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The Honey-Pot

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Title: The Honey-Pot

Creator: Countess Barcynska


        
Release date: April 14, 2013 [eBook #42531]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42531

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HONEY-POT ***




Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]




[Illustration: SHE PUT ALEXANDRIA INTO THE MOST COMFORTABLE OF HER
CHAIRS AND DREW ANOTHER CLOSE TO IT.  PAGE 103.]




                             THE HONEY-POT


                                   BY
                         THE COUNTESS BARCYNSKA

                    Author of "The Little Mother Who
                             Sits at Home."



                                NEW YORK
                         E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
                            681 FIFTH AVENUE
                                  1916




                            Copyright, 1916
                       BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

                    FIRST IMPRESSION, FEBRUARY 1916
                    SECOND IMPRESSION, FEBRUARY 1916




_I am a traveler in the great World-path; my garments are dirty and my
feet are bleeding with thorns.  Where should I achieve flower-beauty,
the unsullied loveliness of a moment's life?  The gift that I proudly
bring you is the heart of a woman.  Here have all pains and joys
gathered, the hopes and fears and shames of a daughter of the dust; here
love springs up struggling toward immortal life.  Herein lies an
imperfection which yet is noble and grand.  If the flower service is
finished, my master, accept this as your servant for the days to come_.

--Rabindranath Tagore.




                             THE HONEY-POT



                                   I


In her petticoat, barefooted, because the morning was sultry, Miss Maggy
Delamere plied a well-worn hare's foot to her cheeks with the sure touch
of an artist.  Professionally speaking and adding a final "e" to the
term, that is what she was--chorus-lady by courtesy, showgirl in the
vernacular of the stage.  On her small dressing-table were ranged a
number of pots and bottles, unguents and creams.  A battered make-up box
containing remnants and ends of variously colored grease sticks flanked
a looking-glass of inadequate size and small reflective power.  A beam
of sunlight striking across a corner of the table danced with minute
particles of dust from a powder-puff.

The astonishing amount of vigor she put into the process of facial
adornment, the prodigality with which she used pigments and washes, were
characteristic of her temperament, all generosity and recklessness.
Paint and powder were a habit with her, not an exigency.  No girl of
nineteen could have needed them less.  Her complexion, well-nigh
flawless, bloomed beneath the unnecessary veneer.  Not even a cracked
mirror could mitigate her good looks nor detract anything from her
vivacious expression.  It reflected a speaking face even when the lips
were still.

She was taking unusual pains with her appearance this morning.  A card
stuck in the edge of the looking-glass provided the reason.


               _Memo. from A. Stannard, Dramatic Agent._
                           PALL MALL THEATRE.
                 _Voice Trial, June 22nd, 10.45 a. m._


As everybody knows, the Pall Mall is the one London Theater of all
others to which ladies of the chorus most aspire.  In Maggy's case that
aspiration was intensified by real want of an engagement.  She had
recently succumbed to an attack of that childish complaint, measles, and
was more than usually hard-up.  Her choice of garments was as limited as
her means, yet twice she changed her mind about one or another of them
before she was satisfied that she looked her best. Her efforts to that
end finished with the tacking of several sheets of tissue paper to the
inside of her skirt to give it the rustle of a silk lining.  The
rustle--deceptive and effective as stage thunder--convincingly
accomplished, she felt ready to present herself before any stage-manager
in existence.

If her mood was serene vanity had no part in it.  Unlike the average
chorus-girl she was quite free from conceit of any kind.  She was too
good-looking to be unaware of it, but she did not trade on her
appearance further than professional principles strictly allowed.  She
asked no more of it than that it should bring her in from thirty
shillings to two pounds a week for honest work behind the footlights.
Commercialism with her ended there.  She was all heart, but free from
illusions.  Her mother had been on the stage before her.  Always on the
stage herself since childhood, familiarized with its careless,
hand-to-mouth existence, its trials and its exuberances, she had become
worldly-wise at ten and a woman at fifteen. But the life did not
demoralize her.  The bad example of a mother's frailty and intemperance
had been her safeguard.  She had never lost her head or her heart.  She
did not rate herself very high, but she rated men lower.  Apart from
this she had no hidebound views about life or morality. Since her
mother's unlovely death she had lived alone and kept her end up somehow.
She had often been penniless, gone hungry and cold; but so did many of
the people among whom she moved.  So long as she was not quite penniless
she never worried.  Cigale-like she lived in the present.  If she ever
suffered from fits of depression it was when she realized that she was
more than usually shabby and needy, a condition, however, which she
preferred to put up with rather than descend to the acquisitive methods
of other girls.

Through the rattle of the traffic in the street below she heard a church
clock booming.  Incidentally, she regarded churches less as places of
worship than timepieces of magnitude, convenient when you do not possess
a watch.  She counted the strokes, ten of them, darted to the glass for
a last survey of herself, gave a touch to her hat, another to her
waistbelt, and pattered in her now stockinged feet to the top of the
stairs.

"Shoes, please, Mrs. Bell!" she sang out. "You don't want me to be late,
do you?"

"Coming this moment, Miss Delamere!" shouted an answering voice.

Mrs. Bell lumbered up the stairs with the shoes in her hand--high-heeled
ones of the sort that only last a fortnight before losing shape.

"I just stopped to give them an extry polish," she panted.

Maggy took them from her and hurriedly put them on.  While she buttoned
them her landlady went on her knees and gave them a final rub up with
her apron.  She meant well.

"You'll have luck to-day," she said, regaining her feet and surveying
her lodger with approval. "I should look out for the butcher's black cat
on my way, if I was you.  Back to dinner, dear?"

"I'll have a cut off whatever you've got, if I am," Maggy answered.

"Mine's hot Canterbury lamb and onion sauce."

"All right."

Maggy ran downstairs, slammed the hall door behind her and walked down
the street into the main thoroughfare, looking for the green motor-bus
that would take her within a stone's throw of the Pall Mall Theater.  In
a quarter of an hour she had reached that imposing edifice.  Going in at
the stage door she descended a flight of stone steps, traversed a long
passage, and found herself upon the stage.

Gray daylight filtered down from the skylight above the flies, just
enough for the business of the moment, no more.  Across the unlit
footlights was a gloomy void, pierced by an occasional gleam from an
open door at the back of the pit or dress-circle, and relieved by the
lighter hue of serried rows of dust-sheets hanging over the seats and
balcony edges.

Close to the footlights was a table occupied by the stage-manager and
one of his satellites.  In the corner to their left an upright piano was
set askew with the conductor of the orchestra seated at it.  At the back
of the stage, standing about in groups, some thirty girls and a few men
were waiting to have their voices tried.

They chattered noisily.  Most of them seemed to know one another.  One
or two called out a greeting to Maggy.  Some were volubly discussing
their professional experiences, telling of late engagements and
prospective ones; the run of this piece, the closing down of that;
incidents on tour and in pantomime; suppers at restaurants and the
demerits of landladies.  These topics ran into one another and
overlapped.  Others, with giggles, imparted risky anecdotes in
undertones.  Most of them appeared to be taking the situation with the
calmness of habit.  Nervousness showed in a few faces; anxiety in one or
two.  One pale-faced girl was in a condition of approaching maternity.
In other surroundings she would have attracted attention, perhaps called
up pathetic surprise that in the circumstances she should be attempting
to obtain employment.  But here very few were affected by pathos at
sight of her, nor was she an object of much surprise.

After Maggy had exchanged a word or two with those whom she knew she
took very little notice of the people about her.  She stood apart,
humming a tune, and every now and again her feet broke into a subdued
dance step.  But this state of abstraction did not last long.  That she
was a creature of impulse showed in an abrupt change from it to close
attention of what was going on around her.  Her fine eyes went alertly
over those present and came to rest on a girl of about her own age whose
quiet manner and dress of severe black singled her out from the rest.
She was tall and slight, very much in the style of the women in
Shepperson's drawings.  Her small features and graceful figure gave her
a distinguished appearance.  She looked what she was, a lady, and a
stranger to her surroundings.  She held a roll of music and glanced
nervously about her until she became aware of Maggy's smiling regard.
It seemed to encourage her.  She returned the smile and advanced.

"At which end will they begin?" she asked nervously, making it clear
that she was an amateur.

"Anywhere," replied Maggy with friendly cheerfulness.  "You're not a
pro.?"

"No."

"I thought not.  I shouldn't let on if I were you.  Managers fight shy
of beginners.  First thing they'll ask you at the table is what
experience you've had.  Haven't you been on the stage at all before?"

"No, I've never appeared in public.  I'm new to it all."

"Been looking for a shop--an engagement--long?"

"For five weeks.  Ever since I came to London."

The girl in black could not hide the note of disappointment that came
into her voice.  Maggy gave her an encouraging tap on the arm.

"Five weeks!" she scoffed.  "That's nothing. Lots of us are out for
months.  You'll know that if you ever hit real bad luck."

"I can't wait months."

"Hard up?" Maggy asked with quick understanding.

"I shall be soon."

"Same here.  Tell me, where are you living? You're different to the
crowd.  I like you."

The girl in black hesitated and got a little red.

"I'm not living anywhere at present," she confessed.  "I was in a
boarding-house until to-day. I had to leave.  I shall have to find rooms
before night.  Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me where to look?"

They had moved away from those nearest them.  Each felt attracted to the
other without knowing why.

"Did they keep your box?"

"No.  Why should they?"

"I thought you meant you couldn't pay."

"No, it wasn't that.  But I can't go back.  A man came into my room last
night--one of the men staying there.  I rang the bell and called the
landlady.  I don't understand why, but she blamed me and was very
offensive.  I didn't go to bed again.  I sat up, waiting for the
morning."

"The beast!"

The cheery look left Maggy's face, giving place to one of deep
resentment.  "The man, I mean," she said, "though I've no doubt the
woman was just as bad.  There are houses like that.  Fancy you not
knowing it.  I should have ... Here, they're going to begin.  Keep by
me.  I'll see you through."

The stage-manager rapped on the table.

"Silence, please!  We'll commence now."

An immediate hush followed.  The groups broke up, spreading across the
stage, facing the footlights.  Such indifference to the occasion as many
of them had hitherto evinced was gone now. They were there to be
engaged.  Even the most self-assured became serious, made so by the
competitive equation.  Only twelve girls and three men were wanted to
complete the ranks of the chorus, and here were nearly forty applicants
for the vacancies.

"Come on, come on.  Who's first?  You with the boa," proceeded the
stage-manager.  "What's your song?"

The girl indicated handed her music to the pianist.  He rattled off the
prelude without the waste of a moment.  The girl sang a few bars, and
was interrupted by: "That'll do.  Next!"

Nothing more was said or asked.  The girl took her sheet of music, and
effaced herself. With equal celerity the next dozen were disposed of.
Not more than one out of four was called to the table for her or his
name to be recorded. All the while the singing was going on the
stage-manager kept up a running fire of remarks at the expense of the
singer.  Generally they were merely sarcastic; some were rude.

The girl in black kept close to Maggy who looked on unperturbed, now and
then jerking out a subdued comment on the proceedings, partly to
herself, partly for the information of her companion.

"Now it's Dickson, poor kid!  Look at the state she's in.  Silly of her
to come.  Powell won't let her open her mouth....  There you are!  Off
she goes.  She's crying.  The brute! He needn't have _said_ it! ...
That's Mortimer. She'll get taken on....  Knew it at once. Down goes her
name--address 'Makehaste Mansions!'  Don't they get through us quick?
We're not human beings, only voices and figures. My turn!"

She walked confidently down to the table, ignoring the piano.

"Where's your song?" inquired the stage-manager.

"Won't you take my voice on trust, Mr. Powell?" was her jaunty reply.
"It's like a bird's."

"Nightingale, I suppose?" he jeered.

"No, bird of Paradise.  Aren't I good enough to look at?"

After a momentary hesitation, during which he appraised her face and
figure, he said:

"Got a photo of yourself in fleshings?"

"Not here.  Plenty at my agent's--Stannard's."

"All right.  Name, please.  Next."

The girl in black was next.  Her heart beat uncomfortably fast as she
moved down.  Had she to pitch her voice to fill that gaping void across
the footlights?  She shrank from singing to these blase-looking men who
gave the impression of damning before they heard.  Then she saw that
Maggy was still standing by the table and nodding encouragingly to her.
It gave her heart.  She handed her song to the pianist and commenced to
sing.

"Louder, please," said some one.

She sang louder and lost her nervousness.  It was not so difficult to
fill that huge auditorium, after all.  So far, she was the only one of
them that had been allowed to sing her song half through.

"Shouldn't mind hearing the rest of that another day," said the
stage-manager, stopping her at last.  "Not half bad, my dear.  Name,
please."

She gave her name, Alexandra Hersey.

"What have you been in?" came the query.

Before she could answer Maggy chimed in.

"She was with me on tour in 'The Camera Girl.'  No. 2 Company."

"Address?"

Again Maggy came to the rescue.

"Put her down to mine.  109 Sidey Street. Then you'll remember us
both--p'r'aps!"

She hooked her arm in Alexandra's and made for the wings.  When they
were in the passage facing the stage-door she said:

"I'll help you find rooms if you like.  I've nothing to do.  I say, you
can sing!"

"If it hadn't been for you--"

"Oh, rats!"

"But it was awfully good of you," Alexandra maintained.  "Is there a
room in the house where you live?" she asked, actuated by a strong
desire not to lose sight of her new acquaintance.

"There's room in my room, that's all.  I pay ten shillings a week.  My
landlady charges fifteen for two in it.  That would be seven-and-six
each.  But"--she made a wry face--"you wouldn't like it.  It's slummy.
There's a smell of fried fish and a beastly row half the night. Still,
you can have a look at it if you like."

There was invitation in the tone.

"I'd like to come," said Alexandra.

"Right-O.  Here's my motor car.  The green one."  She held up her hand
to a 'bus driver. "My chauffeur doesn't like stopping, except for
policemen."

She gave Alexandra a push up and sprang on the footboard after her.
They climbed to the top, and were rattled and jerked in the direction of
the King's Cross Road.




                                   II


One Hundred and Nine Sidey Street was not an attractive apartment house,
but it was cheap and respectable. Mrs. Bell, an "old pro" herself, by
reason of having, in some distant past, earned twelve shillings a week
as a "local girl" in pantomime, preferred the lesser lights of the stage
for tenants.  She knew their ways, their freedom from "side," their
unexacting habits.  When she could not secure them she took in
"respectable young men."  At the present juncture the young men
predominated. Maggy Delamere was the sole representative of "the
professional" in her house.  She occupied the third-floor front, and
owed three weeks' rent.

She threw open the door for Alexandra to enter.  It was the sort of room
that many a domestic servant would have considered inadequate. The only
compensating feature about it on this hot June day was that it had two
windows.  Both stood open, and on the sill of each a pot of flowers,
mignonette in the one, sweet peas in the other, helped to create an
impression of freshness. This was strengthened by the paucity of its
furniture and the chilly look which an unrelieved expanse of linoleum
invariably gives.  A single iron bedstead occupied one angle.  A clean
but faded nightdress case, trimmed with crochet work, lay on the pillow.
This and the flowers in the windows were the only things that gave
evidence of the room being occupied by a young girl.

Maggy made a comprehensive gesture with her hand.

"The chorus lady at home!" she declaimed humorously.  "Living in the lap
of luxury. There's her voluptuous couch, her Louis the what's-his-name
chest of drawers, her exquisite bric-a-bric washstand and--My dear, be
careful of the chair!  It's a real antique, only three legs and a
swinger!  Sit on the bed, it's safer. Pretty little place, isn't it?
We'll have lunch in a minute or two.  Can you eat hot New Zealand
mutton?  I told the old woman I'd have a cut off her joint to-day.  I'll
just shout down to let her know there's two of us."

After her voice had echoed down the three flights and been duly
answered, she came back and poured out water for her new friend to wash
her hands in.  Common yellow soap was all she could offer for this
purpose.  She was only able to afford the fancy variety and cheap
perfumes when she was in an engagement.  She took off her hat while
Alexandra dried her hands and then, as they sat side by side on the bed,
she suddenly blurted out:

"What the dickens makes you want to go in for the stage?  Don't tell me
if you'd rather not."

"There's no reason why I shouldn't," said Alexandra.  "I've longed to
ever since I was quite small."

"Goodness!  And I've wanted to get off it ever since I can remember.
Not that I ever had the chance.  I don't know how to do anything useful.
I suppose you got cracked about the stage, same as most girls, because
you didn't know anything about it.  You belong to a swell family, I
suppose?"

"No," was the smiling reply; "only Anglo-Indians."

"What are they?  Half-castes?  You're fooling!"

"English people who live or have lived in India.  My father was in the
army."

"What, an officer?"

"Yes."

Maggy was impressed.  She had once met a Sergeant-Major, and, superior
being as she thought him, knew that his glory was reflected from the
commissioned ranks.

"That's something to be proud of, anyway."

Alexandra's people had been in the Army and Civil Service for
generations.  It had not occurred to her to think of them unduly on this
account.  She said as much.

"Well," observed Maggy sententiously, "I should say your father and the
rest of your relations must be either dead or dreaming to let you go on
the stage."

"Nearly all my near relations _are_ dead.  I have an aunt and uncle--"

"What does he do?"

"He's a retired colonel.  He--they wanted me to live with them."
Alexandra gave the information with a touch of reluctance.

"Why didn't you?"

To give a stranger adequate and convincing reasons why one prefers not
to live with uncongenial relations is not always easy.  Alexandra put it
briefly.

"We have nothing in common," she said.

"And what do you think you have in common with this life and the people
you'll meet in it?" propounded Maggy.  "If I were you I'd go back and
say: 'Nunky old dear, I've changed my mind.  I'll come and live with you
and be your loving niece, amen.'  Fancy! a retired
colonel--Anglo-Indian--and you think twice about it!"

"Nothing would induce me to change my mind," said Alexandra with
decision.  "There are three girls, and they find it a tight fit without
me.  They're not rich....  When my mother died I had to do something.
Besides, I'm really ambitious to get on."

Maggy snapped her fingers.

"Oh, ambition!  Do you know what the ambition of every chorus girl is?
It isn't to become a star-actress.  That's clean beyond her.  It's to
find a man who'll take her away from a room like this and treat her
decently."

Alexandra found it difficult to reconcile such a statement with one so
beaming and joyous-looking as Maggy.

"But you--you don't think like that?" she rejoined.

"Sometimes I do.  I've kept straight so far because I like being on my
own.  I hate men, with their nasty thoughts and their prowling ways. But
I haven't met any that I liked.  If I had, perhaps I shouldn't be here
now.  If we get taken on at the Pall Mall it'll be nothing but men, men,
men.  We shall get no peace."

"You paint everything in such somber colors. There must be light as well
as shade."

"There's a lot of limelight, if that's what you mean; but the shade's
all the darker for it.  Oh, I can tell you the stage is a rotten place
if you've got no money or no friends or no chap at the back of you.  I'm
not saying that for the sake of talking.  It's good enough for any one
like me.  But when I see a blind man crossing the road I always wish I
could make him see, and as I'm not God Almighty the only thing I can do
is to give him a hand.  That's how I feel about you.  The traffic's
dangerous enough when you've got eyes in your head, like I have.  It's
all traffic on the stage.  I suppose you think you'll be able to look
after yourself?  Well, you wait and see. There'll be Mr. Johnnie at the
stage-door asking you to hop into his landaulette because the road's
slippery or some such nonsense.  But what's the use of trying to
convince anybody?  I can see I shan't put you off the stage....  I'll
help you to look for a room, unless--"  Maggy's volubility checked for a
moment.  "--unless you'd like to chum with me.  I'm just what you see.
Nothing hidden up my sleeve; no drink and no boy."

She saw Alexandra wince at her plain language, and watched her
anxiously.  Hardly ever before had she sought the companionship of
another girl, nor could she quite understand the motive that was making
her do so now.

Her extreme candor certainly had a startling effect on Alexandra.  She
had never met any one so outspoken.  But she put the right construction
on Maggy's frankness, recognized it as a manifestation of genuineness
and honesty, and succumbed to it as she had to the girl's fascinating
vivacity.  She was altogether drawn towards her. Again, Maggy stood to
her as the personification of the new life she had elected to make her
own.

Maggy was looking at her expectantly, looking and smiling.  There was
something very compelling in her smile.

"I'd like to chum," said Alexandra impulsively.




                                  III


When Maggy spoke of the stage she generally meant the Pall Mall Theater.
Just now it was in her thoughts more than any other, perhaps because she
had met Alexandra there, but also because she was inclined to think that
Alexandra and she had made a favorable impression on its stage-manager.

The Pall Mall, De Freyne, its lessee and manager, and the Pall Mall
chorus are a trinity known the world over.  Productions at the Pall Mall
invariably enjoy success.  Long runs prevail there. That was one of the
reasons why Maggy looked forward to an engagement at that theater.
Another was the pay, rather more than was obtainable elsewhere.  In
other respects it offered her no advantages and some drawbacks.  She
had, for instance no aspiration to become one of a chorus whose
unrivaled attractions marked it out as a sort of human _delicatessen_
for the consumption of epicurean males.  On the other hand, De Freyne
was indifferent to expense on the question of costume, and that had had
considerable weight with Maggy.  Like any other pretty girl she reveled
in beautiful clothes, even though they should only be on loan to her for
an hour or two out of the twenty-four.  On tour the dresses were often
effective enough at a distance, but either of inferior material or their
pristine freshness considerably depreciated by having seen previous
service in a London theater.  That militated against the pleasure of
wearing them.  At the Pall Mall everything would be new and the best
that money could buy.

