The Old Things

XIV.

WHEN Owen and Fleda were in her father’s little place, and, among the brandy-flasks and pen-wipers, still more disconcerted and divided, the girl had — to do something, though it would make him stay — ordered tea, he put the letter before her quite as if he had guessed her thought. “ She ’s still a bit nasty, — fancy ! ” He handed her the scrap of a note which he had pulled out of his pocket and from its envelope. “ Fleda Vetch, it ran, “ is at 10 Raphael Road, West Kensington. Go to see her, and try, for God’s sake, to cultivate a glimmer of intelligence.” When, in handing it back to him, she took in his face, she saw that its heightened color was the effect of his watching her read such an allusion to his want of wit. Fleda knew what it was an allusion to, and his pathetic air of having received a little slap in the face, tall and fine and kind as he stood there, made her conscious of not quite concealing her knowledge. For a minute she was kept silent by an angered sense of the trick that had been played her. It was a trick because Fleda considered there had been a covenant; and the trick consisted of Mrs. Gereth’s having broken the spirit of their agreement while conforming in a fashion to the letter. Under the girl’s menace of a complete rupture, she had been afraid to make of her secret the use she itched to make ; but, in the course of these days of separation, she had gathered pluck to hazard an indirect betrayal. Fleda measured her hesitations, and the impulse which she had finally obeyed and which the continued procrastination of Waterbath had encouraged, had at last made irresistible. If, in her high-handed manner of playing their game, she had not named the thing hidden, she had named the hiding-place. It was over the sense of this wrong that Fleda’s lips closed tight: she was afraid of aggravating her case by some ejaculation that would make Owen prick up his ears. A great, quick effort, however, helped her to avoid the danger ; with her constant idea of keeping cool and repressing a visible flutter, she found herself able to choose her words. Meanwhile, he had exclaimed, with his uncomfortable laugh, “ That’s a good one for me, Miss Vetch, is n’t it ? ”

“ Of course you know by this time that your mother’s very sharp,” said Fleda.

“ I think I can understand well enough when I know what’s to be understood,” the young man asserted. “ But I hope you won’t mind my saying that you ‘ve kept me pretty well in the dark about that! I ’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting, so much has depended on your news. If you’ve been working for me,

I’m afraid it has been a thankless job. Can’t she say what she ’ll do, one way or the other? I can’t tell in the least where I am, you know. I have n’t really learnt from you, since I saw you there, where she is. You wrote me to be patient, and upon my soul I have been. But I ’m afraid you don’t quite realize what I ’m to be patient with. At Waterbath, don’t you know ? I’ve simply to account and answer for the damned things. Mona looks at me and waits, and I, hang it, I look to you and do the same.”Fleda had gathered fuller confidence as he continued ; so plain was it that she had succeeded in not dropping into his mind the spark that might produce the glimmer invoked by his mother. But even this fine assurance gave a start when, after an appealing pause, he went on : “ I hope, you know, that after all you ’re not keeping anything back from me.”

In the full face of what she was keeping back such a hope could only make her wince ; but she was prompt with her explanations in proportion as she felt they failed to meet him. The smutty maid came in with tea-things, and Fleda, moving several objects, eagerly accepted the diversion of arranging a place for them on one of the tables. “ I’ve been trying to break your mother down, because it has seemed there may be some chance of it. That’s why I ’ve let you go on expecting it. She ’s too proud to veer round all at once, but I think I speak correctly in saying that I’ve made an impression upon her.”

In spite of ordering tea, she had not invited him to sit down ; she herself made a point of standing. He hovered by the window that looked into Raphael Road ; she kept at the other side of the room ; the stunted slavey, gazing wide-eyed at the beautiful gentleman, and either stupidly or cunningly bringing but one thing at a time, came and went between the tea-tray and the open door.

“ You pegged at her so hard ? ” Owen asked.

“ I explained to her fully your position, and put before her much more strongly than she liked what seemed to me her absolute duty.”

Owen waited a little. “ And having done that, you departed ? ”

Fleda felt the full need of giving a reason for her departure ; but at first she only said, with cheerful frankness, “ I departed.”

Her companion again looked at her in silence. “ I thought you had gone to her for several months.”

“Well,” Fleda replied, “I couldn’t stay. I did n’t like it. I did n’t like it at all, — I could n’t stand it,” she went on. “ In the midst of those trophies of Poynton, living with them, touching them, using them, I felt as if I were backing her up. As I was not a bit of an accomplice, as I hate what she has done, I did n’t want to be, even to the extent of the mere look of it, — what is it you call such people ? — an accessory after the fact.” There was something she kept back so rigidly that the joy of uttering the rest was double. She felt the sharpest need of giving him all the other truth. There was a matter as to which she had deceived him, and there was a matter as to which she had deceived Mrs. Gereth, but her lack of pleasure in deception as such came home to her now. She busied herself with the tea, and, to extend the occupation, cleared the table still more, and spread out the coarse cups and saucers and the vulgar little plates. She was aware that she produced more confusion than symmetry, but she was also aware that she was violently nervous. Owen tried to help her with something: this made rather for disorder. “ My reason for not writing to you,” she pursued, “ was simply that I was hoping to Hear more from Ricks. I ’ve waited from day to day for that.”

“ But you’ve heard nothing ? ”

“ Not a word.”

“ Then what I understand,” said Owen, “ is that, practically, you and mummy have quarreled. And you ’ve done it — I mean you personally — for me.”

“ Oh no, we have n’t quarreled a bit ! ” Then, with a smile, “We’ve only diverged.”

“ You’ve diverged uncommonly far ! ” and Owen laughed back. Fleda, with her hideous crockery and her father’s collections, could conceive that these objects, to her visitor’s perception even more strongly than to her own, measured the length of the swing from Poynton and Ricks ; she was aware, too, that her high standards figured vividly enough even to Owen’s simplicity to make him reflect that West Kensington was a tremendous fall. If she had fallen, it was because she had acted for him. She was all the more content he should thus see she had acted, as the cost of it, in his eyes, was none of her own showing. “ What seems to have happened,” he exclaimed, “ is that you’ve had a row with her and yet not moved her ! ”

Fleda considered a moment; she was full of the impression that, notwithstanding her scant help, he saw his way clearer than he had seen it at Ricks. He might mean many things ; and what if the many should mean in their turn only one ? “ The difficulty is, you understand, that she doesn’t really see into your situation.” She hesitated. “ She does n’t comprehend why your marriage has n’t yet taken place.”

Owen stared. “ Why, for the reason I told you : that Mona won ’t take another step till mother has given full satisfaction. Everything must be there. You see, everything was there, the day of that fatal visit.”

“ Yes, that’s what I understood from you at Ricks,” said Fleda, “ but I have n’t repeated it to your mother.” She had hated, at Ricks, to talk with him about Mona, but now that scruple was swept away. If he could speak of Mona’s visit as fatal, she need at least not pretend not to notice it. It made all the difference that she had tried to assist him and had failed : to give him any faith in her service she must give him all her reasons but one. She must give him, in other words, with a corresponding omission, all Mrs. Gereth’s. “ You can easily see that, as she dislikes your marriage, anything that may seem to make it less certain works in her favor. Without my telling her, she has suspicions and views that are simply suggested by your delay. Therefore it did n’t seem to me right to make them worse. By holding off long enough, she thinks she may terminate your engagement. If Mona ’s waiting, she believes she may at last tire Mona out.” That, in all conscience, Fleda felt was lucid enough.

