"I'm pledged to them," she said aloud. "Possession's nine points of the law."

"I don't expect to hear _you_ calling the law and the prophets in aid."

"It's a woman's privilege to make the best of both worlds," she answered, as Elsie carried her off to fetch their cloaks.

"There is only one world," I called out as she left me. "This is it. I am going to make the best of it."

"How?"

"By appropriating to myself whatever's worth having in it."

"How?" she repeated.

"I'll tell you in six months' time."

Aintree sauntered up with his coat under his arm as Joyce and her sister vanished from sight.

"Rather wonderful, isn't she?" he remarked.

"Which?" I asked.

"Oh, really!" he exclaimed in disgusted protest.

"They are astonishingly alike," I said _a propos_ of nothing.

"They're often mistaken for each other."

"I can well believe it."

"It's a mistake you're not likely to make," he answered significantly.

I took hold of his shoulders, and made him look me in the eyes.

"What do you mean by that, Seraph?" I asked.

"Nothing," he answered. "What did I say? I really forget; I was thinking what a wife Joyce would make for a man who likes having his mind made up for him, and feels that his youth is slipping imperceptibly away."

I made no answer, because I could not see what answer was possible.

And, further, I was playing with a day-dream.... The Seraph interrupted with some remark about her effect on a public meeting, and my mind set itself to visualise the scene. I could imagine her easy directness and gay self-confidence capturing the heart of her audience; it mattered little how she spoke or what she ordered them to do; the fascination lay in her happy, untroubled voice, and the graceful movements of her slim, swaying body. Behind the careless front they knew of her resolute, unwhimpering courage; she tossed the laws of England in the air as a juggler tosses glass balls, and when one fell to the ground and shivered in a thousand pieces she was ready to pay the price with a smiling face, and a hand waving gay farewell.

It was the lighthearted recklessness of Sydney Carton or Rupert of Hentzau, the one courage that touches the brutal, beef-fed English imagination....

"Why the hell does she do it, Seraph?" I exclaimed.

"Why don't you stop her, if you don't like it?"

"What influence have _I_ got over her?"

"Some--not much. You can develop it. I? Good heavens, _I_'ve no control. You've got the seeds.... No, you must just believe me when I say it is so. You wouldn't understand if I told you the reason."

"It seems to me the more I see of you the less I do understand you," I objected.

"Quite likely," he answered. "It isn't even worth trying."

The play which the Seraph was taking us to see was _The Heir-at-Law_, and though we went on the first night, it was running throughout my residence in England, and for anything I know to the contrary may still be playing to crowded houses. It was the biggest dramatic success of recent years, and for technical construction, subtlety of characterization, and brilliance of dialogue, ranks deservedly as a masterpiece. As a young man I used to do a good deal of theatre-going, and attended most of the important first nights. Why, I hardly know; possibly because there was a good deal of difficulty in getting seats, possibly because at that age it amused us to pose as _virtuosi_, and say we liked to form our own opinion of a play before the critics had had time to tell us what to think of it. I remember the acting usually had an appearance of being insufficiently rehearsed, the players were often nervous and inaudible, and most of the plays themselves wanted substantial cutting.

"The last things I saw in England," I told Mrs. Wylton, "were _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, and _A Woman of No Importance_."

Dramatic history has developed apace since those days. I recollect we thought Pinero the most daring dramatist since Ibsen; we talked sagely of a revolution in the English theatre. There must have been many revolutions since then! Even the wit of Wilde has grown a little out-moded since '93. As we drove down to the Cornmarket I was given to understand that the dramatic firmament had been many times disturbed in twenty years; Shaw had followed a meteoric path, Barker burned with fitful brilliance, while aloft in splendid isolation shone the inexorable cold light of Galsworthy....

"Who's the new man you're taking us to see?" Joyce asked the Seraph.

"Gordon Tremayne," he answered.

"The man who wrote 'The Child of Misery'? I didn't know he wrote plays."

"I believe this is his first. Do you know his books?"

"Forward and backward and upside down," I answered. "He's one of the coming men."

I am not a great novel reader, and have no idea how I came across Tremayne's first book, "The Marriage of Gretchen," but when once I had read it, I watched the publisher's announcements for other books from the same pen. The second one belonged still to the experimental stage: then the whole literary world was convulsed by the first volume of his "Child of Misery."

I suppose by now it is as well-known as that other strange masterpiece of self-revelation--"Jean Christophe"--which in many ways it so closely resembles. In one respect it shared the same immortality, and "Jean Christophe's" future was not more eagerly watched in France than "Rupert Chevasse's" in England. The hero--for want of a better name--was torn from the pages of the book and invested by his readers with flesh and blood reality. We all wanted to know how the theme would develop, and none of us could guess. The first volume gave you the childhood and upbringing of Rupert--and incidentally revealed to my unimaginative mind what a hell life must be for an over-sensitive boy at an English public school. The second opened with his marriage to Kathleen, went on to her death and ended with the appalling mental prostration of Rupert. I suppose every one had a different theory how the third volume would shape....

"What sort of a fellow is this Tremayne?" I asked the Seraph.

"I've never met him," he answered, and closured my next question by jumping up and helping Mrs. Wylton out of the taxi.

From our box we had an admirable view of both stage and house. One or two critics and a sprinkling of confirmed first-nighters had survived from the audiences I knew twenty years before, but the newcomers were in the ascendant. It was a good house, and I recognised more than one quondam acquaintance. Mrs. Rawnsley, the Prime Minister's wife, was pointed out to me by Joyce: she was there with her daughter, and for a moment I thought I ought to go and speak. When I recollected that we had not met since her marriage, and thought of the voluminous explanations that would be necessitated, I decided to sit on in the box and talk to Joyce. Indeed, I only mention the fact of my seeing mother and daughter there, because it sometimes strikes me as curious that so large a part should have been played in my life by a girl of nineteen with sandy hair and over-freckled face whom I saw on that occasion for the first, last and only time.

_The Heir-at-Law_ went with a fine swing. There were calls at the end of each act, and the lights were kept low after the final curtain while the whole house rang from pit to gallery with a chorus of "Author! Author!" The Seraph began looking for his coat as soon as the curtain fell, but I wanted to see the great Gordon Tremayne.

"He won't appear," I was told when I refused to move.

"How do you know?"

Aintree hesitated, and then pointed to the stage, where the manager had advanced to the footlights and was explaining that the author was not in the house.

We struggled out into the passage and made our way into the hall.

"Where does one sup these times?" I asked the Seraph.

He suggested the Carlton and I handed on the suggestion to Mrs.

Wylton, not in any way as a reflection on his admirable dinner, but as a precautionary measure against hunger in the night. Mrs. Wylton in turn consulted her sister, who appeared by common consent to be credited with the dominant mind of the party.

"I should love...." Joyce was beginning when something made her stop short. I followed the direction of her eyes, and caught sight of a wretched newspaper boy approaching with the last edition of an evening paper. Against his legs flapped a flimsy newsbill, and on the bill were four gigantic words:--

DEFEAT OF SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT.

Joyce met my eyes with a determined little smile.