That De Freyne's object in dressing his chorus regardless of cost was a
licentious one, the desire to make his two-score of attractive-looking
girls still more attractive in the eyes of the _jeunesse doree_, who
filled his stalls, was no deterrent to Maggy on her own account.  She
did think of it in regard to Alexandra.  She wondered whether Alexandra
would be affected by the demoralizing influence of those beautiful
clothes which at the Pall Mall were fashioned to display a girl's
physical charms to the very limit of decency.  It ended in her being
almost sorry that Alexandra's innocence and the callousness of an agent
should have sent her to the voice trial.

How Alexandra was to make a good impression on the public by posturing
in the chorus was not explained to her.  It was the expression of an
opinion which she could take or leave.  In her innocence she made the
common error of imagining that the public chooses its plays, its novels,
its pictures, its music and its actors and actresses for itself.  She
did not stop to think that there might be gradations in that public or
that the vast majority of it is deprived of selective taste by the
interested parties who cater for it.  Generalizing by the noise the
public makes with its hands when it approves of anything, she argued
that everything it applauds must be good.  The noise is there right
enough and the approval is genuine; but that has to be discounted by the
fact that the public has nothing better to approve of.  For the
public--the crowd--is a led horse most of the time.  It is enormously
manageable.  It does what it is told and goes where it is taken.  Its
taste has never been given a chance of becoming educated because of the
fare that has been forced upon it.  Its purveyors feed it as injuriously
as an ignorant man will a horse.  For the want of anything better the
horse will eat what is given it. So with the public.  Obviously the
public never has anything to do with the choice of a play. Nobody has
except the man who buys it and puts it on the stage.

Following the simile of the led horse and the proverb that, though you
may take it to the water you cannot make it drink, the public likewise
will once in a way evince the same sort of stubbornness. Then the play
that failed to "go down" is unostentatiously withdrawn, or the pretender
to histrionic laurels unable to obtain them will try his or her luck
again in another piece with another's money behind it.

After all, it is but a question of credulity. Even Alexandra had to
conform to it.  She was advised to apply for a place in the chorus and
she did so.  With her necessarily vague ideas about the chorus she did
not think of it as anything very dreadful.  It did not offer so good a
footing on the stage as she desired, that was all.  She did not, for
instance, believe all the disparaging things Maggy said about the stage.
She appreciated that on the stage a girl might be unduly exposed to
temptation, but in her austerity that was no reason for yielding to it.
In her Arcadian purity she could not conceive of circumstances, however
degrading, having any adverse effect on herself. Nor could she credit
Maggy's insistent assertion that without money or influence an actress
must remain in the depths.  She believed, as inexperience always does,
that talent is bound to be recognized sooner or later.  The creed of the
chorus girl, unspoken, unwritten, was yet hers to learn.

For ten days the two girls heard nothing from the Pall Mall Theater.  It
was possible, if not probable, that they might not hear at all.
Meanwhile Maggy went about with Alexandra looking for an engagement in
some other direction.  It was a matter of urgency to both of them to get
something to do.  Maggy had been out of an engagement for two months.
She was in Mrs. Bell's debt, and she owed money to a doctor. Alexandra
was little better off.  As the orphaned daughter of an officer she had a
pension of L40 a year so long as she remained unmarried.  But with the
expense she had been put to in coming to town and in spite of the
strictest economy it was not enough to live on.

She could not help being anxious about the future; more so than Maggy.
Maggy, though she chafed at them, was accustomed to bad times: Alexandra
had never struck them before. Hardly had she got over the illusion of
imagining that a small part in a London theater was obtainable than she
found herself in no request even for the chorus.  It was terribly
disappointing. They were forever haunting stage-doors and the crowded
waiting rooms of theatrical agencies. For hours every day they wandered
about the Strand and its environs.

But for the prospect of sheer want confronting them they would have been
quite happy.  The bond that united them was based on mutual respect as
well as affection.  Disappointment and privation only cemented it.  In
these days when the stale breakfast egg was a comestible to be shared,
when anything better than canned food became a luxury, their friendship
remained free from any of the pettinesses which generally characterize
the intimacy of people living under conditions of hardship.

The stoicism of a family of soldiers supported Alexandra.  She had the
pride of race that refuses to surrender to misfortune.  Her grit,
astonishing in one so delicately reared, surprised Maggy.  She began to
look up to Alexandra as a being of a superior world in which the
virtues, being Anglo-Indian, were of a particularly high order.  She had
a very nebulous conception of the meaning of the term.

Just as Alexandra found it absorbing to listen to Maggy's stage talk,
even though it was humorously misogynistic, so nothing pleased Maggy so
much as to listen to Alexandra's narration of life in an Indian military
station.  It sounded to her like a history of the high gods: a medley of
color, warmth and ease, good living and brass bands. She loved to hear
of parades and polo, of the troops of servants, the gymkhanas and
dances, all the social amusements and advantages of the sahib caste.
From habit, Alexandra would use native words when talking of these
things, and Maggy's unaccustomed brain never quite differentiated
between syce, hazari, maidan, ayah, chit, durzi, kitmagar, butti,
tikka-gari and such-like terms in common use with Anglo-Indians.  But
they impressed her immensely.

The amount of talk they got through in these early days of their
friendship was stupendous. It helped to relieve the harassing search
after employment and its invariable ill-success.

One morning, three weeks after their first meeting, Maggy sprang out of
bed to gather up two letters which their landlady had pushed under the
door.  On the flaps were inspiring words in red lettering.

"Pall Mall Theater!  Hooroo!  One for each of us!" she cried, and danced
about in her nightdress.

Alexandra, behind an improvised screen formed of a shawl over the towel
rail, was having her morning bath in a zinc tub of inadequate size.

"Open mine," she called.  "I'm wet."

She waited anxiously.  There came the sound of tearing paper and then
Maggy's voice, raised excitedly:

"Pull that old shawl down, Lexie!  If you don't practise on me you'll
die of shyness and no clothes at the Pall Mall.  We're engaged!
Rehearsal Thursday.  Eleven o'clock!"




                                   IV


It was past one o'clock.  For over two hours without a pause the chorus
had been going through their "business" in the new play with the
reiteration that exasperates the teacher and the taught.  The girls had
relapsed into sulkiness, the stage-manager's temper was ruffled. Even
the pianist in the O.P. corner by the footlights felt the reaction.  His
hands rested on the keys without energy.

Powell, the stage-manager, faced the forty girls standing in a
semi-circle, three-deep.  The majority of them were dressed in the
ultra-fashionable style of the moment, some very expensively, a few with
taste.  The exceptions were Maggy and Alexandra.  He knew they were all
tired and rebellious; but he was concerned only with their recalcitrant
feet.

"Now then, girls.  Once more."

The pianist's hands came down heavily on the opening chords of a dance
movement.

"La-la-la--da-di-dum--point!  Step it out. Don't mince!"

A tall girl, gorgeously arrayed, brought the dance to a stop by leaving
her position in the front row.

"I'm not going to stick here all day," she announced defiantly.  "I'm
lunching with my boy, and he won't wait."

"Get back to your place, Miss Mortimer," snapped Powell.

"Not me.  I'm going."

As she began to cross the stage on her way out a voice came from the
depths of the auditorium:

"Miss Mortimer, we're not concerned with your private appointments.  If
they're to interfere with your work here you can look for another
engagement somewhere else."

The show-girl glanced in the direction of the voice and shrugged.

"Mean you'll fire me, Mr. De Freyne?  Well, I don't care.  Pa's rich!"

She walked off jauntily, her high heels clicking on the boards, a costly
plume streaming over her left ear.  The lessee of the Pall Mall Theater
said nothing.  He was mildly amused.  He stood in the dark at the back
of the dress circle complacently regarding his theatrical seraglio. All
the girls were pretty, or if not pretty, showy. Some had been selected
for their figures, some for their faces, some for both.  No duchess, not
even a fashionable duchess, was arrayed like one of these.  Solomon in
all his glory might perhaps have competed with them, but not the lilies
of the field.  Presently De Freyne's gimlet eyes picked out Maggy and
Alexandra.  Their appearance disturbed his equanimity.

He watched them attentively for ten minutes or so, at the end of which
period the tired stage-manager dismissed the chorus for the morning. De
Freyne's authoritative voice again made itself heard.

"Miss Delamere and Miss Hersey.  Step up to my room before you go,
please.  I want to speak to you."

The girls exchanged scared glances.  A special interview with De Freyne
was sufficiently unusual to fill them with dismay.  He was not in the
habit of detaining members of his chorus for the fun of the thing.

They groped their way along dim, soft-carpeted passages to the front of
the house and entered the managerial office.  De Freyne was blunt to a
degree.  He wasted no time.

"You two girls have got to make more of a show," he told them.  "I can't
have shabby dresses at the Pall Mall."

Alexandra was too taken aback by this curt rebuke to make any reply; but
Maggy lost her temper.

"Meaning flash clothes and jewelry?" she bit out.  "How do you expect us
to do it on thirty-five shillings a week, Mr. De Freyne?"

"I'm not interested in your resources," was De Freyne's cold answer.

"You ought to be.  You ought to get a pencil and slate and write down
the cost of lodgings, food, boots, and all the rest of it, and figure
out how little we've got left to buy clothes with--unless we don't care
who buys them for us. _We're_ not that sort--not yet."

"You must look smarter," reiterated De Freyne, showing no resentment at
this tirade. "You silly creatures, don't you want to attract attention?"

"We'll attract attention on the night.  Don't worry," said Maggy.  She
was afraid of De Freyne, but she did not let her voice show it.

"That's all very well, but you know the unwritten clause of my agreement
with you all.  The ladies of my chorus have got to be dressed decently
off the stage as well as on....  Anyhow, there it is.  Take it or leave
it."  He dismissed them with a nod.

Neither said anything until they had passed out of the stage-door and
were in the street.

"That means new clothes," said Alexandra in a tone of deep depression.

"Or Dick Whittington!" Maggy rejoined dryly.  "Turn and turn again--our
dresses. I'll have a go at yours to-night, Lexie.  Look, there's
Mortimer and her boy."

A big car slid past them, ridiculously upholstered in white velvet.  An
effete-looking youth and the girl who had stated that her "pa" was rich
lolled in the back seat.

Maggy's eyes followed them speculatively.

"Wonder if there's anything in it?" she remarked.

"In what?"

"In that sort of a good time.  Flat, money, pet dog, car, week-ends at
Brighton--enough to eat."

"I don't want to think about it."

"Neither do I.  But I have lately.  I'm wondering what on earth we're
standing out for.  No one thinks any the better of us for it.  The girls
all think us fools, and the men just grin and wait."

"Don't talk about it.  Talking makes it all seem worse."

"One day I shall do more than talk.  I shall walk off."

Alexandra said nothing.  She knew Maggy's mood.  Maggy was hungry,
tired, and cross. Motives of economy impelled them towards their
lodgings, where half a tin of sardines was waiting to be consumed.
Neither had had anything to eat since early morning.  And when they had
lunched they would have to walk back to the theater for rehearsal again
at three.  Maggy suddenly halted before a Lyons' depot.

"Come on in, Lexie," she said.  "We can't wait.  We shan't be home till
past two.  And if we're late back we'll be fined."

"There's the tin of--" Alexandra began and stopped.

Maggy had pushed open the swing doors. The grateful smell of hot and
well-made coffee and savory, nourishing food, cheapness notwithstanding,
made her surrender to temptation. Deprivation has this effect.  De
Freyne, lunching expensively at the Savoy, recognizing here and there
approved members of his chorus and their cavaliers, could not be
expected to know anything of empty stomachs.  Besides, it was their own
fault if the girls did not know which side their bread was buttered.

They sat down at one of the marble-topped tables.  A waitress came
towards them.

"Two cups of coffee, rolls and butter--"

This was Alexandra's order.

"Coffee, rolls, and two steak-and-kidney puddings," augmented Maggy
recklessly.

Unmoved, the attendant went off to execute the order.

Maggy met Alexandra's startled eyes.  Her own were defiant.

"Don't tell me," she said.  "It'll cost us nearly eighteenpence.  I
don't care.  _I'm_ going to pay, and if I don't go bust that way I shall
do something worse.  We're going to feed, dear!"




                                   V


"Damn!  She's turned off the gas!"

Maggy stopped machining.  The small room was plunged in darkness.
Alexandra groped for matches and lit the candles. It was not easy to
work by the flickering light, but both girls went on with what they were
doing. There was something grim about the task.  One associates the
alteration of frills and furbelows with some small pleasure to the
adapter; but there was none here.  Necessity impelled them, kept them
out of their beds.  They were heavy with sleep.  The air of the room was
close and unpleasant.

Maggy had all but finished turning Alexandra's coat and skirt.
Alexandra had adapted two Indian shawls into an effective dress for
Maggy. The work was too hastily done to bear inspection at close
quarters or much strain by its wearer. They had been steadily at it for
five hours.

It was Maggy who gave in first.  She finished machining with a savage
jerk, leaving the handle to revolve by itself.

"Let's go to bed," she said.  "I'll get up half an hour earlier and
finish that."

Alexandra went on.  She was not going to be beaten for the sake of half
an hour.  Besides, she knew that Maggy in the cashmere shawl arrangement
would please De Freyne.  She, at any rate, would pass muster.

"I'm not so very tired now," she answered without looking up, "and I may
be in the morning."

Maggy shook her hair down and slipped out of her clothes with the
celerity that comes of practise between the acts.  She did not even
trouble to take the paint off her face.  She got into bed and lay
watching Alexandra working by the guttering candle-light.  She did not
talk. She was too utterly tired.

At last Alexandra's work was done.  She hung up the dress and put away
the needles and cotton. She had a strong inclination to get into bed
without more ado than Maggy had shown; but habit was not to be denied.
She knew she would not be able to rest properly unless she was clean and
cool.  She brushed her hair, washed her face and hands, brushed her
teeth.  A huge sigh from Maggy's bed made her turn.

"Am I keeping you awake?"

"No.  I sighed because you're so different to me.  _I_ couldn't wash
to-night.  And I knew my hair'd be a mat in the morning and the pillow
pink from my cheeks."

"I wish you didn't paint.  There's no harm in girls doing it if they
need it, but you spoil yourself."

"Force of habit.  Mother made up my face from the time I was ten."

Alexandra in her nightdress knelt down at the side of her bed.  Maggy
never said prayers.  To see Alexandra say them, she said, was the
nearest she would ever get to such things.  She had never been taught to
pray when a child.

"Might as well drop Him a hint that we're at the end of our tether," she
suggested presently.

When Alexandra rose from her knees Maggy was sitting up in bed watching
her, her hands clasping her legs.

"And you mean to say that you believe somebody hears you!" she said
wonderingly.

"Yes."

"And does what you ask?"

"Yes--in the end."

"Then He must be pretty deaf....  You look nice saying your prayers.  If
I were God I couldn't refuse you anything.  P'raps He's a woman-hater.
Women get the worst of it everywhere, I think.  If we do wrong, we have
to pay for it.  If we don't do wrong, we have to pay just the same.
We're made so that we're not fit to be working all the time.  Oh, it's a
hell of a world for women!  I can stand anything when I feel it's fair
and just.  I can't see any justice where we're concerned.  They have an
inspector Johnnie to see that the scales in the grocery-shops are fair,
but if a woman wants to make a bargain she's got to do it on the heavy
side."

"The law courts are the scales."

"The law?  Aren't the scales against us there too?  If we want a divorce
we've got to be knocked about as well as--other things.  If we're
deserted and ruined before we're married we can get so many shillings a
week until the kid's in his teens.  And if there's no kid or it dies,
well, p'raps your God'll help us, but the law won't. It's all too hard
to fight against, and one can't make head or tail of it.  Look at the
White Slave Traffic.  They'll flog a man if they catch him at it, but
they won't flog De Freyne and give him hard labor for the dirty work
he's doing every day of his life, though everybody knows about it. Why,
he's only a--what's it called?--procurer for the nobility and gentry and
all the rich bounders.  And we're not all in yet, but we shall be.  My
word, one hears a lot about the chorus-girl being on the make-haste and
living you-know-how.  One doesn't hear how she's driven into it, like
cattle into a dirty pen.  I'm done, Lexie.  I shan't hold out long."

Alexandra blew out the remaining candle.  In the darkness one could just
make out the two narrow beds and the glimmer of the window.

"You mustn't give in, Maggy," came Alexandra's voice after a pause.
"When one meets the man one cares about one doesn't want to come to him
with nothing to give."

"Why not?  There isn't a man in a hundred who comes to a woman with a
clean slate.  Why should they expect us to have nothing written on
ours?"

"Because when a man marries nature makes him want a pure woman, not for
his own sake but because of the children she will probably have. For
myself, I know I would rather show a clean slate to the man I loved and
who loved me in a decent way whatever his life had been, than let a man
who was nothing to me write his name there first.  That must be wrong
because it's against nature."

"Is it?  I don't know.  You can argue better than I can.  You don't lose
your temper.  Let's bring it down to ourselves and our difficulties. The
stage is a honey-pot and we girls are the honey in it, and the men are
the flies buzzing round.  They won't leave us alone.  They make it
almost impossible for us to live a decent life. And if it's decent it
isn't beautiful.  You can't call it beautiful, Lexie.  This room's the
limit. Think of the food we eat.  Generally beastly. And our clothes.
Everything's ugly and makeshift, and yet we've only got to stretch out
our little fingers--"

"More than our little fingers."

"Well, if you like.  Anyway, what are we waiting for?  There's no sense
in it.  It won't get us any forrader.  Why don't you leave me alone?
I'd almost made up my mind to give in when I met you.  I should rather
enjoy cutting a dash and having everything I want and going one better
than the other girls who crow over us, and snapping my fingers at the
management like Mortimer did to-day.  If a man was going to marry me and
give me a nice broad ring and a little home there'd be some reason for
going on like this and keeping good; but men don't ask chorus-girls to
marry them, as a rule--not by a long chalk!  Oh, goodnight!"

She twisted on to her side, and the bedsprings groaned.

From neighboring churches clocks began striking twelve.  The noises from
the street subsided. Only an occasional footfall was heard or a cart
rumbling past.  Sometimes a shrill voice broke the stillness, sometimes
a drunken song.

The girls slept.

At dawn a cool breeze moved the dingy window curtain.  Maggy woke and
peered through the gray light at Alexandra, sleeping.

She looked as though she were dead and at peace.

Maggy wondered if that was the better fate.




                                   VI


De Freyne did not seem to notice the efforts of the two girls in obeying
his instructions to smarten up their appearance: he said nothing.  But
for all that, the change did not escape him.  Maggy, in the draped
cashmere affair struck him as likely to appeal to a Jew or a gentleman
from Manchester.  He had a particular individual of each type in his
mind, and awaited a propitious moment for exploiting her to one or the
other.  For the next few days the attention of the girls would have to
be devoted to rehearsals, not men.

De Freyne's exploitation of his chorus naturally had it roots in
commercialism and self-interest.  The girls themselves very seldom
thanked him for his introductions.  They were astute enough to
understand that the advantage was at least mutual.  Not that De Freyne
expected any thanks.  It was a trite observation of his that theatrical
people were the most ungrateful lot in the world.  He himself was a
shining illustration of the dictum, but that did not lessen its truth.
He got his "turn" from his wealthy stage-door dilettanti.  It might be a
social one in the shape of admittance to elevated circles; a select
club, a shooting party, a cruise on a big yacht. Sometimes it was an
invitation by a young and indiscreet member of the peerage to his
country house and a photograph in the illustrated papers to proclaim it.
De Freyne was very partial to reading beneath the group: "From left to
right: The Marquis of Perth, Lady Angela Coniston, Sir Francis
Manningtree, Mr. De Freyne...."  This was prestige dear to his heart.
He toed the line successfully between Society and Bohemianism.  Most of
the rich rascals and all the rich fools of the world were at his
service.

But what gave him most satisfaction was to be able to put an important
City man under an obligation.  It often resulted in special information
concerning stocks and shares that brought him large profits.  He would
have sacrificed any girl's reputation for a one-fourth per cent. turn of
the market, and frequently did so.

In this regard he mentally pigeon-holed Maggy. It would not be difficult
to find her a partner in the dance to which he should set the
Mephistophelean measure.  Alexandra he looked at with a cold eye.  He
wasn't sure of her.  He had nothing to say against her looks, but he had
no use for prudish high-steppers.  Quick of apprehension where girls
were concerned, he put her down in that category.  The chorus would bear
thinning out a bit.  As a matter of policy, De Freyne always engaged
more girls than he wanted.

For another week rehearsals went on, growing more frequent and longer.
The clever stage-manager goes nearer creating silk purses out of sows'
ears than any human being.  No one in the early days of rehearsal would
associate the pouting, obtuse, wooden young woman with the airy fairy
sylphs who ravish the eye on a first night; yet they are one and the
same, trained by methods similar to those used in schooling performing
animals, by coaxing, bullying and inexhaustible patience.

When the chorus were at last up to concert pitch and the principals
letter-perfect, the dress rehearsal took place.  Maggy was in the front
row, looking big and beautiful in a Futurist creation of rose fleshings
and black chiffon.  The front row girls were very carefully chosen for
opulence of figure.  Alexandra had been relegated to the back.  She was
disappointing in tights, which means nothing more than that if a butcher
did not approve her an artist might.


It was over at last, the long performance with its glitter, glare and
gaiety.  There was nothing in it, but all London would flock to see it
because the music was catchy and the girls so pretty and the whole show
so symbolical of the light side of life.  For several days afterwards
rehearsals were frequent.  The usual "cuts" and alterations had to be
made, the show licked into shape.

