Charles Cutman echoed the word, 
 all of a sudden, like a twanged wire then broke 
 off, as sharply again, like the same singing wire 
 when someone has placed a finger on it. Vaguely, 
 like the unformed, elusive memory of a dream, that 
 word recalled the mood of the night before. He 
 could not even remember the emotion of that mood 
 now, but the note had been struck which brought 
 back a sense of some queer thing in himself which 
 had to be hidden like the braces and all those 
 clothes which were actually doing things. He rose 
 to his feet, cheerily. 
 
 "Well, well," he said, "who's for the beach?"
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ''Of course," said Margett suddenly, "this must 
 really be awfully bad for us enervating saps the 
 tissues I" 
 
 He was lying on the beach with Cutman watching 
 from under his hat the heat rising like a shimmer- 
 ing veil off the pebbles. 
 
 "Yes," answered Charles, "better to be on the 
 Cliff golfing." 
 
 "But we never play on the first morning," mur- 
 mured the other. 
 
 "No, never," answered Charles. He propped 
 himself up uneasily upon one elbow and looked 
 down towards the water. Near the sea's edge a 
 little group sat watching the bathers Loxbury, and 
 the women. Charles looked at the three parasols. 
 
 "What an extraordinary air of contentment," he 
 said, "the back of a parasol seems to imply!" 
 
 "Ye Gods!" interjected Margett. "There's old 
 Owen going into the water ! Like a great red por- 
 poise ! And nobody laughs I Now, if they did that 
 on the stage I . . 
 
 Cutman pulled his hat over his eyes and grunted. 
 
 "Weare's a damned old fool," he said, "he'll end 
 by getting a stroke or something!" 
 
 "After all, he's a doctor," said the other. 
 
 30
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "I daresay. I'm a barrister: but I may be the 
 victim of litigation for all that, some day or other I" 
 
 "Rot, Cutman. After all your experience you 
 could never bring yourself to write a cheque for ia 
 solicitor." 
 
 A rich deep voice broke in from behind them. 
 
 "Good morning, Mr. Cutman and Mr. Margett," 
 it said, "welcome back again!" 
 
 "Morning, Willis," returned Cutman, "what 
 kind of a season is it going to be?" 
 
 "About usual, sir," said the voice, and its owner 
 seemed to coil himself into the pebbles besides them 
 with all the grace of a snake in its native rock home. 
 
 Ted Willis was the doyen of the Whyticombe 
 fishermen. That his name should have been Willis 
 was a perpetual mystery, because on looking at him, 
 it was perfectly obvious that he was a grandee of 
 Spain of very high caste. Moreover, he was not 
 like the majority of these men, one whose knowledge 
 of the sea was bounded by the bay and the sailing 
 capacity of his boat. The whole world had been 
 his club for many years before he had decided that 
 there was no more adventure for one of his years, 
 and had settled down at Whyticombe, where he had 
 been born, with the curious homing fatalism of his 
 southern blood. No one knew very much about his 
 birth after all, it was an event of nearly seventy 
 years ago but there is no doubt that it was not 
 lawful. And when you looked into his face with its 
 high forehead, its thousands of tiny wrinkles on the 
 
 31
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 brown skin, its still iron-grey, rather drooping, 
 moustache and its whiter hair, with the deep-set, 
 brooding brown eyes that could yet fire with en- 
 thusiasm on occasions then you had no doubt what- 
 ever that somewhere away back in the pedigree of 
 Ted Willis, you would come across a very fine 
 gentleman, strutting the quarter-deck of a Spanish 
 galleon, fighting with hopeless courage that God- 
 sent storm of 1588, and beaching his quivering ship, 
 perhaps on the Sanscombe rocks, round the corner 
 to the west, over the great white cliff. But, even 
 without looking at his face, you could feel that there 
 was some strain of greatness in the fisherman by the 
 way in which he sat unbidden beside his superiors 
 without giving offence, and by the tone of the 'sir' 
 which he never failed to use in addressing them. 
 
 If you walk along the beaches of South Devon 
 you will find many of these long-shore aristocrats, 
 but you may fare far before you find one whose 
 intellectual ability matches the coat-of-arms which 
 is stamped upon his face. Willis had no library in 
 the little cottage in Boniton Street where he lived; 
 he had, it is very possible, never read half-a-dozen 
 books in his life; but he had lived nearly seventy 
 years with a brain behind those dark eyes, which 
 transformed them into microscopes, and forty of 
 those years had been spent with the rover ticket of 
 a sailor on the world's promenades. Moreover, he 
 could talk talk, indeed, when the fit was on him, 
 in a way which, until the spell was over, made all 
 
 32
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 the books of the universe seem lifeless and without 
 hope. The truth is that Ted Willis might have 
 been a great success as a novelist, or a sailor, or a 
 father or in any of those occupations where 
 imagination is essential to counteract despair, ex- 
 cept for the fact that he was divinely lazy and had 
 never been in any hurry to try to cheat Death by 
 pretending to have achieved something before his 
 visit. 
 
 "Are we going to have a fine August, Willis?" 
 asked Margett, passing his tobacco over to the 
 fisherman. 
 
 "The first half should be pretty well," came the 
 answer, as the fisherman filled his pipe. "What you 
 want to do, I should do quickly. It is always a good 
 rule. Thank you, sir," he added, as he returned 
 the pouch. 
 
 Charles Cutman waved a hand towards the cliff. 
 "The white cliff's gone a bit more since last year, 
 hasn't it?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes, sir," answered Willis, "I'm wondering 
 which will go first; the cliff or 1 1" 
 
 "Rot, Willis," said the Editor heartily, "there's 
 another twenty years in you yet!" 
 
 "Maybe twenty years," returned the fisherman, 
 "or maybe twenty minutes or even seconds. The 
 same as the old cliff. Who knows how far she is 
 undermined? Who knows how far he himself is 
 undermined?" He stretched out a muscular brown 
 arm towards the notice board at the rock's edge. 
 
 33
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "You see that sign, sir?" 'This cliff is danger- 
 ous*. It might be a good thing, don't you think, if 
 some of us could put a sign like that by our own 
 sides?" He paused. "And not only for Death," 
 he added slowly. 
 
 "For what, then?" asked Cutman, with the 
 slightest of rasps in his voice. 
 
 "Oh, lots of things, sir," returned the old man. 
 "The dimming of enthusiasms, the beginnings of 
 regrets, the moment when one knows one is just 
 waiting for the end of things, and one doesn't care 
 enough to do anything more than wait. The young 
 fellows with their newly bought boats, sir, they 
 break their hearts if the mackerel don't come into 
 the bay, and that's what they should be doing. 
 When the day comes that they shrug their shoulders 
 and say 'tain't any use bothering' then I say 'tis 
 time to put up the notice 'This cliff is dangerous' I" 
 
 "Willis, you're an old fool!" said Margett cheer- 
 fully. "You're trying to persuade yourself that 
 youth is the only thing that matters, just because 
 you haven't got it!" 
 
 "But I have got it, sir," rejoined the fisherman. 
 "It isn't the years that count; it's the joy you find 
 in 'em I" 
 
 "Then why the devil do you want to put up the 
 notice board?" queried Cutman irritably. 
 
 "For my own good, sir that's all I" 
 
 The old man rose slowly, puffing at his pipe. 
 
 34
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Mr. Harold will be letting me know when he feels 
 like a piece of fishing?" he asked. 
 
 Cutman nodded. "He wouldn't go out with 
 anyone else, Willis and you know it." 
 
 "Exactly, sir," replied the fisherman. "That's 
 what I meant about the joy you find in *em." 
 
 A small fussy man in a blazer bustled up to him. 
 
 "I want you to take me and my family out in 
 your boat this afternoon I" he began importantly. 
 
 "I'm not taking her out to-day," said the old man. 
 
 "Tut, nonsense, man," retorted the other. "I'm 
 told yours is the best boat in the place." 
 
 "So she is. But I'm not taking her out to-day, 
 sir. I'm sorry." He bowed with a curious grace 
 and moved away along the beach folowed by the 
 puzzled glare of the little man in the blazer. 
 
 "There will still be Emperors," murmured Peter 
 Margett, "when all the world is one republic." 
 
 The little man in the blazer muttered something 
 about "confounded modern democratic principles," 
 and started stumbling across the stones towards the 
 spot where a group of the younger fishermen stood, 
 idly watching the bathers and calculating what this 
 summer season was likely to produce in the way of 
 compensation for spending the winter on the same 
 beach. Alison Margett, her damp hair hanging 
 down her back, suddenly appeared before her 
 father. 
 
 "Look here, Dad," she began, briskly^ "we all 
 
 35
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 want to go for a picnic this afternoon that is, I 
 and Harold do, and mother and Mrs. Weare are 
 quite willing what do you think?" 
 
 "Isn't a picnic rather strenuous for the first after- 
 noon?" said her father. 
 
 "Well, that's what Mrs. Cutman says, but I've 
 just been telling her it's only a tradition." 
 
 "H'm!" grunted Margett, "and now you've been 
 sent to see whether your father will defy tradition 
 or not?" 
 
 Alison laughed. "It's hardly a tradition," she 
 said, "it's a sort of idea that's grown without being 
 asked!" 
 
 "We'll go," answered her father, lying back on 
 the pebbles lazily. "You can tell us where we are 
 going at lunch." 
 
 "Good egg," returned the girl, and turned down 
 the beach to break the news to the three elder ladies 
 that there was now no hope of a reprieve. 
 
 Cutman dug his stick into the stones. "Weak, 
 Peter, weak!" he said. "You know you don't want 
 to go for an infernal picnic and, damn it all, this 
 is supposed to be the wage-earners' holiday!" 
 
 "You musn't call a picnic infernal, Charles," re- 
 turned the Editor. "It's as bad as putting up the 
 notice that Ted Willis was talking about!" 
 
 "Rot!" said the other. "Here we are lying in a 
 sort of Turkish bath, getting more enervated every 
 second. No wonder we don't feel too strenuous !" 
 
 Peter Margett laughed softly. "Comfortable 
 
 36
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Doctrine," he answered, "blame nature. Truth is, 
 we're just at the age when we are always hoping 
 to get enthusiastic about yesterday's excitements 
 always hoping for a miracle ! You can't deny it !" 
 
 There was no answer, and the editor playfully 
 jabbed his companion in the ribs. 
 
 "Well," said Cutman, irritably, "I'm not deny- 
 ing it." 
 
 "Once we liked picnics," murmured Peter. 
 "Romance, Adventure curious sense of I don't 
 know what all really the same idea though vague 
 notion that something different might happen if you 
 had your tea in an unusual place. Now we know 
 that nothing unusual will ever happen. We don't 
 think of the jam any longer, we think of the wasps 
 buzzing round it. Both points of view equally 
 pathetic, I suppose." 
 
 "What the devil are you talking about, Peter?" 
 asked Cutman, who had not been listening. 
 
 "It might make an article," said the editor. 
 "Ah !" he broke off, "they are going back to lunch !" 
 
 They both rose and went down the beach to meet 
 the little party. 
 
 "I've been telling everybody it's a mistake," 
 panted Emily Cutman, a little in advance of the 
 others as they came up the beach. "Rushing at 
 things is such a pity, don't you think? I know 
 Loveday agrees with me, if only she would speak. 
 Well, isn't it trying? I mean to say, why were 
 tongues invented? Harold is such an overwhelmer; 
 
 37
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 He brushes everything aside. Charles used to be 
 just the same, didn't you, Charles? But I don't 
 suppose you remember. Why, when we were en- 
 gaged, Mr. Margett however, that's not the 
 point. Now, Charles," she said finally, "you must 
 admit you don't agree at all!" 
 
 At this point the others arrived. 
 
 "Don't listen, Mr. Cutman!" cried Alison, 
 quickly. "Don't listen to a word of it I The whole 
 thing's settled!" She slid a strong arm round 
 JEmily'.s shoulders and looked at her with a kindly 
 maternal smile. 
 
 "Shock tactics, Charles," said Loxbury; "it is the 
 method of the younger generation. We've got 
 to go!" 
 
 "Why shouldn't we go?" asked Cutman, just a 
 little too violently, "I should enjoy a picnic very 
 much!" 
 
 Harold gave vent to an ironical cheer. 
 
 "Why the devil," said his father explosively, 
 "should it be taken for granted that I shouldn't 
 enjoy it?" 
 
 "Hear! Hear!" came the hearty voice of the 
 doctor. 
 
 "But Berrilow's car only holds four," said Emily. 
 "And you can't walk, dear! It's nearly six miles 
 to Tcstleigh Bottom where they want to go." 
 
 "Can't walk!" roared the barrister. "Can't 
 walk? Do you think I'm a nonagenarian, Emily?" 
 
 38
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Charles and I will walk together," put in Mar- 
 gett. 
 
 "And Harold can walk with me," said Alison. 
 
 "We'll give father half-an-hour's start," sug- 
 gested Harold. 
 
 "I shall walk with you, Charles," said Weare. 
 "Do us a world of good I" 
 
 "And I," remarked Loxbury, "will court eternal 
 shame by travelling in the car but," he added 
 softly, "I shall score heavily at breakfast to-morrow 
 morning, and I will play the best ball of the three 
 of you afterwards !" 
 
 "Very well," returned Cutman doggedly, "and 
 for half-a-crown a hole I" 
 
 He finished the walk along the asphalt to the 
 hotel at a considerable pace and, after lunch, fought 
 down an intense desire for sleep. When the car, 
 starting an hour later, caught up the walkers on the 
 way to Testleigh Bottom, Charles Cutman would 
 have given a large fortune to accept the proffered 
 lift by squeezing in between Loxbury and the driver. 
 But a sense of pride, which he himself knew to be 
 ridiculous, forbade it, and he was not in the least 
 comforted by the suspicion of an ironic smile on the 
 lips of Loxbury as the car went on in a whirl of 
 dust nor, indeed, by the inaudible but obvious 
 volubility of Emily who, as her husband perfectly 
 well realized, was explaining, quite sympathetically, 
 of course, his more private infirmities to Joan 
 Margett and Loveday Weare. His only consola- 
 
 39
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 tion was that Peter Margett's remarks were be- 
 coming more snappy every moment. Evidently 
 Peter was suffering too. The Doctor, though he 
 wheezed like a leak in a steam-pipe up the hills, 
 preserved a perfect good nature and cheeriness. 
 Charles found himself regarding Weare balefully, 
 and persuading himself that this behaviour on the 
 part of the doctor was merely a blind. Of course 
 he must be in a state of misery carrying all that 
 weight . . . 
 
 They turned into the steep lane at the top of 
 which lay the bracken-carpeted clearing beside 
 Testleigh Woods, which had become, by tradition, 
 the goal of this particular expedition. Here the tea 
 would be laid out here somebody would spend 
 twenty minutes trying to make a fire burn from 
 sodden twigs here, finally, the methylated spirit 
 stove would be mobilized amid laughter and dis- 
 appointment and here, after a fly and wasp 
 haunted meal, they would all, as a ritual, walk 
 to the edge of the bracken and look across Wives- 
 hampton and Cowleigh and Daggonsbourne and 
 Northstoke to the grey pinnacles over on the 
 horizon, which it was a point of honour with the 
 Londoners to describe as Tors. 
 
 Moreover, Cutman's tired and disgusted brain 
 reminded him, Emily would say: "That's the 
 moorl" in the particularly awestruck whisper 
 which she would equally certainly use to the sides- 
 man in Church next Sunday. 
 
 40
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 At this point in his reflections, Charles applied 
 the brake with a jerk. He was drifting into another 
 ridiculous mood: absurd! He pointed out some 
 honeysuckle to Margett who remarked that the 
 scent of honeysuckle in a room was overpowering. 
 The doctor, however, scrambling up the hedge 
 clumsily and scratching his hands heedlessly, pos- 
 sessed himself of a sprig which he stuck jauntily in 
 his cap. Margett sneered openly. 
 
 "Poor old Weare," he said, "trying to pretend 
 he's a boy I" 
 
 The Doctor scrambled back into the lane, not in 
 the least put out. 
 
 "Faith and pretence, my dear fact-merchant," he 
 said, "are two of the most potent medicines in the 
 world!" 
 
 As they plodded up the stony lane, Charles 
 Cutman was beginning to derive a real satisfaction 
 from the evident discomfort of the Editor. Indeed, 
 it is possible that he would have arrived at the 
 appointed spot in every bit as genial a frame of 
 mind as Owen Weare, save for the fact that, about 
 five hundred yards from the gap in the hedge be- 
 yond which lay the little clearing, Harold and 
 Alison, pink and hot, but fit for another ten miles, 
 passed them exuberantly and with triumph. More- 
 over, Harold, in a mistaken attempt to be "nice" to 
 his father, shouted over his shoulder as he passed: 
 
 "Good for you, Governor we only did it on the 
 post!" 
 
 41
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 But somehow the note in the voice, ;which showed 
 how very certain Harold had been that he and 
 Alison would 'do it' and the sight of the two 
 Swinging arrogantly through the gap ahead of 
 them flung Cutman back into the state of depres- 
 sion from which the misery of Margett had tem- 
 porarily lifted him. Owen Weare had not missed 
 the flying gusts of expression on his face. 
 
 "Charles," he puffed, "you are finding the art of 
 being middle-aged a very complicated affair. What 
 the devil are you going to do when you're old?" 
 
 As they turned through the gcp, Cutman with an 
 'effort twisted his mind back into a light vein. 
 
 "Dry up, Owen," he said, with the assumed note 
 'of a schoolboy. "What about you?" 
 
 The Doctor laughed. "I?" he echoed. 'Why, 
 my dear Charles, I shall die like everyone else 
 ;when my heart fails I" 
 
 Margett seemed to wake up all of a sudden. 
 
 "Good phrase I" he said earnestly. "Snappy I 
 Double meaning, with mixture of sentiment, tool 
 'When does your Heart fail?' Short third 
 column article I WTiy not?" He paused and turned 
 to Weare. "Write it!" he said. 
 
 "H'm!" remarked Cutman, gloomily. "The 
 essential point is that it's only necessary to keep 
 up one's heart when one is fighting something or 
 other." 
 
 The Doctor nodded. "Quite right," he said, 
 "you think you've come to a point when you simply
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 must know about things, Charles, eh? A sort of 
 freshman at your second university. I'll not try to' 
 be superior," he added simply. "It's a condition we, 
 all come to. It's like influenza, but nobody knows 
 the germ. I've felt the symptoms myself a sort 
 of damnable longing to 
 
 'hear, know, and say 
 
 What this tumultuous body now denies!' 
 I don't know who wrote that but it's quite true." 
 
 Charles Cutman looked at the doctor and nodded. 
 Wonderfully understanding fellow, old Weare! 
 
 The Editor was breathing very fast. It was his 
 method of 'pointing' like a retriever. 
 
 "Rupert Brooke," he said quickly, pigeon-holing 
 the doctor's quotation from sheer force of habit. 
 
 Cutman, wrapt in a haze of self-analysis, snapped 
 angrily. "What the devil difference docs that 
 make?" he asked. 
 
 The doctor merely nodded. Margett took the 
 nod as an acknowledgment of information re- 
 ceived Charles detected in it a sympathy for his 
 outburst against the necessity for the universal label. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Owen Weare was, in spite of 
 his bucolic appearance, an exceedingly diplomatic 
 fellow. He knew quite well that it is very difficult 
 to detect a bedside manner, outside a bedroom. 
 
 43
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Harold and Alison enjoyed the picnic not as 
 much as they had expected to, of course, but still, 
 they enjoyed it. It had, though neither of them 
 had been morbid enough to work the thing out, 
 appeared rather like a play which has run for many 
 nights. Everybody had said the same things that 
 had been said at this particular picnic for years. 
 Loxbury had been mildly satirical and Emily had 
 laughed protestingly at his cynicisms. Loveday 
 Weare had, as far as could be remembered, said 
 nothing at all and Joan Margett had said things 
 unexpected and shattering to the commonplace. 
 
 The last of the meal had been despatched and the 
 party had walked down to the edge of the gorse 
 and looked across the well known and now curiously 
 uninspiring view. Moreover, according to ritual 
 Emily Cutman had become sentimental. Scenery 
 always caused her to think violently about God, and 
 on these occasions she had to be dealt with tactfully, 
 since thinking about God invariably brought her to 
 the edge of tears and general distress. If, as her 
 husband, in a fit of irritation, had once done, you 
 asked her what on earth there was to cry about in 
 the beauties of nature and a religion which, if it is 
 meant to be anything, is meant to be comforting, 
 she would say vaguely, "it all seems so sad", and 
 relapse into an orgy of sniffs, and little sobs, to be 
 
 44
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 followed by a violent sick headache. The only per- 
 son who appeared to understand this irritating 
 emotion was, curiously enough, Loveday Weare, 
 whom no one, not even her husband, ever remem- 
 bered to have seen shed tears in her life. 
 
 "You see," she had once said to Joan, after an 
 uncomfortable episode of the kind, "it really is sad 
 
 . . as Emily sees it. She wants to understand 
 why it's lovely, and she tries to make out that it's 
 because God made it. Then she realizes she doesn't 
 understand God either, and of course she wants to 
 cry; it is very unsatisfactory for her, isn't it? Still, 
 she cries and gets exhausted and forgets the scenery 
 and God because of her headache, and so gets per- 
 fectly all right again. You and I look on the view 
 as probably the result of an earthquake and Emily's 
 tears as the gift of God. The result is we can't 
 cry and I daresay half our lives are dreadful to us !" 
 
 Joan Margett had nodded and answered. 
 
 "When you do speak, Loveday, you come very 
 near talking like limpid water running over coloured 
 stones. I love looking through clear water." 
 
 On the present occasion, however, Emily had 
 been successfully headed off tears by Harold's dis- 
 covery that his unemptied pipe had set his coat on 
 fire. This disaster had the advantage of making 
 her forget all about God without the distressing 
 anaesthetic of a headache, and after prophesying 
 disjointedly any number of soul-curdling accidents 
 to which Harold was certain to fall a victim, she 
 
 45
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 arrived at the spot where they had eaten their tea 
 in a perfectly happy frame of mind. 
 
 As for Harold and Alison, they wandered off on 
 a walk of their own, talking like a couple of under- 
 graduates, of sport, and the pursuit of happiness, 
 and colour, and line and a million and one things 
 which they knew nothing of, and which are, of 
 course, the only things worth arguing about. And 
 they ejaculated 'rot' and 'rubbish' at each other's 
 statements and walked, again like two youths, at 
 least two yards apart all the way. Meanwhile 
 Emily hinted that "perhaps they saw something in 
 one another" and "it wouldn't be a bad thing, would 
 it?" and "it was rather nice, wasn't it, to see two 
 young things falling in love and going off senti- 
 mentalizing?" 
 
 At which point she very nearly tumbled headlong 
 into tears again and warned Loxbury very sternly 
 that "no one was to dare to joke about it in front of 
 the dear children." 
 
 And the curious thing was, that although this 
 picture of Heloise and Abelard wandering hand in 
 hand through the bracken, wrapt in a rosy aura of 
 dawning Romance, brought to birth by giant strides 
 in the wonderful scene set by the stage manager 
 who built Devonshire, was at the furthest pole from 
 the truth, yet, the essential fact remained that 
 through the more modern medium of refuting each 
 other's arguments and calling each other fools, 
 whereby discovering that there was something about
 
 each of them that was worth criticism, Harold and 
 Alison were actually falling in love. 
 
 But Cuttnan, to whom the incidents of the picnic 
 had appeared amazingly even alarmingly staler 
 than usual, and whose efforts at enthusiasm had not 
 even succeeded in convincing himself, now felt his 
 mood heavy upon him, and under the plea that he 
 was sleepy and was going to sit in the shade, walked 
 up to the big hedge under Testlcigh Woods, some 
 quarter of a mile away, and sitting under its shadow 
 and tilting his hat over his eyes, fell to black 
 thoughts. 
 
 The countryside seemed so provokingly, 60 
 triumphantly peaceful. The bracken bent easily 
 and gracefully before a soft, caressing wind. A 
 rabbit, not ten yards away from him, ran out on the 
 grass, looked round enquiringly and settled down 
 to the evening meal. From the hedge, behind him, 
 there came a continuous gentle rustle which seemed 
 the outward and visible sign of a life unproblcmatic 
 and unquestioned in its design. In the wood itself 
 there seemed the deep-noted silence of content. 
 Were only humans the butt and jesting-point for all 
 these hideous problems of existence? Was it pos- 
 sible that Master Rabbit, methodically absorbing 
 his supper, was a prey to hideous doubts about his 
 love and loyalty to Mistress Rabbit, irritatingly 
 asleep perhaps beneath that very hedgerow? 
 Incredible ! 
 
 And to Cutman at this moment, there appeared 
 
 47
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 nothing more obvious than that the philosophy of 
 pig-happiness was the most desirable. He sat very 
 still, unnaturally still considering that he was ex- 
 ceptionally wideawake. His stillness, indeed, was 
 akin to the rigidity of fear, for Charles was fighting 
 hard against a very horrible thought . . . the 
 thought that he hated Emily, after thirty years. 
 He shut the door violently against the unwelcome 
 visitor but he could not close his ears to the per- 
 petual hammering of the door knocker. The very 
 presence of the idea which he put down frantically 
 to bodily indispositions invented for the purpose, 
 made him feel an outcast someone whom dear old 
 Owen and bluff Peter Margett would not care to 
 associate with, did they really know what manner 
 of man he was. And yet . . . another start- 
 ling idea . . . did those two also feel like him, 
 every now and then? He pondered on the thought 
 and dismissed it, feeling more than ever an outsider. 
 
 A sound, slight enough in itself, but different 
 enough in its character to cause Charles to turn his 
 head, came from the hedge on his left. Something 
 appeared to be agitating the leaves somewhat too 
 violently for the gentle summer wind. Charles 
 watched the bending branches with interest. A fox, 
 perhaps ... no. A fox would have nosed 
 him. Now what on earth was coming through that 
 hedge so cautiously? 
 
 Incredibly without noise, or so it seemed to the 
 town-bred perceptions of the barrister, the figure 
 
 48
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 of a man detached itself from the thick hedge and 
 slid into the fern and thick grass beneath it. There 
 was something familiar about the back view which 
 Charles obtained of this apparition. Not in the 
 clothes, for they were really rather peculiar. Navy 
 blue seamen's trousers bound round below the knee 
 with puttees of stained calico, arranged in a way 
 which might well have caused the death of a ser- 
 geant-major in almost any regiment. The coat 
 seemed unnecessarily long and full indeed, on the 
 left side it bulged right out in an absolutely 
 unaccountable fashion. On the head was the relic 
 of what had been a Homburg hat crown and brim 
 stained by sweat and sun, and ribbon gone so many 
 years since, that there remained not even the lighter 
 line where it had been. 
 
 It was the back of a brown neck and the beginning 
 of a head of rebellious white hair that seemed so 
 baffling in its familiarity and Charles was still puz- 
 zling over the problem when the man turned sud- 
 denly and caught sight of him. 
 
 "I should have sensed you, sir," said the appari- 
 tion, in soft liquid tones. "Must be, I'm getting 
 old." 
 
 "What the devil are you doing out here, Willis?" 
 asked Cutman. 
 
 The fisherman looked up and down the hedge, 
 and his keen eyes seemed to search all the points of 
 the compass. There was no one in sight. 
 
 "Poaching, sir," he explained simply. "It is a 
 
 49
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 pity I should have made port just here, for you're a 
 lawyer and 'tis your business to misunderstand a 
 poacher.'* 
 
 "I'm not in Chambers, Willis," smiled the bar- 
 rister. "What have you in your pocket?'* 
 
 "A good dinner, sir," replied the fisherman, "and 
 a couple of rabbits as well." He hesitated, as one 
 apologising for hunting small game. "There are 
 relations, sir," he explained, "with whom it pays 
 to keep in, as it were." 
 
 Cutman nodded. ."There are always relations," 
 he said. 
 
 The old man settled down beside him on the 
 bank, carefully arranging his coat so that it ap- 
 peared quite normal in its proportions. 
 
 "Of course," began Willis, "I might defend my 
 poaching in Lord Testleigh's woods by talking to 
 you, sir, about socialism and the rights of men. 
 Indeed," he added reminiscently, "I have been 
 amongst most happy and respectable savages whose 
 entire peace of mind would have been scuppered 
 by the idea of personal property that was in the 
 Pacific, sir," he added. "Perhaps if there had been 
 sufficient fresh water we'd not have cared so much 
 for those savage chaps A } ^ but _they^.were 
 damned obliging to us, sir.") 
 
 He broke off, accepting Cutman's tobacco pouch. 
 
 "Still, I don't poach from conviction, sir," he 
 went on. "Lord Testleigh's land belongs to Lord 
 Testleigh, and the pheasants and the rabbits in his 
 
 Sot
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 woods belong to Lord Testleigh too, so I'm a 
 thief and there's no defence for that, sir. In- 
 deed," he added, "there's no defence for most of 
 my life, if it comes so far." 
 
 "Nor mine," muttered Cutman, remembering the 
 thoughts about Emily which had been knocking for 
 admittance to his mind. 
 
 "But there's a sense of adventure in the woods, 
 sir," the old man continued. "A sort of making the 
 dying fire glow, if you understand me even in the 
 getting of a bird or two and a silly rabbit. To a 
 lawyer, sir, that'll be a poor enough defence, but 
 . , . v when you're an old man, you've got to grab 
 adventure where you can find it." 
 
 Cutman was silent, revolving the old fisherman's 
 crystal-clear immorality in his mind, comparing it 
 with the muddy morals of which he had been making 
 pies in his own case.,; 
 
 "I'll not deny," the gentle voice of Ted Willis 
 broke in, "that sitting here by you isn't an idea at 
 disguise of mine not that it isn't a pleasure and an 
 honour, sir but there was a keeper chap away back 
 who heard more than he had need of, and no one 
 could suspect you, sir," of sitting here under the 
 hedge, talking away to'a thief!" 
 
 J'Look here, Willis," said Charles indignantly, 
 "you know perfectly well I don't regard you as 
 thief I" v 
 
 The old man looked at him,"smiled, then broke 
 into a little laugh. "I'd rather you did, sir," he 
 
 II
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 said, "and cared to talk to me all the same 1" 
 
 "Very well, then," returned Charles, "I will. 
 Why," he added irritably, "you seem to regard me 
 as hopelessly respectable!" 
 
 He had a wild, instantly crushed desire to tell 
 Ted Willis how far divorced from respectability his 
 thoughts had been, at the moment of discovery. 
 
 "Respectable people, sir," said the fisherman 
 slowly, "are the salt of the earth, as they call it. 
 Where would we wild things be if it weren't for 
 them?" (It was like Willis, thought Cutman, to 
 include him, out of compliment, amongst the 'wild 
 things'.) "Every man of us who feels a kind of 
 rebel jumping inside him like a child on the way, 
 ought to go on his knees and thank the good God 
 for respectable folk. They are ... 'he 
 hesitated, searching for the word. "There's a word 
 I'm looking for, sir," he went on, "something that 
 goes round and round and keeps things steady, so 
 long as it doesn't stop I" 
 
 "Gyroscope?" queried Cutman. 
 
 The old man nodded. "That's the word, sir," he 
 said. "Respectable folk are the gyroscope for all 
 of us. You see," he added thoughtfully, as he 
 pressed down the tobacco in his pipe, "Lord Test- 
 leigh and I both rely on a policeman in the end. He 
 feels comfortable in the notion that he's looked 
 after, and I ... well, truthfully, sir, I'd not 
 get so much zip out of this, if I didn't know I might 
 get locked up I" 
 
 52
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 He paused, cocking his head sideways with a 
 movement quite startling in its resemblance to that 
 of an animal. Yet Charles had heard nothing. 
 
 "That's the keeper-fellow," he said, in a low 
 voice. "He's tracked me down this far 'tis a 
 brainier chap than I'd reckoned I" He stopped and 
 leant back against the bank, his ear almost touching 
 the ground. Some seconds elapsed in what seemed 
 to Cutman complete silence. Then the old man 
 raised his head and chuckled. "He's at fault," he 
 said, "he's gone away along. South, he's moving: 
 he'll never find the trail again now." 
 
 "I didn't hear a sound." Charles Cutman's voice 
 had a ring of astonishment in it, which was almost 
 childish. 
 
 "Ah, sir," returned the other, "you didn't have 
 to. You'll hear, no doubt, many sounds in your own 
 life which my ears would be deaf to. That's nature, 
 sir, don't you think?" 
 
 Charles nodded. "I daresay it is," he answered, 
 "and I daresay one hears a lot of sounds which 
 don't exist." 
 
 Willis rose and took up his stick. The note of 
 longing and self-persuasion in his companion's voice 
 had not escaped him. 
 
 "There comes a time in our lives, sir," he said, 
 "when lot's o' queer questions come up over things 
 we've lived with unheeding for years. There's two 
 ways of facing 'em, sir. You can stick 'em away 
 behind you and pretend you've forgotten 'em 
 
 53
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 that's one way. But it doesn't make it easier to 
 die a man's death at the end. Or you can answer 
 'em, sir. And that's kill or cure." 
 
 Charles looked at the old man, standing straight 
 and clean against the sky, and felt, all of a sudden, 
 a complete intimacy between the two of them. 
 
 "Well, Willis," he asked, "when your time came, 
 what did you do?" 
 
 The fisherman smiled ever So slightly. "I was a 
 coward, sir," he returned, "I've had to keep 'em 
 locked away ever since, an' persuade myself that 
 the keys got lost. But I'm thinking to myself I'll 
 find it under the pillow, the last time I take to my 
 bed!" 
 
 "Rot, Willis, you're ho coward. Why did'nt you 
 try the other way?" 
 
 "I was a fool, sir : I wouldn't gamble on a miracle 
 happening!" he started slowly down the hedgerow. 
 
 "He'd be a fool who would gamble on a miracle," 
 returned Cutman, sourly. "They don't happen." 
 
 The old man turned sharply. "Don't believe 
 that, sir," he said. "They do happen. They hap- 
 pen almost whenever you're in real need of 'em. 
 Yes, sir, real queer unearthly miracles I Wise men 
 know that, sir, but the fools don't find it out till 
 they are old and the time's gone past. I was a 
 fool!" 
 
 He took off his stained shapeless hat with a care- 
 less grace and was fifty yards down the hedge before 
 Cutman realized that he wanted very much to go 
 
 54
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 on talking. Then, as the fisherman took himself and 
 his personality round a bend and out of sight, the 
 barrister pulled himself together with a jerk. 
 Queer superstitions, these old chaps had! Really it 
 wouldn't have been very dignified to have been dis- 
 covered talking seriously to old Willis ! Confound 
 it! A little more and he might have been saying 
 things to a fisherman which . . . the mere 
 idea made Cutman feel quite hot and nervous at his 
 escape. He walked down towards the picnic party 
 again, bracing himself back into a state of healthy 
 heartiness. He found, on arrival, that everything 
 had been packed up and that he was generally sus- 
 pected of having absented himself in order to avoid 
 his share of the labour. Charles entered into this 
 joke, developed heavily by Peter Margett, with an 
 exaggerated heartiness which might have told any 
 keen observer that he found no mirth in it himself. 
 He was, as a matter of fact, pondering all the time 
 on the extraordinary freak of nature which always 
 made holiday-time the breeding ground for un- 
 pleasant and upsetting reflection. There was a good 
 deal to be said for having no time for anything; 
 though this again would come under Willis' defini- 
 tion of cowardice. And here was Emily defending 
 his supposed laziness by appealing on the ground 
 of his age a word she seemed to use as synony- 
 mous with 'infirmity'. Loxbury, with that infernally 
 cynical twist of the lips, which Cutman believed the 
 fool thought fascinating, was proposing to give up 
 
 55
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 his seat in the car and Emily was approving the 
 idea. Maddening! 
 
 "No I" he found himself shouting suddenly. "I'm 
 going to walk home I Why the devil not? I'm 
 going to walk home with Weare !" 
 
 "Of course, d'ear," said Emily, a little alarmed 
 at his outburst. "Of course, if you'd like to " 
 
 "At any rate," broke in the voice of Loxbury, 
 "he'll be walking back with a doctor 1" 
 
 Owen Weare smiled at him. 
 
 "You're disgracefully lazy, Loxbury," he said, 
 "and disgustingly selfish. One of these days you'll 
 get diabetes, I expect. But believe me, we couldn't 
 bear to see a picture like you out of its frame, and 
 your frame is wheels 1 As for Charles walking back 
 with a doctor, it's much more likely to be a case of 
 'physician, heal thyself than anything else." 
 
 Peter Margett burst into the conversation with 
 a rush. 
 
 "Loxbury fell in love with himself at the age of 
 twenty-two," he snapped, "and he's been faithful 
 ever since. Nobody knows why. It's one of those 
 inexplicable things, like somebody else's marriage." 
 
 "Dear me," said the Bachelor, "what an interest- 
 ing fellow I must be ! I wonder how long it will be 
 before the young people come back and give us leave 
 to start the return journey?" He turned to 
 Cutman. Ah, Charles," he went on, "you've missed 
 our interesting speculations about Harold and 
 Alison 1" 
 
 56
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 The soul of Charles surged within him. 
 
 "Ye Gods !" he said bitterly, "don't tell me you've 
 all been planning another marriage!" He could 
 have bitten the words out of his tongue before the 
 sentence was finished, but it was too late. He rose 
 and walked down to some gorse bushes under pre- 
 tence of lighting his pipe away from the wind. 
 
 Emily broke the silence. 
 
 "Cream!" she whispered loudly. "I saw him eat 
 two cut rounds ! It's amazing how soon cream 
 seems to curdle inside Charles !" 
 
 Cutman heard her and cursed softly. Owen 
 Weare was looking at him out of the corner of his 
 eye. Joan Margett rose briskly. 
 
 "Let's carry the baskets back to the car," she 
 said. 
 
 The three men went off with them, shepherded by 
 Emily, full of all manner of possible disasters to 
 jugs and cups. Joan and Loveday were left alone. 
 The latter was gazing over the bracken towards the 
 now hazing hills of North Devon. 
 
 "Can't you feel it, Joan?" she whispered. 
 
 "Like a cyclone coming up?" asked the other. 
 
 "Yes a cyclone that's been growing for years: 
 and, not only his !" Loveday Weare jerked a finger 
 toward's Cutman's back. 
 
 "Ours?" queried Joan. Her companion bent her 
 head as if to the storm which was not yet upon them. 
 
 "Men!" she murmured, half contemptuous, half 
 caressing. "Men ! So obstinately big and so need- 
 
 57
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 lessly strong ! And so . . so pitifully little I 
 And they say we don't know children because we 
 have not borne one 1" She laughed softly. "Well, 
 she added, "the storm's coming. Their hands will 
 be on the wheel and ours have got to be over them 
 . . . or else . . " 
 
 "Or else . . . ?" prompted Joan. .The 
 other shook her head. 
 
 "That vision's finished," came the quaint answer, 
 ad Loveday Weare relapsed into the silence which 
 to most, even of her intimates, wa$ the label of her 
 personality.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The car had started back before Alison and 
 Harold had returned. Emily Cutman, who, under 
 any other circumstances would have considered them 
 lost and in some imminent danger, now being con- 
 vinced that they were engaged in falling in love 
 with one another, apparently imagined that, in such 
 a case, Providence turned itself into a kind of super- 
 natural Cook and Son, who could be relied upon to 
 see that they reached their destination in safety. 
 At any rate, Emily allowed herself to be driven 
 back to Whyticombe quite happily, much to the 
 surprise of Charles who, on the non-appearance of 
 his son, fully expected that he would have to spend 
 half-an-hour persuading Emily that the theory of 
 chances was against Harold being dead. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the boy and girl, who 'dif- 
 fered keenly on every conceivable topic, had drifted 
 into an argument which had increased in bitterness 
 and invective, until all thoughts of time and place 
 had been forgotten. It appeared that Harold con- 
 sidered the limitation of families to be immoral. 
 Alison, whose method of arguing was the extremely 
 disconcerting one of firing off statistics like a Maxim 
 gun, had rained these intellectual shells upon what 
 she called his ".Waterloo vintage prejudice." 
 
 59
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Harold had found his own arguments vague and 
 illusory, though he remained convinced of his point 
 of view, and the result of this was, inevitably, that 
 he became very angry with Alison and she with him, 
 so that they had passed the south corner of Test- 
 leigh Woods and were striding steadily in the wrong 
 direction, some ten miles from home, before the 
 battle broke down from sheer exhaustion and 
 Harold discovered that they did not know in the 
 least where they were. 
 
 "Look here," he said suddenly, "we're lost!" 
 
 "We can go back the same way," answered the 
 girl. 
 
 "Can you find the woods?" 
 
 Alison swung round. 
 
 "Well, of course I can," she said, and stopped. 
 "How absurd," she went on, "surely you remember 
 where we turned off?" 
 
 Harold shook his head. 
 
 "I haven't the least idea," he returned. "Con- 
 found it I How awkward! And it will be getting 
 'dark soon." 
 
 Something in his tone told the girl that he was not 
 merely afraid of the added difficulty of finding the 
 way by night. 
 
 "Good Heavens, Harold I" she laughed. "You 
 don't mean to say that you're thinking of a scandal ! 
 How deliciously comic! Really, with your ideas 
 that everyone should have millions of babies, and 
 that the Church's benediction is necessary before 
 
 60
 
 two people can be alone in the dark, what will you 
 be like in twenty years' time! About 1921, I 
 suppose!" 
 
 "You're a little idiot, Alison," he returned easily, 
 "or you'd know that more harm has been done by 
 what people say than will ever be done by what 
 they do!" 
 
 "I doubt it," said the girl, pugnaciously, "but 
 there's no time to argue. I see I must get you home 
 before sunset or you'll be miserable." 
 
 "Funny," said Harold, with an affectation of ex- 
 treme weariness, "you've no idea how tiring you 
 up-to-date girls become. The strain of keeping up 
 your desperate characters is so painfully obvious." 
 
 "All right, Wyndham," came the answer, "if this 
 is your long speech of fatherly advice : you ought, of 
 course, to be doing it over my shoulder from the 
 back of a chair, but, never mind, I'm ready!" She 
 composed herself irritatingly, as if for a harangue, 
 folding her hands meekly, and looking up into 
 Harold's face with what was a very good imitation 
 of the stage ingenue's 'sweet and trustful' smile. 
 In spite of his annoyance, Harold found himself 
 admiring her eyes not strictly beautiful, of course 
 just grey eyes . . . but rather a nice 
 shape; awfully honest . . . fighting eyes. 
 Harold had known Alison nearly twenty years, but 
 he never remembered noticing the shape of her eyes. 
 Now there seemed something about her quite new. 
 In the few seconds during which he was looking 
 
 61
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 down at her mock-meekness, he tried to find out 
 what it was. No . . . not beautiful, not even 
 pretty well, what was it? He knew her character 
 well enough: 'independence' you could almost de- 
 scribe her in the one word. But what was it about 
 her face? She seemed all of a sudden so ... 
 so "clean"! There she stood, an absolute monu- 
 ment to fearless self-reliance, and yet Harold felt a 
 wave of amazing tenderness for her. How was this 
 athletic, statistic-primed young creature able to in- 
 spire such an emotion? . . . 
 
 "Don't be an ass, Alison," he said, almost plead- 
 ingly. "We can't stand here talking for ever!" 
 
 "Then let's go on!" said the girl. "This lane 
 must lead somewhere!" 
 
 That was like Alison, he thought, as tireless in 
 her optimism as she was in her body. Rather a 
 wonderful companion, really . . . 
 
 His mind became a turmoil of shadowy ideas, 
 exciting and frightening. He automatically began 
 some objections to taking this particular lane, 
 thinking he would cover in that way the amazing 
 whirlpool which had suddenly sprung into being 
 within him. 
 
 But he needn't have bothered. 
 
 She knew. She had seen that momentary startled 
 look in his eyes as he had looked down at her, a 
 fleeting expression which must have escaped anyone 
 save just her who had inspired it. So that, when 
 he had dropped his pitiful pretence at normality, 
 
 62
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 and was striding along beside her in a silence utterly 
 unlike anything which had happened between them 
 before, she too forbore to speak and indeed, looking 
 up now and again, and catching sight of the strong 
 chin tilted obstinately forward as if defying some 
 enemy, with the almost pathetically puzzled eyes, 
 contradicting this firm attitude from above, she too 
 felt a sudden tenderness towards the struggling 
 Laocoon. 
 
 As for Harold, he was now past the first stage 
 when he had tried to laugh these preposterously 
 disturbing thoughts out of his mind. He no longer 
 denied to himself that he wanted Alison for his 
 own. But . , . was this love? After twenty 
 years of comradeship to arrive like a tornado, in 
 twenty minutes ? What had they been talking about 
 to bring on such an attack? Daylight saving, he 
 remembered had been one of the subjects he had 
 been quite rude to her about that. And the limita- 
 tion of the birth-rate I He cast a side-glance at 
 Alison, but she was striding along vigorously, swish- 
 ing her walking stick along the hedgerow. Thank 
 God I he thought, she had no idea what was hap- 
 pening I Perhaps it wasn't quite real ... it 
 would pass. 
 
 His reflections came to a sudden end when the 
 lane, which had gradually become rougher and 
 rougher, turned in a hairpin bend and ended 
 abruptly in a grassy riding which appeared to be the 
 entrance to a wood. 
 
 63
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Alison stopped swinging her stick and looked 
 round her. "That's done it," she said softly. 
 
 "This is awful," murmured Harold. "Look 
 here," he went on, "we must go back the way we 
 came !" 
 
