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Masquerader, The

<h2> XXXI </h2> A few minutes before the curtain fell on the second act of 'Other Men's Shoes' Loder rose from his seat and made his apologies to Lillian. At any other moment he might have pondered over her manner of accepting them—the easy indifference with which she let him go. But vastly keener issues were claiming his attention, issues whose results were wide and black. He left the theatre, and, refusing the overtures of cabmen, set himself to walk to Chilcote's house. His face was hard and emotionless as he hurried forward, but the chaos in his mind found expression in the unevenness of his pace. To a strong man the confronting of difficulties is never alarming and is often fraught with inspiration; but this applies essentially to the difficulties evolved through the weakness, the folly, or the force of another; when they arise from within the matter is of another character. It is in presence of his own soul—and in that presence alone—that a man may truly measure himself. As Loder walked onward, treading the whole familiar length of traffic-filled street, he realized for the first time that he was standing before that solemn tribunal that the hour had come when he must answer to himself for himself. The longer and deeper an oblivion the more painful the awakening. For months the song of self had beaten about his ears, deadening all other sounds; now abruptly that song had ceased—not considerately, not lingeringly, but with a suddenness that made the succeeding silence very terrible. He walked onward, keeping his direction unseeingly. He was passing through the fire as surely as though actual flames rose about his feet; and whatever the result, whatever the fibre of the man who emerged from the ordeal, the John Loder who had hewn his way through the past weeks would exist no more. The triumphant egotist—the strong man—who, by his own strength, had kept his eyes upon one point, refusing to see in other directions, had ceased to be. Keen though it was, his realization of this crisis in his life had come with characteristic slowness. When Lillian Astrupp had given her dictum, when the music of the orchestra had ceased and the curtain risen on the second act of the play, nothing but a sense of stupefaction had filled his mind. In that moment the great song was silenced, not by any portentous episode, not by any incident that could have lent dignity to its end, but—with the full measure of life's irony—by a trivial social commonplace. In the first sensation of blank loss his faculties had been numbed; in the quarter of an hour that followed the rise of the curtain he had sat staring at the stage, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, filled with the enormity of the void that suddenly surrounded him. Then, from habit, from constitutional tendency, he had begun slowly and perseveringly to draw first one thread and then another from the tangle of his thoughts—to forge with doubt and difficulty the chain that was to draw him towards the future. It was upon this same incomplete and yet tenacious chain that his mind worked as he traversed the familiar streets and at last gained the house he had so easily learned to call home. As he inserted the latch-key and felt it move smoothly in the lock, a momentary revolt against his own judgment, his own censorship swung him sharply towards reaction. But it is only the blind who can walk without a tremor on the edge of an abyss, and there was no longer a bandage across his eyes. The reaction flared up like a strip of lighted paper; then, like a strip of lighted paper, it dropped back to ashes. He pushed the door open and slowly crossed the hall. The mounting of a staircase is often the index to a man's state of mind. As Loder ascended the stairs of Chilcote's house his shoulders lacked their stiffness, his head was no longer erect; he moved as though his feet were weighted. He had ceased to be the man of achievement whose smallest opinion compels consideration; in the privacy of solitude he was the mere human flotsam to which he had once compared himself—the flotsam that, dreaming it has found a harbor, wakes to find itself the prey of the incoming tide. He paused at the head of the stairs to rally his resolutions; then, still walking heavily, he passed down the corridor to Eve's room. It was suggestive of his character that, having made his decision, he did not dally over its performance. Without waiting to knock, he turned the handle and walked into the room. It looked precisely as it always looked, but to Loder the rich, subdued coloring of books and flowers—the whole air of culture and repose that the place conveyed—seemed to hold a deeper meaning than before; and it was on the instant that his eyes, crossing the inanimate objects, rested on their owner that the true force of his position, the enormity of the task before him, made itself plain. Realization came to him with vivid, overwhelming force; and it must be accounted to his credit, in the summing of his qualities, that then, in that moment of trial, the thought of retreat, the thought of yielding did not present itself. Eve was standing by