 I have seen the man from Grand-Pont. Has the event proved worse than my fears are better? I can't say. All I know is that the event was different. Susan didn't go down with me to the bathing-hut. I unlocked it myself and carried out the deck chair onto a sunny patch of clean white pebbles. But I had hardly drunk in two drafts of the salt air when I sat up with a start. A man was watching me. He had been sprawling on the stones at the foot of the cliff about a quarter of a mile away. At such a distance it was impossible to make out his features, but as he stood up I saw it was not Mr. John Lamb. I saw the figure of a man well-drilled, a man accustomed to an outdoor life. The man wore a dark blue lounge suit and a straw boater of unmistakably English lines. For a moment I thought with disgust that he was one of those provincial English tourists. We have had two or three of them on and off at St. Veronique, who find some sort of pleasure in lurking about the beaches, furtively watching the ladies while they bathe. I wished I hadn't left Susan behind. But as soon as he saw me sit up the man began to walk towards me in a perfectly open manner. I couldn't feel sure that it wasn't Ruddington. It flashed across my brain that he was scheming an interview with me as a flank movement upon Susan. Besides I remembered that a rather fine-tempered man like Ruddington must perceive the unpleasantness of the position in which Susan's acceptance of him would place Susan's mistress, and in his unconventional ingenuousness he was just the sort of man to come forward betimes with boyishly candid explanations and adjustments and appeals. As he sped towards me over the blinding chalkstones there was something in his stride that recalled the eager masterful love-making of his present majesty of Spain. I got up, relocked the hot door, left the chair outstretched on the shingle and swung off for home as swiftly as was possible without seeming to run away. I did not choose to grant an audience to Lord Ruddington whenever and wherever it might suit him to claim it. But his legs were longer than mine and in better training. I had an instinct to run and instinct to look back, but I mastered them both. Very soon I could hear the stones crunching or slipping or rolling under his boots. Surely I told myself angrily any man who wasn't a bounder or a madman could see that I resented the pursuit? But he came ever quickly or on, and as I gained the path up the beck he positively broke into a run. I turned around. It was Gibson. Gibson, I cried, Gibson, is it you? Yes, ma'am! He answered firmly pulling off his hat and standing six feet away bareheaded in the sun. What has brought you here? I demanded a sternly as I could. But I was too greatly relieved to make a convincing display of indignation. I haven't been near the hotel, ma'am, said Gibson, meeting my eyes. Of course you haven't, the idea. But if you had, you'd have startled me less than by running after me on the beach like this. It's about Susan, ma'am, said Gibson. Gibson is not a man of words, and I could see that he was determined not to be scalded or flurried out of the speech he had been rehearsing. Susan's all right, I said. I told you so in my letter. I thank you, ma'am, said Gibson less aggressively. I shan't never forget how kind you wrote. What's the matter, then? You don't seem to realize, Gibson, that I'm very much annoyed. Didn't I tell you not to come to St. Veronica unless I sent for you? You did, ma'am, you did, answered Gibson, losing his self-control and speaking more and more excitedly. And I give you my word, ma'am, I won't come nearer to St. Varanik than this bit of ground I'm standing on. Oh, yes, ma'am, you've wrote right enough, and I thank you. But it's Susan. She hasn't wrote not one line, ma'am, not so much as a card with a photograph of the pier on it. You've forgotten the bargain, Gibson. I'm ever so sorry for you, but what did you say it tracks'll be? You said you could bear Susan marrying someone else so long as everything was honourable and above board. You were not to come here unless I found that, I nearly let slip Lord Ruddington's name, that Susan's admirer was not going to play the game. So I did, ma'am, broke out Gibson hotly. That's what I said. That's what I promised, and I've cursed myself every day, every minute of every day since I've said it. It was a lie, ma'am. Whether Susan's took away from me honest or took away from me dishonest, I can't stand it and I won't. Susan's Mine I was a dirty hound, ma'am, ever to say as I would give her up, even if it's the emperor of France that comes begging for her with a sack of golden diamonds. Susan's Mine She's the only girl in the world I ever cared about. Yes, ma'am. He cried proudly raising his voice and taking a step forward. And Susan's never cared a straw about any man in the world except me, and she never shall. Susan is a free woman, Gibson, I said. Ever since we left tracks'll be she hasn't mentioned your name. I know nothing about it. But how do you know that Susan never cared for you? Perhaps she only led you on as girls do. And supposing she did care for you, how do you know she hasn't changed her mind? That's just the trouble, ma'am, said Gibson bitterly. I don't deny they may have changed her mind. If they've dangled a lot of money before her eyes in fine clothes and jewelry and motor cars and going to Egypt and all that, I don't deny they may have managed to change her mind. They may have been too strong for a poor girl. Oh, yes, ma'am, they may have changed Susan's mind. But, but they can't never change her heart, ma'am. Her heart'll go on beating true all the same, all the time, and when she's got tired of the fine things, he clenched his fists and finished off the sentence with a gesture between rage and despair. I was forced to turn away from the white heat of his rough eloquence and superb sincerity. What is it you want, Gibson? I asked as soon as I was able. I want to know first, ma'am, has Susan got herself engaged? No, she has not. Is she going to be, ma'am? I don't know, it isn't my affair. I think she hasn't made up her mind one way or the other. I met Gibson's eyes. But this time it was he who looked away. Apologetically, clumsily, he asked. If I may make so bold, ma'am, is the party at Sinveranik? The party? I mean, ma'am, the rich party that's took a fancy to Susan. No, he is not. I have never so much as seen him. Neither has Susan. But what did I promise? Didn't I give you my word that if he came here I would let you know? That's why I'm so vexed, Gibson, that you're coming like this. He accepted the rebuke without a word. What are you going to do now? I asked. I suppose, ma'am, he said slowly and painfully. I'd better go back to Grand Pong. I asked him a few questions. It turns out he came over on Saturday via Southampton and Lee Harbour. He held a letter from a chauffeur he had met in Dirlingham to a Haavre motor accessories firm. The Haavre people, hearing he wanted to be near St. Veranik, gave him a letter to a small cycle and motor-jobber in Grand Pong who speaks a little English. He boards and lodges Gibson and teaches him the driving and mending of cars in return for English conversation, Gibson's labour, and 30 francs a week. Of course, if you object to me staying at Grand Pong, ma'am, said Gibson. If I'd known beforehand I should have objected very much, Gibson, I said. But you've been so lucky and your arrangements are hardly like to disturb them. Give me your Grand Pong address. Gibson gave me a printed card. He is staying at La Desante des Automobilistes. The Desante announces on a card adorned with crossed billiard cues over a foaming bark that it speaks English and that it is equal to billiards, coffee, repairs, and beef steaks at Touteur. Are you comfortable, Gibson? I asked. Very, he answered. I never could abide cider and the beer is shocking, ma'am, but I'm quite comfortable. I'm glad, Gibson, I said. I won't lose the address. Good morning. I recorded to my shame that I was heartless enough to begin moving away. Indeed, I had advanced twenty or thirty paces up the beck before Gibson decided on a second pursuit. Not Susan, ma'am, he said with red cheeks. Shall you tell, Susan, ma'am, that I'm in these parts? That reminds me, Gibson, I retorted. You've forgotten so much of the bargain we made at Traxelby that I can't be certain of anything. You promised not to tell Susan that I had ever let you discuss her with me. I shan't forget, ma'am, but can't I see Susan for a minute? How? Where? I might hang about, ma'am, and frighten her out of her life. No, thank you, Gibson. If there's to be any meeting you'd better write about it from Grampont. It'd take time, ma'am. Surely you can wait a day or two, Gibson. He lost his self-command once more. No, he cried. I can't wait, and if I could wait I won't. I must see Susan before another sun goes down. Don't shout, Gibson, I said. People will hear you. Even if it isn't against your interest to force yourself on Susan, how do you know she will see you? Perhaps she won't. He started. Then he turned aside in such sharp trouble that my hard heart melted. The most I can do, I said, is this. I will tell Susan how you met me on the beach and that I was very angry. I will say nothing about our talk that night in the garden at Traxelby, and you must not mention it, either. All I'm supposed to know is that you're very keen about Susan and that you think she encouraged you and that you're worrying because she doesn't write. In short, if you and Susan meet, you must keep to your own affairs and not bring me in at all. Above all, never say that I wrote to you. I will tell Susan that you will be on the beach at half past two. She must please herself whether she meets you or not. But remember, today is exceptional. No secret meetings. You can get something to eat in the village at the Café de la Marine. I must go. I found Susan sitting under an apple tree with Georgette. Georgette was jabbering over a fearful and wonderful plum-colored blouse which the two were slashing and altering. It may have been my fancy, but Georgette looked a bit sheepish as she went away. Mies' briggs advanced to meet me. Susan, I said, someone whom you know is in the neighborhood. Susan's color fled. Is he Miss? She asked fearfully. At Grand-Pont, I went on. Madame du Poirier told me about it last night. She was at Grand-Pont station in the bus yesterday. He read the name of the hotel and asked Madame if you were here. As usual Susan's color rushed back with reinforcements. She began to tremble. It's that flower, Miss, she gassed. Georgette's flower. Oh, Miss Gertrude, I can't face him yet. I can't. I can't. You don't need to, Susan, I said. It isn't Lord Reddington. Susan moaned a little moan of thankfulness, but her face clouded again as I added. It is somebody else. She searched my eyes. Then she asked in an agonized whisper. Not. It isn't. Not Gibson, Miss? Yes, I answered. Gibson. Susan turned half-round and gazed over the sea. Her pretty country girl's figure shook with hardly-pent feeling. For the first time I saw Susan bitter and angry. I'm ashamed of him, Miss," she burst out. I could never have believed it of him. Not knowing what to say I refrained from saying it. Susan's wrath waxed stronger. She turned upon me with something dangerously like active resentment. You! You knew last night, Miss! She said almost fiercely. Certainly not, Susan, I replied. Madame told me that an Englishman had asked her questions at Grand Pawn. But she didn't know who he was and I never asked her to describe him. Then how do you know it is Gibson? asked Susan a very little less pugnaciously. Because I've just seen him. Susan collapsed. Where, Miss? Where, Miss? Oh! gassed Susan. Come, come, I said. I was quite as much annoyed as you are. I told Gibson very plainly what I thought about it. But Susan, I must admit that there is some little excuse