A DARK 
 
 LANTERN 
 
 ELIZABETH ROBINS
 
 A DARK LANTERN
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE MAGNETIC NORTH 
 THE OPEN QUESTION 
 BELOW THE SALT 
 
 GEORGE MANDEVILLE'S 
 HUSBAND 
 
 THE NEW MOON
 
 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 A STORT WITH A PROLOGUE 
 
 BY 
 
 ELIZABETH ROBINS 
 
 (C. E. RAIMOND) 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE MAGNETIC NORTH," "THE OPEN QUESTION," 
 "BELOW THE SALT," ETC. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 
 All rifkts reservtd
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1905, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1905. Reprinted 
 July, twice, September, twice, November, 1905 ; February, 
 September, 1906 ; June, 1908 ; April, 1913. 
 
 Norton oB }3rrsa 
 
 I. 8. Coining & Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, MM*., U.S.A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 THE PROLOGUE 
 
 BOOK II 
 THE BLACK-MAGIC MAN 112 
 
 BOOK III 
 VINCENT 194 
 
 BOOK IV 
 GARTH 287 
 
 2137942 '
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THE PROLOGUE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 UP the sharply defined path of red baize, from curb-stone to 
 portico, and through the wide-set doors of the big house in St. 
 James's Square, a stream of men and women for nearly two 
 hours had been pouring. 
 
 Fewer were arriving now, and a few were even coming out. 
 Powdered servants were summoning, while others were dis- 
 missing carriages, and still through the open door the little crowd 
 of huddled street folk without (ranked on either side the red 
 pathway) could watch the difficult passage through the crowded 
 hall of the latest tiara, and grew tired of studying the great stair- 
 case packed with a congested mass of humanity unable to move 
 up or down. 
 
 Lady Peterborough was one of the small group of great Lon- 
 don hostesses whose absence is held to make a difference in 
 the season. She and Lord Peterborough had been for over a 
 year in India and the Far East. This was the first party given 
 on their return. 
 
 Royalty had often before honoured Peterborough House with 
 the presence, but to-night a recently married Princess, a popular 
 idol, was to appear with her husband and two of her husband's 
 brothers, German princelings who had been in England since 
 the wedding, increasing their already considerable renown as 
 men of marked accomplishment and 'fatal attractions.' And 
 this was also the evening, as everyone knew, upon which the
 
 2 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 great hostess was introducing her god-daughter, about whom 
 nobody knew anything except that she was not yet eighteen and 
 had been educated abroad. 
 
 A sudden commotion at the door; a pressing back; a flying 
 whisper, 'The Royalties are here,' went speeding up the great 
 stair, acting upon that compact, inert mass as a powerful solvent. 
 Under the magic of the phrase, the impossible accomplished 
 itself. 
 
 Some twenty minutes later the elder of the two unmarried 
 Princes was being presented to a tall, fair girl, the seriousness 
 in whose big, wide-apart eyes was contradicted by the joyous 
 mouth. 
 
 'My god-daughter, your Highness,' Lady Peterborough had 
 said hurriedly, and turned to see who next, after her Grace of 
 Lancaster, should be allowed a word with the Princess. 
 
 The foreigner, hardly looking, bowed with German military 
 precision, and then his eye suddenly fixed. 'Oh,' he said, 'did 
 I see you weren't you at the last Drawing-Room ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' answered the girl. 
 
 'Of course you don't remember me " 
 
 'I do remember you.' 
 
 'No! where was I?' 
 
 'You stood behind the Princess Marie, and your uniform 
 was ' 
 
 'So!' which he pronounced 'Zo'; with that exception his 
 English was quite unforeign 'So! you did notice,' he laughed. 
 'Was that because I stared so?' 
 
 'Not all because of that,' she smiled back, 'though it made 
 me more nervous than ever.' 
 
 'Were you nervous, then?' 
 
 'You saw that I was more nervous than anybody that was 
 why you ' she hesitated. 
 
 'Why I stared so?' he asked, amused. 
 
 ' why you laughed. It wasn't very nice of you.' 
 
 'Upon my word, I didn't guess the least in the world that you 
 were nervous. You seemed unusually composed.' 
 
 'Then why did you laugh?' she demanded. 
 
 As he stood silent looking at her and still smiling, 'Ah!' 
 she said quite low, flushing on a sudden 'Something was
 
 A DARK LANTERN 3 
 
 6 
 
 wrong! Of course I thought of that. But it was too late to help 
 it ... and I've never known what it was.' She seemed to wait. 
 
 'What it was?' he repeated. 
 
 'Yes, what was wrong.' 
 
 'Will you dance?' he asked, quickly looking round as the 
 first bars of a waltz sounded from the ball-room. 
 
 'No, I won't dance. Nor laugh, nor speak, nor eat ever 
 again!' she said tragi-comically. 
 
 'What! You don't mean to take me to supper?' He leaned 
 against the wall and contemplated her. While one of the suite, 
 also detached, stood near talking with Bishop Brailton, the 
 crowd round the rest of the royal party little inner circle and 
 larger one outside all moved slowly away towards the small 
 drawing-room off the ball-room, and the unfeatured mob flowed 
 in between. 
 
 'It was something something' she was very serious now 
 and the school-girl look was gone, but school-girl words were 
 on her lips 'something you don't like to tell me.' As still he 
 made no answer: 'something too dreadful to put into words.' 
 
 'Quite too shocking,' he assured her. 
 
 But the brutality of that nerved her. 'Nobody else seems to 
 have noticed that I did anything odd.' 
 
 'Oh, they spare your feelings.' She glanced up at him half 
 laughing, half dismayed. Then, gravely recalling other testimony 
 'They said my curtsey was all ' 
 
 'Oh yes, that was all ' 
 
 'And I didn't get tangled up in my train!' 
 
 'N-no,' he said, still seeming to enjoy some malicious remem- 
 brance. 
 
 'Which was it?' she said uncertainly, 'my feathers or my hair 
 that was wrong?' 
 
 'Nothing wrong with your hair,' he said, looking at it in such 
 a way as to recall her from that wonderful day of the Drawing- 
 Room to the yet more vivid present. She grew a little confused 
 under his bold admiration, but making a clutch at self-possession: 
 
 'Come then,' she said, seeing that the royal party with Lady 
 Peterborough and a favoured few had disappeared in the direc- 
 tion of the music, 'after all, I see it will be best to drown the 
 memory of that Dra wing-Room.'
 
 4 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'I shall remember it always,' he whispered, as they joined the 
 dancers. 
 
 He had to take a lady of high degree down to supper, but 
 audaciously he telegraphed 'be sorry for me'; and though the 
 young debutante smiled back radiant, she felt the occurrence to 
 be in the nature of a loss almost too heavy for 'seventeen and 
 a bit ' to bear. 
 
 And still the pain of it was a thing nearer far to joy than any 
 other gladness she yet had known. For did it not have its centre 
 and its source in this gay and gracious, gently mocking, utterly 
 beguiling soldier, who smiled your heart out of your breast, and 
 left in its place a strange sharp rapture that now and then, as 
 you tested its edge, took the breath like a rapier thrust pricking 
 you to a sense of life, beside which all the days before were as 
 dead, and coffined and without memorial? 
 
 The night wore on in a dream. The debutante danced, and 
 laughed, and learned through one avenue and another that no 
 coming out for 'long and long' had been so brilliant. Lady 
 Peterborough was told that her god-daughter would be the rage 
 
 'She has a something ' 'She is apart ' 'She will set 
 
 a new fashion in beauty.' And all the while the little school- 
 girl, who should perhaps have been tucked up in bed, was thinking 
 with thumping pulses, 'Does he like my hair? Will he ever 
 forget whatever the dreadful thing was at the Drawing-Room ? 
 Yes, he certainly likes my hair Oh, but when he smiles!' 
 
 He danced only once again with her, and at the cost of Bertie 
 Amherst's waltz, too, so slow had this Prince Anton of Breitenlohe- 
 Waldenstein been to realize how all the men were asking her 
 'keep one for me.' 
 
 While they danced, he asked her if she was to be at the State 
 Concert. And he looked as if life hung upon her 'yes.' 
 
 She was coming? Ah, then 'At the Concert ' 
 
 Was it a great swelling roar of music and of laughter, that 
 filled her ears like the sea no, hush! it was the sound of her own 
 blood beating in her ears. 
 
 'What did you say?' she asked. 
 
 'Say?' 
 
 'Yes, about the Concert.' 
 
 'Why, that we shall meet.' Then, as she kept looking down
 
 A DARK LANTERN 5 
 
 and said no word: 'I suppose you don't care about that?' Still 
 the eyelids were unlifted, and the waltz swayed them like an 
 outside power to which neither in the least contributed, only 
 lent themselves in a mood of rapturous yielding. 'But / care,' 
 he whispered, as if the long pause had not been. 
 And at the end he only said: 'Auf Wiedersehen.' 
 
 It was part of Kitty Dereham's prolonged childishness of 
 mind, that she who fed her foolish young heart on poetry, on 
 Scott and Dumas romance, yet did not for several days wholly 
 understand what the thing was that had befallen her. She 
 walked, all those early hours, in a land where a delicious vague- 
 ness reigned, in a happy freedom from all need to verify, forecast 
 or question. It was enough to lower the eyelids and straightway 
 see his face, to shut the ears against voices round her, and hear 
 the rich eloquence, the all-sufficing promise: Auf Wiedersehen. 
 
 Three days and nights the dream hung suspended in that 
 golden mist. And the Concert was not till to-morrow. 
 
 In the two little groups chaperoned by Lady Peterborough, 
 having tea among the crowd on the terrace of the House of Com- 
 mons, were those who, tired of getting patient hosts to point 
 out great legislators, and who, even with other intervening balls 
 that might have blurred remembrance, yet leaned across little 
 tables or over the parapet, above the river, and talked of the 
 famous night of the coming out. 
 
 'Oh, I say! It's time to draw a veil over that melancholy 
 occasion,' Bertie Amherst at last broke in. 'You lacerate Miss 
 Dereham's feelings. Look here, you know, I can't go on calling 
 you Miss Dereham.' 
 
 'Why not?' demanded Katharine, smiling. 
 
 ' need I, Aunt Kate?' He appealed to Lady Peterbor- 
 ough. 
 
 'Ask Kitty,' she answered promptly. 
 
 'What do you say?' he appealed. 'We're kind of relations.' 
 
 'I never knew that.' 
 
 'Yes, ain't we, Aunt Kate? god-cousins.' 
 
 'Of course, god-cousins.' 
 
 'I suppose you can call me Katharine then,' said the girl 
 after an instant's reflection.
 
 6 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 She looked up surprised when they all laughed. 'I don't 
 know why you're so amused. Nor why you say talking about 
 our ball would lacerate my feelings.' 
 
 'Why? Because it makes you think of H.R.H.' 
 
 She knew her face answered in swift scarlet. But she said 
 steadily enough: 'Anybody would think we could only boast one 
 Royal Highness 
 
 'There's only one you'd boast of.' 
 
 ' Oh, and which is that ? ' 
 
 'Why, the one you fell in love with.' 
 
 The one I fell in love with! the girl echoed to herself. 
 
 'There, Miss Dereham there is the member for Wickham,' 
 and Katharine, fixing her big startled eyes on the new political 
 light, seemed to wink at the refulgence. Her host jumped up 
 and brought Mr. Hastings to Lady Peterborough. In two 
 minutes, that gentleman was nearer forgetting his great public 
 destiny than he had been since he left Eton looking into Kitty 
 Dereham 's eyes. 
 
 'And so you've been in the gallery?' he was saying. 
 
 'Yes, in in the gallery.' (In love!) 
 
 'Could you follow?' 
 
 'Follow? Oh yes! No. . . . Follow who?' 
 
 'Why, the debate on ' 
 
 'Oh no, I couldn't follow the debate.' (In love?) 
 
 'No wonder!' he averred indulgently. 'Beastly place the 
 ladies' gallery.' 
 
 'I didn't mind it so much.' 
 
 'Not the grill? Didn't you feel it an insult to your sex?' 
 
 'I'm afraid I forgot to. I've heard it's the proper sentiment.' 
 
 'It must have bored you hideously, if you couldn't hear and 
 couldn't see ' 
 
 (In love?} 'Oh, but I did see tops of heads. We knew 
 
 several of the people who got up and talked, only we had never 
 
 . studied the tops of them before. If we went often, we'd be' 
 
 her attention wandered . . . (in love!} ' be quite well acquainted 
 
 with the tops of the members' heads, I mean.' 
 
 'Yes, yes, I understand. So that if your acquaintance with 
 a man was only a House of Commons acquaintance, and you 
 met him at a different altitude '
 
 A DARK LANTERN 7 
 
 (The one I fell in love with!) ' yes I'd have to stand on 
 
 a chair to be sure it was the man I thought it was.' She spoke 
 breathlessly, and was grateful when the fabulously clever young 
 member laughed obligingly at her little jest. 
 
 ' I should like to feel sure that under any and all circumstances 
 you will remember me' he took off his hat and held his head 
 down for her to see the thin growth of fine brown hair on either 
 side of a parting that looked twenty years older than his age. 
 
 On the way home Katharine sat so silent in her corner of the 
 carriage, that twice her god-mother glanced sideways at the 
 beautiful little face. 
 
 'Humph!' thought the astute old worldling, 'she is very quiet. 
 And that young popinjay, Hastings, very suddenly finds that 
 after all he may have a little time to dine and dance! Humph! 
 Well if his blood is bad, it's very distinguished. They say 
 he'll have a career, too. It may be quite as well this comes so 
 soon. I don't approve of the modern plan of late marriages. 
 Specially for Kitty with no mother, and that father.' 
 
 In love! The girl sat staring at the dim reflection of herself 
 on the glass in front of the coachman's box, but with no sight 
 in her big childish eyes. That, then, was the meaning of these 
 enchanted days. That was why everything in life was trivial 
 past expression save the State Concert and the meeting. She 
 had been half asleep, and Bertie Amherst had waked her with 
 two words: 
 
 'In love.' 
 
 What would happen auf Wiedersehen? And this she asked 
 and answered over and over again. With slow delicious ap- 
 proach, lingering, making the most of every trifle, fashioning 
 whole dramas out of each question: at what moment would he 
 appear; where would his place be; and where hers? What 
 uniform he would wear; what orders; whether he would have 
 to sit by his cousin. The Princess, wherever she might be, 
 would observe his preoccupation. She, Katharine Dereham, 
 would not be looking in his direction when at last he would 
 catch sight of her, yet mysteriously she would plainly see the 
 sudden light in his eyes; and know how, dumbly, again and 
 again he was appealing: 'Look at me! Katharine!' Ah! It 
 would be delicious but absolutely impossible, nevertheless
 
 8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 for her to face him in that moment. The Princess would talk 
 and smile in vain; the handsome head, with the hair brushed 
 up from the forehead & la Russe, would turn again to Katharine, 
 beseeching her. And still under some sweet necessity, she 
 would look at everyone and anywhere else. The Princess at 
 last would twit him: 'You are not listening you look for some- 
 one?' Then he would fence, and smooth her ruffled feathers. 
 Finally, just as Katharine would be thinking that with safety 
 she might look at the back of his head, he would turn sharply, 
 his eyes catch hers, catch and hold and and it was here that 
 quick thrust pierced her breast, and all the world dissolved in 
 glancing mist. 
 
 In love! 
 
 It was like this then. Heavens! and he was not Anton only, 
 but Prince Anton! Well, what then? It was clear to her in 
 that world of young imagining, where barriers exist but for 
 gallant breaking down, and where the given case is always an 
 exception it was clear that the big foreign soldier was not a 
 Prince alone, but that other auguster entity that men call Fate. 
 # * * * * 
 
 The Concert night was come. In the long queue they waited; 
 Lady Peterborough; his lordship in the modern way, a little 
 depressed under the extinguisher of his cocked hat; Bertie 
 Amherst, who had joined them at the last moment, very smart 
 in his guardsman's uniform, and very ready, it would seem, to 
 make eyes at Katharine. She, sitting quite silent in the sharply 
 broken dusk of the great carriage, looked at her companions' 
 faces from time to time, by the sudden flashing in of electric 
 light, which would vanish again like sheet lightning, as, driving 
 on, they left that lamp behind and moved a little nearer to the 
 entrance of the Palace. 
 
 Bertie was chaffing her for her silence and preoccupation. 
 The girl laughed now and then, but at far other thoughts, hardly 
 hearing his voice, let alone his words. 
 
 She sat stiffly in her corner that she might not crush her chiffons 
 and her flowers sat with muscles unconsciously strained, as 
 if to help the horses to reach the door. Oh, how slow they 
 were! He would be so impatient. He would be thinking she 
 was not coming. But I am! I am! I'm nearly there!
 
 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 She had afterwards only the dimmest recollection of the going 
 in, a vague medley of lights and jewels and the heavy scent of 
 flowers and then all without preparation, with none of those 
 delicious gradations of approach, with as little warning as a 
 telegraph-boy at your door, there was Prince Anton occupied 
 in not stepping on the Princess Marie's gown. He did look up, 
 he clicked his heels and gave a jerky little bow, a little hurried 
 smile, and was gone! ... on to those seats where the lesser 
 Royalties sat. And that was all. She could not even see the 
 back of his head. 
 
 She sat in her place, deaf, waiting. 
 
 Just once again that night she saw him. After the Concert 
 was over, as she stood behind Lady Peterborough on the out- 
 skirts of a little group, she had a glimpse of him at the far side 
 of the great room, laughing at something a highly-coloured, 
 strange-looking woman was saying. 
 
 The girl stood rooted, staring over her shoulder. 
 
 'Come, child,' said old Lord Peterborough, drawing her hand 
 under his arm. 
 
 Two days later she read in the Morning Post, that Prince 
 Anton had returned to Schloss Waldenstein in the Riesenge- 
 birge.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 KATHARINE was not to see the disturber of her peace for 
 nearly three years. 
 
 He was twice in that time in England, but on the first occasion 
 she was at the Peterboroughs' Devonshire place, and on the 
 second in her bed with influenza. 
 
 In all that time, if the Prussian soldier ever left his dim sentry- 
 box in her heart, it was but to appear 'on parade,' as it were, 
 before the keen eye of the reviewing mind, with all his accoutre- 
 ments burnished, shining, sword clanking, and bold eyes chal- 
 lenging the world. It would be when some other menaced the 
 integrity of his kingdom that he would spring out of his hiding- 
 place and stand en garde between Kitty Dereham and other 
 men. With the precision of a mannikin in a Nuremberg clock 
 he could be trusted to appear whenever the hour struck (the 
 hour that threatened to be 'hers'), and having uttered his note 
 of warning would jerk away behind the little door. 
 
 These apparitions, and, above all, these 'notes,' that rang 
 with the remembered music of a man's voice, took to translating 
 themselves out of little pictures into little songs ... for that 
 was how life crystallized for Katharine. This verse-making was 
 already an old habit, ' dating from her seventh year, when her 
 mother had laughed and cried over the first poem: 'On the 
 Sickening Death of our Beloved Bullfinch.' 
 
 Had the girl lived in the times when fine ladies strung rhymes 
 as they strummed the harp, when a Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
 tagu could cap verses with Pope to a chorus of admiration (or 
 at least of envy), Kitty Dereham might have frankly cultivated 
 her gift, if not have taken in it unabashed comfort or open 
 credit. 
 
 10
 
 A DARK LANTERN n 
 
 But she was born into a society where manifestation of any 
 such definite talent would be too great a peculiarity to be pleasant. 
 A less sensitive person than she would have shrunk from the 
 chaffing patronage of men and women whose ideal of accom- 
 plishment was to ride, dance, play certain games, know what 
 to wear, what to say, and above all when to smile. The pre- 
 vailing note was ridicule. The common aim, to evade its shafts 
 by never being caught serious. A world where nothing was 
 socially 'safe' but laughter. 
 
 Kitty's mother, though not born in it, had grown up in this 
 atmosphere, and early gave the child her cue. This, too, with 
 no guess of how strong 'the artist' was in the young soul, no 
 hint of the long struggle to come between the Weltkind and the 
 worldling; little knowledge of the imperious governance of an 
 ideal of beauty; fear only of the dimly descried truth that if 
 her child were so unfortunate as to be different from those with 
 whom her lot was to be cast, the difference would lie chiefly in 
 the fact that the poet they say has died young in the rest of us 
 would live on in Katharine Dereham to the end. 
 
 From the first, however, she showed a decent reticence in the 
 matter. So far as her own small performances were concerned, 
 since her mother's going she had religiously kept them to her- 
 self. She felt now, it would be as easy to exhibit to the world 
 the name ' Anton ' written on her heart, as have shown these 
 dim paraphrases on paper of that original and all-luminous 
 inscription. These verses to the Nameless One became for 
 her a kind of secret confessional where she might recite her 
 griefs and doubts, and set forth her little sins and get absolution 
 of her burden, by laying it down in orderly lengths on paper. 
 Or again, in gayer mood, out of sheer joy in her faculty of vivid 
 visualizing, she would summon the shining apparition out of 
 the vast deep of absence, and, behold! with the regular tramp 
 of measured verse, the foreign soldier would come marching, 
 marching to the sound of trumpets or of penny whistles, what 
 matter? since he marched right gaily and faithfully kept her 
 time. 
 
 Lady Peterborough went to her grave without suspecting 
 Katharine of this particular failing; but the arrant old heathen 
 found quite enough to disapprove and laugh at in the romantic
 
 12 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 little girl, whom she was not so much 'bringing out' as rigor- 
 ously keeping in. The poor lady had her disappointments and 
 her claim upon commiseration. Although she was never able 
 to pluck up, or even to call by its true name, the root of Kath- 
 arine's singularity, she was vaguely uneasy at the girl's elusive- 
 ness. Despite Katharine's gentleness, she was distinctly 'diffi- 
 cult,' and her steadfastness to some alien point of view Heaven 
 alone knew what it was precisely! roused the irritation that 
 comes of a 'difference' not boldly formulated, but tirelessly 
 maintained. 'She has no true sense of values,' said Lady Peter- 
 borough. Like a dweller in a foreign land who has not mastered 
 the currency, she would offer a sovereign where a shilling would 
 serve, or present some strange coin whose very superscription 
 the Peterborough -eye could not decipher. The girl, in her 
 turn, had her surprises. She was too young, too little a thinker, 
 too much an impressionist to formulate, let alone to analyze, 
 the Peterborough standards. It was only with certain outward 
 manifestations that she at all concerned herself, such as the 
 short measure meted out by her god-mother to intruders or 
 mere bores; her merciless ness to people who stirred Katharine's 
 pity. The girl was even simple enough to point out the large 
 latitude Lady Peterborough was ready to accord to people of 
 her own special world, who practically could do as they liked, 
 being who they were. Katharine's lack of sympathy was as 
 evident to her god-mother, when that lady engaged in the con- 
 genial occupation of crushing the socially weak, as when she 
 amused herself by condescending to Art or to new-made 
 wealth. 
 
 But in more important ways the girl failed to take her cue 
 from the older woman. It was nearly a year after the coming- 
 out party that she reappeared in the drawing-room one afternoon 
 a little flushed, asking: ' Oh, have the Falconbridges gone already ?' 
 Ten minutes before, at his request, she had taken Robert Hastings 
 to the library to look for a book. 
 
 'Yes, the Falconbridges have gone,' answered her god- 
 mother. 
 
 'Bother!' 
 
 'Why bother? You've got some one to amuse you.' 
 
 ' No, I haven't. There isn't a man in London so interesting as
 
 A DARK LANTERN 13 
 
 Lord Falconbridge.' She drummed on the revolving book-stand. 
 'I wanted to ask him about the meet of the Coaching Club.' 
 
 'What about it?' 
 
 'If he's in earnest about having me on the box.' 
 
 'Where does he propose to put his wife?' 
 
 'I'm sure I don't know. I forgot her.' 
 
 'It's too common a mistake. It never does. Have you forgot 
 Robert Hastings, too?' 
 
 'Oh, he's gone.' 
 
 'What did he have to say for himself?' 
 
 Kitty turned away. 
 
 Lady Peterborough put up her glass. 'Did he ' 
 
 'Yes,' the girl interrupted. Then hurriedly: 'Of course I said 
 no. Such a silly idea' and she went out. 
 
 What did the child want? Was it, after all, Bertie? Lord 
 Peterborough's nephew (and next after an invalid and childless 
 brother, his heir) had not been supposed to be in the running, 
 having already pledged himself at the time of Kitty's appear- 
 ance on the scene. But in two weeks he had broken his engage- 
 ment, to the great scandal of 'everybody,' and declared openly 
 for Kitty. 
 
 This had all happened months before, but throwing over the 
 other girl had hitherto availed him so little that public opinion 
 had been appeased. And he was a delightful person, was Bertie 
 
 perhaps after all The old woman sat and cogitated, 
 
 but with the baffled feeling that she had never fathomed the 
 girl. And yet Kitty seemed so simple. What did she want? 
 Thank heaven she had no fads to stand between her and suitable 
 arrangements, no crazy modern ideal of emancipation or phi- 
 lanthropy, no yearning to bind books or to bind wounds or to 
 examine drains. Lady Peterborough had even been able to 
 laugh her out of certain 'Popish superstitions' that she had 
 brought with her out of France. It was reassuring that she 
 had manifested a wholly healthy enjoyment in her success, 
 played and dined and danced, smiled away her conquests, and 
 waited. For what? A question often in Lady Peterborough's 
 mind. She had times of fearing an infatuation for Lord Falcon- 
 bridge. Women girls too had gone that way. For he was 
 a brilliant being, brilliant with the triple *nlendour of the great
 
 I 4 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 noble, the politician early in life effective in public affairs, the 
 man of fastidious taste in Art and Letters. Notoriously in- 
 different to his wife, he had since his marriage, only four years 
 before, had at least one liaison that the world knew of. The 
 moment came when Lady Peterborough allowed Kitty to hear 
 of 'that affair'; watched with satisfaction and much misinter- 
 preted the shrinking of the girl; even congratulated herself on 
 the timeliness of the disillusionment, thinking it only Falconbridge 
 who suffered in her god-daughter's esteem. 
 
 It was the sort of occasion that revealed the girl's ignorance 
 of the undercurrents sweeping through the stream she floated 
 on. Lady Peterborough's opinion of her god-daughter was 
 not enhanced by the conversation. Surely it must be infatua- 
 tion for Falconbridge that could make any creature so blind. 
 Of course, a young girl should seem innocent of such knowledge, 
 but to be innocent what was it but to be a fool? When she 
 had at last made plain that people had given up trying to get 
 Falconbridge to stay at their houses, unless Captain Waring's 
 charming little wife were of the party, Kitty exclaimed on a note 
 of stark wonder: 
 
 'And you do it, too!' 
 
 'Do what?' 
 
 'You asked her to Devon Court.' 
 
 'Naturally. The Falconbridges and Peterboroughs have 
 always been friends.' 
 
 'And you blame people, blame me, for forgetting . . . Lady 
 Falconbridge.' 
 
 'It's a thing I never do myself the answer came with a 
 self-righteous ring; 'I always include her.' 
 
 Kitty got up with locked fingers. 'What must it be like!' 
 
 'What!' 
 
 'To be Lady Falconbridge.' 
 
 'A good many girls have wasted valuable time wondering.' 
 The old woman fixed her eyes on the flushed childish face. 
 
 'Poor soul!' breathed Kitty. 
 
 'Don't make any mistake, it's the wife who has the best of 
 it in the end. Remember that. It's the wife who can afford 
 to wait. The other woman's day is bound to go; the wife's is 
 just as sure to come.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 15 
 
 But the girl was as little sustained by the thought of an ultimate 
 justice, as it might be the Countess of Falconbridge herself. 
 
 'To be "included"! along with Mrs. Waring. And every- 
 body, you say, knowing I' 
 
 'It wouldn't help matters to leave Lady Falconbridge out.' 
 The girl turned suddenly. 'Now, Kitty, you are going to be 
 tiresome. You are going to say, "leave the Waring woman 
 out.'" 
 
 'I was going to ask why not leave Lord Falconbridge out?' 
 
 Lady Peterborough merely smiled. There was a good deal 
 in her face at such a moment. Kitty was easier under her frown 
 certainly when she smiled in that way she was rather awful. 
 The girl turned from her with a feeling of sickness, but no sense 
 of being unanswered. 
 
 They admitted such horrors condoned, even smiled upon, 
 encouraged them. The world rocked. She tried to steady her- 
 self with unflinching eyes wide to the shame of it. Life was 
 like this, then. For people who were called 'the best,' called, 
 with high significance, 'us,' who were lifted above the undis- 
 tinguished herd, this was what life sometimes brought, and what 
 'we' could be induced to accept. 
 
 'No, no! A shuddering blackness fell. Flinging out hands 
 that groped in the rocking dark, she found a hand that steadied 
 her it drew the cloud away, and, behold! a figure standing in 
 sudden sunlight, smiling reassurance. Ah, yes. There were 
 men not merely of noble house, but of princely heart. 
 
 The glamour of youth and of poetic imagining had veiled 
 from Katharine's beauty-loving eyes much of the ugliness of 
 the life about her. Not all at once, not for years, did the trans- 
 figuring light of Romance die out, and fall upon the dark 
 and even then only to be steadfastly rekindled. 
 
 She was not one of the girls who have to be forbidden books 
 considered to be 'not quite jeune fille': a few pages of such 
 works told her that these were not or not yet for her. She 
 and her mother had together read much romance in poetry and 
 prose, and when the girl found herself alone she clung the more 
 to 'the kind of thing my mother liked' feeling that so she found 
 again and might hold fast to the dear hand. The 'Idylls of the 
 King' led her back to Malory. In that book of delight she slaked
 
 iC A DARK LANTERN 
 
 her thirst for things chivalrous and fair; and coming down out 
 of her heights, thought herself practical in the outward expression 
 of her tastes, when she looked into heraldry. That study proved 
 full of just the kind of interest that appealed to her. In the 
 Peterborough library the girl grew quietly wise in matters whose 
 waning significance to the world mattered nothing. It was, 
 however, a delightful surprise to find that her god-father knew 
 about these things. What did he not know about, this kindly, 
 whimsical old man, who seemed so entirely content to let his 
 wife take the lead in everything, and who yet held quietly on his 
 way, a way so remote from hers that you would never so much 
 as hear of it, except by chance? Occasion would discover him 
 on the expert's side of a question, but hardly by choice it would 
 seem, seldom with any stress, never with undue emphasis; but 
 few the questions of life or learning that took him unaware. 
 You would know him for years, and never hear him hint at 
 numismatic knowledge; but the moment come when authorities 
 differed, he would speak the illuminating word. You would 
 never have heard him mention Persian literature; till one night 
 at dinner a discussion would arise between two Omarites about 
 some Fitzgerald rendering, and Lord Peterborough would write 
 the original line in character on the tablecloth to prove the case 
 of the sounder disputant. 
 
 And so among other things he was a Herald! Kitty was 
 enchanted, though he did spoil it by saying every man of leisure 
 was more or less, and that it was a form of knowledge 'merely 
 curious.' To the girl these symbols of bygone achievement in 
 field or bower, love or war, meant 'History' of the sort that 
 appealed most to her imagination, concerning itself as it did, 
 not in the large way, with popular movements or the effect of 
 laws, cr even with the policies of Kings, but modestly though 
 fervently with the fortunes of private families. 
 
 On those delightful occasions, all too rare, when Kitty went 
 driving about the London streets with only her god-father, he 
 would lend himself to the girl's preoccupation with the ancient 
 and often childish hieroglyphs that men of old had stamped 
 upon their names. In a pause he would suddenly say, to her 
 obvious delight: 'Suppose we should overtake a knight riding 
 along here, and see on his shield '
 
 A DARK LANTERN 17 
 
 'No,' corrected Kitty, who herself had invented this game, 
 'we'd see his arms first of all, on the tabards of his pursui- 
 vants ' 
 
 'No, we are before the days of tabards, before the jupon, 
 even but when we catch up with this knight we see his shield 
 is: Argent, a human Heart, gules, proper; on a chief azure, six 
 Lioncels of the Field ' 
 
 'No, six Mullets, not six Lioncels. Mullets, Mullets!' 
 
 He laughed; he had thought to catch her. 
 
 'You know the knight?' 
 
 'Of course one of my particular friends, Sir James Douglas.' 
 
 'Then perhaps you'll tell me where he's going.' 
 
 'He is on his way to the Holy Land, and he's carrying the 
 royal heart of Robert Bruce to bury at Jerusalem.' 
 
 'God speed,' the old man saluted, as if the knight rode by, 
 'and a safe return.' 
 
 'We won't see him again,' said the girl. 'He'll fall in Anda- 
 lusia, fighting the Saracens.' She turned her head a little* 
 'Good-bye, James Douglas!' And for the hundredth time 
 after some such trial of her knowledge or of his, 'Isn't it curi- 
 ous,' she said, 'to think that if he should really come riding along, 
 of all the people in the street probably only you and I would 
 know him.' 
 
 'Unless there were Douglases about.' 
 
 'Even they might be in doubt they'd think at first it must 
 be one of them, but they'd say, "Where is the crown?"' 
 
 'Very like,' he humoured her fancy. 'They'd forget that 
 the man who won it never wore it.' 
 
 ' Now there's a lady coming Oh, no, it was as we crossed 
 
 Oxford Street. Oxford Street was there, wasn't it, a long while 
 ago?' 
 
 'Oxford Street Watling Street saw the Roman Eagles.' 
 
 'Well, these weren't Romans that I saw. It was a very 
 great English lady riding with her knights and esquires. Her 
 arms were: "Azure, three Fleurs-de-lys, in pale, or, between 
 
 two Fla "' The girl paused suddenly, and then flung up 
 
 her hand with a joyous little hailing action in the direction of 
 a hansom blocked for an instant in the crowded Piccadilly 
 traffic.
 
 i8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Lord Peterborough stuck his glass in his eye, and scrutinized 
 the good-looking man with an overdressed woman at his side, 
 the two so deep in talk they were oblivious to the world. 'Well,' 
 said Lord Peterborough imperturbably, 'go on with the lady's 
 blazonry ' 
 
 Kitty, still turned to face the hansom, was smiling and lifting 
 her hand. 
 
 'It's father, don't you see?' A slowly moving brougham 
 shut out the hansom for a moment. When visible again, it 
 was seen to be in the act of attempting to cross behind the Peter- 
 borough carriage into Sackville Street. But the policeman 
 held up his hand. The press was great on that side. 
 
 'Oh, I wish he'd look through the window. Who is it he is 
 with?' 
 
 'Hush!' said Lord Peterborough, for the lady was sitting on 
 that side. 
 
 'Do you know her?' asked Kitty. 
 
 'No. Don't stare like that. It's only owls that can look 
 over their spines without dislocation.' 
 
 The lady turned her head, and the underscored eyes fell upon 
 the girl in the carriage. She must have said something. The 
 man, who had been watching her face intently while he talked, 
 glanced past her now, through the window: seemed to pause 
 an instant in his fluent speech, and then, without the quiver of 
 a lash, went on talking, as he dropped carelessly back out of 
 sight in his corner. 
 
 'Father!' Kitty had said, signalling over the back of the 
 carriage. Above the lady's head a man's arm was raised. It 
 pushed up the trap-door. Some direction was given. In the 
 dissolving crush, the cabby turned his horse and drove off in 
 the opposite direction. 
 
 'How funny he didn't recognise us!' 
 
 'Who?' 
 
 'Why, father, of course.' 
 
 'You think it was ?' 
 
 'Think? Why, didn't you see?' 
 
 'I thought it was someone rather like him.' 
 
 'Oh no, it was father. Fancy his having got a new friend!' 
 she exclaimed with animation 'a lady, too.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 19 
 
 'Well, go on. What was the lady's blazonry?' 
 'I shall have to ask my father,' she said, smiling. 
 * * * * * 
 
 When on Sunday she did so, it was to learn that he had been 
 at Aldershot all Friday and Saturday. No, the circumstance 
 was not so curious. There was another man in London for 
 whom he was sometimes mistaken. 
 
 Katharine's view of her father's life was not very clear. It 
 is notorious that the average young person accepts his (even 
 more her) parents as he accepts the first landscape that greets 
 his eyes. It is his only possible conception of the world. 
 
 Even Lady Peterborough's adoring affection for the girl's 
 dead mother, the one great devotion in a singularly loveless 
 life, would not have secured Katharine's being installed as 
 daughter of the house, except upon clear understanding that 
 Colonel Dereham was not to appear there unless expressly 
 bidden. Katharine knew from the first that her father was not 
 appreciated by her god-mother, and that even her sworn ally, 
 Lord Peterborough, regarded Colonel Dereham with a whim- 
 sical tolerance, that was for long, the heaviest cross the girl's 
 proud heart was called upon to bear. In her thoughts of her 
 father she conceived of him always as a gallant soldier too modest 
 to make capital of his splendid services, too dignified to com- 
 plain of being shelved. She saw that he spent his time when 
 at home (in the little house he had taken in Hill Street) in smok- 
 ing and reading French novels, and when he wasn't at home 
 he seemed always to have been at the Club or 'taking a walk.' 
 Katharine felt it a grey existence, and wondered humbly at his 
 uncomplaining acceptance of it 'for her sake,' as he some- 
 times explained. 
 
 His forbearance with the Peterborough attitude towards 
 himself she found especially beautiful and noble. In spite of 
 her mother's dying wish, the girl offered, again and again, to 
 leave Peterborough House and come to live with her father. 
 He opposed the idea with an energy he seldom exhibited about 
 anything, all of course a part of his unselfishness. 
 
 During Katharine's schooldays at Auteuil, while she saw 
 the Peterboroughs regularly two or three times a year, and
 
 20 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 spent all her holidays with them in Devon or in Sutherland- 
 shire, neither she, nor anyone she knew, ever saw Colonel Dere- 
 ham, who was all that time in India. But the name of father 
 stirred her deepest loyalty, and she could easily have made a 
 case of conscience out of Lady Peterborough's perversity in 
 regard to him, would rather have enjoyed making her sacrifice 
 of Peterborough House and everything it meant, to be all in all 
 to her 'poor lonely father.' 
 
 Her poor lonely father was, as a matter of fact, as little poor 
 as lonely, and lived a life so entirely to his taste (albeit not in 
 the full light of day) that nothing would so have disconcerted 
 him as Katharine's constant companionship. In his gratitude 
 to his dead wife's friend for taking his daughter off his hands, 
 he quite forgave the implied criticism of himself. Problem 
 enough to know what to do with his only child during the Peter- 
 boroughs' annual visit to Marienbad. For years Katharine 
 marvelled that this time 'alone together,' always looked forward 
 to, and built about with fair resolutions, should be so barren of 
 comfort or reward. 
 
 Stupid of her, this, for she had a weekly opportunity of en- 
 lightenment. In spite of recurrent opposition from Lady Peter- 
 borough, the girl made a fetich of dining with her father upon 
 every Sunday night that found them both in town. Vain for 
 him nobly to propose to let her off this time; to give the servants 
 their Sunday evening. 'Let them have Saturday . . . any 
 evening but ours,' Katharine would say, and blithely set herself 
 to bring some cheer into her father's life. It was notable that 
 Sunday evening found both of them more cheerful than it left 
 them. And still the stupid Katharine persevered. 'A young 
 girl at least a girl like me, isn't enough company for an ex- 
 perienced man like my father,' she decided. 
 
 'Why don't we sometimes ask people to dine on Sundays?' 
 
 'Oh-a I hadn't considered it.' And he never did. 
 
 Another time: 'How late you are, father dear. I've been 
 wailing three-quarters of an hour. I should think the dinner 
 is quite ' 
 
 'Sorry, my dear. I couldn't get back sooner. You know 
 
 what Sunday trains are ' he stopped on his way into the 
 
 dining-room to open a telegram.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 21 
 
 'Oh, then you've been in the country.' 
 
 'Country? Yes, in the country.' He read the message 
 again, and reflectively he tore it into small pieces before he sat 
 down. He asked about the garden-party and the Castleton 
 wedding. While they were at dessert the bell rang, and with- 
 out waiting for a bidding, Captain Vance came in. He was 
 one of the few people Katharine ever saw at her father's, and 
 it had not been the Captain she had in her mind when she sug- 
 gested asking someone to dine. She had wondered at the 
 intimacy between the two, Vance being a dull man with a sharp 
 temper and a fiery face, who drank a great deal of brandy, and 
 domineered over his brother-in-arms. Katharine considered 
 that her father treated him with an extraordinary forbearance. 
 Her own was plainly taxed. When Colonel Dereham remon- 
 strated with her for her lack of cordiality, she spoke her mind 
 about the Captain. 
 
 'Oh, manners!' her father had said in his indulgent way. 
 'Manners aren't everything,' which was handsome as coming 
 from a man whose own were singularly charming. 'Vance is 
 a good sort. He and his people were very kind to me, out in 
 India, the year I had the fever ' 
 
 And the manners that were amended were Katharine's own. 
 
 On this occasion the good sort drank rather more than usual. 
 'He makes my father do it too,' thought the girl, with her first 
 sick misgiving in that direction. 
 
 Her slight attention to their conversation about somebody's 
 unfair promotion was suddenly heightened by Vance's demand- 
 ing in a truculent tone: 'Wasn't that exactly what I told you 
 in Victoria Street this afternoon ? ' 
 
 'Why, you couldn't he was in the country,' said the girl. 
 
 Her father stared an instant, and then: 'Oh I came back 
 this morning. But I was late had several engagements to fit 
 in. . . .' 
 
 It was the kind of little incident that was always happening, 
 and that yet always took the girl by surprise. 
 
 It has been intimated that in certain ways Kitty was an un- 
 commonly unperceptive person unteachable even. Certain of 
 her views she would not without a struggle submit to the cor- 
 rective hand of experience. Her father was forgetful.
 
 22 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 In spite of her perplexed effort at readjustment, she was at 
 first bewildered, and later amused, at the superficial knowledge 
 of French character that led English people *o be surprised at 
 finding that a girl brought up in France should entertain an 
 innocent reverence for truth. 
 
 In discussing her difficulties on this head with Lord Peter- 
 borough, she found satisfaction in his theory that it was just 
 because she had imagination of the rarer kind, that she was 
 less tempted to misuse it in the common way. For her god- 
 father had stumbled on the fact that Kitty wrote verses : 
 
 'It's all right, little girl, I won't tell anyone. Come, cheer up. 
 Let's see what they're like.' 
 
 She shut the sheet of paper in a book. 'Oh I couldn't 
 simply couldn't.' 
 
 'Oh yes you can.' But as she still sat grasping the closed 
 book with such determined hands that her knuckles showed 
 white under the skin, her old friend persisted, 'It's all right to 
 show me. Shall I tell you why?' She looked up. He was 
 smiling in that whimsical way of his, but he lowered his voice 
 to a kind of conspirator's pitch. 'Do you want to know why?' 
 She nodded. He looked all round the room, still smiling, but 
 as if to make sure they were really alone, and in a whisper he 
 said: 'I've done it myself. ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Does she know?' 
 
 He shook his head with a comic air of terror. 
 
 'You won't tell her about my my . . . ' faltered Kitty. 
 
 'No,' he said, 'not unless you betray me. If you did that I'd 
 be capable of anything.' 
 
 'Where do you hide . . . what you do?' He motioned with 
 his fine head towards a brass-bound bureau. 'You'll show 
 me?' she asked. 
 
 'Should you like me to?' 
 
 'Awfully. When do you do it?' whispered Kitty, coming 
 nearer. 
 
 'A a I don't do it much now.' 
 
 'Oh.' She paused disappointed. 
 
 'I'm too old,' he hastened to explain 'and too easily scared.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 33 
 
 ' But you used to ? ' 
 
 'Oh, for years.' 
 
 'May I see them now?' 
 
 'They won't interest you, my dear. They're merely aca- 
 demic.' Then she knew he had recalled the sins of his youth 
 to put her at her ease. But it turned out a great comfort to 
 have told him. For one thing he never, by so much as a hint, 
 seemed to read anything autobiographic in her effusions 
 discussed them upon such purely impersonal ground, that the 
 girl lost her first sense of agonized shyness, and even came to 
 think of these things of hers as quite unprompted by any actual 
 experience. 
 
 He agreed it was best not to show them to anyone else, not 
 even to dear Blanche, who was her greatest girl friend, and 
 yet Lord Peterborough liked some of them, he said. He 
 certainly gave himself the trouble to take them with sufficient 
 seriousness to point out blemishes, and to instruct the young 
 versifier in certain rules of rhetoric and prosody. They spoke 
 of Katharine's productions as: 'Our Guilty Secret.'
 
 CHAPTER IH 
 
 AFTER wintering on the Riviera, the Peterboroughs went to 
 Rome in the spring of the year that Kitty was nineteen. There, 
 at the house of the Principessa Lucchese, the girl met one 
 afternoon the little Grafin von Hartung, who was a distant 
 cousin of Prince Anton of Breitenlohe Waldenstein, and knew 
 him ' Oh, very well indeed,' she said. Like the rest of the Roman 
 world, she had been looking forward to seeing him here after 
 Easter. And now this news oh! it was too exciting. What, 
 Miss Dereham had not heard? Well, he was anticipating 
 his visit by at least five days something evidently afoot, for 
 he was coming that very afternoon upon the summons, rumour 
 said, of a certain great lady. Of course Miss Dereham had 
 heard. No? not who the latest victim was? It was plain 
 the little Grafin herself had come under the spell, but her role 
 was that of the shocked chronicler. She gave spirited accounts 
 of the Prince's more recent exploits accounts that, touching 
 with some frankness upon love-stricken ladies, Kitty as frankly 
 elicited as she secretly shrank from, dreading the point of each 
 scene in the story, as if it had been a rapier playing about a vital 
 part. 'But people seem ready to forgive Anton anything,' his 
 cousin ended, smiling. 
 
 'If you see him soon ' 
 
 'I'm quite sure to to-morrow I should think.' 
 
 Oh, happy little Grafin! 'Well, tell him,' Kitty said at part- 
 ing, 'tell him that the girl he laughed at, at the Drawing-Room 
 in London three years ago, has not forgiven him.' 
 
 The papers the next morning announced the Prince's arrival. 
 
 In the days that followed, wherever she went, Kitty's one 
 thought was: 'Will it be here, or here, that we shall meet?' The 
 
 24
 
 A DARK LANTERN 25 
 
 very stones in the streets, that to other ears said, Virgil, Cicero, 
 Caesar, cried ' Anton ! ' the length and breadth of Rome. Where- 
 ever she went, whatever said or did, every sense was concen- 
 trated upon recognition. 'Shall I find him here, driving on 
 the Pincio? Small chance of his being in St. Peter's! Does 
 he ever fill a vacant hour in a gallery? Or is he killing time at 
 the Grafin's . . . until I come? If nowhere else, I'll find him 
 at the Quirinal Ball.' 
 
 But at none of these places did they meet. At the first even- 
 ing party given by the Principessa Lucchese, after the Prince's 
 arrival, suddenly there he was. Katharine looked at him with 
 eyes almost unbelieving. Was this he? In some strange way 
 it was not. The man seemed unaccountably less real stand- 
 ing before her, in his habit as he lived, than he had been, march- 
 ing through her songs, or keeping quiet guard in the sentry-box 
 of her heart. 
 
 'You had my message?' she asked, feeling instantly that 
 her words came too faintly and across too vast a distance to 
 reach their goal. She had been talking to him in her heart, 
 sending messages for two long years ... he had never yet 
 replied. But now he was smiling and saying in the old thrilling 
 voice: 
 
 'What message?' 
 
 'You have not seen your cousin ?' 
 
 'What cousin? I have so many. 1 
 
 'The Grafin von Hartung.' 
 
 'No. Is Gerda here?' (Oh, lucky Gerda to be so called 
 by him!) But he did not look for her; his voice was innocent 
 of interest in Gerda; his eyes were on the face before him. 
 
 Had Kitty any unformulated misgiving as to what the meet- 
 ing meant to him, it vanished. He had seen her across the 
 room. People had turned their heads with surprise to see him 
 coming straight to where she stood, between an ancient dame 
 and an English diplomat. He had spoken her name as readily 
 as had it been the night of the coming out, and turned a little 
 to one side, adroitly shutting out of Paradise, Diplomatist and 
 Dame. 
 
 Katharine did not know that more than one having the re- 
 verberant voice, had already been celebrating her advent in
 
 2 6 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Rome, and that elsewhere in these two years Prince Anton had 
 not escaped being reminded, from time to time, that he too 
 could claim acquaintance with what the new poet, Michael 
 Craven, had called 'the most unforgettable face in England.' 
 
 What a blessed piece of fortune that the Grafin had not had 
 the chance to prepare him! How could one in that case have 
 been so sure, Kitty asked herself so blessedly sure, that he as 
 well, had lived these two years 'waiting'? But while patience 
 may be a grace in a girl, the same thing in a man wears a mock- 
 ing face, unless there are 'circumstances' . . . explanatory 
 barriers, nobler to leave standing than untimely to beat down. 
 
 'It is a long time since we met,' she said, innocently opening 
 the door forthwith to explanation. 
 
 'Dreadfully long,' he answered and left a pause she had 
 no skill to fill. He filled it with a bold excursion of the eyes, 
 and then: 'I've always known I should see you again,' he 
 said. 
 
 Could declaration in a crowded room be plainer ? She dropped 
 her gaze upon her fan. 
 
 'I was afraid you would have forgotten ' he went on. 
 
 ' Forgotten ? ' 
 
 'Yes, forgotten our meeting.' 
 
 'Oh no, I had not forgotten our meetings!' She smiled 
 faintly and was quickly grave again, afraid to express even so 
 little where so much waited ready to rush forth. 
 
 'I've often thought of he seemed to reflect an instant 
 'those meetings.' 
 
 'Yes ' 
 
 'I knew I could count on there being a third.' She looked 
 up quickly, and met his smile. 'They say, you know, if there 
 are two there's sure to be a third.' 
 
 'The third . . .' she began and hesitated, for that long ago 
 third had power even now to dash her spirit. 
 
 'Don't tell me you've forgotten we met twice,' he said im- 
 ploringly, 'for you said yourself "our meetings."' A troubled 
 wonder held her tongue. '/ remember perfectly each time.' 
 He lowered his voice. 'Was it likely I should forget?' She 
 glanced down once more at the glittering paillettes on her fan. 
 To eyes as practised as the Prince's, through the veil of grave
 
 A DARK LANTERN 27 
 
 shyness over the drooping face, came dimly a gleam of hidden 
 fires. The old need fell upon him, to blow' the faint-seen spark 
 to the bigness of a bonfire though life was disappointing, the 
 flame was commonly of the farthing-dip description, or at best 
 a fire of straw. He looked at the face bent over the fan was 
 promise there of stuff less easily yielded up to smoke? 'Don't 
 you remember the ball that ball where we danced to- 
 gether?' she looked up waiting. It was plain his boasted 
 memory was guiltless of a notion of where the ball had 
 been. 'And then I saw you at the Dra wing-Room. I remem- 
 ber the Princess Marie whispering ' he stopped suddenly. 
 
 'What did she whisper?' 
 
 'Oh a ,' a little motion indicating and dismissing a tribute 
 to uncommon looks 'the sort of thing you're always hearing, 
 and then she said something about your taking it all as calmly 
 at if you'd done nothing else all your life. I swore I'd catch your 
 eye and see if I couldn't' he laughed, interrupting himself. 
 'But by that time you were gone, and an awkward horror was 
 wriggling with agony in front of the Queen.' 
 
 ' But you did catch my eye. And we talked about it afterwards 
 at the ball.' 
 
 'Yes,' he said with animation, the sequence of their encounters 
 being thus providentially cleared up, 'the ball was the second 
 meeting.' 
 
 'And the third ' she began, needing consolation after all 
 
 this time for the pain it had brought 'the third ' 
 
 'Here! by a stroke of uncommon luck. Where shall the 
 fourth be?' 
 
 The Cavaliere Ginnasi had come in late and evidently did 
 not realize who the Prince was. He stood bowing in front of 
 Katharine and presenting Donna Pia, his daughter, adding that 
 Lady Peterborough had just promised to bring Miss Dereham 
 out to them at Albano, the following Wednesday, to a little festa. 
 During the Cavaliere's brief reference to the yearly holiday that 
 his house had been in the habit of giving to the peasantry round 
 about, Prince Anton stood rather stiffly, not sharing in the con- 
 versation even when appealed to, obviously waiting with scant 
 patience till the interrupter should betake himself elsewhere. 
 In the midst of a remark of the old gentleman's, the Prince, with
 
 28 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 a calmness attainable only by the two extremes of the social scale 
 by the utter boor and the person of exalted rank turned his 
 broad shoulder on the suave little Italian, bent towards the Eng- 
 lish girl and said under his breath, ' I am waiting to be told where 
 the fourth is to be.' Kitty seized hold of her self-possession and 
 hurriedly asked his Highness' permission to present but the 
 Cavaliere had not waited. He was stiffly leading the Donna 
 Pia towards a group that seemed less absorbed. Looking back 
 later, Kitty knew that the moment when the Ginnasis heard who 
 was the foreigner with the atrocious manners, was the identical 
 moment when her name was first linked in gossip to Prince An- 
 ton's. For there were those in the great salon waiting to renew, 
 and many more waiting to begin, acquaintance with the man who 
 stood beside Miss Dereham, saying: 'Of course I can't hope it 
 will seem as important to you as it does to me. The fourth meet- 
 ing, I mean.' 
 
 'What,' she asked a little forlornly, remembering with poign- 
 ancy the occasion he forgot, 'what would be my excuse for 
 thinking so?' 
 
 'I'll tell you when I dare.' 
 
 She did not receive it with the ready coquetry he was used to, 
 nor yet with the shy confusion he would have understood. 
 
 'I went back to England again twice,' he seemed to make 
 out a strong case for himself. ' But I couldn't find you.' 
 
 'You did try?' 
 
 'Well, of course.' 
 
 She sat down on a divan feeling a little breathles?. It was 
 coming! But hush! Wait! Not here must it find her. Had 
 life and training left her less slow to feel the unfitness of the time 
 and place, the room full of eyes pecking surreptitiously at the 
 Prince, would have pricked her to realization; and Lady Peter- 
 borough's pleased vigilance across the space dividing them would 
 have reminded the girl that she was accorded her five minutes 
 te'te-a-tete not to look Destiny in the face, but to fasten in her cap 
 yet another feather this an uncommon fine one that should 
 set off past trophies and win others new. Homage from this 
 man lent any beauty lustre. 
 
 ' How long shall you be in Rome ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' How long shall you ? '
 
 A DARK LANTERN 29 
 
 'Two weeks.' 
 
 '/ shall be two weeks.' 
 
 He tried to make her meet his look. Not even his silence 
 helped him. But she was not easily embarrassed, he observed. 
 
 Was she then so used ? Was she as blase as he had found 
 
 many a girl quite as young, and almost as innocent-seeming ? 
 
 'Are you much here?' he said, bowing to someone who had 
 succeeded in catching his eye. 
 
 'You mean here at the Palazzo?' she asked. He saw that 
 her glance rested on the group in the middle of the room, where, 
 stationed boldly under the full blaze of the chandelier, Lady 
 Peterborough was holding forth to her hostess and the Mon- 
 signore Mazzuoli, in an Italian as fluent as Kitty knew it was 
 atrocious. 
 
 ' Oh yes, we are here oftener than at any house in Rome. They 
 have been friends for fifty years, those two those three in fact.' 
 
 'The Monsignore too?' 
 
 'Yes, the Monsignore too.' 
 
 'Fifty years is too long!' he laughed. 
 
 ' Too long for what ? Friendship ? ' 
 
 'Too long for most things,' he said with a slight impatience. 
 
 'Not too long for ' She stopped short. His wandering 
 
 look came back to her. What was she blushing so furiously 
 about ? 
 
 ' Not too long for what ? ' 
 
 The girl stood up, as her colour deepened painfully. 'She 
 is making me a sign Lady Peterborough is.' 
 
 '/ am making you a sign.' 
 
 Not here not here, her fluttering look seemed saying as, 
 back and forth, among the glancing lights, from face to face it 
 went, like a butterfly pursued across a flower bed. Not here 
 not here 
 
 ' Good-night.' She folded the shining wings of her fan. 
 
 'You mustn't go till you finish your sentence!' he said. 
 
 'We haven't time not for for what I was going to say.' 
 
 'Not time? Why, we've got fifty years.' 
 
 He drew her eyes to drown in his. She caught at her breath 
 frightened, and without a word moved towards the centre of the 
 great room to meet her god-mother. He followed close.
 
 30 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'What have you been doing all this time since I saw you?' he 
 was saying over her shoulder. 
 
 'Very little' then suddenly, with a vision of the Grafin, and 
 remembrance of the great Roman lady: 'But you?' she paused 
 to ask. 
 
 'I?' 
 
 'Yes, what have you been doing?' she insisted. 
 
 'Waiting for to-night.' 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 It was the first time within their experience that Lady Peter- 
 borough and her god-daughter had cared to see much of the 
 same person. That they should do so, for once in a way, made 
 life singularly smooth. It removed a quite recent stone of stum- 
 bling. Kitty was content now to fall in with projects more suit- 
 able to her age and condition, than mooning about Rome in 
 quarters that were not even 'show' places, accompanied only 
 by her god-father and a new protege" of his, a beggarly librarian. 
 
 Lord Peterborough's views about the Prince were not easy 
 to elicit. Kitty's desertion did not induce the old man to spend 
 more time in the bosom of his family. The only difference now 
 being that he retired alone each morning to haunts that had lured 
 him when he was young, and never lost their charm certain 
 musty book-lined halls to which he returned with unabated zest 
 each time throughout the years, whenever he revisited Rome. 
 He had certain musty friends there, and one who wasn't musty 
 men learned in the art of illumination and the literature of 
 the early Italian MS. Commonly he went to them once in a 
 great while his friends, musty and otherwise, came to him. Lady 
 Peterborough had observed with misgiving Katharine's par- 
 tiality for the aforesaid librarian, a dark-visaged young man, 
 of hot temper and radical tendencies, to whose scholarship Lord 
 Peterborough took off his hat, and to whose damnable opinions 
 he listened, smiling. Lady Peterborough provoked their utter- 
 ince (on the one or two occasions when she came to speech with 
 the young radical) in order that she might crush them and him. 
 Since she had not succeeded as well as she could wish, she felt 
 the need of keeping an eye on Signer Giovanelli. The creature 
 was not ill-looking, and bore himself with a certain sullen grace. 
 When her ladyship heard he was so poor that he got money to
 
 A DARK LANTERN 31 
 
 buy new books by binding old ones, she gave him commissions. 
 But 'like all that tribe, he is not really grateful,' she remarked 
 aside when, during one of Prince Anton's visits, Signer Giovanelli 
 was announced. He produced a packet of French Memoirs, that 
 had gone to him in rags, transfigured now in fair white vellum 
 bindings, delicately tooled and ornamented with gold lettering. 
 
 Lady Peterborough looked at them critically, as if trusting 
 to find a flaw in the careful work. Prince Anton, who had found 
 his cue in Kitty's sympathetic reception of the man, took up one 
 of the volumes and turned it over, with open admiration. Lady 
 Peterborough simply looked at him with that expression her 
 intimates knew so well: 'You're on the wrong road, my friend.' 
 But the girl's face told another, kinder story, and as silently 
 besought support. 
 
 'It is not easy,' said the Prince with the air of a connoisseur, 
 'not so easy to get such work done.' 
 
 'I shouldn't think you ever tried,' said his hostess dryly. 
 
 'My sisters have; at home, in England and in France. I've 
 seen the results.' He was turning to the young man. 
 
 'I can tell your sisters of dozens,' Lady Peterborough inter- 
 rupted, 'dozens who do this kind of thing do it well.' She 
 seemed to distinguish the present workman for inefficiency. 
 
 'May I have your address?' asked the Prince, while Kitty 
 glowed with suppressed approval. But the angry young libra- 
 rian replied in French that her ladyship was quite right, and 
 there was nothing unusual, not even unusual badness, in the work 
 in question. Anton persisted and further complimented the 
 scheme of decoration. 
 
 Ah, how good my prince is! Kitty thought. 
 
 'Really? You like this?' pursued Lady Peterborough. 'Oh, 
 that plain one Kitty's looking at is at least inoffensive. But 
 this. Now why in heaven's name so big a coronet?' She ar- 
 raigned her beneficiary. 'And one won't do for you. You 
 must plant a crown in every corner. She dabbed at each repe- 
 tition of the device with a bony finger, and raised her eyes on a 
 sudden to the Prince. 'Do you wonder why this gentleman 
 makes so much of coronets ? ' She smiled her wickedest. ' Signer 
 Giovanelli is a Socialist.' 
 
 'And to think,' said his benefactress when he was gone, 'to
 
 32 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 think that that little black Obscurity objects to the monarchy, 
 and rages against ' 
 
 'Oh, that's not why you dislike him,' said Kitty. 'You have 
 no patience with anybody who is poor.' 
 
 The old woman gleamed at her god-daughter's rare appre- 
 ciation. 'Quite true. I do not like people who have nothing. 
 Still less people who have nothing but a grievance. 5 
 
 But 'the greatest gentleman of all the world' had shown him- 
 self incapable of harshness towards a poor student. And how, 
 for her sake, he bore with Lady Peterborough's intolerance and 
 caprice! though no one knew more unerringly than the Prince 
 how to put down presumption. There was the time when, just 
 as they were going in to luncheon with a large party, Mr. and 
 Miss Fox-Dorland were announced. Lady Peterborough's 
 expressive countenance conveyed that they were too assiduous, 
 even for persons violently rich. They explained that they had 
 been asked for this day by Lord Peterborough. 
 
 ' Oh, he will be sorry he forgot,' said Kitty in the chilling pause, 
 pitying Miss Fox-Dorland. ' But he may come in at any moment.' 
 
 *Not in the least likely. Peterborough has no sense of his 
 responsibilities.' She publicly washed her hands of these guests 
 of her husband's, knowing as well as Kitty did, that the absent 
 host wished to show kindness to the children of an obliging and 
 erudite collector of Illuminated MS., themselves ambitious of 
 quite other distinction. 
 
 The plain daughter, past her first youth and not yet arrived at 
 temerity, was subdued from the beginning and scarcely opened 
 her mouth, except to put food in it. Her young brother was 
 not so easily choked off. He wrestled with the conviction that 
 if only Lady Peterborough above all Miss Dereham realized 
 what a very smart young man he was, they would claim him for 
 their inner circle upon the general exodus to London. 
 
 'I've been at San Moritz,' he announced. 'It's been the best 
 season they've ever known.' This eliciting nothing: 'Are you 
 often there ? ' he asked Miss Dereham. 
 
 'Only once, two summers ago.' 
 
 'In the summer! Oh, it's horrible, I believe, in the summer. 
 Winter's the time.' Lady Peterborough was keeping an inimical 
 eye on the young man. He felt himself in the full lime-light.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 33 
 
 'You ought to go for the Sports. Your friend Lady Muriel Tat- 
 ton was there this year.' 
 
 'Was she? 'said Kitty. 
 
 He nodded with nonchalance. 'In great form, too. We 
 skated a lot together that is, whenever I could get away from 
 the Hon. Mrs. Bernard Hayes. She was always getting up hockey 
 parties, or making me go toboganning with her. Oh, she's great 
 fun!' He looked down the rather silent table and to his joy 
 caught Prince Anton's eye. 'Do you know Mrs. Bernard?' 
 he demanded. 
 
 There was a perceptible pause. Then, 'No,' said the Prince, 
 speaking from the top of a long flight of stairs, yet not, Kitty 
 felt, with Lady Peterborough's offensiveness. 
 
 'Oh, I thought you looked as if you did. Most people know 
 Mrs. Bernard. Prince Henry of Prussia says she's the most 
 wonderful woman for her age he's ever known. She certainly 
 keeps one busy,' he laughed. 
 
 'Ah!' said Lady Peterborough, 'did she manage to keep you 
 busy ? ' 
 
 'Rather!' he laughed again to show that he was impervious 
 to the pervading chill. 'From morning till night.' He turned 
 instinctively to Miss Dereham 'And she's so awfully a well- 
 known, don't you know, it was a a little conspicuous. I didn't 
 altogether like it. I used to hear people asking "Who is that 
 Mrs. Bernard's got hold of this year?" And at the hops she 
 would insist on my leading the cotillon with her. Didn't alto- 
 gether relish it, when I'd hear new-comers asking, " Who is that 
 who's dancing all the time with Mrs. Bernard?" Same thing 
 morning, noon and night a woman as repandue as that, you 
 know, in the most stunning togs and everybody staring, and 
 whispering, and asking who I was.' 
 
 A pause. 
 
 'Well,' said Prince Anton, 'and who were you?' 
 
 The incident did not, except in the Fox-Dorland mind, re- 
 dound to the Prince's discredit. He had meted deserved punish- 
 ment and, after all, in Kitty's opinion, the drafts made on his 
 forbearance by Lady Peterborough, might well leave him with 
 little over for a chance young popinjay. 'How beautiful he is 
 to her for my sake,' thought the young egoist and vet not wholly
 
 34 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 without realization that it is men of a different world from his, 
 who imagine they may with safety ignore older women as a class. 
 Where it may be done with impunity without effective reprisals 
 the society is in a barbaric or a childish stage. No such error 
 was likely to be made by a man like Anton of Breitenlohe-Wal- 
 denstein but the reason of his correctness was, in this particular 
 case, as far from acquired caution, as it was from natural piety. 
 If women must grow old, this, in his opinion, was how they should 
 do it arriving at the dread late stage in the long journey with 
 forces concentrated; important because dangerous; tolerable be- 
 cause amusing; the social gift sharpened to a razor's edge; as com- 
 petent to lift a favourite high, as to crush an inferior under foot. 
 
 Lady Peterborough, for her part, regarded him not alone as 
 a timely object-lesson to Kitty himself so plainly unattainable 
 for more, that he was one of the few who were absolutely 'safe,' 
 standing there as he did, on the other side of the royal gulf, and 
 yet offering a standard by which to shrink little students and 
 Fox- Dor lands into their proper nothingness. 
 
 Prince Anton, in his turn, amused Lady Peterborough, and 
 took her back to the days of her youth when, as the Ambassa- 
 dor's daughter, she was much at the German Court. Full of 
 social inventiveness where her own entertainment was at stake, 
 she was indefatigable in devising ways of adding to the chances 
 of a meeting. Not once, but twice, sometimes even three times 
 a day, in those enchanted weeks, did Katharine see the face she 
 had waited two years for a glimpse of. Never mind if the owner's 
 kinship with the occupant of ' the Perilous Siege ' was not so easy 
 to verify, when Anton sat at Lady Peterborough's side, relishing 
 her wit, condoning her cruelty, convulsed with amusement at 
 some sotto voce story. In the minutes when they were alone, 
 he and Katharine walked in that enchanted forest, that in the 
 older lands, as well as in the new, is virgin still. If he made a 
 false step sometimes, said something that jarred or vaguely 
 troubled, Katharine was quick to think: that is the kind of thing 
 Lady Peterborough, or girls like the Grafin, make him say. If 
 'one of the most worshipfullest men, and one of the best knights 
 in the world,' thinks meanly sometimes of girls and women, it 
 is girls' and women's fault. Never for an instant did she doubt 
 that he would gladly take a nobler view of the sex, were it pre-
 
 A DARK LANTERN 35 
 
 sented. He, on his part, equally quick to readjust himself to 
 a nature whose very aloofness and fastidiousness were a charm 
 while they yet were new. Far from unpleasant to be worshipped 
 by a devote like this; a refinement of pleasure even, to let her 
 little prudishnesses, her odd, old-fashioned dignity have their 
 day ... to lead her by degrees, and without her conscious loss 
 of faith, into a different world. 
 
 It must not, however, take too long. He rubbed his eyes 
 when he realized how much time he had already given to the 
 undertaking, and how little he could yet gauge his progress. 
 
 'You don't seem the least sad,' he reproached her, 'that these 
 days are nearly over.' 
 
 'I would be if ' 
 
 'If?' 
 
 Smiling: 'If there were no more days.' 
 
 'Is that an invitation to England?' 
 
 ' Do you need an invitation ? ' 
 
 'You won't be surprised to see me, then?' 
 
 'Oh, no,' she answered with that odd directness of hers. 
 
 ' You will be surprised if I don't come ? Is that it ? ' 
 
 She smiled again. 
 
 'Say yes,' he implored, thinking that to make her admit so 
 much would be the work of an hour. But the answer came on 
 the instant. 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 Extraordinary how bold the shy thing is, he thought, but what 
 he said was: 
 
 ' Of course. You knew.' 
 
 'Knew. . .?' 
 
 'That I couldn't possibly stay away. Didn't you?' 
 
 Again she took his breath by saying: 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'When did you did you realize?' he asked. 
 
 'Why, the night we met again.' 
 
 'You mean at a 
 
 'At the Principessa's.' 
 
 It amused him to find she had antedated his subjection by 
 so many days little knowing she waited now, expecting him 
 to correct her for post-dating it three years.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE last night of the stay in Rome, Lady Peterborough was 
 'At Home.' Prince Anton had been dining with her. For the 
 first time she found him a little heavy in hand. 'After all, these 
 Germans He would wake up, perhaps, when the great 
 bare salon began to fill with the cosmopolitan throng that would 
 be coming during the evening to bid the Peterborough party good- 
 bye. Kitty was radiant. Well, at all events she was going home 
 heart-whole! As for Lady Peterborough, she was sorry herself, 
 this time, to leave Rome. Really, she must try to import that 
 Prussian princeling into England. Though he had been dull to- 
 night, he was usually the reverse. 
 
 'It is too bad,' Kitty was saying at that moment, 'we are to 
 stay three weeks in Paris on the way home.' 
 
 ' Don't you like Paris ? ' 
 
 'Yes, but I don't want to break the journey this time. We 
 shan't get to London till Saturday the 28th.' As he said nothing 
 she went on quite low: 'You'll come on Sunday?' 
 
 'Sunday? What Sunday?' 
 
 'The last in May.' 
 
 'The day after you get home?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 He smiled. 'If that isn't rather soon.' 
 
 'Soon!' 
 
 'It doesn't seem soon to me,' he agreed 'it's an eternity.' 
 
 'Yes,' she said, and sighed on the single syllable. 'It's too bad 
 you are called back to Waldenstein or else you might meet us 
 in Paris.' 
 
 That was all very well! he argued internally, half laughing, 
 half serious, but what precisely did she mean? Where were 
 
 36
 
 A DARK LANTERN 37 
 
 they? Ridiculous that he wasn't the least sure. And he had 
 known this girl two years; seen her constantly for two weeks. 
 And she had not been out of his head now for days. 
 
 'Come and have a talk in the little room off the gallery,' he 
 said. 
 
 'I can't.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Oh, I I have to be here, but I shall see you in London,' 
 she said to console herself as well as him. 
 
 'Oh, London. As you say, it's an eternity to wait. Besides, 
 I don't know about London.' 
 
 'Why don't you know about it?' 
 
 'I can't tell you here.' Seeming to stroll idly among the com- 
 ing and going guests, a word here, the machine-made bow, a 
 laugh over his shoulder, and he stood at last at the great folding- 
 doors. He turned and looked back at Kitty. 
 
 Lady Peterborough, seeing him apparently on the way out, said 
 hurriedly to the girl: 
 
 'Ask Prince Anton to speak to me again before he goes.' 
 
 More people were arriving. The Prince yielded place, glanced 
 back and saw Kitty coming. He was in the corridor when she 
 reached him with the message. 
 
 ' I don't usually go away without a proper leave-taking, do I ? ' 
 And now he was leading her towards the little room, past the 
 musicians grouped outside. Katharine debated hurriedly within 
 herself. 
 
 It was not among the possible things, she felt, for a girl to fol- 
 low a man out of a crowded drawing-room and go to talk with 
 him in another room alone. She stopped with an air of regretful 
 determination. He read her instantly, and before her protest got 
 beyond her eyes, he had turned to the flower-filled recess, just 
 beyond the great staircase, where a long oval window, blotted out 
 now with drawn curtains, looked in daylight on a court. In front 
 of the curtains a tapestried seat where Katharine sometimes read 
 or dreamed. A shaded lamp hung in the arch above, but when 
 the window's eye was shut, the nook was but little open to ob- 
 servation. Prince Anton held his arm across the branches of 
 the oleander for Katharine to pass. She did so mechanically, 
 but once in the niche, stood still, saying with a lift of voice to be
 
 38 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 heard above the music: 'I can't wait, I'm afraid. Lady Peter- 
 borough only sent me to 
 
 'To bring me back. You can't go without me.' 
 
 'But you'll come.' 
 
 'In three minutes. And for those minutes you are to sit here.' 
 He stood before her. 
 
 The voices of a party of new arrivals coming up the stairs 
 mingled with the music of the serenade. Through the leaves of 
 the formal rank of flowering shrubs the girl saw the shine of 
 gowns go glancing by even recognised faces; by reaching forth 
 a hand might have touched some oblivious passer. And yet as 
 well have gone, as he had suggested, to the little ante-room 
 opposite. 
 
 She had sat down, and now, as on this thought she suddenly 
 rose up, he arrested her with the words: 'Are you going to be 
 like this in London?' 
 
 In the long thin chain that hung about her delicate neck she 
 locked her fingers. Unconsciously near to snapping she strained 
 the fragile links. As still he waited, she forced herself to say: 
 
 'When you come, you'll see what I'm like.' 
 
 In the seconds that had gone by, his thoughts had made such 
 far excursion that he said : ' Come where ? ' 
 
 'To Peterborough House on the last Sunday in the month.' 
 
 'I don't know about doing that.' 
 
 That lifted sudden eyes, and brought quick words. 'Why 
 don't you know?' 
 
 'Why should I go to England?' The swift reproach in the 
 little face pulled him down beside it. 'It's all right,' he said, 
 laying his hand on hers as he sat down. 
 
 'Is it all right?' He felt the ringers tremble. 
 
 He laughed softly. 'Of course.' Until now, sitting quite near 
 each other, they had been talking with an effort above the music. 
 Suddenly the serenade ended, with an effect of drawing back the 
 curtain behind which they two, in the recess, had been as well 
 concealed as behind closed doors. The world flowed into the 
 corridor upon the tide of voices from the crowded salon. As 
 though confronted by a hundred eyes, the girl had withdrawn her 
 hand upon the music's ceasing. 
 
 ' Don't you like me to take your hand ? ' he said quite low.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 39 
 
 Silence. 
 
 'If you don't answer me, I shall kiss it.' 
 
 'Oh,' hurriedly ; ' I do like ' 
 
 ' Then why did you draw it away ? ' 
 
 'I don't know.' 
 
 He smiled, but reflectively. Such an answer from any other 
 young woman would have been eminently satisfactory. But here 
 he was vaguely haunted by the sense of uncertainty inspired in 
 such a man by contact with the virginal mind a thing, for its 
 brief hour, to be smiled at. But a little unwilling wonder remains 
 after the smile is gone. No matter of morals his hesitation to 
 make the first rent in the veil purely a matter of the nerves, 
 more sensitive than the rigidly virtuous give credit for. 
 
 ' Are you going to be very nice if when I come to England ? ' 
 
 'Haven't I been nice here?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' When was I not nice ? ' 
 
 'When you hide your hand when you frighten me.' 
 
 'It isn't nice of you to laugh at me.' 
 
 'Laugh! I'm far too scared.' 
 
 She frowned a little and tried to draw away her fingers again, 
 but he held them fast, 'Don't you realize how different you 
 make me?' he asked. 
 
 '"Different" from what you are with ' She shrank from 
 
 naming the great lady he was so notoriously neglecting. 
 
 While she hung hesitating to the uncompleted sentence, the 
 ante-room door opened softly, and the Grafin von Hartung came 
 out, followed by one of the men from the French Embassy. She 
 had said good-night at half-past ten on the excuse of going home 
 early to an invalid sister. Now at twenty minutes past eleven, 
 she was running lightly down the stairs with her new cavalier at 
 her heels. 
 
 Kitty was more glad than ever that she had eschewed the little 
 room not out of consideration for the Grafin but (from that 
 instinct that was a passion with her) to keep her own most radiant 
 story on a different level. 
 
 'Well, I said you made me different. And you ' 
 
 'I am wondering if you meant "different" from what you are 
 with Grafin von Hartung?'
 
 40 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Well, yes,' he said, amused. 
 
 'I hope so.' 
 
 He laughed outright at her emphasis. 'Don't you like her?' 
 
 'I don't like the way she no, she isn't very nice, but neither 
 am I to be saying so to you.' 
 
 'She's an outrageous flirt. Is that what you mean?' 
 
 'Don't let us talk about it.' 
 
 'But I am interested.' 
 
 'In her?' 
 
 'In your view of her. What does she do that isn't what you 
 call "very nice"?' 
 
 'Please don't ask me.' 
 
 'But I do.' 
 
 'Oh, you know,' said Kitty in distress, 'you know what she's 
 like, better than most.' 
 
 'Yes, I know all about her,' he said rather seriously, 'but I'm 
 not sure just what is in your mind. You must tell me.' He held 
 her by 'must.' 
 
 'The Grafin I can't say it.' 
 
 'Is there cw^thing you can't say to me?' he asked audaciously. 
 
 In her heart she answered, ' No, there was nothing should be 
 nothing.' But aloud: 'Please don't ask.' 
 
 'Yes, tell me. What is it that you've heard that Gerda has ' 
 
 Very low the awful truth came forth. 'She has let somebody 
 a man kiss her.' 
 
 'You mean Monsieur de La Ferte" Beaujon?' His air of relief 
 was puzzling. 'How do you know?' 
 
 'No, not M. de La Ferte. I mustn't tell you who it was.' 
 
 'Oh, very well.' He spoke so lightly she felt obliged to add: 
 
 'But they are not engaged.' 
 
 'So!' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'You find that very dreadful?' 
 
 She stuck her little chin in the air. 'Very like Natalie.' 
 
 'Who is Natalie?' 
 
 'My maid.' 
 
 'Ah like your maid.' He got up. 'Lady Peterborough ' 
 
 'Yes, yes, come.' 
 
 Lord Peterborough was saying good-night to the Principessa
 
 A DARK LANTERN 41 
 
 and her party at the door. Anton fell in with an arrangement 
 she proposed for the end of the month. 'But you can't,' said 
 Kitty, as they went on through the throng, ' there won't be time.' 
 
 'Time for what?' 
 
 'To go to her place in the Apennines before you go home, and 
 still be in England by ' 
 
 ' Oh, I see,' he laughed and looked over her head. 
 
 Misery came swooping down upon the girl. Oh, how long the 
 great room was, and Lady Peterborough was at the far, far end. 
 They made slow progress, stopping to speak to this one and to 
 that. Presently, as they were going on again. 
 
 'Don't you think it's rather hard on me?' she said quite low. 
 
 'What?' He turned his broad shoulder and faced her. 
 
 'To be made to tell you something, and then have you 
 offended 1' 
 
 'I'm not offended,' he was going on. 
 
 'Yes,' she said wretchedly; 'you are quite different since I was 
 so rude as to say that about your cousin. I wish you'd forgive 
 me. To-night. Now.' Again he glanced back at her. 'Don't 
 make me wait till you come to England,' she implored. 
 
 Tears would probably have spoilt her the threat of tears made 
 her eyes wonderfully tender. She really was very beguiling, he 
 acknowledged to himself. 'I wasn't the least offended,' he 
 repeated, but this time he stopped, and leaned his broad back 
 against a marble pedestal that obstructed their way. 
 
 'Oh. Were you only shocked? It was very tactless of me to 
 tell you.' 
 
 'Poor Gerda,' he said which was natural enough, but he 
 chuckled unaccountably. 
 
 Lord Peterborough descended upon them and carried the 
 Prince away. 
 
 When he came half an hour later to say good-night, and au 
 revoir to Kitty, he could not forbear adding under his breath: 
 'So it is understood?' 
 
 'What?' 
 
 'That you are to be very nice to me in England. It's only on 
 that condition I come. Remember how patient I've been in 
 Rome.' (That was it, then, patience.) 'But I warn you I shall 
 not be patient in London.'
 
 42 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Lady Peterborough's change of plan, which brought her party 
 back to London on Wednesday instead of Saturday, was not 
 known to Colonel Dereham. 
 
 Kitty's sole idea in not telegraphing to him, was that she might 
 lead up, by a happy surprise in forestalling their reunion, to the 
 glorious news of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein's coming. For her 
 father must be a little just a little prepared for that great 
 Coming not to England alone, but visibly into his daughter's life. 
 
 Towards her god-father in this connection, Kitty was conscious 
 of a vague sense of chili, not Lord Peterborough's fault exactly. 
 He did not really know the man, of all men, best worth knowing. 
 He had been absorbed by that matter of the acquisition through 
 Giovanelli of a priceless Florentine Missal. In any case, Lord 
 Peterborough was not, after all, near so close to the great matter 
 as Kitty's father. She would go direct to Hill Street from the 
 station, in spite of her god-mother's sniffing and the maid's glum 
 looks. 'I shall not stay long,' she said consolingly to the unre- 
 covered Natalie, whose sufferings in the Channel had reduced her 
 to speechlessness. She was left humped in the hansom corner 
 with closed eyes, while Kitty sprang lightly out on reaching the 
 little house in Hill Street. Before she could ring the bell a new 
 man-servant opened the door in the act of lifting a whistle to his 
 lips. 
 
 'Is my father Colonel Dereham in?' 
 
 'Y-yes'm he is just going out.' 
 
 When the man recovered from his surprise the girl had glanced 
 into the little library, and not finding her father there, had flown 
 upstairs and opened the drawing-room door. Colonel Dereham 
 and a lady were apparently taking leave of each other. He 
 dropped her hand, gaping at the apparition. 
 
 'My child! what has happened?' 
 
 The belated blast of the hansom whistle ascended shrill. 
 
 'Only that I am home again.' Her warmth dropped many 
 degrees. She spoke with a nervousness unusual to her. 'They've 
 made some blunder about the new ball-room decoration. We 
 came as soon as Lady Peterborough heard. She is very angry.' 
 
 'She would be,' he laughed, but oddly, Kitty felt. 
 
 The strange lady had been simply staring. She was a pictur- 
 esque creature too picturesque, the girl felt vaguely. More ex-
 
 A DARK LANTERN 43 
 
 perienced eyes than hers would have seen that without rouge and 
 pencilling the lady would have been handsomer, but less observed. 
 She wore a great deal of barbaric-looking jewellery. Lumps of 
 dull turquoise, chains of uncut emeralds fell over the elaborate 
 embroidery of a Paris gown. Her cart-wheel hat would have 
 graced a garden-party, and put the flower-beds to shame. Kitty 
 had never known anyone just like this. Why did she seem in 
 some way familiar, as with a manner combining the uncertain 
 and the overbold, she advanced, diffusing strong scents? 
 
 Ah, that was what it had been that had met Kitty at the 
 threshold. It was a perfume that she had sometimes noticed and 
 vaguely wondered at before. She had once accused her father of 
 using it. He in turn accused a new soap. 
 
 'Won't you present me to Miss Dereham?' 
 
 'Ah oh, I beg your pardon. Mrs. Heathcote.' 
 
 'How do you do?' She had taken the girl's hand. 'This is a 
 moment I've looked forward to. I used to hear about you in 
 India, and be shown pictures of you, when you were a little girl.' 
 
 'And I,' Kitty forced herself to say, 'I have heard how kind 
 you you all were to my father when he was so ill.' 
 
 'It was very little to do for an old friend. But now that you 
 and I have at last met, let us see something of one another.' 
 
 'I I should be very glad.' 
 
 'The hansom, sir,' said the new servant at the door. 
 
 'Your hansom is here,' repeated Colonel Dereham to his visitor, 
 in a higher key, as one speaks to the slightly deaf. 
 
 She looked at him, looked strangely, the girl thought. 
 
 'I will leave you two to arrange a meeting,' she said. 'Good- 
 bye,' and Kitty's father was conducting her downstairs, with some 
 precipitancy. 
 
 Left alone, she walked about, looked at the cards of invitation 
 stuck in the Adam mirror cards that bore names conveying 
 nothing to the girl. She had a returning sense of the strangeness 
 of this whole life, so near, yet so unknown. What were they like, 
 these Colonels and Captains and their wives ? How unnatural to 
 have so little share in her father's friendships ! How wrong to be 
 so self-absorbed! With a pang she once more noted the bare 
 unlived-in look, that makes most men's rooms so unnecessarily 
 touching to the feminine mind. For the average man is happily
 
 44 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 unconscious of the discomfortable aspect a room may wear, that 
 yet is supplied with all the things that he counts needful. 
 
 'Poor father!' the girl whispered, and with an extension of 
 sympathy 'What an awful friend he's got, too! It is bad luck 
 to owe gratitude to a woman like that! How little I've thought 
 of him all these happy days! I must make it up' and she 
 turned to Colonel Dereham on his reappearance, too full of new 
 solicitude and reproached affection, to take note of the curious 
 half-dogged, half-appealing look that darkened the handsome face 
 or its lighting on the instant she said: 'Dear, I'm so glad at 
 last to have seen Mrs. Heathcote. Did you ask her to dine with 
 us on Sunday?' 
 
 'No. Not Sunday.' 
 
 'When?' 
 
 'I didn't ask her at all.' 
 
 'But you will.' 
 
 He took the girl by the shoulders and looked at her caressingly, 
 yet still with that effect of dumb appeal. 'You certainly don't 
 seem to be the worse for your journey.' 
 
 They sat down on the sofa, and she told him odds and ends 
 that might amuse him, knowing now that this would not be the 
 occasion for the great unburdening besides, the butler had s^id 
 he was going out. She must not feel hurried when she told him 
 her story. 
 
 He looked older. Had that been coming slowly? Only now, 
 in this strong light and after was it only fatigue or had it been 
 emotion? only now did she see quite plain the first hint of the 
 pinch at the nostril, the discoloration under the eyes, and where 
 was his fine colour? It had been going this last year. Now 
 suddenly it was gone! 
 
 'Are you ill, dear?' she asked presently, laying her arms about 
 his neck. 
 
 '111? No. What put that in your head?' 
 
 'Your eyes look ill.' 
 
 'Oh, a little headache.' 
 
 ' and you are' she suppressed 'yellow' 'your nice fresh 
 
 colour is gone.' 
 
 'Youth's a stuff will not endure. Don't forget that, my girl! 
 Well, have you left your heart in Italy?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 45 
 
 She shook her head. Another time she would tell him how it 
 was gone to the Riesengebirge, but she was flung back to-day 
 upon the thought of him his unshared life. What profit had he 
 of his daughter ? She came and went like a mere visitor. It was 
 all wrong and she was to blame. 
 
 'Father, I wish you would let me know some of your friends.' 
 
 'Lady Peterborough doesn't.' 
 
 'She is not my mother. 'I don't want to be so outside your 
 life. . . .' (Such a little time left, too she must make the most 
 
 of these days before ) 'I am willing to give up to share 
 
 one of our dear Sundays. If you don't ask Mrs. Heathcote I feel 
 sure she'll be hurt.' He gave a queer short laugh. 'Don't you 
 mind that? It's very ungrateful if you don't. He made no 
 defence no answer. 'Suppose I mind.' 
 
 'Oh, you have other things to mind.' 
 
 ' You know I've often asked you before and we mayn't always 
 have the opportunity.' 
 
 'Opportunity for what?' 
 
 'To for me to share your life.' 
 
 She blushed as he said, 'Oh, ho!' 
 
 'Do ask Mrs. A curious look of repulsion in his face 
 
 arrested her. 'If not Mrs. Heath ' She stopped again. It 
 
 was almost as if he shrank from the name repeated on his daugh- 
 ter's lips. 'What were you meaning to do to-night?' her eyes 
 went back to the cards in the panelled mirror. 
 
 'Nothing in particular.' 
 
 'This Lady Wick Wick! what a droll name! is enchanted 
 to know you will come.' She read the words written in the corner 
 of the card. 
 
 'Oh, I hadn't really made up my mind.' 
 
 'Then do, and take me.' 
 
 'It wouldn't amuse you.' 
 
 'I'm sure it would! I should so love it, if sometimes we did 
 things together.' 
 
 While he said, 'Not this, I think,' she saw he was considering. 
 
 It would immensely flatter Lady Wick if he brought his daugh- 
 ter to her party. She was always begging him. . . . Kitty 
 recognised the look in the weak, handsome face that meant 
 yielding, and she patted his hand.
 
 46 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'That's beautiful. I must go now or Natalie will be a deader. 
 Why do you suppose servants are always worse travellers than we 
 are?' But she did not wait for Colonel Dereham's views. 'I'll 
 call for you at ten.' 
 
 'You'll get into trouble with Lady Peterborough.' 
 But Kitty danced away. 'Be ready at ten, Sir.' 
 
 'Tell me about our hostess,' she said gaily as they drove to 
 Hans Crescent. 
 
 'Oh a she hunts. Place in Leicestershire.' 
 
 'Is there a Lord Wick?' 
 
 ' Sir William. No one but the Queen has ever seen Sir William, 
 they say. The Queen and of course Lady Wick.' 
 
 'Oh why did the Queen see him?' 
 
 'She had to when she knighted him.' 
 
 'Why was he given his knighthood?' Kitty asked, thinking as 
 she always did, it was the most beautiful-sounding rank in the 
 world. Even to that day, given England's venerable Queen to 
 strike the deserving shoulder with a sword, ' to be made a Knight ' 
 had a marvellous fine ring about it. ' What had he done to deserve 
 the honour?' 
 
 'Happened to be Mayor of his town when the Queen passed 
 through.' 
 
 Lady Wick stood receiving her guests in a merciless white satin 
 gown, which set off with uncalled-for vividness the hues of a 
 visage dyed in wine and wind. Hers was one of those com- 
 plexions in which a general effect of high colour is harshly gained, 
 not by the equal diffusion of swift blood, but by the tracery on 
 the skin's surface of a multitude of tiny threads of scarlet, which 
 seem at a distance to merge into an even flush of colour. She 
 grew purple with gratification and excitement, when she caught 
 sight of Colonel Dereham and his daughter, and forthwith gave 
 Kitty her first experience of being vulgarly lionized. What odd 
 people there are in the world, she reflected, a little bewildered, as 
 she was passed round like a cake basket at a country tea. If 
 these people had less manners they certainly had more 'manner' 
 than those Katharine commonly encountered. It struck her these 
 guests of Lady Wick's took more pains, were more deliberately 
 vivacious and 'entertaining.' The young men were rather like
 
 A DARK LANTERN 47 
 
 Marshall and Snelgrove's young men very elegant. The ladies 
 she saw her god-mother describing them with a single portentous 
 look, and so consigning them to unplumbed deeps. The thought 
 stirred the girl's antagonisms. The ways of Peterborough House 
 were perhaps not much to boast of. The cousin with whom 
 Kitty's schooldays had been passed at Auteuil, Madame de 
 Courcelles, would find them boorish enough. 
 
 Now she was being presented, in passing, to a keen looking 
 young man. His eyes had followed her ever since her entrance, 
 despite his attention being claimed by a loud young woman with 
 a dashing air. He, however, took the introduction to Miss Dere- 
 ham less to heart than the rest, who had all, more or less, made 
 her little speeches. This man merely nodded and continued 
 unabashed his silent appraisement. 
 
 'Oh, and here's Major Whitney!' this from the hostess in a 
 tone that dismissed the dark young man as effectually as 
 Lady Peterborough could have done presenting instead a truly 
 worthy object in the Major. 'He would never have forgiven 
 me while life lasts if I failed to present him! Miss Kitty 
 Dereham.' 
 
 How dare she call me Kitty! The girl bowed distantly, and 
 turned her head to look in the crowd for her father. ' You know 
 Colonel Dereham of course,' Lady Wick was saying. 'No?' 
 she lowered her voice. Kitty, as she scanned faces, profiles, 
 backs of the encompassing crowd, heard again explanatory frag- 
 ments. 'Yes, of the iyth Simla The Peterboroughs Sar- 
 gent's picture ' And again, she met the look of the dark 
 
 young man fixed full upon her. There were many eyes turned 
 towards the girl, but these arrived. Kitty found herself ex- 
 changing glances with them, as Lady Wick raised her tired, voice 
 with shrill vivacity: 'Now, Major, since you're a man of prowess 
 you may hew a way for Miss Dereham into the next room. 
 There'll be music presently, and Tommy is there. He's simply 
 dying to know Miss Dereham." 
 
 'Let him perish. I shall keep Miss Dereham here,' returned 
 Major Whitney with a facetious air. 
 
 'Oh, Major! Major!' Lady Wick screamed with delight as 
 she hurried back to the door to meet a new batch of arrivals. 
 
 Katharine turned her back on the gallant soldier. 'I wish
 
 48 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 there were such a thing as a chair,' she said to the young man 
 with the eyes. 
 
 'Where do you want it?' he answered without budging. 
 
 'Plenty of chairs in the next room,' said the Major over her 
 shoulder. Katharine looked steadily in front of her. 
 
 ' You want to sit down here ? ' demanded the dark young man. 
 
 'Somewhere here,' she said with a frown as the Major's 
 voice still urged, 'Music and plenty of chairs in the next room. 
 "Tommy's" there too, as you've heard. And now you won't 
 doubt that I'm the most unselfish man in the Service your 
 service, Miss Dereham.' 
 
 But Kitty was watching the quick turn of the black head in 
 front of her, the rapid tour of the long eyes, that look of resource- 
 fulness as unmistakable in a drawing-room as in ship or work- 
 shop. The dark young man shouldered his way a few paces 
 and, looking back, made a sign a funny imperious little motion 
 of the head. Kitty hesitated. The Major's voice decided her. 
 She was following the dark young man through the crush. He 
 was elbowing his way with as little haste as civility, drawing 
 attention to his requirements with a quiet: 'One moment please. 
 Yes. Let me through, will you?' and he removed a pretty 
 girl with as little concern as he 'shifted' a fat old man. 
 
 'Here,' he had cleared a little island in the crush, and drawn 
 into it a small divan that had been pushed under a curio table. 
 
 'You have got sharp eyes!' laughed Kitty as she gratefully 
 appropriated the seat. 'I'll just sit here a moment till that 
 Major man ' She apologized for her action more to her- 
 self than to her new acquaintance, standing guard, like a beef- 
 eater before the throne. 
 
 'Oh, the Major's all right very good officer.' 
 
 Kitty made a little face, and rested her chin in her hand, elbow 
 on knee. 
 
 'You're tired 1' announced the beefeater. 
 
 'I crossed from Boulogne this morning.' 
 
 'I crossed from Calais yesterday.' 
 
 'Oh, have you been in Italy too?' 
 
 'No, Vienna.' 
 
 'I don't know Vienna.' 
 
 'Neither do I.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 49 
 
 'How is that?* 
 
 'I've been working there.' 
 
 'At what?' 
 
 'Science.' 
 
 'Stand more so,' she commanded, motioning with her fan. 
 
 Instead of obeying, he said 'Why?' 
 
 'Because I don't want Lady Wick to find me and tell any 
 more people that I'm ' She shrugged. 
 
 'That you're what?' 
 
 'Oh, it's bad enough once all round,' she said, laughing. 'No- 
 body can be told twice who anybody is. Not that I blame any- 
 one for forgetting. I've come to a point of tiredness myself 
 where I can't listen to names.' 
 
 'Yes, I saw that.' 
 
 'Saw what?' 
 
 'That you didn't hear mine.' 
 
 'What is it?' 
 
 "'Nobody can be told twice,"' he quoted. 
 
 'Oh, very well. I won't tell you who I am.' 
 
 'I knew who were you when you came in.' 
 
 'How did you ' 
 
 But he kept her to the point. 'What has Lady Wick been 
 telling people about you ? ' 
 
 'Oh, nothing,' said the girl, with a sudden resumption of 
 discretion. 
 
 'You began to say?' he persisted. 
 
 'I think not.' 
 
 'Yes, you did.' 
 
 This young man is odder even than the other odd people. 
 Kitty considered the face, which she found rather striking, and 
 his impossible manners even more striking than his face. Highly 
 unlikely that she should have met him before, unlikely too that 
 she should have forgotten. But she asked: 
 
 'Did you say you knew me?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Where was it?' 
 