 "That's absurd," answered the girl, "we've 
 walked about four miles down this lane alone it'll 
 take us half the night to get back that way?" 
 
 "Then what do you propose to do?" 
 
 "Go on through the wood, of course. "I'm cer- 
 tain this is the right direction!" 
 
 Harold felt an unreasonable horror of entering 
 the wood. 
 
 "It's getting dark already," he said, feebly. 
 
 "That doesn't affect the question of the quickest 
 way home, silly," she smiled. 
 
 "But you don't know where this wood leads?" he 
 urged. 
 
 "No; but I think I do," she answered, and smiled 
 again for some inexplicable reason of her own. 
 
 "We do at least know something about the other 
 way," he put in, painfully aware that he was giving 
 ground rapidly. She turned suddenly upon him. 
 
 "Harold," she said, "you've no sense of adven- 
 ture : don't you know that sometimes it's miles best 
 to try the way you don't know?" 
 
 He laughed and turned away. 
 
 "Come on, then," he cried, with a reckless note in 
 his voice, "as you say, it must lead somewhere !" 
 
 "Of course it must," she answered softly.
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 But for all that, it did not lead anywhere for a 
 very long time, and after it was quite dark and they 
 could catch sight of a young moon playing shyly 
 about in the tree tops, they were still in what 
 appeared the thickest part of the wood. 
 
 Harold stopped suddenly. 
 
 "We must have come miles and miles," he said, 
 "aren't you tired?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "But, perhaps," she said, "we might sit down 
 and consider the position." 
 
 The roots of an aged tree offered a knobby couch 
 of moss, and upon this they sat, persuaded into 
 silence by the deep quiet of the woods. It was some 
 minutes later when Harold rose suddenly. 
 
 "Alison," he said, "I want to kiss you." 
 
 "I want you to kiss me, dear," she answered, and 
 stood up before him. 
 
 He seized her hands and pulled her towards him 
 roughly, but he saw that she was smiling to him. 
 
 "Oh, my God!" he cried, "and we have got to go 
 back and live in houses !" 
 
 She laughed and pushed back his head, running 
 her fingers through his hair. 
 
 "Dear Harold!" she said. "So modern we are, 
 and a wood and a moon bring us to this !" 
 
 "I must have loved you for ages," he said 
 foolishly, "and never known it!" 
 
 "I knew it, Harold," she whispered, "I've been 
 glad for ever so long!" 
 
 65
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 They walked on, silent, hand in hand. Suddenly 
 the boy stopped. 
 
 "But I don't want to tell anybody I" he cried. "I 
 want our love to be the most private thing in our 
 lives I I hate the idea of a wedding and cards, and 
 presents I Religion? I call it sacrilege I" 
 
 He broke off. 
 
 "I'm selfish," he added. "Perhaps that is only 
 a man's point of view." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "No," she answered, "I know what you mean: 
 it's pagan that part of it. I shall hate it too." 
 
 "But of course we must," he murmured, "we can't 
 upset our people." 
 
 "Of course not, dear," she returned. "It would 
 be a beastly thing to do." 
 
 Almost unconsciously she piled this new morality 
 upon the edifice which her upbringing had defined 
 as marriage. Something primitive, something 
 infinitely older than two thousand years, caught up 
 her very soul, stripped it, and presented it to the 
 man under the silver trees. She turned to him, con- 
 scious of a fluttering, delicious fear. Something he 
 must have read in her eyes, for he stepped back a 
 pace as if, in a picture gallery, he had come sud- 
 denly upon a masterpiece which he had not thought 
 to be there. 
 
 "I am yours, dear . . . yourg. Now and here 
 . . . and, God send, for ever . . . but, I want 
 
 66
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 you to know . . . now, and here * ... if you 
 want." 
 
 Was it Alison speaking? Alison Margett, the 
 little girl across the road, in Harold's Kindergar- 
 ten days, in Kensington? 
 
 His brain seemed to beat like a drum : every sen- 
 sitive fibre in his body blazed into life. Vaguely he 
 realized that his hands were gripping her shoulders, 
 as he heard her voice again. 
 
 "I want you to know," it insisted. "I love you. 
 I want to give everything I've got . . without 
 any qualifications. Do you understand?" 
 
 Breathless, he bent his head in answer. 
 
 "After to-night, dear," said the girl, "lots of 
 things will happen to make this less real . - . . 
 congratulations . . . presents . . . the day 
 we'll have to go to church. That's why I want you 
 to know " (her voice dropped to a whisper) 
 "you can have all I've got to give now . . . be- 
 fore . . . before it's really yours." 
 
 Something told him of a tremendous gift, thrust 
 before him. Something else, startling and unex- 
 pected as the double knock of a telegraph boy, was 
 warning him not to accept it. But he himself, 
 Harold Cutman, seemed a long way off ... a 
 shadowy, unimportant figure foolishly linked up 
 with other Cutmans. The man and the girl in the 
 wood were quite different. The entire world had 
 shrunk into a desert island; there were silver trees,
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 applauding silently, and everything was black and 
 white, making life amazingly simple. 
 
 "Wonderful girl," he said, and realized that his 
 voice was that of a stranger, a stranger he wanted 
 very much to know. 
 
 All of a sudden he felt her grow stiff to his touch. 
 
 "Somebody is coming," she said, then impulsively 
 kissed him. 
 
 "I'm glad this happened," she added quickly. "I 
 don't want us ever to forget it, or ever to talk of it." 
 
 Then she was gone from him, sitting again on 
 the moss where they had first rested. Every woman 
 but this, he reflected, would have wanted to forget. 
 But she was strong and he loved strength. His own 
 had called to hers; it was wonderful to have had 
 such an answer. Then, travelling like a comet 
 through space, he came to earth. Some one was 
 moving through the wood, not ten yards away. 
 Alison's voice reached him in matter-of-fact tones. 
 
 "We can ask the way, now," she was saying. 
 
 "Yes," he answered, and then, suddenly, catching 
 sight of the newcomer, "by George, it's old Willis!" 
 
 The fisherman was bringing his booty back to 
 Whyticombe by this circuitous route: he was not 
 quite satisfied that the keeper was altogether off 
 the trail. 
 
 "Look here, Willis," said Harold, "we haven't 
 the slightest idea where we are I" 
 
 The old man stopped, startled. Absorbed in his 
 own thoughts, he was meeting with the unusual ex- 
 
 68
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 perience of being seen before he saw. His keen 
 eyes rested upon them for a moment; Harold, tall 
 and strong, outlined against a patch of silvered oak, 
 Alison sitting at his feet with a little smile playing 
 about her lips. 
 
 "Oho!" said the fisherman, all of a sudden, "the 
 mackerel are in the bay ! Brave mackerel ! Flying 
 after little glittering sprats they are; chasing their 
 happiness right up to the shingle. Brave mackerel !" 
 
 His voice, like an actor's, took on a deeper tone. 
 
 "But they are running out the boats, my fine 
 adventurers I" he said. "They're hurrying down to 
 the water's edge! 'Ware nets, brave mackerel! 
 'Ware nets!" He broke off sharply with a sunny 
 smile. 
 
 "Excuse me, sir," he said, "I'm old and foolish, 
 but my eyes still serve me. I would like to be the 
 first to congratulate you both, and wish you all the 
 luck the round world holds and that's a deal for 
 lovers, miss!" 
 
 Harold, too astonished by the fisherman's powers 
 of perception to answer, stood staring. But Alison 
 smiled quite naturally at the old man and nodded. 
 
 "Thank you!" she said, adding with another 
 smile: "and we'll look out for the nets!" 
 
 "But how the devil did you know?" asked Harold. 
 
 Ted Willis shook his head. 
 
 "I can't tell you, sir," he answered. "I just know. 
 'Tis a miracle, perhaps for I believe in miracles, 
 sir," he added apologetically. 
 
 69 <
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Alison laughed. 
 
 "It's not necessary to believe in miracles to ex- 
 plain it," she said, "the fact is you're a very clever 
 fellow, Mr. Willis I" She rose, shaking the moss 
 off her skirts, and slipped an arm through Harold's. 
 
 The old man gave her a mock bow. 
 
 " 'Tis kind of you to say so, Miss," he returned, 
 "but if I am clever, it's because I believe in miracles. 
 On my word, miss, I think it takes a wise man to 
 do that." 
 
 She smiled again. 
 
 "We've made our own miracle," she said, stoutly, 
 and Harold held her arm closer. 
 
 The fisherman bowed again. 
 
 "The road to Whyticombe lies straight on," he 
 said, "and to the left when you leave the wood; 
 you can't miss that road, miss." 
 
 "Can I miss the other?" she laughed. "Doesn't 
 that lie straight on too?" 
 
 He blew a cloud of smoke from his lips. 
 
 "Indeed it does," he answered, "but it's a longer 
 tramp than Whyticombe and there's nothing so 
 tiring on a long tramp than a straight road all the 
 way." 
 
 The swish of leaves and the crack of twigs be- 
 came silent as the old man went on his way. 
 
 Harold sighed. 
 
 "I suppose," he said, "that we must go home." 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 70
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Your mother will think we arc dead," she 
 answered, as they started along the little path. 
 
 "I say," said Harold, possessed of a sudden shy- 
 ness, "do you think everybody will spot us, like old 
 Willis?" 
 
 "No," she said, 'we aren't very obvious: and I 
 don't think there is anyone else like Willis." 
 
 They walked on in silence for some time, then he 
 stopped. 
 
 "Alison," he said awkwardly, "I want to say 
 . . about what you said before Willis came, 
 you know ... I want to tell you ... I think 
 that's wonderful. I feel somehow in the end it's 
 going to make all the difference . . . that having 
 happened." 
 
 "Yes," she answered, "it makes our love inde- 
 pendent. I wanted you to know that. And now, 
 Harold," she added briskly, "I don't want ever to 
 talk about that again. There'll be no reason to 
 talk about it because it will always be there. Do 
 you understand?" 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I understand." 
 
 "What we've got to do now," she said, whipping 
 some fallen leaves with the crook of her stick, "is 
 to put up with being properly engaged, and listening 
 to coughs before doors are opened, and being kind 
 of pitied and envied at the same time, and all the 
 general discomforts of mating." 
 
 "It sounds like a Litany," laughed Harold. 
 
 "It is a sort of Litany," she returned. "Beastly: 
 
 71
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 but I suppose all Church services are a sort of pen- 
 ance for daring to be happy 1" 
 
 "Ah!" he said, "then you are happy?" 
 
 "So happy," she answered, "that I will put up 
 even with orange blossom and a wedding cake !" 
 
 They had come out of the wood and had turned 
 to the left up a steep lane. 
 
 "Shall we tell them to-night?" asked Harold, as 
 they caught sight of the lights of Whyticombe 
 below. 
 
 "We'll tell your mother to-night," said the girl 
 
 "No one else?" 
 
 "No," she returned, "we will tell her to-night, 
 and we will tell her that no one else is to know until 
 to-morrow!" 
 
 "But why, dear?" he asked. 
 
 "Because, Harold, to know that she is the only 
 one will give your mother the most ecstatic dreams 
 she has had for years. Well, won't it?" 
 
 "Dear old Mums, I believe it will," he said, and 
 then stopped. 
 
 "But, look here," he added, "what about your 
 mother." 
 
 Alison smiled. 
 
 "My mother," she said, "is rather a wonderful 
 person. She's almost exactly like me I" 
 
 The lane curved suddenly and the lights of cot- 
 tages appeared over the hedgerows. They had 
 reached the outskirts of Whyticombe. Harold 
 stopped and suddenly swung her round to him. 
 
 72
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "One more, dearest," he said, 'one more wood 
 kiss . . . we're not going to be allowed another 
 until we have learnt to forget the wedding !" 
 
 "Splendid man," she whispered, her lips to his. 
 
 "Splendid girl," he whispered back. His eyes 
 and hers were closed: his fingers played about her 
 face. That was their wooing. . . . 
 
 They were arguing about the limitation of the 
 birth-rate once more, as they walked down the main 
 street to the Hotel upon the front. By the light of 
 a chemist's window Alison patted her hair into order 
 again. They were greeted at the door with chaff 
 and relief and Harold, marvelling somewhat at 
 himself, accepted the offer of a game of billiards 
 with Loxbury before going to bed. 
 
 But Alison, on her way to her room, spent a few 
 minutes with Emily, who was in bed, but who sat 
 up suddenly at her news and held her hands and 
 cried a little, saying that she was very happy. And 
 fancy her being the first to know! And she won- 
 dered why Alison wasn't crying herself. But of 
 course "everyone was different", and "Good-night, 
 dear child good-night!" And she was so thank- 
 ful . . . and Harold had always been a good 
 son . . ." 
 
 Whereupon more tears, and Alison left her to 
 her ecstacy. 
 
 As Emily dropped off to sleep she murmured: 
 "Dear child, dear child , * So funny , C 
 
 73
 
 WHEBE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 she never cried once . . . ! But the modern 
 girl has no passion." 
 
 "What's that, dear?" asked Charles, appearing 
 from the dressing room in his pyjamas. 
 
 But Emily was determined to hug her twelve 
 hours' secret to herself. 
 
 "It's nothing, Charles, darling," she said, and 
 kissed him good-night more strenuously than she 
 had for years. 
 
 Charles noticed this and misinterpreted it. He 
 turned out the light and found her hand in the bed. 
 
 "You rotten cad," he murmured to himself. 
 "She's guessed something."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Everyone was delighted. The head waiter, a 
 pale yellow-looking man, whose wife had long ago 
 run away from his persistent cruelty, congratulated 
 the young couple, with real sentiment in his watery 
 grey eyes. When the news of the engagement 
 reached the kitchen, the cook, whose mother, a frail 
 old lady, had to all intents and purposes been killed 
 by the behaviour of her son-in-law, was so moved by 
 the romance having taken place "upon the very 
 doorstep", that she sent up to ask what special dish 
 she might devise for the " 'appy couple" on the first 
 night of their engagement. 
 
 Such is the magic of love. Loxbury decided upon 
 angels on horseback, and then, discovering that it 
 was August, fell back upon a buck rarebit with 
 Worcester sauce on the egg, a savoury of which he 
 was particularly fond after drinking champagne. 
 And he suspected that champagne would be drunk 
 upon so wonderful a day. 
 
 In the general emotion, no one noticed that it had 
 been the bachelor who decided upon the dish, 
 though, as a matter of fact, upon reflection later on, 
 this was found to be rather a pointer to the whole 
 situation. Indeed, it very soon appeared that 
 Romance, in the accepted bill-and-coo and "hush I 
 
 75
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 leave 'em alone" sense was completely absent in the 
 engagement of Harold and Alison. They seemed 
 neither excited nor embarrassed and, since there 
 could be no ulterior motive for marriage on either 
 side, this soon appeared to their elders a state of 
 of affairs, not only peculiar, but almost alarming. 
 
 "And what are we going to do this morning?" 
 asked Emily. She said it with a faint stress upon 
 the "we," indicating that the older people could not 
 now expect the company of the young. "We are 
 going on the beach, as usual," said Alison firmly. 
 "We don't want any nonsense, dear, Harold and 1 1" 
 
 Joan Margett suddenly made one of her quick 
 curious gestures; as if she was pushing something 
 away with her hands. "No nonsense," she echoed, 
 and then quaintly, "Queer children ! I wonder what 
 they're going to live on !" 
 
 It happened that Alison's estimate of her mother 1 
 was not altogether accurate. As for Emily, she 
 wished to write letters; she took a pleasure in in- 
 forming every possible relation of the engagement, 
 almost as if, in its achievement, she had done some- 
 thing rather wonderful herself. The men had gone 
 to the golf links, Harold with them. Though he 
 was as firm as Alison in his detestation of the bill- 
 and-coo atmosphere, he would nevertheless have 
 preferred a morning on the beach with her. But she 
 had said, "You need the exercise, Harold I" firmly, 
 and with a note of possession in her voice which had'
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 given him a curious feeling of importance. So he 
 had gone. 
 
 Loveday and Joan sat by the water's edge, watch- 
 ing Alison swimming about the diving-board some 
 fifty yards out. She swam strongly, seeming about 
 to treat the sea with disdain, throwing up her head 
 now and again, to fling the water from her hair. 
 
 "I begged Alison for years to wear a bathing 
 cap," said her mother. "I know the salt makes 
 the hair brittle, but she won't. She says it is im- 
 possible that there should be anything unhealthy in 
 nature." 
 
 "I think," said Loveday, "that Alison has a sort 
 of passion for strength." 
 
 The other nodded. "Yes," she returned, "Peter 
 is like that. He cannot understand bad work. I 
 mean in his business you know. Yet any number of 
 people write badly, with their whole souls." 
 
 "Of course they do!" said Loveday, "One can 
 suffer every bit as much, just because one doesn't 
 know it's bad." 
 
 "But he can't stand it." 
 
 "Peter?" 
 
 "Yes. I've seen him angry with a manuscript, 
 just as if it was a person." "An inefficient person." 
 Joan took up her knitting. "Yes, and yet it isn't 
 that he has no sympathy. If the man who wrote it 
 was starving he'd give him anything. Only he 
 just doesn't understand weakness. I think Alison 
 hag that in her nature, too." 
 
 77
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Loveday Weare broke a long silence with a little 
 laugh. "Oh," she said, "all the keys to Life's strong 
 boxes are hidden from us. I would have loved to 
 have seen their wooing!" 
 
 Her companion laughed too. "What queer old- 
 fashioned words you use, Loveday," she said. "I 
 wonder how many people use the word 'wooing' in 
 their lives I" 
 
 "Well," returned Loveday, "I've an old- 
 fashioned name and, perhaps, I use odd words be- 
 cause I use so very few." 
 
 "Ah, then," said the other, almost to herself. 
 "You do do it on purpose after all!" 
 
 "Do what, Joan?" 
 
 "Hold your tongue." 
 
 The other hesitated for a moment before answer- 
 ing. An expression, almost of fear, had crept into 
 her eyes. But, apparently she fought it back, for 
 the two aquamarines grew cold again, and her 
 voice was quite level. "Yes. I found I had to when 
 I was quite a girl.'* 
 
 "Why, dear?" Joan Margett laid down her 
 work and looked at her friend intently. Loveday 
 was, and had been for years, a kind of accepted 
 mystery. Was she now to be let into the secret? 
 "Oh, I don't know," rejoined Loveday lightly. 
 "Perhaps I discovered that almost everything I said 
 seemed to upset people, and I didn't know why. I 
 can't believe it's right to upset people without know- 
 ing the reason." 
 
 78
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Joan took her hand suddenly. "You're wonder- 
 fully level-headed and wise, Loveday," she said, "I 
 wish you'd had a child." "I think I'd have been 
 afraid to tell it things. I hate responsibility." She 
 paused. "Owen wanted one ... I don't think 
 he knew why . . . but he did want one. He has 
 been awfully kind about it." She smiled queerly, 
 crookedly. "I think," said Joan, 'that Dr. Weare 
 is one of the kindest and most understanding men 
 I know." 
 
 Loveday nodded, but her hands, clasped round 
 her knee, tightened. Her eyes grew suddenly steel- 
 blue, and she seemed to be looking away beyond 
 the horizon, into something even more eternal. 
 Joan, quick to perceive, saw the change in her friend, 
 though, so slight were the signs, that few would 
 have noticed it. "I think," Loveday was saying, in 
 a whisper, "I think that Owen rather enjoys being 
 kind about it." 
 
 So there were unsounded depths, Joan thought, 
 even in bluff Owen Weare; well, she might have 
 known it. There are few things so deceptive as the 
 happiness of other people. Loveday suddenly 
 stretched out her arms like a sleeper slipping back 
 to rest, after a bad dream. She lay down again 
 on the pebbles and Joan realized that she was not 
 meant to have heard that whisper. 
 
 "Here comes Alison," she said, "she's back in 
 her depth, and is walking out. Not a bit like 
 Venus rising from the sea!" she added, laughing. 
 
 79
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "She doesn't mind about that," returned the other. 
 Joan sighed. "Well," she murmured, "if you are 
 not a great beauty, I suppose it's best not to care." 
 
 Loveday Weare watched the girl coming out of 
 the sea, unembarrassed, triumphantly mistress of 
 herself. "I wonder," she said, "whether it's best 
 not to care." Alison flung herself down beside 
 them, her dark blue bathing tights glistening in the 
 sun. "Really Alison," said her mother, "you throw 
 yourself down on the stones just as if you were a 
 sack of flour!" Alison laughed. "That's alright, 
 mother," she answered, "I don't get hurt." Love- 
 day Weare smiled to her. "It's a wonderful 
 thing being engaged," she said, "it's really a 
 moment to snatch at, and and pigeon-hole. Like 
 seeing mountains for the first time or realising 
 what St. Paul's would look like if Ludgate Hill was 
 just a green hill far away. All those feelings ought 
 to be pigeon-holed, don't you think?" Alison drew 
 over her shoulders a dressing-gown of blue towel- 
 ling. "Why?" she asked. "For the same reason," 
 said the other, "as everything else is pigeon-holed; 
 for reference." The girl smiled. "That's horribly 
 cryptic, Mrs. Weare," she said, "But you know, I 
 doubt whether one's elders ever give one credit for 
 learning from their mistakes, and of course one's 
 parents are never allowed to make any. That must 
 be one of the hardest things about having children, 
 don't you think?" 
 
 She moved up the beach towards her tent, and 
 
 80
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 her mother, from following her with her eyes, 
 turned to Loveday. "Now what do you imagine 
 she meant by that?" asked Mrs. Margett. "After 
 all," returned the other slowly, "you and I felt 
 the cyclone coming up, didn't we?" Joan nodded, 
 a little breathless. "At the picnic," she murmured. 
 "The cyclone that's been growing for years; you 
 called it." "Well," said Loveday, "why shouldn't 
 Alison have felt it, too?" 
 
 The idea shocked the mother; revolted her like 
 a monstrosity. "But children," she cried, "children 
 can't range so far!" She flung her arms out again, 
 with a gesture full of horror. Loveday was laugh- 
 ing softly to herself. "Children!" she purred. 
 "Children! It's not a word Joan that means the 
 same as daughter or son. Some babies are never 
 children!" The other leant across to her. "Ah," 
 she said, "but you don't know, Loveday . . . they 
 cling to you . . . they explore your body with 
 their mouths . . . you are everything, their life, 
 their food, their whole wealth; oh yes, they are all 
 children once." 
 
 "I've not seen that," answered Loveday, "I've 
 only known them when they are grown up. Still, I 
 can understand that it is difficult to realize that your 
 child knows more than you do." "But, Loveday, 
 it's a horrible ... a tormenting idea, that 
 Alison should think . , . think ..." she broke 
 off, deeply moved. "Dear Joan," said her com- 
 panion, "I suppose it is. But " she stopped sud- 
 
 81
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 denly. "I don't believe," began the other in a low 
 voice, "I don't believe even Peter knows." 
 
 Loveday rose suddenly. "Uh," she said sud- 
 denly, "we are operating on ourselves. We don't 
 want to show each other our insides. We shall only 
 lose faith. It's my fault. I'm sorry." She walked 
 down to the water's edge, and threw in a stone, 
 watching the ripples circling further and further 
 away until they were lost. 
 
 Joan Margett turned suddenly, and looked away 
 across the curve of beach to the green of the cliff, 
 which rolled up on the other side of the little bay. 
 She could see, just above the thick woods at its base, 
 that little patch of darker green, the pit, which, as 
 she gathered from Peter, "was the deuce of a place 
 to get out of." Somewhere or other up there, was 
 Peter himself, intent upon hitting a ball. "Oh, 
 Peter . . . dear kind prejudiced old Peter, 
 (her mind slipped back through years, and told her 
 that he was dear and kind . . . ) Peter could 
 know nothing of this. Indeed, was there anything 
 to know? . . . Oh, was there ?" 
 
 Turning, she saw again, the figure at the water's 
 edge. Loveday was still throwing stones. 
 
 She remembered how, at the picnic, this strange 
 woman had seen the coming of the cyclone; sensed 
 it, apparently, in the sulky mood of Charles Cutman. 
 
 "The storm is coming," she had said, and Joan 
 remembered that she had understood at once, what 
 was meant. Yet how could she have understood, 
 
 82
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 unless . . . unless . . . ? Desperately, as 
 a hunted beast, she looked back, and around her, 
 seeking cover, digging out every instance she could 
 call to mind of Peter's kindness, Peter's understand- 
 ing. "It's a wonderful thing being engaged; a 
 moment to snatch at." That was what Loveday 
 had said. "But it isn't all gone," she almost cried 
 the words aloud. "Oh it isn't all gone !" Most of 
 all, beating like an insistent pain in her mind, was 
 the idea that her child could know nothing of these 
 possibilities. In the big world, perhaps, but in her 
 mother's own private world it seemed indecent. 
 
 And Alison, she reflected, with a sad little smile 
 quivering on her lips Alison was just the girl to 
 guess at a thing like that. She had not been a baby 
 for very long. Suddenly she braced herself, taking 
 a quick resolution. She walked down the beach and 
 took Mrs. Weare by the arm. "Loveday," she 
 said firmly, "I want to forget what we have been 
 saying. These things are only half-true less than 
 half. We'd realize that soon enough, if one of 
 them was brought back to us dead!" She waved 
 her hand towards the links. "We're simply breed- 
 ing horrible ideas by talking that kind of heresy! 
 So I've forgotten!" Loveday nodded slowly. 
 "Very well, Joan," she said, "That's certainly one 
 of the ways of dealing with it. It's the same idea, 
 I suppose, that makes it bad form to say 'Hell' in 
 public." "It isn't that at all," answered her friend, 
 "it is that I really and sincerely believe there's 
 
 83
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 nothing there at all. Only if you talk enough about 
 anything . . ." her voice trailed off. 
 
 "Alright, dear," said the other. Her thin lips 
 closed tightly; her habitual expression. But Joan 
 Margett was much too observant a woman to miss 
 the sign. 
 
 "No, no, Loveday," she said. "I won't have 
 that. You have shut yourself away again! You 
 think you've said something to upset me. I know 
 the feeling welll But I'm not a bit upset. It's 
 simply . . . simply that I haven't got a sad 
 nature!" "I'm so glad," said Loveday, "I'd like 
 to be gay, too, but I never have been. Something 
 always seems to be pulling me back. It's queer, isn't 
 it?" "I don't understand," said Joan. "Nor I ; one 
 has to put up with oneself I" She broke off, as the 
 red sail of a fishing boat crept out from behind the 
 cliff. Alison had come up behind them. "That's 
 old Willis' boat," she said, "Harold's going fishing 
 with him this afternoon." "Good Heavens, Alison," 
 said Mrs. Weare, "how on earth can you tell? 
 What good eyes you've got!" Alison laughed. 
 "I can read her name," she said, "Yes, I think I can 
 see pretty well." "Alison," said her mother, "you 
 said that in a thoroughly smug and horrible wayl" 
 "Did I ?" answered the girl, "I didn't mean to. But 
 one feels so offensively fit, just after a bath." She 
 took a rock cake out of a paper bag, and bit it. "I'm 
 going fishing, too," she said. "Oh, well, dear," 
 laughed her mother, "everyone to his taste! Per-
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 sonally I simply can't stand bait. Your father used 
 to take me fishing here, when you were a toddler. 
 He said everyone ought to learn to stand bait. But 
 he gave it up in the end, and I used to watch from 
 the beach." "Why did he give it up?" asked the 
 girl. 
 
 Loveday looked at her quickly. What a typical 
 question for Alison to ask? "Oh, he found I was a 
 nuisance in the boat. I simply couldn't learn not 
 to tuck my skirts round my feet when the fish came 
 over the side, and one day," she chuckled at the 
 remembrance of it "One day Peter caught a 
 conger, and got all mixed up in it and the fisher- 
 man went to help him, and got a hook in his thumb, 
 and they kept shouting to me to do things which I 
 didn't understand, but I tried and pulled some- 
 thing, and then a lot of water came into the boat, 
 and we were all soaked! And it revived the eel a 
 bit too, I'm afraid. Anyway, both the men forgot 
 there was a lady in the boat, and although I was 
 so wet and uncomfortable I did enjoy listening to 
 them. It was really vivid . . . vivid like colour, 
 I mean like a picture full of movement, done in reds 
 and orange !" 
 
 She laughed again merrily. "Your father was 
 fearfully upset about it afterwards. He seemed 
 to think he had behaved very badly." Alison 
 laughed too. 
 
 "Did he want to buy you something?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes, he did. I forget what it was; but some-
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 thing horribly extravagant." She broke off sud- 
 denly. "But how on earth did you guess that, 
 Alison?" she said. 
 
 "I don't know. When men have behaved badly, 
 I thought they always wanted to buy vou some- 
 thing." 
 
 "Oh, well," sighed Mrs. Margett, "Yes; I dare- 
 Say it's their usual idea. Anyway, I was never asked 
 to go fishing again." 
 
 Somehow, Alison's remark seemed to have taken 
 the gaiety out of her. "I must get back," said her 
 daughter, "I promised to meet Harold at the bot- 
 tom of the lane, and walk to the hotel with him." 
 
 "We'll all go back," said Loveday, "It's too hot 
 under this cliff at midday. It makes me feel limp 
 all the afternoon." 
 
 By the time they arrived at the end of the asphalt 
 Ted Willis had beached his boat, and was coming 
 up the shingle, a string of fish in his hand. Alison 
 ran down to meet him. "What time do we start 
 this afternoon?" she asked. 
 
 "A quarter past two, Miss," answered the old 
 man. 
 
 "There are plenty of fish in the bay, and it'll be a 
 fine afternoon; thought I'd bring a wrap, Miss. It 
 turns cold on the water a bit early." He saluted the 
 two elder women, and disappeared up the street. 
 
 "Do you ever feel instinctively that you can lean 
 on some people?" asked Loveday. "I feel that 
 about old Willis!" 
 
 86
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Why on earth should you want to lean on poor 
 old Willis, Mrs. Weare?" laughed Alison. Love- 
 day laughed too. "I didn't say I wanted to," she 
 answered, "Besides, he wouldn't let me. He has far 
 too much dignity!" 
 
 Alison left them at the hotel, and walked along 
 the station road, and over the bridge which spans 
 the mouth of the river, and which is surprisingly 
 imposing to look upon, for so small a town. Harold 
 was just coming out of the steep, hedge-shadowed 
 lane which led up to the club-house. 
 
 "Father and the others are having lunch up 
 there," he said. "They are going to play this after- 
 noon." He kissed her. 
 
 "It's awfully sweet of you to walk out all this 
 way to me," he said. 
 
 They leaned over the bridge, and watched fat 
 mullet nosing lazily about on the mud. "I used to 
 fish here when I was a kid," said Harold. "Leant 
 over this bridge for hours with a worm on a hook, 
 getting no end of thrills. And no-one's ever caught 
 one of these beggars here at all ! But I didn't know, 
 so the sport was just as good I They get a few of 
 them at the mouth, I believe." 
 
 "Quaint, isn't it?" said the girl. "I remember 
 you here, in a jersey and knickers, with a tobacco 
 tin full of bait, always on the point of being knocked 
 into the river. And here we are . . ." She 
 stopped speaking as his hand caught hers. "It is 
 quaint, dear," he said. "It makes Time so vivid 
 
 87
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 to one, eh? . . . always going on and on, I 
 mean. I wish we could stop it for a bitl" She did 
 not take his hand from hers, but she looked away, 
 then quickly challenged his eyes with hers. 
 
 "Harold," she said, "I'm not very romantic, I'm 
 afraid. I hope you don't mind?" 
 
 He shook his head. "Good Lord, Alison," he 
 began, but she cut him short. 
 
 "I'm tremendously fond of you, Harold. I love 
 the idea of us dealing with Life together. But 
 . . . I'd like you to know, that I don't expect to be 
 worshipped, or stuck on a pedestal, or anything. I 
 think people do that almost automatically when they 
 get engaged. I'm not even sure they don't feel that 
 it's expected of them, though they don't realize 
 that, of course. Only, what I mean is, that after- 
 wards, when they are quite used to one another, 
 that horrible old ideal and angel business has to be 
 kept up, because neither of them can bear to tell 
 the other that, of course, it's all rot really, and that 
 they are just good friends. All that soppiness, I 
 daresay, is an awfully amusing game for people who 
 like it; like titivating your emotions, by reading 
 costume novels. But it sets up an unreal standard, 
 and leads, I am sure, to any number of people's 
 misunderstandings, and smash-ups. I want ours to 
 be a commonsense marriage, Harold. I want us to 
 be one of the very few couples who see the thing 
 clear, just like any other undertaking. It doesn't 
 weaken love a bit, because you refuse to call it a
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 holy mystery. My idea is, it strengthens it and 
 makes it real. I don't want us to have any bright- 
 coloured ideal, getting more and more faded all the 
 time, and getting surreptitiously touched up by you 
 or me, by well by hanging over a bridge like this 
 and trying to raise a soppy tear by remembering that 
 we were kids here! I say," she broke off, "I've 
 talked an awful lot without stopping but I did 
 want you to know my idea. Do you agree?" Some 
 moments passed, as he watched a large fish nosing 
 its way up stream. 
 
 "Yes, I agree," he answered, "That is the sen- 
 sible way to look at it." 
 
 And, remembering the wood, he took comfort. 
 This was Alison, dealing with the world at large: 
 the wood was their very own: it would always be 
 their very own, even if Kensington followed. She 
 was right, of course, to show this practical face to 
 the world. Any other road lay the inevitable and 
 painful shattering of the absurd love ideal . . . 
 the pedestal and the angel. Always the wood re- 
 mained their very own. 
 
 "And then, you see," went on Alison, "we will 
 have gone straight at it, with no nonsense, and if 
 ever we should begin to feel . . . dangerous 
 . . . as if we saw each other differently, then we'd 
 not hide it, would we? We'd just face that too 
 . . . and tell each other. Because there'd be 
 nothing to weaken us I" 
 
 In very truth indeed, she had a passion for
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 strength ! He looked at her frank questioning face, 
 and loved her all the more for her desire to take 
 on Life with her naked hands. 
 
 "My darling," he began, then stopped. "Of 
 course we would tell: it's the only reasonable way." 
 And though he was fully persuaded that this was 
 indeed the only reasonable outlook, yet he was a 
 little puzzled. 
 
 For this outburst of fearlessness on Alison's part, 
 this absolute picture of strength, had made him 
 even more tender towards her than ever, with pre- 
 cisely that protective feeling, which had come over 
 him in the wood. t 
 
 And this was curious, for, as all the world knows, 
 it is only weakness that calls for tenderness and 
 protection. 
 
 90
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Alison and Harold caught a large number of 
 mackerel that afternoon. She baited the lines and 
 as fast as he drew one in she would have another 
 ready for him. As an exhibition of team work it 
 reached the highest point of efficiency. Ted Willis 
 watched them, through the clouds of smoke which 
 went up from a pipe almost as weather-beaten as 
 himself, while he kept the boat following the school 
 slowly and unerringly. But they tired at last, for 
 mackerel fishing is not great sport, and while Harold 
 strung the catch, Alison rewound the lines with the 
 dexterity of an expert. 
 
 "Pretty good, Willis, eh?" 
 
 Harold regarded his fish with satisfaction. 
 
 "First class," answered the old man. "I couldn't 
 haul 'em in quicker myself: but then my partner 
 he's a bit of a fool, I'm afraid, sirl" 
 
 Alison laughed. 
 
 "Partner!" she said, putting down the neatly 
 rolled lines. "That's just the one thing I would 
 have wished you to call me, Willis! A partner is 
 the one who looks out for snags, isn't he, and heads 
 away from them?" 
 
 "That's right, miss." 
 
 Harold lighted a cigarette. 
 
 91
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Funny," he said, "you're having known us, 
 Willis, almost as long as we've known ourselves!" 
 
 "Years longer, Mr. Cutman," answered the old 
 man. "Years longer. You only began to know 
 each other yesterday, if you'll excuse my saying so." 
 
 "You mean," corrected Alison, "that we only 
 made up our minds that we knew each other yes- 
 terday." 
 
 The fisherman smiled curiously over the water. 
 
 "Maybe," he said, "that is what I mean, miss, 
 and maybe it's not." 
 
 He headed the boat for the shore and the sun 
 lanced the red sail gaily with little shafts of orange. 
 Ted Willis nodded his appreciation of the picture, 
 to himself. He delighted in these sudden little 
 artistries of coquetting nature. 
 
 "When is the regatta ?" asked Alison. 
 
 "Middle of next week, miss," he answered. "But 
 if you ask me the date, I can't tell you. Figures 
 never did mean anything to me." 
 
 "I think," laughed Harold, "I shall enter for the 
 greasy pole I've never won a side of bacon in my 
 life." 
 
 "You certainly won't, Harold," returned Alison. 
 "I think I would stand anything in the world rather 
 than the sight of you making yourself ridiculous !" 
 
 Ted Willis looked up suddenly. He had caught a 
 ring in the girl's voice out of key with the con- 
 versation. He realized, to his astonishment, that 
 
 92
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 she had been quite serious. He knocked his pipe 
 out over the side of the boat thoughtfully. 
 
 "Strong," he mused, yes, she was strong all right, 
 this girl. But not strong enough to hear her man 
 laughed at on a greasy pole. But, he reflected, 
 perhaps that was rather herculean . . . 
 
 Now, Emily had walked up to the links and was 
 having tea with Charles and Peter Margett on the 
 little veranda outside the club-house. Loxbury and 
 the doctor were out on the course, gravely intent 
 upon defeating one another. 
 
 Emily was of course talking of the great subject. 
 
 "It's an occasion," she said, "for great joy and 
 happiness, I know it is! I've been writing to the 
 relations and friends all the morning and telling 
 them how happy and pleased I ami But all the 
 time, one can't help feeling how sad it all is, can 
 one? Well, of course," she rattled on, "I don't 
 know about men. They think so few things sad, 
 don't they? I remember when poor Parkin lost his 
 cousin in that railway accident in the north was it 
 Wales, Charles? there was a fire, at any rate 
 Parkin's cousin was travelling first with a third-class 
 ticket while if he had been in his right class, he'd 
 probably be alive to-day. And, do you remember, 
 Charles, that wretched Eliza, the one, you know, 
 who pressed your dinner jacket with a crease down 
 the back and had to go she kept on saying it was 
 a judgment ; I was quite irritated ; the idea of death 
 
 93
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 being the wages of travelling first without the right 
 ticket! Still, I suppose it is sin, however you look 
 at it. But Parkin's cousin might have meant to pay 
 the difference. I told Parkin he must always try 
 to feel that. And you might have thought he'd have 
 been upset. I told him he needn't wait at dinner. 
 No. I'm wrong. It was Charles. We thought it 
 came better from Charles. However, it turned out 
 that he really didn't much care: he just took his 
 Thursday evening, as usual, and then I heard he'd 
 been to the Coliseum 1 That's what I mean about 
 things being sad to men! I mean, not being sad, 
 you know." 
 
 "But, my dear Emily," began Charles, "there's no 
 analogy between getting married and getting killed 
 in a railway accident." 
 
 "No, no, dear," she answered. "Of course not; 
 but the principle is the same." 
 
 "What principle ?" asked Margett, floundering in 
 hopeless fog. 
 
 Emily turned to him seriously. 
 
 "Well," she said slowly, "of course, I daresay 
 that's a bad example. You see, being two, or I 
 believe three times removed, I daresay Parkin might 
 not feel so much about his cousin " 
 
 "Oh," said Cutman, wearily, "not Parkin's 
 cousin again, Emily! Whatever can the poor fel- 
 low have to do with it?" 
 
 Emily sat back, a little aggrieved. 
 
 94
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Well, dear," she said, "I was only trying to 
 explain and make it quite clear how I felt." 
 
 Her husband laughed shortly. 
 
 "All I can say, then, is that your feelings must 
 be extraordinarily intricate, eh, Margett?" 
 
 Emily smiled, good-natured as ever. 
 
 "I daresay that what I said wasn't strictly 
 logical," she said, "but then I was never taught 
 logic. She broke off and with a half-turn, looked 
 away over the tops of the trees at the shimmering 
 sea. "All the same, you do lose them!" she mut- 
 tered. 
 
 So that was what Emily felt about it. Just those 
 seven words. 
 
 "You only lose that part of them which you never 
 had, Mrs. Cutman," said Margett. 
 
 She turned swiftly back. 
 
 "Oh, no," she answered. "You had them all, 
 once; all I" 
 
 Charles shook his head. 
 
 "I don't think so, Emily," he said. "Almost the 
 moment they can talk, that other part begins to 
 grow . . . the part you never knew at all." 
 
 Margett nodded. 
 
 "Personality," he jerked. "You can't own it. 
 
 . . . can't even mother it: why, you can't even 
 
 know all of a dog. The world's too big an idea. 
 
 You can't hold down even a tiny bit of it all for 
 
 yourself." 
 
 95
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "You ought not to want to," said Charles sturdily. 
 "It's infernally selfish." 
 
 Emily sighed. 
 
 "Men don't have to fight so hard against it," she 
 murmured. 
 
 "Popular fallacy," snapped Margett, always on 
 the alert for the rights of man. "Popular fallacy, 
 believe me, Mrs. Cutman. You don't think I like 
 the idea of Alison's future being in another man's 
 care, do you?" 
 
 Unexpectedly Emily gave vent to a full, happy 
 laugh. 
 
 "Oh, oh I" she beamed at the astonished Peter, 
 her whole face creasing up into a network of kindly 
 lines "Oh, you amazing men! You're always 
 writing about the future and thinking in the past! 
 There's nothing so old-fashioned as a decent man!" 
 
 Suddenly, with her bird-like quick turn, and with 
 a total change of expression, she turned to Charles. 
 
 "Isn't that an epigram?" she asked, with a note 
 of awe in her voice. "I believe it is. Anyway, it 
 would be if Loveday had said it. But of course, 
 I'm not clever, so it can't be. Still, really!" she 
 beamed again on Margett. "Do you remember 
 your Aunt Alice, Charles?" she went on, apparently 
 as inconsequent as ever, "well, I suppose you don't. 
 Aunts always get forgotten, somehow, like the 
 things you put at the bottom of the shopping list, 
 though I don't believe people have shopping lists 
 now a great mistake, I think, because you could
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 cross the things out which weren't so important; 
 and that saved money. That's what I mean about 
 Aunts. They get crossed out ! 
 
 "Emily," interjected Charles sternly, "what are 
 you trying to say?" 
 
 "Oh, about Aunt Alice I Why, she said that to 
 me?" 
 
 "Said what?" Peter Margett was trying hard to 
 account for Emily's amazing laughter. 
 
 "She said my future was in the care of my hus- 
 band." 
 
 "Well, wasn't it?" asked Charles, a little stiffly. 
 
 "Of course, dear," she answered, "but you don't 
 imagine the present day girl looks at it like that, 
 do you? Terribly wrong of her, I expect. Only 
 she doesn't: I'm sure she doesn't. In a way," she 
 added, "that makes it all the sadder." 
 
 And after this quite unexpected burst of insight 
 into modernity, to which, truth to tell, Emily had 
 given birth from a store of observation of which 
 she herself was practically unaware, she relapsed 
 into silence, back again at her original starting 
 point the idea of losing her son. 
 
 Both the men were taken by surprise. Margett, 
 however, from sheer protective instinct and nothing 
 else, remarked that "he didn't agree with her," and 
 that "generalizations of that kind could only be 
 proved by statistics," a remark which quite unfairly 
 and equally naturally defeated Emily altogether and 
 left her under the impression that she had made a 
 
 97
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 fool of herself : poor Emily was always pathetically 
 unkind to her own convictions. She planted them in 
 the firing line, then scuttled back to the base as fast 
 as she could go without leaving any supports in the 
 rear. 
 
 Now, at the first sign of the enemies' counter- 
 offensive, without reconnoitering to discover 
 whether it was only a bluff or an attack in force, 
 she rose quickly and said that she must be getting 
 home. 
 
 "Very well, Emily," said her husband. "I will 
 take you down to the gate." 
 
 "You're not going to play again this evening?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "There was some idea of a foursome," he 
 answered. 
 
 "Oh, Charlie, dear," she said, "is it wise? I 
 mean, one oughtn't to overdo it ! You aren't a boy 
 really, dear," she added, taking his arm affection- 
 ately, "though of course you will always be to me !" 
 
 The reference to his middle age irritated Cutman, 
 as indeed, inexplicably, did the little gesture of 
 affection. 
 
 Peter Margett came to the rescue. 
 
 "We used to be boys all the year round," he said. 
 "Now we're boys for four weeks only. That 
 doesn't do us any harm: on the contrary!" 
 
 Charles felt grateful that his friend had not been 
 embarrassed had identified himself with the scene. 
 Peter, he thought, was a sympathetic chap . . .
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 capable of being a really big friend. He disap- 
 peared with Emily along the stony path which led 
 to the gate half way down the lane. 
 
 The Editor seated himself again at the little 
 round table, a slight frown accentuating the V-- 
 shaped mark between his eyebrows. Two members 
 of the club, slight acquaintances, came out on their 
 way home. 
 
 "Good evening, Margett!" said one. "You're 
 the last left up here this evening!" 
 
 The editor looked up suddenly, jerking his mind 
 back to the commonplace. "I'm waiting for some 
 chaps to come in," he said. "We are going to play 
 a few holes of foursome, if the light holds." 
 
 "Phew!" said the other, "after to-day's heat! 
 I've played one round and I'm whacked !" 
 
 "Well, so long, Margett," came from the other 
 man, a lean, brown individual with over-emphasized 
 breeches, "if you're determined to kill yourself, 
 you've chosen the right moment! No witnesses! 
 You'll have the whole links as a private mortuary 
 till to-morrow !" 
 
