Never at that time having been myself guilty of a line of prose or verse, I could only judge of composition by the light of pure reason.

To write an entirely imaginative work would be--as the poet said of love--"the devil." An autobiographical novel, I thought, would be like keeping a diary and chopping it into chapters of approximately equal length.

"Have you ever kept a diary a week in advance?" the Seraph asked when I put this view before him.

"Why not wait a week?" I suggested, again in the light of pure reason.

"You'd lose the psychology of expectation--uncertainty."

"I suppose you would," I assented hazily.

"I want to dispose of my premonition on the Rawnsley lines."

"What form does it take?"

His lips parted, and closed again quickly.

"I'll let you know in a week's time," he answered.

Sylvia had not returned when we assembled in the drawing-room, and after waiting long enough to chill the soup and burn the _entree_, it was decided to start without her. Nothing of that dinner survives in my memory, from which I infer that cooking and conversation were unrelievedly mediocre. With the appearance of the cigars I moved away from Lady Roden's empty chair to the place vacated by Gladys between Philip and the Seraph.

"Thumb hurting you?" I asked.

He looked so white that I thought he must be in pain.

"I'm all right, thanks," he answered. Immediately to belie his words the sudden opening of the door made him jump almost out of his chair.

I saw the footman who was handing round the coffee bend down and whisper something to Arthur.

"Sylvia's turned up at last," we were told.

"Did the car break down?" I asked; but Arthur could only say that she had returned twenty minutes before and was changing her dress.

"Has she brought Mavis?" asked Rawnsley.

"The man only said...."

Arthur left the sentence unfinished and turned his head to find Sylvia framed in the open doorway. She had changed into a white silk dress, and was wearing a string of pearls round her slender throat. Posed with one hand to the necklace and the other still holding the handle of the door, she made a picture I shall not easily forget. A study in black and white it was, with the dark hair and eyes thrown into relief by her pale face and light dress.... I must have stared unceremoniously, but my stare was distracted by a numbing grip on my forearm. I found the Seraph making his fingers almost meet through bone and muscle; he had half risen and was gazing at her with parted lips and shining eyes. Then we all rose to our feet as she came into the room.

"The car went all right," she explained, slipping into an empty chair by her father's side. "Please sit down, all of you, or I shall be sorry I came. I'm only here for a minute. Mavis hasn't come, Mr.

Rawnsley. Your mother didn't know why she was staying on in town; she ought to have been down last night or first thing this morning. She hadn't wired or anything, so I waited till the six-forty got in, and as she wasn't on that, I came back alone. No, no dinner, thanks. Mrs.

Rawnsley gave me some sandwiches."

"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said in the tone that tries to be sympathetic and only succeeds in arousing general misgiving.

Sylvia turned her eyes in my direction, catching sight of the Seraph as she did so.

"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, jumping up and walking round to him with that wonderful flashing smile that I once in poetical mood likened to a white rose bursting into flower. "I didn't see you when I came in. Oh, poor child, what have you done to your hand?"

I watched their faces as the Seraph explained; strong emotion on the one, polite conventional sympathy on the other.

"Move up one place, Phil," she commanded when the explanation was ended. "I want to talk to our invalid."

Sylvia's presence kept us lingering long over our cigars, and when at last we reached the drawing-room, it was to find that Gladys had already been packed off to bed with mustard plasters and black currant tea. Life abruptly ceased to have any interest for Philip. I stood about till my host and hostess were established at the bridge table with Culling and Gartside, and then accepted the Seraph's invitation for a stroll on the terrace.

He executed one of the most masterly silences of my experience. Time and again we paced that terrace till the others had retired to bed and a single light in the library shone like a Polyphemus eye out of the face of the darkened house. I pressed for no confidences, knowing that at the fitting season he would feel the need of a confidant and unburden himself to me. That was the most feminine of the Seraph's many feminine characteristics.

It was a wonderfully still, moonlight evening. You would have said he and I were the two last men in the world, and Brandon Court the only house in England--till you rounded the corner of the terrace and found two detectives from Scotland Yard screened by the angle of the house.

Since the beginning of the militant outrages, no cabinet minister had been allowed to stir without a bodyguard; through the mists of thirty years I recalled the dynamiter days of my boyhood. In one form or other the militants, like the poor, were always with us.

It was after one when the Seraph stalked moodily through the open library window on his way to bed. Had he been less pre-occupied, he would have seen something that interested me, though I suppose it would have enlightened neither of us.

On a table by the door stood a photograph of Sylvia. I noticed the frame first, then the face, and finally the dress. She had arrayed herself as a Savoyard peasant with short skirt, bare arms and hair braided in two long plaits. It was not a good likeness, because no portrait could do justice to a face that owed its fascination to the fact of never being seen in repose; but it was good enough for me to judge the effect of such a face on a man of impressionable temperament....

I had an admirable night's rest, as I always do. I awoke once or twice, it is true, but dropped off again immediately--almost before I had time to appreciate that the Seraph was pacing to and fro in the adjoining room.

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST ROUND

"BRASSBOUND: You are not my guest: you are my prisoner.

SIR HOWARD: Prisoner?

BRASSBOUND: I warned you. You should have taken my warning.

SIR HOWARD: ... Am I to understand, then, that you are a brigand? Is this a matter of ransom?

BRASSBOUND: ... All the wealth of England shall not ransom you.

SIR HOWARD: Then what do you expect to gain by this?

BRASSBOUND: Justice...."

BERNARD SHAW: "Captain Brassbound's Conversion."

But for Pat Culling the library was deserted when I entered it the following morning. I found him with a lighted cigarette jauntily placed behind one ear, at work on an illustrated biography of the Seraph. Loose sheets still wet from his quick, prolific pen lay scattered over chairs, tables and floor, and ranged from "The Budding of the Wing" to "The Chariot of Fire." Fra Angelico, as an irreverent pavement artist, was Culling's artistic parent for the time being.

"Merivale! on my soul!" he exclaimed as he caught sight of me.

"Returning from church, washed of all his sins and thinkin' what fun it'll be to start again. We want more paper for this."

As a matter of fact I had not been to church, but Philip had kindly arranged for my coffee to be brought me in bed, and I saw no reason for refusing the offer. It was not as if I had work to neglect, and for some years I have found that other people tend to be somewhat irritating in the early morning. When I breakfast alone, I am not in the least fretful, but I believe it to be physiologically true that the facial muscles grow stiff during sleep, and this makes it difficult for many people to be smiling and conversational for the first few hours after waking. So at least I was informed by a medical student who had spent much time studying the subject in his own person.

"Seraph up yet?" I asked.

"Is ut up?" Culling exclaimed in scorn, and I learnt for the first time that the Seraph habitually lived on berries and cold water, slept in a draught, and mortified his flesh with a hair shirt. He had, further, seen the sun rise, wetted his wings in an icy river and escorted Sylvia to the early service.