THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 A CANDIDATE FOR TRUTH j-A TRILOGY 
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT J 
 
 THE HOUSE IN DEMETRIUS ROAD 
 
 THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 
 
 THESE I,YNNEKERS 
 
 HOUSE -MATES 
 
 FANTASIES 
 
 THE HAMPDENSHIRE WONEER 
 GOSUNGS 
 
 BELLES-LETTRES 
 H. G. WEI-IfS 
 W. E. FORD: A BIOGRAPHY 
 
 (In collaboration with KENNETH RICHMOND) 
 
 COLLECTIONS 
 
 NINETEEN IMPRESSIONS
 
 GOD'S 
 COUNTERPOINT 
 
 J. D. BERESFORD 
 
 All apparent discords and ugliness arc 
 but accentuations of the eternal rhythm ; 
 the necessary beat of an undertone ; God's 
 counterpoint . . . 
 
 LONDON: 48 PALL MALL 
 
 W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD 
 
 GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
 
 Copyright 1918
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION ... I 
 
 II. THE RECEPTIVE YEARS IO 
 
 III. EVELYN ...... 51 
 
 IV. THE AGREEMENT .... 145 
 V. HELENE . . . , .- 178 
 
 vi. 'NEW END' ..... 198 
 
 VII. ADAPTATION ..... 225 
 
 VIII. THREE YEARS ..... 249 
 
 IX. THE RETURN OF HELENE ... 266 
 
 X. CLIMAX . . . . . . 289 
 
 XI. THE CONVALESCENT . . . 311 
 
 XII. PHILIP IN LOVE ..... 326 
 
 XIII. CODA ...... 352
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 
 
 THIS is the story of an episode, but all the life of a man 
 went to the making of it; and the fierce turning-point of 
 his desires could have no meaning to those who know 
 nothing of his ripening. The Blenkinsops will serve as 
 an example of the society that condemned Philip Maning 
 without the shadow of mitigation. They furnished an 
 extreme example, no doubt; they were prejudiced beyond 
 the limit of the common convention. But even the 
 generous-minded found it difficult to condone Maning's 
 fault. The explanation, which he and his wife alone could 
 give, was far too elaborate and too integral to be set forth 
 either in conversation or in the longest letter. Judged 
 by the test of ordinary experience, Maning forfeited the 
 respect of his most intimate friends; and he and his wife 
 realised the validity of that test, and began life again in 
 new circumstances with a fresh circle of acquaintances. 
 They cannot be blamed for shirking that impossible ex- 
 planation. It had no value as propaganda for preaching 
 a new way of life. The conditions that led to Maning's 
 enlightenment were not typical; and the sin that in his 
 case proved to be venial when judged by results, might 
 in another instance be inexcusable. It must not be 
 regarded as a precedent, but only as the extreme 
 presentation of the curious means by which understanding 
 may sometimes be released. 
 
 All this apology will seem a little ominous, but I must 
 make it clear that while I am deliberately writing to defend 
 a particular man, I cannot defend his act apart from the 
 idiosyncrasy of his character. And further than that, I 
 should not be willing, granted the facts of an apparently
 
 2 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 parallel case, to advocate experience of the ecstasies and 
 horrors which Maning suffered, as a means of escape from 
 the bonds of a similar inhibition. The openings that 
 Life offers are so various. To some they come by way 
 of disease and pain, to others by an experience of great 
 happiness. And if occasionally they come by sin which 
 finds blessing instead of punishment, it does not follow 
 that we should seek release by evil, any more than that 
 we should seek it by self-mutilation. Indeed, the whole 
 truth is that in this matter we cannot choose. The means 
 of decision do not finally rest with us. Two things only 
 are to be regretted : the first that to so many no chance 
 of release is ever offered; the second that it should be 
 offered and neglected. 
 
 My most valid apology for Maning rests on the claim 
 that he truly, almost wonderfulty, emerged. 
 
 Philip's father, Peter Maning, was a solicitor with a 
 practice that enabled him to live without ostentation in 
 one of the smaller houses on Herne Hill. It had been 
 built in the days when Herne Hill was a country village 
 near London, and business men met together in Camber- 
 well on their way home, and travelled together for safety, 
 through the dangerous belt that divided the last suburbs 
 of the City from the clustering villages that hung about 
 the skirts of the great metropolis. But those days were 
 long past when Peter Maning discovered ' Middlethorpe, ' 
 as some original, etymologically-minded owner had named 
 the little house. It had certainly an air of middle-ness ; 
 since it stood about half way along the ridge that joins 
 Herne Hill to Denmark Hill, and was moreover wedged 
 in between the high garden walls of two mansions boasting 
 grounds that have since been cut up into endless roads of 
 villas. 
 
 Peter saw the little house as an opportunity, and hardly 
 ever referred to it afterwards without mentioning that
 
 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 fact. He was engaged to Philip's mother when he made 
 the discovery, and they had spent many dispiriting 
 Saturday afternoons together, viewing "the impossible 
 'properties' personally recommended by house-agents. 
 But on this occasion he was alone. It was a bright 
 Sunday morning in late April, and the magnificent chest- 
 nuts in the gardens on either side of ' Middlethorpe ' were 
 thrusting out eager green to catch the sunlight. 
 
 Philip 's mother when she came to see the ' opportunity ' 
 next day, said the chestnuts looked as if they were warming 
 the backs of their hands, thousands of little green hands, 
 all spread demurely to warm. 
 
 'Aren't they like that, Peter?' she insisted, when he 
 glanced up at the trees with a half tolerant smile. 
 
 ' If you like to call things by fantastic names, ' he said. 
 
 He was thirty-six then, and settling down to the steady 
 rules of thought and conduct that were to guide him 
 through the second half of his life. Nevertheless, the 
 sunlight and the vivid young green that were turning all 
 the solemnity of Herne Hill to fairy woods on that April 
 morning, had their influence on him. Perhaps for one 
 sentimental moment he thought of 'Middlethorpe' as a 
 nest. It is certain that for once he made a very indifferent 
 bargain in the conveyance of house-property. He paid 
 too much for the remainder of the lease there were still 
 47 of the original 99 years to run, -and the repayment 
 of the mortgage he was obliged to raise, handicapped him 
 for the first few years of his married life. No doubt the 
 tiresome repetition of his reason for acquiring the de- 
 clining structure of 'Middlethorpe' was the crystallisation 
 of an excuse. 
 
 Before he was ten years old, Philip had begun to wonder 
 why his father inevitably remarked to every fresh visitor : 
 'I bought the remainder of the lease of this place. It 
 seemed to me to be an opportunity . . . . ' 
 
 The garden, too, was always a nuisance to Peter. He 
 took such things with a great seriousness, and while he 
 could not afford to pay a man, he would have been horrified 
 at the thought of letting his i rood and 3 poles (according
 
 4 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 to the precise definition of the lease) run wild. He 
 accepted the remaining solution and cultivated his quarter 
 of an acre with his own hands, a practice that developed 
 into a morose habit as he grew older; but he could not 
 change his method. He made a reasonably tidy show of 
 his garden, but he never took a real pride in it; and the 
 place would have been a happier one for Philip in his 
 earlier years if it had not been fenced about with awful 
 restrictions and threat of penalties. There was not one 
 square yard of the garden that was really free. Even 
 when at four years old he began to imagine himself a train 
 shunting furiously up the neat straight line of the path, 
 he was reproved for kicking gravel on to the lawn. Peter's 
 garden was a place to be treated with great circumspection 
 and delicacy. 
 
 And, indeed, the garden was only a symbol for all the 
 circumstances of Philip's boyhood. He was ruled by the 
 law of that enigmatical 'Don't' which is so incomprehen- 
 sible to the free genius of a child. His father had been 
 brought up by the same code and boasted his profit from 
 it. And presently Philip, in his turn, was ready to forge 
 again the old chains for Peter's namesake and grandson. 
 If something very strange and modern had not happened 
 to Philip, the little Peter might have suffered. But he 
 would have rebelled in time. He was born in the 
 twentieth century and he had a wise mother. 
 
 Philip's mother had an intuition of wisdom, but she 
 belonged to the age of her parents, and never had the 
 confidence of her own opinions. She had that strange 
 plasticity which seems to have been the indicative mark 
 of so many Early Victorian women. The example has 
 been stereotyped by Charles Dickens, who never got any 
 deeper, so far as his virtuous heroines and feeble mothers 
 were concerned; but the evidence does not rest solely 
 upon the doubtful authority of a novelist. Ada Maning 
 and her kind are still represented, if their superficial 
 placidity has been sorely ruffled by the immense protest 
 of the modern woman. 
 
 Mrs Maning was still radiant when she married Peter.
 
 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 She was nearly twenty-seven then; an advanced age for 
 marriage, according to the accepted opinion of her period. 
 But she had not begun to take the mould of any settled 
 habit. She was an only child and had been encouraged 
 in the practice of polite accomplishments and the display 
 of pretty fancies. Peter grimly thrust his influence upon 
 her and she did not rebel. Her fancy was frozen by such 
 comments as that he had made on her image of the young 
 chestnut leaves. He made her believe that the grave 
 experience of life was too high a matter to be turned into 
 fantasy. And she, adoring his rigidity, followed him; 
 although she never found her husband's bitter satisfaction 
 in useless self-denial. Fear was the influence that kept 
 all her best instincts in subjection; fear, not of Peter, who 
 was no more in this connexion than an inspired law-giver, 
 but of the tribal god and of the dread taboo that was the 
 essential of his every ordinance. 
 
 For Peter had the gift of translating all commandments 
 into a negative form. 'Don't' and 'Must not' entirely 
 superseded any mode of encouragement. Even the one 
 truly positive suggestion that Philip should honour his 
 father and mother in order that he might obtain the 
 specified reward of longevity, became in Peter's treat- 
 ment a series of taboos. 'Don't contradict;' 'don't ask 
 foolish questions;' 'don't dare to disobey your mother,' 
 are examples of the restrictions that perpetually fenced 
 Philip from any scrt of communion with his parents. 
 
 An illuminating if somewhat trivial incident may be 
 picked out of Philip's childhood as moderately represen- 
 tative not only of Peter's method but, also, of the quality 
 of the ' Middlethorpe ' household over quite a long period 
 of years. 
 
 Philip was, perhaps, six or seven at the time, a thought- 
 ful, subdued little boy, just beginning to seek refuge from 
 taboo in literature, There must have been something a
 
 6 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 trifle precocious in his newly acquired taste, for, as the 
 incident shows, he would read any book that came his 
 way, though he could not have been able in some cases 
 to make sense of a passage as a whole. No doubt a phrase 
 here and there appealed to him, and he had a vision of 
 some picture that his author never intended. It is 
 possible, also, that the mere sound of words stirred him; 
 and then he probably found a relatively mechanical 
 pleasure in the mere exercise of his new accomplishment. 
 
 Peter found him, one evening, after tea, deeply absorbed 
 by a cumbrous edition of Shakespeare, that had evidently 
 been designed primarily as a bookcase ornament. The 
 edition had, however, the recommendation of large type; 
 if the volumes were far too heavy to be read in any com- 
 fort, unless the student chose some such posture as that 
 Philip had instinctively adopted. He was lying on his 
 stomach on the hearthrug, his elbows leaning on the great 
 open pages of the book, his face propped in his hands. 
 Failing a large book-rest with clips, that pose was almost 
 ideal, overcoming as it did, the volume's admirable regard 
 for its binder's design of rendering the work as nearly as 
 might be unreadable. It opened naturally in two posi- 
 tions to display the marbled papers either inside the 
 front or back covers and unless overcome by superior 
 force it would remain open at no other page. 
 
 Peter's worst suspicions were instantly aroused. He 
 spent much energy in curbing his son's natural tendency 
 to make a noise; but this profound quiet and absorption 
 undoubtedly smelt of the devil. 
 
 ' What have you got there, Philip ? ' he asked. 
 
 'Shakespeare, father.' 
 
 'What are you doing with it?' 
 
 'Reading it, father.' 
 
 'Nonsense,' was Peter's instant response. 
 
 Philip's little face took on a wistful expression, but he 
 was too well drilled to venture a contradiction. 
 
 Peter frowned at his own impotence. 
 
 ' Of course, you can't understand a word,' he remarked 
 severely, and then feeling the necessity to prove his
 
 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 statement, he said, 'Read it aloud. Let me hear what 
 you make of it.' 
 
 Philip already conscious of sin did his best. This is as 
 nearly as may be what he made of a speech of Suffolk's 
 from the Second Part of Henry VI. The punctuation is 
 his own : ' Great men off die by vile benozians. A 
 Roman swarder and banditto slave mothered sweet Lilly. 
 Brutus batsard hand stabb'd Julius Caesar, savage 
 islanders Pompey the Great. And Suffolk dies by 
 pirates.' 
 
 Peter was so absorbed by this opportunity to impose 
 another 'Don't,' that he failed to give his little son credit 
 for having mastered the great initial difficulty of blank 
 verse, by carrying the sentence beyond the apparently 
 final period suggested by the end of a line. He also 
 failed to note that none of the misreadings spoilt the 
 scansion. 
 
 'Well, Philip, and what sense can you make of that?' 
 he asked sternly. 
 
 Philip hesitated. 'Some of the words is rather hard,' 
 he said. 'What's a benozian, father?' 
 
 Peter had no idea, and taken off his guard for a moment 
 hastily gathered up the volume to read the passage for 
 himself. He knew that something of his great authority 
 rested upon his credit for omniscience. 
 
 'Bezonian, boy, bezonian,' he said hastily. 'You 
 couldn't possibly understand* the meaning of words like 
 that, yet.' It was true that he was still quite at sea him- 
 self, but his haste was due less to the fear of exposing his 
 ignorance than to his recognition of another word now 
 made clear by his perusal of the text. When he began 
 his cross-examination, he had overlooked the fact that 
 Shakespeare used such forbidden words as 'bastard'; and 
 Philip's ' batsard' had conveyed no meaning to his mind. 
 
 'What pleasure can you possibly take in reading such 
 a book as this?' Peter continued hurriedly. This was 
 one of the occasions recurring now more and more fre- 
 quently, when his only escape was to lose his temper. 
 ' Don't do it again until you are old enough to understand.'
 
 8 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'No, father/ was Philip's agreement; and then, 'When 
 shall I be old enough? You know I did understand 
 "And Suffolk dies by pirates.'" 
 
 Peter snorted impatiently. 'Not for a great many 
 years yet,' he said. 'And in any case, it's not a proper 
 book for you to read.' 
 
 The incident so far as Philip was concerned terminated 
 with a few more categorical 'Don'ts'; but when he was 
 in bed, his mother's eyes were opened to a new series of 
 taboos that must soon be imposed on her little son. 
 
 'You can't begin too early,' was Peter's main propo- 
 sition. He had not until that day thought of the evil 
 he was so constantly suspecting, in connexion with the 
 immature Philip. But this discovery of a precocious 
 interest in Shakespeare had alarmed him. (He would 
 have been equally suspicious if he had found the boy 
 reading the Bible.) He remembered an illustration of 
 Rosalind that was not fit, in his opinion, for the young 
 male. And, now, all the scared inhibitions of his own 
 youth found allusive expression in the formulating of 
 one colossal 'Don't' that loomed to a mysterious, por- 
 tentous importance. 
 
 Mrs Maning stood for a moment at the cross-roads 
 that night. Some natural wisdom within her protested 
 against Peter's method, and in her thought she began to 
 take sides with her son. But the habit of obedience and 
 the reaction of her own all too fearful peerings at this 
 intimidating subject of sex, were too strong for her. She 
 submitted without uttering a protest, and thereafter 
 joined her husband in his diligent search for the arch- 
 bogey. . . . 
 
 It is necessary to lay a slight over-emphasis on this 
 particular influence of Philip's boyhood, because it 
 chanced in his case to have a great effect upon his life; 
 but it should not be imagined that the Manings were in 
 any way an eccentric family. Peter was regarded by 
 his wife, his friends and acquaintances as a perfectly 
 sane and normal man; and according to the standards 
 of his time, both adjectives were reasonable enough. He
 
 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 and his contemporaries retained in an altered form the 
 prejudices of their Puritan ancestors; and their fierce 
 antagonism to the new spirit was the ebb of an older and 
 more healthy protest. But the Manings and their like 
 were opposing instead of inaugurating a new movement; 
 they were kicking against the pricks of the will to a free 
 admiration of beauty, an urge that in Philip's youth was 
 blooming into such queer, premature flowers as aestheti- 
 cism. And just as a decadent society that opposes the 
 regenerating spirit of Puritanism, falls into vicious excess 
 and every kind of aborted lust; so, also, will a Puritan 
 opposition to the genius of its age, result in distortions 
 that are truly as vile and disgusting as the intemperances 
 of the physical profligate. In this thing it seems that 
 Evil must be denned as resistance to the free expression 
 of the coming spirit; and, as in the case of Peter Maning, 
 a large majority of individuals fall into evil with the most 
 honourable intentions. Sometimes they suffer themselves. 
 More often the children suffer for the repressions of their 
 parents. But the new god presses forward, apparently 
 regardless of the innocent victims that are sacrificed in 
 the vain attempt to oppose him. 
 
 G.c,
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 
 
 WHEN he was ten years old, Philip began his public-school 
 life as a day-boy at Dulwich College. He usually walked 
 there and back, but in wet weather he sometimes saved 
 one of his two miles by taking the train from Herne Hill. 
 
 Nothing of the least importance happened to him until 
 he was fourteen; and then he had an experience which 
 seemed utterly trivial at the time, but took colour and 
 significance later by repetition. 
 
 It was a dull, threatening morning in early December, 
 and he was advised that he had better go to Dulwich by 
 train. He had arrived at the College with damp feet on 
 more than one occasion recently, and his mother regarded 
 damp and draughts as almost the sole causes of illness. 
 Indeed, it was probably her terror of a bogey called the 
 'night-air,' that made Philip subject to constant colds 
 during his boyhood. Mrs Maning, herself, always held 
 an 'ice-wool' scarf or shawl over her mouth, when she 
 had to face the deadly miasmas of Herne Hill, after dark. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Philip much preferred the train. 
 The reason that he always advanced when his father 
 questioned him suspiciously on this display of preference, 
 was that he could join his friend, Georgie Wood, who 
 came up from Clapham, and compare notes on their 
 home-work before they entered class. Another reason, 
 that was never confessed even to Georgie Wood, was 
 that Philip found a particular pleasure in standing almost 
 alone on the deserted down-platform and watching the 
 swarm of top-hatted, black-coated slaves of the City 
 lined up opposite to him, alert to choose forward positions 
 that would enable them to find standing-room, at least 
 
 10
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS n 
 
 in the expected train. The sight of that single-minded 
 crowd gave him a sense of distinction and of leisure. 
 The faces of the men on the other platform expressed 
 harassment and anxiety. They were struggling and 
 uneasy. He could watch them at his ease and permit 
 himself the luxury of imagining the stress of their appre- 
 hension, while holding tight the assurance of his own 
 superior fortune. He could condescend to pity, like a 
 god. 
 
 Philip's short cut to the station lay through unfinished 
 roads that were taking the place of the fields his father 
 used to pass when he first came to ' Middlethorpe, ' and 
 he entered the station itself through a brick tunnel that 
 leads under the line out of Milkwood Road. The tunnel 
 was dark, rather long, and had a twist in the middle of it, 
 but he had never felt the least twinge of fear in passing 
 through it there was always a procession of intent clerks 
 hurrying to catch one of the many up-trains by this short 
 cut from the villas that were springing up so rapidly on 
 that side of the line. 
 
 Nor was fear, apparently, a factor in the strange 
 sensation that came to him as he trotted through the 
 reverberating gloom of the tunnel, to the accompaniment 
 of a hurried pattering of many anxious feet already the 
 bell had rung, and porters above were shouting 'Fast 
 train to St. Paul's.' Philip hurried with them, his mind 
 already fixed on his coming grandeur of position. He 
 would probably miss the full effect in the case of the train 
 now due, but another would come up before his own train 
 arrived. He was a trifle earlier than usual that morning. 
 
 And then without the least warning, he suffered a 
 sensation that strangely reversed his anticipation of glory. 
 He became suddenly aware of himself as of something 
 small and negligible, a creature of ignoble thoughts and 
 ambitions. And the self that watched had no relief of 
 conscious superiority. It was rather as if his physical 
 self realised and resented the smallness of his soul, and, 
 itself a slave, criticised fatalistically the master it could 
 never deny.
 
 12 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 The whole sensation passed as he emerged from the 
 darkness and reverberation of the tunnel; and like many 
 dreams immediately fell back into a realm of unreal ex- 
 perience that had no application to life. As Philip ran 
 up the stairs to the platform he had almost forgotten his 
 momentary disturbance. He certainly did not accept it 
 as a lesson in humility. His own train was rather late, 
 and he played his game of the leisured aristocrat with all 
 his usual gusto. . . . 
 
 If that sensation had been an isolated experience, Philip 
 would have forgotten it long before he came to maturity; 
 just as he forgot the majority of his dreams. But, a few 
 months later, the sensation was repeated in similar con- 
 ditions, and then the first occasion came back to his mind, 
 clear and bright as the memory of some recent and 
 important event. And after the second occasion others 
 followed, and he began to analyse the circumstances that 
 led to what he began to think of specifically as 'that 
 beastly, mean feeling.' 
 
 He made many mistakes before he finally understood 
 all the conditions that were necessary to evoke the 
 phenomenon. Indeed, he did not understand the full 
 tale of them until some years after he had come to man- 
 hood, and long after he had joined the crowd who waited 
 uneasily for the coming of the packed City train. At 
 first, in his boyish, introspective way, he searched himself 
 to find some secret sin for which this might be God's 
 punishment, and for a time he believed that his boast of 
 superiority in the playing of the 'aristocrat' game might 
 have drawn upon him a gust of jealousy from the 
 Omnipotent. (He had had the lesson of humility 
 drummed into him by Peter, from his very infancy.) 
 
 This theory had to give way before the experiment 
 that proved how easily he could cheat God by walking 
 another two hundred yards to the front entrance of the 
 station, thus avoiding the passage of the tunnel. God, 
 he knew, was not to be tricked out of His vengeance by 
 so simple a device as that. And then he made two more 
 enlightening discoveries which were that he never suffered
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 13 
 
 that unpleasant sensation when he was anticipating it, 
 or when he was alone in the tunnel. The sound of hurry- 
 ing feet in the darkness was one essential, the other a 
 mind distracted from the consciousness of his immediate 
 position and feelings. 
 
 It must not be imagined, however, that Philip was 
 seriously disturbed by the repetitions of this curious 
 experience. He hated the feeling when it came, but 
 when it had passed it had no more effect than the remem- 
 brance of a foolish dream. Not for many years did he 
 come to dread it. 
 
 Little need be said of Philip's school-life. It was not 
 particularly indicative. He received the kind of education 
 that was usual to the boys of his period; and the only 
 distinctive inclination he displayed was towards literature. 
 (His precocious taste for phrase stayed with him, and on 
 his fifteenth birthday his father and mother presented 
 him with a copy of Thomas Bowdler's edition of Shake- 
 speare for the family circle.) The masters regarded him 
 as a good, average boy, certainly not brilliant, but 
 decently industrious and quite intelligent. He was 
 neither popular nor unpopular in the school, he was 
 something of a duffer at football and a very moderate 
 cricketer, but his friendship with Georgie Wood survived 
 the latter's inclusion in the first eleven. Indeed, that 
 friendship survived the stress of still greater diversities 
 of interest than this. 
 
 Physically these two boys presented a strong superficial 
 contrast. Wood was rather stocky, fair and square and 
 blunt, with a sensitive skin that freckled extensively in 
 summer, and was covered even at fourteen with a fine, 
 soft down, almost colourless until it caught the gold of 
 sunlight. Philip was dark, although his eyes were nearly 
 as blue as his friend's, and when his moustache began to 
 come at seventeen it showed like a delicate shadow.
 
 14 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 (Wood could boast a fluffy little mat of wool on his upper 
 lip at the same age and had been obliged to cut his 
 whiskers with his mother's scissors.) They were nearly 
 the same height, with a possible inch or so in Philip's 
 favour he stood five feet ten and a half inches in his 
 stockings when he was fully grown but although Philip 
 was neither thin nor narrow-shouldered, Wood had a 
 tremendous advantage of him in physique. He was, 
 however, unusually thickset. It may be remembered 
 that he got his blue for putting the weight when he was 
 at Cambridge. 
 
 Intellectually, there was apparently little to choose 
 between them while they were at Dulwich. They went 
 up the school together form by form; and it was not until 
 after Wood had gone to the University and Maning into 
 the office of Robert Wing, the publisher, that the funda- 
 mental differences in their tastes and mental abilities 
 began to show any marked divergence. While they were 
 at Dulwich they were young and plastic, they settled 
 themselves with youthful adaptability into the stock 
 mould that represented the combined aspiration of the 
 masters and boys with whom they associated. They 
 took on an appearance of thought and conduct that 
 expressed the decent average. Yet the temperamental 
 difference between them must have been a factor in their 
 friendship long before the innate tendency to variation 
 began to manifest itself in their way of life. They were 
 not rivals even in an educational system which is by its 
 method of marks and prizes deliberately constructed to 
 encourage rivalry, as a preparation, no doubt, for the 
 social and commercial wars that seem to have been the 
 high ideal of nineteenth-century civilisation. 
 
 An instance of their conformity to a stereotyped atti- 
 tude is offered by an incident that happens to illustrate, 
 also, the effect of his home-training on the all too impres- 
 sionable mind of Philip. He was just seventeen then; 
 Wood was some two months younger. 
 
 It was a fine evening in May, and the two boys had 
 been over to the lodgings of Mr Haslam, the senior
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 15 
 
 classical master a man who if he accepted the general 
 theory of English education, differed from most of his 
 colleagues by taking a keen personal interest in his 
 pupils. The two friends did not leave Park Road until 
 nearly nine o'clock, and by the time they reached that 
 part of Croxted Road, which in those days was a mere 
 track across the fields, the afterglow was definitely fading 
 into night. 
 
 Philip had just remarked that it was 'pretty lonely' 
 out there at that time, when they were suddenly horrified 
 by the sound of a faint scream. And at that time and 
 place any boy might have been chilled by the peculiar 
 quality of that cry, so full of real protest, yet so restrained. 
 To Philip it seemed like the last cry of a woman who had 
 consented to her own murder. 
 
 'I say, Chip, whatever' s that?' he asked with a thrill 
 of strong nervous emotion sounding underneath his 
 school-boy phrases. 
 
 '/ dunno,' Wood returned, making a better show of 
 hiding his fear, but obviously scared nevertheless. 
 ' S'pose we ought to go and see? ' he added. 
 
 'Don't you think we ought?' Philip agreed. 'It it 
 sounded like some woman being murdered.' 
 
 'Come on, then,' Wood said, but their timid, some- 
 what surreptitious advance towards the black shadow of 
 the hedge was hardly that of knight-errants hastening 
 to the rescue of distress. 
 
 And long before they had reached the hedge, their 
 halting steps towards investigation were arrested by a 
 repetition of the cry, more subdued, now, yet still vibrant 
 with a half-hysterical fear. But this time the cry became 
 articulate. They could distinguish the girl's protesting 
 words of denial, and hear the low, soothing murmur of 
 another, deeper voice. 
 
 Then some kind of realisation rushed upon them, and 
 Philip, half-strangled by a sob of sheer terror, seized 
 Wood's arm and said ' Oh ! 1 let's go let's go. 
 Quickly ! ' 
 
 Wood needed no second invitation, and the two boys
 
 16 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 turned and fled, hurriedly but with a conscious consider- 
 ation for silence that was almost reverent. They ran 
 until they were out of earshot, and even when they were 
 a quarter of a mile from the horrible hedge, they still 
 walked more quickly than usual. They had seen nothing 
 distinguishable, the loom of some moving blackness 
 deeper than the shadow of young green, and just a gleam 
 of something white that flickered and was hidden again, 
 but they were as profoundly stirred and frightened as if 
 they had witnessed a scene of awful horror. They knew 
 and yet they did not know. Their imaginations, and 
 more particularly Philip's imagination, had been deeply 
 stirred by the peculiar emotional protest of that feminine 
 cry. It seemed to them 'beastly,' that was the only 
 word they found to describe it, but to Philip's ears, at 
 least, the cry had also had a note which proclaimed it as 
 dangerous. . . . 
 
 The next day Wood was willing to discuss their adven- 
 ture, although, at the time, his eagerness for flight had 
 seemed no less instinctive than that of his friend; but 
 Philip neither then nor later could bear the least mention 
 of that experience. 
 
 'No, Chip, for goodness' sake, don't. It was beastly; 
 beastly,' was his protest, and for one fleeting instant 
 Wood recognised a queer echo of the cry that had so 
 startled him in the darkness. 
 
 In the main, however, the two boys had demonstrated 
 the likeness rather than the difference of their attitudes; 
 the difference must be sought in effects rather than in 
 the outward evidence of immediate physical reactions. 
 For Wood threw off his shame without effort. Ten days 
 later he told the story to another boy, and laughed with 
 him over innuendoes that would, he knew, have shocked 
 Philip inexpressibly. All that remained to Wood of 
 shame, after that, was a feeling of disloyalty. He was 
 aware of something in Philip's attitude that compelled 
 a rather unwilling admiration. 
 
 But Philip thrust the horror from him, deep down into 
 the unknown spaces of his subconsciousness; whither it
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 17 
 
 sometimes emerged at night, in dreams that shook him 
 with visions of some vague and awful threat; so that 
 once he cried out in his sleep, and woke to hear his own 
 voice repeating 'No; No. Please. Please don't.' He 
 got out of bed, then, and prayed desperately. What 
 terrified him was not the note of fear but the undertone 
 of repressed longing. 
 
 Philip, carefully educated by the system of 'Don't/ 
 naturally expected an immediate and final rebuff, when 
 he should make known his taste in the choice of an occu- 
 pation. He was sure that his father would have only 
 one answer to the request that his son should become an 
 author. Indeed, at times that aspiration seemed 
 ridiculous even to Philip himself. He had no idea how 
 one seriously adopted this profession of literature, hesi- 
 tating in his thought of training schools between the 
 University, Fleet Street and the traditional garret. And 
 none of these three ways had any air of being acceptable 
 to parental authority. His expectation of Oxford or 
 Cambridge depended on the winning of a scholarship, 
 and Mr Haslam had advised him that his chances of 
 fulfilling that ambition were too slight to be worth con- 
 sidering; while neither of the other alternatives was at 
 all likely to meet with Peter's approbation. Nevertheless, 
 and against all the precedents of romance, his path was 
 made, almost miraculously, easy. 
 
 Philip was seventeen, then; about to enter on his eighth 
 and last year of public school life, and on that particular 
 evening his father had come home rather early from town, 
 in order to put in an extra hour of stubborn gardening. 
 The whole family had been to Cromer for a month in 
 August, and Peter's quarter of an acre had run a trifle 
 wild. Philip who had been anxiously awaiting a favour- 
 able opportunity all through the seaside holiday, would 
 certainly not have chosen that evening to open the
 
 i8 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 nervous subject of his desires (Peter's temper was never 
 improved by his self-denying efforts after floriculture), 
 and he was surprised and something intimidated when 
 his father suddenly turned to him at the supper table 
 and said : 
 
 'It seems to me about time, Philip, that we began to 
 consider the question of your profession.' 
 
 ' Yes, father,' was all the answer that Philip could find. 
 He was strangled by a horrible dread that he was about to 
 be taken into his father's office in Queen Street. 
 
 'Have you any particular leaning towards an occu- 
 pation?' Peter continued, with a look that to his son's 
 eye said all too plainly : ' Because if you have, put it out 
 of your mind, at once.' 
 
 Philip glanced nervously at his mother. He had made 
 one or two tentative suggestions to her at various times, 
 and had even shown to her one or two of his little 
 unfinished pieces mainly verse, and something in the 
 manner of Shakespeare. Mrs Maning had thought them 
 'very nice.' But it appeared, now, that she had never 
 contemplated the thought of literature as a serious pro- 
 fession for her son. She coloured a little when he looked 
 at her, and said, ' You've never said anything to me, dear, 
 that I can remember.' Obviously she wished to prove 
 to her husband her innocence of any approach to com- 
 plicity. 
 
 'No, I don't think I have, mother,' Philip agreed weakly. 
 
 'Why I ask,' Peter went on taking the game into his 
 own hands, 'is that I was talking to a client of mine 
 to-day, Robert Wing, the publisher . . . .' He 
 was watching his son's face and stopped abruptly at the 
 sight of Philip's sudden blush. 
 
 'Why, do you know him? ' he asked suspiciously. 
 
 'No, father,' mumbled Philip. His investigations of 
 literature had not so far led him to explore the world of 
 publishers, but the very word had a sound that was 
 almost magical. 
 
 ' What are you getting so red about, then ? ' Peter 
 persisted.
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 19 
 
 'Was I, father? I don't know. I think I should like 
 to know about publishing, that's all/ Philip said. 
 
 Peter sniffed. He had an instinctive sense that if 
 Philip was wilh'ng to go into Robert Wing's office, there 
 must be some strong objection to the plan which he 
 had in some way overlooked. 
 
 'Oh! well/ he continued; 'nothing definite was said, 
 you understand. Wing told me that he had an opening 
 in his office for a youngster with a sound classical educa- 
 tion. No remuneration worth mentioning for a year or 
 two, of course; but opportunities later if you, that is, if 
 the man he found, shaped well. However, it's early days 
 yet. You've got another year at the College, in any case. 
 It just crossed my mind that it might be an opportunity.' 
 
 Peter had said nothing of Mr Wing's careless hint that 
 the desired probationer might subsequently be given a 
 junior partnership, if any capital were forthcoming. He 
 knew that his client was a keen, if slightly too tricky, 
 man of business; and he had his own ideas as to the form 
 any proposition of this kind might take in the dim future. 
 Also, he had said nothing of the factor which had been 
 the chief influence in permitting his mind to dwell on 
 Wing's offer,' Peter knew perfectly well that it was an 
 offer, despite the nice detachment of the manner in which 
 it had been approached and this factor was the 'clean- 
 ness' of Robert Wing's publications. 
 
 Wing was backing the Puritan element in the British 
 character against what he had boldly labelled the 
 'reactions and decadence' of the 'aesthetic movement;' 
 a careless and inclusive definition that he applied to any 
 sign of revolt against the shibboleths of the Victorian 
 influence. He had put out an edition of the classics, 
 which he stamped as coming from the 'Purity Press'; 
 but his first claim to fame rested on his 'discovery' of 
 Edgar Norman, the poet. 
 
 Norman's brief vogue is forgotten, now; and his name 
 will not be found in the Encyclopaedia Britanica, 
 although, for a time, he sold in tens of thousands both 
 in England and America. He was always known as a
 
 20 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 poet Wing's advertisements kept that illusion con- 
 stantly before the public but his financial success was 
 due to the immense popularity of certain sentimental 
 stories they were hardly long enough to be described 
 as novels told with a certain pretty delicacy which the 
 best-quoted of his reviews termed 'sculptured prose.' 
 These stories were eagerly waited for by every love-sick 
 school-girl in England. They ran into many and various 
 editions, some of which, mistermed 'de luxe' by his 
 publisher, were bound in an imitation vellum with limp 
 edges tied with green silk ribbons. Norman having been 
 born with the gift of writing this sugary prose, could no 
 doubt have turned out half a dozen new books every year 
 his stories rarely ran to more than about 30,000 words. 
 His publisher, however, knew his market too well to risk 
 over-production, and the 'new Norman' as the circu- 
 lating libraries spoke of each succeeding effort was 
 always welcomed with the greediness of children who 
 have not been allowed to surfeit themselves. Lastly, 
 there was just one touch of mystery about the author of 
 these exquisitely moral books. No one seemed to know 
 him personally, and no photograph of him had ever been 
 published. 
 
 Wing was a man with a business imagination. He saw 
 literature in terms of 'what suited the public.' The 
 phrase is a text from his commercial vade-mecum, and he 
 had chosen the word 'suit' in this connexion after careful 
 thought. He was not, as he would say in his more 
 American moments, out to teach people what to read. 
 It was his affair to provide 'pure' literature for the 
 millions (he sincerely hoped to find millions) who were 
 sick and tired of this eternal immorality. There was, 
 he believed, an immense public to be ' suited ' ; an estimate 
 which was justified by his own sales, and by the popu- 
 larity of that small group of writers who were so 
 representative of the concluding years of the last 
 century : such men as Richard le Gallienne, Henry 
 Harland, or Anthony Hope. The list may well be 
 concluded by a mention of Laurence Housman's success
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 21 
 
 with An Englishwoman's Love Letters. There was noth- 
 ing of didacticism or urgent evangelical denunciation 
 of breakers of the Seventh Commandment about this 
 group. It had nothing in common with the rival schools 
 of Marie Corelli and Hall Caine. Its object, if it had one, 
 might be denned as the effort to prove that to be good 
 was not necessarily to be dull. There were, as Edgar 
 Norman showed so delicately, compensations for the 
 most peaceful life; such things, for example, as the tem- 
 pered sunshine in which his characters generally moved; 
 while even on the wet days that Norman's 'sensitive 
 realism' (it is impossible to avoid quoting his well- 
 advertised reviews) was forced to recognise, one could 
 find consolation in witty conversation, accompanied by 
 the consumption of such things as marchpane and 
 caramels. If Norman had a fault, from Robert Wing's 
 point of view, it was a tendency to overdo his descriptions 
 of sweetmeats. Wing had once insisted upon the deletion 
 of a whole box of the finest de Bry chocolates. . . . 
 
 And it was this school of fiction that was presently to 
 have a temporarily mollifying influence on the character 
 and desires of Philip, providing him with an outlet, when 
 the only alternative would have been a somewhat 
 dangerous austerity. For a time this literature of 
 confectionery did something to sweeten his life, a fact 
 that later found publicity, in an altered form, in Robert 
 Wing's advertisements. 
 
 Philip's introduction to the works of Edgar Norman 
 was effected by Peter a few weeks after that critical con- 
 versation on the subject of his son's career. He brought 
 the book home with him from the City. The 'new 
 Norman' of that year was the famous Marzipan (the 
 heroine's name), and if there was any truth in Wing's 
 advertisements, Peter must have obtained his copy by 
 private influence, for in every newspaper that day was 
 the announcement that the first large edition of this 
 masterpiece had been exhausted before publication. 
 
 Ostensibly Marzipan was a present for Mrs Maning, 
 but she was told that she might lend it to Philip; and at
 
 22 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 supper that night Peter drew attention to the fact that 
 the book was published by Robert Wing. 
 
 Philip's eyes brightened at the mention of that magical 
 name. 
 
 'Have have you seen him again lately, father?' he 
 asked. 
 
 'See him constantly/ Peter returned with the usual 
 tendency to obstruction. 
 
 Philip blinked rapidly a queer little nervous man- 
 nerism of his when he was excited. 'I suppose he hasn't 
 said anything more about about my going into his 
 office?' he asked timidly. 
 
 Peter frowned as if he found the topic unpleasant, and 
 kept his son on tenterhooks for a full minute before he 
 answered him. 
 
 'Nothing definite,' he grumbled in the surly tone of a 
 man who has been asked for money; but after a decent 
 interval, as Philip ventured no other question, a further 
 statement was grudgingly added. 
 
 'The point is,' Peter said, 'whether I consider Wing's 
 office a proper place for you.' 
 
 ' Oh ! yes; of course, father,' agreed the suppressed 
 Philip. 'I I only wondered.' 
 
 'You seem uncommonly keen on the idea, for some 
 reason or another,' Peter continued suspiciously. If 
 only the boy had expressed a preference for going to 
 the University, the thing might have been settled 
 arbitrarily in five minutes. This complacence frightened 
 Peter. He had never associated the ideas of duty and 
 pleasure. 
 
 Philip was not mature enough or disingenuous enough 
 to understand his father's difficulty; but Mrs Maning 
 with an almost unconscious deceit bred of eighteen years' 
 intercourse with her husband, found a solution in her own 
 rather allusive way. 
 
 She waited for Sunday afternoon when the combined 
 effect of Mattins and dinner invariably kept Peter quiet 
 until three o'clock when he woke peevish and without 
 occupation: he was a rigid Sabbatarian.
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 23 
 
 'Don't you ever feel you'd like to go to Oxford, 
 Philip?' she asked when she and Philip were alone in 
 the drawing-room. 
 
 Philip looked up with something of his father's alert 
 suspicion. He was instantly afraid that this was a new 
 move of the enemy; designed to frustrate his chief desire. 
 
 'I don't know that I do, mother,' he said. 'I think 
 I'd sooner go into Mr Wing's office.' 
 
 ' You might go there afterwards/ his mother suggested. 
 
 'It's so far ahead, mother,' Philip argued; 'and he'd 
 be almost certain to have got someone else by then. 
 This does seem such an such a chance.' 
 
 A flicker of her old humour twitched Mrs Maning's 
 mouth as she noted her son's avoidance of his father's 
 phrase. 'It's not always so easy to recognise one's oppor- 
 tunities, Philip,' she remarked dryly. ' And some of them 
 don't wear very well.' 
 
 Philip's face expressed mild bewilderment. 'But, 
 mother,' he protested, 'you know Mr Haslam says I've 
 no chance of getting a scholarship, and father said he 
 couldn't send me to Oxford unless I did get one.' 
 
 His mother, apparently, overlooked that argument. 
 'You see, dear,' she said, 'in your father's profession he 
 is always meeting people who .... well, who say 
 one thing when they mean another. I believe it's almost 
 a regular part of legal business. And he sometimes forgets, 
 I think, that you mean exactly what you say when you 
 show yourself so eager to go into Mr Wing's office. Of 
 course, I shouldn't like you to deceive your father in any 
 way, and I'm sure you wouldn't ever do such a thing; 
 but if you are really so anxious to learn publishing, I 
 shouldn't, if I were you, press the matter with your father 
 just at present. And then I should like you to think a 
 little about the question of going to College. I think it 
 might be managed even without the scholarship, in cer- 
 tain circumstances. And I should like you to go. Yes, 
 I should really prefer your going to Oxford in many ways. 
 It has always seemed to me to give a man such an 
 advantage in society, if he can say that he has been to
 
 24 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 College. It puts a stamp on him. And your friend 
 Georgie Wood is going, isn't he? ' 
 
 'To Cambridge, mother,' replied the still perplexed 
 Philip. 
 
 'Well, I suppose that is nearly as good,' Mrs Maning 
 commented reflectively. 'Shan't you envy him a little?' 
 
 Philip weighed that question thoughtfully before he 
 decided that if he could only go into the office of Edgar 
 Norman's publishers he would envy no one in the world. 
 Before his mother had time to reply, Peter came in with 
 the air of a man determined to find a misfeasance some- 
 where. 
 
 'I thought you would both be reading/ he remarked, 
 as if they most certainly ought to have been reading. 
 
 ' No, we were discussing the chances of Philip's going to 
 Oxford,' Mrs Maning said mildly. 
 
 'Don't get that idea into your heads,' returned Peter 
 distantly. 'It's out of the question unless Philip gets a 
 scholarship; and it appears that he isn't clever enough or, 
 perhaps, industrious enough for that. Besides which, I 
 am not at all sure that I'd care for any son of mine to go 
 to Oxford. The educational system there can't be what 
 it was, when it turns out fellows like this Oscar Wilde, 
 everyone seems so mad about. Personally, I shouldn't 
 care for anyone to find one of his books in my house.' 
 
 'Philip's friend, Georgie Wood, is going to Cambridge,' 
 put in Mrs Maning thoughtfully. 
 
 Peter leaned back in his arm-chair, crossed his legs and 
 put the tips of his fingers together. 'It's really extra- 
 ordinary,' he remarked, frowning sternly at Philip, 'how 
 you change your mind. Only a few days ago you 
 professed yourself eager to go into the office of my friend 
 Robert Wing.' His thick, dark eyebrows went up as he 
 made an impressive pause before adding, 'Have you any 
 sort of idea what your ambition will probably be next 
 week ? ' 
 
 Peter was always at his very worst during the two 
 hours preceding tea on Sunday. 
 
 Philip opened his mouth to protest that he had never
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 25 
 
 wanted to go to Oxford, and then remembered his 
 mother's subtle suggestion that his father would probably 
 disbelieve him, on principle. He had never thought of 
 that before, but he saw now that it was true. That was 
 why hi c father was always so suspicious. He had spent 
 his life in dealing with people who were suspect by force 
 of circumstances. For a moment Philip hesitated. His 
 natural inclination was to make a full explanation and 
 convince his father that he had in this case no grounds 
 for his suspicion. Then he looked down and said meekly : 
 ' I will do whatever you want me to do, father.' 
 ' Then you'll go into Wing's office/ returned Peter, as if 
 he were passing sentence. ' The thing is practically settled.' 
 Philip hid his jubilation; his first conscious act of 
 serious deceit. He had realised for one passing moment 
 that here was a way to escape from the miseries of one 
 ruled by the method of 'Don't!' But his was not the 
 temper of a rebel. If Georgie Wood had come under 
 Peter's dominion, he would have gone to the devil. 
 Philip caged the devil and tortured him. He would 
 have done better to treat him as an honourable enemy. 
 
 Philip was a few weeks past his eighteenth birthday 
 when Oscar Wilde was sentenced at the Old Bailey; and 
 the event of the trial had a recognisable influence on the 
 boy's mind. 
 
 He had no idea as to the nature of the offence for which 
 Wilde was punished. Philip was one of those boys who 
 can go through an English public school, the more easily 
 if he is a day boy, without attaining any clear realisation 
 of the physical detail of sexual traffic. To him that side 
 of life was thrust into one definite category, labelled 
 'beastliness.' He had no other word for it, and that one 
 very well indicates his attitude. To him these things 
 were unclean, and even at school he had begun to prac- 
 tise a fastidious cleanliness in his own person. (His 
 
 G.C. C
 
 26 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 mother approved and encouraged him, although his 
 morning bath entailed much extra work in the house. 
 The ' opportunity ' had been built before the days of bath- 
 rooms and upstairs plumbing; and Peter had never cared 
 to spend money on a building that would ultimately 
 return to the ground landlord.) 
 
 But this public scandal in the world of letters had a 
 different quality from that of the common beastliness 
 Philip had shudderingly avoided at school. This thing 
 figured in his mind as a threat against all the imagined 
 perfections of human life. The fear affecting him was 
 enormously intensified by the blackness of mystery that 
 shrouded the presumably awful sin. 
 
 'Hanging is too good for that man/ was the sole com- 
 ment on the case that Peter uttered in his son's hearing; 
 but he managed to convey a disgust and a vindictiveness, 
 that filled Philip's mind with a perfect horror of the 
 unimaginable evil. It loomed over him as a menace to 
 the sanctity and cleanliness of life. It took shape in 
 that surrounding cloud of his other consciousness and 
 sometimes it seemed to him as if the Powers of Darkness 
 having been given domination over the Spirits of Light, 
 m:ght violate the sanctity of the Holy Ghost, to the final 
 destruction of the soul of man. He felt small and help- 
 less, and occasionally trembled with the need for further 
 self -purification. In other circumstances he might have 
 entered a Jesuit CoUege at that time; but his home 
 influence had persistently presented the Roman Catholic 
 Church to him in the figure of the 'Scarlet Woman' and 
 that refuge from moral funk was definitely closed to him. 
 His alternative was the burning hell of the Evangelicals. 
 In thought he plucked out his offending eye and burned 
 his unclean hands. 
 
 Little of all this tragedy, however, showed upon the 
 surface of his life. It did not materially affect his work 
 at the College, nor have any practical effect upon his 
 home routine, save for an effort after greater obedience 
 to his father and mother, and a finer devotion to his 
 religious observances.
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 27 
 
 It was in that undefinable region which I have called 
 'the surrounding cloud of his other consciousness/ that 
 the evil was crystallised and stereotyped, to become a 
 constant source of irritation. There, it was as if the 
 dreaded thing was buried by the smooth marbled flesh 
 of a growing tumour. But indeed there is no physical 
 figure for the psychical distortion, although this dim 
 searching for analogy may help us to understand that 
 the gall of our common experience is itself the shadow, 
 the halting illustration of the reality. And just so we 
 come to understand, also, how all the material beauties 
 and horrors of life, all nature and the mechanical pre- 
 sentations of art-forms, are nothing but figures; brief, 
 imperfect illustrations of the permanent spirit that is 
 writing this book of life. We must believe that presently 
 this book will be destroyed and that the immortal source 
 will write again it may be, more clearly .... 
 
 In time Philip's spiritual gall was so smooth and hard 
 that for months he was unconscious of its existence, and 
 even when he was made aware of it by some twist of pain, 
 he cherished it as a thing of beauty. It was to him as a 
 casket of a pearl, he had no knowledge of the tortured 
 devil that writhed at the core .... 
 
 When he entered Robert Wing's office in Norfolk Street 
 in September, 1895, Philip might have passed, so far as 
 his conduct went, as a quite average young man of his 
 period. He was well-read in a rather stunted way. He 
 knew his poets, rejecting more notably Byron, Swinburne 
 and Browning, the first two from some instinctive fear 
 of their content, the last from an impatience with the 
 brusqueness of his expression. He had an easy acquaint- 
 ance with the English, Greek and Latin classics, and 
 when he was forced to defend his admiration for Edgar 
 Norman, found an argument in tracing his manner to a 
 classic derivation. For the same reason he loved Walter 
 Pater and indeed any writer who gave him the satisfaction 
 of recognising some idealised traditional prose or verse 
 form. Idea, invention, new thought, made comparatively 
 little appeal to him. Robert Wing very soon realised
 
 28 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 that this was precisely the kind of young man he had 
 been looking for. 
 
 In appearance, however, Philip was far from common- 
 place. Incidentally he was dark-haired, slender and 
 decently tall; but it was the clean, ascetic modelling of 
 his face, and the pathos of his rather deep blue eyes, that 
 attracted the notice of the casual onlooker. Some aspect 
 of his personal cleanliness had got itself expressed in the 
 slightly fastidious curve of his mouth and the fine drawing 
 of his nostrils. Some women spoke of him and thought 
 of him as a remarkably 'pretty boy,' but the phrase 
 does not do him justice. There was nothing weakly 
 feminine about his type, which would have served for the 
 model of some austere young priest. Perhaps it was the 
 delicately hard line of his eyebrows, and the close dark- 
 ness of his lashes that evoked the ready adjective 'pretty.' 
 A woman's first search for a man's being so often begins 
 at his eyes. 
 
 Within two years Philip had a definite position in the 
 office and was counted one of Wing's assets. That was 
 Wing's lucky period, and it lasted until a year or two 
 after the Boer War. Nothing went really wrong with the 
 business until after the death of Queen Victoria. 
 
 Wing, himself, was a shortish, plump man, with a 
 neatly pointed brown beard, thick round the chin and 
 thin on the cheeks. He had the eyes of a rather imagi- 
 native pig. He lived in good style, had a house in 
 Westbourne Terrace, and was on visiting and dining 
 terms with quite a nice little list of minor titles. He had 
 two distinct manners, one for business and the other for 
 social purposes. The former had a touch of vulgarity 
 and was just perceptibly laced with an English imitation 
 of American methods, and occasionally, of American 
 phrase. In society he was regarded as a clever, modest 
 little rotundity whom it might be useful to know. He 
 sometimes published books for the indigent aristocracy 
 on remarkably generous commission terms. The only 
 other fact of importance concerning him is that his private 
 life was not as pure as his edition of the classics. But he
 
 29 
 
 had a genius for avoiding any kind of scandal. He chose 
 not always the love he most desired, but always that 
 which was safest. 
 
 His relations with Philip began inauspiciously but 
 settled down into a practical compromise within the 
 first twelve months. The trouble began with Philip's 
 first suspicion of double-dealing. He was a strangely 
 developed youngster when he first emerged into the life 
 of a London office. He had been drilled into obedience, 
 but his allegiance was only to a particular set of rules. 
 Peter's influence had shaped him, but the shape was not 
 a submissive one. 
 
 Walter Thurston, a lean, fair-haired man of twenty- 
 six or so, who had been in Wing's office for nearly four 
 years when Philip arrived, gave it as his opinion, within 
 six hours, that the Maning fellow was a cursed young 
 prig. Thurston had genially begun his overtures to the 
 neophyte with the ordinary kind of story it was quite 
 new, and Philip had flushed and frowned and had not 
 attempted the least hint of that mollifying smile which, 
 according to Thurston, common politeness, to say nothing 
 of a sense of humour, demanded. 
 
 Within five months a more obvious snub had been 
 administered to the head of the firm. Fortunately the 
 thing had happened in Wing's private office. He had 
 patronisingly invited his last pupil to read a novel that 
 had been offered by a new writer, and to express his 
 opinion of it. Wing had an underpaid and overworked 
 reader, and when he gave signs of nervous breakdown, 
 became suddenly generous in the matter of holidays. 
 During these periods he saved money by experimenting 
 on his own staff. Philip had been immensely flattered 
 by what he regarded as a mark of confidence, and had 
 sat up the best part of the night over this first manu- 
 script. 
 
 ' No need to write your report, Maning,' Wing had said 
 in his Society manner when he handed over the parcel. 
 'Come into my room when you have read the book and 
 give me your frank opinion.' Wing's sanctum was always
 
 30 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 spoken of as his 'room.' It was furnished in the style 
 of a gentleman's library, and except for occasional tech- 
 nical apparatus on the big writing-table was free from 
 the least suggestion of being a place for the transaction 
 of business. 
 
 Philip was commended on his promptitude when he 
 begged an audience the next day. 
 
 His report was orderly and concise. He admired 
 neither the manner nor the purpose of the book. 
 
 'It's so loose, sir,' was his first criticism when he had 
 outlined the story, ' and I think that, well, that the moral 
 is bad.' 
 
 'But there's nothing prurient in the writing, eh? ' asked 
 Wing who had been interested by a certain ingenuity in 
 the weaving of the story. ' It's clean, isn't it? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! there's nothing beastly in it/ Philip admitted, 
 'but the tendency isn't good, sir.' 
 
 And then Wing winked, and dropped without warning 
 into his business manner. 'Mustn't push modesty too 
 far, Maning,' he said. 'There's a point where prudence 
 merges into prudishness; and this firm isn't a tract 
 society. It isn't morals that matter, it's prurience. I 
 want my books to get into the home; and the important 
 thing is that nothing indecent should be mentioned.' 
 
 He paused there for the sake of emphasis, and his little 
 eyes almost disappeared in the plump smile that heralded 
 a coming lapse into the manner of the books he could not 
 publish. 
 
 Perhaps Philip had an intuition of what was coming. 
 He had turned a shade paler than usual, as he listened 
 to his employer's statement of the firm's aims, and the 
 corners of his fastidious mouth had straightened into a 
 slightly bitter line. 
 
 ' Isn't that a form of hypocrisjr, sir? ' he asked in a low, 
 steady voice. 
 
 Little Wing started, his plump little red mouth opened 
 in astonishment, and his dimpled white hand went up to 
 his beard. 
 
 ' Good Lord ! ' he ejaculated.
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 31 
 
 Another man would have smiled at the little publisher's 
 ingenuous surprise, Philip continued to glower. 
 
 'Are you suggesting that one should conduct a business 
 on the lines of the Sermon on the Mount ? ' Wing asked, 
 with a vague recollection of Magee's famous pronounce- 
 ment. 
 
 Philip's evident perplexity at the thought of conducting 
 a business on any other lines would have been sufficient 
 answer even without his steady 'Why not, sir?' 
 
 Wing hesitated and continued to caress the more 
 satisfactory part of his beard. He had an alert mind 
 and had realised at once that this modern saint he had 
 found might presently be used as an excellent advertise- 
 ment. 
 
 'Hm ! well, it's a good thing to have an ideal, no doubt,' 
 he said; and he looked down at his desk and began to 
 play with the manuscript of the novel. 'But you know, 
 Maning,' he went on, 'it's very difficult to be quite er 
 consistent in this business, in business of any kind. 
 However, if you think this book is bad in tendency, we 
 might send it back and advise certain alterations. I'll 
 take it home to-night, and look into it, myself. You're 
 doing the index for Pilcher's Ethics, aren't you? Very 
 good. I'm glad to have had your opinion of the novel.' 
 
 Philip left the room with no sense of having been an 
 evangel. He was merely puzzled by his employer's 
 apparent lack of purpose. It seemed to Philip that, if 
 only from a business point of view, it was unsound to 
 advertise purity and publish a book with an unsound 
 moral. 
 
 An hour later Wing, still in an unusually thoughtful 
 mood, summoned Walter Thurston to a private conference. 
 
 'I want to know what you think of Maning,' he began 
 at once. ' How does he shape, eh ? ' 
 
 Thurston settled himself in his lazy, graceful way into 
 the arm-chair that his employer had pointed to with his 
 Society manner of invitation he made a point of having 
 at least two gentlemen working in his office and of treating 
 them as equals.
 
 32 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 ' Oh ! he works all right, you know,' Thurston said. 
 'Sticks to it like anything . . . .' 
 
 'Yes? Well? But . . . .' Wing prompted. 
 'State your antithesis, Thurston.' 
 
 'Dunno that it's an antithesis exactly,' drawled 
 Thurston. 'Only he's such an infernal young prig, sir.' 
 
 Wing suddenly slapped the desk in front of him with a 
 smack that made Thurston jump. 
 
 ' Not a bit of it !' he said sharply. ' He's consistent, 
 that's all, and don't you try to convert him, Thurston. 
 Maning's got character, and . . . .'he paused on 
 the verge of saying that he meant to use that character 
 to advertise the business, and added, 'and that's an asset 
 a very rare asset. It's more than character, it's dis- 
 tinction,' he went on elaborating his scheme, 'and I want 
 you, Thurston, to get that note of distinction into our 
 publications. In a way, you understand, it's new.' 
 
 Thurston looked a trifle pained. 'I don't quite know 
 how . . . .' he began. 
 
 'Study him !' returned Wing, with a touch of impatience. 
 ' He's worth it.' 
 
 And for a time the office studied Philip in so far as it 
 kept any hint of hypocrisy out of his sight. Wing himself 
 initiated a special manner of thoughtful consideration 
 whenever Philip was in the same room with him. But, 
 inevitably, there were awful lapses. One of them, perhaps 
 the worst, happened in Wing's own house. 
 
 Philip had been in the office for more than eighteen 
 months, then, and had been invited to dinner in West- 
 bourne Terrace Wing was using the 'distinction' label 
 freely by that time and found Philip's introduction to a 
 certain side of Society, a useful backing for his advertise- 
 ments. 
 
 The guest of the evening on this occasion was Lord 
 Henry Arkwright, uncle to the then Lord Welfare who 
 was reputed to be the poorest English marquis. Lord 
 Henry was the author of the Memoirs that were published 
 by Wing at intervals of a year or so. He had met 
 everyone, the Empress of China, Sir H. M. Stanley,
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 33 
 
 General Booth, and people of that sort, and he had a gift 
 for remembering or inventing the characteristic anecdote. 
 He was a very decent-minded old man, but he naturally 
 adapted himself to the society he patronised, and he 
 would go almost anywhere to dinner if the wine and the 
 cooking were good. Wing had either thought him a 
 perfectly safe person to meet his young Galahad, or had 
 supposed that Lord Henry's position would justify any 
 story he had to tell. 
 
 The story when it came after the women had gone 
 upstairs was not by any means a lurid one. Lord Henry 
 probably told it, in his generous, easy way, as a sort of 
 payment for his dinner. He knew Wing. But the anec- 
 dote was too strong for Philip. He flushed and frowned 
 and pushed back his chair. Wing lost his head. 
 
 'What's wrong, Maning?' he asked impatiently. 
 
 ' I think I'll go upstairs, sir.' Philip said quietly. 
 
 'If you're not feeling well, you'd better go home/ 
 returned Wing sharply. 
 
 And Philip bowed grave';. 7 to the company and left the 
 room. 
 
 'Extraordinarily squeamish fellow,' Wing confided on a 
 note of vexed apology to Lord Henry. 
 
 But Lord Henry was quite untouched. He nodded his 
 head in a slightly senile way that was growing upon him, 
 and started another story much worse than the last. He 
 always tried to please the rich bourgeoisie who asked him 
 to dinner. 
 
 Philip was twenty-two and had been in Mr Wing's 
 office for nearly four years when he met the man 
 who in the apparently haphazard way of life, was to 
 be the agent of an important influence in shaping his 
 destiny. 
 
 Philip had come into the outer office at lunch time to 
 consult the Telephone Directory, and was momentarily 
 alone there, when the stranger entered.
 
 34 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 He was an unusually big man, tall and fat, not with 
 the localised embonpoint of an alderman, but with the 
 rich distributed podginess of some immense schoolboy. 
 He was expensively and smartly dressed in a light grey 
 suit that must have been cut by a first-class tailor, with 
 grey suede gloves he had them both on, and it was 
 amazing that they had not split and grey socks that 
 swelled round his generous ankles and then ducked 
 modestly into a pair of patent leather Oxford shoes. 
 His hair was extraordinarily fair and silky, and so thin 
 that the pink of his plump skull showed through it and 
 slightly warmed its colour. And he wore a ridiculous 
 little yellow moustache waxed into two absurdly tiny 
 spikes. His eyes were a pale, inquiring blue, and notice- 
 ably protuberant. 
 
 When he saw Philip, the stranger paused and his little 
 round mouth opened like the mouth of a small astonished 
 fish. Indeed, the whole figure of the man expressed an 
 ingenuous surprise; he appeared surprised to see Philip, 
 to see the office, to find himself there or anywhere at all, 
 above everything to discover himself dressed in clothes 
 that however perfectly cut were quite obviously intended 
 for someone else. It was not a hot day but he was 
 noticeably warm. When he had taken off his bowler 
 hat and wiped his head with a large silk pocket-handker- 
 chief, his fair hair looked as if it had been painted on the 
 abundant contours of his great skull, by some harassed, 
 mechanically-minded theatrical-property maker. 
 
 'Oh ! I say ! Mr Wing here? ' he asked in a rich contralto 
 voice. 
 
 'I think so. I'll find out,' Philip said. 'Who shall I 
 say wants to see him ? ' It was not a literary sentence, 
 but Philip for some reason or another was slightly over- 
 come. The apparition had come so suddenly. 
 
 ' Oh ! Blenkinsop,' said the stranger. 
 
 ' Oh ! Blenkinsop,' Philip repeated nervously. 
 
 'E. Blenkinsop,' the stranger corrected him without 
 the ghost of a smile. 
 
 Philip checked his second echo just in time. For one
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 35 
 
 absurd moment he found himself mentally working 
 through the possible combinations: 'Ah! Blenkinsop, is 
 it you, Blenkinsop? . . . .' 
 
 Mr Wing was in his room and appeared curiously per- 
 turbed at the announcement of Mr Blenkinsop' s name. 
 He stared inquisitively at Philip. 
 
 'He didn't say what he wanted, did he?' he asked 
 suspiciously. 
 
 'No, sir.' Philip's answer was definite and convincing 
 but his expression hovered on the verge of a smile. 
 
 ' Then what are you laughing at ? ' Wing said sharply. 
 
 ' Really, I hardly know, sir,' Philip said, and his mouth 
 was touched with an unusual whimsicality that relieved 
 its austerity and gave a new and altogether charming 
 character to his expression. 'There was somehow a 
 touch of farce I don't know how else to explain it 
 when Mr Blenkinsop came in,' he explained. 
 
 Mr Wing frowned and muttered. ' Show him in ; show 
 him in,' he said aloud. He was evidently greatly dis- 
 pleased. 
 
 Philip imagined that he was the offender until he heard 
 the opening sentence of Mr Wing's greeting to the stranger. 
 
 'My dear Blenkinsop! Is this wise! Is this wise?' 
 Philip heard as he closed the door behind the full round 
 back of the fair man .... 
 
 Without doubt, this visit had an air of mystery, but as 
 no special instructions had been issued with regard to 
 Mr Blenkinsop's appearance in Norfolk Street, Philip 
 confided the story to Thurston when he came back from 
 lunch. The two young men had by that time achieved 
 some sort of compromise that permitted intercourse. 
 The effect of the story upon Thurston was well in keeping 
 with the other peculiarities of the morning's episode. 
 
 'Oh ! my Hat !' exclaimed Thurston. 'Oh ! my HAT, 
 Maning. Go on. More ! Describe him again.' 
 
 Philip added a detail or two before he pressed for an 
 explanation. 
 
 Thurston was fairly writhing with enjoyment. 'Of 
 course, that explains it ! ' he chuckled. ' I hadn't a notion.
 
 36 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Lord, the times we've tried and missed it.' His laughter 
 became too convulsive to permit of speech. 
 
 Philip watched him with a bland smile. 
 
 'You might tell me/ he kept on insisting. 
 
 'Can't you guess? Can't you guess ?' chuckled 
 Thurston. 'He's one of our authors. And the public 
 have got such a picture of him, and they're going 
 to get . . . .' he stopped abruptly and began 
 again: -'They don't know how they've got it, but they 
 have. Bet you a bob you've got it, too. Here, don't 
 you remember Bobbie telling you the other day that 
 Edgar Norman had rather your type of face? ' 
 
 'Edgar Norman !' exclaimed Philip. 'You don't mean 
 that That . . . .' 
 
 'Yes, That,' Thurston interrupted him with a whoop of 
 glee. ' Oh ! it's immense. It's profound. Think of the 
 dear little girls reading Marzipan, and then being con- 
 fronted with That. They wouldn't touch his next book 
 with a barge pole. Oh ! Bobbie's got the gift of insight. 
 There's no doubt about it.' 
 
 'But how do you know?' protested Philip. 
 
 'It came to me in a rush,' Thurston said; 'in one 
 moment of tremendous conviction. Besides which I've 
 had my suspicions for a long time that Norman's real 
 name was Blenkinsop from letters and things. Bobbie 
 has done his best to keep it dark even from us, but oh ! 
 well, I've had my suspicions about the name, anyway. 
 And now this . . . .' He was shaken by a further 
 spasm of rapture. 
 
 But already the strange alchemy of suggestion was 
 having its effect upon Philip. His remembered picture 
 of Blenkinsop had begun to take a new outline. It had 
 been touched by the reverent hand of one who worshipped 
 genius. All that strange wrapping of flesh was nothing 
 but a figment of the material presentation. And when 
 he recalled the face of the stranger, Philip saw now how 
 some light of intellect and understanding had surely been 
 shining behind the pale blue of those protuberant eyes. 
 
 'Whatever he looks like, it doesn't alter the fact that
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 37 
 
 he wrote those books of his,' was his first proclamation of 
 renewed allegiance. 
 
 'Oh ! he's as clever as they make 'em,' agreed Thurston. 
 ' It's the sell to the public I'm chortling over.' 
 
 It was then that Philip began to wonder if his austerity 
 with regard to the relations of the publisher (and author !) 
 with his public, had not been something too puritanical. 
 He wished he could hear Norman, himself, defend what 
 Thurston called 'the Inspired Deception.' 
 
 And that opportunity was to be offered the same after- 
 noon. Philip was summoned to Mr Wing's room about 
 five o'clock, and went with a premonition that he was 
 'in for a wigging.' That misapprehension was dispelled 
 directly he crossed the important threshold. He had 
 never before seen his employer so embarrassed. 
 
 Wing had the best tea-set, a Georgian silver service 
 usually reserved for such visitors as Lord Henry, 
 standing on a small table by his side, and he was leaning 
 back in the depths of one of his voluptuous arm-chairs, 
 with his legs crossed. His position was easy, but his 
 manner was nervous. 
 
 ' Come in, come in, Maning,' he said, almost unctuously 
 when Philip appeared. ' Have some tea ! Very re- 
 freshing at this time of day. Sit down. Sit down.' 
 
 Philip accepted the tea and the embrace of the 
 indicated arm-chair with a faint sense of uneasiness. 
 Obviously he was not in for a wigging, but it came into 
 his mind that he might have to face a more trying ordeal, 
 the proof of temptation. 
 
 ' You saw Mr Blenkinsop, this morning ? ' began Wing 
 with an air that was slightly roguish. 'And how did he 
 strike you? I don't suppose you guessed that he was 
 an old client of ours? ' 
 
 'No, sir, I didn't, but Mr Thurston did,' Philip replied 
 gravely. 
 
 ' Ah ! you told Thurston ? ' commented Wing. 
 
 'You gave me no instructions, sir,' Philip said. 'And, 
 you see, I had no idea that . . . .' 
 
 'That Mr Blenkinsop was our most inspired writer of
 
 38 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 the present day. No.' Mr Wing's 'No' definitely closed 
 this introduction. 'Mr Blenkinsop takes an interest in 
 you, Maning/ he continued in another voice, and his 
 little eyes watched keenly to note the effect of his an- 
 nouncement. 
 
 Philip blushed. ' I I hardly spoke to him/ was all he 
 found to say. 
 
 'He asked me who you were, at once,' Wing went on 
 blandly. He spoke of you as 'the Adonis with the face 
 of a young priest.' You know what a loving eye he has 
 for the beautiful.' 
 
 Philip's blush deepened and he wriggled uncomfortably 
 on his chair. 
 
 'So I told him what little I knew about you,' Wing 
 rolled on, 'and he was especially charmed to hear of that 
 amazing sincerity of yours. I, also, told him about your 
 reception of Sir Henry's anecdote at my house. I assure 
 you Norman greatly admired what he regarded as your 
 moral courage on that occasion. And the upshot of all 
 this is that he has asked me to pass on an invitation to 
 lunch with him at his club to-morrow if you would care 
 to go?' 
 
 'Of course I would, sir rather,' mumbled Philip. 
 
 'The Oxford, in Piccadilly, one-thirty/ said Mr Wing, 
 concluding the paragraph. 'And now, there is another 
 thing. You have read Norman's forthcoming book The 
 Young Adonis, of course. Delightful, isn't it? One is 
 really tired of saying that he has excelled himself. He 
 has done it so often. But really .... Well, we 
 want a portrait for the frontispiece. Not a portrait of 
 the author, you understand.' 
 
 Wing's pause suggested that he was waiting for a laugh, 
 but Philip's face remained forbiddingly grave as he said, 
 'No, I've always understood that you didn't want Mr 
 Norman to publish his photograph.' 
 
 ' Oh ! well, it's Norman's own wish rather than mine,' 
 Wing explained with a gesture of his plump little hand. 
 'Not that he is sensitive on the subject. You know what 
 a sense of humour he has. But, as he truly says, he is,
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 39 
 
 unfortunately, not a good advertisement for his own 
 books. No, I assure you that it is his choice rather than 
 mine that he should remain, in a sense, a mystery. He 
 . . . .' Wing paused for a moment, and apparently 
 decided to leave that statement as sufficiently empha- 
 sized. 'However/ he continued in a slightly brisker 
 voice, 'what he came to see about this morning was the 
 portrait I just referred to; for The Young Adonis. We 
 decided to put no description under it, but, of course, 
 the inference is that it is a portrait of the hero. And, 
 well, in fact, I had mentioned in writing to him that I 
 knew of only one model for a photograph, which would, 
 as you will understand, be infinitely better, if we can get 
 one, than the ideal portrait of some artist. Artists are 
 so difficult and so expensive. Now, a collotype, from 
 a photograph, pasted in ... .' Philip's expression 
 was so forbidding that little Wing had not the courage to 
 stop talking. He broke off at last in the middle of a long 
 parenthesis on process, with the expression of a man who 
 confidently expects to be contradicted. 
 
 'I think I should like to talk it over with Mr Norman 
 first, sir,' Philip said. 
 
 'Talk it over with Norman? Eh? He knows nothing 
 about printing/ returned Wing with an admirable simu- 
 lation of bewilderment. 
 
 ' I meant about the question of putting my photograph 
 into the new book/ Philip explained solemnly. 
 
 ' Oh ! yes. To be sure/ Wing ejaculated, and bounced 
 out of his chair as if he could not possibly be expected to 
 stay there for the rest of the day, listening to Philip's 
 chatter. ' Oh ! yes. Talk it over with Norman by all 
 means, Maning. Would you send Thurston in? And I 
 wish you'd go through the reviews of Lord Henry's 
 Memoirs again and find some better quotations. Those 
 you chose are too heavy, too dull altogether. We can 
 not afford to be dull in our advertisements. I told you 
 that Norman's club was The Oxford in Piccadilly? Half 
 past one? Don't forget to ask for Mr Blenkinsop. He 
 is not known there as ' ' Norman." '
 
 40 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 6 
 
 Philip's luncheon with Edgar Norman, ne Blenkinsop, 
 was one of those occasions that cannot be recorded in 
 direct narrative, however ornate. Essentially, it was an 
 affair of impressions, and the proper sequence of those 
 impressions is of no importance whatever. 
 
 Moreover, Philip's romantic mind was a little be- 
 wildered by so much splendour. There was, for instance, 
 the club dining-room, imposingly monumental in grey 
 stone : with its plump Ionic columns supporting a lofty 
 entablature of plaster beams in the deeply coffered ceil- 
 ing; with a 'genuine' Tudor fireplace that had been 
 collected from some demolished mansion in Northamp- 
 tonshire; with expensively solid furniture that belonged 
 so undeniably to the period of expensively solid clubs; 
 and with its pervading smell of club cooking, a discreet, 
 refined smell, that surely must have been the result of 
 some exquisitely designed system of ventilation or 
 filtration whereby the coarser odours were excluded and 
 what remained presented only a subtle composite of 
 almost aromatic delicacy. One could take a thoughtful 
 whiff of that dining-room smell in place of an aperitif. 
 Another splendour was the club lunch itself, not too ela- 
 borate, but cooked by a high priest and served by acolytes 
 whose reverent solicitude in the presentation of each 
 silver dish made the lifting of a silver cover an act of 
 adoration. In a common restaurant the discovered 
 delicacy would have been nothing but, say, lamb cutlets 
 and spinach, at the Oxford it was that and something 
 more, something mysteriously more delicate, appetising 
 and refined. And afterwards there was the Oxford's 
 famous smoking-room, done on the same scale as the 
 dining-room, but more voluptuous in its treatment. 
 Here the columns were Corinthian, and acanthus and 
 honeysuckle writhed about the distant ceiling in place of 
 the 'egg and tongue' moulding which was so appropriate
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 41 
 
 to the dining-room. In the smoking-room the fireplaces 
 were not ' genuine/ and the replete visitor was not bored 
 with their history. Lastly the chairs and chesterfields 
 were in saddlebag, and suggested luxurious ease after the 
 faintly devotional maroon leather of the other temple. 
 
 Fresh from the 'opportunity' at Herne Hill, and with 
 no more effective preparation for such grandeurs than 
 that afforded by Robert Wing's private room, Philip 
 must certainly have been a little staggered by such a 
 setting. He moved across its large spaces with the 
 timidity of one who leaves the familiar crowd and 
 movement of the street for the inimical silences of a 
 picture gallery. The hushed voices of the club members 
 seemed to intensify his own capacity for making a noise, 
 and made him nervously aware of his personality. 
 
 And all these grandeurs were but a setting for the 
 greatest splendour of all; for the wonder that he was 
 the guest of him whose 'sculptured prose' and 'sensitive 
 realism' had placed him, according to reviews and 
 advertisements, ' in the very forefront of modern writers. ' 
 
 Philip was unable to recognise on this first great 
 occasion that there were two Normans (or two Blenkin- 
 sops), although there, at the Oxford Club, the very 
 material personality that swaddled the poet was largely 
 in evidence. The boy who had been chaffed through 
 Rugby into Balliol and chaffed out again into this 
 supercilious retreat in Piccadilly, could not in those 
 surroundings assume the confidence of acknowledged 
 genius. Blenkinsop, he was so essentially Blenkinsop 
 at the club wallowed through lunch, with but one 
 expression, an expression of almost stunned surprise. 
 He showed nothing but a fearful amazement when he 
 was tapped on the shoulder by a tall man of thirty or 
 so, with the face of an aristocrat and the pose and voice 
 of a finished man of the world. 
 
 ' Hallo ! B/ remarked this splendid individual. 
 ' Coming up for a game of Snooker, presently ? ' 
 
 Blenkinsop gaped and nodded in a gasping silence. 
 
 And he might have received the most astounding news 
 G.C. D
 
 42 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 when a sedate boy, dressed almost exclusively in buttons, 
 came into the smoking-room after lunch, chirruped 
 'Blenkinsop' in a sweet soprano, looked round, sighted 
 his immense goal, blushed vividly and then presented a 
 telegram on a silver salver. 
 
 Yet the beautiful aristocrat was only a young stock- 
 broker, and the telegram contained nothing but the 
 information that ' Peroxide ' was a safe thing for the three 
 o'clock race at Gat wick. 
 
 It was Philip who should have shown surprise through 
 all these strange experiences, but he was too dazed to do 
 anything but live as it were in a state of delicate suspen- 
 sion, poised and attentive. He watched and waited for 
 the animating touch and it did not come until tea-time. 
 In the meanwhile, however, he gathered material for an 
 understanding of the double Blenkinsop. 
 
 There were three impressions during the afternoon, 
 that contributed to this understanding. The first was a 
 brief conflict of wills between him and his host. 
 
 Philip realised about half an hour after lunch that it 
 was time he returned to Norfolk Street. He had already 
 been out for two hours, and he had acquired something 
 of his father's superstitions with relation to the conduct 
 of business. Nothing had so far been discussed between 
 him and his host that had any sort of bearing on the 
 publication of the photograph in The Young Adonis, 
 but he reverently supposed that that matter had slipped 
 Edgar Norman's memory. 
 
 'I'm afraid I ought to be going,' Philip said, apolo- 
 getically. 
 
 ' Oh ! I say ! Rather not ! ' Blenkinsop protested in 
 his mellowest contralto. ' Promised to play Snooker, you 
 know, with Greatorex fellow who spoke to me at lunch. 
 You come up and watch. Got to talk no end to you, 
 afterwards, if you don't mind.' 
 
 'But I'm afraid Mr Wing . . . .' began Philip. 
 
 ' Blow Wing !' Blenkinsop interrupted and blew gently 
 himself. It seemed as if the merest breath from his 
 famous mouth would send Wing swinging round to any
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 43 
 
 improbable point of the compass. 'Wing doesn't matter,' 
 he explained. 'You're Wing for this afternoon. We're 
 going to consult, presently. Sorry I promised Greatorex. 
 Wasn't thinking for the moment. Snooker bores you, 
 take you up to the library.' 
 
 Philip understood that there was no appeal against 
 this decision. Mr Wing's Court was of no account in this 
 connexion, a mere court of the first instance. 
 
 ' I think I should like to come up and watch you play, 
 then,' Philip said. He was a little afraid of being left 
 alone with these wonderful creatures in the library; also, 
 he wanted to stay with Edgar Norman. At any moment 
 some revelation might come. 
 
 And, indeed, the second impression did bring something 
 in the way of revelation, if it was not of the kind that 
 Philip anticipated. 
 
 He was sitting on one of the abundant lounges on the 
 raised platform that encircled the room in which the club 
 kept its 'crack' table. There was another room, with 
 two tables, next door; this one was reserved for the elect 
 and the adept. 
 
 Next to him sprawled a little dark man with a small 
 elfish face, who, as Philip was dismayed to learn at tea- 
 time, was none other than the infamously famous Earl 
 Chalmers, whose marital affairs continually helped to 
 maintain the romantic interest of the British press. 
 
 (Philip had heard of him through Lord Henry's 
 Memoirs. 'WTiat is it exactly that Chalmers has done?' 
 someone had asked, and the answer had been ' Oh ! 
 bigamy and so on, you know.' It was understood that the 
 sequelae to the initial act might lead to almost anything.) 
 
 Fortunately, Philip was unaware of his neighbour's 
 celebrity at the time, and listened with grave attention 
 while Lord Chalmers expounded his own views of Mr 
 Blenkinsop. 
 
 'B. a friend of yours?' he began, wriggling gleefully on 
 the lounge. 
 
 'Hardly that, I'm afraid,' Philip said. 'I've only met 
 him twice .... as yet.'
 
 44 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'He's a dark horse is old Blenkinsop,' chuckled Lord 
 Chalmers. ' He's such a priceless old codder. Always 
 got a whole bag of tricks up his sleeve. I'd walk a mile to 
 watch him play Snooker with Greatorex. Greatorex's 
 chief ambition is to win a game off B. Level of course. 
 He can't turn his mind to being made Chancellor the 
 Schequer till he's beat old B. at Snooker. And he never 
 will, you know. Not level. Jus' watch him. Balls go 
 in like silk, 'f you know what I mean. Tap 'em anywhere 
 an' down they drop. Like a conjurin' trick. Walk a 
 mile any day to see old B. play Snooker.' 
 
 And even Philip, who watched a billiard-table that 
 afternoon for the first time in his life, could see that Mr 
 Blenkinsop was no common expert. 
 
 It was, however, only the third impression that 
 appeared valuable to Philip, at the time. 
 
 In the little bay-window of the visitors' smoking-room, 
 over tea and muffins, Blenkinsop really expanded 
 metaphorically, of course. He and Philip had the room 
 to themselves, and it was comparatively small and snug 
 a tall man by standing on a table might almost have 
 reached the ceiling. 
 
 'About this photograph affair,' Blenkinsop began, as 
 soon as he had hastily eaten his first muffin. 'Think it's 
 a dirty bit of business, I daresay? ' 
 
 'I don't like it much,' Philip said bravely. 
 
 ' Why ? ' Blenkinsop asked and snatched another muffin. 
 
 'It isn't that I mind so much about my photograph 
 going into the book as a kind of fancy portrait of your 
 Adonis/ Philip explained. 
 
 Blenkinsop grunted and nodded to indicate his desire 
 for further confidences' his mouth was too full for words. 
 
 ' It's just that '..-..' Philip began again, and hesi- 
 tated to find a gentle expression for the difficult thing he 
 wanted to say. 
 
 'Er/ prompted Blenkinsop encouragingly. 
 
 'Well, it's only that I don't know if from what 
 
 Mr Wing suggested .... whether ' Philip 
 
 realised that he could not go back and put the sentence
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 45 
 
 straight now. 'Whether there was any idea that it, my 
 photograph, I mean, might possibly be supposed to be 
 to be a portrait of of you, sir, you know.' Philip's 
 anxious blue eyes were fixed on his host, and his whole 
 expression pleaded for understanding. 
 
 Blenkinsop swallowed. 
 
 'Wing's such a codder,' he remarked, repeating the 
 epithet so recently applied to himself. 'Guessed he was 
 up to that game. Wouldn't like to say so to me, natur- 
 ally; but I knew he was up to something. One reason 
 why I wanted to talk to you about it. Took a fancy to 
 you when I saw you in the office. Hope you won't mind 
 my saying so.' 
 
 Philip blushed and mumbled. 
 
 Blenkinsop looked regretfully at the empty muffin dish, 
 glanced thoughtfully at the bell, and then, apparently, 
 thought better of it. 
 
 ' I know I eat too much,' he said. ' Always did. They 
 called me "Guzzler" at Rugby. Oxford, too. Can't 
 help it. It's my vice. I couldn't write a word if I didn't 
 eat chocolates and things all the time I'm writing. Carry 
 'em in my pocket. Have one? ' And he produced a large 
 box of very expensive-looking confections from his pocket, 
 gazed at them tenderly for a moment, and then offered 
 them to his guest. 
 
 Philip accepted one with a murmur of thanks. 
 Blenkinsop grabbed three with a furtive pounce before he 
 returned the precious box to its nest. 
 
 'Had a beastly time at Rugby and Oxford, you know,' 
 he went on, and his protuberant blue eyes gazed wistfully 
 at Philip. 'Couldn't play footer or cricket worth a damn. 
 Everyone thought me a mug. Bore you, all this?.' 
 
 ' Oh ! no. Rather not,' Philip protested eagerly. He 
 was immensely flattered by these confidences, and 
 sympathetically interested in the ever new romance of the 
 despised genius rising superior to his circumstances. 
 Blenkinsop's next words flattered him still further. 
 
 ' Never talked to anyone about it, not even my mother/ 
 he continued. ' But I've taken an extraordinary fancy to
 
 46 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 you, somehow. Moment I saw you in old Wing's office. 
 However, don't want to embarrass you by repeating that. 
 Only want to explain why'm telling you all this. Con- 
 fession good for a body like mine, only you can't trust 
 people not to laugh at you afterwards. Everyone's 
 always laughed at me. I'm not surprised. Never was; 
 but I made up my mind at Rugby that I'd prove I wasn't 
 such an infernal ass as I look. First idea was to learn to 
 play games. Couldn't manage footer, of course, too fat; 
 and I'm afraid of the ball at cricket, but I'm thundering 
 good at tennis. Play like the Aliens, you know, stand up 
 and volley everything. And then I used to come up to 
 town and have billiard lessons from a professional. Got 
 a most unusual natural ability for the game, he told me; 
 good eye; and I got on at that like a house on fire. Think 
 a lot of me here just because I can put a ball down every 
 time. Frightful rot, but I had to do something in self- 
 defence.' 
 
 'But if they knew about your books . . . .' put in 
 Philip, 'wouldn't that . . . .' 
 
