"So for you, they're all heroines--and saints?"

"Never mind what they are. I stand by them! I'm ready to give them what they ask."

"Ready to hand the Empire over to them--to smash like the windows in Piccadilly?" said Blaydes.

"Hang the Empire!--what does the Empire matter! Give the people in these islands what they _want_ before you begin to talk about the Empire. Well, good-bye, I must be off!"

He nodded to the other two, and opened the door of the Hermitage which led directly into the outer air. On the threshold he turned and looked back, irresolutely, as though in compunction for his loss of temper.

Framed in the doorway against a background of sunset sky, his dark head and sparely-n.o.ble features were of a singular though melancholy beauty.

It was evident that he was full of speech, of which he could not in the end unburden himself. The door closed behind him, and he was gone.

"Poor devil!" said Blaydes, tipping the end of his cigarette into the fire-"he's in love with a girl who's been in prison three times. He thinks she'll kill herself--and he can't influence her at all. He takes it hard. Well, now look here"--the young man's expression changed and stiffened--"I understand that you too are seeing a good deal of one of these wild women--and that she's both rich--and a beauty?"

He looked up, with a laugh.

Lathrop's aspect was undisturbed.

"Nothing to do with it!--though your silly little mind will no doubt go on thinking so."

The other laughed again--with a more emphatic mockery. Lathrop reddened--then said quietly--

"Well, I admit that was a lie. Yes, she is handsome--and if she were to stick to it--sacrifice all her life to it--in time she might make a horrible success of this thing. Will she stick to it?"

"Are you in love with her, Paul?"

"Of course! I am in love with all pretty women--especially when I daren't shew it."

"You daren't shew it?"

"The smallest advance on my part, in this quarter, brings me a rap on the knuckles. I try to pitch what I have to say in the most impersonal and romantic terms. No good at all! But all egg-dancing is amusing, so I dance--and accept all the drudgery she and Alecto give me to do."

"Alecto? Miss Marvell?"

"Naturally."

"These meetings must be pretty boring."

"Especially because I can't keep my temper. I lose it in the vulgarest way--and say the most idiotic things."

There was a pause of silence. The eyes of the journalist wandered round the room, coming back to Lathrop at last with renewed curiosity.

"How are your affairs, Paul?"

"Couldn't be worse. Everything here would have been seized long ago, if there had been anything to seize. But you can't distrain on trout--dear slithery things. And as the ponds afford my only means of sustenance, and do occasionally bring in something, my creditors have to leave me the house and a few beds and chairs so that I may look after them."

"Why don't you write another book?"

"Because at present I have nothing to say. And on that point I happen to have a conscience--some rays of probity, left."

He got up as he spoke, and went across the room, to a covered basket beside the fire.

"Mimi!" he said caressingly--"poor Mimi!"

He raised a piece of flannel, and a Persian kitten lying in the basket--a sick kitten--lifted its head languidly.

"_Tu m'aimes_, Mimi?"

The kitten looked at him with veiled eyes, already masked with death.

Lathrop stooped for a saucer of warm milk standing by the fire. The kitten refused it, but when he dipped his fingers in the milk, it made a momentary effort to lick them, then subsiding, sank to sleep again.

"Poor little beast!" said Blaydes--"what's the matter?"

"Some poison--I don't know what. It'll die tonight."

"Then you'll be all alone?"

"I'm never alone," said Lathrop, with decision. And rising he went to the door of the cottage--which opened straight on the hill-side, and set it open.

It was four o'clock on a November day. The autumn was late, and of a marvellous beauty. The month was a third gone and still there were trees here and there, isolated trees, intensely green as though they defied decay. The elder trees, the first to leaf under the Spring, were now the last to wither. The elms in twenty-four hours had turned a pale gold atop, while all below was still round and green. But the beeches were nearly gone; all that remained of them was a thin pattern of separate leaves, pale gold and faintly sparkling against the afternoon sky. Such a sky! Bands of delicate pinks, lilacs and blues scratched across an inner-heaven of light, and in the mid-heaven a blazing furnace, blood-red, wherein the sun had just plunged headlong to its death. And under the sky, an English scene of field and woodland, fading into an all-environing forest, still richly clothed. While in the foreground and middle distance, some trees already stripped and bare, winter's first spoil, stood sharply black against the scarlet of the sunset. And fusing the whole scene, hazes of blue, amethyst or purple, beyond a Turner's brush,

"What beauty!--my G.o.d!"

Blaydes came to stand beside the speaker, glancing at him with eyes half curious, half mocking.

"You get so much pleasure out of it?"

For answer, Lathrop murmured a few words as though to himself, a sudden lightening in his sleepy eyes--

L'univers--si liquide, si pur!-- Une belle eau qu'on voudrait boire.

"I don't understand French"--said Blaydes, with a shrug--"not French verse, anyway."

"That's a pity," was the dry reply--"because you can't read Madame de Noailles. Ah!--there are Lang's pheasants calling!--his tenants I suppose--for he's left the shooting."

He pointed to a ma.s.s of wood on his left hand from which the sound came.

"They say he's never here?"

"Two or three times a year,--just on business. His wife--a little painted doll--hates the place, and they've built a villa at Beaulieu."

"Rather risky leaving a big house empty in these days--with your wild women about!"

Lathrop looked round.

"Good heavens!--who would ever dream of touching Monk Lawrence! I bet even Gertrude Marvell hasn't nerve enough for that. Look here!--have you ever seen it?"

"Never."