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 great menand the Marquis was a great manhe had his weaknesses. He fell genuinely in love with Miss Grey, and suspecting her liking for Derek Kettering, he could not resist the temptation to saddle him with the crime when the opportunity presented itself. And now, Monsieur Van Aldin, I am going to tell you something very curious. Miss Grey is not a fanciful woman by any means, yet she firmly believes that she felt your daughter's presence beside her one day in the Casino Gardens at Monte Carlo, just after she had been having a long talk with Knighton. She was convinced, she says, that the dead woman was urgently trying to tell her something, and it suddenly came to her that what the dead woman was trying to say was that Knighton was her murderer! The idea seemed so fantastic at the time, that Miss Grey spoke of it to no one. But she was so convinced of its truth that she acted on itwild as it seemed. She did not discourage Knighton's advances, and she pretended to him that she was convinced of Derek Kettering's guilt."

"Extraordinary," said Van Aldin.

"Yes, it is very strange. One cannot explain these things. Oh, by the way, there is one little point that baffled me considerably. Your secretary has a decided limpthe result of a wound that he received in the War. Now the Marquis most decidedly did not limp. That was a stumbling-block. But Miss Lenox Tamplin happened to mention one day that Knighton's limp had been a surprise to the surgeons who had been in charge of the case in her mother's hospital. That suggested camouflage. When I was in London I went to the surgeon in question, and I got several technical details


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 thrillingly a symbol of her essence. The noble body, poor blasphemed perfection, worshipped in the dead husks of statue and painting and yet so feared in its reality. He had to remind himself that it was irrelevant. How could any man with a full quota of biology help dream of mastering that cool, unroused detachment?

Ah, he had already had all of her that was imperishable: her dreams, her thoughts, her poor secret honesties. She had given him these, and nothing could spoil them. He had agreed with himself that his love was merely for her mind. (Distressing thought!) It was only the ridiculous need of keeping this passion to themselves that darkened and inflamed it. If it could be announced it would instantly become the purest thing on earth. It would be robbed of its sting. He imagined an engraved card:—

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 But this would satisfy no one. Perhaps not even themselves. And people don't like things to be pure: it casts a rebuke on their own secrets.

"Joyce, let's make our announcement at this party."

"What announcement?" She looked startled.

"Why, that our minds are engaged."

Her hand, in his, tightened a little, reproachfully.

"George, before you go down. Who is this Mr. Martin?"

"I don't really know; some friend of Phyl's. I never saw him before. She says he's going to do a portrait of her. I think he's kidding her."

He turned toward the stairs and then called her back.

"Listen," he said softly. "When I say something, after dinner, about putting the car away, that's your cue. Slip away and come with me. I want to show you something."


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HE kitchen, that had been a core of fiery heat all day, was now more comfortable. Lizzie sat in an easy slouch, elbows on the oilcloth table cover, enjoying her own supper before attacking the great piles of dishes. The cleansed air, drifting through the open window, struck pleasantly on the moist glow of her body. There was a light tread on the back steps and the squeak of the screen door. The cook felt too deservedly slack to turn, but removed her mouth from the ear of com just far enough to speak.

"Back early, ain't you?"

"Yeah. Brady's shofer was coming this way in their station wagon. Save me walking later on."

"Didn't expect you so soon, nice night like this."

"Well, Brady's bus was coming. Say, that fellow's got a nerve, all right."

Nounou tossed her hat on the shelf; ran her hands through her hair, sat down wearily in the other chair.


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 "Kids in bed?"

"Sure, before dinner. I'm glad you're back. You can give me a hand with the dishes."

"Where's all the folks?"

"On the porch."

Nounou got up, glanced cautiously through the pantry window, then took a cigarette from her bag and lit it. Lizzie, a native of Dark Harbour, reflected sombrely on the ways of metropolitan nursemaids.

"There's ice cream in the freezer if you want some."

"No, thanks. Brady's man blew me in the village. Gee, that boy's fresh."

Lizzie was a little annoyed at this repetition. It was a long time since any one had paid her the compliment of being fresh.

"It's the weather. Hot days and cool nights always makes trouble."

A brief silence. The kettle steamed softly on the range, Lizzie gnashed at her corncob, Nounou blew a gust of smoke and measured the stacks of dishes with a gloomy eye. Washing up was no part of her job, but she was somewhat in awe of the older woman; and the cook's dogged abstraction as she leaned over her food suggested that she had matter to impart.


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 "This place is certainly dead," Nounou grumbled. "Two miles to walk to the village, and a movie one night a week. Gosh, what a dump to spend summer in. Honest, Liz, I'm so tired workin', if I'd got that insurance o' mine paid up I'd quit a spell."

"Keeps you from thinkin,' don't it? If I had your job I wouldn't kick. Wear white clothes and lay out in the sun with them kids."

"You'd ought to get a place in the city. A good cook like you are could make big money."

"It ain't so dead round here as you might think. Say, you know that man was in the garden 'smorning, the one the children took such a shine to. Is he an old friend to the family?"

"Who?—the one that asked for a piece of cake? Never saw him before. I thought he acted kinda crazy."

"Well, they got him stayin' in the house. He must be someone they know pretty well, he calls 'em all to their first names. Say, I wish you'd seen 'em at supper, honest it was a sketch."

"Who all is there?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Brook, just usual sort o' people; and a dame they call Miss Clyde, dark and a bit serious-lookin'; and this Mr. Martin. Well, for the lovamike, when I go in to fix the table I


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 see smoke coming out from behind that screen in the corner, I think something's afire. I run over and there's Mr. Martin setting on the floor smoking on a cigarette. He looks at me sort of frightened, then he laughs and says not to tell anybody because he's learnin' to make rings. He stands around talkin' to me while I'm laying the table, and then Mrs. G. comes in. He says to her 'Do I have to go to bed right after dinner?' The funny thing is he's got a cheerful kind of way about him, you don't much mind what he does, he does it so natural. Of course she knowed he was jokin', she says he can set up as late as he likes. He says it's nice to be able to do whatever you want to and he asks me if we're going to have anything good for supper. Then he asks if he can ring the gong. I always like to do that, he says. Mrs. G. and me both busts out laughing. We laughed and laughed like a couple of fools. I was trying to remember what we was laughing at. I don' know, we just screeched. He smiles too, kinda surprised. There's something about him puts me in mind of the way I used to find things comical when I was a kid. I remember one day I got sent home from school for laughing. It just struck me funny to see the harbour out there and the


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 sunlight on the water and people going up and down the street talkin'."

Nounou tried to imagine what Lizzie looked like as a young girl, convulsed with mirth.

"They all comes in to eat. By and by, while I'm serving the consommay, he leans over and whispers to her—he's settin' at her right. No one else can hear, but I got it, I was right in back of 'em. When I'm in bed, he says, will you come and tuck me in? Well, I wish you could seen her, as red and rosy; she looks swell to-night anyhow in that silver layout o' hers. I never seen any one look prettier; I think that other dame, Mrs. Brook, was kinda sore at Mrs. G. for wearin' it."

Nounou put down her cigarette in amazement.

"You must've got them wrong," she said. "These ain't that kinda folks, you're crazy."

"You never know what kinda people people is till you live in the house with 'em. 'Course it don't mean nothing to me what-all stuff they pull. But listen what I'm telling you. This Mr. Martin is quiet, he don't talk an awful lot, but every once and a while he comes through with something that knocks 'em cold. Going to bed seems to be on his mind. Next thing he says, right out loud, 'It's nice being in bed, it gives you a chance to be alone.'


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 "I couldn't hear so much, bein' in an' out o' the room; an' the whole thing was on my shoulders anyways, because honest to God Mrs. G. was in some kind of a swound. I declare she didn't seem to know what-all was coming off. What with that Mr. Martin talking to me I forgot to put any bread at the places, and will you believe it she never took notice on it until Mrs. Brook piped up for some. When I pass Mrs. G. the peas she takes a ladlefull and holds it over her plate so long I didn't know what to do. Oh, of course, they all talk along smart and chirpy, the way folks does at a dinner party, pretend to kid each other an' all, but I can see it don't mean nothing. Mrs. Brook has some line she thinks a lot of, she springs it on Miss Clyde, I reckon you're wedded to your art she says, throwing it at her pretty vicious. It was bad for Mrs. Brook, I'll admit, setting between Mr. Martin and Mr. G. Because Mr. G. don't make up to her none, he's talking to the Clyde girl all the time; and Mr. Martin don't buzz her none neither. She sings out how much she does love children and Mr. Martin says But do they love you? A good piece of the time she has to talk to her husband, across the table, and you know that makes any woman sore at a party. Once and a while Mrs. G. comes to life


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 and says something about what a good time we'll have to the Picnic; this Martin says Yes, he hankers to see Mr. Granville climb a tree. Mr. G. wants to know what he'll be climbing trees for. 'Why,' says Mr. Martin, 'I heard her say you'd be up a tree if that check didn't come in to-day.' Then Mr. Martin says he likes the way Mr. G. and Miss Clyde look at each other, as though they had secrets together. He's got an attractive way to him, but it seems like he says whatever comes into his head. What-all way is that to behave?"

Lizzie had looked forward to telling Nounou about the dinner. Now she felt with a keen disappointment that it was impossible to describe it adequately. Besides, what she had intended to say would perhaps sound too silly. Mr. Martin looks like some old lover of Mrs. G's, she thought, that's turned up unexpected. He's kinda forgotten about her, put her outa his life. But she's mad about him, all her heart's old passion is revived. Better not say too much about these things to Nounou anyhow; she might let Brady's man go too far.

"Come on, kid," she said, getting up from the table. "Give me a hand with this stuff. I gotta get this kitchen clean, the madam will be coming


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 in here afterwhile to cut sandwiches. We get this finished, we can hit the hay."

Nounou smiled a little as she took the dish-towel.

"I'll help you clean up," she said. "Then I'm going to slip out a while longer."