 Blenkinsop shook his head, and helped himself to 
 another handful of sweetmeats. 'Not here/ he said. 
 ' Not a literary lot here. Only pull my leg.' 
 
 Phi^p sighed, reflectively. It made him sad to think 
 how many people there were in the world who could not 
 appreciate the delicate prose of Edgar Norman. 
 
 'And then, you, about that photograph,' Blenkinsop 
 went on. 'I'm an infernal ass, I know; but I've got a 
 notion that you'll understand. What I mean is, suppose 
 some of 'em did think it was meant for me, it would help 
 me to go on believing that I was really Edgar Norman, 
 and not this ghastly caricature of a bladder known as 
 Blenkinsop. It'd help me no end. Nothing could be 
 sillier. I admit that. And it must be very difficult for 
 you to understand, seeing you've never had to go about 
 like a beastly 'before' advertisement for anti-fat. But 
 sometimes the Blenkinsop part of me becomes an obses- 
 sion. I can't get away from it, imaginatively. And all 
 the time I'm writing, I have to be Edgar Norman,
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 47 
 
 something like that photograph of you. However, as you 
 say, it's all very silly, and if you object, nothing more 
 to be said.' 
 
 'Oh! but I don't object; really I don't. I didn't 
 understand a bit,' Philip burst out eagerly. 'If I could 
 do anything to help you, I- I should be tremendously 
 honoured. I should really.' 
 
 What else could Philip have said in such circumstances? 
 
 'Frightfully good of you,' murmured Blenkinsop. 
 'Don't know how to thank you.' 
 
 Philip protested that it was nothing, absolutely nothing 
 at all. 
 
 Blenkinsop said that it was a most extraordinarily 
 generous thing to do; most. And not to be outdone in 
 generosity, he offered Philip another sweetmeat. 
 
 Blenkinsop and Philip left the Oxford together a little 
 before six o'clock, and a queer little incident occurred 
 just outside the club door. 
 
 A young woman of about Philip's age was standing at 
 the kerb, waiting for an omnibus, and Philip noted 
 instantly that she had in her hand a copy of the de luxe 
 edition of Marzipan. He looked up at Blenkinsop and 
 then touched him, reverently, on the arm. 
 
 'I suppose you're quite used to seeing that about?' he 
 said, indicating the book. 
 
 Blenkinsop smiled, rather fatuously. 'In a way,' he 
 said. ' Complimentary all the same.' 
 
 He was struggling with a distended suede glove, and 
 paused either to overcome this difficulty, or to feast his 
 eyes for another moment on the sight of this young 
 woman cherishing the ideal of some splendid Edgar 
 Norman. And as they hesitated on the lower steps of 
 the club entrance they were rather happily posed as it 
 happened, the young woman turned round and saw 
 them.
 
 48 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 She looked first at Blenkinsop it would have been 
 difficult to avoid doing that and then she turned her 
 attention with a sudden fastidious haste to Philip and 
 allowed it to stay there. 
 
 Philip coloured and tried to look away, but for one 
 moment it was as if his gaze and that of the strange 
 young woman had been mysteriously locked. It seemed 
 to him that he stood there for several seconds trying to 
 release himself and her from this inexplicable entangle- 
 ment, and that during those seconds his consciousness 
 was wonderfully vivified, so that he was aware not only 
 of his own efforts but, also, of hers. Then someone 
 passed along the pavement between them, and the spell 
 was loosed. The young woman turned back quickly to 
 her search for an omnibus, and Philip became aware that 
 his host had left him and was wallowing down Piccadilly 
 in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. 
 
 Philip hurried after him. He felt that he had had a 
 curious experience and that the whole stimulating adven- 
 ture of his long afternoon had found a culmination. He 
 never dreamed that Edgar Norman could have been 
 offended by that brief exchange of glances between 
 himself and a stranger. 
 
 ' That was rather queer,' he began, as he ranged himself 
 alongside Blenkinsop' s beam. 
 
 Blenkinsop looked over his shoulder with an expression 
 of puffy displeasure. 
 
 'Not that I mind,' he said frowning. 'Why should I? 
 Bad form, that's all, trying to pick up a girl just under 
 the club windows.' 
 
 Philip was fairly staggered. 'What?' he ejaculated 
 with a thin gasp of horror. 
 
 'Besides which,' Blenkinsop continued, 'personally, I 
 don't care for that sort of thing.' 
 
 And then all the fire of Philip's asceticism suddenly 
 blazed into action. He seized the bolster of Blenkinsop' s 
 left arm and stopped him in the full stream of Piccadilly. 
 
 'You're mistaken, Mr Norman/ he said sternly, some- 
 thing in the manner of Peter.
 
 THE RECEPTIVE YEARS 49 
 
 Blenkinsop was suffused with a pink flush. His button 
 mouth opened piteously under the spikes of his absurd 
 little moustache; and he backed fearfully against the 
 railings of Apsley House. 
 
 'I thought .... I didn't know . . . . 
 I'm sorry' .... he quavered on a note that he 
 intended to be soothing. 
 
 But already Philip's passion was allayed. 
 
 'Oh ! you might have known that I wasn't like that/ 
 he said. 
 
 Blenkinsop began to pick up his courage. ' Oh ! well/ 
 he said. ' Looked a bit funny, that's all. Natural 
 temptation for a man of your appearance. Must be 
 tremendously run after by women/ 
 
 ' Indeed, I'm not/ protested Philip. ' If you only knew 
 how I hate that sort of thing.' 
 
 His sincerity was beyond all question, and Blenkinsop' s 
 next speech was only intended to cover his retreat. 
 
 'Course, fellows at the club think me infernally 
 squeamish/ he said. 'Perhaps I am. Sensitive, any 
 way. Always regard women something tremendously 
 wonderful and beautiful, be treated with immense 
 respect. No good discussing that against the railings of 
 Apsley House, though. Which way you going?' 
 
 'I'm going down to Victoria/ Philip said. 
 
 'I'm going Kensington Gore/ replied Blenkinsop. 
 'Say good-bye now. Awfully pleased to have made 
 your acquaintance. Hope we'll meet again before long.' 
 
 'Yes, I hope so/ Philip said. 'But Mr Norman, you 
 do believe me about that, don't you? Why, I can't bear 
 to hear women mentioned in any way except the way 
 you mention them in your books. And I never speak 
 to women. Never/ 
 
 Doubtless he had some special application in his own 
 mind of the idea of speaking to women, and Blenkinsop 
 understood that the phrase was not to be taken quite 
 literally. 'Awfully glad to hear you say that/ he said. 
 'Only decent attitude; my opinion/ 
 
 But after that incident another spectre was added to
 
 50 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Philip's dreams. In the night he sometimes saw a face, 
 sweet, kind and intent, that stared at him with a fasci- 
 nated attention. And though he longed to return that 
 stare, he knew that this fantasy of gentle interest was 
 but another intrigue of the Powers of Obscenity, and 
 that his one hope of salvation lay in thrusting back the 
 vision of apparent tenderness by a violent effort of 
 inhibition. 
 
 Nevertheless, great as were his courage and his 
 determination, the snare nearly tricked him, now and 
 again. One evening in early August, for instance, three 
 months after his luncheon at the club, he found himself 
 quite unaccountably walking down the North Side of 
 Piccadilly about six o'clock, and outside the Oxford he 
 paused and looked with a queer, inexplicable longing at 
 the place where he had seen the unknown young woman 
 waiting for her omnibus. 
 
 'I wonder if . . . .'he murmured to himself, and 
 then a thought of the spotless purity of his father and 
 Edgar Norman rose to his mind. He turned away with 
 a white, clenched face, and never once lifted his eyes 
 again until he was safe in Victoria Station. He was 
 ashamed to realise that he had deliberately gone to look 
 for a young woman who was a complete stranger to him. 
 What awful thing might have happened if she had been 
 there on this second occasion, and if she had looked at 
 him again with that same wondering, fascinated interest? 
 
 Right under the windows of the Oxford Club !
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 EVELYN 
 
 IF this book was designed to tell the full story of Philip 
 Mailing's life, I should linger over the detail of the four 
 years that followed his introduction to Edgar Norman. 
 They were years full of incident and interest such as a 
 biographer may well be excused for elaborating. But I 
 realise with something like annoyance that the illustra- 
 tions I should find in that period are not essential to the 
 proper understanding of the episode which has been 
 foreshadowed as the true crisis of Philip's career. The 
 gap must be bridged, however briefly, in order to 
 maintain a true historical sequence; but from the leaping 
 flight of that bridge I look down with a deep sigh of 
 regret upon the averted passage winding through a tangle 
 of distant landscape which I could so ecstatically explore. 
 
 In those four years, the tide of Robert Wing's fortunes 
 had passed the flood. He himself marked the turn as 
 dating from the autumn of 1899. The Young Adonis 
 was announced for the October of that year, but was not 
 published. Wing thought it would be a pity to launch 
 so important a work at a time when the public mind was 
 likely to be diverted by the excitement inseparable from 
 the making of war even if that war was so small an 
 affair as that against the Boer Republics. And then, 
 for a reason that can only be explained by a full under- 
 standing of the author's sensitive temperament, Edgar 
 Norman suddenly 'became difficult' as Wing put it, 
 
 5 1
 
 52 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 withdrew the book indefinitely, although 30,000 copies 
 were printed and a third of them bound, and insisted 
 on the publication of Priscilla in the autumn of the 
 following year. 
 
 And Priscilla was not a great success. The war was 
 practically decided. Queen Victoria was still alive. 
 There had not, presumably, been any considerable change 
 in the public taste. The story and treatment of Priscilla 
 were precisely on that perfect model that had won almost 
 universal admiration. Yet, whereas Marzipan sold over 
 100,000 copies, Priscilla sold less than 20,000. 
 
 If the novel-reading public in England were a fickle 
 public, the failure could be put down to some temporary 
 reaction of feeling, following the excitements of the pre- 
 vious summer. But the English novel-reading public, 
 whatever its failings, is as faithful as a child. It does 
 not run after new methods and new ideas. It infinitely 
 prefers the old stories and the familiar manner. And 
 Priscilla fulfilled both these requirements. Wing, still 
 resentful of the loss incurred by keeping thirty thousand 
 copies of The Young Adonis in warehouse, attributed 
 failure quite unreasonably to the mistake of sub- 
 stitution. Edgar Norman, in a series of somewhat 
 colloquially-phrased letters, blamed the weakness of 
 Wing's advertising. Neither explanation, however, seems 
 sufficiently inclusive, more particularly when they are 
 considered in relation to the further analysis of Norman's 
 sales. 
 
 For although Saccliarina, published in the autumn of 
 1902, was pushed up to a sale of 18,000 or so, it failed to 
 create anything like a sensation. The editors who five 
 years before had greeted Norman's work with a column 
 on the day of publication, and had with wonderful una- 
 nimity hailed each successive repetition of his theme as 
 'an event,' gave Saccharina, comparatively little space; 
 and although every line of the reviews contained a 
 superlative, it is, as every advertiser knows, space rather 
 than adjectives that catches the public attention. And 
 certainly Wing's advertising was not at fault on this
 
 EVELYN 53 
 
 occasion, for he spent so much on pushing Saccharina 
 that he actually lost money on it. 
 
 Then, at last, Edgar Norman gave way. Even the 
 characteristic obstinacy of the fat man broke down under 
 the increasing pressure that the public and his publisher 
 were bringing to bear upon him, and in the spring of 1903 
 he consented to the publication of The Young Adonis, 
 in the following September, with Philip's portrait as a 
 frontispiece. Philip agreed somewhat reluctantly and 
 made the condition that the photograph a new one was 
 taken for the occasion should appear only in the book 
 and should form no part of the advertising. Wing tried 
 to overrule this proviso, but Norman came in a trifle 
 unexpectedly on Philip's side, and Wing had to give 
 way. 
 
 No expense was spared in the announcement and 
 advertisement of the book. It was puffed and para- 
 graphed for two months before it was issued, and, indeed, 
 such an effect of anticipation was created that editors 
 reverted to their old reasonableness and gave The Young 
 Adonis considerable space on the day of publication. 
 Nevertheless, The Young Adonis must be counted as an- 
 other failure. Only by an expenditure that was little short 
 of reckless, could Wing sell his original 30,000 copies; and 
 he made a very wry face when he studied his balance- 
 sheet. 
 
 Philip, still working well and faithfully for his 
 employer, set his brows and pondered unfruitfully over a 
 means to retrieve the firm's fortunes. His father hesi- 
 tated between two opinions. On the one hand, he saw 
 that the partnership that Wing had vaguely suggested as 
 the climax of Philip's service, was now a practicable and 
 relatively cheap proposition. On the other hand, he was 
 not sure whether the inducement was, now, sufficiently 
 promising. Meanwhile, Robert Wing, restudying the 
 signs of the times with new insight, began to wonder 
 whether the season of the 'Purity Press' were not gone 
 for ever? If the public had changed or was changing 
 its mind, and was amazingly declining to an interest in
 
 54 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 what these fellows had begun to write about as 'realism'; 
 then it was time that the firm of Robert Wing began to 
 range itself with the new movement. But and here 
 the circle definitely closes around the innocently thought- 
 ful Philip no change in the firm's plan of campaign 
 could be made until Peter Maning's money was safely 
 lodged to the credit of Robert Wing & Co., or Wing & 
 Maning neither style was at all satisfactory to the little 
 publisher's sensitive ear. He knew his Peter and his 
 Philip, and understood that neither of them would 
 consent to encourage the seUing of such books as well, 
 as Mr George Moore's Esther Waters. Philip had said 
 without reserve that it would be better for George Moore 
 if a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were 
 cast into the Irish Sea. At the age of twenty-six Philip 
 was more than ever a determined ascetic. 
 
 The dim origins of Philip's drama arose from the con- 
 ditions created by the declining prosperity of Robert 
 Wing, but the whimsical Fate who had charge of the 
 affair preferred, as usual, to perform her trick in the least 
 probable manner. While Wing marked time, in order 
 that he might put a sufficiently tempting business 
 proposal before Peter, without committing himself to a 
 change of policy; some influence suggested to him that 
 he might cut down office expenses by getting rid both of 
 Thurston and a subsidiary clerk, and employing one 
 competent woman to do their work. The first part of the 
 scheme was easily carried out. Thurston had been with 
 the firm for over twelve years, but Wing had half-a-dozen 
 good reasons for dismissing him, and did it without a 
 qualm. He had his doubts, however, about finding that 
 competent woman who was to undertake the work of 
 two men. He knew she was to be found, but he was 
 not at all sure where to look. 
 
 Fate did not so much help him as force his hand;
 
 EVELYN 55 
 
 waiting until he was nearly desperate, and then suddenly 
 presenting Evelyn Lang. 
 
 She had been for six years, then, the invisible secretary 
 of the Secretary of the Old Service Club in Piccadilly 
 an unorthodox arrangement that had been hidden from 
 the presumably misogynist members. She was leaving 
 this post because her uncle, the Secretary, was afraid 
 that certain of the members had a suspicion of the 
 presence of an enemy in their midst, and might make 
 trouble with the omnipotent Committee. The average 
 age of the members of the Old Service was over sixty; 
 and the average temper wholly conservative with an 
 inclination to the cantankerous. 
 
 Miss Lang's qualifications for filling the post advertised 
 by Robert Wing, were not very clear. She was twenty- 
 six, could write a good letter in English or French; was 
 a competent typist; and wrote a sufficiently rapid short- 
 hand. But she had had no experience of the publishing 
 business, and knew nothing of the secrets of successful 
 advertising. Wing engaged her because, as he said, he 
 liked her looks. Evelyn nearly refused the engagement, 
 because she was afraid that Wing liked her looks too well. 
 She would certainly have refused it on those grounds if 
 she had not met Philip in the front office. 
 
 He was very overworked just then. Thurston and the 
 negligible clerk had gone, and Philip was trying his best 
 to do the work of three men. 
 
 He was talking to a traveller when Miss Lang came in, 
 and having caught sight of her skirt as she entered, he 
 did not raise his eyes when she came up to the long 
 counter. Benson, the front office clerk, was at his place 
 and it was none of Philip's business. Nevertheless, some 
 part of his attention refused to interest itself in the 
 instructions relative to the traveller's programme for 
 selling the rather poor lot of books on Wing's spring list. 
 And Benson gave that fraction of Philip's attention some 
 really interesting material to work upon. 
 
 Benson was just a trifle too clever for his work. He 
 was forty-five and a bachelor, and he had worked in
 
 56 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 publishers' offices for thirty-one years. He looked at 
 Miss Lang, decided at once that if she were an authoress, 
 she was not a successful one and so didn't matter; and 
 retired into the glass hutch that was his natural retreat 
 from the outside world. 
 
 Miss Lang raised her eyebrows, and after a patient 
 interval rapped gently on the counter. Benson checked 
 an invoice with the detachment of a monk within the 
 sanctities of Mount Athos, whence women and other 
 female animals are happily excluded. 
 
 Miss Lang rapped again, with less timidity this time; 
 and Philip's attention finally strayed from the unprofit- 
 able task of encouraging his traveller to sell the unsaleable. 
 Benson was a disgrace to the business that distributed 
 Edgar Normans to the world. In that house, at least, 
 women should be regarded as 'something tremendously 
 wonderful and beautiful to be treated with immense 
 respect. ' 
 
 So, Philip emerged from the obscurity that veiled the 
 distances of Mr Wing's front office and humbly took 
 Benson's place behind the counter. Not until he was 
 exactly opposite Miss Lang, did he venture to raise his eyes. 
 
 And then the queer experience of five years before was 
 precisely repeated. His gaze and that of Miss Lang were 
 instantly locked, and this time there was no intruding 
 pedestrian to separate them. For two seconds, each of 
 them as long as an average lifetime, they stood and 
 wrestled for separation with a horribly still intensity. 
 Miss Lang was the first to achieve release. She put her 
 hand between them and fumbled with the brim of her 
 hat. ' I wonder if I could see Mr Wing,' she said. ' In 
 answer to his advertisement.' 
 
 Philip was white and trembling. He had to grip the 
 counter to keep himself still, and when he tried to reply 
 his words came in a quite inaudible whisper. Til see,' 
 was what he had tried to say, but he was afraid to move. 
 
 'He advertised for a secretary, you know,' Miss Lang 
 continued. She kept her eyes down, but she gave no 
 other sign of her recent loss of control.
 
 EVELYN 57 
 
 Philip made a stupendous effort, but he did not recover 
 a true realisation of his surroundings and more particu- 
 larly his sense of what was due to the dignities of Mr 
 Robert Wing. 
 
 'If you wouldn't mind . . . .' he said in a low 
 voice, and then abruptly turned away and walked back 
 towards the distant darkness. It seemed to him that a 
 whole new world might have been created out of the void 
 since he had left his traveller. As a matter of fact, 
 Benson had been given just sufficient time to come 
 snapping and snarling out of his hutch. 
 
 'Want to see Mr Wing? Well, he's busy. Better 
 come in again about three/ was Benson's drastic way 
 of dealing with this unnecessary woman. But meanwhile 
 Philip was sending an emissary in the person of the 
 depressed traveller. He came up, dapper and voluble; 
 the secret of his business was to be dapper and voluble. 
 
 'If you'll follow Mr Maning, miss,' he said, 'he'll take 
 you straight up to Mr Wing's room. This way. Take 
 care of these parcels, miss. It's a bit dark at this end of 
 the shop.' And he personally conducted her, talking all 
 the way, in Philip's wake up the stairs, and to the very 
 threshold of the sacred premises, 
 
 Philip stood holding open the door. His downcast 
 eyes and respectful attitude were worthy of the best 
 traditions of a Royal Court. 
 
 Little Wing was staring with his mouth open. It was 
 obvious that he had no idea whom or what to expect. 
 Nor did Philip attempt any announcement. When the 
 presence had passed, he walked out and closed the door 
 tenderly behind him; one faint click of the released latch 
 alone marked the reverent silence of his withdrawal. 
 Then he went and shut himself tight into his own room. 
 
 His prevailing emotion was fear. Why he was afraid 
 he did not know. He was dimly aware that he was 
 shivering and that all his responses seemed to have been 
 paralysed, but he lacked the energy to rouse himself. He 
 sat at his desk with his head in his hands while the work 
 of three men waited for him, and he was unable even to 
 G.c. 5
 
 58 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 think. He might have sat there for an hour, if the office 
 boy had not come to him with the message : 
 
 'Please, sir, Mr Wing'd like to see you.' 
 
 After the shock of that summons Philip's sense of 
 reality began to revive. 
 
 'Mr Wing? Is Is he alone?' he asked. 
 
 The office boy grinned. ' Lady's just gone, sir,' he said. 
 
 Philip put his hand to his forehead, and rose fairly 
 steadily to his feet. 'All right,' he said, dismissing the 
 messenger but he did not at once obey the summons to 
 his employer's presence. He walked twice up and down 
 his own little office to recover his circulation and his 
 powers of thought. 
 
 Mr Wing looked just as usual, and was apparently un- 
 aware that his room had suffered an amazing change. 
 Yet he must surely have known that a faint, sweet scent 
 of the departed presence still lingered there. 
 
 ' I say, Maning,' he said, ' you ought not to have shown 
 that gal straight in like that, you know. What on earth 
 made you do it?' 
 
 Philip suddenly realised that he had had a reason. 
 
 'I didn't like the way Benson behaved in the front 
 office, sir,' he said. 'He was very rude. He went into 
 his box and absolutely refused to take any notice when 
 when he was spoken to. And I do think, sir, that in this 
 office of all others, women should be treated with respect.' 
 
 ' Oh ! Ah ! yes, of course,' replied Wing, tactfully. 
 He had learned to treat Philip's prejudices with respect, 
 although he still had occasional lapses of self-assertive 
 defiance. 'Better speak to Benson about it. Will you? 
 I suppose you didn't notice that gal, did you? Came in 
 answer to my advertisement, and I'm not sure she won't 
 do. I'm going to give her a month's trial, anyway.' He 
 paused and then with the foolish valiance of a man deter- 
 mined to say what he knows to be the wrong thing, he 
 added, 'Good-looking young woman, wasn't she?' 
 
 'I don't know,' Philip replied sternly. 'If she is 
 competent to do the work, it seems to me that that's all 
 that matters,'
 
 EVELYN 59 
 
 Little Wing screwed up his mouth as if he had bitten 
 on a sour apple. ' Oh ! dear/ he said in an audible aside, 
 and then, 'Very well, Maning, very well. And you'll 
 speak to Benson?' 
 
 Philip found relief in that duty. 
 
 ' Mr Wing and I don't like the way you treat visitors, 
 Benson,' he said. 'You must alter your manner and be 
 brisker in attending to strangers.' 
 
 'Well, sir, we don't orfen get wimmin comin' in . . .' 
 Benson began. 
 
 'It isn't a question of women or men. It's everyone,' 
 Philip said. 'You must show more civility/ 
 
 Benson mumbled and then fortune favoured him with 
 an opportunity. A bookseller's messenger came in with 
 a sack and demanded 'Two copies Young Adonis.' 
 
 'Certainly, sir, certainly/ responded Benson with 
 immense alacrity. Two copies? Truslove- & Hanson, 
 I believe? Very pleased to serve you/ 
 
 The messenger looked at him as if he were a new and 
 distinctly amusing curiosity, and departed with an air of 
 facetious sprightliness. 
 
 Philip was unexpectedly smiling. 'Well, Benson/ he 
 said; 'I see no reason why you shouldn't treat even a 
 bookseller's boy with a certain amount of civility. I 
 would much sooner you did that than be rude to people/ 
 
 When he had gone, Benson scowled at the stock. 
 'Damn nonsense/ he said, 'but you can't 'ave that feller. 
 He's consistent, that's what 'e is/ 
 
 Philip had little time in which to prepare himself for 
 life in the new world that had been so swiftly created out 
 of the void. Miss Lang's first visit to the office had been 
 made on a Thursday; and Mr Wing when he had slept on 
 his problem for ten minutes after lunch, decided that she 
 might begin her month's trial on the following Monday. 
 
 On Sunday afternoon Philip walked from Herne Hill
 
 60 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 to Beckenham. The month was early February, but the 
 weather had been anticipated from March; and when 
 Philip stood on the Crystal Palace Parade and looked 
 down over the basin of London, the greater part of it was 
 hidden from him by a rain storm that drove like smoke 
 across the middle distance. He had chosen that walk 
 because he had taken it in preparation for another im- 
 pending crisis, on the Sunday before his confirmation. 
 That was twelve years ago, but he remembered how a 
 sense of uplift had come to him on that earlier occasion. 
 Then the month had been April, and the great sea of 
 London had shone blue and sparkling in the light of 
 coming spring. Now it was hidden in the wreath of a 
 moving storm. But it was the omen of his own detach- 
 ment that dismayed him. He felt cold and isolated, 
 alone there on the wide placidities of the terrace. Even 
 the storm had passed him by. Below him the receding 
 grey of innumerable wet roofs sullenly resisted the 
 buffeting of wind and rain. He was untouched. The 
 vast tinsel mass of the Palace interposed like a breakwater 
 between him and the great surge of air that sped out of 
 the Southwest. The pavement at his feet was gritted 
 with a film of un wetted dust. He was sheltered from the 
 strife of the tempest; and all the life he had lived seemed 
 suddenly futile and unworthy; wasted on the fripperies 
 of literature. 
 
 With a spasm of self-disgust, he turned his back on 
 London, and sought to breast the storm on the steeps of 
 the hill that plunges down into the abyss of Penge. But 
 the squall had passed, and when at the foot of the hill he 
 hesitated for a moment with a vague desire to take the 
 more cheerful road through Anerley to Croydon, the 
 clouds broke and discovered the pale benediction of a 
 filmy sunlight. That decided him. If his way were, 
 indeed, to be made easy, he would seek the storm for 
 himself. Not until he had ridden through the heart of 
 it, could he find the ease of victory. Nevertheless, he 
 found no presage of difficulty overcome in his passage 
 through the profundities of Penge. The rift in the murk
 
 EVELYN 61 
 
 had widened, and even the depressing suburb through 
 which he made his way, was glorified by an unexpected 
 richness of colour. The purple slates of mean roofs lifted 
 a wet face gladly to the sky; the yellow bricks were 
 amazingly fresh and tender. The air of the place was 
 not so much the air of Penge as the smile of a spring wood 
 glorious with hyacinth and primrose .... 
 
 He might have found the material for storm and stress 
 the next morning; but then he was no longer seeking it. 
 He awoke from the annoyance of a provokingly meaning- 
 less dream to the grey of a February dawn, with a sense 
 of impediment. The spirit of life seemed to be arraying 
 against him, laying invisible pretty snares that checked 
 both his action and his thoughts. He suffered the 
 irritation of one who is pressed for time and is delayed 
 by a host of foolish obstructions. The prospect of the 
 day before him was presented as likely to be full of stupid 
 annoyances. He would have to put aside his work to 
 instruct Miss Lang. Mr Wing had gone away for a week- 
 end visit in Warwickshire and would probably not turn 
 up at the office until lunch-time. Philip shivered at the 
 thought of the conversation those instructions would 
 entail. What would she say? How would she behave 
 towards him? All that he could remember of her was 
 an imprisoning stare. Did she challenge every man she 
 met with that entangling gaze of hers? Would she 
 bewilder and embarrass him in his work by turning her 
 eyes on him and confusing his will? He shook his head 
 in a feeble passion against the possibilities of such chafing 
 restraints. A publisher's office was not a fitting place 
 for women. Women were meant to be worshipped, a 
 little distantly. He had a picture of Edgar Norman's 
 Marzipan as the ideal before which he could worthily 
 lay his homage. She had been a young widow, and her 
 first husband had been unimaginably old and fatuous. 
 She had moved remotely, tall, fair and exquisite; 
 combining the perfection of a statue with the daintiness 
 of old Dresden. She was the apotheosis of charm and 
 chastity; and Philip could well understand how the
 
 62 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 reformed lover who returned sanctified in the last chapter, 
 had almost swooned with ecstasy when permitted the 
 ultimate embrace of kissing her rose-white finger-tips. 
 The story ended with the description of that voluptuous 
 act on a note of intense climax. But how could you do 
 yourself justice during the routine of an office day? And 
 Philip was quite sure that Miss Lang was not the ideal 
 heroine before whom he could worship. As far as he 
 could remember, she was not taU enough. Every other 
 detail of her appearance, if he had ever consciously 
 recognised another detail, had slipped from his memory. 
 All that he knew for certain was that she had twice 
 leapt out at him with that intriguing stare. He shivered 
 again and rubbed his eyes impatiently. 
 
 And he was still dreading the probable experiences of 
 the morning, when he alighted at St Paul's Station, and 
 made his way with the press of the urgent intent crowd 
 down the dark, narrow passage that led to the side exit 
 in Queen Victoria Street. He was, indeed, so absorbed 
 by his anticipations that he forgot to be prepared for a 
 return of the familiar 'abasement' experience that had 
 first come to him as a boy in the station tunnel at Herne 
 Hill. He knew, now, all the conditions that were essential 
 to the inception of that unpleasant experience, and had 
 formed a habit of anticipating it. Whenever, for example, 
 he used this exit from St Paul's or the old entrance to 
 Herne Hill, he would come almost mechanically to a 
 halt before entering the gloom, and deliberately revive 
 his memory of the old sensations; and it seemed that it 
 was no more possible for him then, to suffer control by 
 that strange 'abasement' than it is possible for a man 
 to be controlled by the illusions of a dream while he is 
 wide awake. The preventive appeared infallible; but 
 this morning he forgot it; and in the hurrying press of 
 the crowd that filled the resounding darkness with the 
 clamour of dreadful footsteps, the old spell gripped Philip 
 with a new vigour. 
 
 That morning he was aware not only of a terrible 
 contempt felt by both body and spirit for the opposing
 
 EVELYN 63 
 
 entity, a contempt that seemed to burn for a dissolution 
 of their temporary partnership; but also a sense of im- 
 pending calamity. That horrible clamour of attentively 
 pattering feet threatened him with the portent of 
 immediate disaster. Yet, as always when he was in the 
 freedom of the open street, he was almost unmoved by 
 the experience. He could shake off his momentary horror 
 with the smile of one who awakes gladly from a foolish 
 nightmare. The threat had no power of omen. Once 
 he was free he recognised the whole sensation as a passing 
 illusion, that had no reality in the general movement of 
 his life. 
 
 By the time he had crossed New Bridge Street and 
 turned on to the Embankment, the memory of the 
 experience had sunk out of his consciousness, and he was 
 frowning again with the perplexity of indecision conse- 
 quent upon his inability to decide the right method of 
 conducting himself with regard to Miss Lang. Charles 
 Kingsley, he remembered, would take off his hat to every 
 woman in his parish. That was very well as an indication 
 of courtly respect. But suppose Miss Lang were inefficient 
 and careless, how could he correct her while maintaining 
 the true air of knightly courtesy? It would be a mean 
 evasion to report her to Mr Wing. And somewhere at 
 the back of Philip's mind was a dismayed recognition of 
 the fact that Mr Wing and Miss Lang might be shut up, 
 alone, for hours sometimes, in his employer's room. 
 Philip did not believe the stories that were told of Mr 
 Wing and one or two of his women authors; but he was 
 afraid that the rotund little publisher might not, perhaps, 
 live up to Edgar Norman's ideal of respect for womanhood. 
 
 Philip's own prelude to the proposed sonata of his 
 relations with this representative of her sex, was pitched 
 in too high a key, and after the first passage, the thing 
 went dismally flat. The fault was not his after the initial 
 mistake of choosing a key like F major fairly bristling 
 with sharps; but Miss Lang established his error by an 
 attempt to drag him at once into the comfortable leisure 
 of E flat. They were both so nervous. But while his
 
 6 4 
 
 embarrassment was all too evident, hers was efficiently 
 concealed. Between them the prelude went excruciatingly 
 out of tune. 
 
 He left all preliminary instructions as to the materials 
 and circumstances of her new profession to Benson, or 
 young Field, the office boy, as chance might decide; and 
 sent an officially courteous message to her at ten o'clock. 
 He could not know that Field's rendering of the message 
 traduced him; nor did Miss Lang guess that the curt 'Mr 
 Maning wants to see yer, miss/ was Field's easy version 
 of 'Would you ask Miss Lang if she would kindly come 
 up to my room, now.' 
 
 Philip stood up when she entered and bowed gravely, 
 without raising his eyes. His ' Good morning, Miss Lang,' 
 was a trifle shaky. Her prompt response, in the same 
 form, had the briskness of an expert amanuensis. Her 
 uncle, the secretary, had taught her well; and his text of 
 'No larks in business hours, my dear,' had needed no 
 expository sermon. Evelyn knew precisely the definition 
 required by ' larks,' in this connexion. 
 
 Philip waited until Miss Lang had seated herself in the 
 chair he had thoughtfully placed for her before she came 
 in, and then sat down himself. He kept his attention 
 strictly to the pile of letters on his desk all through his 
 instructions. Also, he mumbled, so that Miss Lang had 
 to lean forward in order to hear what he said. 
 
 ' There will, I am afraid, be a great deal of work for you 
 at first, Miss Lang,' he began. ' Mr Wing suggested to 
 me on Friday that you would do a certain amount of 
 book-keeping. You do understand book-keeping by 
 double entry?' 
 
 'No, not by double entry,' Miss Lang returned in a 
 clear, businesslike voice. 'We didn't use it at the club, 
 but I could soon learn.' 
 
 'We have an accountant, of course/ Philip explained, 
 'although we are badly understaffed at present. He 
 would teach you, no doubt. His name is Kitchen. You 
 would only have to help him at first, checking Benson's 
 diary of counter sales and so on. And then . . . .'
 
 EVELYN 65 
 
 But the mere outline description of Miss Lang's pro- 
 posed duties took nearly twenty minutes. Philip's 
 yearnings towards literature had found little personal 
 expression as yet, and he had sought a partial relief for 
 his creative desires in establishing the minutiae of business 
 organisation. Wing's office was most efficiently managed 
 on that side almost too well managed for the tricky 
 methods of its proprietor. The details of every trans- 
 action were so icily clear and sharp-edged. And on the 
 other side Philip's activities were becoming more and 
 more restricted. He was hardly ever consulted, now, as 
 to the possibilities of a manuscript. ' You're so infernally 
 cold/ had been Wing's rather mixed metaphor on the 
 awful occasion that followed the publication of Miss 
 Dorothy Blaythwaite's Love and Terror by a rival house. 
 Philip had had his own way in the matter of its re- 
 fusal by the firm of Robert Wing; and the book, a first 
 novel, sold something like twenty thousand copies in 
 Great Britain. Wing's wry face had only partly expressed 
 his inward comment. He had used other adjectives 
 than 'cold' in his mind; chief among them 'squeamish,' 
 'prudish' and 'priggish.' If only Peter would have come 
 up to the scratch, Wing was quite ready to adopt a 
 twentieth-century policy with regard to suiting the public. 
 But Peter was being quite absurdly hesitant and wily. 
 
 No positive mishap developed in the twenty minutes 
 occupied by Philip's enunciation of Miss Lang's duties. 
 He kept his eyes on his letters and maintained a fair 
 average level of phrase to combine business orthodoxy 
 with a general air of respectful suggestion. She entered 
 memoranda in her note-book, and only interrupted his 
 steady monologue to ask for a repetition when his voice 
 dropped to an inaudible mumble. But both of them were 
 aware of struggle. Her voice was so persistently cheerful 
 and prompt. Her every question besought him by the 
 frankness of its tone to adopt an easier manner. The 
 form of his reply restated his determination to go clean 
 through the whole piece in the most formal manner 
 he could find. And underneath these crisp ripples of
 
 66 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 expression, the forces of their personalities were already 
 beginning to contest the direction in which the current 
 should flow, as the solid rush of the river's mouth meets 
 the dilatory flood of the returning tide. 
 
 The real trouble began for Philip when his formal 
 enunciation was done, and he was obliged to turn to a few 
 immediate matters that demanded attention. 
 
 'I have a letter here from Mr Brill, the author,' he 
 began. 
 
 'What name did you say? ' asked Miss Lang cheerfully. 
 
 Philip blinked. ' Mr Herbert Brill, the author of 
 Many Gates,' he said, and raised his eyes so far that 
 a vision of Miss Lang's hands and something of her 
 craning figure crept into his horizon. 'He is writing 
 about the cheap edition we are getting out for next 
 summer,' he went on, trying very conscientiously to keep 
 his interest away from the fact that his assistant appeared 
 to be wearing a green linen overall, and had hands that 
 the hero of Marzipan might excusably have reverenced 
 with a chaste caress. ' He is asking for a royalty of four- 
 pence a copy, and says that no terms are mentioned in 
 his contract. If you would very kindly look the contract 
 up and find out. Field will explain our methods of filing.' 
 
 He had come safely to that, despite the amazing interest 
 some part of him was taking in the consideration of what 
 coloured hair would go with the green of the overall. It 
 might, aesthetically, be complemented by red, but that 
 suggestion was rejected with disapproval. There was 
 something a little coarse about a red-haired woman. On 
 the other hand, any neutral tint such as that described as 
 mouse-coloured, would be evidence of a disastrous lack 
 of the artistic sense .... He turned impatiently 
 to the next letter on his pile, but Miss Lang's unfortunate 
 lack of experience in the publishing business upset his 
 plans. 
 
 She leaned forward again, so that his world was 
 momentarily illumined by an uncompleted green. 'The 
 book has been published already, hasn't it?' she asked. 
 'Does Mr Brill want a new contract?'
 
 EVELYN 67 
 
 Philip laboriously turned back to a reconsideration of 
 the Brill case. 'The original contract provides for the 
 subsequent issue of a cheap edition/ he said. ' All I want 
 you to find out is about the colour of it.' He was quite 
 unconscious of his slip, even after he had spoken the words 
 aloud. 
 
 'The colour of it?' repeated Miss Lang in great per- 
 plexity; and then Philip seemed to hear an echo of his 
 own voice repeating that ridiculous request. 
 
 He blushed furiously. 'I meant, of course, the terms,' 
 he mumbled. 
 
 'If I might have the letter?' suggested Miss Lang. 
 
 ' Oh ! yes, perhaps you'd better,' Philip agreed, and she 
 saved him further embarrassment by reaching across the 
 table and taking it for herself. 
 
 After that he tried to discipline his outrageous lack of 
 concentration by taking the remainder of the correspon- 
 dence at the double. 
 
 And she did not interrupt him again, even when in 
 taking down various letters, she continuaUy failed to 
 catch the sense of his dictation. Her other consciousness 
 was quite equal to the task of playing a bass in the duet 
 of her mental occupation. ' Poor dear thing, how shy he 
 is ! ' ran the accompaniment to the melody of Philip's 
 compromise between business shorthand and a faint 
 literary turn that he liked to give to the firm's correspon- 
 dence. ' I suppose he has never had a woman secretary 
 before. But he's really too good-looking; too statuesque 
 and formal. I wonder how one could put a little life in 
 him?' The last sentence was 'We are still waiting for 
 your delivery of the galley-proofs.' 
 
 'Gaily? Oh! I didn't know that word. I wonder if 
 he really is Edgar Norman? He looks it, but if he is why 
 should he be slaving his life out in this silly office? He 
 looks as if he ought to get out more.' 
 
 'That's all for the present,' Philip said, at last, with a 
 sigh of profound relief. 'I hope you will ask Field any- 
 thing you want to know. He's quite an intelligent boy.' 
 He stood up and bowed gravely.
 
 68 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Miss Lang, also, stood up, and gathered together her 
 letters and note-book. 'Yes, thank you, Mr Maning,' 
 she said. 'You must excuse a few stupidities, at first. 
 The technicalities of a new business are a little confusing 
 until you get used to them.' 
 
 Philip mumbled some agreement, and then, as she 
 turned away to the door, that other side of him finally 
 refused to be kept in the dark any longer.' Her hair was 
 neither red nor mouse-coloured. It was a warm brown 
 with a thread of gold in it. And the nape of her neck 
 was white as milk. 
 
 When he was alone, Philip sat for five precious minutes 
 with his head in his hands. It seemed to him that his 
 horizon was dark with the omens of a storm; and that the 
 time had come for him to breast the hurricane and so ride 
 safely at last to the harbour of a confident self-control. 
 It was useless for him to practise these evasions and dis- 
 semblings. He must look Miss Lang in the face and 
 overcome the dangers of her possibly insidious stare. 
 
 He had not, even yet, learnt the colour of her eyes, 
 unless, indeed, his dreams had remembered something 
 that he had consciously forgotten. Three times, now, 
 he had dreamed of eyes that watched him through two 
 slits torn in a mask of darkness. No other feature had 
 stood out from the ambush. But the colour of the eyes 
 was an unusual shade of blue, a wet blue, very clear and 
 pure. He had once seen that shade in the eyes of a 
 Cornishman he had met in business; but although he 
 resolutely ascribed his vision to this remembrance, there 
 was a strange difference between the eyes of Penullock, 
 the Cornishman, and those that had watched him in the 
 night, for the watching eyes had had a quality which was 
 unmistakably feminine. 
 
 Mr Wing's work would not get itself done that morning. 
 Again and again Philip frowned and ground his knuckles 
 viciously into his temples in order to win concentration, 
 and a moment later, he found his interest a whole universe 
 away from the general plan of advertisement he was 
 trying to frame. If the day had been clear before him,
 
 EVELYN 69 
 
 he might have succeeded in achieving some kind of 
 mechanical efficiency. But he knew it may be said on 
 this morning that he knew nothing else that within two 
 hours at the longest Miss Lang would come back to his 
 room, bringing her letters and probably asking for further 
 detailed instructions. And before she came he had to 
 decide whether or not he should begin his new policy of 
 open defiance, and incidentally satisfy himself that hers 
 were not the eyes that had rent a way through the 
 darkness of his dreams. 
 
 For the eleventh time that morning, he re-read the 
 paragraph beginning : ' Endeavour to book a particular 
 space through the latter end of April and the beginning 
 of May (say five weeks) in the Times (Lit.Supp.), West- 
 minster Gazette, Daily News . . . .' 
 
 But what should follow 'Daily News . . . .' no 
 massage of his temples nor angry frowning at that 
 delinquent sentence was effective enough to decide. 
 Were there any other papers, barring the Harmsworth 
 lot, which were no good for the firm's purpose? Daily 
 Chronicle ? Morning Leader ? Oh ! and the Telegraph 
 and the Standard, and the Pall Mall, and the St James's 
 . . . . He remembered very clearly walking through 
 Pall Mall and up St James's Street when he had so 
 foolishly gone to revisit that spot in Piccadilly just under 
 the windows of the Oxford Club .... It was 
 possible, of course, that he had known the colour of her 
 eyes at the time and remembered it in sleep .... 
 What was this? 'Endeavour to book a particular space 
 . . . .' No he couldn't. Definitely he couldn't. He 
 loathed and abhorred the whole principle of booking 
 particular spaces to advertise such books as H. Freman 
 Wilson's so-called 'historical study' (i5/- net), entitled 
 'The Secret of Louis XVIII.' He abhorred the thought 
 of attempting to book any space, particular or otherwise, 
 to advertise anything. The \vhole business was sordid 
 and vulgar. If Miss Lang had had a brown neck, mouse- 
 coloured hair and faded blue eyes, everything might 
 have been different. A woman with those qualifications
 
 70 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 might have helped him with his work. Miss Lang was 
 out of place in a publisher's office. Wing ought to have 
 seen that. Perhaps he had? No, that line of thought 
 would not bear examination. Too too beastly. There 
 was something beastly about Wing, now and again . . . 
 
 Philip was standing at the window of his room, 
 intently studying the white glazed brick of the 'well,' 
 which was his single distraction in the matter of landscape, 
 when someone knocked at his door. He knew it was 
 Miss Lang, but he did not feel equal to the strain of being 
 courteous just then. A publisher's office was not the 
 place for courtesy, it was a place for keeping one's mind 
 on the necessity for booking particular spaces, say a 
 quarter column, next reading matter. 
 
 He said 'Come in' without turning round. He said 
 it twice, because the first attempt was nothing but a 
 whisper. 
 
 'I have brought your letters, Mr Maning,' said a clear, 
 businesslike voice somewhere within the vast depths of 
 Philip's tiny room fifteen feet by twelve with an outlook 
 into a well of white glazed brick. 
 
 He walked over to his table without lifting his eyes, 
 and found the letters immediately under his gaze. He 
 read them through in profound silence. His heart was 
 beating at a most unnatural pace, and his hands were 
 cold and slightly damp. He had no idea what the letters 
 were about, but there was certainly an 'e' omitted in 
 galley, and he might quite naturally look up and offei 
 that suggestion. It was an exceedingly difficult thing to 
 do, but it ought to be done. 
 
 'There is an "e" in galley,' he said, and looked up. 
 
 Miss Lang's expression was anxious and a little nervous. 
 Her eyes did not hold his with that perturbing, fascinating 
 stare. She was not some inexplicable siren from the 
 enchanted isles. She was a young woman of twenty-five 
 or so who would almost certainly make a very competent 
 assistant in time. Philip recognised all these things in 
 one flash of understanding. But if the expression of her 
 eyes was not withdrawn and veiled, it was nevertheless
 
 EVELYN 71 
 
 true that they were the same eyes that had three times 
 come to haunt him in the darkness. 
 
 'Is that the only mistake?' Miss Lang asked, and her 
 gaze was directed, with evident perturbation at the little 
 pile of letters on the table. 
 
 Mr Wing did not come to the office at all that day. 
 
 From two o'clock until half -past six Philip resolutely 
 shut himself away from the world and made considerable 
 progress with his general scheme of advertising. 
 
 When he left Norfolk Street, he sent a telegram to his 
 mother, warning her that he would not be home to dinner, 
 and went up to Oxford Street to find his old school-friend, 
 Georgie Wood. 
 
 After Wood had come down from Cambridge, he had 
 gone into his father's business in Fenchurch Street. Wood 
 senior was a tea-broker, and had done very well for him- 
 self in the past ten years. He was a big, rather careless 
 man, with no particular business ability, but he was 
 popular in the City, and men put 'good things' in his 
 way, because they liked him. His son, George, now a 
 junior partner, combined his father's popularity with a 
 somewhat shrewder method; and the firm prospered. 
 
 George's father and mother, and his unmarried sister 
 still lived in one of the older houses on the edge of 
 Clapham Common. They were not attracted by any 
 ambitions of shining in a more select society. But George, 
 himself, had come to desire a more individual freedom 
 than was possible for him among his own people; and had 
 for the past few months been established in a bachelor 
 flat in Oxford Street. His father had winked slyly, when 
 this proposition for a separate establishment had first 
 been suggested; his mother had been perplexed and 
 anxious, his sister a trifle shocked; but no serious oppo- 
 sition had been raised. One or two stereotyped warnings 
 had been repeated by the women, and his father had given
 
 72 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 George some very practical advice. After that George's 
 independence had been confirmed without further 
 remonstrance. 
 
 The conduct of the whole affair had been characteristic 
 of the family. They took life without inquiry, and made 
 the most of it. George's younger brother, Frank, had 
 run away to sea when he was sixteen, had endured the 
 hardships of an apprentice, and stuck to his job. He 
 was, now, at twenty-four, fifth officer on a Union-Castle 
 steamer, and was preparing to take his master's certificate. 
 Two of the Wood girls had married without parental 
 opposition, although in neither case was the marriage 
 regarded as 'suitable' by the Woods' friends in Clapham; 
 and both girls had since then justified their choice. It 
 was impossible to imagine tragedy in relation to the 
 Woods. They all had some freckled, blunt-featured 
 quality that was proof against disaster. 
 
 And it was probably some recognition of this quality 
 in his friend that urged Philip to visit him on this Monday 
 evening. The day had been full of abnormal experience 
 to Philip; and he knew that he had been a little ridiculous 
 in his emotional reactions. He could, in retrospect, 
 appreciate the foolishness of transforming the simple 
 affairs of life into the superlative emotions of literature. 
 But at the time he was unable to help himself. It seemed 
 as if he could not touch the realities of life, as if he peered 
 at them through some distorting, intensifying humour 
 and suffered more greatly in his own personality than if 
 he had come into actual contact with the thing that he 
 now merely witnessed. He had occasionally wondered 
 if one day something would break; and let him out. In 
 such moods the thought of Wood's common sense brought 
 the relief of an antidote. 
 
 Philip hoped passionately that he would find his friend 
 at home in his Oxford Street chambers. 
 
 George Wood was at home, but his brother Frank was 
 with him, enjoying three days' shore-leave among his 
 perpetual voyages between Southampton and Cape Town. 
 He was shorter and rather less stocky than his brother,
 
 EVELYN 73 
 
 his eyes were a harder blue, and his features even 
 blunter. 
 
 Philip paused on the threshold of the tiny square hall 
 in obvious embarrassment. 
 
 , Georgie hailed him with enthusiasm. If Philip came 
 to his friend for some touch of reality, Wood welcomed 
 Philip as bringing with him an air of strange remoteness 
 that satisfied a need of contrast. 
 
 And the younger brother, with a ready tact, saved the 
 situation by saying almost immediately that there were 
 'one or two things' he wanted 'to get.' 
 
 'Look here, Chip, I'll meet you at half-past seven, at 
 Frascati's? How will that do?' he suggested, and then, 
 looking at Philip, he added, 'We might all have dinner 
 together, if you'd care to. I'm on the spree to-night.' 
 
 ' All serene,' his brother agreed, answering for Philip as 
 well as himself. ' Only .... well . . . .' He 
 concluded his saving clause, whatever it was, by saying 
 ' Here, I want to speak to you a minute.' He led his 
 brother out of the sitting-room. 'Shan't be half a tick, 
 old chap/ he apologised to Philip. 
 
 'See you again later, then,' Frank Wood remarked 
 cheerfully. 
 
 'It's like this, you know, old chap,' George explained 
 when he returned to the sitting-room after two minutes 
 spent in a whispered colloquy with his brother outside. 
 'Chaps like Frank have to go a bit of bust when they're 
 on shore. And, well, he comes to me because I know the 
 ropes a bit and see he doesn't get into serious trouble; 
 you know what I mean. But we can have a talk for an 
 hour, now, and then have dinner at Frascati's it's all 
 right there, you know, we'll go upstairs, and afterwards 
 you'll have to excuse me if Frank wants us to toddle along 
 to the Oxford or the Empire, or somewhere. You won't 
 mind that, will you?' 
 
 ' Oh! no, rather not,' Philip agreed with a faint air of per- 
 plexity and, after a moment's hesitation, added, ' But do 
 you mean that your brother . . . ? Is it ... is it safe? 
 
 ' Oh ! Lord, yes,' Wood said confidently, and he looked 
 G.C. F
 
 74 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 so expert and capable that no one could doubt him. But 
 having outlined his brother's intended programme with- 
 out giving offence to the sensitive Philip, he evidently 
 wished to leave well alone before any further explanation 
 was asked for. ' Splendid of you to come up, old chap,' 
 he went on quickly. ' Lucky to catch me in. Is this just 
 a jolly old friendly call, or was there anything special you 
 wanted to tell me? How's Bobby Wing? ' 
 
 ' He was away, to-day/ Philip said to give himself time. 
 He had sought reality and found it in a startling form. 
 'I've got an awful lot of work just now,' he added 
 thoughtfully. 'More than ever now that we've got a new 
 assistant.' He paused a moment before he found an escape 
 for the use of a pronoun by concluding ' Came to-day.' 
 
 'Intelligent sort of chap?' Wood asked by way of 
 encouragement. 
 
 Philip was incapable of further equivocation. 'It's a 
 woman this time,' he blurted out. He knew, now, that 
 he had come to see his friend, because it was absolutely 
 essential to speak to someone about Miss Lang. 
 
 Wood did not smile. He was wise in his generation, 
 and he had a very real fondness for Philip. 'New start, 
 that, isn't it?' he asked. 
 
 'Quite,' Philip replied, and could get no further. 
 
 'What's she like?' asked Wood, still very seriously. 
 
 '/ don't know,' returned Philip in sudden despair. 
 Wood was his friend, his only friend unless you counted 
 Edgar Norman, and above criticism from most points 
 of view. But how could he confide the details of Miss 
 Lang's appearance to a man who was going to take his 
 brother out that evening to the Empire on a hunt 
 that . . . .? 
 
 'Spit it out, old chap,' Wood remarked encouragingly, 
 and then, as no response was apparently forthcoming, he 
 took the bull by the horns and went on, ' You know, Phil, 
 the best thing in the world for you would be to fall in 
 love with a decent girl.' 
 
 Philip drew in his breath with a little gasp. ' Oh ! but 
 Chip, I haven't,' he said quickly. 'Really, I haven't.'
 
 EVELYN 75 
 
 ' But you may ? ' Wood suggested. 
 
 'Of course, I may' Philip conceded. 
 
 'Quite sure you haven't, already/ Wood pressed him 
 with the first hint of a smile. 
 
 'But, Chip, how can one tell?' Philip pleaded. 
 
 Wood began to search along his mantelpiece for the 
 ideally right pipe to bring him inspiration. He decided 
 on a neat little briar, slightly burnt at the top, but 
 coloured elsewhere to a glorious chestnut red. 
 
 'Well, the symptoms vary with the individual;' he 
 began as he filled this aid to exposition, but he broke off 
 and started on a new tack when the pipe was satisfactorily 
 lighted. 
 
 ' I say, Phil; you aren't going to get it like those awful 
 bounders in Norman's books, are you?' he asked. 'You 
 know; all highfalutin' and gas, and that sort of tosh?' 
 
 'We don't agree about Norman's books, you see/ Philip 
 put in. 
 
 'But Good Lord, you know/ the experienced Georgie 
 broke out; 'no woman would stand that kind of thing in 
 real life. At least, that's my experience. What I mean 
 is if you're in love with a girl and she's in love with you, 
 she doesn't want you to go crawling about on your knees 
 half the time and telling her she's too good to touch. 
 Why . . . .' But he decided to repress the illus- 
 tration that had most aptly occurred to him. 
 
 Philip fidgeted. 'I daresay that's true enough of the 
 ordinary affair, Chip/ he said. ' But . . . / 
 
 'But this is a most extraordinary affair, of course. 
 They always are, my dear old chap.' 
 
 'It isn't an affair at all/ Philip explained gravely. 
 'Miss .... she probably is hardly aware of my 
 existence/ 
 
 'Well, considering that you met her to-day for the first 
 time, didn't you?' 
 
 Philip shook his head, and then he got up and began 
 to walk up and down the room. He wanted to be 
 articulate, but it was so impossible to say what he felt, 
 sitting opposite to Georgie Wood.
 
 76 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'You can laugh if you like, Chip,' he said, plunging 
 into an apology. 'I know you'll think me an awful ass, 
 but there is something something unusual about this. 
 You see, I saw her first five years ago. I was coming 
 out of a club in Piccadilly with Edgar Norman, and she 
 was standing on the kerb waiting for a 'bus. And, well, 
 she turned round and looked at me; and, it's difficult to 
 describe, but we sort of couldn't look away again. I 
 don't suppose it was more than a second or two, really, 
 but it seemed an age. And the same thing happened 
 last Friday morning. We hadn't met again in all that 
 time, you know. She came into the outer office and 
 Benson was rather rude; so I went up to the counter. I 
 hadn't recognised her then, of course. And it happened 
 again in just the same way.' 
 
 Wood nodded attentively. 'And to-day?' he asked. 
 
 'Nothing happened to-day,' Philip said. 'I only 
 looked at her once. I couldn't look at her. I was afraid, 
 somehow. But there's one other thing, Chip. Since I 
 saw her first five years ago, her eyes have looked at me in 
 dreams. Only her eyes. I couldn't see the rest of her 
 face. And I didn't know that they were her eyes until 
 to-day.' 
 
 Wood sighed and smoked profoundly. 'I expect it's 
 all right, that sort of thing,' he commented thoughtfully. 
 'I mean it does happen occasionally; and you're just the 
 kind of chap it would happen to. You'd be bound to 
 make a poem of it, anyhow; however it began.' 
 
 ' But, Chip, it must be a poem, always, surely ? ' Philip 
 said. 'Even when .... I don't understand, of 
 course .... But }^our brother, to-night . . . .' 
 
 Wood smoked with an air of grave deliberation. He 
 was confronted again by the influence of his friend's 
 purity. He remembered scenes that had been acted in 
 this very room, and was reluctantly compelled to admit 
 that some of them had held no element of poetry. 
 
 'You've always been rather queer about these things, 
 Phil/ he said after a solemn pause. 'You make me feel 
 rather a rotter, sometimes. You're what the mater
 
 EVELYN 77 
 
 would call "a good influence," rather. Of course, young 
 Frank .... Oh ! well, no, it's no good, there 
 won't be any poem in that affair. There may be when 
 he finds the right girl, just as there may be with me. 
 Once or twice I have met girls who made me feel sort of 
 religious for a bit .... But you get that kind of 
 thing rather knocked out of you in the City .... I 
 
 say, Phil, haven't you ever ? ' He could have put 
 
 that question quite openly to any other friend of his, but 
 lie could find no phrase that he dared use with Philip. 
 Anything like a frank statement would have sounded like 
 shouting in a church. 
 
 ' Chip ! ' Philip ejaculated in horror. ' Of course, I 
 haven't. Why, have you?' 
 
 ' Oh ! Good Lord ! ' muttered Chip, and then, ' But Phil, 
 old chap, you must have guessed that I wasn't a saint 
 that way, haven't you?' 
 
 'I've never thought about it,' Philip returned gravely. 
 'I don't understand these things. I can't understand 
 about your brother, to-night. It seems to me so so 
 absolutely beastly.' 
 
 And at that moment the thing seemed beastly, also, 
 to the experienced, careless mind of George Wood. He 
 could have defended his usual attitude before any other 
 man and some women, but there was some power in 
 Philip's influence that awakened his latent admiration 
 for purity of body. 
 
 ' You ought to have been a parson, you know, Phil,' he 
 said seriously. ' You would have made a splendid parson. 
 Sometimes I wish I'd seen a lot more of you since I left 
 Dulwich. You make a chap think, and you don't preach, 
 either. By Gad, you've made me want to stop young 
 Frank from making a beast of himself to-night; and I'll 
 do it, too.' 
 
 Philip frowned. 'It isn't that, Chip/ he said. 'I 
 mean it's just how one thinks about it oneself. I some- 
 times wish I didn't feel as I do, you know; but I can't 
 help it. I could no more . . . .' 
 
 'Great Scott ! no. Of course you couldn't,' put in Wood
 
 78 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 quickly. 'But all the same I'm going to be a good 
 influence over my young brother, to-night. I say, I 
 suppose we ought to be getting along. It's half-past, 
 now.' 
 
 'I don't think I'll come to Frascati's, if you don't mind,' 
 Philip said. 'I want to think.' 
 
 And Wood did not press his invitation. He wanted 
 Philip's society, but he knew that he would not be able 
 to enjoy it in the presence of 'young Frank,' fresh and 
 eager for a spree. There would, too, be certain inevitable 
 embarrassments. But above all these reasons, George 
 Wood, the man of much experience, had a sympathetic 
 realisation of his friend's attitude towards this unnamed 
 woman, romantically seen in the London street, who had 
 come to haunt his dreams, and had now wonderfully 
 entered his life. Some element in George Wood, half 
 poetic, half religious, could appreciate the beauty of 
 such an ideal as this. He could understand the desire 
 for solitude at such a moment; the dislike for the glare 
 and clatter of life at Frascati's, in the company of a newly 
 liberated sailor, frankly bent on releasing his physical 
 repressions. Philip's first love affair seemed to Wood 
 extremely beautiful and right, that evening. 
 
 His last words to Philip as they parted in Oxford Street 
 were, 'Come along and see me again soon, Phil. You do 
 me good. Sober me down a bit. And I I'd like to 
 hear some more about you and .... and this 
 lady with the eyes, you know.' 
 
 (And Georgie Wood being a practical man, did his best 
 to fulfil the determination he had made to save his brother 
 from excess on this occasion. He did not mince matters. 
 He made a bald statement of his intention before the first 
 course of the dinner was brought to them. Young Frank 
 expostulated in truly sailor-like language. 'I'm going 
 to take you to a theatre,' elder brother George returned 
 firmly. And his authority was not to be denied. He 
 would not consent to argue, quietly over-riding the tor- 
 rent of protestation and abuse that he had drawn upon 
 himself, with a blank affirmation of purpose. But he
 
 EVELYN 79 
 
 made a mistake in his choice of a theatre. He should 
 not have chosen musical comedy. Young Frank gave 
 him the slip as they came out, and did not turn up again 
 at the Oxford Street chambers where he was supposed to 
 be spending the night, until breakfast-time.) 
 
 Philip had just time to get a cup of coffee and a poached 
 egg in a tea-shop. When he was turned out at five minutes 
 to eight by the silent reproach of busy waitresses clearing 
 up, collecting the sugar and piling the chairs on the tables, 
 he walked back to Victoria by way of Hyde Park. 
 
 Out of the give and take of the communion with his 
 friend, he had brought away a resolution to have more 
 courage with himself. He tried quite honestly, that 
 evening, to examine a little more closely this difficult 
 problem of his relations towards women. But the thing 
 was not possible for him. He shuddered at the entrance 
 as before the sight of some revolting horror. He could 
 not have thought of Evelyn Lang as a woman. It seemed 
 to him horribly wrong and disgusting that he should so 
 think of her. She was something wonderfully remote 
 and holy, an ideal to be worshipped in secret, a mystery 
 that it would be the direst sacrilege to uncover. He 
 could get no farther than that. But again the feeling 
 came to him that presently something within him must 
 break, and let him free; and that, then, although nothing 
 of the holiness would be gone, everything would in some 
 inexplicable way be quite different. 
 
 The only point worth noting relative to the six weeks 
 that followed Evelyn Lang's engagement in Norfolk Street, 
 is that she and Philip failed to ease the difficult relations 
 established by their first morning's work. For a few days 
 she struggled to institute an acceptable business manner, 
 but the reserve of his consistently aloof politeness was 
 proof against any attack based on the casual assumption 
 that she was some kind of superior machine. The manner
 
 8o GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 of his consideration for her made it clear that she was 
 anything but a machine, and seemed to imply that she 
 was, indeed, something more than a mere human being. 
 Yet the implication was singularly devoid of flattery. If 
 he never reproved her mistakes, neither did he compliment 
 her on her improving mastery of technicalities. 'He 
 makes one feel so silly,' she confessed to her uncle after 
 three days in the office. He certainly made her nervous. 
 She could not avoid the inference that although he very 
 rarely looked at her, he was acutely aware of her presence. 
 And she resented that awareness of his as something 
 between an unpleasantly pointed compliment and an 
 insult. As the days passed she came to dread the 
 morning's interview, and she had fully persuaded herself, 
 within a week, that she detested Philip. 
 
 She definitely preferred the somewhat familiar jocosi- 
 ties of little Wing; but the office saw comparatively little 
 of its principal that March. He was spending a great 
 deal of his time in Warwickshire, and nobody knew whom 
 he stayed with, while he was there. Evelyn, although 
 she had mistrusted the leer of her employer at first sight, 
 did not associate her happy immunity from too particular 
 attention with her employer's frequent absences from 
 London. She had quite decided after six weeks' experi- 
 ence of the publishing business that if she were compelled 
 to find another engagement, it would be because she 
 ' could not stand ' Mr Maning. Apart from her associations 
 with her two chiefs, she found publishing a very attractive 
 entertainment. It gave her many interests, and she had 
 ideas concerning the firm's programme that she hoped to 
 put before Mr Wing himself. 
 
 Then, at the end of March, Warwickshire was apparently 
 deleted from Mr Wing's list of attractive counties; and, a 
 fortnight later, all the old relations between Evelyn and 
 her chiefs were suddenly exploded. 
 
 She had just gone into Philip's room after lunch, to 
 fulfil what she regarded as the second of her daily 
 penances, when Field appeared with the announcement 
 that Mr Wing would like to see her for a few minutes.
 
 EVELYN 81 
 
 ' You will come back for the letters, Miss Lang ? ' Philip 
 asked as she turned to obey the summons. Even then, 
 he had a curious feeling of apprehension. Little Wing 
 had come in from lunch a trifle flushed and talkative and, 
 according to precedent, he ought to have been enjoying 
 a nap in one of his luxurious arm-chairs. 
 
 'Yes, Mr Maning,' Evelyn said demurely. She still 
 wanted on such occasions as these to revert to her first 
 manner with a casual 'of course,' but her irritation was 
 never quite strong enough to overcome what was in truth, 
 though she had never confessed it, her fear of Philip's 
 personalit)^. 
 
 When she had gone, Philip looked at his watch and 
 frowned impatiently. It was past three o'clock, he had 
 still several letters to dictate; and Miss Lang had other 
 work to do in addition. She would probably be kept late 
 again, and he did not approve of her working overtime. 
 
 At the end of half an hour he rang the bell for Field. 
 
 ' Is Miss Lang still with Mr Wing? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Yessir,' returned Field and grinned. 
 
 Philip detested that grin, but he could think of no 
 excuse for reproving it. 
 
 When he was alone, again, he gave up all pretence of_ 
 work and began to pace up and down his little den. All 
 his distrust of Wing was becoming horribly articulate; his 
 heart was beating with sensible rapidity and his face was 
 very white. He was on the point of breaking desperately 
 into his employer's sanctum, when Evelyn returned. 
 
 The look that Philip gave her as she entered, shattered 
 their old relations in an instant. 
 
 She was slightly flushed, her beautiful hair a little dis- 
 arranged; and Philip's worst suspicions flared into life. 
 He was not even polite. 
 
 'What has been happening?' he demanded violently. 
 
 'Happening?' Evelyn echoed, but her face betrayed 
 her, and the quick eagerness with which she tried to cover 
 her surprise was almost cliildislily futile. 
 
 'Happening?' she repeated. 'Nothing has happened, 
 Mr Maning; I'm sorry I've been so long. Mr Wing . . .'
 
 82 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Has he been insulting you?' blazed Philip. 
 
 She saw that he was madly angry and tried to cool him. 
 
 'No, no,' she said in her ordinary voice, a voice that 
 she had never before used in speaking to him. 'It was 
 nothing, nothing at all. Perhaps he had had rather too 
 much wine with his lunch. Women in business get quite 
 used to that sort of nonsense, you know.' 
 
 'Do you mean that he tried to to touch you?' de- 
 manded Philip. 
 
 Evelyn smiled soothingly and sat down at the table. 
 'Please, don't make any more fuss,' she said. 'I'm quite 
 able to take care of myself. Now, I'm ready for your 
 letters.' 
 
 For a moment Philip stood still and glared. Then he 
 made for the door. ' I can't stand that,' was all he said, 
 but there was a menace in his tone. 
 
 Evelyn jumped up and tried to stop him. ' You're not 
 going to say anything to Mr Wing,' she pleaded. ' Please, 
 Mr Maning, I won't have it. I . . . .' 
 
 But Philip had gone. 
 
 He stalked furiously into the sacred room and slammed 
 the door after him. 
 
 Little Wing was sitting at his desk looking puffy and 
 out of temper. He started violently when the door 
 slammed, and began some expostulation beginning with, 
 'What the devil . . . .' before the glower on Philip's 
 face stopped him. 
 
 'W- what's the meaning of this, Maning?' was the 
 inefficient paraphrase he found to express his displeasure 
 as his manager advanced portentously down the room. 
 
 Philip did not mince matters. He was still white with 
 anger, and his whole manner and expression were merged 
 into a savage threat. 
 
 ' I won't stand it,' be began, and he towered like a spirit 
 of vengeance over the dismayed figure of the rotund little 
 publisher. ' This sort of thing has got to stop, absolutely. 
 You know perfectly well what I mean. I have no control 
 over your beastly adventures outside the office, but I can 
 and will prevent you from insulting Miss Lang.'
 
 EVELYN 83 
 
 Wing clicked his tongue. 'What right have you to 
 lecture me, Maning ? ' he said, making a partial recovery 
 and pushing his chair back to a safer distance. 'And 
 and what the devil are you talking about ? ' 
 
 Philip glared down at him with just wrath. ' It doesn't 
 make it any better to pretend ignorance,' he said. 'I've 
 been afraid that you would begin one of your disgusting 
 advances to Miss Lang, for some time back.' He was 
 quite convinced that he had been so afraid, as he spoke, 
 'And to-day you've done it. It makes it all the worse 
 that you drank too much at lunch. And I won't have it. 
 You had better understand that clearly once and for all. 
 Don't you realise what a vile and beastly fool you have 
 made of yourself?' 
 
 Little Wing was trying very hard not to look sheepish. 
 
 ' I will not be spoken to Like this,' was all the defiance 
 he could muster; and the tone of it lacked the true ring of 
 authority. 
 
 'I'm speaking to you as I would speak to any man who 
 makes an utter cad of himself,' Philip replied furiously. 
 
 Wing hesitated on the verge of saving his dignity by 
 dismissing his manager on the spot. But only the day 
 before Peter had shown signs of a willingness to come to 
 terms; and the little man gulped down his resentment 
 and attempted remonstrance. 
 
 ' Oh ! you misunderstand the whole thing, Maning/ he 
 said peevishly. 'Don't for goodness' sake stand there, 
 glaring, as if I'd committed some offence. You're a 
 fanatic, a positive fanatic. It's absurd, absolutely 
 absurd, the way you take offence on this subject. 
 Nothing happened between me and Miss Lang this after- 
 noon. Positively, nothing at all. She misunderstood 
 something I said, and rather annoyed me. She can go, 
 if she wants to. Pay her a month's salary and tell her 
 she can go.' 
 
 'There's no reason why she should go,' Philip replied 
 with an icy sternness. 'All that matters is that you 
 should promise to behave yourself in future.' 
 
 ' But Good God . . . .' spluttered Wing convulsively,
 
 84 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 and made impotent gestures with his plump white hands. 
 "Pon my word, Maning, you take too much upon yourself. 
 I will not endure this, I won't, indeed.' 
 
 'Of course, / can go,' Philip said with a change of 
 manner, and watched the effect of his speech upon Wing, 
 with a grim, reflective stare. 
 
 'Quite unnecessary if you can manage to use a little 
 more self-control,' Wing said; 'and a little more respect.' 
 
 'I can't possibly respect you when you do things like 
 you did this afternoon,' Philip returned calmly. His 
 passion had spent itself for the moment, but not his just 
 wrath. 'However, the point is this, and we can decide 
 it at once, whether I'm to go, or whether you will promise 
 that you will treat Miss Lang in future with proper decency 
 and and honour?' 
 
 Wirg made a deprecatory noise of disgust in his throat 
 that sounded like the weak beginning of a cough. 'I've 
 explained that, once/ he said, and attempted satire by 
 adding, 'Of course, if you want me to treat Miss Lang 
 like a Princess of the Blood, I'll do my best. But, realty, 
 your whole attitude towards women is ridiculous, fanciful. 
 If you knew . . . .' However, he thought better 
 of that opening. 
 
 'I think you understand, now,' Philip said, gravely, 
 and with that he turned round and quietly left the room. 
 
 'He's a fanatic .... a damned fanatic,' little 
 Wing repeated to himself, trying valiantly to recover a 
 satisfactory hold upon his self-esteem .... 
 
 The whole scene had not occupied ten minutes; but 
 they had seemed very long minutes to Evelyn, waiting 
 uneasily in Philip's little room. 'It's such nonsense,' 
 she repeated under her breath, as if she sought consolation 
 in that judgment; and by 'it' she referred not to Wing's 
 attempt to kiss her, but to the extraordinary burst of 
 indignation by his manager. What did it mean? she 
 asked herself. Was he merely Quixotic, and was this 
 outburst a natural result of his curious attitude towards 
 women; or and she posed to herself with a little air of 
 smiling disdain was it possible that she had inspired
 
 EVELYN 85 
 
 this queer, silent Mr Marring with oh ! with whatever he 
 was capable of feeling? She emphasised the ironic droop 
 of her mouth but her thoughts would not follow the 
 mechanical example of her expression. Miss Lang, the 
 secretary, presented the picture of half-humorous 
 contempt; but the little girl, Evelyn, who was the 
 dominant partner in that collaboration, was at once 
 annoyed, excited, afraid and timidly elated. 'It's such 
 nonsense/ affirmed Miss Lang contemptuously. 'Rather 
 beautiful nonsense, all the same,' suggested Evelyn. 
 'And there is something rather romantic about it all,' 
 continued some compromise of the two voices. 'Seeing 
 him all those years ago in Piccadilly, with that awful, 
 fat man ! and the way we could not help staring at one 
 another ! After all, there certainly is something, it doesn't 
 matter whether you call it ' ' Fate ' ' or what you call 
 it . . . .' The voice was trailing away into the 
 purest school-girl Evelyn, when the sound of the opening 
 and closing of Mr Wing's door interrupted the reverie. 
 
 She glanced over her shoulder and noticed that the 
 door of the room in which she was sitting was unlatched. 
 She heard someone coming slowly, very slowly, down 
 the passage. 
 
 ' Oh ! do for goodness' sake be sensible !' murmured 
 Miss Lang, addressing her own trembling personality. 
 "There's nothing to be nervous about.' 
 
 She set her shoulders back, frowned and drummed 
 impatiently on her notebook. He had stopped outside 
 the door, and the suspense was horrible. ' Oh ! for mercy's 
 sake come in, and get it over,' she thought viciously. ' It's 
 such nonsense, such absurd nonsense.' She had no leisure, 
 now, to persuade herself how absurd the whole situation 
 was; and it was so essential that Evelyn should realise 
 that. 
 
 Philip's pause at the door seemed interminable and 
 then he came in with dreadful deliberation and closed the 
 door behind him, as if he were performing some important 
 judicial ceremony. 
 
 'Shall we take the letters at once, now?' Miss Lang
 
 86 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 said in a clear, confident voice, but she did not turn round 
 to address the shadow behind her. 'It must be four 
 o'clock.' 
 
 He took no notice of that question. He sat down at 
 his proper place at the desk, leaned his head on his hands 
 and looked down at his blotting-pad. 
 
 ' It will be all right, now,' he said in a low voice. ' You 
 needn't be afraid that it will happen again.' 
 
 'I think you've been making an unnecessary fuss about 
 nothing, Mr Maning,' Miss Lang said severely. 'As I 
 told you, I'm quite able to take care of myself.' 
 
 'It isn't that,' Philip said without looking up and still 
 speaking in the same low, tense voice; 'it's the principle 
 of the thing. In this office, more especially . . . .' 
 
 ' Oh ! it was a principle, then,' thought Evelyn with a 
 pout that did not upset the steady, businesslike com- 
 position of Miss Lang's features. 
 
 'At the same time,' Philip went on, speaking more and 
 more dimly, as if the effort were almost too painfully 
 difficult; 'I don't suppose that I should have lost my 
 temper so badly if if it had been anyone else.' 
 
 'Oh! dear,' ejaculated Miss Lang with a peculiar 
 emphasis. 
 
 Philip found the courage to look up. 
 
 Evelyn, on the other hand, looked down and began to 
 design an exquisitely complicated arrangement of dots 
 in her notebook. 
 
 'Twice in one day, you know,' she remarked wickedly. 
 
 ' Oh ! no ! ' exclaimed Philip in the tone of one who has 
 been unbearably misjudged. 
 
 'I'm sorry,' Evelyn murmured. 
 
 'I mean it's so entirely different in every way,' Philip 
 painfully explained. 
 
 Evelyn was spending her soul in the arrangement of 
 dots, and made no comment on the question of differences. 
 
 'I'm not saying that . . . .' Philip began with a 
 burst, and then tried a qualification of the thing he had 
 not stated by adding, ' at least, I don't think I am . . . 
 But .... five years ago .... and ever
 
 EVELYN 87 
 
 since there has been a difference .... And, then, 
 when you first came here ... in the office down- 
 stairs .... perhaps you don't remember . . .' 
 He had his head in his hands again and looked as if he 
 were dictating an exceedingly difficult letter. Evelyn 
 risked an amused glance at his dark hair, and then 
 blushed at her own thought. 
 
 ' I remember/ she said in a little demure voice. 
 
 'I felt sure you must,' murmured Philip. 'And then, 
 you must see, don't you, how absolutely different it is?' 
 
 Evelyn said nothing. She could not decide whether or 
 not it was safe to pretend that she could not understand 
 him. She was surprised to find that she did understand 
 with such perfect clearness. ' He did know, all the time,' 
 she was thinking. 'It was all because . . . . / 
 don't know what to say to him !' She tried to summon 
 up the capable Miss Lang, but Miss Lang seemed to have 
 deserted her. 
 
 'You do, don't you?' he insisted. 
 
 ' Different from what ? ' she asked weakly. 
 
 'Well, you said "twice in one day,'" he explained; 'as 
 if . . . .' 
 
 'No, no, not as if . . . .' she protested softly. 
 
 ' I could only understand that,' he said. 
 
 'Well, you see,' Evelyn began brightly, with an air of 
 being quite ready, now, to put everything plainly; 'I 
 couldn't know, could I?' 
 
 'I should have thought you would have known,' he 
 said, and though his face was still invisible, his tone and 
 attitude suggested profound gloom. 
 
 'We are getting altogether too deep,' was Evelyn's 
 thought, but something prompted her to further inquiry. 
 'Should you, why?' she asked, and then, afraid of the 
 sound of her question, she added briskly, 'But really, 
 Mr Maning, oughtn't we to be getting on with the letters? ' 
 
 'I shan't bother about the letters to-day,' Philip said. 
 'I should have thought you would have known that I 
 could never treat any woman without respect.' 
 
 He paused, and some little disappointed voice within
 
 88 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Evelyn's consciousness was murmuring 'Is that all?' 
 She was on the verge of suggesting that if there were to 
 be no letters, she might as well get on with her other work, 
 when Philip concluded his pause by adding, 
 
 'Particularly you.' 
 
 But she could not respond to that a second time. She 
 had a feeling that they were beginning all over again, 
 and might go on for ever without arriving at any signpost 
 other than this indicative 'particularly you.' It came to 
 her with a slight stir of annoyance that the whole affair 
 was becoming distinctly tiresome. If he had anything to 
 say, he might as well say it, and let her go home and think 
 it over. If he hadn't, she might as well get her work done. 
 
 ' Oh ! well ! ' she said, and stood up. 
 
 Philip hesitated a moment and then stood up, also. 
 
 She ought to have gone, then, there was apparently no 
 reason why she should stay any longer, but she made no 
 movement to go. She stood with her finger tips resting 
 on the table, and she knew that she had to look up and 
 meet Philip's eyes. She knew, also, that if she did, she 
 would for the third time be unable to look away again. 
 
 She tried to resist; she struggled desperately to keep 
 her head down; but she seemed to have no control over 
 her movements. Slowly her head was raised and then 
 her eyes, until they were staring straight into the eyes of 
 Philip. 
 
 Once a stranger had released them, and once she had 
 broken away of her own initiative. This time, she felt 
 as if there were no hope of release; as if they might stand 
 there for ever or until one of them died. 
 
 She became aware that he was holding his hands out 
 towards her, and that her own hands were moving to meet 
 his. And then, as their hands met, the spell was dissolved. 
 They were free to look wherever they would. 
 
 'I don't know why . . . .' she began lamely. 
 
 'It's impossible to say why,' Philip said. 
 
 They were both of them looking down at their joined 
 hands. 
 
 ' I think I'd better go now/ she said, after another pause.
 
 EVELYN 89 
 
 He released her hands instantly. 
 
 'I think you said that you wouldn't take the letters 
 this evening,' she hazarded. 
 
 ' Oh ! no, not this evening,' Philip said, in the tone of 
 one who makes a solemn declaration of his faith. 
 
 She managed to escape on that. She went quickly and 
 quietly, as if she were afraid of disturbing a religious 
 ceremony .... 
 
 It had all been so tense and devotional. She felt as if 
 she had been making the most sacred and binding vows. 
 And yet nothing had been said, nothing that anyone 
 could make sense of. If she had taken down their con- 
 versation in shorthand, it would have read like gibberish. 
 But she had known everything; and he had known. 
 And how they were going to meet to-morrow she dared 
 not guess. Nor was she at all sure whether or not she 
 was prepared to marry him. He had meant that. She 
 had no shadow of doubt that he had meant that. 
 
 Philip went home, that night, in a haze of wonder. 
 When he left the office, he felt a passing inclination to 
 find his friend, Wood, and relate to him the astounding 
 history of the afternoon. But when he pictured himself 
 sitting in the Oxford Street chambers, he understood 
 that the affair was too sacred and beautiful to be discussed 
 in those surroundings; he, also, was diffident of his own 
 power to convey the perfection of it all; and a little 
 doubtful whether George Wood could, in any case, quite 
 appreciate the supernal qualities of this engagement. 
 
 He regarded it, without any question, as an engage- 
 ment. He believed that he and this amazing vision of 
 womanhood were pledged in some transcendental way to 
 a miraculous union, even if that union had in his thought 
 little or nothing in common with the vulgar idea of 
 marriage. He cherished the belief that he and Evelyn 
 had all their lives been moving towards one another, and 
 G.C. G
 
 go GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 that now their meeting had been consummated by an 
 understanding. Presently they would, no doubt, be 
 married; the ceremony was essential as a declaration 
 before the world of their wonderful regard for each other; 
 but they were, in effect, as much pledged and bound at 
 the present moment as they could ever be. 
 
 His mind rested, now and again, on the picture of a 
 villa in Capri, the villa of an epilogue. He saw Evelyn 
 and himself talking literature on the hills or by the sea, 
 with the sun setting and throwing magical lights on 
 Evelyn's hair. Afterwards they would walk home in the 
 hush of the dusk, and there would be a supper of fruit 
 and salad eaten by candle-light. His imagination 
 flickered when he tried to carry the scene beyond the 
 supper . . Would they kiss when they separated for 
 the night, or would she just turn at the hangings that 
 draped the door to her room and raise one of her white 
 hands in a gesture of graceful benediction, a blessing on 
 his repose and his dreams? 
 
 He shuddered a little when he remembered that his 
 father must be told. His mother might understand, but 
 Peter would inevitably raise objections and ask questions. 
 Philip's life at Herne Hill seemed to him very coarse and 
 brutal, that evening. 
 
 And the reality more than confirmed his anticipations. 
 As he grew older, Peter's gardening had become positively 
 vindictive; and he had, most unfortunately, come home 
 early that evening and put in a thoroughly vicious hour 
 of preparation for his spring sowings. If he had had 
 ten thousand a year, he would have continued that habit; 
 as it was he, now, found his excuse for it in the theory 
 that 'it did him good.' The old argument that he could 
 not afford a man was no longer valid. 
 
 The bitterness of the interview between father and son, 
 at supper, was aggravated by the fact that Mrs Maning 
 was not present. This had been, as she put it, one of her 
 bad days. For more than a year, now, she had spent an 
 increasing proportion of her time either in bed or in 
 her own room. She was not suffering from any specific
 
 EVELYN 91 
 
 illness. Her own expression, that she was ailing, describes 
 her condition better than any other. Her doctor's 
 diagnosis of nervous weakness was nothing more than a 
 modern phrasing. The feebleness of her heart was, 
 perhaps truly, regarded as a symptom rather than as a 
 cause of her ailment. Peter sometimes broke the* silences 
 of an evening's sitting with his son, by announcing that 
 Philip's mother was suffering from lack of energy. 
 
 He began with that when they sat down to supper, on 
 this particular evening, and the tone in which he said 
 'your mother/ rather implied that Philip in some way 
 shared the blame of Mrs Maning's weakness. 
 
 Philip looked across the table with the half-anxious, 
 half-pleading expression that always came when his father 
 took that tone with him. He was not, strictly speaking, 
 afraid of Peter, but he had never lost his habit of sub- 
 mission to parental authority. He was still held by the 
 old spirit in these surroundings, and because he was so 
 held, it never even occurred to him that he might postpone 
 the announcement of his engagement until a happier 
 moment. 
 
 After Peter had finished the criticism of his wife's lack 
 of energy, he relapsed into his usual silence; and Philip 
 knew that his time had come. 
 
 ' Father,' he began on a note of pleading that inevitably 
 prejudiced Peter. 'I I've something to tell you.' 
 
 Peter grunted. 
 
 'I I'm engaged.' 
 
 'Rubbish,' returned Peter with finality; and he looked 
 up and frowned at his son round the epergne, daring him 
 to attempt the least contradiction. 
 
 'I am, father,' Philip mildly protested. 
 
 'Engaged? Nonsense,' Peter said, as if a small Philip, 
 aged seven or so, had asked for something that his father 
 was unreasonably inclined to deny him. It had always 
 been Peter's method to lose his temper on such occasions; 
 righteous anger avoided the necessity for convincing 
 explanations. 
 
 ' I'm afraid it isn't nonsense, father,' pleaded Philip.
 
 92 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'But when? Who to? What do you propose to live 
 on?' 
 
 Philip chose the last question as the least difficult to 
 answer. 'I wasn't thinking of getting married for a long 
 time yet/ he said. ' But I've got my salary, even if there 
 is to be no question of a partnership with Mr Wing.' 
 
 Peter for some purpose of his own decided to take up 
 the side issue. 
 
