Whoso Breaketh 
 an Hede 
 
 Iota'
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE
 
 By the same Author. 
 
 A YELLOW ASTER. 
 
 A COMEDY IN SPASMS. 
 
 A QUAKER GRANDMOTHER. 
 
 PATRICIA. 
 
 ANNE MAULEVERER. 
 
 POOR MAX. 
 
 SMOKE IN THE FLAME. 
 
 HE FOR GOD ONLY. 
 
 &c., &c. &c., &c.
 
 "Whoso Breaketh 
 an Hedge " 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. MANNINGTON CAFFYN 
 
 ("IOTA") 
 
 Whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him." 
 
 (Ecclesiastes) 
 
 LONDON 
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED 
 
 PATERNOSTER HOUSE, E.C. 
 
 1909
 
 CHAPEL 
 RIVER 
 PRESS
 
 <* 
 
 PR 
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A UDREY VANSITTART was always light-hearted and 
 \ generally reckless, but her taste, except when too 
 severe a strain was put on it, was good. She 
 knew how to dress. She could spend half an hour and an 
 incredible amount of mental activity in putting on her 
 hat, then forget all about it and wear it with the radiant 
 unself consciousness of a flower. Unlike some women, she 
 had more faith in herself in the end than in her hat. 
 
 A certain ordered gravity running cool and undisturbed 
 through their torrential stream of change characterized 
 the least of her little ways. It was this suggestion of a 
 likeness to things with which he was in the habit of deal- 
 ing, things which posit unity in variety and the converse, 
 that first fixed the near-sighted eyes of Andrew Antrobus 
 upon Miss Vansittart. 
 
 He linked her in a perplexing yet magically enchanting 
 way with mathematics Audrey Vansittart and mathe- 
 matics ! Rather perhaps with the dimly-apprehended, 
 long-lost heaven which lies, whether he confess it or not, 
 or howsoever prosaic to the vulgar eye he may appear, 
 deep down behind the mind of every true lover of the sacred 
 science of numbers. It was the enduring gravity of the 
 great lady in the laughter-loving evanescence of the child, 
 the rhythmic order of the ages in the sheerest inconsequence 
 of the hour which, as presented to his simple mind by
 
 2 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Audrey, so powerfully reacted upon Andrew. Poor Andrew 
 Antrobus ! this puzzled intruder into a world of slang and 
 incoherent antics, and of women who never suggested, at 
 least to a humble person unused to them, anything at 
 all of a cosmic nature, who had, so to speak, no " sign," 
 who filled one with a general sense of dislocation,' and 
 brought on, very frequently, a nervous headache. 
 
 Even in the earliest stages, when he only beheld her 
 well-dressed person quite unaware of his presence, the 
 centre of a senseless chattering crowd in which the deli- 
 cate richness of her voice always took the lead, she was 
 to Andrew as a sacred hush in a godless babel, in the 
 midst of clotted discord a most simple harmony. 
 So much for mathematics when befooled by love ! 
 He made no pretence either then or afterwards of under- 
 standing this paradox in a Paris frock or of trying to 
 explain or justify its existence to his big mind, so full in 
 other regards of inexorable logical demand. All he knew 
 was that it troubled his heart, and whilst bemusing his 
 intelligence, yet transformed his outlook in the most odd 
 and distracting way, and that this confusion of incom- 
 prehensible emotions conferred a wild new glory upon 
 life. 
 
 For the first time in his twenty-seven years he was 
 taken, at the mere sight of another human being of in- 
 ferior brain power, with a rapturous shortness of breath, 
 a delirious upheaval of accepted prejudices, a dizzying 
 sense of supreme gladness, an inconceivable apprehension 
 of suffering entirely unconnected with any state of mental 
 excitement he knew anything about, and in the same 
 moment was aware that this tangle of pleasing pain was 
 just part of the heritage of youth, that mystery he had 
 so often desired to solve. But there had always been so 
 much hard work to be done, that he had never been able 
 to find time for the easy. All that had been for the more 
 fortunate. He had stood outside it, a humble worker, 
 his soul set in the direction of the things which man may 
 free from time.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 3 
 
 He had been reared in an atmosphere of earnest endea- 
 vour, purely feminine ; the far-reaching shadow of 
 undeveloped imagination and overdeveloped conscience 
 had always darkened his steps and kept the light from 
 his path. For no .one but he who has sat under it 
 will credit the way in which a really serious-minded 
 woman can project the shadow of her petticoats or how 
 it impoverishes the soil. 
 
 From his very birth Andrew had been the engrossing 
 responsibility of three sisters, none less than five feet 
 ten in height, and with not a spare inch of flesh between 
 them. They had squandered their youth and spoilt their 
 figures and shattered their organs, never quite sound, and 
 all in the service of Andrew. The Miss Antrobuses came 
 of a fine and exclusive old stock, and had been reared hard 
 and fast in its traditions. They had the lowest possible 
 opinion of the modern woman, and of the methods of an 
 education which can turn her out helmeted and full- 
 panoplied, panting to close with any unseemly dragon that 
 may come along. 
 
 To be grounded at home by governesses and finished in 
 Town by masters was all that their kith and kin had ever 
 desired for their daughters, or could have thought them- 
 selves justified in desiring. Thus it was no vain -glory or 
 vaulting ambition that drove Katharine Antrobus, the 
 spring that moved the family, into the Higher Education 
 for women ; still less had it to do with the yearnings of 
 the modern for action, her fine intellectual pride in 
 acquiring, her honest glory in achieving. Very far from 
 it. Any toil not directly concerned with Society, the 
 Church, or the Poor, Katharine felt to be a subtle degrada- 
 tion, a sort of unexplored uncleanness, a nameless insult 
 to those who had gone before ; above all, a levelling down 
 of the upper classes, of quite national importance. When 
 Katharine, with her two sisters in tow, went forth on the 
 search for knowledge and the right to set up cabalistic 
 signs behind their ancient and unsullied names with the 
 ignpble aim of ultimately running a select ladies' school, 
 
 I*
 
 4 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 they felt as three dethroned princesses might have done 
 on first taking to the road, . 
 
 To keep school for young people, some of whom, from 
 the lamentable state of society, must of necessity be her 
 gross inferiors, was a humiliation that could never be 
 forgotten by Katharine. It paled, however, before -the 
 recurring horror of having to send in her well-earned bills 
 to their parents. 
 
 To the very last she never watched her tail of well- 
 dressed, well-set-up girls going off to a hockey match 
 but she felt a chill down her back and thought of her 
 grandmother. The ambition of the sisters soared far above 
 either attending schools or keeping them. Anything ap- 
 proaching the " wild joy of living " had indeed never entered 
 into their hearts to conceive. It would have reminded 
 them of ill-gotten wealth and the " smart set," but they 
 could have discerned happiness, full and abiding, in a 
 cottage and one small governess- cart in a really good 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 All that the Miss Antrobuses relinquished, and all that 
 they achieved, was entirely for the sake of the baby 
 Andrew bequeathed to them, in addition to the cottage 
 and the governess-cart, a small income, and a large press 
 full of rejected manuscript, by an amiable dreamer. In 
 striving to realize his dreams, he had gone through three 
 fortunes, then died of sorrow just one week after his wife. 
 She, for her part, having fulfilled his last demand and 
 borne him a son to carry on the traditions of a distin- 
 guished name, in wondering what on earth was to become 
 of her baby, had inadvertently slipped out of life. It was 
 the one selfish act of a lifetime, and laid a burthen all 
 too heavy upon shoulders too young to carry it gaily. 
 
 Gilbert Antrobus's last dream, as his first, brought 
 forth nothing but sordid anxiety and extremely hard 
 work for those he had spent his life in declaring altogether 
 too sacred and transcendental for debasing contact with 
 either. His most trenchant utterances on the subject 
 were contained in a poem he wrote beside his wife's grave
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 5 
 
 on the eve of his own decease. Although it was the worn 
 fingers of a once beautiful hand. that inspired his last lay, 
 no one could accuse Gilbert Antrobus of not having been 
 unswervingly faithful to his Ideal ! 
 
 It is not to be wondered at, however, that from their 
 earliest days his daughters took very serious views of 
 what to their unilluminated vision appeared to be the 
 Real. 
 
 The eldest was only seventeen when she found herself 
 fetched up short before it, with two younger sisters and 
 a baby tugging at her short skirts. With no comment, 
 but with a smart click of steel, she shut up the Ideal with 
 the rejected verses and went hammer and tongs for the 
 Real. 
 
 If the family had produced one dreamer, it had produced 
 many men of action and scholars not a few, and if an 
 aristocratic leisure had been the privilege of the Antrobus 
 women, they had never been idlers. 
 
 There was nothing mean in the material which Katha- 
 rine designed to mould. So she put her father away in 
 a little nebulous niche all to himself, shut her lips so 
 tight that they never got loose again, and took possession 
 of her family. 
 
 If they sold the cottage and the governess-cart, com- 
 pounded their income and lived in rooms near a great 
 woman's college, there would be enough to give them the 
 education necessary for the profession of teaching, and 
 to keep Andrew. 
 
 Having arranged everything with her father's kind old 
 lawyer, with prim and polite but inexorable decision, 
 Katharine made known to her only near kindred the 
 Anstruther-Antrobuses, who were violently disapproving 
 of all her proceedings, that she, as guardian of the infant 
 Andrew, represented the elder branch of the Antrobuses, 
 which from immemorial ages had always acted as seemed 
 best without reference to any junior. The letter, consider- 
 ing the composer's age, was monumental. It staggered the 
 younger branch, and as Gilbert, Heaven knew, had given
 
 6 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 them trouble enough and his daughters had not even the 
 good looks of the family, they washed their hands of the 
 whole concern. 
 
 The girls worked with relentless earnestness, and with 
 the same grim determination they adored the baby. 
 
 The gift of laughter is often hereditary, and it rarely 
 goes with rejected manuscript. It did not often strike 
 them to smile, they had a thousand other things to do ; 
 an insurmountable maidenliness in all three made them 
 too shy for caresses, and it can safely be presumed that, 
 in the whole course of his well-cared-for infancy, Andrew 
 never listened to one light or purposeless word. 
 
 During her progress B. A. -wards it is only the exceptional 
 woman who can relax sufficiently to suit the pappy mind 
 of a baby not her own. 
 
 The very year their scanty funds gave out, an excellent 
 opportunity presented itself, and they started school. 
 The youngest was then just sixteen. It was a day school, 
 however, so they could all go on with their own educa- 
 tion and begin Andrew's. This they did in the best and 
 most generous way, but there was very little left for food. 
 Besides, the ladies did not care for food ; they were im- 
 mersed in higher matters. The food was often very 
 forbidding, and Andrew had a fastidious appetite. Whity- 
 brown stewed steak got mixed in very early with his con- 
 ception of great and good women. 
 
 Andrew could very well have taken scholarships, and 
 would have rejoiced in the chance of helping himself, but 
 his sisters did not approve of scholarships for Andrew. 
 There are certain women who must always be doing their 
 duty to the bitter end, no matter who may suffer. It 
 had never been necessary for the Antrobus boys to take 
 scholarships, and Andrew certainly should not be the first 
 to begin. Andrew, for his part, always did as he was told. 
 
 When he was ten years of age his sisters sent him to the 
 most exclusive and expensive preparatory school they 
 could find. After that, for only four months in the year, 
 did he ever know comparative emptiness, but he used to
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 7 
 
 wonder with dumb depression if his sisters ever knew any- 
 thing else. But they sent him to Eton, and then after 
 a distinguished school record, followed by a more distin- 
 guished 'Varsity one, he came home at last to look out for 
 some career suitable to his genius and name. 
 
 The blood of the dreamer had always interfered some- 
 what with the practical exploitation of Andrew, and 
 looking for work under the auspices of his sisters, although 
 a unique, was a soul-searching experience. He was 
 going through it with much fortitude when a great- 
 uncle died and he became a rich man. 
 
 The yoke of the women, in spite of their goodness, 
 had lain heavy upon Andrew's young life, but now at 
 last his own man, without a moment's hesitation he took 
 Katharine by storm, the law into his own hands. With 
 not so much as a glimmer of business instinct he insisted 
 upon the school, now a flourishing one, being made over 
 with no premium worth mentioning to the French mistress, 
 an astute person who knew Andrew, and transferring its 
 principals to his lovely Surrey home. 
 
 It was a fine rambling irregular old block of grey stone, 
 deep-toned mellow brick, and rich red-tilted roofs, built 
 haphazard. It told stories of many a period. An Antrobus 
 in the Tudor times had brought home with him from his 
 travels queer foreign notions, which time had naturalized. 
 A good Jacobean had restored the west wing. The Georges 
 had happily passed it by, and the other periods were now 
 all friends together in their common vesture of flower- 
 starred green. There was a little decorous Dutch garden 
 under the very shadow of a stately Italian parterre, and 
 a riot of English roses everywhere overflowed all bounds. 
 The park was as unpremeditated and as irregular as the 
 house. Rich zones of pasture land were plumped, appa- 
 rently of their own choosing, into wild reaches of heather 
 and pine, and they all stretched out to a wood of chestnuts 
 and birch and great old oaks on one side, and on the other 
 to a half moon of low hills, heather and thyme scented, 
 steeped all through the summer in a deep haze of blue.
 
 8 " WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Andrew made the whole place over to his sisters and 
 begged them to rest and take their ease. The radiant, 
 renewing joy of Andrew in being able at last to turn the 
 tables, and to be the giver and the protector, touched in- 
 articulate unknown depths in his worn sisters. Their very 
 pride put an obligation upon them. Their indefatigable 
 consciences were involved. -. 
 
 They made superhuman efforts to do as Andrew 
 entreated. In trying to rest they worked harder than 
 ever they had done in their lives. They worked themselves 
 to the bone. School-keeping was in comparison a light 
 and frivolous amusement. In order to relieve the painful 
 tension, Katharine scolded the servants and made Andrew 
 very uncomfortable in his fine house, but all in vain. The 
 poison of unloved duty and " going without " had soaked 
 into the marrow of their bones, and no human effort could 
 eject it. 
 
 They said nothing, of course. These things remain 
 mute in the women who experience them. But Andrew 
 knew. He had seen too much of the lives of old-fashioned, 
 anxious women not to have had the hideous details of 
 household economy branded into him. It was not the 
 frequent change of cooks, and the varying quality in the 
 menus that distressed him, but he was pursued by a wear- 
 ing conviction that when he was absent they ate up the 
 scraps and drank cooking sherry. Of one sort of woman 
 Andrew knew too much ! 
 
 His path was indeed a prickly one, for now that he was 
 the prosperous member of the family his two elder sisters 
 tyrannized over him after a fashion their generosity 
 would have made impossible had he still been dependent 
 upon them. 
 
 He took no notice of their petty bullying, and begged 
 them to eat proper food. He went so far as to confiscate 
 all but the best brands of wine the cellar contained. 
 
 They had so few active interests in life, his poor sisters, 
 and he so many ! Besides, now that they had a little 
 time in which to think of themselves and felt justified
 
 " WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 9 
 
 the future of Andrew being happily assured in number- 
 ing doctors' bills amongst their legitimate expenses, it 
 was found that Adeline, the youngest sister, was suffering 
 from a mortal disease, and that the two others consisted 
 chiefly of nerves in a state of anarchy. 
 
 Sophia, when not engaged in helping Katharine to bully 
 Andrew, was pathetically anxious to do as he desired. 
 So she gave up her classical studies and took to reading 
 modern novels chosen for her at random by Andrew, and 
 one day, as she lay on her back patiently trying to master 
 the contents of one, some little vital cord snapped within 
 her, and she died. The doctor gave the disease a fine 
 Latin name, but his wife, who also had studied medicine, 
 read the book and pronounced that to have been the 
 cause of death. A woman's wits can generally get to the 
 root of the matter. 
 
 The fact that his prosperity brought so little relief to his 
 faithful guardians profoundly grieved Andrew, but he 
 had established a laboratory upon his ground-floor, and 
 a man cannot be altogether unhappy when he is looking 
 for the soul of things in slime and the romance of all the 
 worlds in radium. Besides, he now rioted magnificently 
 in meetings of learned confreres delighted to welcome to 
 their ranks a wholly devoted enthusiast of ample means. 
 It is so often paupers who are all too passionately ready to 
 offer themselves up on the altars of science, and paupers 
 need financing, and science is poor. Andrew now fre- 
 quently dined in London. Sometimes he slept there. 
 Occasionally driven to it by relatives, he sat out dances 
 with bewildering young ladies who did all the talking. 
 For the rich branch having inspected his premises took 
 forcible possession of him, and Andrew, having been 
 trained to obedience and hating strife, meekly gave in. 
 
 They put him up for the right clubs, compelled him to 
 know the right people, and insisted upon his learning 
 bridge of sorts. They even made him go out now and 
 again with a golf outfit, which, unless well watched, he 
 generally dropped by the way.
 
 io "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 It was under the auspices of the Anstruther-Antrobuses 
 he first met Audrey Vansittart. 
 
 Audrey was penniless. The aunt whose heiress she was 
 supposed to be, and who had given her her atrociously 
 bad bringing up, had just died, leaving nothing behind her 
 but debts and a solemn injunction upon her niece to 'get 
 settled without delay lest worse befall. There were 
 stories, it seemed, in regard to Audrey. Even at eighteen 
 she gave great promise. 
 
 Her aunt had always looked upon life as a huge and 
 somewhat malignant joke, and had for many years lived 
 sumptuously upon an annuity, so that Audrey had always 
 enjoyed every luxury. Thus her position was now a 
 critical one. For one unused to corners she found herself 
 in a very tight corner indeed.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HER mother and her grandmother before her had also 
 given much early promise, a promise not entirely 
 belied by later events ; but in their case the thing 
 had been done in the best way, a way utterly impossible 
 to a pauper. They had been triumphant over all their 
 enemies, and had each died still beautiful and in the 
 odour of the sanctity then most in vogue. 
 
 They had given but little real anxiety to their family. 
 It was another story with Audrey, however. A pauper 
 with proclivities is a danger to society. It was, therefore, 
 greatly to the credit of Lady Treherne, her mother's 
 cousin, that she put her own feelings entirely aside, and 
 offered to give Audrey her first chance. For, in spite of 
 the adventures attributed to Audrey, she had only just 
 been stripped for the start when her aunt died. 
 
 Lady Treherne put the case quite frankly before the 
 girl. She would give her a clear three months' show in a 
 perfect environment for success, all appointments lavishly 
 provided ; but the matter must be decided for good or 
 for ill within the specified limit of time ; not a day beyond 
 it would she allow. 
 
 Her son, the heir to important estates, would be coming 
 home in Jhe autumn, and if she had not certain other of 
 the boasted advantages of her family, she had, at any rate, 
 the one conscience among them, and sooner than bring 
 Percival into direct contact with a Vansittart on her last 
 stand she would pray that a tiger might devour him. 
 
 II
 
 12 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Lady Treherne liked a metaphor with some probability 
 about it, and Percival shot big game. 
 
 It was a sporting offer. Audrey promptly accepted it, 
 and all might have gone well had she not already met 
 Larry Carfax. 
 
 She had begun practically at seventeen, and had had 
 several affairs within the year ; but she loved Larry with 
 something that came as near to passion at its flood as is 
 possible to eighteen. 
 
 If she married him now, as she had, of course, intended 
 to do had her aunt left her the fortune for which they 
 were both waiting, he would have to leave his regiment at 
 once. Larry couldn't spell, so no one in his senses would 
 have him for a secretary. It would mean the Poor-house, 
 therefore, or some indistinct colony for the present, and 
 for the future, too, so far as human foresight could pierce, 
 for Larry's uncle, a person calculated to live for ever, 
 would undoubtedly disinherit him. Even with a fortune, 
 a Vansittart promised to be a serious difficulty to the 
 old man. 
 
 Larry was only too ardently ready to face any vague 
 ruin for Audrey's sake. He was young and simple and 
 irresponsible, and he loved her dearly, although young. 
 Audrey was neither simple nor irresponsible, and she had 
 no vocation for being a pauper, still less had she any for 
 making one of Larry. 
 
 Besides being quite as selfish, Audrey was much more 
 keenly personal to herself than are most very young girls ; 
 but frorri her very babyhood she had always hated being 
 a spoke in anyone's wheel, and to be one in Larry's was 
 peculiarly odious to her. The more she thought of it 
 the less she liked it. At the same time, the more she 
 loved Larry. But anything may happen in three months, 
 and Larry was safe at Gibraltar. She would have a free 
 hand, and could act as though he were non-existent, and 
 find out about all sorts of things. Perhaps Larry might 
 be duplicated after all ; who could tell ? So buoyed up 
 by faith, hope and charity, she took her trials superbly.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 13 
 
 Virtue, for once in its life, was being its own reward in an 
 entirely satisfactory way. 
 
 The very thought of her disinterested kindness to an 
 undesirable orphan often sent thrills through the happy 
 chaperon. She did her best to look like a benediction in 
 general society. 
 
 Before the first month was out there were two unex- 
 ceptionable openings for Audrey on offer. The second 
 month was in its last days, however, and Audrey still 
 hesitated. The time was short, decisive action imperative. 
 
 By this time Andrew Antrobus had become more or less 
 articulate, and made the third opportunity. 
 
 Lady Treherne recalled the terms of the compact to 
 Audrey, and gave her three days in which to decide. 
 The thing must be done thoroughly, irrevocably, and with 
 distinction before Percival came home. The men were 
 willing. All that now remained to be done was to send 
 out the wedding-cards and arrange about the trousseau. 
 Audrey's own higher self must tell her that even in her 
 exceptional case things must not bear the impress of too 
 indelicate a haste. As all the world knew, she im- 
 pressively remarked, she could explain a great deal, 
 but she must have a full month in which to do it. 
 
 To give Lady Treherne her due, she knew nothing of 
 Larry, he was altogether Audrey's own affair, and she 
 had made the most searching investigations into the 
 prospects of those she had submitted to the girl's in- 
 spection. She did her part nobly, and had always given 
 Audrey credit for an unusual amount of prompt common- 
 sense, and a marked absence of sentiment. 
 
 It would have surprised her immensely to see how 
 drearily sentimental the soundest common-sense may 
 become upon a moonlit night in Mayfair. 
 
 It did not even strike Audrey to consult anyone upon 
 this momentous occasion. She had not a friend in the 
 world who could make the best of a bad bargain, any better 
 than herself, and Larry was for her to dispose of, and not 
 for other people. She kept on hoping until the very last
 
 14 
 
 moment. For two whole days she waited for something 
 to happen, for the gods to give some sign. 
 
 But the heavens were as brass. The gods were silent. 
 She went to her room whistling the last new tune, and 
 finished it before she be^an to think. 
 
 Lady Treherne, listening in her own room, felt relieved, 
 and yet she was sorry the girl should be so heartless. 
 How different it was from the never-to-be-forgotten 
 day upon which she had accepted dear Robert, now, 
 thank God, in Heaven. Oblivious of her pious paradox, 
 she took up Goulburn's sermons and composed her 
 thoughts for the night. 
 
 When she had finished her tune, Audrey sat down by her 
 window, and thought of Larry with her whole strength. 
 He came so near to her that night, so immeasurably dear. 
 She seemed suddenly able to look at him, and through 
 him, and all round him ; there was nothing about Larry 
 she did not know, and no argument on earth could ever 
 make either of them fit for even comparative starvation. 
 So she simply ruled out Larry, and decided not to tell 
 him anything until all was over. Then she steadied her- 
 self to think the rest out, but instead of thinking she began 
 to cry, the dreadful slow tears of the first great sorrow, 
 which seemed to be forced out one by one. They were 
 so laborious and hard ; they hurt her as though they 
 were atoms of sand. She might have been a woman 
 grown, who through experience has learnt to compare, 
 so strongly and maturely did she suffer. And, also, she 
 might have been the most treacle-hearted miss in 
 London, so demoralized with misery did she become. 
 Every ridiculous foolishness she had been warned against 
 all her life came flooding in upon Audrey, and a thousand 
 others of which she had never so much as heard. She 
 was soaked in the folly of the ages, dissolved in their 
 weakness. 
 
 And then the clock struck midnight, and she remem- 
 bered that the time was short. If her aunt had taught 
 her nothing else, she had taught her the imbecility of
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 15 
 
 giving way to feelings in the moment for action. So she 
 pulled herself up, and did her hair, and put on her dress- 
 ing-gown, and with the throbbing life of London beating 
 in upon her, dry-eyed and keen-witted, she stood up to the 
 inevitable. 
 
 An aptitude for affairs had from the first been one of 
 the gifts of Audrey, and her outlook upon the proposed deal 
 in her person was of the most primitive order ; her reflections 
 were thus very much to the point. 
 
 Time now meant everything. Retreat was blocked. 
 She must go on somehow. Larry, as well as Percival, 
 would be back in a month, and if she saw him for one 
 five minutes she would undoubtedly marry him and upset 
 everybody's apple-cart. The ancient alternatives were 
 clearly not for her. She could neither dig nor beg. 
 Besides, she had not a rood of ground to dig in, nor a 
 friend in the world to beg from. As for starving, she had 
 too good an appetite to conceive of it. And one can't 
 stand still. One can never stand still ; one must go on 
 on on s omehow. 
 
 Neither the past nor the present was of the smallest 
 assistance to her. There was nothing available now but 
 the future. And marriage was the only stepping-stone 
 to that, and one must secure something ! The rest was 
 a blurred agony, a foolish mist of tears. 
 
 One must settle first about the men, the only possible 
 means to any end, the indispensable agents in any for- 
 ward movement, and too urgent now to be any longer 
 warded off. 
 
 The first two she found, upon close and detailed con- 
 sideration, too difficult altogether. The little likenesses 
 to Larry that ran in and out of their unlikenesses made 
 her faint and sick in the cool air of night. 
 
 They had, it is true, all the things she wanted. Even 
 then she felt stirrings in her of immense necessities, things 
 which would call for worlds of space for their platform ; 
 the cry for life, free and limitless, was in her ears. But 
 the men !
 
 16 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 They would be wanting so much, those two : be demand- 
 ing as a right everything she would have showered on 
 Larry as a matter of course. She was swept and swamped 
 in some great wave of mutiny. Her whole being rose in 
 revolt against some unknown bondage, a dreadful sense 
 of helplessness in strong, compelling hands took hold of 
 her and shook and shattered her. 
 
 To be bound or coerced, or perhaps even bullied, into 
 doing his will and not your own by one inevitable man 
 it was an inconceivable sort of insult ! Her breath came 
 in short dry sobs, her heart beat wildly, her eyeballs were 
 on fire ; she felt so outraged and lonely, and the night was 
 so pitiless. It told her things hard to brook, awful to 
 deal with. It took her courage away. 
 
 The new current of agitation brought a sudden flush 
 into her stream of thought, and all at once, by no diversion 
 of her making, it was driven at full flood towards Andrew. 
 Poor old, surprised Mr. Antrobus, who thought her an 
 angel ! 
 
 He hadn't half the things the others had, but he would 
 never encroach, or try to bend her to his horrible will, or 
 keep her fussing round after him. He would just worship 
 her afar off and leave her alone. He was of such small 
 account, Andrew ! He hardly counted at all, and he was 
 so kind. He could take care of her and admire her, and 
 be always absorbed in his own affairs. 
 
 And, after all, what did the usual things matter now 
 when she had come to the end of everything ? Nothing 
 mattered any more, least of all Andrew or herself. He 
 would clothe her, and house her, and feed her, and he was 
 less b'ke Larry than any human being she had ever met. 
 Besides, she could give him the little he would want with- 
 out injuring Larry at all really. 
 
 Her decision clinched, Audrey sobbed herself to sleep. 
 
 The next day, in a gentle, docile way that went to his 
 heart, she accepted Andrew, and in the same spirit of 
 meekness a few weeks later she married him. 
 
 Her prophetic instinct did not play her false. Andrew
 
 'WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 17 
 
 counted hardly at all in the honeymoon, but so many other 
 things did count, that she found it a most wearing period. 
 Larry's letters of reasonless reproach, after all she had 
 done for him, were a little too much. They kept her alive, 
 however ; otherwise, she might have yawned herself to 
 death. 
 
 Audrey had never been properly bored before in all her 
 life, and she did not know quite what to make of it. No 
 one could have behaved more sweetly, however ; she 
 entirely satisfied Andrew. 
 
 When he knew definitely of the heaven that lay before 
 him, in the most gentle and considerate way Andrew 
 had established his sisters in a beautiful old house on the 
 edge of the valley, but he could not forbid Katharine his 
 house. She now bored Audrey even more than the 
 honeymoon had done. Adeline touched her a little, and 
 made her feel uncomfortable in a queer way. She rather 
 resented the influence of Adeline. There was a sort of 
 co vert -impertinence in it. 
 
 Both women had taught girls in order to live, and 
 remembered all their worst points. 
 
 Still, Audrey kept her temper, considering the size and 
 quality of her conscience, in rather a remarkable way. 
 They were so old and dull, Andrew's sisters ! She had a 
 half-tender contempt for them ; as active enemies they 
 did not seem worth while. 
 
 She managed Andrew's house with an amount of dainty 
 capacity that made Katharine detest her even more than 
 she had felt sure would be the case. She was charming to 
 Andrew's quiet country neighbours. She found them 
 hopeless, not even worth shocking. Perhaps the con- 
 sciousness that she could have shocked them after a fashion 
 which must have permanently transformed their whole 
 outlook upon life, kept her steady. It is the power of 
 which we are least sure that we are always most anxious 
 to exploit. 
 
 She did her duties very prettily, and night and day she 
 longed for Larry.
 
 i8 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 For lack .of her elevating influence Larry now was 
 fast going to the devil. And one day a legacy amounting 
 to eight hundred pounds a year fell, as it were from the 
 blue, upon Audrey ; no great fortune, but just enough 
 to have made it possible, had they married, for Larry 
 to remain in his regiment. Moreover, the uncle had 
 lately become a teetotaler and a vegetarian, and being 
 wholly unfit for reformation so radical, there were solid 
 grounds for hope. 
 
 Audrey was immensely sorry for herself. If only she 
 had waited, been a milliner, or swept a crossing, or gone 
 into a tea shop, or anything, just for a little year or two ! 
 And those big forces that would have lain dormant perhaps 
 in an active existence, in the dead level of dullness, and 
 the sleepy air, began to swell in Audrey in the most alarm- 
 ing way. Big smouldering fires of passion were bursting 
 into flame in her. 
 
 Sometimes destructive forces, which she had never felt 
 before, would shake her as though she were a rat. She 
 had never been particularly vindictive, she was too full 
 of sunny good humour ; but now she was always wanting 
 to be avenged upon something. Everything became so 
 intolerable that she was driven even into thinking of her 
 health. 
 
 Never in all her life until she met Andrew had she had 
 the ghost of a headache ; now the very sight of him gave 
 her a desperate one. Her condition must be rather 
 serious ! She would be getting cancer next, like Adeline ! 
 Ah ! but she had lost more by her miserable haste than she 
 had ever suspected. To be ready to take possession of the 
 whole world, and to be dumped down in Surrey ! 
 
 Each in his turn is given some desert in which to find 
 or lose himself, and Audrey was rather young for deserts, 
 and the best way in which to apply them. She cried a 
 great deal. There was a pathos in her laughter that 
 wrung the heart of Andrew. He wondered if she were 
 growing pale, but did not venture to inquire. She was 
 so sacred and so remote a trust !
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 19 
 
 All this, however, was nearly three years ago. Audrey 
 had given up crying. She was no longer pale, but with a 
 strange little smile on her grave child's mouth, with 
 orderly deliberation she was dividing the beautiful jewels 
 Andrew had given her from her own worthless trinkets, 
 getting ready to run away from Andrew with Larry.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE undeveloped intelligence of Audrey, full of sur- 
 prises which so grievously affronted his sisters, 
 Andrew found entrancing. He had suffered many 
 things from the developed intelligences of women, and 
 his sisters had never surprised him. Their mental data 
 had always gone by clockwork ; he could always calculate 
 down to the decimal of a fraction what next to expect 
 from them. 
 
 To watch the unfolding of a wonder such as Audrey 
 became to Andrew a secret, sacred, and most absorbing 
 method of research, a rest, and a refreshment. He 
 watched her as a gardener, tired of delving in the wormy 
 earth, might watch the unfolding of a new experiment in 
 roses. On his return from a scientific meeting in which 
 a Personal God, as became a concourse of blameless and 
 God-fearing savants, had been politely, apologetically, 
 but firmly excluded from the scheme of creation, she 
 restored in him all the old warm human beliefs. No 
 God, save only the gentle God of the Christian, could 
 have made Audrey ! She was, to her husband, the one 
 right note in the striving discord, the finger-post to all 
 truth. She was his hope and his salvation, a halo of 
 ineffable romance about his shaggy head, a light to his 
 searching feet ! 
 
 Science, however, is engrossing. Andrew had little 
 time for dallying in the magical atmosphere of feminine 
 surprises. Audrey had, to do a great deal of her un- 
 
 20
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 21 
 
 folding alone, in an atmosphere altogether alien to her. 
 There were girls in her neighbourhood, of course, and she 
 could have played games with them, but a game depends 
 so much upon whom you play it with. Games were too 
 full of memories of Larry for Audrey they made the girls 
 appear colourless. She had no children. She did not 
 want any. It did not strike her that a child of Andrew's 
 could be very interesting. It would be always reminding 
 her of a test-tube. It did not occur to her, as it might 
 to a better brought-up girl, that with a mind to improve 
 and a gift for music, she need never be idle. 
 
 In the dearth of all rational amusement she began to 
 loaf. 
 
 It was at this period that Katharine, having evolved 
 subtle instincts from the contemplation of Audrey, coupled 
 with sundry inrushing memories of her hideous slavery 
 to the like of her, began fairly to prowl about the house, 
 and that Andrew's absences in Germany became more 
 frequent. 
 
 Audrey liked peace, and in her elfish way she was rather 
 sorry for Katharine her back was so long and unyielding, 
 it must ache horribly ; so she gave Katharine the run of 
 the house, and went out into the garden. Katharine 
 followed her ; she seemed to be pursued by an all-seeing} 
 all-comprehending B.A. It spoilt the flowers. Besides, 
 when flowers are your only friends, they get to know too 
 much, and they are so bewilderingly innocent that in the 
 end you are afraid of them. 
 
 And now Larry's uncle died after an immense meal of 
 vegetables. So Larry got all his money and estate. 
 Andrew was still away, Katharine still in hot pursuit. 
 Audrey craved for solitude and a fitting atmosphere in 
 which to indulge her grief, so in sheer desperation she 
 started a motor-car and frequently fled to London. 
 
 Although undeveloped in her higher parts, Audrey had 
 instincts. She knew where danger lay, and sedulously 
 avoided it. Her meeting with Larry was pure accident. 
 When she met him, however, ; Larry was in need in
 
 22 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 direst, most urgent need of reform. And the spirit 
 of the reformer shot up like a consuming flame in Audrey. 
 
 It burnt up shrewd common sense, the gallery of 
 highly-coloured illustrations of current life bequeathed 
 her as sole dowry by her aunt, her own practical ex- 
 perience. 
 
 She only remembered the need of Larry, and her power 
 to help. Larry gave readily to treatment, but suffered 
 several bad relapses. His prosperity but reminded him 
 of his pain, and he was doing his best to rid himself 
 of the reminding burthen. The growing exigencies of the 
 case brought him into ever-increasing contact with 
 Audrey. 
 
 In her character of reforming angel she was irresistible, 
 and Larry's resistance to any temptation, never of a very 
 high order, had become atrophied by disuse. 
 
 They were two unawakened young animals, trained in a 
 bad school, mad and miserable, and one day they fell. 
 
 Even this only partially woke up Audrey. She was 
 still dazed with love. The horror of loneliness had slipped 
 from her heart. For the rest, one could hardly count 
 Andrew, and the others would be overjoyed to get rid of 
 her on any terms. No one wanted her but Larry, or 
 could be hurt by her, and Larry would take care of 
 her. 
 
 There was a certain audacious sense of honour deep 
 down in the grain of both boy and girl. The folly once 
 committed, they would let no one suffer but themselves. 
 They would stand together hand-in-hand and face the 
 music. 
 
 They were sorry, too after a littls, when they had 
 time to consider. Once, as they looked at each other in 
 silence for, with sin comes the fear of words- they 
 saw in each other's eyes something so sad with the eternal 
 sadness of the ages that their hands fell apart, their eyes 
 shut out the vision, and a shame unfathomable and un- 
 speakable took hold of Audrey. It was not any shame 
 of Larry, or Andrew ; still less of Andrew's sisters, or of
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 23 
 
 the world. Audrey had courage and experience, and she 
 was very shrewd. She knew perfectly well that after the 
 storm would come the calm. 
 
 Larry was very rich and his name was an historic 
 one, and these things go a long way. She had no doubt 
 at all that in time they would gain, at any rate, partial 
 immunity from their madness. Besides, together, and 
 with everything anyone could want, she must be always 
 happy, and what do a few little years of being cut by 
 frumps matter, after aH, when you have all the rest ? 
 Larry had the whip hand of the team now, and he had 
 always known how to drive ! 
 
 The shame of Audrey had to do neither with facts nor 
 with people. It was before something within herself that 
 she hid her face and shuddered and sobbed something 
 so great that it crushed her with its greatness ; so pure 
 that her soil seemed to be indelible ; so full of anguish 
 and mercy that her heart was dissolved and melted. 
 For one extraordinary moment she wished that if she 
 could not be good again she might die. The next, the 
 consolations of Larry made life more excellent than 
 death. 
 
 And now she was burning all her boats preparatory to 
 running away with Larry. 
 
 Even as she sorted the jewels she felt the meanness of 
 wanting to return the gifts of Andrew whilst discarding 
 his person ! She bit her lip and laughed. " Get thee 
 behind me, Satan," she said, as she thrust aside the 
 diamond necklace, the emerald star, the bracelet of strange 
 device that Andrew had brought her from Egypt. But 
 her eyes clung fondly to the great king sapphire in a little 
 half circle of a crown that he had brought her only a 
 month ago from Paris. 
 
 It was the loveliest thing she had. It matched her 
 better than all the rest ; it was more like herself. There 
 was an austere simplicity about the other things ; but 
 this it danced and sang and lived ! 
 
 It was meant for the mystic warmth of summer nights
 
 24 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 with the glitter of electric light, not very far off. " And 
 to think of never having worn it, not even once, and the 
 others only at the dullest of dinners ! " She sighed 
 despairingly and began to wonder with a freakish change 
 of mood why on earth Andrew had chosen it, with its 
 fairy mocking suggestion of things of which Andrew knew 
 nothing. 
 
 She was still wondering, when Andrew opened the door, 
 and paused to look at her. In his usual humble way he 
 had knocked twice, but Audrey was thinking so hard she 
 did not hear him. When she started and looked up, there 
 he was with his abominable far-away, kind smile, and 
 this time with the most amazing and discomposing tender- 
 ness and compassion thrown in ! 
 
 This was the last straw ! Andrew was bad enough 
 always, but with unexpected additions ! Audrey throbbed 
 with rage. To look like that now, as though she 
 were a child to be petted, or an idiot to be forgiven, 
 or a doll to be played with ; and she except for 
 that one instant when she was longing for the sapphires, 
 and forgot, in the very act of putting away all childish 
 things for ever. When she felt so old and worried 
 that for all she knew her hair might be turning grey, and 
 her face wrinkling, and there was Andrew smiling in the 
 most infuriating way. 
 
 She clenched the circlet with her small, strong hand. 
 She could have scratched Andrew with it. 
 
 These revulsions of feeling were not unusual with 
 Audrey when she looked at Andrew. Her impulses were 
 not by nature disreputable. It was always some dim 
 vague sense of an untold amount of latent energy in 
 Andrew which might all be expended for her benefit that 
 agitated Audrey. 
 
 And every minute his smile became more insufferable, 
 and now his spectacled eyes appeared to be melting on 
 her. This was sheer impertinence ! And he seemed to 
 be glued to the hearth-rug, and she hanging on the very 
 edge of a precipice !
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 25 
 
 Now this was Andrew all over. He seemed to be made 
 only to be helpless and inconsiderate, and incapable of 
 understanding anything, and to make you feel a beast. 
 
 " May I sit down, dear ? " inquired Andrew ; "I want 
 to speak to you." 
 
 Still holding the circlet, she swept the rest of the jewels 
 behind a pillow to make room for him, and nodded. She 
 was too angry with Andrew to speak. 
 
 He looked round the pretty room ; at the simple 
 treasures on the walls. He had chosen them with such 
 care that they should not be out of harmony with the 
 delicate young hush of Audrey's presence. 
 
 He looked at the old carven spinning-wheel he had 
 chosen to match with her sedateness, at the jewels on her 
 slender fingers ; and as his eyes travelled back to hers 
 they were dark with sorrow. 
 
 Audrey sighed. 
 
 " They've been inventing some mean little scandal about 
 me ; something must come out of Katharine's malignant 
 three months' prowl. But goodness gracious ! if they 
 could only know how grossly inadequate their poor little 
 imaginations are to the occasion ! " 
 
 " Well ? " she sweetly inquired. 
 
 " I don't know what to say, dear, or how to say it. 
 You are not a girl to whom any man has the right to bring 
 bad news. You are not made for such things." 
 
 " I wonder just what I am made for," she said with a 
 quick, mirthless laugh. 
 
 Andrew's eyes, had she cared to read them, could have 
 told her ! 
 
 " Yes," she said. " Please go on." 
 
 Andrew's apologetic ways were so odd. She some- 
 times wondered if he were quite right in his mind. 
 
 " You know, dear, that young Forester's father made me 
 his sole guardian." Andrew's voice was more stodgy than 
 usual, and besides sorting the jewels she had several other 
 things to do. She felt unusually tired, and looked very 
 young and pathetic. Andrew could not bear it ; he looked
 
 26 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 at his toes. " It was an unusual will ; there were no re- 
 strictions whatever. Acting under what I considered to 
 be the best advice, I allowed all his money to remain in 
 his uncle's bank. The interest offered was that legally 
 allowed to trustees, and the arrangement was an immense 
 convenience to the boy's uncle. The bank, I had every 
 reason to believe, was as safe as the Funds." He paused 
 and hesitated. " I did not like the uncle, and so was 
 specially careful to be just to him, even although I made 
 every inquiry. It was a fatal error of judgment on my 
 part there was a run on the bank last week, and on 
 Monday the doors were shut. You would not understand, 
 dearest, were I to explain. The details are so dull." 
 
 The ghost of his old smile played for an instant about 
 his mouth as he glanced at the circlet in her lap. " To 
 cut the story short, I am responsible for Forester's money, 
 and it amounts to a large sum." 
 
 " Oh," said Audrey in a curious surprised way. " And 
 must you pay it ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said gently. He paused to collect himself, 
 to choose the words that would least hurt her. And yet 
 she must know ! She must be made to understand ! 
 For three days now he had waited in helpless anguish. 
 The horror of injuring Audrey was a pain so cruel and 
 intolerable that he hardly knew how to cope with it. It 
 was like ill-using a child such a child as she was ! so 
 unprepared for the sad realities of life ! and yet, since 
 the facts were clamouring at the door, she must both meet 
 and face them. 
 
 " Yes, I must pay. It will take all we have, I think. 
 We must sell this place and the Beeches. Fortunately, 
 the entail was cut in my grandfather's time." 
 
 " Sell this place and the Beeches ? " 
 
 She stared at Andrew, put down the jewel, and slowly 
 stood up. 
 
 " And where are we are all of you going to live ? " 
 she inquired. 
 
 " I don't know not yet. Thank God, child, you have
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 27 
 
 your little income and these ! " He glanced at the 
 jewels. " They're yours absolutely. It's quite right," 
 he said soothingly to some quick alteration in her face ; 
 " you need not feel one qualm. I wish they were finer, 
 dearest." 
 
 " It's rather stuffy," said Audrey, going to the window 
 and throwing open the casement. 
 
 She looked out ; then turned to look at Andrew. Her 
 anger against him had taken another direction. 
 
 " Do you know anything at all about business ? " she 
 asked in a light, hard voice. 
 
 " I am afraid I don't." 
 
 " And you trust everybody ? " 
 
 " One does naturally, I think, when life goes well." 
 
 He spoke with hesitation. 
 
 " I don't ! " she said promptly. " I look and find out 
 and understand. Perhaps stirring up messes makes such 
 a fine thing of life that there's no time." 
 
 He looked in great perplexity at this new Audrey. 
 
 " I know it's been my own fault, my own fatal error 
 of judgment," he said at last, gently ; " I can offer no 
 excuse." 
 
 " As if I wanted excuses ! As if I was thinking of the 
 beastly money ! As if you weren't the most aggravating 
 human being I ever met, Andrew ! As if I didn't know 
 how much worse being your own fault makes it ! And 
 where are your sisters to go ? And what do they say 
 about it ? " 
 
 " I haven't told them ; how could I until I had told 
 you ? They have always worked hard," he said sadly. 
 " Katharine, I feel sure, will begin to work again for a 
 short time until I am ready to help them. That is all. 
 It is very hard." 
 
 " Hard ! " she said, with a stony laugh. " To begin 
 again to teach little wretches she despises, and to have to 
 listen all day to yelling discords on horrible pianos made 
 by creatures neither of them know anything about, 
 and are misjudging and detesting the whole time, and
 
 28 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 one with cancer and the other all back and nerves ! It 
 certainly is rather hard ! " 
 
 Her face was white ; her laugh, Andrew thought, to 
 say the least of it, wild. 
 
 " My poor little girl ! " he murmured. " My poor little 
 girl ! " She was so young, and unproven, and fragile, 
 so unfit for the ugliness of life ! He felt criminally helpless, 
 and she was swaying in a curious way. It was a move- 
 ment unfamiliar to him in women, and very alarming. 
 With commendable self-command he gathered her up 
 in his gaunt arms and laid her out on the sofa. 
 
 Audrey was sufficiently alive to enjoy the experience, 
 and in spite of her dainty delicacy, singularly devoid of 
 fastidiousness. She was vividly, invitingly, intelligently 
 open to the enjoyment of any new sensation. If not 
 unconscious at the moment of her death, she would have 
 enjoyed even that, if fittingly staged. 
 
 The sensation of being carried like an umbrella in 
 Andrew's arms fascinated her. 
 
 " Lie still and rest, little girl," was the only thing 
 that Andrew could think of to say, and even that he said 
 limply. He patted her in a timid sort of way as though 
 she were an unknown specimen that might sting. Then 
 he stood up before her like a great lean culprit. The 
 sight of her delicate flower of a face upturned to him 
 brought home in a rush the unforgivable folly of his 
 careless trust, his unprincipled kindness to the Forester 
 uncle, worse than all his selfish insensate glee in being quit 
 of the harassing business and free to go back to his re- 
 torts and Audrey. He had ruined the life of his young 
 wife, and would drive the faithful women, who, for his 
 sake had been broken, back into the strain and the turmoil 
 of slavery. 
 
 His helpless attitude of guilt, the perplexed apology 
 in his worried eyes, put Audrey fairly beyond herself. 
 How dared Andrew look like that, and she just caught 
 tight in a trap all because of his drivelling idiocy ? With 
 everything coming right, with the dawn of a new life
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 29 
 
 shining in on her, and Larry with everything ready waiting 
 for her, perhaps that very minute ! she liked dramatic 
 surprises and had left the time of her final step vague 
 and now to be interrupted at the crucial moment in this 
 outrageous, vile, cruel way ! It was impossible to move 
 a step further in her own affair till she knew more of 
 Andrew's. She was pushed straight up against an im- 
 movable barrier and Andrew, as usual, keeping every 
 little atom of him that could help anyone, shut up 
 tight. 
 
 Andrew fulfilled no want in life ! Any little section of 
 him that was ever visible to the naked eye was like the 
 nose of a hedgehog, just something that could be hurt. 
 One could never even amuse oneself by pricking it. It 
 hurts too much to see anything wriggle up and squirm. 
 If there was one thing more than another that Audrey 
 avoided it was hurting herself by hurting either things or 
 people ! 
 
 She felt too forlorn and defenceless to be idle any 
 longer staring at Andrew. It was a profitless waste of 
 time ! You might stare at Andrew for a year without 
 getting one new idea ! She sat bolt upright and glanced 
 towards heaven, then returned a brand new and a most 
 amazing Audrey to earth. 
 
 A torrent of bitter wrath dropped like dew from her 
 red child's mouth. She showed a business instinct of no 
 mean order. 
 
 " And then to tell me to lie still and rest ! " she scoffed 
 in conclusion. " So that's what I'm to do when the house 
 is tumbling about our very ears and the ground being cut 
 from under our very feet, and and every hope is being 
 swallowed up and it's all dark, dark, dark not one single 
 ray of light to guide one or keep one, or or anything, 
 and all the things waiting for one things that You 
 make me wish I was dead, Andrew. Everything to be 
 snatched away in one instant." 
 
 Her voice faltered ; a slow resentment, full of the 
 oddest entreaty, grew up in the eyes she lifted to Andrew.
 
 30 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " It's unfair," she said ; " it's horribly, abominably, 
 sickeningly unfair. You know nothing of business, or 
 of women, or men, or of anything buf those awful bottles, 
 and your sisters ; and you take away every hope, and 
 tell one to lie still and hold on to the presents ! And 
 that's you all over ! That is what comes of being a 
 genius. And now even now, you're misjudging me ! 
 You are, Andrew I'm extremely glad you're a genius. 
 It's been my greatest comfort and, oh, the way you're 
 misjudging me ! You know you are ! " she cried, with the 
 face of an accusing angel and the voice of a wood-dove. 
 " You know so little of anything, Andrew, or of anyone. 
 You have no right to judge or misjudge anything but 
 chemicals ! Why didn't you set up an alabaster image 
 of all the virtues on the green shelf and worship that, 
 and bring it presents from Paris, and apologize to it for 
 losing the money ; and tell it to lie still and rest in the 
 middle of an earthquake ? How you ever presumed to 
 marry a live girl is beyond me ! Oh, Andrew, go away ! 
 It's insulting to be standing there and misjudging me in the 
 way you're doing ! " 
 
 Andrew was speechless and immovable. 
 
 " I've got a telegram that I must take myself," she 
 said, her adorable voice more calm. " The motor's being 
 mended. Can I have the carriage or is there any car- 
 riage to have ? And when I come home I'll go to bed, 
 no one must disturb me. They can put my tea and dinner 
 I'm not ill, I want my food they can put every- 
 thing outside the door. 
 
 " I can see very well that you're hopeless in this matter. 
 I've often heard of geniuses in tight places, but I never 
 saw one before, so I must think things out all by myself, 
 and make er some fresh arrangements for the 
 moment." She paused to sigh. " In all my life no one 
 has ever helped me to do anything, or arrange anything, 
 so I must do it, as usual, all by myself. 
 
 " Andrew," she wailed ; "if you only just knew the 
 dreadful, dreadful hole you've put me into, I think even
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 31 
 
 you'd be sorry. And, Andrew," she moaned, hiding her 
 eyes, " don't look like that ! You're simply awful ! " 
 She peered at him through her fingers. " Don't, for good- 
 ness' sake, and with all there is to be done ! 
 
 " I think you'd forgive me being rude just now if 
 you knew everything," she resumed; " the simply awful 
 fix I'm in, and all from your ridiculous trusting dis- 
 position. At any rate," she said more rationally, " it's 
 the first time in all my life I've ever been rude to you. 
 I've always treated you with the greatest respect. You 
 know I have, Andrew ! And I haven't been horrid not 
 once, Andrew, to your old sisters. I've been rather nice, 
 really ! Never forget that." 
 
 " Little darling " 
 
 " Don't, for goodness' sake ! That makes things worse. 
 And I'm not little ; I'd be a tall woman if Katharine wasn't 
 a Grenadier. And I'll give you your due, Andrew, you'd 
 understand if you could. You mean well. I've always 
 felt that. But that's not enough. You know or I 
 don't suppose you do know, since you know nothing about 
 
 human beings Andrew ! " A point of light shot 
 
 up like magic in Audrey's eyes, softening their despair. 
 Her voice grew rich with motherhood. 
 
 " Andrew ! you can surely take all your bottles and 
 things with you ; no one, not even Shylock, can possibly 
 want them, and any shed will do to set them up in won't 
 that be a great comfort to you ? " 
 
 " I hadn't thought of the bottles " 
 
 " You wouldn't, being you," she promptly interrupted ; 
 he was beginning that unbearable smile again. " But 
 think of them now seriously. They'll change the subject 
 for you. If you're thinking of them you can't be think- 
 ing about losing the money at the same time. You didn't 
 mean to lose the money, and it's only when you mean to 
 do things that it matters, I suppose." She looked peculiarly 
 pathetic, her eyes were thoughtful. 
 
 " And, Andrew, whatever you do, don't say one word to 
 your sisters till I see you again, till I've thought things out."
 
 32 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 She stood up, paused and sighed. Her anger had slipped 
 from her ; her petulance was gone. She stood, her hands 
 clasped before her, delicate and stately like some tall 
 white flower. A strange arresting pathos filled with a 
 great appeal the childlike presence. 
 
 And Audrey, just as she looked then, was treasured for 
 ever in the soul of her husband.
 
 " T ARRY will never understand it," said Audrey 
 JLy miserably, tearing up her seventh telegraph- 
 form. " Never, to the day of his death ! How 
 on earth could he ? he's a man ! And it's all Andrew's 
 fault, and he deserves to be left in the lurch, if ever anyone 
 did." She sprang to her feet and flounced over to the 
 window. " To have brought us all into a hole like this 
 by sheer idiocy ! " she said with fiery indignation. " He 
 richly deserves anything ! But I can't go now," she 
 added, stamping. " I simply can't, with Andrew looking 
 like a lost sheep. Someone must take charge of him 
 and everything, and there's nobody but me that I can 
 see. And it's all very well for Larry," she mused with a 
 disturbed brow ; " but I can't go to-day. If I did, I'd 
 have to come back to-morrow to see how things were 
 going on without me ; anyone would and all the thanks 
 I'd get then would be to be turned out again as if I were 
 a mad dog. There's gratitude for you ! 
 
 " And to choose such a time to be ruined ! and the size 
 and importance of the muddle ! Certainly, when Andrew 
 sets about making a fool of himself, he does it to some 
 purpose ! It will take weeks to sort things out and 
 set them all going on the new tack whatever that is, 
 goodness knows ; I'm sure I don't. The awful, awful 
 selfishness of men ! Andrew to choose this time of all 
 others ! And the way Larry will be going on when he 
 knows ! " 
 
 33 3
 
 34 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Her lips trembled ; a tear stole out. She steadied herself 
 and returned to the table. " I'll just have to put him 
 off with as few words as possible," she said. " This isn't 
 the time to be committing yourself." 
 
 " Sorry can't come to-day," she wrote. " Letter 
 follows." 
 
 " That's it," said Audrey. " That will make him 
 understand that the thing has become suddenly in- 
 definite, and he'll have to wait a bit ; that's all. And 
 such a waste of roses," she sighed. " The awful extra- 
 vagance of Larry ! I wonder now how much he's spent 
 on flowers alone to-day ? One can't be always nagging 
 but I meant to begin on that to-morrow ! And 
 now " 
 
 There was a sensation as of boiling behind her eyeballs ; 
 the tears were plainly on their way. " This won't do," 
 she said. " I have too much to see about, and where on 
 earth am I to begin ? " She looked round rather breath- 
 lessly and caught sight of her violin. " There's no wild 
 hurry for the telegram," she said. " Larry won't be 
 expecting me till the evening. I'll practise a bit first." 
 So she put off the drive, practised steadily for half an hour, 
 and conquered three passages which for three days had 
 gaily defied her. And Ajjdrew in his laboratory listened 
 to her with a great amazement. For the life he had now 
 to offer her this Audrey was surely never made ! 
 
 He took out a little portrait of her he always kept in 
 his desk, and despair entered like iron into the heart of 
 the wretched man. It paralysed effort and perverted 
 thought. Even honest labour had lost its savour. 
 
 When Audrey had finished her last chord and put down 
 her violin, there was a glint of compassion in the way her 
 fingers lingered on it. 
 
 " I conquered you, anyway," she said ; " and you can 
 shriek and howl and squall as much as you like, which is 
 more than I can do. AH the same, I feel as if I'd been 
 whipping a baby. I can understand now," she reflected, 
 softly touching a string, " why women get into the way of
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 35 
 
 ill-treating their children when their husbands become 
 absolutely unbearable. 
 
 " It's extremely unpleasant," she said, suddenly standing 
 up, " to be feeling like that sort of person. When I was 
 young I was pretty awful, I daresay, but I used to 
 feel sure that I was really extraordinarily nice in some 
 undiscovered region in my own inside children are queer 
 things ! " A dry sob made her throat crumple up in rather 
 a startling way. " Such nonsense," she said, " when I've 
 got to write to Larry, and don't know in the least what 
 to say." 
 
 She went to the window. 
 
 " I wonder if I'm a fool," she said presently, looking 
 across the gardens and the trees, and the wide heath with 
 its clumps of pines, to the uplands and the thin veil of 
 powdery blue, along the low, long valley to the deeper blue 
 upon the horizon behind where London lay. 
 
 " If there was one single person in the world who could 
 help me to- decide or to do anything ; but there never 
 is there never has been, not once. No one has ever 
 helped me in all my life to do anything, but now and then 
 to be pretty horrid all round generally. 
 
 " Andrew's wise enough, Heaven knows," she resumed, 
 after a pause, " except where banks and uncles are con- 
 cerned. I wonder," she murmured with an elfish laugh, 
 " if I were to go straight to Andrew and put all the facts 
 of the case before him, what just exactly he'd say and 
 how he'd look ? It would be an extremely interesting 
 experiment," she said, her eyes brilliant with intelligent 
 excitement. 
 
 " If only one could follow one's imagination blind, what 
 a time one might have ! It's the want of imagination of 
 other people that makes things so bitterly hard," she 
 moaned, " and people like Larry so difficult to explain 
 things to. I never met a soldier with an ounce of imagina- 
 tion, and Larry has even less than the usual run. And 
 Andrew's is all bunged up with heavenly abstractions 
 and Katharine. 
 
 3*
 
 3 6 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 "I wonder if I'm very low, really," she said, after a 
 long look out, " or if I were at all like Nero playing waltzes 
 just now on a stringed instrument, with everything going 
 to rack and ruin round me ? Perhaps Nero had his 
 reasons like me, and as we know nothing at all about them, 
 perhaps we haven't any right to judge even Nero ; and 
 there's Andrew misjudging me as hard as he can down 
 there among his bottles. 
 
 " Dear me ! " There were tears in her eyes again, and 
 she felt plangently sorry for herself. " And in an hour or 
 so Larry'll be misjudging me just as hard among his 
 wickedly expensive roses ; and between the two of them, 
 I wish to goodness I was dead. If I'm not between the 
 devil and the deep sea, I'd just like to know what girl ever 
 was." 
 
 She realized suddenly that she was crying properly as 
 hard as she could, and her courage came running back. 
 "This won't do," she sobbed ; " it'll never do. One'll 
 want all one's wits with the the lot of them. Larry'll 
 just have to rage," she whimpered, softly mopping her 
 face, for no catastrophe on earth could make Audrey do 
 violence to her complexion. It was altogether too right 
 a note in the cosmic melody, and so far as it went she had 
 a perfect ear. " No one could desert such helpless crea- 
 tures," she protested. " And in the end it'll be good for 
 Larry, I daresay. He has a horrid temper, really, and 
 selfish is no name for him. And if he's dull about some 
 things, he can understand, at least, about Adeline's 
 cancer. That's plain enough, and I'll have just to work 
 it for all it's worth, and those awful nerves that went to 
 pieces slaving for Andrew. They must be arranged for, 
 and so must Andrew. And I'll just be vague about time. 
 Larry'll hate it ; he's so particular about your being 
 definite and keeping your appointments. I can't help 
 it," she sobbed ; " one can't please everybody and do 
 things at the same time. What Larry can't understand 
 he'll have to put up with, that's all. 
 
 " Think of what I've got to put up with myself just ! "
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 37 
 
 She wrote at full speed a letter that shook Larry to his 
 depths, and turned resolutely to the glass. 
 
 " And now I won't think any more," she said ; " no- 
 thing'll induce me. The best way of fixing them all up 
 will come without thinking. These things arrange them- 
 selves, and thinking makes everything more impossible, 
 and gives you a ghastly headache." 
 
 So she did her hair in so new and successful a way that 
 by the time the carriage came round life was again 
 possible. 
 
 She drove to a village some miles away and sent her 
 telegram and her letter. On her return, having given 
 precise orders in regard to her tea and dinner, and armed 
 herself with the last new novel, she retired to her room, 
 and all the time she diligently beat off thought. 
 
 Her methods were ingenious, her courage high ; but 
 the night was too much for her. With the darkness came 
 fear and longing, and some voice in her ears which nothing 
 could silence. She did her best in the matter, used all 
 her resources, tried all her wiles ; but discerning at last 
 that the thing plainly meant to be dealt with, she very 
 wisely decided to contend no more, but to give it its head 
 and hearken to its counsel. Realizing, however, that it is 
 always as well to do a disagreeable thing as comfortably 
 as you can, Audrey curled herself up at precisely the right 
 angle, and prepared to go into the whole subject with an 
 open mind. 
 
 To her it all seemed so simple, these new departures in 
 interruptions, and emotions, and voices and things were 
 surely quite beside the mark. 
 
 She loved Larry with all the strength of her undisciplined, 
 undeveloped nature. He had moved her as deeply as it 
 was then in her to be moved. And from Audrey's point 
 of view that he should do so was only natural. Compared 
 with the rest of her little world Andrew, as we know, 
 did not count Larry was extraordinarily faithful and fair 
 minded. He was kind and generous, and in spite of things 
 Larry was really as good as anything ! Audrey could
 
 3 8 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 make comparisons with an enlightened mind, for the 
 rest he was Larry ! 
 
 They had never meant to do wrong, either of them. 
 She had been trying, on the contrary, to do good to him, 
 and Larry was only too anxious to be reclaimed. And 
 never once had she said anything to Larry about Andrew, 
 or one single horrid thing to him about Andrew's awful old 
 sisters. If Larry somehow knew all about the utter im- 
 possibility of her life, it was not her fault or his ! And if 
 they had done wrong, no one but themselves should 
 suffer. They'd take all the consequences on their own 
 shoulders ; they'd face the music ! 
 
 This, as we know, was the creed of these young people. 
 
 Sometimes when for a moment things looked menacing 
 they used to say it together. It had helped them in many 
 a bad quarter of an. hour. But to say it all alone at night 
 to a dreadful intrusive, not to say insolent, voice, some- 
 how did not work. The. voice would keep on interrupting 
 in a fiendish way. 
 
 Audrey had got into the habit of sweeping aside obstacles 
 with a lightness and skill befitting a more transcendental 
 being ; with the same gentle supremacy she had been able 
 to disarm opposition. 
 
 She now tried ah 1 her methods upon the voice, but 
 this inner monitor would appear to be the only thing 
 peculiar to women that is incorruptible to flattery, irre- 
 sponsive to pitiful appeal. 
 
 It became, if anything, more insistent than before. 
 Audrey could not make head or tail of it. Her outlook 
 was large. She had never been able to understand fussi- 
 ness. It bewildered her. She descended at last to ex- 
 planation, apology ! " But I'm going to do everything 
 for them," said she. " Set them all on their feet, give 
 them my whole eight hundred a year in a way that they 
 must take it. I haven't arranged yet, but I'll find a way 
 and all those awful jewels, too, and even the motor-car 
 I bought myself ; I'll give them everything ! And when 
 that's done, and everything's settled on a solid foundation,
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 39 
 
 so far as I can see, the sooner I'm gone the better. I should 
 only be in the way," she wheedled. " I've always been 
 in the way. They Katharine's always been as horrid to 
 me as she dared. They'll be delighted to get rid of me, 
 and to have Andrew to themselves to make as uncom- 
 fortable as they can." 
 
 She paused confounded. Andrew had slipped in 
 quite by accident. She had been carefully excluding him 
 from the discussion. He always brought a gloom into 
 things, and shut out hope. Andrew was a clog upon 
 endeavour, an obstacle to enterprise. After a little 
 reflection, her better sense asserted itself. " After all, 
 he'll have to come into it, into all of it," she said, with 
 a curious little chuckle ; " I'd better let him in at once. 
 
 " And I'll take good care they don't make him uncom- 
 fortable either," she said with spirit. " I won't stir one 
 step until I've found a first-rate working housekeeper who'll 
 give him proper food and keep that dragon in her place." 
 
 But it was just as Audrey had feared ; directly Andrew 
 came into the matter he made complications. He spoilt 
 everything, and he seemed to be creeping every moment 
 farther into the heart of the affair. He took her life and 
 warmth away. 
 
 Even on this summer's night she was growing cold. 
 It was extremely unfair of Andrew, and she trying so 
 hard to play quite fair, and do all she could for all of 
 them, to leave nothing undone that she could do, and 
 then when she was no longer necessary to any of them, 
 to go to the one single living person who could not get 
 on without her ! No woman could do more ! And here 
 was this voice buzzing, buzzing, buzzing in her ears, and 
 all about Andrew ! Andrew, indeed ! 
 
 She felt outraged. 
 
 " And all Andrew's fault ! " she said. " If he hadn't 
 stranded them all in a ditch without one penny, and a 
 dozen diseases, and no sense, I could have gone away 
 quietly and got it over, and things would have settled 
 down again in no time ; and instead of that, here I am
 
 40 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 racking my brain trying to get them all out of this bottom- 
 less pit, and to make them take the money without know- 
 ing it's mine. 
 
 " Imagine stacks of virtue like that living on the wages 
 of sin ! They'd mix even the wretched money up with 
 poor Larry, who, of course, will only be the poorer by that 
 much. It's only the women who understand something," 
 she sighed, " who ever play fair." 
 
 But the difficulty in regard to the transfer of her income 
 came more keenly home to her, and she flung herself to the 
 other side of the bed. 
 
 " It's those old things who'd be the real sufferers," 
 she presently resumed. " Andrew will have his bottles 
 and his messes and speculations to play about with, and 
 third-class returns to Germany are cheap, and he'd never 
 know whether he was travelling first or third. That's all 
 right ; it's those unfortunate creatures who make all 
 the trouble and it's all Andrew's fault ! " 
 
 She listened in a half-furtive way for the voice. But 
 this time it was an inexorable sort of silence that made 
 things unpleasant for Mrs. Antrobus, and sent her shud- 
 dering into the bedclothes. 
 
 " It is Andrew's fault," she said. " It's his fault 
 entirely. Why didn't he consult me ? And as it's he who's 
 upset the apple-cart, it is he who ought to pay for the 
 damage. Why should I have to tell all the lies to square 
 things for them ? He'll just have to do his part and oh ! 
 the unutterable worry of the whole thing ! I'll be looking 
 fifty by the time I'm ready for Larry, and can get Andrew 
 to see things reasonably, and trample on his wicked, selfish, 
 horrible pride." 
 
 Audrey was now so breathless that she had to pause, 
 and as a precaution she thrust her fingers into her ears, 
 and eternity dealt as it usually does with the little antics 
 of time. The voice went on only the more clearly and 
 more definitely, bringing in Andrew each moment with 
 a more firm insistence. 
 
 This was very extraordinary. Audrey sat up in bed
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 41 
 
 to consider the matter. Andrew, whatever he was, had 
 always been a purely negative quantity. Never, to give 
 him his due, had he been the least forward or presuming. 
 He had rarely troubled even the private reflections of his 
 wife. 
 
 " This isn't Andrew at all," she protested, addressing 
 the darkness and ignoring the voice. " It's the ghost of 
 Andrew, possessed by a devil." 
 
 She listened half expectant, with a faint hope of receiving 
 some encouraging information on the subject. Something 
 in the unresponsive silence frightened her. She cowered 
 down sobbing, and a glimmer of her first shame came again 
 upon Audrey, and the same glory of whiteness seemed again 
 to rise up about the red of her guilt, transmuting and 
 transfiguring it. This frightened her more than ever. 
 She shut her eyes and called upon the, name of Larry, and 
 moaned in the quiet darkness. 
 
 But, as upon that other night of a great cry, there was 
 no sign from Heaven, and each moment she seemed to be 
 more and more encompassed and ensnared by some secret, 
 inexorable force, pressed upon by fingers subtle and strong, 
 compelling her back into some dull prison where alone 
 lurked safety. 
 
 She wanted no coercion into any dull refuge ! She was 
 fearless and free ! She had never been made to crawl 
 into holes at the bidding of things she knew nothing 
 about, and that plainly knew nothing about her. 
 
 So she protested and entreated and sobbed, and every 
 instant Andrew, in relation to herself, became more cruelly 
 inevitable. Larry was being thrust further back. Her world 
 was being turned topsy-turvy by things ill to argue with. 
 
 " I'll go to sleep," she said at last. " It's horribly and 
 fiendishly unfair." 
 
 So still possessed by a strong conviction that neither 
 the voice nor any other of the unseen forces arrayed 
 against her had yielded one inch, she fell asleep at last 
 like a tired child.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SHE awoke as usual, thinking of Larry, when right on 
 top of him in stalked Andrew. 
 
 " This is not like Andrew," she thought indig- 
 nantly, and hurriedly told her maid to be quick. 
 
 Having for her sins begun the day with Andrew, it 
 struck her with increased emphasis that he'd be certain 
 to be muddling something if she did not hasten to his 
 rescue. 
 
 The way in which a few moments later she burst in 
 upon Andrew seriously disturbed him. He had never yet 
 known his wife to be in time for breakfast, and now to 
 behold her fully dressed in his laboratory at half-past 
 eight in the morning ! It took his breath away. 
 
 " My poor little girl ! " he said at last. " I'm afraid 
 you did not sleep." 
 
 Audrey was sitting on his big table discoloured by 
 chemicals, looking at him half elfishly, half reproachfully. 
 
 " Then you quite expected that I should sleep ? " she 
 inquired, with a sudden pathetic pleasure in her disastrous 
 night. " Did you sleep yourself ? " 
 
 He said nothing ; her tired eyes were saying far too 
 much. 
 
 " Andrew, I wonder what you were thinking of all 
 night ? " she said, a flash of genuine interest lighting up 
 their limpid darkness. 
 
 " Of you, child." 
 
 42
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 43 
 
 " Oh ! I wonder what you thought and the sort of way 
 you thought it ? I'd simply love to be a thought-reader. 
 I wish you'd turn yourself inside out, Andrew, just for 
 once." 
 
 Andrew looked a little stiff and awkward. This new 
 phase of Audrey embarrassed him, and he had always 
 found the extreme youth in many of her points of view 
 very difficult. 
 
 She softly laughed. 
 
 " Oh, well ! I was thinking of you, Andrew part of 
 the time, but as you haven't told me a word of your medi- 
 tations, I'll keep mine to myself. I daresay you were 
 thinking about your sisters too. I was till I thought I'd 
 burst. They're the most filling people I ever thought 
 about. And, Andrew, they can't go back to work at their 
 age, with cancers and things. It makes you sort of 
 squirm even to think of it. It's impossible " 
 
 " My dearest " 
 
 " Oh, Andrew, don't ! It's not even as if they liked 
 girls in a mild way. They've always looked upon them 
 as means to an end. You were the end, Andrew ; girls, 
 the unspeakable necessities. Katharine's been a besom 
 of destruction in many a young person's life. The most 
 awful thing I ever saw was Katharine once arranging roses. 
 First she scoured and carbolized the vases ; then she 
 caught the roses in a firm grasp and snipped little bits 
 off them, till they bled ; and when she had taken all the 
 life and the colour and the scent out of them, and left 
 nothing but the thorns, she set them bolt upright in the 
 disinfected vases, and stalked off, thankful that she'd 
 done her duty by her enemies for that day, anyway. 
 Think of the insatiable cruelty of letting anyone like that 
 go back to the scholastic profession ; Nero himself wouldn't 
 do it ! " 
 
 The pain of Andrew was almost greater than he could 
 
 bear. Everything went to its make-up. Her swaying 
 
 figure ; her little petulant foot swinging to and fro ; her 
 
 ^generous, unpractical protest ; the dove's voice in which
 
 44 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 she uttered . her condemnation of the good impossible 
 women ! With a biting pang he knew now what she must 
 have suffered from the poor creatures, and yet this was her 
 first spoken betrayal of a grievance which in coarser hands 
 had made his life a burthen ! He ought to have known it 
 before rather, he ought to have admitted the fact, and 
 faced it, and spared his young wife this at least. 
 
 But this duty he had evaded as he had done others of 
 even more pressing import. Throwing all his energies into 
 the abstract and impersonal, he had neglected the most 
 essential and intimate ideal of his life, that which was 
 life itself. 
 
 In sparing himself he had involved in ruin not only 
 this holiest and dearest of all trusts, but the poor broken 
 women to whom he owed everything. 
 
 No man looks well in a chaos of self -revelation ; such 
 primeval experiences should be passed through in solitude, 
 or in the presence of a sympathetic audience. Andrew, 
 as a conscious worm, appealed to nothing in his extremely 
 critical wife. 
 
 " Andrew," she said, " you're falling in in the queerest 
 way. Your chest is fairly doubling up. I hope to good- 
 ness you haven't consumption. Do sit up straight and 
 let us have this out properly. Things seem to be pretty 
 urgent." She paused, exasperated. " Andrew sitting 
 there tied up in a knot in this awful crisis sort of chokes 
 you," she reflected. " I'll sit up like a poker and see if 
 that'll have any effect on him." 
 
 " Now, Andrew," she said briskly, " I feel like a gun 
 primed and cocked, ready to go off ! So let us begin. 
 When must everything be sold ? " 
 
 " I have several offers already. It's one of the most 
 saleable properties in the county. It may all be done in 
 a month, I think." 
 
 " A month," she said blankly. To put off Larry for 
 a month goodness gracious ! 
 
 " Oh, well, Andrew, don't fidget with those papers, 
 please please ! Look how urgent everything is ! "
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 45 
 
 He looked at her in a dazed way and withdrew his 
 nervous hands. This was all so revolutionary to his ex- 
 perience. He found an increasing difficulty in accom- 
 modating himself to his environment. Moreover, a trust- 
 ful, leisurely confidence, begotten of the unhurried con- 
 templation of nature's methods, was but a poor prepara- 
 tion for the cataclysmic onrush of a desperate woman into 
 any undiscovered region where hope may hide. 
 
 " I wonder if you've thought of anything," said she. 
 
 Nothing would hurry up Andrew. He had to think it 
 out bit by bit. To be cross-questioned by Audrey was, 
 indeed, most strange. Still, it was very sweet, and her 
 voice soothed him ; to watch her gave him strength. It was 
 seldom that he got the chance of enjoying the privileges 
 she now heaped upon him his fault entirely; it should 
 never happen again. He had encompassed her with love, 
 loaded her with offerings, and then left her ! This was 
 the first time she had ever sat on his table swinging her 
 beloved feet. The very way she sat, the curious narrowing 
 of her eyes as she watched him, the manifestation of an 
 intelligence in the common things of life of which he had 
 never suspected her, her half-defiant demand for her rights 
 in his affairs, so completely overwhelmed Andrew that he 
 could do nothing but regard her with perplexed and 
 worshipful eyes. 
 
 " I do believe you never heard a word I said," said 
 Audrey with divine patience. 
 
 " I was thinking of you, dear, and that I'd never known 
 you before, child ! What a little brick you are ! " 
 
 " Now, Andrew, is this the time ? And I'm not such 
 a brick as you think, I warn you, and you know nothing 
 about me at all really. I asked you just now .if you'd 
 thought about things at all." 
 
 " I've thought about nothing else, little darling, and 
 I've done something. I've written to a friend who has a 
 cramming establishment, and he has offered to give me 
 temporary employment until I can look round. The screw 
 isn't much, but it will keep my sisters until they get
 
 46 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 settled. They have their own furniture, you know, and 
 you have enough, poor child, until I pull round." 
 
 There was a world of partially repressed exasperation 
 in the way Audrey kicked out one foot. 
 
 " What employment is it ? " 
 
 " I am to take the boys in science, sometimes in mathe- 
 matics." 
 
 She slowly whistled. 
 
 " Dear me ! " she said at last. " An usher ! " 
 
 " I won't be one long." 
 
 " If you're one once, Heaven only knows ! It's a fatal 
 mistake to start as a worm. Andrew, how old are 
 you ? " 
 
 " Surely, child, you know ? " 
 
 " Oh no, I don't. I've never asked. Somehow it 
 seemed disrespectful. I'd meant to look in the register, 
 but I forgot. You're wandering on towards fifty, aren't 
 you ? " 
 
 " I was twenty-nine in April." 
 
