"What's that? What's that?" said Ted, rushing in from the balcony, but as he never waited for an answer Essie seldom troubled to give him one.

Perhaps I should never have known Essie if I had not fallen ill in her house. Ted and she were kindness itself, but as I slowly climbed the hill of convalescence I saw less of him and more of her. He was constantly away, transacting business in various places, and I must own a blessed calm fell upon the house when the front door slammed, and he was creating a lucrative turmoil elsewhere. The weather was hot, and we sat out evening after evening in the square garden. Gradually, very gradually, a suspicion had arisen in my mind that there was another Essie whose existence Ted and I had so far never guessed. I saw that she did--perhaps by instinct--what wise women sometimes do of set purpose.

She gave to others what they wanted from her, not necessarily the best she had to give. Ted had received from her exactly what he hoped and desired, and--he was happy.

The evening came when I made a sudden demand on her sympathy. In the quiet darkness of the square garden I told her of a certain agonising experience of my own which in one year had pushed me from youth into middle age, and had turned me not to stone, but into a rolling stone.

"I imagined it was something of that kind that was the matter with you,"

she said in her gentle rather toneless voice.

"You guessed it," I said amazed. I had thought I was a closed book to the whole world. "You never spoke of your idea to Ted?"

"Never. Why should I?"

There was a long silence.

The noise of Kensington High Street reached us like the growl of some tired animal. An owl came across from Holland Park and alighted in a tree near us.

"You should have married him," said Essie at last.

"Married him!" I exclaimed, "but you don't understand." And I went over the whole dreadful story again--at full length. Love affairs are never condensed. If they are told at all they are recounted in full.

"I don't see that any of those things matter," she said when I had finished, or rather when I paused.

"Where is he now?"

"In Turkistan, I believe."

"Why not go to Turkistan?" She spoke as if it were just round the corner.

"Turkistan!"

"Well, it's somewhere on the map, I suppose. What does it matter where it is."

"And perhaps when I got there I might find he had set up a harem of Turkistan women."

"You might."

"Or that he had long since left for America."

"Just so."

"Or that he did not want me."

"All these things are possible."

The owl began to call through the dusk, and, not far away, somewhere in the square a gentle lady owl's voice answered him.

"There are things," said Essie, "which one can measure, and it is easy to know how to act about them, and whether it is worth while to act at all. Most things one can measure, but there are in life just a few things, a very few, which one cannot measure, or put a value on, or pay a certain price for, and no more, because they are on a plane where foot-rules and weighing machines and money do not exist. Love is one of these things. When we begin to weigh how much we will give to love, what we are willing to sacrifice for it, we are trying to drag it down to a mercantile basis and to lay it on the table of the money changers on which things are bought and sold, and bartered and equivalent value given."

"You think I don't love him," I said, cut to the quick.

"I am sure," said Essie, "that you don't love him yet, but I think you are on the road. Who was it who said

'The ways of love are harder Than thoroughfares of stones.'

Whoever it was, he knew what he was talking about. You have found the thoroughfare stony, and you rebel and are angry, very angry, and desert your fellow traveller. He, poor man, did not make the road. I expect he is just as angry and foot-sore as you are."

"He was a year ago. I don't know what he is now. It is a year since he wrote."

Essie knitted in silence.

At last I said desperately:

"I have told you everything. Do you think it's possible he still cares for me?"

Essie waited a long minute before answering.

"I don't know," she said, and then added, "but I think you will presently go to Turkistan and find out."

Reader, I went to Turkistan, and was married there, and lived there and in Anatolia for many happy years. But that is another story. I did not start on that voyage of discovery till several months after that conversation. I had battered myself to pieces against the prison bars of my misery, and health ruthlessly driven away was slow to return.

As I lived with Ted and Essie I became aware that he was becoming enormously successful in money matters. There were mysterious expeditions, buyings and sellings of properties, which necessitated sudden journeys. Immense transactions pa.s.sed through his competent hands, and presently the possibility of a country house was spoken of.

He talked mysteriously of a wonderful old manor house in Ess.e.x, which he had come upon entirely by chance, which would presently come into the market, and which might be acquired much below its value, so anxious was the owner--a foreign bigwig--to part with it at once.

Ted prosed away about this house from teatime till bedtime. Essie listened dutifully, but it was I who asked all the questions.

Ted hurried away next morning, not to return for several days, one of which he hoped to spend in Ess.e.x.

"You don't seem much interested about the country house," I said at tea time. I was slightly irritated by the indifference which seemed to enwrap Essie's whole existence.

"Don't you care about it? It must be beautiful from Ted's account."

"If he likes it I shall like it."

"What a model wife you are. Have you no wishes of your own, no tastes of your own, Essie?"

She looked at me with tranquil eyes.

"I think Ted is happy," she said, "and I am so glad the children are both exactly like him."

"Yes, but--"

"There is no _but_ in my case. Ted rescued me from an evil entanglement and eased my mother's life. And he set his kind heart on marrying me. I told him I could not give him much, but he did not mind. I don't think men like Ted understand that there is anything more that--that might be given; which makes a very wonderful happiness when it _is_ given. Our marriage was on the buying and selling plane. We each put out our wares.

I saw very well that he would be impossible--for me at least--to live with unless I gave way to him entirely. Dear Ted is a benevolent tyrant.

He would become a bully if he were opposed, and bullies are generally miserable. I don't oppose him. I think he is content with his bargain, and as fond of me as a man can be of a lay figure. My impression is that he regards me as a model wife."

"He does, he does. He is absolutely, blissfully happy."

"He would be just as happy with another woman," said Essie, "if she were almost inanimate. It was a comfort to me to remember that when I nearly died three years ago."