for him. Of course he hasn't repeated to me a single word that he ever said to you or that you ever said to him. But it is plain that he's very fond of you. And he thinks you encouraged him. He says you haven't sent him even so little as a postcard for a fortnight. Susan's Amazonian ire had died down to a village beauty's pout. I can never forgive him, Miss, she said. I wouldn't have believed it of Gibson. Not to mention the disrespect to you, Miss Gertrude. Never mind the disrespect to me, I answered. I can look after that myself. No doubt it's very silly and weak of him. But the point is that Gibson is so badly in love that he's madly jealous. Please, Miss, you didn't tell him about—Lord Reddington asked Mies Briggs in a fright. Susan, I said, I'm surprised. What are you thinking of? Unless you've told him yourself, he can't have the faintest notion that there's a Lord Reddington in the case. But I can see he suspects there is somebody. That's why he couldn't sit quiet in England while his rival cuts him out in France. I shall never forgive him, Miss, snapped Susan more conclusively than ever. Don't say that, Susan, I said, or if you say it, take care you don't mean it. But I do, Miss. Then it's nothing to be proud of. Don't hate a man for merely loving you. He ought to have stopped at home, Miss. He ought, but he hasn't. You see, Susan, I don't know how it is, but you seem to have a way of making people do mad things. Gibson cares for you quite as much as Lord Reddington does. But he hasn't done anything madder than Lord Reddington's first letter, has he? No, Miss, said Susan, mollified and visibly flattered. And after a minute's pleasant meditation on the unsuspected range and power of her charms, she added prettily, but Lord Reddington does stop at home when I tell him to, Miss. That's true, I granted, but Lord Reddington has all the advantages. Poor Gibson is so frightfully handicapped. I suppose he thinks that all's fair in love and war. I'm annoyed with him for coming here, but I admire his spirit. Gibson isn't a muff, Susan. Oh, no, Miss, she answered promptly and heartily. In fact, this morning I felt quite vexed with Lord Reddington for stepping between you. But I mustn't say more about that. I will come to the point. I have brought a message. Susan's agitation began afresh. I've told Gibson he mustn't come here. He is lodging at Grand Pont. At this minute he's getting something to eat in the village, but he will be on the beach at half past two. To-day, Miss? She asked faintly. Yes, to-day. You can please yourself whether you see him or not. But understand, Susan, I've told him it must be only this once. No meetings on the sly. Of course not, Miss. Susan answered with a touch of indignation which I ignored. If you do go to-day, I added, you won't mention Lord Reddington's name. But, Susan, if there has been anything between you and Gibson, I'm bound to say that you have no right to trifle with him. It isn't fair to him or to yourself or to Lord Reddington, or even to me. Perhaps it's still too soon for you to decide whether you will accept Lord Reddington, but it's high time for you to decide whether you will drop Gibson. If you find you can't drop Gibson, the other matter will settle itself. Be a good girl and remember that the only way to be happy is to do right. Only for heaven's sake, don't prolong the agony. I'm not going to grumble, Susan, but you must have seen that, although I came to St. Veranik for peace and rest, I've had to spend nearly three weeks worrying my head over people that want to marry you. It's getting to be a bit tiresome. You've been awfully good to me, Miss, said Susan with all her usual meekness. I'll try. I must stop. Here's Jarjet with a liter of cider and a crisp roll three feet long and a dish of vrai au beurre noir. A quarter past two. Susan has just started down to the beach. Three o'clock. Susan didn't say anything before she went. While she was brushing my hair, it had got all anyhow in the hammock after lunch, she hardly uttered a word. I have been thinking strange thoughts and wondering at some wonders. What on earth can it be that has turned a china shepherdess like Susan into a Helen of Troy? Why is she a storm-center, a battlefield of heroes? I have seen enough of the world to know that both Gibson and Lord Ruddington are exceptional men. What is it in Susan that drives them mad? Susan's is not a case of the eternal masculine basely desiring lamb-like innocence and childish beauty. In her case, the groom is as good as the Lord in native chivalry and honour. Madame's magnificent old empire chival glass reflected us full length while Susan was busy with my hair. In the autumnal light and with the background of bright hangings and bold furniture, we looked less like a mere reflection in a mirror than like one of those vivid modern French pictures. At first, the feeling was uncanny, but by degrees, this full-colored, life-sized, guilt-framed portrait mastered me until I was able to look at it as dispassionately as if it had been on the wall of the Luxembourg. It was then I began to wonder at wonders and think thoughts. One must not praise oneself up even in one's diary, but one may, one must, be sincere. And it is the simple truth that the more I compared the full-length portrait of Susan with the full-length portrait of myself, the deeper and more inscrutable became the mysteries of life. I looked at the two portrayed forms and the two portrayed faces as critically and with as much detachment as if I had never seen the originals in the real world. Ruddington has seen Susan thrice, but he has seen me thrice also. He says that I was with Susan every one of the three times. Perhaps Susan's brushing jogged my wits, but face to face with that double portrait I couldn't help being reminded of what I scolded Susan for saying this morning. As a matter of purely speculative interest as a curious human problem I couldn't help saying to myself, he saw us both. Why didn't he fall in love with me? To be immodestly candid the only answer I could arrive at was, I don't know. Of course what he says in his letter to Susan about shrinking from making love to Ms. Langley is absurd. It is merely a fanciful thought after the event, a pretty conceit, a gossamer compliment partly to Susan and mainly to himself. He fell wildly, instantly irresistibly in love with Susan because there is something in Susan which gave him no choice. He looked at me and was cold because the something has been left out. Never before today have I looked at myself in a glass hungrily, but today I peered with all the strength of my eyes into the confused depths of the secret. It was no good. I cannot read the riddle. I will write this page without reserve. It is no more my merit, my own work, that I am beautiful than it would be my fault, my disgrace, if I had been born ugly. I will call a spade a spade and beauty beautiful. So here goes. If Susan is pretty I am beautiful and I am more beautiful than Susan is pretty. If Susan is as graceful as a nymph I am as noble as a goddess. If Susan's blue eyes are as blue as the sky my brown eyes are deeper than the sea. If Susan is curds and cream I am fire and snow. If Susan can turn plain men into heroes I ought to raise heroes into gods. Yes, although I have a hundred deformities of mind a thousand uglinesses of conduct and character which I could help and for which I am to blame it is the plain truth that God chose to make me beautiful as not everyone told me so as long as I can remember. But heaven knows that although I have always felt glad it has never made me puffed up or vain and I'm thankful it hasn't. If it had this would have been a bitter day for my pride, for after all Ruddington saw us both and he fell in love with Susan. I can think of only one answer to the enigma and I hope it isn't the right one. I suspect that men of abundant manliness like Lord Ruddington and Gibson instinctively seek for their opposites in the shape of some passive clinging femininity like Susan's. They demand that the woman shall be pretty as well as clinging and passive and feminine because they know that they are brave and that the brave deserve the fair. I suspect that these strong characters find sweet repose in a simple woman's characterlessness. Their eager spirits recuperate in her placidity. Conversely, a flabbier man rejoices in a strenuous all alive woman. Take poor Alice. She is taller than I am, stronger, quicker, harder, more self-willed. And I suppose that is why Hugh in his humdrum way adores her and is wretched when she's away like a faithful hound. If this be the sound theory I shall never marry, how could I endure a man weaker and pettier than myself? And yet the only kind of man I could ever want won't ever want me. I wish I hadn't begun to think these thoughts. Still, more do I wish I hadn't made them become clearer by writing them down. It makes the world seem so mean and lean. There ought to be grander men than Ruddington, men who would spurn honeyed sloth with dolls like Susan, men who would exalt at the challenge of a proud, high-spirited woman as climbers exalt at the white blaze of the young frow, as hunters exalt at the roaring of a desert lion, as soldiers exalt at the side of a strong city set on a hill. But alas for this shrunken, sluggish poverty-stricken time when I, poor I, who am so far short of being a heroine, must begin to regard myself as a brinhild doomed to virgin sleep because the sig-freeds are all too timid and too puny to leap through the small fires of my will and my pride. Four o'clock. These worries have been too much for my nerves. I feel all overstrung as if a little thing would make me break down and cry. For example, just now I went into Susan's room to make sure that she had taken me out of her frame. I find that instead of taking me out she's left me in and taken out Ruddington. There I am, staring across the hinges at an empty oval. Last time I saw the frame it had both of us in it and Susan's room was warm and brilliant with floods of morning sunshine. But just now her room was chill and dim. The paper background of the empty oval showed up ghostly white. I walked to the mantelpiece and gazed down at my own photograph. Instead of looking like one half of a happy honeymoon couple I looked like a girl widow staring at a shroud. Outside in the sunless garden a gust of wind smote a leafy apple branch against the window like a slap of a hand, and at the same moment a great dreariness and utter loneliness fell like a blight, like a frost, like a black shadow on my soul. I have come back to my own room where it is more cheerful. But I see that I have written too much today in this book. Since sunrise this morning I must have written two or three hours. No wonder I am morbid and dumpy. I swear an oath. Whatever happens and whatever Susan may report not another word will I write today. Thursday morning in the summer house. I hate to think of yesterday. Hitherto I have hugged a fond belief that my nerves were of steel. Yet the trivial shock of Gibson's chase coming on top of my early rising bowled me over for the rest of the day. It is humiliating to read all the stuff I wrote in this book. The feverish retrospects, prospects, introspects. After I had skimmed through it this morning I nearly vowed to lock it up and not write another word until I am back in England. But if I don't jot them in a diary I mix updates so frightfully. For example, I was trying the other night to remember the three days when Ruddington saw me with Susan. While Alice was with me I let this book slide, and the result is I can't recall being with Susan once except at the post office, and Susan declares that Ruddington's photograph isn't the least like the young man who stared at her in a dark green suit. I don't even remember where Susan was while he was feasting his eyes on her through the pillars of the monument. Perhaps she