Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

“Among the painters there were Giroux, and Bussières, and Deslon. All men associated with the Impressionist movement. Thouret the novelist, and Dacier the poet, were intimate friends. They met Anne first at Fairholme Court, with me, and they were always devoted to her. Then there was Matignon the critic, a fine old man, who adored her. And Bellet, and Courtois--I could go on quoting indefinitely. They had a flat in the Rue de Fleurus, beautiful as only Anne knows how to make a home beautiful. It overlooked the Luxembourg gardens, and was close to my present studio. I remember it always full of sunshine, and I can see Anne arranging the flowers, (every room was full of flowers), and looking up from them to laugh.

“She was so radiantly happy it was a joy to see her. And she grew so beautiful. She learnt to dress, of course. Beautiful dress is one of her instincts, as you see even now. What a hostess she was! She became the fashion in our set,--René’s and mine. The men raved about her. They found _piquante_, that touch of English shyness and modesty which she combines so oddly with dignity. She held a real salon, and a very brilliant one too, in the Rue de Fleurus. Those were her _beaux jours_.”

“I can imagine it,” said the doctor.

“That sort of _ménage_ is only possible in Paris,” observed François. “Even there, it’s not without its difficulties. But she surmounted them by her very unconsciousness and simplicity. Some of the women even, were won over. One or two of the wives of men in René’s circle were her intimate friends. They went to her as we all did, for advice and sympathy.”

“Just as we all go now to be consoled,” put in Dr. Dakin.

“Precisely. And one of the secrets of her power of drawing confidence, is that Anne is by nature a maternal woman--a mother.”

“That’s the pity of it.”

“I agree. Life hasn’t given her everything. But at least it gave her three unforgetable years, and a memory which has kept her sweet and fresh and young as in her girlhood she could never have been.”

“And she went away,” said the doctor gently, “in the midst of her happiness?”

“She went away quietly, simply, with no fuss, as she does everything. With no farewell scene, or anything of that sort. She left him a letter, and with me, a message. The hardest I ever had to deliver in my life.”

Fontenelle got up, and threw the end of his cigarette into the fire.

“And then she travelled?”

“For years. When they were together, she and Dampierre went to Italy every spring. I believe she has gone over all the old ground since then. She seems to have gone half over Europe as well. I used to get letters from Athens, from Constantinople, from Naples, Rome, Florence. Fortunately she was a rich woman, able to work off her restlessness.”

He laughed a little. “That was one of her adorable simplicities. It never occurred to her that the possession of a fortune made any difference to the situation. She only looked upon it as a means of independence and freedom when her happiness should come to an end. And she was right. René never thought of it either. In some ways he was as childlike and as unworldly a creature as she. He had inherited a fairly good income from his father. He would not have known what to do with more. That’s Anne Page’s story, doctor. I don’t know how it strikes an Englishman, but to me it seems rather a wonderful one because of the type of woman to whom it belongs.”

“Yes,” returned Dr. Dakin meditatively. “One would have thought that convention, or religious prejudice----”

Fontenelle laughed. “She is untouched by either. _C’est un vrai caractère, cette chère Anne Page!_ Until she came to Paris, she hadn’t mixed enough with the world even to _know_ its conventions. Religion? Well, ‘by their fruits ye shall know them,’ and if the fruits of the Spirit are faith and hope, and the charity which suffers long and is kind, there never was a woman who has more absolutely attained the results of religion. It’s not a satisfactory result for the moralist, I admit,” he added.

“But in this very interesting and amazing world, the moralists don’t have it all their own way,” observed the doctor.

“So far as creeds and dogmas are concerned, Anne is a born pagan. It is not that she has examined and rejected them. They simply don’t appeal to her nature. When as young men we first met her, we called her _Flora_, amongst ourselves. She struck us even then as a curious blend of Madonna and goddess. And the physical appearance has a mental and moral parallel. I remember once when I wanted to tease her, I asked what had become of her religion.

“She looked at me with those childlike eyes of hers and said:

“‘I never had any,--in the sense you mean. By being with René I’m not hurting any one. And it’s only by hurting people one does wrong.’

“Then--I admit it was cruel of me, but I was curious--I said that some people had refrained from doing what she had done, for the sake of example to humanity. Her reply was ‘But apart from religion, people haven’t yet decided what _is_ the right way to arrange their lives.’”

Dr. Dakin smiled. “In view of the modern ferment of opinion, she was right there.”

François pushed his chair back, with a movement of impatience.

“Well now what’s to be done? The tale of her incredibly evil past will spread I suppose, and Dymfield will become impossible.”

He laughed rather savagely.

“It’s quite an amusing notion that scandal should attack a gentle woman of Anne’s age. Yet I imagine that few of the natives of a village possess a sense of humour.”

“I don’t think the story will spread. The vicar as I told you is absolutely incredulous, and no one else has heard it.”

“Except Madame?” hinted François. “I don’t wish to suggest an unkindness. But women, you understand? A whisper to a dear friend--_hein_?”

“My wife is devoted to Miss Page,” said the doctor shortly. “I shall warn her; but she will be indignant at the mere suggestion of betrayal.”

“_Parfaitement!_” returned François with a bow. “Pardon me. You will probably find Miss Page in Paris,” he added. “She was expected to-day.”

“So much the better. It will be a great pleasure.”

