"Yvonne, forgive me. Don't misunderstand. You never doubt me, do you?"

"Sometimes--I don't seem to matter to you so much as I did."

Never releasing her he moved around so that they were side by side upon the narrow seat. "You matter more than anything in the world," he said.

"You are so near to my heart day and night that I seem to have you always in my arms." He spoke softly, his lips very close to Yvonne's; her golden hair brushed his forehead. "You are the music to which I write the words. The memory of your lightest action since the very hour we met I treasure and revere. Without you I am nothing. All I dream and all I hope I dream and hope for you."

Yvonne ran her white fingers through his hair and looked up into his face. Paul kissed her, laughing happily. "My darling Yvonne," he whispered, "Do I sometimes forget to make love to you? It is only because I feel that you are so sure of me. Do you know that since I left you I have heard your voice like a prayer at twilight, seen your eyes watching me as I slept and found your hair gleaming in many a golden sunset."

"Of course I don't," cried Yvonne, with mock severity. "How can I possibly know what you are thinking when you are hundreds of miles away!

I only know that when you come back you forget to kiss me."

"I don't forget, Yvonne. I think of you a thousand times a day, and every thought is a kiss."

"Then you have only thought of me twice to-day," said Yvonne, standing up and crossing to a Chesterfield. She seated herself, resting her head upon a black cushion and posing deliberately with the confidence of a pretty woman.

"That is a challenge," replied Paul, "and I accept it."

He followed her, but she covered her face with her hands tauntingly, and only resigned her lips after a long struggle. Then they sat silently, very close together, the golden head leaning against the dark one, and ere long Paul's restless mind was at work again.

"Don is on leave, Yvonne," he said. "Isn't that fine?"

"Oh, yes," replied Yvonne, stifling a sigh. "He called yesterday."

"He called!" cried Paul, sitting upright excitedly. "You did not tell me."

"How could I tell you, Paul? I have not seen you alone until now. Don did not know you were away. A letter came from him two days ago----"

"I know. That was how I learned of his being home."

"He said he would come this afternoon. Oh--perhaps here he is."

Yvonne smoothed her skirt and moved to a discreet distance from Paul as a parlourmaid came in. Paul leapt up, eagerly.

"Captain Courtier?" he cried to the girl.

"Yes, sir."

Paul ran out into the hall. Yvonne rose from the Chesterfield and slowly walked back to the piano. She stood for a while idly turning over the pages of music; then, as her husband did not return, she went up to her room. She could hear Paul talking excitedly as she pa.s.sed the study door.

VI

Don gazed curiously around the large and lofty room. In early Victorian days this apartment had been a drawing-room or salon, wherein crinolined dames and whiskered knights had discoursed exclusively in sparkling epigrams according to certain memoirs in which this salon was frequently mentioned. It had been selected by Paul for a workroom because of its charming outlook upon the secluded little garden with its sundial and irregularly paved paths, and because it was the largest room in the house. Although in a lesser degree than Paul, Don also was responsive to environment, and he found himself endeavouring to a.n.a.lyse the impression made upon his mind by Paul's study.

He had last seen it during the time that Paul, newly returned from Florence, was pa.s.sing the proofs of his great tragedy, _Francesca of the Lilies_. Then it had been the study of a Cardinal of the Middle Ages or of a mediaeval n.o.ble devoted to the arts. In what respect did it differ now? The ma.s.sive table of cedar of Lebanon, figured in ivory and mother o' pearl with the Rape of Proserpine, the work of a pupil of Benvenuto Cellini, remained, as also did the prie-dieu, enriched with silver daisies, which Michelangelo had designed for Margaret of Navarre. The jewelled crucifix was gone, together with the old chain bible and ebony lectern from the Cistercian Monastery at La Trappe. The curious chalice, too, of porphyry starred with beryl, taken at the sack of Panama, and recovered a century later from an inn at Saragossa, had disappeared from its place; and where illuminated missals and monkish books had formerly lain upon the long window seat were works dealing with the war, a.s.sociated with its causes or arising out of it: Amba.s.sador Gerard to _The Book of Artemas_, _G.o.d the Invisible King_ and _Also Sprach Zarathustra_. Even the magnificent _Book of Hours_ bearing the monogram of Diana of Poictiers and bound by Aldo Manuzio, Byzantine fashion, in carved ivory wreathed about with gold filigree and studded with fourteen precious stones, was hidden.

Those tapestries for which Paul had paid so extravagant a price at the sale of the Mayence heirlooms were stripped from the wall, and gone were the Damascus sword, the lance-head and black armour of G.o.dfrey de Bouillon. A definite note was lacking; the stage was in a state of transition, and not yet set for the new drama.

Paul came in, hands extended in cordial welcome. "Good old Don!" he cried. "On Friday I was within twenty miles of the part of the line where I imagined you to be, but was unable to get across."

"How fortunate. You would have had a vain journey, Paul. I was in Derbyshire on Friday. I would have met you this morning, but I knew you would prefer to be _tete-a-tete_ with Yvonne."

"My dear fellow, Ba.s.sett ordained it otherwise. I found myself surrounded by pressmen and picture people. Of course, he disclaimed responsibility as usual, but I could read his guilt in his eyes. He persists in 'booming' me as though I were an operatic nightingale with a poor voice or a variety comedian who was not funny."

"Yvonne told you I had called?"

"Yes. You did not know I was away?"

"My knowledge of your movements up to the time that I left France was based upon those two or three brief communications, partially undecipherable, with which you have favoured me during the past six months. I read your paper, _Le Bateleur_, in the _Review_. Everybody has read it. Paul, you have created a bigger sensation with those five or six thousand words than Hindenburg can create with an output of five or six thousand lives!"

