"Only sometimes there isn't any star, and your hands would be 'outstretched in vain,' as the song says," he commented.

"Oh, I hope not!" cried Nan. "Try to believe they wouldn't be!"

Mallory uttered a short laugh.

"I'm afraid it's no case for 'believing.' It's hard fact."

Nan remained silent. There was an undertone so bitter in his voice that she felt as though her poor little efforts at consolation were utterly trivial and futile to meet whatever tragedy lay behind the man's curt speech. It seemed as though he read her thought, for he turned to her quickly with that charming smile of his.

"You'd make a topping pal," he said. And Nan knew that in some indefinable way she had comforted him.

They drove on in silence for some time and when, later on, they began to talk again it was on ordinary commonplace topics, by mutual consent avoiding any by-way that might lead them back to individual matters. The depths which had been momentarily stirred settled down once more into misleading tranquillity.

In due course they arrived at Abbencombe, and the car purred up to the station, where the Chattertons' limousine, sent to meet Nan, still waited for her. The transit from one car to the other was quickly effected, and Peter Mallory stood bareheaded at the door of the limousine.

"Good-bye," he said. "And thank you, little pal. I hope you'll never find _your_ moon out of reach."

Nan held out her hand. In the grey dusk she felt him carry it to his lips.

"Good-bye," he said once more.

CHAPTER III

A QUESTION OF EXTERNALS

It was a grey November afternoon two days later. A faint, filmy suggestion of fog hung about the streets, just enough to remind the Londoner of November possibilities, but in the western sky hung a golden sun, and underfoot there was the blessing of dry pavements.

Penelope stood at one of the windows of the flat in Edenhall Mansions, and looked down at the busy thoroughfare below. Hither and thither men and women hurried about their business; there seemed few indeed nowadays of the leisured loiterers through life. A tube strike had only recently been brought to a conclusion, and Londoners of all cla.s.ses were endeavouring to make good the time lost during those days of enforced stagnation. Unfortunately, time that is lost can never be recovered.

Even Eternity itself can't give us back the hours which have been flung away.

Rather bitterly Penelope reflected that, in spite of all our vaunted civilisation and education, men still resorted, as did their ancestors of old, to brute force in order to obtain their wishes. For, after all, a strike, however much you may gloss over the fact, is neither more nor less than a modern subst.i.tute for the old-time revolt of men armed with pikes and staves. That is to say, in either instance you insist on what you want by a process of making other people thoroughly uncomfortable till you get your way--unless they happen to be stronger than you! And incidentally a good many innocent folk who have nothing to do with the matter get badly hurt in the fray.

All the miseries which inevitably beset the steadfast worker when a strike occurs had fallen to Penelope's lot. She had scrambled hopelessly for a seat on a motor-'bus, or, driven by extremity into a fit of wild extravagance, had vainly hailed a taxi. Sometimes she had been compelled to tramp the whole way home, through drenching rain, from some house at which she had been giving a lesson, in each case enduring the very kind of physical stress which plays such havoc with a singer's only capital--her voice. She wondered if the strikers ever realised the extra strain they inflicted on people so much less able to contend with the hardships of a worker's life than they themselves.

The whirr and snort of a taxi broke the thread of her thoughts. With a grinding of brakes the cab came to a standstill at the entrance to the block of flats, and after a few minutes Emily, the unhurried maid-of-all-work, whom Nan's sense of fitness had re-christened "our Adagio," jerked the door open, announcing briefly:

"A lidy."

Penelope turned quickly, and a look of pleasure flashed into her face.

"Kitty! Back in town at last! Oh, it's good to see you again!"

She kissed the new-comer warmly and began to help off her enveloping furs. When these--coat, stole, and a m.u.f.f of gigantic proportions--were at last shed, Mrs. Barry Seymour revealed herself as a small, plump, fashionable little person with auburn hair--the very newest shade--brown eyes that owed their shadowed lids to kohl, a glorious skin (which she had had the sense to leave to nature), and, a chic little face at once so kind and humorous and entirely delightful, that all censure was disarmed.

Her dress was Paquin, her jewellery extravagant, but her heart was as big as her banking account, and there was not a member of her household, from her adoring husband down to the kitchen-maid who evicted the grubs from the cabbages, who did not more or less worship the ground she walked on.

Even her most intimate women friends kept their claws sheathed--and that, despite the undeniable becomingness of the dyed hair.

"We only got back to town last night," she said, returning Penelope's salute with fervour. "So I flew round this morning to see how you two were getting on. I can't think how you've managed without the advantage of my counsels for three whole months!"

"I don't think we have managed too well," admitted Penelope drily.

"There! What did I say?"--with manifest delight. "I told Barry, when he would go up to Scotland just for the pleasure of killing small birds, that I was sure something would happen in my absence. What is it?

Nothing very serious, of course. By the way, where's Nan this morning?"

"Playing at a concert in Exeter. At least, the concert took place last night. I'm expecting her back this afternoon."

"Well, that's good news, not bad. How did you induce her to do it?

She's been slacking abominably lately."

Penelope nodded sombrely.

"I know. I've been pitching into her for it. The Peace has upset her."

"She's like every other girl. She can't settle down after four years of perpetual thrills and excitement. But if she'd had a husband fighting"--Kitty's gay little face softened incredibly--"she'd be thanking G.o.d on her knees that the war is over--however beastly," she added characteristically, "the peace may be."

"She worked splendidly during the war," interposed Penelope, her sense of justice impelling the remark.

"Yes"--quickly. "But she's done precious little work of any kind since.

What's she been doing lately? Has she written anything new?"

Penelope laughed grimly.

"Oh, a song or two. And she's composed one gruesome thing which makes your blood run cold. It's really for orchestra, and I believe it's meant to represent the murder of a soul. . . . It does!"

"She's rather inclined to err on the side of tragedy," observed Kitty.

"Especially just now," added Penelope pointedly.

Kitty glanced sharply across at her.

"What do you mean? Is anything wrong with Nan?"

"Yes, there's something very wrong. I'm worried about her."

"Well, what is it?"--impatiently.

"It's all the fault of that wretched artist man we met at your house."

"Do you mean Maryon Rooke?"

"Yes"--briefly. "He's rather smashed Nan up."

"_He_? _Nan_?" Kitty's voice rose in a crescendo of incredulity. "But he was crazy about her! Has been, all through the war. Why, I thought there was practically an understanding between them!"

"Yes. So did most people," replied Penelope shortly.