The doctor rose. “Good-night,” he said, extending his hand cordially. “And thank you for this talk. Perhaps if you decide not to go to Egypt, you will do us the honour of staying with us a little later, when my wife comes back? Our friendship for Miss Page makes a bond between us,” he added, in his pleasant sincere voice.

François met his eyes for an instant. They were full of the kindliness and instinctive liking he felt for the man he was addressing.

“A thousand thanks. But I think I am almost certain to go to Egypt.”

“Another time then. I shall only say _au revoir_.”

François followed him into the hall, and watched him step into a hansom, and give the address of his hotel to the driver.

When he turned away, there was a curious expression about his lips, which presently deepened into a smile that was partly cynicism, partly something else.

He was reflecting on the curious encounters liable to befall a man like himself. He thought of the evening’s conversation, and smiled again to think how completely till this moment he had failed to realize the humour of its friendly nature.

“_C’est un honnête homme. Il ne méritait pas ça----_”

François dismissed the subject of Dr. Dakin’s deserts with a mental shrug, as he went upstairs to his room, in which a bright fire was burning.

XVIII

François drew up an armchair close to the blaze, and lighted his pipe.

His thoughts at first dwelt upon the man with whom he had just parted--a loyal straight, good fellow if ever there was one, he decided. The verdict was accompanied by a greater sense of self-dissatisfaction, a sensation nearer to shame and regret that he had for years experienced.

It was an uncomfortable attitude of mind, and with characteristic love of ease, he hastened to obliterate it, by turning his attention elsewhere.

His conversation with the doctor had conjured up so many mental pictures of the past, that he scarcely knew which of them to examine first.

The salon in Anne Page’s flat, rose before him. With the retentive memory of a painter, François recalled minutely every detail of the charming room.

He saw the deep-red curtains drawn across the three windows, the rose-coloured carpet, the lights shining like stars between the flowers. He saw Anne standing near the table at which coffee was served, receiving her guests with her lovely smile, and eager words of welcome.

He remembered to the smallest detail of lace and trimming, a dress she often wore in the evening, a gown of purple silk which suited so admirably, her hair and the soft whiteness of her neck.

Giroux and Bussières were talking to her, and he watched with amusement their excited faces, and vehement gestures.

It was the evening after René had shown his new pictures.

There had been a crowd of his friends in the studio all the afternoon; a crowd of eager interested men and women, standing before the canvases now so well known, so greatly prized.

Bussières and Giroux he knew were talking of the latest picture, his masterpiece--the famous picture of the lady in the green dress, leaning back upon the sofa.

François looked round the room already filled with people.

He saw the white head of Matignon the critic, towering above the rest. He saw the dark alert face of Thouret bent towards Madame Valory, the painter of pastels delicate and fragile as herself. He saw Courtois the sculptor, in animated discussion with Bellet the new poet of audacities in rhythm. He heard René’s sudden amused laugh, and turned to look at him, as he moved from one group to the other, a little flushed and excited, his fair hair ruffled, his slim yet athletic figure suggesting the Englishman of sport and open-air pastimes, rather than the brilliant French painter he had even then become.

Conspicuous among the crowd was the lady whose portrait he had recently painted.

Blanche Aubriot was the wife of an elderly _roué_, who regarded her very pronounced flirtations with an indifference equal to that which she on her side extended towards his infidelities.

She was a beautiful young woman of two or three and twenty, childless, soulless, and much admired.

To-night she wore the green dress of the picture, and held her court with her usual piquante vivacity.

François regarding the scene with critical and observant eyes, noticed how frequently her glance wandered in René’s direction, and with amusement, her oft-repeated efforts to attract his attention.

His own eyes turned again to Anne, where she stood surrounded by friends, laughing and talking.

He watched her to-night with peculiar admiration.

Curiously enough Dampierre had never painted her.

Once soon after they had settled in their apartment, François had spoken of it as a foregone conclusion.

“She’s just your type--the essentially feminine type of woman.”

Greatly to his surprise, René shook his head.

“_C’est impossible_,” he said conclusively.

François wondered, but the conversation turned immediately upon other matters, and it was only just before he took leave, when Anne was out of the room, that his friend took a book from one of the shelves, and turning over the leaves, handed it to him at an open page.

“That’s why I can’t paint her,” he said.

The poem he touched with his forefinger was Browning’s song beginning--

“_Nay, but you who do not love her,
Is she not pure gold, my mistress?_”

François read it aloud, and came to the last few lines--

“_Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
If earth holds aught--speak truth--above her?
Above this tress, and this, I touch
But cannot praise, I love so much!_”

“For _praise_, read _paint_,” said René, taking the book and closing it. “It’s the same thing. You’re the man to paint her. Ask her to sit for you.”

François had always delayed to avail himself of the suggestion.

To-night he determined to delay no longer. Crossing the room, he joined the little group round Anne, and presently drew her away.

“I haven’t had a word with you this evening,” he said. “And now you must give me one, or even two. About that portrait. I think the time has come. When will you sit for me?”

Even at the moment, he was struck by the curious expression which crossed her face.

When afterwards he tried to analyze it, he could only think of the face of a woman who expecting a signal of some sort, had heard, and accepted it.

“When would you like me to come?” she asked.

She was standing at the end of the room by the fire, and as she raised her eyes, François saw in them the look which did not escape him when he came to paint them.

They discussed the matter for a few moments. Various engagements on both sides postponed the first sitting for a fortnight, but a day was finally arranged.

“How long will it take?” asked Anne.