 She jumped on the table. "Goodness gracious! But 
 it makes all the difference, don't you see. This is the 
 day of the young man. Why, I was reading only the 
 other day that people out of work in the scholastic 
 profession over forty, cut off their moustaches and put 
 on stays, and do physical exercises before they go to 
 look for a situation. It's like girls in their seventh season. 
 And to think of wasting yourself as an usher at your 
 age ! You're very innocent, Andrew." 
 
 " My child ! I never meant to waste myself, but I must 
 look round." 
 
 " I don't believe in ' must ' for comparatively young 
 human beings. You couldn't look round as an usher. 
 You'd be too much ashamed to look at all, or if you weren't 
 you ought to be." She threw up her head. " We're not 
 slaves or idiots ; we ought to be able to do what we 
 want to. What we determine we shall. You don't 
 want to be an usher. Andrew, I can't think that of 
 you."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 47 
 
 " Well, no, it's never been my ambition." 
 
 " Then strike out the usher and let us get on. No 
 earthly arguments will ever take the trail of the usher off 
 anybody. Look at your sisters, usheresses to the day of 
 their death. Let us start on a more workable basis." 
 
 Having been brought up by three sisters great with 
 knowledge, but whom love had passed by, Andrew had 
 never been given the chance to over-estimate himself 
 physically, intellectually, or morally. Thus a fine figure 
 had fallen into a stoop. A splendid head had never taken 
 the proud poise proper to it, and it had never even struck 
 Andrew that he was a man in whom there was no guile. 
 He had never in all his life done justice to himself, but now 
 suddenly he was glad that he had a pure heart and clean 
 hands. He was very glad, it brought him so bewilderingly 
 nearer to Audrey. 
 
 " Andrew, do, for goodness' sake, let us get on ! I 
 believe you're wool-gathering again now, when we haven't 
 one single moment to spare ! " She glanced at him, and 
 it struck her that he was sitting up quite nicely and 
 looking, now she thought of it, rather young for Andrew. 
 He interested her in quite a new way. In any case, she 
 was beginning to enjoy herself a little. 
 
 She was becoming quite indispensable to everybody in 
 a variety of ways. The new importance was exhilarating. 
 It seemed to inspire her thoughts. Suggestions of wisdom 
 she had never known she possessed were flooding in upon 
 her. There was a glimmer of light in the darkness, and 
 it was growing growing ! And she had never seen 
 Andrew look so decent. 
 
 She sprang from the table, put up her finger to enjoin 
 silence, and stood with parted lips, panting a little. 
 
 ".Don't speak," she whispered. " I see I think I see 
 a way. I do see it ! " she said at last triumphantly. 
 " Now, Andrew, don't speak till I've finished. Only just 
 listen. I see the whole thing in a sort of picture. It's 
 quite plain ! " 
 
 Her injunction to silence was unnecessary. The spirit
 
 48 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 of life aflame, in Audrey was enough to startle any man 
 into silence. 
 
 " You have farms and shooting which you never shoot, 
 except for politeness. Couldn't you sell the farms and let 
 the shooting ? I remember that old lawyer who came from 
 Saturday to Monday mumbled on about the value of 
 both." 
 
 She was again on the table, swinging her feet, and 
 pausing every now and then for a thought to form itself. 
 Something he discerned to be going on in Audrey arrested 
 Andrew, and invested her words with a strange authority. 
 Womanhood, he was becoming poignantly aware, was an 
 eternal energy before which, once let loose, any man 
 must do reverence. 
 
 Those little wild, foolish words of hers he had so often 
 treasured in his memory to turn over and smile at, were 
 now become enlightened communications, and, in any case, 
 Audrey had been always his queen. 
 
 " Yes," he said/" the shooting is good, and those farms 
 are valuable." 
 
 " Then they can be sold, or couldn't they be mort- 
 gaged ? " 
 
 " Well, yes, probably." 
 
 " What else is there besides the house and park and 
 the Beeches ? You'll sell that, I suppose ? " 
 
 " A few thousands invested in good securities, that's all." 
 
 " There's my settlement, and that's ten thousand 
 pounds." 
 
 " That can't be touched." 
 
 " It's got to be touched. We'll want it all." 
 
 " Audrey ! " 
 
 " Now look here, Andrew ! I know what I'm talking 
 about. That settlement* must go." She looked aslant 
 at him. "As it happens," she said, " I shan't want it 
 I can't stop now to explain. You'll know all right in 
 time, and it's extraneous to this occasion. And this is 
 my affair as much as yours. It's a question of honour, 
 you must see. It is, Andrew. I oughtn't to have to
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 49 
 
 remind you, and in the end," she said, with a proud lift 
 of her head, " I shan't lose ! " 
 
 " Dearest ! I know, but " 
 
 " Andrew, this is the very first time in my life I've 
 set up my will against yours. And you don't know in the 
 least what my will is. Besides, I shall never want that 
 settlement." 
 
 Andrew frowned in his effort to understand her, but he 
 could understand nothing but the compelling earnest 
 purpose in her beautiful eyes and the dazzling mockery 
 permeating also those inscrutable orbs of light. 
 
 " Andrew, I'm the only single person who can help you 
 out of this hole you've landed us all in, and you must let 
 me do it in my own way. Have you no trust in me at 
 all?" 
 
 " Dearest, I trust you utterly." 
 
 " Now, Andrew, I never asked you to trust me 
 utterly, or in any transcendent or high-class way at 
 all. I just want you to trust me in the little practical 
 things being a genius makes you useless in. Hasn't it 
 struck you at last that I'm grown up ? " 
 
 " It has struck me dumb, I think." 
 
 " Dear me ! I wish it had, then you wouldn't keep on 
 interrupting me ! Well, then, I'm grown up and in my 
 full senses," she said, with an elfish look at Andrew, " and 
 I tell you again that I'll never want that settlement. 
 We can do nothing without it, and we've got to be com- 
 monly honest, whether we like or not ! Now we can get 
 on. If you gave the mortgages on the farms and the 
 money for the Beeches, and what's invested and the 
 ten thousand pounds to the Foresters, and promised to 
 pay interest for the rest the house and park is security 
 enough even for sharks, I should think, and ought to 
 satisfy their rapacity without selling an acre of it ; don't 
 you think ? " 
 
 Andrew paused for a moment. The perfectly reason- 
 able attitude of Audrey restored his spirit ; her serenity 
 brought his back.
 
 50 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " Forester is a good fellow. I feel certain he'll accept 
 the mortgages, but as for the settlement " 
 
 " But we finished about that five minutes ago. The 
 grass is splendid here. There would be always cows 
 and butter and milk. I see it all ! " 
 
 She jumped off the table and stood lightly on one foot 
 like a sweet pea on its stalk. 
 
 " There are the gardens for fruit and vegetables," 
 she said, checking them off, " and the fowl-yards simply 
 overflowing with food, and the house so well arranged 
 and comfortable. Just think, Andrew, what I've done 
 for it, and what it was when I came ! I don't believe you've 
 ever once noticed a thing. And there's the library full 
 of books oh, Andrew, don't look at me as if I were 
 mad ! Just wait and listen and the laboratory full of 
 bottles and smells and things, and my eight hundred a 
 year to go on with, and there's you you yourself, Andrew, 
 with your nice scholarly, dependable appearance, and 
 all the letters after your name, and the pince-nez, and all 
 complete. Why, you're a fortune in yourself. What a 
 mercy that you couldn't look frivolous if you tried ! 
 What queer things you come to be thankful for ! Why ! 
 Andrew, can't you see it ? " 
 
 " My dearest child, I can't." 
 
 " Goodness ! and it's so plain. The whole place turned 
 into a cramming shop and you the head ! It stands out 
 before me every detail as clear as sunlight ! Andrew ! 
 Have you no imagination ? And not ten minutes ago 
 you wanted to be an usher ! " 
 
 " My wonderful child ! To think I knew you so 
 little." 
 
 " Look here, Andrew ! I'm not quite so wonderful as 
 I seem." She paused, and in a sudden, odd way went 
 white. " You'll know soon enough. Let us keep to the 
 scheme. That's all right, anyway." 
 
 " The scheme," said Andrew thoughtfully, " is per- 
 fectly feasible in all particulars save one " 
 
 " That's the foundation of it," said his wife. " The one
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 51 
 
 thing that must be. I thought you were too well brought 
 up, Andrew, to be either stubborn or dishonest. The 
 scheme is sound, I feel in all my bones it is." 
 
 " It's an admirable scheme, little darling, and prac- 
 tical ; but in any case it would take time. Such an estab- 
 lishment as you suggest would need much building 
 up." 
 
 " Oh, Andrew, if you haven't any imagination of your 
 own, won't you use mine for once ? Don't you see the 
 exceptional circumstances this house you your degrees 
 and the world is full of snobs ; anyone who isn't im- 
 pressed by learning and a decent household, we can easily 
 haul in over your page in the Peerage. We or, surely 
 you can do that for yourself, Andrew ? " she said, with a 
 sudden look of apprehension. 
 
 Andrew looked doubtful. 
 
 She stamped. 
 
 " Andrew, you're the corning crammer, and not I ! 
 You must buck up, don't you see ? You simply must. 
 Once you're fairly started, the affair will be yours, not 
 mine. It's not mine now, of course," she said with depre- 
 cation ; " it was only the way you you looked, that made 
 me put in my oar at all. I hate interfering women. 
 
 " Of course, until you're well started, Andrew," she said, 
 breathlessly, watching him with growing anxiety he 
 seemed to be hanging on her words in the queerest way 
 " I'll do every single thing I can for you all. Oh, I'll do 
 a lot really. I I like schemes ! I'll make things hum," 
 she promised with courageous self -sacrifice. " But when 
 it's all set going I'll just drop out. I should only be in 
 the way then, don't you see, and things will go on infinitely 
 better without me " 
 
 " My child " 
 
 " Oh, Andrew, how can you go on interrupting when 
 when the hurry is so enormous ! And you hate inter- 
 fering women yourself, only you'll never say so in your 
 family for fear of being personal " 
 
 She fetched up short. 
 
 4*
 
 52 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Andrew's absorbed attention was beginning to choke 
 her. If he kept on depending on her in this perfectly 
 fiendish way, the consequences 
 
 She shut her eyes and got deadly cold. Some insidious 
 horror seemed all at once to touch and blight the glowing 
 life in her. She sat down quickly and tried to pull herself 
 together. 
 
 Andrew's slower brain, quite unaware of this violent 
 play of emotion, was now weighing the pros and cons of 
 her brilliant project, and marvelling at her capacity. 
 
 " The scheme is all that could be desired," he said, 
 " except " 
 
 " I was going to say when you interrupted," she said 
 with dignity, " that there will be difficulties which you 
 won't like at all. You must expect to be greatly disturbed 
 and inconvenienced. Mothers will be coming at all hours 
 to inspect you " 
 
 " And you ! " 
 
 " Well, yes at first, and I'll be ready for them, don't 
 be at all afraid ! I'm only wondering if you will. The 
 mothers who come to inspect crammers would naturally 
 have all their worst points sharpened by contact with 
 hosts of unappreciative ushers who've failed to teach 
 their sons. They'd be embittered against human nature, 
 and would probably revenge it all on you. I've heard 
 them at tea-parties. You'll be a necessity, but a most 
 unpleasant and expensive necessity, Andrew, and be 
 treated accordingly. You'll find she won't be in the 
 library for five minutes before she'll blame you for every- 
 thing. You won't like it at all. You'll be feeling horribly 
 ashamed of her, I'm afraid, and blushing ; then she'll 
 be more sure than ever that you're the guilty party and 
 you'll catch it ! It'll take you a long time to get used to 
 dealing with mothers, Andrew; and, at any rate, you 
 must do that all by yourself," she said triumphantly. 
 
 " I am not afraid. At the same time, I will never do 
 anything alone again," he said gently. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't be always belittling yourself,
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 53 
 
 Andrew. A genius is not made to be hanging on to any 
 woman's apron strings. He is himself. 
 
 " I read once somewhere," she said, with rather a 
 gentle glance at Andrew, " that a genius must always be 
 rather a lonely man." 
 
 " Thank Heaven, then, that I am not a genius ! But, 
 my most wonderful child, you can't live with my sisters, 
 not in the same house ? " 
 
 " I'd rather die," said Audrey promptly ; " and neither 
 can you. I haven't forgotten. They have their own fur- 
 niture, and there's that far lodge that's empty and that 
 we never use. It's very pretty and healthy. I've seen 
 all about the drains. It's not big, like the Beeches. But, 
 after all, they must suffer just a little. Look at us! And 
 I'll make it all like a babies' house before they "see it ; 
 the garden's lovely already and full of flowers." 
 
 " No man living ever had such a wife, or ever so mis- 
 apprehended her," said Andrew, rather below his breath. 
 " Audrey, Audrey, this is the beginning of a new life for 
 me. Such a life as I had never even dared to hope for." 
 
 " Andrew ! " 
 
 " I must, my own ! " His face was transfigured ; 
 it silenced her and made her shudder. " We're standing 
 together at last," he said reverently, " you and I, in the 
 red of a new dawn, with the fullness of a perfect day 
 before us." 
 
 " Andrew," she said faintly, " how extraordinary you 
 are ! Isn't it breakfast-time ? I feel I don't think I'm 
 very well."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 \TOTWITHSTANDING his fatal implication in her 
 i\ affairs and the atmosphere of doubt and dismay his 
 very presence seemed now to conjure up about her, 
 Audrey could not help hugely enjoying the novel per- 
 formances of her husband. 
 
 She explained this apparent inconsistency to herself 
 in the most plausible way. There had always been such 
 a soul-killing sameness in Andrew that to see him now 
 lumbering from place to place must of necessity excite 
 the intelligent interest of any observant person. To 
 remain unmoved by the spectacle would argue a limp and 
 unreceptive mind. 
 
 Andrew's best original work was always done in the 
 morning, and he had got into the habit of coming to 
 breakfast so fully charged with it as to afford his wife 
 in the early days some feeble entertainment. To watch 
 Andrew upsetting his tea, mixing his condiments, answering 
 questions at random and awakening in starts to his indis- 
 cretions, was better at least than the deadly silence. 
 
 The only time he had ever talked coherently at break- 
 fast was during his honeymoon, and then it was only 
 because Katharine, with a passing gleam of humanity, 
 had refused to put any book except the Bible into his 
 portmanteau, and had given him copious and embittered 
 directions as to his behaviour in the new and trying 
 circumstances. 
 
 With her voice still clanging in his ears, he had made 
 an immense effort to accommodate himself to his environ- 
 
 54
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 55 
 
 ment, and had succeeded to his own profound satisfaction. 
 He explained the geological structure of many mountains 
 to Audrey during the breakfasts of an entire month, and 
 in lighter mood repeated to her idylls of flowers and 
 butterflies, at the same time taking careful notes of the 
 most startling and new of all the wonders of nature, one, 
 moreover, more full of exquisite suggestion than all the 
 others. Of this side to his reflections Audrey knew 
 nothing, however ; she supposed him to be steeped to his 
 neck in his own elderly affairs. 
 
 Andrew could have wished the honeymoon to last for 
 ever. But that was three years ago, and since then he 
 had had more urgent matters to keep him silent, and 
 Audrey had long ago grown tired of watching his social 
 lapses and recoveries. 
 
 And now to see him fussing round and bringing her 
 things and taking care of her just as though he were 
 a real man, although it hurt and terrified her not a little, 
 yet greatly amused Mrs. Antrobus. She glowed and 
 beamed, her eyes danced, smiles trembled in and out of 
 her dimples. 
 
 " Andrew," she said at last, " I wouldn't, if I were you. 
 The tools of your own trade are far easier to manage 
 than any of those applicable to a person like me, and far 
 more in the er divine line that's what you call it, 
 isn't it ? for you. But it's mathematical lines you believe 
 in, Andrew, isn't it, and not divine ones ? " 
 
 " Dearest child, eat something." 
 
 " I'll eat everything if you'll sit down," she said, helping 
 herself largely to kidneys. " I once read a story of a 
 philanthropic elephant, Andrew, who found a partridge's 
 nest just deserted and the eggs getting cold some wretches 
 had killed the mother so being a mother herself the 
 elephant sat down on the eggs. Don't look in that sur- 
 prised way, Andrew you're not really like the elephant 
 in appearance. If your sisters had been full-blown 
 human beings they'd have made you understand that you 
 were quite splendid really, and then you'd have looked
 
 56 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 it. It's too late now, I'm afraid, for you ever to become 
 a professional beauty, but you're like the elephant in never 
 having been built for a foster-mother, especially to the 
 like of me." 
 
 For some reason of which she was ignorant, by some 
 power unknown to her, the strangest sorrow slipped into 
 Audrey's light voice, tears sprang to -her laughing eyes, 
 her dimples were ironed out. 
 
 This was idiotic, so she left her kidneys, jumped up 
 and went to the window, flicking a fly as she passed off 
 Andrew's hair. 
 
 Andrew mutely marvelled and as mutely adored. 
 " We're all looking for something, I think," she said 
 presently in her very lightest voice, coming back to the 
 table, " and if we look long enough we'll find it. It's not 
 like the pot of gold under the rainbow," she said with an 
 abrupt, sharp protest ; " don't look as if it was, Andrew, 
 and make me feel hopeless. You always make me mix 
 myself up with fairy tales. I'm just a fairy tale to you, 
 Andrew, and no more. And you're extremely inconsistent, 
 for if you take hope out of a fairy tale, you may just as 
 well take all the rest, too. Oh, can't you see ! " she said, 
 drawing one polished shoe sharply along the parquet 
 floor ; " the thing one wants most is the one real thing in 
 the whole story, it's there actually waiting ! waiting ! 
 waiting ! until we have courage enough to believe in it, 
 and then to go out and get it ! " 
 
 Her voice was soft again, her grave mouth even a little 
 tender. " I'm perfectly certain you'll find what you're 
 looking for, Andrew. Aren't you listening ? Haven't 
 you been listening to one word ? " 
 
 " Dearest, I'm listening to every word." 
 " Then don't look amused as if I was saying funny 
 things ; I'm extremely serious. Goodness ! if only vou 
 knew ! " 
 
 Andrew's face was growing articulate in a horrible way, 
 but she refused to listen to a word it said. 
 
 ' You'll find your thing in your profession, in your
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 57 
 
 bottles, and your calculations and in yourself, Andrew. 
 I believe there's a bottomless pit of most interesting 
 things in you, Andrew, in your own inside but you'll 
 never find it in the little light fringes of things. You 
 were never made to be sitting on trumpery eggs or running 
 round after people who don't matter. It's never been a 
 real part of your mental equipment. It's all just leaked 
 in by mistake, and it'll leak out again quite naturally if 
 you'll just give it its head. Andrew, I don't want an egg ; 
 you've forgotten, apparently, that I've already eaten 
 one, and do, do listen in an understanding way. If you 
 stick to your own job, Andrew, you'll be very happy, 
 and rather great, I say ! I believe you'll be quite great, 
 Andrew, but you must stick to what suits you and not be 
 wandering off into things which don't concern you at all. 
 Of course, the pupils are all right," she explained hurriedly 
 to his unconvinced face. " You'll rather enjoy seeing 
 them making messes and telling them about the repulsive 
 objects down there you'll never let any one clean up, and 
 trying to kindle fires of enthusiasm in the most unlikely 
 quarters, would interest anyone. The pupils will be an 
 extremely healthy interruption to your real work, far 
 better than meddling with what you would never under- 
 stand and which even if you did, would be certain to 
 disappoint you in the end." 
 
 Her bewildering new interest in himself, her charming 
 gift of illuminated nonsense turned upon him upon his 
 great ungainly figure so unsuited to sport or horsemanship, 
 or any of the amusements of his caste, still less to chaff, 
 his spectacled eyes at that moment he detested his 
 pince-nez with ah 1 the active bitterness of a vain boy 
 they were an insult to himself, an insult to the radiant, 
 the most marvellous youth of his peerless wife. This 
 internal revolution swallowed up the words of Andrew 
 and made him look rather foolish. 
 
 Audrey wriggled and sighed. This, after all her 
 efforts! 
 
 Andrew, with a deprecating movement, took off his
 
 58 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 glasses and squared his shoulders, and in the most extra- 
 ordinary way the action touched his wife. 
 
 " Andrew," she said, " I do believe you'll be great." 
 Her eyes roamed carefully over all his person. " I'm 
 certain you will and you'll like it. In spite of having 
 every atom of wholesome conceit drilled out of you, you'll 
 like it immensely. You look most awfully nice without 
 your specs and really quite young ! It's not you who's 
 like the elephant, after all, Andrew, it's Katharine." 
 
 " Audrey ! Do you want me to be great ? " 
 
 " It's the one single thing I do want. It it would 
 square everything." 
 
 " Then, beloved, with your help I will be great." 
 
 There was panic in her eyes. 
 
 " Not by my help. That's not good enough for you, 
 Andrew, or for me," she added with an irrepressible 
 manifestation of the elf. " You're the last man living to 
 make a footstool of any woman. You must be great 
 alone, all by yourself. Nothing else will ever fill your 
 life or give you the proper sort of satisfaction. If you 
 hadn't been sat on too long by an elephant, Andrew, you'd 
 be as proud as Lucifer and would scorn anything you 
 didn't win entirely on your own. If you hadn't been a 
 genius, Andrew, and brought up by Katharine, I do believe 
 you might have made a soldier a serious sapper, you 
 know, simmering with ideas like the man who took me 
 into dinner on Thursday." 
 
 " But, dearest Audrey," said Andrew blankly, " he's a 
 deadly old bore." 
 
 " He's nothing of the sort. I thought so for the first 
 three courses, but 1 have more faith and hope and 
 charity than you, it seems, for he came to himself at the 
 fourth. He only wants understanding, and a genius is 
 the last person in the world to understand another on a 
 different track." 
 
 There was a look of disappointment in Andrew's eyes 
 but he said gently, " Will nothing less than the best suit 
 you, then ? "
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 59 
 
 " Nothing less," said Audrey with airy finality ; " so 
 you'll just have to give yourself up to your career without 
 one moment's delay. It's very urgent, Andrew, more 
 urgent than you think ! " 
 
 The unaccountable moisture behind them made of her 
 eyes veiled stars. In looking at them, Andrew felt the 
 greatness she demanded already within his grasp. 
 
 " Come out in the garden, child," he said. " There's 
 plenty of time until the pupils come to idle a little." 
 
 " Not for you," she said hurriedly. " You'll never be 
 able to idle again with any real comfort to yourself. And 
 besides, I've got to go to London. I'm going to motor up. 
 And, Andrew, I'll be back to dinner. I promise," she said, 
 with the oddest little break in her voice. 
 
 " But, darling, you always are ! " said Andrew. 
 
 The exquisite child was growing each moment more 
 worthy of analysis, and yet he thanked God each moment 
 more fervently that she was a creature whom neither 
 he nor any other man could ever hope to analyse. 
 
 " You look very white, little child." He peered closer. 
 " I wonder," he adventured ; " I wonder if you wrap up 
 sufficiently." 
 
 " It's June," she said, " and the thermometer is at 
 seventy-nine degrees in the shade, but I have a new 
 chiffon ruffle, and I'll put it on if you like when I take off 
 my dust cloak. 
 
 " And I'll drive myself," she said, when she got upstairs, 
 " at full speed. I despise the Force, you can talk it out 
 of its sternest convictions in five minutes, and it couldn't 
 happen to me to kill so much as a chicken ; it couldn't 
 possibly ! And when I see Larry, oh things will arrange 
 themselves ! 
 
 " I must see these people here through," she sighed. 
 " That's the one single thing to be perfectly sure about. 
 And, goodness knows, it's enough, and I've just got to 
 keep my mind glued to it," she said, picking up her 
 gloves.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SHE drove at prohibitive speed entirely without mis- 
 adventure, alighted discreetly at her Club, and sent 
 man and motor about their business for the whole 
 afternoon. 
 
 " Now I'll wrap myself up in the ruffle and go," she said, 
 appraising the effect in a long glass. " It's the prettiest 
 I've see this summer. I wonder if things ever get quite 
 so beastly for really good girls ? But I said I wouldn't 
 think, and I won't, so there ! " 
 
 Her eyes were peculiarly quick and diligent that bril- 
 Hant morning. A thousand trivial things seemed to 
 impress themselves sharply upon her memory. 
 
 As she came out into the hall she noticed that the face 
 of the hall-porter had lost a little of its monumental calm, 
 and there was no apparent reason why it should. The 
 emotions of the women floating round seemed to be in a 
 state of quiescence. They looked as though they had 
 received the right answers to their letters and were ex- 
 pecting the right men to luncheon. They could have no 
 reasonable excuse for harrying Brown as they often did 
 when things went " aglee " with them. Brown was a 
 good husband and father ; she had long ago found that 
 out. Why, then, should he be looking pensive ? 
 
 She paused to ascertain, and managed to leave him with 
 a more serene brow and a broad grin. But as she went 
 out she despised Brown. To be looking like that on 
 account of an eighth child being down with German 
 measles seemed so trivial with real tragedies afoot. 
 
 Larry's rooms were in Bruton Street, so she decided 
 to walk to them by way of Bond Street, and remem- 
 
 60
 
 bered for years a hat in a certain shop she knew at a glance 
 to have been made for her, a tea-gown in one near it, a 
 bracelet rather like one Andrew had given her ; it re- 
 minded her with a sharp spasm of resentment against 
 Andrew that she had not even finished sorting her jewels 
 yet, and since because of Andrew's insensate folly she had 
 just given up all her money, even looking into shop- 
 windows had become a purposeless pursuit. Andrew 
 took the taste out of everything, and the significance ! 
 Then she came upon a bunch of girls' faces drinking in 
 London, and in an instant they, too, had woven themselves 
 into the warp and web of her life. 
 
 " I look just as good," she said, fetching up short at a 
 window a few paces away from theirs, " and I'm a million 
 times more interesting. I wonder, if they only just knew, 
 what they would say. They wouldn't say much," she 
 mused, with a furtive glance. " Country-breds wouldn't 
 demean themselves by discussing such a subject." 
 
 She flushed with wrath. 
 
 " That's the sort they are. You see it in the way they 
 fasten in their flowers. That brands them." 
 
 But the fresh yourjg eyes were all shyly fixed upon her ; 
 she was one of the sights of London none of them could 
 ever forget. 
 
 Audrey was undeveloped in everything save her innate 
 womanliness. She could never resist honest admiration. 
 She nodded and smiled her smile of enchantment, and went 
 on walking more beautifully because of the watching eyes. 
 
 " But why should they hurt me in this fiendish way ? " 
 she asked. " It's not fair. They know nothing about 
 anything. It's extremely impertinent in such people to 
 have an opinion at all. I'm just as good as they are, 
 really. Somewhere out of sight I am I am ! I am ! " 
 she protested, head in air. " I used to feel I was, and it's 
 a feeling you never forget. You don't bring it back, all 
 the same," she concluded, after a slightly discomposing 
 pause. 
 
 In order to change the subject, she carefully examined
 
 a blouse, but the subject refused to be changed ; besides, 
 the contemplation of a withheld blessing is never very 
 consolatory, so she continued her stroll. 
 
 " Anyway, I could be a thousand times better than any 
 of the three except except for Andrew. They're only 
 half alive really," she pursued. " They're afraid of every- 
 thing. They wouldn't be in it with me for goodness 
 only " 
 
 She brushed the rest aside, and took a surreptitious 
 glance at the heads now all glued to the panes of a fur 
 shop. 
 
 " They've never in all their lives let themselves go. 
 They've never once thought their own thoughts, or wished 
 their own wishes, or looked out of their own eyes. They're 
 dear little bits of their mothers, and grandmothers, and 
 nice Protestant fathers, in country clothes. They couldn't 
 possibly want to be oh, well me; for they couldn't 
 possibly even conceive what I'm like, or what I want, or 
 what's going on in me. If you have no imagination, and 
 no enterprise, and no experience, and are only half alive, 
 how dare you judge anyone except your own ridiculous 
 little self ? 
 
 " And it's all Andrew's fault," she said, after rather a 
 long pause. " If he hadn't made hay of everything, we'd 
 all be happy by this time. Things would be settling 
 down nicely ; his old sisters would have their hands full 
 fencing with the curiosity of the county and letting the 
 choicest morsels slip out. They'd realize their ambition 
 and be the centre of attraction to a select neighbourhood 
 for once. Goodness ! Think of it ! And Andrew ! " 
 
 The horrible inevitableness of Andrew once more wrung 
 the heart of his wife, but she refused to bend to the in- 
 tolerable tyranny of so remote and abstract an idea as 
 Andrew. 
 
 She paused to call reason to her aid. 
 
 " He is beginning to drift into an extraordinary sort of 
 intimacy with me," she admitted ; " and he's doing it in 
 a way no one could ever have foreseen ; but it's only be-
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 63 
 
 cause he's slacking a little in the general muddle, that's 
 all. He'll pull himself together directly I've put things 
 straight for him and am out of the way. No human being 
 could possibly get far enough into Andrew's life to upset 
 it for very long together. Andrew's unstrung for the 
 moment ; I seem to have disturbed the surface of his 
 fathomless mind, and it's the worst thing possible for his 
 investigations. It must be most confusing for a person 
 like Andrew. The delay for him is quite as bad, in a 
 way, as it is for Larry ; I'll just tell Larry so ! Up to 
 this Andrew's always looked at me through a telescope," 
 she pursued. " If he took to putting me under his micro- 
 scope with the worms Goodness gracious ! " she gasped. 
 
 " This delay is fiendish for every one of us, and it's cruel 
 and unfair when one wants to do the best for everyone. 
 To be getting ready to turn his microscope on me, when 
 this very minute he might he might be regretting his 
 rash experiment in an unknown species, is it's too unjust 
 for words ! " 
 
 Audrey looked very proud as she said this, but she felt 
 humble. No bravery of word or look seemed any longer 
 able to ward off Andrew. He was slowly and insidiously 
 encroaching upon her. She was now very near Larry's 
 door and her heart beat faster. 
 
 " The rooms will be full of roses, and there will be 
 lilies-of-the- valley in the silver bowls," she said as a sort 
 of .charm to keep Andrew in his place. " And if 
 I can't be happy even for an hour," she pleaded, " how on 
 earth am I to get them all fixed up, or make Larry under- 
 stand ? He'll think I don't love him, in the way I do, if 
 I let anything come between us. Men can't see things. 
 They're blinder than puppies. And, after all, he's given 
 up a great deal for me poor Larry ! 
 
 " Why must loving hurt you like this ? " she said. " It's 
 like an ache, and having to stay and pull them out of 
 their hole is like an ache too. I'm all aches all over, I 
 think. And Larry'll be blaming me me ! Everybody'll 
 be blaming me, and I'm deadly, deadly tired ; and if I
 
 64 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 weren't going to Larry," she murmured, as she went up 
 the steps, " I'd like to be dead." 
 
 Her arrival lifted Larry from a mood of great de- 
 spondency into one that promised but little true discern- 
 ment of her moral needs. She had gone through a great 
 deal that morning, and pined for consolation. Dazed, 
 half swooning in the grasp of passion and of her great 
 love, trembling in the ecstasy of his touch, with a little 
 smothered cry, she nestled close to Larry. Like the 
 young animal she really was, she could now see only 
 through her senses. She forgot everything, save only 
 that Larry was hers and she Larry's, and in this 
 fact consisted heaven. Her pity was lost in love, 
 her scheme of benevolence swallowed up in kisses. 
 She had no word, no protest, no smile. Love was too 
 real to her. It was as real as death. Even with Larry's arms 
 around her she felt that it was, and like death. It seemed 
 to her, as though her life, with one rending agony of 
 surrender, was all going out to Larry. She quivered and 
 sighed. The thing was too big for her, and with each 
 moment it grew bigger. She seemed to be pledging her- 
 self to shadowy immensities, in which she had no part, 
 to be playing for stakes to be gambling with powers 
 too high for her, too high, too fierce and compelling. 
 She clung closer closer, and Larry held her tight. Her 
 emotion profoundly moved him ; he was infinitely tender 
 to Audrey. 
 
 But suddenly she was afraid of Larry, mutinous against 
 what she knew not. She tore herself almost violently out 
 of his arms, and sat up and shuddered. 
 
 " But what's up now ? " he said. " You're all anyhow, 
 little girl. You want a lot of looking after." 
 
 And then upon an impulse so unprecedented as to be a 
 revelation to herself and Heaven alone knows how much 
 more to Larry ! she primmed her lips and a flood of the 
 most wonderful new words of wisdom poured through 
 them. She might have been steeped in wisdom from her 
 birth. Larry gasped and made a disordered effort to
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 65 
 
 caress her into silence. He could as easily have held back 
 a wave with kisses. He was really alarmed. 
 
 What she said was indeed vague. She propounded 
 no scheme, formulated no definite change in affairs. It 
 "was the leaning towards an uncompromisingly Puritan 
 standard that characterized her utterances, queer glints of 
 virtuous desire that ran in and out of them, dark sugges- 
 tions of some sacrifice of self apparently of an all round 
 nature, which seemed to be embarrassingly imminent, 
 that struck Larry dumb, and then of a sudden Audrey 
 slipped from her rhetorical phase and burst into tears. 
 
 Whereupon Larry was himself again, and soon the 
 tears were dry and hope aflame. This lasted until the 
 telephone-bell called Larry. Larry left her with a stern 
 command not to make a fool of herself while he was away, 
 and directly he shut the door the voice began. 
 
 By this time Audrey overflowed with courage, and what 
 was a voice, after all, when you are braced up by the 
 rapture of kisses ! So she gaily defied the undefiable, 
 which went on quietly turning her which way it would, 
 until at last, with a baffled laugh, she paused to listen. 
 She had to listen to a good deal, and to nothing in 
 the least agreeable. But no matter what the contest, 
 the scent of battle was sweet to the nostrils of Audrey, 
 and this unseen enemy who fought with her seemed to 
 be wanting everything she had ; so she sat straight up 
 amongst the roses and contested every inch of the ground 
 with a horrible suspicion that she was making no way at 
 all. The voice wanted everything, everything ! It would 
 accept no compromise, it was inexorable. It wanted all 
 and would give nothing ! The very immensity in these 
 insolent demands excited the girl ; the curious feeling of 
 being in grip with the biggest thing she had faced en- 
 larged her consciousness. Suddenly in the beautiful room, 
 full of roses and rare and exquisite and delicate things 
 bought for her by Larry, she herself stood up visibly 
 before her own eyes alone, solitary, a creature of infinite 
 significance, upon whom all things waited, who held in 
 
 5
 
 66 
 
 her hands to give or to withhold all good things and all 
 evil. But first she must give up, everything, everything ; 
 keep back nothing ! She shivered and shook. It was 
 like Ananias and Sapphira. She was much too clever a 
 girl not to have read her Bible, and some of the stories in 
 it had always made her feel extremely uncomfortable. 
 
 The vision faded but the voice began again, dinning 
 into her ears, clearly and definitely, all that not ten 
 minutes ago she had been reeling out to Larry, she was 
 now aware, with somewhat artificial incoherence. 
 
 She had found an adversary as invincible as herself, 
 it would appear, and as artful. She laughed, and in a 
 moment was invigorated. And then Larry came back, 
 and his face was now also the face of one who glories in 
 a fight, and it helped in its turn to confirm the mounting 
 courage of Mrs. Antrobus. 
 
 " Where is your luggage ? " he said ; " and what have 
 you done about your car ? Have you sent it back ? " 
 
 " Larry, sit down here beside me. I'll hold your hand, 
 dear. And now be patient and listen. I have a great deal 
 to say to you. Oh, Larry ! Poor, poor Larry ! You 
 won't like it at all." 
 
 Larry was rigid with consternation. He had important 
 affairs of his own to think of, and he had never seen her 
 like this before. 
 
 " Audrey ! for Heaven's sake " 
 
 " Oh, Larry, won't you be patient when I ask you ? " 
 With many explosive interruptions from Larry she told 
 her story, and Larry's fresh face turned grey before the 
 narrative had hurried to its conclusion. There was the 
 most extraordinary air of finality now in Audrey, and 
 she was afraid of something Audrey ! something she 
 could not herself have defined, but it was real to her ; the 
 whole thing was real. Of that Larry was sure, and so, 
 in spite of himself, his face grew grey. 
 
 " But, Audrey, little darling, it won't do," he said at 
 last very gently. " You have the ways of a kitten, dear, 
 and the heart of an angel, and more courage than any
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 67 
 
 bristling female who ever grew a moustache ; but it's 
 my business now to take care of you, and see that you 
 don't go sacrificing yourself for any mad idea. It's an 
 awful story altogether. I'd do a lot to do something for 
 that poor creature with cancer, but I have you to think of. 
 I have to make things as straight as I can for you. My 
 little girl ! my poor darling Audrey ! I wish to God I'd 
 taken better care of you at the start." 
 
 " It was my fault quite as much as yours. Do let us 
 keep to common sense." 
 
 " It was not, as it happens. It never is the woman's 
 fault ; but that's not the question now. I have news 
 too. It was Capel who telephoned. He's just come 
 from the War Office. The rumours about the war are 
 growing like gourds, he says, and we'll be in South Africa 
 before you can say ' knife,' and our regiment's the first 
 on the roster. You can't go back, Audrey. There's not 
 a minute to lose. I want to take steps to marry you, 
 darling, before we go, if it can be put through anyhow." 
 
 Larry spoke in a new voice, there was a glimmer in 
 him of something she had never seen before. It silenced 
 and bewildered Audrey ; it made her tremble. 
 
 " You can't go back not now, child," he said. 
 
 Audrey sat still and white, her hands had grown cold 
 in Larry's. 
 
 " Larry ! " she whispered. " Oh, Larry ! Larry.! " 
 
 He was chafing the little hands. 
 
 " I wouldn't ask you, Audrey, I swear I wouldn't, dear. 
 I'd let you go back for a month only for this, but a month 
 now means everything. It will be a close shave, any- 
 way, with the long vacation in sight, but I'll go to Antrobus 
 myself. I'll go to-day. He's a gentleman, and with this 
 war at the door, and the chances you know, dear, I 
 think he'll play fair. I daresay he's a good old fellow 
 at heart really. I think he'll do the right thing by you." 
 
 " He's twenty-nine," she said drearily. " Isn't it 
 funny ? " 
 
 " But twenty-nine ! Why, good God - 
 
 5*
 
 68 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " He's only five years older than you, Larry." 
 
 " By Jove ! This is a rummy go. Well, perhaps it'll 
 make things easier to explain, and, thank Heaven, he's 
 a gentleman." 
 
 " Even for a gentleman," said Audrey with an elfish 
 laugh, " the situation might be rather disagreeable." 
 
 " Audrey, Audrey ! Don't, dear ! Whatever he may 
 think of me, he'll see you can't be left, not now. He's a 
 man ; he must see. My God ! but I'll see that he does !" 
 
 " Wars never break out as soon as people think ; some- 
 one is always crying wolf long before anything happens." 
 
 " Not this time, darling. I know two men who've been 
 out there for the last five years, who say the only wonder 
 is the idiocy of the people here not knowing that it must 
 come. They've been pestering the War Office for three 
 weeks now, and if the War Office believes in it, it's come 
 pretty near, I tell you. Oh, we're in for it all right any 
 day now. Of course," he said airily, " it won't last long. 
 We'll soon teach 'em. I'll be back in no time, but there 
 are the chances, of course. I must make things as right 
 as I can for you before I go, Audrey." 
 
 He fidgeted a little and got very red. 
 
 " In a way, dear, it's better for us," he said tenderly. 
 He pushed his chair away and knelt down beside her. 
 " Put your head here against me," he said, " and don't 
 look so white. Oh, Audrey, don't, child ; not now. 
 You're not losing courage now when things are all on the 
 turn ? Can't you see it's better, little girl ? " 
 
 " Well, no, I can't." 
 
 There was a wry look about Larry's mouth. He flushed 
 deeper and bit his lip. 
 
 " You must know that I don't mind a hang what I 
 give up for you, Audrey," he said ; " you're giving up 
 enough for me, God knows ! But the thought of having 
 to leave the regiment has been pretty infernally bad, I 
 tell you." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Audrey faintly. 
 
 " I never once regretted it, my own not once, any
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 69 
 
 more than you regretted anything ; but, you see, 
 nothing could prevent it's being a beastly grind, you 
 know." 
 
 " But but must you have left ? " 
 
 She broke off with wide, terrified eyes fixed on him. 
 
 " One must, you see. We're pretty straight-laced in a 
 queer way. Besides, it wouldn't do for you, dear. You 
 can see it wouldn't. Women, you know " 
 
 " Oh, go on ! I know now." 
 
 " If I'd gone," he said eagerly, " I'd have made it all 
 right, you know. The property does want looking after. 
 But now," he said triumphantly, " it's all right, right as 
 rain another story altogether. Other things won't count 
 now. We'll all be wanted, especially our regiment," 
 he said proudly. " They can't do without us, and fellows 
 get chances in a war, you know. I think somehow that 
 I'll do well," he said, flushing again. " It's my chance, 
 I think and, in a way, it's yours. It's ripping good luck 
 for us, little girl." 
 
 She sat up, her eyes still wide and full of trouble. 
 
 " I didn't know you'd have to do this for me," she 
 said. " It's more than if you gave me your life, I think. 
 One doesn't like taking such big things. It's low. It's 
 like like comic opera girls who want all they can 
 get," she said, frowning. 
 
 " Audrey, this isn't reasonable, darling not like 
 you " 
 
 " Oh, it's like me, all right," she sighed ; " but whether 
 it's reasonable or not is another thing. fc l didn't know 
 people were so very particular." 
 
 " It would be a pretty big scandal, you know, little 
 darling, and lots of fellows the Colonel is one of them 
 draw the line at er divorces, you see." 
 
 " Oh, I see ! If I had been one of the girls I saw just 
 now, Larry in my own clothes it would have been 
 better for you." 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous ! " 
 
 " I'm not. The very idea of being like any of them
 
 70 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 makes me squirm ; I should get so tired of myself, and 
 you'd get a great deal tireder ; but at least ther-e'd never 
 have been the ghost of a scandal, not the remotest reason 
 for the Colonel to turn you out." 
 
 " For God's sake don't, Audrey, when everything's all 
 right now, and would have been in the end in any case." 
 
 "If one could only combine everything! Being one- 
 self and having all one wants, and looking all right 
 generally, and always having the right influence on 
 everybody. But it's no use. You can't have everything, 
 and some things seem like bits of yourself ; you can't cut 
 them off and leave them behind. And if I were the least 
 atom like one of those girls oh ! Larry ! Larry ! " 
 
 " But since you're not, darling," said Larry soothingly. 
 
 " I can't bear doing active harm to people. It makes 
 me feel horrible. If you'd had to leave the regiment, 
 Larry, I should have had to keep on hating myself. And 
 then," she said, half sobbing, " the most awful things might 
 have happened." 
 
 The suggestion was cryptic, but there was genuine terror 
 in her eyes. 
 
 The mere thought of doing active violence to any part 
 of her own being was a potentiality so fraught with pro- 
 found tragedy that Mrs. Antrobus's slight frame quivered 
 in the most piteous way. It took Larry all he knew to 
 restore her composure. 
 
 " And now you've got to think of our chance," he said, 
 " and leave the rest. I'm glad I'll be going out with them, 
 not sitting on my heels doing nothing. My God ! but I'm 
 glad," he said, lifting up a gallant face. 
 
 For an instant she looked at him with heavy eyes. 
 " I'm glad you're glad, Larry. Perhaps I shall be 
 glad myself presently." 
 
 " But think of me having to sneak out after them later 
 on in some beastly Yeomanry corps, if it lasts long enough 
 for that. You'd hate that, dear, like the devil. Look 
 here, Audrey ! I believe this will put a lot right for both 
 of us. Do you see, little girl ? I feel somehow that I'll
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE 1 ' 71 
 
 do well. It's oh, well, it's like a sop to Cerberus in a 
 way," he said, reddening and giving a quick, shamefaced 
 laugh. 
 
 Suddenly Audrey sat up straight with brilliant eyes 
 
 " Larry," she cried, " I simply must go back. There 
 must be time afterwards. I can't leave them not 
 now. If I did, I'd have to go back. They'd haunt me. 
 And if I did go back, they'd turn me out, and then I'd be 
 no use to anyone, not even to you, dear. With them 
 helpless and penniless oh, don't you see ? I'd die I 
 know or do something. I must stay and get things 
 settled, and make my miserable money sort of of in- 
 evitable. Oh, I'll find some way of squaring Andrew 
 about it. I know I shall." 
 
 " Audrey, this is madness." 
 
 " It's not madness," she said at last, " but I have to 
 do it." She turned two frightened eyes upon Larry. 
 " It's like this, Larry, I have to. I have to go back." 
 All at once the fear slipped out of her eyes and a great 
 light shot up in them. 
 
 " Larry ! Look here ! This is my chance. It's to 
 me what the war is to you. It's my sop to Cerberus. 
 I want to crowd all the things I've always forgotten the 
 things that other girls never forget once in all their lives," 
 she panted, " into this month not in their way! Good- 
 ness forbid ! but in mine, my own, own way ; and after- 
 wards, between us we'll be happy, happy, happy ! with 
 nothing mixed in to spoil the happiness the whole of 
 the rest of our lives. We can't spoil our happiness 
 now, Larry, when it's so near," she said in little jerks. 
 
 " If this isn't stark staring madness," said Larry, 
 springing to his feet, " Heaven alone knows what it is ! 
 Here's the chance of a lifetime to square everything. 
 There's not an instant to lose. And, Audrey," he said, 
 taking her tenderly in his arms, " it may not be only us 
 dear we two now." 
 
 " Do you think I'd forgotten," she cried out in a dread- 
 ful voice " forgotten that chance ? "
 
 72 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " But, darling," he said, holding her to him, " that 
 decides it. It must decide it." 
 
 She shuddered in his arms. 
 
 " Larry ! Go away ! Don't touch me. Sit down 
 there," she entreated, and in spite of himself he obeyed 
 her. 
 
 " It doesn't decide it," she said. " Even that doesn't 
 decide it. This is my month. I've got to take it. It's 
 mine. Oh ! Larry, it is, and if you won't give it to me, 
 I'll have to take it ; that's all. It's something inside me, 
 I think. I hate and loathe it," she cried passionately, 
 " and I love you. I never knew until this minute how 
 much I loved you. I I wonder if one's heart could 
 break with love ? I love you as much as that, Larry, 
 more than ever I loved you before, and in a different 
 way. Just now, when I looked at you, Larry, you looked 
 rather like a devil ; I'll say that for you ! But " she 
 knelt down and laid her head against his breast " but I 
 sort of knew suddenly that we two, you and I, were sort 
 of meant to be good. Oh ! Larry, don't ! The sort of 
 good that would suit me would never bore you, dear ; 
 how could it ? But somehow I know just as I know that 
 I must go home. It's our chance just as much as your 
 going to the war is, and we've got to take it." 
 
 The arguments that arose in Larry's brain died upon his 
 lips. She compelled him to silence, to obedience, this 
 fantastic, foolish, light creature, with such sorrow as no 
 words have ever spoken, upon her young face. 
 
 " God ! " he said ; " what's a man to do ? " 
 
 " Help me to put on my things, I think ; that's all. I've 
 got to go to them, and you've got to put up with it, and to 
 do your own job. Larry ! You pulled half my hair out 
 with that clasp. Oh ! Larry, if those three girls were 
 rolled into one, they'd never love you half as much as I 
 do, for all their goodness ! " 
 
 " Audrey, will nothing move you ? " 
 
 " Larry ! Try to understand, dear heart, I've got to 
 go back."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 AT eight-thirty that same evening Audrey was diligently 
 peeling walnuts. She did not want them, but they 
 kept her eyes off Andrew, otherwise she would have 
 been forced to watch him. He was acquiring a shuddering 
 fascination for her, and to-night he looked fifty : if he 
 went on ageing in this diabolical way he would be decrepit 
 before the month was out. She felt keenly exasperated. 
 It was so inconsiderate of Andrew to be making things 
 every moment worse for her, considering all she was doing 
 for him. She pinched a walnut hard and wished that it 
 was Andrew. It would be rather interesting to watch the 
 effect of a real pinch on Andrew, the sort of pinch she would 
 give Larry without a moment's hesitation if he annoyed 
 her. This opened out Andrew in an entirely new light, 
 hard and dazzling ; it made you hot and uncomfortable. 
 She was beginning bitterly to resent Andrew, his entire 
 ignorance of all the issues involved in this pregnant 
 month, and the consequent unfairness in her own demands 
 upon his forbearance and intelligence. She laughed 
 softly. 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me you wanted to go to town 
 to-day," she inquired with irrepressible elfishness, " and 
 ask me to drive you up ? " 
 
 " It didn't strike me, dear. Besides," he said with the 
 queer, awkward look that always made Audrey want to 
 shake him into a human being, " you look .so absolutely 
 free in your motor. Both when you ride and when you 
 motor you look' like the spirit of the wind." 
 
 73
 
 74 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Audrey flung a pathetic glance upon Andrew, but 
 Andrew's eyes were on his plate. Andrew never ventured 
 upon any expression of his emotions, but he suffered for 
 it and always took the hidden hurt inseparable from 
 Audrey, as part of the sacred mystery of womanhood. 
 In wretched shyness he now devoured an apple he did not 
 want. 
 
 " Just as I said," she murmured ; " I'm a fairy tale to 
 you. Did you ever read any fairy tales when you were 
 young ? " 
 
 " I hadn't much time, dear child." 
 " Oh, well it was short-sighted policy on the part of 
 the philanthropic elephant. You ought to have got over 
 all that while you were young. A belief in fairies born out 
 of due tune is disastrous. And when you turn wives and 
 business shall I include business Andrew, into 
 
 fairy tales why " 
 
 Naturally Andrew did the wrong thing he winced, 
 and Audrey, feeling greatly outraged, hurried on : 
 
 " Oh, well things happen, you know. Do you want 
 any peeled walnuts ? I have a large supply I'd like to 
 dispose of." 
 
 " No thank you, dearest." 
 
 " Andrew, you haven't a digestion ? I've always for- 
 gotten to inquire." 
 
 " Apparently, so have I, so I suppose I haven't, dear." 
 Her melodious irrelevance soothed the ache left by 
 her gay stab. It was so sweet and new. The melody in 
 Audrey had hitherto breathed itself out in silence mostly, 
 and in the dreams of her husband. 
 
 In spite of the pain her words brought him, he hoped 
 that during this tune of trial she would not go back into 
 the silence. In a vague way he knew that it is always 
 in the empty silence the sense of a man's loneliness grows 
 heaviest. He did not remember to have had any empty 
 silences before his marriage. The child was supplying, 
 it would seem, the want she had herself created. 
 
 She was the point of life whence life grew up, of light
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 75 
 
 which pierced the darkness ; and if the life hurt and the 
 light blinded, she was a woman and holy, a creature de- 
 signed to make men humble. 
 
 To be, as it were, circumference to centre, to such as 
 Audrey, was surely much. Until this crisis he had hardly 
 realized that there was more, that his position was an 
 unique one. That to be triumphant sovereign over a world 
 of marvels yet unconquered, might well give a man pause, 
 and if dwelt upon, revolutionize his outlook. The feet 
 of Andrew, in common with those of his wife, were also 
 upon the threshold of a new life. " You're quite right, 
 really, Andrew," she pursued, slanting her face to look 
 at him behind the flowers. " There is a good deal of fairy 
 tale in the present position of affairs, and some Arabian 
 Nights. Aren't you listening ? " she inquired with 
 studied politeness. He was wandering off again into 
 some queer hedged lane of his own. " There's a good 
 deal, too, that must be put before these sick old women 
 with a light and airy touch ; administered to them, you 
 know, in the guise of a fairy tale, not clapped on to their 
 minds rigidly like a moral essay." 
 
 " Audrey, child ! " 
 
 " Do do listen ! The situation must be let down on 
 them like the gentle dew from heaven, not like a brutal 
 hail-storm. The dew will drench them just as effectively 
 as the hail could do, before it's done, but it'll do it in a 
 much nicer way. Andrew, you must see by this time if 
 if you're human that that it's I who must tell your sisters 
 everything, and not you. You'll hate it, but you'll be 
 glad in the end you'll be extremely glad ; and if your 
 sisters weren't themselves they'd be gladder," she grimly 
 added. 
 
 " It will be a most painful scene, and it is my part, not 
 yours. Audrey, I must spare you, at least, all that I 
 can." 
 
 " Andrew ! " she said, standing up. " Don't go back 
 to the bottles just yet. Come into the drawing-room for 
 once and talk some common sense."
 
 76 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " Sit there ! " she commanded. " Couldn't you sit 
 comfortably," she pleaded, " h'ke any other sinful man ? 
 Oh, Andrew ! " she sighed, " you might have a lovely 
 time before you, if only you knew how. Oh, well you don't, 
 so let us go on now about those poor old things. Andrew, 
 how precisely would you break it to them ? " 
 " Dearest, I could only tell them the truth." 
 " But if you did, don't you see Katharine 'd snort 
 like a war-horse ; the prospectus for the new school would 
 be out in a week, and she'd go on till she died ! Neither 
 God nor man would ever force back her awful energies 
 once they broke loose again. And in her heart she'd 
 be thanking God for the chance of earning the martyr's 
 crown you wrenched from her grasp. But all the same, 
 Andrew, I've been watching her, although she's never 
 forgiven you, and never will, for interrupting her terrible 
 march to Heaven, and wouldn't lie on the lovely soft sofas 
 you gave her, for years, or eat the good food, just to annoy 
 her poor flesh that doesn't even know how to sin ; yet, 
 now, in spite of her iron mind, the flesh has got the upper 
 hand at last, and now she does really rest and really 
 enjoy the doctor's visits, and his medicine. Goodness 
 gracious ! don't you believe me ? If you weren't so full 
 of bottles and things you'd have seen it all in her old 
 eyes. In spite of her religion and herself, Katharine's got 
 a little bit of rest into her tired eyes at last, and it's 
 taken her all these years ! Why on earth can't people 
 get to Heaven without having to wade through Hell ? " 
 she said passionately. " Why should true Christianity 
 be something that hurts yourself and everyone else 
 horribly ? Talk of devils ! there's some natural polite- 
 ness about a devil, and, anyway, he doesn't nag." Her 
 face was white ; her scared eyes looked into some region 
 of which Andrew had never dreamed. He felt most 
 ineffective in a general matrimonial way, and as an 
 instructor in Theology, singularly unfit. What could a 
 simple Agnostic do in such a matter ? At the same time 
 he was deeply distressed.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 77 
 
 " My poor little girl ! " 
 
 " I don't believe God's like that in the very least," 
 she said, not to Andrew, but to that dim something so far 
 and so pitiless that would not leave her alone. 
 
 Andrew, torn by his great compassion, bitterly re- 
 gretting his incapacity, touched the mutinous hand of his 
 wife. 
 
 " I know so little of these things, dear," said he. " But 
 because you are, I feel sure that whoever God may be, 
 He is very good. You are most wonderful, child. You 
 have grown suddenly in one great bound. It is the way 
 of all good women, I have been told." 
 
 " I wonder who told you," she said, with a broken 
 laugh. " Was it the P. E. ? The other words are so long, 
 Andrew, we'll abbreviate the title in ordinary conversation. 
 And if you think I'm developing a latent taste for making 
 myself uncomfortable to please a great Juggernaut of a 
 contraption who wants every nice thing you have to 
 appease it, you're very much mistaken on the wrong 
 trail altogether. Oh, if you'd only let me guide you ! " 
 she sighed. " And I'm not a good woman, do remember 
 that. It'll save you no end of future worry and annoy- 
 ance. I'm developing a sound business instinct I always 
 knew I possessed, and if you'd developed your outside 
 eyes in the way you've done your inside ones you'd have 
 seen it long ago." 
 
 " My darling ! I wish to God I had ! " 
 
 " Andrew ! For goodness' sake don't shrink up in- 
 side you like that. You don't suppose I'm thinking of 
 the loss of the beastly money. Goodness ! If that was 
 all. I have rather more important things than that to be 
 thinking about." 
 
 Andrew's short-sighted stare was not altogether inex- 
 cusable, but it unloosed a new train of unpleasant re- 
 flection in the breast of his wife. 
 
 " Oh, Andrew, if you'd only keep on being absorbed 
 in your own affairs and leave profitless emotions ! Sup- 
 pose, now, anything happened, you know and, oh, well,
 
 78 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 I didn't happen to be on the spot, and the show had to 
 go on all the same with the vigorous and orderly swing 
 in which successful concerns must go, do you think for 
 a moment that twisting yourself up in knots would en- 
 do the trick ? " 
 
 Of this melodious tirade Andrew grasped only the 
 melody. 
 
 "I'm a clumsy fellow, darling, and by my criminal 
 neglect " 
 
 " You're yourself, Andrew, and sure to run amuck 
 in human affairs. You're a thing apart, don't you see." 
 
 " I certainly don't ! " 
 
 " That's the worst," she said sadly. :< You don't ! 
 Oh, well, it can't be helped, but, at any rate, I'll explain 
 the affair to your old sisters. You look so bewildered. 
 I wish you'd understand." 
 
 As he stared at the adorable face Andrew wished that 
 he could. 
 
 " I haven't one unkind thought about your losing the 
 money," she said slowly. His brow grew no clearer. She 
 sighed. " How extraordinary you are, Andrew ! You 
 want to have everything explained to you. You can't 
 explain things, especially if they haven't quite happened 
 yet. Besides, er some things might require a great deal 
 of explanation before you'd understand them. I I 
 just want you to take a reasonable view in general of this 
 world. It's a tremendous help when er sudden sorts 
 of things happen." 
 
 Her responsibility in Andrew was closing in about her 
 like a wire net that hurt and bruised. It put him in an 
 ever-increasing new and forbidding light. Even his mode of 
 apprehending imminent events in her own disastrous yet 
 unavoidable absence was expanding into a grisly horror. 
 Mrs. Antrobus seemed to be constrained and pressed upon 
 by malign and insidious forces, resolved upon making every 
 step on her road to freedom, about as disagreeable as it 
 could well be. 
 
 Andrew, who had not counted at all practically a week
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 79 
 
 ago, to be suddenly turned into an octopus on her hands, 
 with tentacles of unmanageable and immeasurable 
 activity. Andrew, quiet, self-engrossed, harmless Andrew ! 
 
 It was a cruel and hideous transformation foreign to 
 any experience. 
 
 It is hardly to be wondered at that in face of such an 
 obstacle for one memorable moment the stout brain of his 
 wife reeled. 
 
 " It's your unlikeness to other people," she murmured 
 at last, inadvertently aloud ; "a sort of sinless er 
 shell." By his start she became aware of her indiscretion. 
 
 " Oh, well, I'm certain your sins were all purely scientific ! 
 If you knew some of the people I know goodness ! " 
 
 " My dearest, I know several people ! " He was looking 
 at her possessively, like a young lover. This was 
 intolerable. 
 
 " Oh, I know you've met them," she said hurriedly ; 
 " but that's another story. If you knew how difficult 
 it makes things ! " she sighed. 
 
 Andrew reflected for a moment upon that world from 
 which he had saved this curious child. " How little she 
 knows of it," he thought. " How sweet she is, and how 
 undaunted ! But I wonder what precisely she does 
 mean ! " 
 
 There was something in her face so young, so like that 
 of a child wide-eyed with some wonder of new knowledge 
 which they who watch her know to be as old as time, that 
 Andrew laughed aloud. 
 
 The superiority in Andrew's laugh was so tragically 
 ridiculous that it made Audrey feel rather giddy. At any 
 rate, it silenced her for quite a minute. 
 
 " Do let us stick to urgent things," she said at last. 
 " Andrew, I simply must explain ! That's all." 
 
 " It would be a quite impossible situation for you, 
 Audrey." 
 
 " I must do it all the same. Oh, dear ! Can't you see ? 
 If you knew anything about human women you'd see 
 by the look of me that it's all been settled from the
 
 80 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE' 5 
 
 beginning." Just for an experiment she emptied the 
 full contents of her illimitable eyes upon Andrew and 
 watched him being swamped in the novel experience. 
 Before such forces the strength of man is but as water. 
 
 He made a motion as though to leave the room ; he felt 
 that he must be alone amidst his gods to lay this gift, 
 this crown of life and of creation, upon some secret 
 altar. 
 
 " But, dear me, Andrew, where are you going ? We'd 
 better explain things to ourselves first. You saw the 
 lawyer, and he said that it could be managed about the 
 settlement. Are you sure, absolutely sure ? " 
 
 " I'm quite sure," said Andrew, flushing. The flush 
 made her wince. She knew its highly inadequate cause. 
 " But his saying so makes no difference," said Andrew. 
 
 "It makes all the difference. I was afraid there 
 might be bothers. Andrew, I should be low, a common 
 thing, if I were to hold on to that settlement. Take 
 my word for that now ! You'll believe me some day. 
 You'll see I never spoke a truer word," she added, with 
 grim emphasis. " And now we know where we stand." 
 
 " I have promised nothing ; I cannot make up my mind 
 to the course you suggest." 
 
 " You're not taking things in the right spirit, Andrew. 
 And you have promised practically. Anyway, you've got 
 to, now." 
 
 She stood up before him, her hands on her sides like a 
 determined child. " I won't let you stir from here until 
 you do promise. It's the crisis of our lives," she said with 
 dry lips. 
 
 " It's a terrible situation for a man ; you must see that 
 it is, child ! Audrey, I'm pulling myself out of a pit 
 of my own making by by your petticoats." 
 
 ' You're doing nothing of the kind ; you're taking 
 your rights." 
 
 " I am breaking a trust to save myself." 
 
 " Not yourself not you ! It is the others, those poor, 
 tired, sick old women ; they've broken themselves for
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 81 
 
 you, Andrew ! I wonder it's not written on your brain ! 
 And when they've begun to rest at last after all these 
 awful years ! Doesn't that strike you ? the awfulness of 
 it that they had to learn to rest ! " 
 
 " It has touched me so deeply, Audrey, that I have no 
 word to say about it," he said in a low voice. " And that 
 you should have found it out in this way, with those eyes ! 
 Oh, my God ! that has touched me more deeply still." 
 " And yet you make difficulties ! " 
 " It's an insufferable necessity," he said abruptly. 
 " To take what belongs to you ? It's common sense. 
 And even if it is unpleasant," she said in another voice, 
 " I don't want to be a beast ; but you do deserve something, 
 you must know you do. And in future ages if it still 
 weighs upon you," she said with a malicious twinkle, 
 " you can give it back, you know. Anyway, it's our only 
 road out now, and we've got to take it, and that's all been 
 certain from the first, and all this arguing unnecessary. 
 It's useless contention. And now, since even your maniacal 
 pride must admit that you deserve something, will you 
 please promise a sort of permanent promise not to upset 
 any present arrangement later on, whatever happens ? 
 It takes all one's spirit away to see all one's trouble made 
 hay of, even in the future for some unpractical er 
 scruple. And this scheme is sound you'll admit that, 
 Andrew. I know the unpleasantness of baffled pride, 
 but that can't be avoided. Now, Andrew, promise, 
 promise to leave things as we've arranged them no matter 
 what happens ! " Her face was alight with eagerness. 
 She came close to him and caught his hands ; she swayed^ 
 her breast heaved she was a child fighting for its Life ! 
 a suppliant at the feet of mercy ! 
 
 " But, darling why " 
 
 " Oh, promise ! " 
 
 " I promise but " 
 
 " Don't spoil it with ' buts.' You promise faithfully, 
 knowingly ! " She could hardly get her words out. 
 Andrew watched and listened, perplexed, moved, en- 
 
 6
 
 82 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 thralled. She looked very beautiful. An immense desire 
 to kiss her made his eyes swim, but she was so precious 
 a trust, and the heart of Andrew was full of reverence and 
 had been chastened by Katharine. 
 
 " I promise faithfully, knowingly ! Dearest, what am 
 I to know ? " 
 
 " Oh, never mind, promise ! and in your right mind ! 
 You are in your right mind, Andrew ? Honest injun ! 
 You're certain ? sure ? Well, now, promise one more 
 thing and I'm done. You mustn't ever, in all your life, 
 tell your sisters that I've given up my 800 a year, or or 
 prevent them from using it." 
 
 " Prevent their using it ! no, indeed no, my generous 
 darling ; but I particularly wish them to know what you 
 have done. Audrey, I should like my sisters to know you, 
 child." 
 
 " They'll know me all right in time ! Meantime, just 
 promise ! Quick, I'm so tired I I feel giddy ! Oh, 
 promise ! " 
 
 " I promise for the moment. Some day, Audrey." 
 
 " Yes, some day ! Meanwhile, you've promised 
 properly." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I'll sit down ; I feel all anyhow ! And to-morrow," 
 she said slowly, " we'll go and see them together, and I'll 
 do all the talking. We'll go in the morning before they're 
 tired. 
 
 " And then we'll build up, you and I, Andrew, the 
 beginning of the most extraordinarily fine scheme that'll 
 get back all the money in time, and give you plenty of 
 leisure to make the most magnificent career for yourself. 
 And you've promised, Andrew ; never forget that you've 
 promised to carry out all the provisions of the contract ! " 
 
 Andrew laughed. 
 
 " I wish you weren't an Agnostic," she said, " or I'd 
 make you swear it all on the Bible ; but the word of a 
 gentleman is enough, surely ! "
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 NOT very long before this time the very sporting career 
 of one of Audrey's friends had been rudely inter- 
 rupted by an illness of a most annoying nature. It 
 necessitated constant repose on a couch full of scientific 
 inventions. A hideous contrivance quite unfit for polite 
 society. It soothed the aches of the invalid, however, 
 and smoothed the wrinkles acquired by her undeserved 
 sufferings. 
 
 It came in the very nick of time. If she had remained 
 on an ordinary sofa a week longer, being sensibly alarmed 
 upon a variety of scores, and obsessed by some recent 
 literature upon occult subjects, and since it was necessary 
 to her temperament to be impressive from some point 
 of view, she had decided to employ her enforced ab- 
 stinence from active mischief in the practice of the 
 contemplative life in a lawn cap. She felt sure that 
 in common justice the fact must leak out. Now, how- 
 ever, her restored energies began to run into more 
 natural channels. She sent for an artist to drape the 
 couch, and had it wheeled into her boudoir, substituted a 
 light evangelical for the more strenuous creed, and set 
 to wearing her martyr's crown with great ease to herself, 
 and much edification to those others not deemed worthy 
 as yet to compete for the prize. 
 
 " Between the springs of this contraption and the 
 kudos you're getting for Christian resignation, you're 
 enjoying yourself immensely," said Audrey one day, after 
 a careful examination of the machine. In the course of 
 
 83 6*
 
 84 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 her investigations she had given the potential saint more 
 than one good cause to squeak. Audrey had reasons of 
 her own for distrusting the validity of Mrs. Kenyon's 
 conversion. 
 
 " Even undraped, it's pretty dear," she said, trying a 
 spring ; " but I'll have to get one for my sister-in-law, 
 I think. Considering all the time you have on your hands, 
 Lilian, and no clothes to try on it'll cost you a fortune 
 in corsets before you even begin again, poor dear ! 
 you might have faked up a more exhilarating religion 
 than that you've been expounding. It's like an Irish 
 stew made^of curates. An inside artistically redecorated 
 only a month ago ought to do better than that. I hope 
 to goodness the seven job devils haven't got in ! 
 They might from your look, dear ! If I had your 
 chance of holy retirement, instead of having to work 
 like a horse to keep my family from the poor-house, I 
 might invent a fancy religion of my own. I've often 
 wished to." 
 
 " You're wicked beyond words, Audrey," whimpered 
 the invalid. 
 
 " I don't look wicked to the naked eye," said Audrey 
 to Lilian's glass, as she altered the set of her hat. 
 ' ' And I feel friendly to all the world, which is more than 
 you do, dearest. Between the chunks of Irish stew just 
 now you took away three characters. Lilian, you'd 
 really like me, now, wouldn't you, dear, if I gave you the 
 chance to take away my nice little character." 
 
 " I hope I should pray for you, Audrey." 
 
 " Oh, you'd do that, too, especially if you knew it was 
 irretrievably gone. It's easy to pray after the event, but 
 it's better to do something sensible before it ; so I'm going 
 straight on to Eileen Adare to tell her that it's all lies about 
 Johnny, that he's tremendously fond of her really, and 
 only endures that Sue Despard from the Gaiety because 
 he's been made miserable by the lies of the righteous." 
 
 Lilian was livid. 
 
 " You'll betray a confidence ! "
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 85 
 
 " Oh no, I'll not. I don't do things clumsily. My 
 worst enemy can't accuse me of that. But I'll never rest 
 till Eileen and Johnny see things in a reasonable way. 
 Being a pious invalid needn't make you give a busy woman 
 all this trouble, Lilian. When I've done with Eileen, I'm 
 going to find out about the other two. I hate playing 
 about with fairly decent reputations with all the out- 
 rageous ones available. It's very poor sport, really ; 
 all the herrings in the world could never smell like one 
 good fox. I like the real thing in everything. Don't cry, 
 Lilian." She came over to look. " I thought you 
 weren't, not properly, but even that sort of thing plays 
 Cain with the muscles about people's pretty little mouths. 
 
 " You're as pretty as paint, Lilian, with lots of points ; 
 you beat me in some, and you must be nice, or Jim 
 wouldn't spoil you as he does ; and it's all habit taking 
 away people's characters, I think. I wonder if every- 
 thing's all habit ? Buck up, Lilian. There's Jim, and 
 don't bore him with your religion, dear, until you've 
 touched it up a bit." 
 
 Whatever she did Audrey did quickly. Before the 
 week was out the estranged couples were reconciled and 
 the couch bought. She had not an idea how she was 
 going to pay for it. She was in debt already up to her 
 ears. She cared for none of these things as a rule, but 
 suddenly the fact of being in debt for a half-human thing 
 so incorporated with twisted pain, and one that had drawn 
 such a perfect agony of gratitude from Adeline, began to 
 vex her. The debt embittered the gift ; it wasn't fair to 
 Adeline. She began to cast round in her fertile mind for 
 a way out of the dilemma other than the bank, for the 
 moment impossible, and had almost prevailed upon herself 
 to make over to a friend who had long hankered after it, 
 at any price, a very favourite fur cloak of her own. Then 
 Katharine's altogether unjustifiable behaviour to her and 
 Adeline, her quiet, corroding jealousy, and the unworthy 
 modes of its manifestation, so worked upon Mrs. Antrobus, 
 that in order to pay back Katharine in fullest measure
 
 86 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 she fled to town and discharged her debt by bridge with 
 ruinous stakes. To give Audrey her due, she did not 
 gamble in a general way, except to amuse herseli ; but 
 with Katharine the ruling spring in any outbreak, what 
 could any one expect ? And in the end the half-chuckling 
 knowledge of how it had been paid for greatly increased 
 her already real pleasure in the gift. 
 
 Shortly before the present crisis in the affairs of the 
 Antrobuses, Adeline was lying on this unholy gift under 
 the bright shade of a great ilex-tree, murmuring always 
 delicate memories of the south ; soft shafts of sunlight 
 filtered through the branches, catching the coolness of 
 the polished leaves, yet carrying golden messages from 
 the very heart of the sun. It was just that day four 
 years his unexpected inheritance had fallen to Andrew, 
 and a year since Audrey had given Andrew's sister 
 the couch. The instant they put her on it Adeline 
 knew that it was the very thing she had so long waited 
 for ; she could have cried with joy. She need now no 
 longer be beset with swooning fear lest the slightest move, 
 the lightest footstep, should jar and torture her ; no 
 longer turn cold lest too sudden a hand be laid on the 
 coverlet. In this merciful haven of rest she could feel 
 safe and protected. She knew all this quite well. She 
 was immensely grateful both to God and to Audrey. 
 But she could not rest ; she could not let herself go, and 
 drop thankfully down into the cunning invertions of the 
 friendly bed. 
 
 The soul of Adeline was too rigid to throw itself helpless 
 into the Everlasting arms, so her poor body its forlorn 
 form found it difficult to abandon itself to anything less 
 inflexible than duty. It was afraid, just as the soul was, 
 to trust itself utterly to any but an iron rule. She had 
 been careful and troubled too long, poor Adeline ! 'to dare 
 either mentally, physically, or spiritually to sit idle at 
 the feet of Christ, even in the sleepy hush of a summer's 
 morning. The soul that has never rejoiced can no more 
 find rest in God than the body whose shrine it is. Her
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 87 
 
 attitude of angular discomfort inside and out exasperated 
 Audrey into many an extravagance, and sometimes drove 
 her to town when she would have liked much better to 
 have stayed at home and amused herself with Adeline. 
 
 Adeline was a revelation of grim marvels, so bewildering 
 and unexpected as to be weirdly " chic." She was the 
 youngest of the three, and intellectually the least deve- 
 loped, so she had always been given the odd jobs. She 
 was used for sudden emergencies, and never quite knew 
 when she should be wanted. So her little snatched 
 rests had alway been fraught with great distress to 
 Adeline, sometimes with disaster. Thus the sunny hours 
 were still grim monsters to the recumbent figure, too 
 frail now to break from the bondage of old habit. The 
 sudden strike of a clock always made her start. She felt 
 sure that she must have dozed off and forgotten something 
 a lesson, perhaps. Sometimes she sat bolt upright, and 
 started a score of agonies. She had surely forgotten 
 something this time, and Katharine's step was on the 
 stair ! 
 
 She had kept well her dreadful secret, and had worked, 
 with dauntless patience for years. She had troubled 
 no one and shirked nothing, but since the time she 
 was thirty-five she had lain uncomplaining and mute, 
 day and night, under the ban that has blasted the life 
 of many another portionless gentlewoman, the knowledge 
 that one day she should become a burthen. This hurt her 
 even more than the mortal pain ! 
 
 And then the great change had come, and rest poured 
 itself, like the oil of anointing, upon her path. The 
 couch came and her pain was assuaged, and yet she could 
 not rest, this daughter of pain. 
 
 She was amazing, also, in other ways to Audrey. 
 Adeline could hardly be said to be a personality at all. 
 She was the faint echo of the passionless morality which 
 stands for an unprogressive Protestant past, the victim 
 of duty and an overwhelming present. 
 
 It was Audrey who first suggested to her that she had
 
 88 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 any royal rights at all, in anything, much less in herself. 
 And before she knew where she was, she had begun Ho 
 yield her will in a multitude of little matters to a certain 
 airy form of suggestion peculiar to Audrey, but in her vital 
 principles she was adamant. One of these was an in- 
 exorable conviction that now although the day of active 
 work was at an end, God demanded of her her mornings. 
 It did not even strike her that God could ever relax in 
 this obligation He had put upon her, no matter what her 
 mood, or how high the thermometer. She would as soon 
 have expected Katharine to suffer slackness in these 
 things as her ancestral God. 
 
 And to attune one's soul to the company of holy men 
 for all the long hours of a summer's morning is not always 
 easy to one faint with weariness, who has not yet learnt 
 to rejoice in the Lord. And so one morning Audrey, 
 who was feeling pretty miserable herself, and anything 
 but good, came over by way of penance, and found Adeline 
 lumbered up with books and utterly demoralized by grief 
 and weakness, helplessly crying. In utter despair the 
 poor creature, with broken sobs and every word wrong, 
 tried to explain to Audrey the nature of spiritual dryness ! 
 
 Audrey stared. She removed every book, rearranged 
 the pillows and picked some roses. Then she sat down 
 and delivered a little homily. 
 
 " Some people are never satisfied," she said. " Not 
 content with building up a God who's nothing but a stack 
 -of your own prejudices, you must be turning Him into a 
 slave-driver, and an incapable small-minded one at that, 
 who doesn't believe in honest effort at all, and trusts 
 in nothing but His own omnipotent whip. He must 
 always be hustling. He's the worst sweater I ever heard 
 of, worse than any Jew. He's the king of sweaters, I should 
 think." 
 
 " Audrey " 
 
 " Well, I'm not religious. You can't accuse me of that ! 
 I've got all my ideas of God from you and others. When 
 He's not whipping you up to your duty, it seems He expects
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 89 
 
 you to be whipping yourself until He conies round 
 again." 
 
 The poor lady hid her face. Audrey slid down com- 
 fortably against a grass mound and buried her nose in a 
 red rose. 
 