 They both laughed and disappeared down the 
 lane. 
 
 Charles came slowly round the corner of the club- 
 house. He seemed somehow to be walking like an 
 old man. There was something grim about the 
 downward twist of his lips, a suspicion of queer- 
 ness in the brooding of his eyes. "Queerness" was 
 the word which Peter, seeing him, suddenly visual- 
 
 99
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 ized in his brain. He jumped up quickly from his 
 seat. Something was the matter with Charles. He 
 was sure of it. Something had happened. Some 
 thread, tight-drawn for a long time, had snapped. 
 So strong was the impression of disaster upon 
 Margett that he lost even that keen sense of 
 diplomacy which had served him so well in his 
 business. 
 
 "Charles," he said, sharply, "what's the matter?" 
 
 Cutman pulled himself together. Bound up in 
 his own thoughts, he had not realized that he was 
 back again with his friend. 
 
 "Matter?" he said, "nothing's the matter!" But 
 even he himself realized and almost blushed at the 
 insincerity of his tone. 
 
 "No, no; it's nothing!" he muttered wildly, and 
 understood at once that he had made matters worse. 
 
 He saw the editor looking at him keenly, 
 curiously. He had known old Peter so long . . . 
 Of course, Peter could see there was something 
 wrong. Something bigger than himself was beating 
 down the barrier of conventional loyalty. He could 
 no longer keep this thing private ! He could not! 
 
 His hands shot suddenly out in a gesture which 
 he knew to be theatrical and unlike himself. He 
 realized that Peter, still with that keen questioning 
 look in his eyes, was close beside him. He had gone 
 too far now to turn back, he thought wildly. He 
 must explain, something, anything . . . Oh, 
 what should he say? He found himself listening to 
 
 100
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 his own words, as if he were a member of an 
 audience. 
 
 "Emily," he heard. "Tears . . . tears and 
 distress . . . Harold and Alison . . . and, 
 oh, my God, Margett, my comforting her . . . 
 (another meaningless, horrible wave of the arms) 
 my comforting her . . . tongue in my cheek, 
 damning the whole thing . . . damning her! 
 Oh, my God," he added in horror, "My God, I've 
 told the truth." 
 
 His head fell, buried in his hands and, as he felt 
 the tears dampening them, his brain told him 
 monotonously, like the maddening beat of a drum, 
 that he had made a fool of himself given himself 
 away. And these were tears, tears which Peter 
 would be bound to see. Oh God! Why had the 
 snapping point came here? Why had he not been 
 allowed to smash up alone? 
 
 He did not dare raise his head. His cheeks were 
 all blotched, like a crying child. Margett must not 
 see his cheeks. Silence. It was good of old Peter 
 not to speak. He was giving him time; Charles 
 understood that. He lifted his head slightly and 
 looked through his wet fingers: there was no one 
 there. 
 
 Then Peter had funked it ... had gone 
 inside. Well, no wonder ... it had been a 
 rotten thing to do to a fellow, to break down like 
 that in front of him. 
 
 Suddenly he heard Peter's voice behind him. 
 
 "Look here, Charles," it said, "if you want to 
 
 101
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 talk I swear I shall understand . . ." The voice 
 shook ever so slightly, then continued, "more than 
 understand, perhaps." Then it regained its level. 
 "But if you don't want to talk, Charles, I've just 
 not been here for the last quarter of an hour at all." 
 
 Oh, splendid Peter! 
 
 Charles sat up and dared even to look round. 
 The editor was standing some ten yards away and 
 Charles saw, with a leap of gratitude in his soul, 
 that he was standing with his back to him. 
 
 Oh, very splendid Peter! 
 
 "I must talk now," said Charles. "I must. If I 
 don't talk I shall cry again. I'm . . . I'm 
 damned sorry, Peter." 
 
 The editor swung round. 
 
 "Alright, Charles," he said. "I'm jolly glad it 
 was I and no one else. Cements things, eh?" He 
 settled down on the other side of the table. 
 
 "Talk," he urged. "I understand more than half 
 already." 
 
 For some moments Charles was silent, still 
 fighting against his longing to tell Peter everything. 
 
 When he spoke, his voice sounded weak, as if he 
 had been ill for a long time. 
 
 "I'm not a clever man, Peter," he said, "just 
 ordinary. If I was really clever, I suppose I could 
 see through this mess in my soul." 
 
 He paused, but the editor said nothing. He 
 knew that Charles must be allowed to talk, talk 
 nonsense even if necessary, until his voice became 
 steady again. 
 
 102
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "We spent our honeymoon not twenty miles from 
 here. How I loved her! Like a sort of ecstatic 
 idiot: there was a laburnum tree we used to sit 
 under together. It drooped all round us. We used 
 to call it the cloak of gold and pretend it had 
 magic in it and made us invisible from the rest of 
 the world. You see, Peter, to be invisible from the 
 rest of the world was our idea of Paradise. It's 
 horrible of me to talk of these things. They ought 
 to be sacred. They were." He paused and the 
 knuckles of his hands showed suddenly white as the 
 nails bit into the palms. "That was just it," he 
 added, "that was just it! You can't . . . you 
 can't keep it up ! Have you ever felt exalted in a 
 big cathedral? Incense and stained glass and all 
 that? I suppose I set myself always to live with 
 that feeling. It's a commonplace enough of mar- 
 riage 1 But I've always been horribly conscientious, 
 Peter. As a boy, even . . ." (his mind travelled 
 back to his schooldays, and pictured various teasings 
 which had come his way on the score of that same 
 conscience. Now, in later life, there seemed a 
 regiment of less material imps, still determined to 
 make his life a torture). 
 
 He picked up his apologia again with an effort. 
 
 "I am sorry, Peter, old man. It's rotten for you 
 that I should go through all this : but I must finish 
 it now . . . I've got to." 
 
 Peter nodded. 
 
 "I did keep it up for a good long time," went on 
 
 103
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 the other. "Harold's coming seemed to restart it 
 for a bit: she seemed to have made such an enor- 
 mous sacrifice, and I felt more earthy . . . and 
 could look up to her again a kind of rediscovering 
 the halo . . . Then, gradually, I found that she 
 looked on the baby as all hers. Well, that was 
 right enough but somehow, it seemed to take away 
 the halo again." His voice dropped almost to a 
 whisper "and then, of course, poor girl, she began 
 to lose her looks 1" He looked up quickly and 
 added earnestly, "but that didn't count, Peter. I 
 swear to you I don't believe that counted a bit! 
 But, the child .... somehow her responsibili- 
 ties towards the child seemed to smother every- 
 thing. I mean all that laburnum business. She just 
 dropped all that quite easily. Like one drops col- 
 lecting stamps when one goes to the 'Varsity and 
 that makes me feel it hadn't really mattered to her 
 . . . or perhaps to me: and I began to wonder 
 what the devil an ideal was, Peter, and whether 
 whether any girl would have done just as well I" 
 He rose. "And, Oh, my God," he cried, "I'm still 
 wondering!" 
 
 Then suddenly, in a way that reminded Peter of 
 someone playing a piano, his voice changed from an 
 excited treble, to its natural pitch. 
 
 "What have I been saying?" he asked. "I've 
 behaved like a cad. I can't expect you to under- 
 stand." 
 
 The Editor rose too. 
 
 104
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "I'm a twenty-year old friend," he said simply. 
 
 "But Emily " moaned Charles pitifully. "She 
 could never have believed this of me, that I should 
 have told such things to a living soul!" He seemed 
 almost frightened at what he had done and his 
 voice sank again to an agonized whisper. 
 
 "It's the holidays," he said, "always the holidays! 
 If it hadn't been for the holidays, I don't believe 
 this would have happened." 
 
 The man's lips fluttered like a child's and 
 Margett saw that he was on the edge of breaking 
 down again. 
 
 "Steady!" he said, firmly. "Of course it is the 
 holidays." 
 
 The unexpected acquaintance wrenched Charles 
 back from hysteria. 
 
 "You understand that?" 
 
 He asked the question in a tone which was 
 almost awestricken. So it is always when one finds 
 that one's most private thoughts are also those of 
 one's friends. 
 
 "I understand very well, indeed," answered the 
 Editor. 
 
 He realized with alarm that his own voice was 
 not under control. 
 
 Of course he had recognized for years now that 
 he had Joan . . . but he made a great effort to 
 snap off the conviction he had so long and so per- 
 sistently put aside that it appeared almost sub- 
 conscious. In his turn, he looked at his friend with 
 
 105
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 an ashamed apprehension. There was a new light 
 in Cutman's eyes, the light born of an amazing 
 discovery. 
 
 Peter Margett spoke hastily, desperate in his 
 desire to cover up the message of his trembling 
 voice. 
 
 "Naturally, it is the holidays," he said, quickly. 
 "We see more of them in the holidays." 
 
 But he knew at once that he stood condemned 
 by that very sentence, condemned, as the rake is 
 condemned, talking in the lounge at his club; be- 
 cause he knows too much. He heard Cutman's 
 voice again, normal no longer speaking to a 
 father-confessor. 
 
 "You too!" he said, and stopped all of a sudden. 
 
 He wheeled round instinctively, turning his back, 
 as Peter had done for him. The Editor's voice 
 reached him, harsh with pain. 
 
 "Damn you, Charles," it said, and then "How in 
 Hell has this happened?" He spoke as one asking 
 high heaven a reason for its accidents indignant, 
 childlike. 
 
 Charles turned again. 
 
 "I can't help being glad, Peter," he said, "that 
 I'm not alone in this . . . this " he hesitated. 
 
 "Ah," rasped the other, "Sin, you were going to 
 say I" 
 
 "Sin?" Cutman gave a har'd laugK. "The wages 
 of sin is death, Peter. We don't get off so lightly." 
 
 The Editor turned upon him quickly. 
 
 106
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "And our wives?" he said. "Do you think they 
 don't know, don't suffer?" Oh, curse you, Charles 
 . . . curse you ! The thing was asleep. You'ye 
 wakened it! What's the good?" He was furiousf 
 at his own lack of strength. 
 
 Cutman came slowly across .the grass until he 
 was facing his friend. 
 
 "Because I can't stand it, Peter," he said, "not; 
 can you! There may be twenty years more life 
 to us both . . . twenty years more, too, for 
 Emily and Joan: and all those twenty years are 
 going to be dead for us all ! Dull, rotten, stagnant 
 years, because we've lost touch with . . . with 
 . . . oh, with the laburnum tree 1 I don't know 
 how to put it better." 
 
 The Editor had pulled himself together, and only 
 his eyes, strained and dark, now showed that he was 
 suffering. 
 
 "Because," he said, "a tree now is only a tree 
 . . . well, that's what must happen to everyone. 
 A child discovers that its doll is wax . . . once it 
 has learnt that wax exists: we discover that pur 
 dolls are wax and that wax is dull! And the 
 women: they have discovered it too, I suppose." 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "It can't be helped," he 
 added, hopelessly. 
 
 A long silence followed. These two men, the 
 one overstrained, the other, by accident, had lifted 
 the curtain on their souls. They were closer to one 
 another than they had ever come during their long 
 
 107
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 friendship. Yet, since the unveiling had come so 
 suddenly, they were embarrassed. At last Cutman 
 turned. 
 
 "Peter," he said, simply, "I can't accept the 
 verdict. I can't live the rest of my life like that." 
 For some moments the Editor did not speak, then, 
 at last . . . 
 
 "We've got to," he said. "There's no way out 
 we must just hope that they don't care I" 
 
 "Oh, God," whispered Cutman, "I can't! There 
 must be a secret . . v . something we have 
 missed I" 
 
 "Nothing," said the Editor. "It's the usual thing : 
 only most people don't think about it. There's no 
 secret. 
 
 Charles crossed to the table and picked up his 
 cap. 
 
 "Let's go down, Peter," he said. "They'll under- 
 stand we didn't wait for the foursome." 
 
 "Very well," answered the other, and disappeared 
 into the club-house. It was understood that the 
 curtain was again drawn, but Cutman was hurling 
 against his mind, like a racquet ball, against the 
 back wall of a court, one sentence, 
 
 "No secret ? Oh, my God, no secret to look for I" 
 * .*. .*. , * * 
 
 And, as they walked home, out of the faint sum- 
 mer evening mist, already creeping along the links, 
 behind the little lawn upon which these two had 
 
 108
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 lately stood, naked and bitterly ashamed, there 
 stepped a woman, dressed in the short tweed skirt 
 and knitted jumper natural to her surroundings, 
 with merry eyes and a mouth that was seldom still, 
 medium tall, whose years it would be hard to guess, 
 but firm in her stride, and full of good life. 
 
 She came straight down to the chairs on which the 
 two men had sat and there paused. She looked 
 from one to the other, a tiny smile playing about 
 her lips, and the smile might have been tender, or 
 ironic, or even nothing at all, but the look in the 
 eyes, and the eyes themselves were those of a 
 Madonna. 
 
 She turned suddenly and vanished into the already 
 darkening lane. 
 
 109
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The two men did not speak again, on the way 
 back to the hotel, of the subject which flooded their 
 minds, to the exclusion of everything else. They 
 walked in silence, until they were in sight of the 
 hotel entrance and then, when Margett spoke, it 
 was to say something utterly trivial. 
 
 "We couldn't have played many holes, anyway. 
 The light is too bad." And Cutman nodded seri- 
 ously. 
 
 He found Emily in the drawing-room, arranging 
 some wild flowers in a green and yellow vase which 
 she had borrowed from the establishment. Ap- 
 parently, she had recovered from her recent dis- 
 tress and was now concentrating upon the joyous 
 side of the marriage. 
 
 "What do you think?" she said as Charles came 
 in, "so touching and kind: it almost made me cry, 
 Charles! And so unexpected I I mean, you don't 
 expect people to care enough, do you? Well, not 
 those sort : somehow the people whose bills you have 
 to pay never seem as human as others. Anyway, it 
 was a great surprise to me, and I think it would 
 have been to you, Charles 1" 
 
 Cutman waited for her to go on, but nothing 
 happened. 
 
 no
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Perhaps it would," he said, "if I knew what it 
 was!" 
 
 u Why," continued Emily, "when I got back, 
 Mrs. Honeycott met me and started to say a lot of 
 nice things about Harold, about when he was here 
 as a little boy; do you know, Charles, it's amazing 
 what these people remember, when you don't 
 imagine they remember anything! She recalled all 
 about when Harold cut his thumb and there was the 
 lock-jaw panic because he couldn't speak and then 
 we found it was one of those lime-drops he used to 
 buy at Dray ton's, jammed right in between his back 
 teeth!" 
 
 "But what has happened?" asked her husband. 
 
 "Oh, yes," answered Emily, tying her mind down 
 to the matter in hand with a great effort. "Appar- 
 ently it all started in the kitchen: the cook, you 
 know, kind soul, wanted to send up a special dish at 
 dinner to-night. Well, of course, she had to ask 
 Mrs. Honeycott's permission, and when Mrs. 
 Honeycott heard, she evidently went one better, and 
 now there's to be a special dinner in a private room 
 to celebrate their engagement and I must say, 
 Charles, that I think the whole thing is very touch- 
 ing and you are not to laugh at the cook or Mrs. 
 Honeycott!" 
 
 Charles smiled and shook his head. 
 
 "Why should I?" he said. 
 
 But . . . oh, ye Gods! a dinner to celebrate 
 the coming of another marriage, on this night, of 
 all nights! 
 
 Ill
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "You'll have to make a speech, Charles," he 
 heard her saying, "and so will Peter Margett, and 
 I'm sure no one will be able to prevent Mr. Lox- 
 bury making one tool" 
 
 "Oh, surely," he said, "we can do without 
 speeches." 
 
 "It will look very odd," answered Emily seriously, 
 "if someone doesn't say a few words." 
 
 Emily had always been a martyr to the terror of 
 things seeming "very odd." This disease, as a 
 matter of fact, had governed most of her life. 
 Charles realized that she would be upset if the 
 "few words" were not forthcoming. It was an 
 occasion which could only happen once and that it 
 should not have happened with full ritual, would, 
 he knew, always remain a source of real distress to 
 Emily. 
 
 So he and Peter Margett would say a few words, 
 to congratulate the happy couple . . . Well, 
 that was simple and natural enough. But, to-night ! 
 His brows gathered over the irony of this dinner, 
 which had to be so very happy. 
 
 Emily, of course, misunderstood his long silence. 
 
 "Really, Charlie," she said, "you've made 
 speeches at any number of big dinners. It isn't so 
 very terrifying to congratulate your son and your 
 future daughter-in-law, is it?" 
 
 He laughed uneasily. 
 
 "No, no," he said. "But it's, rather short notice: 
 
 112
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 I must think of something witty. It's pretty hard, 
 you know, being up against a journalist 1" 
 
 She plumped the last fox-glove into position in 
 the green vase and crossed to him. 
 
 "You're just as funny as any journalist, Charlie," 
 she said, kissing him on the check. "I love all your 
 jokes!" 
 
 He kissed her, looking over her head with trouble 
 in his eyes. 
 
 "Then that's all right," he answered lightly. 
 "And what do the children think of it?" 
 
 "They don't know about it. It's being kept as 
 a great surprise for them!" She laughed happily, 
 snatching back, as some women will at these times, 
 a bit of the romance herself. 
 
 "It's time we started to dress, dear!" she added, 
 and pushed him playfully through the door, carry- 
 ing the flowers for the dinner table in her hand. 
 
 Alison met Harold as he came down to the lounge 
 from his bedroom. 
 
 "Well," she asked, with a little laugh, "I've just 
 heard about the dinner, from mother. What do you 
 think about that?" 
 
 "It's fearfully kind of them," said Harold. He 
 was half afraid that Alison would have put her 
 practical foot down on the whole business. 
 
 But she answered at once with a nod. 
 
 "It is," she said, "awfully kind. I think it was 
 specially jolly of the cook. Why on earth should 
 she care?"
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Wonderfully kind," murmured Harold again. 
 
 "But they are fixing it, like this," went on Alison, 
 "making it into a date, an anniversary. Then 
 there's the wedding: of course that gets fixed into 
 a date automatically it just becomes a date instead 
 of a day. The date sort of overwhelms the day. 
 Have you ever noticed that any number of people 
 simply adore dates?" 
 
 Her tone was light, but Harold noticed an under- 
 note of something like irritation. 
 
 "Well, you see . . ." he was beginning slowly, 
 but she went straight on. 
 
 "Ted Willis is a keen old bird," she said, with 
 something very like a chuckle. " 'The mackerel are 
 in the bay,' he said, "but they're hurrying down the 
 boats. 'Ware nets!' I think we're going to slip 
 round the nets all right, Harold!" she added 
 triumphantly, as she took his arm. 
 
 Owen Weare was coming down the stairs, his 
 full mouth curved with a smile of conscious and 
 beaming kindliness. It was impossible, looking at 
 him, to imagine that he would not make a speech. 
 
 "You see what I meant," whispered Alison, 
 "about all the things that would happen to make it 
 less real?" 
 
 Harold nodded. 
 
 Then Emily, fussing happily down the stairs, and 
 Joan cautiously forming a chorus to the con- 
 gratulations of the others. 
 
 114
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Loveday Weare came down alone, pausing at the 
 bend in the stairs, to look down upon the group in 
 the lounge. 
 
 She saw the doctor beaming radiant romance 
 upon the young couple, taking the lead in welcoming 
 these two recruits to the ranks of the blessed, and 
 her lips curled in an ironical smile. There was none 
 of that bedside manner at her bed. Then she too 
 joined them, silent as ever. Loxbury arrived with 
 twinkling eyes, absolutely in his element, and per- 
 sisting in calling himself a "blackleg," to the com- 
 plete mystification of Emily, who imagined he was 
 saying "blackhead" and did not consider it in the 
 best of taste. The dinner proved successful enough, 
 the general appreciation of the good-nature that had 
 inspired it, having its influence even among all these 
 cross-currents seated round the table. 
 
 There was a friendly argument as to who should 
 propose the health of the bride. Loxbury, deter- 
 mined to speak at all costs, wished to perform this 
 duty, on the score that he was unbiased. 
 
 Emily, fervid for the correct thing, insisted that, 
 however informal the "little gathering" as she called 
 it, might be, Charles Cutman possessed an inalien- 
 able right to propose the health of his future 
 daughter-in-law. Peter Margett cut short the con- 
 versation, suddenly. 
 
 "Of course, it's for Charles," he said. "I shall 
 reply. Loxbury can speak on 'The right to be a 
 bachelor' afterwards."
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 There was a general laugh as Cutman rose, a 
 glass of Port in his hand. Peter, he thought, was 
 coming through all right, why not he? If only this 
 dinner had been to-morrow or the next day. Why, 
 it was barely two hours ago, that rending . . . 
 Now his brain was divided. He must attempt noth- 
 ing but a few simple words. He was obsessed with 
 the idea that he must show how sincere he was. 
 
 "Ladies and Gentlemen," he began, "or should 
 I say old friends? this is a very happy duty which 
 devolves upon me unexpectedly, to-night." 
 
 (Hear! hear!" from the doctor, the very picture 
 of Dickensian goodwill.) 
 
 "You must forgive me, if, owing to its unex- 
 pectedness, my words are ill-chosen and unready." 
 
 '"No no!" from Harold, backing up his father 
 from pure family feeling.) 
 
 "All of us here, with one exception, (Loxbury 
 pretended to be overcome with embarrassment and 
 shame) have known what it means to have been 
 happily mated, for more years than we care to 
 acknowledge. I cannot do better, in proposing the 
 health of Alison, than to express the hope that she 
 will enjoy long life, splendid health and a happiness 
 equal to that of those who are wishing her well 
 to-night!" He sat down, his eyes on his plate, feel- 
 ing that if he found that Peter Margett was looking 
 at him, he might scream. But they were all applaud- 
 ing, and Emily was shouting "bravo" in a thin, 
 piercing treble.
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Then the Editor was on his feet. 
 
 "As a dress-rehearsal for the wedding-breakfast," 
 he said, "I welcome this opportunity of trying it 
 upon the dog, as I believe the theatrical expression 
 goes ! (laughter.) I want to thank dear old Charles 
 very much indeed, on behalf of myself, my wife and 
 my daughter, for all the good things he has wished 
 her in the future. I think he might have said a 
 little more " (Hear I hear I" again from the doc- 
 tor.) "But it is my experience that he reserves most 
 of his vocabulary for use on the golf links." (Loud 
 and prolonged laughter.) 
 
 "Oh, splendid Peter!" thought Charles. He was 
 trotting out all the traditional jokes, calmly and 
 methodically, putting the tension that he knew was 
 there, back to the normal, with a sure touch. 
 
 "Of course," continued the Editor, "our young 
 friend, Harold, does not want any bouquets from 
 me. At work and at play, however, I think we 
 have known him long enough to say that we 
 thoroughly approve of his methods 1" 
 
 (Loud applause, during which Emily thumps 
 Harold violently upon the back, while two great 
 glistening tears roll slowly down her cheeks.) 
 
 "As for his work," went on Peter, "I may say 
 I have some knowledge of that, having, on several 
 occasions, had the pleasure of refusing articles from 
 his pen." (Laughter.) "For my daughter," he 
 continued, "I really don't know what I can say. 
 From the age of four until ten, she and I were 
 
 117
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 in frequent disagreement upon most questions." 
 "(Loud laughter. Really Peter was superb!) "But 
 after that, I think we have seen eye to eye in most 
 matters and I cannot do better than to associate 
 Joan with myself in an expression, which politicians 
 invariably employ when they propose to hedge the 
 next day namely that Alison is our daughter, a 
 word I use with all the emphasis of which I am 
 capable," (laughter) "and that the Government, 
 that is, myself and Joan, will accept full responsi- 
 bility for her actions in the future I" 
 
 He sat down amid applause and laughter. 
 Charles, glancing across at his face as he smilingly 
 filled up Loveday's glass could hardly realize that 
 this was the man who not three hours since had cried 
 in a voice thin with pain, "Curse you, Charles! 
 The thing was asleep, you've wakened it!" He 
 realized that his own little speech had been stilted, 
 formal. He wondered whether anyone had noticed 
 it, and felt a pang of irritation at Peter's success. 
 Yet there was no doubt that the pain in his voice, up 
 there on the links, had been real. 
 
 Well, the future would be easier for Peter, any- 
 way, with that wonderful faculty for hiding himself, 
 that strange working efficiency when the engine was 
 rotten, inside. And he, Charles (a physical fear 
 gripped him at the thought) , had got to hide himself 
 for the rest of his life. . . . 
 
 There was no secret! Peter had said. But 
 Charles kept a smile on his lips, while these thoughts 
 chased one another through his mind, for the table 
 
 118
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 wa$ in an uproar of merriment. Loxbury was trying 
 to make a speech, deploring with mock tragedy the 
 lonely life of a bachelor, and the doctor was inter- 
 rupting him with jovial sarcasms. 
 
 The door opened suddenly, and the voice at the 
 table died away, in jerks, like the smashing of a 
 large piece of china. 
 
 A woman stood in the doorway, looking at the 
 scene. She was in evening dress, rather wonderful 
 evening dress, it seemed in the frame of the com- 
 mon little room, for its colours, though not par- 
 ticularly bright in themselves, seemed somehow to 
 take all the light to them, as if an invisible ray had 
 been thrown upon her at her entrance. Her eyes 
 twinkled merrily on the company at the table, and 
 the corners of her lips twitched with the beginnings 
 of a smile. If Harold had been asked, he would 
 have said she was a girl. Charles would have called 
 her a woman. That was her age. Her fascina- 
 tion for it was indubitable was not easy to define. 
 Her deep soft eyes were tired, but they looked as if 
 they were just tired from laughing. She gave, some- 
 how or other, an enormous impression of vitality 
 . . . a vitality eternal, independent of herself. 
 An arresting, electric personality the Lady of the 
 Links. Then she laughed, and Charles had a queer 
 sudden impression that he had not expected her to 
 be so human. 
 
 Her laugh, in fact, freed them all from the spell 
 of her unexpected entrance. 
 
 "I'm so sorry!" she said, in a gentle, caressing 
 
 119
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 voice, "You see, I engaged this sitting room, but I 
 only did it to-night. And I expect we've over- 
 lapped!" 
 
 She laughed again and the commonplace explana- 
 tion of her presence came, curiously enough, as a 
 relief. 
 
 Doctor Weare was the first to speak. 
 
 "What a silly muddle!" he said, "but we need 
 not inconvenience you. We have just finished!" 
 
 The newcomer made a movement of protest but 
 the Doctor waved it aside breezily. 
 
 "Certainly not," he said. "We couldn't possibly 
 keep you out of your room. Charles, I think the 
 bell is behind you; this litter must be cleared away." 
 The little party passed out, murmuring excuses. 
 In the lounge Loveday turned to Joan. 
 
 "I've seen that face before somewhere," she said. 
 
 "I wonder where ?" queried the other. 
 
 Loveday shook her head. 
 
 "In a picture perhaps," she murmured, "or per- 
 haps in a dream : I've only seen it for a moment." 
 
 The hearty voice of her husband cut her short. 
 
 "And I say," he was asserting, "that a walk under 
 the moon is the proper programme ! Just as far 
 as the huts and back. Shake down the dinner and 
 do us all good!" 
 
 They acquiesced. None, not even had they 
 wanted to, would have attempted to argue with the 
 doctor in his bluffest mood. The sound of their 
 footsteps merged into the gentle rustic of the sea. 
 
 120
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Upstairs, the intruder had closed the door; then 
 she had walked slowly round to the chair at the 
 head of the table where Charles had been. She 
 rested her hands on the back of the chair and her 
 eyes travelled across to Peter's empty seat. 
 
 The same tender little smile played about her lips 
 as might have been seen, a few hours ago, up on the 
 cliffs. 
 
 At last she curled herself up on a queer stiff little 
 sofa which stood in the window, and looked out on 
 the moon, and the little crawling things under the 
 moon. 
 
 Accident is grim in its sense of fitness and con- 
 trived that Charles and Peter Margett should find 
 themselves together in the walk along the front. 
 A natural shyness possessed them both, and for 
 some time they strode along in silence. 
 
 "You were wonderful at dinner," said Charles at 
 last. 
 
 The Editor cursed under his breath. 
 
 "Don't follow it up," he said. "Don't hunt it, 
 Charles, for Heaven's sake. Can't you leave it 
 alone? It will slip back to it proper place, if you 
 give it a chance." 
 
 "That's what Willis meant by cowardice." The 
 barrister hardly realized that he had said this aloud, 
 until Peter turned upon him savagely. 
 
 "Leave it alone, you fooll" he said, in a voice 
 tense with anger* 
 
 121
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 So that was the secret of Peter's strength, the 
 power of putting things behind him. 
 
 "Look here, Peter," said the other, "that' sur- 
 render, you know!" 
 
 He felt that the sentence sounded like a school- 
 boy's. But Peter Margett seemed to take it seri- 
 ously enough. 
 
 "I tell you," he said, "that is what it means to be 
 strong ... to know when to surrender. Fate, 
 God, Life . . . whatever you like to call him, 
 you've got to show him the white flag. That's the 
 price of sanity." 
 
 "No, no, Peter, it's a fearful creed." 
 
 The other man dug his stick into the grass and 
 fern at the cliff's side. 
 
 "All creeds are fearful," he muttered. "That's 
 what they are for: always to make you afraid of 
 something or other." 
 
 But Charles shook his head vigorously. Yet he 
 felt he could not argue about it. This was Peter's 
 way of life, which had practically come to be 
 himself . 
 
 "Anyway," he said, at last, "there is one thing 
 I want you to know, Peter. I never meant that I 
 no longer love Emily." 
 
 "Of course not," came the answer, "only we 
 object to living the rest of our lives in half-tones. 
 Heavens above ! it's natural enough. Read a story 
 full of colour, a story of ships ... it makes us 
 restless. Well, why? You and I know why. But 
 
 122
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 it's no good, Charles. You've had your bit of 
 colour, and you can't recapture it. I tell you there's 
 no power on earth that can make a laburnum tree a 
 cloak of gold for us, now. If you can't be gloriously 
 happy, be as happy as you can. That's the answer !" 
 
 Charles could see that Peter wanted to escape 
 from the subject. He was not, by nature, an adven- 
 turer and he always clung, desperately, to the status 
 quo. It was a new light on Peter, who by virtue of 
 talking In jerks and headlines, had achieved a repu- 
 tation for distinguished originality. 
 
 Still, Charles was ready enough to abandon the 
 subject; he had told Peter what he had wanted to 
 tell him, that he still loved Emily. Why he should 
 have wanted to tell him that, he could not imagine. 
 Half-tones indeed! Why, this last weakness re- 
 duced the picture of his existence to a smudge of 
 hazy greys. Peter's voice recalled him to the im- 
 mediate present. 
 
 "Curious woman," he was Saying. "Interesting: 
 not a bit like Whyticombe I" 
 
 Strangely enough, Charles understood immedi- 
 ately what woman he meant. 
 
 "Not quite like any place," he answered. "Yes, 
 I think 'interesting' is the only word for her." 
 
 He was a little surprised to find himself giving 
 the adjective so much thought. . . . 
 
 By this time they had lost sight of the others, 
 and, having no enthusiasm for the silver pageant of 
 that summer night-sky, turned back towards the 
 
 123
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 hotel. As they walked in silence, someone started 
 singing down by the waters' edge. The voice, a 
 small mellow baritone, quavered every now and 
 then, in a quaint arresting way. Some of the words 
 reached them. 
 
 "For all my feet can't get 'em wings, 
 
 Nor eyes o' mine pierce far, 
 I'll thank old Earth for what she brings 
 With my fingers round a star !" 
 
 The singer, plainly enough, was fitting his words 
 to his tune. Neither was particularly erudite, but 
 the general effect was intriguing. The Editor, 
 always at the mercy of word magic, stopped sud- 
 denly. 
 
 "For all the sea be cruel and wet, 
 
 With devil a harbour bar, 
 I reckon I'll make my landfall yet, 
 With my fingers round a star." 
 
 The words ceased abruptly, but the melody, if 
 such a singsong could be called melody, was carried 
 on in a soft, gay humming. Someone, thought 
 Charles, was very happy, down by the water's edge. 
 
 What was it about that voice that he found so 
 oddly familiar? Most familiar of all when it 
 cracked and quavered and seemed to go stammering 
 away on the slight night breeze. 
 
 Not old Willis, surely, singing, on the edge of 
 the stones, at this time of night? 
 
 124
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Curious; odd tune, queer words!" 
 
 The Editor's voice broke in upon Cutman*s 
 meditations. 
 
 "Metre all wrong, of course. But the whole 
 thing . . . time and all ... something of 
 the fascination of the primitive! Don't talk," he 
 added sharply, "he may go on!" 
 
 But the singer had finished, and, though the two 
 men stood on the edge of the asphalt, straining 
 every nerve for another note, nothing came to them 
 except the eternal splash and draw of the sea upon 
 the patient pebbles. 
 
 Charles, remembering that the old fisherman had 
 favoured him with some part of his private self 
 under the hedge near Testleigh woods, felt it no 
 business of his to tell Peter any suspicions as to the 
 identity of this singer of crude rhymes at the sea's 
 edge. 
 
 "Curious," said the Editor, as they continued on 
 their way. "Some old sea chanty, perhaps : and yet 
 it didn't sound like that." 
 
 It appeared that Peter possessed a vast and far- 
 reaching knowledge on the subject of sea-chanties. 
 Doubtless all the essential information on such mat- 
 ters was pigeon-holed at his office, in case wind- 
 jammers became, all of a sudden, a popular subject. 
 At any rate, he insisted, for the remainder of the 
 walk, on pumping into the unwillingly receptive 
 Charles all manner of facts about sailors : every one 
 of them absolutely true and absolutely without 
 romance. 
 
 125
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Further along the front, sitting upon a seat under 
 the cliff, Emily was seriously disturbed. 
 
 "You see," she was saying to Joan and Loveday, 
 "It's so queer : I mean, one can't help remembering 
 how different it was when we were engaged! Of 
 course, I know that young people are very different 
 now: I myself had a daily housemaid with most 
 astonishing ideas she was in love with a post- 
 man, a very nice man, I believe I think most post- 
 men are, don't you?" 
 
 Loveday nodded. She knew that Emily would 
 let her meaning escape, as it were by accident, if 
 her listeners were patient enough. 
 
 "But, do you know that girl was just as much 
 interested in the postal system as in the postman? 
 Well, that's what I mean about Harold and Alison. 
 They they won't be left alone, you know. There 
 doesn't seem any sort of of nice silliness about 
 them!" 
 
 Joan Margett nodded. As the mother of 
 Harold's future wife she felt, in a sense, that she 
 must share this puzzle with Emily. 
 
 "Alison," she said, "has always been tremen- 
 dously independent." 
 
 Emily turned to her earnestly. 
 
 "I don't want you to think," she answered, "that 
 I am criticising her: Alison is a dear girl. . . . 
 You know I think that, Joan, dear?" 
 
 Her hand, clammily sincere, found Joan's. Its 
 touch was unreasonably, unjustifiably irritating. 
 
 126
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Joan realized that Emily was always irritating 
 . . . because she was always so sincere and so 
 "right." 
 
 "Yes, of course," she said, trying hard to tune 
 her voice to the other's pitch of sentiment, "only, 
 they are both of the new generation, you know I 
 suppose they must work out their own salvation." 
 
 She knew that she had made use of a cliche and 
 that, as always, it had struck a dull, lifeless chord. 
 
 Loveday, rising suddenly, came to her rescue. 
 She stretched her arms, wearily almost, and spoke 
 away to the water, as if to an audience that was not 
 there. 
 
 "Yes, it's not good to fight it," she said. "It's 
 not a worthy fight. Because, don't you see, that's 
 how they feel, and so that's how they must be. 
 After all, who knows ? They may be right : but, of 
 course, at our age we are content, and rightly con- 
 tent, to be wrong!" 
 
 She turned suddenly to Emily. 
 
 "Don't you understand," she went on, "that we 
 shall be dead long before they know the result of 
 their experiment? Wouldn't you far rather they 
 took a new road, if it looks good to them, than 
 plodded slowly along the one we know, just because 
 we line the pavement and keep them to it?" 
 
 But Emily, full of misgiving, shook her head. 
 
 "No, Loveday dear," she said. "Of course, I'm 
 sure that what you say is right ... I mean 
 really right. Like a circle being an infinite number 
 
 127
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 of dots, or something, as Charlie says . . . and 
 I'm sure he's right. Only, to me, it just makes 
 circles impossible. I suppose I've my own foolish 
 idea of a circle a thing like my embroidery frame. 
 I'm sure if I thought it was made of dots going 
 on forever, I couldn't do another stitch." 
 
 She broke off suddenly with a gesture of im- 
 patience. 
 
 "There I go!" she said petulantly. "I'm not 
 thinking about circles at all, you know!" 
 
 Joan nodded, reassuringly. 
 
 "I know," she answered. "You mean that a 
 scientific engagement is a bad start for marriage." 
 
 Emily nodded quickly. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "that's it; I can't really believe 
 in it." 
 
 "I daresay." The impersonal voice of Loveday 
 broke in unexpectedly. "But can you really believe 
 in " 
 
 She hesitated and stopped. Joan, with her keen 
 sensibilities, scented danger, danger to the desirable 
 illusions of Emily. 
 
 "She is quite right," she said, "it isn't natural. 
 And, if it isn't natural, it's a pity!" 
 
 She uttered the last sentence defiantly, as one who 
 is not really prepared to defend her argument. But 
 Loveday understood and was silent. 
 
 After all, Emily had a right to be happy, any 
 way she could. 
 
 And then Emily shivered a little and said it was 
 getting chilly and that she was going to find Charlie. 
 
 128
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 They watched her thick, comfortable figure dis- 
 appearing into the dark. It was Joan who was the 
 first to speak. 
 
 "You shouldn't do it, Loveday," she murmured. 
 ''What's the use of upsetting poor Emily? It 
 isn't as if she could discover anything, through being 
 upset. She's not made like that." 
 
 Loveday Weare laughed, a queer, hopeless laugh. 
 
 "I think," she said, "that Emily is going to be 
 horribly upset before very long." 
 
 "Ah?" Joan's voice was full of interest. "The 
 storm?" 
 
 Loveday nodded. 
 
 "I rather think it's broken already," she said. 
 
 Joan answered her very seriously. 
 
 "Look here," she said, "you ought not to say 
 these things, unless you know . . . and not 
 even then, perhaps !" 
 
 The other nodded in acquiescence. 
 
 "Then I won't say them, Joan : I know that there 
 are advantages in living in blinkers." 
 
 But her friend was fascinated, fascinated by the 
 queer, almost supernatural certainty of this woman. 
 She could not, as she felt she should, cut loose from 
 the subject. 
 
 "And . . . Peter?" she whispered. 
 
 Loveday nodded, without a word. But at that 
 the very soul of Joan revolted. Peter's character, 
 Peter's idiosyncrasies, even Peter's absurdities, she 
 might discuss and laugh at. After all,, Peter would 
 no longer wish to be treated as a god. Those years 
 
 129
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 were past. But this this hinted at deeper, more 
 private weaknesses ; which, even if they existed, were 
 hers, no one else's. She turned on Loveday, like a 
 tigress, yes, a tigress defending her young. 
 
 For Peter had always been more her young than 
 Alison. 
 
 "You suggest these things lightly enough, of 
 other men!" she said angrily. "I believe, Loveday, 
 that you enjoy giving words that may mean nothing 
 or everything, and playing with words and hinting ! 
 But if you know so much, or guess so much, what 
 of your own man? What of Owen in this precious 
 storm?" 
 
 She stopped indignant, wanting words to feed her 
 wrath. But Loveday's answer, unexpected, paint- 
 ing, as it did, in a few vivid words, the picture of a 
 whole lifetime of possible ideals stifled at the source, 
 found her at last, sitting abject, abject with pity, and 
 a sense of her own past blessings. 
 
 "Owen?" she had echoed, derisively, driven sud- 
 denly out of her long-schooled reticence. "Owen? 
 Dear, bluff, honest old Owen, the very prince of 
 good fellows!" 
 
 Every word burnt like acid. _ She dropped her 
 voice to a lower, tenser key. 
 
 "Owen will never have to fight with any storm." 
 she said. "Why do you think, Joan, that I'm so 
 silent, so so queer? Oh, I know well enough what 
 others think of me! Do you suppose it's natural? 
 Do you think I was born without a tongue and oh, 
 lot's of things I wanted to say?" 
 
 130
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Her white hands fluttered pathetically against 
 the rail of the seat. 
 
 "Of course," she went on, "I've tried to cover it 
 up. I told you, not long ago, that it was because I 
 found that the things I said upset people ! And you 
 believed it! Why, Joan, it doesn't matter upsetting 
 people, in that way! Do you think I've no more 
 courage than that?" 
 
 She leant across the seat, her face very near her 
 friend's. 
 
 "Couldn't you guess?" she said. "Couldn't you 
 guess that it was because I had never been happy?" 
 
 Joan remembered suddenly the curious words she 
 had used of the doctor: "I believe he likes being 
 kind." 
 
 The other gave a queer, discordant laugh. 
 
 "Oh," she whispered, "there are vices which peo- 
 ple never speak about . . . perhaps because they 
 are too common; I don't know. Have you ever 
 heard of the Marquis de Sade? He loved, adored 
 blood and pain." 
 
 Her voice sank lower still. 
 
 "There's a sadism of the mind, Joan, a fearful 
 lust and longing to see the victim shrink and curl up, 
 like the fringe of an oyster when you sprinkle the 
 vinegar upon it!" 
 
 "Dear bluff, sympathetic 7 Owen ! How his 
 patients love him. But I am his real patient, 
 Joan, the subject for his vivisection!" 
 
 She threw her hands into the air and a dry sob> 
 escaped from her throat.
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "In the bedroom . . . after dinner . . . 
 but especially in the bedroom ... he operates 
 on me: he knows I am too sensitive to find the 
 anaesthetic that use even bad use can bring to 
 some people. He torments my beliefs, he even 
 remembers the few words I have said during the 
 day and twists them into ridicule! And I hear so 
 much, from the people who pay him, of Owen's 
 wonderful bedside manner! Dear, splendid old 
 Owen, I've heard people say, what a pity he isn't a 
 father! Joan, though almost every day the probe 
 is twisted deep into that particular sore, I swear to 
 you that I've thanked God again and again that 
 Owen will never be a father now! Because I love 
 children." 
 
 She stopped suddenly, breathing fast. Joan was 
 crushed, appalled by this revelation from the 
 cellared soul of Loveday Weare. She was incap- 
 able of speech, even if adequate words could have 
 come to her. 
 
 "I can trust you," said Loveday at last, "to say 
 nothing of what I've told you. It's not loyalty. I 
 owe none to him. But I hate pity." 
 
 She rose deliberately. 
 
 "As for my husband," she said, "he will never go 
 through any crisis in his affections for me. I wish 
 to God he would, and lose the battle !" 
 
 Joan saw her thin lips close tightly, and she 
 realized that Loveday had said everything. She 
 rose, her mind numbed by this amazing thing. She 
 
 132
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 felt she could not speak, could not attempt to deal 
 with such a tragedy in foolish words. But Loveday, 
 with her fund of strange unexpected sympathies, 
 understood her friend's embarrassment. 
 
 "I don't want pity, dear," she said. "I don't 
 want you to talk of it, at all. It's my own fault, in 
 a way, for I have never been strong enough to cut 
 myself off from the way I was brought up, and to 
 leave him. I would never have told you only I 
 wanted you to know how much you've got to be 
 thankful for, even if Peter deserted you to-morrow 1" 
 
 Joan squeezed her hand in the darkness; it was 
 pitiful to feel how Loveday responded to this like 
 a schoolgirl . . . oh, pitiful! 
 
 She could not speak even then, and they reached 
 the hotel, still silent. 
 
 In the hall was the doctor, lately arrived with 
 Alison and Harold. He came forward, beaming, 
 and took his wife's arm. 
 
 "I have been the favoured one!" he said in his 
 rich, round voice, "I have walked home with the two 
 guests of the evening! Good-night, everybody!" he 
 added, collecting them all with one big paternal 
 sweep of his eyes. "It's time to turn in, if we are 
 going to keep up the celebrations by a real holiday 
 morning to-morrow!" 
 
 His very intonation was an incitement to jollity. 
 He turned and went up the stairs, his arm still 
 holding Loveday's. Beneath the crook of his elbow 
 
 133
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 her hand hung listless, as dumb in its appearance as 
 her own nature had become. 
 
 They disappeared round the bend on to the 
 landing. 
 
 Joan stared after them, another horror dawning 
 in her eyes. For the meaning of Loveday's words 
 had, all at once, become real to her. 
 
 134
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 It was Loxbury who made the amazing discovery 
 on the golf links. He had been slicing his tee shots, 
 and, becoming suddenly serious about it, had gone 
 up early, before the morning round, and spent an 
 hour with the professional. When the others 
 arrived, the bachelor was beaming with suppressed 
 information. 
 
 "A handicap of four," he announced, "and Hart- 
 ley here, says she plays down to a man's eight!" 
 
 Hartley, the professional, nodded. He was a 
 short, bullet-headed little man, with hands which 
 were perpetually writhing together, as if looking 
 for new variations of the grip. "Yes, sir," he said, 
 "I was out a few holes with her this morning: that's 
 about her form. Quite deadly on the green, sir, but 
 of course, no great length, and apt to make mistakes 
 with her irons." 
 
