He was especially affectionate but seemed anxious to be gone. His dark eyes avoided Peter's gaze. He didn't look well--a little anxious: and Cards was generally the soul of light-hearted carelessness.

What a splendid fellow he was! Peter looked him up and down taking that same delight that he had always taken in his distinction, his good looks, his ease. "He ought to have been born king of somewhere," Peter used to think, "he ought really--no wonder people spoil him."

"There's another thing," Peter said, "you're forgetting Clare's birthday next week. She'll be dreadfully disappointed at your not being here for it."

"I'll have to remember it from Paris," Cards said.

"Well--it's an awful pity that you're going for a whole month. I don't know what we shall do without you. And you cheer Clare up--she's rather depressed just now. Thinks of the kid a bit, I expect."

"Well, I'll write," said Cards, and was gone.

II

Peter received at this time a letter that showed him that he had, at any rate, one friend, in the world who believed in him. It was from James Maradick and it was strangely encouraging--now at this period of yawning pits from whose blackness he so resolutely turned away.

It asked him to go with Maradick as his guest to some Club dinner. Then it went on.... "You know, Westcott, we don't meet as often as we should.

Like ships in the night, we signal every now and again and then pass.

But I am quite sure that we have plenty to say to one another. Once or twice--you remember that party when I gassed about Cornwall?--we have nearly said it, but something has always prevented. I remember that you divided the world once in a fit of youthful confidence, into Explorers and Stay-at-homes. Well, those words will do as well as any others to describe the great dividing line. At any rate, you're an Explorer and you're trying to get on terms with the Stay-at-homes, and I'm a Stay-at-home and I'm trying to get on terms with the Explorers and that's why we're both so uncomfortable. The only happy people, take my word for it, are those who know the kind of thing they are--Explorers or Stay-at-homes, and just stick at that and shut their eyes tight to the other kind of people--_il n'existe pas_, that other world. Those are the happy people, and, after all most people are like that. But we, you and I, are uncomfortably conscious of the other Party--want to know them, in fact, want them to receive us.

"Well, I'm getting on and it's late days for me, but you've got all your life before you and will do great things, take my word for it. Only don't be discouraged because the Stay-at-homes don't come to you all at once. Give 'em time--they'll come...."

This seemed to Peter, at this moment of a whole welter of doubt and confusion and misunderstanding of people's motives and positions, to explain a great deal. Was that the reason why he'd been so happy in old Zachary Tan's shop years ago? Why he'd been happy through all that existence at the bookshop, those absurd unreal conspirators--happy, yes, even when starving with Stephen in Bucket Lane.

He was then in his right company--explorers one and all. Whereas here?--Now? Had he ever been happy at The Roundabout except during the first year, and afterwards when Stephen came? And was not that, too, the explanation of young Stephen's happiness upon the arrival of Mr. Zanti and Brant? Did he not recognise them for what they were, explorers? He being a young explorer himself.

On the other side Mrs. Rossiter, Clare, Cards, old Bobby who in spite of his affection never understood half the things that Peter did or said, the Galleons, old Mrs. Galleon and Percival and his sister?... Had Henry Galleon known that dividing-line and suffered under it all his life, and borne it and perhaps conquered it?

And Peter suddenly, standing at his window watching London caught by the evening light, saw for an instant his work in front of him again. London with her towers, her roofs and chimneys--smoke and mist and haze weaving a web--and then beneath it, humming, buzzing, turning, all the lives, all the comedies, all the tragedies--Kings and princes, guttersnipes and duchesses, politicians and newsboys, criminals and saints--

Waiting, that golden top, for some hand to set it humming.

In that moment Peter Westcott, aged twenty-nine, with a book just behind him that had been counted on every side the most dismal of failures, saw himself the English Balzac, saw London open like a book at his feet, saw heaven and all its glories... himself the one and only begetter of a thousand masterpieces!

But the sun set--the towers and roofs and chimneys were coldly grey, a ragged wind rose through the branches of the orchard, dark clouds hid the risen moon, newsboys were crying a murder in Whitechapel.

"I hate this house," Peter said, turning away from the window, into a room crowded now with dusk.

III

It was the first of May, and the day before Clare's birthday. It was one of the most beautiful days of the year, with a hint of summer in its light and shadow, a shimmer of golden sun shaking through the trees in the orchard, flung from there on to the windows of The Roundabout, to dance in twisting lines along the floors and across the walls.

All doors and windows seemed to be open; the scent of flowers--a prophecy of pinks and roses where as yet there were none--flooded the little Chelsea streets.

The Velasquez on the walls of The Roundabout danced in her stiff skirts, looking down upon a room bathed in green and gold shadow.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon and Peter was going out to buy Clare a present. He had seen a ruby pendant many months ago in a window in Bond Street. He had thought of it for Clare but he had known that, with young Stephen's education and the rest of the kid's expenses, he could not dare to afford it. Now... things were different.

It should sign and seal this new order....

He came downstairs. He looked into the little sitting-room. Clare was standing there by the window looking at the gay trees in the orchard. On the opposite wall the Velasquez danced....

She had not heard him come in and she was standing by the window with her hands clasped tightly behind her, her body strung up, so it seemed, by some height of determination. She wore a black dress with a little white round her neck and at the sleeves. Her hair was rolled into a pile on the top of her head and the sunlight from the orchard was shining upon it.

When Peter called her name she turned round with a startled cry and put her hand to her throat. Then she moved back against the window as though she were afraid that he was going to touch her.

He noticed her movement and the words that he had intended to say were checked on his lips. He stammered, instead, something about going out.

She nodded her head; she had pulled herself together and walked towards him from the window.

"Won't you come, too? It is such a lovely day," he asked her.

"I've got a headache."

"It'll do your headache good."

But she shook her head--"No, I'm going upstairs to lie down."

She moved past him to the door. Then with her hand on it she turned back to him:--

"Peter, I--" she said.

She seemed to appeal to him with her eyes beseeching, trying to say something, but the rest of her face was dumb.

The appeal, the things that she would have said suddenly died, leaving her face utterly without expression.

"Bobby and mother are coming to dinner to-night, aren't they?"

"Yes--"

She passed through the door across the sunlit hall, up the dark stairs.

She walked with that hesitating halting step that he knew so well: her small, white hand lay, for a moment on the banisters--then she had disappeared.

IV

Coming through the hall Peter noticed that there was a letter in the box. He took it out and found, with delight, that it was from Stephen Brant. He had had no word from him since the day when he and Mr. Zanti had paid their fateful visit.

The letter said:--

_Dear Mr. Peter,

This is a hurried line to tell you that He is dead at last, died in drink cursing and swearing and now her mother and she, poor dear, are going to America and I'm going to look after her hoping that we'll be marrying in a few months' time and so realise my heart's wish.

Dear Peter I sail on Thursday from Southampton and would be coming to see you but would not like to inconvenience you as you now are, but my heart is ever the same to you, Dear Boy, and the day will come when we can talk over old times once again.

Your affectionate friend, sir,