room and keep an eye on Ellen, who was sitting with her back to him, supporting her bright head on her h

ad as any in Edinburgh. But he was very anxious about her. For some moments now she had not moved, and this immobility was so unnatural in her that he knew she must be somehow deeply hurt, as one who sees a bird quite still knows that it is dead or dying. "Tuts, tuts," he sighed. "This must be looked

as young I saw there was a peck of dust in every room, and I blamed old Mr. Logan for keeping on yon dirty old wife of a caretaker. I said to myself that when I was the master I would have it like a new pin and put a decent buddy in the basement. And now Mr. Logan is long dead, and the old wife is long dead, and I have had things my own way these many years, but the place is

She must be sixty-five. I saw her once in Glasgow, in Sauchiehall Street, after she was married, but she would not speak. Yet what else could I have done? I had my way to make, and it was know

e-lyrics, which were the only dignified and unobscene references to passion he had ever encountered, he thought of that night when he had persuaded little Isabella to linger in the fosse of shadow under the high wall in Canaan Lane and give up her mouth to his kisses, her tiny warm dove's body to his arms. Never in all the forty-five intervening years had he seen such a wall on such a night, its base in velvety darkness and its topmost half shining ghostly as plaster does in moonli

not the only person to be inconvenienced, for he had fashed himself a great deal over the business and had slept very badly for a time. He exhorted her reproachful ghost not to be selfish. Besides, she had somehow brought it on herself by looking what she did; for her dark eyes, very bright, yet with a kind of bloom on them, and her full though tiny underlip had always looked as if it would be very easy to make her cry, and she had had a preference for wearing grey and brown and such modest colours that made

to Isabella and not bear her a grudge for causing him this revisiting heartache. With the softest pity that the lot of beauty in this world should be so hard, though quite without self-condemnation, he thought how very sure the poor girl must have been that he meant to marry her before she abandoned that proud physical reserve that w

must settle this business of Nelly's," he thought. "Of course, Philip is quite right. It would not be suitable. Besides, he is getting on nicely with Bob McLennan's girl, and that would be a capital match

changed by the extraordinary emotions that had lately visited her. For she had spent two horrible nights of hatred for Yaverland. She had begun to hate him quite suddenly when he brought her home to say good-night to her mother. There had broken out the usual tumult in the dancing-hall, and he had raised his head with an intent delighted look that at first sh

peeling chairs; the only person that belonged to her was her mother, who was very dear but very old and grieving; and though everybody else on earth seemed to have acquired a paradise on easy terms, nobody would let her look in at theirs. It appeared that he was just like the others. She

le on his rich colours and rich ways, on the slouch by which he dissembled the strength of his body, the slow speech by which he dissembled the violence of his soul. But there returned at once her hatred of him, and she would long to lay her hand in his confidingly as if in friendship, and then drive her nails suddenly into his flesh, so that she would make a fool of him as well as hurt him. At that she would draw her cold hands across her hot brow, and wonder why she should think so malignantly of one who had been so kind-so much kinder than anybody else had ever been to her, although she had no claim upon him. Yet she knew that no

"Ten minutes past

spin from this. "Later than that. Later than that," she told him wildly. "And I

ger. "What's that

easurable despair that she should have to live in this world where everyone was either inscrutably cruel or mad. She mu

and said, "Stop that noise. I want to speak to you." The gesture was rude, but it was picoteed with a faint edge of pitifulness. The way he put his hand to his head suggested that he was in pain, so she shifted her hands from the keys and looked up vigilantly, prepared to be kind

ck under the strain of his extreme forbearance. He went on in a voice which implied that he was forgiving her freely for an org

does," rep

making her ready to believe that it was all a mistake and he was about to announce a treat or a promotion. And he, reading this ridiculous sign of youth, bent over her, prolonging his kind beam and her response to it, so that afterwards, when he undeceived her, there should be no do

ool of her in her suspicion that someone had dared to question her efficiency. "Well, what's that to do with me? Whoever's been complaining-and no doubt if your clients once

en of," said Mr. Philip, laughing. "