 This, in golfing terms, is almost expressive of a 
 man's ideal in woman. Let her be deadly on the 
 greens: there's no great harm in that, even though 
 it should win the match in the end. But, to be out- 
 driven from the tee ! That would be intolerable and 
 place her immediately so much higher than the 
 angels that, in sheer self-defence, she would have to 
 be artificially degraded, and called "unfeminine" 01; 
 
 135
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "over-developed," or indeed anything that would 
 serve, however inconclusively, to satisfy the male 
 sense of pride. 
 
 And then that aptitude for making mistakes with 
 her irons! There was something tremendously 
 sympathetic about that. This, without a doubt is 
 the really adorable woman, the girl who, any 
 moment, may make a mistake with her iron . . . 
 or indeed, with anything else. Queer creatures, 
 these knickerbockered, crude-looking objects, called 
 men. They have a sneaking adoration for incom- 
 petence in their women-kind, mixed with a childish 
 and worshipping amazement that she is able to do 
 anything at all. It is possible that women, too, are 
 glad when their men fail in something. Both have 
 a queer passion for weakness, hidden away, like a 
 secret vice, under the obvious rectitude of admira- 
 tion for strength. 
 
 "She's out now," Hartley was saying, "playing 
 the pit hole. It's a long carry for a woman, sir, and 
 she's awfully keen about doing it." 
 
 There was something fascinating about that, too : 
 not so fascinating, of course, as if she should carry 
 the pit, but just the wanting to. One felt one would 
 encourage her like anything, and really hope that 
 the ball would fly, at last, over the brink. 
 
 And yet, if it did, one knew that it would be a 
 disappointment. 
 
 Hartley vanished into the wooden hut, that was 
 his factory. 
 
 136
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "I should never have thought," said Loxbury, 
 "from seeing her in evening dress, that she was a 
 golfer I" 
 
 "Seems to be a master mistress, rather, at both 
 games!" laughed Peter. 
 
 "She could play any of us level on her handicap !" 
 
 Charles' comment struck the others as funny. 
 
 "Poor old Charles!" said Loxbury. "Is that a 
 revelation to you ? Why, there are plenty of women 
 who could give us all strokes." 
 
 "Yes, of course," answered Charles, only, he had 
 never imagined them to be quite that kind of woman, 
 not in evening dress, anyway. Besides, a woman 
 who could play you level on your handicap . . . 
 that was just about everything. 
 
 A scratch player was always just a little inhuman 
 to Charles. 
 
 Then, suddenly, Peter realized that they had all 
 been talking of "her," and that no one knew in the 
 least who "she" was. Yet undoubtedly, all had 
 been talking of the same person. It must be, he 
 thought, a very strong personality to impress itself 
 thus without any label whatsoever. 
 
 "What is her name?" he asked, turning to Lox- 
 bury. 
 
 The bachelor shook his head. 
 
 "Upon my word," he answered, "I don't know I" 
 
 He called through the open door of the workshop, 
 
 "Hartley, what is the lady's name?" 
 
 The professional appeared in the doorway, the 
 shaft of a club in his hand. 
 
 137
 
 "She never gave me her name, sir," he said, 
 "She's not been here before, in my time : but I sup- 
 pose she'll have put her name in the green-fee book." 
 
 They went in to change their shoes, and Cutman, 
 who had walked up in the golfing boots which he 
 always took home and oiled religiously, turned over 
 the pages of the strangers' book, while waiting for 
 the others. 
 
 The ink on the last entry, a bold, loveable scrawl, 
 was still wet. 
 
 But the name written was simply "Mary." 
 There was, it is true, a kind of hieroglyphic in front 
 of it, which might have been an initial. Yet, Mary, 
 as a surname, was really rather amazing. Under 
 the space reserved for the home-club of visitors, 
 there was simply a dash. But the smaller space on 
 the other side of the page showed that, at any rate, 
 Miss Mary or was it Mrs. Mary? had paid her 
 three-and-sixpence. 
 
 "I say," said Charles, as Peter came into the 
 room, "Just look at this!" 
 
 The Editor crossed and peered over his shoulder. 
 
 "So that's the lady of last night," he sa\d. 
 "Mary! What a surname I It would make intro- 
 ductions extremely embarrassing, eh?" He laughed, 
 and looked at the scrawl again. 
 
 "Of course," he said, "as a woman's surname, it's 
 quite pretty. Miss Felicia Mary or Mrs. F. J. 
 Mary." As usual he was twisting the words into 
 colours. "But the thing is, she must have had a 
 father ... or a husband; and then it's an 
 
 138
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 absurdity. Fred Mary, Esq., or George Mary, 
 Solicitor!" 
 
 He laughed heartily at his own conceptions: 
 "And think," he chuckled, "if he'd been fat ... 
 or with a walrus moustache or something I Ye gods, 
 think of a conversation at his Club ! 'Excuse me, I 
 didn't quite catch your name !' 'My name's Mary, 
 sir.' And my dear Charles, he might be bald as 
 well!" Peter went off into shrieks of laughter at 
 the conceit. He appeared to have put far behind 
 him that fearful stripping of himself, which, in 
 point of mere time, was so very close. 
 
 Even Charles, whose wound, if not deeper, at 
 least throbbed more painfully, seemed now to have 
 slipped back into the normal without any obvious 
 period of convalescence. 
 
 Not that there was anything peculiar in this 
 sliding back into their everyday selves. The biggest, 
 most poignant tragedy in the world escapes its own 
 tyranny in the end; finding its proper value in the 
 scheme of things, colouring the picture of a life, but 
 never directing its design. And besides, the pains 
 of Peter and of Charles, whatever their private 
 ideas on the subject, were not built on this heroic 
 scale. Their trouble, acute only because they were 
 unfortunate enough to be acutely conscious of it, 
 was far too common and too ordinary to be admitted 
 to the company of the great. And yet, in all con- 
 science, they suffered enough, thereby! Which 
 makes it all the more odd that here they were, 
 
 139
 
 joking and laughing over a name in the visitors' 
 book! 
 
 But deep down in Charles, and in Peter Margett, 
 too, something was stirring, stirring ever so gently 
 and cautiously, like a rabbit in a wood, a quarter of 
 a mile ahead of the beaters; stirring uneasily, and, 
 so softly now that they themselves were hardly 
 aware of it. Yet, at any moment, like the rabbit, 
 this something might take fright, plunging wildly 
 away, crashing through the bracken, heedless of 
 tell-tale rustlings and cracklings till, inevitably at 
 last, there came, too late to stop, the great green 
 closet of a riding, where a gun would very surely 
 have been placed. 
 
 Then, of course, you must not hesitate because, if 
 you do, you will find that your mad speed has 
 petered out just exactly in the middle of that pitiless 
 stretch of uncovered grass, and, choked with a 
 paralytic sense of immediate disaster, you will sit 
 up, bunched and solid, a gift to the most hopeless 
 duffer amongst the guns. 
 
 That, if one could only know it, must be rabbit- 
 philosophy. 
 
 But, unlike the rabbit, Charles and Peter were 
 unaware not only of the far-off presence of the 
 beater, but even that they were stirring at all. 
 
 Yet there was the fact. The beater was trying 
 hard to get a small white ball over the far side of a 
 green pit, and Charles Cutman and Peter Margett 
 
 140
 
 WHERE YOUR, TREASURE IS 
 
 were still in rabbit-language unconsciously cock- 
 ing their ears to the alarm. 
 
 They played their customary morning round, 
 two singles. Charles was playing against the 
 doctor, and (for he could not completely ignore the 
 still smouldering fire of his distress), envied Owen 
 Weare his whole-hearted enthusiasm for the game. 
 Here was a man, he thought, whose love had 
 triumphed over all these problems. He felt a new 
 admiration for the doctor, abasing himself as a 
 miserable creature. And, naturally enough, he 
 thereby pressed and topped and fluffed his 
 approaches, and over-ran or was never up to the 
 hole, and indeed broke all the ten commandments 
 of golf. 
 
 As a result he was well beaten, and, worst of all, 
 discovered that he did not care. 
 
 At lunch, on the balcony, which offered a lovely 
 view of the sea over the tree tops, it was discovered 
 that Loxbury, still slicing, was disinclined for the 
 usual afternoon foursome. As a matter of fact he 
 was sulking about these very tee-shots, exactly as a 
 child sulks when its tower of bricks, through some 
 initial mistake, falls at the actual moment of per- 
 fection. Such a demonstration in the nursery is 
 accounted naughty, and solemn words are spoken of 
 the virtues of self-control as exemplified in the 
 behaviour of Bruce and the spider or some other 
 entirely irritating character, happily for himself 
 always out of reach of the maddened child. 
 
 141
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 But in golf it is quite different. Petulance is re- 
 spected. Rage is understood, and even dignified by 
 the tribute of sympathetic silence. 
 
 Loxbury, who, had he been forty years younger 
 would inevitably have been sent to bed for his 
 behaviour at lunch, was accounted a man suffering; 
 unfairly visited by disaster, and was treated with a 
 kind and tactful sympathy. Thus, wrapt about with 
 that peculiar hauteur of self pity which only a 
 failure at golf can produce, he was, in the end, 
 escorted as far as the little gate at the top of the 
 lane by Peter Margett, who was quite genuinely 
 sorry for him. 
 
 As for the bachelor, he arrived back in the little 
 town, possessed of a not unpleasant sense of 
 martyrdom, and spent the afternoon upon the beach 
 pretending for himself an aesthetic nature which 
 could find a strange sadness in the deep sparkling 
 blue of an unruffled summer sea. 
 
 "I sliced for months at one time," Cutman was 
 saying seriously, as Peter reached the verandah 
 again. "I tried everything." 
 
 "Left foot forward?" The doctor threw in his 
 question in exactly the same tone as he asked 
 whether a patient had ever had a course of calomel. 
 
 Charles nodded. 
 
 "And, in the end,' he went on, with a grave shake 
 of the head, "I even began facing away to the on, 
 every time. Relying on the slice, you know I" 
 
 "Oh, that's fatal!" This from Peter, who had 
 caught up the thread of the discussion. 
 
 142
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "I know," answered Charles, "but I was fairly 
 'desperate, Peter!" He paused and ground out his 
 cigarette on the saucer of his coffee cup. "The 
 slicing disappeared in time," he added, "I don't 
 know why Now, of course, I'm pulling," he went 
 on with a wry smile. 
 
 "Tried the left foot drawn back a bit?" asked the 
 doctor; and so the eternal theme had gone the full 
 circle once again. 
 
 "Don't you think it's much more a question of 
 wrists?" 
 
 All three men turned in astonishment at the 
 Interruption. The strange lady had come out of the 
 door at the end of the balcony, which led into the 
 women's quarters, and was leaning against the rail, 
 facing them. 
 
 "Oh, don't get up," she begged, as they started 
 to scrape back their chairs. "It's fearfully im- 
 pertinent of me to chime in at all, but, in a way " 
 here she gave a merry little laugh, "I met you all 
 three, at the party last night, didn't I" 
 
 She drew up a chair to the table, and Charles dis- 
 covered that it was rather pleasant to feel that she 
 did not seem to expect this to have been done by 
 one of them. Exquisitely feminine though she 
 appeared, she did not require little services and 
 thus big services do not lose their value. Peter 
 offered her his cigarette case '(Cutman's was just 
 too late, under the table), but she shook her head 
 and picked up the conversation again. 
 
 "I'm afraid this is really horribly impertinent of 
 
 143
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 me," she said, "but you see, I'm fearfully keen and 
 I'm a fellow slicer!" 
 
 After that, of course, there was no need for intro- 
 ductions. Deep had called to deep. Indeed there 
 are few better ways of putting all human beings 
 upon an equal footing than this. Discover that the 
 butler's approaching has gone to pieces, at the same 
 time as his master's, and you will find the true 
 brotherhood of man. Play, in a kind and paternal 
 spirit, a game of tennis with one whose twin pig- 
 tails tell you she is still under nursery rule; stand 
 up, if you can, to her slashing service and her un- 
 expected returns : contemplate the fact that the mis- 
 takes she makes are the mistakes you make and 
 the chasm of years, created from a sense of self- 
 protection, will vanish. You will, after a set or 
 two, be playing tennis with your equal ; what though 
 she disappears after the game, within the autocratic 
 sphere of a governess, and is heard protesting 
 shrilly against the ukase that wet shoes must be 
 changed immediately. 
 
 So also can the barriers of sex be pushed over, 
 by the same formula that annihilates class and age. 
 
 Thus they sat talking earnest golf for some time 
 until Peter Margett, again anticipating Charles only 
 by a few seconds, asked her whether she would care 
 to make a fourth in their afternoon round. 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "How kind of you," she said, "of course, I should 
 love it. You see," she added, as she rose to her 
 feet, "I am quite a stranger here 1" 
 
 144
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 She turned and vanished through the door at 
 which she had appeared, saying, over her shoulder 
 that "she would not be a minute." 
 
 In less than that time she had reappeared, her 
 clubs swung over her shoulder. 
 
 "I never take a boy," she said. "They always 
 seem so small at the seaside. While you are looking 
 for your ball in long grass, you're just as likely as 
 not to lose your boy." 
 
 As a matter of fact the three men invariably took 
 out caddies on the afternoon round, but this, of 
 course, made it impossible on that afternoon. 
 
 There is no need to describe the game. Charles 
 played with the strange lady, against the Doctor 
 and Peter. She made a wonderfully sympathetic 
 partner. Charles experienced an actual pleasure in 
 apologizing to her, after putting their ball in some 
 hopeless position. For there is an undeniable joy 
 in being sorry, to the right person. This trivial 
 companionship involved in being partners, un- 
 reasonably annoyed the Editor. He would have 
 liked to have been saying how sorry he was. . . . 
 
 As for Owen Weare, he played his usual steady, 
 serious game, concentrating upon it, undisturbed one 
 way or the other by the presence of their unusual 
 companion. 
 
 But to Charles and to Peter, the whole affair was 
 gradually assuming the interest and the thrill of 
 adventure. There was that quaint entry in the 
 visitors' book a name which was only half a name. 
 Moreover, she had never introduced herself at all: 
 
 145
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 and that almost made her appear to have no name 
 at all, for the majority of people, in meetings and 
 partings, are so apt to insist upon the importance of 
 mere names. Charles became conscious of this 
 lacuna, while negotiating a two-foot put to win a 
 hole and he nearly ran the ball off the green. But 
 then, of course, Charles should not have been 
 thinking about his partner at all, at the moment 
 when the whole business of life was to hear their 
 ball drop, with a pleasing clatter, against the bottom 
 of the tin. He excused himself, enjoying the oppor- 
 tunity, and heard her acquiesce sunnily, in his state- 
 ment about the "trickiness" of the greens. Then 
 she holed the ball from a far corner and halved 
 the hole. 
 
 "What a partner I" he was thinking, as she 
 walked with him to the next tee, warning him, with 
 a smile, that she had never yet carried the pit, but 
 that this time she was going to try harder than ever ! 
 
 And, of course, she failed. Anything else would 
 have been intolerable. The ball, clean hit, struck 
 the further edge, some three feet from the top, and 
 rolled back and down kicking about, this way and 
 that, until it finally settled under an uncompromising 
 piece of scrub. 
 
 "Oh dear!" she said, "what is the good of saying 
 I'm sorry for that ! It couldn't have found a more 
 dreadful place !" 
 
 But somehow, this failure in mere strength was 
 simply entrancing. 
 
 146
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Owen Weare drove his ball well over the brink 
 of the pit. But Charles clamored down, happily 
 enough, with his heaviest mashie in his hand, and 
 hoped more fervently than he had hoped about any- 
 thing for a long time since, that some divine accident 
 would happen and cause him to lay his own ball 
 beside, or even beyond, Owen Weare's. 
 
 And it did. 
 
 How he managed it he did not know; he simply 
 felt an overpowering will to shift the little white 
 ball that lay under the shadow of that infernal piece 
 of scrub. He may even have shut his eyes, as the 
 heavy club came crashing down. There were stones 
 and boulders about, and it was a risky matter to 
 hit hard. 
 
 But, when he looked up, there was the strange 
 lady, outlined against the sky above him, her head 
 half turned away following the ball, and her hands 
 together . . . applauding his effort: applauding 
 his, Charles's effort! Then, for the first time, as he 
 climbed up the opposite slope towards the ecstatic 
 silhouette of his partner, he experienced a feeling of 
 danger. Deep down, it shook him ever so slightly, 
 like the thin, small tremor heralding an earthquake. 
 
 "Oh, a splendid shot 1" 
 
 He was standing beside her, as he heard the en- 
 thusiastic words, and, maybe it was a good thing 
 that, at the moment, he was too much out of breath 
 to reply. It is not good for men, when they have 
 reached the age of Charles, to experience a great
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 longing in the hollow of a pit, to have achieved it, 
 and to climb out and face the audience ! 
 
 This is the lure of the footlights, childish and 
 unreasonable, but horribly compelling. And so, 
 perhaps, it is a matter for congratulation that 
 Charles found himself out of breath. 
 
 Then, over a stretch of springing turf, the vision, 
 once more, of Peter and the doctor. . . . 
 
 "Hotshot!" 
 
 This from Owen Weare, intent upon the game. 
 But from Peter, nothing. He was always, except in 
 the convictions which coloured the paper he con- 
 trolled, honest. 
 
 Now he was honestly jealous. 
 
 In this key, the game continued to the eighteenth 
 green. 
 
 It is not profitable to try to analyse the quality 
 of fascination, if only because its surrounding cir- 
 cumstances are so hard to trace. But the force 
 itself exists, just like electricity or the weird power 
 in the atom, but even less divined in its first causes. 
 Indeed, its effects are practically all that are known 
 about it. 
 
 Thus, as Peter and Charles drove against one 
 another, up the long slope of the last hole, they both 
 realized that, in relation to the woman whose name 
 in the visitors' book was entered as "Mary," they 
 were in the nature of competitors. 
 
 Their hearts beat quicker for the chase, as they 
 had, years ago, when they snatched their wives from 
 
 148
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 the unimaginable hundreds who might have become 
 the mates of Joan and Emily. Since then, perhaps, 
 those legendary husbands had dwindled in number 
 through the years, dwindled and dwindled, until 
 now there remained only the actual inevitable one. 
 
 But at that time it had not been inevitable: 
 rather had it been a tremendous, intoxicating 
 gamble. 
 
 Here, again, undeniably, was that same gambler's 
 thrill. A little disturbing, when a man is past fifty 
 and his whole instincts lean towards the respectable : 
 yet, for all that, impossible to refuse. 
 
 The emotion, the attraction, the desire what 
 does it matter how you label it? the thing was 
 there, established. And Charles and Peter, from 
 whom the very horses of Hippolytus in their first 
 ecstacy of terror, could not have dragged the 
 information, knew it, to the discomfort and joy of 
 their separate souls, as they panted up the slope 
 towards the club house. 
 
 Here they came upon Alison and Harold, who 
 had wandered up to the links for tea, and were 
 starting out for nine holes afterwards. The young 
 people looked at the four coming in, noticed the 
 strange lady, and, about to hail them, hesitated. 
 Then they realized that this was indeed Charles 
 Cutman and Peter Margett, and shouted their 
 greeting. Charles and Peter waved their hats in 
 response. It was, of course, utterly ridiculous, but 
 that meeting struck them both as a pity. 
 
 149
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Meanwhile Alison and Harold passed on, and, 
 finishing with the first hole, came out upon the open 
 cliff and the sea. 
 
 "I don't know," said Alison in her abrupt way, 
 "why we should have hesitated to believe our eyes, 
 just because our fathers were playing with the lady 
 of last night it's quite absurd." 
 
 "Yet we did," returned Harold, "and, knowing 
 our fathers, I'm not surprised that we did I" 
 
 "No," answered Alison, "perhaps you are right." 
 
 It is part of the lovable confidence of youth that 
 every child, despite the proverb, is convinced that 
 it knows its own father. 
 
 In their turn they had breached the pit hole, the 
 woods behind them and the great green slope in 
 front. 
 
 Harold turned suddenly to her. 
 
 "Alison, darling," he said, "you do love me, don't 
 you?" 
 
 "Dear boy," she answered, "why should you 
 doubt it?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't ... I don't. Only you ... 
 your're so splendidly efficient, Alison, carrying out 
 our ideas about it all. I'm afraid I'm not so strong 
 as you. I have to keep on remembering the wood." 
 
 She looked swiftly round, gauging their solitude. 
 Then she kissed him, suddenly. 
 
 "That is to help your memory, boyl" she cried 
 gaily. 
 
 150
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 The kiss whirled him away to those wonderful 
 moments under the silvered trees. Their wooing, 
 tarnished ever so little by the delicate common- 
 place of her treatment of it, in public, became real to 
 him again. Of course, he thought, she was right. 
 They need share none of this ecstacy with those 
 others. With them, the sisters and the cousins and 
 the aunts, all that counted, all that gave them a 
 second-hand, unreasonable pleasure, were the forms 
 and ceremonies, the silly fact not the miraculous, 
 unique emotion behind it. 
 
 So thought the boy, and drove his ball lustily, far 
 over the edge of the pit. 
 
 Alison too, opening her muscular shoulder, easily 
 carried the distance. 
 
 As they walked up the hill, she laughed suddenly. 
 
 "I thought of a phrase last night in bed," she 
 told him, "a phrase which pleased me, because it 
 summed up what I mean about all the people who 
 have and who will congratulate us. All the people 
 who will send presents, and say it's not so pretty a 
 wedding as the last they attended . , . oh, all 
 the people, Harold!" 
 
 "What was it?" he asked. 
 
 " 'The licensed audience of love,' " she answered, 
 solemnly, then burst into laughter. 
 
 "But of course," she added, "I realized it wasn't 
 really a very good phrase, because it's just the kind 
 that Daddy would love for a third leader."
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 She laughed again merrily. 
 
 Oh, thought the boy, this was surely the right way 
 to win the game of life ! 
 
 Had they not mastered the rules before starting 
 to play? 
 
 His heart bounded to meet hers, completely con- 
 fident in them both, as she squared herself for her 
 second shot. 
 
 Thus youth; using the telescope of wisdom but 
 omitting to discover at which is the right end to 
 apply the eye. 
 
 152
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Some few days later, Ted Willis was sitting on 
 the stones beside the water, leisurely mending the 
 broken ribs of a lobster pot. He hummed to him- 
 self a queer, formless little tune, the lilt of which 
 would defy memory, but the motif was one of sad- 
 ness. So much so indeed, that at last, he set down 
 his work and lay back upon the beach, staring up 
 at the sky. Vague, half-discovered longings were 
 at work in his brain, those big embracing emotions, 
 which surged up in him now and again, carrying 
 him outside himself, magicking him far away from 
 the shabby deep-sea fisherman that he was. Some- 
 times these moods which seized him would be, as it 
 were, maelstroms of wild happiness: happiness 
 without a cause, absolute. Then he would sing one 
 of those untutored but triumphant songs, which 
 Charles and Peter had heard not many nights since. 
 At such times he seemed to be admitted to a fellow- 
 ship in the general joy of things; to become one of 
 the immortals who have no need of a jest to make 
 them laugh. But now the pendulum had swung the 
 other way, and he had taken sable sadness as his 
 mate, though there had been no tragedy to hasten 
 their embraces. Misery and Pity, Laughter and 
 Gladness, seemed, on these occasions, to become 
 
 153
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 actual beings, forcing him, a willing victim, into 
 their company. 
 
 If this is madness, Willis was mad: but at least, 
 when the fingers of that consciousness so much 
 greater than his own frame, touched his soul, the 
 old man was possessed of one great, tremendous 
 impulse, the impulse to make, for sorrow or gaiety, 
 the whole world kin. In this mood he gazed at the 
 sky, and at this moment someone sat down beside 
 him on the stones, as softly and as silently as those 
 same invisible fingers had but now brushed across 
 his second self. 
 
 "All that you hate in the sky," a voice breathed 
 in his ear, "is the knowledge that you cannot see the 
 end of it!" The old man, for a moment, hardly 
 believed that the voice was real; it might, indeed, 
 have been only an echo in his mind. Then, plunging 
 back, from the uncharted spaces in which he had 
 been travelling, to the irk of the stones in his back, 
 and the splash of the waves at his feet, he knew 
 that the voice was as real as the pebbles and the 
 water. 
 
 He gathered his limbs together gracefully, like a 
 sailor, sprang to his feet and pulled off his hat. 
 
 "Madam," he said, "if it wasn't a piece of 
 impertinence in a dirty old fisherman, I'd tell you 
 that you were a female wizard !" 
 
 The Lady of the Links pmiled and threw ja stone 
 into the water. 
 
 154
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Long words," she said, "and strange words for 
 a fisherman." 
 
 The sentence was almost a question. At least, to 
 Willis, it appeared to require an answer. 
 
 "I've travelled a long way; I've lived a long time 
 I don't know who my father was," he said, hardly 
 knowing how to reply. 
 
 But she seemed to understand, for she nodded, 
 and scooped out a little hollow in the stones beside 
 her. 
 
 "As an old campaigner," she said, "you ought to 
 have known the value of that " She indicated with 
 a delicate fore-finger the hole she had made. 
 
 Ted Willis smiled and lay down again beside her, 
 worming his body comfortably into the hollow. 
 
 "It would be fearfully rude," he said, "to tell you 
 that you were a queer fish; but somehow I can't 
 treat you as a lady. .You know a bit too much, I 
 suppose." 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 "On the same count," she answered, "I have not 
 even attempted to treat you as a fisherman." 
 
 "Ah, then you know," he said, "that I am the 
 local 'character',?" 
 
 He smiled at his own words. So many visitors 
 had patronized him out of curiosity. The old man 
 knew this well enough, for, unlike the cities, it is 
 impossible to live in a village and not to know the 
 exact role which you .arc filling. - 
 
 '155
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 "The incredible longshoreman !" she said. "Well, 
 I can quite believe it, though, as a matter of fact I 
 knew nothing at all, for I have never been here 
 before." 
 
 "I was wondering," he returned, slowly, "why I 
 did not know your face. 'Tis a sure thing," he went 
 on, with one of his odd slips back into the argot of 
 the beach, " 'Tis a sure thing ye do no want my 
 company, the same way as those others; for to 
 them I'm a bit of local colour, as they call it, like 
 the red on the cliffs I" 
 
 "I am afraid," she said, "that I have too much 
 impulse in my composition. I saw you staring at 
 the sky, and I had an idea that you were feeling 
 mad because it's not just a ceiling, with a room 
 above, that you know quite well." 
 
 He sighed. 
 
 "You are a wonderfully understanding thing," he 
 returned. "I mean no offence. Maybe, that's near 
 enough to what I was thinking, though it was less 
 fine than the way you put it, I'm afraid. Just a 
 mood." 
 
 She nodded smiling. 
 
 "It gave an introduction, anyway," she said. 
 "Tell me, do you know Mr. Cutman and Mr. Mar- 
 gett?" 
 
 "Well enough," he answered. "They have been 
 here every summer time for . . . is it twenty- 
 five years, or twenty-six? I can't remember." 
 
 156
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Near enough," she said, and, under her breath, 
 "enough to explain, without anything else." 
 
 "Two very nice gentlemen," Ted Willis was say- 
 ing, "you have met them?" 
 
 "We are staying at the same hotel," she returned. 
 "What do you know of them?" 
 
 The fisherman raised himself and hugged his 
 knees. 
 
 "No more than you, madam," he said, "if I am 
 any judge I" 
 
 "As I thought," she smiled to him, "you are a re- 
 markable man. I only asked, because it struck me 
 that they were unhappy." 
 
 The old man did not move ; he gazed intently at 
 the water's edge. 
 
 "The lips of Mr. Margett and the eyes of Mr. 
 Cutman," he murmured to himself. But she caught 
 the words nevertheless. 
 
 "Certainly," she whispered, "I was not deceived 
 in you. But I ought not to ask you about other folk. 
 I should have known that you are too big a man to 
 tell me. I am sorry." 
 
 Ted Willis rose> and turned his back upon the 
 sea. 
 
 "I know nothing," he said. "They have been 
 very good friends to me." 
 
 His fine old eyes fixed her, sternly. 
 
 "It is a complete answer," she returned. "But I 
 mean them no harm." 
 
 "I know it," he answered shortly. 
 
 157
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 She looked past him, at the sun dancing on the 
 surface of the water. 
 
 "Take me out for a sail," she said, and he bowed. 
 
 This was the business of his life. 
 
 She sat beside him in the stern. All the time he 
 was subtly conscious that this passenger had little in 
 common with the usual people who patronised the 
 offer of "a sail in the bay." 
 
 She talked, but her talk was not like that of those 
 others. Her conversation seemed to come to him in 
 scraps, like the jumbled creations of his own mind. 
 "The sea," she had said, "is very lonely even in a 
 fishing boat in the bay the sea throws you back on 
 yourself don't you lose the sense that you are part 
 of a community? Don't you begin to feel the real- 
 ity of being part of a universe? That's the sea." 
 
 This was the nature of her conversation, and 
 something in himself responded to it. Her being 
 seemed to swim within the orbit of his own. Their 
 souls marched together; after many years, the old 
 man felt again the elation of a great friendship. 
 
 Then he found himself once more on the beach, 
 gazing at the sky. 
 
 His brain whirled dumbly at the suddenness of 
 the transition. Of course he must have beached his 
 boat, run her up the shingle with the aid of the usual 
 shore-loungers secured her yes, indeed, there she 
 was, half way up the beach. So strong then had 
 been the personality of his passenger that all these 
 
 158
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 everyday exercises had been performed trance-like, 
 leaving no trace upon his memory. 
 
 Nor could he remember lying down again upon 
 the stones and looking at the heavens. Only, as his 
 brain seemed to fall back to him out of that same 
 sky, he did experience a feeling that someone, or 
 something, had been very much in touch with him 
 purposely in touch, seeking, as he vaguely imagined, 
 some sort of information. 
 
 Whether he had given that information, or not, 
 he could not say. Instinctively, he hoped that he 
 had not. Then, remembering the passenger, he was 
 not sure that this really was what he hoped. 
 
 He looked round, half expecting her to be still 
 beside him. But there was no one there. 
 
 He could not remember her saying goodbye to 
 him. There was no money in his pocket. And then, 
 his eyes ranging along the sea front, he thought he 
 saw her, sitting under a parasol, a little way along 
 the cliff, reading a book. The old man passed his 
 hand across his forehead slowly. Then he collected 
 his forgotten lobster-pot and strolled up the beach, 
 He was puzzled. 
 
 And, in a different sense, Loveday Weare and 
 Joan Margett were puzzled too. During the inter- 
 vening days, between the afternoon foursome and 
 the mystification of the fisherman they had reached 
 speaking terms with the strange lady. They had, 
 that is to say, arrived at the stage where it appeared 
 
 159
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 discourteous not to remark that it "was a hot day," 
 or that it "looked like rain," when they passed her 
 in the hall after breakfast. But that appeared as 
 far as intimacy was likely to go. There was no sign 
 of the development of the usual holiday friendship, 
 always so keen and so complete, until, at the little 
 junction on the main line, two separate trains seem 
 to swallow up the different lives into their own pri- 
 vate maws, as utterly and finally as a funeral di- 
 vorces two bodies. 
 
 "You see," said Loveday, lying back in a deck 
 chair on the verandah of the hotel, "there is some- 
 thing not quite obvious about her." She paused, 
 smoothing out her skirt with fingers which touched 
 the folds caressingly. This sense of delight, in the 
 mere feel of things, was one of the few pleasures 
 which no one could deny to her. 
 
 "Perhaps," she added, "that is enough to explain 
 what is happening." 
 
 Joan shifted her position uneasily. 
 
 "You are hinting at things again," she said. 
 
 The other, with a quick gesture of the hand re- 
 pelled the evasion. 
 
 "No! no, Joan," she said, that is simply cow- 
 ardice." 
 
 "Well," muttered Joan, "you have so little to 
 lose." 
 
 "I dare say. There is nothing to envy in that." 
 
 Joan's quick sympathies responded immediately. 
 
 160
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Oh, I am sorry, Loveday," she said. "I never 
 thought! I was hurt." 
 
 "I know, dear. I wish I could be hurt. But I do 
 understand what you feel. Only, is it any use not to 
 face it? If it is, then, by all means let us look the 
 other way." 
 
 Joan was silent for a moment, then she sighed. 
 
 "No," she said, "it is no use not to face it." 
 
 "I knew," murmured the other, "that the storm 
 was coming, but I had no idea it was going to be 
 complicated like this." 
 
 "Do you think," asked Joan, steadying her voice 
 pitifully, "that they are in love?" 
 
 "Men keep that capacity longer than women," 
 answered Loveday, "the capacity, I mean, for . . . 
 for pretending they are still boys !" 
 
 Joan shrugged her shoulders, irritably. 
 
 "Oh, I know that," she said. "Are they . . . 
 or do they think they are, in love ? Anyway, what's 
 the difference?" she added hopelessly. 
 
 Loveday answered slowly, as one choosing her 
 words. 
 
 "I don't know," she said. "Not exactly in love, 
 perhaps : but I think they are trying to recreate the 
 . . . the original thrill, with some . . . some 
 drug which she can give them." 
 
 Her companion nodded. 
 
 "Yes," she answered, and a world of misery es- 
 caped in the monosyllable. Suddenly, with one of 
 
 161
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 her startling gestures, she sat bolt upright, flinging 
 her arms out above her head. 
 
 "Oh," she cried, "I wish I was Emily, comfort- 
 ably blind!" 
 
 Loveday nodded in her turn. 
 
 "And Charles Cutman," she said, "is even more 
 drugged than Peter." 
 
 Joan rose, and paced up and down the little bal- 
 cony, as if caged in by invisible bars. 
 
 "Oh," she cried, at last, "I believe Alison is 
 right, after all ! She is deliberately avoiding all this 
 by cutting out the Romance It's better to be just 
 competent, than unhappy 1" 
 
 "She has yet to prove her theory," replied the 
 other. 
 
 But Joan was not to be comforted. 
 
 "Oh," she cried again, "what do I care? What 
 do I care? My troubles are facts, not theories! 
 Alison is strong and young!" 
 
 "Young enough to devise her own tragedies, con- 
 fidently; just as we were!" 
 
 Loveday Weare's voice seemed tired, its tone 
 hinted that she was not far off becoming an old 
 woman. Joan started for a moment at the phenom- 
 enon; then, in a rush, her own unhappiness surged 
 over her again. 
 
 "I don't care," she said. "I love her, and she is 
 my child, but I don't care. My own affairs have 
 come so much nearer to me than . . . her fu- 
 ture!" 
 
 162
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 She sank back again into her chair. 
 
 "I suppose it is wrong and that I am an unnatural 
 mother," she said. "But again, I don't care. Not 
 now." 
 
 She suddenly buried her face in her hands. Love- 
 day slid an arm around her shoulder. 
 
 "Joan, dear," she said, "I I may be wrong." 
 
 She saw the other, forcing the tears back with her 
 palms, shake her head. 
 
 "I can't comfort you," she said, "at least, only a 
 little. I do feel, somehow, that this woman . . . 
 isn't quite like other women. I do feel that she is 
 not going to rob you in quite the same way." 
 
 Joan Margett looked up, her eyes hard, almost 
 fanatical. 
 
 "Oh," she answered, "I know what you mean. 
 And you think I am as small as that I No! No! 
 No! I love Peter, because . . . because he's a 
 perpetual baby. I love him because he and I have 
 been very, very private friends. I love him because 
 I know, that, even if . . . if he left me for ever 
 he would always be really mine. If something hap- 
 pened to take away his body from me, for a night 
 
 . . a week ... a month ; that would make 
 no difference. It isn't Peter's body that I love, it's 
 Peter!" 
 
 She stopped, out of breath with her own self-reve- 
 lation. Loveday stared at her. 
 
 "And I thought," she murmured, "that you too 
 were a Victorian. I had put you at 1880 and Emily 
 at 1845 I" 
 
 163
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 But her friend, wrapt up in her own distress, had 
 not heard. 
 
 Loveday rose. 
 
 "At least," she said, "you have realized it and 
 you have faced it. You can't do more." 
 
 Joan turned to her and nodded. Then she sat 
 down again in her chair, and picked up her book, 
 opening it at the place marked. 
 
 "Sorry I burst out like that," she said shortly. 
 
 "That's all right," answered the other. She real- 
 ized that this was the inevitable end to that kind of 
 revelation; to round it off in the talk of school-girls. 
 She realized, too, that Joan wanted to be left alone. 
 As she passed through the open window into the 
 drawing-room she heard the book drop from her 
 friend's hand. 
 
 164
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Here indeed was a situation, ludicrous enough! 
 Two men, past middle-age, fighting desperately 
 against an attack of boy's love. It was as if, at fifty, 
 they had all of a sudden developed teething rash. 
 For neither Charles nor Peter was foolish enough, 
 in the beginning, to pretend to himself that this was 
 a grand passion. Yet the emotion was sufficiently 
 compelling for all that. It had indeed all the pain- 
 ful fascination which throws undergraduates into 
 ecstacies of gloom and despair, though they have 
 seen a face but once, nor do the chances point 
 towards their ever catching sight of it again. But 
 there was a difference. For the undergraduate, 
 over-estimating his pains, is unable to value that 
 which he is actually experiencing. He does not know 
 that this very folly is the seed and life of romance, 
 that this fever which he takes so much trouble to 
 hide from the hoarse laughter of an uncle as well as 
 the kind smile of a mother is second only to the great 
 discovery itself, and is, indeed, a treasure to be 
 cherished still, even after that discovery is made. 
 The fever passes, and he is the first to make fun of 
 the next victim. Charles and Peter themselves had 
 suffered these things as desperately and laughed at 
 the sufferings of others as merrily as any of their 
 
 165
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 kind. But, by reason of the disappointment and the 
 sorrow of the waning thrill, they had learnt to long 
 once more for the absurd distress and the ridiculous 
 joy of irrational romance. They had learnt at last 
 that, without this disease of boyhood and girlhood, 
 love runs a terrible risk, the risk of becoming simply 
 an amiable custom. Perhaps they were peculiar in 
 wanting more. It is possible that the majority of 
 the men and women they knew never bothered their 
 heads to keep romance up to concert pitch. Sub- 
 consciously, it may be, most engaged couples, even 
 on the way to church, never expect such perfection. 
 Love does not die oh no I they would deny this 
 Indignantly it does not die but it dulls, becomes 
 less violent, less tremendous, smooths itself down, 
 by long contact, into a sweet-running, durable ma- 
 chine. But Charles, and Peter, too (less emphatic- 
 ally, because he hated to confess a weakness), 
 loathed the idea of the machine. In both their lives 
 their love, their women, their homes, had been the 
 biggest, the most adventurous thing. If that ad- 
 venture disappeared there would be nothing left but 
 a yearly income and a respectable funeral, nothing 
 left except to watch with the irritating or kindly 
 eye of an uncle, the happiness of youngsters. 
 
 And upon the heels of this emotion, when, indeed, 
 it had reached its zenith, the strange lady had ap- 
 peared. 
 
 Somehow, in these two, presumably steadied and 
 settled-down men, she had managed to reawaken 
 
 166
 
 WHERE YOUE TREASURE IS 
 
 the romantic ambitions of the very young which do 
 not need, but even repel any satisfaction. Thus, in 
 the beginning, they wanted nothing of the strange 
 lady, nothing except that she should be there and 
 serve as the spur to their imaginations. She was 
 simply supplying, like a miraculous fount, just that 
 elusive emotion which had gone. 
 
 It is possible that in their own most private selves 
 they knew this well enough, but it is certain that the 
 knowledge made no difference to the actuality of 
 their distress. They were as jealous of one another 
 as two schoolboys over a rare postage-stamp. They 
 were as shy about their condition as a woman with 
 a child. Had they a suspicion that their wives even 
 guessed at the affair, it is possible that, from an 
 utter inability to tolerate their blushes being seen, 
 Charles and Peter would have done something des- 
 perate shipped before the mast, perhaps, and put 
 ashore somewhere in the Pacific, gasping at their 
 own folly, and dazed with astonishment at their 
 behaviour. 
 
 Meanwhile, here was the embarrassing ideal in 
 daily contact with them both. They feared its 
 presence as much as they would have mourned its 
 departure. And still they accepted every intimacy 
 with it which Chance threw in their way. Charles, 
 for instance, had played a whole round of golf with 
 her, alone, and had succumbed, ecstatically, to that 
 miraculous putting. Peter, secretly astonished at 
 the weakness of his own duplicity, had pretended to
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 miss the remainder of the party on an after-dinner 
 walk, and had sat, for one amazing hour, with her 
 upon the balcony. On this occasion Charles, return- 
 ing to the hotel in the rearguard of the party, with 
 Emily's arm resting happily on his own, realized 
 what had happened and came as near to murderous 
 impulse as he was capable of coming. His hatred 
 of Peter, momentary but none the less violent for 
 that, appalled him by the intensity of its reality. 
 He squeezed Emily's arm: a mechanical manifes- 
 tation of affection, which was actually a gesture of 
 self-defence. It was hideous to him to realize, as he 
 felt her answering squeeze, the fearful disloyalty in 
 his mind; still more awful, the knowledge that it was 
 stronger than himself. At that moment his whole 
 life appeared to him as having been a mistake. He 
 told himself that he had missed everything, missed 
 the whole meaning of his existence, by some ridicu- 
 lous, unpreventable mistake, years and years 
 ago. . . . 
 
 Then, the very next afternoon, alone on his way 
 up to the links, he had come upon the strange lady 
 again, watching the mullet over the edge of the 
 bridge, and, half an hour late for his game, had 
 arrived at the Club House with a ready excuse and 
 a light heart once more. 
 
 So backwards and forwards, these ridiculous men, 
 set and middle-aged, experienced the mad emotional 
 see-saw of boyish adoration. Had either of them 
 been alone with the phenomenon, he might have 
 
 168
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 stopped to think that this tempest had blown up in 
 an incredibly short time, that he had actually only 
 been in touch with the divinity for a very few days. 
 He might have considered this, and, considering, 
 crushed the whole business back into an absurdity. 
 But the element of competition took the affair into 
 a higher, more strident key. Both men were jealous, 
 and, such is the insane power of jealousy, neither 
 stopped to think of anything save the temporary 
 advantage, imaginary or real, of the other. But 
 jealousy between friends and jealousy between 
 strangers are very different things. Charles and 
 Peter had known each other intimately for years. 
 Any prolonged pretence between them was impos- 
 sible. At breakfast, on the beach, at lunch, on the 
 links, the assumption between the two that this was 
 the normal August holiday soon became grotesque. 
 If all the diplomatists were friends of twenty years 
 standing, war would be impossible. They would be 
 driven into telling one another the simple truth, 
 through sheer inability to deceive. Thus Charles 
 and Peter, left alone one late afternoon in the bil- 
 liard room, Loxbury and the doctor preferring the 
 sea air, first eyed each other uncomfortably, then 
 eyed everything else equally uncomfortably and fell 
 to praying, each to his own god, that the other 
 would be the first to break this extremely awkward 
 and difficult piece of ice. 
 
 The Editor, with his passion for strength, broke 
 it violently and completely. He banged the red ball 
 
 169
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 into a pocket, thus conclusively terminating the 
 game ; then he threw his cue on to a sofa. 
 
 "Well, Cutman," he said shortly, "what about 
 it?" 
 
 The note of challenge lay in the surname. The 
 barrister had been "Charles" to Peter Margett 
 these many years. The temptation to stave off the 
 attack by the conventional "What on earth do you 
 mean, old man?" was overwhelming, but Charles 
 was beyond the futility of such a remark as between 
 these two. 
 
 He noticed that Peter had seated himself in an 
 arm-chair and was glaring at him defiantly. He felt 
 inclined to be theatrical, to laugh and shrug his 
 shoulders, walking impressively across to the end of 
 the room and replacing his cue calmly in the rack. 
 But he could not. He found it impossible to pose, 
 opposite that face which he knew so well it would 
 be childish. Besides, Peter would see through it, 
 would know that it was only a pathetic, silly effort 
 to gain time. After all, Peter had gone for the 
 problem bald-headed. It was up to Charles to do 
 the same. 
 
 "Well," he said slowly, "it can't lead anywhere, 
 Peter, so what does it matter?" 
 
 "Can't lead anywhere?" rasped the Editor. 
 "You say that because you half hope that it can't. 
 But how do you know where it is going to lead?" 
 
 "But it's ridiculous," muttered the barrister. 
 "Look at us two middle-aged family men I" 
 
 170
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Do you feel a middle-aged family man, when 
 you are up on the cliff with her?" 
 
 Peter's voice was a positive snarl. 
 
 "Don't bark at me, Margett," returned Charles 
 angrily. "I suppose you shed twenty years too, 
 that evening on the balcony!" 
 
 "Well," snapped the Editor, "I'm not ashamed 
 of it. I could have gone on in the old way; I had 
 the strength strength enough, at least, to school 
 myself to it. Fate's chucked this in my road, and 
 it's no longer a question of just my own ideas. You 
 say it can't lead anywhere ! By God, Charles, I say 
 it can ! And because I am able to say that, my need 
 must be greater than yours!" 
 
 He was on his feet, his eyes blazing. His chal- 
 lenge, his certainty that his own longings were bigger 
 and more insistent than his friend's, fired Charles 
 with sudden fury. Why should this man presume 
 to suffer more than he ? Why should he be crushed 
 by the brutality of Peter's headlines, like the public 
 whose subscriptions to his paper made Peter's living 
 possible? 
 
 He became, all of a sudden, passionately angry. 
 