the mantel-piece. She wore a beautiful gown, a long string of diamonds was twisted about her neck, and her soft, black hair was coiled high after a foreign fashion, and held in place by a large diamond comb. As he entered she turned hastily, almost nervously, and looked at him with the rapid, searching glance he had learned to expect from her; then, almost directly, her expression changed to one of quick concern. With a faint exclamation of alarm she stepped forward. "What has happened?" she said. "You look like a ghost." Loder made no answer. Moving into the room, he paused by the oak table that stood between the fireplace and the door. They made an unconscious tableau as they stood there—he with his hard, set face, she with her heightened color, her inexplicably bright eyes. They stood completely silent for a space—a space that for Loder held no suggestion of time; then, finding the tension unbearable, Eve spoke again. "Has anything happened?" she asked. "Is any thing wrong?" Had he been less engrossed the intensity of her concern might have struck him; but in a mind so harassed as his there was only room for one consideration—the consideration of himself. The sense of her question reached him, but its significance left him untouched. "Is anything wrong?" she reiterated for the second time. By an effort he raised his eyes. No man, he thought, since the beginning of the world was ever set a task so cruel as his. Painfully and slowly his lips parted. "Everything in the world is wrong," he said, in a slow, hard voice. Eve said nothing but her color suddenly deepened. Again Loder was unobservant. But with the dogged resolution that marked him he forced himself to his task. "You despise lies," he said, at last. "Tell me what you would think of a man whose whole life was one elaborated lie?" The words were slightly exaggerated, but their utterance, their painfully brusque sincerity, precluded all suggestion of effect. Resolutely holding her gaze he repeated his question. "Tell me! Answer me! I want to know." Eve's attitude was difficult to read. She stood twisting the string of diamonds between her fingers. "Tell me?" he said again. She continued to look at him for a moment; then, as if some fresh impulse moved her, she turned away from him towards the fire. "I cannot," she said. "We—I—I could not set myself to judge—any one." Loder held himself rigidly in hand. "Eve," he said, quietly, "I was at the `Arcadian' to-night. The play was 'Other Men's Shoes.' I suppose you've read the book 'Other Men's Shoes'?" She was leaning on the mantel-piece and her face was invisible to him. "Yes, I have read it," she said, without looking round. "It is the story of an extraordinary likeness between two men. Do you believe such a likeness possible? Do you think such a thing could exist?" He spoke with difficulty; his brain and tongue both felt numb. Eve let the diamond chain slip from her fingers. "Yes," she said, nervously. "Yes, I do believe it. Such things have been—" Loder caught at the words. "You're quite right," he said, quickly. "You're quite right. The thing is possible—I've proved it. I know a man so like me that you, even you, could not tell us apart." Eve was silent, still averting her face. In dire difficulty he labored on. "Eve," he began once more, "such a likeness is a serious thing—a terrible danger—a terrible temptation. Those who have no experience of it cannot possibly gauge its pitfalls—" Again he paused, but again the silent figure by the fireplace gave him no help. "Eve," he exclaimed, suddenly, "if you only knew, if you only guessed what I'm trying to say—" The perplexity, the whole harassed suffering of his mind showed in the words. Loder, the strong, the resourceful, the self-contained, was palpably, painfully at a loss. There was almost a note of appeal in the vibration of his voice. And Eve, standing by the fireplace, heard and understood. In that moment of comprehension all that had held her silent, all the conflicting motives that had forbidden speech, melted away before the unconscious demand for help. Quietly and yet quickly she turned, her whole face transfigured by a light that seemed to shine from within—something singularly soft and tender. "There's no need to say anything," she said, simply, "because I know." It came quietly, as most great revelations come. Her voice was low and free from any excitement, her face beautiful in its complete unconsciousness of self. In that supreme moment all her thought, all her sympathy was for the man—and his suffering. To Loder there was a space of incredulity; then his brain slowly swung to realization. "You know?" he repeated, blankly. "You know?" Without answering she walked to a cabinet that stood in the window, unlocked a drawer, and drew out several sheets of flimsy white paper, crumpled in places and closely covered with writing. Without a word she carried them back and held them out. He took them in silence, scanned them, then looked up. In a long, worthless pause their eyes met. It was as if each looked speechlessly into the other's heart, seeing the passions, the contradictions, the shortcomings that went to the making of both. In that silence they drew closer