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OW it was dusk: dusk that takes away the sins of the world. Under that soft cone of shadow, wagged like a dunce cap among the stars, are folly and glamour and despair; but no sin. The day was going back to the pure darkness where all things began; to the nothing from which it had come; to the unconsciousness that had surrounded it. The long, long day had orbed itself to a whole. Its plot and scheme were perfect; its crises and suspenses artfully ordered; now darkness framed it and memory gave it grace. Tented over by upward and downward light, mocked by tinsel colours and impossible desires, another cunning microcosm was complete.

"I like your orchestra," said Joyce. They were all sitting on the veranda steps. From the garden and the dunes beyond came the rattling tremolo of summer insect choirs.

No one spoke for a moment. Phyllis was enjoying a relaxation after the effort of the dinner table. It was no longer necessary to think, every instant, of something to say. Darkness takes the


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 place of conversation. It replies to everything. Like fluid privacy the shadow rose and flowed restfully about them; faces were exempt from scrutiny; eyes, those timid escapers from question, could look abroad at ease. Reprieved from angers and anxieties, the mind yearned to come home under the roof of its little safe identity. It had not forgotten the distractions that make life hard: quarrels, the income tax, unanswered letters, toothache: but these hung for a moment, merely a pretty sparkle of fireflies. I feel as though I were really Me, Phyllis thought. I wish there were someone to hold my hand.

I wonder if I do like it? Joyce thought as soon as she heard her own voice.

Come home, come home to yourself, cried the incessant voice of darkness. The soulless musicians of earth fiddled with horrid ironic gusto. Nothing is true but desire, they wailed and wheedled. Now they were fierce piccolo and pibroch; now they had the itinerant rhythm of bawdy limericks.

Special intensity of silence seemed to emanate from Ben and Ruth, who sat close together on the top step. In the general pause theirs was like a hard core: it was not true silence but only repressed speech. The smell of Ben's cigar floated


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 from him which confirmed me in that belief. I mentioned the name of that surgeon in Knighton's hearing the day before yesterday. The natural thing would have been for Knighton to mention that he had been attended by him during the War, but he said nothing and that little point, if nothing else, gave me the last final assurance that my theory of the crime was correct. Miss Grey, too, provided me with a cutting, showing that there had been a robbery at Lady Tamplin's hospital during the time that Knighton had been there. She realized that I was on the same track as herself when I wrote to her from the Ritz in Paris.

"I had some trouble in my inquiries there, but I got what I wantedevidence that Ada Mason arrived on the morning after the crime and not on the evening of the day before."

There was a long silence, then the millionaire stretched out a hand to Poirot across the table.

"I guess you know what this means to me, Monsieur Poirot," he said huskily. "I am sending you round a cheque in the morning, but no cheque in the world will express what I feel about what you have done for me. You are the goods, Monsieur Poirot. Every time, you are the goods."

Poirot rose to his feet; his chest swelled.

"I am only Hercule Poirot," he said modestly, "yet, as you say, in my own way I am a big man, even as you also are a big man. I am glad and happy to have been of service to you. Now I go to repair the damages caused by travel. Alas! my excellent Georges is not with me."

In the lounge of the hotel he encountered a friend


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 among the group like an argument. It had a sensible, civilized, matter-of-fact, downtown fragrance. It seemed to suggest that someone—even the crickets, perhaps—should put down a proposition in black and white. Joyce had a feeling that Ben and Ruth were waiting for any one to say anything; and that when it was said they would jointly subject it to careful businesslike scrutiny. Contents noted, and in reply would say

"Orchestra?" repeated Ben, in a puzzled voice.

"The crickets." (She tried not to make it sound like an explanation.) "I'd forgotten that nights on the Island were like this."

Martin was sitting just below her. He had been playing with the pebbles on the path, picking them up and dropping them. He turned and looked up at her.

"Like what?" he asked.

She had the same sensation of disbelief she had felt at the dinner table. One must be strangely innocent or strangely reckless to ask questions like that. George's face shone in the flare of a match: he looked emptily solemn and pensive as men always do while lighting a pipe. Joyce felt almost as though there were a kind of conspiracy against her to make her take the lead in talking.

"They fiddle away as though it was the most


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 important night that ever happened," she said, a little nervously. "As though they think it's a First Night and the reviewers are here from the newspapers."

"It is the most important night that ever happened," said Phyllis slowly. "It's now." There was a queer frightened tremble in her voice.

"There'll be a moon a little later," said George. He said it rather as though this would be creditable to him, as host.

"No, George, don't let there be a moon. Not everything at once, it's too much."

Something in George's outline showed that he thought Phyllis was merely chaffing him; but Joyce was more clairvoyant. For the first time she became aware of some reality in Phyllis: saw that she was more than just George's wife. There was in her some buried treasure that no one had ever taken the trouble to hunt for. Why, she's lovely, Joyce thought. In a sudden impulse she wanted to take Phyllis's hand; her own fluttered liftingly in her lap; she restrained it, for she felt that she would want to kiss George before very long and it didn't seem quite square to be in love with a man and his wife simultaneously. It would be extravagant, she supposed sadly.


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 "We don't need a moon," she said, "with Mrs. Granville wearing that lovely silver dress."

"It makes me feel as though we ought to do something special," said Martin.

"We can have a game of Truth," suggested George.

No one showed much enthusiasm except Martin, who wanted to know how it was played.

"Everyone must tell some thought he has had but didn't say."

Ben and Ruth felt more certain than ever that the evening was going to be a failure.

"A thought you've had ever?" asked Martin.

"No, this evening."

"You suggested it, George; you can go first," said Ruth.

"Ruth evidently believes that unspoken thoughts are always terrible."

"They can't be much more terrible than some of the things that were said at dinner," Ruth retorted.

"In this game you don't get to the really interesting stuff until after several rounds, when people get warmed up. I'll begin with a very small one. I was thinking that I mustn't forget to put away the car.—Now Ruth, what's yours?"


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title: Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/775


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 "That Miss Clyde probably has a very becoming bathing suit."

"I was thinking I heard one of the children calling," said Phyllis. "But it wasn't, it was only a singing in my nose."

"What a funny nose," said Martin.

"Don't you know how something seems to get caught in your nostril and makes a kind of singing when you breathe?"

Ben had had time to make a careful choice of the least damning of his meditations. "I was thinking that the crickets don't really sound like an orchestra. They're more like adding machines."

"Why, that's true," George exclaimed. "They have just that even, monotonous, cranking sound. Adding up some impossible and monstrous total. Counting the stars, maybe."

"I hope you won't think my thought is rude," said Joyce. "It struck me that if it weren't for Mr. Brook's cigar I'd be convinced this is all a dream.—I don't mean it isn't a nice cigar, just that it smells so worldly."

"Well, our secret thoughts all seem fairly innocent. But we haven't heard yours yet, Mr. Martin."

"I don't think this is a very interesting game," said Martin.


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 George insisted. "Come, the guest of honour can't escape as easily as that. Out with it!"

"Do I have to?" Martin appealed to Phyllis. She came out of her reverie, aware that even darkness is inadequate as a sedative. The threads of relationship among them all had tightened.

"I know what Mr. Martin's trouble is," said Ruth. "He says everything he thinks, so naturally he has nothing left."

"Why, that's just it," Martin said. "How did you know? What would be the good of thinking things and not saying them?"

"You're not playing fair," George objected. "No one would be crazy enough to say everything. Besides, there wouldn't be time."

Martin was stubbornly silent.

"I agree with Mr. Martin," Phyllis said. "It's not a very cheerful game. If we didn't say our thoughts we must have had some good reason for keeping them silent. Besides, I must speak to Lizzie about breakfast."

"I'll take the car to the stable."

"Can I go with you?" Martin asked.

George had still cherished a forlorn hope that the world was large enough for him and Joyce to have a few moments alone. For several days the stable had been sanctified in his anticipation.


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 In the hayloft above the old disused stalls there was a big doorway that opened toward the sea. That mustily fragrant place was his favourite retreat when solitude seemed urgent. There, he had thought, he and Joyce could talk. He had even put an old steamer rug on the hay so they might sit more comfortably. There would be moonlight over the water. . ..

"Is it the same stable where we used to play as kids?" cried Ruth. "Oh, let's all go. I want to see it again. Why, that old haymow was the first place Ben ever kissed me."

"What did he do that for?" said Martin.

"Perhaps he'll do it again," said George bitterly. It was just like Ruth to ruin the stable for him.

"Well, I don't want to spoil any one else's plans," said Ben.

"We could play hide-and-seek in the hay," Martin suggested.

Now they were all piling into the car, to ride round the house to the stable. This was of a piece with the absurdity of everything else, George thought. People were always driving up in crowds to visit his secrets. Like sight-seeing busses loaded with excursionists. The world loves to trample over your private ecstasies and leave them littered


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 with scraps of paper and banana peel. And this fellow Martin, with his cool mockery, was beginning to get on his nerves.

The engine leapt into life with the same eager alacrity as if they had been starting off for a long drive. Yes, the human objective means nothing to the routine of Nature. She looses her lightning indifferently, whether between the sooty termini of a spark plug or from charged cloud to earth. She squanders as much energy in a meadow of hallooing crickets as in a human spirit tormented by conflicting passions.