 "Damn you!" he cried. "You assume too much. 
 I try to fight against this thing and for that reason 
 you say that it means nothing to me I You're a fool. 
 You are so used to imposing your absurd ideas on 
 a public who can't answer back, that you imagine 
 you can do the same with me. Well, I tell you, you 
 can't I This thing has happened to you and to me 
 
 171
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 and you've chosen to rip it to pieces between us. 
 All right, Peter, you shall! I'll have no damned 
 headline and bluff from you. If we are going to 
 talk about this, we'll talk straight and honestly. 
 I'll start by telling you the truth. Ridiculous or 
 not, I'd die or do whatever there is that's worse 
 than dying for her to-night!" 
 
 The Editor did not move. Then slowly, a little 
 wearily, he sank back again into his chair. For 
 some moments he was silent, looking past Charles at 
 the marking board on the wall. When he spoke, 
 the note of anger in his voice was replaced by dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 "I'd hoped," he said simply, "that you did not 
 care so much." 
 
 "Do you imagine," returned Charles, "that I have 
 not hoped and prayed I did not care so much?" 
 
 "Thank God," muttered the Editor, "the holidays 
 will soon be over." 
 
 "Ah!" said the other, "then even the strong man 
 of Fleet Street recognizes that headlong flight is 
 sometimes the most desirable thing!" 
 
 The sneer in his voice was not disguised, for 
 Charles was still angry at his friend's attempt to 
 treat his own case as unworthy of serious attention. 
 But he softened immediately, seeing the trouble in 
 the strong man's eyes. 
 
 After all, they were very old friends. 
 
 "It's not so much the women," Peter was saying, 
 "as the children. If they guessed I That would 
 seem a bigger failure somehow!" 
 
 172
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "How could they guess?" asked the other. 
 
 "My God, Charlie," answered Peter, "the mod- 
 ern girl and boy guess everything. They know 
 nothing and they guess everything." 
 
 "If Harold's so damned wise about life " be- 
 gan Charles stoutly, but the other cut him short. 
 
 "It's not that they are wise," he said, "it is that 
 they are so confoundedly sure of themselves that 
 they don't think they need to be wise." 
 
 This was an amazing confession for Peter, 
 apostle of the gospel of strength. Only an 
 emotional crisis like the present could possibly have 
 produced such a heresy. But Charles let it go. The 
 waters in which they were now sailing were too 
 deep and too treacherous to admit of any fooling 
 about with the boat. Sneers and jibes were out of 
 place. 
 
 "And supposing they do guess?" he asked. 
 
 Peter clenched his hands. 
 
 "I'd pretty well hate to know they did," he said, 
 "and have to carry on as a father !" 
 
 "I suppose I would, too," answered Charles. "It 
 seems queer that they should appear to matter more 
 than Joan and Emily." 
 
 "It is, I expect," said the Editor miserably, "that 
 one never really wants respect from one's wife. 
 But there is something horribly undermining in the 
 idea of one's child finding one out." 
 
 "Anyway," muttered the other, "what does it 
 matter? Harold and Alison are going their own 
 road with sufficient determination, as things are." 
 
 173
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "But if they knew this," said 'Peter grimly, "I 
 rather think that it would considerably strengthen 
 that determination." 
 
 For some minutes both men were silent. As a 
 matter of fact, their thoughts were identical. 
 They were looking back upon the early years of 
 these two whom they still, in unguarded moments, 
 regarded as children. They were remembering all 
 those first ideas about their duty as parents, their 
 duty to "set an example," their innate conviction 
 that they could be held responsible for what the 
 child might become. Now they saw that they might 
 have spared themselves those initial pains. They 
 knew, well enough, that had Alison and Harold 
 wished to break every law, human and divine, noth- 
 ing on earth, least of all any remembrance of the 
 behaviour of their parents, would have prevented 
 them. Peter and Charles knew that their children 
 were fond of them, a sense of vague gratitude ming- 
 ling with the much more valuable tribute of real 
 friendship up to a point. The point being that, in 
 the eyes of the boy and girl, they were out-of-date, 
 already set and fixed in their outlook upon life and 
 their ideas of its conduct. And yet, though they 
 might resent this attitude in their children, on the 
 rare occasions upon which Alison or Harold let it 
 slip in their conversation, they were now very loath 
 to let it be known that, in actual fact, they were by 
 no means fixed in their outlook and by no means to 
 
 174
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 be relied upon in their standards, out-of-date or 
 not. It appeared far better that their children 
 should regard them as kindly and amiable men, of 
 the day before yesterday. 
 
 Charles, at this point in the ruminations of his 
 mind, fell into a sudden panic and started pacing 
 nervously up and down the room. 
 
 "Heavens above, Peter I" he said, "I never im- 
 agined a thing like this could happen I I mean to 
 other people, of course, but not to us 1" 
 
 Peter Margett was silent, then he sat up suddenly, 
 straight in his chair. 
 
 "The point is," he said, "that it has happened, 
 and that it has happened to us." 
 
 He rose, facing Charles as the latter swung 
 round to his words. 
 
 "Well?" muttered Cutman, uneasily. 
 
 "I'm cutting out Emily and Joan and I'm cutting 
 out Harold and Alison," came the answer. "As far 
 as I'm concerned, I'm beyond those things. To 
 me, it seems a question between us two." 
 
 "You mean? , ." Charles heard his own 
 voice putting the question timidly, though he felt 
 that he knew well enough what Peter meant. 
 
 "I mean what I say," went on the Editor, roughly. 
 "I love this woman. You say that you love her, 
 too. Very well. That is what is between us !" 
 
 Charles almost gasped at the sentence. There 
 wag the case, stripped naked, as Peter stripped 
 
 175
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 everything naked, and left without a shred of decen- 
 cy, an idea unrestrained and uncovered, but desira- 
 ble. 
 
 "Yes," he said, slowly. "I love her too." As 
 he faced Peter, seeing the glitter of a jealous hate 
 in his eyes, nothing seemed more desirable than the 
 strange lady, nothing more distant and divorced 
 from reality than Emily and Harold. Unmistake- 
 ably, as he thought, this moment found the pulse of 
 youth leaping within him, once again. Now, at 
 least, his fingers were once more closing round all 
 that hot and heedless romance which he had lost. 
 Even so, he realized that Peter's case was the same, 
 and even at this moment it struck him as strange, 
 that in this crisis of their lives, this effort to recreate 
 the past, they should both have lighted upon the 
 same woman the same ideal. Later on he was to 
 learn the significance of this. Now the idea escaped 
 him just as quickly as it had come, and he concen- 
 trated only upon the one fact. 
 
 "Yes," he repeated, "I love her." 
 
 And both men were certain that in the double 
 confession was a complete denial, an absolute over- 
 throw, of twenty and more years of respectable 
 married life. 
 
 Charles, clinging more desperately than his 
 friend to the standard which he had subconsciously 
 set before himself, from the time when he had first 
 become a man, protested against the sheer, over- 
 whelming strength of this disaster. For he was 
 still sane enough to regard it as a disaster. 
 
 176
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Peter," he said, "this is a frightful thing which 
 has happened!" 
 
 Then he caught the Editor's eye, fixing him 
 sternly, and knew that Peter was trying to read in 
 his own expression whether he, Charles, was as 
 seriously tragic in this debacle of their affections, 
 as himself. At that moment, perhaps for the first 
 time, he realized that this woman was the biggest 
 thing in his life the biggest thing that would ever 
 be possible in his life. The sudden conviction almost 
 threw him off his balance. His mind raced madly 
 through the whole period of his married years, 
 burlesquing everything like a buffoon, and arriving 
 again at this incredible climax, settled by some queer 
 trick, upon an old aunt of Emily's, who had to be 
 visited at Kingston about once a year, and who was 
 always found reading the collect for the day, sitting 
 opposite an ivory crucifix. 
 
 Why the picture of the old, yellow face, matching 
 the crucifix, and the trembling lips muttering the 
 words meaninglessly to herself, should have 
 appeared to him at this moment, he could never 
 have explained. Still less could he have told why 
 that picture appeared suddenly and extraordinarily 
 funny. But it did, and he laughed aloud, startling 
 Peter out of his concentration upon himself. 
 
 "What the Devil is the matter?" asked the 
 Editor. 
 
 "Nothing," gasped Charles, fighting against this 
 hysteria. "Nothing. I was thinking about us 
 . . . and about an old aunt of Emily's. About 
 
 177
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 an old aunt ... I" His laughter choked him 
 again. Then at last, he conquered it, and his face 
 became set and tragic. 
 
 "Oh, my God, Peter," he said, "we must put up 
 some sort of a fight against it.'* 
 
 "Why? Why should we ?" 
 
 The question came to him in the dull note in 
 which a man expresses his dogged revolution against 
 things that are. Charles could find no answer to it. 
 They were men, captains of their own ships : if they 
 counted the price and found it worth while, he sup- 
 posed they could set their course any way they 
 pleased. 
 
 "We're talking a great deal of our own feelings," 
 he said, "we don't seem to have considered hers." 
 
 And he knew, in that sentence, that he had iden- 
 tified himself with their common, unconquerable 
 desire. 
 
 "Now listen," Peter was saying, "I want you to 
 know that this thing has come to me like the smash 
 of a Nasmyth hammer. It has crushed out what I 
 was, and has left what I am; what I am now, at 
 this moment. I tell you I don't feel that any other 
 moments matter, either gone or to come. For all I 
 know, she may hate me, but I've got to go after her 
 all the samel That's the way it's got me I" 
 
 Charles accepted the challenge eagerly. 
 
 "You aren't alone," he said. "You've worshipped 
 strength so long, Peter, that you've come to think 
 that you have a greater share of it in yourself than
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 you really have. That's the same in any religious 
 mania. But I can tell you this. In the thing that 
 has come between us, as far as I am concerned, 
 twenty years' friendship won't count that much I" 
 He snapped his fingers derisively. For some few 
 seconds Peter stared at him intently, as if to weigh 
 to the uttermost the value of what Charles had 
 just said. Then suddenly, as if satisfied, his body 
 relaxed. Only his lips set in a harder line. 
 
 "Very well, then," he said, "we understand one 
 another." He turned deliberately and walked out 
 of the room, closing the door softly behind him. 
 And Charles stood stock-still wondering childishly 
 at the unbelievable power of his own emotions. 
 Now Charles was fifty-seven and Peter a few months 
 more, but neither of them, even for a moment, saw 
 any humor in what had just happened. Whatever 
 may have passed through their minds when first the 
 strange attraction of this woman stole in upon their 
 perceptions; however much, at that time, they had 
 persuaded themselves that there was nothing of the 
 grand passion, nothing so compelling and destruc- 
 tive, in the long-forgotten emotions which had 
 sprung into life again at her appearance, now all 
 these thoughts were gone, swallowed up, not per- 
 haps, so much in their individual passions, as in the 
 clash of those passions, which had just taken place. 
 
 For a casus belli may be a very little thing, but 
 once the actual battle has started, it grows as if 
 nourished upon the food of the Gods, and waxing 
 
 179
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 fat upon conflict, becomes in no time, the greatest 
 and most final issue in the world. 
 
 At last Charles sank into a chair, and his elbows 
 upon its arms, let his chin fall into his hands. This 
 then, was the ultimate result of loving and good 
 parents, a properly expensive education, a youth 
 filled with the accepted ideals of decent men, a mar- 
 riage blessed by Holy Church, the thrill of a lawful 
 child, and the passage of fifty-seven years ! 
 
 Here he was, back at the very beginning of 
 things. It all seemed so silly. If this was to hap- 
 pen, or even had it never happened, if this was pos- 
 sible, what was the point of all those precious lost 
 years, during which Emily and he, for the sake of 
 laws and customs which he felt now were in no way 
 concerned with the individual human animal, had 
 pretended, amicably enough, that they still lived in 
 that state of enthusiasm, which can promise to 
 "love, honour, and obey" to "have this woman 
 as thy wedded wife, to live together after God's 
 ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony . . . 
 to love her, to comfort her, honour and keep her 
 in sickness and health, and, forsaking all other, keep 
 thee only to her, so long as ye both shall live . . ." 
 
 "Ye gods," thought Charles in his misery (for he 
 was miserable, being loyal by nature and hating to 
 break a contract) "Ye gods! Either the man who 
 composed the marriage service was the vilest cynic 
 ever born, or else he knew some secret about things 
 which made it possible. And if he did," the bar- 
 
 180
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 rister found himself speaking aloud in his irritation, 
 "he ought to have written that too. It ought to be 
 in the prayer-book!" 
 
 "It's not in the prayer-book," a voice said in his 
 ear. 
 
 Was this his brain, answering its own question, or 
 had Charles indeed spoken aloud and was there 
 someone answering him? He started up in his 
 chair, his heart thumping at the idea of something 
 uncanny in the room. He saw no one. Yet he 
 could have sworn the voice was real. It terrified 
 him to think that his own mind could have played 
 him such a trick. Again that voice, horribly real, 
 assailed his ears. 
 
 "Have you never thought," it said, "that many of 
 the finest things of which men are capable, many of 
 the loveliest gifts that have been given to them, are 
 not in the prayer-book are not even in the Bible?" 
 
 Then, suddenly, Charles realized that it was in- 
 deed a human voice speaking to him, and that the 
 sound came from behind his chair. He rose quickly 
 and faced round. Smiling to him, her hands resting 
 upon the back of the arm chair, stood the strange 
 lady. 
 
 "By George," he said, "You?" 
 
 Then he realized that it was a very stupid thing 
 to say. She must have entered the room, ever so 
 quietly, while he was sitting, his eyes closed, in the 
 torment of his own thoughts. 
 
 181
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "How did you know," Jie &sked stupidly, "what 
 I was thinking?" 
 
 She laughed in a way that fascinated him all over 
 again. 
 
 "Men," she answered, "are So transparent." 
 
 "Are they?" he said slowly. Transparency Was 
 the last characteristic which he desired at that 
 moment. Yet the sight of her, the nearness of her, 
 the sound of her voice, all were whipping his brain 
 to the point where he must tell her that he loved 
 her, tell her perhaps more than that, tell her every- 
 thing, the whole pitiful jumble of his mind, half 
 sheer distress, half pure joy. 
 
 But somehow, out of all he felt for her at that 
 moment, out of all the coiled struggle in his brain, 
 no words would come. 
 
 "Then . , . then, you know?" 
 
 He heard himself stammer the question, and 
 cursed its banality. 
 
 She answered lightly enough. 
 
 "I know lots of things," ehe said, and her eyes 
 danced into his. 
 
 Had it really been her voice, which had said 
 something, something which he could no longer 
 remember clearly, about hknself and the prayer- 
 book and the Bible? Could that voice have be- 
 longed to these twinkling eyes and this adorable 
 face; could it really have come straight from these 
 very desirable lips?, 
 
 182
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Speedily, in the intoxication of simply looking jit 
 her, Charles was forgetting those few mysterious 
 moments, forgetting everything save that he loved 
 this woman, that Peter loved her too, and that she 
 was here with him, Charles, alone. It became very 
 easy to believe that this was all that mattered. In 
 a very few seconds, indeed, it appeared obvious that 
 this was all that mattered. The very smile in her 
 eyes was an invitation, the very quiver about the 
 corner of her lips was an understanding. 
 
 He discovered, with a start, that their hands 
 were touching. The mere touch, to him, was so 
 enthralling that he never noticed its peculiarity the 
 fact that it was her hand which lay over his. . . . 
 Then again he heard her voice. 
 
 "I have told you," she said, "that I know lots 
 of things about you. But I must back that statement 
 up, musn't I?" 
 
 She smiled again, and Charles, drunk now with 
 his leaping imagination, could only nod. 
 
 "What are you doing to-night, after dinner?" 
 asked the strange lady, 
 
 He found his tongue with difficulty. 
 
 "Oh," he said, "I supposq the usual walk along 
 the front." 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "I shall be in my room all the evening," she said, 
 and, to Charles, there wag in her voice something 
 maddening, like the nervous strident call of a dial- 
 
 183
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 lenge when there is doubt as to whether or not it 
 will be accepted. 
 
 "I understand," ne said, and kissed the hand 
 which lay over his own. 
 
 "I wonder," she answered, "whether you really 
 do!" 
 
 But Charles was feeling fine and grand, a hero of 
 big romance, and his singing soul had no room for 
 the subtleties of voice and tone which he might have 
 discovered in her sentence. 
 
 She patted his hand and with a quick, friendly 
 smile left the room. 
 
 As for Charles, his whole being surged and bub- 
 bled with triumph. So much for Peter ! So much 
 for the professional strong man: he, Charles, had 
 felt his hand in that of the strange lady: he, Charles, 
 had received an invitation to her own little 
 sanctuary ! 
 
 He almost felt it in his heart to be sorry for the 
 ridiculous Peter. 
 
 After all, poor old Chap, it must be difficult for 
 him to realize that he could never be quite so 
 attractive as Charles ! One could hardly blame him 
 for not understanding this. And after all, they 
 were very old friends. He left the room to dress 
 for dinner, with a real feeling of sympathy for 
 Peter. That delicious feeling of pity which comes 
 when you are quite certain that you are going to 
 triumph, crushingly and absolutely, over the pitied. 
 
 184
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Now, Peter, at this moment, was tying his eve- 
 ning tie in a state of equally absurd triumph. For, 
 upon leaving Charles in the billiard-room, he had 
 met the strange lady on the stairs, and she had given 
 him to understand that she might have to face a 
 lonely evening, in her little sitting-room. Peter, as 
 was his nature, had snatched at the hint with both 
 hands, and had ascended to his dressing-room, 
 taking at least three steps at a time. So he tied his 
 evening bow, accurately and triumphantly, while 
 Charles, not four doors away, a little late, frisked 
 about inside a clean shirt until he forced his head 
 through the top, with a sheer lightness of heart 
 which expressed itself in bursts of impossible sing- 
 ing, where the tune vanished gurgling into a basin of 
 hot water, and re-appeared, with unabated gusto, 
 twenty bars later on, muted only by the dabbing of 
 a towel. 
 
 Such abandonment Emily, hooking herself into 
 her grey and silver tussore in the next room, did 
 not attempt to understand. 
 
 "Dear Charlie," she murmured to herself, "he 
 has had a cocktail in the billiard-room I" 
 
 Perhaps she was right. 
 
 185
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 It was ten o'clock. The door of the Strange 
 lady's room, that ugly hard-featured little room in 
 which had taken place the merry supper-party with 
 the thunderous atmosphere about it, was closed. 
 Behind it, curled up on the sofa, lay the siren, 
 smiling to Peter Margett. He stood, the other side 
 of the table, resting his fingers upon its green cloth. 
 But perhaps Vesting' is hardly the word, for Peter's 
 fingers were tense, pressing hard into the rough sur- 
 face of the cheap art-serge. He, at least, had given 
 himself over, body and soul, to the blinding glamour 
 of the moment. 
 
 "You are sure," she was Saying, "that you love 
 me?" 
 
 "Sure?" he answered. 1{ I have torn up the idea$ 
 of thirty years, because I love you." 
 
 "Yet you hardly know me." 
 
 "I suppose," he said, "that few men know ^hat 
 fHey love, any more than why." 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 "Yet," she hazarded, "as we grow older we are 
 Supposed to grow wiser, aren't we?" 
 
 "In everything else," he answered Stubbornly, 
 "except love." 
 
 186
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 He came close to her and stood looking down at 
 Her face. 
 
 "You know," he said, "how much I love you. 
 You know that this is nothing that will pass: that 
 whatever happens, this is going to remain with me 
 to the end." 
 
 "Yes," she answered quietly. "I know that. 
 You are that kind of man. This is certainly going 
 to remain with you to the end. Just as it has been 
 with you all these years." 
 
 "You mean," he said, "that I have always been 
 looking for you." 
 
 "Not quite that," she replied. "I mean that for 
 a long time now . <. . you have forgotten what 
 I looked like. And so I suppose you started looking 
 for me again." 
 
 "But . . ." he hesitated, "I have never seen 
 you, never known you before. How could I have 
 forgotten?" 
 
 "You've known me for a long time," she 
 answered. "You've grown to know me so well that 
 you have forgotten me 1" 
 
 "I don't understand," he muttered. 
 
 "Of course, Peter," she said, "of course you don't 
 understand." 
 
 There was a world of tenderness in her voice, like 
 a mother answering the questions of a very small 
 boy. Something of this quality in her tone pre- 
 vented Peter from following up the thrill which the 
 use of his Christian name had given him. He only
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 stared at her foolishly, just as the very small boy 
 would have done. He saw the corners of her lips 
 twitch in that fascinating way which they had, just 
 before she smiled. Her hand came out and found 
 his. Its touch was comforting as it would have 
 been to the very small boy because, though he 
 could not analyse it, there was something growing 
 in that room, something weird not terrifying in 
 itself, but alarming by reason of the fact that it 
 was outside the sphere of human control. Yes, that 
 was it. There were deeps, deeper even than a 
 strong man of the world, fifty-eight years old, could 
 plumb. Things were not going quite as they might 
 have been expected to. ... 
 
 There was something queer, something impossibly 
 familiar even in the touch of this hand which lay in 
 his. One moment he wanted to cover it with quick 
 kisses, the next he just wanted to have it where it 
 was, listless, for ever. Without reason, blindly, he 
 felt that the presence of her hand in his was the only 
 thing which bound him to his own self-respect. 
 
 Certainly something was happening in that room. 
 
 Afterwards, looking back at the affair, as a man 
 tries to analyse the first struggling moments of con- 
 sciousness after an anaesthetic, he could remember 
 little, save the astonishment at that persistent feel- 
 ing of familiarity, of having known and loved this 
 little hand for years. 
 
 He heard her voice, coming as it seemed from a 
 long way off, right away from the sea perhaps, over 
 
 188
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 which she was looking, out of the window. He 
 could see her profile outlined, not sharply, against 
 the night-blue of the sky. 
 
 "Perhaps," she was saying, "I am here to make 
 you understand." 
 
 He fancied she wore that tired, gentle little 
 smile, which he had often seen about her lips. Her 
 hand still rested in his. 
 
 He could not move. For some reason or other, 
 he did not dare. Somewhere in the room, empty 
 except for the man and the woman, was a presence 
 that dared him to move, a presence he could not 
 disobey. 
 
 And then he saw, saw with his own eyes, the 
 miracle. 
 
 The strange lady had not moved, she was still 
 sitting, half turned to the window, looking out over 
 the dark waters. 
 
 But the face was changing. The whole figure 
 was chariging, slowly, almost imperceptibly, yet, as 
 the moments went on, undeniably. Even the hand 
 which lay in his own was changing. It seemed to 
 shrink and yet to be motionless; to grow a little 
 harder, without altering its touch at all. 
 
 Afterwards, trying to recall every second of this 
 wonder, Peter remembered hearing the hurried tick 
 of the little china clock on the mantelpiece. Some- 
 how the ticking of the clock seemed to give a real 
 value to what was happening. 
 Still the face did not move.
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Then, all of a sudden, blindingly, he saw. It was 
 Joan's face at the window; it was Joan's hand which 
 he held in his. 
 
 The words that the strange lady had spoken 
 rushed suddenly back into his mind. 
 
 "You've grown to know me so well, that you 
 have forgotten me I" 
 
 He fell to his knees, his head upon the hand that 
 still lay in his own. Tears, which he did not try 
 to force back, fell upon that hand unheeded. 
 
 Now, at least, he understood. 
 
 How long he remained like that he did not know. 
 It might have been centuries, for time and the soul 
 have nothing in common. And if ever Peter's soul 
 leapt out of its prison, it was now, singing, through 
 the medium of those tears, wild paeans of thanks- 
 giving. 
 
 The voice came to him once more, the voice of 
 the strange lady, near at hand again. They were 
 curious words that reached his ears. 
 
 "Thomas," she said, "must have seemed worth 
 while, near Galilee, or he would never have been 
 shown." 
 
 It needed the reality of the spoken words to 
 bring Peter back to the hard-featured little room. 
 He had been voyaging on a sea of recollections, now 
 for the first time vivid and valued. Magically, as 
 under the restorer's art, the picture of his life had 
 regained its old warmth of colour, its old clarity of 
 design. He saw, with a sense of abasement hardly 
 
 190;
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 credible in so 'strong' a nature, that he had indeed 
 "known Joan so well that he had forgotten her." 
 She had become to him, at this moment, the dearest, 
 most precious friend in the world: she had become 
 more than that . . , much more; all the mad 
 promise of the honeymoon days seemed now to be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 Why? How? Had not he himself, in the pleni- 
 tude of his wisdom, told Charles that 'there was no 
 secret' ? 
 
 Even now he realized that he did not know the 
 nature of that secret. But those last words were 
 still buzzing in his ears. Like Thomas, he had been 
 shown, and he believed. Yesterday his whole 
 editorial nature would have demanded reasons. 
 Now, he found himself on his feet, felt the intoxica- 
 tion of a great joy in his veins, and heard his own 
 voice cry out aloud, "I believe in this!" 
 
 "Yes," came in soft tones from the sofa, "that 
 is the secret I" 
 
 Again he was conscious of his voice, as something 
 out of his own control, explaining things. 
 
 "It is the cities going to the office other peo- 
 ple's tragedies all the time or other people's 
 comedies. It dulls the other side of a man. All the 
 people you meet . . , talking about life cheaply. 
 But they never talk about their own lives. . . ." 
 
 His brain was trying to puzzle out the reason for 
 his failure. 
 
 "It's easy to lose sight of things if they are never 
 
 191
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 mentioned. That's why people advertise. Funny! 
 Nobody ever advertising anything that really mat- 
 ters . . . so, I suppose, it gets forgotten. Hell ! 
 what a fool I've been!" 
 
 He came to earth again, suddenly, regaining in 
 part his ordinary control. Then, of course, reason 
 became assertive, insistent. His mechanism, as a 
 man, jarred violently at contact with a force that 
 was not, on the face of it, human. He became 
 suddenly ashamed of his own blind faith in the 
 miracle. He felt that he must know what it was 
 that had happened, if only that he might be certain 
 of the reality of its happening. Every moment, as 
 he looked into the eyes of the strange lady, once 
 again their merry twinkling selves, the events of 
 two minutes ago were becoming more incredible, 
 slipping away fast into the unsubstantial and 
 unsatisfactory shadows of hallucination and dreams. 
 
 Apparently she divined his thoughts. 
 
 "Listen," she said. "What happened was real. 
 It was no effort of your imagination. All the things 
 you live by, all the funny little things you call 
 facts " she spoke quickly, enthusiastically, as one 
 about to lift the lid of a treasure chest, knowing 
 well what was within; but all of a sudden she 
 stopped short, with a little flashing smile. "Well, 
 they are facts," she said in a more matter of fact 
 tone, "but it's a mistake to believe that they are all 
 the facts. And, in that matter, there is an ignorant 
 old man on the beach who has the wisdom of the 
 
 192
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 serpent!" Now she laughed outright. "'Serpent' 
 is rather cruel," she said, "except that he seems to 
 have twined himself pretty firmly round the tree of 
 knowledge, though he may be hanging on by his 
 tail instead of his head!" 
 
 Peter's mind was still occupied with his own 
 amazing revelation. 
 
 "Hypnotism," he murmured to himself. 
 
 "No," she answered. "No 'ism whatever. Just 
 white magic." 
 
 "Then what are you, who are you?" 
 
 For some reason, perhaps because he found that 
 his brain, which he had always considered a very 
 efficient organ, was outraged by this thing which had 
 happened to him, there was a note of indignation 
 in his voice. 
 
 "If you ask me that," she answered, with a touch 
 of whimsical sadness, "I shall have to tell you the 
 truth. And that is the last thing that you will 
 believe." 
 
 "Tell me!" he said defiantly. 
 
 She sighed. 
 
 "You ask who I am," she answered, "and the 
 answer is easy: I am no one. No, no!" she 
 laughed, seeing his face, "not in the society sense! 
 I mean it literally. I have no name: I simply don't 
 exist in that way." 
 
 She laughed again into Peter's eyes, childlike and 
 round in their astonishment. At her laugh, his eyes 
 became grown-up again, for he decided that she did 
 not mean him to take her seriously. 
 
 193
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Then you ask what I am !" she went on. "You 
 ought to know that, for you fell in love with me I" 
 
 The mere suggestion infuriated Peter now, with 
 all his passion for Joan seething and bubbling inside 
 him, yet how could he 'deny it? Their presence in 
 the room together was living proof. 
 
 "I don't know why I fell in love with you," he 
 muttered, "the whole thing is a mystery." 
 
 "The solution of the mystery," she answered, 
 "lies in what I am." 
 
 "No, no!" he said. "You are everything that is 
 delightful, of course, but " 
 
 He hesitated, abashed. 
 
 "But," she completed his sentence for him, "you 
 love Joan? That is why you fell in love with me." 
 
 She rose and put her hands upon his shoulders, 
 speaking in a soft low voice, with the characteristic 
 little smile about her lips : 
 
 "For I am Joan," she said. "All the bits of Joan 
 that make her the most wonderful woman in the 
 world to you : all the bits you had been idiot enough 
 to have forgotten. And I am all the bits of Mary 
 that make a divine fool of John, and all the bits of 
 Kate, and Alice, and Elsie and Phyllis, right away 
 from the Queen of Sheba to Jane, the underhouse- 
 maid. So now you know what I am, and why I am 
 no one I" 
 
 Peter Margett took a grip upon his brain with 
 both hands, so to speak. He told himself earnestly 
 that it was now necessary for him to be exceptionally 
 calm and rational. This woman was talking non- 
 194
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 sense to him. He must fight against the ridiculous 
 atmosphere in that room which was making it 
 appear more than nonsense. He never had 
 tolerated any kind of nonsense ... he Kad a 
 reputation for not tolerating nonsense. 
 
 The fact was, he reasoned, that, as a result of 
 some emotional cloudburst (curse Charles for this!) 
 he had made a fool of himself, and now this woman 
 was trying to make a fool of him. Well, in the 
 school-boy phrase, he was too old a bird. . . . 
 
 The only thing was that there had been, undoubt- 
 edly, that strange moment with its very tangible 
 result. He did, very definitely, desire to go to Joan 
 and to caress her : and he had not felt that desire 
 for years. He discovered that his companion wasi 
 still looking at him, with her queer little smile. 
 
 He smiled back, a smile full of self-control and 
 kindliness a tea-party smile. 
 
 "I congratulate you," he said. "You keep your 
 incognito exceedingly well, my dear young lady I" 
 
 Now that, whatever the means, he had regained 
 his self-respect, she had become a young. lady to 
 him. Before, he had rejoiced in regarding her as 
 an equal. At this she laughed outright. 
 
 "You can thank your stars," she said, "that you 
 are cured, and whether you believe or not does not 
 matter very much now I" 
 
 He felt that he must make some apology to her 
 for his unbelievable infatuation. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he said, "that I made a: fool of 
 myself." 
 
 195
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Even as he said it, some deep-rooted dogma of his 
 sex assured him that she must have enjoyed his 
 folly. Why, any number of women simply lived for 
 just that kind of amusement I Still, an apology was 
 the right formula for the end of the game. 
 
 For the first time he saw a look of anger in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "you have been a fool; I am not 
 sure that you won't always be a fool. But, as it is, 
 you have been a lucky fool, because you have the 
 makings of a decent fool. If you take my advice, 
 you'll spend the rest of your life trying to find out 
 the enormous amount that your wife knows about 
 you. That should keep you out of any further 
 folly!" 
 
 Suddenly, like the sun bursting from behind a 
 storm cloud, her mood seemed to change. She took 
 his hand, with a quick smile. 
 
 "Man! Man!" she said. "Haven't you always 
 prided yourself upon your strength? Then be 
 strong enough to be thankful that you are out of 
 the mess, without trying to pretend to yourself you 
 were never in it." 
 
 He bent over her hand, stiffly. 
 
 "I know," he said, "that I have a great deal to 
 thank you for. But you can hardly expect a reason- 
 able man to subscribe to your preposterous explana- 
 tion of your identity, can you?" 
 
 "Perhaps not," she answered, with a sigh, and 
 added in a whisper. "They never do ... poor 
 souls." 
 
 196
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 He turned suddenly towards the door. 
 
 "Well, goodbye, lucky man!" she said. She was 
 making his departure very easy, he thought, and 
 inwardly he thanked her for it. 
 
 "Surely," he said, "since I have ... er ... 
 got over my folly, there is no reason why I should 
 not see you again?" 
 
 "Indeed, no,'* she answered. "Only the reason 
 which I gave you and which you would not believe.". 
 
 At the door he turned awkwardly. 
 
 "I can rely on you . . ." he hesitated, "not to 
 say anything about this?" 
 
 She laughed into his distressed eyes. 
 
 "Did I not tell you," she said, "that I was the 
 ideal woman?" 
 
 Peter went down the passage, trying hard to 
 trample upon a conviction that he had not played 
 a very lofty part in the last scene. Over the 
 banisters he heard the voices of people coming in 
 from the front. He heard Loveday Weare saying 
 "Well, if you think so, dear," and then Joan answer- 
 ing very determinedly "I do !" Peter thrilled to her 
 voice, and hugged the thrill joyously to himself, as 
 a child, given an unexpected chocolate, sucks it 
 slowly to make it last. He felt that he did not want 
 to meet Joan just now, any other way except alone. 
 He would go to their room and wait for her to 
 come up. The things he wanted to say to Joan 
 would sound perilously like nonsense, to other ears. 
 As he turned the corner of the landing he heard the 
 
 197
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 door of the strange lady's room shut softly. He 
 looked back, expecting to see her going down the 
 stairs, but there was no one there. He shrugged his 
 shoulders and went on. Everything this woman 
 did, he thought, had some infernal mystery about 
 it. Well, he imagined that was her pose. Not a 
 bad pose, either, for a woman, if she can carry it 
 off! 
 
 Thus the Editor, clutching desperately at the 
 worldly wisdom on which he prided himself. It 
 never entered his head that the click of the door 
 might have been made by someone going in 
 Charles, for instance. 
 
 Peter went into his bedroom, and, sitting in the 
 wicker armchair at the window, waited for his wife 
 to come up. He felt much like a poacher who has 
 heard a man-trap spring to, an eighth of an inch 
 beneath his foot. His heart sang within him. For 
 all that, after some twenty minutes, he began to 
 fidget at the non-arrival of Joan. He supposed 
 they were still gossiping, downstairs in the lounge. 
 Still, he would not go down and see. Of one thing 
 he was absolutely certain : that in his present mood 
 he wanted to see Joan alone. He sat on in the arm- 
 chair, smoking a cigarette and smiling fatuously at 
 his wife's silver brushes on the dressing-table. 
 From somewhere along the beach there floated to 
 him, through the open window, an old quavering 
 voice, vaguely familiar. It sang a tune, indeed, but 
 a tune like the song of a drunken man, vague and 
 
 198
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 without rhythm. Yet the singer was no drunkard, 
 for the words, fitting the impromptu metre excel- 
 lently, came faint, but clear enough : 
 
 "There's no pure green and there's no pure gold, 
 
 And there's no pure heart in man; 
 But he who believes in 'em, young or old, 
 Why, he's garnered all he can! 
 
 "Ye'll bet on gold and ye'll find it's paint, 
 
 (But paint may be bright an' good!) 
 And a wise man blesses his private saint 
 That he chose as a wise man should !" 
 
 Peter threw his cigarette end out of the window 
 and watched it glowing on the pavement. Where 
 the devil was Joan? 
 
 The song still floated to him over the pebbles, 
 but Peter was no longer listening. He was im- 
 patient, hungry; just so had he felt, during his 
 engagement, waiting for Joan at the gates of Kew 
 Gardens, or at Richmond Park. 
 
 199
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Along the sea-front, after dinner, Joan had been 
 walking with Loveday Weare. Her mind, for all 
 its years of sterility, was still the mind which had 
 produced unmarketable poems, was still filled with 
 a sense of romance stronger than herself. In this 
 crisis, all the long-suppressed heroic ideas in her 
 rose to the surface. Peter loved another woman 
 you could twist it any way you pleased, as Loveday 
 had tried to twist it but the ultimate fact re- 
 mained -Peter loved another woman. And Joan 
 loved Peter. She had wit enough to know that there 
 ,was nothing very peculiar in the situation. She had 
 read books and seen plays read so many books and 
 seen so many plays indeed, that the situation might 
 well have appeared to her to be the only one in the 
 world. But then, she and Peter had taken their 
 marriage seriously I They had been young in an 
 age when the idea of an "eternal bond of love" had 
 not become so terrifying that, from sheer self- 
 defence, it had to be laughed out of court by the 
 clever or the passionate. 
 
 Peter, she knew, had believed as much as she 
 in the ideas which, for some time past, she had 
 been learning from Alison's friends were quite 
 
 200
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 ridiculous. She had never entered into these argu- 
 ments, either one side or the other; youth, she 
 knew, was violent and self-confident, but she knew 
 equally well that youth was often right. Only, she 
 and Peter had seen things differently, and in their 
 faith they must live. By the new generation they 
 might be regarded as Druids and sun-worshippers, 
 but, what then? There must have been many a 
 happy Druid, many a noble sun-worshipper. The 
 point was that this thing had happened to Peter, 
 and, in the light of his conviction and the habit of 
 the better part of his life, it could not be treated 
 otherwise than seriously. 
 
 "If I was drowned," she said to herself, "he 
 would be happy." 
 
 She never thought to ask herself how she had 
 failed him, or why she deserved to be a sacrifice. 
 The whole thing was part of her tradition, and the 
 strength of it was bigger than her own intelligence, 
 which told her that it was as ridiculous and as 
 damnable a tradition as Suttee. 
 
 Luckily, perhaps, Loveday overheard her. 
 
 "If I was drowned," she said, "Owen would be 
 neither happier nor more unhappy. He might be 
 less amused, that's all." 
 
 "Well," answered Joan, "that is why you can't 
 understand, I suppose." 
 
 Loveday sighed. 
 
 "I suppose you think," she said, "that if you 
 were drowned, Peter would marry this woman?" 
 
 201
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Joan nodded, her lips set. 
 
 "And do you really imagine, Joan," went on her 
 companion, "that the act of marriage has anything 
 to do with happiness? At least we are nineteenth 
 century women, not eighteenth I" 
 
 "But Peter is nineteenth century, too," answered 
 Joan, "and respectable nineteenth century." 
 
 "That means," said her companion, "that it 
 would irk him considerably to be compelled to live 
 with a woman he professes to adore, without a 
 stamp on the contract?" 
 
 Joan stopped suddenly, and her clenched hands 
 showed white against her dress. 
 
 "Oh," she said, "I may be a Victorian fool, but I 
 can't discuss Peter like this not even with you I" 
 and then she sat suddenly down upon the grass at 
 the cliff's bottom, and rocked backwards and for- 
 wards, her face in her hands, moaning. 
 
 "I wish I was dead!" she sobbed, "I wish I 
 was dead!" And then, in great gasps, "Baby Peter, 
 Baby Peter!" 
 
 Somehow those words seemed more terrible to 
 Loveday than anything which had gone before. 
 They put Alison so absolutely in her niche, the girl 
 that was never a child. Loveday had a curious idea 
 that this agonizing burst of maternal feeling would 
 never have happened had not Peter strayed from 
 the paths of righteousness. It was almost as if, 
 by virtue of his disgraceful behaviour, Joan was 
 falling in love all over again. . . . 
 
 202
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Then she had a sudden fear that someone would 
 pass and ask if Joan was ill, and that she would 
 have to say something or other. And there seemed 
 nothing to say, either to the possible stranger, or 
 to Joan, still rocking backwards and forwards in 
 the shadow. She stood irresolute, helpless. Then 
 a familiar voice reached her through the darkness 
 along the front. 
 
 "Of course, they entertained a good deal," it was 
 saying, "She liked it and I daresay it was good for 
 his business : but the end of it was they never had 
 a meal together from one week's end to the other 
 except breakfast, of course, but you'll soon find, 
 Alison dear, that breakfast doesn't count as a 
 meal not with men. So, in the end, when the 
 trouble came, I always said it was due to that 
 always being at someone else's beck and call, you 
 know. You can't be natural with guests, however 
 long you've known them! Not that all this has 
 much to do with the price of boots, but one thing 
 always seems to suggest something quite different 
 to me!" 
 
 It was Emily, walking home with Harold and 
 Alison. Joan got up quickly, and brushed her hair 
 back from her eyes with her hand. 
 
 "I'm sorry," she said shortly, and peered through 
 the darkness towards the approaching voices as if 
 to see how near they actually were. 
 
 "I shall tell Emily," she said, with sudden 
 decision. 
 
 203
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Why?" whispered Loveday. 
 
 "She has got to share it with me." 
 
 Joan's voice was tense, even cruel. 
 
 "It is almost incredible," said her companion, 
 "that she has not seen it." 
 
 "I shall tell her," answered the other. "I shall 
 tell her to-night." 
 
 Then Emily herself had reached them with 
 Harold and Alison just behind her. All the way 
 home she babbled happily of all manner of trivial 
 things, wondering why orange blossom was out of 
 fashion, and remembering the childish thrill of fur- 
 nishing the first home of one's very own, with a 
 long story about a clergyman with a 'sweet' face 
 whom she had wanted to officiate at her ceremony 
 and why he couldn't come: with all the details of 
 the birth of twins, who must now be over thirty 
 years old. So they reached the Hotel without Emily 
 realizing that, for the entire walk, no one had 
 spoken a word except herself. 
 
 In the hall, Joan had whispered to Loveday 
 again : 
 
 "I am going to tell her now I'* 
 
 And Loveday, though she herself could see no 
 sense in disturbing the placid stream of Emily's 
 mind, had only been able to answer : 
 
 "Well, if you think so, dear." 
 
 To which Joan had replied firmly : 
 
 "I do." 
 
 This was the conversation which Peter had heard 
 
 204
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 as he stood on the landing and on which he had gone 
 straight to his room to wait, hungrily, the coming 
 of his wife. 
 
 Alison and Harold started arguing, in the hall, 
 on some point connected with their programme for 
 the morrow, and Loveday, who always put off going 
 to bed as long as possible, sank into a chair beside 
 them. 
 
 Joan started up the stairs with Emily. 
 
 "I want to talk to you alone," she said suddenly. 
 
 Emily nodded calmy, and Joan found herself un- 
 accountably surprised. 
 
 "In my bedroom, dear," said Emily, and never 
 uttered another word until she was comfortably 
 seated in an armchair near the mantelpiece, oppo- 
 site a photograph of Charles which she always car- 
 ried about with her, and, having unhooked her dress 
 and eased her corsets, had swathed herself in a torn 
 and faded lavender dressing-gown. 
 
 "It's fearfully shabby," she said, as Joan sat 
 stiffly on the edge of the bed, "but, when I bought 
 it, at a sale St. Thomas', Westminster, it was 
 it was really a bargain, quite apart from the charity. 
 Genuine Japanese embroiderv, but of course it's 
 all worn now!" 
 
 "You can see it was good silk," answered Joan 
 dully. 
 
 She felt that there was something diabolically 
 cruel in disturbing this placid mind. What she had 
 come to say appeared to her now as much better 
 
 205
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 left unsaid. She heard Emily's voice again, trivial, 
 without modulation. 
 
 "Well," it said, "I've worn it for twelve 
 years . . . no, thirteen. I remember that 
 sale quite so well in December, it was . . . 
 and, without any change of inflection, she went on, 
 "I suppose you want to talk to me about dear 
 Charles and Peter?" 
 
 The unexpected remark hit Joan like an electric 
 shock. She sat up stiffly on the bedside, and her 
 hand, as if seeking support, found the mahogany 
 knob at the bottom. 
 
 "Yes," she answered. "That is what I came to 
 talk about." 
 
 Emily rose, a shapeless rustle of silk, and, all 
 in a moment, Joan discovered a fat, motherly arm 
 about her shoulders, and a queer spreading body 
 beside her, on the bed. 
 
 "My dear child," Emily was saying, "you haven't 
 'really been worrying about them, have you?" 
 
 "Worrying?" she echoed. Was it possible that 
 Emily was so foolish that she was incapable of the 
 imagination to take in the significance of this thing, 
 even after she had guessed at its existence? 
 
 "I remember a dear old uncle of mine," Emily 
 went on "who lived in Radcliffe Gardens no, not 
 at the time I'm talking of, he'd moved to Edwardes 
 Square. Such a queer old thing. He had hairs 
 growing out of his ears, and he used to try to singe 
 them off with a match when he lighted a cigar!" 
 
 206
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 She chuckled suddenly at the memory of this uncle. 
 As for Joan, she felt that she would scream unless 
 Emily's flow of words simmered down into some- 
 thing reasonable. 
 
 "What was I saying?" asked her companion, 
 suddenly helpless, as usual. 
 
 "An uncle," murmured Joan, automatically. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Emily, "he hated fogs." 
 
 Joan waited for her to continue, but nothing 
 happened. Apparently, to her own satisfaction, 
 at any rate, Emily had explained what she had 
 meant to say. 
 
 "What's it all got to do with Charles and Peter?" 
 asked Joan. 
 
 "Don't you seel" said Emily, and then in a tone 
 of patient remonstrance, "I suppose I haven't made 
 myself clear. I never do, my dear, somehow or 
 other. It's really a terrible affliction, because, al- 
 most always, I know quite well what it is I want 
 to say!" She paused, and put her finger to her 
 lips, like a child thinking hard. "Now what was 
 it," she went on, "that Uncle Ronald used to say, 
 which I wanted to tell you. Oh, I know ! He used 
 to say, especially on foggy days, which I told you he 
 hated, that the chief difficulty of London was to 
 keep on remembering that the sun was there all 
 the time, though you never saw it at all! Well, 
 I was a girl at that time, round about seventeen, 
 so of course I looked for a second meaning in poor 
 Uncle's remark, though I daresay he never meant 
 
 207
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 anything of the kind, for if ever there was a stupid 
 old man ..." she broke off quickly. "How- 
 ever," she said, "he's dead now and has the advant- 
 age of me. What I mean is, I can't prove he was 
 stupid, and it may have been me. But he used to 
 fuss so if the ornaments were out of place on the 
 mantelpiece : really fuss, I mean, so that people felt 
 uncomfortable: and, my dear, the amount of time 
 he wasted on his food! I used to warn Charles 
 when we were engaged 
 
 She broke off suddenly, striking her hands to- 
 gether in a little gesture of irritation. 
 
