 CHAPTER XII. I must, in common decency, let him know that I've talked of the matter with you." She said to her hostess that evening. What answered you wish me to write to him? Write to him that you must see him again, said Mrs. Gareth. Flea to look very blank. What on earth am I to see him for? For anything you like. The girl would have been struck with the levity of this had she not already, in an hour, felt the extent of the change suddenly wrought in her commerce with her friend, wrought above all to that friend's view in her relation to the great issue. The effect of all that had followed Owen's visit was to make this relation the very key of the crisis. Pressed upon her goodness new the crisis had been, but it now put forth big, encircling arms, arms that squeezed till they hurt and she must cry out. It was as if everything at Ricks had been poured into a common receptacle, a public ferment of emotion and zeal out of which it was ladled up to be tasted and talked about. Everything at least but the one little treasure of knowledge that she kept back. She ought to have liked this, she reflected, because it meant sympathy, meant a closer union with the source of so much in her life that had been beautiful and renovating. But there were fine instinct-sinner that stood off. She had had, and it was not merely at this time, to recognize that there were things for which Mrs. Gareth's flair was not so happy as for bargains and marks. It wouldn't be happy now as to the best action on the knowledge she had just gained. Yet as from this moment they were still more etymically together, so a person deeply in her debt would simply have to stand and meet what was to come. There were ways in which she could sharply incommode such a person, and not only with the best conscience in the world, but with the sort of brutality of good intentions. One of the straightest of these strokes, Fleta saw, would be the dance of delight over the mystery Mrs. Gareth had laid bare, the loud, lawful, tactless joy of the explorer leaping upon the strand, like any other lucky discoverer she would take possession of the fortunate island. She was nothing if not practical. Almost the only thing she took account of in her young friend's soft secret was the excellent use she could make of it, a use so much to her taste that she refused to feel a hindrance in the quality of the material. Fleta put into Mrs. Gareth's answer to her question a good deal more meaning than it would have occurred to her a few hours before that she was prepared to put, but she had on the spot of foreboding that even so broad a hint would live to be bettered. Do you suggest I shall propose to him to come down here again? She presently inquired. Dear, no. Say that you'll go up the town and meet him. It was bettered the broad hint, and Fleta felt this to be still more the case when, returning to the subject before they went to bed, her companion said, I make him over to you wholly you know, to do what you please with. Deal with him in your own clever way. I ask no questions. All I ask is that you succeed. That's charming, Fleta replied, but it doesn't tell me a bit you'll be so good as to consider in what terms to write to him. It's not an answer from you to the message I was to give you. The answer to his message is perfectly distinct. He shall have everything in the place the minute he'll say he'll marry you. You really pretend, Fleta asked, to think me capable of transmitting him that news? What else can I pretend when you threaten so to cast me off if I speak the word myself? Oh, if you speak the word, the girl murmured very gravely, but happy at least to know that in this direction Mrs. Gareth confessed herself, warned and helpless. Then she added, How can I go on living with you on a footing of which I so deeply disapprove? Thinking as I do that you've despoiled him far more than is just or merciful, for if I expected you to take something I didn't in the least expect you to take everything, how can I stay here without a sense that I'm backing you up in your cruelty and participating in your ill-gotten gains? Fleta was determined that if she had the chill of her exposed and investigated state she would also have the convenience of it, and that if Mrs. Gareth popped in and out of the chamber of her soul she would at least return the freedom. I shall quite hate, you know, in a day or two every object that surrounds you, become blind to all the beauty and rarity that I formerly delighted in. Don't think me harsh, there's no use in my not being frank now, if I leave you everything's at an end. Mrs. Gareth, however, was imperturbable. Fleta had to recognize that her advantage had become too real. It's too beautiful the way you care for him, it's music in my ears, nothing else but such a passion could make you say such things. That's the way I should have been too, my dear. Why didn't you tell me sooner? I'd have gone right in for you. I never would have moved a candlestick. Don't stay with me if it torments you. Don't, if you suffer, be where you see the old rubbish. Go up to town. Go back for a little to your father's. It need only be for a little. Two or three weeks we'll see us through. Your father will take you and be glad, if you will only make him understand what it's a question of, of your getting yourself off his hands forever. I'll make him understand, you know, if you feel shy. I'd take you up myself. I'd go with you to spare your being bored. We'd put up at a hotel and we might amuse ourselves a bit. We haven't had much pleasure since we met, have we? But of course that wouldn't suit our book. I should be a bugaboo to Owen. I should be fatally in the way. Your chance is there, your chance is to be alone. For God's sake use it to the right end. If you're in want of money I've a little I can give you. But I ask no questions, not a question as small as your shoe. She asked no questions, but she took the most extraordinary things for granted. Fleeda felt this still more at the end of a couple of days. On the second of these our young lady wrote to Owen. Her emotion had to a certain degree cleared itself. There was something she could briefly say. If she had given everything to Mrs. Gareth and has yet got nothing, so she had on the other hand quickly reacted—it took but a night—against the discouragement of her first check. Her desire to serve him was too passionate, the sense that he counted upon her too sweet. These things caught her up again and gave her her new patience and a new subtlety. It shouldn't really be for nothing that she had given so much. Deep within her burned again the resolve to get something back. So what she wrote to Owen was simply that she had had a great scene with his mother, but that he must be patient and give her time. It was difficult, as they both had expected, but she was working her hardest for him. She had made an impression. She would do everything to follow it up. Meanwhile he must keep intensely quiet and take no other steps. He must only trust her and pray for her and believe in her perfect loyalty. She made no allusion whatever to Mona's attitude, nor to his not being, as regarded that young lady, master of the situation. But she said in a post-grip, in reference to his mother, Of course she wonders a good deal why your marriage doesn't take place. After the letter had gone she regretted having used the word loyalty. There were two or three milder terms which she might as well have employed. The answer she immediately received from Owen was a little note of which she met all the deficiencies by describing it to herself as pathetically simple, but which, to prove that Mrs. Gareth might ask as many questions as she liked, she had once made his mother read. He had no art with his pen, he had not even a good hand, and his letter, a short profession of friendly confidence, consisted of but a few familiar and colorless words of acknowledgment and assent. The gist of it was that he would certainly, since Miss Vetch recommended it, not hurry Mama too much. He would not, for the present, cause her to be approached by anyone else, but he would nevertheless continue to hope that she would see she must come round. Of course you know, he added, she can't keep me waiting indefinitely. Please give her my love and tell her that. If it can be done peaceably I know you're just the one to do it. Rita had awaited his rejoinder in deep suspense. Such was her imagination of the possibility of his having, as she tacitly phrased it, let himself go on paper, that when it arrived she was at first almost afraid to open it. There was indeed a distinct danger, for if he should take it into his head to write her love letters, the whole chance of aiding him would drop. She would have to return them, she would have to decline all further communication with him, it would be the end of the business. This imagination of Fledis was a faculty that easily embraced all the heights and depths and extremities of things, that made a single mouthful in particular of any tragic or desperate necessity. She was perhaps at first just a trifle disappointed, not to find in the note in question a syllable that strayed from the text, but the next moment she had risen to a point of view from which it presented itself as a production almost inspired in its simplicity. It was simple even for Owen, and she wondered what had given him the cue to be more so than usual. Then she saw how natures that are right just do the things that are right. He wasn't clever, his manner of writing showed it, but the cleverest man in England couldn't have had more the instinct that under the circumstances was the supremely happy one. The instinct of giving her something that would do beautifully to be shown to Mrs. Gareth. This was a kind of divination, for naturally he couldn't know the line Mrs. Gareth was taking. It was furthermore explained, and that was the most touching part of all, by his wish that she herself should notice how awfully well he was behaving. His very bareness called her attention to his virtue, and these were the exact fruits of her beautiful and terrible admonition. He was cleaving to Mona. He was doing his duty. He was making tremendously sure he should be without reproach. If Leda handed this communication to her friend as a triumphant gauge of the innocence of the young man's heart, her relation lived but a moment after Mrs. Gareth had pounced upon the tell-tale spot in it. Why in the world, then, that lady cried, does he still not breathe the breath about the day, the day, the day? She repeated the word with a crescendo of superior acuteness. She proclaimed that nothing could be more marked than its absence, an absence that simply spoke volumes. What did it prove in fine, but that she was producing the effect she had toiled for, that she had settled, or was rapidly settling, Mona? Such a challenge, Leda, was obliged in some manner to take up. You may be settling Mona, she returned with a smile, but I can hardly regard it as sufficient evidence that you're settling Mona's lover. Why not, with such a studied emission on his part, to gloss over in any manner the painful tension existing between them, the painful tension that under Providence I've been the means of bringing about? He gives you by his silence clear notice that his marriage is practically off. He speaks to me of the only thing that concerns me. He gives me clear notice that he abates not one jot of his demand. Well then, let him take the only way to get it satisfied. Leda had no need to ask again what such a way might be, nor was her support removed by the fine assurance with which Mrs. Gareth could make her argument wait upon her wish. These days, which dragged their length into a strange, uncomfortable fortnight, had already borne more testimony to that element than all the other time the two women had passed together. Our young lady had been at first far from measuring the whole of a feature that Owen himself would probably have described as her companion's cheek. She lived now in a kind of bath of boldness, felt as if a fierce light poured in upon her from windows opened wide, and the singular part of the ordeal was that she couldn't protest against it fully, without incurring even to her own mind some