Paul walked into the cosy little sitting-room and Flamby having closed the door contrived to kick the newspaper under the bureau whilst placing an armchair for Paul. Paul smiled and made a nest of cushions in a corner of the settee. "Sit there, Flamby," he said, "and let me talk to you."

Flamby sat down facing him, and her nerves beginning to recover from the shock imposed upon them, she found that her heart was really beating, and beating rapidly. Paul was in evening dress, and as the night was showery, wore a loose Burberry. A hard-working Stetson hat, splashed with rain, he had dropped upon the floor beside his chair. His face looked rather gaunt in the artificial light, which cast deep shadows below his eyes, and he was watching her in a way that led her to hope, yet fear, that he might have come to speak about the Charleswood photographs. He was endowed with that natural distinction whose possessor can never be ill at ease, yet he was palpably bent upon some project which he scarcely knew how to approach.

"Will you have a cigarette?" asked Flamby, in a faint voice. "You may smoke your pipe if you would rather."

"May I really?" said Paul buoyantly. "It is a very foul pipe, and will perfume your curtains frightfully."

"I like it. Lots of my visitors smoke pipes."

"You have a number of visitors, Flamby?"

"Heaps. I never had so many friends in my life."

Paul began to charge his briar from a tattered pouch. "Have you ever thought, Flamby, that I neglected you?" he asked slowly.

"Neglected me? Of course not. You have been to see me twice, and I felt all the time that I was keeping you from your work. Besides--why should I expect you to bother about me?"

"You have every reason to expect it, Flamby. Your father was--a tenant of my uncle, and as I am my uncle's heir, his debts are mine. Your father saved me from the greatest loss in the world. Lastly"--he lighted his pipe--"I want you to count me amongst your friends."

He held the extinguished match in his fingers, looking around for an ash-tray. Flamby jumped up, took the match and threw it in the hearth, then returned slowly to her place. Her hands were rather unsteady, and she tucked them away behind her, squeezing up closely against the cushions. "We _are_ friends," she said. "You have always been my friend."

"I don't want you to feel alone in the world, as though n.o.body cared for you. When Don is home I have no fear, but when he is away there is really no one to study your interests, and, after all, Flamby, you are only a girl."

"There is Mrs. Chumley and Mr. Hammett and Claude Chauvin."

"Three quite delightful people, Flamby, I admit. But Hammett and Chauvin cannot always be with you, and Mrs. Chumley's sweet and unselfish life affords nothing but an ill.u.s.tration of unworldliness. Yet, if these were your only friends, I should be more contented."

Flamby tapped her foot upon the carpet and stared down at it unseeingly.

"Are there some of my friends you don't think quite nice?" she asked.

Her humility must have surprised many a one who had thought he knew her well.

Paul bent forward, resting one hand upon the head of the settee. "I know very little about your friendships, Flamby. That is why I reproach myself. But a girl who lives alone should exercise the greatest discretion in such matters. You must see that this is so. Friends who would be possible if you were under the care of a mother become impossible when you are deprived of that care. It is not enough to know yourself blameless, Flamby. Worldly folks are grossly suspicious, especially of a pretty girl, and believe me, life is easier and sweeter without misunderstanding."

"Someone has been telling you tales about me," said Flamby, an ominous scarlet enflaming her cheeks.

Paul laughed, bending further forward and seeking to draw Flamby's hands out from their silken hiding-place. She resisted a little, averting her flushed face, but finally yielded, although she did not look at Paul.

"Dear little Flamby," he said, and the tenderness in his voice seemed now to turn her cold. "You are not angry with me?" He held her hands between his own, looking at her earnestly. She glanced up under her lashes. "If I had not cared I should have said nothing."

"Everybody goes on at me," said Flamby tremulously. "I haven't done any harm."

"Who has been 'going on' at you, little Flamby?"

"_You_ have, and Chauvin, and everybody."

"But what have they said? What have _I_ said?"

"That I am no good--an absolute rotter!"

"Flamby! Who has said such a thing? Not Chauvin, I'll swear, and not I.

You are wilfully misjudging your real friends, little girl. Because you are clever--and you are clever, Flamby--you have faith in your judgment of men yet lack faith in your judgment of yourself. Now, tell me frankly, have you any friends of whom Don would disapprove?"

"No. Don trusts me."

"But he does not trust the world, Flamby, any more than I do, and the world can slay the innocent as readily as the guilty."

"_I_ know!" cried Flamby, looking up quickly. "It was Mr. Thessaly who told you."

"Who told me what?"

"That he had seen me at supper with Orlando James. I didn't see him, but James said he was there."

She met Paul's gaze for a moment and tried to withdraw her hands, but he held them fast, and presently Flamby looked down again at the carpet.

"Whoever told me," said Paul, "it is the truth. Do you write often to Don?"

"Yes--sometimes."

"Then write and ask him if he thinks you should be seen about with Orlando James and I shall be content if you will promise to abide by his reply. Will you do that, Flamby? Please don't be angry with me because I try to help you. I have lived longer than you and I have learned that if we scorn the world's opinion the world will have its revenge. Will you promise?"

"Yes," said Flamby, all humility again.

Paul stood up, taking his hat from the floor and beginning to b.u.t.ton his Burberry. "I am coming to see you at the school one day soon, but if ever there is anything you want to tell me or if ever I can be of the slightest use to you, telephone to me, Flamby. Don't regard me as a bogey-man." Flamby had stood up, too, and now Paul held her by the shoulders looking at her charming downcast face. "We are friends, are we not, little Flamby?"