together than they could have done through a torrent of words. There was no asking of forgiveness, no elaborate confession on either side; in the deep, eloquent pause they mutually saw and mutually understood. "When I came into the morning-room to-day," Eve said, at last, "and saw Lillian Astrupp reading that telegram, nothing could have seemed further from me than the thought that I should follow her example. It was not until afterwards; not until—he came into the room; until I saw that you, as I believed, had fallen back again from what I respected to what I despised—that I knew how human I really was. As I watched them laugh and talk I felt suddenly that I was alone again—terribly alone. I—I think—I believe I was jealous in that moment—" She hesitated. "Eve!" he exclaimed. But she broke in quickly on the word. "I felt different in that moment. I didn't care about honor—or things like honor. After they had gone it seemed to me that I had missed something—something that they possessed. Oh, you don't know what a woman feels when she is jealous!" Again she paused. "It was then that the telegram, and the thought of Lillian's amused smile as she had read it, came to my mind. Feeling as I did—acting on what I felt—I crossed to the bureau and picked it up. In one second I had seen enough to make it impossible to draw back. Oh, it may have been dishonorable, it may have been mean, but I wonder if any woman in the world would have done otherwise! I crumpled up the papers just as they were and carried them to my own room." From the first to the last word of Eve's story Loder's eyes never left her face. Instantly she had finished his voice broke forth in irrepressible question. In that wonderful space of time he had learned many things. All his deductions, all his apprehensions had been scattered and disproved. He had seen the true meaning of Lillian Astrupp's amused indifference—the indifference of a variable, flippant nature that, robbed of any real weapon for mischief, soon tires of a game that promises to be too arduous. He saw all this and understood it with a rapidity born of the moment; nevertheless, when Eve ceased to speak the question that broke from him was not connected with this great discovery—was not even suggestive of it. It was something quite immaterial to any real issue, but something that overshadowed every consideration in the world. "Eve," he said, "tell me your first thought? Your first thought after the shock and the surprise—when you remembered me?" There was a fresh pause, but one of very short duration; then Eve met his glance fearlessly and frankly. The same pride and dignity, the same indescribable tenderness that had responded to his first appeal shone in her face. "My first thought was a great thankfulness," she said, simply. "A thankfulness that you—that no man—could ever understand." <h2> XXXII </h2> As she finished speaking Eve did not lower her eyes. To her there was no suggestion of shame in her thoughts or her words; but to Loder, watching and listening, there was a perilous meaning contained in both. "Thankfulness?" he repeated, slowly. From his newly stirred sense of responsibility pity and sympathy were gradually rising. He had never seen Eve as he saw her now, and his vision was all the clearer for the long oblivion. With a poignant sense of compassion and remorse, the knowledge of her youth came to him—the youth that some women preserve in the midst of the world, when circumstances have permitted them to see much but to experience little. "Thankfulness?" he said again, incredulously. A slight smile touched her lips. "Yes," she answered, softly. "Thankfulness that my trust had been rightly placed." She spoke simply and confidently, but the words struck Loder more sharply than any accusation. With a heavy sense of bitterness and renunciation he moved slowly forward. "Eve," he said, very gently, "you don't know what you say." She had lowered her eyes as he came towards her; now again she lifted them in a swift, upward glance. For the first time since he had entered the room a slight look of personal doubt and uneasiness showed in her face. "Why?" she said. "I—I don't understand." For a moment he answered nothing. He had found his first explanation overwhelming; now suddenly it seemed to him that his present difficulty was more impossible to surmount. "I came here to-night to tell you something," he began, at last, "but so far I have only said half—" "Half?" "Yes, half." He repeated the word quickly, avoiding the question in her eyes. Then, conscious of the need for explanation, he plunged into rapid speech. "A fraud like mine," he said, "has only one safeguard, one justification—a boundless audacity. Once shake that audacity and the whole motive power crumbles. It was to make the audacity impossible—to tell you the truth and make it impossible—that I came to-night. The fact that you already knew made the telling easier—but it altered nothing." Eve raised her head, but he went resolutely on. "To-night," he said, "I have seen into my own life, into my own mind, and my ideas have been very roughly shaken into new places. "We never make so colossal a mistake as when we imagine that we know