 "Joan," she said, "I'm going scampering off again. 
 Why don't you stop me? The whole point is what 
 Uncle Ronald said about the sun being always 
 there." 
 
 The effort of actually capturing and pinning down 
 the point, like a butterfly, appeared to have ex- 
 hausted Emily entirely, for the moment. At any 
 rate she stopped talking and sat silently at Joan's 
 side, regarding, with a faint smile, the crinkled yel- 
 low and green paper in the fire place. 
 
 "Do you mean," said Joan, slowly and deliber- 
 ately, "that you don't care?" 
 
 "My dearl" Emily's voice was charged with 
 horrified protest. "Of course I care I Only, oh, 
 I'm so bad at expressing myself . . . You see, 
 in a way, I love Charles as I love God. I couldn't 
 have said that when I was a girl; it would have 
 upset everybody so. I think people who believe in 
 
 208
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURERS 
 
 God are much more human about Him nowadays; 
 finer, in a way, perhaps. Anyway I can say that, 
 now. What I mean is, both are very largely a 
 question of faith, don't you think, like all great 
 friendships. And the more I've thought about 
 God, since I stopped having to learn the collect 
 for the week, the more I've thought it's all a ques- 
 tion of an amazing friendship. And trust is always 
 behind that, isn't it? You can't help remembering, 
 as you get older, lots of things God has done for 
 you things one called luck at the time. That's 
 only slang for God, don't you think? And remem- 
 bering things like that is very nearly all there is in 
 friendship, I believe. Well, I can remember lots 
 of queer little things Charles has done for me, lots 
 of them too little and silly to repeat, but they all 
 proved him a real, real friend. So you see, I trust 
 him, like one does trust friends, .whatever kind of 
 terrible mess they may fall into. And Charles, 
 somehow, is much too much of a baby ever to be 
 really wicked." 
 
 She stopped, smiling again at some stored-up re- 
 membrance of Charles' babyishness. 
 
 "But that," said Joan, "is just exactly what I 
 say about Peter." 
 
 Emily nodded contentedly. 
 
 "I suppose we all do," she answered. Joan re- 
 viewed in her mind the long list of platitudes which 
 had been Emily's confession of faith. Perhaps there 
 was more vitality, more strength-giving power in 
 
 209
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 these simple commonplaces than the intellectuals, 
 whose iconoclastic smartnesses, to which she was 
 wont to listen round her tea-table, gave them credit 
 for. At any rate, here was Emily facing possible 
 disaster with a serenity which no longer appeared 
 the child of simple foolishness. 
 
 "I thought, perhaps, that you had seen nothing," 
 Joan murmured at last. 
 
 "Of course," answered Emily, "of course I have 
 seen. And, in a way, I suppose, anything might 
 happen. Yet, all the same . 
 
 She broke off, stealing a sidelong look at Joan. 
 The tragic lines about her lips, and the questing 
 eyes, full of pain, touched all the emotions of Emi- 
 ly's great store of motherhood. She slipped her 
 hand over Joan's. 
 
 "My dear," she said, "of course I know I'm a 
 stupid old babbling woman, and I can sometimes 
 almost see people not listening when I'm talking, so 
 I daresay everything I think is really very silly; 
 still, I do think things all the same. Now you've 
 always been clever, so you've always been thinking 
 about clever things, like books, and pictures and 
 even politics. And of course they are all very 
 necessary, I daresay, and quite a good thing to know 
 about though even dear Charles secretly likes de- 
 tective stories best! But they arn't important, are 
 they? I saw you reading a book about the Renais- 
 sance in Italy two or three days ago, and then that 
 time I came to tea in May it was Walpole's Letters, 
 
 210
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 and somebody told me you had read the whole of 
 the Golden Ass, which I've never heard of, and 
 Alison says you know a great deal about the Roman 
 Empresses. So there you are ! I mean, Joan dear, 
 that you sit here knowing all about Italy and Mr. 
 Walpole and the Ass and the Roman Empresses, 
 but what's the good of them to you? You're quite 
 as miserable as if you'd never heard of the Ass, 
 like me just because something has happened 
 which has never happened to you before." 
 
 Joan said nothing and Emily went on. 
 
 "I've never contended with the Ass or the Re- 
 naissance, because I know I haven't the brains. So 
 IVe had time just to think of silly homely things, 
 and to go on liking "Excelsior" and "Won by Wait- 
 ing," privately, because if you mention things like 
 that, it gives people opportunities, like the pitiable 
 woman in green trousers whom dear Harold 
 brought from Chelsea, when he was going through 
 that phase!" 
 
 "Dear, dear," she broke off, suddenly. "I'm 
 running away again. What I'm trying to say, Joan, 
 is that I don't believe we are happy because our 
 husbands are ideal men, or that they are happy be- 
 cause we are ideal women . . . 
 
 "We thought so once," interjected Joan. 
 
 Emily nodded. 
 
 "Of course we did. That's the 'Excelsior' idea! 
 It's that which makes us happy. Charlie being 
 made capable of idealizing a foolish thing like me 
 
 211
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 and me able to idealize him, when I suppose, really, 
 he ..." 
 
 She broke off again. 
 
 "There now, she said, "I can't find a single: 
 real fault in him. That's what I mean." 
 
 Joan nodded slowly. 
 
 "You mean," she said, "that the real ideal is not 
 in the object but in ... the idea. The ca- 
 pacity for having an ideal , . . and you think 
 that the secret of life is to remain in touch with that 
 capacity at all costs." 
 
 Emily cocked her head a little on one side, like 
 a; bird. She pursed up her lips and frowned a 
 little. 
 
 "Perhaps that is what I mean," she said, "only 
 though I can't explain it, it is something that sounds 
 simpler than that to me." 
 
 "Then what will you do, Emily," said Joan de- 
 liberately, "if Charles goes . . . goes off 
 with this woman?" 
 
 "I don't know," answered Emily. "It would 
 Just make the whole of me seem useless I know 
 that's a thing that simply revolts you modern-mind- 
 ed women, but I can't help it that's what would 
 happen to me. Only, I don't believe in it any more 
 than I believe that the moon's going to fall splash 
 into the bay, tonight. No, Joan, it's no use to say 
 that I'm idiotic; because, there you are, in a hid- 
 eous state of doubt, wishing you were idiotic your- 
 self!" 
 
 212
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Then you aren't afraid?" said Joan slowly. 
 
 Emily rose and drew the old dressing-gown a- 
 bout her: 
 
 "No," she said, "I am not afraid." 
 
 "I envy you," said Joan, from the door. "I am 
 not sure yours isn't the right philosophy." 
 
 "It's not a philosophy," answered Emily, "it's 
 me." And she added simply, "Do you know, I've 
 often been glad that I'm not clever." 
 
 "It isn't being clever," cried Joan. "It's not be- 
 ing clever enough only just like the bubbles in 
 boiling water, doing all the show part. And yet," 
 she added, "I don't think I've ever been quite like 
 that." 
 
 "Of course not, dear," said Emily,, "if you were, 
 you wouldn't be afraid, for other reasons.' 
 
 Joan, shutting the door, came suddenly back to 
 her. 
 
 "And knowing all you know," she said, "when 
 Charles comes back here tonight into all this inti- 
 macy which was such terror to us when we were en- 
 gaged, Emily when . . . when bed became 
 a kind of nightmare to us which had to be con- 
 quered by our love . . . when he comes back 
 here tonight, what will you do?" 
 
 Her hands were trembling as Emily took them 
 in her own. 
 
 "I've told you, dear," she said, "that I'm a silly 
 old woman. I shall just go to sleep and, half way 
 through the night, Charlie will roll over quite un- 
 
 213
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 consciously into my arms, as he always does: and 
 that's how he'll wake up in the morning. There, 
 Joan, I've told you one of my most private secrets 
 because I'm fond of you! Goodnight, dear!" 
 
 She held Joan's hand for a moment, and Peter's 
 wife went out without another word. It was not 
 in her nature to treat Peter like this. She walked 
 along the passage to her own bedroom, her mind 
 undecided, revolutionary. One outstanding fact 
 remained with her, insisting that she should look at 
 it, like the blatant fire of an electric advertisement. 
 Emily, that living shrine of inconsequent folly, could 
 look this disaster unflinchingly in the face. Emily 
 had resources which she herself had never taken 
 pains to collect. Before her door, she hesitated, her 
 fingers round the handle. It was going to be quite 
 impossible, she felt, to disguise from Peter any 
 longer all that she knew. Her nature, though in a 
 different way, was as downright as his own, and her 
 love, no less intense than Emily's, was not of the 
 kind which, at such a juncture, clings fast to faith 
 and can let the fact slip by. 
 
 Tofnight Peter would have to know. She opened 
 the door softly and went in ... 
 
 Below Alison leant over the banisters and gave 
 Harold a good-night kiss. Then she stood back, 
 her hands on the rail, and looked down at his up- 
 turned face. 
 
 "Harold," she said, "we agreed that ours should 
 be a common-sense life, didn't we?" 
 
 214
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "Well," she went on, "here we are, faced with 
 the first of our problems, which we've got to learn 
 to discuss without sentiment. What do you think 
 of our respective fathers?" 
 
 Harold looked quickly about him, before speak- 
 ing. 
 
 "It seems to me," he said, rather pathetic, "they 
 should be old enough either to know better or 
 worse." 
 
 Alison nodded. 
 
 "Exactly. If they were abandoned, lecherous old 
 gentlemen one could sympathise with them. As it 
 is, they are respectable middle-aged fathers, and 
 their present position is entirely due to the fact that 
 they started a pace of sentiment which they never 
 had an earthly chance of keeping up. Now you see, 
 Harold," she added triumphantly, "exactly the sort 
 of mess which you and I are avoiding about twenty 
 years hence!" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "You are always unanswerable, darling," he said, 
 "so I suppose that you are always right." 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 "I know that tone of voice, Harry!" she said, 
 gaily. "I've heard it from your father. It means 
 that one has made a conceited remark. Well, if 
 confidence is conceit, I'm full of it !" 
 
 "And with you by my side, Alison," he returned, 
 "I'm full of it too!" 
 
 215"
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Dear Harold 1" she Said, her eyes shining. "Do 
 you know, there's no picture I love more to make 
 for myself, than the picture of us two, as strong 
 ... as strong and unbending as two steel bars 1" 
 
 "Steel?" he echoed. "I've never heard love com- 
 pared to that before." 
 
 "I daresay not, Harry," She answered. "But 
 you've heard of the bonds of love, haven't you? 
 Well, what makes the strongest kind of bonds we 
 know?" 
 
 She laughed again, and shook his hand, much as 
 a man friend might have done, to say goodnight. 
 Harold just had time to kiss the back of her, hand 
 before she withdrew it. 
 
 "Unanswerable," he said, "as usual!" He fol- 
 lowed her with his eyes as far as the turn on the 
 landing, but his desires and his love followed her 
 further still, beyond any bars of mere steel into a 
 region so mystical, so full of unknown dangers that 
 he dared not face it. He crushed these things back, 
 pinning his faith to the virile confidence of Alison. 
 Poor Harold! try as he would, he lacked a great 
 deal of modernity. Something in his nature was 
 always trying to persuade him that there was big- 
 ger game to be had in his life than mere efficiency. 
 
 216
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 As Joan closed the door of her bedroom behind 
 her, she became aware that Peter was in the room, 
 although, coming out of the lighted passage, it was 
 some moments before she actually saw him. But 
 Peter, whose whole being had been intent upon the 
 opening of that door, was on his feet and half-way 
 towards her, before her mind had registered any- 
 thing except that she was face to face with her prob- 
 lem. Then, something in his face, in the humility 
 of his gesture, shocked her: shocked her in the 
 sense that it was utterly unexpected, like the calm, 
 unreasonable faith of Emily. It flashed through 
 'her mind that Peter was going to confess his in- 
 fatuation, that he was going to grovel and be sorry, 
 comforting his own passions by the open admission 
 'that he had failed her. Joan knew well enough that 
 .there is a certain self-pride in every confession of 
 
 She experienced a desperate hope that Peter 
 iwould confess nothing, that he would not knock 
 away from beneath him hig own pedestal. That 
 jwould be shameful: an act which would make it 
 hardly important enough a pedestal, for her to knock 
 down herself. And now Peter was close to her. 
 His big hands stole round her cheeks and framed 
 Jjer face. And in hit touch t th^rq was some subtk 
 
 17
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 contact which threw her reason right out of the 
 fight, so that she seemed to slip back to some period, 
 separated, by the mere test of time, by many years, 
 but always apparently, by some miracle, potentially 
 present. Breathlessly still, but (again the miracle), 
 no longer fearfully, she listened for his words. 
 "My girl. My very wise, patient girl!" 
 She stood limp, revelling. It was a long time 
 since she had heard the soft notes in Peter's strong 
 voice. 
 
 "Little Joan Funk I" he went on, with a happy 
 rippling laugh. "That's what I called you in the 
 canoe at Somming!" 
 
 "And you," she said, "were Peter Rash." 
 "I lived up to my name," he answered, "but you 
 never did." 
 
 And she realized, with relief, that this was all of 
 his confession. She could not have borne, at that 
 moment, to hear Peter abase himself. And now, 
 too, she understood that something unexpected had 
 happened, something which had thrown the whole 
 machinery of the situation out of gear. But the 
 situation seemed no longer to matter. Peter had 
 thrown back to that other man who for many years 
 had been a memory, a memory by which the wonder 
 of Peter had still lived on with her, though who 
 can say that it had not been growing, albeit uncon- 
 sciously, more anaemic while the original picture 
 slipped further and further away? At least, how- 
 ever, it had not grown so feeble, but this single 
 moment could bring it to life again, as yivid, as
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 joyous as ever. She felt young at his touch, as if 
 her very body had followed her flying mind, back 
 through the years and she knew, by Peter's touch, 
 that he, too, was feeling young. She closed her eyes, 
 as women will, when they are entirely happy. 
 
 "Oh, Peter," she murmured, "have you fallen in 
 love with me all over again?" 
 
 "If I may," he answered. 
 
 Her heart beat fast with excitement. In his 
 answer she read, not only that the old romantic 
 desires were alive once more, but that Peter even 
 wanted to woo her again ... to woo her, Joan, 
 not many years removed from an old woman. 
 What magician's wand had touched Peter on the 
 shoulder, and given him the priceless knowledge 
 that no woman ever loses her desire to be sought I 
 The question flashed through her brain, only to 
 be flung out immediately. 
 
 It didn't matter! It didn't matter! 
 
 For it was his voice she heard asking her 
 whether she was too tired to sit on the balcony with 
 him for a few minutes. It was his hand that drew 
 her towards the open window, and tenderly placed 
 behind her neck the garish cushion in the wicker 
 chair. It was his chair that moved stealthily nearer 
 to her own, as she sat still and silent, in the deep 
 quiet of an unbelievable joy and, when the big 
 light over the front door was suddenly eclipsed, as 
 the Jubilee clock struck twelve, it was his arm that 
 slipped round her, in the kindly darkness, drew 
 her from her chair to his own, and with a gentle shy- 
 
 219
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 ness which hinted nothing of ownership, held her 
 upon his knee and against his breast, ridiculously 
 proud, amazingly happy. 
 
 "It is a dream," she murmured to herself. 
 
 Then she felt his lips wandering about her hair. 
 
 "Yes," he answered. "It's a dream, dear. I 
 have never valued dreams enough. This time it will 
 be different. We are not going to wake up." 
 
 She slipped an arm round his neck and sighed. 
 
 "Baby Peter," she whispered contentedly, then 
 snuggled closer, and, from sheer happiness, fell 
 asleep. Peter was not ashamed at the tears which 
 stood in his eyes. The night hid them from the 
 world, while his soul hugged them to himself. He 
 felt her soft body breathing, like a child's, against 
 his own. He heard the caressing murmur of the 
 sea upon the pebbles. But the night was very dark. 
 He could not even be certain of the bold outline of 
 the great white cliff. Everything seemed to have 
 conspired to make the world a little private place 
 for him and Joan. And at that moment Peter's 
 reason deserted him for good. He even found him- 
 self well able to believe the strange Lady's explana- 
 tion of herself that explanation which he had 
 described as preposterous. The trite old quotation 
 came into his mind: "There; are more things in 
 Heaven and Earth " 
 
 "And especially in Heaven," murmured the 
 Editor, ending his thoughts aloud. 
 
 220
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Thus Peter and Joan accepted the miracle. Per- 
 haps they realized that this thing which had hap- 
 pened would not bear talking about or dissecting: 
 that it was a gift, more valued perhaps because 
 not altogether deserved, to be accepted with the 
 same glad wonder as the gift of life itself. Vaguely 
 enough, in after years, Peter, whose passionate 
 reason ever refused to be completely denied, did try 
 to philosophise over his own good fortune. The 
 conclusion he arrived at was that the perfect lover 
 must fall in love twice once in the divine glow of 
 gambling youth, and, years later, once again with 
 something very akin to that original glow, but with 
 a finer appreciation of its divinity, and a more stable 
 affection for the girl who had once called so loudly 
 and absolutely to the boy in him. The Editor, 
 having arrived at this conclusion, even thought of 
 writing an article about it, but decided that he be- 
 lieved in the idea too much, to be able to make it 
 convincing in his paper, and wisely refrained. As 
 for Joan, whose brain also would not be denied, she 
 poured forth the full measure of her joy in verse 
 verse that, by reason of her intense feeling, neither 
 scanned nor rhymed, though, without doubt, it con- 
 tained more sheer colour in its lines than many a 
 
 221
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 professional poet achieves in a life's work. But, 
 just as Peter abandoned the idea of his article, so 
 Joan tore up her verses, content to accept so won- 
 derful a gift, without attempting an expression of 
 thanks. 
 
 As for the immediate effect upon her, when she 
 woke up, hardly daring to imagine that this was 
 anything but a dream, and discovered a new Peter, 
 or rather the old Peter, beside her, it was natural 
 enough. Her thoughts flew to her daughter, and 
 all the misgivings about her engagement, which had 
 been submerged by the imminence of her own 
 troubles, rose to the surface again. As for Peter, 
 he was quite definitely shy of appearing at the break- 
 fast table. He was silly enough to imagine, like any 
 love-sick youth, that everyone would read his in- 
 fatuation in his face. He therefore arrived late in 
 a state of absurdly loud and forced heartiness. He 
 proposed various plans for the day, which to the 
 surprise of Loxbury and Doctor Weare, included no 
 interval for golf and, in the back of his mind, he 
 was tortuously planning how he might spend the 
 greater part of the twelve hours alone with his wife. 
 Charles, too, curiously enough, seemed to have no 
 special inclination towards the links, and, for some 
 odd reason or other, refused to catch Peter's eyes. 
 However, in spite of the machinations of her father, 
 Alison bore Joan off to the usual morning on the 
 beach and Emily and Loveday Weare followed in 
 their train. The Doctor and Loxbury went up to 
 
 222
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 the links alone, and so Peter and Charles found 
 themselves in the very last position they desired, 
 that of forced companions for the morning. As the 
 Editor rose from the table he stole a glance at the 
 table where the strange lady was used to sit. Her 
 chair was empty and its emptiness afforded him a 
 strange feeling of relief. Turning back, he just 
 caught Charles in the act of looking away quickly 
 from that same chair. Peter very nearly laughed. 
 Poor old Charles ! He could have the field to him- 
 self, now. Only, of course, Peter Margett could 
 not tell him so: that would involve giving away 
 happenings too private even to be whispered. He 
 heard the others, in the hall, fussing about towels 
 and bathing costumes. Curse it! He would have 
 liked to have been fussing too ; anything rather than 
 being condemned to a whole morning with Charles 
 alone. 
 
 "Might as well sit outside somewhere?" said 
 Cutman, and Peter nodded assent. They found 
 themselves walking down that part of the beach 
 which lay opposite to the hotel. Peter, with all his 
 years of journalistic experience, had never known 
 himself so bereft of words. Was it possible to 
 spend the morning with Charles, without broaching 
 the subject of the strange lady? That was the only 
 thing which appeared to him, at the moment, as 
 being of supreme importance. He could not help 
 remembering his last conversation with Charles, 
 upon this point, and came as near to a blush, as he 
 
 223
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 had for twenty years, when he called it to mind. 
 It seemed now like a scene in a very cheap drama. 
 He would have to remember that Charles was still 
 in that absurd state of mind. A few yards of shade, 
 beneath the side of a boat, caught his eye. 
 
 "Here's a place out of the sun," he said, "let's sit 
 here and smoke the best pipe of the day." 
 
 Charles grunted assent and they settled them- 
 selves upon the stones, leaning uncomfortably back 
 upon the receding timbers of the boat. 
 
 "Somehow or other," said the barrister, after a 
 pause, "I didn't feel like eighteen holes this morn- 
 mg." 
 
 "No. Nor I," answered Peter, feebly. 
 
 "Heat, perhaps," volunteered the other. 
 
 "I expect that's it." 
 
 The Editor, in his inmost self, was damning the 
 futility of his reply, at the same time as he cast 
 about desperately for some possible topic of con- 
 versation. He realized that banalities such as these 
 could not proceed for long between Charles and 
 himself, friends of twenty years standing, without 
 either hysteria or violence. 
 
 Charles was going through exactly the same 
 agony of mind, wondering how on Earth he was 
 going to avoid, through a long morning, any refer- 
 ence to the lady who had been the cause of that 
 scene in the billiard room, now so obviously and 
 ineffably ridiculous. 
 
 A long silence obtained between the two men. 
 
 224
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Charles shifted uneasily, and, with a half-formed 
 thought that the action might make him appear 
 more natural, picked up a stone with his left hand 
 and attempted to throw it carelessly into the sea. 
 Unfortunately, his brain being occupied with more 
 important matters, he released his hold upon the 
 stone too soon, and it went spinning away at a right 
 angle to his body, disappearing, some twenty yards 
 distant, over the bows of another fishing-boat. 
 
 Peter sat up sharply. 
 
 "Look out, Charles I" he said, "what on earth are 
 you doing?" 
 
 "Went off unexpectedly," muttered Charles. As 
 no agonized screams of pain came from the other 
 side of the boat, and no outraged and furious figure 
 appeared from behind her, Peter leant back again, 
 though the sudden feeling of alarm, which he had 
 experienced, left him irritable. 
 
 "Damned silly thing to do!" he said crossly. 
 "You might have killed someone." 
 
 "I tell you it went off unexpectedly," repeated 
 Charles. 
 
 "Then all I can say, Charles, is that if you've 
 got so little control over your muscles, you'd better 
 give up throwing stones." 
 
 Peter was, as a matter of fact, extremely thank- 
 ful for this opportunity of irritating Charles and 
 making any attempt at confidences between them, 
 less likely, thereby. He therefore put into his voice 
 a great deal more venom than he felt. But Charles, 
 
 225
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 being, as he was, in a state of happiness not one 
 iota removed, in sheer idiocy, from Peter's own, re- 
 fused to be annoyed. 
 
 "Something has upset you," he answered cheer- 
 fully, "and I think I can guess what it is." 
 
 The Editor turned sharply towards him. 
 
 "I've been a fool in a certain matter we know of," 
 went on Charles awkwardly "I might as well 
 admit it to you. It's more honest and, besides, 
 I'd like to." 
 
 Peter stared at him. He had thought that he had 
 the essentials of the situation between them well 
 defined, but this remark was quite foreign to his 
 expectations. Since he could hit upon no immediate 
 answer, he fell back upon a demand for explanation, 
 couched, as he hoped, in a tone sufficiently uninter- 
 ested as to excite no suspicion of anything but polite 
 mystification. 
 
 "You mean?" he queried, digging his walking- 
 stick into the stones. 
 
 "I saw her last night," said Charles, obviously 
 ill at ease, but determined to make a clean breast of 
 things to his friend. "I had an idea that I saw you 
 along the passage, as I went into her room, and, 
 after what happened between us, Peter, I expect it 
 galled you to see me going in there. I ... I 
 can quite understand it galling you horribly only 
 . . . it's . . . it's awfully difficult to explain 
 this, Peter but, it needn't worry you a bit. That 
 is ... not in the way you think." 
 
 226
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 He broke off, and Peter, half recognizing the 
 truth of what had actually happened, was capable of 
 nothing but silence. The barrister, sturdy even in 
 his embarrassment, continued. 
 
 "What I mean, Peter, is that, as far as I'm con- 
 cerned, that's all over. I might just as well tell the 
 truth, because in this case, the truth is ... is 
 just about the most wonderful thing that has hap- 
 pened to me since the . . . the laburnum tree I 
 told you about. Only, just the fact that it is all 
 over, is all I need really tell you, except . ..." 
 
 At this point Charles became more awkward than 
 ever and started to play, pointedly, with his watch- 
 chain. 
 
 "Except what?" echoed Peter, who, having now 
 guessed everything, could find nothing to say. 
 
 "Well," answered Charles, slowly, "You know, 
 old man, that I'm not of the preaching kind, but I'm 
 not sure that you might not find it worth while 
 . . . that is, I know I'm the last fellow to give 
 advice to anyone but . . . well, I'm not sure 
 that chaps of our age won't find something much 
 better by looking behind 'em than by looking in 
 front of 'em!" 
 
 He broke off suddenly, and was silent, as shy of 
 his own remarks, as a schoolboy betrayed, unex- 
 pectedly, into a confidence. The Editor also re- 
 mained silent. He was so annoyed at the idea of 
 Charles giving him the very advice which he him- 
 self had half thought he ought to hand out to the 
 
 227
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 barrister, that he simply could not find anything 
 whatever to say.. This had the unfortunate result 
 of emboldening Charles. 
 
 "If I thought," he said, "that you were the kind 
 of fool who would imagine I had got up on a sort 
 of moral throne and started chucking warnings at 
 you, I'd not say another word. Only I really have 
 got an idea, Peter, that you and I ... er ... 
 turned up the wrong street together. I mean, 
 that when you said there was 'no secret' you made 
 one of your few howlers, old chap. Fact is," he 
 added, with a little nervous laugh, "that the . . . 
 the laburnum tree is really every bit as wonderful as 
 when you first caught sight of it, even if you go and 
 transplant it to your own front garden, and pass it 
 every day for years and years 1" 
 
 "Those arn't your own words, Charles," an- 
 swered Peter. "That is what she said to you." 
 
 Charles turned quickly to him, startled. 
 
 "And so," went on the Editor, "she did it to you 
 as well!" 
 
 And suddenly he began to laugh, because Peter 
 really possessed a keen sense of humour, and he saw 
 now that, however amazing the miracle, however 
 splendid its results, it had, like everything else, its 
 yery laughable side. Charles regarded the paroxysms 
 of his friend, first with annoyance, and then with real 
 alarm. Not unnaturally, since he had not yet 
 guessed the truth, he could see nothing funny in the 
 situation. 
 
 228
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "What the devil is the matter with you, Peter?" 
 he said, and then as the Editor's laughter in no 
 way abated "Very well, if you see anything to 
 laugh at ! ... Only, I may as well tell you, that, 
 it was only because you are an old friend, that I felt 
 I ought to say anything at all about it to you." 
 
 Peter pulled himself together quickly and laid a 
 hand on his companion's arm. 
 
 "No, no, Charles," he said. "There isn't any- 
 thing to laugh at really. It's more a case for a 'Te 
 Deum,' and I know it. Only . . . only, you 
 see " and his voice shook again "I must have 
 come out from the operating-room only thirty 
 seconds before you went in!" 
 
 "She asked you to come to her last night, as 
 well I" 
 
 Peter nodded. 
 
 "And what would have happened," went on 
 Charles, "if we had both arivcd at once?" 
 
 The other shook his head. 
 
 "I don't know," he answered, "but I have suffi- 
 cient belief in her, to imagine she would have found 
 some way out of the situation." 
 
 Charles nodded, in his turn. 
 
 "What is she?" he whispered suddenly, "a hypno- 
 tist?" 
 
 The Editor countered with another question. 
 
 "What did she do to you?" he asked. 
 
 "Nothing very much. She looked at me, Peter, 
 smiled and just . . , talked I Queer thing 
 
 229
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 was that I began to feel a fool almost immediately. 
 And a queerer thing she seemed to know all 
 about the laburnum tree and any number of things 
 about Emily, which I ought to have guessed ages 
 ago. I suppose that is what happened to you?" 
 
 Again Peter shook his head, but without a smile. 
 
 "No, Charles," he said, "I am afraid I was a 
 harder case. I'm never going to tell a soul what 
 happened to me. Oh," he added, in a tone of 
 admiration, "she gauged us both marvellously the 
 disappointed sentimentalist and the the would-be 
 strong man." 
 
 Normally, Charles would have taken immediate 
 offence at these words, but, at the moment, his mind 
 was too much occupied with his own thoughts. He 
 hardly heard what Peter had said. 
 
 "She puzzles me," he murmured to himself, "I 
 can't imagine who she is, or where she comes from 
 or how she has got so much ... so much . . ." 
 he hesitated and Peter broke in. 
 
 "Inside information?" he suggested. "Why, 
 Charles, do you mean to tell me, you never asked 
 her?" 
 
 "Asked her?" queried Charles vaguely. EvU 
 dently the idea had never entered his head. Cer- 
 tainly the barrister's had been an easier case than 
 Peter's. 
 
 "Why, did you?" he went on, intensely interested 
 in Peter all of a sudden. 
 
 The other nodded. 
 
 "Oh, yes," he said, "I asked her." The intona- 
 
 230
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 tion might have warned Charles that the answer to 
 the question had been unexpected, but he missed it. 
 
 "And she told you," he asked, "who she was?" 
 
 "No, Charles," answered the Editor. "She told 
 me that she didn't exist at all!" 
 
 "Good Lord!" said Charles, "what on earth did 
 she mean by that?" 
 
 "Last night," returned Peter, "I thought it was 
 a playful way of telling me that she had no inten- 
 tion of giving herself away. This morning I am 
 not so sure." 
 
 "Not so sure?" echoed the other. "Why, good 
 heavens, Peter, what on earth do you mean?" 
 
 But what Peter meant was not destined to appear 
 at that moment. A medley of voices sounded behind 
 them, breaking in, with the startling suddenness of 
 an explosion, upon the extreme privacy of their 
 
 conversation. They caught only a jumbled sense 
 
 of if 
 
 "Hold hard, Ted . . Blast . ... eh, what's 
 that? Bide a bit, I tell 'ee what's that? . . . 
 Now, all together!" And then in a kind of tense 
 shout.' "Nao! hold hard, I say! .'". ." followed 
 by a sudden shifting of the boat behind them and an 
 equally sudden jerk, as she stopped. Then the 
 familiar voice of Ted Willis himself, calm and 
 authoritative. "Steady all! What's the trouble, 
 Walter?" After which, the voice of Walter, in the 
 complacently protesting tone of one who has seen 
 something, which others have missed. 
 
 231
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "There be a couple o' blasted fools sitting under 
 the side of her. I seed 'em. We'll crack their heads 
 like seaweed pods, in a jiffy, shifting the boat!" 
 
 Charles and Peter realized simultaneously that 
 the blasted fools referred to, were themselves. 
 They got up quickly, meeting the four or five heads 
 now peering round the stern of Ted Willis' boat. 
 
 "Sorry," said Peter, "we had no idea that you 
 were going to run the boat down." 
 
 "Deaf as weasels!" protested the voice of him 
 who had been addressed as Walter, but Willis, as 
 usual, swept his hat from his head with the gesture 
 and the smile of a courtier. 
 
 "Mr. Cutman'and Mr. Margett!" he said, in a 
 tone which combined, most felicitously, a note of 
 welcome and surprise. "So it is my property that 
 has provided a piece of shade for you this hot morn- 
 ing? Very proud, I. am sure." 
 
 Charles smiled to him. 
 
 "We've been trespassing," he said, "at least we 
 can pay a fine by lending a hand !" 
 
 They joined with the fishermen and boys, in 
 shoving the boat down to the water's edge. She 
 was a heavy craft, broad in the beam, and, when her 
 bows lay in the surf, caressed by the little waves, as 
 if they were trying to tempt her out to sea, her 
 sponsors, in the launching, were mostly out of 
 breath. 
 
 "Is the sun too hot, gentlemen," said the fisher- 
 man, "for me to tempt you out with me?" 
 
 232
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 The invitation was welcome to them both. Men 
 hate nothing more than being forced to exchange 
 confidences, however old and tried their friend- 
 ship may be. In the boat they would have the 
 advantage of the chilly influence of a chaperone. 
 They jumped at the idea. 
 
 "Then perhaps," said Willis, "you will get in 
 now ? We can shove her out well enough, and Lon- 
 don-made trousers don't stand the salt water too 
 well!" 
 
 Ten minutes later the beach had become imper- 
 sonal. They looked along its stretch, to the little 
 white bathing tents under the great cliff, with the 
 same vague feeling of superiority of position, with 
 which an audience regards a play. Such is the great 
 gulf created by a quarter of a mile of sea. 
 
 The old fisherman sat in the stern, smoking the 
 pipe which seemed as much one of his limbs, as his 
 legs and arms. 
 
 "Lobster pots?" asked the Editor suddenly. 
 
 The old man nodded. 
 
 "I've a dozen," he answered, "half a mile out 
 from Sanscombe Rocks." 
 
 They sailed on in silence for another fifteen 
 minutes. 
 
 "There's a couple of lines; under your feet, Mr. 
 Cutman," said Willis at last, "and a bit of bait in 
 a mug, you'll see. If you've a mind to throw a hook 
 overboard, maybe you'd earn your breakfast!" 
 
 "Right O," returned Charlcg and busied himself 
 
 233
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 with the tackle. He trailed the line carelessly over 
 the side, letting it slip slowly through his fingers. 
 Peter, as the boat slid beyond the limits of the bay, 
 let his eye range along the coast appreciatively. 
 
 "What's the use of talking of the Mediter- 
 ranean?" he said. "There's no coast to beat Devon, 
 on a day like this. Look at the sun picking out the 
 red and the green!" 
 
 "It's a gay, fine coast," assented the fisherman, 
 "but in the South the picture's different. There the 
 colour is in the water, don't you think, sir? It's 
 a great show, but it changes every hour. Here's 
 a picture you can rely on like an old, tried love, it 
 is. It will never let you down. Maybe that's why 
 I, who have seen the world, sir, and many a coast 
 so fine that you catch your breath as you see it 
 maybe that's why I still like Devon best." 
 
 "I daresay," began Charles, "that there is some- 
 thing in that. But all the same . . ." 
 
 His sentence broke off abruptly and, with no 
 apparent explanation his body shot so violently 
 across the side of the boat that the Editor grabbed 
 his left arm. 
 
 "What the devil are you at, Charles?" he 
 shouted. 
 
 "All right!" came the answer from the barrister, 
 straining over the side. "Get a hold on this line !" 
 
 The fisherman threw the tiller over, bringing the 
 boat round towards the struggling Charles. Peter, 
 by this time, was hauling upon the line. 
 
 234
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "What on earth has happened?" he said. But 
 the barrister was now back in his seat, looking at 
 Willis. 
 
 "I was jolly near pulled out of the boat," he said. 
 "Can't imagine why the line doesn't break!" 
 
 "Take the tiller, Mr. Margett," said the fisher- 
 man, "and we'll see what's at the end of that line. 
 Keep her turning towards the pull." Peter obeyed 
 orders, as Willis came down to Cutman's side. His 
 brown hand slipped out along the line, till it was 
 under the water. 
 
 "You've the wrong line," he said, then, turning 
 "Make her fast round the seat, sir!" Cutman did 
 as he was told. 
 
 "It's a wonder she's not snapped, all the same," 
 the old man muttered. "Follow the pull, Mr. Mar- 
 gett, follow the pull! It all depends on you, sir, 
 whether we see the sea-serpent before the line 
 snaps!" 
 
 He chuckled to himself, straining gently at the 
 taut thread running into the water. 
 
 "What bait did you use for this monster, Mr. 
 Cutman?" he asked. 
 
 "Why," answered the barrister, excitedly "Just 
 a slip of mackerel, from the tin! What is it, 
 Willis?" 
 
 "Ye'd not catch a whale with a piece of mackerel, 
 Mr. Cutman. Maybe it's a mermaid that's missed 
 her breakfast. Hand over, Mr. Margett, or she'll 
 snap the line, she's away off, under the boat!" 
 
 235
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Suddenly the line sagged and grew limp in his 
 fingers. 
 
 "There I" said the barrister. "It's gone." 
 
 "I don't know about that!" answered the fisher- 
 man, pulling in the slack line, cautiously, while his 
 eyes rested on the water some twenty yards away. 
 A little patch, bubbling and seething, appeared on 
 the calm sea, like a miniature whirlpool. 
 
 "That's your fish, sir," said Willis. "Look hard, 
 for I'm afraid that's about all we're likely to see of 
 him!" 
 
 A long, glistening back turned over just above the 
 water, and disappeared incredibly quickly; equally 
 instantaneous in its appearance and departure was 
 a huge tail. It hit the water with a great smack and 
 threw up a little column of spray. Then the sea 
 closed over the victim, silently. 
 
 "Good Lord," said Cutman, "is it a porpoise?" 
 
 "No, sir," answered the old man, "he's a blue 
 shark." 
 
 "A shark!" said Margett, "taking a slip of 
 mackerel!" 
 
 The fisherman laughed. 
 
 "No, sir," he returned, "The poor fellow is even 
 more astonished than Mr. Cutman. He's been foul- 
 hooked." 
 
 The line tightened again* 
 
 "By George," shouted the barrister, with the sud- 
 den enthusiasm of a schoolboy, "can't we land 
 him?" 
 
 236
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "We can try, sir. But's a marvel the line has 
 lasted so long." 
 
 Even as he spoke it became slack again, and the 
 old man pulled at it hard. There was no resistance. 
 He hauled in the broken line, coiling it deftly round 
 its frame. 
 
 "He's away, sir," he said, "with a silly little hook 
 in his side that will make him the laughing stock of 
 every self-respecting blue-nose in the channell" 
 
 He put away the line and resumed his place at 
 the stern. 
 
 "Pity," said Margett to his friend, "that you 
 can't take him home to Emily." 
 
 Charles laughed, as if Peter had made a very 
 good joke. But, as a matter of fact, he would have 
 liked exceedingly to have taken the shark home to 
 Emily. He knew that Emily would have been 
 rather thrilled whether it was foul-hooked or not. 
 He looked sideways at the Editor and gave another 
 little laugh. 
 
 "I hardly think Emily would have appreciated 
 the gift!" he lied, and heard Peter chuckle. Of 
 course, he thought, Margett was not the kind of 
 man to retain this kind of enthusiasm.. He had to 
 admit to himself that it really was a schoolboyish 
 kind of idea. But then superiority, of any kind, is 
 mostly on the surface. Underneath . . . but 
 Peter, even after twenty years, could not be admitted 
 underneath. Charles, gazing at the ripples, racing 
 past the side of the boat, wondered whether there 
 had ever been such a thing as a friend who could 
 
 237
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 be admitted underneath. Peter, anyway, had too 
 little sympathy with any kind of weakness. Mean- 
 while, the Editor, smoking a cigarette by his side, 
 was actually engaged in wishing that he had caught 
 a shark, rather bigger than Charles', which he might 
 lay at the feet of Joan. Also, like the barrister, he 
 was admitting to himself the childishness of such a 
 wish, and thinking how impossible it would be to 
 tell Charles of so ridiculous an idea. 
 
 The business of the lobster-pots cut short these 
 ruminations, and interested the two men for some 
 minutes. In due course, they were on the beach 
 again, had thanked Ted Willis heartily for his hos- 
 pitality, and were on the way up to the hotel, for 
 lunch. The old man followed them up the beach, 
 with his eyes. 
 
 " 'Are they unhappy?' she asked me," he mur- 
 mured, and then with a chuckle "I reckon she 
 knew well enough ! an' now something's happened 
 to 'em . . . Mr. Cutman was as keen as a lad 
 for that shark!" 
 
 He coiled a length of rope round his arm and 
 looked at it meditatively. 
 
 "You're an old man, full up with a deal of queer 
 ideas," he said to himself, "but I wonder whether 
 you're right this time? If so," he added, "she'll be 
 back back where I believe she came from, by 
 now !" Then he was silent for a moment, and threw 
 the coil of rope into the bottom of the boat. After 
 which he stood up, shaking his head, like a dog 
 shaking off the wet. 
 
 238
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Willis," he said, sternly, "if you're old fool 
 enough to think in fairy tales, why don't you write 
 'em and earn an honest penny!" 
 
 He strode up the beach. By the rusty old wind- 
 lass below the promenade, he stopped and shook his 
 head. 
 
 "There's others," he murmured, "foul-hooked to 
 an idea, like Mr. Cutman and the shark; maybe 
 they'll spend most of their lives trying to land it 
 but the line's got to snap in the end. Better for 
 them if it goes at the first tug, I'm thinking!" 
 
 He turned on his way and disappeared up the 
 little village street. A young fisherman, eating his 
 bread and cheese on the beach, jerked his thumb 
 over his shoulder, and addressed his companion, an 
 older man, with a thin, ragged moustache. 
 
 "Old Willis is breaking up," he said. " 'E's 
 started talking to 'imself I That means 'e's started 
 talking moonshine." 
 
 The other shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "I've been on the beach fifteen years," he said, 
 "and I've never known old Willis when 'e weren't 
 queer-like. Nobody knows how old he be nor, 
 for that, do anyone seem to know him any better 
 than the next man." 
 
 He spat contemplatively. 
 
 "Always been the same," he added, and pulled his 
 hat over his eyes. 
 
 "Reckon he's just an old fool, then," rejoined 
 Youth, carelessly, and spat ever whit as efficiently 
 as his Elder. 
 
 239
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 It is a commonplace to say that women have no 
 sense of proportion. That is only to affirm that they 
 are less apt to be calculating, than men. A sincere 
 woman considers less the expediency of her actions 
 than a sincere man. She looks straight at her prob- 
 lem, in the light in which it would appear, were it 
 set in ideal surroundings. Women, in fact, actually 
 guide their lives much less by the rules of things as 
 they are, as by their own private ideas as to what 
 they ought to be. Hence, the generalization, com- 
 mon amongst men, that all women are idealists to 
 the point of stupidity. 
 
 The entire romance of Joan's life, which she 
 had for a long time looked upon as lost (long in- 
 deed, before such an idea had even started to be a 
 disturbing element in Peter's existence) had come 
 back to her. The immediate result of her own hap- 
 piness was the same as it is, in the case of most hu- 
 man animals she wanted to share a bit of it a lit- 
 tle bit of it, with someone else. Whether this emo- 
 tion springs from the old Greek idea of insurgnce 
 against the wrath of the gods at over-prosperity, or 
 whether as one may be allowed to hope, it has its 
 origin in an innate kind-heartedness within everyone, 
 is a question each must settle for, himself, according 
 
 240
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 to his own experience of human motives. The fact 
 remains, that it is the most ordinary form of reac- 
 tion, after great happiness, and, in the case of Joan, 
 what more natural than that her mind should turn to 
 her daughter, beginning the very experiment which, a 
 very short time hence, had seemed to the mother lit- 
 tle but a chimera, which lived faintly on, only by vir- 
 tue of its original enthusiasm? She had spoken to 
 Emily that morning, not of those moments with 
 Peter on the balcony, for those were sacred, but just 
 to tell her that things were not as she had imagined. 
 Emily had smiled to her and nodded. "No, dear," 
 she had said, and had added, inexplicably, "I always 
 thought she had nice eyes." Confirming to herself, 
 perhaps, her own unreasonable faith in things. 
 Then Joan had mentioned Alison, and had hinted to 
 Emily that the engagement of their children was 
 curiously unlike their own. Emily had admitted 
 this, a puzzled frown upon her forehead. But the 
 frown had disappeared almost immediately, as she 
 answered, "Charles feels that too, only he says that 
 they are both very modern, and will grow out of 
 it." With which explanation she appeared to be 
 perfectly satisfied. But Joan was not made in such 
 a way that she could lean absolutely upon another. 
 The bald, business-like attitude which her daughter 
 had taken up towards her engagement, alarmed her 
 all the more, now that she had found, as she thought, 
 justification for the romanticism of her own wooing. 
 They arrived back at the hotel some three quar- 
 
 241
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 ters of an hour before lunch and Alison, who had 
 come to her mother's room to borrow some cold 
 cream, was standing before the glass over the fire- 
 place, patting her hair into shape with almost mas- 
 culine carelessness. Joan sat in the armchair look- 
 ing at her. 
 
 "Alison," she said, suddenly, "are you quite cer- 
 tain that you love Harold?" 
 
 The girl stiffened; immediately on the defensive. 
 
 "Of course," she said, carelessly, "Why?" 
 
 "Only, dear," answered Joan, "because it ... 
 it doesn't look like it!" 
 
 Alison turned slowly away from the glass, and, 
 avoiding her mother's eye, walked across to the 
 window. Her heart was beating fast, for here was 
 the beginning of the fight which she had known must 
 come sooner or later. Well, she knew the methods 
 she had always meant to adopt when the moment 
 came. Attack, smashing even cruel, if necessary. 
 She was young and she believed in herself: and, if 
 she crushed every loving relation she had in the 
 world, she felt that she was right, so long as she 
 kept this belief. She turned and faced her mother. 
 "It would be waste of time, mother," she said, "to 
 pretend that I don't know what you mean. The 
 great thing is, don't you think, that I should be 
 straight with you?" 
 