ly would look plain with all her colour gone. "There's just a limit to everything, Miss Melville, a limit to everything. You seem to have come to it. Ay, long ago, I have been thinking! You'd better know at once that you were seen late on Saturday night, hanging about with a man. It sounded like yon chemist chap from the description. You were seen entering a cab and driving away. I won't tell you"-he stepped backwards, swelled a little, and became the respectable man who has to hem a dry embarrassed cough before he speaks of evil-"what the client made of it all." And then he bent again in that contract

with her it had been contrived out of innocence by some dark alchemy of his own soul; it still moved him to a madness of unprofitable loyalty and tenderness. In every way he was defeated. It seemed now the least of his miseries that he had failed to destroy his father's persuasion that Ellen was a person of value, for it was so much worse, it opened the door to so long a procession of noble and undesired desires, that he had not been able to destroy. That same persuasion in himself. He counted it a fresh grievance against h

etestable. Ah, this was a piece of foolishness between Mr. Philip and herself. In a world where misery was the prevailing climate, where there were men like Yaverland, who could effortlessly deal out pain right and left by simply being themselves, it was so foolish that one who had surely had a natural turn for being nice, who had been so very nice that firelit evening when they had talked secrets, should put himself about to hurt her. Her eyes followed him

Mr. Philip did not send for her. She was obliged to sit in her idleness as in a bare cell, with nothing to look at but her misery, which continued to spin like a top, moving perpetually without getting any further or changing into anything else. Presently she went and knelt in the windowseat, drawing patterns on the glass and looking up the side-street at the Castle Rock, which now glowed with a dark pyritic lustre under the queer autumn day of bright south sunshine and scudding bruise-coloured clouds, seeing the familiar scene strangely, through a lens of tears. She fell to thinking out peppered phrases to say of the client who had told

e ashamed heat of his eyes, were just the same as grown-up people used when they told mother why they had had to turn the maid away, and that, so far as she could make out, though they always spoke softly so that she could not hear, was because the maid had let somebody kiss her. What was the use of having been a quiet decent girl all her days, of never stopping when students spoke to her, of never wearing emerald green, though the colour went fine with her hair, when people were ready to believe this awful thing of he

n of the weather. The autumn sunshine, which had never been more than a sarcasm on the part of a thoroughly unpleasant day, had failed altogether, and Edinburgh had become a series of corridors through which there rushed a trampling wind. It set the dead leaves rising from the pavement in an exasperated, seditious way, and let them ride dispersedly through the eddying air far above the heads of the clambering figures that, up and down the side-street, stood arrested and, it seemed, flattened, as if they had been spatc

of which she was a part, to wander as he chose in strange continents, in exotic weathers, through time sequined with extravagant dawns and sunsets, through space jewelled with towns running red with blood of revolutions or multi-col

arknesses of the sky, the mountains, and the ship-starred sea, but would go quickly to his house on the hill, not hurrying, but showing by a lightness in his walk, by a furtive vivacity of his body, that he was involved in some private system of exciting memories. He would open the wrought-iron gates with a key which she had not known he possessed, which had lain close to him in one of those innumerable pockets that men have in their clothes. With perfect knowledge of the path, he would step silently through the garden, where flowers run wild had lost their delicacy and grew as monstrous candelabra of coarsened blooms in soil greenly feculent with weeds; she rejoic

ited blankly for this moment which the old man's shuffling step was now bringi

ght you a bit roc

king against her. Ought she therefore to deduce from the unusual size that he had been saying something unusually cruel? But, on the other hand, su

len, he did not know why, in the same rough, soft, broad Scots tongue that he had talked with his mother and father when he was a wee boy in the carter's cottage on the Lang Whang of the Old Lanark Road, that he still talked to his cat in his little study at the back of

of an unwanted child. And Mr. Mactavish James, was so wrung with pity for the wee thing, and the mature dignity with which she wore her misery, and the next moment so glowing with pleasure at himself for this generous emotion, that he beamed on her and purred silently, "Ech, the poor bairn! I will go strai