 'What?' 
 
 'That we met.' 
 
 'I didn't say we had met. I said I knew who you were.' 
 
 4
 
 50 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'You've seen my picture?' 
 
 'I've seen you.' 
 
 'Where?' 
 
 'At the Opera last year.' 
 
 'Oh, you go often?' 
 
 'Not here.' 
 
 'While you've been abroad?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Then you do know something about Vienna after all.' 
 
 'The University and the Opera, that's all I saw.' 
 
 ' You care about music ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'No? Why do you go ?' 
 
 'Because the row puts other things out of my head.' 
 
 'Row! You mean the music?' she laughed, delighted. 
 
 'Yes,' he said quite gravely. '\Vhen I've been working at the 
 same thing for seventeen hours, I can't always get my mind to 
 leave off. But a lot of banging does it.' 
 
 While Kitty was laughing, he went on: 'I used to drink 
 beer.' 
 
 ' and now you go to the Opera.' 
 
 He nodded. 'Music's just as fuddling at the time and not so 
 unsatisfactory next day.' 
 
 'Oh, what a nice conversation we are having don't let Lady 
 Wick find me.' 
 
 'I could come and see you.' 
 
 ' Oh ! could you ? ' His audacity took her breath ! 
 
 Instead of answering, Katharine stood up and caught sight of 
 her father. She made him a sign. 
 
 'Let's see, it's Peterborough House, isn't it?' said the per- 
 sistent voice at her side. 
 
 'No, Hill Street,' answered Katharine, as she joined her father. 
 Deliberately she gave no number. 
 
 On her way home, feeling that her comments on Lady Wick 
 and Major Whitney had not given satisfaction: 'Father dear, I 
 like your friends,' she said. 'They're so so ' 
 
 'So what?' asked Colonel Dereham with an unusual edge in 
 his mellow voice. 
 
 'So different.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 51 
 
 'Different from what?' 
 
 'Why, from everyday people.' 
 
 'They may not be exactly like the people you see every day.' 
 
 'Oh, no,' the girl admitted frankly, 'not a bit.' Her father's 
 silence admonished her. 'Your . . . Lady Wick's people are 
 much more . . . original.' 
 
 'H'm.' 
 
 'That man that's been studying science abroad ' 
 
 'Which was that?' 
 
 'I forget his name.' 
 
 Really that young man was what was he? 
 
 Different, any way. 
 
 Too 'different' even for Hill Street.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE drawing-room was full of people when on Sunday after- 
 noon, to the surprise of everyone but Kitty, Prince Anton came 
 in. He seemed scarcely to see the girl. Lady Peterborough 
 masked most of her enormous content at his appearance, know- 
 ing that the best way to make sure of seeing a good deal of such 
 a person, was not to make too much of the circumstance. Not 
 only the Prince, but his friend and secretary the old Freiherr 
 von Dewitz, principal member of the small and economically 
 ordered suite, spent most of their time at Peterborough House. 
 They dined and drove with her much-diverted ladyship, they 
 sat in her box at the Opera. 
 
 Just before he went away that first Sunday: 
 
 'You are looking very well pleased,' Prince Anton said to 
 Kitty, 'to be back in London.' 
 
 The girl smiled. 'Do you think it's that?' 
 
 'What else?' 
 
 'I can't imagine.' And then they both laughed. In spite of 
 Lord Peterborough joining them at that moment, Katharine 
 went on: 'You are pleased too, aren't you?' Turning to the 
 old man: 'We are saying it's good to be back in London.' 
 
 Instead of continuing in the same vein, 'Still, I don't deny,' 
 said the Prince, 'I'd rather be in the country at this time of the 
 year.' 
 
 Was that for the intruder's edification, thought Kitty, wondering. 
 
 'Where for preference?' Lord Peterborough was asking, 
 ' Waldenstein ? ' but simultaneously with the answer 'N-no, 
 not Waldenstein,' Lady Algy was at his elbow, stiffly claiming 
 fraternal attendance to her carriage. 
 
 'Why not Waldenstein?' Kitty asked. 
 
 52
 
 A DARK LANTERN 53 
 
 'Because there are places more . . . One of my cousins and 
 I have a little shooting-box in Hungary ' 
 
 'You don't get any sport this time of the year, do you?' 
 
 'Not shooting, but it's at its best in other ways just now. I 
 can see you there.' 
 
 Ah, that was what he meant away from all these people he 
 and she alone 
 
 'What is Waldenstein like?' she asked. 
 
 ' Waldenstein ? Oh, Waldenstein is an ugly barrack except 
 an old bit.' 
 
 'When was the old bit built?' 
 
 'Twelve hundred and something. But the shooting-box . . . 
 you'd like that. 
 
 ***** 
 
 It was during an entr'acte in the Boheme that Kitty, refusing 
 to her eyes the bliss of turning and exchanging looks with the 
 man who sat at the back of the box, behind Lady Peterborough, 
 leaned on the railing and fixed her gaze on the tier above. 
 
 A face was bending over, apparently looking intently into the 
 Peterborough box. People did that more than ever since Anton 
 had taken to sitting there. Even from the Omnibus box, royal 
 eyes wandered thither and seemed to forget the way back. But 
 this face looking down from above as she glanced up a second 
 time the man bowed. Katharine looked over her shoulder, and 
 right and left into other boxes, to see for whom the bow was 
 meant. No one but herself seemed to notice. 
 
 Again looking up, again she met the downbent look, and again 
 the recognition. She picked up her glass. Why, of course. It 
 was Lady Wick's dark young man, who had said that 'the row' 
 at the Opera rested him after his long hours of study. Kitty 
 smiled and he nodded again. Going out she saw him in the 
 lobby, and laughed as she caught his eye, remembering the 
 ground of his patronage of Covent Garden. He must be study- 
 ing very hard just now. He seemed to need a great deal of re- 
 laxation. He was always there always in the same place, and 
 always staring down into the Peterborough box. If he ever 
 looked at the stage Kitty certainly never caught him in the act. 
 She would smile and nod; and when she was specially happy, 
 she smiled and nodded more than once. Life was so extremely
 
 54 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 gay, why not? It was even a relief to be able to smile and nod 
 at some one a long way off, since one might not look at the man 
 behind Lady Peterborough's chair, or if at all, so dreadfully 
 discreetly. And the dark young man was always in the lobby 
 when they came out and Kitty, yes, she did rather make eyes 
 at him. Life was so extremely gay. 
 
 Several times as she was driving in or out of St. James's 
 Square, she had passed and was recognised by the young man 
 who seemed of late to have much business in that part of town. 
 He took his constitutional in the Park, too, of a morning. Kitty 
 had got into the way of looking out for him as she raced up and 
 down the Row. Flying by, she would make him a gay little sign, 
 partly out of happy morning spirits, partly just to see the face 
 light up. 
 
 But he was growing bolder. He stood to-day by the pillar-box 
 at the corner of St. James's Square, pretending to write on a card 
 before posting it, and deliberately watching her being handed into 
 the carriage after her god-mother, by the Prince. He had smiled 
 when he first caught sight of her; now he was frowning. 
 
 'Who is that with the Dark-Lantern face?' Lady Peterborough 
 demanded. 
 
 'I don't know his name.' 
 
 'Why do you nod to him then?' 
 
 'Oh, he's a friend an acquaintance, at least, of my father's.' 
 
 The young man had posted his card. In the act of going 
 slowly on, he stopped and drew out his watch. 
 
 Seeing Kitty's eyes still on him, 'He walks like a shopkeeper,' 
 said Lady Peterborough, dismissing him. 
 
 ' or a student,' corrected the girl, 'and that's what he is!' 
 
 Then Lady Peterborough spoke of the stamp of the English 
 public school, and Waldenstein and the Freiherr of the fine 
 effect of militarism even upon the civilian. And now they were 
 off. Lady Peterborough, unfurling her brilliant parasol, looked 
 out upon the world contented, calm, like an Eastern idol beneath 
 its canopy. The Prince sat back in the carriage like a King on 
 his throne, and the Freiherr looked more a Field-Marshal than 
 ever, and the June sunshine filled the world, and everyone was 
 happy unless, maybe, the dark young man, who wasn't going to 
 Hurlingham this glorious afternoon. The girl looked back; he
 
 A DARK LANTERN 55 
 
 was doing the same, standing stock-still, watch in hand, staring 
 after the carriage. Kitty smiled. The young man smiled. Ah, 
 that was well now all was well, with all the world. 
 
 It was the day of the great Polo match, and Hurlingham was 
 surely one of the brightest spots upon all the shining globe. 
 They passed a drag full of people they knew. Blanche Weare 
 waved a pink parasol, and a young man called out that they must 
 join forces on the grounds. 
 
 A mail phaeton went flying by, the young Duke of Worcester 
 driving, with why, it was Mary Lattimer on the box beside him. 
 
 'They are engaged! You may depend upon it, they are 
 engaged,' said Lady Peterborough in the tone of one who has 
 lost something, 'and even so, I don't know what the Lattimers 
 are thinking of to let Mary Oh, here's her mother behind, in 
 a victoria, with the other girl. Still, before the thing is announced 
 well, the world is changing.' 
 
 'Why, it's almost like a race-meeting,' said Waldenstein, his 
 eyes wandering with interest over the throng. 
 
 Certainly everyone wore the prettiest possible things, the whole 
 place blossomed into colour, and shimmered with movement and 
 laughter. On their way to the Polo ground Lady Peterborough 
 turned back to speak to Lady Lattimer and hear her worst fears 
 confirmed. The best match in England, too! Meanwhile Prince 
 Anton was saying aside to Kitty: 'I've something to show you; 
 we must sit together.' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'You'll manage it?' 
 
 'I? I'm afraid I don't know quite how ' 
 
 'Don't you think you could manage to get lost? I mean 
 just separated a little from your party; then I'd come to find 
 you?' 
 
 Kitty, laughing, shook her head. It was the kind of enterprise 
 she had no skill in. But the instigator, undaunted, seemed to 
 have proposed to the Freiherr a plan of action less simple, perhaps, 
 but calculated to achieve the same end. The Secretary kept close 
 to the girl's side, till after the seating was arranged to suit Lady 
 Peterborough; herself and Prince Anton in two places that had 
 been kept for her in the middle of the front row, Kitty not very 
 far off under the wing of the old Freiherr. But all at once this
 
 56 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 gentleman seemed to be consumed with a desire to hold converse 
 with Lady Peterborough, in whose favour until this hour he had 
 stood high. Leaving Kitty planted there near the end of the 
 row, he made his way to Lady Peterborough. The space between 
 the front places and the low guard that marked off the onlookers 
 from the grounds was not great. But there he stood in every- 
 body's way or bound to be so in a moment when the match 
 began stood and talked to Lady Peterborough with great volu- 
 bility, until Anton sprang up and said almost impatiently: 'You'd 
 better sit here I'll get another place,' and before remonstrance 
 could be made effectual he was at Kitty's side. 
 
 The girl was standing up, shading her eyes and looking across 
 the vivid green of the Polo ground, to see if that was Bertie 
 Amherst on the restive roan pony. A light wind fluttered the 
 pale green ribbons on her white hat, and tossed out the ends of 
 her lace scarf. All about her was sunshine and a soft shim- 
 mering movement the dumb laughter of glad things without a 
 voice. 
 
 ' Do you know what you are like ? ' the Prince said. She turned 
 with a smiling question in her eyes. 'When I looked round and 
 saw you standing here in this wonderful light, I knew instantly 
 what it was you made me think of. You are like a silver 
 birch.' 
 
 'I'm glad my white gown ' 
 
 He was smiling too: 'Really the English colouring is something 
 quite apart and I don't mean the colour of your gown.' 
 
 '"Silver birch" is very pretty, but I don't think it as good as 
 Lady Peterborough's comparison. Wasn't it imaginative of her 
 to say that young man's face was "like a Dark Lantern"?' 
 
 ' What young man's ? ' 
 
 'The one we passed in the Square. Didn't you notice?' 
 
 'I'm afraid I was too much occupied with a face that is fortu- 
 nately little enough like a Dark Lantern.' 
 
 '"Like a Dark Lantern"\' she repeated; 'it's a phrase that 
 sets you thinking expecting makes you feel such wonderful 
 possibilities you think of a great shining that may spring out 
 any moment from behind the shuttered dark.' 
 
 'I don't like dark faces. I'd rather think of one as fair' his 
 eyes were like kisses on her brow and lips 'I think I never in
 
 A DARK LANTERN 57 
 
 my life saw anything so why, you are as fair as moonlight.' The 
 fairness was blotted with sudden colour as the girl sat down. 
 
 'Now they're beginning. Look! that's Bertie. Did you ever 
 see anyone ride so well?' 
 
 But Anton still stood there with his back to the polo, and his 
 eyes on the girl. 
 
 'I've given you your name. You must find one for me.' 
 
 'You must sit down,' said Kitty, 'everybody else is sitting 
 down.' 
 
 'When the silver birch has told the name of the other tree.' 
 
 She looked up at the tall straight figure. For all the throng 
 about them, he stood alone. The sun was in her eyes. She 
 narrowed them like one descrying something on the far horizon. 
 'You are like a poplar in a plain,' she said. 
 
 And then, although laughing he sat down, instead of watching 
 the spirited game in front of them, they talked on. He got out 
 of her the not easily ascertained fact that she not only loved 
 poetry, but tried to write it. She was committed to show him 
 something. Good heavens! how might that be! It was all 
 about him. 'I shan't be able to, after all. I couldn't, before 
 Lady Peterborough. . . .' 
 
 ' Bring something to show me to-morrow in Kensington Gardens. 
 I'll be there at twelve, near the ' 
 
 ' Oh, I don't see how we could do that.' 
 
 'Why not? What is the advantage of being out of Germany if 
 one mayn't have a little freedom?' 
 
 Kitty had been thinking only of herself. She felt reproached. 
 'You don't have freedom at home?' she asked. 
 
 He shook his head. 'Everybody knows everything one does, 
 and a great deal one hasn't done. Nobody realizes anything 
 about the rapture of privacy who hasn't lived in a little German 
 Court.' 
 
 'Tell me about it. What is it like at Waldenstein ? ' 
 
 'I'll tell you anything you like to-morrow, in Kensington 
 Gardens.' 
 
 'Really I I don't think it's a thing we can do. You had 
 something to show me.' She changed the subject a little hurriedly, 
 like one afraid of it. 'What was it?' 
 
 'I'll show it you in Kensington Gardens.' Then, as she said
 
 58 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 nothing, he went on: 'This isn't what I mean, but I got this for 
 you in Rome . . . zum Andenken.' He drew out of his pocket 
 a heart-shaped reliquary, delicately wrought and enamelled. 
 'Promise me you'll wear it ... always.' 
 
 'How beautiful! Yes, I'll wear it ... always.' 
 
 She hung it on her long chain and hid it in her gown, while 
 the light wind played with her loosened scarf. It wavered like a 
 fleecy cloud across the Prince's face. 
 
 'Oh, I'm sorry.' 
 
 'Don't hold it down in your lap let it the scarf is saying 
 danke schon.' Although she had not thanked him for his gift, her 
 whole heart sang thanksgiving. 
 
 'All my life I shall remember what the world was like to-day,' 
 she kept thinking, as she sat looking out across the green expanse 
 at the mad game going on. Men riding like the wind, leaning far 
 out of their saddles, and with a slender stick, by some gay miracle, 
 conjuring a ball from out the grass, and with a gallant gesture 
 sending it flying, flying, like a little white bird, up into the blue 
 and far across the green. 
 
 The very ponies were playing the game with the same mad zest 
 as the men, plunging after the swift white speck, dashing into one 
 another, turning sharply, darting, dancing about the goal a far 
 white gleam like a flower in the grass. 
 
 Oh, it would be fun to watch the ponies, if there were not so 
 much in the world beside! 
 
 Oh, the band playing, and the laughter and the summer in the 
 blood! 
 
 'Whatever comes I shall have had to-day ' 
 
 A sudden cry and movement, and then no more laughter. 
 
 ' What is it ? What has happened ? ' 
 
 'One of the men is down.' 
 
 'Who?' 
 
 'Amherst,' voices said about them, and people stood up. 
 
 ' Oh, poor Bertie ! ' Kitty was on her feet. 
 
 Philip Craybourne had pressed forward to see better. 'That's 
 all right. They've stopped his pony. Then, catching sight of 
 Kitty Dereham's face: 'They're always smashing their collar- 
 bones, those fellows. It's nothing serious.' As Kitty still stood 
 staring at the men who were carrying Bertie off the field, Cray-
 
 A DARK LANTERN 59 
 
 bourne added with an edge in his voice : ' Some very good playing 
 was wasted on you to-day. But I'll tell Bertie the part of the 
 game that interested you.' 
 
 It was plain to see that Lady Peterborough was annoyed and 
 plain to those who knew her, that the cause was not Bertie's 
 broken collar-bone. 
 
 She was almost short with the Prince, and she was distinctly 
 snubby to the Freiherr. 
 
 ' Then since we can't be of any use to you about Mr. Amherst, 
 you must at least be free of any need to think of us in your anxiety,' 
 said Prince Anton, gaily advertising his resolve not to tarry long 
 with anyone out of temper. The hostess demurred, but he 
 assured her: 'Oh, Worcester will give me a lift back to town;' 
 and he was off with the Freiherr at his heels. 
 
 'Perhaps they've quarrelled! Mary is not driving back with 
 the Duke.' Lady Peterborough groped for consolation. But 
 poor Bertie got soundly rated for his broken bone. And there 
 was still wrath left to be expended upon Katharine, who was 
 distinctly saddened at the summary leave-taking of the Prince. 
 
 'I want you to understand,' said her god-mother as they drove 
 home, 'I won't have you making yourself conspicuous with 
 Waldenstein.' 
 
 'I shouldn't like,' said the girl, 'to make myself conspicuous 
 with anybody.' 
 
 'He doesn't realize that a girl may suffer by having people 
 staring as they did this afternoon.' 
 
 How they would stare if she were seen in Kensington Gardens 
 and yet it would be foretaste of heaven to walk with him there 
 alone. But people wouldn't understand; they would say horrid 
 things. 
 
 Why, there was that woman again in a hansom the woman 
 Katharine and Lord Peterborough had seen with her father's 
 double. The face broke into smiles; the lady bowed. It was 
 Mrs. Heathcote. 
 
 The girl was very silent the rest of the way home. 
 
 That night she sent a note to Prince Anton to say that she 
 would not be walking in the Gardens the next day, but praying 
 him to understand and to forgive her. 
 
 All the evening she sat waiting for an answer of some sort.
 
 fc> A DARK LANTERN 
 
 None came. 
 
 Meeting him, out of town, at the Prime Minister's garden-party 
 the next day, Kitty seized a moment to make clear that, for all she 
 did not accept the tryst, she understood how a man in Prince 
 Anton's position must long for a little privacy. She showed 
 herself so eagerly sympathetic with that point of view, that his first 
 coldness to her melted. 
 
 'Nothing is worth having that all the world knows about,' he 
 said in return, and began something, half laughing, about 'the 
 vulgar eye,' when his hostess carried him off. 
 
 As Lady Peterborough was taking her leave, the Prince made 
 opportunity to say to Kitty: 
 
 'You remember I am dining with you to-morrow.' 
 
 'You don't think I had forgotten.' 
 
 'Let me see,' he reflected, 'what was the hour?' 
 
 'It isn't dinner, it's only what Lady Peterborough calls "a cold 
 collection" before "Tannhauser."' 
 
 'I know. She said half -past six, didn't she?' 
 
 'Yes, half-past six.' 
 
 'Suppose I forget the precise time' he lowered his voice 
 'and come a quarter of an hour earlier. Will you be down? 
 
 'Oh yes.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 'Lady Peterborough has come in late. But she is dressing in 
 a whirlwind,' Kitty greeted him breathless. He still held her 
 hand. The girl tried to think quickly of something else to say, 
 since he did not speak. 'What was it you were going to show 
 me in Kensington Gardens?' 
 
 'You never came.' 
 
 'But you know how I wanted to.' 
 
 'People do what they really want to.' 
 
 'Girls can't.' 
 
 'Oh yes, they can. My faith in you is a little ' 
 
 'Don't say that.' She could easily have cried. 
 
 He lifted her hand and kissed it. 
 
 It comforted her vastly, though it was his habit. He kissed 
 Lady Peterborough's hand too, she thought a little resentfully. 
 But he did not let the girl's fingers go; while with the free hand 
 he felt in his pocket.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 61 
 
 'What I wanted to show you is only a foolish little photograph. 
 
 He drew her to the sofa, still keeping her hand. 
 
 'What place is this?' 
 
 'Our shooting-box. These woods go on for miles the river's 
 just here.' 
 
 ' It's charmingly pretty. Is there a picture of Waldenste in too ? ' 
 
 'No. This is the place I care about. You'd like it too. I 
 see you there.' 
 
 He had said that twice. 
 
 Would the honeymoon be here? was that his meaning? 
 Surely, for the velvet voice went on: 
 
 'I'll tell you what the days would be like,' and behold she was 
 in every hour! Easy for her inexperience to mistake German 
 sentiment (no less excellent and beautiful for being a common 
 possession among the Teutons) for a thing as rare and strange, 
 as would be poetic effusiveness about woods and waters, in the 
 mouth of a young Englishman to-day. 
 
 So he was a poet too, this Prince of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein, 
 singer as well as soldier, like Montrose and Raleigh, like Sir 
 Philip Sidney, and like that Lovelace who wrote to Lucasta on 
 going to the wars, and from prison to Althea. 
 
 The girl sat in a golden dream listening to the tale of the hours 
 told with extraordinary charm, albeit with an eye on the door. 
 And she was there! at this place in Hungary; hidden in the forest; 
 had seen the sun's uprising, and now, the day far spent, came 
 riding at the Prince's side, out of the thick fir-wood, where already 
 it was dusk, to find the little chalet still shining in the warm sun- 
 set. 'We would send the horses on before with the grooms,' 
 he had said, 'and we would wait till they were out of sight. And 
 then we take hands and now we go home.' He bent down 
 nearer. He kissed her. She closed her eyes a second. 'And 
 the best part of it all' his breath was on her face 'we shall 
 be so far from the prying world . . . quite hidden in the heart of 
 the fir- wood.' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Could you be happy in a love that was everyone's property?' 
 
 'I never thought.' 
 
 'Of course you couldn't. It is spoilt the moment it is shared 
 with others.' He drew away.
 
 62 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 The mere thought seemed to chill him. 
 
 Or was it Lady Peterborough's coming along the hall? 
 ***** 
 
 Twice in the ten days that had followed the evening at Lady 
 Wick's, Kitty had seen on the hall table at Hill Street, where 
 seldom a visiting card appeared, one bearing the inscription 
 
 Mr. Garth Vincent, 
 
 and written underneath in pencil, 46 Cavendish Square. 
 
 'Who is your new friend?' she asked her father, taking up the 
 second card, on Sunday night, as they went in to dinner. 
 
 'No friend of mine. Who is this?' he asked Gibbs. 
 
 Gibbs straightened his important back, and said: 'The gentle- 
 man asked for Miss Dereham, sir.' 
 
 Kitty's wide eyes disclaimed all knowledge of him. 'What 
 did he want ? ' 
 
 'He didn't say, miss.' 
 
 'What was he like?' 
 
 'A dark gentleman he was, miss.* 
 
 ' Old or young ? ' 
 
 'Young, miss, and ' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'Rather sharp-spoken, miss.' 
 
 ' How sharp-spoken ? What did he say ? ' 
 
 'He asked when you would be here.' 
 
 'That doesn't sound so very sharp.' 
 
 'No, miss, but he said it sharp. Asked me if you had got 
 the other card. What had I done with it!' Gibbs' dignity was 
 obviously ruffled at memory of the encounter. 
 
 Her father chaffed her unmercifully. This was evidently some 
 friend she wanted to conceal from Lady Peterborough's lynx eyes. 
 He wasn't sure that even an indulgent parent like himself could 
 connive at 
 
 She begged him in French not to say such things before a ser- 
 vant; she was not sure of Gibbs' sense of humour perhaps she 
 meant Colonel Dereham's. 
 
 Doubt of other qualities in her father was certainly gaining 
 ground. Although she fought against these realizations fought 
 most of all against the vague mortification the name Heathcote
 
 A DARK LANTERN 63 
 
 conjured up her confidences had been checked. She had not 
 told her father what she had meant to about the Prince, and the 
 two men had not encountered. A meeting seemed difficult to 
 arrange with only Kitty apparently desiring it, and Lady Peter- 
 borough so full of devices for entertaining the Prince in more 
 festive fashion. They had gone off this afternoon to the second 
 day's sale at the great Bazaar, held under royal patronage, and 
 where Lady Peterborough had a stall, assisted by an army of 
 pretty women. 
 
 Kitty, fighting against a depressing summer cold, was trying 
 over the music of a song though she had been allowed to stay at 
 home for the express purpose of lying down, that she might be 
 in better case for the dinner-party that evening and the ball to 
 follow. 
 
 Six o'clock. She really must go away and rest now, or Lady 
 Peterborough would find her there and scold her. The door 
 opened. Heavens! Could she be back already? 
 
 The butler's voice: 'Mr. Garth Vincent.' 
 
 Why, that, the girl remembered, that was the name of the 
 mysterious Hill Street visitor. Coming out from behind the piano 
 screen, she found herself face to face with the dark young student, 
 who had found her a seat at Lady Wick's crush, and shown his 
 Dark-Lantern face so often since, about the Square and at the 
 Opera. But why was he here? 
 
 'How do you do!' She shook hands, yet more dumbfounded 
 to see the unexpected visitor regarding her with unsmiling, in- 
 quisitorial eyes. 
 
 'Why did you give me the Hill Street address?' he demanded 
 without preamble. 
 
 'Why not?' she said, suddenly at sea. 
 
 'For the good reason that it isn't yours.' 
 
 'It is mine.' She faced him. 
 
 He simply looked at her. She felt her colour rise. His direct- 
 ness had wiped out the enormity of his own behaviour, in showing 
 the insincerity of hers. 
 
 'My father's house is in Hill Street.' 
 
 'So are other houses where you don't live.' 
 
 It was no use. She must tell the truth to this odd creature. 
 'I did it to to save explanations.'
 
 64 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Well, you see it hasn't saved them. It's brought me here.' 
 He sat down. 
 
 Kitty stared at him, and then, clutching at her self-possession, 
 said with dignity: 'I don't see people here that that Lady Peter- 
 borough doesn't know.' 
 
 ' Her not knowing me can be remedied whenever you like.* 
 
 Kitty began to laugh a little hysterically. 
 
 'Oh, dear, if she heard you!' 
 
 The contingency appeared to have no interest for him. 
 
 'Will you see me in Hill Street, as you said you would?' 
 
 'I didn't say I would' she was quickly grave again 'and I 
 can't.' 
 
 'Why not?' He leaned forward and fixed her with his curious 
 eyes. 
 
 Kitty stood up. 'I think I must ask you, please, to go.' Still 
 he looked at her with that intent expression, but not as if he had 
 heard, and he remained seated. 'It will be better,' she said, 'if 
 Lady Peterborough doesn't find you here.' 
 
 'Better for who?' 
 
 'Better for you.' 
 
 He leaned back in his chair. 
 
 'Even better for me,' she added on an impulse. 
 
 ' Then come to Hill Street ! ' He was on his feet. 
 
 The impertinence of this young man! really, it took the breath. 
 
 'Why should you think I would do that?' the girl asked with 
 heightened colour. 
 
 'You know why.' 
 
 (Was that his way of saying: You encouraged me smiled, and 
 made eyes you know you did? Ohf) 
 
 'I know why? I beg your pardon ' Kitty held her head 
 
 uncommonly high . 'I don't know the least in the world.' 
 
 He was about to speak, as deliberately he sat down again. 
 Something in his aspect made her nerves shrink at what might be 
 coming. Hastily she flung up a barrier. 
 
 'It isn't worth discussing Hill Street or anything else, as I'm 
 going away.' She saw his figure stiffen, as under attack. 
 
 'Where?' 
 
 'To abroad.' 
 
 'When?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 65 
 
 'Soon.' 
 
 'How long do you stay?' He was frowning at the floor. 
 
 'I shall not come back for some time.' 
 
 Kitty caught her breath when he lifted a heavy look. The 
 long shining eyes were bloodshot. 
 
 ' When you do come back you'll see me ? ' he said. 
 
 'It will be quite impossible.' 
 
 The effect on him was of a kind to make the obscure nervous- 
 ness that had seized her early in the interview, gain upon her 
 thrusting her rudely into a world radically different from the one, 
 draped and garlanded, where she had lived these late enchanted 
 days. Here suddenly was something not only bare, but raw and 
 rather terrible. She repeated very gently: 'It is quite impossible. 
 You see, Mr. ' 
 
 'Garth Vincent is my name,' he interrupted bitterly, 'but I 
 don't see.' 
 
 She tried to speak, felt sorely her need of self-defence, remem- 
 bering the things he remembered, but found no word. 
 
 'Then there's nothing to hope for,' he said. 
 
 'Oh yes, yes, so many other things.' 
 
 'I've tried them all,' he returned quietly. 
 
 'You can't have done that. You're too young.' Oh, il iie 
 
 would only go 'There are other things' he looked up 
 
 'but' . . . she was trembling unaccountably . . . 'but they aren't 
 any of them here.' 
 
 'Nor at Hill Street?' he said with a curious persistence in the 
 hope he had hugged for days. 
 
 4 jSlo;' at a look from him she added, 'I don't see how you could 
 think 
 
 'Oh yes, you do.' 
 
 A compliment in any other mouth, this implication of miracle- 
 working charm. From this man's lips the phrase fell like a whip. 
 Humiliation rushed upon her, seeing in his face this further wit- 
 ness to those looks and smiles she had flung out in the fulness 
 of an overbrimming joy very much as at the Nice carnival, the 
 winter before, she had tossed out of her carriage flowers and con- 
 fetti aimed gaily at the bolder masques. But to dress her actions 
 up in simile, was not to hide their ugliness. She had encour- 
 aged this impossible young man. Intoxicated with youth and 
 
 5
 
 66 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 success, she had flirted with him, just as though she had been 
 that horrid Hilda Carey or oh dear I Well, she was reaping 
 her reward in this difficult hour. 
 
 Quite suddenly he dropped his head in his hands, and sat so, 
 for several seconds, with hidden face. 
 
 'Please forgive me,' she said, leaving much unsaid that was yet 
 for once courageously recognised, amply admitted. 'I'm sorry.' 
 
 'No, you're not.' 
 
 'I am, I am.' 
 
 'It's a game you'll often play.' But he dropped his hands and 
 stood up. 
 
 A noise in the hall. Mimi's bark. Were they home from the 
 Bazaar? From the swift excursion of the thought, her attention 
 came back to the uncouth figure, awkward, wretched, angry yet 
 halting there, like a creature too maimed to run. Katharine saw 
 suddenly exactly how Lady Peterborough would view this unusual 
 apparition in her drawing-room. As to the possibility of her 
 god-mother knowing his errand no, no! A hot shrinking filled 
 the girl. And Anton! On the eve of becoming a Princess of 
 Breitenlohe-Waldenstein here she was discussing with a young 
 man of this sort 
 
 'Good-bye, Mr. Vincent.' From leagues on leagues of dis- 
 tance: 'I forgive you your rudeness and your 
 
 'My damned impudence.' 
 
 No waiting for reply. No other word. He was gone. 
 
 'Who is that bounder?' said Bertie, corning in.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PEOPLE had begun to talk of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein's infatua- 
 tion for the English girl. When he followed her to London, they 
 inquired of everyone but Lady Peterborough, what on earth that 
 old woman could be thinking of. Lord Peterborough shrugged, 
 and said it was a question that he for his part never asked; but 
 he watched Kitty with curiosity, not to say concern. 
 
 She herself was far from ignorant of the difficulties in her way. 
 She held not only the current social views on the subject of rank, 
 but held them emphasized, illuminated, by the little hole-and- 
 corner historic sense, that found poetry and romance in the family 
 history of a small portion of the community. If it meant much 
 to her chivalry-loving soul to think of the Schloss built on the 
 mountain crag by crusading princes of Waldenstein blood if it 
 was a fine and fitting thing that one's loves should come of a race 
 of Kings it was troubling too, if you yourself were otherwise 
 descended. How, even in this astonishing age, when few things 
 old stood firm, how get over the ancient barrier between blood 
 merely gentle and blood royal! How was it to be done? for done 
 it was to be. Not by her Fate's affair. That thought alone 
 made it possible to draw quiet breath. 
 
 There were elements in the situation that she knew she had 
 not yet grasped. But these were not the things that would have 
 afforded a more experienced mind food for cavil or for wonder. 
 That Anton should plot and plan for hours to gain five minutes 
 alone with her, seemed to the girl not to call for explanation in 
 a lover. That since their secret understanding he behaved so 
 differently to her, so indifferently almost, when others were by, 
 although the fact wounded her pride, it was not to her thinking 
 Anton's fault, but other people's. If the 'talk' had reached even 
 
 67
 
 68 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 her ears, more no doubt had come to him. She had no difficulty 
 in attributing his recent bearing to her before the world, to the 
 accumulated irritation of a sensitive spirit, restive under the 
 menace of the vulgar eye, intent on respite from the entailed 
 publicity of a high position. Explaining so, things otherwise 
 inexplicable, she held herself ready to aid and to abet him. A 
 proposal to conceal a relation of this sort to any other man, 
 would have stirred her critical sense, made her ask questions of 
 herself and him. But with respect to Anton, temporary secrecy 
 seemed a wholly natural imposition. While she would have 
 shrunk from hiding the lover, she was ready to hide the Prince, 
 considered that she perfectly understood the ground of his implied 
 but unmistakable demand for silence. Of course he meant, 
 till every detail should be arranged. 
 
 But he asked strange things of her clandestine meetings that 
 she did not even seriously consider, so impossible did they seem. 
 
 'You don't a bit understand,' she said to him once, half laugh- 
 ing, half in tears. 'Men are so ignorant.' 
 
 'Oh, they are!' 
 
 'Yes, of what's expected of a girl.' Then, as her quick spirit 
 saw he was about to urge again, 'One can't do that!' 
 
 'You're not in France.' 
 
 'One can't go off and meet someone alone, even in England. 
 
 People wouldn't realize ' She looked at him with changing 
 
 colour. 'I should have thought it wasn't possible in Germany 
 either.' 
 
 'Oh, people like us do as they please.' 
 
 But he felt so little sure of his ground, that he hesitated, even, 
 if the truth were told, a little in awe of the unsmirched soul of 
 the girl. Too accomplished a squire of dames not to know 
 that the art of love is the art of preparation, he nevertheless 
 began to be restive at the passing of the days; at the shrinking 
 dislike she showed of certain books he lent her, books of a dis- 
 tinct educational quality. 
 
 'No, I didn't like it, but' half apologetically 'I'm afraid I 
 didn't understand it very well,' she said of a volume of perfervid 
 poetry that he had counted on for its effect. 
 
 The last time that he suggested a way of meeting tmter vier 
 Augen, and she had only sighed and shaken her head: 'But
 
 A DARK LANTERN 69 
 
 we are so discreet,' he said, less by way of comment on the 
 past than promise for the future. Not seeing that she wholly 
 missed his meaning, he went on: 'We have been too long-suffer- 
 ing.' 
 
 'Dreadfully long-suffering,' she agreed. 
 
 'How long shall we be "suffering"?' but he had his laugh 
 alone. 
 
 She was trying to find courage to make answer. 'Till ' 
 
 'Well?' he persisted, watching her. 
 
 'Till we set out for the shooting-box?' she hazarded, hot with 
 blushes. 
 
 'Ah!' he seemed to be thinking. 'Well when is that to be?' 
 
 'When do you think?' 
 
 'It cannot be too soon.' 
 
 The words set all the world to whirling. 'There will be a 
 good deal to do,' she said with a sense of breathlessness. 
 
 'Will there?' 
 
 'Well, you know girls have to have trousseaux and that kind 
 of thing.' 
 
 'Oh, must they?' for all the world as though he had never 
 heard of these commonplaces. Soon thereafter he took his 
 leave. 
 
 Again and again, when about to make things clear, he caught 
 himself up. There was an effect of something proud about the 
 girl that held at bay something, in spite of the romantic element 
 in her character, that produced an impression of coldness. The 
 virginal will have this effect upon the sensual man. It disquiets 
 him. Often he will seek refuge from it in the opposite extreme. 
 
 And so one morning a note of farewell: 
 
 'I must report myself at Berlin.' 
 
 # # * # * 
 
 She wrote to him anxious, but trusting little letters, and got 
 back tardy, non-committal answers that any eye might see. 
 Without a doubt, Kitty thought, he was in some trouble, family 
 or State. Being who he was, he was one of those few to whom 
 no general rule applies. This thought was the key to her whole 
 relation to him. 
 
 But, oh, the waiting was hard. Eight months dragged by. 
 
 She wrote to him, enclosing her latest photograph. Was
 
 70 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 he going to Rome again this spring, or would London see 
 him? And would he send her the long-promised picture of 
 himself ? 
 
 He would 'bring it,' came the glorious answer. 
 
 And in April he did. If he had had 'trouble,' no hint of it 
 hung about him now. Nor yet about his picture, a delightful 
 water-colour sketch doing the Prussian uniform gay justice, and 
 the handsome face no less. 
 
 And he was just the same. No, more adorable and again 
 the sun shone and all the waiting and the Winter were forgot. 
 
 Just one cloud on the horizon that Kitty's eyes could see. 
 Colonel Dereham was ill; certainly too 'seedy' at present to pay 
 his respects to, or even to receive the Prince of Breitenlohe- 
 Waldenstein. His old occasional headaches were grown chronic. 
 There were times when the girl became a prey to fears too dark 
 for formulating days when he shut himself up and refused to 
 see her, or even Mrs. Heathcote. For as time went on there 
 was less ceremony about this friendship. But when he did re- 
 appear, although he sometimes looked ill enough, still he was 
 usually cheerful, in his old light way, and his daughter would be 
 reassured. He had an inveterate dislike to explanations, or any 
 sort of soul-searching. If he resented the asking of questions, 
 even by Kitty, he certainly seldom put them himself. The more 
 striking, therefore, his unprefaced demand one day 
 
 'When are you going to marry?' 
 
 'Why, I ... I don't know.' 
 
 'Don't they ask you? the idiots.' 
 
 'Not all of the idiots, father dear.' 
 
 'Humph! I know of three who do.' 
 
 ' Do you ? ' a little wickedly; 'I wonder if I know them.' 
 
 'Bertie Amherst, Sir Philip Craybourne, and Hastings.' 
 
 'Oh, those ' 
 
 'Well, what are you waiting for? Aren't they splendid enough 
 for you ? ' 
 
 'They aren't so very splendid.' 
 
 'They're three of the best matches in England.' 
 
 'Y-yes I suppose they are.' 
 
 'You're waiting to fall in love, I suppose.' 
 
 'Oh no,' a little guiltily, 'I'm not waiting for that.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 71 
 
 'For what then?' 
 
 She stood silent. 
 
 How could she say for what she was waiting? 
 
 'I don't think it will do you any good, Kitty' (he was uncom- 
 monly serious for him) 'to have people saying you are keeping 
 up a desperate flirtation with Breitenlohe-Waldenstein.' 
 
 'Do you hear people say so?' Unconsciously her emphasis 
 measured great distance, for the Heathcote woman held the 
 farther end of the tape. 
 
 'Well, they do. And it's the second season they've said so. 
 Won't do you any good, my dear.' 
 
 Another time when some society paper reported at length a 
 bal masque at Peterborough House, with a significant reference 
 to Prince Anton and Miss Dereham as Lancelot of the Lake and 
 the lily maid of Astolat: 'I don't know what that old Peterborough 
 woman is thinking about,' repeated Colonel Dereham with an 
 ill-humour very unusual in the most amiable of men. 
 
 More to the point was what Lord Peterborough thought. For 
 the first time in thirty years he precipitated a scene with his wife. 
 It ended stormily. He would speak to Waldenstein. That 
 threat reduced Lady Peterborough to terms. Let him wait for 
 twenty-four hours. It was far easier to wait than to forge ahead. 
 The huge effort had exhausted the old man's scant energy. Yes, 
 he would wait twenty-four hours. 
 
 He and Katharine avoided each other. She knew he dis- 
 approved of her, and he knew she knew. No need of words there. 
 
 But between Waldenstein and Lady Peterborough, a long 
 conference behind closed doors. 
 
 Again after dinner she took him away to her boudoir to show 
 him some of her new bindings. But almost at once a servant 
 came to Katharine in the drawing-room: 'Her Ladyship asks 
 you, please, to bring her your book, miss the book that came 
 home from the binders yesterday.' 
 
 'Which one? Oh, the Prosper Me'rime'e?' 
 
 'Yes, miss,' said the footman, relieved at not having to tackle 
 the name. Kitty went with the volume in her hand to the pink 
 and white room opening on to the conservatory. Only Anton 
 was there. She hesitated on the threshold. 
 
 'I had a message from '
 
 72 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Yes, it's all right.' He drew her in and shut the door looked 
 at her a moment, coming closer as he did so, till suddenly he 
 caught her to him. His action had the air of an overmastering 
 impulse. Yet he was not so carried away but he could wonder, 
 as his arms closed round her, where she got her flame-like up- 
 rightness there seemed nothing firm enough in her physique to 
 serve as framework for so tall, reed-straight a creature. She 
 was one of those girls whose slender bones seem to lack hardness 
 while they have elasticity. He laid a hand on her waist absurdly 
 small. Wrists so slight; and all so pliant. The youngness of 
 her was like the youngness of a child. He kissed her. 
 
 'Why did you leave me, if you love me like this?' she whis- 
 pered. 'You've never told me why.' 
 
 'It was because I loved you like this, that I left you.' 
 
 'I don't understand the least in the world.' 
 
 'No, dear angel, of course you don't. Dear, dear little inno- 
 cent!' He kissed the hand on his sleeve, lifted the other, took 
 the green and silver book out of her grasp, laid it on the writing- 
 table, and fell to kissing the small fingers that had held it, kissing 
 them one by one. 'But Lady Peterborough understands per- 
 fectly. Ah, that's a clever woman. But then she knows the 
 life. You see, my beautiful, there have been great difficulties.' 
 (Just as she had guessed!) 'You can't conceive what huge 
 difficulties Lady Peterborough realizes.' 
 
 'Yes, yes,' the girl protested, 'I can understand all that better 
 than you think.' 
 
 He had put her into a great chair and sat upon the arm, draw- 
 ing her close against him. ' Well, if you can understand, so much 
 the better. It hasn't been easy. Far from it.' 
 
 'Dear Anton,' she murmured. He had gone through harass- 
 ing scenes at Waldenstein for her sake perhaps, who knows, 
 they are making him leave the army; even give up his rank! 
 'Tell me about it,' she whispered. 
 
 'Well ' but he fell to murmuring endearments in caress- 
 ing German. Suddenly he got up and ran his white fingers 
 through his upstanding brush of yellow hair. 'I'm frightfully 
 in love, you know,' he said argumentatively. She smiled. Did 
 he think it necessary to point that out? 'They'll say I've lost 
 my head.' (Poor Prince! to have even at this moment to think
 
 A DARK LANTERN 73 
 
 of 'they.') 'My only defence is: I can't help it. C'est plus fort 
 que moi. I can't let you go.' 
 
 'Of course not.' 
 
 'No, it isn't exactly "of course,"' he said, smiling; 'but I can't 
 let you go.' Again he kissed her: brow, eyes, 'Mundwinckel.' 
 'But you'll understand and make things easy help me all you 
 can.' 
 
 'Indeed I will.' 
 
 'You won't forget that I've made great sacrifices for youi 
 sake ' 
 
 'I will never forget that.' 
 
 He stood directly under the electric light by the great green 
 marble mantelpiece. His fine fresh-coloured complexion gleamed 
 pink and satiny in the strong illumination; his hair looked like 
 spun glass, and the defiant upturned moustache, catching the 
 downward flooding light, seemed more metallic-golden than 
 ever. 
 
 And he loved her he was her knight, this splendid creature. 
 
 'The great thing (you'll agree with me in this, my beautiful) 
 is to have no delay.' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'And you you'll like living in Hungary?' he asked, after a 
 second's hesitation. 
 
 'I shan't mind where we live.' As he looked at her reflectively 
 she added: 'But it would be delightful to be part of the year at 
 Waldenstein, wouldn't it?' 
 
 'No,' he said with decision. 'It's no use to begin that ' 
 
 'Our English Princess is so seldom there.' 
 
 'But my mother is, always.' 
 
 'Won't she like me?' 
 
 Transported to the Waldenstein circle, he answered absently. 
 'She may not care about about this kind of arrangement.' 
 
 The girl half rose. 'What is it you mean, what "arrange- 
 ment"?' 
 
 'Why, a what I'm proposing. A private marriage.' Some- 
 thing in her eyes made him add hurriedly: 'You said you could 
 understand my position.' 
 
 'You you mean "private" just for the present till you are 
 able to announce it?'
 
 74 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'My dear child, you see, unfortunately, you aren't you have 
 every grace except rank. We can't get over that.' 
 
 'Can't get over it?' 
 
 'No. And we, in Germany, are great sticklers for ' 
 
 'But you said oh, what was it you said? the great huge 
 difficulties were got over. What did you mean ? Please, please 
 speak plain. I it hurts me so dreadfully ' 
 
 She stood up, facing him with bewildered eyes. 
 
 'It's all right,' he said soothingly, with a hand out to bring 
 her back; 'I shall always love you best.' 
 
 She drew away shaking with a sudden cold excitement. ' Does 
 a private marriage with me mean ' 
 
 'Everybody will understand it's all right,' he repeated. 'No- 
 body will think any the less . Why, it's been done in your 
 
 own Royal Family.' 
 
 'You don't mean Anton, say you don't mean I may live to 
 see another woman your real wife.' 
 
 'If ever probably never in any case you would be my real 
 wife, too.' 
 
 'Too! Too?' 
 
 Devil take the unlucky little word, he thought. It stung like 
 a wasp. 
 
 She had shrunk back from it away, away to the middle of the 
 room, with both hands up, barrier- wise, to shield her wound; 
 and a pitiful young face looked over, only half crediting the 
 extent of her hurt. 
 
 'Don't look like that?' he prayed; 'you make me miserable.' 
 
 As slowly, doubtfully, he came towards her with outstretched 
 hand, his signet caught the light. Her wide eyes fixed upon it. 
 Old words rose up above the chaos in her mind: 'Knight, thou 
 hast done thyself great folly, for this shield ought not to be borne, 
 but by him that shall have no peer that liveth.' 
 
 ' you make me miserable,' he was saying. 
 
 ' I I don't want to make you miserable "too." ' Her voice was 
 so faint, he was afraid she was going to fall. 'Don't,' she cried, 
 shrinking, and with eyes still fixed on the ring, as though it carried 
 an evil spell newly apprehended. 'I I am "all right," as you've 
 learned to say. Only I Oh, I wish I had died last night.' 
 
 She fled from the room.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 75 
 
 'Prince Anton is downstairs.' Lady Peterborough stood at the 
 foot of the girl's bed the next morning at eleven o'clock. 
 
 'I am not able to see Prince Anton.' 
 
 'To-night, perhaps?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' To-morrow ? ' 
 
 'Never again.' 
 
 The old woman leaning on the footboard half smiled. 'I 
 suppose you know that Lady Hermione Vinton has found nothing 
 to complain of in her position? And everybody receives and 
 respects the morganatic wife of the Russian Grand Duke ' 
 
 'Please let Prince Anton be told I cannot see him again.' 
 
 'Oh, very well.' But she lingered. 'It would be a much 
 more interesting life than being married to the average English- 
 man. . . . For a little cosmopolitan like you ' She was 
 
 nearly at the door. 'It would have suited me much better, I 
 know.' At the mere prospect she turned with renewed animation. 
 ' If you played your cards reasonably well, who knows the world 
 is changing. What is wildly impossible to-day, is a matter of 
 course in a few years' time.' 
 
 'Just tell me one thing;' the girl half sat up, her hair, that he 
 had said was as fair as moonlight, falling all about her. 'What 
 did he mean when he spoke of "difficulties," "great difficulties," 
 that had been got over?' 
 
 'Why, that he was ready to offer you a private marriage. It 
 means a great deal to a man like Anton. He is still as free as 
 air. Life is very pleasant for such a person. He offers to lay 
 many of its attractions aside. You would have a legal and 
 understood claim. The tie would be fully recognised. The 
 children ' 
 
 'Don't!' She covered her face with her hair. 
 
 ' they would be received and provided for. You too. 
 
 You know you haven't a great deal of your own. I've told him 
 your god-father would insist on a settlement ' 
 
 'He wouldn't agree!' she said through the shining tangle. 
 
 'He hasn't been asked yet.' 
 
 'Thank heaven for that!' 
 
 'But he has been busying himself. Whatever happens, he will 
 have to be told. You had better get up and talk it over with '
 
 76 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'No! I will never speak of it again.' 
 
 ' Oh, indeed. Very well. What message shall I give Walden- 
 stein ? ' 
 
 'Please give him my "good-bye."' 
 
 Prince Anton and Lord Falconbridge were giving a dinner- 
 party at the Amphitryon that night. Lord Peterborough was 
 not expected to lend countenance to these occasions. 'I will 
 do many things for peace,' he had once said, 'but I will not 
 eat my food in a restaurant while I have a dining-room of my 
 own.' 
 
 So he would be alone to-night unless Kitty She dragged 
 
 herself up and dressed. When the gong sounded she went 
 downstairs. 
 
 'Good little girl!' was the greeting, and they talked as though 
 Kitty were in the habit of lying in bed a whole day, and it was 
 a special grace in her to come down to dinner. 
 
 'Going to sing a little by-and-by?' he asked when they went 
 into the drawing-room. 
 
 'No not not to-night,' and she turned away her head quickly 
 that he might not see the sudden tears. It was better to leave 
 her to herself, he decided. For his own part, he sat huddled 
 over some reports of the Historical Society, withdrawing more 
 and more from an unsatisfactory world into the depths of his 
 great arm-chair. As though even there, feeling himself not safe, 
 he seemed, in that way of his that Katharine knew so well, to be 
 retiring inch by inch into his own linen. Only the ends of his 
 fingers came out of his wide white cuffs. His neck and spine 
 seemed to have drawn together like a closed accordion. Half-past 
 nine. Kitty turned the pages of a very original novel for they 
 were all blank, those pages, save for a single name written across 
 each one. 'Anton.' 'Anton.' Half -past nine. And here was 
 the last post. Lord Peterborough had to come out of his retreat. 
 One of his letters was hard to read, it seemed. He thrust out his 
 neck, drew out his accordion spine, and you could see now how 
 tall he would be standing. His letter must be very badly written. 
 He turned his head sideways, with eye-glass eye directed full at 
 the page, and looking rather like a suspicious cock interrogating 
 a grain of maize. Muttering discontentedly, and holding the
 
 A DARK LANTERN 77 
 
 paper now closer, now farther off, to get the proper focus, he went 
 on tromboning with his letter. 
 
 Kitty laughed, leaned her head on her arm and burst into tears. 
 
 'Bless my soul, child! Don't do that!' He uncoiled himself 
 and got up shakily. 'Tell me about it, little girl. I am your 
 guardian, you know.' He dwelt significantly on the beautiful 
 word. ' Don't think I look upon the office altogether lightly, nor 
 from a point of view purely legal.' He waited a moment, standing 
 before the crouched figure with the hidden face. He seemed to 
 feel he must talk on to give her time for recovery. 'In a matter 
 of greater moment than income and "settlements" I would 
 "guard" you, little girl.' 
 
 He waited. She put out one hand from under the hidden 
 face, took his, pressed it, and let it fall; her own as well, hanging 
 limp at her side. 
 
 He drew up a little chair beside her and sat there waiting. 
 'Perhaps you think you can't talk freely to a dry old man.' 
 
 'Dear, if to anyone to you,' the muffled voice said upon a sob. 
 
 'I know more about what you're going through than you think.' 
 The only answer, the low sound of weeping. 'Yes, it is very 
 bitter but it would be less so if you realized the bitterness was 
 certain to go. Go utterly. I know something about it.' 
 
 She lifted her tear-stained face. 'Did you ever ' 
 
 'Yes yes.' He was looking past her at the light. 
 
 ' You cared ? ' 
 
 He nodded slowly. 
 
 'Hugely? Horribly much?' The prettiness of the face was 
 suddenly distorted again and the tears streamed down. 
 
 But the old face smiled tenderly, pitifully. 'We said that no 
 man and woman had ever cared before not as we did.' 
 
 She bowed her head and still wept on. 
 
 Presently she raised her face and dried it. Crushing hei 
 pocket-handkerchief into a moist little ball, she said in that cloudy 
 voice that long weeping brings, 'You were young too?' 
 
 'About as young as about twenty-eight.' 
 
 Anton was twenty-eight. 'But you were married then.' 
 
 'Yes, I was not free.' 
 
 'Oh-h.' 
 
 'It came too late; you see.'
 
 78 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Too late.' 
 
 They sat and looked before them. 
 
 When he saw the ball of handkerchief pressed again on her eyes, 
 he went on with his task. 
 
 'You don't realize it, but it's worse if it comes when you are 
 when you're older. For then you have been saying to yourself that 
 you have missed it and suddenly at the eleventh hour here it is! 
 Your gladness is chequered with a horror at remembering how 
 near you had come to never finding it. You would think it was 
 your last chance. We said all these things. Had our hours of 
 mad revolt of agonized acceptance.' 
 
 'And then?' 
 
 'Then ? Oh, then we we turned away from love to loneliness. 
 Said, for honour's sake (decency's sake we'd call it to-day but 
 this was long ago, and we used noble words still, unabashed by the 
 majesty of them) yes, for honour's sake we would make the 
 sacrifice, lay our heads upon the block and die the death.' 
 
 Kitty leaned nearer and took his hand. 
 
 'You suffered together,' she said. He assented. 'And you 
 have that to remember.' 
 
 He seemed to agree. 'The one thing that comforted us was 
 that nothing could take memory away. Had we been destined to 
 be happy, so our sorry comfort ran, we might (who could say?), 
 in falling on the thorns of life we might have cried out against 
 each other, forgotten our love or done it some indignity. Now it 
 was safe, because it lay wrapped in cerements. Not all the angels 
 in heaven, we said, not God Himself, could take away what had 
 been.' 
 
 A little pause. 
 
 He cleared his throat and in a different voice: 'I haven't thought 
 of Honora for fifteen years.' 
 
 'Oh!' 
 
 'I call up her ghost to-night to point a moral anaesthetic. 
 And so pale are memory and ghost, I may have summoned them 
 in vain. Let them go back to sleep again, among the shades.' 
 His frail hands in the air dismissed them. 'Your dream, little 
 girl, will go to join my dream, and Dante's and Abelard's and a 
 million more. And you will sit one day, as I do, trying to recover 
 a twinge of the old anguish and like me fail.'
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE following summer, a marriage was announced between 
 Prince Anton Friederich of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein, and the 
 Duchess Margaretha, of Hildesheim, member of a petty royal 
 house, and the Prince's second cousin. 
 
 In the next few years Katharine had more than one escape 
 from an encounter with the Prince. At last in Paris, at the 
 house of a common acquaintance, they found themselves face to 
 face. 
 
 He carried it off with his old light-hearted grace. It was the 
 most enchanting thing in the world, this meeting. Lady Peter- 
 borough entirely agreed with him. Even the Marquis de Cour- 
 celles made him welcome at Auteuil, when Katharine, for once 
 flying Paris, took refuge in the home of her schooldays. Anton's 
 appearance there, his instant alliance with the Marquise, gave 
 Katharine, a sense of seeing circumstances close round her again. 
 
 Not without admitting to others things that she shrank from 
 formulating to herself, could she prevent Prince Anton's frequent- 
 ing the house. It was plain that he had no share in Katharine's 
 shrinking. All hers the pain of renewed contact. 
 
 That was the tragedy of it that she cared still. 
 
 Rumour had of late linked the name of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein 
 with that of a great singer. To Katharine's amazement, he spoke 
 of Madame Baria. Then came the day when he told her that he 
 had just had a serious disagreement with his wife about the 
 singer, and the Princess had gone off in a frantic rage to her 
 brother in Pomerania. 
 
 'And she has taken the child,' he added. 
 
 < Whose child?' 
 
 'Hers.' 
 
 70
 
 8o A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'The Princess's?' 
 
 'And mine, of course. It's all right.' He brought out the old 
 phrase with a new inflection, and he stroked his moustache, as 
 one who reflects upon good-fortune. But when he lifted his eyes, 
 Katharine's face arrested him. He tried to take her hand took 
 instead her recoil, without offence. 'You perhaps don't realize,' 
 he said significantly, ' the advent of that small person alters many 
 things.' 
 
 'Of course. A child is a great tie.' 
 
 'On the contrary,' he returned with equal gravity. 'My boy 
 brought me my edict of emancipation. From the day of his birth 
 he carries my burden. I am now, what I have never in my life 
 been before: a free man. 7 He spoke with the air of the success- 
 ful strategist. It was as if he would have her believe the child's 
 existence was proof of nothing so much as his devotion to the 
 woman he had not married. 
 
 Upon the first opportunity he returned to the subject of 
 Madame Baria. How dared he be so unblushing about the 
 matter! 
 
 'My sympathies are all with the Princess,' Katharine said 
 coldly. His answer was to turn up his corn-coloured moustache 
 sharply on either side, with a slow twist of thumb and forefinger, 
 as if it were so that he not merely manipulated the military 
 moustachio, but set the full lips smiling at their highest signifi- 
 cance. He stood looking at Katharine over his two hands, 
 arrested in the act. 
 
 'What a pity,' she thought, steeling herself against the remem- 
 bered trick of manner, 'what a pity he knows how well he looks 
 like that! I am sure he has been told that is his "conquering 
 smile.'" 
 
 'It is horrible,' she said, turning from him, 'horrible that you 
 should be so ' 
 
 'So?' 
 
 ' so false.' She sat down with averted face. 
 
 'If I deserved that epithet it was before I ever saw the Baria. 
 But it is a little curious to be reproached by you.' 
 
 'I admit,' she spoke quietly again, and with a distinct effect of 
 establishing distance 'I admit that I have not the shadow of a 
 right to call you to account. It would be grotesque of me '
 
 A DARK LANTERN 81 
 
 'It would be,' he said with sudden passion, 'if the one who is 
 responsible for the affair were the one to condemn it.' 
 
 Her indignant refusal to admit the smallest responsibility in an 
 odious breach of faith, he turned into his opportunity to tell her, 
 with all the bitterness of the impassioned egoist, how he rued and 
 deplored the wretched marriage Katharine's behaviour had paved 
 the way for. 
 
 ' Every hour since my wedding-day I have realized more poign- 
 antly that there is for me just one woman in the world.' 
 
 ' Mme. Baria ? ' inquired Katharine, hating herself for the poor 
 jibe, saying it to keep herself from tears. 
 
 ' Baria !' he burst out, 'Baria will serve an end.' Luckily, 
 Margaretha had definitely left him. It was to tell Katharine that, 
 that he had come to Auteuil to-day. His wife would beyond a 
 doubt get a divorce. No, Katharine need not start up with scared 
 looks. Her fair fame was as dear to him as her love would be. 
 Let her judge from that! No. The pretext would be Baria. 
 Now, did Katharine understand! 
 
 The next day, taking Natalie, and leaving her god-mother 
 behind, she joined Lord Peterborough in Devonshire. 
 
 Anton, not daring to follow her there, rained upon her such 
 Liebesbriefe as only a German can write. Not merely mixing 
 reverence with passion, others have mastery of that craft, but con- 
 veying what he would with a nai've simplicity, a naked directness 
 as electric as disarming. An effect, this, due chiefly to the lan- 
 guage in which he wrote, lending itself to that combination of 
 the raw truth that goes home, and the sentimental that sounds so 
 much more possible in German than in English poetizing, 
 philosophizing, appealing with every practised phrase of the man 
 who has made this theme his study as well as his pastime. The 
 same letters in English would have missed their mark; spoiled by 
 that shrinking of the heart from the phrase worn commonplace, 
 its significance chiefly ironic, reminiscent of long abuse. The old 
 things said in another tongue came charged with the excitement 
 of discovery, wearing a freshness as of Eden. 
 
 And he made good his claim to being more than soldier. Not 
 only sent her books as time went on, wrote about them pertinently. 
 In his more impassioned moods, made and sent dedicated to 
 
 6
 
 82 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 her little Gedichte, that because they were not notably bad seemed 
 brilliant. 
 
 But for all their hitting the mark, Liebesbriefe and Gedichte 
 got for their return: 
 
 '// is no use. I wonder at your lack of knowledge of woman- 
 kind. This "kind" of woman, you should know, I am not.' 
 
 And again: 
 
 ' Your Highness is very daring. You will even be writing to me 
 of Tugend as well as of Liebe. I do not know if "Virtue" is as 
 strong in me as Pride. I only know, that although my feeling about 
 you keeps me from anyone else, it will equally keep me from you.' 
 
 'Until the divorce!' he interpreted by return, with the com- 
 ment: 'Strange what cruelty so gentle a being can wilfully inflict.' 
 In each after letter, confident reference to the divorce. Then 
 proceedings were already instituted! 
 
 The weeks went on bringing the letters, the books, the little 
 mementoes. He was fertile in finding excuse for making her 
 think of him. He understood, as nobler men have failed to do, 
 what significance these material things may carry; more eloquent 
 sometimes, in their guise of beautiful symbols, than copies of 
 poetry or pages of protestation. 
 
 Since Katharine's return this time to England, whether she 
 were in London or the country, Waldenstein's standing order at 
 Gerard's, in Regent Street, brought her every Thursday a basket 
 of La France roses the flowers she had carried at the Dra wing- 
 Room that day they had first seen each other. Never the heavy 
 pink buds were brought into the room, without bringing the 
 sound of Prince Anton's voice, the look in his face. 
 
 With the prospect of the divorce held so steadily in view, it 
 seemed less flagrantly unfit that he should address her in the 
 terms he used; but 'es ist mir zuwider,' she wrote him again and 
 again. ' Wait till we have the right to these dear words. To use 
 them now is like asking me to wear Breitenlohe family jewels. 
 They still belong to someone else.' 
 
 By dint of simply not noticing these portions of her letters, he 
 bore down her objection to the manner, as well as the matter, of 
 his address. He wrote now of their future together as one in the 
 act of making practical arrangements.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 83 
 
 Lady Peterborough's letters were of the same tenor. She 
 suggested several times that Katharine should return to Paris, 
 but the girl remained in Devon. Even Lord Peterborough was 
 written to on the subject. 
 
 'Why don't you go?' he said, not dreaming the Prince was 
 there. 'I don't want to leave you so soon again,' Katharine had 
 equivocated. 
 
 'Oh, as to leaving me, I am going to Holland, as soon as I can 
 get away,' and he expounded a holy mission to prevent an in- 
 valuable MS. from crossing to America. Still Katharine did 
 not give him his discharge. The old man wondered. 
 
 Not till the Prince left France (all his movements were inter- 
 preted as hinging upon arrangements for the divorce) not till 
 then did Lady Peterborough return to London, summoning her 
 family to meet her. 
 
 Katharine was nothing loth. German letters were many hours 
 nearer in London than in Devon. Waldenstein himself was 
 nearer, though she had expressly forbidden him to set foot on 
 English soil 'until after.' 
 
 Lord Peterborough deposited Kitty in London, and hurried on 
 to the Hague. He was hardly across the Channel before his wife 
 began to complain as loudly of the desolate state of London dur- 
 ing the Easter holidays, as though it were something never 
 remarked before. The very idea of Devon this rainy weather 
 made her ill. She developed a well-known but, to her entourage, 
 very alarming symptom described by herself as 'creaking with 
 boredom.' 
 
 On the following day she was considering a plan for taking 
 Katharine and going to Berlin. Why not ? The Carrs were to be 
 there on their way from Egypt to St. Petersburg. Katharine was 
 obliged to acknowledge to herself, that this was just the kind 
 of sudden scheme for movement and diversion, that Lady Peter- 
 borough was capable of evolving at any moment, and yet 
 
 If Anton were not in Berlin, he was only a couple of hours away 
 at his cousin's, Graf Wilhelm's. 
 
 'I don't feel like going abroad so soon again,' Katharine had 
 said. 
 
 'Oh, you'd better,' returned her ladyship off-hand. 'You 
 can't stay here alone.'
 
 84 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'I'll go to my father for a little. He has not been able to get 
 away this Easter.' 
 
 Lady Peterborough produced her familiar snort, but said 
 nothing. 
 
 It did not necessarily argue great affection for her god-daughter, 
 that she should feel Katharine to be an essential part of the suc- 
 cess of the German programme. She continued to say nothing 
 further on the subject, but she postponed her plans for a day or 
 two. Katharine, grown more analytic, fully expected that Lady 
 Peterborough was waiting for the purpose of communicating the 
 state of affairs to her ally. There would surely be imploring tele- 
 grams. But nothing. Not even the now usual daily letter. 
 What had happened? Was Anton ill? Or angry at something 
 Katharine had said in her last letter. She tried to recall precisely 
 what she had written and waited anxiously; tried to quiet her 
 nerves by setting aside her own preoccupations and devoting her- 
 self to her father. 
 
 Mention has been made of things that early disconcerted 
 Katharine's loving admiration of him. These things, of one 
 kind and another, seemed to have their origin in the fact that 
 Colonel Dereham did not always speak by the card, nor even 
 think with accuracy, as Katharine explained to herself; not yet 
 knowing how the one vice inevitably breeds the other; so eager 
 to find excuse for him that she got a kind of pitying comfort out 
 of setting the effect before the cause. 
 
 When she at first, in all good faith, had prompted his memory 
 or mended his misapprehension, he would look at her with an odd 
 expression in his fine eyes, and say: 
 
 'You are very like your mother.' 
 
 'It's the only unkind thing he ever says of her,' the girl had 
 thought with tender mystification. 
 
 Certainly Katharine, in spite of her somewhat lax training, and 
 in spite, as the superficial might say, of her poetic leanings, felt 
 for la ve*rite vraie that passion of the soul that realizes the largest 
 optimism by refusing to believe that men can improve upon truth; 
 with early glimpses of a further faith, that, should the first obvious 
 Good that all men yearn for should that fail, the second will 
 be there, the greater Good of bearing well the absence of the 
 good we sought. If Colonel Dereham long ago, when he and his
 
 A DARK LANTERN 85 
 
 world were young, had ever had glimpses of this source of high 
 content, they were dimmed and lost in the light of these common 
 days. 
 
 On going to Hill Street after her heroic decision not to accom- 
 pany Lady Peterborough to Berlin, Katharine found her father in 
 one of his strange, dulled, unsociable moods. His daughter's 
 proposal to come, after Lady Peterborough's departure, to spend 
 a fortnight with him, he received with some surface grace. And 
 the next morning telegraphed her from Boulogne that he had felt 
 so ill, he was seeking change! No address. 
 
 'I'll go with you after all if you'll have me,' Katharine said to 
 Lady Peterborough. It seemed to be Fate. 
 
 The night they crossed the Channel, while Natalie in her mis- 
 tress's state-room was hastily putting out the toilet things, in 
 lugubrious anticipation of being speedily incapacitated for fur- 
 ther service, her disgust at the unexpected journey found vent 
 in guarded muttering against Lady Peterborough. Katharine 
 laughed. 
 
 'It's not Lady Peterborough who makes you put to sea, my 
 poor Natalie. It's I.' Oh no, it was her Ladyship. She had 
 made up her mind Mademoiselle Katharine should go. 'Not a 
 bit of it. She accepted my refusal without a murmur.' Without 
 a murmur? Very like! Her ladyship did things more effectual 
 than murmur. What ' nonsense ' was she talking ? Kind heaven ! 
 but nonsense was not in her line. 'Me? I use my eyes and 
 ears,' said the Frenchwoman with severity. 
 
 'And then?' 
 
 'Then? I find that her ladyship does not accept it that Mad- 
 emoiselle Katharine should decline to go abroad; should visit her 
 father. She goes herself to Hill Street Lady Peterborough 
 does to arrange that.' 
 
 'Ridiculous! Lady Peterborough never goes to Hill Street.' 
 
 'An exception, last Wednesday. She went to call on Colonel 
 Dereham. He was not at home, hein? Much good that. She 
 goes up to his bedroom, and talks to him for one ha If -hour.' 
 
 'How do you know?' 
 
 'Gibbs, he tell me. Therefore are we not in Hill Street, but 
 God have mercy on us, here! Presently, no doubt, at the bottom.' 
 
 Katharine left the woman grumbling over her work, and went
 
 86 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 above. A night of fitful moonlight and wind-driven clouds 
 Already they were off. No sleep for Katharine Dereham unless 
 walking the deck awhile, with this salt breeze in her face, should 
 quiet her nerves. If what Natalie reported was a fact, then the 
 day after Katharine had said 'I'll go and stay in Hill Street,' the 
 very next morning after she had arranged it with her father, Lady 
 Peterborough had left Katharine in Bond Street, trying on hats 
 at Angela's, and had driven straight to Colonel Dereham's. 
 
 Why should the circumstance, unusual, unprecedented as it was, 
 disturb Katharine so profoundly ? Even if the surreptitious visit 
 had really taken place, was it anything new to find Lady Peter- 
 borough manoeuvring to compass her own entertainment? The 
 question was, had Anton been in communication with her? Or 
 was she merely flying from London, on her own initiative, to 
 avoid a time when her particular world had not returned from 
 Easter outings ready in her own conscienceless way to use Kath- 
 arine as a bridge to pleasure, yet innocent of actual collusion. 
 Oh, the fatigue, the ugliness of such speculation! 
 
 Her father, too. How strange he was of late! Was the Heath- 
 cote woman worrying ? 
 
 Oh, to clear all the fog and doubt and double-dealing away! 
 To speak honestly and to be honestly answered! The truth! 
 The truth! There were times when that seemed to be all she 
 asked of life. 
 
 More and more, where everything seemed shifting and uncer- 
 tain, her soul thirsted for some sound assurance. How long 
 would she be forced to live on this windy diet of implication, 
 hint, insinuation, and such meagre sustenance as she could glean 
 'between the lines.' 'I am not meaning you, Anton,' she ex- 
 claimed in her heart, having meant most of all him, yet pitiful to 
 the hurt such thoughts had done her old ideal of him. Up and 
 down in the windy moonlight she walked the deck to tire out her 
 fears, up and down with the scent of tar and salt in her face, in- 
 sensibly soothed in her helplessness by the valiant forging-onward 
 motion of the ship, buoyed up by the secret sense of superiority 
 that visits the woman who may call herself 'a good sailor.' She 
 loved it all the swish of the spray, even the swinging and waver- 
 ing of the deck, yes, the putting down the foot and finding the 
 floor sunk half a yard, or risen till one strings the sinews for a
 
 A DARK LANTERN 87 
 
 hill-climb or as if one walked the waves themselves, or on the 
 rolling clouds. 
 
 The morning found her in better heart. She helped the dis- 
 organized maids to get the luggage through the customs, and 
 after the reviving cup of coffee and the brioche that tastes so 
 wonderfully good the first day of one's return to it she had 
 shaken herself free of the shadows of the previous night, and 
 yielded herself up to the thought that nearer, nearer, every minute 
 of that day would see her to her goal! She stood in the corridor 
 of the Berlin express, looking out at the flat, water-laned country, 
 the familiar windmills, the women in sabots, wearing white poke 
 bonnets over close-fitting hoods, basket on arm, hurrying briskly 
 along the level roads in the pink and pearl-gray light of the early 
 hour. Saw the marshes and canals drop their smoke and silver 
 hues, and take on the gold of the advancing morning tasted 
 that intoxicating cup, the beauty of the world, which goes to the 
 head like wine, and like wine wins us to think better of ourselves, 
 our fellows, and our common fate, since here we are environed 
 all about by glories such as these. 
 
 All through the day, each time the train, stopped, Katharine 
 sent out to buy papers. Searched them through for Court gossip, 
 and for gossip of the courts. 
 
 But, after all, legal proceedings against a Waldenstein were not 
 conducted as they were amongst the rank and file. Prince Hein- 
 rich, the head of the house, had power to dissolve the marriage, 
 but naturally little willingness. He would no doubt try recon- 
 ciliation first. In any case the hearing would never reach be- 
 yond the Castle walls. The reason that she had no letters, might 
 be, that at that very instant the trial was going on, and Anton, 
 no longer with his cousin in the Elbethal, was absorbed body 
 and soul in fighting for liberty and her in the family council sum- 
 moned to the Riesengebirge. Or was he in Berlin ? Her guesses 
 kept her on the rack. 
 
 Two days in the German capital without sign or hint of him. 
 Then beyond any shadow of doubt he was gone to Waldenstein ! 
 
 On the third morning a brief note bearing the same Wilhelms- 
 ruhe postmark, yet saying he had been away and that his letters 
 had only just come into his hand; adding that he was proposing 
 by the same post his plans for meeting.
 
 88 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 To be so certain that she would fall in with it that could 
 mean only that he would be bringing her great and happy news. 
 A moment's bitterness at the thought that she should have so 
 descended from the crystalline heights of the old shining dreams, 
 as to call 'great and happy,' the news of a man's divorce from an 
 innocent woman, his freedom to offer the lees of his life to her, 
 to Katharine Dereham! 
 
 His letter to Lady Peterborough made no mention of any 
 earlier communication from her. Merely regretted not having 
 been in Berlin to receive her, and suggested that for fear the fine 
 weather might not last, she and Miss Dereham should come 
 two-thirds of the way the following day by train, to meet him 
 and his cousin for half a day's coaching in the Sachsische Schweiz. 
 
 These were so far from being the conditions Katharine would 
 have chosen for their meeting, that she had a moment of think- 
 ing she would not fall in with the arrangement. But the need 
 to see him now, without delay, was grown too great for her to 
 cavil at the where and how. To-morrow, then.
 
 CHAPTER Vin 
 
 LADY PETERBOROUGH dropped her Carrs without a pang. 
 The morning that she and Katharine took the train agreed upon, 
 brought the same weather that had thus far smiled upon them, 
 mild and bright. 
 
 'I made an excursion very like this when I was a girl,' the old 
 woman had said in high good humour. Before the train stopped 
 at their destination she dropped the Tageblatt, and put her head 
 out of the window, instantly ejaculating, 'I see him!' 
 
 'Graf Wilhelm too?' inquired her companion for the sake of 
 saying something. 
 
 Katharine's outward stillness gave no hint of the tumult within. 
 It was Lady Peterborough who was all animation, excitement, 
 volubility. Through the window she made a slight motion with 
 a stiff rheumatic hand in its loose white glove. 'They see!' 
 She smiled with unusual urbanity. 'I like a man to take off his 
 hat like that, and to stand so, bareheaded, as if we were Kings 
 and Queens, my dear. None of your Englishman's uneasy haste 
 to get his headgear out of his hand! Kind Heaven, what have 
 those two got on! Lincoln green with scarlet waistcoats. Oh, 
 these dear Germans! How it carries one back! And their buff 
 leather ' The slowing train stopped with a bump that pre- 
 cipitated Lady Peterborough into her seat feeble with laughter. 
 'And you'll find they think their clothes are English!' she gasped. 
 'I've seen it in a modified form before. In their grim deter- 
 mination to dress pour le sport a 1'Anglaise, even the foreigner 
 who knows England at first hand, will put on things that no 
 
 Briton out of Bedlam ' She thrust her black wig once more 
 
 out of the window: 'Saints in Paradise! what is it they've got on 
 their heads? Tyrolese hats, my child, with feather tufts at the 
 back! Oh, these dear Germans!' 
 
 89
 
 90 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Katharine had sat quite still, and let Lady Peterborough do all 
 the reconnoitring. The first she saw of Anton, he was at the 
 window thrusting aside a Gepacktrager, even the magnificent 
 guard, and himself throwing open the door. His hand crushed 
 hers, then carried it to his lips. His eyes could not have smiled 
 in that fashion into hers if all were less than well! 
 
 Graf Wilhelm was made known: a man of fifty odd, with a 
 big stomach and a round grey-whiskered face. Very urbane and 
 inclined to laugh noisily on small provocation. The appearance 
 of the two, if extremely smart, was in truth somewhat surprising. 
 Apart from the question of hats, it could not be denied that few 
 Englishmen would have had the courage to confront the public 
 so attired; but the effect was at least as 'sporting' if not as Eng- 
 lish as intended. The waistcoats alone were enough to make 
 the most spleenful Briton smile, but after all they were immensely 
 becoming at least, Waldenstein's was. 
 
 Katharine, intent on considerations more important, was con- 
 scious only of that spice of foreignness, that gay pictorial quality, 
 which is one of the islander's gains in going abroad. Not a case 
 of waistcoats and flamboyant ties alone these did but match 
 the more picturesque manners, the hand-kissing, the very way 
 they had doffed again the absurd green hats. All very well for an 
 Englishman to scorn such doings. He has no skill in these things. 
 
 'What a day!' Katharine, conscious of the tell-tale radiance 
 of her air, turned her face up to the cloudless sky as if to insist: 
 'It is this sweet spring sunshine at noontide flood, not reassurance 
 in the shining looks of my lover, that makes my world and me so 
 gay.' Talk and laughter between Lady Peterborough and the 
 two men flowed on, as they walked the long platform, now under 
 its high glass roof, now downstairs, now along passages of vitri- 
 fied brick, up again and out at the main entrance. 
 
 'I thought you said a drag!' Lady Peterborough arraigned 
 Prince Anton as he stopped beside a carriage. 
 
 'It will come for us in an hour,' answered Graf Wilhelm, 
 stepping forward with an air, and handing her in 'after we are 
 fortified with a little ddjeuner.' 
 
 As Katharine waited to follow her god-mother into the landau, 
 she turned quickly and, risking remark, said to Prince Anton 
 under her breath:
 
 A DARK LANTERN 91 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'Welll' 
 
 'Is it well?' 
 
 ' Can you doubt it ? ' Of course not, not from the moment she 
 had seen his face at the carriage window. 
 
 'What are all the flags and decorations for?' demanded Lady 
 Peterborough as they drove off. 
 
 'Even the old town is glad to-day,' the Prince said to Katha- 
 rine. They exchanged looks, like two children with some gay 
 secret. 
 
 Graf Wilhelm, more explicit, answered: 'The birthday of our 
 Saxon King, your ladyship.' 
 
 Through the crowded streets they clattered at nearly as in- 
 considerate a pace as the Droschkes, whose Klitscher drove 
 gaily over the populace by virtue of being Erste Klasse. Through 
 the Altmarkt, past the Konigliche palace and the Hofkirche, 
 that Graf Wilhelm said Frederick the Great had bombarded, 
 and where at that moment old King Albert and his Court were 
 hearing the High Mass celebrated. A glimpse of royal coaches, 
 as the travellers drove by, and here they were at their hotel. 
 
 They breakfasted before silver epergnes in which the floral 
 decorations were peonies made of scarlet feathers. Again Lady 
 Peterborough twisted her old face and murmured: 'These dear 
 Germans!' and the only one to resent either look or words was 
 Katharine, it seemed. 
 
 She could have wished grown suddenly sensitive to their fair 
 fame that Germans of Graf Wilhelm's generation ate more 
 fastidiously more after the manner of Prince Anton and 'people 
 generally.' The type of what she had heard with disgust called 
 'the heavy feeder' was intensely antipathetic, and she kept her 
 eyes turned religiously away from the offender as much as was 
 possible. But Graf Wilhelm was far from unintelligent, and 
 as great a talker as he was a trencher-man. 
 
 Anton had taken out of the back of the carriage a parcel, 
 which he produced during the meal and proceeded to undo. A 
 very beautiful bit of old porcelain, the figure of a girl. 
 
 'I have to be very careful. It is only lent to me out of the 
 royal collection. But you see who it is like ? ' he asked Katharine. 
 'It has for me a look of you.'
 
 92 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Graf Wilhelm thought the same. Lady Peterborough couldn't 
 see it. 'But it is quite exquisite,' she agreed. 
 
 'I must return it to-morrow, but I want to get the people at 
 Meissen to copy it. One for you and one for me,' Prince Anton 
 said to Katharine. 'We can go anywhere you like any other 
 day. What do you say?' he turned to Lady Peterborough, 
 ' what do you say to driving through the valley of the Elbe to the 
 Potteries this afternoon?' 
 
 'Surely everything will be shut!' 
 
 'No. I've wired. I've arranged that the man I want to see 
 shall be there.' 
 
 'Ah! You have arranged that you will have your own way. 
 Then why the formality of asking us?' 
 
 In the good-humoured sparring between the two, Katharine 
 declined to bear a share. 'Just as Lady Peterborough thinks,' 
 she said, not indeed greatly caring, since she and Anton were 
 not to be alone, in which direction or upon what pretext they all 
 went driving through the April sunshine. In any case he would 
 surely make his opportunity to tell her the news she longed so 
 desperately to hear. Or rather the particulars. For now she 
 knew his news. The sound of a horn blown loud. 
 
 'The King going by?' 
 
 'I rather think our coach.' They found it at the door. Graf 
 Wilhelm climbed to the box seat, and Anton stood below hand- 
 ing the ladies up. 
 
 'You goin' to drive?' demanded Lady Peterborough, watch- 
 ing Graf Wilhelm with suspicion. 
 
 'I am to have that pleasure.' 
 
 'Well, I hope it will be a pleasure all round,' she said darkly, 
 and then, with heroic aspect, mounted. 'No, Katharine should 
 sit on the box,' she said, her ladyship's plan being obviously to 
 appropriate the Prince. Katharine and he followed. The 
 grooms sprang into their places. Graf Wilhelm gathered up 
 the reins, a blast on the shining horn, and away they went through 
 streets, gay with the green and white Saxon banners, and the 
 sunshine and the holiday crowd. 
 
 Now they were stopped by the police, and made to wait some 
 moments before they could cross the street. The monarch was 
 on his way to the Review. Here they were, the kindly old King
 
 A DARK LANTERN 93 
 
 with ruddy face and frosty beard, and sitting beside him, the 
 Emperor William, come to do him honour, dressed in white, 
 with white cock's feathers blowing over a shining helmet. 
 
 The old King, bowing right and left, smiled and nodded at 
 Graf Wilhelm. The Emperor turned his head slightly, levelling 
 a sharp look at the party on the coach, with hand lifted return- 
 ing the men's salute. A little pause, and a second carriage with 
 the Queen and the Princess Mathilde; a third and fourth. 
 
 Prince Georg had made sign of recognition to the men on the 
 coach. Upon Lady Peterborough's sharp repetition, 'Who is 
 that ? ' Graf Wilhelm told off the lesser royalties as the carriages 
 rolled by. When the last was gone, the populace overflowed 
 the highway, compelling the big coach to move slowly for the 
 first few yards, but the way cleared before a blast from the horn, 
 and the great vehicle went clattering over the cobbles of the long 
 Leipziger Strasse, till it left the town behind. Out here were 
 smooth and pleasant roads, bordered by gardens, or by sunny 
 meadows sloping down to the Elbe, fringed with the tender greeen 
 of April leafage. And now they were in Apple-blossom Land; 
 for mile after mile they drove between orchards in full blpom, 
 upon a roadway carpeted with fallen flakes of pink and white. 
 
 'In a minute,' Graf Wilhelm said, 'we shall see, on that hill 
 over there, the ruin of the Schloss that is the twin of W'alden- 
 stein.' Noticing Katharine turn with kindling looks, Lady 
 Peterborough observed with decision, '/ shall save myself for 
 the Potteries. Scaling this coach will be climbing enough for 
 one day.' 
 
 'There's a road part way up,' Graf Wilhelm consoled his 
 companion. 'We'll go as far as the Forst Haus. There it is.' 
 High above the new building, of a cringing ugliness, the old 
 castle lorded it even in its ruin. 
 
 'That,' Graf Wilhelm pointed with his whip, 'that was the 
 Wittwen Haus of the ancestors of the present King on his mother's 
 side. The Margrave who built it was born in the room where 
 my cousin, here, first saw the light.' 
 
 'How was that?' asked Katharine. 'How did the Walden- 
 stein come here?' 
 
 'He was a younger son too, and having married a South Ger- 
 man, he searched all Saxony for a site like Waldenstein.'
 
 94 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'If he thought this was like it the gentleman was blind,' said 
 Anton, a trifle impatiently. 
 
 'No doubt in his day,' the other defended the Margrave, 'the 
 woods were as fine about here as yours of Waldenstein. You 
 can't deny he found a hill set above a river, just where three 
 valleys meet, and he built his castle in every respect like the one 
 he had been born in.' 
 
 And Waldenstein is older still, thought Katharine, looking up 
 at the ruin. Was the day not far when from windows framed 
 before those that were crumbling on the cliff, she would look out 
 upon a world like this, only wooded where this was bare, like this 
 commanding three several valleys, like this divinely smiled upon 
 by curving river, and rich sunshine and apple-trees in bloom? 
 'And so Waldenstein's like this!' she said aloud. 
 
 'Only the old part. Let us get on, shall we?' Prince Anton 
 suggested. 
 
 'About what date is this?' Lady Peterborough turned to 
 him, the only one of the party who had seemed to take no sort of 
 interest in what Graf Wilhelm had been saying. 
 
 While Prince Anton hesitated Katharine turned, and over her 
 shoulder said, 'I think you told me the Waldenstein date was 
 1 200 and something.' 
 
 'No, no,' cried out Graf Wilhelm, 'two hundred years earlier.' 
 
 'Oh, very like,' said the other. 
 
 'What!' Katharine threw over her shoulder, 'you drop two 
 centuries out of your family history as lightly as that!' He 
 seemed not to hear. 
 
 But she had done this red-faced Graf Wilhelm an injustice. 
 He had great feeling for these things of the past, that so fired 
 Katharine's imagination. He was leaning back now answering a 
 question of Lady Peterborough's: 'Yes, it was that Margrave of 
 Waldenstein, who built this in 1062 more than a quarter of a 
 century before it came into the hands of the present reigning 
 house, by marriage.' 
 
 'The present reigning house!' echoed Lady Peterborough. 
 'I always say your German families give most of ours a very 
 mushroom air.' 
 
 'Of course,' Graf Wilhelm admitted, 'ours of Saxony is the
 
 A DARK LANTERN 95 
 
 oldest reigning house in Europe. They've sat on the throne for 
 over eight hundred years.' 
 
 One family keeping such power in their hands all that time! 
 through the most eventful 800 years the world had known 
 keeping it to this hour! The old man they had just seen took 
 on for Katharine a new significance. How tenacious were these 
 Teutons! Not in mere domination so much, as in this long con- 
 tinuance of it, lay the triumph of the aristocratic idea. Other- 
 where dynasties rose and fell, whole nations were wiped out, and 
 still the same house ruled Saxony, and still in the Pomeranian forest 
 Princes of Anton's blood sat firm on the Waldenstein crag. 
 
 And she was to have her share in this long story! Nothing that 
 she heard or saw but took on sharp significance. Nothing so 
 trivial but it would bear upon what was coming. These things 
 were to be the background of her new life. 
 
 Now they were waking echoes in the Meissen streets. 'That 
 is the Dom,' Graf Wilhelm pointed with his whip. 'The finest 
 example of Gothic in Saxony.' Prince Anton's animation came 
 back only when they approached the Potteries. Everything at the 
 great factory shut and silent. But no, two brisk young men, and 
 an old gentleman, who seemed vastly pleased that Prince Anton 
 should have come personally to him about the order. He ex- 
 amined the statuette through great round spectacles, and asked 
 leave to keep it till the following day. 
 
 'Now these ladies will come down and look at some of your 
 fine things!' said his patron. 
 
 'Unfortunately ' many apologies; everything shut and 
 
 locked. 'Any other time ' 
 
 'I told you it would be like this!' Lady Peterborough called 
 down; and as the talk below went forward, Graf Wilhelm joining 
 in, she gave herself the satisfaction of whispering in Katharine's 
 ear: 'Dreadfully spoilt these little royalties 1 They think no rule 
 holds for them.' 
 
 'Oh, well,' said Graf Wilhelm. 'You can see all this another 
 day. In any case it is nearly the hour when all English ladies 
 must drink tea.' 
 
 'Not in Germany!' said Lady Peterborough with telling 
 emphasis. 
 
 'But mine is Russian caravan tea. You will like it, I am
 
 96 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 bold enough to believe. I told them to be ready for us any time 
 after four.' 
 
 'Where?' 
 
 'At Wilhelmsruhe.' 
 
 'Oh, is your place near?' 
 
 'Not half an hour's drive,' said Anton. 
 
 'You seem to have the afternoon very carefully mapped out.' 
 
 'Your ladyship mocks me. But I will not have you wholly 
 disappointed. It is a very good exchange, I assure you. My 
 cousin has things infinitely better worth seeing than any they 
 could show you here.' 
 
 It was not yet five o'clock when the coach drew up before a 
 great bare unbeautiful house set in a charming old park. The 
 owner seemed to be under no illusions about it. ' I have nothing, 
 I regret to say, like Waldenstein to show you here,' he said, 
 when the chimneys emerged from the trees. 
 
 'It's infinitely more comfortable,' returned Prince Anton. 
 
 'Horribly new, as you see,' his cousin went on to Lady Peter- 
 borough, 'built on the site of the old place in my father's time 
 when taste was what you see.' 
 
 'But that tower nearly hidden, surely ' 
 
 'Oh, yes, they saved that and the picture gallery.' 
 
 'And the pictures and things,' said Anton. 'You'll forgive 
 me the Potteries, Lady Peterborough, when you see what I 
 mean.' 
 
 'I am sorry my wife and boys are away. You must try to put 
 up with bachelor entertainment.' Graf Wilhelm led the way into 
 a large hall, carpeted with skins and hung with trophies of the 
 chase. A green and scarlet macaw on its perch in a bay window 
 received the intrusion with a watchful silence, but on anyone's 
 near approach, began describing invisible circles in the air with 
 its wicked-looking beak. 
 
 The promised Russian tea was served with coffee and wines, 
 and the imaginative German Kuchen, on tables ranged near a 
 porcelain stove that reached nearly to the ceiling. Lady Peter- 
 borough sat near the source of the mild diffused warmth, drinking 
 tea with rum and lemon, highly commended by her host, who 
 for his own part drank a beverage undiluted, more fiery than 
 tea. 'It will be cold driving back. You will have to lend
 
 A DARK LANTERN 97 
 
 us wraps,' she said, with an obvious drop in her enthusiasm 
 for more coaching in the chill of a late afternoon, however 
 beautiful. 
 
 Katharine, realizing in herself a mood of growing restlessness, 
 interpreted the long lingering over the little tables in the pleasant 
 hall, as pure consideration for Lady Peterborough's aged bones. 
 She and the host did most of the talking. The effect of high 
 spirits that Prince Anton had presented at the station in the 
 morning, and during the earlier part of the drive, had degenerated 
 hour by hour into something like a nervous vivacity between fits 
 of abstraction. Why was he so so what was it? Katharine's 
 happiness of the earlier day suffered conscious check. Her 
 nerves responded nicely to the uncertain balance of his own. A 
 sense of excitement invaded her, very different from the quicken- 
 ing joy with which she had greeted his face at the rail way- carriage 
 window. A move at last! Lady Peterborough got up from her 
 comfortable corner, and went to look into the sunk garden Graf 
 Wilhelm had been talking about. 'I will have one like that in 
 Devonshire,' she said, disregarding the cabalistic circles the 
 macaw, upon her approach, at once began to describe in the air 
 with its writhing head. Lady Peterborough's next remark was 
 drowned by a horrible shriek from the bird. Katharine started 
 up, shaking from head to foot. Anton laughed. 'How nervous 
 you are!' 
 
 The object of the macaw's malediction looked out unmoved. 
 'Very nice. Yes, I could do that in Devonshire. Where's the 
 coach ? ' 
 
 'Isn't it there yet?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'My cousin will show you the gallery if you like while I ' 
 
 The host caught up his Tyrolese hat. Prince Anton roused him- 
 self with sudden animation. 
 
 ' Of course, yes. It's this way, Lady Peterborough.' Through 
 a little vaulted passage that had been a Gothic porch, they reached 
 a vast room, bare but for its divans and occasional bronzes and 
 the pictures on the wall. The windows on the west looked 
 across a grassy court to the clock tower, standing black against 
 the sunset. The two visitors were led down that side of the 
 long gallery past the older paintings. All portraits these, and 
 
 1
 
 98 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 many unsigned, done in the days when renown was oral and there 
 was less to remember. In a world not yet choked with rubbish, 
 no one was afraid the maker of a fine picture or a fine poem would 
 be forgot. Margraves and Princes, Kings and Queens, knights 
 
 and ladies 'Wilhelm could tell you stories about these 
 
 people. Some of them have places in the songs and legends of 
 the people, but I am no good at remembering such things.' 
 
 'Not even when they're about your own ancestors?' 
 
 'There are too many,' he said impatiently. 
 
 'Ancestors or stories?' 
 
 'Both. Life is so much shorter than it used to be; we have 
 
 time nowadays ' Lady Peterborough was a little in advance 
 
 he lowered his voice: 'time only for ourselves? 
 
 Again, and more acutely, was she consicous of an effect of 
 restrained excitement about him. 
 
 The old clock struck the hour. Lady Peterborough glanced 
 through the window and compared it with her watch. The 
 action, simple as it was, seemed to ruffle him. He hoped she 
 was not bored or tired. Would she sit down a moment here, in 
 front of the Holbein? This was, with one exception, the finest 
 thing in the collection. 
 
 He placed her to the best advantage, but complained of the 
 light. No, it was quite right, she said. But he rang and set the 
 garrulous old butler to drawing the curtains, while the Prince him- 
 self went about turning up the electric light. The old servant, a 
 little dazed by the command, continuing to remind Seiner Hoheit 
 that there was still quite good daylight abroad, began on the right 
 his lowering of the curtains. 'No, this side first,' Anton said 
 irritably, and Katharine felt that he was appeased only when the 
 grim old clock tower was shut out behind scarlet silk. As well 
 as if he had told her, she knew that he wanted the face of time 
 hidden, the fact of time forgot. Yet he and she were not alone 
 and he stood committed to a task she knew was little to his 
 liking. Why was he setting himself, with such unwonted deter- 
 mination, to show off the gallery to the best possible advantage ? 
 What was it to him? And the answer she knew was: Time. 
 But why this time? He would see her again directly, under 
 conditions far more favourable. 
 
 'No, don't look at that abortion,' he said, hurrying her past
 
 A DARK LANTERN 99 
 
 a great Rubens ruddy as a butcher's shop, ' here's a Rem- 
 brandt.' 
 
 'Surely it is Saskia!' 
 
 'Yes, isn't she irresistible in her plump effrontery? I always 
 want to pinch her cheek.' 
 
 He turned suddenly back to Lady Peterborough, and bent 
 over her, looking back at Saskia and telling some story the picture 
 had recalled. Lady Peterborough brightened visibly under this 
 infusion of narrative. She looked round as Katharine joined 
 them. Yes, the old man had finished his task with the many 
 windows, and was gone. 
 
 'Well,' demanded Lady Peterborough, 'what news from 
 Waldenstein ? ' 
 
 Prince Anton hesitated, and then with an air of aloofness he 
 seldom adopted with Lady Peterborough, made answer: 'Miss 
 Dereham shall tell you that.' 
 
 Katharine was sensitive to the rebuff administered, more by the 
 Prince's manner than his words; Lady Peterborough, however, 
 uttered a half -mocking but good-humoured 'Ahf And is your 
 cousin perhaps waiting in the hall meanwhile?' 
 
 'Oh, no,' he said, with a return of his friendly animation, 'he 
 will join us here. But he won't forgive me if I show you so 
 little.' He went on pointing out this and that. 'These absurd 
 old Lucas Kranachs are most delightful things every bit as good 
 as any the Czar has in the Hermitage.' 
 