reproach of ingratitude, some charge of smallness. If Mrs. Gareth's apparent determination to hustle her into Owen's arms was accompanied with an air of holding her dignity rather cheap, this was after all only as a consequence of her being held in respect to some other attributes rather dear. It was a new version of the old story of being kicked upstairs. The wonderful woman was the same woman who, in the summer, at Pointon, had been so puzzled to conceive why a good-natured girl shouldn't have contributed more to the personal route of the brig-stocks, shouldn't have been grateful even for the handsome puff of Flida Vetch. Only her passion was keener now, and her scruple more absent. The fight made a demand upon her, and her pugnacity had become one with her constant habit of using such weapons as she could pick up. She had no imagination about anybody's life, save on the side she bumped against. Flida was quite aware that she would otherwise have been a rare creature, but a rare creature was originally just what she had struck her as being. Mrs. Gareth had really no perception of anybody's nature, had only one question about persons. Were they clever or stupid? To be clever meant to know the marks. Flida knew them by direct inspiration, and a warm recognition of this had been her friend's tribute to her character. The girl had hours now of somber wishing that she might never see anything good again. That kind of experience was evidently not an infallible source of peace. She would be more at peace in some vulgar little place that should owe its cachet to a universal provider. There were nice strong horrors in West Kensington. It was as if they beckoned her and wooed her back to them. She had a relaxed recollection of water bath, and of her reasons for staying on at Ricks the forest was rapidly ebbing. One of these was her pledge to Owen, her vow to press his mother close. The other was the fact that of the two discomforts, that of being prodded by Mrs. Gareth, and that of appearing to run after somebody else, the former remained for a while the more indurable. As the days passed, however, it became plainer to fleet her that her only chance of success would be in lending herself to this low appearance. Then moreover, at last, her nerves settling the question, the choice was simply imposed by the violence thundered her taste, to whatever was left of that high principle at least, after the free and reckless meeting for months of great drafts and appeals. It was all very well to try to evade discussion. Owen Gareth was looking to her for a struggle, and it wasn't a bit of a struggle to be disgusted and dumb. She was on too strange a footing, that of having presented an ultimatum, and having it torn up in her face. In such a case as that, the envoy always departed. He never sat gaping and dawdling before the city. Mrs. Gareth every morning looked publicly into the morning post, the only newspaper she received, and every morning she treated the blankness of that journal as fresh evidence that everything was off. What did the post exist for but to tell you your children were wretchedly married? So that if such a source of misery was dry, what could you do but infer that for once you had miraculously escaped? She almost taunted Fleeter with supine-ness in not getting something out of somebody, in the same breath indeed in which she drenched her with the kind of appreciation more onerous to the girl than blame. Mrs. Gareth herself had, of course, washed her hands of the matter, but Fleeter knew people who knew Mona, and would be sure to be in her confidence, inconceivable people who admired her, and had the entree of water-bath. What was the use, therefore, of being the most natural and the easiest of letter-writers if no sort of sidelight, in some pretext for correspondence, was, by a brilliant creature, to be got out of such barbarians. Fleeter was not only a brilliant creature, but she suddenly heard herself commended in these days for attractions new and strange. She figured suddenly in the queer conversations of Ricks as a distinguished, almost as a dangerous beauty, that retouching of her hair and dress in which her friend had impulsively indulged on the first glimpse of her secret was by implication very frequently repeated. She had the sense not only of being advertised and offered, but of being counseled and enlightened in ways that she scarcely understood—art's obscure even to a poor girl who had had, in good society and motherless poverty, to look straight at realities and fill out the blanks. These arts, when Mrs. Gareth's spirits were high, were handled with a brave and cynical humor with which Fleeter's fancy could keep no step. They left our young lady wondering what on earth her companion wanted her to do. I want you to cut in! That was Mrs. Gareth's familiar and comprehensive phrase for the course she prescribed. She challenged again and again Fleeter's picture, as she called it, though the sketch was too slight to deserve the name, of the indifference to which a prior attachment had committed the proprietor of Pointon. Do you mean to say that Mona or no Mona, he could see you that way, day after day, and not have the ordinary feelings of a man? Don't you know a little more, you absurd, affected thing, what men are, the brutes? This was the sort of interrogation to which Fleeter was fitfully and irrelevantly treated. She had grown almost used to the refrain. Do you mean to say that when the other day one had quite made you over to him, the great gawk, and he was, on this very spot, utterly alone with you? The poor girl at this point never left any doubt of what she meant to say. But Mrs. Gareth could be trusted to break out in another place and at another time. At last Fleeter wrote to her father that he must take her in for a while, and when to her companion's delight, she returned to London, that lady went with her to the station and wafted her on her way. The morning post had been delivered as they left the house, and Mrs. Gareth had brought it with her for the traveller, who never spent a penny on a newspaper. On the platform, however, when this young person was ticketed, labelled, and seated, she opened it at the window of the carriage, exclaiming as usual after looking into it for a moment. Nothing, nothing, nothing, don't tell me. Every day that there was nothing was a nail in the coffin of the marriage. An instant later the train was off, but moving quickly beside it, while Fleeter leaned inscrutably forth, Mrs. Gareth grasped a friend's hand and looked up with wonderful eyes. Only let yourself go, darling, only let yourself go. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Mrs. Gareth conscientiously proved by closing her lips tight after Fleeter had gone to London. No letter from Ricks arrived at West Kensington, and Fleeter, with nothing to communicate that could be to the taste of either party, forebore to open a correspondence. If her heart had been less heavy, she might have been amused to perceive how much free rope this reticence of Ricks seemed to signify to her that she could take. She had at all events no good news for her friend, save in the sense that her silence was not bad news. She was not yet in a position to write that she had cut in. But neither, on the other hand, had she gathered material for announcing that Mona was undeserable from her prey. She had made no use of the pen so glorified by Mrs. Gareth to wake up the echoes of waterbath. She had seduously abstained from inquiring what, in any quarter, far or near was said or suggested or supposed. She only spent a machetinal penny on the morning post. She only saw, on each occasion, that that inspired sheet had little to say about the eminence as about the abandonment of certain nuptials. It was at the same time obvious that Mrs. Gareth triumphed on these occasions much more than she trembled, and that with a few such triumphs repeated she would cease to tremble at all. What was most manifest, however, was that she had had a rare preconception of the circumstances that would have ministered had Fleeter hadn't been disposed to the girls cutting in. It was brought home to Fleeter that these circumstances would have particularly favored intervention. She was quickly forced to do them a secret justice. One of the effects of her intimacy with Mrs. Gareth was that she had quite lost all sense of intimacy with anyone else. The Lady of Ricks had made a desert round her, possessing and absorbing her so utterly that other partakers had fallen away. Hadn't she been admonished months before that people considered they had lost her and were reconciled on the whole to the privation? Her present position in the great unconscious town defined itself as obscure. She regarded it at any rate with eyes suspicious of that lesson. She neither wrote notes nor received them. She indulged in no reminders nor knocked at any doors. She wandered vaguely in the western wilderness or cultivated shy forms of that household art for which she had had a respect before tasting the bitter tree of knowledge. Her only plan was to be as quiet as a mouse, and when she failed in the attempt to lose herself in the flat suburb she felt like a lonely fly crawling over a dusty chart. How had Mrs. Gareth known in advance that if she had chosen to be vile—that was what Fleeter called it—everything would happen to help her? Probably the way her poor father, after breakfast, daughtered off to his club, showing seventy when he was really fifty-seven, and leaving her richly alone for the day. He came back about midnight, looking at her very hard and not risking long words, only making her feel by inimitable touches that the presence of his family compelled him to alter all his hours. She had in their common sitting-room the company of the objects he was fond of saying he had collected—objects, shabby, and battered of a sort that appealed little to his daughter—old brandy flasks and matchboxes, old calendars and handbooks, intermixed with an assortment of pen-wiper's and ashtrays, a harvest he had gathered in from penny-bazaars. He was blandly unconscious of that side of Fleeter's nature, which had endeared her to Mrs. Gareth, and she had often heard him wish to goodness that there was something striking she cared for. Why didn't she try collecting something? It didn't matter what. She would find it gave an interest to life, and there was no end of little curiosities one could easily pick up. He was conscious of having a taste for fine things, which his children had unfortunately not inherited. This indicated the limits of their acquaintance with him—limits which, as Fleeter was now sharply aware, could only leave him to wonder what the mischief she was there for. As she herself echoed this question to the letter, she was not in a position to clear up the mystery. She couldn't have given a name to her errand in town, or explained it, save by saying that she had had to get away from ricks. It was intensely provisional, but what was to come next? Nothing could come next but a deeper anxiety. She had neither a home nor an outlook, nothing in all the wide world but a feeling of suspense. Of course she had her duty—her duty to Owen, a definite undertaking, reaffirmed after his visit to Ricks, under her hand and seal. But there was no sense of possession attached to that. There was only a horrible sense of privation. She had quite moved from under Mrs. Gareth's wide wing, and now that she was really among the pen-wiper's and ash-trace, she was swept at the thought of all the beauty she had foresworn by short, wild gusts of despair. If her friend should really keep the spoils, she would never return to her. If that friend should, on the other hand, part with them, what on earth would there be to return to? The chills struck deep as fleed a thought of the mistress of Ricks, also reduced in vulgar parlance, to what she had on her back. There was nothing to which she could compare such an image, but her idea of Marie-Antoinette in the conciergerie, or perhaps the vision of some tropical bird, the creature of hot dense forests, dropped on a frozen moor to pick up a living. The mind's eye could indeed see Mrs. Gareth only in her thick colored hair. It took all the light of her