ourselves. Months ago, when your husband first proposed this scheme to me, I was, according to my own conception, a solitary being vastly ill-used by Fate, who, with a fine stoicism, was leading a clean life. That was what I believed; but there, at the very outset, I deceived myself. I was simply a man who shut himself up because he cherished a grudge against life, and who lived honestly because he had a constitutional distaste for vice. My first feeling when I saw your husband was one of self-righteous contempt, and that has been my attitude all along. I have often marvelled at the flood of intolerance that has rushed over me at sight of him—the violent desire that has possessed me to look away from his weakness and banish the knowledge of it; but now I understand. "I know now what the feeling meant. The knowledge came to me to-night. It meant that I turned away from his weakness because deep within myself something stirred in recognition of it. Humanity is really much simpler than we like to think, and human impulses have an extraordinary fundamental connection. Weakness is egotism—but so is strength. Chilcote has followed his vice; I have followed my ambition. It will take a higher judgment than yours or mine to say which of us has been the more selfish man." He paused and looked at her. She was watching him intently. Some of the meaning in his face had found a pained, alarmed reflection in her own. But the awe and wonder of the morning's discovery still colored her mind too vividly to allow of other considerations possessing their proper value. The thrill of exultation with which the misgivings born of Chilcote's vice had dropped away from her mental image of Loder was still too absorbing to be easily dominated. She loved, and as if by a miracle her love had been justified! For the moment the justification was all-sufficing. Something of confidence—something of the innocence that comes not from ignorance of evil but from a mind singularly uncontaminated—blinded her to the danger of her position. Loder, waiting apprehensively for some aid, some expression of opinion, became gradually conscious of this lack of realization. Moved by a fresh impulse, he crossed the small space that divided them and caught her hands. "Eve," he said, gently, "I have been trying to analyze myself and give you the results; but I sha'n't try any more; I shall be quite plain with you. "From the first moment I took your husband's place I was ambitious. You unconsciously aroused the feeling when you brought me Fraide's message on the first night. You aroused it by your words—but more strongly, though more obscurely, by your underlying antagonism. On that night, though I did not know it, I took up my position—I made my determination. Do you know what that determination was?" She shook her head. "It was the desire to stamp out Chilcote's footmarks with my own—to prove that personality is the great force capable of everything. I forgot to reckon that when we draw largely upon Fate she generally extorts a crushing interest. "First came the wish for your respect; then the desire to stand well with such men as Fraide—to feel the stir of emulation and competition—to prove myself strong in the one career I knew myself really fitted for. For a time the second ambition overshadowed the first, but the first was bound to reassert itself; and in a moment of egotism I conceived the notion of winning your enthusiasm as well as your respect—" Eve's face, alert and questioning, suddenly paled as a doubt crossed her mind. "Then it was only—only to stand well with me?" "I believed it was only the desire to stand well with you; I believed it until the night of my speech—if you can credit anything so absurd—then on that night, as I came up the stairs to the gallery and saw you standing there, the blindness fell away and I knew that I loved you." As he said the last words he released her hands and turned aside, missing the quick wave of joy and color that crossed her face. "I knew it, but it made no difference; I was only moved to a higher self-glorification. I touched supremacy that night. But as we drove home I experienced the strangest coincidence of my life. You remember the block in the traffic at Piccadilly?" Again Eve bent her head. "Well, when I looked out of the carriage window to discover its cause the first man I saw was—Chilcote." Eve started slightly. This swift, unexpected linking of Chilcote's name with the most exalted moment of her life stirred her unpleasantly. Some glimmering of Loder's intention in so linking it, broke through the web of disturbed and conflicting thoughts. "You saw him on that night?" "Yes; and the sight chilled me. It was a big drop from supremacy to the remembrance of—everything." Involuntarily she put out her hand. But Loder shook his head. "No," he said, "don't pity me! The sight of him came just in time. I had a reaction in that moment, and, such as it was, I acted on it. I went to him next morning and told him that the thing must end. But then—even then—I shirked being honest with myself. I had meant to tell him that it must end because I had grown to love you, but my pride rose up and tied my tongue. I could not humiliate