 'That's fortunate,' said Lady Peterborough, regarding the 
 queer saint a trifle sardonically. ' For I shall not go to Russia to 
 inspect the Czar's.' 
 
 'No need to go to Russia. Come next year to our Deutsche 
 Kunst-Ausstellung. The Czar is lending us his Kranachs.' He 
 crossed half-way to Katharine. 'I never allow anyone to go by 
 without paying their respects to Peter Vischer's dog. You have 
 not even seen him!' He halted before the bronze. 
 
 But Katharine had yielded herself up to the experience of 
 being not arrested merely, but actually hailed by the glance of a 
 face that looked darkly out of a great frame farther on. A man 
 of lean, commanding aspect, high ruff and gloved hand upon his 
 sword hilt, who seemed advancing to meet her. 
 
 'How unmistakably the cavalier!' she said.
 
 ioo A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Yes,' agreed the guide; 'van Dyck certainly did know how 
 to paint a gentleman. But see what Peter Vischer could do with 
 a dog.' 
 
 'You talk about your cousin's knowledge of things here, but 
 you seem to know the gallery rather well,' said Katharine, return- 
 ing from her interview with the cavalier. 
 
 'Yes,' came the caustic old voice from the ottoman. 'This is ? 
 new light upon you, Prince.' 
 
 'How?' 
 
 'I had not realized you knew cared about painting.' 
 
 'Did you think I was an Englishman?' he asked maliciously. 
 
 Was that in return for the amused patronage of 'these dear 
 Germans!'? He had not seemed to mind at the time nor even to 
 hear. Katharine, aghast, hastened to say the first thing that came 
 into her head. 
 
 'Is Graf Wilhelm a connoisseur?' 
 
 ' Oh, only as all Germans of his class are.' 
 
 A distinct snort from the direction of the Peterborough divan. 
 Prince Anton turned to her a face conciliatory, suave once more. 
 'Of course I admit that what is here is the gathering and the 
 sifting of centuries. There isn't a new picture in the collection 
 but the Israels and two or three other things of the modern 
 Dutch school, except that Lenbach over there of Wilhelm's wife.' 
 
 'Ah!' ejaculated Lady Peterborough, giving way to her first 
 expression of enthusiasm, as she left her divan and crossed that 
 end of the gallery, to stand before a magnificent presentment of a 
 most regal-looking dame. 'Ah, that's painted 1 And so that is 
 the Grafin! Who was she?' 
 
 'One of the Detmolds.' 
 
 'Really!' 
 
 'No one who sees that can rightly say the mistress of this house 
 is not at home,' said Katharine. 'It is like a living presence. 
 Are you and she great friends?' Prince Anton smiled and led 
 them on, saying significantly: 
 
 ' I like her better as a sister-in-law than I would as a wife. She 
 has just sent for poor Wilhelm post haste. He has to leave at 
 cock-crow to-morrow for Turin.' 
 
 'Ah! I suppose he has preparations to make ' observed 
 
 Lady Peterborough.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 101 
 
 'Wilhelm? Oh no, he'll be here in a minute. He hoped you 
 might care to see the Porcelain Room.' Prince Anton, with a 
 sudden access of vivacity, pushed open a door at the end of the 
 gallery, leading into a much smaller apartment, which the old 
 butler had curtained and left ablaze with light. Glass cases in 
 rows, and from surbase to ceiling, tiers of shelves filled with ware 
 that gave the room its name. In the cases, old ivories and jewels, 
 cups and vessels of agate and blood-stone; drinking bowls and 
 tankards, craftily wrought and encrusted with rude jewels; 
 enamels brought from the Palace of the Grand Mogul; mechanical 
 toys; a hundred beautiful and ingenious things done in the days 
 when there was time. 
 
 'Why, it is a museum!' exclaimed Katharine. 
 
 'There used to be a clock here' he was going from case to 
 case. 
 
 A queer grunting sound then an explosive, 'Ich hab'sl' from 
 the end of the room. 
 
 'Ah, is that you, Borromaus?' Prince Anton laughed. 
 
 Between a high cabinet and a curtained window, under a 
 shaded lamp, a man sat at a low table covered with tools, bending 
 with distended cheeks over a blowpipe held to a spirit flame. 
 Deliberately he laid aside the pipe, and, sticking a magnifying 
 glass in his eye, looked fixedly at a shining object in his hand, 
 while he gruffly greeted the Prince. 
 
 'Allow me, Lady Peterborough, to present to you a genius. 
 Herr Borromaus here is a great mechanical expert among 
 other things.' The shock-headed gentleman, having got up, 
 took the glass out of his eye, and awkwardly bowed. 'I am 
 sorry to say he is also a socialist, democrat God knows what!' 
 continued the Prince, laughing. 'This is no place for you, 
 Borromaus.' 
 
 'And why not?' returned the man sturdily. 
 
 'Because you care nothing for Art.' 
 
 ' God in Heaven, but you are very wrong there. I care greatly 
 for Art.' 
 
 ' Impossible impossible ! ' insisted the other. ' Art is a product 
 of selection, conservation of the best, rigid rejection of the unfit. 
 Nothing here,' he waved a comprehensive hand, 'nothing here 
 but furnishes argument against democracy.'
 
 102 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Far from it! Here I sit, surrounded by the results of work, 
 good work.' Borromaus threw back his great head with a glare. 
 'Here, at least, a workman may feel himself at home.' 
 
 'Sophistry! Nothing here but emphasizes the value to the 
 world of the aristocratic idea. What are you at? Why, you've 
 got the clock. This was the thing I used to love as a b&y. You 
 see the crystal ball ? When the thing's in order the ball runs all 
 round this gold gallery.' He made as if to take it out of Borro- 
 maus's hands. But the genius drew back, guarding the old 
 toy from profane fingers. 'Let me have it! When I was a boy 
 I used to know how to set it going.' 
 
 'Yes, to going wrong,' muttered the man, sitting down at the 
 table again. Since the Grafin would not permit the clock to be 
 taken from the room, it was plain she wanted it in no other hands 
 than his, Borromaus's though such matters were not, strictly 
 speaking, his business. 
 
 Prince Anton had only laughed at the privileged character. 
 'No need to apologize for your amiability, my good Borromaus. 
 Die schone Grafin gets what she wants out of doughtier men 
 than you. The Detmolds have done just that since before 
 Friederich der Starke gave one of them that clock. No, no, it's 
 not a bit of use for you to begin one of your harangues in this 
 room. Nobody need ask a better argument against your level- 
 ling doctrines, than just what we can see within these four walls. 
 Isn't it so, Miss Dereham? If it had been not for the reigning 
 houses and the nobles, who had the love of beautiful things, the 
 money to pay for them, and the power to guard them, how much 
 of all this would have survived? Who of the men who made 
 these things could have kept them from destruction? It's no 
 use,' he laughed, turning his back on the man. 'Learning, art, 
 all that went to make civilization, we owe its survival to the 
 noblesse. Isn't it so, Wilhelm?' The master of the house stood 
 in the doorway laughing. 
 
 'Is Borromaus denouncing you again?' 
 
 Small need to ask, with denial, argument, instance of 'the 
 Republics of Italy,' 'Greece,' flung after the party, as they re- 
 turned through the picture-gallery the voice of the agitator 
 from the Porcelain Room drowned in Anton's laughter, and the 
 words tossed back: 'You owe everything to the nobles, I tell you
 
 A DARK LANTERN 103 
 
 it was they who recognised the good thing when they saw it, 
 who encouraged men like you with praise and pence and who 
 handed on Art as they handed on social order.' 
 
 'One of the coach horses is too lame to drive,' Graf Wilhelm 
 was saying to Lady Peterborough, with profuse regrets. 
 
 'I suppose you can get us to the station?' 
 
 'Of course, of course. But you will dine first?' 
 
 'What are the trains?' 
 
 'There is one before nine, I think. But I have sent for the 
 new Kursbuch. I will bring you word.' He left the ladies at 
 the gallery door, and returned to the hall. Lady Peterborough 
 followed; but Katharine went back to look at her Cavalier. 
 Anton had disappeared. He would return, and there would be 
 time for a quiet word. 
 
 When Lady Peterborough reached the hall, it was empty. 
 She went over to a table, and picked up a French novel. The 
 old butler came in grumbling at the heels of a brisk young foot- 
 man, took some letters from him, and bade him go about his 
 business. Didn't he know this was the butler's affair ? 
 
 Still muttering to himself, after the withdrawal of the offender, 
 the old man ranged the letters on the table a pile for the master 
 of the house, for Prince Anton one. As if hypnotized, Lady 
 Peterborough, staring at the single letter, advanced a step or two. 
 The macaw, craning suspiciously, and ominously circling with 
 its head, emitted a hoarse shriek. The old butler started. His 
 nervous, palsied hands knocked the single letter off the edge of 
 the table on to the floor. Catching sight of the visitor, the old 
 fellow bowed deprecatingly, and mechanically begged pardon. 
 
 'Schone Schrift,' said Lady Peterborough, and as he picked, 
 the letter up, face down, she added, 'Ich kenne diese Wappen,' 
 and she looked at the chiffre under the embossed armorial bear- 
 ings. 'Have you ever seen that beautiful writing before?' she 
 demanded, as he replaced the letter on the table. 
 
 'Every day, gnadige. It is the, as you say, beautiful hand- 
 writing of the Princess Margaretha of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein.' 
 
 'Ah "every day." The Prince, I dare say, is not so good a 
 correspondent as all that.' 
 
 'Not perhaps to everyone. But to her Highness, his wife, he 
 writes every day, or very nearly,' he said with approval. 'Ladies
 
 104 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 are not pleased when they have no letters is it not so, gnadige?' 
 he wheezed out a laugh and doddered away. 
 
 Lady Peterborough turned from the table, and walked to the 
 armchair by the tall porcelain stove. But instead of sitting 
 down, she stood there looking at the tiles. In communication 
 with her! In constant communication! Upon Graf Wilhelm's 
 reappearance, with an open railway guide, she did not turn nor 
 speak. 
 
 'The only good train, I am sorry to say, goes in three-quarters 
 of an hour.' 
 
 'That will do,' she answered. 
 
 'It leaves scant time for dining.' 
 
 ' There is no need. We will sup later. Will you see about the 
 arrangements for our reaching the station?' Graf Wilhelm 
 looked sharply at her. 
 
 'I am at your ladyship's command, but I had hoped ' 
 
 'Thank you,' she interrupted him. 'How soon can we have a 
 carriage ? ' 
 
 'Oh, in ten minutes. But that would give you a wait at the 
 station. Unless indeed,' he suavely presented her with a cloak 
 for her sudden inimical mood, 'unless you care to look into the 
 Dom for a few minutes. It is very fine lit up.' 
 
 'No, thank you. I have seen enough for one day.' 
 
 ' So ? Entschuldigen ' he withdrew. 
 
 'Why had he not rung the bell and issued his orders as other 
 men did? Humph! There was a great deal of running about. 
 Humph! I suppose I made him feel it best to run but they 
 have curious ideas of behaviour here.' 
 
 When, but for the disquieting company of the macaw, she had 
 been alone sixteen minutes by the clock, she got up and vigorously 
 rang the bell. 
 
 'Tell Miss Dereham the young lady who is with me that I 
 wish to see her.' 
 
 'The lady 
 
 'Yes, the lady! Go quickly. She is in the picture gallery.* 
 
 The footman hesitated an instant,, and then disappeared. He 
 returned to say the lady was not there. 
 
 'Where is Prince Anton?' 
 
 'His Highness has gone out'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 105 
 
 'Gone out! Graf Wilhelm, then. Tell your master Lady 
 Peterborough must see him at once, instantly, do you hear?' 
 
 The man assured her that he did, and incontinently departed, 
 amid renewed screams from the macaw. 
 
 'If they leave me alone much longer with that bird I shall 
 wring its neck,' she decided. 
 
 'Ten thousand apologies,' began Graf Wilhelm, entering 
 hastily. 
 
 She cut him short. 'Where is Miss Dereham?' 
 
 'Miss Dereham? Oh, she thinks she would like to see the 
 Dom ' 
 
 'No! It is too late. Be good enough to tell her to come 
 here.' 
 
 'She has already gone, your ladyship.' 
 
 'Gone I How?' 
 
 'In the landau. My cousin ' 
 
 ' Does she imagine there is time to go on her fool's errand and 
 come back?' 
 
 'Comeback?' 
 
 'Yes, for me. How am I to get to the station?' 
 
 'Your ladyship could not imagine I have, of course, 
 
 carried out the commands your ladyship laid upon me My 
 
 wife's phaeton will be here in five minutes.' 
 
 Lady Peterborough glanced angrily at the clock. 
 
 'Nearly half an hour ago you said in ten minutes.' 
 
 His only answer was to ring the bell. But he was obviously 
 very ill at ease. The voice and aspect of this guest of his seemed 
 to have as disturbing an effect on him as it obviously had on the 
 macaw. 
 
 'Say we are waiting,' he said to the servant. 
 
 'The phaeton is here, Herr Graf.' 
 
 'I will go first to the Cathedral,' announced Lady Peterborough. 
 
 He hesitated. 'You are not afraid you may in that way lose 
 your train ? ' 
 
 'Tell your man to drive fast.' 
 
 Looking sharply right and left at all the passers-by, she paid 
 small attention to the conversation her host made by the way. 
 Now they were clattering along a slanting street, and now they 
 stopped before the steps of the Cathedral. Graf Wilhelm, watch
 
 106 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 in hand, observed: 'They are quite sure to have gone to the 
 station by this time, but I will just glance in.' To his amaze- 
 ment his companion insisted on getting out and doing the 
 glancing for herself. No sign of Katharine in the beautiful 
 dim spaces. 
 
 'The station!' Graf Wilhelm said to the coachman impera- 
 tively, as he handed Lady Peterborough back into the phaeton. 
 ' We must not lose this train/' Off again, bowling down the steep 
 street, while Graf Wilhelm kept up his polite commentary upon 
 Gothic architecture, and the fine mortuary brasses there were 
 here, and all this in spite of the fact that his guest was at no pains 
 to disguise her total lack of interest in Sidonia's monument, or to 
 conceal her own anger. 
 
 The phaeton dashed up just as the train came into the station. 
 With incredible agility Lady Peterborough precipitated herself 
 out of the pony carriage, and made for the platform, Graf Wilhelm 
 following close. 'This way for the Erste Klasse,' he said. 
 
 'I don't care what class. Where is Miss Dereham?' She 
 was peering among the few passengers. 
 
 'Miss Dereham is, of course, in the train. Let me help you 
 in, and then I will go and find her.' He took hold of her arm. 
 
 'I will not get in till I see Miss Dereham!' said Lady Peter- 
 borough, with sudden fire. Graf Wilhelm drew back, as she 
 went hurriedly along the platform, peering in at Erste Klasse 
 windows, and saying to guards and Gepacktrager: 'Did a young 
 lady get in at this station ? ' 
 
 'Yes, gnadige Frau; three young ladies.' 
 
 'No, I saw those three. I mean a tall Fraulein with a grey 
 hat.' 
 
 'I did not notice their hats. Einsteigen!' The puard held 
 the door. Again Graf Wilhelm offered an assisting hand. 
 
 'Not till I know she is here.' 
 
 'You will lose the train yourself!' 
 
 Her only answer was to draw back. The guard slammed the 
 door; the train moved off, leaving Lady Peterborough staring 
 after it. Graf Wilhelm stood, obviously perplexed, with his 
 hands ic his overcoat pockets. 
 
 'Miss Dereham no doubt consoles herself thinking vou -are in 
 another carriage.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 107 
 
 'She isn't there herself. You know she isn't there!' 
 
 'Your ladyship overestimates my powers of clairvoyance. 
 But I should have thought her being there impossible to doubt.' 
 
 Lady Peterborough was taking little aimless steps up and 
 down the platform. She spoke to a man in uniform about trains. 
 Her face had begun to wear that ghastly, corpse-like look that 
 unwonted emotion or fatigue will quite suddenly imprint upon 
 the old. Under the greenish station gas she looked a hundred. 
 
 Graf Wilhelm went forward. 'The slow train goes in fifty 
 minutes. Will you allow me to order dinner for you at the hotel 
 here?' 
 
 'No. You will take me back to Wilhelmsruhe.' 
 
 'To Wilhelmsruhe!' He stared. 
 
 'To Wilhelmsruhe. And I will look in again at the Cathedra] 
 on the way.'
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 WHEN Prince Anton came back into the gallery, Katharine was 
 disappointed, even chilled, at his proposal to go and see the Dom. 
 
 ' Oh, thank you, but I think not.' 
 
 'We'll go this way,' he said. Had he not heard, or was that 
 his way of accepting her decision? 
 
 He opened the west door of the gallery and led her across 
 the court. He walked so rapidly that she had some difficulty 
 to keep up with him; and he added no single word to his 'This 
 way.' How much more a creature of moods he was than she 
 had realized! But he had, no doubt, been living through trying 
 hours. At the Tower Gate a carriage waited. 
 
 ' But I said ' while she was trying to give reasons for refusing, 
 she was being handed in. After all they must secure some little 
 time in private. She must know he no doubt wanted to tell 
 her. . . . She turned to him as they drove off through the beeches, 
 only to find her hands grasped and her ears filled with a whis- 
 pered torrent of emotional German. 
 
 Whatever had been happening at Waldenstein, however the 
 divorce had been gained, and whenever to take effect such 
 sober considerations must needs wait. Not all unwillingly she 
 yielded her thirsty soul to the passionate outpouring. After 
 the days of waiting, after the last hours of suspense, words like 
 these fell with the quickening freshness of water in the desert. 
 Now that they were before the Dom, he did not even pretend 
 that he wanted her to see it. He glanced at the time, seemed 
 to go through some rapid mental calculation, and then, 'Home!' 
 he said to the coachman. 'Round by the clock tower again.' 
 
 'That is a far prettier entrance than the main one,' she ap- 
 proved, and with an effort: 'But you must tell me about ' 
 
 108
 
 A DARK LANTERN 109 
 
 'Yes, yes, when we get in. Drive fast!' But he had not 
 said go like mad, which seemed to be the coachman's interpre- 
 tation of the order. At one moment Katharine thought the horses 
 were running away, and clung tight to the hand that held hers. 
 'There is no danger,' he whispered, and took up the old theme. 
 Not merely his words, not only his nearness were at work upon 
 her hurrying senses. The rapid motion wrought as well. When 
 they drew up again under the clock, she was trembling so that 
 in getting out she could not find the carriage step. The Prince 
 lifted her to the ground; but quickly, almost untenderly, and 
 led the way, not across the court as they had come, but into the 
 tower. He had said something earlier about showing her 'the 
 
 other part.' 'Not to-night, no, dear Prince ' but all day 
 
 he had seemed to have no ears for 'no.' 
 
 When she found him going up a narrow stair, she stood still, 
 steadying herself against the wall. 'There isn't time!' she said. 
 
 'Plenty,' he threw back without pausing. 'It's only a quarter 
 of an hour to the station.' 
 
 'No, twenty-five minutes,' she returned with that same in- 
 ward irritation that she suffered when her father strained the 
 truth. 
 
 'Time for a little talk,' the voice came down out of the dim- 
 ness, drawing her up after it. 
 
 The effect of the break-neck drive the need of sharp despatch, 
 the sense of the much to say and more to hear, and the flying 
 minutes, sent her hurrying up the stair. 
 
 'Why not sit down anywhere,' she pleaded, 'for the little time 
 we have?' No answer up and up he went. When he gained 
 a landing and made no pause even here, to Katharine following 
 close behind the broad back, came a realization that often visits 
 women, of the power that lies in masculine inexpressiveness. 
 
 'We shall waste all our precious time in running about cor- 
 ridors and racing upstairs,' she protested breathless. Neither 
 word nor sign as he went on. 'I can't be interested in this old 
 
 tower to-night, Anton. I can think only of ' Up and up 
 
 the expressionless broad back moved before her eyes. She paused 
 again: 'I won't look at the armoury to-night!' The figure above 
 moved on. What coercive power in an ear that seems literally 
 not to hear refusal! The mind a blank to it, robs the refusal
 
 no A DARK LANTERN 
 
 of its least effect, nullifies it utterly. More than once during 
 that day she had had the sensation of being with one who under- 
 stands only certain phrases of the language she was speaking. 
 Either not talk at all, or one must needs say what can be made 
 intelligible. This man leading the way up the dim-lit stair, did 
 not understand 'No.' All day he had not. 
 
 But he paused at last; opened a door and held it for her to 
 pass. 
 
 'I won't look at anything,' Katharine said breathlessly, and 
 then stared about her in surprise. A small lamplit room of 
 luxurious modern furnishing. 'Where is the armour?' 
 
 He laughed. 'Armour is of no use here,' he said in German, 
 'clean out of date,' and he came towards her with outstretched 
 hands. She drew back, bewildered yet trying to marshal her 
 wits. 
 
 'I want to hear ' she began. 
 
 The faint scent that always clung about him, tobacco, Russian 
 leather and some discreet hint of flowers, came towards her like 
 a tide. It closed about her. 
 
 'It is settled at last!' he said. 
 
 'The divorce?' 
 
 'That you are mine.' 
 
 'Then the divorce is granted.' 
 
 He stopped her mouth with kissing. Even in that headlong 
 moment, the horrible intuitiveness of woman descended on her 
 like a curse or like some blessing won through anguish. As 
 she lay that moment passive in his arms, the great struggle of 
 her life went forward in her soul: 'He has been deceiving me!' 
 The old turmoil of the mind that a lie, or even dread of lies, pro- 
 duced in her, gave her the sense that all the securities of life had 
 failed her, all standards were in the dust. 
 
 If this man did not speak true, then was chaos come. The 
 main fact of existence was not that she was shut in here alone 
 with him not that he was every second nearer losing what was 
 left of self-command these things were obscured by the horror 
 of 'he lies.' But where was her own quick sense of truth ? Why 
 was she taking so meanly its betrayal? And with a shuddering 
 distinctness she saw why it was that she was lamed. 
 
 Truth violated even in the secret places of the heart, may be
 
 A DARK LANTERN in 
 
 trusted to wreak this revenge, deadening perception, hampering 
 revolt. And in the secretest place of all, Katharine Dereham 
 had known. 'I have felt it coming all the afternoon each turn 
 of his thought, each rush, and each recoil and doubling deep 
 down in my heart, fathoms below admission even to myself, / 
 have been conscious 0} it all. No innocent maiden trapped. His 
 accomplice, I.' 
 
 Yet for all the moment's rude unveiling of herself to herself, 
 she saw in flashes, pictures of a Katharine Dereham who should 
 play at being caught, stand a sympathetic figure in the general 
 eye while she tasted the sweet of yielding. 
 
 'Anton,' she said, 'the divorce is not granted.' 
 
 'She is Catholic,' he whispered thickly, holding her closer 
 and looking into her face with half-shut eyes. 
 
 'She is right. And the church is right, and you and I are 
 wrong, all wrong, Anton.' She spoke monotonously, with filling 
 eyes. He laid his face on hers. She drew away, but gently. 
 
 ' It would have been kinder to write me the truth to England,' 
 she said. 
 
 'You and I would not be here if I'd done that.' 
 
 'No and I at least would have been spared some of this pain.' 
 She turned blindly to the door. A quick movement and he in- 
 terposed between her outstretched, shaking hand, and the high- 
 up ancient latch of heavy iron. 
 
 'There is no time for more now,' she said. 'I will go back 
 to Lady Peterborough.' 
 
 'No!' 
 
 'Oh yes ' 
 
 'I do not mean you to go back.' She opened her lips. He 
 stopped her. 'You don't in your heart want to.' 
 
 'Lady Peterborough ' 
 
 'Lady Peterborough has gone.' 
 
 'She would never do that.' 
 
 'I tell you she has gone without you. On my honour' (Kath- 
 arine shivered) 'she is gone.' 
 
 She sat down in the nearest chair, staring at the lamp. Al- 
 though he came and knelt beside her, his low words seemed to 
 reach her from a long way off things he had never dared to 
 say plainly before, about the consecration of a great love, about
 
 ii2 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 the holiness of freedom in these high affairs. 'Petty middle- 
 class principles ' had no application to people such as they. 
 
 'I seem to see/ she said at last, 'how well you have prepared 
 me to hear all this. Little by little, since we met in Rome, you 
 
 have No, why should I blame you? It is myself who is 
 
 to blame, for letting go, one by one, the things that that I 
 believe I cannot live without, Anton.' 
 
 'What things?' 
 
 She shook her head slowly, and the tears rose again to her eyes. 
 
 'You can't give them to me, after all.' She drew her hands 
 away from under his lips, and, crying softly, she rose up. Not 
 seeing the door for tears, she yet moved towards it. 
 
 'Hushi stop! You don't understand: one must speak so care- 
 fully. You are lifted up or hurled down with a phrase. I saw 
 you shrink when I said how easily that "marrying with the left 
 hand" could be done to-morrow. I meant to-night and what's 
 
 in the left hand less than in the right ' he took her shaking 
 
 fingers away from the high latch. 
 
 'No, no, you must not touch me. I I can't think when you 
 do.' But his arms were round her. That he did not kiss the 
 face was because the face was hidden. Over the bowed head 
 he poured out an excited torrent half in German, half in English 
 his boundless devotion; his loyalty, that being the man he was, 
 no witnessed vow nor legal form could ever hope to coerce, but 
 that she, the lady for ever regnant in his heart, would find her 
 
 vassal and her slave As suddenly she lifted her white face, 
 
 and looked at him, he recoiled: 'No, no!' he exclaimed, as if she 
 had spoken and then on a lower note, 'You are a statue. Not 
 a woman.' 
 
 They stood there breathing quickly in the silence, looking in 
 each other's eyes. 
 
 Then, muttering something in German she did not catch, he 
 set his broad back against the oaken door, and looked down 
 upon her with every feature set. 
 
 She came closer. He did not move an eyelash. 
 
 'Open the door,' she said. 
 
 ' Do you imagine for a moment that I shall ? ' 
 
 ' It is impossible for you to keep me here against my will.' 
 
 'You speak as though such a thing had never been done.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 113 
 
 'It never has been. Not' the trembling lips smiled faintly 
 'not since woman realized ' 
 
 'I am better informed. I know of cases.' 
 
 She winced inwardly. Baria, one? Oh no, she wore the 
 Prince's favour like a jewel or a feather. But had some other 
 confronted him here in the tower or elsewhere heard these 
 words ? The sense of moral sickness made her physically faint. 
 
 ' You have not known of a case like this. Not where the woman 
 really did not want to stay.' She interrupted his prompt as- 
 severation. 'Oh, yes, where she pretended pretended very 
 well. But not really wanted to meant to go, as I do.' 
 
 He only shifted his position slightly, leaning more heavily 
 on the door. Standing so, looking at each other, they heard 
 steps. Anton turned sharply, and held a hand ready to shoot 
 the heavy bolt. 
 
 'If you do that,' said Katharine very low, 'I shall call out.' 
 
 'Anton!' Graf Wilhelm's voice pitched cautiously. 
 
 'Well!' 
 
 'Come here. I must speak to you.' 
 
 An instant's reflection, and Prince Anton opened the dook 
 a few inches, standing with hand upon the latch and face to the 
 intruder. Katharine never moved from behind the door every 
 sense strained to make effectual use of the interruption. 
 
 Graf Wilhelm's whisper, perturbed, angry, reached her dis- 
 tinctly, as he jerked out in indignant German: '. . . the devil to 
 pay downstairs. She refused to go without Miss . . . She has 
 insisted on returning here.' 
 
 'Good God!' the Prince ejaculated under his breath. 
 
 'She is questioning the servants,' the man outside added in 
 growing agitation. 'You mustn't expect me ' 
 
 'What on earth are you talking about!' the Prince's words 
 were addressed to Graf Wilhelm but they merely marked time. 
 The real question was put when the hand, dropped from the 
 latch, was held out in silent appeal to the woman behind the 
 door the ringers groping and trying to fasten on her arm. She 
 seemed not so much to refuse as not to notice that vain asking 
 for connivance for courage to carry the fight to a finish. 
 
 Katharine came quietly round behind the Prince, and over 
 his shoulder nodded to the man without. 
 
 8
 
 H4 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Already train time is it?' she asked in even tones. 
 At sound of her voice Prince Anton drew himself up suddenly 
 another man. 
 
 'I am sorry if we have kept Lady Peterborough waiting,' he 
 ' We will come at once.'
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 IT was not till several years after Lady Peterborough's death, 
 that Katharine fully understood the loyal part her god-mother 
 had played. 
 
 After the funeral, she and Lord Peterborough, turning their 
 backs on the big silent house in the old London square, had 
 lived abroad, chiefly in Italy, where from time to time Colonel 
 Dereham was with some difficulty induced to visit them. His 
 coming seemed to gratify no one save Katharine, but Lord 
 Peterborough, more and more dependent upon her, withdrew 
 his old objection to Colonel Dereham's society, rather than be 
 deprived of Katharine's. She realized in these brief visits how 
 her father's health was going from bad to worse, his old easy 
 temper so far lost that it was difficult to find even a valet who 
 would live with him. 
 
 Although it would have cost Katharine a wrench to abandon 
 her kind old guardian, she was self -reproached, sore even, to 
 see how little her father seemed to want to have her with him. 
 Such glimpses as she got of the kind of people he did want, 
 were an unending surprise and chagrin. She more than once 
 found herself regretting Lady Wick and the red-faced Captain, 
 even Mrs. Heathcote, who seemed to have dropped out of the 
 Hill Street life. 
 
 If from the spectacle of her father's physical decline she shrank 
 secretly, as the woman will who has begun to husband what 
 is left her of her own youth still more did she recoil from the 
 analogy in Colonel Dereham between the bodily undoing and 
 the spiritual. 
 
 The old resemblance between him and herself that had been 
 her girlish pride, became a torment. 'Will it be like that with 
 
 "5
 
 n6 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 me too? Is this the real horror of leaving youth behind that 
 one is like to leave dignity and courage on the same rough road 
 where we lost beauty? Did we come into the world with our 
 arms full of blessings, and is the true story of each life a mere 
 telling of how one by one we let our blessings fall ? ' 
 
 'No, no!' she reassured herself. The worthiest things in life 
 we might keep fast hold of to the end, if we cared to. The great 
 thing was to care. Truth in the old simile that life was like a 
 garden left to itself it ran to nettles. No character so fine it 
 could with impunity dispense with discipline, a ceaseless watch- 
 fulness, and a 'war on weeds.' Colonel Dereham had let his 
 garden run to seed. Not all his fault, Katharine maintained 
 to herself, as intent as ever on excusing, justifying him. Wilfred 
 Bruton was right when he said it was a prime defect in the mili- 
 tary system that a man was shelved at a time of life when he 
 ought to be doing his best work, thrown on his beam ends too 
 late to begin anew, and with an experience behind him that 
 merely unfitted him for ordinary civil life. If only she could 
 get her father to work at something! But in any case she would 
 set herself to tasks. 
 
 So it was she fled to books, and burned more than a wise 
 woman's share of midnight oil. 
 
 When the Boer War broke out she moved heaven and earth 
 to get her father back again into active service. But there were 
 too many younger, keener men agog for the chance of salting 
 down the Boer farms with English bones. Every one of the 
 men that she had laughed and danced and dined with, seemed 
 to have claimed his right to a share in the protracted struggle, 
 that Katharine and Lord Peterborough followed with maps and 
 newspapers, hope and fear and horror. 
 
 'Think of Bertie being so keen to go back to all that!' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' demanded Bertie's uncle. 
 
 'Oh, -well!' Then, seeing Lord Peterborough's resentment 
 of her tone, she hastened to add: 'I can understand how all 
 those young men in the first enthusiasm, with the fever of the 
 popular epidemic in their blood, and in sublime ignorance of 
 what the step involved ' 
 
 'Bertie Amherst is a soldier and the son of a soldier.' 
 
 'Yes, yes, I know. But think how Bertie loves his comfort
 
 A DARK LANTERN 117 
 
 And think of what he went through at Ladysmith! He doesn't 
 forget, poor dear. And yet even before he's well of his wound, 
 back he goes.' 
 
 'You never did Bertie justice.' 
 
 'And all the others!' Katharine went on. 'When I remem- 
 ber the pampered lives they've led, the men who officer the 
 British army, and then think of them down there marching 
 
 on the burning veldt starving, shot to pieces ' her voice 
 
 shook, ' a boy like Bertie getting out of his sick-bed and hobbling 
 back to his post ' huskiness swallowed the last syllables. 
 
 'I tell you, you've never appreciated Bertie. But there's 
 nothing surprising in what he's done' the proud old voice was 
 coerced to steadiness, even to the level of the commonplace. 
 'It's always been like that. Read your history.' 
 
 'There have always been brave men. But these are men 
 
 one can't imagine . Idle, luxurious, as you must admit 
 
 Bertie is was (I beg his pardon, bless him!). I hear him now, 
 saying patriotism was all rot, and he was just going out for the 
 fun of the thing. Fun ! ' 
 
 'Bertie's afraid of nothing more than a suspicion of heroics. 
 He has all the Englishman's horror of a fine pose.' 
 
 'You are like that, too.' Katharine smiled. 
 
 'Humph! That may be the only reason I don't like to hear 
 the type belittled. I confess I've small patience with the modern 
 notion that because a man belongs to the upper class, he must 
 therefore be a poor creature. When you were a foolish little 
 girl you made an idol of one of these men, and because he dis- 
 appointed you, you seem inclined to believe with the popular 
 novelists, that the nobler virtues are the prerogative of the name- 
 less and the penniless. It isn't so. I had to do in my young 
 days with men of all classes. And I tell you that I found more 
 fair dealing, courage, honour, in my own class than I did any- 
 where else. If you think I'm prejudiced ask any of the people 
 who know both sides. Ask the great bankers, administrators. 
 People of that sort will all tell you the same. The other point 
 of view is promulgated to please the mob. We are the People! 
 they like to think. It wouldn't be fair that a man who has half 
 a dozen places and several hundred thousand a year should have 
 any virtues to boot. And so from wicked baronets up, the pop-
 
 u8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 ular opinion attaints us all. The novel writers are middle-class 
 themselves, they vaunt their own at our expense except the 
 smaller fry, who make us out splendid and idiotic.' He got up 
 and walked about, a thing he seldom did in these days. 'No! 
 Bertie Amherst is typical of what I mean. His South African 
 record is no surprise to me. It's all in the tradition. We have 
 been at it a long time. Right conduct is as cultivable as chrysan- 
 themums. Bertie's record is no "sport," as the men of science 
 say it is a natural product. And no mean thing, my dear. 
 But you've never appreciated Bertie.' 
 
 Katharine found herself justified in cultivating her own garden, 
 developing new areas of enthusiasm, reaching out towards Art, 
 and flowering in poetry. 
 
 Out of the Italian days, the days of their voluntary exile from 
 harassed and unhappy England, had come a little sheaf of verse 
 that Lord Peterborough told her marked advance, even mastery. 
 Believing the time was ripe, both in Katharine's life and in her 
 practice of her gift, he showed some of the later poems to an 
 English man of letters. The none too complaisant critic was 
 stirred to something like enthusiasm. He got leave, after some 
 persuading, to put his own verdict to the rough and ready public 
 test, by printing one of the poems. The success of the experi- 
 ment led to its repetition. The new distraction helped Kath- 
 arine through halting days; for the unwilling realization was 
 being forced upon her that she was growing less able 'tc garden,' 
 as she called it. Had she kept too closely to her books of late? 
 Or, she speculated miserably, was this the beginning of the long 
 decline that had brought her father to the shadowed place, where 
 he walked with uncertain, shambling feet, and that changed face 
 with the discoloured daubs under eyes eyes that seemed not 
 to see. She consulted more than one doctor, and learned by 
 that sure means to believe herself very ill. Nevertheless, when 
 news came that Colonel Dereham on his return to England had 
 suffered a relapse, she rushed across Europe to be with him, 
 only to find herself rigorously shut out of the sick-room. But 
 she stayed on, going to him whenever permission was granted, 
 till the convalescence was well advanced, and he had persuaded 
 her that she had left Lord Peterborough alone long enough. 
 A few months later the same thing happened again, only Wies-
 
 A DARK LANTERN 119 
 
 baden this time the scene. Again the waiting outside a guarded 
 door, that opened at last to show the wasted gray-green face, 
 the shaking hands, the uncertain temper, the undisguised desire 
 to be left alone. Katharine learned forbearance and lost yet 
 more of her buoyancy and bloom in her father's sick-room, but 
 she never abandoned her hopes for seeing him, her plans for 
 making him, strong again and 'very nearly happy.' It was to 
 be 'her work.' Being Lord Peterborough's adopted daughter 
 was an office too easy and pleasant to seem a duty. Her own 
 father was her life's problem. No matter how small encourage- 
 ment he gave her, to see him in better case was her mission, in a 
 world out of which hope of personal happiness had died. 
 
 Matters stood so the winter after the Wiesbaden experience, 
 when Katharine put an end to days of anxiety at the cessation 
 of all news from Hill Street (save a disquieting scrawl from a 
 servant) by declaring that she would leave for England the fol- 
 lowing day. Lord Peterborough and the Italian doctor stoutly 
 opposed her plan. 
 
 But she was quite strong enough, she protested. Was she 
 not going out that very night, a thing she had not felt able to 
 do for weeks ? 
 
 'You are doing it only to please an old friend. If I had seen 
 Mary, I would have told her ' 
 
 Katharine cut the remonstrance short. She must attend to 
 some shopping, there were things she wanted for the journey. 
 
 As she drove past the Grand Hotel, one of two men coming 
 out of the court paused and lifted his hat. For a moment, 
 summoned from such distance of abstraction, she stared. Then 
 by a painful stirring of the heart, she knew, when she had passed, 
 that it was Prince Anton. Oh no, nothing would induce her to 
 look back. She was glad she had not known him; still more 
 glad that she was going away from Rome. But he contended 
 with her father the rest of the day in her thoughts. The hurried 
 glimpse had been a little cruel to him; represented him as altered, 
 heavy, dimmed. The sense of the change in him haunted her 
 unpleasantly, like a libel on the dead. 
 
 Lord Peterborough had decided that since Katharine was 
 not to be dissuaded from this journey that he was sure she had 
 not strength for, he would go too. By way of preparation,
 
 120 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 he said, but obviously being himself out of sorts, he went early 
 to bed. 
 
 Katharine sat in the great room trying to read while she waited 
 to be called for. Not wholly to please the Duchess of Worcester 
 was she going to the Palace to-night. She found herself in a 
 mood of mingled bodily and mental restlessness, when to sit at 
 home and prosecute studies of the Art of the Renaissance was 
 beyond her power. To be doing again 'the old things,' seeing 
 the old sights, hearing the old familiar jargon, would keep at 
 bay the new anxiety, the old pain. Still, 'Ought I to go?' she 
 found herself wondering. 'Will he be there?' The opening of 
 the door behind her, that meant Giovanni was come to announce 
 the Duchess's carriage, cut self-questioning short. 'What a 
 good thing she is a little before her time!' Katharine dropped 
 her book, and got up to put on a cloak. As she turned she 
 found herself looking into Prince Anton's face. She was too 
 surprised to speak. And now he was bending over her hand, 
 uttering old phrases in the old way. Yet how different it all 
 was. Then, after a pause, at last something without the sting 
 of association: 'You are not changed at all.' 
 
 'Oh yes, I am,' she found voice to say. 
 
 'I should be glad to hear you were changed, in one respect.' 
 
 'I am older,' she said quietly. 
 
 'I was thinking' (a touch of criticism in his tone, to meet 
 her irresponsiveness) 'that you perhaps no longer waste time 
 looking for the impossible.' 
 
 'There are at least some impossibilities that I no longer look 
 for.' She stood very straight and tall in the long white cloak 
 hanging loose on her shoulders and falling to her feet. 
 
 He drew off a trifle and surveyed her. 
 
 'You are wonderful to-night you are more wonderful even 
 than I remembered.' 
 
 'And you have time to remember?' she asked, recalling recent 
 rumours. 
 
 'Not only time to remember, but to come to Rome to see 
 you.' 
 
 She looked at him, a prey to sudden anger, not that he had 
 not come to Rome for her, but that he should say he had. As 
 her eyes rested on the wide, heavy face, the sudden fire in her
 
 A DARK LANTERN 121 
 
 own died, giving way to a curious new shrinking, leagues away 
 from the old delicious fear. 
 
 'How could you how could you do it?' he said very low. 
 She thought he was going back upon the past, and kept silence. 
 But behold, memory with him meant as of old, yesterday. 'To 
 go by, like that without the faintest little sign. How could you, 
 Katharine ! ' 
 
 She looked at him steadily: 'I didn't know you,' she said. 
 
 His laugh was a trifle forced. 'You want to pretend I am 
 so changed as that?' 
 
 'We both are changed,' she repeated. 'Let us be glad/ She 
 held out her hand. 
 
 'You are not dismissing me?' 
 
 'I am going out. Here is my friend.' 
 
 'I will come to-morrow.' 
 
 The words came back, again and again, as the train hurried 
 her towards England each time she remembered the Duchess's 
 smiling confirmation of the gossip, as to what had really brought 
 Waldenstein to Rome. 
 
 **** 
 
 Katharine had not wanted Lord Peterborough to come 
 with her on this hurried journey to England. She was even 
 harassed by his presence. On arrival in London, telling only 
 Natalie of her plan, she left the old man at the platform's edge, 
 saying 'how do you do,' to the coachman, jumped into a hansom, 
 and drove straight to Hill Street. A remembrance flashed across 
 her of that other far-away day when, after meeting Anton in 
 Rome, she had hurried in this selfsame way to her father, in hot 
 haste to tell her wonderful news. She remembered the discon- 
 certing apparition of the Heathcote woman in the drawing-room, 
 and how, to get the taste of that encounter out of his mouth, her 
 father had taken her to Lady Wick's showed her that queer 
 society which she, nevertheless, had grown to envy for him, in 
 preference to associations more doubtful still. That was the 
 night she had met the strange young man who had haunted Hill 
 Street after, and watched her at the opera, followed her in the 
 Park, and finally forced Peterborough House itself. Does a 
 woman ever quite forget a man who has made her feel he really 
 cared? She wondered. Men, of course, forgot even a man
 
 122 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 like Lord Peterborough. Had he not said, when the wound that 
 Waldenstein made was new had Lord Peterborough not said 
 that she would sit one day as he did that night, trying to recover 
 a twinge of the old anguish, and, like him, fail? It was not so. 
 Even through all the disillusionment of this last meeting, the old 
 wound throbbed and ached. If the old love stood for nothing 
 but pain, it did stand for that. 
 
 The cab stopped. Her father! The fingers shook as the 
 purse was searched for the fare. As she was getting out, 
 casting anxious looks at windows that gave no sign, a news- 
 boy rushed past crying an extra. 'Latest war news! Another 
 Disaster!' 
 
 Bertie! Poor Lord Peterborough would forget all about her 
 in buying up newspapers, and looking with frightened old eyes 
 for Bertie's name among the killed. 
 
 Not at all of Colonel Dereham was she thinking at that mo- 
 ment when she rang the bell, but of poor Bertie, to whom she 
 had 'never done justice,' and of his prefacing the perennial 
 question that last time with: 'If you say "no," now, I shan't 
 worry you again.' She knew he had said afterwards to Cray- 
 bourne: 'I shall manage not to come home.' Tears rose in her 
 eyes. 'And all my life,' she said to herself, 'I've loved Bertie in 
 a way.' 
 
 'Latest war news!' the boy's voice came back from round 
 the corner. 'Fresh Disaster!' 
 
 Gibb opened the door. 
 
 'My father how is he?' 
 
 The man looked scared. 
 
 'He is very ill?' She leaned against the table in the hall. 
 'He is dead!' 
 
 'No, no, miss; only a little unwell. He will be able to see 
 you to-morrow.' 
 
 She flung off her heavy travelling cloak, and ran up the stairs, 
 conscious, with rising excitement, of the agitation of the servant 
 who pursued her, saying he had orders not to admit anyone; 
 it was as much as his place was worth. He even dared to lay 
 hold of her sleeve. She must not go in. 
 
 She turned suddenly upon the man and asked haughtily: 'Is 
 Colonel Dereham not alone, then?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 123 
 
 'Oh yes, miss, he is alone, but ' She shook him off, and 
 
 opened the door. 
 
 ****# 
 
 It was the night after that scene of horror, that she understood 
 better old Lady Peterborough, and her action all those years 
 ago. She had sent Colonel Dereham to Boulogne, but not 
 merely to checkmate Katharine's Hill Street visit, not solely to 
 keep the girl at her own side. Most of all, she had done it to 
 shield Katharine from this knowledge she had gained at last, 
 to keep his daughter's eyes from seeing Henry Dereham as Lady 
 Peterborough had found him that morning: 'Only half alive, 
 ghastly, opium-sodden.' 
 
 'She asked him,' Lord Peterborough told Katharine, 'if he 
 wanted to run the risk of your rinding him like that. He had 
 just enough wits left to pray her to avert the last sole degradation 
 that had power to make him shrink. If he went away, he said, 
 he could pull himself together. And she helped him to go.' 
 
 Katharine, swiftly reviewing the years, saw in what fashion 
 he had kept his word and understood other things as well, 
 that had hitherto been hid. In spite of Lady Peterborough's 
 right about face after discovering that Waldenstein was still 
 in communication with his wife, the girl had reproached her 
 bitterly, beginning with the frustration of the Hill Street visit. 
 
 Katharine did her justice now, remembering how she had 
 never defended herself from the charge of having instigated 
 Colonel Dereham's flight to Boulogne, for the purpose of serving 
 her own frivolous and ill-starred ends. 
 
 'What would you have done,' Katharine remembered de- 
 manding at the height of her misery and reproach, 'if Graf 
 Wilhelm had not brought me down that night?' 
 
 'Insisted on searching the place myself. It is never wise 
 to force a man into incriminating admissions far better to 
 indicate his loop-hole of escape. But if Waldenstein and his 
 cousin had not crawled out ' 
 
 'What then?' 
 
 'I would have pulled the place about their ears. There would 
 have been little Ruh at Wilhelm's.' The old face looked out 
 of the grave again. More life in it still than in the glazed, horror- 
 haunted eyes of the man in Hill Street.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 THE BLACK-MAGIC MAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 AFTER the protracted strain of taking Colonel Dereham to 
 Paris, and establishing him in a private hospital for the cure 
 of victims of the morphia habit, Katharine returned to Peter- 
 borough House very ill, and glad, on the whole, to think she 
 was probably dying. 
 
 As she had done abroad, so now in England, to please Lord 
 Peterborough, she saw more than one great doctor, who promptly 
 discovered that that organ which he called his specialty was in 
 need of medical attention. Several agreed that the action of 
 the heart was not quite normal (upon which verdict the patient 
 would smile ruefully in secret), and they were all of one opinoin 
 that rest, and a fine variety of drugs, would ultimately restore 
 her to perfect health. 
 
 In turn she obeyed the directions of each of these gentlemen, 
 just as she had before obeyed those of various foreign advisers, 
 and with precisely the same result, save that now she was slowly 
 but steadily growing weaker. As month succeeded month, she 
 saw how, given a certain tenacity, which most assuredly was hers, 
 the body may maintain against the forces that make for its 
 undoing, a resistance gallant and tragically long. Dear heaven! 
 it was as hard to die, as it was to get well. It might take years 
 years in which she would lose little by little the last remnant 
 of physical strength; looks (a vision of her father rose), perhaps 
 even will and dignity, would go before she would be rid of this 
 fast-clinging, unwelcome, inveterate life. 
 
 124
 
 A DARK LANTERN 125 
 
 Obeying the doctors' orders, she went out very little only 
 on rare occasions to Lady Algernon's with Lord Peterborough, 
 or alone to Blanche Bruton's now and then, or to hear a little 
 music, or drive round and round the Serpentine on fine days 
 with the frail old man, for whom she had come to feel a daughter's 
 affection. 
 
 At the end of July they went to Scotland. September brought 
 them South to entertain a houseful at Devon Court, and early 
 October found them once again in London. 
 
 During the time in Scotland she had written a poem, to which 
 she gave the name of the month just ending. It was really a 
 good-bye to summer in more than the calendar's sense. The 
 idea came up from the South, brought across the Highlands in 
 a sack of the prosaic London post a silver printed bidding to 
 Dolly Weare's wedding. 
 
 That child a bride! How old it made one feel! It seemed 
 as if everybody of Katharine's own standing had already married 
 now it was the turn of babes and sucklings. Dolly! Yes, 
 after all she must be eighteen. 
 
 How chill this Highland air! There was a yellow leaf. Oh 
 yes, summer is waning, and soon we'll be saying 'It is gone!' 
 
 She put her verses into the mouth of a woman who sees the 
 summer end, without having felt it warm and quicken, a woman 
 to whom the tradition of its teeming richness is a legend and 
 reproach. Katharine signed her initials and sent the verses to 
 an evening paper. The thought of that woman of her fancy 
 who unlike herself, as Katharine insisted saw the summer 
 dying without ever having seen it flame, the thought of her was 
 much with Katharine in those days, helping her to bear her own 
 less sorry burden. For worst of all, she told herself, must be 
 to come to Autumn, without ever having known that Summer 
 in the heart. 
 
 But here, too, in Devon, the imaginary woman haunted her. 
 Katharine sang 'September in the South' as seen through eyes 
 like those. And when October came, she shared the dim and 
 tender days with this sister of the heart, who needed to be com- 
 passionated, this inarticulate one whose grief was eased by find- 
 ing at last expression. Katharine began to get letters of wonder- 
 ing praise, and to hear of the Singer of the Months as a rare new
 
 126 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 voice. She planned a Kalendar. Each month should give a 
 leaf out of the woman's stqry. 
 
 The Brutons were back from a round of visits, and Katharine 
 dined with them the night after her own return. She stayed on 
 when the others had gone, talking with Blanche over the fire. 
 Wilfred had rung to ask for his letters, and had gone away with 
 them to the library. 
 
 'I've had a letter from Bertie Amherst,' the hostess said after 
 a pause. 
 
 'Yes?' 
 
 'He complained you never wrote to him. He asked for news.' 
 
 'Dear old Bertie.' 
 
 'He doesn't seem as glad as other people that the war is prac- 
 tically ended.' 
 
 'Does he say that?' 
 
 'No, but he asks me what I mean by congratulating him on 
 coming home. "I never get anything I really want," he says 
 "not even when it's a Boer bullet." 
 
 'Poor old Bertie.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 Blanche was the only one she ever allowed to speak to her 
 of Prince Anton. She told her now of that last vision of him. 
 How afraid she had been of meeting him. 'But I saw that 
 night that I need never be afraid again.' For at last she had 
 seen the real man. Seen the moral poverty of the creature; 
 seen even the mere animal beauty, dimmed and coarsened. 
 Something heavy and gross in the great figure and the wide 
 face, that travestied memory. And yet memory at its best and 
 brightest, what had it to reflect? This man's weakness, self- 
 indulgence, and radical untruth. He had lied and lied; was 
 lying to-day, would lie to-morrow, would be lying with his latest 
 breath. 'And for that I have given my youth!' 
 
 But she shrank even from Blanche's comment, and inter- 
 rupted her hurriedly: 'They, too! How they lied, all those 
 people that were here to-night,' said Katharine wearily. 'Give 
 me another cigarette.' 
 
 'Lied?' Blanche handed her the tortoise-shell box, and 
 pushed the spirit-lamp across the polished top of the low re- 
 volving bookstand.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 127 
 
 'Yes, don't pretend they didn't, or I'll lose faith in you.* 
 'They didn't lie about the stir your Kalendar is making. I've 
 
 heard the most critical people 
 
 'They lied when they said how well I was looking.' 
 
 ' Oh, that's a form of saying they're glad to see you again.' 
 
 'It's a relief that, with you, any gladness you may feel doesn't 
 
 take the shape of uttering inanities about my personal appear- 
 
 ance.' 
 
 'Well, you know, Kitty, you are uncommon good to look at 
 
 even if - ' 
 
 But Blanche stirred the fire. 
 
 ' -- if I've no more colour than the tablecloth? If my eyes 
 are pushed back in my head. If, in short, I'm ghastly.' 
 
 'Did you, after all, consult Dr. South?' 
 
 'Yes, eight weeks ago with the result you see.' 
 
 'I've been wanting for some time' Mrs. Bruton hesitated. 
 'Wilfred discouraged me. And I agree with him it's a great 
 responsibility to advise anyone to give up one doctor and call 
 in another, especially - ' She looked at Katharine's listless 
 face. 'But I've been longing to talk to you about a man who 
 really is very extraordinary.' 
 
 Ah, how well she knew this preamble to the recommendation 
 of a new doctor! She threw her cigarette in the fire, stretched 
 her slim body till her satin toes touched the fender, and with 
 both arms uplifted rested her blonde head in her locked hands. 
 
 'They say,' Blanche Bruton went on, 'it was he really who 
 kept the Queen alive. She was far more ill than the public 
 knew tried all the usual things, and then, one fine day, to the 
 horror and consternation of the Court Physicians, she sent for 
 this - ' 
 
 Katharine unintentionally marked her scant concern in the 
 story by letting her hands drop suddenly from behind her head, 
 and bending down to examine the delicate pattern chased on the 
 little antique lamp. Blanche hesitated an instant, and then 
 took a fresh start. 'Lord Danby, and now my brother Jim, 
 they swear by him and at him,' she added with a laugh. 
 
 'Why do they swear at him?' inquired Katharine, making 
 her first feeble sign of interest.
 
 i28 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Oh, he goes for them so so Says such things, my 
 
 dear ' and she laughed again as she fitted another cigarette 
 
 into a holder. 
 
 'What kind of things?' 
 
 'Well a don't Sir William Mclntosh, and the rest, tell you, 
 for instance, that a person with a heart ought not to smoke?' 
 
 ' not smoke a great deal, they say. But they smoke them- 
 selves, and they know ' 
 
 'Well, this man I'm telling you about says, no tobacco at all 
 and no wine. And he gets into the most appalling passion if 
 you don't do as he tells ycu. When he found out that poor 
 Jim had smoked half a cigar, he made the most awful observa- 
 tions you ever heard in your life (Jim wouldn't repeat all, he 
 said). But when the doctor had unburdened himself thoroughly' 
 she laughed again 'he simply ran out of the room and down- 
 stairs, knocking over Lady de Winton at the door, and had 
 driven away before Jim was sufficiently recovered to ring the 
 bell.' 
 
 'Oh, he did recover under this treatment.' 
 
 'He got his wife to go and explain. She came back quite 
 shaken, I assure you, and said he had told her he had people 
 on his hands who wanted to get well he couldn't waste his 
 time on fools (oh, yes, he said fools), who apparently didn't 
 want to.' 
 
 'And was that what cured Jim ? for I saw him at the 
 
 Saturday Pop, looking ' 
 
 'He wrote a very handsome apology, my dear Jim! Fancy! 
 and promised to do everything he was told. They're quite 
 friends now. And Jim's well.' 
 
 'What's his name? I can't think why I haven't heard of 
 him.' 
 
 'Oh, you haven't been seeing people ' 
 
 'I've been seeing doctors enough.' 
 
 'They're the very last to tell you. They say there never was 
 anybody so hated by the profession as this new man is. He 
 isn't really so new. Everybody's been running to him for several 
 years now, in spite of the anathemas of the other doctors. They 
 won't lots of them won't ever have anything to do with you 
 again if they know you've consulted '
 
 A DARK LANTERN 129 
 
 'I believe I'll go to him.' 
 
 'Do, dear. He's in Cavendish Square. Number I'll 
 
 look it out for you this minute.' She stood up, her charming 
 face full of hope and cheer. 
 
 ' Could I write a note here ? ' asked her guest. 
 
 'For an appointment? Yes, of course.' Blanche was en- 
 chanted to find her friend less listless than she had seen her for 
 long. She did not know that by operation of a survival of 
 the old optimism, Katharine regularly went through this phase 
 when a new doctor was in question, and paid for it, by a 
 deep distrust after some acquaintance with his methods and 
 his mind. 
 
 'I'll say "to-morrow if possible,"' she announced, drawing 
 up the chair to the little writing-table, and choosing a pen, while 
 her friend lit the two wax tapers. 'And I'll put in a telegraph 
 form. Enough stamps?' She was looking in a box. 'What's 
 the creature's name?' 
 
 'Vincent Garth Vincent. What's the matter?' 
 
 'Oh, I used to know Garth Vincent.' Katharine stopped 
 rummaging for stamps, and was staring at the candle-flame. 
 
 'You know him?' 
 
 'A little.' 
 
 'How very odd.' 
 
 'Yes, Lady Peterborough thought it "odd."' 
 
 'Where did you come across him? Abroad?' 
 
 'No. Here in London.' 
 
 'You consulted him?' 
 
 'No. He consulted me. It was a long time ago.' 
 
 She threw down the pen and stood up. Blanche took hold 
 of her arm. 
 
 ' What do you mean by saying he consulted you ? ' 
 
 ' said, as well as I remember, very much what I should 
 
 have to say to him. That he was wretched he'd tried every- 
 thing, and had come to the conclusion there wasn't much to 
 expect of life unless I could . . . give him hope.' 
 
 'He wanted to marry you?' 
 
 'That was what I gathered.' 
 
 'And you . . .?' 
 
 'I didn't give him "hope." And I've no reason to think he 
 
 9
 
 I3 o A DARK LANTERN 
 
 could give it to me. It's too much for one human being to ask 
 
 of another.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 What really prevented her from going to him was the 
 sense of contrast. She had never seen him since those golden 
 days. 
 
 And yet over and over again, after the talk with Blanche, 
 she kept saying to herself, 'She is right. I mustn't give up try- 
 ing to get well. That's like my father. I must go and consult 
 some one . . . not him, of course. I couldn't possibly go to 
 him. And so Garth Vincent is grown great!' She would look 
 back to the old days and repeat: 'Oh no, not him! But I must 
 see someone.' With that resolve she would go to bed, live some- 
 how through the broken night, dogged by humiliating visions of 
 her father, and by that galling sense of how alike they were, and 
 how life had failed them both alike, utterly utterly. Strength 
 to meet the listlessness of morning came only with renewed self- 
 admonishing, 'Go and get advice. There must be help in the 
 world. You've only to ask the right man.' 
 
 But once again upon her feet, facing the practical side of the 
 problem she could only ask, Who? who? And from the answer 
 of the moment, turn deliberately away. 
 
 After an interval occupied in a cruise in the Mediterranean, 
 Prince Anton began to write again, when his return to Berlin 
 had set his thoughts running in old grooves. Katharine re- 
 turned the letters unopened. With the third she enclosed a line: 
 It is o] no use to 'write again. But he did. Not only wrote but 
 telegraphed. These last communications, she would open una- 
 ware, expecting a bidding from Blanche, or message from Bertie, 
 back again from South Africa. Instead of any such matter, she 
 would find herself reading words above Anton's name, that made 
 her white face flame with scorn scorn for herself she would 
 have said, or rather for that blind Katharine who was dead. 
 Under the nervous strain, under the lash of these reminders of 
 all she longed most passionately to forget, she felt the little strength 
 she still had going, going. 'Help! ' she kept crying in her heart. 
 'Oh, who will help me!' 
 
 A morning came when as she said the words she looked in the 
 glass. Stood aghast with parted lips.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 131 
 
 'Natalie! My hat grey toque! Thick white veil. Quick! 
 Long cloak. Tell Howe a hansom. Quick!' 
 
 'Cavendish Square!' and she was there before she realized 
 she did not know the number. She hailed a passing postman. 
 'Oh yes,' he turned obligingly. 'Everybody hereabouts knows 
 Dr. Vincent's number. It is forty-two the house where the 
 carriage is standing.' 
 
 Another victoria drove up at the same moment as Katharine's 
 hansom. Slowly and with lumbering dignity a great closed 
 carriage made way. 
 
 ' Dr. Vincent is in ? ' Katharine asked of the man who opened 
 the door. 
 
 'You have an appointment.' 
 
 'No. Give him my card.' 
 
 'If you haven't got an appointment ' 
 
 'Just take him the card please' she swept past the dubious 
 functionary, in the wake of the woman who had arrived in the 
 smart victoria, and who had given her name with confidence. 
 Not yet half -past ten, and there were already four people in the 
 big dingy dining-room, that with London doctors does half of 
 its double duty as a waiting-room for patients. It occurred to 
 Katharine now, as it had done under similar circumstances be- 
 fore, to wonder how the man's family could endure to eat in a 
 place consecrated for so many hours of every day to the use of 
 the ailing and the wretched. Didn't the misery that unhappy 
 mortals brought here, didn't it vitiate the air? Was it that that 
 blurred the very window panes, as the light exhalation of the 
 dying will cloud a mirror held to witness to the breath? Had 
 not suffering and disease got into the very carpets and curtains of 
 such places, mixing there congenially with the London grime? 
 In any of these dining-waiting-rooms was there ever laughter 
 and good cheer? 
 
 She looked about her. 
 
 The one male present held up the one morning paper, like a 
 screen, between himself and the rest of the world. Three women, 
 with listless hands turned over the few soiled and much-mauled 
 volumes that dotted, oasis-like, the yellow-brown desert of the 
 great dining- table. A massive bronze clock on a black marble 
 mantelpiece, ticked with busy solemnity. As the time went on,
 
 13* 
 
 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 and people relinquished their books, either out of sheer weari- 
 ness, or with a sudden access of cheerful alacrity, on being sum- 
 moned to the consulting room, Katharine took them up in turn. 
 A bound volume of Punch. A pamphlet on Diseases 0} the Eye. 
 A Guide to Cairo. A novel by a never-heard-of-name, and a 
 humorous American work wearing an air desperately shabby, 
 infinitely sad. Two men came in. One went and sat in the 
 farther corner, like a sick dog, who would slink as far as possible 
 out of sight. The other affected a jaunty disregard alike of the 
 dismalness of the errand that brought people here, and of the 
 environment that awaited them. He walked about with his 
 stick and his gloves held jauntily behind him, and looked at the 
 pictures as if he were at a Private View in Bond Street. There 
 were only three pictures and they were old, unless that little one 
 in the bad light Katharine couldn't make it out. Everything 
 here was old. The whole aspect of the place was that of a house 
 long lived in. The massive buffet was early Victorian, the carpet, 
 curtains, everything was heavy and dingy and old. 'If I didn't 
 know he was still young,' mused Katharine, 'I would take this 
 to be the house of an octogenarian.' 
 
 She closed the tattered volume of Punch, and stared at the 
 four glass vases, that huddled forlornly together in the middle 
 of the table, carrying each its wisp of dejected-looking flowers 
 a few drooping anemones supported by stiff bits of ragged 
 ivy. That anyone could believe that to be decoration! she mused. 
 Anyone? Why it must be his wife who cherished the delusion. 
 What sort of a woman had he married ? A slattern at all events, 
 she decided with her persistent French view of the untidiness 
 of the average London house, the low standard of cleanliness 
 and good-housekeeping prevailing among middle-class London 
 matrons. She remembered vaguely the loud young woman 
 who had flirted so obstreperously with Garth Vincent that night 
 at Lady Wicks'. Was it she he had married ? 
 
 The jaunty young man had been summoned. The sick dog 
 still sat in the corner. An old lady came in with a girl, very 
 pretty. Was she ill, too ? Had that man Katharine had thought 
 so little of in the old days, had he hope and healing for each one 
 of this heterogeneous gathering? And it's like this every day 
 people sit here waiting with dread in their hearts, waiting for
 
 A DARK LANTERN 133 
 
 Garth Vincent's verdict. Well, it was a queer world. She got 
 up and went to look at the picture in the shadow. A child. A 
 wistful, tender little face. If it was like the mother, then he 
 hadn't married the horsey young woman. 
 
 The servant reappeared every ten minutes or so, carrying off 
 some one, or ushering in others, who came and sat in the heavy 
 leather-covered chairs, coughed, looked angrily at whoever was 
 reading the solitary paper, turned over the shabby books and 
 compared their watches with the big bronze clock. Katharine 
 took up the Standard for the second time, thinking as she did 
 so, that there was perhaps a validity that she would before have 
 been disposed to deny, in the supposed connection between your 
 slattern and your woman 'superior to the frivolities of Fashion.' 
 The feminine portion of this establishment apparently did not 
 patronize the lady's papers. There was not even an old one 
 about. In the total absence of such literature, she discovered 
 a difference between this and other waiting-rooms. 
 
 When Katharine had sat there an hour, she went into the hall 
 and said to the man-servant: 'You took my name in?' 
 
 'Yes, madam. He said he would see you if you could wait.' 
 
 'Well, I can't stay much longer,' she said decisively. 
 
 But she went back and sat in the gloomy room till nearly one. 
 
 'Will you come now?' said the man, suddenly appearing. 
 
 She followed him out with the same air of eager haste that the 
 others had worn. The servant opened the consulting-room door. 
 
 'How do you do?' said a hard voice; with the abrupt addi- 
 tion: 'I'm sorry to see you,' and she was shaking hands with 
 the same dark man she had known in those different days. Al- 
 though he stood with his back to the light and his face in heavy 
 shadow, she was conscious of a change in it that was not the 
 change of years. 'How do you do,' she had echoed and turned 
 a little nervously towards the chair that faced his own, on the 
 other side of a writing-table. 'Is this where the victims sit?' 
 she asked with an affectation of lightness. 
 
 'Sit here,' he said shortly, and she went to the sofa near the 
 window. 
 
 'Take off that veil.' 
 
 'Oh, of course.' She lifted her hand to unpin it, laughing 
 a little embarrassed laugh, and as she let it fall she had an in-
 
 134 
 
 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 stant sense of comfort in the better sight of his face. If there 
 was change in her, so incontestably was there in him. But his 
 was gain. And after a curious fashion. For it was the face of 
 a man who had fought some battle fierce and bitter, who had 
 been hurt in the battle, and who carried the smouldering memory 
 of that conflict and that hurt for ever with him. What has been 
 happening through these years? she wondered. But the specu- 
 lation was gone in a flash, for he was discharging questions at 
 her with the precision of a minute gun, and before she had been 
 thirty seconds in his presence she felt three things. First, that 
 she need not have minded coming. Second, that here was a 
 man who gave and who demanded the naked truth. Third, 
 that he was going to make her well. 
 
 But under hard conditions. When she had stood the fire of 
 his interrogation: 
 
 'You must go into a Nursing Home,' he said. 
 
 'That's impossible.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'It's impossible because I want to get well. A Nursing Home 
 would not do me any good.' As he frowned the more and moved 
 with impatience, she hastened to add with greater show of feeling 
 than she herself realized: 'I I've seen in the past few years so 
 much my father has been ill has lived in such places and 
 the taste left in my mouth is too bitter.' 
 
 'Very well. Then I'm afraid I can't help you.' 
 
 She stared. 'Please don't say that.' 
 
 He only laughed rather disagreeably, got up and held out his 
 hand: 
 
 'Good-bye.' 
 
 'Oh, wait a moment. You see, the case' (she shuddered: 
 'I'm "a case" now') 'the case is a little different from most ' 
 
 'They all say that,' he interposed impatiently. 
 
 'But here it's true. You can make a Nursing Home of Peter- 
 borough House.' 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 'I'm not one of a big abounding family. There is a quiet, 
 airy house, full of well-trained servants and, besides me, only 
 a frail old man. He will agree to anything that will help me 
 to get well. I can be isolated absolutely isolated there.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 135 
 
 'It never succeeds,' he said, but she thought he was consider- 
 ing the proposition. 
 
 'We can make it succeed. You can impose any conditions 
 you please. I pledge myself they shall be carried out.' 
 
 'There's a whole system, in the right kind of Nursing Home, 
 that can't be transplanted at a moment's notice if at all.' 
 
 'You can't suggest anything so difficult, but we will do it,' she 
 persisted. Then as he stood with his head bent, brows drawn 
 close together, silent : ' If you refuse to help me in my own home ' 
 he looked up suddenly 'then there is left only Good-bye.' 
 Not conscious of the tears that stood in her eyes, she held out 
 her hand. He kept his right one in his pocket. 
 
 'It's against my rule.' 
 
 'You'll do it this once?' 
 
 'I'll make the trial, but I've very little faith.' 
 
 'You'll have more as we go on. Now, what am I to do?' 
 
 ' Go home and go to bed.' 
 
 'Yes,' she nodded, waiting. 
 
 'Leave word that you won't see any visitors not any. 1 He 
 glared at her, suddenly furious, as if she had demurred. 
 
 'No no no one.' 
 
 'No letters, no telegrams, no messages, no daily papers, no 
 communication of any sort for six weeks.' 
 
 'For six weeks,' she repeated like a child learning a lesson. 
 
 ' I'll send you a day nurse and night nurse, and come and see 
 you to-morrow.' 
 
 'Am I so ill?' 
 
 'Yes, you're rather ill,' he said sharply. 'You've had a shock 
 of some sort, haven't you ? ' 
 
 'Oh a ' While she stammered with surprise at his 
 
 clairvoyance, he had put out his hand. 
 
 'Good-bye.' 
 
 And she was in the street.
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 NOT yet daring to tell Lord Peterborough what she had let her- 
 self in for, she secretly began her preparations making them 
 with a kind of excited deliberation, and the sense of pain that 
 attends all such 'letting go.' 
 
 For those two hours that she worked at her writing table, and 
 at a certain locked bureau, she had from time to time the sudden 
 sharp envisagement of life that visits those who drown, or those 
 falling down to death from some great height. As she turned 
 over notes, poems, photographs, she read a commentary on the 
 wasted years not visibly set down saw panoramic pictures of 
 herself limned more vividly than by the sun; and all connected, 
 finely related, effect following hard on patent cause. There was 
 the little child in Paris, the school-girl at Auteuil, learning odds 
 and ends of everything but discipline; the debutante bending 
 before the old Queen at Buckingham Palace and raising her 
 eyes to meet the smiling gaze of the man in the blue uniform; 
 the disillusionment of the years; her father's downfall; the sense 
 of ruin and helplessness, and then that searching half-hour in 
 Cavendish Square before the Judge who had sentenced her to 
 prison. It was as if, until to-day, she had wrought at life like the 
 tapestry-makers, on the wrong side of the fabric. And now on 
 a sudden (since that thirty minutes under Garth Vincent's hands) 
 had been brought round in front of the great frame and seen 
 the pattern fairly. The sight had made him, whose little con- 
 cern it was, uncommon grave. He had asked her questions 
 that to remember took her breath, yet that on the instant seemed 
 as inevitable as thunder on the heels of lightning questions that 
 rent aside the trappings of existence and left bare the skeleton 
 of things. He had not tried to comfort her, and yet strangely he 
 
 136
 
 A DARK LANTERN 137 
 
 had done just that. How, she could not then have told. For 
 although she believed he would help her, he had not spared the 
 truth. And the truth was grave. 
 
 In any case six weeks was a long time. One never knew. 
 She burnt a great many letters, and those she could not bring 
 herself to burn, she sealed and inscribed ' in the event . . . ' 
 
 Then she went downstairs to see if Lord Peterborough were 
 back from his drive, and if he were, to make a clean breast. It 
 was nearly four o'clock. She pushed open the library door softly, 
 for he often dropped asleep after an outing. 
 
 'Well here you are at last,' he said, paraphrasing 'look how you 
 neglect me!' 
 
 'I wasn't sure if you were back.' 
 
 'I didn't go.' He brandished a long ivory paper-knife over 
 a new book. 
 
 'Oh! It has been such a nice afternoon.' 
 
 He said nothing, but went on sawing open the thick leaves 
 with a hoarse grating sound. 
 
 'I hope it wasn't because I didn't come.' 
 
 'Oh, it didn't matter.' 
 
 'You wouldn't never take drives, would you if I were not 
 here ? ' 
 
 'Eh?' He looked up sharply under his bushy white eyebrows. 
 'Where are you going?' 
 
 'Nowhere. I'm going to stay here but I shan't be able to 
 drive' a change in the whimsical old face made her add hur- 
 riedly, 'not for the next little while.' 
 
 'Why not?' He laid the ivory knife in the last cut page and 
 slowly closed the book, keeping his dim old eyes fastened on her 
 face. 
 
 'It seems my nerves are shattered.' They exchanged looks 
 that said Henry Dereham, and the old man frowned. 'I am 
 advised to keep very quiet for a little.' 
 
 'Humph, the last man said Exercise. Change.' 
 
 'I know. It didn't do. I'm going to give the Rest Cure a 
 chance.' 
 
 His dulled hearing caught the blurred syllables together. ' Give 
 what Rescuer a chance ? Who is he ? ' 
 
 'Dr. Garth Vincent.'
 
 i 3 8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 ' fellow calls himself a Rescuer?' 
 
 'Oh, he couldn't exactly be called a Rest Cure in himself. In 
 fact he's as far removed from being soothing as anyone I know, 
 but ' 
 
 'Oh well, if he rescues you' and he laughed. 
 
 Katharine joined him, relieved that he was taking the news so 
 philosophically. 'But while he's "rescuing" or Rest- Curing me, 
 you'll have a lot of responsibility with my god-father,' she 
 said, leaning over the back of his chair. 'It would interfere 
 with the Rescue most dreadfully, if I didn't have a perfectly 
 quiet mind.' 
 
 Howe came in with letters lying in two neat piles on a tray. 
 The correspondence was inspected in silence while the man 
 mended the fire. Katharine glanced hurriedly at an urgent 
 request from a high quarter for her to join a Woman's Colonial 
 Emigration Committee; a scolding for disappointing some people 
 who had expected her the evening before; a wedding invitation; 
 two dinners. Then she settled to read the letter she had turned 
 on its face upon first catching sight of the superscription. It was 
 from her father. A maudlin appeal for her to get him back to 
 England. She dropped the untidy sheets on her lap and looked 
 down on them through a mist of tears. 
 
 ' What is it, child ? ' inquired the gentle voice of the old man by 
 the fire. 
 
 'Oh nothing,' she answered, as Howe returned with a tele- 
 gram. 'After this, you'll just put all letters and things aside 
 till I'm stronger. This for me, too?' She opened the despatch 
 and read: 
 
 '// you return my letters unopened I must come to London though 
 M. is dangerously ill. ANTON.' 
 
 Margaretha dangerously ill! 'Give me a foreign form.' 
 She wrote: 'Await my letter. Important you should not com- 
 municate be/ore hearing from me. K.' 
 
 and Howe, I'm not at home. Will you see people?' 
 'No. Oh, Lady Algernon of course,' Lord Peterborough added 
 suddenly with a harassed look. He disliked his sister rather more 
 than less as time went on but the tradition of family affection
 
 A DARK LANTERN 139 
 
 was more potent with him even than his love of peace. Poor dear, 
 thought Katharine, left to Lady Algernon's tender mercies! 
 
 'Won't you have some nice person to stay these weeks I can't 
 be with you?' 
 
 ' Can't be with me ? Bless my soul ! who will you be with then ? ' 
 
 'The doctor wanted me to go to a Nursing Home 
 
 'Stuff and nonsense! I never heard of such rank absurdity. 
 Nursing Homes are for people who can't have proper attention in 
 their own houses.' 
 
 'That isn't quite his view.' 
 
 'But it's yours!' he announced, yet with open anxiety. 
 
 'Yes, dear. It's mine.' 
 
 'I should think so indeed.' 
 
 'I told him there was nothing, just nothing, that couldn't be 
 done for me here.' The old man nodded briskly. 'He said that 
 people always said that, and then raised objections. His orders 
 were not carried out, and then when people didn't get well they 
 blamed him.' 
 
 'We won't give the fellow a loophole to crawl through. What 
 does he want?' 
 
 ' wants me to stay in my own rooms with a day-nurse and 
 
 a night-nurse.' 
 
 'Two nurses!' His voice fell. 'Are you as ill as that, my child?' 
 
 'No, that's the ridiculous part of it,' she said lightly. 'But he 
 says after all this ineffectual "patching" we must do the thing 
 thoroughly and have done with it.' 
 
 'What does he mean by thoroughly?' 
 
 'Well to diet and take a Rest Cure receive no letters or 
 messages, read no papers, see nobody, be "isolated" as he calls 
 it for a few weeks,' she did not dare say six, as she watched the 
 white brows pull together. 
 
 ' Does the fellow want to relieve you of my exhilarating society ? ' 
 
 'I'm not to see any face I know, not even Natalie's.' 
 
 ' God bless my soul ! ' He jumped up, his withered old cheeks 
 suddenly flushed. 'I never heard such nonsense shut a young 
 woman away from all her best friends, from even her old servants! 
 How did you hear of this man?' Before she could answer 
 Howe had opened the door and announced: 
 
 'Lady Algernon Caxton Mr. Amherst.'
 
 I4 o A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Look here, Adeline,' in the agitation of the moment Lord 
 Peterborough instinctively set aside private differences and sum- 
 moned a family council: 'what do you think of this new-fangled 
 notion of a Rest Cure? Some quack's been telling Katharine 
 she won't get well if she doesn't go to bed, and bar the door 
 against every human creature who knows or cares about her. 
 What do you think of that ? ' 
 
 'Preposterous!' boomed Lady Algernon in subterranean tones. 
 'What quack?' 
 
 'Oh, some new man what's his name?' 
 
 'Nothing very new in the prescription,' said Bertie, coming to 
 Katharine's rescue. 'I know people who've tried it.' 
 
 'Who recommended the fellow?' Lord Peterborough asked 
 Katharine, as Bertie released her hand. 
 
 'Blanche Bruton told me about him. Garth Vincent is his 
 name.' 
 
 'Oh, I know him,' said Bertie; 'clever chap.' 
 
 'Yes, Blanche said he cured Jim Henley, and oh, lots of 
 people she knows.' 
 
 'Vincent's a first-rate man,' said Bertie with decision; but he 
 looked at Katharine in a way that indicated 'There's more to be 
 said than that; however, we'll leave well enough alone.' 
 
 'One thing I must insist upon,' said Lord Peterborough, 'and 
 that is your seeing McClintoch first.' 
 
 'What for?' asked Katharine in dismay. 
 
 'Why, to know what he thinks of this crazy plan.' 
 
 'But I don't want to consult Sir Lawrence any more.' 
 
 'Why not? He's looked after the health of the family for 
 five-and-twenty years, and understands your constitution better 
 than anyone in the world.' Katharine's harassed look rested on 
 Bertie Amherst as the butler came in, and said in an undertone, 
 that a young person was asking for Miss Dereham. 
 
 'I told you I was not at home.' 
 
 'Yes, I said she'd better come another day but she said she 
 couldn't and she was sure you would see her.' 
 
 'What impertinence!' said Lady Algernon, ready as usual to 
 manage other people's affairs. 'Who is it?' 
 
 'She says she's a nurse, your ladyship,' remarked Howe with 
 his most detached air.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 141 
 
 'Oh,' laughed Katharine. 'Of course! it's all right. Tell 
 Natalie.' 
 
 'Already!' ejaculated Lord Peterborough. 'She must be sent 
 away, Katharine, till we can get another opinion. I don't believe 
 for a moment that McClintoch ' 
 
 'It won't do to ask Sir Lawrence what he thinks of Vincent,' 
 said Bertie. 
 
 'Why not? if Vincent's all right?' demanded his uncle. 
 
 'Oh, it would never do. If Vincent thought anyone consulted 
 him, and then went to get another man's opinion ' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'Why he wouldn't touch the case.' 
 
 'You mean to say he would jib at Katharine's talking over 
 such a step with a man who's known her all her life!' 
 
 Bertie shook his head and laughed. 'Vincent's a wonderful 
 clever chap, but he's got the devil's own temper. He'd say if 
 Katharine wants to consult McClintoch, let her stay with Mc- 
 Clintoch. Why bother Vincent at all, if you don't believe in 
 him?' 
 
 Katharine's grateful eyes assured Bertie he was on the right 
 track. 
 
 'Why indeed!' said Lady Algernon in her deepest tones. 
 
 'Why should anyone go to an upstart doctor when one can 
 have ' 
 
 'Young, too, ain't he?' interrupted Lord Peterborough. 
 
 'Young, and cocksure, and quite odious,' said Lady Algernoa 
 'Sets at defiance all his superiors in the entire medical profession 
 no respect for anybody,' she put up her nose. 'I wouldn't 
 permit him to cross my threshold. Such manners! A perfect 
 boor ' 
 
 ' I never said he was an embodiment of all the graces,' observed 
 Bertie. 
 
 'I didn't know it mattered in a doctor,' said Katharine. 
 
 'No, no,' answered Lord Peterborough reasonably. 'I won't 
 say his manners matter. If the fellow knows his business, that's 
 all Katharine wants of him.' 
 
 'Exactly,' said Katharine. 
 
 'All the same, I saw him at Sanford House last night,' said 
 Bertie.
 
 i 4 2 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Lady Algernon's nose went up yet higher. 'Yes,' she said, 
 'you meet them sometimes in most unexpected places, in these 
 degenerate days.' 
 
 'Them?' inquired Katharine, with a moment's stirring of the 
 curiosity of the waiting room: what kind of woman had he 
 married ? 
 
 'Yes,' Lady Algernon went on, 'in my young days medical 
 men were kept in their proper places. Now, the person who has 
 been prescribing for your liver in the morning, may be peering 
 into your plate at the dinner table. Disgusting!' 
 
 'Poor things, are they never to dine out?' 
 
 'Let them go among their own kind, as men-dressmakers and 
 such people do. It is revolting to think of mixing in general 
 society with a man you've had to consult about ' 
 
 'I can see,' Katharine quietly interrupted, 'that it may revolt 
 them if they remember.' 
 
 'Going about as they do,' the old woman went on imper- 
 turbably, ' there's no telling what mayn't happen. Some silly girl 
 with new fangled notions, might even think she could marry a 
 doctor just as though he were in the army or the church.' 
 
 The beautiful guardsman laughed. 'There's something in 
 doctorin' that fails to appeal to the aesthetic sense of most women.' 
 He looked at Katharine. 
 
 She smiled assent. 'Yes, it's not a romantic profession.' 
 
 'I should like to return to the times,' began Lady Algernon, 
 'when the professions of doctor and barber were combined in 
 one ' 
 
 'I wouldn't,' said Bertie as the tea came in; 'you probably 
 got hair oil now and then, as a pick-me-up.' He kept his seat 
 by Katharine on the sofa. In an undertone: 'You'll write to 
 me, won't you?' 
 
 'Write to you?' 
 
 'Yes, while you're lying up there with nothing to do.' 
 
 'I musn't communicate with anybody.' 
 
 'Oh, that's rot. You can easily do it without getting into 
 trouble with Vincent.' 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 'It isn't as if you were in that beastly Home of his. They 
 watch you there like a cat watches a mouse. Dawlish was eight
 
 A DARK LANTERN 143 
 
 weeks in the place. He told me if you sent a postcard ' 
 
 Bertie made a little gesture of the devil to pay. 
 
 'The nurse discharged, I suppose.' 
 
 ' and the patient. Fact. But here you can do the Cure 
 
 in moderation. Write to me, Kitty.' 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 'It's to be exactly as if I were in the Nursing Home. I've 
 promised him. It's only on that condition he undertakes my 
 case.' 
 
 Bertie sighed. 'Come with me to the new Savoy opera to- 
 night then, for a final fling.' 
 
 'No, I said I'd go to bed and I'm going.' She rose. But 
 Lady Algernon was taking leave, so Katharine waited for a last 
 word with Lord Peterborough before disappearing from the 
 general view. When they were alone: 
 
 'So,' he said, 'you've determined to follow this man's advice?' 
 
 'I believe it's good advice.' 
 
 'Oh, you believe in the fellow, do you?' 
 
 'Yes, I think he will cure me' she spared the old man 'if 
 anybody can.' 
 
 'Well, come, that's something. You haven't usually felt like 
 that.' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' I don't like to think of my girl being given over to the mercies 
 of an uncouth creature Adeline's been telling me ' 
 
 'What does it matter?' Katharine interrupted with a weary 
 smile. 'I can quite imagine he doesn't get on with people like 
 Lady Algernon. And it's true he did rather buffet me about. 
 But all the same he was rather kind to me, too' she stared in 
 front of her 'in the sort of way that the rain and the wind are 
 kind.' She looked up after a silence to find Lord Peterborough 
 sitting with head sunk between his shoulders and eyes lowered. It 
 occurred to her that he looked unusually old and lonely, and yet 
 she must leave him for all those weeks! 
 
 She went over and laid her hand on his shoulder. 
 
 'Please help me to do this Cure. Vincent's right. It's what I 
 need. After all, it's no more than many Roman Catholic women 
 do from time to time.' 
 
 'Take Rest Cures?'
 
 144 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Yes, kind of. They turn their backs on the world, and go for 
 a few weeks into a Religious Retreat just for the refreshment of 
 their souls.' She spoke lightly, and smiled down at him. 
 
 'Beastly bore for you.' 
 
 'Well, I don't know. I am rather tired, and I shall be able 
 to lie in bed without reproach.' 
 
 ' Did I ever reproach you ? ' 
 
 'Yes you don't go to drive unless I come, and then I'm 
 reproached.' 
 
 'Oh, I mean to drive when the weather is decent.' 
 
 'Yes. And I'll lie in bed and nobody will dare say I'm a 
 sluggard. I'll do only the things I like, and be approved for it. 
 Just rest and scribble verses now and then, and read, read, 
 read. Peer, let's make a list! There are long delightful books 
 that I've been promising myself to read for years and years. 
 There's never been time before. You'll get them for me, won't 
 you?' 
 
 He felt for the pencil on his watch-chain making a list of 
 delightful books was a thing he was good at. 
 
 'Do you know what I'd do if I had to take a Rest Cure?' 
 he said. 
 
 'No, what?' 
 
 'I'd learn a new language.' 
 
 ' The very thing ! /'// learn a new language. What shall it be ? ' 
 she said with something like enthusiasm. 
 
 'You say you want to refresh your soul and we know, that 
 "Wer eine neue Sprache lernt, bekommt eine neue Seele" 
 that might be even better than refreshing the old one.' 
 
 Katharine had a sudden vision of Vincent's forbidding face 
 as he said, 'I don't mean any half and half business I mean 
 really resting.' But she played with the question to amuse the 
 old man, declining Russian as too hard, and deciding upon Dutch 
 'because of South Africa.' 
 
 But in belittling the situation to Peer she had come to see 
 it differently herself. By the time she had given her final direc- 
 tions to Howe and the housekeeper, she had begun to look 
 forward with a quite unexpected equanimity to this time of seclu- 
 sion. She ran back into the library with a step so light that Lord 
 Peterborough looked up in surprise. ' Why, you're better already. '
 
 A DARK LANTERN 145 
 
 Then, as, smiling she dropped on the footstool in front of him: 
 'I wonder if you really need this Cure ' He spoke wistfully. 
 
 'Yes, I need it dear, but it will be a success only if you are 
 very kind.' 
 
 'What can I do, child?' 
 
 She laid her head on his knee, and he put a thin hand on her 
 hair, repeating gently, 'What can I do?' Sudden tears came into 
 her eyes. 
 
 ' Be as good to my god- father as you've been to me ever since 
 I was a little little child.' She was on her knees with arms about 
 him. 'Will you drive every fine day, and do all the dull and 
 healthy things?' They tried to laugh. 
 
 'Yes,' he said. 'Now go away and don't show your face here 
 again till you're quite well.' She promised, still laughing, dried 
 her eyes, and got as far as the door. Turned, and with a little 
 difficulty finding her voice : 
 
 'I expect you think I've taken it all as a matter of course but 
 I haven't.' 
 
 'Taken what as a matter of course?' 
 
 'All that you've done for me.' 
 
 ' Oh that ' with sudden energy he began to cut the remain- 
 ing leaves of his book. But Katharine came back, quite calm 
 again, and stood by his chair. 'I'd like you to let me say just 
 once that I am grateful.' 
 
 'As to that, you've given as much as you've taken. What 
 should I do alone?' 
 
 'No, no, you could get on without me far better than I could 
 without you. Why, you're the only person in the world who has 
 never failed me.' 
 
 'I have been very fond of you, my dear.' 
 
 But Katharine did not dream how glad she was to be that she 
 had not let slip the occasion to make profession of faith. 
 
 As she went upstairs a double knock shook the heavy outer 
 door. The sound affected her as it might the dweller in some 
 impregnable fortress, who hears an impotent enemy battering at 
 the gates. Freedom from the tyranny of the London hourly 
 post, that of itself was much. No more notes to answer, no 
 attack upon the quivering nerves by telegraph boys with messages 
 from Berlin no heart-breaking letters from her father. No
 
 i 4 6 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 need to smile and look pleasant. No one to entertain. 'Hah 
 
 h !' she drew a long breath as she stood on the topmost step. 
 
 She had left Care below. 
 
 The nurse had been taken to her room. She must have heard 
 Katharine come upstairs, for without delay she presented her- 
 self. Tall, gaunt not young, a perfunctory smile, a cold nose, 
 set off by the white aureole of her frilled cap, which gave the 
 impression of being tied with excruciating tightness under her 
 long chin. The starched muslin of the strings seemed to embed 
 itself in the loose skin of the neck, and after doing its worst by 
 way of discomfort there, launched out briskly in the wings of a 
 stiff-tied bow. The small constricting cuffs looked ready to cut 
 off each purple hand. 
 
 'I am Nurse Phillips,' she said. 
 
 Katharine responded and sent her away for tea. Twenty 
 minutes later, Nurse Phillips re-entered the room with a pro- 
 prietary air, as one now fully installed. Katharine was in dress- 
 ing-gown by the fire, writing on a portfolio held upon her knee. 
 The most difficult task she had shirked till the last, this final 
 letter to Anton, explaining the exigencies of the Rest Cure, and 
 that if he still went on sending letters or telegrams, they would 
 either lie untouched, or be opened (in the event of anything 
 happening to her) by other hands. That would give him 
 pause. 
 
 'Shall you soon be ready to go to bed?' inquired the nurse 
 hovering about. 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Can you tell me where the scales are?' 
 
 'What scales?' 
 
 'The scales to weigh you.' 
 
 Katharine reflected. 'I believe there used to be scales in Lady 
 Peterborough's bath-room. We can go there if you like.' 
 
 'Could the scales be brought in here?' 
 
 'Here?' 
 
 'Yes. Dr. Vincent won't want you to go out of this room.' 
 
 'Oh, won't he?' smiled Katharine. 
 
 'No,' answered the nurse gravely. Then as Katharine said 
 no more: 'Dr. Vincent is very particular about having the weight 
 taken every night before dinner.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 147 
 
 Life in one room! That will seem odd. Katharine reached 
 out her hand and rang the bell. 
 
 'Do you mind letting me know what you want?' 
 
 'Oh, I'll see a servant about ' 
 
 'Could I say what it is?' asked the woman. 
 
 Then as Katharine stared at her, she added, 'If you'd rather 
 not, of course, for to-night it won't matter.' 
 
 ' for to-night?' 
 
 'When the Cure begins, you know from to-morrow Dr. 
 Vincent won't want anyone to come in after the room is done in 
 the morning, except the nurse.' 
 
 ' and himself, I suppose.' She smiled a little impatiently. 
 
 'Oh, yes himself.' 
 
 A knock at the door. 'Just give the order about the scales, 
 will you?' As the nurse disappeared, Katharine heard outside 
 Natalie's voice, a little excited and hushed down Natalie, never 
 before debarred that door! What a queer experience it was to 
 be! She went on with that last letter to Anton. 
 
 'So, you see, for six weeks' she paused with a renewed sense 
 of relief at being, for that much time at least, beyond the reach 
 of his troubling power. ' For six weeks ! ' she repeated to herself, 
 staring into the fire 'nobody and nothing of all this tangled 
 wretchedness can reach me. For two and forty days I shall be 
 safe.' She looked round her prison smiling. Why, it will be 
 next door to being dead. I'll have such peace here as I thought 
 only graves could give. 
 
 And she re-read the last words of her letter: 'So you see, for 
 six weeks' and wrote on ' "I am as one disembodied, triumphant, 
 dead." KATHARINE.'
 
 CHAPTER in 
 
 VAGUELY, as she lay there all that first morning, she expected 
 to hear Vincent announced forgetting, so little had the con- 
 ditions of his life come home to her, that he would not be likely 
 to come before his office hours, and would scarcely therefore 
 reach her till the latter part of the day. Idly she cut the leaves 
 of Jusserand's 'Roman d'un Roi d'cosse,' but she felt too let 
 down, even to begin that work, although the nurse gave her a 
 momentary fillip by saying, 'Is he going to let you read?' 
 
 'Oh, yes.' 
 
 'Did he tell you so?' 
 
 'Yes, certainly.' Then presently: 'Don't most people read 
 who take a Rest Cure?' 
 
 'He sometimes lets them. It depends.' After a moment 
 spent in poking the fire: 'I don't know so much about cases in 
 private houses. It is very seldom he consents to take a real 
 Rest Cure patient that is not nursed at the Home.' 
 
 'Oh?' and although she knew quite well, 'Why is that?' she 
 said. 
 
 'Because, well you see, at the Home everything goes by rule, 
 it's all like clockwork. He thinks that people, especially women, 
 haven't enough sense of discipline to carry out orders for them- 
 selves.' 
 
 'I suppose he doesn't imagine everybody to be the same in 
 that.' 
 
 'People are helped, he thinks, by being hedged in by the 
 routine of a house where everything is organized for the purpose 
 of ' 
 
 Katharine interrupted, recoiling from the thought of her 
 father: 'In cases where people don't need to be hedged in, and 
 
 148
 
 A DARK LANTERN 149 
 
 have the will to carry out reasonable instructions, it is surely 
 better to let them exercise it.' 
 
 'Oh, if they have it,' was the unconvinced reply. 
 
 'Even in the Nursing Home, I suppose people sometimes rebel 
 against the regulations.' 
 
 'It's no use to rebel there.' 
 
 Katharine remembered the soothing letter she had written to 
 her father while the nurse was at breakfast. She had not pur- 
 posely concealed it, but it lay out of sight between the leaves of 
 the 'Roi d'Ecosse' awaiting its stamp. She recalled vaguely 
 something Bertie had said. 'For instance,' she pursued, 'if 
 people at the Home write letters ?' 
 
 'They aren't posted.' Then while Katharine lay digesting 
 the information, the nurse added: 'And if Dr. Vincent hears of 
 
 their having written ' she paused to dust the little Dresden 
 
 figure. 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'Oh, at the Home, he just comes in, and tells the patient to 
 pack up and go away.' 
 
 'Hm! and do they do it?' 
 
 'No, they want to get well, and they know they can't without 
 his help. So they give in and promise not to break his rules 
 again.' As Katharine made no comment upon this, the nurse 
 added: 'Dr. Vincent told Sir William Blake' (she brought out 
 the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with less effect of 
 importance than she managed to convey in saying ' Dr. Vincent') 
 'that he wouldn't waste his time on anybody, no matter who it 
 was, who didn't give the treatment a fair trial.' 
 
 Katharine mentally decided to say nothing about the letter 
 she had just written, and upon the first opportunity to burn it. 
 But how was it with her father ? Ought she to have disregarded 
 his doctors, and hers, and have gone to him? Would the right 
 kind of daughter have responded to his half-mad appeal? 
 
 She turned and tossed, but the question followed or was 
 varied only by others centering about Prince Anton. Had the 
 Princess Margaretha died? If so, would Anton after a decent 
 interval feel himself free to treat honourably at last and would 
 he, with his bland lack of conscience, refuse to see that it was too 
 late? Was it indeed too late or was it only sickness made her
 
 1 5 o A DARK LANTERN 
 
 feel it to be so? 'My father' 'Anton' 'Anton' 'father!' 
 In spite of saying: 'I shall not get well if I dwell on such disturb- 
 ing themes,' the battledore of her mind sent up first one and then 
 another of these shuttlecocks, wearily received it back, and sent 
 it flying only to catch the other again. And so on, hour after 
 hour, jaded, sick in every sense, she played the weary game. 
 
 Again at luncheon, as last night at dinner (when Katharine 
 had put the error down to nervousness), the nurse laid the silver 
 covers off the dishes on the bed; upside down but the steam 
 or grease was like to run down on the coverlid, and in any event 
 the very sight of them there was an offence. Katharine asked to 
 have them removed. 'There's no other place,' said Nurse 
 Phillips, 'every place here is covered with bric-a-brac.' 
 