So the young man, following her attentively, appeared equally to feel. “ So far as that goes,” he promptly declared, “ she has at last tired Mona out! ” He uttered the words with a strange approach to hilarity.

Fleda’s surprise at this approximation left her a moment looking at him. “ Do you mean your marriage is off ? ”

Owen answered with a kind of gay despair. “ God knows, Miss Vetch, where or when or what my marriage is ! If it is n’t ‘ off,’ it certainly, at the point things have reached, is n’t on. I have n’t seen Mona for ten days, and for a week I have n’t heard from her. She used to write me every week, don’t you know ? She won’t budge from Waterbath, and I have n’t budged from town.” Then he suddenly broke out, “ If she does chuck me, will mother come round ? ”

Fleda, at this, felt that her heroism had come to its real test, — felt that in telling him the truth she should effcctivelv raise a hand to push his impediment out of the way. Was the knowledge that such a motion would probably dispose forever of Mona capable of yielding to the conception of still giving her every chance she was entitled to ? That conception was heroic, but at the same moment it reminded Fleda of the place it had held in her plan, she was also reminded of the not less urgent claim of the truth. Ah, the truth, — there was a limit to the impunity with which one could juggle with it! Was n’t what she had most to remember the fact that Owen had a right to his property, and that he had also her vow to stand by him in the effort to recover it ? How did she stand by him, if she hid from him the single way to recover it of which she was quite sure ? For an instant that seemed to her the fullest of her life she debated. “Yes,”she said at last, if your marriage is really abandoned, she will give up everything she has taken.”

“ That’s just what makes Mona hesitate ! ” Owen honestly exclaimed. “ I mean the idea that I shall get back the things only if she gives me up.”

Fleda thought an instant. “ You mean, hesitate to keep you,—not hesitate to renounce you ? ”

Owen looked a trifle bewildered. “ She does n’t see the use of hanging on, as I haven’t even yet put the matter into legal hands. She ’s awfully keen about that, and awfully disgusted that I don’t. She says it ’s the only real way, and she thinks I’m afraid to take it. She has given me time, and then given me again more. She says I give mummy too much. She says I ’m a muff to go pottering on. That ’s why she’s drawing off so hard, don’t you see ? ”

“ I don’t see very clearly. Of course you must give her what you offered her ; of course you must keep your word.

There must be no mistake about that ! ” the girl declared.

Owen’s bewilderment visibly increased.

“ You think, then, as she does, that I must send down the police ? ”

The mixture of reluctance and dependence in this made her feel how much she was failing him. She had the sense of “ chucking ” him, too. No, no, not yet ! ” she said, though she had really no other and no better course to prescribe. “ Does n’t it occur to you,” she asked in a moment, “ that if Mona is, as you say, drawing away, she may have, in doing so, a very high motive ? She knows the immense value of all the objects detained by your mother, and to restore the spoils of Poynton she is ready is that it ? — to make a sacrifice. The sacrifice is that of an engagement she had entered upon with joy.”

Owen had been blank a moment before, but he followed this argument with success, — a success so immediate that it enabled him to produce with decision, “ Ah, she ’s not that sort ! She wants them herself, he added ; “ she wants to feel they ’re hers : she does n’t care whether I have them or not! And if she can’t get them, she does n’t want me.

If she can’t get them, she does n’t want anything at all.”

This was categoric ; Fleda drank it in. “ She takes such an interest in them ? ”

“ So it appears.”

“ So much that they ’re all, and that she can let everything else absolutely depend upon them ? ”

Owen weighed her question as if he felt the responsibility of his answer. But that answer came in a moment, and, as Fleda could see, out of a wealth of memory. “ She never wanted them particularly till they seemed to be in danger. Now she has an idea about them ; and when she gets hold of an idea_

Oh dear me ! He broke off, pausing and looking away as with a sense of the futility of expression: it was the first time Fleda had ever heard him explain a matter so pointedly or embark at all on a generalization. It was striking, it was touching to her, as he faltered, that he appeared but halt capable of floating his generalization to the end. The girl, however, was so far competent to fill up his blank as that she had divined, on the occasion of Mona’s visit to Poynton, what would happen in the event of the accident at which he glanced. She had there with her own eyes seen Owen’s betrothed get hold of an idea. “ I say, you know, do give me some tea ! ” he went on, irrelevantly and familiarly.

Her profuse preparations had all this time had no sequel, and, with a laugh that she felt to be awkward, she hastily complied with his request. “ It’s sure to be horrid, she said ; “ we don’t have good things.” She offered him also some bread and butter, of which lie partook, holding his cup and saucer in his other hand and moving slowly about the room. She poured herself a cup, but did not take it ; after which, without wanting it, she began to eat a small stale biscuit. She was struck with the extinction of the unwillingness she had felt at Ricks to contribute to the bandying between them of poor Mona’s name ; and under this influence she presently resumed : “ Am I to understand that she engaged herself to marry you without caring for you ? ”

Owen looked out into Raphael Road.

“ She did care for me awfully. But she can’t stand the strain.”

“ The strain of what ? ”

“ Why, of the whole wretched thing.”

“ The whole thing has indeed been wretched, and I can easily conceive its effect upon her,” Fleda said.

Her visitor turned sharp round. “ You can ? ” There was a light in his strong stare. “ You can understand it’s spoiling her temper and making her come down on me ? She behaves as if I were of no use to her at all ! ”

Fleda hesitated. “ She’s rankling under the sense of her wrong.”

“ Well, was it I, pray, who perpetrated the wrong ? Ain’t I doing what I can to get the thing arranged ? ”

The ring of his question made his anger at Mona almost resemble for a minute an anger at Fleda; and this resemblance in turn caused our young lady to observe how handsome he looked when he spoke, for the first time in her hearing, with that degree of heat, and used, also for the first time, such a term as “ perpetrated.” In addition, his challenge rendered still more vivid to her the mere flimsiness of her own aid. “ Yes, you’ve been perfect,” she said. “ You’ve had a most difficult part. You’ve had to show tact and patience, as well as firmness, with your mother, and you’ve strikingly shown them. It’s I who, quite unintentionally, have deceived you. I have n’t helped you at all to your remedy.”

“ Well, you would n’t, at all events, have ceased to like me, would you ? ” Owen demanded. It evidently mattered to him to know if she really justified Mona. “ I mean, of course, if you had liked me, — liked me as she liked me,” he explained.

Fleda looked this inquiry in the face only long enough to recognize that, in her embarrassment, she must take instant refuge in a superior one. “ I can answer that better if I know how kind to her you’ve been. Have you been kind to her ? ” she asked, as simply as she could.