 ' I'm not sure that a partnership with Wing would be a 
 good investment,' he said. 'He doesn't seem to me to 
 be doing as well as he was. We've been discussing terms 
 lately, as I suppose you know?' 
 
 'No, I didn't/ Philip said. He had been given no 
 chance of knowing. 
 
 'Well, we have/ Peter went on, 'and Wing seems very 
 shy of giving me a full statement of his accounts for the 
 past ten years. I suppose you don't know the figures?' 
 
 'Not of the profit and loss account/ Philip said. 'No 
 one knows those figures except Mr Wing himself.' 
 
 Peter shrugged his shoulders. 'Then you see how the 
 case stands/ he said. ' If Wing won't produce that state- 
 ment, properly authenticated, I've no intention of risking 
 money in the business. And if I say definitely that I've 
 no further intention of buying you a partnership, your 
 position is, to say the least of it, precarious.' 
 
 ' I think I've been very useful to Mr Wing/ Philip put in. 
 
 'Pooh!' returned Peter. 'What's the good of that? 
 Are you increasing his business? From what I gather 
 you're not. And that's the only thing that matters from 
 his point of view. He could get a thousand managers 
 to-morrow, who would be useful. Anyone can manage 
 an office. What Wing's looking for is someone who'll 
 either bring money into the business, or work it up/ 
 
 Philip could not deny the force of his father's argument. 
 
 ' But you don't think Mr Wing would sack me, do you? ' 
 he asked, and even as he put the question, he knew 
 perfectly well that Wing would do just that without the 
 least hesitation. He had been very near doing it that 
 afternoon.
 
 EVELYN 93 
 
 'Certainly I do,' Peter replied. 'Not at once, perhaps. 
 That would be too obvious. But if I refuse the money 
 for a partnership, he'll look elsewhere for it. I've very 
 little doubt, indeed, that he wants the money badly. 
 Don't you think so yourself? You ought to know that.' 
 
 'Yes, I think he does,' Philip said. 
 
 ' Oh ! well, that practically settles it,' Peter concluded. 
 'I'm not going to risk investment in a failing business, 
 and so far as I can see you've no particular capacity for 
 building it up again. If you had, you'd have done it 
 before this as manager. And so what it comes to is 
 that for all intents and purposes you are on my hands 
 again, and to crown everything, you come to me and ask 
 me to keep a wife for you as well. I repeat, Philip, that 
 your getting engaged is the sheerest nonsense, and the 
 sooner the engagement is broken off the better.' 
 
 And having then conclusively disposed of Philip's 
 aspirations and his own supper, Peter retired in high 
 dudgeon to his own little den. 
 
 Philip went upstairs to sit with his mother. She looked 
 very frail and small against the background of dark 
 curtains that festooned and canopied the head of the 
 old-fashioned bedstead. Her hair had lost its colour 
 very rapidly since she had been ailing; even the blue of 
 her eyes had faded. 
 
 Philip had told her very briefly of the fact of his en- 
 gagement before supper, but she had made little response, 
 then. She had appeared a little agitated and nervous. 
 He had guessed that she had been afraid for him. 
 
 She greeted him, now, with a wistful inquiry. 
 
 'Was he was your father very displeased?' she asked. 
 
 ' He has in a sense forbidden it,' Philip said. 
 
 Mrs Maning looked sympathetically at her son. She knew 
 all too well the first fury of Peter's passion for forbidding. 
 
 'Did he ask you anything about her, dear? ' she said. 
 
 'Nothing. Nothing whatever,' Philip replied. 
 
 'But then . . . .' suggested Mrs Maning. 
 
 'He made it a question of finance, you see,' Philip said, 
 and reported the essentials of his recent interview.
 
 94 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'He will probably talk to me about it, to-morrow/ his 
 mother said, with an air of conferring comfort, and then 
 continued. 'But, dear, you've told me nothing yet. 
 Who she is, or how old, or even whether she is good- 
 looking.' 
 
 Philip frowned in great perplexity. 'I can't, mother/ 
 he said after a long pause. 'You must see her. I'll ask 
 her if she would come down here. Perhaps, to-morrow. 
 What is to-morrow? Oh ! Saturday. If she came in 
 the afternoon, and could see you first up here?' 
 
 'But won't that seem like flouting your father?' Mrs 
 Maning asked timidly. 
 
 'He he couldn't say anything while she was here/ 
 Philip ventured, 'and afterwards I could explain to 
 him . . . / 
 
 His mother looked as if she thought Philip's ability to 
 explain exceedingly doubtful. 'It might vex him/ she 
 said. 
 
 ' Father is so easily vexed/ Philip said. ' I wonder why ? ' 
 
 'He has always been like that/ Mrs Maning said, as if 
 no further explanation could be necessary. 
 
 'Yes, I know/ Philip agreed. 
 
 'He might come round if you gave him time/ Mrs 
 Maning suggested anxiously. 
 
 They spoke of Peter always with a grave detachment, 
 as if his relation to them was that of a governor to his 
 staff. He, himself, was just beyond open criticism, but 
 his methods were not. 
 
 ' I would like him to see her/ Philip said obstinately. 
 
 'But I think in that case you ought to speak to 
 him again first/ his mother insisted. 
 
 Philip sighed and went over to the bed. 'Very well, 
 mother, I will/ he said. 'Don't you worry any more 
 about it. Try to go to sleep/ 
 
 She took his kiss meekly. Never since he was seven 
 years old had she clung to him, or kissed him with any 
 approach to fervour. Peter had frightened her, and, 
 now, she was afraid not only of Peter, but also of Philip 
 and herself.
 
 EVELYN 95 
 
 Peter met his son at the foot of the stairs. 
 
 'Have you been talking to your mother?' he asked 
 grimly, as though that, too, was an offence. 
 
 'Yes, father/ Philip said. 
 
 'About this engagement of yours?' 
 
 'Yes, father. I want . . . .' 
 
 'Young men of your age always want to do the things 
 they can't/ was Peter's epigram. ' What is it you want?' 
 
 'Shall we go into your study?' Philip suggested. 
 
 Peter consented with a qualifying reluctance. 'I've 
 said all I have to say/ he remarked as soon as he and 
 his son had sat down. 'You admitted just now that 
 you were not in a position to marry, and I cannot see 
 that there's anything more to be said. Who is the girl? 
 How is it that neither your mother nor I have ever heard 
 of her? Where did you meet her? How long have you 
 known her? I must have a much clearer understanding 
 about it all before I can listen to any talk of your being 
 engaged, as you call it.' 
 
 ' I want to bring her down to see you to-morrow/ Philip 
 said quietly. He was so used to his father's method, now. 
 He endured it without resentment, accepting it as one of 
 the ordained things that were necessary to the scheme of 
 life .... 
 
 'What for?' snapped Peter. 
 
 'It would be so much easier than trying to answer all 
 your questions, father/ Philip explained patiently. 
 
 'The whole proposition is so utterly unreasonable, just 
 now/ Peter complained, but by the time he had elabo- 
 rately restated his just causes for annoyance, Philip knew 
 that the minor point had been conceded. And not until 
 then did he consider the possibility that Evelyn might be 
 unwilling to come down to Herne Hill. For a moment 
 he hesitated on the verge of saying that the visit would, 
 of course, be subject to his fiancee's consent which he had 
 not yet asked; but he decided that would be unwise. 
 
 'She must come/ he determined with the first touch of 
 arrogance that had entered his thought of her.
 
 96 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 8 
 
 Some part of Evelyn's time, that night, was, also, spent 
 in discussion, although it was very different in kind. She 
 had made many decisions in her life, but the one that, 
 now, faced her, was unprecedented; and she swung from 
 one extreme of certitude to the other until she began to 
 question her own powers of judgment. 
 
 When she left the office for her lodgings in Warwick 
 Street, she had finally decided that all the happenings of 
 the afternoon might safely be classed together as 'foolish 
 nonsense.' Peter, himself, could not have been more 
 drastic or more contemptuous, and she was so profoundly 
 engaged by the finality of this judgment that she got on 
 to the top of the wrong omnibus and did not discover her 
 mistake until she found herself being taken along Cock- 
 spur Street instead of down Whitehall. She had made 
 the same mistake before and was not greatly disconcerted. 
 It was a fine evening. She could walk home from Hyde 
 Park Corner. But before she was half-way down 
 Piccadilly, she realised that the finger of Fate was again 
 directing her. She stared at the facade of the Oxford 
 Club as she passed, and suddenly and most illogically 
 altered her conclusions. 
 
 All the past took a new aspect. The figure of Philip 
 was changed from that of an oddly-mannered, somewhat 
 incomprehensible business superior, to the ideal of a rather 
 wonderful hero whose life was inextricably part of her 
 own. She thrilled at the memory of their first meeting. 
 She believed that she had always known that Philip was 
 inevitable. Her judgment on his anger that afternoon 
 rose loftily from a decision of 'foolish, unnecessary inter- 
 ference ' to an almost passionate eulogy of his courage, 
 and of the fineness of his attitude towards women. He 
 might be romantic, but there was something splendid in 
 his romance, however out of place in this twentieth-century 
 London. As she walked down Grosvenor Place, she saw
 
 EVELYN 97 
 
 him as a creature, peerless and superb, whom it was her 
 wonderful privilege to guard and cherish. 
 
 But when she was having tea in her own room, she 
 laughed at her recent hyperboles. She had been more 
 romantic than Philip himself. And it was then that she 
 came to a clearer understanding of what it was that, above 
 all, she had missed in their brief recognition of each other. 
 He had been so distant, frigid, aloof. He had offered her 
 a kind of homage that might be very flattering, but was 
 certainly not the ideal relation she sought in marriage. 
 If he had been passionate . . . .? She blushed in 
 her solitude when she found herself considering what 
 her own attitude might have been if he had been 
 passionate. 
 
 The balance turned again with a solemn pretence of 
 finality, when she reflected that he had good reason for 
 restraining any evidence of passion that afternoon. After 
 the awful example he had so recently reproved, how could 
 he have been anything but frigid and aloof? He had 
 done it to reassure her, knowing that their mutual under- 
 standing was a thing already proved and sacred. 
 
 Only .... was it? Did she .... care? 
 She picked at her thoughts and feelings, as if by her 
 fastidious translation of them into recognisable words, 
 she could spare her own modesty. Something was 
 happening underneath the cool surface of this selecting, 
 critical consciousness of hers, but it was not yet urgent 
 enough to disturb her seriously. 
 
 And somewhere about this point in her reflections, she 
 faced the thought of confiding in her uncle. She rejected 
 it instantly and then went downstairs to ask if the Colonel 
 were out, and whether if he were, she might use his tele- 
 phone. When she had rung up the Exchange, she decided 
 that when her uncle replied she would say nothing of what 
 was in her mind; and when she heard his round, aristocratic 
 voice answering her 'Hallo ! is that you, uncle?' she said 
 at once, 'I do so want to talk to you about something. 
 Could I come up to your rooms at the Club? ' 
 
 'Better not/ her uncle replied. 'Where are you? In
 
 98 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Warwick Street? Barker away for the week-end? All 
 right, ask Merton if we can use his room.' 
 
 Evelyn's lodging in Warwick Street was not of quite 
 the common quality. Merton had been a butler, and he 
 retained his fervent admiration for the aristocracy. 
 Evelyn, herself, represented a slight indiscretion, but she 
 had had a double claim on Merton's regard. He had been 
 man-servant to her father, thirty years before, when the 
 Revd. Augustus Lang had just received his appointment 
 to the Deanery of Medborough. But her chief claim 
 rested on her uncle's introduction. In the days when 
 he was in the Civil Service, he had lodged with Merton; 
 had been, in fact, his first lodger and had stayed there 
 until that unfortunate affair in the Home Office drove 
 him to accept the post of Residential Secretary to the 
 Old Service Club. Eustace Lang had been an official 
 scapegoat. Someone had to take responsibility for the 
 blunder, and, in a sense, it was just that he should suffer. 
 His agency had been implicated. No real disgrace was 
 attached to his part in the affair. He could not have 
 known all that was involved. But if the blame had not 
 been taken by him, a more important person might have 
 been compelled to resign office; and it was not convenient 
 for the Government that he should go. So Eustace Lang 
 was privately offered his secretaryship, and then publicly, 
 as far as the Service was concerned, was asked to resign 
 his position and his claim to a pension. He was forty-five 
 at that time, and he had now been at the club for eleven 
 years. 
 
 He arrived in Warwick Street just after nine o'clock, 
 and he and Evelyn sat and talked in the luxurious sitting- 
 room of the temporarily absent Colonel Barker. Just 
 before her uncle rang the bell, Evelyn had made her fifth 
 or sixth final decision in favour of confidence; but when 
 she actually met him and began to talk to him, she 
 wavered once more. He was so 'utterly charming,' as 
 she put it in her thought; so confident, so unobtrusively 
 and completely a gentleman. And just at that moment, 
 when her mind was full of what she wished to say and to
 
 EVELYN 99 
 
 reserve about Philip, the contrast between the two men 
 seemed altogether garish. Her thought of Philip was 
 suddenly sharpened. She saw him stiff and clumsy in 
 his attempted courtesies. Her uncle's perfect ease, his 
 habit of doing the right thing because it was his inclination, 
 made all Philip's mannerisms appear rude and ungainly. 
 But her last chance of silence was gone now. Her uncle 
 gave her no opportunity for retreat. Directly he had 
 gracefully dismissed the adulant Merton, he spared her 
 the first pain of confession by saying, 
 
 'Well, Evelyn, has it happened?' 
 
 'Happened?' Evelyn replied automatically. She could 
 have given no other answer, although as she spoke she 
 recognised the foolishness of her quibble. 
 
 Her uncle smiled. ' You brought me down here to tell 
 me, but, now, you've thought better of it, eh?' he said. 
 'Well, it's just as you like, Evelyn. I'm always glad to 
 see you. We don't meet very often, now. And, after 
 this, I suppose we'll see still less of one another.' 
 
 'I don't see why/ Evelyn said with a sigh. 'I'm not 
 going to let it interfere between us. And, uncle, now 
 you're here, I feel nearly certain that it's all a mistake.' 
 
 'Is it this chap, Maning, you've told me about?' her 
 uncle asked. 
 
 ' Yes ! How did you know? ' She was a little startled, 
 a little ashamed that her uncle should have guessed. 
 
 'I thought you criticised him rather too bitterly/ he 
 said. ' I've been afraid, once or twice.' 
 
 'Afraid?' 
 
 'Naturally. I don't want to lose you/ 
 
 'Don't say these things, dear/ she protested. 'It isn't 
 fair and there's no question of your losing me. And I 
 want so much to know if you think it's a mistake/ 
 
 ' No one but you can decide that/ he said. 
 
 'You can help me/ she returned. 'I don't know. I 
 can't decide. I've decided a dozen times both ways, 
 since I left the office.' 
 
 'You wouldn't care to tell me how it all came out, I 
 suppose? ' her uncle suggested.
 
 ioo GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Yes, I would. I wouldn't mind/ Evelyn said with a 
 touch of eagerness. ' It began with Mr Wing taking too 
 much to drink at lunch.' She was glad to have that 
 incident as a starting-point. As she elaborated it, she 
 glowed again with her admiration for Philip's courage. 
 ' He went straight into Mr Wing's room, and I think he 
 must have given him an awful wigging,' she said. ' I saw 
 Mr Wing just before I left and he apologised. And he 
 looked so sheepish. And, you know, dear, it does take 
 courage to go and rate your own employer.' 
 
 'He certainly seems to have courage,' commented her 
 uncle. ' I wonder Wing stood it,' he added as an after- 
 thought. 
 
 'It's his, Mr Maning's, character, I think . . . .' 
 faltered Evelyn. 'He's so sincere and and stern. I 
 don't mean that he has ever been stern with me. He's 
 too lenient. But you know that if you really vexed him, 
 as Mr Wing did to-day, for instance, that he might be, 
 oh ! simply overpowering.' 
 
 Her uncle fidgeted. 'Yes, yes, that's all very well, 
 my dear,' he said; 'it sounds as if you might admire the 
 fellow and so on, but do you . . . .' 
 
 She would not let him complete his sentence. 'There's 
 another thing I've never told you,' she said. 'I don't 
 know that I can tell you now. Something that happened 
 five years ago.' She put her hands over her face and saw 
 with all the vividness of recent experience the figure of 
 Philip on the Club steps; the figure of a youth, with a fresh 
 eagerness and grace that the Philip of her office experience 
 seemed to have lost. She had not realised that change 
 before. It shocked her and filled her with pity. He had 
 been different, then; and she had a ridiculous feeling that 
 in some way she had been to blame. 
 
 ' Five years ago ! ' her uncle was repeating in astonishment. 
 
 'I I saw him, that was all,' she explained hurriedly. 
 'And we looked at one another. He was coming out of 
 the Oxford, with a horrible fat, fair man.' 
 
 'Nevertheless, I don't quite see why that should make 
 any difference/ her uncle commented.
 
 EVELYN 101 
 
 'It does,' Evelyn asserted. 
 
 At that moment the memory was making so much 
 difference to her that she had come to the point of criti- 
 cising her uncle's elegance of manner and appearance. 
 It was natural to him, a genuine expression of him, but 
 was it, after all, such an admirable thing? Had he not 
 evaded life? At twenty-seven Philip had suffered so 
 much that he had already lost the fresh eagerness and 
 grace of his youth. Her uncle had never suffered. He was 
 quick, clever, tactful, sympathetic; he had any number 
 of engaging qualities; but he was still a boy. The one 
 tragedy of his life had not affected him. And just as 
 ten minutes before her uncle's charm and elegance had 
 stirred in her a passing contempt for Philip's stiff 
 courtesies; so now her thought of the youth she had seen 
 on the steps of the Piccadilly club, served as a test to 
 disparage the superficial ease of her uncle's way of life. 
 
 'I must take your word, then, for that,' he said, and 
 his sympathetic smile seemed to assure her that he 
 accepted her statement without the least reservation. 
 
 ' I don't know that I can explain exactly why,' she said 
 
 'No, don't try to explain,' he returned. 'I understand. 
 But what I have in my mind is that if you really want me 
 to advise you, I think Maning and I ought to meet. I 
 can't call myself your guardian, and I don't wish to; but 
 I am your trustee.' 
 
 'Dear, don't put it on those grounds,' she pleaded. 
 ' You know you are my very best friend.' 
 
 'That's between ourselves, Evelyn,' he said. 'I was 
 looking for an excuse that would give me some authority 
 with Maning. By the way, do you know which family 
 he belongs to? He spells his name with one ' ' n," I think ? ' 
 
 Evelyn shook her head. 'His father is a solicitor, I 
 believe,' she said, 'and they live at Herne Hill. I don't 
 know anything more. But I would like you to meet him, 
 dear. Could you come to tea here to-morrow afternoon? 
 I'll bring him.' She smiled as she added, 'If you want 
 authority, I will tell him that you are my trustee, my 
 only near relation, and my best friend.'
 
 102 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Tea? Yes. Not before five, I've got a Committee 
 meeting/ he agreed. ' But don't mention my third qualifi- 
 cation, Evelyn. I must be every inch an uncle to-morrow.' 
 
 They talked until half-past ten without opening any 
 new aspect of Evelyn's engagement. 
 
 She was overcome by nervousness the next morning. 
 Last night she had carried with her a constantly changing 
 version of Philip that sometimes thrilled and sometimes 
 repulsed her. But every version had been in some way 
 adaptable to her thought of him, had been personal, a 
 thing possessed. Awaiting his usual summons in the 
 depressing gloom of the compartment more particularly 
 allotted to her hi Norfolk Street, she could realise him 
 only as Mr Maning, her business superior the cold, formal, 
 exaggeratedly courteous man who never looked at her if 
 he could possibly avoid her eyes. She wondered how she 
 could greet him, whether he would make any reference 
 to the scene of yesterday. She almost doubted if there 
 had been any significance in those scenes. She was cold 
 with nervousness when she received the expected message. 
 
 He was sitting in his usual pose at his desk when she 
 went in with a slight exaggeration of her business manner; 
 his head in his hands, and a general suggestion about him 
 that he was struggling patiently with matters beyond his 
 capacity. And he rose and bowed with precisely the 
 same air of formal respect that he had exhibited towards 
 her ever since she had been at the office. After that, he 
 plunged desperately into the business of the letters that 
 had been postponed on the previous afternoon. 
 
 She had leisure to think and to watch him while that 
 affair was in hand. He was never fluent in his dictations, 
 always attempting a search for the phrase that should 
 compromise business shorthand with a vague turn of 
 literary expression. And this morning, he stammered 
 and hesitated more than ever.
 
 EVELYN 103 
 
 Her thought of him during that interval was chiefly 
 compassionate. She felt a new sympathy with this 
 difficulty in finding expression. She seemed nearer to 
 him this morning, more able to appreciate his formalities 
 and his hesitations. It seemed to her that she was aware 
 of some barrier, not between herself and him, but in his 
 own personality; some limitation that he ought and was 
 unable to exceed. 
 
 Her observation of him was more critical. She liked 
 his hands. They were slender and sensitive, and his nails 
 were scrupulously cared for, if they had not the polish 
 and slightly dandified perfection of her uncle's. She liked 
 his dark hair and the shape of his head; and there was 
 something about his pose that appealed to her sense of 
 protection. But she criticised his clothes. Why did he 
 wear serge of such a dark blue that it was almost black ? 
 And a black tie? And a turned down linen collar? Cer- 
 tainly he had a good neck, but there was something a 
 little 'common' she could find no other word about 
 that coUar. Benson might have worn it. 
 
 And in the middle of taking down a formal business 
 communication she suddenly realised that he was speaking 
 to her. She had entered ' I can't go on with this, to-day,' 
 in her notebook before she understood that the remark 
 was addressed to herself and not to the procrastinating 
 firm of printers who had recently had a strike of their 
 linotype operators. 
 
 He went on without changing his attitude or looking 
 up from his desk : 
 
 'I can't give my mind to business. Everything is so 
 difficult. My father .... There are so many 
 things you ought to know before .... before this 
 afternoon. I should be so glad if you could come 
 home with me, this afternoon, and meet my father 
 and mother . . . .' 
 
 Evelyn jerked in a short 'oh !' of remonstrance, but he 
 probably gave it the value of surprise, for he continued, 
 rather in the manner of one confessing to an outrageous 
 crime :
 
 104 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'If you could, I should be so tremendously glad. The 
 truth is that things are much more complicated than they 
 may appear to be. When I came here, eight years ago, 
 it was on the understanding, more or less, that I should 
 eventually become a partner. But, now, my father 
 doesn't think it advisable to put money into this business, 
 for financial reasons. Also, he thinks that I've no special 
 aptitude for it. He says that if I had been really capable 
 I should have worked the business up, whereas it has 
 gone steadily down for the last three or four years.' 
 
 'Yes,' Evelyn said, and her inflexion displayed a clear 
 intention to carry on. She had ideas about the future 
 programme of Robert Wing, Publisher, and after Philip's 
 ominous introduction, she was eager to impart them to 
 him. They might, she thought, contain material for his 
 consolation. But he meant, now, to finish his confession. 
 
 'I think he is right,' he continued, rather more quickly. 
 ' I haven't any real aptitude for work of this kind. I can 
 manage an office, but, as my father says, any intelligent 
 person can do that. What Mr Wing wants, either in a 
 partner or a manager, is someone with more initiative. 
 So you see, I am, in fact, a failure.' 
 
 ' Oh ! no,' Evelyn put in warmly. She was beginning 
 to wonder if he were leading up to the revocation of what 
 might rank as one of the shortest engagements on record, 
 but apart from her sympathy for him, she could not 
 possibly endorse his confession of failure. 
 
 'You don't think so?' he asked, and she thought for a 
 moment that he was going to look up. 
 
 ' Oh ! no, certainly not. There must be organisation as 
 well as initiative,' she said. 'And Mr Wing, as the 
 responsible head of the business, ought to provide the 
 initiative. And your office methods and organisation are 
 so splendid.' 
 
 He sighed wearily. ' It's all mechanical work,' he said. 
 'I don't take any real pride in it. It isn't what I want 
 to do. When I came I hoped .... I thought I 
 might become a a writer, but . . . .' 
 
 'Why haven't you? ' she prompted him, and the gentle
 
 EVELYN 105 
 
 encouragement of her tone seemed to suggest that he 
 could certainly become an author if he cared to try. She 
 leant a little towards him with a movement that was 
 almost the beginning of a caress. 
 
 'I have tried a hundred times. I've had one or two 
 articles published. But I can't write .... yet,' 
 he said. 'At least I couldn't till yesterday. Let me say 
 everything, now. It's this, chiefly, I think, I'm almost 
 certain that if you . . . Even last night, after all 
 this bother with my father, it was different. I .... 
 I wanted to write. I felt I could because you .... 
 But, then, how can I ask you .... anything? If 
 I have to leave here, I should be entirely dependent on 
 my father, until I could get some other work . . . .' 
 
 He stopped in the middle, but he had said enough to 
 give her courage. She laid her hands on his, and gently 
 pulled them away from their fierce entanglement with 
 his hair. He did not resist her, and slowly, almost re- 
 luctantly, he lifted his head. But when he had, at last, 
 dared to look at her, he could not look away; so that 
 although she continued to hold his hands, she blushed 
 and her head drooped as she said with a slightly trembling 
 tenderness : 
 
 ' If I could only help you .... to write, nothing 
 else would matter. And, of course, we'll go down together 
 to see your father and mother, this afternoon. I had 
 asked my uncle to meet you at tea he is my only near 
 relation but I will put him off. Or, perhaps, we should 
 have time for that afterwards? Could we get back to 
 Warwick Street by five, do you think? ' 
 
 He took no notice of her question. He was holding her 
 hands more tightly, now, and his eyes watched her with 
 a strange yearning. 
 
 'Love is surrender,' he said suddenly, and with the 
 hushed air of one who makes an amazing discovery. 
 
 'Of course/ she said, under her breath. 
 
 He stood up, still holding her hands, and drew her to 
 her feet. He pulled her slowly towards him until the 
 curve of the green overall at her bosom was just touching 
 
 G.C. H
 
 io6 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 him. She heard him draw in his breath with a long sighing 
 inspiration, and then she felt her hands released and one 
 of his arms about her neck. The delicate intensity of the 
 embrace had a quality of consummate emotion. It seemed 
 as if any further intimacy would bring sensation to a pitch 
 that was almost unendurable. And yet she felt that his 
 clasp of her was tightening, that his breath was coming in 
 short gasps, that the arm about her neck was gently raising 
 her head. 
 
 ' Oh ! Philip; oh ! Philip,' she whispered. Her heart 
 was throbbing against his breast with a fury of nervous, 
 ecstatic expectation. 
 
 She thought she must faint under the dragging intensity 
 of his kiss. He seemed to be absorbing her into himself, 
 to be mingling her body and soul with his .... 
 
 And then she heard a door slam, and the sound of little 
 Wing's flustering steps in the passage. She tried to drag 
 herself away, but Philip could not instantly release her. 
 They were hardly separated when the handle of the door 
 rattled. They were standing flushed and hopelessly 
 embarrassed. They were caught; disgracefully! All the 
 sweet ecstasy of their embrace had been degraded; and 
 they hesitated, self-conscious and ashamed, awaiting 
 through a long suspense the threatened exposure. 
 
 It never came. They heard little Wing's voice speaking 
 to someone in the passage outside, and a moment later 
 the latch of the door clicked its signal of release. They 
 were saved. Wing had pattered away down the passage 
 towards the head of the stairs. They had time to recover 
 their powers of circumspection. But in that instant of 
 fear, all the mischief of Philip's life-long repressions had 
 been cruelly aggravated. 
 
 Evelyn recovered with a laugh that expressed relief 
 rather than amusement. Her hands went first to her 
 hair, and then she laid them on her cheeks to cool the 
 burn of her face. ' How silly ! ' she said, making an effort 
 to achieve complacency. 'Let me see, what were we 
 talking about ? Oh ! about our going to Herne Hill and 
 whether we could get back to Warwick Street in time for
 
 EVELYN 107 
 
 tea. I don't see why we shouldn't, do you?' She sat 
 down and looked up at Philip with an air that was per- 
 ceptibly tinged with the manner of Miss Lang. 
 
 The interruption, now that they were saved, had not 
 so greatly disturbed her; but she could not at once recover 
 equanimity after the sacred intensity of the embrace she 
 had so recently known. It was something outside all her 
 experience, real or imaginary. She knew that her life 
 was changed; that a new and unresented limit had been 
 imposed upon her freedom. ' Love is surrender,' he had 
 said, and she felt that she had once and for all made the 
 ultimate surrender. All her doubts had gone. She had 
 given herself and rejoiced through all her being. The 
 conventions had surrounded them again; but the outward 
 necessity to conform to a code of manners in no way 
 affected the secret profundities of their new relationship. 
 They had shared an experience that must unite them for 
 all time. All the interferences of life could be nothing 
 more, in future, than a superficial misunderstanding . . . 
 
 ' I should like you to meet my uncle,' she said. 
 
 Philip had not moved. He felt shaken and fatigued. 
 The horrid devil of his youth and his dreams had nearly 
 escaped, and had been thrust back with furiously active 
 hands. The struggle was over, but he had not won solely 
 by his own effort. If Mr Wing had not come, the devil 
 might have become master. In Philip's thought were 
 such words as 'abasement' and 'shame,' but his long 
 habit of repression would not permit him to speak them. 
 He believed that Evelyn shared his horror. He read her 
 speech of trivialities as evidence of a shame, perhaps 
 greater than his own. And it was necessary for him, 
 now, to recover, as she had done, the sanity of the normal. 
 They had been saved by the interposition of some personal 
 Providence. In future, he would set a still stricter guard 
 over himself. 
 
 He sank back into his own chair, at last, with a hint of 
 exhaustion. 
 
 'What were you saying? ' he asked weakly. 
 
 ' Has it shaken you so? ' Evelyn returned.
 
 io8 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 He looked at her and smiled, and then sat up with a 
 show of alertness. ' Oh ! no, rather not/ he said; framed 
 an excuse in his mind and decided that the safest course 
 lay in evasion. 'Weren't you saying something about 
 my meeting your uncle? ' he asked, almost briskly. 
 
 Evelyn, after the briefest hesitation, accepted his cue. 
 She recognised that after his righteous indignation of the 
 day before, it would have been very humiliating for him 
 to be found committing what, in Mr Wing's eyes, could 
 only be regarded as precisely the same offence. She 
 wondered if his heart were not very strong. In future, 
 it must be her duty to save him, if she could, from sudden 
 alarms. 
 
 They were discussing trains when little Wing returned. 
 He had his hat on and kept it on while he was speaking. 
 
 ' I'm going out of town, Maning,' he said. ' I just wanted 
 to say that I should be glad if you would give a message 
 to your father from me and explain that I shan't be up on 
 Monday. You might ask if Tuesday, at the same time, 
 would suit him. You can tell me on Tuesday morning 
 and if it wouldn't I'll ring him up. I couldn't get on to 
 him this morning. He was out.' 
 
 He left the room in a bustle without once glancing at 
 Evelyn. 
 
 'There will be trouble on Tuesday afternoon,' Philip 
 remarked with a shade of whimsicality in his tone. 
 
 Evelyn's face brightened. This was the first time she 
 had found in him any indication of a sense of humour. 
 
 'Will there?' she asked. 'About the partnership?' 
 
 Philip nodded. 'It's just possible that Tuesday may 
 be my last day in the office,' he said. 
 
 ' Oh ! no, surely not,' she protested, and added, ' Would 
 you mind? ' 
 
 'Mind?' he repeated. 'If you only knew the relief it 
 would be. One splendid row with Wing and after- 
 wards . . . .' 
 
 'Freedom?' she suggested. 
 
 He sighed. 'Hardly that,' he said. 'There's my 
 father-'
 
 EVELYN 109 
 
 'I'm dreadfully nervous about meeting him,' she con- 
 fessed. 
 
 ' I'm nervous, too,' he admitted. ' He is rather rather 
 terrifying sometimes. He is so stern and so formal.' 
 
 ' But so are you,' Evelyn said gaily. 
 
 He stared at her in sincerest amazement. 
 
 'Didn't you know it?' she insisted. 
 
 'If you could only guess how absurdly timid I am/ he 
 said. 
 
 She found it delightful to chaff him, and he appeared 
 to welcome her new freedom of speech. 
 
 They were at the beginning of the spurious intimacy 
 which was to serve them for so long as a vehicle of inter- 
 course. 
 
 10 
 
 They acquired facility in the use of their new medium 
 of exchange during the afternoon. Evelyn was nervous 
 and excited and she found distraction in a continuous 
 ripple of chatter. She was afraid of silence, and Philip, 
 on his part, was ready for entertainment. He was 
 searching for a compromise, and this superficial conver- 
 sation appeared to offer a solution. The women in Edgar 
 Norman's books sometimes talked as Evelyn was talking. 
 The duty of their attendant cavaliers was to encourage 
 and admire. There was precedent for these manners. 
 Philip's imagination slipped forward again to the 
 contemplation of that epilogistic honeymoon in Capri, 
 and he recast the twilit dialogue into a new fantasy. 
 
 She definitely took shape for him as the remote and 
 beautiful heroine before their day was finished. He knew 
 little enough of the young women of his own or other 
 suburbs from personal contact; but he realised that he 
 had always been aware of them, now that Evelyn's speech 
 and behaviour provided him with a contrast. When he 
 took her ticket for her at St Paul's, she accepted his 
 responsibility for the cost of their expedition without
 
 no GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 acknowledgment. And he knew that the young women 
 of his own class would have made it an occasion for pro- 
 test. The fact of his paying for the ticket might have 
 been accepted, but there would have been disclaimers. 
 In imagination he could hear the words and accent of the 
 meaningless insistence. 'No, really, Philip, I can't let 
 you pay for my ticket not yet.' Possibly the whole 
 argument might have been entered upon for the sake of 
 that last innuendo? He might have actually overheard 
 that very sentence spoken? Evelyn smiled at him with 
 a kind of serene approval when he met her again at the 
 entrance to the platform stairs. She accepted his service 
 without thought. She did not seem to be aware of it. 
 And he knew that hers was the attitude that he had wished 
 for and admired. 
 
 She exhibited another aspect of it in the crowded second- 
 class carriage. She did not blush or giggle or bridle. She 
 talked to him with an ease that disregarded the other eight 
 passengers in their apartment. She was as much at home 
 with him as if she had been his sister. And the subject 
 of her conversation was unembarrassingly appropriate. 
 She spent the twelve minutes of their journey in giving 
 him an account of her one visit to the Crystal Palace and 
 in asking him questions about that strange place of enter- 
 tainment. They had slid easily into a discussion of the 
 Handel Festival by the time they had come out of Herne 
 Hill station. 
 
 But he recognised, then, her recent awareness of their 
 late fellow passengers, for she took his arm with a quick 
 gesture of appeal and said, 
 
 ' Bother Handel and the Palace ! Do tell me what your 
 father will say to me, Philip. Don't walk too fast. I'm 
 appallingly nervous.' 
 
 'I can't believe it,' he returned. 'You are bound to 
 impress him.' He wished that she had not taken his arm, 
 otherwise she was an aspect of perfection. 
 
 ' I'm glad I put this frock on if it was only for uncle's 
 benefit,' she remarked obscurely. 'It isn't exactly new, 
 but it gives me confidence. Shall I be proud, or do you
 
 EVELYN in 
 
 think it would appeal more to him if I appeared as the 
 modest, suppliant daughter-in-law elect ? ' 
 
 'If only he isn't gardening,' was Philip's irrelevant 
 response. 
 
 'Oh ! but Philip; does he garden? Why didn't you tell 
 me? ' she said eagerly. '/ used to garden. It's a subject; 
 and such a subject. There's always hope with a man 
 who gardens, however gloomy he may be. You did say 
 he was gloomy, or morose, or something, didn't you? 
 You're not offended?' 
 
 ' Yes, he is gloomy and morose,' Philip agreed thought- 
 fully. ' I have never said so, I hadn't thought of him like 
 that, but it's true.' 
 
 'Philip, are you fond of him?' Evelyn put in with the 
 air of one approaching a topic of true importance. 
 
 'I respect him,' Philip said. 
 
 'Of course/ she commented, with a little droop of dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 'I suppose I am "fond" of him,' Philip amended, using 
 her word with the emphasis of quotation. 
 
 ' I loved my father,' Evelyn said with quiet enthusiasm. 
 
 'Is he . . . . isn't he, then?' Philip asked, 
 allusively. 
 
 'He has been dead for six years, poor darling,' Evelyn 
 said and correcting any false impression by adding at 
 once, 'But I'm certain that he's very happy, now. He 
 must have gone straight to happiness. He did deserve 
 it so. And I told you that my only near relation is my 
 charming uncle. Had you forgotten? But I've got quite 
 a respectable family history if your father and mother 
 want to put me through a cross-examination. It's true 
 that I had a grandmother who was rather scandalous; 
 but we needn't go back as far as that; and she had the 
 excuse of being half-French.' 
 
 Peter was working the front garden in his shirt sleeves, 
 and Philip's sudden drag on Evelyn's arm, and the halting 
 gesture of his other hand, at once proclaimed his father's 
 identity. She looked up at him with a smile of reassurance, 
 and gently pressed his arm.
 
 ii2 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'We haven't been such very naughty children,' she 
 whispered. 
 
 Philip drew comfort from the courage of her indepen- 
 dence. It came to him that he had nothing to fear from 
 his father. And then he frowned nervously and gave 
 expression to his surface apprehension by saying, 
 
 ' I'm so afraid he'll be rude to you' 
 
 ' Oh ! never mind,' returned Evelyn recklessty. 
 
 Peter looked up and stared as they halted at the gate, 
 and Evelyn in a flush of nervousness broke into volubility 
 without waiting for Philip's introduction. 
 
 'It's so delightful to see a garden again, Mr Maning,' 
 she said. 'We had such a sweet garden at home. My 
 father was the Dean of Medborough, yon know. And it 
 reminded me so of him to see you working here. He 
 used to forget his meetings with the Chapter, sometimes, 
 and had to be sent for. They knew they were sure to find 
 him among his roses. But don't you trench your sweet 
 peas?' 
 
 Philip stood and shivered, clinging nevertheless to the 
 new hope that pierced his despair when Evelyn announced 
 the amazing fact that she was the daughter of a Dean. 
 She ought to have told him, he thought. If he had had 
 that magnificent credential to display last night, he might, 
 perhaps, have made his own terms. Now, the announce- 
 ment would be discredited. Peter would be suspicious, 
 justly wondering why, if this remarkable thing were true, 
 he had not been told earlier. Indeed, Philip showed very 
 clearly that he understood neither Evelyn nor his own 
 father. 
 
 She had leapt to her announcement in sheer terror. 
 She was fully aware of her parentage as of a possible 
 advantage, and had hinted as much to Philip on their way 
 up from the station; but she was sufficiently self-conscious 
 to realise the boastful sound of her Deanery either in the 
 office or in this house of Philip's. 
 
 And Peter was overborne, an eventuality his son had 
 never foreseen. Peter had met members of the aristocracy 
 in the practice of his profession, and he recognised the
 
 EVELYN 113 
 
 type. And to the social splendour was now added the 
 authority of high office in the Established Church. He 
 might bully in his own province, but he knew the proper 
 duties and satisfactions of reverence. And, no doubt, 
 buried far below the malignant tendencies of his stubborn 
 floriculture, lay a secret pride that he had never cared to 
 display. His wife and son, as far as they had dared to 
 offer any comment, had shown a propensity to deplore his 
 activities as gardener. His City friends would have 
 despised his attempts as the triflings of an inept amateur. 
 He had never had a word of encouragement or praise until 
 this beautiful, fluent young woman had descended so 
 unexpectedly to compare him with a Dean haled unwillingly 
 to the Chapter House. 
 
 Peter dusted the mould from his hands. ' I don't believe 
 in spoiling them/ he said, and the reference was obviously 
 to the trenching of sweet peas. 'If they'll grow at all, 
 they ought to grow without my nursing 'em.' 
 
 Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief. 'You have to spoil 
 them, Mr Maning,' she said. ' You have to treat them as 
 little, tender, helpless things. I'm sure that was why my 
 father loved his garden. He used to say that he could 
 afford to give himself to his flowers because they were 
 never ungrateful; the more pains he took, the greater the 
 reward they brought him. He was never the least bitter, 
 but he sometimes shook his head over his proteges he 
 had such a lot and wished they were more like his roses.' 
 
 'I've always fancied that the soil hereabouts didn't 
 favour roses,' Peter commented. 'We're on gravel, here, 
 which has its advantages from other points of view. I 
 took the house before Philip was born. It seemed to me 
 at the time to be an opportunity.' 
 
 'I think it's a charming little house/ Evelyn said with 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Peter shrugged his shoulders and put on his coat. 'Is 
 your mother expecting you?' he asked Philip. 'She's in 
 her own room, still; or was half an hour ago/ 
 
 He knew that he had been inveigled, and it may be 
 that for once he was not sorry. Philip might have made
 
 ii4 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 a fool of him by withholding that essential fact of Miss 
 Lang's social position. Philip was uncommonly stupid 
 at times. Peter had no intention of boasting the proposed 
 alliance, but he would find much satisfaction in keeping 
 the dignity of it in reserve. He looked at his son with a 
 new curiosity as the three of them moved towards the 
 house. 
 
 Philip was not present at the interview between Evelyn 
 and his mother. He intended to stay, but Evelyn would 
 not let him, and Mrs Maning unexpectedly supported her 
 after having made him promise before he left the house 
 that morning that he would not go away while Evelyn 
 was there. Philip, seeking a refuge in which to await 
 Evelyn's reappearance, was vaguely aware that the old 
 rules and order of ' Middlethorpe ' were being seriously 
 disturbed. He met his father in the hall, and the two 
 men looked at each other with the nearest approach to 
 understanding they had ever shown. 
 
 'Come into my study,' grumbled Peter. 'Left her 
 with your mother, have you? I don't know if you realise 
 that I don't even know her name, yet. Where did you 
 meet her?' 
 
 Philip explained and Peter listened for once without 
 interruption. 
 
 ' Father dead, I suppose,' he commented when Philip 
 paused and added 'Has she Miss Lang got any private 
 fortune?' 
 
 'I've no idea,' Philip said. 'I shouldn't think it could 
 be much in any case or she wouldn't have taken Thurston's 
 place.' He had used that description in his explanation. 
 It gave Evelyn a status. 
 
 'Modern craze; women going into business,' remarked 
 Peter. 'Has she got any special aptitude? It seemed to 
 me, just now, that she had plenty of self-confidence.' 
 
 ' Yes, I should say she had aptitude,' Philip said. ' But, 
 of course, she'll give up her work after we are married.' 
 
 ' I'm sure I don't know what you are going to live on,' 
 Peter returned. 'I've written to Wing . . . .' 
 
 ' Yes, I know/ Philip interrupted. ' He sent a message
 
 EVELYN 115 
 
 by me to know if you could make it Tuesday at the same 
 time. He'll be out of town on Monday.' 
 
 'Yes, I can see him on Tuesday,' Peter said after a 
 moment's reflection. 'You understand, don't you, that 
 I'm going to cry off that partnership? ' 
 
 Philip nodded. 
 
 ' Well, what do you propose to do ? ' 
 
 ' If Wing won't keep me on? ' 
 
 ' He won't. Take that as certain,' Peter said. 
 
 Philip looked at his father with all his old boyish 
 wistfulness. What do you suggest ? ' he asked. 
 
 'Well, I suppose you've had a training of a sort,' Peter 
 said. 'Couldn't you go to another publisher? Or there's 
 advertising. You must know something about that, now. 
 There are opportunities in advertising for a man with a 
 head on his shoulders.' 
 
 And Philip had been dreaming of writing books, poetry, 
 essays, perhaps a novel, something in the manner of Edgar 
 Norman. He had material, now, and inspiration. Evelyn 
 would surely approve, and she was there in the house with 
 him at the present moment. She would give him support 
 and confidence. But the old habit was too strong for him, 
 as yet. He had not the power of initiative to break the 
 stereotyped relation. The flash of understanding between 
 himself and his father had died out again. 
 
 'I know something of advertising, of course,' Philip 
 said, and then wondered how it was that he who had 
 bullied little Wing without a thought of fear, should sub- 
 mit so easily to his father's every command. Was it that 
 he had no faith in his own ability to make a living by 
 literature; that he had no cause worth fighting for? Why 
 should he take it for granted that Peter would oppose 
 any suggestion of his son's ambition in letters with a flat 
 rebuke ? 
 
 'Well, you'd better think that over before Tuesday/ 
 Peter said. ' I fancy I hear your Miss Lang coming down- 
 stairs.' 
 
 He seemed relieved to hear that Philip and Evelyn were 
 returning to town for tea; his inevitable expression of
 
 n6 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 disapproval was nothing but an acknowledgment of 
 necessary custom. 
 
 But before they went, Evelyn held the ground she had 
 won by insisting that she must see all the garden, although 
 there was nothing to see in April; and she argued points 
 of policy with regard to seeds in a way that charged Philip 
 with nervous anxiety. He was afraid that at any moment 
 his father's resentment might overflow. 
 
 He confessed that anxiety to Evelyn as they returned 
 to the station, after a visit to ' Middlethorpe ' that had 
 lasted a bare three quarters of an hour. 
 
 ' Couldn't you see how he liked to be contradicted? ' was 
 Evelyn's astonishing reply. 
 
 Philip's response was little more than a gasp of in- 
 credulity. 
 
 'Really, he did/ she insisted. 'I believe you and your 
 mother, what a dear she is ! have been far too obedient. 
 He likes opposition. Why do you give way to him so, 
 Philip?' 
 
 'It always seems to me that he must be right/ Philip 
 said. 
 
 ' No one is always right/ Evelyn affirmed. 
 
 'This afternoon while you were upstairs, for instance/ 
 began Philip, and gave her the gist of the brief debate on 
 his own prospects. 
 
 ' But of course you must write/ she proclaimed without 
 a moment's hesitation. 
 
 'He'll never let me/ Philip replied despondently; 'at 
 least, he'll never let me take to writing as a sole means of 
 getting a livelihood/ 
 
 ' Have you ever asked him? ' Evelyn put in. 
 
 'No! But I'm absolutely certain. Absolutely/ he 
 said. 
 
 ' You're really a very astonishing person/ was Evelyn's 
 comment. 
 
 Philip shook his head impatiently. 'If you could 
 realise . . . / v/as his next opening and their argu- 
 ment proceeded with the elisions that were an essential 
 of Evelyn's conversation.
 
 EVELYN 117 
 
 'Are you quite sure that I don't?' she asked, 
 
 'But you've only seen him for ten minutes.' 
 
 ' At least you might make the attempt.' 
 
 'If I were quite sure in my own mind that it is the 
 right thing for me to do.' 
 
 'And you couldn't trust me to tell you?' 
 
 'How can you know, yet? You've seen nothing I've 
 ever tried to write.' 
 
 'There were the business letters,' she suggested slyly. 
 
 His sense of the right attitude made him pause to ac- 
 knowledge that. 'I've often wondered if you were 
 laughing at me over those letters,' he said. 
 
 'I wasn't. Never,' she returned hastily. 'But tell me 
 what sort of things do you want to write, now. A novel ? ' 
 
 ' Perhaps.' 
 
 'I'm sure you could,' she said. 'You would be so 
 earnest, and so truthful; and people are beginning to want 
 the truth in novels. They're sick of nonsense like Edgar 
 Norman's.' 
 
 Philip could hardly have been more aghast if she had 
 made confession of any other form of libertinism. 
 
 'Do you mean to say that you don't admire his books? ' 
 he asked. 
 
 'But, surely, you don't either?' she said. She knew 
 very well that he did, but she meant to cure him of that 
 weakness. She expected to find him apologetic; she had 
 no suspicion that she had attacked one of his principles. 
 
 ' Indeed, I do,' he said stiffly. 
 
 'But, Philip, why?' she pleaded. 
 
 'I admire his writing immensely; and his attitude 
 towards women.' 
 
 ' His attitude towards women is merely silly,' she argued. 
 
 'It's my attitude, too.' He made his declaration 
 steadily, with no hint of apology. 
 
 In her heart she wondered if he were merely being what 
 she already described to herself as ' Peterish.' ' Oh ! no, 
 it isn't,' she said lightly. 'You are far too sensible for 
 that. You must know that women are human beings 
 just as much as men.'
 
 n8 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 She stated the one fact in life of which Philip was most 
 afraid, with no apparent realisation of the awful thing 
 she had said; and Philip consoled himself with a reflexion 
 on her ignorance. She must be warned, but she need 
 not be rebuked. She had no conception of the dreadful 
 innuendo that her speech had carried. 
 
 'What a horrible thing to say,' he remarked coldly. 
 ' It sounded rather like Mr Wing.' 
 
 Evelyn looked at him in blank astonishment. 'What 
 do you mean ? ' she said, in a tone that should have warned 
 him. But Philip had his head in the air. He was too 
 convinced to consider her remonstrance. 
 
 'Remarks like that,' he explained, 'are the beginning 
 of all sorts of mischief; and it's that attitude that is 
 made an excuse for all this prurient fiction. It's beastly. 
 I hate it.' 
 
 ' Oh ! nonsense,' Evelyn said sharply. ' For goodness' 
 sake, Philip, don't be a prig.' 
 
 It was his turn, now, to be astonished. She had 
 brought him down with a jerk from his vapourings in the 
 middle air, and it was her head that expressed disdain 
 as they walked down Milkwood Road, with the slight 
 access of speed due to an excitement of temper. 
 
 For a few yards they walked in silence. Evelyn was 
 hot with resentment at what she considered an undeserved 
 and altogether insulting rebuke. Philip was stiff with 
 the blank obstinacy of the fanatic. He had come back 
 to earth, but he had not fallen on his knees. 
 
 Evelyn was the first to recover her willingness for speech. 
 ' Oh ! it's ridiculous to suppose that we are quarrelling, 
 already,' she said, addressing some invisible third person. 
 
 Philip said nothing. He looked as if he might be staring at 
 the hypothetical mediator whom Evelyn had just invoked. 
 
 For a moment she felt a strong desire to shake him, 
 but she remembered Peter and the white, subdued face 
 of that woman in the bedroom upstairs; and determinedly 
 made allowance for her lover's upbringing. 
 
 'Don't let us be ridiculous, Philip,' she said, looking up 
 at him.
 
 EVELYN 119 
 
 He looked back at her with none of the evasion of a 
 man who has lost his temper. His expression was set 
 and hard, but it was neither ashamed nor indignant. 
 
 'You did not accuse me of being a prig yesterday 
 afternoon/ he said quietly. 
 
 'That wasn't a bit the same thing/ she protested. 'All 
 I said was that women are . . . / 
 
 But he could not hear a repetition of that profanity. 
 He interrupted her. 'I know/ he said. 'I don't want 
 you to say it again. It hurts me/ 
 
 She was too bewildered to attempt a further remon- 
 strance, just then. His equanimity was so disturbing 
 that she began to wonder if her remark was, indeed, 
 capable of some other, some quite horrible interpretation. 
 Could he have supposed? .... She blushed un- 
 comfortably at the thought of what impossible things 
 he might have supposed. But they were already at the 
 entrance to the station and questions were impossible 
 until they reached Victoria. They hardly spoke to one 
 another in the train. 
 
 Her last effort to achieve vindication was not made 
 until they were within a hundred yards of her lodgings 
 in Warwick Street. 
 
 'Philip, I must ask you one thing/ she said, then, 
 on a note of desperation. 'You didn't .... you 
 couldn't possibly have thought I meant anything . . . 
 unpleasant, just now .... when we were walking 
 down to the station?' 
 
 'I'm sure you didn't intend to/ Philip said. 
 
 'But . . . / she began to protest. 
 
 ' Can't you see that I must always worship you? ' he said. 
 ' I don't want to think of you as being .... like myself/ 
 
 She was reassured on one point, but very doubtful if 
 she were equal to playing the part of an un-mortal heroine. 
 And she had no one, now, in whom to confide. After that 
 kiss of the morning, uncle Eustace was no longer a possible 
 father confessor. She had ratified the engagement, and 
 she could not draw back because her lover considered her 
 more than mortal.
 
 120 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 She realised, nevertheless, how perilously she was 
 swinging again, as she listened to the deftness of her 
 uncle's conversation while the three of them sat round 
 Colonel Barker's tea-table. She knew perfectly well that 
 she ought not, at this moment of her engagement, to be 
 making excuses for Philip on the ground that he had not 
 had her uncle's opportunities. She wanted, quite 
 earnestly, to accept the inevitable man of her choice as 
 above criticism, but when she made the effort, her mind 
 refused to consider anything but that amazing disagree- 
 ment in Milkwood Road. She was so unequivocally sure 
 that she was right. Also, she had an intuition of danger, 
 of some threat to her own and Philip's happiness, implicit 
 in his stilted rebuke. What the danger was, she could 
 not guess. Almost she could persuade herself that his 
 respect for women was a splendid and wonderful thing; 
 but when she remembered its most recent expression, she 
 was beset by unaccountable feelings of annoyance and 
 restraint. It seemed as if Philip had attempted to 
 contradict some all important, but imperfectly realised, 
 article of her faith. 
 
 She put away the impossible problem at last and gave 
 a further fraction of her attention to the conversation 
 between her uncle and Philip. They had discovered a 
 common acquaintance; an almost certain contingency 
 in view of the fact that Eustace Lang 'knew everybody.' 
 She had not heard how the name of Blenkinsop had come 
 up, and wondered why Philip was looking embarrassed. 
 
 ' Oh ! yes, I know him slightly,' he was saying. ' I have 
 been to his club twice the Oxford and I have seen him 
 at other times. Not recently. Not for two or three 
 years, now, I think.' 
 
 'Queer fellow, isn't he?' Lang commented with a 
 reflective smile. 'He has the reputation of being what 
 is sometimes called a "codder." Wonderful billiard 
 player. Perhaps, you haven't seen him play billiards?' 
 
 'Yes, I have,' Philip said. 'Once. At his club. I 
 don't know much about the game, but I could see how 
 well he played.'
 
 EVELYN 121 
 
 'Who is this wonderful Mr Blenkinsop?' Evelyn put in 
 brightly. 'I've never heard you mention him, Philip.' 
 
 Her uncle made a playful gesture of rebuke. ' Ah ! I 
 fancy that's rather by way of being a trade secret/ he 
 said; 'although most people know it now, I fancy.' He 
 smiled at Philip with an air of bland encouragement, but 
 Philip failed to respond. 
 
 Evelyn leaned eagerly forward. 'A trade secret,' she 
 said, with her eyes on Philip. 'Our trade? Is your Mr 
 Blenkinsop a famous, anonymous writer?' 
 
 And even as she asked the question, the answer pre- 
 sented itself to her, clear and unquestionable as the 
 solution of a puzzle. She saw again the steps of the 
 Oxford Club that Philip had just mentioned, and the 
 unforgettable figure of the gross, fair man, who had 
 appeared so much grosser by contrast with the slim, active 
 youth at his side. She remembered, too, that she had 
 had a copy of Marzipan in her hand. She had tried to 
 read it in the 'bus in order to forget the strange attraction 
 of Philip's eyes; and certain pages of that book would be 
 for ever associated with her first picture of him. From 
 that the easy leap of her imagination needed no further 
 stimulus to guess the identity of the fat man with Edgar 
 Norman. 
 
 ' Oh ! well, Mr Maning isn't, of course, at liberty to 
 speak. It would be unfair to press him,' her uncle was 
 saying. 
 
 Evelyn took no heed of him. 'Philip! You don't 
 mean to tell me that thai man, in Piccadilly, five years 
 ago, was Edgar Norman?' she asked. 
 
 Philip blushed and looked down. 'His appearance is 
 frightfully against him,' he conceded. 
 
 Evelyn leaned back in her chair with a long ripple of 
 laughter. 'But it explains everything,' she said. 'What 
 was your word, uncle? A codder? How delightful ! 
 Oh ! yes, he must certainly be a codder.' 
 
 Philip sighed patiently. 'It isn't fair to make fun of 
 him like that,' he said. 
 
 ' No, no; quite true; it isn't,' Lang agreed. ' As a matter 
 G.C. I
 
 122 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 of fact, Blenkinsop is, without question, a man of very 
 unusual abilities. By the way, it's a long time since 
 we've had a book from him. Has he given up writing, 
 altogether?' 
 
 'Yes; altogether,' replied Philip; and he glanced a little 
 defiantly at Evelyn, as he continued, 'I think it's a 
 tremendous pity.' 
 
 'I ought to explain, uncle,' Evelyn put in, 'that Philip 
 and I have had our first quarrel this afternoon; all about 
 Edgar Norman's books. Philip admires them. I don't. 
 And we've been wondering if London is big enough to 
 hold two people who disagree on such a vital subject.' 
 
 Lang took his usual safe course. He had a natural 
 genius for diplomacy. ' I think the old Latin tag says, in 
 effect, that a question of taste isn't worth quarrelling 
 about,' he said. 'And I don't believe for a moment that 
 you and Philip it is obvious that I must call him Philip 
 would quarrel over such a subject as the literary merits 
 of our friend Blenkinsop. But you ought to meet him, 
 Evelyn. You've been a trifle prejudiced by your one 
 sight of him.' 
 
 Evelyn shuddered. 'I don't want to meet him,' she 
 said instinctively and made a little grimace. She looked 
 at Philip, nevertheless, with a shade of anxiety. She 
 was afraid that her natural response to that suggestion 
 of meeting Edgar Norman might be regarded as a further 
 offence. 
 
 To her surprise and relief he smiled without a suspicion 
 of tolerance. ' But surely you admire his literary style ? ' 
 he asked. 
 
 She wanted to defend her point of view, but Philip's 
 unexpected amenity deserved recognition. 'I suppose I 
 am prejudiced,' she admitted. 'But it wasn't by his 
 appearance. I didn't know what he looked like until 
 five minutes ago. And, like everyone else, I suppose, I 
 was partly influenced by that photograph in The Young 
 Adonis. Philip, how could you?' 
 
 'He persuaded me,' Philip explained. 'I was rather 
 sorry for him. I'm sure you would have been, too, if you
 
 EVELYN 123 
 
 had heard what a rotten time he'd had, just because of 
 of his appearance.' 
 
 'Did he tell you that?' Evelyn's wonderful eyes were 
 suddenly intent and earnest, and Philip, at that moment, 
 would have done anything to please her short of sacrificing 
 one of his sacred principles. 
 
 'Don't you believe it? ' he asked. 
 
 She shook her head decisively. ' Do you? ' she returned. 
 
 'I did' Philip admitted. 
 
 'But, now?' she insisted. 'Don't you think, now, that 
 he was probably "codding?" Oh! I like that word for 
 him. He has eyes like an immense, solemn, hypocritical 
 cod.' 
 
 Philip watched her, entranced. ' If he was, it was very 
 clever of him,' he said. 
 
 'But of course he's clever,' returned Evelyn with an 
 accent on the epithet that gave it all the colour of abuse. 
 
 Her uncle who had been leaning back in his chair 
 watching, with evident amusement, his niece's subjugation 
 of Philip; joined in the conversation by commenting, 'If 
 cleverness is such a crime, Evelyn, you must be a great 
 criminal.' 
 
 She turned on him at once. She was fully aware of her 
 power, just then, and she was pleased with herself, with 
 Philip and her uncle. 
 
 'Cleverness without sincerity is a crime,' she said. 'I 
 know Philip will agree with me in that.' 
 
 ' As if he agreed with you about nothing else under the 
 sun/ laughed her uncle. 
 
 ' It's just a sort of low cunning/ she persisted, not to be 
 diverted from her point. 
 
 ' And sincerity without cleverness is what ? ' Lang asked. 
 
 ' Well, it's always beautiful/ returned Evelyn without a 
 thought of the principle to which she was committing 
 herself. 
 
 'It's a nice point whether a witch can be described as 
 clever, sincere and always beautiful/ Lang remarked in 
 a stage aside to Philip. 
 
 'Perhaps it isn't safe to generalise from a single
 
 124 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 example/ Philip replied and blushed a little at his own 
 boldness. 
 
 Evelyn waved a protesting hand at both of them. '/ 
 was serious/ she said. 
 
 It was all going very well, almost like a scene from 
 Marzipan Philip thought. And Evelyn, after her one 
 brief failure in Milkwood Road, had shone out again more 
 gloriously remote and ideal than ever. When he re- 
 membered that kiss in the office, he was filled with shame 
 and self-reproach. He had belittled her. What had 
 possessed him? He had deserved to lose her for that 
 detestable familiarity. 
 
 He rose at once when Lang announced about six o'clock 
 that he must get back to the club; and Evelyn, after a 
 rather conventional protest, did not press him to stay. 
 She was not afraid of shocking Merton, but she was just 
 perceptibly afraid of being left alone with Philip. He 
 had been a dear and behaved very nicely before her uncle, 
 and she had a feeling that it might be well to close the 
 long day's adventure with that feeling of satisfaction. 
 
 She had one word, alone, with her uncle on the doorstep. 
 
 ' I've made up my mind for myself/ she whispered. 
 
 'I noticed that/ he replied, and added, 'Charming 
 fellow; quite charming. So simple and unspoilt. I liked 
 his championship of Blenkinsop.' 
 
 She held him a moment to ask a question that subject 
 intrigued her. ' Tell me honestly, uncle/ she coaxed him. 
 'Isn't he this Blenkinsop man an awful person, really? ' 
 
 Lang shook his head. ' Never heard anything against him/ 
 he said. ' The worst you can say is that he's an enigma. 
 As a matter of fact, he's very seldom in town, now. He 
 spends most of his time with his father and mother at a place 
 about forty miles out of London, called Sutton Parslow.' 
 
 Philip went home wrapt in ecstatic contemplation. His 
 whole being was filled with humility at the thought of his 
 wonderful lady. The remembrance of the morning's 
 familiarity still embarrassed him, now and again; but that 
 brief quarrel in Milkwood Road seemed to have been 
 completely wiped out of his mind.
 
 EVELYN 125 
 
 ii 
 
 He awoke to a world of distractions the next morning. 
 
 He had dreamed of Evelyn, and this time it was not 
 her eyes alone that had taken shape. He had seen her 
 distorted out of all resemblance to the woman he knew, 
 yet in his dream this figure that repelled while it enticed 
 him, had been recognised as a presentation of the true 
 Evelyn. She had fled from him through the mysterious 
 doors and endless passages of some immense building; 
 and he had followed her with a thrill of strange desire 
 until in some unexpectedly public place in the labyrinth 
 he had caught her only to realise that she had changed 
 into the form of a great white ewe that wore a horrible 
 aspect of lascivious humanity. He had been filled, then, 
 with a great shame. He had been caught in this public 
 place, in the act of being revoltingly faithless to his be- 
 trothed. He was disgraced, and when he sought to hide 
 himself, he discovered that he was naked. 
 
 He was thankful to wake and find the April dawn 
 coming. His window faced east, and he got out of bed 
 and looked out over the little gardens at the back of the 
 house. He could see no farther than that, because the 
 old estate next door looped all Peter's little property into 
 the bend of a solid elbow, and interposed a screen of high 
 trees between his house and the fall of the hill towards 
 East Dulwich. Philip, still under the influence of that 
 meaningless, impressive dream, was aware of a feeling of 
 enclosure as he looked out at those gaunt, bare trees. 
 They were like giant pickets, their arms raised high above 
 their heads in a gesture of dismay and warning. ' Hi ! 
 there. Go back! go back!' they were shouting; they 
 were foolishly excited at the chance of his escape; they 
 gesticulated with a frenzied uplift of stiff, protesting arms. 
 
 And the sight of his tumbled bed did not tempt him to 
 return to a further remembrance of his night's experience. 
 There, too, was the association of enclosure imposed by
 
 126 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 the rigid determinations of his own mind. And when, as 
 last night, his thwarted imagination had sought relief in 
 sleep, he loathed the sight of his bed. 
 
 His bath refreshed him, but after he had dressed he felt 
 cold. It was barely half-past six, and this was Sunday 
 morning. The maid was always later on Sunday. There 
 would not be a fire downstairs for an hour yet. He must 
 go for a walk. He had time to get as far as the Crystal 
 Palace Parade and back before breakfast. 
 
 The air was wonderfully clear and bright outside the 
 house. All those southern suburbs were deep in the 
 stillness of the day of rest. The people of London might 
 have died in the night for any sign he could see of human 
 activity. The little vagrant breeze that stirred now and 
 again the dust and refuse of the pavements, had an air of 
 getting about its business before the day began. He had 
 passed through Burbage Road and Dulwich Village and 
 the greater part of College Road, before he met another 
 human being, and then he saw two women hurrying with 
 a determined and half-furtive eagerness to early cele- 
 bration. The sound of a single bell ringing suddenly near 
 at hand was a trite intrusion on the clear emptiness of 
 this open world. He hurried past the church to escape 
 the resonant insistence of that perfunctory call to worship. 
 The sound of it beat upon him and depressed him. It 
 stopped abruptly before he was out of hearing, and 
 immediately afterwards a clock struck seven on the key 
 note of the scale of which the high-voiced bell had been 
 sounding the dominant. The toll of the clock was 
 soothing. It completed and resolved the clamorous 
 begging of the earlier note. 
 
 By the time he reached the Parade and looked down 
 over the great basin of London, a few little spurts of 
 smoke were lifting here and there from occasional 
 chimneys, but the air was still amazingly clear and sweet. 
 On the farther lip of the immense saucer he could see 
 the sharp blue hills of the northern heights. 
 
 The depth and brightness of it all should have refreshed 
 him, but he could find no peace in it that morning.
 
 EVELYN 127 
 
 Though he had all the visible world to himself, he had no 
 feeling of liberty. It was as if he had an itch in his brain 
 that neither contemplation nor physical exercise could 
 allay. His thought could not drop from the harping 
 insistence of the dominant, and his future wore an aspect 
 of petulant urgency that could never find satisfaction. 
 
 In a few days' time he would almost certainly be leaving 
 Wing's office. He would have to find another post, pro- 
 bably as an advertising agent. He would never be able 
 to write. And the thought of Evelyn made him afraid. 
 Up there in the stillness he acknowledged that he was 
 afraid of her. She had suggested that if it were fine, he 
 should call for her about three o'clock in Warwick Street, 
 and take her to one of the Parks, or for a long ride outside 
 a 'bus. He looked up at the sky and saw that the bright- 
 ness of the morning was already obscured by a drift of low 
 cloud. For a moment he was relieved, and then it seemed 
 to him that the enormous length of the day would be 
 unendurable if he did not see her. 
 
 He sighed impatiently and plunged down the hill 
 towards the vale of Dulwich. Life held no prospect of 
 contentment for him. The anticipation of the somewhat 
 dreary morning service at the evangelical church his 
 father and mother had always attended, filled him with 
 distaste. He must get away from all that. He would 
 go up to Mattins at St Paul's; and avoid the familiar 
 tedium of Sunday dinner at ' Middlethorpe.' 
 
 These feelings of restlessness and dissatisfaction were 
 not new to him, but until to-day he had always been 
 able to subdue them by some effort of mental concen- 
 tration. On this Sunday morning an unprecedented 
 symptom was added in the form of a sick distaste for any 
 form of intellectual effort. He wanted not to think but 
 to do; but even the pace of his return walk brought no 
 sense of physical exhaustion. That itch in his brain 
 needed a relief that could not be procured by such half 
 measures as these; and he was unaware of the very 
 existence of that generative tickling. His diagnosis 
 reached no further than the symptom of a symptom.
 
 128 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 The strange outlet that was afforded to him in the 
 course of breakfast was doubtless an aspect of destiny. 
 It is impossible to say that chance was responsible, and 
 if the origin is ascribed to Providence, then Providence, 
 indeed, was working in a mysterious way. One solution, 
 at least, may be rejected without hesitation. It is certain 
 that Philip, the objective, ascetic, but otherwise amenable 
 Philip of his friends' and parents' knowledge, did not 
 himself find the ointment that was to be a temporary 
 salve for his mind's unrest. A pent flood was suddenly 
 liberated and swept out in turmoil. No channel had 
 been prepared for it. Philip had never guessed that any 
 channel might be needed. 
 
 If his intention had been in any way deliberate, he 
 would certainly have postponed it to a more favourable 
 opportunity. Peter came down in a mood more morose 
 and more irritable than was usual to him even on a Sunday 
 morning. He complained of a stiff neck, and the little 
 scratch on his wrist that he had incurred in cutting out 
 dead wood from the roses a few days before, showed signs 
 of festering. Both ailments appeared very trifling to 
 Philip, and he was so engrossed in his own troubles that 
 he paid comparatively little heed to the temper such 
 small irritations had begotten in Peter. Nevertheless, 
 Philip's sudden outburst was not due to inadvertence. 
 It came without the consent of his volition. It might 
 be said that he was truly astonished to find himself 
 speaking. He did not afterwards remember the exact 
 form of his opening. Something must have given way. 
 
 He became aware that he was making this solemn 
 declaration of independence. 
 
 'I have been thinking it all over since we discussed it 
 and I've decided that the only thing for me to do is to 
 take up literature.' 
 
 Peter, evidently in pain from his stiff neck, merely 
 grunted an inclusive disapproval. 
 
 Philip flowed over that without a twinge of fear. Now 
 that the thing was stated, he saw everything clearly. He 
 did not care a fig for any opposition. He was inspired
 
 EVELYN 129 
 
 by a glorious certainty that intoxicated him. Even so 
 does the convert rejoice in the new light of spiritual revel- 
 ation. There can be little question that if some slight 
 accident of his circumstances had brought Philip into 
 another relation, he might have become either a priest 
 or a revivalist preacher. As it happened the storm of 
 life eventually tossed him over the breakwater. 
 
 'This is something that I must decide for myself/ he 
 continued with a new arrogance, and he got up from the 
 table and delivered his affirmation from the rostrum of 
 the hearthrug. 'I shall be twenty-seven on Tuesday, 
 and I've been wasting the last nine years in learning office 
 management. Well, if I've learnt anything it is that 
 that isn't my avocation. If I go into an advertising 
 agent's office, I shall only be wasting more time. It 
 would be no training for me.' 
 
 'How do you expect to get a living?' Peter put in. 
 He had turned his chair round and was looking up from 
 under his untidy eyebrows. 
 
 'I shall have to write reviews and articles to begin 
 with,' Philip said with serene confidence. 'I can get 
 work of that kind without any difficulty. I have got to 
 know a few people from being in Wing's office. That will 
 in a way be hack work, but it will be more training for 
 me; and I shall be paid enough to live on.' 
 
 'And to keep a wife on? ' asked Peter. 
 
 'Not at first,' Philip replied with a slight effect of 
 condescension. 'I we are not proposing to get married 
 at once and she . . . .'in the midst of his whirl 
 downstream he yet had to steer violently away from 
 the rock of Evelyn's name . . . 'she quite approves 
 my choice of a career.' 
 
 ' Put you up to it, I suppose,' grunted Peter. 
 
 Philip shook his head. He knew that he was un- 
 conquerable, and was prepared to meet any contradictions 
 without reserve. ' No, I spoke of it first,' he said; ' I have 
 had it in my mind for years; and now I am quite determined 
 to go on my own way.' 
 
 'With or without my approval ? ' asked Peter threateningly.
 
 130 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 ' Yes,' returned Philip, with a full, round certainty. 
 
 Peter sniffed, turned his chair back to the table and 
 made a pretence of going on with his breakfast. 
 
 'I suppose you realise . . . ' he began again after 
 a short pause. 
 
 'Father, I realise everything, much better than anyone 
 else possibly could,' Philip proclaimed. 'You can't say 
 that I haven't obeyed you in everything up to now. But 
 this is something that no one can decide for me. I'm not 
 a boy any longer.' 
 
 Peter made a painful attempt to shrug his shoulders. 
 He was badly handicapped by his stiff neck. And then 
 he conceded the first round to his son without further 
 argument and retired to the corner of his own study. 
 
 Philip had no misgivings. He was riding the torrent 
 of his discovery that within two days of his twenty-seventh 
 birthday he was no longer a boy. He did not, then, add 
 to it his endorsement of Evelyn's discovery that Peter 
 liked to be contradicted. 
 
 The experiences of the day upheld Philip's mood. 
 
 He added a paragraph to his proclamation by going 
 to his father's study a little before ten o'clock, and 
 announcing his intention of attending morning service 
 at St Paul's. 
 
 Peter did not look up. He was sitting bent forward 
 over the fire, nursing his ailments. 
 
 Philip had a passing qualm of uneasiness, not for his 
 own future, but for his father's health. It was unlike 
 Peter to take a stiff neck so seriously. 
 
 'I say, you are not going to be ill, are you, father?' he 
 asked. 
 
 '111? No!' snapped Peter. 
 
 'You don't think you ought to see a doctor?' Philip 
 persisted. 
 
 Peter's grunt of contempt was a satisfyingly sufficient 
 answer to that question. He made no reference to his 
 son's project of forsaking his parish church; and after 
 another anxious pause, Philip went out of the room. Five 
 minutes later he had forgotten his father's indisposition.
 
 EVELYN 131 
 
 On any other day he might have worried himself about 
 so unusual a portent; but in those first hours of his freedom 
 his mind was too furiously busy to consider any subject 
 but his own emancipation. 
 
 He was so surprised at himself for 'having done it,' and 
 so pleased with the manner of his announcement and 
 argument, that he did not pause to wonder why he had 
 never 'done it' before. The glory of the bare fact was 
 enough. In a moment he had become a candidate for 
 literary honours. He had stood up and waved his arms, 
 and aU his bonds had fallen from him. 
 
 To make his certainty still more sure, the lessons of the 
 day both spoke a direct and approving message to him. 
 It was the second Sunday after Easter, and the first lesson 
 from the twentieth of Numbers told the story of how 
 Moses had smitten the rock and water had come out 
 abundantly. The second lesson from the seventeenth 
 of St Luke, was still more applicable. 'If ye had faith 
 as a grain of mustard seed,' the old canon intoned with a 
 faint air of reproach, 'ye might say unto this sycamine 
 tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted 
 in the sea; and it should obey you.' 
 
 But the tone of reproach was lost on Philip, as was, 
 also, the rebuke to Moses in the first lesson. He had had 
 faith, or won it by his own action. He had lifted up his 
 arm and smitten the rock; he had commanded the syca- 
 mine tree, and it had not definitely refused him. After 
 that the sermon was lost upon him. He was planning 
 the recountal to Evelyn of how he had entered upon his 
 new life. He would mark the ijth of April, 1904, as the 
 red letter day in his calendar; as the beginning of a new 
 epoch. 
 
 He was still vibrating to that high triumphant note 
 when he reached Warwick Street rather before three 
 o'clock. It had been raining heavily when he left the 
 Cathedral, but he had brought an umbrella, and the 
 weather had been powerless to drown his mood. He had 
 lunched at Appenrodt's, and afterwards the sun had come 
 out, and he had walked down through the fresh brightness
 
 132 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 of steaming streets to Hyde Park, and had sat there until 
 another shower had driven him down to Victoria some- 
 thing before his tune. 
 
 Evelyn had been uncertain whether to expect him. 
 She had made a vague appointment for him to come and 
 take her out, 'if fine.' The second shower made her 
 dubious, but she went down to indulge herself with a 
 further instalment of Colonel Barker's hospitality, so that 
 if Philip had already started before the rain came on, she 
 might have some place in which to receive him. She had 
 only one scruple about using that room, and it was based 
 on the fact that she had received an effusive invitation 
 from its owner to use it at any time whether he was there 
 or not. 
 
 The sight of Philip coming up the street gave her a 
 little start of surprise. She had not hitherto seen him 
 in a tail-coat and top hat. And the tail-coat had an air 
 of being used only for festivals; it was stiff and a little 
 tight, he had, as a matter of fact, had it since he was 
 nineteen. And the top hat could have come from no- 
 where but a suburb or the remote provinces; it had no 
 shape, and at the present moment was scarred and damp 
 with the rain. He looked so orthodox and so typical. 
 Even his walk and the way he held his umbrella had some 
 mark of the average young man from the average suburb. 
 
 But that impression of him was instantly dispelled 
 when he was shown into the sitting-room. His trousers 
 might be noticeably damp, his boots splashed and muddy, 
 his general appearance so little aristocratic as to warrant 
 Merton's severest censure; but there was a new spirit in 
 his face, a spirit that Evelyn had guessed at and until 
 then never seen. 
 
 Their greeting was stiff with the effect of their nervous- 
 ness. She had been willing to kiss him, or at least to give 
 him both hands with some more intimate greeting than a 
 conventional 'How do you do?' But his embarrassed 
 entrance, however contradicted by the glow in his face, 
 anticipated any familiarity. After his stiff little bow and 
 his formal handshake, she could offer nothing more.
 
 EVELYN 133 
 
 'I'm sure you've got something nice to tell me/ she 
 said, as soon as Merton had gone. 'You look as though 
 you had good news.' 
 
 'Yes, I have; in a way,' Philip replied; a trifle shy in 
 beginning, now that he was once more confronted by the 
 full sight of his wonderful lady. Nothing could have 
 been simpler than her dark blue coat and skirt and white 
 blouse, but it was new to him, and for some reason that 
 he could not guess, intimidating. She looked taller, and 
 that air of hers which even : : n the office had sometimes 
 quelled him seemed to have grown more pronounced since 
 he had learnt that her father had been a Dean. The 
 greatness of his news appeared in these surroundings to 
 have lost something of its importance. He felt that he 
 ought to offer so wonderful a creature an assured and 
 generous income, a place in Society; and all that he had 
 to say was that he had bullied his father into permitting 
 him an opportunity to write reviews and articles for the 
 magazines, if he could. 
 
 'I've been talking to my father this morning,' he went 
 on, with much the same expression of appeal that he 
 might have worn in approaching Peter. 'About my 
 future.' 
 
 'And he's going to let you write?' Evelyn put in with 
 an eagerness that could hardly have been bettered if 
 Philip had announced his unexpected succession to wealth 
 and position. 
 
 'He didn't refuse,' Philip said. 'I I rather took a 
 leaf out of your book and contradicted him. I told him 
 that it was a question I must decide for myself.' 
 
 ' But how splendid ! ' was Evelyn's comment. ' Did 
 you put on that terrifying manner of yours, as you did 
 yesterday when I ventured an opinion on woman's claim 
 to humanity?' 
 
 Philip frowned his astonishment. ' Did I ? ' he asked. 
 
 'Indeed, you did,' Evelyn told him. 'But never mind 
 that, now. Tell me some more of what you're going to 
 do.' 
 
 'I think I'd better try to get some reviewing to begin
 
 134 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 with/ Philip explained, although some part of his mind 
 continued to occupy itself with the picture of a Philip 
 capable of putting on a 'terrifying manner' before Evelyn. 
 'I believe I can. I really know quite a lot of people, 
 slightly, of course, who could help me.' 
 
 'And you'll leave me all alone to do battle with Mr 
 Wing?' Evelyn asked thoughtlessly. 
 
 It was evident that he had not considered that. ' Oh ! 
 no!' he broke out at once. 'That would be impossible. 
 You'll have to leave Norfolk Street, of course.' 
 
 Evelyn laughed softly, reassuringly. 'Of course, I 
 shan't,' she returned. 'I shall stay on if Mr Wing will 
 have me.' 
 
 Philip's face stiffened. 'I can't let you do that,' he said 
 sternly; and she guessed that it would be unwise to chaff 
 him. 
 
 ' We won't quarrel again so soon,' she said gently. ' But 
 you'll have to let me go my own way in things of this 
 sort. You're so peremptory, uncompromising, what is 
 the word I want? And I don't believe that that is a good 
 way to begin a an engagement. I've been rather spoilt, 
 you know, and you'll have to give way to me a little, now 
 and again.' She had softened it all, but there was no 
 mistaking her spirit. 
 
 'But I couldn't let you stay on, alone, in Wing's office,' 
 Philip affirmed. 
 
 She felt the force of his inflexibility and tried to charm 
 him. 'But I should be quite safe' she ventured. 
 
 ' It isn't a proper place for you,' he returned. 
 
 She smiled at him. ' What was it you said of your father 
 this morning?' she asked. 'That you must decide your 
 own future for yourself. Well, aren't I to be equally 
 privileged?' 
 
 ' But that's entirely different,' he said. 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 He had only one explanation and hesitated to give it. 
 
 'It isn't different,' she persisted. 'Tell me why you 
 think it's different.' 
 
 'You're not a man,' was his equivocation. He found
 
 EVELYN 135 
 
 it impossible to state the improper fact that she was a 
 woman. 
 
 'Oh! Philip; how perfectly Victorian!' Evelyn ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 He did not quite like the sound of that remonstrance. 
 'But you're not . . . .' he began and paused for a 
 word. 
 
 ' Yes, I am/ Evelyn announced with the enthusiasm of 
 conviction. 'I'm a Modern Young Woman. I believe 
 in the Suffrage movement; and in women's economic 
 rights; and in open discussion without silly dissimulations. 
 Didn't you know that young women of my sort were bred 
 even in Cathedral Precincts nowadays? But I've been 
 earning my living for the last six years or more; so I have 
 a right to speak from experience, now. I admit that my 
 poor old darling managed to leave me rather more than a 
 hundred a year, but that isn't enough to make me a para- 
 site, although I do feel rather mean sometimes when I 
 talk to women who have nothing but what they earn.' 
 
 Philip listened in blank amazement. He had heard of 
 a thing called ' The New Woman/ that he always visualised 
 on the lines suggested by current caricature, as bloomered, 
 spectacled and splay-footed; but he had only to use his 
 eyes to reassure himself that Evelyn was not one of these. 
 The 'new woman' as a species was something merely to 
 be regretted, from his point of view. It had a tendency 
 to destroy the beauty not so much of life as of ideals. It 
 gave opportunity to foolish little illustrated papers that 
 called themselves 'comic' and were merely vulgar. It 
 had no sanction from tradition. It was, in fact, an 
 instance of the deplorable modern acceptation of sheer 
 ugliness. But although he had to defend his aesthetic, 
 he was not touched on one of his sacred principles. In 
 this matter he was relatively mobile. 
 
 He bent his head and clasped it between his hands, as 
 he sought to find a convincing expression for his thought. 
 He looked so like ' our Mr Maning ' of Norfolk Street, dic- 
 tating letters, that Evelyn shivered. 
 
 'I know women are saying things like you've just said/
 
 136 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 he began, 'but I didn't associate them with you. I I 
 want women to be just beautiful . . . .' 
 
 ' Oh ! no/ Evelyn interrupted sharply. She could not 
 bear that argument from Philip, the argument of Colonel 
 Barker and all the other impossibles. 
 
 'But why not?' he persisted. 'There are not so many 
 beautiful things in life, that we can afford to lose one of 
 the most beautiful of all.' 
 
 'Women needn't be less beautiful because they use 
 their brains/ she said. 
 
 ' They will/ Philip returned. In his mind he saw quite 
 clearly two types of women, the beautiful and the clever, 
 but he found it difficult to say why it was impossible to 
 blend them. 'They'll get too interested in other things 
 to care about being beautiful/ he tried, quite unconscious 
 that he was expressing the two fundamental aspects of 
 that sex jealousy which so impeded woman's emancipation. 
 He did not fear the rivalry of women in business or the 
 professions, and he certainly would not have admitted 
 that he feared lest woman, preoccupied with affairs, would 
 have less time and inclination for the worship of Man. It 
 was, indeed, his very innocence that permitted him to 
 state objections the validity of which a more experienced 
 man would have strenuously denied. 
 
 Evelyn smiled, perceiving both his admissions and his 
 simplicity. 'Now, you've given away your whole case/ 
 she said; 'if you only knew it. But I simply can't talk 
 to you while you sit as if you were dictating letters. 
 When you look like that you make me feel like Miss Lang.' 
 
 He changed his position at once, and his smile answered 
 her with a readiness that pleased her by its unexpectedness. 
 
 ' I was so afraid of you/ he admitted, and added, ' I am 
 still.' 
 
 He was a continual surprise to her; such an inexplicable 
 mixture of harsh dogmatisms, and appealing, boyish 
 ingenuousness. And it seemed that she could never tell 
 which side of him would come uppermost. A sudden 
 rush of tenderness came over her, and she got up and 
 knelt by the side of his chair.
 
 FA'ELYN 137 
 
 'Don't be afraid of me, dear,' she said. ' We must not, 
 must not be afraid of each other.' 
 
 She was ready for any response, but he was rigid with 
 embarrassment and distress. He appeared afraid to 
 move or to speak. 
 
 'What is it, dear? ' she asked. 
 
 'I I don't want you to kneel to me,' he said stiffly, 
 and then, finding a voice for his emotion, he continued. 
 ' It's for me to kneel to you. I I worship you. I can't 
 help being afraid of you. I don't want to help it.' 
 