sat behind Alice and me, or did she sit with the servants? It's tantalizing to think that perhaps I've seen him and perhaps stared back at him and that it's all slipped out of my mind. So I shan't stop entering things in this journal, but I mean to enter them more curtly. Luckily there isn't much to write about Susan and Gibson even if I were disposed to write it. Susan didn't come back till half past four. Until after dinner she avoided the subject, and it was only when I was mounting to a very early bed that I asked any questions. Well, Susan, I said, and what have you done with poor Gibson? I've sent him home, miss. To England? Oh, no, miss. To Grand Pont. He had to go to Grand Pont whether you sent him there or not, I said. But didn't you give him an answer? Susan had replied to my questions rapidly and defiantly, but without any warning she sat down plump on the top stair with a candlestick in her lap and sobbed the plentifulist and heartiest sobs of all her many sobbing since Ruddington wrote his first letter. Overwrought as I was, I wonder that the unexpectedness and oddity of it did not drive me into hysterical laughter. I controlled my sop only by speaking to Susan roughly. Get up, you silly creature! I said. Charrette will hear you and, madame. What's the matter? Oh, Miss Gertrude, she sobbed. I know I oughtn't to have said the things to Gibson that I did say. I oughtn't. I know, I know. Then what did you say them for? It was all his fault, miss, not mine. I oughtn't to have said the things I did, but why did he say such bitter, cruel, awful things to me? I've no idea, Susan. I said taking the candlestick from her lap and leaving her to follow. She did not appear till she had dried her eyes and regained some composure. When she came into my room her lips were set and she did not speak. Susan, I explained, I was sorry to cut you short, but we mustn't have scenes on the stairs. Besides, tonight I'm tired out. Gibson upset me this morning, but I'm sorry if you've quarreled. Susan broke down again. I hate him, miss. She cried with a stamp of her pretty foot. I shan't never forgive him for the things he's said to-day. I shan't never speak to him again. Not a word, miss. Not if I live to be a thousand. At that I stopped her, and I don't know any more. Friday, three o'clock. Susan came to me in the summer house this morning and said firmly, Please, miss, I've decided. Certainly I am out of sorts. As she paused on the verge of her announcement my heart stood still. No doubt the strain and excitement of these three weeks have sapped me and mined me, and Susan's and Gibson's affairs have been so constantly present to my mind that I suppose they have become affairs of my own. Anyhow, I felt myself chilling ridiculously and going pale as Susan spoke. What have you decided? I asked at last. I have decided, replied Susan in her most important manner, that I will keep company with his lordship for a month. I mean, miss, when we're back at Traxelby. You'll take him for a month on trial, I said, gesting feebly. Yes, miss. I don't think I ought to be married to him till I'm sure I can put up with him. Of course, Susan, I answered, but that was settled all along. He isn't expecting you at present to say that you will marry him. He simply asks whether he may come in person and persuade you. Yes, miss, said Susan, cuddling charmingly, and after thirty seconds she added, please, Miss Gertrude, I beg pardon, but when shall we go back to Traxelby? The prospect vexed me suddenly and enormously. I foresaw myself enmeshed for another month in ignominious arrangements for the comings and goings of the lord of the towers to the ladies made at the Grange. The presentiment of inevitable complications and humiliations on my very own territory was too much for my patience, and I answered Susan sharply. Really, Susan, I said, do try to understand that I must think about myself a little as well as you. With all these worries I feel as if I've hardly had three clear days at Saint Véronique all these three weeks. You and Lord Ruddington might be the only people in the world. I'm very sorry, miss, said the bride-elect, completely penitent. I only asked Miss so that we could, could what? Put it in the letter, miss. Susan, I inquired, how have you got on with your writing? This letter will be very short. Don't you think you can manage it yourself? Bring down my writing case and your own pen and see what you can do. I'll try, miss, she said, most deeply disappointed, and she went away. When she sat down again by my side I admit that Susan astonished me by the speed and the tolerable skill with which she executed a fully addressed envelope. But my surprise had a short life. It seems that Susan's handwriting exercises have been practically confined to the scribing and rescribing a hundred times of the words Lord Ruddington and Ruddington Towers. But when she sat face to face with a black sheet of note-paper, ideas, words, and pen-women-ship alike failed. Susan sighed, moaned, squinted, wriggled, ate the pen-holder, powdered, and finally adorned at the middle of the paper with a big tear. Doubtless it was my duty to transmit that sheet of paper teardrop and all to the Lord Ruddington so that he might frame it in gold and ivory or treasure it in a casket of bejeweled silver. But I was quite heartless this morning. I snatched the sheet away unkindly, crushed it up profanely, and said, You're wasting paper, Susan, and what's worse, you're wasting time. Can you do it or not? No, miss! whimpered Susan. Her shoulders began to heave, and she shed two more big tears. Hand me my own pen, then, I said less harshly, and a clean sheet of paper. You may come back in ten minutes to see if what I've written will do. I know it will do, miss, said Susan fervently. All the letters you write, miss, are beautiful. I don't always understand them at first, but when I think them over and over after they're posted... Now run along, Susan. I cut in. I'll leave the letter inside this case in my room. Your own envelope will do. Post it if you think it is all right. Here is the letter. Dear Lord Ruddington, Your question is, do I consent to one or more interviews between us on my return to England? My answer is, yes. After we have met, one or the other or both of us may decide that it is better we should not meet again. I repeat that you have read too much into my letters, and that you have formed expectations concerning me which are bound to be disappointed. I think our meetings, like this correspondence, ought not to be oftener than once a week, and that we ought to make up our minds once for all at the end of the month. When our return day is fixed I must tell all that is in my mind to miss Langley, and must fall in with her wishes as to the place and time of meeting. Probably she will prefer London to Traxelby. I hope to hear that you are well. Yours very sincerely, Susan Briggs. I can't expect Susan to be over-pleased. To use her own old scared phrase, it gives his lordship a chance of backing out. But it makes the only arrangements that are fair and safe all round. Besides, if Susan thinks it is too prudent and cold, she can easily warm it up by getting Jarjet to shove in an appropriate collection of sentimentiferous flowers. Saturday night. This day have copied, read les chouins, bathed, lunched, read more chouins, walked to the village, dined, read more chouins, and am just going to bed. Sunday night. There was a letter for Susan this morning with a compon postmark. She regarded Gibson's writing on the envelope with darkling brows and thrust the packet unopened into her pocket. So far as Gibson is concerned I am not exactly delighted with the situation. He ought to go home. But I can't tell him so. When the new lady Ruddington begins her reign at the towers, Gibson will hardly enjoy life at the Grange. I shall feel his going very much. But I'm getting used to Ruddington's wrecking. He's wrecked my holidays, he's stealing Susan, and I suppose I must spend the autumn watching him smash up my whole household. In any case, I mustn't command or persuade Gibson to leave Grampon so long as he thinks that a smattering of motor mending will help him in his next place. I can't guess what the poor lad has written to Susan or how she is going to take it. But love and hate, even the loves and hates of poor and simple people, come home to me so vividly here at St. Véronique that I can't help feeling miserable over Gibson's trouble. With the undimmed sun shining down from a cloudless heaven on the endless waters and the immeasurable uplands, such elemental verities as love and life and death seem to be at home. It was to bérigny that I went from Asse. The Curie spoke to me afterwards as I was sitting under the shadow of the Calvary. He is a simple soul, but he talked with spirit and intelligence about his church and his country. I found him still smarting under the well-meant fussiness of two old maids from Bournemouth who worked the Hôtel de Dauphin last month. It appears that they distributed evangelical tracts in French wherein the present troubles of the church in France were explained as a divinely appointed punishment of popery and as a divine call to the French people to embrace scriptural truth. The Curie spoke with fine scorn of that British sectarian animosity which hates the Pope ten times worse than the devil. And he confirmed what I had learned from the more blatant Paris journals, that the so-called campaign against clericalism is at heart a campaign against Christianity and not only against Christian dogma but even against many ancient precepts of Christian morals. More. He confirmed what I have myself read in the speeches of deputies and even of ministers, that the attack is not merely against Christianity but against the whole idea of supernatural religion and that it is avowedly an attempt to establish a lay state, a purely secular community trained from childhood, to believe that all religion is superstition and that human science alone can teach men how to live and die. After the Curie went home to break his fast, I still lingered in the church yard. A new plank monument had been raised during the week over a new tomb, and its jet-black letters on a snow-white ground reminded me of the resolve I had made to offer a day profundus for the faithful dead. I found the place in my paroisien and said the opening words aloud. The sound of my own voice in that sunny field of death frightened me and I stopped. I began again reading to myself. But it was of no use. I couldn't go on. When it comes down to downright earnest you can't skip from one religion to another. Lost in a crowd one can coquette with another religion, tolerate it, even enjoy its unfamiliar ancient ritual. But with my day profundus it was different. I couldn't shed my Protestantism like an old cloak in the twinkling of an eye. Not that I felt, as I sat down again on the platform of the Calvary, that praying for the dead was false doctrine and superstitious error. I dared not say it was true, but still less dared I say that it was false. I thought of the two old mates from Bournemouth, their half-knowledge, their meddling, and I felt it would be at the very least an unpardonable impertinent to offer doubting prayers for needs that I could only have understand. I ought to have remembered the ancient Mariner, how with a heart as dry as dust, seven days, seven nights he stood alone on a wide, wide sea with death, how at last he watched the watersnakes, coiling and swimming, blue, glossy green and velvet black in the shadow of the ship, how a spring of love gushed from his heart and he blessed them unaware, and how the self-same moment he could pray. With me it was the other way about. At Birini this morning I began with faith and ended with unfaith. I went to pray and came away to doubt. Hardly had I classed my book and resolved that it would be a bad taste to pray before