They made the circuit of the house. Down the drive from the front door to the main road, along the side of the house, then up the back lane by the kitchen and the circular bed of cannas. Only a hundred yards, but it seemed interminable because it was futile and meaningless. Something had gone wrong in his time sense. As the car passed the kitchen window he could see Phyllis talking to Lizzie, holding up a loaf of bread as she spoke. At the same moment Ruth was saying something about the moon coming up. His mind went off in a long curve. He felt a gush of anger at Phyllis because she had been so unaware of his feeling for Joyce. If she had been spiteful, or jealous, or suspicious, how much easier it would


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 have been. Her pettiness would have driven him and Joyce blissfully into each other's arms, without the faintest sense of remorse. But this strangely detached Phyllis who seemed to move in a dream, instead of the familiar Phyllis of tempers and reproaches, was a different problem. Even sin, he thought furiously, is to be made as difficult as possible for me. And I had always imagined it would be so easy. Will God ever forgive me if I don't commit the sins I was intended to? God will get no praise from me, He's packed the house with a claque of crickets to put the show over. Through the window Phyllis's golden head shone in a haze of lamplight. As always, when angry at her he loved her most. When you love a woman, why make her life miserable by marrying her? Marriage demands too much. . ..

From this speculation he came back to find Ruth just finishing her sentence, the car still opposite the window, the loaf of bread still lifted in Phyllis's hand. It occurred to him that this evening was damnably like the slowed motion-pictures in which the stream of life is retarded into its component gestures. Now he was to have the embarrassment of witnessing the actual rhythm of living, the sluggish pattern that underlies gay


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 human ritual, the grave airy dancing of creation treading softly its dark measure to unheard, undreamed music. The smallest alteration in the mind's pace changes everything, as some trifling misprint turns a commonplace newspaper headline into obscenity.

They drove into the stable.

"I miss the nice old horsey smell," said Ruth. "Too bad, it's only a garage now."

"Which was it you wanted to revive, the horsey smell or the embraces of Ben?" said George. "The loft hasn't changed much, I think."

He snapped on the light. While the others climbed the narrow little stair behind the old feed bins he filled the radiator with water and poured oil into the crank case. Morosely he heard their words overhead.

"Someone's left a blanket up here."

"Look, the bay's all full of moonlight. I didn't remember it was like that."

"We were children then, we didn't know about the moon. We had to go to bed too early."

"The old swing's gone." (This was Mr. Martin's voice.)

"Why . . . how did you know? Yes, that's where it was, that beam. . . ."

I thought that lunatic had been here before,


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 George said to himself. He seems to know his way about.

He started the motor again. He thought he had noticed a faint roughness in its turning. He listened attentively, marvelling at the strong, hurrying fidelity of those airy explosions. I know why this car has kept her youth, he thought. She hasn't had any proper care, but she's been loved. A soft throbby purring, with a sweet quavering rhythm; the sound of sliding, of revolving, of vapour evenly expelled. It was a consoling, normal kind of sound; complete in itself; it shut out the voices upstairs. A touch on the throttle and it rose to a growl of unused power, a shout of fierce unquestioning assent, not much different from defiance. The old barn rang. It was as if an officer of some colonial regiment called on his legions for a fatal exploit, and heard in their answering yell a voice of savagery that might turn against himself.

He switched the key; the sound slid off into a soft conclusive sigh. There was an almost human breath of frustration in it. He closed the hood, his mind too vague for thinking, and saw Joyce standing there.

"I thought Mr. and Mrs. Brook would like a moment of privacy," she whispered.


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 He had her in his arms. On her soft lips was all the bittersweet of their long separation, of their mirth together, of their absurd and precious passion, denied by men and ratified by crickets. It was the perfect embrace of those who are no longer children, who can sweeten the impossible by mocking it a little. The tingling triumph of social farce, undreamed by poor candid Nature—the first illicit kiss!

"I suppose," she said tremulously, "that this really is what they call a Guilty Passion."

"My dear, my dear. What a queer world, where one has to apologize for loving people."

As though down a long avenue of distance he saw her in the perspective of her life: an exquisite gallant figure going about her brave concerns: so small and resolute in her single struggle with the world, and coming to his arms at last. He knew then that poets have not lied; that fairy tales are true; that life is hunger, and for every emptiness caters its own just food. Her mind that he had loved was tangled up with a body. Chastity was probably a much overrated virtue. For her sake, if she desired it, he was willing to make the heroic effort which is necessary to yield to temptation.

He held her close, in silence. Austere resolu-


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 tions slipped away like sand in an hour glass. For an instant his only thought was a silly satisfaction that she must reach so far upward to meet his lips. His mind taunted him for thinking this.

"Dear fool, dear damned fool," he said. "Yes, you're just as you should be: lips cool and eyelids warm. And as soft as I always imagined. Oh, it's not fair that any one should be so soft. Joyce, do you know why I had to have you here? It's just a year . . . you remember?"

"Yes. The day you were looking out of the window. How long it seems."

"We begin to feel like a nice old unmarried couple."

She laughed, her rare broken laugh.

"Oh, George, then it is really you. The Fourth you, I mean. I couldn't quite believe it."

Voices came down from the loft. First it was Martin:

. . . "That's what I like about her. She looks as if she's happy inside."

Then Ruth, with a scornful snicker:

"Happy? I dare say. Did you see the way she looked at George at the dinner table? That kind of woman's always happy with someone else's husband."


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 There was an inaudible murmur, then Ben's voice:

"It's a form of nervousness."

Joyce drew back from his arms. Her eyes were dark with horror.

"Oh . . ." she said with a sob. "Why are people so . . . so inadequate."

Ruth's little sneer, falling on them like a crystal spirt of poison, burned George's bare heart.

"Joyce, dear Joyce . . ." He put his hands on her shoulders. "I must tell you, I must. I've waited so long. Oh, it's so long since I've done anything I want to, I've forgotten how. Joyce, you don't know how I needed you. I was hungry, I was a beggar, you fed me with laughter and taught me how to suffer. You taught me how to love, yes, everything I love I love a thousand times better because I know you. God help me, I love even Phyllis better because of you. . . ."

With a gesture of pathos and despair she buried her face in his coat. They heard the others beginning to descend. To postpone for a few moments the necessity of speech, he turned wildly to the car and again started the engine. As Ruth appeared at the foot of the stairs, her mouth opening to say something, he speeded the motor to a roar.


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 "Oh, George," piped Ruth as they were walking back to the house. "I've left my scarf. I must have dropped it in the loft. Ben'll get it. Have you locked the barn?"

"No, we don't lock anything around here."

"You laugh at locksmiths," said Joyce.

"I'll go," George said. "I can find it easier than Ben. There's a flashlight in the car."

He walked back to the stable. A lemonade-coloured moon was swimming above the maple tree. He did not bother to get the torch but slipped up the stair, moving noiselessly on rubber soles. The scarf was lying just at the top, where the steps emerged into the old harness room. He was about to glance into the hayloft, to satisfy his sentimental vision of how it would have looked to him and Joyce, a cavern of country fragrance, a musk of dead summers still banked there in pourried mounds. He was halted, with a catch of breath, by murmuring voices. He peered round the doorpost. A slope of powdery moonlight carved a pale alley through the heavy shadow. On his rug, spread toward the open window, sat Nounou and Brady's man, ardently enlaced.

The whispering pair, engrossed in rudimentary endearment, were oblivious of all else. It amused


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 him to reflect that they must have been hiding anxiously somewhere in the loft while the visitors palavered near them. A single cricket, embalmed in the hay, chirped sweet airy prosits—solitary lutanist (or prothalamist) of the occasion. George stood smitten by the vulgar irony. There was cruel farce and distemper in finding his own dear torment parodied in these terms of yokel dalliance. The parable was only too plain. This back-yard amour was as rich in Nature's eyes as the kingliest smoke-room story of the Old Testament. Nature, genial procuress, who impartially honours the breach and the observance.

With the crude humour of the small boy, never quite buried in any man, he emitted a loud groaning wail of mimic anguish. He thrilled with malicious mirth to see the horrified swains leap up in panic. He tiptoed stealthily away, leaving them aghast.

This has got to end, he said to himself.


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F THERE were only one moonshiny night in each century, men would never be done talking of it. Old lying books would be consulted; in padded club chairs grizzled gentry whose grandfathers had witnessed it would prate of that milky pervasion that once diluted the unmixed absolute of night. And those who had no vested gossip in the matter would proclaim it unlikely to recur, or impossible to have happened.

Mr. and Mrs. Brook and Martin had gone on toward the veranda. Joyce lingered where the edge of the house's shadow was a black frontier on the grass. The lawn was a lake of pallor. Under the aquamarine sky, glazed like the curly inmost of a shell, earth was not white or glittering, but a soft wash of argentine grey. There was light enough to see how invisible the world truly is. The pure unpurposeful glamour poured like dissolving spirit on the dull fogged obscure of ordinary evening: the cheap veneers of shadow peeled away, true darkness was perceivable: the dark that threads like marrow in the bones of


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 things: the dark in which light is only an accidental tremble. Where trees and shrubs glowed in foamy tissue, hung chinks and tinctures of appeasing nothing. This was abyss unqualified, darkness neat.

She was drowned at the bottom of this ocean of transparency. She felt as people look under water, pressed out of shape, refracted, blurred by the pressure of an enormous depth of love. In such clean light a thought, a memory, a desire, could put on shape and living, stare down the cautious masks of habit. The trustiest senses could play traitor inside this bubble of pearly lustre; the hottest bonfires of mirth would be only a flicker in this dim stainless peace. Better to go indoors, join the polite vaudeville of evasion, escape the unbearable reality of this enchanted. ..

"Here you are!" said a voice. "Thank goodness. I want to ask you things. You're different."

It was Martin.

"What's the matter with all these people?" he exclaimed. "Why can't they have fun? Why do they keep on telling me they love me? I don't want to be loved. You can't be happy when you're being loved all the time. It's a nuisance.


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 I want to build castles in the sand and play croquet and draw pictures. I want to go to bed and get a good sleep for the Picnic; and that lady wants me to kiss her. I did it once; isn't that enough?"

Here was a merriment: to expect her, at this particular junction of here and now, to join his deprecations.

"Quite enough," she said. "But it depends on the person. She may not think so."

"It's Mrs. Phyllis. I asked her if she was ready for me to go to bed, and she said I mustn't say such things. What's the matter with her? I think she's angry. Everybody seems angry. Why is it?"