 She got to her feet quickly and walked over to the 
 window. She had a sense of having been snubbed; of 
 having been accused of an attempt to derogate the dignity 
 of her womanhood. Yet even as she flushed under the 
 implied reproof, she began to find excuses for him. His 
 home and his training were responsible for these queer 
 heroics of his. It would be all right, presently, when they 
 knew each other a little better. She had so much, so very 
 much to teach him. And at the back of her mind there 
 was, perhaps, some little primitive glow of satisfaction in 
 the amazing intensity of his respect and worship. If, as 
 she could not admit, it was to be a choice between the 
 Philip who condescended and the Philip who adored, she 
 would unhesitatingly choose the latter. 
 
 It was impossible, now, to return to any discussion of 
 feminism. She must have time to persuade, to educate 
 him. Any argument between them was a futility, until 
 he had made some attempt to understand. At present, 
 he talked and thought of the problem in a language with- 
 out ideas, just as Colonel Barker talked. ' Oh ! my dear 
 young lady, you have a higher vocation in life than sitting 
 in a stuffy office, ' he had said the other day; and he harped 
 on that absurdity of women becoming 'unsexed.' Philip 
 might not use these phrases, but his suggestion of ' women 
 getting too interested in other things to care to be beauti- 
 ful,' had precisely the same significance. 
 
 She turned from the window with a little sigh, and then 
 with a quick, graceful gesture indicated the sudden 
 brilliance of Warwick Street. A reflection of the sunlight 
 G.C. K
 
 138 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 from a window opposite caught the gold in her hair; and 
 it was as if in that moment she had beckoned to the sun 
 a~d it had come to greet her. The whole room was 
 illuminated. 
 
 ' We might go out, after all/ she said. 
 
 He gazed at her for an instant and then dropped to his 
 knees beside her and reverently kissed her hand. Even 
 the horrible conventionality of his suburban dress could 
 not disguise the lithe beauty of his movement. She saw 
 him transfigured. Her imagination pierced his disguise 
 and greeted the Adonis of her vision. And she knew that 
 from her first recognition of him, she had always seen him 
 like that. Under all his wrappings, his body and mind 
 were clean and beautiful. Only, she must have patience. 
 He was more modest and more timid than a nun .... 
 
 They fell into no further dissensions that afternoon. 
 She was content, for once, to play the part he so resolutely 
 thrust upon her. She was gracious and encouraging; and 
 Philip, warmed by her smile, recovered his mood of the 
 morning, and surprised her yet again by displaying his 
 sense of beauty. She had not realised how quick was his 
 response to such wonders of light, shade and colour as 
 they encountered in the rapidly drying streets of this 
 April London. And if she recognised that he clothed 
 all the duh 1 reality of it with a romance that was just 
 perceptibly spurious, she was willing, just then, to meet 
 him at least half way. The 'solemn gulf of Victoria 
 Street, the vision of a Westminster 'wrapped in glory,' 
 the 'wide authority' of Whitehall; all these descriptions 
 somehow overshot the mark; but she was so glad to find 
 him articulate, that she gave to each phrase a full measure 
 of approbation. He was full of a passion to become 
 creative, and he had not failed to attribute his mood to 
 her influence. They were glad with each other, in the 
 astonishing heat of the afternoon sun. They saw London 
 bright and purified and almost dazzingly beautiful.
 
 EVELYN 139 
 
 12 
 
 Philip had no presentiment of disaster as he returned 
 home, but as he was walking up from the station, the 
 memory of his father's ailments came back to him; and 
 he quickened his pace as if after eight hours of forgetfui- 
 ness he could, now, make some amend by arriving home 
 a minute sooner. And it may be that the mere effect of 
 hurrying aroused some apprehension in his mind, for 
 when he saw the respectable door of ' Middlethorpe ' 
 standing untidily open, he was suddenly afraid. That 
 one little aspect of neglect gave the house an unaccount- 
 able air of disaster. 
 
 The maid came hurriedly downstairs as Philip entered. 
 She must have been listening for him. 
 
 ' Please, Mr Philip, yer father's very ill/ she announced 
 breathlessly. 'We be waitin' for you. I 'ad to go out 
 for the doctor and Dr Payne was away from 'ome, and 
 I've fetched Dr 'Adland from across the road. 'E's 'ere 
 now. 'E come in at once. Yer father wouldn't let us 
 send before, not till he got so bad. 'E says 'e's been 
 poisoned, now. An' your mother's bad, too; at least, 
 she come over very faint. I been sittin' with 'er. And 
 she says please will you see the doctor when 'e comes out.' 
 The girl was flushed and panting with excitement. 
 
 ' Yes, of course I will,' Philip said. ' Perhaps, I had 
 better go up at once? ' He looked to her for advice. 
 
 'P'raps you 'ad/ she agreed. 
 
 But as Philip made a movement towards the stairs, they 
 heard a door closing and the doctor's step coming down. 
 
 He was a young man, just beginning private practice, 
 and his excitement, although different in expression, was 
 not less evident than the maid's. 
 
 'Oh ! is it Mr Maning?' he asked when he saw Philip. 
 'I know you by sight, I think. I'm glad you've come 
 home. I should like to speak to you a minute. Can 
 we .?'
 
 140 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 The door of the dining-room was standing open and he 
 made a gesture towards it. 
 
 They went in and left the maid neglected and forgotten 
 in the hall. 
 
 'I'm afraid there's no shadow of doubt that it's a case 
 of tetanus,' Dr Hadland explained rapidly. He was a 
 tall, well-made young man, with a handsome, boyish 
 face, and his manner proclaimed that this case appealed 
 to him as a quite considerable adventure. 'Your own 
 doctor is out of town, I understand; but we can't possibly 
 wait for him. I shall start the physostigmine treatment 
 at once. I can get that from the chemist's at the bottom 
 of the hill; but I shall have to get the tetanus antitoxin 
 from the hospital . . . .' He paused and looked at 
 Philip, on the verge of framing a question. 
 
 ' Can I go up to town for it ? ' Philip asked, guessing his 
 intention. 
 
 'Oh! would you? I should be awfully glad if you 
 could,' the young doctor replied eagerly. 'It's the 
 Middlesex, I'll give you a note, if you'll come over. And 
 then you might ring up the chemist on the way to the 
 station and get him to send up the physostigmine. I 
 hope he'U be in.' 
 
 Philip was already consulting the little time-table he 
 always carried in his pocket. 'There's nothing till 7.19,' 
 he said. ' That gives me over half an hour. If the chemist 
 by the station is out, I should have time to get up to the 
 other one in Norwood Road.' 
 
 ' Good ! Yes !' the doctor agreed. ' I'll just run over 
 the road and write the prescription and the note better 
 be on my paper, you know, in case there's any question 
 at the hospital and then I'll come back and stay here 
 with Mr Maning. Oh ! and I'd better telephone for a 
 nurse. He'll have to be watched, you know.' 
 
 'Is he very bad?' Philip asked, as he received the 
 rapidly written note and prescription, and the question 
 seemed to arouse for the first time Hadland' s realisation 
 of the necessity for a professional manner. 
 
 ' I'm afraid it is rather a serious case,' he said gravely.
 
 KVELYX 141 
 
 'Can you tell me precisely when he got that scratch on 
 the wrist? It's important to know how long the virus 
 has been germinating. He works a good deal in the 
 garden, doesn't he? I've seen him from here.' 
 
 Philip puzzled over the first question for a moment, 
 and then remembered an incident that fixed the date of 
 the pruning of the rose trees. 'It was last Monday,' he 
 said, 'because I remember ' 
 
 The gravity of the doctor's face interrupted the trifling 
 reminiscence. 
 
 'Does that make it worse? ' Philip asked. 
 
 Hadland nodded. ' Too quick,' he explained and added, 
 with a reversion to his acquired manner, ' However, there's 
 plenty of hope, yet.' 
 
 And that was all Philip had to console him while battling 
 against the tedious delays of his second Sunday journey 
 to and from town. Fortunately the chemist at the bottom 
 of the hill was in, and stocked the unpronounceable drug. 
 He promised to ' run up' with it himself. He was evidently 
 greatly interested. 'Not for Mr Maning, I hope, sir?' he 
 asked. 
 
 'Yes. It is,' PhiT'p said. He had twenty minutes to 
 wait, now, before his train came in, even if it were punctual; 
 but the feeling of urgency was so strong upon him that he 
 could hardly bear to answer the chemist's questions. 
 
 ' Dear, dear, dear !' he was saying, and he made a noise 
 with his tongue as if he were condoling with a child. ' And 
 young Dr Hadland is in attendance, I see? I thought 
 Dr Payne . . . .' 
 
 ' He's out of town,' Philip explained. 
 
 'Well, well/ the chemist said; 'they do say you should 
 choose a young doctor and an old lawyer; and Dr Hadland's 
 a very clever young man, I hear.' 
 
 'Is he?' asked Philip, eagerly. Until then he had not 
 thought of questioning Dr Hadland's capacity, but this 
 comment on his youth gave expression to some misgiving 
 that must have been lurking somewhere in the recesses of 
 his mind. 
 
 'Oh ! very clever, I believe,' the chemist said. It
 
 142 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 would never do for him to disparage a man who might 
 become an important customer. 'And he'll be up to all 
 the latest treatments, no doubt.' 
 
 ' I'm going up to town, now, to get an antitoxin serum/ 
 Philip laid the suggestion before his listener in the hope of 
 receiving professional approval. 
 
 ' Ah ! we can't stock things like that, of course,' was all 
 the answer he received. 
 
 ' I suppose that's a good thing? ' he asked hopefully. 
 
 ' Oh ! yes ! almost the only thing, you might say,' the 
 chemist agreed. 
 
 But that assurance merely increased Ph lip's realisation 
 of the need for haste. The train was twenty minutes late, 
 and they kept him waiting so long at the hospital that he 
 was afraid he might miss the 8.49 back to Herne Hill. 
 He ran all the way from Mortimer Street to Holborn 
 Viaduct. 
 
 Yet all that furious urgency was more endurable than 
 the inaction which supervened after he had delivered his 
 precious tube of culture to young Dr Hadland. The 
 nurse had arrived; the doctor as soon as he received his 
 serum became immensely preoccupied and businesslike, 
 and when Philip crept up quietly to his mother's room, 
 he found the maid on the landing, and she informed him 
 with the uplift of a warning finger that Mrs Maning had 
 'just dropped off, nicely.' 
 
 There was no sound, now, from the room at the other 
 end of the passage; and Philip looked towards it with a 
 glance of curious apprehension. 
 
 'They've give him morphia,' the maid whispered. 'I 
 'card the doctor teh 1 the nurse when she come.' 
 
 ' I expect it'll be all right, now,' Philip returned. 
 
 'While there's life there's 'ope,' the maid agreed with 
 an effect of hoping for the worst. 'There was a man I 
 knew at 'ome died of lockjaw,' she continued. 'Suffered 
 awful, I believe, before the end come; and they fed 'im 
 through an 'ole in his cheek.' Her words were simple, 
 but her tone vibrated with the suggestion of unmention- 
 able horrors.
 
 EVELYN 143 
 
 Philip shuddered, but his need for companionship was 
 so great that he could not tear himself away from this 
 intimate colloquy with a woman whom he had never 
 before addressed except to give her an order. 
 
 ' He won't suffer much if they give him morphia/ he 
 commented. 
 
 'Not so much, anyway,' the maid amended. She was 
 flattered by the young master's attention. She had 
 always considered him very gocd-looking but terribly 
 stand-offish. In the midst of savouring this unexpected 
 tragedy in the household, she was doing her best to create 
 a good impression. 'It comes from gardenin', they say/ 
 she went on. 'When I was little I always believed you 
 got it if you cut yourself there/ she exhibited a red right 
 hand and pointed with her left to the ligament between 
 her thumb and first finger. 'Cut some string or some- 
 thin'. But, now, they say not. A nurse told me; a friend 
 of mine. I used to see 'er orfen at one time.' 
 
 ' It's due to a germ, you know/ Philip explained. 
 
 ' Everythink is, pretty well, nowadays/ the maid replied. 
 
 ' But Dr Hadland said there was plenty of hope. This 
 serum I've just brought from the hospital is a splendid 
 thing. The chemist by the station said it was practically 
 the only cure.' 
 
 ' It's wonderful the cures they do find.' 
 
 The conversation promised to become interminable, 
 but when the doctor came out of the room at the end of 
 the passage and, seeing Philip, beckoned to him, the maid 
 was instantly forgotten. 
 
 ' I'm going back, now, but I'll look in again last th : ng/ 
 Hadland said. 'The nurse is splendid. She has nursed 
 a case of tetanus before.' 
 
 Philip went down with him to the front door. 
 
 ' You haven't far to come if you want me/ Hadland 
 remarked genially as he went out. 
 
 'You still think there's a hope?' Philip asked. 
 
 ' Oh ! undoubtedly/ the young doctor replied, lingering 
 on the doorstep. ' But it's no use trying to disguise the 
 fact that it's a very serious case.'
 
 i 4 4 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 13 
 
 The case was, indeed, so serious, that poor Peter's 
 torture was only prolonged for three more days. There 
 was nothing to be done except continue the treatment 
 and keep his all too clear consciousness as dull as possible 
 with drugs. After the morphia ceased to affect him, 
 they gave him occasional doses of chloroform to tide 
 over those terrible spasms when the contracted muscles 
 sought still more intense contraction. 
 
 Dr Payne, returning to his practice, on Monday, could 
 only endorse the diagnosis and prescription of his young 
 rival. Old Payne stroked his beard, wagged his head at 
 Philip and looked incredibly wise, but he had no valid 
 cause for complaint. 
 
 Philip asked him if there were any hope; but the old 
 doctor would not commit himself to a definite opinion. 
 
 Peter asked for his son on Monday night, and Philip 
 went up at once. But he had hardly entered the room 
 before the nurse on duty almost pushed him out again. 
 One of those awful spasms was returning, and she knew 
 it would be a case for an anaesthetic. 
 
 'He can't see you, now,' she explained hurriedly. 
 ' Please run over to Dr Hadland and ask him to come at 
 once with the chloroform.' 
 
 Just one glance at the bed was all Philip had time for, 
 but the memory of what he saw remained with him for 
 the rest of his life. 
 
 And Peter did not ask again. 
 
 He died quite suddenly at the end.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE AGREEMENT 
 
 MRS MANING died five months after her husband. If 
 widowhood had come ten years earlier, she might have 
 summoned her energies and lived to be an old woman. 
 As it was, she was just too weak to recover. Peter had 
 exhausted her, and she died very gently of inanition. She 
 had surrendered her will nearly thirty years before, and 
 when its keeper was gone, she lacked the sheer ability to 
 go on living. 
 
 All Philip's gentleness and innocence of mind were 
 inherited from his mother, and those qualities should have 
 been blended with that harsh courage and stubbornness 
 of opinion which he derived from his father. But, as yet, 
 the two sides of Philip's character were as distinct as the 
 Lves of his parents; and it seemed possible that the former 
 evil might recur; and the strength and constrictions of 
 Peter once again dominate and strangle the sweetness 
 and imagination of his wife. And the third element in 
 Philip that had a source so distant as to be beyond any 
 possibility of indication, was helping to tilt the balance 
 to the same side. 
 
 Peter's wiU had been commonplace. He had been 
 too shrewd to attempt any control of the living by post- 
 humous commands and threats of penalty. He had left 
 all his property to his son; no doubt with a view to saving 
 a second payment of succession duty; and had bequeathed 
 his practice, so far as it was possible, to a friend who had, 
 also, been appointed an executor. The name of this 
 friend, Henry Pratt, was familiar enough to the ' Middle- 
 thorpe' household, but he had only twice been to Herne 
 Hill. He and Peter had met at lunch nearly every day
 
 146 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 for thirty-five years, they had had the greatest confidence 
 in one another; there was no good reason why they should 
 not have entered into partnership; but they had preferred 
 to maintain their friendship on its original basis. When 
 they had both been comparatively young men, just 
 starting in private practice, they had met each other in 
 business, and had gradually fallen into the custom of 
 lunching together. The custom became established, but 
 no further development hc.d seemed necessary. 
 
 Pratt was a bachelor, a tall, bowed man, with a scholar's 
 head and a square grey beard; a tolerant, kindly creature, 
 and such a contrast to the wiry, rugged Peter, that Philip 
 wondered what the two men had found to talk about 
 during their daily hour of companionship. The general 
 tone of the advice he received when his affairs were finally 
 wound up a couple of months after his mother's death, 
 seemed to mark an immeasurable difference of attitude 
 between Pratt and his old companion. 
 
 ' Well, my boy/ old Pratt said in his courteous, dignified 
 way, ' you are by way of being an independent gentleman, 
 with an income of over four hundred and fifty pounds a 
 year, not counting an eighteen years' lease on the Herne 
 Hill property. And what do you propose to do with 
 yourself? I hope you won't be tempted to become a 
 mere idler. You must not bury your talents.' 
 
 ' I hope to become a writer,' Philip explained modestly. 
 
 A very fine ambition, Pratt thought, and inquired what 
 form it was to take. 
 
 Philip hedged a little. He was well into his novel then, 
 but in that company the writing of novels seemed a trifle 
 frivolous. 
 
 'I haven't done much at present,' he said. 'I'm doing 
 a little casual reviewing, and, well,' his natural honesty 
 would not be denied, but he blushed faintly as he added, 
 'I'm writing a novel.' 
 
 Old Pratt smiled approvingly. 'A great and difficult 
 art,' he said. ' I have found much pleasure and instruction 
 in the reading of fiction.' He leaned back in his chair and 
 pushed up his spectacles as if he were quite ready to have
 
 THE AGREEMENT 147 
 
 a short chat on literary affairs with a potential expert. 
 ' Not quite the sort of fiction published by your late chief, 
 Robert Wing/ he went on, confidentially; 'I prefer what 
 I should call stronger meat than that. Thomas Hardy, 
 now. I'm a great admirer of Hardy. Such humanity. 
 Ah ! many's the argument I've had over Hardy with your 
 poor father. But there, perhaps you agree with him.' 
 
 Philip had to admit that his education had not so far 
 included the works of Thomas Hardy. They had been 
 banned by his father, and Philip had a general idea that 
 they were coarse and improper. , 
 
 Old Pratt raised his eyebrows and then dropped his 
 spectacles with an effect of disappointment. 'Ah ! well,' 
 he commented, 'poor Maning always maintained that 
 Hardy was not fit for the young. Now, I think we have 
 settled everything? But I hope you'll come and see me 
 now and again, for your father's sake. Lord, how I miss 
 him !' 
 
 That conversation added another touch to the picture 
 of Peter that was becoming such an influence on his son's 
 mind. He had always respected his father, but, now, he 
 was beginning, he believed, to understand him. Peter's 
 prohibitions were taking shape as an example, and his 
 character as a type of splendid righteousness. He had 
 been consistent. He had set his face resolutely against 
 the modern tendency towards every kind of moral laxity. 
 And Philip, steadily creating an ideal of this image, became 
 more and more determined to follow in his father's foot- 
 steps. There had been a time when he had had a curious 
 feeling of uneasiness in discovering certain tricks of 
 resemblance between himself and his father a tone of 
 voice, a turn of speech, or, more surprising still, a queer 
 pervasive sense of likeness that defied analysis. Now, he 
 took a pleasure in these evidences of his inheritance. 
 Sometimes, when he was writing, he would pause and 
 attempt to imitate the well-remembered set of his father's 
 expression. Sometimes he succeeded so well that he 
 seemed able to appreciate the very springs of his father's 
 thought.
 
 i 4 8 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 He was much alone in the autumn of that year. He 
 was still living in the little house at Herne Hill, and had 
 engaged an elderly woman to manage his domestic ar- 
 rangements with the assistance of the maid who had 
 remained faithful to his service, despite the fact that 
 since their one intimate conversation on the landing, he 
 had relapsed into his former unconsciousness of her 
 existence as a human being. 
 
 He used his father's study, now, as a writing-room, and 
 sometimes saw himself as a new and more austere Ruskin, 
 whose mission it was to deliver a message of continence 
 and purity to a decadent civilisation. He had a very 
 clear idea of the message, but he was by no means certain 
 of the best manner for its deliverance. The novel he was 
 writing was not an ideal vehicle. It took too much for 
 granted. He could not denounce moral obliquity, in this 
 form, unless the sin were first described; and he could not 
 br ng himself to describe it. He had made one or two 
 tentative efforts in his mind to picture a scene leading up 
 to some fall from virtue, and had been scared by his own 
 ability to conceive such a situation. Those exercises 
 recalled all too vividly the cry of the woman under the 
 hedge, and the terrifyingly attractive emotions he had 
 experienced when he had kissed Evelyn in the office. 
 That way led to the tempting of the imagination, to the 
 encouragement of lascivious thoughts. And whatever 
 his ultimate object, it must be wrong deliberately to 
 investigate such emotions and desires. He might describe 
 only to condemn, but he, himself, would suffer in the 
 process necessary to attain even the most superficial 
 accuracy of description. Once his thoughts were allowed 
 to trifle with that subject, they were apt to slip, revolt- 
 in gly, out of control. He believed, also, that the exercise 
 might aggravate the disgust of his dreams, and they were 
 bad enough already. Every evening he prayed earnestly 
 to be delivered from one particular form of dream, and 
 when it came, as it did quite frequently, he would get out 
 of bed in the middle of the coldest night, and spend 
 half an hour on his knees, praying not less earnestly for
 
 THE AGREEMENT 149 
 
 forgiveness. He was sure at such times that there must 
 have been some fault in himself. 
 
 And he was just too much of an artist to drag invective 
 of immorality into his novel without plausible excuse. 
 He went on with the book because he had a habit of 
 finishing what he had begun. But he had little real 
 pleasure in it. Reproach stood at his elbow. He was 
 wasting his opportunities. He had a mission in the world, 
 and he was burying whatever talents he had, by writing 
 a story that only condemned vice by ignoring it. 
 
 Sometimes he wondered if Georgie Wood had been right 
 in saying that he ought to have gone into the church? 
 
 Evelyn was still working in Norfolk Street. 
 
 She had already made some sort of a position for herself 
 in the business. She continued to do a large amount of 
 purely secretarial work, but her influence was visible both 
 in Wing's advertisements and in his autumn publishing 
 list. Two new novelists had been discovered who were 
 frankly labelled as 'realists' in the firm's announcements; 
 their claim to the title resting mainly on the fact that 
 they could not be described as romantics. She had ideas 
 about the trend of fiction, and she found Mr Wing quite 
 ready to listen to them. Now, that his hope of the Maning 
 money was finally lost, he had given up ah 1 thought of 
 further development on the lines of the 'Purity Press.' 
 And Edgar Norman was proof against any blandishment 
 or financial inducement that had as its object the creation 
 of another Marzipan. 'Done all that/ he explained 
 conclusively. 'If ever I write another book, take a new 
 line altogether.' 
 
 Wing who did not care twopence for a purity that was 
 not remunerative was very willing in the summer of 1904 
 to listen to Miss Lang's enunciation of her theory that 
 the probable development of English literature was towards 
 a greater frankness of speech. And he made one statement
 
 150 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 on that theory as affecting his own business future that 
 had, indirectly, an influence on Evelyn's attitude towards 
 Philip. 
 
 'Yes, I believe you're right, Miss Lang/ Wing said. 
 ' Fellows like Charles Marriott and H. G. Wells look as 
 though they're going to do something; but it isn't what 
 you could strictly call a "movement," yet, and I don't 
 know that it's likely to be not as an advertising proposi- 
 tion. It looks as if we'd better follow the times to a 
 certain extent, but it's only taking a middle line at best.' 
 He paused a moment, looked at Evelyn with a pucker of 
 doubt showing in the pouches under his eyes, and then 
 continued, 'And I'm not ready, as yet, to go the whole 
 hog, on the other side. There's Victoria Cross, for 
 example, and that book of Frank Danby's, last year, 
 Pigs in Clover, was rather near the knuckle in places, 
 well, they go, up to a point, but I don't fancy the great 
 B.P. is going to stand very much of it.' 
 
 ' Oh ! no,' Evelyn put in earnestly, and qualified her 
 agreement by adding, ' I think Pigs in Clover was very 
 clever.' 
 
 Wing took no notice of her interruption. ' And in any 
 case, you know,' he went on, 'no reputable publisher is 
 going to make a line in pornography. It's a pity we can't 
 find another Edgar Norman, or, better still, some feller 
 who has really got an enthusiasm for the old kind of 
 virtue. If Maning, now . . . .' 
 
 'He is writing a novel,' Evelyn commented. 
 
 'Well, I hope he'll let me see it when it's done,' Wing 
 said. Then he leaned back in his chair and delivered 
 himself of his final gospel. 'Maning's a queer fish,' he 
 began, 'no slight on him to say that; I know you're en- 
 gaged. But so far as the publishing business is concerned, 
 I'd sooner put my money on his books than on Victoria 
 Cross's. We don't know what his literary abilities are 
 yet, and everything depends on whether he can express 
 his ideas in the form of a dramatic story. But if he can, 
 ' little Wing thumped his desk with a podgy fist, 'he's 
 the author for me, and chance these realist fellers.
 
 THE AGREEMENT 151 
 
 Mailing's consistent, and he's so sincere, it fairly lifts him 
 off his feet now and again. And that's the sort we want 
 for the English public. If he could do a picture of him- 
 self, with good strong action, goin' about with his notions 
 of virtue, rising superior to every temptation, bein' Pure 
 to the verge of insanity, I'd guarantee to sell a hundred 
 thousand copies. A book like that, written with Maning's 
 conviction, is as good as a new religion to some people. 
 You tell him what I say, Miss Lang, and use your influence 
 with him. Tell him he'll be doing a lot of good in the 
 world. That'll tempt him more than the success, if I 
 know anything about him.' 
 
 That pronouncement gave Evelyn cause for much 
 thought. It did not increase her admiration for her 
 employer, his interest was so explicitly mercenary. But 
 it gave her a new aspect of Philip. She began to see him 
 as the high priest of a finer morality, and to take herself 
 to account for her own frank interest in life. There was, 
 without question, something very splendid in her lover's 
 rigid asceticism of thought and action. Perhaps, it had 
 only provoked her because it was an ideal beyond her own 
 accomplishment. She had moments when she felt that 
 she wished, above everything, to be worthy of so clean, 
 so almost religious a devotion as that which was being 
 offered her. And she tried more and more when she was 
 with him to appreciate the formalities that he interposed 
 upon their intercourse; to check her natural desire to 
 express her own love by little caresses and evidences of 
 what she began to suppose must be purely physical 
 emotions. She found these repressions immensely diffi- 
 cult, but she tried very hard. There was undoubtedly 
 something in Philip's exalted Puritanism that aroused her 
 sincerest admiration. He was, as she often repeated to 
 herself, so magnificently consistent .... 
 
 She gave him Mr Wing's message the same evening, but 
 Philip did not respond with the eagerness she had expected. 
 
 'I don't feel that I can write a book of that kind,' he 
 said. 
 
 'But you might do so much good/ Evelyn urged.
 
 152 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 ' I'm afraid/ he began, ' that a book of that kind . . . 
 calls for .... for something I can't give.' 
 
 She had no idea what he meant. 'I believe you could 
 write it,' she affirmed with an encouraging air of con- 
 viction. 
 
 ' I don't know. I might be able to,' he hesitated. ' But, 
 you see, I'm afraid of the effect upon upon myself.' 
 
 Evelyn's bewilderment was clearly written on her face. 
 
 He struggled a little further with the difficulty of his 
 explanation. ' You see,' he said, ' I should have to describe 
 so much wickedness. Half more than half the effect of 
 a book like that depends upon its descriptions. And in 
 writing one would have, in a sense, to experience the things 
 described.' 
 
 'Must they be described? ' asked Evelyn to gain time. 
 
 ' That is how you get the dramatic effects,' he explained 
 with more readiness. Now that the difficult point had 
 been made clear, he felt more sure of himself. ' Light and 
 shade, you know. It would be too feeble to spend your- 
 self in condemning a sort of imaginary fault. It couldn't 
 possibly be dramatic, I mean.' 
 
 She saw that, but the subtlety of his reason for not 
 attempting description still eluded her. There was 
 Bunyan, for example, and heaps of others; writers above 
 reproach in their private lives, who had not hesitated to 
 describe what Philip called 'wickedness.' By way of 
 putting the question more plainly, she cited her example. 
 
 ' But, Philip,' she said, ' other men have done it. Good 
 men like John Bunyan. It can't be wrong, if your 
 purpose is a good one.' 
 
 ' "Pilgrim's Progress" isn't a novel,' was Philip's 
 defence. 
 
 ' Oh ! well, Sir Walter Scott, then,' Evelyn tried. 
 
 Philip blinked and looked down at the pavement. They 
 were walking down Whitehall towards Evelyn's lodging. 
 He had formed a habit of calling for her at the office, taking 
 her out to tea, and going as far as the door of her house in 
 Warwick Street. It was a means of seeing her without 
 being alone with her in a house. He was never quite at
 
 THE AGREEMENT 153 
 
 ease, now, when they two were shut into a room, alone, 
 together. 
 
 'I suppose it's a personal question,' he said. 'I don't 
 feel that / can do it, that's all. I feel that it would be 
 degrading.' 
 
 Despite her reaction to Mr Wing's dissertation of the 
 morning, she had a quick spasm of irritation. Surely, 
 this was a purity more than human. 
 
 'It seems rather absurd to me,' she said; 'and, well, 
 rather selfish.' 
 
 'It isn't a thing I can argue about,' Philip returned 
 gravely. 'I daresay I haven't made my meaning clear. 
 To me, writing a book like that would be touching pitch/ 
 
 'Oh ! well,' Evelyn conceded; 'I suppose I don't under- 
 stand. Shall we risk the profanities of Strutton Ground 
 or go straight on down to Victoria ? ' 
 
 He chose the broad, straight path of Victoria Street. 
 
 Evelyn wrestled with the new intricacy of her problem, 
 that evening, and decided that in this thing, too, she had, 
 perhaps, been lacking in insight. She saw that with 
 regard to Philip she must be ready to concede the whole 
 proposition without a single extenuation; he had touched, 
 or was attempting to touch, an absolute; and the very 
 smell of pitch might be a source of defilement. 
 
 'It's rather terrifying . . . .' Evelyn murmured to 
 herself. 
 
 She was, presently, to suspect another deduction, still 
 more 'terrifying' that might possibly arise from Philip's 
 absolutism in the matter of sexual purity. Her process 
 was not, however, a logical one; and when she had her 
 first doubt as to whether her lover might actually shrink 
 from the idea of marriage, she put it from her as an absurd 
 invention of her own mind. The truth is that he was 
 not honest with her in this matter; indeed, he was not 
 honest with himself. 
 
 G!C. L
 
 i54 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 It was late autumn when the preliminary and easily 
 repulsed doubt first shook her; and the circumstances of 
 their two lives were indicating very plainly that their 
 marriage was the one easy and completely satisfying 
 solution of all their difficulties. She knew, then, that 
 her position ki the firm of Robert Wing, was becoming 
 daily more insecure. Wing had, at last, found the partner 
 he had been looking for, and she had no intention of 
 staying in Norfolk Street, after the agreement was signed. 
 She expected a cordial endorsement of her decision from 
 Philip, and when it was not given, she imagined that he 
 must have misunderstood her. 
 
 ' But, Philip, I don't think you have quite realised/ she 
 said. 'This new man, Mr Sharpe, is a perfectly awful 
 person. He was a bookseller, you know, and he has 
 saved a little money, and thinks he knows all there is to 
 know about publishing. But it isn't that. He's so so 
 coarse and horrible. I've never been the least afraid of 
 poor fat little Mr Wing; but, well, I could not work for a 
 creature like this Sharpe person. The look of him makes 
 me feel sick. He's tall and white-faced, with a great 
 black moustache that he's always playing with, and thick, 
 wavy sort of hair. And, and he looks greedy. I should 
 never have a moment's peace. You can't snub a man of 
 that sort. He's too thick-skinned.' 
 
 She had said enough, she thought, to rouse Philip to 
 fury, but he was strangely unmoved by this threat of the 
 coarse, lascivious Sharpe. 
 
 'Yes, I suppose you'll have to leave in that case,' he 
 said. ' But what will you get to do ? ' 
 
 The answer to that was obvious, but she hesitated to 
 frame it without reserve. 
 
 'And you are having trouble with your housekeeper,' 
 she tned by way of giving him a lead. ' We seem to be 
 rather out of luck just now.' 
 
 'Oh ! Mrs Billing has been better since I spoke to her,' Philip 
 replied rather too eagerly. ' I think she'll be all right, now.' 
 
 Evelyn pursed her lips, and decided that further hesi- 
 tation on her part would be simply prudish.
 
 THE AGREEMENT 155 
 
 'But, Philip/ she began, and stopped because she saw 
 that he knew exactly what she was going to say. He had 
 frowned and quickened his step; his demeanour was that 
 of a man anxious to evade a difficult proposition. In 
 face of that attitude she found a frank question impossible. 
 
 ' Oh ! I suppose I can find something else to do. I must 
 ask uncle/ she said, suddenly reverting to his question. 
 
 'I shouldn't think you would have any real difficulty/ 
 he returned with evident relief. 
 
 She suffered one of her quick feelings of annoyance with 
 him ; and on the excuse of having some ' marketing ' to 
 do, insisted on his leaving her when they came to the 
 corner of Strutton Ground. ' I know you hate this street/ 
 she said. 'It's too too frank for you/ 
 
 He left her without any convincing exhibition of un- 
 willingness; and when she got home she wondered for the 
 first time if it were possible that he was afraid of marriage. 
 She dismissed the idea, then, as ridiculous, but it inevitably 
 returned. 
 
 And within a fortnight the topic of their possible 
 marriage had come to the surface, however unwilling 
 Philip's co-operation. For days the subject had formed 
 an invisible background to all the material of their con- 
 versation, and, at last, Evelyn rent the artificial fabric of 
 their talk and displayed the base in all its immodest 
 nakedness. 
 
 ' I can't really see/ she said with a sort of moody petu- 
 lance. ' I really cannot see why we shouldn't be married, 
 and solve all these difficulties at one stroke. Can you?' 
 She did not look at him but she knew that he quivered. 
 
 'Isn't it rather soon?' was the first feeble effort of 
 procrastination. 
 
 'Soon?' she- repeated contemptuously; she had to 
 disguise her real feeling by displaying some other. ' What 
 do you mean by soon ? ' 
 
 'My mother has only been dead two months/ he ex- 
 plained gravely. 
 
 She was inclined to cling to that. ' Oh ! quite/ she said, 
 still with an air of aloof dignity. 'I didn't mean at once/
 
 i5b GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 ' Oh ! I see,' was all Philip's response. 
 
 They got no further that day; and even now, that the 
 subject had been definitely opened, Evelyn found it very 
 difficult to make any particular proposal. Her doubts of 
 Philip's willingness were gaining ground; and faced by the 
 bald alternatives of his unwillingness to marry herself and 
 his unwillingness to marry anybody, she preferred to 
 accept the latter. 
 
 It was early in January when Philip's housekeeper, ably 
 reinforced by the maid Alice, came to Evelyn's assistance. 
 
 Any woman would have seen through Mrs Billing's 
 recurrent periods of inertia within a month. Philip 
 accepted the suggestive excuse of a weak heart without 
 question, and was not suspicious of any physiological 
 improbability when his housekeeper's ailment confined 
 her to her own room for two or three days at a time, and 
 released her filmy, trembling, and even meeker than was 
 her common habit. 
 
 Mrs Billing had had a weary life of it, poor soul. She 
 had suffered since childhood from a timorous spirit. In 
 her thought she was very capable of standing up for her- 
 self, but no sober occasion had yet found her equal to 
 her antagonist. Alice had ridden over her roughshod 
 from the first. And, no doubt, what Mrs Billing sought 
 in alcohol was chiefly the courage of her own opinion; 
 it figured to her, perhaps, as the ideal relief. It may 
 have been a change of liquor or an overdose that finally 
 brought her down, in the middle of an attack, to Philip's 
 study at nine o'clock one evening. 
 
 She began firmly, even creditably; although it was a 
 mistake to lean against the closed door and maintain a 
 convulsive grip of the handle. She did not look at Philip 
 but at some guiding light of courage above his head. 
 
 'I wish for to give notice,' she said quite coherently. 
 
 Philip had been a trifle startled by the involutions of
 
 THE AGREEMENT 157 
 
 her entrance, but he was willing to make uncommon 
 allowances for her weak heart. 
 
 ' I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs Billing. Why ? ' h said, 
 and added considerately, 'Won't you sit down?' 
 
 'No, thank you/ returned Mrs Billing with an accent 
 that left no doubt of her scorn for such an insult. ' Not 
 in this house.' 
 
 Philip stared in bewilderment. 
 
 'Not in this house,' repeated Mrs Billing, having found 
 her line. She stared fixedly at an engraving of Dore's 
 'Dream of Pilate's Wife' over the mantelpiece, as she 
 continued, 'I may be put upon and treated like dirt, I 
 always have been, and it seems as if everyone thinks they 
 can wipe their shoes on me, but there's an end to every- 
 thing. I may be poor-spirited, I'm sure I've been told 
 so orfen enough, but there's an end to everything.' She 
 appeared to be slightly confused by the unexpected 
 recurrence of the same sentence, and gave a genteel 
 hiccough that had a note of affronted astonishment. 
 
 'But Mrs Billing, I don't understand in the least,' 
 protested the amazed Philip. 'And I'm sure you're not 
 well. Won't you . . . .' 
 
 ' Ah ! interposed Mrs Billing, glaring an imbecile dis- 
 approval upon Pilate's wife. ' You'd accuse me of drink, 
 I suppose, Mr Maning, a thing I'm happily not given to.' 
 
 'I haven't. I only thought . . . .' Philip began, 
 and instantly realised the truth of the indictment. 
 
 ' It was only to be expected,' Mrs Billing went on. ' Any 
 stone's good enough to throw at me as I know to me cost. 
 But there's one thing, I won't put up with, Mr Maning, 
 and that's the immorality of this house.' 
 
 If she had meant to rouse him, her ambition was satisfied. 
 He jumped to his feet. 'What do you mean by that? ' he 
 demanded angrily. 
 
 Mrs Billing waggled her head. She was not afraid, her 
 expression said. Some people might not have the courage 
 of their convictions, but she spoke her mind. She was 
 slightly impeded by occasional recurrences of that in- 
 explicable hiccough, but she had a very clear recollection
 
 158 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 of what she had come to say, and she meant to say 
 it. 
 
 ' No need for you to be hoity-toity with me, Mr Maning,' 
 she said boldly, though she still continued to address 
 Pilate's wife 'I've seen what I have seen, and if Alice's 
 condition don't need some explanation, I should be glad 
 to know why ? ' 
 
 'Alice's condition?' repeated Philip, shocked out of his 
 righteous anger. 
 
 Mrs Billing said something that sounded like ' Whup up.' 
 
 Philip sat down again and leaned his head on his hands. 
 He had noticed that Alice was getting very stout, but the 
 meaning of that distension had never entered his mind. 
 The even monologue of his housekeeper's boast of courage 
 flowed over him; she was most unhappily and d sgracefully 
 drunk and could be dismissed at a moment's notice, but 
 what was he to do about this other crime, this unprece- 
 dented and appalling outbreak of 'beastliness' in the 
 house sacred to the memory of his father and mother? 
 
 Mrs Billing was finding her splendid outburst 
 degenerating into the commonplace. She probably did 
 not mean what she said, but having a good half bottle 
 of courage behind her, she could not afford to lose the 
 occasion. 
 
 'However meek, I'm a respectable woman,' she broke 
 out with a sudden burst of passion; 'and I don't stay 
 another moment in a house where the master sleeps every 
 night with a common slut of a servant girl.' 
 
 Philip heard that. The charge against himself was 
 negligible inasmuch as the substance of it was nothing 
 more than the gibbering of an idiot. She might with 
 greater plausibility have accused him of plotting to 
 murder the Bishop of Truro. It was the form of her 
 statement that stirred him to a cold bitterness of disgust. 
 
 'Get out of my room at once, you horrible woman,' he 
 said in a low, steady voice; and he got up and moved 
 towards her with the slow, malicious concentration of one 
 intent on the capture and destruction of some noxious 
 insect.
 
 THE AGREEMENT 159 
 
 Mrs Billing was scared. She was sober enough to 
 appreciate the threat of that tense approach. Abuse 
 she could have welcomed and returned. She had reached 
 a stage when a satisfactory burst of shrieking would have 
 given her considerable relief. But this horrid suggestion 
 of a coming pounce rilled her with sheer terror. She fell 
 on the threshold in her first attempt to curl round a door 
 that vindictively opened towards her; but she scrambled 
 to her feet again with the energy born of desperation and 
 fled up the stairs with a speed that was in the circumstances 
 exceeding creditable. 
 
 Philip forgot her before the scutter of her agitated foot- 
 steps had reached the landing. She had spoken obscene 
 words, but the terror of them was as nothing compared to 
 the fact of Alice's offence. Oh ! why were men and women 
 so beastly ! 
 
 He had no intention of saying anything to Evelyn about 
 the double tragedy of his household. He considered the 
 subject quite unfit for any kind of mention in her presence. 
 But his ignorance and helplessness betrayed him into 
 seeking her advice in the matter of replacing his two 
 servants; and he believed with an altogether unwarranted 
 confidence, that he had merely to say he had dismissed 
 both maid and housekeeper, making some general impli- 
 cation that the matter was not one to be discussed, and 
 that Evelyn would, then, delicately avoid further inquiry 
 as to causes and advise him as to a remedy. 
 
 He chose the tea-shop as the more suitable place for 
 opening the subject. They were less alone there than in 
 the street and Evelyn would have less opportunity to 
 press for reasons. 
 
 'By the way, I've got to get two new servants,' he 
 began with a false ease. 'How does one do it? I don't 
 think the local registry office is much good. Could you 
 tell me of one in town ? ' 
 
 'But, Philip/ Evelyn said, 'What's happened? I
 
 i6o GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 thought that Mrs Billing was such a treasure, and the 
 other girl has been with you for years, hasn't she?' 
 
 ' Three or four years, I think,' Philip said. 
 
 'Was she impertinent?' Evelyn asked. 
 
 Philip hesitated, but his remembrance of Alice's 
 miserable, imploring face as he had seen it that morning, 
 would not permit him to accept that fable. 
 
 ' Oh ! no,' he said. ' No, she wasn't impertinent.' 
 
 'But then, Philip; why?' Evelyn asked. 
 
 ' I'm afraid I can't tell you,' he returned, with becoming 
 modesty. 
 
 Evelyn's eyes twinkled. Her first guess was that the 
 girl had been making amorous advances to her master, 
 and the absurd futility of such an attempt appealed to 
 Evelyn's sense of humour. 
 
 'She didn't try to make love to you, did she, dear? ' she 
 asked with a fair imitation of seriousness. 
 
 Philip was shocked. This, in another form, was the 
 accusation of Mrs Billing. ' Oh ! no, no, certainly not,' he 
 said with an accent ol disgust. 
 
 'But why, then?' Evelyn repeated. 
 
 'I can't tell you,' said Philip, completing the original 
 couplet in a slightly stiffer form. 
 
 'Oh! nonsense!' ejaculated Evelyn, with a touch of 
 asperity. Try as she would, she could not always make 
 allowance for this strange modesty of his. There were 
 occasions when he was simply childish. 
 
 Philip frowned and said nothing. 
 
 'Has she got herself into trouble?' Evelyn tried at a 
 venture. 
 
 He accepted that with an ashamed nod. 
 
 ' Poor girl ! What are you going to do about it ? ' 
 Evelyn asked. 
 
 The 'poor girl* was too amazing a comment for any 
 direct criticism, but he included it in his censure uf her 
 impossibly foolish question. 
 
 ' I have done eveiything I could do. At once,' he said 
 'I only heard last night, and she left the house this 
 morning.'
 
 THE AGREEMENT id 
 
 'You don't mean to say that you just turned her out 
 into the street ? ' gasped Evelyn. 
 
 'Of course/ Philip said. 
 
 Evelyn's eyes flamed. She had evidently lost all 
 consciousness of their neighbours at the next table. 
 ' Philip, look at me I' she commanded. 
 
 He obeyed her, but it was a stern, inflexible stare that 
 met hers when he raised his head. 
 
 'Can't you see what a wicked thing you've done?' she 
 demanded, but he so obviously could not that she did not 
 wait for an answer. ' Oh ! that kind of self -righteousness 
 makes me so angry/ she went on quickly. 'I can under- 
 stand your .... ideal of .... of personal 
 purity. Or I think I can. But you've no sort of right to 
 judge that girl off-hand and turn her out. You haven't, 
 Philip. Haven't you thought what you may be responsible 
 for? You may very well have driven her to suicide or to 
 prostitution. Can't you realise that?' 
 
 'It will be her own fault if she comes to a bad end/ 
 Philip said coldly. 
 
 'It will be your fault as well/ Evelyn replied at 
 once. 'Do you think it's a moral thing to do to drive 
 a woman into further sin, just because she has sinned 
 once?' 
 
 'I could not keep her in the house/ Philip said. He 
 was not abashed by her attack upon him. He was not 
 angry. But the cold, hard set of his face showed plainly 
 that he was completely impervious to any argument. 
 
 Evelyn drew in her breath with a long sharp sigh. At 
 that moment she hated him; less perhaps for his Puritanism 
 than for his immobility. 
 
 'Does religion, the New Testament, Christ, mean 
 anything to you?' she attempted desperately. 'Just 
 think of all Christ said on that subject, about the woman 
 taken in adultery, for instance.' And then she saw dis- 
 tractingly that in this thing Philip might truly count 
 himself as being without sin, as having earned a right to 
 throw the first stone. 
 
 'If you condone a sin of that kind, you encourage it/
 
 163 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 was what he said, unintentionally assuming the mantle 
 in the very way she had feared. 
 
 ' Oh 1 it's inhuman/ she exclaimed, and stood up and 
 began to collect her little belongings. She was leaving the 
 table when another thought occurred to her. ' I suppose 
 you've no idea where the girl's gone to? ' she asked. 
 
 ' She said she was going home/ Philip said. 
 
 'And do you know where that is? ' 
 
 'Yes. She left an address at Penge. I said her box 
 should be forwarded.' 
 
 'Did you pay her anything?' 
 
 ' I paid her three months wages/ Philip said. 
 
 Evelyn stared at him for an instant and then sat down 
 again. ' Oh ! you did do that, did you? ' she asked grimly. 
 'Now, why? You would have been justified, wouldn't 
 you, in turning her out without paying her a penny?' 
 
 Philip frowned with the first shade of perplexity he hc.d 
 yet shown. 
 
 ' I didn't want, in a way, to condemn her/ he said. ' I 
 only wanted to get rid of her at once. I couldn't bear to 
 think of her being in the house. I couldn't endure the 
 sight of her.' 
 
 Evelyn's face softened. This was the aspect of him she 
 was beginning to understand. 'Will you give me that 
 address ? ' she said. 
 
 'Why?' he asked, quickly, defensively. 'You're not 
 going to write to her.' 
 
 'No, I'm going to see her/ Evelyn returned. 
 
 ' Oh ! no' he gasped, and there was something of real 
 suffering in his voice. ' No, not you! 
 
 'I am/ Evelyn said firmly. 'I have a friend who is 
 interested in all these cases. She'll look after the girl 
 until until it's all over, and then find her work if she'll 
 take it/ 
 
 ' But, then, let your friend go, not you/ Philip besought 
 her. 
 
 'Why not me?' she asked. 
 
 'I couldn't bear it/ was all he said, but she saw the pain 
 in his face.
 
 THE AGREEMENT 163 
 
 ' Isn't that very silly? ' she said gently, trying to humour 
 him. 
 
 He was suddenly lax, now, even reasonable. 'Perhaps 
 it is,' he admitted. ' But I don't want you to go. I won't 
 give you the address unless you promise that you won't 
 go yourself. Your friend could do it all.' 
 
 ' Oh ! you must not make a goddess of me/ she whispered, 
 but she consented to leave all the affairs of Alice in the 
 hands of her friend. 
 
 When Philip and Evelyn had left the shop, the conver- 
 sation of the two young women at the next table became 
 suddenly animated. 
 
 ' She's got a temper, my word ! ' remarked the one who 
 had unfortunately had her back turned to the actors in 
 the recent drama. 
 
 'Don't blame her, though, in this case, do you?' replied 
 the other. 
 
 'Meanin' he knows more about that girl than he'd let 
 on? ' 
 
 'Well, he was afraid for her to go and see the girl, wasn't 
 he?' 
 
 ' Sounded a bit like that, I'll admit.' 
 
 'Sounded? You should have seen his face, my dear. 
 If ever I saw a man look scared, he did,' explained the 
 young woman who had occupied the seat with a view. 
 
 That observer, who happened to be short-sighted and a 
 shade too vain to wear her glasses in public, had seen an 
 effect that the near spectator invariably missed. Little as 
 she was aware of it, a vision had been granted to her, how- 
 ever absurdly false had been her interpretation. She had 
 combined the manifold and labelled it correctly; while the 
 single stimulus of the shifting combination was invisible
 
 164 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 to Evelyn, placed always in the sharp focus of Philip's 
 attention. She was too near; everyone who knew him 
 was too near. But, once, Georgie Wood had a passing 
 sight of the vision revealed to him. 
 
 The occasion occurred little more than a month after 
 the sudden insurgence of Mrs Billing, but the affairs of 
 Philip and Evelyn had moved on rapidly in these four 
 weeks. She had taken command with a new imperious- 
 ness after that episode in the Strand tea-rooms, and had 
 told Philip that he was not to be trusted any longer to 
 look after himself. A 'cook-general/ guaranteed by 
 references to be as safe and sober as could be humanly 
 expected, had taken the place of the two outcasts; a 
 stoutish, capable woman, who approved of Evelyn from 
 the moment they met in the registry-office, and took 
 charge of Philip as if he had been an invalid or an imbecile. 
 Her name was Mrs Hunt. 
 
 She proved an outspoken influence in the hastening of 
 Philip's marriage. She had been married twice herself 
 and had a tolerant if markedly condescending opinion of 
 the male sex; but she was prepared to worship Evelyn, 
 and wanted to see her mistress of ' Middlethorpe ' as soon 
 as might be. 
 
 Mrs Hunt's method was perfectly straightforward. She 
 had a conviction, born of experience, that men were 
 incapable of understanding anything but the plainest 
 statement, and she did not, as she would have expressed 
 it, mince matters, with this obviously incapable member 
 of his sex. Philip often looked at her with something of 
 the appeal he had shown before the autocratic imperatives 
 of his father. 
 
 Certainly Mrs Hunt's influence had considerable weight 
 in fixing the date of Philip's marriage for the twenty-first 
 of February; but Mr Sharpe had come into power, then, 
 Evelyn had left Norfolk Street, and every circumstance 
 seemed to be combining to beat down any excuse for 
 delay. 
 
 It was only eight days before the ceremony that Philip 
 suddenly revolted.
 
 THE AGREEMENT 165 
 
 He had had no plan of rebellion in his mind when he 
 went to dinner with George Wood, who was to be his best 
 man. When the appointment had been made, a resolution 
 of quite another kind had been flickering across the surface 
 of his thought. He had recognised that he must ask 
 advice and he could ask it of no one else. He had come 
 to that stage of resolution with repugnance and much 
 distress of mind; but the conclusion seemed inevitable. 
 And all through dinner the anticipation of the questions 
 he was determined to put later, filled him with a strange 
 dread. 
 
 Wood attributed his companion's nervousness and 
 general air of embarrassment to his preoccupation with 
 the subject of his coming marriage, but did not guess the 
 particular aspect of that contract which was the sole 
 cause of perturbation. He knew the practical ignorance 
 of his friend in these matters, but it was incredible to a 
 man of Wood's experience that Philip, at his age, and 
 with his knowledge of literature and of the traffic of Wing's 
 office, should be as innocent of the elementary facts of 
 reproduction as any school-girl of thirteen. 
 
 The dinner was certainly not a social success, although 
 Wood did his best, handicapped as he was by his knowledge 
 of Philip's delicacy with regard to the subject of marriage 
 in general. Not long since he had filled the office of best 
 man for another friend of his, and two nights before that 
 ceremony he had, also, dined alone with the future bride- 
 groom. The remembrance of that dinner now filled 
 Wood with a feeling of shame. During the marked 
 intervals of silence, he could not help comparing the 
 present and former occasions, and it seemed to him that 
 he and Fergusson had been most unnecessarily coarse. 
 Even at the time he had wondered, a little uneasily, now 
 and again, what Fergusson's future wife would have 
 thought if she could have overheard parts of their con- 
 versation ! Philip, no doubt, went to the other extreme, 
 but there was a clean strain of decency in George Wood 
 that distinctly approved the present contrast. Never- 
 theless, he looked forward to the quiet evening in his
 
 166 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 own chambers with a sense of something like dismay; 
 and when they had finished dinner, he was inspired to 
 suggest that they 'might, perhaps, do a theatre. Take 
 your mind off things a bit, old fellow/ he said. 
 
 Philip was horribly tempted. At that moment, he 
 would have given anything to escape from the duty he 
 had imposed upon himself. But when he thought of the 
 unescapable future that lay so closely before him, and of 
 another still more torturing interview that no excuse 
 could avoid, he braced himself with a rigour of desperation. 
 
 'I I want to talk to you, rather, Chip,' he said. 'I 
 couldn't do it, here.' And then he finally burnt his boats 
 by adding, 'I want you to tell me certain things. I 
 don't know anything about marriage and all that it 
 means.' 
 
 Wood flushed. The coarsest story told within hearing 
 of a barmaid, would not have brought a blush to his tanned 
 and freckled face, although it might have aroused his 
 indignation. Before Philip's confession of innocence, he 
 was as self-conscious as a young girl. 
 
 ' All right, Phil. Rather, ' he agreed hastily, and clicked 
 his fingers impatiently at the wrong waiter. 
 
 'Number seven, at your table, sir, I'll send him/ the 
 waiter replied with deference .... 
 
 Philip was a casual smoker. He accepted a cigarette 
 when it was offered to him, and helped it to burn, 
 that was all. To-night, for the first time in his life, he 
 found a refuge not so much in tobacco, as in the excuse 
 for occupation that Wood's cigarettes gave him. George, 
 hardly less embarrassed than his friend, smoked furiously. 
 
 And, somehow, behind the cover of smoke, the thing 
 was said, not openly; the explanation came by hints 
 that were themselves only half spoken, by brief, often 
 monosyllabic questions, and answers that apart from the 
 context of the two men's thoughts rather than their words, 
 would have been quite meaningless. Yet there were 
 few misunderstandings. Philip was not learning but 
 remembering. The long inheritance of knowledge from 
 innumerable generations came welling up from his
 
 THE AGREEMENT 167 
 
 subconsciousness to explain the obscurest and most 
 allusive of Wood's curt replies. 
 
 But, in Philip's case, those revelations of instinct were 
 not released in one fluent charge to take up the great 
 mission of life. They came to him foul with the confine- 
 ment of the long imprisonment he had imposed upon 
 them; grotesquely distorted by the cramps of inhibition; 
 indecently disguised in the motley of his eruptive dreams. 
 They filled him with disgust and terror; they confirmed 
 his worst apprehensions. 
 
 George Wood was as grave as a conscientious father 
 warning his first son against the perils of school-life. He 
 took this duty upon himself with a seriousness that had 
 the finest qualities of religion; and his very embarrassments 
 became him. No father confessor could have chosen more 
 delicate phraseology to penetrate the halting admissions 
 of a stainless penitent unaware of the very nature of the 
 sins he might have committed. Whatever suggestions 
 of impurity arose in Philip's imagination, were not 
 prompted by any word or smile of his friend. 
 
 Silence fell at last; a silence that presently became so 
 unendurable that Wood resorted to changes of position, 
 to a forced cough, to tapping out his pipe on the fender, 
 in order to break it. 
 
 Philip did not move. He had finished smoking, and 
 he sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped 
 above his bowed head, and his gaze if his eyes were 
 open? fixed on the hearthrug. 
 
 Wood leaned over and almost surreptitiously picked up 
 the Star he had bought in Oxford Street, as they came 
 back to his chambers. He had a feeling of respect for 
 Philip's thoughts. If it had been any other man, Wood 
 would have been amused, but there was some quality in 
 Philip's attitude that compelled reverence. 
 
 'I can't,' was the strangled whisper that finally gave 
 utterance to the wild turmoil of his endeavour. 
 
 'Eh?' ejaculated Wood, hastily dropping his paper. 
 'Can't what, old man? Oh ! hang it, you mustn't take it 
 like that. In a case like yours, with love on both sides,
 
 168 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 I mean, everything's as pure and beautiful as it can 
 possibly be. You've only got to think of it like that, and 
 it'll be all right. Bound to be.' 
 
 Philip still crouched in the same attitude. He did not 
 move a finger of his clutching hands as he enunciated his 
 conclusions in a low, steady voice that only wavered now 
 and again when the emotional stress of his words seemed 
 almost to choke him. 
 
 'It's no good,' he said. 'I can't. I have tried to be 
 brave. I have been brave. I've faced it. Everything. 
 All that you've said I shall have to face. I haven't spared 
 myself. Perhaps, with another woman, I might. I don't 
 know; I might work myself up to a sort of reckless ex- 
 citement. Not with Evelyn. Never with Evelyn. The 
 thought of it terrifies me. She is too wonderful. Too 
 sweet; too perfect. I couldn't. It would disgrace her as 
 well as me. If she expects that in marriage, I can't marry 
 her. But I don't believe she can expect that. She doesn't 
 know any more than I did before this evening. Perhaps, 
 she has just imagined things, all wrong. I'm sure if 
 she realised the horrible truth, she would run away sooner 
 than marry me.' 
 
 He broke off as if he had come to the end of his dis- 
 avowal, but before Wood could collect himself to confute 
 the argument, he began again; 
 
 'There must be a higher ideal of love and marriage. 
 Why shouldn't Evelyn and I fulfil it? Why must it all 
 be dragged down to the animal level? We can live with- 
 out children. I don't want to have children. I don't 
 love her because she might bear me children; I love her 
 for her own perfect self. And I don't want any further 
 satisfaction than to see her and talk to her. Why should 
 I? You don't want to kiss a work of Art. And she is 
 greater and more beautiful than any work of Art . . . 
 Men are so greedy. They want a climax. They want 
 to be .... I don't know .... The great 
 loves of romance were all tragedy. After that climax 
 they couldn't have gone on being great. They flamed 
 and were glorious and then expired. I would sooner do
 
 THE AGREEMENT 169 
 
 that than .... become inured, satisfied. Have 
 Evelyn as a wife who had become .... a con- 
 venience. Lose her for the sake of her children. Perhaps, 
 as you say, by cheating one's imagination, it might be 
 made .... not beastly. But you can say what 
 you like, you know in your heart that it's only sensual, 
 horrible pleasure that tempts you. You do know that, 
 don't you, Chip? Be honest with me.' 
 
 And deep down in Wood's being there stirred the power 
 of a response that is surely the birthright of most men; 
 the response to an ideal of purity and asceticism; a 
 symptom of the great religious element which even in the 
 savage finds expression in a respect for chastity. For it 
 is as if God experimented; as if the seed of that ideal were 
 sown in every man, in the hope that here and there it 
 might develop into the finest flower of sainthood. This 
 ideal has no correspondence with the modesty and re- 
 luctance of women. It is positive and aspiring; a high 
 ambition to win dominance over the flesh and let the 
 spirit free. And when as on this evening in Wood's 
 chambers, the ideal finds an exemplar, even though it 
 be a false exemplar, he commands the respect of every 
 man who has not so far denied his own spirit that the 
 spring of it has been choked and dried. 
 
 'Well; I don't know,' Wood stammered. 'But surely, 
 Phil, I mean the world couldn't go on if we all felt like 
 you do about it. And that couldn't be Right. Race 
 suicide. Jolly well the end of humanity.' 
 
 'I'm not advocating it,' Philip returned, speaking still 
 from under the cover of his hands. ' I'm not saying that 
 I'd like you, or anybody, to think as I do. It has to be. 
 I know that. But it's for me and Evelyn. I don't know 
 why we should be different. Perhaps, she's not. I'm 
 sure most women, of her sort, must loathe that side of 
 marriage. They sacrifice themselves in order to have 
 children. Sometimes, I daresay, for their husband's sake, 
 if they care enough. I am different from other men, I 
 suppose; in a way. But you've almost admitted that 
 you agree with me up to a point. You've said, practically, 
 G.C. M
 
 170 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 that you just give way to that as you might to drinking or 
 some other temptation -because you like it; not because 
 you think it could even possibly be beautiful.' 
 
 Wood got out of his chair and began to pace the room. 
 He felt as if some call had come to him to renounce the 
 world and go out into the wilderness. And he was sensible 
 of regret that he was not fine enough to respond. It was 
 too late for him; but could he sincerely urge Philip to 
 violate this strangely compelling ideal of chastity? 
 
 ' There's one thing, you know, Phil,' he said after another 
 silence; ' you ought to tell her. There ought not to be any 
 misunderstanding before you're married.' 
 
 'It isn't necessary. I'm sure it isn't necessary/ Philip 
 said, and he suddenly relinquished his attitude and leaned 
 back in his chair with a long sigh. 'I'm certain, certain 
 that she must feel as I do; that she will be relieved, 
 presently, when she finds out.' 
 
 Wood looked doubtful. 'You may be right,' he said; 
 'but all the same, I'm sure you ought to tell her, now, 
 before you're married.' 
 
 'I couldn't,' Philip replied positively. 'It would be an 
 insult to her to suppose that she doesn't think as I do.' 
 
 ' She may want to have children,' Wood suggested. 
 ' All nice girls do.' He waited, but as Philip seemed 
 unable to answer that, he continued, 'You don't think 
 it . . . . beastly, for women to have children, do 
 you? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! no,' Philip exclaimed. ' No, that's beautiful.' 
 
 'Well, I put it to you that Miss Lang will want to have 
 children,' Wood said. ' And that if you don't, you ought 
 to be quite honest about it before it's too late.' 
 
 'I couldn't tell her,' murmured Philip. 
 
 'Well, write to her,' suggested Wood. 'You could do 
 it like that, couldn't you?' 
 * ' Yes, I might write it,' Philip agreed. 
 
 'Then you must.' 
 
 Wood was beginning to recover his satisfaction. He 
 had found an argument; or was it an excuse? Perhaps, 
 after all, in marriage that essential of the desire for children
 
 THE AGREEMENT 171 
 
 was so predominant that all personal pleasure gave way 
 before it. Yes, surely, that was true. 
 
 ' Look here, Phil,' he began again with a new note in his 
 voice. ' Do you mean to say that if she, Miss Lang, does 
 want to have children that you would be so selfish as to 
 refuse just for ... for a personal scruple? Look 
 at it from that point of view, only. Think of it as you 
 would of a surgical operation, to save your life.' 
 
 Philip clenched his teeth. 'I can't,' he said with a 
 tremor of despair in his voice. 'I can't, Chip. I have 
 tried. I can't. I won't. But I will write to Evelyn, I 
 do see, about that. It is only fair to her.' 
 
 He got up and stood for a moment by the fireplace. 
 'I'm going, now,' he said. 'I'm awfully grateful to you, 
 Chip. You've made it all so clear to me; although I ex- 
 pect I'll suffer for it in dreams.' He broke off and added 
 quickly, ' I say, old boy, do you know you're getting fat? ' 
 
 'Rot,' returned Wood at once; and glanced down the 
 line of his waistcoat, a new habit that was growing upon 
 him. 'I ought not to have chucked footer,' he added 
 thoughtfully. Til jolly well go in for cycling or some- 
 thing this summer.' 
 
 They kept the conversation at that level while Philip 
 was putting on his coat, but there was a kind of fatherly 
 solicitude in Wood's manner that had not hitherto marked 
 his relations with Philip. 
 
 ' Look here, we'll have to have one more talk before the 
 twenty-first,' he said as he came out on to the landing. 
 'Just to fix up a few details, you know.' 
 
 'Come and have dinner with me, then, on Saturday,' 
 Philip suggested. ' My new housekeeper isn't a bad cook.' 
 
 'Right you are,' Wood agreed heartily, but they still 
 stood facing one another, waiting for something they 
 both knew was yet to be done. 
 
 It was Wood who took the initiative; he put out his 
 hand and clasped Philip's, and at the same time, to cover 
 his own confusion, he slapped him a trifle boisterously on 
 the shoulder. 
 
 ' You'll be all right, old son,' he said.
 
 172 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Philip wrote his letter the same night. He knew that 
 until it was written, the contemplation of it would be a 
 continual weariness. As he waited in the resounding 
 blackness of Holborn Viaduct Station, surely one of the 
 dullest places in London at ten o'clock in the evening 
 and afterwards, as he sat, alone, in the cold stuffiness of 
 the second class carriage, he perpetually drafted and 
 redrafted the form of the statement he had promised to 
 make to Evelyn. He tried to put the thought of it away 
 from him until he could set it out on paper, experiment 
 with, delete, polish it and read it aloud, as he did with 
 the more tiresome passages of his novel. But his mind 
 refused to consider any other subject. By the time he 
 reached Herne Hill he was so fretted by the irk of it, that 
 he ran home in a fury of impatience to get the letter 
 written and to be free from the exasperation of this un- 
 inspired prompting. 
 
 He anticipated endless labour and revision in 
 composition. In the train he had cast and recast his 
 sentences until the form of his words had become mean- 
 ingless and unfamiliar. But when he sat down at his 
 desk, the thing came without effort, and in a manner 
 completely different from anything foreshadowed by 
 the tedious rehearsals of his journey home. He began, 
 without any form of address,- 
 
 'I have been thinking and wondering and letting my 
 mind play a little madly with all the subject of the future 
 that will so soon be the future no longer for you and me. 
 In imagination I have met your thought of our life 
 together and found it greeting me, gently complaisant 
 with all my ideal of the perfect partnership that must 
 presently be ours. Only once did that imagined converse 
 of our thoughts falter. In the garden where we walked 
 we came upon the statue of an infant god, a little tender
 
 THE AGREEMENT 173 
 
 thing that looked down anxious and yet dismayed, 
 contemplating, it may be, the loss of its godhead in 
 exchange for the love of some beautiful, human mother 
 or so we read the allegory in the quietness of our com- 
 munion. And for a moment, you were strangely moved. 
 It seemed to me as if you would stretch out your arms 
 to the waiting child. A deep shadow suddenly lay over 
 the brightness of our garden; the colour died from the 
 flowers; the sweet intercourse of our thought was broken; 
 and I knew that while you still walked beside me, you 
 were no longer mine. Then you turned to me and asked 
 the gift that I dreaded, and the shadow on the garden 
 deepened until in the darkness I could see nothing but 
 your eyes that looked at me with doubt and a little fear, 
 and yet with a desire for sacrifice; for the sacrifice of all 
 the magic purity and marvel of our love. But I could 
 not answer that desire. I knew that no recompense 
 could avail me for all that I must lose if, only for an 
 instant, I ceased to honour you with the perfect chastity 
 of adoration and love that is the best and truest thing in 
 life that I have to offer. And, perhaps, your eyes saw 
 deep into my soul, for presently the shadow began to lift, 
 and in a little I saw your face, sweet and content as it 
 had always been. And the colour burnt clear again in 
 all the leaping freshness of the flowers; the image of the 
 waiting god had vanished; and once more we walked in 
 the clear, ecstatic communion of love and understanding.' 
 
 He did not read his parable through when he had written 
 it. Now that his message had been spoken, his mind was 
 free from pain and very tired; and the contemplation of 
 even one further repetition of his recent experience filled 
 him with nausea. Yet as he was folding the letter, a last 
 terror of doubt came to him lest Evelyn might possibly 
 misunderstand him and the whole torture have to be 
 repeated. He hurriedly opened the sheet again, then, 
 and added a postscript. ' I had to write an allegory, but 
 I want an answer. This is a question, and until it's settled 
 I cannot be quite happy.'
 
 174 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 After that he sealed his letter and went out and posted 
 it. As it fell with a little click into the pillarbox, he 
 became aware of a new serenity. A soft air stirred in the 
 darkness of the night. The widely spaced lamps down 
 the tunnel of the dip towards Denmark Hill led his inquiry 
 into the invisible distance with an effect of regular soothing 
 rhythm. He stood and followed the line of dwindling 
 points, to and fro, diagonally from pavement to pavement, 
 until the last faint speck fell to the plane of the road's 
 horizon. It seemed to him that in this smooth regularity, 
 diminishing along some magic curve of perfect progression, 
 he could read the secret of happiness, of the peace and 
 comfort of an ordered life. He had a sense of calm that 
 was transcendental in its immensity; a sense of passing 
 by a regular and ordained deliberation through an eternity 
 from which the very principle of effort had been, for ever, 
 excluded. 
 
 He was not disturbed when the postman came out of 
 the distance with firm, even steps, and cleared the pillar- 
 box to the accompaniment of a musical chink of keys, a 
 little murmuring chatter of collected letters, and the last 
 firm chord of a closing metal door. Philip, from under 
 the black shadow of the tall paling, watched his 
 disappearance, beating a diminuendo of retreat down 
 the alley of the faintly lit perspective. 
 
 The word rhythm rocked softly in his mind as he walked 
 home, letting his footsteps beat to the measure of his 
 thought. 
 
 All fears and apprehensions had passed from him; and 
 he was conscious of a relief and content beyond any 
 expression. Every nerve of his body was softly vibrant 
 with a realisation of perfect comfort .... 
 
 'I shan't dream to-night,' he thought, as with confidence 
 he settled himself luxuriously to sleep. 
 
 But in the early morning he dreamt with a vividness 
 and particularity that he had never before known. As 
 he knelt by his bed, praying with shame and misery in the 
 cold blackness of the February dawn, he attributed his fall 
 to his sinful request for knowledge on the previous evening.
 
 THE AGREEMENT 175 
 
 8 
 
 Evelyn's half whimsical reflection when she first read 
 Philip's letter, was that he had sent her a very unusual 
 valentine. The little god who was surely the patron of 
 that day, had been flouted, told he was not wanted and 
 solemnly warned off the sacred ground of Philip's garden. 
 This Cupid was a profane god, arch and merry and mis- 
 chievous, and when his shaft was loosed, he was off for 
 more sport with never a care for the outcome of his last 
 escapade. Philip's god of love was austere .... 
 Was he? Evelyn paused, uncertain whether that de- 
 scription was applicable. 'In a way, austere,' she 
 reflected, and in another way, poetic, or was it sentimental? 
 And, then, there was a touch of Mrs Grundy about him, 
 and a touch of religion, and over all a peculiar likeness to 
 Philip. As a God of Love he was, probably, almost 
 certainly, unique; and if one drew him the portrait would 
 resemble Philip, in a toga, with wings on his head and an 
 iron ball chained to his feet. And under the toga he would 
 wear plate armour ! 
 
 She sighed and read the letter through again, approving 
 the deftness of the allegory, but deploring the style as 
 being too derivative. Edgar Norman had a passage in 
 Marzipan that was the perfect model for such an effusion 
 as this. 
 
 In the room below, Colonel Barker was taking his tub. 
 He was not ashamed of that exercise. The whole house 
 could follow the ritual made audible by his vehement 
 splashings and gruntings. When the prolonged 'ah' of 
 the toweling began, Evelyn sighed and attempted to fix 
 her mind once more on the problem of Philip's question. 
 He wanted an answer. Until he knew that she was one 
 with him in her anticipation of all that marriage should 
 not mean to them, he would know no peace of mind. 
 
 She had never considered the matter before, but she 
 was quite certain, now, that she had always expected
 
 176 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 something of this kind. She believed she could appreciate 
 Philip's attitude and feelings. What she could not under- 
 stand were her own. 
 
 On one side she agreed with him. It seemed to her 
 that there was something splendid and spiritual about his 
 ideal of love. Why should the love of a man and a woman 
 necessarily seek a particular physical expression? She 
 could not avoid the impression that that aspect of love 
 was always, and at the best, a little coarse, something 
 to be hidden in the night and forgotten in the day's inter- 
 course. 
 
 On the other side there was, firstly, the consideration 
 of the desire for children. She had that. She loved 
 children and adored babies, frankly and with no sort of 
 reserve. But was it absolutely essential to her satisfaction 
 that the children should be the fruit of her own body? 
 She was not quite sure. For a time her mind played with 
 the idea of an adopted baby, and then turned from it with 
 a strange little sickness of unrest. But there had been a 
 'secondly' to be considered in this part of the argument, 
 and she was not able to state it, even in thought. It was 
 allied to those sudden spasms of annoyance that Philip so 
 often aroused in her; it was a sense of some unrealised 
 restriction; it was a source of some physical irritation 
 buried so deep within her body that nothing could reach 
 to allay the annoyance of it. When that irritation came, 
 she filled her lungs with a long forced inhalation, and her 
 hands instinctively crushed her protruded breasts. 
 
 She jumped out of bed when she reached that stage of 
 her analysis, and followed Colonel Barker's example with 
 more decorum. 
 
 By the time she had finished breakfast, the immediate 
 solution of her problem was perfectly clear to her. For 
 the present, she must agree with Philip; she was even glad 
 to agree with him. But they need take no vows of final 
 abstinence. When they had been married for a few 
 months they would be better able to discuss the whole 
 question with none of those reserves which were, now, so 
 inevitable.
 
 THE AGREEMENT 177 
 
 When she reached the post-office, ten minutes later, 
 she destroyed two telegraph forms before she could find 
 a message that should be as clear to Philip as it would be 
 meaningless to the anaemic woman in glasses who was 
 evidently prepared to criticise Evelyn's every word, move- 
 ment, or thought with the same fastidious disapproval she 
 nad already signified of her dress and appearance. 
 
 'I quite agree/ was all Evelyn's telegram.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THEY went to Paris for their honeymoon. Evelyn 
 decided that; only a week before they were married. 
 Philip had mentioned Penzance as offering the most likely 
 climate in England at that time of year, and some simi- 
 larity in the sound of the name had instantly suggested 
 Paris to her. 
 
 They had debated the important question for the first 
 time on the day that Evelyn had sent her telegram. 
 Until then, Philip had had a strong disinclination to 
 discuss the subject with her; and in his own mind had 
 comforted himself by cherishing a presentiment that at 
 the last moment the wedding would be postponed. After 
 his letter and the assurance afforded by Evelyn's reply, 
 he had forgotten the presentiment altogether. He was 
 able, then, to contemplate marriage with unalloyed 
 pleasure; and although the idea of going to Paris had 
 shocked him slightly when it was first mooted, he had 
 conceded her choice without demur. That had been 
 Evelyn's day. Her agreement had given her the right 
 to exercise to the full her royal prerogatives. 
 
 They stayed in a large pension in the Avenue d'lena, 
 kept by two Englishwomen. Philip had begged for that 
 concession. What French he had was not adapted to 
 the light exchanges of hotel life, and he had all an English- 
 man's fear of making a fool of himself. In the streets 
 and shops and galleries he would always have Evelyn's 
 fluent and colloquial French to rely upon; but as they 
 were to occupy separate bedrooms in the pension, he 
 pleaded that they might go to some place where he could, 
 in an emergency, make himself understood. 
 
 178
 
 H&LENE 179 
 
 Evelyn, it appeared, was quite at home in Paris, but 
 it was not until they had been there nearly a week that 
 she sprang her great surprise on him. He had known that 
 she had been at school in Paris, for fifteen months, but 
 this new fact was far more startling; and her method of 
 announcing it had a just perceptible air of covering some 
 reservation. 
 
 They were at breakfast in the pension dining-room, 
 enjoying the privacy of a small table set in one of the tall 
 windows that looked out over the Avenue. The house 
 was nearly empty just then. Except for two American 
 families who screamed through every meal, Philip and 
 Evelyn had the place pretty much to themselves. 
 
 ' I've been thinking,' was Evelyn's abrupt announce- 
 ment of her news, 'that we might call on some relations 
 of mine, this afternoon. Really, your French is improving 
 wonderfully; you have a very good ear.' 
 
 He smiled his acknowledgment of the compliment and 
 denied its truth. ' Oh ! I'm very bad, still/ he said. ' Not 
 nearly good enough to call on an3'one. But, Evelyn, I 
 thought you said you hadn't any relations, except your 
 uncle.' 
 
 'Not near relations,' she amended. 'These are the 
 descendants of my maternal grandmother' the scandalous 
 one I told you about who was half-French- -by a second 
 marriage. She married a Frenchman afterwards.' 
 
 Philip was too much alarmed at the prospect fore- 
 shadowed by this suggested visit, to notice the effect of 
 dissimulation. 
 
 'But I don't think I should quite like, yet . . . .' 
 he began with his perplexed frown. 
 
 '/ should like you to,' Evelyn replied, and without 
 waiting to test the force of her authority, hurried on, 
 'It'll be such fun. Their name is Lambert. He, M. 
 Lambert, was my grandmother's son, a sort of half uncle, 
 I suppose. And there's a daughter I want to see now 
 she's grown up. She's seventeen, now, and I have hardly 
 seen her for six years. She was the loveliest, wickedest 
 little thing at eleven. And you'll be able to talk to her.
 
 i8o GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 She has been educated at Cheltenham. Uncle Hugo is 
 tremendously keen on everything English. He can speak 
 it himself a little and he always boasts of being a quarter 
 English; though you'd never guess it if he didn't tell you. 
 His wife can't speak a word and hates the sound of it. 
 However, 7'11 devote myself to her. But it's really Helene I 
 want to see. The last time was in town when I went to 
 see her through London; and she looked rather a little 
 frump, then, and .... and, oh ! flapperish; almost 
 an English school-girl.' 
 
 'Couldn't you go without me?' was all Philip's comment 
 on this information. 
 
 'Young wives on honeymoon don't call on their relations 
 and leave their husbands behind,' Evelyn generalised. ' I 
 might ask them to have tea with us here, of course,' she 
 continued; but that will mean our being invited to 
 dejeuner or something in return. Two undertakings 
 instead of one; though even if we just called we'd almost 
 certainly be asked to a meal the next day. I used to see 
 quite a lot of them, at one time, when I was at school 
 here. I should like you to meet them, Philip. Please ! ' 
 
 ' It's only that I feel such an ass trying to talk French,' 
 Philip said. 
 
 Evelyn smiled. He had been at his best from her 
 point of view, since they had been in Paris; so ingenuous, 
 so reliant on her and so adoring. He had kept her at a 
 constant level of satisfaction with herself and her abilities. 
 Also, she had been more than a little proud of him. In 
 that atmosphere, the formalities of his courtesy had lost 
 their effect of stiffness; they were more in place in Paris 
 than in London. And she had noticed how people in 
 public places remarked his appearance. He had lost 
 something of that air of strain since his father died, she 
 thought; he was growing more like the simple, graceful 
 youth of her first vision. And, without question, his 
 physical beauty gave him distinction. She had seen the 
 quick, admiring glances of women in the streets and 
 galleries. 
 
 'That's only your English self-consciousness, you know,
 
 HfiLENE 181 
 
 dear,' she said. 'Uncle Hugo's English isn't a bit better 
 than your French, and you'll see how proud he'll be of 
 airing it.' 
 
 ' Oh ! well, I'll try, of course/ Philip agreed. ' I know 
 it's silly to be so funky about it. Only, I would sooner 
 they came here first. I should feel that we were on our 
 own ground, in a way.' 
 
 'And it would be more convenable,' Evelyn added. 
 I'll write this morning. Only they must bring Helene. 
 Uncle Hugo calls her "Nay -lee." He thinks that's so 
 very English.' 
 
 She showed him her letter of announcement and invi- 
 tation when it was written; and, also, the next morning 
 her aunt's reply, rapturous with surprise and so impatient 
 of delay that that very afternoon had been fixed for the 
 family call on the young couple. 
 
 ' I think you'll like her' Evelyn said with just sufficient 
 emphasis on the pronoun to attract Philip's attention. 
 
 ' More than I shall like him? ' he asked. 
 
 'Well, you're such contrasts,' Evelyn said. Her air of 
 having very elaborately taken him into her confidence 
 over the whole affair, was tinged this morning with a 
 shade of uneasiness. 'You see,' she went on, 'he's an 
 agnostic, for one thing. In the French way, of course; 
 it's more a reaction against Roman Catholicism than 
 anything.' 
 
 Philip looked a little uncomfortable but made no com- 
 ment. 
 
 ' And then, his taste in English literature is so different 
 from yours,' Evelyn continued. 'It's as well for you to 
 be prepared. He he counts himself as being very broad- 
 minded, you see. He's a Liberal, and all that kind of 
 thing.' 
 
 'Well, we probably shan't discuss religion and politics/ 
 Philip ventured. 
 
 ' He will/ Evelyn affirmed with confidence. ' From the 
 very first moment. And he'll go on all the more if you 
 disagree with him. He'll get into a state of tremendous 
 excitement and gesticulate, and forget absolutely that lie
 
 i8a GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 has a quarter strain of English in him. He just adores 
 an immense argument. But . . . .' She stopped 
 and changed her tone, dropping to a note of cajolery; 
 'but couldn't you not disagree with him, dear?' she said. 
 'You needn't deny any of your principles. Just say 
 " Oh ! that ! ' ' very French, you know, with a little gesture, 
 as if all that might be taken for granted.' 
 
 There could be no question of Philip's uneasiness, now; 
 and his face was set into that expression of stern obstinacy 
 which she most dreaded. 
 
 'No, I couldn't do that,' he said in a low, hard voice. 
 
 ' It does make it so difficult,' Evelyn replied, addressing 
 some invisible arbitrator, and staring out of the window. 
 'I put it off for six days, because I knew there would be 
 some kind of fuss. And really, I don't see how you can 
 expect to go through the world like this,' she added, turn- 
 ing quickly to face him across the table. ' I mean how can 
 you ever learn anything; if you never, never consent 
 to hear the other side.' 
 
 ' There are some things it's better not to learn,' he said. 
 
 Evelyn pursed her mouth, and the wonderful cornflower 
 blue of her eyes seemed to be alight with its own radiance. 
 Philip, daring a nervous glance at her face, was a little 
 dazzled. 
 
 'Do you really think so?' she asked with an air of 
 condescension that admirably became her. 'That's the 
 laisser faire attitude, of course. If there is anything 
 unpleasant in the world, you shut your eyes to it and 
 pretend it doesn't exist. But hasn't it ever struck you, 
 Philip, that that attitude may, in some connexions, appear 
 quite insufferably self-righteous?' 
 
 She was sorry as soon as she had spoken. When she 
 saw that she had hurt him she instantly regretted the 
 sharp flicker of vexation that his prudish little dogma had 
 aroused. She bent forward over the table and held out 
 her hands to him. 'I'm sorry, dear/ she said. 'I 
 shouldn't have said that; but oh ! why won't you try to 
 understand life all life? ' 
 
 He took her hands and held them, a trifle sheepishly,
 
 HfiLENE 183 
 
 for one of the American families was still breakfasting at 
 the other side of the dining-room, very much engaged in 
 the discussion of some system of language teaching that 
 they referred to as the ' Burrlits.' 
 
 'I can't,' he said with a half-ashamed look of appeal on 
 his face. ' And sometimes Paris frightens me. I am 
 frightened of meeting your uncle; not only because of 
 speaking French.' 
 
 She tried honestly and sympathetically to understand, 
 but her tone was rather that of the governess explaining 
 difficulties to a small child. 'I think that's chiefly due 
 to your training, dear,' she said. 'You have been so 
 boxed up, haven't you? And if you are to write great 
 novels, you must face all kinds of experience.' 
 
 'I shall never write a great novel,' he returned. 'I 
 don't think I want to.' 
 
 She released his hands, then, and leaned back with a 
 little sigh of impatience. 'What's wrong with you, 
 Philip ? ' she asked with a sudden imperative seriousness. 
 
 ' I don't know ! Something,' he admitted, defensively. 
 ' I ought to have been a monk, I think.' 
 
 ' Oh ! nonsense,' she ejaculated with another little spurt 
 of annoyance. And then, afraid that he was about to 
 take cover under that terrible attitude he had always 
 adopted in dictating letters, she continued more gently, 
 'Look at me, dear. Don't hide yourself. Do let's be 
 frank and honest about this.' 
 
 'About what? ' he jerked out with a nervous frown. 
 
 'About this "something" you've admitted, that's 
 wrong with you ? ' 
 
 He cast a glance at the Americans, as if he would plead 
 their presence as an excuse for declining to be frank and 
 honest at that moment; but they were already on their 
 feet, making a voluble exit. Even the two waitresses had 
 gone. He and Evelyn would be alone in a few seconds. 
 
 'I don't see how we can discuss that,' he said coldly. 
 'It isn't a subject I could possibly discuss with a woman.' 
 
 'I'm not "a woman," in that sense,' Evelyn replied. 
 'I'm your wife.'
 
 184 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Ohl I can't/ he repeated desperately. He saw again 
 with astonishing vividness the interior of Wood's sitting- 
 room in Oxford Street; he heard the deliberate, selecting 
 tones of Wood's voice as he steered a quite astoundingly 
 discreet course through his physiological explanation; he 
 smelt the aromatic pungency of the cigarette he had been 
 smoking. And then with a jerk as if the reel of his mental 
 records had been swiftly changed, he re-experienced all 
 the blinding emotions and the shamed reactions of his 
 dream. No, it was all horrible, disgusting; a thing of 
 terror and disgrace that must never come near Evelyn. 
 She did not know. She must be labouring under some 
 physical misconception or she could never sit there calmly 
 in the broad light of the window, and suggest that they 
 should discuss this awful subject, frankly and honestly. 
 