On one of these occasions Maggy received a message from De Freyne.  He
wanted to see her. Leaving Alexandra in the dressing room she went up to
the managerial office.  It was nearly one o'clock.

"I'm glad you took my advice," he said in a friendly tone.  "You've been
turning yourself out much better."

"Thanks," Maggy answered.  "Is that all?"

"No.  I'm going to put you in the way of dressing really well.  A very
decent chap wants to know you.  You'll be lucky if he likes you."

"That's your opinion.  Well, he can like me as much as he likes.  But
I'm straight."

De Freyne chewed the end of his mustache.

"You get these silly notions from the girl you live with," he said
impatiently.  "I'll mix advice with a bit of prophecy.  If you don't try
and make yourselves more agreeable you'll find you're in--"

"Queer Street?"

"It's equivalent--Garrick Street and Maiden Lane--out of a shop.  It
doesn't hurt you to be nice to a fellow, does it?  He may ask you to
lunch.  Duchesses lunch."

"I'm not a duchess, and I'm particular who I lunch with."

At the end of her sentence the door opened and a man looked in.  He had
heard her, and was amused.

Maggy's look as she turned to acknowledge De Freyne's introduction was
inimical.  She knew perfectly well what that introduction portended. She
must be hard.  She had repulsed other men. She could take care of
herself.  But this man--what was his name--Woolf?--loomed tall and big
over her, big as Fate, possessive.  He exercised a spell: he appealed to
her.  She knew it in the first moment that she looked at him.  She knew
she would like to lunch with him, and that she would inwardly be
disappointed if she had the strength of mind to refuse.  When the
invitation came she accepted it with cheeky reservation.

"All right, Mr. Woolf, so long as you don't think I'm Little Red
Riding-hood and included in the menu."

The capitulation satisfied her conscience.  Then she remembered
Alexandra.

"I must go and tell my friend not to wait for me," she said.

"Miss Hersey?" supplied De Freyne.  "You might also ask her to come in
here in ten minutes, will you?"

"My car's outside," said Woolf.  "You'll find me at the stage-door."

Maggy ran along to the dressing room where she had left Alexandra.  The
other girls had gone.

"Lexie, I'm going out to lunch," she began breathlessly.  "I wish you
were coming too.  Do you mind?  I shan't be long.  I'll cut home as
quickly as I can."

She could not hide her excitement.  It showed in an added sparkle of the
eyes, a catch in the voice.  Alexandra wondered what else besides an
invitation to lunch could have created this effect. It caused her vague
uneasiness.  But prospective enjoyment was so clearly written all over
Maggy's face that she refrained from expressing it.

"Of course I don't mind," she said.  "I hope you will enjoy yourself."

"You are a dear!" Maggy felt awkward. "You--you don't think it's wrong?"

"There's nothing wrong in going to lunch with anybody.  Especially if
he's--all right, and knows you are, too."

"He's nice, I think."

"I'm glad.  But be careful, Maggy."

"Rather!"

Maggy moved to one of the mirrors and took up a powder-puff.

"You've got heaps on already," deprecated Alexandra.

"Have I?"  She powdered over the rouge. "I do look rather like puff
pastry--in layers, don't I?  Well, I haven't time to take any of it off.
Lexie, De Freyne wants to see you in a minute or two.  I don't think
it's anything important. He seems in a good temper.  Ta-ta, dear."

She ran out and made for the stage-door where Woolf was waiting for her.
His car, a big open one, was drawn up opposite it.  Maggy wished the
girls had not all gone.  They had twitted her so often about her lack of
a male escort.  Now there was no one to see her get in.

"Where are we going?" she asked.  "The Savoy?"

"Not this time," said Woolf.  "My house is not far off."

"I'd prefer the Savoy," she persisted, although she had never actually
been to that restaurant.

Woolf was the sort of man who invariably gets his own way with women.
In addition to being characteristically obstinate he was indifferent to
any opinion that clashed with his own.  If it was one that suited him so
much the better; if not, he ignored it.  So long as he paid the piper he
considered he had the right to call the tune.  But before paying he
scanned the bill carefully.  He was not a gentleman.  He met gentlemen
sometimes, and was adaptive enough to be mistaken for one. He belonged
to one or two nearly-good clubs. He was a man about town in the sense
that he was to be seen wherever money could purchase an entrance.

"You'll be quite chaperoned at my place," he assured Maggy.  "I've a man
and his wife."

"I don't need a man and his wife to look after me," she retorted
sharply.

He gave her an attentive stare.  "Who does look after you?"  His meaning
was obvious.

"Myself, of course.  Why don't we go to the Savoy?"

"How persistent you are.  Do you want to know why, really?  Promise you
won't be offended?"

"If I am I'll hop out."

"Well ... when you let me buy you some pretty clothes I'll take you
there."

He half expected she might "hop out," especially as the car had come to
a standstill in a traffic block.  She looked hot-tempered.  But Maggy
was too level-headed to be sensitive on the score of clothes.

"I suppose that king in the story wouldn't have been seen with his
beggar maid at the Savoy until he'd dressed her out," she remarked
ironically. "Well, you won't go there with me any time, anyway."

"Why not?"

"Because this young woman provides her own wardrobe."

"We shall see."

Woolf liked her spirit, otherwise her independence might have irritated
him.

Arrived at his house he gave her in charge of his man's wife.  Maggy
disliked the woman on sight.  There was something furtive about her. She
gave the impression of being one who was used to waiting on ladies in a
single man's house. Sly and secret amusement lurked in her eyes.  She
lingered, unostentatiously, while Maggy prinked herself in front of the
glass.  After a minute or two she turned, and intimated that she was
ready.

"Wouldn't you like to take off your hat, miss?"

There was something unpleasantly insinuating in the smooth tones.

"No, thanks," said Maggy shortly.

"You've left your purse on the table, miss."

"Have I?  There's nothing in it.  It'll be quite safe."

The woman led the way downstairs and ushered her into a room
half-library, half-drawing-room.

"Find everything you wanted?" inquired Woolf, coming forward to meet
her.

"Yes, thanks.  What a swanky bed-room! Silver hair-brushes and face
powder and hairpins! Is it yours?"

"No, it's the visitors' room.  I'm glad you like it."

"I didn't say I liked it.  It looked as if you always had it ready for a
lady.  I don't like the look of your man's wife either."

Woolf laughed at the downright expression of opinion.

"She's all right," he said significantly.  "She's as quiet as the grave
and much deeper."

"She's no good."

"Who _is_!  Are you?"  He took her hand and tried to draw her to him.
Maggy's form grew rigid.

"Hands off," she said coolly.  "There's nothing doing here."

"Won't you let me kiss you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"For the same reason that I keep my hat on, and you don't.  One's out of
respect for me and the other's respect for myself."

"You're a funny girl!"  Woolf drew back and looked at her.  "Why are you
on the defensive?"

"Haven't I need to be?"

"Not with me, surely.  I want to be friends with you."

"Friends!"  She threw up her chin aggressively. "I've only got one in
the world."

"And who is he?" Woolf asked with quick curiosity.

"She's a girl.  I chum with her."

"Women can't be friends with each other," he asserted didactically.
"Especially when they're of the same profession.  A Hottentot woman and
her civilized sister have only one occupation--the study and pursuit of
man.  You're like doctors, all at each other's throats.  Some of you
practise homeopathy, the others are allopaths. The first marry and take
their husbands in small doses, the allopaths believe in quantity.  Your
friend would probably leave you to-morrow if she got a good enough
chance."

"Talk about some one you know," Maggy responded.

The contentious conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Woolf's
man announcing lunch. They went into the dining room.  Maggy was hungry
and did justice to an excellent meal.  But she refused to drink anything
stronger than lemon squash, and when Woolf pressed her for her reason
for such abstinence she gave him none.  She had seen her mother suffer
from alcoholic excess. The smell of spirits always turned her sick.

When they were alone Woolf leant towards her.

"Now let's talk," he said.  "What do you want me to do for you?"

"Nothing," replied Maggy shortly.

"Do you dislike me?"

She looked at him and away again.

"No.  That doesn't mean you're fascinating. You're the sort of man who
might get round a girl like me if I was fool enough to listen to you.
Lexie--that's my chum--would tell you off at once."

"I should think she's a man-hater."  Woolf was beginning to feel a
distinct antipathy towards Maggy's friend.

"No, she isn't.  Only men aren't much in our line.  You can see prowling
beasts without going to the Zoo."

Maggy's conversational trick of generalizing led away from the point
Woolf wanted to press.

"You doubt me," he said.  "You'd believe in me if I wanted to marry
you--"

"Oh, cut it!  You don't!" she interjected.

"Marriage is an institution for the protection of women who wear flannel
petticoats.  It doesn't follow that a girl can't trust a man because he
offers her a lot more than most wives get."

"He offers her a lot more because he knows it won't last for long.  I'm
practical."

"If you were practical you'd listen to my offer."

"Oh, I'll listen."

"Well, I'd like to make you really comfortable. You ought to have a
smart little place of your own, and dainty things, and money to spend."

"It's as old as the hills.  I daresay I'm not the only girl you've made
that proposition to.  Try somebody else.  I'm going now."

"You mean you won't think about it?"

Maggy was silent for a minute.

"Oh, I shall think about it right enough, don't you worry," she said in
an odd voice.  "I shall think about it when I'm hungry.  I shall think
about it when I'm tired.  It's a long way from the theater to King's
Cross Road.  I shall think about it when I see the other girls sneering
at me because I haven't got a boy.  I shall think about it in the summer
time when people go to the sea and take off their clothes, and I shall
think of it in the winter when I'd like a few more on.  You needn't
think I don't know that you're tempting me."  Her voice nearly broke.

"Then be friends," urged Woolf again. "What's to prevent you?"

"Lexie.  Lexie would be cut up.  Lexie has made me think more of myself
since I've known her than I ever did before.  If it wasn't for her do
you think I'd traipse home night after night to that slummy little room
that's dear at fifteen shillings a week?  _She's_ not used to the life,
and if she can hold out against it I ought to be able to who've never
known anything better.  Well, thanks for a nice lunch.  You've fed the
hungry. That's one good mark for you."

Woolf led her back into the other room and shut the door.

"You'll kiss me before you go," he said imperiously.

He had her by the wrists.  His strong grasp sent a thrill through her.
Though she resisted she wished there were no harm in letting him kiss
her, wished that his offer were not based on wrong-doing.  It was not
only because he could give her material things that she was tempted.
She had stumbled across a man who made a direct call to her nature, and
she knew it.  De Freyne, callously unselective, could not have
deliberately chosen an individual more likely to encompass Maggy's
surrender.  Woolf was not young: nearly forty. But he was so blatantly
good-looking, so--so swaggering.  Maggy knew he was selfish and probably
a little unkind, possibly bad-tempered, that he would never care for a
woman in the way that women crave to be cared for, tenderly,
protectively.  All the same, she knew that she would get too fond of him
if she saw him often and that he would go to her head....

Even now she felt dizzy.  Her habitual self-confidence deserted her.
She experienced an overmastering desire to fling herself into his arms
and cry and cry, to tell him how difficult everything was, and how she
had tried....  But she knew perfectly well that he would not understand.
He was a man who would never understand women's feelings because he did
not think them worth understanding.  As long as there were women in the
world, plenty of pretty ones, their feelings did not matter.  Flowers
did not feel when one picked them, or if they did, well, that was what
they were there for: to be picked.

"You don't want to kiss me against my will, do you?"

Maggy struggled free.  As a matter of fact Woolf's grasp had relaxed.
He was quite ready for the interview to end.  He had a business
appointment at three and did not want to be late for it.  If Maggy had
offered him her soul at three that afternoon, or what interested him far
more, her substance, he would not have foregone his appointment.  That
was the man.

"Well, good-by," he said, without further persuasion.  "You can go home
in my car.  I'll 'phone to the garage now."

Maggy went to get her purse and gloves. When she returned Woolf was no
longer in the room.  It was five minutes to three.

"The car is at the door, miss," the man told her.  "Mr. Woolf had an
appointment to keep. He asked me to say would you ring him up any time
you wished to speak to him.  This is his telephone number, miss."  He
handed her a card.

He helped her into the car and tucked the linen rug round her with just
that touch of familiarity which the good servant avoids.  Maggy knew
perfectly well what he and his wife thought about her.  Unused as she
was to servants, good or bad, she was quick enough to appreciate that
they took their tone from their employer and his habits.

She leant back in the car and gave herself up to the luxury of being
driven in it.  The celerity with which she was whirled from the
affluence of Piccadilly and Regent Street to the grimy purlieus of the
King's Cross Road had a disheartening effect upon her.  When the
chauffeur stopped at her door she was sure she saw disparagement in his
face.  He would return to his own place and tell Woolf's man and his
wife to what sort of a lodging-house he had taken her, and they would
make impertinent jokes at her expense.  She despised herself for caring
what the man thought or said. Alexandra wouldn't have cared a button.
She would have scorned the man for scorning her.

She went upstairs slowly.  The period of reaction had arrived.  It
depressed her.  The lunch was over; the pleasant excitation Woolf's
company had aroused had died down.  She felt "flat."

To her surprise Alexandra was not in.  She put the kettle on the
gas-ring and took out their tea-cups from the cupboard where they were
kept. She was rather glad she had got in before her friend.  It would
show how she cared about her, to have hurried home and made tea....
Good old Lexie!

At the sound of steps outside she called out:

"Hurry up, Lexie.  Tea!"

It was Mrs. Bell, not Alexandra.

"I've brought the bill," she observed, depositing a half sheet of paper
on the table.  "I'd be glad to have it squared soon.  You're still
one-ten behind."

"We haven't got it yet."

"You'll pay me soon?  I shall have to let the room if you don't.
Letting's all I have to depend on, you know.  By the way, I ought to
have told you, it'll be seventeen and six a week now instead of fifteen.
The rents of these houses have gone up."

"Since I drove here in a car," snapped Maggy. "We'll pay you and clear."

"No, don't do that, dearie.  Can't you just give me a bit on account?"

Maggy opened her purse and held it upside down.  She had given
threepence to Woolf's woman, and the remaining threepence to the
chauffeur.  They had despised the coppers, naturally, and barely thanked
her.  They would not have thanked her at all but for the possibility
that they might see her again under more affluent circumstances.

"Something'll happen soon," said the woman, thinking of the car.  "I'll
treat you kind because I've a kind 'eart."

She stood away from the door to let Alexandra, who had come up, pass
into the room.  Maggy looked up quickly.  Something was wrong.  She saw
it at once.

"So I'll let it stand over," went on Mrs. Bell. "The bill," she
explained to Alexandra.  "It seems as it's not convenient for you to pay
it yet. It's disappointing, but I suppose--"

"How much is it?" asked Alexandra in a dispirited voice.

"Two pounds--five altogether with last week's bill."

To Maggy's amazement Alexandra handed her the amount.

"Write the receipt and go, please," she said.

When they were alone Maggy stood still waiting for an explanation.

"Where did you get it?"

To add to her astonishment Alexandra began to cry brokenly.  She had
never seen her give way before.

"Lexie, darling, what is it?"  Her voice was sharp with alarm.

Alexandra stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun.

"A fortnight's salary in lieu of notice," she said.  "I think I've been
walking ever since. The pavements were hot, and--my head."

Maggy said nothing more.  With a world of sympathy in her touch she
unpinned Alexandra's hat.  Alexandra sat with her hands in her lap
staring in front of her.  Maggy knelt on the floor and gently drew off
her friend's shoes, brought slippers and put them on, after which she
poured out a cup of tea and silently put it before her.

This was dire news.  Lexie would tell her more by and by.  Maggy knew
she couldn't talk now. She couldn't have said a word herself without
breaking down.  Tea would relieve the tension.

There came an irresolute knock at the door, and their landlady thrust in
an arm and a plate.

"Shrimps was passing so I've bought you a pint for a relish, dears,"
came a conciliatory whine.

To save argument Maggy took them and shut the door again.

"W-what a mixture!" she gasped hysterically. "Temptation and tea,
t-tears and--shrimps!"




                                  VII


Alexandra began to tell about her sudden dismissal.  De Freyne had been
in a good temper and apparently had no grievance against her.  Every one
in the chorus knew there was always the chance of not being kept on for
the run of the piece.  He was the managerial autocrat of stageland and
he did what he liked. A fortnight's notice or a fortnight's salary in
lieu of notice discharged his obligations so far as his chorus was
concerned.

Quite formally and with much the same stereotyped form of regret as an
editor employs in rejecting a suitable contribution, he told Alexandra
that he did not feel himself justified in retaining her services.

"Are you--dissatisfied with me?" she faltered, utterly taken aback.

"No, not exactly.  You're a hard worker."

"Then--?"

"I simply find I don't need you.  I'm sorry, but there it is."

"Is it--because I didn't get a new dress when you spoke to us?  I
couldn't afford to," she said simply.

De Freyne fidgeted with some papers on his desk.

"Oh, that's all finished and done with," he answered without looking at
her.

"But I'd like to know where I've failed, please, Mr. De Freyne.  It's
very important that I should know.  I shall have to find another
engagement."

De Freyne gave her a searching look.

"You may get on all right elsewhere," he said. "I'll tell you the truth
for once in a way.  You're not the right type.  Don't you see you're not
the sort of material I've got to provide?  Hang it all, it's my living.
Do you think I surround myself with the belles of Houndsditch and the
Lord knows where because I like it?  The only kind of girl I've any use
for is the one who, besides working in business hours, makes a show in
smart places the rest of her time.  Miss Mortimer was a good instance of
what I mean until she got swelled head.  You're a lady and you won't do.
Forget you are one and you can stop on or come back again.  I mean
that."

She knew what he meant, and since she had no intention of modeling
herself on Miss Mortimer she also did not attempt to argue the matter.
De Freyne, for some unaccountable reason, tried to justify himself.

"I daresay you think me a sort of understudy to Apollyon, but if you'll
look at things impartially I'm not as bad as all that.  The girls I
engage come to me knowing I can find them the best market.  I give them
far better chances than they can get anywhere else.  You and your friend
are--accidents.  You have either got to clear or--conform.  In the case
of your friend, don't you think it's rather a shame to persuade her to
buck up against things?  She's not like you.  It's not doing her a good
turn.  I've given her a chance to-day...."

He let the words sink in.

Alexandra left the theater, dismissed.

Her luck looked desperately bad.  It was unlikely that she would get
another engagement until the autumn, if then.  It was a long time to
wait.  True, she might go and stay with her nearest relatives, the
Anglo-Indian Colonel, his wife and daughters, but they lived in
Devonshire. Once in Devonshire it was morally certain that she would
have to remain there, dependent on people with whom she had nothing in
common.  Her purse would not allow her to make frequent journeys to
London to find work.

She did not want to give up the stage without a struggle.  It would be
horribly humiliating to own herself beaten.  She believed in her
dramatic ability.  She was not afraid of roughing it, but she had not
seen the rocks ahead.  When she turned over in her mind other ways of
earning a living difficulties presented themselves.  She could not do
office work: she knew nothing of shorthand or typewriting.  She might
apply for the post of children's governess or companion, but would she
be acceptable for either?  There would be questions as to her previous
experience.  All she would be able to cite would be a fortnight's
stage-work in the chorus, hardly the right qualification for a guardian
of youth or companionship to a lady! She could picture the instinctive
drawing-back of a prospective employer and the murmured "I'm afraid you
won't do...."

No, she would have to go on as she had begun or drop by the way.

She walked the sun-blistered pavements, hardly noticing where she was
going, trying to think what to do, where to go.  The same old
heart-rending round would begin again--Denton's, Blackmoore's, Hart's,
the lesser known agencies, and "nothing for you to-day.  Look in again,
dear."

How she was going to live she simply did not know.  A fortnight's
salary! ... She could not guess how many hundreds of men and women of
the same profession as herself were facing the same problem without even
the fortnight's salary between them and destitution.

Then there was Maggy.  Unless Maggy "conformed," she would be told to go
too.  De Freyne's words stuck in her mind: "Isn't it rather a shame to
persuade her to buck up against things? It's not doing her a good turn."
"Things," of course, was a euphemism for Fate.  She had never meant to
impose her own moral views on Maggy.  She didn't want to spoil her
material prospects.  Maggy had shown again and again that it was only on
her, Alexandra's, account that she had elected to make a stand.  There
was ever a hint of irresolution behind her apparent firmness.  Alexandra
was fairly sure that if Maggy found a man who would gain her affection
and treat her well she would be ready to be convinced that there was no
harm in an unlegalized union. That she had not succumbed in the past was
no argument that she would remain unassailable in the future.  Alexandra
was perhaps standing in her light.  In one sense she was protecting her,
in the other she was taking the bread out of her mouth.  She did not
feel herself privileged to coerce the younger girl when she could not
help her or even help herself.  Maggy was not fiercely virginal.  Once
she had taken the initial step she would lose her sensitiveness.  Nature
would demand that she take it sooner or later.  She was frail, because
at heart she was so simple, so unhesitatingly unafraid to go where her
instincts led her.

Alexandra made up her mind that she would not try to influence her.  It
was not fair.  But she hoped she would not yield to temptation.
Something in the thought of Maggy surrendering twisted her heartstrings.
It made her feel so dreadfully sorry.  It was as though she dimly
foresaw that if Maggy snatched at the sham thing Joy, she would see it
turn to sorrow, to dust and ashes....