Flamby glanced up swiftly. "Yes," she said. "Thank you for thinking about me."

XII

The rain-swept deserted streets made a curious appeal to Paul that night--an appeal to something in his mood that was feverish and unquiet, that first had stirred in response to an apparently chance remark of Thessaly's and that had sent him out to seek Flamby in despite of the weather and the late hour. He did not strive to a.n.a.lyse it, but rather sought to quench it, unknown, and his joy in the steady downpour was a reflection of this sub-conscious state. Self-distrust, vague and indefinite, touched him unaccountably. He considered the intellectual uproar (for it was nothing less) which he had occasioned by the publication of his two papers--comprising as they did selections from the first part of his book. The att.i.tude of the Church alone indicated how shrewdly he had struck. He had bred no mere nine days' wonder but had sowed a seed which, steadily propagating, already had a.s.sumed tall sapling form and had unfolded nascent branches. The bookstalls were beginning to display both anonymous pamphlets and brochures by well-known divines; not all of them directly attacking Mario nor openly defending dogma, but all of them, covertly or overtly, being aimed at him and his works. He had been inundated with correspondence from the two hemispheres; he had been persecuted by callers of many nationalities; a strange grey-haired woman with the inspired eyes of a Sita who had addressed him as _Master_ and acclaimed him one long expected, and a party of little brown men, turbaned and urbane, from India, who spoke of the _Vishnu-Purana_, hailing him as a brother, and whose presence had conjured up pictures of the forests of Hindustan. A dignified Chinaman, too, armed with letters of introduction, had presented him with a wonderful book painted upon ivory of the _Trigrams of Fo-Hi_. But most singular visitor of all was a sort of monk, having a black, matted beard and carrying a staff, who had gained access to the study, Paul never learned by what means, and who had thundered out an incomprehensible warning against "unveiling the shrine," had denounced what he had termed "the poison of Fabre d'Olivet" and had departed mysteriously as he had come.

There had been something really terrifying in the personality of this last visitor, power of some kind, and Paul, whose third paper, _La Force_, was in the press, seemed often to hear those strange words ringing in his ears, and he hesitated even now to widen the chasm which already he had opened and which yawned threateningly between the old faith and the new wisdom which yet was a wisdom more ancient than the world. He was but a common man, born of woman; no Krishna conceived of a Virgin Devaki, nor even a Pythagoras initiate of Memphis and heir of Zoroaster; and this night he distrusted his genius. What if he should beckon men, like a vaporous will-o'-the-wisp, out into a mora.s.s of error wherein their souls should perish? His power he might doubt no longer; a thousand denunciations, a million acclamations, had borne witness to it.

And he had barely begun to speak. Truly the world awaited him and already he bent beneath the burden of a world's desire.

Few pedestrians were abroad and no cabs were to be seen. Every motor-bus appeared to be full inside, with many pa.s.sengers standing, and even a heroic minority hidden beneath gleaming umbrellas on top. Paul had found the interiors of these vehicles to possess an odour of imperfectly washed humanity, and he avoided the roof, unless a front seat were available, because of the existence of that type of roof-traveller who converts himself into a human fountain by expectorating playfully at selected intervals. Theatre audiences were on their several ways home, and as Paul pa.s.sed by the entrance to a Tube station he found a considerable crowd seeking to force its way in, a motley crowd representative of every stratum of society from Whitechapel to Mayfair.

Women wearing opera cloaks and shod in fragile dress-shoes stood shivering upon the gleaming pavement beside Jewesses from the East-End.

Fur-collared coats were pressed against wet working raiments, white gloved hands rested upon greasy shoulders. Officers jostled privates, sailors vied with soldiers in the scrum before the entrance to the microbic land of tunnels. War is a potent demagogue.

Isolated standard lamps whose blackened tops gave them an odd appearance of wearing skull caps, broke the gloom of the rain mist at wide intervals. All shops were shut, apparently. One or two cafes preserved a ghostly life within their depths, but their sombre illuminations were suggestive of the Rat Mort. Musicians from theatre orchestras hurried in the direction of the friendly Tube, instrument cases in hand, and one or two hardy members of the Overseas forces defied the elements and lounged about on corners as though this were a summer's evening in Melbourne.

Policemen sheltered in dark porches. Paul walked on, his hands thrust into his coat pockets and the brim of his hat pulled down. He experienced no discomfort and was quite contented with the prospect of walking the remainder of the way home; he determined, however, to light his pipe and in order to do so he stepped into the recess formed by a shop door, found his pouch and having loaded his briar was about to strike a match when he saw a taxi-cab apparently disengaged and approaching slowly. He stepped out from his shelter, calling to the man, and collided heavily with a girl wearing a conspicuous white raincoat and carrying an umbrella.

She slipped and staggered, but Paul caught her in time to save her from a fall upon the muddy pavement. "I am sincerely sorry," he said with real solicitude. "I know I must have hurt you."

"Not in the least," she replied in a low tone which might have pa.s.sed for that of culture with a less inspired observer than Paul. A faint light from the head lamp of the cab which had drawn up beside the pavement, touched her face. She was young and would have been pretty if the bloom of her cheeks and the redness of her lips had not been due to careful make-up; for her features were good and, as Paul recognised, experiencing a sensation of chill at his heart, not unlike those of his wife. If he could have imagined a debauched Yvonne, she would have looked like this waif of the night who now stood bending beneath the shelter of her wet umbrella upon which the rain pattered, ruefully rubbing a slim silken-clad ankle.

"I can only offer one reparation," Paul persisted. "You must allow me to drive you home."