 He leaned his elbows on the table and clasped his hands 
 together over the back of his bowed head. 
 
 'You don't understand. You can't understand/ he 
 said. 'You couldn't possibly ask me to discuss it if you 
 did.' 
 
 She put her hands over his and pulled them gently apart. 
 'Don't be too heroic, dear/ she said softly. 'And all this 
 has really nothing to do with your meeting Uncle Hugo 
 this afternoon.' 
 
 She thought she was discovering a method of dealing 
 with him. She thought that he was already becoming 
 more pliable, that he was losing the dreadfully priggish 
 manner he had adopted so amazingly in Milkwood Road 
 that afternoon. She thought that if she only had a little 
 patience, she would presently cure him. 
 
 ' Oh ! of course, I'll meet your uncle/ he conceded gladly. 
 
 Monsieur Lambert was a tall, blunt-featured man. His 
 forehead had been slightly pitted by smallpox, and Philip 
 wondered if the very un-English beard that covered much 
 of the remainder of M. Lambert's face, was worn to conceal
 
 HfiLEXE 185 
 
 more disfiguring marks. It was, however, a very hand- 
 some beard, thick and brown, and cut into an imposing 
 fork. 
 
 He came into the little room engaged for the occasion, 
 at the head of his family, rushed at Evelyn, and embraced 
 her fervently; and it was not until his wife and daughter 
 had followed his example with equal volubility but less 
 enthusiasm, that they turned their attention to Philip. 
 ' Ah ! Mister Marning, I am truly charmed,' M. Lambert 
 said fluently, as if he had, perhaps, been studying this 
 opening as he came along. 'It is a great pleasure to 
 greet you.' 
 
 Mme. Lambert murmured something in French with 
 the expression of one who does not expect to be under- 
 stood, but her eyes smiled encouragingly, as if she wanted 
 Philip to know that she did not blame him for his stupidity. 
 Helene held out a little pale hand, that was unexpectedly 
 limp in his, looked up at him with a shy and curiously 
 furtive glance, and said ' How do you do ? ' in a low, rich 
 voice, that had an un-English quality, although her speech 
 had but the slightest French accent. Indeed, it was less 
 an accent than a crispness and finish; also, she just notice- 
 ably caressed her words, and now and again emphasised 
 the sharp trill of her r's. 
 
 After the introduction and considerable exclamation, 
 M. Lambert seated Evelyn and his family with ceremony, 
 placing himself in the position of importance as if he were 
 now ready to act as interpreter between representatives of 
 Paris and London. Evelyn, however, besought him to 
 continue the conversation in French. ' Philip understands 
 quite well,' she explained, 'although he is still rather shy 
 in speaking.' 
 
 There were no awkward pauses, after that. M. Lambert, 
 ably assisted by his wife, proceeded to put Evelyn through 
 a searching cross-examination concerning her manner of 
 life during the past six years, and more particularly they 
 pressed her to recount the most intimate details of her 
 engagement and marriage. There were few reserves. 
 Philip was not excluded from the pleasures afforded by 
 
 GC. M
 
 i86 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 this personal confession. They turned to him continually 
 with comments and criticisms, and Monsieur especially 
 produced an admirable effect of conducting the whole 
 inquiry for Philip's benefit. They showed him con- 
 vincingly how they 'had already taken him into their 
 completest confidence. The whole thing went at a brisk 
 gallop until Evelyn mentioned her husband's literary 
 ambitions. 
 
 Her uncle's enthusiasm fairly blazed at that; and he 
 found the subject so vitally important that he entirely 
 neglected his niece in order to explain to Philip how deeply 
 he was engaged by the subject of English literature. 
 
 'I read, also, your modern writers/ he continued after 
 a brief resume of his scholarship. 'Ardee and Wells; 
 and Meredith a little, but I find him rather difficult. Also, 
 of course, Wilde. It arrive, once, that I meet him in 
 Paris.' And then in English, and with a gesture of grave 
 commiseration, 'But that was a great pee-tee. Do you 
 not think? For genius, that is not so culpable, hein?' 
 
 Philip stiffened. He remembered his father's ' Hanging 
 is too good for that man,' and his own youthful, uninformed 
 terror of some unspeakable infamy. 
 
 'I I never speak of him,' he said. 'I think he dis- 
 graced the dignity of letters.' 
 
 ' Ah ! So ! ' commented M. Lambert with a shrug and a 
 wonderful uplifting of his eyebrows. ' But for me, genius 
 has always excuse.' He paused as if seeking to find some 
 enlightening phrase among his limited stock of English 
 words, and then continued in French, 'But in English I 
 cannot express myself. If you will permit me to use my 
 own language, I will explain . . . .' And he 
 proceeded with considerable force and emphasis to explain 
 his views on the need for indulgence in any charge brought 
 against genius. He went back to Villon for his instances, 
 and forward to Verlaine, whom he had met more than 
 once in the early 'nineties. Incidentally he had a word 
 or two to say about the rivalry between Philomene Boudin 
 and Eugenie Krantz .... 
 
 Lambert counted himself an artist, and he mixed with
 
 artists of every kind. Theirs was, indeed, the only society 
 he enjoyed. He hr.d a comfortable private income in- 
 herited from his father, and spent a proportion of it in 
 encouraging the signs of genius, which he was continually 
 discovering in the most unlikely places. And the 
 irresponsibility of genius was, by common consent, his 
 particular topic. He had published one or two volumes 
 of essays and literary criticism; but it was generally 
 understood that the work he was writing on the 
 'Irresponsibility of Genius' might even recommend him 
 as a possible candidate for the Academy. Personally, 
 he pretended to laugh at that suggestion, but no doubt, 
 he cherished the ambition in his more hopeful moods. 
 
 And naturally he could not miss such an opportunity 
 as this to display his subject. It seems more than likely 
 that he had deliberately led up to it from the moment 
 he had heard of Philip's literary tastes. But two factors 
 combined to save the situation as far as Evelyn was 
 concerned. The first was that Philip fortunately 
 understood something less than half of Lambert's argu- 
 ments and illustrations, and, more particularly, none of 
 the words that might have offended his sensibilities. The 
 second was that the exponent of the theory neither asked 
 for nor desired comment. He was the authority. He 
 might regret to find such a failure of intelligence as that 
 displayed by his niece's husband, but that failure was 
 happily not irreparable. He had confidence that it was 
 his special mission to repair it immediately. 
 
 The arrival of tea brought a temporary diversion; and 
 Evelyn who had been giving some stray corner of her 
 attention to the two men while she chattered to her 
 aunt and cousin, did what she could to save Philip from 
 further penance. But Lambert was too pleased with 
 himself to let go the subject before he had made sure of 
 a convert. He was so very sure that his reasoning was 
 above suspicion, his case indisputable. 
 
 Philip was too bewildered to attempt contradiction. 
 So far as he was able to follow the discourse, he condemned 
 its purport, but the least sign of disagreement let loose
 
 i88 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 upon him a new flood of eloquence that still further over- 
 whelmed him. 
 
 At the last, Lambert bore his family away with the air 
 of a man who has achieved a triumph. ' You and our 
 charming Evelyn come to dinner with us on Saturday/ 
 was his final word to Philip; 'and then I show you my 
 notes, and perhaps read to you one or two chapters of my 
 book. It is beyond refutation all that I have said. You 
 will agree with me, I see that, already. With a man of 
 your intelligence, agreement is inevitable.' 
 
 Philip could only bow. It was left to Evelyn to return 
 the compliments, and express her own and her husband's 
 delight and gratitude at the contemplation of the honour 
 conferred upon them by her uncle's promise to read them 
 parts of his great book. She did it charmingly. But 
 when the Lamberts had gone, she turned to Philip with a 
 whimsical smile and said, 
 
 'Poor dear, were you very much bored; and shocked? 
 That's his subject, you see. And the more you disagree 
 with him, the more anxious he is to convert you. Aunt 
 Aida said how sorry she was for you; and she was very 
 sweet about you, too. But I'll spare you blushes.' 
 
 She stood with her back to the table, her hands resting 
 lightly on its edge, and there was something quizzical and 
 mischievous in her smile that made him aware of his own 
 gaucheness. 
 
 'Must we go to dinner on Saturday? ' he asked, ignoring 
 her speech. ' I feel such a fool among French people.' 
 
 'Oh ! but you were splendid,' she replied; 'and obviously 
 we must go to dinner. We accepted. What possible 
 excuse could we have?' Her tone teased him not less 
 than her words. 
 
 Philip looked worried and puzzled. ' It isn't only that,' 
 he said, 'what your uncle said about genius, and so on. 
 It's . . . .' 
 
 'Well?' she prompted him. 
 
 He thought for a moment and could find no words to 
 express his real feeling. ' Oh ! nothing more/ was his 
 equivocation; 'it's only that it makes me so fearfully
 
 HfiLfcNE 189 
 
 awkward ; being such a fool at speaking French. I'm sure 
 you must have been ashamed of me.' 
 
 She relented, then, and soothed and a little flattered 
 him. 'It will soon be over,' she concluded, 'and I'll 
 promise you this dinner shall be the last time. And, 
 Philip, really, really, it is very good for you. Do you 
 know that you are becoming more broad-minded, 
 already? I was terrified, at first, lest you should pull 
 down your upper lip, and put on your Nonconformist 
 expression, when uncle began. But you were so good.' 
 
 He sighed but made no other protest. It was beyond 
 him, at that time, to express his inner thoughts. All this 
 world of Paris was so strange and intimidating. He 
 suffered from a kind of spiritual agoraphobia, and longed 
 for the protection of Herne Hill and ' Middlethorpe.' 
 There he could find support and confirmation for his 
 instinctive desire for shelter. All about him were men 
 and women who would think as he did, that all this talk 
 of condoning the sins of genius was dangerous and per- 
 versive. Here, in Paris, the very air of the place was 
 against him. Worse still, here temptation walked abroad 
 with a high head, boasting and unashamed. 
 
 For in truth, his sight of Helene had been more agitating 
 than all the half-understood arguments of her father. This 
 was his second reason for dreading that dinner-party, the 
 reason for which he had been unable to find words. Helene 
 had behaved with all modesty, but by her very manner of 
 walking, or sitting, or speaking, or remaining silent, she 
 had flaunted her sex at him. From the first moment she 
 had entered the room he had perceived that she repre- 
 sented the evil thing. From the crown of her impudent 
 hat to the soles of her fawn kid boots, she figured some 
 terrible essence of seductive femininity. He had hated 
 her, instinctively, and had shivered with disgust at the 
 touch of her too soft fingers. Yet he had been fascinated 
 as one is fascinated by the sight of the horrible. He had 
 had to exercise a great effort of self-control in order to 
 avoid looking at her. Not for an instant could he be 
 unaware of her presence in that little room. And once,
 
 190 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 caught off his guard, he had looked at her; and she, as if 
 she was no less conscious of him than he was of her, had 
 looked up at the same moment, and with one glance of 
 her brown eyes had seemed to take him completely into 
 her co fidence. There had been something a little sly 
 in her expression; it was as if she had said, 'You and I 
 shire the knowledge of some deliciously wicked secret.' 
 He h .d turned away his eyes immediately, but he h-".d 
 felt his cheeks burn as if he had been unexpectedly shocked 
 by some outrageous immodesty. 
 
 The thought of having to sit at the table with Helene 
 Lambert, of having to address her, to remain in one room 
 with her all the evening, filled him with an awful sickness 
 of distaste. 
 
 His mother would have decided with one glance that 
 Mile. Lambert was not a 'nice' girl. Peter would have 
 scowled a portentously threatening disapproval. And 
 even Evelyn with all her experience of Paris admitted 
 that her cousin's development was, as she put it 'rather 
 alarming.' 
 
 'It's all Uncle Hugo's fault,' she explained, seeking 
 excuses. 'Ever sinte Helene was a child, she has been 
 shown off to his artist friends, and they are, most of them, 
 the sort of people who would flatter and encourage her. 
 She's so beautiful, and so so very much the type that 
 Frenchmen admire. They do so take it for granted that 
 it's a woman's mission to be beautiful and nothing else.' 
 She stopped and made a whimsical little grimace at him, 
 as she added, ' But you join issue with them there, don't 
 you?' 
 
 ' Oh ! no/ Philip exclaimed in a very agony of desire to 
 disclaim any kind of sympathy with the opinions of a 
 Parisian artist. 
 
 ' But you said once that you wanted women to be just 
 beautiful/ she taunted him. 
 
 He knew that there must be an obvious fallacy some- 
 where; but he could not immediately grasp, much less 
 state it. His answer was absurd. 
 
 'I took it for granted that they must, also, be innocent/
 
 HELENE 191 
 
 he said. At the last moment he rejected the word 
 ' virtuous/ as likely to provoke Evelyn's ridicule. 
 
 ' Does that make so great a difference in the principle ? ' 
 she asked quite seriously. 
 
 ' Oh ! yes, yes/ he assured her. He was on the verge 
 of panic. He foresaw that this conversation was going 
 to drag them down to the discussion of the things he 
 could not and would not discuss with her. He could 
 not understand why she seemed to desire that discussion? 
 She was so perfect in all else, the ideal woman of his day- 
 dreams. He would not believe that such perfection could 
 cover the one destructive flaw in his conception of 
 womanhood. 'It makes all the difference/ he repeated 
 eagerly. 'It's the difference between you and that little 
 serpent who came this afternoon.' 
 
 ' Serpent ? ' echoed Evelyn, and gave a soft, low whistle. 
 
 He was surprised at the epithet, himself. It had welled 
 up unbidden from his subconsciousness, a symbol that 
 may have had its origin in the Old Testament, or have 
 been derived from a still older source. The sound of it 
 on his lips had frightened him; he felt as if the word had 
 been obscene. 
 
 ' She made me think of a snake/ he explained hurriedly. 
 (Snake, curiously enough, had, to him, quite another 
 significance.) 'She she wriggled. I hated her/ 
 
 'Was that the other reason why you didn't want to go 
 to dinner there ? ' Evelyn asked. She was interested, 
 perplexed, and more than a little fascinated by these 
 queer glimpses of the dark places of her lover's mind. 
 And with each new revelation she was grasping more 
 and more clearly the certainty that she, and she only, 
 could find a remedy for this one extraordinary distortion 
 of his thought. But, she recognised the condition with 
 an intuitive certainty, she must be patient. She must 
 not scare him. She must coax him as tenderly and per- 
 suasively as she would coax a strange cat. An unwary 
 advance, a sudden shock, and his distrust might be 
 aroused beyond all appeasing. 
 
 'I don't like her/ was Philip's only answer.
 
 192 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 She tried one more probe. 'But you're surely not 
 afraid of her? ' she asked. 
 
 'It isn't being afraid,' he said uneasily. 'It's more 
 like the feeling of disgust one has for for a cockroach.' 
 
 She decided to press him no further, then; and with a 
 sudden change of tone, she said, 'Well, although you 
 weren't very lucid, I think I do understand quite well, 
 the difference between your admiration of feminine beauty 
 and the Frenchman's. It's the difference between the 
 worshipful and the possessive. But you are both wrong !' 
 She waited for the spur of his denial but none came. 
 'You're determined not to be tricked again,' she chaffed 
 him gaily. 'Well, you shan't be, but I'll throw down 
 my challenge all the same : Women, this is my sincerest 
 and most sacred belief, so take it to heart, Women have 
 as serious and as various a mission in the world as men, 
 and they are going to fulfil it. And if you dare to insult 
 me again by asking me to be merely beautiful, I will . . . 
 Oh ! Philip, do laugh ! If you're going to be morose, I 
 shall insist on our having dinner at a cafe; and I know 
 you'd infinitely prefer to have it in the safety of this 
 Anglo- American pension.' 
 
 'You are quite right, I would/ he admitted. 'But 
 what I should like still better would be to be alone with 
 you in some Italian villa in, oh ! anywhere, Capri, for 
 example.' 
 
 'Like the epilogue in Marzipan, Evelyn commented 
 mischievously, but she recovered her seriousness at once 
 and went on, 'Well, couldn't we? I'm sure Uncle Eustace 
 could manage to find someone who would lend us an 
 Italian villa; perhaps not at Capri, but somewhere just 
 as good. Really, Philip, don't you think we could?' 
 Her eyes flashed with excitement. She had been 
 mistaken in prescribing this too potent tonic of Paris 
 for him. She saw, in imagination, all the allaying 
 seduction of the methods that would be possible in the 
 solitudes of an Italian spring. His answer came as a 
 crushing disappointment. 
 
 'I'm afraid not, now,' he said in his old grave tone of
 
 HtfLfcNE 193 
 
 decision. 'I want to get back as soon as ever our time 
 here is over. I must finish my book.' 
 
 She was too vexed to plead with him, and in a little 
 revulsion of feeling she decided to give Helene every 
 chance of flirting with him on the following Saturday. 
 She further decided that nothing should induce her to 
 stay in ' Middlethorpe ' after September. That horrid, 
 stuffy, stiff little house was undoubtedly bad for him. 
 They would find some delightful place in the country, 
 with a garden, a long, low white house with red tiles 
 and green jalousies. 
 
 The dinner party was not such an infliction as Philip 
 had anticipated. A young American painter had been 
 invited to meet them, and thereby effect a balance of the 
 sexes. He was a very recent discovery of M. Lambert's 
 and expected to do great things in time. His presence 
 made all the difference to Philip. The American's bold 
 but imperfect French set an example that might have 
 stirred the emulation of the merest tyro; and he evidently 
 had no fear of the seductions of Helene, nor any hesitation 
 in flirting with her in her parents' presence. 
 
 Mme. Lambert, indeed, was constrained to offer some 
 kind of apology. 'We are artists, you understand,' she 
 explained. 'We do not believe in the old-fashioned 
 manners and restrictions. To be free, that is the great 
 thing, is it not so?' 
 
 Philip murmured an agreement. It was hopeless to 
 oppose the spirit of Paris. For another few days he must 
 suffer, and then he would be able to return to the strong, 
 defended places of Herne Hill. 
 
 They dined at the Cafe Riche; and when they went 
 back to the Lamberts' flat, Monsieur insisted upon show- 
 ing Philip his library. The room was worthy of the name. 
 Outside the British Museum he had never seen so many 
 books collected within a single apartment. And for a 
 time he was almost at ease, while his host displayed some
 
 i 9 4 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 of his most precious treasures, rare editions, and two 
 black-letters that Philip, at first, mistook for mediaeval 
 manuscript. The American who had accompanied them 
 a shade unwillingly, found an interest of his own in various 
 portfolios at the other end of the room. 
 
 And even when Lambert took up again his theme of the 
 necessity for toleration with regard to the eccentricities 
 of genius, Philip's sensibilities were not offended. He 
 had a sense of having escaped the greater danger, and 
 found himself almost gladly agreeing with the dictum that 
 freedom of thought and action were essential for the 
 production of the finest literature. He had his own 
 definition of freedom in that connexion, but he did not 
 find it possible to venture that in French. M. Lambert 
 was convinced of having achieved a complete triumph 
 when the young artist interposed with an impudent 
 question. 
 
 'That's fine/ he said; 'but if I were a genius and went 
 off with your daughter, would you be so ready to forgive 
 me? ' 
 
 M. Lambert snapped his fingers at him and called him 
 a rogue; but Philip thought that the instance was 
 far more convincing than the argument. Every woman 
 was someone's daughter. 
 
 He was congratulating himself that the ordeal was 
 safely over when the time came to say 'good-night.' 
 There had been some talk of a supper-party with other 
 friends who were coming in, later; but Evelyn, to Philip's 
 great relief, excused herself and him on the grounds that 
 they had had 'a long day,' and were so very English as 
 to need at least eight hours' sleep. Everyone seemed 
 to be talking at once, just then, and he was bewildered 
 and eager to escape. He did not realise what he was 
 doing until he found Helene's soft hand insinuated into 
 his. 
 
 There was nothing clandestine about that caress. He 
 had been saying good-night to her without any thought 
 of her presence until she touched him. But the manner 
 of her hand-shake recalled him to an overwhelmingly
 
 HtiLfcNE 195 
 
 intimate consciousness of her personality. Her tremulous, 
 soft fingers nestled in his, and clung to him with just that 
 same effect of abandoned familiarity that her brief regard 
 of him had suggested three days before. She took his 
 confidence and understanding for granted, as if she were 
 the beloved mistress sending him away with the wife of 
 whom she could never be jealous. And for an instant his 
 will was paralysed. His hand held hers tightly, con- 
 vulsively, grasping it with the loathing desire of an honest 
 man who had stolen some lovely, disgraceful jewel. 
 
 He was still trembling when he and Evelyn came out 
 into the soft March night. He agreed gladly when she 
 suggested that they should walk the two miles or so back 
 to the Avenue d'lena. He wanted physical exercise; .he 
 would have liked to walk on and on through the darkness 
 till he fell exhausted by fatigue. 
 
 But there was no narcotic for him in the reckless brilli- 
 ancy of the Paris night. Every man and woman they 
 met seemed newly braced to the beginnings of adventure. 
 The very sound of the traffic had a heady ring, a note of 
 challenging improvident gaiety that he had never heard 
 in the sullen remonstrant thunder of London streets. 
 Evelyn felt it, too; and when she took his arm as they 
 turned into the Champs Elysees, and pressed her body 
 more closely to him than she had ever before dared, he 
 responded to the thrill of her excitement. 
 
 She began to talk then in a soft, eager voice; making a 
 quick little running commentary on the beauties of Paris, 
 that presently diverged into a more intimate talk of 
 themselves and their relation to all this glitter of life. 
 
 The name of 'Nellie,' suddenly presented to his half- 
 attentive mind, induced astonishingly, he thought, 
 no tremor of repulsion. ' I'm afraid they will have trouble 
 with her,' Evelyn was saying. 'She is, don't you think, 
 a little, no, a great deal abandoned? She would make 
 love to any man. I'm sure she made eyes at you, didn't 
 she?' 
 
 Some conscious, authoritative part of his intelligence 
 prompted him to reprove this licence of speech, but his
 
 196 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 answer came without any effort, slipping past the guard 
 of his control. 'Yes, she did/ he said, 'and she pressed 
 my hand when I said good-night.' Indeed, it seemed to 
 him that she was pressing it still. It was as if the palpable 
 wraith of those voluptuous, longing fingers had come with 
 him into the night, and was leading him back to the cover 
 of the quiet house. 
 
 ' Oh ! Philip ! ' Evelyn protested in mock resentment, 
 and she laughed with a flicker of gleeful surprise. 
 'Weren't you shocked?' 
 
 His answer to that was all ready, but it was tripped 
 and anticipated by some escaping devil of wickedness 
 that scampered past the guard with an impudent squeal 
 of delight. 
 
 ' No ! ' he said, with a thin, trembling laugh. ' I I 
 found it rather exciting.' 
 
 She looked up at him with a question as if for one 
 moment she had had a doubt of his soberness, and then 
 she pressed his arm still closer. ' I shan't let you see her 
 again,' she said. 
 
 He did not answer that. He felt the pressure of her 
 body against him. He could see the gleam of a golden 
 thread in her hair through the gauze of the scarf she was 
 wearing as a head-dress. He was aware of the soft con- 
 tour of her bare shoulder, nestled into the silk lining of 
 her fur coat. And some libidinous spirit was beseeching 
 him to release his thoughts, pleading that he was safe, 
 out here in the open street; that for once he would be 
 better if he relaxed that iron control; that already they 
 were at the Arc de Triomphe, and he had but a few 
 hundred yards to go before he would be locked again in 
 the chaste prison of his own room. 
 
 He released his arm and in the comparative gloom of 
 the Avenue d'lena, put it about Evelyn's shoulders, 
 drawing her to him with an urgent pressure. She yielded 
 with a little murmur of content. He felt her face pressed 
 against the roughness of his overcoat. The wraith of the 
 soft, warm fingers still interlocked with his own, was 
 trembling with a furious impatience.
 
 HfiLfcNE 197 
 
 They entered the pension in silence and did not speak 
 again until they were alone together in the privacy of 
 Evelyn's room. His own room led out of it by a door of 
 communication that stood, now, wide open. But he 
 looked at it with a feeling of repulsion, hesitating to end 
 this rapture of careless intoxication by entering the cold 
 isolation that would, he believed, so soon be the scene of 
 bitter repentance, and all the tired re-making of old vows 
 of discipline. 
 
 'Good-night,' he said in a voice that shook with ner- 
 vousness. 
 
 She turned to him with a bright, confident smile, and 
 then, with a lithe, 'graceful gesture, let her heavy coat 
 slip from her shoulders on to the floor. She stood five 
 feet away from him, and her head was lifted with a proud 
 willingness of surrender. 
 
 His eyes faltered before hers, and his gaze dropped to 
 the exquisite curve of her white shoulder. He could not 
 move, but his hands stretched towards her in a desperate 
 groping plea of invitation. 
 
 ' Oh ! my poor little Philip/ she whispered as she came 
 close within his arms. 'Am I so terrifying? ' 
 
 Then the wraith of Helene's fingers suddenly closed on 
 his with a furious, compelling strength, that took command 
 of his whole body. 
 
 ' Darling ! ' Evelyn gasped in a murmur of weak, ecstatic 
 protest.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 'NEW END.' 
 
 IT was nearly the end of April when Evelyn announced 
 that there could no longer be any doubt. Her eyes were 
 glad, but the lines of her mouth drooped with a hint of 
 remonstrance. Perhaps her body was timorous, despite 
 the hopeful encouragement of her undismayed spirit. 
 This amazing process coming to demand such fine in- 
 tricacies of function after twenty-five years of habit, 
 must have been an intimidating undertaking. There 
 were a million million things to be anticipated and 
 prepared for, and considerably less than a year in which 
 to do it all. Her appearance reflected the immense pre- 
 occupation of those engrossed activities. She was thinner, 
 her face was drawn and her expression a little wistful. 
 Even her spirit flagged, at times; she suffered periods of 
 depression in which she sought solace and re-assurance. 
 And Philip, though he was gentle, forbearing and anxious 
 to say just those things she desired, was unable to bring 
 her any comfort. 
 
 They were already approaching the third phase of their 
 relations. 
 
 And the little Herne Hill house was becoming to her a 
 place of horrible confinement. The trees of the old 
 estates shut her garden out from air and sunlight. The 
 outspread hands of the chestnuts seemed heavy with 
 menace. She saw them as a vast audience awaiting the 
 outcome of the tremendous conflict that was being enacted 
 within her body; an audience, gloomily eager, everyone, to 
 
 198
 
 'NEW END' 199 
 
 point thumbs down when the awful moment of victory 
 arrived. 
 
 From that menace no escape was possible within the 
 four walls of ' Middlethorpe.' The house was full of gloom 
 and restriction. The spirit of Peter still held sway through 
 some influence that his personality had impressed on each 
 inanimate object that had ever belonged to him. 
 
 She had felt that influence on the first evening of their 
 return home, although she had translated her feeling into 
 another expression. 
 
 'Philip, we must have new furniture,' she had said; 'if 
 I have to sell a few shares to pay for it. This is too dread- 
 fully old-fashioned and depressing.' 
 
 Philip had been surprised. He had judgment enough 
 about such things as furniture in general; but he had 
 never thought of the furniture of 'Middlethorpe' as being 
 open to criticism. It was, to him, nothing less than 
 inevitable. He had never considered it as having once 
 been the subject of a choice. He had not regarded it as 
 being good or bad of its kind, nor compared it with other 
 examples. He would have been as likely to contemplate 
 some drastic change in the shape of his own body, as the 
 idea that these immemorial and permanent objects with 
 which he was so familiar, might be sold; and mere goods, 
 bought in a common shop, be substituted. 
 
 'Is it ? ' was all he had found to say. ' It's always been 
 here. I've hardly noticed it.' 
 
 'You may be used to it; I'm not,' Evelyn had returned 
 with a touch of asperity. 'But surely, now, you can see 
 that it is gloomy ? ' 
 
 Philip had examined the predestinate furniture, then, 
 for the first time in his life. 
 
 ' It would be like getting rid of one's relations,' he had 
 remarked. 
 
 'Which is sometimes rather a good thing when you 
 bring a wife home,' Evelyn had added. 
 
 Philip had prepared himself for the minor sacrifice, 
 when she opened her new proposal in the second week of 
 May.
 
 200 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'I can't live here, Philip,' she began. She had tried 
 over a dozen delicate approaches in her mind, but she was 
 too nervous at last to dare anything less than a statement 
 which would irretrievably commit her. 
 
 The avowal had been forced from her at an unhappy 
 moment. A dilatory spring had burst into sudden per- 
 formance that day; and Philip had found happiness in 
 the rich promise of summer. He had known, it may be, 
 a hundred such days at ' Middlethorpe,' and they were 
 all associated, for him, with the gladness of youth, with 
 the return of light and warmth, and the miracles of 
 growth and expansion. They brought him a great sense 
 of lightness and power and of the wonders of his own 
 imagination. 
 
 'I thought you would be happy, to-day/ he said, with 
 an effect of nervous trepidation. 
 
 'It makes me want to see the spring, the real spring,' 
 she replied. She was standing with her back to him, 
 looking out of the window. He was on the hearthrug, 
 consciously enjoying the fact that for the first time, this 
 year, they had not needed a fire. 
 
 'I've felt the spring, here, all day,' he said, still with 
 an air of apology. He knew, all too consciously, that he 
 must humour her, just now. ' I love these days out here.' 
 
 She turned to him with a movement that was un- 
 designedly dramatic. She was feeling with a new 
 intensity this May; more sensitive than she had ever 
 been to every appearance of beauty and ugliness. And 
 all her thought suddenly flared into language. 
 
 ' Oh ! a London spring !' she said passionately. ' It 
 may be beautiful by comparison; but it's only a travesty 
 of the real thing. We get an air, here; a hint of it all, 
 dulled and smirched by the smoke and dust and the 
 uncleanness of asphalte roads and stone pavements. 
 But I want the pureness of the original. I feel as if I 
 have hardly known the truth of what the spring might 
 be. Just a memory of my early girlhood is all I have. 
 After that it was Medborough, or Paris, or London; and 
 now, I am missing it again. And why, Philip, why?
 
 'NEW END' 201 
 
 Why are you and I missing the real sweetness of the 
 original and contenting ourselves with this imitation? 
 There isn't a reason. We could live anywhere. And 
 oh I this house holds me down like a prison . . . .' 
 She broke off on a note that threatened hysteria. She 
 wanted so much to express more than she was able to 
 him. The sight of him sometimes filled her, now, with a 
 dreadful impatience. There were moments when his 
 becoming gentleness made her long to shake him, brutally, 
 cruelly; to do him or herself some horrible injury. 
 
 Philip frowned, patiently entreating himself to for- 
 bearance, and stared down at the carpet. 
 
 'Would you like to go away somewhere, for a time?' 
 he asked. 
 
 She had controlled herself again. His suggestion 
 showed, she thought, that there was at least a hope. 
 And at that, all her sanguine spirit pictured the accom- 
 plishment with a joy almost too great to be borne. 
 
 Her voice trembled as she said, ' Not for a time ! For 
 always. Think of it, dear, to live in the country. Not 
 too far from town, perhaps, fifty miles or so. Far enough 
 to get away from the faintest flavour of the suburbs. 
 Wouldn't you like it, yourself? You must love the 
 country, too. I know you do. And there is no reason 
 why we should be cooped up here in this dreadful Herne 
 Hill.' 
 
 She came nearer and looked up at him with eyes full of 
 entreaty. ' And, Philip/ she went on, ' for his sake, when 
 he comes. To be born in that air away from the smoke 
 and the dust, and . . . .' she shuddered as a little 
 picture came to her with spontaneous vividness; 'and 
 oh ! the sound of paper scraping on the hot pavement. 
 You know how it blows, slowly, along the roads; gritty 
 and harsh.' She put her hand to her mouth as if her 
 teeth had been set unbearably on edge. 
 
 Philip could think of nothing to say. The sense of her 
 
 illustration had taken hold of him, as no argument could 
 
 have done. He realised the arid grittiness of a London 
 
 June; could hear and see the shabby desecration of soiled 
 
 G.C. o
 
 202 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 paper, edging a furtive spasmodic search through quiet 
 streets. 
 
 'You would want to go soon/ he said at last. 
 
 She drew a deep sigh of immense relief. 'It must be 
 soon, dear/ she explained. 'I shouldn't be able to help 
 with the move, later. If it's to be a move? ' 
 
 'I might be able to let this place furnished/ he said. 
 In his heart he clung to the thought of it as a sanctuary. 
 If it were let furnished, it would be possible to return to 
 it, almost at any time. 'And find a furnished house in 
 the country/ he added. 
 
 She saw the trap, but the plan promised such speedy 
 escape that she had no hesitation in accepting it with 
 gratitude. Her ideal of the future, after her child was 
 bom, was of a remote and different life. 
 
 She came close to him, put her arms round him and 
 leaned her head on his shoulder. 'Darling, you're very 
 patient with me/ she said, crying a little in the reaction 
 from her recent emotion. 'Women are queer; at these 
 tunes. You do understand, don't you?' 
 
 He kissed her hair and gently released himself. 'Yes, 
 yes, rather; I understand/ he answered her. 'I'd better 
 see Mr. Pratt about it to-morrow morning. I'll go up 
 to town directly after breakfast/ He was willing, now, 
 to discuss plans at any length, but he could not endure 
 caresses at that moment. 'What part of the country 
 have you got in mind?' 
 
 'I don't care/ Evelyn said. 'Anywhere green and 
 quiet/ 
 
 She had sat down on one of the stiff, upholstered chairs 
 that were always set to partners about the round ma- 
 hogany table in the middle of the room. She looked 
 suddenly desolate and apathetic. As she leaned on the 
 table the bolt that held it to the massive pedestal of its 
 one central leg, gave a little, and the top moved with a 
 harsh creak. 
 
 Evelyn jumped up as if the table had threatened her. 
 'Only let it be soon/ she begged with a gasp of passion. 
 ' Oh ! this house terrifies me, suffocates me.'
 
 'NEW END' 203 
 
 She had, nevertheless, to endure the threat of it for 
 may weeks after that discussion; but all that period of 
 waiting was lightened for her by constant absence 
 and the excitement of house-hunting an occupation 
 that was, for her, sheer delight. She had always loved 
 to investigate empty houses; to plan the arrangement 
 of furniture, to see in imagination the bare thing clothed 
 and alive. In her mind she could dress and play with a 
 house much as she had once played with a doll. 
 
 And they were, at last, almost on the point of taking 
 an empty house when the delayed miracle was aptly 
 performed for them. 
 
 Before that happy chance was offered, they had 
 penetrated deep into Sussex and Surrey and Kent. The 
 accident of their suburban position set their thoughts 
 to the Southern counties, and they had, at one time, as 
 many as nineteen house-agents supplying them with 
 'particulars' that never by any accident corresponded 
 with Evelyn's wishes when the vagueness of the descrip- 
 tions was depressingly visualised in the concrete. 
 
 'Why do they call them "particulars?"' Evelyn 
 distractedly asked on an occasion when they had 
 wandered by the slowest of lines to Heathfield and 
 thence, by a wagonette, five miles out to a village set 
 in wonderful scenery, in order 'to view' a house that 
 was a shabby and more inconvenient copy of 'Middle- 
 thorpe.' 'They are so anything in the world rather than 
 particular. Fancy dragging us down here to see a place 
 like this.' Her scorn in the articulation of 'this' was 
 quite astonishing. 
 
 Philip was beginning to wonder if they would ever find 
 a house to suit her. His only knowledge of the ideal she 
 carried in her mind, was conveyed by certain hints that 
 might have been originated in the 'orders' of the agents. 
 She had been afraid of being too explicit, lest she should
 
 204 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 give him an excuse. He had been all that was patient, 
 attentive, painstaking, submissive, but she knew very 
 well that he hoped they would never find the house she 
 wanted. He admired the wide hills of Sussex, he could 
 be lyrical about the beauties of Surrey, but he clung to 
 the safety of that detestable little house on Herne Hill, 
 as a castaway might cling to a hen-coop floating the surge 
 of the open Atlantic .... 
 
 They did not at first connect the Blenkinsops' invitation 
 to spend a week-end at Sutton-Parslow, with their search 
 for a house. Indeed, Evelyn was strongly in favour of 
 refusing that invitation. It was addressed to her by 
 Mrs Blenkinsop, but was explicitly stated to have been 
 issued at the instigation of her son. It appeared that 
 he had only just learned from Mr Wing of Philip's 
 marriage. 
 
 'I don't think I could spend a week-end in the same 
 house as Edgar Norman/ Evelyn declared with a 
 fastidious pucker of the mouth. 
 
 'You are a bit prejudiced on that subject, you know,' 
 Philip replied. 
 
 ' You don't want to go, do you? ' she asked. 
 
 'Yes. I should like it,' he admitted. 'I've never been 
 down there. I believe they've got a charming place.' 
 And then with an unpremeditated conviction he said, 
 'And we might find the perfect house down there. The 
 Blenkinsops might know of something. It would be 
 new country for us.' 
 
 Evelyn wavered. 'Where is Sutton-Parslow?' she 
 asked. 
 
 'I'm not absolutely certain,' Philip said, 'whether it's 
 in Buckinghamshire or Hertfordshire. Or it might even 
 be in Bedfordshire. I know you go from Euston.' 
 
 ' It might be worth trying,' Evelyn agreed after a little 
 further consideration. 'As you say, we've never once 
 tried the North side. I hope it won't be too hot.' 
 
 ' I thought you didn't mind the heat,' Philip said. 
 
 ' I don't. I was thinking of Edgar Norman Blenkinsop,' 
 she replied allusively. 'He's so fat.'
 
 'NEW END' 205 
 
 They were met at the station by an open landau, drawn 
 by a pair of horses that matched, and attended by two 
 men in livery who did not. The landau and the livery 
 were dark blue, and the paint of the landau was waxed 
 and polished until it had the depth and transparency of 
 a fine enamel. 
 
 Philip began nervously to wish that they had brought 
 more luggage, but he soon drew confidence from Evelyn 
 who was evidently not to be intimidated by any grandeurs 
 that the Blenkinsops of Sutton Manor might threaten. 
 During the two-mile drive she discussed the country and 
 the likelihood of their being able to find a house in it, with 
 the same careless disregard of the stout coachman and the 
 thin groom, as she had shown of their fellow passengers 
 when she discussed the Crystal Palace on her first visit to 
 Herne Hill. 
 
 She approved the country with an enthusiasm to which 
 Philip found himself unable to respond. Compared with 
 the richness of the Sussex landscape, this lush pasture 
 land seemed to him a little tame and flat. He did not 
 know the great central plain of the Midlands; but to 
 Evelyn who had spent so much of her youth at Med- 
 borough, the sight of the undulating distances, the wide 
 lanes and the scattered abundance of forest trees made 
 her feel as if she were coming home. 
 
 'We had country so much like this on one side of 
 Medborough,' she explained. 'On the other, of course, 
 it was just the Fens. I loved both kinds you have to 
 be born in the Fens to appreciate them, properly, but 
 I think this kind appealed to me most.' 
 
 Philip murmured on a sympathetic note of encourage- 
 ment. 
 
 'It isn't like Sussex or Surrey, I know/ she went on. 
 'There's nothing grand about it. But you do admit, 
 don't you, that it's very sweet and English. It's the 
 real type of England, you know.'
 
 206 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 She found ample support for that assertion when they 
 came to the village, for the first effect of it was almost 
 laughably typical. There were the group of immemorial 
 elms; a huddle of half-timber work cottages that tried to 
 clutch all their outlying extensions under one thatched 
 roof like a prudent hen with an extravagant family; a 
 farm house of the same period, that might once have 
 been a coaching inn; a pump under an erection that had 
 all the appearance of a lych gate; and the whole group 
 set about the cross-roads in the very style of approved 
 melodrama. 
 
 Philip and Evelyn smiled at each other as the Blenkin- 
 sops' carriage went slapping round the tuni, to the 
 accompaniment of brisk hoofs and the muted rumble of 
 rubber tyres. 
 
 'Didn't I say?' she asked gaily, with a wave of her 
 hand at the set-piece. 
 
 'Only the church missing,' he agreed. 
 
 After that their first sight of Sutton Manor was dis- 
 appointing. They had not been prepared to leap two 
 centuries, and find among clipped yew hedges and formal 
 gardens a brick and stone house of the later eighteenth 
 century, all complete with a pedimented front-door, 
 rusticated quoins, corniced eaves with an ogee gutter 
 as the top member, and flat pitched slate roofs. It was 
 imposing, but an anachronism in that place. It looked, 
 too, as Evelyn said later, as if it had 'a suggestively low 
 forehead and its hair parted so precisely in the middle.' 
 She felt at once as if she could have inferred the Blenkin- 
 sops, but she said nothing of that to Philip. 
 
 Indeed, the Blenkinsops were admirably suited. Mr 
 Blenkinsop senior was rather short and noticeably sturdy. 
 He wore a comfortable beard, in the style of Edward 
 VII., but too thin on the cheeks to reckon as a natural 
 ornament to his satisfied businesslike face. His wife, a 
 large, fair woman who had not yet degenerated into 
 shapelessness, was less commonplace. She had a good 
 forehead under the neat symmetry of her rather thin 
 flaxen hair. And if Evelyn believed that she could have
 
 'NEW END' 207 
 
 inferred the Blenkinsops from the facade of their Georgian 
 mansion, she was quite certain that she could have inferred 
 Edgar Norman from her first sight of his mother. 
 
 The only other permanent member of the household was 
 a Miss Bertha Harding, introduced as ' our cousin/ a dark- 
 haired woman of any age between thirty and forty, with 
 a long, thin nose that stood over her surprised mouth like 
 a perpetual mark of exclamation. Her function in the 
 family seemed to be that of a commentary, but she was 
 often very elusive, and her motive as hard to disentangle 
 as are, to the untrained ear, the higher elaborations of the 
 phrase that constitutes the single theme of a fugue. 
 
 Mr Blenkinsop did the honours. He explained the 
 house to them, when it was built, by whom, and its place 
 in the county history. 
 
 'The Bertrands/ he said, leading up to the real point 
 of his introductions, 'have owned all this property, a 
 matter of eleven thousand acres, including three villages, 
 for centuries. The family was originally noble, but the 
 title was lost about a hundred years ago by a succession 
 through the female line. Of course, now, properly 
 speaking, they are not Bertrands but Notions, but the 
 husband of Miss Bertrand took the name. The present 
 owner is a charming man, I hope you may meet him here 
 at some time. And what I was going to say was that 
 this house was originally the manor of the Sutton 
 property, as distinct from the larger property of Parslow. 
 It was built . . . .' 
 
 ' Had all that,' his son put in unexpectedly, disengaging 
 himself from the tea-cake that had hitherto absorbed all 
 his attention. 
 
 Mr Blenkinsop who had looked likely to maintain his 
 subject over the week-end, stopped as suddenly as if the 
 power had been cut off. 
 
 'Don't suppose you're much interested, Mrs Maning,' 
 Edgar continued. 'Houses, that sort o' thing?' 
 
 'Just now it's a subject that fascinates me,' Evelyn 
 said, jumping for the opportunity. 'We are looking for 
 a house; furnished, if possible. We've ransacked Surrey
 
 208 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 and Sussex, thoroughly, and there isn't one to be found 
 there within our means. Do you know of anything on 
 this side of London, Mr Blenkinsop? We aren't per- 
 nicketty but we can't stand villas.' 
 
 She looked at the father but it was the son who replied. 
 
 "Strordinary thing is, we do. Practically round the 
 corner. Fellow named Punshon bought the land, built 
 the house and's just come into more money pots. 
 Taking a place in Devonshire and wants to sell "New 
 End," furniture and all.' 
 
 ' I I don't think we want to buy a house,' Philip put in. 
 
 'He might let,' Mrs Blenkinsop said. 'I asked him, 
 before he went away and he distinctly told me that he 
 might let.' 
 
 'Punshon give it you, probably, if you asked him/ 
 Edgar remarked. 'Simply don't care, now. However, 
 take you round after tea. May as well see it.' 
 
 'It's quite modern, of course,' Miss Harding com- 
 mented, opening the way for a return to Mr Blenkinsop' s 
 original discourse. 
 
 'Oh! we don't mind that, if it's nice,' Evelyn said 
 quickly, as her host cleared his throat. She was wondering 
 if the exaggerated elisions of Edgar Norman's speech had 
 been adopted as a protest against the careful formalities 
 of his parents' method. 
 
 'Jolly place,' Edgar replied. 'Had thought taking it 
 myself, sort of retreat.' 
 
 'Edgar! Retreat from what?' Miss Harding asked, 
 but no one answered her. 
 
 'You finished, might as well go now? ' Edgar suggested. 
 
 'If we might? I'm so excited about it, I shall think of 
 nothing else till we've seen it,' Evelyn replied eagerly. 
 
 'Old houses, like this, are so scarce,' Miss Harding 
 commented ineffectively. 
 
 'Take you out by the back; short cut,' Edgar explained 
 as he led Evelyn and Philip into the garden. 'Take my 
 advice, you'll rent "New End,"' he continued as they 
 crossed the one meadow that separated the grounds of 
 Sutton Manor from the garden of Mr Punshon's experiment.
 
 'NEW END' 209 
 
 'Jolly place. Well built; Punch everybody called him 
 Punch, naturally, smart chap. Sooner live ' ' New End ' ' 
 myself than in that illustration of ours.' 
 
 ' Illustration ? ' Evelyn repeated with a laugh of approval. 
 She was beginning to think that she might, after all, find 
 Edgar Norman a quite bearable companion. 
 
 'Just like an eighteenth-century print, you know,' he 
 replied. ' Formal and artificial. No feelin' really in that 
 period. Same with the furniture. We're cluttered up 
 with Sheraton and Chippendale and Heppelwhite. Five- 
 sixths of it fake, of course. Still, same style, and it's bad 
 aesthetically, my opinion. You wait here a minute? 
 Key just round the corner. I'd sooner you didn't go in 
 without me.' 
 
 He rolled away in a state of evident excitement. 
 
 'If only he weren't so fat and so greedy/ Evelyn 
 confided to Philip. 
 
 'Can't help that, can he?' he returned. 'But I'm 
 awfully glad you don't altogether dislike him especially 
 if we're going to take this place.' 
 
 'Probably see a lot of him. Often come over, tea, my 
 opinion,' Evelyn said, with a fair imitation of Edgar 
 Norman's voice. 'Rather like Jingle, isn't it? Oh ! I 
 wish he'd be quick ! Philip, I'm sure this is going to 
 do, aren't you? Couldn't you try to be a little enthu- 
 siastic ? ' 
 
 ' I am, really,' he replied. ' But I'm nervous, too. And 
 we've no idea what the rent will be.' 
 
 'It can't be much,' Evelyn affirmed confidently. 'He 
 said Mr Punch would give it us if we asked him. Oh ! 
 here he is. I wish he didn't remind me of a very buttery 
 and underdone crumpet.' 
 
 The house faced a narrow lane but was shut off from it 
 by a high rubble wall against which a variegated ivy had 
 been encouraged to grow; three out of five plants had 
 made an excellent beginning and were spreading a fan 
 of enamelled green and white leaves for the admiration 
 of any artist capable of appreciating honest effort. 
 
 ' Now ! ' Edgar Norman announced with the gesture of
 
 2io GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 a showman, as he threw open a heavy oak door that had 
 a slightly monastic air. 
 
 Evelyn gave a little gasp of ecstasy as she saw the house 
 of her Paris dream, long and low and white, with rich red 
 roofs and green jalousies to every window. 
 
 And there were many added enchantments, here, that 
 she had never visualised. The strip of lawn, and the 
 paved forecourt were, she instantly felt, so precisely right; 
 and the whole place had that convincing effect of satis- 
 faction and beautiful repose that is the result of just 
 proportions and can be achieved by no other considerations 
 whatever. 
 
 ' Come a bit over this corner of the garden, get the best 
 angle,' Blenkinsop suggested softly, when he had given 
 them time to recover from the first shock of discovery. 
 'Punch and I collaborated most of this. More pleased 
 still, if I'm not mistaken, get inside.' 
 
 He was justified in that anticipation. The rooms, also, 
 were planned and proportioned with an eye to some 
 aesthetic ideal that often escapes the modern architect. 
 There was a contentment and serenity about them all, 
 from the unobtrusive angularity of the little irregular 
 hall, to the calm of the sitting-room with its two windows, 
 the larger of which looked out over the beginnings of a 
 very promising rose-garden. And the furniture was, also, 
 in keeping; modern every stick of it, but thoughtfully 
 designed 'Made for a house, live in; not for a museum,' 
 as Blenkinsop commented; with clean, useful lines, and 
 covered, in the sitting-room with modest chintzes whose 
 colours and patterns lay peacefully against the smooth 
 broad tones of wall-paper and carpet. Each room had a 
 consonant unity, with no eccentric 'features' to distract 
 the attention. 'New End' was, as Blenkinsop continually 
 insisted, 'just a house to live in.' 
 
 They came to rest, at last, in the sitting-room, and it 
 was there that Philip began to make those essential 
 inquiries that Evelyn seemed disposed to overlook. 
 
 'I suppose you don't know exactly what Mr Punshon's 
 asking in the way of rent?' he asked.
 
 'NEW END' 2ir 
 
 ' Fact is he wants to sell, furniture anyway,' Blenkinsop 
 said. ' Queer chap; great friend of mine. He and I spent 
 no end of time on this place. Months, working together. 
 Been finished just five years, now. However, I'll write 
 to him. Probably won't answer for weeks. Meanwhile 
 no reason why you shouldn't come in.' 
 
 Evelyn had fallen into a long abstracted silence, but at 
 that remark she awoke with a little start of attention. 
 
 'Oh! Mr Blenkinsop! Really? At once?' she asked 
 eagerly. 'Do you mean quite at once? next week, for 
 instance ? Early next week ? ' 
 
 Philip opened his mouth to remonstrate, but there was 
 some quality in her radiant joy that checked his reproach 
 of her unreasonableness. He remembered that she must 
 be humoured, and he believed that she would soon learn 
 from Blenkinsop how impossible it was that they should 
 take possession of ' New End ' so impulsively. 
 
 Blenkinsop, however, was playing on Evelyn's side. 
 
 ' Perfectly all right,' he said in his smooth, rich contralto. 
 ' Take all responsibility myself. Really no reason why you 
 shouldn't sleep here Monday; send Maning home to pack. 
 Place all ready, nothing to be done.' 
 
 Philip couldn't quite stand that. 
 
 'But I must have some idea about price,' he said 
 anxiously, with a look of deprecation at Evelyn, that 
 begged her to have a little consideration for him. 
 
 'You needn't bother, Philip !' she said. 'I'll take it on 
 my own responsibility. I've got a little money of my 
 own,' she explained to Blenkinsop. 'And I know you 
 will get Mr Punshon to be as moderate as he reasonably 
 can. But I must have it. I'm afraid to leave it, now, 
 for a single night. Oh ! couldn't you wire to Mr Punshon? 
 Suppose he met someone in Devonshire . . . .' Her 
 look conveyed the despair that thought aroused in her. 
 
 Blenkinsop looked at his watch. ' All serene ! ' he said. 
 ' Let's go and wire. Post-office only five minutes up the 
 road.' 
 
 But even the inducement of claiming instant possession 
 could hardly tempt Evelyn away from her ideal house.
 
 212 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 ' I'm glad there's one fault I can find with it,' she remarked 
 as she lingered on the garden side of the monastic door in 
 the stone wall. 
 
 'What's that?' Blenkinsop asked with a tremor of 
 genuine anxiety. 
 
 'It's too perfect,' she said. 'Naturally I should have 
 liked to make one or two improvements and I can't think 
 of one.' 
 
 Blenkinsop smiled amiably. 'Easily alter something it 
 you want to,' he said. 
 
 'Let me carry the keys,' Evelyn besought him as they 
 went up the road to the Post Office. 
 
 'What are we going to say in this telegram?' Philip 
 asked as she took possession of the sacred symbols. 
 
 ' Say ' ' Mrs Maning has the keys of New End and refuses 
 to part with them ever again. Wire lowest terms," ' 
 Evelyn suggested. ' Mr Blenkinsop shall word it, because 
 he has the telegraphic manner of speech.' 
 
 Philip looked a shade embarrassed by this impudence, 
 but Edgar Norman accepted her pertness as the begin- 
 ning of confidence. 
 
 'He's so fat, you see, Mrs Maning,' he said with his 
 usual blonde gravity. 'Has to economise breath, much 
 as possible; particularly when trying to keep up with 
 beautiful young woman racing to get an option.' 
 
 ' Oh ! I'm sorry,' she apologised. ' Philip and I always 
 do walk rather fast.' 
 
 ' All right. Be there in a minute,' he said. 
 
 ' But, seriously, what are we going to say ? ' persisted 
 Philip. 
 
 'Take my advice. Offer buy the furniture. He'd take 
 hundred and fifty. And five years' lease of the house at 
 forty-five,' Blenkinsop suggested. 
 
 'Oh! Philip, could we?' Evelyn asked with a look of 
 rapture. 
 
 He would have liked to refuse. He looked down at the 
 road and frowned, but the eagerness of her spirit overcame 
 his tendency to objection. 'It it does seem rather an 
 opportunity,' he said.
 
 'NEW END' 213 
 
 ' That was what your father said about ' ' Middlethorpe," ' 
 Evelyn returned; and for one moment the glow of her 
 enthusiasm was chilled. Then she hugged the thought 
 of her ideal house and added quickly, 'But "New End" 
 isn't the least like "Middlethorpe."' 
 
 ' And I'm not much like my father,' added Philip. 
 
 Evelyn's unspoken comment was 'Thank Heaven'; but 
 in Philip's mind was a thought of regret. Somehow, he 
 had failed, he believed, to live up to the fine austerity of 
 his ambition. He had been weak and now there seemed 
 no option for him but to continue his weakness, for a 
 time. 
 
 The telegram, even in Edgar-Normanese, cost them one 
 shilling and fivepence halfpenny without the prepayment 
 for a reply. In speech he was curt, but once he had a 
 pen in his hand there was no restraining him. The tele- 
 gram was sent off a little before six o'clock, and the answer 
 was received with the letters next morning. It only 
 contained three words : ' All right. Punch.' 
 
 After one evening with the Blenkinsops, Evelyn had 
 fairly made up her mind about them. The father, she 
 decided, had made money in business quite a respectable 
 sort of business, he had no trouble with his pro- 
 nunciation, if his periods were too formal, probably 
 wholesale, whatever it was, it wasn't antique furniture, 
 she knew enough for that. She actually found a small 
 bead of glue at the back of one of the drawers in their 
 ' Sheraton ' dressing-table ! Mrs Blenkinsop might have 
 been the daughter of a professional man; doctor, or lawyer, 
 or something; but Bertha Harding was more difficult to 
 account for, she had an air that was reminiscent of the 
 Medborough precincts. 
 
 ' Whose cousin is she, do you know? ' Evelyn asked 
 Philip when they went upstairs, but he had neither 
 information, nor, it seemed, curiosity.
 
 214 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'For a budding novelist you are, to say the least of it, 
 rather uninquisitive,' she remarked. 
 
 ' I should never attempt to draw real people in a book/ 
 he explained. 
 
 ' Well, but if you don't get the material of your imaginary 
 people from life, where do you get it from? ' she asked. 
 
 Philip was unable to answer that. 
 
 Til ask the great E.N. to-morrow,' Evelyn said with 
 decision. She had treated 'the great E.N.' from the out- 
 set with a flippancy that paid no deference to his established 
 position in the world of English letters. 
 
 'He might not like that,' Philip thought. 
 
 'He will,' Evelyn asserted confidently. 'You've always 
 taken him too seriously. I'll make him admit to-morrow 
 that his books are ah 1 humbug. He's much, much better 
 than I thought he would be.' 
 
 The opportunity to ask her question, and what was still 
 more important, to visit her new house, did not come until 
 after midday dinner. Before that, their time was fully 
 occupied. Breakfast was late, family prayers were long, 
 the church was half a mile away, morning service was at 
 half past ten, the Blenkinsops never used the carriage on 
 Sunday if they could help it; the Vicar came back with 
 them to dinner, and the hour between the end of morning 
 service and dinner was devoted to entertaining him, 
 because he had to get back to open the Sunday School at 
 two. 
 
 But if she found no time to see her enthralling toy in 
 the midst of these tremendous undertakings, she had 
 leisure to think about it. Indeed, such was her pre- 
 occupation that she failed to notice a necessity imposed 
 by the aspect of the Blenkinsops' pew (it was essentially 
 a ' pew ' with red cushions and hassocks and a door with 
 a brass bolt) and did not turn her face to the East along 
 with the rest of the occupants of the north aisle, while the 
 congregation recited the Apostles Creed. She was at the 
 end of the pew, with Philip on her left, and she merely 
 wondered why he had turned his back on her, until she 
 became aware too late of the general rectification of aspect
 
 'NEW END' 215 
 
 at the invitation to pray. She had been replanning the 
 sitting-room furniture. 
 
 The Vicar she rather disliked. He was too suave, she 
 thought, too grateful for the Blenkinsops' patronage, his 
 interest in her proposal to take ' New End/ overdone. 
 
 'Two new parishioners for you, Vicar/ had been Mr 
 Blenkinsop's method of introduction. 'Mr and Mrs 
 Maning, I'm delighted to say, are going to take "New 
 End," and become permanent residents/ 
 
 ' Indeed ! How very charming ! ' the Vicar had said 
 with a cordiality that suggested the toady. 
 
 Edgar did not go to church, nor put in an appearance 
 until dinner was announced. Evelyn saw him then, with 
 an expression that was new to her although the associa- 
 tions of it came back to Philip with a quite startling 
 familiarity. Not until he saw again that look of ingenuous 
 and universal surprise, did Philip realise just what he had 
 missed in the Edgar Norman of this later acquaintance. 
 
 Evelyn was on tenterhooks all through the solemn 
 Sunday feast, afraid lest some awful suggestion might be 
 made for her entertainment during the afternoon. But 
 one glance at her host and hostess, as the Vicar left the 
 drawing-room, was enough to dispel that misapprehension. 
 They displayed, both of them, the pufnness of repletion; 
 they were only waiting politely for her to make the first 
 move; and she could not doubt that they were ardently 
 looking forward to the repose they had earned by their 
 fatiguing piety. 
 
 'I wonder/ Evelyn said, looking at Edgar Blenkinsop, 
 'whether Philip and I might go over and have another 
 prowl round "New End." There are one or two 
 things . . . / 
 
 Mr Blenkinsop senior pulled himself together with an 
 appearance of briskness that accorded little with the 
 glazed abstraction of his swollen eyes. 
 
 'By all means/ he said. 'Certainly, my dear Mrs 
 Maning. You can get the keys at . . . .' 
 
 'Got the keys/ his son interposed, and then to Evelyn, 
 'Come with you, 'nless you'd prefer go alone/
 
 216 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Oh ! no ! do come if you will,' she said; 'that is if you 
 don't . . . .' 
 
 'Like to come, immensely/ he returned and explained 
 his interruption as soon as they were in the garden by 
 adding, 'Ought to explain convention of ours; never 
 mention going to sleep Sunday afternoon. Pater always 
 accounts for his Sunday afternoon, tea-time, even if he 
 has been snoring like a pug for two hours in his 
 study.' 
 
 Evelyn smiled. 'Did you say pug or pig?' she asked. 
 Philip never understood these references to the classics, 
 Alice had been omitted from his education but Edgar 
 Blenkinsop was quite equal to the allusion. 
 
 'Portmanteau/ he replied briefly. Philip's bewilder- 
 ment made Evelyn laugh. She had not a care in the 
 world that afternoon. 
 
 'But how is it that you don't "retire,"- would that 
 satisfy the convention? on Sunday afternoon?' she 
 asked. 
 
 'Don't eat enough dinner, middle of the day/ he said 
 with his usual solemnity. 'Also, don't get up till twelve 
 o'clock. Suppose you think my figure result of sleeping 
 too much. It isn't. Result of stuffing chocolates all 
 day. Can't help it. Have one? ' 
 
 Evelyn accepted chocolates with alarming enthusiasm. 
 
 They explored ' New End ' with exhaustive thoroughness 
 that afternoon, and Evelyn found it more than perfect. 
 By four o'clock she was, indeed, suffering from a slight 
 attack of repletion; and when they came to a pause in 
 the sitting-room slid away from the single subject that 
 had till then absorbed ah 1 her attention and began to 
 chaff the quite willing Edgar. She liked the way he 
 accepted chaff and laughed at himself. He played that 
 game very well. She remembered that her uncle had 
 said he was good at games, billiards and tennis. She 
 wondered a little at his ability in the latter connexion 
 and decided to test his skill, herself, at the first oppor- 
 tunity. There was an excellent tennis court at Sutton 
 Manor, but they never played on Sunday.
 
 'NEW END' 217 
 
 She opened by keeping the promise she had made to 
 Philip the previous evening. ' By the way, Mr Blenkinsop/ 
 she began, ' Philip and I were having a discussion last night, 
 and I said I'd refer the question to you, as an expert. 
 Philip said that he would never put real people into a 
 novel, and I asked him if he didn't get the ideas of his 
 imaginary characters from life where he did get them 
 from. He didn't seem to know. Now, where do you? ' 
 
 ' Meaning to say in the first place, my characters aren't 
 real?' asked Edgar. 
 
 'Well, they're romanticised, aren't they?' 
 
 ' Get 'em from other books,' the celebrated author said, 
 without a sign of a smile or any mark of embarrassment. 
 ' There's a sort of type, you know; sort of quintessence of 
 the heroic ideal, everyone dreams about, more or less. 
 Modern novelists are simply ashamed to admit it, but 
 they got it, too. Everyone has, my opinion.' 
 
 'You don't even pretend, then, that women like your 
 Marzipan have ever existed in real life?' asked Evelyn 
 with a whimsical lift of her eyebrows. 
 
 ' Lord, no ! Isn't the point,' Blenkinsop said. ' Per- 
 sonally, never want write about "real life," get too much 
 of it in fact. Write novels forget all that. People read 
 'em for same reason. You laugh, Mrs Maning, but don't 
 mind telling you when I wrote novels, believed in 'em 
 myself, like anything. Got sick of 'em, though. Worked 
 it all off. Matter of fact can't touch marchpane, now; 
 confection, I mean.' 
 
 'Why not try a chocolate lady for a change? ' suggested 
 Evelyn. 'Call her " Cocoatina." ' 
 
 'Mrs Maning pulling my leg no end, this afternoon,' 
 Blenkinsop said, turning to Philip. 'Excusable in cir- 
 cumstances. What you think about it?' 
 
 'I don't know, quite,' Philip admitted. 'I used to like 
 your books immensely. But well I tried to write one 
 myself, and it didn't come off, and I think I'm rather 
 changing my ideal, in some ways.' 
 
 'He has never submitted that book to a publisher, nor 
 even shown it to me,' Evelyn put in. 
 
 G.C. P
 
 218 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'It isn't typed, you see, and simply smothered with 
 corrections/ Philip explained. 
 
 ' Point is chiefly, did you believe in it when you wrote 
 it?' asked Blenkinsop. 
 
 ' I don't fancy I did/ Philip said. 
 
 'No good, then/ Blenkinsop pronounced decisively. 
 'Book you ought to write, dour, puritanical stuff. See 
 yourself great reformer, absolute whole-hogger. Raise 
 yourself higher power, so to speak. My line sickly senti- 
 mental raised higher power. Saw myself that way as a 
 boy. You're different. See yourself Luther Wesley 
 Knox rolled into one, and let yourself go. You'd make a 
 fortune no time.' 
 
 Philip blushed. He was astonished and at the same 
 time ashamed to hear his secret ambitions thus made 
 public. He looked at Evelyn with embarrassment as if 
 he were afraid of her having learnt too much of his inner 
 thoughts. These months since his marriage had given 
 to all that side of his life some inexplicable appearance of 
 disloyalty. 
 
 And she knew. He saw at once that she had guessed 
 far more than Edgar Norman had revealed by his clever 
 analysis. She frowned slightly, as if she, too, were 
 ashamed to have this aspect of her husband's character 
 discussed by an outsider. 
 
 ' Oh ! I don't think the novel is his medium at all/ she 
 said, addressing Blenkinsop. 'When I get him down 
 here, I'm going to encourage him to write essays, and 
 articles, and criticism. He's too serious for fiction/ 
 
 Blenkinsop' s pale, protuberant blue eyes were quite 
 expressionless as he said, 'Can't be too serious, writing 
 novels/ 
 
 'But I meant . . . / Evelyn began. 
 
 ' Meant he's too high-brow/ Blenkinsop said. ' Suppose 
 I'll never get you to take me seriously, Mrs Maning. No 
 one ever does. Don't blame 'em. Appearance too much 
 against me. Ought to be getting back, tea. Everyone 
 awake by now, and trying be good-tempered/
 
 'NEW END' 219 
 
 Evelyn did not return again to ' Middlethorpe.' 
 
 The whole plan was discussed and settled over Sunday 
 supper. She was to stay on at Sutton Manor for three or 
 four days and Philip was to go back to Herne Hill, help 
 Mrs Hunt to pack, have the house thoroughly turned out 
 in preparation for possible tenants, leave the keys with 
 the agents by the station, and full powers of negotiation 
 with Mr Pratt. 
 
 Evelyn heaved a sigh of relief when Philip agreed to 
 the plan without posing a single objection; but when they 
 were alone together, upstairs, she offered to go back with 
 him. 
 
 'Perhaps I'd better go with you to-morrow/ she began. 
 
 Philip had not begun to undress, but she was sitting at 
 the dressing-table with all her splendid wealth of hair 
 loose about her, brushing it as she talked. 
 
 ' No reason why you should,' Philip said. ' I can manage 
 everything perfectly well except your packing, and Mrs 
 Hunt will be quite equal to that.' 
 
 ' Oh ! you can manage,' Evelyn replied. She did not 
 turn her head but she could see his face intermittently in 
 the oval mirror of the pseudo-Sheraton dressing-table, as 
 he gently paced up and down the room. 
 
 'There really won't be much to do,' he agreed evasively. 
 
 'You're sure you don't want me to come?' she tried 
 more boldly. 
 
 The truth was that he did not. He had been glad of 
 this chance to be alone for three or four days in the familiar 
 house of his boyhood. The readiness of his agreement at 
 supper had been entirely traceable to a clutching at this 
 opportunity 'to think things over,' as he phrased it to 
 himself. It seemed to him that since that evening in Paris 
 he had never had a chance to examine his own feelings. 
 
 'It would be rather a fag for you just now, wouldn't 
 it ? ' he asked.
 
 220 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 ' N-no !' she deliberated, in the manner of one who 
 carefully weighs objections. 
 
 'It hardly seems worth while, that's all/ he said. 
 
 She threw her hair back from her face, neatly separated 
 the mass of its invigorated ripples into two strands, and 
 began to plait one of them with a deft intentness. 
 
 'What you really mean, of course, is that you don't 
 want me to come; that you'd sooner be alone/ she said in 
 a low voice. 
 
 He had dreaded her honesty. He was not ready for a 
 frank discussion. Before he attempted that, he must 
 have his quiet time, away from her, to examine his own 
 desires and feelings. While she was there in the room 
 with him, she distracted him from any just appreciation 
 of true values. Her beauty snared him, and presently 
 he would be sorry. And the power of his reaction in- 
 creased instead of diminishing; increased until the thought 
 of it became a threat that stood between them and 
 transformed his every concession into the shape of a 
 deliberate sin, for which he must pay a growing price of 
 remorse. 
 
 The spectre was before him, now; but he had no ability 
 to fight it. Her weakness was too strong for him. He 
 must placate and soothe her. He could not go away for 
 three days and leave her in anxiety or doubt. He knew 
 that he could instantly reassure her. He had only to 
 cease fighting himself. Even as he paced the room he 
 recognised the ease of submission. If he made one step 
 forward, the angel with the flaming sword would stand 
 aside and let him pass. But this should be the last time. 
 He would claim his three days, he would make a great re- 
 pentance, and come to a final understanding with himself. 
 
 He paused in his mechanical walk and looked at her 
 with a steady deliberation. 
 
 Her second plait was done and she was sitting quite 
 still in front of the glass, a figure of warm, passionate 
 beauty, lit by the soft radiance of the candles on the 
 dressing-table. The window was open to the mild 
 placidity of the June night.
 
 'NEW END' 221 
 
 'Well? ' she said without looking up. 
 
 He came and knelt by her, wound his arms round her 
 waist and leaned his face on her bare shoulder. 
 
 'No, I don't want you to come/ he said. 'You hate 
 that house, and I would sooner go alone, and do all the 
 packing and things. It's quite natural, isn't it?' 
 
 She bent her head until her cheek rested on his hair. 
 
 ' If it's only that,' she said. ' But sometimes I'm afraid. 
 I daresay I'm often silly, just now. You .... 
 Philip, why are you so afraid to love me? ' 
 
 'Am I?' he asked, dishonestly. He held her a little 
 closer; and then seeking an excuse for his own evasion, 
 he said, 'How can I help being a little afraid of so 
 wonderful and beautiful a lady ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! don't be afraid of me,' she pleaded. ' Let us be 
 equals, absolute equals; hand-in-hand; two children going 
 on a great and exciting adventure.' Her breast heaved 
 with a quick sigh as she added in a whisper, 'It is the 
 greatest of all adventures that's coming to me, isn't it? 
 You must stand by me, darling.' 
 
 But in the distorted background of Philip's conscious- 
 ness stood the displaced angel, with a frown of reproach. 
 
 'This may be good, but it is not the best,' the angel 
 urged. 
 
 He boldly explored whatever was valid in that reproach 
 during the hours of his solitude in 'Middlethorpe'; and in 
 that familiar and, as it seemed to him, pure and single- 
 minded atmosphere, one aspect of his problem, at least, 
 was plain beyond any question. He had denied the best 
 in himself, and in doing it had debased the quality of his 
 love for Evelyn. 
 
 She had ceased to be the wonderful, mysterious woman 
 of his ideal. He had faced that knowledge for more than 
 a month, now, but the loss of the ideal had not seemed 
 to be of the first importance, confused as he had been by 
 the continual magic of Evelyn's presence. He had been
 
 222 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 reconciled to the belief that the perfect pattern of romance 
 could not exist in the flesh as a perpetual object of worship. 
 The great love affairs, as he had said to his friend Wood, 
 must either find sublimation in a glorious flame of death 
 or sink back to the common level of humanity. Any 
 middle course was impossible. When aspiration failed 
 as it eventually must from the mere exhaustion of mortal 
 possibilities, nothing was left but to soothe the longing of 
 the soul by physical satisfaction. 
 
 So far he could state a case, that had all the appear- 
 ance of being an universal; but what defeated him was 
 the application. He, himself, was so unable, as he 
 believed, to soothe that longing of the soul by what he 
 regarded as a debasement of his ideal. He had found 
 some aspect of Evelyn that shocked him, an aspect that 
 was inseparable in his mind from the thought of Helene 
 Lambert. The fear of the serpent was ever present with 
 him, and it seemed that he was encouraging the evil thing 
 by his own act. How, then, could he consent to an 
 alternative that must finally quench both his own spirit 
 and that of Evelyn? 
 
 Yet all this theory of love this vague searching after 
 some fugitive ideal of the eternal romantic that flowers 
 anew with each generation and, dying, scatters its im- 
 perishable seed of spiritual ambition, was fading in 
 importance, was being ousted by the practical 
 considerations of his daily intercourse with his wife. 
 For another dread had been added to the many that 
 were blinding him; he was afraid of losing the last 
 semblance of his love for Evelyn. 
 
 He had worshipped her first for the secret mystery of 
 her remoteness and difference; and that source of 
 adoration had, he felt, been explored, become familiar 
 and uninspiring. Afterwards he had found consolation 
 in the contemplation of her beauty. ^EstheticaUy, she 
 satisfied him. He had been able to regard her, without 
 any thought of ownership, as a presentation of the ideal; 
 to watch and admire her as something unique and flawless 
 that comforted his longing for worship. Now, even that
 
 'NEW END' 223 
 
 solace was being taken from him. Already she was 
 changing; losing something of her grace and elegance; 
 the smooth curves of her face and neck. And that change 
 would be progressive towards an ugliness that he did not 
 picture in connexion with Evelyn but invariably associ- 
 ated with his remembrance of the peccant, robust Alice. 
 It was impossible that Evelyn's figure should ever resemble 
 that of Alice, but his anticipation of the coming change 
 persistently haunted him in that form. And when that 
 second cause for worship was gone, he could picture no 
 further resource. He felt that the Evelyn of his dreams 
 was being taken from him, and that in place of her he 
 was to be given a woman, alien and unsympathetic, who 
 did not understand him and whom he could not understand. 
 Some hint of that feeling, it may be, comes to every 
 man when the supreme function of woman begins to 
 absorb her every faculty. His pride is wounded by the 
 inevitable realisation that he is become a secondary and 
 absurdly unimportant partner in the great work of 
 reproduction. Save for the value, whatever it is, of his 
 economic capacity, he is of no more use than a spent 
 may-fly. Within the sanctuary the sacred rites go forward, 
 while he waits at the door of some outer court, a servant 
 and of no account. The actual ceremony may be as much 
 beyond the comprehension of the woman as it is beyond 
 his own; but hers is the temple of the transfiguration, 
 hers the intimate watching service; and for him there is 
 nothing but what she can offer of her residual attention. 
 And, so, there must come now and again some gust of 
 resentment against the bonds of his slavery, a desire to 
 depreciate the services of the priestess; a longing to vindi- 
 cate his own spirit. The form of the reaction may vary, 
 but often, as in Philip's case, it takes the shape of alienation 
 from that diverted partner whose secret ministry he must 
 spend himself merely to guard. And Philip lacked the 
 ultimate consolation. He had not come to his share in 
 the inauguration of the great mystery with a serene 
 confident mind, devoutly offering ecstatic tribute to his 
 love and to the future of their union. He had come
 
 224 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 recalcitrant and ashamed, denying the beauty of God 
 and humanity, an unbelieving ministrant who profaned 
 the altar by his doubting service .... 
 
 Little wonder that out of the black hesitations of his 
 thought during those three days at ' Middlethorpe,' came 
 a resolution finally to cramp that distorted devil of his 
 imagination, securely and for ever in his prison. That 
 determination, at least, seemed to him right, beyond any 
 impugning. In the darkness of his mind, he saw this 
 renewing of his vow of chastity as the only hope of re- 
 storing his relations with Evelyn. When they were once 
 more living apart, he could by an act of imagination restore 
 her to her old throne. Then, even though her beauty 
 might suffer a temporary transfiguration, he could find 
 cause for worship. For the mystery of the unknown 
 woman, he could substitute the mystery of motherhood. 
 Once again she would present for him an unattainable, 
 intangible ideal.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ADAPTATION 
 
 EVELYN'S son was born on Christmas Eve. Her only 
 fear towards the end of her long trial, had been lest her 
 child might be a daughter. When she heard the news, 
 she smiled her relief and said faintly, 'Now I'm perfectly 
 happy.' She had had an easy confinement, and the only 
 thought that mingled with her satisfaction was a reflection 
 that the pains of child-birth had been grossly exaggerated. 
 
 'No one else you want to see?' asked the nurse. She 
 had only been three days in the house, and had not yet 
 passed the stage of archness that always served her as a 
 means of communication with a new patient. 
 
 Evelyn had forgotten that she might be asked so soon 
 to receive visitors. 
 
 'The doctor said Mr Maning might look in for just one 
 minute, but it's as you like, you know,' the nurse said. 
 
 ' I suppose he has been very anxious? ' Evelyn murmured. 
 
 'Naturally. They always are/ the nurse returned. 
 'But I don't want you to talk. If you don't feel up to 
 it, I'll send word down.' 
 
 'No, let him come,' Evelyn said. All that she desired 
 just then, was absolute repose. She felt as if she could 
 never again make another effort. Even the smile with 
 which she welcomed Philip, was rather a relaxation of 
 inner controls than an attempt at greeting; a smile that 
 might have accompanied a gentle, painless weeping. 
 
 Philip had a complete air of being on tip-toe. 
 
 'How are you, now?' he whispered. 
 
 'All right. Have you seen him?' 
 
 He had, but his only impression had been that his son's 
 head was surely malformed. 
 
 225
 
 226 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Yes. Splendid,' he murmured. 
 
 'Nine pounds/ Evelyn commented proudly. 
 
 Philip nodded encouragement. 
 
 She closed her eyes. 'So tired,' she said. 
 
 He hesitated a moment, then gently touched her hand 
 and stole out of the room. 
 
 ' You have been good ! ' the nurse said in a tone of brisk 
 approval, as he came out on to the landing. But when 
 she went back into the bedroom, she looked at once and 
 with a trace of anxiety at her patient. She could see, 
 however, no sign of disturbance there. 
 
 Nor was Evelyn disturbed just then. She was still 
 hopeful. And she could find immense consolation in 
 repeating the last couplet of those dream verses that 
 had seemed to the dreamer to define the ultimate object 
 of existence : ' Plenty to live for, And nothing to do.' 
 Even without Philip, she had plenty, now, to live for; 
 and at the moment exquisitely nothing to do .... 
 She would call him 'Noel.' 
 
 Philip, that Christmas Eve, had no such grateful source 
 of consolation. He was restless and dissatisfied. For 
 the past three months that itch of the mind he had ex- 
 perienced intermittently in his early manhood, had 
 increased until it had become a serious symptom. He 
 had no object in life. He wanted work, strenuous, 
 absorbing work, but he could decide on nothing that 
 would absorb him. He shrank from the prospect of any 
 mechanical occupation, such as he had found in the 
 business organisation of Wing's office. He believed quite 
 sincerely that to occupy himself with such distractions 
 as these was a waste of his abilities. He might as well, 
 perhaps better, spend muscular energy in the tilling of 
 his own garden. There remained two alternatives; and 
 despite the continued discouragement of failure he still 
 clung, somewhat too obstinately, to the first of them. 
 
 The making of literature had always been his chief
 
 ADAPTATION 227 
 
 ambition. He had certain abilities that he still regarded 
 as qualifying him to engage in the craft of letters. He 
 had imagination of a kind; a taste for phrase; a faculty, 
 if anything too strongly developed, for self-criticism; the 
 patience to select and order material; a feeling for con- 
 struction. With such recommendations he might be 
 judged as being endowed in almost abundant measure. 
 But one essential was lacking, an essential so important 
 and vital, that if it exists without any one of the 
 qualifications possessed by Philip Maning, it will force 
 itself into expression in face of every difficulty imposed 
 by lack of capacity or experience. Philip had, to put 
 the thing negatively, nothing to say. 
 
 Since he had been living at 'New End,' he had taken 
 his own novel as a test. There was a story, derivative, 
 no doubt, but still a story that had, at first sight, as much 
 claim to attention as others of its kind. But he recognised 
 that his story was not worth telling. It was stale and 
 dead. And when he attempted to re-read it, he was rilled 
 with a nausea of stifling impatience. As an example of 
 careful, polished writing, the book was admirable; as an 
 essay in fiction, it was he faced the criticism without 
 hesitation, simply damnable. Compared with the worst 
 novel of Edgar Norman's, it was flat and arid as a desert. 
 
 He was honest enough to search for reasons, but he 
 always returned to the single explanation which was of 
 all others the least stimulating to new effort. He could 
 but decide again and again that he had not the imagin- 
 ative invention required to make a novelist. Of what 
 use was it to him to have the power of describing when 
 there was nothing on earth that he sincerely wanted to 
 describe? And yet he had moments when it seemed to 
 him that if only some gate within his mind could be 
 thrown open, a wonderful rushing mass of material would 
 burst out upon him. Sometimes he held himself rigidly 
 still, waiting for the great inspiration. At others he 
 paced irritably up and down the brief length of the little 
 room that had been devoted to the uses of a study. But 
 no physical exercise had any effect upon that stubborn
 
 228 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 barrier that interposed between him and all the marvels 
 he longed so urgently to present. He had no thesis that 
 aroused in him an ardent lust to give it form. Of his one 
 comprehended ideal, purity of body, he was completely 
 unable to write. He would sooner have stripped himself 
 in some public place, than have set down his thoughts on 
 that subject. 
 
 So it was that all his accomplishment consisted in a 
 few articles accepted by the Reviews, slight things, 
 the majority of them based on some piece of current 
 criticism and one sketch which he could not submit to 
 any public. 
 
 That sketch was in a class all by itself, so far as Philip's 
 literary production is in question. It had to use his 
 own description 'come of itself,' a little elusive piece of 
 inspiration committed to words almost before he was 
 aware of what he was writing. It had the air but not the 
 form of an allegory, and began with a realistic account 
 of a young lawyer, spending a lonely week-end in a lonely 
 country cottage. He had come there for complete rest, 
 in order that he might clear his mind before re-attacking 
 an intricate and difficult case that would ensure the 
 success of his professional career, if he were able success- 
 fully to carry it through. 
 
 The cottage was on the edge of a deep, wild wood, and 
 on the first afternoon of his arrival he set out to explore 
 the shades of what it pleased him to imagine was a 
 boundless extent of forest. And, indeed, the wood was 
 large enough and dense enough for him to lose his way 
 in it. He became confused as to his direction. The 
 sun which had been shining brilliantly all the morning 
 was now entirely obscured; and although he had no sense 
 of fear, he began to believe that it was very possible he 
 would have to spend the night in the open. 
 
 And then with a peculiar quality of unexpectedness, 
 he came into a tiny glade and in the midst of it was the 
 white marble statue of a woman, a thing of triumphant 
 chastity and beauty, serene and exquisite, a pillar of light 
 among the immense profundities of the forest.
 
 ADAPTATION 229 
 
 He did not approach this amazing discovery of his. It 
 seemed to him that he was not yet ready to gaze openly 
 upon it. And, now, a strange certainty of his direction 
 had come to him, and he made his way back to the cottage 
 without the least hesitation. 
 
 He did not revisit the place next day. A plan was 
 forming in his mind. He meant to obtain possession of 
 this wonderful thing that he had seen; and, before he 
 made the attempt, he wanted to be sure whether or not 
 the secret was known in the neighbourhood. He told 
 himself that his reason for making his inquiry was the 
 practical one of ascertaining if the statue were already 
 private property; but his true reason was that he had an 
 immense longing to be sure that no living being besides 
 himself had ever profaned the sanctuary of the glade. 
 
 His method of making the inquiry without disclosing 
 his own knowledge was very simple. He pretended 
 interest in the wood as a property. He asked if the game 
 were preserved, if the mature timber was ever felled or 
 new timber planted, whether the owner would be willing 
 to sell, and who the owner was. For, he argued, if I talk 
 about the wood, anyone who has heard of the statue will 
 certainly mention it, sooner or later. By evening he was 
 fully convinced that no one in the village shared his most 
 precious piece of knowledge. In all his many conversa- 
 tions he had not once heard any reference that he could 
 possibly have related to his secret. Nor was there any 
 tradition or story about the wood, such as might have 
 arisen if the secret of the statue had been known in the 
 past. As to the wood itself, he could gather no 
 information as to ownership. He could only infer that 
 it was, technically, waste land belonging to the Crown. 
 
 That night he was kept awake by the urgency of his 
 desire to see the statue once again before he returned to 
 complete his plans for obtaining full possession of it; and 
 in the morning he set out as soon as it was light to feast 
 his soul for a few moments in contemplation of the supernal 
 miracle. The glade lay in the very heart of the wood, a 
 two hours' walk from the village, but, alas ! he had no
 
 230 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 difficulty this time in finding his way. The single track 
 of his one passage from glade to cottage, was already 
 become a beaten path ! At first he consoled himself with 
 the assurance that these traces of invading feet would 
 soon cease they were, he had no doubt, the tracks of a 
 party of young roughs who had sought distraction from 
 the idleness of a Sunday afternoon. But as he approached 
 nearer and nearer to the sacred spot, his fears deepened 
 until they became almost unendurable. He was too late. 
 He had not attempted to conceal his footprints. His 
 inquiries on Sunday morning must have arosed some 
 suspicion. He would reach the glade to discover that 
 the inestimable treasure had been stolen ! 
 
 And, indeed, the rough traces of brutal tramplings led 
 straight to the very edge of the glade. He paused there 
 hopeless and dejected. He could no longer doubt that 
 the statue had been stolen, a tragedy that appeared to 
 him as the greatest he could ever be called upon to endure. 
 But when he looked up, his heart leapt with a great throb 
 of relief, for there before him gleamed still the precious 
 form of his desire. He rushed forward, and then a truth 
 more horrible than his most dreadful apprehensions was 
 revealed to him. The statue was debauched and filthy. 
 It had been made the sport and cockshy of the rabble . . . 
 Philip was something in love with this little spontaneous 
 piece of inspiration. He had called it Concealment, a 
 word that represented for him the whole idea of pure 
 worship. He had polished and re-written the story until 
 it satisfied not only his secret craving for a justification 
 of the allegory, but, also, his sense of proportion as an 
 artist. There were two streaks of realism across the 
 foreground of his picture; the first was the description 
 of the young lawyer on the afternoon of his arrival at 
 the cottage; the second, the account of the inquiries in 
 the village. These two essays in naturalism set forth 
 the conception of an actual world too gross to appreciate 
 the lover's perfect ideal, and gave the parable, in Philip's 
 opinion, the seal of an absolute truth. It appeared to 
 him so evident, so incontrovertible, that the purity of
 
 ADAPTATION 231 
 
 his image must be sullied by any exposure to the vulgar 
 multitude. 
 