She found herself before the door of their lodging.  She had walked
there mechanically with dragging steps.  De Freyne had said that he had
given Maggy a chance that afternoon.  Alexandra recalled her happy,
flushed face, the look of excitation in her eyes.  Maggy had evidently
liked the man, whoever he was.  It was only three o'clock.  She did not
expect her back yet.  She was probably still enjoying herself
tremendously. Alexandra wondered how much Maggy cared for her after all,
how soon before she would leave her to fight it out alone.


And she found Maggy in before her.  Maggy had made tea, she had taken
off Alexandra's hat and knelt down and drawn off her shoes....

Alexandra put down her cup and stretched out her hand across the table.
Maggy took it and gave it a squeeze.

"There's a bit of poetry I learnt once," she said.  "I say it whenever I
feel the limit.  It's a sort of psalm.

    "All's well with the world, my friend,
      And there isn't an ache that lasts;
    All troubles will have an end,
      And the rain and the bitter blasts.

    There is sleep when the evil is done,
      There's substance beneath the foam;
    And the bully old yellow sun will shine
      Till the cows come home!"


"Can't you see 'em in your mind's eye, Lexie dear, a string of
them--brown ones with soft eyes--their heads moving from side to side,
coming down the long lane just round the turning ... and the sun shining
behind them through clouds.... Cheer up, ducky!"




                                  VIII


Maggy said very little about Woolf.  On certain topics there was a
barrier of silence between the two girls, imposed by Alexandra.  Maggy
was disposed to be utterly unreserved, crude.  Brought up in stage
surroundings she had heard undiscussable things talked of openly all her
life.  Alexandra showed such distaste for laxity of speech that Maggy
now refrained from touching on the subject of sex almost entirely.  Had
she been unreserved about Woolf, his conversation with her and her own
attitude toward him, she would have had to show herself in a light that
Alexandra would have disliked and certainly not understood.

Maggy was never quite sure in her mind whether Alexandra was very cold
by nature or completely reserved.  She, herself, belonged to the type of
woman, not a rare one, who can discuss her marital relations with others
with a frankness that no man would ever dream of employing when speaking
of his wife to his most intimate friend. Alexandra, except under
extraordinary stress, would be as secretive as a man.  To discuss sexual
emotions or indulge in speculation about them with another girl was a
thing quite foreign to her. At school she had, in that sense, been a
being apart, while the other girls whispered in corners. Instinctively
she shrank from having her mind contaminated by second-hand knowledge of
the most vital and delicate functions of nature.

Her upbringing had been different from Maggy's.  Maggy's mind had been
forced prematurely on the hot-bed of theatrical laxity. Alexandra's
life, up till the last year, had been one of calm and sweet
companionship with an adored mother.  She had lived a healthy, normal
existence, met men of her own class who would no more have dreamt of
thinking irreverently of her than of their own mothers or sisters.  She
was aware that strong passions, illicit unions, and trouble and misery
resulting from immorality, did exist in the world.  She read of these
things in newspapers and the books that were never kept from her; but
these passions and unions and dissolving of unions seemed things that
did not touch her class.

She came into active collision with them for the first time when she
went on the stage.  She could not shut her eyes to the condition of
things there any more than she could shut her ears to the sordid
language of the girls in their common dressing room.  But it made her
ashamed to be a woman, a being of the same sex.  These girls thought of
men only in one way.  The men whom they spoke of as their "boys" or
their "friends" were certainly not any coarser in mind than the girls
themselves.  They had no more reserves of speech than factory-hands.
There were exceptions here and there, but being exceptions they were
negligible as a power of reform.

Some girls attained their positions legitimately, she knew; but how few?
One could count them on the fingers of one hand.  Every one of them had
had some one, a mother or a father to look after them, a father who
waited at the stage-door every night, a comfortable home.  They had been
dressed well by their people.  Though in the chorus, they had never
known its strain and stress, for they had not been of it.  Its hardships
and temptations had, so to speak, been screened from them, and they had
been curiously impervious to its language.  Hence it was that their
reputations had not suffered.

Even out of musical comedy how few illustrious names were unassociated
with scandal.  Alexandra had heard the true story of how one of
England's most prominent actresses was selected for her first important
part--that of a courtesan. An actress sufficiently convincing in the
role could not be found, till at last the author of the play exclaimed
in exasperation: "Well, if we can't get the actress, let's have the
woman."  The equivalent had been lauded by the Press and the public, and
the author's fees had not appreciably diminished!

Alexandra knew now that her own chance of succeeding through hard work
or any talent she might possess was about one in a thousand.  She learnt
of the many capable actors and actresses--some of them more than
capable--who were touring the provinces year after year, and would wear
out their souls and their lives touring the provinces.  It was more than
a hard struggle for the women: women were scarcely given a fighting
chance.

Yet all she could do was to fight, fight all the time so as not to drop
out; to make a bare living, not to lose sight of ambition's pinnacle
while she was forced to dwell in the plains of penury.  But as regards
Maggy she would not influence her one way or the other.  Maggy would
have to decide for herself.

During the ensuing week they were less together than they had ever been.
In the morning Maggy was at the theater while Alexandra went the round
of the stage-doors to see if there was a chance of her being taken on.
Very often they did not meet till after the show in the evening.  For
the first two nights Alexandra had gone to meet Maggy and had walked
back with her; but now Maggy came home in Woolf's car.  She said nothing
about him.  Alexandra asked no questions.




                                   IX


"I've got something to show you," Woolf said.  "Hop in."

Maggy got into the car.  She had been lunching with Woolf at his house.
He always sent her to Sidey Street in his car, but never went there with
her.  He hated slums and mean streets. He had been born and bred in them
and had had enough of them.

"Coming too?" she asked.

"Yes.  I'm going to take you to see something I've just fixed up.  I
want to know what you think of it.  It's a flat."

"Oh."

He got in beside her and set the car going. Maggy had been holding him
at arm's length all the afternoon.  He was getting a little tired of the
pursuit and intended it should end.  He could not associate Maggy with
protracted virtue.  If she persisted in this pose--for he thought it was
a pose--he would lose interest in her.  He had told her as much at
lunch.

"Oh, rubbish!" Maggy had responded, munching at a pear that only a rich
man could afford to buy out of season.  "Courting's a change for you."

"It's too much trouble.  In business I work hard.  I know what I want
and I go on till I get it.  With women I don't want hard work.  Besides,
unripe fruit is sour.  It's best when it's ready to fall."

"Then you've come under the wrong tree," she said cheekily.

But she knew that the fruit was trembling on its stem--ripe.

"About this flat," she said, when they were on their way, "are you
thinking of moving?"

"No."

Woolf turned and looked at her intently.  She could not face the
searching in his eyes; she blushed and was angry with herself.

"I don't see what you want my opinion for, anyway," she said, to cover
her confusion.

"It's funny, but I do."

He said no more.  Maggy's thoughts occupied her for the rest of the
drive.  She sat back in her seat, out of contact with Woolf.  When he
was close to her, or his clothing touched her, a breathless sensation
assailed her, sapping her strength.

The flat he took her to see was a furnished one in Bloomsbury, small but
attractive in her eyes. It contained a bedroom, a bathroom and a sitting
room.  Meals were obtainable at a reasonable price in a restaurant
attached to the building. The rooms had every appearance of being lived
in.  There were flowers in sitting room and bedroom, magazines, a box of
chocolates: on the bedroom dressing-table was a brand-new silver
toilette set and brushes.  Among the pictures on the walls, framed in
black and gold, were several studies of female figures in the nude.  The
electric lights were rose-shaded.

Maggy was entranced with the place.  She forgot her defensive attitude
and showed frank pleasure in all she saw.  She fingered the silver
brushes lovingly, smelt the flowers, munched a chocolate.

The white-tiled bathroom with its plated fittings appealed to her
strongly.

"Hot and cold!" she murmured.  "Not in bits but all at once.  Scrummy!"

"What are you talking about?" said Woolf, amused.

"In Sidey Street we have a foot-bath and wash in bits," she explained
frankly.  "I've dreamt of baths like this.  I've never had one."

She turned on the taps with the fascination of a child, and watched the
water run.

"So you like it all?"

"I should just think I did!"

She perched on the edge of the bath, swinging a foot.

"You've really taken it?"

"For three years."

"Who's coming to it?"

"It's for a good girl."

"You mean for a bad girl," she pouted.

"She'll be good--to me."

"Well, I hope she'll like it."

He took her two hands.  "So do I, Maggy. She's said so, anyway."

"Meaning me?"

He nodded.

"You've taken it on the chance that I'll come?"

"It's got to be completely furnished.  If it wasn't you it would
probably be some one I didn't care about half so much.  But it's going
to be you, isn't it, Maggy?"

"For three years!"  Her voice trembled. "And after?  What happens when
the agreement's run out?  Has the girl got to be like the flat--taken on
by some one else?  There was a play, wasn't there, a few years ago,
called 'Love and What Then?'  It didn't last long."

She got up and went back into the sitting room. Woolf followed her.

"Won't you trust me and come?"

"If I came I should come without trusting you. I'm not the kind that
tiles herself in.  I suppose I should let things rip."

"Well, it's yours for the taking.  Only you've got to decide--now."

And suddenly Maggy's defenses broke down. She felt the frail bulwarks of
her unsheltered girlhood crumbling around her.

"It wouldn't be for the bathroom or the bedroom or what you'd give me,"
she said huskily.

"Wouldn't it?"

His arms were about her.

"No," she whispered.  "It's you."


Woolf gave her a little Yale key.

"Here it is.  Let yourself in when you want to take possession."

He had tea sent up from the restaurant and they had it together in the
cosy sitting room. Maggy was very subdued.  She would go back to Sidey
Street only to pack the few personal possessions she treasured.  She
hoped, was almost sure, Alexandra would be out.  She dared not face her
just yet.

"I'll bring you back after the show to-night," Woolf reminded her when
they parted.  "Don't forget I've given you the key."

"I've given you more than a key," said Maggy.




                                   X


"Lexie, I feel a beast, but I've got to go. You'll never understand.
That's why I've said so little about him.  Woolf, I mean.  It isn't only
what he can give me, though it does mean something too.  I'm wrong
somewhere, I suppose.  I don't think about it like you do.  And it's all
right for girls like me. Perhaps it's the only thing.  You'll never want
to see me again.  That's the one part that doesn't bear thinking about.
I don't suppose you'll believe I care a hang for you now, but I do, even
though it's too late to go on living with you if I wanted to.  The other
thing was stronger, that's all.  I had a little Persian cat once.  I
used to let her out for exercise on a string because I was afraid of
losing her.  But she got out when I wasn't looking all the same and
disappeared for three days. She couldn't help it, poor dear.  It was
just her nature.  I expect I'm like that cat.  I was bound to go on the
tiles.  You'll think that vulgar.  I am vulgar all through.  That's the
difference between us.

"You've been the best chum in the world, dear. I can't thank you
properly.  I'm a rotter.  I've left my cash on the dressing-table.  I
don't want it.  Fred Woolf will be looking after me.  Take it, do
please.  What's the use of starving when you needn't.  Good-by, Lexie.
You may not believe it, but I'm crying and I _do_ care.

"MAGGY."




                                   XI


Mrs. Bell came into the room with the supper tray.  It was mostly tray.
The supper consisted of two cups of cocoa, half a loaf of bread and an
atom of butter.  She gave her lodger an inquisitive glance as she spread
the tablecloth.  Alexandra had Maggy's letter in her hand, and her face
was woefully sad.

"You need not lay for two," she said quietly. "Miss Delamere won't be
here in future."

The bald statement was sufficient for Mrs. Bell. Ever since the day when
Maggy had been brought to her door in a private car she had more or less
been prepared for this denouement.  The association of chorus-girls and
cars in her experience had but one meaning: a rise for the former in the
plane of life with a concomitant and much-to-be-desired acceleration of
the pace at which it may be lived.

"I'm glad she's found a friend," she observed cheerfully.  "She's the
sort that's made for a man to look at.  Have you seen her chap yet, Miss
Hersey?"

"I don't want to talk about Miss Delamere's affairs," winced Alexandra.

"You're upset, I can see.  I'm not denying it's hard to see a friend
carried off like that."  Mrs. Bell Bell shook her head deprecatingly.
"It's a trying place, the stage.  I wouldn't go back to it myself, not
if I was paid like a Pavlova.  I'd rather toil and moil for Mr. Bell
downstairs all the days of my life."  And having thus asserted her claim
to respectability, conjugal endurance and a taste for sour grapes, with
admirable conciseness she felt she was privileged to ask another
question: "Have you got a shop yet, dear?"

"No, it's the wrong time of year."

"You can't wait till the autumn?"

"No."

"Then what'll you do?"

"I'm not thinking of myself just now.  It doesn't matter," said
Alexandra wearily.

"I know.  You're bothering your poor head about Miss Delamere.  Don't
you fret.  She's got some one to look after her.  That's better than
looking after yourself.  I daresay she's sleeping in a creep de sheeny
nightdress to-night with real lace on her pillows."

"Don't talk like that!" Alexandra shuddered.

"Well, it's no good trying to walk clean on a muddy road.  Drink your
cocoa while it's hot, dearie.  If you're on the stage you must go on
like the angels in heaven, doing what Rome does, where there's very
little marriage or giving in marriage."  Mrs. Bell's metaphor was mixed,
but her views were definite.  "That's why I would rather see my own girl
lying here at my feet dead and smiling in her coffin than in the
profession.  She's a respectable upper housemaid," she finished
comfortably, as she closed the door behind her.

Alexandra tried to eat a little dry bread.  The butter was rancid.  She
ended by giving up the attempt.  Her throat ached.  She leant her head
on the table.  It ached as much as her heart and throat did.  Her whole
body was permeated with the pain of unshed tears.

Maggy had gone.

Except for the letter, which was final enough, it was difficult to
realize.  She had not even taken her box, only a small handbag.  Her
possessions had been so pitifully meager.  Her wooden-backed brush and a
metal comb were still on the dressing-table, but the cheap German silver
powder box and her rouge and cream pots were gone; there was the
nightdress case on her bed in the crochet work that was Maggy's hobby
with the big badly-worked M in washed-out greens and pinks. Wrapped in a
little screw of paper was the money she had left behind.  She had taken
Alexandra's photograph, and for some reason she had turned the face of
her own to the wall.

A wild desire came to Alexandra to run out, late as it was, go to Maggy
and bring her back.  Then she remembered that she did not even know
where Maggy was.  She was gone and that was all; swallowed up in the
immensity of London; captured by some man unknown.

The realization that Maggy had deliberately stolen away at the call of
exigency hurt her acutely. Passion had never touched Alexandra.  Just
now she could only feel impatience with one who was moved by it to
extremes.  But mingled with the distaste for a thing she could not
comprehend was compassion for her friend.  Some part of Maggy must be
suffering, sorry.  No woman surrenders herself without some secret,
sacred regret.

She sat thinking, trying not to think, for hours. Finally, she undressed
and, in the darkness, said her prayers.  She felt they were futile,
childish....  She turned her face to the wall so that she should not see
the ghostly outline of Maggy's narrow, empty bed.

As the hours passed and sleep did not come she began to wonder if it
were not all a dream.  The idea took hold of her.  Of course, Maggy had
not gone....

She sat up and spoke her name across the darkness.

"Maggy!"

Although there was no answer, the tantalizing obsession was still upon
her.  She got out of bed and crossed over to Maggy's, feeling above the
coverlet for the comforting touch of the warm, sleepy body.  The
coverlet was flat, the sheets cool.  Maggy had gone.

She groped her way back to her own bed, and at last tears came, and with
tears, sleep.

By the morning, the sharp edge of her feelings was somewhat blunted.
She was still sorry, but not passionately sorry.  Those who have wept
for their dead with the poignancy of first grief experience much the
same dulling of the emotions.  It precedes the inevitable resignation,
without which they could not again take up the lonely burden of life.

Maggy was lost to her, as lost to her as if she had died.  She had not
the consolation of knowing that she would see her again, alive,
exuberantly happy, unregretting, and that this feeling would pass.  She
did not know then that across the barrier of her frailty Maggy would
hold out her strong, young, eager hands, and that she, Alexandra, would
grasp them in unalterable love and friendship.

She put away the money Maggy had wanted her to take until she could give
it back to her, and directly she had had her breakfast, started for the
theatrical agents' offices.  They opened at ten. She had small hope of
obtaining anything at any of them.  The principals did not know her by
sight.  When one of them made an occasional dart into the waiting room
and gave a quick glance round she was only "one of a crowd."

At such times there would be a little stir and scrimmage amongst the men
and women in which she would not share.  Men would elbow women, women
elbow men in their efforts to catch the agent's eye or better still his
sleeve.  And he would shake them off in a precipitate passage from his
own room to that of his partner's at the other end of the waiting room.
Alexandra knew his short, little, staccato, stock sentences by heart.

"Nothing for you to-day, dear."  (Shake her off.)

"Sorry, my dear, I can't stop."  (Shake her off.)

"No, my dear, I--oh, it's you.  Stop behind. I'll see you later."
(Pressure of the hand.)

"Nothing in your line to-day, old fellow." (Shake him off.)

Perhaps a fleeting look at Alexandra, so that she was in doubt as to
whether she had been noticed or not.

Then the crowd would wait on, lessened by the few who lost heart and
went on to other agencies. The assembly varied little in any of these
refuges of the out-of-works.  There you would find every specimen of
stageland: the sprightly young man with an eye stimulated hopefully by
sherry from the adjacent Bodega, dressed in the last fashionable suit
left from his wardrobe, his waistcoat pocket bulging with pawntickets;
the old actor with a blue chin, a red nose and a kindly smile,
unctuously imparting the latest "wheeze" to a brother comedy-merchant;
the hard-eyed woman of forty, rouged, smelling of spirits and patchouli,
consumed with inward wrath because of the refusal of managers to
entertain her applications for youthful parts; the fresh-looking girl
with an air of country lanes and a pigtail, who nevertheless was bred
and born at Stratford-at-Bow; the seedy advance-agent, vainly trying to
adopt a managerial air; the plump and cheery chorister with no ambitions
beyond thirty shillings a week and a long pantomime run; her male
compeer nourishing a secret belief that he could "wipe the floor" with
every tenor on the boards.

Eleven, twelve, one o'clock, and still the patient crowd would linger on
in the agents' offices, chattering intermittently, giggling
occasionally, desperately anxious all the same, eyes ever glancing
toward the two shut doors.

At one would come the unwelcome news, spoken by the young man who kept
the accounts and made out the contracts:

"Mr. Whitehead's gone to lunch.  Won't be back to-day.  No use waiting."

How quickly the room emptied!  Alexandra did not know that a goodly
proportion of its habitues would quickly foregather for consultation and
refreshment in Rule's or the Bodega, where the atmosphere was redolent
of alcoholic odors, curiously aromatic, sonorous with sustained
conversation and the low chuckle of the comedians.

One saw the same faces again after the luncheon hour, at Denton's, at
Hart's, at Paul Stannard's, a little less hopeful, a little more tired
as the day went on.

Paul Stannard had got Alexandra her engagement at De Freyne's.  She went
to him again now.  She liked him.  He was a gentleman by birth, had
drifted on to the stage, loathed it, could not get free of it, and ended
by running a theatrical agency with fair success.  He did not call all
girls "dear," only the ones that liked it, and was more accessible to
the rank and file than most agents.

"I thought I had fixed you up with De Freyne," he said.  "His show's in
for a long run. Couldn't stick it?"

"Mr. De Freyne told me to go."

Alexandra was tired.  She could hardly stand.

"Sit down," invited Stannard.  "Up against it?"

"Well, I've nothing to do.  It's serious."

"I'm sorry."  He turned over the leaves of a big book on his desk.  "And
I can't help you. Nothing's doing, except a sextette for Rio."

"Can't I go?" she asked eagerly.

"My God, no!"

He put his hands in his pockets and surveyed her compassionately.
Belonging as he did to the class that shelters its women it still hurt
him to see women engaged in fighting for bread.  It was more desperate
still when they fought for honor too, or held it above the price of
bread.

"Why did you send me to the Pall Mall if you knew they wouldn't
want--any one straight-laced?"

"I can't ask every girl who comes to me for a job to sign an affidavit
concerning her morals. Why are you on the stage at all if you've got
different ideas to the others?  You haven't an earthly.  Might as well
buy a toothbrush."

"Buy a toothbrush?"

"To sweep out an Augean stable."  He scribbled some addresses on a half
sheet of paper. "There's just a chance these aren't filled up. Mention
my name.  I don't hold out any hope, though."  He hesitated for a
minute.  "Are you bound to go on at this?  Haven't you a home to go to?"

"I'm bound to go on," she said, trying to keep the desperate note out of
her voice.

"Well, good luck."  Stannard held open the door for her.

"Poor devil!" he said as he shut it.




                                  XII


All the names which Stannard had given her were those of minor managers.
It was late in the season and their companies would in all probability
be made up and booked for the road.  Still she went to them.  There was
a bare chance that one of them might have a vacancy.  For two hours she
hung about their offices waiting for an interview, only to waste her
time in the end.  "Full up" was the answer she got to each application.
The last place she called at was situated in a block of buildings off
Shaftesbury Avenue.  As she left it a door facing her on the opposite
side of the passage opened and a man in a frock coat and silk hat came
out.  He stopped short, looked her up and down and spoke.

"Excuse me, but are you out of an engagement?"

"Yes," she replied, a last glimmer of hope flickering within her, the
silk hat suggesting something managerial.

The stranger's next words confirmed her in this idea.

"I believe you're the very person I've been looking for for a week.  The
question is, can you sing?"