treasures to make her concrete and distinct. She loomed for a moment, in any mere house, gaunt and unnatural. Then she vanished, as if she had suddenly sunk into a quick sand. She'd elost herself in the rich fancy of how, if she were mistress of Pointon, a whole province, as an abode, should be assigned there to the august queen mother. She would have returned from her campaign with her baggage train and her loot, and the palace would unbar its shutters and the mourning flash back from its halls. In the event of a surrender the poor woman would never be able again to begin to collect. She was now too old and too moneyless, and times were all altered, and good things impossibly dear. A surrender, furthermore, to any daughter-in-law, save an oddity like Mona, needn't at all be an abdication, in fact. Any other fairly nice girl, whom Owen should have taken it into his head to marry, would have been positively glad to have, for the museum, a custodian who was a walking catalog, and who understood beyond anyone in England the hygiene and temperament of rare pieces. A fairly nice girl would somehow be away a good deal, and would at such times count a blessing to feel Mrs. Gareth at her post. Fleeda had fully recognized the first days, that quite apart from any question of letting Owen know where she was, it would be a charity to give him some sign. It would be weak. It would be ugly to be diverted from that kindness by the fact that Mrs. Gareth had attached a tinkling bell to it. A frank relation with him was only superficially discredited. She ought for his own sake to send him a word of cheer. So she repeatedly reasoned, but she as repeatedly delaying performance. If her general plan had been to be as still as a mouse, an interview like the interview at Rick's would be an odd contribution to that ideal. Therefore, with a confused preference of practice to theory, she let the days go by. She felt that nothing was so imperative as the gain of precious time. She shouldn't be able to stay with her father forever, but she might now reap the benefit of having married her sister. Maggie's union had been built up round a small spare room. Concealed in this apartment, she might try to paint again, and abetted by the grateful Maggie. For Maggie at least was grateful. She might try to dispose of her work. She had not indeed struggled with a brush since her visit to Waterbath, where the sight of the family's splotches had put her immensely on her guard. Pointon, moreover, had been an impossible place for producing. No active art could flourish there, but a budistic contemplation. It had stripped its mistress clean of all feeble accomplishments. Her hands were imbrewed neither with ink nor with water color. Close to fleet as present abode was the little shop of a man who mounted and framed pictures, and desolately dealt in artists' materials. She sometimes paused before it to look at a couple of shy experiments, for which its dull window constituted publicity. Small studies placed there for sale, and full of warning to a young lady without fortune and without talent. Some such young lady had brought them forth in sorrow. Some such young lady, to see if they had been snapped up, had passed and repast as helplessly as she herself was doing. They never had been. They never would be snapped up. Yet they were quite above the actual attainment of some other young ladies. It was a matter of discipline with fleet to take an occasional lesson from them, besides which, when she had now quitted the house, she had to look for reasons after she was out. The only place to find them was in the shop windows. They made her feel like a servant girl taking her afternoon, but that didn't signify. Perhaps someday she would resemble such a person still more closely. This continued a fortnight, at the end of which the feeling was suddenly dissipated. She had stopped as usual in the presence of the little pictures. Then, as she turned away, she had found herself face to face with Owen Gareth. At the sight of him, two fresh waves passed quickly across her heart, one at the heels of the other. The first was an instant perception that this encounter was not an accident. The second, a consciousness, is prompt that the best place for it was the street. She knew before he told her that he had been to see her, and the next thing she knew was that he had had information from his mother. Her mind grasped these things while he said with a smile. I saw only your back, but I was sure. I was over the way. I've been at your house. How came you to know my house? Fleeta asked. I like that, he laughed. How came you not to let me know that you were here? Fleeta at this thought it best also to laugh. Since I didn't let you know, why did you come? Oh, I say, cried Owen, don't add insult to injury. Why in the world didn't you let me know? I came because I want awfully to see you. He hesitated, then he added. I got the tip from my mother. She has written to me, fancy. They still stood where they had met. Fleeta's instinct was to keep him there, the more so that she could already see him take for granted that they would immediately proceed together to her door. He rose before her with a different air. He looked less ruffled and bruised than he had done at Ricks. He showed a recovered freshness. Perhaps, however, this was only because she had scarcely seen him at all as yet in London form, as he would have called it, turned out as he was turned out in town. In the country, heated with a chase and splashed with the mire, he had always reminded her of a picturesque peasant and national costume. This costume, as Owen wore it, varied from day to day. It was as copious as the wardrobe of an actor, but it never failed of suggestions of the earth and the weather, the hedges and the ditches, the beasts and the birds. There had been days when he struck her as all nature in one pair of boots. It didn't make him now another person that he was delicately dressed, shining and splendid, that he had a higher hat and light gloves with black seams and a spear like umbrella. But it made him, she soon decided, really handsomer, and that in turn gave him, for she could never think of him, or indeed of some other things without the aid of his vocabulary, a tremendous pull. Yes, that was for the moment, as he looked at her, the great fact of their situation. His pull was tremendous. She tried to keep the acknowledgement of it from trembling in her voice, as she said to him with more surprise than she really felt. You've then reopened relations with her? It's she who has reopened them with me. I got her letter this morning. She told me you were here, and that she wished me to know it. She didn't say much. She just gave me your address. I wrote her back, you know, thanks no end, she'll go to-day. So we are in correspondence again, aren't we? She means, of course, that you've something to tell me from her, eh? But if you have, why haven't you let a fellow know? He waited for no answer to this, he had so much to say. At your house, just now, they told me how long you've been here. Haven't you known all the while that I'm counting the hours? I left a word for you, that I would be back at six, but I'm awfully glad to have caught you so much sooner. You don't mean to say you're not going home? He exclaimed to dismay. The young woman there told me you went out early. I've been out of very short times, said Fleda, who would hung back with the general purpose of making things difficult for him. The street would make them difficult. She could trust the street. She reflected in time, however, that to betray to him, she was afraid to admit him, would give him more a feeling of facility than of anything else. She moved on with him after a moment, letting him direct their course to her door, which was only round a corner. She considered as they went, that it might not prove such a stroke to have been in London so long, and yet not to have called him. She desired he should feel she was perfectly simple with him, and there was no simplicity in that. Nonetheless, on the steps of the house, though she had a key, she rang the bell, and while they waited together, and she averted her face, she looked straight into the depths of what Mrs. Gareth had meant by giving him the tip. This had been perfidious, had been monstrous of Mrs. Gareth, and Fleda wondered if a letter had contained only what Owen repeated. Chapter 14 of the Spoils of Pointon When they had passed together into her father's little place, and among the brandy flasks and pen wipers, still more disconcerted and divided the girl to do something, though it would make him stay, had ordered tea, he put the letter before her quite as if he had guessed her thought. She still a bit nasty, fancy. He handed her the scrap of a note which he had pulled out of his pocket and from its envelope. Fleda Vetch, it ran, is at West Kensington, 10 Raphael Road, go to see her and try for God's sake to cultivate a glimmer of intelligence. When in handing it back to him, she took in his face, she saw that its heightened colour was the effect of his watching her read such an illusion to his want of wit. Fleda knew what it was an illusion to, and his pathetic air of having received this buffet, tall and fine and kind as he stood there, made her conscious of not quite concealing her knowledge. For a minute she was kept silent by an angered sense of the trick that had been played on her. It was a trick because Fleda considered there had been a covenant, and the trick consisted of Mrs. Gareth's having broken the spirit of their agreement while conforming in a fashion to the letter. Under the girl's menace of a complete rupture she had been afraid to make of her secret the use she itched to make, but in the course of these days of separation she had gathered pluck to hazard an indirect betrayal. Fleda measured her hesitations and the impulse which she had finally obeyed and which the continued procrastination of waterbath had encouraged had at last made irresistible. If in her high-handed manner of playing their game she had not named the thing hidden, she had named the hiding place. It was over the sense of this wrong that Fleda's lips closed tight. She was afraid of aggravating her case by some ejaculation that would make Owen prick up his ears. A great quick effort, however, helped her to avoid the danger with her constant idea of keeping cool and repressing a visible flutter. She found herself able to choose her words. Meanwhile he had exclaimed with his uncomfortable laugh. That's a good one for me, Miss Vetch, isn't it? Of course you know by this time that your mother's very sharp, said Fleda. I think I can understand well enough when I know what's to be understood, the young man asserted, but I hope you won't mind my saying that you've kept me pretty well in the dark about that. I've been waiting, waiting, waiting. So much has depended on your news. If you've been working for me I'm afraid it has been a thankless job. Can't she say what she'll do one way or another? I can't tell in the least where I am, you know. I haven't really learnt from you since I saw you there, where she is. You wrote me to be patient, and upon my soul I have been. But I'm afraid you don't quite realise what I'm to be patient with. At water-bath, don't you know? I've simply to account an answer for the damned things. Mona glowers at me and waits, and I hang it, I glower at you and do the same. Fleda had gathered fuller confidence as he continued. So plain was it that she had succeeded in not dropping into his mind the spark that might produce the glimmer his mother had tried to rub up. But even her small safety gave a start when after an appealing pause he went on. I hope you know that after all you're not keeping anything back from me? In the full face of what she was keeping back, such a hope could only make her wince, but she was prompt with her explanations in proportion as she felt they failed to meet him. The smutty maid came in with the tea-things, and Fleda, moving several objects, eagerly accepted the diversion of arranging a place for them on one of the tables. I've been trying to break your mother down, because that it seemed there may be some chance of it. That's why I've let you go on