“ Why, rather, Miss Vetch ! “ Owen declared. “ I ’ve done every blessed thing she wished. I rushed down to Ricks, as you saw, with fire and sword, and the day after that I went to see her at Waterbath.” At this point he checked himself, though it was just the point at which her interest deepened. A different look had come into his face as he put down his empty teacup. “ But why should I tell you such things, for any good that it does me ? I gather that you’ve no suggestion to make me now except that I shall request my solicitor to act. Shall I request him to act ? ”

Fleda scarcely heard his words ; something new had suddenly come into her mind. “ When you went to Waterbath after seeing me,” she asked, “did you tell her all about that ? ”

Owen looked conscious. “ All about it ? ”

“ That you had had a long talk with me, without seeing your mother at all? ”

“ Oh yes, I told her exactly, and that you had been most awfully kind, and that I had placed the whole thing in your hands.”

Fleda was silent a moment. “ Perhaps that displeased her,” she at last suggested.

“ It displeased her fearfully,” said Owen, looking very queer.

“ Fearfully ? ” broke from the girl. Somehow, at the word, she was startled.

“ She wanted to know what right you had to meddle. She said you were not honest.”

“ Oh ! ” Fleda cried, with a long wail. Then she controlled herself. “ I see.”

“ She abused you, and I defended you. She denounced you ” —

She checked him with a gesture. “ Don’t tell me what she did ! ” She had colored up to her eyes, where, as with the effect of a blow in the face, she quickly felt the tears gathering. It was a sudden drop in her great flight, a shock to her attempt to watch over what Mona was entitled to. While she had been straining her very soul in this attempt, the object of her magnanimity had been pronouncing her “ not honest.” She took it all in, however, and after an instant was able to speak with a smile. She would not have been surprised to learn, indeed, that her smile was strange. “ You said a while ago that your mother and I had quarreled about you. It’s much more true that you and Mona have quarreled about me.”

Owen hesitated, but at last he brought it out: “ What I mean to say is, don’t you know, that Mona, if you don’t mind my saying so, has taken it into her head to be jealous.”

“I see,” said Fleda. “Well, I dare say our conferences have looked very odd.”

“They’ve looked very beautiful, and they’ve been very beautiful. Oh. I’ve told her the sort you are ! ” the youngman pursued.

“ That of course has n’t made her love me better.”

“No, nor love me,” said Owen. “ Of course, you know, she says she loves me.”

“ And do you say you love her ? ”

“ I say nothing else, — I say it all the while. I said it the other day a dozen times.” Fleda made no immediate rejoinder to this, and before she could choose one he repeated his question of a moment before. “ Am I to tell my solicitor to act ? ”

She had at that moment turned away from this solution, precisely because she saw in it the great chance of her secret. If she should determine him to adopt it, she might put out her hand and take him. It would shut in Mrs. Gereth’s face the open door of surrender: she would flare up and fight, flying the flag of a passionate, an heroic defense. The case would obviously go against her, but the proceedings would last longer than Mona’s patience or Owen’s propriety. With a formal rupture he would be at large ; and she had only to tighten her fingers round the string that would raise the curtain on that scene. “ You tell me you ’say’ you love her, but is there nothing more in it than your saying so ? You wouldn’t say so, would you, if it’s not true ? What in the world has become, in so short a time, of the affection that led to your engagement ? ”

“ The deuce knows what has become of it, Miss Vetch! ” Owen cried. “It seemed all to go to pot as this horrid struggle came on.” He was close to her now, and, with his face lighted again by the relief of it, he looked all his helpless history into her eyes. “ As I saw you and noticed you more, as I knew you better and better, I felt less and less — I couldn’t help it — about anything or any one else. I wished I had known you sooner, — I knew I should have liked you better than any one in the world. But it wasn’t you who made the difference,” he eagerly continued, “ and I was awfully determined to stick to Mona to the death. It was she herself who made it, upon my soul, by the state she got into, the way she sulked, the way she took things, and the way she let me have it! She destroyed our prospects and our happiness, upon my honor. She made just the same smash of them as if she had kicked over that tea-table. She wanted to know all the while what was passing between us, between you and me ; and slie would n’t take my solemn assurance that nothing was passing but what might have directly passed between me and old mummy. She said a pretty girl like you was a nice old mummy for me, and, if you ’ll believe it, she never called you anything else but that. I ’ll be hanged if I have n’t been good, have n’t I ? I have n’t breathed a breath of any sort to you, have I ? You’d have been down on me hard if I had, would n’t you? You’re down on me pretty hard as it is, I think, aren’t you ? But I don’t care what you say now, or what Mona says, either, or a single rap what any one says : she has given me at last, by her confounded behavior, a right to speak out, to utter the way I feel about it. The way I feel about it, don’t you know, is that it had all better come to an end. You ask me if I don’t love her, and I suppose it’s natural enough you should. But you ask it at the very moment I’m half mad to say to you that there’s only one person on the whole earth I really love, and that that person ” — Here Owen pulled up short, and Fleda wondered if it was from the effect of his perceiving, through the closed door, the sound of steps and voices on the landing of the stairs. She had caught this sound herself with surprise and a vague uneasiness : it was not an hour at which her father ever came in, and there was no present reason why she should have a visitor. She had a fear, which after a few seconds deepened: a visitor was at hand; the visitor would be simply Mrs. Gereth. That lady wished for a near view of the consequence of her note to Owen. Fleda straightened herself, with the instant thought that if this was what Mrs. Gereth desired, Mrs. Gereth should have it in a form not to be mistaken. Owen’s pause was the matter of a moment, but during that moment our young couple stood with their eyes holding each other’s eyes, and catching the suggestion, still through the door, of a murmured conference in the hall. Fleda had begun to make the movement to cut it short, when Owen stopped her with a grasp of her arm. “ You ’re surely able to guess,” he said, with his voice dropped and her arm pressed as she had never known such a drop or such a pressure, — “ you ’re surely able to guess the one person on earth I love ? ”

The handle of the door turned, and Fleda had only time to jerk at him, “ Your mother ! ”

The door opened, and the smutty maid, edging in, announced, “Mrs. Brigstock ! ”

XV.