 Joan nodded. 
 
 "Of course, dear," she answered, her brain fight- 
 ing hard against her heart, which was shouting to 
 
 242
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 her that it was going to be a terrible thing for a 
 daughter to be "straight" with her mother. 
 
 "Well, then," said Alison, "in the first place I 
 don't think that it has anything to do with you or 
 with Dad. My engagement is none of your busi- 
 ness!" 
 
 That was a good clean, smashing blow to lead off 
 with, and Joan felt it almost physically, as if Alison 
 had actually hit her. But she was brave, and she 
 smiled and nodded. Her mind, almost against her 
 will, was telling her that her own mother that 
 queer old woman in a stiff cap who seemed now to 
 belong to another age had been very very dif- 
 ficult about her engagement. The fashion then, of 
 course, had been to treat one's parents with re- 
 spect but, after all, she had been every bit as 
 determined as Alison. Perhaps it came to the same 
 thing in the end. 
 
 "You see, mother," Alison was going on, "I am 
 young and so is Harold. There is no reason what- 
 ever why we should handicap our lives by trying to 
 graft the ideas of old people upon our own." 
 
 "I am not so very old, Alison," said Joan, quickly, 
 like a fighter who, hard pressed, puts his hands up 
 quickly to shield his face. 
 
 "You're not an old woman," returned Alison, 
 "but when you talk of engagements, you are talking 
 of the engagements which happened before I was 
 born. Naturally, because that is the only kind of 
 engagement you know. But, you must see, that you 
 
 243
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 might just as well, from my point of view, give me 
 a lecture on the marriage customs of old Babylon." 
 
 The mother managed another smile. She must 
 not, she told herself, take this second blow too seri- 
 ously. She supposed things looked like that to the 
 young. 
 
 "After all," Alison was saying, "it may be as 
 well for us to understand one another. First of all, 
 mother, though of course I'm fond of you and Dad, 
 I don't feel I owe anything to any relation I have in 
 the world. A debt which can never be paid till the 
 creditors are dead, is an absurdity. If there is one 
 distinguishing feature about the present generation, 
 It is a refusal to subscribe to absurdities. That is 
 why I say that my marriage is nothing to do with 
 any of you. If you like to go on being friends with 
 me, after I'm married, it will be splendid. But, if 
 there's any sort of silly trouble, I'm not going to 
 bother with it. Why should we, Harold and I? 
 We're trying to make our own lives, and that's dif- 
 ficult enough in itself, without the perpetual brake 
 on the machine, caused by relations who have, as a 
 rule, failed to make anything of their own. If I 
 and Harold hurt anyone's feelings, in the course of 
 working out our own salvation, it's a pity, but it 
 will have to be. What's more, we are sound enough 
 to expect our children even to hope that our chil- 
 dren will do the same with us!" 
 
 Joan, reeling under the torrent of words, saw an 
 opening, and hit back. 
 
 244
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS! 
 
 "You've not had a child, yet, Alison 1" 
 
 "If part of the disabilities of having a child," 
 answered her daughter, "is that one loses the sense 
 that one's duty is to let it alone, to prevent it being 
 clogged by other people's sentiments, other people's 
 religions, other people's prejudices then I can only 
 hope that I shall always be sterile I" 
 
 The very words her daughter chose to use seemed 
 to hurt Joan. But still she managed a smile. 
 
 "You're giving me a long lecture, Alison," she 
 murmured. "But I haven't really said very much, 
 have I?" 
 
 "That's just hedging, mother," returned Alison, 
 quickly, "I know perfectly well that you don't think 
 there is the usual amount of sentiment between 
 Harold and me, to make up the mixture which you 
 have been taught to regard as love. Well, I can 
 only repeat, that that is our business I" 
 
 She came away from the window and sat upon 
 the edge of the bed. 
 
 "You, and your generation, mother," she went 
 on, "tried the other way. Your engagements be- 
 came conspiracies amongst your friends to produce 
 an Arabian Nights atmosphere of romance. I dare- 
 say it's a very pleasant form of opiate. Perhaps 
 it's worth the disillusionment. I don't know; and 
 I never shall know, because I never propose to 
 try it I" 
 
 "Disillusionment?" Joan's laugh was unnatural, 
 fpjT $he could not help realizing that there had in- 
 
 245
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 deed been disillusionment, only last night magically 
 dispelled. Still, she managed to smile again, as 
 she added. 
 
 "What on earth do you mean, Alison?" 
 
 The girl rose and came and stood before her 
 mother. She looked down at her fixedly with her 
 clear, honest grey eyes. 
 
 "Look here, mother," she said, "you don't think 
 children are blind, do you? We don't talk about 
 all we see, for the same reason as we don't expect 
 you to interfere with us, because it's none of our 
 business. But of course, we do see. Harold and I 
 have realized for some time what has been hap- 
 pening to our fathers, and have wondered how it 
 was going to turn out!" 
 
 Joan stood up, suddenly, her eyes bright with 
 anger, even though she recalled Loveday's mention 
 of this possibility. 
 
 "How dare you, Alison?" she said. 
 
 The girl's eyes never faltered. 
 
 "I had just as much right to say that to you, 
 mother," she answered, "as you had, to talk to me 
 about my engagement." 
 
 "Do you think so?" returned Joan, coldly. 
 "Your ideas are very peculiar." She turned away 
 towards the dressing-table, struggling against the 
 insistent idea that Alison's logic was disturbingly 
 correct. 
 
 "To you, mother," answered her daughter, "my 
 ideas are naturally peculiar. I expect the ideas of 
 
 246
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 the man who first thought of an iron ship were con- 
 sidered peculiar, by his mother." Joan answered 
 nothing. She stood at the dressing-table, her back 
 to her daughter, her fingers tapping upon the linen 
 cloth. Alison's voice came to her again in a gentler 
 tone. 
 
 "It'.s not that I don't love you, mother. But, one 
 must separate love from any kind of slavery." 
 
 Joan turned. 
 
 "Do you think you can separate love," she said, 
 "from some sort of slavery? You will be very 
 clever, if you do. Ah, Alison, you talk a great deal, 
 dear girl, but you've not had to do much, or to give 
 much, yet!" 
 
 For some reason these words angered Alison. 
 
 "Oh, I see," she flashed back, "you think that I'm 
 just talking: that I wouldn't back up my words by 
 my deeds? Then let me tell you, mother, that I 
 would, that I have I Harold and I became engaged 
 in Testleigh Woods, that night that was where 
 we knew we loved each other and knew, too, that 
 when we came home, there were going to be lots of 
 people who were going to knock the cleanness and 
 the brightness off our love, by silly conventions and 
 foolish talk. And so, mother, because I wanted him 
 to know that my love was much more real than any 
 church could make it, I offered myself to Harold, 
 that night, in the wood, before anyone knew, except 
 our two selves !" 
 
 She stopped, breathless. She had said more than 
 
 247
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 she had ever meant to say. But she was not in the 
 least ashamed of the adventure in the wood rather 
 the opposite and she tossed her head proudly. 
 Her mother turned slowly towards the chair, so 
 slowly that the movement appeared unnatural. Her 
 hand seemed to go out towards its arm, blindly 
 fluttered for a moment, then found it. Joan sank 
 slowly into the chair. She did not dare ask whether 
 Harold had accepted that offer in the woods. 
 Vaguely she felt that, somehow or other, she must 
 keep her daughter's confidence, must try to appear 
 at least as if she understood these new ways. She 
 was, at the moment, only anxious that Alison should 
 not start justifying what had happened, with that 
 terrible flow of biting words. She managed a smile 
 and a little nod. 
 
 "I see, Alison," she said in a low voice, "I see 
 your point of view." 
 
 Alison crossed and kissed her on the forehead. 
 She knew that she had hurt her mother, but she 
 still thought that it was the only thing to do. But 
 Joan hardly felt it. She heard the gong for lunch 
 booming below and saw the outline of Alison's 
 strong, obstinate head, as she slipped from the 
 room. 
 
 Still she sat in the chair. From the very first 
 moment of the fight, Alison had started hitting her. 
 She had been virtually beaten, half-way through. 
 But not beaten sufficiently to satisfy Alison. There 
 had remained the knock-out, and she had taken it. 
 
 248
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 She sat limp, in the chair, till her brain began to tell 
 her that her absence from lunch would be remarked 
 upon. 
 
 Then she dragged herself slowly to her 
 feet. ... It was at that moment that the door 
 opened and Peter came in, childishly agog to tell of 
 the adventure with the shark. He had the same 
 dazzling smile upon his face, which she had seen 
 that morning, for the first time, after twenty odd 
 years. The smile cheered her, enthused her again, 
 much like the sponge and the towel of the second 
 in the corner of the ring. But, as she went to meet 
 him, she felt her legs trembling and giving way be- 
 neath her, just as if she had really and physically 
 received that knock-out blow. The next thing she 
 knew was that she was in his arms, that his right 
 hand lay upon her head, and that, between tears, 
 which she was trying hard to restrain, she caught a 
 glimpse of his terribly large Victorian watch-chain. 
 
 "Your grandfather's watch-chain I Your grand- 
 father's watch-chain 1" she sobbed hysterically: 
 "She would call it the key to the whole business !" 
 After which she found herself laughing, and won- 
 dering why the sound of the laugh was all wrong. 
 Then, after a long interval, as it seemed, she was 
 on the bed, with a handkerchief, soaked in eau-de- 
 cologne round her forehead. The voice of Peter 
 eemcd to come from a long way off. It sounded 
 yery firm and kind and comforting. 
 
 "No, dear," it said, "you will not go down to 
 
 249
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 lunch." Then she must have been talking, she 
 thought dimly and with a quite vague feeling of 
 terror, wondered how much she had been talk- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 His next words were reassuring. 
 
 "It is the heat," he said. "That bit of beach at 
 the bathing hole is an absolute suntrap." 
 
 He fussed away to the dressing-table, replacing 
 the stopper in the scent-bottle, and aimlessly straight- 
 ening brushes and trinket-boxes. Joan could not 
 help a little smile, despite the turmoil of her mind. 
 Dear, dear Peter! He was so obviously enjoying 
 his effort to be of use. Oh yes, he was the old 
 "baby Peter," all right! 
 
 Then the thought came into her head, that she 
 must certainly go down to lunch. She had a quick 
 vision of Peter, telling the assembled company that 
 she had been overcome with the heat: another flash 
 showed her Alison, with the beginning of a smile 
 upon her lips. And now, frankly, she did not care 
 whether Alison's theories were right or wrong. She 
 only felt, and felt strongly, that she had beliefs of 
 her own, standards of her own, all of which were 
 just as important as those of Alison. 
 
 She must certainly go down to lunch ! The idea 
 of surrender was still intolerable to her, even after 
 that last terrible blow. Moreover, Peter must not 
 know anything of Alison's amazing confession. 
 Confession? no, it had sounded more like a slogan. 
 Her mind raced away with her, at top-speed. She 
 
 250
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 imagined whole life-times, as Peter fussed at the 
 dressing table. Supposing there was a child a 
 child, who had already started life; a child of that 
 madness in the wood? Her brain buzzed round 
 dates and calculations. It might be possible, she 
 thought, to fake things . . . with luck. But 
 of course, some people would talk women would 
 talk. That would be awful: and still more awful, 
 the few who would deliberately not talk Loveday 
 Weare, for instance. Joan actually shuddered as 
 she thought what the silence of Loveday would feel 
 like. . . . 
 
 Then her mind, like a ball thrown from a great 
 height, seemed to leap back again, not quite to 
 where it had started, but to a point not far below. 
 
 After all, this hypothical child ... it would 
 be a real baby ... a little girl or a little boy. 
 
 If now, it had started it's being, what right had 
 she to begin to load it already, with her own preju- 
 dices? No. No. If there was anything criminal 
 in the affair that would be it. The child, of course, 
 must be regarded as just a child. 
 
 Above all, Peter must know nothing about it. 
 There he was, smiling at her over the end of the 
 bed . . . dear old Peter ! 
 
 And perhaps probably, even there was no 
 child. 
 
 Fearfully illogical, that this probability took the 
 whole affair onto a plane of far less importance 
 but it did ! Joan could not, at that moment, pursue 
 
 251
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 the ethics of her emotions. The great thing was 
 that dear, violent Peter should guess nothing. 
 
 She smiled to him and saw his eyes twinkle. 
 
 "Better, eh?" he said "I thought that bandage 
 would do trick I" 
 
 She smiled to him again and he came to her and 
 slipped an arm round her shoulders. It was nice 
 to feel Peter so loving . . . but she was 
 glad, for all that, that the language of smiles is 
 not easily read. For, though it was actually the 
 very thing which was wanted at the moment, her 
 smile had come, simply because Peter was really 
 rather a darling, standing there at the end of the 
 bed, thinking he had been efficient with his bandage. 
 
 She roused herself quickly and squeezed his hand. 
 
 "Dearest old fuss-pot Peter!" she said, and slid 
 to her feet, off the bed. 
 
 "Of course, I shall come down to lunch!" she 
 added, and started to repair ravages at the glass. 
 
 252
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Lunch proceeded as if nothing had happened at 
 all. Certainly, there was no hint in the behaviour 
 of Joan, that twenty minutes ago, her own daughter 
 had outraged convictions which had become almost 
 part of herself. If anyone appeared a little on 
 edge, it was Alison, who felt a curious disinclination 
 to catch her mother's eye. But Joan, apparently, 
 made nothing of it, and fell in with a suggestion that 
 they should take their tea to the top of the white 
 cliff, with the mild enthusiasm which she always 
 displayed, on these occasions. 
 
 As a matter of fact, she was suffering intensely, 
 more intensely, perhaps, than she had ever suffered 
 since the long labour, mental and physical, which 
 had heralded Alison's appearance in the world. 
 But Joan, as has been said, had, by reason of an 
 early discovery that she was apt to any disturbing 
 things, schooled herself to suppression for many 
 years, and now this discipline stood her in good 
 stead. Moreover, she recalled a remark of Lox- 
 bury's, made at the inception of that very picnic, the 
 end of which had found her daughter and Harold 
 Cutman in the, to her, accursed wood. 
 
 "Shock tactics!" he had said, in his lazy drawl. 
 "It is the method of the younger.generation I" The 
 
 253
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 remark had been occasioned by the eager insistence 
 of the young people upon the undertaking of the 
 expedition; but, as Joan recalled it, the idea seemed 
 to her to have a deeper significance, to be a truism 
 that covered a greater field than the bachelor had 
 ever imagined. And, besides, she felt that the big- 
 gest necessity of all was to keep this secret to her- 
 self. For this reason, therefore, it was her business 
 to smile and so Joan smiled. 
 
 Charles and Peter decided to play a round of 
 golf, while the bachelor and Owen Weare, who had 
 taken their exercise in the morning, elected to join 
 the party for the cliff. 
 
 "And I warn you two lads," said the doctor, in 
 his most cheery voice, "that the heat, playing golf, 
 is killing!" 
 
 "Must have one more round," answered the 
 Editor. "Tomorrow, we all go back to our respec- 
 tive factories!" 
 
 "It's been a splendid holiday, anyway," said 
 Emily, "and I'm sure we all look much the better 
 for it." 
 
 "Quite apart from the fact," added the Doctor 
 with a courtly little bow towards Alison, "that two 
 young people have discovered the wonderful treas- 
 ure of Romance!" 
 
 And then, because it seemed the obvious thing to 
 do, everyone smiled and drank to the health of 
 Harold and Alison. But those smiles! If only 
 someone could have read them: for they were in- 
 
 254
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 deed, like so many different messages in code. 
 Loveday Weare's smile, her sadly cold and ironical 
 blue eyes fixed upon the genial mask of the doctor : 
 Joan's smile, bravely trampling upon doubt ; a smile 
 which was almost a prayer for her daughter's hap- 
 piness. Loxbury's smile, debonair, courteous and 
 quite worthless. Charles and Peter with would-be 
 parental smiles, but, wondering, privately, whether 
 this discovery of Romance had been attributed to 
 the right explorers. Emily alone, perhaps, wore a 
 smile which had nothing behind it, except faith and 
 good-will. 
 
 So lunch came to an end and Charles and Peter 
 found themselves on the way to the links. They 
 played a few holes and then, mutually agreeing that 
 it was too hot, even for golf, sat down under the 
 shade of the belt of woods. 
 
 "She's gone," said Charles, all of a sudden. "I 
 asked the porter, just before lunch." 
 
 "So did I," returned Peter. "She left very early, 
 apparently." 
 
 Charles nodded. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "just disappeared into thin air, as 
 far as we are concerned. Isn't it curious to have 
 become so intimate with another human being and 
 not even to know her name and address !" 
 
 "I am not sure," said the Editor slowly, "that we 
 should ever have become so intimate with her, if 
 she had given us her name and address." 
 
 Charles looked at him sharply. 
 
 255
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Look here, Peter," he snapped, "what the devil 
 are you driving at? You hinted at some curious 
 idea on the beach, too I" 
 
 Peter was silent for a moment, then gave a little 
 shrug of the shoulders. He answered Charles' 
 question by another. 
 
 "Can you imagine that woman telling a lie?" he 
 said. 
 
 "No," pondered Charles, "I'm not sure that I 
 can. Why?" 
 
 "Because, Charles, as I told you, she said that 
 she did not exist, and besides . . ." 
 
 He broke off, seeing all over again the miracle 
 that had been done for his sake. 
 
 "Yes, but damn it, Peter . . ." 
 
 "Very well, if she does exist, Charles, she told 
 a lie I" 
 
 Cutman swung round suddenly towards his friend. 
 
 "But, good heavens, Peter! you're talking abso- 
 lute nonsense! Even if she did say that, it's just 
 a ... a figure of speech." 
 
 "I daresay," answered the Editor in a tone much 
 more humble than it was his wont to use in argument. 
 "It is quite possible that I am talking nonsense. 
 One can only speak according to one's own con- 
 victions." 
 
 Charles' voice sounded positively awe-stricken, as 
 he listened to this suggestion of his hard-headed 
 friend. 
 
 "You don't mean, Peter, that you think . . ." 
 
 256
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 The other moved, with a little gesture of irrita- 
 tion. 
 
 "I don't know," he said, "what I think. I don't 
 know that I care much. She has given me something 
 that is priceless, Charles, and I am afraid I can't 
 think much beyond that." 
 
 The Barrister nodded, and for some moments 
 was silent, nervously plucking up little handfuls of 
 grass and throwing them at his shoes. 
 
 "It's an amazing idea," he said, at last. "I'm 
 trying to see it. I suppose we were attracted to her 
 by the very qualities we had forgotten in Joan and 
 Emily . . . she would represent all that part of 
 them which had got hidden, so to speak, under the 
 years." 
 
 Peter nodded. Charles had come very near that 
 explanation of herself which the strange lady had 
 given to him, and which he had, at first, so lightly 
 dismissed. 
 
 "Probably, as you say, Charles," he returned, "I 
 am talking sheer wild nonsense but then it is very 
 nice to feel again the inclination to believe in non- 
 sense. That's another bit of what she has given 
 back to us. And yet I don't know ... we are 
 rather apt to use 'nonsense' as a synonym for all the 
 things we don't know. The more I think about her, 
 the more I can't help feeling that she knew a won- 
 derful amount about . . . about the beginning 
 of things." 
 
 Charles nodded. 
 
 257
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "But why," he asked, "do you speak of her as if 
 she was dead?'* 
 
 "I suppose," answered the other, "because I am 
 convinced that we shall not see her again in this life. 
 Anyway, not just that 'her.' After all, that is all 
 that death means to us." He paused for a moment 
 then went on quickly, like a man who has made up 
 his mind to say something which his instincts tell 
 him he should keep to himself. 
 
 "I ... I think she knew, Charles," he began, 
 shy as a schoolboy. "I think she knew. About the 
 way we all start, I mean, the way we are all treas- 
 ure seekers in the beginning . . . pitched into life 
 one way or another, but all convinced that there's 
 hidden treasure, somewhere." 
 
 "Yes," murmured Charles, "That's true enough; 
 it starts when we are children." 
 
 "I rather think," said the editor, "that she knew 
 it went on long after we were children : and I think 
 she knew where that treasure was I" 
 
 Charles had fallen beneath the spell of Peter's 
 sincerity. He had never heard the editor talk so 
 earnestly before. He nodded, eagerly, and even 
 discovered, with a shock, that his hand was on 
 Peter's arm, and that Peter, the unemotional, had 
 not noticed its presence. 
 
 The editor went on, as if to himself. 
 
 "Yes, I think she knew where it was. Not in 
 Emily or Joan, Charles. Not in you or me. But in 
 Emily's idea of you, which must, so to speak, be 
 pulling you up a bit higher than yourself, all the 
 
 258
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 time. And your idea of Emily . . . working the 
 same way. And so with me, and Joan. That's 
 Romance, Charles! not the servant girl, who mar- 
 ries the Marquis, as we publish it in our serials, but 
 just two ordinary mortals, living together, and 
 believing in one another. It's that capacity in us 
 . . . that amazing possibility in the human 
 animal it's that which she knew it's that which 
 is the Undying Thing I" 
 
 And then, as suddenly as he had torn the veil 
 from his naked, grateful soul, the curtain of Good 
 Form appeared to him, menacing in its insistence, 
 and he crowded back into the zareba of his private 
 mind, like so many women of the east, all the chil- 
 dren of the miracle, which had broken out of prison 
 for those few moments. 
 
 But Charles, deep in his own thoughts, did not 
 notice the sudden shrinking of his companion back 
 into the Peter Margett whom the world knew. 
 
 "And yet," the barrister murmured, "very little 
 really happened; not nearly enough, one would 
 have thought, to give us this amazing feeling 
 of ... of certainty!" 
 
 "Nothing happened, Charles," came the answer. 
 "That is the whole point. You don't think that any 
 human woman, just talking, could have put back into 
 you and me, all that . . . well, all that practically 
 makes us light-hearted when we think about it? It is 
 just that which convinces me that when she said she 
 was nothing, she spoke the literal truth!" 
 
 259
 
 WHERE, YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Nothing?" echoed Charles, his chin sunk in his 
 hands. 
 
 "Nothing, as far as human intelligence is con- 
 cerned. Damn it, Charles, think of the number of 
 things that influence our lives ideals, thoughts and 
 convictions which come from nowhere; prejudices 
 which you couldn't trace to any source in a hundred 
 years. Those are the things which sway us which 
 make up what we call our personalities. If you want 
 to try them, by the test of touch and sight or 
 name and address you're done! But, there they 
 are all the time nothing, but everything I" 
 
 "Yet," answered the barrister, slowly, "we did 
 see her and we did touch her." 
 
 "We believe we did. She knew that we were suf- 
 ficiently gross to make that belief necesary for our 
 conviction." 
 
 "You seriously mean, Peter, that you don't think 
 that woman is anywhere now, at all?" 
 
 "Anywhere? Well, no. Not anywhere within 
 what you would call the meaning of the act." 
 
 And then Peter Margett shrugged his shoulders, 
 helplessly. 
 
 "I've told you," he said, "that I don't know what 
 I think. The thing is, that something came out of 
 her being . . . her entity something quite 
 apart from anything she said. That something has 
 been given to us. I don't care where it came from : 
 I've never believed in God, Charles, not the matins 
 and evensong God but I do know that there are 
 
 260
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 God-like emotions and God-like ideas which can be 
 the property of men I know it now, anyway !" 
 
 He rose and picked up his bag of clubs. 
 
 "Come on," he said, "let's carry the pit and re- 
 gain our faith in our muscles. I hate giving myself 
 away. Reserve is one of the tenets of my gospel of 
 strength. I wonder what strength really is I" 
 
 He strode off to the tee and Charles followed. 
 
 Queer mixture, old Peter. Now, who would ever 
 have imagined . . . and, yet, wasn't it just pos- 
 sible that he was right? Only, if so, well . . .!" 
 
 Charles banged his ball three yards, to the lip of 
 the pit. It began to bump slowly down to the bot- 
 tom. He disappeared after it, cursing happily. 
 
 261
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Trunks, suit-cases, and packages were being 
 loaded up on the crazy eminence of the station 
 omnibus. Everything had been counted four times 
 by Emily; on each occasion the result had been dif- 
 ferent and she was now starting all over again. 
 Mrs. Honeycott, standing at the top of the steps, 
 had twice sent the porter round every bedroom, to 
 discover whether anything had been left behind. 
 Charles, who had never, in Emily's eyes, grown old 
 enough to be trusted with a return ticket, had several 
 times taken them from his waistcoat-pocket to 
 assure her that they were really there, and had, at 
 last, handed them over to Harold, a procedure 
 which, for some reason or other, had the effect of 
 comforting Emily completely, so far as they were 
 concerned. Loveday, meanwhile, sat patiently 
 inside the omnibus, her two aquamarines gazing 
 steadily, as it appeared, upon nothing. The Doctor 
 was up and down the steps, in and out of the little 
 hall, everywhere at once, pretending to help. 
 Alison had been assuring Emily every five minutes 
 that there had been no mistakes made, but now she 
 had given it up and was whispering to Harold, "I 
 believe she enjoys it!" To which Harold, remem- 
 bering countless fusses of his youth, nodded in the 
 
 262
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 affirmative. It was the end of the holidays; just 
 such an end of the holidays as had happened now 
 for twenty-six years. Just such an end, with a dif- 
 ference. Charles and Peter stood some fifty yards 
 below the omnibus, on the very edge, in fact, of the 
 big stones at the top of the beach. They did not 
 speak. Apparently, they were just looking at the 
 sea. 
 
 Then, tramping slowly up the incline of the 
 beach, an old man approached them, a string of 
 fish hanging from his right hand. 
 
 "Then it's good-bye, Mr. Cutman and Mr. Mar- 
 gett, until next year?" 
 
 "Afraid so, Willis," returned Charles. "We're 
 feeling all the better for the holiday, anyhow." 
 
 "Ye look it," returned the old man, shortly, and 
 smiled apparently for no reason at all. 
 
 "What's the joke, Willis?" asked the editor. 
 
 "No joke, sir, at all," replied the fisherman. "I 
 was only remembering something that I told Mr. 
 Cutman and which he did not believe." 
 
 "What was that?" asked Charles. 
 
 "That miracles, sir, are very apt to happen when 
 most you need 'em." 
 
 There was a silence, and then Charles' voice 
 broke it suddenly. 
 
 "Are you a wizard, Willis, or what are you ?" 
 
 At that, the old man could not resist the theatrical 
 sweep of his battered hat from his white head, and 
 the courteous, semi-ironical bow which he knew so 
 well how to execute. 
 
 263
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "I'm just an old man, sir," he answered. "But, 
 because I'm a bit lonely, perhaps, and because I've 
 made a mort of mistakes, I'm not sure the gods 
 haven't let me in to one or two secrets." 
 
 "Look here, Willis," began Peter, having made 
 up his mind that this was an occasion for dignity, 
 "I think you ought to know that, in my opinion, 
 your comments . . ." And then he stopped, dis- 
 covering that he had not really formed any idea as 
 to what Ted Willis "ought to know." 
 
 Charles was a little embarrassed, more perhaps 
 at his friend's attempt at grandeur than by anything 
 the old fisherman had said. He held out his hand 
 shyly. 
 
 "Well, au revoir, Willis," he said, and was thank- 
 ful for the anxiously shrill voice of Emily, calling 
 him to the omnibus. 
 
 Some excited squeaks on the steps of the carnage. 
 A slamming door. Mrs. Honeycott waving a hand- 
 kerchief. Ted Willis's brown hand in the air. The 
 infernally bumpy surface of the station road. The 
 train seeming, to Londoners, amazingly short and 
 queerly old-fashioned. The red-haired guard, who 
 is apparently immortal. Labels . . . corner 
 seats ... an attenuated whistle, and that fear- 
 ful, amateur jerk with which the engine-driver 
 always started. Then the slow passing of the river 
 running under the bridge which led to the golf- 
 links . . . the dark little patch on the road-side 
 which was the opening of the lane that ran up to the 
 
 264
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 club-house. The links I The club-house ! No won- 
 der Peter and Charles, looking out of the window, 
 were silent. It was up there, on that great green 
 hill-side, that something something had come to 
 them, and made the rest of their lives seem worth 
 the living. As the silent sleepy cliff slid away behind 
 the train, it seemed almost like an old friend setting 
 out upon a long journey. It left the same sad im- 
 pression. Even after the change at the junction, 
 that feeling remained, and Charles and Peter sat 
 silently occupied with their own thoughts almost all 
 the way to Waterloo, magazines and papers lying 
 idle by their sides. One thing only, they knew, 
 would cure this melancholy; the moment when they 
 were alone again with Joan and Emily. They were 
 thinking, perhaps, of the road along which that 
 original madness might have led; thanking the gods 
 that be for the actual outcome. Dangerous folly? 
 Yes but 'Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia" 
 
 There is many a madness leading to salvation. 
 
 Waterloo, the old luggage, the old cab, the old 
 home, the old problems . . . but with it all, a 
 gay new feeling, an incredible lightness of heart, 
 even when the pile of bills and correspondence is 
 picked up from the old chest in the hall. 
 
 Emily, four months later, could not pretend, even 
 with the best will in the world, that her son's actual 
 
 265
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 wedding had been a success. To her mind, it must 
 have seemed "very odd" to the various relations and 
 friends who ought to have been invited, but who 
 were not. Alison had insisted upon putting the 
 vrhole business through with as great expedition, 
 and as little ceremony, as possible. Even the 
 organist was only allowed to play his instrument 
 once, at the end of the service, and he, the father 
 of nine children, with a sense of sentiment in pro- 
 portion, was quite personally hurt that no one had 
 thought it worth while to ask for any particular 
 music. So he had played the Wedding March with 
 a touch that was almost truculent. The whole 
 affair, according to Emily's ideas, was over "almost 
 before it had begun." "You might have thought," 
 she said, afterwards, to Joan, "that Harold and 
 Alison were ashamed of it!" 
 
 To this Joan could find no answer, for she felt, 
 at least as far as Alison was concerned, that it might 
 very well be the truth. 
 
 And, indeed, deep down in herself, the bride's 
 mother was not so sure . . . Alison kneeling 
 there at the altar steps, while the clergyman gave 
 them his address, and somewhere behind the im- 
 mediate relations the quite audible sniffs of an old 
 servant of the Cutmans', to whom this was a land- 
 mark of sentimental orgy standing out, as in red 
 ink, amongst the similar pleasure she was wont to 
 extract from churchyards, on her "evenings out." 
 
 Joan tried to remember the address delivered 
 
 266
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 over her own bridal head, years ago. She could 
 not recall a word of it. Naturally, she had been 
 thinking of other things the train they were to 
 catch at Paddington ; that troublesome veil ; the pic- 
 ture of Peter in pyjamas (wondering whether 
 pyjamas would make any difference to Peter!) ; the 
 insistent idea that she had somehow cut her life 
 in half at this point and a vague, but very real, 
 sensation of fear. ... In honesty, that was all 
 that Joan could remember of her own wedding. 
 There were, of course, other kaleidoscopic impres- 
 sions still remaining. A spinster aunt who kept on 
 saying that something or other was "very wonder- 
 ful" and her father looking very hot and seeming 
 strangely relieved. She could not even remember 
 much of what the clergyman had said to her 
 daughter that afternoon. He had, she recalled, 
 made a reference to child-bearing which, outside a 
 church, would certainly have been considered in the 
 worst possible taste. Yes, she was forced to admit, 
 that in a perfectly kind and fatherly way, he had 
 said things over their defenceless heads which might 
 well cause any sensitive pair of lovers to shun the 
 clergy for the rest of their days. Not, of course, 
 that it was the fault of the Reverend James Far- 
 quhar, an old friend of her husband's, whom they 
 knew to be a great-hearted old gentleman, with all- 
 embracing sympathies. But his profession pledged 
 him to mediaevalism : and the manners of mediae- 
 valism are apt to look gross in these days. Yes, to a 
 
 267
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 nature like Alison's the whole affair might well have 
 appeared impertinent. It was quite likely, as Emily 
 had hinted, that she was ashamed of it. Anyway, 
 it was over, and Harold and Alison had gone to 
 Paris for a week. Two days before the ceremony 
 Joan had been surprised to receive a visit from 
 Harold just before the dinner-hour. He had 
 appeared, almost as a conspirator, and seemed un- 
 accountably nervous. Her mind, never quite free 
 from dwelling upon her daughter's defiant story of 
 the evening in the wood, now flew back to it, to the 
 exclusion of everything else. Here was the boy, 
 obviously ashamed of what he wanted to tell her! 
 What else could it be, then, but that. . . . And 
 yet, she reflected quickly, there would be no confes- 
 sion unless such a thing had become necessary, and, 
 in that case, surely the embassy would not come 
 from Harold! 
 
 "Look here!" he had suddenly perked out, "I've 
 been making up my mind to tell you something I 
 thought I ought to tell you before our marriage, 
 because . . . well, because afterwards it 
 wouldn't be quite the same thing." 
 
 She had nodded encouragingly, pitying the boy's 
 wretchedness. 
 
 "Alison told me," he had continued, "what she 
 had said to you about ... er . . . about the 
 wood. I ... I couldn't help thinking that there 
 might be some mistake ... in your mind, Mrs. 
 Margett, I mean. ... So I just want to give you 
 my word that that nothing happened in the wood 
 
 268
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 at all!" After which, before she could say any- 
 thing, he had burst out, loyally. "Though I think 
 it was wonderful, splendid of her !" 
 
 Joan had risen then and taken his hand. 
 
 "Thank you very much," she had answered 
 simply. "If anything could have made me better 
 pleased that you were going to become Alison's 
 closest friend, it would be this." 
 
 "What? That nothing happened in the wood?" 
 
 "No," she replied. "Just that you thought it 
 right to come and comfort the imaginary fears of 
 an old lady!" 
 
 She forgave herself the "imaginary"; after all, 
 why should she give herself away? And so that 
 incident in the bolshevism of Alison was closed. 
 For Joan, even had she ever wished to, was now 
 precluded from speaking of it, out of loyalty to 
 Harold. 
 
 And now they were married, and very certain of 
 themselves, and there was a house being taken in 
 Pembroke Road over which Charles Cutman was 
 being allowed to fuss, as regarded the terms of the 
 lease, and Emily, as regarded the drains, an arrange- 
 ment which, as Joan thought privately, had prob- 
 ably been engineered by the practical Alison, with 
 the deliberate idea that "it would keep Harold's 
 people happy." Moreover, it did. 
 
 The worst of these level-headed, unromantic folk 
 is that they are so often right. 
 
 Alison, going through an efficient honeymoon in 
 Paris, regarded the occupation of her parents-in- 
 
 269
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 law as a stroke of policy on her part, calculated to 
 keep them out of mischief. She was apt, like many 
 modern girls, to treat children as if they were 
 grown-up, and elders as if they were children. In 
 Paris, the real strength of Alison's personality was 
 especially in evidence. Harold, whose French was 
 poor, was embarrassed at his disabilities. Alison, 
 who knew no French at all, forced Frenchmen who 
 had no English to understand that language. A 
 triumph of sheer brutality. 
 
 On the second day of the honeymoon, Alison 
 walked into Harold's dressing-room and told him 
 that there was something which they ought to dis- 
 cuss immediately. Harold, in his dressing-gown, 
 was still moved by the thrill of a council-of-war 
 with a woman, also in a dressing-gown. He had, in 
 his nature, a full share of that respect for the idea 
 of woman which it is now the fashion to date as a 
 foible of the middle of the last century. It seemed 
 still to Harold a great compliment that a woman 
 should come so near to him. . . . 
 
 The nature of Alison's problem stunned him, at 
 first. Foolishly, as he instantly admitted to him- 
 self, it seemed for a moment to disperse that de- 
 sirable abyss of respect which lay between them. 
 
 "I think we ought to decide, Harold, dear," she 
 said calmly, "whether we want to have a child or 
 not. It seems to me rather degrading to have a 
 child by mistake. Especially to the child." 
 
 He nodded. In a way, he supposed it was. It 
 was certainly an arguable point of view. On the 
 
 270
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 other hand, deliberation seemed to make the baby, 
 in a kind of way, machine-made. . . . Surely 
 there was something to be said for the divine acci- 
 dent. And, rightly or wrongly, it was a discussion 
 which seemed rather wretched. 
 
 Alison went into ways and means and the number 
 of servants who would be required in the house in 
 Pembroke Road, if a nursery was to be waited upon. 
 Harold agreed with her that it could just be done. 
 But he could not help feeling that they had missed 
 the glorious thrill of discovering, after the event, 
 that it could just be done. < 
 
 "And, of course," said Alison, "I should like a 
 child. Would you?" 
 
 "Of course," answered Harold. There was 
 something in his wife's tone which made the poten- 
 tial baby appear part of the routine of an efficient 
 married woman. The wood seemed a great dis- 
 tance away. Had it simply been what Peter Mar- 
 gett would have called propaganda? A proclama- 
 tion of independence, a throwing down of the 
 gauntlet on behalf of modernity? "No, no," he 
 told himself; "there had been passion In those 
 kisses." There was passion somewhere, hidden 
 beneath the fearful efficiency of the girl who sat 
 opposite to him, in her dressing-gown. His wife. 
 His wife ! The word whirled him away from mis- 
 giving. He had only been used to it for two days : 
 he kissed her, radiantly. 
 
 Ten weeks later, Alison told Joan that she was 
 likely to become a mother. 
 
 271
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Joan kissed her, and smiled. She was glad that 
 Alison was going to have a baby, frankly regarding 
 its advent as a possible medicine for her daughter's 
 disease. 
 
 Emily, on the other hand, hugged her daughter- 
 in-law, cried a little, and started stitching and em- 
 broidering, like a sweated seamstress. The baby, 
 as it happened, gave more joy to her than he was 
 destined to give to anyone, for, on a raw October 
 morning, after several hours of queer noises, which 
 just reached Harold as he paced up and down the 
 room below (little snatches of mad song, dying 
 away into a strange helpless drone, and erratic 
 footsteps of people who might be doing anything), 
 there came a long silence. Harold stopped walking 
 up and down and stood at the door. He hesitated 
 to go out of the room. He had so often, during 
 the night, been asked quite kindly to remain inside. 
 He heard steps coming down the stairs, and a mur- 
 mur whicK he could not catch. Then Joan's voice, 
 on a low note. 
 
 "Ah." 
 
 After which the cool, balanced tone of the nurse. 
 
 "I think you had better tell her." 
 
 472
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Is she . . . ?" 
 
 "Oh, yes . . . just coming round. Here is 
 Doctor Vardon." 
 
 Harold heard the Doctor's step on the stairs. 
 Then another murmur. And more steps, going up. 
 He came out of the room at that, and saw the doctor 
 and the nurse, talking in the hall. Joan had evi- 
 dently gone up to the bedroom. As he came for- 
 ward, the doctor hurried to meet him. The nurse 
 seemed to vanish, as if by magic. 
 
 The older man took his arm and drew him back 
 into the study. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he said. "Your boy was born dead. 
 I was afraid that might happen, from certain 
 symptoms last night; but there was no point in 
 alarming you . . . when there was a chance that 
 it might be needless. Your wife is perfectly all 
 right. She'll be as fit as a fiddle in three weeks." 
 He squeezed Harold's hand sympathetically. "I 
 hate bringing news like this," he said, then picked 
 up his bag. "You would rather be alone, of course." 
 
 Harold pulled himself together. 
 
 "Rotten luck!" he said, huskily. "You'll have 
 something before you go, Doctor? A whiskey-and- 
 soda?" 
 
 "Thanks, no. Better have one yourself. And 
 don't forget to eat a good breakfast." 
 
 He was gone. A decent old chap. Harold 
 gazed up the stairs towards Alison's room. A maid, 
 who had heard the closing of the front door, put 
 
 273
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 her head timidly round the top of the basement 
 stairs. 
 
 "Excuse me, sir," she stammered. "Is it a girl 
 or a boy?" 
 
 "Hush," answered Harold, without quite know- 
 ing why, and added, "he is dead." 
 
 The mere fact that the baby could no longer be 
 referred to as "it" seemed to make his grief more 
 poignant for the son he had never seen. At least 
 the child had now become 'someone'. He turned 
 back towards the study, his hands clasped behind 
 his back. 
 
 The maid, feeling that the situation was beyond 
 her scanty vocabulary, disappeared. He sank into 
 his armchair. Poor Alison ! . . . poor girl. All 
 those rotten months, and then this ! 
 
 He stole quietly up the stairs, pausing for a 
 moment outside Alison's room. There was no 
 sound. He went on, and found himself upon the 
 landing of the little room which had been prepared 
 as a nursery. Some perverse idea of feeding his 
 distress made him open the door and go in. There, 
 in the corner, was the bassinette, with those silly 
 ribbons which his mother had so loved to stitch onto 
 the muslin curtains: and inside, the coverlet with 
 a *C' embroidered upon it by Joan. He walked 
 across to it. Somehow that 'C made the whole 
 thing real to him, over again. He lifted the cover- 
 let and stood suddenly still, shocked. There was 
 something beneath it. What he had thought were 
 the blankets, were not. 
 
 274
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 So that was where they had laid his boy. 
 
 A levql, kindly voice, from the doorway, brought 
 him back to himself. 
 
 "Now, Mr. Cutman, it won't help you at all to 
 be up here." 
 
 He turned and saw the nurse standing at the foot 
 of the little bed. 
 
 "I mayn't see my wife yet," he answered. "I 
 would like to see my boy." 
 
 "You can see Mrs. Cutman very soon now. She 
 will make a splendid recovery." 
 
 "I would like to see my boy," he said doggedly. 
 
 "Very well. And then you will go?" 
 
 He nodded. She turned back the coverlet, un- 
 loosed a safety pin with deft fingers and laid back 
 a flannel covering. Then she crossed to the window 
 and turned her back upon Harold. He looked down 
 upon a little red, withered old man. It seemed 
 miraculous that so small a thing should be so per- 
 fect. His son. He picked up one of the little 
 hands and kissed it. "Charlie," he murmured, and 
 then let it fall and drew himself up. 
 
 "Ave atque vale, little chap," he said, and turned 
 away. That was all the christening and all the 
 burial-service his boy would ever need. He heard 
 the nurse behind him, putting things in order. 
 
 "Thank you, Nurse," he said, over his shoulder. 
 
 "Go down and have some breakfast, Mr. Cut- 
 man," she answered. 
 
 Well, she was right. It was weak and foolish to 
 
 275
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 make oneself unnecessarily ill; unable to deal with 
 things. Alison would hate that. . . 
 
 He went slowly down to the dining-room. 
 
 Alison, drifting slowly out of the fog of uncon- 
 sciousness, found her mother by her side. 
 
 "Is it all over?" she asked in a thin whisper. 
 
 "Yes. All over, dear." 
 
 "Boy?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Alison's eyes never left her mother's face. 
 
 "Well," she said, all of a sudden. "Tell me !" 
 
 "He was born dead, dear girl." 
 
 There was a long silence. Alison lay quite still, 
 dry-eyed. When she spoke, her words came as a 
 shock to Joan. 
 
 "Whose fault was it?" she asked. 
 
 "Fault? Why, no one's fault." 
 
 "Mine, then," answered her daughter. Whereat 
 she turned her face to the wall, her left hand lying 
 limp in her mother's. 
 
 For some minutes Joan sat there silently, won- 
 dering at the way in which Alison had taken the 
 news. Could it be that even this was to be estimated 
 by the test of efficiency, like everything else? She 
 put the idea from her, telling herself that, under 
 such a shock, stranger things might have been 
 expected. 
 
 276
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Suddenly Alison spoke again, without turning. 
 
 "I'd like to see Harold," she said. 
 
 Joan looked a question to the nurse, who had 
 just come in. She nodded and Joan slipped out of 
 the room. 
 
 When Harold came in, his only positive emotion 
 was a desire to be of some use to his wife. He 
 knew, like an actor in some unsuitable part, that 
 the situation was outside the measure of his experi- 
 ence. Still, like the actor, he trusted blindly to 
 instinct. Whatever he must do he believed he had 
 the capacity for "getting it over." 
 
 The white mask appearing over the bed-clothes 
 was horribly unlike Alison. 
 
 He was aware of a moment of cowardly inde- 
 cision, in the doorway; aware, two seconds later, of 
 a burning longing that this indecision should have 
 passed, unnoticed. 
 
 Then a voice in his ear said, "Five minutes, Mr. 
 Cutman," and a kind of sensation in white and 
 butcher-blue seemed to pass him by. It was a sen- 
 sation which he remembered. But where ? He re- 
 called it suddenly. It was at the obsequies of his 
 son. 
 
 There seemed nothing personal about this woman. 
 She was simply an impression in blue-and-white. 
 Yet she had forced herself indelibly upon the canvas 
 of his life. Now, he heard her footsteps, going 
 upstairs. 
 
 Evidently his son still demanded service, though 
 
 277
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 his actual life could be measured in minutes. Yet 
 the woman demanded service too: and he was 
 ashamed that so much of him was still upstairs in 
 the nursery. When he approached the bed, he felt, 
 perhaps for the first time in his life, that sense of 
 inevitable, but inexcusable, brutality which, in his 
 relationship with women, comes to every sensitive 
 man. Yet, even as he looked at her, he realised, in 
 part, that he was deceiving himself: that martyrdom, 
 in some form or other, was a necessity for a woman. 
 Still, sentiment triumphed. He felt a cad. 
 