He made a gesture of ignorance. “I don’t know. A month perhaps, with luck. But this is going to be my masterpiece, Anne. I shall succeed, or perish in the attempt. Have you got that flowered gown you used to wear in the garden at Dymfield? I suppose not. Yes? _Très bien!_ Bring it, I want to try an effect.”

He was interrupted by René, who came up at the moment, and laid his hand lightly on Anne’s arm.

“I want you to go and talk to Matignon, dear,” he said in a low voice. “He’s always bad tempered if you don’t pay him enough attention. Go and make love to the old boy.”

A vague uneasiness passed from François’s mind at the sound of his friend’s voice, always gentle when he spoke to Anne. It was even gentler than usual now, and he did not fail to notice the caress of his hand on her sleeve, nor the look of happy understanding between them, as she moved away, smiling, to obey him.

“I’m arranging for her to come and pose. I’m going to begin the picture at once,” he said.

“_Bon!_” returned René, his face lighting up. “You’ve taken your time about it.”

“One hesitates to begin one’s masterpiece,” François retorted. “You who do nothing else, except finish them, ought to have compassion on the weaker brethren.”

René made a laughing gesture of menace.

“_Allons, mes amis ... mais calmez-vous donc!_” exclaimed Blanche Aubriot at his elbow.

François looked down at her white shoulders, and experienced a momentary feeling of repugnance which passed into self-ridicule, for glancing at her indolent brown eyes soft as velvet, at her full red lips, at her glossy hair, he acknowledged her beauty.

“Come and talk to me, Monsieur René,” she urged with the insistence of a spoilt child. “You’re a great man, I know, but the lion condescends to the mouse sometimes, doesn’t he?”

François followed them with his eyes as they moved away together.

“If she had said _cat_, I should have found no difficulty in reversing the parts,” was his inward reflection.

* * * * *

The fire had died down, but as he sat before the smouldering ashes, François was very far in space and time from the club bedroom in which he was dreaming.

He was passing through successive stages of satisfaction and despair, hope and baffling discouragement, while he painted Anne’s portrait. After the first fortnight, she came every day, and every day she was more silent.

He remembered this afterwards. At the time, engrossed heart and soul in his picture, he did not notice her quietude. He was only half consciously perplexed by a subtle difference in her expression which he found hard to reconcile with his previous impression of her--a difference which was at once his inspiration, and his despair.

“If only I can get that, I shall paint a great picture!” he exclaimed one day involuntarily, breaking a long silence.

“What?” asked Anne.

He started, forgetting that he had spoken aloud.

“I don’t know.”

She smiled a little. “Then I’m afraid you won’t get it.”

“But I _have_!”

He almost shouted the words, one afternoon a week afterwards, when she had stood patiently almost as long as the daylight lasted.

She looked at him with inquiring eyes, as he threw down his brush.

“I won’t touch it again! It’s there! It’s all right. _Mon Dieu!_ Anne, do you hear me? I’ve painted a great picture.”

He came towards the stand, both hands outstretched, and helped her down.

“Come and look before the light goes,” he urged. “Why Anne----” his triumphant tone changed abruptly to consternation. “You’re not ill, dear? You’re trembling so. What a brute I am! I’ve kept you posing too long. I forgot. Come and sit in this chair. Here’s a cushion. I’ll get you some water.”

She shook her head. “I’m all right,” she assured him, trying to smile. “I want to see the picture.”

He turned the easel towards her, and she looked at it a long time in silence.

“Do you like it?” asked François at last anxiously.

“It’s too good for me. It’s idealized,” she said. “But it’s the best thing you’ve ever done, François. I congratulate you. You’re right. It’s your masterpiece.”

He felt a warm glow of pleasure. Anne as he had often acknowledged was an admirable critic, instinctively a connoisseur, and her life amongst painters had trained and sharpened her natural perception. Secretly François stood in greater awe of Anne’s verdict on his work, than on that of many of his fellow-craftsmen.

“You have suggested all the Dymfield garden in those flowers,” she said after another silence.

“In you,” he returned quickly, wondering at the tone in her voice.

“I’m going to give you this, Anne,” he went on, speaking gaily to avert an uneasy fear. “I hope you appreciate the compliment. I lay my masterpiece at your feet, and you can pick it up and hang it in your salon, between the two long windows. That’s the place for it.”

She turned slowly from the picture, and her eyes met his, while she shook her head.

“No,” said she in a low voice. “I can’t take it, François.”

“Why not?”

She leant back in her chair, and a smile so sad that involuntarily he turned away, came creeping round her lips.

“Because I’m a woman,” she replied.

He made no reply. The meaning of her words did not escape him, but in a moment she translated them.

“You’ve painted me at the end of my _beaux jours_,” she said. “Before they are quite over--but at the end. I’m very grateful. But I couldn’t live with that picture, it would be too----”

She did not finish the sentence.

“Besides,--there’s another reason,” she added after a further pause.

“What’s this?” asked François, suddenly taking a book from the table. With a sort of blind haste, he strove to hinder her next words by snatching at any pretext to arrest them.

“It’s a book you lent me, nearly three years ago, I’m ashamed to say. When I first came to Paris. I’ve always forgotten to return it. But to-day,” she paused as though her mind were wandering away from the present. “To-day I remembered it.”

François took it up.

“_Mademoiselle de Maupin._ I forgot I’d ever lent it to you.”