Mrs. Brigstock, in the doorway, stood looking from one of the occupants of the room to the other; then they saw her eyes attach themselves to a small object that had lain hitherto unnoticed on the carpet. This was the biseuit of which, on giving Owen his tea, Fleda had taken a perfunctory nibble : she had immediately laid it on the table, and that subsequently, in some precipitate movement, she should have brushed it off was doubtless a sign of the agitation that possessed her. For Mrs. Brigstock there was apparently more in it than met the eye. Owen, at any rate, picked it up, and Fleda felt as if lie were removing the traces of some scene that the newspapers would have characterized as “ lively.” Mrs. Brigstock clearly took in also the sprawling tea-things, and the mark as of high water in the full faces of her young friends. These elements made the little place a vivid picture of intimacy. A minute was filled by Fleda’s relief at finding her visitor not to be Mrs. Gereth, and a longer space by the ensuing sense of what was really more compromising in the actual apparition. It dimly occurred to her that the lady of Ricks had also written to Waterbath. Not only had Mrs. Brigstock never paid her a call, but Fleda would have been unable to figure her as so employed. A year before, the girl had spent a day under her roof, but had never felt that Mrs. Brigstock regarded this as constituting a bond. She had never stayed in any house but Poynton where the imagination of a bond, one way or the other, prevailed. After the first astonishment she dashed gayly at her guest, emphasizing her welcome, and wondering how her whereabouts had become known at Waterbath. Had not Mrs. Brigstock quitted that residence for the very purpose of laying her hand on the associate of Mrs. Gereth’s misconduct ? The spirit in which this hand was to be laid our young lady was yet to ascertain; but she was a person who could think ten thoughts at once, —a circumstance which, even putting her present plight at its worst, gave her a great advantage over a person who required easy conditions for dealing even with one. The very vibration of the air, however, told her that whatever Mrs. Brigstock’s spirit might originally have been, it had been sharply affected by the sight of Owen. He was essentially a surprise : she had reckoned with everything that concerned him but his presence. With that, in awkward silence, she was reckoning now, as Fleda could see, while she effected with friendly aid an embarrassed transit to the sofa. Owen would be useless, would be deplorable : that aspect of the ease Fleda had taken in as well. Another aspect was that he would admire her, adore her, exactly in proportion as she herself should rise gracefully superior. Fleda felt for the first time free to let herself “ go,” as Mrs. Gereth had said, and she was full of the sense that to “ go ” meant now to aim straight at the effect of moving Owen to rapture at her simplicity and tact. It was her impression that he had no positive dislike of Mona’s mother ; but she could n’t entertain that notion without a glimpse of the implication that he had a positive dislike of Mrs. Brigstock’s daughter. Mona’s mother declined tea, declined a better seat, declined a cushion, declined to remove her boa : Fleda guessed that she had not come on purpose to be dry, but that the voice of the invaded room had itself given her the hint.

“ I just came on the mere chance,” she said. “ Mona found yesterday, somewhere, the card of invitation to your sister’s marriage that you sent us, or your father sent us, some time ago. We could n’t be present, — it was impossible ; but as it had this address on it, I said to myself that I might find you here.”

“ I’m very glad to be at home,” Fleda responded.

“ Yes, that does n’t happen very often, does it ? ” Mrs. Brigstock looked round afresh at Fleda’s home.

“ Oh, I came back from Ricks last week. I shall be here now till I don’t know when.”

“ We thought it very likely you would have come back. We knew, of course, of your having been at Ricks. If I did n’t find you, I thought I might perhaps find Mr. Vetch,” Mrs. Brigstock went on.

“ I’m sorry he ’s out. He ’s always out, — all day long.”

Mrs. .Brigstock’s round eyes grew rounder. “ All day long ? ”

“ All day long,” Fleda smiled.

“ Leaving you quite to yourself ? ”

“ A good deal to myself, but a little, to-day, as you see, to Mr. Gereth,” and the girl looked at Owen to draw him into their sociability. For Mrs. Brigstock he had immediately sat down ; but the movement had not corrected the sombre stiffness taking possession of him at the sight of her. Before he found a response to the appeal addressed to him Fleda turned again to her other visitor. “ Is there any purpose for which you would like my father to call on you ? ”

Mrs. Brigstock received this question as if it were not to be unguardedly answered ; upon which Owen intervened with pale irrelevance : “ I wrote to Mona this morning of Miss Vetch’s being in town; but of course the letter had n’t arrived when you left home.”

“ No, it had n’t arrived. I came up for the night, — I’ve several matters to attend to.” Then looking with an intention of fixedness from one of her companions to the other, “ I ’m afraid I ’ve interrupted your conversation,” Mrs. Brigstock said. She spoke without effectual point, had the air of merely announcing the fact. Fleda had not yet been confronted with the question of the sort of person Mrs. Brigstock was ; she had only been confronted with the question of the sort of person Mrs. Gereth scorned her for being. She was really, somehow, no sort of person at all, and it came home to Fleda that if Mrs. Gereth could see her at this moment she would scorn her more than ever. She had a face of which it was impossible to say anything but that it was pink, and a mind that it would be possible to describe only if one had been able to mark it in that same fashion. As nature had made this organ neither green nor blue nor yellow, there was nothing to know it by : it strayed and bleated like an unbranded sheep. Fleda felt for it at this moment much of the kindness of compassion, for Mrs. Brigstock had brought it with her to do something for her that she regarded as delicate. Fleda was quite prepared to help it to perform, if she should be able to gather what it wanted to do. What she gathered, however, more and more, was that it wanted to do something different from what it had wanted to do in leaving Waterbath.

There was still nothing to enlighten her more specifically in the way her visitor continued: “You must be very much taken up. I believe you quite espouse his dreadful quarrel.”

Fleda vaguely demurred. “ His dreadful quarrel ? ”

“ About, the contents of the house. Are n’t you looking after them for him ? ”

She knows how awfully kind you ’ve been to me, Owen said. He showed such discomfiture that he really gave away their situation ; and Fleda found herself divided between the hope that he would take leave and the wish that he should see the whole of what the occasion might enable her to do for him.

She explained to Mrs. Brigstock:

“ Mrs. Gereth, at Ricks, the other day, asked me particularly to see him for her.”

“ And did she ask you also particularly to see him here in town?” Mrs. Brigstock’s hideous bonnet seemed to argue for the unsophisticated truth; and it was on Fleda’s lips to reply that such had indeed been Mrs. Gereth’s request. But she checked herself, and before she could say anything else Owen had addressed their companion : —

“ I made a point of letting Mona know that I should be here, don’t you see ? That’s exactly what I wrote her this morning.”

“ She would have had no doubt you would be here, if you had a chance,” Mrs. Brigstock returned. “ If your letter had arrived, it might have prepared me for finding you here at tea. In that case I certainly would n’t have come.”

“ I m glad, then, it did n’t arrive. Would n’t you like him to go ? ” Fleda asked.

Mrs. Brigstock looked at Owen and considered : nothing showed in her face but that it turned a deeper pink. “ I should like him to go with me.” There was no menace in her tone, but she evidently knew what she wanted. As Owen made no response to this, Fleda glanced at him to invite him to assent; then, for fear that he would n’t, and would thereby make his case worse, she took upon herself to declare that she was sure he would be very glad to meet such a wish. She had no sooner spoken than she felt that the words had a bad effect of intimacy : she had answered for him as if she had been his wife. Mrs. Brigstock continued to regard him as if she had observed nothing, and she continued to address Fleda: “ I’ve not seen him for a long time, and I’ve particular things to say to him.”

“ So have I things to say to you, Mrs. Brigstock! ” Owen interjected. With this he took up his hat as if for an immediate departure.

The other visitor, meanwhile, turned to Fleda. “ What is Mrs. Gereth going to do ? ”

“ Is that what you came to ask me ? ” Fleda demanded.

“That and several other things.”

“ Then you had much better let Mr. Gereth go, and stay by yourself and make me a pleasant visit. You can talk with him when you like, but it is the first time you ’ve been to see me.”

This appeal had evidently a certain effect; Mrs. Brigstock visibly wavered.

