"My dear old man, I should just think so. This is the first time I've been properly in London for years and now I'm going to stay. Fancy you married and successful and here am I still the rolling-stone!"

"You! Why you can do anything!"

"Can't write 'Reuben Hallard,' old boy...." and so, with a laugh, they parted.

In the cab, afterwards, Clare's head was buried in Peter's coat, and she sobbed her heart out. "How I _could_ have been such a beast, Peter, Peter!"

"Darling, it was nothing."

"Oh, but it was! It shall never, never happen again...but I was frightened--"

"Frightened!"

"Yes, I always think some one's going to take you away. I don't understand all those other people. They frighten me--I want you to myself, just you and I--always."

"But nobody can take me away--nobody--"

The cab jolted along--her hand was on his knee--and every now and again a lamp lighted her face for him and then dropped it back into darkness.

By the sharp pressure of her hand he knew that she was moved by an intensity of feeling, swayed now by one of those moods that came to her so strangely that it seemed that they belonged to another personality.

"Look... Peter. I'm seeing clearly as I think I never have before. I'm afraid--not because of you--but because of myself. If you knew--" here his hand came down and found hers--"if you knew how I despise myself, my real self. I've been spoilt always, always, always. I've always known it. My real self is ashamed of it. But there's another side of me that comes down suddenly and hides all that--and then--when that happens--I just want to get what I want and not to be hurt and ..." she pressed closer against him and went on in a whisper.

"Peter, I shall always care for you more than any one--always whatever happens. But think, a time will come--I know it--when you'll have to watch me, to keep me by you, and even let your work go--everything, just for a time until I'm safe. I suppose that moment comes to most women in their married lives. But to me, when it happens, it will be worse than for most women because I've always had my way. You _mustn't_ let me have my way then--simply clutch me, be cruel, brutal, anything only don't let me go. Then, if you keep me through that, you'll always keep me."

To Peter it was almost as though she were talking in her sleep, something, there in the old, lumbering cab that was given to her by some one else to say something to which she herself would not give credit.

"That's all right, you darling, you darling, you darling." He covered her face, her eyes with kisses. "I'll never let you go--never." He felt her quiver a little under his arms.

"Don't mind, Peter, my horrible, beastly character. Just keep me for a little, train me--and then later I'll be such a wife to you, _such_ a wife!"

Then she drew his head down. His lips touched her body just above her dress, where her cloak parted.

She whispered:

"There's something else."

She raised her face from his coat and looked up at him. Her cheeks were stained with crying and her eyes, large and dark, held him furiously as though he were the one place of safety.

He caught her very close.

"What is it?..."

That night, long after he, triumphant with the glory of her secret, had fallen asleep, she lay, staring into the dark, with frightened eyes.

CHAPTER VI

BIRTH OF THE HEIR

I

Peter's child was born on a night of frost when the stars were hard and fierce and a full moon, dull gold, flung high shadows upon the town.

During the afternoon the fear that had been in Clare's eyes for many weeks suddenly flamed into terror--the doctor was sent for and Peter was banished from the room.

Peter looked ludicrously, pitifully young as he sat, through the evening, in his room at the top of the house, staring in front of him, his face grey with anxiety, his broad shoulders set back as though ready for a blow; his strong fingers clutched the things on his writing-table, held them, dropped them, just like the hands of a blind man about the shining surface, tapping the wood.

He saw her always as he had seen her last night when she had caught his arm crying--"If I die, Peter.... Oh, Peter, if I die!"... and he had comforted and stroked her hair, warming her cold fingers.

How young she was, how tiny for this suffering--and it was he, he who had brought it upon her! Now, she was lying in her bed, as he had once seen his mother lie, with her hair spread about the pillow, her hands gripping the sheets, her eyes wide and black--the vast, hard bed-room closing her in, shutting her down--

She who loved comfort, who feared any pain, who would have Life safe and easy, that she should be forced--

The house was very still about him--no sound came up to him; it seemed to him that the hush was deliberate. The top branches of the trees in the little orchard touched his window and tapped ever and again; a fire burnt brightly, he had drawn his curtains and beyond the windows the great sheet of stars, the black houses, the white light of the moon.

And there, before him--what mockery! the neat pages of "The Stone House"

now almost completed.

He stared into the wall and saw her face, her red-gold hair upon the pillow, her dark staring eyes--

Once the nurse came to him--Yes, she was suffering, but all went well ... it would be about midnight, perhaps. There was no cause for alarm....

He thought that the nurse looked at him with compassion. He turned fiercely upon Life that it should have brought this to them when they were both so young.

At last, about ten o'clock, able no longer to endure the silence of the house--so ominous--and the gentle tap-tap of the branches upon the pane and the whispering crackle of the fire, he went out....

A cold hard unreal world received him. Down Sloane Street the lines of yellow lamps, bending at last until they met in sharp blue distance, were soft and misty against the outline of the street, the houses were unreal in the moonlight, a few people passed quickly, their footsteps sharp in the frosty air--all the little painted doors of Sloane Street were blind and secret.

He passed through Knightsbridge, into the Park. As the black trees closed him in the fear of London came, tumbling upon him. He remembered that day when he had sat, shivering, on a seat on the Embankment, and had heard that note, sinister, threatening, through the noise and clattering traffic. He heard it again now. It came from the heart of the black trees that lined the moonlit road, a whisper, a thread of sound that accompanied him, pervaded him, threatened him. The scaly beast knew that another victim was about to be born--another woman was to undergo torture, so that when the day came and the scaly beast rose from its sleep then there would be one more to be devoured.

He, Peter, was to have a child. He had longed for a child ever since he could remember. He had always loved children--other people's children--but to have one of his own!... To have something that was his and Clare's and theirs alone, to have its love, to feel that it depended Upon them both, to watch it, to tend it--Life could have no gift like that.

But now the child was hidden from him. He thought of nothing but Clare, of her suffering and terror, of her waiting there so helplessly for the dreadful moment of supreme pain. The love that he had now for Clare was something more tender, more devoted, than he had ever felt for any human being. His mind flew back fiercely to that night of his first quarrel when she had told him. Now he was to be punished for his heartlessness and cruelty ... by her loss.

His agony and terror grew as he paced beneath the dark and bending trees. He sat down on a seat, at the other end of which was a little man with a bowler hat, spectacles and his coat collar turned up. He was a shabby little man and his thin bony hands beat restlessly upon his knees.

The little man said, "Good evening, sir."

"Good evening," said Peter, staring desperately in front of him.

"It's all this blasted government--"