sely, "I've been hear

know it. Mr. Ph

may not be the quiet, religious lover pondering how a minute's kissing under the moon can sanctify all the next day's daylight that the poets describe him. He may be inflamed out of youth's semblance by jealousy, an

ed about seeing you an

Och, 'twas him that saw me

werved his head before the long look, pansy-soft with gratitude, that she now turned on him. The girl was so inveterately inclined to dilate on the pleasant things of life that his generosity in admitting that his son was a liar, and thus assuring her that her shame had not been as public as she had supposed, quite wiped out all her other emotions. She fairly glowed about it; and at that the

d gnawed the ginger stick, her jaw being so impede

at unless he hurried up and got to the point she would rush from the room and leave him without this delicious occupation. So he went on, speaking cosily. "I thought little of it. You are a good lassie, Nelly, and I can trust you. I know that fine. Sometim

him with wrinkled brows and smiling mouth, sure that he was not being unkind, but wondering why he laughed, and murmured, "Mr. James, Mr. James!" It flashed on her suddenly what he meant, and she jumped up from her seat and cried through exasperated laughter, "Och, men are mean things! I see what's in your mind! But indeed I did not intend to be catty! You must admit, though she's your own daughter, that Miss Chrissie's teeth are on the long side! That's all I meant. Och, Mr. James, I wish you would not be such a tease!" However, he co

she was almost soulless in her beauty and well-being, and as little a matter for pity as a daffodil in sunshine. She was completely, absorbedly young and greedy and happy. The fear that life was really horrid had obscured her bright colours like a cobweb, but now she was radiant again; it was as if a wind had blown through her hair, which always changed with her moods as a cat's coat changes with the weather, and had been lank since morn

ion ye're developing the claws! There was a fine piece in the Scotsman this morning about one of your Suffragettes standing on the roof of a town hall and behaving as a w

dn't she? Yon mi

's a good man. He's an Engli

e's not a lady, who is? Her photograph's given away wi

bt it,

ng the ph

guilefully, watching for her temper to send up rockets

chuckled, "Yon's not my own. I heard Mary Gawthorpe say that at an open-air meeting. She is a wonder, yon

es, and set his eyes wide on her face. From something throbbing in he

while we haven't killed even a policeman, though there's a constable in the Grange district whose jugular vein I would like fine to

g for religion," he murmured,

w her hands down her face, threw up her arms, and breathed a fatigued, shuddering sigh. The conv

ied such a puncture of office discipline, and he sat blowing at it until he saw that this was a new phase of her so entertaining misery. It is always absurd when that pert and ferocious dance, invented by an unsensuous race inordinately and mistakenly vain of its knees, is performed by a graceful girl; and Ellen added to that incongruity by dancing languorously, passionately. It was like hearing the wrong words sung to a familiar

g. Her need to speak of Yav

ere an awful lot of the time. Mr. Yaverland says there is a place in Peru where it is always spring. That would be bonny." She fel

surveyed mankind from China to Pe

e tried to make time by wrangling. "Why do you call hi

sense, lassie,

spoke, and indeed she was not quite aware what those were. "Sense isn't sitting in your chair all day and ruining the coats of your

tavish James; "the widow of a substantia

it were, what's the good of living to be sensible? It's like living to have five fingers on your hand. And life's so short! Mr. James, does it never worry you dreadfully that life is so short? I wonder how we all bear up about it. One ought to live for adventur

d Mr. Mactavish James, "this is a

laughed sobbingly, and went on. "And he's been in Brazil. He lived for a time in Rio de Janeiro." She stared fixedly at her mental image of the fateful house where there was a broken statue on a bier, shook herself, and went on. "And he's travelled in the forest. He's seen streams covered with the big leaves of Victoria Regia like they have it in the Botanical Gardens, and egrets standing on the bank,

ctavish James, "you'll be losing y

en the crew were down with the New Guinea fever. And another time he was working at a mine in Andalusia. The miners went on strike. He and some other men put up barricades and took guns. They defended the

ng traiking about like this. Rollin

ke no mistake! He earns a lot of money.