 'Ring the bell, and tell them to bring up another small table.' 
 And so it was that, early in the day, the nurse had discovered 
 Katharine to be 'fussy,' and the patient had seen the nurse to 
 have 'shiftless ways.' After luncheon the blinds were drawn, 
 and Katharine left to repose. In an hour Nurse Phillips was 
 back, pulling the silk into thick folds again, and letting in the 
 grey afternoon. 
 
 'I am cold. Will you ring, and ask my maid for a thick woolly 
 dressing-jacket a pink thing she knows.' 
 
 'Yes,' answered the nurse in a preoccupied tone, folding up a 
 towel. 
 
 'Anton' 'my f ather '' father '' Anton '! Oh, to get 
 
 away from memory! 
 
 'And I'd like,' Katharine went on aloud, 'my patience cards 
 from the drawing-room.' She had already asked for them in the 
 morning. 
 
 'Oh, yes,' said the nurse remembering, 'I'll get them just as 
 soon as ' She was bustling about, tidying the room. 
 
 'Just as soon as what?' 
 
 'After Dr. Vincent has been.' 
 
 Ah! thought the patient, the cause of this sudden fervour for 
 neatness stands revealed. And so began for Katharine, that 
 focussing of all life's forces upon a little daily routine. She smiled 
 condescendingly upon her growing absorption in the trivial 
 saying to herself that it was as if an eye that had looked through 
 field-glasses, up at towering Alps, and down on armies contend-
 
 A DARK LANTERN 151 
 
 ing in the plain had suddenly been set to peer at life through a 
 microscope. Well this was the great world, too. Perhaps 
 after all only intellectual snobbery could deny it significance. 
 And then she smiled faintly, as she watched the nurse smoothing 
 the tumbled coverlid, picking up a thread off the big Persian 
 rug and looking back at the fire. Katharine's eyes followed 
 every movement, as the blue-gowned figure bent, and pulled the 
 bearskin a little to the right, and then turning again, swept patient 
 and apartment with an eye narrowed, alert, to see that all was 
 ready for the great man's fit reception. 
 
 Tdly the woman in the bed wondered about the woman moving 
 in the room. How little Katharine knew of her as yet. Nothing 
 save that she had a naturally keen desire to please the man she 
 worked for, and that in common with the majority of English 
 nurses her neatness was superficial. Colonel Dereham's and 
 Lady Peterborough's illnesses had shown up the fact that few Eng- 
 lish nurses, even among those best born, have got beyond the vul- 
 gar fear of being classed with servants therefore that part of their 
 duty which is traditionally 'servant's work' they slur and scamp, 
 quite in the fashion of the least admirable of the class they are most 
 desirous to be differentiated from. To watch Nurse Phillips dust 
 the room was to lie and long to jump up and show her how. She 
 shared the conviction of the lower class Londoner, that to clean a 
 room was to stir up the dust in it at most to remove the dirt from 
 one quarter to another. Katharine had tried, that morning, to 
 convince herself that this was a matter quite trivial beside the 
 great question of good health, or even beside the hardly lesser one 
 of good feeling. Although she longed to have her own well- 
 trained people about her, she determined to set aside the feeling, 
 to find out and make the most of the best in this stiff spinster, that 
 she must come to know so well before their relations ended. What 
 was it like to be a nurse? To see people only at their worst? 
 Had she ever cared for anyone, this chill-visaged Nurse Phillips ? 
 What kept her going faithful to a life so unlovely and so scantily 
 rewarded ? Just now she seemed a prey to restlessness went in 
 and out between bath and bed-room, and made frequent excur- 
 sions into the hall. Katharine heard whispering in the passage 
 about the jacket. For no discoverable reason, as the nurse re- 
 turned, suddenly the sick woman remembered that day with
 
 i S a A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Anton at the Polo match. The nurse made a rattling among the 
 toilet-bottles and the glasses. Has that woman ever been to a 
 Polo match? The idea was somehow ludicrous. Hers was the 
 grim and dingy world of drugs and doctors. 
 
 When finally she came to the bedside with a pink bundle, she 
 unfolded it with some faint show of surprire. 
 
 'Is this what you sent for?' she said, as she eyed its plainness. 
 
 'Yes.' Katharine slowly pulled herself into a sitting posture. 
 
 ' Shall you put it on now, before the doctor conies ? ' 
 
 'Yes it's warmer.' Then laughing: 'You think it not smart 
 enough?' 
 
 'Oh, that doesn't signify,' said the other, 'though most patients 
 don't realize how very little it matters to a doctor what they have 
 on/ 
 
 'Do they make smart toilets sometimes?' 
 
 'Very,' and she smiled for the first time. 'I had a patient 
 once who was very untidy, except on the days the doctor came. 
 Then she would put on a yellow silk gown embroidered with 
 topazes a wonderful affair. She did look well in it, too,' Nurse 
 Phillips added grudgingly. 'And another used to do her hair in 
 great black puffs all over her head, and sit bolt upright in her bed 
 for hours, so not a hair should go wrong till after Dr. Vincent had 
 been.' With a feeling of scorn for such feminine weakness, 
 Katharine, exhibiting a sudden energy, flung off the long flimsy 
 silk gown with its froth of white lace, and threw it in a heap at 
 the foot of the bed. 
 
 The nurse caught it up, and while folding it hastily (not as 
 Natalie folded things!) she glanced sharply about, as though to 
 assure herself nothing, besides this, was obviously out of place. In 
 the act of shutting the wardrobe-door, she looked around with an 
 assumption of deliberation that somehow, to the sensitive woman 
 in the bed, betrayed more nervous concern than frank exhibition 
 of excitement would have done. As she stood listening a second 
 with head thrown back, Nurse Phillips said softly, 'That's Dr. 
 Vincent, now.' It was not till a few seconds later that Katharine 
 was aware of the sound of fast driven horses brought up suddenly, 
 and the sharp attack of shoe-iron on the asphalt of the court 
 underneath her windows. But to Katharine the sound meant 
 Anton, and a drive through sunny streets hung with green and
 
 A DARK LANTERN 153 
 
 white Saxon banners; a coach brought gallantly up to the porte 
 cochere of a new house in an old park, where a battle had been 
 fought, and where Lady Peterborough had checkmated the boldest 
 of the Prince's moves. 
 
 While she recalled those hours, she had been dreamily feeling 
 for the sleeve of the woolly garment the nurse pulled it quickly 
 within range, went to the door, returned and very low she said: 
 
 'He is running up the stair,' and therewith vanished. 
 
 'He' is running up the stair? Ah no. 
 
 Almost instantly a knock not loud but sharp. 
 
 'Come in.' He entered with her words, not waiting for them. 
 
 'Good morning' a different apparition from Anton the golden. 
 A swarthy lowering face, a figure businesslike, alert, compact of 
 the very prose of life, or set to the tune of utility as soldiers' feet 
 to a march. He had come swiftly in, seemed not even to look 
 at her, went straight to the nearest window, already down an inch 
 from the top, and pulled it open a foot and a half. 'You're too 
 hot in here,' he said, and stood an instant taking a stethoscope 
 out of his pocket and fitting it together, frowning down upon it. 
 Katharine was conscious of a little shudder passing over her. 
 
 ' I shall be cold with so much raw air streaming in on me,' she 
 said. 
 
 ' It doesn't stream on you streams towards the door.' 
 
 In that quick way of his, that yet was so unflurried, he came 
 over to the bed, pushed aside the white enamel chair placed for 
 him, and sat down on the delicate rose coverlid. 
 
 'Breathe,' he ordered. 'Breathe again! Again!' 
 
 He withdrew the stethoscope, unscrewed it, and still with that 
 fixed frown he said: 'The first thing you've got to do is to stop 
 starving yourself. It's absurd your eating a continental breakfast.' 
 
 How had he learned in the second outside that she 
 
 'I can't possibly eat a great heavy meal early in the day.' 
 
 'Yes, you can. You've got to.' 
 
 'I haven't done it for years.' 
 
 'You've been running down for years.' 
 
 'Well, at all events I must have my first cup of tea before my 
 bath.' Then as for the first time, apparently, he looked at her, 
 she smiled disarmingly: 'What do you think that nurse brought 
 me bright and early? Hot milk before I got my eyes fairly open.'
 
 i 5 4 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'That was right.' 
 
 'Oh, I assure you ' 
 
 ' Didn't you drink it ? ' he glowered. 
 
 'Well' (laughing a little), 'the nurse seemed to think it was 
 such a matter of life and death ' 
 
 'So it is.' 
 
 She looked at him, but there was no smiling in his face. 
 
 'She wanted me to drink a great jorum at ten o'clock last night, 
 too.' 
 
 'Quite right.' He turned abruptly to the fireplace, and stood 
 staring at the pictures an instant. Katharine knew as well as if 
 she had been inside his head, that he had been arrested for that 
 second by the water colour of Prince Anton, brilliant in Prussian 
 blue and gold lace. 
 
 ' I don't like milk,' said Katharine meekly. 
 
 'What has that to do with it?' He wheeled back upon her, 
 but as her eyes searched his face, she could not tell whether he 
 was looking at her or not. He seemed never to 'want to look at 
 her, and yet it was his business to. 
 
 ' . . . How can I drink milk so soon after dining ? ' 
 
 'How soon?' 
 
 'Oh, we have dinner like most people at a quarter past eight.' 
 
 'You must dine at seven.' She opened her lips, but forbore to 
 say how dreadfully it would upset the servants. She knew the 
 answer to that : Then you must go to a Nursing Home ! 
 
 She sacrificed the servants' equilibrium without a qualm. 
 
 'Your business is to eat, and sleep, and not to think,' he said 
 glancing towards the fireplace, and (Katharine could have sworn) 
 at Anton's picture. 
 
 'You said I might read?' 
 
 'Yes trash.' 
 
 He picked up a book on the low table at the bed's head. 
 
 ' Poetry! 'he said derisively and dropped it. 'That's not the 
 kind of trash I mean. Read novels, novels without any "prob- 
 lems" in them.' He was making for the door. 
 
 'You haven't given me any medicine,' she half sat up to say. 
 
 'Yes, I have. Milk, mutton oh, you'll be given medicine,' 
 and he laughed suddenly, with an air of dour malice, as he shut 
 the sick room door.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 155 
 
 'Humph! odd creature,' she mentally ejaculated, and then 
 began the treadmill round: Father Anton the wasted past, 
 the unlit future. 
 
 While Katharine was having her first frugal tea under the new 
 regime, Nurse Phillips sat in the chair Vincent had thrust aside 
 a couple of hours before, sat there silent save for the remark: 
 
 'Butter and cream are very good for you.' 
 
 Then presently as Katharine seemed to take no notice: 'Dr. 
 Vincent will expect you to eat at dinner all the butter you leave 
 now.' 
 
 The patient smiled at the solemnity of the warning: even faintly 
 curious. 
 
 'What would happen if I disappointed him?' 
 
 'He would probably come round.' 
 
 'Come round.'? 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' Come here ? again ? to-night ?' 
 
 'Oh yes.' 
 
 Katharine lay and idly considered the matter. 'How would 
 he know I'd ' 
 
 'I should have to telephone him.' 
 
 ' Did you ever have to do that ? ' 
 
 'Oh, yes.' 
 
 'What happened?' 
 
 'He is always in one of his black rages, when he's sent for.' 
 
 'What good does being in a rage do?' inquired Katharine 
 with some dignity, but spreading the butter thicker on the toast. 
 
 'All the good in the world in some cases. Patients will say 
 they can't possibly eat any more. I've explained, and begged, and 
 done all in my power. They say, to save their lives they can't 
 swallow another morsel. I tell them, in that case, it is my duty 
 to ring up Doctor Vincent. They say it doesn't matter if I do. 
 It doesn't matter even if he comes. They seem to count on his 
 not coming, but' (she shook her head, with a grim smile, as who 
 should comment silently on the vanity of human hopes) 'he does 
 come looking like, well he isn't pleasant at such moments.' 
 
 ' What happens?' 
 
 'He goes in and shuts the door.' 
 
 'Well?'
 
 I 5 6 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 The nurse made a little awkward but eloquent gesture with her 
 purple hands. 
 
 The shutting of the door was probably not followed by man- 
 slaughter, so: 'What do you suppose he says?' asked Katharine 
 amused, interested. 
 
 ' Oh, we don't know what he says he always sees his patients 
 alone.' 
 
 'Aren't you told afterwards?' 
 
 'Not usually.' 
 
 ' But but what do you suppose ' 
 
 'If it's a woman, she's generally crying when I go back. Even 
 the men seem rather unnerved but,' with a little laugh in which 
 triumph subtly entered, 'the plate is always clean.' 
 
 ' I'd rather like to see him in one of his rages.' 
 
 'No, you wouldn't,' interrupted Nurse Phillips with conviction. 
 
 'Ah, well,' said Katharine. 'I dare say he won't show that 
 side here.' She spoke with the easy assumption of the woman 
 who, much as she had been lied to, had never in her life been 
 treated rudely. 
 
 'I wouldn't depend on that,' observed the nurse. 
 
 'Depend on what?' 
 
 ' On his being any different here from elsewhere. He's exactly 
 the same to everybody. Royalty and all.' As Katharine looked 
 at her she had a glimpse of a new source of satisfaction to the 
 infinitely various human mind. This gaunt woman by the fire 
 was accessible to something very like pleasure, not far off from 
 pride, in truth, at the spectacle of fine ladies brought under the 
 law of the master she herself so zealously served. Of no avail 
 their arts and wiles their rich trappings and high-sounding 
 names. That they were all one to Garth Vincent, gave the very 
 English mind of the nurse, her moment of high equality, which 
 otherwise she could not attain gave her at times even an uplift- 
 ing sense of superiority. For she, the nurse, was a sort of Grand 
 Vizier to the Great Mogul through him she touched the springs 
 of life outside her sphere, through him laid hands on Power. If 
 he ruled her with a rod of iron, he left a fragment of that harsh 
 sceptre in her hand, and in her arid days some of the heady joy 
 of playing despot irresistible to one who had looked at life only 
 from beneath. Nurse Phillips was naturally a silent woman
 
 A DARK LANTERN 157 
 
 indeed, it was that quality, coupled with unswerving obedience, 
 that had secured to her a permanent place on Vincent's staff, but 
 to Miss Dereham she talked. While Katharine dined that night 
 she again put questions that loosed the unready tongue. 
 
 'We had a very beautiful woman at the Home once, doing a 
 modified Rest Cure, Miss Nina Bellair ' 
 
 ' Qh, the singer ? ' 
 
 'Yes, and after a fortnight she wasn't any better. So the Doc- 
 tor said: "Put flesh on that patient.'" Her voice had taken 
 on something of Vincent's brusquerie. 'The first day that she 
 had a 4-ounce luncheon (4 ounces of mutton, 4 toast, 4 vegetable, 
 4 milk-pudding), I was called to the telephone a moment, and 
 when I got back, I was astonished to find she'd eaten all her 
 mutton so quickly. I went out to bring in the pudding, and met 
 the Doctor.' 
 
 'Vincent?' 
 
 'Yes, Dr. Vincent,' and Katharine from that hour needed not 
 to ask again who, of all the medical profession, was 'the Doctor.' 
 'He'd been sent for to see a man in the Home who was bad. I 
 passed with my patient's clean plate just as he Dr. Vincent 
 came out of the opposite room. "Did she eat it all?" he said. 
 "Well, I suppose so," I answered for it's as much as your head 
 is worth to make the least mistake with him. He'd call it lying. 
 He told one of the nurses, once, that all women were natural 
 liars.' She smiled, curiously, as at some endearment. '"Don't 
 you know if she's eaten it all?" he said. So I told him I'd had to 
 go to the telephone a moment. He was half way downstairs as I 
 said the words, but he turned back and called out "Bring the rest 
 of her luncheon," and he was in my patient's room like a flash 
 of lightning. When I got there, he was walking up and down 
 talking about the place he'd been to for his last holiday, but I 
 could see that his eyes were darting everywhere. He stared at 
 the fire, told me to put on some coals, and, while I did so, he 
 looked far back in the scuttle went to the window, and examined 
 the pavement and the gutter and all the while he talked about 
 Herzegovina. While the last of the pudding was being helped, 
 he took the tongs, and put them a little way up the chimney be- 
 hind that iron flap -you haven't got it here, but you know the 
 kind of draught thing I mean. I saw my patient stop, with her
 
 i S 8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 last spoonful half way to her mouth. I looked round, and Dr. 
 Vincent was holding out with the tongs a slice of mutton an inch 
 thick, powdered all over with soot.' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'Oh, I fled out of the room.' 
 
 'But what happened?' 
 
 'The pudding plate was very sooty,' she said, getting up with 
 her grim smile. 
 
 'You can't think the woman ate a piece of meat that had been 
 up the chimney?' 
 
 'I don't think Dr. Vincent ate it.' 
 
 'Disgusting of him to make the poor thing ' 
 
 'No, it was just what she needed. She was very spoiled and 
 difficult before. No more trouble after that. She got fat and 
 well. Married now, you know, and has a baby.' 
 
 'I consider that a most revolting story,' said Katharine, plaster- 
 ing the butter thick on her last mouthful. 'He'd made a great 
 mistake if he supposed such treatment would succeed with every 
 patient.' 
 
 'He doesn't make many mistakes.' 
 
 'Probably he thought that anybody weak-minded enough to 
 hide the meat, could be coerced into eating it. How exceedingly 
 silly to refuse food until he comes and lectures you! no wonder 
 he has a poor opinion of women.' 
 
 The next day at eleven a masseuse knocked at the door. 
 
 'I didn't send for a masseuse.' 
 
 'Dr. Vincent sent her.' 
 
 'But I don't want massage ' 
 
 'Dr. Vincent always insists upon massage in a case like yours. 
 Come in please, Miss Gillies.' 
 
 'A case like mine.' Did that doctor-man think it was so easily 
 classifiable my case? Had he, in the purblind fashion of his 
 profession, so lightly diagnosed and docketed her strange and 
 complex quarrel with existence? But here was the big Scotch- 
 woman with a form of treatment Katharine had often tried, and 
 especially disliked. It had never soothed, but seemed rather to 
 excite and irritate her. She did not belong to the cat tribe it is 
 not any hand that can help these highly specialized senses and 
 it is this that men (in only a few of whom the same sensitiveness
 
 A DARK LANTERN 159 
 
 exists) it is this that they forget, or have never realized. For 
 Katharine Dereham to be touched by strange hands was an offence 
 to the spirit, a positive hurt to the nerves. For such people, 
 massage may be a hindrance rather than a help to health. It 
 was something, that she should instinctively have liked the big, 
 raw-boned, fresh-coloured woman, albeit she hated the office 
 she was there to perform. Katharine quickly made up her 
 mind to submit 'just for to-day' in order to preserve, before his 
 subordinates, the air of conforming to the Doctor's commands. 
 It was like a man to prescribe massage as a matter of routine! 
 
 Katharine, who had lived too much with men to share the 
 frequent feminine delusion that they were utterly different from 
 women, had not waited until now to feel that such slight difference 
 as she could verify, came uppermost in their apprehension of 
 things of sense. A man is able to divorce satisfaction of the 
 body from satisfaction of the mind; with the highly civilized 
 woman they are one. No man feels the same wonder and amaze 
 that strikes so sharp upon a woman, when she hears of a man's 
 dalliance with serving-maids at home, or abroad with Asiatics. 
 If a woman looks below her station, her heart and mind will 
 make some sort of shift (often strangely successful) to follow after 
 her eyes. She cannot, unless she is wholly base, find the joy she 
 looks for, on any other terms. Even for health or service, physical 
 contact, except with those who are dear, is an oppression and 
 a horror. That women of Katharine Dereham 's type are inacces- 
 sible to bodily benefits unless they come in special guise, is a part 
 of the complex work of civilization. Garth Vincent, with all his 
 cleverness, would not understand. Still she would tell him, when 
 he came in the afternoon, that, however it might do in other cases, 
 massage was bad for her. 
 
 She kept her eye on the clock as the hour drew near, made a 
 pretence of reading but was really revolving in her mind how 
 she would put this objection to, this rejection of (she firmly 
 amended), a part of his treatment that he 'always insists upon.' 
 Three. Ten past. A quarter. She took another book. Half 
 past. Four. Oh, of course he can't always come at the same 
 time. I'll have my way about the massage. Four-thirty. The 
 nurse brought tea. Katharine hurried through it that she might 
 not be in the middle when he came. Still no sign of him. Five-
 
 160 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 thirty. Six o'clock. She began to feel rather angry. He was 
 neglecting her for someone else. 'Does Dr. Vincent ever come 
 as late as half -past six ? ' 
 
 'Oh yes, if he has been prevented from coming earlier.' But 
 the nurse was putting the weights on the scales. 'Will you let 
 me take your weight now?' Katharine listened for the sound of 
 his horses' hoofs upon the asphalt. Nothing. As she was getting 
 back to bed, 'I suppose he won't come now,' she said. 
 
 'To-night! Oh no. He hasn't time to see any one patient 
 more than three times a week unless they're worse or send for 
 him. Then he rushes in for an instant.' 
 
 And she had watched and waited hours for the creature! Yes, 
 she felt distinctly angry. But she did not realize that it was the 
 first day for years, that she had not thought of Anton. The first 
 night that he, or her father, had failed to haunt her pillow. 
 ***** 
 
 On the occasion of Vincent's second visit the following day, 
 he came in like a jocular ogre, saying 'Now I want some of 
 your blood. We'll see if you're as anaemic as you look.' He 
 washed her middle finger with an antiseptic that made it cold as 
 ice. Then he stabbed the pink tip with apparent satisfaction. 
 'Hurt?' he said, with a grin, as the blood answered. The little 
 glass beak of the tiny tube drank the red bead greedily, and held 
 it in a scarlet thread. But he did it four times, and when she 
 winced he smiled. 
 
 'Anaemic!' she said 'is that what makes me look such a 
 fright?' 
 
 'It's partly that,' he said, accepting her description without a 
 qualm. And then with that look of Schadenfreude, she was coming 
 to know, he glanced up from some occult proceeding at the table. 
 'Your type fades early in any case.' 
 
 She felt the words quite as much as he could have wished, but 
 she presented a smiling front. 
 
 'What is the type that lasts best?' 
 
 'Brunette, of course. A dark eye may be bright at eighty.' 
 He had let his own flash across the face upon the pillow. Then 
 quickly, as if to forestall any mistake in her mind as to what he 
 found there, ' Of course, any woman who is a walking skeleton 
 looks older even than she is.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 161 
 
 Even than she is I Heavens ! the creature talks as if I were 
 fifty! 
 
 ' Good-bye.' He was gone and the nurse was there gathering 
 up some things he had left on the table, and putting them into 
 a black bag. And she had forgotten to say she wouldn't have 
 massage! So she had it and she had it twice a day. 
 
 'Did you tell him about your neuralgia?' asked the nurse. 
 
 'No. I thought you would. Don't you tell him everything 
 that he ought to know ? ' 
 
 'Yes, when I can get him to attend.' 
 
 'When you can get him to attend? Why, he must attend. 
 That's what he conies for.' 
 
 The nurse preserved a non-committal silence. 
 
 'It's much better you should tell him details, than that I should. 
 But it's quite necessary he should know.' 
 
 'Everything goes down on the chart.' 
 
 ' Does he always read the chart ? ' 
 
 'He usually glances at it but he reads the patient. He can 
 tell more by looking at you than most doctors can by cutting 
 you open.' 
 
 'That is pure superstition,' returned Katharine, nettled not 
 only by the crudity of the phrase. 'I don't care myself to tell 
 him sick-room details and then he's always in such a hurry 
 besides, it's far better you should. You know how to put them.' 
 
 'I tried to get hold of him to-day to speak about your wanting 
 coffee. I ran down the first flight trying to explain, but he 
 wouldn't take any notice.' 
 
 'I shall ask him the next time he comes to be good enough to 
 answer my nurse 
 
 'Oh, please Please I' Her consternation was comic. 'You 
 won't do that it would be the ruin of any nurse.' 
 
 'If I asked my doctor to listen to her reasonable questions 
 about her care of me? Preposterous!' 
 
 'Oh, he does listen. Don't imagine he loses anything that's 
 said.' 
 
 'How do you know?' 
 
 'It always turns out so. He never seems to look, sees every- 
 thing doesn't listen, hears everything.' 
 
 'Then, why didn't he answer about my having coffee?'
 
 i6 2 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'It was an answer, you see.' 
 
 'His saying nothing?' 
 
 'Why, yes. You haven't had it.' 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The next day, in the ten minutes before he was due, Nurse 
 Phillips went about the room folding up towels, putting slippers 
 out of sight, and altogether fidgeting about in a way that she 
 seemed to reserve solely for this particular hour three times in 
 the week. 
 
 'Oh, you needn't be so particular,' Katharine said at last. 
 
 'His own house is not so immaculate Have you ever seen 
 
 his wife?' she asked suddenly. 
 
 The nurse stopped and stared. 'His wife? He is not 
 married.' 
 
 'Oh, isn't he?' 
 
 'No, he has nobody but a little invalid step-brother a cripple 
 that he's devoted to. Dr. Vincent has all sorts of great people 
 asking him to their houses' Nurse Phillips spoke with an air 
 of personal pride 'but he never disappoints that sick boy. A 
 patient of mine, a well-known society- woman, once told me: 
 "We know now if he says, ' I've promised to dine with my brother,' 
 it's no use saying another word."' 
 
 So he had not married the horsey young woman! Katharine 
 was not foolish enough to believe it was for her sake he had been 
 so long single. She knew the world better than that. Women 
 did such things, not men. 
 
 But why had he ?
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SHE was reading a little volume that Anton had given her, 
 during the days of enchantment in Rome an exquisite diamond 
 edition of Dante's sonnets when Vincent appeared, chart in 
 hand, and on his lips the words: 'Well, how's this patient?' 
 setting her in the pigeon-hole of her affliction, roughly stripped of 
 individuality, labelled only, a disease. By a deliberate emphasis, 
 too, underscoring the pitiful commonness of her plight. With 
 that quick step of his, all day long, he was in and out of sick- 
 rooms this, one of scores. 
 
 She laid the white vellum volume down, keeping her finger in 
 the place, and said 'Good-morning' with an easily discernible 
 access of dignity. If nothing of this escaped him, he made no 
 sign. 
 
 'I have forgotten to tell you before,' she said, 'that massage 
 doesn't agree with me.' 
 
 'How do you know it doesn't agree with you?' 
 
 'By the after-effects.' 
 
 'What are they?' 
 
 'Overfatigue.' 
 
 'Oh, that isn't the massage that's the foolish life you've led.' 
 
 'But it frets me to to' she was losing her temper 'to be 
 pawed about.' He only laughed. 'I don't want any more of it,' 
 she said. 
 
 'You've got to have it,' he said shortly. 
 
 'No, really, it does me no good, and I dislike it extremely.' 
 
 'By God, if one got only what one liked in this world! you'll 
 find you won't like plenty of things,' he assured her encouragingly. 
 
 'But I ' 
 
 He cut her short by throwing the chart down on the pink cover- 
 
 163
 
 i6 4 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 H i, and he took the little volume out of her hand. Looked at it 
 suspiciously, and ejaculated, 'More poetry' as if he had caught 
 her taking opium. 'Italian, too,' he added, as though this be- 
 trayed a blacker depth. He threw the book on the table. 'If 
 you want to give yourself a chance to get well, leave sentimental 
 rot alone for six weeks, anyhow.' 
 
 'You may not care about it yourself, but poetry has helped 
 many a sick person ' 
 
 'Never helped anybody,' he retorted angrily. 'The Poets are 
 responsible for a lot of harm filling women's minds with foolish- 
 ness, encouraging their weakness blinding them to reality. I 
 tell you your only chance is to let the ideal alone and be an animal 
 for a time. Eat, sleep, and leave sentiment to fools.' 
 
 'I'm not sentimental.' 
 
 'Oh, aren't you!' he rapped out. 
 
 She shook her head with an inclination to laugh, rather 
 than be angry. 'You think I am, because you've heard I write 
 poetry.' 
 
 'I've read some of it!' he snorted. 
 
 'Ohf she blinked, confounded. 'But one can write poetry 
 and yet be quite sensible.' He sat lowering. '/ am.' 
 
 ' are what?' he demanded, not looking at her. 
 
 'Quite sensible,' she answered seriously. 
 
 'Well, let's see!' he tossed the challenge out. 
 
 She half sat up, and laid hands on the chart. 
 
 'That's not for you.' He took it from her with scant ceremony. 
 Then, as the caprice seized her again, to laugh up into the lower- 
 ing face, he shot a look at her that quenched her sense of the 
 comic as he said harshly: 'There's nothing ideal about your 
 present circumstances, I can tell you that!' He took a blue 
 paper out of his pocket, spread it open on the chart, and looked 
 at it a moment. 'This is your first analysis. Nice reading!' 
 
 'What does it say?' 
 
 He threw the paper on the rose-silk coverlid. 'You can look 
 at that all you like.' 
 
 She took it up. 'What does it mean? I can't understand 
 these words.' 
 
 'Lucky for you,' he jeered. 
 
 'Is it a very bad report?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 165 
 
 'Rotten! Rotten state of things.' He waited a moment to 
 give her the full benefit of the good news, and then took the paper 
 back, and smoothed it out under his slim brown fingers, that 
 seemed no part of his vigorous, essentially masculine frame. ' We 
 have here,' he spoke like a professor demonstrating before a class, 
 'a pasty-faced subject ' 
 
 ' You mean me ? ' 
 
 'Yes. Haven't you looked in the glass?' 
 
 Anton! she mentally apostrophized with a little gasp. Hear 
 him! shades of all who have spoken women fair since Eve first 
 knew she was in Paradise by words on Adam's lips! 
 
 As he sat with his black look bent upon the paper, she hesitated 
 between hysterical laughter and downright anger. Of what use 
 to be angry with such a creature ? With a sort of grim gusto he 
 was uttering his few bald phrases, about the poverty of her blood 
 and her generally deplorable state. 
 
 'I knew you were ill, but I didn't know how ill.' Katharine 
 was grave enough now. ' If you hadn't come in that morning ' 
 
 'What would have happened?' she said very low. 
 
 'You'd have had a bad breakdown.' 
 
 Suddenly all the horror of those days and nights before she 
 went to him suddenly it all came rolling back, threatening to 
 overwhelm. Had she been having only a little respite here, 
 lulled by some curious hypnotic quality in the man who had set 
 himself to try the experiment of saving her ? What did he really 
 think of her chances ? She had no fear that he would lie. If he 
 could be induced to say he believed she would get well, she would 
 know it a thing long ago appointed, fixed by Fate, unalterable; 
 secure that she should find health again. But in putting the 
 question, she had the sense of running a ghastly risk. She was 
 not so ready to die as she had thought and death was far from 
 being the worst that might befall. Could she bear the truth? 
 For if he should be doubtful it would mean the worst. It he were 
 to hesitate an instant, it would mean 'thumbs down.' But if he 
 could be got to say all would be well why, then, 'not all the 
 angels in heaven above, nor the devils down under the sea,' could 
 tear that certainty away. Oh yes, she had been, as he said, on 
 the brink of a bad breakdown, that morning she had hurried to 
 Cavendish Square.
 
 T 66 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'But you did come in,' he said after the pause, getting up sud- 
 denly as one who has dealt exhaustively with his subject. 
 
 'Wait a moment.' She sat straight, and held up a detaining 
 hand, as he was making for the door. He never halted, but 
 turned his dark face over his shoulder. 'Shall I gel well? 1 she 
 said, dropping her voice to a whisper as he flung open the door. 
 
 'Of course you'll get well,' he answered, speaking louder than 
 usual, 'if you do what you're told.' 
 
 And she heard him running downstairs. 
 
 Before Nurse Phillips brought into Katharine's room any of 
 the many flowers sent the patient by her friends, she carefully 
 abstracted the notes. So that except for Anton's roses, which 
 always came on Thursdays, and needed no labelling with that 
 sole exception, Katharine had no idea who was remembering her 
 and who forgetting. 'Was no card sent up with these?' she 
 would ask at first, feeling an oppression at the menace of a name 
 at the thought of anyone, even thus symbolically, penetrating 
 her retreat. But the gaunt nurse would stiffen her thin body, and 
 say with the air of a school ma'am checking a froward pupil: 
 'Dr. Vincent prefers the names not to be given.' And again that 
 curtain, that had trembled, moved an instant, as if a hand were in 
 the act of sweeping it aside to admit the horde without again at 
 Vincent's sharp command, it fell softly down between Katharine 
 and all the world, thick, motionless, impenetrable. Nestling 
 secure under the coverlid, Katharine smiled. 
 
 'You will get all the cards and notes when you are well, 'added 
 the nurse, as if to forestall complaint. 
 
 'When did he make that rule?' 
 
 'Oh, before I began to nurse for him.' 
 
 Katharine was even disappointed that she might not regard it 
 as a precaution specially invented for her safe-guarding. More 
 and more she secretly hugged the sense of having someone to 
 keep the big roaring world at bay. But that did not prevent her 
 from now and then affecting some concern for the thing she was 
 cut off from. 
 
 'Is there going to be a General Election?' she asked Vincent 
 one day. 
 
 ' Looks rather like it.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 167 
 
 'I shall never catch up! I suppose all sorts of things are 
 happening? . . .' 
 
 ' Not that 7 know of . Beastly weather! You're lucky to be in 
 bed such a day.' 
 
 He left her with the feeling that had grown and grown, as of 
 one on board ship in the middle of the ocean. Imagination 
 at first was always going back to the moment of leave-taking 
 not only of persons, but of material means of communication. 
 There had been the usual last moments when letters were hurried 
 on board, telegraph-boys rushed back and forth, messenger-boys 
 with 'Express' notes and flowers friends ran up and down the 
 gangway. Then the thousand threads in an instant severed, the 
 whole of life cut off, and you swung out to sea. But the image 
 dissatisfied her now. She replaced it by a picture of herself in a 
 moated house set upon a hill-top. Many roads leading up, and 
 all full of people, all bound for the hill-house. On a sudden 
 Vincent had ordered the drawbridge up and no soul could pass. 
 They stood baulked, making appeals from the far side of the 
 moat. Vincent shook his head; they turned away and vanished. 
 And Vincent had gone round the high-perched house and cut all 
 the wires. These were, mysteriously, not telegraph and telephone 
 alone, but sentient avenues of emotion, as well as of practical 
 communication. Each man and woman who had established 
 anything like close intercourse or intimate understanding with the 
 lady in the hill-house, each one in her life who 'mattered,' had 
 woven a thread from the innermost seat of his consciousness 
 to the innermost seat of hers. And each upon his string each 
 one pulled and played, until Vincent had gone all round the 
 house and cut them every one. 
 
 She had a distinct vision of the ends of these cut threads and 
 wires hanging limp, relaxed, over the moat's high wall. And, 
 oddly enough, the fancy brought her a more perfect rest than she 
 had known. This was what he meant when he said 'isolation' 
 bless him! No pulse of that swift current that throbbed round 
 the world could reach and electrify Katharine Dereham to pleasure 
 or to pain. Yielding herself up to the blissful sense of detach- 
 ment and quiescence, she saw, as a non-combatant might see 
 from afar, through the dust and smoke of a distant battle saw 
 better than the men who fought, how the conflict tended. In
 
 1 68 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 calling modern civilization 'Progress' men were proud. What 
 more civilized than this constant 'going forward'? What had 
 the Nineteenth Century struggled for more than any other gain? 
 What had it achieved for the million? Enormously increased 
 facility for 'going forward.' And where men could not go them- 
 selves, they sent their spirit through the penny post or flitting 
 ghostly over wires. Movement, Progress were they indeed 
 civilization ? Had the Nineteenth Century marvels of locomotion 
 and intercommunication two sides of the same shield had 
 they made men better friends than the elder world had seen? 
 Had they made tenderer lovers or strengthened the family tie? 
 Hardly. Were the nations closer drawn? Yes, for competition, 
 hatred, conflict. 
 
 That din of many voices, Intercommunication, and its twin 
 horror, incessant Locomotion these it was that had given the 
 world a new aspect, and mankind a new disease. Neurasthenia 
 had the foremost nations in its grip. How could it be otherwise ? 
 as Vincent said. People spend more and more every year on 
 mere movement. In the old days, even your fine gentleman, if 
 after his college days, he made the Grand Tour with his ' Gover- 
 nor,' did his travelling once and for all. Now the European ' trip ' 
 is not a matter for once in a lifetime, but for once a year. In this 
 fever for movement the rich lead, but the poor follow hard. 
 'Cheap trips' to Brighton and to Margate, and season tickets to 
 places nearer by, keep the lower classes almost as much on the 
 jump as Egypt, India, and Japan do the leisured few the dif- 
 ference is merely in the length of stride, not in the essential 
 unrest. 
 
 'What has your life been?' Vincent arraigned his patient. 
 'How many years since you were sixteen have you stayed in 
 any one place ? ' Not a twelvemonth, not six months, spent in a 
 single spot. 
 
 'Where do you live?' 
 
 'Why, in London and at the Peterborough place in Devon.' 
 
 'Just as if a body could occupy two places at once! That's 
 the heart of the trouble. You are always pulling yourself up 
 and leaving some of your roots behind.' 
 
 'Haven't you a place in the country?' 
 
 'Yes, and the minute I can afford to stay there you won't
 
 A DARK LANTERN 169 
 
 catch me in London, let alone scouring the Continent. But you 
 You are in Paris a month or two out of every twelve. At Easter, 
 Rome or the Riviera. August finds you in Scotland. Whitsun- 
 tide ' He motioned impatiently, as if to say: I can't follow 
 
 such a will-o'-the-wisp. 'And as if that sort of teetotum arrange- 
 ment were not enough, late years have seen the development 
 of the week-end country-house visit. Movement, movement 
 until the only way to save your lives is to catch hold of you and 
 clap you into a Rest Cure. But what good! The minute you 
 are out ' 
 
 'No, no; I've learnt a hard lesson,' quoth Katharine, smiling 
 ruefully. 
 
 1 Not a bit of it,' he growled. ' Are you well ? Then it's : " Let 
 us go to Monte Carlo and play ... to St. Moritz and skate." 
 Are you ill? off to Nauheim; Marienbad. Any time, any 
 excuse; only let us go, go, go. The very phrase for breakdown 
 is "not able to keep going any longer." And the poor body' 
 he had glanced at the thin outlines under the rose coverlid 
 'whose tap-root is in the soil, is dragged up from its native heath 
 every few weeks, hauled about from pillar to post, shaken and 
 whirled in motor-cars, jostled on the railway, tossed about on 
 the sea.' 
 
 He sat still and glowered while his patient mentally filled in 
 the outline. Even 'at home' one's whole ill-used system was 
 kept a-quiver; beat upon by fierce lights; hourly jarred by the 
 postman's knock shot through and through by electric currents 
 no safety even behind the barrier of the Sea. Cabled at, 
 telephoned to, whirled through space, and stuck as full of the 
 darts of modern Civilization as any St. Sebastian is with arrows. 
 
 'And yet there are many like me,' said the low voice from the 
 bed, 'quite ready to sit down in some quiet country spot and 
 never leave it.' 
 
 'Humph! How long do you think that mood would last? 
 
 anyone who has lived like a Dancing Dervish!'
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AT the end of the first week of her incarceration, Katharine 
 was distinctly better, at the end of the second, less well. She 
 had her own view of the cause. 
 
 'Nurse Phillips!' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'You must tell Dr. Vincent how bad this massage is for me.' 
 
 'Don't you think it's just at first?' 
 
 'No. I've tried it off and on for years. It's always so. You 
 can see the ill effects for yourself.' No answer. 'Can't you?' 
 
 'I can see you seem very tired after it,' she admitted. 'But I 
 suppose he has some good reason for ' 
 
 Good heaven! the woman's imagination balked at the bare 
 notion of anything of Vincent's ordering not doing ultimate 
 good. 
 
 'There can't be any intelligent reason for increasing my ner- 
 vousness and my pain.' 
 
 The nurse made a little non-committal hitch of one shoulder 
 and spread her cold hands. 
 
 Katharine kept her eyes upon her. 'You surely don't think 
 he never makes a mistake.' 
 
 'I suppose he does; but I've never seen it.' 
 
 'Well, at all events, you must please tell him the massage does 
 me no good, but actual harm.' As the woman made no rejoinder: 
 'You won't forget?' ' 
 
 'I'll tell him that you say so.' While Katharine digested this 
 in silence, the nurse went on: 'It won't be any use. He will 
 only shrug his shoulders, and rush downstairs.' As she saw her 
 patient's eyes flash she added, 'But if you tell him 
 
 Katharine did not think it necessary to say that she had tried 
 
 170
 
 A DARK LANTERN 171 
 
 that and had failed. 'Please remember not to lean against the 
 bed,' she said wearily. Nurse Phillips went and mended the 
 fire. After handling the dusty if not actually dirty shovel and 
 poker, she proceeded, without washing, to put away Katharine's 
 clean linen just come from the laundry. As her fingers, purple 
 outside, and witnessing to London grime within, touched the 
 dainty things 'Oh, don't!' cried the patient. 'Do wait till 
 you've washed your hands.' 
 
 'I can't be always washing.' 
 
 'No; I realize that. But at least put on gloves when you 
 attend to the fire.' The nurse sniffed up disdain through her 
 cold nose. It was the first time there had been anything resem- 
 bling a passage of arms between them. But the nurse's ingrained 
 untidiness troubled Katharine unceasingly. The patient had 
 had little experience of the average London woman's early 
 relinquishment of the struggle against dirt, her acceptance of 
 a compromise which habit has brought her to regard as cleanli- 
 ness. She forgot that it took an army of well-trained people to 
 keep Peterborough House in its habitual condition, and that 
 this woman had been brought up in circumstances where true 
 cleanliness was too expensive to be attained. Twenty times a 
 day the nurse did things that Katharine would have dismissed 
 any servant in her employ for doing a second time. And yet 
 she tried to overcome her sense of discomfort tried to blunt 
 her perception of it. Once, indeed, she did say something about 
 it to the masseuse. Miss Gillies had come in promptly as usual, 
 and instantly turned up her sleeves preparatory to washing 
 her hands. 'I am not able to have massage to-day,' said 
 Katharine. 
 
 'Oh!' Miss Gillies looked as disappointed as if the lost 
 benefit were her own. 'Have just a little arms and neck.' 
 
 'No. I can't stand it to-day.' Then suddenly, 'I should 
 think you'd be delighted.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'To be let off.' 
 
 'Oh, I don't care to have time left on my hands' and she 
 asked professional questions. Katharine, a little amused, 
 answered her. 
 
 'Just let me see if 1 can't help that pain, will you?' and
 
 i ;a A DARK LANTERN 
 
 soon she was hammering away at poor Katharine quite in 
 the usual way. It was that day the sick woman confessed 
 to being tortured at the nurse's untidy ways. Miss Gillies 
 nodded comprehendingly. 'Londoners are usually durrty,' 
 she agreed. 'And the ordinary English surrvant!' She fell 
 to beating the unhappy patient as though Katharine were a 
 prime offender. 'The average house is filthy,' she said, pausing 
 an instant, with her high colour several shades higher still 
 'simply filthy. And if you tell people that, they don't know 
 what you mean. Once a year they have what they call their 
 spring cleaning. Good heaven! we have it in Scotland once a 
 week.' 
 
 'Don't come this afternoon, Miss Gillies,' said Katharine 
 faintly, turning over after her final punishment. 'I simply can- 
 not bear it twice to-day.' 
 
 'Has the Doctor said so?' 
 
 'No; but I'll explain.' As Miss Gillies shook her head: 'You're 
 an odd woman. Are you honestly not glad sometimes to have a 
 holiday ? ' 
 
 'I preferr to do my wurruk,' she said sturdily, her burr coming 
 out stronger than usual. 'I like to see my patient getting on.' 
 
 'Well, you needn't come any more to-day.' 
 
 'I must come unless I have Dr. Vincent's orders not to.' 
 
 'I'll tell him I was too weak.' 
 
 Miss Gillies' face was anxious. 'Don't look so cast down/ 
 said Katharine, laughing. 
 
 The Scotswoman shook her tawny head. 'Wait till ye see 
 what the Doctor looks like. But I'll be herre at fourr, and hope 
 ye'll be betterr.' 
 
 When Vincent came, Katharine told him with a light-hearted 
 air that she had urged Miss Gillies to take a holiday. 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'Because you are going to let me off massage,' Katharine 
 smiled appealingly then, seeing his face darken: 'She wears 
 me out, Dr. Vincent.' 
 
 'Tell her to be more gentle.' 
 
 'It's not a question of gentle or rough. If I have it at all, 
 I'd rather have it hard.' He had not been in the room thirty 
 seconds but he jumped up, saying: 'You can't do without it.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 173 
 
 'Then once a day.' 
 
 'No; twice' his hand was on the knob. 
 
 'Please, please once.' 
 
 'Twice!' and he was outside. 
 
 She felt unequal for the present to further contest on the sub- 
 ject. And besides, after all, she told herself, he must, with his 
 wide experience, know better than she. When she could carry 
 her increased pain with help of that conviction, she/had already 
 travelled farther than she knew. But it was true that certain 
 of her old bad symptoms were gradually yielding to his treat- 
 ment. He would make all well before he was done with her, if, 
 as he himself had said, she 'did as she was told.' 
 
 The next time he appeared, Katharine knew he had heard 
 from the nurse outside that the last medicine had not had the 
 desired effect, and that the patient grievously missed her morn- 
 ing coffee. Katharine meant to put in a plea herself if the nurse 
 should have failed, but as she watched him silently screwing 
 together the two ebony pieces of his stethoscope, she was struck 
 afresh by something in his air to which she could not give a 
 name. It was suddenly as if she had never seen him before, 
 and just as one looking on a new face for the first time gets an 
 impression sharper, and somehow different, from anything that 
 one can commonly recover after custom has blurred the saliencies 
 just so she had an instant's perception of how he would have 
 struck her had she never seen him before. That's how he seems 
 to people! she thought. It was because I had known him before, 
 that I didn't see him so, that morning I went to Cavendish Square. 
 
 Didn't see him properly at all. But now Following out 
 
 her new impression: 'Does that black stick of yours help the 
 incantation ? ' 
 
 'The what?' (She laughed.) 'Nurse! Bring me the pre- 
 scription-book.' 
 
 When the woman had gone, 'It isn't medicine I want,' said 
 the patient. 
 
 'What do you want?' he asked, as though he hadn't been 
 told outside. 
 
 But instead of saying coffee, the patient answered: 'Magic.' 
 
 'Whatf 
 
 'Not medicine, Magic is what I need.'
 
 i 7 4 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Then you've come to the wrong man.' 
 
 She looked at him curiously: 'I'm not so sure.' 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 And still from time to time, as the days went on, she made 
 clutches at her old judicial frame of mind. She saw that the 
 idea of Vincent himself lending the smallest countenance to 
 any hocus-pocus, even to a good end, was unthinkable. He 
 would have covered with ridicule the notion of a doctor's having 
 any so-called 'occult' power. Nevertheless, she told herself 
 that he had cultivated the legend of his fierceness and his hard- 
 ness, so that he might impose on the imagination of patients 
 belonging almost exclusively to the class of the pampered and 
 the over-self-indulged people who had to be terrorized into 
 obedience and harried into health. She remembered the in- 
 stance of the great painter, Aubrey Church. He had told her 
 himself, the night after that first talk with Blanche about Vincent, 
 how he had held out through months of agony against going 
 to the man, and finally rushed to him one day, only to stop on 
 the door-step, and, recalling afresh stories he had heard about 
 him, turned about, and went back home with his malady, rather 
 than put himself under such a man. So the legend had its un- 
 salutary side. But she could see plainly now, how with many 
 it must give him a huge initial advantage. She was even con- 
 scious how the very thought of being herself treated to the rough 
 side of his tongue had kept her more than once from speaking 
 her mind. She knew there were certain limits beyond which 
 if he should step she would have to dismiss him. Things that 
 other women had had to suffer at his hands she would never 
 tolerate. The more important, therefore, not to cross him 
 since, like those others at 'the Home,' whose diet was frequently 
 humble pie, she had come to feel: without his help, I shall not 
 get well. And yet, careful as she had been, he had spoken to 
 her with what she felt acutely to be an unnecessary crudity 
 about certain details seeming almost (or did she imagine it?) 
 to take a malicious pleasure in calling this hitherto inaccessible 
 lady, down from the clouds, to answer his blunt interrogatories. 
 It was as if he waited for her to wince that he might pounce 
 upon her. It would almost seem as if he laid traps for weak- 
 ness, and stood ready to jeer if she were caught.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 175 
 
 One day, as he was about to test the action of her heart, she, 
 upon a quickly repented impulse, held the coverlid tight across 
 her breast a moment, and as he pulled it away impatiently, 
 she turned her head aside with an involuntary long breath. 
 
 'What are you sighing about?' he said roughly, as he turned 
 the coverlid down and gleamed at her between half-shut, moody 
 eyes. 
 
 'I'm not sighing,' she said, with more fortitude than truth; 
 and she knew he was disappointed that she gave him no chance 
 to say to her, as he had said to a woman who had made a pro- 
 tracted struggle under similar circumstances: 'I knew you had 
 a feeble body, but I had no idea you were feeble-minded too. 
 You evidently can't imagine how absolutely uninteresting these 
 matters of routine are to a doctor.' And, indeed, to do him 
 justice, he seemed to try to convey this indifference in time to 
 save his patients from error. Never could disembodied spirit 
 have brought less of the flesh to the discharge of duty than did 
 Garth Vincent. It was the more credit since he was intensely 
 man. But in his work, the keen, untender eyes were all for 
 symptoms; the fine brown hands touched warm flesh as coolly 
 as they would have pressed a rubber water-bottle. 
 
 'Do you go into every sick-room looking as if you'd rather 
 murder than cure the patient?' Katharine asked him one day. 
 
 He grinned with the momentary satisfaction of one who sees 
 himself appreciated. 'If I had my way,' he said, 'I'd give sick 
 people a certain time to get well in if they didn't do it, I'd have 
 them strangled.' 
 
 'Oh no, you'd strangle them yourself. You'd like that part 
 of it.' 
 
 He nodded amiably. 'I'd begin with the babies. I wouldn't 
 give the weak ones a chance to grow up and cumber the earth.' 
 
 Katharine remembered the little invalid brother, and felt 
 sure he did not guess that she had heard of his existence or 
 of the bond of kindness said to exist between the two. 'After 
 all, you're not a Hercules yourself,' she said aloud, recalling 
 things the nurses had said about his overworking and his head- 
 aches. 
 
 'No,' he retorted. 'I ought to have been choked in my 
 cradle.'
 
 176 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'I'm very glad you weren't,' she said quickly. His half-shut 
 eyes seemed to search the wall for Anton. Katharine felt a 
 renewed impatience with the picture. Why did he seem to 
 notice it so often? Or did she only imagine that he did? No, 
 she felt that he realized now, how little she liked to be reminded 
 of it perhaps even knew she forebore to send it away only be- 
 cause that would be to emphasize its having been there. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Although she could not move Vincent on the subject of massage, 
 she did by degrees regulate Miss Gillies though it was not alto- 
 gether easy. Fortunately, the masseuse was an intelligent woman, 
 though her interests were not varied. They closely skirted 
 her profession, and by degrees it was apparent to Katharine's 
 clear sight, that they centred in Garth Vincent. Not, it would 
 seem, in any sentimental fashion, but as a study and a standard. 
 This fact was brought to the surface by Katharine's criticism 
 of him. Indeed, Miss Dereham was learning far more of her 
 medical attendant than most of his patients did, and from two 
 aspects of one fact: her vague unformulated fear of falling under 
 his influence, and her perfectly conscious shrinking from even 
 seeming to do so in the eyes of the nurses. The insistence of 
 this double motive made her affect a lack of faith she was daily 
 farther from feeling. Her deliberate expression of incredulity 
 and dissatisfaction, not only brought out the loyalty of Vincent's 
 subordinates, but gave their enthusiastic defence of him, an 
 air of professionalism that they could feel cloaked the strong 
 personal element. And so, as the days went on, these women, 
 shut up there together, played at a kind of intellectual hide- 
 and-seek. Katharine, under cover of criticism, more and more 
 prompting them to stories of his miraculous cures his blunt 
 and, to their sense, clever sayings; the nurses firing their own 
 hearts, while they could honestly think they were only inspiring 
 the patient's with a salutary confidence. Very adroit Miss 
 Dereham became in drawing the women out guiding them 
 from any point of the compass to the one topic they handled 
 with a depth of feeling they strove in vain to hide, and an elo- 
 quence they did not guess. 
 
 Having discovered in the pretty little night-nurse that same 
 combination of fear, and worship of Vincent, that Katharine
 
 A DARK LANTERN 177 
 
 had so quickly detected under Nurse Phillips' dryness she 
 said to the masseuse one day: 
 
 'It is really comic to see the state of awe these nurses are in. 
 I asked the little young one last night to go and cut out the 
 Honours list from the morning's Times and bring it in to me. 
 He lets me read, you know.' 
 
 'But not daily papers.' 
 
 'No. The Honours list isn't the daily paper.' 
 
 'It is news.' 
 
 'Oh, the very mildest form of entertainment. But she flatly 
 refused.' 
 
 'Of course.' 
 
 'It wasn't of course at all. You're not so hopelessly under 
 the spell; you'll get a yesterday's paper for me.' 
 
 Miss Gillies shook her head. 'Oh, if you are afraid to, I'll 
 promise you Vincent shall not know.' 
 
 'I couldn't, really.' 
 
 Katharine spent ten minutes in trying to break down the 
 woman's resolution. Something of Vincent seemed to have 
 entered into her. Katharine might as well have talked to the 
 bed-post. But the big brawny Highlander talked readily enough 
 of his Honours, though they were not listed. This and that 
 hopeless case he had brought round. How just in the past 
 two years his practice had grown so enormous, that he was in 
 danger of breaking down his own health in carrying it; how 
 he had now to charge, besides his invariable big fee, a guinea 
 a mile extra if he went outside a certain small radius; how she 
 had just come from a patient he had visited that very day at 
 two o'clock and that patient was a person of discernment and 
 some humanity. She had said to him: 'You don't look well.' 
 'Oh, I'm well enough I haven't had luncheon.' 'Why not?' 
 'Hadn't time to-day,' he said. 
 
 'That's simply silly of him,' contributed Katharine. The 
 heavy face of the woman lightened with a sudden quick gentle- 
 ness. 
 
 'They call him hard. And nobody denies his manners are 
 atrocious. I've heard people say he is cruel. The fact is, he 
 neglects himself rather than them.' 
 As she was going out that evening Katharine called after 
 
 12
 
 i 7 8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 her: 'I know why you none of you dare let me see the Honours 
 list. They've given Vincent a knighthood, and you're all so 
 silly about him, you're afraid I couldn't refrain from congratu- 
 lating him, too.' The Scotchwoman laughed. 'No, he isn't 
 Sir Garth yet and he may never be, he makes too many enemies. 
 But they can't prevent him, all the same, from being the Great 
 Doctor Vincent I 1 She nodded and went out. 
 
 To the pink-cheeked night-nurse, Katharine that same evening, 
 spoke of the girl's home, 'far away in Wales.' 
 
 'I was once among those mountains it's a lovely country,' 
 said the patient, with the impulse to bring the place nearer to 
 the girl's homesick sense. 'Oh, you know it?' and she beamed. 
 'Have you seen Marion Tregethan's pictures of it?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'No? She is very famous. She had a picture in the Academy 
 two years ago. Miss Tregethan is a near neighbour of ours, 
 she said with innocent pride. 'But she has been so ill.' 
 
 'What has been the matter?' 
 
 'Well, one doctor said one thing and one another.' 
 
 'What did Vincent say?' 
 
 'I begged her for months to go and consult him. But she 
 had just had to settle some awful debt of her brother's and 
 she supports her mother, you see. She felt she couldn't afford 
 to pay a great specialist's fee. One day I I was so unhappy 
 about her, I thought she was dying, and I just went to see Dr. 
 Vincent.' She stopped breathless, as if she expected demon- 
 strations of astonishment from the patient. 'I told him about 
 her.' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 ' He said he couldn't possibly advise without seeing her. " Send 
 her here," he said. I explained that she wasn't well off, and 
 
 that she worked for a living, and how clever she was, and how 
 
 He cut me short: "Send her along." I thought, so did she, that 
 he meant to make a reduction in his charges. He treated her 
 for months, and cured her, and wouldn't let her pay a penny. 
 Oh, he is good, in spite of all they say. Just let them ask Marion 
 Tregethan I' Suddenly she lowered her voice from its note of 
 triumphant admiration to something close on reverence. ' Marion
 
 A DARK LANTERN 179 
 
 has seen him with his little step-brother,' she said, almost under 
 her breath. 'One day she had waited so long to see the doctor 
 the room was crowded, and it was quite the end of the morn- 
 ing after one o'clock, and the hours of consultation were over. 
 So poor Marion put on her things and was going home. But 
 in the hall she fainted. The servant called Dr. Vincent, and 
 he brought her round. But he wouldn't let her go away made 
 her have some luncheon. "My brother is here to-day," he said. 
 "We are going to the country together this afternoon." And 
 Marion found in the dining-room, when she went back, an in- 
 valid-chair, with a boy lying in it, looking about seven; but he's 
 ten or eleven. And to see Dr. Vincent with that boy well, 
 Marion cried when she told me about it, so I suppose that's why 
 I'm so silly now,' she said, brushing her hand across her pretty 
 eyes. 
 
 ' Doesn't the invalid brother live with him ? ' 
 
 'No, he wants to but his mother won't let him. Dr. Vin- 
 cent doesn't want her, they say but he cares about that boy 
 oh, he cares! She was his father's second wife, and she isn't 
 friends with her stepson awfully jealous of the way her boy 
 worships him. Dr. Vincent has done everything for them. They 
 have very little but what he gives them. They used to live all 
 together, but Dr. Vincent would rather be alone. He's all by 
 himself in that big house.' 
 
 'No doubt he has plenty of friends.' 
 
 'No, Marion Tregethan says there isn't a lonelier man in Eng- 
 land.' 
 
 * # * * * 
 
 He came in one stormy night at six, and sat down heavily 
 in the chair this time. It was a sign he might not hurry away 
 so soon, and Katharine's spirit rose. 
 
 She had learned now that if she talked of her pain, or indeed 
 of herself at all, he would get up and march out. For the last 
 two visits she had said nothing of symptoms, leaving him to learn 
 what he might from nurse and chart. But to-night: 'How did 
 you sleep last night?' he said. 
 
 'Well.' 
 
 'H'm! It's more than I did.' 
 
 'What kept you awake?' He shook his head, and picked
 
 i8o A DARK LANTERN 
 
 up a long chain of hers lying on the table by the bed a little 
 enamelled reliquary was attached. He laid the heart-shaped 
 box in the middle of the chart as he said: 'I often don't sleep, 
 when there's a case that isn't going right.' 
 
 ' Have you such a case now ? ' 
 
 He seemed to ward off any slightest danger of a professional 
 confidence 'and like everybody else I sometimes lie awake just 
 because I'm miserable.' 
 
 'Miserable? You?' 
 
 'Yes, of course. Everybody has his hour, from time to time. 
 Mine comes pretty often.' 
 
 'It ought not.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Because you have the two best things that can fall to the lot 
 of man.' 
 
 'What are they?* 
 
 'Work that you love, and people who pin their faith to it.' 
 
 'That never made anybody happy.' He was winding the 
 long jewelled chain in circles, round the reliquary, as it lay in 
 the middle of the chart. His head was bent, his look intent 
 on the pattern he was making; all about the man an unusual 
 quiet, almost absent-mindedness. Katharine held her breath 
 as one might, seeing a sleep-walker passing unaware through 
 peril. Controlling her voice to a low, steady cadence, she said 
 quietly: 'What does make people happy?' And still staring 
 at the gleaming chain, 'Love,' he answered. She lay very still. 
 She had heard the word from the lips of a good many men, but 
 she had never heard it with that accent. No gentleness in it 
 no shred of tenderness, personal or impersonal, was left about 
 the vexed and ill-used word. It came out naked, bare, bleed- 
 ing, like a new-born child with a cry but far enough from a 
 wail, for he had brought the single syllable out on a note of low 
 defiance, as one speaks the name of one's enemy as well as one's 
 desire. It struck Katharine that 'Love' should always be said 
 just so. It had thrilled her like the finale of some great tragic 
 poem. And he was like that, after all this man. 
 
 Hard upon the heels of the thought came a quick revulsion. 
 He was trying her. Just as he had tried her endurance of bodily 
 pain, he was putting her sore heart to the proof. Was he think-
 
 A DARK LANTERN 181 
 
 ing of the German officer above the fire? Whether it was an 
 ancient grudge against her, or a newer grievance against all 
 the tribe of ailing nervous women, or pure insensibility, it was 
 certain he was constantly testing her against the cold steel edge 
 of his own strange character. The remembrance braced her. 
 'Why,' she said quietly, 'you are more sentimental than I.' 
 
 'That's not sentimentality,' he said doggedly, 'that's nature.' 
 And she felt rebuked. He had the advantage that truth may 
 be trusted to confer. 
 
 An angry dissatisfaction with herself seized her, as he straight- 
 ened up and laid her chain back upon the table. Hitting on 
 the first thing she could think of to detain him: 'One moment 
 before you go. I've given this massage a fair trial, and it has 
 done me downright harm.' He frowned. But before he could 
 answer: 'Look here,' she appealed to him, 'I've done everything 
 but everything you've advised ' 
 
 ' What else are you here for ? ' he threw in. 
 
 'I deserve that you should treat me like a reasonable being.' 
 Now, as ever, when she talked to him, he kept his eyes religiously 
 away from her face if they were anywhere but smouldering 
 under the half-closed lids, they rested on the features of Prince 
 Anton. 'I don't want I should hate to go contrary to your 
 advice ' 
 
 'You have only,' he interrupted roughly, 'yourself to please 
 about that. I don't imagine it matters particularly to anybody 
 else.' It was very brutal; it was so nearly true. What great 
 difference did she make in the world to any human soul? If 
 she had been ignorant before of the fact of her little actual ac- 
 count in the scheme of things, these weeks of death in life would 
 have demonstrated how little evil would be wrought in any life 
 should she go out of the Saga. Even Lord Peterborough had 
 done well enough without her she was convinced of that, since 
 he had never made a sign. But penetrated as she was by sud- 
 den pain at his words, she did Garth Vincent justice in her heart. 
 He had said that only because he had been betrayed into a 
 moment's confidence a little while before confidence which she 
 had met so ill. It was on his part a movement to redress the 
 balance. She had deserved what she got. 
 
 'But the fact about Miss Gillies is,' Katharine went on cour-
 
 i82 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 ageously, 'that good masseuse as she is, I should be better with- 
 out her.' 
 
 'It's damned nonsense!' he said, jumping up and going to 
 the fire, where he stood apparently scowling frightfully at Prince 
 Anton. '"Better without"!' he echoed. 'Maybe you think 
 you'd be better without me,' and he wheeled suddenly round. 
 
 'Oh no,' responded the patient faintly. 
 
 'There's no use in my wasting my time here,' he made for 
 the door, 'if you're going to treat yourself.' 
 
 'No, no,' said Katharine, half rising in her bed. The threat 
 of being given up by him why did it suddenly seem the last 
 irretrievable disaster? She did not know why but she was at 
 the mercy of the feeling. 'I was only joking,' she called out 
 as he reached the door. 
 
 'I'm glad to find you so cheerful,' he said in his most dour 
 fashion. 
 
 He passed Miss Gillies on the stair. She came in with a brisk 
 ' Good-evening ' and set to work.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 As slowly Katharine began to adjust her mind to the new 
 order this being dependent for everything, from creature com- 
 forts to high courage, upon a person who never spared her feel- 
 ings, and yet in some way conveyed to her that he was her friend 
 she found herself more and more occupied, absorbed by the 
 strange character of the man. What had made him like this? 
 She knew as well as if she had lived these years at his side, that 
 he had suffered. Partly, no doubt, for his own sins, but very 
 much, she was convinced, for those of others. Life had used 
 him hardly. The Welsh girl he had befriended had said 'there 
 is no lonelier man.' And all these gossiping subordinates of 
 his had said that it was true. Lonely! In London. At the 
 very zenith of a brilliant career. Lonely! Why was anyone 
 lonely? Because one could not accept life's second best. She 
 herself had been lonely in that cause. But, after all, women 
 were known both to need companionship more and to be more 
 fastidious about it. There were men, of course, who were by 
 nature celibate. That was not Garth Vincent's case. No ob- 
 server could be in an instant's doubt on that subject. But men 
 the reverse of ascetic, the most self-indulgent, they, too, remained 
 unmarried. No foolish lifelong search after perfection kept 
 them lonely. They were pleased only too readily and too widely. 
 But what was the truth about such people? 
 
 A short-sighted self-indulgence blinded them to the fact that 
 to avoid the closer tie, to avoid responsibility, is to lose the finer 
 essence of human companionship. You cannot get the sweet 
 alone of anything in this life, and at the same time get the best. 
 Even the grosser souls realize, in the end, they have let the best 
 go by, though they do not know at which of life's turnings they 
 
 183
 
 184 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 have missed it. If you will have only the gaiety, the youth ever 
 renewed, of changing relations, you will find yourself in the middle 
 years without those assurances and sanctities that are born of 
 faithful living through days evil as well as good, beside some crea- 
 ture you have not only enjoyed, but suffered with and carried 
 burdens for. Something of this, she felt, Garth Vincent realized. 
 And therefore was he alone. People criticised his manners. 
 But after all she smiled a little as the thought came to her 
 their manners seemed not too well to please him. He preferred 
 his loneliness. 
 
 ***** 
 
 One morning when the patient took the clinical thermometer 
 out of her mouth, instead of returning it at once to the nurse, 
 she held it a moment, trying to read the registration. Nurse 
 Phillips seized it, quite in Vincent's own style, and saying, 'The 
 Doctor doesn't allow the patient to do that,' she walked off 
 towards the washstand. She stood there as usual, pouring 
 cold water over the thermometer, wiped it, and snapped it in its 
 pencil-like case. 'When do you really wash it?' demanded 
 Katharine. , 
 
 'Wash it? I did so just now.' 
 
 'You poured a little cold water over it. When do you dis- 
 infect it?' The nurse stared. 'Surely,' Katharine went on, 
 
 'you realize that a thing that has been in the mouth needs ' 
 
 She broke off it was too absurd, telling this trained nurse a 
 commonplace like that. 'I suppose you keep an antiseptic wash 
 of some sort outside ? ' 
 
 'I don't know what you think I want an antiseptic for, in your 
 case,' replied Nurse Phillips loftily. 
 
 'I have no idea what the custom is in English hospitals; but 
 foreign nurses don't shut up their clinical thermometers in cases 
 without disinfecting them.' 
 
 'Oh, don't they?' 
 
 'No, the thermometer lies in a bowl of carbolized water, and 
 before it is taken out it is washed off with a bit of antiseptic 
 cotton.' 
 
 'That's in bad cases, I suppose?' 
 
 The depth of her ignorance lay revealed. She had as little 
 idea of the meaning of aseptic as any scullion.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 185 
 
 'In England,' Nurse Phillips was saying with complacent 
 finality, 'we pour clean water over them and wipe them.' 
 
 'In the nursing home, when you have two patients to look 
 after, do you use the same thermometer for both?' 
 
 'Yes,' answered the woman brusquely. 
 
 'And you wash them so, only with cold water?' 
 
 'We don't take contagious diseases in the nursing home.' 
 
 Katharine began to watch her now, whatever she did, with 
 a nervous dread of detecting her in further enormities. 
 
 One of the medicines was a sticky compound. After taking 
 it that evening, Katharine watched as she had never done be- 
 fore the fate of the medicine glass. The washstand was nearly 
 hidden by a great Spanish leather screen. The patient had to 
 sit up and crane her neck to keep the blue-gowned figure within 
 range of vision. To-night, for the first time, she did so. Saw 
 how a little water was poured into the glass and then emptied 
 out, saw the medicine still showing red and sticky. More water, 
 and oh, horror! the nurse put two of her purple fingers into the 
 glass and rubbed them round. Out with the ensanguined fluid, 
 and in the act of wiping the glass, arrested by a voice from the 
 bed. 
 
 'Surely you will at least rinse it first.' 
 
 The nurse never even turned round. 'I have.' 
 
 'Not since you had your fingers in the glass.' 
 
 'My fingers are clean.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 'Well, how's this patient to-day?' 
 
 'I am very miserable.' 
 
 'Of course you are a miserable sinner.' 
 
 'The old pain came back in the night. I can't stand it.' 
 
 'Think you can't, eh?' He rubbed his hands cheerfully. 
 It was a bitter day, but to Katharine his action had had an air 
 of fiendish satisfaction. 
 
 'You must give me something,' she said with an accent of 
 authority. 
 
 'I see. Because you haven't got any will-power I must further 
 weaken you with drugs.' 
 
 'I have a great deal of will-power but the after-effects of 
 such pain as this are very bad.'
 
 i86 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'They're nothing to the after-effects of narcotics/' She re- 
 membered a good illustration of the truth of that and fell silent. 
 
 'You must learn a little self-control it's part of the cure.' 
 
 'But really I can't stand 
 
 'By God!' he said in the casual way in which he often in- 
 voked the Deity. 'It's curious what a lot more we can all of 
 us stand than we think we can.' 
 
 She digested this, and seemed to abandon the first tack in 
 favour of another. 
 
 'I dislike to make complaints more than you will believe, 
 but ... I think you must get me another nurse.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'I'd like another.' 
 
 'You want to discharge a person without any reason?' 
 
 'I'd stand a better chance of getting well with another nurse, 
 which is a pretty good reason.' Then, as he still wore that 
 immobile black mask, and she was most unwilling to injure the 
 woman in his eyes, 'Put it down to nerves. I'd like someone 
 who will show more consideration for the patient and less for 
 
 the ' ('doctor' was on her lip; she changed the word) 
 
 'treatment. She rubs it in night and day.' 
 
 'She isn't here at night.' 
 
 'Well, she rubs it in 
 
 'You need it rubbed in. That's what she is here for. Any- 
 thing else?' He was probably quite shrewd enough to realize 
 that this couldn't be all Katharine had to complain of. 
 
 'Well, she is not very fastidious.' 
 
 'It's not her business to be fastidious.' 
 
 'Well, then,' Katharine was goaded into saying, 'I'd like 
 someone who hasn't been trained on dirty paupers.' 
 
 He walked quickly to the door, and jerked it open, calling 
 sharply, 'Nurse.' Katharine quaked as the stiff figure came in. 
 
 'Yes, Dr. Vincent.' 
 
 'Why do you have all these flowers here?' 
 
 'I did suggest ' 
 
 'Take them out. Keep the windows open day and night. 
 Good-bye!' . . . And that was all the good she had done herself. 
 ***** 
 
 The next time that Nurse Phillips came in with a basket of
 
 A DARK LANTERN i87 
 
 roses Katharine started. Anton's roses! It was so; they always 
 came on the same day of the week in a curious basket that looked 
 as if it were carved in ivory. And was it Thursday again already ? 
 She realized she had hardly thought of Anton since the last roses 
 came. Oh, the world was grown a strange and shrunken place 
 narrowed down to these four walls. It had been upon an 
 impulse almost guilty that she had started at the reminder of 
 Prince Anton. 
 
 'I have only brought them in for a moment for you to see,' 
 the nurse was saying, with an air unusually conciliatory. 'I 
 mustn't leave them after what Dr. Vincent said the last time.' 
 
 'No, you can have them if you like, but I don't want notes 
 or cards left about.' She fumbled feverishly among the cool 
 leaves. 
 
 'There was no note.' 
 
 'The card, then.' 
 
 The nurse had gone over to mend the fire, and made no re- 
 joinder. It angered Katharine to think this woman should 
 see even the name that name! should see it every week, be 
 that much perforce in Katharine Dereham's confidence, and 
 thinking, no doubt, all kinds of things that were not true. ' Was 
 there no card with this?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'What was done with it?' The woman hesitated, caught 
 the glint in the patient's eye, and answered: 
 
 'It is in the top drawer of the cabinet in the hall.' 
 
 'Who put it there?' 
 
 'I did.' 
 
 'What made you put it there?' 
 
 'That is where I put anything of that kind.' 
 
 'I left orders that everything coming for me was to be taken 
 to Lord Peterborough.' No answer. 'What else belonging 
 to me is out there in the hall cabinet ? ' 
 
 'Only a few cards and things.' 
 
 'Telegrams?' She writhed inwardly under the horror of 
 Anton's possible outpourings passing through this nurse's hands, 
 and left accessible to the curious eyes of servants. 'Letters? 
 Are there letters left out there ? Why don't you answer ? ' 
 
 'Dr. Vincent . I am not supposed to answer.' The re-
 
 i88 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 joinder came sulkily, as the nurse laid down the tongs and stood 
 up. 
 
 'Will you please go and get me those letters and things ?' . 
 
 'I can't do that.' 
 
 'I don't mean to read one of them. I simply want them here.' 
 
 'They are quite safe. But I'll lock the drawer, if you like.' 
 
 ' You have not understood. What I am asking you is to bring 
 the things to me.' 
 
 ' I must not do that without permission.' 
 
 'Whose?' 
 
 'Dr. Vincent's.' 
 
 Katharine got up, and went swiftly, barefoot, across the floor, 
 opened the door, crossed the hall, and pulled open the top drawer 
 of an inlaid cabinet that stood between two windows. She 
 gathered up a double handful of letters, cards, and orange-brown 
 telegrams, glanced hurriedly far back into the deep drawer to 
 satisfy herself that only visiting-cards remained, then turned 
 with a feverish quickness, and flew along the hall towards her 
 room. A man's voice down in the hall below arrested her. 
 It sounded so exactly like Sir Lawrence McClintoch's croak. 
 Was Lord Peterborough consulting him about her after all? 
 Was that he now coming up? She hurried on. At the turn of 
 the corridor she glanced down over the banister and saw Vincent 
 half-way up the stairs. He was coming with slow step, and deeply 
 meditative air, most unlike himself. Nor did he either pause, 
 or hasten, on catching sight of the white apparition above. But 
 even as it flew past she saw how his eyes, wide for once with sur- 
 prise, had suddenly taken on that suffused, bloodshot look that 
 anger gave them. 
 
 'What are you doing out here?' He overtook her at the 
 door. 
 
 'I I ' 
 
 'Get back into bed.' He spoke very roughly. She retreated 
 before him breathless. The nurse melted into the hall. 
 
 'What were you doing out there?' He shut the door, and 
 came across the room with that horrible red look in his eyes. 
 
 'I understood,' said Katharine, shaking with excitement, 
 'that my orders had been disobeyed that my letters and things 
 were not in the right hands.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 189 
 
 He brought out an oath that made Katharine catch her quick- 
 coming breath. 'What have you got to do with letters while 
 you're in my hands?' 
 
 'I don't want to read them,' she flung in. 
 
 'Your letters 1 damned nonsense! Not in the right hands!' 
 He swore again. 'You're not in the right hands! Send for 
 
 somebody else! I've got no time to ' He turned like one 
 
 bent blindly on rushing away had an air of thinking the door 
 was where the open fire burned so bright brought up suddenly 
 there before it, and stood glaring, his back turned squarely on 
 his patient. 
 
 In a flash Katharine was out of bed, slid her feet into slippers, 
 went over to where he stood, thrust two thin white hands between 
 him and the blaze, and let a shower of notes, cards, telegrams, 
 fall down upon the coals. 
 
 'They are all there,' she said, without looking up, and seemed 
 to wait an instant, like a penitent child, in her long white gown. 
 Then, as Vincent made no sign nor motion, she turned away. 
 When he did look round she was in bed again. 
 
 He walked to the door without a word, without even raising 
 his eyes. Katharine said to herself: 'He's going! He's leaving 
 me! what shall I do what shall I do?' 
 
 'Nurse,' he called sharply, as he shut the door. He stood, 
 a second or two, in the hall giving his directions, and then 
 Yes, he was running downstairs. Would he ever come back? 
 Oh yes, or else he would have said. What a hurry he was always 
 in to get away! Was there any sick-room where he lingered? 
 Ah no. If Garth Vincent stayed long anywhere, it must be in 
 some happy house where Health abode. 
 
 Nurse Phillips went out of the room as usual upon Miss 
 Gillies' appearance the next morning, and when Katharine 
 opened her eyes, after trying to sleep, for the hour of darkened 
 chamber that always followed massage she found a strange 
 young woman pulling up the shades. 
 
 'Good-morning. I am to be your nurse,' she said, smiling 
 over her shoulder. 
 
 ' Oh ! Where is Nurse Phillips ? ' 
 
 'She has gone.' 
 
 Something in the fresh, alert face that was as professional as
 
 190 
 
 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Nurse Phillips' own, and yet far from unpleasing, made Katharine 
 feel it well to abstain from questions. But she recognised Vin- 
 cent's hand. 
 
 It had not taken long, when he had once made up his mind. 
 ***** 
 
 The next day, a quarter of an hour or so before he was due : 
 
 'Put that chair closer, please,' said the patient to the new 
 nurse 'then perhaps he will sit in it.' 
 
 'Oh, he always sits on their beds.' 
 
 Their beds? Let him. But on my bed ! 
 
 'He does not "always" do so here,' the patient said aloud, 
 ' and I do not despair of seeing that he has learned better manners.' 
 
 The nurse laughed softly. 
 
 'I suppose,' pursued Katharine, 'you have heard his patients 
 say that before.' 
 
 'Oh yes, they all complain of his manners at first. But 
 he's too busy, I suppose, to ' 
 
 'Other doctors,' Katharine began, with a vision of the charm- 
 ing grace of her Italian medico, the irreproachable manners of 
 her Paris doctor the soothing gentleness of Sir Lawrence 
 McClintoch and with less enthusiasm she thought of the 
 cat-like step and honeyed solicitude of Dr. Traine. It was a 
 universally accepted axiom that doctors should be reassuring, 
 sympathetic not come in like a breath of east wind, glower at 
 you as if you were a naughty child, and she recalled other 
 'ways' of Vincent's that made her flush she hoped with anger. 
 'Other doctors aren't too busy to behave. Quite as great men as 
 Garth Vincent ' 
 
 'But you don't go to them,' said the nurse, alert. 
 
 'I have.' 
 
 'Ah! you've tried them!' The inference was unanswerable. 
 'Sister Morton she's at the Nursing Home, you know she 
 says he has a great horror of "the good bedside manner."' 
 
 'That's quite unnecessary,' said Miss Dereham with emphasis. 
 ***** 
 
 Two minutes later, while Nurse Lynn was gone downstairs 
 to telephone to the chemist, Natalie slipped noiselessly into her 
 mistress's room, finger on lip, laid a letter on the bed, and stole 
 away without a word. Katharine recognised Anton's writing,
 
 A DARK LANTERN 191 
 
 and before she had time to think, she had torn the envelope 
 open and read: 'Margaretha is dead yet how shall I weep at 
 what breaks down the barrier between you and me? For God's 
 sake send me a sign. ANTON.' 
 
 But she saw clear at last. It meant no more than that he 
 hoped she finally would yield. And if it did mean more ... It 
 was not merely Anton's wife it was Anton himself who was 
 dead. Even as she folded up the letter she saw not the German 
 soldier in her mind's eye, but a very different apparition. The 
 whole room all of life, was dominated by a forbidding and all 
 ungracious figure, which yet to her brought an influence of con- 
 fidence and safety. 
 
 Natalie had been leaning over the banisters listening to the 
 new nurse's strenuous endeavour to put herself in communica- 
 tion with the chemist. Natalie knew the facilities offered by 
 the London telephone system, and felt safe. She put her head 
 in at Katharine's door with an engaging smile. But the most 
 indulgent of mistresses regarded her with a look most strangely 
 stern. 'Don't you know that Dr. Vincent doesn't wish me to 
 receive letters?' 
 
 'Oui, mademoiselle,' said the maid, 'mais cette lettre la 
 
 'Is just the same as any other letter. And all are for- 
 bidden. There is no answer.' Natalie withdrew abashed, but 
 instantly her head reappeared. 'Vous n'en direz rien a M. le 
 Docteur ? ' 
 
 Under the coverlid Katharine smiled. What had been going 
 on downstairs, that Natalie, who feared nor God nor devil, 
 should be so anxious Vincent should not learn of her errand to 
 Miss Dereham's door? 
 
 'I'd be very sorry,' said that lady, 'to have him hear that his 
 orders had been set at defiance.' 
 
 'Oui, mademoiselle,' said the Frenchwoman with unnatural 
 meekness, and discreetly withdrew. 
 
 Still, so mechanically may an old infatuation work, that in 
 one side of her brain Katharine could lend herself to the idea 
 that she was thrilled at the news of the death of her rival, that 
 she waited with excitement to hear 'what next,' even imagined 
 Anton coming over incognito to see her. She stirred uneasily 
 at the supposition. He might think he could win over Lord
 
 i 9 2 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Peterborough might insist on seeing her might even encounter 
 Vincent on his way upstairs. 
 
 But at the invocation of that name her imagination was lulled 
 again. Prince Anton could 'get round' servants, might even 
 get round Lord Peterborough, but a hundred Antons would 
 not move Garth Vincent. She settled down into the pillows 
 with a luxurious sense of safety. She fell to shaping dialogues 
 between the two men, and could not for her life keep Anton 
 from cutting therein a sorry figure. As for herself, she took 
 no concern. She was under Vincent's care. Warm and close, 
 like a generous cloak, she wrapped the words 'under Garth 
 Vincent's care' about her shrinking heart. He might browbeat 
 her himself. He would not let another. 
 
 She lay and waited for him.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ON Friday of the fourth week he did not come at all. Kath- 
 arine had waited for him with an impatience she had some ado 
 to mask. When the new nurse brought up a telephone message 
 that he was delayed, and would not be in till the morrow, Kath- 
 arine felt the pinch of a disappointment wholly disproportionate 
 to the cause. It was as if he had done her some great wrong 
 failed her at a crucial moment. She was angry and sore, and, 
 yes, in pain. She had not noticed it before, but the pain was 
 greater than it had been far, far greater. For fear the nurse 
 should guess at her frame of mind, she dwelt on the physical 
 suffering. 
 
 'Would you like me to telephone and ask him to come in 
 after dinner?' 
 
 'Oh, no.' 
 
 Nurse Lynn readily accepted the patient's implied promise of 
 endurance. 'If you can wait till to-morrow it's rather hard 
 on him after being so driven all day, to be called out at night.' 
 
 'I shouldn't think of it,' said Katharine decidedly. 
 
 'He'll be ill if he goes on like this,' said the nurse. 'He has 
 been told that if he works more than five days a week he will 
 break down. And he does not always get his Saturday and 
 Sunday in the country. He certainly looked very fagged on 
 Wednesday.' 
 
 'Did he?' 
 
 'Didn't you notice? He is very anxious or he wouldn't be 
 promising to see people Saturday.' 
 
 'Anxious?' (Am I seriously worse? she thought.) 
 
 ' about somebody at the Nursing Home. And it tells on 
 
 him.' 
 
 'Who is it?' demanded Katharine. 
 
 193 13
 
 i 94 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'We aren't supposed to say. But we always notice he is 
 like that if a case isn't doing well hasn't a kind word for any- 
 body. I never saw him worse than he was when Mrs. well, 
 
 the wife of his greatest friend, was very ill. I nursed her. It 
 was all we could do' (Katharine saw how the nurse associated 
 herself neck to neck with the doctor in the struggle) 'all we 
 could do, to pull her through. And she suffered the most awful 
 agony. One day he came in when I was off duty, and found 
 some cocaine on her table. He just stood there in the middle 
 of the room, and swore till . . . well, my patient told me she 
 was so wrought up by the things he said, and the way he looked, 
 that when she found breath to say why she must have an anodyne 
 the pain was gone. For the half-hour that he stayed there, 
 she had no twinge of it.' 
 
 'I doubt if bad language would act so beneficently upon all,' 
 said Katharine dryly. 
 
 'Well, it's very curious,' observed the nurse. 'I don't say it's 
 his bad language, but he does take away pain just by coming 
 in.' Katharine had already had her own private siege, refusing 
 to admit this superstition, and would not yet capitulate certainly 
 not before a witness. 
 
 'He had to go to Osborne that week,' the nurse went on, 'for 
 a consultation, and he left that cocaine on my patient's table, 
 only telling her that if she took it she would make the battle 
 harder. When he got back, and saw how pale and spent she 
 was, without sleep, and enduring that awful pain, he said' she 
 lifted her head with an air of one trying on, in imagination, a 
 wreath of laurel; Katharine prepared to hear some utterance 
 heroic, if not profound 'my patient told me that he said, "You're 
 a plucky woman ! " and she felt it was worth it.' 
 
 'Worth . . . what?' 
 
 'To hear him say that.' 
 
 That Vincent should call one a plucky woman, worth days of 
 agony! 
 
 The next day at noon came a second message to say that, 
 just as he was leaving home to come to Miss Dereham, he was 
 unexpectedly sent for on a very urgent case, and would not 
 therefore be at Peterborough House till Monday. 
 
 Even after Katharine's ire had somewhat subsided, her sense
 
 A DARK LANTERN 195 
 
 of injury remained acute. Who were these people that took 
 up all his time kept him from her couldn't do without him? 
 
 Visions visited her of houses, here and there, all over the 
 West End. Men and women lying in their beds, with ears 
 keen to catch the sound of his horse's hoofs, eyes turned to the 
 door: when will he come? When will Help come over the 
 threshold in the person of Garth Vincent? Hope Happiness 
 . . . what a shining train he brought with him into shadowed 
 rooms. Gods! what a power for one man to hold in a democratic 
 age! 
 
 But her own private disappointment that he had not brought 
 her any good gift that day, of Faith or of Forgetting that pressed 
 hard. She could not get away from the pain in her body, and 
 shrank appalled at thought of all the hours she must live through 
 before Monday should bring her help. And she was humiliated 
 that it should be so. Why could she not bear her pain alone? 
 Why should she, Katharine Dereham, want to lean upon him? 
 It was inevitable enough in the feeble, shallow, hysterical women, 
 all very well for a romantic little nurse, that the doctor should 
 represent to her all good things, success or failure, public opinion, 
 the great world. But for Katharine Dereham! She wondered 
 an instant what Anton would say could he look into her mind 
 and see there nothing but nothing, save a longing to see this 
 rough man who so neglected her. Anton, Bertie, Blanche, Lord 
 Peterborough they flitted faint and shadow-like about the intense 
 silhouette of Garth Vincent, always now planted firm in the 
 foreground. She forced herself to think of other things scenes 
 in gay drawing-rooms, in Roman galleries, palaces, the Schleppen 
 Cour at Berlin, Court balls in London, and the brilliant days 
 and nights she had lived through in this very house, where she 
 now lay wan and spent, listening in vain for the sound of Garth 
 Vincent's horses clattering in the court. Might he not, after all, 
 get away from that other 'case' in time to come to her ? She tossed 
 and turned and waited. Angry and sore at her own weakness, 
 she summoned Sorrow's aid. Forced herself to think of those 
 very things from which a month ago she had prayed deliverance. 
 Again called up Anton and even while she said 'Anton' behold 
 \t was another. Made herself think of her father. But even 
 that spell, so long potent for misery and preoccupation even
 
 i 9 6 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 that had lost its hold. Vincent's face rose up between her and 
 the sorry vision, and shut its image out. 
 
 Not merely a distraction now a burning necessity to prompt 
 the people about her to talk of him. 
 
 More stories of the cures he had wrought, on the hopeless and 
 the dying, and always, where possible, the personal application 
 to give the patient courage. When Katharine was most harassed 
 by pain, the panacea offered was some form of, 'We must tell 
 him.' Once the response came sharp, 'What's the good of 
 that?' The new nurse stared. 'He will know what to do for 
 it.' Then, as the patient said nothing, 'You must have faith 
 in him,' she said softly, with such an accent that Katharine felt 
 the 'him' to carry the capital letter. Just so she knew pious 
 exhorters spoke of the Saviour of men. They weren't content, 
 these women, with vaunting his natural powers, he must have 
 a touch of the supernatural forsooth to gratify the ingrained 
 human love of magic. 
 
 'You think he didn't know, without your telling him, that 
 your head was bad on Wednesday? Why, he came in here 
 quite well and cheerful, and went out of your room in three 
 minutes with a raging headache.' 
 
 'Yes,' said the patient in a commonplace tone, 'he said the 
 room was kept too hot. Did he tell you he had a headache ? ' 
 
 'Oh, no he never talks to me except, of course, a word 
 or two when it's necessary about my work. He scolded me 
 Wednesday.' She beamed. 
 
 'What did he say?' 
 
 'He said, looking frightfully angry, how did I expect to get 
 anybody well in such an atmosphere.' 
 
 'Did you tell him it was my fault that I had insisted ' 
 
 'Oh, no,' she smiled. 'With him it's always the "nurse's 
 fault.'" On the other side of the door, Katharine remembered; 
 it was always the patient's. 'But I could see by his eyes, before 
 he spoke, that he had all of a sudden got a headache. And he 
 reported me to Sister Morton. She telephoned to me, and I 
 went to see her in the evening. She mentioned then, that he 
 was frightfully overworked, and had one of his bad afternoons. 
 It's no wonder,' she added, with a little head-shake, ' that he has 
 success. He pays for it.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 197 
 
 'How does he pay?' 
 
 'With his own strength. He gives Himself to his sick people.' 
 (Again that effect of the capital letter. Gives Himself! Kath- 
 arine forced herself to smile.) 'Sister Morton says he goes 
 sleepless, night after night, sometimes when he is anxious about 
 a case. And all day long he is giving out his vital forces. She 
 says it's no wonder he is sometimes spent and ill with fighting 
 for his sick people. And because he doesn't make polite speeches, 
 they call him hard. But it's only the people outside' the 
 motion of Nurse Lynn's white cap indicated that fraction of the 
 world who were not nurses 'who think he's unsympathetic. 
 We know better. Dr. Vincent loves his patients.' But here 
 Katharine laughed outright. 'Yes,' protested the nurse, 'he can 
 be horribly rude to them, but he cares about them just as we 
 do. You can't work for weeks to help someone and be indifferent. 
 It isn't in nature. That is, if you love your work.' 
 
 'And do you mean to say you really care about all the horrid 
 sick people you have to do disagreeable things for?' 
 
 'Yes,' said the woman, her fresh face shining 'some more 
 than others, of course, but I always care.' 
 
 'Then, you have the true vocation,' said Katharine, with a 
 sense of respect. 
 
 'It certainly makes me miserable when they don't get well,' 
 Nurse Lynn added, 'just as it does Him.' 
 
 'I don't say it is so with you, but in Dr. Vincent's case, what 
 you call sympathy, I call ambition. He hates not to succeed.' 
 
 'So do the other doctors. But more than half his patients 
 are people who've tried everything else wrecks. And they 
 come to him against the other doctors' advice, having heard 
 all kinds of things against him.' 
 
 'He must know,' added Katharine, 'that all his rivals and 
 his enemies are waiting, keen as razors, to drop upon him if he 
 fails. Yes, I've heard about it. The older men see this young 
 iconoclast climbing up, setting at defiance old ways and old gods, 
 rough, indifferent, without reverence or fear, calmly incurring 
 their displeasure and sweeping away their practice royalty going 
 
 to him and getting treated like any pauper in the free hospital ' 
 
 Katharine stopped, breathless. Where was she going? Had she, 
 then, fallen into step with these foolish women who followed him
 
 198 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 like sheep? Heavens! Heavens! Where was she? Whither 
 drifting ? Was he conscious at all of what was happening ? He 
 shut one up here, with nothing to do but lie and watch the legend 
 grow! Daily an inch is added to his stature! Soon he will be 
 twelve feet high, and it will be fair weather only when he 
 smiles, and storm and darkness when he draws his black brows 
 together. 
 
 And still she kept up the show of cynicism and of unbelief. 
 
 'Why do I take this odious stuff?' she said, pausing on Sunday 
 morning with the medicine glass in her hand. 
 
 'Because you know it will do you good,' responded Nurse 
 Lynn with a chee^ul promptitude. 
 
 'Oh, you can't expect me <x> feel the blind, besotted faith 
 in Vincent that you do.' The nurse flushed crimson and 
 Katharine was sorry for the error of her tongue. Sorry, not 
 alone that she had hurt the nice little woman, but afraid she 
 had set a bar to conversation and to confidence. She hastened 
 to repair the error. 'I confess,' she said, 'that it does weigh 
 with me a great deal that he is able to inspire such zeal in the 
 people who work for him.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Nurse Lynn, still painfully flushed, but speaking 
 steadily and gravely. 'He has a great many enemies, and . . . 
 they say ... an unhappy nature, but if it's any comfort, he can 
 always see that the people who work for him believe in him.' 
 
 'He is fortunate. I can't think of anything much better in 
 the way of a destiny than to do good work among people who 
 believe in it, and like you.' She spared the good little crea- 
 ture 'love you,' but only because it was a true description of 
 the relation Vincent's associates bore him; only because Kath- 
 arine felt the situation too vividly to use that word word like 
 a torch ready to fire the city where men and women dwell in 
 pretended safety, going decorously about their duties through 
 ruined streets and over tottering bridges. What a new world 
 this was this Underworld, as she had begun by calling it (though 
 slowly it had climbed the horizon like a star) this world of 
 hard work work, whose end was good to others, world gov- 
 erned so despotically by men whom Lady Algernon and her 
 like thought they condescended to if they asked to dine, and 
 then, in trouble, leaving condescension at home, fled to these
 
 A DARK LANTERN 199 
 
 despots with white faces, listened to them as had they been oracles, 
 obeyed them as had they been gods! 
 
 She looked back, reviewing the strange slow weeks. As the 
 days had drifted by, the world that Katharine Dereham had 
 lived in all her life had grown dwarfed and shadowed. Not 
 merely aimless, not only morally ugly, but mean, indistinct. 
 What a very little game it was they'd all been playing! What 
 easy victories, what cheap victims! It seemed to her that she, 
 who all her life had lived amongst the 'governing class' had 
 never (with the exception of a certain great English soldier) 
 never seen a man who was master, till she saw Garth Vincent 
 in his consulting-room. However little willing, no one disobeyed 
 him there. Lying and pretence were left on the far side of his 
 threshold the secrets of the deepest hearts were bared in that 
 confessional, where Science was acknowledged Deity, and Vin- 
 cent her high-priest enforcing truth, the creed. 
 
 And not there alone. As she realized how he had made this 
 long, impregnable old Peterborough House his own, dominat- 
 ing, permeating it from garret to cellar, she smiled, remember- 
 ing the Scotch saying, 'Where McGregor sits is the head of the 
 table.' Where Vincent came, the place became his and the 
 people there his servants. And it was not, as she had thought 
 at first (with a comic side-glance at herself), an effect of partial 
 paralysis, induced by sheer astonishment at the rough direct- 
 ness of his address that rude succour that had the air of 
 assault. No, this mastery was a real thing with its roots in char- 
 acter. It was most complete over those who knew him best. 
 Clear enough now, that he moved among the people who served 
 under him, as a General moves at the head of a disciplined army 
 the kind of General who, without seeming to try, mysteriously 
 makes his soldiers glad to follow him, even on short rations and 
 bleeding feet. 
 
 History inquired in vain what spell such leaders had invoked, 
 but it shaped the story of the nations just as it shaped single 
 lives. It was notorious that nurses fell in love with the doctors 
 they worked for, and that it was held to be a nuisance, matter 
 for covert smiling. But here the pitiful commonness of the 
 event was transmuted, lifted up, by something in the man 
 so ready to stamp on weakness the moment it showed its head,
 
 200 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 something in him so contemptuous of feeling that did not trans- 
 late itself to Service, that the little tragedy of these women's 
 lives, took on a touching dignity, as stoically they worked be- 
 side him. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Katharine realized now, looking back, how her imagination 
 had been haunted by the memory of the little talk, during which 
 he had said in that unsentimental, defiant fashion, that only 
 love made happiness. A thousand times she had recalled his 
 lowering face, his downbent sullen look, and the tone in which 
 he had, for the one and only time, said the word 'love' in her 
 hearing. 
 