 " It's so irrational," she said. " No God who made 
 the roses could be the least like that, and if you don't 
 care for roses perhaps Katharine put you off them by 
 the way she handles them there's the sky. Oh, Adeline, 
 do, for goodness' sake, look at it ! " said Audrey, as she 
 turned over on her back, and her dainty glances seemed to 
 gather in all things. " The sky could keep me occupied 
 for days if I had nothing better nothing to distract my 
 attention ; and there are the trees besides, and the sun play- 
 ing with the shadows, and the sound of the stream, and 
 the red roofs of the village, and all the little sounds of babies 
 and hens and dogs, and things growing ; and think of 
 the trout under the bridge, and that butterfly perfectly 
 idle in the air, and that little wretch, Johnny Hodges, 
 skulking in the bushes instead of being at school, as happy 
 as a cricket. And if that's not enough for you, goodness 
 gracious ! you've been good all your life, Adeline ; there 
 must be the most delightful things going on inside you that 
 not even pain could keep down. I haven't been good any 
 of my life, far from it, and yet they go on in me some- 
 times." There was the queerest, half-mocking apology 
 in the beautiful eyes she turned to Adeline. " Being good 
 always hasn't much advantage, that I can see, unless it 
 keeps the supply from getting jumpy." 
 
 " Audrey ! You don't understand," cried Adeline, 
 when at last she could speak. " I'm infinitely thankful 
 to God, and to Andrew, and to you, dear ; I do know 
 you are kind, dear Audrey. But oh ! if you only knew 
 knew even just a little of God ! " 
 
 " Not of your God. I don't want to know anything 
 at all about Him," said the girl in a low, fierce voice, her 
 grave lips^smiling. " A slave-driver, who won't let you 
 rest even when the whole world is calling to you to rest !
 
 90 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 rest ! rest ! .after your honest, hard, good day's work. 
 It makes me squirm, Adeline, when I think of the way you 
 worked, and the way it must have hurt you." 
 
 " Oh, Audrey, I was strong once ! " 
 
 " How long ago, I wonder ? As if I didn't know how 
 much it hurt, working at things you had no taste for, and 
 never saying a word for all those years about the pain. 
 " I always know how much pain hurts," she said with a 
 shiver. " I say, Adeline," she cried, sitting up suddenly 
 with the elfish look she reserved as a rule for Andrew, 
 " do you think that could be God the God of the Antro- 
 buses working in me ? " 
 
 " Oh, Audrey 
 
 " Dear me ! I thought you'd be quite pleased to think 
 of me squirming under the iron heel of Providence. 
 Adeline, I wish you wouldn't. I'm a beast, I daresay, but 
 if only you'd be sensible, I could be quite nice. I could 
 amuse you and keep the pain away, but what's one to do 
 with such different points of view ? Don't you see you 
 adore what I despise a Creature who's harder on you, one 
 of His sincerest followers, than a rank bad human being 
 would be. What chance would I have in such a galcre ! 
 And here are you wanting to deliver me me ! who never 
 did an honest day's work in my life, into His clutches. 
 You've been working all your life, you've practically killed 
 yourself for Andrew, and all the thanks you get from your 
 awful conception is to be made cry this perfect day because 
 you're too tired to read depressing books about Him. 
 They are depressing, Adeline ; I've tried them. Don't 
 you believe me ? You may, then. I could pass a better 
 examination in them than you this minute. I like 
 digging into other people's experiences ; don't you see ? 
 I've been trying to find out what makes them give 
 up joyfully everything that makes life worth living, and 
 go singing to the stake. It's fascinating, you know. 
 You've given up everything, Adeline, and would go 
 to the stake without moving a muscle ; but somehow," 
 she said, narrowing her eyes, " I don't think you'd go
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 91 
 
 singing, and that shows there's something rotten in the 
 state of Denmark." 
 
 " Audrey ! " 
 
 " It's your fault probably, not God's. He's one of the 
 Truths of the world. Most of the biggest things have 
 been done for Him, and done singing things that no 
 one could ever have done for a slave-driver with a common 
 mind. I'm sure it's your own fault," she said dreamily, 
 her long lashes dropping on her pink cheeks. " You've 
 added up all your own pain and your own sorrow, and 
 built it on to the original construction of prejudices and 
 limits and fears built up by the other Antrobuses, and 
 call that God. You've built in all the awful things, and 
 left out all the nice. Don't you see the simply awful un- 
 fairness of it, Adeline ? " said Audrey, lifting herself on 
 her elbow to ascertain how Adeline now looked. 
 
 By this time Audrey had become a sort of Lucifer in 
 petticoats to Adeline. The poor thing shuddered and 
 was enthralled. 
 
 " Plainly something made that butterfly above your 
 head," cooed Audrey. " Look, Adeline ! quivering with 
 joy because the sun's shining, and something lets even 
 the drones get fat, and something made the roses." 
 
 " Audrey ! " 
 
 " But they're there, and who made them if God didn't ? 
 And why don't you build that God into your image of 
 fury and destruction ? It's the God who made the 
 silly things and lets tired people rest who appeals 
 to me." 
 
 " Audrey, you frighten me ! " 
 
 Audrey stood up to look at Adeline. The sight made 
 her feel cold all down her back. 
 
 " You look exactly as if you'd seen the devil ! " she 
 said. She was unaccountably angry. It was ruthlessly 
 unfair of Adeline. 
 
 " It's horrible to have this effect on people," she said, 
 " and it's certainly a quite new experience to me. This 
 is what comes of trying to make religion a little cheerful.
 
 92 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 I wish I'd stayed in the hammock or gone to town." 
 The blank tragedy on the face of Adeline, considering all 
 she herself was enduring just then for all their sakes, with- 
 out any qualifications for that sort of thing, hereditary 
 or acquired, exasperated Audrey to the point of dis- 
 traction. 
 
 " Adeline ! for goodness' sake don't look like that ! " 
 she cried piteously. " Listen to the thrush in that high 
 bough telling you things, if you won't believe me. The 
 thrush hasn't any false doctrine, and he's thoroughly 
 domesticated. 
 
 " Isn't it funny, Adeline," she said in a brisker voice, 
 remembering of a sudden a less poignant grievance, 
 " that in spite of the way I manage the house and the 
 difference between then and now," she said with a sweep- 
 ing gesture, " that not one of you has ever said one word 
 about it not even you, and you're not jealous of me, like 
 Katharine ? " 
 
 Adeline was stricken dumb. 
 
 " I wonder if you ever praised the girls, not officially 
 on speech-days, but to themselves in the way that makes 
 people dance inside them ? Oh ! I thought you didn't. 
 You couldn't ; it wasn't possible ! Silence was always 
 your only defence, poor Adeline ! The others were afraid 
 of the God of the Antrobuses. You were afraid of 
 yourself. He's infected Andrew too in a way ; this 
 extraordinary Heirloom! " 
 
 " Don't, don't say any more for a minute ; oh, Audrey, 
 don't ! " 
 
 Audrey went for a stroll amongst the roses, and Adeline 
 tried to pray, but between her and prayer came Audrey 
 and her religious opinions. She shuddered and hid her 
 face. And yet that God, who made the roses strangely 
 fascinated the weary woman. She recoiled and returned. 
 She faltered and stood firm, and the thrush trilled out a 
 radiant measure and slowly, slowly into her tired soul 
 there crept a half-tangible foretaste of some mystery of 
 joy, that even now now, after all these years, might still
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 93 
 
 be hers. By some soft pressure of themselves her weak 
 arms went out to it. 
 
 At last she opened her eyes to see Audrey softly 
 whistling, a rose amidst the roses. 
 
 " But but she's terrible," gasped Adeline. " She's 
 not good. I've been afraid even to think of it but now 
 I know. Oh, I know ! Oh, God ! " she said. " Oh, 
 Audrey ! " 
 
 She closed her eyes and two tears burnt through the 
 lids. 
 
 " And yet," she said, " God did make her and and 
 she knows things that I shall never learn here." 
 
 When Audrey came back she strewed the couch with 
 roses. 
 
 " They'll remind you," she said, " and when they're 
 withered, don't let Katharine tidy them away. Put them 
 into your little silk bag, and I'll take them home and make 
 potpourri of them. Here ! I'll put the roses and the 
 bag quite near so that you needn't even move to get at 
 them." 
 
 Adeline half lifted herself. Her face was alight with 
 wonder and fear and a shuddering new knowledge. She 
 took hold of Audrey's hands gathering the roses in about 
 her. 
 
 " Audrey ! " Her voice was almost inaudible. 
 
 " You're not good ! You're not good. I don't under- 
 stand I don't understand anything at all. Only 
 I know. Oh, you're not good, poor child ! And yet," 
 she whispered, sinking back, " for the first time in all my 
 life I love you dearly, dearly ; I have to, Audrey ; 
 I can't help it. And yet and yet ' 
 
 " You've never looked for any goodness in me, and you 
 couldn't recognize it my sort of goodness, if you did," 
 said Audrey at last in a little frozen voice. " I I have a 
 horrid temper, but I can't hurt things, and I'm an ex- 
 tremely good housekeeper. The servants like me, and 
 so they do their best. They hate Katharine, and so 
 they did their worst. And, any way," she said, with an
 
 94 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 unregenerate grin, " in future you'll give even your God 
 credit for a little kindness and common sense, and you'll 
 never cry again a whole summer's morning because you're 
 too tired to read books about Him. And why didn't 
 you love me before ? " 
 
 Without further parley Audrey went away looking very 
 airy and proud. Adeline could hear her singing as she 
 crossed the brook. 
 
 She came afterwards at intervals that varied in length. 
 And Adeline knew oh ! but she knew ! and the more 
 she knew the more dearly did she love Audrey, and she 
 no longer cried because she could not read the words of 
 holy men, for now they seemed to sing in her heart, and 
 in thinking of Audrey and praying for her she at last found 
 rest. 
 
 And now Andrew and Audrey were coming to her across 
 the lawn, and seeing them together made her heart stand 
 still with joy.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 TV'ATHARINE'S heart, as she watched the advancing 
 JX couple, did anything but stand still with joy. It 
 rapped out the most strenuous disapproval. 
 
 " Coleridge," she said with prim tartness, " was right 
 when he said that the wisdom of a nation is contained in 
 its proverbs. ' You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled.' 
 Andrew has spent his week in gadding, and is now giving 
 up even his working hours to dally with his wife. As I 
 happen to know, his paper for the British Association is 
 precisely where it was last Thursday, and that important 
 experiment of which he was so full last week has gone no 
 further. If through her Andrew becomes practically a 
 failure " 
 
 " Dear Katharine, please," pleaded Adeline ; " they're 
 coming." Katharine proudly composed her face. 
 
 Katharine, being Andrew's godmother, thought herself 
 justified in annotating the progress of his work during 
 his absences from his laboratory. Her knowledge 
 of facts was monumental, and had always been of great 
 value to her brother. It had saved the fretting genius 
 of the student from many of the worries wholly in- 
 separable from any dealings with the infinitely little ; he 
 was used to the ways of Katharine, and had nothing 
 to conceal. Her impertinent suspicions, indeed, offended 
 his taste, but were as a drop, after all, in the ocean of 
 his gratitude. Moreover, he knew that Katharine, in her 
 domiciliary visits, came in by a private door rarely used, 
 and he cherished a simple belief that Audrey knew nothing 
 at all about them, and could not, therefore, be disturbed 
 
 95
 
 96 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 or affronted by the unjustifiable liberties taken by his 
 unhappy sister. But the prowlings of the conscientious 
 godmother were only too well known to Audrey, and had 
 a most unhallowed effect upon her. They touched ah 1 her 
 pride, and most of her worst passions. She laid boyish 
 and undignified traps for Katharine, and more than once 
 brought that chaste and scholarly lady to open shame. 
 She was always careful, however, to keep her own active 
 share in the painful denouements devised by her wit an 
 inviolable mystery. 
 
 Her part was to appear serene and unruffled for the 
 purpose of making delicate and courteous inquiry at 
 precisely the wrong moment for Katharine, who hated her 
 in consequence with all the resourceful virulence of a 
 righteous and well-stored mind. 
 
 Her hatred was both personal and professional. 
 Katharine, feet upwards in a tub sprawling on all fours 
 amidst a chaos of china, was an object scarce calculated 
 to exalt feminine attainments in the eyes of the rescuing 
 housemaid. Catastrophes so unworthy were, for obvious 
 reasons, made known on neither side to Andrew, but even 
 his limited powers of observing human nature were 
 practised enough to give him certain vague glimpses of 
 the truth in passing events. He was sometimes aware of 
 sudden spasmodic efforts on the part of Audrey to benefit 
 his sisters, of presents she bestowed on them, and arrange- 
 ments for their comfort she brought about. He was 
 aware also of Katharine's almost violent recoil from these 
 attentions. She had, indeed, more than once appealed 
 to him to stay the hand of his wife in the embarrassing 
 matters. 
 
 It was an ever new surprise to Andrew. " Why should 
 they wish to thwart the child in her benevolent amuse- 
 ments," he would plead ; then seize his hat and fly. He 
 could not understand Katharine, or her attitude. Not 
 only did Audrey deny herself to placate poor Katharine 
 with pretty peace offerings for what offence it would 
 have puzzled the poor man to conceive but she gave
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 97 
 
 grim dinner-parties for Katharine's especial benefit ; 
 dreadful occasions which tried even him. 
 
 It was all part of the sweet and sacred mystery that 
 enwrapped this wonder he called his wife ; and why his 
 sisters would not accept Audrey in, at least, somewhat 
 the same spirit was an ever-increasing astonishment to 
 Andrew. 
 
 She was as new to them, surely, as to himself, and if 
 rightly apprehended, might be as renewing. An angel 
 had alighted in their midst a creature of fire and dew, 
 and, lo ! their one sentient desire in their fatal bondage 
 to old habit was to break her in with bit and bridle ! 
 
 Even Andrew saw that, and now, as he beheld Katharine 
 rise up in her unbending stateliness to greet them, he 
 profoundly regretted his promise and throbbed to dis- 
 burthen himself of the secret that must even before that 
 awful judgment seat, justify and exalt his wife, lower 
 the proud crest of Katharine, and perhaps open even her 
 great heart ! Once opened to Audrey it could never 
 close again, and from henceforth life would flow on for all 
 of them in friendly harmony. As Audrey kissed the un- 
 yielding cheek of Katharine and bent like a delicate flower 
 over Adeline, a verse of Scripture he had long forgotten 
 floated up out of the depths of Andrew, suggested 
 probably by the leonine quality in Katharine's fine head 
 bristling under the caress : "A little child shall lead 
 them." In the ecstatic vision he clean forgot the occa- 
 sion, so Audrey sailed in, took the lead and prepared to 
 do all the talking. She had confidence enough, but in 
 order to feel rather more worthy of being guardian angel 
 to the afflicted than of late she had been doing, she 
 crouched down beside Adeline, and got as near to her as 
 she could. 
 
 The attitude made Katharine snort. 
 
 " Why, you have not suffered from spinal curvature 
 long ago is quite a puzzle to me, Audrey," she said in 
 her well-modulated, sonorous voice. " Your irresponsible 
 treatment of your figure is, to my mind, rash."
 
 98 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 A pert reply rose readily to Audrey's lips, but an alert 
 prick from some deeper instinct silenced it, and the fact 
 of Andrew's reverent contemplation of her in character 
 of guardian angel was becoming quite engrossing. 
 
 " I'll begin those exercises you showed me to-morrow," 
 she said, the very breath and essence of sweet reasonable- 
 ness ; " but to-day is so full of urgent and difficult 
 things that even one's figure doesn't seem to count for 
 very much. Andrew said that I might tell you just how 
 things stand, and since they're pretty horrid for all of 
 us, please please," she entreated, " let me get every- 
 thing said before you begin." 
 
 Then in language very far from academic, but very much 
 to the point, she stated the position. 
 
 The manner of her rendering of the tragic narrative, 
 in spite of her artless recourse to slang, was, indeed, so 
 informed by the wisdom of the serpent and the innocence 
 of the dove, that in watching and listening the face of 
 Andrew became transfigured, and Katharine, at first 
 completely stunned by shock and horror, after one glance 
 at Andrew, was filled to the brim with lurid suspicions. 
 
 " For some terrible reason of her own she's cajoling 
 Andrew," she thought, and, for the first time in her life, 
 was stricken dumb. 
 
 Adeline, in a silent agony, prayed for Audrey. Now 
 that rest had come at last to her, she lived in clearer airs 
 and saw as the spirits see. It was not Andrew whom 
 Audrey was trying to cajole with her silver tongue, it was 
 God. Even the money that was to keep them together, 
 to give back to 'Andrew the -place that,4n his folly, he 
 had forfeited, was Audrey's. Adeline's new-found vision 
 could pierce through every subterfuge. She knew ! she 
 knew ! and the mighty love in her new heart ran out to 
 seek and to save that which was lost. It caught Audrey 
 and encompassed her, and held her close. 
 
 And Audrey forgot her worthlessness, her pose, her elfish 
 delight in deluding them all. She forgot even her own 
 stake in the throw, Andrew's magnificently simple
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 99 
 
 admiration, and uplifted by the love and the knowledge 
 of the poor creature who knew nothing and whom no 
 man had loved, for one little instant she was as good as 
 she looked. She sprang at a bound to the level of her 
 high purpose. She was Audrey fresh from the heart of 
 God! 
 
 With regal courtesy, full of pride and a fine humility, 
 she subdued mutiny, dominated dissent, diverted argu- 
 ment, quelled hatred, moulded temperament ; she 
 arranged for them all, and forethought for all of them. 
 
 But at last Katharine wrenched herself free from the 
 enchanted exaltation that seemed to be possessing them. 
 " She's like an inspired devil," thought Katharine ; and 
 this broke the spell for Audrey. She fell back with a flop 
 into the webs of earth. 
 
 " And, after all, it is a sop to Cerberus," she said, with 
 a queer little grin, " and pretty mean ; and Katharine has 
 the eyes of a basilisk, and she knows." 
 
 In a sort of panic Audrey leant nearer to the only one 
 of the four who had any conception in the least near the 
 truth, and found renewed courage. Adeline had never 
 taken any active share in the family counsels. She had 
 watched, and waited, and obeyed, but now the spent voice 
 lifted itself up and she spoke steadily. All her nervous- 
 ness concentrated itself apparently into her diffident 
 touchings of Audrey's hair. Physical contact with girls 
 had always alarmed her. Between the inert brain and her 
 who strove to stoke it into activity, there seemed to be 
 a great gulf fixed. She had been yearning all her life to 
 cross this gulf, but what has the incubator, after all, to 
 do with the chicken per se ? to hatch out potential 
 energies was her part, so she had never dared. Her 
 present flutterings about Audrey's hair was her first visible 
 effort in this direction. And now it was only despair 
 that made her bold. Before the terror of Audrey's dark 
 soul those of her bright head had suddenly become as 
 naught, and so enterprise was let loose. Some day even, 
 she felt with an absurd leap of her spirit, she might even 
 
 7*
 
 ioo "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 take out all the hairpins and watch the shimmer of the 
 red gold flowing out into the sun. The thought gave her 
 courage to take one look into the complex, awful mystery 
 of the sweet young face. She almost smiled when she 
 remembered that once she had been afraid of Audrey's 
 hair I 
 
 She fixed her eyes firmly upon Katharine, and spoke to 
 her alone. 
 
 " It's no use pretending that this isn't a heavy blow to 
 all of us," said Adeline. " It is, but it must fall more 
 heavily upon Audrey than on anyone else." 
 
 " Really, Adeline " 
 
 " Dear Katharine, please let me speak. I know that 
 Andrew has always been like your own child. He is 
 more to you than many a son is to his mother, and it's of 
 him you'd naturally think first. I know as you do that 
 in spite of all we can do, or say, or think, that Andrew 
 will always blame himself for this. He will forget all he 
 has done for us and remember only this, but the fact of 
 his thinking, what he surely will think, will, I believe, 
 in the end help him, everything will help him, but per- 
 haps this reverse" more than all " She paused to 
 
 gather in her forces, and a light in her eyes that none of 
 her surprised audience had ever before seen, prevented 
 even Katharine from interrupting her, and now her hand 
 ceased moving, it rested softly on Audrey's head. " It 
 will establish and strengthen him, I think ; it will bring 
 out the best in him, and in making his career, and working 
 for what, hitherto, he has found more easily, I think 
 Andrew will do great things, and soon, in going forward, 
 he will have no time to look back. Perhaps Andrew is to 
 be congratulated," she said, smiling at Audrey. 
 
 " It's Audrey I'm most sorry for. Oh, Katharine, 
 she's young, and has a a royal right to brilliant and soft 
 and splendid things around her. They belong to her. 
 She is part of them. It usedn't to strike me like this, but 
 it does now. She is very young for the battle of life, and 
 so'dainty and delicate and fine for for the heat and the
 
 I 
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 101 
 
 dust and the strife, and yet of her own will, without a 
 murmur Audrey has told me nothing, nor has Andrew, 
 but I know that Audrey never said one hard word in all 
 this affair or thought one hard thought " 
 
 Katharine's eyes were regaining their old ascendancy 
 over her, and in self-defence Adeline shut hers. 
 
 " I know she hasn't," said she with the air of a diffident 
 child turned mutinous all at once, " and of her own free 
 will she has taken a great burthen on herself, and when 
 Andrew lost his head, I'm afraid, Katharine, that he 
 did, Audrey kept hers. Audrey will save us all, I 
 believe, by her thought and her wisdom. Audrey has 
 given us all that she has, things of which we have never 
 suspected her, wisdom and guidance and strength and 
 resolution. Audrey who who was a child yester- 
 day ! " Katharine's eyes bored through the tremulous 
 lids of her sister, and since Adeline had said all the 
 essential things, she yielded tiredly to their importunate 
 command. 
 
 Katharine never forgot her duty, so now, before uttering 
 a syllable, she forced Adeline to drink a horrible concoction 
 which always made her feel deadly sick, and in shaking up 
 the pillows of the sufferer she also shook up her person. 
 
 Adeline felt shattered, but she bore up like an angel. 
 
 She was now the only angel of the quartette. In 
 Audrey's mutable economy the spirit of evil was once more 
 in full cry. She was enjoying herself in a new way. Even 
 Adeline's mild little guesses at the truth, her generous 
 praise which the moment before had bruised and wounded, 
 and made her tremble, filled her now with freakish glee. 
 
 She was again the central figure in a horrible farce, 
 a point of surprise in their silly existences little sus- 
 pected, and as she watched Katharine shaking up 
 Adeline, she could have twisted the life out of her. She 
 sat straight up with sparkling eyes, and stiffened like a 
 terrier for the fight. 
 
 " And now that you have experienced the result of 
 exaggerated emotions, dear Adeline," said Katharine
 
 102 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 freezingly, " I hope you will exert a little self-control 
 and restrain yourself. You will remember the doctor's 
 saying that serenity is your only hope." 
 
 Adeline made a noble though futile effort to cease from 
 shaking, but the conserved energy of Katharine was always 
 greater than she knew. 
 
 " I quite see that it is most kind of Audrey to try to 
 make this most disastrous affair more palatable to us by 
 putting it in, so to speak, a poetical form. She proposes, 
 by what means I have yet to learn, to idealize and trans- 
 form the most precarious, frequently the most sordid 
 and grinding of all the professions, the scholastic one, into 
 an er exhilarating game. I have lived the life, in 
 some degree successfully. I can therefore speak with 
 authority. Audrey has seen it, its possibilities, and its 
 issues merely in her imagination. 
 
 " Imagination can hardly alter facts. Possibly it is 
 the absence in myself of the magic gift which makes it 
 difficult for me to believe that fitness for the realities of 
 life can, like a mushroom, be the growth of one night." 
 
 Curious little sounds of varying origin issued from the 
 mouths of the three, and Katharine calmly proceeded : 
 
 "By an error of judgment on the part of Andrew, we 
 are all practically penniless. Andrew, you never even 
 mentioned your difficulties to me ! I would so gladly have 
 undertaken any drudgery in the matter. I am, thank 
 God, broken in to drudgery ! However, since you did not 
 consult me, we must only accept the fact, and although 
 deeply grateful for what Audrey proposes to do for us, I, 
 for one, must decline to be a burthen on anyone." 
 
 " That is a hard way to put it, Katharine," said Andrew. 
 " How many years was I a burthen upon you ? " 
 
 " That was quite different. I had no other ruling 
 interest in life, none of us had," she said generously. 
 ;< You were the first always, you were our only hope, and 
 our only aim." 
 
 ' You sacrificed everything for me ; you : none of you 
 had the health or the strength for constant work, and you
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 103 
 
 had enough to live on happily in a leisured life. You 
 gave me everything your health, and your strength, 
 and your income and one of you, alas ! gave her life 
 for me, without one regret. And I may I not give any- 
 thing back, Katharine ? I owe you everything we I 
 Audrey and I are one in this, as you see, may we not 
 pay you back even the paltry interest of all your 
 principal ? " 
 
 Katharine's lips thinned. Audrey playing with a 
 rose, reminded her of the Roman Empire at its most 
 corrupt period. 
 
 " I did my duty as my sisters did," she began. 
 " Other people have duties to do, too," said Audrey 
 pertly, lifting the bull-terrier squirming at her feet for 
 recognition into her lap to annoy Katharine, who hated 
 the creature as she did Satan, but, remembering how 
 infinitely more than Katharine was at stake, she dis- 
 missed him with a sympathetic murmur of " Rats ! " 
 and fixed her eyes on Katharine's Jager shoes as being 
 the least exasperating part of her person. 
 
 " I mean," she civilly resumed, " that now it's Andrew's 
 turn to do his duty. You've had your chance, and you 
 took it splendidly, and now the time's come for Andrew 
 to take his." 
 
 The Jiigers were pressing viciously into the turf. 
 " Nothing will induce me to look," thought Audrey ; 
 " but I'd give worlds to see her face." 
 
 " The result of Andrew's incursion into human affairs," 
 said Audrey, " on his own account, is anything but lively 
 for any of us. I also could have wished that he had 
 consulted we. However, it's done, and we're all flounder- 
 ing in a hole. 
 
 " It's like the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' don't you think ? 
 and now the least that any of us can do for Andrew is 
 to let him fish us out. If we get hurt scrambling out by 
 ourselves, Andrew' d never forgive himself. He'd feel a 
 beast to the day of his death ; and if he didn't, he ought 
 to." She ventured upon a glance. Katharine's face was
 
 104 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 like stone. Audrey clasped her hands and let her lashes 
 drop. " Although it would be the person who came 
 between him and his duty who'd be the real beast." 
 
 " Have you finished, Audrey ? " inquired Katharine 
 with great self-control. 
 
 " Not quite, please, not for a little minute. If Andrew 
 let anyone else interfere in this job he'd be despicable. 
 Don't you see, Katharine, don't you see that this is 
 Andrew's job, and no one else's, and can't you see the un- 
 fairness of cutting the ground from under his feet when 
 he's just getting them firmly down on it ? But that's 
 nothing to trying to keep him as if he was a baby in arms, 
 when he's six feet if he's an inch it never struck me 
 before, but he is." She chuckled in spite of herself. 
 " Besides, he hasn't had a very amusing life. Why should 
 he be deprived of the pleasure of delivering wise virgins 
 from the slimy pit into which his own folly has dropped 
 them ? " 
 
 She turned her wicked eyes full upon Andrew. " He'll 
 like being a proper, reasonable man for once, don't you 
 see ? and surely you'll admit it's quite time he began. 
 It's not his fault that this is the first real chance he's 
 ever had. 
 
 " Katharine, you've done a lot for Andrew, do this 
 one more thing : give him his first chance ! " she de- 
 manded audaciously, " and we'll all sit tight and just 
 cheer him on." 
 
 There was an ominous silence, in which Audrey, being 
 rather sorry for Andrew's face, smothered down the elf, 
 and partially resumed the angel. 
 
 The Jager shoes showed great activity; the prodigious 
 amount of evil passion they ground into the innocent 
 earth made her own sins seem less importunate, her own 
 part in the situation more absorbingly soul-stirring. She 
 would force Katharine into surrender in the end, but, 
 meanwhile, she would play with her feelings a little. 
 Katharine and her affairs were playing pretty recklessly 
 with hers.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 105 
 
 Then, if force failed, she could always resort to wheedle. 
 She had no scruples and much courage. Adeline, growing 
 quite bold, drew her glittering head more close. But for 
 her dire sense of disaster in regard to Audrey, her strange 
 recoil from some hidden stain in the child, the over- 
 mastering desire to pierce further and behold some wonder 
 of beauty which lay beneath it in depths that no stain 
 had ever reached, she could have found a throbbing interest 
 in the affair. It was so new, and urgent, and alive ! 
 A drama playing itself out under her very own eyes ! 
 
 Katharine uttered a jerky cough. 
 
 " The moment a woman begins to think," she said in a 
 careful voice, " she has once and for ever relinquished her 
 proud privilege of sitting er tight that, Audrey, is, I 
 think, your term, whilst those she loves contend in the 
 arena. Life for her has then ceased to be the spectacle 
 of a summer's day. She also must descend to her own 
 arena, and fight in her own way." 
 
 " And who's left to cheer the men who gain the crowns ? " 
 demanded Audrey. 
 
 " That part, I feel sure, you would perform to perfection, 
 Audrey." 
 
 " Oh ! I'll clap Andrew all right if I happen to be 
 about. It's clapping a man wants, and generosity and 
 trust, not that awful sort of unselfishness that's selfish 
 to the core, and would rob him of all his glory just to add 
 it to yours." 
 
 Katharine turned to Andrew, with an unmoved face. 
 
 " You and Audrey kindly suggest that we should move 
 into the far lodge," she said. " It is very pretty, and very 
 convenient, and I have always regretted that it should not 
 be in the hands of gentle-people. I think it most kind 
 of both of you to propose having it done up and the 
 garden seen to. That was your thought, Audrey, I feel 
 sure," she said with heroic generosity. " We will gladly 
 accept your offer. We can put some of our furniture in, 
 and I am sure you will keep the rest for us; I will 
 then, at once, take measures for the reconstruction of my
 
 106 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 school. My connection is excellent. I have no fear of 
 not succeeding. In a very short time I hope to be in a 
 position to reassume all my responsibilities." 
 
 Audrey's eyes were like lamps in a pool ; her lips were 
 parted ; she sat immovable. By the curious insight 
 which came to her in flashes she saw Katharine no 
 longer a grim, impregnable obelisk of granite, but a weary 
 woman, grown old before her time, embittered by dis- 
 appointment, unmellowed by experience, unhallowed by 
 love, marching magnificently to her death. She looked 
 into the heart of Adeline, and it was bleeding. 
 
 And then she saw Adeline when things happened, and 
 she had gone, and Katharine trampling down her anguish 
 with her great Jager shoes. 
 
 A frenzy of self-preservation took hold of Audrey. 
 She slipped involuntarily to her knees. She clasped her 
 hands, her words poured forth in a passionate stream. 
 She forgot the horribleness of Katharine ; the sight 
 of her seemed actually to inspire her. She forgot every 
 forbidding detail ; she remembered only that people were 
 not made to be stretched on crosses, and that Katharine's 
 will must yield to hers. 
 
 The soft storm of words beat her to and fro as though 
 she were a pebble tossed by the tide. She was an instru- 
 ment true, keen and subtle in the hands of something 
 not herself, and her words went home like darts. 
 
 But this was only for a moment. Too soon she was her- 
 self again, an earth-born sprite defying authority. 
 
 " You do understand," she said accusingly ; " I can see 
 you do. This is Andrew's chance, the chance of his life ; 
 you know it, and yet you can dare to stand in the way of 
 it, to hurt and hamper him, and limit him and make him 
 ashamed, and and take all the heart out of every- 
 thing. Now, now, when every bone in your body is 
 aching at the very thought of going back to the work 
 you hate. You are you're aching all over I see you 
 are ! I always see pain ! I I wish I didn't ! You must 
 know that it will haunt Andrew. He'll never be great
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 107 
 
 or even a decent crammer with a millstone like that round 
 his neck, and it's all just to score off him and me, and to 
 bring every sin we ever committed home to us, and to be 
 jfor ever sort of shaking your blood-curdling example 
 before us like a Salvation Army flag. And can't you see 
 the insolence of it to Andrew, and the cruelty to Adeline, 
 and and the horribleness to me ? The only result of your 
 wicked, wicked unselfishness, will be to make it utterly 
 impossible for any single one of us ever to be happy again. 
 And to kill yourself for that ! " 
 
 She fairly knelt down before Katharine and there was 
 infinite entreaty in her exquisite eyes. 
 
 " Have a little mercy, oh ! Katharine, do ! and let 
 someone be a little happy. Have some mercy, and some 
 common sense, and even you yourself might be a little 
 happy, perhaps, for once, in your own way ! "
 
 CHAPTER Xt 
 
 AND then the most extraordinary thing happened. All 
 at once Katharine stood up, paused, sighed and 
 yielded. 
 
 It was not Audrey kneeling amidst the daisies, a spec- 
 tacle so profoundly soul-stirring to the other two observers, 
 that conquered Katharine : far from it. A snake in the 
 grass were, at any time, less repugnant to her feelings, 
 and Audrey making a theatrical exhibition of herself was, 
 she judged, a sight to make the angels weep. 
 
 It was the rapture of trustful assurance and love upon 
 Andrew's quiet face that at last broke the unloved woman. 
 She had given him everything but her pride to gain this 
 crown of great glory, and she had lost in the game. And 
 now she was so tired and sad, so riven with her miserable 
 pain, that all there seemed left her to do was to hand in 
 that also to the lost cause. 
 
 So she took her pride the trusty sword that had so 
 well served her broke it, as it were, across her knees, 
 and handed it, her whole heart going out in hate to the 
 conqueror, to Andrew. 
 
 " I'll do as you both wish," she said slowly ; " and now 
 that the first act of this pitiful melodrama is at an end, 
 had you not better sit on a chair, Audrey ? Far be it 
 from me to interfere in your scheme for the ideal life and 
 the regeneration of Andrew. We'll go to the cottage, 
 Adeline and I, and with what gratitude we may, accept 
 your charity. 1 am too old, as you have so graphically 
 demonstrated to me, to contend with modern youth, and 
 
 1 08
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 109 
 
 the new ideal of life ; but I am still young enough to 
 watch how youth founded upon ignorance and egoism, 
 and ideals fashioned from iridescent bubbles, will replace 
 the dull old order." 
 
 Her words were clear and serene. She sat erect and 
 stately, her strong hands evenly stroking the pages of 
 a book, but the still look of renunciation in Katharine's 
 face frightened Audrey out of her wits. Her bitter words 
 she simply brushed aside ; they were just Katharine ; 
 but the look the look ! That represented to the girl 
 vaguely, hauntingly, yet inconceivably conscious of her 
 hidden stain, and, at the same time, straining every nerve 
 to deepen and make it indelible the lost causes of all 
 the righteous. 
 
 " And if the righteous look like that when they have 
 to give in in the end, what about the wicked, even when 
 they win ? Perhaps their lost causes are hell, the real 
 thing, where they pinch your flesh with hot irons." 
 
 Of a sudden she felt physically sick, so bitterly clear 
 was her realization of the pain without hope that hurts 
 the flesh. Her senses never failed Audrey. 
 
 " But this won't do," she said, bracing up ; " and 
 Katharine's the most discouraging person I know. Asso- 
 ciating with her ought to be eternal punishment enough 
 for anyone." 
 
 Audrey could not shake off this horrible impression, 
 however. When she picked herself up from her knees, 
 and stood before Katharine, her audacity had slipped 
 away, her passion was quenched, her crisp clothes hung 
 limp about her undeveloped shoulders. She was a forlorn 
 child in the blighting shadow of the Law. 
 
 " I wonder if you'd hate me less, Katharine," she said, 
 " if I were a real proper prodigal in awful clothes, eating 
 husks in the wilderness ? " There was a perfectly genuine 
 sob in her throat. 
 
 " My dear Audrey, I must again beg of you to compose 
 yourself," said Katharine with superb .' scorn. "Your 
 perfect health, I should have thought, would have pre-
 
 no "WHOSO BKEAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 served you at least from hysteria, your singularly acute 
 business instinct from exaggeration. Pray permit me- to 
 pass. All this has been too much for you, Adeline. 
 Andrew, hand me those drops, please." 
 
 Adeline's whole body rose in revolt against the drops 
 and Katharine. She wanted to get hold of Audrey's hand, 
 to gather strength from its freshness, and then spend it 
 in confused prayer for the girl's sin, and crystal clear hope 
 for her salvation ; but Katharine, in her present mood, 
 would have quelled an archangel into obedience. 
 
 Adeline swallowed the drops, and all the hope in her 
 heart slipped out. No effort is lost, however. The mood 
 of Katharine corrected that of Audrey, who was herself 
 again. The audacity in her regal retreat was impressive. 
 
 Directly she was out of the line of Katharine's vision 
 she relaxed both in face and form. " It's Katharine 
 who's made her feel bad," she said loftily, " and not me. 
 Katharine's exactly like Katharine of Russia, without 
 her saving immorality, and that's no fault of hers it's 
 just from early education and from an impious desire to 
 be an example to you. I don't think it was ever necessary, 
 Andrew ; some people seem to be born good. What spoilt 
 her eagle flight was being cramped into a school-room 
 messing about with a few little flabby brains, when she 
 should have been marching through rivers of blood to 
 found empires. Nothing but a spacious life could ever 
 have organized the colossal energies of Katharine and 
 taught her to laugh and leave Adeline alone. She should 
 have been you, Andrew, and have married me." 
 
 " I'm extremely thankful she didn't. My dearest child, 
 if you think for two consecutive moments you will forgive 
 Katharine, for you'll understand how much it costs her 
 to give up, to stand aside, to be conquered, after all these 
 years, by a little foolish child so full of infinite wisdom." 
 
 " Andrew ! don't," she cried. " You haven't the right. 
 You, to speak like that, when you know so little of me 
 as to think I don't know what all this means to Katharine, 
 that I don't feel every bit of it inside me more than
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" in 
 
 Katharine does. She's constructed of the best steel ; 
 she's not soft and flabby inside her, like other people. I 
 loathe victories at such a price, and then," she said 
 miserably, "to be hated in that awful steel-clad way for 
 having won. When people are past their play and the 
 time for other people's has come, they ought to see it 
 and retire in good order. I wonder what her stony eyes 
 saw when she watched the girls at their games. I daresay 
 it was their poor little souls playing about in hell. She'd 
 see anything Katharine ! " 
 " My poor little darling ! " 
 
 " And all this for doing my duty," she wailed. " Sup- 
 pose I did anything but my duty the exact opposite, in 
 fact I wonder now just what the Antrobus family would 
 say ? " 
 
 She fetched up short to look at Andrew, and the finger 
 on her lips trembled a little. He looked impossible. 
 
 One morning, a few weeks ago, in searching for some 
 little truth, he had found it, and, at the same time, had 
 found himself once again sheer up against that self -erected 
 barrier which divides the minds of men from the source 
 of all truth, so that the wisest are still but as sparrows 
 picking up the crumbs from the master's table. 
 
 He had been battering his head most of the preceding 
 night against the great gates of brass, and now, between 
 the blows and being again baffled, his head ached, and his 
 heart was as water within him, and yet as ever the fierce 
 desire to storm the jealous barrier and fight his way in and 
 know took hold of Andrew, for to know was the passion of 
 his life. 
 
 His tactics, however, were not as yet equal to the 
 assault, and he now sat idle, bewailing his defeat ; so, 
 as he was greatly interested in the progress towards 
 materialization, then almost completed, of a newt, he 
 dropped speculation, put his tiny instruments in order, 
 and began his patient, breathless investigations. The 
 little procession of changes went on under his absorbed 
 eyes as it had done from the beginning, each innermost
 
 H2 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 detail, moment by moment, fitting in inflexibly to the 
 inflexible purpose. Mysterious fingers more delicate than 
 air touched and moulded the little head ; the backbone 
 was pressed into shape as by a thought ; new charac- 
 teristics came out into the light as by magic, and all the 
 time little foolish fancies were stirring in Andrew's big 
 mind little enough to be sure and held down tight, but 
 for all that they pressed so hard upon him that he left 
 the ordered progress of the newt to the safe guardianship 
 of the law within him, and went up the steps and out into 
 the garden. To lie awake at nights fighting windmills 
 takes all a man's strength, and this last had been a long 
 business. He was tired and dazed, and not quite account- 
 able, perhaps, for his vagrant imagination. 
 
 For all at once it seemed to him as though the brazen 
 gates had fallen as suddenly and noiselessly and irration- 
 ally as ever the walls of Jericho did, and the source of all 
 things and of ah 1 truth lay discovered to the eyes of man. 
 Nothing definitely differentiated or fixed. But there in 
 infinite, ineffable, beneficent abundance above him and 
 about him and within him lay everything, the whole 
 waiting only for the eye to see and the hand to handle. 
 
 But there fell a blindness upon the eyes of Andrew 
 an impotence upon his hands. He stood a bewildered 
 scientist, in doubt about his sanity, not to say his soul. 
 Then his eyes alighted upon a hedge of sweet-peas, their 
 little hearts afire with the summer, and he wondered at 
 the extraordinary things they fell to telling him. He had 
 never before paused to listen to the secrets of the flowers : 
 he had torn them out of their little insides with instru- 
 ments ; but now his benumbed brain being equal to 
 nothing else, it listened at their silver ears. The poise 
 of their heads, so light and proud and elegant, reminded 
 him of Audrey, and her heart also was afire with the 
 summer. 
 
 That swift, irrational, irresponsible fall of the gates, 
 and the subsequent blindness, had certainly greatly upset 
 Andrew, for now he looked with a new wonder at all.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 113 
 
 the flowers. He awoke at last to find himself calling them 
 aloud in the full sunshine by the generic term of the 
 " little thoughts of God." 
 
 It was a momentary weakness. He laughed at his own 
 folly, and lo ! the gates stood up again in brazen defiance, 
 and he forgot his sentimental definition. But Audrey, 
 standing now before him, brought it to his memory. His 
 eyes behind the pince-nez grew dreamy. 
 
 " You're like a flower," he said ; " a sweet-pea, I think, 
 and so in common with all the flowers you're one of the 
 ' little thoughts of God.' " 
 
 Audrey gasped. Andrew looked at her more closely. 
 
 " But, Audrey, your eyes are sad. They're the saddest 
 eyes I've ever seen. I wonder why ? " 
 
 He frowned in the baffled way he had done when the 
 brazen gates defied him. 
 ^Audrey flounced round again to his side. 
 r ^" Let us go home," she said. " You haven't been 
 listening to one word, not one ! Talk of the inconsequence 
 of the frivolous ! You're complicating everything by 
 growing er extraordinary at the wrong moment. It's 
 just like you, Andrew. 
 
 " Besides, I thought you didn't believe in God ? " She 
 narrowed her eyes to observe him. " I've been glad 
 sometimes you didn't," she said thoughtfully. " He'd 
 probably have been the God of the Antrobuses, and have 
 made you afraid to rest, or enjoy yourself, or let anyone 
 else do it. You're getting very uncomfortable, Andrew, 
 and it's all so curious, when there's such a heap to do and 
 we're still up to our necks in the hole, and it's so awfully 
 necessary that you should keep your head." 
 " My dearest child I " He looked hopelessly puzzled. 
 " Look here, Andrew ! I'm not such a fool as I Iook 4 
 really. I have read a lot of your literature, and I happen 
 to know that when people who've spent years trying to 
 root God out of the universe, for the good of science, 
 turn round suddenly and try to switch Him back into it 
 for their own selfish comfort, that it often affects their 
 
 8
 
 ii4 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 brain. They have the most harrowing time, and so's 
 everyone else, and unless they land in a lunatic asylum, 
 they turn Plymouth Brethren and preach." 
 
 Andrew was still puzzled and anxious, but he laughed. 
 
 " How dare you," said Audrey, " to laugh, in the most 
 serious crisis of our lives ! But no one can do more 
 than one thing well at a time. Couldn't you put through 
 this present project first, and then start on the other 
 tiail ? " 
 
 " My dear child, I have no notion of taking any tran- 
 scendental flight, either now or later." 
 
 " I wonder if you haven't really ? " she said in a slightly 
 disappointed voice, and her glance grew rather motherly. 
 She had so much to protect, to arrange for, and to provide 
 against. She must be very careful and let no oppor- 
 tunity slip. 
 
 " However," she said, " I'm not at all sure that it 
 mightn't distract your mind, make a a pleasant variety 
 afterwards later on, I mean." 
 
 Andrew laughed, for him vociferously. 
 
 This new and intimate companionship with Audrey 
 deeply stirred and amused him. The sweet vitality she 
 was giving out in her eager fixed resolve to defy everything, 
 and despite all hindrance, to live at full pitch for the rest 
 of her own days, and yet make everything tolerably com- 
 fortable for everyone else, was a revelation to Andrew, a 
 quickening. It was the first time she had ever lived her 
 pure and most precious life in the presence of her husband, 
 and the effect was singularly inspiring. Until now he 
 had seen women as through a glass darkly. This was 
 the Vision Beautiful to Andrew. The richness of it, the 
 multiplicity, the fragrance, and, above all, the sweet 
 inconsequence, and the melody that called out all his 
 tenderness ! The sadness in the young eyes unloosed 
 hidden springs of strength and reverence. The sap of 
 youth welled up in Andrew. At this moment his heart 
 and his years came very near together. 
 
 He laughed like a boy.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 115 
 
 " Don't be afraid, little Flower of Theology. It's only 
 when I see you that I believe in God. The rest of the 
 time," he added, with a pang of unaccountable sorrow, 
 " I'm looking, I think honestly, for a First Cause." 
 
 For some inexplicable reason Audrey came nearer to 
 Andrew. 
 
 " I don't like that name. It sounds like Katharine." 
 
 " There is an elusive difference between the two," he 
 said with an odd sigh. 
 
 " First Cause would be an awful sort of person if you 
 got into a tight place. He's only fit for books, I think . 
 When this is over, Andrew, if I were you, I'd look for 
 the other the real God and leave First Cause where 
 he is. It would fill up your time more completely. And, 
 Andrew, I'd better tell you at once you'll never find God 
 by looking at me." 
 
 She fetched up beside a little stagnant backwater of 
 the stream. 
 
 " Oh, do you know, there's a brood of late tadpoles 
 here ? I forgot to tell you. They were jelly a v/eek ago, 
 and now they're enjoying life." 
 
 She poked the point of her sunshade in amongst the 
 scurrying crowd. 
 
 The lateness of the creatures' appearance upon this 
 mortal sphere greatly interested Andrew. He examined 
 and speculated with hearty content. 
 
 " You know a great deal more of tadpoles than ever you 
 could know of me," said his wife. " You're much more 
 at home with them. I advise you to look for God in the 
 tadpoles ; if you looked long enough you might find Him 
 the real one, you know." 
 
 Her eyes began to shine in their curious, sudden way. 
 " I'm sure you would," she said. " I get quite sure of 
 things quite suddenly sometimes." Her cheeks were 
 flushing, her eyes aflame. 
 
 "And then with the cramming-shop going like anything, 
 and Katharine a mile and a half away, and your great- 
 ness coming nearer every day so near that you can 
 
 8*
 
 ii6 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 almost touch it oh, Andrew ! you'll have no end of a good 
 time ! " 
 
 " And you'll be the giver of all the gifts, you amazing 
 child," he said ; . " perhaps even the giver of God," he 
 added slowly, with the saddest smile. " In all things you 
 must always be my inspiration." He watched her and 
 the tadpoles by turns. 
 
 " I decline the tadpoles' as a link to the Infinite, with 
 you at hand, Audrey," he said, standing up. " On the 
 whole, I quite agree with you in thinking that I shall 
 have no end of a good time ! 
 
 " The most disastrous night of my life," said he, as they 
 walked on, " has become the dawn of such a day as I had 
 never dared to expect, and it is you, dear, who has brought 
 in the morning." 
 
 " Oh, Andrew ! " she said hopelessly. " If you'd only 
 take my advice and not bother about me ! " 
 
 She walked on listlessly, swinging her hat, and said no 
 more.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 A UDREY now worked as hard to get her own will, 
 l\ as many a worthy saint has done to forego his. 
 In some regards she practised a self-denial as austere. 
 She permitted herself no longer to think except for 
 others ; she kept her eyes upon high matters, and re- 
 fused to behold iniquity either in herself or in Katharine. 
 She poured forth her passionate heart to Larry every 
 day in short sentences, sometimes in crisp ones, and all 
 the time she worked so valiantly for the undoing of his life 
 she was unfolding a mother's heart for Andrew. It grew, 
 it grew. In the most destructive and diabolical way it 
 grew. It confounded reason, contraverted experience. 
 At such break-neck speed did it expand that the hard 
 little green bud of a thing which once was Audrey's heart, 
 and had so bitterly protested against the most diffident 
 intrusion of Andrew, was now full of him and his concerns. 
 They hampered her, and were beyond words perplexing 
 and terrifying, but now she could forgive Andrew for the 
 inconvenience he caused, as a mother can forgive her son. 
 His attitude towards her was incomprehensible, and 
 singularly wanting in common sense, but she felt sure 
 that he would know better in time. 
 
 With the sheer audacity of the faith inseparable from 
 motherhood, she could see Andrew, in all his crude im- 
 perfection, his amazing helplessness, that which in the 
 mellowing and chastening hand of time he would yet 
 become. She began to take a mystic pride in Andrew 
 as potentially completed man. 
 
 There were occasions, of course, upon which he made 
 her feel dreadful, and then she put him in his right place ; 
 
 117
 
 ii8 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 that of an inexorable stepping-stone to success, by writing 
 unflinchingly firm letters to friends demanding pupils, 
 and generally getting them. 
 
 The natural woman is in a chronic state of revolt 
 against the instructor of her son ; his misrepresentations 
 touch her to the quick, and rob her of some vague right 
 in her own blood and bone which yet is sacred, and once 
 filched from woman by man can never be given back 
 to her. They have no prophetic vision, tutors, and can 
 only see where mothers know. 
 
 Every woman living, directly her own man child is 
 born into the world, goes out on the eternal search for 
 the perfect being, the Two in One, to look after him, and 
 many a> e foolish enough when the time comes to expect 
 to find this goal of creation concealed in the person of 
 a tutor. That is why she has no scruple whatsoever in 
 changing, at the shortest notice, one Temple which has 
 belied faith, hope, and charity, for another whose yet 
 unopened depths may cherish these graces. 
 
 Audrey was quite aware of this wide-spreading 
 feminine ideal, and was herself fairly inspired with it, 
 and all the circumstances were propitious. Andrew's 
 character and attainments were widely known. His 
 gift for teaching had been a bye-word at his college, his 
 position was sound. The house was well-drained, on 
 gravel soil, and an hour and a half from London. This 
 was beautifully set forth in the prospectus by Audrey. 
 Saturday to Monday leave was strictly denied unless 
 either of his parents or a well-authenticated substitute 
 should appear in person to claim the applicant, and 
 return him in safety to the fold. 
 
 Even her worst enemy felt assured that, knowing as 
 much as Audrey Antrobus did about man, her first care 
 would be to feed him, and if the lads did fall in love with 
 her, she was safer in the end, less expensive and more 
 developing to good manners, than the housemaid, or the 
 portionless daughters of the Vicar. 
 
 Mr. Antrobus's Army House was an establishment
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 119 
 
 for which the soul of many a mother had often yearned. 
 Promises came pouring in, and working at such a rate, 
 Audrey was so tired at night that she slept like a baby, 
 and arose fresh as the morning. 
 
 And now, having finished for the moment with 
 Andrew's part, she turned her attention to the 
 domestic changes the project made necessary, and 
 lo ! she was brought face to face with Andrew and 
 his needs in even a more poignant fashion. Instead of 
 becoming obliterated in some degree, as she had con- 
 fidently expected, his consequence grew. He seemed 
 to want her in a more insistent, intimate way than ever. 
 In no department could you wash your hands of Andrew ! 
 When you have to think of the nourishment peculiarly 
 necessary to the especial man with whom you deal, it, 
 so to speak, insulates him from all others around you. 
 
 She was attaching Andrew to herself by bonds, small 
 indeed, but unbreakable, and doing him a grievous wrong, 
 emphasizing, instead of lessening, the helplessness of An- 
 drew, increasing his dependence upon herself. 
 
 In order to grow to the full stature of a man, Andrew 
 must be self-dependent, and to make him so must from 
 henceforth be her ruling aim. This was now the problem 
 that lay between her and success. It was a problem of 
 monumental proportions. Sometimes she felt too young 
 for the task, too lacking in experience. She could not 
 have conceived the possibility of Andrew's spreading 
 himself in this way, or of her bearing it with the divine 
 patience she did. He had indeed become an octopus 
 of unknown dimensions and dumb and dogged move- 
 ments, and was getting mixed in with all she did. He 
 seemed to be pulling her with insidious tentacles into 
 some hidden snare. 
 
 Some of this clotted emotion cried itself out in her 
 letters to Larry, and Larry, who had plumbed depths in 
 Audrey that no other line had ever reached, grew des- 
 perate as he read. He had not one doubt as to her love, 
 but he had many in regard to a queer strain in the girl
 
 that more than once had confounded all his calculations. 
 His own code of morality may have been that of a world 
 still in its early youth, but there was no mdefmiteness 
 in it. It stood out clear-cut and sharp in his mind, and 
 he meant, as a matter of course, to abide by it. He had 
 already stood the test of the Day Afterwards, that day of 
 retribution which always overtakes the man who must, 
 by force of something not himself, even sin like a gentle- 
 man. He had not flinched, and had not been found 
 wanting. He had been ready to sacrifice the thing he 
 held dearest, his career, for Audrey, and now that the 
 chance of his life had given that back, his one consuming 
 desire was to do the right thing by her, to make smooth her 
 path and assure her future position before he left England. 
 
 Larry had never wanted anything better than to be a 
 soldier. He could not have conceived any finer future 
 for any man, be he prince or swineherd. The very thought 
 of having to leave his regiment with no professional 
 future more enterprising than that of a colonel of Yeo- 
 manry, had twisted his heart-strings. But it was only 
 in the moment of his reprieve that the Vision Splendid 
 which alone makes the great soldier rose up before Larry 
 and wrote itself in the ink that does not fade into the warp 
 and woof of the careless boy. 
 
 In every atom of the stuff of him he was now a soldier, 
 and to do quickly and in the best way what had to be 
 done was part and parcel of Larry. In the exaltation of 
 his supreme triumph over fate he saw clear. He knew 
 that the war was upon the land and that therein lay 
 his chance. The Lion might doze, and doubt, and sit 
 tight, but Larry knew from the beginning to him it 
 was as sure as God. Of the future he had no doubt. 
 He had his chance now, which would square a lot 
 
 And for the rest the world is an institution that can 
 be got at. An historic name does something, but the way 
 of a man with a woman does more ; and Audrey was 
 Audrey, and if between them they could not win back 
 the smile to wried mouths, and reawaken in unseeing
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 121 
 
 eyes the recognition that brings absolution of sin, it would 
 be indeed a strange thing. Of the future he had no fear ! 
 It was the present that threw him. The wrong that 
 he had done must be righted, and time was everything. 
 The month was running out, and Audrey seemed no nearer 
 the end of her task than she was when it began. So 
 he wrote a letter to her that, in an instant, made her 
 face grey and sucked out all her strength. She crept to 
 the sofa and lay down. 
 
 It was eleven o'clock, and she had already had a 
 triumphant morning. Finding herself suddenly up against 
 a serious difficulty, she had left her preparations, and 
 as a means of grace flown hot-foot to Katharine, con- 
 centrating all her energies into seeing the best in her. As 
 a hair-shirt Katharine was becoming invaluable ; Audrey 
 could now wear her without moving a muscle, and even 
 Katharine was beginning to watch Audrey with some 
 human amusement, and permitting her to do all the 
 disagreeable things without audible protest. 
 
 She had come home quite refreshed ; a solution to the 
 last difficulty had flashed upon her as she crossed the 
 brook, and now the cold, awful truth in Larry's desperate 
 letter pierced her like an arrow. Her wings fluttered 
 wildly against the cruel bars of the cage she had herself 
 so cunningly devised. Her heart fought blindly against 
 its own leading. She curled herself into a little knot 
 on the great sofa, and held in the cries that tore her 
 throat ; she fought with all her might for self-control, 
 but she could not quiet thought, or curb the imagination 
 maddened from restraint. 
 
 She saw, as in a mirror, the Palace of Harmony she 
 had built up for those others with all her treasures, and 
 lo ! it was a sepulchre to hold her sin, and the sepulchre 
 crumbled and fell, and all the things she wished to conse- 
 crate and the creatures she designed to protect, were 
 crushed in the ruins ; all except her sin. That alone 
 endured ; it arose from amidst the chaos and followed 
 her whithersoever she went. She shut her staring eyes
 
 122 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 to blot out the vision, only to see things more prosaic 
 but not less hideous. 
 
 The scheme for the salvation of these helpless, hope- 
 less people was hers. She was its life ; without her 
 it would inevitably die of inanition and and in spite of all 
 her wisdom, and all Andrew's promises, they would find 
 out, these women Katharine, by the help of all the 
 devils she worshipped ; Adeline, by some magic more awful 
 still and without one gleam of gratitude for all her self- 
 sacrifice, fling back her sinful money in her face. Oh ! 
 well she knew Christians ! 
 
 She tried to reason, to argue, to have things out with 
 herself, to clarify her outlook. She could see nothing but 
 Adeline shrunk together crying, when she had just learnt to 
 laugh at last, and forgotten to prepare for death. Katharine 
 was less distinct but more alarming. She was doubtless 
 dying of hard work ; and Andrew, paralysed and broken, 
 he groped blindly with his dead eyes amongst his bottles. 
 
 By giving life to all the wretched crowd, she had, it 
 was plain, cut her own throat. 
 
 She sat up and beat off despair. She would win ! She 
 would win ! Something would turn up. Something 
 have mercy, somewhere ! After all she'd done and 
 suffered and given up, she couldn't give in now, throw 
 up what was going to be a great enterprise not now, 
 things had gone too far. She was too indispensable. 
 It was part of her, she could not leave it ; she couldn't 
 desert them, those unfortunate creatures, or her post. 
 She'd never been mean never ! She couldn't begin now. 
 But neither could she write to Larry or be alone any longer 
 in this horror of pain. 
 
 She sprang from the sofa, washed her face with trembling 
 hands, put Larry's letter near her heart for consolation, 
 and fled to Andrew in the laboratory. 
 
 Like many another, Audrey was the helpless victim of 
 racial and climatic conditions. She could have been 
 supremely moral as a bigamist.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A NDREW was nervously staring at a telegram. The 
 1\ volcanic eruption of his wife was plainly a relief, but 
 he spoke dejectedly. 
 
 " I have always been glad I didn't happen to be a 
 woman and have to interview housemaids. What short- 
 sighted mortals we are ! " he sighed. " I had rather 
 interview an army of housemaids than one Senior 
 Wrangler. Look, Audrey ! This is the first reply to 
 our advertisement. He may be here now at any moment. 
 I wish," he added mildly, " that the devil would take 
 him ! " 
 
 " He'll not, then. Special providences like that never 
 happen. And he's pretty poor, too," she mused, fluttering 
 the telegram, " or he wouldn't have answered in such a 
 hurry, and set out all his qualifications for the job. House- 
 maids aren't in it with this. Housemaids can always 
 get situations ; it's the situations that can't get house- 
 maids : but it's another story with Wranglers. They 
 don't suit every place." 
 
 Andrew sighed. Here was a shadow upon his path that 
 even Audrey could not lighten ! 
 
 " I have been reading about Wranglers lately," she 
 said, sitting down, " and so far as I can understand, they 
 seem to be incapable of dealing with anything less monu- 
 mental than a Wrangler's brain. Do you think they're 
 quite the thing for a cramming place ? " 
 
 Andrew started and stared. 
 
 " You can't empty an ocean into a pint pot, and that's 
 what Wranglers would be sure to be after." 
 
 123
 
 124 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " Audrey, what have you been reading ? " 
 
 " An extremely interesting book. How pedantic you 
 are ! Just because I melt down knowledge into common 
 sense you think I'm light-minded. I hate scientific 
 jargon ! And you're dreadfully weak, Andrew. If this 
 Wrangler happens to be Learning in adversity, as I fear he 
 is from his indecent haste he must have sat up all night to 
 catch the early worm in the morning papers the boys 
 won't be in it with you that is, of course, provided his 
 conversation stimulates your own mental powers. You'll 
 engage him straight off just because it would hurt you too 
 much not to do so, besides being a slur on scholarship." 
 
 " My dearest Audrey, I have a conscience." 
 
 " You have, poor Andrew, a scholar's conscience. It's 
 a beautiful and delicate instrument," she sighed, " unsuited 
 to a world full of jars." 
 
 " But, my dear child, if the man knows enough to 
 stimulate my brain, he'll surely suffice for those of lads 
 from the public schools." 
 
 " Don't you think public schools are places where brains 
 pick up a good deal of rubbish and get into the way of 
 being stimulated in the wrong places ? " 
 
 " I hope not, dear." 
 
 " So do I, but one must admit facts. I know so many 
 boys, and I do think public schools have a genius for 
 antagonizing the smaller sort of brains. A Senior Wrangler 
 who must have sucked in knowledge with his great organ 
 just because he had to, could hardly be expected to 
 realize the existence of organs that actively resist the 
 intrusion of light and knowledge at all into their rubbish- 
 holes. It is the man who knows the things that fill their 
 queer brains and can turn them out and put his own 
 stuff in, who'll get the boys into Sandhurst." 
 
 She seemed interested in the subject, and Andrew was 
 interested in her. So she had the field to herself. 
 
 " The man who is master of his subject forgets so often 
 that he was once its slave, or that if he wasn't, he was 
 the exception, not the rule."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 125 
 
 " The greatest intellects are frequently the most simple, 
 dear." 
 
 " But that's just it. It's not simplicity a boy wants ; 
 it's artfulness, and a creature who's turned himself into a 
 great sponge for the absorption of learning could never 
 be expected to be all day tracking a boy's little atom of a 
 sponge to its lair or teaching it to suck. He'd be too 
 dazzled in the radiance of his own illuminated brain to 
 see a wink in the semi-darkness of other people's. He'd 
 always be teaching and developing the only self he knows, 
 and that's himself. I have my doubts about Wranglers, 
 as applied to the wobbly brain of anybody." 
 
 " There's a glimmer of truth in your observations, 
 perhaps." 
 
 " I've known two high-up Wranglers," said Audrey. 
 " One tried to lower himself to my level he told me that, 
 in spite of the evidence of his five senses, he believed that 
 I possessed an intellect, and recommended me to go to 
 Girton. The other tried to be funny. I don't know 
 which was the least conducive to my mental develop- 
 ment." 
 
 " But, darling child, I'm a Wrangler." 
 
 " As if I ever forget that ! It's only right that you 
 should be a Wrangler and all the other things as well ; 
 it confers dignity on the establishment. It's a distinct 
 asset, a Wrangler in the house is quite indispensable. 
 And, besides," she said, forgetting more important matters 
 in her absorption in her scheme once Audrey got 
 thoroughly absorbed in one thing, she forgot the rest 
 " besides, you'll be safe enough. I'll know every boy 
 down to the ground in a week, and I can tell you just 
 how to get at him. Of course, I only mean the idiotic 
 part that you couldn't possibly know anything about, 
 without natural inward fellowship, or years of patient 
 excavation." 
 
 " There may be something in that," said Andrew, with 
 keen enjoyment. 
 
 Andrew felt that he was, indeed, beginning to know his
 
 wife. She looked at him and started. Her cheeks grew 
 scarlet, her jaw dropped. 
 
 " Oh, Andrew, I didn't mean that altogether ! Once 
 the thing is started I shouldn't dream of interfering. 
 I I respect you too much, and I hate interfering women. 
 Only it is so important to get this thing started on the 
 right lines, you know, and then it will live simply on its 
 own merits, and you, with your great sponge of a brain, 
 once you pick up a few practical suggestions, will be suck- 
 ing in knowledge every hour. The boys will be teaching 
 you, don't you see ? Oh, the thing'll go ! All it wants 
 is a push-off ! I simply want you to explain boys to 
 yourself by well, say by me, and to get you now this 
 minute to think first of the boys and afterwards of the 
 Wrangler ; not on any account to let him get uppermost 
 in your mind. Once he is," she said with decision, " he'll 
 stay there and crush the boys to powder. Oh ! Andrew, 
 he will ! It will be the elephant all over again ! Dear 
 me ! Andrew, if you'd sat out as many dances as I have 
 with boys, you'd have some idea how to set about blotting 
 out their ignorance with your knowledge, and making the 
 painful process a rose-strewn path to the creatures. It's 
 nothing but intimate experience can do this, I can tell 
 you." 
 
 " But, dearest, I fear I cannot make it a rule of sitting 
 out dances with my pupils ! " 
 
 " No, worse luck ! If you'd sat out more of them 
 with girls in an understanding way, it would have done 
 just as well. By losing all your opportunities, Andrew, 
 you've laid a pretty heavy burthen on me, I'd wish you 
 to know. There's another thing. Two Wranglers would 
 be sure to have conflicting opinions on most subjects 
 that by the nature of them would have to be threshed out 
 at meals, and in clarifying your own brains you'd muddle 
 those of the boys, besides ruining your digestions and 
 now, Andrew, you mustn't forget for one minute that 
 once I've pushed you off, I've washed my hands of the 
 whole business."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 127 
 
 " Except to be the life and soul of it, beloved. Every 
 day I know you better, and regret more keenly my im- 
 becility in having waited so long for the knowledge. I 
 have practically lost three years of you. That hurts, 
 little girl." 
 
 " You know nothing of me, and you never will, what- 
 ever happens. Do stick to your chores, Andrew. Good- 
 ness ! here he is walking and he's mopping his face. 
 I felt in my bones he was poor, and sure to complicate 
 things. Why couldn't he drive and arrive cool ? I'm so 
 glad I ordered sweetbreads for luncheon ; and if you can, 
 do, for goodness' sake ! pay his fare. You won't hurt 
 his feelings you'll get so red. Even with butlers you 
 blush like a rose and Wranglers ! Andrew, but it's awful ! 
 A crammer's life isn't all beer and skittles, anyway. Make 
 things as nice as you can ; but, Andrew, think first of the 
 boys first, first, first ! " she hissed. " I I simply must 
 see that man at the first plunge I'd know him in one 
 minute ! And you can't settle anything definite until 
 after luncheon." 
 
 She flung a glance round the room. 
 
 " I say ! I'H just stand behind this screen and creep 
 out quietly. I'll open the door one atom ready for the 
 retreat." 
 
 " Audrey ! for Heaven's sake, don't ! " pleaded the 
 wretched man. 
 
 The coming interview presented a bewildering array of 
 difficulties to this alien upon earth, and the little glimmers 
 of sense and sound understanding in Audrey's engaging 
 prattle had not tended to allay his apprehensions. The 
 sense of responsibility was new in him, and he handled it 
 clumsily. His own shortcomings drilled into him by 
 circumstances and their high priest, Katharine, had only 
 partially yielded to the less strenuous methods of his wife. 
 He knew little of the boy whose intuition is to idle ; a 
 Senior Wrangler looking for a menial post moved him to 
 his depths ; and Audrey, behind the screen listening with 
 all her ears, was the last straw.
 
 128 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " Audrey ! Go ! For God's sake, go, my dearest ! You 
 still have time." 
 
 " I haven't. I hear him on the stairs, and you ought 
 to be glad to have me so near. Other people would be 
 glad enough, I can tell you ! Andrew ! at least look 
 calm ! " 
 
 How gladly would he have followed her counsel of 
 perfection, but Andrew, in his own way, was human 
 also. 
 
 Audrey had never believed that duty could be so en- 
 joyable. She was wholly happy, and the pucker in 
 Andrew's brow suited him. It was just what he wanted 
 to make him quite alive. 
 
 Mrs. Antrobus breathlessly waited. Her intuition had 
 led her, as usual, to within an appreciable distance of the 
 truth. Mr. Frazer was poor, and about as unfitted to the 
 training of the dawning mind as a man well could be. He 
 was unworldly, also awkward, humble, but not in regard 
 to his own capacity far from it. He had an honest 
 appreciation of the instrument with which, when per- 
 fectly at his command, he meant to achieve mighty aims. 
 His passion for the quest of knowledge was a consuming 
 fire ; to acquire facts and deduce arguments the breath 
 of his nostrils. 
 
 It was of Henry Frazer as mere man of whom he 
 was doubtful. He had never been a boy, and knew 
 but little of the species, and the little that he did know 
 had steeped him in pessimism ! Boys were at best a 
 hideous and eternal necessity, the tuition of nine-tenths 
 of them a hopeless task ; but if he, who had ac- 
 complished what he had in himself, could not deal 
 with their rubbishy brains as well as another, it were 
 indeed strange. 
 
 He was poor, it is true, but the precipitancy in his 
 present enterprise was less in order to feed and clothe him- 
 self, and so take the burthen off his parents, and get away 
 from an overflowing family, than an overwhelming desire 
 to come face to face with a man of Andrew's standing, and
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 129 
 
 by hook or by crook to live in his presence and learn at 
 his feet. 
 
 In less than five minutes Audrey had sized him down. 
 She was twittering with sympathy for both the men and 
 shaking with apprehension. She had, to be sure, full 
 cause to be. 
 
 The three sentences he jerked out bore the hall-mark 
 of good breeding ; his clothes, if old, fitted ; he was care- 
 fully shaven ; his voice had the right tone ; more than all, 
 his countenance was good in an aloof, ineffective way. 
 
 As a man he was as deeply detrimental as Andrew 
 himself. He was everything he ought to be, but the one 
 thing needful. In two minutes he and Andrew had 
 drawn one another into a discussion and both forgotten 
 the occasion. They were at it hammer and tongs. Jaw- 
 breaking horrors of speech slid nimbly off their tongues. 
 They reverberated in the brain of Audrey. 
 
 Her courage remained steady, however. The very 
 extent and variety of the pitfalls from which she had to 
 protect Andrew and his potential victims, gave tone to 
 her moral fibre. The conversation swung forward on its 
 mighty wheels, the original idea receding steadily into 
 the misty margins of the scholars' consciousness. 
 
 The potential energies of the young tutor were, she 
 could see, inconceivable ; he was a bombshell in the 
 path of Mrs. Antrobus, and seemed likely to remain so. 
 The one would form a mortal temptation to the other, t(* 
 which he would invariably gaily yield ; they would hope- 
 lessly demoralize each other. The scheme for which she 
 was renouncing the best in life was doomed ! 
 
 At the same time she paused to give them one more 
 chance, and the more she looked at the young man the 
 better she liked him, the more did she discern o* his 
 possible usefulness in certain future contingencies. As a 
 disciple upon his own hearthstone, he would form a sort 
 of improvised anchor for Andrew to hold on to until things 
 righted themselves, and he grappled that which Destiny 
 had in store for him.
 
 130 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 For such use he seemed nothing less than a Heaven- 
 sent boon. But the boys ! the shop ! The boys would 
 run riot ; the shop be shut up after the first term ! 
 
 She listened with pensive deliberation as spirits mixed, 
 and followed whithersoever they led. She rushed with them 
 from argument to argument ; her native wits carried her 
 over every difficulty like a bird. She paused when they 
 did to review matters, to pick up some point of union, 
 emphasize some difference. She paced with them upon 
 some common ground where for a moment they could dwell 
 at peace, then start asunder again to fly at each other's 
 throats and slaughter and slay. 
 
 As in their gentle scholarly voices they reviled one 
 another, she would silently chuckle. Sometimes Andrew 
 looked like an inspired prophet, but much more frequently 
 like the Prince of Darkness. Never before had she been so 
 proud of Andrew. It was a most exhilarating discussion. 
 Duty took on new values. 
 
 At the same time, since it was the only conversation 
 in her life in which Audrey had only taken a passive 
 part, she became a little restless in her enforced seclusion. 
 She longed to clap and cheer them, but in no sort of 
 way did she permit her personal emotion to interfere 
 with the intrinsic serenity of her procedure. 
 
 The existing impossibility of the man was as patent 
 as his potential invaluability. He must go ! 
 
 But it was not until the two pince-nez, and the noses that 
 supported them, met in final accord over one green jar 
 that she decided that the time for Andrew's moral effort 
 had come. 
 
 She looked cautiously round the edge of the screen ; 
 the man's back happily was turned to her, and she con- 
 cluded with some slight disdain that his absorption would 
 be greater than her attraction, but Andrew was another 
 thing. Him she fixed in an hypnotic stare, and at last, 
 with a painful effort, the wretched man turned to focus 
 his gaze upon the disintegrating spectacle of Audrey, 
 saying " No ! " after a fashion that no man could dis-
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 131 
 
 regard. She was a fiery image of negation, and brought 
 home his contemplated sin to his anguished soul. 
 
 Her ridiculous eyes were wet, and that was why Andrew 
 knew that she was right and he must turn from his door 
 the visiting angel. It was, perhaps, the most desolating 
 moment in Andrew's whole life. 
 
 Audrey stole away, feeling as though she had been ill- 
 treating two babies, but knowing the calming power of 
 common sense and food upon any distracting passion, 
 she rang the bell to hurry in luncheon. When the men, 
 still throbbing with their last subject, joined her, she was 
 standing at the open window contemplating two peacocks 
 strutting in the sun. The artless grace with which she 
 turned to greet her guest slightly disturbed Mr. Frazer. 
 He flung a hasty glance at Andrew ; he had not been 
 prepared for this sort of thing. So very young a person ! 
 Any wife must be a brake upon the strenuous life, but 
 this ! He felt sorry for Antrobus. He was irresistibly 
 drawn to the man. He wondered if they had children, 
 and if so, if they were of any biological value to their 
 father. He hoped they did not suffer from any of the 
 more explosive complaints of infancy. He himself was 
 the eldest of eleven, and his mother a good, stalwart 
 woman without bowels would break in upon his most 
 important work to send him running for the doctor. 
 With how many a domestic earthquake had the small 
 house reverberated, and no one in the end any the worse 
 for it but himself ! It was one of his reasons for be- 
 coming a tutor. 
 
 By this time he was keenly sorry for Antrobus, and 
 made his final decision for celibacy. 
 
 " If only you'd telegraphed," said Audrey, " we could 
 have sent for you." He was absently swallowing his 
 soup. 
 
 " Thank you ; but I enjoyed the walk. One must 
 have exercise." 
 
 " He never looked at anything," thought Audrey ; 
 " and that's the person who proposes to get the best out 
 
 9*
 
 132 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 of boys." He was now helping himself in a vacant way 
 to sweetbreads. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Frazer, do take some sauce ! " 
 
 He glanced indifferently at his dry plate. 
 
 " I've taken some, thank you." 
 
 " It's a lovely walk from the station," she adventured. 
 
 " Yes," he said nervously. The worst of women was 
 that they always made you tell lies. 
 
 " And yet, if he only gave his senses a chance," she 
 thought, " he'd be very much like other people. I wish 
 I'd had him sooner, or that there was more time." 
 
 " This is rather a nice place for boys, don't you think ? " 
 she sweetly inquired. 
 
 " Indeed, yes ! They're lucky to have the chance of 
 such aUaboratory. The last place I was at they used a 
 back kitchen from which every domestic sound was 
 audible. You propose, Mr. Antrobus, to take science 
 yourself ? If you permit the fellows free access to your 
 laboratory, you will, I fear, be throwing pearls before 
 swine." 
 
 Andrew looked dubious. 
 
 " But I was thinking of the country, you know," said 
 Audrey, " and being four miles from a station and a nice 
 distance from town." 
 
 He ripped his mind from Andrew, and turned upon her 
 a dull, inattentive eye. 
 
 " That sort of fellow the fellow, I mean, who won't 
 work except under compulsion doesn't concern himself 
 with the country, Mrs. Antrobus. He likes a street to loaf 
 in a shop, for choice a gun-shop, to flatten his nose 
 against, and he probably only takes the trouble to do 
 that because the other fellows do it." He paused to bolt 
 the rest of the food on his plate, with a dim idea of hurrying 
 up the meal and getting rid of her. 
 
 " But he can surely do more active mischief than 
 that ? " pleaded "Audrey. 
 
 " Well, yes," he said heavily. " He can stare at girls. 
 I have, however, watched him at it, and found that it
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 133 
 
 was done, as in the case of the guns, in a perfunctory way, 
 without any serious conviction. As with the gun-shop, 
 it is a purely mechanical and uninterested process." 
 ^There was a slight pause. Andrew, who was con- 
 scientiously anxious to pick up hints as to the details 
 in his proposed undertaking, looked pensive. 
 
 Mr. Frazer wondered if he had been indiscreet. It 
 was, indeed, something in the face of Mrs. Antrobus 
 herself which had recalled to him certain investigations 
 into the workings of a boy's mind, in which he had once 
 dabbled. He felt embarrassed, but not self-conscious. 
 
 In his own person he had never believed himself to be 
 the least interesting to women; he took, therefore, but 
 little interest in women. The pause, however, seemed 
 in some cryptic way to await his breaking. 
 