a shadow fell upon all things. The light of the sun was broad and bright, but within me there grew a bleak wonder that anyone should be able to believe in God. I mean the Christian's God, of course. If he is truly identical with the eternal cause of the universe and yet yearns for man's love and worship, how can his heart be content that his right arm should hang idle while few neon believers are closing his temples and muscling his messengers? I looked along the wooded ravine with a beck chatters down to St. Véronique with Grand Ponds spire away to the right and I thought of Susan and Ruddington and Gibson. If God's delight is in the virtuous happiness of men and women, why this hateful tangle? Perhaps it was a blasphemous thought, but the tangle was so cruel, so useless, so cunning, that it seemed to require an omnipotent devil for its explanation. The cruelty of it brought tears to my eyes. I thought, for the first time of a coincidence that deepened the wrong. Susan, Ruddington, and I, we are all orphans. As for Gibson, if he has parents, it is fifteen years since they made a sign. Each one of us robbed before we could speak or think or remember of a mother's care and love, and for compensation Gibson cheated of love altogether Susan beloved where she cannot love. Ruddington loving with no love to answer. I thought of myself. If the Christian's God is one with the upholder of all things, his was the lightning which struck the old Grange and slew my father and mother as they slept. Where are they today? Are they annihilated body and soul as dead as stones on the beach? Or do their spirits wander wearily in profundus bound under the burden of new sorrows, awful and unknown? Yes, I thought of myself. Except Granny, who was fifty years my senior, who has ever loved me dearly? Whom have I ever dearly loved? No one. Not even Alice, though we have been good chums. I result on Thursday never again to think the thoughts I thought before the glass, but thoughts will not be denied. In the churchyard this morning as I sprang up and paced among the graves a hot, vast, rebellious anger nearly drove me mad. Today I knew that I was made for love, for a love immense as the sea, everlasting as the hills, more splendid than the sun. Why has it been written that love must pass me by? So I did not say a day profundus. I know that God exists, but the depth seemed too deep for him to pity and the heights too high for him to hear. I clang the churchyard gate behind me harshly, and it was in vain that the jet-black letters on the snow-white plank of the new grave whispered, if you please. Monday, 2.45 p.m. Susan is behaving strangely and I don't like it. There is a letter from Reddington. When it arrived Susan made no secret of it, but she has neither shown it to me nor mentioned it, although she has been with me all the morning. In one sense I grant that it is Susan's letter, not mine, and that she is under no obligation to let me read a line, but in another sense it is as much mine as hers. The letters Reddington writes are answers to my letters, not Susan's. The Susan he thinks about and writes to is no longer the palpable Susan with whom he fell in love at Traxelby. He has a new Susan, a composite Susan, a Susan who never was and never will be, a Susan idealized as much from my letters as from his recollections of her face. If Susan at last feels competent to compose and write her replies well and good, but she should say so. To take back the whole affair into her own hands without a word is rather cool. Not that I care one jot about what Reddington has written, but I do feel rather sick about Susan's uncouthness. After the pains I've taken it is so monstrously ungrateful. I know Susan, I said. I saw the envelope. Susan went on furrowing the gravel. Would you like to read it, Miss? She asked. Perhaps there's no necessity. I answered a little stiffly. Perhaps you can manage the reply yourself. I wish you would read it, Miss. She said after a very long pause. Where is it? Upstairs, Miss. Then how can I read it? Please, Miss, said Susan coyly. I don't like to show it to you. It's so loving. Indeed, I said. Then be sure you don't worry me with it unless you find you can't answer it. Yes, Miss, said Susan. She went back to the hotel with a clouded face. The afternoon dragged. To tell the truth I wanted to see his letter immensely. Yet how could I? To have read it out of mere curiosity would have been like peeping through a hedge at an unsuspecting pair of sweethearts or like eavesdropping behind some lover's seat. Still it was terribly tantalizing to have the door of the playhouse slammed in my face just as the piece was getting exciting. I tried to read, work, walk about, write, but in vain. All I could do was to think, remember, anticipate, dream till I felt the loneliest of lonely outcasts. Reddington's love affair which had been so silly and worrying and tiresome suddenly became as warm and homely and bright and cozy as a Christmas hearth, and I felt like a friendless orphan wandering outside in the gloom and the cold. By six o'clock I was so deep in the dumps that I positively made some sort of a weather remark to the enormous silent Frenchman who had been here a week. I hadn't guessed that he was a mountain of shyness. At my voice he jumped, flushed crimson, knocked over his wine, choked, and nearly frightened me out of my wits before he could utter an intelligible word. Jarrette was sulky about this spilt claret, and from merely feeling solitary I went on to the knowledge that I was roundly hated. When I came up to my room an hour ago I found Susan had left Reddington's letter under my blotting pad. Envelope and contents were so flat and uncrumpled that I hardly think they have been cherished next to Susan's wildly beating heart. Reddington says, Susan, all mine. As ever I love, honor, and obey. Take a month if you will before you speak the word, but I have settled it with the stars in their courses what the word must be. Forever, everywhere, you are Susan, all mine. In her neighborly good nature and excellent wisdom Miss Langley may choose for our meeting place, tracks will be our London, or the Equator, or the North Pole, or Saint Véronique, or the New Moon, or the Summit of Mont Blanc, or Ruddington Towers, or a Coral Island, or the Bottomless Spit, or the top of the Monument, or any other square yard she pleases. So long as Susan is there in the midst, the arid scorching heat of the Sahara will be Eve's garden refreshed and guarded by the four streams of paradise. Susan has promised that she will come an inch to meet me. She shall never turn back alone. But let not Susan mistake this perfect confidence of mine for vanity. I believe that Susan will run to be all mine, not because she gives herself lightly, for where is there a prouder than Susan, and not because I am handsome, or desirable, or magnetic. I am not magnetic, I am not desirable, I am not handsome. No. I believe that Susan must be all mine because I am all hers, because it is unthinkable that she should come close to the blaze of such a love as mine without herself taking fire. Unless the devil is torturing the world, such love as mine for thee implies, requires, compels, an equal love of thine for me. What a Susan this is, who is all mine! When I recall her face as I saw it in Traxelby Church, what a wonderful, beautiful Susan! But when I read her letters I cry again with three-fold gratitude. What a beautiful, wonderful Susan! Her pride is as fine as the curl of a rose leaf, but her sweetness, like the rose's perfume, hovers over it all. Not that Susan thinks that she has ever revealed herself in her letters. She believes that she has veiled herself in veils of prudence and reserve. But my eyes have found her out, have found her more beautiful for her dissembling, like a great bright star hiding in the milky way. Susan, it is no use hiding any longer. The hour has come for shining out without a cloud between. Do not wait for our meeting. Write to me just once without distrust of yourself or of me. I have obeyed, have I not, in all things. Reward me at last. Pour out your heart, even if it be a brim with fears. When she reads this, prudent Susan will be moved to answer that I am taking too long and sudden a leap, and that I am skipping over two or three seemingly stages. She will say that she has written nothing which I have the right to answer with a love letter like this. But this is not an answer to Susan's letter. It is an answer to her flower. Ruddington In a corner of the envelope I found something which his lordship's wonderful, beautiful Susan has overlooked. It was a petal of a creamy rose. Poor Ruddington. And to think that it is nobody's fault. Tuesday at sunrise. How can I write it? Only because if I write it not my brain will turn, my heart will break. I love Ruddington. For days and weeks I have lied to myself, I have lied to this book. With my wits I have parried the truth, but in the heart of my heart ever since the day I took his portrait in my hand I have known. As I have looked for his writing by every post I have known. As I have read his letters grave or gay I have known. As I have sat replying I have known. Every hour of every day by the sea, in the garden, in this room I have known. When I saw his portrait facing mine I knew. When I saw his place empty in the frame I knew. Oh, how hungrily! And when I sat on Sunday bitter-hearted under the Birigny cavalry I knew. Yet God knows how I have fought it, how I have held it down even out of my own sight. And God knows how, according to my light, I have striven to do my duty by Susan and by Gibson and by them all. My poor wits are too weary. They can parry the truth bright cruel thrusts no more. So before I tear this book into tatters and burn it till not a letter of his name remains once for all I will confess. I love Ruddington. I fell asleep last night with his roseleaf, my stolen roseleaf under my pillow. I dreamed a dream of peace. A peace as sweet and strong as death. I dreamed I was at rest within his arms. And I awoke in the loneliness of the rainy daybreak holding out my hands to him and murmuring his name. Tuesday, 2 p.m. I shall burn this book, but not today. The world seems hushed, remote, unreal. Today I seem to belong not to life but all to love and death. As soon as the sun had conquered the mist we went down, Susan and I, to bathe. The tide was high, with warm, boisterous waves. Perhaps I went out too far or breasted the rude buffeting too long. Without warning my strength forsook me. I have swooned in the water. The undertow drew my feet away from their hold on the ribbed sand and at the same moment a towering, craggy wave broke with a shattering crash full over me. Involuntarily, by the animal impulse of a creature clinging to life, I raised a foolish cry which filled my mouth with water. I threw up foolish hands and straight away began to sink. But instantly calm and self-control returned. The great waters were chanting in my ears. I even opened my eyes and looked up through the green crystal at the noonday sun, a round, moon-like sun, mild and cool and kind. I believed it was the end. Death was all round me and under me and over me like the sea, but I was not afraid. Till death was near I had not dreamed that he could be so sweet. To sink down, down, down in his arms was not a frightful descent into horror. It was a gentle settling into unutterable peace. But it was not to be. For the present I belong to life who is so niggardly and cruel not to love who is so lavish or to death who is so kind. Susan had seen me collapse and when a thunderous wave swung me towards her she plucked me from its grasp. Susan does not know that death has laid his lips on mine and that I have looked into his pitiful eyes. She thinks I merely lost my footing and she knows nothing of this swoon. But she says I look ill and shaken and I do believe she has forgotten