expecting it. She's too proud to veer around all at once, but I think I speak correctly in saying I've made an impression. In spite of ordering tea she had not invited him to sit down. She herself made a point of standing. She hovered by the window that looked into Raphael Road. She kept at the other side of the room, the stunted slavy, gazing wide-eyed at the beautiful gentleman, and either stupidly or cunningly bringing but one thing at a time, came and went between the tea-tree and the open door. You pegged at her so hard, Owen asked. I explained to her fully your position, and put before her much more strongly than she liked what seemed to me her absolute duty. Owen waited a little. And, having done that, you departed. She felt the full need of giving a reason for her departure. But at first she only said with cheerful frankness, I departed. Her companion again looked at her in silence. I thought you had gone to her for several months. Well, Fleeter replied, I couldn't stay. I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. I couldn't bear it, she went on. In the midst of those trophies of pointon, living with them, touching them, using them, I felt as if I were backing her up. As I was not a bit of an accomplice, as I hate what she has done, I didn't want to be, even to the extent of the mere look of it. What is it you call such people? An accessory after the fact. There was something she kept back so rigidly that the joy of uttering the rest was double. She felt the sharpest need of giving him all the other truth. There was a matter as to which she had deceived him, and there was a matter as to which she deceived Mrs. Gareth. But her lack of pleasure in deception as such came home to her now. She busied herself with the tea, and to extend the occupation, cleared the table still more, spreading out the coarse cups and saucers, and the vulgar little plates. She was aware that she produced more confusion than symmetry, but she was also aware that she was violently nervous. Owen tried to help her with something. This made, indeed, for disorder. My reason for not writing to you, she pursued, was simply that I was hoping to hear more from Rick's. I've waited from day to day for that. But you've heard nothing. Not a word. Then what I understand, said Owen, is that practically you and Mummy have quarreled, and you've done it. I mean you personally, for me. Oh, no, we haven't quarreled a bit. Even with a smile, we've only diverged. You've diverged uncommonly far, Owen laughed pleasantly back. Fleeda, with her hideous crockery and her father's collections, could concede that these objects, to her visitor's perception even more strongly than to her own, measured the length of the swing from Pointon and Rick's. She was aware, too, that her high standards figured vividly enough even to Owen's simplicity to make him reflect that West Kensington was a tremendous fall. If she had fallen, it was because she had acted for him. She was all the more content he should thus see she had acted, as the cost of it in his eyes was none of her own showing. What seems to have happened, he exclaimed, is that you've had a row with her and yet not moved her. Fleeda considered for a moment. She was full of the impression that notwithstanding her scant help, he saw his way clearer than he had seen it at Rick's. He might mean many things, and what of the many should mean in their turn only one? The difficulty is, you understand, that she doesn't really see into your situation. She hesitated. She doesn't comprehend why your marriage hasn't yet taken place. Owen stared. Why, for the reason I told you, that Mona won't take another step till mother has given full satisfaction. Everything must be there. You see, everything was there the day of that fatal visit. Yes, that's what I understood from you at Rick's, said Fleeda, but I haven't repeated it to your mother. She had hated at Rick's to talk with him about Mona, but now that scruple was swept away. If he could speak of Mona's visit as fatal, she needed at least not pretend not to notice it. It made all the difference that she had tried to assist him and had failed. To give him any faith in her service, she must give him all her reasons but one. She must give him, in other words, with a corresponding omission, all Mrs. Gareth's. You could easily see that, as she dislikes your marriage, anything that may seem to make it less certain works in her favor. Without my telling her, she has suspicions and views that are simply suggested by your delay. Therefore, it didn't seem to me right to make them worse. By holding off long enough, she thinks she may put an end to your engagement. If Mona's waiting, she believes she may at last tire Mona out. That, in all conscience, Fleeda felt was lucid enough. So the young man, following her attentively, appeared equally to feel. So far as that goes, he promptly declared, she has at last tired Mona out. He uttered the words with a strange approach to hilarity. Fleeda's surprise at this aberration left her a moment looking at him. Do you mean your marriage is off? Owen answered with a kind of gay despair. God knows, Miss Vetch, where or when or what my marriage is. If it isn't off, it certainly, at the point things have reached, isn't on. I haven't seen Mona for ten days, and for a week I haven't heard from her. She used to write me every week, don't you know? She won't budge from water-bath, and I haven't budged from town. Then he suddenly broke out. If she does chuck me, will mother come round? Fleeda at this felt her heroism had come to its real test. Felt that in telling him the truth she should effectively raise a hand to push his impediment out of the way. Was the knowledge that such emotion would probably dispose for ever of Mona capable of yielding to the conception of still giving her every chance she was entitled to? That conception was heroic, but, at the same moment it reminded Fleeda of the place it had held in her plan, she was also reminded of the not less urgent claim of the truth. Ah, the truth! There was the limit to the impunity with which one could juggle with it. Wasn't what she had most to remember the fact that Owen had a right to his property, and that he had also her vow to stand by him in the effort to recover it? How did she stand by him if she hid from him the single way to recover it, of which she was quite sure? For an instant that seemed to her the fullest of her life she debated. Yes, she said at last, if your marriage is really abandoned, she will give up everything she has taken. That's just what makes Mona hesitate, Owen honestly exclaimed. I mean the idea that I shall get back to things only if she gives me up. The thought an instant. You mean makes her hesitate to keep you, not hesitate to renounce you? Owen looked at trifle befogged. She doesn't see the use of hanging on, as I haven't even put the matter into legal hands. She's awfully keen about that, and awfully disgusted that I don't. She says it's the only real way, and she thinks I'm afraid to take it. She has given me time, and then has given me again more. She says I give mummy too much. She says I'm a muff to go pottering on. That's why she's drawing off so hard, don't you see? I don't see very clearly. Of course you must give her what you offered her. Of course you must keep your word. There must be no mistake about that, the girl declared. Owen's bewilderment visibly increased. You think then, as she does, that I must send down the police? The mixture of reluctance and dependence in this made her feel how much she was failing him. She had the sense of chucking him too. No, no, not yet, she said, though she really had no other and no better course to prescribe. Doesn't it occur to you, she asked in a moment, that if Mona is, as you say, drawing away, she may have in doing so a very high motive? She knows the immense value of all the objects detained by your mother, and to restore the spoils of point and she's ready, is that it, to make a sacrifice? The sacrifice is that of an engagement she had entered upon with joy. Owen had been black a moment before, but he followed this argument with success, a success so immediate that enabled him to produce with decision, ah, she's not that sort. She wants them herself, he added. She wants to feel they're hers. She doesn't care whether I have them or not. And if she can't get them, she doesn't want me. If she can't get them, she doesn't want anything at all. This was categoric, Flita drank it in. She takes such an interest in them? So it appears. So much that they're all, and that she can let everything else absolutely depend upon them? Owen weighed her question, as if he felt the responsibility of his answer. But that answer came in a moment, and as Flita could see out of a wealth of memory. She never wanted them particularly till they seemed to be in danger. She has an idea about them, and when she gets hold of an idea, oh, dear me! He broke off pausing and looking away as with a sense of the futility of expression. It was the first time Flita had ever heard him explain a matter so pointedly, or embark at all on a generalization. It was striking, it was touching to her, as he faltered, that he appeared but half capable of floating his generalization to the end. The girl, however, was so far competent to fill up his blank, as that she had divined on the occasion of Mona's visit to Pointon what would happen in the event of the accident at which he glanced. She had there, with her own eyes, seen Owen's betrothed get hold of an idea. I say, you know, do give me some tea. He went on irrelevantly and familiarly. Her profuse preparations had all this time had no sequel, and with the laugh that she felt to be awkward, she hastily complied with his request. It's sure to be horrid, she said, we don't have at all good things. She offered him also bread and butter, of which he partook, holding his cup and saucer in his other hand, and moving slowly about the room. She poured herself a cup, but not to take it, after which, without wanting it, she began to eat a small, stale biscuit. She was struck with the extinction of the unwillingness she had felt at Ricks to contribute to the bandying between them of poor Mona's name, and under this influence she presently resumed, I might understand that she engaged herself to marry you without caring for you. Owen looked into Raphael Road. She did care for me awfully, but she can't stand the strain. The strain of what? Why of the whole wretched thing? The whole thing has indeed been wretched, and I can easily conceive its effect on her, Fleida said. Her visitor turned sharp round. You can? There was a light in his strong stare. You can understand it spoiling her temper and making her come down on me? She behaved as if I were no use to her at all. Fleida hesitated. She's rankling under the sense of her wrong. Well, was it I pray who perpetrated the wrong, ain't I doing among what I can to get the thing arranged? The ring of his question made his anger at Mona almost resemble, for a minute, an anger at Fleida, and this resemblance in turn caused our young lady to observe how handsome he looked when he spoke, for the first time in her hearing, with that degree of heat and used also for the first time such a term as perpetrated. In addition his challenge rendered still more vivid to her the mere flimsiness of her own aid. Yes, you've been perfect, she said. You've had a most difficult part. You've had to show tact and patience, as well as firmness, with your mother, and you've strikingly shown them. It's I who quite unintentionally have deceived you. I haven't helped you at all to your remedy. Well, you wouldn't at all evince a cease to like me, would you? Owen demanded. It evidently mattered to him to know if she really justified Mona. I mean, of course, if you had liked me, like me as she liked me, he explained. Fleida looked as inquiry in the face only long enough to recognize that in her embarrassment she must take instant refuge in a superior one. I can answer that better if I know how kind to her you've been. Have you been kind to her? She asked as simply as she could. Why, rather, Miss Vetch, Owen declared, I've done every blessed thing she wished. I rushed down to ricks, as you