Her atmosphere was the most deeply absorbed--the rarefied atmosphere of the studio. Across the gulf of months Betty met the direct, far-seeing look, which took in all and gave out nothing. It had waited for its interpretation till now.

With the interpretation--which was that of things held back, reserved--Betty came to evolve a discrimination. The discrimination was between two att.i.tudes. Both had held back something; neither had given unreservedly. One had held back all of friendship, offering nothing; the other had given friendship, withholding from it an element--the element of respect.

Retrospect made the most of both. It would have been hard to say which it found the more effectual weapon. There were moments when Betty could have caught at the sharp blade of one to escape the other, each was driven in alternately. Finally, in spite of all which she would have during these months foregone had she been taken at her word, in spite of all that retrospect with the search-light could not wholly spoil, she attained at times to endorsing the working principle of the entire withholder, as it had been once phrased by her--'One should quite withdraw.' Retrospect, on the whole, made it out a principle more honest, more kind.

Tommy, who was every day being shown a little more how Prudence Varley had from the beginning 'quite withdrawn,' concerned himself, not with the honesty or the kindness of the principle, but merely with its immediate basis.

So, coming to an understanding of its basis, he saw vividly his own hopelessly unachieved intimacy, his attempts so driven back upon themselves, yet gaily denying defeat, his battering at walls which had been built--not at all, as he had supposed, of abstraction, but of entire perception. He saw now more and more each day the impenetrability of those walls; retrospect illumined for him the unheeding detachment, the abrupt swerves from persons to things, so frequent because he had been so indomitable in his return to persons, perceiving them for gates in the impenetrable walls.

There had been times, there had been moments, when the gates had yielded a very little; one had, as it were, got sudden glimpses through.

After all, the Crevequers had never failed, till now, to achieve any intimacy....

The half-conscious, vague knowledge of this made the shut gates the more significant; their barred faces were written over, large, with words.

The Crevequers, having begun to learn to read, spelt them out.

Tommy's reading was perhaps attained to with greater slowness, greater difficulty--the fault of s.e.x--than Betty's; but in the end the attainment was equally complete.

To Tommy one element in the business was all-important; before it the other elements shrivelled into nothing. But there were other elements which at times had their turn. There was the att.i.tude of Venables, now realized as the basis of the embarra.s.sment which had for some time been oddly, inexplicably, growing into their intercourse with each other.

Wholly to absorb that att.i.tude Tommy had to go back some years, to an old atmosphere--an atmosphere of discriminations between the things a man could do and the other things which he could not do. It is curious how environment can choke an atmosphere. This, of a certain social and moral decency, as evolved by youth in community, had been brought back to Tommy by Venables. Venables and the atmosphere reacted on each other; each explained the other. This was rather a question of the renewal of old things than of new acquirements. Four years--those four years--do not easily slip out of life. They had not slipped out of Tommy's; but it had needed Venables to make them stand and deliver their message. They delivered it, with whispers growing to clamour--a sordid recital of the things which a man cannot do. From the friendly inexpressiveness of Venables' eyes, Tommy gathered the cla.s.sification 'just sc.u.m.' With a side glance at Betty's part in the business, he admitted that there were also, beyond doubt, the things which a girl cannot do--beyond doubt, too, Betty had done them; but here old atmosphere did not come to his help: his ignorance was as outer darkness. Those things were Betty's concern. He wondered a little what she made of them, if anything. He wondered a little also if he was angry with Venables; on the whole, it hardly seemed logical enough to be worth while. (Betty in this matter cut herself adrift from logic.)

Still nothing was said between them; still neither knew how it fared with the other. They, who shared all their thoughts, kept these thoughts locked from each other's sight.

Then, on the twenty-sixth of March, a letter was brought in to them as they sat over supper. They knew what it would say. The Venables had returned to Parker's--they would like to see the Crevequers at lunch the next day. Mrs. Venables was eager to resume the Intimate Contact with the People; she must have a talk with Betty about it.

Betty handed the note to Tommy, who was hunting in his pocket for matches to light his pipe. He glanced at it, then tore it neatly and with careful deliberation into strips, and folded them into lighters.