 If any further confirmation of that deduction had been 
 needed, he could have found it in his attitude towards 
 his own confession of faith now that it had been made. 
 For he could show his work to no one. The story had 
 become his statue of the glade, something altogether 
 too sacred to give to the coarse world of criticism. He 
 kept his manuscript in a locked drawer of his writing- 
 table and he had thrown the key into a pond. After the 
 allegory was finished, he never wanted to read it again, 
 but he would not destroy it; he felt some necessity for 
 preserving the symbol. And as a symbol the very 
 manuscript in its secret hiding-place took a form of 
 beauty. He thought of it as an idol, he longed to be near 
 it; but he dared not look at it again, lest in this world of 
 vulgar reality, some accidental interruption might expose 
 it to the rabble. He, himself, would not make the 
 irreparable mistake of leaving behind him the plain mark 
 of his footsteps .... 
 
 But this one achievement was but a further discourage- 
 ment from attempting success in letters. If the only true 
 expression of his mind could never be exhibited to the 
 world, of what use was it to persist in formulating his 
 second best? He could go on reviewing and writing 
 unessential articles, but neither honour nor relief could 
 come to him by that road. So it was that he began to 
 consider more and more earnestly during the days of his 
 son's infancy the second alternative, the idea of giving 
 practical service in the cause of morality. 
 
 He was honest enough to admit to himself that in this 
 work, also, he could give but his second best. For precisely 
 the same reasons that compelled him to keep the story of 
 his statue in a locked drawer, he would be unable to preach 
 to any congregation his secret ideal of chastity. He 
 accepted the reproach of cowardice. He did not deny 
 that the highest in this kind must face an ultimate shame 
 and misery, be exposed naked on the cross of faith; but 
 he knew that such martyrdom was beyond his capacity.
 
 232 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 God had locked some secret place in his mind and thrown 
 away the key. 
 
 Nevertheless, he pondered the giving of his second best 
 to social service, as a means of escape from the present 
 sterility of his life. Some outlet he must have, and the 
 memories of his boyhood forbade him to seek it in the 
 practice of a stubborn uninspired horticulture. In any 
 case, Evelyn did that much better than he could ever do 
 it. Her flower garden was a delight to herself and all 
 their visitors. 
 
 Noel Peter, a deliciously successful baby, was six months 
 old, and Evelyn was enjoying her roses at their best, before 
 she finally worked herself up to the pitch of 'speaking 
 plainly' to Philip. She had tried other phrases for her 
 intention; she had heard herself saying : ' Let us discuss 
 this honestly,' or 'We must come to some sort of under- 
 standing;' but when it came to the point she reverted to 
 her first rendering. 
 
 It argues no change of character in the open-minded, 
 courageous Evelyn that she should have waited so long to 
 speak, or that she had quite consciously feared to begin. 
 Philip's careful avoidance in conversation, of any topic 
 that might provide her with an opportunity would not 
 have deterred her. She was not afraid, in one sense, of 
 him, but of herself. He had set her so uncompromising 
 an example of modesty and she had reacted to the other 
 extreme. When she dared the rehearsal of that momentous 
 challenge in her thought, she was sometimes shocked by the 
 'plainness' of the speech she desired to scourge him with. 
 Moreover, such a marriage relation as theirs had been, 
 offered the most impenetrable of barriers. They had been 
 intimate as lovers, and yet that intimacy was no bond 
 between them, but rather a reproach. It was as if they 
 had separately sinned, and were ashamed now to recall 
 that half-forgotten remembrance. And their relations 
 ever since they had come here to live at ' New End,' seemed
 
 ADAPTATION 233 
 
 sometimes to have an air of permanence that could not be 
 attacked. They had never quarrelled. If she could have 
 found excuse in an outburst, the difficulty of beginning 
 might have been overcome. But Philip so genuinely 
 considered her every whim. His conduct as a husband 
 was so unimpeachable; and so completely a failure. He 
 gave her the semblance of a perfect devotion. She could 
 find no ostensible, reasonable cause for remonstrance. 
 And while he was, she knew, aware no less than herself, 
 that it was the semblance only he offered, she could not 
 demand the spirit. The spirit of love was a free thing to 
 be won but not commanded. If she drove him, finally, 
 into a corner, he might admit that he no longer loved 
 her. 
 
 And it may be that in her heart the fear of that admis- 
 sion was a deterrent greater than ah 1 the others. It was 
 certainly the partial relaxation of that fear which brought 
 her finally to the verge of speech. 
 
 As an opportunity it was badly chosen as regards the 
 place. They were in the rose garden at the side of the 
 house, and their effect of privacy was limited by the 
 knowledge that only an eight-foot wall divided them 
 from the publicity of the lane. They were invisible, but 
 undoubtedly audible to any chance loiterer on the other 
 side of the wall. She realised that disadvantage, but in 
 every other respect the opportunity was ideal, and, just at 
 that moment, all her fear of speech was miraculously gone. 
 They had seen the crimson and gold edge of the sun vanish 
 at last with an effect of suddenness in the north-west; they 
 were surrounded by the rich sweetness of her treasured 
 roses; and the warm, still air, the coming of twilight, the 
 evening thrillings of a blackbird ecstatically rejoicing in 
 one of the lane elms, all conduced to fill her with a glorious 
 certainty of love. 
 
 They had been slowly pacing the flagged path through 
 the pergola, but she drew Philip down on to a little rustic 
 bench by the wall when her determination welled up into 
 speech. 
 
 'Philip,' she began; and in that instant she knew. She 
 G.c. Q
 
 234 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 felt his instinctive recoil. He had been courtly, almost 
 tender, but at the change in her voice he was on the 
 defensive, he was, she felt, her enemy. After that she 
 hardened her heart. She had begun, now, and she would 
 know the truth, though the blackbird had gone and the 
 roses had lost their scent, and the night was coming cold, 
 and dark, and lonely. 
 
 ' I must speak about certain things,' she went on, trying 
 still to keep her voice gentle and pleading. ' I must know. 
 It's the uncertainty and the suspense that's so unendur- 
 able. If we're going on for ever as we are, now . . . .' 
 
 Philip braced himself to meet the discussion he could 
 not, now, postpone. He had courage enough for that; 
 the'dour, harsh courage of his father. Nevertheless, his 
 expression was very unlike Peter's. Whatever Philip 
 had inherited from his mother was not yet dominated 
 and absorbed. 
 
 'What is it, exactly, that you want to know?' he said. 
 He spoke in a low voice to warn her that they might be 
 overheard, but there was a restrained evenness in his tone 
 that was not suggestive of tenderness or concession. 
 
 'I want to know if we are going on as we are, now? 
 Always?' she said. 
 
 'I suppose so.' He gave his deliberate utterance the 
 finality of a considered verdict, trying vainly to avoid 
 her unavoidable response. 
 
 ' But, Philip, why ? I must know why,' she urged him. 
 
 She was of a different age and spirit from those of his 
 mother, and he recognised his handicap even while he 
 longed for the autocratic confidence of his father. 
 
 ' I can't explain why,' he said feebly. ' It isn't a thing 
 one can discuss. It's it's something I feel about . . . 
 about . . . .' 
 
 ' Marriage? ' she put in, and at once regretted the caustic 
 sound of her comment. 
 
 'The intrinsic tightness of the thing,' he concluded. 
 
 ' Oh ! dear,' Evelyn sighed, and put her hands to her 
 face to exclude the distraction of the twilit garden, while 
 she gave herself wholly to his impossible explanation.
 
 ADAPTATION 235 
 
 'Do you want the world destroyed?' she asked after a 
 long minute of silence. ' Do you feel that it's intrinsically 
 "right" that the human race should cease to be?' 
 
 'No !' he said with the first hint of annoyance creeping 
 into his voice. 
 
 ' Well, then ? ' she pressed him. 
 
 'It's my own feeling, that's all/ he said obstinately, 
 fully aware that he had no logical refuge. 
 
 'You don't want other people to follow your example? ' 
 
 He wished most sincerely that he could have answered 
 with a clear, unfaltering 'No/ But he did want that. 
 If other men and women, it might be, perhaps, no more 
 than a small community of them, could think as he did, 
 there would be no need for him to keep his allegory in a 
 locked drawer. 
 
 'Only a few/ he compromised. 
 
 ' Including me, I suppose? ' 
 
 'Yes, including you/ 
 
 'And if I have no sort of wish to be included? ' 
 
 'You will have in time. You'll come to under- 
 stand . . . / 
 
 ' Oh ! my dear man ! Why should I ? ' Evelyn asked with 
 a laugh that in spite of her sounded altogether too scornful. 
 
 'Why shouldn't you?' he returned, and then realised 
 that he was giving her the chance he would fain have 
 denied her. He did not want to hear her defence. It 
 was the defence of the rabble. He had succeeded so well 
 during the past few months in keeping his vision of her 
 pure as the statue of the glade, and, now, she would 
 deliberately destroy the result of all his long effort. 
 'For me . . . .'he began again quickly; but she 
 would not permit him to go on. 
 
 ' No ! ' she said. ' You've asked me a question and I 
 will answer it. You mayn't be able to explain yourself, 
 but there's no reason on earth that I can think of, why / 
 shouldn't.' 
 
 ' I know what you're going to say/ he tried in desperation. 
 
 'Do you?' she asked incredulously. 'Well, if you do, 
 what answer can you possibly give to it ? '
 
 236 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 ' You'll say we're only human/ he said, and something 
 of shame crept into his voice as he attributed the state- 
 ment to her. 'But I want you to be something better 
 than that.' 
 
 ' Inhuman ! ' she retorted, and then regretting the tricky 
 sound of it, tried to cover her mistake by adding, ' Or do 
 you mean superhuman?' 
 
 ' I haven't given it any name,' he said quietly. ' It may 
 be an ideal, but it doesn't seem to me beyond our reach.' 
 
 Her impatience was getting beyond her control. That 
 specious resemblance to some valid ideal was the thing 
 that always finally annoyed her. It had an air not so 
 much of truth as of an undeniable superiority that she 
 could not, she admitted that she could not, quite sincerely 
 despise. Every instinct and intuition of her body and 
 spirit told her that he was wrong, but this one argument 
 or was it an inducement?' of his wore such an appear- 
 ance of being irreproachable. 
 
 ' Oh ! what do I care whether it is or isn't beyond my 
 reach?' she said irritably. 'Don't say; don't think- you 
 wouldn't say it, of course/ "sour grapes." It isn't that. 
 I don't want to be what you call .... I don't even 
 know what you do call it. Anyway, not a representative 
 of your ideal.' 
 
 She paused entirely dissatisfied with everything she had 
 said and in a moment she saw the whole thing suddenly 
 plain. If she had given herself time, she would not, then, 
 have confronted him, brutally, with the simple truth; but 
 the joy of her discovery, of finding, at last, the single, 
 irrefutable reply to the argument that had so far almost 
 silenced her, was too great to admit a moment's reserve. 
 
 'If it is really your ideal,' she said. 'But is it? To 
 me an ideal is something that means self-sacrifice, ardour, 
 self-denial, oh ! a giving up of ordinary comforts and 
 satisfactions to get something finer and better. But 
 you're not giving up anything. You won't, you can't, 
 sacrifice yourself. You're just cold, intellectually cold 
 and fastidious, foolishly fastidious. So . . . .' she 
 was elaborating her case, seeing it more and more clearly
 
 ADAPTATION 237 
 
 as she talked, 'it's very easy for you to talk of an ideal, 
 when the ideal is nothing more than your ordinary inclina- 
 tion. Of course, this this notion of asceticism may be, 
 in some cases, very splendid, and oh ! yes, beautiful. But 
 only when it's won against the grain, when men of 
 passionate, human desires have deliberately controlled 
 themselves for for some higher end. You're not doing 
 that. You are just pandering to some finical, squeamish 
 notion of Puritanism you've got hold of. Oh ! Philip, 
 don't you see it, yourself? I'm sorry, dear, if I've said 
 too much, but . . . .' 
 
 She had said far too much. He could not endure it. 
 She had thrown mud and stones at his statue. He made 
 a movement to get up from the bench, but she laid her 
 hands beseechingly on his arm. 
 
 'Philip !' she said. 'I'm sorry ! But, darling, do face 
 this, now, once and for all. Isn't it true? It's all this 
 concealment that's so so vicious.' 
 
 He pulled his arm away from her savagely, then. It 
 seemed to him that she had, now, truly penetrated his 
 ultimate secret. Had she not named the sacred object 
 of worship as vicious? 
 
 ' Face it ? Face it !' he repeated, trembling with anger 
 and impotence. 'What is it you are asking me to face? ' 
 He fumbled in his mind for a word or a phrase that should 
 cover her with shame at the bare sight of her own request 
 But though he thought of many words, they came, indeed, 
 with a strange profusion, he could not speak them. 
 
 ' Is it so awful? ' she commented with a faint amusement. 
 In the midst of her disappointment, she could still appreci- 
 ate the humour of his absolute dismay. 
 
 'I must refuse to discuss that,' he said with a poor 
 imitation of Peter's manner. 
 
 ' You don't seem to consider me, at all ! ' she remarked. 
 ' Why am I to be put off with a sham marriage and be told 
 when I ask for an explanation that you refuse to discuss it ? 
 Don't you admit that you owe me any sort of justice? ' 
 
 He longed to go; to hide himself somewhere safely away 
 from this horrible topic that she would force upon him.
 
 238 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 But though he hated her at that moment quite passion- 
 ately, he could not yet relinquish all appearance of 
 courtesy. The habit of his own conventions was too 
 strong for him; and he stood sullenly mute by the bench, 
 waiting and longing for release. 
 
 'You won't answer that? ' she asked after a pause. 'Or 
 is it that you can't admit that you owe me any sort of 
 justice? ' 
 
 ' I don't know what you mean by justice,' he mumbled, 
 knowing all too well and shamed at her demand. 
 
 ' Love, then,' she substituted bravely. 
 
 'It isn't love you're asking for,' he said. 
 
 ' What, then ? ' she insisted. 
 
 He evaded that. 'I give you respect, devotion, wor- 
 ship,' he said, and it was almost too dark, now, for him 
 to see the petulant shrug of her shoulders. 
 
 'Do you?' was all her reply. 
 
 'Yes, I do/ he said stubbornly. 
 
 She was silent for so long that he had begun to hope 
 the worst was over, and that he might be permitted to go, 
 when she began again in a cool, level voice that surely 
 any listener on the other side of the wall could have heard 
 with the most discomforting ease. 
 
 'All that you have got to say/ she began, 'amounts 
 simply to this, that you won't discuss our our relations 
 as man and wife. You haven't attempted to answer 
 what I said to you about the selfishness of your ideal; 
 but I see, now, that no answer is needed. If you want 
 to lead the life of an anchorite, you must. I can only 
 suppose that any feeling you may ever have had for me, 
 is gone?' She waited, a trifle anxiously, for a denial 
 but as he made no answer, she continued. 'You admit 
 that? Very well, then so far as I can see, there's nothing 
 to be done but as it were begin life again with a new 
 understanding. We can, I suppose, be friends in a way. 
 Not very intimate or devoted friends, but still oh ! 
 reasonably easy acquaintances. And I must make up 
 my mind to that. I've got my boy . . . .' 
 
 She stopped abruptly. The pathos of the situation
 
 ADAPTATION 239 
 
 had come to her with an effect of overwhelming surprise. 
 She had been speaking calmly and reasonably, she had 
 believed that the prospect she drew of her own future 
 was a perfectly tolerable one, and this unforeseen threat 
 of tears was like the uprush of another personality from 
 within, coming suddenly to overpower her. 
 
 ' Please go ! ' she murmured, with little hope of being so 
 instantly obeyed. Indeed, his caUously prompt accept- 
 ance of her dismissal nearly overcame her. Sitting there 
 alone in the rose-garden, even the determined thought of 
 her baby was not sufficient to check the convulsive sobs that 
 welled and broke and shook her whole being so painfully. 
 ' This is hysteria, hysteria,' she told herself, and clenched 
 her hands and leaned her head back against the wall, 
 fighting with all the strength of her mind for self-control. 
 
 'I don't really mind! Why should I mind?' she 
 argued, holding her defence against that invading physical 
 woe with stretched and rigid muscles. ' I don't love him. 
 I'm not sure that I have ever loved him.' 
 
 She returned to that, presently, when, more than a 
 little wrung and tired, she began to pace again the deeper 
 twilight of the pergola. Had she ever loved more than a 
 figment? More than her own thought of him? He was, 
 she knew, in some inexplicable way 'her type.' And he 
 had appealed to her at a critical moment, when she was 
 turning the corner that opened the vista of a. long straight 
 road leading to old age. (At twenty-four, she had dreaded 
 the contemplation of her next birthday 'twenty-five' 
 had always had for her some suggestion of being the age 
 of the finally adult.) But had there ever been more than 
 that and the accident of propinquity? And had not her 
 strange first sight of him been an illusion? The imagin- 
 ative recognition of an ideal that did not, in fact, exist? 
 When she thought of him, now, she thought of a vexing 
 personality that had no sort of likeness to the spirit she 
 had postulated as inhabiting the graceful body of that 
 clear-eyed, hopeful youth on the steps of the Oxford 
 Club. Had he changed so greatly since then, or had she 
 been the victim of a profound misconception? She could
 
 240 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 find no comforting answer to these questions. She could 
 understand neither Philip nor herself. 
 
 But she found a way of relief later, when she had fed 
 and resettled her baby in his cot at the side of her own 
 bed, and was kneeling over him, crooning softly to soothe 
 him back into the placid deeps of the slumber from which 
 she had so recently recalled him. She found relief there, 
 in quiet, unhysterical tears that brimmed and fell on to 
 the gay eiderdown of the cot, and did not interrupt the 
 soft croon of her cradle-song. 
 
 She hardly knew for what she was weeping, but she 
 thought it must be that she mourned a lost ideal of 
 perfect comradeship and love. 
 
 Philip at least deserves greater sympathy in that he 
 found no relief. 
 
 When he was alone in his study and had lighted his 
 lamp and drawn the curtains over the window that stared 
 straight over the rose-garden and might have exposed him 
 to the view of her he had just left with such intolerable 
 willingness; he attempted with what he believed to be a 
 sincere intellectual honesty, to find some escape from the 
 appalling intricacies of his marital relations. The en- 
 deavour might be justly compared to the effort of a man 
 confined in a long, narrow passage, both ends of which are 
 barred by very difficult-looking doors. He walked, as it 
 were, everlastingly backwards and forwards, examining 
 each door in turn. At the one end he was confronted 
 and defeated by his inability even to speak of any matter 
 relating to sex; at the other by the admission that he 
 owed a duty to Evelyn, that he had been false to his 
 marriage vows, and had in sheer cowardly selfishness 
 left her when she most needed him. He beat his hands 
 on that door until they bled, he knelt before it and 
 castigated himself unmercifully, and then fled up the 
 passage to stare at, but not to touch, the only other 
 possible means of escape. He did not touch it, because he
 
 ADAPTATION 241 
 
 had an idea that if he turned the handle, the door might 
 open; and he could not face the sight of what lay beyond. 
 He heard Evelyn come in, just after ten o'clock, and he 
 longed to go and ask her forgiveness. He had his fingers 
 on the handle of the study door when he realised that he 
 dared not. Forgiveness asked for and conceded would 
 mean a complete reconciliation, and after that he would 
 have to face the situation all over again. She could not 
 understand. He had tried to explain; had explained 
 enough, surely, for her to realise his attitude if she were 
 not so .... He had halted always at that point 
 for a word to describe her; and when it came he resolutely 
 crushed it back. If he were once to admit that Evelyn 
 was sensual (it was as if he whispered the word in the 
 darkness of his mind) his last hope of worshipping was 
 gone for ever. And she had given him his freedom to- 
 night. In future they were to be friends, and from that 
 distance he could achieve respect. All the glory had 
 gone, but if she left him alone, he could recover 
 respect and, perhaps, something of adoration. No, he 
 must not ask for forgiveness. He had by a mere negation 
 achieved his primary object of separation, of a solitude 
 beyond the reach of her invasion. If they both suffered, 
 for a time, they would suffer less in the long run than if 
 he gave her any smallest expectation, now, that he might 
 eventually take her back into the sanctuary. She had 
 said that concealment was vicious. She could never 
 understand. He must make the great repudiation of the 
 old hope, at once and for always. He could never believe 
 again that she and he would agree on that one, all- 
 important subject. A compromise was happily possible. 
 There would be no scandal, no change in their way of life. 
 
 He was to find, however, and that not later than the 
 next morning, how many changes their compromise of 
 the previous evening might involve.
 
 242 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Evelyn came down to breakfast with a new manner. 
 She was cold and dignified, and she gave no play to the 
 sense of humour which had never before seemed to fail 
 her. (He had always admired her wit.) But the essence 
 of the change was in her treatment of himself. She dis- 
 played a new imperiousness, more than a little tinged 
 with contempt, and appeared to seek excuses for the 
 exercise of her recently assumed superiority. 
 
 'What's the address of your friend, Mr Wood?' she 
 asked suddenly in the middle of breakfast. 
 
 Philip gave the name and the number of the Oxford 
 Street flats, and then inquired why she wished to know. 
 
 'I'm going to ask him down for next week-end. He 
 hasn't been near us for three months, and I like him,' she 
 replied casually. 
 
 ' I don't suppose he'll come,' Philip said. ' I think he 
 has rather lost his interest in me, lately.' 
 
 'Oh! he'll come,' she affirmed confidently. 'He hasn't 
 lost interest in me, yet. And now Edgar Blenkinsop is 
 at home, we can get in some decent tennis. When he's 
 handicapped by Bertha Harding, Mr Wood and I can give 
 a fair account of ourselves.' 
 
 'You haven't asked if / want to see him,' Philip said 
 gravely. 
 
 ' You can keep out of the way, you know, if you don't,' 
 Evelyn returned. Her words were flippant, but the hard 
 stare of her eyes challenged him to dare a reply. 
 
 He saw, then, something of the entanglement of his 
 dilemma. If he resisted, she had a weapon that would 
 instantly defeat him. Indeed, she showed the next 
 moment how unscrupulously she was prepared to use it. 
 'I mean to get some enjoyment out of life/ she said, with 
 a little contemptuous laugh. 
 
 He attempted no answer. He was not prepared, yet, 
 to meet her on this new ground of open enmity. He was 
 foolishly searching his mind for, and still more foolishly 
 discovering, her object in adopting this new attitude 
 towards him. He could only conceive it as part of a 
 deliberate scheme to bring him to terms.
 
 ADAPTATION 243 
 
 And before he could escape to his study, she gave him 
 two further essays in the methods of her new autocracy. 
 The first of them followed immediately from her con- 
 sideration of Georgie Wood's probable acceptance of her 
 invitation. 
 
 'There's another thing I want him for/ she threw out, 
 carelessly. 'I want his advice about that back lawn of 
 ours. I think it could be made into a very decent tennis 
 court, and then we could play here on Sundays. Edgar 
 has no objection, you know, it's only his father and 
 mother; and they only mind, really, because of setting 
 an example.' 
 
 'You don't mind our setting a bad example?' Philip 
 asked. Here at least, he felt that he was on firm ground. 
 
 'That rigid Sabbatarianism is such piffle,' Evelyn 
 replied in the tone of one who is thinking of something 
 else. 
 
 'I don't think so/ Philip replied firmly. 
 
 She looked up at him, then, as if she had just remembered 
 his presence in the room. 
 
 'Don't you?' she asked. 'I do; and my father used to 
 think so, too. He and I always played chess on Sunday 
 evening.' 
 
 ' You may do what you like about the lawn/ Philip said, 
 delivering his ultimatum; 'but I won't have tennis played 
 here on Sunday.' 
 
 She dismissed that solemn announcement as almost 
 beneath notice. 'Nonsense/ she said calmly. 'Queen 
 Victoria is dead, you know. Oh ! by the way, I had a 
 letter from Mme. Lambert this morning. You remember 
 Helene, you called her a serpent, didn't you; and squeezed 
 her hand in the hall of the Lamberts' flat? Well, she has 
 married an American millionaire, of sorts, rather one of 
 the lesser lights, I fancy, and gone to live in San Francisco. 
 She's only eighteen, now. Poor Helene, I can't help 
 feeling sorry for that child; she's so almost certain to 
 come an awful cropper one of these days.' 
 
 This was her second essay in method. 
 
 He made one more attempt at resistance.
 
 244 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 '1 want to make it clear about the tennis/ he began, 
 frowning aside the irrelevancy of Helene's marriage. 
 
 ' Oh ! you needn't play if you're afraid to/ Evelyn 
 returned brightly. 'But you can't expect me to be 
 guided by your extraordinary prejudices. After last 
 night I consider myself justified in doing anything I like, 
 within reason. I've made the gran' rifiuto, but I claim 
 compensations. I can't pretend to be as holy as poor 
 dear old Celestino/ she concluded whimsically. 
 
 Philip compromised with himself on the ground that he 
 must have time to think over this last development, before 
 he could answer Evelyn's declaration of independence. 
 He left the room with a certain dignity. He was never 
 gauche, now, except when he was embarrassed by such a 
 discussion as that which had been forced upon him last night. 
 
 But no clearness with regard to a final issue came to 
 him in his solitudes. He was too confused by the real- 
 isation that, in spite of everything, he had immensely 
 admired Evelyn in her new mood of the morning. She 
 could, with one, unhappily all too vital, exception, so 
 perfectly present the heroine of an Edgar Norman 
 romance. 
 
 The visit of Georgie Wood, who accepted Evelyn's 
 invitation by telegram, was anything but helpful so far 
 as easing the general situation was concerned. Evelyn, 
 metaphorically, took cover behind the sturdy figure of 
 the young tea-broker, and only looked out at Philip in 
 order to grimace at him. From that vantage ground 
 she appeared quite openly to defy him. 
 
 He only essayed one protest and was ignominiously 
 defeated. 
 
 He came upon them at ten o'clock on Sunday morning 
 actually at work on the back lawn. He was ready for 
 church, and had come out in the innocent belief that his 
 wife and visitor, also ready, were strolling up and down, 
 waiting for him to join them.
 
 ADAPTATION 245 
 
 And Evelyn had not even the decency to look guilty. 
 Her smile was, he thought, at the same time confident 
 and a shade malicious. 
 
 'Going to church, Philip?' she asked gaily. 'We're 
 not coming. Mr Wood quite understands that he has 
 been invited to make himself useful on this occasion.' 
 
 Georgie had his coat off and a spade in his hand. He 
 had kept the vow he had made in Philip's presence, to 
 limit his figure by taking regular exercise, but he looked 
 more sturdily solid than ever. He was, however, evi- 
 dently satisfied with the result of his physical training. 
 When he now took a sight down the line of his waistcoat, 
 he wore an air of viewing it with complacency. 
 
 'Good discipline for me, old chap,' he said, as though 
 he were exonerating Evelyn from possible blame. 'I 
 have to keep hard at it, or I'd run to seed in no time. 
 Hereditary, I expect. The pater's immense.' 
 
 'Aren't you coming to church?' Philip asked, with his 
 eyes on Evelyn. 
 
 She shook her head. 'So dull,' she commented, and 
 added briskly, 'And Edgar's going to get up frightfully 
 early this morning to help. We expect him about twelve. 
 He says he won't dig, but he can manage a barrow.' 
 
 Philip frowned heavily. 'I don't like your doing this 
 on Sunday,' he said on a note of determined severity. 
 
 'Oh! don't be Peterish,' was Evelyn's reply, and then 
 she turned to Georgie and said, 'Do tell him not to be so 
 Victorian, Mr Wood. It really is time that he learnt 
 that the head of the family isn't all the law and the 
 prophets any longer.' 
 
 'I haven't been to church simply for ages, Phil,' Georgie 
 explained. He was slightly embarrassed but prepared to 
 be perfectly frank about this matter of churchgoing. 
 'People don't seem to worry about it as much as they 
 used to,' he added. 'Even the gels have practically 
 chucked it, now.' It was understood that his instance 
 of 'the gels' referred exclusively to his own sisters. 
 
 'I happen to believe in it, you see,' Philip replied, 
 striving to produce some effect of dignity.
 
 246 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Wood's nod conferred a kind of tolerant approval. 
 'Yes, I know; all right for you, old man. But I don't 
 see that you can expect me to come.' 
 
 'I don't/ Philip said. 'But I do expect . . . .' 
 His glance at Evelyn completed the sentence. 
 
 She smiled and waved him away. 'You've always 
 expected too much of me/ she returned gaily. 'Now, 
 hurry, dear, or you'll be late and shock the Blenkinsops; 
 and you're interrupting horribly.' 
 
 Philip realised that he would only lose prestige by 
 attempting any display of authority. Evelyn was too 
 clever for him; and she could shelter behind the barrier 
 imposed by the presence of George Wood. If she were 
 asked to come into the house, she would certainly refuse. 
 Also, Philip was not at all sure that he desired an argu- 
 ment with her at that moment. 
 
 Yet it was less against her than his friend Wood, that 
 Philip's resentment burned, as he reflected on his defeat 
 during his half-mile walk to the church and throughout 
 the greater part of morning service. Evelyn remained 
 in all these aspects just beyond the reach of criticism. 
 He admitted her superiority. In a sense she awed him. 
 But he had an obscure feeling that Wood had been dis- 
 loyal. He ought to have adapted himself to the custom 
 of the house in which he was staying as a guest. He 
 certainly ought not to have remained at home with Evelyn 
 while her husband went alone to church. 
 
 Philip looked across the nave at the solemn Blenkinsops 
 facing him from the north aisle. They would waylay 
 him as he came out, and make inquiries after Evelyn's 
 health. They would assume at once that her absence 
 from church must be due to 'indisposition/ That was 
 a word of theirs for small illnesses. He might, in this 
 case, have said with truth that she was indisposed, without 
 mentioning that her indisposition was of the will; but the 
 fact that Wood had, also, stayed at home, compromised 
 the affair quite hopelessly. Also, they would know later 
 that their son had gone to ' New End/ to assist in making 
 a tennis court.
 
 ADAPTATION 247 
 
 And so far as Philip could see there was no way out. 
 This sort of thing was going on indefinitely. 
 
 The doors confining the two ends of his narrow cage of 
 thought, had moved a trifle nearer together, but he was 
 not aware that his pacing to and fro was, now, reduced by, 
 perhaps, another half step. 
 
 He fled the Blenkinsops. 
 
 There was a collection on behalf of church expenses 
 that morning, and after he had made his contribution, 
 he did not wait for the conclusion of the hymn and the 
 blessing, but escaped furtively. The sound of Mr 
 Blenkinsop's ringing tenor followed him into the church- 
 yard with a note of inquiry. Mr Blenkinsop always sang 
 his proper part in the harmony, and some of the school 
 children who sat near his pew, had become perverted 
 into following him, and also sang the tenor instead of the 
 tune. Philip's last impression as he hurried out of earshot 
 was that the whole congregation had turned 'Who givest 
 all/ into an immense question that could never be resolved 
 into the calm satisfaction of the key-note. 
 
 He found his wife and her two assistants hard at work 
 on the levelling of the tennis court Evelyn, cool, fresh 
 and cheerful; and her two lieutenants cheerful, also, but 
 certainly not cool. Edgar Norman, diligently wallowing 
 up and down with his barrow, looked as if he had just 
 undergone the Baptist ceremony of immersion. 
 
 None of them showed any sign of shame, when Philip 
 made his entrance, conveying by his expression and bearing 
 the grave and frowning air so proper to an English Sunday 
 morning. 
 
 'Rotten slacker,' was Edgar Norman's comment as he 
 trundled by to shoot another load of earth on to the tiny 
 embankment he was making. 
 
 ' I say, Phil, aren't you going to help, now ? ' Wood 
 protested, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief that 
 appeared to have come straight out of the wash-tub.
 
 248 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 But Evelyn came across to him as if she would spare 
 him the disgrace of being scolded in public. 
 
 ' Oh ! Philip,' she said in a low voice that trembled on 
 the verge of laughter. ' You do look so exactly as if you'd 
 come out to see what we were doing and tell us we mustn't. 
 Don't you think you could forget about it for a bit and 
 help?' 
 
 He did not answer her immediately. Outwardly he 
 appeared to be poised on an effort of deliberation. 
 Within, his mind was convulsively tearing up and down 
 its prison searching first this door and then that, as if in 
 the hope that the next time one of them would be found 
 miraculously and unblameably open. When he, at last, 
 replied, it seemed that some other voice spoke through him. 
 
 'I don't approve of working on Sunday,' he said. 'If 
 you persist in going on against my wishes, I suppose I 
 must submit; but you surely need not ask me to join you.' 
 
 He was grave and dignified, but his solemn protest had 
 no effect upon Evelyn. She did not answer him directly. 
 She turned to her two colleagues and announced in the 
 manner of a herald : ' Philip won't help. It's against his 
 principles. What's to be done?' 
 
 Georgie Wood grinned. ' You don't mind my going on, 
 do you, old chap ? ' he asked. 
 
 Edgar Blenkinsop was sitting on his barrow, trying to 
 dry his head. His face wore that expression of blank, 
 infantile surprise that he usually reserved for comparative 
 strangers. 
 
 ' Oh ! I don't mind anything,' Philip replied with a 
 sudden gust of temper, and he turned and walked quickly 
 back to the house. 
 
 'Effect English Sunday,' remarked Edgar. 'Always 
 happens. Great relief come and work for Mrs Maning. 
 Lost good stone this morning. Anyone like a chocolate? '
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THREE YEARS 
 
 NOTHING of final importance happened in the three 
 years that followed the indefinite decisions of the rose- 
 garden. At the end of that time Evelyn and Philip were 
 still living in the same house and on nearly the same terms 
 of acquaintanceship. With them it was up to the summer 
 of 1909 not a question of happenings, but of slow, 
 invisible movement towards a separation, of which neither 
 of them was aware. 
 
 But if life at 'New End' had not brought them nearer 
 together, nor moved them suddenly apart, it had wrought 
 what seemed to themselves some quite amazing changes. 
 
 Evelyn's dramatic success as a writer, for example, 
 may be reckoned among the changes that were not, in 
 fact, essential so far as her or Philip's inner life was con- 
 cerned, although that success appeared of quite immense 
 importance to them at the time. 
 
 She began to write in the first instance as a relief from 
 boredom. Noel Peter did not occupy all her time, nor a 
 quarter of her mental energy. His was, however, the 
 influence that turned his mother's creative faculties towards 
 literature. If he had not been there, she would have 
 plunged back into some social or commercial undertaking. 
 
 But, having once begun, Evelyn continued to write for 
 the joys of finding distraction and of making something. 
 Also, she took a true delight in writing for its own sake. 
 
 Her first novel, entitled a trifle fantastically Now and 
 Then, was started with about the same seriousness of 
 intention as she would have given to sketching a profile 
 on the blotting paper. She sat down at her little bureau 
 in the sitting-room one morning, a week or two after the 
 G.c. 249 R
 
 250 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 famous Sunday of the tennis court revolt, and began to 
 write with no least idea of what the story was presently 
 to be. She wrote a page or two of description about a 
 young woman with a family likeness to Miss Evelyn Lang 
 of the Medborough precincts, placed in an absurd dilemma 
 at a station waiting-room without money, luggage, jewel- 
 lery or anywhere in the world to go to. But that evening 
 the story of the young woman's further adventures in 
 London began to unroll before Evelyn's imagination with 
 a vividness that she found quite fascinating. She could, 
 indeed, hardly control her eagerness to get the story down 
 on paper, and the next morning Noel was bathed, tucked 
 into his perambulator and put out to sleep in the rose- 
 garden, a full half-hour earlier than usual. 
 
 She was genuinely sorry when the book was finished. 
 It had occupied most of her mornings and evenings for 
 five months, and she missed the pleasant distraction of 
 living in a world of her own making. Then she bought a 
 typewriter and found another pleasure in transcribing her 
 work, the pleasure of an artist who polishes and perfects 
 his creation. She discovered that the act of typing her 
 manuscript made her amazingly critical. 
 
 When the book was finished at the beginning of the new 
 year, she sent it off to Messrs Robert Wing & Co. and 
 began another. She had never once mentioned her essay 
 in authorship to Philip. 
 
 She took that step almost in desperation and with a 
 timidity that seldom, now, marked her approach of him, 
 when she received a nicely typical letter from Mr Wing, 
 himself, accepting the novel, offering to publish it in the 
 following May, and suggesting a contract that Evelyn 
 regarded as nothing less than an insult. 
 
 Philip was not at home when she received the letter. 
 He often, now, spent three or four nights every week in 
 town, sleeping in a room he had taken off the Borough 
 Road, to be near his Working Boys' Club. But he came 
 home that evening, and she tackled him with a sudden- 
 ness that showed how nervous she was, just as they were 
 getting up from dinner.
 
 THREE YEARS 251 
 
 ' Philip, I want your advice,' she said. ' I've written a 
 novel don't ask me why, I've no idea and Mr Wing 
 has accepted it and offered me what I think are simply 
 ridiculous terms. Will you tell me what I ought to say 
 to him? Let's go into the other room.' 
 
 She felt that the passage from one room to another 
 would give herself and him just enough time to recover 
 from the shock of her announcement. Why she, herself, 
 should be apprehensive of trouble, she could not under- 
 stand. The only explanation that occurred to her was 
 vaguely connected with a thought of her year-old son. 
 Philip had, she believed, no other threat that could even 
 remotely affect her. She would not admit that she was 
 still afraid of hurting Philip, himself. 
 
 Nor did he show any sign of hurt when she told him, 
 rather too succinctly, how her book had come into being. 
 
 ' It was something to do,' she said. ' You've been away 
 so much, and when you're here . . . .' She left him 
 to fill that gap as he would. ' I had to find an occupation,' 
 she concluded; 'and I've enjoyed writing the book. I've 
 begun another.' 
 
 ' But what sort of a book is it? Aren't you going to let 
 me read it? ' he asked. He looked tired and almost fragile 
 in the light of the green-shaded lamp; and the lines about 
 his mouth and eyes were those of a man who was unduly 
 harassed. 
 
 Evelyn noted these things, and wished she could feel a 
 greater sympathy for him. But all that side of her 
 emotional life was become callous against any appeal of 
 his. She had reacted so violently after that willing 
 desertion of her in the rose-garden. She had with one 
 drastic effort of renunciation given up all hope of him as 
 a husband. And, now, the defence of a particular self- 
 sufficiency she had so quickly and effectively assumed, 
 had grown about her until the figure of Philip had become 
 differentiated from the rest of humanity. She could pity 
 anyone in the world but him. 
 
 ' Oh ! yes, of course you can read it, if you want to,' 
 she said. 'It won't interest you. It's just piffle from
 
 252 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 your point of view. But what I wanted to consult you 
 about was the terms Mr Wing offers. No advance; no 
 royalty on the first thousand copies and only ten per 
 cent, afterwards up to five thousand; and that only on 
 condition that I make a contract with him for three more 
 novels.' 
 
 'Ridiculous,' Philip commented. 'But if you don't 
 mind, I'd like to read the book before I advise you about 
 terms. It it mayn't be the sort of book I care for, but 
 I should be able to judge it' from a commercial point of 
 view, I think.' He sighed. 'I was with Mr Wing, how 
 long?' he went on absently. 'Nine years. And it isn't 
 three years since I left him. It seems such an immeasur- 
 able time.' 
 
 'Hardly complimentary to me,' Evelyn remarked. 
 
 ' Have you a copy of the book ? ' he asked quickly, as if 
 he preferred not to divert their conversation any further 
 into a possibly sentimental channel. 
 
 ' Oh ! yes/ she said briskly, abandoning any last shade 
 of anxiety about his reception of her work. She could 
 always beat him. He had no threat that would not 
 instantly crumble before her infinitely more powerful 
 counter-threat. He was afraid, even now, of the least 
 reference that might however allusively suggest a renewal 
 of that old conversation. As she went over to her bureau 
 and took out the manuscript, she could smile, quite 
 cruelly, at the thought of how he would certainly wince 
 at the strong spice of naughtiness that pervaded Now 
 and Then. In her heart she was saying bitterly, 'My 
 dear boy, you needn't be afraid that I shall ever open 
 that subject again. Oh, never again. Never again.' 
 
 'This is the carbon copy,' she said, in the once familiar 
 voice of Miss Lang, the secretary, as she gave him the 
 typescript. 'I did it for America. I've been realising, 
 lately, what a useful thing it may be for a writer to have 
 had experience of a publisher's office. And by the way; 
 I forgot that Mr Wing wants a finger in any possible 
 American profits, as well.' 
 
 ' I shouldn't go to Wing,' Philip said. ' I'll be better
 
 THREE YEARS 253 
 
 able to advise you who to approach after I've read the 
 book. I'll take it into my study and begin at once.' He 
 paused and twiddled the fat bunch of typescript absently 
 for a moment, and then, with an obvious change of inten- 
 tion, added 'How long is it?' 
 
 'About seventy thousand words,' Evelyn replied. 
 
 She wondered after he had gone what he had been 
 about to say. None of her guesses came anywhere near 
 the truth. 
 
 From the moment she had made her announcement, 
 Philip's thought of the book had centred about a single 
 anxiety. He may have been influenced by his old read- 
 ing of romantic fiction, or have been prejudiced by his 
 own mental and physical obliquity, but the one explanation 
 of Evelyn's writing that had occurred to him was that she 
 had made a frank revelation of their marital relations with 
 an intention either to pillory or to plead with him. Of 
 the two alternatives he would have preferred the former. 
 
 He had made up his mind as to his own course of action 
 in either event, during the short interval occupied by 
 walking from one room to another. In this he had no 
 hesitation; he was determined that if his supposition 
 proved correct, he would anticipate the publication of the 
 book at any cost. He had made his plans as he talked. 
 He had hoped that Evelyn would give him the original 
 manuscript, and he had decided that he would call the 
 next day at Wing's office and recover the second copy. 
 Whether he should destroy them at once or retain them 
 as hostages in his room in the Borough was a matter that 
 he could settle when he knew the extent of her revelations. 
 It might be possible merely to stipulate for certain 
 omissions or alterations. And then, when she had pro- 
 duced a third copy, leaving still one more to be impounded 
 before he could control the situation, he had weakly 
 hesitated on the verge of asking her whether she had, 
 indeed, written of themselves. The difficulty of obtaining
 
 254 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 her original copy had suddenly seemed to him insuperable. 
 He had glanced into her open bureau and was convinced 
 that the manuscript was not there. He knew very well 
 the kind of bundle a book of 70,000 words would make in 
 Evelyn's handwriting. 
 
 His mind was still niggling with the perplexity of how 
 to obtain that third copy when he began to read; and the 
 relief of finding his fears to be entirely groundless was 
 such that Evelyn's witty naughtiness had no effect upon 
 him. It is true that he did not read with very close 
 attention. He had finished the book within three hours. 
 
 Evelyn was agreeably surprised by his comments the 
 next morning. She had expected some kind of remon- 
 strance, and was even prepared to alter a few passages 
 which had given her, on reflection, more than a twinge of 
 uneasiness. Now that she actually had an offer for 
 publication, the book had become such a personal thing. 
 
 'You really think I should be justified in calmly refusing 
 Wing's offer, then?' she asked. 'I mean you think I 
 should have no difficulty in placing the book with someone 
 else?' 
 
 'I have no sort of doubt about it,' Philip said. 'It's 
 exactly the kind of book publishers are, or were, looking 
 for.' 
 
 'Amusing piffle,' she remarked, with just a spice of 
 bitterness. She was under no illusion as to the permanent 
 worth of her work, but she had enough pride in her 
 achievement to desire some commendation from her first 
 critic. 
 
 Philip stumbled over his attempt to improve upon her 
 summary. He realised, now, with what a divided atten- 
 tion he had read his wife's maiden effort in literature. 
 ' Amusing certainly,' he said, ' and oh ! bright and witty 
 and full of movement . . . .' 
 
 'That'll do,' she checked him. 'It means much the 
 same thing.' 
 
 But she had to admit later that he made himself very 
 useful, if his praise had been of the faintest. Wing and 
 his partner, Mr Sharpe, proved tricky and obstructive
 
 THREE YEARS 255 
 
 when Evelyn flatly refused their terms and asked for an 
 immediate return of the MS. They wrote and offered 
 slightly better terms, demonstrating quite plainly that 
 they meant to haggle to the limits of her patience. 
 
 She showed the letter to Philip and he took ah 1 the rest 
 of the arrangements in hand for her, and carried them 
 through with an ability that left her with a feeling of 
 rather shamed gratitude. He saw Wing the same day, 
 demanded the return of the MS., and absolutely declined 
 to consider any offer he was reluctantly driven to make. 
 Within three weeks he had obtained from Bailey & 
 Williams a contract such as is seldom given to the author 
 of a first novel. 
 
 Evelyn did try to thank him, to show her gratitude by 
 something more than a mere verbal acknowledgment. 
 Her effort served only to prove the final obstruction of the 
 barrier interposed between them. 
 
 He cut her short, at once, with a return of that didactic 
 manner which always left her with a sense of having been 
 insultingly refused. ' It interested me to do it/ he said. 
 'I should have made a good man of business from one 
 point of view.' 
 
 She thanked him formally, then; and shrugged her 
 shoulders at the implication of his manner. 
 
 She never again came within sight of making another 
 overture to him. 
 
 Evelyn's success as a novelist was a factor in the 
 immense crisis that separated her and Philip in the May 
 of 1909; but this factor was purely economic. Her 
 achievement could not be counted as in any sense a 
 determining influence. 
 
 Philip had no jealousy of his wife's accomplishment. 
 It did not touch him on his one tender spot. It is true 
 that he 'disapproved' the tone and tendency of her 
 writing, but towards the end of his long imprisonment, 
 he disapproved of almost everything. If he had inherited
 
 256 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 without alloy the physical and mental characteristics of 
 his father, he might have developed finally into a very 
 fair copy of the original, imposing his disapprovals and 
 categorical 'Don'ts' on his household, with tolerable 
 success. But Philip had been born with a temperamental 
 weakness, and the poison that had been a tonic to Peter 
 was slowly destroying his son. Long before the end, the 
 spiritual and mental trouble had begun to display itself in 
 such physical ailments as neuralgia, insomnia and indi- 
 gestion. 
 
 He could find no outlet. Even the safety-valve of some 
 passionate, fanatic, religious energy was denied to him. 
 His creed was not vital enough to burst into a flame. 
 Indeed, his conforming piety was more a habit than any- 
 thing, and in the last few months he came to disapproving 
 certain passages of the New Testament. He could not, 
 for instance, agree with Christ's treatment of the case of 
 the woman found in adultery. 
 
 His social experiment was, also, a failure. The parson 
 with whom Philip worked in the Borough, proved to be 
 infected with dangerous heresies, and incurred a scandal 
 in the parish by following Christ's example too closely in 
 the matter of showing tolerance to a certain type of sinner. 
 And the boys of Philip's club were either indifferent to 
 his earnest exhortations on the subject of morality, or 
 displayed a frankly pagan tendency that fairly shocked 
 him into silence. After eighteen months of dogged, 
 bitter effort, he abandoned all further interest in the 
 youth of Southwark. His only true convert was an 
 anaemic youth of seventeen who was presently taken 
 from Philip by the undiscriminating agents of the law 
 and confined in an institution for first offenders. His 
 offence was the negligible one of stealing money from 
 his master's till. 
 
 Another cause for Philip's increasing distress was a 
 type of dream that often tormented him, without, now, 
 bringing that physical relief which in his earlier days 
 had stretched him to the exhausting limits of prayerful 
 penitence. A new element had entered into this phase of
 
 THREE YEARS 257 
 
 his mental torture; he continually dreamed that he was 
 on the verge of being unfaithful to Evelyn, and it was 
 this unfaithfulness rather than the moral obliquity of 
 his phantom desires that appeared in sleep to be the evil 
 for which he suffered such agonies of remorse. He could 
 not, always, effectually dismiss the impression when he 
 woke. The thought of the loathsome symbol remained 
 with him; the woman who evaded him by turning into a 
 serpent or a lascivious white ewe stayed to taunt him 
 with the reproach that he could betray his exquisite wife 
 to satisfy his evil lust. For in his dream he passionately 
 desired the horrible thing. 
 
 And more than once, when he had awaked to this 
 realisation, among the unreal visions of early morning, 
 he had quite seriously debated whether a return to 
 Evelyn would not be the lesser of the two evils that con- 
 fronted him. On two occasions he had got out of bed 
 with the sudden determination of going to his wife and 
 overwhelming her indifference, or it may be her positive 
 repugnance, by a passion of entreaty to save him from 
 himself. What hindered his going was less a fear of 
 repulse than his still active admiration for Evelyn. It 
 seemed to him as he hesitated that, if she acceded, he 
 would be more than ever guilty of unfaithfulness to her; 
 that he would be once again defiling the image which 
 now, after nearly four years, shone again with all its 
 former purity. 
 
 But if he had put her back on that inaccessible pedestal 
 of his imagining, he was not prepared in one particular 
 to accept her dogma as a divine mandate. She might 
 be an object of worship, but she was not infallible. 
 
 It was about three months before the crisis that Evelyn 
 first began to be afraid of him. 
 
 Until then there had been no recurrence of one shiver 
 of the doubt that had shaken her before she made her
 
 258 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 announcement of having written a novel. She and Philip, 
 in their three years of virtual estrangement, had found a 
 method of intercourse that served the ordinary purposes 
 of their life at Sutton-Parslow. Their relations were 
 somewhat those of a brother and sister, with no important 
 interest in common, who shared a house by force of cir- 
 cumstances. They were not usually silent when they 
 were alone together, but they talked only of superficial- 
 ities, and by avoiding the one dangerous topic achieved 
 quite a reasonable association. 
 
 And the little Noel Peter, Evelyn's one vulnerable 
 possession, was almost exclusively his mother's charge. 
 He saw comparatively little of his father, and, up to the 
 age of three, there was no question of his receiving any 
 kind of instruction from him. He had grown into a 
 beautiful child. He had his mother's hair and eyes, 
 and there could be no doubt that he had inherited, also, 
 her independence of spirit. Evelyn was pleased to find 
 that revolutionary temper in him, although she tried to 
 keep it within bounds. She had had more than one 
 battle royal with him before he was three years 
 old. 
 
 Philip was interested in his son up to a point, and when 
 he played with him, sometimes achieved the supreme 
 honour of Noel's approval. The boy was never afraid 
 of him, but up to that time he had not been afraid of 
 anything. Philip found a little solace, now and again, 
 in this communion with the child. He was, at least, 
 innocent; and Philip never associated him with any 
 thought of those early relations between himself and 
 Evelyn. Indeed, a whole group of memories concerning 
 their Paris honeymoon had been locked away in a secret 
 drawer of his consciousness, along with much other strange 
 material. He believed fondly that the key had been lost. 
 But memories are living things that cannot be confined 
 and cramped in the dark like the dry body of a written 
 paper. And now and again he was aware of a furtive 
 movement in the black labyrinths of his mind; of a rest- 
 less diminutive thrusting like the first faint stir of a child
 
 THREE YEARS 259 
 
 within the womb; of an uneasiness that provoked a hidden 
 irritation, insomnia, and when he could sleep, a renewed 
 succession of foul, tormenting visions. By some passage 
 those thwarted, suppressed prisoners must continually 
 seek liberation; or, failing release, they would presently 
 destroy the vital fabric of the host .... 
 
 Evelyn did not hear until long afterwards the true 
 story of what happened on that afternoon in February. 
 But the unreliable, inductive process by which she first 
 arrived at a definite accusation against Philip, was ap- 
 preciably reinforced by an act of intuition. The only 
 witnesses were the two principals, and one of these refused 
 to give evidence, while the other was too imaginative and 
 too disinclined for mental concentration to prove trust- 
 worthy, although at three and a quarter, Noel had a 
 vocabulary and a power of constructing sentences 
 appreciably in advance of his age. He had lived all 
 his little life in the company of adults, a condition that 
 tends to force the young mind. But he was, without 
 doubt, a precociously clever boy. 
 
 Evelyn had been up to town that day, but had returned 
 in time to put him to bed. She was telling him his usual 
 story, when her fears were first aroused. 
 
 The story was innocent of alarms. Evelyn had dis- 
 covered for herself that the nursery tales of her own 
 childhood were terrible things, full of rancours, and 
 murder and ferous beasts, and she had so far kept all such 
 terrifying horrors as the story of Little Red Riding Hood 
 from the confident innocence of her son. She was 
 recounting the mildest of adventures when he broke in, 
 and she did not immediately gather the purport of his 
 interruption. 
 
 'There wasn't a torment, was there?' he had asked 
 quite irrelevantly. 
 
 Mrs Hunt often called him a ' little torment ' and Evelyn 
 thought she could place the origin of the word, until he 
 persisted, 'I don't want there to be a torment, mumma,' 
 and looked towards the door into the day nursery with a 
 little, frowning doubt that she had not before observed in
 
 260 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 him. 'Of course there won't be a torment, darling; what 
 are you talking about ? ' she asked. 
 
 Noel sat up in bed and opened his blue eyes very wide. 
 'You know/ he said, 'a horribub torment,' (T was the 
 only letter that ever puzzled his tongue) ' Big as a house. 
 Oh ! mumma, p'ease don't 'et there be a torment.' He 
 clung to her suddenly and began to whimper. 
 
 She had no doubt, then, that someone or something 
 had frightened him, but she spent her energies in soothing 
 and allaying his fears before she attempted any questions; 
 and when she had dispersed his fears, Noel, once more 
 master of his courage, jibbed at anything approaching a 
 cross-examination. 
 
 'Wen, you see, it was 'ike this,' he explained too 
 elaborately. 'I went in my train aw' the way to 'ondon. 
 And then . . . .' he chuckled happily .... 
 'there was a teeny-weeny torment,' and he screwed his 
 face up and put his fingers and thumbs together in a 
 triumphant illustration of the ultimately unimaginable 
 teeny-weeniness of the torment he had seen in London. 
 
 Evelyn did not persist in her questions. She knew by 
 experience that although her son could give a quite 
 graphic account of experience when he did it of his own 
 initiative, he was unable, as yet, to respond truthfully to 
 questions. He would accept any suggestion with 
 eagerness, just to escape the fatigue of remembrance, 
 reconstruction and translation into language. She left 
 him sleepily sucking his thumb and went down to inter- 
 view Mrs Hunt. 
 
 But Mrs Hunt could not imagine what he could have 
 meant. She certainly hadn't frightened him with any 
 such threat as that of a black man coming down the 
 chimney. Evelyn sitting on the kitchen-table, she and 
 Mrs Hunt were close friends, believed her at once. Mrs 
 Hunt's honesty was as sure as the cleanliness of her tables. 
 
 'Was he alone at all, this afternoon?' Evelyn asked. 
 She was without a nurse at that moment. 
 
 ' Only when 'e was 'aving 'is afternoon sleep,' Mrs Hunt 
 said. ' I let him be by the fire in the nurs'ry. Rose and
 
 THREE YEARS 261 
 
 me left 'im for a quarter of an hour after 'e'd took his 
 dinner and when I went up agen 'e was 'alf asleep on the 
 rug; so there I let him lie till Rose took 'im for 'is walk.' 
 
 ' You don't know if your master went up? ' Evelyn asked. 
 
 ' I don't, mum/ Mrs Hunt returned with sudden asperity. 
 
 'I must speak to Rose,' Evelyn decided. 
 
 Rose was a regent from the village, who was helping to 
 govern during the interregnum, by taking Noel out for 
 his morning and afternoon perambulations she was a 
 bright little girl of sixteen, who had listened intelligently 
 to Evelyn's very definite instructions. 
 
 'Rose wouldn't 'ave said nothing to 'im,' Mrs Hunt 
 asserted, a decision with which Evelyn agreed after she 
 had interviewed Rose, herself, ten minutes later. There 
 was an eager innocence about Rose's replies that put her 
 above suspicion. 
 
 After this process of elimination, Evelyn gave full play 
 to her intuition. 
 
 'Philip, what did you say to Noel when you saw him 
 this afternoon,' she decisively asked him, at dinner. 
 
 ' It's time that he was taught certain things,' was Philip's 
 evasion. He was in one of his worst moods that night. 
 
 'What things?' Evelyn gasped. 
 
 'Many things,' Philip replied sternly. 
 
 'Do you mean to tell me that you've been deliberately 
 frightening him ? ' Evelyn asked. 
 
 'I told him the truth, so far as he was able to under- 
 stand it.' 
 
 ' And you used the word " torment." ' 
 
 ' I believe I did.' 
 
 Evelyn's eyes were as widely opened as those of her son had 
 been when he had confessed his fear to her an hour before. 
 
 'I won't have it, Philip,' she said. 'Let us be quite 
 clear about that, at once. I will not have him frightened. 
 If you are going to interfere with my management of him, 
 I shall go away and take him with me. You believe that, 
 don't you? I mean it, absolutely.' 
 
 Philip made no answer and she did not trust the stubborn 
 resignation of his silence. But after that there was no
 
 262 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 further symptom of fear on Noel's part for more than two 
 months, and presently Evelyn forgot to question him 
 every time he had seen his father. 
 
 Nor was the second evidence of Noel's fear similar in 
 kind to the first. This time it was not of an imaginative 
 peering into the shadows beyond the reliable comfort of 
 his objective world, but rather of a self-consciousness and 
 mistrust as if he had already come to a dim realisation of 
 a duality within himself. He had adopted the use of the 
 personal pronoun, then, and the first sign of the new 
 attitude was the substitution of 'he' for 'I.' 
 
 ' He was nearny naughty to-day, mummy, and he knew 
 he mussent, but he wanted to be naughty jus' the same,' 
 was one of the admissions that set Evelyn pondering. 
 She went straight to Philip on this occasion, without 
 making any general inquiry. The new nurse was a 
 gentlewoman, trained, experienced and dependable, a 
 luxury permitted by Evelyn's economic independence. 
 She was richer than her husband, now. 
 
 This second charge against Philip, however, ended 
 much less satisfactorily than the first. He had, it seemed, 
 nothing to conceal about his recent advice to his son; and 
 the argument degenerated into a prejudiced and wandering 
 discussion on the principles of what is known as the ' free- 
 expression' method of training. Neither side of the con- 
 troversy was ably represented, but on the whole, it was 
 Philip rather than Evelyn who had the best of the exchanges. 
 
 He had a phase of clearness and comparative ease at 
 that time. His indigestion and neuralgia had abated; he 
 had been sleeping better and dreaming less. And in this 
 argument with Evelyn his reasonable adduction of the 
 weight of traditional authority was exceedingly difficult 
 to combat. She knew so well that she was biased, and 
 although she would not let that admission appear, even 
 implicitly, in the controversy, the knowledge handicapped 
 her. She could not but be aware that she exaggerated 
 almost wildly now and again in herjanxiety to dominate him. 
 
 Afterwards she somewhat grudgingly allowed a certain 
 validity to at least one of his arguments. 'Life is a
 
 THREE YEARS 263 
 
 school,' he had said. 'He will have to face it by himself 
 eventually, and we' Evelyn had intensely resented the 
 plural 'must train him to endure it. If we don't give 
 him any lessons in self-control now, it will be fifty times 
 harder for him to control himself in a few years' time.' 
 She knew that that was true, but she had evaded it at 
 the time by protesting that Noel was too young as yet 
 for any lessons in self-control; and had been uncomfort- 
 ably conscious as she had spoken, of the fact that she, 
 herself, had already inculcated a few rules of self-control 
 with a properly resolute severity. She had been forced 
 into over-statement by her fear. She could not trust the 
 permanence of what now appeared as a temporary stage 
 of reasonableness. She remembered Peter, recognised in 
 Philip an inevitable result of his father's method, and 
 with a simple logic that was fallacious in form but con- 
 vincing to her sense of reason, she deduced that Noel, in 
 his turn, went in danger of following in his father's 
 footsteps. 'Let me at ah 1 events save some poor unfor- 
 tunate woman from that misery,' Evelyn had thought 
 with an uncharacteristic bitterness. 
 
 But she, too, was losing something of her spiritual 
 equipoise just before the great crisis; and if it had not 
 been for the transcending influence of Noel Peter, she 
 might have encouraged the silent adoration of Georgie 
 Wood, and run away with him. She did not deceive 
 herself into believing that she was, or ever could be 'in 
 love' with him; if 'being in love' involved the romantic 
 tenderness and exaltation she had experienced in the 
 early days of her association with Philip? Her sentiment 
 for Georgie was rather of the kind she might have felt 
 for some highly intelligent and trustworthy dog. His 
 virtues towered almost loftily by comparison; he was 
 so honest and frank and healthy-minded. Yet after she 
 had piled them, building as it were, a sturdy refuge for
 
 264 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 herself and Noel; she always concluded with the recogni- 
 tion that however safe and worthy the building, it 
 failed lamentably to arouse in her one smallest thrill 
 of excitement. 
 
 She was sorry for him. He was so admirably faithful 
 to the three of them. Sometimes he disciplined himself 
 by as many as six weeks' abstinence from her presence, 
 and when he broke out again and invited himself down 
 for a week-end, his formal politeness and deference sug- 
 gested that some part of the six weeks had been devoted 
 to registering new vows of self-restraint. But with her 
 kindly regard for his evident virtues, was mingled enough 
 of amusement to save her from the least approach of 
 sentiment. She could not pity him as, even now, she 
 sometimes pitied the thought of what Philip had once 
 been. ' Our admirable Georgie,' was a phrase with which 
 she sometimes teased her patient admirer; and the phrase 
 possibly expressed the limit of her tenderness for him. 
 
 Nevertheless, she might have taken him, if only out of 
 a reckless desire to assert her final contempt for Philip's 
 virtue, had it not been for Noel. If she had done that 
 desperate thing, Philip might, she sincerely believed he 
 would take an unbearable revenge by obtaining a legal 
 sanction to take her child from her; and she would sooner 
 have trusted him to any stranger than to his father. 
 
 That furious distrust of Philip in this connexion was 
 the true sign of her spiritual disturbance. Her half- 
 whimsical trifling with the thought of an elopement in 
 the company of Georgie Wood and an abducted Noel, 
 was by comparison sane and reasonable enough. The 
 evil that vitiated her attitude towards Philip lay in her 
 tendency to become exclusively ruled by her prejudice 
 against him. She counted it in his disfavour, for example, 
 that Noel, himself, had no distrust of his father, was often, 
 indeed, eager to play with him, a fact that should surely 
 have weighed to Philip's advantage. Even Mrs Hunt 
 gave him some credit on that score. Evelyn put down 
 her son's affection to some subtle enticement of his father's; 
 planned to obtain influence over her, not by reaching out
 
 THREE YEARS 265 
 
 towards a new bond of affection but by an attempt to 
 divert her son's admiration and love as a preliminary to 
 cramping his mind in the old vices, which had, as she 
 honestly believed, ruined the lives of both his father and 
 grandfather. But her mental obliquity in this particular 
 was the mark of an unhealthy perversion. Perhaps, a 
 natural jealousy had something to do with her abnormal 
 suspicions, but she would have been too sane to encourage 
 that weakness if she had not been overwrought by other 
 causes. 
 
 It seems, indeed, that the little household of ' New End ' 
 was rapidly drifting towards disruption that spring, despite 
 Philip's temporary relief from the more violent symptoms 
 of his obsession; and it was a mere accident of fate that 
 the climax should have been exploded by another influence 
 entering with a sinuous effect of blandishment from the 
 great world outside. 
 
 Yet it is possible that the apparent accident was as 
 truly inevitable as any other incident in the lives of Philip 
 and Evelyn. The still unwoven threads drawing up 
 through the loom to form the pattern of these two 
 destinies, were knotted with other threads, that appeared 
 to have no part in the design. And the great machine 
 can never be stopped; the tangled threads of destiny ure 
 gathered up as they lie, tangled and intricate; sometimes 
 the machine stutters, so desperate is the knot, and the 
 pattern that runs off the loom comes starred and twisted, 
 the original design lost by the intrusion of an alien figure. 
 Then the ravelling snaps under the strain and presently 
 the tangle, slipping back into the immense past of things 
 performed, takes its place in the larger pattern that no 
 man has yet been able to read. 
 
 And when, after the break, the machine of our individual 
 experience runs smoothly again, and the pattern we know 
 and desire is restored to its placid, familiar development, 
 we look back at the vanishing star of the knotted and 
 crossed threads, and speak of accident and coincidence. 
 
 But who shall say that the unwoven threads have not been 
 caught and tied together since the beginning of all time? 
 G.C. s
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE RETURN OF H^LENE 
 
 EVELYN failed at first to recognise the identity of the 
 writer, when she received that innocent-looking letter 
 forwarded by her publishers. She was used to receiving 
 all kinds of queer communications from her admiring or 
 critical readers. It is true that they did not usually 
 address her as ' My dear Evelyn,' but even that familiarity 
 had been attempted by perfect strangers who declared 
 that after reading Now and Then they felt that she was 
 'almost more than a friend.' 
 
 ' My dear Evelyn/ the letter ran, ' I am in Europe for a 
 few months and should so like to see you while I'm here. 
 Where are you living ? You ought to be in Who's 
 Who? and you are not, or I would have just dropped 
 in on you. My husband couldn't come over, this trip, 
 so I am a little lonely all by myself in London. I read 
 your books in America, and always meant to write to you 
 about them, but I hate writing letters. What an age it 
 is since we met. Your affect, cousin, Helene Flaxman.' 
 
 'Why, of course, how silly, it's "Na3'lie!" ' Evelyn 
 ejaculated. 
 
 Philip made a sound of inquiry. 
 
 'Helene Flaxman, nee Lambert,' Evelyn explained. 
 
 'What about her?' Philip asked with a faint shade of 
 disconcertion in his tone, due rather to his memory of 
 dreams than to his associations with Helene herself. 
 
 'She's left her millionaire in San Francisco,' Evelyn 
 said, 'and come over to "Europe" she's quite American, 
 now, I suppose and she wants to see us again. At least, 
 she doesn't actually mention you. What fun ! I must 
 ask her to come and stay with us ' 
 
 266
 
 THE RETURN OF HfiLfiNE 267 
 
 'Must you?' The hint of his perturbation was more 
 marked, now; and caught Evelyn's attention. 
 
 'You're not still afraid of her, are you?' she said, with 
 the ironical inflexion that she could never keep out of her 
 voice when she touched on that subject. 
 
 'No. I'm not afraid of her,' Philip replied quietly. 
 ' But I don't like her. In fact, I dislike her very strongly.' 
 
 ' Oh ! you and your dislikes/ Evelyn murmured to her- 
 self, and then aloud, and with an air of condescending 
 explanation, she said, 'She'll be completely altered, now, 
 no doubt,- she's been married for four years. And in 
 any case, you needn't see much of her.' 
 
 His instinct prompted him to make a further and more 
 emphatic protest. He knew that this proposed visit of 
 Mrs Flaxman's (he thought of her with determination 
 solely as Mrs Flaxman), would in some obscure way be 
 'bad' for him. In the past two months he had been 
 almost free from that unbearable itch of the mind he 
 suffered from. He had been writing a series of essays on 
 eighteenth-century poetry two of the essays had already 
 been accepted by the Contemporary Review and he pro- 
 posed, now, by way of making a volume, to enclose the 
 series by a preliminary study of Crashaw and a final one 
 of Francis Thompson, binding his series, as it were, 
 between the poetry of two other centuries. He had found 
 real pleasure in this little conceit, finding his way to a 
 species of constructive criticism that gave him a sense of 
 discovery. He felt that the purpose of his book was 
 genuinely ambitious. The long step from Roman Catholi- 
 cism to Roman Catholicism, bridging all the artificialities 
 of the eighteenth century, figured to him as in some sort 
 an excuse for omitting Keats, Shelley, Byron, Browning 
 and Swinburne, from what was becoming almost an 
 inclusive theory of the evolution of English poetry. 
 
 And at the breakfast table that morning, his first 
 instinctive reaction against the suggestion of Mrs Flax- 
 man's visit, was due, he believed, to the fear that she would 
 upset his work. Why her coming should disturb him, he 
 did not, with a characteristic suppression, pause to inquire.
 
 268 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'It isn't that, altogether,' he began, replying after a 
 sensible interval to Evelyn's last remark; then he looked 
 up, saw the perceptibly mocking brilliance of her smile, 
 and stopped abruptly. 
 
 She was looking, he thought, as perfectly beautiful as 
 he had ever seen her. The May sun falling in a narrow 
 slant through the low windows gave a glow to the whole 
 room, an effect of soft incandescence that picked out the 
 gold thread in her hair, the cornflower blue of her eyes, 
 the clear delicacy of her skin, and the gleaming whiteness 
 of her perfect teeth. He saw her momentarily lit and 
 dissociated from her surroundings, the incarnation of a 
 cold and cruel beauty, fascinating, self-reliant and, for 
 him, utterly unobtainable. 
 
 He looked down again with a faint reluctance. 
 
 'Of course I must ask her,' Evelyn said. 'She'll 
 probably wake you up a bit. It will be good for you.' 
 
 'Very well,' he agreed. 
 
 He dared not face her mood of raillery. He was like a 
 man recently relieved from the agony of neuralgia, who 
 holds himself very still, enjoying the ecstasy of his relief, 
 but in constant terror lest some inadvertent movement 
 or posture should recall the recent torture. For he saw 
 in Evelyn's face that she was prepared to daunt him and 
 he could not oppose her. He submitted like a poor cowed 
 prisoner, mortally afraid of the whip. 
 
 Nevertheless, he succeeded very efficiently in forgetting 
 Helene's existence in the course of the next few days. His 
 physical condition was reacting upon his mind in curious 
 ways about this time, and he had periods of partial 
 aphasia during which certain memories would be tempor- 
 arily blotted out. It was as if some function of his brain 
 became over-tired and slept. 
 
 And when Evelyn received Helene's bright, enthusiastic 
 acceptance of her cousin's invitation two days alter the.
 
 THE RETURN OF H&LENE 269 
 
 receipt of that first letter, she said nothing about it to 
 Philip. He was interested in his work again, and neglect- 
 ing his son altogether, and either she thought it well to 
 leave him alone, or she had a passing qualm of pity for him 
 and thought it kinder to leave him in peace. She had an 
 intuition, even then, that Helene' s coming might precipitate 
 some kind of crisis. She might have developed in all sorts 
 of queer directions since her marriage and more than once 
 Evelyn found herself speculating doubtfully over the 
 phrases of Mrs Flaxman's first letter. She could not find 
 a really convincing reason for that solitary trip to Europe. 
 Had Helene possibly kicked over the traces, already ? She 
 would not tell them the truth, probably; she had always 
 been sly. It occurred to Evelyn, now and again, that 
 asking Helene to stay at ' New End,' was rather like inviting 
 a weasel into a respectable rabbit-hutch. 
 
 Philip's reception of her announcement when she went 
 into his study on the Friday afternoon of Helene' s arrival, 
 tended to confirm that simile. 
 
 He frowned in blank horror. ' Helene Mrs Flaxman 
 coming here to-day? ' he said, at once confused and aghast. 
 
 ' Well, you knew she was coming,' Evelyn said, button- 
 ing her gloves. 'I'm going to meet her, now. I've told 
 Mrs Hunt to have tea ready for us in the sitting-room when 
 we come in.' 
 
 'I had absolutely forgotten,' Philip said, putting his 
 hand to his forehead. 'I do remember your telling me, 
 now. How long is she going to stay ? ' 
 
 'Honestly, I don't know,' Evelyn admitted. 'It is 
 possible that she may stay some time. Do you mind so 
 much as all that ? ' 
 
 He could not have looked more apprehensive of trouble, 
 if Helene had been a surgeon coming to perform a critical 
 operation. 
 
 ' You can't understand,' he said with a nearer approach 
 to confidence than he had shown for over three years. 
 
 A faint stir of compassion moved her. 'If you could 
 only explain . . . .' she suggested. 
 
 Her word instantly showed him the absurdity of his
 
 2 7 o GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 weakness. Explain ! How could he possibly explain? 
 How could he or anyone lay bare all the hidden things of 
 life? If he did, she could never bear to look at him again. 
 Humanity as a whole was horrible and disgusting, the 
 only hope of decency was to thrust away all that side of 
 life by an immense effort of will. 
 
 ' I have explained/ he said. ' I told you that I dislike 
 Mrs Flaxman. There is something repulsive about her.' 
 
 Evelyn pursed her lips. 'I wish you would try to get 
 over that nonsense/ she remarked. ' I must go, now. 
 The wagonette's waiting for me/ She was at the door 
 when she delivered her last advice to him, in the impatient 
 tone of one who remonstrates with an unreasonable child. 
 ' I do hope you're not going to be rude to Helene/ she said. 
 'I shall be very annoyed if you are. These ridiculous 
 prejudices of yours are becoming a perfect mania/ She 
 shut the door behind her with an impetuosity that betrayed 
 her irritation. 
 
 Ridiculous prejudices ! Philip weighed that grievous 
 misapprehension with conscious distress. She did not 
 know, of course. He had saved her from the degradations 
 of that knowledge. Four years ago she had been in danger, 
 too, but he had stood between her and the evil thing that 
 had haunted himself; and, now, she was so completely 
 safe that she had forgotten. She was, indeed, almost too 
 innocent. She had become so childishly ignorant that 
 she toyed with awful dangers. The flirtation with Wood 
 was an instance. She could not realise that Wood's mind 
 must be a pit of disgust, full of loathsome memories of his 
 past sensualities. But her supreme purity was an in- 
 violable protection in that case. With this woman who 
 was coming into the house, the danger was of another 
 quality. She represented an instant peril that must not 
 be toyed with. She was vile and threatening. Her 
 presence in the house would be a source of pollution . . . 
 
 When he came to that he jumped to his feet with a 
 scowling face and clenched hands. But even as he stood 
 there, meditating some violent plan of action should he 
 stand at the gate in the wall and forbid her to enter? a
 
 THE RETURN OF HELfcNE 271 
 
 sudden pain of fear shot through him. It was as if the 
 malignant stab of his neuralgia had taken shape as a 
 visible threat. No ! he must not, must not, upset him- 
 self. If he did, the old tortures from which he had been 
 so happily free, lately, would return, probably in an 
 aggravated form. He dared not deliberately challenge 
 that misery. He must lose himself, again, in his work; 
 hold himself very still, poised in delicate contemplation. 
 Evelyn was pure enough to be safe even from the pollutions 
 of the serpent. 
 
 He returned to his desk with a new effort of attention, 
 and by way of restoring his calm, read through once again, 
 though he knew the most of it by heart, Francis Thompson's 
 Hound of Heaven. 
 
 But as he read, an amazingly new impression of the 
 whole poem came to him. The thought of God's pursuit 
 faded and vanished. This was no metaphor of God's 
 pursuit but an actual, tormentingly vivid account of his 
 old experiences in the tunnel that led to Herne Hill station 
 or in the dark passage-ways of St Paul's. The very phrases 
 were sheer description .... 'down the arches 
 . . . . the labyrinthine ways .... Titanic 
 glooms . . . .' And, above all, the sound of footsteps 
 . . . . ' those strong Feet that followed, followed after 
 . . . . the following Feet .... those noised 
 Feet.' The sound of them in the echoing darkness beat 
 around him with 'deliberate speed,' even as they beat 
 through the rhythm of the whole poem. And at the end 
 was the realisation of his abasement, phrased for him as 
 he had never been able to phrase it for himself. 
 
 ' Lo, all things fly thee, .... strange piteous, 
 futile thing, wherefore should any set thee love 
 apart? . . . . Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest 
 clot ? . . . . How little worthy of any love thou art ! 
 Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee . . . . ? ' 
 
 He put his hands to his ears to shut out the sound of the 
 clustering footsteps. The arch of the tunnel was thrust- 
 ing down upon him. He saw himself as contemptible 
 beyond all description, and yet something within him
 
 272 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 struggled to flee the strictures of his own judgment. He 
 made a violent physical effort to escape from the illusion 
 that beset him. He paced the room, he leaned out of 
 the window, in an effort to recall reality by a sight of the 
 rose-garden. But over the beauty of young green, and 
 beneath the leap of the great arch of the sky, he could 
 see still the gloomy curve of the tunnel, could hear the 
 thronging beat of the footsteps, could feel the horrible 
 contempt of himself that threatened his sanity, his very 
 existence. 
 
 Then there came to him the sound of the opening front 
 door, and a bright chatter of laughing, gossiping voices; 
 and the illusion suddenly lifted and scattered, so that he 
 stocd dazed and wondering, immensely relieved and 
 thankful, as a man who has fallen from a height and finds 
 liimself miraculously unharmed. 
 
 He opened his study door with a fumbling haste and 
 went straight into the sitting-room. The lesser danger 
 was momentarily forgotten in the joy of his escape. 
 
 He stood in the doorway for an instant, seeing the two 
 women seated there in the room with a startling clearness 
 of vision. He not only saw them, but, also, for the first 
 time, realised them both as powerful, living entities; it 
 was as if a portrait had suddenly taken solidity and the 
 flush of life, had unexpectedly smiled and moved. He 
 saw, for instance, with a strange effect of discovery that 
 there was a strong physical resemblance between Evelyn 
 and Helene. One was fair and the other dark, but they 
 might very well have been taken for sisters. When he 
 had last seen Helene, she had been little more than a 
 child and Evelyn had been a mature woman. Now Helene 
 was, also, mature, challenging comparison. 
 
 She was sitting on the chesterfield, a light grey dust 
 cloak open, and just falling from her shoulders. Her body 
 leaned forward, further emphasizing the line of her bust
 
 THE RETURN OF HELfcNE 273 
 
 already marked by the cut of her rather high-waisted 
 frock. Her head was thrown a little back, so that she 
 looked at Evelyn with a droop of her eyelids; watching her 
 attentively, with the least pucker of a smile dimpling the 
 fastidious curves of her pretty mouth. 
 
 Evelyn broke off whatever she was saying when he came 
 into the room and turned to him with a hint of misgiving 
 in her expression. 
 
 'You remember Nellie, Philip,' she said. 'But she has 
 so grown up since we last saw her, I hardly recognised her 
 at the station. Do you think you would have known her, 
 if you'd seen her by accident or something, not expecting 
 to see her, I mean ? ' 
 
 Helene turned her head and glanced at him for a moment, 
 the smile still about her mouth, but she made no other 
 movement; she did not even return his solemn bow. 
 
 'Of course you wouldn't have recognised me,' she said 
 addressing Evelyn, and with apparently no further thought 
 for Philip, who sat down in the window seat by the door, 
 as the nearest and most negotiable refuge. ' It's five years; 
 well, then, more than four; since you saw me, and I was 
 then a flapper. Now'- she straightened her pose and 
 spread out her hands as though she would demonstrate 
 the fullness of her increase ' I am grown up oh ! so grown 
 up, and so married and so wise.' There was still a clear 
 trace of the exotic about her, evidenced rather in her 
 phrase and gesture than in her accent. She moved, too, 
 with an effect of suppleness that was not English, a lithe- 
 ness that faintly caricatured Evelyn's stiff er grace. 
 
 'Pooh!' Evelyn returned. 'Don't pretend wisdom at, 
 how old? twenty-one?' 
 
 'But nearly twenty-two,' Helene corrected her; 'and it 
 isn't only age that counts. Think of my experience, of 
 Cheltenham and Paris and then oh ! 'Frisco, and Chicago 
 we were five months in Chicago, and New York. Nigel, 
 that's my husband, you know, has come East, now. He 
 says that that is the test, in America. The man who is so 
 big in 'Frisco is quite little in New York. And he means 
 to be big, also, in New York.'
 
 274 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'And you've left him to grow big, alone?' commented 
 Evelyn. 'Philip, just ring the bell. Mrs Hunt may not 
 have heard us come in.' 
 
 He would have preferred to keep quite still and silent 
 he had not so far spoken a single word perfect immo- 
 bility alone gave him a feeling of security. Now, he would 
 have to cross the whole width of the room from window to 
 fireplace, and pass quite close to the incarnation of danger 
 sitting on the chesterfield. Also, he would have to return. 
 The window seat was the only seat in the room that was 
 not directly overlooked by her from her present position. 
 
 Nevertheless, the double journey was accomplished 
 without the dreaded mishap of attracting her attention 
 to him. She continued talking directly to Evelyn, ap- 
 parently unconscious of his presence. 
 
 'Well, I have left him only for quite a short time,' she 
 was saying in answer to Evelyn's question. 'He hopes 
 very soon to join me over here. Perhaps in Paris.' 
 
 'When are you going to Paris? ' Evelyn asked, probably 
 with the intention of making some preliminary sounding 
 of her visitor's immediate plans. 
 
 ' Oh ! soon,' Helene replied carelessly. ' In June, per- 
 haps.' 
 
 And this was the seventh of May ! 
 
 From behind the screen of Mrs Hunt's splendid width 
 she must have started from the kitchen before the bell 
 rang Evelyn threw a whimsical glance at Philip, safely 
 returned to the harbour of the window seat. 'She has 
 come to stay for three weeks at least/ her expression said; 
 'so hadn't you better try to make the best of it? ' 
 
 He could not answer that question, even to himself, as 
 yet; but, strangely, he was beginning to hope. If she 
 'left him alone,' the phrase had come to him unsought 
 he might endure her presence in the house unaffected. 
 Evelyn was pouring out the tea, and he had a paramount 
 ordeal before him. He would have to give Helene her 
 cup, offer her bread and butter, and cake; possibly speak 
 to her. It would be a test. If she challenged him, then, 
 with any such look as she had given him in Paris, she must
 
 THE RETURN OF HfiL^NE 275 
 
 go. He would be resolute, defy the paltry conventions of 
 society and turn her out of the house. 
 
 As he stood by the tea table, waiting for Evelyn to 
 complete the interminable business of question and answer, 
 cream? sugar? do you like it fairly strong? as if this 
 paltry affair were a matter of supreme importance he 
 was braced and rigid with the determination of his pur- 
 pose. He would do it, at once, while his resolution was 
 still hot make a scene it would be the only way. If 
 Evelyn would but be quick .... 
 
 But Helene gave him no least cause for resentment. 
 Her conduct and expression were irreproachable. She 
 did not look at him as he stood interposed bluntly between 
 her and his wife. Nor did she fall into the other impro- 
 priety of an assumed demureness implying that his very 
 presence so near to her was a cause for perturbation. She 
 simply treated him as she might have treated a butler 
 or a brother. She continued her brisk conversation, and 
 as she took her cup from him, leaned a little sideways 
 in order to avoid the screen of him between her and 
 Evelyn. 
 
 She was giving Evelyn further particulars about ' Nigel.' 
 She appeared to like talking of her husband. 
 
 Philip made his escape a few minutes afterwards, with 
 the excuse of going back to his work. In the interval she 
 had addressed but a single remark to him directly. 'He 
 is tall, of course/ she had said, still describing the attrac- 
 tions of Nigel, and she had looked at Philip for one moment 
 with a cool, critical stare and had added, 'Quite two or 
 three inches taller than you, I should think.' 
 
 If he could draw any inference from his ten minutes in 
 the sitting-room, it could only be, he thought, that she 
 regarded him with something very like contempt. 
 
 So far he was satisfied, but her disdain of himself was 
 only one factor in the agitating problem of whether he 
 could endure her presence at 'New End' for three weeks. 
 He had, also, to consider whether she might not upset 
 the comfortable balance he had so recently attained, even 
 though she continued to praise the virtues and physica]
 
 276 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 completeness of her husband, and to stare past himself 
 at Evelyn. 
 
 He had not once looked at her directly while he had 
 been in the other room, but he had recognised that the 
 difference between her and all the other women he had 
 ever known, was, if possible, more marked, now, than it 
 had been in Paris four years ago. She was so curiously 
 alive, as it were, all over. She seemed to inhabit her 
 body as,- well, as Evelyn, for example, never did. With 
 Helene there was no sign of the admirable duality of ordi- 
 nary humanity; of the controlling intelligence, chaste, 
 reasonable, even severe, ruling the instinctive desires 
 and habits of that necessary slave and pendant, the body. 
 She was simple, whole, a single primitive expression of 
 elementary womanhood. It was impossible to imagine 
 her displeased with herself, or of playing one hand against 
 the other. She could never know shame unless it were 
 imposed upon her by outside violence, for she would be 
 incapable of adversely criticising her own thoughts or 
 actions .... 
 
 He had reached that point of analysis before he realised 
 that he was allowing his thoughts to dwell upon her, that, 
 more reprehensible still, he was reaching out to her by a 
 miraculous effort of intuition. How could he come to 
 have such knowledge of her, unless it had been gathered 
 in his dreams? 
 