saw, with fire and sword, and the day after that I went to see her at water-bath. At this point he checked himself, though it was just the point at which her interest deepened. A different look had come into his face as he put down his empty teacup. But why should I tell you such things for any good it does me? I gather you've no suggestion to make me now, except that I shall request my solicitor to act. Shall I request him to act? Fleida scarce caught his words. Something new had suddenly come into her mind. When you went to water-bath after seeing me, she asked, did you tell her all about that? Owen looked conscious, all about it? That you had had a long talk with me without seeing your mother at all? Oh, yes, I told her exactly, and that you had been most awfully kind, and that I had placed the whole thing in your hands. Fleida was silent for a moment. Perhaps that displeased her, she at last suggested. It displeased her fearfully, said Owen, looking very queer. Fearfully broke from the girl. Somehow at the word she was startled. She wanted to know what right you had to meddle. She said you were not honest. Oh, Fleida cried with a long wail. Then she controlled herself. I see. She abused you, and I defended you. She denounced you. She checked him with a gesture. Don't tell me what she did. She had colored up to her eyes, where, as with the effect of a blow in the face, she quickly felt the tears gathering. It was a sudden drop in her great flight, a shock to her attempt to watch over what Mona was entitled to. While she had been straining her very soul in this attempt, the object of her magnanimity had been practically pronouncing her vile. She took it all in, however, and after an instant was able to speak with a smile. She would not have been surprised to learn, indeed, that her smile was strange. You had said a while ago that your mother and I quarreled about you. It's much more true to say that you and Mona have quarreled about me. No one hesitated, but at last he brought it out. What I mean to say is, don't you know, that Mona, if you don't mind my saying so, has taken it into her head to be jealous. I see, said Flida, well I dare say our conferences have looked very odd. They've looked very beautiful, and they've been very beautiful. Oh, I've told her the sort you are, the young man pursued. That, of course, hasn't made her love me better. No, nor love me, said Owen. Of course, you know, she says, so far as that goes, that she loves me. And do you say you love her? I say nothing else. I say it all the while. I said it the other day a dozen times. Flida made no immediate rejoinder to this. And before she could choose one, he repeated his question of a moment before. Am I to tell my solicitor to act? She had at that moment turned away from this solution, precisely because she saw in it the great chance of her secret. If she should determine him to adopt it, she might put out her hand and take him. It would shut in Mrs. Gareth's face the open door of surrender. She would flare up and fight, flying the flag of a passionate, heroic defense. The case would obviously go against her, but the proceedings would last longer than Mona's patience, or Owen's propriety. With a formal rupture he would be at large, and she had only to tighten her fingers round the string that would raise the curtain on that scene. You tell me you say you love her, but is there nothing more in it than you're saying so? You wouldn't say so, would you, if it's not true? What in the world has become, in so short a time, of the affection that led to the engagement? The deuce knows what has become of it, Miss Vetch, Owen cried. It seemed all to go to pot as this horrid struggle came on. He was close to her now, and with his face lighted again by the relief of it, he looked all his helpless history into her eyes. As I saw you and noticed you more, as I knew you better and better, I felt less and less, I couldn't help it, about anything or anyone else. I wished I had known you sooner. I knew I should have liked you better than anyone in the world. But it wasn't you who made the difference, he eagerly continued, and I was awfully determined to stick to Mona to the death. It was she herself who made it, upon my soul, by the state she got into, the way she sulked, the way she took things, and the way she let me have it. She destroyed our prospects and our happiness upon my honor. She made just the same smash of them as if she'd kicked over that tea-table. She wanted to know all the while what was passing between us, between you and me. And she wouldn't take my solemn assurance that nothing was passing, but what might have directly passed between me and old mummy. She said a pretty girl like you was a nice old mummy for me, and if you'll believe it, she never called you anything else but that. I'll be hanged if I haven't been good, haven't I? I haven't breathed a breath of any sort to you, have I? You'd have been down on me hard if I had, wouldn't you? You're down on me pretty hard as it is, I think, aren't you? But I don't care what you say now, or what Mona says either, or a single wrap what anyone says. She has given me at last by her confounded behavior a right to speak out, to utter the way I feel about it. The way I feel about it, don't you know, is that it at all better come to an end. You ask me if I don't love her, and I suppose it's natural enough you should. But you ask it at the very moment I'm half mad to say to you that there's only one person on the whole earth I really love, and that person, here Owen pulled up short, and Fleeter wondered if it were from the effects of his perceiving through the closed door, the sound of steps and voices on the landing of the stairs. She had caught this sound herself with a surprise and a vague uneasiness. It was not an hour at which her father ever came in, and there was no present reason why she should have a visitor. She had a fear which after a few seconds deepened. A visitor was at hand. The visitor would be simply Mrs. Gareth. That lady wished for a near view of the consequence of her note to Owen. Fleeter straightened herself with the instant thought that if this was what Mrs. Gareth desired, Mrs. Gareth should have it in a form not to be mistaken. Owen's pause was the matter of a moment, but during that moment our young couple stood with their eyes holding each other's eyes and their ears catching the suggestion, still through the door of a murmured conference in the hall. Fleeter had begun to make the movement to cut it short when Owen stopped her with a grasp of her arm. You're surely able to guess, he said, with his voice dropped and her arm pressed as she had never known such a drop or such a pressure. You're surely able to guess the one person on earth I love. The handle of the door turned and Fleeter had only time to jerk at him, your mother. The door opened and the smutty maid edging in announced Mrs. Briggstock, end of chapter 14. Chapter 15 of the Spoils of Pointon. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings were in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The spoils of Pointon by Henry James, chapter 15. Mrs. Briggstock and the doorway stood looking from one of the occupants of the room to the other. Then they saw her eyes attached themselves to a small object that had lain hitherto unnoticed on the carpet. This was the biscuit of which, on giving Owen his tea, Fleeter had taken a perfunctory nibble. She had immediately laid it on the table and that subsequently in some precipitate movement she should have brushed it off was doubtless a sign of the agitation that possessed her. For Mrs. Briggstock there was apparently more in it than met the eye. Owen at any rate picked it up and Fleeter felt as if he were removing the traces of some scene that the newspapers would have characterized as lively. Mrs. Briggstock clearly took in also the sprawling tea things and the mark as of high water in the full faces of her young friends. These elements made the little place a vivid picture of intimacy. A minute was filled by Fleeter's relief at finding her visitor not to be Mrs. Gareth and a longer space by the ensuing sense of what was really more compromising in the actual apparition. It dimly occurred to her that the lady of Ricks had also written to water bath. Not only had Mrs. Briggstock never paid her a call but Fleeter would have been unable to figure her so employed. A year before the girl had spent a day under her roof but never feeling that Mrs. Briggstock regarded this as constituting a bond. She had never stayed in any house butt-pointing where the imagination of a bond on one side or the other prevailed. After the first astonishment she dashed gaily at her guest, emphasizing her welcome and wondering how her whereabouts had become known at water bath. Had not Mrs. Briggstock quitted that residence for the very purpose of laying her hand on the associate of Mrs. Gareth's misconduct? The spirit in which this hand was to be laid, our young woman was yet to ascertain. But she was the person who could think 10 thoughts at once, a circumstance which, even putting her present plight at its worst, gave her a great advantage over a person who required easy conditions for dealing even with one. The very vibration of the air, however, told her that whatever Mrs. Briggstock's spirit might originally have been, it had been sharply affected by the sight of Owen. He was essentially a surprise. She had reckoned with everything that concerned him but his personal presence. With that, in awkward silence, she was reckoning now as Fleeter could see while she affected with friendly aid and embarrassed transit to the sofa. Owen would be useless, would be deplorable. That aspect of the case Fleeter had taken in as well. Another aspect was that he would admire her, adore her, exactly in proportion as she herself should rise gracefully superior. Fleeter felt for the first time free to let herself go, as Mrs. Gareth had said. And she was full of the sense that to go meant now to aim straight at the effect of moving Owen to rapture at her simplicity intact. It was her impression that he had no positive dislike of Mona's mother, but she couldn't entertain that notion without a glimpse of the implication that he had a positive dislike of Mrs. Briggstock's daughter. Mona's mother declined tea, declined a better seat, declined a cushion, declined to remove her boa. Fleeter guessed that she had not come on purpose to be dry, but that the voice of the invaded room had itself given her the hint. I just came on the mere chance, she said. Mona found yesterday somewhere the card of invitation to your sister's marriage that you sent us or your father sent us some time ago. We couldn't be present, it was impossible. But as it had this address on it, I said to myself that I might find you here. I'm very glad to be at home, Fleeter responded. Yes, that doesn't happen very often, does it? Mrs. Briggstock looked round afresh at Fleeter's home. Oh, I came back from Rick's last week. I shall be here now till I don't know when. We thought it very likely you would have come back. We knew, of course, of your having been at Rick's. If I didn't find you, I thought I might perhaps find Mr. Vetch, Mrs. Briggstock went on. I'm sorry, he's out. He's always out all day long. Mrs. Briggstock's round eyes grew rounder. All day long? All day long, Fleeter smiled. Leaving you quite to yourself? A good deal to myself, but a little today, as you see, to Mr. Gareth. And the girl looked at Owen to draw him into their sociability. For Mrs. Briggstock, he had immediately sat down. But the movement had not corrected the somber stiffness taking possession of him at the sight of her. Before he found a response to the appeal addressed to him, Fleeter turned again to her other visitor. Is there any purpose for which you would like my father to call on you? Mrs. Briggstock received this question, as if it were not to be unguardedly answered, upon which Owen intervened with pale irrelevance. I wrote to Mona this morning of Miss Vetch's being in town, but, of course, the letter hadn't arrived when you left home. No, it hadn't arrived. I came up for the night. I've several matters to attend to. Then looking with an intention of