 The wonder at his daring to speak the word at all given 
 the man he was to say it in a sick-room, to say it in hers 
 wonder at it pursued her more and more as the days went on, 
 and as the meaning of all he said and did gathered significance. 
 She remembered how on that occasion, when the first surprise 
 was over, and she had glanced furtively at him, how she saw, 
 or thought she saw, that he was not thinking of her the least 
 in the world. Even as long ago as that, had she been sorry? 
 Had she unconsciously hoped for some sign that the great good 
 he had missed was spelt with the letters of her name? Cer- 
 tainly there had been no sign in him of any remembrance of 
 the things he had said to her in the drawing-room downstairs 
 all those years ago. No sign of aught but a hurt, defiant crea- 
 ture confessing to another, his failure to find the best. Had 
 he admitted so much to Katharine Dereham as to one notoriously 
 vowed to an absorbing passion? Had that been the key to the 
 license? The mere surmise was edged with anger yes, and 
 quick with instant rebellion. But she was too honest-hearted 
 to be able to soothe herself with any construction of his words 
 or conduct, that could fairly be interpreted as meaning the small- 
 est interest in her. He had conveyed to her unmistakably, from 
 the first, that she was no more to him now than any other sick 
 woman. And she had been so relieved and glad. Where was 
 it gone that relief and that gladness? What was this in its 
 place ? 
 
 Katharine was far enough from being the kind of woman, 
 who wants every man she comes into contact with, to fall in
 
 A DARK LANTERN 201 
 
 love with her. Her life had been too full of that kind of thing 
 and her vision of its ultimate value was too clear and sane. 
 Why, then, did she feel with growing poignancy the hurt of this 
 one man's indifference? Could it be because to her he had 
 come to be No no. 
 
 It was long and long enough, since lying here in her bed, after 
 he had left her with a jibe, that she had said to herself, 'If he 
 cared for me now, could I many him?' And albeit her blood 
 made instant affirmation, her judgment said firmly, 'No.' He 
 comes out of another world. He couldn't live in mine, nor I 
 in his. He is this. He is that. She buttressed her sense of 
 criticism night and day. For let no one think Katharine Dere- 
 ham did not struggle against the spell that circumstance (as 
 she truly said), more than the man, had cast about her. I 
 am weak and full of fancies, she told herself a thousand times, 
 perhaps at the mercy of any impression, and this one not alone 
 strong in itself, but making, in spite of all, especial appeal to me 
 to me above any woman living. 
 
 That he should obsess her, like this, was partly a result of 
 her recoil from the rottenness of her old standard. Not the 
 outward form and pressure of Romance alone, she had long 
 believed Prince Anton to embody. Behind her girlish infatua- 
 tion, had been the unconscious reaching out for high and noble 
 things. 
 
 Might not this stronger feeling (oh yes, she was sounding 
 depths through all these days and nights that Anton had left 
 her stranger to) might not this, instead of matter for shame- 
 faced concealing, might it not be a thing wholly honourable 
 fortunate? A maturer ideal, in which the man's roughness 
 stood for truth, was truth his absence of outer graces a kind 
 of blessed relief from pretence and inanity and humiliating 
 insecurity. There there, she felt, she touched the heart of the 
 matter. This man could treat her cavalierly he would never 
 shame her as lying shames. Oh the peace of truth! She leaned 
 against it as the weary rest upon a pillow but started up with 
 burning face 'truth' had taken on human form! The imagined 
 pillow under her hot cheek was Garth Vincent's breast.
 
 CHAPTER Vin 
 
 THE one thing at this juncture that Vincent could have done, 
 had he realized and cared to cure this new malady, would have 
 been to put off his armour of professionalism and give her the 
 smallest one of the assurances her heart cried out for day and 
 night. But there seemed no flaw in the armour. So she fed 
 herself on dreams, faring more daintily than any woman may 
 who finds herself called on to digest hard fact. In that world 
 to which she retired with his image, she was able to wrest all 
 to beauty and to honour. She could, of course, have set his 
 faults aside. She preferred to wreathe them with a fine romance. 
 
 And so she gave him liberally out of her own armoury, any- 
 thing he hitherto had lacked to overcome her. And so she 
 lay there, on a pillow full of dreams, drawing out now a little 
 song, and now a picture of him. Now was he called on to save 
 the life of his enemy, and she saw him going straight to the task 
 fulfilling it with a plain simplicity that wore an air of antique 
 virtue. And the notion pleased her like the long-sought music 
 of a perfect rhyme. Others might call him coarse. He was 
 merely primitive. Had she not said when first speaking of him 
 to Lord Peterborough that, though he had buffeted her, he had 
 been kind ' in the same way that the wind and the rain are kind ' ? 
 
 Yes, he was like that like the wind and the rain. But he 
 must have tenderness too. And to verify it, through his rough- 
 ness, she must make pictures of him with poor, shy patients 
 and, more eloquent still, with his little crippled brother. And 
 these pictures, songs, and dreams carried her farther and far- 
 ther into the life that men had said was lonely. Had he known 
 it, Garth Vincent was never an hour of those days without com- 
 panioning. 
 
 202
 
 A DARK LANTERN 203 
 
 'I'm worse.' 
 
 He went through the usual routine rather more cheerfully 
 than usual, Katharine, for once, telling him how the pain had 
 increased. ' Oh, I'm very much worse.' 
 
 'No, you're not.' 
 
 'But indeed I am.' 
 
 'You only think so. As a matter of fact, you're better.' And 
 the words imposed themselves upon her like a law. She felt 
 the thing he had declared felt it so long as the Black-Magic 
 Man was there. 
 
 But what was to become of her if she were better only upon 
 those terms? Soon she would have been lying here six weeks. 
 What was to come after? And all her dreams would shrivel 
 up and vanish, in a sudden loneliness and fear. 
 
 Nevertheless, with her final envisagement of the fact that 
 he had swept into her life, like a flood through a broken dyke, 
 abolished all older landmarks, and overwhelmed her world 
 with her acceptance of this fact as inexorable, fore-ordained, the 
 instinct to keep aloof from him, to shrink from under his hands, 
 grew hour by hour. It was, of course, mere reflex action 
 the pull-back from Nature's imperious prompting 'on!' But 
 the instinct, strong as self-preservation (of one phase of which 
 it was a spiritual counterpart), was so dominant with her that 
 for days she could scarce be civil to him. She had always (as 
 she looked back, this was clear) jelt him keenly. His first 
 entrance into her room, had given her a sense of being intensely 
 alive. 
 
 Now, partly that instinct of self-preservation, and under- 
 neath, lurking behind, a refinement of sensuousness, made her 
 want to elude the touch of those slim brown fingers that did 
 work as mechanic, as unfaltering, as some fine instrument that 
 ruthlessly registers human conditions, feeling them as little as the 
 hermometer feels cold. 
 
 A thousand times she had reminded herself of how she had 
 always despised the weak, hysterical fools who fell in love with 
 their doctors. There was something to her sense quite espe- 
 cially undignified in it. No such sentiment ought even remotely 
 to touch a relation which at best is delicate and trying. Of 
 course, doctors couldn't like sick women. Naturally, far more
 
 204 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 than other men they worshipped health. And if they saw that 
 their patients Ugh! how it must revolt them! 
 
 This man, especially! How merciless he would be! For 
 days now her preoccupation was how successfully to hide the 
 truth. The strain told obviously upon her weakened forces. 
 She was spent, and daily still more frail. She, who had been 
 used to sleep so well, began to lie awake hour after hour, alter- 
 nately driving the thought of him away with scourging words, 
 and then calling him back, with thoughts and images that lulled 
 her like a poison, working to later pain. She would sometimes 
 in the night make a desperate pact with herself that when he 
 came again she would say, with the boldness of one fighting 
 for life, ' Go away, and let me send for someone else. You can't 
 do me any good, for I've fallen in love with you.' And in the 
 morning she would see that it would be easier to die than to say 
 such words. Following upon this, came the phase in which 
 intense, and hitherto unimagined physical agony, drove out 
 thought. An evening when she got up and walked the floor, 
 saying to Nurse Lynn: 
 
 'Send for Vincent.' 
 
 He came. 
 
 'I am in unbearable pain, and I've stood it as long as I can. 
 I must sleep. Give me a draught.' 
 
 'No!' 
 
 Katharine had gone back to bed before he entered. The 
 fair hair that had tumbled down on each side of her face set 
 all save eyes in shadow. 
 
 'Where is the pain?' He bent down over her with a strange 
 gentleness, and for a moment she could not speak. 'I can't 
 see you.' He lifted the electric night-light with one hand, and 
 with the other he pushed the hair away from her face. 
 
 'Don't J " she cried, recoiling. Plainly, as the light flashed an 
 instant on him, she saw how his long, gleaming eyes grew sud- 
 denly suffused. They had a curious trick of getting bloodshot 
 when he was angry. She had noticed it before. But she 
 had never seen him, nor any human soul, look as he looked 
 at that moment, when he set the light down on the marble 
 slab, with a clang and an oath, left her bedside and fled to 
 the fire.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 205 
 
 'If you'll forgive me,' said Katharine, trembling, 'I'll forgive 
 you.' 
 
 'Forgive. . . . What have you got to forgive? I'm here for 
 business, and I attend to it to the best of my ability. But I'd 
 much prefer you should send for ' 
 
 'Hush, hush,' she said, very low. 'You ought to know it was 
 the pain.' 
 
 He walked up and down before the fire, fulminating. She 
 didn't listen. 
 
 'You don't mean that you can't give me something to deaden 
 this suffering.' 
 
 'By God! I can but I won't. Send for a regular practitioner. 
 Who do you want ? What's his name ? Come, who is it ? ' 
 
 Down under all her wretchedness, she smiled. He was sen- 
 sitive as any woman. Hurt to the quick that a patient of his 
 should recoil from his hand, when he was trying only to help 
 her, outraged at his suspicion that she should think he over- 
 stepped his duty; ready with all his success to think she was 
 losing faith in him; quick to forestall a possible wish to 'call in 
 another opinion.' 
 
 'Come, who is it you want?' he was still angrily demanding. 
 
 'There is no one,' she said, quite low. But he was not 
 appeased. 
 
 'Call in some other man! Any general practitioner can give 
 you some pleasant dose that'll put you to sleep. I could do it 
 too. I can take away any damned pain you like. The difference 
 between us is, that I won't make you easy for a night at the cost 
 of all the rest of your life.' 
 
 'Very well,' said Katharine. Still he was angrily pacing the 
 floor, and recommending general practitioners. 
 
 When he had exhausted the theme, and found that still Kath- 
 arine lay quite quiet and apparently subdued, he said more 
 gently: 'If I were weak enough to give you a narcotic 
 now, in the state your nerves are in, I'd be doing you a serious 
 injury.' 
 
 'But how am I going to get through these hours ahead of 
 me?' As he seemed, unheeding, to be going, 'Oh!' she cried, 
 'Black-Magic Man, give me a charm!' 
 
 He stopped, looked back, stared at her an instant.
 
 20 6 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Set your teeth, and say damn!' With which flower of style, 
 and fragment of high philosophy, he left the room. 
 
 The next day he returned. 
 
 'Any better?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'What are you worrying about?' 
 
 'Nothing.' 
 
 'Yes, you are, There's nothing in your analysis to accoun; 
 for the state you're in. What are you worrying about?' 
 
 'Only at being so ill.' 
 
 'You are beginning to fret at confinement.' 
 
 'No . . .' 
 
 'You think someone is bothering about you' (did she dream 
 it, or did his heavy eyes look dully out for an instant at the figure 
 in Prussian blue above the blazing fire?) 'you think someone 
 can't get on without you. Women are so damned conceited!' 
 
 'I'm not thinking Katharine could never remember 
 quite what the words were that tumbled out she only felt through 
 the nightmare of pain, and anger, and love, and fear, a pas- 
 sionate need of denying, of sweeping utterly and for ever away, 
 his belief that Anton, Prince of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein, counted 
 for anything with her in the future. It was suddenly, somehow, 
 a matter of honour to disavow concern with all that life where 
 he Garth Vincent was not. 
 
 She could have wept, as she saw her failure to convince him, 
 written in his face, before he said the words: 'I assure you the 
 world goes on very well without . . . any of us. But you won't 
 believe me. You lie awake, and . . .' 
 
 'And what?' 
 
 'Well, you know.' 
 
 'I I don't know,' she faltered. But she saw now, plainly, 
 that the roving glance that would not rest on her, had caught 
 upon the picture of the Prince. It was more than she could 
 bear. She half sat up. ' Perhaps you share the vulgar suspicion 
 that I have a very special interest at stake' (only a gleam 
 answered out of half-shut eyes) 'that I am Prince Anton's mis- 
 tress.' As he said nothing, nor even moved, she found herself 
 adding passionately: 'I am not. I have never been.' 
 
 'Much better for you if you had, since you hadn't the sense
 
 A DARK LANTERN 207 
 
 to marry,' and before she could recover from her stark astonish- 
 ment, he was gone. 
 
 The next day he was there again no interval now, daily visits, 
 but shorter even than they had been, and never talk of anything 
 touching himself. 
 
 'You're so accustomed to complaining, exaggerating people,' 
 she said, 'that you have no idea what I'm suffering.' 
 
 'Yes, I have. I know it's Hell,' he answered calmly. 
 
 His acceptance for her of the worst that pain could be, 
 made strangely for her acceptance of it. 'We'll see how it is 
 to-morrow.' 
 
 And to-morrow: 'Well?' 
 
 'The same.' 
 
 'Where?' She showed him, feeling behind the clamour of 
 the tortured nerves a curious new peace instead of the old fierce 
 unrest at his nearness. Pain had to that extent sobered the 
 fever in her blood. She felt no longer woman, but mere suffering 
 human being. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Saturday to-day. How long, how torturingly long, before 
 Monday would bring him back ! But Sunday brought a change 
 in the weather. Katharine was quick to feel the revivifying in- 
 fluence of that rare phenomenon, a little sunshine in the London 
 winter. 'He'll be glad I'm better,' she thought childishly, and 
 he had barely got inside her door, before she greeted him joyfully 
 with the news, 'Oh, Black-Magic Man, the pain's all gone.' 
 
 If he were pleased, he successfully concealed the fact. 
 
 'Better, are you?' he said roughly. 'It's about time I Ever 
 since I took hold of you, you've been behaving like a damned 
 baulky horse!' 
 
 She gasped. He never even looked up from under his sullen 
 eyelids to see how she took his elegant speech. The contrast 
 between the ideal hero and the queer creature before her struck 
 her both as comic and exhilarating. 'Why do you come back 
 after a pleasant holiday in the country with evil words in your 
 mouth ? ' 
 
 'I hadn't a pleasant holiday.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Had the blues.'
 
 2o8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'What nonsense!' said Katharine, feeling singularly cheerful 
 herself, in spite of the 'evil words.' 
 
 'It isn't nonsense. There are always more unhappy days to 
 be got through than happy ones.' 
 
 'Not if one has health.' She sighed enviously. 
 
 'In that case I must be ill.' 
 
 Does he make a cult of sadness? thought Katharine. Does 
 he shrewdly guess that it makes one's heart ache to know how 
 hard he works to lift up other lives, and yet must himself live 
 more than half his days under the harrow of depression ? 
 
 ' Do you really mean you were too ' down ' to enjoy the country 
 this glorious weather?' 
 
 He nodded. 'I didn't even care about my dogs.' 
 
 Her betterment was as short-lived as the London sunshine. 
 The next time he came, 'Oh, help me help me!' 
 
 'Don't I try?' 
 
 'Yes, but I'm such a difficult subject!' 
 
 'You're right there.' 
 
 Four unforgettable days, during which he did not see her. 
 He had gone to Scotland for a consultation. Then came the 
 break of Sunday. 
 
 On Monday he found her very ill said little, left a new pre- 
 scription. She, too, had hardly spoken. But something seized 
 hold of her as he was going out. She turned her white face 
 towards him: 'Don't let it be so long until you come again.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'You help me.' 
 
 'Why, I thought it was the other way about. I thought I did 
 you harm.' 
 
 'Oh, no.' And when he was gone she smiled a little to herself, 
 supposing he had in mind his roughness, and the instances 
 not a few where he had got on other patients' nerves, and where 
 they had even, according to the nurse, written letters asking him 
 not to come again, for a few days. 
 
 How modest he is, after all, quite ready to think ill of himself! 
 . . . Then a flash, as of horrible lightning, and Katharine covered 
 her face from its fierceness with her hands. 
 
 He guesses! He has no fear, this time, that his faults of temper
 
 A DARK LANTERN 209 
 
 or of manner have done his patient harm. I've borne them 
 strangely well so strangely, that at last ... he knows 1 
 ***** 
 
 'There is a great deal of noise about the house. Why are so 
 many carriages driving into the court?' 
 
 The nurse looked embarrassed. 'I will ask,' she said. But 
 if she asked, she did not share her information. 
 
 'I shall have lain here six weeks next Tuesday,' Katharine 
 said gravely to Vincent upon the occasion of his subsequent 
 visit. ' When am I to get up ? ' 
 
 'As soon as you are better.' Each time that he came after 
 that, she said something about bringing the treatment to a close. 
 But he was firm. 
 
 'You said six weeks.' 
 
 'I hoped six weeks would do it.' 
 
 The intense pain was certainly yielding again. 
 
 ***** 
 
 'When can I get up?' 
 
 'To-morrow.' 
 
 Katharine's face broke into smiling. 'Really? When can I 
 have my letters?' 
 
 'Wednesday, if you're as well as this.' 
 
 'And when may I go out?' 
 
 'At the end of the week, if you don't backslide.' 
 
 She lay thinking. How she had plagued him these last days, 
 to say just that! And now, unexpectedly, upon the coming of 
 the longed-for word, a great jump of joy, but with something 
 like a caught foot to one vaulting. What is this? Why am I 
 not wholly glad to be better to be taking my place again among 
 the living and the doing? Then she saw that all these weeks 
 of imprisonment had made a change in her other than that 
 coming through Vincent's personality. When her first excite- 
 ment at the thought of getting up and going out when that died, 
 she found herself trying to evade an obscure sense of fear, creeping, 
 creeping, till finally it flew at her throat and held her panther-like. 
 Fear of what? Of life. Of going out from the sheltered place 
 where she had lain and fretted, found fault with nurse and doctor 
 and masseuse, suffered a strange new malady, and railed mightily 
 at the old, and sighed ten thousand times for health and freedom. 
 
 14
 
 210 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Only to get out of this dungeon-room where Vincent had laid 
 galling chains upon her! oh, to stand upon her feet, and meet 
 him as a free woman, accustomed to dictate terms to men ! And 
 now that the doors are wide, only a shrinking back from the 
 light, from the roar of the outside world, from this much-vaunted 
 freedom that no woman, she told herself passionately, no woman 
 has any use for. 
 
 On the other side of the door waited Anton, free waited her 
 father Bertie. And she was not yet a well woman. Oh, far 
 enough from that. How was she to take up the heavy burden? 
 Suddenly to shoulder all responsibility herself, after this long 
 physical and mental idleness, after this close-wrapping of hourly 
 attention, of never-sleeping care ... to go out to face the 
 November wind? She shivered like a new-born babe, and fell 
 to wailing inwardly. And the mood was not as passing as she 
 hoped. All the various motives avowed and unavowed, for 
 shrinking back, for veiled terror, kept flying across her vision like 
 dim sea-birds in the dusk before a storm. They gather in a 
 place of shelter, they perch behind a tall, wind-breasting rock. 
 Not one little fear but flies to him and falls to rest. She could 
 reason about it. For all these weeks, not an act of my life but 
 has been referred to him. May I? Is this well? I am weaker! 
 'No, you're not weaker!' and straightway weakness was not. 
 Was the pain too great? Patience, he will come. Was the time 
 unendurably long? But he is on the stair. Am I utterly out 
 of heart ? He has confidence to share nay, compels your sharing 
 it. He is the great symbol of duty and of strength. 
 
 The early sayings of the nurse came back: 'You must have 
 faith in Him.' And she had. And to this end: that without 
 him, faith was not on the earth. 
 
 'What are you going to do when you get up?' 
 
 She looked at him an instant. 'To do?' 
 
 'Yes: where do you want to go?' 
 
 'Oh, I shan't go anywhere. Lord Peterborough hates travel- 
 ling nowadays.' 
 
 'You've got to get into the country, or by the sea.' 
 
 'Oh no,' she found herself pleading, as though, after she left 
 his hands, she was still bound to acknowledge his supremacy 
 over her actions. 'I don't feel enterprising.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 211 
 
 ' Of course not. But you must leave London. Better arrange 
 to do so Saturday.' 
 
 'Is a change of air absolutely essential?' 
 
 'Absolutely. Where will you go?' 
 
 'Oh, I shall have to consult Lord Peterborough. Poor dear! 
 he'll have to immolate himself, and come too!' He never failed 
 her, bless him! But Vincent had precipitately left the room. 
 She heard a low-voiced conversation going on outside. He 
 was talking longer with the nurse to-day than he ever had before. 
 
 What ? At last the quick steps running down the stair. 
 
 Nurse Lynn came in and sat down. 
 
 'Miss Dereham, Dr. Vincent says that I must tell you to pre- 
 pare yourself for some sad news.' Katharine sat up suddenly. 
 
 'My father ' 
 
 'No. Lord Peterborough- 
 
 'Well? Is is he He is dying!' She was out of bed. 
 
 Nurse Lynn ran forward, and prevented her from reaching the 
 door. 
 
 'Oh, Miss Dereham, come back. It is of no use. He 
 Lord Peterborough is dead.' Katharine stopped stone-still in 
 the centre of the room. 
 
 'When did he die?' 
 
 'Two weeks ago, when you were worse. You remember 
 that day you asked why so many carriages were driving into 
 the court. It was the day of the funeral.'
 
 BOOK III 
 
 VINCENT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 TENDERLY attached as she had been to Lord Peterborough, 
 through all the years since his roof had meant home to her, the 
 first thought upon the shock of the news had been, not her own 
 loss and utter loneliness, but: 'Did he want me? Of course he 
 did. He was missing me all those last weeks of his kind life.' 
 Few people, so far as she knew his history, had ever been necessary 
 to Lord Peterborough, but Katharine Dereham was one. She 
 ought to have been with him. Oh, to die alone, like that, with 
 only hirelings near! not to have your last look into the dimming 
 world, encounter eyes that love you. Her tears flowed fast. 
 'Why,' she said to Nurse Lynn, 'was I not told, when they saw 
 he was seriously ill?' 
 
 'Sir Lawrence wanted you to be told.' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'Dr. Vincent had an interview with Lord Peterborough, and 
 after it was over Lord Peterborough gave orders, himself, that 
 you should on no account be told.' 
 
 Vincent! Vincent had done that. The next day she turned 
 a sad, reproachful countenance upon him as he entered, asking 
 how he could do her such a wrong. Had he no idea how much 
 love and duty she owed the lonely old man? She would have 
 been quite able to bear seeing him. 
 ,, 'I was the best judge of that at least, I was the only judge.' 
 
 'It was very wrong of you ' 
 
 'It was absolutely right. I would do just the same again.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 213 
 
 'I can only say your judgment was greatly at fault. The 
 shock of hearing "It is all over," and I I not there beside him' 
 the tears overflowed again 'it is far worse for me than to be 
 told he was ill and wanted me. I should have had all my life the 
 comfort of knowing I was with him at the last.' 
 
 'Your comfort,' he said, 'that's what you're thinking about. 
 He didn't want you.' 
 
 'I'm sure he did. He loved me.' 
 
 'Maybe,' he shrugged; 'but you don't want anybody when 
 you're dying.' 
 
 '/ shall or should, if there were anyone who cared for me as 
 I cared for Lord Peterborough.' Vincent sat and looked at his 
 knees. 'This shock has thrown me back,' she went on. 'I shall 
 not be able to go away on Saturday.' 
 
 'That's just as you feel,' he said, indifferently. 
 
 It was not till some little while after she learned of his death, 
 that she began to realize for how much Lord Peterborough had 
 counted, not only in the general scheme of things, but in her 
 present perplexity. All through those last days she had been 
 mentally arranging matters, with him for point d'appui. They 
 would go away together do this and that together. She even 
 had a plan of taking the wise old wordling into her confidence, 
 and letting him administer the tonic of whimsical comment. 
 And just as she was putting out her hand to him, he had vanished 
 from the world. 
 
 Instead of arranging to go away on Saturday, she saw Blanche 
 Bruton and the family lawyer. She learned, that like the lady of 
 Belmont, she was 'richly left.' She sorted and read certain of 
 her letters not Anton's yet, she shrank from the very touch of 
 them. But her father's. She opened these in the order of their 
 dates. He was 'wretched,' 'desperate,' he was 'dying.' She 
 'must come.' He was 'better' he had a 'Polish nurse' who 
 was a 'jewel.' Katharine recognised the strain, and smiled 
 through her sadness. He would play off the Polish jewel, against 
 his undutiful daughter. Before she broke the seals, she seemed 
 already to have read the letters that followed. But now she saw 
 there was a gap of three weeks, and then a note dated from the 
 Hotel Ritz in Paris. 'I am here with my wife.' He had married 
 the Polish Jewell
 
 2i4 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 When Vincent came back on Monday she told him. 
 
 'I haven't the faintest notion what to do. Mrs. Bruton wants 
 me to go with them to Egypt. But ' She looked at him. 
 
 'Well, why not?' 
 
 'I thought you objected to our "teetotum" ways.' 
 
 'You must go where you can get pure air for a few weeks it 
 doesn't matter where it is.' 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 She found herself too weak even to see properly to her mourn- 
 ing. Couldn't stand to have clothes tried, couldn't bear the 
 weight of them when they were made. It was out of the ques- 
 tion to go anywhere with people who rushed about, and sight- 
 saw or did anything strenuous. Together with an even abnormal 
 activity of mind and fancy, a great physical lassitude lay heavy 
 upon her. She finished a poem on the Land of Counterpane, 
 and the two sonnets she had written during her 'isolation' sud- 
 denly fell into place in the newly and more vividly seen 'Se- 
 quence' which eagerly she planned. She tried to think of the 
 future, and saw only Vincent's frowning face. 'I will go away 
 somewhere for a little, with only Natalie,' she determined and 
 the sea-air shall clear my brain of all the cobwebs that I've col- 
 lected in this room. I shall let the sunlight in, and then have 
 a look at life's possibilities. 
 
 'I am going to Torquay,' she announced to Vincent. 
 
 ' That's all right. Who with ? ' 
 
 'My maid.' 
 
 'To visit people?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'It won't do you any good to be bored. Why not take some- 
 body along, or let someone join you?' 
 
 'I'm not in the mood for people.' Then, fixing him steadily 
 for an instant: 'I am not well, you know, even yet.' 
 
 'Of course you're not well. How should you be? Seven 
 weeks of sense won't always redeem how many years is it of 
 foolishness?' She was silent. He was pretending he had for- 
 gotten her age. Twice already he had asked it, just as several 
 times he had put other leading questions over again. At first 
 she had thought that his memory, charged with so many 'cases,' 
 had very naturally tripped. But it was too retentive of trifles for
 
 A DARK LANTERN 215 
 
 her long to hold that error fast. Little by little she had divined 
 the man's invincible unbelief in the truth of people's testimony. 
 His psychology was sound, at least, in that, while he knew most 
 people can upon occasion lie, few people can manage to tell the 
 same lie, at long intervals, in different moods, and under widely 
 varying circumstances. 'You're only better,' he said at last, 
 seeing that this time she was not going to answer. 
 
 'But I want to be well. Oh, I want dreadfully to be well. 
 There's no reason, is there, why I shouldn't be?' He looked 
 at her in that curious grudging fashion that she had come to 
 know. 
 
 'You've had too much of everything in your life, except one.' 
 
 ' You mean rest ? ' 
 
 'Oh, you've caught up some of that.' 
 
 'What is it I have lacked?' 
 
 'You wouldn't like me to tell you.' 
 
 'Yes, I would,' but her heart misgave her. 'What is it I 
 have lacked?' 
 
 'A man.' 
 
 She drew a startled breath as if he'd struck her. 
 
 'I suppose,' he went on brutally, 'you've taken credit for your 
 way of life. It's been your destruction very near.' Not a 
 word was uttered by either for some seconds. Then: 'Do you 
 want it put more plainly?' 
 
 'No, no,' she shuddered; 'you are plain enough.' But his 
 sullen eyes seemed to own no wish to spare her any hurt he could 
 inflict. 
 
 'You'd better just look about you as quick as you can,' he 
 said coarsely. 'It's no time for nonsense, no time for sentiment 
 or Poetry!' He brought the word out venomously. 'Get the 
 first help you can to repair your past foolishness. Good-bye. 
 And remember! Even poetic ladies are human! Good-bye.' 
 ***** 
 
 She established herself with Natalie in rooms that looked on 
 the sea. For a whole week she walked, and drove, and slept 
 and fought her dreams. A wire from Anton ran: 'Only just 
 learned your address. Shall be down to-night.' And that same 
 morning she fled to Ventnor, leaving only the London address 
 behind. On the cliffs overlooking the Solent, Katharine read
 
 216 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 the accumulated letters and old telegrams from Berlin, that she 
 might realize 'whereabouts he is.' Dismay fell upon her as she 
 read, to feel him so close to her again. So ghastly close! What 
 phrases he used! How dared he? Why, of course he dared. 
 He had seen her glow under his caressing German. Surely there 
 is more intimacy conveyed by the German tongue than any 
 other men can speak. There is in Italian a certain barrier of 
 high courtesy, in French a formal elegance, in English an im- 
 plication of reticence, but in German! Ah, how dared he write 
 her in such terms things a man might say to a chambermaid? 
 And he was full of meeting meeting! 'And no parting ever 
 again.' Each letter more earnest than the last. Well, some- 
 body cared for her, after all! 
 
 She sat wrapped in furs, on a high-perched balcony, looking 
 at the pale sunshine on the sea, and trying to forecast what was 
 to come. 
 
 There was danger for her in her present mood, in that thought: 
 somebody cared. Danger of a vulgar kind she felt. She saw 
 herself sinking, after the long fight, into a relation to Prince 
 Anton morganatic, not merely socially questionable, but in essence 
 evil, because accepted now as a miserable makeshift, with none 
 of the old innocence and faith. Besides, now it would be a kind 
 of treason. Her heart, her very blood, were full of another. 
 She dropped her hands over her eyes, and then shrank back into 
 the light. For in the dark of covered eyes, she saw Vincent in 
 that last merciless mood of his. 
 
 And was she to follow his brutal counsel go away with Anton, 
 or stay in England as Bertie's wife? 
 
 Nothing easier to Vincent's view. And she exonerated him 
 from baseness in her mind. These were matters hid from men. 
 For it is only woman who suffers through the burden of mere 
 sex. Men have the permission of public opinion to evade this 
 suffering. A grant derived from the mighty men of old who 
 established that Public Opinion, through which to-day even 
 the weak male finds liberty finds immunity from the grosser 
 burden of the flesh. The bold initiative of the men of old, sur- 
 vives, too, in the accepted privilege of the man to 'propose' to 
 the woman and to take rebuff without injury to his self-esteem. 
 
 But is not woman as old as man? Why did she not in those
 
 A DARK LANTERN 217 
 
 robuster times, even while accepting the yoke of labour and sub- 
 serviency, why did she not employ her thousand arts and all her 
 subtle strength to compass liberty in this respect at least ? Why, 
 with the very beginning of civilization, do we find the woman 
 commonly cherishing chastity in fact as well as in appearance? 
 For the children's sake, say the historians, or out of fear of the 
 male. But the explanation leaves too much out of account. 
 Small doubt the male preferred it so, but he had an ally in the 
 woman's heart, or he would as little have prevailed, as she to-day 
 to keep him true to an ideal yet unrealized. 
 
 The root of woman's suffering (and of her rarest joy; Katharine 
 saw the one as clearly as the other) lay deeper than any mere 
 lack of custom's sanction to escape from the importunity of the 
 flesh. Were it otherwise, woman had ages ago been free, and 
 left freedom unattainted a heritage to all her daughters. 'But 
 she will never be free,' said the prisoner, in the little iron-bound 
 balcony above the sea. Not for her, except in the lower types, 
 the satisfaction men find in the temporary, the makeshift; the 
 soothing of the body, while the soul sleeps. 
 
 No reasonable woman, to Katharine's thinking, would make 
 this difference a ground for any assumption of superiority. Just 
 as surely as her body is made something different from man's 
 so in this is her soul different. It is the mark of the feminine 
 on the spirit, this hunger for the special, for the one that out of 
 all the world alone is hers, the one that, whatever he may do, 
 she is bound to hold herself sacred to. It is only the woman 
 who knows that this is true, even before motherhood teaches her 
 monogamy's significance to society. Any man may give her a 
 child, but only one can give her what even more than that bless- 
 ing, her soul and her body hunger for. Yes, it was clear enough 
 to her now. This knowledge (instinct, rather), far more than 
 custom, or any feeble clinging to the outward forms of respect- 
 ability this it was that kept so many neglected wives and single 
 women chaste. They cannot help feeling: 'If I do not weary 
 if I am not false, he will surely come.' They look abroad, and 
 they do not see him. The years go by, and they will presently 
 be old; but waiting so they prove their faith. 
 
 Staring out to the grey sailless sea, she faced the truth, for- 
 mulated it once for all. We are each in the prison of our sex, we
 
 2 i8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 women. The tragic thing the glad thing, too is that to each 
 prison is a single key. And the man who holds it may never even 
 see the outer walls behind which we wait. 
 
 'Nevertheless, we wait,' she said in her heart. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Thoughts like these are haggard company, though they wear 
 their weariness with a certain grace. 
 
 What, precisely, had been in his mind when at the last he gave 
 her that 'coarse counsel'? It flashed over her there could be 
 no greater proof of her irremediable love for the man, than that 
 she could throw such an epithet at him, and yet find him stand- 
 ing firm, unshaken by so much as a hair, on his pedestal in her 
 heart. And all her life she had been called fastidious, hyper- 
 sensitive. Suppose any other man had dared speak so! No pale- 
 ness now her face a flame at the mere imagining. But Garth 
 Vincent he might say what he would. She belonged to him. 
 Many a wife belonged less to her husband, than she belonged to 
 this man who had never shown a sign of affection, or even of 
 ordinary sensitiveness to the fact that she was a woman. 
 ***** 
 
 Three weeks had gone. Was Time helping her ? Not a whit. 
 Still he coloured all the world. Abandoning herself to her dreams, 
 she said to her pillow: 'Of what use to fight? he has got into 
 my blood.' 
 
 There were moods in which she persuaded herself that it would 
 all come right. Even if he had come to care for her, he could 
 never have told her so, she was sure, while she was under his 
 care his patient. She had never heard the etiquette of such 
 a situation discussed, but she felt it would be his view, inflexibly 
 adhered to. So he might, all the time, have been caring for her 
 and still have made no sign. Should she go back and see ? Even 
 if (as was more probable, she confessed) he did not yet care, why 
 should he not come to? Men had not found it hard. Evidently 
 his distrust of woman was deep, his contempt ready. Evidently 
 he had suffered at their hands. 'But I live alone,' he had told 
 her. And the workers under him had said, 'there is no lonelier 
 man.' And yet he was human ah, very, very human. 
 ***** 
 
 Driving past the pier one morning, she saw the young Duchess
 
 A DARK LANTERN 219 
 
 of Worcester afoot alone. Katharine stopped the victoria and 
 greeted her. 'I am worn out with nursing,' she said, and in truth 
 looked it. ' George is no better,' and they talked of the sad case 
 of a young and gallant soldier whose life was crushed, almost 
 extinguished, not upon the field of battle, but in a South African 
 fever camp. As his wife talked on, Katharine found herself 
 asking, ' Who sent him here ? ' 
 
 'Nobody. I felt he was being killed in London, and in a fit 
 of desperation I brought him away. And you've been rather ill 
 yourself.' 
 
 'Tired chiefly and my heart, you know ' 
 
 'Yes, I remember.' 
 
 Katharine was so tempted to ask if they had tried consulting 
 Garth Vincent, that she said as little as possible, hardly dared 
 open her lips, in truth, lest the name should jump out. 'Who has 
 the Duke consulted ?' One name after another. Not his. They 
 parted with a plan to meet and walk next day, 'if George can 
 spare me.' 
 
 The following morning Katharine drove out the mile and a half 
 to the villa they had taken. The Duchess was in better case. 
 He had slept better. Katharine heard the good news with a lack 
 of enthusiasm that shamed her. They walked an hour, talking 
 of common friends, and somewhat of Katharine's poem (the first 
 written ' In Isolation,' as she called the October sonnet) which had 
 just been published. The Duchess had a pretty taste in literature, 
 and considerable acquaintance with the poets. Things she said 
 that morning made her companion thrill with an exquisite joy: the 
 joy of seeing that some instructed and sensitive soul has caught and 
 shared your mood of passion or of insight, has felt the fine blend- 
 ing of pleasure and surprise at some felicity of phrase, or a rhyme, 
 that came like a gift of God, smiting one with the sudden gladness 
 that other treasure-seekers know, when in some midnight cave 
 they stumble on a heap of gold. Under very different conditions 
 Katharine was to remember and be fired afresh by the Duchess's 
 enthusiasm. Just now, not poetry, but life, called trumpet- 
 tongued. 
 
 The next day the Duchess was to drive into Ventnor for Kath- 
 arine. But instead came a note: 
 
 He is worse. I dare not leave him. I am distracted. Won't
 
 220 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 you come and lunch here ? Katharine carried a clear plan out to 
 the ugly villa that grey morning a plan that filled her world 
 with sunlight, and set her eyes to shining behind her veil. 
 
 'Oh, my dear, I am very frightened. We seem to have tried 
 everything.' Katharine held herself back by main force from 
 crying out, 'Fool! You haven't tried the only thing that can 
 avail!' looked merely sympathetic, thoughtful. Some minutes 
 later, 'It's considered a dangerous thing,' she said, 'recommend- 
 ing doctors, but you haven't tried mine, I believe.' 
 
 'Yours?' 
 
 'Yes Garth Vincent.' 
 
 'Oh, I remember hearing you had been in his hands. But 
 
 I've been so absorbed Yes, of course. A did you like 
 
 him?' 
 
 'Vincent? Well, "like" is perhaps hardly the word.' 
 
 'So I hear,' laughed the Duchess. 'People either say "genius" 
 and roll their eyes mysteriously, or else they say 'charlatan" and 
 curse.' 
 
 ' Oh, I don't think I do either. What lovely mimosa ! ' 
 
 'Of course he's been in our minds many times, but ' 
 
 'Your other doctors have dissuaded you. They would.' 
 
 'Well, are you glad you went to him?' 
 
 'Glad? Oh yes.' 
 
 'He did you good?' 
 
 'I'm a new creature. And I was a specially baffling case. 
 He's had the greatest success with troubles like the Duke's.' 
 
 'Yes, yes, so I've said to George. We've even been upon the 
 
 point ' The harassed wife put question after question for the 
 
 next half-hour. 
 
 Twice Katharine made a move to go. 'You must be tired. 
 I'm sure you ought to lie down.' 
 
 'No. No. You must tell me all you can about Dr. Vincent.' 
 Katharine sat calm and self-possessed to all appearance, speak- 
 ing dispassionate sentences about the great specialist. But she 
 chose her words not only, not chiefly, for their air of discrimina- 
 tion and their coolness. She spared no art to make them effectual, 
 while they seemed so measured and judicial. She changed the 
 subject now and then, but at junctures that made her sure the 
 Duchess would return to it forthwith.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 221 
 
 The next day: 'I wrote to Dr. Vincent yesterday,' was the 
 Duchess's greeting. 'I can't think why he doesn't wire when he 
 will come. I asked him to.' 
 
 'Probably waiting to see if he can manage to leave his London 
 patients long enough.' Katharine allowed herself to be per- 
 suaded to stay to luncheon again. She felt she could not go home 
 without knowing what his answer was. It was there by three 
 o'clock. 
 
 'He'll come down to-morrow,' said her hostess, reading. 
 
 Saturday! That was what Katharine had expected. 'Does 
 he say what train ? ' 
 
 'No. Let's look them out. I hope he won't just fly in and 
 fly out, as they say he usually does.' 
 
 'That's his great fault, I think,' admitted Katharine. 'But, 
 as one of his nurses says, he can tell more about your inside by 
 looking at you, than others can by cutting you open however, a 
 new patient doesn't, can't, realize how miraculous he is at diag- 
 nosis. He is apt to lessen a person's confidence by so mucn 
 despatch.' 
 
 'Oh, my dear,' the anxious face was full of sudden alarm. 
 ' George will be sure to think ' 
 
 'Why,' interrupted Katharine, 'why don't you nail him?' 
 
 'Who?' 
 
 'Vincent.' 
 
 'I wish I could.' 
 
 'Wire and ask him to dine.' 
 
 'Will that do it?' she smiled. Katharine's loyalty took quick 
 alarm. 
 
 'He's no more likely to say yes to you, my dear, than to any- 
 body else but he must dine somewhere, and time will be a con- 
 sideration.' They concocted a telegram. 
 
 'You'll come and help me out, won't you? I feel rather ner- 
 vous after all I've heard such contradictory things. And 
 there's so much at stake.' Her eyes suddenly filled. 
 
 Katharine stayed on, upon her urging, from hour to hour, till 
 it was too late to go home to dine. As she passed through the 
 hall on the way to the carriage at half-past nine, she saw a paper 
 that looked familiar lying on the table. 'Isn't that your tele- 
 gram?' It was. The flustered new footman had forgotten it.
 
 222 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Katharine consoled the Duchess by saying she would take it her- 
 self, and so make sure of its going. 'How good you are! I'll 
 never forget what you've been to me to-day. When will you come 
 to-morrow ? as early as you can. By eleven ? ' 
 
 'If you like.' 
 
 'You're an angel.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 'I've had no answer about dining,' were the Duchess's first 
 words when Katharine reappeared. 
 
 'Then he'll come. But when? Better have each train met.' 
 And orders were given. The Duchess longed to ask Katharine 
 to go herself to meet and to make sure of him. Katharine longed 
 to propose it. Neither spoke of such a thing. Katharine con- 
 soled herself by a vision of him at dinner. Saw him in imagina- 
 tion throw off his 'doctor's gown' saw him smiling, friendly 
 saw him after, left alone with her, while their hostess went away 
 to the sick-room. 
 
 'I've come to feel that everything depends upon this visit,' 
 said the Duchess, nervously walking up and down before the 
 fire. 
 
 'Yes,' said Katharine. The sound of carriage wheels. They 
 stopped. Footsteps in the hall in the hall? surely he came 
 walking in over Katharine's Dereham heart. 
 
 Indeed yes, everything depended upon this visit. 
 
 The footman was announcing 'Dr. Vincent.' The Duchess 
 went forward. They spoke, and Vincent's eye fell on the other 
 figure. Katharine rose up, and gave her hand. 'You're sur- 
 prised ? ' 
 
 'I thought you were at Torquay. You're looking better;' and 
 he turned sharply away from her to the Duchess, who was saying: 
 
 'Won't you have tea or something before you ' 
 
 'Oh no no, thank you' in so brusque a fashion that Kath- 
 arine exchanged a hasty look of encouragement with her hostess 
 as much as to say: 'That's nothing.' 
 
 'I'll go up at once.' 
 
 'I hope you're going to stay and dine,' said the anxious wife, 
 leading the way to the door. 
 
 'I'm sorry. It's quite impossible I must get back to-night. 
 Unless ' He left it, but Katharine felt the only thing that
 
 A DARK LANTERN 223 
 
 would keep him would be mortal illness, and her hope died. 
 She sat alone in the fire-lit drawing-room, till the Duchess came 
 back. 
 
 'He wouldn't let me be there, too says he'll see me afterwards.' 
 They tried to talk of indifferent things. 
 
 'I wish we had wood fires here. Don't you love them?' 
 
 'Yes, the scent of burning wood He is good-looking,' 
 
 said the Duchess. 
 
 ' Better looking in this light than he is by day.' 
 
 'I don't believe you like him.' 
 
 'Oh yes, I do.' 
 
 '/ do. And if he cures George I shall adore him.' Katharine 
 smiled: but she was heavy-hearted. She must have speech of 
 him, but how how? 'He says you look well. I don't agree 
 with him. You are tired to-day.' 
 
 'I believe I am. I haven't been sleeping as I ought.' 
 
 'Didn't you sleep last night?' in that way in which such 
 questions are put to all, save the one or two, who sit at the heart 
 of life. 
 
 'No, I didn't sleep. I can't think why. Do you know, I've 
 half a notion not to stay and dine, since you won't need me now. 
 It will save those poor horses ^f yours if I go back to town with 
 Vincent. It will save them another trip.' 
 
 When Vincent came down, Katharine, leaving him alone with 
 Duchess, went to make ready. Five minutes later she stood 
 buttoning her gloves in the hall. The drawing-room door was 
 shut; the sound of voices came muffled through. Katharine stood 
 there a long while, buttoning and unbuttoning the long gray suede. 
 Is he expecting me back? Is he spinning out the talk that he 
 may see me again ? Does he care the least in the world ? Wouldn't 
 he stay and dine if he did? What am I going to say to him? 
 What will he say to me ? She opened the front-door and looked 
 out. The carriage-lamps shone through a white fog. The night 
 was very raw. The coachman loomed gigantic in his great bear- 
 skin cape. A door was opening behind her. Vincent came out, 
 followed by the Duchess. 'Yes, the sooner the better for him,' 
 he was saying. 
 
 'Then we will go up on Monday.' He was putting on his 
 cout. ' And you'll come in '
 
 224 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Tuesday at three. Good-bye.' 
 
 A sudden absurd shyness seized Katharine. She was ashamed 
 of standing there, hatted and gloved, so obviously waiting for 
 him. He turned, looking for his umbrella, caught sight of her, 
 and stared. The footman presented the umbrella, while the 
 Duchess was saying: 'Miss Dereham is going back to Ventnor, 
 too.' 
 
 They were bowling along the road, lights twinkling in upon 
 them dimly a ghostly white mist enveloping the world. 
 
 'How do you find the Duke?' 
 
 'Oh, he's been doing all the wrong things, so, of course ' 
 
 Then a silence, wrapping them coldly like a spiritual counterpart 
 of the fog. 
 
 Suddenly Katharine said: 'What an odd life yours must be!' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'To come to know people so dreadfully well for a little while, 
 so much better than their nearest and dearest and then to see 
 them drop out of your sight like a stone into a well.' 
 
 He said nothing; and she, acting on an impulse too swift to 
 parry: 'I wonder what you're like outside of your profession?' 
 
 'Oh, everybody is pretty much alike.' 
 
 'I don't find it so. But many people wear their experience 
 writ large. About most, you can at all events get an idea. But 
 I've no notion what your history is. I'm ignorant even of the 
 outlines.' Her voice had begun to shake. With an effort she 
 spoke more lightly and more firmly. 'But that's because I don't 
 know anyone who knows you except as a doctor.' 
 
 'No one does know me except as a doctor.' 
 
 'Who of your family are living?' 
 
 'Nobody.' 
 
 Why did he not tell her of the step-brother? 'Is everybody 
 dead?' 
 
 'Pretty well everybody. All those nearest to me.' 
 
 ' Where did you go to school ? ' 
 
 'I went to a good many schools. I never stayed at one.' 
 
 'You studied medicine?' 
 
 'Yes, that was quite late.' 
 
 'But what did you do with the years when other people are 
 in school?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 225 
 
 'I've told you I was always running away.' 
 
 'Where did you run to?' 
 
 'The East: India, Japan. The West: Mexico, Chili, the 
 Argentine.' Then quite suddenly, 'Oh, I've been everywhere. 
 I've seen it all,' and his tone did not endorse the Maker's verdict 
 that it was good. 
 
 'I don't believe you've seen it all. I believe you've seen only 
 the worst of many things. Especially of women.' 
 
 'What makes you think that?' 
 
 'I'm sure of it.' 
 
 He laughed disagreeably. 'They can't humbug me as they 
 used to.' 
 
 'Ah! The very word Woman, for you means deceit. Yes, 
 you must have had a bad time.' He looked out of the window 
 a moment into the fog, and then drew his head in. But he said 
 nothing. 'It's rather a pity, I think, to have known so few nice 
 women that you ' 
 
 'Not many "nice,"' he interrupted. 'But I've known plenty.' 
 
 Katharine remembered some of the smart women who fre- 
 quented him. Does he think we are all like Imogen Bailey and 
 Anne Minton? 
 
 As if he heard the silent question: 'They're very much alike.' 
 
 'Who are?' 
 
 'Women. They all have the same constitutional failing.' 
 
 'And that is ?' 
 
 But he did not wait for the question. 'They begin to lie the 
 minute they come into the consulting-room. And they lie till 
 I've seen the last of them. Lie about their habits, their age, 
 their past even, by God! about their symptoms! Lie to me!' 
 and as a street light for a moment faintly lit up the dark interior 
 of the carriage, she saw the satirical grin on his face, 'as if I 
 were one of their little tame-cat-men, or artist idiots, and couldn't 
 read the facts under the powder on their faces and under the 
 skin of their rotten bodies.' 
 
 Katharine, shrinking into her corner, had a sudden glimpse of 
 a portion of that history she had failed to elicit. Here was a 
 man who spent his life in the search after, and the practice of, 
 accuracy. The deceit of the less admirable, the vagueness of 
 even the better sort among women, had added to his misogyny 
 
 15
 
 226 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 and to his brutality. The thing that he hated most, he was 
 doomed oftenest to encounter. 
 
 'And then they complain of me because / don't lie,' he burst 
 out suddenly. She was conscious that he had turned, and was 
 trying to catch a glimpse of her face, as the now frequent lights 
 shone in an instant and then flitted by. 'It's all very well,' he 
 went on, as if in answer to some criticism, 'all very well to say 
 truth is compatible with courtesy. In a perfect world it would be 
 so, in a damned world like this, full of lying, nervous people 
 
 'I never lied to you,' came a low, quiet voice out of Katharine's 
 corner. As he did not answer at once: 'Did you ever think I 
 did?' 
 
 'I never caught you,' he said discontentedly. 
 
 They were rattling into the station. 
 
 'What have you been doing with yourself here?' he asked 
 suddenly. 
 
 'Trying to get strong.' 
 
 'How?' 
 
 'With the help of sleep, air, and the little sun there is.' 
 
 'You're not alone?' 
 
 'Yes, I am alone.' The carriage had stopped. 
 
 'That's bad.' The groom opened the door. 
 
 'I want to get a paper,' she said blindly, longing to postpone 
 that loneliness that he so truly said was 'bad.' She went to the 
 news-stand, and bought one thing after another. He followed 
 her, and stood looking on. She had her arms full now, and no 
 excuse to linger. 
 
 'Well, I suppose I must say good-bye.' 
 
 'I'll put you in the carriage,' he said with unexpected civility. 
 As they walked back, Katharine dropped one of her papers. 
 He picked it up. They stood a moment under the station lamp. 
 
 'Don't come any farther,' she said desperately, 'you you'll only 
 have time to get some of their horrid tea before your train goes.' 
 
 'Let me see your face.' 
 
 'My my face?' Her head was drooping, she had an aching 
 wish to hide it. 
 
 'Yes, hold up your face.' She did as she was bid, with a 
 sudden summoning of pride. But something in the bold eyes 
 frightened her. Involuntarily she lowered her own.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 227 
 
 'Look at me.' Was it the doctor spoke, or was it She 
 
 lifted the down-dropped lids an instant, but shrank before some- 
 thing in the look, she could not be sure what, but something 
 'Oh, God in Heaven, give it a name! Let me, at least, know!' 
 And even while she prayed, she was in full flight, crying over her 
 shoulder 'Good-bye.'
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 'WHY did he want to see my face? What was he looking for 
 there ? What did he find ? ' Half the night the questions hunted 
 her, up the hills and down the dales of tossing wakefulness. 'Oh, 
 he cares! He cares!' she would say from time to time, and all 
 her blood made holiday. 'But why then. ... Is he afraid to 
 risk it ? Does he remember the old rebuff ? Can he still be un- 
 certain of me . . . think I'm ready to play with him ? No no, 
 he is just indifferent. A little curious. But he doesn't care at all.' 
 
 The blackness of that knowledge would envelop her wholly for 
 a while. Then, here a rift, and there a rent, through which would 
 shine a little light. 
 
 'Even with all the illness, I'm not hideous. I care so much, 
 that I shall make him care. I'll go back to town.' 
 
 And in the morning she said again: 'I'll go back to town!' 
 But where? Bertie would be installed at Peterborough House. 
 Blanche in Egypt. Where should she go? The world was 
 curiously lonely; but what did it matter? After all, she wanted 
 only one person among London's millions, and him she would 
 find at his post. 
 
 While making her arrangements for returning and putting her 
 fate to the test, Katharine definitely set aside the contemplated 
 plan of establishing herself at once in some attractive house, send- 
 ing to Paris for her mother's beautiful old cousin, the Marquise 
 de Courcelles, who was willing to exile herself from France, she 
 wrote, for the sake of being with Katharine. 
 
 Easy enough for Miss Dereham to surround herself with the 
 glamour, that in London so easily aureoles a woman such as she. 
 Easy enough when the spell was wrought, to bid Vincent come 
 and see how he withstood it. 
 
 228
 
 A DARK LANTERN 229 
 
 But Katharine realized that it would be an impossible vulgarity 
 that she should try to play upon, to dazzle and 'lead on' this 
 man. ' A shallower soul than mine,' she said to herself, ' would feel 
 the impossibility of that, after all those days that there alone in 
 Peterborough House, we fought the great fight against disease. 
 Even if he were willing, I simply cannot receive him as I receive 
 other men still less can I lay traps for love. No, not even for 
 his. But I can go back to town. I can send for him or go to 
 him give him at least the chance to speak. What was he look- 
 ing for in my face? Perhaps he'll tell me. To-morrow! To- 
 morrow I shall be in London his London and mine.' 
 
 Only one more day in this windswept little house, with its 
 balcony looking out upon the passing ships. 
 
 How many hours she had spent on that chill perch! This was 
 the last time she would sit, watching the pale winter sunshine 
 flicker on the cliffs, and fall in lines of flecked brightness on the 
 ruffled sea. She drew her furs closer about her throat, and leaned 
 over the balcony rail to watch some tiny children, climbing up a 
 steep place, jutting over the sands. Now they stood on the crest 
 of the height, and Katharine's gaze moved townwards. Far down 
 the one bit of straight street, Natalie coming home with the fruit 
 and tea-cake. 
 
 Suddenly from behind the chair a sound; the opening of the 
 glass door, and the landlady's quavering voice: 'If you please, 
 Miss, a gentleman is here to see you.' There was only one man 
 in the world, and he was here! Katharine turned sharply as the 
 rusty figure of the woman drew back. Every drop of blood went 
 hurrying to meet him making festival to the tune: Garth Vincent! 
 Garth! Garth! 
 
 But time and tune were rudely changed, as she saw what 
 presence filled the little French window. 
 
 'Anton!' After speaking the name she did not stir, but sai 
 with wide eyes staring at the big figure, to which the long straight 
 lines of the overcoat gave back some of the old elegance noted 
 how he dwarfed the room behind him, the whole house; noted 
 the broad satisfaction of the face, took in even the elongated 
 white paper parcel that, lightly held, dropped downward from 
 thumb and finger. He stooped and came out upon the balcony, 
 smiling gaily.
 
 230 
 
 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Ah!' he composed his features. 'How pale you are!' He 
 looked at her tenderly, her hand in his, and then glanced back to 
 make sure the rusty female had departed. 
 
 ' Dear child, it was very wrong of you not to write to me. And 
 cruel not to let me come and nurse you back to health. Why 
 have you taken it into your head that just because you are ill I 
 am to be cut off from you? I can't have that, you know!' all 
 in a breath, smiling caressingly and detaining the hand that he 
 had taken.' 
 
 'I haven't been seeing my friends.' 
 
 'Your friends!' he laughed indulgently, and stooped to lay the 
 white paper parcel on the long box of dry earth, that fronted the 
 balcony railing, and wherein three forlorn dead geraniums held 
 fast a few brown leaves. Fresh green stems stuck out from one 
 end of the paper stems with rose thorns on them. How truly 
 German! He was bringing her a Strausschen as any Bursch 
 might his Madchen. 
 
 But behind the thought, unconsciously prompting it, was the 
 feeling that Vincent, had he come on such an errand as she knew 
 had brought the Prince, Vincent would as soon have brought a 
 bomb-shell as a bunch of roses. She had watched Anton bending 
 stiffly down to lay the parcel on the flower-box, and the unromantic 
 thought occurred to her: For a man to go in so at the hip . . . 
 he must be laced. But even if she were wrong about that, there 
 was the drop of the heavy jowl, the straw-coloured hair thinning 
 at the top, the sodden look of the man who has overfed, and over- 
 slept, and overdrunk, and overdone all pleasure, and wholly missed 
 the tonic of hard work and the fining down of self-discipline. 
 
 ' Do they know who you are, here ? ' she asked. 
 
 He shook his head. 'Incog.' Now he was standing close to 
 her again, looking down at her with a smile. 'It shan't hurt you 
 to be with me.' It was manifest that in his mind, the only possible 
 explanation of her evasion of him, was that she feared herself not 
 sufficiently strong to bear the rapture of his presence. Either that 
 or else (his eyes, gentle and full of genuine pity, were searching the 
 white face), even more pardonable, in his mind, her fear that she 
 was not yet in sufficient good looks to meet 'the most fastidious 
 eye in Europe.' 'Poor child, you've been dreadfully ill.' 
 
 'No, I can't honestly say I have.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 231 
 
 'Nonsense! I know better.' 
 
 'You judge by my looks?' 
 
 'I judge by your inhuman treatment of me.' Then, as she 
 offered no excuse: 'You look adorable! I like you even better 
 pale. But it's time I came to see after you. Why do you sit out 
 here in December trying to catch your death of cold ? Let us go 
 inside.' 
 
 'No,' she said, 'I like it here. The air does me good.' 
 
 'Air! Yes, if it were Algiers, or even Arcachon yonder.' He 
 shivered. But Katharine laid her elbow on the railing, and sup- 
 ported her cheek on her hand. With obvious unwillingness, gin- 
 gerly even, he took the other seat, a rusty iron chair not over clean. 
 
 'Are you afraid of being faint if you go inside?' he asked, 
 scanning her marble features for sign of over excitement. 
 
 'No, not exactly faint.' 
 
 'H'm!' He gave it up, dismissed it in favour of something 
 even more pressing. 'Katharine,' he leaned forward, 'I've 
 just been to Waldenstein and seen my brother.' 
 
 'Well, and how is Prince Heinrich?' 
 
 'Less unreasonable as he grows older. Less disposed to 
 dictate. He's got four boys of his own now to look after and 
 to succeed him.' 
 
 'Ah!' said Katharine. 
 
 'And he always admired you immensely.' 
 
 'He is very good.' 
 
 'No, he isn't good. But all the same, it counts for a great 
 deal. He's quite of our view at last.' Katharine stared at the 
 dead geraniums. 
 
 'I saw the old Chancellor, too, as I came through Berlin. It 
 can all be managed.' Her face was absolutely expressionless. 
 A little wind had come up out of the sea. Suddenly the Prince 
 of Breitenlohe- Waldenstein rose to his feet: 'I can't talk of it 
 out here in this truly English chill do come inside.' She lifted 
 her head, and let the hand that had supported it fall and fasten 
 on the iron railing with an instinct of anchoring herself. 
 
 ' I am sorry you find it disagreeable here, but I never sit in that 
 little room.' 
 
 His look dulled. He was ill-accustomed to find his wishes 
 unregarded. But as his eye fell again upon Katharine he seemed
 
 232 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 to forget the slight affront. 'No wonder. What a place for 
 you!' With a backward glance of suspicion he took the rusty 
 chair again. 'Dear child' he laid his hand on hers 'I've 
 come to carry you away with me. Everything is en train 
 
 'Anton,' she began hurriedly but his voice, low, hurried, 
 eager, struck in and silenced her. 
 
 'You think it's soon, but there's no need for anything to be 
 announced, you know, until we like.' 
 
 Ah! she had expected that. But she showed no sign. 
 
 'At the same time, even if it should come out all the world 
 knows that Margaretha and I never got on together.' He made 
 a motion with the left hand the one still tightly gloved and 
 having the stuffed-to-bursting aspect of fat fingers forced into 
 exactly-fitting dogskin. The gesture seemed an appeal to all 
 reasonable minds to admit that the fact of having made his late 
 wife unhappy was excuse sufficient for slighting her memory. 
 'I shall take you back to London this afternoon.' She started 
 and opened her lips; but again he hurried on, 'As I say, every- 
 thing is en train ' 
 
 'I cannot go, Anton,' she struck in. 'I I cannot even dis- 
 cuss it.' 
 
 'You don't understand, dear.' He smiled indulgently, but 
 he straightened his military back and lifted his handsome chin. 
 'I want you to be my wife.' Then as Katharine's white face 
 mounted no flush, showed no radiance, he suddenly bent forward 
 again, and scrutinized her as one does a person of whom one has 
 heard something that sheds a great light reversing all former 
 views. 'You haven't taken it into your head that you're going 
 to die?' 
 
 Katharine laughed, with more of bitterness than she had ever 
 shown him; seeing how from his point of view, if she would not 
 be his wife there could be only one reason. But: 'I'm likely to 
 live as long as anybody,' she said. 
 
 'Then what's this about not marrying! Of course you'll 
 marry me. Ah, my dear, I never knew what happiness was till 
 that moment came when I was free!' 
 
 'Don't, Anton,' poor dead woman who had given him thus, 
 his happiest hour! 
 
 'But it was too bad to have you hidden away from me in a
 
 A DARK LANTERN 233 
 
 sick-room, and that outrageous boor of a doctor who had hypno- 
 tized the servants I came over, you know.' 
 
 'You camel In spite of my warning.' 
 
 'Of course I came.' 
 
 'Natalie has never told me!' 
 
 'Had her orders, I suppose, and so afraid of that brute 
 but my coming was no use. I never had such an experience in 
 my life.' He brushed his sharp upturned moustachios fiercely 
 right and left. 'I didn't give in readily. I stopped writing, but 
 I came a second time after Peterborough's death.' 
 
 ' Who did you see ? ' 
 
 'It's the greatest wonder I didn't shoot that medical man of 
 yours,' he said, squaring himself in the little iron chair. 
 
 Katharine smiled faintly. 'You might have challenged him to 
 a duel' a delicious picture. Garth Vincent summoned to 
 deadly combat, by the most accomplished swordsman in Europe, 
 and responding with a 'Go to the devil!' or something equally 
 elegant. 
 
 'Challenge a pill -box! Hardly. But that's all done for.' 
 Again he laid his right hand over hers. She did not withdraw, 
 but with the other, held still faster to the cold iron of the railing. 
 His mouth and eyes were smiling 'Thank God, you're better, 
 and I'm free ' 
 
 'The trouble is, Anton, that Pm not free.' The smile did not 
 instantly leave his face it yielded little by little to bewilder- 
 ment. 
 
 'Not What, in the name of God, do you mean?' 
 
 'Just that. I'm not any longer free. I belong to someone 
 else.' 
 
 ' You belong . Someone else ? I won't believe it. You're 
 raving.' Then as Katharine said nothing, sat there with the 
 flush in her cheeks and the light in her eyes, that he had waited 
 for in vain before: 'You belong to me,' he said, and threw back 
 his head. 
 
 She felt for an instant something of the old beauty in his face; 
 but she went on sadly, quietly: 'It is only fair that I should treat 
 you candidly, though I haven't told anyone else ' 
 
 'Who is it?' he interrupted. Katharine had no idea the 
 caressing voice could be so brusque. ' Who is it ? ' he repeated.
 
 2 3 4 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'That, I am not bound to say.' 
 
 ' You don't mean to tell me that you consider yourself engaged 
 to somebody else?' 
 
 'N no. That is the man is free.' 
 
 'I don't understand you.' 
 
 Her eyes sought the dead geraniums, and rested on the crumpled 
 leaves. 'Don't understand how a woman may be bound and a 
 man be free?' 
 
 'I don't in the very least understand what it is that you're 
 trying to tell me. But,' he added hurriedly, 'I don't want to. 
 It's fantastic a piece of delirium. You are mine!' Then as 
 she lifted her changed face to his, he cried out suddenly: 
 'Katharine!' and she saw that the handsome eyes were wet. 
 'Why, I've loved you and waited for you, for years.' No lover, 
 the most steadfast on earth, could have found an accent more 
 convincing than throbbed through this last of the many pro- 
 fessions of his faith. But she was hardly at the pains to remind 
 herself anew in what fashion he had loved and waited. What 
 did it all matter now ? As little to her as it would when she was 
 dust. 
 
 'Please don't speak so loud,' she had said. 
 
 'Not free! Did you really say not free ?' But he never waited 
 for her silent affirmation. 'Then he must release you. You 
 must tell him that the man you have cared for since you were 
 
 barely out of the schoolroom is only now able . Tell him 
 
 you didn't know, or didn't realize. You were shut away in a 
 sick-room. But now you've seen him and it's all different. 
 Tell him he must release you!' 
 
 She smiled uneasily as a sudden vision of Vincent, listening 
 to such words, mocked at her. 
 
 'Poor child!' The soft voice folded her again like some warm 
 garment. 'You were lonely and desperate. I don't really 
 blame you. But it's an ugly shock. I had such faith in you, 
 
 dear. However ' He stood up, again dwarfing the balcony 
 
 with his bigness, and stopping to brush some iron rust off his 
 sleeve, with the air of one who just so lightly would do away 
 with any impediment in the way of his plans. 'Fortunately,' 
 he said, with a look of new purpose in his face, 'fortunately I 
 have come in time,'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 235 
 
 'You are at least eight weeks too late.' 
 
 His face was suddenly quite ugly. 'You don't mean that you 
 are going to keep a promise made under a total misapprehension.' 
 
 'There is neither promise nor misapprehension.' 
 
 Again bewilderment fell upon him. 'Then after all you are 
 free.' 
 
 'A woman is very far from free who cares as I care.' 
 
 'For He took hold of the railing as if the balcony had 
 
 begun to sway and swing 'care for some other for this other 
 man ' 
 
 'For the other man.' 
 
 'Then 7 ' he burst out, having something on his tongue of 
 
 which he obviously repented him in time. He changed to: 
 'And yet the man, if I remember, is free.' He had gripped hold 
 of his self-control again, but his smile was far from pleasant. 
 
 'Yes, Anton,' she said gently. 'He does not even know I 
 love him. At least I think he does not. He has made no sign.' 
 
 'Good God!' he burst out again. 'Made no sign? How do 
 you know then that he will?' 
 
 'I wish I did know.' 
 
 'And for this this school-girl's dream you are throwing me 
 over ! ' 
 
 'Why don't you say I am too old for such foolishness? He 
 would.' 
 
 'He would appear to have a gracious tongue!' As she said 
 nothing he looked about helplessly right and left; bewildered, 
 like one who wakes to find himself in some new place and hunts 
 for a clue as to how he got there. His wandering attention had 
 the air of being suddenly arrested by concern, at seeing how 
 the paper round his flowers had blown open at the end how 
 ruefully the roses hung their beautiful heads over the rim of the 
 flower-box. Then, as with an effort, turning his eyes sharply 
 back to Katharine's moved, excited face, and finding there the 
 clue : ' How is this interesting little story going to end ? ' he asked. 
 
 It was in that instant, that she saw with all the vividness of 
 prophetic vision, that her waiting would be vain. For whatever 
 reason, upon such slight clue as she had had in mind to give him, 
 Garth Vincent would never speak. For whatever reason, never 
 again would he offer her his love. And so it was, that being
 
 236 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 called on to formulate her ground for Hope, she first saw plain 
 the Hopelessness that waited for her. 
 
 'I have no more idea than you have of the end.' 
 
 'But you will sacrifice everything to waiting.' 
 
 'Do you think you can well reproach me for being able to 
 do that?' 
 
 'Ach/' he cried on a sudden, dropping his glove. 'I see! 
 You're punishing me. You don't really care for this man. 
 
 You Ah-h ' it was a kind of laugh, that deep giving out of 
 
 boundless relief 'I understand at last. You have said to your- 
 self: "He made me wait. He shall have his turn." Very well. 
 I will wait;' and he sat down. 
 
 The sight of him there, the sense of his impenetrable egoism, 
 the mere weight and bulk of his bodily presence, grew suddenly 
 intolerable. 
 
 And he would wait. There in Ventnor, later in London. 
 More patient, more persistent, more the lover now that she was 
 out of his reach, than he had ever been before. And the thought 
 revolted her. A protracted struggle at this time of day was 
 too hideous. Aside from the ugliness of it, it would involve a 
 further complication of existence that she had no strength to 
 meet. 
 
 'It seems you are strangely far from understanding me even 
 yet, though I've tried to be plain. I hardly know how to be 
 plainer,' but even as she said the words, 'a way' flashed its 
 sign-post before her startled eyes, and pointed a guiding finger. 
 'Perhaps it will be clear, if I say that, at last, I know a man for 
 whose sake I could do what I refused to do for you.' 
 
 'You don't mean ' he began, breathless. 
 
 'Yes, I do.' 
 
 'It isn't possible, Katharine, that you ' 
 
 'Listen!' She bent forward, paused to cast a glance across 
 her shoulder to the open glass door, and even though there was 
 obviously no one in the little room she lowered her voice. 'I 
 would turn my back on all the rest of the world to follow him. 
 Anywhere, and without assurance of anything beyond beyond 
 the joy of "das reine Zusammensein." ' He had been rigidly 
 still but now she saw him wince. 'Yes, you taught me that 
 phrase. It's only now that I can guess at what it means.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 237 
 
 He turned away his eyes. A refinement of cruelty in her, 
 a kind of intellectual indecency to use in this new connection 
 those old words of his, sharp reminder of the days when he had 
 urged on her, and urged in vain, precisely this point of view. 
 But she had done it not meaning to inflict pain meaning only 
 to shed full daylight. If she had these daring thoughts if she 
 should find arguments to make them good, had he not given 
 them to her? They were in truth his children, and with a power 
 to wound that only our own can wield. 
 
 'So now,' she said in the pause, 'now you understand.' He 
 sat there perfectly still staring at the roses on the flower-box. 
 
 'Yes,' he said at last, speaking a little thickly, 'I understand 
 now.' But still he did not go. 'He is married, I suppose.' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Ah!' he burst out in a kind of rage of humiliation. 'No 
 impediment, no excuse, and yet you sit here waiting for him to 
 make a sign.' She offered no denial. 'And if he should, you'd 
 go to him.' 
 
 She shrank. 'I only say I could.' 
 
 'You've known him how long?' 
 
 'You have no right to question me.' 
 
 'No right! I have the best right in all the world. The right 
 of a man who has loved you for years, and who wants to save you 
 from a ghastly mistake. It is, of course, some quite new acquaint- 
 ance.' A sudden look in his face, or else the fear in her own 
 tortured heart, made her jump to the conclusion that he was on 
 the point of guessing. But for that she would have declined to 
 answer. As it was, and to put him off the track, she said hurriedly : 
 'I have known him a long time.' 
 
 'What? And he doesn't give you the smallest reason to 
 
 think ' She shook her head. He laughed unpleasantly. 
 
 'Then I'll wait until you are tired of watching for it.' 
 
 A feeling as of one struggling in a nightmare strangled her. 
 Was there no way to shake him off? 'Anton, I I won't wait. 
 
 If he makes no sign I'll go to him ' She stopped an instant 
 
 before the look in his face. 'Why not?' she said a little wildly. 
 'If it were thinkable that a woman of character and standing 
 should be morganatic wife to a Prince, why not to this First of 
 Men if he will have it so if he will!' The solid world about
 
 238 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 her went swimming out of sight, as she let her head drop on 
 arms folded on the railing. She did not know how long she sat 
 there, but when she lifted her tear-wet eyes, Prince Anton was 
 disappearing through the French window without one backward 
 look. 
 
 But he had pointed out the way! 
 
 She sat motionless there in the rising wind, heard the house 
 door close, heard steps go down the side street, under the balcony 
 listened to them growing fainter, with an overwhelming sense 
 of the sadness of life, the pitiful evanescence of the things we call 
 enduring. 
 
 The thought of Vincent made her shrink a little now, and yet 
 brought close upon that shrinking a reproach as of disloyalty. 
 For it was no real thing that was disappearing down the narrow 
 street. It was a dream, a phantasm. Not youth and love that 
 were going out of her life! No! She had said good-bye to an 
 incarnate lie. Why was she so sad? Shame upon her. She 
 stood up, thinking to go to her room. As she turned away, her 
 eyes were caught, as by an appeal from the neglected roses, that 
 hung their heads down over the end of the old flower-box. Crying 
 softly, she lifted them in her hands. They brushed against the 
 dry geraniums broke off a leaf. The brown and shrivelled thing 
 whispered something as it rustled across the rim of the box, and 
 went flying down the street like a belated messenger at the Prince's 
 heels.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SHE did not, after all, go up to London on the morrow, but 
 stayed on at Ventnor, day after day, so little certain in which 
 direction to turn that she stood stock still. 
 
 If all unwitting, Anton had pointed out 'the way,' his visit had 
 lamed her spirit, and taken from her the moment's courage to 
 set her feet upon so strange a path. Ten days went by. Then, 
 very early one morning, she rang for Natalie. 'I must go back 
 to town. Immediately. By the i.io.' 
 
 Once in London, the tonic spirit of the place, the sense that 
 the grey and ancient town invariably brought back, of there being 
 here a concentration of mighty forces at work, a place of huge 
 happening, of mystery, achievement, and boundless possibility, 
 of destiny a-making all wrought in her afresh to a renewal of 
 the spirit. And he was here. Garth Vincent daily went his way 
 through these enchanted streets. It was here that they would 
 meet. Here that she would come to know. . . . 
 
 The mood of daring born in that hour of revolt against Prince 
 Anton, came back insistent, almost joyous. Why not? Days 
 before Anton had found her there at Ventnor, she had known 
 that shame would tarnish any attempt that she might make to 
 take Garth Vincent in or to take him unaware to win him to 
 her by any devious way of subtlety or wile. To-night in London, 
 she could say to herself with a sense of exhilaration, that there 
 would be, for her at least, a certain honour in openness of dealing 
 even though it brought her pain, even though it brought the 
 blow of blank denial. It must be possible to lift the supreme 
 question of life into that high region where feminine pretences 
 and small reserves are left as far below, as light clouds under 
 Alpine climbers. 
 
 330
 
 24 o A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Why not ? She leaned out of the hansom as she drove through 
 the crowded streets, saying the two little words of Fate over and 
 over to herself between intervals of justification. 
 
 Why not? Why should it be impossible to take her love to 
 him, and offer it quite openly, saying: 'Without your seeking 
 or my will, this has come. It is no such common thing. Women 
 and men, too, wait all their lives for such a gift. I dare not be 
 ashamed.' One would even give it proudly, with a sense of 
 bounty if the giving were less sweet. 
 
 The magic of the London mood lasted till she turned into 
 Westminster Bridge Road. 
 
 A gaunt, ungainly figure in a nurse's close bonnet, and long 
 straight cloak, crossed hurriedly under the horse's head. The 
 starched white bow under the woman's chin recalled Nurse 
 Phillips recalled the days that she had been a part of, and the 
 pains that Katharine had taken to hide her true state from the 
 nurse; above all, to hide it from Him, the Healer. But that was 
 long ago, before she realized what had befallen her. Before she 
 belonged to him. And she said the last phrase over solemnly, 
 as one reciting a part of the office of a sacrament. She had no 
 longer any sense of the voluntary choosing of a course. Whether 
 she liked it or not, whether she struggled or acquiesced, he was 
 a part of her already. Whether for health, purifying, strength- 
 ening; or like a fever, devouring the blood only that remained 
 to know. And for that knowledge was sLe come to town. 
 
 Nearly four-and-twenty hours went by, and still the first step 
 towards acquirement not alone was not taken; it was not even 
 clear in what fashion it should be essayed. Thursday! and 
 to-morrow he would be going to the country. The thought 
 brought a feverish sense of need for sharp despatch, and yet the 
 note of summons that she vaguely meant to write was still unsent, 
 unformulated. Each time she sat down with a sheet of paper 
 before her, it had instantly seemed an easier thing to go to him. 
 'Difficult missions were best conducted by word of mouth,' she 
 said to herself, satirically; and then, gravely: 'a look will often 
 save a sentence, save a situation; the withholding of a word 
 speak volumes.' She would push the paper from her, and rise 
 up full of the new purpose. 
 
 Go to him! Be admitted by a man with a patient's appoint-
 
 A DARK LANTERN 241 
 
 ment book? have such an interview, any interview with Garth 
 Vincent now, in a consulting room? Hideous, grotesque, intol- 
 erable. And she would sit down again, begin a note, tear it up, 
 and go for a walk twice to the Park, and many times back and 
 forth, back and forth through her suite of rooms. 
 
 And now it was Friday. Whatever came, she must have 
 speech of him to-day or else be left over Saturday, and Sunday, 
 in a London where he was not. She would send him on this 
 Friday morning, a note by special messenger. She wrote half 
 a dozen in turn. Everything was impossible the moment it 
 reached paper. Impossible to ask him simply to come, and 
 to come quickly that would mean, 'I am ill, come with your 
 professional air, take not my hand, my pulse.' Ugh! Impos- 
 sible to ask him to dine, impossible to send this summons forth 
 under any poor little mask of mere civility impossible, im- 
 possible each and every way. 
 
 And now it was five o'clock, and he was gone. London was 
 stripped and bare. 
 
 On Saturday, her restlessness took her forth directly after 
 luncheon. 'I'll go to the Park/ she had said to Natalie, meaning 
 what she said. But instead of going to the left when she got 
 outside Claridge's, she turned to the right and presently found 
 herself walking up New Bond Street. Where it meets Oxford 
 Street, she stood several seconds on the curb-stone, arrested 
 by the thought: 'Suppose someone is very ill, and he has stayed 
 in town!' Upon the mere supposition, London was full of 
 eager life again, and of limitless possibility. Again the feeling: 
 this is the heart of the world! Down yonder, only five or six 
 minutes away, that house where he 'lived alone.' She crossed 
 the road that Lord Peterborough said had seen the Roman 
 eagles, and turned down the second street on the left. It was 
 very short, and her goal was at the bottom. But she paused 
 again. 'Am I going to his house? But I've seen for long 
 that I couldn't do that. What should I say if I found him there ? 
 Nothing. Nothing.' She turned sharply and sheered off to 
 the left, into Henrietta Street. 'And I will never meet him by a 
 chance, since he almost never "goes out," and then not to places 
 I frequent.' 
 
 A sombre anger invaded her heart. 'In spite of my boast to 
 
 16
 
 242 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Anton, shall I go on like this, letting I dare not wait upon I 
 would, till I am old, and the Saga for me is ended? Are there 
 other women in the world who walk these streets with just such 
 histories in their hearts, carrying them about under commonplace 
 exteriors, till they lay them to rest in their graves?' As she 
 thought, she walked on. Suddenly she stopped again. But, 
 of course! The thing to do was to go to Worcester House. It 
 had begun to rain, but she called a hansom, and looking back 
 as she got in back towards the square she could not see, his 
 square at the end of the street she gave the cabman the new 
 direction. 
 
 Her Grace was gone to the country. The Duke? He was 
 at a Nursing Home, and saw no one. She turned away. How 
 raw and grey the London street! The wind struck keen, but the 
 rain had stopped. ' Drive,' she said to the cabman, ' drive towards 
 Cavendish Square.' 
 
 Now they were passing the house. No trim brougham waiting 
 for him to come out, opportunely. No, he was away. What 
 was it like, his 'in the country'? Imagination gave no clue. 
 When she had driven by this town-house of his equal mystery, 
 although she had been in it she remembered she had not looked 
 up at its windows. Indeed, now she thought of it, she had been 
 too flustered to see it at all. She was shy of making the cabman 
 drive round again, and, besides, the rain was over. 
 
 At Mortimer Street she dismissed the cab, and continued on 
 foot round the Square. The moment she turned, at the north- 
 west corner, she fixed her eyes on the house. 'Are you there? 
 Are you there?' Her glance ran from window to window. No 
 face. Now she was passing the door again. It struck her it 
 was rather like Garth Vincent: close-shut, unyielding-looking, 
 impenetrable, with iron about it, all grim and black save only 
 the shining name. She went by, repeating the shining name. 
 Since he's in the country, I'll go round once more, and then never 
 again. 
 
 Who was the bronze man standing in the middle of the Square, 
 between the leafless plane-tree and the holly hedge ? She crossed 
 to read the name upon the granite. 'I suppose you know him 
 very well, William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck. You 
 see him flying in and out every day of your life. It's nothing to
 
 A DARK LANTERN 243 
 
 you, William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck ' and 
 
 she walked on, prolonging this last round childishly, pausing 
 with pretence of interest to look up, as she passed, at the great 
 mysterious house on the west. Two Houses of Mystery in one 
 Square! This one surrounded by walls and guarded by spiked 
 gates. She stared up at the single Cyclopean window in the very 
 front of the high pediment, and felt it must have been upon such 
 an afternoon as this, that the late Duke determined to dispense 
 with the pretence of daylight. Was it true that he had burrowed 
 underneath his palace, and honeycombed the earth with sub- 
 terranean rooms and galleries, where he lived out his strange 
 existence, mole-like, never seeing the light of day, and yet like 
 some genie in an Eastern tale, living in a blaze of splendour: 
 lights, lights, everywhere, day and night, in the gorgeous under- 
 ground rooms, shining upon wonderful pictures, marbles, gold, 
 and jewels treasures without number and without name? And 
 he never showed anyone his kingdom underground, and the world 
 in revenge had called him mad. How it hates and fears mystery, 
 the rough-and-ready old world! If you have anything you are 
 not ready to advertise, you must be either criminal or mad. 
 What's the use of microscope and telescope, electric light, and 
 the halfpenny press if a man presume to have a secret? Why, 
 the very stars must have their pictures taken, and be interviewed. 
 'Of course,' Katharine smiled up at the oculus, dim, but vigilant, 
 like an eye dull and old that yet sees more than many young 
 and shining 'of course the Duke was mad.' A door banged in 
 the direction of Vincent's house. She looked quickly back over 
 her shoulder. An old man had just come out, opened his um- 
 brella, and walked quickly away. Why, yes, it was raining 
 again. Just a little, slow and sullenly. Was there on earth a 
 drearier place than London in December? What use to go 
 round the dismal square again? None. One wanted a fire, 
 a light, and a hole to creep into just like the mad Duke! She 
 stopped on the corner, looking up Wigmore Street. Cabs in 
 the distance. She would wait till one came within hail. Sud- 
 denly she was very tired. 
 
 But she stood at the corner some minutes, feeling the chill 
 and the wet penetrate the innermost heart of life. Well, here 
 she was in London again! But the London that she had been
 
 344 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 so happy in, was as dead as Pompeii. Peterborough House was 
 shut and empty. Bertie was gone to the Riviera, so said the 
 Morning Post. Anton was dismissed for ever. Even her father, 
 lost to her. And kind old Lord Peterborough was hardly colder 
 in his grave than Katharine standing there waiting for a hansom 
 in the rain. 
 
 And this was what coming back to London meant. Who 
 was the happier for her coming? Who cared? It did not 
 help her at the moment to remember that nobody knew of her 
 presence that there were those who would fly at her call. The 
 fact that she was alone, and convicted in her heart of a vain 
 search for someone these facts struck cold like the wet London 
 wind. It was the feeling all women know who allow themselves, 
 even temporarily, to break with the kindly ties of family and 
 close friendship. She saw the littleness, the grim insignificance 
 of the individual things that our friends unconsciously help us 
 to disguise from ourselves. Happily, or even busily surrounded, 
 we forget that it is only by virtue of others that we properly exist 
 at all. As well try to live without people, as play ball without 
 wall or raquet for it to rebound from or hands to keep it going. 
 When we fly to books, it is again to people that we go again we 
 reach out for companionship, for those assurances without which 
 we perish, assurances no man finds within himself, not the most 
 philosophic nor the best. 
 
 Katharine hung those bitter moments suspended in the void. 
 A hansom came crawling along. The driver's sou-wester and 
 mackintosh cape gleamed in the grey wet. The woman stand- 
 ing on the curb-stone raised her hand. The cabman motioned 
 'All right,' but waited. A motor-car was rushing down the 
 street. The man who drove it turned his head, the least bit in 
 the world, and looked sharply at the figure standing at the corner. 
 
 'Is that you?' He swerved in towards the pavement, till 
 his swollen wheel grazed the curb. With a buzzing and a vibrat- 
 ing the monster paused, panting and as if pleased to rest. 
 
 'Do you know anything about motors?' Vincent demanded. 
 
 'Yes; I learned something about them abroad. I've driven 
 a Panhard.' She looked critically at the English-made machine, 
 congratulating herself How well I have myself in hand ! ' What's 
 this?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 245 
 
 'A new Napier.' 
 
 'What power?' 
 
 'Twenty-four. What are you doing out in the wet?' The 
 rough question pleased her like a caress. 
 
 'I've just come up to town,' she answered irrelevantly 'that 
 is, I came last night. Don't you want to take me back to my 
 
 hotel?' As he hesitated: ' or are you rushing to some 
 
 patient ? ' 
 
 'I'm giving myself twenty minutes to try this machine.' 
 
 'I think I might ask you "what are you doing out in the wet?" 
 It's a fine afternoon to try a motor.' 
 
 'I haven't got time to wait on the weather. Besides, the 
 shower's over. Where's your hotel?' She told him. 
 
 'Well, get in.' 
 
 She took her seat at his side, with never a thought for the 
 disappointed cabby scowling from over the way. She fixed 
 her eyes on the fine brown hand that rested on the driving wheel, 
 and gave herself up to a blind, unreasoning joy as the car scudded 
 round the corner. 
 
 'You aren't dressed for motoring,' he said. 'Pull the rug 
 over.' 
 
 'I'm not cold.' And it was true. The chill was gone out 
 of the air. She did not even feel the occasional rain drop. She 
 had a sense of being, on a sudden, wrapped in warmth. They 
 flew on in silence. Glancing sideways, she saw the vigilant eyes 
 narrowed. On the driving wheel lightly, firmly, lay the clever 
 hands; the right falling every now and then on shining brake, 
 or speed-lever, and resting there awhile. 
 
 'They aren't a bit like the rest of you,' she said involuntarily 
 'your hands aren't.' 
 
 'Why?' He shot as sharp a look down on them, as if he'd 
 never in his life seen them, before. 'What's the matter with 
 them?' he demanded. Then, before she could answer: 'I know! 
 They're damned cold!' With his left hand he felt in his pocket. 
 That gloves were not forthcoming seemed not to surprise him, 
 nor even to matter. Absorbed in his new toy, one hand or other 
 always on the wheel, eyes measuring distance, brain calculating 
 time. 
 
 She had laughed. 'That wasn't what I meant.' Still she
 
 246 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 watched his hands. With deliberate intent to infuriate: 'They 
 are like a woman's or an Italian's.' 
 
 ' Oh ! you find me effeminate, do you ? ' he grinned. 
 
 'Hardly that,' she admitted. 
 
 'You'd call me a woman's man, or a man's man?' he asked 
 sardonically. 
 
 Stupidly she answered au pied de la lettre: 'Oh, a man's, of 
 course,' thinking straightway after, 'What's called "a woman's 
 man" is not a man for anyone.' 
 
 Now they were racing from Vere Street across Oxford Street. 
 'Which way are you going not down Bond Street!' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Why, the traffic and the greasy wood pavement ' 
 
 But threading his way in and out among cabs, omnibuses, 
 carriages, he turned sharply into crowded Bond Street, those 
 same slim hands on brake or wheel or lever, guiding the car as 
 surely, safely here, as they guided men and women through 
 dangers more menacing than the quick disaster of a street colli- 
 sion. 
 
 There was Aubrey Church coming away from some picture 
 show, no doubt, walking, as always, with down-bent head, his 
 near-sighted eyes seeming to have given up the hope of seeing 
 the world as it passed, and to look for compensation in the pav- 
 ing-stones. But now the press was closer, just above the point 
 where Brook Street comes into Bond Street and still they 
 hardly slackened speed. 
 
 'That was neatly done,' said Katharine lightly, as by a hair 
 they missed grazing a carriage suddenly drawn up. 
 
 'Ass!' ejaculated the driver of the motor. 'Even if the Prime 
 Minister doesn't know his business, he ought to get a coachman 
 who does!' 
 
 'Oh, was that Marlowe?' 
 
 'Yes. You aren't going to stay in town!' 
 
 'Why shouldn't I?' 
 
 'Because you aren't strong enough yet.' 
 
 'No,' she answered vaguely. 
 
 ' Where are you going ? ' 
 
 'I don't know.' Then suddenly: 'I thought you were going 
 to cure me.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 247 
 
 'I did the best I could.' 
 
 'No,' she said, with a sudden passion vibrating in the low 
 voice. 
 
 'What?' The press was closer here, and still they hardly 
 slackened pace. 
 
 As straight ahead as he, she looked, driving the car of her 
 life. 'You only took me a certain way on the road' . . . she 
 hesitated, caught her breath, glanced sideways, met his simul- 
 taneous swift scrutiny, and then, with the feeling one must have 
 who jumps from the roof of a burning house, she said very low: 
 'Why don't you finish what you began?' Instead of making 
 for the little court in front of Claridge's he turned the car sharply 
 out of Brook Street into South Molton Street. Without looking 
 at her, he said: 
 
 'What do you mean by that?' 
 
 'All that you can imagine I might.' 
 
 'Imagining isn't my business.' 
 
 Oh! would he spare her nothing? She clenched her hands 
 together in her muff, and, 'Take me away,' she said. 
 
 'Where?' 
 
 'Wherever you will.' 
 
 'When?' 
 
 'Now.' 
 
 'I can't.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'I've got a consultation.' 
 
 Good God ! did he never forget his trade ? 
 
 'I'm not going to the country till the last train,' he said. 
 
 'To-night?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Well.' 
 
 He looked at her now. Her muscles stiffened as under an 
 assault, but she sat quite silent, submitting herself with outward 
 calm to the dire humiliation of refusal. 
 
 'Do you mean it?' he asked sharply. 
 
 'Yes, I mean it,' and her heart leapt up with a sudden wild 
 hope. As he said nothing: 'Don't you believe me?' 
 
 'It isn't easy.' Another pause, and then, with rough bitter- 
 ness: 'You hit me pretty hard once.'
 
 248 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'You need not be afraid now,' she said almost in a whisper. 
 Straight on, without reply, he drove round to Brook Street again; 
 in her heart the prayer: 'Oh, don't remember that I "hit you 
 pretty hard once!" 3 But he is remembering. He will refuse. 
 Quick! Let me think. We are almost there. I must get up 
 to my room somehow . . . and then . . . well, it won't matter, 
 of course, if I never come down again. Only I must get there, 
 decently.' She began to long for that featureless hotel room as 
 she had never longed for any haven but this man's breast. When 
 I say good-bye, shall I be able to look at him without. . . . 
 Dear God . . . how were these seconds just before her how 
 were they to be lived through ? Should she find strength to stand 
 up under his eyes? If not if she fell ... no ... he would 
 have to stay in that event, stay and look after her, and he would 
 think . . . No! Whatever happened, she must bear this anguish 
 steadfastly, till he was out of sight. Only a moment more. . . . 
 If only the man hadn't such terrible eyes! 
 
 The car shot neatly into Claridge's narrow court. The liveried 
 servant at the door set down the wicker wheel-guard, and was 
 coming forward. 
 
 'Good-bye,' said Katharine, rising before the motor had 
 actually stopped. 
 
 'I'll meet you at the station,' said Vincent. 
 
 'To go . . .where?' she said very low. 
 
 He looked suspiciously at her, as if she had asked him some 
 too intimate question. Then he opened his coat, felt in a pocket, 
 took out a letter addressed to himself drew off the envelope, 
 and handed it to her, saying: 'Victoria at ten.' 
 
 'Victoria at ten,' she heard someone replying. Was that 
 her voice ?
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LESS like one leaving a lover than like one escaping from an 
 enemy, swiftly across the shallow step, through the two glass 
 doors, past a servant and a couple of out-going guests, into the 
 hall of Claridge's. Two or three groups of people, in the bril- 
 liantly-lit space, were quietly talking. Upon Katharine's quick 
 entrance, a man sitting on the sofa opposite the door, in the 
 shadow of a gigantic palm, jumped up and came towards her. 
 She swerved a little on a blind impulse to evade. 
 
 'Patience is sometimes rewarded,' said a familiar voice. Her 
 sense of nervous irritation at the intrusion of the irrelevant, was 
 not allayed by seeing it was Bertie standing in her way, saying 
 good-humouredly: 'I've been waiting a solid hour.' 
 
 'Have you?' Although he stood there in the full light now, 
 she was barely conscious of him; or, rather, conscious of him 
 merely as impediment, featureless, impersonal. She herself, like 
 a passenger off a ship, who has made a voyage long and stormy, 
 and on the solid earth yet feels the motion of the boat, Katharine 
 was still speeding breathless against the wind across uncharted 
 seas, on a journey of high peril, for which she needed eyes and 
 ears and unencumbered heart. The man she had left at the 
 door with those words so utterly commonplace, ' Victoria at ten ' 
 (for her charged with the significance of betrothal), the man she 
 had left out there, with his curious faculty for taking the colour 
 out of all other men, was so sharply vivid before the eye of the 
 mind that this old friend confronting her actual eye man of 
 mere flesh and bone was vague as half-forgotten dreams. 
 Blindly she moved to the stair, on the impulse to shake off this 
 faded memory that spoke with Bertie Amherst's voice, this 
 pleasant ghost that had risen between her and that fierce reality 
 
 249
 
 250 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 out yonder, as insistent as women find sacrifice, as glorious as 
 men find war. 
 
 What was the pleasant ghost saying in the soft, unemphatic 
 voice? Why did he keep beside her? She must hasten away 
 and make ready 
 
 'Victoria at ten!' 
 
 Oh, Black-Magic Man! You must love me love me! 
 
 'What's the matter, Kitty? You . . . Look here! you aren't 
 going to faint, are you?' Bertie had taken hold of her arm and 
 was drawing her to the sofa. Katharine sat down and covered 
 her eyes with her hand. Now he was even vivider. That was 
 how he would look at ' Victoria at ten.' 
 
 What was this the ghost beside her was saying? 'You aren't 
 strong enough yet to be running about all alone, too.' And 
 then very mercifully he sat silent for a little. Bertie had always 
 an instinct for doing the proper, or at all events the soothing, 
 the desired thing. 
 
 Presently: 'Are you all right for a moment?' She nodded, 
 without taking her hand from her eyes. 
 
 Bertie jumped up and intercepted a servant, hurrying by with 
 a card. Spoke to him as if confidentially, and emphasized his 
 words with a clink of gold upon the tray where a card lay. Then 
 loud enough for Katharine to hear: 'Yes, please. Before you 
 take that up! Will you?' 
 
 'Yes, sir!' The servant had turned about and run off in a 
 different direction. Bertie was always civil to servants. She 
 thought how Vincent would have spoken. He had no 'Will 
 you?' let alone 'Please,' even for his equals. But disapproval 
 knocked in vain at her full heart. 
 
 She let her hand drop from her eyes into her lap, and sat staring 
 in front of her at vacancy. Vacancy? No! At pictures 
 painted on the hours that would come after 'ten o'clock at Vic- 
 toria.' 
 
 Bertie had slipped quietly into the place at her side. 'Why 
 don't you take off those heavy furs?' He helped her. 'Beast 
 of a day. You aren't going to stop here long such weather? 1 
 
 'N-no.' 
 
 ' When are you off again ? '
 
 A DARK LANTERN 251 
 
 'T-to-night or very soon.' 
 
