“Do you realise what you’re saying?”

“Perfectly! I knew I was a pariah from the moment I recanted, and that whether people knew it or not didn’t matter. All the same—it HAS mattered.”

“I see,” said Adrian again, and came to a standstill. “I suppose that’s natural.”

“Whether it is to others, I don’t know; it is to me. I am out of the herd, and I’ll stay there. I don’t complain. I side against myself.” He spoke with desperate energy.

Adrian said, very gently: “Then you just want to know how to hurt Dinny least? I can’t tell you: I wish I could. I gave you the wrong advice when you came before. Advice is no good, anyway. We have to wrestle things out for ourselves.”

Wilfrid stood up. “Ironical, isn’t it? I was driven to Dinny by my loneliness. I’m driven away from her by it. Well, goodbye, sir; I don’t suppose I shall ever see you again. And thanks for trying to help me.”

“I wish to God I could.”

Wilfrid smiled the sudden smile that gave him his charm.

“I’ll try what one more walk will do. I may see some writing on the wall. Anyway, you’ll know I didn’t want to hurt her more than I could help. Good-bye!”

Adrian’s tea was cold and his bun uneaten. He pushed them away. He felt as if he had failed Dinny, and yet for the life of him could not see what he could have done. That young man looked very queer! ‘Bleeding to death inside!’ Gruesome phrase! And true, judging by his face! Fibre sensitive as his, and a consuming pride! “Going back into the blue.” To roam about in the East—a sort of Wandering Jew; become one of those mysterious Englishmen found in out-of-the-way places, with no origins that they would speak of, and no future but their present. He filled a pipe and tried his best to feel that, after all, in the long run Dinny would be happier unmarried to him. And he did not succeed. There was only one flowering of real love in a woman’s life, and this was hers. He had no doubt on that point. She would make shift—oh! yes; but she would have missed ‘the singing and the gold.’ And, grabbing his battered hat, he went out. He strode along in the direction of Hyde Park; then, yielding to a whim, diverged towards Mount Street.

When Blore announced him his sister was putting the last red stitches in the tongue of one of the dogs in her French tapestry. She held it up.

“It ought to drip. He’s looking at that bunny. Would blue drips be right?”

“Grey, Em, on that background.”

Lady Mont considered her brother sitting in a small chair with his long legs hunched up.

“You look like a war correspondent—camp stools, and no time to shave. I do want Dinny to be married, Adrian. She’s twenty-six. All that about bein’ yellow. They could go to Corsica.”

Adrian smiled. Em was so right, and yet so wrong!

“Con was here today,” resumed his sister, “he’d been seein’ Michael. Nobody knows anythin’. And Dinny just goes walks with Kit and Dandy, Fleur says, and nurses Catherine, and sits readin’ books without turnin’ the page.”

Adrian debated whether to tell her of Desert’s visit to him.

“And Con says,” went on Lady Mont, “that he can’t make two ends meet this year—Clare’s weddin’ and the Budget, and Jean expectin’– he’ll have to cut down some trees, and sell the horses. We’re hard up, too. It’s lucky Fleur’s got so much. Money is such a bore. What do you think?”

Adrian gave a start.

“Well, no one expects a good thing nowadays, but one wants enough to live on.”

“It’s havin’ dependants. Boswell’s got a sister that can only walk with one leg; and Johnson’s wife’s got cancer—poor thing! And everybody’s got somebody or somethin’. Dinny says at Condaford her mother does everythin’ in the village. So how it’s to go on, I don’t know. Lawrence doesn’t save a penny.”

“We’re falling between two stools, Em; and one fine day we shall reach the floor with a bump.”

“I suppose we shall live in almshouses.” And Lady Mont lifted her work up to the light. “No, I shan’t make it drip. Or else go to Kenya; they say there’s somethin’ that pays there.”

“What I hate,” said Adrian with sudden energy, “is the thought of Mr. Tom Noddy or somebody buying Condaford and using it for week-end cocktail parties.”

“I should go and be a Banshee in the woods. There couldn’t be Condaford without Cherrells.”

“There dashed well could, Em. There’s a confounded process called evolution; and England is its home.”

Lady Mont sighed, and, getting up, swayed over to her parakeet.

“Polly! You and I will go and live in an almshouse.”

When Compson Grice telephoned to Michael, or rather to Fleur, for Michael was not in, he sounded embarrassed.

“Is there any message I can give him, Mr. Grice?”

“Your husband asked me to find out Desert’s movements. Well, Desert’s just been in to see me, and practically said he was off again; but—er—I didn’t like his looks, and his hand was like a man’s in fever.”

“He’s been having malaria.”

“Oh! Ah! By the way, I’m sending you a book I’m sure you’ll like; it’s by that French Canadian.”

“Thank you, very much. I’ll tell Michael when he comes in.”

And Fleur stood thinking. Ought she to pass this on to Dinny? Without consulting Michael she did not like to, and he, tied tightly to the House just now, might not even be in to dinner. How like Wilfrid to keep one on tenterhooks! She always felt that she knew him better than either Dinny or Michael. They were convinced of a vein of pure gold in him. She, for whom he had once had such a pressing passion, could only assess that vein at nine carat. ‘That, I suppose,’ she thought, rather bitterly, ‘is because my nature is lower than theirs.’ People assessed others according to their own natures, didn’t they? Still, it was difficult to give high value to one whose mistress she had not become, and who had then fled into the blue. There was always extravagance in Michael’s likings; in Dinny—well, Dinny she did not really understand.

And so she went back to the letters she was writing. They were important, for she was rallying the best and brightest people to meet some high-caste Indian ladies who were over for the Conference. She had nearly finished when she was called to the telephone by Michael, asking if there were any message from Compson Grice. Having given him what news there was, she went on:

“Are you coming in to dinner?… Good! I dread dining alone with Dinny; she’s so marvellously cheerful, it gives me the creeps. Not worry other people and all that, of course; but if she showed her feelings more it would worry us less… Uncle Con!… That’s rather funny, the whole family seems to want now the exact opposite of what they wanted at first. I suppose it’s the result of watching her suffer… Yes, she went in the car to sail Kit’s boat on the Round Pond; they sent Dandy and the boat back in the car, and are walking home… All right dear boy. Eight o’clock; don’t be late if you can help it… Oh! here ARE Kit and Dinny. Good-bye!”

Kit had come into the room. His face was brown, his eyes blue, his sweater the same colour as his eyes, his shorts darker blue; his green stockings were gartered below his bare knees, and his brown shoes had brogues; he wore no cap on his bright head.

“Auntie Dinny has gone to lie down. She had to sit on the grass. She says she’ll be all right soon. D’you think she’s going to have measles? I’ve had them, Mummy, so when she’s isulated I can still see her. We saw a man who frightened her.”

“What sort of man?”

“He didn’t come near; a tall sort of man; he had his hat in his hand, and when he saw us, he almost ran.”

“How do you know he saw you?”

“Oh! he went like that, and scooted.”

“Was that in the Park?”

“Yes.”

“Which?”

“The Green Park.”

“Was he thin, and dark in the face?”