Little you know."

I expanded my chest. Since I had come to terms with Mildred, some thirty hours before--and I had had a very uphill fight of it before she gave in--I felt that I was an expert in these matters.

"Chipps," said Sinclair. (Chipps is not my name, but it has stuck to me ever since I was at school.) "Chipps, the truth is, we are in the same boat."

My old wound gave a sudden twinge.

"No," I said. "No. We aren't. I'm not taking any water exercise with you, so you needn't think it. Mildred and I are walking on the towing-path arm in arm, and I don't approve of boating for her because I don't like it myself. So she remains on dry land with me. In the same boat, indeed!"

"I meant, we were both in love," he said with the ghost of a smile, "if your corkscrew advances towards matrimony can be called love. I did not mean that we were in love with the same woman."

"I don't care if you are _now_. I did care d.a.m.nably once, but I don't mind a bit now. Do your worst."

"The conquering hero, and no mistake," Sinclair said, looking at me with something almost like affection, and he put out his hand. "Good luck to you, old turkey c.o.c.k."

I shook his hand harder than I intended, quite warmly, in fact.

"Why don't you marry too?" I said. "It would make all the difference to you, as it has to me."

We seemed suddenly very near to each other, as we had been in the old days; nearer than we had ever been since he had made trouble between Mildred and me.

He looked at me with a kind of forlorn envy.

"I cannot find her," he said again.

The words fell into the silence of the large, dimly lighted room.

And perhaps because we had been at school together, perhaps because I had no longer a grudge against him, perhaps because I was not quite so repellent to confidences as heretofore, and he was conscious of some undefinable change in me, Sinclair said his say.

"I fell in and out of love fairly often when I was young," he said.

"You've seen me do it. But at the back of my mind there was always a deep-rooted conviction that I was only playing at it, and the real thing was to come, that there was the one woman waiting somewhere for me. I wasn't in any hurry for her. I supposed she would turn up at the right moment. But the years pa.s.sed. I reached thirty. As I got older I began to have sudden horrible fits of depression that she wasn't coming after all. They did not last, but they became more severe as I gradually realised that I could not really live without her, that I was only marking time till she came.

"And one summer night, or rather morning, ten years ago, something happened. You need not believe it unless you like, Chipps. It's all one to me whether you do or you don't. I came home from a ball, and I found among my letters one dictated by my young sister saying she was very ill and wishing to see me. She was always ill, poor little thing, and always wanting to see me. She was consumptive, and she lived in the summer months with her nurse in a shooting-box high up on the Yorkshire moors, the most inaccessible place, but she liked it, and the doctor approved of it. I used to go and see her there when I had time. But that was not often. I had made provision for her comfort, but I seldom saw her.

"I laid the letter down, and wondered whether I ought to go. I did not want to leave London at that moment. I had been dancing all night with Mildred, and was very much _epris_ with her. Then I saw there was a postscript in the same handwriting, no doubt that of the nurse. "Miss Sinclair is more ill than she is aware."

"That settled it. I must go. Once before I had been warned her condition was serious, and had hurried up to Yorkshire to find her almost as usual. But, nevertheless, I supposed I ought to go. I felt irritated with the poor little thing. But as my other sister Anna was married and out in India, I was the only relation she had left in England. I decided to go.

"In that case it was not worth while to go to bed. I sat down by the open window, and watched the dawn come up behind Westminster. And as I sat with the letter in my hand a disgust of my life took hold of me. It looked suddenly empty and vain and self-seeking, and c.u.mbered with worldly squalid interests and joyless amus.e.m.e.nts. And where was the one woman of whom I had had obscure hints from time to time? Other women came and went. But she who was essential to me, who became more essential to my well-being with every year--she never came. I felt an intense need of her, a pa.s.sionate desire to find her, to seek her out.

But where?

"And as I sat there I felt in my inmost soul a faint thrill, a vibration that gradually flooded my whole being, and then slowly ebbed away. And something within me, something pa.s.sionate surrendered myself to it, and was borne away upon it as by an outgoing tide. It ebbed farther and farther. And I floated farther and farther away with it in a golden mist. And in a wonderful place of peace I saw a young girl sitting alone in the dawn. I could not see her face, but I recognised her. She was the one woman in the world for me, my mate found at last. And I was consumed in an agony of longing. And I ran to her, and fell on my knees at her feet, and hid my face in her gown. And she bent over me, and raised me in her arms and held my head against her breast. And she said, 'Do not be distressed, I love you, and all is well.'