"Yes."

"Then come in."

He threw the door open again and followed her in.  The room contained
two chairs, a desk, a small grand piano, one or two playbills on the
walls and several diagrams of the larynx, looking not unlike a map of
the tube railways.

"This is my practise room and therefore bare," he explained.  "It's bad
to sing in a room blocked up with furniture.  Breaks up the voice, you
know. By the way, my name's Norburton--Gerald Norburton.  You may have
heard of it," he added modestly.

Alexandra had heard of it.  The name was that of a singer of some
repute.

"Oh, then, you're not an agent," she said, a little disappointed.

"Lord, no."  The idea seemed to amuse him. "Fact of the matter is this:
my friend, Maurice Haines, wrote to me the other day--here's his
letter--asking me to find him a likely girl for a sketch he has booked
at the Palace.  He'd engaged some one, but she's just gone in for
appendicitis.  Funny thing, appendicitis.  Has it ever occurred to
you--"  The blank look in Alexandra's face constrained him to keep to
business. "So he appeals to me, thinking that as a singer I might know
some one likely.  But I didn't--not until I saw you.  If you can sing
it's a sure thing."  He read from the letter he had been searching for.

"'She must be tall and dark and a lady.  Youth essential.  Of course she
must have a well-trained voice, but previous experience doesn't matter.
I'll look in next week, and if you know a girl who will do, for heaven's
sake have her round.  The sketch is booked for the next six months,
first here and then in the leading provincial towns.  I'll pay ten
pounds a week for the right woman.'

"What do you think of that?"

"It seems to me it depends on my voice," said Alexandra.

"That's it.  Do you mind singing me something? Here's a pile of songs.
Pick out one you know."

She found a song.  Norburton played the accompaniment.  She had an idea
she was singing well and hoped he would think so.  When she finished,
she had the impression that he was not satisfied.

"I'm afraid you're disappointed," she said, with foreboding.

"No, not exactly.  You've a nice voice.  You want to know how to pitch
it better.  As it is it won't carry.  I believe I could teach you in
five days, before Haines comes round."

"I couldn't expect you to do that."

"But I _do_ teach," he laughed.  "Do you doubt my capability?  I assure
you that besides being a public singer I get three guineas for every
half-hour lesson I give."

"What I meant was," said Alexandra, "that I couldn't expect you to coach
me for nothing, and I couldn't pay enough to make it worth your while."

He appeared to think.

"I want to do my best for Haines," he said. "Look here.  I'll give you
five lessons--one every day for ten minutes--and you can pay me what you
can afford, five shillings a lesson, say."

She colored.  "That's charity."

"No.  I really want to help Haines."

Now Alexandra had little more than five shillings in her purse.  The
next quarterly payment of her annuity would not be due for a fortnight.
In the meantime all she possessed was some old jewelry that had belonged
to her mother.  There was the money Maggy had left behind her, but she
was not going to touch that.

"I should like you to teach me.  It's very good of you," she said.
"Would you take this instead of money?  It's worth a little more than
five five-shilling lessons."  She tendered him a ring with a single
pearl in an antique setting.  A pawnbroker would have lent her five
pounds on it.  She was anxious that he should take the ring.  It would
make her feel less under an obligation to him.

Apparently he appreciated her feelings.

"That's very pretty of you," he said.  "It fits my little finger, too.
Would you rather I took it?"  There was a shade of reluctance in his
voice.

"Much rather."

"Well, thank you very much.  Now I must pull you through by a little
teaching.  Can you have your first lesson now?  No time like the
present, is there?  Stand in the corner over there to the right.  Now,
sing 'ah' on middle C.  Keep your tongue well down.  Give it room--give
it room! Swell it out!  You'll do very well," he said, after ten
minutes.  "To-morrow, same time.  I'll drop Haines a line.  Don't thank
me, please."

Another girl came in as Alexandra went out. She heard Norburton tell her
she was early.

"Have you heard from Mr. ----"  She thought the name mentioned was
Haines, but argued she must have been mistaken.  The girl was fair and
short, not at all the type Norburton's friend wanted.  Alexandra assumed
she must be one of the singer's private pupils, and thought no more
about her.

For the next four days she came for her lessons, and at the end of that
time Norburton told her he was quite satisfied with the result.

"Haines will be here to-morrow at eleven," he told her.  "Don't worry,
you'll get the engagement."

All the same she did worry.  She pinned her hopes on it.  She had
curtailed her food down to the irreductible minimum.  Privation showed
in her looks.  She was not a big eater, but her physique demanded good
and nourishing food, which now she never got.  She wanted new shoes and
gloves badly.  These she could not manage to do without indefinitely.
She began to lose confidence in herself in these days.  She knew her
appearance was noticeably shabby, and that she was getting the delicate
look that employers dislike.  One cannot say to the man from whom one is
hoping for an engagement: "I'm pale, but I'll look better when I can
afford to feed myself properly.  My clothes are shabby, but they would
be in rags if I hadn't looked after them as if they were priceless
brocades.  And I'm not poor and hungry and out of an engagement because
I've no talent, but because I've certain principles that I've brought to
the wrong place.  Give me a chance and don't ask anything else of me."

At five minutes to eleven the next day she was in Shaftesbury Avenue.
Outside Mr. Norburton's door some ten or twelve girls were waiting. They
looked a mixed lot, all of them anxious, poor and shabby.

"He told me ten," said one of them, "and he's not here yet."

"I've been here since half-past nine," said another.

One bold spirit rapped sharply on the door.

As a result one next to it bearing a brass plate and a solicitor's name
was opened and a man put his head out and angrily demanded:

"Who's making that row?  If you're waiting to see the fellow who had
that room, he's gone. Went away yesterday afternoon."

"Meaning Mr. Norburton?" asked one of the girls.

"I don't know what his name was.  He's gone, anyhow.  It's no good
waiting about and making a noise."

He shut the door.  The girls stared at one another blankly.

"I want to know the meaning of this," said one of them truculently.
"P'raps the caretaker can tell us."  She clattered down the stone
stairs, and half a dozen of the others followed her.

A fair girl standing next to Alexandra spoke to her.

"Did you want to see Mr. Norburton too?"

"Yes, but I'm afraid I shan't."  Alexandra felt faint.

"I don't think we shall either.  It's my belief we've been done.  Did he
give you lessons?"

"Five."

"I had five, too," nodded the girl.  "Two pounds I paid the blighter.
He said I'd suit Mr. Haines a treat.  Read me a letter saying he wanted
a fair girl with a good figure and contralto voice--  What's that?  It
was a 'tall and dark' to you!  My hat!  What did _you_ pay?"

"I gave him a pearl ring."

"O-oh!"  Her eyes went round.  "I saw it on his finger.  Then you were
hard up?"

"I had the ring, but not the money to pay him."

"And I had the money.  And I haven't got it now."

One of the girls who had gone to make enquiries below came up again.

"Thought I'd come and tell you," she panted.  "It's true.  He's gone,
right enough. The piano was hired and it's been fetched away. He's done
seventeen of us, the beast!  His name isn't Norburton at all, but Easton
or Weston, I forget which.  If the real Mr. Norburton or Maurice Haines
heard what he'd been up to they'd prosecute him.  He's just been using
their names to cod us.  Oh, I'd like to--to--"  The unspoken threat
tailed off in a resigned sigh.  "Well, there's a voice-trial at Daly's
at 11.30.  I'm off."

Alexandra did not move.  She was dazed. The other girls melted away, all
but one little creature in black who commenced to sob.

"Don't cry," said Alexandra, touched by her grief.  "You must try and
forget the disappointment."

The girl raised streaming eyes.  She was very plain and wore her hair
frizzed out all round her head.  The fingers through which her tears had
been trickling were red and work-worn.

"I paid him f-four pounds in gold," she wept. "And he s-said my voice
was g-good enough to get me the engagement.  And I've given notice at
the place I'm at on the strength of it, and now I'll have to go back and
ask to be kept on.  Makes me ashamed of myself, it does, after what I
said to the mistress about gettin' ten pounds a week on the stage.  And
now f-four pounds of good money gone!"

"Haven't you any left?"

"I've got eleven saved, but it would have been fifteen," sniffed the
girl.  She took it hardly that she had to pay so heavily for her
experience.

"Well, then, cheer up," said Alexandra.  "I haven't got fifteen
shillings."

"Not in the world?"

"Not in the world."

"But you're a lady!"

"Am I?" asked poor Alexandra.  Tears were not far from her own eyes now.
The girl saw them, and the fount of her own dried up in her compassion
for a disappointment that must be even greater than her own because of
the actual need behind it.  A lady, and with less than fifteen shillings
in the world!  Why, she had always been able to earn nearly ten
shillings a week, without counting her board and keep.  She had always
been able to count on regular employment, plenty of food and a fairly
comfortable bed; and until she had been dazzled by the magnificent
prospect of ten pounds a week and still more by the idea of becoming a
"star actress," she had been fairly contented with her life.  She wished
she had never seen that catch advertisement in the newspaper.

"I shouldn't think any more about the stage if I were you," advised
Alexandra.

"I shan't," was the resolute answer.  "It's no good, is it?"

"Not a bit of good."

The girl hesitated.

"Do you mind telling me," she said, "if it's very bad.  The girls on it,
I mean."

"It's difficult sometimes for them to be good," was Alexandra's
qualified reply.

"That's pretty much what our milkman says. He had a wife he divorced
that used to go on the stage once a year in pantomime."

Alexandra smiled wanly.  She was getting accustomed to the democratic
atmosphere of the stage, where social differences are inexistent.  The
dragging in of the milkman's wife was only a sharp-cut illustration of
the lengths to which the leveling-down process could go.  The life had
robbed her of all surprise at the necessity of having to rub shoulders
with ex-shopgirls and the like; but this was the first time she had
found herself on terms of equality with a domestic servant.

"Dessay I'm well out of it," said the girl philosophically.  "I hope
you'll get on, miss."

As she passed Alexandra she stopped, making believe to pick up something
that was not there.

"Oh, look what you've dropped!" she exclaimed, holding out two
half-crowns.

Alexandra had come out that morning with only a few pence.

"It isn't mine," she disclaimed.  "If you look in your purse you'll
probably find it's your own money."

The girl made a pretense of doing so.

"No, that it isn't," she insisted.  "It must be yours, right enough."

"But it can't be."

Before she could anticipate the movement, the girl slipped past her and
raced down the stairs. Alexandra followed as fast as she could.  But the
girl was too quick for her.  She was nowhere to be seen when Alexandra
reached the street.

Only then did she comprehend the meaning of the generous subterfuge.
She stood staring down at the money in her hand--two half-crowns, given
her by a servant!




                                  XIII


July, that theatrical close season, was wearing itself out.  Alexandra
subsisted on the small quarterly dividend that a grateful country
bestows in the way of pension on the orphaned children of the men who
fight its battles.  She sweltered in her one room or else sat in the
deserted ones of theatrical agencies waiting for an engagement that
never came.

One sultry afternoon, on turning into Sidey Street, she found, standing
opposite her door, a brand-new landaulette.  In her prosperous days she
had learnt to distinguish between the makes of cars, and a glance showed
her that this one belonged to a type that was just then being widely
advertised at a popular price.  But it was neither its shape nor finish,
nor even the bright coloring of its paintwork that attracted her
attention so much as the large monogram composed of an M. and a D. in
the center of its door-panel.  The world might contain a thousand other
people with those initials, but M. D. on an empty car outside
Alexandra's door meant that Maggy was inside the house, waiting for her.

Her heart beat fast and she went in.  There would be a visible
difference in Maggy.  Their girlish friendship was a closed chapter.
Maggy had left her.  The hurt still rankled.  She felt nervous.  It
would be like greeting a stranger; worse, it would be meeting as a
stranger one with whom she had shared a close intimacy.  There would be
awkwardness....

Maggy, waiting for her, felt equally nervous. She had struggled against
the desire to see Alexandra again, but it had grown too strong for her.
She yearned for her.  She wanted to tell her that she had not deserted
her, that she could still be as true a friend as ever.  Suppose
Alexandra were so intolerant of what she had done that she would not
even let her stay a minute!  Perhaps she would refuse to speak, or worse
still, and this was more likely, she might pretend hard that her
feelings had not changed so that she, Maggy, might not feel hurt, and
Maggy would know she was pretending.  She began to wish she had not
come.

Looking round the little room it seemed difficult to believe that she
had really left it.  Only the expensive frock she was wearing, a peep
through the curtains at the new toy that she liked to drive about in,
assured her that she had.  Then she noticed that her bed was gone.  That
was even more conclusive evidence of the domestic rupture than the
expensive frock and the car.  And yet Alexandra had her photograph on
the mantel-piece. That cheered her.

During one of her periodical peeps at the window she saw Alexandra
walking down the street. A panicy feeling assailed her.  She peeped
again and noticed how slowly she was coming along, how listless was her
step.  She looked tired, frail. Maggy's warm heart gave a compassionate
thump. Her nervousness increased as she heard Alexandra mounting the
stairs.  What should she say to start with?  "I was passing, and I
thought I'd look in?"  That would sound casual, forced. Or "I hope you
don't mind my coming to see you."  That would be groveling.  Should she
wait for Alexandra to speak first?  Suppose she should say something
cold and cutting, final? Suppose she just stood still, waiting for Maggy
to speak?  And how long might they not stand looking at each other like
that, without saying a word....

Alexandra opened the door and Maggy faced round, her breast rising and
falling.

Unrehearsed words bubbled from her heart.

"Oh, Lexie, I'm just the same.  Won't you be?"

"Maggy, dear!"

Choking with emotion and gladness, they found they were holding hands
tightly, as if they could never let go.  Big tears welled up in Maggy's
eyes.

"It doesn't alter one a bit," she got out huskily.

They sat down on the bed, close together, for a moment or two dumb with
congestion of thought--the numberless things, essentials affecting
themselves, that needed asking and answering.

"Are you happy, Maggy?"

"Don't I look it?"  She irradiated happiness. Her eyes beamed, her lips
laughed.  "I love him, Lexie.  It's lovely to love a man whatever way
love comes to you.  He can't give me the brown egg at breakfast because
he's not there then, but I feel just as--oh, you know!  I'm not really
_bad_, Lexie.  There isn't another man in the world for me.  Tell me
about yourself, darling.  Have you got anything to do yet?"

"No.  I'm beginning to wonder whether I ever shall.  I can't see
anything ahead.  It's black."

"Your stomach's empty," said Maggy prosaically. "You look as if you've
lived on nothing for ten days."

"I've lived on four-and-sixpence a week."

"Oh, Lexie!  And I've had caviare and plovers' eggs and all sorts of
expensive things while you've been starving!"  She looked horribly
contrite.  "Do you know that picture advertisement with a big fat cat
talking to a thin miserable one and saying it had been fed on somebody's
milk? I'm the fat cat because I'm being kept by--"

"Don't!" said Alexandra.

"I'm sorry.  I forgot.  Fred encourages me to be downright.  Don't take
the pins out of your hat.  Look here, Lexie.  Do me a favor and come out
with me sometimes.  Come now! When Fred's not around I'm at a loose end,
and it's lonely.  I get tired of mooching round the shops and only
buying things for myself.  The day would go faster if I could lie in bed
half the morning, but I'm so beastly energetic.  I'm awake at seven and
thinking of eggs and bacon.  I would like to show you my flat.  Would
you mind coming to see it?  There's no one there, only me."

She saw Alexandra hesitate.

"It's such a duck of a flat," she went on.  "I haven't got any one to
show it to.  Dozens of times I've said to myself: if only Lexie could
see this or that....  You needn't approve of me, but do come!  We can
have an early dinner before I go to the theater."

"But what about--"

"Fred's never there at that time.  We generally lunch out and then I
don't see him till after the show."

On Maggy's left hand Alexandra noticed the gleam of a wedding ring.
Maggy, following her glance, smiled contentedly.  For the moment it
occurred to Alexandra that perhaps Maggy was really married after all.
She asked the question.

"No," was the regretful reply.  "But I often forget I'm not.  There's
not much difference when you're fond of a man.  You get to love him so
much that you don't feel the law could bring you any closer.  All the
same I'd like to be married to him really.  I'd like to look after his
clothes, and keep his things tidy--and have his children."  She flushed
and got up rather hurriedly.  "Ready?  Come along!"

In the narrow hall they encountered Mrs. Bell. She had been lying in
wait, and now advanced with her be-ringed and not over-clean hand
outstretched.

"Always pleased to see you, Miss Delamere," she beamed.  "I'm sure Miss
Hersey's been quite lost without you.  No chance of your coming back to
us, I suppose?"  She smiled knowingly.

"You never know," said Maggy lightly. "Here's something to--buy shrimps
with," she supplemented, winking at Alexandra.

Mrs. Bell gave an astonished and delighted look at the coin before her
fingers closed on it.

"Well, you are a dear!  I always did say you had a heart of gold--"

"Not when my purse had only coppers in it," Maggy laughed.

"What did you give her?  She looked quite surprised," Alexandra inquired
directly the street door had shut.

"A sovereign."

"But why?"

"Swank, my dear.  Get in."

The car moved off.

"How do you like it?" she asked.  "It's a Primus.  Fred's got an
interest in them.  I wish he'd make me an agent.  He's had my photo
taken in one for an ad.  They've got electric starting and lighting and
only cost two-seventy-five. Lean back, dear.  Isn't it comfy?  Oh, I
wonder what you'll think of my flat.  You'll like the bathroom, I know.
Hot water service at any time of the day or night.  That's in the
prospectus."

Alexandra laughed.

"May I have a bath?"

"Of course.  Whenever you like.  I thought you'd ask."

She could not contain her pride in her new home. Alexandra, unable to
help contrasting it with her own poor room, liked its light daintiness,
its exquisite tidiness.  Maggy would have delighted in doing the whole
work of a cottage of her own in the country.  She was by nature
domesticated. The personal touch was everywhere visible about the flat,
especially to Alexandra who knew her. Maggy had a mania for crochet
work.  It was to be seen in all directions.  Towels, mats, chair covers,
everything that could have crochet sewn on to it was so ornamented.  A
large open workbox, crammed to overflowing with a medley of fancy-work,
testified to the hours she gave to her needle and the many directions in
which she made use of it.  A mongrel terrier gave them a violent welcome
as they came in, and a dissipated-looking cat blinked at them lazily
from the sofa where it lay on a cushion.  Maggy introduced the two
animals.

"This is Mr. Onions," she said.  "I saw him eating one out of a dustbin
and brought him here. He was starved, Lexie.  Now he lives on the fat of
the land, like me.  And he's no breed, like me.  Neither is Mrs.
Slightly.  She's Slightly because she's slightly soiled, and never will
clean herself, and she's called 'Mrs.' because she's not married, but
ought to be.  Isn't it curious, Lexie? Slightly and Onions are absolute
gutter-snipes, but they've taken to cushions and cream as if they'd
never known anything else.  Fred can't bear them. He wanted me to have a
Pekinese with a pedigree, but _I_ haven't a pedigree, so I don't want an
animal with one.  Slightly and Onions are such grateful devils, too.
Would you really like a bath now?  After you've had it we'll have tea.
China tea at four and six a pound, my dear! Think of that!  I believe I
could drink tea dust and enjoy it if I knew it was expensive."

While Alexandra luxuriated in her bath, reckless for once of the
quantity of water she used, Maggy took the opportunity of providing
something exceptional in the way of tea.  It began with poached eggs and
finished with strawberries and cream.  Maggy was not a bit hungry; she
had lunched late with Woolf.  But she knew Alexandra had been denying
herself food and would eat heartily so long as she could do so in
company.  So she crammed loyally, ignoring the physical discomfort it
inflicted on her.

Finally she put Alexandra into the most comfortable of her chairs and
drew another close to it.  Onions lay at her feet, Slightly was curled
on her lap.

"Now tell me what you've been doing to get an engagement," she said.

"There's nothing to tell.  No luck anywhere, that's all."

Maggy sighed.  "I wish you could live here. That's impossible, I know.
But why be so proud? Let me lend you a few pounds."

"I can't.  I've not used the money you left.  I meant to give it back to
you, but I forgot."

"You make me angry.  Isn't my money good enough?  I'm sorry, Lexie.
You've got such cracked ideas."

Alexandra decided to be frank.

"It isn't that," she said.  "I would take your money if I dared and be
grateful for it.  I would sooner borrow from you than from any one.  But
if I began to borrow, even from you, I should find it more difficult to
keep straight.  I've never said as much to anybody before, but I don't
want you to think I won't take it because it's you who are offering it."

"I think I know what you mean.  Once you've taken the first step you're
afraid you'll go on slithering.  But you've got to take some sort of
step to get a job.  De Freyne said we were shabby, Lexie; but if he
could see you now!  What's the use of being nearly the same size as your
best friend if you won't let her lend you a dress or two?  Answer me
that.  That's not borrowing. That oughtn't to hurt your pride.  We used
to swop things.  And I've got a dress and a hat, and a pair of shoes in
the other room that are too small for me.  You must have them, Lexie.
No one'll look at you as you are.  When managers see a girl looking
shabby they only think of the reputation of their stage-door.  If you'll
just let me give you a leg-up toward a job!  Let me drive you round to
the agencies in the car instead of walking.  I won't take 'no.'  It's
Maggy's call this time."