“You remember the story?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“It’s very different from my story, isn’t it? But the way she found, I had already discovered for myself before I read the book. It’s the right way. In my case, the only way.”

François had just lighted a cigarette. He threw it away with a sudden jerk, and looked at her without speaking.

“I’m going to-morrow.”

Her voice was steady, but quite colourless.

“René,” stammered her friend, “René is going to-morrow?”

“Yes. Into the country for a few days, for the background of his new picture.”

François drew up a chair, and sat down close to her.

“Anne,” he began gently, “There hasn’t been anything? Any...?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. But it’s coming. This has been in my mind for weeks. It was there though I scarcely knew it, before you wanted me to sit to you. When you asked me, I knew certainly.”

The spring twilight lingered in the studio, and he could still see her face, white against the cushion he had put into the chair.

As he listened to her quiet low voice, all she was saying seemed to him like the illusion of a dream.

_Anne_ to be talking of leaving René! It was an absurd hallucination on his part--a trick of his imagination.

“But René?” he asked nevertheless. “He doesn’t know? Why, I saw him early this morning, and he spoke of you----”

For the first time, her voice trembled, and he watched her slim hands travelling aimlessly over the frills on her dress.

“He doesn’t know,” she said. “That’s why I’m telling you.” There was a long silence, and he saw her fighting for composure.

“François,” she began at last in a whisper. “He won’t understand at first. He’ll think me cruel, and wicked and inexplicable.” She caught her breath, but went on bravely. “You are far sighted too. You know as well as I do, the woman who will--who will----

“He doesn’t know it yet himself. He still loves me. Now, to-day. And that’s why I’m going. I couldn’t bear.... He must be quite free. It was only on those terms I agreed with myself to--to----” She was shivering now from head to foot, and the words came in gasps like the words of a dying woman. “It has lasted for three years, and I thought it might only be three months. I have had quite ... quite a long life, François.”

He turned away so that he should not see her smile.

“I’m not going to be coward enough to spoil it--for both of us,” she went on after minutes which seemed like hours. François had been mechanically counting the strokes of the clock which ticked maddeningly in the gloom. He had never noticed it before, and was seized with a sudden mad desire to smash it into fragments.

“But I want you,--will you, François?--in a little while, when he will listen, to say what you can for me?”

He got up, and began to walk about the room, stumbling against the chairs in the way.

At last he turned abruptly, and stood before her.

“Must you, Anne?” His voice was an entreaty. It shook almost as much as her own.

She got up slowly, and gave him both hands.

“Good-bye, François.”

He held them close, without speaking.

“I shall write to you,” she said, “--later on. I’m going to be a great traveller. You will hear of me from--from all sorts of wonderful places. And I shall see you again, my dear friend. But I don’t think I shall ever see----” she stopped, and he felt her hands shaking in his.

“Anne!” he implored. “Don’t go.”

“Don’t say anything more,” she implored. “I have to get through the evening. It’s our--last. So you see it must be quite--It must be quite a happy----”

She stretched out a trembling hand for her cloak, and he wrapped it round her, fastening it for her as though she were a child. Then he took her downstairs, and called a closed _fiacre_.

In the darkness of the courtyard, by the door, he put his arm round her shoulders, and taking both her hands in one of his, he kissed them.

They were wet with the tears she had tried to brush aside.

XIX

Two or three mornings before the conversation between Dr. Dakin and François Fontenelle, Anne, the peaceful Anne of to-day, received by the same post, three letters which interested her.

She knew the handwriting on the envelopes of each, and hastened first to learn what her brother had to say. Hugh, as she had known for some months, was returning to England.

His farm had prospered, and anxious to launch his sons, boys of sixteen and eighteen, in the professions they had chosen, he had determined to retire, and end his days in the old country.

The letter, an affectionate one, stated that he was already in London where he had taken a furnished house, to give him and his wife time to look round, and decide upon their future home.

Anne must come to see them the moment she returned. They were all looking forward to her visit.

She put down the closely written pages with an air of content, and turned smiling to the envelope inscribed in the large childish characters which recalled Sylvia Carfax.

“MY DEAREST DEAR MISS PAGE,

“I _must_ write to you because I’m so happy and excited. I’ve
got _splendid_ plans. Just yet, I can’t tell even _you_ what
they are, because it’s a secret for the present. But it means
a simply magnificent chance for me, and of course it has
something to do with my work. Mother and father will be very
angry, I’m afraid, but I can’t help it. It’s too good to lose,
and one can’t sacrifice the whole of one’s future because of
one’s parents. Besides later on, they will see how wise I’ve
been. Oh dear Miss Page, _when_ are you coming back? I want
to see you so much, because by that time everything will be
settled, and I can tell you all about it. I’m too excited to
write any more. Only I want you very badly. Do, _do_ come home
soon.

“Your ever loving
“SYLVIA.”

Anne returned the note to its envelope with a slightly worried look.

What folly was the child considering? She must write to her at once, and insist upon a full explanation.

In the meantime she opened the other letter, which bore the Paris stamp-mark, and was evidently from Madge Dakin. It was very short, and very incoherent, but when Anne raised her head and let the lilac-tinted paper slip from her hand, her face was rather white.

She was at breakfast in her sitting-room, whose window overlooked Rome.

The sunshine flooded the room, and the anemones, purple, white and scarlet, in a bowl placed on the snowy cloth, glowed with the colour of jewels.

