They were crossing the hotel foyer, when something caught her attention. Without explanation, she darted from his side. Thinking she had seen a friend, he did not follow at first. She made straight for the news-stand; picking up a magazine, she commenced skimming its pages. He strolled over and peered across her shoulder.

“The Theatre! Something in it that you want? Shall I buy it for you?”

She did not seem to hear him. He touched her hand, repeating his question. For answer she turned back to the cover-design. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

He recognized the stooping face and the vague hypnotic smile that he had seen in the many photographs that decorated the walls of the apartment.

“Don’t know about wonderful,” he said carelessly; “she’s all right.”

“All right!” Desire frowned her restrained annoyance. “No one who knows anything about Fluffy would call her ‘all right.’ She’s wonderful. I adore her.”

He chuckled. He hadn’t wakened to the enormity of his offense. “You’re a curious girl Surely you, of all persons, don’t want me to adore her?”

Her frown did not lighten.

“Shall I buy it for you, Princess? You can glance through it while we’re waiting for our meal to be served.”

She ignored his offer and drew out her purse. As they turned away she said, “If you’d liked her, I’d have allowed you to pay for it.”

“But why should I like her? I’ve never met her. You talk as though I detested her.”

“You do. And I know why. You’re jealous.”

Again her daring truthfulness took away his breath. She had discovered something so latent in his mind that he hadn’t owned it to himself. He was jealous of Fluffy—just as jealous as if she had been a man. He resented her power to whisk Desire from his side. He dreaded lest she had occupied so much of the girl’s capacity for loving that nothing worth having was left He suspected that the use of powder, the trivial views of marriage, the passion to go upon the stage were all results of her influence. It wasn’t natural that a girl of twenty should focus all her dreams on an older woman. She should be picturing the arrival of Prince Charming, of a home and the graciousness of little children.

Desire lifted to him a face grown magically free from cloud. “That wasn’t at all nice of me—not one bit ladylike. After all, I am your guest.”

Did she say it out of sweet revenge? It was as though she had told him, “I keep my friendships in separate watertight compartments. To-day it’s your turn to be taken but. To-morrow I shall lock you away and remember some one else.” It hurt, this polite intimation of his standing. He wanted to be everything to her—to feel all that she felt, to know her as his very self. To him she was his entire life. And she—she was satisfied to term herself his guest.

She led the way as they entered the grill-room. Heads were turned and glances exchanged, in the usual tribute to her beauty. The orchestra was still madly twanging. Between tables in the centre, a space had been cleared that two paid artistes might give exhibitions of the latest dance-steps. When they rested, the diners took their places and did their best to copy their example. Doors and windows were open. In lulls, while the musicians mopped their foreheads, the better music drifted in of waves breaking and the long sigh of receding surge. They took their seats in a sunlit corner, a little retired, to which they were piloted by a discreet and perspiring waiter. As Desire examined the mena he inquired, “What will madam have?” To every order that she gave he murmured, “Yes, madam. Certainly, madam.”

When he had left, she glanced mischievously across at Teddy. “Why did he call me that?” She knew the answer, but it amused her to embarrass him.

“Because—obviously, he thought we were married.”

“Married!” She was pulling off her gloves. “I shan’t be married for ages—perhaps never. I expect he thought we were married because we looked so separate—so uninterested.”

She didn’t speak again till she had satisfied herself, by means of the pocket-mirror, that no irreparable ruin had befallen her pretty face since the last inspection. Her action seemed prompted by childish curiosity rather than by vanity. It was as though when she saw her own beauty, she saw it with amazement as belonging to another person. It made him think of the first sight he had had of her: a small girl kneeling beside the edge of a fountain and stooping to kiss her own reflection. He remembered her clasped hands and dismay when her lips had disturbed the water’s surface, and her image had vanished.

The examination ended, she gazed at him thoughtfully. “I’ve still to tell you about that—the thing for which I’ve to ask your forgiveness. Shall I tell you now?—No. It’s about Fluffy, and——” Her finger went up to her mouth.

“We don’t agree on Fluffy. And we’ve neither of us recovered from our last—— Was it a quarrel?” She coaxed him with her smile, as though he were insisting that it was. “Not quite a quarrel. Not as bad as that I expect you and I’ll always have to be forgiving. I have a feeling—But you’ll always forgive me, won’t you?” Before he could answer, she leant companionably across the table, “Do you believe in romance? I don’t.”

His sense of humor was touched. One minute she rapped him over the knuckles as though he were a tiny, misbehaving boy, the next it was she who was young and he who was elderly.

“You’re irresistible.”

“Ah!” She gave a pleased little sigh. “When I choose to be fascinating—yes. D’you think the waiter would call me madam, if he could see me now? But tell me, do you believe in romance?”

“Believe in romance!” He felt her slippered foot touching his beneath the table. “I couldn’t look at you and not believe in it. Everything that’s ever happened to you and me is romance: the way Hal and Farmer Joseph brought me to you; the way we met in the dead of night at Glastonbury; and now—— I’ve come like a troubadour as far as Columbus, just to be near you. Isn’t that romance? Romance is like happiness; it’s in the heart It doesn’t shine into you; it shines out Even those people over there, hopping about to rag-time, they don’t seem vulgar; they become romance when you and I watch them.”

“But they’re not vulgar.” She spoke on the defensive. “If you could turkey-trot, I’d be one of them. Oh, dear, what an awful lot of things you disapprove of. I’ll have to make a list of them. There! You see——” She spread out her appealing hands. “I’m being horrid again. I can’t help it.” The babies crept into her eyes. “I’m not the girl you think me. I’m really not.”

The slippered foot beneath the table had withdrawn itself.