 " I have noticed," he said, " that they do take some 
 interest of a vital nature in their ties. It is frequently 
 the cause of their being late for work." He spoke with 
 no virulence. His feeling for or against the species was a 
 passive one. In common with women, the place in Nature 
 of the boy was to perfect man in the practice of self- 
 control and a rapid readjustment of jarred mental 
 mechanism. 
 
 Mrs. Antrobus helped him to a cutlet. Had she per- 
 mitted him a free hand he would undoubtedly have for- 
 gotten the peas. 
 
 " I'm afraid your investigations were too purely 
 scientific," she said, "to be entirely sympathetic. Per- 
 haps you don't quite do justice to the boys. The stare, 
 won't you admit, was rather tentative than perfunctory. 
 Andrew, have some gravy, do ! They're so young," 
 she pleaded, " and one must practice before one is perfect 
 even in the simplest things in life. And to have to stare 
 in groups, as he always does, must surely handicap a poor 
 beginner of a boy. I've always been rather sorry for 
 crammers' boys trying their powers, each more or less an 
 object of derision to all the others, and the whole lot 
 directly the girl looks as if she was aware of their presence,
 
 134 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 wishing that the ground would open and swallow them. 
 I've often longed to show them the right way to qualify. 
 It's as pathetic as young cocks learning to crow. Don't 
 you think that both cocks and boys get over the phase 
 more comfortably in the country ? " she said with simple 
 sweetness, " especially if there's some responsible person 
 to guide them in the difficult endeavour, you know." 
 
 " Good God ! " he thought, " she's alluding to her- 
 self ! " 
 
 "We stand on such different platforms, you and I, 
 Mrs. Antrobus," he said with great severity, " that we 
 could hardly hope to agree upon any subject, perhaps. 
 The sight of a lot of fellows making asses of themselves 
 in the face of the public, on the eve possibly indeed, I 
 may say probably of an important examination, is not 
 a spectacle to enlist the sympathies of the man who is 
 responsible, to the young fools' parents. It's the results 
 of the examinations and the statistics of the establishment 
 in which he happens to be interested that alone concern 
 him." 
 
 This was the longest speech he had ever made to a 
 woman, and he blushed hard. 
 
 Audrey gave him some lemon-cream. 
 
 " I can quite understand," she said, with unruffled 
 serenity. " I've never looked at an Army crammer yet 
 but I've been sorry for him. The awful thing is that the 
 most important parts of a boy to himself are those least 
 important to his tutor. It's the most difficult problem ! 
 A boy wants such a lot of sifting and sorting out before 
 you can get hold of the right bit of him, free it from rubbish 
 and nail it to the subject uppermost in your mind. If it 
 strikes him, of course, at the first go off, it's all right 
 Nature does the rest ; but if it doesn't, he'll offer you all 
 the wrong things first. It must be a frightful grind for a 
 man who has never idled to understand an idler." She 
 cast a look of impersonal admiration round the table. 
 " To understand things, you must have lived them, don't 
 you think ? and boys are so curious ! You have to reach
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 135 
 
 them through such mysterious windings. They're more 
 plain, of course, to people as bad as themselves like 
 me, for instance. The great thing, I've found, is to get 
 them to admire themselves for things in them they have 
 never suspected. That has the most extraordinary effect." 
 
 Andrew looked apprehensive and was about to speak, 
 when, casting a melting glance at him, she kicked his 
 shins sharply under the small round table. In nervous 
 silence he ate a peach. 
 
 " I have no doubt it would have a most extraordinary 
 effect, Mrs. Antrobus," said Mr. Frazer unsmilingly. 
 " Boys are fatally open to flattery." 
 
 " But is it flattery ? " she meekly inquired. " Isn't it 
 unearthing nice little bits of them they haven't the wit 
 to get at themselves ? " 
 
 Mr. Frazer's sorrow for Antrobus was now poignant. 
 Would this amazing woman never cease ? The prospect 
 of intimate companionship with a genius that but one 
 brief hour ago so enthralled him was already losing in 
 intensity. The skies had changed. The glow had de- 
 parted from the enchanted air. 
 
 In a gentle, unobtrusive way Audrey put a splendid 
 nectarine on his plate. Andrew watched her in silence. 
 From her very expressive kick and some look in her eyes 
 that demanded both attention and obedience he was now 
 aware that she had a purpose in her strange behaviour, 
 and the weight of his own imminent implication in some 
 thing not unlike criminal cruelty to a brother, made him 
 thankful enough for any passive respite. 
 
 " I knew a boy once," said she, " whom no one could 
 teach. He had brains, they all said, but he was hopeless. 
 He gave a bad name to three good crammers. Then he 
 smashed himself up out hunting one day and I helped to 
 nurse him ; I was staying in the house, and he liked me 
 to be about. One day, the day-nurse had to go out for 
 the afternoon, and left me in charge, and suddenly he 
 got delirious and a good deal more interesting than ever 
 he had been in his right mind. He said out everything
 
 136 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 that had been, going on in his mind for years. To listen 
 to a boy in an absolutely relaxed state is pretty scaring, 
 I can tell you and very good for your education. I 
 oughtn't to have left him, I know," she said with a pretty 
 air of apology. " The nurse gave me entire charge, but I 
 knew a nice young footman I could trust, and gave him 
 f indirections. So I put on my habit and galloped across 
 to^his last crammer's, and it was dark and the sleet 
 was awful, and his temper worse ; his language was in- 
 conceivable but I made him come and listen. Once 
 he began, he went on, I can tell you. He listened till 
 dinner-time, and you should have seen his face, just ! " 
 
 Audrey now demurely busied herself with her own 
 peach. 
 
 " What was the result ? " said Andrew, laughing in 
 spite of his better judgment. 
 
 " The boy passed. He's doing well in India now, and 
 so's the crammer in Devonshire." 
 
 Mr. Frazer glared, not for any personal reason ; he 
 was thinking solely of Antrobus. 
 
 " I am sure that yours is an excellent method, Mrs. 
 Antrobus, but, as you will admit, hardly workable." 
 
 " As a continuance no," she sighed ; " that's the worst 
 of it, and the first impulse of a boy who is not delirious 
 is so often to convert himself into a stuffed image in the 
 presence of a great mind. It's a sort of pride partly, 
 and partly the sense of his own insignificance, I think. 
 I know it's that with myself." 
 
 Her sweet, humble glance trembled upon their faces. 
 
 " I suppose it's the old story again, differently applied. 
 Set a thief to catch a thief," said she. 
 
 He did not contradict her. He was face to face with 
 the real original serpent in Paradise, the betrayer of man- 
 kind. He knew now all that was to be known of the 
 downfall of man. So much for his brief excursion into 
 Eden. The sooner he returned to Earth the better. 
 
 Even the nectarine that she had given him was ashes 
 upon his tongue. He wondered bitterly how the less
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 137 
 
 unyielding substance of an apple had not choked Antrobus. 
 He looked with positive repulsion at his hostess. 
 
 It was an experience she greatly resented. Sighing, 
 she insisted this was pure malignity upon his swallowing 
 some nuts. Whilst he gulped them down she poured 
 upon him a soft torrent of words, the sting of which lay 
 in the occasional sharp glances of shining sense by which 
 they were fitfully lit up. The_hideousness of woman in 
 action jarred upon his every sense, warped judgment, 
 palsied power. 
 
 His one passionate desire now was to renounce the 
 purpose which so lately had set his pulses racing and 
 opened his eyes to a wondrous vision. 
 
 When they stood up it was difficult to determine which 
 of the men looked the more dejected. Audrey's heart 
 bled. She flicked a letter out of her pocket. 
 
 " Now, Andrew," she said, " just start Mr. Frazer on 
 his first cigar in the laboratory " 
 
 " I don't smoke, thank you." 
 
 " Oh ! " she said sorrowfully. 
 
 That he should be denied even that poor consolation ! 
 No one else, when they went about doing good, had to 
 suffer such reiterated stabs as she. 
 
 "I am sorry," she said, looking tenderly at the 
 Wrangler. 
 
 " Then, Andrew, give him a book, please, or some- 
 thing. The reply to this letter must go by the early post, 
 and you must see it first. So do forgive me, Mr. Frazer ; 
 I can't keep him long because the post goes in a quarter 
 of an hour." 
 
 " What is it, dear ? " said Andrew, coming back with a 
 troubled brow. " This letter ? And, Audrey 
 
 " Letter ? Oh ! Andrew, how can you ? Can't you 
 understand ? And to be blaming me, when 
 
 She swung Andrew round to look at him in the light. 
 The lightning quickness of her action knocked him out of 
 time. He stared bewildered and moved. The quiet 
 man surged with strange emotions. His soul longed
 
 138 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 greatly for Mr, Frazer as a fixture in his laboratory. His 
 reason cast him forth. Never in all his days had Andrew 
 felt the like of this discomfort, or had the conduct of his 
 wife been so incomprehensible and so full of an alluring 
 interest. She was greatly to be censured, blameworthy 
 in a way of which he could not have conceived. He loved 
 her with a depth of passion he had not yet known. 
 
 " You know he's hopeless," she entreated. 
 
 " I find him a man of supreme ability or, rather," 
 he added, with a grim smile, " before luncheon I had found 
 him so." 
 
 " And now ? " coolly inquired Audrey. 
 
 " He would, I fear, not be conducive to the commercial 
 success of an Army house." 
 
 " Well, hardly ! " said Audrey ; " and you're blaming 
 me for it me, when I could cry for him I could howl, 
 Andrew ! But do just think of the boys ! And, Andrew, 
 can't you see can't you see anything ? " 
 
 She shook him in her agitation, but apparently not into 
 consciousness. 
 
 " See, dearest ? see what ? " he replied. 
 
 " Oh, Andrew ! Anything ? Do you think I liked it ? 
 Goodness gracious ! the one thing I longed to do was to 
 sit like a lamb and help him to things and listen to both 
 of you. I'm not forward, Andrew ; I could worship genius 
 in silence as no other living woman could, if if Oh, 
 bother ! I tell you again you know nothing at all about 
 me, Andrew ! " 
 
 Andrew smiled in a soothing way. 
 
 " Well, anyway, I've saved you. No need now to dis- 
 miss him. Wild horses wouldn't make him come to you. 
 Was I altogether a beast, Andrew ? " 
 
 " Dearest ! You were very effective ! " 
 
 " I was. He'll never forgive me to the day of his 
 death, and if you only just knew how that strikes me. 
 How awful it is, and so vilely unjust, and with you think- 
 ing me forward me ! Oh ! to be hated wrongfully in the 
 way he'll hate me ! Katharine's dislike will be a fool to
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 139 
 
 his ; besides, she deserves being coerced for her good, and 
 he doesn't. He's a helpless creature at heart, and has 
 never met the right woman. I could have done wonders 
 for the poor man," she wailed, " if only there'd been time, 
 and even now I have a hundred schemes for him, and 
 he hating me like poison ! 
 
 " It's a sordid sort of thing delivering a genius for his 
 own good into a net. You can't pay his fare, Andrew ; 
 it would be too awful ! But be sure to get his address." 
 She paused and thoughtfully frowned. " Be sure to get 
 his address, and give him a general invitation to the 
 laboratory. He wants exercise, he says. He could 
 bicycle down." She paused, still frowning, to make some 
 inner calculations. " And couldn't you ask him down 
 definitely, say about the middle of next month ? 
 Andrew, do ask him then. Please don't forget ! And 
 now, fly to him, oh, do ! or he'll be hating me worse 
 than ever, and it's so awful ! Oh, Andrew ! I have to 
 bear a good deal more for you than ever you'll know. 
 No ; don't begin to say things, please. You must just go ! 
 
 " Everything always costs a lot more than you expected," 
 she said, with imploring eyes, turned with no apparent 
 reason to heaven. " It's all frightfully horrid," she 
 sighed when she had flown to her room and was looking 
 across the heather and the pines and the wide, dim distance 
 beyond, to the great fringe of grim sadness wherein 
 London lies. " Presently, when that Wrangler knows 
 everything, he'll be uplifted in a way he never was before. 
 He'll feel that he knew all along, and he'll be certain to 
 the day of his death that what he doesn't know about 
 women isn't worth knowing. And to have that effect 
 on a man who's barely begun ! It's extremely hard and 
 most unfair ! It's it's slimy ! I wish Larry weren't 
 so far away ; I feel just awful ! " 
 
 She crouched down beside the sofa and cried bitterly. 
 
 And now, as always in this sad and lonely world, the 
 light shone on patiently in the darkness, and when the 
 heart is riven sometimes a little gleam steals in.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A UDREY had started upon her audacious enterprise 
 \ airily enough. To hoodwink and defy a God against 
 whose variable decrees her little light Pagan heart 
 had always rebelled, seemed in the beginning anything but 
 a momentous affair, and for a time she was justified of 
 her temerity. Her wild spirit, tired of beating its in- 
 effectual wings in nothingness, found ample opportunity 
 in the spacious and vital airs in which she now found 
 herself for high, effective flight. It flew hither and thither 
 upon merry wings, full freighted with blessings, and when 
 weary of legitimate service, could always amuse itself by 
 dropping them stealthily at Katharine's great square- 
 toed feet. 
 
 This was a revenge so subtle and full of consolation that 
 Mrs. Antrobus caught herself being quite fond of Katha- 
 rine in flashes. 
 
 But to convert Adeline from the extraordinary per- 
 version of common sense with which her worship of God 
 had filled her, and ward off the logical consequences 
 of her astounding creed from the poor dying body, 
 worked like an inspiration in Audrey. 
 
 She was wise in her generation, and never permitted 
 the rigour of God or man to make her intolerant to either, 
 and her mad blood leapt to every experience. 
 
 Even after a lurid half-hour with Adeline's conception 
 of Infinity, when she came face to face with the roses, in 
 a way all her own, Audrey loved God a little for their 
 sake. A curious sense of protection was now growing 
 
 140
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 141 
 
 up in her silently. It seemed to enlarge the borders of 
 her consciousness, to uplift her. 
 
 Sometimes as she went out into the garden in the evening 
 to think of Larry, and bid the flowers good-night, in the 
 intimate presence of this inner expansion, her eager lips 
 parted, her longing eyes were wet. She threw out her 
 arms to gather into them and hold and keep from all 
 harm not Larry, that was the thing which confounded 
 her never Larry with the whole of her crying out for 
 Larry, but every one, every living creature who could be 
 bruised, or hurt, or suffer wrong. 
 
 When this happened to Audrey, it seemed to her that 
 it was she only in all the world who knew enough to treat 
 such tender hurts. That it was for this she had been born ; 
 for this, and not for Larry, that she should be set free. 
 It seemed as though it were for her, as for no other, to 
 clothe with her strength the weakness of those who were 
 not yet ready to stand alone ; to protect the faltering 
 footsteps of those that made for strength. 
 
 As a new experience it fascinated her. Sometimes she 
 bitterly resented the voiceless entreaty of the shadowy 
 crowd which stretched out trembling hands to her. Once 
 in her extremity she beat them off with all the delicate 
 strength of her little clenched fists. 
 
 It was Larry whom she loved so tenderly, so dearly, 
 so passionately ! Larry, for whom she was getting ready 
 with such unsparing exertions ! 
 
 Perhaps it was the first foreshadowings of her destiny 
 stirring in Audrey, the dawning sense of her royal birth, 
 her pride of place, which holds woman as the mother of 
 man nearer to God than all His other creatures, nearer 
 even than the poet, that so transformed Audrey and so 
 infuriated her. 
 
 For the moment of irrational rapture was always fol- 
 lowed hot-foot by one of irrational wrath, and both moods 
 combined, Valways^made /Andrew appear more intrusive 
 and de troj> than ever. He seemed in some vague, exas- 
 perating way to be associated with the helpless moaning
 
 142 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 things it was, it would seem, her mission to succour and 
 shelter. He lay in her heart like a bruise. Andrew ! 
 who had always stood in awkward embarrassment without 
 its closed doors. 
 
 It was just like Andrew in his latest phase, and in the 
 circumstances inexcusable. It was, anyone must admit, 
 sheer impertinence on the part of any man who knew as 
 little of a woman as Andrew did, to be haunting and tor- 
 turing her and interfering in her duties in the way he was 
 now doing. Andrew's alteration was certainly not alto- 
 gether for the better. He appeared to be developing 
 a " coarse thumb " and his very breeding should have 
 saved him from that ! 
 
 " And I literally bursting to do my best for them all ! " 
 said Mrs. Antrobus. 
 
 Andrew's looks, both plangent and otherwise, had been 
 peculiarly trying to Audrey in the hours succeeding the 
 ousting of Mr. Frazer. So overwrought was she that she 
 fled at last to her violin, but finding that also could play 
 her false, she wrote a letter to Larry which greatly bewil- 
 dered the long-suffering, simple and deeply-disappointed 
 man, so full was it of Audrey in a frankly fermenting 
 condition. 
 
 After tea she strolled down to post her letter, and see 
 what Adeline could do for her. Also, for her part, to 
 amuse Adeline with a full and veracious account of her 
 morning's adventure. 
 
 By this time an odd understanding had grown up 
 between the pair. Except for the one thing that mattered, 
 which lay in each crouching behind the bars in the great 
 silence, they had no concealments one from the other, 
 these women. 
 
 To pour herself out to so staunch and unseeing a friend 
 often made the minutes fly trippingly for Audrey, and 
 Adeline supped life from the glancing flow. 
 
 Her present narrative suited the powers of Audrey, 
 and she was a born actress. So graphic was she, indeed, 
 in gesture, tone and attitude, that Katharine, bearing
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 143 
 
 down with a draught for Adeline, fetched up short, and 
 dropped limply on a seat. Her fears were abundantly ful- 
 filled. She heard every word and each one turned her 
 more rigid. 
 
 Had Audrey lost her wits ? Or Andrew ? Was it he 
 who had gone as mad as a March hare ? Andrew's sporadic 
 worship of an iridescent bubble was grievous enough, but 
 was it possible that he had now become the puppet of a 
 malignant sprite ? 
 
 A Senior Wrangler of unimpeachable record, and respect- 
 able parentage, to be turned with contempt from Andrew's 
 door, because, forsooth, Herodias had demanded it ! Was 
 it for this she had given him her life, and insisted upon 
 the sacrifice of those weaker than herself ? For this, 
 that Adeline should now he a-dying ! 
 
 She paused to steady her senses and listen with closer 
 attention. As she watched with a face of stone the 
 magical play of hand and form and face in Audrey, 
 listened to the rhythmic melody in her voice, Katharine's 
 whole being set harder. 
 
 " I can see her dancing around, or upon she would 
 spare nothing the bleeding head of the Baptist. I can 
 see Andrew looking on." 
 
 The spectacle fascinated Katharine. She put down the 
 medicine glass and clenched her hands. 
 
 The horrible farce drew to its close. She shuddered at 
 Adeline's blasphemous laugh, half rose at the blessed 
 return of her scruples, rejoiced grimly at the sharp, quick 
 pain in her worn face, and the instant her sense of sin 
 had sent Adeline huddling down in the pillows, flattened 
 her, so to speak, Katharine arose to her full height, a giant 
 refreshed. She was about to fall upon both the sinners 
 when withheld, in spite of herself, by another lightning 
 quick change in Audrey. 
 
 With a swift, impatient twitch of her thin, child-like 
 shoulders, a shake of the gallant little head, she steadied 
 herself, and was now hovering like an angel above Adeline, 
 doing little tender things for her, soothing and reassuring
 
 144 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 her. A sweet, elusive charm had transformed the scene. 
 The echo of some eternal pain was now in Audrey's face ; 
 even her soft, mocking laughter went well with the grow- 
 ing twilight. 
 
 The reaction was so sudden and complete that Katharine 
 gasped and sat down again. Was she also bewitched ? 
 This light woman, who had just done shameful evil to one 
 whose shoes she was not worthy to untie, and robbed her 
 husband of a congenial companion ! 
 
 Katharine stood up and shook herself, limb by limb, 
 as though she were casting out the devil. An essay 
 she had once written in a sportive mood recurred to her. 
 It concerned the mimic genius inherent in the Gallic 
 race. 
 
 " Just as I once said," she murmured. " Her grand- 
 mother was a Parisian. She does not act the thing, she is 
 it. A consummate actress. God help her husband ! 
 Herodias were less ruthless," said Katharine. She ad- 
 vanced quickly, gave Adeline her medicine, then in a few 
 well-chosen sentences she permitted Audrey to become 
 articulately aware of what she precisely thought of her. 
 Miss Antrobus had an effective method of conveying 
 information, and had only upon the rarest occasions 
 been entirely frank with her sister-in-law. Audrey in 
 her turn was even more sparing of her words than 
 Katharine, and she chose them more wittily, without 
 losing one jot of her dignity ; she was telling in the 
 finest degree. She left Katharine curbing, with bit 
 and bridle, her baffled rage, and floated home in the 
 mist of tender blue with a heart feeling every bit as 
 cruel and bloodthirsty as her primitive prototype, and 
 of a more evil complexion. A century or so can add a 
 good deal in subtlety and meaning to the hatred of woman 
 to woman, and evoke in it vasty deeps of resource and 
 cunning. The modern woman has to be sure gained in 
 refinement. 
 
 Katharine came up next morning determined to have her 
 say. She had given Andrew her life and the lives, also,,
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 145 
 
 of the two others. She had, at least, the right to 
 speak the word that might save him from utter 
 destruction. 
 
 She had made, as usual, straight for the laboratory, 
 and Audrey, who felt her presence somewhere about, had 
 been lying in wait for her ; so when she emerged from 
 the side door, she found herself, so to speak, in the smiling 
 face of Audrey, who triumphantly conveyed her to the 
 drawing-room and insisted upon her staying to luncheon. 
 
 " But, first," she said, " let me show you the way I've 
 had the bedrooms divided." 
 
 Half an hour before this Audrey had seen what she 
 knew to be a second applicant for the situation riding up 
 the avenue with a notably good seat on one of the local 
 jobmaster's screws. She had surveyed him for some 
 minutes through an open window, and, being satisfied, 
 had left him and Andrew undisturbed. She was now 
 resolved that he should get over the taste Katharine 
 would undoubtedly have left in his mouth in peace and 
 at leisure, and that Andrew should have time to recover 
 himself, so she put forward luncheon a quarter of an 
 hour, and arranged in her own mind that before it 
 was over, he should definitely know Katharine's precise 
 position in the household. 
 
 Having thus far fulfilled her conscience, she chevied 
 Katharine upstairs and down, until she felt a happy 
 assurance that every bone in her stiff body ached 
 badly. 
 
 The precautions of Mrs. Antrobus were not uncalled 
 for. Seized upon by a lurid fear that Miss Antrobus 
 intended to be an active partner in the cramming concern, 
 Mr. Norman had been mentally rearranging his outlooks. 
 Andrew, in the fatal shadow of Katharine's accusing eye, 
 was distinctly nervous and at his worst. He plunged with 
 incontinent haste into the prevalence of hay fever, and 
 the horrible authority with which Miss Antrobus had 
 settled the question for all tune almost resolved Mr. 
 Norman's hesitation into a lusty " No." 
 
 IO
 
 146 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 He felt extremely sorry. He had cogent reasons for 
 desiring the position. He had heard of it from having 
 met Mr. Frazer, who had been at his own college, upon his 
 return from his foiled enterprise. This gentleman spoke 
 feelingly, and in listening to his unvarnished tale of the 
 potential crammer's wife put against his own ideal of 
 Andrew Antrobus, there was a quiet academic fragrance 
 about the name Andrew had left behind him which 
 engaged the imagination of many of those who followed 
 in his steps, and looked confidently forward to his future 
 he had found himself irresistibly attracted, j 
 
 But with this desolating lady a fixture in the establish- 
 ment, his fervour sensibly declined. Andrew, himself 
 again with Katharine's departure, caused within him a 
 new upheaval of enthusiasm. He was in a state of judi- 
 cial attention when he came into luncheon. 
 
 Mrs. Antrobus greeted her guest with artless sweetness, 
 and turned with a nice wifely air to her husband. 
 
 " I've just seen a purple emperor on the cystus," said 
 she, " and it was quite three inches long." 
 
 Mr. Norman looked at her with great interest. 
 
 " Purple emperors are rare about here," he said. " That 
 must be the same one Miss Antrobus saw just now. She 
 stated its length to have been an inch and three- 
 eighths. It must have grown in the interval." 
 
 He spoke in a level, pleasant sort of voice. There was 
 an element of intelligence in his cynicism, and he was not 
 in the least impertinent. He held the balance at pre- 
 cisely the right angle. 
 
 Audrey looked and laughed. 
 
 " You have a good eye for fallacies," she said. " I hope 
 you have also some mercy for them. At the same time, I 
 believe that butterfly was nearer three inches than an inch 
 and three-eighths. It looked endless. You rode over ? " 
 
 " Yes. I intended to walk, but I met a temptation in 
 the shape of a horse belonging to a Mr. Cyrus Bull, pure 
 Saxon, I should think, with the financial genius of a Jew, 
 and I yielded to it."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 147 
 
 " I know the man," said Andrew with concern. " I 
 wish we'd known, and we could have sent for you." 
 
 " But," said Audrey eagerly, " you enjoyed the ride ? " 
 
 " I did immensely. It had the right incentive ; it 
 was a pleasure I couldn't afford, and I had a fixed deter- 
 mination to get the better in the end of Mr. Bull by ex- 
 tracting more enjoyment out of the deal than he could 
 have conceived possible, considering the nature of the 
 screw he gave me." 
 
 " You do like horses ! And you take a delightful view 
 of temptations." 
 
 " Mrs. Antrobus, you don't seem to see that you're 
 prejudicing my chances." He glanced at Katharine frozen 
 to her seat, then turned with a frank laugh to Andrew. 
 
 " If I hadn't liked horses quite so much, I think I might 
 say without boastfulness, Mr. Antrobus, that I should 
 run a far better chance of working under you than I do as 
 things stand." 
 
 " The schools don't teach everything," said Andrew in 
 queer nervous haste, avoiding Katharine's eye. He was 
 getting into the way of trusting the face of his wife, and 
 precipitately saying things that afterwards greatly sur- 
 prised him. Knowing Katharine's eye to be menacing, 
 he tried to explain himself rationally. " Knowing the 
 stuff with which you have to deal, its capacities, scope, 
 and possible temptations, must surely go a long way." 
 
 " Scholarship," slowly pronounced Katharine, " does 
 not surely preclude common intelligence ? " 
 
 " I hope not, indeed, Miss Antrobus," said Mr. Norman. 
 " And, Mrs. Antrobus, I assure you that my leniency in 
 regard to temptation only applies to myself. I take a 
 very different view of it when applied to other fellows, 
 and I may say with perfect truth that I have been pretty 
 successful in inducing those others to adopt the higher 
 conception." 
 
 " I have known quite ordinary people," rigidly pursued 
 Katharine, " with quite sufficient intelligence not even to 
 despise scholarship." 
 
 10*
 
 148 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Since no one else made any motion to speak, with ready 
 good-fellowship Mr. Norman took the field. 
 
 " So have I, and I've known scholars big enough to 
 despise nothing, not even fools. It's only the man with 
 an infinite capacity not to get bored, who can interest 
 nimself by nature in anything with life in it, who can get 
 at the best in life, don't you think ? The man who 
 taught me more than any other man ever did, and I went to 
 him a hopeless slacker." He mentioned a world-known 
 name " you all know him, of course. He sought out 
 my one vulnerable spot and worked up from that. In my 
 case it happened to be horses. You have fine stables here, 
 Mr. Antrobus. I suppose you'll let the boys who can 
 afford it, ride." 
 
 " I hadn't even thought of that yet," said Andrew. 
 
 " Now come to luncheon," said Audrey with a radiant 
 face, " and after luncheon, while you two talk, we'll go 
 and see old Bull's screw. You will come, won't you, 
 Katharine ? You're not in a great hurry surely, to-day. 
 Miss Antrobus," she explained " lives nearly two miles 
 away, and she doesn't spare us much of her time, 
 This is the first time for weeks you've lunched with 
 us, Katharine ; do take some olives done with cream 
 do ! This is a new cook. I'm getting her ready for 
 the boys, and how can she be expected to do her best 
 unless we appreciate her efforts ? People seem to forget 
 that cooks are human beings." 
 
 " It's the fact in regard to boys you're plainly deter- 
 mined not to forget," said Mr. Norman appreciatively. 
 
 " I'm afraid it's the only side of them I'd ever remem- 
 ber," said Audrey with a pensive sigh. 
 
 " I doubt it," said Norman ; " boys have a way of forcing 
 cryptic facts upon your recognition. I never met anyone 
 like a boy for broadening your outlook, and giving it a 
 leg-up. I think," he added, in rather a shy way, " you 
 don't slack with any real comfort to yourself with boys 
 about." 
 
 " That acts both ways," said Audrey. " I don't think
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 149 
 
 the boys could slack with any real comfort to themselves 
 with you about." 
 
 " That's the one thing in life I should like to be sure 
 of," he said, peeling a pear. " I say, Mr. Antrobus, aren't 
 you going to make some stringent rules in regard to the 
 use and misuse of your tools and things in that labora- 
 tory ? You have a magnificent show down there, and 
 you can't let loose a dozen unmuzzled bulls in a china 
 shop without paying the price, and chemistry and lawless 
 spirits I find invariably go together." 
 
 " It didn't strike me," said Andrew, hesitating. His 
 ideas, save on his own lines, did not flow, and slewing 
 himself round to those demanded by the new situation, 
 even with the aid of his peerless wife, was a ponderous 
 process for Andrew. " I am, as you know, only starting 
 the thing 
 
 " And unless you can talk it over in peace, it'll never 
 get started at all," said Audrey, an unconditional " yes " 
 radiating from her whole person. " You do smoke ? " 
 She turned almost entreatingly to Norman. 
 
 " Well, yes," he admitted ; " my vices don't lie as a 
 rule in negations." 
 
 Buoyed up by instinct, the authorization of Audrey, and 
 a secret horror of the accumulative incursion of a plague 
 of inferior intelligences in search of employment into the 
 cherished privacy of his laboratory, the embryo crammer 
 felt that he had found the right man. So, brushing aside 
 the affair as settled, and led on by sympathetic understand- 
 ing, he relapsed into some dear and intimate theme in 
 which he at once became Andrew Antrobus himself. Mr. 
 Norman was glad enough to listen and revere, but some- 
 times he broke in with some word informed with a light 
 as from a younger world which yet was the oldest of 
 all. 
 
 In a curious, vague way he reminded Andrew of his 
 wife that is always supposing that Audrey had been 
 educated. Norman surprised him, in short, more than 
 once in somewhat the same way that Audrey did. Mr.
 
 150 
 
 Norman, for his .part, sincerely enjoyed his ideal scientist 
 and the contemplation of a mental organism which for 
 years had been straining in one direction suddenly by 
 no volition of its own forced into a dozen alien ones. 
 Its piteous, creaking efforts in the processes of readjust- 
 ment filled him with great compassion, and let loose in 
 him an amount of energy he had hardly suspected in him- 
 self. Everything in regard to the position engaged his 
 zeal, and Mrs. Antrobus in character of crammer's wife 
 was the finishing touch. 
 
 He took his acceptation as granted, handed Andrew, on 
 a pure afterthought, a bundle of admirable testimonials, 
 and took over without comment a score of minor details 
 which had escaped the consideration of the extraordinary 
 promoters of the scheme. He even engaged to procure 
 a classical master in all points unexceptionable, and an 
 intimate friend of his own, and so with the last obstacle 
 removed, Andrew almost forgot himself and thanked God, 
 and Mr. Norman felt a pious conviction that at last he 
 had found his right place* one where he would have a 
 free hand with the boys. Had he had a doubt of this, 
 not Andrew, as man or scientist, or even Audrey, as 
 crammer's wife, would have moved him a jot. He had 
 lately declined three excellent posts because he refused to 
 be bound by any man's system but his own. He was a 
 rebel at heart, a more strict disciplinarian, therefore, 
 than one who has never broken a law, for he knew both 
 in the seen and in the unseen that wherewith he had to 
 deal. 
 
 " And if this isn't the work of Providence," said Audrey 
 that night, as she sat out on the balcony looking now up 
 at the sickle moon entangled in the topmost branches of a 
 tall pine, now down at the white rockets striving, in gentle 
 rivalry with the drowsy roses, to bathe her in their sweet- 
 ness. " This man on the spot to be a right hand to 
 Andrew, the other within call for special occasions. 
 The boys treated like human beings. A good cook. The 
 scheme on the point of running and Katharine squashed.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 151 
 
 He'll keep her in her place, that's plain enough. It's 
 all coming right. I can go soon now, thank goodness, and 
 begin properly. Oh '.I'll soon be free, and Larry '11 have 
 
 his chance, and then " 
 
 She threw out her arms and laughed softly, richly, volup- 
 tuously, and in one instant the outstretched arms were 
 full of a burthen of voiceless pain. A sorrow too full and 
 deep and fierce and elemental for the solvency of tears 
 took hold of her. It rent and tore her. It bruised her 
 soft flesh. Her head ached with it ; her heart throbbed. 
 She was- very tired and immensely sorry for her own 
 vague distress. It had ceased to excite or interest her. 
 It was becoming cruel and intrusive, like Andrew. She 
 shivered in the moonlight and crept into bed, and sobbed 
 in the chill, unfriendly silence till she slept.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 IT was August. The rumours of war grew daily. The 
 smaller Press had already begun to lose its head. 
 Sincere young men, exalted by glimpses of a new 
 light, and throbbing for recognition, bared their tumul- 
 tuous hearts in the mystic atmosphere of the midnight oil. 
 The citizen, weary with the dullness of a long peace, and 
 yearning for he knew not what, a pother of new forces 
 astir within him also, believed the vehement utterances, 
 and upon stool and behind .counter belaboured alike 
 Government and Boer. 
 
 A new freshness was in the spent air, a new melody 
 in the tired ear ; dulled eyes looked up from the dust to 
 see the light that each believed he had left behind him 
 with his boyhood still shining, serene and unchanged, a 
 golden halo above each man's head. For the halos of 
 the saints, which shine so hard that they break through 
 the magic circle of darkness in which even the artist sits 
 working, and become gold paint upon his palette, and 
 sometimes, alas ! hard hoops of gold upon holy heads, are 
 the inheritance of the world, and still hover to and fro in 
 the dusty streets, over the dull heads that have sold them, 
 each for his own particular mess of pottage. 
 
 We had been at peace too long. We had grown fat 
 and secure, and " where there is no vision the people 
 perish." We had sinned within and without, and in the 
 babel of the telephone we had forgotten to hearken to 
 the little voice which tells the secrets in the impulse of 
 affairs to the expectant, so we were taken unawares, and 
 
 152
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 153 
 
 staggered dazedly in the shock of our awakening, and 
 some saw stars, but others the light that is eternal, 
 waiting patiently for the seeing eye. 
 
 The spell of freedom was abroad, and many a secret 
 door thrown open, and thejhboy hidden in every good 
 man broke loose those stifling days of August, and ran a 
 rolh'cking white flame up and down the lands " of the 
 Seven Seas." One met him about the streets in weather- 
 beaten eyes, under grizzled beards, looking up from between 
 bent shoulders. He discovered himself, this boy, as a 
 gleam in the sadness of failure, a light in the gloom of 
 misapprehension. He was everywhere, he renewed old 
 hearts, unloosed sealed fountains, and brought strange 
 things to pass in anxious men unable to keep away from 
 the centre of things even for a day or two, too full of 
 new and larger cares even to go shooting. He is all for 
 the healing of the nations, this immortal boy, he conspires 
 for the confusion of the wise, and it is he who has made 
 England. 
 
 He was strong in Larry just now, and at his worst 
 had never been quite dormant in him ; but now that the 
 rigour of a great chance and a gallant goal was upon him, 
 there was more boy than man in Larry, and by reason of 
 it he grew in manliness in great strides. His love for 
 Audrey enlarged and strengthened him ; his^passion was 
 now no passing frenzy, it reached to the roots of his being. 
 He grew in consciousness. He saw his shame and accepted 
 his penalty. He recognized his responsibility with the 
 knowledge of one who has long watched life. He saw 
 Audrey's side of the affair as he had never before seen it. 
 And one day, when she came to him trembling and laugh- 
 ing, and in the throes of some hidden agony which was 
 mortal, to tell him the most wonderful news a woman 
 has to tell, he drank to the dregs a curious cup. It held 
 all things both sweet and bitter, both clean and unclean. 
 And after that day Larry was never again quite the same 
 man. It was his baptism into the whole of h'fe. So many 
 of us have to rest content with a sprinkling upon the fore-
 
 154 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 head, but for such as Larry and Audrey there can be 
 nothing less than total immersion. 
 
 Larry knew this, and for a moment he was stunned 
 by the complex pain of the knowledge, but as the arrested 
 life in him came leaping back, the sharpness of his wits 
 appreciably increased. He could account for himself now, 
 but what about Audrey ? There was that in her match- 
 less eyes which bade him walk warily. There were other 
 arms stretched out for the girl with which it might be 
 ill to cope. There were powers with which he had not 
 reckoned astir around them. 
 
 She had run up one morning in her motor, and had 
 called in the intervals of a shopping expedition. She 
 looked white and very young, and until she told him, 
 he could not make head or tail of the sorrow in her strange 
 eyes. When he could move, he held her very close, and 
 could no more have spoken than, her message delivered, 
 she herself could. They were accepting life as life is, 
 this boy and girl, and acceptances of this order belong to 
 the eternal things and go forward in the silence. 
 
 " Lie here," he said at last, putting her on the sofa. 
 : ' You're as white as paper, but we've got to arrange 
 things now once for all. You must see it at last." 
 
 "I see nothing else," she said, " but they can't be 
 settled." 
 
 " Oh, look here, Audrey " 
 
 " It will make no difference," she said ; " but go on." 
 
 " You're my affair now, altogether, darling ; you know 
 you are. The very fact of your being in in Antrobus's 
 house is an insult of sorts ; it's a damned insult to me." 
 
 " Some people might look upon it as a damned con- 
 venience," said Audrey drearily. 
 
 " Audrey, don't ! You're not the sort to say such things, 
 dear." 
 
 " Well, considering all the circumstances, I'm the sort 
 to say most things, aren't I ? " 
 
 " It's altogether different. It's poles apart from 
 from Oh, dearest, talk sense ! "
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 155 
 
 " I'm trying to. 7s it different and poles apart from ? 
 you weren't very definite, Larry. And I wonder if 
 everybody'll think it's so different and such poles apart 
 when the time comes ? " 
 
 " It is altogether different with you." 
 
 " Katharine, you must remember, will have a voice 
 in that matter." 
 
 " Damn Katharine ! " 
 
 " It wouldn't make any difference. She's immortal 
 and all-pervading, and we've got to reckon with her." 
 
 " Oh, well, we'll be doing it together." 
 
 She got up and pushed her hair back. 
 
 " Shall we ? " she said, as though to herself. " I I feel 
 as if we'd be doing it, each of us alone." 
 
 " Audrey ! You couldn't wish me to give up going 
 out ? " he asked, his face nearly as white as Audrey's. 
 " Forgive me, little girl," he cried in quick repentance ; 
 " as if I didn't know you, but but 
 
 ." Larry ! I know what your chance is to you, and 
 your chance is mine. It will make things straight for both 
 of us, I think, somehow, and and perhaps for 
 
 She broke down at last. The very silence of her sobs 
 made Larry afraid of those shadowy arms which defied 
 him. In an unaccountable panic he looked up and 
 around him, but he spoke steadily. 
 
 " Distance makes no difference," he said. " Whatever 
 happens, we're now one, we two. We'll be always to- 
 gether, and I can do a lot before I go. I have no near 
 relations, you know, any more than you have, but I 
 know one good woman. She's a brick, and she'll stand 
 by you, and Antrobus is a gentleman, and there may 
 still be plenty of time. At any rate, you're mine alto- 
 gether now, dearest, and we'll do the best we can together. 
 You've always pulled things through, Audrey." 
 
 " Yes," she said, " that's the trouble. They can't 
 spare me yet. Larry, let me speak ! They want me more 
 than ever. I've got them to that point when to desert 
 them would be rank treachery. A few weeks will make
 
 156 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 all the difference ; I've calculated it all out. By that 
 time Andrew will be firmly fixed in the scheme, a part 
 of it, just as he is of his laboratory, and nothing could dis- 
 lodge him. And with such a good beginning they could 
 manage even without my money." 
 
 " Audrey ! " 
 
 " Oh ! don't you understand, Larry ? You're so blind ; 
 you must understand ! If I came to you now, if I stayed 
 as oh ! Larry, if you only knew how I want to to 
 stay and get it over, and begin again and be able to sleep. 
 I can never sleep now, but I can't desert my post any 
 more than you could. And, Larry ! You'd hate me if I 
 did 1 " 
 
 " But, darling " 
 
 " What's the use ! Don't ! I have to stay till the 
 boys settle down six of them are coming on Monday 
 and things are going, and Andrew has become part and 
 parcel of them, and I can slip out quietly without bring- 
 ing everything I've worked so hard to build up down 
 about their ears. In a very short time," she said, flush- 
 ing scarlet, " I'll have to leave to come to you ; but one 
 can do lots in a month. One can put them all, the whole 
 concern, into Mr. Norman's hands ; he's invaluable, and 
 my falling out won't matter. He's most extraordinarily 
 trustworthy and understanding, and once he gets the full 
 hang of things " 
 
 " It's stark, staring madness. I may be in South 
 Africa in a month. You said a month before ; now it's 
 six weeks, and you want another month." 
 
 " What am I to do ? " she said in quiet, concentrated 
 supplication ; but it was not Larry to whom she prayed, 
 it was to something much more indefinite and far away. 
 " They're a millstone round my neck." 
 
 " Which will drown us both unless you look out." 
 
 " It won't drown you, Larry," she said at last slowly. 
 " And odious and abominable as it is for both of us, it's 
 stnTmy chance this setting themjjoing, and I've got to 
 take^it properly. Just as you've got to take yours. I
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 157 
 
 can funk nothing. I can't be mean just as you can't be 
 mean. In some things women must play the game in the 
 same way a soldier must, and this is one of the times. I 
 don't want to believe it," she cried. " I've done my best 
 net to, but I have to, that's all ! I've been thinking so 
 much in the night, Larry, lately. I don't like it, I can 
 tell you, but I have to. I believe it's on the way we take 
 our chances, you and I, that everything will depend. If war 
 was declared to-morrow," she said with wide, sad eyes, 
 " I'd still have to do all I can for them before I could leave 
 them. Oh, Larry ! I'd still be yours, dear ; I'd always be 
 yours ; only it would be too hard on us, I think. It 
 can't happen it would be too hard. If you could see 
 me there, even for a day 
 
 " My God, child ! I don't want to see you there ! " 
 
 " I don't want to see myself, and it won't happen it 
 can't," she said passionately. " But they want me first. 
 They won't soon," she said in the saddest voice Larry had 
 ever heard. 
 
 " Oh, Larry ! I wonder I'm not good," she cried, 
 " when my love for you is just like an angel in my heart. 
 It's what makes me stay until I've finished, I think." 
 
 " I wish to God it was less of an angel, then," said 
 the unhappy lad. 
 
 " No, you don't. Oh, Larry ! Let me be as good as I 
 can under the circumstances, when it's all so awfully 
 horrid." 
 
 " Do you not see, Audrey, that in this delay you're 
 putting me in the wrong ? It makes my blood boil when 
 I think of you in a false position down there, and me 
 here doing nothing to take care of my own, acting like a 
 damned coward, afraid of the consequences of my own 
 act, and in face of what may happen any day, any hour. 
 I never hear the yell of a newspaper boy, but I'm in a 
 blue funk a nice state that for a man to be in ! " 
 
 " I know it all, Larry," she said despairingly; " and 
 yet I can't leave them, not yet ; I've tried I've tried 
 night and day, but I can't. Sometimes I think if I loved
 
 158 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 you less I might," she said, sighing with a mystic look in 
 her great eyes ; " but my chance is more yours than mine, 
 I think, just as yours is mine more than yours, and we've 
 each got to take our own in the best way. I don't want 
 to believe this either, but I've got to I've got to ! " 
 
 Suddenly she laid her head upon his breast. 
 
 " Since I've known about this," she said, and now she 
 was lividly white, " I'm sort of driven I think more than 
 ever to keep on helping them to the very last." 
 
 " My God ! but I don't believe any man was ever before 
 in such a hole," he groaned. 
 
 " But what's one to do ? " 
 
 " You're mad, little girl, and you're harder than you 
 know on a fellow." 
 
 " I'm not mad, and I know how hard it is, Larry, but 
 it's it's part of everything, somehow. It's part of the 
 chance." 
 
 She drew her fingers slowly across her eyes. 
 
 " I must go home now, and, Larry, I'll be as quick as 
 ever I can, but I'll have to finish up all I can. Oh ! 
 if only you would understand, it would be a little easier, 
 I think."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE little mean sufferings due to the littleness and 
 meanness of our conceptions may wear themselves 
 out with time and cossetting, without leaving one 
 definite impression behind, still less that sense of defeat 
 which spurs on to victory ; but a pain set throbbing by 
 Another Hand will not yield to such slight treatment ; 
 it grows in the quiet night ! One may dodge and elude 
 it in the busy day, but in the night, then comes its chance 
 and in the game of chance it stands upon its own ground, 
 and we on shifting sands, mortal and defenceless. For 
 some weeks now Audrey had given up contending with her 
 torment. She knew what she had to expect, and simply 
 faced it. But upon the day of the boys' arrival, the dawn 
 of her great scheme in action, there was no trace of her 
 dark vigils apparent in Mrs. Antrobus. She was a vision 
 of lustrous serenity in an extremely costly embroidered 
 frock. 
 
 There was the royal simplicity of a star about Audrey 
 that day. For convenience sake the whole batch came 
 over together, and each boy in succession, as he greeted 
 her, felt his breath come shorter and wished himself more 
 in harmony with such shining whiteness. They were all 
 glad they wore the latest ties, and three exulted in having 
 been at last promoted to the family tailor. No one but 
 himself can understand what it means to a boy of sixteen 
 to be still wrestling under the soul-destroying bondage of 
 Messrs. Hope Brothers, when he stands five-feet-ten in his 
 stockings, and has some pretensions to muscle. 
 
 159
 
 160 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 After a moment's inspection, Audrey discerned that 
 three out of the group, and these the tallest, were withering 
 under this ban, and with the wisdom of a score of serpents 
 she restored their self-respect ; each for the moment for- 
 got his little common self, was uplifted to high airs and 
 swaggered as though he trode the firmament. With a 
 purely animal delight in her achievement, enjoying her 
 own inimitable effect to the full, Audrey started them out 
 on the right track, and in life at a crammer's more 
 perhaps than in any other life, it is the first step that 
 counts. Before her smile of dismissal had sent them 
 blundering into the background, Mrs. Antrobus had con- 
 ferred upon the three victims to the reach-me-downs a 
 hall-mark which even a tailor cannot give. The other 
 three were jealous, and the moral development of the six 
 rocked gaily on. 
 
 Mr. Norman, whom nothing escaped, was immensely 
 amused, and Andrew thought that his wife looked more 
 than ever like an angel on his hearth. Sometimes Audrey 
 frightened him. There was that about her which filled 
 him with disordered visions of creatures too good for 
 human nature's daily food ; he had nightmares of this 
 being, too transcendently light for earth, taking airy 
 flights to heaven. More than once, and always at a most 
 inconvenient moment, he had found his hands going out 
 involuntarily to hold her back. 
 
 The tallest of those still in bondage to Hope Brothers, 
 and the most gawky, Macmahon, had other disqualifica- 
 tions which at once drew him to Audrey. Her miserable 
 arms were now stretching out wider every minute. The 
 advent of the boys seemed to fill them with hidden springs. 
 Sometimes she wondered if she were going mad. Consider- 
 ing the strait she herself was in, to say nothing of Larry's, 
 she ought to be keeping the power of protection now 
 sprouting in her, very near home. But what is one to 
 do when a lad as long and clumsy as Macmahon, and 
 as badly dressed, is sent to a crammer's by an idiotic 
 aunt with his clothes fastened up in one of his
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 161 
 
 sister's dress-baskets ! Audrey gnashed her teeth, made 
 Macmahon unpack without a moment's delay, and had 
 his box switched out of sight. 
 
 She paid a visit next day to the aunt, who kept house 
 for her brother-in-law a dreamer immersed in the law. 
 She behaved with great sweetness, firmness and discre- 
 tion, and returned with decent baggage, and with simple 
 lucidity explained the affair to Macmahon, taking the 
 opportunity at the same time of complimenting him on the 
 width of his chest. 
 
 Nothing could have been better done. Macmahon 
 was an unlicked young cub, who had worn out the temper 
 of many a tutor. He was, in crammers' slang, " a bad 
 case." But with wandering thoughts of what mothers 
 might mean to fellows, and what aunts most certainly 
 do not, working in young blood, coupled with ideas still 
 more vague in which women and angels and ripping good 
 food get beaten up into a fine froth, a boy will now and 
 then try what doing his best feels like. This is precisely 
 what Macmahon did. He made a better start than anyone 
 could have expected from his previous record, and Mr. 
 Norman, who was a shrewd man, laughed and doubted. 
 
 Directly he got into the train upon his return from 
 Surrey, he had begun to doubt. Upon the breezy, fragrant, 
 wide space of heather getting the best out of old Bull's 
 screw, he had been attracted and amused by Mrs. Antrobus, 
 but with the hot breath of smoking men hemming him in, 
 salient doubts of her came blundering from somewhere into 
 his consciousness, and partially obscured Mrs. Antrobus. 
 
 Now he was more amused than before, and Audrey 
 was no longer obscured, but the doubts grew, as did 
 also her supreme importance in the concern. She was 
 the most living presence on the premises, its life and 
 soul, the very breath of its nostrils. She was rarely 
 actively dominant as in the matter of Macmahon' s boxes, 
 save, of course, in her own sphere. But she was there, and, 
 insensibly, they all drew near to her. He was drawn him- 
 self. In spite of his laughter and his doubts, he found 
 
 II
 
 162 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 himself telling her things, and asking her opinion upon 
 them. 
 
 " But why do you consult me when you don't like me ? " 
 she said one day. 
 
 " Because you always tell me what I want to know. 
 You have a way of putting your finger upon the one bit 
 of truth that's been dodging me. And I do like you ! 
 You know far better than I do that a man must like you 
 whether he wants to or not. He has no choice." He 
 paused to look, bit his Up, and laughed. 
 
 Her face was still frankly questioning him. " Well, go 
 on," she said. 
 
 " I'm not sure of you ; I don't know from Adam, w T hy. 
 It's a problem with which it's not for the like of me to 
 deal. This is the last thing a man should be saying to his 
 principal's wife. I hope you won't get me sacked, Mrs. 
 Antrobus. It's partly your own fault. You affect me as 
 the fellows down there in the laboratory at this moment 
 puzzling Mr. Antrobus do ; I have to be quite straight 
 with you, and not too delicate-minded either." 
 
 " You must come one day to see my sister Adeline," 
 said Audrey serenely. " She is not sure of me either, 
 but she likes me very much. You can compare notes. 
 In any case, I want you to know her, and sometimes to go 
 and see her. Will you ? Say that you will ! " 
 
 Her eyes narrowed and shot out a curious glance at 
 him. 
 
 " Of course I will, Mrs. Antrobus." 
 
 " That's a distinct promise, remember. Can you go 
 over with me to-day ? She's quite different from Katharine. 
 She's quite altogether different." 
 
 A few minutes later, as he stood waiting for a class, 
 he saw Mrs. Antrobus go slowly upstairs, and turned to 
 watch her as any man would do, and her face in an angle 
 of the staircase sketched out in a shaft of light made of 
 his dim, indefinite doubt a sharp and definite fear. 
 
 " But what the devil " he muttered. " What's up 
 
 with her ? She's getting uncanny."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 163 
 
 From that day he watched her more intelligently, and 
 presently he caught her defying him and thoroughly en- 
 joying herself. She liked, it was plain, intelligent observa- 
 tion. It was the scrutiny of the unintelligent observers, 
 of Andrew and the boys, that she could never learn to 
 defy. Andrew's she could evade and elude, indeed, but 
 the boys', never. They had brought a new atmosphere 
 into the house, and it was a challenge and a menace 
 in one. They were still young animals, as well she knew, 
 with their moral forces in the slow process of emerging. 
 
 A boy may lie with a clean conscience when a man 
 from sheer reflex action will tell the truth, but the 
 atmosphere of the boy will be the truer, the light through 
 which he looks for truth the more searching. It is indeed 
 a merciless white flame scorching away every sham. 
 
 It seemed to wrap Audrey round, to beat about her and 
 penetrate into her innermost fortress, to tear all her 
 secrets from her. It was a cruel torture of brilliancy, this 
 light the boys shed. And yet all the passionate beckoning 
 things dawning in their quivering hearts cried out to 
 hers. 
 
 They were seeking things together, she and the boys ; 
 to the most wonderful things the hearts of all of them were 
 reaching out, and yet and yet here they were burning 
 all the veils that hid her from a world of accusers. They 
 were betraying her, she who was weaving the very fabric 
 of their lives into hers, undoing her who was straining 
 every nerve to make them ! 
 
 Audrey could always snatch dreams from a country 
 very far away, and but for sordid necessity, lest they 
 should obsess her practical outlook, she would never 
 systematically brush the shadowy visitors aside. Nothing 
 that could destroy or hurt was ever given voluntary foot- 
 hold in Audrey ; she was by nature constructive, not 
 destructive, excepting when she chose to destroy in order 
 to build up again to her own pattern ; and now, when 
 she found herself in the midst of the bricks and mortar 
 of which men are made, the eternal passion of the builder 
 
 II*
 
 164 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 inherent in woman got hold of her. It moulded old 
 ideals into shapes she knew not ; it brought forth new 
 ones. It quickened her pulses. It was like good wine in 
 her blood, and yet it steadied her. She grew in lucidity. 
 
 The fact that she knew so much, and the boys so little, 
 stilled the tumult of her being. She was held in a new 
 poise. And in a way all her own a royal way, by being, 
 as it were, one of them she reigned supreme over the boys. 
 She never interfered now or asserted herself, that un- 
 becoming necessity was at an end. What was now re- 
 quired of her, it was plain, was just to sit tight and let 
 all the nice secret hidden things in her flow out, and 
 fill up, and make soft and cushiony the barren, wind- 
 swept spaces and cold, unkind recesses and corners where 
 hearts are sure to get hurt, perhaps beyond healing. 
 
 She felt as if she could hold in the hollow of her hand 
 the career of each of those boys, who, each in his turn, 
 had to fare through the vision of the cloth of all things, 
 clean and unclean, which leads in the end to knowledge. 
 She could see them, one by one, tearing off the poor 
 little rags of defence with which they hid themselves from 
 all the others who knew, believing her and trusting her. 
 She could be busy day and night in the most ravishing 
 way. She need never be bored again. She could live ! 
 live ! live ! 
 
 Her eyes would be quick to things that could baffle 
 the most uplifted saint or scientist who ever lived. Her 
 swift, small hand could turn to the right creatures whom 
 the big, slow hand of a man might send blundering to the 
 left. The place was made for her, and she for the place ! 
 An endless procession of boys all wanting her, all stretch- 
 ing out helpless arms to her, would pass before her wistful 
 eyes when she lay awake at nights. 
 
 When this happened she generally cried herself to sleep. 
 Not that she loved Larry any the less ; far from it. She 
 loved him infinitely more than she had ever loved him, 
 but there was a new note in the love, and it frightened 
 Audrey. It made her a little silent also, and the reflective
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 165 
 
 look growing in her great eyes was very bewildering to 
 thoughtful men. All that she did she did quickly and 
 quietly, and now that her duties were quadrupled she did 
 them more quickly and quietly still. Everything in house 
 and garden went by clockwork, and when she had finished 
 with these she now set to weaving the wizardry of her 
 presence into her own room. Each day it grew more 
 intimately like Audrey. And in her room, or in her garden, 
 she was always ready just to wait and to draw people to 
 her. 
 
 It was a brilliant, absorbing pursuit, a soul-stirring 
 occupation. It was like the unfolding of a magical gift. 
 Mr. Norman watched her laughing, and still with a doubt ; 
 and, meanwhile, Larry's last thread of patience was 
 strained to breaking-point. 
 
 Audrey, in her new self and her new love, was so great 
 and overpowering a wonder that he felt like a woman 
 in her hands. She had thrown her spell upon him to some 
 purpose. The smouldering mystery of the passion which 
 was transforming Audrey lived in her voice, her bearing, 
 her letters. Larry did not pretend to understand her ; she 
 would have confounded a philosopher and he was a 
 plain man. He felt, in a way, bound to obey her, to 
 respect some sacred obligation she had put upon him, but 
 there was a limit to all things. Rumours were now 
 practically facts. Any day he might get his orders. 
 
 He would give Audrey one more chance, and then take 
 the law into his own hands. He would face Antrobus, 
 and tell him the whole truth, and take on all the conse- 
 quences. At all costs he would shoulder his responsibility, 
 and do all that a man could for Audrey. 
 
 Audrey was getting out of her own hands, and out of 
 his, and the more he speculated as to the cause of it the 
 less he knew. He was as much at sea in regard to the 
 powers working in Audrey when he sat down to deliver 
 his ultimatum as he had been for weeks, but not under- 
 standing the reason of the thing made him only the 
 more alive to its significance. Many diverse circum-
 
 1 66 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 stances were combining to educate Larry, and he hoped 
 eventually even to understand Audrey. Meanwhile, he 
 would act as one who has left childish things behind 
 him, and insist upon taking care of her even against her 
 will, and no matter what the forces might be, to pit 
 himself against them. 
 
 Even if there were a bad scandal, they couldn't spare 
 him now. It was the hour of the young man, and he had 
 taken it with both hands. He knew well that he had 
 made himself invaluable both in the regiment and out- 
 side it. His position now was very different from what 
 it had been a month ago. He was sure of his chance, 
 but he must be sure of Audrey too. He explained the 
 position to Audrey with unswerving clarity in a very 
 sensible letter. 
 
 Ever since Larry had stood up to life and decided at 
 last to act as a man grown, Audrey knew that when 
 he made a resolution he would keep to it, and she knew 
 that this letter of his was final. 
 
 She had kept him quiet for a long time, but now her 
 power was broken. He wrote on Monday, and on Thursday 
 things must be settled one way or the other. This was 
 certain, and once more Audrey found herself in a tight 
 place.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 \ UDREY was in the garden when Larry's letter came. 
 /\ The moon was now in her third quarter, a brilliant 
 conquering queen, who had lost the proud, tremu- 
 lous delicacy of her first youth. Trees and flowers and 
 grass were bathed bounteously in her white radiance. 
 The stars shone frostily in the blue deep. The air was 
 bright and pure and fragrant. All the tenderness of 
 spring was in the world, and more than its sadness. 
 Perhaps it was the leafy things and the flowers that had 
 been nipped into doubt by the first frost, so with the 
 foreshadowing of death in their hearts, their vision of 
 the resurrection, the birthright of the dumb things, had 
 been blurred for the moment. 
 
 It was the half-hour's recess after dinner, and before 
 evening study, and it had become an established habit 
 in the household that one or other of the boys should 
 bring its mistress her evening mail, and this evening the 
 lot had fallen upon Macmahon. 
 
 It was always pretty hard for Audrey to read Larry's 
 letters under the searchlight of adoring inexperience, 
 but she had not been Audrey had she funked the ordeal. 
 A rapid glance told her that this was a letter to be read 
 at leisure ; so with all its significance flooding her heart, 
 she put it into her bodice, looked at a note or two, and 
 turned to Macmahon. His mouth was wide open. His 
 eyes inclined to goggle. The effect of the remote and 
 incomparable She on a lad who gets slowly through his 
 phases is rarely becoming. Her finished perfection pricks 
 him in strange and unaccustomed places. It is a challenge 
 
 167
 
 1 68 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 to the evil in him as to the good. If he adores, he also 
 resents. She will bring home to him his incompetence 
 as no other power on earth can do, and it is, as we know, 
 the first impulse of the half-awakened to shrink from the 
 light. 
 
 Macmahon, moreover, had committed the cardinal error 
 of obtuse boyhood in laying himself open to the worst 
 side of any tutor, who in his brief career he had given good 
 cause to curse both God and man. It could be safely 
 said of Macmahon that he had never known the best side 
 of any grown man save in fleeting flashes which left no 
 impression, until within the last fortnight. 
 
 His father, from time immemorial, had devoured his 
 breakfast wrapt in a dream, and was invisible to his 
 family the rest of the day : he always dined at his club. 
 As flesh and blood he did not count at all. His elder 
 brethren mildly regarded him as a confirmed rotter, 
 glanced without comment at his outrageous reports, and 
 brushed him from their memory. 
 
 Thus left to his own devices, he set up a fabulous con- 
 ception in his disorderly mind as to the immutable charac- 
 teristics of those in authority, and conscientiously acted 
 up to it. 
 
 But now he was being greatly exercised in his mind, in 
 his new and illuminating experiences, as to the inherent 
 humanity potential even in tutors. No insertion of any 
 new leaven can take place without well-defined discom- 
 fort, and to see one's tinsel armour of defence dropping 
 off in pitiful peelings, must be very humiliating to any 
 poor boy. 
 
 To be forced into admitting that all the tutors were 
 more or less in the right and yourself in the wrong, would 
 try the temper of a ripe angel, much less of a raw lad, to 
 say nothing of finding yourself the biggest fool in a group 
 not famed for wisdom. 
 
 Macmahon, in short, was being revealed to himself and 
 others like unto him as an egregious ass. A fool newly 
 alive to his folly is apt to be hypersensitive, the boy
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 169 
 
 was finding himself in a robust atmosphere, and the hideous 
 predictions of a score of infuriated instructors became 
 iron-bound facts to him. His sufferings were severe, and 
 although an irresistible attraction drew him to Mrs. 
 Antrobus, she was, nevertheless, Macmahon's last straw. 
 He had, indeed, grabbed her letters, like the bear he was, 
 from another aspirant, and now with throbbing pulses 
 awaited her recognition ; but in the radiance of her pre- 
 sence every idiocy of which he had ever been guilty seemed 
 to batter about his wretched ears. 
 
 Had Audrey not known that she hurt Macmahon quite 
 as shrewdly as he hurt her, she had now sent him flying. 
 With his mouth open and his eyes screwed up, and Larry's 
 letter burning at her heart, he was too impossible alto- 
 gether, but she looked again, and her eyes and her heart 
 melted. She put into uncompromising, biting words all 
 the inarticulate ills of the poor " hard case," and in the 
 same breath she sighed, and longed to be at his ears. 
 They were so flat and broad, and she knew in her bones 
 that he would end as everything else seemed to do, in just 
 making things a little more difficult for her. But in any 
 job a chance is a chance, and catch Larry missing the 
 least little one of his ! 
 
 " There's half an hour to spare," she said lightly. 
 " Shall we go down to the pond and see if any wild duck 
 are about ? I hear you got on awfully well at the jumping 
 yesterday. How did you manage it ? You can't have 
 had much practice living in town ah 1 your life." 
 
 " Oh, well ! One likes to do something fairly well," 
 he said, glowing. 
 
 " One would like to do everything pretty decently," 
 she said, trying not to sound virtuous. " The difficulty 
 is in doing it." 
 
 " It comes natural to some people," he sighed, with a 
 furtive look at her. She glanced at the moon. 
 
 " Does it, I wonder ? I don't think the people to whom 
 things come too easily would ever make the best sol- 
 diers. Getting over difficulties, I should have thought,
 
 170 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 would be the best training for a soldier. That's why I 
 think that the fellows who find exams, an awful grind 
 often come out better in the field and camp than geniuses. 
 They've got used to pulling through by the skin of their 
 teeth. They don't expect easy victories or walk-overs 
 in anything. They've got to swat for it. You can win 
 your spurs in lots of ways, don't you think ? And, after 
 all, if you can't get the better of a book, how can you 
 expect to get the better of a man ? And you can't lick 
 him into shape until you have got the better of him. If 
 I were going up to Sandhurst," she cooed, "I'd look at 
 the toughest book as a sergeant would look at the toughest 
 recruit ; I'd see what I wanted in it, and I'd get it, just 
 as the sergeant does with the recruit if he's worth his salt. 
 It would make books and recruits so immensely interest- 
 ing instead of being repulsive bores." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Macmahon, goggling worse than before. 
 
 " Listen ! " she said. " That's the flap of a duck's 
 broken wing. Some idiot broke it late last winter, and 
 she couldn't go away with the others. I've been track- 
 ing the creature all the summer. If I could catch her, 
 I'd set her wing. I've set many a broken limb for a bird, 
 but she's too cute." 
 
 " Is there nothing you can't do ? " 
 
 She paused, and her smile puzzled the boy. 
 
 " Several things," she said. 
 
 " If if you were a man, would you be a soldier ? " 
 
 He shot his remarks at her in an explosive way. He 
 had contracted the habit at school, and now that his 
 voice was breaking, the result was startling, but Audrey 
 did not flinch. 
 
 " Why, of course I should. It's a nice, big, alive 
 life. You can stretch in it, and always have to keep 
 your eyes skinned so as to keep things going and your- 
 self and everything else up to the pink of perfection. Oh, 
 it's a live life ! " 
 
 " Would you make all your sons soldiers if you had 
 'em ? "
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 171 
 
 " If I had a dozen sons they should all be soldiers ! " 
 
 She said it impulsively, then she flushed scarlet and 
 stooped down to the water. 
 
 " It's full of minnows and they're all asleep," she said. 
 
 "I'm glad you like soldiers." 
 
 " Good ones ! I hate slackers. I always think that if a 
 fellow will funk work finding it difficult only makes for 
 his final success he'll funk fire, and a cowardly soldier 
 is a thing I simply can't understand or forgive. I'd shoot 
 him as I would a gun-shy dog ! Listen to that aggra- 
 vating duck and the swish of the trailing wing ! If he's 
 that sort of thing, it's such gross impudence his wanting 
 to be a soldier. An inferior animal may do quite well, 
 and live and die and be forgotten in other pursuits ; 
 but a soldier, to disgrace himself in the very smallest thing 
 with every little gutter-snipe in the kingdom panting 
 to catch him out ! I should hate a profession that hadn't 
 some real proper ideal you can get hold of in it. Some 
 ideals are so floating and far away, but a soldier's is so 
 plain and upstanding ; it just suits my wits." 
 
 She paused tentatively. Macmahon's conversation, it 
 was true, did not flow, but he seemed to be wrestling 
 with something in the silence. Plainly he needed time. 
 
 " Just think of having the honour of England in your 
 very heart," she said with serenity, " and having your 
 hands and head just given you to keep it clean ! The 
 Army is the finest monopoly in the whole world, and it's 
 worth any grind to belong to it. The dirtiest little recruit 
 going would be a poet if he knew all that he repre- 
 sented," she said, with a lift of her regal head. 
 
 Macmahon fairly spluttered. 
 
 " And it's such plain sailing, really. It only means to 
 keep your head under all conditions, and to be prompt 
 and to the point, and to expect first-rate work from every- 
 one, and to see you get it. It's a nice clean job." 
 
 Macmahon uttered a long " Oh ! " Audrey drew his 
 attention to the light upon the water ; the moon made 
 a halo about her head. Macmahon felt beside himself.
 
 i;2 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " If if I hadn't come here, I think it's very likely 
 I'd have gone to the bad," he said at last, in jerks of 
 some violence. " Perhaps, later on I'd I'd have 
 funked." 
 
 " I can't believe that." 
 
 " You might if you knew, just ! You take a very dif- 
 ferent view of things from my people, you know." His 
 full-stop was a click. 
 
 " They're putting me into the Army because I happen 
 to be a fool, and would be sure to run a mucker in the 
 Law. You see, I wasn't even fit for a parson, because 
 we expect D.D.'s in our family, not to say bishops." 
 
 Mrs. Antrobus coughed. Her ethical sense, though 
 still invertebrate, forbade her telling Macmahon what 
 precisely she thought of his people, and a veiled hint 
 needs a moment's reflection. 
 
 "I've noticed before," she said, " that very advanced 
 scholars are not always quite fair to the Army. They 
 judge it by its failures, and not by its successes. If any- 
 one was so rash as to attempt to put me into the Army 
 because I wasn't fit for the Law, I'd just show them ! 
 I'd work till simply I burst, till I made them eat every 
 word and just understand what it means to be a soldier 
 and all a soldier stands for. If you don't do well after a 
 send-off like that, Macmahon, I'll never believe in anyone 
 again." 
 
 The compliment was somewhat subtle to one unused to 
 flattery. Macmahon had to pause before he could master 
 it. And Audrey, believing both herself and Macmahon 
 to have had enough, suggested that they should return 
 to the house. 
 
 Silence seemed best to befit both the hour and the 
 occasion. They paced soberly side by side. Then a queer 
 gurgle somewhere deep down in Macmahon drew the 
 attention of Mrs. Antrobus from her own affairs. She 
 glanced at him from the tail of her eye. There were 
 tears in his eyes, and the moon was turning them into black 
 diamonds.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 173 
 
 " Goodness gracious ! " she protested ; " as if I hadn't 
 enough without this ! " 
 
 She was aware of a furtive ringer poking out the damp- 
 ness ; then Macmahon fetched up short and looked at her 
 with praiseworthy steadiness. 
 
 " If if you'll help me, Mrs. Antrobus, I promise you 
 I will I'll show 'em I always knew I wanted something 
 to buck me up." 
 
 He seemed to be wrestling with each sentence in turn. 
 
 " And if I could get it, then I was no worse than other 
 fellows no bigger an ass, you know. But I never knew 
 till now what it was I wanted never had a leg-up before 
 from anyone in my whole life. If if you'll help me, Mrs. 
 Antrobus, I give you my word, I I won't disappoint 
 you. And I'll make my people sit up, see if I don't." 
 
 This was an immense speech for Macmahon. He 
 gasped, and struck his toe sharply with his stick. 
 
 " I knew," said Audrey to her labouring soul, " I knew 
 he'd be another nail in my coffin. And even in the 
 moonlight he's the ugliest boy I ever struck." 
 
 " No man can do a man's work for him but the man 
 himself," she said, virtuous but temporizing. 
 
 " I don't want the work done," he said with a new pride. 
 "All I want is is for you to to do what you're 
 doing now, you know." 
 
 Macmahon, it was clear, was expanding. There was 
 genuine terror in the wide eyes of the crammer's wife. 
 
 " I never ! " she murmured. 
 
 " You will, Mrs. Antrobus ! " The lad was entreating 
 for his life, He spoke sharply vehemently. There 
 was the demand almost of an equal in his voice. 
 
 " I'll do every mortal thing I can for you," said some- 
 thing not herself within Mrs. Antrobus, but it spoke in 
 the golden voice of Audrey. 
 
 Macmahon, who never could do anything gracefully, 
 started, grunted, and slithered down two steps, slippery 
 in the dew of the night.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 moon had sailed down over the pines, left the pond 
 1 she had turned to silver to the blackness of night, 
 stripped the wide stretch of heather of its vesture of 
 white, and carried the wizardry and the wealth of her 
 presence away over the low hills to the valleys beyond. 
 
 Andrew's old house looked dim and full of peace. Men 
 and boys and servants slept the sleep of the just. Even 
 the white owls were back in their cosy crannies and the 
 bats at rest in the ivy. 
 
 The spirit of peace herself seemed to brood above the 
 old grey gables. It had laid a stilling hand even upon 
 Audrey, who, wrapped in a white cloak, sat immovable 
 as a statue out on the balcony. So long as the moon 
 was up she had been restless enough. She had moved 
 from her room to the balcony, from shadow to shine, 
 with the noiseless gliding persistence of the moon herself. 
 She swayed to the pressure of contending forces blindly, 
 with protestations ; but she held her ground and kept her 
 head, and the fierce exultation of the fight was upon 
 her. 
 
 So long as the light held out the issue was all for Larry 
 and the joy of life, but the instant she was gathered into 
 the darkness it was quite another story with Audrey. 
 Soft hands of entreaty were again about her, little mute 
 voices cried to her for help, and her promise to Macmahon 
 set her brain aflame. She plunged into her room and 
 switched on every electric light, but that altered nothing. 
 It was the old, friendly light which had known them 
 
 174
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 175 
 
 together she and Larry so long, that made all the 
 difference. The electric light showed out every flaw 
 in her scheme of life, and brought great glaring fears 
 flapping in about her. 
 
 The darkness has advantages the light does not 
 possess. If there is a glass in the room one must 
 naturally be looking at it, and Audrey had seen things 
 going on in her altering eyes which frightened her ; and 
 as we know, she was wise in her generation, so now 
 she sat motionless in the darkness thinking. She was at 
 bay at last ! She had known for some time that when 
 Larry once took command he would accept nothing less 
 than unconditional surrender. She could make no terms. 
 Had there been one doubt as to Larry's ultimate power 
 to master her, she could never have loved him as she 
 did, and everything would at once have been easy. 
 
 Her love had been growing lately in the strangest way. 
 It filled, and steadied, and enlarged her. It was a different 
 thing altogether from the wilful, uncontrolled folly which 
 had bared life to two young fools. Now it was part of 
 some illimitable immensity which seemed to be hers, yet 
 hidden from her. She stood before it trembling with 
 expectation, and yet she was held as in a vice at some 
 secret parting of the ways. 
 
 The joy of the whole world was so near her that its 
 glow leaped up through the darkness ; she felt through 
 all the chill of night its warmth upon her cheek ; her 
 breath came in short, quick gasps as it met some 
 leisured breath from finer airs ; it blew about her, 
 articulate with invitation and wonder. It waited, and 
 called, and warmed this speaking silence, for between her 
 and the whole of joy she knew with a mystic certainty 
 of knowledge there lay also the whole of pain. She 
 saw quite clearly two paths. One shallow white road 
 went down with an easy sweep, but the mystery of im- 
 mensity lay at the spring of the upland one, and to climb 
 was in the warp and woof of Audrey. 
 And all the time love lay weeping and entreating in her
 
 i;6 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 heart, and that, too, blocked the way, for love was also 
 great and eternal, and full of mystery. All the littlenesses 
 seemed that night to be stripped from Audrey. She 
 stood alone an earth-born sprite, without one glimmer 
 of conviction of sin, concerned, only for her feelings, and 
 fighting with giants. 
 
 And never once were her eyes blinded to the truth. Her 
 baptism of fire wherein lay victory was yet to come, and 
 there it lay barring the way, sheer in the crook of the 
 upland path. 
 
 That is, if she accepted the ordeal. The choice rested 
 entirely in her own hands, but precisely what she should 
 choose or reject was still vague in her mind. 
 
 She fought like a gallant soldier, who, although not 
 altogether clear as to what the mortal contention is all 
 about, would die rather than give in until something is 
 won. Audrey was in no sort of way the general upon the 
 height, who sees the beginning and the end and the hill 
 that lies between. 
 
 All she knew was that there was something else besides 
 Larry and love on one side and a deserted family and a 
 broken law upon the other, and herself a shuttlecock 
 between the two. There was something far greater and 
 more insistent and compelling than even these, and this 
 part seemed somehow to be hers, to belong to her, to be 
 her chance, her moment, an odd deathless moment which 
 meant everything, and this dumb conflict with blind pain 
 alone in the night was only the preparation for it. 
 
 " But I don't understand ! " she cried out at last. 
 " What is it ? but what is it ? What does it all mean ? " 
 She was plainly not ready for an answer, for none came, 
 so she hid her face in her hands and sobbed, which proved 
 her in the end to be no more than the tiredest woman 
 in the whole world whom nothing in heaven or earth 
 could comfort save love and Larry. 
 
 " They're all I want," she said. " And I'd hate heaven 
 without Larry. Anyone would, and if they didn't, they 
 ought to be ashamed of themselves."
 
 177 
 
 But it was of Macmahon's blurred brown eyes she 
 dreamed in that dull dawn, and not of Larry's grey ones 
 as keen as a razor. 
 
 She had no time next morning for her own affairs, and 
 her head ached. She could not think. There were still 
 two days. Larry must wait. She would not even write 
 to him. There was nothing she could clearly explain. 
 Her few hours of sleep, spoilt by Macmahon, brought her 
 neither light nor leading. The mist of mystery seemed to 
 draw in about her. It held down her forces with a chilly 
 hand, in which lay some horrible purpose. 
 
 She was once more a soldier held in mute inglorious 
 inaction by a command he dared not disobey. 
 She was waiting doggedly for some development. 
 When she was at home she always had the boys to tea 
 with her, and to-day she made no exception. It was part 
 of her orders, part of the scheme, part of that for which she 
 was making ready. The only difference they saw in her 
 was that she was, if anything, more ripping than usual, 
 and gave them better cakes, but all she did, she did in 
 a dream of expectation. She would like to have known 
 of what, but by this time she had grown numb. She 
 could now accept things with a stolid calm. 
 