if it were a hated prison and all that was done in it contemptible; and these things were

pairson," she

who were going to do the things his age could not do. "Ah, well! Ah, well!" he sighed, with

m coldly and sai

lt a conviction, which had the vague quality of melancholy, that he was morally insolvent, and a suspicion, which had the acute quality of pain, that his financial solvency was not such a great thing after all. For Ellen looked like an angry queen as well as an angry angel. It seemed possible that these young people were not only going to have a mansion in heaven, but would have a large house on earth as well, and these two establishments made his single establishment in Moray Place seem not so satisfactory as he had always thought it. These people were going to take their fill of beauty and delight and all the unchafferable things he had denied himself that he might pursue success,

a tender and offended voice, "You're not eating your sweet

lways get h

iately she had the soft breas

e went on. "But there! I've been able to d

ot for me. You'v

en out over a stranger. But I kn

Mr. J

y an old man, and you're you

ed and yet muted with pity, brilliant as sunset but soft as light rain, the honest thing in him for

rtled. "Me,

said, "b

w that her sexual feelings were focussed on one man she treated all other men with a sexless familiarity that to t

o you want me to

ike one of those actresses? Now isn't that a queer thing? I'm all for art as a

oth. That's wh

h with a sob. "You'r

and look in the glass

were doing something much more radical than looking in a mirror, as i

d at yourself befor

ped. "How do you think I

eated grimly and exultingly, "You'v

nd ran her hands ashamedly up and down h

t beautiful

Sarah Bernhardt wore in La Dame aux Camélias, I dare say I could look all right with a fan-a big fan of ostrich feathers." This time she faced the image directly and almost gloatingly, as if it were food. "But considering my c

Venus," said Mr. Mactavish James, "a

after a chin like Carson's. I think it makes one looked up to, irrespective of one's merits. But if what you say is t

'll do," he an

ures which were but abstract designs drawn by her womanhood. She lifted her face towards the mirror and pouted her lips mockingly, as if she knew that some spirit buried in its glassy depths desired to kiss them and could not. She stood on her toes on the hard wooden seat, so that it looked as if she were wearing high heels, and her hands, which were less like paws than they had ever been before, because she was holding them with consciousness of her fingers' extreme length, took the skirt of her frock and pulled it into pann

d man, half from honest jocosity and half from an itch to b

her beauty, she answered, "Yes, it is a pity! It is a great pity! He's

e talking of making a pair, are you?" Amusement always made his voic

ike a blackbird's song. And then she ceased. Her head fell forward. Her gown dropped from her outstretched hands, which she pressed against her bosom. A second past she had filled with spring this office damp with autumn; now s

aped Mr

ed about something that could not come true, that would be horrible if it d

and he had to sink back in his chair and look up at her thro

d allowed consciousness of that fact to colour her manner when they had run against each other in Princes Street. Ellen was trying to imitate the expression by which this bourgeoise had given her mother to understand that the interview need not long be continued. She caught it, she thought, but it did not really help. There was still this pressure of a flood of tears behind her eyes. She looked out of the window and exclaimed, "It's getting dark!" She said it peevishly, as if the sun's descent w

heerfully, "you must run away home. I'll not have it said I drive a bairn to death with late hours. Good evening, lassie." He was so terrified by

t seen here, she was not alone. There pressed against her the unexpungeable fact of her disgrace. Her eyes, mad with distress, with too much weeping, printed on the blackness the figure of the man with whom she had associated herself in this awful way by that idiot capering before the glass, by those maniac words. With rapture and horror she saw his dark-lidded eyes with their brillian

n as to Isabella Kingan's heart he had played over again with the tempo rubato and the pressed loud pedal of sentimentality, and it was now

l he bent over her, whinneying in the slow, complacent accents of Scottish sentime

er that her disgrace was not to end here, that he might talk about it, that the thing might well be with her to her grave, that she had done for herself, that now and forever she

Nelly, Nelly, he's

s of this long day of weeping, flung out of the door of this loathed place, to which she re