 Oh, Black-Magic Man, how is it with you when you care? 
 As, silently, she opened the door to the question, fear crept in. 
 
 'As quick as all that!' Bertie said in a low, disappointed 
 voice. 'Where are you going?' 
 
 She turned for the first time and looked at him. 'I thought 
 you were on the Riviera.' 
 
 'What made you think that?' 
 
 'Oh, some paper said so.' 
 
 'Rum state of things when your knowledge of my movements 
 is gleaned from the press! Don't you think so?' 
 
 She smiled faintly: 'I've been away, you see. So long out 
 of things I I feel a good deal of a stranger.' 
 
 Why had Vincent not made her the least sign since he was 
 ready? Why had he allowed her (compelled her!) to say 
 what she had said? There had been cruelty in that. Cruelty 
 of the actual moment, and the lasting cruelty of the memory 
 that stabbed her now, and would again, again. 
 
 'Well, you won't feel a stranger long,' Bertie had said. 
 
 'I don't know. I've had a queer notion that it might last.' 
 
 'Take my word for it it won't. By Jove, Kitty!' he leaned 
 towards her, not lover-like, not oppressive, just pleasantly smil- 
 ing 'it's good to have you back.' 
 
 Again she turned her head. The vagueness that enveloped 
 him dispersed a little. It was as if in the act of reading the bold 
 black-letter of a parchment writing, absorbed by the wonder 
 of the story, dazzled by jewelled picture and illuminated capital, 
 the eye had suddenly been arrested by some older writing under- 
 neath, not quite obliterate. The older matter was nothing of 
 importance, yet here and there a fragment of it caught the 
 eye, held it an instant from the graver matter that overlaid 
 the page. 
 
 'What did you say?' she asked. 
 
 'Only that it's good to have you back.' 
 
 'How did you find me?' she said with an obscure gratitude 
 to him for trying, unrecognized effect of her forlornness of an 
 hour ago when she had stood alone in the rain, waiting. 
 
 'I ran across Craybourne at the club. He asked where you 
 were. / didn't know.'
 
 2S A DARK LANTERN 
 
 The brisk servant put a small table in front of Katharine, and 
 set down the cognac tray. 
 
 'Thank you,' said Bertie. 'That's all right.' 
 
 'Much obliged, sir.' 
 
 'You've treated me brutally,' but he said it quite cheerfully 
 as he poured out the liquid amber. 
 
 'Oh no. / haven't been brutal.' She set her lips to the tiny 
 glass and took the scorch of the liquor on her tongue. 
 
 'Yes, you have. No. Please drink it all,' he prayed her. 
 She smiled to herself: Vincent would have said . . . Suddenly 
 she saw him side by side with this man on the sofa not nearly 
 so dim now, the man on the sofa. The war and the wound, and 
 absence, seemed to have left him the same attractive creature. 
 Well groomed and spick-and-span, and yet with an air of neg- 
 ligence, that made you feel his immaculate freshness achieved 
 without pains, unsought, inevitable, a grace of nature, like his 
 fine tanned skin and his clear boyish eyes eyes with nothing 
 behind them? Well, there might even be a certain comfort in 
 that. Nothing to crack one's wits with wondering. Oh, Black- 
 Magic Man, what secrets fierce or tender behind your eyes? 
 
 'Danby came into the club,' Bertie was saying, 'while Phil 
 and I were talking. He said he'd seen you in a hansom at 
 least, he thought it was you coming out of Claridge's. But 
 you looked clean through him as if he'd been air, and he hardly 
 thought you'd cut an old friend like that. 
 
 'Oh no. I didn't notice ' 
 
 'You were thinking of something else.' 
 
 'Yes, I must have been.' 
 
 'Or someone.' He studied her. 
 
 'Bertie ' she began nervously. 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Nothing. I must go upstairs now.' 
 
 'What are you going to do to-night?' 
 
 'To-night? Why? What are you going to do?' 
 
 'Take you to see the new French dancer at the Alhambra.' 
 
 'Bertie, you can't so soon after ' 
 
 'Oh, lots of people do. And I've got a box. No one would 
 see you. I've asked the Hudsons, and we'll sup at the Savoy 
 private room.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 253 
 
 'I can't,' she said quickly; 'didn't I tell you I wasn't going 
 to stay in London?' 
 
 'But you can't get back to Ventnor to-night look at the time!' 
 Katharine did so with a stringing up of nerves. 'Stupid of me 
 to think of dragging you out to supper but there's no reason 
 we shouldn't dine quietly together, and I'll leave you to go to 
 bed early.' 
 
 She shook her head. Dining with Bertie took time. Kath- 
 arine's dinner would be short to-night more like what she felt 
 must commonly be Vincent's own. A vision of him at the head 
 of the dinner-table that gruesome table in the Cavendish Square 
 dining-room, that sick folk gathered round each day. She saw 
 herself sitting there opposite Garth Vincent. And for her life 
 she couldn't see white damask, nor glass, nor silver, only a dingy 
 brown cloth, thumbed papers, and tattered books. Instead 
 of the roses that she loved, those wiry bits of ivy, and a few aged 
 anemones drooping dejected. Inwardly she smiled at herself, 
 and shook the vision off. Where she was there would be roses. 
 But while Bertie's pleasant voice went on he had made her 
 sit down again in the shadowed corner by the palm she felt 
 herself pursued by realization of things at Cavendish Square, 
 or otherwhere with Garth Vincent, that she would find harder 
 to change than the flowers at his sombre board. 
 
 Bertie had asked her something. What was it? To cover 
 her inattention: 'If you aren't going to the Riviera, as the papers 
 say, what shall you do?' 
 
 'I am going, as a matter of fact, to take the yacht to Palermo; 
 at least' he looked at her 'I was going to in a fortnight or so.' 
 
 How well she knew what the long golden days on the blue 
 water would be like! And while Bertie and his friends, who 
 were her friends too, were doing all these familiar, pleasant things, 
 what would she be doing? 'And till then, London?' she asked. 
 
 'Well, I did promise Crutchley I'd hunt ten days or so in Leices- 
 tershire first.' 
 
 She could see Bertie as vividly in Leicestershire as she saw 
 him on the yacht, and she recovered a vague wonder as to what 
 a London specialist could find to do in the country, 
 
 Well, she was going to discover. 
 
 'Victoria at ten!'
 
 254 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'So that's it,' she said aloud, 'Hunting in Leicestershire till 
 
 you go to Sicily I could find it in my heart to envy the 
 
 Southern part of your programme -' and thought flew on to 
 the hours that she meanwhile would be living through, in mid- 
 winter England. Not one of them all could she forecast. As 
 she groped in the impenetrable dark, she turned her eyes to 
 the face beside her, with a sudden sense of comfort in its open- 
 ness even in its lack of hidden possibilities. No rude sur- 
 prises out of Bertie. With such frank aids as he gave you to- 
 wards making computation of what you had to expect, you would 
 find yourself in the position of the undeveloped races. You 
 could not count far, perhaps, but you could count securely. It 
 was like saying i, 2, 3, upon the fingers. 
 
 He saw that she had not even listened to his urging that she 
 should share that part of his programme she admitted she almost 
 envied. 'As I say, I had thought of going to Leicestershire; 
 but on reflection I think Brook Street will do me. If you don't 
 feel up to anything to-night, when shall I come to-morrow ? ' 
 
 ' To-morrow ? ' 
 
 'Yes, to-morrow.' Patiently he sat there waiting for her 
 answer. 
 
 To-morrow! what would the world look like to-morrow? For 
 Katharine Dereham all the populations of all the cities of the 
 earth would be narrowed down to a single man. To-morrow 
 she would find herself cast away on a desert island with this 
 One. The One who had made her say what she had said. 
 He had not helped, nor ever so little screened her. Had left 
 her from the first to struggle quite alone in the coils of the dragon. 
 Her hand went up to her throat like one who fights for breath. 
 Love could be like that it seemed a Monster that came up 
 from the roots of the world, out of the deeps of the sea; a thing 
 sired by Storm and mothered by the Dark, that seized hold 
 of the puny creatures of the earth, and in spite of barriers, in 
 spite of all high words and cleanness of the heart this Mon- 
 ster of Mystery, Ancient of Days, this Love, could coil ab^ut 
 its victims till their strength was spent. 
 
 Was not all the song and story of the Past a mere retelling 
 of this conflict? In its poor little trumpery modern guise, she 
 was fighting the same fight that Phaedra fought, and Brynn-
 
 A DARK LANTERN 255 
 
 hilde, and all the pale and sad-eyed sisterhood, who long ago 
 had shown the world that a great passion is a great calamity. 
 'But I, a poor and puny modern, what have I to do with these 
 terrible and elemental things? They are as out of place in my 
 life, as a peplum would be on my shoulders, or sandals on my 
 feet, here in this commonplace Claridge's.' The modern had 
 exploded 'magic,' and character was Fate. 
 
 She dropped the hand that had caught at the close string of 
 pearls at her neck and sitting erect, with eyes out of which 
 the vague fear was vanishing, heard the iteration at her side, 
 'What time to-morrow?' 
 
 'I'll let you know, Bertie.' 
 
 ' No, I want you to tell me now. It isn't much to ask ? ' 
 
 'I ... I can't possibly say any more now.' She stood up. 
 'I think I told you I might have to go away at once.' (A long 
 way off now, that voice: 'Victoria at ten.') 'Good-bye.' She 
 held out her hand. As he took it, warmly yet without undue 
 pressure, she suddenly tightened her own hold found herself 
 clinging to this hand so unexpectedly, a little half-hour ago, held 
 out. 
 
 'Bertie, what are you doing to-night?' 
 
 'Why, I told you going to ' He looked at her hard, 
 
 'No I'm not either! I'm coming back here after dinner.' 
 
 'You mustn't do that,' she said quickly. 
 
 Bertie wavered a moment, but his manners saved him, as 
 they have many another at a moment when thought is obscured. 
 'Of course I won't come, if you don't want me.' 
 
 'No, not to-night,' she said. 
 
 'I'll tell you what I'll do! I'll be at Peterborough House, 
 in the library! I've had a telephone put in. Enough to make 
 my uncle turn in his grave. It sits flaunting there at the side 
 of his old writing-table. I'll be near it all the evening.' 
 
 'I can't have you give up your party ' 
 
 'I'll get Danby to take it off my hands. That'll please every- 
 body!' 
 
 'Bertie, you're very good.' 
 
 'Oh, I'm lots of things, but good isn't one of 'em.' 
 
 'No, I shall not need to telephone,' she said with an air of 
 finality,
 
 256 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Probably not, but I shall be there all the same. From after 
 dinner till midnight, within two feet of your voice.' 
 
 'Good-bye.' 
 
 But he kept beside her to the lift. 'I'm going on to the Bru- 
 tons'. Shall I say you're here?' 
 
 'Was the paper wrong about them, too? I thought they 
 were in Egypt.' 
 
 'They were. One of the children got ill. They raced back.' 
 He was writing something on a card. 
 
 'What is that?' 
 
 'My telephone number.' 
 
 She took it. 'No, don't tell the Brutons just yet.' 
 
 'All right.' He lifted his shining hat, and appeared to be 
 sinking downward from Katharine's own level like the tradi- 
 tional angel descending out of Paradise, cleaving his way through 
 space without effort or discomposure, his two feet side by side. 
 But it was not Bertie who shot down Katharine going up in 
 the swift-flying lift. 
 
 ***** 
 
 ' How long does it take to get from here to Victoria ? ' she asked 
 the servant who brought the coffee after dinner. 
 
 'About fifteen minutes.' 
 
 She looked at the clock. Not yet nine. 
 
 At a quarter past she went suddenly into her bedroom. 'Nat- 
 alie!' The maid was not there. Katharine found a hat and 
 pinned it on her head. Unlocked her fitted travelling bag, stared 
 at it, and locked it again. Caught up her gloves and ran down- 
 stairs, not waiting for the lift. 'The telephone is over there,' 
 she said to herself. Aloud, to the man in livery near the door: 
 'A hansom, please.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 He was waiting for her on the platform. 
 
 But with no air of expectancy. The casual observer would 
 have said the gentleman under the lamp was waiting yes, for 
 his train and killing time by reading the late edition of the 
 Westminster Gazette. But Katharine caught the sharp look 
 thrown out between the top of the paper and the fringe of the 
 half-dropped eyelid. He did not know her on the instant through 
 her figured veil.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 257 
 
 She went rapidly towards him, and saw the moment when 
 he recognised her. No gladness in the look, almost a slacken- 
 ing of taxed attention an effect of 'Oh, there you are, are you?' 
 
 'I have come only to tell you ' She was out of breath, 
 
 almost out of voice. 
 
 'Wait a moment,' he interrupted, folding up the paper and 
 thrusting it into his pocket in the act of turning away. 
 
 'I only wanted to say ' 
 
 He had his watch out. 'You can talk in the train.' And 
 now he was going back along the platform. 
 
 She followed him a few steps breathlessly. 'I'm here only 
 because I promised ' 
 
 'Yes, yes' he smiled over his shoulder with a grimness that 
 summoned all her womanhood to arms. 
 
 'Just to make my word good to clear it of caprice and to 
 tell you ' 
 
 'I'll get your ticket.' 
 
 'I don't want a ticket I ' 
 
 He was gone. 
 
 She stood an instant looking after him; then with swift steps 
 followed on again in the same direction hesitated the fraction 
 of a moment at the entrance of the booking-office, turned, and 
 disappeared under a black board on which white letters adver- 
 tised: WAY OUT. 
 
 As the clock hand pointed to ten minutes past ten, in one of 
 the little telephone cabinets off the hall at Claridge's, a white- 
 faced woman was standing, receiver at ear. 
 
 'Are you there, Bertie?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'A is everything just as it used to be?' 
 
 'Absolutely the same.' 
 
 'Of course I mean the library?' 
 
 'It's all just the same except that I've established communi- 
 cation with you.' 
 
 ' Good-night.' 
 
 'Good-night.'
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FOR three days Katharine shut herself up in the hotel. Bertie 
 called every afternoon, and was each time told, 'Miss Dereham is 
 unable to see anyone.' On the fourth day he was met by the news 
 that Miss Dereham was gone. 
 
 'Gone where?' She had left no address. 
 
 It was out of sheer formless dread of Vincent that Katharine 
 left the hotel where he knew she was. Not that she could se- 
 riously think he would come here for her and yet, there he stood 
 at every turn, by the door, in the lobby, on the stair, with his 
 face of menace, or with that derisive smile, even now a vision 
 to shake the heart. She reasoned with herself in vain. Called it 
 nerves, denied it was the all-imperative call of that mysterious 
 election in the blood that cries out day and night, 'My own, 
 my own, give to me my own.' 
 
 How long would it be like this ? Was London to be impossible 
 to her forever, for dread of one man's eyes? Would the hour 
 never come when she could meet them steadfastly ? 
 
 On the evening of the day that Bertie was told she had gone 
 from the hotel without leaving her address, he found her at the 
 Brutons'. Yes, she was going to stay with Blanche a few days, 
 till she could make more definite plans. 
 
 'What has happened?' he said. 
 
 ' Happened ? ' 
 
 'Yes. You look as if you'd seen a ghost.' 
 
 'Perhaps I have.' 
 
 'Well, look at me.' 
 
 She smiled: 'Do you think the sight of you will set the ghosts 
 to flight?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 259 
 
 'Rather. I say, Kitty ' She interrupted him, speaking 
 
 quite slowly and with those eyes that had seen a ghost fixed upon 
 him: 
 
 'I almost think that, of the men who've said they love me, 
 you ' 
 
 'Yes?' 
 
 'You've liked me best. I'm very grateful to you for that.' 
 
 'Liked you! Is that a reflection on the way I've made love?' 
 
 'No. It's only to say you've been blessedly quiet about it all 
 yet you've always given me a feeling that you liked me.' 
 
 'It don't somehow sound the right sort of raging ' She 
 
 smiled, a light of kindness in her face. 'Look here, Kitty. I 
 could rage more or less if that's what you want.' 
 
 ' My dear Bertie, that you don't, never have raged, makes me 
 makes me ' 
 
 He waited, and then with sudden misgiving: 'Are you going 
 to marry Waldenstein after all?' he demanded. 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'I know he asked you, not three weeks ago. I saw him the 
 day he went to Torquay and I saw him after he got back. I 
 was even a little sorry for him. Are you a little sorry that you 
 said no? Is that it?' 
 
 'No. That's not it.' 
 
 'Would you say "no" again?' She nodded wearily. 'Then 
 you'll marry me.' 
 
 'I shall never marry anybody.' 
 
 'That's absurd. You aren't the kind to live alone.' 
 
 'It may be that that makes me feel ' 
 
 'What?' 
 
 'The need of a friend. I want a friend most terribly.' 
 
 'Well, I'm here.' If he had taken her hand, or made any of 
 the customary demonstrations, that would have been the end. 
 He sat quite still. 
 
 'But ' She stopped. 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'I meant only what I said. A friend.' 
 
 'I understand.' 
 
 'No, you don't. I want to be honest with you. At least, 
 while I don't want to tell you everything, I want '
 
 2 <5o A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'You needn't tell me a mortal thing. I'd rather make you 
 forget. Come to Sicily. We'll make up a party if you like 
 though I shall hate the rest. It's the kind of thing the Brutons 
 would like, if they aren't afraid to leave that boy of theirs.' 
 
 'They might bring Freddy along. It would do him good.' 
 
 ' Kitty I You mean to come! But what's the use of worrying 
 with a party?' 
 
 'Ah, I knew you wouldn't be content to have me as a friend/ 
 
 'Try me.' 
 
 'How long could you be content so?' 
 
 'As long as those were your terms. 
 
 'You think, perhaps, I shall change. You are building on 
 that.' 
 
 'No, I almost wish I were.' 
 
 'It would be a great pity for you ' 
 
 'The only thing that would be a pity would be that I should 
 go alone!' 
 
 'Bertie, something has happened that makes me shrink from 
 
 gives me a great horror of One side of life is spoiled for me, 
 
 spoiled utterly.' 
 
 'Poor Kitty 1' 
 
 She looked at the incarnate kindness sitting there, till a rush of 
 tears dimmed it. 
 
 'Friendship,' she said 'friendship is a very noble thing.' 
 
 'Yes,' agreed Bertie, and she smiled, but the flicker went out 
 upon his adding: 'There's only one thing better.' 
 
 'Oh, Bertie go away and find the one thing better.' 
 
 'I shall never find it away from you.' 
 
 'You will never find it with me.' 
 
 'Then I shall not find it.' 
 
 'That is the face he took into battle,' she thought. But for 
 herself, a sense of warmth and safety wrapped her round, with this 
 coming close again of the old familiar life. When memory 
 stabbed at her, she would shrink and say to herself half-piteously, 
 like one before a court of justice, making out her case: 'Yes, I 
 don't deny I thought and said all those terrible, appalling things, 
 but it was part of my illness. I am nearly well now. I am 
 another creature.' Yet in her happiest moods, recollection of 
 Vincent would strike her laughter silent, and set her nerves to
 
 A DARK LANTERN 261 
 
 twanging harshly. The terror of meeting him did not lessen. 
 What should she do if she did meet him? She would not pay 
 visits in Portland Place, because it meant going by Cavendish 
 Square. She would not go to Worcester House for fear Vincent 
 might be still in attendance upon the Duke might meet her at 
 the door or on the stair. 
 
 It was her first acquaintance with terror. No one so well as 
 Bertie helped to exorcise the demon and though he was far 
 enough from guessing at the source of his new acceptableness, he 
 availed himself of it, in his pleasant smiling way, from morning 
 till midnight. When Katharine felt tempted to draw back from 
 him, the thought of that possible encounter with Vincent was 
 all-sufficient to serve Bertie's cause. 
 
 He saw his affairs in so hopeful a light that he accepted with 
 patience the brief postponement necessitated by Katharine's 
 going to pay her little yearly visit to Madame de Courcelles. She 
 was to cross that night, in spite of the storm that had come in 
 with the dawn, and increased as the day wore on. 
 
 'I don't mind the wind and the rain,' Katharine said as they 
 stood about the fire drinking coffee after luncheon 'I only mind 
 leaving Blanche in the midst of this new anxiety about Freddy.' 
 
 'Oh, I'm not anxious any more,' said Mrs. Bruton, cheerfully, 
 'I've got Moore to call in Dr. Vincent. There's Moore now!' she 
 said, glancing through the open door at a middle-aged man, who 
 could be seen slowly and pompously wending his way upstairs. 
 Mrs. Bruton set down her coffee cup, excused herself, and has- 
 tened after the family adviser. Katharine stood quite still, by 
 the far end of the mantelpiece facing the door. 'Shut itl shut 
 the door, Blanche!' she prayed inwardly. But the door stood 
 wide. 
 
 The Chiltern girls who had been lunching, talked on. Bertie 
 was in first-rate spirits, despite the impending journey. They 
 chattered and laughed. Katharine stood asking silently why she 
 did not pull herself together, and go and close the door. Wheels 
 outside. Something stopped. She turned her head. All she 
 could see through the window was about two feet of a whip, but 
 she felt the sting of it like a lash across her face. Fascinated 
 she watched the end trembling was his hand on it? What if 
 it were ? Her heart was not hanging on that string, though she
 
 2 62 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 did have the distinct sensation that, invisible, it dangled out there 
 in the cold and wet, shivering, at the end of his whip. 
 
 A peal at the bell, a sharp attack upon the knocker. Still 
 there was time to shut the door, and still she stood there. The 
 top of a black head moved quickly up between the pillars of the 
 banister; the white of gleaming eyes intensified by the pupils' 
 scintillant black, that flung a passing look into the drawing-room. 
 He never slackened that pace of his that was half a run. But as 
 he mounted the second stair, he turned his head and across the 
 balustrade met Katharine's eyes. No mark of recognition, no 
 change in the set face, save that the shining eyes were suddenly 
 suffused, the pupils not dimmed, but the white turned red. And 
 now he was gone. 
 
 'Why, Kitty,' Gladys Chiltern said, 'wasn't that your doctor?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'And doesn't he even say "How do you do?" to you?' 
 
 Bertie looked round. ' Oh, was that Vincent ? I must say it's 
 ungrateful of you, Kitty, not to have gone and spoken to him.' 
 
 'I know other people he's cured, who can't stand him either,' 
 said Gladys. 'Now, I think I'd rather like him. Make him 
 come in as he goes down. I want to look at the creature.' 
 
 'Why,' said Bertie, jumping up from his armchair by the fire, 
 'you're shivering, Kitty. It is too cold with that door open.' 
 
 'Yes, shut it,' said Katharine. 
 
 'No, no,' objected Gladys. 'I want to see him as he comes 
 down.' 
 
 But Bertie had obeyed Katharine. As the others talked on, 
 she sat and listened for footsteps, and had not long to wait. 
 'Now!' she admonished herself, 'if I am a rational being I'll break 
 this spell, I'll get up, go out and speak to him tell him about 
 Bertie.' 
 
 The group round the fire, in the midst of a laughing discussion, 
 hardly noticed as Katharine rose quietly and crossed the room. 
 She reached the door, opened it a little. He was coming down- 
 stairs, the anxious mother at his heels. Katharine was sure that 
 she was going out to speak to him. But the impulse seemed not 
 so much to weaken, as to be impossible to obey. Her hand on 
 the knob, lamed; her feet so near the threshold smitten with 
 paralysis. He was saying ' no immediate danger.' But would he
 
 A DARK LANTERN 263 
 
 come again to-morrow, Mrs. Bruton begged. 'Not necessary.' 
 'Yes, yes, it would make such a difference, if you would come.' 
 A fraction of an instant he seemed to hesitate looked over the 
 banister again, as he had done in going up, saw the drawing- 
 room door ajar, and let his gleaming eyes fall upon the face that 
 looked out at him. Katharine tried to take her fingers from the 
 knob, tried to go forth and tell him what she had not yet told 
 Bertie that she was going to marry Mr. Amherst. She must 
 herself tell that to Vincent. Only so would the dark influence be 
 exorcised, and the future safe. And instead of going out upon the 
 errand, there she stood feeling pitifully what sadness lay under- 
 neath the harshness of that face, and again as before, how the 
 riddle of the painful earth seemed written there. 
 
 Blanche, bending towards him, with her hand on the banisters, 
 urged his coming back ' to-morrow.' ' Impossible before Monday,' 
 he said abruptly, and over Mrs. Bruton's head again he dropped 
 that look on Katharine, that held her as Arctic iron holds and 
 burns bare flesh. To draw away, is to wrench and tear the living 
 tissues. The only safety lies in submission to the searing contact. 
 She bent her head less like one saying, 'How do you do?' than 
 like one saying simply 'Yes.' 
 
 Still Mrs. Bruton's anxious voice ventured to hope that 'to- 
 morrow' he hurried down the stair. Out of his refusal three 
 words 'the country to-night' came like a command as he 
 passed the door that stood ajar the face no longer there. Gladys's 
 derisive laughter had made Katharine turn. 
 
 'You're afraid of him,' the girl announced gleefully. 
 
 'He is talking to Blanche about Freddy.' Katharine came 
 back to the fire. She lifted her eyes, and again through the 
 window saw the whip lash tremble, fly into the air, describe a 
 wild fantastic curve, and disappear in the grey wet of the windy 
 December afternoon. Something of herself was surely dangling 
 on the lash. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 She bade Bertie good-bye after tea. No, she preferred it like 
 that. She hated to be 'seen off.' It was an inane custom. 
 
 She would not even allow Wilfred Bruton to come to the 
 station. Blanche needed him. Natalie was an experienced if 
 unenthusiastic traveller.
 
 264 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 It afforded that person no small astonishment, however, to find 
 herself steaming out of Victoria Station on the eight o'clock train, 
 while Miss Katharine stood beside her dressing-bag and jewel- 
 case out there on the platform, asking the way to the telegraph- 
 office. Miss Katharine had changed her mind while she was 
 getting out of the cab. Well, to be sure, how she did care for 
 that poor little sick Freddy! Or was it sympathy for his mother's 
 anxiety? Natalie, at all events, had got at last the long-delayed 
 permission to go for a visit to her own people. 
 
 * * * # * 
 
 For an hour and three-quarters Katharine sat in the dismal 
 station, scrutinizing by turn wet travellers, and the face of a small 
 watch, or in the quiet times after train departures, still sat there 
 with body slightly forward-bent over clasped hands, staring down 
 in front of her at the track left by muddy feet and the trail of 
 dripping umbrellas, studied these signs with an air of fixity 
 befitting some Champollion deciphering an obscure inscription. 
 Looking back afterwards, she had no clear recollection of writing 
 the note to Bertie, or the telegram to Madame de Courcelles, 
 yet she sat there with both note and telegram crushed together 
 in her hand. 
 
 * # * * * 
 
 He never even paused when he caught sight of her. She knew 
 he had seen that she sat there. She found herself behind him at 
 the gate. 
 
 'Tell the man to let me through,' she said. He turned and 
 shot a look at her over his shoulder. They stood so, arraigning 
 each other. 
 
 'Pass on, please,' said the ticket-inspector. 
 
 'It's all right,' muttered Vincent hurriedly, as though the 
 words were surprised out of him. Katharine was allowed to pass. 
 She walked beside him, waiting for him to speak. No word. 
 
 'You minded you minded it that I didn't come before.' 
 
 'Minded?' 
 
 'Yes, I saw that in your face to-day.' 
 
 'Humph! You read faces as well as hands?' 
 
 It struck her miserably, as they walked on, that this time he 
 made no move to get her a ticket. Oh no, he had tried that 
 before. Even that first time, he had waited to get it till she was
 
 A DARK LANTERN 265 
 
 actually here. Had he, even before she failed him, felt obscurely 
 (as it might have been herself) that to make too sure, to stand 
 ticket in hand, were to tempt the Fates were to give the mocking 
 weavers of destiny yet one chance more to turn the pattern to 
 grotesquerie ? A new wretchedness fell upon her as she felt what 
 it had been, to just this man, to start upon his journey with a 
 superfluous fare in his pocket. ' Less my absence,' she told herself 
 humbly, 'than the presence of the ticket, unclaimed, derisive. 
 'You hit me pretty hard once.' Twice? She stole a sideways 
 glance. Not a third time, if caution could safeguard a man. She 
 stopped suddenly. 
 
 'Is there time before the train goes to send this wire?' she 
 asked, holding out the message to Auteuil. He paused, not 
 taking the paper: 
 
 'The train to where?' 
 
 She shrank. ' hit me pretty hard once,' she repeated to 
 
 herself maybe twice, certainly no third time. Vividly before 
 her eyes, that envelope he had given her in the motor,, 
 
 'To High Winston,' she said. 
 
 His answer was to draw out his watch. 
 
 'And this letter, please ' 
 
 He took the two, half turned, and then looked back with a 
 sudden rather sinister smile. 
 
 'No, no,' she went nearer 'don't ' He turned his head 
 
 so resolutely away she laid her hand on his arm. 'You are not 
 to remember you must know there is for me no turning back, 
 now,' 
 
 She stood and watched him going down the platform. 
 
 The friendly porter appeared with her bag. 
 
 'Is this your train? Where shall I label ' 
 
 She repeated the name of the place. 
 
 The man found her a corner seat, put the small things in, and 
 went away for the others. Katharine kept her jewel-case in her 
 hand, and stood on the platform by the open door. Suppose he 
 doesn't come back! 
 
 The rebound from that fear was so great that, as far off down 
 there, near the gate, he detached himself from the gloom and 
 came towards her, she felt like a creature rescued. 
 
 The reaction from those few seconds' doubt, came in the guise
 
 266 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 of a reassurance so warm and fear-allaying, that a strange sensa- 
 tion mastered her, of its being an old custom for her thus to stand 
 at week ends, waiting for him to join her in the train. Not a 
 clandestine creature in a veil she felt underneath her excitement 
 a sense of the naturalness, the fitness of it all, as if she were his 
 wife, had been his wife for years. 
 
 'Only half a minute to spare,' he said, holding the door for her. 
 She got in and sat down. Vincent still stood on the platform. 
 What was he waiting for? she wondered impatiently. Oh, he 
 had sent for a foot- warmer; the man was coming with it. 
 
 A passenger hurrying by, stopped and spoke. Vincent greeted 
 him as an acquaintance. Although he stood with his face towards 
 Vincent and away from the carriage, Katharine shrank back in 
 her corner. All the fancied 'naturalness' of the situation fled 
 out of it. It was very new for Katharine Dereham to feel awk- 
 ward, shamefaced, at unavoidable disadvantage afraid; and 
 she suddenly felt all these things. The hot-water tank was pushed 
 in. The porter was closing the door, shutting Vincent out. 
 Katharine lifted a sudden staying hand, and her anxious eye 
 caught Vincent's. He smiled; a little wickedly, but, Saints in 
 Heaven! what a light it made his smiling! 
 
 At the last moment he entered the carriage, his bluff, middle- 
 aged friend following hard upon his heels, talking about the pro- 
 jected change in the time-table. It was plain he had not seen 
 Vincent's smile, had no notion but what he was alone. 
 
 What will he do? What do men do under such conditions? 
 She remembered Hilda Carey and Oscar Warburton. That she, 
 Katharine Dereham, should come to play poor Hilda's part in the 
 ugly little comedy. A story of Bourget's came back to her all 
 sorts of 'shady' escapades, out of fiction and out of life, chased 
 one another through her head. Will he pretend we are strangers ? 
 and she felt her gorge rise at the prospect of the cheap deceit. 
 Swiftly foresaw, too, the difficulty at the other end. It was so 
 late, there were few passengers. No hope of being lost in a crowd. 
 And the bluff acquaintance would not miss any detail in the 
 vulgar subterfuge by which, hanging about, lurking behind 
 luggage, or at the station corner, she should at last perforce be 
 claimed and carried off close upon the midnight hour! 
 
 While she was being ground under these prognostications,
 
 A DARK LANTERN 267 
 
 Vincent had turned to her and said quite simply: 'Can we have 
 the window open that much?' 
 
 'Yes,' she answered. The acquaintance stared. But Vincent, 
 still talking time-table, pushed the hot-water tank under Katha- 
 rine's feet. 'Thank you,' she said, feeling suddenly that he could 
 be trusted, even here, and again that it was ' natural ' to have him 
 looking after her. The talk between the two men was now about 
 a horse sale; Vincent asked especially about a certain mare. 
 He prompted his horsey friend upon some question of pedigree, 
 and the argument waxed hot. Katharine's thoughts left the two 
 men and went whirling on before, wheeling giddily like flocks of 
 frightened birds, now darting back upon the past, and then on 
 on to what lay before. 
 
 Still the talk of horses went forward without a pause, the bluff 
 man doing the major part, the other listening, dissenting, correct- 
 ing, throwing in one word to the other's twenty, but by that one 
 steering the course of the score. For some moments from under 
 her veil, Katharine kept covert watch upon the dark, ungentle 
 face. ' Oh, I love you I love you,' she said in her heart. Then, 
 turning to meet the wind that rushed in at the window : ' Does he 
 shall I make him love me? Shall I?' 
 
 The train had stopped several times but no one had got in. 
 Now as they went on again Katharine made a visor with her 
 hands, shielding her eyes from the ceiling lamp, and looking out 
 upon the countryside. The air smelt of wet earth, of sodden 
 dead leaves, of dripping woodland. But nothing here, away from 
 station lights, nothing could be plainly seen. A gale of wind was 
 sweeping the black moonless world. It seemed to be the wind 
 and not the train that was carrying her away. 
 
 Vincent, still talking or listening to his friend, was making the 
 window fast in spite of her: 'I don't feel cold.' 
 
 'It's too much,' and the sash was pulled up tight. 
 
 As he turned his head to answer something his friend had said, 
 it occurred to Katharine that he was treating her as Germans 
 treat their wives, as though in the rational councils of the lords of 
 the universe, women naturally had neither art nor part not only 
 needed not to be appealed to, needed not even to be remembered 
 unless they seemed likely to catch cold, or do something else 
 of a silly and purely feminine character. And she smiled under
 
 268 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 her veil, not ill-pleased at either his care or his neglect. It 
 indulged her fancy that the situation was that of plain and 
 simple folk long wed. 
 
 She glanced down at the skirt of her brown cloth gown, muddied 
 by the hansom wheel. What would it be like, trying to get on 
 without a maid? Should she find some one 'down there'? 
 Whether she did or not, her instinct had been right; it was not 
 possible to face the idea of bringing even a devoted servant out 
 of the old life to be witness of the new. There must be no eyes. 
 And this not for the sake of those conventions she was leaving 
 behind; still less for prudence' sake. A question of nerves. No 
 eyes had ever had the right to look at Katharine Dereham as 
 they might to-night and from this hour, on. But just now, no 
 eyes. Not that she was actually afraid now, or even doubtful. 
 But she had intensely that sense of isolation, that comes of a 
 resolve to act in blind obedience to some inner call, whose voice 
 no other will ever fully understand, and few even faintly hear. 
 And so: no eyes, no ears. She glanced across the carriage, 
 encountered Vincent's level look, and turned again to the dark 
 square of the window. There would be his ears to hear his 
 merciless eyes to meet. She would need all her courage to face 
 that light, unflinching. 
 
 Natalie, a good deal taken aback at her mistress's sudden 
 determination Natalie, not over-pleased, will have a rough 
 crossing, thought her mistress; adding with conscious grimness' 
 'And I, too, I'm likely to have a rough crossing.' 
 
 Now they were stopping again. The horsey man raised his 
 voice he raised his hand, too, and laid it on the window-strap 
 before the train pulled up. He was evidently getting out here 
 and still the same theme. 
 
 The wind rushed in, and the man, alighting, held fast to his 
 hat. Vincent did the same while he shut the door, saying through 
 the window: 'That mare for sale? Send her over to-morrow 
 morning. I'll have a look at her.' 
 
 'All right. Good-night.' The horsey man was gone. 
 
 ' Only one more station,' Vincent said. He pulled up the sash 
 again and leaned back, stretching out his hands upon his knees. 
 He glanced down at them reflectively, and suddenly laughed. 
 'So you read hands 1 Can you read your own?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 269 
 
 He was still looking at his, with something of the same atten- 
 tiveness he had shown in the motor. Two hours before she 
 had drawn off her glove to write the note to Bertie. Her bare 
 right hand lay now upon her muff. Jewels flashed and signalled 
 for admiration. But Vincent seemed as little to see the wink- 
 ing jewels as the hand upon the muff. He was holding both 
 his own palms up to Katharine with: 'Now I'd like to hear 
 what's queer about them.' 
 
 He offered them to her as if he expected her to take them, 
 palmist fashion. She made a little motion to do so, and then 
 checked herself. She no more dared to touch him than if he 
 had been flame. And he was still holding up his hands, and 
 almost boyishly, 'Tell me what's queer about them,' he said. 
 
 'They're not like the rest of you.' 
 
 'How do you make that out?' 
 
 'Why, because you you the rest of you,' she indicated 
 faintly with her ungloved hand the bold hard face bending near, 
 the square of shoulder, in general the strong and well-knit frame. 
 But as he still sat there, holding up his hands and looking from 
 them to her 'because the rest of you is very masculine and 
 your hands are ... as I've said.' 
 
 'Are what?' 
 
 'Why, not like English hands at all.' 
 
 'I don't see that,' he said sharply, like one rebutting a damag- 
 ing accusation. 
 
 'Well, you look at other people's. There are more ugly hands 
 in England than in any country in the world. And besides, 
 yours are sensitive hands.' 
 
 'Where do you find that?' he said, grinning. 
 
 She must justify herself, and not let him think she was merely 
 flattering him. 'Look at the finger-tips.' 
 
 He obeyed with a sudden comical gravity, but seemed to 
 derive less satisfaction than he had anticipated. 
 
 'Turn them over.' She laid her muff down on the seat beside 
 her, and bent forward a little. 'Lay them down so,' she illus- 
 trated. An instant's tingling ran through her, as she saw he 
 might think she meant him to lay them in her lap. 'Here,' she 
 said hurriedly, 'here is your paper.' She laid it across his knees. 
 'Now don't you see?' She bent further over.
 
 270 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Look at the line down the side. No here, from little finger 
 to wrist. How good the curve is ' 
 
 'Oh, good is it?' 
 
 ' and how slim the wrist is ' With her forefinger she 
 
 had indicated the curve, following the line described only a 
 quarter of an inch from his hand, following it slowly from little 
 finger-tip down to wrist, to where the short black hair came 
 out from the white cuff and suddenly it was as if, after all, she 
 had touched him. She drew back and leaned her head against 
 the cushioned wall. While he still sat an instant frowning at his 
 palm-down hands, she said to herself: 'The kind of lean hands 
 to do Black Magic healing to the verge of the miraculous if he 
 will, but hinting at other powers as well' powers to which she 
 refused to give a name. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The lasting impression of the arrival at High Winston, was a 
 thing compounded of black night and moaning wind. Great 
 trees tossed about an old house. The ghost of a light flitted from 
 window to window, and halted at last in the hall. Katharine 
 remembered with shrinking the one question she had put at the 
 end of the journey: What about the servants? 
 
 'What servants?' 
 
 'Yours.' 
 
 'Well? They're my servants. I'm not theirs.' 
 
 In lieu of welcome, they were set upon by dogs. Vincent 
 cursed them, and then forgot his human companion in pleased 
 acceptance of canine apologies. 
 
 An old woman with a lamp, murmuring through Vincent's 
 'Where's Jackson?' that her son had gone down to prevent more 
 damage being done by the high wind to the unfinished stable; 
 and how he had expected to be back, but thought 'no matter 
 what ' the master would expect him to look after the new stables. 
 While Katharine digested her grim adventure under the aspect of 
 'no matter what,' Vincent was inquiring into the supposed damage, 
 with an absorbed solicitude he had never betrayed in finding out 
 the havoc wrought by disease upon the human frame. 
 
 Firing off quick questions, he had divested himself of his coat. 
 Katharine stood in hers. The dogs still barked at her, between 
 their master's threats, and in intervals of leaping round him
 
 A DARK LANTERN 271 
 
 trying to lick his face. A gust of wind blew open a door in some 
 region beyond. The old woman went to shut it, still muttering 
 about the storm. Vincent was putting on his coat again. 
 Katharine looked at the dark face for a sign. A sign, man! 
 A sign! 
 
 He spoke to the dogs. 
 
 On an impulse Katharine moved back to the front door, which, 
 left ajar, the wind had blown half open. She peered out. The 
 hand of the storm caught at her silk scarf, and seemed to draw 
 her into the dark. The thought of flight contended with the 
 tears in her throat. One step over the sill, and the spell would 
 be broken. Now she was crossing the dim threshold plucked 
 at, welcomed by the many fingers of the rejoicing winds. In 
 the same instant from out the shadowy house, an ungentle hand 
 had fallen on her shoulder. His voice: 
 
 'You're going the wrong way.' 
 
 She caught her breath in a sob. ' Oh, Black-Magic Man, how 
 am I to know?' 
 
 He crushed her suddenly against him, his lips were on her 
 mouth. 
 
 So, silently, he answered her. 
 
 She drew away with a sense of terrified gladness, and steadied 
 herself against the door, not daring in that first dizzy moment to 
 lift her eyes. Dark as it was, she might see too much. Trembling 
 still, she yielded to the hand that drew her back into his house. 
 
 The old woman was there again like a Fate, looking on, 
 impassive. 
 
 'Take Mrs. Vincent upstairs,' he said, and Katharine felt the 
 oddity of her own swift relief, her gratitude for the shelter of a 
 name. 
 
 'I'll see Jackson,' he threw over his shoulder, and slammed the 
 door behind him.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 DURING the long silent drive from the station through the 
 windy dark she had said to herself: 'What sort of life does he 
 lead here?' Imagination was as unlit as the night. She had 
 seen this man at work 'What will he be like at play?' She 
 knew instinctively that good work confers dignity, but that 
 play borrows its qualities from the player. She had not known 
 how men worked before; she had learned that with an odd kind 
 of reverence from Vincent. But she knew how men played, 
 men who made a profession of it, and she shrank half uncon- 
 sciously from seeing this man, whose youth had been spent, 
 as she vaguely gathered, in vagabonding about the world among 
 the hardier sort of adventurers, who had late awaked to love of 
 science, and had won his extraordinary place, not as others said 
 by sheer force of genius, but, as he said, ' because I worked like 
 
 hell ' how was this man going to play his part in that pretty 
 
 modern tournament, English country life? 
 
 She need not have troubled herself. He did not play. He 
 went about his property with the same black-browed earnest- 
 ness that he carried in town from patient to patient, from lecture- 
 room to laboratory. And with the same success, wrought in the 
 same way, out of love for what he was doing. Wherever he had 
 gathered up such lore, he knew soils and crops and cattle, as he 
 knew men and their weakness. To see him among his horses 
 was to feel he understood them better than did the grooms, who 
 understood nothing else. He had the land-hunger of the founders 
 of the great estates. Ever since she could remember Katharine 
 and her father had been selling land. Lord Peterborough from 
 different motives had got rid of thousands of acres. But Vincent, 
 whenever a neighbouring farm came into the market, added it 
 to his possessions not merely to have it, not merely to carry it 
 
 272
 
 A DARK LANTERN 273 
 
 on in the old way, but to improve, to exemplify his favourite 
 theory that farming was not only good fun, 'it could be made to 
 pay. Katharine credited the pay at once, since he said so, but 
 she was sceptical about the fun. 
 
 'When you work so hard at your profession all the week, 
 don't you think you ought to rest when you come down here?' 
 
 'What I do here does rest me.' 
 
 She looked at him. He had gone out before breakfast that 
 very first morning, to try the mare that he had taken the un- 
 accountable fancy to. Katharine had watched from a window, 
 with her heart in her mouth had at last, at risk of ridicule, 
 gone out on the porch and called, 'Do come in.* 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'I I'm hungry.' 
 
 'Eat, then.' 
 
 'Oh, send that vicious beast away!' 
 
 'No, I won't,' he said, and for a good hour he devoted himself 
 to inducing the mare to take a different view of her whole duty 
 to man. He came in hot and a little breathless, but quite amiable. 
 'She's just like a damned woman,' he said in his pleasant way, 
 as he watched from the window the smoking-wet creature trem- 
 bling, jerking at the halter, led away in a blanket. 'I've bought 
 her.' 
 
 'Bought her? I can't see what you did that for.' 
 
 'You will if you stay long enough,' he showed his teeth in 
 that sardonic silent laugh. 
 
 After breakfast he had gone over to look at the new stables 
 stables with wonderful concrete floors, a brand-new system 
 of drainage, ventilation, and sanitation 'this place will be as 
 clean as a hospital ward.' But something had not been done 
 as he had ordered. Katharine came away when he began to 
 berate the foreman. She didn't see him again till luncheon. 
 They went to ride after, but he sent Katharine home from the 
 mill. 
 
 'You've had enough; good-bye that's the road.' He went 
 on alone to inspect the Hill farm, and never came back to tea. 
 Katharine was not angry; she felt herself even smiling from time 
 to time. It was sufficiently unlike the days of guilty dalliance 
 she had heard and read of. 
 
 18
 
 274 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 He came in at seven, splashed and muddy from neck to heel, 
 having been in the saddle five hours. 
 
 'By God, I'm tired!' He stretched himself out before the 
 fire, and his boots steamed. 'Been raining hard these two 
 hours.' 
 
 Katharine laid down her embroidery and looked at him. ' Do 
 you never take cold ? ' 
 
 He mumbled something as he poked between the bars. But 
 he went upstairs in a moment. She wondered what he would 
 put on. 
 
 As for herself, she dressed as if she had been going to a Lon- 
 don dinner-party, with the exception that, had she been in town, 
 she would have worn black. When she came down an hour 
 later she stopped an instant at the door, with a sudden fear 
 at her heart, fear that some close friend of hers, or of the Peter- 
 boroughs, had got upon her track and followed her. For a 
 man in evening dress stood at the fire. A very well-cut back 
 was turned upon her. The shine of immaculate linen reflected 
 from the glass. She had recoiled sharply, about to run away, 
 when the figure wheeled round. 'Why, it is you!' She came 
 in laughing. 'You I never saw you in evening dress before.' 
 
 'Yes, you did.' 
 
 'Oh, you mean years ago. But you weren't you, then.' She 
 longed to tell him how well he looked. But his eyes were shin- 
 ing curiously as, in his turn, he scanned her. She was glad 
 she had put a bunch of Parma violets in the front of her ivory 
 satin gown. As she stood that instant before him, twisting her 
 fingers in and out of the long rope of pearls that she knew set 
 off her fairness, last night's feeling of almost intolerable excite- 
 ment returned upon her. She avoided his eyes looked right, 
 looked left, and suddenly with outstretched hand indicated cer- 
 tain changes she had made in the furniture, which she had found 
 arranged in a painful diagram, stiff, unhomelike. 'Don't you 
 like it better so?' 
 
 He looked about the room as if he had not, until then, taken 
 note of any change. At right angles to the fire she had drawn 
 a sofa. Between it and the end of the hearth was now a little 
 table with reading lamp. Opposite was the huge armchair 
 with footstool, and at the farther side, a rather bigger table,
 
 A DARK LANTERN 275 
 
 also lamp-lit. And books of hers, in vellum and old brocade, 
 lay about, a silk work-bag, and various feminine odds and ends 
 in silver and enamel things that she was used to having by 
 her wherever she was. And the whole room was full of flowers. 
 
 'You do like it a little better, don't you?' she asked. As his 
 eyes came back after a tour of the room, a malicious gleam crossed 
 the dark face. 
 
 'You look as if you meant to stay.' 
 
 The smile died from off her lips. Passionately she told her- 
 self: 'No gentleman would have said that.' She moved away, 
 silent, to the far bowl of white lilac, and buried her hot face in it. 
 
 'Where did you get your flowers?' 
 
 'From the Great Matley greenhouses.' 
 
 'How did you know there were greenhouses at Great Matley?' 
 
 'I asked.' 
 
 'I told you you'd had enough.' 
 
 ' Enough ? ' 
 
 'I expected you to go home.' 
 
 'I did go ... home.' 
 
 'Round by Matley?' 
 
 'Oh no, I sent.' 
 
 With a great effort, as they sat down to dinner, she began 
 to make conversation, her long training in keeping up appear- 
 ances, coercing her to 'act' a little before the servants. 
 
 'I'm told some of the things didn't get down from London. 
 I suppose it isn't easy to have much variety here,' she pursued 
 laboriously. 
 
 'You can get everything you need here, but fish.' 
 
 'Oh, I dare say one needn't starve.' She had not meant to 
 criticise the dinner she was talking against, not time, but silence, 
 and hardly knew what words she flung into the breach. But 
 Vincent never talked except to say something. He looked at 
 her speculatively as he broke his bread. 
 
 'Are you fussy about your food?' he demanded. 
 
 'I don't think so.' 
 
 'I'm satisfied with very plain things.' 
 
 The dinner was not amiss, but it was impossible for her to 
 eat. Last night she could have gone there was still time; to- 
 night, ah, it was very different to-night. And he had jeered
 
 276 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 at her: 'You look as if ' Feeling suddenly that she should 
 
 choke: 
 
 'Is there some wine?' she asked. 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'I'll have some if there is * 
 
 The servant opened the cellaret the gilded necks of cham- 
 pagne bottles looked out like fine plumaged birds from a crate. 
 
 'No. You mustn't have wine,' he said. 
 
 She pretended to take it in comedy vein. 'Oh yes, I must, 
 just to-night. You know I'm not a wine-bibber, but just to- 
 night.' 
 
 'Why just to-night?' 
 
 'Because I I'm tired.' 
 
 'That's just the time you shouldn't drink wine. And you 
 don't look tired. You look very well.' 
 
 The servant had gone out. She tried to laugh leaned her 
 head on her hand, and before she knew it, the tears were drop- 
 ping on the cloth. 
 
 'What! Are you crying because I don't give you wine?' He 
 jumped up. She, too, laughing and saying, 'Don't be silly 
 I I'm just ' The light danced. She caught at the side- 
 board. He put his arms round her, and brought her back to 
 her chair but after she was seated, he still leaned over her as 
 if to speak, looked up as the door opened to admit the servant, 
 and then went quickly back to his place. 
 
 'You're very long,' he said sharply. 'What's the trouble 
 with you people out there ? ' 
 
 While the man excused, apologized, Vincent began again to 
 talk to Katharine. 'Of course, you can have wine if you want 
 it, but you're better without.' And he began to speak of Italian 
 wine thence of Italian experiences of various sorts; and pres- 
 ently of some brigands he had once encountered in Morocco. 
 He told the story rather wel), but he seemed in no need of the 
 usually accepted signs of interest in his interlocutor. Even here, 
 she noticed that questions seemed to interrupt and put him on 
 his guard. 
 
 'When was that? 
 
 'Oh, some years ago' and he was off again telling of a ruse 
 by which the leader of a gang was afterwards taken.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 277 
 
 'What attracted you to Morocco?' 
 
 'I wasn't attracted, I just went.' 
 
 But it was a good story, and he told it with a singular uncon- 
 scious effectiveness, in his bald telegraphic style. 
 
 Instead of following her back to the drawing-room he went 
 to a side-door and whistled. The dogs came bounding into 
 the hall. He spoke to each one, calling each by name. When 
 he reappeared in the drawing-room surrounded by them, and 
 Katharine saw his face in the full light, she was astonished, 
 touched even, by its kindness and good-humour. But the dogs 
 were equally astonished, and not in the least touched to gentler 
 feelings by the horrid discovery of a woman by the fireside. They 
 bellowed fearfully at the apparition in white satin, while Vin- 
 cent, by dint of damning them freely, at last reduced them to 
 a grudging endurance of the intruder. But he had seen Kath- 
 arine's involuntary shrinking away. 'Do you mind dogs?' he 
 demanded. 
 
 'No, oh no,' she said, thinking, whatever her own discom- 
 fort, it was good to see him look like that. She moved forward 
 to the table. The bull pup, plainly a misogynist, resenting the 
 liberty she took, and roused to renewed detestation of the petti- 
 coat, flew at Katharine with murderous intent. Vincent was 
 upon him like a flash of lightning, and the beast had time only 
 to set his teeth in the satin gown, before he was half-choked in 
 those fine brown hands, that Katharine had said were 'like a 
 woman's.' Turk, gaping furiously for air, eyes starting out of 
 his head, half throttled, would not have endorsed her opinion. 
 He was dragged out into the hall, and there received correction. 
 Katharine put her hands over her ears at first but still she could 
 hear. She ran to the door and stood among the howling dogs, 
 praying him 'not to do it any more.' Vincent, still with his 
 hand on the collar of the offending member of his family, dragged 
 him back to the drawing-room, whither Katharine had precip- 
 itately retired, so as not to rouse the angry passions of the Turk 
 by appearing again too prominently in the foreground. She 
 seized her work-bag with a nervous hand, and hunted for her 
 needle. But Turk's feelings were not to be spared. He was 
 dragged straight to Katharine's feet. 
 
 'Are you afraid of him?' demanded Vincent, frowning.
 
 278 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'No,' said Katharine, not even knowing that she lied. 
 
 'That's right,' he said. 'Now!' fiercely to the dog, 'you be 
 good to this person. Understand?' He bent over the beast 
 with an air of such ferocity that the woman's sympathies went 
 suddenly out again to the cowering dog. She half put out her 
 hand to lay it on Turk's head thought better, and dropped 
 it at her side. Vincent patted Katharine's knee, never looking 
 at her, eyes fastened on the dog, as he repeated, 'Understand? 
 This is a friend.' Katharine glowed under the adoption more 
 grateful, prouder, than any compliment had ever made her 
 yet sharing not a little in Turk's nervous demoralization. For 
 Vincent, still frowning his blackest, went on talking to the dog, 
 alternately bullying and roughly caressing, while Katharine 
 sat back in the chair not daring to speak or even move, divided 
 between 'fear of the two ugly brutes,' as she said to herself, sud- 
 denly seeing the absurdity of the situation. 
 
 After a few more emotional passages, 'poor Turk,' as Kath- 
 arine now thought of her enemy, lay down near the door in black 
 dejection, and Vincent went over and stood among the good 
 dogs, back to the fire, hands clasped behind. Glancing side- 
 ways, surreptitiously, Katharine took in the immaculate figure 
 and the more than forbidding face, eyes half-shut, suffused and 
 reddened, as anger always left them, fixed sullenly on the van- 
 quished dog. Turk, as far away as he could get, crouching 
 by the closed door, his wicked face wickeder than ever, the loose 
 leathery mouth, sourly reflective, drooping in evil curves upon 
 his paw, one lurid eye fixed upon his master. Katharine swal- 
 lowed a hysterical laugh at the spectacle of Vincent and his bull- 
 dog glowering at one another from a distance after an engage- 
 ment. But for the little choked noise that escaped her lips, 
 no sound in the room for some moments. Quickly, deftly, she 
 drew in and out her embroidery silk. 
 
 Vincent seemed at length to tire of glowering at Turk to 
 feel the oppression of silence ensuing upon the din. He looked 
 round suddenly as one missing something. 'I must get a piano 
 down.' Katharine, still feeling rather hysterical with suppressed 
 laughter (she was so sure the music just silenced had, in spite 
 of Vincent's anger, been that, after all, most to his taste), essayed 
 Jo answer with becoming graciousness.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 279 
 
 'Yes, that would be nice.' The words had no sooner left 
 her lips than she remembered that speech of his. 'You look 
 as if you meant to stay,' and her mood darkened. The sur- 
 face comedy was broken through, showing again the grimness 
 of the situation for a woman such as she. 'You play, your- 
 self?' she asked. 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Sing?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Then it would hardly be worth while.' 
 
 She worked feverishly at her pattern, holding the more rigidly 
 to an aspect of tranquillity, since she could not coerce her heart 
 as he had done the dog. If she could only whip it into submis- 
 sion! The heavy-freighted seconds passed. As he stood there 
 by the fire she had the illusion of seeing him with unusual vivid- 
 ness, while she kept her eyes on her work. 
 
 At last: 'Do you know what o'clock it is?' he said. 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Well, it's country bed- time.' 
 
 'Good-night,' she said, nodding at him, and going on with 
 the petal of her flower. 
 
 He came and stood in front of her. What would he do next? 
 She began to tremble in all her limbs, tremble so that she could 
 not control her hand to make the stitches even. But worked 
 on with unraised eyes. What would he do? Was he getting 
 out of patience he who had so little? Was he looking at her 
 as he did at Turk? She could have laughed, and still more 
 
 easily have wept. Was it possible that he Ah, dear Heaven! 
 
 Was he gazing down with such a look as she had dreamed of, 
 and never yet had seen ? 
 
 Lower still he stooped. What was it? What did he mean? 
 Still she dared not raise her face, and yet her eyelids fluttered 
 longing to lift and welcome him. 
 
 'I wonder,' he began at last, and with a start she raised her 
 eyes. He was not looking at her at all but gravely studying 
 the horned petals of the columbine. 'I wonder what would 
 happen to me if I had to make another just like that, or be hung. 
 Or rather I don't wonder. I know.' 
 
 'You'd say "I'll be hanged" for a change.'
 
 28o A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'For a change?' 
 
 'Yes. Ordinarily, you'd say "I'll be damned."' 
 
 'Oh no, not now, I wouldn't.' 
 
 'Since when did you leave off?' 
 
 'Oh, years ago,' he said quite seriously. 'When I first came 
 back from the wilds, I used to swear like a trooper.' 
 
 'Really. And you never do that now?' 
 
 'It's worn off. It wouldn't do in my profession used to 
 frighten the women into fits.' 
 
 'I'm glad you never do it now,' she said, giving way to smiles. 
 
 What an odd creature it was ! Where was the charm of him ? 
 She couldn't have told for her life. She only knew as she looked 
 up at him, that there was no other man in the world. But for 
 fear he should see something too much of this, she bent over 
 her embroidery again. 
 
 'Put that away.' 
 
 'I must finish this bit.' 
 
 He attempted to take the work out of her hands. 
 
 'Be careful! You'll prick me! Ah no, it's you!' He had 
 dropped the embroidery. 'I'm so sorry.' 
 
 He rubbed a crimson drop off his hand on his handkerchief. 
 'And now my columbine is blood-stained,' she said. With the 
 unhurt hand he again laid hold of the work. She allowed him 
 to have it, but stood up. 
 
 'Let me fold it properly.' 
 
 'You're exactly like a child making excuses to sit up late.'
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MONDAY morning. 
 
 From the hall where Katharine stood to see Vincent off, she 
 could see through the open door, the square of wintry landscape 
 lit palely by the struggling sunshine. Moist and^chill, but very 
 sweet, the early morning air invaded the warm house. The 
 Turk was on the threshold, looking dourly from his master to 
 the objectionable woman. Was it only the Turk's morning 
 mood, or was he really so much uglier by broad day? As he 
 watched the preparations for his master's departure he seemed 
 to suggest with an extra gleam of malice in his wicked eye, an 
 extra festoon in the loose black leather of his mouth: 'Take the 
 strange woman back to town and lose her.' The other dogs 
 were skirmishing about the groom, whose head appeared at the 
 left of the steps as he stood holding the horse. 
 
 'So you're not coming to the station?' 
 
 'I don't believe I will.' 
 
 As Vincent pulled on his driving gloves she thought he looked 
 a trace less pleased with life. 'Good-bye,' then. Without so 
 much as shaking hands he turned on his heel, looked back at 
 her from the door, and, with that sardonic grin of his, inquired 
 brusquely: 'Shall I find you here when I get back?' 
 
 She swallowed before she could bring out words and he went 
 on: 'You'll get tired of it, down here,' a little angrily as if to 
 announce: Don't suppose you can surprise me by making off in 
 my absence. 
 
 'Tired?' she had echoed, leaning against the hall table. 
 
 'Bound to,' he jerked out. 'Whirligig existence you've led!' 
 
 'I should get tired if if you stayed away too long.' 
 
 'Got to stay away till Friday.' 
 
 281
 
 282 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Yes, I know that.' 
 
 He looked down at the catch in his glove. Five days before 
 she would see him. Should she write to him? Would he, after 
 all, expect that even like it? 
 
 'Shall you write to me?' she said. 
 
 'Write?' in the tone of one saying throttle, or cut off an ear. 
 Then suspiciously, 'What about?' 
 
 'Oh a just to let me know . . . you're alive.' 
 
 'I expect somebody 'd mention it if I was dead.' 
 
 She left the table and came nearer to him. ' What do you want 
 me to do while you're gone?' 
 
 '/ don't care what you do.' But the odd thing was that de- 
 spite its roughness, the speech had strangely the effect of installing 
 her here, of leaving her in formal possession. A Spaniard would 
 have said with a bow and a roll of the eyeball: 'My house and 
 my gardens, my servants, my horses, they are yours, most beautiful 
 lady.' Vincent's version of that was: '/ don't care what you do,' 
 for he added ' Don't break your neck. Pete's your beast. Ride 
 every day and be out all you can. This is the place for you if 
 you can stand it. Good-bye.' 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 He telegraphed Friday morning. Katharine thrilled to think 
 of his writing 'Vincent' on a message to her. He was coming 
 by the early train. She would go and meet him. All the day, 
 whether she rode or walked, wrote or idled by the fire, she was 
 meeting him in imagination at the train ridiculously, childishly 
 happy, as she said to herself; yes, and excited, too. He was 
 coming, coming home. The time of his absence had been in 
 one way long, and yet the days had never lagged. The world 
 here seemed to be full of things to do or rather to think about. 
 Making the most of being still a semi-invalid, Katharine on the 
 day after her arrival had told the housekeeper that everything 
 should go on as before. And deep relief fell upon the domestics 
 of High Winston. Katharine was out of doors the greater part 
 of every day, as Vincent had prescribed, in rain or shine, riding, 
 walking, building castles by daylight and by dark ; at night sending 
 herself to sleep with stories; deliberately, as only the imaginative 
 may, shutting out that disturber of inward peace 'Reality,' behind 
 the barred and padded doors that open upon dreams.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 283 
 
 She went about this house of his in a secret rapture. All these 
 things everything she touched and looked upon was his. Not 
 mere chairs and tables, not mere guns and sticks, whips, pipes, 
 old hats, as they might look to the casual eye, but things glorified 
 by his possession of them. His personality was stamped upon 
 them all, giving to the meanest, value and significance, like the 
 plain letter 'N' that so overshadows the mere crown on some 
 trifle that was Buonaparte's. 
 
 Not that alone. Himself was everywhere. 
 
 As she looked across the drawing-room that first evening she 
 spent alone here, she had a vision of him flung upon the sofa, his 
 black head buried in the red cushion. The sense of his being 
 there was so strong upon her, that she got up and went over to 
 the sofa, smiling and looking down into his face. Before she 
 knew what she was doing, she was on her knees bending over the 
 cushion. And she kissed the silk. 
 
 A piano came down on Wednesday. But she had not been 
 without music, yet had no feeling that it was she who made it. 
 He did that with his name. 
 
 ' Garth ! ' She said it in her heart with a sense of its surpassing 
 sweetness, as any schoolgirl might. She longed to say it aloud. 
 They had never yet called each other by their Christian names 
 and it was a pity, since, 'Garth! Garth!' was so beautiful to 
 say. She took to whispering it when she felt it was safe to do so, 
 out in the sunlit open, by day in the dark of the night as she 
 lay in bed. ' Garth ! Garth ! ' 
 
 She remembered the talks at Ventnor about poetry, and as 
 she read new verses aloud in the seclusion of her room, or the 
 equal solitude of the wood, wondered what Mary would say to 
 them. For the Duchess of Worcester had been a memorably 
 good audience in those Isle of Wight days, that seemed to lie so 
 far behind. A discreet woman, too with a full life of her own, 
 and no inconvenient taste for research into another's. It was of 
 course possible to use the Ventnor address, but Katharine planned 
 how she would take the north-bound train from Matley to Par- 
 minton, and post from there to Worcester House giving her 
 friend the publisher's address, and instructions for sending on. 
 
 Yet, after all, what waste of words to string rhymes and make 
 songs ! What could even a great poet say so eloquent as ' Garth ' ?
 
 384 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 And then she laughed at herself, and then whispered 'Garth!' 
 again, with a sense of quick delight quite new, as if she had 
 never tried the spell before. 
 
 The sound of Vincent's dog-cart crunching gravel had hardly 
 died that Monday morning, when Katharine set herself to the 
 task of making friends with the Turk. Jackson had appeared, 
 as Vincent, reins in hand, was in the act of wrapping the rug 
 round his legs. The man snapped a chain on Turk's collar, and 
 was taking him off when Katharine came out on the porch. 
 Vincent had looked up, lifted his hat, and then driven off. 
 
 'Where are you going with the dog?' 
 
 'I have orders to keep him on the chain for this week.' 
 
 'Why is that?' 
 
 'I think it's on account of you, ma'am.' She walked beside 
 the two down to the kennels, and stayed there an hour or more. 
 
 The other dogs were already decently disposed and, poor 
 things, were neglected for their virtues' sake. But Turk! In 
 pursuance of a plan, Katharine returned to the kennels after 
 luncheon. The object of her interest received her with horrid 
 manifestations. She was heartily glad he was on the chain. 
 Nevertheless, in half an hour or so when he was calmer she got 
 Jackson to give the Turk his liberty and she leaned a good deal 
 on Jackson, in spirit, during the moments that immediately 
 followed. She spent the greater part of the afternoon down 
 there. 
 
 The next morning she released the Turk herself, but in the 
 presence of Jackson, who saw with manifest astonishment and 
 some misgiving his master's orders contravened. 
 
 Every day, twenty times in every day, Katharine would despair 
 of making the conquest she had set her heart upon. The process 
 of making friends with the Turk was like learning a new language. 
 You toil and toil, and seem to be exactly where you were at the 
 beginning. You do advance, but you cannot believe it. Nothing 
 seems a whit less hard than it did at first. You despair; but if 
 you keep at it, however self-contemptuously, one day you find, 
 all of a sudden, that you have accomplished more than you had 
 dreamed. You are getting hold of the thing after all. It was 
 just so in the conquest of the Terrible Turk. He would infinitely 
 prefer starving to death apparently, rather than eat anything
 
 A DARK LANTERN 285 
 
 Katharine gave him. At least, while she was there, he wouldn't 
 so much as look at it. Very well, she would go away. When 
 she came back the plate was clean, but the Turk ready to glare 
 at her with added fury, quick to growl the menace: 'Don't pre- 
 sume to think it was I ate your offering. Never! 'sdeath! Gad- 
 zooks! I despise your chicken! but I'd eat you as soon as wink.' 
 
 Since he scorned to squire her in her walks (you'd as soon 
 expect the King to go shopping with you) she would send for 
 him the moment she came indoors and keep him in the room 
 with her, till bed-time. 
 
 It was hard, after all the trouble she took, to hear him begin 
 to rumble like a four-legged volcano when she reappeared the 
 next morning. But Katharine was hugely elated at his con- 
 senting to snap a wish-bone out of her hand, on Thursday even- 
 ing, after he had been sedulously starved all day. That was the 
 moment when she said to herself, 'Hurrah! I am getting hold of 
 this new language after all.' The next morning the internal 
 rumbling was a half-hearted sort of performance, as of one whose 
 mind wasn't on his work. 
 
 After the telegram came, on Friday, Katharine, in an access of 
 joy and excitement, ventured gingerly to pat him. He stood it. 
 Ah! ha! she would do that before Garth. She wouldn't tell him 
 how much trouble she'd taken, but she would flaunt the result. 
 
 As the afternoon wore on, her excitement grew. How would 
 Garth look when he caught sight of her? Would he like it that 
 she should go to meet him ? Would he be a little pleased that she 
 couldn't wait? . . . Would the man who sold him the mare 
 perhaps be in the train ? Would he come on to Vincent's station, 
 that he might talk 'horse' a little longer? 
 
 As the time drew near for the dog-cart to appear, her sense of 
 gladness waned until it yielded to eclipse. 
 
 Will he stare, when he sees me there, instead of Jackson? 
 Will he laugh, in that malicious way of his, to see me so im- 
 patient for his coming? Or will he throw a sulky, half -noticing 
 look that will say: 'Oh, you're still here, are you?' and then talk 
 to the dogs. After all, why should she go? There might be 
 someone in the train or even on the platform someone who 
 would recognise her. 
 
 If she could have felt sure that he would like her to come she
 
 286 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 would have risked that but how could she tell? No, she was 
 too nervous. She would stay at home. And she would keep 
 Turk. Yes. She rang and explained that it was too cold for 
 driving, and Jackson was to go alone. Then she went upstairs 
 and changed her gown. Came down rather sadly talked to 
 Turk and stared at the clock face. 
 
 He came in with the Bedlington, and two collies, and the new 
 terrier jumping round him. Turk went majestically to offer 
 greeting. 
 
 'Hello!' whether to her or Turk it would be hard to tell. But 
 she stood up smiling and intending to say: 'How do you do?' 
 The words that came were: 'Oh, I'm glad you're back.' 
 
 'Bored, eh?' He flung himself down in the sofa corner, and 
 let his hand fall till he could reach and pull the brown collie's 
 ears, Awhile Turk growled under his breath at these tactless 
 attentions to an inferior. 
 
 'No, I haven't been bored,' she said. 
 
 'What makes you glad to see me back, then?' 
 
 A sudden great longing to make him understand, took her 
 off her feet swept her forward with outstretched hands, eyes 
 full of shining, and a flitting scarlet in her cheeks. He watched 
 her with an air of quiet curiosity, and when halfway to his sofa 
 she stopped abruptly, he grinned. For Turk had crossed her 
 path, trailing a long solemn growl. If she had had herself better 
 in hand, she would not, at that critical moment, have lost her 
 new-found authority with the dog. But breathless, unmindful, 
 overwrought, she started back and uttered a little cry. And so 
 undid the work of five painstaking days. She saw at once that, 
 upon her betrayal of fear, Turk had cast off all allegiance. But 
 she was too entirely under the dominion of her new impulse to 
 think about that or to care. Cautiously she coasted round the 
 dragon in her path, till she had nearly gained the sofa. A sudden 
 vicious rumbling brought her again to a standstill. 
 
 'Come on,' said Vincent, still with his grin. 'If you haven't 
 been bored, what makes you glad to see me?' 
 
 ' I'd come and tell you if . . .' She looked down, half -amused, 
 half angry, on her enemy. 
 
 'Afraid, are you?' He turned approvingly to Turk. 'You 
 keep her in order, do you, while I'm away,' and he went on con-
 
 A DARK LANTERN 287 
 
 versing with the Turk, while Katharine stood, not daring to 
 advance. 
 
 When he had got his full measure of enjoyment out of that: 
 'What do you stand there for? Why don't you sit down?' he 
 said suddenly. He did not add, 'here by me,' but it was to the 
 sofa that she moved. Turk stood up and rumbled worse than 
 ever. Again she stopped, half laughing, half annoyed. Vin- 
 cent's pleasure in the performance was unblushing. 'Don't like 
 her, eh? Why not? What's she been doing you don't like? 
 Don't want her here, eh ? ' Suddenly he leaned forward, put out 
 his hand and took hers. But he had the air of doing it solely to 
 enrage the dog. Katharine clung to the hand, saying in low, 
 persuasive tones: 'Oh, send them away.' 
 
 But he only laughed, through Turk's renewed manifestations 
 of dislike and jealousy. 
 
 'Hate one another, eh?' the master said with satisfaction. 
 
 'Not at all,' protested Katharine, but still watching Turk 
 uneasily and holding tight to Vincent's hand. 'You don't 
 bring out the best of bull-dog nature. It's only since you've 
 come back that he behaves like this. We've made friends.' 
 
 'Oh, you have, have you?' He looked at her sideways. 
 
 'Yes. Turk is only pretending. He comes to me for his 
 dinner now.' 
 
 'What?' 
 
 'And he took a walk with me this morning.' 
 
 'Oh, look here!' he laughed out his unbelief. 
 
 'But it's quite true. It's only since you came in that he has 
 fallen from grace. I think you two react most evilly on each 
 other. Either of you alone is ' 
 
 'Turk! She is trying to sow dissension in our family. Turk! 
 Is it true you like her like this stranger?' . . . He bent to 
 Katharine, disengaging himself from her clinging hold, and 
 laying his hand on her shoulder, while out of the corners of his 
 eyes he glanced down at the jealous Turk 'Made friends with 
 her, have you?' Disavowal of the imputed alliance was instant, 
 unmistakable. Vincent lifted two fingers and passed them down 
 Katharine's cheek. The sound of subterranean wrath was mount- 
 ing to higher levels as with an air of deliberate malice repeating: 
 'Really do like this stranger, do you?' ostentatiously he put
 
 288 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 his arm round her, and drew her close against him. Katharine 
 shut her eyes dizzily, hardly knowing that Turk had backed off 
 with a very ugly sound, till she felt Vincent's hold suddenly 
 leave her. He had sprung up, and as she opened her eyes she 
 had a vision of the great bull-dog in the air coming down upon 
 her, and Vincent meeting him, catching him by his gaping jaw, 
 in a fashion that looked horribly dangerous. She gave a sudden 
 cry and flung forward on a perfectly blind instinct to help. 'Sit 
 down!' shouted Vincent, at the same time giving the dog a kick 
 that sent him howling out of the room, with all the others slink- 
 ing after. 'Don't you ever try to interfere in any dog trouble!' 
 
 Katharine had sat down shaking with excitement and with 
 both hands held tight over her heart. 'All right!' she said, 
 breathless. 
 
 He looked at her, and then scowled at the door, through which 
 the dogs had vanished. Then coming nearer to an apology 
 than Garth Vincent had ever been in his life, he muttered: 'It 
 wasn't altogether Turk's fault this time. But if he ever flies 
 at you again . . . I'll kill the brute.' 
 
 She said nothing. He came nearer and asked brusquely, 
 'Pain come back?' She only smiled faintly, still holding her 
 hands tight over her heart. He bent down, took her hands 
 away, and thrust his own into her bodice, saying professionally: 
 
 'Going like a trip-hammer, eh?' 
 
 And she, making no resistance, dropped her head against his 
 arm. All she had meant to say when Turk had stopped her, 
 summed up in a single syllable: 
 
 1 Garth: 
 
 And he: 'Oh, you've discovered I've got a front name, have 
 you?'
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Six weeks had gone and again she was counting the hours 
 as she did at each week's end the hours and then the minutes 
 till he should come. 
 
 Although it was winter still, the sensitive human spirit, roam- 
 ing field and wood, could feel the first faint stirrings of the spring, 
 and searched the frosty weald for sign of confirmation. No 
 clear answer from the meadow, no definite sign from the wood, 
 for all through the winter, primroses had lit their pale lamps 
 here and there, and set them to glimmer in the shelter of hedges, 
 or to light the secret places of the wood. 
 
 It was the moment when the coming miracle seems most 
 incredible and is yet most desired the moment upon February's 
 threshold when one says to one's self almost with misgiving: 
 other miracles may not happen, this particular one will never 
 fail. And yet there is no faintest sign that winter's sleep and 
 silence will not endure forever, no least assurance to the ear or 
 eye, that out of this grave of all the years will rise the flower- 
 eyed Spring in her mantle of sun-flecked green. 
 
 There where a tiny canal stretches its grey ribbon for boundary 
 between Garth Vincent's fields, over there two starlings splash 
 and flick the water. In the willows along the brink a dozen 
 more they know. 
 
 Spring! what would it bring to her? What was to be her 
 awakening? For she too, in a fashion, had slept, had been 
 quiescent as the bare brown fields, not looking before or after; 
 lulled; yes, yes, she had slept, and must awake. 
 
 Standing under the leafless willows she drew her hands across 
 her eyes and with finger-tips still resting on her temples, looked 
 across the stubble to the many-gabled house. It would be there 
 
 289 19
 
 290 
 
 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 that Fate would find her there that she would wake out of 
 this long slumber to her greatest joy or sorrow. 
 
 What was he thinking? Had he a definite plan? or had 
 he too been sleeping? Certainly he gave no sign. 
 
 She was even more conscious than before, that what to the 
 superficial eye was rough, boorish in him, wore to her a kind 
 of dignity, conveyed a flattery even, that silken speech had failed 
 of. In his bareness of approach there was still this something 
 that seemed to lift her up. Instead of feeling any loss in her 
 lover, she was conscious mainly of a strange high discipline that 
 wore the air to her of moral gain ironic as the epithet would 
 sound in many a good man's ear. 
 
 But the end what was to be the end? However much he 
 might in his unwilling heart have come to care for her, she could 
 not flatter herself that she was necessary to him. Not even that 
 she had won his confidence. 
 
 That hurt to his faith in woman, however it had come about, 
 was so deep it seemed past healing. Nothing so disheartened 
 her as to find that after all the proofs that she had given, he did 
 not really trust her. His first instinct was still and always, 
 suspicion; self-defence against man's enemy, woman. 
 
 And yet. . . . She dropped her hands and walked across 
 the stubble towards the mill. And yet . . . 
 
 In the bend of the quiet reach above the race, a wild duck 
 was lurking. Jackson had said 'next month, bar black frost, 
 his nest will be there.' 
 
 Spring. 
 
 ' and Garth?' . . . she said to herself, standing still that 
 
 she might not scare away the wild duck very much as she had 
 learned to stand quiet, gentle, unshaken, before the untamed 
 forces in the nature of the man she loved. 
 
 His defects of temper and of taste, his deliberate harshness 
 that seemed a savage need to make others share in his disgust 
 of life; his ineradicable distrust of his kind no 'attitude' but 
 the heavy end of his life's burden as Katharine saw it none of 
 these things were absent from her unshrinking vision of the man 
 as she had come to know him here at High Winston. 
 
 She had not ceased to wonder at his power of 'dividing his 
 life into air-tight compartments,' as she expressed it to herself.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 291 
 
 Nothing of one experience spilled over into another, no mood 
 overlapped on to the next. No admission in the Present of the 
 Past. No hint this morning of last night. An air so ' oblivious ' 
 that an invincible shyness must fall upon the one who so much 
 as dreamed of reminding him of hour or incident which he seemed 
 to wipe so clean out of existence, that its ever having been 
 became a matter requiring evidence. 
 
 It was as if he lay under some necessity to say without the 
 clumsy aid of words: 'Being human, I have my times of weak- 
 ness. These are woman's opportunity. But do you imagine 
 you have got hold of me come one whit nearer ? ' If so, his the 
 task to undeceive her. 
 
 In his den behind the empty conservatory, where even the 
 dogs were unwelcome, Garth Vincent, smoking, reading agri- 
 cultural and 'horsey' papers, medical pamphlets, reports of 
 scientific societies, disquisitions in French and German on disease 
 deaf to any sound, blind to any sight beyond words printed on 
 a page a creature dead to all outward manifestations, yet con- 
 cerned intensely with things silent and unseen that was one 
 person. Another, the man who rode his horses to a foam, or 
 tramped the countryside, in fair weather or in foul, all eyes and 
 ears, not for the poetry, the spirit, but the externality of country 
 life. 
 
 While he ate and drank, listened to the singing, chaffed the 
 dogs, or made Katharine talk, rather than talk himself that 
 was yet another man, simple, often boyish, as by hazard, kind. 
 If even here reserved, it was with a reserve like the schoolboy's, 
 that seems less a barrier to check advance, than a shield for 
 shyness. 
 
 None of these, precisely like that Garth Vincent of the more 
 revealing moods, and quick repentance of them. Against this 
 last man he bore an open grudge at first angry, then sullen; 
 but less and less of either, Katharine thought, as time went on. 
 And yet never wholly forgiven, never reconciled. Would he 
 ever be ? 
 
 Even in quite early days Katharine guessed the significance 
 to her of the answer to that question. 'You are like the new 
 terrier,' she said once, speaking of a lost and starving dog 
 that had followed Garth home from Matley one Sunday and
 
 292 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 declined thereafter to leave. Vincent, while professing to de- 
 test the cur, allowed him to stay on. 'Yes, very like the new 
 terrier.' 
 
 'I suppose you mean because I've got a vile temper,' he said. 
 
 'You are maligning the terrier.' 
 
 He accepted that. 
 
 'Have you been told you have "a vile temper " '? 
 
 'Yes,' he answered promptly. 
 
 ' Who says so ? ' 
 
 'Everybody that's ever had the privilege of knowing me.' 
 
 'Well, that isn't why you're like the terrier. It's because 
 you've both of you had a bad time and can't get the recollection 
 of it out of your head. ' 
 
 He put on that impenetrable black mask of his. 
 
 But Katharine continued: 'When I come suddenly on Stray, 
 he doesn't see me, he sees an imaginary woman with a sharp 
 weapon. Now do you understand?' 
 
 He made no answer. 
 
 'Yet Stray knows this particular woman; knows if I stoop 
 to pat him, there's no need to expect a blow. But I might as 
 well go about with a club. He's always shying at it.' 
 
 'And you think I'm like that?' 
 
 'Did nobody else ever tell you?' 
 
 'A woman told me the other day clever woman, too that I 
 was a born cynic.' He looked distinctly pleased. 
 
 'Oh,' said Katharine, 'a cynic is only a sentimentalist whose 
 feelings have been dreadfully hurt.' 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Yet she had no desire to cover with fair words any fact in 
 the problem he presented to her. The woman who had been 
 called romantic, poetic, before whom men had systematically 
 veiled, denied, the less admirable aspects of human nature 
 this same woman learned how little perfection has to do with 
 the winning or the holding of devotion. 
 
 Just as in another sort of strait, she would have scorned to 
 'make a show,' to pretend to be better off than she was, so here, 
 a kind of pride prevented her from consciously painting Garth 
 Vincent as better than life revealed him. Her reward was an 
 intenser yearning towards the untamed and unbelieving spirit,
 
 A DARK LANTERN 293 
 
 a compensation in hugging closer such marred excellence as their 
 hours together had betrayed. 
 
 He had so much, this man, she could say to herself. I haven't 
 imagined it; it is all there. Kindness, deep, unfaltering, yet 
 shrinking almost with anger from the name. She suspected 
 him of capacity for heroism. Knew him convicted of truth that 
 would not flinch. And under his hardness, natural and acquired, 
 a sensitiveness like a woman's. 
 
 Such a man must have a soul. Oh, to wake it! to wake 
 it! Not only to make him care. To make him willing to show 
 he cared. Not in gusts of passion, but with the steadfast ten- 
 derness that is ready to show itself unabashed that fails not any 
 hour. 
 
 Sometimes she would look back to those first days when she 
 lay in her old room at Peterborough House not a few months 
 since, but surely many years ago, since she lay there drawing 
 herself back from dreams, with the saying: 'I couldn't marry 
 him. ' By-and-by : ' How odd if I should, though. ' Then : ' There 
 isn't another real man in the world. Oh, if he would love me.' 
 
 The terms upon which she might get that love, the terms had 
 long and long enough, been of secondary import. 
 
 Oh yes, she had travelled far. And yet had no prevision of 
 the end. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Full, when he came this time, of his farm improvements 
 of ditching, planting, and getting ready for the Spring. 
 
 On horseback or on foot, Katharine was with him everywhere, 
 listening to his talk with the men, showing him this and that, 
 delighted to share the lore she had gathered through the week. 
 No whit less than he or his men, she felt the sense of this some- 
 thing coming, that must be prepared for. It is time to do this; 
 the time is nearly gone when it's any use to do that; time lost 
 now, can never be made up. She felt the stir and thrill of these 
 rural commonplaces, longed herself to have a hand in this great 
 making-ready; had many a conflict to withstand temptation 
 secretly to set bulbs in the brown earth, and bury surreptitious 
 seeds, that like good deeds should show fair faces, bearing their 
 gentle witness, when she had quite forgot where it was she hid 
 them, or even that they were at all.
 
 294 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 But she shrank and held her hand, at memory of Vincent's 
 saying on that first evening here, when she had set about his 
 rooms only perishable flowers, things like herself not standing 
 firmly in this soil of his, but rootless and yet he had looked 
 suspiciously on them and her, and said those words that stung 
 her still: 'You look as if you meant to stay.' But on this happy 
 morning, when every field and almost every furrow was sum- 
 moned to the great conspiracy of Spring called on to conceive 
 and to bring forth Katharine found herself saying to Vincent 
 as they crossed, again, the lower garden: 'All along here, from 
 the porch to the far gate, you ought to have flower borders.' 
 
 'That's a woman's business. Some day (She waited 
 with a strange pitiful impatience) 'some day there'll be flowers 
 there.' Although she did not raise her eyes, she knew he never 
 glanced towards her, but straight before him over the hedge. 
 She felt it like a formal repudiation not you, some other woman 
 shall make my borders brave. As she walked steadily on beside 
 him, and he as steadily held his peace, she kept the foolish tears 
 from falling by making a singing little roundel out of his hard 
 saying: 'Some day there will be flowers there.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 For all her watchfulness, it seemed to be happening often 
 now, that one or other would stumble upon that horn : the Future. 
 How do they avoid it? those others who are consciously to- 
 gether 'for the present.' Ah, it was easier no doubt in towns, 
 where such things chiefly happened there all life was tentative 
 and hand to mouth. But however fair your lot is in the country, 
 you are face to face with the broad and basic things upon which 
 life is built. Present beauty is no more than the cover of the book 
 of the year. And here at High Winston where everything was 
 hourly done in reference to suns that had not risen, and to rains 
 that would be falling when other moons had waned, here where 
 every act was one of faith, looking towards harvest and content 
 to wait how should one walk here and not think of the future? 
 She fell to dwelling on it more and more. When that field is 
 sowed . . .? Where shall I be when the grain sprouts there? 
 Who will walk here with him when the tassels are yellow and 
 full? 
 
 He will be just as pleased. He will have his horses and his
 
 A DARK LANTERN 295 
 
 dogs field, forest and farm and in the town his sick people 
 besieging, clinging to him, and his fame that grows and grows, 
 like the saplings in the copse and he'll have flowers in the bor- 
 ders of his life, as many as ever he will. 
 
 * * # * * 
 
 She knew that before her advent at High Winston, Vincent 
 had usually gone back to town by a late train on Sunday. He 
 had never done that in all these weeks and she listened with 
 a sinking of the heart as he told Jackson to bring the dog-cart 
 round for the Sunday afternoon train. 
 
 The afternoon! That meant that he was going somewhere 
 going to some London dinner-party. And on their Sunday. 
 The sense of being deserted fell chill upon her. She said nothing, 
 and strove to show that her spirits were undashed. Instinctively 
 she felt that he was armed and braced to meet remonstrance. 
 But she would give him no opportunity to look that look, and 
 say that rough word held as ready as any lance in battles long 
 ago. The effort that it cost her to 'be just the same' was a kind 
 of tonic till he had driven away. 
 
 Then came the worst hours she had known. 
 
 # * * * * 
 
 Turk, who had gone with his master to the station, came back 
 towards six o'clock, to find his new ally huddled together in the 
 depths of the great chair by the drawing-room fire. A sombre 
 twilight was filling the room, yet Katharine had not rung for 
 the lamps. 
 
 She held out her hand, spoke to the dog with an absurd sense 
 of gratitude to the beast for his coming back to her. 
 
 ' What do you want, old fellow ? Shall we go for a run before 
 it's dark?' 
 
 The sound of the wind rattling the casements and wailing 
 down the wide chimney, had brought so forcibly back that first 
 night of her coming wrought so upon her nerves, that she had 
 been saying ever since Vincent left her, that she must go out 
 and meet the wind in the wood, where it piped a tune less mourn- 
 ful, less mixed with the sorrows of men. But the weight of her 
 wretchedness had kept her anchored in the great chair, till Turk 
 came in and seemed to say: 'Yes, we're dreadfully lonely. Let's 
 do something.'
 
 296 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 She put on a reefer and pinned a tam-o'-shanter on her yellow 
 hair. Followed by the dog and without conscious plan, she 
 found herself going the way Vincent and she had gone in the 
 morning down across the bridge and past the mill to the 
 field behind, where a rush-fringed pond lay darkling in a hollow 
 below a group of elms. 
 
 She had no wish to see again even dimly through the dusk, 
 the bodies of the young rooks blown out of their nests by the 
 last week's gale. But here she had come with Garth, and here 
 she must come again to see if any of him was there, since he 
 was nowhere in the echoing house. She stood with the dog 
 close at her side and looked up. 
 
 These were the tall trees that she could see from her bed-room 
 windows even from her bed she could watch them, stately, 
 black against the dawn, or tossing in the winds of March, the 
 rooks' nests perilously swinging, and the old birds circling, cry- 
 ing and now the young rooks dead at the great tree's foot. 
 
 But she had been right, the wind's song was less sorrowful 
 out of doors. Of no house Katharine had ever inhabited did 
 the wind take such complete possession as of Garth Vincent's. 
 No exception that night of her arrival. The first impression 
 of draughty hall, doors blown violently to, flapping shutter and 
 the voice of the complaining wind sighing in all the chambers 
 that impression was the one dominant and oftenest recurring. 
 
 'What do you call the place ?' she had asked him. 
 
 'I don't call it anything.' 
 
 'I shall call it the House of the Winds,' she had said, and it 
 was the name she gave to the first poem she had written here. 
 
 Often she had lain in her bed, and with eyes fixed on these 
 great trees, and the high-perched homes of the rooks, wondered 
 to herself the same thing she had said to Garth that morning, 
 as they two had stood here looking up from the dead birds to 
 the far-away nests, and then lower down to the many convenient 
 crotches where young birds might safely lodge: 'I thought dumb 
 things had such wise instinct. Hasn't the rook-race learned 
 how fierce the March winds blow? Don't they see what comes 
 of building up so high ? ' 
 
 'You're expecting more of rooks than you get in men,' he had 
 said shortly, and walked on.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 297 
 
 The wind blew an echo of the words in her face, as she stood 
 without him under the elms in the dusk. What was the use 
 of warning anybody? Of what good experience even? Here 
 was she, Katharine Dereham. She had known all her life what 
 was the fate of women who took the step that she had taken. 
 Of what use had that been to hold her back ? 
 
 As well as the rooks she knew the winds blew fierce in March, 
 but had she therefore built safely in a crotch of the world's big 
 tree ? Not she nor any other who loves the nest hung high. 
 
 There was more light out here than in the house, and one 
 could see the glorious cloud-packed sky, lowering, tumultuous, 
 black masses driving across the face of the moon, giving to the 
 human atom looking up a feeling that from some Godlike point 
 of vantage she watched the rolling of the world. 
 
 And down here underneath, forever the rooks build high, 
 build high, and ever the March winds blow. . . . She went back 
 across the darkening fields making a song. Hurriedly the next 
 day, posting from Parminton, she sent it to the London publisher 
 for inclusion in the book that he was bringing out in April 
 'A Kalendar and other Poems, by K. D.' 
 
 ***** 
 
 On the second Friday in April he wired that he would not 
 be down till to-morrow, and when he came it was to show a tired, 
 harassed face, a mouth set like iron. Katharine asked no ques- 
 tions, but set herself with all that she had in her (and she pos- 
 sessed a genius in these things) to soothe and cheer him. It 
 lifted her very high to find how well she had succeeded. And 
 then on Sunday at noon, again that blow in the face: 
 
 'I want the cart for the afternoon train.' 
 
 But she said no word none to Vincent, but many to Kath- 
 arine, cautioning, admonishing. I can bear that he should be 
 away all the week, why should it be so bitterly hard to let him 
 go a few hours earlier ? But he was a whole day late this week, 
 wailed the heart of the woman. Never mind that was because 
 he was hard at work. He is doing great things in London. You 
 ought to be glad and proud. And so I am. That is why I can 
 bear to be without him so much of the time. But to-day Sun- 
 day, he goes to amuse himself. Ah, but you are mean-spirited! 
 You don't mind how hard, or how incessantly he works, it is
 
 298 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 a little pleasure that you grudge him. Oh, you're a poor crea- 
 ture! But I don't grudge him pleasure I only want to be the 
 one to give it to him. Or, I want, at the least, to be beside him 
 when others do. 
 
 ***** 
 
 'Garth.' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 But she sat and looked in the fire. 
 
 'Well, what is it?' 
 
 'Couldn't you stay with me to-day?' 
 
 'No.' A long pause: 'Well?' 
 
 'I said nothing.' 
 
 'Why don't you?' 
 
 'What is there to say?' 
 
 'Why, the usual thing that women find to say.' 
 
 ' What is the usual thing ? ' 
 
 'As if you don't know! Why, I saw it on your lips "Where 
 are you going?" "Who are you going to see?" ] She sat quite 
 still. 'Well? Goon. Let's get it over.' 
 
 'I have never put those questions.' 
 
 'Not yet.' 
 
 'And I never will.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Perhaps because I've realized how afraid you've been that 
 I would.' 
 
 'Humph! I'm not exactly afraid, you know.' 
 
 'It's true. You're only afraid when you see I don't do these 
 things.' He looked at her with a sudden sharp gleam. She 
 went on: 'It disconcerts you that I don't.' 
 
 'Oh, does it?' he retorted, showing his teeth. 
 
 'Yes, you find me unaccountable. You don't like that. You 
 like to be the unaccountable one.' 
 
 'Because I'm not always explaining myself?' 
 
 'Because you're always warding off an imaginary attack upon 
 your confidence. And you like to think the past is an impene- 
 trable mystery but the mystery is growing very transparent. 
 You tell me so much of it every hour you're here.' 
 
 '/tell you!' 
 
 'Yes. You've just told me that you've known intimately
 
 A DARK LANTERN 299 
 
 a nagging woman. She accounts for a good deal in you.' He 
 stared at her suspiciously. But Katharine went on: 'Yes, you've 
 known well some woman, who instead of being glad when you 
 came in, wouldn't give herself up to being glad, till she'd said, 
 "Why are you late?" "Where have you been?" "What 
 made you stay so long?" "Who was there?" "Why must 
 you go again?" I'm not blaming that woman. I'm rather 
 sorry for her.' He had been frowning, with that don't-you- 
 dare-come-any-further look, that he put on when anyone ven- 
 tured to touch upon his private concerns, and as in despite of 
 that, she had gone on, he jumped to his feet. 
 
 'Good-bye.' 
 
 'Good-bye,' she echoed quietly. 
 
 In the act of turning to the door he paused: 'Like that?' He 
 stood with his head on one side, seemed rather pleased on the 
 whole that she made no move to kiss him. She kept her seat 
 with an effort of self-control, and she held out her hand with 
 something royal in it commingling of fine impulse and yet finer 
 repression. It was conciliatory, and yet it was of the essence 
 of dignity. 
 
 He had the air of not seeing the hand held out turned on 
 his heel and laid his lean fingers on the door-knob. 'So you 
 don't want to know when I'll be back ? ' 
 
 'I don't want to ask you.' 
 
 'Well, that's a good thing,' he laughed harshly, and went 
 out. 
 
 Long she sat there. What a life! What a life for Katharine 
 Dereham! she said to herself, and yet her eyes were not so much 
 unhappy as wondering. 
 
 The light came into the old room, level and incarnadined. 
 Looking up, she saw the blaze of the sunset through the delicate 
 green veil of young leafage. She went out through the garden 
 which was no garden, and into the orchard, which did honour 
 to its beautiful name. On the gnarled root of an old apple-tree 
 she sat down to watch the glory fade. A step behind and 
 without looking, her blood told her who was there. Then he 
 was not gone yet! He would miss his afternoon train unless he
 
 300 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 drove like mad. But driving like mad was just what he some- 
 times liked to do. 
 
 She held her breath as he came up behind her, treading softly 
 on the tangled grass. Her heart flew out to meet him, but she 
 sat quite still. He stopped and hesitated. She knew that he 
 was vaguely embarrassed, undecided. She had accustomed him 
 to welcoming looks. It was as if he resented her obliviousness. 
 He whistled to Turk, with an eye on Katharine. When he saw 
 that still she did not move, he half turned to go, on an impulse 
 of anger changed his mind, came up and thrust a branch of 
 wild cherry blossom in her face. She lifted quiet eyes. 'It's 
 lovely,' she said. He dropped the branch across her lap, and 
 laughing a little wickedly, as one who remembers having played 
 a successful joke, and announces that he does not expect the victim 
 to be as pleased as the perpetrator he rubbed the back of his 
 hand lightly on her cheek. 
 
 She smiled up at him. 
 