The air was sweet with the scent of violets which almost covered a small table near the open window, and outside, over-arching the city, the Roman sky was gloriously, passionately blue.

Anne sat with her elbows on the table, her chin resting on her open palms, lost in thought.

Suddenly she rose, and rang the bell.

“Burks,” she said when the maid appeared, “can you pack, and be ready to start for Paris to-day?”

Burks stared. “But I thought we weren’t leaving for another month, ma’am,” she gasped.

“I know. But I find it’s necessary to go at once. Can you manage it?”

The maid beamed with satisfaction. “It’ll be a rush, but I’ll do it, ma’am, and be thankful. I’m about tired of foreigners,” she added, alluding thus with a sniff of scorn to the Italian cook with whom she lived on terms of ill-concealed warfare.

Anne smiled absently.

“Yes. You’ll be glad to get home, I dare say Burks, and Paris is on the way. Please give me my writing things. I must put off all my engagements, and write a hundred letters, so I don’t want to be disturbed this morning.”

Left alone, Anne re-read the letter which had prompted her decision to leave Rome at once. Short, hurried as it was, it conveyed the misery of the writer better than pages of outpouring, and Anne did not need the supplication contained in the last lines to lead her to any creature in distress.

“Poor little soul! Poor wretched little thing!” she thought, before she forced herself to attend to the lengthy correspondence which in view of her large circle of Roman friends, such a hurried leave-taking entailed.

Unwilling to hinder Burks in her work of packing, she went herself to post her letters, and to dispatch the telegram which warned Madge Dakin of her arrival in Paris next day.

While she walked to the post-office, while she mingled with the crowds in the street, and vaguely heard the cries of the flower vendors, the cracking of whips, the babel of tongues, her thoughts were far away. Her friend’s letter had told her nothing definite, but Anne guessed the nature of her trouble.

Imperceptibly, from sadness and perplexity her expression became stern. A passionate anger such as for years she had not experienced, grew momentarily stronger.

“Always the same,” she repeated to herself. “Cruel, cynical. Too light-minded to desire anything strongly. Selfish enough to gratify every passing whim----” And then her thoughts received a sudden disconcerting check.

What of the years of loyal friendship he had given her? How could she forget his tenderness and sympathy at the bitterest moment of her life? How ignore either, the many kindnesses difficult for a man wholly cynical, impossible for one wholly selfish, which he had shown to the down-trodden, the beaten, the unsuccessful in life’s struggle?

Once again, for the thousandth time she recognized the complexity of every human being. The baffling contradictions; good interwoven with evil, nobility with meanness, honour with disloyalty. It was the great intricate puzzle of human nature she was once more considering; a tangle which nothing but the cloak of infinite charity can cover. The only cloak which glorifies and reveals what is good and strong, while in pity, in despairing tenderness it hides under its ample folds, the shame, the weakness, the ugly scars of the form it both shelters, and defines.

Anne sighed as she reached the top of the Spanish steps, and leant on the wall to take a last look at the city she loved.

Overhead, that “great inverted bowl we call the sky,” here, deeply blue, surpassingly beautiful. Beneath it, the dancing sunshine playing alike on dome and pinnacle, roof and tree, and on the thousands of men and women in the busy streets. Men and women hiding within their breasts incalculable heights and depths of virtue and vice, actual or potential. Men and women soon to be covered by the earth on which they walked, to make place for another, yet essentially the same swarm of human beings between the same earth and sky, still asking the same questions under the same sunshine, which laughed, and never replied.

It was the eternal puzzle, the old riddle to which through the ages no solution has been found.

Anne sighed once more, and then smiled at the futility of considering it again just now, when there was packing to be done.

_He maketh His sun to shine upon the just and upon the unjust._

The words slipped into her mind before she turned away, with a momentary sensation of reassurance. At least the sunshine fell upon every one alike. Perhaps it symbolized a cloak of charity wider and larger than any woven by human minds.

* * * * *

“Will Madame come upstairs?”

The maid re-entered the room in which Anne had been waiting, and then preceded her up the staircase to a door which she threw open.

A little figure huddled over the fire, rose hastily as she entered, and with incoherent words that sounded like a cry, threw herself into her arms.

“Oh! You are good! You are good!” Madge repeated, hiding her eyes like a child against the elder woman’s arm. “I should have _died_ if you hadn’t come.”

When at last she drew herself away, and looked at her visitor, Anne had to suppress a start of dismay.

She scarcely recognized Madge Dakin.

Her cheeks were white and sunken, and swollen with much crying. She was pitifully thin, and her nervous hands strayed constantly about her face. Her pretty hair, generally so carefully waved and tended, was screwed into an untidy knot at the back of her head. She had evidently not troubled to dress all day, for she wore a bedroom wrapper, whose pink ribbons she had forgotten to tie and arrange.

“My dear child,” declared Anne, “you must give me some tea. I’m dying for it, and I shall be speechless till I get it.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry. I make it myself generally. I--forgot it this afternoon.”

Anne sat down in an armchair near the fire, and purposely allowed her to put on the kettle, and make all the preparations alone.

A glance at the room, a fairly large one, from which a bedroom opened, showed that her friend had probably done nothing but cry over the fire for several days.

It was dusty, and littered with papers, books, working materials. It looked untidy, and uncared for.

There were dead flowers in the vases, and the curtains half drawn, obscured the already dying light of a dull day.

When the kettle began to boil, she rose, and gently pushed Madge into a chair.