 After tea, still blindly following some vague bidding, 
 she went to see Adeline, and, sitting beside her in the 
 room upon which she had impressed herself in a hundred 
 ways, sat Mr. Norman, quite at home. 
 
 He was feeling rather chastened himself that after- 
 noon by a private worry of rather an intimate order, and 
 had nothing particular to do. He was sorry, too, for the 
 patient, still woman, and it interested him to observe 
 Mrs. Antrobus from her point of view. It was quaint, 
 yet not uncomplicated with subtleties. There was a 
 doubt in it, as Audrey had suggested, that matched his 
 own ; but when Audrey came it was not of her brilliant 
 personality he spoke or thought, but of the sordid enough 
 tragedy with which his mind was charged. It was the last 
 subject he could have imagined himself discussing with 
 
 12
 
 i;8 " WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 the prim woman on the couch so ignorant of life, but as 
 he watched her he had become aware in her of a know- 
 ledge which may fall foul of the hard facts of life from 
 one standpoint, yet from another may throw a light upon 
 their darkness not at the command of the man in the 
 street. She was a person, indeed, whom one should 
 do their utmost to defend from the rude contact of 
 hard facts, but if a man wants to unload his mind of any 
 burthen he will generally consult his own pleasure and con- 
 venience first. After some desultory talk it struck him that 
 Miss Antrobus's views on a mess into which one of his 
 friends had just got himself would be interesting. 
 
 It was the usual precipitate marriage without love, 
 and love the implacable avenger making hay of lives 
 and law. In this case the woman had followed her 
 feelings and flown to the man at the most inconvenient 
 moment. He had just passed a brilliant examination 
 and won a brilliant post in the Near East, which, like 
 an honourable man, without comment or complaint he at 
 once declined. The matter touched Norman keenly ; 
 the man was his cousin and his friend ; he had looked 
 forward with sure expectation to a great career for him, 
 and he had always liked the girl. He briefly repeated the 
 story to Mrs. Antrobus. 
 
 " She's a nice girl," he said ; "I can't understand it ! 
 She's clever, and I thought she had character enough 
 for most things and could love a man enough to spare 
 him. She's suffered a lot, too. Her husband had nothing 
 but his income to recommend him an unspeakable cad 
 her mother did that job and her child died. Suffering 
 has a way of turning out heroic women, but there's precious 
 little heroism in spoiling a man's chance by giving way to 
 your inclinations." 
 
 " Perhaps you don't happen to know much about love 
 and its queer ways," said Audrey serenely. 
 
 " I do ; at least, I hope I do," he said, laughing. " I've 
 been engaged for a year now to an old-fashioned girl who's 
 taught me something about it. She's one of the heroic
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 179 
 
 women in her quiet way, in whom love must always be 
 founded on sacrifice." 
 
 " Oh ! a man's woman ! " said Mrs. Antrobus promptly. 
 
 "That doesn't describe her in the least, as you'd see 
 the minute you saw her, or, if you didn't, then you'd say 
 it in a very different way. And the minute after you'd 
 describe her in detail much better than I can. You'd 
 know her at a glance in the way you know the boys. You 
 find them far from perfection just as you'd find Mary, 
 but you'd know at a glance that she'd always give her best 
 to a man and not her worst, and anyhow, she'd never 
 come blundering into his life at the wrong moment." 
 
 " Dear me ! Self-sacrifice is the one virtue men appre- 
 ciate in women, and the way they worship it, with a 
 reverence much too humble for emulation, is extremely 
 interesting." 
 
 " It's your own fault entirely. Why do you overdo it 
 in such an inimitable way. We're every man Jack of us 
 just as selfish as you've made us. But it's playing pretty 
 low down on us when, having uplifted all our expectations 
 for years, you suddenly give tradition and yourself the 
 lie and undo a man by a precipitate surrender to him, not 
 only of yourself, but of all his ideals of you, and handicap 
 him by the generous gift for the term of his natural life, 
 because your courage gives way. It's a back -handed blow 
 to the lot of us, don't you see ? That's not the sort of love 
 that's given woman her pre-eminence and made man her 
 slave." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " He is ! You know all about it. Your whole life 
 is governed by an unusually vivid knowledge of the fact. 
 You yourself are a commentary on the fact. And if 
 you knew the girl and the man, you'd understand the 
 whole thing far better than I could ; but you'd see it as 
 I do. I'll bet my bottom dollar on that ! It's a bolt 
 from the blue. It's inexplicable ! She's not that sort of 
 woman, and she'll find out presently what she's done 
 not from him : he's the best fellow going but she'll find 
 
 12*
 
 i8o "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 it out : a woman always does if she's worth the name 
 she'll find the first hell she tried hurt her a deal less than 
 the last, because she didn't drag anyone else into it, her 
 husband never counted except as a well-fed animal, and 
 burning hi unison after the first fine rapture is poor 
 comfort." 
 
 Adeline was silently watching Audrey ; she wondered 
 if she were growing a little white. 
 
 " You're arguing in the narrow way of a mere man," 
 said Audrey. " There were two sides. He loved her, too. 
 He loved her first, probably they always do. She 
 wouldn't have gone to him unless he wanted her more 
 than anything else in the whole world. A woman must 
 be pretty sure of a man before she'll run away with him. 
 If he loves her properly the appointment will be nothing 
 to him. . . ." 
 
 " It's a good deal to his friends, and it would be a good 
 deal more to the woman if her love had a little more grit 
 in it." 
 
 " She has things to lose, too." 
 
 " A great many. But the sort of woman she's just 
 proved herself to be always thinks that the world's well 
 lost for love. I like the other sort best." 
 
 " You would ! " 
 
 " So would you. It's a fine thing to be able to love a 
 man better than he loves himself. It sounds impossible 
 to one who knows men, doesn't it, Mrs. Antrobus, but it's 
 done every hour of the day. Women have been hard at 
 it from the beginning, and won't budge till the end. In 
 ethics, as she understands them, a woman will always go 
 one better than a man. A man will give his life for a 
 woman, but a woman will give him back himself when 
 he's more to her than a dozen lives. I think myself 
 there's a sort of cosmic responsibility in the make-up of 
 women learnt, as they sit thinking, beside genera- 
 tions of cradles, and it's the one fact that keeps the flag 
 of clean living even half-mast high. There's not one 
 woman who trips who doesn't trip up with her a dozen
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 181 
 
 men. If our leaders in this sort of thing go slithering 
 into the gutter, what can you expect of the rank and file ? 
 I say, Mrs. Antrobus, don't ! " he said with a laugh. 
 " I'm neither a prig nor a Puritan, and this excess of moral 
 ardour is anything but cosmic it's purely individual. 
 You'd feel as bad yourself if you knew Sandy and the 
 girl." 
 
 " I know other people," said Audrey with daring eyes, 
 " and I think you're special pleading. You're a man, 
 the result pure and simple of what did you call it ? 
 ' generations of women's spoiling.' You've taken all 
 we've given, and now you turn and revile us for our 
 gifts. I don't think you know very much about love, 
 although probably you're very well up in being loved. 
 I think you're extremely hard on the girl." 
 
 " Not half so hard as she is on the man and on herself ; 
 and that sort of love doesn't attract me. I don't want to 
 know anything about it. It's cheap a drug in the 
 market ! It's unfair to a man ; it's not playing the 
 game. If you've given us your best with both hands, 
 all these ages, are we to sit still now and be fobbed 
 off with your worst without a protest ? You have us as 
 you reared us ! I say, Miss Antrobus, tell us what you 
 think about it." 
 
 Adeline had been mutely praying for words when the 
 time for speech should come, and now she looked at 
 Audrey and was dumb. Audrey, without any doubt 
 about it, had grown pale, and there was a glitter of 
 mockery in her hard eyes. Adeline nervously blinked, 
 and thinking that the sun was in her eyes, Mr. Norman 
 moved a screen. That gave her time. She reached out 
 furtively for Audrey's hand, and hid it in her shawl as 
 though it were a contraband baby. 
 
 " I don't know that you quite deserve their best, Mr. 
 Norman," she said with demure precision ; " but if you 
 didn't demand it and get it, I think the world would be 
 a poorer place than it is now. The supply might run 
 short, and then what would women do ? or men ? Mr.
 
 182 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Norman, keep on demanding," she said, looking from 
 Audrey to him ; " and your old-fashioned girl will teach 
 you in time, even in this matter, to give and take. One 
 used to think that the sacrifice of herself, or or of any 
 one else, was the monopoly of women ; a great many women 
 think so still, I fear, and it makes them almost as selfish 
 as men," she said with a faint smile. 
 
 " You can hit harder than I gave you credit for, Miss 
 Antrobus. You're about right, I think," said Norman, 
 looking at the two. " We want all we can get from you. 
 And this fellow isn't even a man ; he's a boy, practically." 
 " And she's a girl ! " said Audrey. 
 " She was married at eighteen, and has suffered for it 
 ever since. She's ten years older than Sandy, or she 
 ought to be, anyway." 
 
 " I knew in my bones you'd be merciless to fallacies." 
 She was wondering why Adeline was clutching her hand 
 in a wild way, and why her face was twitching. 
 
 " Only a boy ! " said Adeline faintly. " And a woman 
 to ruin the life of a boy ! It's awful to hurt a boy, to hurt 
 his belief and trust in women and goodness ! It's the 
 most awful thing in the world, I think. I never knew 
 much of boys, Audrey, until you told me ; and now I 
 think I know 7 more of those I've never even seen, except 
 through that window-' I often watch for them on the 
 crest of the hill look at the two now," she said with 
 wistful eyes, " just coming down ! than ever I knew of 
 the girls I lived with and taught for years. You show 
 them to me, Audrey, just as they are, and I know I 
 know better than you, dear, for all your knowledge 
 how easily a woman may hurt them just at the start. 
 Oh ! Mr. Norman, I'm sorry for the girl ; I think she 
 wants the sympathy of all of us more than even the man. 
 It's so awful to be the one who hurts. To hurt a man or 
 a child ! " she said in her little soft, pensive voice. 
 " You class us together, then ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Adeline simply. " You need very much 
 the same unselfish care and observation. And you're
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 183 
 
 both difficult. You need much faith, and hope, and 
 charity." 
 
 Audrey patted her hand and laughed. 
 
 " But never mind," said Adeline. " Mr. Norman, keep 
 on asking for the best they have to give. How you use 
 it is your own affair." 
 
 " You justify and condemn us in the same breath. 
 Perhaps I am hard on her. Having been spoilt by women, 
 I took her too much on trust. I expected more from her 
 than was in her." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said Adeline, looking softly into Audrey's 
 face ; " but it lay so deep down that love did not reach 
 it. Sorrow will pierce farther. I wish," she said sadly, 
 her eyes, in spite of her, still fixed on Audrey, " I wish 
 her love had been great enough, and it would have known 
 all this, and how much, much more, of its own invincible 
 power, how everything is possible to it, how it can give its 
 own life for the beloved, and so learn the meaning of the 
 resurrection ; and then all the bitterness of guilty sorrow 
 would have been spared them. It seems so dreadful when 
 the love of a woman falls short, and if it's the demand 
 of men that makes women, keep on asking, dear Mr. 
 Norman," she said slowly, looking always into Audrey's 
 fascinated eyes. 
 
 Audrey was stricken dumb. The face, manner, gesture 
 of Adeline had all altered. She was a new creature, and 
 spoke in a strange tongue, as one with authority. But 
 the last word spoken she shrank back, flushing miserably, 
 in almost a convulsion of shyness. Norman stood up 
 quickly and said good-bye, and when Audrey had done all 
 the little needful things she went out into the frosty 
 twilight as one half dreaming.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 T NSTEAD of taking the homeward path Audrey walked 
 1 on towards the other side of the park, making half 
 vaguely for a mossy bank on the edge of the wood, 
 which in summer had always been warm with sunshine. 
 Many an hour she had lain against it thinking of Larry 
 and all the joys of their life together. 
 
 But now the sun had gone west, the shadows were long 
 amidst the great chestnuts, the bank was damp, and 
 the moss, an emerald in the sun, was now a cold, sad green. 
 From the dim depths beyond came the little plaintive 
 whimpering of the young things born that year, and who 
 knowing only summer, protested against the approach 
 of some vague shadow upon their gay lives. Rustling 
 leaves fell fitfully to the ground. A mole, heavy with 
 sleep, thrust out his nose to smell the signs of the seasons. 
 
 The beginning of the great change was in the air. A 
 curious smell as of the approach of death floated into 
 the consciousness of Audrey's dream. Queer, noiseless 
 footfalls went pace by pace with hers. She paused when 
 she had gone past the chestnuts, through a thicket of 
 scrub oak, as far as the thorn fence where the great trees, 
 fallen now into rhythmic line, looked out at her from 
 stately aisles. 
 
 Here the silence was unbroken, the live things had 
 crept out apparently after the westering sun. Even the 
 loosening leaves paused and tightened their hold a little. 
 To be high up in clear airs seemed suddenly the only life 
 possible to a leaf. With the first touch of death, the spirit 
 of life flows freer. 
 
 184
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 185 
 
 A shiver took Audrey. To be all alone with life still 
 inarticulate for all its wanting and striving, it needs a 
 gallant courage and a pure heart. She did not at all like 
 the passionless judgment of the unhurried trees. She felt 
 unfairly dealt by. All things seemed to be against her, 
 even the trees which she knew in her heart to be anything 
 but fools. She had sorted out many a puzzle under their 
 consolatory shade and many a glimmer of reason, which 
 out in the veiled sunshine had evaded her, came sliding 
 down through their silver leaves. They knew all about 
 her the trees. She had counted them amongst her best 
 friends, and now to be treating her like this ! The flowers 
 are well enough in one's joys, they can even share one's 
 tears ; but in the deep adventures of life it is to the trees 
 we go. And now to be made feel awful by the trees ! 
 
 She shrank from her mute observers, and yet they 
 drew her on and on right into their heart, where a great 
 oak kept watch. He meant goodwill, and an invitation 
 perhaps, so in a crook of his gnarled roots she sat down 
 at last. She was still numb and blind to all the issues 
 that mattered. She was outside everything now out- 
 side sorrow and joy and fear. They enveloped her, indeed 
 she walked in them, and yet she stood outside. And all 
 the things she saw were of another world the little things 
 and creatures that used once to be hers ! She was a 
 stranger in earth and sea and sky, yet nothing escaped 
 her craven leaves, holding on piteously to their trusty 
 twigs, the proud and faithful ones putting on triumphantly 
 the fine trappings of death. She saw glimpses of a cobalt 
 sky and flashes of sunshine revealing opulent mysteries 
 of green. A little God's cow on her white hand made 
 her heart beat, as though that, too, were far off. It 
 always came when she went to the wood to think of 
 Larry. And now she was afraid of it as she was afraid 
 of other nameless things ; she put it gently on the leaf 
 with a queer feeling of personal injury. 
 
 " I could be so happy," she said suddenly. " The 
 most ridiculous little things would make me happy if
 
 1 86 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 if people would only leave me alone. Think of other 
 women in this dull hole nothing to do, nothing to think 
 of. I haven't been at a race-meeting, or a dance, or a 
 theatre for months ; and what's my bridge to other 
 women's ? One's sole amusements Katharine, Adeline, 
 Andrew, a cramming shop ! Goodness gracious ! 
 
 " If if things had just been a little different, if every- 
 thing hadn't been against me, no one living would ever 
 have had such a time. I could be alive all over always ; 
 I could live with my whole heart, not with mean little 
 samples like half the people one knows. It's too bad, 
 it's too bad, it's too bad ! " said Audrey. " And now to 
 be driven distracted by that wretched mathematician, 
 who wants to make human beings into an exact science, 
 as if anyone could ! And Adeline, who knows nothing of 
 anything except what I've told her ! It's too ridiculous 
 altogether. Go away, God's cow ! I'm an extremely 
 wicked woman, not fit for the society of the innocent. 
 To give up Larry, indeed ! that's what it all comes to. 
 One would think they knew with their fiendish hints 
 and for the sake of the boys, too ! to be foisting their 
 responsibilities on me ! Adam all over again ! As if I 
 ran their beastly show ! " 
 
 Audrey, it will be seen, was growing less numb and 
 more articulate. 
 
 " Men are all the same," she pursued ; "and even 
 mathematicians aren't very different. Give them an inch 
 and they'll take an ell ! This is the result of treating an 
 usher like a human being. Mr. Norman seems to be 
 steeped in middle-class limitations. To tell me to my 
 face that I'm oh, well ! that sort of woman prac- 
 tically, when it was I that made Andrew take him ! 
 And if the girl did run away, and if he did give up the 
 appointment, there will be others when it's all blown 
 over. Besides, anyway, it's their own business, and they've 
 probably a good private income. And love means some- 
 thing, I suppose ; as much as a miserable appointment, 
 anyway, I hope, since it governs the world. And what
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 187 
 
 does anyone know about it till he loves even the wrong 
 person ? But the less they know, the more they talk. 
 There seem to be two sides to every question but one. 
 And a sort of rule and compass affection for a stack of 
 exploded virtues can't give a man much insight into 
 anything. And Adeline Goodness gracious ! Ade- 
 line ! " 
 
 Audrey threw up her hands and laughed out into the 
 waiting silence, and suddenly her hands returned to her 
 lap laden with a thousand tender griefs, her wild eyes 
 turned inwards. For lo ! in a glimpse the glory and the 
 greatness of her womanhood lay open to Audrey, and 
 there as in a glass stood its inexorable counsel of per- 
 fection, and with her keen, clear power of perception she 
 knew that, struggle as she might, she must in the end 
 obey it. Not to understand, or to accept, or to attain to, 
 but it stood above her as a judge and commanded her to 
 obey. 
 
 Her path was clear before her, her baptism of fire the 
 surrender of Larry ! 
 
 She sat shivering on the root. She felt so small and 
 slight to be bandied about by great cruel things with 
 which she could not hope to cope ; and, after all, what 
 was it all about ? " If only they'd leave me alone ! If 
 only they'd leave me alone ! " 
 
 Audrey was driven very hard ; at that moment she 
 could have welcomed even the pain of knowing what a 
 woman's sin means to a woman for the sake of the inter- 
 pretation it brings. " As I see it," she said, " it seems so 
 fussy, so meaningless and exaggerated, so trivial worlds 
 at play with a ball ! " 
 
 And yet here she was trembling in the grasp of immen- 
 sity and fully conscious that the whole matter was taken 
 out of her hands. 
 
 Most women may be led into the right way by cords of 
 silk, but others, it would seem, need the clasp of the 
 Eternal hand of flame. 
 
 " So I must give up Larry, must I ? " she said aloud,
 
 i88 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 when the intolerable compulsion had at last been lifted 
 off her and with it had faded the sudden vision of hidden 
 things. " Give up Larry, indeed ! " The words rang in 
 her ears, and burned in her brain, and at last drove her 
 as with a goad up and down a green cathedral aisle, not 
 built by hands, to run the gauntlet of innumerable alive, 
 attentive eyes. 
 
 Could she have enjoyed one tear of contrition, one 
 glimmer of conviction of sin, any one perquisite of the 
 repentant, it had been less lonely, perhaps, for Mrs. Antro- 
 bus, but with nothing but unyielding trees to look at 
 you, and unknown forces to fight against you, and irra- 
 tional commands to coerce you, it is too hard on a girl. 
 Audrey, however, fought on gallantly with the unknown, 
 and now and then a hand would come out from the dark- 
 ness and press her more deeply back into throngs of 
 strange and illimitable forces. 
 
 She had come unconsciously to the edge of the wood 
 unrelieved by any tag of the most ordinary morality, 
 gamely fighting, when suddenly from the little old pepper- 
 pot of a tower in the yard she heard the stroke of seven. 
 The practical instinct that rarely deserted her pushed 
 the encompassing mysteries away, and she came hurrying 
 into the twilight of the fields, to find Mr. Norman busily 
 engaged in teaching his terrier to make short work of 
 rabbits. She was so lonely and baffled that she was glad 
 to see him. 
 
 She paused for a moment to ascertain if he knew what 
 he was about. It would have been a slight gleam of com- 
 fort to find one so accurate and full of transcendental 
 demand, making a fool of himself, but he was plainly well 
 up in the ways of both dogs and rabbits. " He has a 
 fiendishly correct eye," she sighed. " If he hadn't been 
 a first-rate army tutor, he'd have done well as a poacher." 
 
 " I suppose you do know that you're poaching," she 
 said, when a few steps brought her within earshot. " I 
 can't imagine your committing any sin from absence of 
 mind like other people."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 189 
 
 " God forbid ! Don't you think an unpremeditated sin 
 is a confession of weakness ? Besides, you lose the pleasure 
 of anticipation." 
 
 " What about the example to your pupils ? " 
 
 " They're safe with Mr. Merten making hay of Virgil. 
 They'll not poach so long as I'm about, but you can't 
 jeopardize the future of a dog for a hollow scruple." 
 
 " What about the shooting tenant ? " 
 
 " I hope he'll be grateful. I'm training the rabbits 
 for him. Fine little chap, my dog, don't you think ? " 
 
 " Very fine ! What does our solitary keeper think of 
 him ? " 
 
 " He looks forward to a great future for him." 
 
 " Oh, you've squared Douse as well as your con- 
 science ? " 
 
 " A good sportsman is always a philosopher, and can 
 be approached on that side." 
 
 " You're quite nice and tolerant to yourself and every- 
 body else, except women." 
 
 " Tolerance from a man to a woman would mean in- 
 solence." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " You couldn't be tolerant to the soldier who had the 
 honour to carry the colours and disgraced them. You 
 might be sorry in a way for the beggar, of course, but 
 sorrow in such a case isn't much of a catch for the offender. 
 If women have been chosen by universal suffrage to 
 carry the flag they must do their job. You'd look pretty 
 blue if we were to offer to take it from you, and we've all 
 got to pay a price for our hereditary rights ; they're 
 generally worth it, don't you think ? And, after all, 
 yours is a royal right. A man can't understand these 
 things ; they're beyond him, as a rule, but on rare occa- 
 sions, and always when Mary Mostyn happens to be about," 
 he said with a laugh. " I believe it's worth all you've 
 paid for it even to you. I mean, practically ; theoreti- 
 cally it's all right, anyway. To see her flag idly flapping 
 in the breeze would inspire any woman ; but even when
 
 190 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 she's being broken under the weight of it, her pride in the 
 burthen must give her a courage of which we know pre- 
 cious little. It's never for one man or for one ideal a 
 woman sacrifices herself ; it's for the flag." 
 
 " It's a Juggernaut of a thing, and enjoys crushing bleed- 
 ing bodies, and it's always for one man' a woman sacrifices 
 herself ; and in the whole matter there's often much 
 ado about nothing ; and the self-sacrifice where no one 
 suffers but yourself and is always being cast to the four 
 winds does good to no one. On the contrary, it's extremely 
 bad for other people's souls." 
 
 " That's quite likely. At the same time, you're wrong 
 and I'm right. Ask any man who knows me if I'm a 
 sentimentalist, Mrs. Antrobus. Meantime I'll give you 
 my word that I'm not. I'm a mathematician with a 
 leaning to vagrant philosophy, and with Mary Mostyn I'm 
 only a mute one at that. Do me the justice to believe 
 this, Mrs. Antrobus. She's a simple girl unused to idealistic 
 jargon. She'd think I'd gone mad if I talked trans- 
 cendental ; but with you, Heaven alone knows why the 
 folly, if it is folly, becomes articulate ! You unlock 
 the foolishness hidden in every man." 
 
 He turned to look at her and laughed. " It's all your 
 fault. Only for you I should this moment be talking 
 and thinking dog look at him ! he's well worth the most 
 undivided attention but I believe if you let yourself 
 go, you'd be a rabid idealist, and there's nothing more 
 infectious." 
 
 " I haven't infected other people," she said, after a 
 slight pause. 
 
 " You've infected the lot of us," he said, with a sharp 
 glance at the mute changes in her face. " We've all got 
 to do our best with you about. This wiU be the most 
 successful show in England ; see if it won't." 
 
 " Its success will have nothing to do with me. I hate 
 interfering women." 
 
 " So do I." 
 
 " Do you know," she said, with a sudden laugh, " that
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 191 
 
 I sort of made Andrew keep you, and send the other man 
 away. It hurt Andrew in an awful way. He hadn't met 
 you then, you know, but Mr. Frazer would have ruined 
 the show in three months." 
 
 " I heard of his dismissal from Mr. Frazer himself. 
 That's why I came ; I wanted to see you, but there were 
 other reasons." 
 
 " I wish you'd tell me if he ever suspected that I was 
 behind the screen the whole time making signs to Andrew. 
 Andrew'd never have done it but for me, and I've been 
 haunted by a suspicion that Mr. Frazer saw me." 
 
 " He didn't see you, but he's begun to observe women 
 in order to understand you in your particular environ- 
 ment." 
 
 " Ah ! that strikes everyone. They begin to wonder 
 at once why Andrew married me." 
 
 " No man has ever wondered in regard to that, Mrs. 
 Antrobus, not even when, being preoccupied like me, 
 he's not in love with you. Sometimes friendship is better 
 than love. I say, Mrs. Antrobus," he said, on an entirely 
 unpremeditated impulse, " I wish you'd take mine, the 
 whole of it, for what it's worth. It will be a novelty in 
 its way to you, at least. You must be pretty full up 
 by this time of the other thing. Someone on the pre- 
 mises, not devoured by a hopeless and illicit passion, 
 might come in useful some day." 
 
 Her face seemed to have drawn the words from him. 
 The minute they were spoken he denied any responsi- 
 bility in them. 
 
 She was silent for a minute, and he had a suspicion that 
 her lips trembled, but she looked up at him with the old 
 mocking defiance in her eyes. 
 
 " I'll take your friendship and thank you for it," she 
 said. " It's the first thing of the kind a man has ever 
 given me, and I'll value it as long as you let me keep it, 
 and be sorry when you take it back." 
 
 " It's yours. One takes back nothing but engagement 
 gifts."
 
 192 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " That depends." 
 
 " It doesn't where you are concerned. No man who 
 had once given you his friendship would take it back." 
 
 " It does depend," she said, " and there's the last bell 
 and I'll be late." She turned to fly to her room, then 
 turned again. " I like your gift tremendously," she said, 
 with the most elfish laugh he had yet heard her utter ; 
 " but if only you knew just, it's one more millstone round 
 my neck. Thank you all the same ; it's a new sensation. 
 I've just fifteen minutes to dress in, and I'll come down 
 without a hair astray. You look if I don't." 
 
 " I know you will. To look would imply a doubt." 
 
 " Dear me ! This is startlingly new, and the way you've 
 always been doubting me ! " 
 
 " But we're friends now, and one doesn't doubt one's 
 friends." 
 
 " Now why, in God's name, did I say that ? " he asked 
 himself as he went upstairs. " I never meant to say it. 
 And what's up with her, I'd like to know. How much 
 am I letting myself in for ? She won't do things by halves, 
 if she does them at all, and I'd swear to a man not 
 Antrobus in any case. Anyway, I'm here if she wants 
 me, and the ground is cleared between us. Directly she 
 wants to use me she'll say so, and I never met a woman I'd 
 like better to serve ! If you love one woman, I believe 
 you'd like to serve them all, which might become incon- 
 venient in the end ! "
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 A UDREY was becoming confused by the constant sur- 
 \ prise of her own actions. Meant by nature and 
 training to be the apple for whom men contended, 
 the queen who crowned the victor, she in whose honour 
 all the blows were given and endured, the present state 
 of affairs was beyond her comprehension. For a score 
 of reasons it seemed quite peculiarly outrageous. 
 
 A woman who has always received her dues from men 
 is nearly always gentle towards them. And although she 
 could enjoy to the top of her bent being the centre of 
 their contention, she could always find a deeper satis- 
 faction to her nature in subsequently becoming a link 
 between the combatants. There was nothing mean or 
 niggardly in the desires of Audrey, a sense of spaciousness 
 characterized all her points of view ! 
 
 And now now a whole world of men to be crying 
 out for her blood ! For hers ! It dazed her. She 
 might have been Jezebel herself from the persistent 
 ferocity with which they demanded the sacrifice of her 
 harmless person, so well disposed to all of them. 
 
 Andrew, Larry, Mr. Norman, Macmahon, and, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Norman, every man who had ever loved a 
 woman, were shrieking for a scapegoat in the shape of one 
 poor woman, already fainting under a burthen of mystery 
 from which there was no relief. And to stand alone in the 
 darkness and fight for one's life with men, of all people 
 in the world ! 
 
 193 !3
 
 I 9 4 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 From nine-thirty p.m. to bedtime was always a lonely 
 interval for Audrey. The boys were at preparation, the 
 masters smoking or amusing themselves, Andrew in his 
 laboratory, the servants in their distant quarters ; and 
 of late, to be alone with life at this hour had become 
 extremely obnoxious to Mrs. Antrobus. For weeks she 
 had never touched her violin, and had only made a pre- 
 tence of reading. Such torment of mind as Audrey's 
 demands stronger sedatives than a book or a fiddle. Even 
 such innocent instruments of pleasure array themselves 
 on the side of the enemy. All these things were against 
 her, but it was none of them that brought her shuddering 
 at last to her knees, crouching half defeated against the 
 low window-seat flooded with veiled moonlight. 
 
 She had turned off the light, a small wood fire flickered 
 out in blue flames. The night was sad and ghostly. The 
 breath of war was upon the land, and the next day was 
 Thursday ; but of all the voices that pressed about her, 
 all the cries that rent her heart, she now heard but one 
 the inexorable command of her child, her child and 
 Larry's at last become articulate. 
 
 ;< You must give yourself for him. It is his chance," 
 said the voice. " And yours, and it is the only one. 
 Obey ! obey ! obey ! " said the little inflexible voice. 
 " And see that the sacrifice is complete." 
 
 It was then that Audrey made her final decision. 
 Against all the other commands she had protested. She 
 had uttered cry for cry, but with this mystic whisper 
 there was no arguing. The tension of her clenched hands 
 loosed, her strained eyes relaxed, her wild heart went 
 softly, her head drooped lower and lower, till she lay almost 
 breathless in the wonderful hush, still listening for one little 
 word of mercy. 
 
 To give up what is more than life even at the command 
 of that which it has brought out into the light, is surely 
 the woman's pain of pains. 
 
 But there was no mercy in the voice, nothing but ever- 
 lasting love.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 195 
 
 " You must give yourself," it said, " and the sacrifice 
 must be complete." 
 
 But even now she listened, hoping to the last with a great 
 courage. Then slowly she sighed, gathered herself up 
 and filled the room with light. 
 
 " And my next move," she said, kneeling down to build 
 up the fire ; " whatever it is, it must, it stands to sense, 
 scatter pain broadcast. 
 
 " Oh, not to-night ! I can't tell Andrew to-night," 
 she cried, skrinking and shivering ; " but I must just 
 find out a little how much he'll mind. Perhaps perhaps 
 after all he's only Andrew." 
 
 This was consolatory. She leaned nearer to the leaping 
 flames and tried to get warmer. 
 
 " But I wish I wish I could spare even Andrew," 
 she said. " I could. He need never know. It's my 
 secret and Larry's but, but I have to," she said, her 
 breath coming more quickly. " It's not my affair any 
 longer. I have to tell the whole truth or none." 
 
 " I can spare no one," she cried passionately, " and 
 and nothing has been spared me." 
 
 She stood up at last and threw the wrap she had worn 
 in the garden over her shoulders. " The sacrifice will be 
 very complete ; no one need be the least anxious," she 
 said, brooding over the fire. " Everybody's going to be 
 sacrificed, so far as I can see." 
 
 " I wasn't born to be a bringer of pain," she moaned. 
 "If I could only die ! instead of this and this is only 
 the beginning." 
 
 She sat down again, too cold to move, but the fire did 
 not warm her. So she drew her wrap more closely and 
 went down to Andrew. 
 
 More than once in the last few weeks she had come in 
 upon him lightly, like a moonbeam, and through his most 
 abstruse calculations one little atom of Andrew was now 
 always listening for the footfall of his wife. 
 
 She looked very slender and ethereal in the ample folds 
 of her rich cloak. A most unusual sense of responsibility 
 
 13*
 
 196 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 took hold of Andrew. He felt sure that she was in need 
 of something that he could give, but if only he had the 
 remotest conception in what it consisted ! In his bewil- 
 dered concern he pushed a wretchedly uncomfortable arm- 
 chair in her direction, took off his working glasses, and 
 peered at her with mute, inquiring distress. He would 
 have given worlds had Audrey afforded him some little 
 clue even to the more simple parts of her perfect being, 
 for most passionately did he desire to serve her. But 
 before the exquisite rarity of her soul his diffidence only 
 grew with intimacy. She was as a shrine which grows 
 always more holy as man draws more near. 
 
 What now looked out at him from her matchless eyes 
 caused Andrew to come very near praying for light 
 whereby to decipher this mystery of godliness who was 
 his alone. But failing speech too high for him, the spell 
 of silence was the only setting sufficiently fine for Audrey. 
 So he sat, and in mute devotion gazed at her, till in the 
 end the sprite in Audrey broke into a laugh. 
 
 " Oh, Andrew, don't ! " she entreated. " For good- 
 ness' sake, don't ! Say something anything ! the com- 
 monest little thing that occurs to you will suit me the best. 
 I'm not the least what your eyes swear that I am. Oh ! 
 Andrew, sometimes your eyes take the solemnest oaths. 
 You might be swearing on the Bible, and it's it'sTso 
 frightfully funny." She paused to laugh unsteadily. 
 
 " Staring through microscopes at insects ought to give 
 people more correct views of human beings. I shouldn't 
 be half so much surprised at the inaccuracy of your ob- 
 servations if you were an astronomer always staring at 
 stars through telescopes, but a man used to the ways of 
 worms ! " 
 
 " They have very fine and delicate ways, dearest. They 
 make a man fastidious, I think." 
 
 ;< You oughtn't to be in any sort of way an idealist, 
 Andrew," she said, with a little passionate laughing ring 
 in her voice, " when you don't believe in a proper 
 God."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 197 
 
 " But I believe in a worm," he said with an odd smile. 
 " I wonder wherein the initial difference lies." 
 
 '' You look through the worm at something else, just as 
 you always look through me. It makes you extremely 
 difficult, Andrew. I I wish you wouldn't." 
 
 Of a sudden the red ran up into her face and down 
 into the whiteness of her neck, and she turned from him 
 with a quick movement and huddled down into the 
 shadows of her purple cloak. 
 
 " Life would be a poor business if one didn't, dearest, 
 and I a duller man than even I am. We must all in 
 our differing degree be always looking for our own par- 
 ticular sang real. 
 
 " The pity is," he added, with vague inquiry again in 
 his eyes, " that in our hot pursuit of our own quarry we 
 forget the hosts of others equally absorbed in their 
 schemes, and in the end we become unspeakable bores 
 to those who do not happen to be members of our own 
 little hunt." 
 
 " You're not a bore," she said quickly. 
 
 " I've often bored you." 
 
 " Not for months and months. When you did, it was 
 my fault, not yours." 
 
 " It's been your misfortune, child, and mine. A crea- 
 ture of flame and fire and dew was never made to be 
 hampered by any obstacle so inevitable as such a husband 
 as myself." 
 
 " Andrew ! do talk sense ! " 
 
 He stood up and came closer, and looked shyly down 
 at her. 
 
 " I have noticed that you get the best out of the most 
 unpromising material, Audrey. We have all noticed it, 
 child. You have never taken me seriously in hand. 
 Couldn't you begin to do so ? You might make some- 
 thing you might make even what you want out of me, 
 I think, dearest. My faith in your capacity is measure- 
 less, dear little girl " He reddened and hesitated. " I 
 
 in the end I might make you happy, Audrey."
 
 ip8 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 There was a light in his eyes a fatal light she well 
 knew, and in his voice a tone. 
 
 " My usual luck ! " said Audrey in the silence of her 
 soul. " My usual luck ! " 
 
 She wound her hands tightly round her trembling 
 knees, and tried to control her swaying senses, to beat 
 down the wave of pain that would swallow and choke 
 her. 
 
 " My usual luck," she said. 
 
 For an instant she could not speak or think ; she could 
 do nothing but let Andrew, with his new look, become 
 mirrored in her memory. The real Andrew she had never 
 met to come out at last to claim her, and now now ! 
 
 She knew all the ways of love ; she had learnt in a good 
 school. And Andrew, as young as his years to an hour, 
 stood waiting for his leap into the heart of a new world. 
 And to-morrow to-morrow, his eyes would be opened and 
 he would see ! 
 
 " Andrew," she said in desperation, " I wish you'd 
 always go without glasses. You look so different, so 
 much more easy. If you'd go on like this you'd quite 
 soon be adapted to the simplest understanding." 
 
 " That's not a reply to my question." 
 
 " What question ? " 
 
 " Will you take me in hand seriously ? Not as an ex- 
 periment, Audrey, as heretofore " he paused and laughed, 
 and the light in his eyes grew as keen as a knife " an 
 experiment in an unknown force with some claims to in- 
 telligence, but in the way in which you deal with the 
 boys, and make of me what you will. It will, I know, be 
 the best of which I am capable." 
 
 He drew her eyes to his. She was forced to look at 
 him. And every sign and portent of the awakening of a 
 man to the fullness of life was patent to her expert 
 vision. 
 
 There was a marvel of pathos, a marvel of dignity about 
 Audrey, as she stood up and drew her cloak around her. 
 He never forgot her as she looked then, but as her perfect
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 199 
 
 face bent towards him, lightly like a flower, it was a-quiver 
 with mockery the tragic mockery of a wandering soul. 
 
 " I'm going up to town in the morning," she said. " Ask 
 me that question again in the evening. Good-night." 
 
 Had he known how to speak to a woman, or to touch 
 her, he would have followed her ; but being only on the 
 eve of his awakening, he was fully aware of nothing but 
 his own impotence. 
 
 That night he did but little work and did not sleep at 
 all.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 T ARRY had taken a new flat in a new neighbourhood, 
 ]_/ and had made it very sweet and fresh and fragrant, 
 as perfect a setting for a woman's life as the heart 
 of woman could desire. There were few busier men now 
 in London than Larry, and his work was absorbing ; 
 but taught by love, he forgot nothing. Love and light 
 and joy and hope lived in the pleasant rooms. 
 
 Even Audrey, who knew him as no one else did, and 
 expected always their best even from the meanest, was 
 mute with surprise and delight and expectation, stabbed 
 to the heart with mortal pain. 
 
 She went from room to room without a word to say 
 good-bye to all her joys. The least little thing she 
 touched seemed to her like a dead child upon whom the 
 coffin lid was just about to close. As last she threw 
 herself into a low chair before the fire. 
 
 " Well," said Larry, too happy and excited to know of 
 any condition save that of beatitude, " what do you think 
 of it ? " 
 
 " The whole place is just alive with love and hope and 
 joy, and the passion of living. I I didn't know till this 
 minute what love meant, or life, or- or anything," she said. 
 
 " Audrey ! What's up with you ? " 
 
 " N Nothing ; but you can give me some wine, or tea, 
 or or something, if you like." 
 
 She lay still for a few minutes, while Larry took care of 
 her, and even then she noticed the unhurried common 
 sense in all his proceedings. 
 
 " You'd have lost your head a month ago, Larry," she 
 
 200
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 201 
 
 said presently. " You were only a boy then ; you're 
 a man now. You've grown up in a month. Oh, Larry ! 
 you'll be a great soldier. And, Larry," she said very 
 slowly, " I love you so awfully much, dear, that that 
 I'm going to give you up." 
 
 " Drink your wine, Audrey, and don't be a fool." She 
 finished it and gave him the glass. 
 
 " Now you'd better lie down." 
 
 " No ; I'm all right again, but I'm not well enough 
 for useless fusses and I'm too tired to argue ; do please 
 remember that. I want to settle things in the quickest 
 possible way and get done. And, Larry, I'm under orders, 
 and I've got to obey and so've you." 
 
 She huddled down lower into her chair and put her 
 hand up to shade her face. " And my C.O. is our child, 
 Larry yours and mine and last night it simply told 
 me I must give you up that it's your one chance and 
 mine." 
 
 " Audrey, for Heaven's sake stop." 
 
 " It said," she persisted " I heard it quite distinctly 
 you don't think I'm inventing this ! it said that the 
 sacrifice must be complete. I was neither ill nor mad," 
 she said passionately ; " that's what it said ; and also that 
 I must tell the whole truth to everybody and spare 
 nobody. And when I love you so ! " she moaned. 
 " When I know this room has shown me things that I'd 
 only dreamed of before." 
 
 Larry knew too much of men by this time not to have 
 learnt a little of women. From the instant she began to 
 speak he saw the deadly sincerity of Audrey and her 
 mortal pain. Despair pierced like iron into his heart, 
 but he soon thrust that out. He was too young yet for 
 despair, and she wanted all the reason he had at his 
 command. 
 
 He put a strong force upon himself, knelt down beside 
 her and drew her little head down to him. 
 
 " Fortunately for both our sakes," he said quietly, " I 
 have a voice in this matter now."
 
 202 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " No," she said. " Neither of us has any voice any 
 longer. It's the child's voice now, and we've just got to 
 obey it " 
 
 " Things have gone too far." 
 
 " Oh, Larry ! what's the use when you know they 
 haven't." She drew herself out of his arms and looked 
 at him. 
 
 " Larry, you know enough of me by this time, I hope, 
 to know when I mean things ; to be quite sure, anyway, 
 that I wouldn't come here here to you, to make a scene, 
 
 or a fool of either of us, or to be persuaded, or Her 
 
 eyes were full of an odd light, her face was white, but not 
 a muscle moved ; her purpose, it was plain, was as im- 
 movable. 
 
 Larry sighed restively. 
 
 " You wouldn't care for me in the way you do now," 
 she said steadily ; " it's quite different from the first way, 
 and I'm glad it is I'm glad, Larry, even now but you 
 wouldn't care for me in this way if you thought for a 
 minute I was making a woman's fuss in all this, and didn't 
 mean to do as the child said." 
 
 " Audrey ! you to talk like this ! " 
 
 " It does sound funny, doesn't it ? " She pushed back 
 her hair, frowning. " I don't know anything about sin. 
 It's not that. I don't feel sinful : sin's a sort of thing that 
 has never interested .me ; it's a depressing subject ; but 
 if you've got to do a thing, you've got to, that's all." 
 
 " Don't look like that, Audrey ; don't speak like 
 that. You can't expect a man to stand that sort of 
 change in a woman when he's been the cause of it. 
 My God ! but when I think that that day should bring 
 forth this " 
 
 She laughed in rather a dreadful way. 
 
 " It's the wages of sin, Larry it's the old story ; it's 
 like a tract. But, anyway, if we're sinners, we're doing 
 our level best to square everything, you and I ; we're 
 giving- up everything. We're paying the uttermost 
 farthing : a devil couldn't want more than that. Oh !
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 203 
 
 it ought to be enough," she sobbed in the extremity of 
 her anguish. " There ought to be nothing now to come 
 between you and your chance when we've given up 
 everything. If God wants more," she said wildly, " I'll 
 never look at a flower again, or touch a child ; and, Larry, 
 I'll kill yours." 
 
 Words were worse than useless ; he hid her poor face 
 in his arms. 
 
 " If you do this if you're mad enough," he said at 
 last, " do you mean to say you'll tell Antrobus every- 
 thing ? " 
 
 For a minute or two she lay against him trembling ; 
 then she sprang from the enchantment of his caresses and 
 went, swaying a little, to the window. She opened it wide 
 and stood leaning against the wall. 
 
 " I have to," she said at last. " I couldn't live in his 
 house and eat his bread, and be deceiving him all the time. 
 And I'd like to know what you'd think of me if I didn't. 
 Andrew's no more than a child himself. You can't tell 
 lies to children, and keep on telling them perhaps for 
 eighty years. Sinners and scientists live for ever, and 
 once I begin again I'll go on. Ce n'est que le premier pas 
 qui cofde." 
 
 " Audrey ! For God's sake ! " 
 
 " It's the most bewildering what's the word ? " she 
 said ; "I saw it somewhere in a book counsel of 
 perfection I ever struck. Don't stand staring like 
 that, Larry. It's not my affair, you know it's not. 
 I'm under orders. And it's our last day together. 
 Can't you help me ? Can't you touch me or do 
 something ? When when to-night when I go home, 
 I'll tell Andrew everything." 
 
 " My God ! How'll he take it ? " 
 
 " Like a gentleman of a past age," she said slowly. 
 ' ' Andrew is curious. It will change his life now ; it 
 wouldn't a month ago. Everything's been against me. 
 He'll be very good to me. He'll take care of me, but he 
 doesn't know anything about anything. He divides
 
 204 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 women into angels and school marms, and nebulous 
 mysteries which strike men dumb, and with madness, 
 and don't concern women and he puts me on the side of 
 the angels. Oh, Larry ! Larry ! Larry ! how shall I 
 live ? How on earth shall I live ? And I can't die 
 not until I know you've taken your chance, anyway ! I 
 wish I could have hysterics or something," she said, 
 coming back to the fire. " They must be so comforting 
 on occasions like this, and they'd give you something to 
 do, Larry ; you look as if you'd be the better of some 
 honest labour." 
 
 She dropped down in a chair, and the two sat in the 
 throbbing silence. The hand stretched out to Larry 
 burnt and froze him. In his heart he knew that the 
 game was up ; but with his reason strong and sane 
 from recent use, he was preparing a final sortie, treading 
 down, too, the brute of passion, now no longer a shadowy 
 thing safe in the background. He was, to be sure, hard 
 set that day in late September, in thrall to a score of con- 
 siderations, and passion, rich and warm, and in the fullness 
 of its youth, tore at his heart. 
 
 But there were other things to reckon with pain, bitter 
 disappointment, pride the obligation, the sense of honour 
 common to decent men, that was put upon him. 
 
 It was their last chance from another point of view 
 from this insensate one of Audrey's. If she went now, 
 it would be for ever. He loved her wholly ; his love 
 had followed all the windings of her strange unfoldment, 
 and had grown with it in depth and greatness grown, 
 also, in warm human passion. He wanted the whole 
 of Audrey. By the strongest of all rights the right of 
 possession she was his already, and a man will not lightly 
 hand back his own to one who has never had it. 
 
 He was perfectly level-headed. He knew even in the 
 transmuting grip of love and passion all that her sacrifice 
 might mean to him. It would clear every obstacle from 
 his path. Nothing need now come between him and the 
 best in life. He was free to take all his magnificent
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 205 
 
 chances. She was uninjured in the eyes of the world, and 
 no power on earth or in heaven could rob him of her 
 love. An illimitable future lay ahead of both of them, 
 for she was safe in the hands of her husband. And even 
 for that he half despised Andrew. 
 
 The eternal contempt of the concrete man for the 
 abstract one was part of the make-up of Larry, and 
 once he had got over the shock of the years, of the actual 
 sum of the years oi Antrobus, nothing could make 
 him realize his rival as anything but aged and infirm, 
 a creature to be sorry for, but not seriously to consider. 
 He regarded him, in short, as Audrey had once done. 
 He was a safe guardian for Audrey, however ; that was the 
 essential thing ; and a little waiting full of hope seems 
 nothing on the eve of a great chance. 
 
 There were salient advantages to himself in the beau- 
 tiful self-surrender of Audrey. But he looked at her, he 
 touched her ; the scent of her rippling hair made him 
 too human for ultimate ambition. It was Audrey herself 
 he wanted now; the present joy and hope and ravish- 
 ment that were all his, her faults and frailties, her 
 marvels of warm allurement, her exquisite, measureless 
 love. 
 
 He wanted no star to worship or regret, but the woman 
 who was his ! his ! his ! The triumphant note of posses- 
 sion rang in his mad heart. The pride of the victor stirred 
 in him the pulses of expectation. What would anything 
 be without Audrey so intimately a part of everything ? 
 Without her the world were cold, no matter what his 
 chance or his manner of taking it. Without her for the 
 crown of victory, what did it all amount to, after all ? 
 As for sacrifice, he would be sacrificing something too 
 a good deal, as it happened and " Let that count ! " he 
 said aloud. 
 
 As he watched her in the flame-lit gloom the passion 
 of self-sacrifice ran rampant in Larry. For a moment he 
 might have been a woman, but soon he was a man again, 
 torn and tormented by a passion ingrained in man by
 
 206 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 nature, and in the woman by the man, and now he was 
 more ready than ever to sacrifice everything and every- 
 body for Audrey Audrey now meaning himsel . 
 
 And Audrey knew all the symptoms. She saw his self- 
 control ebbing with the recoil of a spring tide, bearing 
 down every resolution, obscuring reason. And as the 
 fever of passion thrilled in the veins of the man, enlarging 
 his senses, some cool flow of which she had no knowledge 
 suddenly came pouring through Audrey. She was alive, 
 alert with a strange new hie, buttressed by a courage 
 keener and more daring than her own, and all those im- 
 pulses to run to the help of helpless things that all these 
 weeks had so tormented her, all ran out now to Larry. 
 For an instant she lay motionless in his tightening arms. 
 She held her breath under the panting of his ; the scent 
 of the roses brought out by the fire confused her like wine. 
 She sighed, collected her senses, and the strength with 
 which she pushed him from her was not power but gentle- 
 ness. She stood up white and steady, steady enough to 
 laugh lightly and turn on the light. 
 
 " And now," she said, seeing for all she hardly dared to 
 see his disordered face, the lurid light in his sunken, hot 
 eyes, the pitiful defeat in his shrunken figure, " couldn't 
 we have tea ? It's early, but still and move this screen ; 
 it's stuffy. And then with the frosty air coming in behind 
 us, the lovely fire and oh, Larry ! put the three rose- 
 bowls on the table ; it'll be perfect. You've made the 
 room mine me ! I shall always keep it just as it is, 
 somewhere in a dream. 
 
 " That's right. Sit there, Larry ! That's your chair, 
 and we've lived a whole long life, we two, on just such 
 evenings as this, with the thousand other things that 
 belong to us, somewhere. And now ring for tea, and we'll 
 have the nicest tea ; it will be my send-off to you, Larry. 
 A soldier always expects a send-off when he goes to the 
 wars. I'll see you once more, of course. I'll go down to 
 the ship. I'll tell Andrew that at once, so that there can 
 be no mistake."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 207 
 
 " I wonder which of us is mad I to allow you to do 
 this insensate thing, or you to do it ?" 
 
 " I think we're both completely sane, and that that's 
 what's wrong with us. Maniacs live lightly on illusions, 
 and we're gorging ouvselves on facts." 
 
 Audrey went to the window. 
 
 The flat was in a quiet court. The roar of the city came 
 to their ears like a distant murmur. A baby cried in the 
 street ; the bell of a muffin man went tingling down the 
 walk ; a butcher's boy at an area door played sadly on 
 a jews' harp. 
 
 The little homely sounds of the uneventful lives of 
 God-fearing people filled Audrey with a fierce passion of 
 pain. Two women, oozing bridge from every pore, hurried 
 on tapping high heels to a party. 
 
 " I know her," said Audrey, " the nearest one. I once 
 won five pounds from her, and she looked like a glittering 
 snake when she paid it. She belongs to a Rescue Society 
 and lectures Magdalens. She's very modest and always 
 alludes to them as ' they,' and quotes things out of the 
 Bible about them in the thinnest voice you ever heard. 
 She'd give her eyes to be at me." 
 
 " Don't, darling ! " 
 
 " Goodness gracious ! but I wish she had my job ! " 
 
 " What does that girl think ? " she asked, when the 
 maid had gone. " What lie have you invented ? " 
 
 " She thinks that you're my wife, of course," he said 
 jerkily ; " come up to see me off, and stay in town for 
 distraction when I'm gone. My own man is on leave. 
 He has never been here, and will join me at the ship." 
 
 " You must change the programme a little, Larry. Say 
 that I find the consolatory presence of my dearest relations 
 necessary just now, and put the servants on board wages 
 for the moment. Afterwards, I'll be going to travel, 
 and they can disperse. Arrange it all on account of my 
 state of health. So much for propriety ! That golden 
 flame makes a sort of halo of glory around your brow, 
 Larry. I think it's prophetic. Larry, eat something; !
 
 208 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 This is my party, and you're rather rude sitting there like 
 a stuffed image. You require nourishment. You'll need 
 all your strength for what's coming, every atom of every 
 sort of strength and courage you have, or what'll become 
 of me at home with Andrew ? I'll know I'll know 
 everything about you, Larry," she said, the wild light 
 leaping up in her eyes. " And you need never tell me 
 when you've forgotten me. I'll know that." 
 
 " You'll never know it," he said. The suffocating wrath 
 of passion made words difficult to him. 
 
 " I wonder with a whole free life before you ! But 
 until you give up caring for me, I wish you'd keep all 
 these things. You could let the flat, of course, but I'd 
 like you to have these to come home to. They're the only 
 things we'll ever be likely to have together. 
 
 " If I were good I daresay I'd be asking you to sell 
 them all by auction, and bury your wicked past ; but one 
 can't bury anything so full of life at a moment's notice. 
 You can't murder things for righteousness' sake ; it's 
 it's bad enough to let them die, and when they're dead 
 when everything is dead, your past and all, sell them for a 
 charity ; choose some Home for Fallen Sisters, Larry, for 
 remembrance ' ' 
 
 Words were useless, so he kissed her into a momentary 
 silence, but words were now the only refuge of Audrey ; 
 she got free again and laughed. 
 
 " Don't give them to any other woman, that's all I ask. 
 I couldn't bear that. I'd haunt you both. No other 
 woman must ever share these things. They're mine me, 
 even when you've forgotten me. Failing the home for fallen 
 sisters, couldn't you burn them ? " 
 
 " Audrey, have you no mercy on yourself or on me ? " 
 
 " Mercy I don't know. There's not very much of ' the 
 gentle dew from heaven ' in the present situation. It 
 doesn't make you feel weakly amiable in any sort of 
 way. It makes you want the most enormous things from 
 other people. Nothing less than the biggest will satisfy 
 me so far as you're concerned, or I'll feel like a common
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 209 
 
 creature who steals the manhood of men, and whom people 
 rescue when they're not playing bridge. Oh, Larry ! I'm 
 glad it's your country that's taking you from me ; not a 
 woman. I couldn't stand that ; that would be the 
 limit." 
 
 She took his cup and brought it back to him. She 
 stooped, and slowly, lingeringly, she laid her head on his 
 shoulder, and touched his hair and his forehead and his 
 mouth. 
 
 " I'm just seeing if I could give you back to a woman," 
 she said, standing up and trembling, as she always trembled 
 now when Larry's arm was round her. 
 
 " I couldn't ; nothing would induce me. No one but 
 one of Andrew's unsubstantial saints could do it and no 
 credit to her ! " 
 
 " You're as white as paper," said Larry. " Your eyes 
 are sunk in your head. The only live thin g about you is your 
 hair. You're nothing but a woman on her beam ends, whom 
 no one but a man could ever take care of. Don't move," 
 he said, holding her tight. " You're mine. You've never 
 been anyone's but mine, and you never can be. It's not 
 in nature. You're mine by ties that neither of us can 
 break," his voice was steady and low, his eyes hard and 
 relentless. " Can't you see the unfairness of the whole 
 thing ? the insolence of your attitude ? " he said hoarsely. 
 " You've already sacrificed everything for me in one way, 
 and now you want to do it in another ; everything to be 
 sacrificed to me ! It's too big an order even for a man. 
 I'm the only one of all concerned, can't you see, who'll 
 come off scot-free in public opinion, and have as decent 
 an environment as man could wish," he said bitterly, 
 " for the cure of a broken heart, or whatever you may 
 choose to call it. Antrobus must have it out teaching 
 unlicked cubs, and you my God ! Audrey, it's too much," 
 he said, straining her to him with brutal force. " If it's not 
 a case of a man sheltering behind a woman's petticoats, I'd 
 like to know what is. Child ! Can't you see ? You talk 
 of giving me back my freedom, my manhood ; but, by 
 
 14
 
 210 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 God ! you're robbing me of both of all the rights of a 
 man.' 
 
 She lay motionless in his arms fighting the hardest 
 battle of all. She was aflame with passion, weak with 
 love, worn from sleepless nights, unfit physically, mentally 
 unbraced for strife like this, with no conviction of sin what- 
 soever, and all that she had ever wanted lay in the warm 
 circle of Larry's arms. She nearly gave in to the wild 
 rapture of love. 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! yes ! " cried out the whole of her sentient 
 being. All nature was on her side, generations of Art; in 
 one rhythmic voice of triumph they were both pleading 
 her cause, for love is all and hell is nothing until the spirit 
 wakes, to hearts great enough to pay the price, as these 
 two were ; but the tiny voice said, " No " like a fairy 
 bell it said it " No ! no ! no ! " said the little voice, and 
 it spoke with the inexorable gentleness of God. 
 
 Larry must have seen some vision clear enough even to 
 his understanding in her eyes as she lifted them to him, 
 for in an instant she was sacred to him. He put her 
 tenderly down on her chair and the fight was at an end. 
 
 " At least, I can do something," he said, after a long 
 silence ; " and you can obey in something, little as you 
 believe in obedience. I'll make fresh tea, and I'll ring 
 for bread, and you'll make some toast at that fire. I've 
 never seen you making toast ; perhaps you can't ; but I 
 seem to see you making toast somewhere by some wood 
 fire, and you must make it for once by ours ! " 
 
 " I've made heaps of toast beautifully." 
 
 " I know ; I can see you. You'd be roasting chestnuts 
 if it was two months later. You'll be roasting them for 
 the boys. It's partly for those boys you've thrown me 
 over, Audrey." 
 
 Audrey looked out at him as though from some vast dim 
 vision. 
 
 " I think it's because you were a boy once, like them," 
 she said. 
 
 So she made toast, and Larry buttered it as lavishly as
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 211 
 
 he had done at Sandhurst, and they drank the fresh-made 
 tea, and courageous laughter more sad than tears broke 
 out between them. They were children together before 
 the bright fire for one little hour, and then a shrill call 
 from the telephone brought Larry with flashing eyes to 
 his feet. 
 
 He came back more slowly than he had gone, and now 
 his eyes were smouldering fires, half quenched. 
 
 He put his hand on Audrey's shoulder. 
 
 " It's come," he said. " We sail on Friday." 
 
 " Friday ! I I must hurry home," she said, not 
 knowing why she said it. 
 
 " I'm a selfish beast," she cried in a moment, " to think 
 of myself first now, but I'm glad, Larry ; I am glad. 
 You know I am in my heart, but oneself always slips in 
 first somehow. We'll keep on pretending to the last," 
 she said suddenly. " This is ours all this," she said, 
 and gathered everything in with a quick move of her arms. 
 " We've lived here together for years, so come to my room 
 and do all the little things you'd be sure to do in a little 
 place like this, where we'd be free and do what we like." 
 
 He followed her nervously with abashed eyes. He 
 was phenomenally clumsy. 
 
 " Not that ! Oh, Larry, I'd expected better things 
 from you ! And now fix my veil. Ah ! " she cried, 
 refusing to notice his shaking hands, his twitching face, 
 " you're hopeless as a maid. You must learn adaptability, 
 or you'll never be a Field-Marshal. And now, my coat 
 that's my fur, stupid and oh, Larry ! " she said, standing 
 up proudly and looking confidently into his face, " this 
 is the prettiest of all the rooms ; you might have been a 
 woman from the way you thought it out. It's just home. 
 I'll be always a stranger and a sojourner in any other room 
 now till the end of my life." 
 
 " Home ! " he said, in a voice which was almost a groan 
 " Oh, come ! 
 
 " And we'll have one more five minutes by the fire. I 
 told Horner to be at my club at five-thirty " 
 
 14*
 
 212 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " You're not. as adaptable as you might be in new 
 conditions, Larry," she said, as they looked together into 
 the fire. " But what a soldier you'll be ! And I'm glad 
 you were good till you knew me you were good, Larry, 
 weren't you ? It never struck me before, but now I'd 
 like to be sure. I know really, but " 
 
 " I was right enough, no thanks to me. I never wanted 
 anyone but you." 
 
 " I'm most frightfully glad." She nestled closer to him. 
 
 " Perhaps I might have wondered some day when you 
 couldn't tell me this, and it might have made things a 
 little bit different. Rather ridiculous, don't you think, 
 considering all things ? " 
 
 " Oh, Audrey, even now " 
 
 " But you're just the same. You're glad I was good, in 
 a mild way. Larry ! say you are ? " 
 
 " You'd better go," he said, breathing hard. " I can't 
 stand much more of this. Good ! Good ! You're too 
 good for me. You ask too much of a man." 
 
 " I ask no more than you can give," she said. Sorrow 
 had dried up all her tears ; she trembled no longer. Her 
 face was full of pride and courage. " How could I love 
 you as I do if I I wasn't sure of you in all circumstances 
 if I couldn't ask all you've got to give this last time 
 together. I don't understand your fight as well as my 
 own, but we've stood together under fire, you and I, and 
 we're comrades from now on in everything. Oh, Larry ! 
 if we're rank bad sinners, anyway we're right good 
 soldiers. Oh ! Good-bye ! Good-bye ! I'll come to the 
 ship, but this is good-bye. You must come with me to 
 the car for the maid's sake, and don't moon about here. 
 Spend your evening with soldiers or read tactics, or tell 
 the War Office what you think of it, and never forget that 
 I'm a soldier too," she said. 
 
 She walked out before him with the fine unruffled 
 serenity of a young queen
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 WHEN she got home? Audrey found Mr. Norman 
 and Andrew in perplexed c'onclave in the hall. 
 So absorbed were they, that at first they did not notice 
 her ; but when they did the look of profound relief on 
 both their faces shrewdly stabbed her, but she spoke 
 lightly. 
 
 " What on earth is the matter ? " 
 
 " Macmahon, of course," said Norman ; in the im- 
 mensity of his relief Andrew was stricken dumb. " You 
 couldn't suppose it to be anyone else, since time means 
 everything to him and us just now. He's supposed to be 
 starting an attack of diphtheria or something." 
 
 " Yes ; and what else ? " 
 
 " He's in the lap of luxury, and not bad at all ; but 
 that sort of chap easily takes fright, and he's got some 
 sin on his conscience, no doubt, and wants to see you. 
 Nothing less will content him." 
 
 " It's impossible ! " said Andrew hurriedly. 
 
 " Why? " said Audrey ; " I can have a bath afterwards 
 and change my clothes." 
 
 " You're tired," said Andrew. '' It's an immense risk ; 
 Dr. Lambert forbids it. He must be kept in complete 
 isolation until we know. It's not as though the boy were 
 in any danger." Andrew's face, as he watched her, was 
 half apprehensive, half expectant. She looked very white 
 and fragile this evening, a little ghostly and ethereal; a 
 superstitious thrill of foreboding disturbed his mind. 
 
 " There must be some danger about, don't you think ? " 
 
 213
 
 214 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 she said, " or Macmahon wouldn't be so anxious about his 
 sins. It's sure to be sins, and there's no one he could 
 confess to but me not Dr. Lambert's nurse, I'm certain ! 
 I've seen her, and no boy living could confess a sin to a 
 mathematical genius," she said with an elfish laugh. 
 " It wants a woman to receive the confession of a boy." 
 
 Mr. Norman noticed queer things going on in her in a 
 flash. Andrew saw nothing but two dear eyes full of 
 radiant light. 
 
 " Don't wait dinner," she said ; " I'll be in for the 
 entree, and I'll be frightfully careful. I know all about 
 infection, and I I had a good tea." 
 
 " There is a risk, we all know it," said Andrew, turning 
 with shy dignity to the other man ; " but I felt sure that 
 Mrs. Antrobus would take it." 
 
 " One would be sure, naturally. I'm glad she's gone 
 to the lad. He's a rank bad case ; I'd be sorry in the end 
 to be balked by him, and I hope Mrs. Antrobus will save 
 us from that humiliation." 
 
 Andrew's mind was wandering off after his winged wife. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Mr. Norman I I gather that 
 you are not alluding to the danger of infection." 
 
 " No, I'm alluding to the far more probable danger of 
 Macmahon's being plucked for Sandhurst, his last chance, 
 and getting us blamed, by an illness complicated with un- 
 timely and irrational repentance. I wonder what he's done 
 over and above what he's been doing for some days under 
 my very nose. He can't even crib intelligently ; he has all 
 the sinuosity of the fool of a clever family, and all his 
 stiff-necked, wrong-headed conceit built up on a rotten 
 foundation of morbid humility. If a fellow has always 
 got less than his dues he's as conceited as an ape and as 
 devoid of self-respect. I have no doubt he's been up to 
 something that badly wants absolution, and that the 
 working of his chaotic wisp of a mind has a lot to do 
 with his high temperature. They're morbid in every way, 
 those chaps." 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Norman ! " said Andrew, with real concern,
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 215 
 
 " I am sorry you feel in that way about the boy. His 
 brain is still a fortress to be subjugated, I rfear, and the 
 choice of tactics for its subjugation seems to present 
 great difficulties ; and even when gained, it will not hold 
 much that one could desire," sighed Andrew. " Still, 
 the conquest of any enemy is beginning to have its 
 pleasures for me. And Mrs. Antrobus likes the boy." 
 
 "So do I but he needn't have played us this trick 
 just now. He'll put us back for months, and his family is 
 too charged with pure intellect to have either insight or 
 mercy. We'll be having letters in the academic style, 
 and very likely the aunt who let him loose with the lady's 
 dress-case in tow. His male belongings have affairs of 
 moment to attend to. They'll sit tight." 
 
 " I'm sorry for the lad," said Andrew quietly. 
 
 " So am I, when he doesn't upset my calculations and 
 make hay of dates. I wonder what he's done ! " 
 
 " Mrs. Antrobus will, no doubt, ascertain, and also 
 undertake the aunt, "said Andrew with a view to consola- 
 tion. The genuine professional ardour of his colleagues 
 was a characteristic he greatly valued, but for the moment 
 he himself could only pretend to the stirrings within him 
 of the lesser humanities. 
 
 In the press of the new life there was coming into the 
 apperceiving mass of Andrew's economy a most perplexing 
 change ; there was a loosening of old centres, a gathering 
 in of new, and slipping in and out of the winding of his 
 expanding thought went always Audrey laughing, elud- 
 ing, mystifying and leading him on and on to some 
 beckoning glory of light, to some deeper deeps of life, and 
 summer, and love, and understanding, than those he had 
 yet plumbed. 
 
 Without doubt he stood upon the verge of some wonder- 
 ful awakening. His soul reached out towards it with sure 
 expectation ; his whole being was alert for the dawn. 
 
 It was only in respect to the next step, that little step 
 so difficult in our limited measure of our limitless powers, 
 that Andrew now experienced any poignant motion of
 
 216 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 humility. The old order was indeed passing ! With 
 Audrey for guide, from henceforth the stoniest path 
 upward would, to be sure, be the jewelled way of a king. 
 
 Meanwhile, Audrey was sitting beside Macmahon, help- 
 ing him to disburthen himself of his secret at the least 
 ix)ssible hurt to his throat. 
 
 His general position amongst his kind had filled this 
 ^reat hulking fellow with many of the silly shames of 
 an anaemic girl, and a charge of malingering justified by 
 fact at the beginning of his cramming career, which had 
 exposed him to the grinning and indelicate ragging of the 
 rest, had now kept him silent about his sufferings. He 
 had never before had a serious illness, and the aching 
 discomfort of the last few days had been a revelation 
 of the devil to him. An unpleasant sort of a reminder 
 that he'd better buck up and mend his ways, and the 
 devil, in his steaming hot and clammy cold meditations, 
 had got himself largely mixed up with Mrs. Antrobus. 
 The premonitory symptoms of a diphtheritic attack, in 
 short, had raked the soul of Macmahon in a way the 
 birch-rod of half a dozen schools had failed to do. 
 
 Tweaks and twinges of pain, alien and unearned, con- 
 founded him. No boy could bear a straightforward 
 caning with more courage and equanimity than Macmahon. 
 Canings had lost all moral significance for him, and his skin 
 was tough and seasoned. Even in the matter of birchings, 
 God or is it, perhaps, the devil will temper the wind to 
 the shorn lamb, but this insidious attack of invincible 
 red-hot pincers upon his shrinking flesh took the heart 
 out of him. 
 
 In order to please Mrs. Antrobus, and get the better of 
 the other " chaps," and his own inexplicable and mounting 
 ineffectuality, he had, for several days past, been cribbing 
 right and left, legally and illegally. Even in the matter 
 of cribbing there is a wide-minded code of honour, which 
 must be rigorously adhered to, and Macmahon, in his 
 frenzied despair, broke every article of it, not caring a 
 rap for any consequence. His mind was in ferment ;
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 217 
 
 he had grown too numb with snubbing to be moved by the 
 piercing shafts of Mr. Norman's wit ; his promises to 
 Mrs. Antrobus were fast fading, and yet the insensate 
 desire to please her urged him forward on his nefarious 
 course. 
 
 Perhaps Macmahon was too dense to be stabbed to life 
 by anything less brutal than diphtheria. Possibly he 
 needed inspiration of the battering-ram order. At any 
 rate, he was getting it. 
 
 He was worse than was supposed, in great pain and dire 
 despair. All the religion of which he had ever been 
 capable was centred round a dumb devil, who had of a 
 sudden become articulate. He was the most unhappy 
 lad in England, as lashed by the relentless whip of fear 
 he lay, looking phenomenally ugly, on the bed, but 
 duplicity was at an end. In no sort of way did he finesse 
 in regard to his confession. He jerked it out in spasms. 
 
 It was a matter of the meanest, an ugly little snake 
 of a sin which made Audrey's sad, steady mouth quiver ; 
 but she only said, very quietly : 
 
 " Oh, well, that's all done with. What you've got to 
 do now is to leave it behind you with all the other miserable 
 sad things, and to begin again. You'll never get better 
 in body or mind if you lie there hugging those vile little 
 things closer, instead of simply walking away from them. 
 You might as well expect peace and comfort with an 
 adder in your bed as with your sins. And never mind 
 about the promises you made and broke. You poor 
 thing ! " she murmured, with an irrepressible burst of un- 
 regenerate humanity ; " you made them by moonlight, 
 and that was a radical mistake, and it was for me to see 
 that you repeated them by daylight ; but I've been busy 
 I've had very pressing affairs of my own." 
 
 His face was drawn with some vague pain, yet vague 
 as it was it tormented him even worse than his aches. A 
 dreadful darkness was about the miserable, mean lad. 
 The inexorable Hand, so full of tenderness, pressed sore 
 at this moment upon two poor sinners.
 
 2i8 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 The pathos of the swollen, hideous face pierced deep 
 into the more experienced of the two, right into the heart 
 of love that lies behind all sin and all experience, and for 
 full five minutes Audrey was the Audrey of whom God 
 had never lost sight. For where, in God's name, would 
 any of us be if He but for one instant lost touch with the 
 least of His little ideals of life. 
 
 For Audrey, she said very little ; it is only in the silence 
 when the spirit becomes articulate that our speech is made 
 perfect, and the neighbourhood of death, even in the dark- 
 ness of ignorance, opens the eyes. The few words which 
 Audrey, not understanding, did speak to the boy, he under- 
 stood, and those she never uttered he understood even 
 better. 
 
 " I know now," he said at last, moving weakly under her 
 hand. " I wish I needn't die. I'd like " 
 
 He didn't say what he'd like, but Audrey knew 
 perhaps. 
 
 " You'll not die," she said, " if I can help it. But even 
 if you do, it'll be all right I'm sure it will I'm quite 
 perfectly sure," she added. " So take it just as it comes. 
 But keep on all the time wanting to get well. Don't 
 give in never give in and then don't bother in the end 
 even if you've got to, and can't get well. It's better to 
 get well, but it's all right, anyway. It's all quite simple, 
 really," she said after a pause, touching his forehead 
 curiously. " But remember, dear, that / want you to get 
 well. I can't tell you how much I want you to get well, 
 lad," she said slowly with a strange face. 
 
 " I'll want you, I think, all my life. We've come so 
 close, in so queer a way, that I think we'll always want 
 each other you and I. However it goes, we'll always be 
 pals, but I'd rather you were alive. It's so much more 
 natural and cosy to have you about the house as flesh 
 and blood, making up to all of us for your foolishness. 
 You'd be doing it all right somewhere else, of course, 
 and I'd know I'd feel you were but one likes homely 
 things.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 219 
 
 " Thave rather a horrid thing to do to-night," she said 
 with another wistful touch ; "I wish a bit of you could 
 come with me for confidence. I'll often want you now, 
 Macmahon, so you must do your level best to live. To 
 desert me now would be the meanest act of your whole 
 life. So just do your best, and then if you fail, no one 
 can blame you. Now you know what you've got to do, 
 so now I'll go." 
 
 The boy lay silent. Words matter so little when death 
 is creeping up your throat, and swift on its track the 
 mounting battle-cry of life. 
 
 She met the doctor at the door. 
 
 " He's extremely ill," she said. " You'll have a big 
 fight this time, Dr. Lambert." 
 
 " But, Mrs. Antrobus ' 
 
 " I don't pretend to know anything at all about illness, 
 but I felt death at my elbow five minutes ago, and the boy 
 saw him. I don't want that boy to die and what I want 
 I generally get, Dr. Lambert," she said laughing. 
 
 " I can quite believe it, Mrs. Antrobus ; but what busi- 
 ness have you here ? I gave orders 
 
 " I know ; and I broke them, and I'm sorry ! I'm not 
 insubordinate, really, but he sent for me, and I had to 
 go, and I've taken every precaution. I'm not the least 
 silly, and you ought to know that by this time." 
 
 " I do know it but I have my reputation to consider 
 and your health." 
 
 " They're both invulnerable. It's the greatest comfort 
 to me to know that you have all those letters after your 
 name. In this household we acquire a respect for these 
 things, and it would be an awful humiliation for the whole 
 staff if the boy died now they've all been concentrating 
 their minds on him, so far with precious little success, 
 but I've backed him from the beginning. And, oh, well ! 
 he's got to live ! " 
 
 " I'll do my best." 
 
 " And you'll let me have a finger in the pie ? " 
 
 He laughed.
 
 220 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " You'd better give in with a good grace," she said, 
 " for you'll find you can't do without me in the end." 
 
 " I quite believe that." 
 
 " After this I'll obey every order, but to-night I must 
 do what I like." 
 
 " Anything you like, Mrs. Antrobus, must be charming." 
 
 " I hope you'll find it so ! " 
 
 " I'm sure the boy will. Go and change, and eat 
 a good dinner, and I'll send you word what I think of 
 the patient." 
 
 " You'll think just as I do when you see him," said 
 Audrey airily. 
 
 That dinner, half over when she came in, was always 
 afterwards a fantastic dream to Audrey. Andrew's clear- 
 cut features, his far-away eyes so full of trust and simple 
 depths of knowledge. Andrew of the single eye, to whom 
 she represented Heaven ! 
 
 Mr. Norman's rough, heavy, massive head, his keen 
 searching eyes, which knew too much of her ever to asso- 
 ciate her with anything but the pleasant earth. Forrester, 
 the classical man a fine intellectual machine, who 
 admired her wit and enjoyed her dinners, and made it 
 a rule never to speculate on women. The varying faces 
 of the boys plainly obsessed by their food, yet each ring- 
 ing up his higher part, so to speak, in the vain endeavour 
 to look pensive in view of her mission of mercy to a 
 comrade in distress, and the manner in which both mood 
 and dress became her. 
 
 Upon an impulse of wild audacity she had put on the 
 youngest of her many frocks, the whitest and the most 
 virgirdy innocent, a thing of combed wool and silver. 
 
 Her hair, still wet from the carbolized water, curled 
 up in an aura of gold, alive with the red of life. Soft 
 tendrils fell down childishly over her brow. Suppressed 
 excitement and her late plunge in cold water had brought 
 a glow to her pale cheeks. She had come into touch with 
 things strange and unfathomable as she sat by the sick 
 boy's bed, and the stir of them lingered still in her eyes,
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 221 
 
 but sometimes this was sent flying by a flash of protest, 
 mocking, challenging, terrible ! 
 
 Mr. Norman was aware of very extraordinary things 
 going on that evening in his chief's wife, and so lonely was 
 she, so conscious of the measureless depths of passionate 
 life within herself, of the mysteries of pain and despair 
 awaiting all the lives that touched hers, that she made no 
 effort to hide herself from the only man who could see. He 
 glanced with some apprehension at Antrobus, and thanked 
 his stars that Mary was just what she was. Once a weird 
 desire took hold of him to take over the job whatever it was 
 for Antrobus, who had his hands just then more than 
 full with an experiment which might mean much hi the 
 councils of men. The notion tickled him ; he glanced at 
 Mrs. Antrobus, and laughed as he passed her some fruit, 
 and all at once her odd, dominating significance took 
 supreme hold of him the magical charm of her face, 
 its light insouciance, its bewildering invitations and re- 
 pulsions, the humour and the pathos of it, its mystic 
 suggestions of wickedness and profundities of pain of 
 pain such as no man may dare to dream. 
 
