It was not Toni who stood there, however; and seeing the blank look on Owen's face, Herrick hurried to explain his errand as one merely of inquiry.

"Come in," said Owen mechanically, drawing his visitor inside the house.

"It's awfully decent of you, Herrick. You have heard of my wife's--disappearance?"

"Yes. I suppose you have no idea what can have taken her away?"

"Not the slightest. The maids say--now--that her thick motor coat and cap are gone, and her purse--with a few pounds in, I don't know how much--is missing from her drawer. But where she has gone is a complete mystery."

"She gave you no hint of her departure?"

"Not the faintest." Owen became suddenly aware that his visitor's coat was damp with the wetting mist; and his hospitable instincts awoke. "I say, come into the library and have a drink. You're pretty well soaked."

He led the way to the library, regardless of Herrick's disclaimers; and the other man thought it best to follow him, first asking permission to bring Olga inside the house--a permission readily granted. Once inside the warm, tranquil room, Owen insisted upon Herrick shedding his coat and accepting a whisky and soda; but though he pressed Herrick to sit down and even took a cigarette himself, it was evident that Owen was all on thorns with anxiety and apprehension.

"You haven't heard your wife say she wanted a change? You know women are restless beings."

"Not Toni. She was always happy here. I'd promised to take her to Switzerland for Christmas, and that pleased her; but she was never keen about going away."

"I see. She was happy here. Well"--his gaze wandered dreamily round the lamp-lit room, with its mullioned windows and well-filled shelves--"I don't wonder at that. Anyone might be happy in such a home as this."

"Yes, she always loved Greenriver." Unconsciously both men used the past tense. "Ever since I brought her here as my wife she loved the old house."

"She was happy, you say?" Herrick felt a sudden desire to probe beneath the surface. "You never--forgive me--you never found her depressed--or--or unsettled--in low spirits?"

"No. She was sometimes a little--well, what shall we call it?--not bad-tempered, but well, a trifle jumpy; but she seemed to be in good spirits as a rule."

"You never--I suppose"--he laughed, trying to make the question sound casual--"you never had any disagreements--any little fallings-out? Oh, don't think me impertinent--I was only wondering whether perhaps Mrs.

Rose had taken offence at some little thing--and had gone off for a short visit somewhere to--well, to punish you."

He had half expected Owen to resent the implication; but Owen took it quietly.

"We never exactly quarrelled," he said. "At least, that isn't quite true. We did disagree, more than once, on one particular subject; and last night we certainly had a few words. We both lost our tempers--I confess I lost mine--and I said one or two things I'd have given the world to recall afterwards."

"I see." Herrick spoke gravely. "Well, no doubt Mrs. Rose knows you did not mean anything unkind----"

"I hope so. By G.o.d, I hope so." Owen's voice was hoa.r.s.e. "If I thought Toni had taken my words seriously I--why, I said things I didn't mean in the very least, and I never for one instant dreamed she would take them as spoken in earnest."

"I see." Herrick repeated the words. "You will pardon me for saying that Mrs. Rose always struck me as being more sensitive than the majority of women."

"Did she?" Owen stared at him, struck suddenly by the significance of his manner. "By Jove, Herrick, I never suspected my wife of any undue sensitiveness. She always seemed to me too young, too immature and undeveloped to take things much to heart. Her youth was one of the greatest charms about her to me. It never struck me she was a woman, capable of a woman's sufferings----"

He broke off suddenly.

"Stay, though. Once I thought--she looked at me and I thought her eyes looked different--not like the eyes of a child. I wondered then ... but ... oh, no, she couldn't think I meant the things I said.

Once or twice I have felt exasperated at what I thought was her childishness, her ignorance of the world, and I've said things now and again, unkind things, even cruel things sometimes ... but I've been secure all the time in the thought that she didn't understand...."

"You wouldn't have hurt her--wilfully?"

"Hurt her?" Owen stared at him. "Good G.o.d, man, what do you take me for?