 'You take it like that, do you?' he said suddenly. And with 
 a schoolboy's note in his voice, added, 'Then come for a ride.' 
 
 'To the station?' 
 
 'No! The woods.'
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 VINCENT had pointed out to her the publisher's flaming adver- 
 tisement of her book. She read it, smiling, but apologetic. 
 What rot he must be thinking it! And not he alone. Little 
 books of verse were always dropping, still born, from the London 
 press. Hers just another, like the rest. Those sonnets she had 
 written out of such an eager heart. How dull, belated, lacking 
 in significance, they had looked forth from the proof. Ah, they 
 had not stood the proof, those frail little things of her making! 
 She threw the paper down, and talked about a broken fence and 
 trampled grain, and whose fault. 
 
 The next Friday he brought down a daily paper and a weekly, 
 each with a review of Katharine's 'Kalendar'; hailing a new 
 poet, calling on all the world to listen to 'this new voice.' Katha- 
 rine stared hard at the printed words, and felt she was not awake. 
 One notice was signed. What! a 'superior' reviewer like John 
 Waycott to break away from the stereotyped mild praise and 
 tempered blame, to sound the loud trump and clash the cymbals 
 in this daring fashion, ushering in ' a true poet ' ' the one woman 
 since Christina Rossetti died, who,' etc., etc. The feeling upper- 
 most was one of bewilderment. It was delightful, of course, 
 but it was chiefly 'queer.' Her verses make men feel like that? 
 Why, she must look at them again, and see what it was they 
 meant those critics! 
 
 But not before Garth. Oh, how he must be grinning in- 
 wardly, if not . . . no, she couldn't look at him. A feeling of 
 painful shyness mastered her. 'Are you coming out? it's beau- 
 tiful now out of doors!' She stood with her eyes on the sleeve 
 of her jacket, pulling at a bit of loosened braid. Yes, that, at 
 all events, was very like a poetess; it was too much in character. 
 
 301
 
 302 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 If people were going to call her a true poet, she really must mend 
 her clothes. But it was hard, this getting on without Natalie. 
 A rustle of paper. She looked up, and saw that Vincent was 
 reading the more flaming of the two reviews. For the third 
 time, had Katharine but known. 
 
 'Oh come, Garth,' she said, making for the door. 
 
 'In a minute.' But when he finished that, he re-read the other 
 notice, Loo. However, he had the decency not to talk about 
 either of them. Katharine felt it was very nice of him. 
 ***** 
 
 An hour or so after dinner that Friday night: 'Go and sing,' 
 he said and she did. 
 
 'That's enough foreign stuff. Let's have some English.' 
 
 She began Land of Hope and Glory. Impatiently he inter- 
 rupted. 'Sing the one about the rooks.' 
 
 'Rooks?' returned Katharine, playing the prelude to another 
 of her own songs. 'You mean "The Blackthorn and the Missel- 
 thrush.'" 
 
 'I don't anything of the kind,' he said firmly. 'I mean the 
 one about 
 
 ' " Forever the rooks build high, build high, 
 And ever the March winds blow " ' 
 
 She coloured at the sound of her song upon his lips. It was 
 one of the things John Waycott had quoted. Katharine her- 
 self had set it to music, and had sung it now and then for several 
 weeks without, of course, saying where she got it; and always, 
 when Vincent was there, with a sense of daring, as one making 
 bold experiment. She would have liked to refuse to sing it now; 
 but she felt it would be rather silly. 
 
 When she finished, and he sat there quite still, expressionless as 
 usual at such times, a great longing caught hold of her to hear him 
 say something kind about the song. Had it been mere curiosity 
 to hear it again with this new knowledge of its origin ? Ah, if he 
 would only say in private, here with her alone to listen, a tenth, 
 a twentieth of what John Waycott had said to all the world, how 
 infinitely happy, how rewarded she would be! She sat playing 
 softly and longing to know what was going on inside the black 
 head that showed above the back of the armchair.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 303 
 
 'I thought you despised that sort of thing,' she said at last, 
 still moving her fingers softly over the keys. 
 
 'Sing the rooks again.' 
 
 And John Waycott's praise was gloriously overtopped! 
 * * * * * 
 
 Even after that, unmeasured was her astonishment to find 
 that Vincent collected such notices of her book as he came across 
 during the week in London, and religiously presented them to 
 her when he came home. He seemed never to have heard of a 
 press-cutting agency, though as long ago as in Lady Peterbor- 
 ough's lifetime, Katharine had been accustomed to seeing little 
 packets of clippings in green paper, which would set forth how 
 her ladyship and Miss Dereham had worn this and that at the 
 Opera, so-and-so at Her Majesty's garden party, and how they 
 had opened a bazaar or gone to the Riviera. The Agency had 
 kept on sending these things about after Katharine to town or 
 country address: what Lord Peterborough had left her; how the 
 Sargent picture had been reproduced; how the original of it was 
 seeking health abroad. Several such announcements had made 
 the journey from Peterborough House to Torquay, to the Isle of 
 Wight, and thence to the post-office at Great Matley, a market 
 town five miles from Winston. Since the publication of the 
 'Kalendar,' it rained notices. 
 
 With the aid of green packets of information, Katharine knew 
 well enough how the ball was rolling over there in London; how 
 the slatings she had looked for, failed to come; how she was 
 paragraphed and pictured and praised; and talked of as making 
 her home now, for some years, in Italy. She had secreted these 
 clippings, with a prayer that Garth would be too busy, if not too 
 indifferent, to read such as he came across in town. He had 
 stood the Rook Song nobly, but he hated poetry in general, and 
 he hated what he called 'rot.' There was no blinking the fact 
 that 'A Kalendar, and Other Poems,' came strictly under the 
 meaning of the term. She could not fathom his intention in 
 saving up these notices, and bringing them home to her, if it 
 were not to scoff at them and her, in some convenient season. 
 Then one day it came over her with all the force of a thing gro- 
 tesquely out of character, incredible as true, that Garth Vincent, 
 of all men, was agreeably affected by the stir Katharine's work
 
 3 04 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 was making. She had expected jeers, even anger, and behold 
 he was pleased! There was only one thing that you could foresee 
 about this man, and that was that he would surprise you. He 
 was positively proud that she had raised this little dust of praise! 
 
 Well, well men were very odd. 
 
 This was the pouring wet Sunday, when he had not allowed 
 her to go with him on his ride. He had changed his soaking 
 clothes, and come down stairs, dry and warm and hungry, for 
 the tea that she had ready by a great glowing fire. When he 
 had been fed, he stretched out his feet comfortably to the blaze, 
 glanced at the windows where the late April rain was dashing 
 like spray against the port-hole of a ship and suddenly: 
 
 'What have you been doing?' he said. 
 
 'Nothing much.' 
 
 'Been making any more songs?' 
 
 'Of course not,' in the tone of one reformed, who finds it hardly 
 fair to have old sins recalled. 
 
 'I believe you have. Where are they?' 
 
 'Of course I haven't.' 
 
 'Why, "of course"?' 
 
 She looked at him. Should she tell him? 'You've been at 
 home.' 
 
 'Well, I don't prevent you.' She only smiled a little. 'What's 
 my being here got to do with it?' 
 
 ' Everything.' 
 
 He stared at the fire seeming to study the matter profoundly. 
 
 It would have taken a man to be surprised at Katharine's 
 confession. Quite certainly, she not only never thought of her 
 'success' when he was there (unless he thrust a newspaper under 
 eyes), she had no impulse to make other music, than that best 
 of all that may be played upon the harp of life. She had few 
 of the illusions, said to beset 'the women who do things' as to 
 the relative values of the things that women may do. 
 
 Poetry on paper was better than no poetry at all, but if their 
 two lives were out of tune, what other music could make amends, 
 or drown discord such as that? And she was full of growing 
 fear. 
 
 All these weeks gone by, and still no nearer to that response 
 and fusion, the assured and practised unison, the fundamental
 
 A DARK LANTERN 305 
 
 harmony that was the kind of poetry antiphonal she longed to 
 have her share of making in the world. 
 
 No use, she told herself the next morning after he had gone 
 no use to blink the facts. Here in the soft April sunshine, 
 under apple trees in bloom, she stood environed still by storm 
 and stress and the tempestuous dark, by all that had met her 
 that December midnight, when he had brought her here. 
 
 No difference between now and then? 
 
 None but that she loved him better, and that people out there 
 in the world were making a noise with her name. 
 
 The noise did little to elate a brain clear-judging enough, where 
 the passionate heart was not the stake. Not that in this she was 
 all unlike the mass of the moderately enlightened. For, although 
 the world will more and more care about good work, the old 
 illusion about fame has failed even the smaller folk. The very 
 word, if gravely used, has a sound archaic, and summons men to 
 think in Greek and Latin. 
 
 But the selfish world is reconciled. It is seen that like those 
 things made in the sweated trades, fame profits least the men 
 who make it, and too often is chief mourner at your 'Great 
 Man's' funeral chief loser by the levelling of death. And even 
 where the so-called 'Fame' abides a little, the modern mind 
 cannot, in that, read recompense to the worker in his grave. 
 That this one waked and wrought when we were playing or 
 
 asleep, it profits us who played and slept who now can think 
 
 it profits him? 
 
 And these things are beginning to be clear even to little folk, 
 when they concern themselves with such matters at all. 
 
 The noise that Katharine Dereham's poetry was making, was 
 just loud enough to wake her from her winter sleep. A call that 
 she had been most happy to smile at and then close her ears to, 
 had life been kind. But this noise that echoed out of London, 
 mixed with the undertone of uncertainty and fear that sounded 
 below the outer peace and gladness of her life, mixed and swelled 
 and sounded just enough insistent to rouse hev ; make her look 
 about with wide clear-seeing eyes, taking fresh note of herself, 
 and of this shadowed and uncertain way she walked in, to an 
 end she knew not. 
 
 ***** 
 
 20
 
 306 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 While Katharine, sitting on a footstool between Vincent's 
 chair and the fire, was tempting Turk with fragments of after- 
 dinner biscuit, she heard the maid come in and say in the scared 
 voice commonly employed by that person in addressing 'the 
 Master' 'A a telegram, sir.' Vincent had been leaning for- 
 ward, elbows on knees, chin in hand, watching the dog the 
 man's dark face over Katharine's shoulder, almost touching her 
 yellow hair. She heard the envelope torn open close to her ear, 
 for Vincent had hardly altered his position. Still leaning forward, 
 he held the telegram so that with a side glance she could have 
 read it. She kept her eyes on the dog. 'No answer, now,' he 
 said gruffly, and the servant went softly out. Still he studied 
 the message over Katharine's shoulder. 
 
 She had not once looked round. Now she tossed up another 
 fragment of biscuit, and as Turk caught it in its descent, she 
 said: 'He never misses now, even when I throw crooked. Look!' 
 Another ivory scrap went up in the air, and again with a lazy 
 movement and a mien of bored dignity Turk opened his jaws, 
 and permitted the fragment to find lodgment in his capacious 
 mouth. Katharine laughed: 'Good dog.' 
 
 Something fluttered down into her lap. Very well she knew 
 it was the telegram, but she took no notice turned her head the 
 other way, and called to the new terrier, who had put his nose 
 in at the door. 'Let's see if Turk will allow him in here.' Turk 
 declined with fury, and Katharine had to get up and soothe him. 
 As she rose, the paper fluttered to the floor, face uppermost. 
 Vincent sat looking at it. Katharine seemed absorbed in the 
 dogs. 
 
 'Give me that, will you?' he said, lolling back in his chair. 
 She handed it to him without a glance at it. 
 
 'I wish I knew what to do about this,' he said presently. She 
 seemed not to hear. He left the telegram on the mantel-piece 
 that night. 
 
 As Katharine stood before the fire after breakfast, the next 
 day, her eye caught the signature: 'Nelly.' She made no sign. 
 But all day long the name kept pricking her. 
 
 That evening, realizing at last that he would wait in vain for 
 Katharine to touch upon the subject, he took the telegram, 
 scowling, and brought it to the sofa where she sat, smoothed it
 
 A DARK LANTERN 307 
 
 out across his knees, and swore under his breath. It was mon- 
 strous unsympathetic in Katharine not to take notice of that. 
 She picked up a book. 
 
 'Have you seen this?' he said at last. 
 
 'What?' She glanced down. 'It's not for me, is it?' 
 
 He held it before her. She read: 
 
 ' Leonard worse wants to come to Winston NELLY? 
 
 'Who is ... Leonard?' 
 
 'Who's Nelly, you mean?' 
 
 'Who are they both?' 
 
 He had closed thumb and finger afresh over the signature 
 as if it would have pleased him to pinch Nelly. 
 
 'She's got a rotten idea in her head that it makes her younger 
 to call herself by her front name. She's the woman my father 
 was fool enough to marry.' 
 
 'Oh! Then, Leonard She turned a face of sudden 
 interest up to his. 'Leonard is the . . . Leonard is your brother.' 
 
 'No, he isn't,' he answered roughly. 'My step-mother's son, 
 is what he is.' 
 
 'But you ' she had meant to say, you are fond of him. 
 
 Instinctively she knew it would do 'Leonard' little good to have 
 Garth's weakness for him formulated. 'You'll let him come, 
 I suppose.' 
 
 'Why should I?' 
 
 'Wouldn't it do him good?' 
 
 'Nothing does him good.' 
 
 'But he has been here a great deal, hasn't he? Won't he 
 feel ' 
 
 'How do you know he's been here?' 
 
 'Oh, Mrs. Jackson said something about it.' Whereupon 
 Vincent got up suddenly, crumpled the telegram in his hand, 
 and tossed it in the fire. 
 
 He never referred to the matter again. 
 
 Katharine, as Vincent had suspected, would have been quick 
 to resent it, had any of his family found her here in her equivocal 
 position. Unimaginative as Vincent was, he had prefigured 
 that, guessed that she would shrink 'from eyes' had presented 
 the possibility of 'eyes' out of mixed motives, as a test. Sus-
 
 308 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 picion had been swift to ask: Does she think she has any right 
 to keep people away? 
 
 But Katharine's heart had suddenly gone out to the crippled 
 boy that she knew Garth Vincent cared for. An instinct towards 
 alliance with some one who loved him, and to whom he for years 
 had shown steadily that kindness that he so stoutly repudiated. 
 
 Katharine's untiring and often successful effort to veil her 
 apprehension of the ugliness of her situation his sometimes 
 acquiescence in the veiling, oftener silent laughter, occasional 
 comment, half-savage, wholly coarse they were neither of 
 them strangers to any of these things. She had shown that 
 she could forgive him things unpardonable. She had not only 
 come under the harsh spell, she could believe that she had abated 
 somewhat of the harshness. Although he was as ready as ever to 
 denounce delicacy as 'sentimental rot'; as ready when she re- 
 warded some concession on his part by saying 'you are good,' 
 to declare he didn't believe in 'goodness,' no nor in honesty, 
 nor in anything under the sun but self-interest (suddenly upon 
 that text, finding tongue, and sparing her no sordid example 
 he could cite), in despite of all this, his speech, she told herself, 
 was less uncouth of late, and even his manners better. 
 
 But he had not been able to eschew the malicious pleasure to 
 be expected of a woman's jealousy of telegrams signed 'Nelly' 
 nor amusement at the notion of Katharine Dereham, who lived 
 ostrich-like with her head in the sand, being brought suddenly 
 to face the prospect of some of Vincent's people appearing at 
 High Winston. 
 
 She had not intended it so, but the effect of her evident interest 
 in Leonard, cost the boy a bidding to the country. The thought 
 that Vincent wanted to keep even his sick little step-brother out 
 of her life chagrined her even more than the fear of 'eyes' had 
 made her shrink. Was he afraid this child would tell her some- 
 thing she was not to know? 
 
 * * # * * 
 
 The next week-end Vincent wired that he was going to Corn- 
 wall. No explanation, no regret. No letter following. Silence, 
 and a bundle of papers addressed in his hand. More reviews. 
 As if they were to make up! 
 
 No word all the week. None even on the Friday. Late
 
 A DARK LANTERN 309 
 
 Saturday evening as she sat alone, a noise of horse's hoofs beat- 
 ing on the gravel. A crunch and swish. A vehicle had stopped. 
 Could it be ... so late? She ran to the front door. It was 
 open. Vincent was paying a cabman from the station. 
 
 She stood back in the shadow till he came in, flung down his 
 hat and gloves and stripped off his top-coat. 
 
 She noticed, as she stood half behind the door, how he drew 
 his hand across his eyes, like one who tries to see clearer in a 
 mist and he stood listening a second with head turned to the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 She moved silently out of the shadow, like a deeper shadow 
 herself, and put her arm softly round his neck. He turned 
 with a start and a recoiling. She felt it so curious, so terrible, 
 that after all that had passed, his first impulse should be the 
 defensive, that she drew away her arm and led the way into the 
 pleasant lamp-lit room, saying coldly, 'I didn't mean to startle 
 you.' It was the first time that she had volunteered a caress 
 it was his tired movement of the hands that prompted her. 
 
 'Have you dined?' she said stopping. 
 
 'Yes,' he answered, brusquely, pushed past her to an arm- 
 chair and dropped into it. How tired he looked! She longed 
 to make him come to the sofa, longed to take his head in her 
 lap, to comfort him remembered that action of instinctive 
 withdrawal in the hall and sat motionless, expressionless in her 
 corner. At such a time the delicate white face could wear a 
 look almost hard, and singularly aloof. He glanced at her once 
 or twice, out of half-shut eyes. The minutes passed. 
 
 'I'm going to bed,' he said, jumping up at last. 'Dog-tired. 
 Good-night.' 
 
 'Good-night,' and he went up stairs. 
 
 He slept the greater part of the next day and then went 
 off to ride alone. Katharine strayed about the house with a 
 feeling of suddenly being a stranger there a person wholly 
 without rights and now unsure of welcome. 
 
 What had happened? Something, plainly. Probably some- 
 thing to do with his profession but from time to time she stabbed 
 her aching heart with the wonder: had his mood anything to do 
 with a woman? Had he in this last fortnight come to know 
 someone who But she would not altogether admit the
 
 3 io A DARK LANTERN 
 
 possibility of that. No, it was some professional worry. . . . 
 But in that case why did he not tell her? 
 
 Ah, he didn't trust her. That, at least, was true beyond the 
 hazard of a doubt. She was an outsider to his life that was 
 the essence of her disgrace. Not lack of the legal tie ; lack of 
 confidence. That degraded her. 
 
 He went back to town in the evening having hardly spoken, 
 save a moody word or two at meals. 
 
 Her effort to veil the ugliness in her position broke down com- 
 pletely. 'Oh, I am punished, well punished,' she said to herself 
 with tearless, burning eyes. ' I have tried, and I have failed. And 
 I must bear it. But not here. I cannot sit here alone with my 
 failure still less read weekly comment on that failure in his face.' 
 
 What should she do? To go, at all events to go! the painful 
 need was mounting to a passion. 
 
 A sense of dizziness and turmoil overwhelmed her. Here in 
 the silence and Spring sweetness of the country, she felt all the 
 affrighted bewilderment of the rustic caught in the street traffic of 
 a great city, deafened by the roar, unnerved by the myriad danger. 
 
 The thing that had overtaken her was a commonplace in 
 irregular living, and yet as easily console the small-pox patient 
 by pointing out how he had put himself within infection's range, 
 as for Katharine Dereham to say to herself, this was what in- 
 evitably happened. For she could say, that was not true. There 
 were cases few, of course, but some where the relation lasted. 
 Others where the woman especially your woman of education 
 and independence where she it was, who tired first. That view 
 was not so commonly presented to the world, but real life stories 
 had ended so. For Katharine, the older, humbler version, of 
 the woman who cared not less but more. 'Oh, I ought to have 
 guessed! I ought to have known! If not before from that 
 first time he kissed me. I should have fled away from him as 
 I would from a house on fire.' 
 
 Again Friday went by without him. Again late Saturday 
 brought him back more like himself, that is, more like his 
 better, happier self. She longed to yield and soften to his mood, 
 but her heart was over heavy for the task. 'Before he leaves 
 me this time, no, before ten o'clock to-night, I will speak ... I 
 will say that I must go.' But it was hard to find the moment
 
 A DARK LANTERN 311 
 
 harder still the strength. She had to flog her failing spirit, say- 
 ing: 'Other women, that woman most of all, against whose ghost 
 I've striven, she would cling fast, no matter at what cost to per- 
 sonal dignity barnacle-like such women fastened on men's 
 lives . . .' Ohl it made her hot to think that her own feeling 
 hitherto had blinded her: he may have expected before, those 
 words she found it so hard to bring out he may have found his 
 patience taxed. 
 
 Ah, the whole thing was ugly, ugly. 
 
 ***** 
 
 During dinner she talked constantly, like one nervously on 
 her guard, and frightened at what might leap into a pause. She 
 told him stories and made him laugh in that queer silent way 
 of his but he kept an eye on her; quick to feel the something 
 unusual in the air. 
 
 In the drawing-room she ignored the dogs, and moved rest- 
 lessly about, still talking. Presently she heard him grumbling: 
 
 'Somebody's taken away my pipe.' 
 
 'Why, there's a cartload here!' 
 
 'But the one I want 
 
 She drew it out from behind a Chinese box. 
 
 'This the one?' 
 
 'Let's see?' He never stirred. 
 
 She took it to him holding it gingerly. 'It smells horrid!' 
 
 'No it doesn't.' He took it in his left hand, and with the right 
 he pulled her towards him. She stiffened. 'Come here let's 
 look at you.' The scarlet flew into her face as she drew away. 
 
 He felt for his tobacco-pouch, saying slyly: 'You've got your 
 old colour back. It seems to suit you down here.' 
 
 She winced, then took her courage in her hands. 'I think 
 with you, my cure is complete.' More the something in her 
 voice than in the words arrested his attention. 
 
 He looked at her steadily while he filled the pipe. 
 
 Her throat felt dry, but she forced out the words: 'I think I'd 
 better go back to town.' 
 
 He struck a vesta held the flame to the pipe's brown bowl, 
 pulled a breath or two, watched the tobacco shreds catch and 
 glow, flung the match in the grate and crossed his legs. Not till 
 then did he speak, and what he said was: 'All right.'
 
 BOOK IV 
 
 GARTH 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SHE did not know until that moment, that down deep in her 
 heart lived the hope, the expectation even, of some outburst on 
 his part of anger and surprise when she should have found the 
 strength to speak of parting. 
 
 But only a lowering of the eyes, and those words of ready 
 acquiescence: 'All right.' 
 
 That, the sum of what he had to say at prospect of her dropping 
 out of his life that, all he had of regret or of common human 
 kindness ... a black look in the fire and, 'All right.' 
 
 Turk got up and stood before her, saying quite plainly: 'Bis- 
 cuits.' 
 
 'I must get you some, doggie.' Hastily she caught at the 
 excuse. 
 
 Leaving Vincent there with his all-compensating pipe, she 
 carried upstairs her humiliation and her aching heart, her tears 
 that no summoning of pride would keep behind her eyes. She 
 locked her door and flung herself sobbing on the bed. She had 
 thought that she had stored up strength enough to go. She saw 
 now that she had counted on his softening his realizing how he 
 would miss her, his begging her to stay on different, worthier 
 terms. But no. 'All right' and a level look in the fire. 
 
 A faint noise hi the dressing-room. She hushed her sobbing 
 to listen. Was it the maid? The next moment Vincent beside 
 the bed, saying, ' What are you crying about ? ' 
 
 'I'm not crying,' returned a muffled voice. He bent down.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 313 
 
 She smelt his smoky breath. He tried to lift her face out of the 
 pillow. 
 
 'Don't touch me!' she cried with sudden passion. 
 
 His own face impulsively darkened as he released her. He 
 walked to the dressing-table, to the door, and back to the bed 
 again, where he stood straight, angry, looking down. 
 
 'When do you want to go?' 
 
 'Directly. The first possible moment.' 
 
 In a fury he took hold of her shoulder, and forced her to turn 
 her tear-stained face to the light. The sight of it seemed to 
 reassure him, but he said roughly: 'Look here have I treated 
 you so badly?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Well, if I had treated you badly, what could you do more than 
 want to rush off at a moment's notice like this?' 
 
 'Waiting won't make it make it ' Her voice failed. 
 
 'I've got to go to the West of England again in two or three 
 weeks; wait till then.' 
 
 'No/' she said it with an outraged sense that every word showed 
 more ruthlessly how little it all meant to him he had got used 
 to her, was ready to detain her here a few weeks longer, till he 
 too had to be away, and so the 'break' be made quite easy. He 
 was scowling down at his watch-chain. 
 
 'I told you you wouldn't be able to stand it here,' he said. 
 
 'It is true. I am not able to stand it.' 
 
 The door bell. A telegram, of course, for no one ever called. 
 
 Vincent still stood, lost in thought, examining his watch-chain 
 link by link. Voices downstairs. Men's voices. The house- 
 keeper's raised in quavering excitement. The barking of the dogs. 
 
 'Don't you think you'd better go ' began Katharine. 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'And see who it is.' But still he stood there. A fear caught 
 hold of Katharine lest it should be someone for her Bertie, or 
 Blanche, or even Craybourne. 
 
 Anton crossed her mind. Suppose it was he! 
 
 As the seconds passed and the sounds continued, she felt every 
 instant the more sure. Yes, it was Anton, down there in the hall. 
 He was come to take her away. And in the very nick of time! 
 But even as she said this to herself, behold, the mere thought had
 
 3 14 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 thrown her back again upon Garth Vincent. She had the impulse 
 to creep into his arms and beseech him to let her stay 'for 
 always.' 
 
 Still the sounds. Hark! Was that a child's voice? She got 
 up, brushed her handkerchief again across her eyes, and, leaving 
 Vincent leaning against the foot of the bed, deep in some dis- 
 turbing thought, she stole out upon the landing and bent over the 
 banisters. 
 
 It seemed as if a discussion was going on between men about 
 some luggage. Now a clear young voice was saying: 'No I won't 
 have anything brought in, till I've seen them.' 
 
 And Mrs. Jackson remonstrating: 'They doos go out for walks 
 o' moonlight nights, and sometimes they doosn't get back till 
 late.' It was then the little parlourmaid glanced up and said: 
 'Oh, there's Mrs. Vincent, now.' 
 
 Katharine went slowly down. In the angle of the lower hall, 
 half surrounded by the dogs, a pale little boy sat on the oaken 
 settle; a man stood near carrying a dressing-case and rug. The 
 cabman waited at the open door, and the High Winston servants 
 were respectfully drawing back, upon sight of the lady coming 
 down. 
 
 Katharine kept her eyes fixed on the slim little figure upon the 
 settle. The boy looked up. Hurriedly fitting a crutch under his 
 arm with help of the man, he had pulled himself on his feet. As 
 he stood there, half shy, half reassured, it seemed to Katharine as 
 if, into this house that she was leaving, he had come unbidden, 
 unlocked for, like all Fate come to bring definite good or definite 
 evil which? she asked of the little white face with its grave 
 grey eyes; of the square forehead with the thick red-brown hair 
 growing low; of the mouth unnaturally firm for one so young of 
 the air that animated all, an air of character dashed with caprice. 
 What are you come to bring? Shall I be humiliated before this 
 child, or shall I be lifted up ? 
 
 The boy had been staring at her with all his eyes. Katharine, 
 pausing an instant on the stair, called up, 'Garth! Garth, your 
 little brother is here,' and then ran down. 
 
 The boy held out a hand. She took it warmly. 'Did you 
 telegraph? We never got it. Garth didn't know Garth!' He 
 appeared at the top of the stair.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 315 
 
 'Hello!' called up the young visitor eagerly. 
 
 'What are you doing here?' said Vincent coming slowly down. 
 
 The young eyes searched first his step-brother's unwelcoming 
 face, and then Katharine's. While still he looked from one to the 
 other, 'I'm afraid you hate it? me coming like this?' he said. 
 
 'You've no business,' began Vincent harshly, while Katharine 
 involuntarily moved nearer the unbidden guest 'no business to 
 be scouring the country alone.' 
 
 'Garth!' Katharine turned suddenly and laid a hand on Vin- 
 cent's arm. 
 
 'I wasn't alone. I brought West along,' said the boy very 
 crestfallen, looking over his shoulder at the man-servant 'I 
 thought you . . . you'd like it.' 
 
 'Well, I don't!' said Vincent roughly. 
 
 Only by an effort did Katharine prevent herself from expos- 
 tulating. 
 
 The tears sprang up in the child's grey eyes, but manfully 
 he kept them back. 'Of course I didn't know you had got 
 married, or I ' 
 
 'What I've done has nothing to do with it,' said the other even 
 more angrily. 'When I want you here, I tell you so.' 
 
 'You mustn't stand.' Katharine laid an arm gently round the 
 young shoulder with a motion to draw the boy down upon the 
 settle torn between a wish to help him, and a fear lest champion- 
 ship from her should not only complicate her last difficult hours 
 here, but do the child's cause harm. 
 
 There are certain people entirely capable of being kind, who 
 are ready to resent being prompted to kindness. She realized 
 Vincent was one. 
 
 The boy had swallowed his tears, as, with his servant's help, he 
 sat down, rattling the crutch while a slight spasm of pain flitted 
 across his face. 'You you've usually been glad to see me.' 
 
 'And so he is, really, ' Katharine reassured him under her breath. 
 
 'I suppose your mother told you to come,' said Vincent. 
 
 'No. She she doesn't know about it,' answered the boy 
 miserably. 'She won't like it, either.' 
 
 'Garth I* Katharine burst out, 'you mustn't be unkind.' 
 
 But already upon being satisfied that his step-mother had not 
 prompted the move, Vincent had been appeased.
 
 3 i6 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Oh, well/ he mumbled, half turning away, 'now that you're 
 here ' 
 
 The boy looked up quickly. 
 
 'You know I wouldn't have come if I'd understood.' 
 
 'Understood what?' demanded Vincent, as sharply as before. 
 
 'Why ' He looked at Katharine, and seemed to take heart. 
 
 A little smile flickered round the mature, firm mouth. 'I was 
 most awfully surprised when Mrs. Jackson told me you'd got 
 married.' 
 
 Silence. Katharine held her breath. In a more collected 
 moment she would have known even Vincent would be incapable 
 of explaining to this child, but now her feeling was of one who 
 escapes a danger closely skirted, when she heard the harsh voice 
 saying: 'Did you expect me to consult you?' 
 
 The boy laughed at that, nervously, but with returning spirits. 
 'Well people's family usually hear about it, don't they?' 
 
 'I haven't got a family.' 
 
 The boy looked down, abashed. 
 
 Katharine took his hand, and as he raised his eyes to her face 
 she smiled, and gave a little nod, as much as to say: 'We know 
 he doesn't mean that.' 
 
 'Well, anyhow,' said the intruder, 'I believe it's a piece of luck 
 for me as well as for you.' 
 
 'What is?' 
 
 'That you're married.' He hesitated, remembering the recent 
 shock to his anticipations: 'Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe 
 she means to send me away.' 
 
 Katharine glanced hurriedly at Garth, and saw a look in his 
 face that told her the boy's cause was safe. 
 
 'Oh, has she asked you to stay?' He was laughing his silent 
 laugh, as Katharine left the settle to speak to the housekeeper, 
 the only one of the servants who had ventured to remain. Even 
 that privileged person had discreetly withdrawn inside the dining- 
 room door. Katharine heard from her that Master Leonard 
 always had the little octagon room. 
 
 'Then have it got ready, please.' 
 
 Vincent had gone out to give orders about the trunks and the 
 invalid chair. 'And you must be hungry,' said Katharine, 
 coming back into the hall.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 317 
 
 'I oughnt't to be,' returned the boy, watching her with atten- 
 tive eyes, 'but I believe I am.' 
 
 ' Of course you are. Come in here. It won't take them long 
 to get you something She led the way into the dining-room, 
 and at the door looked back, expecting to see him following on 
 his crutch. What she did see was that Vincent, having made fast 
 the front-door, came back to the settle, just behind the servant. 
 The man, having deposited rug and dressing-case at the foot of 
 the stair, had returned, and was bending down as if to lift the 
 boy. Leonard drew back, then made a little friendly gesture 
 of 'No, not you!' and held up his arms to Vincent. With- 
 out a word being exchanged, or on Vincent's part a look, he 
 picked up his unbidden guest and carried him into the dining- 
 room. 
 
 Ah, he does care! 
 
 The table was just as they had left it half an hour before. 
 Hurriedly Katharine made a place ready and herself sat down 
 beside the boy. Turk came squeezing in between them. 
 
 Katharine had watched with hidden tenderness not only how 
 skilfully Garth had lifted, put down, and helped the cripple but 
 how practised all his service was. No new thing this, tacitly to 
 make up for a rude reception. It was done with all the ease of 
 long custom and all the gathered beauty of old kindness. The 
 cripple had shrunk and set his face when the man-servant bent 
 over him. He had given himself up to his step-brother with 
 confidence and smiling. He was eating and talking away, now, 
 as if no cloud had rested on his arrival, Vincent on his right, with 
 an air of watchful content and a second pipe. 
 
 Presently, 'How long can I stay?' said Leonard. 
 
 Katharine rolled bread-crumbs on the cloth. 
 
 'Hum oh, we'll see,' returned Vincent, obviously at a loss. 
 
 'I'm not asking you. I'm asking her.' 
 
 Then, as Katharine made no instant answer, 'Well, how long 
 should you think you can put up with him?' said Vincent 
 maliciously, looking at her across the boy. 
 
 Katharine reached over the cloth for a far-away crumb, and 
 gathered it solicitously into the little pile with the others. 
 
 ' Perhaps she'd like to know me better before she decides, 51 said 
 the small guest hastily, but his confident look had clouded.
 
 3 i8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Oh, 7 wanted you to come before,' said Katharine. 
 
 'No! Did you?' he beamed. 'And mother never told me.' 
 
 'Where is your mother?' asked Katharine with suppressed 
 anxiety. 
 
 'She's gone back to London.' 
 
 'Left you alone at St. Ives?' demanded Vincent. 
 
 'Oh, she had to go. They want her to be a chairwoman at 
 a Primrose League something and there were several very im- 
 portant things ' 
 
 dare say,' grunted Vincent. 'What put it into your head 
 to come here?' 
 
 ' Oh, you know that was in my head when you first came down 
 to see me.' 
 
 'And I said you were to stay where you were.' 
 
 'Yes, but you promised to come back. And you didn't. Now 
 I know why.' He laughed roguishly up at Katharine. 
 
 'When I promised to come back you were ill. When your 
 mother wrote that you were all right 
 
 'Oh, of course,' interrupted the boy, with an old-fashioned air 
 of that knowing all which forgives all, 'you couldn't leave what 
 am I to call you?' 
 
 'My name is Katharine.' 
 
 He leaned back in his chair, and took her in with an aspect of 
 great satisfaction to himself. 'I never had a sister before. It's 
 awfully jolly.' Vincent puffed out the smoke, and Katharine 
 rolled bread. Then, as if in his old-fashioned way the child were 
 wondering how things in general had impressed the new member 
 of the family: 'Isn't this a nice kind of a place?' 
 
 'Yes, indeed,' assented Katharine. 
 
 'She don't think much of it,' muttered Vincent. 
 
 Katharine and the little guest exchanged understanding smiles. 
 'Of course, we both know Garth,' he telegraphed. Then aloud: 
 'And don't you rather like the pond?' 
 
 'Oh yes, and the big trees ' 
 
 'And the rooks,' added Vincent. 
 
 'Yes. Did you know there's stickle-backs in the little river?' 
 said the boy eagerly. 
 
 'No really?' 
 
 'Lots. Did you ever fish ?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 319 
 
 'Oh yes,' responded Katharine with an enthusiasm that sur- 
 prised herself. 
 
 'Now I think you'd better get to bed,' said Vincent, pushing 
 back his chair. 
 
 'Oh, Garth,' said the boy, 'let's talk a little about fishing 
 first.' 
 
 ' No. But you can ask her to sing you one song before you ' 
 
 'Does she sing, too ?' 
 
 They all laughed. 
 
 It seemed to please something she had not suspected in Vin- 
 cent, to show her off to this little member of his family. 
 
 He put Leonard into the arm-chair and opened the piano. 
 Katharine sang one song after another upon the boy's imploring. 
 Vincent seemed to forget he had said just 'one.' 
 
 When she had finished 'The Blackthorn and the Missel-thrush' 
 Leonard clapped his hands. 'Why, that song might have been 
 written in the lane between Matley Church and the Coxon's 
 thatch cottage ' 
 
 'That's where it was written,' says Vincent. 
 
 'How do you know?' laughed Katharine. 
 
 'Was it written there?' asked Leonard, mystified. 
 
 'You remember where the hill goes up sharp into the wood?' 
 said Katharine. 
 
 'Rather. That's near our old picnic place, isn't it?' Vincent 
 nodded. 'I've spent three birthdays here,' announced the boy. 
 
 'When is the birthday due?' 
 
 ' Twelfth of May. That was a jolly picnic you made last year,' 
 he said to Vincent with charming guile. 
 
 'Who was there?' asked Katharine, and then regretted the 
 question. 
 
 'Oh, me and Garth and Turk and Jackson, and the collies. 
 We had awful fun, didn't we ? ' 
 
 Vincent nodded. Then, bending down over the grate to knock 
 the ashes out of his pipe: 'I can't do it this year. I'm going 
 away.' Then, in the pause, he glanced suddenly at Katharine, 
 who was closing the piano. 'But she might, if you got on the 
 good side of her.' 
 
 Leonard looked eagerly at the lady's grave face. As she said 
 nothing: 'I expect it would be a lot of trouble for her.'
 
 320 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'No. It would be delightful,' rejoined Katharine hurriedly. 
 'But the twelfth is a good way off.' 
 
 'Only three weeks,' said Vincent. 
 
 'Three weeks and two days,' amended Leonard. 
 
 'She hates it here,' said Vincent, putting his pipe in the rack. 
 'All rot about the pond and the rooks! Don't even care about 
 horses, really. Just like your mother. Dying to get back to 
 town.' 
 
 'Oh,' said Leonard. 
 
 'Don't believe all he says.' Katharine was smiling with a 
 sense that tears were close behind. Garth must know per- 
 fectly how hard it was for her to go. Why did he want to tor- 
 ture her? 
 
 'It isn't true?' demanded Leonard quickly. 'You do like 
 this place?' 
 
 'Well, if she does, you may get your picnic after all,' said Vin- 
 cent, as he lifted the boy in his arms and carried him out Turk 
 close on his heels; for Turk knew well enough he was expected 
 to sleep in the octagon room, too, when Master Leonard was 
 at High Winston. 
 
 Yes, for that boy, at least, Garth Vincent cared! 'I'll come 
 and say good-night in two or three minutes,' Katharine called 
 after them. 
 
 But she stood exactly where they had left her till Vincent re- 
 appeared. 'Oh!' she started out of her reverie: 'I was going 
 to put out the lights. You needn't have come back.' 
 
 'Yes, I need.' 
 
 Speaking absently, while she turned out the tall standard near- 
 est her, 'What for?' she said. 
 
 'Why, for you.' 
 
 Had he divined her determination, made in the hopeless grief 
 of the earlier evening, to effect the break that night? to make 
 it complete and final, since come it must. Bitter as that hour 
 had been, it had come to her nobly attended, with courage and 
 with resolution. But where were these high companions now? 
 Had they gone gravely out, when Leonard opened the door, 
 admitting other influences in his train: compassion, and the 
 natural drawing together of poor human folk, who need help 
 and who bring love? Certainly her sense of personal suffering
 
 A DARK LANTERN 321 
 
 and humiliation had fallen far into the background, as she had 
 stood there watching Vincent, skilled and strangely gentle, carry- 
 ing the boy to bed. 
 
 Ah, very true, it was, he cared! 
 
 The sight had set other fancies stirring. 
 
 If it were her child 
 
 Vincent put out the last light. Now the room was dark. She 
 went into the hall, remembering vividly that she had meant to 
 turn to him on the threshold and say good-night. What she did 
 say was: 'I must go and see if Leonard has everything.' 
 
 'I've done that.' He turned out the lower hall light and fol- 
 lowed her closely up the stair. She went on, with the radiance 
 from above catching in her hair, and with no word, but a breath- 
 less sense of his having heard the unspoken ' Good-night,' which 
 was to say as well, Good-bye. At the head of the stair, she turned 
 to go down the corridor to the octagon room. He stopped her 
 abruptly with: 
 
 'Leonard's all right.' 
 
 ' Oh then I I'll just say good-night to him.' 
 
 'I've said it for you. You can do it every night for the next 
 three weeks till I come back.' He stood a little impatiently, 
 waiting for her. ' Leonard mustn't talk any more. He's excited 
 enough as it is.' Then, drawing nearer and dropping his voice: 
 Tve told him.' 
 
 She opened her lips, and no sound came. 
 
 She leaned against the wall, feeling faint with disgust. Little 
 or nothing of what filled her heart was written in her face, but a 
 sudden pallor had wiped out the ' old colour ' as clean as a sponge 
 may wipe a slate. He had done the incredible. 
 
 'So,' she said quite low, 'you have told the child.' It was the 
 end. 
 
 'I ought to have waited till morning. He's such a rum little 
 chap. Takes all that kind of thing frightfully seriously.' A sick 
 and dizzy feeling made her lean hard against the wall a moment. 
 'Most boys wouldn't care tuppence, you know.' She stood up 
 straight looked right and then looked left. Where should she 
 take refuge for the night? 'But Leonard's always been poring 
 over books. And he's never seen a real live poet before.' 
 
 'A poet?' she said scarce audibly. 
 
 21
 
 322 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Yes, a genius, you know,' and he grinned as at some capital 
 joke. 
 
 'You . . . then, what you've been telling Leonard is ' 
 
 'You don't really mind?' She detected a suspicion of anxiety 
 under his amusement. 'He's sure to know some time.' 
 
 ' What was it you told him ? ' 
 
 ' That it was you wrote "The Blackthorn and the Missel-thrush " 
 and all the rest.' 
 
 'Oh.' 
 
 Vincent was standing under the light, hands in pockets, silently 
 chuckling. ' You ought to have seen his eyes. Never knew such 
 a rum little chap.' 
 
 Did he guess how changed and gentle his own eyes were when 
 he talked about the boy? Indeed, indeed he cared! 
 
 ' What did Leonard say ? ' 
 
 'Said he felt very "queer and heavenly" while you were sing- 
 ing!' Vincent interrupted himself with a smothered burst of 
 laughter. 'And I explained it.' 
 
 ' Oh ? How did you do that ? ' 
 
 'Told him it was no doubt because you were what they call 
 a genius.' His teeth were shining in a silent laugh, as he lifted 
 up his hand to find the screw that should turn out the light. 
 
 'I'm not a genius!' she said rather hotly, resenting being ex- 
 ploited to amuse a child. 
 
 'Well, that's what I read in the papers,' he persisted. 
 
 'Whatever I am, you make me wish I was somebody else.' 
 
 He dropped his uplifted hand, and looked at her. Her voice 
 had had a queer ring in it. 
 
 'Wish you were somebody else? Who?' 
 
 'Some little white-faced boy who can't walk without a crutch.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'I think then, perhaps, you'd ' 
 
 'What?' 
 
 She shook her head, with eyes slowly filling. 
 
 'Go in,' he said; 'I'm turning out the light.'
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IT was twice as long as Vincent had stipulated before High 
 Winston saw him again. Katharine wondered sometimes at her 
 patience. But in truth she had hugged close the soft green days 
 in lane and wood, following Leonard's chair, or sitting by the 
 rush-fringed river, or under the late-come leafage of the oaks, 
 beside the boy Garth loved, and who in turn had made an Abgott 
 of the man. 
 
 They talked of a thousand things, those two, but of nothing 
 so much as Garth. 
 
 'If I had not loved him before,' she would reflect, 'Leonard 
 would have made me.' Yet Leonard had small share in the 
 Garth of those last hours, that memory dwelt on, doating. He 
 had exacted a promise from her, an odd enough thing for him 
 to do. 'You won't go away, no matter what happens, before 
 I get back ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Not for a day?' 
 
 'Not an hour,' she had said, adding, 'How anxious you are 
 about that boy.' 
 
 'About Oh, Leonard. Well, you've promised, haven't 
 you?' 
 
 'Yes, I've promised.' 
 
 And so she stayed on, strangely content, living, as such blinded 
 ones may do, on an all-sufficing memory. For whatever went 
 before, whatever might come after, he had loved her in those 
 test hours. 
 
 'I've been so afraid you would be wanting to go up to town,' 
 Leonard had said, gratefully, as the time drew to a close. 'I 
 
 323
 
 324 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 never had such a nice visit here before. It's always been rather 
 lonely in the middle of the week.' 
 
 'But this time you've had so little of your brother. I'm afraid 
 you miss Garth.' 
 
 'Not so much as I used to when I was all alone here, with 
 only West and the Jacksons, from Sunday night till Friday.' 
 
 'I suppose you had visitors, sometimes?' 
 
 'No, Garth hates 'em! ' Then with face grown suddenly grave: 
 'Mother wants to come down on Friday.' 
 
 Katharine had often wondered in what fashion she figured in 
 the weekly letters exchanged between Mrs. Vincent and her son. 
 But no word had yet enlightened her, and she could not have 
 questioned the child. 
 
 'I telegraphed to Garth about it,' he said after a thoughtful 
 little pause. 
 
 She looked up. 'No answer yet?' 
 
 'No. I'll have it to-night, I should think.' 
 
 When it came, he gave it at once to Katharine. 
 
 'Say no room this week. Next if she likes. GARTH.' 
 
 Ah! That must mean he was coming Garth himself! At 
 last! But did it mean, too, that he was bringing people? 
 
 Mrs. Vincent must have resented the message, for she wired 
 back that her son was to return to her at once, or she would come 
 and fetch him. 
 
 'You see she doesn't know there's anybody here,' Leonard 
 apologized for her, 'and she thinks it isn't very nice of 
 Garth.' 
 
 'Your mother imagines you are quite alone all this time?' 
 
 'Oh, with West, you know, and the Jacksons and Garth at 
 the week-ends.' 
 
 'Then you haven't said ' she meant to add: 'that Garth 
 
 hasn't been here for six weeks?' but she could not even to that 
 extent question the boy. She got up hastily. 
 
 Leonard was looking at her. 'I haven't told mother the great 
 news about you. I think, from what Garth said, he wants to 
 do that himself.' 
 
 Very unwillingly the boy went back to town early the next 
 morning. Katharine's sorrow at his going was swept out of
 
 A DARK LANTERN 325 
 
 existence by the wave of eager joy that rushed upon her at getting 
 a note from Vincent the first that had ever come. 
 
 'Dear K., Back to-morrow by the 6.22. Send a wire to say 
 you will be at the station. G. V.' 
 
 Was this his way to bar all chance of being taken by surprise ? 
 Did he, in spite of Leonard's frequent, though never-answered 
 letters, full of Katharine, as she knew, and of their days together 
 did he doubt that she would hold out to the very end of a time 
 so much longer than he had given her any hint of ? Her answer 
 was simply: / will meet you. K. 
 
 And she did. 
 
 'I'm afraid you'll be disappointed when you hear ' 
 
 'What?' he interrupted sharply, pausing as he was about to 
 get into the dog-cart. 
 
 ' Leonard's mother sent for him. He went back yesterday.' 
 
 'Oh, I knew that.' 
 
 Jackson from the back seat presented an accumulated budget 
 of the happenings in stable, kennel, and field. 
 
 They dined out on the lawn, an arrangement Vincent scoffed 
 at, but obviously enjoyed. And they were gayer than ever they 
 had been together. As they strolled about afterwards, Katharine, 
 too full of joy in his return either to make, or even to remember, 
 'plans' or any form of taking thought for the morrow, listened 
 contentedly to Garth's observations on the tremendous change a 
 few weeks makes in the country at this time of the year; heard 
 him with gladness saying after a little pause: 'Leonard seems to 
 
 have enjoyed himself down here ' and then, upon his sudden 
 
 halting at the hedge-gate, heard all her happiness come crashing 
 in ruin about her ears upon his adding: 'It was nice of you not 
 to go till I got back.' 
 
 Not to go tiU 
 
 She stood motionless, while steadily he looked at her. Nothing 
 in life had ever hurt her as his eyes did at that moment. 
 
 'You forgot I promised,' she found voice to say 'promised 
 you I would wait till you got back, before I ' 
 
 'I know.' 
 
 'And now I suppose I can go?'
 
 3 26 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'For how long?' he demanded. 
 
 'For how long?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 The ghost of the Other Woman nerved her. She had come 
 back, then! . . . But Katharine would never be among the 
 'again-goers.' 
 
 'You don't think I'm going for good?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'You think I couldn't bear that?' 
 
 'Why should you?' 
 
 'Do you know of any reason why I shouldn't . * . try to 
 bear it?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 Lightning-quick, a sense within her of barring the door with 
 both hands against hope hope too long illusive to be let in now. 
 She was thankful she had not taken that brusque 'Yes!' too 
 simply, for straightway he was qualifying it, ' unless I'm much 
 mistaken' hesitated and looked at her while she shrank, not 
 knowing why she did, for the dark look was glowing. In spite of 
 telling herself that she hoped for nothing any more, his pause, 
 the sense of waiting, affected her like some intolerable physical 
 pain. She broke the silence rudely. 
 
 'I thought you realized, I've only waited, to keep my promise. 
 But of course I'm going to-morrow.' 
 
 'You can't go!' 
 
 'What makes you think that?' 
 
 She saw him glance sharply over the hedge, was herself vaguely 
 conscious of two heads appearing some yards away above the 
 flat, clipped top. Garth rested his hand on the gate and leaned 
 towards her, speaking his next words as low as if they two had 
 been in a room full of people. 
 
 'No!' she cried. 
 
 His eyes were lit. ' Yes! unless I'm very much mistaken.' 
 
 Quite near now, above the hedge, those two heads coming 
 swiftly. Jackson with one of the farm hands, both bicycling. 
 The bodyless apparition glided along on the top of the close- 
 clipped laurel, like an illusion produced by some juggler, but no 
 stranger, at that moment, than any other trick played by the 
 arch-juggler, life.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 327 
 
 'Good-evening, ma'am. Evening, sir.' 
 
 The two heads went tobogganing by, on the downward slanting 
 hedge. Still she stood where this new thing had found her, stood 
 there in the failing light, fathoms deep in silence, utterly without 
 motion, or even changing look, yet feeling herself to be blown along 
 by the sudden-veering wind of Destiny, with a too great momentum 
 for any thinking, or seeing, or even clear and final feeling. 
 
 Out of the blackness of the chaos in her mind, one thought 
 was rising clear: after all, the relation she had borne to this man 
 could not now, in the eternal nature of things, be episodic, soon 
 ended, and overlaid by the multitudinous littleness of life. That 
 last disgrace of triviality was not to cling mocking about the story. 
 The great abiding link between man and woman was established 
 between him and her. A thrill went through her at the realiza- 
 tion: something of him would be always with her till she died. 
 The thought offered sanctuary. He might treat her as he liked, 
 might go where he would, this with care and fostering should 
 abide. This much, out of her love and suffering, she had won. 
 
 And she hugged the thought; seeing quick glimpses of life 
 abroad, in seclusion, and in earnest living for the sake of 
 
 Then, consciousness of that figure leaning on the gate, those 
 eyes, came pricking through her lulling dream of recompense. 
 
 She turned abruptly, and began to retrace her steps through 
 the shrubbery to the house. But he was at her side. 
 
 'Well!' She answered nothing. ' What are you going to do ?' 
 
 'I don't yet know.' 
 
 He put out his hand and took her arm, forcing her to keep 
 his pace. 'No, tell me.' As she walked on, her fair head held 
 up, shining still in the fainter light, he said: 'A man and a woman 
 who spend their lives together ought to have children.' 
 
 'Spend their lives together?' she echoed under her breath. 
 
 'Yes. At first I wasn't sure. I hadn't seen enough of you, 
 you hadn't seen enough of me, to know what chance we had of 
 getting on together.' 
 
 (Gods! how commonplacely he pulled her passion down:) 
 'And now, as you begin to feel sure, I begin to doubt,' she said. 
 
 Another man would have stopped to remonstrate, and try to 
 recover ground. He went headlong on: 'Besides, women are 
 kittle cattle. You think they're all right, and they're '
 
 328 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 ' all wrong?' she suggested faintly. 
 
 'Rotten!' 
 
 She tore her arm out of his hold, but he caught her wrist. 
 Instead of apology: 'I've seen too much,' he said roughly. He 
 stood still by the garden seat, obliging her to do the same. As 
 she made no rejoinder, 'I won't run risks,' he threw in. Silence, 
 He let go her arm. With release from his rough sustaining, a 
 faintness fell upon her. She dropped upon the garden seat. 
 
 'Well?' he said, waiting. 
 
 'That night' at last she was bringing out the breathless 
 words 'that night, just before Leonard came, when I said I 
 must go you hadn't made up your mind then.' 
 
 'Yes, I had.' 
 
 'But when I said I was going, you answered, "All right."' 
 
 'Well? I didn't blame you for not wanting to be buried at 
 High Winston for ever.' 
 
 Then as Katharine sat silent, throwing back this light upon 
 the past, he went on, 'I should have been thick-witted if I hadn't 
 found out by that time.' He left the sentence as if he had rounded 
 it to the fullest completeness of expression. 
 
 'Found out what?' 
 
 'What I wanted.' 
 
 'You didn't think of what I wanted.' 
 
 'I supposed I knew. That was what made me angry! To 
 
 find out that you, of all women ' He kicked a stone out of 
 
 the path, the same expression on his face that he had worn that 
 night when he stood beside the bed, saying: 'Look here! Have 
 I treated you so badly ? ' 
 
 'What was it made you angry?' she persisted. 
 
 'Why, to find out that you should imagine you could go for 
 good. ' 
 
 'That surprised you?' 
 
 He looked at her. ' You! with all your fine notions!' 
 
 She dropped her eyes. 
 
 'Of all women, you/ Just as if ' 
 
 'Just as if ?' 
 
 'Oh, you understand me well enough.' 
 
 'I'm only beginning to, Garth.'
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THEY were married so quietly, that a never dissipated vague- 
 ness existed in the general mind, as to when and where, they had 
 gone through civil form, or religious ceremony. 
 
 ***** 
 
 It was a few minutes before five o'clock, when Paul Dalberg, 
 F.R.S., etc., etc., Lecturer on Pathological Chemistry, author 
 of a world-renowned work on 'Assimilation,' turned his broad 
 back upon William George Frederick Cavendish Bentinck, and, 
 in the act of lifting Garth Vincent's knocker, was accosted by 
 another visitor. The fair, good-looking Professor turned, and 
 greeted with animation, a red-cheeked girl of twenty-six or so, 
 who stood on the step breathing quickly after a brisk walk, and 
 presenting a somewhat masculine, if undeniably handsome, 
 effect in her ruthlessly neat attire. When the butler opened 
 the door, she cut him short with: 
 
 'It is not a bit of use, Staines, to say they're not at home. I 
 am to see Dr. Vincent at five. Though I did think at first,' she 
 added to her fellow-visitor on their way to the drawing-room, 
 'that I couldn't have read his note right. It's such an unusual 
 time for Garth's hale and hearty acquaintance to get speech of 
 him.' 
 
 'Oh, he'd see you at any time. But I suppose men do come 
 home to tea when they're just married.' 
 
 She laughed: 'Is it observation of that fact that has deterred 
 you ' 
 
 'Oh,' retorted Dalberg, 'it isn't 7 who have been deterred.' 
 
 ' Don't pretend you ever in your life seriously contemplated 
 
 What's that?' 
 
 He was unfolding a piece of music, his eyes still on the girl: 
 'Never seriously contemplated tea every day in my own house?' 
 
 329
 
 330 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Sydney Ford looked at the music over his shoulder. 'That 
 would be to darken too many lives. Women have spoiled you 
 for woman.' 
 
 'I've heard that said with more reason 
 
 'Impossible for morj reason to exist.' 
 
 ' said with more reason, I repeat, of your cousin. Yet he 
 
 has succumbed.' 
 
 'Garth had only his profession, you see.' Sydney turned 
 away and sat down. 'You're protected by your hobby.' 
 
 'The more exposed,' Dalberg smiled. 
 
 'It's quite true, being a lover of good music, and a maker of 
 it, makes you welcome in places where your exalted achievements 
 in science wouldn't do much for you.' 
 
 'Happily they aren't mentioned or even known.' 
 
 'Oh yes, they're known, in a hazy way,' she insisted. 'Just 
 enough to give piquancy to your being so musical and so ' 
 
 ' so ?' 
 
 'Oh, being as ready to smile with, as at women.' 
 
 '"At?" No, really!' protested the Professor. 
 
 'To smile at us,' the girl jeered good-humouredly, 'is almost 
 the duty of anybody at once so scientific and so notoriously a 
 favourite of the fair.' 
 
 He laid his pince-nez on the mantelpiece, and began seriously: 
 'You don't understand 
 
 'Perfectly/ She got up and began to walk about with a rest- 
 less air. 'Smiling at us is your way of conveying: "My head is 
 not turned, you observe." Perhaps a sop to men less in women's 
 good graces. A way of assuring theLn' she caught up his 
 pince-nez ' and hunched her shoulders, imitating him: '"My 
 dear fellow, your loss is, in my estimation, trifling.'" Laughing, 
 she laid down the pince-nez. 'Now, if it had been you! But 
 can you imagine anything more comic than Garth's marrying a 
 poetess ? ' 
 
 Paul Dalberg looked at the door and lowered his voice. 'I 
 can imagine nothing more tragic than her expecting to make a 
 success of marrying Garth.' 
 
 'How long do you suppose it will last?' 
 
 He shrugged. 
 
 'It will be curious,' she said reflectively, 'curious to watch.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 331 
 
 A little pause, and then she laughed again. 'Garth and a 
 poetess ! ' 
 
 'After all, she isn't a poetess to hurt.' 
 
 ' Oh, isn't she ? Well, I'm not literary, thank God, so I can't 
 pronounce; but one hears that the critics are going about saying 
 there hasn't been since Christina Rossetti ' 
 
 'That's all true, I believe.' 
 
 It was as if she made an effort to conceal her disappointment. 
 'Oh, really!' 
 
 ' what I mean is, she is first and foremost a charming 
 
 woman.' 
 
 'So! She's captured you already! Well, it's not a bad 
 beginning.' 
 
 'What do you make of her?' asked Garth's only intimate friend 
 with a puzzled air. 
 
 'I haven't seen her yet. Apparently you have.' 
 
 'Several times,' said the Professor. 
 
 ' Several times ! ' echoed the girl quickly. ' Why, how long have 
 they been married?' 
 
 'Well, they've been back in town ten days.' 
 
 'I don't believe Mrs. Richard knows that,' she said reflectively. 
 
 'I fear Mrs. Richard knows very little about the whole 
 thing.' 
 
 'When I hear people rail at Garth's vile temper, I always think 
 of Mrs. Richard.' Sydney sat down again. 'I consider his for- 
 bearance with that step-mother of his ' 
 
 'I don't want to detract from his credit, but there can't be a 
 question of breaking wuli Mrs. Richard.' 
 
 'You don't mean because she was his father's wife?' 
 
 'I mean because she's a pensioner,' said Garth's friend. 'Most 
 of all because she's a person who has ready under her hand a 
 potent means of revenge.' 
 
 ' In Leonard . . . ? ' 
 
 'In Leonard,' repeated Dalberg. 
 
 'There's no doubt it's the greatest happiness the poor child has 
 coming here.' 
 
 'It has been Garth's greatest happiness. I've sometimes 
 watched the three together. You could almost see the mental 
 process by which Garth arrives at the conclusion that, for the sake
 
 332 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 of that sick child, he will moderate his transports of dislike to the 
 mother.' 
 
 'Moderate them to a certain extent?' laughed the girl as at 
 some diverting recollection. ' Yes, although there's never been a 
 time when Mrs. Richard approved of her step-son, she's done what 
 she could to keep him in the family.' Miss Ford got up with an 
 air of impatience to look at the clock. 'Well! at all events, the 
 long suspense on the part of her goggle-eyed sisters is ended.' 
 
 'Is theirs the only suspense that's ended?' 
 
 'And to think there's a popular theory that jealousy is a feminine 
 complaint!' 
 
 'It is no news to you that I am jealous,' said Dalberg, coming 
 nearer. 
 
 Sydney evaded him, going to the window for a moment. As 
 she stood there, looking out: 'Why do you suppose she married 
 him?' asked the girl. 
 
 ' You don't think it's impossible she should care about him.' 
 
 'The kind of woman they describe it doesn't seem very likely. 
 In any case it's a rather funny ending to her long romantic attach- 
 ment to Prince Anton, that people used to talk about,' she turned 
 back to the fire and to the man standing there. 'Some even 
 said ' 
 
 'Some talked nonsense.' 
 
 'How do you know?' she demanded sharply. 
 
 'Well, I have my view. She's the sort of person wait till you 
 see her.' 
 
 'She must have laid herself out!' Sydney smiled significantly. 
 
 'On the contrary,' said Professor Paul, 'she snubbed me 
 rather.' 
 
 'I take leave to doubt that she snubbed Prince Anton. The 
 standards of the people she's lived among are frankly cynical. 
 One is told that anything (with them) is possible so long as a 
 certain outward decency is preserved.' 
 
 'However that may be, I shouldn't call her typical of her class.' 
 
 'Romantic and that kind of thing?' asked the girl, a certain 
 hardness in her voice. 
 
 'I mean that if not virtue (which is a form of romance) 
 
 'Oh, for shame!' 
 
 'If not virtue,' he persisted, 'pride keeps that kind of woman
 
 A DARK LANTERN 333 
 
 from She is imaginative, she is sensitive, in short, she has 
 
 the great preoccupation of being an artist.' 
 
 'Oh!' the scorn of the athletic young woman was unconcealed, 
 'you mean her poems?' 
 
 'Perhaps I mean her soul.' 
 
 'Why, Paul, you know perfectly well you don't believe in any- 
 thing so old-fashioned.' 
 
 'How do you know I'm not converted?' he laughed. 
 
 The pompous butler came in with a table, followed closely by 
 a maid with a tea-tray. 
 
 'I really must stay and see this woman,' said Sydney mockingly, 
 in a half whisper. 
 
 At the sound of Garth's voice outside the maid started and 
 rattled the tea-things. The man-servant dropped his magisterial 
 air and ran out. 'Yes, sir. Not ten minutes ago, sir,' they heard 
 him saying, as Garth came in with letters and telegrams. 
 
 'Oh, you're here again, are you?' he said, nodding to Paul. 
 He shook hands with his cousin, and tore open a second telegram. 
 
 'Your wife ' Sydney began. 
 
 ' She'll be here in a minute. I've sent her to change her shoes.' 
 A covert look passed between the two visitors. 
 
 'Is this the way you keep your appointments?' demanded the 
 girl, as Vincent tore open another envelope. 
 
 He glanced up. 'Why, am I late?' 
 
 'I must have five minutes' talk with you,' she said, going a 
 little nearer to him. 
 
 'What about?' 
 
 'That's what I've come to say.' 
 
 'Well, I've got five minutes;' he pulled out his watch. 
 
 'Could I see you downstairs? I want to consult you ' 
 
 Paul deposited the music on the piano, and took up his hat. 
 
 'What, you ill?' Vincent had said to the girl. 
 
 'No, it's about a friend of mine.' 
 
 'I must be off,' Paul put in. ' I only came to leave some music 
 for your wife.' 
 
 'You needn't go. She'll be down in a minute.' 
 
 'I must I'll be late now. Do you mind if I go this way?' 
 Paul was escaping by the little back drawing-room. 
 
 'What's that for?' demanded Vincent as his friend vanished.
 
 334 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Oh, I see. Hear, rather,' as Mrs. Richard Vincent's high voice 
 broke clearly on the silence, even before the servant opened the 
 door: 
 
 'Mrs. Richard Vincent and Master Leonard;' the dignified 
 Staines stood aside, as Mrs. Richard burst in, wasp-waisted and 
 overdressed; resolutely juvenile in a picture hat. 
 
 'Oh, you're here,' she said to Vincent, stopping short in her 
 career. 
 
 'Yes, this is where I live.'" 
 
 She kissed Sydney with effusion, but kept her eye on her step- 
 son. 'I fully intended to wait till you came in. I've something to 
 say to you. But I should be greatly disappointed if I didn't see 
 your wife at last.' 
 
 Garth made no answer, but as Leonard's chair was wheeled in, 
 he went over and spoke to the boy, who looked round eagerly and 
 whispered something. Before Garth had answered, the little 
 fellow burst out: 'West? Now West's gone, without taking me to 
 my place ! ' 
 
 'Have you got a place here?' said Garth. 'I didn't know that.' 
 
 The boy was obviously dashed, but, 'Yes,' he said, 'behind the 
 tea urn, next to Katharine.' 
 
 'Well, as they're neither of them here ' began his step- 
 brother. 
 
 'You know, 1 Leonard appealed, 'you know where she likes to 
 have me.' Then, gathering courage: 'She'll be very angry with 
 you, if you don't do as she likes.' 
 
 Garth laughed and was wheeling the chair in place, as Katharine 
 came in. She went straight to Leonard, but Mrs. Richard, not 
 waiting to be presented, precipitated herself forward. 'So we 
 meet at last,' she said in the strained London tea-party voice, 
 and writhing her neck so that, despite the circumference of her hat, 
 she could bring her face near enough to the new member of the 
 family to kiss her on the cheek. Katharine disengaged herself 
 without undue haste, while Garth interrupted the salutation by 
 saying to his wife ; 'You haven't changed!' 
 
 'Yes, I have.' 
 
 'Let me see. Put out your foot.' 
 
 'Why, you don't doubt me, do you?' Katharine laughed, 
 ignoring his demand. 'Is this your cousin?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 335 
 
 'Yes.' He stared suspiciously down at Katharine's shoes. 
 'You were very quick about it.' 
 
 'I get tired of being driven upstairs every time I come in,' she 
 returned, still smiling, 'so I keep shoes in the coat room.' He sat 
 down in a chair by Leonard as the tea urn appeared. Above the 
 lower interchange between Katharine and Sydney, Mrs. Richard's 
 voice rose shrill: 'Well, it's been the greatest surprise,' she an- 
 nounced, seating herself and keeping her prominent eyes on 
 Katharine. 'I suppose you know we'd all come to think of Garth 
 as quite hopelessly wedded to bachelorhood?' 
 
 'Yes?' Katharine's eyes left her, passed over Sydney, and fell 
 upon Leonard. 'Has Garth told you Turk half killed the Irish 
 terrier on Sunday?' 
 
 'Oh, I was afraid ' lamented the boy, craning his head 
 forward with excitement. 
 
 An animated conversation between the two, to which Mrs. 
 Richard listened with a frank curiosity, in which neither Turk nor 
 terrier could claim a share. Unblushingly she took stock of the 
 new acquisition, her clothes, her ways, her looks from this point 
 of view and from that. But the doggy conversation soon palled 
 on Mrs. Richard. She had come not only to inspect her step- 
 daughter-in-law, but strung up to the fearful joy of speaking her 
 mind to Garth. The satisfaction imparted by the act of nailing a 
 thesis on the temple door is not confined to your religious Re- 
 former. Mrs. Richard held up the protest and drove the first 
 nail smartly in. 
 
 'Of course you realize,' she turned briskly to her step-son with 
 that smile that is no smile, but a mere showing of the teeth 
 'you realize that you have treated us all very shabbily.' 
 
 Katharine, in the act of pouring tea, glanced at Garth. He sat 
 quite stolid and regarded his boots. 
 
 'Oh, I hope not,' said his wife, covering the pause for him, 
 since his look denied the smallest intention of doing so for himself. 
 
 'It's very sweet of you to try to excuse him,' Mrs. Richard went 
 on, still goggling and smiling in that inimical way of hers. ' But 
 you must be intensely conscious of what I mean; even if it's too 
 much for the masculine mind.' 
 
 The owner of that impediment to clear perception leaned on 
 the sofa arm and spoke sotto voce to Sydney. Katharine, so far
 
 336 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 from justifying expectation by seeming ' intensely conscious,' wore 
 a look of vague surprise. 
 
 'But of course you've found out how Garth loves making a 
 mystery,' said Mrs. Richard. 
 
 'Does he? Oh dear!' 
 
 ' Doesn't he ? ' Mrs. Richard appealed to Sydney. That young 
 lady, not waiting for her tea, had begun on bread-and-butter. It 
 struck Katharine there was something wonderfully vigorous, 
 'athletic' even, in the way she ate it. 'Just wait,' pursued Mrs. 
 Richard with a humorous air. 'It's nice of us to forewarn you, 
 isn't it, Sydney? Oh, he carries it into the simplest things. 
 You'll be out walking with him. He speaks to a man. "Who 
 was that?" you say quite innocently.' She caricatured Garth's 
 frown: "'A friend of mine." "What's his name?" "You 
 wouldn't know it." "Not if I never hear it, of course." "You 
 won't hear it." that's the kind of thing, isn't it, Sydney?' 
 
 'I'm surprised at you, Garth.' Katharine laughed a little 
 wickedly. 
 
 'Paul Dalberg says have you seen Paul?' demanded Mrs. 
 Richard. 
 
 'He couldn't wait,' Garth explained shortly to his wife. 
 
 'Well, you will see him,' Mrs. Richard assured her. 'He's the 
 one human being Garth never gets tired of. I wonder how you'll 
 like him. He says that nobody who knows Garth had any right 
 to be amazed. "It's just like him," he says, and if anybody 
 understands Garth I suppose it's Paul Dalberg. But,' she 
 dropped the humorous air, 'where it's a question of marriage 
 and a marriage, I may say, that he ought to be proud of it's 
 a different matter. It isn't fair to his wife.' 
 
 'Oh, his wife ' began that lady light-heartedly. 
 
 But she was interrupted. 'As I said to you in my letter, you 
 must have thought it very singular and uncordial, that your 
 husband's friends made no sign. But how could we?' 
 
 'I didn't misunderstand.' 
 
 'I assure you we kjiew nothing, absolutely nothing. Did we, 
 Syd?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 Leonard looked round the urn with a superior little air. '/ 
 knew.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 337 
 
 'Fancy/ Mrs. Richard was growing more excited, 'fancy his 
 not even ' 
 
 Garth jumped up, watch in hand, and asked about the hunting 
 accident Sydney had had at Christmas. 
 
 As Mrs. Richard was about to resume, Katharine said with 
 a conciliatory air: 'Yes, Garth is rather uncommunicative, as 
 you say.' 
 
 'Uncommunicative! The Vincents,' Mrs. Richard paused to 
 take in the group, Garth, Leonard, and Sydney, ' are every one of 
 them as secretive as the Crawleys are frank.' 
 
 'The Crawleys?' 
 
 'You didn't know I was a Crawley?' 
 
 'I don't think Garth is, as you say, rather uncommunicative.' 
 
 'Seriously,' Mrs. Richard appealed through his back to the 
 better nature of the bridegroom, 'you can't imagine how awk- 
 ward all this unnecessary secrecy has made it for us.' Garth 
 turned half round, frowning. Mrs. Richard rushed on excitedly: 
 'Why for weeks, ever since it came out in fact 
 
 'A fortnight ago,' Sydney put in calmly. 
 
 ' I've been bombarded with questions! Nobody would have 
 
 believed, I didn't know the answer to a single one of them.' 
 
 'No,' muttered Garth under his breath. 
 
 'You can't think what I felt like at the big Bazaar on Tuesday,' 
 Mrs. Richard turned to Katharine for sympathy, 'under Royal 
 Patronage, you know. My sisters and I had such a pretty stall 
 with Lady O'Brian Irish Industries, you know, great success. 
 I'm going on there this afternoon to look over our bills and 
 accounts a dear person, Mora O'Brian: you must know her. 
 But fancy all those people crowding round me at the Bazaar asking 
 for particulars. Where the marriage had taken place and all that.' 
 
 Garth wheeled suddenly upon her. 'Didn't you tell them?' 
 
 Mrs. Richard gaped. 'How could I?' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Did you think you'd told us? Never once! You're the 
 oddest creature! He'll be saying next that he invited us to the 
 wedding,' she said to Sydney. 
 
 'I'd never go so far as that,' remarked her step-son. 
 
 'What/' 
 
 'Marriage should be private.' 
 
 23
 
 53 8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Oh, nonsense!' Mrs. Richard was still bewildered by the 
 audacity of his first question. 'The fact is, you impose on my 
 sense of family obligation. You know you could depend on my 
 not giving you away to all those women.' 
 
 Garth's angry eyes leaped at her. ' Give me away ? ' 
 
 'Naturally I didn't admit publicly how badly you've treated us 
 all. And when everybody asked, "Where were they married?" 
 I said, "Oh, Ireland, of course."' 
 
 'How did you know?' said Garth, almost pleasantly. 
 
 'Then I was right!' Mrs. Richard triumphed. 'Well, I con- 
 sider it a stroke of genius on my part.' Garth resumed his talk 
 with Sydney, but it was plain that he kept an eye, if not an ear, 
 for Mrs. Richard. She was saying with animation to Katharine: 
 'No, it wasn't, as I see you're thinking, our "Industries" that put 
 Ireland in my head. Everybody knew you'd been out of England. 
 Some said visiting relations. Your father's people I knew came 
 from County Wicklow.' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'I remember that because a cousin of mine married a cousin 
 of yours.' 
 
 'Oh, who was that?' 
 
 'Mabel Denison, Captain Dereham White's second wife.' 
 
 'I don't think I ever ' 
 
 'But I'm sure you agree it was very extraordinary of Garth 
 
 'I do agree that he's extraordinary.' 
 
 Sydney lowered her voice: 'Can't I see you downstairs?' 
 
 'You can tell me here what it is.' He shot a watchful glance 
 over his shoulder towards Mrs. Richard, who was saying: 
 
 'At our M.A.B.Y.S. Committee meeting this very morning the 
 Duchess of Worcester asked me how long you'd been married.' 
 
 'Oh, did she?' responded Katharine. 'She's rather an old 
 friend of mine. So you see, Mrs. Vincent 
 
 'You must call me Nelly. Everybody calls me Nelly.' 
 
 'Since my old friends were not told, you see you were not the 
 only one who ' 
 
 'The Duchess isn't in the family after all,' observed Mrs. 
 Richard with dignity, as Garth half turned again, impatience 
 darkening every feature. ' It was so very awkward being asked
 
 A DARK LANTERN 339 
 
 that, by the Duchess, before the whole Committee. What could 
 I say? / didn't know.' 
 
 A slight pause, and then: 'You shouldn't let a little thing like 
 that stand in your way,' said Garth at his deadliest. 
 
 'Well, I didn't! How long have they been married?' said I. 
 'Oh, for some time.' 
 
 'Right again! You're a clever woman after all,' he turned to 
 Sydney once more. 
 
 'After all!' 
 
 'While I think of it,' he threw over his shoulder, 'if you and 
 Leonard care to go down to Winston, you can have the house for 
 July. Yes, go on,' he said to Sydney. 
 
 'Oh thanks,' Mrs. Richard pulled herself together, 'August 
 would suit us better.' 
 
 'No,' Garth burst out angrily, drawing away from Sydney. 'I 
 told your friend, since she didn't like my treatment, she needn't 
 send for me again.' 
 
 'It isn't that she doesn't like it's only that you you shatter 
 her nerves. And she's afraid she's going to die.' 
 
 'Tell her from me she'll have no such luck.' 
 
 'Garth!' 
 
 'All women ought to die at thirty-five.' 
 
 'Well, they do their best.' Mrs. Richard tossed her head and 
 the plumes on her great hat waved. ' It's about the age they call 
 in the doctor.' 
 
 'Nonsense,' said Sydney. 'Why thirty-five is just the time the 
 modern woman begins to think seriously of marriage.' 
 
 'I wouldn't advise you to put it off so long,' said Garth. 
 
 'I'd begun to think I was never to see Winston again.' Mrs. 
 Richard accepted Katharine's tea. ' But now that you've under- 
 taken this gentleman 
 
 ' Oh, but I haven't! It's the other way about.' 
 
 Garth looked at his watch. 'Do you want a lift?' he said to 
 his step-mother. 'I'm going past the O'Brians.' 
 
 'No, thank you,' began Mrs. Richard and then hesitated. It 
 was an unheard of thing for Garth to be so civil. Too much of 
 material consequence depended upon his good-will, to sacrifice 
 it in any cause less dear than that of 'just giving him a piece of 
 my mind.'
 
 340 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'You will leave Leonard,' Katharine was saying, seeming to 
 consider Garth's proposal accepted. 
 
 'No, he has a lesson at ' Mrs. Richard interrupted her- 
 self with her high mirthless laugh: 'Really if either your wife 
 
 or I were suspicious we might almost think ' Again she 
 
 hesitated. 
 
 'I understood you to say you were going to the O'Brians,' said 
 Vincent. Under his impatience was a dogged patience that made 
 his wife wonder. In spite of the immediate deterioration of his 
 manners under the step-motherly eye, he had already endured 
 much, and in spite of his half-past five engagement, here he still 
 was, listening to Mrs. Richard's: 
 
 'In the height of the season you suggest I should go to the 
 country, and in the middle of my first visit, you want to take me 
 to the O'Brians'.' 
 
 They quietly measured swords. She rose a little nervously, as 
 West came in. 
 
 'After all I shall see you often,' she assured Katharine, 'and 
 I will confide to you that the offer of a lift from Garth is an un- 
 precedented grace.' She looked round for her parasol. 'Who 
 are you going to see at Chelsea ? ' 
 
 'A man.' 
 
 'What did I tell you? Well, as I'm a poor miserable creature 
 without a carriage you don't know anything about it, of course, 
 but for a woman to go about London as much as I have to, with- 
 out a carriage ' 
 
 The door opened and the servant announced 'Lord Peter- 
 borough.' 
 
 'Bertie! I am glad.' Katharine had greeted her old ally with 
 enthusiasm, before she took in the fact that he was slowly followed 
 into the room by Falconbridge. She was in the act of introducing 
 him to her husband, when she saw they already knew one another, 
 and was conscious of a vague sense of surprise, of incongruity. 
 
 'I regard this as an indiscretion,' Lord Falconbridge began in 
 his deliberate way. 'You must blame Amherst.' 
 
 'Blame?' exclaimed Katharine, 'I applaud him.* 
 
 In the general hum of conversation Mrs. Richard resumed her 
 seat with an air of fixed purpose. Without introduction she knew 
 who the elder man must be. Photographs and cartoons had made
 
 A DARK LANTERN 34I 
 
 his face public property. Sydney, after saying good-bye hurriedly 
 to Katharine, lingered at the door long enough to see Garth turn 
 away from the new arrivals, and say to Mrs. Richard: ' I'm going.' 
 
 'Oh, are you? Good-bye then.' 
 
 'You're not coming!' 
 
 'I believe I won't, after all, thank you just the same. It was 
 sweet of you to ' 
 
 Anything less sweet than Garth were difficult to imagine, as he 
 said significantly: 'Well, you won't be asked again.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'I don't like people with minds like weathercocks.' 
 
 'I believe you want to make me a scene.' Mrs. Richard un- 
 covered her teeth. 
 
 As Garth passed Leonard, the boy put out a detaining hand, 
 although Bertie was making friends with him. Mrs. Richard did 
 not at all like the look in her step-son's face. In two seconds 
 she had weighed the matter. Lord Falconbridge must be on 
 rather intimate terms to stroll in, unasked, in this informal way. 
 He would be here often. But if that prickly customer, her step- 
 son, were rubbed too violently the wrong way irritating animal! 
 Unwilling Mrs. Richard found her feet. 'Of course I'm com- 
 ing,' she said with an air of forced amusement. 'I only wanted 
 to see what sort of t&te you'd make.' She laughed vivaciously. 
 'I suppose you'll let me say au revoir to your wife,' and she joined 
 the others, who were talking rather low, as it seemed to a woman 
 whose frankness was apt to take the form of screaming. Kath- 
 arine's face was radiant with happiness, and Lord Falconbridge 
 was looking at Katharine in a way 'Well I' mentally ejac- 
 ulated Mrs. Richard, ' and his wife not dead six months I ' Then 
 aloud: 
 
 'I must make up another time for the shortness of this ' 
 
 She stopped, annoyed at Katharine's obliviousness. 'I'm sorry 
 to interrupt this engrossing conversation, but Garth positively 
 insists on carrying me off with him.' 
 
 For one instant Lord Falconbridge stared at her rather rudely, 
 and pointedly turned away. He stood talking to Garth while the 
 two women made their adieux. 
 
 'Now, when are you coming to dine with me?' demanded 
 Mrs. Richard.
 
 342 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'I don't know what our plans are. I'll speak to Garth, and 
 let you know.' 
 
 'Speak to him now.' 
 
 'Oh, he's talking to I'll telephone you in the morning.' 
 
 'No time like the present. Garth!' He raised his eyes. 
 'What night this week will you and Katharine come to dine?' 
 
 'We can't this week.' 
 
 'What's your first free evening?' 
 
 'Haven't any free evenings.' 
 
 'Oh, nonsense ' Then aside to Katharine as Garth turned 
 
 his back and listened attentively to Falconbridge, 'If that high 
 and mighty person has come to talk privately, why wasn't he 
 taken to the consulting-room?' 
 
 Katharine ignored that. 'I knew Garth had a good many 
 engagements just now. But later ' 
 
 'Come without him!' suggested Mrs. Richard suddenly. 
 'That'll be even better. We'll have a cosy little dinner all by 
 ourselves.' 
 
 'Thank you, I don't think ' She looked towards her 
 
 husband. 
 
 'Oh, you'll soon see you'll have to spend a great deal of your 
 time alone if you wait for Garth. "No free evening" is an 
 old cry.' 
 
 ' Just now it seems to be the time of year that all the scientific 
 bodies come to London 
 
 Mrs. Richard laughed maliciously. 'Is that what he tells 
 you?' 
 
 Again Katharine ignored the interruption. ' Lectures, receptions 
 to foreign celebrities, the dinner of the Pathological Society 
 
 'Oh yes. As my youngest sister used to say, "Society of some 
 sort, no doubt." Muriel is great fun. You must know Muriel. 
 Come and dine with us quietly to-morrow.' As Katharine was 
 about to speak: 'You'll be all alone. I know you will.' 
 
 'Alone? No, I 
 
 Mrs. Richard raised her voice. 'Isn't it to-morrow. Garth, 
 that you make your address before the Royal ?' 
 
 He looked round and merely nodded. 
 
 'That's all right, then! Katharine's coming to dine with 
 Muriel and me.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 343 
 
 'No, I'm going to hear the address!' 
 
 ' Fancy you caring Thursday, then!' 
 
 'We're dining that night,' said Garth, 'with the Al- 
 though she waited, he did not finish. 
 
 'Who with?' 
 
 But again he seemed to give his whole mind to Lord Falcon- 
 bridge. 
 
 'Well, Friday,' said Mrs. Richard, in a half -whisper. But it 
 only served to show how little of the talk not meant for him Garth 
 was missing. 
 
 'She can't be out every night.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'She has to take care of her health.' 
 
 Lord Falconbridge discreetly joined Bertie, and made acquaint- 
 ance with Leonard. 
 
 'Really, Garth, you can't think it would overfatigue her just to 
 dine quietly round the corner.' 
 
 'She won't dine anywhere without me. Good-bye;' he went 
 over to the two men by Leonard's chair, but stood a moment 
 longer, talking. 
 
 A gleam of suspicion had crossed the dislike in Mrs. Richard's 
 face. ' Not dine without him ! ' she said, in an outraged undertone. 
 'Does he imagine you're going to stand that?' 
 
 Katharine smiled. 'I wouldn't be surprised.' 
 
 ' Well, if I were in your place, I wouldn't lose any time in wak- 
 ing him from that rosy dream. To expect a woman like you 
 to sit at home while he runs about, paying visits all day, and 
 dining at night with his 
 
 'Not every night,' said Katharine, with an obvious effort after 
 civility. 
 
 Mrs. Richard, pinching her lips, sent her hard glance across 
 the room to her step-son. 'You can't expect to make a 
 domestic animal all at once out of a man who's led the life 
 Garth has.' 
 
 For the first time Katharine dropped her tolerant manner. 'I 
 don't understand you.' 
 
 Mrs. Richard caught herself up. 'Oh, of course, it will be 
 different now to a great extent. We are all so delighted to have 
 him married. And not married to ... the wrong person.'
 
 344 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'That,' returned Katharine coldly, 'is always a subject for 
 congratulation.' 
 
 ' I assure you we've had frights, my dear ! ' Mrs. Richard spoke 
 hurriedly, confidentially. 'I consider him in great luck; and I 
 shan't mind saying as much to him. Everybody else has always 
 been afraid of Garth. He hears the truth from me. Oh, you'll 
 find me the frankest person of your acquaintance.' 
 
 Bertie had left the others, and came strolling over to Katha- 
 rine. 'I suppose it's through the Princess Isabella.' 
 
 'I hadn't heard that Garth knew her particularly,' replied 
 Katharine off her guard. 
 
 ' You've always been rather a favourite in that quarter.' 
 
 ' You don't think that sort of thing counts ? ' 
 
 'Oh, she's an accomplished wire-puller, is the Princess. If 
 there are honours going, she sees no reason why they shouldn't 
 be conducted into channels she has made.' 
 
 'You are greatly mistaken,' said Katharine quickly, 'if you 
 think I have anything to do ' 
 
 ' Didn't she send for you the other day ? ' 
 
 'The Princess Isabella did?' asked Mrs. Richard. 
 
 ' She wrote to me about some poems of mine, and said I might 
 come ' 
 
 'Exactly. You vividly revived an old interest, and fired her 
 
 'You forget,' returned Katharine, 'he saved Prince Charles's 
 life.' 
 
 'Why, that was Garth,' said Mrs. Richard, who had been 
 goggling from one to the other with speechless astonishment. 
 
 ' Surely his record is quite enough to account for ' Katharine 
 
 lowered her voice. 'I hope no one will be so mistaken as to 
 suggest that I that there's any motive behind the proposal 
 other than Garth's own deserts. He wouid certainly refuse the 
 knighthood if ' 
 
 Mrs. Richard gasped. 'What!' 
 
 'Would he?' inquired Bertie, with polite incredulity. 
 
 'Beyond any shadow of doubt,' said Katharine quickly. 
 
 'A knighthood!' breathed Mrs. Richard. 
 
 'Sh! Yes. It mustn't be spoken of just yet. Oh, are you 
 going? Good-bye.' Katharine shook hands with Bertie much
 
 A DARK LANTERN 345 
 
 more coolly than she had greeted him, looked up, and saw her 
 husband pausing at the door with his eyes fixed on her. She 
 went to him. 'You want to speak to me?' although he had 
 uttered no syllable. What he said now was in an undertone. 
 Very low she answered, 'You think only of the child.' 
 
 'No, I don't,' he said. Then over Katharine's head to Mrs. 
 Richard, still making her adieux: 'If you're coming, come,' and 
 he was gone. 
 
 'My dear Garth 1' Mrs. Richard called after him. 'Coming? 
 Of course! Leonard darling, West is waiting. Good-bye!' She 
 made for the door with more trepidation than pleasure. But 
 whatever lay before her in this tete-h-tete, for the first time in his 
 life sought by her step-son, she had the satisfaction of feeling that 
 she was not departing without having planted her sting. She 
 had only to look at the face Katharine bent over Leonard to feel 
 assured of that. Well, it was far better not to start with illusions. 
 'Good-bye, my dear!' 
 
 'Shall we be toddling?' Bertie said to Falconbridge. 
 
 'You haven't had much talk with ' 
 
 'Oh, she has only one topic now.' 
 
 Bertie walked beside Leonard's chair as West wheeled the 
 boy out. 
 
 'Well, having offered you my congratulations ' began 
 
 Falconbridge. 
 
 'No don't go don't. I must have someone to talk to. I 
 feel rather wrought up. Your news, I suppose. Sit here.' 
 Katharine dropped into a chair, and covered her face for the 
 briefest moment with her hands. When they fell, he saw to his 
 surprise that she was laughing. 'Wasn't Mrs. Richard appall- 
 ing?' 
 
 'H'm.' 
 
 Her laughter was low but a trifle hysterical. 'I oughtn't to 
 say that but Garth himself detests her. He endures her only 
 on poor little Leonard's account.' 
 
 'The boy?' 
 
 Katharine nodded. 'He's a darling.' 
 
 'I perceive,' said Lord Falconbridge with a little smile, 'that 
 the least patient person of my acquaintance grows tolerant.' 
 
 Katharine was suddenly grave. 'When people don't marry
 
 346 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 as boy and girl, there is in the woman at least a wish first of 
 all to understand that past she hasn't had a share in understand 
 it before she rejects it.' 
 
 'Ah. 1 
 
 'You say that as if you were surprised I should think I could 
 reject ' 
 
 'If I am surprised, it is rather that you should hope to under- 
 stand.' 
 
 She laughed again. 'Oh, it isn't as different as all that.' 
 
 'Isn't it?' 
 
 ' Let us forget about ' she began impulsively, with a motion 
 
 of her hand towards the door. ' Let us talk about the things we 
 used to.'
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WHAT followed, the more took Katharine by surprise, in that 
 Vincent seemed willing to see her friends about her in Cavendish 
 Square, and was ever ready, in spite of the enormous labour of 
 his professional life, to go about with his wife in the evening. 
 In his undemonstrative fashion, he showed that he was gratified 
 by the admiration that followed in her wake. He observed her 
 looks narrowly, and even, to Katharine's merriment, developed 
 views about her frocks. 
 
 But he was not so complaisant when, as the season went on, 
 her engagements multiplied and overlapped. Willing as he 
 was, apparently, to see Katharine amuse herself, he resented 
 any evidence of her 'overdoing' resented it with a vigour to 
 which it took his wife some time to adapt herself. He thought 
 equally little of making her give up the most brilliant political 
 party of the season, or a quiet tete-h-tete with a friend, if Katharine 
 dared show a face too pale to please him. Any gratitude he may 
 have felt to the Princess Isabella did not prevent him from tele- 
 phoning to the palace, without even consulting Katharine, to say 
 that his wife was tired, and would not be coming to 'dine quietly' 
 that night with Her Royal Highness. Katharine perforce found 
 herself 'husbanding' her strength (as she laughingly emphasized 
 her new prudence), keeping her best looks for the eyes that were 
 not to be cajoled. 
 
 It's for the sake of the child that is coming, she would think, 
 not without a stirring of jealousy. 
 
 If Vincent was, as his wife flattered herself, softened, human- 
 ized, no change wrought in him prevented his falling, now and 
 then, into one of those old black moods of surly silence, or his 
 being swept from time to time by some sudden gust of rage. 
 
 347
 
 348 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 But those who suffered in these new days were his servants, his 
 relations, patients, friends. To Katharine he was singularly 
 gentle. 
 
 'The child! It's all for the child,' she would say to her un- 
 grateful heart, 'he was never so good to me before.' 
 
 She had left London gladly, and had not gone back till her 
 little son was two months old. Even then, she waited for Vin- 
 cent's prompting: 'It's no kind of life,' he grumbled. 'You here 
 and I three-quarters of the time alone in London.' The speech 
 pleased her, though she had laughed and said: 'We like you 
 better in the country, the baby and I,' as if the child had had 
 conscious experience of those few weeks in the summer. 
 
 Cavendish Square meant not only Mrs. Richard and the 
 'awful sisters,' the Past was there. 
 
 The coming of the child and the happiness he brought, had 
 sent all shadows flying. But in her reluctant memory they 
 gathered thick in Cavendish Square. All those unrecorded and 
 never-named days, months, years, when she was not in the life 
 that she longed to feel was undividedly hers. 
 
 'One day, that too,' she promised herself. But only through 
 Garth must the possession come not through any other. Yet 
 it seemed as if 'others' were for ever waiting ready to forestall 
 him to rob her of the voluntary confidence, that she said to her- 
 self would be the final seal to union and to happiness. 
 
 Welcome as Katharine had made Paul Dalberg at all times, 
 she felt herself to be too much under the magnifying glass in his 
 presence, to be at ease with him. She knew, as the sensitive 
 creature will, 'he behaves to me as if I were someone else.' 
 Plainly, he did not accept her at face value. Not all to himself 
 had he kept his silent speculation: 'it isn't probable she really 
 cares about Garth; why does she pretend so furiously?' 
 
 In that few weeks' experience in the summer, she had learned 
 to be sorry when Paul appeared during Mrs. Richard's visits. 
 His being there seemed to accentuate the bitter taste those visits 
 left behind. The air of staid old Cavendish Square seemed to 
 go to the lady's head. At ' my step-son Sir Garth Vincent's ' she 
 was even more vivacious than elsewhere, and gave away so many 
 pieces of her mind, that no after shortcoming in intelligence 
 could have surprised any witness of her prodigality. If Katharine
 
 A DARK LANTERN 349 
 
 baffled, piqued Paul Dalberg, not so Mrs. Richard, who cer- 
 tainly did all in her power to act as a corrective to Katharine's 
 supposed subtlety. Mrs. Richard's conception of 'frankness' 
 involved an unflinching pointing out of her step-son's short- 
 comings to his wife and to his closest friend; partly out of curi- 
 osity to see how this unknown quantity 'the wife,' would meet 
 these strictures, partly out of a need Mrs. Richard felt herself 
 to be under to show that she was not going to be dazzled by 
 Garth's distinction, any more than she had been awed all these 
 years by his overbearing ways. 
 
 In a feeble, half-laughing way, Dalberg would excuse the 
 criminal, or sympathetically shake his big head over Garth's 
 enormities. 
 
 Now, on the eve of Katharine's return to town, things that 
 she had been glad to forget came back to her. She heard again 
 Mrs. Richard's favourite formula, uttered with a modest air, 
 as of one not fully comprehending her own virtues: 'I dare say 
 it's a fault, but I always say what I think, and quite between 
 ourselves ' 
 
 Katharine knew that, what perhaps most disconcerted Mrs. 
 Richard, was to find that Garth's wife did not even put herself 
 to the trouble of defending him, unless Leonard happened to be 
 present. She had a disarming way of smilingly admitting the 
 most damaging things. Had Mrs. Richard in an outburst of 
 temper called him 'a rough creature': 'Haven't you had enough 
 of the ' ' smooth " ? ' the rough creature's wife would say. ' / have ! ' 
 
 Was he called selfish? 'I like selfish people,' Katharine 
 would answer. 'They're the only ones who aren't hypocrites.' 
 And when the smoke had cleared away, she would still be found, 
 laughingly insisting: 'Nothing would so disturb me as having to 
 live with a philanthropist it would be almost as uncomfortable 
 as being married to a martyr.' 
 
 Dalberg watched with interest her success in passing over, 
 with apparent calm good-temper, even Mrs. Richard's references 
 to 'the racketty life Garth led for years.' On the first occasion 
 only, Katharine had looked significantly from the lady to the 
 other guest. But Mrs. Richard tossed her big hat: ' Oh, I haven't 
 forgotten Paul Dalberg. We none of us mind him, do we, 
 Paul?'
 
 350 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'It is my despair,' he had said with mock gravity, 'that you 
 none of you do.' 
 
 And Mrs. Richard had added: 'You don't suppose we can 
 tell Garth's very oldest friend anything, do you?' 
 
 These hints, it is "but fair to say, were usually thrown out 
 only after some collision with her step-son, which had brought 
 into lurid relief his arch offence: restriction upon intercourse 
 between Mrs. Richard and his wife. 
 
 'Now why can't you come, Katharine? It's very awkward 
 for me. I promised Lady O 'Brian. Why is Garth so deter- 
 mined to keep you and me apart?' 
 
 'That you are here to say so doesn't look much like ' 
 
 'Now you are making phrases. Why does he do it, Paul?' 
 
 'It would require great concentration to discover,' the Pro- 
 fessor had replied. 
 
 'I should think he might know by this time I was to be trusted. 
 Now did I ever tell anything I oughtn't ? ' she inquired of Katha- 
 rine with a deliberately tricksy air. 
 
 'I'm sure I don't know.' 
 
 'Yes, you do. You must admit I've been most discreet.' 
 