her own affairs in mine. At sunset Susan won't let me leave my room. She has guessed that this morning's affair was more serious than a mere swallowing of salt water and she insists that I am an invalid for the rest of the day. Jarjet has made a crackling wood fire. The logs rest on quaint old iron dogs and in one sense the blaze is cheerful. In another sense it is depressing. The sun has set early and these logs are the funeral pyre of summer. Everybody is so kind. Jarjet set a table between the hearth and the window and Madame has sent up such a poulet en casserole as I have never tasted before. Du Poirier chose out a burgundy dry and bold and strong. Now that I feel so much better I know that I was ill. Before dinner I lay down on my bed and slept two unrestful hours. I dreamed that I was climbing toilfully up a stony path between ruinous walls and close-grown ancient thorns. I climbed in a light that was neither of the night nor of the day, in the wan and chilly light of a moon-like sun such as I had seen through the water. And all the time I climbed I knew that he was near. The rice I saw him through the briars and once he called my name but he was always on the other side of the wall. I dreamed much more but though I couldn't help dreaming I can help recalling it all I can keep writing it. Yet what can I do if I don't write? I can't get to close grips with a book. The end of Les Chois is too beautiful too sorrowful and I've no one to talk to save Susan. Susan has been an angel all day but I couldn't talk to her just now. I will go to bed. Midnight The house is quiet as the grave. I cannot sleep. Perhaps the fire was too restless and right. The room is so warm that I am sitting without even addressing down just as I slipped out of bed. I have a plan of wooing sleep. I am going to write to Reddington. Not a reply on behalf of Susan. Not a letter that will ever be posted. Not a letter that any eyes save mine shall ever see. Once, just this once, because I am sleepless and shaken and worn and unhappy I will let myself go. For half an hour he shall be mine. His rose-leaf, my stolen rose-leaf, shall lie by my hand. Tomorrow the fire for what I write tonight. And for me, tomorrow and all the morals after it, no looking back to this hour, no brooding, no idle regret, nothing save the quest of forgetfulness. This is what I write, the first and last love letter of my life. Saint Veronica's At Dead of Night Beloved, you bid me write to you just once without distrust, either of myself or of you. You bid me pour out all my heart. I obey. Once, this once, I will speak to you as I have never spoken before, as I can never speak again. You have seen me in the flesh three times, treading the solid ground, breathing the summer air. Yet you do not love me. I have seen you only in a portrait, and I love you as wildly as eternally as immeasurably as you believe you love, poor Susan. I know it all through my soul, and as you wrote in your first letter, there can never be anyone in the world for me save you. Your portrait was the beginning. How can I have been near your own very self those three times in England without turning to you as a flower turns to the sun without answering you as deep answers deep, I do not know. Perhaps my heart did turn, my soul did answer. But for my consciousness the portrait was the beginning, and what your portrait began your letters have carried on. You say that poor Susan's mind is even more beautiful and wonderful than poor Susan's face. Alas! How cruelly you are deceived! How rudely you must be awakened! But with thee, beloved, it is thy mind that makes me love thee most. Although I have wandered only a few steps along its margin, I know that a long lifetime would not suffice me to explore that goodly land with its sunny fields, its merry brooks, its great deeps, its peaks piercing the clouds of heaven. Yes, beloved, thy mind is beautiful and wonderful. And yet it has deceived you. At the sight of a pretty face you bent like a reed under an immense infatuation which you think is love. It is the tragedy of your life and mine, beloved, that we whom God made for one another must go our separate ways, you with your infatuation, I with my love. Doubtless before long we shall meet. You will feel the delicacy of my position, you will be considerate, grateful, kind. And I must sit and smile and put you at your ease, while all the time my heart will be crying, this is the man who should have loved me. Tomorrow all will be changed. This hour of self-revelation will belong to the past, never to have a successor. But tonight I have let myself go. If you were here at this moment your infatuation should melt and vanish before my love, like whorefrost before raging fire. You should go down on your knees, you should prostrate yourself at my feet, imploring pardon for your ignoble truancy and for your treason against love. But I would make haste to forgive you, beloved, and to raise you up and to throw myself against your heart into your arms. I send you back, your rose-leaf. It has lain by me as I have written and I will keep nothing to remind me of this hour. So I send it back, not as it came, for it is heavy with a kiss. The sand has run out in the glass, my hour is ended. When I have laid down my pen I shall weep. And when I have wept, for chance I shall sleep and love you dreaming as you will never love me waking. Farewell. I laid down my pen five minutes ago. I take it up again to say that I have not wept and that I cannot sleep. What a letter I have written! What a slow-footed, cold-blooded, low-pulsed, nerveless, school-girlish scribble! Will the fire be able to burn it, I wonder? Or will it put the fire out like an armful of damp green boughs? No, I can't sleep. My very contempt for what I have written has awakened me in every fiber. I am not ill now. I have never been so well before in my life. A moment ago I looked at myself in the glass. The picture enchained me. I stood with the torch-like brass candlestick held high. My uplifted arm was bare as far as the deep lace at my elbow. My eyes shone. My hair fell all about me, almost to my knees. In contrast, my feet were like two lilies, my neck was like a swan's. And as I gazed, another veil was withdrawn from the mystery of life. By the light of the candle I saw my own cheeks glow red, as it was revealed to me what it will mean to live without love. What fate denies me is not only communion with the kindred spirit. I too am flesh and blood. Let Susan and Ruddington thank their stars that I was brought up gently, Christianly, instead of wickedly, selfishly, in the passion-fraught air of a worldly home. Let them thank their stars, that the devil in me has been laid, that the Tigris in me has been damed. If Ruddington were here tonight, if Susan came running hither through that door, how small a thing could sting me past control and arouse me to overwhelm them under my proud anger and pitiless love. I could dash his china shepherdess into a thousand pieces. I could compel him to forsake all and follow me to the end of the world. A memory rises up suddenly and makes me laugh bitterly. Susan, at tracks will be. How I smiled at her melodromatics when she knelt down in an agony of fear and made me swear that I would not take him away from her. But I have sworn, and I may not repent. Enough, far more than enough of this. It is mad, it is sickly, it is contemptible. Know more of it, to-night or ever. I will go back to bed and lie snug and read till morning. Wednesday noon, in bed. I feel bruised all over, strengthless, stunned. Susan woke me at ten o'clock. Les chouans had fallen to the floor and the candle at my bedside had burned down to its socket. Susan says that she came in at seven with no less noise than usual. But I was sleeping so soundly that she didn't like to wake me before ten. While she was propping me up with pillows and pouring out the coffee I looked round the room and my heart stood still. The letter to Reddington was gone. My cheeks turned whiter than the sheets. Susan caught me in her arms. Oh, Miss Gertrude, no, no! She wailed. I couldn't bear it. She thought I was going to die. I opened my eyes and tried to speak. But Susan wailed on. It's my fault, Miss. All mine. You're so good to me, Miss. I ought to have known. I ought to have said, Don't bother about his lordship, Miss, till you're well and strong. But I didn't think. I'm too selfish, Miss. Oh, Miss Gertrude, to think you were sitting up writing and writing all that and me snug and warm in bed. Susan? I said feebly asking the question in terror. What have you done with it? It's gone, Miss. Answered Susan with the prompt heartiness of one who breaks good news and administers consolation. So you don't need to worry your head about it any more. Gone? I echoed in a voice as thin as a ghost. Yes, Miss. Madame was going to Grand Pond in the omnipass. She asked me if we had any letters for the early post. And, oh, Miss Gertrude, it was perfectly lovely. I can't never thank you enough. I couldn't understand it all through. But it was so lovely, it made me cry. I lay still with closed eyes. When Susan held the coffee to my lips, I drank. When she drew away the extra pillows and settled the bedclothes cosily round me I did not resist. Indeed, I did not say another word. Susan thinks I am asleep. I ought to be up and doing, but doing what? I ought to be hot, angry, ashamed, full of resolves and plans. But I am lying here despite the shocks and bruises subdued at rest, strangely imperturbable. Can it be that I am happy because, while I have played fair with Susan, I have been suffered once, just once, to speak in his ear and to send him a rose-leaf with a kiss? I have thought it all out. Did Susan sign the letter? Even if it has gone without her name, it doesn't matter. He cannot guess that it is mine. At first I shuddered at recollecting the bits about poor Susan. But again it doesn't matter. He will take it that Susan has written poor Susan instead of I, just as he himself writes prudent Susan instead of you. He will read it tomorrow morning. It will puzzle him, but the task of interpreting it will delight his fanciful, super-subtle mind. I can predict his reading of the riddle. He will take it that Susan in her wonderful, beautiful soul is comparing her angelic love with his very human infatuation. He will picture her more exquisite and spiritual and poetical than ever. But it is my kiss that he will cull from the curling lip of that pale rose. I am not number three at Du Poirier's Hotel anymore. I am a householder and a mistress until Sunday morning of the Villa de la Mer. I am writing in my new bedroom. The French windows open on a broad wooden balcony facing the sea. The furniture is brand new, as new as the Villa Garden with its glaring pass of chalk chippings bordering an oblong of wiry grass and lean, shivery shrubs. If Ruddington wrote into Dirlingham, he would get the letter this morning about a quarter to ten. At half-past two a telegram arrived at the Hotel du Dauphin addressed to Susan. Happily he had the tact to hand it in at Miller's Bridge where Susan isn't known. Susan brought the unopened message to me with a scared face. I took it, and this is what I read aloud. To Miss Briggs, Hotel du Dauphin, St. Véronique, France. I am crossing tonight and shall reach St. Véronique to-morrow at six p.m. Ruddington. Susan snatched the paper out of my hand with a cry of dismay. Oh, Miss! she moaned, letting it fall on the grass. Whatever shall we do? I was struck dumb. Whatever shall we do? she cried again. Oh, Miss Gertrude, he mustn't come. I can't bear it. I must send him a telegram at once. I must. Too much staggered to answer I looked at her blankly. She collapsed on the rustic seat by my side, covered her face with her pretty new French apron, and went off into an old-fashioned, uncontrollable fit of weeping. To the sound of her sobs I tried to decide