Her pulses were applauding her private thought: If Phyllis loves him, I can love George.

"And I saw Bunny in the garden. She says you're the only one who can help me because you almost understand."

"Bunny! Bunny who? What do you mean? . . ."

He must be mad. Yet it seemed an intelligible kind of madness: some unrecognized but urgent meaning sang inside it like a sweet old tune. In the misty moonlight she saw the great wheel of Time spinning so fast that its dazzling spokes


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 the venerable Monsieur Papopolous, his daughter Zia beside him.

"I thought you had left Nice, Monsieur Poirot,” murmured the Greek as he took the detective's affectionately proffered hand.

"Business compelled me to return, my dear Monsieur Papopolous."

"Business?"

"Yes, business. And talking of business, I hope your health is better, my dear friend?"

"Much better. In fact, we are returning to Paris tomorrow."

"I am enchanted to hear such good news. You have not completely ruined the Greek ex-Minister, I hope."

"I?"

"I understand you sold him a very wonderful ruby whichstrictly entre nousis being worn by Mademoiselle Mirelle, the dancer?"

"Yes," murmured Monsieur Papopolous; "yes, that is so."

"A ruby not unlike the famous 'Heart of Fire'."

"It has points of resemblance, certainly," said the Greek casually.

"You have a wonderful hand with jewels. Monsieur Papopolous. I congratulate you. Mademoiselle Zia, I am desolate that you are returning to Paris so speedily. I had hoped to see some more of you now that my business is accomplished."

"Would one be indiscreet if one asked what that business was?" asked Monsieur Papopolous.

"Not at all, not at all. I have just succeeded in laying the Marquis by the heels."


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 seemed to shift and rotate backward. But her mind still intoned its own jubilee: If Phyllis loves him, I can love George. It's all right for me to love George. Be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors!

"Bunny Richmond, of course. She's playing some kind of hide-and-seek round here. It's not fair."

"It is fair!" cried Bunny passionately. He could hear her calling to him from somewhere just round the corner of the path. "Oh, Martin, Martin, can't you see? I can't tell you, you've got to find out for yourself."

Bunny had cried out so eagerly that even Joyce almost heard her. She turned to look.

"What was that, someone whispering?"

"It's only Bunny," he said impatiently. "She's playing tricks on me. She wants me to go away."

Joyce had stepped out of the shadow, and now Martin partly saw.

"Why, I know who you are. Why . . . why, of course. They called you Miss Clyde, that fooled me. You're not Miss Anybody, you're Joyce . . . the one who gave me the mouse. You don't love me too, do you? People only love you when they want you to do things."


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 Bunny kept calling him, but he closed his ears to her.

"No, I don't love you," she said slowly. "I love George."

But she had to look at him again to be sure. He was very beautiful and perplexed. Perhaps she loved everybody. For an instant she thought he was George; she could see now that there was a faint resemblance between them. Then she noticed that George was there too. He had come along the path from the stable. His face was sharpened with resolve. He paid no attention to Martin, but spoke directly to her.

"Here's your scarf," he said, almost roughly, holding it out. Then he remembered it was not hers, and thrust it in his pocket. He made an uncertain step toward her.

"Oh, we can't go on like this," he said harshly. "This has got to . . ." He made a queer awkward gesture with his arms. She went to them.

"How funny you are," observed Martin from the shadow. "First you want to push her away and then you hug her."

Apparently George did not hear him.

"Why did you wake me?" he was asking her.


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 "Why couldn't I go on sleepwalking through life? If I had never known you, how much anguish I'd have missed. Oh, my poor dear."

"You mustn't talk to her like that," said Martin. "This is Joyce, she thinks once is enough. She isn't like Phyllis."

"Go away, Martin," called Bunny. "It's no use now."

George held her fiercely. His voice trembled on broken words of tenderness. His bewildered mind craved the ease of words, a little peace, a little resting time. Must this glory of desire be carried for ever secret in his heart?

"You'll hurt her," said Martin angrily.

This they had stumbled on, George's heart cried to him. It was none of their seeking. She belongs to who can understand her, insisted the sweet sophistries of blood. Joyce leaned up to him, the dear backward curve of woman yearning to the face of her dream.

"Don't you know me?" Martin appealed to her. "You gave me the mouse yesterday."

He was unheeded. They did not even know he was there.

"You're doing it too," he said to her bitterly, and went away.


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 "George, when did I give you a mouse?"

"A mouse? What are you talking about? You're going to give me something much better than a mouse. Do you know what I said to you once in a dream? I said, the worst of my love for you is that it's so carnal."

Her eyes met his, troubled but steady.

"And do you know what you answered?"

"No," she said pitifully. "Oh, George, George, I don't know about these things."

"You said, 'Perhaps that's what I like about it.

She clung to him in a kind of terror.

"I don't know whether I said that. George . . . don't let's be like other people. Does it matter?"

They stood together and the crickets shouted, rattled tiny feet of approval on the floor of the dunes like a gallery of young Shelleys. The whole night was one immense rhythm; up the gully from the beach came a slow vibration of surf. She was weak with the question in her blood, her knees felt empty. Perhaps that's where your morality is kept, in the knees, she thought. She slipped her arms under his coat, round the hard strong case of his ribs, to keep from tottering. The tobacco smell of his lapel was infinitely precious and pathetic.


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 "How do I know what matters?" he whispered. "We can wait and see. If it's important, the time will come. But I want you to know, my love for you is complete. It wants everything. Can't you hear the whole world singing it? Everything, everything, everything."

"I don't like the crickets. They're trying to get us into trouble."

Everything is so queer this evening, she thought. How did all this happen? I'm frightened.

"We've always been different from other people," she said. "We're absurd and pitiful and impossible. Don't let's spoil it, let's just be us."

His arms held her more gently. For love is beyond mere desire: it is utter tenderness and pity. Sing, world, sing: here are your children caught in the chorus of that old, old music; here are Food and Hunger that meet only to cancel and expire. Here, cries Nature in her deepest diapason, here are my bread and wine. Too great to be accused of blasphemy, she shames not to borrow the words of man's noblest fancy. Take, eat, she cries to the famished. This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And her children, conscious of lowly birth, can rise to denials her old easy breast never dreamed.


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 "George," said Joyce quickly, "is any one watching . . . listening to us? I've had the strangest feeling. As though someone was trying to tell me something, calling me."

"A singing in your nose, perhaps."

"No, but really."

"I've been trying to tell you something."

"Where did Mr. Martin go? Wasn't he there?"

"I didn't see him."

They turned toward the house. Its dark shadow hung over them, clear, impalpable, black as charcoal. They felt purified by mutual confession and charity.

"I think it was the house listening to us," she said. "Why am I so happy?"

He knew that he loved her. It was not lust, for though he desired her and a thousand times had had her in his heart, yet he shrank from possession, fearing it might satiate this passion that was so dear. So it was a fool's love: perhaps a coward's, since to be taken is every woman's need. But who shall say? Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.

He loved her, for he saw the spirit of life in her. He loved her as a dream, as something he himself had created, as someone who had helped to create part of him. He loved her because it was secret,


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 hopeless, impossible. He had loved her because he could not have her: and now she was here for his arms. The Dipper and the wind in the pine trees said, Poor fool, if you want her, take her. The black flap in the sky, where the starry pinning has fallen out (it opens into the law of gravity) said, It concerns only yourselves, no one will know. The tide and the whistling sand dunes said, She's yours already.

From the sleeping porch over their heads he heard one of the children cough.

"George," she whispered, "I'll do whatever you tell me."

He turned to her. "I'd like to see any one laugh at locksmiths."


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 Variants   Notes


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HEY were entrenched in a little fortress of light. The tall silk-shaded lamp made the living hall an orange glow, an argument against silver chaos veined with brute nothing. The clock, the clock, the clock, measured itself against the infidel crickets. Phyllis, in a corner of the big sofa, was in the centre of that protecting glitter. She was panoplied in light: it poured upon the curve of her nape, sparkled in the bronze crisp of her hair, brimmed over the soft bend of her neck and ran deep down into the valley of her bosom. It rippled in scarps and crumples of her shining dress, struck in through the gauzy chiffon, lay in flakes on the underskirt, gilded the long slope of her stockings like the colour of dawn on snow. She could feel it, warm and defiant, wrapping her close, holding her together. Even her bright body, in such fragile garb, was hardly dark.

But the reality was still that pale emptiness outside. Where she sat she could see, beyond the dining room and the high rectangle of French windows, a pure shimmer of white night. Down


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 A far-away look came over Monsieur Papopolous' noble countenance.

"The Marquis?" he murmured; "now why does that seem familiar to me? NoI cannot recall it."

"You would not, I am sure," said Poirot. "I refer to a very notable criminal and jewel robber. He has just been arrested for the murder of the English lady, Madame Kettering."

"Indeed? How interesting these things are!"

A polite exchange of farewells followed, and when Poirot was out of earshot. Monsieur Papopolous turned to his daughter.

"Zia," he said, with feeling, "that man is the devil!"

"I like him."

"I like him myself," admitted Monsieur Papopolous. "But he is the devil, all the same."


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 the broad open well of the stair the same tender void came drifting, floating, sinking. Summer night cannot be shut out: it is heavier than thin lamp-shine, it spreads along the floor, gathers beneath chairs, crowds up behind pictures, makes treacherous friendship with the gallant little red-headed bulbs.

She felt soft and ill. She felt her pliant body settling deeper into the thick cushion, her hands weighing inert upon her lap. She wished Ben and Ruth could be restful for a moment. Ruth was flitting about, looking at the furniture; Ben, though sitting quietly, kept blowing cigar smoke in a kind of rhythmical indignation. She could see his mind toiling, so plainly that she would not have been surprised to read words written in his spouts of smoke, as in the balloon issuing from the mouth of a comic drawing. If Mr. Martin would only say something. He had just come in from the garden, without a word, and sat expectantly at the foot of the stairs. He was outside the circle of light, she could not see him clearly, but he seemed to be looking at her with inquiry or reproach. For being such a dull hostess, probably.

