Athena held out her foot to the fire, and Lingard, staring down, saw that she was wearing a curious kind of slipper, one unlike any that he had ever noticed on a woman's foot before. A sandal rather than a shoe, it left visible the lovely lines of the arched instep and slender ankle.

"You were out a long time," she said, and fixed her eyes on the clock.

It was one of the curious costly toys of which Rede Place was full, and for which old Theophilus Joy had had a marked predilection. Fashioned like a tiny wall sundial, across its face was written in faded gold letters, "I only mark the sunny hours." The hands now pointed to three minutes to midnight.

Lingard said no word. He went on staring down at Athena's little foot.

He was wondering if she knew how exquisitely perfect she was physically, how unlike all other women.

"Isn't it odd to think," she whispered, "that in a few moments another day will begin? I feel more like Cinderella than ever--now. You have given me such a good time," her voice trembled, and he looked up and stared at her strangely. "You've almost made me in love again with life," and she was sincere in what she said.

"I?" said Lingard hoa.r.s.ely. "I?"

"Yes, you! You don't know--how could you know?--what it's been to me, what it would have been to any woman, to have a man for a friend, to feel at last that there is someone to whom one can say everything----"

He looked away from her. At all costs he must prevent himself from showing what he felt--the violent, the primitive emotion her simple, touching words had called forth.

How utterly she would despise him if she knew! He swore to himself she should never know that she had made him all unwittingly traitor to the woman she loved,--the woman alas! whom they both loved. Lingard, and that was part of the punishment he already had to endure, never left off loving Jane Oglander. Jane was always, in a spiritual sense, very near to him; it was her physical self which was remote.

The tiny gong behind the little clock began to strike, quick precipitate strokes.

"Isn't it in a hurry?" said Athena plaintively, "in such a hurry to end the last of my happy days." Her voice broke into a sob, and Lingard, at last looking straight into her face, saw that tears were rolling down her cheeks.

He gave a hoa.r.s.e inarticulate cry. Athena thought he said "My G.o.d!" She was filled with a sense of intoxicating happiness and triumph. Each of the wild, broken words--words of self-abas.e.m.e.nt, self-blame, self-rebuke, which Lingard uttered, holding both her hands in his firm grasp,--meant to her what fluttering white flags of surrender mean to besiegers.

With downcast eyes, with beating heart she listened while Lingard, abasing himself and exalting her, took all the blame--and shame--on himself. His words fell very sweetly and comfortingly on her ears.

Athena had no wish to act treacherously by Jane.

Any other man but this strange man would have had her long ago in his arms, but Lingard, though he held her hands so tightly that his grasp hurt, made no other movement towards her, not even when with a sobbing sigh she admitted--and as she did so there came across her a slight feeling of shame--that she, too, had been a traitor, an unwilling, an unwitting traitor, to Jane these last few days.

At last they made a compact--how often are such compacts made, and broken?--that Jane should never, never, know the strange madness which had seized them both.

Lingard spoke of leaving the next day. Nothing would be easier than to urge important business in London. But again the tears sprang to Athena's eyes.

"Don't go away," she murmured brokenly. "I couldn't bear it! I promise you that Jane shall never know. Don't leave me with d.i.c.k and Richard--they've both been kinder--indeed, indeed they have--since you've been here, Hew----"

He eagerly a.s.sured her that he would stay. Flight was a cowardly expedient at best, and the feeling he intended henceforth to cherish for Athena Maule was nothing of which he need be ashamed. It was a high, a n.o.ble feeling of compa.s.sion and respect. It was well, nay most fortunate, that they had had this explanation; henceforth they would be friends. The very touch of her cool hands resting so confidingly in his, had driven forth certain black devils from his heart--made him indeed once more true to Jane,--Jane who, if she knew all, would understand.

For there were things Athena had told him of her life with Richard which Jane did not know,--things which it was not desirable Jane should ever know, and which had filled him with an infinite compa.s.sion for Richard's young, beautiful wife.

When Lingard bade her good-night, he resisted the temptation, the curiously strong temptation, of asking Mrs. Maule if she would allow him to kiss her feet.

CHAPTER X

"The pa.s.sion of love has a danger for very sensitive, reserved and concentrated minds unknown to creatures of more volatile, expansive and unreflective dispositions."

d.i.c.k Wantele walked with swinging nervous strides up and down the short platform of the little country station of Redyford. He had already been there some time, for the local train run in connection with the London express was late. But he was in no hurry--there would always be time to tell Jane that she would not see her lover for some hours.