She prevailed in the end, forced the new frock on Alexandra and the
shoes that were too small; stuffed other things into the parcel when she
wasn't looking--a veil and some gloves, a pot of Bovril from her
sideboard, a tin of biscuits, a bottle of scent and other things.
Alexandra found them all when she got home.  They dropped out of the
most unexpected places.  There was a box of chocolates in one sleeve,
some very nice soap in another.  A silk petticoat was wrapped round a
bottle of lemon squash.  It was so like Maggy's indiscriminate largesse.
Where she loved, she was constrained to give, always with both hands.
Before Alexandra left she showed her a photograph.

"Fred," she said.  "Isn't he handsome? He's got one white tuft in his
black hair.  I wish you knew him, Lexie."  Alexandra had all along been
afraid she was going to say that.  "I wish you _would_ meet him."  Her
voice was wistful. "I'm so proud of you.  I've talked about you to him
such a lot.  I believe if he were to see you he'd--think more of me,"
she added humbly.

"Doesn't he think a lot of you?" asked Alexandra, surprised.  She put
down the photo.  The face, handsome, albeit brutal, did not appeal to
her.

"In a way.  But I don't think he really believes you're a lady ... that
a lady would be real friends with me.  It's difficult to explain."

Alexandra felt sure she would not like Woolf. She instantly resented
what she suspected must be his attitude toward Maggy.

"You'd be doing me a favor," Maggy said. "Would you mind very much?"

Alexandra shrank from meeting Woolf because instinctively she guessed
the kind of man he was. The photograph almost told her.  It showed her a
man, not a gentleman, yet whose money bought him the right of way
amongst gentlemen, the type of man who would assume that every woman,
not a lady, had her price.  She felt sorry for Maggy.

"I will meet him if you're very keen about it," she said at length.  It
seemed so grudging, so ungrateful to refuse the one thing required of
her. Maggy would have done, had done, more than that for her.  She
acknowledged the concession now with a spontaneous hug.

"I'll fix a day.  We'll have lunch together," she said.  "It makes me so
happy, Lexie, to think I've got you again--my friend.  Men say women
can't be friends.  They don't know. Have another look round before you
go.  You do think it nice, don't you?  Fred's taken it on a three years'
agreement."

"Is he married?" asked Alexandra suddenly.

"No."

"Then surely he might marry you."

"He would never marry me," said Maggy. "I don't talk about it.  I don't
think of it.  If he thought I'd got such an idea in my head I don't
believe he'd want me any longer.  He'd hate to be tied down to anything
or anybody for longer than a three years' agreement."

An oppression fell on Alexandra.  The room, which had been flooded by
the afternoon sun, was in shade now.  It looked colder, less intimate.
One saw that it was a room whose furniture had been provided _en bloc_
by a Company--the Company that owned the flats.  There was no individual
taste about it.  There was nothing permanent about it.  It was not a
home, and was not meant to be one.

"But after three years--" Alexandra began anxiously.

Maggy shut her eyes.

"If you ever love a man," she said, "you'll know one doesn't think in
years.  One simply feels--in minutes."




                                  XIV


Alexandra did not have to avail herself of Maggy's offer of her car for
the purpose of visiting the various agencies. That evening she received
a post-card from Stannard requesting her to call on Mrs. Hugh Lambert at
her house in South Kensington. Mrs. Lambert's name was familiar to her
as that of the wife of a leading actor-manager on whose stage she was
never seen.  She toured the provinces with plays of her own, while he
remained in London or visited New York, in both of which cities he was
the idol of a vast number of impressionable women.

You could hardly pick up an illustrated paper without finding Hugh
Lambert's photograph in it. You could buy picture post-cards of him at
every shop where such things are on sale--full-face, in profile, in
costume, out of costume, head and shoulders, half-length, full-length.
How he was able to devote so much time to being photographed and yet get
a reasonable amount of sleep was a mystery that did not seem capable of
explanation. He was immensely popular and very good-looking in an
effeminate way.  Before arriving at the dignity of actor-management his
talent for poetic interpretation had been freely recognized.  But
success had spoilt him.  Now he was mannered. Costume parts were his
hobby.  The story went that, at one of his dress-rehearsals in which he
was figuring as a Roman general in gilded armor, he asked a lady present
what she thought of his appearance, and that her answer had been: "Oh,
Mr. Lambert, what a girl you are for clothes!"

As Lambert's reputation had increased, so that of his wife had
diminished.  At one time she had promised to develop into an actress of
renown.  But for some reason difficult to understand she never quite
succeeded.  The critics said she lacked "personal magnetism," that touch
of attractiveness that gets the actress's individuality across the
footlights.  The fact remains that she failed to please the public in
the big roles that fell to her in her husband's productions.  London
dropped her, and Hugh Lambert's name blazed alone in colored electric
lights across the front of his theater.

Then came a whisper of his marital infidelity. The couple separated.
From this time onwards Mrs. Lambert was seldom seen on the London stage.

Her career was a disappointing one.  None knew it better than herself.
Technically and emotionally she was a finer actress than her husband's
leading lady, finer indeed than most of the leading ladies of other
managers.  That she became a great attraction in the Provinces was
nothing to her.  She loathed the Provinces, their inadequate theaters,
their inferior hotels, and the incessant traveling.  At thirty-five she
found herself as it were back at the collar-work of her earlier days of
struggle, and without its compensations. Then, conjugal affection and
the stimulus of ambition still unachieved had made touring bearable and
often enjoyable because she shared it with Lambert.

Now she was alone.

She hated the sordid manufacturing towns and their unsophisticated
audiences, the eternal sameness of the self-vaunted watering-places, the
dull spas where fashionable frequenters of the pump room would
condescend to patronize her whom they would not pay to see in London.
She was a tired woman.

To her came Alexandra at eleven o'clock on the morning appointed.  She
had quite forgotten, until her maid brought her up the card, that she
had asked Stannard to find her a small-part actress who would also be
useful as a companion.  She saw Alexandra at once.

The impression the latter first got of her was a pathetic one.  She
never forgot it.  Mrs. Lambert was sitting up in bed.  The small oval of
her face was too pale for health, and her dark hair accentuated her look
of fragility.  On the dressing-table lay a rich copper-colored
transformation.

"I hope you don't mind seeing me in bed," she said.  "I hate keeping
people waiting.  It's so selfish.  In my time I've sat on dress-baskets
outside dressing-room doors waiting for hours till some selfish wretch
took it into his head to see me, although he'd made an appointment and
knew perfectly well I was there.  I vowed I'd never treat any one in the
same way.  Sit down somewhere and tell me about yourself.  What have you
done?"

"Very little," Alexandra confessed.  "I'm almost an amateur."

Mrs. Lambert made a wry face.  "Not a moneyed one, I hope?"

"I've got forty pounds a year."

"Officer's daughter's pension?"

"Yes."  Alexandra looked surprised.  "How did you know?"

"I'm one myself.  Officer's daughters can't do much when they're left
stranded.  They teach if they're ugly and sensible enough, and they go
on the stage if they're sufficiently pretty and foolish.  How long have
you been at it?"

"Three months."

"And how long in an engagement?"

"I rehearsed for three weeks at the Pall Mall in the chorus....  I
wasn't wanted."

"I don't wonder.  I can't quite see a girl like you in the Pall Mall
chorus.  You must have had rather an unpleasant time of it there.  Were
you worried by men?  Before I married I used to wear a wedding ring.  In
my innocence, I thought it would be something of a protection, but it
had quite a contrary effect."  She gave Alexandra a sympathetic look.
"Would you really like to come on tour with me?"

"Mr. Stannard didn't say what you required," said Alexandra.  "Perhaps
you won't think I'm experienced enough."

"Well, I want some one to thread ribbons through my underclothes, to
sleep in my room when I see bogies, and play a small part--a servant
flicking chairs.  I can't promise that it will increase your theatrical
reputation, but perhaps when you leave me, some minor manager might be
induced to give you a decent part on the strength of your having been in
Mrs. Hugh Lambert's company.  You'll go about with me.  I'll pay all
hotel expenses and give you thirty shillings a week.  If you're hard up
for clothes, say so.  I've always got a lot more than I want, and as I
send them to the Theatrical Ladies' Guild you needn't feel under any
obligation about taking them.  I hope you'll decide to come.  I should
like you to.  You won't be overworked and I'll treat you decently.  I'm
not a cat."

"I'd love to come if you'll have me."

"Well, we'll consider it arranged then.  Stannard will see to the
contract.  The tour is for three months.  I leave town in about a
fortnight, but you might as well come and stop here in the meantime.  We
shall get to know each other and rub corners off.  Would you care to?
Then come back to-night, somewhere about six.  You can help me with my
shopping and packing.  I'll keep you busy!"  She held out a thin
artistic hand.

There was no maid in the hall, so Alexandra opened the door to let
herself out.  A man stood on the steps, about to ring the bell.  He was
thirty or so, of an aristocratic type.  They both hesitated for a
moment.  Then he asked:

"Can you tell me if Mrs. Lambert is in?"

"Yes--I think so," she said.

"Would you mind telling her I'd like to take her to lunch.  I'll wait if
she isn't down yet."

"Yes, certainly," said Alexandra.  It struck her that he seemed to be
aware of the late hours she kept.  It argued intimacy.  "What name shall
I say?"

"Oh--Chalfont."

She went upstairs again, knocked at the door, and found Mrs. Lambert
with the morning's papers on the bed.  She was reading of her husband's
projected departure for America with his successful repertoire.  There
were tears in her eyes.

"I shall have to take to glasses," she said, looking up.  "I can't read
without weeping.  What is it?"

"Mr. Chalfont is downstairs.  He wants to know if you will lunch with
him."

"Please tell Lord Chalfont," said Mrs. Lambert in a low voice, "that
it's the anniversary of my separation from my husband, and that I'm
lunching on my heart.  But he can come to dinner to-night if he likes.
Ask him to put you in a taxi."

She returned to the newspapers.




                                   XV


"Lexie's coming to lunch to-morrow," Maggy informed Woolf.  "We must
give her a good one, Fred, and you'll behave, won't you, D.D.?"

"D.D." in Maggy's language of love stood for Dearest Darling.  She was
not free from the modern, time-saving habit, set by trade advertisements
and the halfpenny papers, of abbreviating words in common use down to
their lowest denomination.

"So she's woken up to the fact that there may be something to be got out
of you," yawned Woolf.

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Fred. Lexie couldn't be on the
make-haste.  She's not made that way."

"Sounds as if she's too good and uninteresting to live."

"She isn't uninteresting.  You'll like her. She's very pretty.  Do be
good and do me credit."

"Well ... I like that!" Woolf stared at her, half-amused.

"I mean, don't say the things you say to me. She's sensitive."

"My dear girl, don't teach me how to talk to women.  Judging by what
you've told me I'm inclined to think your copybook Lexie is a deep 'un.
I don't think I'll come, anyway."

"Oh, but you must.  I've asked her on purpose to meet you.  I want her
to see what a duck you are, and to like you, and not to think me bad
just because I let you wipe your shoes on me."

She slipped to the ground and sat at his feet. Woolf liked her in her
devoted moods.  Like many another unworthy man, adulation gave him
peculiar satisfaction.  Maggy was rarely flippant now.  She loved Woolf
with a passion that almost frightened her.  It was not a passion of the
mind. He dominated her in other ways.  She was too transparent to hide
how much she cared.  She gave too much.  It was her pleasure, when she
knew he was going to stay several hours with her, to take off his shoes
and put on the pumps which with a few other things he kept at the flat.

She commenced to unlace his shoes now.  Then she dragged his pumps from
under the sofa, kissing them first before she put them on his feet.

"You funny creature.  What makes you do that?" he asked, well enough
aware of her reason, but desirous of extracting an expression of it.

"Because I adore you.  I feel like Mary Magdalene or whoever it was who
broke the precious ointment all over her Master's feet. Oh, yes, I know
who it was.  But do you think she wouldn't have done it just the same if
He had been an ordinary man?  He was _her_ lord.  She never thought of
Him as everybody's Lord.  That isn't blasphemy.  It's love."

"You don't know how I love you," she went on ardently.  "Men think they
know how to love, but they never love as a woman loves.  I love you so
much that first of all I wish I had been your mother, so that I might
have held you in my arms when you were tiny and given you dill water for
your tummy aches, and bathed and powdered you.... And next I wish I had
been your twin sister to have grown up with you....  And next I wish I
had been the first woman in your life....  And next I wish....  Oh, and
I'm thankful to be--just yours."  She sat up, and went on in rather a
tense voice.  "I wonder if you'll ever get tired of me.  Could you,
Fred?"

"Well, I'm not yet."  He gave a playful pull at her loosened hair.

"And treat me like men treat the A.F.'s in story-books."

"What's an A.F.?"

"Abandoned female, you goose.  That's what I am.  And when you've
finished with me will you leave me to starve in a garret while you live
in a mansion with a beautiful and good wife?  And will I haunt your
doorstep and throw vitriol in your belovedest face?"

"What nonsense you're talking, Maggy."

"It isn't all nonsense.  It isn't only in the story-books that women do
that.  They do it in real life too.  I read about a case in the paper
not long ago, and the judge asked the girl why she did it. She answered
'Because I love him.'  The silly judge said: 'That's a funny way of
showing love,' and there was laughter in Court, in brackets. Laughter in
Court!  I expect it sounded to that girl like laughter in hell.  I know
what she must have felt.  I daresay she lived so long with the man and
loved him so much that she felt as good as his wife.  Then when he left
her, she must have gone mad, poor thing."

She got up and stood in front of him, looking very sweet and alluring.

"How long will you love me, I wonder?" she mused.

Woolf drew her on to his knees.

"So long as you look like you do now."

"You mean so long as I'm pretty?  Wouldn't you love me if I looked like
poor Mrs. Slightly? She's losing her fur."

"What's the matter with Mrs. Slightly?" he asked.

He did not care for Maggy's mongrel pets, and his tone was not
encouraging.  It put Maggy on her guard.  She had a premonition that it
would be best to hide Mrs. Slightly's secret until it could no longer be
hidden.

"I'm not quite sure," she said.

"Where is she?"

"I left her in the bathroom.  I'll get her.  She hasn't had her supper
yet."

She went out of the room.  Woolf heard her calling the cat softly, then
came a smothered exclamation, and she called to him eagerly, excitedly.

"Oh, Fred!  Fred!  Come here!  Come and _look_!"

He followed her.  She was standing before Mrs. Slightly's basket.  The
cat was purring, its eyes half-shut, tired after the tremendous function
of motherhood.  Six little rat-like, squirming bodies lay against her
own.

"Six of them!" breathed Maggy triumphantly. "Aren't they lovely!  Wasn't
it worth going on the tiles for, Mrs. Dearest?  The cat's cradle is
full, full!"

Woolf disengaged her arm from his.

"It's disgusting," he said angrily.  "You ought to have got rid of her
before this, or--or kept her in.  You can't keep the kittens.  They'll
have to be drowned."

Maggy looked at him blankly.

"Aren't you pleased?" she asked, surprised.

"Pleased!  At a sight like that!  Besides, you told me a lie.  I won't
have lies.  You must have known before you went to the theater that the
cat had had kittens--"

"I didn't.  Oh, how dare you say so!  Do you think I'd have gone out and
left her all these hours without any milk by her side if I'd guessed
they were coming so soon?"

She flew off, and came back with a saucer of bread and milk.  She put it
on the floor and went down on her hands and knees beside the newly-born
animals.  There was a rapt expression on her face.

"I don't think I'll stop," said Woolf huffily, and moved to the door.

He expected that she would call him back, but to his surprise she did
not even look up.  She was wholly absorbed with the natural phenomenon.
For the first time in their intercourse she was oblivious of his
presence.  She did not even hear him go.  She knelt entranced.

At last a sigh broke from her.  She became articulate.

"Oh, you babies!" she whispered.  "Oh, you little, little things!"




                                  XVI


Maggy looked forward with immense eagerness to the luncheon at which
Woolf was to meet Alexandra.  She had a double reason for desiring it.
In a sense, Alexandra's presence would mean that she no longer
disapproved of the connection: it would give it a certain sanction, an
authority it would otherwise lack.  Her other reason concerned Woolf
himself.  In spite of his assertions to the contrary, she was sure he
knew how to appreciate a woman of culture.  Once he saw how different
Alexandra was from the girls he usually met, his regard for herself
would grow stronger, if only because she had the advantage of the
friendship of such a superior being.

She was not altogether wrong in her assumption that Woolf liked a lady,
although it must be admitted he seldom felt at ease with one.  He was
only himself with declasse women, or a girl of Maggy's class, who had
few sensibilities to shock.  All the same, he was contemptuous of the
women whose society he frequented, and he had a sneaking admiration for
the women of the more sedate world to which he did not belong.  It was
likely that he would ultimately marry a lady, if he married at all,
since he considered that women, other than the class that will not give
itself away except in the bond of holy matrimony, were not worthy of any
such honor.  He was a cad, of course, but a cad of ambitions and brains.

Maggy's rhapsodies about Alexandra left him cold.  He did not credit
Maggy with being much of a judge concerning matters pertaining to the
aristocracy.  He did not believe that Alexandra had the breeding Maggy
was always vaunting. He merely supposed that she was more subtle than
Maggy, one who could ape superior manners, much as an astute parlormaid
can.

The fact that this friend so exclusive, according to Maggy, should
overcome her scruples sufficiently to meet him, knowing perfectly well
in what relation he stood to Maggy, was sufficient confirmation that she
had never had any scruples of importance to overcome.  He was amused
that Maggy could be so hoodwinked by one of her own sex.  But then Maggy
was a little fool--pretty and taking, and that was all.  He was too
egregious to appreciate that real friendship for Maggy, friendship which
overrode personal considerations, had induced Alexandra to accept the
invitation.

She turned up at the flat at the time appointed. They were to lunch in
the restaurant attached.

Woolf could not help being impressed with her appearance.  He could not
deny that she was really exceedingly pretty.  Her features were quite
perfect--white brow, small straight nose, well-shaped mouth.  He saw all
this at a glance, the cool, scrutinizing glance of valuation with which
he favored every attractive member of her sex, whether a duchess in her
carriage in Bond Street or a shop-girl on her way to work.

Maggy introduced her friend and her lover with mutual pride.  The tone
in which she did it left no doubt that what she would have loved to say
was:

"This is Lexie.  Isn't she lovely?  You know she is;" and then with a
certain dubiousness: "My Fred....  _Do_ like him.  Surely you must think
him handsome."

"Delighted to meet any friend of Maggy's," said Woolf cordially.  "Been
a long time coming round, haven't you?"

Alexandra instantly resented the unnecessary familiarity he put into his
tone, but for Maggy's sake she refrained from showing it.  Woolf was no
better and no worse than she had expected to find him.  He was merely
vulgar, from the salmon-pink handkerchief in his breast-pocket to the
too-valuable pin in his tie.

"I came as soon as I was asked," she answered equably.  "Maggy and I are
old friends. There's no reason why I should keep away from her."

"Of course, there isn't.  Only Maggy thought you didn't approve of--this
little show."  He waved his arm round the room.

"It's a dear little flat.  I like it very much."

Woolf laughed loudly.  "The flat's all right. Perhaps I should have said
our little menage a deux.  There's no harm in it.  Everybody's doing it,
aren't they, Maggy?  Come along to lunch, you girls."

If Alexandra could have run away then and there she would have done so.
She guessed what she was in for.  Maggy was looking nervous. She wanted
Alexandra and Fred to "get on," to like each other.  She had done her
best to make her lover avoid the sort of conversation Alexandra would
not like.  She was dreadfully afraid he was going to spoil it all.

As Woolf led the way down to the restaurant she slipped behind and
whispered:

"Lexie, don't be shocked if Fred talks a bit. I've told him not to
because you don't like it; but if he forgets--"

Alexandra gave her arm a little squeeze.  It heartened her.  Her adoring
eyes went to the big figure, striding on in front of them.

"Doesn't he look a dear?" she asked.  "Could I _help_ it?  Fancy him
wanting me!"

Her abjectness was a revelation to Alexandra. She had not conceived it
possible that cheeky, masterful Maggy, could have surrendered her
independence so completely.  In this man's company she was quieter, more
subdued, ever watchful to please, to laugh when he laughed--a little too
much perhaps, too ready to applaud his most commonplace remarks as
witticisms, his untasteful jokes as gems of wit.  She had a mind of her
own.  She hardly showed it.  His assertive manhood seemed to have
swamped her personality. All the time she was considering him.  He
scarcely considered her at all.

Conversation did not run freely during the first part of the meal.
Woolf wanted to shine in Alexandra's eyes as a good host.  He showed it
by bullying the waiters over trivialities, until she began to feel quite
uncomfortable.  His was not the quietly assertive tone of the man who
knows what he wants and how to order it.  It was obvious to the very
attendants themselves that he blustered in order to draw attention to
his importance, just as he would tip excessively and yet argue over a
trifling item on the bill.

Over his coffee and a cigarette his manner showed some improvement.
Still, he had not taken Alexandra's measure.  She was telling Maggy of
her sudden luck in obtaining an engagement, and that she was going to
stay with Mrs. Lambert.  Maggy was delighted.

"Oh, I'm glad!" she said enthusiastically. "It's tip-top, Lexie.  Fred,
did you hear that? Lexie's going on tour with Mrs. Lambert.  Isn't it
splendid for her?"

"Splendid for Mrs. Lambert.  Rather!" concurred Woolf, with heavy
gallantry.  "You'll have plenty of opportunities of ingenue parts with
the lady," he went on, knowingly.  "You'll suit her to a T.  You'll play
propriety, of course! Dashed funny, that."

"I don't understand," said Alexandra.

"Oh, come, we're none of us as good as we look.  Of course you've heard
about Mrs. Lambert and Lord Chalfont?  I told you everybody was doing
it."