fixedness from one of her companions to the other, I'm afraid I've interrupted your conversation, Mrs. Briggstock said. She spoke without effectual point, had the air of merely announcing the fact. Fleeter had not yet been confronted with the question of the sort of person Mrs. Briggstock was. She had only been confronted with the question of the sort of person Mrs. Gareth scorned her for being. She was really somehow no sort of person at all, and it came home to Fleeter that if Mrs. Gareth could see her at this moment, she would scorn her more than ever. She had a face of which it was impossible to say anything, but that it was pink, and a mind that it would be possible to describe only if one had been able to mark it in a similar fashion. As nature had made this organ neither green nor blue nor yellow, there was nothing to know it by. It strayed and bleated like an unbranded sheep. Fleeter felt for it at this moment much of the kindness of compassion, since Mrs. Briggstock had brought it with her to do something for her that she regarded as delicate. Fleeter was quite prepared to help it to perform if she should be able to gather what it wanted to do. What she gathered, however, more and more, was that it wanted to do something different from what it had wanted to do in leaving water bath. There was still nothing to enlighten her more specifically in the way her visitor continued. You must be very much taken up. I believe you quite espouse his dreadful quarrel. Fleeter vaguely demurred. His dreadful quarrel? About the contents of the house, aren't you looking after them for him? She knows how awfully kind you've been to me, Owen said. He showed such discomforture that he really gave away their situation, and Fleeter found herself divided between the hope that he would take his leave, and the wish that he should see the whole of what the occasion might enable her to bring to pass for him. She explained to Mrs. Briggstock, Mrs. Gareth at Ricks the other day asked me particularly to see him for her. And did she ask you also particularly to see him here in town? Mrs. Briggstock's hideous bonnet seemed to argue for the unsophisticated truth, and it was on Fleeter's lips to reply that such had indeed been Mrs. Gareth's request. But she checked herself, and before she could say anything else, Owen had addressed their companion. I made a point of letting Mona know that I should be here, don't you see? That's exactly what I wrote her this morning. She would have had no doubt you would be here if you had a chance, Mrs. Briggstock returned. If your letter had arrived, it might have prepared me for finding you here at tea. In that case, I certainly wouldn't have come. I'm glad then it didn't arrive. Shouldn't you like him to go? Fleeter asked. Mrs. Briggstock looked at Owen and considered. Nothing showed in her face, but that it turned a deeper pink. I should like him to go with me. There was no menace in her tone, but she evidently knew what she wanted. As Owen made no response to this, Fleeter glanced at him to invite him to a scent. Then, for fear he wouldn't, and would thereby make his case worse, she took upon herself to declare that she was sure he would be very glad to meet such a wish. She had no sooner spoken than she felt that the words had a bad effect of intimacy. She had answered for him as if she had been his wife. Mrs. Briggstock continued to regard him as if she had observed nothing, and she continued to address Fleeter. I've not seen him for a long time. I've particular things to say to him. So have I things to say to you, Mrs. Briggstock. Owen interjected. With this he took up his hat as if for immediate departure. The other visitor meanwhile turned to Fleeter. What is Mrs. Gareth going to do? Is that what you came to ask me, Fleeter demanded? That and several other things. Then you had much better let Mr. Gareth go and stay by yourself and make me a pleasant visit. You can talk with him when you like, but it's the first time you've been to see me. This appeal had evidently a certain effect. Mrs. Briggstock visibly wavered. I can't talk with him whenever I like, she returned. He hasn't been nearer since I don't know when, but there are things that have brought me here. They can't be things of any importance. Owen, to Fleeter's surprise, suddenly asserted. He had not at first taken up Mrs. Briggstock's expression of a wish to carry him off. Fleeter could see that the instinct at the bottom of this was that of standing by her, of seeming not to abandon her. But abruptly, all his soreness working within him, it had struck him that he should abandon her still more if he should leave her to be dealt with by her other visitor. You must allow me to say, you know, Mrs. Briggstock, that I don't think you should come down on Miss Vetch about anything. It's very good of her to take the smallest interest in us and our horrid, vulgar little squabble. If you want to talk about it, talk about it with me. He was flushed with the idea of protecting Fleeter, of exhibiting his consideration for her. I don't like you cross-questioning her, don't you see? She's as straight as a die. I'll tell you all about her, he declared with an excited laugh. Please come off with me and let her alone. Mrs. Briggstock at this became vivid at once. Fleeter thought she looked most peculiar. She stood straight up with a queer distention of her whole person and of everything in her face but her mouth, which she gathered into a small, tight orifice. Fleeter was painfully divided. Her joy was deep within, but it was more relevant to the situation that she should not appear to associate herself with the tone of familiarity in which Owen addressed a lady who had been, and was perhaps still, about to become his mother-in-law. She laid on Mrs. Briggstock's arm a repressive, persuasive hand. Mrs. Briggstock, however, had already exclaimed on her having so wonderful a defender. He speaks upon my word as if I had come here to be rude to you. At this, grasping her hard, Fleeter laughed. Then she achieved the exploit of delicately kissing her. I'm not in the least afraid to be alone with you, or of your terror meat of pieces. I'll answer any question that you can possibly dream of putting to me. I'm the proper person to answer Mrs. Briggstock's questions, Owen broken again, and I'm not a bit less ready to meet them than you are. He was firmer than she had ever seen him. It was as if she had not dreamed he could be so firm. But she'll only have been here a few minutes. What sort of a visit is that? Fleeter cried. It has lasted long enough for my purpose. There was something I wanted to know, but I think I know it now. Something you don't know I daresay I can tell you, Owen observed, as he impatiently smoothed his hat with the cuff of his coat. Fleeter by this time desired immensely to keep his companion, but she saw she could do so only at the cost of provoking on his part a further exhibition of the sheltering attitude which he exaggerated precisely because it was the first thing since he had begun to like her, that he had been able, frankly, to do for her. It was not in her interest that Mrs. Briggstock should be more struck than she already was with that benevolence. There may be things you know that I don't, she presently said to her with a smile, but I have a sort of sense that you are laboring under some great mistake. Mrs. Briggstock at this looked into her eyes more deeply and yearningly than she had supposed Mrs. Briggstock could look. It was the flicker of a mild, muddled willingness to give her a chance. Then, however, quickly spoiled everything. Nothing is more probable than that Mrs. Briggstock is doing what you say, but there's no one in the world to whom you owe an explanation. I may owe somebody one. I dare say I do. But not you. No. But what if there's one that it's no difficulty at all for me to give, Fleeter inquired. I'm sure that's the only one Mrs. Briggstock came to ask if she came to ask any at all. Even the good lady looked hard at her young friend. I came, I believe, Fleeter, just, you know, to plead with you. Fleeter with her bright face hesitated a moment, as if I were one of those bad women in a play. The remark was disastrous. Mrs. Briggstock, on whom her brightness was lost, evidently thought it singularly free. She turned away as from a presence that had really defined itself as objectionable, and Fleeter had a vain sense that her good humor, in which there was an idea, was taken for impertinence, or at least for levity, her illusion was improper, even if she herself wasn't. Mrs. Briggstock's emotions simplified. It came to the same thing. I'm quite ready, that lady said to Owen rather mildly and woundedly, I do want to speak to you very much. I'm completely at your service. Owen held out his hand to Fleeter. Good-bye, Miss Vetch. I hope to see you again tomorrow. He opened the door for Mrs. Briggstock, who passed before the girl with an oblique, averted salutation. Owen and Fleeter, while he stood at the door, then faced each other darkly and without speaking. Their eyes met once more for a long moment, and she was conscious there was something in hers that the darkness didn't quench, that he had never seen before, and that he was perhaps never to see again. He stayed long enough to take it, to take it with a somber stare that just showed the dawn of wonder. And he followed Mrs. Briggstock out of the house. End of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 of the Spoils of Pointon. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Henry James, The Spoils of Pointon. Chapter 16. He had uttered the hope that he should see her the next day, but Fleeter could easily reflect that he wouldn't see her if she were not there to be seen. If there was a thing in the world she desired at that moment, it was that the next day should have no point of resemblance with the day that had just elapsed. She accordingly aspired to an absence. She would go immediately down to Maggie. She ran out that evening and telegraphed to her sister, and in the morning she quitted London by an early train. She required for this step no reason but the sense of necessity. It was a strong personal need. She wished to interpose something, and there was nothing she could interpose but distance but time. If Mrs. Briggstock had to deal with Owen, she would allow Mrs. Briggstock the chance to be there, to be in the midst of it was the reverse of what she craved. She had already been more in the midst of it than had ever entered into her plan. At any rate she had renounced her plan. She had no plan now but the plan of separation. This was to abandon Owen, to give up the fine office of helping him back to his own. But when she had undertaken that office she had not foreseen that Mrs. Gareth would defeat it by a maneuver so remarkably simple. The scene at her father's room had extinguished all offices, and the scene at her father's room was of Mrs. Gareth's producing. Owen, at all events, must now act for himself. He had obligations to meet, he had satisfactions to give, and Flida fairly ached with the wish he might be equal to them. She never knew the extent of her tenderness for him, till she became conscious of the present force of her desire that he should be superior, be perhaps even sublime. She obscurely made out that superiority, that sublimity mightened after all, be fatal. She closed her eyes and lived for a day or two in the mere beauty of confidence. It was wither on the short journey. It was wither at Maggie's. It glorified the mean little house in the stupid little town. Owen had grown larger to her. He would do, like a man, whatever he should have to do. He wouldn't be weak, not as she was. She herself was weak exceedingly. Arranging her few possessions and Maggie's fewer receptacles, she caught a glimpse of the bright side of the fact that her old things were not such a problem as Mrs. Gareth's. Picking her way with Maggie through the local puddles, diving with her into smelly cottages, and supporting her at smellier shops in firmness over the weight of joints and the taste of cheese, it was still her own secret that was universally interwoven. In the puddles, the cottages, the shops, she was comfortably alone with it. That comfort