Mrs. Maule had taken General Lingard over to the Paches to lunch. It was a small matter, an altogether unimportant matter, and it was certainly no business of Wantele's to care about it one way or the other. And yet he did care. He was jealous for Jane in a way she never would be for herself. And then--and then Lingard had allowed himself to be bamboozled--no other word so well expressed it--as to the time of Jane's arrival.

It had happened at breakfast. "Mrs. Pache is expecting us--you and me--over to lunch," Athena said to Lingard.

And Wantele had cut in--"Jane is coming this morning."

"No, indeed she isn't! We shall be back long before she arrives," and then Athena had gone on, addressing no one in particular, "Jane is the most casual person in the world----"

Lingard, throwing back his head with a quizzical look on his face, had exclaimed, "Yes, that's one of the good things about her." He had shot out the words as a sword leaps from its scabbard.

There had followed a moment of silence. And then Athena had broken out into eager praise of Jane--eager, inconsequent praise. But for once Hew Lingard had seemed indifferent, hardly aware of the sound of her voice.

Instead he looked across to Wantele: "I wonder if you remember that curious phrase of George Herbert? 'There is an hour wherein a man might be happy all his life could he but find it--'"

Athena had stared at Lingard--what did he mean by saying such an odd thing?

Then she had reminded d.i.c.k that the last time Jane had been coming to Rede Place she had changed her mind not once but three times, and what Athena said had irritated Wantele the more because she spoke the truth.

Jane was curiously uncertain and casual--women of her temperament often are. She only made an effort to be mindful of her engagements when dealing with those concerning whom most people would have said punctuality did not matter--with those forlorn men and women adrift on the dark sea of South London, to whose service she had given herself since her brother's death.

For a moment he, d.i.c.k Wantele, and Hew Lingard, had been in that wordless sympathy which between men means friendship. Wantele was eager to be convinced that his suspicions were both base and baseless. If only Athena would remove her disturbing presence from Rede Place! But he knew her too well to hope that she would go--yet.

Here was the train at last, but where was Jane Oglander? d.i.c.k looked before and behind him. No, she was not there. She hadn't come after all.

She had, as usual, changed her plans at the last moment. Athena was right, Jane was really too casual! When he reached home he would find a telegram from her explaining----

And then suddenly he saw her walking towards him from the extreme end of the platform. And the mere sight of her dispelled, not only the irritation of which he was now ashamed, but the anxieties, the suspicions of the last ten days.

He had vaguely supposed that Jane would look unlike herself, that the fact that she was going to be Lingard's wife would have produced in her some outward change. But she looked as she always looked--set apart from the women about her, especially from those of her own age, by the greater simplicity, the almost austerity of her dress. An old cottage woman had once said to Wantele, "Grey is Miss Oglander's colour, and if she was 'appy perhaps light blue."

And as she came up to him, smiling, he remembered what the old woman had said, for Miss Oglander was wearing a long grey cloak; it was open at the neck, and showed some kind of white vest with a touch of blue underneath. On her fair hair, framing her face, rested a Quakerish little cap-like hat with strings tied under her soft chin.

"d.i.c.k," she said, "how kind of you to come and meet me! I'm so glad to see you!"

And he saw with a queer feeling of mingled pleasure and jealous pain that she did indeed look glad; also that there had in very truth come a change over her face. Jane Oglander possessed that which is not always the attribute of beauty, a great and varying charm of expression, but Wantele had never seen her eyes filled, as they were to-day, with gladness.

"I nearly came by the later train," she said. "For I had to see a child off to the country, to a convalescent home, and its train went at the same time as mine. But I found a kind, understanding porter, and so it was all right. Working people are so good to one another, d.i.c.k. The porter wouldn't take the sixpence I offered him for looking after the little boy----" And in her voice there was still that under-current of joyousness which was so new, and, to Wantele, so unexpected.

Jane Oglander looked as if the six last years had been blotted out,--as if she were again a happy girl, pathetically, confidently ignorant of the ugly realities of life.

They walked out of the station together, and with a simultaneous movement they turned into the field path which formed a short cut to Rede Place. Soon they fell into the easy, desultory talk of those who have many interests and occupations in common. The young man had saved up many little things to tell her--things that he thought would amuse Jane, things about which he wished to consult her.

And as they walked side by side, Wantele kept reminding himself, with deep, voiceless melancholy, that this was the last time--the last time that Jane Oglander would be what she had been for so long, his chief friend and favourite companion. Lingard--happy Lingard had been right.

More fortunate than Wantele, he had found that hour most men seek and never find, the hour wherein a man may be happy all his life.

They were now close to the house, and as yet neither had spoken the name of Jane's lover. "Shall we go in by the Garden Room?" asked Wantele.

Now had come the moment when he must tell her of Athena's and Lingard's absence; also, when he must, if he could bring himself to do so, wish her joy.