Her crimson face and indignant eyes did not warn him of the blunder he
was committing. Maggy was playing nervously with the crystallized sugar,
afraid of angering Woolf by stemming the tide of his untactful
garrulity.

He bent forward, lowering his voice.  "It's like this," he said, and
began to give details of a liaison which Alexandra had no reason to
credit, details which were offensive and unnecessary. She was genuinely
shocked.  Involuntarily she pushed back her chair while he was still
talking and made the first excuse she could think of.

"I shall have to be going now, Maggy.  I'm so sorry.  I--I'm late for an
appointment as it is.  I--I'll come and say good-by before I go on
tour."

"Must you really go?" asked Maggy weakly. She knew that Alexandra could
stand no more. It meant that her poor little attempt at concord between
the only two people she cared about had come to nought.  "Fred, tell the
waiter to order a taxicab."

"I won't wait for that," said Alexandra.  "I shall be too late.  I ought
to go at once.  I shall find one in the street."

She managed a reassuring smile to show Maggy that though her feelings
were outraged she meant to get over it, and let it make no difference to
their friendship.  Now that she had met Woolf and learnt the sort of man
he was, nothing would have induced her to waver in allegiance to Maggy.
Maggy needed her though she might never say it. She knew she could not
bring herself to meet Woolf again, even for Maggy's sake.

He insisted on escorting her out of the restaurant and putting her into
a cab.  He was aware now from her almost monosyllabic rejoinders that he
had made a mistake, spoken in bad taste.  It was suddenly obvious to him
that she was a lady--the "real thing," and that he had offended her.
Simultaneously with this came the desire to know more of her.

"I believe you're annoyed," he said.  "Have I been a bit too
plain-spoken?"

"Here's my taxi," she said, disregarding the question.

He helped her in, knowing that she disapproved of him.  A natural
premonition told him that she would not be desirous of meeting him again
unless he could convince her he was aware of his error and regretted it.
He was distinctly taken with her, more now than ever that her
fastidiousness made her difficult.  He leant toward her and spoke almost
anxiously.

"I'd like to meet you again.  Can't you dine with me one night before
you go?  I'm sorry if I've offended you....  I made a mistake.  I
thought you were Maggy's sort."

The apology, so disloyal to Maggy, as well as insulting to herself,
inflamed her.

"You unspeakable cad!" she said.

Woolf returned to Maggy rather red in the face.  She had left the
restaurant and was waiting for him in her sitting-room.  She was afraid
to reproach him, and yet anxious that he should know he had blundered.
She was terribly disappointed.

"You shocked Lexie," she told him, and waited to see what he would say.

He made no answer.

"You thought her pretty?" she went on.

Woolf was biting his finger-nails savagely.

"Didn't you?" she persisted.

"Oh, yes.  Very pretty."

He had been repulsed, snubbed, and was rankling under the smart of it.
It made him turn to the girl who had nothing but devotion for him for a
salve to his wounded vanity.  The girl who had just gone was provokingly
desirable because of her cool eyes, her scornful mouth, her aloofness,
the disdain of her.  But Maggy was all his, living for him.

He took her in his arms almost savagely.

"You're worth ten of her," he exclaimed; and in his irritation believed
what he said.

Her body relaxed submissively in the grip of his arms.

"Oh, my God, how I love you!" she murmured, trembling.

She laid her cheek against his and stroked his hand.  "Will you do me a
favor, Fred?" she went on presently, unconsciously taking advantage of
what she regarded as a soft mood.

"What is it?  A bit more money than I give you?"

"No.  I don't want more money.  I've got enough.  I've never been greedy
that way, have I?"

"No.  More silly you.  Women should make hay while the sun shines."

She looked at him with soft eyes.

"When the sun shines some women only want to let it warm them through
and through."

"Well, what's the favor?"

She pointed at the basket containing Mrs. Slightly and her offspring,
which Woolf had not noticed.

"You asked me to have them drowned.  I'd rather find homes for them.
Please, D.D.?"

"But, good Lord--why?"

She drew away from him, walked over to the basket, and leant over it, as
if communing with Mrs. Slightly.

"I had a dream last night," she said.  "It's because of that I--I want
Mrs. Slightly's kittens to live.  I dreamt that I was a mother cat, only
in my dream I had but one little kitty.  But it was all mine and I loved
it.  It had soft black hair with a white tuft in it--like its father."
She looked straight at the white lock that was so singular a feature of
Woolf's dark hair.  "And one afternoon when I had come back from a
stroll I went to the basket to find that my Kitty was gone.  I mewed for
it everywhere.  There was nowhere that I did not look.  I couldn't
possibly, as a cat, know that the human I looked up to, the giver of
food and all good things could do anything so evil as to make away with
the precious thing.  It was a nightmare.  In my dream, I was searching,
searching for hours.  My cat-heart was breaking.  When I woke up, I was
mewing! Don't laugh, Fred.  And I made up my mind that I couldn't have
Mrs. Slightly's kittens drowned. Oh, the people who drown kittens and
take away calves from cows and lambs from sheep, must be hard-hearted
beasts.  Why, if I had a baby, a little soft warm baby, and somebody
wanted to deprive me of it--Fred!"  She caught at his arm.

Startled by the sharp note of appeal in her voice he put a startled
question.

Maggy had cast her arms protectively round the basket where Mrs.
Slightly and her kittens slept, all unconscious of issues concerning
their fate. Her shoulders were shaking.  She was moved by some
extraordinary emotion.  But when she turned to Woolf again she was calm.

"I am quite sure," she said.




                                  XVII


The change from the drab surroundings of the King's Cross Road to Mrs.
Lambert's pretty house in South Kensington made Alexandra feel as though
she had escaped from purgatory.  Hers was the temperament that withers
in a sad environment and expands in a bright one.  Whilst in her
lodgings she had had to put up with dinginess and discomfort: Albert
Place was the antithesis of everything unpleasant. She seemed to breathe
more freely there.

The house was small, Georgian and white. Great wire baskets overflowing
with pink climbing geraniums hung from its porch and balcony. Between
its green iron railings and the front door was a strip of well-kept
garden full of shrubs and ferns kept fresh and glistening with a
constant supply of moisture.

Inside it was equally delightful.  Mrs. Lambert had a nice taste for
form and color.  Where Maggy would have put hot-toned plush and
burnished copper the actress had quiet soft brocades and silver.  Her
furniture consisted mainly of delicate Georgian mahogany as decorative
as it was comfortable.  Alexandra reveled in it all.

Then again, the change meant relief from anxiety. She had something to
do, she would be paid for it.  For three months or more she would be
free from continuous alarm about the morrow. Here was occupation,
cleanliness, comfort, good food, agreeable companionship.  Over and over
again she kept reminding herself of it.

The days that followed her arrival were busy ones.  The tour was to
start in a fortnight. There was much shopping to do, packing,
preparation for it.  The small part Alexandra was to play, that of a
parlormaid, did not take up much of her time rehearsing.  Mrs. Lambert
did not rehearse at all.  Her understudy relieved her of that duty.
Occasionally she would spend an hour watching her company and conferring
with her manager, but so long as things went on smoothly, as they
generally did, she avoided the theatrical side of her affairs as much as
she could.

The fact was, as Alexandra quickly found out, Mrs. Lambert disliked the
stage.  She loved acting because she had a gift for it.  But she was not
eaten up with her own achievements and was quite free from the
artificial manner and the petty interests of average stage-folk.  Her
chief pleasure lay in getting away from London in her excellent Panhard
limousine on every available occasion and forgetting that she belonged
to the stage. Alexandra shared many a pleasant drive with her that hot
end of July, lunching in the shade of some quiet Surrey lane or the more
deserted parts of Richmond Park.

A day or two before they were to start on tour they met Maggy in a
Regent Street shop. Maggy's appearance was very striking.  Her coloring
just now was more vivid than usual.  She bloomed.

"Oh, Lexie!" she exclaimed, "I was half afraid you'd gone off without
saying good-by."

"You know I wouldn't have done that," Alexandra protested.

"I haven't given her a moment to herself," put in Mrs. Lambert.  She was
looking at Maggy with the frank admiration of an unjealous woman. "Are
you great friends, you two?" she asked.

"We used to chum together," Maggy said. "Lexie is my patron saint."

"Well, then you must see more of her before she goes.  Won't you come
and lunch with us to-morrow?--seventy-four, Albert Place."

"I should love to," Maggy answered eagerly. "May I really?"

"Yes, do," said Mrs. Lambert.  "Half-past one."

She nodded, and Maggy moved away to join Woolf, who had come in.  He
glanced curiously at Alexandra as she and Mrs. Lambert left the shop.

"That's Mrs. Lambert, with Lexie," Maggy told him.  "I was just talking
to them. Mrs. Lambert asked me to lunch at her house.  Isn't it kind of
her?  She looked at me so nicely too. Our hearts seemed to shake hands."

Woolf had scarcely noticed Mrs. Lambert. He had only had eyes for
Alexandra, and was incensed because she had not acknowledged him.

"Your precious particular friend cut me," he said.  "I suppose you saw
that."

"I'm sure she couldn't have seen you.  Why should she cut you?"

Woolf had his own reasons for surmising why she had done so, but he was
not going to give them.

"I should like you to drop that friendship," he said vindictively.

"Drop Lexie?  Me?  You're joking!"

"I'm not."

Maggy very seldom argued with Woolf.  Her subjugation was nearly
complete, but she still had some spirit left.  She showed it now.

"I gave up living with Lexie to come to you," she reminded him.

"Do you regret it?"

"I don't, but I probably shall.  Anyway, instead of turning up her nose
at me she's behaved like a darling.  I couldn't go back on her.  Why,
I--I'd rather have drowned Mrs. Slightly's kittens with my own hands
than been so mean as that!"

"Well, you needn't lunch with her at Mrs. Lambert's.  You might meet
Lord Chalfont there."

"It's not in the least likely.  But what would it matter if I did?"

"I don't like him."

"I thought you said you didn't know him?"

"I've never spoken to the bounder, if that's what you mean," said Woolf
testily.

"I don't understand you.  You generally don't care what I do or where I
go when I'm not with you.  When I see Lexie again I shall tell her
you're huffy with her."

Now Alexandra had not deliberately meant to cut Woolf.  She would not
have done so out of consideration to Maggy; but as she had only seen his
reflection in one of the shop mirrors she did not consider it necessary
to turn round and bow to him.  Besides, she knew he was the sort of man
Mrs. Lambert would not care about, and it was quite likely that if she
had acknowledged him he would have presumed on her good nature.

"What a lovely girl!" Mrs. Lambert said, when they were in the street.
"She's a joy to look at.  Who was the man who joined her?  I seem to
know his face.  He looked Jewish."

"His name is Woolf."

"I wonder if he's the person who is exploiting Primus cars.  He owns
some racehorses too, and a sporting paper."

"It's the same," said Alexandra.

"Lord Chalfont knows more about him than I do.  He had him turned out of
his club.  It's an exclusive one, and some thoughtless young fellow had
brought him in.  I don't think he's very nice, dear.  What a pity he
knows your friend."

Alexandra hesitated.  She guessed that Mrs. Lambert had asked Maggy out
of consideration to herself.  But if she knew that Woolf and Maggy were
intimate perhaps she would wish to rescind that invitation.  Alexandra
did not want to be disloyal to Maggy, nor yet to let Mrs. Lambert be
deceived about her.

"Maggy thinks a lot of him," she hesitated. "I don't want to talk about
her because she is my friend, but--"

Mrs. Lambert laid her hand on Alexandra's for a moment.

"The majority of us have got a 'but' in our lives," she said in a
curious tone, and then added with apparent irrelevance, "Did I tell you
that Lord Chalfont will be staying with us on tour?"




                                 XVIII


Maggy meant to disregard Woolf's injunction against her going to Mrs.
Lambert's. The temptation to see Alexandra was too strong to resist.
Moreover, she thought it likely that he would forget having made it.
Then, if she went and he still objected, she would admit having
disobeyed him.  She would not lie about it.  She never did tell lies;
not on moral grounds but because lying was cowardly and she did not know
the meaning of cowardice.

Woolf had been a little overbearing with her lately, too much the
master.  She did not mind that sort of tyranny so long as it implied
fondness, but she had a feeling that he was changing towards her.  For
one thing, she knew he was annoyed at her condition.  That hurt her
abominably.  In books she had read of husbands and wives being drawn
closer together, of estranged couples becoming reconciled under similar
conditions.  Indeed, she had hoped for special tenderness from him
directly he knew they existed.  She had even tried to delude herself
into the hope that he might marry her.

It was not that she wanted any legal hold on him.  She would not have
loved Woolf any more because of marriage.  But if he married her it
would be a guarantee of his love, which just now she had reason to
doubt.  That was all.  The rights which marriage confer on a woman meant
nothing to her.  She only wanted to get rid of the nightmare dread of
separation from him.  Any other girl similarly situated would have stood
out for marriage, but Maggy had too much pride for that.  She recoiled
from a more than possible refusal.

She felt thrown back upon herself, lonely in spirit.  A faintness
assailed her whenever she thought of what she would have to undergo
without a soul knowing of it except Woolf.  And on this subject, so
closely connecting them, Woolf was cold and remote.  He would have shown
more concern had she cut her finger.  She wanted comfort.  It would have
helped her to confide in some sympathetic woman.  She wondered whether
she dared tell Alexandra, and decided that it would not be fair or even
expedient.  Virginal Alexandra would not understand, or if she
understood she would be more afraid than Maggy herself.  Obviously she
could neither reassure nor comfort her, since the thing was right out of
her experience, and always would be.  Poor Maggy! Her abundant vitality,
her pulsing affections, made motherhood infinitely desirable to her.  As
a child she had scarcely had time to play with dolls because she was
always on the stage, but she had always yearned over babies.  Nature,
which takes no account of the individual, concerned only with the
reproduction of the race, had intended her to be a mother.  Man-made
shibboleths were to deny her that right.

She took great pains in dressing for her visit to Mrs. Lambert's.  She
was free from the spirit of feminine emulation, but she wanted to look
her best, to please Alexandra's critical taste, so that she might
remember how she looked that day, in case they might never see each
other again. Maggy had never before been inclined to depression, but the
clammy fingers of morbidity touched her now.

She elected to wear a frock of sprigged muslin and a simple hat that she
had trimmed herself. The hat was in part a concession to Woolf, for she
took pleasure in such tasks, and liked him to see that she could excel
in them.  Thus dressed, she was quite perfect.  Her coloring was so
vivid and her figure so mature that extreme simplicity suited her.  But
she was not quite satisfied with the effect.  Her eyes roved over the
dressing-table in search of some finishing touch, and came to a stop at
her jewel-case.  From it she took a diamond bracelet Woolf had given
her, and put it on.  He had bestowed it on her with great
impressiveness, and she accordingly believed it to be very valuable.

When she reached Albert Place neither Mrs. Lambert nor Alexandra was in.
They had been detained somewhere and had telephoned through to say so.
The maid showed her into the drawing room.  Somewhat to her dismay she
found it occupied by a man.  She did not know him by sight, but she
immediately came to the conclusion that he must be Lord Chalfont.  She
felt awkward, uncertain whether it was "proper" to speak or not.  She
had not encountered any men of rank before, and had not the average
chorus girl's assurance with male members of the peerage.

Lord Chalfont got up.

"I fancy we're both here for the same reason: to lunch," he said
pleasantly.  "Shall we become known to each other?  I'm Lord Chalfont."

"My name's Delamere," rejoined Maggy.

"We both owe something to the French, then. It ought to provide us with
a sort of _entente cordiale_."

"Oh, I don't believe Delamere's my right name. It's too high-falutin'.
But it's the only one I know of.  My mother took it for the stage and it
had to do for my christening."

The statement was made quite innocently. Chalfont was amused.

"I'm sure I've seen you before," he said.

His easy manner gave her confidence.  She liked him.  She felt she could
talk to him without being on her guard.  The way in which he looked at
her had nothing disturbing in it.  It was not the hunting look which she
was accustomed to see in men's eyes, and against which she was for ever
armed.  If there was a touch of admiration in it there was also respect.
She recognized the difference, and knew she had to do with a gentleman.
Woolf had spoken of him as a bounder.  There he was obviously wrong.
Lord Chalfont looked the sort of person she had seen in historical
pictures, dressed in silk and lace, walking unconcernedly to have his
head chopped off.

"I daresay you've seen me often," she agreed. "I'm in the front row at
the Pall Mall Theater--black chiffon over pink.  Then I'm somebody's
boot polish in the advertisements--my photograph, you know--cleaning my
own shoes without dirtying my frock.  And I'm somebody else's
motorcoats, and nearly everybody's mouth-wash and cigarettes."

Chalfont laughed.

"By Jove!  Do you know, I've always wondered who they got to sit for
those advertisements. How's it arranged?  Do you mind telling me?"

"Not at all.  Sometimes the people--cigarettes or motorcoats, you
know--write and ask you to come and pose for them at their shops; but
generally it's done through a photographer. He gets paid for taking the
photos, and you get a little cheque and a lot of advertisement.  When
it's for a mouth-wash you have to put on a broad grin and show your
teeth.  It's awfully tiring sometimes.  For a hair-restorer you wear
your hair down, and if you haven't much they fluff it out with a long
switch so as to make people believe in the stuff."

"You're not tempted to use it, I suppose?"

"Rather not!  I've got too much hair as it is. It won't even fall out in
the autumn and spring."

"How about the cigarettes?"

"Oh, I daresay they're all right, though I don't suppose you'd want to
smoke them."

"Just what I thought.  Personally, I never buy anything that's
advertised if I can help it.  When I have it I invariably have a feeling
that I'm being taken in."

"I think it's the women more than the men who are taken in," said Maggy
thoughtfully. "Women believe anything they see in the papers. I used to
once."

"But not now?"

She shook her head.  "You get to know a lot about make-believe when
you're on the stage."

"I suppose you do.  How is it I've never met you here before?"

"I'm Lexie's friend.  I mean Miss Hersey. Excuse my bad habit of
speaking of people by their Christian names.  I know it's not right.  I
don't, myself, like to hear women call their husbands 'Daddy' or
'Father' before strangers. It always sounds to me as if they wanted you
to consider yourself one of the family."

"But you know Mrs. Lambert, don't you?"

"Hardly.  I met her with Lexie in a shop the other day and she asked me
to lunch.  So here I am.  Have I come too early?"

"On the contrary.  I'm very glad you're here, relieving my solitude."

"I was afraid I was boring you.  I can only talk rubbish.  I can't help
it.  You see, I don't know anything about the things that sensible
people talk about.  Pictures and books and politics."

"I think you do yourself an injustice.  Please don't imagine I say it
out of compliment, but it's evident you are full of ideas, jolly
interesting ones, too."

"Everybody has ideas of a sort, I suppose. What I mean is, I can't
discuss any of the subjects that really matter.  Religion, for instance.
I know there are a thousand and one different ways of worshiping God,
but I haven't brains enough to argue about them.  I'm far more
interested in a thousand different patterns for crochet, or the everyday
things you see from the top of a bus. I'm just hot and cold, or happy or
miserable."

"Which is it to-day?" asked Chalfont.

There was no flippancy in his tone.  He saw that Maggy was an innately
simple girl, quite natural, and by no means unintelligent.  He found her
frankness very refreshing, and he could but admire her delightful
appearance.  He was anything but bored.

"Which is it to-day?" he repeated.

"Warm and happy--just now.  I'm not often miserable.  I love my life,"
she said.

She meant it.  The pretty room, the flowers abounding in it, the shaded
windows framing masses of pink geranium, the soft ease of the big
armchair she was seated in, so different from the new-art, unadaptable
chairs of her own flat, had induced in her bodily comfort and mental
contentment.  For the moment she had forgotten the anxieties caused by
her physical state. Unconsciously too she had fallen under the charm of
Chalfont's amiability.  She had never met a man like him.  She felt she
did not want to be on her guard with him.  Whether he was more honest or
more reasonable than other men she had known she did not stop to think
about.  Had she been asked for her chief impression of him she would
have expressed it in the word clean.

So while she waited for Alexandra's return she let her candor have full
play, keeping Chalfont amused by her cheery talk and quaintly humorous
accounts of her life behind the scenes at the Pall Mall.  She had
brought with her a number of picture postcards of herself to give to
Alexandra, for recently she had become quite a photographic favorite,
and these she showed him.

"This is the one I like best," he said.  "In the dress you have on now.
It's charming."

"The dress, you mean.  I'm so glad you like it.  I was afraid it was too
quiet.  I'm never quite sure about my dresses and hats.  My taste in
clothes isn't always quiet.  I love bright colors. They make me feel
warm and comfy.  You know how dogs like rolling in mud.  I have the same
feeling about colors.  If I see anything very bright and gorgeous I want
to hug it to me for joy.  People are always staring at me in the street
because of what I'm wearing."

Chalfont could quite understand that any one, in the street or
elsewhere, would find pleasure in looking twice at such a beautiful
creature.  But he did not say so in so many words.

"You need not mind that," he said.  "There's an esthetic sense in nearly
everybody that makes them glad to look at anything--radiant."

"Radiant means brilliance, doesn't it?  Talking of brilliance, do you
like this?"

She held out her arm with the bracelet on it. Chalfont had already
noticed it.  Now he gave it a closer inspection.  Whilst being a good
judge of precious stones he had a great liking for paste when it was old
and good, but what he saw now was merely a product of the modern
manufacturer.

"A French copy, isn't it?" he asked, thoughtlessly.