what course was best. Susan's plan of an immediate telegram commanding him to stop at home seemed good at first. But I glassed at his words again and all doubt vanished. I knew that Susan might as well tell to-morrow's sun not to rise, to-morrow's tides not to flow, as tell Ruddington that to-morrow he must not invade St. Véronique. Nor could I blame him or wonder at him. With such a letter as mine in his hand I should have despised him if he had not flown on the wings of the wind. Stop crying, Susan, I said, and with a bitterness which she did not understand I added. It is I who should be upset, not you. Yes, Miss, I know Miss, sobbed Susan. With you so ill and weak it's horrible, it's dreadful. I don't mean that, Susan, I said. But do you think I like his coming here? First it was Gibson, and now it's Lord Ruddington. She turned on me white with terror. I know, I know, oh I know, Miss Gertrude. She crooned ringing her hands. What if Gibson meets him, Miss? They'll fight and they'll both be killed. Don't talk nonsense, I said irritably. If they killed each other at least we should have some peace. As for sending a telegram what's the good? He's made up his mind. Very likely he has started. If so, no power on earth will turn him back again. Do you think, Miss? Began, Susan, think what? Your letter, Miss, my letter. Do you think that perhaps it was too loving? And what if it was? I retorted. He's got the letter by now, hasn't he? He's got it and it can't be altered. Susan wept afresh. Oh, Miss, she moaned. If only we was a traxel, be I wouldn't mind. But it's dreadful. A plan occurred to me. Wait here, I said, while I go and speak to Madame. Within a quarter of an hour it was all arranged. I told Madame that an Englishman from the next parish to my own would arrive tomorrow night. Madame is the pink of propriety, and she had nothing but approval for my scheme of taking Susan and Jarjet to the Villa de la Mer for the time of Ruddington's stay. I took it upon myself to declare that the newcomer will go away again on Sunday, and I am not sure that I shall allow him to remain so long. The du Poiriers had made the villa beautifully sweet and clean in the hope of attracting one more end of the season tenant. There was hardly anything that needed to be done. Madame has sent down a great hamper of linen and two baskets of provisions and a pudgy little baby cask of cider. And here we are. Already the change has done me good. Sitting on the broad balcony between two tubs of bushy, bright-leaved eonimus, I am so near the sea that at the top of the tide this spray kisses my cheeks. To come here was an inspiration every way. From a house of my own I can manage tomorrow's happenings. To be mistress of a house helps me to be once more mistress of myself. These wholesome, hearty breezes will blow away the morbid nightmares of yesterday and the days before. I mean to go back to where I stood a week ago. That is to say, having done my duty by Susan, I mean to stand aloof and look on at the last act of the comedy. All this afternoon I have been healthily awake, and am now healthily drowsy. Tonight I shall be like a child in a cradle, with the big soft sea cooing me to sleep. Friday morning. If ever I cross to St. Véronique again I shall come to the villa and not to the hotel. Last year I hated the sight of the villa standing up gaunt and shadeless with raw red walls and a cold muddy blue slate roof. But once inside you are cheerfuler than in the hotel. There's another and a stronger reason. What was it that demoralized me at the hotel and made me such an easy prey to mockish fancies? It was because I had nothing to do, nothing to supervise. The villa is only a big doll's house, but its toy duties and its miniature responsibilities have stiffened my backbone already. I have settled everything about Reddington. When he reaches the hotel he will find a note from Susan. I can't have him mooring us tonight. He must cool his ardor till tomorrow. And he mustn't stay longer than Sunday. Thirty-six hours of it will be a long enough ordeal for poor Susan. All that is needed at this stage is that they should come face to face and, as Susan says, decide whether they can put up with one another. If he stays more than one clear day they'll be getting into explanations and confidences and it will all come out about my letters. Unless there is mutual disenchantment in which event Susan will send him off at once I will see him tomorrow after lunch. As Susan's guardian I shall have to sit in state and give him a gracious audience while he shyly unfolds his tale of love and proves the honourableness of his intentions. I am glad that he is coming. It's far better to get it over at Saint Véronique than to have to go through it all at tracks will be. Besides, it's better that I should meet him without any more delay. Distance and mystery have lent enchantment to my view of him and they are to blame for my three silly nights and days. If there are any germs of love sickness still lurking in my veins I expect to talk with him will kill them. He will be unlike his portrait and far more unlike his letters. He is just an ordinary male person gone mad over a pretty face. The only uncommon thing about him is that his letters strive by an ecstatic tulle de force to lift an everyday masculine passion up to supramundane regions. Through a sequence of galling accidents I have bolstered up his illusion. That is why for a few days there really was a spiritual bond between us. But tomorrow we'll snap it. There is sure to be a something. Perhaps he will have a weak voice. I could no more endure him with a weak voice than I could endure Susan with a gruff one. This is the note he will find awaiting him. You ought not to come here but I received your telegram too late to stop you. I showed the telegram to Ms. Langley and she was angry. Not angry because you want me. Indeed, so soon as she is satisfied that all is as it should be she will help me as much as lies in her power. But she was angry that you should come here. I have promised to ask you, imperatively, not to remain after Sunday. Until that day we shall be at the Villa de la Mer, a chalet about a mile from here. Do not try to see me tonight. I agree with Ms. Langley that it will be best if we meet tomorrow morning on the beach at eleven o'clock. I shall expect you at the end of the path down from the hotel where the beck is lost in the shingle. I can be with you for an hour. If we do not find that we are making a mistake, Ms. Langley will be glad to see you at the Villa at half past two. S. B. That is as far ahead as I mean to look. If Susan and he strike a bargain at once I may have to consider what unbendings I must make and what little honors I must render tomorrow night and Sunday to my noble neighbor and to my Lady Ruddington of the very near future. I have kept faith with Gibson. Tomorrow morning he will have a discreet letter telling him that the unknown is coming for a few hours, that he is an honorable man, and that Gibson will best serve himself and everybody else by keeping out of the way. Noon Susan is alternately beaming and weeping like an April day. Before she carried the note up to the hotel to leave it for Ruddington, she was all bright excitement and chattering importance. We had quite a gay quarter of an hour settling what she should wear on the beach. She is going to meet him in her navy blue surge which she has hardly worn with white gloves and quite a Parisian hat which she has taken over from Georgette. It is of soft, fine blue straw made cocked hat shape with two downy snow white wings. What must I do miss when he comes up to me? She asked. I didn't ask what she meant. Perhaps she thinks she ought to bob a curtsy. You won't do anything, I answered. He will come up saying he got your note or how good it is of you to come or something like that. Don't be too stiff. Hold out your hand simply and easily. I was wondering miss, began Susan, but she cut herself short blushing violently. You were wondering, I echoed. I was wondering miss, will he want to kiss me? I blushed with her. Really Susan, I said, you must look after yourself. My last letter was so loving miss, said Susan doggedly. It was and it wasn't, I answered with cunning. The point is this. You've refused Gibson. Susan winced, but I went on. You've refused Gibson and you've made up your mind that you will marry Lord Ruddington if you like the look of him when you see him in real life. It's your affair Susan, not mine. But as for kisses, well surely he won't offer them and you won't take them till you have both decided what you are going to do. Then I'll tell him he mustn't miss, said beautiful Susan. Later on she asked. Please miss Gertrude, what will he say to me? Dear me Susan, I might be a witch. How do I know what he'll say to you? She endured my sarcasm, but Susan still believes that I know everything. It has never entered her head why I wrote that fatal love letter to Ruddington on Tuesday. She accepts it simply as one more proof of my all round efficiency. She wonders at it no more than she wonders at my writing adequate letters to my solicitor or banker or to a tenant. She thinks I know all about love just as I know about law and business as part of a liberal education. I don't mean his very words miss, she said. I mean miss, what will he talk about? For one thing, I replied glad of the chance, he'll talk about your letters. And that's a point I want to mention. Someday a way will be found of making a clean breast of everything. But until I have seen him and he is safely back in England you mustn't give him the faintest shadow of a hint that any of those letters were mine. If you do there'll be such a muddle that I don't see how we can get out of it. I know miss, I know, said Susan alarmed. I shan't be the single word. Don't be too confident, I answered warming up to the business. You may find it hard work keeping it in. He's bound to say a lot of things that you won't very well understand. For instance, take that letter I wrote on Tuesday night, the loving one as you call it, the one you posted when I was ill. It's too late to scold you over it now, Susan, but you oughtn't to have rushed it off. We could have written something much more suitable. But it was lovely miss. It was a great deal too lovely, I said. He'll say all kinds of fanciful, clever, difficult things to you about it. My advice Susan is this. Don't be stiff, but be shy. Don't go out of your depth and talking to him. So long as he speaks about things you understand, answer him freely. Be as natural and simple as you can. He'll like you all the better, but if he goes too deep, don't try to follow. Just hold your tongue. If he bothers you and presses you, say you would rather talk about it some other time. But he'll find me out some day, miss, said Susan doubtfully. How do you know there's going to be a some day? Perhaps you won't like him. If so, you'll part and there's an end of it. The great thing, Susan, is not to worry yourself into a fright. If you're scared and nervous you won't look nice, and if you don't look nice he'll be far more disappointed than if you're not clever. Now run up to the hotel with this note. She departed in good spirits, treading jauntily. But when she came back she was limp, hopeless, tearful. It has called for all my strategy to allude a scene. I'm so glad Georgette is here. She and Susan get on together like a house on fire. Georgette is all ears and sympathy for every word Susan says, though Susan might as well be talking Coptic five six of the time. At this minute they are laying the table under the balcony and Susan is full-floor with her tale of hopes and fears. Sunset. The gold is tarnishing in the sky and a cold bitter wind is blowing from the sea. It has struck six. He will just be arriving at madams. The villa is sunnier and freer than the hotel by day. But it is eerie with the fall of