 Even as he laughed he felt stirred and repelled, and 
 gathered himself in a little away from her. His very 
 chair, in the insensible movement of his mind, drew 
 closer to Mary ! What a house of defence she was ! 
 Mary ! So sure and warm, so everlastingly fixed upon a 
 rock ! 
 
 " What a prig I am," he thought ; the next minute he 
 laughed again, and in the second of tune a change had 
 taken place in the morale of his merriment, and Mary was 
 now at the root of it ; centred in her he could have pity 
 for all women, and a growing understanding of some. 
 This understanding would, however, be always more 
 illuminating in Mrs. Antrobus's affairs than in Mary's. Mr. 
 Norman was not for the moment quite sure whether he were 
 glad or sorry. 
 
 " I oughtn't to be laughing," he said, " ought I ? It's 
 a solemn occasion for all of us. That unfortunate fellow
 
 can do nothing like a rational human being, not even get 
 a diphtheritic attack." 
 
 " Dignity isn't his strong point, certainly," said Audrey. 
 " He'd even die, I think, in a clumsy, unimportant sort 
 of a way. But he can be silent like a man. I've just 
 found that out." 
 
 " But surely he had something to say to you ? " 
 
 " Oh, a great deal. Then he didn't shine, but he did 
 in the silence. He mustn't die ! He's got to live in order 
 to justify that one moment of his existence, and confound 
 the lot of you ! " 
 
 " He's the meanest cribber I ever struck." 
 
 " Or I ! That part was our fault yours and mine and 
 Andrew's, and the other man's," she said with serenity, 
 and a comprehensive glance round the table. "You were 
 too scholastic, and I too frivolous, to notice the beginnings 
 of his illness. He's never been ill before, but he's often 
 pretended to be, so he was afraid to own up, and felt 
 outraged and cowed and capable of any meanness ; be- 
 sides, he wanted to please me." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " He'd made promises, you see, in the moonlight, and 
 you'll admit they're bewildering, even to the advanced 
 moral consciousness, and I've been busy. I had no time 
 for Macmahon's education." 
 
 " You have for ours, and your methods are charming. 
 I wish I had known the beggar was ill, but that bout of 
 malingering put us all off." 
 
 " It would, naturally, and his pathos is too ugly, no 
 man living would be touched by it. I want him most 
 frightfully to pull through everything death and all ! " 
 
 There was an eagerness in her face, so fierce and hard 
 and insolent, that he could hardly have believed her tender, 
 changing, pleasure-loving face capable of it. 
 
 " This illness will teach him to fight, I think," she said. 
 " It's what he wants, don't you think ? " 
 
 "I do. So far, he's only feebly beaten his ineffectual 
 head against the enemy."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 223 
 
 " But think of his difficulties, in that family of cast- 
 iron intellects, and his life of hopeless contention against 
 a succession of distracted and demoralized tutors, all his 
 physical and mental betters." 
 
 " It's a sad case from every point of view." 
 " Talk of the mercy of the strong ! Wait till he begins 
 really to enjoy a fight. Directly he proves his strength in 
 a big, decided battle, he'll give up guerilla warfare, and 
 you just look out ! It's the one thing that nothing can 
 take away," she said, " the love of a fight. It's the first 
 thing given you, and the last thing taken back. So long 
 as you can fight, there's something left to "you, don't you 
 think ? " Her lips were parted, her challenging eyes were 
 upon him. 
 
 " But," he said, after a second's pause, " but what on 
 earth can you know about it ? " 
 
 " Everything ! " she said promptly, with a quick laugh. 
 " You must know very little of me or you wouldn't have 
 said that to-night. You'd have said something cheerful 
 and encouraging. You'd have tuned up every drop of 
 fighting blood in me, as, perhaps, some day I'll be tuning 
 up Macmahon's. Isn't it nice to see them eat ? What's 
 the matter with Dacre ; can't he even be greedy ? Is he 
 anything ? " 
 
 " He's a fellow for whom any crammer living may thank 
 God." 
 
 " People will be thanking God for him in a mild way 
 all the days of his life. His sins will never screw a tear 
 or a smile from any woman, and he'll always produce the 
 right platitude at the right moment, and get high in his 
 exams., and all the great events in life will pass him by. 
 I wonder if God'll get as tired of him as his wife will ? " 
 " What about Forbes ? " suggested Norman laughing. 
 " Forbes will make many a woman cry, but he'l know 
 how to dry her tears, and he'll never be horrid to a child. 
 He'll get into Sandhurst all right he can do things but 
 I think he'll end in the ' Legion that never was listed.' I 
 wish he wouldn't. I wonder what his mother is like."
 
 224 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " Mrs. Antrobus, why do you say this to-night ? " 
 
 " I don't know because I seem to know suddenly, and 
 I'm rather sorry for sinners to-night." 
 
 " You could never upon any occasion fail a sinner. A 
 saint might fare worse at your hands." 
 
 " I'd try to do justice even to him." 
 
 " Painful effort could never be wholly becoming to you. 
 We'll hope that you may never need it." 
 
 " Do you generally speak to your superior officers 
 your C.O.'s wife, in this unpardonable way ? " 
 
 " She's never tempted me before, so I've never fallen." 
 
 " I've stayed too long ! but so long as the peaches held 
 out I couldn't disturb them. One has so little time," 
 she sighed, " in which to be greedy, or mad, and bad, and 
 sad, and sweet or anything else easy and elemental 
 that makes the poems one can never forget. Moral 
 obligations are the curse of civilization, don't you 
 think ? " 
 
 " Whatever I may think on these matters I keep to 
 myself." 
 
 There was an appeal half elfish, half deprecating in the 
 laughing face she turned to him over her soft, seductive 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Couldn't she confine herself to being a rather unusual 
 crammer's wife," he thought later on, " not sprite, wanton, 
 and saint all in one. Poor Antrobus ! I wonder if any- 
 thing but time and tribulation could sort her out, and get 
 the proportions in her more discreetly mixed. It's too 
 complicated a job for any plain man. I wonder what's 
 up. Mary would be considerably out of her element in 
 this galere, but I could wish her nearer."
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 HER very environment went to the further confounding 
 of Audrey. The repulsions and attractions which 
 form the bond and the barrier between completeness 
 and incompleteness, between man and boy, penetrating 
 the life on both sides, crying for mutual expression, mutual 
 recognition, the suppressions and the audacities, were 
 filling the wild brain of Audrey with a white heat of 
 excitement. It beat, as with muffled strokes, upon her 
 quivering heart. It tore the veil from some hidden niche 
 of horrid laughter. Her lawless being had reached its 
 limit of inarticulate pain. It clamoured for the licence 
 of words, of strange indecent unrestraints. The retribu- 
 tion of the woman who has sinned swung Audrey that 
 night towards madness. 
 
 For the woman, unlike the man well- armoured in com- 
 placent reserves, with the whole of public opinion in his 
 favour has been, since the world was, naked body-slave 
 to many bonds, unprotected by any opinion, sensitive to 
 every stroke. She must receive in her unlearned heart 
 every shaft the well- taught brain of man has learnt from 
 the beginning to ward off from his. 
 
 No depth of corruption can protect a woman from her 
 pure self, and so she falls soone. than man into the torture 
 pits which twist secrets from living souls. Audrey was 
 bewildered and full of fear. The primitive desire of the 
 wounded to hurt and slay had her in grip. In the clang 
 and chaos of horrid counsels she lost her way ; her brain 
 
 225 15
 
 226 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 rocked. The half of her could have shrieked out her 
 story to all those men and boys, and laughed in the listening 
 faces ; the other half longed for the darkness to cover 
 her. 
 
 And, after all, speech is the last poor resort of those 
 who have forfeited their right to the white heights of 
 silence. It was such a lost cause hers ! Speech or silence 
 were equally futile. What is the use of hiding that for 
 which there is no hiding-place ? The very air knew. 
 The refuges of women are riddled with ambushes. Their 
 sin, confessed, or unconfessed, lurks behind a thousand 
 gaping doors, in the brains of men, in the entire economy 
 of women, in the wide eyes of children and the hidden 
 vision of those who die, for she is the last ' spoken word 
 of God,' poor woman ! His standard-bearer, open to all 
 disaster. She cannot hug to herself the crowning joy 
 of life any more than she can gather in and cover its 
 crowning shame. As she must rejoice for the whole of 
 mankind when a child is born, so for the whole of man- 
 kind must she suffer when one is dishonoured, her eternal 
 birthright sold. She is in nothing entirely her own, for 
 she, above all other creatures, has been bought with a 
 price. 
 
 This is the vision of pain which spares no one who 
 is a woman, not even light Audrey, with a soul not 
 yet alive ! 
 
 There is nothing deep enough, or strong enough, or 
 secret enough, in earth, or sea, or sky, to cover the shame 
 of a woman, and by the passion of His own agony to 
 transmute it, and give it back to the world as the love 
 which once it was, but the heart of Christ. It is the miracle 
 of the world, which proves God. 
 
 But of these things Audrey knew nothing any more 
 than the boys did who buzzed about her and courted her 
 smile and drank her coffee. 
 
 It is true that this mad night she set ajar a little door for 
 a fleeting instant to their searching eyes, but she kept her 
 own counsel.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 227 
 
 There was, however, a wistful kindness apparent in 
 her even to him, which disturbed Mr. Norman. It was 
 eminently unlike Mary, and spoke of plumbless depths 
 in which he devoutly hoped that Mary would never 
 flounder. There was a whisper as of a good-bye to some 
 mystic something in Mrs. Antrobus that went but scurvily 
 with the coffee and the big jugs of cream she pampered 
 the great hulking fellows ! Norman would like to have 
 lent a hand that night, but no matter what the strait 
 might be, it was plain to both the friends that she must 
 find her own lonely way out of it. Being honestly in love 
 with Mary, he was honestly sorry for Mrs. Antrobus, 
 but he left her that night to the boys and himself under- 
 took the other men. Antrobus was hopeless at this 
 period, awake only to three overpowering facts : his con- 
 scientious duty to his pupils, an experiment the fate of 
 which hung in the balance, and Audrey. 
 
 As though the other pain were not enough, by nine 
 o'clock Audrey ached all over with the mortal pin-pricks 
 of the boys. 
 
 When they had gone she waited until Andrew, upon 
 the impulse of a sudden inspiration, had also bolted ; 
 then she stood up and shook herself, her limbs and 
 body, but she held tight her rocking head, and shut 
 her eyes. 
 
 " And now," she said, " now I must say it." She spoke 
 as a child might of a lesson ; her lips were apart, her eyes 
 wide, the singular translucence of her complexion was very 
 striking. There was an appeal of infinite youth about her 
 and of mighty contrasts and wide spaces. She looked like 
 a child who had strayed from heaven, and looked into 
 hell, and dazed by the mixed marvels of her journey, was 
 wandering bewildered anywhere. 
 
 " I must say it all," said she, " while I can speak like 
 a human being. I want to shriek, and howl, and yell it 
 into Andrew's ears. It seems the only way. And yet, 
 where's the use ? " she said ; " where's the use ? We're 
 alive at least, I am, and Andrew is by fits and starts, 
 
 IS*
 
 228 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 and there will be an endless lot of to-morrows to be getting 
 more alive in ; and deafening Andrew right at the start 
 won't alter anything. Besides, he might think I was 
 mad, and put it all down to that, and then I'd have to 
 begin all over again. I'd better go while I can speak 
 like a lady! " 
 
 A wild laugh broke from her as she gathered up her 
 skirts, and ran lightly down the* corridor. 
 
 She was an interruption, even his measureless love and 
 illimitable wonder could not deny that, but in the same 
 breath Andrew keenly reproached himself. 
 
 The visits of angels are so rare that the mortal who 
 girds at them must indeed be churlish. 
 
 What he lost by her somewhat inconvenient presence 
 would be made up a thousandfold by the ineffable bene- 
 diction she would leave behind her. He put a chair for 
 her, a low-cushioned one, he was learning something 
 this clumsy Andrew ! and waited. She was plainly in a 
 more silent mood than was usual with her. It would have 
 been sacrilege to speak first. It might break some hidden 
 spell. 
 
 His simplicities took Audrey's courage away. Still in 
 silence she watched his maddening smile widen. All she 
 could say in the end was " Sorry ! " 
 
 He smiled with tender amusement. She said it in a 
 small voice like the boys. The grotesqueness of the word 
 struck into her sharply like a knife-thrust. She sat up 
 with the sting of the pain. It seemed so strange so 
 strange ! 
 
 The air of the room, the light of the lamp, the twinkling 
 bottles, the queer, wise things on the table they all 
 knew all about her, and there sat Andrew, smiling, 
 waiting, believing. If it had been anyone but Andrew 
 never, surely, was man so impossible to such a role ! 
 
 The monstrous incongruity in the matter drove her 
 back and back again from her implacable purpose. No 
 words could fit it, none explain. With her evanescent 
 charm, her elusive touches, she babbled of Macmahon, of
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 229 
 
 the nurse, of unimportant details. She confused Andrew. 
 Horrid thoughts of diphtheria racked his brain. Audrey 
 was never unreasonable, never a causeless distraction. 
 Beyond all women, she knew what she wanted, and the 
 value of time. She had always respected his privacy. 
 Nothing but illness could account for her present pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 For one instant he felt very much as an ordinary 
 husband might have done, the next he beheld in himself 
 a criminal. 
 
 " My dearest," said he ; "I fear you're ill ! " 
 
 She twisted in her chair and stood up before him like 
 a more bewildered child than ever. Her hair, as the 
 water dried, had grown more curly. It fell in wild pliant 
 waves about her head and face. A ray of moonlight 
 played on the white dress, the irrepressible life in her 
 entreated and besought, not Andrew, but something beyond 
 and above and about them, and it was to this she spoke, 
 and not to Andrew, when the words came swift, low, 
 level words which would not be denied, or stayed, or 
 silenced. 
 
 There was nothing violent or exaggerated, nothing even 
 dramatic in the confession of Audrey. It was terse, un- 
 sparing, pointed with inevitable truth. Something behind 
 her of which even in his agony Andrew had caught a 
 glimpse still entreated, still besought something but the 
 child who faced him gave no quarter, even as she asked 
 none. 
 
 The truth, throbbing and bleeding with naked life, lay 
 hot before Andrew. His whole being rose in revolt. 
 Involuntarily his hands, relaxed and powerless in the 
 first shock, rose up to beat off from himself and from the 
 child the horrible reality. 
 
 He knew ! he knew ! he knew ! but the first impulse 
 of the man must always be to defend the woman from his 
 own knowledge. Then all at once his hands fell back im- 
 potent. A man may wrestle with an unknown God, but 
 with the truth wherewith He has pierced his heart there
 
 230 " WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE " 
 
 is no contending. He sat quiet, loose, limp, unbound as 
 from a nightmare. His eyes were striving for sight, his 
 ears for hearing. He looked round at last amongst the 
 homely things wherein his quiet life had lain for some vague, 
 new understanding. He had realized too small a corner 
 of life ! The world in which he had always lived had told 
 him so little ; of the red tares of the hot flesh he knew 
 nothing at all. He had learnt neither mercy nor a mighty 
 faith at the honest root of things. He was most patheti- 
 cally unprepared to do justice to any sinful woman. He 
 would inevitably over-estimate her strength and under- 
 estimate her temptation. He had never followed hard 
 upon the hot scent of life, staking life itself upon the 
 passionate chase, never ventured to drink of the magical 
 waters of desire, to gaze fearless through the magic mirror, 
 and so touch the illimitable beyond where the travelled 
 eyes are focused, where the bold heart is fixed. The story 
 of the cloth of common things had written nothing upon 
 the consciousness of Andrew, nor had the potential un- 
 cleanness of a woman. And uncleanness in such a soul as 
 hers, that which had been the soul of his soul ! 
 
 This was the condemnation of Audrey. In this one 
 moment of time his infinite possession of her passed into 
 the had-beens. 
 
 " Oh, Audrey ! " he said again. " Audrey ! " 
 
 He loved her not less, but more; but this was gone 
 with the other things which lay in ashes at her feet, her 
 little twinkling feet ! Even now the gleam of a buckle 
 on one of her small shoes made him shiver. 
 
 It was gone with the rest, this wonderful sense of sole 
 possession, with his ideal, his consciousness of life, of God ; 
 his vague, immeasurable joy in all things and creatures ; 
 the warmth of living which Audrey had brought out into 
 the light. 
 
 Her little foibles, her pretty follies, her wayward moods 
 so sweet and dear, which ran in and out like a silver 
 current through the deeper river of her grave beauty. 
 Everything he had known and worshipped in her passed
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 231 
 
 before him in a mournful procession, and each, as it went 
 by, added a deeper note to his deathless sorrow. 
 
 He had always been too bound in by limitations to 
 accept the whole of any complex life even in its innocence ; 
 the very variety of the heights of Audrey had confounded 
 him, and her depths her guilt ! It seemed to sweep him 
 off his feet ! An incredulous, amazed cry of protest broke 
 from his lips. 
 
 " It can't be," said Andrew ; " it can't be ! " 
 
 " It is," she said, still standing before him, waiting. 
 
 There was a vague unseemliness in her attitude. Why 
 did she stand whilst he sat motionless in her presence ? 
 And for what did she wait ? 
 
 There was no more to say, no more to do, and that 
 she should stand while he sat was incomprehensible ! 
 Dazed, baffled, half blind, almost foolish from this bludgeon- 
 stroke of fate, as foreign to his nature as it was to his 
 experience, Andrew stumbled to his feet, and watched the 
 space between him and that which had been, growing, 
 growing, growing ! He judged her from the best he had 
 in him, from the pellucid depths of his own purity, and 
 that he had not penetrated into the eternal depths beyond 
 was not the fault of Andrew, whose education had but just 
 begun. He had hardly dared to face the flaming glory of 
 the dawn of life, when, lo ! it was snatched from him, and 
 in its stead there arose about him the twilight of a life 
 that is spent. 
 
 As they stood, the Little space between, a curious sense 
 of age fell upon Andrew, a slowing of his pulses, a mortal 
 loss of hope, a detachment, a solitariness as of one who has 
 failed young. 
 
 But still she waited silent, and very white. 
 
 He watched her wondering, this Audrey who was, and 
 a new sense came to birth in him with a laboured pang. 
 A sense of responsibility, dim, bewildering, extraordinarily 
 young and untaught, but something with which from 
 henceforth he must reckon. 
 
 His quiet, scholarly, delicately-organized brain had
 
 232 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 suffered change, and could not quickly readjust itself to 
 the new conditions. His heart was dead, his eyes 
 seared. He groped in the unaccustomed gloom of the 
 evening life. He looked at her across the chasm which 
 had swallowed the promise of the morning, the fulfilment 
 of noon, and as he looked, from sheer force of old habit, 
 the old inquiry, so intimately a part of him, grew up in his 
 defeated eyes. 
 
 This hurt her, perhaps, more than all the rest. By 
 this she realized the way in which he suffered. It was so 
 like Andrew to ask her her ! 
 
 " What will you do with me ? " she said, speaking for 
 him as she had so often spoken before. 
 
 " There's nothing left surely but to take care of you ! " 
 he said at last. 
 
 " Yes," she said wearily. She was very tired ; she 
 could not stand much longer. Suddenly he understood 
 that. 
 
 " Sit down," he said ; " please sit down." 
 
 He spoke in a quick, anxious, nervous way ; his eyes 
 blinked and tried to clear themselves ; his seeking fingers 
 twitched. He might have been an ineffectual mother 
 left suddenly without a nurse. 
 
 She could have screamed with agonized laughter, but, 
 instead of that, she meekly sat down. She could no 
 longer give way to her emotions as other women did. She 
 was now one apart, half invalid, half suspect, with Andrew 
 on guard, and the world listening at the door. The un- 
 utterable desolation of the dethroned queen was upon 
 her. She had lost her supremacy ; she quailed before 
 the cold terror of her new life. She who had always given 
 must now, in all things, accept. 
 
 She cowered shivering into her chair. 
 
 " You had better lie down," said Andrew, lamely. 
 
 " But before I do anything, I must know things," 
 she said tiredly. " There's so. much for both of us to be 
 sure of. There's my child there's everything. Would 
 it be better if I went away ? " she said simply.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 233 
 
 " You're mine, to take care of," he said, jerking out 
 the difficult words slowly. " I accept the responsibility 
 
 of everything, of your child " He broke off, looking 
 
 away from her. 
 
 ' If if only you weren't you ! " she whispered in the 
 choking silence. 
 
 Some strangled cry seemed to reach him from his dead 
 heart, but he put it aside. 
 
 " We can't change that," he said gently. " We can 
 change nothing, but you're mine always to take care of. 
 I'll do it clumsily at first, I fear, but I'll do my best, 
 Audrey, and one can learn. 
 
 " Why did you tell me this ? " he asked suddenly, a 
 light shooting into his dull eyes. 
 
 " I I had to." 
 
 " For Carfax's sake ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " To square him ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Ah ! " he said. " Ah ! " with the indrawn breath of 
 one who has received a mortal thrust. " Well, naturally," 
 he added presently, as though to himself. 
 
 " If if you had been anyone else ! " 
 
 " It would have made no difference, you loved him." 
 
 " No," she said out of her great sadness ; " it would have 
 made no difference. I want to say one more thing. I 
 must go to Southampton on Thursday to say good-bye. 
 I've promised ! It's the last time, and we've said good- 
 bye already, really." 
 
 " Go ! " he said ; "of course, go. I want no explana- 
 tions." Some warmth of humanity had left his voice. 
 
 She sighed and trembled. 
 
 " And after that you must rest. You must take care 
 of yourself, and permit me to take care of you, and now 
 you must go to bed." 
 
 " But I can't ! " she said, after a pause. " I'm going 
 to sit up with Macmahon. He's very ill ; he'll die, 
 probably and I promised."
 
 234 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " Sit up with Macmahon ! " he repeated. There was 
 no irony in his voice, but the vague surprise in it struck 
 Audrey. " It will be always like this," she thought 
 drearily. " I'd rather die and go to hell." 
 
 There was a quick step on the stairs, a peremptory 
 knock, and Dr. Lambert came in. 
 
 " You're right in your diagnosis, Mrs. Antrobus," said 
 he. " The boy is worse than I thought. My nurse is 
 good, but you're better. We'll have to save him between 
 us. It's not my fault, Antrobus, it's your wife's ; she's 
 made herself indispensable, and none of us want to lose 
 the boy. You don't look in the least fit for night nursing," 
 he said, with a sharp look at her. " You didn't when I 
 saw you in the room, so I've sent for this," he said, pour- 
 ing something into a glass. " Hope it's clean, Antrobus ; 
 no witch's poison at the bottom of it ? You must take it 
 three times in the night, and I've taken the liberty of 
 ordering nourishment for you as well as the nurse. My 
 nurse doesn't mind the arrangement in the circumstances, 
 and that's noble of her, I can tell you. I'll be back at 
 one o'clock. Very sorry, Antrobus, but blame your wife 
 and not me." 
 
 He went as he had come, with unhurried staccato 
 celerity, and they were together with their secret, and the 
 silence. 
 
 Neither broke it, for in the homely, brisk announce- 
 ment of the poor little tragedy of life, common to both, 
 and in which their hearts must beat as one, their brains 
 co-operate, their hands join, the dividing secret had grown 
 like a gourd. For a moment Andrew felt as though the 
 horror of it must stretch its foul tentacles into every atom 
 of his being, absorb the whole of him, and drink his life 
 away. It would he down with him at night, and in the 
 morning arise with him ; he would be no longer himself, 
 but the prey of this hideous encroachment, from which 
 there could be neither rest nor respite. 
 
 To-morrow, as upon a thousand to-morrows, it would 
 remain this secret a pain upon which no dawn should
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 235 
 
 arise, no sun go down. The room whispered the secret, 
 the garden throbbed with it. It was too great for human 
 heart to hold and this to be between them ! 
 
 Audrey, sensitive to any pain, could hardly endure her 
 own ; but Andrew's, heaped on top of it, must inevitably 
 make an end of her. Laying violent hands on her whole 
 being she stood up, and, what is more, she stood steadily. 
 She put a big call upon life, and life, the irresistible, replied 
 to the call ! 
 
 " I know," she said. " Don't think I don't know, 
 Andrew ; I know just what it is to you, Andrew, and, in 
 addition, I've got Larry ! " 
 
 He started. Her voice sounded like strange, broken 
 bells in the lonely evening. " I'm not asking for pity," 
 she said with sudden pride ; "I only say it in case 
 you should think I don't understand everything. But 
 I can't think any more now ; I can't be sorry any more ! 
 or anything. I've got to do my best for Macmahon. 
 
 " I wish," she said, turning to him, a mother's look in 
 her extraordinary eyes, " I wish you'd do some big thing 
 to-night. You could," she said, speaking slowly. " You 
 could do anything " She paused and sighed. 
 
 " There's no going back," she said. " It's done, and 
 one must go on on on ! If one didn't, one would die, 
 don't you think ? " 
 
 She went out quickly, firmly, unfalteringly. He heard 
 her go up the stairs, open the door, gently shut it. He 
 heard her soft step as she went on on on ! 
 
 Andrew, in common with other men, had his own idea 
 of the repentant Magdalen, and a most humble and 
 reverent appreciation for her, but this ! He was be- 
 wildered, amazed, broken with anguish, to which, in earth 
 and in heaven, there was no clue. 
 
 If she had cried ! He could have understood tears ! 
 But of her wild heart or her wild virtue he had no under- 
 standing.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 A UDREY with the prescience which dire necessity 
 \ and direr pain had brought to birth in her, knew quite 
 well what Andrew, even in the manner of her re- 
 pentance, demanded from her, expected from her, and 
 even in this she must bruise and wound him. 
 
 She smiled drearily as she went up the stairs. 
 
 " Even in this poor little thing I can't oblige him," 
 she said drearily. " I'd do anything I'd cut off my hair 
 I would ! What does it matter now ! I'd cut it off 
 and stand in a sheet at the church door at the eleven- 
 o'clock service, if it would give him one atom of satis- 
 faction ; but what good would it do ? And tears they 
 make your eyes red and take up your time ! One must 
 go on ; one can't wait. I haven't cried once for Larry, 
 not properly," she said, the tears raining down her cheeks. 
 " If Andrew knew that, I I wonder if he'd feel better ? 
 And what's the good of looking back ? If I sat down now 
 to look at my sins and think of Larry, what would become 
 of Macmahon, I'd like to know ? It's not the moment 
 either for tears or for remembrances. A pillar of salt or 
 a fountain of tears would be equally out of place. I can't 
 oblige Andrew oh ! poor Andrew ! " she sobbed, as 
 she tore off her clothes. " I must forget all the things 
 that interrupt, and just go on, and try to catch hold of 
 the life in Macmahon. It's crying out to me ! I can 
 hear it," she said, plunging into the cold bath set ready for 
 the morning. " I can actually hear it ! " she repeated, 
 gasping with the douche, " and his poor, ugly, importunate 
 body must not die when it wants so much to live ! " 
 
 236
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 237 
 
 " And his soul oh ! bother it ! " she said. His sal- 
 vation or her own were as much beside the mark in the 
 wild pressure of events as either remorse, or shame, or 
 any other deep and mortal pain. 
 
 It was the life in the boy crying to hers that set upon 
 every action of Audrey the sign manual of victory. 
 
 Once, whilst dressing, she yielded to a fatal temptation, 
 and paused with her ivory brush half lifted. 
 
 " I'd like to go to bed for ever," she said, and in in- 
 stantaneous obedience to her faltering thought she got 
 quite white and cold. But she had sense enough to stand 
 up and beat her hands together, and stamp with her 
 stiffening feet, and get hold of herself again. 
 
 " Anyway, I can't," she said. " I've just got to go on. 
 If I stopped once but since I can't, what's the use of 
 being idiotic ? " 
 
 When ten minutes later, perfectly dressed in a cool 
 green linen, neat and finished, with burnished hair, she 
 stood beside Macmahon's bed, she looked as fresh as a 
 flower. Dr. Lambert glanced at her with mounting 
 interest. 
 
 " I thought I'd better look in again," he said. " Shall 
 I tell you what to watch for ? " he asked, with a dubious 
 glance at her toilet and her brilliant face, and some grim 
 amusement at the quiet confidence with which she looked 
 down at the boy whose condition was now almost 
 desperate. 
 
 " No," she said airily. " Nurse, who knows, can attend 
 to these things. I'll be watching for the life behind them. 
 He wants to live and he's got to. My intelligence can go 
 no further. So don't muddle it with knowledge." 
 
 " I quite agree with you. The less you know of symp- 
 toms the better," he said drily, taking the thermometer 
 from under Macmahon's arm and handing it to the nurse. 
 Her expression was respectful and confirmatory. 
 
 " I daresay he feels you both looking like that," said 
 Audrey tranquilly. " Never mind them, lad. They're 
 wise and we're foolish, but we know what we want. And
 
 238 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 no decent soldier, or even the makings of one, would think 
 of letting himself be beaten by a beastly little microbe. 
 It is a microbe, isn't it ? " she said, turning her innocent 
 gaze upon the doctor ; " one likes to be reasonably 
 accurate." 
 
 " It's possibly a form of fungus." 
 
 " That's even lower in the social scale, Macmahon, and 
 a soldier has worse things to fight than microbes and 
 funguses." 
 
 " Oh ! " said the prim little nurse under her breath. 
 
 " You're not a Christian Scientist, are you, by any 
 chance ? " said the doctor, as he washed his hands, " or 
 a Faith-healer ? " 
 
 " Now ! " she said, warmly flushing. " Have I the 
 Christian Science smile or the Faith-healer's figure ? I 
 didn't expect this of you, Dr. Lambert." 
 
 " When are his people coming ? " 
 
 " They're in Paris. They'll arrive just in time to be a 
 nuisance, just when his attention oughtn't to be dis- 
 tracted for one instant from getting well. I feel sure 
 that aunt will want to be pawing him when the occasion 
 for it is at an end. I'm not uncharitable, but I've seen 
 the box she sent his things in, and you haven't." 
 
 " You're incorrigible," he said, chuckling in spite of his 
 grave fears. 
 
 She followed him to the door. 
 
 " He's going to live ? " she said. 
 
 " My small particle of knowledge says no, so for his 
 people's sake and yours I've asked Antrobus for a second 
 opinion. He'll be here at ten to-morrow." 
 
 " Then tell him for goodness' sake not to be thinking 
 horrid, depressing thoughts in this room and airing his 
 knowledge. It's such a simple business," she said, with 
 tired, wise, laughing eyes ; " why must you be com- 
 plicating it ? There's too much knowledge about already 
 with you and your nurse. It's wicked ignorance that's 
 going to save Macmahon. It's the only thing he under- 
 stands. With two mathematical geniuses on the
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 239 
 
 premises it took me to explain the nature of a rider to 
 him." 
 
 She glanced with a strange little smile at the ugly form, 
 heaving and gurgling on the bed. " Perhaps we're affinities, 
 Macmahon and I ; that might account for it ! " 
 
 With a deprecatory thought of his wife, a handsome, 
 angular lady who took life seriously, he smiled. At the 
 same time, he was a little sorry for Antrobus. So triumph- 
 antly cock-sure a young lady must be a disturbing element 
 on a scientific hearthstone. As a philosopher, Dr. Lambert 
 distrusted this novel element in a sick-room ; as a man, 
 he believed in it considerably more than he did in the 
 specialist that is, when he looked at Audrey. Directly 
 he got out of sight of her he pinned all his faith on the 
 man from town. 
 
 Meanwhile Audrey set to bending all her mind to avoid 
 treading on people's toes, and to upset, to the best of her 
 ability, all their scientific calculations. She refused to see 
 anywhere anything but indestructible life. Sometimes she 
 kept the life going in herself by startling the nurse out of 
 her primness by a merry laugh, or a story told in her full, 
 sweet voice. She never spoke under her breath, and never 
 did she leave the boy out of the conversation, or let her 
 eyes stray long from him. She spoke to him, and appealed 
 to him with the sincerest, most simple belief that he both 
 heard and understood. Why she believed it she neither 
 knew nor cared. The one certain thing was that unless 
 he was asleep, Macmahon stirred to the sound of her voice, 
 so she could defy all the expert knowledge in the kingdom, 
 and keep her hope alive. She knew he would want her 
 most in the darkness, so from the beginning she had decided 
 to rest by day and be with him by night. She put him to 
 sleep at last by pouring out beside him endless floods of 
 old rhymes picked up heaven alone knows where ! 
 
 They were strangely sad, and sweet, and wild, and Nurse 
 Donne, who had a literary and critical turn, and had 
 patiently waded through countless anthologies, was 
 puzzled to account for any of them. Then, with an odd
 
 240 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 glance at his nurse, suddenly breaking away from the 
 rhymes, Mrs. Antrobus repeated several psalms quite 
 accurately and in the purest, most beautiful voice. By this 
 time Macmahon was asleep, and her own concerns were 
 down again upon her, so she curled up limply in a big chair, 
 and her face dropped tiredly on the arm nearest the lamp. 
 She seemed, to the fascinated gaze of the nurse, to gather 
 up all the little tags of poetry, one after the other, and 
 to repeat each in flesh and blood, its sweetness, its sadness, 
 above all, its magic wildness and strange revolt ! The 
 nurse's eyes looked startled behind their glasses. She 
 drew her lips in at the corners. She prepared strongly to 
 disapprove of everything. She had had a sound evan- 
 gelical upbringing, and had supported for five years an 
 impossible husband. Both dispensations tell on a woman, 
 and make her eyes sharp to behold iniquity. 
 
 The proceedings and general bearing of Mrs. Antrobus 
 filled nurse with many gloomy apprehensions. 
 
 Then a little careless, petulant movement of the incom- 
 prehensible young woman made her much more plain to 
 the expert, and touched the truest, sweetest, freshest spot 
 in her sore-tried, worn heart, the little grave which held 
 her one dead child. It had been but scurvily received 
 by its father, this poor morsel ! He pathetically resented 
 the inroads its advent had made upon the valuable time 
 of his wife, and his prophetic eye quailed before what was 
 yet to come. He need not have disturbed himself. It 
 lived only five hours, but it spent well its little life. It 
 turned the patient eyes of its mother in a new direction. 
 And even if a woman only looks steadfastly into the 
 unseen in search of a baby five hours old, her vision inevit- 
 ably enlarges ; she asks for more, and she who asks, 
 expecting, will as surely receive. Her baby gathered 
 into his little hands all the commonness of the dust- 
 strewn life of little Nurse Donne. But to enable her to give 
 out that with which he continually filled the void, called 
 for the dynamic power of some other baby thought, or 
 touch, or pain:
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 241 
 
 Moreover, to anyone who has suffered and rejoiced in 
 the bearing of life, the first herald of its coming must 
 always be a shock of joy, of grief, of all the heights, and all 
 the depths in the unity that makes us one. The mystic 
 joy and the mystic pain even in the first breath of spring 
 can never stir and move a man as it must always stir and 
 move a woman. It will make him strut, indeed, and puff 
 himself out, and will beckon him seductively to his own 
 ends, but very rarely will it bring him weeping to his 
 knees. 
 
 The invitation is too elusive, its intimacy too lacking of 
 the warm earth. 
 
 But upon the present occasion Nurse Donne had no 
 desire whatever to be moved or stirred ; she would vastly 
 have preferred to keep on disapproving with a right mind. 
 Her eyes shied away from their own testimony ; she wiped 
 the moisture from her spectacles and looked again more 
 boldly. And with the second look she forgot everything 
 but the one thing. 
 
 The insolence of rank, its intrusive presumption, the 
 vanity of petted women, the seductiveness of unscrupulous 
 ones, even the dim suggestion of something " not right " 
 in the alien interloper all the bristling barriers that 
 divided them fell like Jericho's walls, and Nurse Donne 
 took possession of Mrs. Antrobus. 
 
 They were two women together, and she the wiser of 
 the two. As one with authority, she put a pillow under 
 the small white face, and drew the chair in which Audrey 
 lay nearer to the fire, pleasant in the cold before the 
 dawn ; then with mounting superiority, she sat awaiting 
 developments. The patient needed nothing. Her time 
 was her own. It made her feel almost ecstatic to be able 
 to look upon this blatant worldling from any height of 
 experience. 
 
 " A nice set-out," she mused. " I should have been 
 informed. That's what comes of marrying a dreamer; 
 and I daresay the doctor is also in total ignorance. Doctors 
 are like other men, they observe nothing about a woman 
 
 16
 
 242 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 except that she's pretty if she's pretty enough, that is, 
 and used to getting her own way. And if she'd been used 
 either to obedience, or to self-discipline, Mrs. Antrobus 
 wouldn't be here to-night." 
 
 Quite unconsciously she sniffed. A very considerable 
 amount both of obedience and of self-discipline had 
 done precious little for her. She stooped to put back 
 one of Audrey's feet which had slipped off the stool. 
 
 Audrey, deciding after a short trial that her own com- 
 plications must wait until Macmahon's were decided one 
 way or the other, was watching her out of the tail of her 
 eye. 
 
 The nurse's fixed gaze was slowly becoming significant. 
 She sighed ; her face was full of the demand of a superior 
 being. With the speed of an arrow Audrey shot to her 
 feet, scattering the pillows. 
 
 " Will you allow me to tell you, Mrs. Antrobus," said 
 Mrs. Donne sternly, " that you must not move in that 
 impetuous manner. It is er criminal. The patient is 
 asleep. Will you lie down like " 
 
 " A human being," suggested Audrey. 
 
 The impulse to fling out something daring took the nurse, 
 but she drew in her lips in time. 
 
 " The whole thing is madness. How it's permitted is 
 beyond me ! But, Mrs. Antrobus, will you take the few 
 precautions possible in the astounding circumstances ? " 
 
 Audrey's cheeks were scarlet, but she was laughing a 
 little. This transformation in the quiet, prim woman was 
 so weird, and yet there was a dignity in it. Powers she 
 had never suspected in so meek a creature, were plainly 
 being unearthed in Nurse Donne, and to be in any going 
 concern was always fascinating to Audrey. She had seen 
 Andrew's eyes glow as he stirred life out of a dead pond. 
 She experienced much the same sensation when she beheld 
 this mould, in which professional propriety had set and 
 hardened, manifesting lively emotions. 
 
 " I've never seen an outburst of professional zeal before," 
 she murmured. " It's delightful. Please go on."
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 243 
 
 The woman flushed a light puce. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Mrs. Antrobus," she said quietly, 
 kneeling to make up the fire. 
 
 " But goodness gracious ! " cried Audrey. " You've 
 just shown that you know better than that, than to 
 think I could be horrid in that sort of way. My minor 
 sins are never unforgivable, I wish you to know. I only 
 want you to speak as you spoke just now, to let me find 
 out new things in you, see things you generally take care 
 to hide. Until this minute I thought you just a model 
 nurse, and a most superior woman, and they're so unstimu- 
 lating when when you're lonely and people are ill. And 
 now, just when you've begun to be so nice and interesting, 
 there you are, rolling yourself up like a hedgehog and 
 thinking me a beast." 
 
 " I shouldn't presume to think you anything of the 
 sort, Mrs. Antrobus." 
 
 " Not in those words ; but yours are much more telling, 
 really. And with that," she said, glancing round half 
 shivering at Macmahon, " and all sorts of mysteries so 
 near such a word as presumption can't exist. We're 
 you and me together, groping in the dark in this queer, 
 quivering sort of loneliness. You'd feel different from 
 me in the day, of course, and be sorry if you didn't, but 
 here in the night, with the boy there fighting for the life 
 he's made such a mess of, we're just two women. Did you 
 know that he was a hopeless sort of poor thing, nurse, 
 the despair of all sensible people ? But he does want to 
 get well so much, and I'm so desperately anxious that he 
 should. No matter how undeserving people are, I want 
 them to get what they want. You think that an awful 
 doctrine, don't you ? " inquired Audrey, with an odd 
 look at her. " You've drilled yourself into complete 
 self-repression, I think. I wonder why ? I should have 
 thought you were humble enough by nature, without using 
 artificial means. I should like to know. It's suddenly 
 become extremely interesting." 
 
 On the rare occasions when one woman is absolutely
 
 244 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 sincere with another the other knows it. Nurse Donne 
 clasped her small knotted white fingers. 
 
 " I had a baby once," she said, " and it taught me many 
 
 lessons ; above all, I think, the responsibilities of life and 
 
 its solemnity, and the manifold dangers of self-indulgence." 
 
 " Nothing will persuade me that you ever wanted such 
 
 lessons. It takes one's courage away to listen to you." 
 
 " I needed every lesson that I have received, Mrs. An- 
 trobus, and, thank God ! nature can be overcome." 
 
 " You've overcome yours, certainly. I wish you'd tell 
 me what the result feels like ? " 
 
 " Like duty at least attempted," said she, with a meek- 
 ness to make one shudder. 
 
 " It's like a Buddhist stripping himself of every joy, 
 through a thousand lives, just for the sake of one little 
 miserable starved soul. Why should we be given a nature 
 only to thrust it out in the cold like a stray dog ? It's 
 not reasonable." 
 
 " It's the discipline of life. We cannot pit our feeble 
 strength against it." 
 
 " We can pit our extremely strong nature against 
 unnatural and unreasonable exactions," said Audrey with 
 decision. " I believe what our poor little nature wants is 
 adding to, not taking away from ; to have nice warm, 
 becoming clothes put on it, not to be stripped naked and 
 exposed to every east wind. Now, dear Nurse Donne, 
 don't say anything humble-Christian. One of my sisters- 
 in-law, whom I dearly love, is a humble Christian, and I 
 know all their arguments, and I have the smallest possible 
 opinion of them. Tell me about your baby and why it 
 died. I feel it died. J don't think you look like a happy 
 mother. Perhaps if you did," she added, " you wouldn't 
 have felt so kind just then to me. Being too happy 
 makes you forget other people, don't you think ? " 
 
 Nurse Donne was barely in a position to think at all. 
 She was repeating texts to herself, and wondering what it 
 must feel like to be pretty enough to get your own way all 
 along the line always, without visible effort, and to say
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 245 
 
 unseemly things with propriety. For the first time in her 
 existence her child had taken a back seat ; she knew it, 
 and flushed a more unbecoming puce than usual. This 
 also she knew, and it made her forget her texts. 
 
 She had so much, this other woman, without one thought 
 of religion, and probably not even the beginnings of a 
 layette. She was the sort of thing Mrs. Donne had been 
 brought up to hope for the best for ; and now to be longing 
 to be like her ! There was something about Mrs. Antrobus 
 it was impossible to put into words. Nurse Donne felt 
 absolutely certain that the devil was not very far off. 
 And yet she dared not hoodwink either herself or God. 
 What would she not have given to have the indescribable 
 attraction of this strange sinner ! "To have been a 
 Christian for fifteen years and be so little worthy of the 
 name ! " 
 
 She put her child tenderly back in his place and spoke 
 harshly in her contrition. 
 
 " My child lived just five hours, and then God took 
 him."" 
 
 " Oh ! oh ! " said Audrey, in a quick, scared way. 
 " I I do hope you cared for his father most awfully." 
 
 " Thank God ! " said Mrs. Donne, " I did my duty by 
 my husband." 
 
 " You poor thing ! " thought Audrey. 
 
 ' I wish the baby hadn't died." 
 
 " It was God's will." 
 
 " Don't say that again, please, not here in the dim light 
 and death all around us." Audrey shivered and looked 
 over her shoulder into the shadows, then hurriedly back 
 into the fire. " Oh, please, nurse, just touch him and see 
 if he's all right. 
 
 " Perhaps it wasn't God's will. It doesn't seem pro- 
 bable to-night, with all the curious things going on all 
 around us. I feel them. They seem to be listening to 
 us. I wish to goodness they wouldn't. They know too 
 much. I feel this minute as if a searchlight was being 
 waved up and down in my inside."
 
 246 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 The nurse started. The symptoms seemed to point 
 to mental disturbance .- 
 
 " How long have you been a nurse ? " asked Audrey. 
 
 " Just fifteen years, Mrs. Antrobus." 
 
 " Why, you must be saturated with this sort of thing. 
 Don't you feel sometimes as if you could hold no more, 
 as if you must blow up in order to breathe ? " 
 
 The nurse stared. 
 
 " I can't say, Mrs. Antrobus, that I do." 
 
 " But don't you feel the things going on feel that 
 they know more of you than is altogether agreeable ? " 
 
 Mrs. Donne rearranged the restless foot of the world- 
 ling. 
 
 " My life has been a life of discipline, Mrs. Antrobus. 
 I have learnt to curb my imagination." 
 
 " Oh ! But surely sometimes you must have given it 
 its head, taken off the bit and bridle just for a treat, and 
 given your poor imagination food and drink and a little 
 exercise. There must have been disorganized moments 
 in your life when the door of duty got off the latch, and 
 your imagination and the other forbidden things came 
 out to breathe. I'm quite absolutely certain it broke 
 loose when your baby died." 
 
 Audrey's eyes were full of a bold challenge ; she laughed 
 softly. " One must have a great many joys to give up 
 any one of them willingly to any God," she said, " and 
 when it's only one little ewe lamb ! Even if you were 
 encased in duty, you couldn't say, ' God's will be done ' 
 at first. Don't say you could, dear Nurse Donne, for I 
 wouldn't believe you, and I don't think even God would." 
 
 " It did take time," she admitted with sad, clasped 
 hands. Nurse Donne had a hunted look. The amazing 
 conversation was telling upon her, and yet she panted to 
 hear. The imagination she had so sternly controlled was 
 struggling in its bonds. She was perfectly well aware 
 that this recreant member had always clung hard to 
 the devil, that her conquest over it was but partial. She 
 cast a furtive look into the dim shadows ; never in all
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 247 
 
 her experience had she passed so unseemly a night ; but 
 she made a big effort, straightened her little valiant back, 
 and delivered her testimony. 
 
 " It did take time, Mrs. Antrobus. I was rebellious and 
 stiff-necked. I would not yield my will to His, but in the 
 end I found comfort found comfort in God." 
 
 Audrey leaned over and looked gravely in her face. 
 
 " Adeline all over again," she murmured. " It's per- 
 fectly true, you did. How extraordinary it must be ! I 
 seem to be porous to all sorts of distracting things ; every- 
 thing horrid trickles into me except this sort of thing that 
 belongs to you and to my sister-in-law. And yet it fas- 
 cinates me. One likes to experience, to know. One hates 
 being out of anything," she said, staring into the fire. 
 " It's just the same when I'm with Adeline. She's ex- 
 tremely wrong-headed. Her sacrifices are idiotic, but 
 she's got something I haven't, just as you have, and I 
 don't like it ; it makes me feel small." Audrey glanced 
 with interest at the lean, unilluminated face, at the stiff, 
 flat chest and flatter waist. " And Adeline has cancer," 
 she said, " and she's been sat on all her life. It seems 
 to square a good deal for both of you." 
 
 She leaned back in her chair, kicked off her shoes and 
 stretched out her feet to the blaze. There was a hint of 
 heathenish abandonment in the action. The nurse was 
 excited. A vision of the dances of naked savages arose 
 in her mind. Yet here was an opportunity. She almost 
 choked in her effort to rise to it. 
 
 " A baby is frequently a means of grace, Mrs. An- 
 trobus." 
 
 " Oh ! Doesn't it depend ? " said Audrey, her eyes on 
 the fire. " Suppose a baby had no right to appear, for 
 instance, would it be a means of grace, then, do you 
 think ? " 
 
 The nurse looked at her sharply. There was a suspicion 
 of mockery in the artless, watching eyes that half mysti- 
 fied, half offended her. 
 
 For a moment she said nothing ; she stooped to put a
 
 248 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 pillow under the little feet. She was bewitched by the 
 strange night's doings, by her own mounting interest in 
 one for whom her better judgment had not one good word, 
 and now those godless, irreverent eyes ! 
 
 She looked again, and could not comprehend how so 
 much sadness could show forth from such a face. 
 
 " Do answer," said Audrey. 
 
 " That is a question I cannot presume to deal with, Mrs. 
 Antrobus. Personally, I have no vocation for rescue 
 work. I have subscribed according to my means to the 
 cause, but that sort of iniquity does not appeal to me." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Audrey. " Oh ! " 
 
 " Your baby, I hope, Mrs. Antrobus, will teach you 
 many things of which you are now ignorant, and in many 
 ways. That is, if you receive it in the right spirit." 
 
 " What's that precisely ? " 
 
 The inquiry was not made in the right spirit ; of that 
 there could be little doubt. Nurse Donne bridled. 
 
 " As a chastening messenger from God, Mrs. Antrobus. 
 One for whom you must be prepared to sacrifice yourself 
 in a thousand ways. A baby is, I assure you, no light 
 responsibility." 
 
 " Dear me ! Duty and sacrifice again ! You never 
 mention pleasure." 
 
 " I've known so little of it. For fifteen years I've 
 been watching pain, and, thank God ! its sanctifying 
 effect." 
 
 Audrey wriggled in her discomfort. To-night she was 
 down on the bare bed-rock of everything. The bleak, 
 primitive, anxious morality of the woman suited her 
 mood. She was so safe in the hands of this creature, so 
 ignorant of everything. This dull, good little nurse, sodden 
 with blind obedience to God and man. And in the 
 piercingly wise atmosphere, the sad, reminiscent silence 
 she was so lonely, so full of a throbbing life of which she 
 knew so little, so near another life of which she knew less, 
 and so she turned with relief and yearning to any homely 
 comfort.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE"- 249 
 
 The minute conventions, the commonplace narrowness 
 of the woman, her point of view, her scale of emotion and 
 set of gown and cast of feature, were all so safe and so ridi- 
 culous in any big demand of sense, or soul, or circum- 
 stance. She had been born in a uniform, and spent her 
 tender youth in looking forward humbly to a depressing 
 matrimonial career, and now she purified her harmless 
 little soul in looking back to it. The pivot on which she 
 turned was much more the unspeakable husband than the 
 five-hours' baby. That was a painful joy, and to dwell 
 too much even on a painful joy savours of idolatry. By 
 no stretch of the imagination could her feelings towards 
 her husband be connected with idolatry. In the com- 
 panionship of such a person one is, indeed, preserved 
 from many sins ! 
 
 " One good look inside her would be extremely interest- 
 ing," thought Audrey, and suddenly she was afraid even 
 of that. 
 
 The silence, broken only by the quick, hard breathing of 
 the sick boy, seemed alive and to be drawing in about her. 
 She drew closer to the nurse and in a childish little way she 
 caught hold of her apron. 
 
 " Sacrifices seem to differ a great deal," she said. 
 " Suppose a sacrifice got mixed up with a great deal of 
 pleasure and a great deal of sin, would it lose all its savour 
 in your eyes ? " 
 
 Nurse Donne looked scared. 
 
 The conversation, she felt in her bones, was becoming 
 risque. She did not disdain modern literature and had 
 " studied " French. 
 
 " But but, Mrs. Antrobus ! I don't understand 
 you." 
 
 Audrey turned innocent, inquiring eyes upon the fire. 
 "" It's so hard to think of an instance. Oh ! well, I do 
 know a case in point just now ; it won't matter if I don't 
 mention names. Suppose a married woman cared for 
 some one else ? It happens, you know, in in worldly 
 circles in London and Paris."
 
 250 
 
 Again Nurse Donne bridled. This was a more inti- 
 mate experience even than novels. It brought the devil 
 in a way closer. 
 
 " They were both getting ready for a divorce, when 
 suddenly it struck the er woman that this sort of thing 
 would do a lot of harm to the man spoil his career, in 
 fact, say he was in the Diplomatic Service, or the Army, 
 or Navy so she simply insisted on his giving her up 
 he didn't want to a bit and came home to mind the 
 house, and mend the socks, and be good ever after. The 
 husband was very good and knew nothing about any- 
 thing ; but she told him everything all right, so as to begin 
 again all good and nicey. Now, you see, it would be pretty 
 awful for the woman ; bad enough for the others, of course, 
 but worse for her. Do you think in that case that the 
 sacrifice would square things a bit all round and make the 
 contraband baby if there was one a means of grace ? " 
 
 The nurse's eyes were nailed helplessly to her changing 
 face. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Antrobus ! I couldn't think of judging." 
 
 " But you're judging this minute." 
 
 " Pain sent by God " 
 
 " Dear, good little nurse, I wish I could make you 
 understand ! " She sat up and fixed her eager eyes on the 
 woman. " She loved the man most immensely, and the 
 life with him rushed on on on ! It was like a river at 
 the flood, running straight out to a great sea, so full that 
 it ached and overflowed I know exactly how it all was 
 but she gave it all up, and came back to paddle about in 
 a little back-water of life for the rest of her days, with 
 nothing to look forward to and everything to regret. Can't 
 you put aside the thought of sin just for a minute, and say 
 what you really think ? " 
 
 Nurse Donne had heard something of the goings-on of 
 worldlings, not only in literature, but from less remote 
 sources ; but this shameless intimate demand ! And 
 yet the appeal to herself stirred her in a way it had no 
 business to do ; of that she was quite certain, but it went
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 251 
 
 on stirring her all the same. Never in all her experience 
 had she conversed upon such topics on intimate terms 
 at daybreak in a chamber of death. She was impotent, 
 speechless. Education, we are told, consists in being pre- 
 pared for any emergency. The education of Nurse 
 Donne was plainly in its infancy. She quailed before 
 the unexpected. 
 
 " Mrs. Antrobus," she wailed, " will you lie down even 
 for half an hour ? " 
 
 " Oh, dear me ! " said Audrey ; " that's not an answer, 
 and I'm not delirious. I'm perfectly sane, and, what's 
 more, I mean to know. It interests me to have your 
 opinion on this matter ; it will be the opinion of so many 
 thousands of other good people. Very likely it would be 
 the opinion of the husband ; he was beautifully brought 
 up by a good woman." 
 
 " It's a matter for prayer," pleaded the nurse. " Dear 
 Mrs. Antrobus, ask God." 
 
 " Even if I did," she said slowly, " people don't get 
 direct answers to prayer. We'll know all about God's 
 opinion in time. I want to know yours now. It would 
 be a right opinion ; you'd share it with the best public 
 opinion in every village in England, led on by every rector ; 
 and she's got to live in a village. So, you see how really 
 important your opinion is to me. I've got to advise her, 
 you see. Would the sacrifice square things ? It's pretty 
 big, and nothing's wasted in nature, they say ; so why 
 must this be the one exception ? And would the baby 
 be a means of grace ? " 
 
 Her pellucid eyes steadily demanded a reply ; but in 
 spite of their clear innocence, a strange, unaccountable 
 suggestion of sinister significance looked out from behind 
 them. 
 
 Nurse Donne was anything but at ease. She spoke in 
 jerks and with some slight acidity. 
 
 " If the lady you mention has any depth, if she is not 
 wholly deadened by frivolity, if she is still capable of feel- 
 ing pain, then this unfortunate child may, in the end,
 
 252 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 prove the cause of her conversion. Sometimes God 
 chooses strange methods." 
 
 " Yes ! He chose an ass once ; a baby is nicer, don't 
 you think ? So as long as the poor wretch can keep on 
 feeling awful, there's some chance for her ! It's a curious 
 sort of hope to hang on to ! Can she never be happy 
 again never in all her life ? " Audrey shivered. " It 
 makes you feel deadly," she said ; " and after all, it's 
 done. Nurse ! do say something nice ! " 
 
 " Oh ! Mrs. Antrobus, and the poor woman ! What 
 can I say ? Every repentant sinner will some day 
 rejoice." 
 
 " Oh ! in Heaven ! but it's so remote and hymn-booky 
 and think of all the years of the meanwhile ! Good people 
 have less imagination than bad, I think, even to begin 
 with, before they've curbed it. And yet perhaps I wrong 
 them ; after all, they invented hell, and that wanted an 
 imagination, if ever anything did." 
 
 " Oh ! don't, Mrs. Antrobus," panted Nurse Donne, 
 " and in your condition ! " 
 
 " Would it be better if I were to meditate on hell just 
 now ? would it be more likely to make my baby a means 
 of grace ? Do good women always think of hell before 
 their babies are born ? It's hard luck on the babies, I 
 think," said Audrey tiredly, pushing back her gleaming 
 hair. 
 
 " I wish some frightful sinner would invent a new reli- 
 gion, who'd felt inside him, you know, what hell really 
 meant, and could describe it properly at first hand. That 
 religion would teach people everything, and it would be 
 full of mercy. It would never hurt anything again, and 
 it would guard everybody in the whole world from the 
 tiniest thought of hell." 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Antrobus, let us talk of something else ! " 
 
 " I wish you'd understand," said Audrey petulantly. 
 " You might in this curious light, and with curious things 
 going on so near us, and with your five -hours' -old baby, 
 and being a Christian martyr inside you. If some saint
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 253 
 
 could live just for one week in the heart of a sinner with 
 an open mind, she'd convert the world. It must be a 
 woman," she reflected ; "it would take a man a month 
 to find out what a woman would know in a week, and no 
 saint could stand a month in the inside of a sinner ; the 
 whale's would be a fool to it. He'd become unbalanced 
 with the strain, and come back as parochial as ever." 
 
 Nurse Donne looked flushed and apoplectic. 
 
 " Mrs. Antrobus," she almost spluttered, " will you let 
 me nurse you ? I am fully qualified." 
 
 " I should like you to nurse me. You'd be very kind 
 and nice and un-understanding, and we'd have plenty 
 of time for conversation." 
 
 She smiled like an angel in the little woman's face, and 
 touched her hand in an odd, appealing way. 
 
 " I think I'd Like to have you, but first you must pro- 
 mise something, or I'll not. Now listen," she said, sitting 
 up straight ; " will you promise faithfully never once to 
 think of hell, but simply to nail your eyes to Heaven 
 between now and then ? If you don't, I won't have you. 
 Will you promise ? " 
 
 Nurse Donne tottered. She hung on wildly to thoughts 
 of opportunities, but her carnal mind said : " Yes." 
 
 " But do you think you can for weeks on end ? " said 
 Audrey. 
 
 The nurse looked sheepish. 
 
 " I'll make an effort, Mrs. Antrobus. I'll make it a 
 matter of prayer." 
 
 " I wonder if you know what you're letting yourself in 
 for," said Audrey with a little laugh.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 A SUDDEN change in the boy's face brought both 
 women to their feet, and for the next two hours they 
 found but little time for speculation. 
 
 The nurse did her duty finely without a ray of hope ; 
 Audrey did little else than hope on steadily with all her 
 resolute heart. 
 
 The hideous unfairness of letting him die now upon the 
 very threshold of a new chance appealed so strongly to 
 every sporting instinct in her that she seemed as one 
 literally inspired. 
 
 To Audrey the issue of the battle no longer concerned 
 one poor little life ; there were bigger issues involved. 
 The struggle held everything. It was the weak against 
 the strong for all time. To lose him now were ineffaceable 
 dishonour, not only to her and to the nurse and doctor, 
 but to the world itself. Her whole being seemed to expand 
 in the fierce fight. She simply took the matter into her 
 own hands and defied the Universe for this poor fool 
 who wanted at last to do better ! 
 
 Without a thought of God in her godless heart, she was 
 fighting that night for the honour and the justice and 
 the lovingkindness of God. She was possessed by the 
 impersonal passion of a great soldier. The doctor won- 
 dered whether she were saint or devil. He was glad his 
 wife was safe in her bed. The nurse lifted up a prayer 
 for the unborn child, and at last the boy breathed freely ; 
 the crisis was past. 
 
 " And now you'll lie down, Mrs. Antrobus," said the 
 nurse and the doctor in a breath. 
 
 254
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 255 
 
 " Indeed I will, for two hours, and then I have to go to 
 Southampton to see a friend off to the war." 
 
 " Mrs. Antrobus ! " 
 
 " It's all right," she said, laughing. " I can put as 
 much sleep into two hours as other people can into a 
 whole night, and we don't have wars every day and 
 friends going off to them. I'll be with you to-night, 
 Macmahon," she said, leaning down to him ; " so be 
 getting ready for me all the time. You mustn't give us so 
 much trouble to-night, you know, because we'll all be 
 tired." 
 
 Dr. Lambert was genuinely anxious about her ; he dis- 
 trusted too much pent energy in women. After such a 
 night, to be gadding off to Southampton ! He had fallen 
 a good deal under the dominion of his wife, and when at 
 nine-thirty he saw Mrs. Antrobus in serene perfection on 
 the steps, he felt annoyed. 
 
 " She's not a saint," he reflected. " It's in the marrow 
 of her bones to spend herself on fads and frivolities. All 
 this nursing business is against nature." 
 
 Her husband was standing beside the motor, and at 
 sight of him a distinctly startled look touched her face, 
 and she flushed brilliantly. 
 
 " I have excellent advice to give you both," said 
 the doctor drily, " but I think I'll keep it to myself." 
 
 " And please don't let the specialist be too depressing," 
 said Audrey. 
 
 " Antrobus knows, if anything, less of her than I do," 
 he mused as he walked off. 
 
 She had not seen Andrew since that moment when he 
 stood helpless on the threshold of the new life, and now 
 to find him here ! It was odd and dreadful ; it made her 
 heart beat, but it was Andrew all over, to be accepted 
 with everything else. As Audrey flushed he had grown 
 a little whiter. 
 
 " And he'll be here when I come back, too," she thought, 
 with a horrid feeling of suffocation, " to protect me ! 
 It would hurt less, I think, if he beat me."
 
 256 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " Take all the care you can of yourself." he said. " The 
 boy is better. Must you sit up with him to-night ? " 
 
 " Oh, I must ! He's not safe yet, anything but safe, 
 but I'll lie down when I come back." 
 
 He tucked her in with clumsy carefulness, and as he 
 stood up, she noticed that he had dropped back into his 
 old stoop. She had quite cured him of it, and had 
 begun to feel rather proud of his figure. Her breath came 
 in little noiseless pants. Unless this were nipped in the 
 bud, what would be the end of them ? 
 
 " Andrew," she said desperately, leaning down to him, 
 " if you fall back into all your old habits, you'll never 
 get through at all, and then neither shall I. The one 
 single thing is to hold yourself as stiff as a ramrod, and 
 now your back is bent like a bow. I'm grateful to you 
 for coming to see me off. Oh, Andrew, I am ! but but 
 you frighten me ! It's I who ought to be bent double, 
 don't you see, and not you ; and yet nothing will induce 
 me to stoop. It will take my courage away to be always 
 watching you, and I want it all, Andrew. If only you 
 could get your mind back on your work ! Oh, poor 
 Andrew ! Good-bye ! I only make things worse." 
 
 So Andrew went back into his class-room with another 
 burthen of obligation upon his tired shoulders, and from 
 that day he was never seen to stoop again, unless it might 
 be in the course of an experiment ; but Audrey soon 
 forgot her pain in another, the greater as usual swallowing 
 up the less. 
 
 This misery rocked her to sleep in the train, but the 
 pain that was to keep her sleepless for many a night to 
 come met her at the station. Larry's face, with the 
 triumph of life on it, and the sorrow of parting. In a 
 quick flash of insight she saw that in some sort he had 
 already conquered everything that can hold a man back 
 sin, sorrow, regret, foreboding everything but love ! 
 and she was left at home with defeat. Her fight was all 
 to come. Andrew was saddening, but Larry seemed to 
 slay her. She trembled and laughed.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 257 
 
 " But you love me just exactly the same," she said, " in 
 spite of the war." 
 
 " How could I love you any different, goose ? And what 
 has the war to do with it ? " 
 
 " It has a lot to do with it. You're quite new." 
 
 " Not I. I'm as old as sin, and thirsting for the blood 
 of the righteous, It's my first chance, you know. Wars 
 don't hang on every bush." 
 
 " Take me for your page, Larry, and I'll sharpen your 
 tailor sword with a patent steel." 
 
 " Come along," he said. 
 
 He was piloting her through the crowd, and although 
 he had learned to trust Audrey in most contingencies, he 
 did not like the look in her eyes now. She had no war 
 to square everything as he had ; she had it all to bear ! 
 Poor Audrey ! 
 
 " You've been killing yourself with that boy," he said. 
 " I oughtn't to have let you come." 
 
 " As if you could have kept me away ! I told Andrew 
 everything last night, and just now he came to see me 
 off." 
 
 Larry whistled. 
 
 " He looked bowed to the earth with my sin. I think 
 he'd feel better if I stooped too, but I can't. I'll hold 
 myself better than ever, Larry, when you come home to 
 see." 
 
 " You needn't tell me^ dear. I know you." 
 
 " So does Andrew." 
 
 " Possibly as Mrs. Antrobus. Audrey, write every 
 week, dear ; tell me everything. Don't leave out one 
 trifle. You're mine while I'm alive. Nothing can alter 
 that." 
 
 " I wonder," said Audrey. " This war has altered you 
 more in a month than I did in three years." 
 
 " The thought of you has come largely into the thought 
 of bloodshed, darling." 
 
 " I'm being a chastening dispensation to two men, it 
 seems. It's it's too much for one woman. You look 
 
 17
 
 258 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 a rather boastful and blatant warrior, Larry. You're 
 rather like Tartarin going to kill lions. Oh ! look at the 
 faces of those women ! " 
 
 They were now in the shed opposite the transport, 
 amidst piles of baggage, tardy question and quick reply, 
 the faces of absorbed men and sorrowful women. A 
 mother waited with mournful patience while her boy 
 swaggered round in his first khaki. A more courageous 
 one smiled. Wives used to patience stood aside whilst 
 their husbands attended to their last duties on this side. 
 Fresh country lads, the details of various regiments, 
 trooped through, some grinning fatuously in their excite- 
 ment, others with mouths agape and tears behind their 
 simple eyes ; some were stolid already from the hardness 
 of life, some weakened with the stress and strife of it ; 
 more grown strong in the wonderful mill. Audrey had 
 no eyes for the grizzled veterans who knew ; it was the 
 boys and the women, who had yet to learn who seized and 
 held her. 
 
 She made Larry wait while she gathered their pain into 
 her throbbing heart, and let the sad procession of their 
 faces write itself indelibly upon her consciousness. 
 
 Larry looked at her. 
 
 " I say," he said almost roughly. " You must drop 
 this. How are you to live at all if you go picking up other 
 people's troubles in this reckless way ? You have enough 
 of your own, child. Everyone must bear his own grief, 
 just as he must do his own job. It's all in the day's 
 work. This will make men of these youngsters and teach 
 their mothers sense. The nation's got a bit soppy." 
 
 " Well, really," said Audrey. " I never thought I'd 
 have to have such a word applied to me." 
 
 " It was applied to the nation, and not to you." 
 
 " Don't prevaricate, Larry. I thought tribulation had 
 improved you, but it hasn't. You've taken even that 
 small consolation away from me." 
 
 " No, Audrey, I haven't. You can stick to that, any- 
 way. I'm not quite the fool I was, dear, or the bounder.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE " 259 
 
 I'd take better care of you now than I did. I haven't 
 much to boast of, but that's true, I think. I'd give 
 a good deal to be able to wipe all that off the slate. 
 When one stops playing and begins to live, one sees things 
 different, and there's one thing certain : you can wipe 
 nothing off that's ever been written on any slate. It's got 
 to be worked off somehow, of course, but it wants more 
 than a sponge. I've found that, and it's my job, Audrey, 
 this ; not yours, thank Heaven ! " 
 
 " What's the use of treating me as if I were a passive, 
 lady-like sort of person, Larry ? I've never been passive 
 in anything, and very rarely lady-like. I've more brains 
 than you, my good boy ; we're equal partners in this job, 
 as you call it, and always have been. We've both got our 
 work cut out for us. This is a nice cabin, Larry." 
 
 " It's ripping ! They've given me one of the best. 
 You'll do your work like a brick, I know ; but, only 
 for me, it would have been the light, every-day work of 
 any woman, not the up-hill, grinding game it is. We're 
 not equal partners. It's the part of a man to look after 
 a woman, and I wasn't a man ; that's all." 
 
 " But I was a woman," said Audrey, with calm finality. 
 " Be reasonable, Larry ; I've never been a cipher in 
 that or anything else. For myself, I find my own sins 
 quite enough without trying to sneak other people's. 
 Some people are never satisfied. Will you write from every 
 stopping-place, Larry ? " 
 
 " Of course I shall." 
 
 She stood up and looked out through the door. 
 
 " I wonder if you'll be nice to those boys, walking up 
 and down to show their uniforms, instead of talking to 
 their mothers, or if you'll snub them ? Don't snub them, 
 Larry ; the most foolish things are wise enough to be 
 hurt. If you saw Macmahon ! Goodness ! and he's so 
 ugly ! There's an immense salmon-coloured freckle on 
 the very tip of his nose." 
 
 " You look as white as death. I'm going to get you 
 coffee or something. You'll be all right while I'm
 
 260 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 getting it, Audrey ? You mustn't get ill now. If I 
 thought that '' 
 
 " Do you think I'm quite an idiot ? Go and get the 
 coffee, do ! " 
 
 When he had gone a great dry sob broke from her, the 
 anguish of her heart flooded her small delicate face. She 
 seemed too fragile for struggle so fierce. " I wonder if I 
 shall ever see him again ? " she said. " I wonder if this 
 is the way in which we must work it off ? A sponge, 
 indeed ! No such luck for the likes of us. That's not the 
 way they do these things, I'm beginning to think." 
 
 " Oh, Lnrry ! how quick you've been, and with the 
 brandy and spoon and all complete ! I wonder if you'll 
 keep up all your bad habits, besides me, on the veldt ? 
 I've been your worst habit, Larry. A whole life spent in 
 shedding bad habits and vices will be rather monotonous, 
 don't you think ? I wonder what repentant sinners fill 
 up the holes with ? You couldn't keep a stagnant tank 
 of repentance in your inside. It wouldn't be wholesome. 
 What will you call me, Larry ? Your aunt, or your first 
 cousin once removed ? That's in the prohibited degrees 
 pasted up in the church, so it's all right. Have some 
 coffee ? It's our last stirrup-cup, and my true love and 
 ever, and it's you who should be drinking it, not I. Vica- 
 rious suffering is bad enough, but vicarious stirrup-cups 
 must be worse for the other man ! I think I must be 
 getting good, Larry. I can't smoke." 
 
 " You'd better come up. My stable companion has 
 just come on with half a dozen belongings in tow. Say 
 good-bye, darling." 
 
 " We said it that day in town. That was the death-bed 
 parting of the poets." 
 
 " Oh, Audrey, don't 1 " 
 
 " Oh, Larry ! Larry ! Good-bye ! " 
 
 "Oh, my own ! I wish to God " 
 
 " I'm glad we love each other, Larry ; I can think of 
 nothing else now. Oh, Larry ! I'll always be sinfully 
 proud of you Stop wishing, and go on on on ! I shall
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 261 
 
 presently. Don't be the least afraid. Presently, Larry, 
 when I'm rested, we'll both be going on, and you'll be 
 marching to the sound of drums, and I'll hear it. Good- 
 bye." 
 
 The other man, with his crowd of satellites, all twittering 
 like birds, came in as they went out. 
 
 " He's dissipated his affections, that man," she said, 
 " and learnt much wisdom. He keeps it all in his 
 outside pocket, and will have the greatest pleasure in 
 passing it on to you ; you'll have a cheerful voyage. It's 
 the safest way, really ; it's what you should have done, 
 dear, instead of starting a past at your age ! Come and 
 see how the boys are getting on, and the mothers. Oh ! " 
 she said, as they leaned over the side of the boat, " look 
 at all the swaying white faces looking up for the last 
 good-bye. It's like a sea of sadness, and the monotony 
 of it ! Neither hats, nor clothes, nor feathers, nor figures 
 make the smallest difference the same stream of sorrow 
 is flowing through all of them, and they've all grown 
 exactly alike." 
 
 " Come, child ! " 
 
 " Larry, send me a list of all the details, and I'll watch 
 thek names. I belong to that sea, you see, and the more 
 I know of vicarious suffering the less I like it, and the awful 
 way it will keep cropping up ! " 
 
 " The last bell, Audrey ! And the last good-bye ! " 
 
 " Larry ! Go on ! on ! on ! Never stop, and pre- 
 sently I'll keep step with you. I'm not going to be out- 
 done by the likes of you ! Don't flatter yourself, 
 Larry ! " 
 
 She stood upon the fringe of white faces, erect and 
 smiling to the boys, who stared at her ; but to Larry it 
 seemed that the stream of sorrow which flowed in rivulets 
 and runlets through all the rest of the livid crowd, gathered 
 itself together and flowed in full flood to Audrey. 
 
 For of all women he had ever known, Audrey had the 
 greatest heart.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 MACMAHON was safe at last, slowly labouring on 
 towards convalescence. The boy had been snatched 
 from the jaws of death by the sheer audacity of 
 ignorance of that there was no doubt. The rest was 
 hopelessly mixed up with a riddle of a mouth, and two 
 blue eyes, which cast conflicting lights on serious subjects. 
 
 " The mystery of womanhood is beyond the conception 
 of any sane man," said the specialist, at the end of his 
 final visit, " but when it's complicated with the half 
 derisive inspiration of a most delicate devil it's best left 
 alone. I have always suspected the devil of being purely 
 feminine, now I know the supposition to be correct. A 
 crammer's wife to be sure ! If I had a son I'd send him to 
 her ! " 
 
 " My wife has decided not to send ours," said the 
 general practitioner with commendable solemnity. 
 
 " Mrs. Lambert is no doubt wise in her decision, but 
 we're as God made us mere men ! " 
 
 " She sent the aunt away weeping with gratitude, 
 without seeing the boy, and warded off the rest of the 
 family by the same methods." 
 
 " And she has given a lift to two reputations, and pre- 
 served a pupil intact to Antrobus. A Napoleon in petti- 
 coats ! I should like to know that she was happy." 
 
 " Happiness is the privilege of the commonplace," said 
 Dr. Lambert, quoting from his wife in one of those moments 
 of " divine discontent " which so- frequently made his 
 house unbearable. 
 
 As he drove back to the station the specialist smiled the 
 
 262
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 263 
 
 hollow smile of long cultivation, but he was sorry for the 
 other man. 
 
 " He might be happy here, too, in these free airs and wide 
 spaces," he thought. " It's hard enough to grasp happi- 
 ness in the eternal sadness of the streets, and in the con- 
 flict and despair of competition, but it must lurk some- 
 where, surely, in this whispering heather, with no rival 
 within a radius of five miles and a serious wife. But it's 
 the same with him as with all of us, I suppose. His 
 happiness is locked up in the tender, inexorable, im- 
 practicable heart of a woman, for it's she, after all, who 
 holds the happiness of the world, even as she holds its 
 life. And six new gowns last quarter," he groaned, " and 
 Heaven alone knows how many bridge debts ! " 
 
 " And she's quite commonplace, really, poor little 
 Ada ! Thank Heaven ! I detest domestic sphinxes ! 
 I must try and find some other way with the poor child ! 
 Happiness is, after all, the least commonplace of pos- 
 sessions." 
 
 Audrey had that curious effect on men. No one who 
 ever looked at her but wanted to be happy, and to give 
 a little happiness to some other wretch, and at that moment 
 she was sitting on a green seat in the sun of late autumn, 
 thinking that no one's sorrow had ever matched hers. 
 Nevertheless, she was laughing a little. Having pulled 
 herself together, and gathered her wits, she was just going 
 to tell Adeline about the baby, with the reservations 
 necessary to the narrative. 
 
 The situation had its humours, and all the dolours of 
 humanity and all the horrors of hell could not have hidden 
 them from Audrey. And yet it was mortal pain to her 
 to befool Adeline, an unspeakable affront to the dying 
 woman, an unspeakable degradation to herself. 
 
 " If only the righteous knew the malignant meanness 
 of sin and the vile advantages it takes of you," she mur- 
 mured, " they'd all be so full of sympathy for the sinner 
 that they'd coddle her up as they would a baby." She 
 stood up, and went slowly on. " And that would be
 
 264 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 extremely bad for sinners, I suppose. But one is so 
 lonely ! " 
 
 The long nursing, the stern control over mind and body 
 she had been practising day and night, the melting com- 
 passion that, in spite of her rigour of self-command, would 
 keep flowing out to the ugly lad, Andrew a deepening 
 bruise in her heart, Larry lode-star and death-stroke in 
 one, the terrible problem of the coming child, and now 
 this news she bore were weakening even Audrey. The 
 day was hot and thunderous, and she had been neglecting 
 Adeline. Since the day of the new life she had never 
 once been near her. 
 