Maggy's eyes widened.  French--copy? Her diamond bracelet a
copy--imitation!  She could not credit it.

"But--they're diamonds!" she stammered, filled with a horrible
misgiving.

Chalfont noticed the sharp note of disappointment in her voice and put
it down to one of two causes.  Either she had been defrauded by somebody
or the bracelet was a present meant to deceive her.  He made haste to
modify the opinion he had expressed about it.  Looking at it once more,
he said:

"Is it?  I'm awfully sorry.  Of course, I must be mistaken.  Hullo!" he
interjected with relief, "here are Mrs. Lambert and Miss Hersey."




                                  XIX


Lunch was over.  Chalfont had taken his departure; Mrs. Lambert had
excused herself on account of a bad headache and gone to lie down.  The
two girls were alone. The personal equation began to trouble Maggy
again.

"I haven't seen you to talk to since you came to the flat," she said
diffidently.  "Were you really cross with Fred?  Of course, what he said
about Lord Chalfont was only what he'd heard.  I could see by your face
you were shocked."

"No, I wasn't exactly shocked," Alexandra answered.

"But you didn't like it.  Fred didn't mean any harm.  He's like me: he
doesn't think what he says.  I wish you liked him.  You don't, do you?"

"You make me uncomfortable, Maggy.  We can't all like the same people."

"But you're sorry I'm so fond of him?"

"Very sorry," said Alexandra in a low voice.

"I can't stop caring because of that.  It's--it's in my system.  Some
girls fall in love with a man because they believe he's good or noble or
brave or something they're particularly keen on; but if they find out
they're mistaken they're off that man like fleas from a dead rabbit.  If
that sounds vulgar please forgive me, Lexie.  The words just came out.
It's one of Fred's expressions.  What I mean is, I can't love like that,
though I know I should be much more comfortable if I could.  If I knew
you'd stolen Mrs. Lambert's purse or gone off with a rag-picker it
wouldn't make a bit of difference to me.  It's you I love, not what you
do.  And I feel the same about Fred, only more so."

Prior to this, Mrs. Lambert had asked Alexandra a few questions about
Maggy's relations with Woolf.  The answers she had fitted in with
certain information about the man himself previously imparted to her by
Chalfont.  What she deduced from the two statements made her sorry for
Alexandra's friend and a little anxious about her.

"No girl is safe with a man like that," she had said to Alexandra.  "If
I were you I should try and persuade her to break with him."

And Alexandra meant to try.  There was one weapon she might have used to
shake Maggy's loyalty to Woolf: the cruelly belittling way in which he
had referred to her just before her cab drove off.  But she shrank from
that.  It was too poisonous.

"What would you say if I asked you to leave him?" she asked.  "Supposing
I needed you back with me?"

Maggy weighed the problem.

"I should say you jolly well knew I couldn't come," she answered.  "I'm
all in.  If Fred was in Hell and wanted me there I believe I'd have to
get to him.  You don't know what it is."

"What is it?"

"It's the little things about him that have eaten into me.  I'm
corrupted, or corroded, whatever it is.  Perhaps it's both.  I love the
white lock in his hair, the little pellet in his ear where he got
peppered out shooting once, the scent of his tobacco, the smell of a
Harris tweed suit he's got."  She sniffed sensuously.  "And there are
other things I can't tell you about...."

"If he were to die or married some one else you would have to resign
yourself to doing without him," argued Alexandra.

"Perhaps.  I don't know.  He's not dead or married, and I'm his.  I know
he could manage without me.  I'm just like an ornament to him. He dusts
me and puts me back on my shelf, and takes me down sometimes and has a
look at me. I hope to God he'll never drop or break me!"

Alexandra was disturbed by the depth of passion in her voice.

"I know what you think about Fred," Maggy went on.  "You think he's
something near a cad. Well, there are lots of women who love cads and
who don't know that they are cads.  Perhaps I'm one of them.  You can't
put me out of this, Lexie dear.  I don't know how it's going to end and
I don't want to know.  That's where real life is rather like the stage.
The tag to a play's kept dark, never spoken until the curtain's about to
hide the players from view.  If we knew how things were going to end
with us--knew the tags to our lives--I guess some of us wouldn't be able
to go on with our parts off the stage."

It was like arguing with a fatalist.  Her loyalty to Woolf was as
unalterable as destiny. Alexandra gave up trying to move her.  She
changed the conversation, and an hour later Maggy went upstairs in
response to a message from Mrs. Lambert, who wanted to say good-by to
her.

Mrs. Lambert's bedroom was in half darkness. She was still racked with a
headache, but she wanted to see Maggy and to hear whether Alexandra had
succeeded in persuading her to break with Woolf.  For this purpose she
had left the two girls alone together.  Maggy closed the door gently
behind her and tip-toed toward the bed.

"I'm so sorry you feel bad," she said feelingly. "It won't do for me to
stop talking to you.  That will make your head worse.  I'll just say
good-by and go.  Thank you for being so kind to me.  It was nice to come
and see Lexie here."

"You're very fond of her?" asked Mrs. Lambert.

"She's fine.  I lived with her, you see.  When you live for weeks with
another girl in one room, and don't have a cross word it stands to
reason one of you must be eighteen-carat.  That's Lexie. She never
complained or lost heart, not even when things were bad and I left her.
She's the quiet sort but she's a fighter.  There were soldiers in her
family.  It comes out in her.  But I've started to talk--"

"You don't tire me.  Sit down.  It's refreshing to hear a woman speak
well of another. Rather a novelty too.  Aren't you jealous of her going
away with me?"

"No, I'm awfully glad she's found you.  I was thinking this afternoon
how well she fitted in with everything here.  She's a lady, like you.
Things that I never fretted about because I wasn't used to them, she
must have missed terribly.  She's fine lace.  I'm crochet work."

Mrs. Lambert laid her thin hand on Maggy's.

"How would you like to come on tour with us?" she asked.  "I could make
room for you. But I suppose your contract at the Pall Mall wouldn't
permit of it?"

The unexpected proposition was tempting enough.  Under different
circumstances Maggy would have jumped at it.

"It isn't the contract that would stop me," she said with some
hesitation.  "But I've got a--flat."

There was a pregnant pause.

"And there's another reason....  I--I have to go away for a little while
... and I was glad that Lexie would be away.  Oh, what have I said? You
don't understand?"

"I think I do."

Maggy's face flushed crimson and then went white.  Mrs. Lambert's hand
still lay on hers. Contact with it gave her a feeling of sisterhood, a
longing to confide.  Her pent up feelings suddenly found voice.

"I want to tell some one," she choked.  "I've got to go through with
something I hate--and dread.  I've longed to speak to another woman
about it, but there was only Lexie, and she's not"--she stumbled over
the word--"married.  I wouldn't tell her.  It wouldn't have been right."

"Tell me."

"I--can't see your face," whispered Maggy fearfully.

"It's not turned from you."

Then Maggy unburdened her soul.  A flood of unreserved words broke from
her.  Mrs. Lambert neither moved nor spoke, but the grasp of her hand
tightened as the poignant story culminated.

"I daren't let myself think about it," Maggy's faltering voice went on.
"If I think too much my brain begins to rock, and I'm afraid.  It's
wonderful and awful and I don't feel the same. The other day I saw a
woman in the street.  She had such a pretty baby in her arms.  It was
too heavy for her to carry, and she looked dead tired, but I could see
by her face how she loved it, weight and all, and I had to hold on to
myself to stop from screaming out, 'You're lucky.  You can keep yours.
I--'"  Something she dimly discerned in Mrs. Lambert's face brought her
to a sudden stop.  "Why, I've made you cry!" she said contritely.  "What
a brute I am!"

"No, no.  Don't take your hand away," was the soft rejoinder.  "You poor
child!  My heart aches for you."


When Maggy re-entered the drawing room her eyes were suspiciously red.
She seemed anxious to get away.  She put her arms round Alexandra and
hugged her.

"Good-by, Lexie," she said breathlessly. "Don't forget me.  The best of
luck.  Mrs. Lambert's an angel.  T-tell her so--from me."

She tore herself away, pulled down her veil, and was gone, leaving
Alexandra bewildered.

Maggy stopped at a jeweler's on her way home. Taking off her bracelet,
she handed it to the man behind the counter.

"Don't bother to tell me what it's worth.  Just say whether it's real or
sham," she said.

It was sham.

She dropped it into her bag and went out, with a new pain gripping at
her heart.  She never wore the bracelet again.

After dinner that evening Woolf remarked its absence.  She had worn it
ever since he had given it to her.

"Where's your bracelet?" he inquired.  "I hope you haven't left it about
or had it stolen."

"Fred," she said, looking him steadily in the eyes, "I found out quite
by accident that it isn't real.  Wait a minute.  Let me finish.  You
know I don't care tuppence about the value of anything you give me.  It
isn't the cost I think of.  If you'd given me a ring out of a penny
cracker I wouldn't have changed it for another from somebody else a
million times its value.  But don't sham to me.  I--I can't bear it."

"I never told you they were real diamonds," he rejoined in a nettled
voice.  "If I didn't say they were paste you ought to have guessed it.
Anyhow, the bracelet cost me twenty pounds. Genuine stones that size
would have run to the price of a damn good race horse."  He gave her a
disparaging look.  "Why, all in, you don't cost me as much as one of the
animals I've got in training."

The words froze her.  She stared at him in dumb agony.

"Oh, my heart!" she cried, with a sudden catch at her breath.

He sat still, coldly indifferent.

"And I've given it to you!" she presently whispered.




                                   XX


Alexandra's longing to act, to appear before an impartial audience in a
play reflecting every-day life, was at last satisfied when the tour
began.  Her part was a very small one, that of a parlormaid only, but it
did not prevent her going through the usual phases of stage fright at
the first performance.  On the second night she was calm and collected.
At the end of a week it surprised her to find that she was no longer
under the spell of theatricalism.

Had she joined the company in the ordinary way the glamour of the stage
would have got hold of her and remained with her for a long time. As an
insignificant member of it, out of touch with its leading light, she
would have imagined mysteries where none existed.  But from the very
first all these so-called mysteries were exposed.  She was like the
assistant to the conjuror: she saw how things were done.

In the first place, Mrs. Lambert did not pose as any high-priestess of
the drama: she was rather contemptuous of the stage.  She thought of it
as a way to make an easy living, that was all. Alexandra's notions about
the stage were all associated with Art: Mrs. Lambert's were confined to
figures. She and her manager talked business unexcitedly for an hour
every day, never esthetics.  She was mildly amused when Alexandra showed
her enthusiasm for acting, as she did in that first week.

"You'll get over it, my dear," she said.  "It's not an art, merely a
matter of temperament.  If acting were creative one could take it
seriously, but it isn't.  The author creates; the actor only represents.
When I'm acting I often feel like the inside of a moving picture show.
It's all mechanical."

"But," said Alexandra, "you weren't always like that?  When you first
went on the stage--"

"I felt as you do, all emotion and inexperience. Now that I've lived and
am disillusioned I know that the stage is only a business, and not a
very edifying one.  The public don't see that side of it, fortunately.
They think only of the amusement it provides.  If they would stop there
it wouldn't matter: but they have such a mania for everything theatrical
in this country, such a desire to penetrate beyond the footlights, that
they quite forget the necessity for a curtain between the make-believe
of the stage and themselves. They're like a child with a toy.  They want
to see the inside mechanism, and directly they do they suffer the usual
disappointment.  I never take people 'behind'; if I do I always find
they never again want to pay for a seat 'in front.'  We're only
shop-keepers, after all, and shop-keepers don't invite their customers
behind the counter, any more than the customers are in the habit of
asking their butcher or their baker to dinner.  Somehow you can't get
the public to see things like that. Instead of keeping members of the
stage at a distance, treating them like kennel-dogs, they invite them to
their houses and pamper them.  It makes them more conceited and
self-sufficient than they are already.  I don't deny that a few actors
and actresses are decently born and bred, indoor dogs, so to speak,
knowing their manners; but that's no reason why the whole pack should be
made free of the public's drawing rooms....  Let us walk up to the
cathedral and spend a quiet hour there."

The tour had opened in a small cathedral town, and the three hours spent
at the theater each night hardly counted in their daily round.  They
motored about the surrounding country, or read, talked and did
needlework in the private sitting room of their quiet hotel.  Such a
life, placid and yet full of pleasant occupation, was delightful to
Alexandra.  She found the weekly change from town to town exhilarating,
and the journey each Sunday in Mrs. Lambert's comfortable landaulette a
luxurious mode of traveling.

At the end of their first week Chalfont came down and remained with them
for the rest of the tour.  Both he and Mrs. Lambert treated Alexandra on
terms of equality so that she never felt an intruder on their intimacy.
Before her they made no secret of their attachment, but she never
regarded it as anything more close than what might exist between old and
tried friends.  Sometimes she detected in Mrs. Lambert quite a sisterly
attitude toward Lord Chalfont.  That was probably accounted for by the
differences in their ages, she being a few years the elder.

Chalfont often asked after Maggy.  He had quite an open admiration for
her, which Mrs. Lambert shared.  But, unlike him, she seldom asked for
news of her.  At the time, Alexandra did not notice this apparent lack
of interest.  She was not able to impart anything about Maggy for the
simple reason that she had not heard from her. Only twice during the
early days of the tour had there been a letter from her.  After that,
although Alexandra repeatedly wrote, she got no reply.  She could not
help wondering at this silence.  It was not like Maggy.  Later, when she
spoke of it to Mrs. Lambert, the latter did not seem surprised.

"You're sure to hear from her soon.  She may be away," she said.

And a letter did arrive from Maggy shortly afterwards.  It was written
in pencil and strangely shaky, quite unlike her habitual hand, which
although childish, was remarkably firm.  She said very little, confirmed
Mrs. Lambert's prophecy by admitting that she had been away for a
change, owing to which she had not received Alexandra's letters until
her return.  She ended with a postscript which had evidently been added
in a burst of feeling.

"I love Fred more than ever, Lexie.  I couldn't exist without him.  He
has been such a dear since I got back."

Alexandra passed it across the breakfast table to Mrs. Lambert, with the
remark:

"It's from Maggy.  She doesn't say what has been the matter with her,
though."

Chalfont looked up.

"Has your friend been ill?" he asked with concern.  "I'm sorry to hear
that.  We must send her some flowers, Ada."

"Yes, we will," Mrs. Lambert concurred.

After breakfast he went out to buy some. When he came back Mrs. Lambert
was alone in the room.

"What beauties!" she said, lifting the lid of the box he had brought in
with him.  "Catherine Mermets."

She hung over the roses, the bitter-sweet of the memories they evoked
coming up to her with their delicate fragrance.  Chalfont always bought
her Catherine Mermets when they were in bloom, great masses of them; but
it was Hugh Lambert who had first given her a bunch of three, purchased
at a street corner at sixpence each in the days when sixpences were
scarce with him.

"I got them because they are your favorites," he said.  "I thought she
would be sure to like what you like.  Anyway, what's good enough for you
is good enough for anybody."

She put her arm over his shoulder and kissed him.

"You're always so thoughtful, and so loyal," she said.  "I'm getting old
and you remain steadfast.  It seems such an irony of fate that I can't
love you as you deserve.  Although Hugh has no claim on my feelings or
my memory, I can't forget him.  I give you so little, Leonard.  One day,
perhaps, some girl will love you worthily, and make up for my meanness."

He smiled down at her, shaking his head.

"Keep those roses," he said.  "I'll get Miss Delamere some more."

"No, no, I want her to have them.  Put your card in.  Shall I write the
address?"


Woolf was with Maggy when the post brought her the roses.  He cut the
string and stood looking on while she removed the tissue wrappings.

"Oh, roses!" she cried delightedly.  "Who can have sent them?"

They had traveled as well as could be expected of cut flowers, but they
were flagging a little for want of water.

Woolf pounced on the card that accompanied them.

"'Lord Chalfont,'" he read, and scowled at the club address in the
corner.  "Damn his impudence sending you flowers!  And how the devil
does he know your address?" he demanded angrily.

Maggy was perturbed at this outburst.

"You needn't mind, Fred," she said placably.

"Did you tell him where you lived?"

"Of course not.  You needn't go back to that. You said you'd forgiven me
for going to lunch with Mrs. Lambert that day.  You know I met him
there, and that's all there is in it.  He must have known that I--I
hadn't been well--through Lexie, and sent the flowers out of
politeness."  She turned the lid of the box up.  "The address is in a
woman's hand: Mrs. Lambert's. There's nothing to look so furious about."

The fact that flowers should come to Maggy from a comparative stranger
would not, of itself, have irritated Woolf.  She often received flowers
now, and from men she had never met.  Her good looks and prominence at
the Pall Mall accounted for this.  Woolf made no objection.  The
admiration of other men for her rather enhanced her desirability in his
eyes.  He took it as a tribute to his own good taste in having secured
possession of her.  But Chalfont's name affected him in much the same
manner as a red rag does a bull.  It blinded him with rage because it
stood for everything that he himself was devoid of--birth, breeding,
nobility of nature--and, moreover, because it was that of the man who
had humbled him by having him turned out of the select club to which he
aspired to membership.  That incident had touched Woolf on the raw.  It
was much as if he had been told that he was unworthy of association with
gentlemen.

He picked up the roses and pitched them into the fireplace.

"Damned cheek, sending you a few pennyworth of dead flowers!" he flared
out.  "I'll go and buy you some live ones!"

Maggy did not protest.  She had learnt discretion with Woolf.  He flung
out of the flat. Half-an-hour later a messenger boy came with a
magnificent bouquet of freshly-cut Catherine Mermets.

Maggy was so happy arranging them.




                                  XXI


In spite of the pleasant conditions under which the tour proceeded it
began to be evident to Alexandra that Mrs. Lambert was suffering from
acute nervous strain.  She would spend hours on the sofa in thoughtful
silence. Conversely, she showed undue vivacity on the stage at night.
Sometimes she evinced an almost feverish interest in the financial side
of her tour, growing depressed when business was indifferent and unduly
elated when it was extra good.

During this period Alexandra learnt for the first time that Mrs. Lambert
had a daughter. Inconsequently enough, as it seemed to her, Mrs.
Lambert's reference to the fact was the outcome of a talk between them
one day concerning Maggy. It showed the elder woman in a new aspect,
strongly maternal in her feelings.  The child's absence evidently
distressed her.

"Why don't you have her with you?" was the natural inquiry that rose to
Alexandra's lips.

The reply to this was as spontaneous as the question.

"I would love to!  But how could I?  Baba is ten.  There's Chalfont....
Children are so quick to notice things...."

Alexandra's puzzled look showed that she placed a very innocent
construction on the intimacy of these two.

"You didn't think we were only friends?" Mrs. Lambert inquired a little
reluctantly.  "It's not so.  I supposed you knew."

The admission did not actually shock Alexandra, but it pained her.  She
found it difficult to associate Mrs. Lambert with any form of liaison.
Lord Chalfont, moreover, had also given her the impression of being a
man averse from it.  That these two, in Alexandra's estimation so free
from the taint of theatrical libertinism, should not have been superior
to circumstances was singularly disconcerting.

"I did think you were only friends," she said.

Her voice was so full of disappointment that Mrs. Lambert half-regretted
her frankness.  She knew Alexandra to be a very pure-minded girl. She
felt she owed her an explanation.

"Friendship as you understand it is difficult, almost impossible,
between a man and woman in circumstances like ours," she said.  "Lord
Chalfont has remained unmarried on my account.  I think you must know
that my husband and I are separated.  Well, a woman is a very lone
creature without love and sympathy.  There are so many things she cannot
do for herself.  If there were nothing else there would always be the
difficulty of business.  I have to work for Baba's sake.  I couldn't do
it alone.  I _must_ leave her independent of the stage."

"I am so sorry," was all Alexandra could say.

"I believe you are.  My dear, when I was your age, like you I was full
of regrets for all the wrongs of the world.  I wanted it perfect and
morally rigid.  I meant to show that an actress could still be a lady
and quite virtuous.  I don't think I've disproved the one, but the Fates
have been too strong for me to fulfill the second qualification.  I had
to separate from my husband.  I did not want to.  I loved him.  I have
nothing to reproach myself with for the rupture between us. But for that
I should always have been a faithful wife.  I only thought of his
career.  I used to fight all his battles, on and off the stage.  At one
time I did all his business for him because he hated it.  In those days
he wasn't spoilt.  He was just a fascinating, childish person with all
the sensitiveness of an artistic temperament.  He was very fond of me,
too....  Then came the time when he went into management, and there was
no part for me.  I was not to play "lead" with him because he considered
me unsuited to it.  I was too proud to play a smaller part in his own
theater....  He engaged Mary Mantel.  In that play their love-making
brought down the house.  It was so real.  It _was_ real.  I found that
out very soon.  Mary Mantel deliberately took my husband from me.  He
was too weak to resist her--to resist pleasing any pretty woman.... I
told them both what I knew ... and we parted.  If I hadn't discovered
what I did, or suppressed my knowledge of it, I don't doubt but that he
would be with me now, behaving as a lover to two women!  ...  For years
Lord Chalfont went about with me.  We were friends, nothing more.  I
always hoped Hugh would make atonement and want me back.  But I lost
heart, and Chalfont was always there, so patient and kind....  As a
Catholic I couldn't bring myself to divorce Hugh and marry him, and I
thought that if he should ever get tired of me I should like him to feel
free....  Because I am an actress, to whom all things are forgiven, the
voice of social ostracism had never been raised against our union....
That is the whole story.  Well, what do you think of me now?"

Alexandra did not know what to think, still less to say.  The only
comm

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