But speech was impossible. Now, with eyes widened by terror and yearning, she was almost aware of the sleepy world that lies beneath the


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 mind's restless flit: the slow cruel world, without conscience, that the artist never quite forgets. In the glare of the lamp the room burned with subordinate life: the grainy wood of the furniture, the nap of the rug, the weave of the sofa, were fibred with obstinate essence. Being was in them as in her, went on and on. It seemed as though one sudden push, if it could be made, might break through the fog of daily bickerings and foresights and adjustments, into that radiant untroubled calm. But conscious life tends to take the level of the lowest present: with Ruth and Ben and even the house itself steadfast against her, how could she speak out? The darkness that, outdoors, had been sweet privacy, was here obverted into secrecy: secrecy lay under the chairs, behind the doors, between the ticks of the clock. She had settled this room, only a few hours before, with so much care—dusting, arranging; everything in its accustomed pose. Now it was too strong for her, and every pattern in it ran with shouts of taunting laughter. . . . It was just like George to linger in the garden, leaving her alone to "entertain" these guests.

Then she was aware that someone had spoken. She had not caught the words, but the sound poised in her mind. It was a pleasant sound, it


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 must have been Mr. Martin. Perhaps she would go through all the rest of her life without knowing what he had said. Yet it might have been a cry for help. You never know, she thought, when people may leave off pretending and lay their heads on your breast. What a silly way to put it: lay their head—his head—on your breasts; because you have only one head and two breasts. Perhaps that's why the insects make such an uproar, shrilling sour grapes. They're jealous because they're not mammals. . ..

"He went back to the stable to get my scarf."

"I hope they won't catch cold," said Phyllis. "It's so much cooler to-night."

"You oughtn't to kiss people when you have a cold," said Martin.

This, Phyllis supposed, was a little reckless aside for her alone. She felt a bright seed of anger in her; it was sprouting, climbing up the trellis of her nerves. She had a fine fertility for anger; her mind was shallow soil as its bottom had never been spaded: such seeds could not root deeply and slowly, so they shot upward in brilliant quick-withering flower. The rising warmth medicined her empty sickness. He was cruel, but she loved him for it and could have prostrated herself at his feet. What right had he to be so untouched, so


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 happy and certain and sure? His mind was one, not broken up into competing yearnings.

"Competition is the life of trade," she said.

Looking up, she wondered if she had said something accidentally witty. From the other side of the room Ruth was regarding her strangely. Beyond Ruth, black against the blanched evening, were George and Joyce on the veranda steps. . . . Oh, so that was what Martin had meant?

Ben's face was so perplexed and bored, she took pity on him.

"What would you people like to do? Play cards? We can't dance, there isn't any music."

Ruth was quite content not to dance; she suspected she would have had to take Ben as a partner. "Ben's favourite game is Twenty Questions," she said.

"Gracious, I haven't played that in ages. It'll be rather fun. Here come the others, let's do it."

George seemed almost like a stranger, Phyllis thought. She had an impish desire to ask to be introduced. It amused her to think that any one should want to kiss him.

"What a gorgeous night." He spoke loudly, rather as if someone might contradict. "Here's your scarf," he added, almost roughly, holding it


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 out to Joyce. Then he remembered, and gave it to Ruth.

"How funny you are," said Martin. "You made the same mistake again."

"Thank you so much," Ruth said. "I'm sorry you had such a long hunt for it."

Joyce crossed the room in silence. Ruth's eyes followed her, and it was in Ruth's face that Phyllis first saw Joyce was beautiful. She brought some of the moonlight with her. No man can ever admire a woman's loveliness as justly as another woman, for he rarely understands how her fluctuating charm depends on the hazard of the instant. Something had happened to make Joyce beautiful, and Phyllis was surprised by an immense compassion. This creature too was lonely, had her bewildered tumult in the blood, was defenceless and doomed. Ruth's watchful eyes, unseen by Joyce, were asking her whether she had anything to say for herself, anything that could be used against her. And Ruth (Phyllis could see) was as outraged by Joyce mute as she would have been at anything she said.

Joyce was helpless: helpless, because she was happy; helpless, for she had brought no words with her. She had brought only moonlight and it was


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 declared contraband. In the instant that the girl hesitated in the choice of a seat, Phyllis knew that she could have loved her, they could have come together in a miracle of understanding, but Ruth had made it impossible. Ruth, the comely fidget, who would never know the stroke of any grievance greater than her own jealous mischiefs. What could Ruth know of the great purifying passions, who had always forestalled them by yielding to the pettiest? The seedling anger in Phyllis's heart, sensitively questing an object, swayed outward as a young vine leans toward sun. She would not think of the Brooks again as Ben and Ruth. They were Ruth and Ben. She knew now why Ben peeped so warily from behind a rampart of sedentary filing cabinets. His soul lurked behind the greatest of hiding places, a huge office building.

With a swift impulse she reached out, beckoning to a place beside her on the sofa. Joyce's hand was cold and seemed surprised. The two hands, like casual acquaintances meeting by accident, lingered together wondering how to escape politely. Phyllis realized it was not a success. She leaned forward to speak brightly to George, so that her fingers might seem to slip free unawares.

"We're going to play Twenty Questions."

"Fine!" said George. This, he thought, would


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OME all ye valiant ailors bold, that live by tuck of drum, I’ll tell you of a robber who on the eas is come; His name is called Captain Ward, as you the truth hall hear, There has not been uch a robber, this hundred and ixty year. He’s wrote a letter to our king, on the fifth of January, To ee if he would take him in and all his company. To ee if he would accept of him, and all his jolly ailors bold, And for a ranom he would give two thouand pounds in gold. Firt be beguil'd the wild Turk, and then the king of Spain, Pray how can he prove true to us, when he proves fale to them. O no O no, then aid the king, for no uch things can be For he has been a rank robber, and a robber on the ea.

title: Page:Three songs (3).pdf/2


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 prevent general conversation, the one thing most to be feared.

"Ben, you go out," Phyllis suggested. Ben deserved some amusement, he had been rather patient in the middle of this silent turmoil.

"Let Ruth," said Ben. "She's clever at guessing things."

"No, Ben, you," Ruth said definitely. She was having too good a time guessing as she was.

From the sofa Joyce could see into the little dark sitting room—her room: her only retreat. It drew her strongly. The frame of the window opened into moonlight and a queer twist of shadows. If only she could go in there, get away. Here, under the lamp, everything was too full of dangerous artifice. The light held everything together tightly, in a bursting tension. No one could say anything for fear it would have a double meaning. One meaning at a time was burden enough.

Was there anything queer about that little room? Mr. Martin, sitting at the bottom of the stairs, was close to the door: he was looking there too. In the back of her mind she remembered that she had started to say something to him in the garden; or he to her, she was not certain which; but something had been left unfinished. George


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 was watching her, watching her; she could feel it, and needed to escape into herself. How could she escape? He knew all about her now, she found him round the remotest corners of her mind. No, no, there were lovely things about her that he did not guess. If she could be alone for a few minutes she could find out what they were. . . . So this was love, this dreadful weakness. It ought to be so easy; free and easy, that gay old phrase; and the taut web of human nerves frustrated it. Beside her, in a glitter of light, Phyllis shone mysteriously. The touch of that warm hand had shocked Joyce. She knew now that they could never be at peace together.

"I'll go," she said suddenly.

Phyllis, still leaning forward, was listening.

"Was that one of the children?"

As Joyce rose, getting up with difficulty from the deep settee, Martin closed the sitting-room door with a quick push. Why did he do that? Now it would seem rude to go in there. George, whose ear was cocked toward upstairs, looked angrily at him.

"I didn't hear anything. You've got the children on the brain, Phyl."

"I'll go on the veranda while you think of something," Joyce said.


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 It was amusing to see how eagerly they all turned to the old almost forgotten pastime. She heard them mumbling together while they concerted their choice. They were like savages at a campfire, rehearsing some cheerful ceremonial to dispel sorcery. The bare mahogany of the dining table was glossed with panels of dim colour. This led her eyes upward to the red and blue window. It reminded her distantly of some poem, some perfect enchantment that mocked the poor futility of her own obsession. That most magic outcry of unreflecting love, from the most wretched of lovers: the eternal collision between life as dreamed and life as encountered.

There was a burst of laughter.

"She'll never guess that," she heard Ruth saying.

"All ready," George called.

"There are five of us, you can go round four times. You must ask questions that can be answered by Yes or No."

She began in the traditional way.

"Is it animal?"

"No," said Ruth.

"Is it vegetable?"

"Yes," said Phyllis.

"Is it in this room?"


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 "Yes," said Ben.

The part of her that was asking questions seemed separate from her racing undertow of feeling. She was the frightened child who was shy about games because she was always playing and watching simultaneously. What should she ask? It was vegetable and in the room. She had a preposterous eagerness to say something wildly absurd, she was weary of telling lies. If it had been Animal, she might have said "Is it George's love for me?" Their faces would have been comic. But it was Vegetable. . . . My vegetable love shall grow Vaster than empires and more slow. . . but if I quote that it will have to be explained. Why do poems insist on coming into the mind at instants of trouble?

"Is it Mr. Brook's cigar?"

"No," said George.

"Is it associated with some person in this room?"

"Yes," said Martin. A little self-consciously, she thought.

"Look here," George interrupted. "That answer of Phyl's wasn't quite right. Is it fair to say it's vegetable?"

"It was vegetable, vegetable in origin," Phyllis protested.


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 "Yes, but in a way it's animal too. It's becoming animal."

"Is it—any one's affection for any one else?" Joyce demanded promptly.

"No," said Ruth, amid general laughter.

"The difficulty with this game," said Phyllis, "is that there are so many questions you can't answer just Yes or No."