"And we spoke together in whispers, and my agitation died away. I did not see her face, but I did not need to. I knew her as I had never known anyone before. I had found her at last.

"I had never guessed, I had never dreamed, I had never read in any book that anything could be so beautiful. It was beyond all words. It was more wonderful than dawn at sea. I leaned my head against her and cried for joy. And she soothed me as a mother soothes her child. But she was crying too, crying for sheer joy. I felt her tears on my face. She needed me as I needed her. That was the most wonderful of all, her need of me. We had been drawn to each other from the ends of the earth, and we were safe in each other's arms at last.

"And then gradually, imperceptibly, a change came. The same tide which had brought me to her feet began to draw me away again, and sudden terror seized me that I was going to lose her. I clung convulsively to her, but my arms were no longer round her. We were apart, stretching out our hands to each other. Her figure was growing dimmer and dimmer in a golden mist. In an agony I cried to her. 'Where shall I find you? Tell me how to reach you?' And she laughed, and her voice came serene and rea.s.suring. 'We shall meet. You are on your way to me. You will find me on the high road.'

"And we were parted from each other, and I came slowly back over immense distances and moving waveless tides of s.p.a.ce; back to this room, and the dawn coming up behind the tower of Westminster."

"You awoke in fact," I said.

"No. I had not been asleep. I returned. And an immense peace enveloped me. But gradually that too, ebbed away as I began to realise that I had not seen her face. She was in the world, she was waiting for me. Thank G.o.d that was no delusion. But which of all the thousands of women in the crowd was she? How was I to know her? 'You are on your way to me, you will find me on the high road.' That was what she had said, and it flashed through my mind that she might be Mildred. 'You are on your way to me.' I was to motor Mildred to Burnham Beeches that very afternoon. I had arranged to take her there before I had received the letter about my sister. Chipps, I dare say you will think me heartless, perhaps you often have, but I simply dared not start off to Yorkshire that morning, even if my sister was dangerously ill. I had a feeling that my whole future was at stake, that I must see Mildred again, that nothing must come between her and me. I went with her to Burnham Beeches. We spent the afternoon together."

"I have not forgotten that fact," I said.

"And I found I was mistaken," he said. "She knew nothing. The same evening I went to Yorkshire, but I did not find my sister. She had died suddenly that afternoon."

"You would have been in time to see her if you had let Mildred alone," I said brutally.

He did not answer for a long time.

"For ten years I looked for her, now in one person now in another, but I could not find her. I tried to go to her again in that waking dream, but I could not find the way. I could not discover any clue to her. For ten years she made no sign. At last I supposed she was dead, and I gave her up.

"That was last autumn. Gout had been increasing on me, and I had been up to Strathpeffer to take the waters there. And my other sister Anna, now a widow, pressed me to stay a few days with her at the little house on the moors where my younger sister had lived, and which I allowed Anna to use as her home as she was extremely poor. The air was bracing and I needed bracing, so I went, dropping down from Strathpeffer by easy stages in my motor. I was glad I went. The heat was great, but on those uplands there was always a fresh air stirring. Anna, who had hardly seen me for years, made much of me, and though she had no doubt become rather eccentric since her husband's death, that did not matter much on a Yorkshire moor. I spent some happy days with her, and it turned out to be fortunate that I had come, for on the third afternoon of my visit, she had found out--she found out everything--that an old servant of mine, the son of my foster mother, had got into difficulties, and was being sold up next day at a distant farm. She urged me to motor over very early in the morning and stop the sale and put him on his legs again. I rather liked the idea of a thirty mile drive across the moors before the sun was up, and I agreed to go. I had no objection to acting Providence and pleasing Anna at the same time.

"I shall never forget that afternoon. We had tea together in the verandah, overlooking the great expanse of the heathered, purple moors.

And the thunder which had hung round us all day rolled nearer and nearer. The moors looked bruised and dark under the heavy sky. The long white road grew whiter and whiter. My sister left me to shut all the windows, and I lay in my long deck chair and looked at the road.