 With a stern effort after self-control he picked up his 
 volume of Francis Thompson, glanced again at The Hound 
 of Heaven, decided that his unpleasant discovery of the 
 afternoon was a foolish illusion, and then turning back 
 the pages, his eye was caught by one of the Sister 
 Songs. 
 
 ' "Whose sex is in thy soul/" he read, and further 
 understood a new application of the statement that the 
 'child-woman's' soul "Must be obsequious to the body's 
 powers, Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and 
 close its ways." ' 
 
 He threw the book down with a jerk of disgust. Was 
 no poetry free of these allusions to the forbidden thing?
 
 THE RETURN OF H&L&NE 277 
 
 Was his study haunted? Or was it that his own thoughts 
 peered out at him through the most innocent expression? 
 And was it possible that already Helene was ' being bad ' 
 for him? Curiously enough, he had no feeling of dread. 
 On the contrary, he was aware of something very like 
 elation, of a sense of exhilarating adventure. 
 
 And for the first few days of Helene' s visit that sense of 
 adventure stayed with him. He was not working well, 
 but he was singularly free from any of those physical 
 symptoms that so harried and destroyed him free enough 
 to be consciously proud of his immunity. And Helene 
 still 'left him alone;' treating him, indeed, with a kind of 
 forbearing contempt that occasionally piqued him. 
 
 It is true that he hardly saw her except at meals, and 
 sometimes for an hour or two after dinner. 
 
 Evelyn, watching him with a mind prepared for amuse- 
 ment, found nothing to amuse her. He was, perhaps, 
 more than ever sedate and grave when he was asking 
 Helene dull questions about American life, but she could 
 see no sign of that irritated disapproval she had fully 
 anticipated and was almost ready maliciously to encourage. 
 
 Meanwhile if she sought distraction from the limitations 
 of her own life, she found it in studying her cousin. 
 
 Evelyn's study played about more instant things than 
 Philip's had done. She made no immense generalisations 
 about character, and if she had been asked if it were true 
 that Helene's sex was in her soul, would probably have 
 answered 'of course,' without the least hesitation. Her 
 probe was thrusting towards the recent history of Helene's 
 life rather than towards so plausible a mystery as her 
 soul. Evelyn had known all about that since the begin- 
 ning of the world. 
 
 The other pursuit she found extraordinarily engrossing. 
 Helene was so perfect an actress, so deplorably inaccurate 
 an historian. She could talk of her husband, of her life
 
 278 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 with him, of his adoration of herself, with a spontaneity 
 that was beyond suspicion; but her facts, and worse still 
 her dates, were as uncertain and contradictory as those in 
 one of Noel's accounts of a visit to the imaginary London 
 he had never seen. 
 
 Nevertheless, Evelyn formed no particular suspicion 
 until certain deeply interested inquiries about the 
 American mail began. Before that she attributed all 
 her cousin's inaccuracies to the ingenuous, imaginative 
 lying of the simple child, eager to obtain some immediate 
 and superlative effect. 
 
 Heldne's first display of anxiety about her American 
 letters was made on the Tuesday following her arrival. 
 She came down late for breakfast she was always late 
 for breakfast glanced at her plate and made a charming 
 little gesture of disappointment. 
 
 ' No letters for me ! ' she said with a droop of her ex- 
 pressive mouth. Then she kissed Evelyn ' good-morning/ 
 nodded to Philip with her attention apparently centred 
 on the toast, and sat down with a sigh. 
 
 ' But, perhaps, it isn't the day, yet, for American letters? ' 
 she continued more hopefully. 
 
 'Well, I'm never quite sure which days we do get 
 American letters,' Evelyn said. 'I don't get very many, 
 now. Was it important ? ' 
 
 ' N-no ! ' Helene ruminated. ' In a way, yes, perhaps. 
 But not very important. It is charming weather. Do 
 we take Noel to the woods to-day ? ' 
 
 The next morning the importance of the American letter 
 loomed a trifle larger, Helene' s disappointment being in- 
 creased by the fact that Evelyn had received an American 
 mail that day. And that evening between tea and dinner, 
 Helene made the confession that on examination was so 
 uncommonly difficult to account for. 
 
 'It is odd about that letter,' she began, a propos of 
 nothing in particular. 
 
 Evelyn made sounds of encouragement. 
 
 'It is from Nigel, of course,' Helene continued. She 
 was sitting on the arm of one of the big chairs, swinging
 
 THE RETURN OF HELENE 279 
 
 her foot with a movement that betrayed nervous im- 
 patience. 
 
 'Are you anxious about him?' Evelyn asked. 
 
 'About him? No. It is something more reasonable 
 than that,' Helene replied, and she shrugged her graceful 
 shoulders as she added, 'It is that I have at the present 
 moment no money. I find it very inconvenient.' 
 
 Evelyn was watching her with the aesthetic pleasure 
 she might have found in watching some lovely child. 
 ' But, Nellie, I can lend you some money, of course, if you 
 want it.' 
 
 'That's sweet of you/ Helene returned with careless 
 gratitude. 'A little, perhaps, to tide over, would be 
 useful, but it does not explain . . . .' 
 
 'You were expecting a remittance. Had you written 
 to ask for it?' 
 
 ' It is more than a fortnight ago, now,' Helene explained. 
 ' I have, I suppose, been spending too freely, and Nigel is 
 sometimes difficult- about money although he is so 
 rich. Oh well, it is now Noel's hour. Let us go and play 
 with him. If no letter comes on Saturday you must lend 
 me a little money to cable to New York.' 
 
 Noel had enthusiastically acclaimed Helene as a play- 
 mate. It seemed that here was a mind he could truly 
 understand. Evelyn had had one or two twinges of 
 maternal jealousy that had been allayed almost at once, 
 by the realisation that Helene was as capable of com- 
 pletely forgetting Noel as she was of entering the world 
 of his imagination. She would entertain him deliciously 
 for an hour, enjoying his games and stories with a zest 
 that sometimes exceeded his own. And then it may be 
 in the middle of the entertainment she would suddenly 
 get up and go away leaving him puzzled and a little 
 desolate. 
 
 On this particular evening she was so very inattentive 
 from the very beginning that presently Noel remonstrated. 
 
 'Auntie Nennie, you're thinking,' was the form his 
 accusation took. His best beloved Mummie had a 
 dreadful habit of thinking in the midst of the most
 
 28o GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 entrancing game, but it was not to be endured from this 
 new contemporary of his. 
 
 Helene looked at him, still all too obviously thoughtful. 
 'He is very like you, Evelyn,' she remarked over Noel's 
 head. 'And not one little bit like Philip.' 
 
 Noel, finally outraged by this last insult he did not 
 like thus to be spoken of, to a third person gathered an 
 armful of bricks and transferred his patronage to Evelyn. 
 But he soon found that she, also, was most dreadfully in 
 a 'thinking' mood that evening. 
 
 She was trying to push her probe deeper into the last 
 twelve months or so of her cousin's history and began by 
 asking herself, if Helene had been spending too much 
 money, what she had been doing with it? The hotel 
 from which she had written in the first instance, had 
 been a very third-rate place. But, what was much harder 
 to explain, and to a feminine mind quite peculiarly signi- 
 ficant, was that Helene was not too well provided with 
 clothes and had hardly any jewellery. Her two best 
 dresses, one of which she had not yet worn at ' New End,' 
 were obviously last year's. She had certainly not been 
 spending money recently on her dress, then; more than 
 that she did not produce the impression of being the 
 adored wife of a millionaire, even of a dollar millionaire 
 who was, as yet, only a 'quite little' man in New 
 York. 
 
 Evelyn pondering these discrepancies, began to recall 
 other discrepancies in Helene' s narrative irreconcilable 
 statements that now took on a new colour. There was, 
 for instance, the story of an episode in San Francisco that 
 had originally been placed as 'just lately,' but afterwards 
 had been shifted back into the abysm of a past, described 
 as ' Oh ! more than a year since.' 
 
 Evelyn made many guesses, but none of them was very 
 near the truth. She he.d been misled from the start by 
 that red herring of some secret source of expenditure. 
 She wondered if Helene had been gambling or betting, 
 and if the possibly Puritanically-minded Nigel had been 
 shocked? Perhaps, Helene had run away to Europe in
 
 THE RETURN OF HELfcNE 281 
 
 order to make her own terms and her husband was trying 
 to starve her into submission? 
 
 Of one thing, however, Evelyn was quite sure now; 
 and in that focus intuition, preconception and logic united 
 in a blinding whiteness of truth : Helene was deliberately 
 lying for some ulterior purpose of her own, and not, now, 
 because she indolently followed the preference to speak 
 what she felt rather than make the effort to remember 
 and present facts. 
 
 Helena's change of manner towards Philip began just 
 a week after her arrival at 'New End.' She came and 
 knocked at his study door after tea, and then walked in 
 and announced that at Evelyn's suggestion she had come 
 to borrow a book. 'Not a novel,' she explained, 'I am 
 tired of novels, they are all the same and all unreal. I 
 wish now to read poetry, and Evelyn tells me that you 
 have all the poetry books in here because you are yourself 
 writing a book about them.' 
 
 She looked at him once as she made this speech, timidly, 
 almost with deprecation, as if she shyly besought him not 
 to be angry with her. 
 
 Philip's immediate desire was to be rid of her as soon 
 as possible. He had found himself able to endure her 
 presence in the house while she treated him with contempt, 
 but he suffered an agony of nervous apprehension at being 
 thus alone with her in his study. 
 
 He picked up the Francis Thompson collection as offer- 
 ing the nearest bribe. 
 
 ' You will like this,' he said, standing up. ' He is new, 
 comparatively. He only died two years ago. But he is 
 quite first-rate, as a poet.' He wanted her passionately 
 to go, but he wanted, also, now that the opportunity was 
 given him, to show that intellectually, at least, he was not 
 such a despicable creature as her recent manner towards 
 him seemed to imply. 
 
 'Thank you, and such a dear little green book,' she 
 G,C. T
 
 282 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 replied. ' I am sure to love that.' And she seated herself 
 with a sudden hitch on his study table and opened the 
 volume at once, as though she meant to stay and read it 
 there. Then she dropped her hands and the book to- 
 gether into her lap and said, ' Oh ! But, are they, then, 
 hymns?' 
 
 The collection had fallen open at 'Ex Ore Infantium,' 
 which begins : ' Little Jesus,' and in that collection the 
 last words of the previous poem are ' nurseries in Heaven.' 
 
 Her brown eyes expressed some astonishment, but 
 chiefly a sort of wondering, fascinated interest. 
 
 Philip, however, did not see her eyes. He was, he 
 believed, keeping himself well in hand. ' Oh ! no, they 
 aren't hymns,' he said, in the cold judicial voice of an 
 established critic. 'Many of them have a religious turn. 
 Thompson was a Roman Catholic . . . .' 
 
 'But you are not a Catholic, are you?' she interrupted 
 him. 
 
 'No. No. I'm not,' was ah 1 the answer he could find. 
 
 'But you are, nevertheless, religious?' she inquired. 
 
 Philip began to fidget, his mind divided between the 
 desirability of snubbing her by the severity of his replies, 
 and the more drastic expedient of leaving the room, with 
 or without an excuse. 
 
 ' I believe in religion,' he said coldly, accepting the first 
 alternative. The truth is that he preferred not to move. 
 As on the night of her arrival, the real security for him 
 seemed to be in immobility. 
 
 'Yes,' Helene commented thoughtfully. 'It is that, I 
 think, that makes one so afraid of you. I feel, always, 
 that your thoughts are so very far away, and my poor 
 little self so terribly insignificant to you. It is true that 
 I am not clever. But I must go, now. I interrupt your 
 work. Thank you for the book. It wiU at least interest 
 me very much to see the sort of poetry you admire.' 
 
 She slipped off the table and was gone before he looked 
 up. 
 
 Philip made no attempt to go on with his work. He set 
 himself deliberately to consider exactly why she appeared
 
 THE RETURN OF HtfLfiNE 283 
 
 so peculiarly repulsive to him. He found many cogent 
 and comforting reasons, all related to the forward and 
 immodest tendency of her whole being. But behind his 
 every inhibiting thought of her, some part of him rejoiced 
 in her admission that she was afraid of him. 
 
 He believed that of Helene, who could never know fear 
 of her natural slave and worshipper Man. She was 
 capable of any submission but never of fear, in that 
 relation. 
 
 The old trouble began again in a dream that night, 
 although he went to bed in a calm and unapprehensive 
 state of mind. 
 
 He had gone out with Evelyn and Helene into the rose- 
 garden after dinner, and had talked to them about poetry 
 academically and addressing his remarks ostensibly to 
 Evelyn. He had retired to his study about ten o'clock 
 and had then put in a satisfactory two hours' work on 
 his essay. As he undressed, he was inclined to congratu- 
 late himself on having outgrown the disturbing influence 
 of women. 
 
 The dream came to him in the early morning and was 
 of a new kind. At the beginning it was, indeed, less like 
 a dream than a vision. It seemed to him that Helene 
 came into his room and talked to him. He saw her with 
 perfect distinctness and with a clear consciousness of his 
 surroundings. She had come to reproach him for rejecting 
 her love, and he felt intensely sorry for her, so sorry that 
 he believed it was his duty to make some compensation 
 for his cruelty. He sat up in bed and held out his arms 
 and then began to embrace her with what appeared to 
 him a passion of pity for her distress. Whereupon it 
 seemed that it was Evelyn he held in his arms; and, again, 
 that it was his mother. But when he awoke it was to a 
 sense of chagrin and frustration, because Helene had 
 slipped from him. The feeling was so strong and so 
 persistent that it aroused shame and a kind of terror of
 
 284 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 himself. He had been unfaithful in desire, as in those 
 earlier dreams of the serpent and the white ewe, and this 
 time the offence was exaggerated in as much as the dream 
 had a quality of reality that the others, in retrospect, had 
 lacked. 
 
 He could not look at Helene at breakfast. He felt that 
 she must know, that she was a partner in his disgrace. 
 And later, when he tried desperately to concentrate his 
 mind on his work, his neuralgia returned and prostrated 
 him for three hours. 
 
 He did not put in an appearance at luncheon. The 
 pain had left him with a wonderful clearness of vision. 
 He realised with painful certainty that he had truly been 
 guilty of unfaithfulness, not to Evelyn, but to his own 
 principles. He had dallied and shirked, and, now, he 
 was suffering for his sin. He must begin afresh this 
 immensely difficult fight for purity. 
 
 Evelyn knew the worst when he came into the sitting- 
 room at half-past four. Her suspicions had been awakened 
 at breakfast and had subsequently been confirmed by his 
 attack of neuralgia. When she saw the old dour expression 
 on his face at tea time, the cruel set of his lips, the bent 
 brows and haunted eyes that brooded over impossible 
 terrors, she resigned the last hope that, after all, she might 
 have been mistaken. 
 
 And with her recognition of this returning threat to all 
 the sweetness and sanity of life, she decided with a new 
 vehemence that she could bear it no longer. She had 
 known in the past few months a period of comparative 
 relief . Before that ease had come, she had been gradually 
 inured to the discomforts of Philip's mania. But, now, 
 she could not endure the prospect of re-encountering 
 conditions that had at the time appeared passably 
 bearable. Her capacity for suffering could not stand 
 the strain of alternation. 
 
 She made her plans as she talked brightly but too 
 garrulously to her cousin over the tea-table. She began 
 by entirely excluding poor Georgie Wood from any share 
 in her future. To do that would be dangerous and give
 
 THE RETURN OF HfiLfcNE 285 
 
 Philip the opportunity to wound her in the one spot where 
 she was vulnerable her devotion to Noel. She cared 
 nothing for any construction their friends and acquaint- 
 ances might put upon the separation. The one point that 
 remained debatable was the precise manner of her leaving 
 'New End.' Should she run away and hide, or should 
 she face Philip and intimidate him into making terms of 
 submission? For purely selfish motives, she greatly 
 preferred the latter alternative. But through the 
 bitterness and resentment that had flared up against this 
 reviving threat with an altogether unprecedented vigour, 
 still flickered one pale flame of compassion for Philip. 
 She would save him some misery by running away. If 
 she made terms with him, she must necessarily be cruel. 
 He would put up a hard fight to save their respectability, 
 or whatever it was he so much prized. She would have 
 to humble him, terrify him, before he would consent to 
 her going. 
 
 One further consideration, however, followed the choice 
 of the first alternative. There was Helene. She could 
 not be left behind to bring scandal into the purified, 
 woman-deserted monastery of 'New End.' 
 
 She glanced at Philip scowling darkly over his tea-cup. 
 Perhaps, she thought, he would solve the subsidiary 
 problem for her, by turning Helene out of the house. 
 In his present mood he surely would not long endure 
 the companionship of that unmoral piece of sheer femi- 
 ninity. (Evelyn had been wondering more and more 
 what Mrs Flaxman had been up to.) Nevertheless, it 
 might be kinder to everyone concerned, if she gave Helene 
 warning and sent her back to London, or better still, on 
 to Paris. She had lent her twenty-five pounds that 
 morning, but that would not last long and Evelyn, 
 although she had found no satisfactory explanation of 
 the mystery, had a growing conviction that no remittance 
 would be forthcoming from New York. No cable had 
 been despatched that afternoon. Helene had postponed 
 it on the excuse that perhaps she had better wait, now, 
 until after the arrival of the next American mail.
 
 286 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 After tea, Philip retreated to his study at the earliest 
 possible moment. 
 
 Helene, who had been unusually quiet while the flow of 
 Evelyn's chatter lasted, looked up with a bland innocence. 
 
 ' He should not have that neuralgia/ she said. ' Evelyn, 
 why is it that he and you no longer share a bedroom? ' 
 
 'He prefers it/ Evelyn said. 
 
 ' But is it good, do you think? ' Helene went on, ignoring 
 the coldness of Evelyn's tone. 'Is it that you prefer to 
 have no more children?' 
 
 'You'd better ask him, my dear/ Evelyn replied 
 caustically. 
 
 'But how is that possible? ' Helene asked with a sweet 
 simplicity. 
 
 Evelyn was tempted into a provoking ' Why not ? ' 
 
 Helene shrugged her shoulders. 'It seems to me, 
 Evelyn, that you do not care, any more/ she said. 
 
 ' Not in that way, perhaps/ Evelyn admitted. 
 
 'But in that case/ Helene remonstrated, 'why do you 
 not separate? It is better in every way/ 
 
 'Have you and Nigel separated?' Evelyn retaliated. 
 
 'In a manner, yes/ Helene said calmly. 'But that was 
 not my fault. Nigel was so cold and so what is the 
 word? So occupied by his business. It was, I think, 
 that I distracted him. But it is doubtless only for a 
 time. With you and Philip it is quite different/ 
 
 'Quite/ agreed Evelyn. 'But how long is it since you 
 and your husband have separated, Nellie?' 
 
 'We will not talk of that, now/ Helene replied with a 
 little gesture of distaste. 'Some day I will tell you all 
 about it. But I am sorry that you and Philip should 
 have this misunderstanding. When I saw you together, 
 in Paris, all those years ago, I thought you both so 
 beautiful and so attached/ She paused for a moment 
 and concluded, ' I am sorry for poor Philip/
 
 THE RETURN OF H^LNE 287 
 
 'You think it's all my fault?' Evelyn commented. 
 
 Helene studied her with a long, reflective stare. ' I think 
 you cannot have understood him very well,' she said. 
 
 'Do you think you understand him?' Evelyn returned. 
 
 ' A little; yes.' Helene 1 s face was almost wistful in its 
 intensity. 'I think you have frightened him. You are 
 so so distant, so superb. I don't know how to say it. 
 Look at us, you and me, together. We are more than a 
 little alike, are we not? You must know it. We are of 
 the same type, although you are fair and I dark. But 
 inside we are as different as it is possible to be. You are 
 so clever, so intelligent. You make your judgments and 
 decide whether you will be this or the other . . . .' 
 
 'And you?' Evelyn put in. 
 
 'I . . . .' Helene began, and suddenly could find 
 no word in any language to describe herself. She frowned 
 and shook her head, bothered by the necessity for mental 
 concentration even on a subject so uniquely interesting as 
 a description of herself. 'I am just different/ she said, 
 and went on, 'I feel when you think. I cannot weigh 
 this or that. I . . . .' 
 
 'But how does that help you to understand Philip?' 
 Evelyn interrupted her. 
 
 ' Ah ! how, I cannot say,' Helene said. ' But I know 
 if . . . .' 
 
 ' If you were married to him,' Evelyn supplied. 'Well? ' 
 
 ' Well, he would not sleep at one end of the house and I 
 at the other,' H61ene pouted defiantly. 'Why do you 
 laugh? Like that?' 
 
 Evelyn's laugh had not had the true ring of merriment, 
 and she knew very well what her cousin had meant by 
 'like that?' It was true that she had jeered. 'Oh! 
 my dear Nellie/ she explained, 'I'm sorry, but I couldn't 
 help it. You see you don't begin to understand Philip. 
 He he simply hates all women.' 
 
 She had expected that emphatic statement to create 
 some sort of sensation, but Helene received it with a gentle 
 contempt. ' Oh ! no/ she said. ' Oh ! no, my dear Evelyn. 
 It is that he loves women too much, and he is afraid/
 
 288 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Of himself.' 
 
 'Of himself, yes; and also, of them.' 
 
 Evelyn could not believe it. 
 
 She did not dismiss so startling a paradox without 
 careful attention. She thought it over as a wild and 
 desperate possibility while she was dressing for dinner, 
 coupling this unlikely explanation of Philip's conduct 
 with Helene' s last remark to herself. 'But if you truly 
 believe that he hates women,' she had said, ' that explains 
 why you are not at all jealous.' She had thrown that out 
 as she left the room, and had not waited for a reply. 
 
 But Evelyn, testing the theory of Philip's passion by an 
 inductive process that touched ah 1 her relations with him 
 in the past, could find so little corroboration, that she 
 finally dismissed the idea with an impatient sigh. No, 
 there was no hope there; nothing to save the situation. 
 She must get Helene away, and then run away, herself, 
 with Noel. 
 
 When she came into the sitting-room, she found Helene 
 alone, perched on the end of the chesterfield, and wearing, 
 for trie first time in that house, the second of the evening 
 dresses she had brought with her. Undoubtedly she could 
 be forgiven for not having worn it before. It was not the 
 kind of dress that is worn except on high occasions. 
 
 Evelyn's smile, as she criticised it, was not free from a 
 hint of perturbation. 
 
 ' You do not like it ? ' asked Helene, composedly. 
 
 'I do; but I don't think Philip will,' Evelyn said. 
 
 In her mind she decided that that dress would inevitably 
 hasten the coming crisis. And the next day was Sunday. 
 He was always worse on a Sunday. 
 
 She had an intuition, even then, that the choice of plan 
 would not lie with her.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CLIMAX 
 
 EVELYN awoke that Sunday morning with a sense of 
 oppressed foreboding. Nature, as represented by the 
 weather and Noel, was in its sunniest mood. The fresh 
 scents of mid-May were warm with sunshine; and Noel, 
 after sleeping on, sweetly and innocently till past seven, 
 displayed himself in his most engaging temper when he 
 climbed into his mother's bed. But these tempting 
 aspects of life, full though they were with promise for a 
 freer future, failed to dissipate Evelyn's nervousness. 
 She faced the day with a dread of what it might bring 
 forth. It might be that she would have won her freedom 
 by that evening, but hope of the result was overshadowed 
 by her distaste for the means that would be necessary to 
 bring it about. 
 
 As she went down for breakfast, she was almost ready 
 for compromise. 
 
 The sight of Philip's sombre face dispersed that weak- 
 ness and served to stiffen her for the coming struggle. 
 The word 'clenched' came into her mind as she watched 
 him, more or less surreptitiously over the breakfast-table. 
 His face, his body, his very spirit seemed to her to be 
 clenched in one tremendous restraint. He hardly spoke 
 throughout the meal. 
 
 Helene did not come down until he had left the room, 
 one cause for thankfulness, since when she appeared 
 at last, she gave evidence of being in a mood that not 
 even Philip's sternest frowns could have suppressed. 
 She was at her most exuberant, and so full of delight in 
 the sunshine and the exquisite sensation of being alive 
 that she failed to notice her cousin's preoccupation. 
 
 289
 
 290 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'When will it come? And how?' were questions that 
 rang unceasingly through Evelyn's mind. If he would 
 but begin, she could, she believed, bow her head to the 
 storm, endure it for a few hours, and then make it the 
 excuse for carrying out her original intention the very 
 next day. But this menace without actual performance 
 was torture. She tried to divert her attention from it by 
 planning the detail of her escape. After the storm had 
 broken, and she knew that sometime, somehow, it must 
 break before the day was out she would surely have no 
 difficulty in persuading Helene to accompany her. She 
 counted on that to overcome the difficulty of the luggage. 
 All her own things might be taken under cover of Helene' s. 
 Philip, even if he saw the things, would not know how 
 much Helene had brought with her. It was quite in 
 character that she should have come with a superfluity. 
 And her own excuse would be the accompanying of Helene 
 to the station or to town ? Noel had often been promised 
 that he should go, soon, to the amazing London, he so 
 frequently described. Nurse would go with them as a 
 matter of course. As to Mrs Hunt, she must be persuaded 
 to remain behind for a week or two. She must be told; 
 and then bribed with the promise that she might follow 
 as soon as Evelyn had made any kind of permanent 
 arrangement. 
 
 As a plan, Evelyn could find no flaw in it; but she 
 counted on some peculiar provocation that would give 
 her good excuse for putting the plan into action. 
 
 She had not long to wait for a sign as to the manner in 
 which the second of her two essential questions would be 
 answered. 
 
 Philip came into the sitting-room at ten o'clock with 
 the hard determination of one who expects a temporary 
 defeat, but has no intention of being finally deterred by it. 
 
 'Are you coming to church, this morning?' he asked,
 
 CLIMAX 291 
 
 looking fixedly at a point between Evelyn and her 
 cousin. 
 
 Helene was smoking a cigarette on the chesterfield, her 
 favourite resort in that room, and one that permitted her 
 a fine variety of attitudes. At the moment she was lean- 
 ing back in one corner of it, with her legs boldly crossed 
 in a pose of idle enjoyment. 
 
 She looked up, pertly, when Philip spoke. 'No, I do 
 not go to church this morning,' she announced without 
 hesitation. 'I went last Sunday, just to see if it would 
 be like Cheltenham, and it was even more dull than that. 
 And you see, at home I was brought up as agnostic. 
 Nigel, also, does not believe in religion.' 
 
 She exhaled a slow wreath of smoke, with an air that 
 blent defiance with sensual pleasure. 
 
 Philip made no attempt to answer that challenge 
 directly. He turned to Evelyn. 'And you?' he de- 
 manded. 
 
 ' I'm not coming, either,' she said resolutely. She knew 
 that she was playing a part and hated the doing of it, but 
 the crisis must be hastened. She must suffer, if necessary, 
 her own displeasure. 
 
 Philip made no reply; but the solemnity with which he 
 left the room, his hard, deliberate manner of closing the 
 door constituted a threat that even Helene could not 
 ignore. 
 
 ' He is displeased/ she said. ' There is no reason why 
 you should not go, Evelyn, as far as I am concerned. I 
 shall do very well alone.' 
 
 'I don't want to go,' Evelyn returned quietly. 
 
 'But he will be very angry, will he not?' 
 
 'I expect so.' 
 
 'And you do not care?' 
 
 ' No ! I've decided . . . .' Evelyn began with 
 found that she had a very strong disinclination to confide 
 her plans to Helene. Need she, after all, be told? Could 
 not some taradiddle be invented to explain the one real 
 difficulty of the luggage? 
 
 'You have decided? Yes?' Helene prompted her.
 
 292 GOB'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Evelyn sighed deeply, and leaned back wearily in her 
 chair. ' Oh ! I don't know,' she said. 
 
 'Is it so serious?' asked Helene. 'You do not mean, 
 do you, that you are contemplating a separation? ' 
 
 'No. Yes. Perhaps,' Evelyn returned. She was 
 wondering why she need mind telling Helene. She was 
 not to be trusted, certainly. She would respect no con- 
 fidence if it suited her mood to betray it. But what 
 harm could she do, in the present instance? She might, 
 although it seemed wildly improbable, warn Philip; but 
 if she did, would it matter so much? Might it not be 
 better to face it out, and let him share the blame of her 
 going? 
 
 'I am not surprised/ Helene said, calmly. 'You are 
 not well suited to each other.' 
 
 ' You think not ? ' Evelyn returned, a gleam of amusement 
 lightening for a moment the darkness of her depression. 
 
 'Most certainly I think not,' Helene continued, dis- 
 passionately. 'It is, as I said yesterday; you are too 
 superb for him. He can admire, but he cannot love 
 you.' 
 
 'What sort of woman do you think he ought to have 
 married, then, Nellie?' Evelyn asked, seeking further 
 entertainment. 
 
 'He should have married me,' Helene said with the air 
 of one who reveals a truth that can no longer be shirked. 
 'I have known it always; since we met in Paris. I knew 
 it that first afternoon we met in the Avenue d'lena. I 
 loved him at once. It is not necessary to disguise it any 
 more, since you have decided to separate. I came here 
 to see him again.' 
 
 'Oh! Nellie, don't/ pleaded Evelyn, all her gloom 
 suddenly dissolved into laughter. 
 
 Helene looked something disconcerted by the genuine- 
 ness of her cousin's amusement. 
 
 ' It is, nevertheless, true/ she assented with an effort of 
 dignity. 
 
 'But, my dear, I am sorry for you/ Evelyn replied, 
 trying with little effect to assume a becoming gravity.
 
 CLIMAX 293 
 
 'You believe that he dislikes me?' 
 
 ' I'm afraid so. I'm afraid he dislikes you very much/ 
 Evelyn said. 'In fact I'm dreading that that he will 
 want you to go- soon almost at once.' 
 
 H61ne smiled. ' But if you go, instead? ' she suggested. 
 
 'And leave you here? Oh! Nellie, you wouldn't be 
 safe. He might murder you.' 
 
 'I take my chance of that,' replied Helene serenely. 
 
 Evelyn faltered before the colossal task of impressing 
 her cousin's understanding with the true facts of the 
 case. 
 
 'Nellie, you don't understand. Really, you don't 
 understand,' she began by way of getting one essential 
 firmly stated. 
 
 Helene' s graceful, expressive shoulders shrugged that 
 premiss out of existence. 
 
 'But, my dear, indeed you don't,' Evelyn re-asserted. 
 
 'But if it is you who do not understand?' Helene 
 suggested. 
 
 They looked at one another with a calm forbearance. 
 They were so curiously not rivals. Neither had the least 
 jealousy of the other. Helene despised Evelyn's claims. 
 Evelyn, though she believed in Helene' s confession of love 
 for Philip she might, given a reasonable opportunity, 
 have fallen in love with the Pope had not one smallest 
 doubt of Philip's safety should the confession be made to 
 him. If Evelyn felt the necessity of insisting upon 
 Hetene's departure, it was solely to save Philip from 
 unnecessary trouble. 
 
 'If I could only explain/ she said with a whimsical 
 perplexity. 
 
 ' Is it that you are not jealous because you are so very 
 sure of him? ' asked Helene. 
 
 'If you could but realise how sure I am that that he 
 could never love anyone in the way oh ! in your way, 
 my dear Nellie/ Evelyn said. 
 
 H61ne half closed her eyes and swayed her body softly 
 backwards and forwards. 'Will you give me a chance 
 to prove who is right, you or me? ' she asked.
 
 294 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Indeed, I will not,' Evelyn replied emphatically. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' commented Helene, with a dreamy satisfaction. 
 
 ' For his sake,' explained Evelyn. ' It would drive him 
 absolutely mad. I sometimes think he is very nearly mad, 
 already, on that subject.' 
 
 'It is true,' agreed Helene surprisingly. 'But you 
 mistake the cause.' 
 
 Evelyn recognised that there was no getting beyond 
 this absolute deadlock. Helene' s experience had imposed 
 a limitation on her understanding that no feminine argu- 
 ment could remove. Evelyn might record every detail 
 of her maimed life with Philip, and Helen e's single 
 uncompromising explanation would be simply that it was 
 Evelyn's fault; that she had been too 'superb.' 
 
 And, for one passing, mischievous moment, Evelyn 
 actually played with the thought of leaving these two 
 incompatible creatures alone together. She saw it, for 
 that moment, as the apotheosis of the comic, a subHme 
 farce. Then the true sweetness of her character, not yet 
 hopelessly soured by the tragedy of her experience, re- 
 asserted itself, and so far as the immediate controversy 
 was concerned, she made her final decision and imposed 
 it by asserting her supremacy over her cousin. 
 
 ' Oh ! very well/ she said. ' Have it your own way if 
 you will; but I am not going to give you a chance of proving 
 yourself right. To-morrow you must come away with me. 
 Noel and I will go to London with you. I'm sorry to be 
 inhospitable, but the circumstances are unusual, aren't 
 they? ' 
 
 'But until to-morrow?' asked Helene with great com- 
 posure. 
 
 Evelyn laughed. ' Until to-morrow you can do whatever 
 you like,' she said. ' But in no circumstances whatever will 
 I leave you behind when I go.' 
 
 'Even supposing that Philip should request it?' 
 
 The humour of it was too appealing. ' Oh ! yes,' Evelyn 
 agreed, 'I will make that one exception. If Philip asks 
 to be left alone with you, I will raise no objection. He 
 must ask me, himself, of course.'
 
 CLIMAX 295 
 
 'But of course/ Helene murmured, and added, 'You 
 will give me some opportunity?' 
 
 This was Evelyn's last hesitation. She wanted 'not to 
 be a beast/ as she put it. Yet what could happen? 
 Nothing worse, surely, than a quickening of that inevitable 
 'row' she had been almost praying for. 
 
 'You shall have an opportunity/ she decided quickly. 
 ' After tea. Mrs Hunt will be out and I will take Nurse 
 and Noel with me for a walk. You and Philip will have 
 the house to yourselves/ 
 
 She was going up to the nursery, but she turned round 
 at the door to add, ' All the same, I do seriously warn you, 
 Nellie, that you had much better leave him alone/ 
 
 'I have no fear/ Helene replied. 
 
 Evelyn had planned her own part in the crisis with 
 some nicety, but Fate had no intention of doing things 
 to suit her arrangements. 
 
 For a time it all seemed to be happening precisely in 
 the manner that she had anticipated. After a gloomy 
 dinner during which Philip took no part in the conversa- 
 tion, he signified his wish to speak to her alone. She 
 acceded to that request without hesitation. She was 
 feeling tired and nervous again, but she was bravely 
 willing to face the worst and 'get it over/ Her mind 
 repeated that phrase automatically as she led the way 
 to the sitting-room. I must 'get it over/ she said to 
 herself. ' Get it over/ She found something hypnotically 
 soothing in the repetition. 
 
 And at first, although Philip's temper and expression 
 confirmed her anticipations so closely as to make her feel 
 that she was merely re-living some old experience, she was 
 little disturbed. He talked, pacing up and down the room 
 and warming himself up to the pitch of domination which 
 was so plainly his goal. She listened, apathetically, lean- 
 ing back in her chair, and noting the fulfilment of her
 
 296 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 prophetic vision of the scene with the languor of a 
 stage-manager who sees the performance after exhausting 
 weeks of rehearsal. She hardly troubled to reply. 
 
 He began at once too autocratically and too tritely. 
 
 'This sort of thing can't go on,' he said, and waited for 
 her to accept her cue. Her 'What sort of thing?' would 
 have given him the right opportunity to expound those 
 definitions that he had so carefully prepared. 
 
 She overlooked the obvious and merely nodded a general 
 encouragement. 
 
 ' You know what I mean, of course,' he said, with another 
 attempt to stimulate her question. 
 
 'Well? ' she replied, in a tone that requested him to 'get 
 it over.' 
 
 He was baulked by her assent. 
 
 'Is it that you simply don't care any more?' he asked 
 with a spurious heat. 
 
 She wrinkled her forehead with a look of weary per- 
 plexity. 
 
 ' Care for going to church? ' she said. ' Or what? ' 
 
 Apparently, he saw, then, that he must make his 
 considered declaration without hope of encouragement. 
 
 'Everything, everything,' he began in a monotone, that 
 was chequered as he continued, with little crescendos of 
 impatient temper. 'All the decency and respectabilities 
 of life. We are living in sin, the sins of omission. It 
 isn't that we are being positively evil, but we are sliding 
 into a pit . . . .' 
 
 Evelyn's eyebrows lifted with a brief effect of protest, 
 but she made no other comment. 
 
 The burden of his complaint grew heavier as he tried 
 more desperately to impress her. 
 
 'The house is becoming unendurable,' he went on with 
 a fanatical, glowering intentness. 'I can't suffer the 
 presence of that woman here any longer. She pollutes 
 the air. The sight of her is disgusting to me. She must 
 go, Evelyn. At once. I insist on that.' 
 
 ' No Sunday trains/ remarked Evelyn carelessly. He was 
 mad and she was not afraid of him. What did it matter?
 
 CLIMAX 297 
 
 He winced palpably, and she noted that he was still 
 vulnerable, that his madness had not yet enveloped him. 
 
 ' She must go to-morrow,' he said lamely, displaying for 
 an instant his obvious discomfiture. 
 
 Evelyn nodded. 'Very well/ she agreed. 'Anything 
 else?' 
 
 He paused, summoning all his forces for his culminating 
 attack. He had come to a pitch of determination. He 
 must and would impose his creed of purity upon his own 
 family. 
 
 'That is only the beginning/ he said on a low, muffled 
 note. ' Only the beginning. We must stop drifting. We 
 are being false to ourselves/ Then he raised his voice and 
 continued 'Everything must be changed. We must be 
 positive in virtue, not negative in evil . . . / 
 
 Again he paused, but she gave him no help. He had 
 said enough already, to provide her with all the excuse 
 she required. It would soon be over, now. 
 
 Her silence brought him to the climax of his despair. 
 
 ' Noel must not be allowed to suffer from our weakness/ 
 he said. 
 
 She did not move, but the apathy of her expression 
 suddenly quickened into life. Her eyes sought his with 
 a flash of defiance. 
 
 ' I am going to teach him/ Philip continued, and braced 
 by her first sign of opposition, he stopped his pacing and 
 confronted her. 'He is old enough to understand, and 
 you are spoiling him, ruining him. You are so thought- 
 less of his good that you have even permitted that woman 
 to play with him. That, at least, must stop from this 
 minute. I forbid him ever to see her again/ 
 
 That threatened her plan, but Evelyn saw her means of 
 evasion in a flash. Nurse must be sent out early with 
 Noel, and meet them at the station. And then, in one 
 moment, she saw her plan as it was one long texture of 
 trickery and deceit. A shameful piece of chicane, practised 
 in the full view of H61ne, Nurse, Mrs Hunt and Noel. 
 
 She put up her hands to hide the shamed blush of her 
 burning face. 
 
 G.c,
 
 298 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Philip was speaking again, apparently encouraged in 
 the belief that his ascendancy was, at last, becoming 
 assured. She hardly heard him. Her plan was destroyed. 
 Having once seen it in all the motley of its trivial pretences, 
 she could never think of it again. But the problem re- 
 mained more urgent than ever before. Even now Philip 
 was laying down the lines of his proposed education of 
 Noel, expounding the laws of the negative dogma that he 
 had so thoroughly learned from Peter. 'He must 
 not . . . .' she heard as the dominating refrain of 
 all his intentions. 
 
 With a movement that was consciously dramatic, she 
 dropped her hands and faced him. 
 
 ' No ! ' she said, and was surprised at the clear ring of 
 her own voice. ' You shall never have the least share in 
 the education of my son. Never ! Never ! ' 
 
 ' He is my son, too.' Philip had been physically startled 
 by the unexpectedness of her reply. It was as if he 
 staggered and clutched at the first support. 
 
 'No. I claim him; absolutely,' Evelyn affirmed. 
 
 ' You can't,' Philip retorted, braced to dispute this clear 
 and vital issue. 'I insist on fulfilling my duty towards 
 him, as his father.' 
 
 She almost pitied his weakness, as she prepared to make 
 an end of him and all his assumptions. She realised her 
 own power beyond any possibility of doubt, but she re- 
 cognised, also, that she was striking, now, for final victory. 
 Whatever her compassion, she dare not spare him. He 
 must be crushed and beaten into complete submission, in 
 order that she and Noel might go free. 
 
 ' Listen to me,' she said imperiously, and glanced at the 
 door, as though now, for the first tune, they were about to 
 discuss matters that must not be overheard. 
 
 ' I am listening,' he replied, in a dull, obstinate voice; the 
 mark of defeat already on his face. 
 
 She did not rise, but sat up stiffly, laying her hands 
 along the arms of her chair. Her whole pose was that of 
 the ruler, self-confident and serene. 
 
 ' I am going to leave you/ she said, ' and I am going to
 
 CLIMAX 299 
 
 take Noel with me. I have endured your presence long 
 enough. You have not been my husband for four years. 
 I have come to dread the very sight of you. You are not 
 sane. Your mind is poisoned and unhealthy. I would 
 as soon entrust the education of Noel to a homicidal maniac 
 as to you. You want to kill his spirit, to make him into 
 just such another pitiful poisoned creature as you have 
 become, yourself .... I have settled everything. 
 I had not meant to tell you. I had meant to go away 
 quietly and write to you afterwards, but I see that that 
 would be a foolish evasion of my responsibility. I am not 
 the least ashamed of leaving you. Anyone may be told 
 the true reason which you know as well as I do myself. 
 But if it would be any salve to your respectability or 
 decency or whatever you call it, you may tell people like 
 the Blenkinsops that I have run away from you; that I 
 am a bad woman; any lie on earth you like. It is all one 
 to me so long as I can save myself and Noel from the 
 infection of your presence.' 
 
 She had expected victory, but not the complete abase- 
 ment he exhibited. All his dogged resolution had 
 vanished. He was a man crushed and humbled. He 
 had no defence, no reply. He had dropped on to the 
 chesterfield before she was half-way through her speech, 
 and now he leant his head against it, hiding his face in an 
 attitude of confessed weakness. And when, at last, his 
 first remonstrance was spoken, it took the form of a pitiful, 
 childish 'Why?' 
 
 'But why, Evelyn?' he mumbled. 
 
 She stood up to conquer her last moment of doubt. 
 Whatever compassion she felt for him, she dared not, 
 now, for Noel's sake, and her own, relinquish anything of 
 what she had won. 
 
 'Why?' she said. 'Because I despise you.' 
 
 She left the room with a dignity that Hetene might 
 properly have described as superb .... 
 
 As she closed the door behind her, she became aware 
 that her heart beat as if she had just been furiously run- 
 ning. Yet she had no feeling of exhaustion; but rather
 
 300 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 of unusual physical ability. She ran upstairs to her own 
 room, with a sense of elation that extended to her body. 
 
 She entered her bedroom still rejoicing in the complete- 
 ness of her victory, went over to the cheval glass standing 
 at an angle to the window, and stared at her own reflection. 
 
 ' Well it's done/ she said aloud in a soft voice. 
 
 Her own image gazed back at her for a moment with a 
 set, stern face; and then she saw as if witnessing some 
 detached phenomenon, that the reflected face was 
 crumpling into strange puckers, just such puckers as she 
 had seen on the face of Noel when he was on the verge 
 of a tempestuous outburst of tears. 
 
 ' Oh ! don't, don't be silly/ she implored herself. 
 ' Don't ! ' She put her hand to her throat, trying forcibly 
 to check the passage of the sob that was surging up with 
 the steady, irresistible swell of an oncoming wave . . . 
 
 He might hear her in the room below. She made a 
 violent effort and the sob broke into a spray of rapid 
 gasping sighs. But another was coming, a whole storm 
 of them, and she flung herself on to the bed and pressed 
 her face deep into the coverlet. 
 
 She did not know- she had no sort of idea what she was 
 crying for. 
 
 Throughout the paroxysm her one dread was that Philip 
 might hear her. 
 
 In all those years she had not cried once since her scene 
 with Philip in the rose-garden. 
 
 Philip still crouching in the room below heard no sound 
 of Evelyn's weeping. He could hear nothing but the 
 fervent tramping of many feet passing eternally through 
 the tunnel of his own being. His waking dream of abase- 
 ment had found fulfilment in reality. 
 
 Yet the experience must always have had its foundation 
 in the reality of his own consciousness. In his youth and 
 early manhood, the thing itself, god or devil, had been no
 
 CLIMAX 301 
 
 more than a vague, transitory shape. It had not, then, 
 a true life of its own. It had needed the material echo 
 of the physical to call it into momentary expression. 
 When a chance combination of effects had rung a certain 
 note, the adolescent wraith had been endowed with a 
 feeble power of manifestation. It had responded to the 
 key-note, singing in sympathetic vibration to the passing 
 chord of likeness. 
 
 Now, the thing he had known only as an echo had come 
 into possession. The wraith had become incarnate, was 
 clothing itself with the subtle material of his body. As 
 yet, it was no more than an awful visitor; but presently 
 he, himself, might be but a weak, resentful host whose 
 dying protests fluttered ever more and more feebly as he 
 was remorselessly ousted from his own dwelling. 
 
 Even now his sense of abasement was almost unendur- 
 able. Evelyn had said that his mind was poisoned and 
 unhealthy, and he could not deny it. He shuddered at 
 the violent truth of her censure. He was a thing corrupt 
 and possessed. He had struggled in vain against that 
 possession, and had had no strength to resist it. He did 
 not blame himself for the feebleness of his struggle. He 
 had passed that stage of hope which still clings to salvation 
 by remorse. He accepted his condition as the inevitable 
 result of some fundamental failing in himself. He was 
 the ultimate weakling, a creature so unworthy that even 
 his soul would at last fade and die, as a thin, inane ghost 
 of personality. 
 
 There was no chance of escape for him, any more. The 
 door that had represented Evelyn, was visibly barred and 
 shut against him for ever. The other could but give access 
 to the last, destroying abasements of Hell. 
 
 He did not hear Helene come into the room; and his 
 prostration was so complete that when she actually 
 touched him, he felt powerless to move. Nevertheless,
 
 302 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 he knew that this was the evil thing that had come, now, 
 to stay with him. 
 
 'Philip,' she said, with a low, soothing sweetness, and 
 in an accent that gave his name the liquid ripple of its 
 French pronunciation. 'She, Evelyn, has told you? 
 You know that she leaves you to-morrow, for good? ' 
 
 He remained silent, but she seemed to require no answer 
 to her questions. The soft, deep flow of her speech went 
 on demanding no response, asking nothing but that she 
 might uninterruptedly pour out her whole confession. 
 
 ' It is better so,' she crooned over him. ' Much better. It 
 was always impossible that you and she should understand 
 one another. Now, that she has admitted that, you will see 
 it, too. At first it is, perhaps, a shock; but presently you 
 will see how much better it is that she should leave you.' 
 
 She paused a moment and came closer to him, insinuated 
 one arm about his neck and pressed her face against his 
 hair. 'But you and I have always loved one another,' 
 she continued with thrilling abandonment. 'All that 
 you have thought to love in Evelyn has been nothing but 
 your longing for me. I have been yours since first we 
 met in Paris. I have loved you with perfect faithfulness. 
 I have shut my eyes to the caresses of my husband, and 
 embraced always and only you. It is something beyond 
 life, this love of ours. It has been for ever. If we had 
 never met again I should still have loved the thought of 
 you and of you only, through all my experience. When 
 so far away, in America, I heard your spirit calling to me, 
 I could not resist. I ran away from my husband; he was 
 an apparition, he was nothing. All the world could not 
 have prevented me from coming, when I heard your spirit 
 call ... .' 
 
 He was hardly aware of her as a physical presence. 
 She was but another of his dreams, taking flesh, becoming 
 the palpable alluring reality of his own creative imagina- 
 tion. He thrilled with all his secret dream desires. In 
 dreams he had been exempt from the galling chains of his 
 own inhibitions. Although the waking might be a horror, 
 in sleep he had tasted ecstasy.
 
 CLIMAX 303 
 
 He was passive. In these short fugitive moments of 
 Helene's love-making, he had tasted the hitherto unknown 
 joys of absolute surrender. She had come to him as the 
 symbol of the detested beautiful thing that had haunted 
 his life with desire; and he had made no effort to repulse 
 her. He had enjoyed her caress as he might have enjoyed 
 the taste of some sweet poison that would presently destroy 
 him. 
 
 His intelligence with its long habit of cultivated dis- 
 tastes, moved with a deadened inertness, drugged and 
 nearly paralysed by the intoxicating odours of Helene's 
 passion. He felt that he was sinking to those depths 
 in which the ideals of chastity and cleanliness could never 
 know an even transitory existence; into the depths where 
 evil reigned positive and absolute. And the will to resist 
 had gone from him. He had played for the highest, and 
 had lost, irrevocably. To Evelyn he was a thing poisoned 
 and unhealthy, a thing to despise. There remained no 
 stimulus to further effort. Why should he care? His 
 pride had been broken. Why should he not plunge into 
 the flame and die in the rapture of his immolation. ' Love 
 is surrender,' he had once said. He would surrender, 
 now, without reserve. 
 
 And still he did not move. His mind and his body 
 approved this new resolve of submission, but his will 
 remained inert. He suffered experience, vividly, en- 
 thrallingly, but as if it lacked some peculiar quality of 
 reality. Helene seemed to be no more than the alluring 
 phantom of his imagination, tempting, but ephemeral as 
 a rainbow that lights the smother of a breaking wave. 
 He lay like a man in deep sleep until, breathless with 
 the sweat of entreaty, she sighed and moved apart from 
 him. 
 
 He raised himself, then, with the lax effort of one who 
 turns reluctantly to the light of morning; and it was with 
 an apparent reluctance that he, at last, looked at Helene. 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' he asked, bracing himself to the 
 task of confronting the new day. 
 
 She turned her brown eyes and looked at him, but
 
 304 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 otherwise she remained as immobile as he had recently 
 shown himself. 
 
 'What can one mean? ' she replied after a pause. 
 
 He watched her with a growing curiosity, seeing her, 
 for the first time. His eyes, it seemed, had a new power 
 of vision. He saw the shape of her, and the colour and 
 grace, as he might have seen the beauty of a flame. He 
 was hardly aware of her clothes, nor even of her body. 
 He saw her as something that burned very clear and 
 bright, something into which he would presently leap 
 and be consumed. 
 
 When he spoke again his words sounded in his ears as 
 dull, heavy things; gross fuel thrown dead and black 
 into the heart of a fire. 
 
 ' But if I love you,' he said, ' I only love you as an idea. 
 And it isn't love. I don't know what it is.' 
 
 ' You love me already in your soul,' she returned. 
 
 'Have you ever dreamt of me?' he asked, reaching 
 towards a possible bond. 
 
 She smiled a little contemptuously. 'So often/ she 
 said. 
 
 'You used to come to me? ' he went on, more eagerly. 
 
 'Never,' she said. 'It was always you who came to 
 entreat me.' 
 
 He shook his head as though that view of things did 
 not please him. ' I could never have done that/ he said, 
 and suddenly burned to make confession of all the things 
 he had dreaded and could never do. 
 
 Here was an unimagined opportunity. The act of 
 confession was made possible by his discovery that there 
 was someone in the world to whom he might confess 
 without shame. Helene would not be shocked, and 
 neither would she condemn him. She was a primitive, 
 evil thing without reserves and without a standard of 
 morality. Hitherto he had not imagined it possible that 
 any living creature after seeing his soul stripped bare 
 could still continue to endure his presence. Even in 
 his prayers he had made immense reservations. He had 
 never accused himself, before God, of secret longings for
 
 CLIMAX 305 
 
 the evil he had shunned. He had presented himself 
 rather in the light of an unhappy victim, than in that 
 of one who wrestled with his own desires. 
 
 And, now, at the very moment when he had reached 
 the last despair of abasement, he had found a fellow- 
 devil, loving and patient, before whom he could deliver 
 the ultimate wickedness of his being. He knew that she 
 would be patient. She was his, she had admitted it, his 
 to command in any way he chose. 
 
 His eyes lighted with the longing to reveal himself to 
 one who would find no fault in him; his familiar and equal. 
 
 He turned to her and took her two hands in his. She 
 yielded them with the least hint of demureness. 
 
 ' I want to tell you about myself/ he said. 
 
 She desired nothing better. 'Teh 1 me everything,' was 
 her response. 
 
 ' I have always had an unhealthy mind/ he began. 
 
 She frowned and shook her head. 'It was only that 
 what was most natural in you, you regarded as being not 
 natural/ she said. 
 
 He pressed her hands more tightly. She was, indeed, 
 the most sympathetic of fellow-sinners, but he could not 
 be satisfied until he had outstripped her in evil. He 
 must prove to her that nothing so softly feminine as her- 
 self could rival him in wickedness. He must display the 
 very dregs of his lowest emotions before her .... 
 
 She interrupted him, at last, from sheer satiety. He 
 had nothing to teach her, and she tired of his intellectual 
 revelations. She wanted the warmth and assurance of 
 physical love. 
 
 She drew his head down on to her breast and caressed 
 him with soft, enticing hands. 
 
 ' It is nothing, my darling, nothing/ she murmured. ' I 
 can cure you of all those queer fancies. They come because 
 you have always been too good. But, Philip, now tell me. 
 You love me, do you not? You know, now, that you have 
 always loved me? ' 
 
 One of the doors of his prison was flung wide open, and 
 he paused no longer. There was the flame that was to
 
 306 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 destroy him. He saw it clearly and with so little fear 
 that he could find a joy in dallying with the first smart of 
 the burn. 
 
 He wound his arms about her and kissed her willing lips. 
 
 He was hers, now, for ever. She alone knew the awful 
 secrets of his life. He had shown her the hidden naked- 
 ness of his soul, and she still loved him. She was his 
 equal; the only human being before whom he could know 
 no hint of shame .... 
 
 They looked up to see a round, white face, gazing with 
 an expression of portentous horror through the open 
 window. Then the mouth opened with a gasp like the 
 last spasm of a strangled cod, emitted the one word 
 'Blackguard' in a rich contralto, and the head vanished 
 abruptly. 
 
 Philip stood up. His contract with the devil had been 
 sealed and witnessed. He was committed, now, beyond 
 any hope of withdrawal. 
 
 'We must tell . . . .'he began and stopped. 
 
 He found that a new restraint had been put upon him. 
 He could no longer pronounce the sacred name of 
 ' Evelyn.' 
 
 He had delivered his soul to his collaborator in evil, 
 but he still laboured under his burden of shame before 
 every other living creature. He had, as yet, but one 
 possible confidante in all the world. 
 
 And when Evelyn, recovered from her hysteria, saw the 
 old sullen look of determination on his face as he came 
 into her bedroom, she believed that he had come to offer 
 terms; to sacrifice anything that was possible to him, 
 rather than permit her to leave 'New End.' 
 
 She tried to anticipate any bargain of that sort by 
 taking an immediate initiative. 
 
 ' It's no good, Philip,' she said, at once. ' I have made 
 up my mind, absolutely. I am going to-morrow, with 
 Noel.' She had entirely forgotten her treaty with Hele*ne.
 
 CLIMAX 307 
 
 'It isn't that/ he mumbled. 'I came to tell you that 
 there's no necessity for you to go, now. I'm going, 
 instead.' 
 
 He kept his face turned away from her. He believed 
 himself unworthy to stand in her presence. She had 
 become again the immaculate ideal of his first conception; 
 a standard wherewith to measure the appalling depths 
 of his own baseness. 
 
 ' You are going? Where?' she asked. She stared at 
 his averted flinching figure; she had no suspicion of the 
 truth; she imagined a trap. 
 
 'I don't know where,' he said, trying to overcome his 
 deep reluctance to admit his shame to her. 'London, 
 probably. One can get lost in London.' 
 
 'Is this a splendid act of self-sacrifice?' asked Evelyn. 
 'Designed to put me in the wrong?' 
 
 He shook his head wearily. Her bitter suspicion was 
 balm in comparison with the horrible truth. He turned 
 his back upon her and stared out of the window. 
 
 'There is no reason whatever why you should go,' 
 Evelyn went on. 'I am perfectly willing to take all the 
 blame, I assure you; perfectly willing. Not for your sake. 
 Simply because I don't care.' 
 
 ' It isn't that,' he said, and she had to strain her attention 
 to catch the low rumble of his speech. ' I've thrown up 
 the sponge. I've I'm not fit to be in the same house 
 with you. I'm a blackguard. Blenkinsop called me that 
 ten minutes ago, and he was right. I don't deny it. He 
 saw me me and Helene.' 
 
 He hardly knew what he expected, although he would 
 not have been surprised if she had laughed. He was 
 certainly not prepared for the blank silence that greeted 
 his confession. He stood very still, listening; at first with 
 nervous apprehension and then with an increasing longing 
 for any sound that would snap the tension of this motion- 
 less world. He dared neither to speak again, himself, nor 
 to turn his head. He began to wonder if while he had been 
 making his confession, she had left the room without his 
 hearing her.
 
 3o8 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 And when, at last, she spoke, it was as if her voice, low 
 and timid, returned after a long absence. 
 
 ' You and Helene? ' she said. ' I don't think I can have 
 heard what you said, Philip. What about you and 
 Helene?' 
 
 ' Yes ! ' he replied, ' Helene ! ' He wanted so despairingly 
 to make an end of these terrible admissions of guilt, but he 
 could find no words. ' We we are going away, together.' 
 
 Surely that should be enough, he thought. She could 
 not expect him to descend to details. But why had she 
 again fallen into silence? Had she, perhaps, fainted? If 
 only he dared to look at her. All the pride had been 
 drained out of him. He had no spirit left to oppose her. 
 She might say what she would, and he would accept her 
 worst description of himself with meekness. 
 
 He stepped back a pace from the window, and in so 
 doing one of his questions was answered for him. She 
 had not fainted. He saw the weak wraith of her reflection 
 in one of the lead framed squares of the window. He 
 could just discern the white oval of her face, a dim, pale 
 transparency that seemed to stare at him from the depths 
 of a sombre yew tree, the tree of mourning. Was this the 
 dissolving ghost of his ideal, he wondered; his last sight of 
 the wonderful, beautiful Evelyn, who had been the single 
 love of his life, and whose respect he had deliberately and 
 irrevocably forfeited that afternoon? Nothing was left 
 for him, now, but the companionship of his equal in de- 
 bauchery. He had chosen Hell, and must abide by his 
 choice. 
 
 He stared once more at that faint, almost invisible 
 reflection of his ideal, humbling himself before it in one 
 final prostration of worship. Then, meekly, furtively, 
 he left the room without casting one glance at Evelyn. 
 
 There was no need for any further explanation. She 
 had given no judgment but he knew that she had con- 
 demned him.
 
 CLIMAX 309 
 
 But if he had stayed; if he had been bold with entreaty 
 and besieged her for forgiveness, the result of his confession 
 would have been little affected. She was stunned with 
 amazement. Her thought cast itself against this tre- 
 mendous negation of her experience, and fell back, limply, 
 to pause in a stupefied search for some other way of escape 
 Had he pretended? Had he posed as a sinner to save 
 her? She could have understood that grotesque attitude 
 in him. It was consistent with his distorted attempts at 
 camouflage about the dangerous exposures of naked truth. 
 If she had had no evidence but his own admissions, she 
 would have believed that he was lying. 
 
 In those first moments of stupefaction, she found it so 
 hard to face the problem presented by Helene' s confidence 
 in victory. Yet that confidence was, she realised, the 
 convincing thing, a very blare of triumph, to which 
 Philip's mutterings were nothing more than a confused 
 and stammering echo. Helene had known, had seen 
 through the posturing disguise of Philip's mania, while 
 she, herself, had accepted the disguise as a part of the 
 essential man. 
 
 Evelyn, bravely essaying self-understanding, could not 
 see just where she had failed. She had tried to dissuade 
 and re-educate him; she had never been cold or intolerant; 
 she had for many months after their marriage been most 
 hopefully loving. Was she, then, as Helene had suggested, 
 too superb? She could not believe it. In Paris, and 
 immediately after their return to ' Middlethorpe,' she had 
 been, on occasion, most willingly humble. 
 
 No, she could find but one explanation, she lacked some 
 element that appealed to Philip. He would worship her, 
 but he could not love her, man to woman. What it was 
 she lacked, she could not, then, inquire. That research 
 demanded investigation of the positive Helene, a process 
 that Evelyn could not yet endure even in imagination.
 
 3io GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 She shuddered in the warmth of the May evening. She 
 was stiff and cold, and life was facing her with all its de- 
 testably urgent insignificances. She had had no tea, the 
 others had probably had no tea. She had promised to go 
 over to the Blenkinsops, which was why Edgar, no doubt, 
 had come over to ' New End.' Philip had said that Edgar 
 knew and had called him a blackguard. Edgar, then, had 
 seen something; what, she would probably never know, 
 since there was no one whom she could ask. 
 
 She rose slowly. She must go to Noel. Nurse had 
 given him his tea, no doubt. Nurse and Noel were like 
 houses in a perplexing wilderness of unknown things. 
 
 Cold supper was laid on the table. They the two 
 strangers downstairs could have supper alone together 
 if they wanted it. She would have no desire to eat until 
 they had gone. They would leave her alone. She need 
 not meet them again .... 
 
 Nevertheless she saw them once more. She watched 
 their departure next morning from the window of her 
 bedroom, screening herself within the ambush of the 
 muslin curtain. The sight of their furtive escape from 
 the world of her happiness, should have brought un- 
 mitigated relief, but all the ease of it was marred for her 
 by a single observation. As Philip walked down the 
 little flagged path to the monastic gate, he turned once 
 and spoke to Helene; and as he spoke, his face was 
 suddenly lit by one of those old boyish smiles that Evelyn 
 had so long missed. 
 
 It was then, for the first time, that she realised the 
 anguish of a deserted wife. He had gone from her gladly, 
 young and hopeful, smiling after all these years of gloom, 
 for very happiness. 
 
 What was it she had lacked, that he could possibly find 
 in Helene? 
 
 From that time Evelyn hated Helene with a passion of 
 resentful jealousy.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CONVALESCENT 
 
 PHILIP'S impressions of those first days in London before 
 the slow ebb of his pride returned to brace his exhausted 
 spirit, were of the changed aspects of men and women. 
 From the depths of his humility he saw life as strangely 
 admirable and exalted. He discovered humanity, not as 
 a class of stupid, stubborn, and, incidentally, depraved 
 children foolishly trying to ignore the jealous schoolmaster 
 who waited grimly for the time of their inevitable punish- 
 ment; but as something swift and eager and unimaginably 
 diverse, full of the most wonderful potentialities for 
 adventure, for accomplishment, and for surprising en- 
 joyments. He was like a convalescent, too weak as yet 
 to rise and take his part in the exhilarating festival of 
 life, who watches the gorgeous pageant with exquisitely 
 renewed senses, full of delight and of feeling, and of 
 amazement at the delicate accuracies and perfections of 
 the whole created universe. 
 
 He came upon some realisation of the change that was 
 working within him, by way of an advertisement for some 
 patent medicine, boldly headed 'Hope for Humanity.' 
 He saw the phrase without taking in its particular appli- 
 cation, in that context, to a sluggish liver or a recklessly 
 indiscriminate digestive apparatus. His associations were 
 older than that, and belonged to the evangelical sermons 
 of his boyhood. He remembered himself in an egregiously 
 missionary mood, praying that the whole world might have 
 its eyes opened to the understanding of that crucified Hope. 
 
 Now the expression struck him as a pure anomaly. 
 Humanity itself presented the symbol of aspiration. The 
 men and women who had so recently blazed into being for 
 
 3"
 
 312 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 him, were personifications of nothing less than Hope. 
 The meanest of them, towering above his head, shone 
 triumphantly as a splendid expression of life. And Life 
 was something that inevitably conquered. You could 
 only defeat life by annihilating it. Hope for Humanity 
 was pure nonsense. Humanity itself was the highest 
 and most daring assertion of the eternal existence of hope. 
 
 That revelation was not made, however, until he and 
 Helene had been staying for nearly a week in their 
 Bloomsbury hotel. The vicious dregs of his mind were 
 not to be finally rinsed out by one act of complete pros- 
 tration. The inverted cup still needed a very efficient 
 scouring. 
 
 Helene was ideally helpful in that process. She began 
 with a bright ambition to convert him into as whole-hearted 
 a hedonist as she was, herself. She had been encouraged 
 from the outset by the ease with which she had wooed 
 her Puritan into renouncing the satisfactions of chastity; 
 and her buoyant spirit desired the ultimate heights of 
 victory. 
 
 The first principle of her method if any mental process 
 of hers can deserve so logical a term was to eliminate all 
 his old shrinkings and distastes by the example of her 
 acts and speech. She had no reserves from him, physical 
 or mental, and within the course of those first seven days 
 she truly appeared to have achieved the impossible. At 
 the turning-point of that stage, she had the temerity to 
 trifle with his old prejudices. There were moments when 
 he was almost too plastic. 
 
 And Helene recognised the trend of his recovery long 
 before he himself was aware whither the slow return of his 
 pride would take him. She could not have put her 
 knowledge into language, but she began to feel and 
 presently to understand the unalterable steadfast per- 
 sonality of the essential Philip. She came at last to 
 understand it well enough to realise that he was not, after 
 all, the single desire of her soul and body. 
 
 The period of her uncertainty was helpful to Philip in 
 new ways. She had recourse to such stimulants as
 
 THE CONVALESCENT 313 
 
 increasingly veracious accounts of her life in America 
 during the past fifteen months or so. As he began to 
 show himself in the gathering strength of his personality, 
 she reacted by attempting to increase her own value. 
 Her absolute surrender was withdrawn. She tried to 
 pique and to tempt him by the remote suggestion that he 
 might, one day, lose her. She never made a full con- 
 fession, she was incapable of doing that; but from the 
 many tempting kernels of her history that she chose to 
 incite his appetite, he was able, in time, to discern, in its 
 more general outlines, the kind of tree from which the 
 nuts were gathered. 
 
 Her story had a very definite influence upon Philip, 
 although it was not the one she expected. It helped 
 him to know himself, and face his own strength and 
 weakness with a sincerity that took tone from the evasions 
 of her illustration. He could recognise in her obvious 
 concealments another form of his old weakness. The 
 difference between her fear and his own was nothing 
 more than a difference of gesture. 
 
 Financial failure loomed behind all her earlier accounts, 
 but it had no peculiar importance as a background. She 
 could take rich delight in cuddling down among the soft 
 consolations of wealth, but there were joys she prized more 
 highly than the ease of position. She had certainly not, 
 at that time, ever considered the advantages of selling 
 herself. The failure of her San Francisco millionaire was 
 important in a fortuitous rather than in any intrinsic way. 
 He had left her alone, for a time, somewhere in California, 
 and the state of loneliness being unendurable to Helene, 
 she had found another affinity. There had been, so far 
 as Philip could reckon, at least four affinities between 
 his meeting with her in Paris and her coming to 'New 
 End,' and no one of them, except Flaxman in his first 
 period, had offered the inducement of anything like real 
 wealth. 
 
 The hidden phases of this story that Philip learned to 
 suspect, all hovered about this question of inducement. 
 She lingered too persistently on the theory that all her 
 
 G.C, X
 
 314 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 earlier loves had been nothing but shadows and promises 
 of himself. The simplest mind and Philip's mind was 
 becoming exhilaratingly rich in suggestion about this 
 time must have come to doubt her insistence on this 
 chief assertion. And Philip, reaching out with a new 
 curiosity to the wonder of human life, presently guessed 
 at an explanation which, if it did nothing more, satisfied 
 the personal test of his own experience. 
 
 He could only guess, as yet. He was too full of curiosity, 
 surprise and admiration to seek the limitations of a tight 
 inclusive theory. But he grasped, to his own comfort, at 
 one or two inferences that in some way fitted their places 
 in the puzzle of his mind. Helene, he thought, was afraid 
 not so much of herself as of her motives. She, too, was an 
 idealist, although she sought love where he, himself, had 
 sought chastity. He had tried to conceal facts; she, 
 the more real springs of impulse without which these 
 phenomenal 'facts' of his could have no existence. He 
 had feared his expression; she, the validity of her desires. 
 He made her altogether too conscious in the picture he 
 drew, but that was inevitable; a result of his masculine 
 weakness for diagram. The consolation of the analogy 
 remained. He had come to the semblance of an excuse 
 for his own madness; he began to recover his pride; he 
 saw, afar off, the first faint light of a love that held 
 dazzling possibilities of happiness. 
 
 Within a fortnight of his desertion of her, Philip's 
 thoughts and desires had turned back to the contemplation 
 of Evelyn. 
 
 His first open quarrel with Helne followed a few days 
 later, but that was subsequently composed by her effort. 
 She was not ready to break with him so quickly. 
 
 They had been dining in a tiny Soho restaurant, had 
 come late and did not finish until well into the slack time 
 between dinners and suppers. The patron, his wife and 
 the one waiter had retired to make their own meal. Philip
 
 THE CONVALESCENT 315 
 
 and Helene had the little room to themselves, and they 
 had that evening no inducement to hurry. They sat on 
 and fell into a long silence. 
 
 'What were you thinking all that long time?' Helene 
 asked at last. 
 
 He answered with a readiness that was all too ingenuous. 
 He had been so deep in his thoughts that he had a little 
 lost his sense of recent history. 
 
 'I was thinking about "New End/" he said. 
 
 Helene' s eyebrows went up. 
 
 'She must have been so frightfully glad to get rid of 
 me/ he explained, with an air of amendment. 
 
 But that aspect of his ruminations pleased her even 
 less than the other. She wanted quite passionately, just 
 then, to maintain the highest estimate of his value; to 
 contemplate him as the long-sought and hardly-attained 
 perfection. 
 
 ' Ach ! ' she ejaculated with a foreign roughness of con- 
 tempt. ' Evelyn is a fool ! ' 
 
 She stabbed him three times with that brief comment; 
 but the only wound that showed the taint of poison was 
 the middle one her careless use of Evelyn's name. He 
 held that name sacred so far as his own speech was con- 
 cerned, and he could not bear to hear Helene treat it like 
 a common thing. 
 
 There was something of the old sullen austerity about 
 him as he replied. 'You don't understand/ he said, and 
 the trick of unconquered physical habit showed again in 
 the stoop of his shoulders, and the tardily suppressed 
 inclination to rest his head in his hands. 
 
 'Perhaps you would like to return to her?' Helne 
 asked; but the possibility of such happiness seemed to 
 him, then, so infinitely remote that this effort failed to 
 wound him. 
 
 ' She would be willing enough, I have no doubt/ Helene 
 continued, trying for another nerve. 
 
 He laughed a stiff little laugh of contempt. 'Which 
 proves you don't understand/ he said. 
 
 'I understand far more than you think/ she returned.
 
 316 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Partly she was fighting the distasteful suggestion that 
 Evelyn regarded Philip with a just tolerant pity; and 
 partly she was pricked by a new-born fear that Philip 
 might regret the loss of Evelyn. Helene could not resist 
 the temptation to taste that improbable gall. No doubt, 
 she hoped to find it turn to sweetness in her mouth. ' Oh ! 
 yes, I know,' she continued, 'you think she, perhaps, 
 despised you at the end. But it was not so. She watched 
 you from the window when we went away. I saw her 
 behind the curtain. It must have been Evelyn it is 
 unlikely Mrs Hunt would have waited there. It was 
 only that she knew you could never truly love her. And 
 she has pride. She would pretend.' 
 
 He listened with an evident eagerness. This was fertile 
 stuff on which to feed his imagination. ' Oh ! no,' he said, 
 trying to lead her on to give him more of this lovely, fan- 
 tastic nonsense; 'I'm sure, quite sure, that she hadn't a 
 particle of .... liking, left for me.' 
 
 'Do you, then, desire that she should "like" you?' 
 Helene asked, returning to the directness of her first 
 probe, and with more effect now, in as much as she had 
 stimulated him to uncover the secret inflammation he 
 had been hiding even from himself. 
 
 'It's too impossible to think about,' he said. 
 
 'Philip, you cannot still care for her?' she pressed him 
 with a quickened anxiety. 
 
 ' Oh ! I've said it's impossible even to think about it,' 
 he replied impatiently. He realised suddenly that this 
 was a subject he could never discuss with Helene. The 
 inflammation had begun to smart, and must be instantly 
 covered again. 'It's ridiculous to talk of such unlikely 
 things.' 
 
 'But, Philip . . . .' 
 
 ' I don't want to talk about it,' he interrupted her, and 
 his tone was a threat. * 
 
 She could not endure that. All her passion flashed out 
 in an explosion of natural anger. ' Oh ! then, you may 
 go back to her, if you wish it,' she said in a voice that 
 must have reached the little party of contemplative resting
 
 THE CONVALESCENT 317 
 
 diners on the other side of the serving hatch. 'Now, 
 that I have taught you, you might, perhaps, manage 
 better next time. So ! Go and beg her to forgive you. 
 As for me, I have finished with you.' 
 
 She had prepared her exit as she spoke, standing up, 
 turning her face to the leprous mirror behind her, and 
 paragraphing the quick sentences of her speech with 
 vivid movements of active hands that flew about their 
 duties of arranging her for the street. 
 
 Her manner of leaving the room was a dramatised and 
 more emphatic version of the insulting ' Ach ! ' with which 
 she had introduced the subject of Evelyn. 
 
 At the crash of her going, the tired waiter emerged 
 attentive and uninquisitive, the personal concerns of his 
 customers shut out from him by the screen of his bill 
 block and pencil. He was serene as a tolerant god. 
 Philip might go forth to the committal of any crime after 
 he had paid the modest tribute of his bill for the dinner. 
 For five and twopence he could obtain an inclusive dis- 
 pensation, provided always that the crime was committed 
 away from the holy premises of the patron. 
 
 But Philip was not greatly disturbed by Helene's sudden 
 outbreak of temper. Either he recognised it as being in 
 the accepted manner proper to their relations, or was 
 become indifferent to her favour. And he had ceased to 
 inquire into his own motives or sensations before he had 
 gone fifty yards down Shaftesbury Avenue. He was 
 alone with this glory of life, the magical thing that had 
 been presented to him without preparation, as if the 
 enticing labyrinthine ways of it, once seen flat and grey 
 and out of drawing, had suddenly taken depth, colour 
 and solidity; so that he stood no longer as an unwilling 
 spectator of a tedious simulacrum, but could explore and 
 adventure into ever new and more delightful depths of 
 participation.
 
 318 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Until now, the element of a distracting personality had 
 perpetually snatched at the skirts of his attention. This 
 evening for the first time he could abandon himself with- 
 out a single drag or preoccupation to the rapture of 
 watching the marvellous ways of humanity. 
 
 He went no deeper than observation. The repose of 
 his body made no demand upon him; and he needed, 
 could, indeed, hardly imagine any greater satisfaction 
 than the exciting activities of his own brilliant sensations. 
 In the old days he had sought beauty in the more extra- 
 vagant culminations of form and colour; now, there was 
 nothing ugly left in all the world. The dingy window of 
 a neglected warehouse, the grimiest beggar whining a 
 furtive plea for help, were figures of inspired reality, not 
 less than the iridescent stain of petrol that damascened 
 the cold purple of the asphalte, or the vision of conquering 
 youth, excitedly leaving the theatre. 
 
 All apparent discords and ugliness were, it seemed to 
 him, but accentuations of the eternal rhythm; the necessary 
 beat of an undertone; God's counterpoint .... 
 
 He had relaxed from the tensity of that exalted 
 happiness when he got back to the hotel rather before 
 midnight. The spirit of ecstasy was slowly draining 
 away, leaving him tired and content. He hardly knew 
 whether or not he expected to find Helene. He was 
 prepared to meet her or to endure the realisation that 
 she had left him, with equal fortitude. Either alternative 
 promised its balance of compensation. 
 
 He was, however, forewarned before he entered the 
 bedroom. The lift-boy remembered Mrs Maning's return 
 'oh ! a 'our or more ago'; and he looked up at Philip as if 
 that simple statement might be enriched if any encour- 
 agement were forthcoming. 
 
 Philip only nodded. 'As long as that,' he commented 
 absently. He was thinking that the lift-boy with his
 
 THE CONVALESCENT 319 
 
 peaked face and brown eyes was very like a pert, engaging 
 squirrel. What a pity that one must give him sixpence 
 instead of telling him that one regarded him with loving 
 admiration as a wonderful expression of the great Hope ! 
 
 Helene greeted him as if no interval had elapsed since 
 their parting in Soho. She was still fully dressed, and the 
 movement with which she turned as he came into the 
 room, was a natural continuation of the flaunting contempt 
 of her exit from the restaurant. Just so might she have 
 turned if he had called her back at the door three hours 
 earlier. 
 
 She had, perhaps, intended to treat him to a performance 
 of the full orchestra of her accomplishments, to display the 
 amazing gamut of her possibilities, before she forgave and 
 re-indentured him to her service. Whatever her intention 
 she obviously changed her response when she saw the 
 vague, dreamy contentment of his face. 
 
 ' Pheleep ! ' she said, dropping from the stiffness of 
 opposition to an unexpected suppleness of entreaty; 
 'Where have you been, so long? I have been waiting 
 and waiting. I had a terrible presentiment that you 
 might never return.' 
 
 He had for her the same tender smile with which he 
 had greeted the lift-boy. 'I've been walking about 
 London,' he said. 
 
 'All the time?' she asked, with a quick suspicion. 
 
 'All the time,' he replied with a calmness that forbade 
 doubt. 
 
 'But why? ' she persisted. 'Were you so angry? Was 
 it that you must wear yourself out before you came back? ' 
 
 'Oh! no. I wasn't at all angry,' he said. 'I've been 
 looking at Life. I have never seen it before. It amazes 
 me.' 
 
 'And now, you are tired? ' she asked, soothingly. 
 
 ' Not exactly,' he explained. ' It's rather as if . . .' 
 he reflected on his sensations for a moment before he found 
 his simile ' as if I had been very sound asleep, and woke 
 up rested but rather lazy.' 
 
 He had sat down in one of the stiff arm-chairs that their
 
 320 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 perfectly decorous hotel provided for its married visitors, 
 and she came and knelt by him, took one of his hands in 
 both of hers and looked up at him with a forbearing 
 gentleness. 
 
 ' You are queer, sometimes, Philip,' she said. ' But you 
 are a poet, and so one must make allowance. But I want 
 to understand. I can understand, I think.' 
 
 He was vaguely aware of her magnificent greediness for 
 him. She could not be content until she possessed all he 
 had to offer. She had explored all his physical confessions, 
 now she would invade the last corners of his secret being. 
 Or was it only that she would search him for one hidden 
 beauty, in order that when she found it she might destroy 
 it, though all that was best in him should come away with 
 this precious core of his new life? 
 
 'Tell me all that you were thinking,' she urged, and he 
 felt the demand of her spirit pressing upon him and knew 
 that at all costs he must hide his secret from her. 
 
 'I didn't think;' he began with a reviving eagerness 
 that seemed to display a new lust for expression. 'I just 
 watched and experienced. Everything, to-night, was 
 beautiful in some way. Even the commonest things. 
 It wasn't that they had any particular purpose, as one 
 usually understands it, but just that they were. It was 
 so splendid to look for ugliness and to find that it simply 
 didn't exist . . . .' 
 
 He had found his screen and he continued to build it 
 up between them. She might pretend with wide, 
 entranced eyes and deep breaths of approval, but his 
 ecstasies bored her, because she could not get past them 
 to the one truth that was the single object of her curiosity. 
 Nevertheless, she was astonishingly patient. She flattered 
 him into further embroideries even when he showed signs 
 of weariness; waiting until he had come to the last resources 
 of his mood, before she made her one concentrated effort 
 to surprise the truth from him. 
 
 'And were you glad to be alone? ' she commented softly, 
 with no more evidence of guile than if she were seeking 
 conventional assurance of his longing for herself. And
 
 THE CONVALESCENT 321 
 
 then taking his face in her hands and looking deep into 
 his eyes, she added bitterly, ' Or did you long for Evelyn? ' 
 
 The shock of her change of tone momentarily paralysed 
 him. If she had been a trifle less dramatic, she might 
 have achieved her first purpose of wringing an admission 
 from him. But she had by a shade overdone the emphasis 
 of her suspicion. He was so far staggered by this startling 
 grab at his treasure, that he made no such instinctive 
 gesture of defence as would have betrayed his terror. And 
 that instant of paralysis gave him time to frame his 
 response. He felt rather than knew that his only chance 
 was to lie, magnificently, not by any negative protest 
 but by the pure assertion of the positive act. 
 
 ' No, my sweet, I wanted you,' he said, and giving licence 
 to his half-willing forces, he surrendered himself to the 
 gathering surge of desire. 
 
 He held her so closely that she cried out against him 
 in ecstatic protest. 
 
 For the time she was happy again; believing that she 
 had attained her absolute. 
 
 But, for Philip, that night marked the insurgence of the 
 new ideal. As once some tortured longing for chastity 
 had come between him and his wife; so, now, the thought 
 of Evelyn began to thrust itself between him and He'le'ne. 
 The familiar symptoms were soon returning; the old 
 reluctance, the old sense of reproach after the reluctance 
 had been overcome. Yet the difference between the old 
 shame and the new was inestimable. It was not fear 
 that ruled him now, but love.>: And as his reactions grew 
 daily more insistent, he was filled no longer with a sense 
 of weakness, but with a kn^Jedge of power. 
 
 For three weeks after that first quarrel with Helene, he 
 still remained with her, gathering courage and control as 
 his pride returned to him. And when he made his declara- 
 tion, she was prepared for it. Her resistance, a 
 remarkable effort that completely deceived Philip, was 
 nothing but the last assertion of her amazing vanity.
 
 322 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 The scene, it can only be described as a scene was 
 played out in the retirement of the stiff hotel bedroom. 
 
 Helene's part in the drama followed the classic tradition; 
 and she demonstrated that the French dramatists have 
 either studied and reproduced a type with painstaking 
 realism, or have by their genius created a language for the 
 expression of such emotions as Helene wished to display. 
 (The interactions of art and nature have become so complex 
 that the task of disentangling cause or motive is like un- 
 picking and re-sorting the threads of a tapestry. The 
 analogy may be carried just so far as the conclusion that 
 when the thing is done, nothing is gained by it.) 
 
 Philip, on the other hand, might have stood as the 
 exemplar of modern English fiction. He spoilt every 
 climax by his obstinate disregard of precedent. Helene's 
 splendours increased his self-consciousness instead of 
 warming him to the fine, dramatic responses that would 
 have given her the opportunity to surpass herself. But 
 if he let the whole scene down, by his inability to act, his 
 failure was responsible for the nice irony of her final effort. 
 
 It was Philip who chose the time and place for what he 
 timorously foreshadowed as an 'explanation'; but it was 
 Helene alone who was responsible for the earlier movement 
 of the piece. She knew precisely the form and content 
 of his promised explanation and intended, if possible, to 
 nullify it. 
 
 She began by a voluble accusation that cast him in the 
 part of the romantic seducer, and rose from that intro- 
 ductory essay to a rendering of the disillusioned and 
 desolated heroine. She threw herself on the bed and 
 sobbed with effective abandon at the conclusion of this 
 second paragraph. 
 
 Philip endured this opening in silence; less astonished 
 than he should have been and quite exasperatingly un- 
 convinced.
 
 THE CONVALESCENT 323 
 
 She must, however, have anticipated that attitude in 
 him, and it seems probable that the whole of her prologue 
 was nothing more than an immense plunging into emotion 
 in order to feel her way to the really moving plea that 
 followed. She came to it something too suddenly, a 
 weakness necessitated by the fact that she had no support 
 in filling the pauses between a change of action, and she 
 had to cross the full width of the stage from the bed 
 to the arm-chair by the fireplace but when she had 
 fairly entered the critical movement, her method was un- 
 impeachable. 
 
 She began quickly by cancelling all that she had said 
 until then. ' Pheeleep ! ' she implored him, kneeling before 
 him in the same attitude that had proved so successful 
 three weeks earlier; 'I did not mean it. Forgive me. I 
 love you so. All my life I have loved only you, and now, 
 if you leave me, I cannot bear it, indeed, I cannot.' 
 
 She did not want him any longer. She knew that all 
 the joy she had ever had from him was spent and irre- 
 coverable. But her vanity would not permit her either 
 to be turned off as a discarded mistress, or, more urgently, 
 to accept the least blame for the final parting. She had in 
 reserve one gesture that she intended presently to display; 
 but before that she meant, if it were possible, to make him 
 plead to her, beg her to take him back into her embrace. 
 She failed simply because, from first to last, Philip was 
 incapable of insincerity. 
 
 He was deceived by the earnestness with which she 
 besought him. After the perplexed embarrassment caused 
 by her meaningless accusation of him as a seducer, he had 
 hardly a doubt of her integrity. He believed that she 
 wanted to keep him; but he could not respond. 
 
 'Helene, it isn't possible,' he said when he got his first 
 real opportunity. She renewed her pleading, then, with 
 fresh vigour, and it was, perhaps, five minutes before he 
 was able to enlarge his statement. 
 