night. I will have a fire and an extra lamp. Oh that it were Monday morning with it all over and Ruddington gone. How can I be sure that I have mother wit and force and pride enough to scrape through? What if the sight of him fans Tuesday's flame instead of quenching the embers? What if I do truly love him after all? What if I break down while he is asking me for Susan? This useless, restless, shameless pen of mine is my ruin. Why do I never learn? Why did I not burn this book days ago to ashes? Even as I have sat writing these so few lines the truth has darted out of its hiding place. I can cheat myself no more. God has marked me down to receive through my heart the sharpest, most feminist arrow of his cruelty. I am the chosen vessel of his wrath. I love Ruddington and he is close at hand while the light is dying out of heaven and I am so cold and lonely. He has sped over land and sea on fire with love and the love is not for me. The last of the red is gone from the sky. Twelve hours before tomorrow's dawn. Twelve hours of sleepless darkness. Twelve hours of solitary vigil to prepare for meeting him tomorrow in the merry sunlight and for draining my cup of bitterness to its black dregs. I could almost laugh. A laugh as hard as iron, as bitter as a black frost. If there be saints in heaven I challenge them to look at me now. Come, good people, I pray you have your charity. A day profundus if you please. Seven o'clock. No need to wait for tomorrow. It is to be to-night. It is to be now. I shall write this short page to steady my nerves to rally my wits to cool my blood. Something is in the wind. Twenty minutes ago when I told Susan that I should not need her again till dinner time she made pretense of tidying the room as I was staring into the fire. She did not know that she was reflected in the glass. I saw her stand stock still and gaze at my face with the gaze of one who gazes for the last time. She could not have gazed at me more desperately if there had been a hangman waiting at the door to take one of us away. Suddenly her cheeks shone with a drench of tears. She covered her face with her hands and stumbled through the doorway. I was sick of scenes, and with such an anguish as mine I felt a contempt for Susan's mere ups and downs. So I pretended not to see or hear and I didn't follow till ten minutes ago. Susan is not in the house. Geret says she went out as soon as she came downstairs. She thinks Susan has only gone for a breath of seer before dinner. It is outrageous. It is unendurable. It is wicked. It is cruel. They are meeting now. What note or what message did Susan leave this morning at the hotel? Not mine. I am a fool, a simpleton. I have less sense than a little child. I can guess the place. It will be on the beach between here and the beck. They are meeting now. He is holding her in his arms. She will be like Potter's clay in his hands. His ardent masterfulness will flick aside her doubts and fears like grains of sand. Her wits will fly away from her like chaff before the wind. There will be no Susan there save a girlish form for him to hold, a burning face for him to kiss, and a childish voice to tell him about me and my letters. And to moral. Unendurable is the word. Endure it, I will not. I refuse to be flouted and disobeyed and made a fool of and shamed. Susan is my maid. I don't allow followers, whoever they may be. Or rather, I allow them an honest daylight and at times appointed, not on the sigh, not in the dark. I am going out. End of Book 4, Part 1. Book 4, Part 2 of Susan by Ernest Oldmeadow. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. La ville de la mer, Part 2. Sometime or other. I am glad I did not burn this book. It shall stand as my golden legend. The fire is still lively in the grate and the two lamps are beaming softly. I don't know whether it is Friday night or Saturday morning. Saturday morning, I suppose. But no going to bed till all is written down. I stepped out of the villa about a quarter past seven and began crunching westward along the stones. Rage and hatred were in my heart. I almost understood those men and women who make haste on such errands as mine, grasping pistols or cold steel. The wind was in my face, but I bent into it and sped on. I was not cold. It made me glow to think how I would burst upon them, cover them with shame, fling them apart, humiliate them a thousand times more than they should ever humiliate me. But rage and hatred did not last. Under the lee of a great black boat drawn up on the shingle, I paused to take breath. It was warm and still in that little patch of shelter, out of the nipping bluster of the wind. While I was standing there, looking over the faintly gleaming water, a black mantle of cloud fell away from the moon. The sea became a far-spreading shimmer of silver. The little cloud sailed as curly and white as feathers from her great seabird's breast across the soft blue heaven. A single chime of the Birini church bell fell from the cliff. A single, silvery chime as if the moonlight had spoken. At that holy call I was born again. Rage and hatred had been strong, but I had not rage enough or hatred enough to go on standing up stubbornly against all that graciousness and beauty. It melted my heart of stone, and I knew it for an impossibility that God should be otherwise than beautiful and good. For a moment, Ruddington and Susan receded from my mind. Or rather, I thought of them along with all the millions of happy lovers upon whom the same sweet moon was smiling. And I blessed them, unaware. My mind came back to my errand. And then I fought the battle. Along the beach I could see the trees which shade the path, and above the swish of the small waves, I could hear the beck humming loudly in its ravine. I was sure that they were there under that green roof close to that music in this moonlight made for love. The thought burnt me like hot irons and I could have cried aloud. Then the agony was over. I had resolved to let them be, to leave them alone with their happiness. Rage was tamed, hatred was changed to a sad, worldwide pity. But as I turned wearily back to the clouded east, I ached and tingled all over like a beaten child. At the first crunch of my foot on the pebbles as I turned round, someone sprang towards me from the foot of the cliff. I cried out in terror. He faced me in the moonlight. We were only a step or two apart. It was Ruddington. We looked full at one another without speaking, and as I looked I knew that, though he could not be mine in this world, I must be his for ever and ever. Then the enormous whiteness of the cliff seemed to rock before my eyes, and the humming of the beck swelled to thunder in my ears. But he caught me before I fell. Susan, he said softly in my ear. His voice was warmer and brighter than gold as he repeated. Susan. I lay helpless in his arms. All strength had gone from me, just as it had gone when I have swooned in the sea. I could not struggle. I could only let myself sink more wholly against his heart, just as I had so willingly sunk down, down, down through the cool green water to the deep, strong peace of death. But though death's caress had been sweet, it was sweeter to rest against the warm heart of love. I don't know how long that perfect happiness endured before a stab of anguish pierced me through. It seemed an hour. It may have been a minute. Perhaps it was less than half a second before full consciousness returned. Then a voice within me cried shame. I remembered that, although I had gaze at his face in the broad light of the moon, he had only seen mine in the shadow. Bitterest of all, it was not my name he had murmured in that voice brighter and warmer than gold. He had hailed Susan. I was a cheat, a changeling, lying shameless in Susan's place. I knew it. But for a moment longer I rested at peace in the soft nest of his arms. With all the gray years of the future to be lived through in loveless loneliness, I deliberately gave myself that one long moment. As if he knew that the warmth and sweetness of it must last me all my life long, he held me closer to his heart. I wished then that I could have died. Life, harsh life, cried aloud. I called up some sudden strength and tore myself free. I am not Susan, I said. He gave the slightest cry, made the slightest retreat in the world. Then before I knew he enfolded me once more. No, he said proudly, not Susan. Susan, ma petit Susan. But I frightened her. She is trembling. Susan, forgive me. I must have been mad to leap out upon you like that. But how could she walk along the beach tonight and not expect me to be here? I heard him vaguely. He was too strong for me. My will, my moral energy as well as my bodily strength refused to return at my command. I could hardly open my eyes to look up at the mild moon, so like the cool, round sun which I had seen under the water. Say you forgive me, Susan, he murmured. You are angry with me for coming to France. How could I wait, Susan, when you had confessed that you love me? I wrenched myself roughly free. With a frenzied effort of will, I rallied back all my allies of conventionality and of pride. You have made a mistake, I said curtly, stepping away two or three paces. I am not Susan. This time he started violently. But he recovered himself in an instant and came towards me without stretched hands. I sprang back. Susan, he said gravely, don't jest. For heaven's sake, not now. This is some quaint fancy. You say you are not Susan just as you said my infatuation was not love. Forgive me, Susan, but this isn't a time for subtleties. You love me and you know I love you more than life. Don't refine or jest now. This moment of our first meeting is too great, too sacred. Let us be clear and simple like the moon and the sea. No, I cried as he advanced. How dare you touch me again. It's all a mistake. No doubt this is Lord Ruddington. You are speaking to Miss Langley. His arms dropped to his side and he fell back as if I had struck him in the face. I steadied myself with one hand against the side of the boat. It was a long time before he spoke. Miss Langley. He said at last in tones as cold and dull as lead. What can I say? Then his voice quickened and brightened and he cried. No, Susan, you shall elude me no more. Stand back, please. I said icely and decisively. There has been enough of this. I understand you are to see Susan tomorrow at eleven o'clock. Before I could move he leapt to my side. Miss Langley. He said rapidly but firmly, Miss Langley, if you are truly Miss Langley, if this isn't some ill-time joke, hear me for one moment. Heaven knows I did not mean to insult you, but this is a terrible thing. I have laid on you one indignity, but I beg you to endure another. You have answered me from the shadow. I ask you, for heaven's sake I implore you to show me your face one moment in the light. He had pressed so near that his shoulder touched mine. I leaned against the boat counting the cost. Had I the strength to stand out sheer in the pitiless light and biting air. To watch his face, its lightning flash of passionate eagerness, its following gloom of disenchantment and chagrin. To listen to his stammering apologies. To bestow pardons, revise arrangements. And last of all to stumble back over the stones alone, I, who had just known the support of his breast, had I the strength. What if I should break down as the light of love died out of his eyes and weep bitterly? But there was no choice. My heart bled as I schooled myself once more to the haughtiness of artificial pride, and I said, This is monstrous, but as you please. He made way for me with old-fashioned reverence as I stepped out into the moonshine. With all that was left of my shattered will I strove to offer for his scrutiny a face hardened by haughtiness, lips curling with disdain, eyes alight with annoyance. But how could I hate him while I loved him? How could my eyes that were so hungry stab him? And how