A man doesn't wilfully hurt his wife--the woman he loves. And to hurt Toni would be like hurting a child."

"Mr. Rose"--Herrick took a resolution to speak plainly--"are you sure you did not treat your wife rather too much as a child? Are you sure you didn't deny her the right of a woman, the right to share your life, your work, your aims? Are you quite sure you never made her feel her inferiority to you in different ways, never let her see that in some matters she was perhaps hardly your equal? Oh, I know you are exceptionally clever, brilliant, and she is only a simple girl; but still she was not a child; and it may have been rather galling to her to be treated as one."

For a moment Owen sat motionless, his eyes fixed on the other man's face with a stare whose earnestness was its justification.

Then--

"Look here, Herrick," he said, "I believe you are trying to tell me something--something about my wife which I don't know. Well, what is it?

I think, as her husband, I have a right to ask you to share your knowledge with me. What do you say?"

"I think you have every right," Herrick answered quietly, "and I ask nothing better than to tell you all I know."

Without further preliminaries he repeated to Owen the conversation he had had with Toni on the day of the Vicarage Bazaar; and a sudden light broke over Owen as he listened.

"You are alluding to the occasion when Lady Martin and the Vicar's wife called her ignorant, frivolous, empty-headed."

"She told you?" Herrick was surprised.

"Yes--long afterwards. But I laughed at her and told her it was nonsense--jealousy, or something like that. I never dreamed she had taken it to heart."

"She took it so much to heart that she began to wonder how much was true, and how she could best rise above the defects with which they endowed her. She honoured me by asking my advice; and I was only too glad to help her. She called herself ignorant, and I endeavoured to show her how, by study and application, she might repair that ignorance. I recommended her books, mapped her out a course of reading--oh, it's no use going over it all now; only just what seems important to me is this.

What had specially wounded her was the fact that they had evidently denied her the possession of a soul." He smiled rather tenderly. "And it was her pa.s.sionate desire to show that she _had_ a soul which drove her to all those desperate expedients of study and the like."

He paused, but Owen did not speak.

"I wonder if the process of making one's soul is a painful one, after all? Like most new-born creatures, I expect it's a delicate, sensitive thing at first, easily wounded by a word, a glance.... I don't suppose it has a very joyful time in the beginning, struggling towards the fuller light like a weak, fragile little flower opening its petals one by one to the sun. But luckily a soul is a very vital thing. It can stand a good deal in the way of unkindness or neglect without shrivelling up. And I daresay a few kindly words, a sympathetic thought, are like water to a dying plant--or as the Bible has it 'as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.'"

As he finished his speech Owen broke in impetuously:

"Don't say any more, Herrick. My G.o.d, what a fool I've been! To think that all this was taking place beneath my eyes and I was too blind, too self-absorbed to see."

"Well, everyone is blind, at times," said Herrick gently. "I'm not trying to make you unhappy, Rose--the whole affair is no business of mine, and you may well resent my interference."

"No, no," said Owen hastily. "G.o.d knows your interference is only too justifiable. But----"

"Perhaps I am to blame, after all, for trying to engineer so delicate a situation. The fact is, I felt a great pity for Mrs. Rose. She was only a girl after all, and girlhood is a lively, careless, light-hearted period. But although her soul appeared--then--to be unawakened, I knew it was there all the time; and I confess I hoped that when she came into full possession of it you would draw nearer to one another, and a better understanding would ensue. But----"

He paused.

"Well? Your plan hasn't worked?"

"I don't know. The thing is, not so much _where_ has Mrs. Rose gone, but _why_ did she go? Look here, Rose. I'm perfectly certain that her one thought all through has been for your welfare; and though on the face of it it seems peculiar that she should take this means of proving her love for you, I'm quite convinced she is acting on your behalf in this odd disappearance of hers."

"But how could I benefit by her disappearance?"

"I don't know. But I am quite sure----"

He broke off suddenly, and the next instant the two men started to their feet as the hoot of a motor-horn sounded loudly outside the house.