“You’re better,” he whispered. “You’re unexpected. None of my magic cloaks fit you. You’re surprising. A man likes to be surprised.”

She refused to look at him. With her chin tucked in the palm of her hand, she gazed listlessly to where the dancers whirled and glided. When she spoke, her voice sounded tired, as if with long contending.

“Why won’t you be disillusioned? Every time I show you a fault, you turn it into a virtue. From the moment we met, I’ve acted as selfishly as I knew how; and yet you still follow, follow, follow. Don’t you ever lose your temper? You can’t really like me.”

To her bewilderment a great wave of gladness swept into his eyes. At last he had stumbled on the hidden forethought that lurked behind all her omissions of kindness. She had been trying to save him from herself. In the light of this new interpretation, every grievance that he had harbored became an infidelity. He stretched out his hand, as though unconsciously, till the tips of his fingers were just touching hers.

“I shall always follow, and follow, and follow. I shall know now that, even when you’re trying to be cross, it only means that you’re——”

What it would only mean he didn’t tell her; at that moment the waiter returned.

When the covers had been removed from the dishes and they had something to distract them from their own intensity, the gayety of the rag-time caught them.

She flashed a friendly glance at him. “We’re always getting back to that old subject, like sitting hens to a nest.”

“We hadn’t got there quite.”

She pursed her lips judiciously. “Perhaps not quite. Wouldn’t it be safer to talk of something else?”

“About what? I can’t think of anything but you, Princess.”

She clapped her hands. “Splendid. Let’s talk about me. You start.”

He bent forward, smiling into her eyes, grateful for the chance. “There’s so much to tell. All day I’ve been making discoveries. I’ve found out that you’re half-a-dozen persons—not just the one person whom I thought you, Desire. Sometimes you’re Joan of Arc, with dreams in your eyes and your hands lying idly in your lap. Sometimes you’re Nell Gwynn, utterly unshockable and up to any naughtiness. That’s the way you are now—the way I like you best. And sometimes you’re a faery’s child, a Belle Dame Sans Merci, a beautiful witch-girl, who won’t come into my life and won’t let me forge.”

She became extraordinarily interested. At last he had absorbed her attention. “That Belle Dam whatever you call her, she sounds rather lurid. Tell me about her.”

All through the meal, to the alternate thunder of the sea and the jiggling accompaniment of rag-time, he told her. How La Belle Dame Sans Merci lay in wait in woodlands to tempt knights aside from their quests and, when she had made them love her, left them spell-bound and unsatisfied. They forgot time and place as they talked. The old trustful intimacy held them hanging on each other’s words. They were children again in the meadows at Ware, hiding from Farmer Joseph; only now Farmer Joseph was their fear of their own shyness.

“I did something last summer,” he said; “it was just before I met you. Perhaps it’ll make you smile. I’d just come to success, and I wanted to tell you; but I hadn’t an idea where to find you in the whole wide world. I tried to pretend that you were still in the woodland beside the pond. I went there and stayed all day, willing that you should come. You couldn’t have been so far away; you may have been in London. Well, I had that poem with me, and—— You know the way one gets into moods? It seemed to me that you weren’t a truly person and never had been—that you were just a faery’s child, a ghost in my mind.”


‘I set her on my prancing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

A faery’s song.’


“That sort of thing. Perhaps you were thinking of me at the very time.”

“Perhaps,” she nodded. “Coming back to England after all those years did make me think of you. But how does the whole poem go? Can’t you repeat it?”

He had come to, “And there I shut her wild, wild eyes with kisses four,” when she stopped him.

“I should never let you do that If I did——” She bent towards him flippantly, lowering her voice. “If I did, d’you know what I’d do next? I should marry you.” The curl against her neck shook in emphatic affirmative. “I’m not going to be La Belle Dame whatever you call her any more. I’m going to try to be Nell Gwynn always. You must tell me next time I’m that La Belle person, and I’ll stop it.”

“Ah, but I can’t—that’s a part of the spell When you look that way I can’t speak to you. I’m dazed. It’s as though you’d buried me beneath a mountain of ice. I can only see you and feel unhappy. I can’t even stir.”

He fell to gazing at her. His silence lasted so long that she grew restless. “Say it,” she urged.

“I was thinking that, in spite of all these people and the orchestra and the dancing, we’re by ourselves—not afraid of each other the way we were.”

“Oh!” She twisted her shoulders. “And now I’ll tell you why: it’s because there’s a table between us and, however much you wanted, you couldn’t do anything silly. So, you see, I’m safe, and can afford to be gracious.”

He knew at once that it was the truth that she had stated. How few girls would have said it! They had finished their coffee. She had been very pressing that he should smoke a cigar. He had just lighted one, and was comfortably wondering what they should do next; a drive in the country perhaps, and then back to the tall city lying spectral in moonlight. She consulted her wrist-watch and pushed back her chair. “How about the taxi?”

He at once began to seek the connection between his smoking and the taxi. Behind all her actions lay a motive, which she disguised with an appearance of irresponsibility. Being in her company was like studying the moves in a game of chess. Had she persuaded him to smoke in self-protection, so that he might be occupied when they were alone together?

“The taxi! It’s early. We don’t need to go yet. Or d’you mean that you want to take a longer drive?”

“I’ve——” She winked at him. “This isn’t the great big confession—— I’ve to get back for the theatre. Don’t look crestfallen; you’re coming—just the two of us. If we don’t start now, I shan’t have time to dress.”

As he followed her out into the courtyard, he made a mental note: her insistance that he should smoke had been a precautionary measure for a home-defense. Already her manner towards him was growing circumspect. When she had given the driver instructions, she took her seat remotely in the corner. There was one last flicker of her Nell Gwynn mood when she leant out to gaze at the sea lying red behind the gray salt-marshes.<............