"That's why it's a good game," said George. "It's like life."

Joyce tried to recapitulate. It was in this room, associated with a person, it was vegetable in origin but becoming animal. . . but how absurd.

Perhaps they mean becoming to an animal, she thought.

"Is it Mrs. Granville's silver dress?"

"No."

"Is it anything to wear?"

"No."

"Is it associated with a man or a woman?"

"I can't answer that Yes or No," said George.

"Well, with a man?"

"Yes."

"Is it something I can see now?" she asked, looking directly at him.

"You're asking him twice," Martin said. "It's my turn."


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 Why did her mind keep straying away? Standing in the middle of the circle, she could feel them surrounding her, desiring her to divine this thing. Perhaps it was something she didn't want to guess, something that would mean

She repeated the question, looking at Martin this time.

"No," he said, smiling.

Her mind was a blank. She went round the group again, asking almost at random. The succession of No's had a curiously numbing effect. But she knew, without having put the question directly, that it was something connected with Martin.

She came to Ben, on the last time round. She stared at his white canvas shoes, trying to think.

"Is it . . . is it"

She turned away from the strong scent of his cigar. The glimmer of coloured light on the dining-room table caught and held her. It suggested:

"Something to do with a cake?"

"Yes," said Ben, amazed.

They were all startled, for her last attempts had been far off the track.

"Two more tries," said George, encouraging her.

She had a queer sensation that the back of her dress was open and reached unconsciously to but-


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 ton it. How silly, of course it's not open, it fastens on the shoulder. . . . A cake, a cake. . . there was a warm whiff of burning candles in the room. She knew now what it must be; what he had begun to tell her in the garden. . . . They were all crowding round her, tall people, voices coming down from above, wanting her to explain. Two more questions. . . one would do! Martin was standing behind George, he looked eager and yet anxious. She remembered now: the mouse, the mouse she had brought him; it was such a little thing; chosen and cherished for her difficult own; and the joy of giving away what was dearest. . . joy embittered by hostile scrutiny. . ..

Everything was all tangled up together. What had she given, a mouse to Martin or her truth to George? Oh, the pride, the fierce pride of now telling her pitiable secret. She could see the stripy pattern of George's coat, she knew exactly how it smelled. George looked eager and yet anxious

No, George, no! her mind was crying miserably. It wasn't you, it wasn't you; I gave it to him

She must not tell them that she had guessed it. George must be spared this last inconceivable edge of irony; and Martin must go away before either of them found out.


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 "I'm sorry," she said. "I can't get it."

George caught her arm as she swayed.

"I don't feel very well. Please forgive me. I think I'll go to bed."

"I knew she wouldn't guess it," said Ruth.

"Of course it wasn't really fair," said George. "She couldn't possibly know about the slice of cake Mr. Martin had. But it was queer how close she came."


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mimosa was nearly over. The scent of it in the air was faintly unpleasant. There were pink geraniums twining along the balustrade of Lady Tamplin's villa, and masses of carnations below sent up a sweet, heavy perfume. The Mediterranean was at its bluest. Poirot sat on the terrace with Lenox Tamplin. He had just finished telling her the same story he had told to Van Aldin two days before. Lenox had listened to him with absorbed attention, her brows knitted and her eyes sombre.

When he had finished she said simply:

"And Derek?"

"He was released yesterday."

"And he has gonewhere?"

"He left Nice last night."

"For St. Mary Mead?"

"Yes, for St. Mary Mead."

There was a pause.

"I was wrong about Katherine,” said Lenox. "I thought she did not care."

"She is very reserved. She trusts no one."

"She might have trusted me," said Lenox, with a shade of bitterness.

"Yes," said Poirot gravely, "she might have trusted you. But Mademoiselle Katherine has spent a great deal of her life listening, and those who have listened


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EORGE stood uneasily on the landing, halfway up the stair. The house seemed over-populated. Upstairs was a regular dormitory, he thought angrily: all down the long passage he could hear the stealthy movement of people going to bed: doors opening cautiously, reconnoiterings to see whether the bathroom trail was clear. And the ground floor was worse: Joyce in the sitting room filled the whole place with her presence. He could not stay in the hall, the dining room, or the porch, without being in sight or hearing of her sanctuary. Against his will he lingered on the thought of her there, the small ugly chamber transfigured by her intimacy. Even the dull brown wood of the door was different now, it thrilled him with unbearable meaning, his mind pierced through it and saw her loveliness—perhaps tormented like himself with farcical horrors. It was unbearable to think of her going away into the dark nothing of these empty hours, uncomforted. Why couldn't he go and tuck her in like one of the children? She seemed to him just that, a fright-


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 ened child who had somehow crept into his arms. She was there, divided from him only by that senseless panel. He imagined her prostrate on the couch in a quiver of silent tears; she, exquisite, made for delight, whose pitiful reality had shaken his solid, well-carpentered life into this crazy totter.

My God, he reflected, I thought I had got beyond this sort of thing.

There was a creak at the stair head; he saw her above him, shadowy against the bay window. In her translucent wrap she was delicately sketched in cloudy brightness, young and firm of outline. So the door had been mocking him. With a twinge of self-disgust he shrank, stumbled down the stairs, tiptoed out and took refuge at the far end of the garden.

A splinter of light drew him to the table under the pine trees. The jug and glasses, left there since lunch time; mutely pathetic, as forgotten things always are. There was still a heeltap of tea in one of the tumblers, he drank it and found it sirupy with sugar. It's a mistake, he thought, to eat sweet things late at night: they turn to sour in the morning. Night is the time for something bitter.

In the house, yellow squares flashed on and off. Downstairs, he could see Joyce's shadow against


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 the blind. At the other end of the building, in the gable, the spare-room window went dark. Martin had slipped off to bed rather oddly after their game. In the embarrassment of Joyce's momentary dizziness he had simply gone, without a word. George found himself thinking that much of the evening's difficulty was due to this bumpkin stranger. He was probably well-meaning, but either with his idiotic pleasantries or a silent smirk of censure he had a gift for blighting things. There was nothing about him that you could put precise finger on, but he had a way of making one feel guilty. How queerly, too, he had looked at Joyce.

The evening was changing. The air had shifted toward the northwest; suddenly, over the comb of the overhanging dune, a silvery spinnaker of cloud came drifting. It was like a great puff of steam, so close and silent it frightened him. For an instant, passing under the moon, this lovely island of softness darkened the night to a foggy grey. It was something strange, a secret between himself and the weather, encouraging his silly wits not to be afraid of the desperate magic of fancy, the fear and tenderness hidden in men's hearts.

He turned again toward the house, and saw that now Joyce's window was black. She was there,


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 at rest; he blessed her being in that little room. He had thought of it only as opening into the main thoroughfare of the house; but it was open, too, into the garden and freedom. What did the door matter! She was there, shining. He could speak to her. He imagined her voice, her trembling husky whisper, when she heard him at the sill. Why is kindness always whispered, while anger is so loud? How delightful if people shouted "I love you!" as though it were an insult. Glorious, to stand under the window and halloo it at her, watch the house rouse with scandalized life! Ah, what friends we might have been if they hadn't made us whisper. Why did they force us to be lovers?

Then he remembered—the accurate circumstantial memory of the householder. The window was screened. To speak to her through a wire mesh—intolerable. Besides, it might only make matters worse. He could never tell her his own joy, and might merely smirch hers. They might only struggle dumbly in the grotesque antic of spirits whose moods cannot mingle. The moment had passed. Life had gone by him, while he was fretting over paltry trifles, and left him a drudge. There was nothing to do but go indoors and work on the booklet. How exciting that brochure would be, what marvellous advertising, if he could


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 really tell what summer was like at the Island. Why, the company would have to run special trains. The very aisles would be packed, people sitting on up-ended suitcases, if they knew that this dangerous coast was the place where Temptation really broke through. . . where the old Demiurge laid his cards on the table. It would become a Resort—yes, an asylum for lunatics, people ridiculed by transfusions of the moon. How a poet might write it, telling the colour of that world. Warm tawny flanks of sand hills, sprawled like panthers. The sun a coal of topaz, veiled in white flame that sheeted the whole summit of sky. Light so fierce one never looked upward. Wherever one turned was a burning and a glitter; the air was a lens and gathered all its rays into one stream. Always one's knuckles were sweet with salty smell. Repressed thunder yawning in the blue elixir of the afternoon: deep, deep afternoon, penetrated with lawless beauty. The small sorry whisper of the wind sang it in the keen scimitar grasses; smooth beams of driftwood, faded by the sea, felt it; the sandpipers, drunk with it, staggered on twiggy legs. Bronzed thighs and shoulders, shining in the green shallows marbled with foam. . ..

The transitive billow of cloud slipped away


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 beyond the roof; again the strong resinous air was clarified, streamed with gracious light. His mind almost smiled at his fatuity: the sentiment did not graduate into an actual smile, but spent itself in a tiny whiff of self-deprecation through his nostrils. He stretched upward, raising his arms, standing tiptoed, feeling the calf-tendons tighten and coolness in his fingers as the blood sank. His hands met a low limb that reached across his head. He gripped it and chinned himself. There was good animal satisfaction in feeling the quiver in the biceps, the hanging weight of his body. Well, we're not done for yet, he said to himself. No, sir, not yet. He capered a few dance steps on the silky floor of needles, and pulled out his pipe. . ..

She was coming. He saw her coming, swiftly across the lawn. No, not swiftly; evenly was the word; unquestioningly; as he had always known she would come. His mouth was open to warn her of the croquet hoops, but she passed surely among them. When he saw her face, he knew this was something not to be spoiled by words. Her face was enough.

In that unreasonable glamour she was pure fable: the marble (Oh, too cold, too hard a word) come to life. There was no pang, no trouble, no desire;


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 he knew only that there is some answer to the gorgeous secret: the secret that the world is in conspiracy to deny No, not to deny; more cunning than that: to admit and pass heedless on. There was meaning in everything; significance in the shapes of things. The black plumes and pinnacles of the trees were fashioned exactly so, could never have been otherwise.