“ I can’t talk with him whenever I like,” she returned ; “ he has n’t been near us since I don’t know when. But there are things that have brought me here.”

“ They are not things of any importance.” Owen, to Fleda’s surprise, suddenly announced. He had not at first taken up Mrs. Brigstock’s expression of a wish to carry him off : Fleda could see that the instinct at the bottom of this was that of standing by her, of seeming not to abandon her. But abruptly, all his soreness working within him, it had struck him that he should abandon her still more if he should leave her to be dealt with by her other visitor. “ You must allow me to say, you know, Mrs. Brigstock, that I don’t think you should come down on Miss Vetch about anything. It’s very good of her to take the smallest interest in us and our horrid little squabble. If you want to talk about it, talk about it with me.” He was flushed with the idea of protecting Fleda, of exhibiting his consideration for her.

“ I don’t like your cross-questioning her, don’t you see ? She’s as straight as a die : I ’ll tell you all about her ! ” he declared, with an excited laugh. “ Please come off with me and let her alone.”

Mrs. Brigstock, at this, became vivid at once; Fleda thought she looked uncommonly queer. She stood straight up, with a peculiar distention of her whole person and of everything in her face but her mouth, which she gathered into a small, tight orifice. Fleda was painfully divided ; her joy was deep within, but it was more relevant to the situation that she should not appear to associate herself with the tone of familiarity in which Owen addressed a lady who had been, and was perhaps still, about to become his mother-in-law. She laid on Mrs. Brigstock’s arm a repressive hand. Mrs. Brigstock, however, had already exclaimed on her having so wonderful a defender, “ He speaks, upon my word, as if I had come here to be rude to you! ”

At this, grasping her hard, Fleda laughed ; then she achieved the exploit of delicately kissing her. “I ’m not in the least afraid to be alone with you, or of your tearing me to pieces. I ’ll answer any question that you can possibly dream of putting to me.”

“ I ’m the proper person to answer Mrs. Brigstock’s questions,” Owen broke in again, “ and I’m not a bit less ready to meet them than you are.” He was firmer than she had ever seen him : it was as if she had not known he could be so firm.

“ But she ’ll only have been here a few minutes. What sort of a visit is that ? “ Fleda cried.

“ It has lasted long enough for my purpose. There was something I wanted to know, but I think I know it now.”

“ Anything you don’t know I dare say I can tell you! ” Owen observed, as he impatiently smoothed his hat with the cuff of his coat.

Fleda by this time desired immensely to keep his companion, but she saw she could do so only at the cost of provoking on his part a further exhibition of the sheltering attitude, which he exaggerated precisely because it was the first thing, since he had begun to “ like her, that he had been able frankly to do for her. It was not in her interest that Mrs. Brigstock should be more struck than she already was with that benevolence. “ There may be things you know that I don’t,” she presently said to her, with a smile. “ But I ’ve a sort of sense that you ’re laboring under some great mistake. ”

Mrs. Brigstock, at this, looked into her eyes more deeply and yearningly than she had supposed Mrs. Brigstock could look ; it was the flicker of a ceitain willingness to give her a chance. Owen, however, quickly spoiled everything. Nothing is more probable than that Mrs. Brigstock is doing what you say ; but there ’s no one in the world to whom you owe an explanation. I may owe somebody one,—I dare say I do; but not you, no ! ”

“ But what if there’s one that it’s no difficulty at all for me to give ? ” Fleda inquired. “ I ‘m sure that’s the only one Mrs. Brigstock came to ask, if she came to ask any at all.”

Again the good lady looked hard at her young hostess. “ I came, I believe, Fleda, just, you know, to plead with you.”

Fleda, with a bright face, hesitated a moment. “ As if I were one of those bad women in a play ? ”

The remark was fatal. Mrs. Brigstock, on whom her brightness was lost, evidently thought it singularly free. She turned away, as from a presence that had really defined itself as objectionable, and Fleda had a vain sense that her good humor, in which there was an idea, was taken for impertinence, or at least for levity. Her allusion was improper, even if she herself was n’t; Mrs. Brigstock’s emotion simplified: it came to the same thing. “ I’m quite ready,” that lady said to Owen, rather mildly and woundedly. “ I do want to speak to you very much.”

“I ’m completely at your service.” Owen held out his hand to Fleda.

“ Good-by, Miss Vetch. I hope to see you again to-morrow.” He opened the door for Mrs. Brigstock, who passed before the girl with an odd, averted salutation. Owen and Fleda, while he stood at the door, then faced each other darkly and without speaking. Their eyes met once more for a long moment, and she was conscious there was something in hers that the darkness did n’t quench, that he had never seen before, and that he was perhaps never to see again. He stayed long enough to take it, — to take it with a sombre stare that just showed the dawn of wonder; then he followed Mrs. Brigstock out of the house.

XVI.

Owen had uttered the hope that he should see her the next day, but Fleda could easily rerlect that he would n’t see her if she were not there to be seen. If there was a thing in the world she desired at that moment, it was that the next day should have no point of resemblance with the day that had just elapsed. She accordingly projected an absence: she would go immediately down to Maggie. She ran out that evening and telegraphed to her sister, and in the morning she quitted London by an early train. She required for this step no reason but the sense of necessity. It was a strong personal need ; she wished to interpose something, and there was nothing she could interpose but distance, but time. If Mrs. Brigstock had to deal with Owen, she would allow Mrs. Brigstock the chance. To be there, to be in the midst of it, was the reverse of what she craved ; she had already been more in the midst of it than had ever entered into her plan. At any rate, she had renounced her plan; she had no plan now but the plan of separation. This was to abandon Owen, to give up the fine office of helping him back to his own ; but when she had undertaken that office she had not foreseen that Mrs. Gereth would defeat it by a manœuvre so simple. The scene at her father’s rooms had extinguished all offices, and the scene at her father’s rooms was of Mrs. Gereth’s producing. Owen, at all events, must now act for himself: he had obligations to meet, he had satisfactions to give, and Fleda fairly ached with the wish that he might be equal to them. She never knew the extent of her tenderness for him till she became conscious of the present force of her desire that he should be superior, be perhaps even sublime. She obscurely made out that superiority, that sublimity, might n’t after all be fatal. She closed her eyes, and lived for a day or two in the mere beauty of confidence. It was with her on the short journey ; it was with her at Maggie’s; it glorified the mean little house in the stupid little town. Owen had grown larger to her: he would do, like a man, whatever he should have to do. He would n’t be weak, — not as she was : she herself was weak, exceedingly.