 She walked slowly, firmly, resolved not to be tired. 
 She called in at a farm on the edge of the park, and had a 
 glass of milk, and a look at the latest baby. She soundly 
 shook three boys who were worrying a weasel, and tried 
 to induce a fat and well-liking tramp of tender years to 
 join the army. By the time she reached Adeline she felt 
 greatly restored. 
 
 Adeline had now grown very fragile, and rarely sat up, 
 and as she lay passive, her muscles and nerves all happily 
 relaxed, her free spirit flew in and out and sanctified 
 the airs about her. Audrey was far too sensitive not to 
 be aware of some subtle impression, far too artistic not 
 to appreciate the rare excellence of it. It was an en- 
 chanted air, and made her feel lonely and aloof. She felt 
 like some intruder in a shrine^. 
 
 " Oh ! Adeline," she cried. " Couldn't you feel nice 
 and wicked and understanding for a few minutes ? This 
 isn't at all the welcome I expected after a whole fort- 
 night. What have you been up to ? Not turning ritualist 
 surely, after all these years of simple gospel. There's a 
 subtle suggestion of incense in this room, or have you been 
 setting up a secret still in your inside ? What is it all 
 about, you dearest of dears ? " 
 
 "I've been waiting for you, dear, and thinking of you, 
 and it's been so long. I wondered if you'd ever come ! " 
 She lifted herself weakly on her elbow to look at Audrey.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 265 
 
 " And there is something I knew there was. What have 
 you to tell me, Audrey ? Don't be long, dear. Your 
 spoiling has made me exacting." 
 
 So Audrey told her, with the necessary reservations. 
 It seemed so sacred a thing to Adeline, so exquisite and 
 new, that her white face flushed, and she hid it in her thin 
 hands. 
 
 " I knew that it was something great ; I knew you were 
 going where I coujd never follow you ! I've been feeling 
 so out of your life lately, dear Audrey, so small, and of 
 no account. Nothing has ever happened to me ; every- 
 thing has passed me by ! It was quite natural you didn't 
 come, dear. I see that now, but don't let me feel like a 
 stranger to you again, dear Audrey, for so long together. 
 I'm too old and ill ! You've made yourself too necessary 
 to me, and I have so much time to think now, and to clear 
 my brain, that all sorts of things are becoming so plain 
 to me, and they're all about you." 
 
 She stretched out her hand for Audrey's. " Even now 
 even now, with this wondrous thing come to pass even 
 now, Audrey, I know more certainly than I've ever known 
 that you're different quite different from anyone I've 
 ever known, and in a dreadful, dreadful way, but now I 
 can't condemn you," said Adeline, with sad, deprecating 
 eyes ; " I I can't even pray for you, Audrey," she 
 whispered, " as once I did. I can do nothing but trust 
 you, and trust you, little Audrey. I hope I may be for- 
 given if I do wrong." 
 
 " But you're doing right ! Oh ! Adeline, keep on trust- 
 ing me. Just exactly the way you're doing. But why 
 did you make me feel like an outcast at your door when I 
 came in first ? Don't do it ever again. Even if I com- 
 mitted all the sins in the Decalogue, we belong to each 
 other, we two. You can't get out of it, poor Adeline ! 
 It's your cross and one of the little ironies of life. The 
 thought of it has bucked me up in many a whity-brown 
 moment. And don't make too much of the baby. It's 
 a human sort of commonplace, really, that happens to
 
 266 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 many. Babies are difficult enough, without making them 
 worse. Besides, swamping them in transcendental 
 imaginations bedewed with tears, and emotions unfitted 
 to their constitutions, might give them colds. Adeline ! 
 I wish you wouldn't cry ! You wouldn't like to give a poor 
 baby its first cold, dear darling, now, would you ? " 
 
 " Oh, I wonder what's wrong with her ? " thought 
 Adeline. " You've been to Southampton, dear?" 
 
 " Yes, to see a friend off, and Andrew came to see 
 me off. Andrew's rather wonderful in his way, Adeline. 
 You'd be quite safe in idealizing him ! " 
 
 " Andrew doesn't want any idealization." 
 
 " Well, no ! I suppose he doesn't. That's why he's 
 never been half so interesting to you as I am, and why 
 you don't think of him half so often as you think of me. 
 It calls out all the forces of your mind to keep me up to 
 the mark in it. Andrew's assured perfection calls for no 
 laborious effort. Your imagination just falls about him in 
 a reverent sort of hush. You may. with perfect safety, 
 even fall asleep. Andrew's all right, anyway. Do you 
 think it was because God got tired of Archangels that He 
 made men ? " 
 
 " Oh, Audrey ! and now ! " 
 
 " Now tea is ready. It hasn't been like tea since I 
 deserted you now, has it ? " 
 
 " You know it hasn't, child." 
 
 " I don't believe your affection for me is at all good for 
 your soul," said Audrey when Adeline's tea was finished 
 and Adeline made cosy. " It's a bowing down to wood 
 and stone quite unworthy of your bringing up. It ought 
 to make you very kind and forgiving to other people who 
 sin more or less in the same direction." 
 
 " Audrey ! " said Adeline with softest reverence. " How 
 does Andrew take it ? " 
 
 " Andrew," said Audrey, with an elfish glance, " takes 
 it beautifully. And now I must distinctly tell you that 
 I'm not going to have that baby used as a moral bomb. 
 I'm doing my best to take it in the right spirit, and babies,
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 267 
 
 I assure you, can be very full of complications, and so 
 can the spirit in which they're taken. When Macmahon 
 comes back from his holiday I'm going to bring him round 
 to see you. He also is a person in serious need of idealiza- 
 tion, and you can be doing it while I'm otherwise engaged. 
 You must get better, Adeline. Between me and Mac- 
 mahon you'll have your hands full. 
 
 " You're used to self-sacrifice, Adeline," she said, as 
 she was putting on her gloves ; " so even if it hurts you, 
 you must keep on living. If you didn't, I'd be so lonely 
 that some day, some day I might make a mean sort of 
 fool of myself, and it's low to do that, don't you think ? " 
 
 For the next ten minutes Audrey talked nonsense at 
 the top of her speed.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 A NDREW, never failing to hold himself at precisely 
 j[\ the right angle now, laboriously watched over his 
 wife, and the more heavily he watched over her the 
 more lightly did she slip away from his understanding. 
 He could not understand her ; he had never been made 
 to understand Audrey before her fall, but after it she 
 completely confounded him. She was as incompre- 
 hensible to him as she must have been to Katharine 
 had that spinster known anything at all about her. His 
 love, of course, could know no shadow of turning ; Audrey 
 was his, to hold in his heart for ever. It beat only that it 
 might be her habitation ; it went softly that it might not 
 hurt her frail, imprisoned wings ; for what was he, after 
 all, but the jailer of an idea ? the shelter of a shadow, 
 the substance bound to other laws than his ? 
 
 He could not understand her ! Could he have per- 
 ceived one tear in her eyes, one quick, fearful change of 
 colour, one stoop of her proud spirit, or her beautiful head, 
 in recognition of that which she had done, it had been 
 easier for Andrew. 
 
 In the nursing of Macmahon, indeed, after some con- 
 sideration, he had found real sacrifice of self. Those days 
 and nights of anxious watching meant much to a tender 
 woman. But, Macmahon dispatched on his holiday, he 
 had entertained a painful, yet eager, expectation of some 
 breakdown on the part of Audrey, and when nothing of 
 the sort took place he was more filled with consternation 
 than before. 
 
 Even in woman in a state of innocence, outside the 
 
 268
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 269 
 
 scholastic profession, tears and blushes and breakdowns 
 had been, in Andrew's secret soul, so much a part of her 
 birthright and constitution that they had become almost 
 necessary to the solidarity of his mental equipment. Thus 
 he could make no way at all in his effort to grasp Audrey 
 in her new role. 
 
 Her pauseless, unswerving, onward march ! her un- 
 impaired vitality ! The gay insouciance perennially 
 present in the energy with which she managed her house- 
 hold and the men and boys who composed it ! The 
 exhilarating effect of her bright presence ! her brilliant 
 face ! 
 
 Andrew had never juggled with facts. If Audrey was 
 Audrey, sin was sin ! He could have followed her humbly 
 to any depth, and as humbly led her back, but she could 
 not alter facts for him. 
 
 As she soared upon gallant wings, he toiled lonely along 
 a tired earth, and one day in February, as Larry was 
 going out to take his first chance, Audrey's baby was 
 born, and Audrey lay at the point of death. Her flight 
 had been too swift and sure perhaps, her defiance of God 
 and man too gay and dcbonnaire, or it may be that her 
 sorrow had been too heavy for one so light, for now all 
 the powers seemed to be taking their revenge on her. 
 She lay on the borderland of appearances, and babbled 
 out all her secrets ; and Andrew, whose honour was 
 Audrey's, made over all his work to his subordinates, 
 and mounted guard over her. 
 
 He came out in a new character, and an extremely 
 troublesome one. He turned out the nurse whenever he 
 possibly could, and kept even the doctor at bay. Andrew, 
 sitting like a spectacled dragon beside her bed, gave rise 
 to innumerable embarrassments ; he became a most 
 aggressive nuisance. 
 
 He never once looked at the baby, even to resent it ; 
 but Audrey, oh, God ! how he loved her ! 
 
 For three days and three nights he never left her, but 
 sat in enthralled anguish, listening to the artless out-
 
 2/0 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 pourings of the mixed mind of a woman. Sometimes 
 he could not believe his ears. The holding capacity of this 
 frail, child-like creature was apparently illimitable. Heart 
 and brain, the impious negation of both, the eternal 
 conflict between spirit and flesh, God and the devil, all 
 found an ample place in the being of Audrey, and each, 
 in its kind, was transmuted in the astounding crucible of 
 her mind. 
 
 She forgot nothing and nobody not even him. He 
 seemed to be mixed up in everything, even in Larry. 
 She was as constant to her duty as to her sin ; she had 
 not the heart to leave either out in the cold. 
 
 Andrew felt bowed to the earth under this weight of 
 new knowledge. It was too hard for him. She knew 
 nothing of failure ; she had no conception of the curious 
 abstraction that good women call sin still less of the 
 vital significance of that concrete thing that she had 
 done. The consequences of her act, it is true, appealed 
 plangently to Audrey. Her weak, trembling plaints, the 
 echo of a shuddering laugh in each, cut Andrew to the 
 heart. The bitter little cry of her loneliness, her shattered 
 pride, her sad and bitter mockery of him, as he had 
 judged her so full of surprise, as she nursed Macmahon, 
 her derisive protest against the vague instinct of Norman, 
 and the unconditional trust of the boys, although even now 
 he did not understand the half of it, rent the heart of 
 Andrew. 
 
 He learnt a great deal of Audrey, however, and of the 
 sources of her actions. She seemed to have read the hearts 
 of all of them like a book, and her own heart seemed big 
 enough to hold them all in one way or another. More 
 than once Andrew found himself blushing like a girl. 
 
 The only happening in which he was wholly cast forth 
 was in her renunciation of Larry. That was for Larry 
 alone. Nor had he any part in Adeline. 
 
 He had always been deeply grateful for Audrey's kind- 
 ness to the dying woman, but he was amazed and abashed 
 in the face of Audrey's affection for her, and her absolute
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 271 
 
 claim upon Adeline. Above all, in her tender, mocking 
 judgment of the nebulous saint ! 
 
 The conceptions of Audrey were extraordinarily true, 
 her judgment in all things, save the one thing, unerring. 
 She knew nothing of sin, or of the indelible stain her 
 exquisite soul had suffered. She knew all things, sweet 
 Audrey, save how to repent ! 
 
 Possibly the disturbance of Andrew's presence held 
 at arm's length the calm of death, or perhaps Audrey was 
 bound too closely to this warm and definite earth to leave 
 it too readily for any cold, indefinite, supersensual refuge. 
 Andrew had but little to do with her return ; he was there 
 to guard and not to claim her, but at least he was ready 
 to welcome her back with a transport of joy on his quiet 
 face. She shut her eyes to keep him out, while she col- 
 lected her swooning senses, and in her weakness she 
 followed the habit contracted in the silence of the last 
 few days, and spoke as she thought. 
 
 " So I've been dying, have I ? " she whispered. " And 
 you're as glad as that because I didn't. And now you look 
 guilty in the old way. What have I done this time ? " 
 she sighed. She frowned, and looked round feebly, trying 
 to remember. 
 
 " And isn't there something something else ? " she 
 said at last. 
 
 " There's a baby somewhere," said Andrew, getting 
 very red, and feeling guilty all over ; he had forgotten 
 it for three days. " I'll ring. The nurse will know, 
 perhaps." 
 
 Audrey was trembling as she looked at him, and the elf 
 in her was apparently still alive. 
 
 " Do ring, Andrew ! Perhaps the nurse may know." 
 
 As the baby came in, Andrew went out a desolate, 
 childless man, and upon some strange impulse Audrey 
 stretched out her arms with passionate desire for that she 
 had never wanted. 
 
 The nurse mutely thanked God. Mr. Antrobus's re- 
 ception of his first-born was a scandal. Ever after, the
 
 272 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 very name of mathematics was anathema to Nurse Donne. 
 She classed them with the other occult abominations, 
 condemned alike in New Testament and Old. She pro- 
 foundly regretted the rash act which had landed her in a 
 community of pure intellect, heartless, soulless, without 
 God in the world. For those of Mrs. Antrobus's ravings 
 she had been permitted to hear had been anything but 
 reassuring, and she had not been given time enough with 
 the patient to restore her heart with love, and service 
 without love is a severe dispensation. Audrey found it 
 so, so as soon as she could lift her eyes from the distracting 
 bundle at her breast, she set to winning over her care- 
 taker. 
 
 Mrs. Antrobus was always only too ready to make 
 friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. 
 
 " But I've done all the right things," she pleaded. 
 " I nearly died, and gave you all plenty of sensations, and 
 I've saved your conscience from no end of a swat. If I 
 had died, feeling as horrid to me as you've been feeling, it 
 would have given you fits, I can tell you. It's an old 
 acquaintance, you see, that conscience of yours. I know 
 its capacity. I'm not going to bring up my baby in that 
 acute way." 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Antrobus ! do just be a woman ! " 
 
 "But I'm being only too much of a woman. I've 
 got a baby, and I'm completely under your thumb, and 
 I've upset the whole household. Do you think it's going 
 to be a means of grace, this small, flabby thing ? " 
 
 " That will depend, Mrs. Antrobus, upon its mother. 
 A baby, at least, ought to have love, and a warm welcome. 
 Will you forgive me," she said, with an irrepressible burst 
 of bitterness, " if I hope that it may never be a Senior 
 Wrangler ? " 
 
 Audrey wriggled, and looked curiously at the child. 
 
 " Make your mind easy, nurse," she said ; " it will never 
 be that. And mathematics haven't hardened my hus- 
 band's heart," she said ; " they've made it extraordinarily 
 soft ; but a man can't be bothering about babies when he
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 273 
 
 thinks his wife is going to die. It's only women who can 
 do half a dozen things at the same time. Men are born 
 specialists." 
 
 " A first child ! " said the nurse implacably. 
 
 " It would take too long to explain," said Audrey 
 audaciously. 
 
 Then, laughing brokenly, she huddled down in the bed 
 to think of things. 
 
 She would gladly have forgotten them, and have thought 
 of her baby. The helpless red thing made her ache with 
 an idiotic eagerness. She wanted to absorb herself in it, 
 and let the rest go, and start fair again with the baby ; but 
 it was no use, they had all come back. 
 
 The day Larry went she had, as she thought, burnt all 
 her boats, and come back to Andrew upon one little spar, 
 but now it seemed suddenly as though that had only been 
 the beginning of the burning, that there were still fleets 
 of boats to be burnt. 
 
 " And after giving up Larry and breaking my heart," 
 she moaned, " and working as I've done for all of them ! 
 It's sickeningly unfair ! And Andrew never once to look 
 at my baby ! And to go out as it came in, looking as I 
 ought to have been doing, I suppose; being an example 
 to me, as usual, in his fiendish way ! 
 
 "As if Andrew could judge of Larry and me ! " After 
 a minute she chuckled. " And, after all, how could one 
 expect him to look ? " she thought. She drew the child 
 closer, and breathed more quickly, and presently two fever 
 spots burnt on her cheeks. 
 
 " You can't expect to be an inspiring object to poor 
 Andrew, you unfortunate little thing ! " she whispered ; 
 " and you'll never be a Wrangler ; and I'm glad ; and I 
 ought to be ashamed of myself for saying it, or even for 
 looking at your dearest, ridiculous little red face, but 
 I'm not,- and nothing will ever induce me. You're all 
 that's left to me. You're my one single thing mine 
 and Larry's ! 
 
 " And I could have had everything, and people " 
 
 18
 
 274 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 people was a convenient word, comprising God and Andrew 
 " seem to forget that to me," she said with mounting 
 excitement. " They forget everything but the one 
 thing ! And now, to have to be ashamed of you ! I wish 
 one of the jury of matrons who'd be judging me to-day 
 if they had the chance had one themselves, and they'd 
 know then that there's a limit to meekness. Oh ! little 
 beloved ! to have to hide you under the blankets when 
 Andrew comes in ! and to have him standing there, being 
 afraid of you and me. 
 
 " I can't be ashamed, you little wonderful child ! 
 I can't ! " she said, feverishly. " And you must just 
 explain yourself to Adeline while I sit tight. One way 
 or another, you'll need a lot of explaining to the righteous. 
 And to have to be ashamed of you ! It makes one sick 
 and giddy. It's too much to think of when one's ill ! 
 To be ashamed of everything even of helping poor fools 
 to get well," she thought wearily. " And for saints and 
 angels to dare to judge sinners and all that poor sinners 
 have to put up with ! It's it's wicked presumption ! 
 If one of them had to try even for half an hour to be 
 ashamed of her own, own baby not that I am ! but 
 she'd succeed, no doubt, where I fail." 
 
 Whenever the nurse came near, Audrey shut her eyes, 
 and even her stirrings were never violent, so apparently 
 there was no need for anxiety, and Nurse Donne knitted 
 and thought of the dangers of overmuch learning and a 
 frivolous heart. 
 
 " Even if I turned High Church and confessed, it wouldn't 
 hide the baby ! or explain him, or anything. You're 
 just mine," she said, " you poor little thing ! and if you 
 live till you're eighty you'll always be in Andrew's way ! 
 A nice mess I've got you into, you poor, little thing ! ' 
 
 An overpowering weight of helplessness suddenly fell 
 down upon Audrey, and a curious desire to smother the 
 poor little obstacle to Andrew's content. A quick uprush 
 of cruelty from some submerged deep ran like a red fire 
 through her, a primitive cunning awoke in her eyes.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 275 
 
 She looked out furtively at the nurse, her pupils narrowed, 
 she laughed noiselessly, and her delicate fingers closed 
 round the little neck ; but even half-crazy Audrey was 
 not made of the stuff to hurt helpless things. She shud- 
 dered, and passionately kissed the child. 
 
 But she was confused in the agony of her wild defiance ; 
 Andrew's etherealized face haunted her. Her pride had 
 suffered change, her joy in life, which refused to be beaten, 
 was yet harassed and assailed at every point, menaced, 
 broken, and all the colour of life had gone with Larry. 
 
 And now to have to try to be ashamed of her baby 
 was the last straw ! She lay mute and forlorn ; when 
 suddenly her brain grew clearer, her heart beat more 
 slowly, and a new idea came creeping in. It grew and 
 grew in significance, in reason, in power, and after a 
 few minutes' thought she felt sure that it was her one 
 alternative. She grew quite calm and almost happy 
 again. 
 
 Death in the desperate circumstances was far the best 
 thing for everyone concerned, not to be compared with 
 the fag of trying to be ashamed of your own baby, always 
 as baby, child, boy and man for years, and years| 
 and years ! It was so easy death ! It did not stand in 
 constant opposition to you, and begrudge you even one 
 little baby. She had tried all the difficult things to square 
 matters ; she had spared nothing, not even Larry 
 certainly not herself and now to be asked to be ashamed 
 of her baby by people who knew nothing about it. That 
 was the limit ! 
 
 " Dying is far easier," she said, huddling down dreamily. 
 " It's nice. It's like going down, down into some curious 
 place, where people know everything and are always kind. 
 It's quite easy, baby ! So come along ! We'll hurry 
 you and I it's no use to make two bites of a cherry." 
 
 With her failing strength, she held the child closer, and 
 with the same light heart with which she had defied 
 God and lived, she now proceeded to defy Him and die. 
 
 " I wonder why on earth He made the roses ! " she
 
 276 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 said, when she had rested a little ; " but perhaps it was 
 long ago, and He's forgotten." 
 
 " It's the easiest thing I ever did," she said presently, 
 looking up with mad, amused eyes at the nurse, who, 
 distracted, sent for Andrew, and in his usual extraordinary 
 way he took all the pleasure even out of dying. No one 
 could die in peace looking at Andrew. He was so helpless ! 
 He must always be one's first thought. In a saintly way 
 Andrew was extremely selfish ; to disturb her now, when 
 she'd arranged everything so nicely, and squared it all ! 
 
 And to have to be explaining all this to Andrew, when 
 she thought she'd done with words words were so stupid ! 
 just like Andrew ! As if any words would ever explain 
 the pang of trying to be ashamed of your own little 
 baby ! 
 
 She stared at Andrew's face of anguish and perplexity. 
 " They seem to be whirling about the words to explain," 
 she said, and exerted all her remaining strength to make 
 the matter more clear to the wretched man. She re- 
 capitulated her reasons for her early death in the faintest 
 voice, but with partial coherence, and a glimmering sense 
 of the humour of the affair. She often sighed. Andrew did 
 not look inspiring ; he was worn with anxiety, pain, 
 amazement ; haggard and unshaven. He had no com- 
 fort at all, poor Andrew! When Audrey left him, God 
 had gone also. He was back shivering on the icy breast of 
 Evolution. Yet, stripped of faith, hope, love, paralysed 
 by fear, helpless and ineffectual, Andrew was wiser than 
 he knew. He was so forlornly at her mercy that Audrey 
 could do no less than come to his rescue. Had she been 
 in her grave, smothered in flowers, she must have come 
 back to Andrew, as Andrew looked then. He exasperated 
 her into activity ; he was-a challenge no woman could dis- 
 regard. A man could have looked out for himself but 
 Andrew ! 
 
 Even hours later she was still too weak for definite 
 explanations, and neither coherent nor polite. 
 
 "What on earth made you look like that ? " she in-
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 277 
 
 quired. " Dying was so much easier ! What's going to 
 happen to all of us now, I wonder ? Andrew, do go and 
 
 have a bath and shave. I'm not cross, but really ! 
 
 And I'll not die. You won't give me the chance and 
 it was so much easier oh ! ever so much ! " she repeated ; 
 " and I've given up that, too, for you. Talk of self- 
 sacrifice ! " she muttered, with a crazy smile ; " and it's 
 all your fault." 
 
 A creature like Audrey to find death easier than trying 
 to be ashamed of her baby ! 
 
 Andrew, alone in his room, cowered and hid his face ; 
 but he looked more sane when next his wife beheld him.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 more Norman knew of Andrew Antrobus, the 
 better he liked him his proud humility, his humble 
 pride. The unflinching determination with which 
 he tried to accommodate himself to his new environment, 
 his expanding intelligence, the almost woman-like clever- 
 ness with which this abstraction so uninstructed in 
 common things laid himself out to do his duty, and to 
 induce others to do theirs, his simple and sedate methods 
 to entrap unwary minds, fix floating ones, and bring to 
 judgment those who funked. 
 
 Andrew was plainly sending out shoots in divers direc- 
 tions. The odd thing was that in the one direction 
 which was no affair whatever of his mathematical master, 
 he was apparently lying fallow, under the nipping hand of 
 some untimely frost. 
 
 There was some mischief afoot, and Mrs. Antrobus was 
 no doubt the centre of it. To look upon Antrobus as the 
 centre of any mischief were inconceivable, to conceive 
 of Mrs. Antrobus as the active element in some vital mis- 
 chief were inseparable from one's first thought of her, and 
 it kept her alive in all those that followed. 
 
 Some change in the constitution of the mischief had 
 taken place that day she had gone to Southampton, of 
 that he felt sure. There had been no mystery about the 
 jaunt. She had talked of it before she went, and kept 
 them informed in many of its details upon her return. 
 She looked pale and uncomfortably pathetic that night, 
 but her bearing had been admirably self-contained, and 
 no one down to the dullest boy could lightly forget her. 
 Her gentle voice, her vital, graphic words full of signifi- 
 
 278
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 279 
 
 cance. Her simple, moving description of that rocking 
 sea of white faces ; the forlornness of all sorrow upon those 
 that were left, the triumph of all hope upon those that 
 went. She said little things that night with an incon- 
 sequent laugh that must find a home in any boy's heart 
 and fire his spirit. This light woman ! this quickener of 
 souls herself soulless ! 
 
 He could not understand her any more than Antrobus 
 could, but he knew too much of Mary not to know that 
 something had happened that day which set Mrs. Antro- 
 bus, and probably her husband, high above the compassion 
 of the most impertinent. 
 
 Still, no woman has any right to be wanton and saint 
 in the same breath. She disturbed cosmic proportion. 
 
 She chained the imagination, however, and invited 
 speculation. No enterprising mind could keep her out. 
 Moreover, she was a fund of most valuable information, 
 and when a man has had the luck to strike a crammer's 
 wife with as much genius for self-revelation as Mrs. 
 Antrobus, and with as obliging a disposition, a sudden 
 drop back into reserve upon her part is not playing the 
 game such as it should be played by an expert of her high 
 order. 
 
 " And considering the way she keeps our noses to the 
 grinding-stone, too," said Mr. Norman. " I've worked in 
 my time to develop half-baked asses, but I'm hanged if I 
 ever worked as I work now under her all-seeing eyes." 
 
 He thanked God for Mary, but felt glad that he knew 
 Mrs. Antrobus. He decided at the same time that for 
 the present she did not want him. " When she doe?," 
 he reflected, " she'll let me know. It would be doing her 
 a profound injustice to suppose that she doesn't know far 
 better than he does himself when a man means a thing. 
 I'm there when she calls. Meanwhile, I'll steer clear of her." 
 
 This he accordingly proceeded to do in the nicest way. 
 
 Audrey knew very well what he was after, and one day 
 in late March, on the edge of the wood, she told him so. 
 " But why ? " she said. " Do tell me all about it."
 
 280 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 He laughed and looked at her. " You're hopeless for 
 tea-parties," she said ; " you haven't played bridge for 
 months ; you can't be turning Mary over in your mind 
 the whole of every afternoon, comparing her with me 
 entirely to my disadvantage. You're training that dog 
 into semi-imbecility. Those boys must have some light 
 relief, and I thought that I could always be trusted to 
 supply that much, at least, to the establishment. Now 
 tell me." 
 
 " You knew that I was here when you wanted me." 
 
 " That's not enough. You've never been the least in 
 love with me. You disapprove of me a good deal. You 
 know nothing at all about me, and you like making incur- 
 sions into the unknown." 
 
 " Even a man can practise self-sacrifice on occasion, or 
 be rather more selfish even than God made him. Some- 
 times he will forego a pleasure rather than suspect himself 
 to be in the way." 
 
 " I like constant friends, so full of trust that they 
 could be in your way all day long without knowing it. 
 I'm glad Macmahon is back." 
 
 " So am I. Never met a fellow like him for keeping you 
 up to the mark. I felt myself going slack in his absence." 
 
 " That's a nice effect to have on people, but it would be 
 nicer, even in your absence, to be able to urge them on to 
 superhuman efforts." Her shining eyes were fixed firmly 
 upon someone very far away. Before Mr. Norman could 
 think of Mary he sighed, which is a misfortune that may 
 overtake any man. 
 
 " Pity that sort of spirit isn't more rampant this side ; 
 it might hustle them up over there," said he. 
 
 " Women want victories without bloodshed," said 
 Audrey serenely. " You should listen to tea-parties on 
 the war. They buck up when a man comes in, and try to 
 look Amazonian in a nice way, but when we are alone ! " 
 
 " Women aren't shedders of blood by nature ; even the 
 shedding of honest and necessary domestic blood causes 
 them real sorrow. My mother is an excellent housekeeper,
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 281 
 
 and yet the perennial slaying of poultry causes her an 
 inconceivable amount of secret agony. She has never 
 seen one of us going off to shoot or hunt without a gay 
 send off and a secret shudder. She looks upon England 
 as a select little island sitting in her own seas, under the 
 direct supervision of God, and she has three sons at the 
 war." 
 
 " I'm sorry ! Oh, I'm sorry for your mother ! She's 
 the woman who makes good sons and good soldiers, but 
 she would never be sorry for people all round, as women 
 not the least good might be. I'm glad for her sake that 
 you only like me in a sort of scientific way. I never 
 come within the circle of your meditations without a micro- 
 scope hot on the heels of the vision." 
 
 This observation Mr. Norman passed. 
 
 " Women have a lot of time to be hurting themselves in 
 just now," he said, " knitting queer looking things that 
 must surprise many a raw recruit." 
 
 " That sort of thinking doesn't hurt," said Audrey un- 
 kindly. " It stretches their imaginations a bit ; that's 
 all. It wants more definite pain than that from a woman 
 to spur people on to be great, and it wants more all round 
 understanding from her too. Being a mass of fears and 
 feelings and affections all in a tangle isn't much good 
 when a country gets itself into a tight place, and must 
 have the blood of men. Nothing will get it out but a 
 willing sacrifice the blood of men and the tears of women." 
 
 Her breath came quickly in a sudden, abrupt way ; 
 her eyes were flashing, her cheeks scarlet. " One one 
 wants to see things as they are," she said, frowning, 
 as though to disentangle her own confused perceptions 
 and speaking softly as though to herself. <( To know all 
 round ; to be a man yourself, without ever stopping being 
 a woman, to be of much use as a woman when everything 
 and everybody are in tight places. And it's a grind." 
 
 With quite incredible swiftness her breath came naturally, 
 her face regained its airy calm. 
 
 " I wonder," she said, " if there are many men now
 
 282 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 who'd bind their only son hand and foot, and lay him 
 on an altar to kill him with their own hands in obedience 
 to God to something who knows what he's about, 
 whom you can absolutely trust ? " 
 
 The little frown was again drawing in her brows, but her 
 eyes were shining oddly. 
 
 " There are very few men left who'd do it ; but there 
 are some women, and you're one of them, I think, 
 Mrs. Antrobus." 
 
 "Oh!" said Audrey. "Oh!" They walked on in 
 silence for a minute. 
 
 " You don't at ah 1 approve of me," said Audrey. " You 
 wouldn't like Mary to know me, or your mother; I 
 wonder why you say that ! " 
 
 " So do I, but I know it's true ; and it's true, too, that 
 I don't want Mary to know you or my mother. And yet 
 I can't answer for my mother but under no conditions 
 of which I can now conceive would Mary ever bind her 
 only son and lay him on any altar with intent to slay. 
 If later on I were a sufficiently brutal brute to Mary, 
 of course Heaven alone knows what mightn't happen ! " 
 
 " Mary won't have a chance, so you'll never know 
 whether she'd do it or not. But no one ever in ah 1 my 
 life has been a brute to me." 
 
 " There are other weapons finer and more keen that 
 God in His mercy puts into the hands of men for the per- 
 fecting of women, and they turn out more finished work." 
 
 " Dear me ! What a nice Bible conversation we're 
 having ! I'll tell Adeline. She'll be so full of thankful- 
 ness. Since you enjoy excursions into the unknown, 
 Mr. Norman, couldn't you take Macmahon for your field 
 of inquiry ? You know as little of him as you do of me, 
 and he'll yield a quicker harvest to expert cultivation, of 
 good, clean English wheat. It's the only sort of grain, 
 you understand. And Macmahon has another advan- 
 tage. You could introduce him to Mary without a 
 qualm." 
 
 There was a long silence, full of the youngest sounds,
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 283 
 
 the small shy presages of spring. The unformed, uncertain 
 note of a robin filled with vague expectation, sprayed 
 down on them from a thicket of hawthorn and lilac. A rook 
 rustled tentatively in his last year's nest, the melting 
 of thin ice in a corner of the brook made tinkling melody. 
 The solemnity in the submission of the waiting trees had 
 given place to a look, as it were, of ardent passivity. 
 They looked ahead now to life, not as they had so often 
 done in those hard months of disillusion, back into death. 
 
 It was the sort of day when sudden little lights spring 
 up in the hearts of men. 
 
 " If you ever really want to know Mary," said Mr. 
 Norman, as they came up to the steps, " I'll write to her 
 by the next post to come as soon as she's packed." 
 
 " I'm glad we're friends," said Audrey, " and that you 
 were never in love with me. I wasn't sure at first if I'd 
 altogether like it for a continuance, but I do. It's what 
 I want. I've never had a real friend before a human 
 one, I mean. Adeline's not quite human, is she ? " 
 
 He thought of her a good deal that night, and came 
 to many wrong conclusions about her and some right ones, 
 which is as much as can be expected from any man whose 
 pride has never suffered fall. 
 
 Larry, with his advantages, was more sharp-sighted ; 
 he was now seeing things in Audrey he had never even 
 suspected. He read things in her letters hidden to her- 
 self ; he saw her on the road to some transformation of 
 which she knew nothing. 
 
 He was learning his " Book of Women " in an 
 informing atmosphere, in the silence of wide seas 
 and spaces, the stress of a great purpose, and the 
 alert, attentive senses of a man consciously on the road 
 to consciousness. He found out a lot about Audrey in 
 the starry nights, and he found her the best book in 
 which he had ever spelt out life, taking things altogether. 
 All that he had ever wanted he found now in Audrey. 
 She was his one with him ; he could leave her now out 
 of no part of him, so close and indivisible were he and
 
 284 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Audrey. Sometimes when hope receded and the sense of 
 doom crushed down on him, and the horror of limit came 
 battering at his door, and the eternal, insatiable prayer 
 for life, more life, broke into an agonized cry, and his being 
 was rent and torn in the fear of even potential non- 
 attainment, the fear which destroys men, the thing that 
 gave him reassurance was Audrey. She was the light upon 
 his path by which he saw himself and her, and saw them 
 both illimitable. As he learnt to know himself by the 
 light she shed, he was learning to know her also, and the 
 knowledge ran in and out of his letters and blankly con- 
 founded Audrey. Larry was beginning to talk to her in 
 another language to that she knew, and she had no key 
 to it. She could not make head or tail of Larry. He 
 exasperated and dismayed her. He routed from their 
 lairs and brought to the surface submerged things within 
 her that persisted. She had to deal with them, to try to 
 find out about them. They excited her curiosity. They 
 made her afraid, and there was one thing about Audrey 
 that could never change. She never turned away from 
 anything she feared. 
 
 So now she often found herself brought up sharp before 
 many a simple utterance of Larry's, ashamed. 
 
 She had never blushed for her sin in Andrew's or 
 Katharine's acceptation of the word ; but she blushed now, 
 hot with tingling pain, at Larry's appraising of her goodness. 
 
 Sometimes she hid her face. The shame she could 
 never conjure up for her poor baby, the innocent creature 
 in her arms, her sin and the symbol of it, seemed now 
 to be all centring in herself, tearing up all her foundations, 
 and growing growing growing, breaking down every 
 defence. And the more clear-cut she stood out in Larry's 
 letters, the more it grew. 
 
 Larry's idiotic idealization was bringing her up against 
 some new recognition. Everything seemed to be converg- 
 ing to one point, and that point herself. 
 
 Audrey had never neglected herself ; that charming 
 entity had always interested her. She had always found
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 285 
 
 it so full of paradox and variety, that she felt sure it must 
 interest any reasonable being. With certain exceptions, 
 she had always found herself a pleasant playground, and, 
 as we know, the blighting shadow of guilt had not 
 seriously affected her outlook. 
 
 The horror and desolation of the sense of separation 
 born of sin had never visited Audrey, and even such 
 sorrow as she knew, passionate, insistent, and sincere as 
 it was, could not break down the barriers which divide. 
 The eternal pain which lies in truth was still for Audrey 
 to suffer. Never once in all her life had herself bored 
 Audrey, and no woman could throw herself with more 
 abandonment of interest into other people's affairs. 
 Within and without, the ever-pursuing presence of her 
 own personality was an engaging obsession. She could 
 create an alluring atmosphere in the most adverse cir- 
 cumstances, and persuade herself, honestly enough, that 
 therein lay reality ; at any rate, enough reality to ferry 
 her across the moment, and she could generally draw 
 everyone else into her own delicious mirages. 
 
 She was essentially social, a builder up and not a 
 destroyer ; and now to have subtle forces working 
 destruction in all her outlook was hard and inconceivable, 
 and that they should come, too, from Larry's hand ! 
 Instead of making things more secure for her, he was 
 making things totter, filling her with the most extra- 
 ordinary sense of doubt, of fear, of instability. Wants 
 she had never wanted floated wild in her miserable mind. 
 Ground that she had always felt to be sure enough for her 
 light weight, seemed to be sliding and slipping from under 
 her feet. Her standard of values, so sufficient hitherto, 
 had lost all value, and it seemed to look to her for re- 
 adjustment. 
 
 " But what is it all about ? " she asked a great yew 
 hedge, with her odd little frown between her brows. 
 " What does Larry want of me ? What does everything 
 want ? Why am I bombarded and hustled by everybody 
 when I'm always doing things for them all ? I never stop."
 
 286 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 The last two hours she had spent being an angel to 
 Adeline, and she had given up a party in town for 
 it. And now the mail had come and brought Larry's 
 letter full of demand. What did he want of her ? What 
 did any one want ? What did she want herself ? That 
 was the worst. Something not herself, but closer, was 
 demanding even more than Larry and the rest. It was 
 demanding day and night, it never let her go. 
 
 She had always been able to get away from herself 
 if she wanted to, but she could not shake off this Doppel- 
 gdnger to make one shudder. 
 
 She used to delight in herself and the ways of her going, 
 just as she did in the sun, and the stars, and the first 
 spring flowers ; she had been just as dear to herself and 
 as impersonal. She could appeal to herself in such a 
 variety of ways that herself had never tired her ; it had 
 brought her so near dear, tender things, such pure satis- 
 factions, such assurances of needs that she alone could fill. 
 
 Her joy in her own being was pure in its way ; it 
 might have been the joy in a primrose looking out from 
 its nest by the roadside to the answering joy in some 
 seeing eye. And to be harsh to such a dear and intimate 
 and joyful self as this ! and that the enemy in the gate 
 should be Larry ! She panted with some mystic appre- 
 hension. She was angry with Larry and with herself. 
 Her breath came in rough gasps ; it hurt her throat. 
 Hard, odd, dry sobs broke from her. 
 
 " And, Larry, to hurt me like this ! " she sobbed, 
 shivering and swaying. " Oh, Larry, how can you ? 
 And and considering all things the impertinence of 
 it ! " 
 
 In some awful and incomprehensible way herself had 
 laid its hand upon Audrey. And Audrey, so fine and 
 delicate, was being broken and ground at last in the slow, 
 implacable grasp. 
 
 " But it's Larry's fault," she said, throwing up her 
 head. " If it's not Andrew, it's Larry. I I don't think 
 I can bear much more. '
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE baby dropped quite naturally into his little life, 
 and suffered in no sort of way from his environment 
 of pain and responsibility. Nothing could damp 
 the ardour of the creature, or temper his zest for life. He 
 took everything that came with something of his mother's 
 gay courage. Full of faith and assurance, he made his 
 demand upon his small world, resolved to be on the best 
 terms with everybody ; he scattered his smiles and his 
 goodwill alike on good and evil. Never was seen a baby 
 with so universal a mind. The spirit of conquest throbbed 
 in his blood. 
 
 It was impossible to Andrew's sense of duty to avoid 
 the child. He accepted him fully, as he did everything 
 else, and the smallest pretence of noticing him was enough 
 for little Loring. With fine magnanimity Andrew him- 
 self had chosen the name, a family name of which he was 
 justifiably proud. Andrew did things thoroughly ! 
 
 Perhaps in gratitude, perhaps for some other reason 
 which lay in his own heart and God's, the baby pursued all 
 his advantages, and insisted upon the attention of Andrew. 
 He would not be denied. He rarely cried, this vital atom, 
 but he crowed and chuckled ; his eyes were Audrey's, 
 and the sceptre of innocence was in his hand. 
 
 His attitude to the miserable man was a challenge 
 not to be disobeyed. In the presence of a pure soul the 
 still voice of harmony commands the air, and shame is 
 transmuted. The loftiest moments of Andrew's sad life, 
 those that came nearest peace for his weary soul, were 
 
 287
 
 288 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 the brief instants he spent daily receiving in silent wonder 
 the extravagant advances of Carfax's child. 
 
 He had begun the habit for Audrey's sake, and then 
 somehow he and the child had filtered into it, and the 
 visits became an inseparable part of his lonely life. 
 There was no familiarity on the part of Andrew ; he never 
 touched little Loring. To all seeming, he was the most 
 detached object of Loring's experience and of the nurse's 
 she was a good woman, and described him even in her 
 prayers as a stuffed image but noticing one day the 
 joy of the child as the sun glanced upon the glasses on 
 his side, for ever afterwards Andrew let him play with 
 them. But never when Audrey could see him did Andrew 
 go near the child, chiefly tor Audrey's sake. He was 
 studiously anxious, so far as in him lay, to protect and 
 guard his wife, and, at least, he could make unnecessary 
 the soul-twisting sensations she must necessarily ex- 
 perience should she behold him occupied with her son. 
 The potentialities of suffering conjured up by Andrew 
 were probably never experienced in their entirety by any 
 human woman, perhaps not by any human man ; they 
 were more than likely part of the contents of Andrew's 
 own peculiar make-up. But Audrey was labouring with 
 too many other half-conscious potentialities of her own 
 not to be partially aware of them. She knew all about 
 the visits down to their smallest details. She took the 
 most absorbed interest in them, and her own sensations 
 in the matter were quite as much, as with her present capa- 
 city for pain, she could reckon with. She wanted none 
 of Andrew's fancy touches ; she had enough of her own. 
 Andrew's shy pride kept him remote from the nurseries ; 
 he performed his sacrificial rites in the grounds of his 
 old house, which was full of caches, and Audrey a born 
 stalker of game. Very rarely did Andrew stand in 
 passive contemplation of her child but Audrey saw him, 
 and the tumults and torrents of confused and elfish mirth 
 and misery that these vigils of Andrew let loose in her, 
 no one but Audrey herself could describe.
 
 " WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 289 
 
 She was torn with sorrow and with a wild revolt from 
 the hideous necessity of some inexplicable continuity in 
 everything. Her heart beat against its bars ; she lifted 
 her defiant head against the world. She could have killed 
 Andrew, and fallen in a rapture of passionate gratitude 
 at his feet ; but try as she would, she could not be 
 ashamed of her baby. She did try ; she tried hard. It 
 seemed to be the one thing that Andrew in his secret soul 
 demanded of her, that something vaster and more im- 
 perative than Andrew was demanding also. It was in 
 the tissue of the flesh of Audrey to please people. So she 
 tried as hard as the like of her could try, and signally 
 failed. The child was inexpressibly dear to her, and it 
 was hers for something better than to be ashamed of. 
 Her baby was not a thing to hide and ignore, whatever 
 else might be. 
 
 In her recoil from this ever-recurring balked endea- 
 vour Audrey, who could never be a bubble in the stream 
 of events, but must always be making or marring history, 
 bestowed on Andrew a new form of torture, by flaunting 
 round the baby amongst the boys. There were now some 
 fourteen or fifteen of them, all of whom, in his kind, adored 
 Mrs. Antrobus, and Mrs. Antrobus, as the mother of a 
 " kid," aroused much astonished interest. The " kid " 
 in itself was an object beneath the notice of any self- 
 respecting person, but being one of the assets of your 
 crammer's wife, put another complexion on the matter. 
 Naturally one had to humour Mrs. Antrobus in her queer 
 tastes, and to look, at least, as though one shared them. 
 
 Women speak volubly of the decadence of good manners 
 in boys, but let any one of them watch a knot of boys 
 whose inevitable duty it is to admire a baby, and the object- 
 lesson will strike her dumb. 
 
 Macmahon was furiously jealous of the baby ; yet even 
 he was lifted above himself as he beheld its mother, and 
 felt sure her eyes rested with peculiar significance upon 
 himself. 
 
 " Don't have 'em at home," he said quite glibly in his 
 
 19
 
 290 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 exultation ; and one of them safely precipitated into 
 speech, the tension in the air grew less. 
 
 It was Mrs. Antrobus's first official tea-party at which 
 the baby was present, and the discomfort in her visitors 
 had natura'ly been acute. It was a rare occurrence for 
 Macmahon to take the lead in anything. A vibration of 
 surprised appreciation reached him from the others, and 
 puffed out by the novel sensation, he recklessly forged on, 
 fully conscious of a fatuous grin upon the faces of the 
 rest, the exciting cause this time not himself, whilst he 
 looked very much as usual. 
 
 It was a spiritual experience Macmahon never forgot, 
 and Audrey, in her quick way vaguely sharing it, of 
 course smiled at him like an angel. 
 
 " Haven't much use for 'em in most places, I should 
 think, judging from what one hears," he said ; " but this 
 one seems to fit in. Never struck me before a baby could, 
 y'know." 
 
 Every man in the room admired Macmahon, and won- 
 dered where he got his knowledge and his volubility. 
 Several carefully approached the nurse. One ravished 
 by some queer memory, made an explosive and sepulchral 
 noise with his mouth, and Macmahon, still first favourite, 
 discreetly talked it down. 
 
 " It must keep you amused, Mrs. Antrobus," said 
 he. 
 
 " Amused ! " Audrey laughed. " Amused ! Oh ! 
 that's the last word ! Little you know. A baby isn't 
 a doll to fool about with, I can tell you. It's not the 
 least like what it seems to be ; it's a far-reaching sort of 
 thing, involving a lot of things and people. It means hard 
 work." 
 
 " It means a lot of money," said Thornton, with such 
 stern conviction, that Mrs. Antrobus found out later in 
 the afternoon that he himself was suffering very seriously 
 from babies. In order to make practicable the yearly 
 arrival of one in his own family, he himself had been fobbed 
 off with a hopelessly inferior school, whilst two of hi*
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 291 
 
 juniors hovered even then on the verge of the pit that 
 had engulfed him. The illuminating appearance of a 
 specimen of the fatal species had threshed him for the 
 first time into articulate protest. Audrey went consider- 
 ably out of her way, and employed methods anything but 
 holy to save the other two urchins from their elder's 
 fate, and, as usual, she triumphantly succeeded. 
 
 "If it was only expense," muttered a rich young man 
 destined for the cavalry ; " but that's a fool to fits and 
 croup. They've spoilt the Christmas holidays for three 
 years on end, and it was measles at Easter." 
 
 " Oh ! they have a lot to answer for, poor things," said 
 Mrs. Antrobus. " They're always interfering with the 
 amusements and the points of view of men. It's well 
 they've got women and their own unconsciousness of 
 offence to protect them. They don't have fits or give them 
 to other people to please themselves, you see ; but since 
 they're in the world, they've got to behave like human 
 beings. It's their er ' categorical imperative.' I've 
 been reading extracts from German philosophers, Andrew. 
 Won't you have more tea ? " 
 
 The quick recoil in Andrew's eyes when he caught sight 
 of the amazing addition to the tea-party had roused in 
 Audrey the usual wild storm of pity and revolt. 
 
 " No, thank you, and I've a great deal to do, Audrey, 
 to-day. I am afraid I must leave you now." 
 
 As he looked at her, avoiding the baby, he flushed in 
 his maddening way. 
 
 " And expecting me to be doing it, too," she thought 
 angrily ; " as if I could, with so much to attend to ! As 
 if doing the correct thing in repentance for Katharine, 
 say would in any sort of way suit me, or alter anything ! 
 And to fly from the baby with only half your tea, and 
 Andrew a philosopher, I suppose, since he's a genuis 
 it takes the heart out of you: 
 
 "You're all despising the baby in your hearts," she 
 said in a clear voice that could not fail to reach Andrew's 
 retreating ears. " You forget that he's only a few years 
 
 19*
 
 292 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 younger than the rest of us, and may get his V.C. sooner 
 than any of you." 
 
 " He probably will with you at his back, Mrs. Antrobus," 
 said Macmahon, with a mouth full of plum cake. 
 
 Here one of the others jogged his elbow, and sent a 
 crumb the wrong way. This occupied him for some 
 time, and gave the rest a chance. Now that the road was 
 cleared, they were getting full up of Macmahon, and, 
 Mrs. Antrobus having victoriously waved the banner of 
 her pretender in the face of him to whom alone it mat- 
 tered, promptly dismissed nurse and baby, and there 
 was more scope for rational conversation. So now the 
 room hummed with vital memories. The crude searchlight 
 of youth was turned full on, and beneath it, men as trees, 
 stalked to and fro, before the amused attentive eyes of 
 Mrs. Antrobus. They were larger than human, and 
 smaller, these unconscious specimens, for time alone will 
 focus the sight, but they lived and spoke. A boy like a 
 woman will make a shrewd shot at the sources of human 
 action, and, like her, he is limited by his experience, and 
 his charity is as scant as his knowledge. He has not yet 
 looked round the corner, nor, as a rule, has she. There 
 were splinters from a thousand boys in Audrey. She threw 
 off, with an immense effort, every burthen that oppressed 
 her, and lived each moment as blithely as did the boys. 
 
 Andrew, vaguely conscious that he had hurt her, came 
 in half an hour later, felt the throb of excitement in the 
 air, looked at her face without one afterthought alight 
 with it, and dumbly went out. Mr. Norman came in for 
 a belated tea, and so exultant was the atmosphere that 
 even his official presence carried no weight. He drank his 
 tea and became a spectator of the play. 
 
 It was an atmosphere of perfect liberty. Vainglory, 
 cruelty, prejudice, self-seeking, irresponsibility, justice, 
 candour, generosity, honour, faith, hope and charity 
 all rubbed shoulders ; no hatred whatsoever seemed to 
 exist between the highest and the lowest. They were all old 
 friends together, and all joined hands to realize the whole.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 293 
 
 With an artless grin high crimes of conduct were brought 
 to light, devious stratagems unearthed, unholy victories 
 admitted. It was immensely to the credit of Mr. Nor- 
 man that he never moved an eyelid. He wondered, how- 
 ever, that Mrs. Antrobus did not. As a man, he naturally 
 expected it from a woman. He did not know what man 
 could ? how near together a boy and a woman not yet 
 " stabbed into life " can come. 
 
 And yet the woman innate in Audrey kept the balance 
 even. She neither belied herself that merry day, nor did 
 any one of the boys. It would have been impossible with 
 Audrey there. Poor Audrey ! who had belied her soul 
 and wounded the world. But boys came in amongst the 
 helpless things and were safe in her stained hands. 
 
 Mr. Norman knew it well. She had not spared him ; in 
 sheer mischievous abandonment she had, from time to 
 time, used all the weapons in her armoury on him, and 
 would do it again to-morrow, in spite of Mary, and of her 
 sincere acceptance of his friendship ; do it, too, with the 
 most unabashed and wanton enjoyment, but that day the 
 inevitable weapon of her sex became in the cunning hands 
 of Audrey a silver trowel to build up men. 
 
 " She's beyond me," he mused. " I wish I could afford 
 to marry Mary." 
 
 When the last boy had filed out, she appreciably re- 
 laxed, motioned to Mr. Norman to remain, stretched 
 herself as unaffectedly as a young beast of prey still 
 innocent of bloodshed, and laughed. 
 
 " A whole afternoon of it ! It takes it out of you ! " 
 she said. 
 
 " It might out of another woman. It doesn't out of 
 you." 
 
 " As if you could possibly tell." 
 
 " Who am I to answer for any woman ? It's you your- 
 self who speak by my unworthy mouth ; that's all. I 
 only know you by what you've told me of yourself and 
 demonstrated to me. You're very honest and very 
 candid ; you've never spared either yourself or me."
 
 294 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 She sat up to look at him." 
 
 " I wonder if you thank God after praying for Mary 
 that He's delivered you from me ? " 
 
 " I haven't gone the length of that, but I'm glad it's 
 turned out all right, and that I can always be your friend. 
 I'm very proud of the office, Mrs. Antrobus, and I might 
 have been jolly well ashamed of myself if I'd been only 
 your slave, and perhaps on the strength of it made a mess 
 of the establishment. A fellow can't carry that sort of 
 thing about with him and do his job. Something must 
 go by the board, and it would never be you ! " 
 
 " Well, no ! " said Audrey, lifting her expressive 
 eyebrows. 
 
 He put his hands on his knees and laughed at her. 
 
 " And you're better pleased yourself that it's as it is. 
 You like these fellows too well to injure them in the most 
 trivial way." 
 
 " Or injure Andrew/' 
 
 " We'U leave Antrobus out." 
 
 " It's impossible ever to leave anybody out." 
 
 " I'd give a lot to have a close and uninterrupted view 
 of your conscience, Mrs. Antrobus." 
 
 "So should I," said Audrey, with emphatic sincerity. 
 " It would be sure to be a most interesting conscience." 
 
 " It would, if it exists. I'm not sure yet that it does." 
 
 " Perhaps," she said, " it's a wandering star that's not 
 settled down yet, and only appears at intervals. If only 
 we could catch it and domesticate it, we could pore over 
 it for hours, you and I together, and find out no end of 
 things. Mary wouldn't mind, since it would all be in the 
 interest of science and friendship ; and if she did, we'd 
 make her sit beside us with a note-book, and register the 
 variation in the violence of the pricks. It would be a 
 liberal education for Mary and a new profession for 
 women." 
 
 . " No woman so simple at heart as Mary and so tender 
 could bear to watch such pain as you would suffer, Mrs. 
 Antrobus, and no man living would have the courage.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 295 
 
 He'd fly for his life. We must all three prosecute our 
 studies apart." 
 
 " You know very little about me if you think I indulge 
 in secret internal castigations, for I don't " 
 
 " Wait till the need arises." 
 
 " Oh, well, you're generous. You think there's still a 
 chance for me ! It's a new reason to be glad you're 
 still young ; you offer a nice wide field for internal dis- 
 turbances. You take the privilege of a friend. I'm rather 
 off friendship if that's one of its tricks ; you're not at all 
 complimentary." 
 
 " I paid you the biggest compliment I could." 
 
 " You do believe, then, that women have souls ? I met 
 a man lately who said they hadn't. I wonder what it 
 would feel like to have a soul ? It would be always 
 swelling up in you and spoiling your figure, don't you 
 think ? and might in the end make your seams go crooked. 
 You could never wear tailor-mades." 
 
 " You take material views." 
 
 " So would the tailor in the circumstances. One must 
 consider others in all things. I wonder if you'd like seeing 
 me tormented inwardly. There are great and good men, 
 I think, who would like to watch a woman repenting 
 slowly and painfully in sackcloth and ashes. Now that's 
 so different from me. If a man did anything to me, and 
 I forgave him at all, say, for trying to murder me or any 
 other light little crime, I'd hate to see him torturing himself 
 for his past sins, and getting hollow-eyed and narrow- 
 chested and out of step. I'd much rather he'd turn 
 his back on the regrettable occurrence, and go on 1 on ! 
 on ! doing his living oh, well ! perhaps a little betier 
 than he did before." 
 
 " A man strong enough to turn his back on his past will 
 never do it till he's got out of the past all that he wants ; 
 till he's made it serve him and not master him ; and it 
 won't do that till he's forced it to give out to him all the 
 good in it ; above all its toll of pain, for pain is alive, if 
 anything is, and it's more life that every man wants."
 
 296 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " You're determined to make me squirm." 
 
 " I was thinking of the man, who proposed to murder 
 you, and the way he'd got to work it out for his good in 
 the end. And you can't refuse any fence, you see, if you 
 want to keep up with the hunt. And you to talk ! Catch 
 you sneaking round after gaps." 
 
 " You're all the same," she said. " Men have no right 
 to demand the pain of women." 
 
 " They have every right to demand consciousness for 
 women, and pain comes in with consciousness." 
 
 " But she needn't always be writhing. She may 
 have a little spell of peace while she's doing her duty, 
 a very unpleasant one sometimes ! You all want a great 
 deal too much. Over-swelling souls and nose-reddening 
 tears ! It's unprogressive and early- Victorian. The 
 idea of a poor woman being expected to suffer just to prove 
 she's got a soul. It's a sort of incense to the pride and 
 vainglory of men. It's far better to put things behind 
 you and go on ; and if you made people uncomfortable 
 yesterday, do your level best to make them comfortable 
 to-day." 
 
 " It's a fine philosophy, but it won't bar out pain." 
 
 " Your state of mind isn't at all nice for a man engaged 
 to be married. I'd like to exorcise it with a violin solo 
 I've just composed, only I've no time now. I've got to 
 do one or two of the unpleasant duties that you seem to 
 think worse than useless. To long to be watching a 
 woman in a horrid hot hell wrestling with her sins, 
 instead of making up for things on the nice cool earth, 
 is an awful state of mind for an engaged man. I'm sorry 
 for Mary."
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 ATOTH1NG could damp the spirits of Audrey for very 
 IM long, or curb the velocity of the wild challenge of 
 her temperament ; but there were things in the letters 
 of Larry that now became very disturbing. Quiet, manly 
 stable things, new outlooks on life, a new interest in it 
 from the new points of view, a quiet forethought for 
 the child, to whom he had left a large sum of money 
 and an unentailed estate, in a way that could hurt 
 no one all these things disturbed her oddly. It was the 
 mounting trust of Larry in her own goodness, however, 
 that completely confounded Audrey, the way in which he 
 insisted on accrediting her with the simple, old-fashioned 
 goodness of old-fashioned women at which she had so 
 often laughed ! She could not drive his ridiculous ideas out 
 of her head. They kept her awake o' nights. And if they 
 all went on harrying her in this sort of way her health 
 would give way ; she'd get wrinkles, perhaps her hair 
 would turn grey. 
 
 Larry seemed to be in league with Andrew, with Mr. 
 Norman, and the boys, with some inward demand and 
 some outward pressure all directed upon her, with the sole 
 view of making her uncomfortable more uncomfortable 
 even than was inevitable in the circumstances. 
 
 Discomfort, moreover, was in the air. A miasma of 
 apprehension was upon the land ; affairs in South Africa 
 were going to the dogs. Men waited in a dreadful ex- 
 pectation ; the low voice of wailing was in the street 
 the whisper of mistrust. Fear, not of death we had not 
 sunk so low as that, thank God ! but of dishonour, cut 
 
 297
 
 298 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 deep into the heart of the country. Weak women, grown 
 strong in meditation, were now ready enough to offer their 
 sons upon the altar in order to save it. Dead hearts came 
 to life ; sleeping souls awoke ; the willing hands of old 
 men rose up in anguished protest against their impotence. 
 One hand of God lay heavy upon the blindness born of 
 the material heart of England, the other pointed up- 
 wards to her heritage of light. Out there in the land 
 of dreadful night some of her sons took one way and some 
 the other. Her wise children leapt upwards to the light, 
 accounting death as nothing before the significance of 
 life. The others were merry in the darkness. And while 
 all the papers howled, the tragedy went on, and England, 
 in blood and sweat, learnt the ultimate lesson of all the 
 nations upon earth " Where there is no Vision the people 
 perish ! " 
 
 And into Audrey in her own poor little way was beaten, 
 by day and by night, unceasingly, the same eternal counsel. 
 She stood also in the shadow of the Cross, in the portal 
 of the Great Suffering which guards the Great Records, 
 and is the only Home of the Great Happenings, and she 
 laughed out lightly into the bright air. Want of courage 
 did not come in amongst her vices, and yet the desire to 
 flee was in all her delicate flesh, and, lo ! she could not 
 move ! 
 
 She could laugh, however, and jest and comfort, and 
 inspire, and make the roof ring with her wild merri- 
 ment. 
 
 During this time of strain and stress she was as sweet 
 a sprite as ever aped womanhood. And not once since 
 that extraordinary moment in which she thought to choke 
 him, had the mortality of her child ever even struck her. 
 He held her life, and Larry's, and the life and joy of the 
 whole world. He was invulnerable in her eyes, the 
 centre of life ! Infantile diseases were void of all signifi- 
 cance to Audrey. They might concern other babies, but 
 hers never ! And then suddenly one day the baby grew 
 quiet. He lay in the nurse's arms and gazed out into
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 299 
 
 some region into which his mother could not follow 
 him. 
 
 For the first time since he was born his life was apart 
 from hers ! She could not follow him ! She said nothing ; 
 she did not look at his limbs or ask about his symptoms, 
 or commit one sensible folly, but an odd little bell beat in 
 her heart and her whole being stood still. Something 
 had happened in some vast silence, within and without, 
 and she would never be the same again. 
 
 She knew it, even then, and she was afraid, and bitterly 
 angry for a minute. She could not even speak ; but 
 one can always laugh at least. So she laughed lightly, 
 and tweaked a little curl of the golden hair. 
 
 " He's worrying about the Situation, nurse ! " she said 
 at last. " It's all right, really, little foolish one ; England 
 isn't going to the dogs. I know better than you can, 
 at your age, so you must just take my word for it ; so 
 hurry up, and grow, dear darling, and don't get dis- 
 heartened. Leave that for the poor old things who 
 can do nothing, who have to wait in the chimney- 
 co ners. You have to wait too, Loring, but it's a nice 
 waiting, full of events, and not a long eventless growl 
 like the waiting for death of the old men in the chimney- 
 corners." 
 
 In spite of herself she fetched up short, for who can 
 tell the thoughts of babies ? and his eyes had looked 
 out strangely at his mother. 
 
 Perhaps he knew the pain of the shock, and even 
 the pain of her glib speech, for directly after he began to 
 crow and chuckle, but in a minor key, unlike his usual 
 lusty note. 
 
 " Oh, nurse," said Mrs. Antrobus, accusingly, " you've 
 been talking about Simpkins' young man before baby. 
 Don't say you haven't ! You have, and it's got on his 
 nerves. I've always told you that babies must always 
 listen to cheerful conversation, and not to the lamentations 
 of cowards. Simpkins ought to be ashamed of herself 
 especially now that Hopkins is a corporal. She's not
 
 300 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 worthy to be a soldier's wife ; she'd better think of the 
 fishmonger's assistant she seems to spend a good deal 
 of her time in confiding her woes to him." 
 
 " 'Tain't her woes, ma'm ; it is the corporal's good 
 conduct an' the officers' praise." 
 
 " Oh, is it ? it takes a long time to tell then, and seems 
 to clear the way for the fishmonger's attentions. But she 
 says much more than that before my baby. And how 
 often must I impress upon you that your responsibility 
 in choosing subjects fit for his ears is simply enormous. 
 Babies require elevating conversation." 
 
 This had always been a startlingly new point of view to 
 nurse, and although utterly devoted to her mistress, she 
 was frequently respectfully perplexed by her. 
 
 " I think, ma'm, the baby is a little out of sorts." 
 
 " Obviously ! I'll send Simpkins to the circus this after- 
 noon, and if the fishmonger's assistant will take her, I'll 
 gladly pay. It may make her more hopeful." 
 
 " Yes, ma'm," said the bewildered Moore. 
 
 " I wish you would open your understanding as wide 
 as you do your eyes, Moore," sighed Mrs. Antrobus, " then 
 there might be some hope of you. You're an excellent 
 girl, except for your limitations, you know ; but you'd 
 be an extremely valuable nurse if you'd try to get the better 
 of them, instead of looking on me as on one mentally 
 afflicted." 
 
 " Oh, ma'm ! no, never, ma'm " 
 
 " It's all right, Moore. I have the greatest faith in you, 
 really. And if Simpkins does marry that miserable young 
 man," said Mrs. Antrobus as she swam from the room, 
 " for, as you all know, I've done my best to make him 
 enlist and with his shoulders and chest measurements to 
 be hawking fish now ' I shall take good care that Hopkins, 
 when he returns a sergeant hung with decorations, gets a 
 girl worthy of him. And now, take baby out, Moore, and 
 be sure to remember every single thing I've said to you." 
 
 " Oh, ma'm ! " wailed Moore. 
 
 When she got to her room, Audrey's breath was coming 

 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 301 
 
 in little gasps, her knees trembled ; but by sheer force of 
 habit she fastened her hat with three pins, and directly 
 she was out of sight of the house she fled down the yew 
 walk, down through the pines, across the stream and 
 meadows, making straight for the doctor's house. She 
 must go herself ! She could not rest or wait ! She must 
 go on, on, on ! but she was herself and no other when 
 she met the doctor just coming out of his gate. She let 
 him drive her back, and spoke half jestingly of the child, 
 and her wish that he should see it. She told him merrily 
 of several of her enlisting adventures ; she was now scour- 
 ing the county in search of recruits. They were laughing 
 when they came to the baby in the grounds, and when she 
 stood on the steps to say good-bye to him, she laughed 
 still. 
 
 " She's the most insidiously radiant creature I ever met, 
 and there's nothing the matter with the child. I foresee 
 what I never dared to expect an excellent client in Mrs. 
 Antrobus. A baby is a marvellous leveller ! Mrs. Antrobus 
 as an anxious mother is indeed an agreeable surprise. 
 I must tell Alice. It may enable her to look upon the poor 
 lady, at least in some respects, as one does upon an ordinary 
 human being. Hitherto there has been no platform upon 
 which they could meet on equal terms." 
 
 Alice did call the next day, to learn that Mrs. Antrobus 
 had gone to town to a bridge party! She examined the 
 child, diagnosed hysterical folly on the part of his betters, 
 and flounced home. So much for William's anxious 
 mother ! 
 
 The growing silence in the child and in everything in 
 earth, and sky, and air, seemed to be choking her, so 
 Audrey had wired to accept an invitation she had 
 previously declined, and flown to London and wholesome 
 noise, thus endangering a score of friendships, and putting 
 her hostess to no end of inconvenience. She played until 
 she had won 50, and with equal zest went on till she 
 had lost 30, and righted the emotional balance. She 
 demanded a chasse for her coffee and told some startling
 
 3 02 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 stories with inimitable frankness and reserve> and then, 
 as by a miracle, she swept out the tainted atmosphere of 
 heat and corruption with a heather-scented breeze. 
 
 " Why don't you come back to us ? " said a man 
 who had known her since she was fifteen ; one who had 
 suffered a good deal himself, but had made others suffer 
 more. " You were a baby Pan trying his pipes when you 
 left us. Now you're the eternal youth himself, and by 
 virtue of your sex something more. You left us before 
 you found yourself or us. Couldn't you bring the cram- 
 ming establishment to town ? " 
 
 " It's better in the country and so's Pan. He can play 
 there, too, and we can dance." 
 
 " He can play well enough in town, and we keep good 
 time." 
 
 " He's better for boys down in the reeds by the river." 
 
 " May I come down and listen and be a boy again ? " 
 
 He looked at her with bold admiration. She laughed, 
 and her look was as direct as his. 
 
 " You've lost the way, you'll never be a boy again 
 anywhere ; we shouldn't know what to do with you, the 
 boys and I. You'd silence the pipes." 
 
 " I've danced to them for eight-and-twenty years with 
 creditable agility, in less expert hands than yours." 
 
 " But you don't know my tunes, and I can't teach you, 
 my hands are too full. 
 
 " Don't come, please," she said, in the gentlest tone of 
 command. " I'm on the very verge of finding out some 
 new tune, and I want to be left at peace with the boys, 
 and the reeds, and the rivers, and a baby. Did you know 
 I'd got a baby ? " 
 
 " How long will you remain at peace with the boys, 
 and the reeds, and the rivers, and a baby, Mrs. Antrobus ? " 
 
 " I don't know ; I wish I did," said Audrey ; " but, 
 good-bye, and don't come. Good-bye, dear people of 
 Babylon ! " she called out to the room at large. " If 
 you rumple up your foreheads in the fiendish way you did 
 just now when a poor little country mouse picked up a
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 303 
 
 few crumbs from your overloaded tables, you'll soon be 
 getting wrinkles, and you ought to be shedding a tear 
 for her going back now to recoup herself for the subse- 
 quent losses by gleaning corn. It's not corn now, is it ? 
 it's potatoes ; but, anyway, remember poor Ruth, and 
 wish her good luck." 
 
 When she got home the baby had grown, she thought, 
 one tiniest semitone more quiet, and the mail had come 
 in. 
 
 Things were beginning to turn, and Larry to hope ; he 
 wrote in a flood of moonlight. His chance was coming, 
 there was no mistake this time ! Every bit of him that 
 had been going dead for months in the hideous inaction, 
 was coming to life in a way he had never felt before, not in 
 the best run he had ever ridden, or the best game of 
 polo he'd ever played, and with chances about, that 
 sort of thing can't strike you foolish for the first minute, 
 and in the next make you fit for anything, for nothing ! 
 
 The chance was no nearer, geographically, than before ; 
 it lay not twenty miles away, behind a handful of little 
 hills as it had been lying all these sodden weeks but 
 now they were given their heads at last. They could look 
 out at facts with their own eyes now, and walk com- 
 fortably on their own flat feet, and find their bearings 
 unhampered by old habits and old fogies, or the devil 
 himself turned old woman over there in the War Office. 
 They knew where they were now, and having no longer 
 any fools in authority to instruct them, could turn all 
 their attention to trusting themselves ; they had thrown 
 off the yoke, and action was now the word. And no matter 
 what happened, Audrey must train the boy to be a soldier, 
 unless he turned out a hopeless skunk. A man must 
 find himself sooner or later in soldiering, and even a skunk 
 after a bit will get less of a skunk. He gets the hang 
 of things ; he lives ! " You see things in the fellows out 
 here," said Larry, " that you might search for all your 
 life in a dull barracks at home, and never catch sight 
 of. It brings them Close to you in the queerest way.
 
 304 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 You respect them and yourself in a new way ; you drop 
 on them worse than before, as it happens your eyes and 
 your wits get keener in this air, and your head clearer, 
 but I have less petty crime in my company every day, 
 and I think it's because I know more of the men and can 
 manage them better. The soldier is a fine fellow, and 
 you're the best soldier I know, Audrey, little girl, far and 
 away the best ! You're always showing me the right way 
 to take with everything. I often hear you clapping. 
 To-night I can. It's you who make me take the right 
 way with the men. It's you who will be with me when 
 the chance comes. 
 
 " I have no cause to grouse. It's come already in a way. 
 The colonel has recommended me for a D.S.O. They 
 think me useful of sorts, and it's you you, at every 
 turn ! But of course it is, since we're each the half of 
 the other ! 
 
 " This is not very moral, is it, with Antrobus a fixture ? 
 but it's the fact. We could never have been what we are, 
 you and I, without each other. It's doubtful morality 
 all right, and I've done with it practically, as you have ; 
 it doesn't pay if one wants to play a big game. It's not 
 good enough for either of us now, and I know to-night 
 just as clearly as if you told me, that you're finding the 
 same thing over there amongst the Surrey hills. 
 
 " But you're finding it in a different way a woman's 
 way poor Audrey ! It's not so ripping a way we've 
 got the best of it always, I think but I wonder which is 
 the most effective way, yours or mine ? 
 
 " My God ! but I hate to think of your suffering, child, 
 there, in the lonely house ; and yet you must, you must ! 
 I can't take that over for you ! It's not my job, and I 
 can't fix it up for you. I wonder if it's fair. Everything 
 seems fair to-night. Everything is in less of a muddle. 
 You feel sure that it's all right somewhere, and that 
 you're on the right road ; but to think of you suffering, 
 and you the mother of my child ! To-night this seems 
 more wonderful than ever it did ! I wonder if I'll ever see
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 305 
 
 him or you ? but even if I don't, to know you're good 
 is a lot. 
 
 " I've been sorry enough ; I've suffered for my sins, 
 I can tell you. Antrobus is a good fellow, and one doesn't 
 like to go behind another man, good or bad. And the 
 wrong to you, my own, the wrong to you ! My God ! 
 but I've suffered ! 
 
 "But to-night that 'seems done with, too. The one 
 thing I know for certain is that it's done with, and we love 
 each other, and that you're good, and my chance is at the 
 door ! " 
 
 He must have jumped up suddenly and blurred the 
 sheet. It was very difficult to decipher. 
 
 " I could wander on all night," he said in a postscript, 
 " but we've got the route. Good-bye, little Audrey ! 
 Don't expect to hear for weeks." 
 
 " But this is good -bye," she said. " It's my last 
 letter." 
 
 The knowledge lay like a stone in her heart ; she could 
 not lift it. 
 
 As a rule her first impulse was to fight ; above all, 
 to fight sorrow, to crush the first premonitory symptom 
 of its possibility, to refuse to believe, to fly to any refuge 
 sooner than give in. But to-night she sat still and knew. 
 She was trapped ! To struggle would now be the act of 
 a fool ! 
 
 The letter came when she was giving them their coffee, 
 and as he left the room Andrew gave her the evening 
 paper. She knew by his kind, maddening look as he gave 
 it, that there was some mention of Larry in it. Three times 
 in the three weeks his name had thrilled every sentient 
 heart in England, and sooner than not himself give her 
 the paper Andrew would have died. 
 
 This was the biggest mention of all. 
 
 " He's having his chance with a vengeance," she said, 
 " and I'm helping him ; but it's hard to be a woman." 
 
 She crouched down beside the window. 
 
 " It's never been so hard before. I think this is the limit. 
 
 20
 
 306 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " I've always been less than a woman, so I've been able 
 to go on till now perhaps that's it," she said presently. 
 " But now " 
 
 She shuddered, her fearful eyes looked out into the 
 moonlight. 
 
 " I I'm not afraid of ghosts, surely I haven't come 
 to that ! I I've done my best ! " she cried out passion- 
 ately after a long silence. " If Larry's done his job so 
 have I we've done our level best, we two. And to-night 
 every woman in England is crying over Larry and envying 
 him for herself. 
 
 " And here am I and there's Andrew, in the 
 laboratory and the baby getting quieter in his cot 
 and a good God made us all ! 
 
 " And if this isn't defeat," she said, after a long move- 
 less waiting, " it's precious like it. And I thought I 
 couldn't be defeated," said Audrey, standing up at last ; 
 " it seems odd. 
 
 " And I wonder what's defeating me ? " she said aloud 
 in a thin, shrill voice from which anguish had wrung the 
 richness ; " is it God, or the devil, or what ? 
 
 " Oh, well, I'll have to wait now for eventualities, and 
 for news like Simpkins, without even a fishmonger's 
 assistant to comfort me, and read out of the same book 
 with me at church. It must be nice for Simpkins, but 
 what about Hopkins thinking of her out there in the 
 moonlight ? and yet God made them all ! Oh ! for what ! 
 For what ! For what ! 
 
 " I suppose he made to-morrow, too," she said, " and 
 all the other to-morrows full of waiting, with Larry doing, 
 doing, doing ! 
 
 " Even Andrew has his distractions. Oh ! Larry ! " 
 she moaned. " Can't even you help me ? 
 
 " I'd better go see baby and get ready for the next 
 to-morrow God has ready for his poor little playthings." 
 
 It was her first sense of real defeat, her first sentient 
 perception of mortality, and virtue had gone out of 
 Audrey,
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 307 
 
 She was a little different. Macmahon suggested "Flue," 
 and was surreptitiously kicked for his pains. 
 
 Andrew's heart stood still. His brain went plodding 
 round a host of wrong causes until the doctor's arrival to 
 see the baby put him on another false scent. 
 
 Audrey had not spoken of the baby's being" unwell, 
 and unversed in babies, he had perceived no change ; 
 but Audrey could not be anxious for nothing. He went, 
 oppressed by a horrid diffidence, to look for her. He was 
 so anxious to help and come as near her as the other man 
 may. If he could not understand anything else, he 
 could at least understand her loneliness, and there was 
 a certain relief in finding some tangible trouble of which 
 they could speak. He threw off his diffidence, and 
 looked more like other people, and less like Andrew, 
 when he came to Audrey putting on her gloves in the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 20*
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 I DIDN'T know the child was ill," said Andrew, 
 blushing in his usual dreadful way. He made the 
 most strenuous efforts to overcome this desolating habit, 
 but in vain ; it grew upon him, and was the saddest 
 of all the sad comedy of her life to Audrey. 
 
 " I don't know myself that he is," she said in the gentle 
 way she always spoke to him. "If I'd been sure, I'd 
 have told you. You're extraordinarily good to me, 
 Andrew," she said, on a sudden impulse. 
 
 Andrew blushed deeper and stuttered. Some pit 
 seemed to be swallowing up all his words. Audrey felt, 
 in a way amusingly unlike Andrew's, and much more 
 unpleasant, every fluctuation in Andrew's sense of guilt 
 in regard to her and the baby, but she never blushed. 
 