 He took her hand and winced to find it so cold. 
 And then, again, his brain took charge, and he 
 remembered that there was something colder up- 
 stairs, in the bassinette; and, as he remembered, he 
 fought desperately against the idea that, in himself 
 also, there was something which had turned icy-cold, 
 in sympathy. 
 
 He heard Alison's voice. 
 
 "Funny," she whispered. "Little boy. Little 
 woolen suits. Lots of self-will, I expect! First 
 little spanks 1 Eton collars school . . . Oxford 
 . . . women, and the woman we'd be allowed to 
 know ! Their children, and our efforts not to inter- 
 fere !" She laughed suddenly, queerly. 
 
 "I'm a little light-headed, Harold," she said. 
 
 He patted her hand, soothingly. Yet her half- 
 hysterical sentences seemed to him like a precis of 
 everything for which he had hoped from this night's 
 agony. 
 
 278
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Rotten luck, darling," he answered. "But 
 ... we love each other all right; that's all that 
 really matters." 
 
 She sighed. 
 
 "Don't, Harold," she said. "That's what your 
 father would have said to my mother." 
 
 For a moment he rebelled. What he had said 
 was commonplace, and he knew it. But there is a 
 time for commonplace, and either he must have said 
 something of the kind, or nothing at all. Yet he 
 could not fight against her weakness: he could not 
 assert himself in the face of her pain. He simply 
 smiled; cursing himself for entertaining even a 
 moment's irritation, at such a time. His wife's eyes 
 were closed, but she was speaking again: speaking 
 vaguely, in queer little jerks. . . . 
 
 "Lived seven minutes, they say . . . my fault, 
 I expect ... I must ask the doctor. No good 
 getting sentimental or tragic about it. We must 
 stick to our creed . . . the only one. I don't 
 want to see the body!" 
 
 Harold made no answer. For some seconds .he 
 sat still, wondering vaguely why his wife's last few 
 words had sounded like some horribly offensive dis- 
 cord, played in his ear. Then he realised, all of a 
 sudden, that she was asleep. The impression in blue- 
 and-white was somewhere in the room again. He 
 rose. 
 
 "Asleep, I think," he murmured. 
 
 "Yes, she's dozing," answered the nurse, and, for 
 
 279
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 some reason or other, he found her at his elbow, in 
 the doorway. 
 
 "You musn't mind," she whispered, "anything 
 your wife may have said, Mr. Cutman. She's had 
 quite a lot of chloroform, you know." 
 
 "Eh? Oh, no, of course not! Not that she 
 . . . but, thanks. Of course not!" And so he 
 escaped. 
 
 Splendid nurse, that! Anticipated everything. 
 Always trying to be kind, too ! Not that she under- 
 stood, of course, but still, she wanted to be kind! 
 
 Anyway, it meant that Alison would be looked 
 after. 
 
 In the evening, Harold paid another visit to the 
 bedroom. The nurse opened the door to him, and 
 smiled. 
 
 "I wouldn't come in, Mr. Cutman," she said. 
 "She is fast asleep and quite comfortable. Take my 
 advice, and get a good night's rest yourself." 
 
 He went to his room and started to undress. 
 
 As he was getting into bed, he found himself 
 repeating over and over again, "You musn't mind 
 . . . anything she may have said . . ." 
 
 "Chloroform," he told himself, and suddenly be- 
 came terrified at the value which he was beginning 
 to set upon this word. 
 
 280
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 He got over the startling shock of those ten 
 minutes at the bedside, of course. In twenty-four 
 hours that word "chloroform" had definitely 
 obscured the horror of the words, as it did physical 
 pain, and, in a fortnight, as Alison grew stronger 
 every day, and as the relationship between the two 
 became automatically normal again, even his son 
 began to appear simply as a possibility which had 
 not eventuated. No more actually real than a brief 
 which had been expected, but which, at the last 
 moment, had been given to someone else. So 
 Charles Cutman, junior, having tasted this life for 
 seven minutes of tortured breath, might be sup- 
 posed to have left not the ghost of a footprint where 
 he had passed. 
 
 Harold and Alison resumed their normal, un- 
 eventfully happy existence. There were no more 
 children: that particular angle of married life had 
 been bungled, and it was obviously better to stick to 
 the things which you knew you could do well. 
 
 And there were many things which Alison could 
 do well. She could keep her household and herself 
 at that particular pitch of well-being which was ex- 
 pected of her particular niche in Society. She could 
 
 281
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 deal with the vagaries of difficult servants. She 
 could see that her husband was comfortable, that 
 his outward life experienced no knocks or jars, other 
 than those he might, or might not, receive in his 
 chambers at the Inner Temple. So all was well 
 just as well as the dining-room clock which was 
 wound up every Friday night, and ticked comfort- 
 ably along for the next seven days. 
 
 Indeed, the clock ticked away the seconds and the 
 minutes and the hours and even the years, and 
 Harold Cutman and Alison never stopped to wonder 
 whether they had really achieved happiness or not. 
 The meals were regular and there were no quarrels ; 
 and the Church and the Law, at any rate, demand 
 no 1 higher standard from marriage than this. 
 
 Eight years after the wedding, Charles Cutman 
 died. He came back, on a wet evening, from his 
 chambers, and, in spite of Emily's entreaties, was 
 too lazy to take off his boots. In the semi-delirium 
 which supervened towards the end of his pneumonia, 
 he kept on repeating that the last eight years of his 
 life had been the most wonderful he had ever known. 
 When he was actually within a few moments of 
 death, Emily was holding his hand. 
 
 "Going now," he gasped, all of a sudden, and she 
 felt his fingers grip hers, as they had when he was a 
 young man. Then he closed his eyes and fought 
 horribly for ten seconds more of breath. 
 
 "Young . . . always silly . . . He won 
 .... we were . . . Different ways now," he 
 
 282
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 coughed. "Tell them . . . laburnum tree right 
 . . . . dead right!" 
 
 Then his whole body shivered like a kicked jelly- 
 fish. She thought it was the end, but, for no appar- 
 ent reason, his voice became suddenly normal and 
 clear. 
 
 "Emily," he said, "y u arc wonderful . . . 
 you have always been wonderful. I thank God for 
 you." 
 
 She kissed his foul damp forehead passionately; 
 kissed his dry lips trying, animal-like, to suck back 
 some moisture into them from her own. His hand 
 clawed wildly into the air. She found it, realising 
 in a flash that this was going to be the last time his 
 fingers would close round hers. They clung to her 
 hand like red-hot talons. Then, slowly, they seemed 
 to grow cold. She looked at his face on the pillow, 
 thinking that he had gone. But, suddenly, with an 
 unnatural jerk, his head came up and he smiled hap- 
 pily into her eyes; his parched lips twisted and 
 writhed. 
 
 She put her face close to his, for she knew he had 
 something else to say before he left her. 
 
 "Golden girl," he whispered, and seemed to have 
 exhausted his strength. Then, quickly, all in a 
 breath, he finished. "See you later!" he said loudly, 
 and fell back. The bedclothes quivered and then 
 sagged. There was a queer metallic snap from the 
 face on the pillow. The jaw dropped, and Charles 
 Cutman's face became a hideous mask. But "golden 
 
 283
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 girl" was the name he had called her under the 
 laburnum-tree as it seemed, millions of years ago. 
 And it is things like that which make Death 
 ridiculous. 
 
 Later, at least, it was the personal memory of 
 those last quick confidences, the personal certainty 
 of those few moments of absolute happiness, that 
 made the black coat of Harold and the black Paris 
 model of Alison seem just a little absurd, just a 
 little unnecessary, even to the conventional Emily. 
 
 Somehow, after the passage of several months, 
 even, she did not feel that she could give the young 
 people that last message. She knew, well enough, 
 all that was meant by the "laburnum tree," but she 
 knew also that the gift of words, the right words to 
 impart such priceless knowledge to a couple of 
 heretics was not hers. In the end, after hours of 
 torment, thinking herself disloyal to her dead hus- 
 band, she never told them at all. 
 
 And she was right; they would have been kind 
 and sympathetic, but nothing more. 
 
 Thus, Charles Cutman's body rotted and re- 
 plenished the earth, in the little Sussex churchyard, 
 where the accident of his great-grandfather's rector- 
 ship had ordained that all the Cutmans should be 
 buried. But Charles Cutman's soul continued to 
 keep alive, in the heart of an old woman, an un- 
 quenchable fire of enthusiasm for life and love and 
 suffering, up to the day when she, too, with great 
 content, surrendered, without question, her fat old 
 
 284
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 body and her garrulous old mind, and slid away, 
 care-free, into whatever might lie behind the gentle 
 black curtain which descended upon her last few 
 moments. 
 
 As for Harold and Alison, the years slipped com- 
 fortably over their heads; the disappearance of a 
 cook or the discovery of a housemaid's dishonesty, 
 being the only kind of storm which ruffled the 
 placidity of their existence. Harold's practice grew 
 bigger, and they moved from Pembroke Road to a 
 pretty little house in Knightsbridge. Alison, even 
 after twenty years, did not appear to have changed 
 much. At one period she had threatened to grow 
 stout, but she immediately discovered the right 
 exercise to counteract this tendency and efficiently 
 conquered it. Her father had then retired and, 
 finding on his retirement that he could get no hap- 
 piness in the surroundings in which he had been so 
 accustomed to energise, suddenly left England with 
 Joan and settled in Italy. 
 
 Joan acquiesced in this retirement, though, in 
 private, she regarded it as a mute acknowledgment 
 of the end of her personal existence. There was 
 nothing to prevent her going, and the realisation of 
 this saddened her. In the old struggling days, how 
 thrilling such a journey would have been, what pic- 
 tures every trivial foreign incident would have called 
 up to her vivid, but long-suppressed, imagination. 
 To-day she- regarded the prospect with a tinge of 
 bitterness ; could not help wondering what she had 
 
 285
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 actually achieved, now that she was within measur- 
 able distance of Death. Alison, certainly, no longer 
 needed her. Indeed, looking back through the 
 years, even to nursery days, the old lady began to 
 doubt whether Alison had ever needed her whether 
 indeed Alison had ever needed anyone even her 
 husband. And, to Joan, it semed a very tragic busi- 
 ness, a terrible waste to fake the semblance of a 
 great friendship, when there was no actual need of 
 that friendship at all. She puzzled over it, even 
 tormented herself over it. ... Thus had Emily, 
 whose mere intelligence was so much less acute than 
 Joan's, had the advantage of her all the time dur- 
 ing those pregnant days at Whyticombe and after 
 the dull consummation of Harold's marriage. 
 Emily realised no tragedy or comedy, except in those 
 situations which had been tacitly and conventionally 
 labelled as such. She regarded the dead child as a 
 tragedy, Harold's story of an illiterate plumber, at 
 work on the Pembroke Road kitchen range, as a 
 comedy. Such things were cut-and-dried, in her 
 mind. When Alison refused to grieve over the non- 
 existence of their son, she was at first puzzled. 
 Then her conventional mind and her conventional 
 training came to her rescue, and she persuaded her- 
 self, quite easily, that Alison's nature was "re- 
 served," that the poor, cheated mother could not 
 bring herself to speak of sorrows so intimate. 
 Emily had even respected her daughter-in-law for 
 this imaginary reticence. She had died, comforted 
 
 286
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 in the idea that her son had a wife whose nature was 
 so "deep." "Deep" and "lasting" were words she 
 had used since girlhood synonymously, and without 
 the slightest notion of their meaning or actual 
 efficacy in the scheme of things. But Joan was 
 different. Hers was the weakness of extreme intel- 
 ligence. She believed in the maxims of her youth, 
 in all the emotions which she and Emily, as girls, 
 had been taught to consider as "deep and lasting." 
 She believed in sentiment, in "family life," in "faith- 
 fulness" (quite apart from whether that faithful- 
 ness was the outcome of genuine emotion or the re- 
 sult of continuous human strain) she believed in 
 all these things, but, since her brain would insist 
 upon working in larger circles, she could not com- 
 pletely persuade herself that there might not be 
 other schemes of perfectly legitimate happiness; 
 that fashions in love as in clothes might not be 
 capable of supersession. With her right hand she 
 clung to the canons she knew ; with her left she tried 
 feebly to push away the disturbing possibilities which 
 her tyrant of a brain was for ever suggesting. 
 Emily's left hand had always been a faint, admiring 
 shadow of her right, and so Emily had, on the 
 whole, been a happier woman than Joan. 
 
 When Alison's mother came to say goodbye, 
 before starting for Italy, her daughter kissed her 
 heartily, and congratulated her. "It's a splendid 
 thing for you, Mother," she said. "You always 
 needed colour and warmth you're out of place 
 here." (As if Joan did not know it!) "In Italy, 
 
 287
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 even the houses have frescoes painted on the outside. 
 You'll adore Italy I" 
 
 "Well," answered Joan, slowly, in the curious 
 meditative tones she always used, "perhaps I shall." 
 
 She was not, really, thinking about Italy at aR: 
 she was only wondering in her acute, vivid way, why 
 it was that a grown-up child should be so pleased at 
 the removal of its mother: the removal, that is to 
 say, in mere mileage. As she looked at Alison, still 
 telling her of the wonders of Italy, Joan felt, sud- 
 denly, and with a definite sense of surprise even in 
 the moment that it was better that the baby had 
 never lived. As Alison smiled into her mother's 
 eyes, without the slightest sense of what lay behind 
 the surface of them, Joan actually wondered 
 whether it might possibly have been better if her 
 own daughter had never lived. She returned home 
 to her packing, with a sense that the visit had been 
 as ridiculous as a conventional call. She might just 
 as well have left a card upon Alison. 
 
 Well, perhaps none of it mattered. Perhaps the 
 standards of her own youth were really outworn. 
 Perhaps she and Peter and their like had become 
 tiresome to the young. And even so, had they the 
 right to complain? Certainly not. Their lives were 
 behind them. 
 
 In due course Alison herself would be an old 
 woman. She too would become, as it were, one of 
 the books which are never taken down from the 
 shelf: works which made a sensation in their day, 
 
 288
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 but which became tedious, and even infantile, to a 
 new generation, pregnant, of course, with greater 
 possibilities than any litter to which the world had 
 ever given birth before. 
 
 How would Alison take it, when the dust began 
 to settle upon her? Joan shook her head over her 
 open trunk, and told herself that it was very 
 wicked of her to want to smile. Yet, for all that, 
 she smiled. 
 
 In Italy she discovered that Alison had been right. 
 u You always needed colour . . . you're out of 
 place here !" 
 
 It was a distinct effort to realise that Alison was 
 right. Joan had to arrive at it by a process of 
 belittlement: by telling herself that, after all, it was 
 unlikely that even Alison could invariably be wrong. 
 
 Italy gave her, in the last few years of her life, 
 everything which, by their absence, had caused the 
 writing of her "unmarketable" poems so long as 
 her soul was not too tired to protest against its 
 boundaries. Here, among a strange people, among 
 unaccustomed scenes, with uninherited laws and cus- 
 toms, there seemed to be no real boundaries, after 
 all. Peter himself became the only definite standard 
 by which to measure her life. Inversely, the editor 
 too found his horizon narrowing gently to a circle 
 just large enough to contain his wife and himself. 
 
 It was indeed a genuine inspiration which had 
 sent Peter and his wife abroad, in their old age. 
 
 If they had any sense of defeat, it was not in their 
 
 289
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 own lives. The years slipped behind them and they 
 no longer bothered whether their ideas were right 
 or wrong. They only knew that, in their own case, 
 those ideas had "worked" satisfactorily. They 
 were happy and they were not afraid of death : and, 
 as the old man put it jocularly to the old lady, sitting 
 in their little cliff-garden, overlooking the Mediter- 
 ranean, "You can't say fairer than that." 
 
 Alison's letters came regularly, documents so 
 matter-of-fact that they almost read like statistics. 
 
 "Harold bought a new winter overcoat yesterday. 
 Thirteen guineas. Apparently it's a reasonable 
 price for a decent coat. But Harold's has a belt, 
 and only one button. I'm not sure I care for it." 
 
 That kind of letter. 
 
 One day, Joan, reading to her husband the latest 
 news from their daughter, came upon this passage: 
 
 "Do you remember Dr. Weare? He used to 
 come to Whyticombe when we were kids." 
 
 "Ah," interjected the old man, "that shows you 
 how difficult it is to understand children! Do we 
 remember Owen Weare ! Well, well what about 
 the dear old chap?" 
 
 Joan paused for a moment, then read on: 
 
 "He died suddenly the other day, from heart- 
 failure. Apparently, he always had a bad heart." 
 
 She stopped again, as if that last sentence meant 
 more than it said. 
 
 "Poor old Owen!" said Peter. "He was a good 
 sort always." 
 
 290
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Joan answered nothing. She was thinking of 
 Loveday, released at last, years and years too late. 
 Like a prisoner serving a life-sentence, whose good 
 conduct has saved for him a few pitiful months, and 
 who shuffles out of the prison gates into a blinding, 
 useless freedom. 
 
 And yet, thought Joan, perhaps this tragedy, like 
 so many, came about from lack of courage. 
 
 Loveday should have left him. 
 
 "Poor old Owen!" murmured Peter, half asleep 
 in the sun. "Always a good sort. But he died 
 quick, it seems . . . that's something." 
 
 He slipped further down into his chair and tilted 
 his hat over his eyes. 
 
 "Poor Mrs. Weare," he said sleepily. "You 
 ought to write her a letter." 
 
 "Yes," answered Joan, and said no more. In a 
 few moments she noticed that Peter was asleep, and 
 she slipped indoors. The time was ripe and good 
 for she did not want Peter to see that letter. 
 
 291
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 The Beach Hotel at Whyticombe was under new 
 management, when Alison and Harold visited it 
 again, nearly twenty years after their engagement. 
 The place itself had not changed much : a new villa 
 here, with a bright clean red roof, a new shop 
 there or an old one with a new name painted over 
 its windows. But the faces, of course, were strange. 
 Not that Harold and Alison experienced any feeling 
 of sadness, as their parents would have done, over 
 this very natural phenomenon. Their lives, at the 
 time when they were last holiday-making at the little 
 town, had hardly begun, whereas Emily and Joan, 
 Charles and Peter had long arrived at that point 
 where all one's surroundings appear permanent. 
 Harold enquired after Ted Willis, and learnt that 
 he had been dead twelve years. The manner of his 
 death was still a romance to folk who were accus- 
 tomed to a yearly routine of splendid normality. 
 
 "Very queer, sir," a young fisherman told Harold. 
 "God took him at his work, as one might say. 
 Thought he'd done enough lobstering and messing 
 about, maybe. But God likes work, sir ; He let him 
 get his pots in, and then took him." 
 
 "Do you mean he died on his boat?" 
 
 The young man nodded. 
 292
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Yes, sir. My uncle was one of them that went 
 out and found him. His boat lay out there." 
 
 He shot a brown arm out towards Sanscombe. 
 
 "He went out in the late afternoon, sir, to take in 
 his pots, and the next morning there was his boat 
 still riding off the rocks. The old fellows got to- 
 gether on the beach an' looked at her. They all 
 knew old Willis was queer, sir, and that's, I expect, 
 why they didn't do anything till the afternoon. 
 Then they put out to see what was up. He was 
 dead an' stiff, stir, when they reached him. Dead 
 many hours, doctor said. But he was a rum bird in 
 life, sir, and he was a rum bird dead, too!" 
 
 The fisherman paused, unwilling to waste the 
 dramatic crisis of his story. 
 
 "How do you mean?" asked Harold. 
 
 "He was dead, but standing, sir! Standing up 
 against the mast, with his icy old arm crooked 
 around it, so he couldn't fall and, eyes open, over 
 the channel. He weren't staring, like the dead, 
 Uncle told us; just looking out like anyone else. 
 Reckon he knew what was coming, sir, and those 
 who found him say he looked as if he knew where 
 he was going to, as well. But there, sir, old chaps 
 like Uncle, as you know, are like to be fanciful." 
 
 He drew his hand across his mouth, reflectively. 
 
 "Still, old Willis was always queer . . . 
 always." 
 
 Harold nodded. 
 
 "But he was a good sort. Took me out fishing 
 when I was a boy," he said. 
 
 293
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Aye, sir," nodded the other. "No one could 
 ever say that Willis didn't know all there is about 
 fishing." 
 
 He nodded awkwardly and moved down the 
 beach towards his own boat. Harold felt em- 
 barrassed for a moment, wondering whether the 
 man had expected a tip. He could not help remem- 
 bering the ease and grace with which Ted Willis 
 was wont to sweep off his hat and smile, at the end 
 of such an interview. And this was his epitaph! 
 He knew "all there is about fishing" ! 
 
 As Harold walked back to the hotel he experi- 
 enced a definite feeling of having lost something. 
 Not the mere physical presence of Ted Willis, for 
 that had never been of importance to him. By his 
 very age, the fisherman had never been anything but 
 a memory to the young man. Yet it seemed now 
 as if an idea, a very definite and desirable idea, had 
 vanished. The sensation was mysterious, and, like 
 his father, Harold always became depressed when 
 he was puzzled. 
 
 They had taken a private sitting-room at the 
 Beach Hotel, and, on the very first night, had recog- 
 nised it, with an effort, as the very room in which 
 the party had taken place upon the day of their 
 engagement. An old-fashioned sofa stood in the 
 window the window looking out over the sea and 
 Alison had already complained of its uncomfortable 
 formation. 
 
 When Harold came in, he flung himself down 
 upon this sofa and stared out of the window. 
 
 294
 
 ' 
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Alison, sitting in an armchair, on the other side of 
 the room, looked up quickly, diagnosed the usual 
 affection of the liver, inseparable from the first 
 hours of sea-side holiday, and returned to her work. 
 
 Harold sat still, his eyes looking over the channel, 
 but seeing nothing. Curious imaginations, quite 
 foreign to his own nature, seemed suddenly to take 
 hold of him. His mind ran, as it appeared, uncon- 
 trolled, over his own career. His success at the 
 bar mediocre, sufficient. His success in society 
 accepted as an uninterestingly respectable individual. 
 What was left? The greatest, most ambitious field 
 of all. His success in his own home. Still that 
 terrible word "mediocre" insisted. The hiss of 
 Alison's needle, in and out of the brim of a hat 
 which she was re-decorating, seemed to make it even 
 more redundant. He moved uneasily upon the sofa, 
 with an ever-growing and ever-resisted sensation 
 that something outside himself was assailing his 
 soul. It was as if he was actually losing ground in 
 some terrific battle, for the absurd reason that he 
 had never realised that it was a battle at all. 
 
 Alison's needle ticked on like a clock. 
 
 "Damn," he said, without knowing that he had 
 spoken. 
 
 She looked up. 
 
 "What's the matter, Harold?" 
 
 "Nothing," he answered. "Did I speak?" 
 Then he realised the necessity of some sort of ex- 
 planation. 
 
 "Do you remember old Willis?" he went on. 
 
 295
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Vaguely," answered Alison. "You mean the 
 fisherman?" 
 
 Harold nodded. It was so like her to remember 
 what he did rather than what he was. 
 
 "I've been hearing how he died," he said, as if 
 that might explain the sudden unconscious oath. 
 
 "He was an old man," returned Alison, in a tone 
 which showed that she had little interest in her sub- 
 ject. 
 
 "Oh, yes," answered Harold; "he was an old 
 man." 
 
 He himself could not pretend to any real emotion 
 over the death of Ted Willis. He had simply used 
 the memory of the man as an explanation of his own 
 inexplicable emotions. 
 
 Alison's needle started to click rhythmically, 
 once more. The light just beginning to fade, the 
 sea turned a deeper grey. The window rattled, a 
 kind of irritable mutter, before the vanguard of a 
 breeze. The man on the sofa moved sharply, un- 
 naturally. Something which he could not describe 
 even to himself was attacking him as if a horde 
 of monstrous gnats buzzed about his brain. He 
 jumped suddenly to his feet : so suddenly that Alison 
 dropped her work into her lap and stared. 
 
 "It's odd," he said. "I've a feeling that some- 
 thing once happened in this room something 
 rather marvelous: do you believe in suggestion?" 
 
 Alison picked up her hat. 
 
 "I daresay," she said, "that different things react 
 
 296
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 on different minds. No doubt one's surroundings 
 have some physical effect upon one. It's a question 
 for the doctors. If you mean anything else well, 
 no. That kind of nonsense doesn't lead anywhere." 
 
 He felt suddenly furious with the quiet conceit 
 which was carrying Alison so serenely through life: 
 which, indeed, had carried him, up to this point. 
 
 "My God," he heard himself saying, "don't we 
 believe in anything?" 
 
 Alison rose. 
 
 "What do you mean?" she asked. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders and, turning, stood 
 looking out of the window again. He knew that he 
 could not explain. 
 
 "The wood," he muttered. "Oh, we were fine in 
 the wood ! We were going to defy the world with 
 our brand-new theories, weren't we? We were so 
 jolly kind to go to church and have a wedding- 
 breakfast for the sake of our relations and their 
 silly conventions! We, who knew so much better! 
 Well, the wood made a fool of me, too ! I thought 
 it was all real!" 
 
 Alison's cold voice cut in. 
 
 "Do you mean that you think I deceived you that 
 night?" 
 
 "No; I don't mean that. I know that you meant 
 it our creed of commonsense and all that. We 
 both meant it. Only . . ." 
 
 "Only what?" 
 
 He turned round. 
 
 297
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "Well," he said slowly, "the fact remains that 
 we didn't defy convention in the wood, after all." 
 
 She stared at him. 
 
 "I would have given myself to you, then," she 
 said. 
 
 "Perhaps, perhaps," he answered, and shivered 
 for no particular reason. "Only," he added, "it 
 didn't happen, because " 
 
 She waited deliberately for him. 
 
 "Because we aren't that kind of people," he went 
 on in a rush. "Because we aren't big enough or 
 small enough, whichever it is, to be happy except 
 according to the rules. And, because we thought 
 we were so mighty superior, we chucked away all the 
 things that make it possible to live by rules." 
 
 "We were to be partners," said Alison slowly. 
 
 "It is impossible !" he cried. 
 
 "Do you mean you have been faking it all these 
 years?" 
 
 "No. Finding it out." 
 
 "Finding what out? That you don't care for 
 me?" 
 
 "That to be partners, there must be something 
 to ... to cling to." The man felt that he could 
 never tell her what he meant. It seemed impossible 
 to put it into words. For a moment he wished he 
 had said nothing, though he knew that the impulse 
 to speak had come from outside, had been stronger 
 than him. 
 
 298
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "We were to be masters of our lives," she was 
 saying. "Why should we accept blindly second-hand 
 emotions?" 
 
 "There are things you must accept blindly . . . 
 Life itself you can't choose. Love . . ." 
 
 He stopped abruptly, with a sense that it was use- 
 less to oppose his red-hot mood to Alison's cold 
 reasonable logic. 
 
 "There's just one thing," he said. "We agreed 
 that, if ever either of us felt that the partnership 
 was no longer real, we would not try to conceal it. 
 If you feel you no longer care for me, Harold, for 
 heaven's sake, do me the justice of telling me." 
 
 "If I didn't care for you, Alison," he returned, in 
 a low voice, "why should I have said a single word 
 of all this?" 
 
 And for all his words, he did not know why he 
 had said what he had. She kissed him on the fore- 
 head. 
 
 "I must change for dinner," she said. "Are you 
 going to?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," he answered dully, and then, when she 
 was at the door, "Alison, do you never remember 
 being afraid of the dark?" 
 
 "Never," she returned. "Don't be long, dear." 
 
 She went out, and the door closed behind her. 
 
 As he sank back upon the ugly sofa in the window, 
 the closed door appeared to his brain as a caricature 
 of Alison herself. He put up a last desperate fight 
 against the convictions that crowded upon him like 
 
 299
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 an army in close order. He told himself that he 
 was tired, morbid ill. . . . 
 
 But a force infinitely stronger than his own 
 counter-attack beat him back. Wildly, without 
 reason, he felt that, if only he could get out of that 
 room, he would be free of its compulsion. He stag- 
 gered to his feet, and found himself upon his knees. 
 
 It was a real prayer he uttered, the first for many 
 years perhaps all the more genuine for that. 
 
 "Curse cleverness," he said, "curse wisdom I 
 want to be happy, I want Alison to be happy, I want 
 a child who is happy I want to be the chap that 
 makes them happy!" 
 
 A soft voice seemed to whisper in his ear, "Pooh I 
 The emotions of the stone-age ... of the 
 animals, perhaps!" 
 
 "Who cares?" 
 
 "Aren't you a man? With a Public School and 
 an Oxford career behind you?" 
 
 "Miles behind me. I'm grown up." 
 
 "Grown up? And only gone back to a sense of 
 possession and a desire to protect your belongings?" 
 
 "Who cares? I've heard all that before . . . 
 even at Oxford. God ! How many names has Love 
 been called!" 
 
 "Love?" The soft voice seemed to purr deris- 
 ively. "What has it achieved? To what ambition 
 has it been anything but a handicap?" 
 
 "To all, perhaps, except itself." 
 
 "What! Is a simple home an ambition? Re- 
 member, it's a big word." 
 
 300
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Suddenly Harold heard his own voice, curiously 
 loud, as if answering someone whom he knew to be 
 out of hearing. 
 
 "I know it is a big word, and I swear it is the 
 biggest thing!" 
 
 He stood up, in the growing darkness, staring into 
 the luminous blue of the window. At his back the 
 shabby, ugly room lay in deep, kind shadows. 
 
 "Klondyke ! Stake out your claim quick and hang 
 on to it!" 
 
 Harold started at the reality of the voice. He 
 turned quickly and found himself with his hand on 
 the door. Then, in the darkness, he heard a soft 
 rustle, like the swish of silk, at his feet. Instinc- 
 tively, he swung open the door, with that sense of 
 embarrassment which a man feels when he has been 
 on the point of preceding a lady. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he said, involuntarily, and stood 
 there, holding the door open. 
 
 There was no sound. No one passed out into 
 the dimly-lighted passage. 
 
 But someone came in. 
 
 Standing there, semi-conscious, by reason of the 
 intoxication of his own mental revolution, Harold 
 was not aware of the entrance of what, to him, 
 appeared as the third person. 
 
 He came to earth, as it were, when he saw that 
 someone someone with shaking fingers was light- 
 ing the gas at the side of the mantelpiece. The 
 yellow flame leapt up with an explosive little hiss, 
 and, catching the draught from the window, threw 
 
 301
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 pale shadows jumping all over the room, like an old 
 sick clown going through his capers. 
 
 Beneath the fluttering jet Harold saw a short 
 black figure, something like a low peg on which 
 someone had hung innumerable shawls. Even when 
 this object turned round, he could see only that it 
 possessed a face. The features caught no illumina- 
 tion from the capricious light above them. But he 
 felt, suddenly, that the thing was looking at him, 
 and he realised that his own face must be in the full 
 light. 
 
 "Dear ! dear I" A quavering voice, curiously low, 
 came to him. "It is Harold I" The shapeless black 
 shadow produced a cracked, horrible laugh. 
 
 "And why no light?" it went on. "Why no 
 light? To be afraid of the light! Oh, dear! That's 
 the most fearful confession of all. Even I, even I 
 . . . was only afraid of the dark!" 
 
 He saw her now more plainly, an old woman, with 
 a crumpled yellow face, from which, like two jewels, 
 bewildered at the inadequacy of their setting, stared 
 a pair of flashing aquamarines. 
 
 Old Mrs. Weare! 
 
 So she was still labelled in the files of Harold's 
 mind, though he could no longer call himself the 
 "new" generation. 
 
 Mrs. Weare. 
 
 And, he remembered, the cheery old doctor's wife 
 had been said, for a long time, to have become a 
 little "queer." Not that she had gone "out of her 
 
 302
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 mind" that misfortune had a tinge of disgrace 
 about it in the circles in which Harold's life had been 
 thrown and one was expected to call people eccen- 
 tric, under their rules, though the utmost limits, 
 even of Bohemia, had long since been overstepped. 
 Besides, what excuse had Loveday Weare for such 
 a regrettable and anti-social fate to overtake her? 
 The death of Owen Weare, that incomparable hus- 
 band, might have caused a grief so deep that it 
 amounted to mania ; but the eccentricities of Loveday 
 had developed months, even years before the doctor 
 had settled his account. 
 
 "Yes," he heard her say, "even I was only afraid 
 of the dark. In the dark, you see, there is no one 
 at all, except yourself . . . and perhaps another. 
 That is terrifying, quite terrifying!" 
 
 And for no reason at all, as it appeared to him, 
 the old woman laughed again. 
 
 Harold shut the door softly. 
 
 "I had no idea you were at Whyticombe," he 
 said. "I came tonight." 
 
 With an instinct of kindness, he moved across 
 and, taking her arm, guided her to one of the un- 
 compromising armchairs that flanked the fire, as if 
 truculently upholding a hard-dying convention. 
 
 "It must be hard for you," he said, "to come here 
 . . . now." 
 
 Her eyes blinked at him from the chair, and he 
 saw her thin lips twist into a smile which was like 
 the ghost of some emotion which had once been very 
 
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 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 much alive. Somehow the impression it gave him 
 was an impression of revenge. 
 
 He shivered and, for want of a better gesture, 
 anasmic embers of the fire. 
 
 He felt suddenly her cold hand upon his. 
 
 "I've booked the same bedroom," she was saying. 
 "I've been up there. Nothing changed. The same 
 bed same chair by the side of the bed!" She 
 chuckled again. 
 
 Harold licked his dry lips. 
 
 "It's silly of you, Mrs. Weare. You'll only get 
 more unhappy this way." 
 
 Again the enigmatical, horrible chuckle. The 
 cold, claw-like fingers tapped upon his hand. 
 
 "Before I go to bed," she went on, "I'm going 
 downstairs into the hall. Then I'm coming up the 
 stairs to bed . . . all by myself ! all by myself !" 
 
 He caught a strange note of triumph in her voice. 
 Certainly poor Mrs. Weare was quite mad. 
 
 "And then," she said, "I shall open my bedroom 
 door and I shall undress and I shall lay all my 
 clothes on that chair by the bed. You've no idea 
 what that will mean to me! There was a reason 
 before why I couldn't, you see! And after that I 
 shall get into bed and turn out the light and . . ." 
 her voice dropped to a whisper, "I shall lie right 
 across that big bed from corner to corner ! . . . 
 right across from corner to corner!" 
 
 He caught a light of pure happiness in her two 
 
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 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 great aquamarine eyes. Apparently she saw that he 
 was bewildered for she sat back suddenly in the 
 chair with a little contented sigh. 
 
 "It was worth while coming," she murmured, 
 "just for that journey up to bed." Then she paused, 
 and in a stronger voice, a voice which appeared to 
 Harold surprisingly sane, she said: 
 
 "But that is not the only thing I came to Whyti- 
 combe for," and she got up from the chair and stood 
 beside him. 
 
 He said nothing. Her words had not meant any- 
 thing to him. The description of the bed, and of 
 the chair by its side, were meaningless, merely terri- 
 fying in their suggestion of some insane purpose. It 
 was as if an idiot talked vaguely of things which, in 
 the mouth of a sane person, would hint of unmen- 
 tionable horrors. 
 
 But he felt suddenly that he could no longer stand 
 there in silence. 
 
 "We ... we must dine together, of course," 
 he said. 
 
 "I think not," she answered, and he watched, with 
 a wild aversion, her yellow cheeks creasing up again 
 into a dreadful smile. 
 
 "No, no," she went on. "You and Alison must 
 dine alone. As far as Romance is concerned I am 
 a leper. Whenever I meet young people I feel I 
 ought to be ringing a leper's bell!" 
 
 She seemed to notice his embarrassment for the 
 first time. 
 
 305
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "No, no," she repeated; "you do not understand; 
 not yet I" 
 
 The door opened behind them, and Harold heard 
 Alison's voice. 
 
 "They have rung the gong for dinner; you'll not 
 have time to change now." She broke off sharply, 
 catching sight of the black shadow which stood be- 
 side her husband. 
 
 The old woman sighed softly almost as if she 
 was taking a quick breath before making some big 
 physical effort. Then, once more, she gave her 
 curious little chuckle. 
 
 "Oh, yes, Alison," she said; "there is plenty of 
 time to change even now." 
 
 "It is Mrs. Weare," Harold put in, quickly. "She 
 has just come down from town." He made a quick, 
 silencing gesture to Alison, as if to tell her that this 
 was not an ordinary visit, that it was no place for 
 an ordinary greeting. Alison, surprised by his warn- 
 ing, bit off the conventional words which were upon 
 her tongue. 
 
 "I want you to sit down for a few minutes a very 
 few minutes." She found Loveday Weare's arm 
 in hers, pushing her gently towards the armchair. 
 She allowed herself to be guided to it, without a 
 word. The old lady stood between her and Harold, 
 and seemed, mysteriously, to dominate them both 
 by some force coming from her shrunken, shapeless 
 figure. 
 
 "In a way," she said, "Butler was right. It is a 
 
 306
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 crime to be diseased. It is wicked not to be happy 
 eh?" The monosyllabic query came suddenly, like 
 an unexpected rifle-shot from a quiet wood. But 
 evidently the old woman expected no answer, for she 
 went on almost without a pause. 
 
 "You two have been to visit me sometimes. Twice 
 a year, wasn't it? Yes, I think so. Just before 
 Christmas and somewhere about June, eh? It 
 wasn't kindness it was because you felt it was 
 your duty, and you would have felt uncomfortable 
 if you had left it undone. Your duty, because I 
 was alone !" She chuckled again, a real, unmistak- 
 ably merry little laugh. "Ah," she said, "because I 
 was alone so pitiably alone! eh? You're puzzled, 
 but you'll soon know what it is I find so funny about 
 that. Yet I liked to see you, because I studied you. 
 Yes, I used to dissect you both when you came and 
 sat in my little drawing-room and wondered how 
 long it would be before you could decently go." 
 
 "That is quite true," said Alison suddenly, and 
 the old lady nodded smilingly. 
 
 "Of course, dear, of course. And you hated my 
 stuffy old-fashioned drawing-room you even hated 
 looking at the gilt clock under the glass case. I 
 know!" 
 
 She leant forward over Alison, intently. 
 
 "So strong you are !" she said in a low voice. "So 
 honest with yourself, eh? I was a strong nature, 
 too. If I had been born when you were born, and 
 encountered what I did encounter, my strength might 
 
 307
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 Have led me ah, where? But it's not your problem 
 it's not your problem, my dear; that's why it is 
 so wicked to be unhappy." 
 
 "We are not unhappy, Mrs. Weare." 
 
 Loveday nodded at her comprehendingly. 
 
 "Yes. Perhaps you are right. There has never 
 been anything definite about you at all. Maybe you 
 are not even capable of being unhappy. Poor girl ! 
 Poor man!" 
 
 "Mrs. Weare !" Harold broke in sharply, indig- 
 nantly, but the old lady stopped him with a gesture. 
 
 "I know," she said. "I know I It is impertinent, 
 is it not? I know that I must explain why I am 
 here, why I talk like this to you, why I am what I 
 am. But when I tell you, I want you to remember 
 that I was strong too as strong as Alison herself." 
 
 "I believe in strength," said Alison. "It is the 
 thing that matters most of all." 
 
 "You fool!" snapped the old woman suddenly. 
 "YouVe never had to use what you call your 
 strength. That's why it has turned into your weak- 
 ness your terrible weakness! Listen to me!" 
 
 She told them quickly, bitingly, the story she had 
 once told to Alison's mother ; only she went further 
 back and told them of her girlhood, a rebellious 
 girlhood, full of revolt against all the conventions 
 of her time, all the sentiments of her surroundings. 
 
 "I tell you," she cried at last, "that I too was 
 strong. But I made a great discovery. I found 
 that there were things which strength could not 
 
 308
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 touch. Love laughs at strength; happiness, real 
 happiness, is practically made up of all the things 
 we call weakness. I can thank God now that Owen 
 was never happy. I thought once that he was : that 
 his cruelty was a great joy to him. But it wasn't. I 
 can see that now. Because he had no weakness no 
 moments of tenderness nothing to throw it into 
 relief. 
 
 "Strength 1" She looked suddenly full into Ali- 
 son's eyes. "Yes. You may have strength enough 
 to kill your own human capacity for feeling, for 
 tears, for kisses, for all the wonderful stupidities 
 which you've inherited by your womanhood but 
 what then? What then?" Her voice dropped to a 
 whisper. 
 
 "Strength kills everything, in the end every- 
 thing, even Owen's happiness, I thank the just God: 
 yes, strength, alone, is a killer." 
 
 Before they knew it she was at the door it was 
 closing behind her. Alison was silent, Harold did 
 not move. How many seconds they remained there 
 in the flickering gaslight they did not know, but, 
 suddenly, they heard a faltering step coming up the 
 stairs from the hall. 
 
 "My God!" whispered Harold, "she's going 
 though her programme. What she came to do! 
 Getting the thrill of being alone : trying to start life 
 all over again!" 
 
 The steps passed the door of the sitting-room. 
 Alison's voice broke in, uncertainly: 
 
 309
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 "That woman is indomitable,"she said, "indom- 
 itable;" and then, as if the picture suddenly sprang 
 to life in front of her eyes, "My God ! that round- 
 faced, red-cheeked old man! My God!" 
 
 She turned away her head and Harold heard her 
 whispering to herself. He caught a few words. 
 
 ". . . and I thought / was strong," she was say- 
 ing. "All those years all those years! And she 
 is starting over again, now !" 
 
 She rose slowly, unsteadily. 
 
 "I think," said Harold, "I had better go upstairs 
 and dress." 
 
 "I will come up, too," she answered. 
 
 The dim-lit passage leading to their bedroom was 
 very silent. Under a door on their right a lamp 
 threw a thin yellow line along the further wall. 
 Harold clutched Alison's arm. 
 
 "That's her room . . . the one she shared with 
 with him!" 
 
 The girl took a step forward, then stopped sud- 
 denly. 
 
 "Harold," she said, "there . . . there's no sound." 
 
 The man felt a perfectly unreasonable panic seize 
 him, as if a pair of cold arms had been thrown sud- 
 denly about his knees. 
 
 "Knock," she whispered. 
 
 He raised his voice in the exaggeration of terror. 
 
 "But why? why?" he cried. 
 
 "Knock!" she whispered again. 
 
 310
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 He seized her arm. 
 
 "What is it, Alison? Of what are you afraid?" 
 
 "I don't know," she said. "There is something 
 stirring in me which I don't understand. That 
 round red-faced man I Years and years and she 
 was strong, too!" 
 
 "Was?" Harold's voice shook. 
 
 "Is that why you want me to knock?" he whis- 
 pered. 
 
 She said nothing, and he rapped with his knuckles 
 upon the door. There was no sound. He knocked 
 again, breathing fast. Then he turned the handle 
 and pushed open the door. 
 
 Loveday Weare lay, fully dressed, stretched 
 across the big bed from corner to corner, her arms 
 flung out, in the shape of a cross. Her eyes were 
 open, staring at the ceiling, but the fire of the two 
 aquamarines had left them. Her pale thin lips still 
 smiled triumphantly at the vision of the last effort 
 her imagination would ever make. 
 
 "Oh, God I" murmured Harold, kneeling by the 
 bedside. He heard his wife's voice, coming from 
 the other side of the room. 
 
 "I understand," Alison was saying. "She must 
 have suffered here more than anywhere when 
 everyone else was holiday-making. She came to 
 triumph over those sufferings; to start life over 
 again, from the worst starting-point of all! 
 Strong? It must have needed some strength to 
 
 3"
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 come and take it all up again from just this point!" 
 
 She took the thin withered hand and held it in her 
 own. 
 
 Harold looked up wildly. 
 
 "But," he cried, "she was all right downstairs 
 she was all right. What has killed her?" 
 
 "Her own strength has killed her," answered 
 Alison slowly. "She thought she could face this 
 room. She believed in her own strength though she 
 knew that strength alone . . . was a killer. 
 That was what she said, to us." 
 
 Harold nodded. 
 
 "She was determined to go through with it," he 
 said. 
 
 "Yes," answered Alison, "and then when she 
 got here, she broke her heart . . . that's all." 
 
 "Broke her heart?" 
 
 "Yes. Either because of a great, tremendous joy, 
 or because of a terrible fear!" 
 
 She looked about the room with a shudder. 
 
 "We shall never know which," she added simply. 
 
 For some seconds they stood looking at one 
 another across the figure lying so unnaturally across 
 the bed. It flashed through Harold's mind that no 
 one, besides themselves, would ever know the awful 
 symbolism of that attitude. Suddenly, he saw 
 Alison sink down beside the bed, with a queer, 
 strangled moan. 
 
 "Harold," she said, "I'm frightened ! I'm fright- 
 ened!" 
 
 312
 
 WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS 
 
 In a moment he was by her side, his arm round 
 her. 
 
 "It's not not her being dead. I'm frightened 
 because because I've been so proud ... so 
 proud! . . . and I've never fought anything in 
 my life! I'm frightened in case the things . . . 
 all the things she spoke of may not be left for me ! 
 I'm frightened because I'm small because I don't 
 feel strong any more ! Oh, Harold, I'm frightened, 
 I'm frightened!" 
 
 He took her in his arms on the floor, stroking her 
 head. Her fingers clutched at his like a baby's, in- 
 stinctively expecting protection. Harold smiled, 
 suddenly, happily. He drew her closer to him, for- 
 getting, in the new Alison, what else kept them com- 
 pany in the room. 
 
 On the bed, the dead woman still stared at the 
 ceiling, with her ironically triumphant smile.
 
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