"And as I looked the words came back to my mind. 'You will find me on the high road.' Lies! Lies! Ten years I had been seeking her. I should never find her. And far, far away on the empty highway I saw a woman coming. My heart beat suddenly, but I remembered that I had been deceived a hundred times, and this was no doubt but one more deception.

I watched her draw nearer and nearer. She came lightly along towards the house under the livid sky with the heather on each side of her. She had a little knapsack on her shoulder. And as she drew near the breathless stillness before the storm was broken by a sheet of lightning and a clap of thunder. My sister rushed up and dragged the chairs farther back.

Then her eye caught sight of the tall grey figure now close below us on the road. A few great drops fell.

"Anna ran down to the gate and called to the woman to take shelter. She walked swiftly towards us, and then ran with my sister up the steps, just as the storm broke.

"'Magnificent,' she said, easing her shoulder of the strap of her knapsack while her eyes followed the driving rain cloud. 'How kind of you to call me in. There is not another house within miles.'

"She was a very beautiful woman of about thirty, with a small head and a clear-cut grave face. Her dark, parted hair had a little grey in it on the temples. She smoothed it with slender, capable, tanned hands. She had tea with us, my sister welcoming her as if she were her dearest friend. That was Anna all over.

"The thunderstorm pa.s.sed, but not the rain. It descended in sheets.

"The stranger looked at it now and then, and at last rose and put out her hand for her knapsack.

"'I must be going,' she said.

"But Anna would not hear of it. There was not another house within miles. She insisted on her stopping the night. A room was got ready, and presently we all three sat down to a nondescript meal which poor Anna believed to be dinner.

"I was attracted by our guest, but not more than I had often been before by other women. She had great beauty, but I had seen many beautiful women during the last twenty years. She was gay, and I like gaiety. And she had the look of alertness and perfect health which often accompanies a happy temperament. She and Anna talked incessantly, at least, Anna did. I did not join in much. My cure had left me languid. When we had finished our meal we found the rain had ceased, and the moon shone high in heaven over a world of mist. The moors were gone. The billows of mist drifted slowly past us like noiseless waves upon a great sea. The house and terraced garden rose above it like a solitary island. The night was hot and airless, and we sat out on the verandah, and talked of many things.

"Of course, Anna is eccentric. There is no doubt about it. But the worst of her is that her form of eccentricity is infectious. She is extremely impulsive and confidential, and others follow suit if they are with her. I have known her once (at a luncheon party of eight people whom she had never met before) say, as a matter of course, that she remembered a previous existence, and sleeping seven in a bed in an underground cellar. I was horrified, but no one else was. And a grave man beside her, a minister, told her that when first he went to Madeira he remembered living there in a little Portuguese cottage with a row of sugar canes in front of it. He said he recognised the cottage the moment he saw it, and said to himself, 'At any rate, I am happier now than I was then.' A sort of barrier seemed always to go down in Anna's presence. People momentarily lost their fear of each other, and said things which I have no doubt they regretted afterwards.

"I need hardly say that as Anna looked at the moonlight and the mist she became recklessly indiscreet. I could not stop her. I did not try. I shut my eyes, and pretended to be asleep. And she actually told this entire stranger all about her first meeting with her late husband, which it seemed had taken place on an expedition to Nepal. Anna was always wandering over the globe with Lamas, or sailing on inflated pigskins with wild Indians, or things of that kind. I had only known the bare fact of her marriage with a distinguished but impecunious soldier who had died some years later, and I was amazed what a dramatic story she made of her first encounter with him on the mountains of Nepal, and how his coolies had all run away, and she let him join on to her party. And how they walked together for three days through a land of rose-coloured rhododendrons; without even knowing each other's name, and how she cooked their meals at the doors of the little mud rest-houses. There was something very lovable after all in the way Anna told it. I realised for the first time that she, too, had lived, that she had been touched by the sacred flame, and that it was natural to her to speak of her great happiness, the memory of which dwelt continually with her.

"I saw through my half-closed eyes the strange woman's hand laid for a moment on Anna's hand.

"'You were very fortunate,' she said gently.

"'Was I?' said Anna. 'I suppose everyone else is the same. We all see that light once in our lives, don't we? I am sure you have too.'