 ' Oh ! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry/ he continued in deep dis- 
 tress. 'But you knew from the very beginning that I 
 didn't really love you. I said so at "New End." '
 
 324 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 She drew back at this crude denial of her whole case, 
 but she was not yet quite exhausted. 
 
 'At "New End," yes,' she retaliated; 'but how many 
 times since have you told me that you loved me better 
 than all the world?' 
 
 ' I know,' he admitted. The excuse for those protesta- 
 tions was clear enough in his own mind, but he could not 
 hurt her by saying that he had not been responsible for 
 anything he had said or done in the past five weeks. 
 
 'Well, then?' she instigated him, sitting back on her 
 heels and waiting for his impossible explanation. 
 
 'I've no excuse/ he confessed, miserably. 
 
 'Philip, you do not mean it?' she tried again, seeing 
 him so downcast. 'You cannot mean that we must 
 separate?' 
 
 'I do,' he returned doggedly. However disgraced by 
 her just recriminations, he would not let go his purpose. 
 
 And Helene would not ask him 'Why?' any more than 
 would Evelyn on a former occasion. Helne had no wish 
 to hear his reason. She preferred to disbelieve it. She 
 did not guess that even her almost unlimited powers of 
 persuasion would never have induced him to betray his 
 sacred secret. 
 
 She pondered him, the situation, and all that had been 
 said, for a moment or two and came, apparently, to the 
 conclusion that she was at the end of her resources. He 
 had defeated her in the essential particular. She could not 
 wring one last protestation of love from him. Nothing, 
 now, remained but to leave him finally degraded. 
 
 She got up slowly with an effect of climax. 
 
 ' I do not see why I should fatigue myself further,' she 
 said. 'Truly you are not worth it. But I have been 
 sorry for you. You do not know your own mind for two 
 days together. As Evelyn told me, you are almost im- 
 becile. But I am like that, when I love, I love altogether, 
 without reserve. I would not believe Evelyn when she 
 told me you were mad. I make a hero of you in my 
 mind, and it is yourself alone who could prove to me how 
 foolish I have been.'
 
 THE CONVALESCENT 325 
 
 ' Oh ! and I know three weeks ago,' she continued with a 
 warmer impatience. 'After we quarrel in the restaurant, 
 I wrote, then, to my husband in America, and three or 
 four days since I have his answer begging me to return 
 to him. He has, it seems, made another fortune, in New 
 York. He has sent me money to return to him. But 
 still I give you another chance, because I who can love so 
 truly must always believe that others, also, are faithful, 
 too. But with you it is all sensation, you cannot under- 
 stand love. You are too mean to comprehend it. You 
 demand everything and give nothing.' 
 
 She had convinced herself of being guided by the purest 
 motives, and had humiliated him. Her instinct for climax 
 demanded that she should end there, before she spoilt 
 her effect by repetition. 
 
 'Will you, please, leave me?' she concluded with fine 
 dignity. 'It disgraces me to see you in this room.' 
 
 He would have spoken again, but she forbade him. 
 
 ' Please go ! At once ! ' she commanded. 'I do not 
 wish to hear the sound of your voice ever again.' 
 
 She had, at least, succeeded in the better part of her 
 vindication. He went, bearing all the marks of humilia- 
 tion. She could not know that he had a dreadful fear 
 lest she should call him back.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 
 
 HE took two furnished rooms on the first floor of a 
 pleasant-looking house in Torrington Square. The sun, 
 when it showed itself, as it did comparatively rarely in 
 the summer of 1909, came into his sitting-room soon 
 after one o'clock; and in the afternoon he often sat at 
 his window and stared out at the plane trees in the Square 
 gardens. He had always punctually renewed his Reader's 
 Ticket for the British Museum, and he spent his mornings 
 there, studying the poets he had so far missed; Shelley, 
 Keats, Swinburne, Byron and Browning, and, with a 
 backward glance, quite a host of the Elizabethans and 
 their immediate successors, such as Donne, Ben Jonson 
 and Herrick. He dined out at various little restaurants 
 in the evening and afterwards walked about London. 
 
 He was investigating the subject of Love, as a prepara- 
 tion for beginning life afresh. He was quite unaware that 
 he was 'studying' Love, in so far as the word 'study' 
 implies purpose or design. It was just that the subject 
 filled his thoughts and he could give his attention to 
 nothing else. Also, he wanted very earnestly to 
 understand where and how and why he had so wretchedly 
 failed as a lover. He was sure, now, that the fault was 
 not in himself. If Fate were kind to him, he could still, 
 he knew, be the perfect lover of one woman .... 
 
 His admirable plan was as incidental as his choice of 
 theme. He had brought no intellectual consideration to 
 the arrangement of his method; and he did not realise 
 that as his day was divided, it revealed successively the 
 three roads to knowledge : the first of them by way of the 
 records of human expression, the second by introspection, 
 
 326
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 327 
 
 and the third by observation of the world about 
 him. The order of his scheme was arbitrarily fixed by 
 the fact that he found the Museum Reading Room more 
 empty in the morning; that he preferred the afternoons 
 for solitary thought in Torrington Square because of the 
 westward aspect of the house; and that the summer 
 evenings seemed to him to display most instantly the 
 material for observation. At night, Love walked the 
 London streets in the thinnest possible disguise. He 
 rarely spoke to anyone, man or woman, in his evening 
 explorations. He watched and tried to understand. 
 
 Some aspects of this universal love-making were easily 
 comprehensible to him, now; others were more difficult. 
 He could, for instance, feel in sympathy with the rather 
 coarse ecstasies of a young man and woman from the 
 East End, behind whom he rode on the outside of an 
 omnibus one July night. He followed them all the way 
 to the Bank, although he was going home and had intended 
 to get down at Bloomsbury Street. He could realise, in 
 that example, how these two young lovers were living 
 their desire for beauty. But he found it hard, at first, 
 to feel any proper appreciation for the furtive sexual traffic 
 of Piccadilly and Regent Street. He knew that there 
 must be some hidden aspect of beauty in that also, but 
 it continued to evade him, so long as he remained a mere 
 observer. The realisation of this failure eventually drove 
 him to make an experiment in conversation. 
 
 With extreme diffidence, he responded one evening to 
 the smiling invitation of a stout Frenchwoman and 
 followed her to the hired room in Soho which served her 
 for the purposes of a hotel. She received the halting 
 explanation that it was conversation only that he was 
 seeking, with a preliminary jerk of suspicion, but when 
 she had reassured herself that he represented no Vigilant 
 or Purity Association and was willing to pay generously 
 for his entertainment, she responded with an amused 
 condescension. 
 
 He came away from that interview with many new 
 conclusions, chief among them the strange suggestion
 
 328 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 that the whole business was far less important than he 
 had imagined. He saw that his old delusion of dwelling 
 too urgently on the physical was still apt to dominate 
 him, on occasion. Once she had discarded the arts of her 
 profession, that stout courtesan had been revealed as a 
 very simple woman. She had told him a long irrelevant 
 story of her younger brother who was an apothecary in 
 Brussels; and she had kissed him at parting with the 
 warm affection of a true friend; admitting that she had 
 spent a very pleasant evening. 
 
 Also, she had given him a glimpse of the average young 
 man's hidden yearning for woman's society. Philip, it 
 appeared, was not the first who had come to her merely 
 for conversation. 'They wish sometimes to display 
 themselves,' she had said in a phrase that was happily 
 ambiguous; and Philip feeling his way to sympathy with 
 a mind that was, perhaps, a trifle too sensitive, had 
 understood something of the suppressed youths' craving 
 for expression. All the intercourse of their lives was 
 glazed with assumptions that they knew to be false. The 
 coarse jeers at sex in their associations with men were 
 evidence of restraints and pretences not less artificial 
 than the polite negations of their converse with young 
 suburban women. Both disguises were assumed to hide 
 such urgent needs as those shown by this desire to confess 
 to a woman from whom they expected neither praise nor 
 blame, but merely comprehension. She had represented 
 for them, perhaps, the all- wise, all-loving mother, and, 
 indeed, Philip had recognised that mother spirit in her 
 when once her last suspicion of him had been laid 
 aside .... 
 
 And, after that conversation, Philip began more hope- 
 fully to turn his thoughts in a new direction. He could 
 never hope to see these permeating subtleties of sex, clear 
 and whole; but he had, he believed, swept from his mind 
 many of the deplorable errors that had so far obscured 
 his outlook. He was preparing himself for the new life 
 that he longed so ardently to spend with Evelyn; and he 
 felt that the time was soon coming when he might plead
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 329 
 
 for her forgiveness. He was becoming daily more sure of 
 himself and he had never doubted her. 
 
 His immediate trouble in those last days of July, some 
 nine weeks after he had left 'New End,' was to find a 
 means to approach her. He had already begun to write 
 to her, not a letter, but a long account of himself that 
 had taken the form of a rather disconnected series of 
 notes. His most earnest desire in that period of violent 
 reaction, was to achieve a perfect honesty, and in making 
 the attempt he discovered, incidentally, that the instru- 
 ment of language was inadequate to convey all that he 
 wished to write. Genius might have achieved much by 
 subtle suggestion through a wider range of imagery, but 
 not even genius can say all. 
 
 Philip, struggling to write the truth, found that he 
 could not express a tenth of what was in his mind. 
 Furthermore, what he could and did write appeared to 
 him both too obvious and too ugly. Something of the 
 fact of his old obliquity came out but nothing of the 
 change since his confession to Helene nothing, that is 
 to say, that he considered worth keeping. He was con- 
 stantly being torn between his eagerness to be honest, 
 and a foolish tendency unduly to belittle himself. Page 
 after page was destroyed because when he came to read 
 over his notes, he was confronted by a vision of a quite 
 repulsive humility. 
 
 ' It's the old trouble in a new form,' he said to himself. 
 'Once I was ashamed of my body; now, I'm pretending 
 to be ashamed of my spirit.' 
 
 Also, he was intrigued, just then, by the idea that he 
 had suffered some immense change, that he was not the 
 same person that he had been before he went away with 
 Helene. He was aware of new feelings, of a clearer mind, 
 of a freed leap of imagination; and it seemed to him that 
 his very personality and character had been miraculously 
 transfigured. 
 
 But the truth is a truth he never thought of trying to 
 state in his notes that he was precisely the same Philip 
 Maning he had always been. He had changed his opinion 
 G.C. Y
 
 330 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 on one subject, that was all; as another man might have 
 changed his religion or his politics. The effect upon 
 Philip's relations with humanity was exceedingly great, 
 but the effect upon that strange complex which he referred 
 to when he said 'myself,' was almost negligible. One 
 form of expression had given place to another; but his 
 character, the sum and balance of his innate tendencies, 
 limitations and potentialities, was unalterable, in kind. 
 Growth and development were coming to him, as they 
 may come with sudden urgency to the flowering of a late 
 spring; and he mistook this delayed burgeoning for a 
 change of species a fundamental misapprehension, not 
 conducive to a clear statement of the truth in writing. 
 
 It was at the beginning of the short burst of fine weather 
 which came that year during the first week in August, 
 that he gave up the attempt to explain himself in writing 
 and decided to go down to ' New End ' and speak to Evelyn 
 face to face. He had little confidence in his power of 
 making explanation by his spoken words, but his long 
 exercise in self-examination had convinced him that she 
 must instantly recognise the change in him. As he im- 
 aginatively pictured their meeting, she would look up, 
 and know, forgiving him both for his old blindness and for 
 his unfaithful act. Afterwards, through long delicious 
 days of happiness, he could make it all clear to her. She 
 would help him to find new ways of interpretation. 
 
 He would go to her as a penitent child to its all-wise, 
 all-loving mother; not with specious promises of amend- 
 ment, but with the wide-armed declaration of devotion 
 that would include all possible compliances. 
 
 The vision of that perfect reconciliation came to him 
 one evening in Torrington Square. He had not been out 
 that day, and he sat by the open window watching the 
 black outlines of roofs and chimneys against a sky that 
 slowly dipped its pennants of lake and cardinal, clearing 
 up the gala flags of sunset in preparation for the grave 
 solemnity of the waiting darkness. 
 
 And presently when the sweet, pale lamps of Heaven 
 came to keep watch above the copper glare of London, a
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 331 
 
 sense of wonderful satisfaction and rest came to him. 
 He sat on, serene and idle, until the sombre glow in the 
 south-west died with the recession of the great human 
 tide of pleasure-seekers, until the sound of tinkling han- 
 soms and clattering hoofs had ceased, and his exquisite 
 mood of tranquillity was taken up by the broad enclosing 
 sweep of night. 
 The stars had come a little nearer. 
 
 The morning found him filled with an impatience that 
 now and again flared into irritability. The first practicable 
 train for Sutton-Parslow left Euston at half-past ten and 
 he could not keep his mind from rehearsing the detail of his 
 meeting with Evelyn. 
 
 At any time in the past week the thought of that meeting 
 had been a delight; but, now, in the nearness of antici- 
 pation, the prospect of it had taken on the hard dry outlines 
 of reality. He saw his arrival at 'New End,' his entry 
 through the monastic door in the wall, and himself suddenly 
 alone and unprepared to meet the inquisition of whatever 
 might be peering at him from behind the ambush of all 
 those blank, staring windows. He could not decide, 
 moreover, the essential point of whether he should regard 
 himself as a visitor and ring his own front-door bell? 
 And if he walked in and could not at once find Evelyn, 
 or found her in company with nurse or Mrs Hunt, how 
 could he in the first case, summon her, or in the second 
 break through the constraint of their first greeting? He 
 realised with an unpleasant feeling of nervousness that 
 he was not well prepared to meet nurse or Mrs Hunt. If 
 he could but separate Evelyn and himself from the terrors 
 of the immediate world, lift her into some splendid isola- 
 tion, all would be well. 
 
 Suppose Edgar Norman were there? 
 
 Philip had finished breakfast by nine o'clock; he could 
 not reach ' New End' until half-past twelve, and he realised
 
 332 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 that if he spent three and a half hours in this anticipatory 
 fretting, he would come to his meeting with Evelyn in a 
 nervous, irritable state of mind that might produce a very 
 unfavourable first impression. He was annoyed with his 
 own mental processes. He had experienced a strange 
 peace of mind during the past eleven weeks; neither the 
 stormy scenes with Helene nor the reflections on his own 
 misbehaviour had once produced the effect of irritation. 
 Now it seemed as if that old tormenting itch of the brain 
 was beginning again; as if some alien thing restlessly 
 re-settled itself in its familiar nook. He thought of the 
 parable of the man who left his house swept and garnished, 
 and wondered if, should Evelyn refuse him, his own last 
 state would be worse than the first. 
 
 What he did not, then, fully understand, was that for 
 three months he had been living out of the world, and 
 that this morning marked his return to the normal exigen- 
 cies of life. He was like a religious convert, facing the 
 practical issues of his change of faith, after long weeks of 
 meditative retreat. 
 
 He stood at the open window for a time, looking out at 
 the sunlit trees in the Square garden, and when he turned 
 back into the room again, the gloomy pucker had gone 
 from his forehead. ' I must have faith/ he said to himself, 
 as one who makes a great discovery. He did not complete 
 his creed in words, but the true object of his faith was 
 Evelyn's all-embracing charity in the thought of that 
 all the trivial obstacles that barred his approach to her 
 were nothing more than incentives to action. 
 
 ' I must have faith/ he repeated, ' and I must be strong 
 and unafraid/ Already something of his cloistered peace 
 had returned to him. 
 
 He began the true re-encounter with his old world on 
 the platform of Sutton-Parslow station. He was not quite 
 sure and he hopefully tried one or two more or less satis- 
 factory explanations, but he had an unpleasant misgiving
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 333 
 
 that the station-master had cut him. His ticket had 
 been taken from him with a sour scowl, and when he had 
 volunteered the statement that it was a ' lovely day, ' no 
 answer had been returned. The station-master had 
 always been rather a morose individual, it is true; and he 
 might have been particularly worried and absent-minded 
 this morning; but there had been something in the 
 appearance of lumpish indignation with which he had 
 turned from Philip's advances, that was more than a 
 little disconcerting. 
 
 As Philip set off up the familiar road, so near, now, as 
 he believed, to the object of his quest, he was aware for 
 the first time of a cold doubt as to how the neighbourhood 
 might regard his recent delinquencies. He had not, until 
 then, once thought of the neighbours. 
 
 The doubt was further deepened while he was still 
 half-a-mile from 'New End.' He met two young women 
 from the village at the turn of the road and when they 
 saw him their faces flamed to a sudden scarlet. They 
 ducked their heads convulsively and moved closer together 
 when he attempted a nod of recognition; and after they 
 had gone by, he heard an outburst of astonished ejaculation 
 that punctuated a slightly hysterical giggling. They be- 
 haved, in fact, as if they had unexpectedly encountered 
 something quite distinctly improper. 
 
 ' It was ! I tell yer/ drifted back to him as a sample of 
 their comment on the meeting. He could fill in the reply 
 to that for himself, the pretended opposition designed to 
 stimulate further reassurances. ' 'E'd never 'ave the face/ 
 was what the other girl would have said. His coming was 
 a splendid excitement to them; it would enliven the dull- 
 ness of their conversation for days. They would go about 
 the village telling their story and provoking amazed denials. 
 They would tell how they had met him coming up from the 
 station 'as bold as brass,' and how he had greeted them 
 with a smile. ' I went 'ot all over,' they would say, as 
 if the sight of him had been as the sight of something 
 thrillingly obscene. 
 
 He kept his eyes on the ground and walked more quickly.
 
 334 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 His heroic mood of the last few weeks could not be revived 
 in the teeth of this wind of criticism and condemnation 
 that was blowing from every cottage in Sutton-Parslow. 
 He had been so wrapt in contemplation of his own delivery 
 that he had never considered how the great stirring, prying 
 world that hemmed in Evelyn and himself, would judge 
 him. If he had thought of that, he might not have had 
 the ' face ' to come back, here, to the scene of his dishonour. 
 Yet he knew that he was a cleaner-minded, saner man 
 than he was in the days when he had been regarded as a 
 normal example of virtue. And knowing it, he knew also 
 that he could never prove it to the village. He was 
 branded with the scarlet letter, and there was probably 
 not a soul in the whole parish who would ever look below 
 the surface of that flaming mark of shame .... 
 
 He realised with a cold shiver of doubt that he had come 
 to the high wall of the 'New End' garden. As he laid his 
 hand on the latch of the monastic door, he sought con- 
 solation in the recital of his new creed. 'I must have 
 faith,' he murmured; 'and I must be strong and unafraid.' 
 He paused for still another moment to add a new clause. 
 'She will understand/ he said. 
 
 He had meant to rush his attack; to run up the flagged 
 path, fling open the front door, and then, if he did not 
 find Evelyn in the sitting-room, boldly to call to her in a 
 voice that should ring a triumphant claim to her through- 
 out the stubborn, resisting house. But even as the oak 
 door swung inwards, the realisation of unanticipated 
 disaster swept over him. The chinks between the flags 
 bristled with a vivacious disorder of thistles, plantain 
 and dandelion; the lawns were rank with uncut grass; 
 the roses were choked by the bold flaunting thrust of the 
 conquering briar; and the house, with jalousies tight 
 closed over every window, seemed to look discreetly down 
 with lowered eyelids, a figure of shocked and disillusioned 
 mourning. 
 
 He stood cold and aghast on the stone sill of the gate- 
 way, and miserably stared at this wreck of his own making. 
 But surely he should have known that he would not find
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 335 
 
 her there. How could she have stayed to endure the 
 gossip of the village? 
 
 He turned with a low sigh of overwhelming disappoint- 
 ment and carefully closed and latched the oak door, as if 
 he would bar the sight of that pathetic chaos from the 
 view of any chance passer-by. Already, his mind was 
 turning to the thought of his new direction. She had 
 gone from the village and, perhaps, that was a good omen. 
 He could never have lived again within the fenced re- 
 spectabilities of Sutton-Parslow. Now, he had to search 
 the world for her; and it might be that their meeting 
 would be among more favourable surroundings than those 
 which were drenched with the bitter remembrances of his 
 shame. 
 
 He looked up to see the bellying figure of Edgar Norman, 
 standing stock-still within five yards of the gate, his face 
 blank with the affronted surprise of a gross, insulted 
 schoolboy. 
 
 Philip stiffened and returned the stare with a fierce 
 scowl of challenge. He felt suddenly braced by this 
 meeting. He had to meet the opposition and miscon- 
 structions of the world. It was hopeless ever to think 
 of making an explanation. The story of his whole life 
 was involved and nothing less could be offered. And it 
 seemed in some way appropriate that his great encounter 
 should begin with this particular confrontation. He 
 remembered with extraordinary clearness the scene in 
 Piccadilly when Edgar Norman had shrunk in terror 
 against the railings of Apsley House. 
 
 'I say, Norman,' Philip said in a clear, bold voice; 'can 
 you tell me where my wife is living, now?' 
 
 He had not intended to open his challenge with that 
 question, but the urgency of his quest thrust out through 
 all restraints. 
 
 The figure of Edgar Norman quivered slightly, like a 
 gently shaken mould of brawn, and the pink flush of 
 exercise in the hot sun, drained visibly away from his 
 great cheeks. But the champion of women was not to 
 be intimidated without a struggle. ' Unutterable cad ! '
 
 336 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 he ejaculated, and stood still, tremblingly awaiting Philip's 
 assault. 
 
 ' I asked you a question,' Philip said and moved a couple 
 of steps nearer. 
 
 Norman blenched almost imperceptibly, and glanced 
 uneasily over his shoulder. Help was coming. The 
 figures of his father and mother were already in sight, 
 strolling deliberately up the lane. 
 
 'Wouldn't give Mrs Maning's address, you save my 
 soul from Hell/ he said clearly. 
 
 Philip shrugged his shoulders. He had seen the enemy 
 reinforcements bearing down upon him, and he was seeking 
 some epithet that should sum up all his contempt for this 
 flabby soul before him. The man was silly, oh ! pitifully 
 inane, but all the insults one could pile upon him would 
 never convince him of his drivelling ineptitude. Philip 
 lifted his head with a toss of pride. He must not con- 
 descend to bandy insults. There was but one ambition 
 for him, to find Evelyn. She, alone, could understand 
 him .... 
 
 He walked past Mr and Mrs Blenkinsop with an air of 
 preoccupied disdain, but he was aware of the intolerant 
 swerve with which they gave him the road. 
 
 He went on to the Post Office, from which he and Evelyn 
 had despatched that famous telegram to the still unknown 
 'Punch,' who had proved so uninquisitive a landlord. 
 The post office was his last hope in Sutton-Parslo\v ; but 
 there, too, he received a curt rebuff. 
 
 'Will you give me Mrs Maning's present address?' he 
 asked, covering, he hoped, all his sensitive shrinking by 
 a tone of authority. 
 
 Mrs Rawlins, the post-mistress, turned her back on him. 
 
 'Any letters addressed to Mrs Maning, here, will be 
 forwarded,' she said over her shoulder. 
 
 'But I want to know . . . .' Philip began again, 
 and stopped because Mrs Rawlins had retreated into the 
 privacy of her back premises.
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 337 
 
 He remembered that there was no train back to town 
 until a quarter past two. He had an hour and a half to 
 wait, and nowhere to go. He was a pariah in this place, 
 a thing to be stared at and spat upon. Evelyn had always 
 been popular in the village, and he had not; and now the 
 whole population was congratulating itself on its insight. 
 ' We never liked him,' the people would say. 
 
 He decided to walk back to the next station which 
 served the little hamlet of Burdon. Perhaps, the story 
 of his infamy had not travelled as far as that. Burdon 
 was more than four miles from Sutton-Parslow, and he 
 and Evelyn had only been out there twice. 
 
 He took no thought of the fact that he had had nothing 
 to eat since breakfast and that the 2.15 would not get him 
 to Euston until nearly four o'clock. Before he had walked 
 a mile he had forgotten everything but the necessity for 
 finding Evelyn without delay. He could write to her, 
 of course, but that meant a long postponement. More- 
 over, he disliked the thought of writing to ask her to see 
 him. He could not begin any sort of explanation in a 
 letter and she might refuse to give him her present 
 address. 
 
 He was ready to acknowledge, now, that she might be 
 unwilling to see him. If the villagers and the Blenkinsops 
 had judged him so hardly, he must be prepared to find that 
 Evelyn, too, was harbouring resentments that might be 
 difficult at first to overcome. It would be so much better 
 in every way if he could come to her unannounced. When 
 she saw him she would forget her resentments and preju- 
 dices in a moment. 
 
 As he walked through the burning glory of the August 
 day, he saw nothing of the rich beauty about him. As 
 once in the dullness of a London night, he had looked for 
 and failed to find one blot of ugliness, so, now, his eyes 
 were closed to beauty. He had but one thought, one
 
 338 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 desire, to find Evelyn. Until he had done that, nothing 
 else existed for him. He did not live, he was but a sentient 
 suffering thing buffeting the enormous opposition of 
 humanity. 
 
 He saw but two more possible ways of getting Evelyn's 
 address without writing to her, and both promised 
 unpleasant judgments from his fellow-men. The first 
 possibility was Evelyn's uncle, Eustace Lang; the second 
 Georgie Wood. The second was, perhaps, more hopeful, 
 but Philip decided to see Lang first. He could be found, 
 for certain, at the Club, at four o'clock. Wood might be 
 anywhere at that hour, but was almost sure to be in his 
 Oxford Street chambers about seven. 
 
 Philip reached the deserted little station of Burdon 
 twenty minutes before the train was due, but he was safe 
 from insult; there was no official here to stare at him with 
 sullen suspicion. Burdon was only a ' halt ' on the branch 
 line, and the guard of the train served its passengers with 
 tickets. 
 
 Critical members of the Old Service Club, and most 
 of the members, as Lang knew very well, had the critical 
 faculty strongly developed were accustomed to find 
 fault with their almost historic premises on the ground 
 that much valuable space had been wasted on the entrance 
 hall and staircase. They would not on any account have 
 had its extent reduced by a single superficial foot, but the 
 subject offered a convenient grumble, when other com- 
 plaints were not toward. 
 
 Philip sitting in that hall on an oak chair that would 
 have borne the weight of a performing elephant, was 
 overcome by the vastness of his waiting-place. He had 
 made his request for an interview with the secretary of 
 one of the two officials who inhabited the glass enclosure 
 by the door, and had seen a small and shining boy in 
 buttons dismissed to the immense task of making his way 
 up the grand staircase in order to submit the request to
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 339 
 
 Mr Lang. The boy had seemed to vanish into the per- 
 spective before he reached the first floor, diminishing into 
 the background of his enormous surroundings like a 
 mounting lark. Then after a brief interval he had 
 gradually waxed into visibility again, had safely accom- 
 plished the magnificent descent, and bulking to the size 
 of average humanity had told Philip that Mr Lang would 
 see him in a few minutes. The boy had then indicated 
 the plaything of the performing elephant on the further 
 side of immensity, with a formal gesture of invitation, 
 and dwindled into the glass enclosure. 
 
 Half an hour had passed since he had received that 
 message and Philip still waited in the decorous amplitudes 
 of the underpopulated hall. The seemly traffic of members 
 and servants hardly modified the broad effect of resounding 
 emptiness. The activities of diminutive humanity, 
 whether entering with a porter's assistance through the 
 double fortress of swing doors that excluded the negligible 
 remainder of London, patiently creeping into and out of 
 the aerial perspectives of the staircase, or flitting with a 
 pitiful pretence of haste across the desert of the parquet 
 floor entirely failed to mitigate the desolation of the 
 hall's aloofness. Men were but moving specks, uneasily 
 stirring in this arena of solitude, like half-torpid flies 
 aroused by a gleam of winter sun. 
 
 But when at last the tiny figure of Eustace Lang emerged 
 from the unknown and began with a neat deliberation to 
 descend the interminable ranks of flat stairs, it seemed to 
 Philip that he came like some tiny god out of a civilised 
 Olympus. He had an air of finished and complacent 
 authority. The quiet spruceness of his correct clothes, 
 the smoothness of his hair, the unassailable correctitude 
 of his confident manner, proclaimed him as moving with 
 perfect serenity in these magnificent surroundings. As 
 he stepped eternally down from his sequestered heights, 
 he conveyed the sense of unlimited importance. He was 
 like the infinitesimal seed at the core of some enormous 
 fruit almost invisible, yet the single end and purpose of 
 the whole astounding proliferation.
 
 340 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 Long before the impressive figure of the little secretary 
 had bulked to life-size on the floor of the hall, Philip had 
 realised the ultimate futility of an attempt to wring 
 Evelyn's address from any member of this world. He 
 persisted rather as an act of self-discipline than because 
 any remnant of hope remained with him. The ordeal of 
 Sutton-Parslow was contemptible compared with this 
 confrontation of society represented by the massed 
 opinions of the Old Service Club. The village could be 
 viewed with something of contempt. The peasants were 
 ignorant and debased, the Blenkinsops a mere figment 
 of self-assertion clinging parasitically to the aristocratic 
 tradition. But Eustace Lang represented the immovable, 
 statuesque mass of the ruling classes; he came backed 
 by the overwhelming prestige of a club for noblemen and 
 gentlemen. There was no means of appeal to that class 
 from below. Flattery and insult alike marked the ap- 
 pellant's inferiority. And Philip, now that he had 
 forfeited his claim to the forbearance that had once been 
 shown to him, could never expect to greet Eustace Lang 
 again on equal terms .... 
 
 'You wanted to see me? ' the composed secretary of the 
 Old Service asked sedately, when he had achieved the 
 ground floor. He might have been addressing a complete 
 stranger. The cool modulation of his tone implied that 
 there was really no need for the supplicant to apologise 
 for bringing the Olympian down from his remote 
 throne. 
 
 'Yes/ Philip answered, 'I want to ask you . . . .' 
 
 Mr Lang interrupted him with a suave, restrained 
 gesture of his hand. 'Not here/ he said, and moved 
 away, leaving Philip to follow him into a severely furnished 
 little waiting-room on the further boundary of the hall. 
 
 At the door of this room the secretary paused, signed 
 Philip to enter and then came in, himself, closing the door 
 behind him. 
 
 'I want to know Evelyn's present address/ Philip 
 began at once. He had come for that and he meant to 
 ask for it, but he knew that he would never get it.
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 341 
 
 Lang stood by the table impassive and remote. 
 'Why?' he asked. 
 
 'I want to see her/ Philip said. He kept his gaze on 
 Lang's face without wavering, and his stare was returned 
 with the absent detachment of one who idly watches 
 some animal posturing behind the bars of its cage. 
 
 ' She does not wish to see you/ Lang replied. 
 
 'She told you that? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Do you mean that she asked you not to give me her 
 address?' 
 
 ' No. I infer that she did not anticipate a request so 
 incongruous and unseemly.' Lang's tone remained per- 
 fectly equable, polite. He might have been gravely 
 dismissing the too enterprising agent of an insurance 
 company. 
 
 'But you can't know that; you couldn't possibly 
 understand all the complications . . . .' Philip 
 began, and broke off before the realisation that nothing 
 short of his whole life story could explain those compli- 
 cations. ' Oh ! this is something that only concerns 
 myself and her,' he continued desperately. ' If you refuse 
 to give me her address, I have nothing more to say to 
 you.' 
 
 'You can write to her at her publisher's the letter 
 would be forwarded/ Lang said with a faint contempt, 
 as if the importunities of his visitor were becoming 
 tiresome. ' I must say, however, that I think you would 
 be better advised to do nothing of the kind. You have 
 done your best to ruin her life, it would be only decent 
 to leave her alone, now/ 
 
 Philip flushed. 'You can't understand/ he said 
 irritably. 
 
 'Quite enough/ returned Lang imperturbably, and his 
 attitude said quite plainly 'If you have nothing else to 
 say, you had better go/ 
 
 'Of course you think . . . / Philip tried and then 
 stopped with a movement of tired impatience. It was 
 so difficult not to make some effort to defend himself.
 
 342 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Oh! it doesn't matter what you think,' he went on, 'or 
 what anyone thinks, except Evelyn. I'm sorry to have 
 brought you down here for nothing.' 
 
 ' It has at least given me the opportunity to warn Evelyn 
 that you intend to persecute her still further/ Lang replied 
 calmly. ' I shall write to her to-night.' He moved to the 
 door and held it open; and then, as Philip made no move- 
 ment, beckoned with an almost imperceptible nod of his 
 head to one of the officials in the glass case a summons 
 that, slight as it was, was obeyed with instant alacrity. 
 
 Lang passed out and away, the neat, plump repre- 
 sentative of authority and all decent opinion, returning 
 with the distinction of his class to the aristocratic solitudes 
 of his administrative centre. 
 
 Philip followed the summoned official and was dismissed 
 with supercilious courtesy to the common streets which 
 were so obviously his proper environment. 
 
 He had suffered the contumely of peasant and aristocrat, 
 now he would seek the judgment of his equal. If Georgie 
 Wood failed him, nothing was left but to write to Evelyn. 
 But Wood must not fail him. He, surely, might be made 
 to understand. 
 
 Unhappily, the task of making Wood understand was 
 immensely complicated by facts of which Philip had no 
 knowledge; and it seemed at first as if no opportunity for 
 the endeavour would be granted. 
 
 Georgie, trembling with indignation, stood solidly on 
 his own threshold, barring the entrance to his chambers 
 with a very formidable resolution. 
 
 ' Good God ! You ! ' was his greeting, offered in a tone 
 of final outrage and disgust. 
 
 'Yes! I want to see you/ Philip said firmly; and he 
 held his head up and looked Wood in the face with no 
 sign of shame. 
 
 'What for?' was the uncompromising reply. 
 
 Til tell you if you'll let me come in/ Philip said.
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 343 
 
 'Well, if you're asking for my opinion of you, you can 
 have it, here/ Wood returned. 
 
 'I haven't the least interest in your opinion of me/ 
 Philip said. 
 
 Wood raised his voice. 'Because you damned well 
 know it, already/ he said. 
 
 Philip shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' I shall give it you all the same/ Wood went on trying 
 to find relief for his feelings in a mixture of swearing and 
 shouting. His only other choice was physical violence, 
 and he would have preferred that way, but was just too 
 civilised to begin without some more definite provocation. 
 'You're a damned scoundrel, Maning, a a an unmiti- 
 gated rotter/ It was the worst thing he had to say, and 
 he said it three times; ejecting the third repetition as a 
 disgusted bulldog might have coughed up the hair of an 
 ignominiously slaughtered enemy. 
 
 Philip waited quietly until the last rags of his reputation 
 had been spat upon, before he attempted any answer. 
 Wood's fury had not moved him. He wondered 
 inattentively why his former friend should be so 
 outrageously violent, but the abuse had not touched 
 him on any tender spot. His reply when it came was 
 by way of being a counter-thrust. 
 
 ' I thought you called yourself a sportsman/ he said. 
 
 Wood stiffened. ' By God, yes, I do ! ' he returned 
 with an emphasis that reached out to the implication of 
 Philip's definite exclusion from the same category. 
 
 ' And yet you condemn me out of hand without hearing 
 a word in my defence.' 
 
 'Good Lord!' ejaculated Wood, badly handicapped by 
 his incapacity to become articulate. ' Good Lord ! What 
 possible defence can you have for behaving like an ' 
 
 'Unmitigated rotter/ supplied Philip; 'I know. You've 
 said ah 1 that. Now, it seems to me that you might give 
 me a chance. Not to explain. I don't want to defend 
 myself . . . .' 
 
 Wood's sniff of contempt warned him to attempt 
 nothing so futile.
 
 344 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Oh! look here/ Philip continued, 'Haven't you ever 
 done anything that you've been ashamed of?' 
 
 Wood was apparently touched by that. He moved 
 back into the little square box that did duty as a hall. 
 'You'd better come in and have this out,' he grunted. 
 'Only I warn you that I'm jolly well going to tell you 
 what I think of you.' It seemed to have suddenly 
 occurred to him that he had not properly begun that 
 task as yet. 
 
 Philip followed him rather wearily. He was so 
 completely without interest in this promised re-statement 
 of opinion, and so eager to obtain the precious information 
 for the sake of which he was enduring all this ignominy. 
 Nevertheless, he had decided not only to endure but to 
 encourage the coming tirade. He must descend to 
 intrigue. He had an intellectual advantage over his 
 adversary, and he must use it, deliberately. 
 
 He sat down in one of Wood's arm-chairs without wait- 
 ing for an invitation. He had been walking about the 
 streets since he had left the premises of the Old Service 
 Club a little after five; and it was now a quarter past 
 seven. He had felt too sick to eat, sick with anticipation 
 of struggle and with longing to satisfy his quest. 
 
 'Surely you must have realised,' he began without 
 introduction, 'that there must have been some unusual 
 reason for what I did. You know what I think, or used 
 to think about that sort of thing, better than anybody.' 
 
 Wood remained standing by the table, resolutely fierce 
 and stubborn. 
 
 ' Good God, yes, that makes it all the worse/ he said. 
 
 'Does it?' Philip asked. 
 
 ' In a way. I mean you used to rile me infernally 
 before you made a cad of yourself down at "New End," 
 with all that blasted pious rot, going to church. And, 
 well I guessed you were behaving rottenly to Mrs Maning, 
 then. In another way. Anybody could see you didn't 
 care for her not in a decent way.' 
 
 ' Not in the way you cared for her, for example/ Philip 
 put in.
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 345 
 
 'Now look here, Marring/ Wood broke out violently. 
 ' If you dare to say a word against Mrs Maning, by God, 
 I'll half kill you;' and, indeed, he looked as if he would 
 be truly thankful to find a reasonable excuse for physical 
 expression. 
 
 Philip did not wince. He cared nothing for the threat 
 of a thrashing, but he was dismayed, nevertheless, by 
 the sight of Wood's fury. Philip could understand that. 
 In him, too, a desire for physical violence was beginning 
 to manifest itself; and he recognised a passion of jealousy 
 that was the reflection of his own. He had been away 
 from Evelyn for three months. There could be no doubt 
 that Wood had been in love with her for years. It was 
 possible that since his own desertion of her she had counted 
 herself a free woman. If she had gone to any lengths, he 
 was ready to forgive her. She had had every excuse. 
 But as the realisation of all the possibilities came to him, 
 he felt that he would like to see the burly figure of Georgie 
 Wood torn slowly and wickedly to pieces. 
 
 ' Have you seen her lately ? ' Philip asked, ignoring the 
 threat of chastisement. He had controlled himself, but 
 something in the level bitterness of his tone proclaimed 
 his suspicion. 
 
 'What the hell has that got to do with you?' was the 
 instant retort. It was a relief to Wood when he could 
 resort to the familiar cliches. 
 
 ' Oh ! Lots ! ' returned Philip calmly. 
 
 'I don't see it/ Wood replied, maintaining the heat of 
 his indignation. 'You've forfeited every claim on her/ 
 
 'I haven't/ Philip said. 'That is just what you won't 
 understand. And in any case it isn't a question for you 
 or me to decide. She is the only person who can settle 
 that.' 
 
 ' She has settled it/ Wood asserted, and then a doubt of 
 his own honesty most detestably intruding itself upon 
 him, he added quickly, ' You don't mean to tell me you'd 
 have the impertinence to try to see her again ? ' 
 
 'Yes, I do/ Philip said. 
 
 ' But Good God ! ' Wood exploded, could find no strong 
 G.C. z
 
 346 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 enough continuation and began to pace the room, fuming 
 and snorting. 
 
 He was so damnably handicapped by the memory of 
 an interview he had had with Evelyn only a week before. 
 He had confessed himself at last; pleaded that she owed 
 no duty to anyone, now; and had begged her to institute 
 proceedings for divorce. She had refused quietly, but 
 unequivocally, and had forbidden him once again to 
 abuse Philip. She had, nevertheless, been very gentle 
 and tolerant with him. He had left her with the feeling 
 that there was still a possible hope, in time. 
 
 But, now faced by Philip, Wood was conscious of a 
 strange sense of having been disloyal to the man who had 
 once been his friend. It was absurd. It could not stand 
 the test of ordinary common sense. But it persisted. 
 Also, he was not, on reflection, the least convinced, now, 
 that Evelyn cared for himself as a possible second 
 husband. 
 
 'I do want to see her again,' Philip re-asserted. 'I 
 want to explain certain things to her. I want to make 
 every possible restitution that is in my power.' He knew 
 that he was not being quite sincere in thus stating his 
 intentions, but it was absolutely essential to get Wood's 
 attention. 
 
 He had achieved that. ' Restitution ! ' Wood snorted 
 contemptuously, trying to convince himself that it was 
 his duty to prevent Philip from ever seeing Evelyn again. 
 'What possible restitution could you make, my good 
 man?' 
 
 'I want to ask her that,' Philip said. 
 
 'Well, why don't you? What the hell do you come to 
 me for? ' was Wood's just reply. 
 
 'I want you to tell me where I can find her. I don't 
 know where she is.' 
 
 'You can write to her.' 
 
 'I don't want to do that.' 
 
 'No, I suppose you want to go snivelling and posing 
 and pretending you're sorry, and beg her to take you back 
 a cursed difficult thing to do in a letter.'
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 347 
 
 'Impossible,' agreed Philip quietly. 
 
 'God knows why I don't wring your bloody neck,' 
 soliloquised Wood impatiently. 
 
 'Probably because you don't feel that you have a right 
 to,' suggested Philip. 
 
 Wood interrupted his walk with a savage jerk that 
 seemed to threaten the instant execution of his threat. 
 
 ' Is that an insinuation ? ' he asked in the bullying tone 
 of a cross-examining counsel, and spoilt his effect by 
 continuing, 'Because if, as I said before, you dare to in- 
 sinuate one damned thing against Mrs Maning, I'll do it, 
 here and now, at once. And as to having a right to, I've 
 as much right as any decent, self-respecting man.' 
 
 Philip sighed patiently. ' Oh ! wring my neck if you 
 like,' he said. 'I don't see that it would make her any 
 happier. If it would, / certainly shouldn't mind; and I 
 should have the satisfaction of knowing that you'd have 
 your neck wrung afterwards by the common hangman.' 
 
 His complete abandonment was beginning to have its 
 influence on Wood, who could not for ever keep his anger 
 at a temperature when it must just not boil over into 
 action. 
 
 ' Oh ! we're talking rot, now,' he exclaimed impatiently. 
 
 'Absolute rot,' agreed Philip. 
 
 'Well, whose fault is it?' rejoined Wood. 'Why the 
 devil can't you tell me what you want? ' 
 
 ' I have. I want my wife's present address.' 
 
 'What for?' 
 
 'I want to see her.' 
 
 Wood had an inspiration. 'In my presence?' he 
 stipulated. 
 
 It was nothing but a foolish, honest suggestion, 
 prompted by some instinctive desire to protect Evelyn, 
 but it illuminated the whole position for Philip, so far as 
 Wood was concerned. He was suddenly exposed as the 
 thick-headed, devoted watch-dog. Obviously he never 
 had been and never could be anything more. He was in 
 some indefinable way outside the lives of Philip and 
 Evelyn.
 
 348 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'What are you afraid of?' Philip asked, and the first 
 intimation of a smile flickered across his face. The 
 realisation of his own power was coming to him. He 
 was beginning to see more and more clearly that he was 
 master of the situation. 
 
 Wood was declining to mere bluster. ' You ! ' he said. 
 'You won't play the game. You'll try to work on her 
 feelings, and that sort of thing.' 
 
 'And do you propose to act as a kind of chairman or 
 judge, and rule out certain pleas of mine as improper? ' 
 Philip asked. 
 
 'That's damned rot, of course/ muttered Wood. 
 
 'Absolutely damned rot,' Philip repeated. 'Who are 
 you to stand between her and me and decide whether 
 she is to listen to what I have to say to her? ' 
 
 Wood evidently felt that all the advantages he had 
 held at the outset were slipping away from him. He 
 began to clutch a trifle wildly at any foolish evasion. 
 
 ' I can refuse to give you her address, anyway,' he said, 
 sullenly. 
 
 'Oh! yes,' agreed Philip; 'only in that case you must 
 be honest with her. You must tell her that I asked you 
 for it and why you refused.' 
 
 'Of course,' Wood conceded, but his gloomy face re- 
 vealed his aversion to the task. 
 
 'Well, will you do that?' Philip asked. 
 
 'I don't know that I will,' Wood replied. 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 ' She'd be sure to rag me,' Wood said, making immense 
 admissions. 
 
 Philip hugged his inferences eagerly, but he was afraid 
 to press for further revelations. 
 
 'Won't hear a word against you from me,' Wood went 
 on, after a pause, dribbling out these to him detestable 
 truths either from excess of honesty or with some muddled 
 idea of defending Evelyn. 
 
 Philip's heart was thrilling with joy. He had, he 
 believed, needed no confirmation of his boldest estimate 
 of her, but the confirmation was very sweet.
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 349 
 
 'You have practically admitted that everything must 
 be left to her,' he said, trying to conceal his exultation. 
 
 'Only I can't trust you, curse you!' snapped Wood. 
 ' With all your confounded cant and hypocrisy.' 
 
 'When have you known me play the hypocrite?' Philip 
 asked quietly. 
 
 'Oh ! damn it, you can't ever have done anything else/ 
 Wood said. ' How else can you explain the way you have 
 gone on? All that purity humbug, and then going off 
 with a French prostitute ? ' 
 
 The sound of that description warmed Philip's curiosity. 
 Once or twice since his interview at the Club, he had 
 wondered vaguely who had been responsible for telling 
 the story of his desertion. Now, he knew, definitely, 
 that whoever had told, it had not been Evelyn. Surely 
 he had never for an instant been despicable enough to 
 believe that it could have been Evelyn. 
 
 'Who told you all that?' he asked. 
 
 ' That fellow Blenkinsop,' returned Wood vindictively. 
 ' He saw you. You don't deny it, do you? ' 
 
 'No, I don't deny it. He saw me all right,' Philip said. 
 
 ' Well, then ? ' Wood challenged him, with the air of one 
 who poses the unanswerable problem. 
 
 Philip got up. He was near the end of his quest, and 
 all that was still necessary was to conceal as far as possible 
 too open a display of triumph. 
 
 'Yes, it's all true/ he said; 'and I could not begin to 
 defend myself to you. Your judgment has been made 
 and finished with nothing can alter it. That doesn't 
 matter. The point is that you have admitted that you've 
 no sort of right to judge between me and and my wife. 
 She must be allowed to settle her own likes and dislikes. 
 He sank to what may be regarded as a pardonable guile 
 as he went on, ' Can't you trust her to know her own mind? 
 Don't you know her well enough for that? Do you think 
 she'd be influenced by anything / could say, if she 
 despised me. And aren't you sure in your own mind 
 that she does despise me? If you want me'- he paused 
 on the thought of saying 'out of the way/ and rejected it
 
 350 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 as too provocative 'if you want me to be disgraced,' 
 he amended, 'isn't it the quickest way for me to see her, 
 and know the worst? I want to know as much as, per- 
 haps, you do. And that's all I want just to know.' 
 His voice sank on the last sentence. As he uttered it, 
 the aspiration seemed to be all the truth. 
 
 Wood stared down in a moody apathy at the toes of 
 his smart boots. For so big a man he had remarkably 
 neat feet. 
 
 'When do you propose to go? ' he asked. 
 
 'I don't know where it is, yet/ Philip said. 
 
 'Seaford. She's got rooms in the Parade, number 
 forty-eight.' He delivered his secret, at last, in the tone 
 of one who has still something in reserve. 
 
 Philip picked up his hat. ' I shall go by the first train 
 to-morrow morning,' he said, and would have left the 
 room but Georgie suddenly, almost brutally confronted him. 
 
 'And I shall come down in the afternoon,' he said. 
 ' And by God, you'd better look out, then. If you . . .' 
 His inability to describe Philip's probable acts of perfidy 
 fairly choked him. 
 
 Philip was as calm as one who watches the mouthing 
 fury of a bulldog leaping at the end of an unimpeachably 
 reliable chain. 
 
 'All right, I'll look out,' he said. 
 
 'You'd better,' was Wood's last effort. 
 
 Sutton-Parslow would have no more of him, nor Eustace 
 Lang, nor Georgie Wood, nor, perhaps, anyone he had 
 ever known; yet in face of that remarkable unanimity of 
 opinion, Philip still hugged his faith in Evelyn. For 
 many long weeks he had been living with a creation of his 
 own thought; an imaginary, forgiving, comprehending 
 Evelyn who would need no word of explanation from him 
 to understand the wonderful truth of the change that had 
 been wrought, and of the necessity for the unhappy means
 
 PHILIP IN LOVE 351 
 
 by which alone that change could have come. As he saw 
 her, she looked at him and then without a word held out 
 her hands. After that, she might wish to hear his story; 
 if it were but to confirm, perhaps, her own intuitive 
 knowledge. ' Tell me about it,' she might say : ' there must 
 be no more secrets between us.' But the great central 
 fact of his love for her, she would recognise at a glance. 
 
 For Evelyn, alone, in this world of appearances and 
 delusions was real to Philip. In some lives there might 
 be many influences who thus stood apart from the re- 
 mainder of humanity, by virtue of this peculiar relation 
 to each other. But he was aware of but one person who 
 could deserve this description of reality in relation to 
 himself. She was in some way essential to him and he 
 to her. No quarrel could ultimately separate them. 
 They might live at opposite ends of the earth for the rest 
 of their lives, but his destiny would still be inseparable 
 from hers. Whether they hated or loved, they were 
 bound to each other by this tie of mutual recognition. 
 Helene had flashed through his life and was gone and 
 forgotten. Evelyn had been present with him from the 
 moment when he had first seen her in Piccadilly. If 
 they had never met again, she would still have been the 
 one true acquaintance of his life. 
 
 He could not explain the mystery of this truth. He 
 did not attempt to explain it, but he cherished his know- 
 ledge of it as a pearl of eternal and unassailable wisdom. 
 
 He must have been approaching this essential truth, 
 he believed, for years; but not until to-night, in the middle 
 of his conflict with Wood, had the full realisation of all 
 that differentiated his relation to Evelyn from his relation 
 to the rest of humanity astoundingly dawned upon him. 
 Even now, he could find no words with which to describe 
 his new knowledge. It was beyond the reach of words. 
 But he clung to that one phrase as to a key that might 
 presently open for Evelyn, also, the hiding-places of truth. 
 She was real to him as no other person was real. It must 
 follow that he was equally real to her. 
 
 Nothing else, surely, was of any account whatever.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 CODA 
 
 PHILIP caught the 6.20 train from London Bridge. He 
 had had dinner after he left Wood's chambers, and had 
 then gone back to his own rooms in Torrington Square 
 and tried to sleep. But though it seemed that his tired 
 body and brain continually dropped back into some 
 condition of unconsciousness or anaesthesia, his spirit 
 had never ceased to watch with an anxious and dreadful 
 urgency. A dozen times in the night he had started up 
 with a shock of fear, called back from the verge of deep 
 oblivion by the restless watcher who would not permit 
 him to creep beyond that threshold which sets a temporary 
 bar between body and spirit. He had, for this night, to 
 remain within call of that ruling force within him, which 
 may rest but can never sleep. 
 
 It was a quarter past five when he finally awoke, coming 
 out of an age-long dream of distressful endeavour that 
 had driven him half-clothed over a thousand obstacles 
 in order to catch a phantom train that was ever beyond 
 his reach. But he forgot his fatigue in the relief of waking 
 to the knowledge that he had still abundant time, and 
 that his path to the station was through a negotiable 
 reality which would not trick him by a perpetual series 
 of illusions. He had come back to the welcome law and 
 order of the common world, and within a few hours he 
 would certainly meet Evelyn face to face. In the haunted 
 reminiscences of his waking it appeared to him as if he 
 had been seeking her all his life long. 
 
 And in the train he really slept, so peacefully and so 
 deeply that if an inquisitive guard had not routed him 
 out at Lewes, Philip would certainly have gone on to the 
 
 352
 
 CODA 353 
 
 terminus at Hastings. Perhaps the watcher of the night 
 had prescience of that guard's activities or it may be that 
 Philip's body had taken advantage of the spirit's confidence 
 that all was now well, and cunningly escaping from super- 
 vision, had ambushed itself beyond recall. 
 
 ' Now then, where for ? ' had been the exasperated 
 inquiry that had dug him out at last, and the tone of 
 it implied a steady crescendo rising by stages to this 
 drastic superlative. 
 
 'Seaford, Seaford,' Philip had returned irritably. He 
 had no sense, then, of danger just averted. As he paced 
 the stark untidiness of Lewes platform, he was surprised 
 at his own insensibility. 
 
 For with that sleep in the train, the pressure of urgency 
 had gone from him. Now that he was so near his destina- 
 tion, he began to feel afraid. The culminating disaster 
 was not that he should delay his sight of Evelyn for a few 
 hours or even for a few days, but that she should not 
 understand him when he arrived. And could he be certain 
 that she would be so ready to forgive? All the evidence 
 of yesterday's experience was against that possibility. 
 They had all of them, from Georgie Wood down to the 
 station-master, given him clearly to understand that they 
 regarded him as an unclean, despicable creature. 
 
 The train was running out of Newhaven when the last 
 trickle of confidence drained out of him. In the cool 
 sunlight of early morning, he sat stripped of all illusions. 
 
 He spent his day until two o'clock at the Imperial 
 Hotel. He had had breakfast there when he arrived, 
 had succeeded in engaging a front bedroom overlooking 
 the Parade, and had spent his morning at the window, 
 hoping to catch a sight of Evelyn and Noel. He had 
 had some idea that he would be able to judge something 
 from her expression. He dared not go out. All his faith 
 and courage were gone from him. He pictured an
 
 354 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 accidental meeting between himself and Evelyn on the 
 sea-front, and invariably saw her turning away from 
 him with contempt. 
 
 Two things finally drove him to make what he could 
 only regard in that hour of disillusion as a forlorn attempt. 
 The first was his thought of Eustace Lang's threat of the 
 warning he intended to send. If Evelyn had received 
 that letter this morning, she might already have gone, 
 have left Seaford sooner than run the risk of a meeting. 
 (It was certainly odd that he should not have seen her 
 all the morning ! Seaford was such a little place and the 
 hotel windows commanded all the most attractive stretch 
 of the parade and beach.) The second influence was the 
 recollection that Wood might be coming down later in the 
 day; and it was the contemplation of that possibility 
 which finally decided the event. Philip could not bear 
 the thought of Evelyn and Georgie Wood being on familiar 
 and friendly terms while he, himself, was shut out. If it 
 ever came to that, he would do something desperate, 
 something that would dramatically close either Wood's 
 existence or his own. Never until that day had Philip 
 known the awful tortures of jealousy. 
 
 He had not quite finished lunch when he reached the 
 climax of his resolve to put his fate to the test without 
 another instant's delay; and the other visitors, decorously 
 occupied with the vast importance of their meal, were a 
 trifle startled by the abruptness of his exit from the 
 dining-room. Incidentally he knocked his chair over 
 and did not trouble to pick it up again. As a promising 
 young stockbroker put it for the amusement of his friends 
 at the best table in the bay window, ' It looked as if some- 
 thing had bit him' an explanation that was very near 
 the truth. He had been bitten by the frantic demon of 
 jealousy. 
 
 His impetus carried him past the primary obstacle that 
 separated him from his goal. He had rung the bell of No. 
 48, The Parade, before the cold fit took him again. After 
 that, though he was trembling with nervousness, he had 
 not the ingenuity to turn back. When the lodging-house
 
 CODA 355 
 
 servant opened the door, he asked mechanically for Mrs 
 Maning, largely because he could think of nothing else to 
 say. 
 
 'Will you come up, please?' the maid returned with a 
 welcoming smile. 
 
 Philip followed her direction. His heart beat with a 
 furious insistence that made a clamorous demand on his 
 nerves. He felt sick and faint. 
 
 And the ordeal of waiting was not yet over. He was 
 shown into a pleasant, sunny room, facing the sea, and the 
 room was empty. While he still stood defensively search- 
 ing its possibilities of cover with a glance that compromised 
 defiance and surrender, the maid went out closing the door 
 behind her. She had said something about 'won't be a 
 minute'; but the sense of her speech only came to him 
 after a long delay. He had walked over to the window 
 and was looking out at the brilliant oleograph of blue sea, 
 blue sky and grey-blue shingle which was all that the sight 
 conveyed to him, when the sound of the maid's voice 
 reached his consciousness. He turned round believing 
 that the girl had come back with a message. 
 
 'It's impossible,' he said to himself. 'Impossible for 
 me to see her and talk to her when I am in this state. I'm 
 not really sane. I was a fool to come.' Yet, although he 
 longed, now, to escape while he had time, he had no power 
 of initiative to make the attempt. Something of the old 
 search for refuge in immobility had returned to him. Just 
 as he had feared to move, to get up and ring the bell, and 
 so challenge Helene's attention in the 'New End' sitting- 
 room; so, now, he dared not turn his head when he heard 
 with an almost painful distinctness, the click of a latch, 
 the sound of a light footstep in the room behind him, and 
 the gentle closing of the door. He knew that she was 
 there, waiting for him to speak, but he was paralysed, 
 rigid and impotent as any terrorised quarry of the wild. 
 
 It was Evelyn who first broke the spell of their uneasy, 
 struggling silence. He heard her voice, cool and even, 
 the voice of someone remote and isolated, demanding the 
 reason for his presence there.
 
 356 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'Well?' was all that she had said, but with that one 
 word she had announced her attitude of complete detach- 
 ment, of judgment coldly withheld. 
 
 He turned and stared with eyes dazzled by the glare of 
 sunlit water. He saw her as a shape of light against the 
 sudden blackness of the room. But even that uncertain 
 vision of her was enough to tell him that this was not the 
 real Evelyn of his dream. It was a stranger that met 
 him; some woman far less familiar to him than the 
 Evelyn he had seen for the first time on the pavement of 
 Piccadilly. 
 
 He summoned his resolution to make some introduction 
 of himself. 
 
 'I suppose you think I'm mad? ' he said. 
 
 The bewilderment of the sunlight was leaving him. 
 The image of her was taking up detail, no longer bemused 
 with a haze of dancing brightness. He saw that she was 
 dressed in a pale grey linen, very fresh and sweet, but 
 producing an effect of withdrawal and reserve. She 
 seemed to have disguised herself beneath some assumption 
 of retirement; as if with that grey dress she would put on a 
 garment of invisibility. Her hair, too, was done more 
 smoothly and compactly ; the gold thread was nearly hidden. 
 
 ' Oh ! no, not mad,' she said; ' indiscreet, perhaps.' She 
 paused a moment before adding. ' I knew you were 
 coming. I heard from Eustace this morning.' 
 
 Philip's inclination of the head had something of the air 
 of a bow. He felt like the representative of some business 
 concern, come to sell goods that he knew were unaccept- 
 able, if they were not actually spurious. His introduction 
 had been made, and his credentials accepted, nothing, 
 now, remained but to put forward his proposition. 
 
 ' I wanted to see you,' he began, and could find nothing 
 more to say. The idea of suggesting that he should return 
 to her was nothing less than farcical. It would be like 
 proposing to a woman whom he had not yet known for 
 ftve minutes. 
 
 'Well, here I am/ she returned. 'What do you want 
 to say?'
 
 CODA 357 
 
 She was standing by the table, leaning just perceptibly 
 against it, and he still stood just within the bay window. 
 He saw that she would not ask him to sit down until she 
 knew why he had come. But what could be the one 
 reason for coming that would excuse his visit? There 
 must be one, or she would have refused to see him. 
 
 'I den't know,' he said. 'I had to come. I I saw 
 Wood last night, too. It was from him that I got your 
 address. He is coming down to see you this afternoon.' 
 
 She frowned with an evident touch of impatience. 
 
 'Is Helen e here, too?' she asked. 
 
 ' Helene ! ' he ejaculated in complete astonishment. 
 Not until then had it occurred to him that none of them 
 knew of his separation, weeks before, from He'le'ne. 
 
 Evelyn's lift of the eyebrows was a trifle incredulous. 
 ' Have you forgotten her already ? ' she asked. 
 
 'Almost,' he admitted. 'She she went away weeks 
 ago. ' She said she was going back to her husband in 
 America. He had made another fortune.' 
 
 ' You had tired of one another by then ? ' she went on 
 coldly. 
 
 He thought of that scene with Helene in the bedroom. 
 Had she tired of him, then? He was not quite sure. 
 
 ' I wanted to get away/ he said lamely. 
 
 'And she?' Evelyn asked. 
 
 ' I think so. She made a scene/ he replied. ' But I am 
 almost sure she was glad to go/ 
 
 It was not right. He could see that from the increasing 
 hardness of her expression. This was not the single 
 excuse that could justify his coming to see her. If she 
 would but give him any encouragement, he might, at 
 least, explain something of his desire just to be within 
 sight of her again. But how could he display the burning 
 eagerness of his love to this stranger? 
 
 'And, now, I suppose you've repented of all your sins, 
 and want to be forgiven ? ' she remarked. 
 
 He drew in his breath with a faint gasp of relief. ' Oh I 
 it isn't quite that/ he said. 
 
 'You are afraid, perhaps, that I might forgive you too
 
 358 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 much,' she suggested, and he saw, then, almost blindingly, 
 the vista of possibilities that might be opened to him, 
 when he could once more speak to her without reserve. 
 He was still, she believed, at the point at which he had 
 left her. She still thought him the morose, narrow-minded 
 Puritan who had wrecked her life at ' New End.' He must 
 try again, but it must be from the very beginning. He 
 would never convince her by protestations. 
 
 'I suppose you don't believe in miracles?' he said, and 
 she looked up at him with the first hint of surprise in her 
 face. 
 
 ' I don't think I do,' she said. 
 
 'It didn't seem to be a miracle to you that I the man 
 you knew, then, should have run away with Helene ? ' 
 
 'Just at first,' she admitted, steadfastly keeping her 
 eyes away from him. 'Afterwards I found an explana- 
 tion.' 
 
 'Did you?' he asked. 'What was that?' He was 
 perplexed by this new turn of her mind. It seemed that 
 his happy intuition of her regard of him was not, after all, 
 a true one. 
 
 ' Does it matter? ' she said. 
 
 'It matters tremendously to me,' he replied. 
 
 She gave a little, nervous laugh. 'Well, surely, there 
 could be only one explanation,' she said. 'It must just 
 have been that I was never the right woman for you.' 
 
 He pulled himself up on the brink of that protestation 
 he knew to be useless. He was gathering confidence. 
 She still maintained the conscious aloofness of a stranger, 
 but she was permitting him to talk; and he had so much 
 to say. For two months or more he had pondered and 
 written about this one subject. Surely, now, he should 
 be able to make some fraction of all he had thought clear 
 to her. It seemed that he must give it all out with the 
 flat objectiveness of a public speaker trying to convince 
 an unsympathetic audience; but he believed that if he 
 could once find a voice he would presently be able to 
 evoke some response. 
 
 'Oh! you don't understand,' he said; 'not the least
 
 CODA 359 
 
 little bit in the world. Will you let me try to tell you? 
 I only want you to listen.' 
 
 'Shall you be long?* she replied. 'I had promised 
 Noel . . . .* 
 
 * Wouldn't he let you off?* Philip asked, consciously 
 daring his first touch of intimacy his first appeal to the 
 familiarity of their former intercourse. 
 
 For a moment she stood undecided, studying this new 
 aspect of his approach. The faintest glow of a blush had 
 wanned her face when he had changed his tone, but when 
 she spoke she had regained the cool steadiness of her 
 former manner. 
 
 "I suppose I owe it to you,' she said. TU go and tell 
 him.' 
 
 She was away for a full ten minutes, but Philip waited, 
 now, with an assured patience. She had promised to 
 hear him, and that was all he asked, for the present. 
 
 His forecast of her instant comprehension had been 
 lamentably false, and he must change his plan, but he 
 was quite immensely hopefuL He would begin by ex- 
 plaining the miraculous change in himself; when she had 
 fully understood that, he would begin to woo her. They 
 would meet every day, and slowly, gently he would be able 
 to tell her of the profundity of his love and admiration for 
 her. 
 
 Presently he heard Noel's voice on the landing outside, 
 the dear childish ring of it plainly audible through the 
 closed door. 'But who is it, Mummie? Who've you got 
 to see?' he was saying. 
 
 The reply, hushed and soothing, was indistinguishable; 
 but it was evident that Noel had not been told who was 
 the importunate visitor that compelled his mother to 
 break her promises. 
 
 Philip heard his footsteps on the oilcloth of the stairs. 
 He was apparently reconciled to his mother's desertion 
 of him, and playing some elaborate game in his descent
 
 360 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 to the front door. His steps went clump, clump, with a 
 deliberate noisiness all the way down. 
 
 Philip wished that he could speak of Noel to Evelyn 
 when she returned, but he dared not do that, as yet. He 
 was afraid even to walk over to the window to look after 
 him. To do that was to risk the chance of seeming to 
 adopt an attitude; of using an advantage. Yet his heart 
 yearned over Noel, as much because the child was 
 Evelyn's son as because he was, also, Philip's own. 
 
 Evelyn did not come back to the sitting-room until the 
 front door had closed with a slam that must have played 
 some part in Noel's game. Her manner had changed com- 
 pletely in the brief interval. She came in, now, with the 
 tired resignation of one who after long debate has decided 
 to choose the slightly less objectionable of two harassing 
 alternatives. Philip had often seen that expression on 
 her face in the worst hours of their life at ' New End.' 
 
 She sat down at once in one of the two arm-chairs that 
 were drawn about the melancholy blankness of a fire 
 screen rising from an absurd froth of paper shavings. 
 
 'Sit down,' she said, nodding at the chair opposite. 
 'I suppose I'd better tell you before you begin all your 
 explanations, that I've already made up my mind.' 
 
 He did not accept her invitation to sit down, but stood 
 leaning against the table, almost facing her. 
 
 'Made up your mind to what?' he asked aghast. 
 'Surely you can't decide anything until you've heard 
 what I have to say.' 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders with the mark of impatience 
 that was so familiar to him. 
 
 ' Oh ! I suppose I know, pretty well,' she said. ' You 
 have had your lesson. You're sorry, quite humiliatingly 
 sorry. You've turned against Helene just as you turned 
 against me, just as you'd turn against any woman; and, 
 now, for all our sakes, and for the sake of respectability 
 and all the other silly things, you want us to go back to 
 our old appearances. Well, I've thought it over, and 
 I've decided, chiefly, perhaps, for Noel's sake, that it's 
 the best thing to do. You will have to give me more
 
 CODA 361 
 
 freedom, in fact, entire freedom of opinion and action, 
 especially with regard to Noel's education and training. 
 I claim that. I shall take it. At the first sign of inter- 
 ference' she looked up at him with a hard challenge 
 ' I shall leave you, as I meant to do, before you did what 
 you did.' 
 
 She paused, and then as Philip, too much embarrassed 
 both by the advantage she had given him and by her 
 complete misunderstanding of him, waited to find some 
 reply, she went on ; ' Noel has asked for you, several times. 
 I don't know whether you're interested to hear that? You 
 haven't so far asked after him.' 
 
 And still Philip could find no words to begin. He 
 wanted to break down this tremendous barrier between 
 them with one stupendous blow. The absurdest sugges- 
 tions rushed up into his mind. He thought of throwing 
 himself at her feet, of taking her brutally in his arms, of 
 thrusting the fact of his love upon her in one unseemly 
 outrageous declaration of passion. His quiet answer 
 when it came, seemed to him as a ridiculous anti-climax 
 to all the fierce clamour of those ardent longings. 
 
 'You don't notice any change in me? ' he asked. 
 
 She looked at him sharply. Until then she had scarcely 
 glanced at him. ' None whatever,' she said firmly. 
 
 He lifted his hands in a gesture of impotent despair. 
 
 'But I'm not the same man/ he declared. 'I've I've 
 learnt to understand life.' 
 
 Her regard of him implied suspicion rather than welcome 
 of this declaration. ' In what way? ' she asked. 
 
 'That's just what I want to tell you/ he said. 'But 
 it's so terribly difficult, even to begin. It's such a big 
 thing. I tried to write it. I've been living in rooms in 
 Torrington Square for the last six weeks, thinking how I 
 could put it to you. And I wrote pages; and tore it all 
 up because it was so cold and explanatory like a kind 
 of thesis.' He spoke evenly, without emotion, waiting 
 for some sign of response from her, and as she still gave 
 none, watching him still with that appraising air of faint 
 suspicion, he continued in the same dull voice : 
 
 G.C. 2 A
 
 362 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'And then I decided that I must see you. I thought, 
 I don't know why, that when you saw me you would 
 understand at once, and that, afterwards, I should be 
 able to tell you everything.' 
 
 ' Afterwards ? ' she commented. ' After what ? ' 
 
 'After you had understood,' was all the explanation he 
 had to give. 
 
 She moved uneasily in her chair. 'Does all this mean 
 that if you come back, it's to be on new terms?' she 
 asked. 
 
 ' Yes, yes, it does,' he said grasping at the opportunity 
 to get something stated. 'Quite new terms. I want to 
 begin all over again; to begin as we never began before.' 
 
 'I don't know that I'm at all ready to agree to that,' 
 she returned; and her attitude and the lower pitch of her 
 voice hinted at an embarrassment she had not before 
 shown. 'You see, how could we possibly begin again 
 after well, after that Sunday at "New End?" You 
 upset everything that day. You made me feel, oh ! I 
 don't know mean, a failure, and well, as if I must 
 have been impenetrably stupid. Did you know that I 
 gave Hetene leave to make love to you? Did she tell 
 you that? I did. I didn't believe it possible that she 
 could tempt you. Even when you told me, yourself, 
 I couldn't believe it. I thought you must be pretending 
 perhaps to save me in some way? or to get away from 
 me? No, it was later that I began to think that.' 
 
 He saw the damning fact of his unfaithfulness staring 
 nakedly out from her reminiscences of that fateful Sunday. 
 And all his explanations could not explain away his act 
 of desertion. That was only the turning-point and origin 
 of his reformation. Whatever he had, now, to offer her 
 was merely a result of what some other woman had taught 
 him. 
 
 ' Oh ! I know, I know,' he said desperately. ' There 
 can't be any excuse for that. It's too feeble to say that 
 I was mad, but I was in a way.' 
 
 ' But if it was my fault that you were nearly mad,' she 
 put in. 'It might, if you come back, all happen again.'
 
 CODA 363 
 
 'Never,' he affirmed, with a better confidence. 'No, 
 no, never. I know, now, what a fool I was.' 
 
 'She taught you?' 
 
 'I suppose so.' 
 
 ' And I tried to and failed ! Well? ' She made a gesture 
 as if she would draw his attention to the fact that he was 
 proving her case instead of his own. 
 
 'You failed because I loved you too much,' he burst 
 out; and having dared to say that, he found, at last, that 
 he could speak. 
 
 ' That's the whole point,' he went on breathlessly. ' You 
 see, I didn't understand. It wasn't my fault. It was the 
 way I had been brought up. I had always been taught 
 to think of that side of love as as beastly. And I had 
 been frightened by it. I heard a woman once protesting, 
 it was when I was a schoolboy in the dark under a 
 hedge, and it terrified me. It sounded to me as if she 
 were being tortured and oh ! horribly destroyed. I 
 used to dream of it. And there was never anyone to help 
 me to see things differently, and I never did see them 
 differently. And with you, it was impossible. You were 
 so lovely, so precious, so perfect. I adored you always 
 from that first moment in Piccadilly. It is unthinkable 
 that I could ever love anyone else. But don't you see, 
 now, how I was afraid to touch you with all that poison 
 of misunderstanding in my mind? It seemed a dese 
 cration. Even children. That old horror was always 
 with me. How could I endure that my beastliness 
 should touch you? I was afraid to speak of it, or even 
 to think of it when I was alone.' 
 
 He paused, hot with the excitement of his confession, 
 trying to frame the explanation of his change of attitude, 
 and Evelyn helped him with a vital question. 
 
 'But why didn't you feel like that about her?' she 
 asked. 
 
 She was moved, now. He could see the stir of response 
 he had been waiting for. She was looking at him with 
 something in her expression that proclaimed her no longer 
 a stranger.
 
 364 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'About Helena?' he said eagerly. 'But I didn't love 
 her. She was a kind of suicide I thought it was suicide, 
 moral suicide. I didn't care any more for anything. 
 After you said you were going to leave me, nothing else 
 in the world mattered. I went to Helene as I might have 
 gone to drink or drugs, or any other form of self-destruc- 
 tion. She she represented the worst sin, I knew.' 
 
 Evelyn got up quickly and went over to the bay window. 
 It seemed as if she were afraid to be too near him, just 
 then. When she spoke again, she had her back to the 
 room. 
 
 'But why weren't you destroyed? ' she asked. 
 
 'That's what I can't explain,' he said. 'It's what 
 I've been trying to explain to myself. It must have 
 been a miracle. I don't seem able to get beyond that. 
 One night, in London, I walked about the streets, alone, 
 and everything was beautiful. I couldn't find one aspect 
 of life or matter that had not some claim to beauty. I 
 had a fancy that everything we usually call ugliness was 
 necessary to the harmony God's counterpoint, as it 
 were; something that completes the structure of the 
 melody.' 
 
 ' Oh ! Philip ' she cried out his name as if she were hurt, 
 but when he made a movement towards her, she turned 
 and held up her hand. ' No, no ! ' she said, ' Tell me some 
 more of this. It bewilders me. I'm not sure that it 
 doesn't rather frighten me. One doesn't expect miracles 
 nowadays casting out devils, I mean, and things like 
 that. It's shuddery.' 
 
 He smiled with something of his old boyish charm. 
 ' Oh ! well/ he amended. ' We give it another name, 
 that's all. I was a pathological case all right. I don't 
 deny that. But I know that I'm cured.' 
 
 She was searching his face as if she sought, fearfully, to 
 discover any mark of the old possession. 'You used to 
 suffer horribly from neuralgia and indigestion, didn't 
 you?' she reminded him. 
 
 'And insomnia,' he added; "but those must have been 
 symptoms. They've all gone, anyway. I re really been
 
 CODA 365 
 
 living a rotten sort of life for the last six weeks, but I've 
 been better than I used to be at " New End." You know, 
 I used to have such ghastly dreams.' 
 
 'About that?' 
 
 'Yes. And about Helne before she came down to 
 us; always after I'd first seen her in Paris. She repre- 
 sented a particular kind of temptation, and she used to 
 get mixed up with all sorts of queer symbols, serpents 
 and sheep. And I used to wake simply wretched because 
 I felt as if I had been unfaithful to you.' 
 
 Evelyn put her hand to her forehead with a gesture of 
 bewilderment. 'I can't pretend to understand it,' she 
 said, and added with a touch of her old whimsicality, 
 ' And you seem so pleased about it ah 1 ! ' 
 
 'Isn't any prisoner pleased when he has been 
 liberated?' Philip asked. 'I do feel that so tremend- 
 ously the sense of freedom. I can look at the world, 
 now, without being afraid of it.' 
 
 She shook her head impatiently. 'Yes, I can see that 
 difference in you, now,' she said; 'now that you've told 
 me what to look for. But I didn't see it before, and as 
 I've said, I can't pretend to understand it. You've got 
 used to it, I suppose, in a way; I haven't. It's all too 
 horribly like a miracle, or a Lourdes cure, or something. 
 However, the thing is to decide what we are going to do. 
 You see, Philip, I don't know you ! ' 
 
 'I have, at least, persuaded you that I have changed, 
 then ? ' he asked with a wry smile. 
 
 'When I think of our talk in the rose-garden, that 
 evening,' she replied, 'and then of what you've just 
 been saying, I feel justified in admitting the possibility of 
 modern miracles.' 
 
 He frowned miserably at the remembrance she had 
 called up. 'Oh! don't remind me of that/ he protested. 
 ' If you only knew how I longed to say the things I simply 
 could not say. If you knew how I loved you all the time 
 and dared not tell you. I know I made you suffer but I 
 suffered quite as much.' 
 
 She was still wrestling with her chief perplexity. ' But
 
 366 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 what ought I to have said ? What ought I to have done ? 
 To help you? ' she asked, and then with a sudden leap 
 she went on, 'I felt that so horribly when I saw you go 
 away that morning with Helene. I was watching you 
 from my window and you smiled, just your old nice smile 
 that I hadn't seen, oh ! for years. It was the worst 
 moment of the whole horrible business. It made me feel 
 that there must have been something so dreadfully wrong 
 with me' 
 
 'I suppose we can neither of us forget all that?' he 
 commented. 'Perhaps we ought not to forget it. But 
 it is horrible.' 
 
 ' Oh ! no, I shall never forget it,' she said. ' I feel scarred, 
 and I've been bitter.' 
 
 'But you're not bitter, now? ' he put in eagerly, grasping 
 at her implication. 
 
 'One doesn't know at the time,' she said. 'I can't tell 
 until you've gone away and I've thought about what you've 
 said and how you looked, and and what you've proposed. 
 You must give me time lots of time.' 
 
 ' Yes, I will,' he agreed; ' But you must let me see you, 
 often ? ' 
 
 'It does seem as if we can talk, now,' she remarked. 
 'We never could before.' 
 
 'I haven't begun to say anything, yet,' he said. 'Not 
 of all the things that I've been longing to say to you, for 
 years.' 
 
 'Yes, but not now,' she replied quickly. 'Not to-day. 
 I'm not ready to listen.' 
 
 'You'd like me to go now?' 
 
 ' Yes, I think so. Where are you staying? ' 
 
 'At the hotel. The Imperial.' 
 
 She reflected for a moment before she gave him a little 
 consolation to take away with him. 'You may meet me 
 on the beach, just here, to-morrow morning,' she said. 
 'And 'yes, you may see Noel, too.' 
 
 He did not offer her his hand, and he was actually at the 
 door before one contingency occurred to him. ' I forgot 
 Georgie Wood was coming down this afternoon/ he said.
 
 CODA 367 
 
 'Does that make any difference?' she asked. 'He'll 
 probably go up to town by the early train to-morrow.' 
 
 ' But he'll be with you this evening,' Philip said bitterly. 
 
 'Well, of course,' she agreed. 
 
 He came back into the room, and then right over to her 
 where she still stood in the bay window. 
 
 ' Please, Evelyn ! I can't bear it,' he said, on a note of 
 pleading. 
 
 'Can't bear it?' she echoed to give herself time. This 
 new Philip was at once so strange and so imperishably 
 familiar. She recognised, now, some ring in his voice, 
 some aspect of his appearance, gesture, movement, that 
 had been cherished as the thrilling necessity of her desire 
 ever since she had been old enough to formulate her ideal 
 of a companion. She felt that if she had met him, this 
 afternoon, for the first time, she could have gone out to 
 meet his every wish, to give and receive with an ecstatic 
 willingness. But as yet she could not dissociate the 
 spirit she believed in and trusted from the hard impres- 
 sions of the man she had come to know all too well. She 
 felt the attraction of the new spirit but she saw still the 
 figure and semblance of the old appearance. 
 
 She moved slightly away from him and continuing her 
 answer, said, with a defensive air of banter, 'But you 
 can't pretend that you're jealous of poor Mr Wood?' 
 
 ' Frightfully ! ' Philip replied with a quiet decision that 
 was an effective form of vehemence. 
 
 She wished that she could treat his jealousy as an absurd 
 phantasy, but there had been moments quite recently in 
 which she had seriously weighed Georgie Wood's pleading. 
 Indeed, it had had an influence with her hardly less than 
 the thought of Noel's future, when she had come back 
 into the room half an hour before and announced her 
 willingness to return to Philip on the old terms. She 
 knew quite definitely that she did not want to marry 
 Georgie. She had for him respect, admiration, trust, 
 anything but love. And she was afraid of his honesty 
 and strength and persistence. She had seen herself giving 
 way out of sheer weariness.
 
 368 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'You needn't be jealous/ she said steadily. 'In any 
 case I should never have married him.' 
 
 ' But he still hopes you will.' 
 
 'He won't any more after this afternoon, poor dear.' 
 
 'You'll tell him? 1 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'That you're coming back to me! ' 
 
 'I haven't promised that, yet,' she put in quickly, but 
 she was too late. In a moment of .sudden certainty all 
 his restraint had fallen from him. He took a step forward 
 and laid his hands on her shoulders. 
 
 'Evelyn, I can't wait,' he said with an intensity that 
 seemed physically to shake her. 
 
 She felt limp and powerless in the conquering ardour 
 of his embrace, but still some habit of distaste found 
 expression in breathless remonstrance. 'No, Philip, no. 
 I must have time. I can't understand, yet,' she implored 
 him. 
 
 He took no heed of her protest. He held her more 
 closely, bending his head down, pressing his cheek against 
 her hair. ' Oh ! my beloved,' he whispered. ' Give me a 
 lifetime, afterwards, to make atonement. I will live only 
 for you and Noel. But don't send me away from you, 
 now. You do understand. In your heart you under- 
 stand. Don't drive it back with thinking of the cramped 
 distorted creature I used to be. I am changed in that; 
 but not in my love for you. I have always loved you; 
 in the same way; in this way; in every conceivable way 
 that a man may love a woman. Don't shut your mind 
 against that thought. Don't weigh evidence. That was 
 what drove me to madness. Just let the spirit of love 
 speak through you, as it is speaking through me. Let it 
 show you, as it has shown me, that it can be only beauty, 
 that everything we so stupidly call ugly is just an 
 alternating beat in the long exquisite rhythm of love.' 
 
 She drew a deep breath, and then looked up at him 
 recovering her hold on practical life with a characteristic 
 whimsicality. 
 
 ' But, Philip,' she said; ' I think that's all very beautiful
 
 CODA 369 
 
 and perhaps true, but it doesn't alter the fact that you are, 
 for all intents and purposes, a stranger. Can't you see 
 that it's rather embarrassing?' 
 
 He smiled down at her, joyfully, tenderly. 'Before 
 we met in Piccadilly we had known each other for a 
 thousand centuries,' he said. 'And have you forgotten 
 how I kissed you in old Wing's office? Did you know me 
 any better, then? I know it has taken years for you to 
 learn to forget me t^tat was what you were doing ah 1 the 
 time but surely that has gone, now, just as if you had 
 met me again after a long, long absence? ' 
 
 She held herself a little apart from him, and searched 
 his face as if she would find again the Philip she had nearly 
 forgotten. 'Yes I can see you, again,' she said, 'but 
 altered. It's you, but you're scarred. And there's 
 something gone, something you must have given to Helene, 
 and that you can never, now, give to me.' 
 
 He could not deny that. 'I could only be cured by a 
 drastic operation,' he said. ' But it's only my body that's 
 scarred. Don't let's think too much of bodies, Evelyn. 
 It kills love if you think too much of bodies. And my 
 spirit has always been yours. I only loved you in 
 Helene . . . .' 
 
 She shook her head petulantly and drew away from 
 him. ' I don't think I want to hear her name again,' she 
 said. 'And you use it so carelessly.' 
 
 'Which shows how little she ever was to me,' he said. 
 ' Your name was sacred. I never spoke it aloud from the 
 time I left you until to-day.' 
 
 'And did she teach you to make love so fluently? ' she 
 retorted. 'That's very new to me, from you.' 
 
 Her jealousy of the past was very precious to him, but 
 he feared it, too. If it was a sign of her love, it was a 
 sign, also, of her too clear sight of the scar that had dis- 
 figured him. 
 
 She had gone back to her seat by the fireplace, a 
 reminder, he hoped, of their too prominent position in the 
 exposure of the bay window. He came, now, and knelt 
 by her, and she did not repulse him.
 
 370 GOD'S COUNTERPOINT 
 
 'I admit the wound/ he said. 'I only want to make 
 atonement. 'Won't you give me the chance?' 
 
 She took his face between her hands, looked deep into 
 his eyes for a moment, and then very gently and deliber- 
 ately kissed him. 'Yes, you shall have your chance, 
 dear,' she said. 'But I'm scarred, too. We've both lost 
 something.' 
 
 He trembled still with the ecstasy of her kiss as he 
 answered her. 'I don't believe it,' he affirmed, with an 
 emphasis that was suddenly passionate. 'There can be 
 no such things as loss and ugliness. Our love can only 
 be one tissue of beauty.' 
 
 She laughed, a little tremulously. 'You are going to 
 teach me to love/ she said softly. 'You have outdone 
 me. I thought once that I knew, and that if you would 
 only let me, I could teach you. But I don't think that 
 I ever quite rose to these heights. Perhaps that was 
 why I failed in the old days. I wasn't absolute enough. 
 But, Philip; you don't want me to become like Helene, 
 do you? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! I wouldn't have you altered in one least possible 
 particular/ he exclaimed ardently. ' You are my ultimate 
 symbol of perfection. Whatever you do or say or look 
 must always be perfect for me/ 
 
 She gave way finally, then. She clung to him as if she 
 would assure herself that he was in truth the reality she 
 desired. 
 
 'But will you always feel that?' she asked, and the 
 tears that had welled into her eyes began to overflow. 
 
 She knew that she had exposed the last tragedy of 
 human love, the magnificently aspiring; a sempiternal 
 ecstasy limited by the feeble devotions of a physical 
 expression. 
 
 But Philip had no doubts at that moment. 
 
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