prevailed even while at the evening meal her brother-in-law invited her attention to a diagram drawn with a fork on two soiled tablecloth of the scandalous drains of the convalescent home. To be alone with it she had come away from ricks, and now she knew that to be alone with it she had come away from London. This advantage was, of course, menaced, though not immediately destroyed, by the arrival on the second day of the note she had been sure she should receive from Owen. He had gone to West Kensington and found her flown, but he had got her addressed from the little maid and then hurried to a club and written to her. Why have you left me just when I want you most, he demanded? The next words that was true were more reassuring on the question of his steadiness. I don't know what your reason may be, they went on, though why you've not left a line for me, but I don't think you can feel that I did anything yesterday that it wasn't right for me to do. As regards Mrs. Briggstock, certainly I just felt what was right and I did it. She had no business whatever to attack you that way and I should have been ashamed if I had left her there to worry you. I won't have you worried by anyone. No one shall be disagreeable to you but me. I didn't mean to be so yesterday and I don't today, but I'm perfectly free now to want you and I want you much more than you've allowed me to explain. You'll see if I'm not all right, if you'll let me come to you. Don't be afraid, I'll not hurt you nor trouble you. I give you my honor, I'll not hurt anyone. Only I must see you on what I had to say to Mrs. B. She was nastier than I thought she could be, but I'm behaving like an angel. I assure you I'm all right, that's exactly what I want you to see. You owe me something, you know, for what you said you would do and haven't done, what you'd departure without a word gives me to understand, doesn't it? That you definitely can't do. Don't simply forsake me. See me if you only see me once. I shan't wait for any leave. I shall come down tomorrow. I've been looking at the trains and find there's something that will bring me down just after lunch and something very good for getting me back. I won't stop long. For God's sake, be there. This communication arrived in the morning, but Fleeter would still have had time to wire a protest. She debated on that alternative. Then she read the note over and found in one phrase an exact statement of her duty. Owen's simplicity had expressed it and her subtly had nothing to answer. She owed him something for her obvious failure and what she owed him was to receive him. If indeed she had known he would make this attempt, she might have been held to have gained nothing by her flight. Well, she had gained what she had gained. She had gained the interval. She had no compunction for the greater trouble she should give the young man. It was now doubtless right that he should have as much trouble as possible. Maggie, who thought she was in her confidence, yet was immensely not, had reproached her for having quitted Mrs. Gareth and Maggie was just in this proportion gratified to hear of the visitor with whom early in the afternoon Fleeter would have to ask to be left alone. Maggie liked to see far and now she could sit upstairs and rake the whole future. She had known that, as she familiarly said, there was something the matter with Fleeter and the value of that knowledge was augmented by the fact that there was apparently also something the matter with Mr. Gareth. Fleeter downstairs learned soon enough what this was. It was simply that as he announced the moment he stood before her, he was now all right. When she asked him what he meant by that state, he replied that he meant he could practically regard himself henceforth as a free man. He had had, at West Kensington, as soon as they got into the street, such a horrid scene with Mrs. Briggstock. I knew what you wanted to say to me. That's why I was determined to get her off. I knew I shouldn't like it, but I was perfectly prepared, said Owen. She brought it out as soon as we got round the corner. She asked me point blank if I was in love with you. And what did you say to that? That it was none of her business. Ah, said Fleeter, I'm not so sure. Well, I am and I'm the person most concerned. Of course I didn't use just those words. I was perfectly civil, quite as civil as she. But I told her I didn't consider she had a right to put me any such question. I said I wasn't sure that even Mona had with the extraordinary line you know that Mona has taken. At any rate, the whole thing, the way I put it, was between Mona and me. And between Mona and me, if she didn't mind, it would just have to remain. Fleeter was silent a little. All that didn't answer her question. Then you think I ought to have told her? Again, our young lady reflected. I think I'm rather glad you didn't. I knew what I was about, said Owen. It didn't strike me that she had the least right to come down on us that way and ask for explanations. Fleeter looked very grave, weighing the whole matter. I dare say that when she started, when she arrived, she didn't mean to come down. What then did she mean to do? What she said to me just before she went, she meant to plead with me. Oh, I heard her, said Owen, but plead with you for what? For you, of course, to entreat me to give you up. She thinks me awfully designing that I've taken some sort of possession of you. Owen stared. You haven't lifted a finger. It's I who have taken possession. Very true, you've done it all yourself. Fleeter spoke gravely and gently, without a breath of corketry. But those are shades between which she's probably not obliged to distinguish. It's enough for her that we're repulsively intimate. I am, but you're not, Owen exclaimed. Fleeter gave a dim smile. You make me at least feel that I'm learning to know you very well when I hear you say such a thing as that. Mrs. Briggs-Dott came to get round me, to supplicate me, she went on. But to find you there looking so much at home, paying me a friendly call, and shoving the tea things about, that was too much for her patience. She doesn't know, you see, that I'm, after all, a decent girl. She simply made up her mind on the spot that I'm a very bad case. I couldn't stand the way she treated you, and that was what I had to say to her. Owen returned. She's simple and slow, but she's not a fool. I think she treated me on the whole very well. Fleeter remembered how Mrs. Gareth had treated Mona, when the Briggs-Dott came down to pointin'. Owen evidently thought her painfully perverse. It was you who carried it off. You behaved like a brick, and so did I, I consider. If you only knew the difficulty I had, I told her you were the noblest and straightest of women. That can hardly have removed her impression that there are things I put you up to. It didn't, Owen replied with candor. She said our relation, yours and mine, isn't innocent. What did she mean by that? As you may suppose, I particularly inquired. Do you know what she had the cheek to tell me? Owen asked. She didn't better it much. She said she meant that it's excessively unnatural. Fleeter considered her fresh. Well, it is, she brought out at last. Then, upon my honor, it's only you who make it so. Her perversity was distinctly too much for him. I mean you make it so by the way you keep me off. Have I kept you off today? Fleeter sadly shook her head, raising her arms a little and dropping them. Her gesture of resignation gave him a pretext for catching it her hand. But before he could take it, she had put it behind her. They had been seated together on Maggie's single sofa, and her movement brought her to her feet while Owen, looking at her approachfully, leaned back in discouragement. What good does it do me to be here when I find you only a stone? She met his eyes with all the tenderness she had not yet uttered, and she had not known till this moment how great was the accumulation. Perhaps after all she risked there may be even in a stone still some little help for you. Owen sat there a minute staring at her. Ah, you're beautiful, more beautiful than anyone, he broke out, but I'll be hanged if I can ever understand you. On Tuesday at your father's you were beautiful, as beautiful just before I left as you are at this instant. But the next day when I went back I found it had apparently meant nothing. And now again that you let me come here and you shine at me like an angel, it doesn't bring you an inch nearer to saying what I want you to say. He remained a moment longer in the same position than jerked himself up. What I want you to say is that you like me. What I want you to say is that you pity me. He sprang up and came to her. What I want you to say is that you'll save me. Fleeta hesitated. Why do you need saving when you announced to me just now that you were a free man? He too hesitated, but he was not checked. It's just for the reason that I'm free. Don't you know what I mean, Miss Vetch? I want you to marry me. Fleeta at this put out her hand in charity. She held his own, which quickly grasped at a moment. And if he had described her as shining at him, it may be assumed that she shone all the more in her deep, still smile. Let me hear a little more about your freedom first, she said. I gather that Mrs. Briggstock was not wholly satisfied with the way you disposed of her question. I dare say she wasn't. But the less she satisfied, the more I'm free. What bearing have her feelings, pray, Fleeta asked. Why, Mona's much worse than her mother, you know. She wants much more to give me up. Then why doesn't she do it? She will as soon as her mother gets home and tells her. Tells her what, Fleeta inquired. Why, that I'm in love with you? Fleeta debated, are you so very sure she will? Certainly I'm sure, with all the evidence I already have, that we'll finish her, Owen declared. This made his companion thoughtful again. Can you take such pleasure in her being finished, a poor girl you've once loved? Owen waited long enough to take in the question, then with the serenity startling even to her knowledge of his nature. I don't think I can have really loved her, you know, he replied. Fleeta broke into a laugh which gave him a surprise as visible as the emotion that represented. Then how am I to know that you really love anybody else? Oh, I'll show you that, said Owen. I must take it on trust, the girl pursued. And what if Mona doesn't give you up, she added. Owen was baffled but a few seconds, he had thought of everything. Why, that's just where you come in. To save you, I see. You mean I must get rid of her for you? His blankness showed for a little that he felt the chill of her cold logic. But as she waited for his rejoinder, she knew to which of them it cost most. He gasped a minute and that gave her time to say, you see, Mr. Owen, how impossible it is to talk of such things yet. Like lightning, he had grasped her arm. You mean you will talk of them? Then as he began to take the flood of assent from her eyes, you will listen to me? Oh, you dear, you dear, when, when? Ah, when it isn't mere misery. The words had broken from her in a sudden loud cry. And what happened next was that the very sound of her pain upset her. She heard her own true note. She turned short away from him. In a moment she had burst into sobs. In another his arms were round her. The next she had let herself go so far that even Mrs. Gareth might have seen it. He clasped her and she gave herself. She poured out her tears on his breast. Something prisoned and pent, throbbed and gushed. Something deep and sweet surged up. Something that came from far within and far off that had begun with the sight of him in his indifference and had never had rest since then. The surrender was short, but the relief was long. She felt his warm lips on her face and his arms tightened with his full divination. What she did, what she had done, she scarcely knew. She only was aware, as she broke from him again, of what had taken place in his panting soul. What had taken place was that, with the click of a spring, he saw. He had cleared the high wall at her bound. They were together without a veil. She had not a shred of a secret left. It was as if a whirlwind had come and gone, laying low the great