They were away from rooms and roofs. They were on the beach; the tide was far ebbed, they ran over mirrors of sand, they were in sparkling black water milder than air. Still there were no words; their white bodies gleamed in silver, laved in snowy fans of surf. They were just themselves, chafing impediments were gone; nothing was between them and they wanted nothing. They ran, breathing warmly, to burrow in the powdery cliff, where the acid smell of sharp grasses sifted down from the dunes. They lay in a hollow of sand; she curled against him, nestled smoothly close, he could feel her thrilling with small quivers of joy. There was no pang, no trouble, no desire; only peace.

Everything else they had ever known had been only an interruption. This had always been happening, underneath. It was the unknown music for which their poem had been written. They were quit of the pinch of Time, the facetious


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 nudge of Custom. Quietness was in them, satient like fresh water in a thirsty throat. Here was the fulfilment men plot and swink for: and how different from crude anticipation. What could there be now but pity and kindness? Here was triumph: Man, the experimenting artist, had created fantasy above the grasp of his audience, Nature. Like any true artist, he must always play a little above his audience's head.

"Now I'm going to tell you the truth," he said happily, and waited a moment for the luxury of her voice.

She was silent. He turned to look; her face was anxious.

"Why is it," he said gently, "that when you announce you're going to tell the truth, people always expect something disagreeable?"

Then he knew that the sand was chill and gritty. A breeze was blowing, the light was dim and meagre. This was not the glad forgiving sun but the cold and glassy moon.

"No, no!" she cried. "You must never tell the truth in a dream. If you do . . . it happens."

"But this was a lovely truth," he began. A window snapped into brightness beside him, just


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 above his head. Phyllis was looking from the pantry.

"George! What on earth are you muttering about out there? Come in and help me cut sandwiches."


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E WAS startled to find Phyllis at work in her nightgown. Another hallucination, perhaps, he thought sardonically. Everything seems to burlesque everything else.

She had thrown aside her blue quilted wrapper and was busy slicing and spreading. The table was crowded with bread, ham, beef, lettuce, mustard, jam, and cheese. The Picnic. George had forgotten the menace of the Picnic. It struck him as pathetic to see her valiantly preparing the details of this festival which was already doomed and damned. She was chopping off little brown corners of crust. Wasteful, as usual; besides, the crust is the best part. He managed not to say so, remembering that he had made the remark every time he had ever seen her cut sandwiches. The lace yoke at her neck had two tiny buds of blue ribbon stitched in it. There was something pitiably nuptial about them. How soft and young she was in her flimsy robe. Her eyes were smudged with fatigue. How beautiful she would have looked to any other man.


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 "My dear child, cutting sandwiches in your best nightgown."

"I haven't anything better to do in it, have I?"

"Yes, you have. Go to bed in it."

He held the wrapper for her.

"Put this on. I'll open the door. Whew, it's hot in here. I'll finish all this for you."

The blade of the long carving knife continued, small definite crunches.

"You can have your sardines. I found a box in the pantry. There isn't any key for them, you'll have to use the can opener."

The warm kitchen air was like a stupor. This was the steady heart of the house. Ghostly moonlight might wash up to the sill, fragile fancies pervade other rooms: here strong central life went calmly on. In the range red coals slept deep, covered and nourished for the long night. The tall boiler, its silvery paint flaked and dulled, gave off drowsy heat. Under the table the cat Virginia, who was not to be shocked, lay solidly upright with her paws tucked in, sated with scraps and vibrating a strong stupid purr. The high grimed ceiling was speckled with motionless flies, roosting there after a hard day. Packages of groceries, series of yellow bowls and platters, were ranged on the shelves in comfortable order. This was not a


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 modern kitchen, shiny, white and sterile, like a hospital. It was old, ugly, inconvenient, strong with the memory of meals arduously prepared; meals of long ago, for people now vanished.

"The weather's changing," he said. "I don't know if to-morrow will be fine or not."

He wondered at himself: able to speak so lightly, as if everything was usual. His mind was still trudging back, up clogging sand hills, from a phantom bend of shore.

"If it rains, we'll have our sandwiches at home. I've promised Lizzie the day off."

He saw a quick horrible picture of the Picnic spread in the dining room, rain driving outside, the children peevish, themselves angrily mute.

"There's cold chicken in the ice box; please get it out and slice it for salad sandwiches. I don't think Mr. Martin cares much for beef, I noticed at lunch."

"What does he think he is? Some kind of Messiah? If he doesn't like our ways, what did he come butting in for?"

He checked himself. The moment was ripe for quarrel, the gross mustard-sharpened air seemed to suggest it. He put the carcass of fowl on the scrubbed drain board by the sink and began to


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 carve. Standing so, his back was toward her. He made some pretext to turn, hoping to divine her mood; but her face was averted. There was ominous restraint in the shape of her back. The anticlimax of all this, the delicatessen-shop smell, after his ecstasy in the garden, fretted his nerves. Brutal shouts of wrath clamoured in his mind. It was infuriating to see her so appealing: can't one ever get away from it, must a man love even his wife? He wanted to ask her this, but feared she would miss the humour of it. He longed to horrify her with his rage, so that he could get rid of it and then show the tenderness he secretly felt. Certainly I'm the colossus of sentimentalists, he thought. I can turn directly from one kind of love to another. Queer, the way it looks now it's my feeling for Joyce that is disinterested and pure, my love for Phyl that's really carnal. How did this morality business get so mixed up?

He amused himself by putting the slivers of chicken in two piles: the dark meat for Martin, the white for Joyce. How white she had been in the surf. . . . But that was only a dream. This is real, this is earnest. This is Now, I'm cutting sandwiches for the Picnic. This is what Time is doing to me; what is it doing to her? How did our


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 two Times get all knotted up together? He found himself affectionately stroking a smooth slice of chicken breast.

There was something in Phyllis's silence that pricked him. He looked uneasily over his shoulder. She had sat down in the chair by the table, her chin leaning on one wrist, watching him. He went to her and touched her shoulder gently.

"Go to bed, Phyl dear."

"George, can't we get away from this house?"

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Get away. Take me away, George; we'll take the children and go. To-night. Before anybody wakes up."

She rose suddenly.

"I'm frightened. Take me away. George, I can't live through to-morrow, not if it's like to-day."

Just the way I feel, he thought.

"There, there, little frog, you're all frazzled out. It'll be all right, don't worry. Go and get your sleep."

"No, I'm not tired. I wish I were. I'm all burning up with not being tired. George, we could take the babies and just get in the car and go. Go anywhere, anywhere where there isn't


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 anybody.—We'll take Miss Clyde with us if you like. She's frightened too."

"Don't be absurd."

"George, it would be such fun; when they all came down to breakfast, Ben and Ruth and Mr. Martin, we just wouldn't be here. Never come back, never see this place again."

"You're raving, Phyl. Why, I took this house specially for you. Besides, you know I can't go away now, I've got this booklet to finish."

She looked so miserable, so desperate, his anger began to throb.

"You can write a booklet about something else. You know you can, they're all crazy to get your stuff. George, you're so big and clever, you can do anything. Miss Clyde can illustrate it. I don't mind your loving her, I'll be sensible, just take us away before the Picnic. Go and wake her now, she can go in her wrapper, you'll like that."

"Damnation," he burst out, "don't talk such tripe. I believe you're crazy. It's this half-wit Martin who's got on your nerves. I've got a mind to wake him up, throw him out of the house. What the devil did you ask him in for?"

"It's my fault. But he's changed so, since this morning. We've all changed. We're not the same people we were."


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 She pushed her arms up inside the sleeves of his coat and caught his elbows. He remembered that cherished way of hers, unconscious appeal to old tendernesses. He looked down on the top of her head, into the warm hollow where his head had lain. Her neck's prettier than Joyce's, he thought bitterly.

"It's queer you should hate him so," she said.

"What do you mean?" He pulled his arms away.

"Oh, I don't know what I mean. Perhaps he—perhaps he is what you said."

"What, a half-wit?"

"A kind of Messiah. They come to make silly people unhappy, don't they?"

He looked at her in cold amazement and disgust. Only a few moments ago he had been afraid of her; but now, by showing her poor thoughts, she had put herself at his mercy.

"You go to bed," he said. "I'm sick of this nonsense." He gripped her shoulders roughly and pushed her toward the door.

"Please, just let me put away the sandwiches. I want to wrap them in wet napkins so they'll keep fresh."

"Forget the damn sandwiches."

"Not damn, ham sandwiches." She couldn't


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 help laughing. It was so paltry to have him propelling her like a punishable child.

"Ham, jam, or damn, forget them!" he cried, raging. "You and your Messiah have ruined this Picnic anyhow. You spoiled it because you knew I looked forward to it. You've plotted against it, sneered at me and at Joyce because you knew I admired her."

"Admired her! Oh, is that the word?"

The little sarcasm hummed like a tuning fork in some silent chamber of his mind.

"You fool," he said. "Are you trying to push her into my arms?"

"I guess she can find the way without pushing."

"Well, you are a fool," he said slowly, in a dull voice that struck her deeper than any temper could have done. "You throw away love as if it was breadcrusts."

With a furious sweep he was about to hurl the neat piles of her handiwork on the floor. In one last salvage of decency he altered the course of his hand. He seized a fistful of the little brown strips of crust and flung them wildly across the room. The carving knife clattered off the table.

"You're frightening Virginia," was all she said.

Anger, the red and yellow clown, burst through the tight paper hoop of his mind and played gro-


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 tesque unlaughable capers. Bewildered by his own ferocity he strode to the corner, swung open the door of the back stairs, and pointed savagely upward. She went without another word. Her blue eyes were very large and dark, they faced him with the unwavering defiance he detested and admired. Good old Phyl, he couldn't help thinking. She's unbeatable. Now, as usual, he had put himself in the wrong. He crashed the door behind her, and stood listening to her slow steps.