 The perennial exasperation and horrible hurt of it all, 
 and she trying so hard to please him ! Above all, the 
 dumb appeal of his quiet, inquiring face, and with her own 
 affairs in the state they were ! She moved from one foot 
 to another and stifled a sigh. 
 
 " Perhaps he's not ill at all," she said ; " but one gets 
 foolish." 
 
 " I I understand." 
 
 She finished her last button and sat down. 
 
 " I'm going to take baby to see Adeline. He won't 
 be ready yet. There's plenty of time. Andrew, won't 
 you sit down ? And you don't understand. You under- 
 stand nothing but going on being good in your own way. 
 I wish it didn't make you look old and ill." 
 
 Andrew was hopelessly unready ; he hadn't a word. 
 
 308
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 309 
 
 She wriggled. 
 
 " If the boys and the experiments aren't enough, if 
 they can't fill your time and thoughts, couldn't you try 
 er realizing your ego, Andrew. I've been reading it up. 
 It seems an absorbing pursuit, one that would take up 
 the whole of any man's spare time, and you haven't much, 
 really. It seems able to erect a sort of ring fence around 
 people strong enough to keep out any intruder." 
 
 Andrew looked rigid with surprise. He was the least 
 encouraging person Mrs. Antrobus had ever tried to 
 influence. 
 
 " Oh ! it would suit you exactly. You have to be so 
 desperately in earnest about it. It'll never pay you to 
 be desperately in earnest about me, Andrew, and all in 
 the wrong way. If only you'd turn your attention to 
 the other things ! I'd feel less horrid if you did, Andrew 
 less of an obstacle. I've never been an obstacle to anyone 
 yet, and I don't want to begin on you. Oh, Andrew ! 
 not on you, of all people ! " 
 
 Andrew had not recovered sufficiently for coherent 
 words, and her face was very moving to a silent 
 man. 
 
 " I want you to be going on like the others." 
 
 " How many ? " he thought. " How many ? " 
 
 " Not hanging round the things you were never made 
 to understand." 
 
 He wondered what things there were that he did under- 
 stand. The dislocating sense of guilt for her from 
 which he strove so vainly to rid himself was in full 
 possession of him. Her point of view reached farther 
 and farther his significance in it grew more shadowy. He 
 lived in her speculations she in his heart ! The desolating 
 difference ! 
 
 But at least his responsibility in her and in himself 
 was clear and defined. 
 
 " And Kant and little light Audrey ! " He groaned in 
 the silence of his soul. " This child in morality ! this ex- 
 quisite symbol of unconsciousness ! "
 
 310 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " If a man fails to understand these things, which above 
 all else are his affair," he said, with the very oldest of his 
 smiles, that which was more distracting to Audrey than 
 any of the others, " he will fail, I fear, in realizing even 
 the beginning of his ego. What has induced you to read 
 Kant, Audrey ? " 
 
 " One gets so tired of muddled brains at tea-parties, 
 and now when women are all talking war and politics, 
 I thought I'd try something which might sort out mine 
 enough to get some idea as to where the muddle starts. 
 One likes to know things. And there's a muddle in 
 everything. It can't start altogether from women's 
 brains or their acts. Besides, it's nice to dig into great 
 brains in books ; one doesn't get much chance out of 
 them." 
 
 " Audrey, child ! " 
 
 " I'm not blaming you, Andrew. It's our methods 
 being so different, and the way in which we understand 
 things and misunderstand things. I wish you'd go on, 
 Andrew, and follow your own road, and let me find my 
 own way out of my own mess. It's mine, not yours. 
 Tracking egos is a more worthy pursuit for you, and it 
 would make you forget." 
 
 " It would be impossible for me to forget you, Audrey, 
 and hardly conducive to the search for an ego. That, 
 so I gather, comprises the highest duty of man. I fear, 
 child, that we must go on together." 
 
 She beat softly with her foot upon the carpet and 
 sighed; 
 
 " Ah ! you don't understand," she said, looking out 
 into some region very far away from Andrew; 
 
 " I understand, Audrey, more than ever I did before, 
 that in marrying you, not understanding, I did you an 
 indelible injury." 
 
 " For goodness' sake don't be adding a new burthen to 
 your load, Andrew. You married me from the very 
 highest motives. How could you have understood me 
 or anyone else, brought up as you were ? I could have
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 311 
 
 taught you all about me soon enough if I hadn't been a 
 beast. Couldn't we keep from going back, Andrew ? 
 Marrying me has been the best thing you ever did, really 
 except for the one thing. And there's one thing I want you 
 to know : that's over and done with," she said in a low, 
 steady voice. " And Larry wouldn't go behind you now 
 by one hair's-breadth, not if I went on my knees to him. 
 Larry's gone on miles ahead of me. I haven't kept back 
 Larry and he a sinner just like me ; and how could I 
 want to keep you back, who'd be a saint if you weren't 
 an Agnostic ? I have some gratitude," she said pas- 
 sionately ; " I want to play fair and I wish you wouldn't 
 be blushing when I'm as cool as a cucumber. One has no 
 time to blush ; one has to be doing, doing, doing. I 
 wonder if things had been different if you'd been the 
 fallen sister and not I I wonder just how you'd have 
 managed the affair, and if in the end you'd have come up 
 top any sooner than I shall ? " 
 
 Her words came in a soft torrent. She would have 
 forced a solid, sensible man only moderately in love into 
 listening to her, not to say Andrew. 
 
 " Blushes have never been the least effective," she pro- 
 ceeded, " nor tears, nor standing in white sheets at church 
 doors. Fallen sisters are very much where they were 
 centuries ago, in the eyes of the respectable middle classes. 
 They haven't moved an inch, really. There must be some 
 way on, some way of progress," she said, frowning and 
 tapping her foot, " even for them ; some new way that 
 isn't simply loathsome for them, I mean, not for the 
 rescuers. And if there is, one would like to find it. There's 
 nothing without a future, not even pigs. There's a so- 
 ciety just started to uplift pigs, to point them to the higher 
 life, to show them what nice, fastidious creatures they are 
 by nature it's like making them realize their egos, don't 
 you think and that keeping on wallowing in styes is 
 merely a misapprehension of truth." 
 
 " For God's sake, Audrey, stop ! " 
 
 " But I can't ; I have to, and I'm sure we don't often
 
 3 i2 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 have any rational conversation. There must be a way," 
 she said, frowning ; her eyes were full of the saddest 
 gravity, her mouth trembled a little. " Not any of those 
 faked up by parochial saints on the rotten foundations of 
 personal inexperience. I've been asked to go on a com- 
 mittee for rescue work, and I will, just to see, to find out, 
 and to make them all sit up. If you'd give up repenting 
 for my sins, Andrew, and in just the sort of way Katharine 
 would, if she had the happy chance of knowing about 
 them, it would save us both a lot of horribleness ; and 
 some new thing might begin ; one might see some other 
 way." She waited, she ached for words for any, the 
 smallest that might ease the tension of her heart. But 
 Andrew's feelings were too deep for words ; the weight of 
 centuries of right judgment on these matters crushed down 
 all power of expression. She was so lonely and desolate ; 
 she would have liked even Andrew to touch her ; but 
 nothing was more remote from Andrew's diffident inten- 
 tions. She sat looking at him, whitening slowly all the 
 time. 
 
 " Only you'd think it indelicate it's Katharine's word 
 and must be wandering about somewhere in you 
 I'd give you Larry's letter that came last night. It would 
 show you the way in which a sinner can be good, and 
 think other sinners good, and believe in them down to the 
 ground, in spite of everything." 
 
 By this time Andrew looked as though he would never 
 speak again. Faint, yet pursuing, Audrey forged on : 
 
 " Larry has as little right to believe in me as you have, 
 or less, because he knows more of me, and yet he thinks 
 that I'm good, properly good, like other people. It's 
 very curious to you, Andrew. It is tome, in a way." Her 
 eyes looked out into a great distance, her mouth melted. 
 She moved slightly towards the light. 
 
 Andrew was still searching for words, and a human 
 expression, when she spoke again. 
 
 " I should like you to be at peace with Larry, now, 
 Andrew, now ! this minute ! I wonder if you would
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 313 
 
 mind saying just once, Andrew, that you forgive 
 Larry ? " 
 
 Andrew stared, shrank together, blundered to his feet 
 and stood stiff and half blind before her. She moved 
 again and drew a deep breath. 
 
 " If only you'd say it once, even if you only say it in a 
 dull way, only half understanding ! It seems suddenly 
 so extraordinarily urgent." 
 
 He stood immovable, watching her white passionate 
 face, the entreaty in her tired eyes, the fatigue in her 
 proud, young bearing. A spell was in the air. 
 
 All at once he shuddered in the horror of her self- 
 revelation. He recoiled from her, shocked, estranged. 
 Every inherited instinct rose up against her. For all 
 their righteousness the Antrobuses had fought duels in 
 their time for their women, had been implacable with the 
 best ! 
 
 But still the spell was in the air, and in this there was 
 greater than Audrey to reckon with. 
 
 " It seems suddenly so urgent," she said in a low, clear 
 voice. " I never even thought of asking you when you 
 came in, or of saying anything. But I had to say it, and 
 I have to ask. Oh, Andrew ! Andrew ! " She sat, white 
 and trembling, full of a magical, transcendent appeal. 
 
 A strange sense of awe, of an infinite responsibility, 
 was gathering in upon Andrew. The bitter, uncom- 
 promising anger with which his heart was full whenever 
 he thought of Carfax and, indeed, when did he ever 
 forget him ? changed slowly to a generous, enlarged, 
 fundamental desire to be just and fair ; to try to see in 
 all men, even in this man who had irredeemably wronged 
 him, what at bottom he would alone see in himself. He 
 fought stubbornly against the better mind ; brutal 
 passions rose up and defied him: Perhaps no man ever 
 fought harder in his time than this poor scholarly Andrew 
 Hidden resentments rushed out to oppose the outrageous 
 demand put upon him ; unknown cruelties battered at 
 his heart ; strong logic made stronger his brain. But
 
 314 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 Audrey, and the truth in things as they are, stood unflinch- 
 ing in his path, and from his birth he had been well in- 
 structed in giving up. A settled habit of obedience can 
 damn or save, as a man takes it, and there were other 
 things which words clothe but scurvily, that fought in 
 Andrew upon the angels' side. 
 
 " I forgive him," said Andrew at last, not looking at 
 her, hardly thinking of her. The affair seemed now to be 
 his, not hers, or any other's. " Yes, I forgive him," he 
 said slowly, speaking as though to himself. " When 
 it comes to the point, no man has any right to judge any 
 other except by himself; I couldn't do any man an in- 
 delible injury, knowingly. It may have been equally 
 impossible to Carfax." 
 
 For an instant Audrey looked breathlessly up in his 
 ashen face. 
 
 " I'm glad," she said almost inaudibly, " I'm glad you've 
 forgiven Larry. I'll be the most faithful right hand to 
 you that ever man had. I'll stand by you in every way. 
 I'll make your life splendid. And, in the other things 
 there may be some way. Perhaps one can square things 
 in the end, square every single thing. 
 
 " Only only give me my head, and believe, and I 
 will. It won't be your way, it will be mine, and and I 
 wonder, Andrew," she said, throwing out her hands in a 
 wild appeal, " I wonder if you'll believe in it, or understand 
 it, or accept it to the day of your death ? " 
 
 " At least, I shall understand your loneliness, Audrey, 
 and your great sorrow." 
 
 " Ah ! " she said, " Ah ! But will you go on ? Will 
 you go on, Andrew ? And, watching you will be helping 
 me all the time to find my own way out." 
 
 It was only the will of Adeline that now held her to life. 
 She was very tired, and could have prayed humbly for 
 death, but Audrey wanted her ; so with even more 
 chastened humility she prayed for life.-
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 315 
 
 Her love for Audrey was so inextricably mixed up with 
 the many seductive things that had passed her by, that it 
 required stern spiritual exercise upon her part to keep 
 her prayers for Audrey quite pure and perfect. The God 
 who made the roses was continually slipping in, pressing 
 back into silence the God who made the Law, so some- 
 times the conflict became rather too difficult for so weary 
 a saint ; so she had to throw up the sponge at last and let 
 the God of the roses have His way. 
 
 And, after all, if Love is the consoler who melts the 
 heart, he is also the sword who pierces the soul. The 
 unifier and the divider. The eternal Two that know no 
 division. 
 
 So Audrey was in safe hands in any case, and in some 
 way, upon a day not given to her to know, Audrey would 
 be both pierced and melted, and she not there to help. 
 
 She knew Andrew too well to trust him in this subtle 
 matter. Audrey would have to stand up to a great deal 
 alone. She had no doubts as to Audrey's courage, but 
 many in regard to her discretion. And Audrey alone in 
 the wine -press of God would be hard driven. 
 
 It would be a special happening, and Adeline would like 
 to have had a hand in it. To be just for once paramount 
 in the need and the determination of one human soul. 
 She could have done great things for Audrey. She knew 
 in her heart she could, and it would have made up for all 
 her other misses. Sometimes as she lay and dreamed 
 wild dreams concerning this fullness of fulfilment, she 
 experienced a rounding out, an expansion, a blossoming 
 of all desire, such as astonished her. Her heart beat like 
 the heart of a young girl. Her cheeks tingled. 
 
 But she kept down her feelings whenever she felt strong 
 enough, and blushed as insanely as Andrew himself could 
 for her secret folly. 
 
 Audrey perfectly turned out for a country walk, the 
 freshest vision of dancing life, laughing and chattering,
 
 3i6 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 was anything but a fit commentary upon Adeline's sacred 
 vigil. She blushed again as she thought of it. 
 
 When Audrey had talked all the nonsense she had 
 breath for, and had sent the baby to pay his formal 
 respects to Katharine, Adeline was composed enough to 
 see something in her eyes that annulled all thoughts of 
 her own shortcomings. 
 
 The Spirit was, indeed, far enough from Audrey, but 
 some sword of whose quality she was extremely doubt- 
 ful, was even now in her heart. 
 
 " But what can it be ? " she considered. " Audrey has 
 
 a baby, and even if Andrew Oh ! well . . . ." said 
 
 Adeline, bridling. " But whatever it is, she won't tell 
 me yet, and when she can 
 
 " But I won't repine," said Adeline robustly. 
 
 " Audrey, Dr. Lambert says that everyone is talking of 
 the way in which the boys are getting on, and how ad- 
 mirably you manage your house, and of how wonderfully 
 Andrew has taken to his new occupation. And it's all 
 you, dear. Dr. Lambert likes Mr. Norman greatly, but 
 he says it's ah 1 you ; that you are the moving spirit in 
 everything the point of life, he called you." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Audrey complacently. " Oh, well ! I don't 
 think they could very well do without me not now. It 
 was my scheme from the beginning, wasn't it, Adeline ? 
 And I chose Mr. Norman. I've done my best," she said, 
 speaking not to Adeline, but to herself. 
 
 " Child, you've done wonders ! " 
 
 " And yet it's not enough. I might just as well have 
 been enjoying myself in my own way." 
 
 Adeline anxiously watched her. 
 
 " If you had done anything less than you have done, 
 or done it differently, I wonder where any of us would-be 
 now ? " 
 
 Her face still confounded Adeline. 
 
 " It's not often one gets so many dreams fulfilled in a 
 few short months," Adeline went on. " I never see one 
 of those boys go up that hill "
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 317 
 
 " For tobacco ! " said Audrey. 
 
 " Never mind what it's for ; but I never do without 
 dreaming of his success, and Andrew's, and Mr. Norman's, 
 and, above ail, yours, little Audrey ; and here are all my 
 dreams coming true. No one could ever have prophesied 
 it of you, dear Audrey," resumed Adeline, when Audrey 
 said nothing. 
 
 " Oh, yes, they could, if they'd known anything at all 
 about me," said Audrey promptly. 
 
 Adeline sighed. 
 
 " I know we don't understand you, dear." 
 
 " You understand quite enough about me." 
 
 " You've done wonders, and you've done all this, 
 Audrey, you who love neither God nor " she said slowly 
 " nor Andrew ; it makes me feel such a failure. I have 
 never done anything decisive in all my life, and yet," she 
 added, getting very red, " yet I was converted at eighteen." 
 
 A dazzle of interest arose in Audrey's remote eyes. 
 She was alive in a moment ; she leaned eagerly nearer to 
 Adeline. 
 
 " And you never told me that before ! Converted at 
 eighteen ! At a given date something that actively hap- 
 pened. An event you can look back on, and count time 
 by ! It's rather fascinating. I thought that sort of 
 thing just trickled in anyhow, and trickled out later 
 on. But do tell me just what you mean by conversion ? " 
 
 " I mean," said the poor woman, " I mean," she looked 
 dumbly into Audrey's brilliant face. It had taken all 
 her courage to speak out, to deliver her testimony. Never 
 before had she dared to speak aloud of this miracle of a 
 thing that had happened to her, and now to have to explain 
 it and to such a face ! Trembling and stuttering, she 
 bared her poor heart, and Audrey was too absorbed to see 
 that she was almost fainting when she had finished. 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Audrey, frowning. " I've read about 
 such things, but I've never been told like this. They 
 interest me. She lifted up her hand as though in search 
 of something. Her foot swung more slowly.-
 
 318 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " It's fascinating, you know. But that was definite 
 enough, surely. Adeline, don't get struck all of a heap 
 like that ! Go on ! do ! It's immensely interesting. I 
 believe conversion has a lot of names, and happens to lots 
 of people. How can you say that you've done nothing 
 definite ? " 
 
 " But, Audrey," faltered the wretched Adeline, " you 
 do nothing ; it's it's done to you." 
 
 The eager excitement in the girl frightened Adeline 
 nearly out of her wits. It was so odd an outcome of the 
 testimony it had cost her so much to deliver, and she had 
 conveyed an entirely wrong impression concerning this 
 wonderful thing to Audrey. 
 
 " It isn't definite, Audrey, as you count definiteness. 
 Oh, if only it was ! " she whispered. 
 
 " It's definite enough," said Audrey, nursing her knee. 
 " It's a continuous, coherent sort of thing. It's like Kant 
 tracking his ego and landing himself in a sort of abomina- 
 tion of desolation, where he sat tight and surveyed man- 
 kind with a steely eye." 
 
 " Child ! " 
 
 Adeline lay back panting. All that she knew of Kant 
 she had gathered from Katharine. 
 
 " Adeline ! What on earth is the matter ? " 
 
 " Kant ! " murmured the poor lady. " He has been 
 called Antichrist." 
 
 " Who called him that ? " 
 
 " Katharine." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Audrey. " Oh ! just like Katharine. Oh 
 well ! don't you worry about what I know of Kant, it 
 wouldn't hurt a fly. And he was pretty cocksure about 
 most things, but he wasn't Antichrist. There's a wonder- 
 ful fascination about these things," said Audrey, beating 
 a rhythmic measure on her knee, " in things somewhere 
 or other ahead of you. Kant and conversion, for instance. 
 It's what makes me like you so tremendously, Adeline." 
 
 " Dear Audrey ! " 
 
 " You see," said Audrey dreamily, " something hap-
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 319 
 
 pened to you and Kant, that never happened to me. 
 Dear me ! Couldn't you tell me more ? " 
 
 " Oh, Audrey ! it's so sacred ! There are no words 
 at least, I haven't any." 
 
 " I've read words, plenty of them, but they've never 
 struck me as you have, suddenly and that unfortunate 
 lonely Kant ! It is interesting. I'm glad you were con- 
 verted at eighteen, Adeline. I'm glad that you've gone 
 one better than me, and know something I don't. Was 
 Katharine also converted at eighteen ? " 
 
 " Dear child ! Katharine was always good." 
 
 " I know, but she wasn't converted at eighteen. It 
 must have been a pretty big thing, Adeline, that made 
 you more enterprising than Katharine on one memorable 
 occasion. You must often feel quite nice and comfy having 
 done a big thing that Katharine never did, and to know 
 things she knows nothing about." 
 
 " Audrey ! Katharine 
 
 " Goodness me ! I know. She's an example, but you 
 were converted at eighteen, and it's far more interesting. 
 I wonder if I'd been converted at eighteen what would 
 have happened." 
 
 " Even if you had been," said Adeline wistfully, " you 
 couldn't have done better for us than you have done." 
 
 " Oh, couldn't I ? " said Audrey. " Have you noticed 
 anything about baby ? " 
 
 " What do you mean, Audrey ? " said Adeline, startled. 
 " I think he's grown a little quieter. The doctor says 
 he's a splendid child." 
 
 " And he thinks I'm the usual mother ? " 
 
 " I think he's growing so like you. He's not like 
 Andrew." 
 
 " Well, no ! " Audrey picked up her skirts to warm her 
 ankles. 
 
 " Adeline, conversion must have been a strengthening 
 process. I wonder it didn't make you defy Katharine, and 
 take a little stroll round the world on your own account, 
 chaperoned by conversion. It was all you wanted to
 
 320 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 make you perfect. I say ! here's Katharine. Her step 
 seems light and airy. A grave and contemplative baby 
 would appeal to her. I'm glad you got converted in good 
 time, and had the pull over her all these years, and had 
 little hidden places of your own into which her spectacled 
 nose could never, never pierce. I'll say what I like ! 
 You're far more mine than you are Katharine's. Katha- 
 rine, I'm going to make a soldier of baby." 
 
 " Indeed, Audrey ! and Andrew ? " 
 
 " Andrew's leaving these things to me, and baby's been 
 born and bred in war." 
 
 " He is rooted and grounded, I am thankful to say, in a 
 more stable soil." 
 
 " There are dozens of soldiers behind him," said Audrey 
 audaciously. 
 
 " And of scholars not a few." 
 
 " Scholars don't die for their country." 
 
 " They live for it." 
 
 Katharine was too great and good a woman to quail 
 before any platitude. 
 
 Audrey was not in the mood for Katharine, and in 
 regard to her she had no fixed conscience. Katharine 
 was one to be used as a screen upon which to throw the 
 worst of her, and the child as he was brought in looked 
 more quiet than before. Audrey's heart leaped up and 
 almost choked her, and so Katharine being now the only 
 temptation she could yield to with any degree of comfort 
 to herself, she made ample use of her. 
 
 But during the whole of the unworthy skirmish she kept 
 on lightly pinching Adeline's hand under her bed-clothes, 
 so robbing the scene of all its pain for the poor 
 bewitched saint.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 ONE day Andrew noticed the growing quietness of the 
 child, and then Audrey felt quite sure. 
 
 " Would you like another opinion, Audrey ? " 
 
 He watched her with great anxiety. She was almost 
 as quiet as the child. She was as vivid as before, as full 
 of reserves of life, but there had fallen a stillness upon 
 her, and looking back, he saw that it had been growing 
 now for many days. A vision of her as she had nursed 
 Macmahon came back to him. Her defiance of precedent, 
 the security of her hope, the self-assertiveness of her 
 courage, the audacity of her claim, and now her state of 
 almost passive acquiescence. He could not understand 
 her. 
 
 " I don't want anyone but Dr. Lambert," she said ; 
 " no one can do anything for baby. He's tried life ; he 
 gave it a good trial, you'll admit that, but he's had enough 
 of it you can see ! At least I can. Perhaps he doesn't 
 approve of me, or of being an embarrassment in a general 
 way. Anyway, he's had enough of it." 
 
 " Must you speak like this, Audrey ? " 
 
 " No," she said, after a pause ; " and it's cheap ; but 
 you're the only person I can ever speak the truth to, 
 don't you see, and when one is being defeated all round 
 one gets foolish, and doesn't mind hurting people." 
 
 " Can I do nothing, Audrey ? " 
 
 " What more could any man do ? " she said passionately. 
 " You'd save the child if you could. You'd squirm in his 
 embarrassing presence till the day of your death to save 
 
 321 21
 
 322 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 me, and you've forgiven Larry. You've done a great deal, 
 Andrew, and some day I'll be nice about it. Meanwhile, 
 let me go on in my own way. You have no hand in these 
 things. They're my affair, and we must all do our own 
 job. This is mine ah 1 right, and yet I seem to have to 
 stand aside now and let things work themselves out without 
 me. I I have to stand aside and let the child die ! 
 I have to be a cipher," she said, drawing her fingers across 
 her eyes, " and let things happen. It does mean being 
 defeated, don't you think ? " 
 
 " My poor child ! " 
 
 " I wonder why on earth Providence chose you as the 
 centre of all these experiences, Andrew ! It's not com- 
 monly honest, not to say decent, with your bringing up, 
 and your imagination. You have plenty, but it's of the 
 wrong sort. It's a clog to keep you back, not a goad 
 to drive you on. If only you'll be good and kind in the 
 usual way, and let me look after the impropriety in the 
 situation myself. It's mine, not yours ! If you did, 
 you'd be a great man much sooner than you'll ever be, 
 suffering tortures all in the wrong way for me. Go on, 
 Andrew, for goodness' sake ! go on ! on ! on ! and leave 
 me to scramble out anyhow. 
 
 " And even if baby were proper, Andrew," she said 
 presently, " I wouldn't go into mourning for him, so 
 don't let that be troubling you." 
 
 The usual dumb devil took hold of Andrew, and he 
 retreated, blushing. But presently he walked down to the 
 doctor, and between them they arranged for a specialist. 
 
 When he told her, Audrey softly laughed. " I know, 
 without the specialist," she said. " I wonder when you'll 
 begin to trust me in the things I do understand, Andrew ! " 
 
 A week later the child died, and two days afterwards, 
 as he lay, a little image of Larry in his roses, the news 
 came. 
 
 It was important news, put in leaded type in the great 
 papers, for the nation had lost a good man, and they were 
 ill to spare.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 323 
 
 " I should like to be of some use to you, child," Andrew 
 stuttered, as he gave her the paper and went out. 
 
 When he next saw her she was standing beside the child's 
 bed, almost as still as he. 
 
 "Oh, Andrew," she said, as soon as she saw him ; 
 " wasn't it lucky you forgave Larry then ? And isn't 
 it odd the whole thing ? Every symbol of wickedness 
 swept from our path with the neatness and precision of a 
 Greek play. You're good you're the best man I have 
 ever known, except Larry, since he went on without me ; 
 but if he'd come home you'd have been haunted all your 
 life with the gross impropriety of his continued existence. 
 You'd have been blushing inside you all the time for me. 
 And now you can go on unabashed." 
 
 " Will you think of yourself now, Audrey, and not of 
 me?" 
 
 " Are you like Mrs. Donne and nurse, sort of outraged 
 because I don't cry and tear my hair. I heard Mrs. 
 Donne quoting, ' She must weep or she will die ! ' in a 
 strangled voice to her dead baby. There wasn't any 
 other audience visible. Did you know she once had 
 a child who lived five hours and was a means of grace 
 ever after ? Oh ! Andrew, I'm not ill, or mad, or anything ; 
 but one doesn't cry for a hero one is too proud of him. 
 And baby he knew what he was doing," she said, 
 touching his little hand. " He was like me : he hated 
 being an obstacle to people. I'm going for a walk, 
 Andrew. Is that improper ? Would you like to come as 
 far as the gate with me for the sake of weaker brethren ? 
 Andrew," she said, turning to look at him, and standing 
 up very stately and proud, " would you mind saying 
 at dinner to-night that Larry Carfax was my best 
 friend ? It would be only fair to Larry and it would 
 be fine of you. I shall be grateful some day, when I can 
 be anything. This sort of thing being defeated all round, 
 makes you dull, I think. Don't blush when you tell the 
 boys, please Andrew, or look guilty. It isn't fair to Larry, 
 or to me, or to yourself." She paused, and caught her 
 
 21*
 
 324 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 breath. The perplexed suffering in his face tortured 
 her. 
 
 " I wish there were words to say things in," she said 
 at last, softly. 
 
 "To be sorry for a man like you in common words 
 is in a way an insult and yet I am sorry in a way that 
 is not an insult. Ah ! It's very bewildering. No wonder 
 you don't understand, Andrew. No one could but the 
 person who's part of it all, but, at least, don't be thinking 
 that I'm going to break down. I'm not. It's so sense- 
 less just at the beginning of a new start." 
 
 " I shah 1 do as you wish, child ; I would gladly under- 
 stand you if I could." 
 
 " You wouldn't be you if you did," she said gently, 
 " and I'm glad you're you, Andrew ; I couldn't stand any- 
 one else, not now." 
 
 Audrey could always find her feet and her wits better 
 out of doors. She felt both to be tottering, and that would 
 never do. 
 
 Even in her extremity the cry for life was in her ears. 
 She resented her benumbed weakness just as, in a like 
 strait, she would have resented Larry's. 
 
 Besides, in a dim, negative way there was something 
 afoot in her that could never be got through in the house 
 near Andrew's dumb pain, and the hush of death, and the 
 boys walking up and down on tiptoes in their poor, foolish 
 sympathy. 
 
 It was this one little human thing that for one moment 
 had freshened her eyes with tears. 
 
 She would have liked to have gone to Adeline, but she 
 could not not yet. She must have things out with some- 
 thing first. Even now, the nearness, the inevitableness 
 of some new experience of pain, strangely excited this 
 creature so alert for novelty. 
 
 She turned mechanicaUy towards the wood, now a 
 melody of all sweetness, but she shivered and took the 
 other path. " Everything's spoilt," she said ; " one is 
 even angry with spring ! It's not fair," she murmured, 

 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 325 
 
 hurrying along. " It's low. If I'm beaten, other things 
 aren't, and I shouldn't be wanting to drag them down 
 with me. I wonder what's going to happen ? " she said 
 as she sat down under a tree shivering. " What's the 
 new hurt ? " 
 
 She was on the hill above the old church, bathed now 
 in sunlight, the very yews to the south of it were golden, 
 the graves bejewelled. 
 
 Although the services bored her, she loved the church. 
 She had made a dozen sketches of its square tower, with 
 the curious old gable of black and white. In spite of the 
 dead services, it was an alive place, full of the joys and 
 the sorrows, and the hopes, and memories of a host of 
 sentient creatures. It held both tears and laughter ; 
 it held passion and dreams. It was a strong and stalwart, 
 a secret, and silent place of refuge for helpless things. 
 
 The beech under which she sat, uncurling its leaves 
 in the sun, drawing in sensuously the rising sap, basking 
 in happiness, was no place for the like of her. She sprang 
 up, and just at her feet, in a nook in the hedge, was a 
 great clump of primroses. They, also, were too young 
 for her need. She was no longer part of them, no longer 
 part of anything. She was thrust out of everything by the 
 blow that had killed her heart. 
 
 " Nothing wants me," she said ; " I'll go to church, 
 and if Mr. Bevan sees me he'll be filled with fallacious 
 hopes, and Katharine, if she's prowling round, with vin- 
 dictive misapprehensions." 
 
 Avoiding the primroses and the great rows of beeches, 
 all rapturously uncurling in the sun, she made straight 
 for the church. She paused to watch the spears of light 
 piercing the solemn darkness of the yews, and to pick a 
 sprig of bay to wear for Larry. 
 
 For a long time even the hospitality of the bountiful 
 church was given her but churlishly. She was more 
 lonely than before, more dead at heart, and greatly dis- 
 tracted by the simpering smile of an effeminate St. George, 
 who seemed to be coming towards her on mincing toes.
 
 326 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 She was too forlorn to sit up straight in a pew. So 
 presently she knelt down, and so sad was Audrey that 
 she forgot to hitch up her beautiful skirt in order to save 
 bagging. 
 
 She cowered down in the narrow, dusty pew, and in the 
 pain of her desolation at last she fell asleep. 
 
 When she awoke a faint sense of twilight was in the 
 air. One streak of rose fell athwart the altar from the 
 setting sun. An early nightingale sang in a copse near 
 at hand. The faint lowing of the village cows stole in, 
 the crying and the crooning of the children. 
 
 Audrey looked up half dazed to listen. She knelt on, 
 wondering. Besides the other sounds, the church was 
 full also of the song of the bird, and yet the silence was 
 unbroken. 
 
 There was a sense of hushed waiting, of expectation 
 everywhere. Audrey held her breath. The dizzy whirl of 
 her thoughts fell slowly into line. The little common 
 sounds persisted. The bird sang on, and yet the silence 
 was unbroken. She felt keen and quick again ; the numb- 
 ness had left her. " But what is it ? " she said, waiting 
 and listening. The bird sang on ; the silence grew more 
 deep. 
 
 And then all at once a rapture of life rose up in Audrey 
 just as, outside, in the world, the sap was rushing to leaf, 
 and branch, and bole, and rioting in the heart of all 
 the little people of the woods. 
 
 She was as one dead who was coming to life, and then 
 it seemed to her as if suddenly she was Audrey standing 
 outside Audrey looking at her with newborn eyes. 
 
 From her very beginnings she saw Audrey, and was 
 aware of all her secrets. Every little incident in her little 
 life passed before her, and the greatest seemed infinitely 
 small, the least of infinite significance. 
 
 The bird sang. The silence seemed to sing in unison. 
 The crystal clarity of her vision grew. There was no 
 darkness anywhere. Spirit, soul, and body were at last 
 alive together in Audrey, and she knew the whole of pain.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 327 
 
 It was neither Larry, nor Larry's child, who concerned her 
 now : it was herself and every other man and every 
 other woman whom she had dishonoured in the dishonour 
 of herself. Her poor little dishonour, hitherto a sort of 
 sorry joke in her light mind, she suddenly found to be 
 illimitable and to have dishonoured the world she loved 
 so well. 
 
 If there was one thing in life she hated it was to hurt 
 any helpless thing, and every helpless creature who had 
 ever lived had, it seemed, been hurt by her. 
 
 Nothing ever happened to Audrey in gentle measure ; 
 she leapt to every experience of joy and pain. Whatever 
 draught she drank she drank to the dregs. 
 
 . She suffered now the agony of an old soul, this thing of 
 thistledown, whose soul was in the making, alone in the 
 church where she had never said a prayer ! 
 
 " Can one do nothing for oneself, then : must it be always 
 for everybody ? " she cried out at last. 
 
 " I can't bear it ! " she moaned ; " it's too big for me ! 
 Oh, Larry ! Larry ! Larry ! " 
 
 She crouched down, cowering in the unutterable < 
 of the forsaken soul. To be alone, alone, alone in a wonder- 
 ful warm world and all from one's own folly. 
 being cast forth from the throbbing heart of things that 
 broke Audrey. She could not stand apart ; she must 
 always be drawing in closer to the " watch-fires of the 
 tribe," to babble with them in their " wantonness, t 
 hopes and their joys ! " 
 
 The woman who could not bear to be shut out of 
 heart of a boy, to be shut out of the heart of the wor d ! 
 Something 'in her wild brain snapped; she coul think 
 no longer ; she threw up the sponge, and put the whol 
 
 ^ct Larry's last letter that 
 
 restored her balance in the end, and the Audrey she had 
 suddenly, for one instant, seen. 
 
 men the power of thought came back, she found that 
 her eyes had curiously widened, and altered in their focus,
 
 328 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 and that the clearest part of the whole vision, which 
 in the first shock had been a nightmare, was a glimpse 
 she had caught at the back of all the horror, of the Audrey 
 whom Larry saw and believed in, who was in the end 
 herself ! 
 
 " It's me ! " she said, standing up at last. " Larry saw 
 it, and I saw it, and if I don't believe in it I'll die ; and I 
 can't die now," she entreated, " not now, with so much 
 to do." 
 
 But there were things still to happen she had not yet 
 reckoned with, and now they came trooping in. What 
 Audrey did she must always do quickly, and her descent 
 into hell, as beseemed her temperament, came now with 
 a rush. Nothing was spared her nothing ; but still 
 she saw through all the chaos and the consternation. 
 She saw, high, high above her, the Audrey of Larry's 
 letter in a circle of light, and she fought her way back to 
 it like a young tiger. For having seen the best at last, 
 she must now attain to it. 
 
 There was nothing meek or even respectable in the 
 coming back from hell of Mrs. Antrobus. She fought 
 with the flames for her birthright of purity, with the 
 same verve and vigour with which she had once cast it 
 into them. She fought as she loved, with superb audacity. 
 
 The first bell for the evening service recalled her from her 
 own affairs. She put her hat straight, and stood up. 
 She wondered why she tottered, and felt too tired to move. 
 She pulled herself together, and by some impulse walked 
 straight into the shaft of light now filling the church, 
 and falling, a sheet of silver, across the Christ. 
 
 " I know what I've done," she said, looking nervously, 
 shyly, like a child, up in His face. " I know better than 
 anyone else ever did, I think," she said, stuttering for the 
 first time in her life ; " but I know I know, also, I think, 
 what I can do, and I'm going to do it. I'm not beaten," 
 she said, " I'm not really beaten ! " 
 
 She lifted her hand as though to grasp something. 
 " And I think," she said, blushing as red as Andrew, " I
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 329 
 
 think I know why you're hanging there, better than if 
 I'd been good. 
 
 " It hurts so horribly to have hurt things that it shows 
 one things." 
 
 Mr. Bevan caught sight of her as, following still the 
 shaft of light, she went out by the western door, and 
 paused, startled. She was more steeped in worldliness 
 than any young woman he had ever met, and that very 
 morning had hidden behind the yew hedge when his wife 
 called. Gertrude had seen her. But still, she had sought 
 the church in her bereavement. He thought of her as he 
 prayed for those in trouble, and could have done it with 
 greater fervour but for her incomprehensible avoidance, 
 so very lately, too, of the incomparable Gertrude.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 THE demand Audrey had put upon her husband 
 would have been a big one for any man, but for 
 Andrew it was colossal, an ordeal from which his whole 
 being revolted. To him it was like the betrayal of an 
 inviolable secret, an intolerable affront to Audrey herself, 
 and yet she had asked him ! And there was reason in 
 the demand, and justice, and a wild nobility. It was part 
 of Audrey herself. And that such a woman could have 
 sinned ! No matter to what heights or depths his love 
 for Audrey bore him, it centred at last always in this 
 amazed question, so intricately was the sense of sin woven 
 in and out of Andrew. 
 
 He had mercy in fullest measure in a universal sort of 
 way. Never in all his kind and stainless life had he con- 
 demned man or woman, and no man living could, of course, 
 condemn Audrey ! 
 
 But that it should be Audrey who had sinned ! 
 
 Women would be worse, perhaps, had the wonder of 
 Andrew in this matter been less, and yet who shall say 
 that this is not hard on women ! 
 
 His emotions in the affair did not, however, affect his 
 tribute to Larry Carfax that night at dinner, except 
 favourably. 
 
 Audrey might well be proud of her two men ! 
 
 In certain matters Mrs. Antrobus had no scruples. She 
 was listening to Andrew all the time from a little powdering- 
 room behind the dining-room. Not that she doubted 
 Andrew. She was only anxious to admire and be grate- 
 ful, and be more or less an active presence in any big 
 
 330
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 331 
 
 happening in which he figured. Even her tiptoe entrance 
 into her hiding-place came into Audrey's scheme of 
 restitution. 
 
 Later on Andrew felt a mounting abashment at the 
 intimate knowledge of the unspeakable affair betrayed 
 in her thanks. 
 
 " But " he stammered. 
 
 " Oh ! Andrew, do you think I could possibly have sat 
 still in my room with this going on ? I was just at your 
 back in the little room, and heard every word. Now 
 you're shocked ! But, goodness gracious ! how could I 
 have done anything else ? It was a great and generous 
 thing to do. I had to be there. You did it splendidly, 
 and, oh, Andrew, I do thank you. It's Larry's best 
 epitaph, and you spoke it. And there you are still being 
 shocked. You look shrunk up. You'd give your life 
 for me, Andrew," she said, after a pause ; " and yet you 
 never look at me but you wonder how I could ever have 
 done what I've done. I revolve in your mind on a pivot 
 of sin. Are all good men like that ? Would it be any 
 comfort to you to know," she said softly, " that I do 
 know what I've done. I know now ! I found out to- 
 day ! And no pain is in the least like it," she said slowly. 
 " No man could suffer for me as I must suffer for myself, 
 now and you least of all. It's such woman's pain 
 and yet it is everybody's." 
 
 Her eyes were dark and far away, her breath came 
 slowly. " Yours is only your own pain, and the other 
 men's who belong to your type. It's a rare and fine and 
 sound type, Andrew ; I admire it as I do the North Star, 
 but I know more about pain now than any of you. I 
 learnt in an hour more about it, and about sin, than 
 any of you could learn in your whole long lives. So, 
 Andrew, set your mind at rest, and do leave me to deal 
 with the awful thing, and just go on." 
 
 " Child ! don't say any more ! " 
 
 " There's not much more to say, poor Andrew ! But I 
 want you to know that I'm going on, too, in spite of every-
 
 332 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 thing, in my own way. And you must go on without me ; 
 will you, Andrew, please say you will ? " 
 
 He paused . Then said gravely, " Yes, Audrey, I will 
 go on. But but is this the parting of our ways ? " 
 
 " We can't travel together as we are," she said in a 
 low, tired voice ; " but sometimes roads meet. I'll 
 always be about, Andrew, when you want me. I'll do 
 all I promised for you ; but please go on now without me, 
 and without understanding me. Andrew, you were an 
 angel while the child lived ! I wish you'd be a man now, 
 and be rather glad it came. I don't think anything else 
 but baby could ever have made me see myself for what I 
 am a person who's outraged herself, and the whole, 
 whole world. It's an awful feeling, simply. I wish I could 
 go to sleep, and sleep for years, and wake up the real, 
 proper me ! Oh, Andrew ! I saw her I did see her, and 
 you have no idea " She broke off, quivering. Then, 
 in an instant she was as still as the child, and strangely 
 like him. His face floated back vaguely into Andrew's 
 stunned mind. As he stood rigid and helpless before 
 Audrey, the look of serene and lovely expectation on the 
 child's quiet face seemed to shine also upon hers, white 
 and worn, etched out against the purple fold of a curtain. 
 
 She was a child, too, waiting for a new world. As 
 Andrew, with reverent eyes and a breaking heart, looked 
 at his wife wonderingly, he renewed and confirmed his 
 resolution. He would do as she wished ; he would go on, 
 and for the moment without her. It seemed to be the 
 only thing he could do for her, walk forward on a cold 
 and lonely road, and trust her to her own keeping. 
 
 Her sin wrapped in her sorrow lay in his heart, chasten- 
 ing desire, and with the best that was awake in him he 
 loved her infinitely. 
 
 Audrey was always a woman first, and the rest after- 
 wards. When first the fact of Andrew's magnificent march 
 forward broke upon her astonished vision, it pierced her
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 333 
 
 wayward soul in the oddest way. The infinite loneliness 
 of life chilled her eager blood. The dividing sword of sin 
 seemed to be plunged afresh into her heart. She was 
 forsaken, defenceless, afraid ! 
 
 " If Andrew had even a glimmer of imagination," she 
 said, shaking and sobbing, " he'd see he'd know ! To 
 leave me now now now ' " 
 
 All at once a laugh broke, half strangled, through her 
 sobs. 
 
 " And when I begged him, when I simply pushed him 
 
 on out of my way off on his own track But if one 
 
 could only be anything else but a woman, even for half 
 an hour, it would be an immense relief," said Audrey. 
 
 And so this was the way of their going. 
 
 Andrew, with the sense of sin embalmed in his heart, 
 a nameless burthen borne with heroic fortitude, went 
 on his way. Audrey stumbled on painfully, and in her 
 heart was the passion for perfection.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 AS she made for life, the loneliness of her mortality was 
 often too much for Audrey. Impermanence took 
 and made of her its puppet. Fears she had long 
 forgotten came trooping in. The better counsels of Larry 
 were obliterated ; she remembered only Larry himself, 
 a creature no better than herself and far more dear. 
 
 The old disreputable desire to hurt and slay and 
 destroy that had rocked through her before she threw 
 over Larry, came in force on every flank. Mocking 
 spirits of evil rollicked at will in her wild brain. Even 
 the boys were no longer safe in her hot hands. They were 
 the only undefiled treasures she had ever possessed, so 
 in her instinctive fear for them she flew to London, and 
 did an incredible amount of mischief until the intolerable 
 pain in her mood drove her back to the Vision waiting 
 always behind the cloud of smoke, which once seen can 
 never be forgotten. 
 
 It was at this period that Mrs. Antrobus won the reputa- 
 tion from which she still suffers, and awoke in men's minds 
 an abiding wonder as to how she kept her weapons so 
 miraculously keen in the rust-producing, mould-inducing 
 air of a scholastic environment in Surrey. She was the 
 scandal and the envy of many an old hand. 
 
 By a fortunate or unfortunate chance, Mr. Norman 
 became aware of the radiant coruscations of this pre- 
 sumably untamable star, and he laughed without putting 
 on the breastplate of Mary, which shows that his love 
 for Mary was now as unconditioned as his trust in Mrs. 
 Antrobus. 
 
 334
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 335 
 
 In a dumb, vague way Andrew knew a great deal, but 
 what he knew best was that Audrey was too fearless 
 either to lie to him, or to be a traitor in his camp. So 
 her sin sank deeper into his heart, and her sorrow grew 
 more sorrowful. This was cold comfort, so he worked 
 harder than ever, and his reputation also grew in 
 bounds. 
 
 His venture in cramming in the biggest slump yet known 
 in the cramming industry was a trumphant success. An 
 invention had brought him in a large sum. His standing 
 in the scientific world was assured. 
 
 It was Audrey who really suffered for her sins as suffer- 
 ing counts, for it was she who had alone beheld per- 
 fection, and seen the vision which does not fade. It was 
 she who must for ever return to it, and always at the point 
 of the sword. So when tired of darkness, she craved for 
 the light, and she would not be denied until the veil was 
 lifted again and the light shone through. Nothing deterred 
 her or held her back. When very desperate she did not 
 trouble even about her sins. She thought only of her 
 aching need, she contended as one with authority, and 
 pressed past the sins. She demanded, and cried for that 
 which was her own. 
 
 It was no importunate widow who fought in Audrey. 
 It was a soldier with victory in his heart. She fell and 
 rose. She fell and again she rose. Her will was indomit- 
 able, her desire unquenchable. The agony of a lonely 
 heart is impossible to one born for love, and to the brave 
 come all things. 
 
 One day, selfless and purified, Audrey lay sobbing at 
 the feet of God. When the wild little driver gave up 
 the reins at last to the Hand behind her own, and so 
 found freedom, her first impulse was to tell Adeline every- 
 thing. It seemed so urgent, so imperative, the one and 
 only thing that she could do. For now she was suddenly 
 aware that it was this for which Adeline was still waiting,
 
 336 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 and that now the last strain would slip from the poor 
 tired heart. 
 
 She told her everything. Audrey was always com- 
 plete in her methods. The unfortunate spinster was fairly 
 dissolved in blushes before she had half finished. Things 
 known in the white silence of the spirit are quite another 
 story when poured out through the red mouth of the 
 flesh. Adeline, if triumphant, was shattered. It took all 
 Audrey's wits to restore her. 
 
 " It's so weak of me," faltered Adeline. " When I knew 
 it all in my heart all the timei" 
 
 " I know," said Audrey ruefully. " It's me telling it. 
 But oh, Adeline ! don't be blushing again ! It's like a 
 stab. It's awful simply. And it's all very well you'd 
 never care for me like this, if I'd been a born saint. Don't 
 argue, you couldn't. I wish Andrew was more like you," 
 she said with the saddest eyes. 
 
 " I can die now," said Adeline, with a sigh of dreamy 
 content, and rather sentimentally. 
 
 Audrey was robust in the twinkling of an eye. 
 
 " Oh, Adeline, you mustn't yet. I'm so lonely. I have 
 nothing altogether my own except you. Don't die yet 
 for goodness' sake, don't," she said, shuddering. " A 
 little more pain can't matter now, when it's so nearly done 
 with. Adeline, dear darling," she wheedled, " don't leave 
 me yet."
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 came times when the very heat and turmoil of 
 1 the fight were a grim joy to Audrey. She was puffed 
 up, and went like a white^ flame through the boys. 
 These were memorable periods. The old Audrey was as 
 sparks in the flame, and the establishment not only 
 rejoiced, but did its work unusually well. 
 
 Andrew would have rejoiced also had his courage been 
 greater, but, on the whole, he bore up bravely, and the 
 days went on, and the hunger of loneliness was now 
 always in Audrey's heart. She had at last been unselfish 
 enough to let Adeline go home, and strong enough to 
 refuse her last request. 
 
 " Let me tell Andrew that I know everything, Audrey, 
 and that my last wish is that you should be the mother of 
 his children," said Adeline on the morning of her last day. 
 
 " No," said Audrey at last. " That lies between Andrew 
 and me. How did you know this, Adeline ? " 
 
 " I know everything now, I think, dear. Call one child 
 Adeline, Audrey, and make her all that I might have been 
 if you'd come sooner." 
 
 Andrew's march forward was growing quite triumphant 
 His step was lighter. His eyes looked boldly out into the 
 future, already in his grasp, and manifest in all his bearing. 
 A fine fortitude was stamped on his brow indeed, an 
 unassuageable sorrow in his heart, but standing firm upon 
 what had been he was ready now for all that might come. 
 
 His face was young, with the ineffaceable youth of 
 those who dwell amongst great and permanent things, and 
 little white hairs crept quietly out among his brown ones. 
 
 337 22
 
 338 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " That's my sin," said Audrey, each time she saw a 
 new one, " and he's forgetting to be a man, and nothing 
 in the whole world will ever make me forget to be a woman, 
 and what shall I do ? what on earth shall I do ? " 
 
 She fled as usual to the boys, and for sure consolation 
 what can beat them ? But the mother-hunger in a woman's 
 own heart what can satisfy ? Hardly even the boys of 
 some other woman. 
 
 " If only one were a nice well-bred cow," said Audrey, 
 " with definite duties and moderate ambitions, or a 
 clergyman's daughter dyed in the wool. It's being a fully 
 alive woman all the time that upsets the apple-cart, I think. 
 
 " It's beautiful to look at Andrew doing just as I told 
 him," she sighed, " and leaving me here in the lurch alone ; 
 and it's all Katharine's fault, training him into always 
 doing what he's been told to do. Women are at the 
 root of all evil." 
 
 Mr. Norman was also struck by the solitary advance of 
 Mr. Antrobus. 
 
 " Mrs. Antrobus is a forceful engine of destruction," he 
 reflected, " when once she gets the steam up. It doesn't 
 take much to break up a man we're frail creatures 
 but it takes a lot to harden him into a new mould. An- 
 trobus might be a great man, but he'll probably end in 
 only being a great scientist, and it's the devil of a shame." 
 
 One day spring drew Audrey into the heart of the wood, 
 and in the busy coming of the myriad life about her she 
 forgot her loneliness. She quickened in the quickening life 
 in leaf and bud and bough, and in that quivering in all the 
 little people in earth and sky and air. Young life rol- 
 licked in her young blood. She opened her arms wide 
 and gathered in the world. She opened her mouth wide 
 and asked God to fill it. 
 
 A wonderful expectation awoke in Audrey. An ineffable 
 harmony composed her mind. She was one with the 
 melody of the world, a citizen of the dear City of God. 
 Her place in it and her rights in it were sure. The quicken- 
 ing of joy was in the heart that had known the whole of
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 339 
 
 sorrow. Her forfeited birthright, purified by fire, lay 
 even now in her clean hands. The past and the present 
 and the future were all hers, and God's hand was still 
 upon the wheel of time. She lay back against the mossy 
 trunk, rocked, as it were, in strong, protecting arms, and 
 suddenly with no volition of her own, her hushed senses 
 sprang to throbbing life. 
 
 She, too, was part of the youth of the warm world, and 
 the chiefest of her rights in it was hope. The abundance 
 of the teeming earth could alone satisfy this hungry heart. 
 The spirit and the power to express and to bring forth 
 life ; the spirit and the passion of motherhood rocked 
 through the wood, claiming, demanding, compelling, run- 
 ning like red wine through all her veins. 
 
 And presently the sun went down behind the trees, the 
 passion went west with his master. The sense of mor- 
 tality in all things was paramount. The scent of death 
 contended coldly with the fragrance of life. The order of 
 the world was dislocated chaos afoot. 
 
 And oh ! the piteous shock of it ! The cruel awakening ! 
 
 Audrey forgot that she had ever been a woman in whom 
 experience had burnt up tears. She lay with her head 
 against a mossy bank, and forgetting pride and know- 
 ledge, dropped down into the icy stream which flows for 
 ever around the warm zone of hope, and cried like a child. 
 She had fought a lone hand so long, so long. She was very 
 tired. She had done what she could, and she was still an 
 outcast. 
 
 Andrew did not even know the sylvan haunts of his wife ; 
 he was too fully occupied with the higher part of her, 
 and her inconceivable fall from grace. He did not use 
 this term. It was far too definite for his sense of courtesy 
 and high sensitiveness to appearances. He wrapped the 
 whole unutterable tragedy up in a gentle veil of mist, 
 more impenetrable than bulwarks of steel, and carefully 
 embalmed it in the depths of his being. He knew less 
 than nothing of the flesh of Audrey, and so could hardly 
 be expected to know very much about her spirit ; but he
 
 340 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 loved her with the best part of him, and was doing his 
 utmost to obey her command, and often wondered dumbly 
 at the radiant gaiety of her face and her frocks as she went 
 in and out of his daily life. He would have suffered less 
 could she, even for three months, have worn mourning for 
 her dead. 
 
 If he could have stooped to jealousy he would fre- 
 quently have speculated upon the mysteries of love and 
 Larry ; but Andrew meant to be a great man, so he took 
 care to set his house in order. 
 
 Never in all his life did he experience a greater shock 
 than now at the sight of Audrey sobbing in the damp 
 moss. She looked less than eighteen. Her hat was 
 awry. She looked anything but tidy. She was ridicu- 
 lously young, but with a youth which in no sort of way 
 repulsed him. 
 
 Her defenceless dishevelment made her almost easy to 
 Andrew. He caught her in the firm grasp of a father 
 and set her upright. 
 
 " Audrey ! " So fatherly did he feel, that there was a 
 tone of mild disapproval in his voice. The sense of 
 responsibility in him seemed to be swelling. There was a 
 smudge of green slime, presumably from the moss, on her 
 light skirt. 
 
 This was as fundamentally . unlike Audrey as her red 
 eyes and her swollen cheeks. If only she had been more 
 often like this. His heart bounded and stood still. He 
 deeply sighed. 
 
 " Audrey ! Aren't you well ? " 
 
 She was becoming more like herself he almost wished 
 she wasn't. He had high hopes. Perhaps perhaps at 
 last the sense of sin, that might have made them one 
 He tore his mind from the wild dream. 
 
 She, too, saw the smudge of green, and was she was 
 making it worse with her handkerchief. " Audrey ! " 
 he gasped. His fatherliness weakened. He had neither 
 word nor action for dilemmas of this order. Andrew's 
 education, as we well know, had hardly begun.
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 341 
 
 " I'm quite well/' she said ; " but sometimes even the 
 wisest are fools." There was a snap in her uplifted eyes 
 for all their redness ; anything but meekness in her silver 
 voice. 
 
 He paused to think it all out. His wild hope dropped 
 wingless. And suddenly Audrey's primitive anger against 
 Andrew which she had been at such pains to keep down all 
 these desolating years of increasing consciousness and 
 lonely pain, rushed up from some submerged abyss, and 
 she had never been at a loss for words in which to express 
 her emotions. 
 
 " You look as if you were seeing a ghost all the time, 
 Andrew, she cried at last. I'm not a ghost. You may 
 be, but I'm alive. I'm as much alive as as the 
 spring. If you were alive, perhaps you'd understand," 
 she said, taking three pins out of her rickety hat. 
 
 Andrew was alive enough to notice that her hands were 
 shaking. 
 
 They were steady, he remembered, that night when she 
 told him the news which had changed life. 
 
 " I'm worse than being ill," she proceeded. Her hands 
 were now shaking in her lap ; she made no pretence even 
 of arranging her hair. " I'm being defeated. I'm being 
 defeated now in a final sort of way. The others were 
 skirmishes ; this is uncommonly like Armageddon," she 
 said slowly ; " and I, of all people, and to be defeated in 
 the midst of victorious things ! I loathe and hate and 
 abhor it ! " 
 
 " But, child, how ? " 
 
 " How ! Oh, Andrew ! How ! Because I'm standing 
 still before your judgment-seat, after all these years, 
 being condemned condemned condemned all day long." 
 
 Andrew felt as though he were in the first plunge of an 
 icy bath. After all his high hopes this ! 
 
 " And now," said Audrey, " I'm being misjudged, not 
 judged at all, because I've won. Oh, Andrew ! I have. 
 I've won ; I've got myself back. My own real self ; you've 
 never once seen it, Andrew, and it's been very hard and
 
 342 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 very lonely doing it all alone In a way, it's not being alone 
 really," she said, curiously flushing, " but it's been rather 
 dreadful since Adeline died. She was the most enormous 
 help. Adeline was a saint, and she knew, and she trusted 
 me down to the ground, Andrew. She saw farther than 
 you, Andrew, because she loved more, and so she trusted 
 me without understanding. Larry was anything but a 
 saint, and he understood me perfectly well, and, he, too, 
 trusted me down to the ground. Just before he died and 
 knew it when no man could tell a lie ; besides, Larry 
 never told lies he said that he knew I was good good 
 just good ! You are the only part of the world that 
 matters who now mistrusts me, and till I conquer you I 
 shall feel defeated, and I wonder if you're unconquerable, 
 Andrew ? Adeline, Larry and you ! They represent the 
 world to me more personally and nearly and signifi- 
 cantly than if my story was being yelled out this minute 
 in all the evening papers." 
 
 At last he could speak blankly, amazedly. 
 
 " Audrey ! I trust you entirely." 
 
 " Trust me entirely ! You don't trust me at all. The 
 one thing you withhold shows exactly where your trust 
 begins and ends. It is the test of the very large part of 
 the world a man like you represents. I am a prisoner at 
 the bar being misjudged as righteously after I've won 
 myself ! as before I knew there was a self to win. Andrew, 
 if you could only see it the new me ! " she cried. " Oh ! 
 it's far enough away, sometimes one can only just keep on 
 believing in it, and that's hard it's the hardest thing in 
 the world but once you've seen it you you know 
 you've got the right to everything. It's because the 
 real you isn't you at all perhaps, it's part of everything. 
 What's done is done. You can't forget your sin or remove 
 it or cover it up. You can only use it as bricks and 
 mortar to build up again with. And that you should still 
 think that I couldn't build up children. Not now, after 
 everything." 
 
 She was looking up to something Andrew had not yet
 
 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 343 
 
 seen, and she laughed softly out into the twilight in her 
 old way, and in some new and ineffable way that thrilled 
 the deeply-moved and perplexed man. 
 
 " I will trust you to the uttermost, Audrey," he said, 
 after a long pause. 
 
 " Do you think I wanted that ? " she said, jumping up 
 with flaming eyes. " Do you think I'm trying to coerce 
 you, or wrest anything from you ? Until you can trust 
 me as the two others did, I want nothing from you. Do 
 you think I could be the mother of your children on suffer 
 ance ? Do you know nothing about me, after all these 
 years all I've made you suffer ? You must first see in 
 me, in me me me, who's lost and won myself ! and 
 suffered, and made you suffer, the best of all the mothers 
 in all the world for your children. It must be that, Andrew, 
 the best of all, or a tragedy for both of us. You want the 
 fullness of life as much as I do, Andrew more," she said, 
 with bold serenity, " for I know what it is and you don't. 
 
 " I want nothing now," she said, swaying a little, but 
 with a marvel of pride in her white face ; " nothing, but 
 she said, falling suddenly back into the old Audrey " but 
 someone had to turn you in the right direction, and I'd 
 like to know who'd do it if I didn't ? " 
 
 Andrew's eyes were on the ground ; his face worked 
 curiously. She was not thinking of Andrew just then. 
 
 " I could never love you as I loved Larry," she said 
 dreamily; " that's one part of me and can never be divided. 
 One can never make it repeat itself in the same way. 
 But there are a thousand ways of love, and they are all 
 wonderful. I have so much waiting for you, Andrew, for 
 everything and everyone for the very stocks and stones, 
 I think, that sometimes I feel as if it would rise up in a 
 great wave and drown me. I have enough for you, 
 Andrew, and the whole world, but it's held back ; it's 
 being defeated like me, until you trust me as those two 
 did?" 
 
 Andrew had a thousand words but not one came. 
 She sighed and sat down on a root of the old tree.
 
 344 "WHOSO BREAKETH AN HEDGE" 
 
 " There's so much pain," she said, " and it's not the 
 best thing. Joy's the best ; it is, it must be. We all 
 want it so. We ache for it so bitterly. And unless we 
 can turn all our sorrow into joy, I think we've missed the 
 best. It's awful to miss the best to be defeated," she 
 said. "To be alive all over and to be defeated. Oh, 
 Andrew ! Life is so much to me, and it would be as much 
 to you ! Some day I believe I could love you so much 
 that you could understand everything. You could live 
 as I can live." 
 
 " I understand you, Audrey at last I understand you 
 perfectly." The light on her pure face suddenly lit his, 
 the passion in her pure heart was aflame in his. 
 
 " Our roads have met at last," he said, " and this is the 
 dawn of the new life, and I I have been the worst sinner 
 of the three." 
 
 She paused and looked at him. 
 
 " No," she said, " that's my proud privilege. But, 
 Andrew, I'm glad you said it. It's it's made you suddenly 
 as young as me." 
 
 They went home together, silently, as lovers may, and 
 the song of earth and sky and air was in their hearts. 
 
 As they came up the yew walk Audrey saw Mr. Norman. 
 
 " Aren't you glad I got him for you, Andrew ? " she 
 said. " Go on, now. I've something to say to him." 
 
 " Mr. Norman," she said, " what day can Mary come ? 
 I'm quite ready for her." 
 
 Why he did it Norman never knew, but he took off his 
 hat, laughed in her sweet face, stooped, and kissed her 
 hand. 
 
 " You've been very long about this invitation, Mrs. 
 Antrobus. I've been expecting it for months, and so has 
 Mary." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.
 
 PATERNOSTER HOUSE, 
 PATERNOSTER Row, 
 
 LONDON, E.G., September, 1909. 
 
 NEW BOOKS 
 
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 circles as one of the finest horsemen in Leicestershire, has kindly undertaken the 
 work of revision, and his additions will prove of the greatest value. An mtemtin* 
 feature of the new edition will be a chapter on Military kid in* by Major W. H. Km*. 
 Riding Master of the Royal Horse Guards, who has dealt in a very thorough and clear 
 manner with the subject on which he is so eminently competent to speak with 
 authority. It includes a description of the requirements of the army bars*, htt 
 breeding and general training, the training of recruits, the military seat, ofieer'* 
 riding and riding in the ranks. There will be a number of new photocrapbio 
 illustrations, which have been taken specially for the new edition. 
 
 Just ready. By the aame Author 
 NEW EDITION REVISED AND ENLARGED 
 
 Stable Management and Exercise 
 
 A BOOK FOR HORSE OW.1ERS AMD 
 By captain M. H. HAYES. F.H.C.V.S. 
 
 Illuttrated by numerous Reproduction* of Phototra^he taken i 
 ihi3 work. In one volume, demy vo. Prtce 1 ne 
 
 "The work of an exceptionally competent utbority wbo .boroil*ly 
 his subject, and is able to make the result* of hs practical knowUd*e c 
 readers." Badminton iiagatine.
 
 A moat readable and enjoyable book by a popular writer 
 
 Queer Things 
 about Egypt 
 
 By DOUGLAS SLADEN 
 
 Author of "Egypt and the English," "Queer Things about Japan," 
 " Queer Things about Persia," etc. 
 
 In two vols., demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 245. net 
 With a large number of beautiful illustrations, printed on art paper 
 
 "Queer Things about Egypt" proceeds upon the same lines as the Author's very 
 successful book, 'Queer Things about Japan." A large part of it deals with the 
 humours of Egypt and the Egyptians, chiefly modern, but to the extraordinary 
 fascinations of Egypt, with its mediaeval glories and ancient monuments. Mr. Sladen 
 gives special attention. He takes the spectacular and romantic side, which the 
 general public can understand, and avoids difficult ancient Egyptian names and the 
 ancient Egyptian mythology. The simplicities and curiosities of native life, and the 
 delights and experiences of the Englishman travelling in Egypt are fully described. 
 
 Mr. Sladen spent his entire day in the open air, notebook and camera in hand, 
 and a large part of the book is a distillation of the humours he observed as be stood 
 and watched in the bazaars of Cairo or the ruins of Karaak as he rode in the desert 
 or along the banks of the Nile ; as he halted in Arab villages or Arab markets ; as 
 he stayed in hotels in town and country; as he shopped in the native streets and 
 bazaars. 
 
 The volume will have as beautiful illustrations as those contained in " Egypt and 
 the English," a book to which the Egyptian Press is still devoting many columns, 
 months after its publication. 
 
 " Queer Things about Egypt " is the book which Mr. Sladen really went to Egypt 
 to write, and for which he filled his notebooks. The country and the people have 
 lent themselves to his humorous observation, and the result is certainly the best book 
 of the kind the Author has written, successful as they have been. 
 
 Recently published 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Egypt and 
 the English 
 
 In super royal 8vo, cloth gilt top, illustrated by 40 half-tone 
 reproductions from photographs, 2is. net. 
 
 " Mr. Douglas Sladen has written a brilliant book on Egypt. Mr. Sladen knowi 
 as well as any man how to write a readable book, and this volume touches on almost 
 every aspect of Egyptian life and travel always with spirit and originality and 
 sometimes with real genius." Daily Chronicle-
 
 UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE WAR OFFICE 
 
 In four volumes, small 4 / o . Price 1 7 . 6d. net per 
 
 vol. to Subscribers for the entire set, and one 
 guinea net Per volume to Non-Subscribers. 
 
 The History of the War 
 in South Africa 
 
 COMPILED FROM OFFICIAL SOURCES 
 
 By Major-General Sir JOHN FREDERICK MAURICE, K.C.B. 
 
 Author of " History of Ashanti Campaign." " Official History of 1882 Campaign." 
 " Balance of Military Power in Europe." Ac.. ic. 
 
 Volumes I, II and III. with portfolio* of mp, BOW ready. 
 
 The fourth and concluding volume to now bi the prooo, and w bo ready hortfy. 
 
 Maps for the several volumes sold separately, price S- each net. 
 
 For full particulars, with notes on the contents of the various 
 volumes, see separate circulars. 
 
 The Times in reviewing the Second Volume ay: "This 
 history will prove a valuable storehouse of information with regard 
 to isolated battles, and will form a useful text from which other* 
 may point important lessons. The printing is excellent, and the 
 maps are admirable, both in quantity and in quality." 
 
 The Broad Arrow says:" A narrative which could hardly be 
 improved upon. Sir Frederick Maurice brought peculiar qualifica- 
 tions to his difficult task ; he was assisted by acme very brillumt 
 writers, whose labours he has known so to use as to avoid even th 
 semblance of patchwork ; while he has been supplied with lb best 
 possible evidence in regard to everything that took place." 
 
 3
 
 For Naturalists and Sportsmen. 
 
 The Mammals of 
 Somaliland 
 
 By R. E. DRAKE-BROCKMAN, 
 
 F.Z.S., F.R.G.S., etc. 
 
 (Colonial Service) 
 
 In one volume, demy 8vo (9jx6J), with 18 full-page illustrations 
 in collotype, 1 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 This work will interest naturalists all over the world, and it 
 will also make a special appeal to those who have been in the 
 country, or are likely to go there and to spend some of their time 
 in sport. Indeed, no sportsman intending to visit the Somali 
 Country, or even the countries adjoining, should be without the 
 book, as a very large number of the mammals here described 
 are to be found in Abyssinia and in British Bast Africa proper. 
 It deals with the mammals of the Somali Country, a part of the 
 Ethiopian Region, which are perhaps the most interesting of all 
 the groups on the African Continent. The Author is particularly 
 well fitted to write the book owing to his many years' residence 
 and travel in many parts of Somaliland, and it may be confidently 
 accepted as authoritative and up-to-date. The illustrations, which 
 include the various antelopes and the rarer mammals from photo- 
 graphs by the author, are a special feature of the book, great pains 
 having been taken in their reproduction. The author's scheme is 
 to take each mammal separately, give the order, sub-order, family 
 and genus, and to follow this with a description, the measurements, 
 distribution and habits. Most of the measurements of the animals 
 have been taken in the flesh, and this should be of the greatest value 
 to naturalists, while the sportsman will find much to interest him 
 in the appendices on the Game Regulations and the best methods of 
 skinning and preserving. It must be an invaluable and standard 
 work of reference for years : having regard to the author's 
 experience and knowledge, and his opportunities of studying the 
 subject, the book is not likely to be superseded.
 
 NEW 6s. NOVELS 
 
 Each in crottm 8vo. 
 
 A Question of Quality 
 
 By MADAME ALBANESI 
 
 Author of "The 
 
 
 The Tragedy of the 
 Pyramids 
 
 By DOUGLAS SLADEN 
 
 Anther of " A Japanese Marriage," " The Admiral." " My Son Richard." . 
 "With a frontispiece in colours by Benton Fletcher 
 
 The Author has used his knowledge of Egyptian affaire which he acquired to 
 write "Egypt and the English" for the groundwork of a novel fall of Muring 
 incidents and knit closely together with a romantic love story. He hat taken a CTMI 
 canvas and filled it adequately, and in the character of Hoseyn Hanan, the Descen- 
 dant of the Prophet, the leader of the movement against the British occupation, ha* 
 given an Arab of splendid qualities. The story hangs partly upon the Krroluiioo of 
 the Egyptians, partly on the love affairs of Lucrece Considioe, the daughter of an 
 American millionaire who is financing the Revolution. Lucrece waver* between the 
 Descendant of the Prophet, by whom she is fascinated, and Ailta Kennedy, a Highlander 
 officer, in whose character Mr. Sladen has given a fine example of the brilliant yoong 
 soldiers who have built up modern Egypt. The book is a counterblast to Mr. Hau 
 Caine's story, "The White Prophet," for in it the author shows the British Amy and 
 officials in Egypt saving the country by their splendid devotion, while he prove* the 
 worthlessness of the Egyptian Revolutionists and their dependence on a Pan- 
 Islamism movement to drive all Christians out of North Africa, of which the savage 
 Senussi are the backbone. The quickly-moving episodes become more exciting and 
 follow more closely upon one another as the book proceeds, until the Revototioa 
 culminates in the march of a hundred thousand Sennssi on Cairo, while totoMJJ 
 interwoven with the love story which runs all through are the adventure* of Kennedy, 
 carried even to the very altar. The book is a wonderful picture of the lay. social life of 
 Egypt and shows, too, that it is another India as regard* it* intrigues and oompinoe* 
 by the natives.
 
 NEW 6s. NOVELS 
 
 Each in crown 8vo. 
 
 Whoso Breaketh 
 an Hedge 
 
 By "IOTA" 
 
 Author of " A Yellow Aster," " Patricia : a Mother," etc. 
 
 Audrey, the heroine of lota's new novel, is a clever woman, full of life, 
 charming, audacious, a great talker, with the habit of analysing her emotions. Her 
 husband is a scholar and a mathematician, who bores and adores her, and in her 
 desperation she finds a lover in a young soldier, but later Audrey and her husband 
 come to an understanding. The story in its telling is characteristic of the author 
 and it will be found quite up to the level of her best work. 
 
 Poppy 
 
 By CYNTHIA 8TOCKLEY 
 
 Author of " Virginia of the Rhodesians." 
 
 Poppy Destin is an original creation, a delightfully fresh study of a brilliant and 
 beautiful girl born in South Africa. Her story is traced from her childhood, which is 
 spent as a drudge in a cruel relative's home at Bloemfontein, through many scenes 
 of storm and stress, both in England and South Africa, before the story comes to its 
 satisfactory ending. Poor Poppy's path, however, is not one of roses, her beauty 
 and gifts attracting too much attention for a girl who has, as she had, to fight her 
 way in the world. 
 
 A Society Scare 
 
 By FLORENCE WARDEN 
 
 Author of " The Marriage Broker," " The White-Countess," eto. 
 
 A story in the Author's most popular vein. It opens in Ostend, where in one of 
 the hotels a lady is found murdered. The circumstances are mysterious ; suspicion 
 falls on the wrong person, and the murder is ultimately traced in a quite unsuspected 
 quarter. The story moves quickly, the dialogue is natural and bright, and the interest 
 is not allowed to flag for a moment.
 
 NEW 6s. NOVELS 
 
 Each in crown 8vo. 
 
 The Intruding Angel 
 
 By CHARLES MARRIOTT 
 
 Author of " The Column." 
 
 In " The Intruding Angel " Mr. Charles Marriott treats in 
 sympathetic manner of a phase of married life unfortunately not 
 uncommon namely, that of a couple linked together in a loveless 
 marriage. They are alienated by every thought and action, but at 
 last both husband and wife find their affinities. 
 
 The God of Love 
 
 By JUSTIN HUNTLY MoCARTHY 
 
 Author of " The Gorgeous Borgia." " The Plover of Franc*." 
 " Needles and Pint." etc. 
 
 "The God of Love," by Justin Huntly McCarthy, is a romance 
 dealing with one of the most famous of all the world's love-stories, 
 the love of the young Dante for Beatrice Portinari. Over this 
 love-story scholars have argued and continue to argue endlessly. 
 Mr. McCarthy professes to give the key to the mystery in the form of 
 a narrative of a friend of the poet's youth. What neither Dante nor 
 any known chronicler of Dante's life has told, the narrator of " The 
 God of Love " tells in a tale that is starred with many adventures 
 and many scenes of romantic love. The story is steeped in the 
 atmosphere of Florentine life in the days of the poet's youth, and 
 the progress of the romance is essentially dramatic. 
 
 New Is. Edition of a Popular Work 
 By JEROME K. JEROME 
 
 In crown 8vo, cloth, with pictorial wrapper, 1. IK* 
 
 The Passing of the 
 Third Floor Back 
 
 An immense demand has arisen for this edition immediately 
 on its publication. A second large edition in this cheape 
 being immediately required. The author's play of the sam 
 founded on the book has been one of the most successful 
 years. It has been performed hundreds of times in London art 
 Provinces and it is still being freely toured.
 
 BY THE LEADING NOVELISTS 
 
 HURST 6 BLACKETT'S 
 
 New Library of ifl. Copyright Novels 
 
 These volumes are well printed on good paper, and are attractively 
 bound in cloth gilt, with illustrated wrapper in two colours ; the 
 size is 6| by 4! , and each volume contains a frontispiece by a well- 
 known artist, and a decorative, title page, both well printed on 
 art paper. 
 
 TWO NEW VOLUMES 
 
 COLONEL DAVERON .. At press By Percy White 
 THE ILLUSTRIOUS O'HAGAN By Justin Huntly McCarthy 
 
 VOLUMES NOW READY 
 
 THE STRONGEST OF ALL THINGS . . By Madame Albanesf 
 THE YOUNGEST MISS MOWBRAY .. By Mrs. B. M. Croker 
 
 THE IDES OF MARCH By Mrs. Baillie Reynolds 
 
 Author of " Thalassa," etc. 
 
 A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY By Madame Albanesi 
 THE TURNSTILE OF NIGHT .. .. By Mrs. C. N. Williamson 
 HER OWN PEOPLE By Mrs. B. M. Croker 
 
 THE BEST VALUE EVER OFFERED 
 
 New 6d. Copyright Novels 
 
 For 1909 
 
 BY WELL-KNOWN AUTHORS 
 
 Clearly printed from New Type 
 
 on Good Paper and bound in Attractive Covers 
 
 30 THE COMPANY'S SERVANT Mrs. B. M. Croker 
 
 31 A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE " Rita " 
 
 32 EMOTIONAL MOMENTS Sarah Grand 
 
 33 DURING HER MAJESTY'S PLEASURE M. E. Braddon 
 
 34 CASPAR BROOKE'S DAUGHTER Adeline Sergeant 
 
 35 THE TRIUMPHS OF EUGENE VALMONT Robert Barr 
 
 36 A CROOKED PATH Mrs. Alexander 
 
 37 FORTUNES A-BEGGING Tom Gallon 
 
 38 A HAPPY MARRIAGE Ada Cambridge 
 
 39 THE RED PERIL Coulson Kernahan 
 
 40 THE MOTHER OF EMERALDS Fergus Hume 
 
 41 SABA MACDONALD " Rita " 
 
 42 IN AN ORCHARD CLOSE Alice and Claude Askew 
 
 43 SIR ANTHONY Adeline Sergeant 
 
 44 THE TRAGEDY OF FEATHERSTONE B. L. Farjeon 
 
 A. C. Fowler, Printer, Tenter Street, Moorfields, E.G.
 
 uc scxmew neaoNAL tawfL 
 
 A 000 143 660 9