false front that she had built up stone by stone. The strangest thing of all was the momentary sense of desolation. Ah, all the while you cared. Owen read the truth with the wonder so great that it was visibly almost a sadness, a terror caused by his sudden perception of where the impossibility was not. That made it all, perhaps, elsewhere. I cared, I cared, I cared. Fleeda moaned it as defiantly as if she were confessing a misdeed. How couldn't I care? But you mustn't, you must never, never ask. It isn't for us to talk about, she insisted. Don't speak of it, don't speak. It was easy, indeed, not to speak when the difficulty was to find words. He clasped his hands before her as he might have clasped them at an altar. His pressed palm shook together while he held his breath and while she stilled herself in the effort to come round again to the real and the right. He assisted this effort, soothing her into a seat with a touch as light as if she had really been something sacred. She sank into a chair and he dropped before her on his knees. She fell back with closed eyes and he buried his face in her lap. There was no way to thank her but this act of prostration, which lasted in silence till she laid consenting hands on him, touched his head and stroked it, held it in her tenderness till he acknowledged his long density. He made the avowal seem only his, made her, when she rose again, raise him at last softly as if from the abasement of shame. If in each other's eyes now, however, they saw the truth, this truth to Fleta looked harder than ever before. All the harder that when, at the very moment she recognized it, he murmured to her ecstatically in fresh possession of her hands, which he drew up to his breast, holding them tight there with both his own. I'm saved, I'm saved, I am, I'm ready for anything, I have your word, come! He cried as if from the sight of a response slower than he needed and in the tone he so often had of a great boy at a great game. She had once more disengaged herself with the private vow that he shouldn't touch her again. It was all too horribly soon. Her sense of this was rapidly surging back. We mustn't talk, we mustn't talk, we must wait, she intensely insisted. I don't know what you mean by your freedom. I don't see it, I don't feel it. Where is it yet? Where, your freedom? If it's real, there's plenty of time. And if it isn't, there's more than enough. I hate myself, she protested, for having anything to say about her. It's like waiting for dead men's shoes. What business is it of mine which she does? She has her own trouble and her own plan. It's too hideous to watch her and to count on her. Owen's face at this showed a reviving dread, the fear of some dark, some process of her mind. If you speak for yourself, I can understand. But why is it hideous for me? Oh, I mean for myself, Fleeter said impatiently. I watch her, I count on her. How can I do anything else? If I count on her to let me definitely know where we stand, I do nothing in life but what she herself is led straight up to. I never thought of asking you to get rid of her for me, and I never would have spoken to you if I hadn't held that I am rid of her, that she has backed out of the whole thing. Didn't she do so from the moment she began to put it off? I had already applied for the license. The very invitations were half addressed. Who but she all of a sudden demanded an unnatural weight. It was none of my doing. I had never dreamed of anything but coming up to the scratch. Owen grew more and more lucid and more confident of the effect of his lucidity. She called it taking a stand to see what mother would do. I told her mother would do what I would make her do, and to that she replied that she would like to see me make her first. I said I would arrange that everything should be all right, and she said she really preferred to arrange it herself. It was the flat refusal to trust me in the smallest degree. Why then had she pretended so tremendously to care for me? And of course at present, said Owen, she trusts me, if possible, still less. Fleeter paid this statement, the homage of a minute's muteness. As to that, naturally, she has reason. Why on earth has she reason? Then, as his companion moving away simply threw up her hands, I never looked at you, not to call looking, till she had regularly driven me to it, he went on. I know what I'm about. I do assure you I'm all right. You're not all right. You're all wrong, Fleeter cried in despair. You mustn't stay here. You mustn't, she repeated with clear decision. You make me say dreadful things, and I feel as if I may you say them. But before he could reply, she took it up in another tone. Why in the world if everything had changed, didn't you break off? I, the inquiry seemed to have moved him to stupor faction. Can you ask me that question when I only wanted to please you? Didn't you seem to show me in your wonderful way that that was exactly how? I didn't break off just on purpose to leave it to Mona. I didn't break off so that there shouldn't be a thing to be said against me. The instant after her challenge, Fleeter had faced him again in self-reproof. There isn't a thing to be said against you, and I don't know what nonsense you make me talk. You have pleased me, and you've been right and good, and it's the only comfort, and you must go. Everything must come from Mona, and if it doesn't come, we've said entirely too much. You must leave me alone forever. Forever, Owen Gas? I mean unless everything is different. Everything is different when I know you. Fleeter winced at his knowledge. She made a wild gesture, which seemed to whirl it out of the room. The mere illusion was like another embrace. You don't know me, you don't, and you must go and wait. You mustn't break down at this point. He looked about him and took up his hat. It was as if in spite of frustration, he had got the essence of what he wanted and could afford to agree with her to the extent of keeping up the forms. He covered her with his fine, simple smile but made no other approach. Oh, I'm so awfully happy, he exclaimed. She hesitated. She would only be impeccable even though she should have to be sententious. You'll be happy if you're perfect, she risked. He laughed out at this and she wondered if with a newborn acuteness he saw the absurdity of her speech and that no one was happy just because no one could be what she so easily prescribed. I don't pretend to be perfect but I shall find a letter tonight. So much the better if it's the kind of one you desire that was the most she could say and having made it sound as dry as possible she lapsed into a silence so pointed as to deprive him of all pretext for not leaving her. Still nevertheless he stood there playing with his hat and filling the long pause with a strained and anxious smile. He wished to obey her thoroughly to appear not to presume on any advantage he had won from her but there was clearly something he longed for beside. While he showed this by hanging on she thought of two other things. One of these was that his countenance after all failed to bear out his description of his bliss. As for the other it had no sooner come into her head than she found it seated in spite of a resolution on her lips. It took the form of an inconsequent question. When did you say Mrs. Briggstock was to have gone back? Owen stared to water bath. She was to have spent the night in town don't you know but when she left me after our walk I said to myself that she would take an evening train. I know I made her want to get home. Where did you separate, Fleta asked? At the West Kensington station she was going to Victoria. I had walked with her there and our talk was all on the way. Fleta pondered a moment. If she did go back that night you would have heard of from water bath by this time. I don't know, said Owen. I thought I might hear this morning. She can't have gone back, Fleta declared. Mona would have written on the spot. Oh yes, she will have written bang off, Owen cheerfully conceded. Fleta thought again so that even in the event of her mother's not having got home till the morning you would have had your letter at the latest today. You see she has had plenty of time. Owen hesitated then. Oh, she's all right, he laughed. I go by Mrs. Briggstock's certain effect on her. The effect of the temper the old lady showed when we parted. You know what she asked me, he sociably continued. She asked me in a kind of nasty manner if I supposed you really cared anything about me. Of course I told her I supposed you didn't, not a solitary rap. How could I ever suppose you do with your extraordinary ways? It doesn't matter, I could see she thought I lied. You should have told her, you know, that I had seen you in town only that one time, Fleta suggested. By jove I did, for you, it was only for you. Something in this touched the girl so that for a moment she could not trust herself to speak. You're an honest man, she said at last. She had gone to the door and opened it. Goodbye. Even yet, however, Owen hung back. But even if there's no letter, he began. He began, but there he left it. You mean even if she doesn't let you off? Ah, you ask me too much. Fleta spoke from the tiny hall where she had taken refuge between the old barometer and the old Macintosh. There are things too utterly for yourselves alone. How can I tell? What do I know? Goodbye, goodbye. If she doesn't let you off, it will be because she is attached to you. She's not, she's not, there's nothing in it. Doesn't a fellow know, except with you? Owen roofily added. With this she came out of the room, lowering his voice to secret supplication, pleading with her really to meet him on the ground of his negation of Mona. It was this betrayal of his need of support and sanction that made her retreat, hardened herself in the effort to save what might remain of all she had given, given probably for nothing. The very vision of him, as he thus morally clung to her, was the vision of a weakness somewhere at the core of his bloom, a blessed manly weakness of which if she had only the valid right, it would be all a sweetness to take care. She faintly sickened, however, with the sense that there was as yet no valid right poor Owen could give. You can take it from my honor, you know, he painfully brought out, that she loaths me. Fleta had stood clutching the knob of Maggie's little painted stair rail. She took on the stairs a step backward. Why then doesn't she prove it in the only clear way? She has proved it. Will you believe it if you see the letter? I don't want to see any letter, said Fleta. You'll miss your train. Facing him, waving him away, she had taken another upward step, but he sprang to the side of the stairs and brought his hand above the banister down hard on her wrist. Do you mean to tell me that I must marry a woman I hate? From her step she looked down into his raised face. Ah, you see, it's not true that you're free. She seemed almost to exult. It's not true, it's not true. He only, at this, like a buffeting swimmer, gave a shake of his head and repeated his question. Do you mean to tell me I must marry such a woman? Fleta hesitated. He held her fast. No, anything is better than that. Then, in God's name, what must I do? You must settle that with Mona. You mustn't break faith. Anything is better than that. You must, at any rate, be utterly sure. She must love you. How could she help it? I wouldn't give you up, said Fleta. She spoke in broken bits, panting out her words. The great thing is to keep faith. Where is a man if he doesn't? If he doesn't, he may be so cruel, so cruel, so cruel, so cruel, Fleta repeated. I couldn't have a hand in that, you know. That's my position. That's mine. You offered her marriage. It's a tremendous thing for her. Then, looking at him another moment, I wouldn't give you up, she said again. He still had hold of her arm. She took in his blank dread. With a quick dip of her face, she reached his hand with her lips, pressing them to the back of it with a force that doubled the force of her words. Never, never, never she cried. And before he could succeed in seizing her, she had turned and flashing up the stairs, got away from him even faster than she had got away at ricks. End of chapter 16.