Betty watched him; when he had done, he held one over the lamp and lit his pipe with it.

Having successfully carried out this operation, he turned to her.

'You didn't want it, did you?'

Betty shook her head. She had not wanted it at all.

Tommy got up and leaned out of the open window, his back to the room.

'I shall be busy to-morrow,' he remarked.

'So shall I,' Betty said slowly.

Tommy said presently:

'How much longer are they going to be in Naples?'

'Don't know,' said Betty, her chin in her hands. She was thinking it over.

Tommy said suddenly, 'Oh, confound!' and explained, after a moment, 'My pipe's gone out.'

They came thus to a perception of each other's position in the matter.

By whatever steps this position had been attained, it stood clearly defined. Both were too busy to go to lunch at Parker's Hotel; that emerged saliently. With no words uttered on the subject, their points of view had marched together, side by side, immeasurable miles from the evening, three weeks ago, when one had said to the other, 'So for three weeks we shan't have a chance of eating too much at lunch. Pity, isn't it? I loved those lunches.'

The march of the other's point of view each accepted, silently, without surprise. The only matter for surprise would have been the march of one without the other. For, backwards or forwards, they had always moved side by side.

CHAPTER VIII

BROKEN BARRIERS

'The barriers break; life opens all about us; The faces grown so long familiar are become as words, Each one with infinite meanings, a new world.'

HENRY BINNS.

It was hard to deny Mrs. Venables entrance; her intimacy was so all-reaching. The Crevequers did not see how it was to be done. Betty almost reached the conclusion that it could not be done, and echoed Tommy's question, 'How much longer are they going to be in Naples?' In ignorance of the answer to that, the Crevequers built meanwhile their flimsy, pitiful wall, piling for bricks excuse upon excuse, lie upon lie.

Over the wall Mrs. Venables swept like a wave of the sea. She saw nothing; but, whatever she had seen, she would not have been deterred, but the more impelled. When she did see--if ever she saw--it would be an impression of the first order, most immensely striking.

What she at present saw was that the Crevequers had become unsociable; three weeks had been enough to throw them so entirely back upon their old friends and their old amus.e.m.e.nts that the new friends, with their atmosphere so widely different, had slid to a great distance, and were not welcomed.

'Atmosphere counts for a good deal. We have not, perhaps, made allowance enough for the strain--for it is a strain--of stepping out of one atmosphere into another. It takes time.'

Prudence Varley said:

'Only, when you don't step out at all, but carry your own atmosphere about with you, the strain is less. The Crevequers have always seemed, anyhow, to bear up under it.'

Since the Crevequers, finding the strain too great, refused to come to the atmosphere, the atmosphere came to them. It was carried by Mrs.

Venables and Miranda; it spread itself over the sitting-room while Mrs.

Venables talked. Mrs. Venables wanted another social evening in the Vicolo Fiori.

'Yes,' said Betty. 'I'll l-let people know.' (She was stammering horribly to-day.) 'But--but I'm afraid I shall be busy myself.'

Since the evening had not been specified, this was rather too manifestly a brick in the wall. Mrs. Venables pointed it out, with 'Every night, my dear?' and a lift of the brows.

Betty held to it.

'And--and every day as well. We're very busy just now, Tommy and I.'

They had become bored with the new atmosphere; they wanted to throw it wholly off, and be left in peace with their less reputable friends; this Mrs. Venables deduced, with displeasure now rising.

'I think,' she said, 'that it is to be regretted--very much to be regretted.'

Her tone dragged in to be regretted so very much more than the mere fact--the only one offered her--of the Crevequers' excess of occupation, that Betty's dark brows flickered nervously, resentfully, as if she feared something.

Miranda's round eyes beamed with sympathy. The desire to avoid another social evening with the very poor was wholly within the sphere of her comprehension.

'It's a rotten game; I hate it,' she observed.

Mrs. Venables spoke to her quite sharply for once on the subject of limitations of interest and ungracefulness of speech. Miranda, indeed, was a little in the way at the moment; she made intimate approach difficult.