"It was designed to pave the way, Don. You think it has succeeded?"

"Succeeded! You have stirred up the religious world from Little Bethel to St. Peter's." Don dropped into an armchair and began to load his pipe from the Mycenaean vase. "Some of your facts are startlingly novel. For instance, where on earth did you get hold of that idea about the initiation of Christ by the Essenes at Lake Moeris in Egypt?"

Paul's expression grew wrapt and introspective. "From material in the possession of Jules Thessaly," he replied. "In a tomb near the Pyramid of Hawara in the Egyptian Fayum was found the sarcophagus of one Menahim, chief of the Order of the Essenes, who were established near Lake Moeris. Menahim's period of office dated from the year 18 B.C. to the year of his death in the reign of Caligula, and amid the dust of his bones was found the Golden Chalice of Initiation. I cannot hope to make clear to you without a very lengthy explanation how the fact dawned upon my mind that Jehoshoua of Nazareth, son of Joseph, became an initiate, but the significance of these dates must be evident. When you see the Chalice you will understand."

"Had it been found in Renan's time what a different _Vie de Christ_ we should have had."

"Possibly. Renan's _Vie de Christ_ is an exquisite evasion, a jewelled confession of failure. But there are equally wonderful things at Thessaly's house, Don. You must come there with me."

"I shall do so without fail. It appears to me, Paul, that you have materially altered your original plan. You have abandoned the idea of casting your book in the form of a romance?"

"I have--yes. The purely romantic appeal may be dispensed with, I think, in this case. _Zarathustra_ has entered the blood of the German people like a virus from a hypodermic needle. I do not hesitate to accept its lesson. Where I desire to cite instances of ill.u.s.trative human lives they will be strictly biographical but anonymous."

"You hope to succeed where Maeterlinck failed."

"Maeterlinck thinks as a poet and only fails when he writes as a philosopher. Don, I wish I could have you beside me in my hours of doubt. Thessaly is inspiring, but his influence is sheerly intellectual.

You have the trick of harmonising all that was discordant within myself.

I see my work as a moving pageant and every figure is in its appointed place. I realise that all the knowledge of the world means nothing beside one short human existence. Upon the Ogam tablets, the a.s.syrian cylinders, the Egyptian monuments is written a wisdom perhaps greater than ours, but it is cold, like the stone that bears it; within ourselves it lives--all that knowledge, that universe of truth. What do the Egyptologists know of the message of Egypt? I have stood upon the summit of the Great Pyramid and have watched its shadow steal out and out touching the distant lands with its sceptre, claiming Egypt for its own; I have listened in the profound darkness at its heart to the voice of the silence and have thought myself an initiate buried, awaiting the unfolding of the mystic Rose of Isis. And science would have us believe that that wondrous temple is a tomb! A tomb! when truly it is a birthplace!"

His dark eyes glowed almost fiercely. To Don alone did he thus reveal himself, mantled in a golden rhetoric.

"Mitrahina, too, the village on the mounds which cloak with their memorable ashes the splendour that was Memphis; who has not experienced the mournful allurement of those palm-groves amid which lie the fallen colossi of Rameses? But how many have responded to it? They beckon me, Don, bidding me to the gates of royal Memphis, to the palace of the Pharaoh. A faint breeze steals over the desert, and they shudder and sigh because palace and temple are dust and the King of the Upper and Lower Land is but a half-remembered name strange upon the lips of men.

Ah! who that has heard it can forget the call, soft and mournful, of the palm-groves of Mitrahina?

"I would make such places sacred and no vulgar foot should ever profane them. Once, as I pa.s.sed the entrance to the tomb of Seti in the Valley of the Kings, I met a fat German coming out. He was munching sandwiches, and I had to turn aside; I believe I clenched my fists. A picture of the shameful Clodius at the feast of Bona Dea arose before me. My very soul revolted against this profanation of the ancient royal dead. To left and right upon the slopes above and perhaps beneath the very path along which the gross Teuton was retiring lay those who ruled the world ere Rome bestrode the seven hills, whose body-slaves were princes when the proud states and empires of to-day slumbered unborn in the womb of Time.

Seti I! what a name of power! His face, Don, is unforgettable and his image seems to haunt those subterranean halls in which at last he had thought to find rest. To-day his tomb is a public resort, his alabaster sarcophagus an exhibit at the Sloane Museum, and his body, stripped of its regal raiment, is lying exposed to curious eyes in a gla.s.s case in Cairo!

"We honour the departed of our own times, and tread lightly in G.o.d's acre; why, because they pa.s.sed from the world before Western civilisation had raised its head above primeval jungles, should we fail in our respect for Egypt's mightier dead? I tell you, Don, there is not one man in a million who understands; who, having the eyes to see, the ears to hear, has the soul to comprehend. And this understanding is a lonely, sorrowful gift. I looked out from an observation-post on the Somme over a landscape like the blasted heath in _Macbeth_. No living thing moved, but the earth was pregnant with agony and the roar of the guns from hidden pits was like that of the grindstones of h.e.l.l. There, upon the grave of an epoc, I listened to that deathly music and it beckoned to me like the palm fronds of Mitrahina and spoke the same message as the voice of the pyramid silence. Don! all that has ever been, is, and within us dwells the first and the last."

VII

A silence fell between them which endured for a long time, such an understanding silence as is only possible in rare friendships. Paul began to fill his pipe, and Don almost regretfully broke the spell. "My real mission," he said, "is to release you from a bargain into which you entered blindfolded, without realising that you had to deal with an utterly unprincipled partner."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"I owe a debt to the late Michael Duveen, Paul, which you generously offered to a.s.sist me in liquidating----"