Arranging her few possessions in Maggie’s fewer receptacles, she caught a glimpse of the bright side of the fact that her old things were not such a problem as Mrs. Gereth’s. Picking her way with Maggie through the local puddles, diving with her into smelly cottages, and supporting her, at smellier shops, in firmness over the weight of joints and the taste of cheese, it was still her own secret that was universally interwoven. In the puddles, the cottages, the shops, she was comfortably alone with it; that comfort prevailed even while, at the evening meal, her brother-in-law invited her attention to a diagram, drawn with a fork on too soiled a tablecloth, of the scandalous drains of the Convalescent Home. To be alone with it she had come away from Ricks; and now she knew that to be alone with it she had come away from London. This advantage was of course menaced, but not immediately destroyed, by the arrival, on the second day, of the note she had been sure she would receive from Owen. He had gone to West Kensington and found her flown, but he had got her address from the little maid, and then hurried to a club and written to her. “ Why have you left me just when I want you most? ” be demanded. The next words, it was true, were more reassuring on the question of his steadiness. “ I don’t know what your reason may be,” they went on, “ nor why you’ve not left a line for me ; but I don’t think you can feel that I did anything yesterday that it was n’t right for me to do. As regards Mrs. Brigstock, certainly I just felt what was right, and I did it. She had no business whatever to attack you that way, and I should have been ashamed if I had left her there to worry you. I won’t have you worried by any one ; no one shall be disagreeable to you but me. I did n’t mean to be so yesterday, and I don’t today ; but I’m perfectly free now to want you, and I want you much more than you’ve allowed me to explain. You’ll see if I ’m not all right, if you ’ll let me come to you. Don’t be afraid, — I ’ll not hurt you nor trouble you. I give you my honor I ’ll not hurt any one. Only I must see you, on what I had to say to Mrs. B. She was nastier than I thought she could be, but I ’m behaving like an angel. I assure you I’m all right, — that’s exactly what I want you to see. You owe me something, you know, for what you said you would do and haven’t done; what your departure without a word gives me to understand — doesn’t it ? — that you definitely can’t do. Don’t simply forsake me. See me, if you only see me once. I shan’t wait for any leave, — I shall come down to-morrow.

I’ve been looking into trains, and find there’s something that will bring me down just after lunch, and something very good for getting me back. I won’t stop long. For God’s sake, be there.”

This communication arrived in the morning, but Fleda would still have had time to wire a protest. She debated on that alternative; then she read the note over, and found in one phrase an exact statement of her duty. Owen’s simplicity had expressed it, and her subtlety had nothing to answer. She owed him something for her obvious failure, and what she owed him was to receive him. If indeed she had known he would make this attempt, she might have been held to have gained nothing by her flight. Well, she had gained what she had gained, — she had gained the interval. She had no compunction for the greater trouble she should give the young man ; it was now doubtless right that he should have as much trouble as possible. Maggie, who thought she was in her confidence, but was not, had reproached her for having left Mrs. Gereth, and Maggie was just in this proportion gratified to hear of the visitor with whom, early in the afternoon, she would have to ask to be left alone. Maggie liked to see far, and now she could sit upstairs and rake the whole future. She had known that, as she familiarly said, there was something the matter with Fieda, and the value of that knowledge was augmented by the fact that there was apparently also something the matter with Mr. Gereth.

Fleda, downstairs, learned soon enough what this was. It was simply that, as he announced the moment he stood before her, he was now all right. When she asked him what he meant by that, he replied that he meant he could practically regard himself henceforth as a free man ; he had had, at West Kensington, as soon as they got into the street, such a horrid scene with Mrs. Brigstock.

“ I knew what she wanted to say to me : that ’s why I was determined to get her off. I knew I should n’t like it, but I was perfectly prepared,” said Owen.

“ She brought it out as soon as we got round the corner; she asked me pointblank if I was in love with you.”

“ And what did you say to that ? ”

“ That it was none of her business.”

“ Ah, “ said Fieda, “ I ’m not so sure ! ”

“ Well, I am, and I’m the person most concerned. Of course I did n’t use just those words: I was perfectly civil, quite as civil as she. But I told her I did n’t consider she had a right to put me any such question. I said I was n’t sure that even Mona had, with the extraordinary line, you know, that Mona has taken. At any rate, the whole thing, the way I put it, was between Mona and me ; and between Mona and me, if she did n’t mind, it would just have to remain.”

Fleda was silent a little. “ All that did n’t answer her question.”

“ Then you think I ought to have told her?”

Again our young lady reflected. “ I think I ’m rather glad you did n’t.”

“ I knew what I was about,” said Owen. “ It did n’t strike me that she had the least right to come down on us that way and ask for explanations.”

Fleda looked very grave, weighing the whole matter. “ I dare say that when she started, when she arrived, she did n’t mean to ‘ come down,’ ”

“ What then did she mean to do? ”

“ What she said to me just before she went: she meant to plead with me.”

“ Oh, I heard her ! ” said Owen. “ But plead with you for what ? ”

“ For you, of course, — to entreat me to give you up. She thinks me awfully designing, — that I’ve taken some sort of possession of you,”

Owen stared. “ You have n’t lifted a finger ! It’s I who have taken possession.”

“ Very true, you’ve done it all yourself.” Fleda spoke gravely and gently, without a breath of coquetry. “ But those are shades between which she’s probably not obliged to distinguish. It’s enough for her that we ’re singularly intimate.”

I am, but you ’re not! ’ Owen exclaimed.

Fleda gave a dim smile. “ You make me at least feel that I’m learning to know you very well when I hear you say such a thing as that. Mrs. Brigstock came to get round me, to supplicate me,” she went on ; “ but to find you there, looking so much at home, paying me a friendly call, and shoving the tea-things about, that was too much for her patience. She does n’t know, you see, that I ’m after all a decent girl. She simply made up her mind on the spot that I’m a very bad case.”

“ I could n’t stand the way she treated you, and that was what I had to say to her,” Owen returned.

“ She’s simple and slow, but she ’s not a fool: I think she treated me, on the whole, very well.” Fleda remembered how Mrs. Gereth had treated Mona when the Brigstocks came down to Poynton.

Owen evidently thought her painfully perverse. “It was you who carried it off; you behaved like a brick. And so did I, I consider. If you only knew the difficulty I had! I told her you were the noblest and straightest of women.”

“ That can hardly have removed her impression that there are things I put you up to.”

“ It did n’t,” Owen replied, with candor. “ She said our relation, yours and mine, isn’t innocent”

“ What did she mean by that? ”

“ As you may suppose, I particularly inquired. Do you know what she had the cheek to tell me?” Owen asked.

“ She did n’t better it much : she said she meant that it’s excessively unnatural.”

Fleda considered afresh. “Well, it is ! ” she brought out at last.

“ Then, upon my honor, it’s only you who make it so! ” Her perversity was distinctly too much for him. “ I mean you make it so by the way you keep me off.”

“ Have I kept you off to-day ? ” Fleda sadly shook her head, raising her arms a little and dropping them.

Her gesture of resignation gave him a pretext for catching at her hand, but before he could take it she had put it behind her. They had been seated together on Maggie’s single sofa, and her movement brought her to her feet, while Owen, looking at her reproachfully, leaned back in discouragement. “ What good does it do me to be here, when I find you only a stone ?”

She met his eyes with all the tenderness she had not yet uttered, and she had not known till this moment how great was the accumulation. “ Perhaps, after all.” she risked, “there may be, even in a stone, still some little help for you.”

