He was reading a letter in the bold, firm handwriting of Elizabeth Carr.

    "Dear Mr Quain," she wrote, "I don't think I ever thanked you for the article you wrote of our day in the forest with the children. I asked Kenneth to tell you how glad I was, but I expect he forgot all about it. I think your article was most sympathetic, though I wish you hadn't made quite so much of that unfortunate child who was dressed so grotesquely. I will tell you what I mean when I see you, for I am writing to know if you can come to dinner here. I'm sorry Kenneth won't be able to come—he's away in Lancashire on that dreadful strike. Thank Heaven—he'll be leaving it all soon."

There was a postscript.

    "Of course, I know the nature of your work will not let you say 'yes' definitely, but I've made the day Saturday, on purpose to give you a chance. And if I don't have a wire from you, I shall expect you."

It was quite a month since he had spent that day in Loughton with Elizabeth Carr, and though he could not name offhand the things he had done since then, day by day, that day and its incidents remained sharply defined in his memory.

Had he really taken more than usual care to write his account of their doings? Or, was it that the vision of her, and the recollection of her earnest eyes, inspired him to better work? Or, had there been nothing very[229] special about the story after all, and was her letter merely a courtesy?

The fact remained that he was flattered to receive the letter with its invitation. Kenneth had certainly forgotten to deliver her message. He looked upon it as something of a triumph for him: very patiently he had waited for a word from Elizabeth Carr.

There was that extraordinary remark of hers when he had watched the children sing their grace. He had asked her what she meant by it, and she had declined to say. He had felt humiliated by her words: did she imagine that he had no heart at all? She seemed to think that because he was a reporter on a halfpenny paper, he must be absolutely callous.

He re-read the letter. She was curiously captious. She seemed ready to take offence now because he had made a "story" out of that wretched child clad in its mother's cape and bedraggled blouse. Well, of course, she wasn't a journalist. She couldn't be expected to see human interest from the same point of view as The Day. He wrote, accepting her invitation provisionally.

In the days that followed, thoughts of Elizabeth Carr recurred with disturbing persistency. He recalled the odd way in which she had come into his life: first at that evening at the Wrattens, when Lilian Filmer had been his foremost thought, then, intermittently, at Kenneth Carr's, something unusually antagonistic in her attitude to him; and now she had come into the heart of his work, bringing with her a touch of intimacy. She, who had always averted herself from him, was now asking him to be her guest.

She, who had always seemed to ignore him, was, of a sudden, extending towards him tentacles of influence, vague and shadowy; he was uneasily aware of their presence.

He read her letter several times before the Saturday[230] came—the gentle perfume of it reminded him of her own fragrance. He was sensitive to praise and appreciation, and he dwelt often on those words which spoke of his work. It was pleasant to know that he had at last shown Elizabeth Carr what he could do. She was, he knew, judging him always by Kenneth's standard, in life as well as writing, and of course every one knew that Kenneth's ideals were high, that his writing was brilliant.... So Kenneth was going to leave Fleet Street. It was the first that Humphrey had heard of it. "I shall have to chuck it," Kenneth had said, and he was going to keep his word. He contemplated the prospect with melancholy. Kenneth was a good friend; his departure would leave an intolerable gap in London life. The chats and the evening meetings would be gone.... They would pass out of each other's daily life....

Thus Saturday came, and Humphrey found himself free to carry out his acceptance of Elizabeth's invitation.

Humphrey had always imagined that Elizabeth lived in a flat with some woman-friend: he was surprised when he found the address led to a little white house, one of a row of such houses, in a broad, peaceful road at the back of Kensington High Street. It was one of those houses that must have been built when Kensington was a village; it was like a cottage in the heart of London. The Virginian creeper made its drapery of green over the trellis-work that framed the window, and the walls were green with ivy. An elderly woman opened the door to his knock, and he found himself in a low-ceilinged hall, with a few black-and-white drawings on the walls, and a reproduction of Whistler's Nocturne.

He was ushered into the sitting-room. Even if he had not known that it was her house, he could have chosen this room, out of all the rooms in London, as the room of Elizabeth Carr. Wherever he looked, he found a reflex of her peace and gentle calm.

[231]

In the few moments of waiting he took in all the details of the room: the soft-toned wall-paper, with a woodland frieze of blue and delicate shades of green, the old Japanese prints on the walls, and the little leather-bound books on the tables here and there. He had sat so many times in the rooms of different people whom he went to interview, that his observation had trained itself mechanically to notice such details. He heard a rustle on the stairs, the door opened gently, and Elizabeth Carr came into the room.

She looked as beautiful as a picture in the frame of her own room. So had he imagined her, her hair looped back from its centre parting piled in gleaming coils just above the nape of her neck, leaving its delicate outline unbroken; a long necklet of amethysts made a mauve rivulet against the whiteness of her bosom till it fell in a festoon over her bodice, and blended with the colour of her dress, amethystine itself. And in her hair there gleamed a comb beaten by a Norwegian goldsmith, and set with moonstone and chrysoprase.

She came forward to greet him, moving with the subtle grace of womanhood. Her charm, her frank beauty, filled him with a peculiar sense of unworthiness and embarrassment. Before the wonder of her, before the purity of her, everything else in life seemed incomprehensibly sordid.

"I am so glad you were able to come," she said. She looked him in the eyes as she spoke, and there was this, he noticed, about Elizabeth Carr: she meant every word she said—even the most trivial of greetings took on significance when she uttered them. Her words gave him confidence.

"It was good of you to ask me...." There was a slight pause. "I nearly missed the house," he said with an inconsequential smile. "I always thought you lived in a flat."

[232]

"Did you?" she replied. "Oh no!—(Do sit down—I'm expecting some more visitors shortly.) I've had this house for a long time." She sighed. "It's an inheritance, you know, and I thought I'd live in it myself, instead of letting it. Kenneth and I have dreadful squabbles—he says it's too far out for him, and wants me to keep a flat with him in town—and I loathe flats. I've got a small garden at the back, and it's blessed in the summer. There's a walnut tree and a pear tree just wide enough apart to hold a hammock."

"A hammock in London!" cried Humphrey; "I envy you! Think of our Clifford's Inn."

"I really don't know how you people can live on the doorsteps of your offices. I'm sure it's not good for you. Anyway, Kenneth's giving it up."

"I hadn't heard of it before your letter."

"It was only settled a few days ago. Grahams, the publishers, liked his last book well enough to offer him a good advance; and the book's sold in America—he's got enough to get a year's start in the country, and so he's going down there to write only the things he wants to."

Humphrey smiled in his cocksure way. "Aha! he'll soon get sick of it, Miss Carr."

Elizabeth Carr's fingers strayed into the loops of her amethyst necklace; the light shone on the violet and blue gems as she gathered them into a little heap, and let them fall again. Her brows hinted at a frown for a moment, and then they became level again.

"Nothing would make you give up Fleet Street, I suppose?" she asked.

"No ... the fever's in me," he said. "I couldn't live without it."

"Are you so wrapped up in it?"

"Well," said Humphrey, "I suppose I am. It's rather fine, you know, the way things are done. You[233] ought to go through a newspaper office and see it at work ... all sorts of people, each of them working daily with only one aim—to-morrow's paper...."

"And you never think of the day when Ferrol doesn't want you any more?"
............