He soothed the cat with some sardine-tails, finished making the chicken sandwiches, wrapped them carefully as Phyllis had suggested. I wonder what we'll be thinking when we eat them? As he put them away in the ice box he noticed the cocoanut cake on a shelf. With a sense of retaliation he cut himself a thick slice. He became aware of the scrambling tick of the alarm clock on the dresser. A quarter past eleven. The house was thrillingly still. The serenely dormant kitchen slowly sobered the buffoon dancing in his brain.

He fetched his precious bottle of Sherwood and poured a minim dose. The golden drug saluted him gently. In this fluid too the flagrant miracle lay hidden, the privy atom of truth and fury. The guest of honour, he thought ironically, feeling his vitals play host to that courteous warmth.


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 The guest of honour, always expelled. A spark falls into your soul. Shall you cherish it, shelter it to clear consuming flame; or shall you hurry to stamp it out? Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? The smell of burning cloth is mighty disagreeable. Vacantly he studied the label on the bottle. ''Manufactured prior to Jan. 17, 1920. These spirits were tax paid at the non-beverage rate Sale or use for other purposes will subject the seller or user to very heavy penalties.'' Well, certainly this is a Medicinal Use, he thought. "If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it's me." Where did the phrase come from? . . . Yes, old Billy Bones, in Treasure Island.

Well, these foolishnesses would have blown over by to-morrow. Do a little work on the booklet and then turn in. He must get the thing done, earn some money. The gruesome burden of expenses. How little Phyllis realizes the load a man's mind carries. I suppose she carries one too, poor child. Every mind carries the weight of the whole world.

He was on hands and knees, picking up the scraps of crust that had fallen under the boiler. In a luxurious self-pity he found himself humming a hymn tune. Blessed solitude, where a man can


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 sing to himself and admire the sweet sorrow of his own cadence! An almost forgotten poem came into his head and fitted pleasantly to the air.

Something in this appealed nicely to his mood. He allowed himself an encore. His voice, rising behind the stove, got a good resonance. Then he heard a footfall, a door opening. Ah, he thought, Phyl has come down to say she's sorry for being so crude. Well, I'll let her speak first. I'm tired of always being the one to make advances.

He waited, industriously gathering crusts, though he felt that the posture of Lazarus was not advantageous. There was no word.

"Well," he said impatiently, "have you had enough of your funny business?"

He turned, and saw Nounou's amazed face in the aperture of the back door. With an incoherent murmur he rose, took his bottle, and stalked out of the kitchen.


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T WOULD be interesting to speculate," said page 38 of George's treatise, "how such a cheery little town obtained the name Dark Harbour. Perhaps it was due to the scenic background of rugged hills that overlooks the picturesque old fishing port and reflects its invigorating pine woods in the water. At any rate, the future of the place is bright indeed. The Eastern Railroad's express service now stops there, and large metropolitan interests have pledged themselves to the erection of a modern caravansary which will supplement the long famous 'folksy' hospitality of the Bayview Hotel. Separated only by a lengthy trestle from the mainland, the Island spreads its varied allure of rolling sand dunes, pine groves, and broad shallow beaches. Shaped like a crescent, its outward curve is buffeted by the mighty ocean; on the inner side, sheltered from easterly gales by the unique sand hills, is the comfortable cottage colony where a number of wise people have been vacationing for many years. Many artists have discovered the pictorial charm


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 of the region, and find in the forests or in the maritime life of the Bay subjects for their water colours and oils. Canvases that have later become famous in academies and exhibitions have first felt the brush in those shingled studios clustered about the old inn, renowned for its savoury chowder. There is a brilliance in the air, an almost Italian richness of colour, in the Island's landscape. It will be many years before so vast a terrain can become crowded, but many new bungalows have been built lately, and the newcomers pay tribute to the good taste of those who, a generation agone, divined Dark Harbour's magic as a haven of summer tranquillity."

He felt a rational pride in this composition. It was in the genially fulsome vein esteemed by railroad companies. Even if people weren't tranquil, in a place so competently described, they ought to be. He thought there was a neatness in that touch about Dark Harbour and its bright future. Phyllis was probably right when she often said it was a shame Mr. Granville should spend his talents in mere publicity work when he might so easily write something famous—fiction, for instance. These are my fictions, he always replied, pointing to his private shelf of advertising pamphlets, neatly bound and gilded as his Works.


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 do not find it easy to talk; they keep their sorrows and joys to themselves and tell no one."

"I was a fool," said Lenox; "I thought she really cared for Knighton. I ought to have known better. I suppose I thought so becausewell, I hoped so."

Poirot took her hand and gave it a little friendly squeeze. "Courage, Mademoiselle," he said gently.

Lenox looked very straight out across the sea, and her face, in its ugly rigidity, had for the moment a tragic beauty.

"Oh, well," she said at last, "it would not have done. I am too young for Derek; he is like a kid that has never grown up. He wants the Madonna touch."

There was a long silence, then Lenox turned to him quickly and impulsively. "But I did help, Monsieur Poirotat any rate I did help."

"Yes, Mademoiselle. It was you who gave me the first inkling of the truth when you said that the person who committed the crime need not have been on the train at all. Before that, I could not see how the thing had been done."

Lenox drew a deep breath.

"I am glad," she said; "at any ratethat is something."

From far behind them there came a long-draw-out scream of an engine's whistle.

"That is that damned Blue Train," said Lenox. "Trains are relentless things, aren't they, Monsieur Poirot? People are murdered and die, but they go on just the same. I am talking nonsense, but you know what I mean."

"Yes, yes, I know. Life is like a train, Mademoiselle.


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 He had spread out his papers on the dining table, where he could write without seeing Joyce's door. But he couldn't seem to resume the flow of that slick treacly style, which the experienced brochurist can smoothly decant, like a tilted molasses barrel. The discomforting irony of the last word penetrated him. He changed "Italian richness" to "Italian passion," but that was as far as inspiration carried him. It was vain to remind himself that Walter Scott had written novels all night long, that Napoleon had planned campaigns in the agony of stomach-ache, that Elbert Hubbard was never at a loss for a Little Journey. In a nervous fidget he pared his nails, sharpened pencils, rearranged the glasses on the sideboard, emptied Ben's cigar débris from the living-room ash tray. He trod stealthily, in stocking feet, for fear of disturbing Joyce. Without his usual couch to sleep on, his usual table to work at, he felt homeless. There was a dull pain at the bottom of his ribs. He tried to remember whether he had unduly bolted his food at dinner. Perhaps he was going to have appendicitis.

He had a sort of insane desire to justify his existence, to atone for a day of such incredible futility by getting some work done. If every possible extraneous trifle could be attended to perhaps his


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 mind might be calmed. He crept upstairs to clean his teeth and found that Phyllis had put his dressing gown and pyjamas and slippers on the window seat. Was that a softening overture, or a hint that she did not want him in the bedroom? He tiptoed warily to the balcony to glance at the children. Even in sleep Sylvia was still the coquette: she lay with one hand curled against her cheek, the most ravishing pose, her face a lovely fragile gravity. Janet was restless, muttering something about bathing.

He undressed, sitting on the window seat. With a vague notion of postponing the struggle with the pamphlet he went through his routine with unusual care, watching the details. He noticed for the first time his ingenious attempt to retain the tip of each sock, by curling his toes into it as he removed it. The purpose was evidently to turn the sock completely inside out in the one motion of stripping it off. For the first time in weeks he decided to fold his trousers neatly instead of just throwing them on a chair. He gave them a preliminary shake and found that the sand lodged in the cuffs flew unerringly into his eyes. He discovered that if he tried to put the left leg into his pyjamas first, instead of the right, it didn't feel as though he had them on at all. The laundress


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 had managed to let the end of the waist-string vanish inside its little tunnel of hem. It required some very sharp work to creep it out again. What a good booklet could be written, for some pyjama and underwear manufacturer, on The Technique of Getting Undressed. How pleasant that if you lay out your clothes just in the order of their discarding they are exactly serialized in the correct sequence for dressing to-morrow.

All this, he felt with subtle horror, was just a postponement of something inevitable, something he knew was coming but could not identify. Some great beauty of retribution had him in its onward march. He was unworthy of the glory of living, he had niggled and haggled and somewhere in his bunglings he had touched some fatal spring. He had broken some seal, let the genie out of the bottle. The little whiff of fragrant vapour had flowed and spread until it darkened the whole sky. It hung terrible above him and the four tiny Georges cowered beneath it. And behind and within every other thought was Joyce. He could see her, perfect, inaccessible, afraid. This dear device of Nature, this gay, simple ingenuity of dividing life into halves and making them hanker for one another! Oh, Joyce, Joyce, it does matter. Joyce, I need you so.


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 A craven impulse tempted him to turn in at once, on the window seat; but its curved shape was not comfortable; moreover, how could he possibly sleep? Downstairs the big couch had a lamp by it; he could read, and while reading, think. The principal pleasure of reading, he had always found, is to fix the attention of the coarse outer mind, allowing the inner faculty to slip free. As he went down the clock startled him by counting midnight. He timed his step on the creaky treads so that the chime would cover them. But that settled it, he thought. One can continue working after twelve, but one can't possibly begin work at that hour. Besides, it's impossible to be conscientious in dressing gown and slippers. Morals, conscience, ambition, all the cunning artifice of custom, are laid aside with the garments of the day. The sophistries of virtue avail you nothing now. The thing in your heart that you are angriest at and most ashamed of, that is God. And that's what gods are invented for: to be despised and rejected. A god who was honoured and welcomed, how unhappy he would be.

He lay down on the couch with a book, but his mind ran wild behind the printed lines. The weight and breathing of the silent house pressed about him. How well he knew that feeling of a