 'Discretion is well known to be your leading characteristic,' 
 observed Dalberg. 
 
 'Oh, it's all very well to chaff,' she dropped her archness. 
 'But Garth's suspiciousness does sometimes irritate me to the 
 
 point of ' She seemed forced to contemplate tapping a 
 
 whole furnace-full of blazing indiscretions. But before Mrs. 
 Richard knew it, Katharine had changed the subject as lightly 
 as firmly. 
 
 On occasion, when he had outstayed Mrs. Richard, Paul 
 would be aware that his friend's wife, when at last they were 
 alone, betrayed something of the fatigue of one who has been 
 gay and indifferent at some cost to herself. And it was at such 
 times that he found her most sympathetic and most perplexing. 
 Once or twice he had permitted himself to manifest something 
 of his approval of the way she both bore with, and defended her- 
 self against Mrs. Richard. As if to heal the wound he knew 
 was there, though he was not permitted to see it, he would speak 
 of the long close friendship that had existed between him and 
 Vincent, and how Garth was a man that few women (no woman
 
 A DARK LANTERN 351 
 
 he would have said, two months ago) could easily understand, 
 least of all Mrs. Richard. But he, Paul Dalberg, knew him 
 thoroughly and here he would find the wife casting appre- 
 hensive looks at this 'old friend, who knew' as much as to say: 
 'Be careful. Knowledge must not reach me that way.' 
 
 The proverbial curiosity of woman accorded ill with that air 
 she more than once had worn, of appealing to Paul to keep the 
 Past at bay. ' Of course it's an attitude,' he would say to him- 
 self, 'but it's not a bad attitude,' grudging admiration added. 
 
 Her marrying Garth had it been effect of that notorious 
 sudden weariness, that attacks those women over-difficult, and 
 makes them at the eleventh hour, hurriedly take the nearest hand 
 held out? Or was this queer marriage a mere hasty solving 
 of some intricate personal question in which Garth was only 
 secondarily concerned? A way of dulling an old pain? or a 
 satisfaction to some new pique? He had observed her with 
 Bertie. But the amiable Bertie was too obviously her unre- 
 garded slave. Falconbridge! Could that have been it? 
 
 She arranged a little luncheon-party for the week after her 
 return. It the last moment, not without misgiving, she included 
 two of Garth's scientific friends. It had gone better than she 
 had dared to hope thanks a good deal to 'the dear Brutons' 
 and to Bertie. 
 
 They had all come up into the drawing-room again, and during 
 the drinking of coffee that invariable cleavage had taken place, 
 isolating once more the little groups that a deliberate effort had 
 for an hour fused and amalgamated. The Brutons and Peter- 
 borough stood talking and laughing in the middle of the room, 
 while Katharine with every aspect of absorption in Lord Falcon- 
 bridge's account of the effect upon the country of the Prime 
 Minister's speech, was covertly lending herself to the surprise 
 she still felt at hearing her husband (sitting on the sofa between 
 his two foreigners) speak by turns in terse, idiomatic French and 
 Italian 'quite as fluent as his English,' she thought, smiling to 
 herself, 'which is not saying much.' There was for her, not 
 merely an effect of strength in his economy of speech but some- 
 thing at times of pathos in his inarticulateness. It went to excuse 
 his delay in finding those particular words for which all her life
 
 352 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 seemed waiting. Vividly, too, this lack in him contrasted with 
 her own facility in expression, and her acquaintance with the 
 equally facile in artistic and in social life. But more and more 
 to his wife, herself a lover of words and a juggler with them, 
 Vincent's bareness of speech wore an effect of voluntary absten- 
 tion from the trivial and superfluous; acquiescence in, even a 
 part of, the great universal silence that greets men's larger ques- 
 tioning. With words we may unpack the heart, but fill its deep 
 wells never. From this man, at least, never a syllable more than 
 just enough to get his meaning across the line that separates from 
 silence. All plain and bald. Yes, No, Thanks, and Damn you. 
 
 Blanche came over to her, and Falconbridge joined the three 
 men. 'We ought to go away early and let you rest/ said Mrs. 
 Bruton. 
 
 ' Rest ? Nonsense. ' 
 
 'You're looking rather fagged.' 
 
 'Hush.' 
 
 'You foolish creature, I believe you're positively afraid of 
 admitting you're tired before that husband of yours.' 
 
 Katharine smiled. 'Well perhaps I am.' 
 
 'Why, what does he say to you?' 
 
 'Oh, I'm not afraid of his saying much.' 
 
 'Heavens, what do you think he would do?' 
 
 'Put me to bed like a naughty child and take away my toys 
 not let me see a letter, a paper, a friend for two days.' 
 
 'Is that what he threatens?' 
 
 'He doesn't threaten. He will just do it.' 
 
 'Nonsense, I'm very sure he wouldn't go such lengths.' 
 
 'He has. And he will again if I look ' 
 
 'Are you nursing your baby still?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Oh, that accounts for it.' 
 
 'Yes,' Katharine answered gravely, 'that accounts for it.' 
 
 The two foreigners came to make their adieux. Katharine 
 stood at the door saying last words to them. Her husband 
 having glanced at his watch shook hands with the others. As 
 he was in the act of following the last of the two strangers: 
 
 ' You aren't going ? ' said Katharine. 
 
 'Yes.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 353 
 
 'Oh no. It's so early.' 
 
 He glanced back at the four by the fire. 'You don't want 
 me.' 
 
 'Do you think it's very nice of you to say that, the first time 
 I have the Brutons and Bertie to lunch after being away so long ? ' 
 
 'It's not the first time you've had the other man.' 
 
 'Lord Falconbridge ? Oh, he invited himself. He wanted 
 to show me a paper he's written on ' 
 
 'Writes too, does he?' 
 
 She smiled. 'Why not?' 
 
 'Politics ain't enough! Well, I don't blame him for thinking 
 so.' 
 
 'I don't gather that that's precisely his view. Politics are 
 very absorbing.' 
 
 'You seem to think so.' 
 
 She laid her hand on his arm as he was escaping. 'You don't 
 mind Lord Falconbridge coming, surely.' 
 
 'Oh, I don't have to talk to the fellow. You've got the trick 
 of it?' 
 
 'The trick?' 
 
 'If he was a man of science now ' As Vincent was again 
 
 turning away, Wilfred Bruton strolled towards them. 
 
 'I'm in the act of telling my husband,' explained Katharine, 
 'that he's dreadfully narrow about the worth of other professions.' 
 
 'Can a man be a great success in any profession he doesn't 
 somewhat overrate?' 
 
 'Oh, I overrate mine, do I? Thanks. Good-bye.' 
 
 They laughed, and Wilfred turned to speak to Falconbridge. 
 
 'Oh! Garth!' Katharine called suddenly. He put an impa- 
 tient face in at the door. 'I did ask Sydney.' 
 
 'What did you do that for?' 
 
 'Oh, just' (she lowered her voice) 'to have your friends rep- 
 resented too and not only by a couple of snuffy savants.' 
 
 'Those are the two most distinguished biologists in Europe.' 
 
 'Yes, yes, of course. Still, I thought it would amuse you to 
 have Sydney.' He frowned and she added hurriedly, 'I want her 
 to know Lord Falconbridge, too. Sydney would interest him.' 
 
 'Don't agree with you. Syd isn't his sort,' and he bolted, 
 leaving his wife to demonstrate that she was. 
 
 23
 
 354 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Mrs. Bruton had meanwhile found herself growing confidential 
 with Bertie. ' She must loathe his people and most of his friends. 
 
 'Not Professor Paul,' said Bertie, 'and I'm sure she likes the 
 little hunchback.' 
 
 'Poor Kitty. She's found out her mistake.' 
 
 'Mistake?' he echoed. 'Leonard's an awful nice little chap.' 
 
 Mrs. Bruton refused to follow down a by-path: 'Kitty ought to 
 have married you.' 
 
 'She didn't think so.' 
 
 'She'll find this a very different London from the London of 
 Peterborough House.' 
 
 'Well, she chose this.' 
 
 'Did she?' 
 
 'Why do you say that?' 
 
 'Because I know she didn't. He hypnotized her. There's 
 something uncanny about that man. Don't you remember the 
 day last year when he came to see Freddy?' 
 
 Bertie nodded. ' I was ridiculously happy that day. I thought 
 everything was going so smoothly.' 
 
 'So it was,' said Mrs. Bruton with unusual emphasis. 'Then 
 Vincent came.' 
 
 Bertie looked up, wondering: 'Well. He went up to see Freddy 
 and he came down again. I remember perfectly. Nothing 
 happened.' 
 
 'You think not?' 
 
 'Why, I was there. She didn't even speak to him.' 
 
 'She had meant,' said Mrs. Bruton, sinking her voice even 
 lower, 'to cross to Paris that night.' 
 
 'She did cross.' 
 
 As Mrs. Bruton shook her head, 'What do you mean?' he 
 demanded. 
 
 'I believe Vincent stopped her. I know ' She hesitated. 
 
 'What do you know?' 
 
 'That Natalie went to Paris alone.' Mrs. Bruton rose with 
 the sudden remorse of a woman not given to indiscretion. Lord 
 Falconbridge was saying good-bye to Katharine upon the ap- 
 pearance of Mrs. Richard, followed by Leonard and Sydney. 
 
 'I'm coming along with you, Mrs. Bruton, may I?' Bertie 
 asked with a preoccupied air.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 355 
 
 'Could I drop you?' interrupted Falconbridge. 
 
 'Will the new toy hold four besides the chauffeur?' Under 
 cover of Mrs. Richard's screaming that she had only come in 
 for a second to bring her friend Mrs. Belderson to see Garth, 
 etc., etc., the last of the luncheon-party melted away. 
 
 'Well?' Wilfred Bruton faced Falconbridge as they all stood 
 outside watching the chauffeur do mysterious things to incite 
 the car to action. 'What do you make of that?' No one imag- 
 ined he referred to Falconbridge's recent acquisition. 
 
 'Oh, she endures the fellow.' 
 
 'What do you think made her ' 
 
 The owner of the car turned up his collar with a superior air: 
 'Victim to that common weakness of woman a liking to look 
 on herself as a tamer of wild beasts. The wilder the beast the 
 greater the victory.' 
 
 'And when the time comes for her to see she has failed?' 
 
 'Ah, she won't like that.' 
 
 'I'm very grateful to the beast,' Mrs. Bruton said as they 
 whirled away 'very grateful that he isn't shutting Katharine 
 out from her old friends. I liked him better to-day.' 
 
 'He's in good spirits at the moment,' answered Falconbridge. 
 'He has just killed an epic.' 
 
 'You don't mean Katharine's writing an ' 
 
 'I said an epic. We have just one poet of the antique 
 stature ' 
 
 'Michael Craven! Yes,' agreed Wilfred. 
 
 'In the middle of his masterpiece,' Falconbridge went on, 'in 
 an hour of depression yesterday, he went to Vincent.' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'Of course Vincent hasn't the dimmest notion of what's at 
 stake lays the Poet on his back, and flings his pen out of the 
 window.' 
 
 'Ah, poor Craven's been ill for a year,' said Blanche. 
 
 'He's been told by half a dozen doctors ' began Wilfred. 
 
 'Pure nerves,' interrupted Falconbridge. 'All he wanted was 
 a tonic and to be kept going till he'd finished his magnum opus. 1 
 
 'Perhaps,' said Blanche, 'Vincent felt it more the doctor's 
 business to save the man's health rather than his book.'
 
 356 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Sheer incapacity to appreciate what Craven was doing. He 
 was telling those foreigners to-day that he went to Italy once. 
 Why do you think he went to Italy?' Blanche laughed and 
 shook her head. 'He heard that some fellow at the Naples 
 Biological Station had invented a new stomach pump. He went 
 to try it on himself.' 
 
 Mrs. Richard meanwhile was relieving her feelings about the 
 perfectly monstrous way Garth had treated Mrs. Belderson 
 wouldn't look at her because it was 'after hours,' such a great 
 friend of ours, too. I always hoped we all did, didn't we, Syd ? 
 that marriage would civilize him. "Wait," you remember 
 my often saying, "wait till he gets a wife."' 
 
 'You hadn't reckoned,' said Katharine easily, 'on his marrying 
 the wrong woman.' 
 
 'Ohf The gossips have told you ' 
 
 'I've been told nothing by gossips.' 
 
 'I see,' said Mrs. Richard acidly, 'you only mean you haven't 
 the courage to correct his manners.' 
 
 Katharine caught Leonard's eye. 'I mean I haven't the desire.' 
 Then with courageous mendacity, 'I like them as they are.' 
 
 'Well, I wouldn't admit that before any young person. It's 
 a poor standard to set up.' 
 
 It was the truth in the observation that stung Katharine. She 
 flushed as she retorted : ' If any person old or young can make as 
 good a thing of his life as Garth has, he's in luck.' 
 
 Mrs. Richard uncovered her shining teeth. 'And you never 
 mean to tell him when he's being outrageous?' 
 
 Again Katharine sent a covert glance at Leonard. He was 
 listening intently. 'You don't expect that a swimmer, struggling 
 in a storm to save a life, will stop and make fine speeches. Garth 
 hasn't time or strength to think of the trifles that fill our lives.' 
 
 'Trifles! You think it a trifle to Well, 7 don't and I 
 
 shall tell him ' 
 
 'I wouldn't trouble to do that if I were you. And since you 
 ask me I'll tell you what I think.' She stood up, and in the eyes 
 that had no recognition for Professor Paul, standing at the door, 
 was a light of battle that no one there had ever seen before. 'I 
 think,' she went on in a low penetrating voice, 'that Garth does
 
 A DARK LANTERN 357 
 
 more good in a day than anyone else I know does in a week. 
 And the day for him is long and harassing. When he once 
 gets inside these doors, he shall have peace if I can get it for 
 him.' 
 
 It was then that Professor Paul came in, and relieved the 
 tension, while he tacitly supported Katharine, by saying that 
 he'd just come from making an unsuccessful attempt to see 
 Michael Craven. He would be very anxious but for the fact 
 that the young poet was in Garth's hands, and then he sat down 
 by Sydney, and seemed to forget everybody else. 
 
 'Don't blame me,' said Mrs. Richard aside to Katharine, seem- 
 ing to feel the need of some atonement. '/ didn't bring her.' 
 
 'Bring ?' 
 
 'Syd. I found her in the consulting-room, with Garth.' 
 
 'You went in!' exclaimed Katharine. 
 
 'Yes'; then half apologetic, 'I had to take Mrs. Belderson, 
 you know. But really that girl ought to be spoken to.' 
 
 A dim little smile crossed Katharine's face. 'Then there's 
 no doubt Garth was doing it.' 
 
 'It was bad enough before. Buc I should think now that he's 
 married ' 
 
 Abruptly the hostess left the room. She must go up to the 
 baby. 
 
 Mrs. Richard soon departed, but even after Sydney, restless 
 and absent-minded, had also gone, Paul stayed on, trying to 
 forget his own dissatisfaction with life, in amusing Leonard 
 for half an hour. Katharine's absorption in her baby must 
 make a rather tragic difference to the little cripple. 'Wouldn't 
 you like to play something?' Professor Paul asked. 
 
 'Oh, thank you, but' 
 
 'But what?' 
 
 'Katharine will be back by-and-by.' 
 
 'That's all right. There are lots of games three can play.' 
 
 'But you see,' Leonard still employed the direct methods of 
 extreme youth, 'Katharine plays better when nobody else is here 
 but Stanley.' j 
 
 'Stanley?' 
 
 ' Yes, that's me. I told you years ago that I was going exploring 
 when I grew up.'
 
 358 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Ah, I remember.' 
 
 'It's too hot in the tropics to walk, you know,' Leonard ex- 
 plained a little hurriedly. 'I dare say you've heard that people 
 white people get themselves carried about in the tropics.' 
 
 'Yes. To be sure,' said Professor Paul. 
 
 'You remember the picture of Stanley with his native bearers?' 
 
 'I can't say I 
 
 'Well, it's a good deal like this,' he patted the arms of his 
 invalid chair. 'All the explorer does is just to mean to get there. 
 There are plenty of people to do the carrying.' 
 
 'I believe you're right,' said Professor Paul, swinging his eye- 
 glass. 'To mean to get there, that's the main thing.' 
 
 Leonard beamed at this most understanding of Professors. 
 
 'We practise a lot here, Katharine and I do. She loves it. 
 Makes me awfully sick sometimes when I remember she's only 
 a woman and can't ever do the real thing. But we practise. I 
 lie here in the long thick tangle and wait for game. This is our 
 jungle when everybody's gone. Katharine does the roaring. 
 Did you ever hear Katharine roar?' 
 
 'Yes,' said Professor Paul meditatively. 'I did once. I 
 thought it rather good roaring too.' 
 
 'Oh, it's splendid! Makes me perfectly cold, so I can hardly 
 aim straight. That's the lion I shot,' he pointed modestly to the 
 big skin by the fire. 
 
 'Ah! I shouldn't care to have met him.'' 
 
 'It was a bit awkward.' 
 
 'But you want a tiger, don't you ? Shall I be the tiger? ' 
 
 'Well, you see,' Leonard hesitated. 'Lord Falconbridge * 
 
 Paul laughed. 'What! His Pompousness would make a 
 better elephant.' 
 
 'He's giving Katharine and me a tiger stuffed, you know. 
 We're hoping it may come this afternoon.' 
 
 'Ah!' Professor Paul swung a meditative eye-glass. 'That's 
 how he does it.' 
 
 Five minutes later Lord Falconbridge was shown in, to 
 Leonard's excited, 'Oh I Is the tiger in the hall?' 
 
 'Well, no,' returned the dignified visitor. 'I'm in a great 
 difficulty about the tiger.' 
 
 'Oh, dear '
 
 A DARK LANTERN 359 
 
 'You see there are two. One's a splendid fellow so big,' he 
 measured. 
 
 'Hah!' rejoiced the boy. 
 
 'The other's smaller about so.' 
 
 'That's rather little, isn't it, for a tiger?' 
 
 'Well, you see she's a tigress and she has two cubs. They go 
 along with her after the well-known custom of cubs. I didn't 
 know which would be best. I couldn't make up my mind between 
 their respective attractions.' 
 
 With a grave air of trying to help his Lordship out of his quan- 
 dary, Leonard repeated: 'Cubs! Yes. Cubs would be rather 
 splendid, don't you think?' politely he included the Professor in 
 their deliberations. 
 
 'I think,' said that authority, 'cubs would be delightful.' 
 
 ' and a tigress,' pursued Leonard, 'is always fiercer of 
 
 course.' 
 
 'Yes, there's that,' agreed Paul. 
 
 Leonard was torn between conflicting advantages. 'But 
 how big did you say the tiger was ? ' 
 
 'About ' Lord Falconb ridge obligingly measured again. 
 
 'I think ' said Leonard, wrinkling his white forehead. 
 
 'No. Yes. It's terribly hard If only 1 could see them 
 
 before we decide.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Lord Falconbridge, ' the car is here. Wiiy shouldn't 
 
 we all go and ' He looked round as if expecting an addition 
 
 to the company. 
 
 'Go now!' exclaimed Leonard. 'Go this minute? And 
 bring back whichever tiger is ' 
 
 'I'm afraid we couldn't travel with Ine tiger,' his Lordship 
 confessed with an air of such regret that Leonard felt bound 
 to cheer him up. 
 
 'Oh, well, never mind that.' 
 
 'It can be sent later,' said Falconbridge. 
 
 'Of course.' Leonard leaned on his elbow, his shining eyes 
 turned to Paul. 'Would you be so awf'ly kind as to ring that 
 bell behind you ? West can came too, can't he ? And of course 
 you will!' he took it upon himself to invite the Professor. 'Oh 
 yes, please come too. Katharine can't. She has to be with 
 the baby.' After a pause he took the two men into his confidence.
 
 360 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'I don't think much of that baby. What do you say?' West 
 appeared in time to save the company from indiscreet admissions. 
 
 The incongruous three had departed on their tiger-hunt when 
 Vincent came in, looked round as if he too were hunting, then 
 dropped heavily into a chair by the fire and sat there in a tired 
 heap. The servant appeared and made up the fire. 
 
 'Will you have tea, sir?' 
 
 'No.' After the hearth had been brushed up, 'Is Lady Vincent 
 at home ? ' 
 
 'Yes, sir. Tea has just gone up to the morning-room.' 
 
 'Who's there?' 
 
 'Nobody, sir.' 
 
 'Whose motor-car was that ?' 
 
 'Lord Falconbridge's, sir.' 
 
 Katharine came in and the servant vanished. 
 
 'Garth, come upstairs.' 
 
 'What for?' 
 
 'He is looking such an angel.' 
 
 Vincent turned his head away, and after a little silence: 'You 
 soon won't know what he looks like if all your visitors stay as 
 long as Falconbridge.' 
 
 'He didn't stay so long.' 
 
 'Oh, it didn't seem long?' 
 
 Katharine, who was quite ignorant of Falconbridge's return, 
 was about to retort, hesitated, and looked narrowly at the dark 
 face by the fire. ' What is the matter, Garth ? ' 
 
 'Nothing.' 
 
 But his eyes, his whole Wesen, contradicted the assurance. 
 A sharp fear took hold of her. Was he ill ? But a duller woman 
 than Katharine would have seen he was in no mood for ordinary 
 solicitude. She waited a while, picked up a book and pretended 
 to read made him think she had forgotten, or at all events 
 ceased to observe him. He sat and glowered at the fire. By- 
 and-by she went gently over to him, paused behind his chair, bent 
 down and laid her cheek on his. She longed to speak, but kept 
 her lips close shut. Presently, her reward. He drew away, but 
 only to turn on her eyes full of dumb suffering like a wounded 
 dog's 'Craven's dead,' he said. 
 
 'Oh, Garth 1' She was at his side now on her knees. 'Oh, my
 
 A DARK LANTERN 361 
 
 dear, I'm sorry.' The look in his face again arrested her. She 
 felt her way : ' But the other doctors said recovery was impossible.' 
 
 'Any bungler can say as much as that.' 
 
 'But you didn't bungle.' 
 
 'I must have.' A great misery was in his face. 
 
 She stared at him. This was the other side of the shining 
 shield of his professional life. 'What would you do differently,' 
 she whispered, 'if Craven were alive now?' 
 
 'Nothing different.' 
 
 'Well you see!' she breathed freer. 
 
 'That's only to admit how little doctors can do after all. It's 
 
 that ' he jumped up, brushed past her and began walking 
 
 rapidly up and down ' it's feeling so powerless now and then, that 
 makes ' he drew his hand round his head, ruffling his hair. 
 
 'Makes what, dear?' She had risen and stood looking at him. 
 
 ' makes me sick.' He flung himself down on the sofa. 
 
 'If I had often to sign a death certificate, I'd give up my practice.' 
 
 Poor Garth, if it came often, someone else would be perform- 
 ing that duty upon him, thought Katharine. He lay quite still 
 with hidden face, lay so long motionless that she hoped his ex- 
 haustion had merged in sleep. She brought a long cloak of hers 
 out of the hall and covered him over. Then she went out again, 
 to say she was not at home. What she most longed to do was to 
 say that he was not, but she would no more have done so without 
 his permission, than she would have read his letters. She knew 
 he must live his own life in his own way, and this was not the 
 first nor would it be the last occasion, wherein she could only 
 suffer with him, and not say much. 'Just stand aside and love 
 him,' she admonished herself. By-and-by he would feel the love, 
 and it would help him as only love with non-interference can 
 help such a spirit. 
 
 She turned out the electric lights and only the fire flickered in 
 the room. 
 
 By an effort of self-control she refrained from sitting close to 
 him; that intelligence of love, that is akin to genius, told her that 
 he would be fretted by any emphasis, just then, of sympathy or 
 tenderness. But when he could rouse himself, when he should 
 begin to wonder where she was, he would look round and find 
 that she had been content to wait for just that moment.
 
 362 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 It fell out a little differently from what she hoped. Not his 
 own unprompted need of her roused him out of his wretchedness, 
 but a call to action. A ring and a double knock, followed by 
 Staines opening the drawing-room door, and standing there 
 astonished at the absence of light. 
 
 Without raising his head: 'What is it?' demanded Vincent. 
 
 'A note, sir.' Staines turned on the light. ' Could you possibly 
 come at once, sir? They've sent their electric brougham.' 
 
 Still lying there, Vincent read the note. 'I'll come,' he said. 
 
 'Very good, sir.' Staines went out and shut the door. 
 
 Vincent leaned on one elbow, and brushed his hair mechani- 
 cally with his hand. He stood up, letting Katharine's cloak 
 fall on the floor, and still making absent-minded passes at his 
 ruffled hair, he walked towards the door. Suddenly he glanced 
 round, saw Katharine sitting with locked fingers at the fireside, 
 face upturned, looking at him with her heart in her eyes. In- 
 stantly he turned away again, as his shy or surly impulse always 
 was, to rebuff or to ignore the open proffering of sympathy. He 
 was more touched than he would have admitted, to find that she 
 had been there, watching with him through that long dark hour. 
 But it was not in him to say the word she longed to hear. He 
 gave her instead, a commonplace travesty in the phrase: 'Don't 
 wait for me,' and went out. 
 
 As the door closed behind him, the weight not only of his trouble 
 fell upon her, but the sense of love's helplessness lay like defeat 
 upon her soul. At such a time, at any crucial moment, one stands 
 solitary. She had watched with him through his evil hour and 
 yet he had been alone! 
 
 She lifted her arms suddenly above her head, and let them fall 
 impotent in her lap, and let the tears rain down. Through her 
 grief, she listened to hear the front door shut behind him. But 
 instead she heard the knob of the drawing-room door turn sharply. 
 Vincent came in dressed for a cold drive, crossed with his quick 
 elastic step to where she sat, took her wet face in his hands and 
 kissed her on the mouth. 
 
 'Thank you,' he said, and went out. 
 
 He had never done such a thing before, as stop in the midst 
 of his work or his trouble to kiss her. 
 
 Then she had helped him.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 WHILE she sat there, Paul Dalberg put his head in at the 
 door. 'I thought I'd just look in to tell you that Falconbridge 
 has taken Leonard safely home, after making the boy his slave 
 for life.' 
 
 'Oh, come in, won't you ?' 
 
 While he accepted the invitation he went on: 'Leonard thinks 
 you won't sleep if you aren't assured that the tiger hunt is crowned 
 with success.' 
 
 'It is good of Lord Falconbridge ' 
 
 'Yes, isn't it!' replied Paul scoffingly. 'So unselfish.' 
 
 'Why do you say it like that? You ought to be more sym- 
 pathetic, for you've been rather good yourself.' 
 
 'Oh / ' he waived away his claim. 
 
 She looked at him narrowly. Easy to see even he was not in 
 the best of spirits. 'Sit down a minute,' she said. 'I want to 
 tell you something. I used to be sorry when you came while 
 Mrs. Richard was here. I shan't be any more.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Not after the way you took Garth's part to-day. But I'd like 
 you to tell me one thing.' 
 
 Ah! it was coming at last! She was wanting to be told. 
 
 'Do you know,' she went on, 'what it is that makes him so 
 extraordinary ? ' 
 
 'How extraordinary?' 
 
 'Why in the way you said this afternoon. You and I realize 
 if others don't ' 
 
 'Realize what?' 
 
 Sympathy with the failure to keep Michael Craven alive made 
 it a solace to her to say: 'That he's the most wonderful doctor in 
 the world.' 
 
 3 6 3
 
 364 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'We know that he's a wonderful man,' said Professor Paul. 
 
 Katharine looked up suddenly. 'You aren't telling me that 
 you don't believe in his skill.' 
 
 'He has his share.' 
 
 'Only that!' Katharine's tone was a little chilled. 'Then 
 what do you mean by his being wonderful ? ' 
 
 'That he has something more than skill. You see, my dear 
 lady, you have to know a good deal, to know how very little is 
 known.' 
 
 'About ' 
 
 'The internal economy.' 
 
 'You don't mean that Garth doesn't know!' 
 
 'He doesn't know more than's been discovered.' 
 
 'But,' said Katharine doughtily, 'a great deal has been dis- 
 covered.' 
 
 'Incredibly little,' said Professor Paul. 
 
 'You don't mean about sickness.' 
 
 'Just about sickness.' 
 
 'I am sure,' she persisted with involuntary childishness, 'Garth 
 knows.' As Dalberg smiled: 'You think he doesn't?' she de- 
 manded. 
 
 ' Did you ever hear him boast that he did ? ' 
 
 'Oh, boast.'' 
 
 'Well, did you ever hear him so much as admit that he knew 
 exactly what was amiss exactly what to do ? ' 
 
 'I can't remember,' said Katharine. 
 
 'Nor anybody else.' 
 
 'But he must know. Look at his record.' 
 
 'His success,' said Dalberg, 'is undoubted.' 
 
 'Then how do you explain it? You don't surely think it is 
 chance.' 
 
 'Chance!' the Professor laughed. 'Oh no. I began by ad- 
 mitting that Garth was "wonderful." He does brilliantly what 
 every doctor does more or less . . . fills up the lacunae in knowl- 
 edge ' he paused. 
 
 'With ?' 
 
 'With the things that people need even more than they need 
 health.' 
 
 'What does anyone need more than health?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 365 
 
 'Hope.' Professor Paul got up. Suddenly he was standing 
 before her. 'I am under the impression that you don't get on 
 with Sydney Ford.' 
 
 Her self-absorption prevented her catching the champion- 
 ship in his voice. 'She isn't sympathetic to me personally.' 
 
 'Oh, isn't she?' 
 
 ' and I don't mean to pretend to like her specially. But 
 
 if you mean' Katharine's eyes were sparkling suddenly, 
 'if you mean am I jealous of Sydney Ford, no.' 
 
 'Oh, I didn't mean ' he began. 
 
 'Yes, you did. But isn't this a digression from Hope?' 
 
 'Well, I don't know.' He sat down again and took his chin 
 in his hand. 'It's a difficult labyrinth we find ourselves in.' 
 
 ' You mean life ? ' 
 
 He nodded. 'It's because of that, Garth scores. Few who 
 aren't glad to listen when a man says: "Here's a way!"' 
 
 'Now you're telling me that my husband's a pretender a 
 quack trading on ignorance.' 
 
 'I'm saying,' persisted Garth's friend, 'that he gives people 
 what most of all they need. The same thing takes people to 
 doctors that takes them to church. It was no mind specially 
 acute, and no figure of speech that called Christ the Great Physi- 
 cian with all the sick world ready to listen to the one who should 
 say with conviction, "This do and thou shalt be saved." The 
 greater the conviction the greater the success. Look at the 
 Catholic Church and the Salvation Army. Those two cover 
 the widest field in the Western world. Neither considers any 
 soul beyond the reach of help. From the opposite ends of 
 society the weary and bewildered go gratefully to one or other 
 to hear the accent of conviction to be reassured.' 
 
 'Surely what honest people are after is the truth.' 
 
 Slowly and a little wearily Professor Paul shook his big head. 
 'Very few in any age want the truth even if it could be found. 
 What they want is cheer. Whether it comes out of a bottle or 
 a book,' he shrugged, 'what matter?' He got up to take his 
 leave. 'If health was what people mainly wanted they'd get 
 it without going to the doctors.' 
 
 ' How would they get it, Professor Paul ? ' Katharine smiled. 
 
 'By observing themselves as no doctor has time to do. But
 
 366 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Lord bless you, health isn't the main thing, so Garth and the 
 rest are kept busy.' 
 
 'You think you've been telling me news?' demanded Kath- 
 arine. 
 
 'Oh, I haven't?' 
 
 She shook her head. 'I found out long ago that Garth was 
 a Black-Magic Man.' 
 
 'Exactly,' said Garth's friend with a seriousness to which 
 Katharine had no key, 'that's the secret of his success.' 
 
 It was the last confidential talk she had with Paul for some 
 time and still she was too absorbed in her own problems to 
 realize that what she had said about Sydney was costing her a 
 friend. 
 
 She missed him the less in that Falconbridge had fallen into 
 the habit of coming to see her almost daily, and was often re- 
 ceived in the jungle with or without that mighty hunter Leonard. 
 On the rare occasions when Vincent looked in during his busy 
 hours, he would sit a few minutes quite stolid and absolutely 
 silent, listening darkly to the talk, like one having slight acquaint- 
 ance with the tongue yet conscious of grave need to follow the 
 conversation. With secret wonder he heard Katharine's share 
 in it. She spoke the language fluently, understood the allu- 
 sions, used the same shibboleths. Falconbridge was the old 
 life embodied. Her life. . . . Vincent was a stranger there. 
 
 A mark of the change working in him, a sign of dawning grace, 
 though it came so greyly, was his simple facing of the evidence, 
 that this man of the type Vincent wanted to despise, secretly 
 wondered at, vaguely feared this man was the obvious com- 
 plement of Katharine's life. As her husband compared him- 
 self with Falconbridge he felt his own rude advantages shrink 
 out of sight. 
 
 And for the first time these things mattered. When he came 
 to realize the chasm that others felt lay between himself and 
 Katharine came even to share the supercilious man of the 
 world's wonder as to how the chasm had been bridged, or if it 
 really were bridged that was to be 'smitten into the place of 
 dragons,' that to be 'covered with the shadow of death.' 
 
 No realization visited Vincent of the fact that while from the 
 lower orders of creation up to man, love rouses a great longing
 
 A DARK LANTERN 367 
 
 for pre-eminence, a need to outshine as well as utterly to van- 
 quish rivals in men and women not altogether of the baser 
 sort love brings to birth a power to make the only atonement 
 possible, for lacks and failures impossible to forgive ourselves. 
 
 Those who truly love us must help us to bear our own un- 
 worthiness, for this is the thing we cannot bear alone. 
 
 Not until we get beyond the ancient, instinctive, wish to dazzle 
 eyes that are dear, by our fine feathers of wit or beauty, good- 
 ness or philosophy, may we find love's highest and most precious 
 opportunity in helping to endure the absence of excellences lost 
 or never found. 
 
 All the world will be sorry for a man run down in a fog, but 
 who will sympathize with him and not shrink, if groping in spir- 
 itual twilight, overtaken by untoward circumstance and his own 
 soul's weakness, he turn coward, lying, mean? Yet what maim- 
 ing of the body can be so tragic? 
 
 Are we dumb when we should speak? Suspicious when we 
 should have faith? Rough when we should be gentle? That 
 the world cannot forgive us these things is the least of our suffer- 
 ing. We cannot forgive ourselves. We cannot forgive God 
 unless human love show us the soul of goodness in things evil. 
 Out of the dark that gathered about Garth Vincent, out of his 
 dumb suffering, came no better thing at first than need to in- 
 flict pain. 
 
 And of that, more pain. 
 
 Vincent began to notice that now when he came in during 
 any visit of Falconbridge's, that gentleman would forthwith 
 get up and take his leave, with calm disregard of any construc- 
 tion that might be put upon his admission of the fact that, how- 
 ever much he might have to say to Katharine, he had absolutely 
 nothing to say to Katharine's husband. 
 
 Once Vincent astonished his wife by asking, after Falcon- 
 bridge was gone: 'What do you two find to talk about?' 
 
 'Oh, all kinds of things. He is certain there'll be an appeal 
 to the country before ' 
 
 Garth interrrupted : ' shows you his "papers," I sup 
 
 pose, and you show him yours.' 
 
 'My papers?' 
 
 ' Your poetry. 1 The old contemptuous accent.
 
 3 68 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 He was miserably jealous of those new poems she did not sho\s 
 at all events to her husband. Why didn't she show them? Had 
 Falconbridge inspired was he in them? 
 
 'What is weighing on you, Garth?' 
 
 'What should weigh on me?' he had asked sharply. 
 
 ' I thought perhaps someone was very ill you might be anxious. 1 
 Moodily he shook his head. Mrs. Richard's voice sounded in 
 the wife's ears. But Katharine had told herself that in explana- 
 tion of any masculine mood, not otherwise accountable, to cry 
 "cherchez la femme," was the impotent way of such women as 
 Mrs. Richard, asserting their sex's questionable power. And 
 
 yet The black wretchedness in the face of the man at the 
 
 fire, if it were not the outcome of some heavy usury exacted by 
 the past, surely, surely it would be less hard to share with sym- 
 pathy such as hers. Vaguely, before this, she had met the pos- 
 sibility of his bursting out one day : ' While you think only of this 
 child, there's another I cannot forget.' And she told herself 
 how she would amaze and soften him by saying: 'Bring home 
 the other child.' 
 
 Now he had lifted his head and seemed fiercely to search her 
 face for something he expected to surprise there. Does he want 
 to tell me? thought the woman, hoping. Does she want to tell 
 me? thought the man, fearing. 
 
 When Sydney came in at these times, Vincent would revive 
 ask her where she had been keeping herself, and why had 
 she not been in the Row that morning; as if not seeing more 
 of her was all his quarrel with life. No eyes for anyone but 
 
 Sydney. Almost eloquent in approval of her riding. ' never 
 
 saw any woman at her best on a horse but Syd.' 
 
 Katharine's only sign, her being a little more pleasant to the 
 'favourite cousin' who, misunderstanding, was half sorry for 
 the wife and yet there was this sensation of flying down some 
 steep incline and not being able to stop herself. From time to 
 time the girl all but cried out to Paul Dalberg. 
 
 Vincent let drop, as by a chance, that he was going to be able 
 to get away to Winston this week-end. 
 
 Katharine went down with the baby by a morning train. Vin- 
 cent arrived worn out, harassed, ready to flare.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 369 
 
 When she had given him tea Katharine got up to leave him. 
 
 'Where are you off to?' 
 
 'Only upstairs.' 
 
 'What for?' though he knew perfectly what mother's duty 
 the hour brought. 
 
 Katharine had glanced at the clock. 'You won't be lonely 
 Sydney is coming at six.* 
 
 ' What if she is ? I didn't ask her.' 
 
 'No. I did.' 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'I I thought she would amuse you.* 
 
 He turned his lowering look fiercely on her, as if to find and 
 challenge any weakness, any lying or may be, more than all, 
 any 'martyr- nonsense.' 
 
 But Katharine returned the dark look steadily. 'She will 
 stay the night.' 
 
 Then it was vaguely he realized that, although he would have 
 expressed indignation at the spectacle, it would have soothed 
 this growing misery, drugged the black devil in his breast to 
 have found Katharine jealous. He would not let her go till 
 he had tried, searched, probed her, till Katharine had said: 'Of 
 course I felt it the other day when you disappointed me of my 
 ride and took your cousin.' 
 
 'You could have come too.' 
 
 'It is hardly the same thing.' Hastily she added, 'With any 
 third person.' 
 
 'Then why do you ask Syd here?' 
 
 With an effort at self-command, a sense that she was on trial 
 and much depended on the way she acquitted herself, 'I've thought 
 it out,' answered Katharine. 'There are very few people you 
 care to be with my friends are nothing to you. Even your 
 own very little. You work hard and you' (she looked up, smil- 
 ing a little uncertainly) 'you work well. You deserve relaxa- 
 tion. Who shall put it in your way if not I?' Then so quickly 
 as to sound sharp, the words: 'I have faith in you, you know, 
 or I couldn't.' 
 
 This was not what, clumsily, he had been playing for. 
 
 'Humph. You're offering me Sydney as you'd offer a baby 
 a sugar-stick.' 
 
 24
 
 3-70 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Sh,' said Katharine suddenly. 'There she is.' 
 
 He sat glowering; merely nodded curtly when the girl came in, 
 filling the quiet room with her loud free manner and cheerful talk. 
 
 Katharine, rather more quiet even than common, was en- 
 tirely pleasant. After making fresh tea for the visitor she was 
 in the act of rising, when lo! Garth was on his feet and in that 
 way of his, as though obeying some imperative call, like a flash 
 he was out of the room. 
 
 'Where are you off to? ' called Sydney, setting down her cup. As 
 the only answer was the shutting of a door, she turned to the wife. 
 
 'Perhaps to the stables,' suggested Katharine. 
 
 With small ceremony Sydney went after him. 
 
 Katharine sat chin in hand, staring at the carpet. Presently 
 Sydney tramped in again, with two dogs at her heels. 
 
 ' Has he come back ? ' 
 
 'No,' said Katharine. 
 
 'Well, where on earth has he vanished to?' 
 
 'I can't imagine unless he's in his den.' 
 
 Sydney marched to the dingy sanctum where even Turk knew 
 he might not go. 
 
 The woman by the fire sat erect holding on to the arms of her 
 chair. She could not have counted ten before Sydney reappeared 
 in the hall as if she had been shot out of a cannon. Garth loomed 
 behind the scarlet-cheeked Amazon. 
 
 ' Why, how should I know I wasn't to go there ? ' she protested. 
 'Katharine suggested it.' 
 
 'Katharine! You sug ' he seemed about to advance to 
 the arch-culprit over Sydney's prostrate form. 'Why the devil 
 do you send people bothering ? By God, a man must have some 
 place to himself.' 
 
 Katharine went to him quickly, gravely: 'Garth, you are not 
 to speak like that.' 
 
 'You know,' he barked rather than said, 'I won't let any one 
 come after me there.' 
 
 'Why, I saw Katharine come out of that room the very last 
 time I 
 
 'Katharine!' he burst out. 'What's that got to do with it! 
 Katharine's my wife.' 
 
 He turned and fled. They heard a door slam.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 371 
 
 If Vincent had come to have no doubt to the appeal that Falcon- 
 bridge of necessity made to a woman like Katharine, Falconbridge 
 was wholly without understanding of Vincent's hold on his wife. 
 
 She, absorbed in the problem of her own existence, looked 
 upon her almost daily visitor as a pleasant link with the old life, 
 and a welcome distraction from the perplexity of the new. In her 
 heart-soreness she was grateful that he took the trouble to divert 
 her. Great things were happening in the world outside. The 
 public crisis could for an hour make her forget her private affairs. 
 
 Yet sometimes talk would stray, and Falconbridge being there 
 did not prevent her dropping back into well-worn channels of 
 thought. Mention had been made of a man and woman both 
 had known. 'She was not in love with Douglas all those years,' 
 Falconbridge said with sudden impatience. 'She was in love 
 with love.' 
 
 'I've had times of wondering,' Katharine replied meditatively, 
 'if that isn't true of all but the most unhappy women.' 
 
 Falconbridge eyed her curiously. Weeks ago he had cast the 
 husband out of calculation. Not that he pretended to guess 
 why Katharine had married him, but the more he saw of them 
 both, the more was it incredible that she should care for Vincent. 
 Upon that firm foundation Falconbridge was proceeding with 
 some skill to make love to her. Hitherto the skill had held the 
 other element sufficiently in check. But what did she mean by 
 wondering if all women were in love with love, 'all but the most 
 unhappy ? ' 
 
 'You are not the most unhappy?' he said tentatively. 
 
 'I? Far from it.' 
 
 Was it her way of saying that in spite of this unideal marriage 
 she cherished the ideal still still was waiting 
 
 'Some women,' she went on in that abstracted tone, 'are more 
 thorough about it than others that's all the difference.' 
 
 'More thoroughly in love with love?' 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 What precisely did she mean? How 'thorough' was she 
 prepared to be? 
 
 'If a woman is in your phrase so "thorough" that she goes all 
 lengths ' he was beginning when Katharine interrupted. 
 
 'If she gives up everything and even if she gets nothing in
 
 372 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 return, if she has ruined her life all the more she must be 
 "thorough," all the more she must hold fast for ever to the ruined 
 happiness.' 
 
 To project possibility so far was to be over-pessimistic. Fal- 
 conbridge stroked one eyebrow. 'I don't know that I follow 
 you,' he said. 
 
 'A woman may come to think she has paid too much for a 
 thing not to rate it high. I am sure there are people (women 
 at least) who cling to love not so much because it is love, as 
 because it is justification. All the same,' she added quickly, 
 'I believe there is validity in mature passion.' She had no eyes 
 for that in his face to which unconsciously she had given name. 
 'And it's because there is something in character, don't you 
 think, that makes fitness? Something that, no matter what 
 happens, lasts, because it's the essence of personality.' 
 
 'I've thought so lately,' he said. 
 
 1 something that keeps tenderness alive, even ' She 
 
 caught the look of mystification that crossed his face 'something 
 that makes one man's faults more endurable than another man's 
 virtues.' 
 
 Lord Falconbridge considered the proposition but really she 
 could not be held to be flattering, this analytic lady. 
 
 'In the very young,' she went on, looking back along her life, 
 'I suppose it is blood alone that cries out; or blood plus the 
 attraction of some glittering outward advantage. 
 
 Ah, he had caught up with her now. Clearly she was thinking 
 of Breitenlohe-Waldenstein. 
 
 'Exactly,' said Falconbridge. 'It is only later, as you say ' 
 
 He was about to take her hand, but dreamily she leaned forward 
 chin in palm and stared into a bowl of roses on the low table by 
 her chair. 
 
 'In the maturer spirit' (how grave the woman was he thought; 
 she should be happier, seeing how he bent and gave largesse 
 with his eyes) 'in the maturer spirit,' she went on, 'the demands 
 are greater. The rewards must be not so much quite other than 
 young blood asks, but those and others besides. A case with us,' 
 a flitting smile made the face in some way even sadder than 
 before, 'a case of Sibylline Leaves. Each tune, the woman has 
 less to offer, each time she demands more.'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 373 
 
 'I will not hear you say you have less to offer,' he said tenderly 
 
 She half roused herself, but her eyes were strangely unseeing 
 'And the man what if he does balk, mystify, anger, hurt the 
 woman ' 
 
 'Oh, come! Not as bad as that!' Lord Falconbridge dis- 
 guised his satisfaction. He was not easy to flatter, yet to be 
 assured that he had power for all this over a woman who had 
 seemed so little responsive it gave him an unfamiliar sense of 
 elation. 
 
 'Better so,' the low voice finished, 'than absence of these hurts 
 and presence of someone else.' 
 
 'You can't really think that I would hurt you, his hand 
 closed on hers. 
 
 While Katharine was saying ' You!' the door opened suddenly 
 and Vincent stood there. 
 
 'Good-bye!' said Falconbridge. Seeming quite unmoved, he 
 loosed her hand. 
 
 The man exchanged curt greeting as the visitor passed out. 
 Vincent went away directly after. 'Called out of town,' was all 
 the word he left. 
 
 The next day when Katharine allowed the nurse to go out, 
 she told her to leave word as she went down, that if Lord Fal- 
 conbridge called he might come up to the nursery. 
 
 What an extraordinary message! thought that gentleman. 
 What did it mean ? He found her at the top of the house, sitting 
 in the level light of afternoon, singing the child to sleep. She 
 did not pause upon his entrance, nodded, pointed to a chair, and 
 went on till the cradle-song was ended. 'You wanted me to 
 come here?' he said in the silence, still mystified. 
 
 'If you wanted to see me,' she answered quite low. 'But it is 
 very good of me to admit you to my holy of holies. Few people 
 are allowed here.' He looked round the pretty white room. 'I 
 could not give you a better proof of friendship,' she added. 
 
 'Of friendship!' he echoed irritably. 
 
 'Exactly! Of friendship.' The child stirred. Very softly 
 she began a new lullaby. 
 
 Vincent had come back close on Falconbridge's heels. No 
 need to ask who was there with those horses at the door. Well, 
 this was what he had expected. He had only waited for this
 
 374 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 to come back without warning to make certain that in his absence 
 and after what he was sure had passed, Katharine would receive 
 Falconbridge again. With mounting passion he went from room 
 to room. 
 
 This was the song Lord Falconbridge had told her was 'the 
 best ' she yet had made. Yes, his critical unwillingness reaffirmed, 
 as the cadences fell upon the quiet he had been right. Motion- 
 less he sat there, insensibly soothed not alone by the singing, by 
 the soft purity of the woman's face and air as well. The picture 
 ministered to the man's weariness as much as to a fastidious 
 artistic taste. In this mood he liked looking at her much as he 
 liked the Lippo Lippi Mary. As the door was roughly opened 
 he said to himself, 'And all wasted on this uncouth creature!' 
 'Perhaps not often,' he consoled himself. 'It is my holy place,' 
 she had said. She looked round as Vincent came noisily in: 
 'Hush!' she said. 'You'll wake him.' But there was an unseen 
 something in the room that even he could feel, that without her 
 words would have sealed his angry lips. 
 
 He flung himself into a chair. Lord Falconbridge went away 
 and left the two alone together. But Vincent did not tarry long. 
 'No time. Pm not a gentleman of leisure!' 
 
 What had kept him away these four-and-twenty hours ? What 
 hidden trouble had so changed him? The gentleness and care 
 of all those months before the child was born had waned untU 
 they vanished. Besides the dark preoccupation in his thoughts, 
 no ears, no eyes now, no interest that he was ready to own outside 
 of his profession. His life was flung into his work, as a Roman 
 criminal was flung to the lions and the work rent and tore him. 
 When Katharine would remonstrate at some bitter flying com- 
 ment 'he would say with an oath, 'The rest of you may pretend 
 if it pleases you. It's my business to deal with things as they 
 are. I see the seamy side all day long.' And in the midst of 
 her defence of the 'human nature' he so savagely despised, she 
 came to dread that silent laughter that seemed to shrivel kindness 
 and to blast good faith. 
 
 Only Mrs. Richard was left in the drawing-room, one day 
 after he had gone, to comment upon his taciturnity. Katharine 
 spoke of possible professional worries.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 375 
 
 'No, a mere habit,' Mrs. Richard assured her. 'If he ever 
 knew how to talk he's forgotten. One can't altogether blame 
 him. All those years his life was not the kind of thing he could 
 talk about, you know.' 
 
 'I don't know, Mrs. Vincent.' 
 
 'Oh, my dear, it's absolutely no use to make a mystery about 
 it. Anybody must know that a man like Garth didn't live like 
 a monk all that time before he married you.' 
 
 'Here's another reason,' Katharine would say to herself, 'why 
 people should marry young.' Instead of being divided by 
 jealousy of the days unshared, they are bound by common mem- 
 ories. Was that at the root of the world's ready sympathy with 
 first love? Was it a vicarious shrinking from the irony of the 
 Past? unwillingness to be reminded of the evanescence of the 
 transfiguring light, dread of hearing behind the new vows, echo 
 of the old? She had come to a place where she stood straining 
 her ears for that echo; craving pain as men commonly crave 
 pleasure, the pain of hearing from his lips some halting hard 
 confession, that out of past disillusionment should bring future 
 peace. 
 
 But meanwhile as that for which she longed showed no sign 
 of approach that which instinctively she dreaded most, seemed 
 to be coming nearer. 
 
 Insistently evoked by this one and by that, the Past, which 
 day by day should recede, growing faint and ever fainter till it 
 was faded quite this Past came steadily closer. There were 
 times now when she held her breath, feeling: It is on the threshold! 
 When that door opens, I shall know. 
 
 One morning an anonymous letter in an illiterate hand. The 
 scrawling signature 'An unknown friend' sent the blood to her 
 face. This was the way people heard. She read a venomous 
 attack upon the character of one of the men-servants. 
 
 As slowly the hope died that it would be through Vincent 
 enlightenment would come, she tortured herself with wondering 
 under what guise it would reach her. Would the door bell ring 
 one day and in sweep a woman for the orthodox interview? Or 
 would a shabby creature, with a dark-eyed child, stop her in the 
 street some twilight hour, saying: 'Help me. I was as much to 
 him long ago as you are to-day.' Or would one of their kind
 
 376 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 friends in some gay gathering, point out 'that dashing creature 
 over there. See? For years she was Garth's chtre amie.' 
 
 No, it would come in more lurid guise. There would be an 
 awful scene of some sort, and the past would be avenged not 
 realizing how every hour vengeance was being wreaked.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IT was a curious fact that Katharine's self-absorption had 
 made her take Falconbridge's avowal comparatively lightly. 
 He had made a mistake. What then? Life was full of mis- 
 takes. Would they were all of as little consequence as this! 
 Besides, he was ill, and needed the friendship he had seemed to 
 despise. He was very sensitive about letting the public get wind 
 of his true condition, telling Katharine it would hurt him fatally. 
 The task before him was one to tax the strongest. For even a 
 whisper of doubt, as to his physical ability to carry through the 
 great new public measure, would hamper him incomparably. 
 The situation roused Katharine's sympathies; she knew how he 
 had fought for, waited for, this moment. The Government that 
 he had so successfully undermined, so vigorously attacked, was 
 toppling to its fall. The ambition of his life was on the verge of 
 accomplishment. Any day, any hour, the King might be ex- 
 pected to send for him to form a Cabinet. 
 
 Late one afternoon Vincent and Dalberg had come in together, 
 to find Katharine sitting alone at the writing-table in the drawing- 
 room. It did not escape Vincent that, as she greeted them, she 
 laid a sheet of blotting-paper over a half-written page. 
 
 'Where's Falconbridge ? ' demanded her husband. 
 
 'Falconbridge!' she echoed in some surprise, and so far was 
 he from her thought, she stopped to think: 'Oh, he's gone to 
 Little Matley.' 
 
 'What is he doing at Little Matley?' 
 
 'Staying with the Brutons.' And upon something more than 
 common equivocal in his face, added: 'Didn't you know they'd 
 taken that old Manor?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 377
 
 378 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Oh yes, some time ago.' That he hadn't heard, how it 
 emphasized the long absence from Winston! He never wanted 
 to go there now. There was a pause that no one bridged, till 
 Dalberg observed in the tone of one who not so much makes con- 
 versation as manufactures commonplace: 'Shockingly ill Falcon- 
 bridge was looking yesterday.' 
 
 ' Did you think so ? ' said Katharine, carefully wiping her pen. 
 
 'Didn't you?' returned Paul. 
 
 'Oh, he's been having a harassing time of it just lately,' she 
 answered. 
 
 'You mean you don't believe the man's ill?' demanded her 
 husband. 
 
 'I suppose a great political crisis like this tells on a person 
 who knows he's responsible for it.' 
 
 Covertly Vincent watched her as she sat there, passing her 
 slim hand over the blotter, and then withdrawing it, only to close 
 the white vellum book in which he knew she copied out her verses. 
 He had seen the book in Falconb ridge's hands. It had never 
 yet been in his own. 
 
 'What are you writing?' he said suddenly. 
 
 ' O a some notes I make from time to time.' 
 
 'If they're only "notes," let's see.' 
 
 As he spoke she was snapping the patent spring fastening, 
 that was so disproportionately massive to the book. 'It's a 
 good piece of binding.' She handed him the locked volume. 
 He flung it down without a glance. ' Giovanelli of Florence did 
 it for me,' she said, as though she had not noticed. 
 
 The key of the book dangled from her bracelet. 
 
 What notes were these 'her friend' might see, but not her 
 husband ? 
 
 While Dalberg went on perfunctorily talking, Katharine 
 glanced out of the window and saw Falconbridge driving up. 
 
 'Oh, he didn't get off. Here is Lord Falconbridge, after all.' 
 As she turned round suddenly she met her husband's eyes. For 
 the first time it was present to her that he might be seriously 
 jealous. It seemed so out of character, that she ridiculed herself 
 for the idea, and yet there was hope for them if he could be so 
 foolish as be jealous. How should she make sure? Should she 
 tell him by-and-by that she had half promised Blanche to go to
 
 A DARK LANTERN 379 
 
 her at Little Matley for the week-end, to try in that way to wean 
 herself (who was the greater baby), and how, after something 
 Falconbridge had said yesterday about seeing her at the Bruton's, 
 she had changed her mind ? 
 
 No, it would be rather stupid of her to talk about the mis- 
 take Falconbridge had made. At the same time, she would 
 be on the safe side. 'Will you tell Staines to say I'm not at 
 home, Garth?' she said from the door. 'I'm going upstairs.' 
 
 'Falconbridge has not come to see you.' Vincent looked at 
 his watch. 
 
 'Not come to see me?' She paused. 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'To see' a formless uneasiness seized her 'to see you?" 
 
 'Oh, I have my uses,' he said grimly, as he nodded to Staines 
 and followed the servant downstairs. 
 
 In that room where many a life or death sentence had been 
 pronounced, the two men confronted one another after the 
 examination. 
 
 'Well,' said Falconbridge in a hesitating voice, 'I've told you 
 what is involved. Shall I go on?' 
 
 ' No ! ' said the other with the sharpness of a gunshot. 
 
 Falconbridge paled to the lips. 
 
 'You mean it isn't safe?' 
 
 'I mean you won't be able.' 
 
 Falconbridge steadied himself with a hand on the writing-table. 
 
 ' How much time have I ? ' 
 
 'At the rate you're going, not three months.' 
 
 'And if I stop?' 
 
 'If you stop you may go on as long as other people.' 
 
 'If I stop in a fortnight ?' 
 
 : No! If you stop at once. To-day.' 
 
 They looked at each other while you might count five. 
 
 'I suppose,' said Falconbridge, 'you advise me to go away.' 
 
 'No,' returned the other sharply; 'I advise you to stop work, 
 late hours, excitement, public-speaking, strain.' 
 
 When Vincent returned to the drawing-room, Dalberg was 
 alone trying over some music.
 
 380 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 He got up, lit a cigar, and waited till his friend told him moodily 
 he believed he had stopped Falconbridge in time. He would 
 refuse office. Dalberg looked at him. 'I suppose you don't 
 doubt my friendship, old man.' 
 
 'Well, go on.' 
 
 'Was there no middle course?' 
 
 'Middle course?' 
 
 'A course that no one could construe doubtfully.' 
 
 'Oh, construe be damned! The man had to come to me for 
 the truth!' A gleam of exultation crossed the grim face, but 
 it went out with the last word, as he added: 'He knew I wouldn't 
 give him poetry I* 
 
 'It's a very big spoke to put in anyone's wheel,' said Dalberg. 
 
 'I didn't put in the spoke,' Vincent answered angrily. 'I 
 only told him it was there.' 
 
 Dalberg lowered his eyes and looked at the end of his cigar. 
 'If you take away the public career of a man like that, you leave 
 him ' He hesitated. 
 
 'Well?' demanded his friend. 
 
 'You leave him only his private' he lifted his eyes and met 
 Garth's 'his very private interests.' 
 
 Silently each man held the other's eyes till the door opened 
 and Katharine reappeared. 
 
 'You've come to hear the news?' said her husband. 
 
 'What news?' 
 
 'About your friend.' 
 
 'You mean Lord Falconbridge?' 
 
 'He wanted to know if he was going to be able to stand the 
 strain of office.' 
 
 She stood waiting. But he said nothing, the sense of awk- 
 wardness in the silence became unbearable seemed to endow 
 it with a significance to which it had no right. 
 
 'Well,' she said, 'what did you tell him?' 
 
 'He must give up public life.' Failing to find in her face 
 what he seemed to search for, his dark look wandered moodily 
 about the room. 'He'll have the more time,' he began, hesitated, 
 and as his eyes fell on the locked book 'more time for poetry,' 
 he ended, as he got up and left the room. 
 
 And then she knew.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 381 
 
 Just before dinner on the following Monday evening, Vincent 
 was urgently telephoned for by a patient in a critical condition. 
 
 'Such an awful night ' Katharine would have dissuaded 
 
 him, but his face was all the answer she needed. 'At least you'll 
 wait to dine?' she begged him. But he was gone. No time to 
 put off Paul. The moment he appeared, Katharine felt a change 
 in him. His stiffness had suddenly vanished, leaving him in a 
 curiously happy, friendly mood. 
 
 He told her stories during dinner, and promised to make some 
 music for her after. But instead of doing so, when they were 
 alone again in the drawing-room, to Katharine's surprise he said 
 suddenly, out of the blue: 
 
 'I think you dislike me rather less than you used. Am I 
 right?' 
 
 Instead of protesting, she answered: 'I began by being very 
 anxious to like you.' 
 
 'You succeeded rather ill at first, I gathered,' he went on 
 good-humouredly. 'Come, now, what were your first impres- 
 sions? You don't dare tell me.' 
 
 'I thought you both suspicious and insincere.' 
 
 'I gave you no cause for that,' he said, obviously a little dashed. 
 
 'Yes, you did.' 
 
 'How?' 
 
 'Unfortunately, only one comment of yours on Garth's mar- 
 riage reached me.' 
 
 He looked at her a little anxiously. 'It could not possibly 
 have been I liked you from the first. Someone maligned me.' 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 'What was it they told you I said?' he persisted. 
 
 'What you said was: "I wonder how long that will last!'" 
 
 'Oh h'm! It was a common speculation.' 
 
 She got up suddenly, and walked to the window and back. 
 'Those two questions: Why had I married Garth, and how long 
 would it last!' The low voice rose and fell unsteadily. 'You 
 were all so unbelieving, so suspicious yourselves, you were sure 
 I must be.' 
 
 'You haven't told me why you thought me suspicious.' 
 
 She stopped suddenly under the chandelier, and he saw why 
 the soft eyes shone so. They were brilliant with tears. 'If you
 
 382 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 have forgotten, I haven't. You didn't credit me with caring 
 much for Garth, yet you fully expected me to be jealous of Mrs. 
 Richard's sisters. You were sure I would be afraid of Sydney 
 Ford.' 
 
 'Perhaps not of them,' escaped him as it were involuntarily. 
 
 She caught her breath and went on: 'You expected me to 
 interfere even with the old custom of these Monday evenings. 
 When you found I was at some pains to keep the time free, you 
 wondered what motive I could have. Always looking for motives ! ' 
 She turned away, evidently trying to master her growing agita- 
 tion, and continued her restless walk. Dalberg was so wholly 
 unprepared for this first failure on her part in self-control, that, 
 himself a little nervous, he tried to stem the current of her emotion 
 by an innocent jibe, as she repeated, a choke in her voice: 
 'Always, always looking for motives.' 
 
 'Haven't you heard it is the scientific habit of mind?' 
 
 She turned upon him: 'The simple explanation that I wanted 
 my husband's closest friend to find no excuse in the new wife 
 for slackening the old tie that didn't appeal to you with any 
 special force, "Women naturally dislike their husband's old 
 friends "that is one of your articles of social faith. Like many 
 another who isn't subtle himself, you are afraid of the quality 
 in others. There's nothing a man like you expects so much 
 from a woman like me, as subtlety. You were mortally afraid 
 of being taken in. I didn't seem so, but I must be complex' 
 breathlessly now the long-pent torrent poured forth. 'You 
 were for ever occupied in translating me out of subtlety into plain 
 English. I was "artistic" save the mark! "Neurotic, prob- 
 ably," since I tried to write poetry; certainly without conscience 
 or loyalty, since I'd lived in what the people outside it call "the 
 smart world." It was incredible that I' the beauty of her 
 face was suddenly convulsed 'incredible that I was a simple- 
 hearted woman who cared more for her husband than for any- 
 body or anything in all the ' The low sound went out sob- 
 bing. She turned to hide her face. Paul sat dumbfounded. 
 
 Without looking at him, her veiled voice broke again upon 
 the hush of the room. 'If he and I win through, we will not 
 have our friends to thank! Mine always ready to remind him 
 how I must miss' something caught at her voice again 'how
 
 A DARK LANTERN 383 
 
 unfit my life must have made me ' She covered her face 
 
 with her hands, but still spoke on : ' His friends for ever ready to 
 remind me of his "savage and unholy temper" those are his 
 best friend's words, Paul' she dropped her hands and turned 
 sharply the arraignment of her tear-stained face upon the 'best 
 friend' sitting there 'all of you for ever and for ever reminding 
 me of she stopped as though breathless before some spectral 
 danger risen on a sudden in her path ' reminding me of that Past, 
 I have no share in.' Something in her face appalled him. 'The 
 Past,' she repeated, staring straight in front of her as at a tangible 
 terror. 'The Past! that has risen from the grave, wearing still 
 the grave-cloth on its face more horrible for being unrecognis- 
 able, veiled, voiceless, and yet for ever there.' She stood so long 
 motionless, with wide eyes open to the vision, that Paul got up, 
 took her by the arm and led her to the sofa, saying he knew not 
 what halting words of friendship and regret. But the low shak- 
 ing voice broke in again: 'You and otners have said so often. 
 "How long will it last?" that we, too, have begun to say those, 
 hideous, defeating words. We breathe infection, Garth and I.' 
 
 She had said good-night. He followed her to the door. ' You 
 were happier when you came,' she said brokenly. 'I am sorry.' 
 
 'I wanted to tell you,' he stammered, 'that that Sydney and 
 I are going to be married next month.' 
 
 She turned back and held out her hand. But the look of 
 suffering in the face that tried to smile brought tears to his 
 unaccustomed eyes. 
 
 It was after this first open acknowledgment of the chasm 
 that seemed to be widening between Garth and her, that Katharine 
 asked herself dully, in the exhaustion that followed on abandon- 
 ment to pain: 'Is my love dead? Has he hurt me so much and 
 so often that he has killed it? Even so I must justify my act.' 
 And the feeling gained upon her that it was only right, after all, 
 that she should pay this price. Let better women refuse she 
 herself, perhaps, lacking the need to expiate, she might refuse, 
 calling the price too great. But she had broken the social law, 
 obeyed the prompting of the blood, and at peril of her last shred 
 of dignity must pay the price; bear with him and for him to the 
 end in spite of anything that might befall, prove the some-
 
 384 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 thing better than mere headlong passion that had flung her after 
 him. 
 
 #***# 
 
 'It isn't only that he cries. Look at him, Garth. He isn't 
 so well.' She had brought him the child in her arms, to hear 
 him scoff away her fears! 
 
 But instead : ' No, he is not so well. You must stop nursing him.' 
 
 'Oh no not yet.' 
 
 'To-day. I told you weeks ago, he must be weaned.' 
 
 'Oh yes, I have begun ' 
 
 'It's time you ended.' 
 
 He found later that she had given in to the child's wailing. 
 
 'You can't be trusted,' he said stonily. 'I shall have to send 
 him away.' 
 
 'Send him away!' Was the man mad? But he nodded. 
 
 'I know very well you wouldn't do that, Garth.' 
 
 'If I did, you'd try to leave me, I suppose.' 
 
 The 'try' set her nerves obscurely tingling. Why only 'try'? 
 But quietly she answered: 'No.' 
 
 'You would if I went too far.' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'You would if you came to hate me.' 
 
 'Not even then.' 
 
 'Why not?' he demanded, with as much harshness as if another 
 answer would have pleased him better. 
 
 'Because leaving you would be to degrade the Past. There 
 was offence in it, I don't deny. But it is redeemable offence. 
 Don't be hard to me about the baby, Garth.' 
 
 'Redeemable.' 
 
 'Redeemable by showing I was right in my feeling if not in 
 my act. If I was wrong about the strength of my feeling, I 
 was unpardonable by any rule.' 
 
 ' By God! how you split hairs! ' he burst out. 'You mean such 
 notions as those will keep you to your bargain?' 
 
 'Yes, Garth.' 
 
 'No matter what I do?* 
 
 'No matter what you do.' 
 
 Then, at the worst, he would not even have the enlightenment 
 of her 'trying' to leave him. Was he never to know?
 
 A DARK LANTERN 385 
 
 There was one way. 
 
 He had taken the first step along it when he had said he would 
 send the child away. Very well had he come to realize that, in 
 a creature like Katharine, except love lead, there is no power to 
 accept the greatest nearness. 
 
 If he made the move to re-establish that, and she rebuffed 
 him 
 
 All his life leapt up in a flame. 
 
 By that test he would know.
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 WHEN Katharine came home after lunching out that Friday she 
 ran up to the top of the house, as she often did in these days 
 upon returning, without stopping even to take off her hat. 
 
 The pretty white room was empty. 
 
 Where was the baby? Gone with the nurse. Where was the 
 nurse? No one knew. She had packed a small trunk and 
 vanished. 
 
 Vincent had just started on his afternoon rounds. It might be 
 hours before he would be back. Surely there was only one place 
 to which, on such short notice, he would send the child. 
 
 There was barely time to catch the afternoon express to Win- 
 ston. Hot foot and full of anger she fled to Victoria. Staines, 
 promptly carrying out orders, telephoned to his master in the 
 next street. Vincent re-appeared with Dalberg. He looked on 
 the hall table as if for something he counted upon finding. 
 
 'Any word left?' 
 
 'No, Sir.' 
 
 Quite casually: 'Did Lady Vincent say where she was going?' 
 
 'She told the cabman "Victoria," Sir.' 
 
 'Who said the baby was at Winston?' 
 
 'I don't know, Sir.' 
 
 'Ring up a messenger.' In the consulting room he wrote out 
 a telegram instructing the nurse to take the next train back to 
 town. 
 
 Although he did not show his friend the message, quite as 
 though Paul had remonstrated, Vincent, looking at what he had 
 written, muttered in fierce extenuation: 'Mothers are damned 
 selfish! disobey my orders make the child ill ' 
 
 When he heard the bell ring he picked up the telegraph form, 
 and made for the door, but stopped short hearing Mrs. Richard's 
 
 386
 
 A DARK LANTERN 387 
 
 voice. Sydney, too! Paul went into the hall to speak to them. 
 Staines came for the message: 'Yes, Sir, the boy is here.' 
 
 As the servant went out counting the words, Mrs. Richard's 
 high voice penetrated the consulting room: 'No only came to 
 leave word for you, Paul. We've just been to your house. I 
 knew Katharine was away ' 
 
 Like a flash Vincent appeared at his door: 'How did you 
 know ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, you're there nursing your wrath all alone ! ' (She laughed 
 as at some witticism.) 'I heard Mrs. Bruton arranging it on 
 Wednesday. Those Little Matley week-ends are becoming quite 
 celebrated. I wish she'd ask you and me, Garth. Very well, 
 Paul, we'll expect you at eight.' 
 
 Little Matley. So that was Katharine's post-haste errand! 
 Falconbridge's too. 
 
 When Dalberg rejoined him, Vincent was walking up and down 
 the small room with set face and unseeing eyes. 
 
 'I don't in this case see the motive,' Paul said, 'but Mrs. 
 Richard doesn't need a motive. It's easier for her to lie than 
 not to lie.' 
 
 'It is to most people. I expect them to lie.' 
 
 'Not all, I suppose?' 
 
 'All except ' Vincent stopped abruptly, and turned to his 
 
 writing-table, fumbling aimlessly among the papers lying there. 
 
 'In any event,' Dalberg spoke with a deliberate lightness, 
 'going to see Mrs. Bruton doesn't strike the onlooker as a thing 
 unforgivable.' 
 
 'There's one thing I wouldn't forgive ' said the man at the 
 
 table, crushing up the analysis paper nearest to his hand. Paul 
 looked apprehensively into the changed face as Vincent added 
 half to himself, 'If Katharine should lie to me ' 
 
 Just before the train drew up at Winston, another had gone 
 London wards bearing back the child. All unconscious Katharine 
 passed him on the line, finding out the truth only upon reaching 
 the house. 
 
 Too late to return that night. 
 
 Nor was she sure that she should find her child in Cavendish 
 Square.
 
 3 88 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 Ah, he was very cruel! 
 
 A wave of anger carried her far from him. Balked emotion 
 as poignant as hers will sap strength like a disease. Not losing 
 consciousness till dawn, she slept on till nearly noon. A noise 
 in the room roused her. Vincent! flinging down a travelling-bag, 
 and taking out his watch as if with thought of train-catching. And 
 what was it in his face had he been frightened into coming for 
 her? Terror drove the sleep out of her eyes; half rising, she said: 
 
 'He is ill my baby's dying!' 
 
 'He is perfectly well.' 
 
 A sobbing little appeal escaped her 'not . . . not crying any 
 more ? ' 
 
 'Not a whimper.' 
 
 She lay down among the pillows. The baby, too, had ceased 
 to need her! 
 
 Garth turned his back upon her, opened his travelling-bag, and 
 was flinging out his things. 
 
 Over the woman, as she watched him, the anger of the night 
 before came flooding back. She wanted nothing but the child. 
 Why had he come? 
 
 He had his question, too. Without turning round: 'Why did 
 you leave like that without telling me?' he said suddenly. 
 
 Ah, he had come to a point where even he wanted explanation. 
 
 'You know one reason why I left like that.' 
 
 'What's the other?' he said, still with his back turned. 
 
 'That I live in your house like a stranger.' 
 
 He was at the wardrobe now, absorbed in collecting his riding 
 things and taking possession in the old way. After the first terri- 
 fied misreading of his haggard looks, she had not seen his face. 
 For fear he might suddenly look round again, she turned away her 
 eyes. 
 
 His presence was an oppression, an intrusion. As she lay 
 listening to the sound of his quick movement about the room, she 
 found herself wishing passionately that she were back in her own, 
 the room at Cavendish Square still more that one at the top of 
 the house looking out upon the plane-tree and William George. 
 Within, a little white Ah, the tears! 
 
 This man, moving about with the sturdy air of possession he 
 could hurt her without a pang.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 389 
 
 Not only her eyes avoided him now she turned her back upon 
 him, and looked through tears out of the open window to the great 
 trees where a parliament of rooks was met. Remembrance came 
 back upon her of that other time in this very room, too that 
 bitter hour before Leonard's coming, over a year ago, when she 
 had felt that her misery and sense of alienation must needs end 
 in her going away. She had thought then that her suffering was 
 the righteous outcome of her headlong act the usual ending of 
 a story such as hers. But certainly marriage had not closed that 
 avenue to pain. Even more to-day than then, she felt the time 
 was come when to be with him on the old terms was impossible. 
 Fit action for a slave or a cocotte, who must disguise, pretend, 
 and reckon with some sordid advantage at sacrifice of her last 
 shred of personal dignity. The essence of the beauty of this 
 relation was in the perfect heart. There must be no bitterness, 
 no holding back nothing between them but love, or the relation 
 is degraded, and would show tarnish were she fifty times his wife. 
 
 Now his voice: 'You'd better get up and go for a ride.' 
 
 'There won't be time for that,' she said. 
 
 ' Going over to Little Matley ? ' the question rang out quick and 
 sharp. 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'You won't stay cooped up here all day.' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'What's your programme?' 
 
 'I'm going back to town.' 
 
 He came to the foot of the bed, and stood there looking at her, 
 with a face she had never seen before. ' Don't push me too far,' 
 he said. 'If you did ' 
 
 She saw the slim hands working on the top of the footboard in 
 a way that struck her as strangely horrible. Her heart began to 
 beat with an inexplicable terror, and then she knew why. In 
 imagination she had felt those brown hands at her throat. 'If I 
 did ? ' she said. 
 
 'I don't know what might come.' He turned away and strode 
 out of the room. 
 
 A sudden light now upon that saying, 'If you should try to 
 leave me.' She knew she had had a glimpse of the old violence 
 that the world was said to be outgrowing. Was the world out-
 
 390 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 growing it? Or would there be always men of hot spirit who 
 would not, could not stop to count cost? who would go head- 
 long to ruin, dragging others after ? If the current view was right 
 and there were to be no more then was this the last of that 
 tempestuous line. 
 
 She rose to meet what the day would bring. By the time she 
 was dressed she had come to see that she could trust him about 
 the baby. He loved the child. And after what he had said, 
 still more after what he had looked, she would not go to town 
 that day. She looked at the reminders of his late presence in 
 the room. Neither could she stay here. 
 
 She had herself driven to the station, and told Jackson not to 
 wait. A cab took her the rest of the way. 'After all, Blanche, 
 here I am for the week-end,' she said, and while rapturously her 
 friend welcomed her, 'Are you a large party?' 
 
 'No, only those I said Bertie, Lord Falconbridge, the Chiltern 
 girls and the Scotts.' 
 
 The men were rejoining them unusually soon. But it was 
 already late, for the women had sat late about the board, pro- 
 longing a dinner that had gone with uncommon gaiety and spirit. 
 Katharine and her hostess stood looking at the effect of the 
 tapestry newly hung in the upper hall as the men streamed up the 
 stair. One of the Chilterns, Falconbridge and Bertie, had also 
 joined the group standing before the faded grace of the old 
 hawking scene, when the front-door just below them resounded 
 to knock and ring. 
 
 'Garth!' said Katharine involuntarily under her breath to 
 Blanche. 
 
 'What makes you think ?' demanded Mrs. Bruton. 
 
 Katharine had drawn back a little, behind Lord Falconbridge 
 all the soul of her in quick revolt at the idea of a scene; at the 
 bare possibility of these particular people, among all people under 
 the sun, seeing her husband in the nakedness of passion. Better 
 a thousandfold go back to Winston and wait there for whatever 
 was to come. 
 
 Under cover of the hum: 'Kitty,' whispered Blanche, 'some- 
 thing's happened!'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 39! 
 
 'I had forgotten,' Katharine answered, in the same undertone, 
 'but I told him I was not coming here.' 
 
 Mrs. Bruton looked down over the banisters, and made the 
 butler a sign: wait. Then with nothing in her face of her 
 dread of a jarring incident, she said very low: 'If it should 
 be he ' 
 
 'It is,' returned Katharine, as firmly as though she had known 
 all along that he would stand there at this hour knocking at 
 the door. 'If he's angry about your coming or anything 
 I don't think Lord Falconb ridge's nerves are in a state to 
 bear ' 
 
 'No no,' returned Katharine under her breath, 'he must be 
 told he will find me at home.' 
 
 'But you won't go!' Mrs. Bruton went forward suddenly to 
 Lord Falconbridge. 'I know you're wise about such things. I 
 wish you'd look at the smaller tapestry, and tell me what you 
 think. Will you show it to him, Kitty ? ' After a look exchanged 
 with Blanche, Katharine moved mechanically towards the morn- 
 ing-room. 
 
 She stood with Falconbridge before the new acquisition. 'Why 
 are you so pale ? ' he asked, not even glancing towards the tapestry. 
 Before she could answer, 'Ah!' he smiled satirically. Through 
 the door they had left ajar that unmistakable voice! Mrs. 
 Bruton's, answering over the banisters, albeit so much nearer, 
 not half so clearly distinguishable: 'Oh, is that you, Sir Garth! 
 Katharine? I'm sorry to say she refused to stay.' 
 
 'Has she gone?' 
 
 'Unhappily for us ' 
 
 'Gone where?' 
 
 'Why,' Mrs. Bruton sent down a disarming little laugh, 'where 
 should she ' 
 
 'She's not in London.' 
 
 'No, not London.' 
 
 'Do you mean she has gone to Winston?' demanded Vincent. 
 
 'I suppose Winston, of course, is where she ' 
 
 'When?' 
 
 'Oh a I should think she'd be there before you get back.' 
 
 Falconbridge, imperturbable, was now for the first time looking 
 at the tapestry.
 
 392 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 'Did she go alone?' The voice came steadily nearer. He 
 must be half-way up the stair. 
 
 'Alone!' repeated Mrs. Bruton. 'Why a yes. You see, 
 Wilfred ' 
 
 ' I want to see Bruton,' that other voice struck in, quite close to 
 the door. 
 
 'Then come into the drawing-room.' 
 
 Katharine thought quickly. He would not only not find her 
 there, he would not find Falconbridge. She turned to the great 
 man, her eyes sparkling with anger and with fear. 
 
 'I'd like to speak to Bertie a moment. Would you mind ? ' 
 
 As plain as words could have done it, she asked him to present 
 himself in the drawing-room, and quietly to let Bertie know. As 
 plain as words could have done it, with no sparing of hauteur, 
 Falconbridge refused. But what Falconbridge said was: 
 
 'Mind? Not in the least,' and he strolled over to a table 
 where stood a shaded lamp, picked up a book, and idly turned 
 the leaves. 
 
 No help from him. 
 
 To get home! before humiliation overtook her. 
 
 She found herself hurriedly crossing the room to the door at the 
 far end. 
 
 'You won't find Amherst that way,' said Lord Falconbridge 
 coldly. 
 
 'No,' she answered, and still went blindly on, conscious that 
 Falconbridge was leisurely following, some distance behind, 
 through the little passages, up steps and down. When she came 
 to the tiny, old-time, powder-room she went in and looked cau- 
 tiously through a crack in the blind. One of the Bruton grooms 
 was holding the vicious mare, that no one but Vincent dared to 
 ride, let alone to drive. Then he must have wired from London 
 for the dogcart to meet the last train to Little Matley. It would 
 be hard to beat the mare home at the breakneck rate Vincent 
 allowed her to cover the ground. 
 
 Katharine heard Falconbridge's steps pause at the powder-room 
 door. She dropped the blind guiltily, and rang the bell. 
 
 He simply leaned against the door and waited till a servant 
 came. 
 
 'Has Mr. Bruton got a motor-car in the stables here?'
 
 A DARK LANTERN 393 
 
 'There is only his lordship 's- 
 
 ' Quite at your disposal,' said Falconbridge quietly, 'Tell 
 Ferrier ' 
 
 'I I should be glad to have it at once,' she said hurriedly, 
 'at the garden entrance.' 
 
 x- * * * * 
 
 That neither his wife nor Falconbridge was of the party at Little 
 Matley, that seemed now to be what he had gone to establish. 
 But they were together somewhere, and Vincent was driving along 
 the moonlit lanes, bearing that damning knowledge back to his 
 forsaken home. 
 
 As he reached the high road, suddenly he reined up, listening. 
 The hollow horn of a motor-car warning some late prowler, stray 
 dog, or straggled sheep but what was a motor doing so far off the 
 main highway, down there in the old, disused grass-grown road 
 between the Little Matley gardens and the water meadows? 
 Who was foolish enough to ride into that swamp ? He stood up 
 in the dog-cart, till a curve in the lower road gave him a glimpse 
 of a light. Yes, some lunatic taking the old coach road from 
 Parminton to ... where? deliberately passing all the lanes 
 that would bring him up on the good road. What fool was skulk- 
 ing, and bumping along, at this hour of the night from Parminton 
 to Great Matley? Winston? Like a match struck in a cave 
 a light flashed in his brain. Had Mrs. Bruton been shielding her 
 friend? Did she know Katharine had been to Parminton? 
 And why Parminton? And in whose car? It was out of sight. 
 He sat thinking. What better thing to do with the nightmare 
 hours, than leave the cart and get a saddle at the inn, set the 
 mare at the fences, and ride cross-country straight as the crow 
 flies, through the Winston Woods, and meet that erratic motor 
 where the old road joined the new meet it and see? 
 
 When Katharine had reached the garden entrance she was 
 thankful to find the motor already there; but two figures sitting in 
 the car! Not Ferrier alone, Ferrier's master. Well, what did 
 anything matter but to get home, and to get home quickly, without 
 passing Garth on the way? 
 
 Not yet spent was the wave of fear and anger that had carried 
 her off her feet, and yet dimly she began to see, that the ebbing
 
 394 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 of that tide was leaving unsightly wreckage on the shores of her 
 life. Nothing in her nature was stronger than her sense of 
 loyalty; yet slowly it came over her as they rushed along, that 
 loyalty, for the first time, had suffered disaster in the storm. 
 
 Falconbridge talked to ears that heard only that harsh voice on 
 the Little Matley stairs, and Blanche's soft, misleading answers. 
 Mistaken as it may have been, there was nothing ignoble in 
 Garth's coming unexpectedly for his wife; no offence whatever 
 save in her way of meeting or not meeting his demand. She 
 had made him ridiculous. She clenched her hands. Had stood 
 behind the door with people that he hated, and heard him lied 
 to! Now, again, she saw Lord Falconbridge's sneering look of 
 comprehension. What had possessed her to bear that? Why 
 had she not gone out and said, 'I'm here' let come what might? 
 If some day Garth heard the truth She shut her eyes. She 
 shut her ears: saying to herself, 'I have been patient, but now 
 I've forfeited all chance of profit from my patience by an act 
 of cowardice. Oh, how much more potent is wrong-doing than 
 righteousness! One good deed cannot save us one bad one 
 damns to all eternity. In a moment's baseness I lose all I ever 
 gained.' 
 
 She was leaning out over her side of the car trying to distin- 
 guish the Great Matley lights. How long this old way was! 
 and how fast the mare was flying by the shorter road! 
 
 'You are too distressed to listen to-night,' the voice at her side 
 was saying. 'I won't pretend that I don't understand.' Lord 
 Falconbridge put out his hand. She thought he was feeling for 
 the rug she had pushed down. 'No,' she said; 'I'm burning 
 up!' The impatience in her voice gave him pause. 
 
 'You are quite unstrung,' he said sympathetically. 'It can't go 
 on like this. Something must be done to bring a little happiness 
 into your life.' Again his hand went stealthily seeking hers. 
 
 'Oh, happiness!' she said, with an accent that made him draw 
 away. Still she stared out, watching the road in front of the fan 
 of light, that they seemed to be pushing along in front of them. 
 
 'Why do you say it in that tone?' he demanded, 'as though 
 happiness were so little?' 
 
 'Certainly I no longer think it all,' she answered. 
 
 'You are bravely making the best of a '
 
 A DARK LANTERN 395 
 
 She leaned towards him for the first time; saying almost sharply: 
 Don't call my life a bad bargain. I can't allow that.' 
 
 'Ah, you pay gallantly the dreamer's penalty. You stand com- 
 mitted to make the dream come true. Or failing 
 
 'If I have failed' she interrupted again but on a different 
 note, with an effect of both humbleness and pride, that baffled 
 Falconbridge 'if I have failed, it isn't the worst of failure.' 
 Now she had turned away her head again, but did she know, for 
 all that her eyes seemed to be searching in the gulf of blackness 
 between the fan of moving light and the far moonlit distance 
 did she know that Falconbridge leaned over, with lips almost 
 at her ear? Suddenly she clasped the ungloved hands in her 
 lap, and with eyes still looking for the Great Matley lights, very 
 low she said: 'I cannot in my mood of deepest self-abasement 
 believe my husband would have found less unhappiness with 
 some other woman.' 
 
 'But you. Great Heaven! What of you?' 
 
 'I would rather be unhappy with the man I have chosen, than 
 happy with any other. Isn't that the test, after all ? ' 
 
 'I can't pretend to understand.' 
 
 'In that case ah, at last! You see? You see the lights?' 
 
 'No, I am still absolutely in the dark,' he said, and his well- 
 controlled voice showed by contrast all the sore anxiety, the strong 
 excitement, that throbbed and broke in hers. 
 
 Instead of lessening, her agitation seemed to grow as they 
 rushed through the silent town. She leaned forward and spoke 
 to the chauffeur. ' Couldn't you go faster ? ' On they flew. 
 
 'Since I may not see much of you in the future,' she said sud- 
 denly to Falconbridge, ' I think I owe it to all of us, not to leave 
 you with misapprehension.' 
 
 'Yes, you had begun to say, "in that case" supposing I still 
 fail to understand?' His cold smile was like an insult. 
 
 She lifted her face to meet the wind, and when she spoke it was 
 with a curious hard breathlessness, as one who, with huge effort to 
 rise above the tyranny of nerves, concentrates all her being upon 
 bearing faithful witness in some final hour. 
 
 'You have only to remember,' she said, 'that in these matters 
 there's something in character that makes fitness. I suppose it is 
 only after character is developed bent this way or that by the
 
 396 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 prevailing wind blowing through one's life only then that we 
 know what, for us, makes fitness. And I grant you fitness is 
 as mysteriously made as joy, which you know (or may have heard) 
 men have found delicate women, too in the roughest, pain- 
 fullest places.' 
 
 He left her at the door. 
 
 She looked at the hall clock with amazement. After all they 
 had made wonderfully good time. Not only was she home first, the 
 car would get back to the old road before Vincent could meet it. 
 
 On the dressing-table lay the white vellum book, wrenched and 
 marred, the lock broken off. 
 
 Well, he had seen the Baby's Songs what then? Why was 
 she trembling? It was as if some of the heat and tumult of the 
 passion with which he had torn the book, lingered yet about the 
 ruined thing to touch her with contagion. She could see him 
 doing this. His bootless errands to London, and to Little Matley, 
 would not have made him gentler. Oh, why had she fled away? 
 She might have known it would only make things worse. 'I 
 must keep my head,' she said to herself as she hid the shattered 
 book in a drawer. 'I may have to save him from himself to- 
 night. To-night? No/' her nerves cried out. 'To-morrow. 
 He would see clearer then.' She crossed the room to bolt the 
 door, paused, listened, opened it cautiously, went out and stood at 
 the top of the stairs. All quiet. She went back and rang her bell. 
 
 ' Was the octagon room got ready for the nurse ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, m' lady,' said the sleepy maid. 
 
 'Take Sir Garth's things in there. Ask him, when he comes, 
 please not to disturb me. I hardly slept last night.' 
 
 'He's gone to London, m' lady ' 
 
 'Just move his things and quickly. I am very tired.' 
 
 For all that, when the maid at last was gone, and the doors 
 locked and bolted, Katharine did not go to bed, did not even 
 undress. She turned out the blazing light, drew up the blinds, 
 and sat by the open window facing the gate. The time dragged 
 leaden. Surely he ought to be back by now. The sleepy maid 
 would be giving in to weariness. He might not get the mes- 
 sage 
 
 She left the window and threw herself on the bed. Vividly 
 a vision of him stamped itself upon the dark, Garth as he had
 
 A DARK LANTERN 397 
 
 stood there that morning at the foot of the bed, his quick brown 
 fingers moving in that horrible way, and his slow lips saying: 'If 
 you did I don't know what might come.' 
 
 Hush! was that a horse galloping? 'I'd think that must be 
 Garth if I didn't know he had the dog-cart.' While she listened 
 for wheels, the moments passed. 
 
 More than once she said to herself, I must keep my head. The 
 sense was all about of impending horror. She sat up suddenly. 
 Someone was moving in the house. Not he, for she would have 
 heard him driving in at the gate. 
 
 The handle of the door turned. She held her breath. 
 
 'Open the door!' he said. 
 
 She had meant to answer, if at all, quietly, from the bed 
 but the voice brought her to her feet, carried her across the room. 
 
 'Wait till morning, Garth.' 
 
 'Open the door!' 
 
 Silence. She looked at the bolt, saying to herself with exultant 
 terror, that it was strong. And still as she stood on the inside, he 
 stood there without, waiting, but straining to send every sense 
 through the barrier between them. 
 
 The woman holding her breath on the other side, felt as if those 
 fierce eyes were forcing sight through the fibres of the wood. The 
 sound of his breathing came to her. Every nerve in her body was 
 conscious of the intensity of his listening. 
 
 'Open the door or I'll ' 
 
 She recoiled, and waited rooted there, till she heard his quick 
 step going down the corridor. Thank God! She turned up the 
 light, and with uncertain fingers felt for the clasp of her necklace. 
 At that instant the dressing-room door was tried was shaken. 
 
 'I shall not open the door till morning ' 
 
 Before the words were fairly out, a great noise burst upon the 
 quiet. That sole barrier between her and what was to come, the 
 solid door, shivered and cried out. A sound of crashing and 
 splintering followed hard a sound to her shrinking nerves as if 
 the very foundations of the house were being broken up, and as 
 by some explosion, scattered to the winds of heaven. With that 
 last harsh splintering, the second of the lower panels gave way. 
 Vincent had stooped and was coming in, head lowered like a bull 
 red-eyed, maddened. He did not advance upon her, but upon
 
 3 p8 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 the other door, still locked, bolted, chained; and now his eyes were 
 making circuit of the room. 
 
 ' What are you looking for ? ' she said. 
 
 He came close. She fell back before his advance, until ar- 
 rested by his words, for the words were like a cry for help. ' Don't 
 ever do it again. Say what you like to me but don't ever lock 
 me out. It makes me see red!' 
 
 Her fictitious strength was suddenly gone. She sank into 
 the chair under the light. As her upturned eyes rested on his 
 tortured face, something strange in experience, something alto- 
 gether new seized hold on her, and her heart, which she had 
 hardened, was suddenly like molten wax for looking in his face 
 was like looking in an open wound. While her wide eyes filled, 
 the form before her that had seemed to her iron and granite made 
 man slightly it swayed. 
 
 ' Garth ! ' She held up her hand. 
 
 A ragged, stifled cry came out of his lips, and he was on his 
 knees, his face hidden in her lap. No anger of his had ever 
 seemed to her so terrible as that torn and tortured cry. It was 
 like some convulsion of inanimate Nature, dwarfing the narrow 
 human experience, beggaring her of words, leaving her trembling 
 and dumb. That cry of his still sounded in the silent room. 
 It lived on, long after it had left his lips. It cried again from 
 the cornice. It echoed from window to door. She held her 
 clasped hands shaking to her breast, looking about wildly, as if 
 to find him help. Then as her eyes fell upon the figure crouching 
 at her feet, and she realized him kneeling there like a little child, 
 she began to sob softly above his hidden face. So often she had 
 said in her heart, 'If only you really loved me,' she never knew 
 that, bending over him now, she said the words aloud, until she 
 heard him answering: 'It is because of that. You can say any- 
 thing you like. Don't lock me out.' 
 
 'I never will again,' she answered, laying her cheek on his hair. 
 
 'Garth, I was at Little Matley, when you came to-night. I 
 heard you asking . . .' Still no sign. 'Blanche lied because she 
 thought she knew, I was afraid.' 
 
 He repeated: 'You were afraid?' 
 
 'Oh yes, I was afraid. I am afraid now; but I have to tell you.
 
 A DARK LANTERN 399 
 
 It was because I was afraid I came by the old coach road in a 
 motor-car Lord Falconbridge brought me home.' 
 
 'I know he did.' 
 
 'How could you know?' 
 
 'I rode through the wood. I saw you pass.' 
 
 She waited, knowing that she and the man at her side had 
 skirted disaster close that night. 
 
 'Please tell me, have you been jealous, Garth?' 
 
 'You haven't thought much about me of late,' he said in dogged 
 self-defence, 'the nearest you came to that, was to think of 
 the child.' 
 
 But although it was so untrue, the saying shed a light. 
 
 ' And through it all ' she framed his face between her hands 
 'do you mean that you loved me through it all?' 
 
 'It's not to be helped that I love you.' 
 
 She laughed upon the edge of tears. 
 
 'Oh, Garth, Garth, there's nobody in all the world, but would 
 think it a disaster to be you or me and yet how do they, those 
 people who have lived calm, unshaken lives, how can they be sure 
 of each other, as you and I are sure ? ' 
 
 But he had no more words to-night than common. 
 
 'If any power but death,' she ended softly, 'could have parted 
 you and me, we should not be together now.' 
 
 'No,' he said. 
 
 'What about the future? when the black moods come again ' 
 she clung closer to him. 
 
 'They won't so long as you make me feel I am near to you. 
 And that no one else is,' he added fiercely. 
 
 Ah, she was to take care of the Future. 
 
 Involuntarily she said, 'And the Past?' 
 
 That term for him seemed strangely contracted, for like one 
 confidently calling up a witness on his side, 'Do you forget,' he 
 said, 'the months here before the baby was born?' 
 
 'If I have, I never will again,' she answered. 'The Past' for 
 her, too, should mean that tender happy time. 
 
 After all these months of waiting for him to speak, after being 
 so sure that her love must inevitably win from him the story of
 
 400 A DARK LANTERN 
 
 those other years who and where, and how, and all the rest- 
 now, waking beside him in the dawn, it suddenly came over her, 
 that she should never know these things. He would love her well 
 of that she was assured and he was steadfast unto stubborn- 
 ness. But she would never get him to lift the veil. And for a 
 moment the thought chilled her. But the late realization of the 
 truth was at last sun-clear. He had none of the artist's reflex 
 pleasure in contemplating himself in pain. His way was to damn 
 the circumstance, and then do all he could to forget it. Even if 
 he remembered, memory would never get so far as speech. If he 
 had few words for present need, he would have none at all for 
 the past. All these weeks in London, she had felt the barrier of 
 the unknown years rise between her and him high, impassable, 
 impregnable and for a while the barrier had shut out joy. But 
 only for a while. She saw by the light of the new morning, that 
 what she had deplored as a flaw in the faith that she hoped to 
 establish between them, was no flaw of his making. It was a 
 thing essential, inevitable part of the human lot. She had 
 thought that other husbands, close to their wives in sympathy and 
 devotion, told them their past. But did they? Not one had 
 told, or could tell everything. To any but the least sensitive, 
 even the vaguest reminder of these things set the nerves jarring. 
 And yet this source of pain lay behind every marriage made late 
 enough to be founded on the rock of proved fitness. Her good 
 fortune it was, that Garth would never make those old days live 
 again, by any word of his. They seemed the more securely dead. 
 They were as if they had never been. 
 
 THE END
 
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