Owen sat there a minute staring at her. “ Ah, you ’re beautiful, more beautiful than any one,” he broke out, “but I’ll be hanged if I can ever understand you ! On Tuesday, at your father’s, you were beautiful, — as beautiful, just before I left, as you are at this instant. But the next day, when I went back, I found it had apparently meant nothing; and now again, that you let me come here and you shine at me like an angel, it does n’t bring you an inch nearer to saying what I want you to say.” He remained a moment longer in the same position, then he jerked himself up.

“ What I want you to say is that you like me, — what I want you to say is that you pity me.” He sprang up and came to her. “ What I want you to say is that you ’ll save me ! ”

Fleda hesitated. “ Why do you need saving, when you announced to me just now that you ’re a free man ? ”

He too hesitated, but he was not checked. “ It’s just for the reason that I ’m free. Don’t you know what I mean, Miss Vetch ? I want you to marry me.”

Fleda, at this, put out her hand in charity ; she held his own, which quickly grasped it a moment, and if he had described her as shining at him, it may be assumed that she shone all the more in her deep, still smile. “ Let me hear a little more about your freedom first,”she said. “ I gather that Mrs. Brigstock was not wholly satisfied with the way you disposed of her question.”

“ I dare say she was n’t. But the less she’s satisfied, the more I ’m free.”

“ What bearing have her feelings, pray?” Fleda asked.

“ Why, Mona ’s much worse than her mother. She wants much more to give me up.”

“Then why does n’t she do it

“ She will, as soon as her mother gets home and tells her.”

“ Tells her what?” Fleda inquired.

“ Why, that I ’m in love with you! ”

Fleda debated. “Are you so very sure she will ? ”

“ Certainly I’m sure, with all the evidence I already have. That will finish her ! ” Owen declared.

This made his companion thoughtful again. “ Can you take such pleasure in her being ‘finished,’ a poor girl you’ve once loved? ”

Owen waited long enough to take in the question; then, with a serenity startling even to her knowledge of his nature, “ I don’t think I can have really loved her, you know,” he replied.

Fleda broke into a laugh, which gave him a surprise as visible as the emotion it testified to. “ Then how am I to know that you ‘ really ’ love — anybody else ? ”

“ Oh, I ’ll show you that! ” said Owen.

“ I must take it on trust,” the girl pursued. “ And what if Mona does n’t give you up ? ” she added.

Owen was baffled but a few seconds ; he had thought of everything. “ Why, that’s just where you come in.”

“To save you? I see. You mean I must get rid of her for you.” His blankness showed for a little that he felt the chill of her cold logic ; but as she waited for his rejoinder, she knew which of them it cost most. He gasped a minute, and that gave her time to say, “You see, Mr. Owen, how impossible it is to talk of such things yet! ”

Like lightning he had grasped her arm. “You mean you will talk of them?” Then, as he began to take the flood of assent from her eyes, “You will listen to me ? Oh, you dear, you dear, when, when ? ”

“ Ah, when it is n’t mere misery ! ” The words had broken from her in a sudden, loud cry, and what next happened was that the very sound of her pain upset her. She heard her own true note ; she turned short away from him ; in a moment she had burst into sobs ; in another his arms were round her ; the next she had let herself go so far that even Mrs. Gereth might have seen it. He clasped her, and she gave herself, — she poured out her tears on his breast; something prisoned and pent throbbed and gushed ; something deep and sweet surged up, — something that came from far within and far off, that had begun with the sight of him in his indifference, and had never had rest since then. The surrender was short, but the relief was long : she felt his lips upon her face and his arms tighten with his full divination. What she did, what she had done, she scarcely knew: she only was aware, as she broke from him again, of what had taken place in his own quick breast. What had taken place was that, with the click of a spring, he saw. He had cleared the high wall at a bound ; they were together without a veil. She had not a shred of a secret left; it was as if a whirlwind had come and gone, laying low the great false front that she had built up stone by stone. The strangest thing of all was the momentary sense of desolation.

“ Ah, all the while you cared ? ” Owen read the truth with a wonder so great that it was visibly almost a sadness, a terror caused by his sudden perception of where the impossibility was not. That made it all perhaps elsewhere.

“ I cared, I cared, I cared ! ” Fleda moaned it as defiantly as if she were confessing a misdeed. "• How could n’t I care ? But you must n’t, you must never, never ask ! It is n’t for us to talk about! ” she insisted. “ Don’t speak of it, don’t speak ! ”

It was easy indeed not to speak when the difficulty was to find words. He clasped his hands before her as he might have clasped them at an altar ; his pressed palms shook together while he held his breath, and while she stilled herself in the effort to come round again to the real and the right. He helped this effort, soothing her into a seat with a touch as light us if she had really been something sacred. She sank into a chair, and he dropped before her on his knees ; she fell hack with closed eyes, and he buried his face in her lap. There was no way to thank her but this act of prostration, which lasted, in silence, till she laid consenting hands on him, touched his head and stroked it, held it in her tenderness while he acknowledged his long density. He made the avowal seem only his,— made her, when she rose again, raise him at last, softly, as if from the abasement of shame. If in each other’s eyes now, however, they saw the truth, this truth, to Fleda, looked harder even than before, — all the harder that when, at the very moment she recognized it, he murmured to her ecstatically, in fresh possession of her hands, which he drew up to his breast, holding them tight there with both his own, “ I’m saved,

I ’m saved, — I am ! I’m ready for anything. I have your word. Come ! he cried, as if from the sight of a response slower than he needed, and in the tone he so often had of a great boy at a great game.

She had once more disengaged herself, with the private vow that he should n’t yet touch her again. It was all too horribly soon, — her sense of this was rapidly surging back. “ We must n’t talk, we must n’t talk ; we must wait ! ” she intensely insisted. “ I don’t know what you mean by your freedom ; I don’t see it, I don’t feel it. Where is it yet, where, your freedom t If it’s real there s plenty of time, and if it is n’t there’s more than enough. I hate myself,”she protested, “ for having anything to say about her : it, ’s like ‘ waiting for dead men’s shoes ’ ! What business is it of mine what she does ? She has her own trouble and her own plan. It s too hideous to watch her and count on her !

Owen’s face, at this, showed a reviving dread, the fear of some darksome process of her mind. “ If you speak for yourself I can understand, but why is it hideous for me ? ”

“ Oh, I mean for myself ! ” Fleda said impatiently.

“ I watch her, I count on her: how can I do anything else ? If I count on her to let me definitely know how we stand, I do nothing in life but what she herself has led straight up to. I never thought of asking you to ‘ get rid of her for me, and I never would have spoken to you if I had n’t held that I am rid of her, that she has backed out of the whole thing. Did n’t she do so from the moment she began to put it off ? I had already applied for the license ; the very invitations were half addressed. Who but she, all of a sudden, demanded an unnatural wait? It was none of my doing ;

I had never dreamed of anything but coming up to the scratch.” Owen grew more and more lucid, and more confident of the effect of his lucidity. “ She called it ‘ taking a stand,’ to see what mother would do. I told her mother would do what I would make her do ; and to that she replied that she would like to see me make her first. I said I would arrange that everything should be all right, and she said she really preferred to arrange it herself. It was a flat refusal to trust me in the smallest degree. Why then had she pretended so tremendously to care for me ? And of course, at present,” said Owen, “ she trusts me, if possible, still less.”