She made the tea herself, while in a sort of stupor of wretchedness, Mrs. Dakin watched the movements of her white fingers.

“Now drink that, my child,” she said, putting the cup and saucer into her hand.

“Have you had any lunch?”

Madge shook her head.

“Then you must eat a plateful of these excellent biscuits, and you must begin at once.”

She proceeded to drink her own tea, talking about her journey, and the slowness of the trains, till watching the face opposite to her she saw a trace of colour in the cheeks.

“And now what is it, my dear?” she asked very gently, as Mrs. Dakin pushed the cup away from her.

For answer, Madge burst into a flood of hopeless tears.

Anne leant forward and took her hand. “It’s François Fontenelle, isn’t it?” she inquired.

Mrs. Dakin raised her head, her lips parted like a baby’s.

“How did you guess?” she whispered.

“Because I’ve known him for a great many years--very well.”

There was the faintest trace of bitterness in Anne’s tone. The sight of the miserable bowed figure had revived some of her resentment.

With a quick movement, Madge left her chair, and knelt beside her, hiding her face, with a childish gesture, while Anne’s arm went round her as tenderly as a mother’s.

“I’m going to tell you everything,” she began in a half-choked voice. “I’ve been so wicked, Miss Page, that I--I can’t believe it. Every now and then I think it’s a dream.” She shivered in Anne’s grasp, and sobbed a moment.

“It was my fault. I thought I was so bored. I thought I was tired of Harry--of Harry who has always been a thousand times too good for me. And so I--I flirted with him. Helen Didier says I threw myself at his head. She’s a hateful woman, and I loathe her, but that’s true, I did. He never cared for me. In my heart I knew he didn’t, even when I led him on to make love to me. It was nothing but my wretched wicked vanity. Just because I was bored. Just because----” Her voice sank, and for a moment Anne heard nothing but the painful catching of her breath in exhausted sobs.

“And the awful part was,” she stammered at last, “that _I_ didn’t care either. I never meant it to be more than a flirtation. At least I think I didn’t,” she added with a pitiful attempt at perfect honesty. “But----” She stopped short.

“But it became more than that. He was your lover?”

She nodded her head, and then suddenly clasped Anne with convulsive strength.

“And Harry’s coming to-morrow. And I’m a vile woman!”

She cried the words aloud in a panic of horror.

“Oh, Miss Page, what shall I do. What will become of me? what shall I say to Harry? I shall go mad!”

Anne laid her cheek on the head that rested against her shoulder, and was silent.

She understood what was passing in the soul of the weak, terror-struck little woman. The horror of outraged conventions, the nightmare conviction that she, the descendant of generations of respectable, honest women, she who had never heard of the sin she had committed, except in accents of disdain or horror, had become an abandoned creature, unfit for decent society, branded, defiled, eternally lost.

Anne’s heart went out to her in passionate pity.

“Oh help me! Tell me what to do,” Madge wailed. “You’re the only woman in the world I dared to tell, because----”

The abrupt pause, and a nervous gesture betrayed her, and Anne started a little, overcome by a sudden conviction.

“Yes. Why did you tell me, my dear?” she asked quietly.

“Because,” began Madge hurriedly, “you are so kind, so sweet, I felt----”

“That wasn’t the only reason.”

“No!” she cried with sudden recklessness. “It wasn’t. It’s because I heard that you--that you--Helen Didier found it out. She never rested. And then I asked--_him_, and he said I was never to mention your name to her. But she found out all about it, on the pretence that it was _you_ who had corrupted my mind, and made me what she calls fast. And so----”

“And so you thought you might confess to a fellow sinner?”

Anne’s cheek still rested on Madge’s hair, and over her head, her eyes smiled very quietly into the fire.

Madge was silent.

“I knew you wouldn’t utterly despise me,” she murmured at last, in a low voice.

“He has gone?” asked Anne after a moment. “You sent him away?”

“He came on Monday--two or three days ago. I’ve forgotten when.” She made a distracted gesture. “Until--until just lately, it was all right. We were not--not----”

“Not lovers,” said Anne, finishing the sentence for her in an even voice.

“Well, he came. And by that time I’d come to my senses, and to all this awful misery. He’s very kind,” she went on with a sort of surprise, as a child might speak of the unexpected clemency of some grown-up person. “He said he didn’t want to make me unhappy, and if I pleased it should all be at an end, and he would go away. So he went. But Harry’s coming to-morrow, and I daren’t meet him. I daren’t look at him. It’s awful--_awful_! I would kill myself,--but I daren’t do that either.”

She rose from her knees, and sank back in her chair, exhausted and shaking; her eyes fixed on Anne were the eyes of a little hunted animal.

All the terror of the gulf she had put between herself and respectable women, all the horror of feeling herself _déclassée_ outside the pale of moral virtue, filled her conventional little soul. It outweighed the sense of her personal disloyalty; it was greater than her sense of wanton treachery towards her husband. She was no longer a respectable woman, and in that fact lay the sting.

Anne leant towards her. “You haven’t told Harry?”

She shook her head.

“Then don’t.”

Madge stared at her incredulously. “But--but look at me!” she stammered. “He’ll see. He’d guess, even if I don’t tell him. I can’t stop crying. I can’t--help it.”

While she spoke the tears were running down her cheeks.

“Yes, you can. You can pull yourself together. He expects to find you ill, but you can meet him with a bright face--for his sake.”

“For his sake?” repeated Madge.