could my lips scorn him when they were aching to tell him all? The eager lightning flashed in his face, but I waited in vain for the dull thunder of despair, for the fall of the gloom. No, it was not lightning. With my heart standing still I saw that the light abode in his eyes, that it waxed fuller and more radiant as he gazed intently into mine. But suddenly he quenched it. One second more, he commanded abruptly, dryly almost harshly. Simply and literally, without any paradoxes or rooses whatever, are you, Susan? I am not, Susan, I said, beginning to turn away. Simply and literally and truly you are indeed Miss Langley. I am Miss Langley. Something chained me to the spot. I saw him go pale as death, and I heard him groan in anguish. Then may God help us all. What do you mean? I demanded. We seem to be so mysteriously one that the strength which deserted him passed into me. Are you not satisfied? I added. I must go. In a flash he was master again. He flung himself across my path. No, he cried, you shall not go. Some meddling idiot has deceived me. There has been a horrible and unspeakable mistake. Gertrude Langley, it was you I met in Dirlingham. It was you I watched in Traxelby Church. Gertrude Langley, it is you I love with my whole soul. It is you, it is you, it is you. I shall not let you go. His words sang all round me like birds. My battle-worn and feebled spirit reeled under such bursts of music, such flashes of glory. I made one last agonizing effort to play the conventional part, to rebuke and repel him, to parade amazement, shame, and a dishonest show of anger. But he was too strong. He dominated me so that I could not even pause to marvel at the miracle or to ask myself if it could be true. I could only taunt her towards him in dumb, unconditional surrender and burst into a torrent of thankful tears. This third time he held me, not as he had held me before. Then he had strained me to him like a lover. Now he supported me gravely, reverentially, as any man would support any woman who has half fainted away. But by swift degrees he guessed the truth. He held me closer, he bent his lips to my ear, and he asked, with a grave wonder in his voice of gold, you do not mean this? Yes, I whispered with my eyes closed, I mean this. For two or three seconds we were content to have it so. Then his clasp weakened. I knew what he meant, and I drew myself free. We forgot Susan, I said. Yes, he said slowly, we forgot Susan. He stood beside me in silence, looking at the sea. Then, without warning, he broke out with terrible words of anger. Not to me. It was as though he arraigned the universe and shook his fist at the stars. A thousand curses, he cried. A thousand curses on their heads who have brought us all to this. It is not to be born. It is a tangle of fiends. Great God. To be loved by the two best women on earth, and then instead of happiness, to find an end in misery all round. It is the work of devils. It is not to be born. He remembered me at his side and fought down his wrath. At last he turned to me an ash in face and began. There is much to say. Where will you sit down? Nowhere, I answered. No, do not touch me again. What there is to be said, say. We stood and arms length apart on the stones and he spoke. Gertrude Langley, he said, For five weeks I have loved you and there is no woman in the world save you that I ever did love or ever shall. But through a string of ghastly blunders hardly to be explained or even believed, I have loved you under another name and amid wildly false notions of your station. Be hurt at nothing, I shall say. I believed on twofold testimony that you were, Susan, your maid. Do not be galled or insulted till you have heard me out. You cannot insult me, I said. Besides, I know all. No, he cried. You do not know. You know that I have written Susan letters, that I have badgered her to marry me, that I have followed her to Saint Véronique and that I am to set eyes upon her tomorrow. But listen, I will tell you what you do not know. You do not know that this poor girl has a heart of gold, a soul of fire, a mind that is a fountain of gems. Did you know that? No, I said. I did not. He mistook my ghost of a smile. It stung him. Miss Langley, he said, We have been wrong, you and I, and all who have been born like you and me, to rank and wealth and leisure. Because the novels are nearly all written round such lives as ours, we think that the poor and the servile are without romance, without spirituality. We are not quite sure that they have minds and hearts and souls of their own. I say we have been wrong. All Susan's few letters to me save one have been shy and hurried. But, though I say it in the ears of the only woman I can ever love, there isn't, there can't be in all the world a nobler mind than this poor Susan's, a sweeter heart, a purer soul. I did not answer. His calmness left him. You don't see, you won't see, you can't see, he cried. Why will you make me put it into words? You are shutting your eyes to the tragedy of it all. Gertrude Langley, what would you have me do? I was given some dim sense of the greatness of his soul. Almost mechanically I replied, I would have you do only what is right. God bless you for that, he murmured and took my hand. Only what is right. But tell me which is the right. I love you and you love me. When and where you saw me? Where and when and why and how your love for me began I cannot guess. All that matters is, you love me. Beautiful Gertrude, answer me. You love me and I love you, but which way lies the right? You mean, I said slowly disengaging my hand, that there is Susan? Yes, he said gently, there is Susan. Which way lies the right? For all I know I shall find Susan ugly and she is a lady's maid. But the point is, I have forced her to love me with such a love as I did not expect to find in this world. Do not smile, do not imagine I think myself handsome or in the least adorable. But I have read her last letter fifty times and I know if I draw back, if I tell Susan of this cruel tangle it will break her heart. No, do not interrupt me. In such a case I know how hard it is for you to believe that I am not mad. Dearest, help me, for God's sake. It's hard enough, God knows. I ought to have thrust in words boldly refusing to be denied. I ought to have told him everything, but he silenced me with one gesture and finished. Yet after all, he said, what is there to discuss or to decide? Haven't you told me already to do the right? And the right is to keep faith with Susan. Oh, I know, I know, he cried out bitterly. It will wound your heart, it will break mine. But, dearest, we have so much. We have books, we have friends, we have a hundred occupations. But this poor Susan, what has she? She has nothing except love. If she has love, I said, and we have all else in the world beside, then Susan is rich and we are poor. He turned away. When he looked at me again, he said, it is simply a choice which of us must be robbed of happiness and burdened with lifelong sorrow and failed with bitterness. You and I are too, and Susan is one. They say minorities must suffer. He smiled a sad smile and watched me narrowly. And at the same moment a coldness numbed my heart. While he had been extolling Susan, I had drunk in his words deliciously, biding my time to laugh out merrily and prick the shining bubble. But suddenly all things stood out in a different light. I remembered my oath to Susan at Tracksleby. I remembered that she had given up Gibson. I recalled with anger that at this very moment she was prowling about to catch some secret glimpse of her lover. Yes, he repeated, minorities suffer. It is the way of the world. I renounce Susan and what does it amount to? A mere lady's maid sees me break faith and drop her in favor of wealth and beauty. She loses her faith in God and man. Possibly she even has the bad taste to go and die. Meanwhile I, having always had all I want, go and get a great deal more. Natural, isn't it? He laughed a bitter laugh. Don't talk again like that, I said as bitterly as he. He was silent while I thought my thoughts. I knew full well in the depths of my soul that to suffer anything to thrust itself between him and me would be a crime and a blasphemy. Yet I knew it might come to pass. If I told him all about Susan, all about Gibson, all about the letters, he would still have only my word for it that she did not love him in her own way. He would seek Susan to-morrow morning as appointed to hear Susan's own words, and under the glamour of his presence what might not Susan say. But light blazed through my brain. I had found the key. I must go back to the villa. I must track Susan at all costs. I must tell her the whole story of Ruddington's mistake. Probably she had already come back. I turned to him and said, Why be ironical and bitter? You have spoken truly. You have to do what is right. He seized both my hands. To him it was the end. Gertrude, he said, For the first and last time my own Gertrude. So this is good-bye. Our first meeting is our last. Tomorrow, after it is over, I shall go straight away. Tomorrow is hers. But tonight is ours. Beloved, this is not the end. There are more worlds than this one, this world which someone has cursed for us. For ever, I am all thine. But the waiting will be so long. Beloved, do not say that I may not bid thee good-bye. I restrained him gently, for my mind had clouded again with thronging fears. No, I said, let us not make the future harder by any weakness in the present. He bowed his head and obeyed. When he looked up he said quietly, One practical point before I go. She will not, I will not, ever be at Reddington Towers. Tracks will be as your old home. The towers shall be shut up. My eyes failed with tears. Beloved, I said softly, Good-bye. I gave him my hand and he held it to his lips. Then I broke from him and fled home. Georgette received me with a volley of outcries about the spoiled dinner. Where is Susan? I asked. She has not come back, said Georgette, retreating towards the kitchen. And then I saw that Georgette was in the secret. Georgette, I said, peremptorily in French. I insist that you tell me this instant where Susan has gone. Her brow darkened. She looked at me defiantly and tossed her head. Come, I commanded with a wrap on the table. I insist, this moment. Pardon, Madame, retorted Georgette with republican spirit. I am the servant of Madame du Poirier and the friend of Susan. There was no time to argue. I shifted my ground and coaxed. If you are a friend of Susan, I said, you will answer at once. Something very important has happened. We must find her at once. Georgette hesitated suspiciously before she asked. Is it about the millor from England, Madame? The millor with all the money. Yes, yes, yes, I said, it is most important. Then he may take his money back again, said Georgette with a fine flourish. Susan, she will only marry for love. She has gone away. Gone away? I echoed, sinking down on a chair. Yes, Madame. Susan said, if she didn't run away, the millor would make her marry him. Georgette, I cried, springing up. I give you my word that the millor shall not mention marriage to Susan again. If you are her friend, tell me where to find her. I swear that I am thinking only of her good. Georgette was silent. The truth rushed in upon me, I said. She has run away with Gibson? Yes, Madame, said Georgette tranquilly, with Monsieur Gibson. Georgette, I cried, help me to find them and I'll give you fifty francs. No, don't pout. If I can stop them, Susan and Gibson will be grateful to you as long as they live, on my word of honour. At last, Georgette said, Susan went out too soon for fear that Madame would stop her. She attends Monsieur Gibson at the bottom of the beck at half past eight. I snatched her all from the table and rushed out again to the beach. The birrini clock struck eight. There would be six or seven minutes to spare. End of book four, part two.