Fleda paid this statement the homage of a minute’s muteness. “ As to that, naturally, she has reason.”

“Why on earth has she reason ? “ Then, as his companion, moving away, simply threw up her hands, “ I never looked at you — not to call looking — till she had regularly driven me to it,” he went on. “ I know what I ’m about.

I do assure you I ’m all right ! ”

“You’re not all right, — you’re all wrong! ” cried Fleda in despair. “ You mustn’t stay here, you must n’t I ” she repeated, with clear decision. “You make me say dreadful things, and I feel as if I made you say them.” But before he could reply she took it up in another tone : “ Why in the world, if everything had changed, did n’t you break off ? ”

“ I ” — The inquiry seemed to have moved him to stupefaction. “ Can you ask me that question, when I only wanted to please you? Did n t you seem to show me, in your wonderful way, that that was exactly how ? I did n’t break off just on purpose to leave it to her. I did n’t break off so that there should n’t be a thing to be said against me.”

The instant after her challenge Fleda had faced him again in self-reproof. “ There is n’t a thing to be said against you, and I don’t know what nonsense you make me talk ! You have pleased me, and you’ve been right and good, and it’s the only comfort, and you must go. Everything must come from Mona, and if it does n’t come we’ve said entirely too much. You must leave me alone — forever ! ”

“Forever ? ” Owen gasped.

“ I mean unless everything is different.”

“ Everything is different — when I know ! ”

Fleda winced at what he knew ; she made a wild gesture which seemed to whirl it out of the room. The mere allusion was like another embrace. “ You know nothing — and you must go and wait ! You must n’t break down at this point.”

He looked about him and took up his hat : it was as if, in spite of frustration, he had got the essence of what he wanted, and could afford to agree with her to the extent of keeping up the forms. He covered her with his fine, simple smile, but made no other approach. “ Oh, I’m so awfully happy ! ” he exclaimed.

She hesitated : she would only be impeccable, even though she should have to be sententious. “ You ’ll be happy if you ’re perfect! ” she risked.

He laughed out at this, and she wondered if, with a new-born acuteness, he saw the absurdity of her speech, and that no one was happy just because no one could be what she so lightly prescribed.

“ I don’t pretend to be perfect, but I shall find a letter to-night ! ”

“ So much the better, if it’s the kind of one you desire ! ” That was the most she could say, and having made it sound as dry as possible, she lapsed into a silence so pointed as to deprive him of all pretext for not leaving her. Still he stood there, playing with his hat. Suddenly she asked, “ When did you say Mrs. Brigstock was to have gone back ? ” Owen stared. “ To Waterbath ? She was to have spent the night in town, don’t you know ? But when she left me after our talk, I said to myself that she would take an evening train. I know I made her want to get home.”

“ Where did you separate ? ” Fleda asked.

“ At the West Kensington station,— she was going to Victoria. I had walked with her there, and our talk was all on the way.”

Fleda pondered a moment. “If she did go back that night, you would have heard from Waterbath by this time.”

I don t know,” said Owen. “I thought I might hear this morning.”

“ She can’t have gone back,” Fleda declared. “ Mona would have written on the spot.”

” Oh yes, she will have written bang off ! ” Owen cheerfully conceded.

Fleda thought again. “Then, even in the event of her mother’s not having got home till the morning, you would have had your letter at the latest to-day. You see she has had plenty of time.”

Owen hesitated ; then, “ Oh, she’s all right!” he laughed. “I go by Mrs. Brigstock’s certain effect on her, — the effect of the temper the old lady showed when we parted. Do you know what she asked me ? “ he sociably continued.

“ She asked me in a kind of nasty manner if I supposed you ‘ really ’ cared anything about me. Of course I told her I supposed you did n’t, — not a solitary rap. I low could I suppose you do, with your extraordinary ways? It doesn’t matter ; I could see she thought I lied.”

“ You should have told her, you know, that I had seen you in town only that one time,” Fleda observed.

“ By Jove, I did, — for you ! It was only for you.”

Something in this touched the girl so that for a moment she could not trust herself to speak. “ You ’re an honest man,”she said simply, at last. She had gone to the door and opened it. “ Good-by.”

Even yet, however, Owen hung back.

“ But even if there’s no letter “ — he began. He began, but there he left it.

“ You mean, even if she does n t let you off ? Ah, you ask me too much ! “ Fleda spoke from the tiny hall, where she had taken refuge between the old barometer and the old mackintosh. “ There are things too utterly for yourselves alone. How can I tell? What do I know? Good-by, good-by ! If she does n’t let you off, it will be because she is attached to you.”

“She’s not, she’s not: there’s nothing in it! Does n’t a fellow know ? — except with you ! ” Owen ruefully added. With this he came out of the room, lowering his voice to secret supplication, pleading with her really to meet him on the ground of the negation of Mona. It was this betrayal of his need of support and sanction that made her retreat, harden herself in the effort to save what might remain of all she had given, given probably for nothing. The very vision of him as he thus morally clung to her was the vision of a weakness somewhere in the core of his bloom, a blessed manly weakness, of which, if she had only the valid right, it would be all a sweetness to take care. She faintly sickened, however, with the sense that there was as yet no valid right poor Owen could give. “You can take it from my honor, you know,” he whispered, “ that she loathes me.”

Fleda had stood clutching the knob of Maggie’s little painted stair-rail; she took, on the stairs, a step backward. “ Why then does n’t she prove it in the only clear way ? ”

“ She has proved it. Will you believe it if you see the letter? ”

“ I don’t want to see any letter,” said Fleda. “ You’ll miss your train.”

Facing him, waving him away, she had taken another upward step ; but he sprang to the side of the stairs, and brought his hand, above the banister, down hard on her wrist. “ Do you mean to tell me that I must marry a woman I hate ? ”

From her step she looked down into his raised face. “ Ah, you see it’s not true that you ’re free ! ” She seemed almost to exult. “ It ’s not true, it ’s not true ! ”

He only, at this, like a buffeting swimmer, gave a shake of his head and repeated his question : “ Do you mean to tell me I must marry such a woman ? ” Fleda hesitated ; he held her fast. “ No. Anything is better than that.”

“ Then, in God ’s name, what must I do ? ”

“ You must settle that with her. You must n’t break faith. Anything is better than that. You must at any rate be utterly sure. She must love you, — how can she help it? I would n’t give you up! ” said Fleda. She spoke in broken bits, panting out her words. “ The great thing is to keep faith. Where is a man if he does n’t ? If he does n’t, he may be so cruel. So cruel, so cruel, so cruel ! “ Fleda repeated. “ I could n t have a hand in that, you know : that’s my position,— that’s mine. You offered her marriage: it’s a tremendous thing for her.” Then looking at him another moment, “ I would n’t give you up ! ” she said again. With a quick dip of her face she reached his hand with her lips, pressing them to the back of it with a force that doubled the force of her words. “ Never, never, never ! ” she cried ; and, scrambling up the stairs, got away from him even faster than she had got away from him at Ricks.

Henry James.