“Yes. Think of him a little, my dear, and forget yourself.”

“You mean he would never forgive me? Never take me back?”

“On the contrary, I know he would. He loves you. You would never hear a word of reproach from his lips. Your husband is a fine man, Madge, and a generous one--and a gentleman.”

“Yes, he is! He is!” she returned eagerly. “He _would_ forgive me, and I ought to tell him. I should never have a happy moment if I didn’t. My life would be spoilt.”

“And what about his?” asked Anne quietly.

Madge gazed at her. “You mean he--he wouldn’t forget it?”

Anne answered with a curious smile.

“You don’t understand much about men, my little Madge,” she said. “When they love, their instinct of possession is stronger than anything you can guess. It’s bound up with a thousand forces from primitive barbarous times. It may be unreasonable and savage, but it’s there. A generous man forgives, and even tries to understand. But the wound remains, and it rankles in spite of him. Have you the right to inflict such a wound? The wrong is yours. _You_ should be the only one to suffer.”

“But I _shall_ suffer,” broke in Madge. “And much more, if I feel I’m deceiving him.”

“Then accept the extra suffering, and bear it alone,” returned Anne quickly. “One pays for everything, Madge. Is it fair to call upon some one else to share the expenses?”

There was silence for a moment.

“If _you_ had married--afterwards, I mean,” said Madge hesitatingly, “wouldn’t you have told your husband?”

“There was no question of my marriage,” answered Anne rather painfully. “But if your circumstances were mine,” she added after a moment, “I should act as I advise you to act.”

Madge’s grasp on her hand tightened, but she did not speak.

“Go back and be a good wife to him,” Anne went on. “My dear,” she said sadly, “you don’t know your blessings. You have married a man with a faithful steadfast nature. His love will never fail you, and in that, thousands of women might envy you. All the material for happiness is within your reach. Happiness for the lack of which many women starve all their days. It never comes to them. It’s never offered. And if they can’t bear to be utterly without the joy of love, before the earth covers them, they have to take it at a great price.”

Her smile brought the tears again to Madge’s eyes.

“Such a price, my dear little Madge, as I’m glad you know nothing about.”

“Dear Miss Page!” she whispered. A moment’s half-awed revelation came to her of all that her friend’s words implied. In the light of it, her own fears and regrets, her whole mental attitude towards the past, later as well as immediate, seemed incredibly petty, mean, and trivial. She was ashamed with a nobler less selfish shame than she had ever experienced.

Her cheeks burnt, and her tears ceased to flow.

“Oh! I’ve been a beast!” she cried involuntarily. “I’ve always been so selfish and hateful to Harry. I’ve taken everything as my right. I’ve never thought of any one but myself. I’ve never thought of the lives of other women. You are right. It would only be one more selfishness to tell him. I won’t. I’ll love him instead.”

“Do that, my dear, and you’ll make him the happiest of men,” returned Anne simply. “And don’t refuse him children, Madge,” she added softly. “You owe him that. Besides, you’re refusing the greatest happiness for yourself. The blessing that women--women like me, can never have. That’s part of the price, you see. Not the least part of the price,” she added as though to herself.

She rose, and Madge stood up too, still holding her hand.

The firelight fell on Anne’s face, and the younger woman looked at her as though she had never seen her before,--with a tender surprised admiration.

“You are so beautiful!” she exclaimed suddenly.

The first smile Anne had seen came to her lips.

“I shall pray that my first baby may have eyes just like yours,” she said, almost gaily. “And hair like your lovely hair--when she’s a little older.”

Anne laughed. “It used to be brown. It went white very quickly--in three months.”

As she glanced into the mirror above the fireplace, she thought suddenly of François’s portrait with its mass of soft fair hair, _couleur de miel_; _couleur de poussière dorée_. She remembered the epithets of the painters.

“I must go now,” she said. “To-morrow Harry will be here to take care of you. Make yourself look pretty, Madge. Put on your nicest frock, and do your hair the way he likes, high up, you know, with little fluffy curls about. And make the room pretty, dear. I’ll order some flowers to be sent round to-night. Lots of them, so you’ll have plenty to do to arrange them. No more sitting by the fire and crying, mind! No looking back. Only look forward.”

Madge held her tight. “Oh! you’ve given me so much courage!” she exclaimed with a long sigh of relief. “You dearest of women. I’ll do everything you tell me.”

XX

Outside, in the lighted street, Anne called a cab, and gave the address of the nearest florist.

Her thoughts dwelt upon Madge, as the carriage rattled down the boulevard.

“I’m scarcely sorry,” was the outcome of her grave reflection. “It will make a woman of her. She needed a great shock, or a great sorrow to take her out of herself, and make her realize what it would mean to lose her husband.”

It was only while she was choosing flowers for her, that the part of Madge’s confession which concerned herself, came back confusedly to her mind. It gathered greater clearness as she drove towards her hotel, and by the time she reached it, and was sitting by her bedroom fire after dinner, she found herself wondering what would be the outcome of the matter.

That she might be sure of Madge Dakin, her instinct satisfied her. Yet the results of Madame Didier’s inquiries would in all probability, from other sources, reach Dymfield. What then?

Anne’s thoughts flitted from Mrs. Carfax to Mrs. Willcox, the solicitor’s wife, a lady who was interested in Church Missions, and Rescue Homes for Fallen Women. The memory of Miss Goldie, a maiden lady of substantial means, and views of life which even Dymfield considered rigid, came to her, and forced a smile. She saw her sitting in the front pew in church, her black bonnet with two purple pansies upon it, tied tightly under her chin. She saw her angular elbows, under the short mantle of black silk adorned with bugle trimming. She heard her rasping voice, which seldom softened even for Anne, who as a rule affected insensibly the voices of her neighbours.

She remembered Mr. Willcox, stiff, erect, lean-faced Mr. Willcox, loud in his denunciation of the present age, which he considered lax and immoral to the last degree.

She thought of the Vicar, with his blustering attempts at modernity, and his violently expressed scorn of everything but muscular Christianity and common sense.

Dymfield was the typical English village, with its types indigenous to the soil, firmly rooted, impervious to criticism, profoundly self-satisfied.

Dymfield for Anne would be impossible.

But Dymfield meant Fairholme Court, to which her heart was inextricably linked. The garden that she had planted, the garden that was full of fragrant memories of the blossoming time of her life. The bare idea of leaving it sent a pang of desolation to her heart.

She got up and began to walk restlessly about the room.

The absurdity of such an outcome of malicious gossip, struck her with a pathetic desire to laugh.

“After all these years! At my age,” she murmured.

She thought of her three years of happiness, the little space of time which had opened like a flower in her grey life, and wondered pitifully why any one should grudge it to her. But most of all, she shrank from the thought that people should talk about it. It had been for so many years her secret possession, the memory that had sweetened all her later days.

It would be insupportable to know that her acquaintances were gossiping about her. About her and René.

A painful flush rose to her face as she sat down again by the fire.

After her talk with Madge Dakin, her old life seemed too near. She thought of the parting with René in the morning--the morning he left her for his three days’ work at Fontainebleau.

The agony of making that parting a light one! She remembered that he turned at the door, and came back to kiss her again. The sun was on his hair, as he crossed the room.

Involuntarily to-night, twenty years after the words were spoken, Anne put her hands over her ears, that she might not hear his voice. But she knew what he had said. She remembered how, when he was gone, her resolution wavered.

Without question he loved her still. Wasn’t it too soon? Might she not stay a little longer? Just a little while longer? And then the _bonne_ had brought the letters of the second post, and among them there was one for René in a handwriting she knew. Within the past month they had been coming very often, these letters. Lately, every day.

She remembered how the sunshine had streamed upon the envelope at which she sat staring, till at last she moved to make her preparations.

Then the long train journey, and the agony which feared to betray itself in some insane fashion which might cause her to be stopped--forcibly prevented from reaching her destination.

She wanted to shriek aloud, to rave and cry, like the madwoman she half feared she might in fact have become.

Of the next few weeks she recalled nothing but a confused nightmare impression of unfamiliar rooms, strange faces, strange voices. Of people who for some mad reason were going about as usual, occupied with the ordinary business of life; talking, laughing, eating and drinking, unmoved, unconcerned.

One book on every hotel table drew her like a magnet. She would sit down anywhere with a _Bradshaw_ before her, and at once, mechanically plan her journey back to Paris.

Over and over again, she looked out trains, studied connections, pictured the moment of her arrival.

It would be tea-time. The lamps just lit. René sitting by the fire--René leaping to his feet to meet her.

Or it would be early morning. She would open his bedroom door softly....

And then the realization of her madness; more sleepless nights, fresh strange hotels, new cities up and down whose streets she wandered wondering why she should be there, why she should enter one building rather than another, why the day never passed, and when the night came, thinking would God that it were morning.

So terribly near seemed her past torture, that with all her strength Anne tried to stem the flood of reminiscence.

Thank God, little Madge Dakin had never known, would never know, misery such as hers! In the midst of her whirl of memories Anne gratefully considered this.

With an effort at diversion, she tried to recall the names of the cities in which she stayed, through which she had passed during the first few months of her exile.

In vain. She had only a confused impression of scorching streets, of palm trees against a hot blue sky; of seas hatefully, mockingly calm and blue.

She was in Athens when the news of his death reached her, and with it a packet of letters written during the first few weeks after her departure. They were letters from René, never sent, because she had left no address. Letters written in the frenzied hope that some day soon he must hear from her.

It was then that she tasted her first moment of peace.

She remembered sitting in a little walled garden somewhere within the city, and for the first time seeing that the blue sky overhead was beautiful.

She noticed the broad leaves of a fig-tree clambering upon the wall opposite, and listened to the dripping of a little stream which flowed from a stone trough into a well whose mouth was fringed delicately with ferns and wild flowers. And for the first time came to her a premonition of the calm and peace, and even happiness of her later years.

Her emotional life was over. No man as a lover would ever exist for her again. But she had experienced the love for which she had been willing to pay. She had paid, and some day she would be content.

René dead, had become hers once more--this time for ever.

Later in the year she met François at Antibes, and heard calmly, with scarcely a stab of pain, what she was prepared to hear. She had been right to go. But René had died before he ceased to love her.

Afterwards, her true wander years began. And then at last, the thought of the house and the garden at Dymfield became dear to her, and she went to them as a child goes home.

Anne let her mind dwell gratefully upon the quiet happy years she had spent at Dymfield.

She thought of her work among her flowers, and the paradise of beauty it had produced. She thought of the poorer village people whose lives she knew, whose children she loved, to whom for years she had been a friend. She remembered her little plans for their welfare, all the pleasant trifles which made up the sum of her daily existence.