myself. I put the case before him in another light. It was a tussle of wills—and I won; but the victory was not what it should have been. That was proved to-day when he returned to tell me of the loss of this telegram. It wasn't the fear that Lady Astrupp had found it; it wasn't to save the position that I jumped at the chance of coming back; it was to feel the joy of living, the joy of seeing you—if only for a day!" For one second he turned towards her, then as abruptly he turned away again. "I was still thinking of myself," he said. "I was still utterly self-centred when I came to this room today and allowed you to talk to me—when I asked you to see me to-night as we parted at the club. I sha'n't tell you the thoughts that unconsciously were in my mind when I asked that favor. You must understand without explanation. "I went to the theatre with Lady Astrupp ostensibly to find out how the land lay in her direction—really to heighten my self-esteem. But there Fate—or the power we like to call by that name—was lying in wait for me, ready to claim the first interest in the portion of life I had dared to borrow." He said this slowly, as if measuring each word. He did not glance towards Eve as he had done in his previous pause. His whole manner seemed oppressed by the gravity of what he had still to say. "I doubt if a man has ever seen more in half an hour than I have to-night," he said. "I'm speaking of mental seeing, of course. In this play, 'Other Men's Shoes,' two men change identities—as Chilcote and I have done—but in doing so they overlook one fact—The fact that one of them has a wife! That's not my way of putting it; it's the way it was put to me by one of Lady Astrupp's party." Again Eve looked up. The doubt and question in her eyes had grown unmistakably. As he ceased to speak her lips parted quickly. "John," she said, with sudden conviction, "you're trying to say something—something that's terribly hard." Without raising his head, Loder answered her. "Yes," he answered, "the hardest thing a man ever said—" His tone was short, almost brusque, but to ears sharpened by instinct it was eloquent. Without a word Eve took a step forward, and, standing quite close to him, laid both hands on his shoulders. For a space they stood silent, she with her face lifted, he with averted eyes. Then very gently he raised his hands and tried to unclasp her fingers. There was scarcely any color visible in his face, and by a curious effect of emotion it seemed that lines, never before noticeable, had formed about his mouth. "What is it?" Eve asked, apprehensively. "What is it?" By a swift, involuntary movement she had tightened the pressure of her fingers; and, without using force, it was impossible for Loder to unloose them. With his hands pressed irresolutely over hers, he looked down into her face. "As I sat in the theatre to-night, Eve," he said, slowly, "all the pictures I had formed of life shifted. Without desiring it, without knowing it, my whole point of view was changed. I suddenly saw things by the world's search-light instead of by my own miserable candle. I suddenly saw things for you—instead of for myself." Eve's eyes widened and darkened, but she said nothing. "I suddenly saw the unpardonable wrong that I have done you—the imperative duty of cutting it short." He spoke very slowly, in a dull, mechanical voice. Eve—her eyes still wide, her face pained and alarmed—withdrew her hands from his shoulders. "You mean," she said, with difficulty, "that it is going to end? That you are going away? That you are giving everything up? Oh, but you can't! You can't!" she exclaimed, with sudden excitement, her fears suddenly overmastering her incredulity. "You can't! You mustn't! The only proof that could have interfered—" "I wasn't thinking of the proof." "Then of what? Of what?" Loder was silent for a moment. "Of our love," he said, steadily. She colored deeply. "But why?" she stammered; "why? We have done no wrong. We need do no wrong. We would be friends—nothing more; and I—oh, I so need a friend!" For almost the first time in Loder's knowledge of her, her voice broke, her control deserted her. She stood before him in all the pathos of her lonely girlhood—her empty life. The revelation touched him with sudden poignancy; the real strength that lay beneath his faults, the chivalry buried under years of callousness, stirred at the birth of a new emotion. The resolution preserved at such a cost, the sacrifice that had seemed wellnigh impossible, all at once took on a different shape. What before had been a barren duty became suddenly a sacred right. Holding out his arms, he drew her to him as if she had been a child. "Eve," he said, gently, "I have learned to-night how fully a woman's life is at the mercy of the world—and how scanty that mercy is. If circumstances had been different, I believe—I am convinced—I would have made you a good husband—would have used my right to protect you as well as a man could use it. And now that things are different, I want—I should like—" He hesitated a very little. "Now that I have no right to protect you—except the right my love gives—I want to guard you as closely from all that is sordid as any husband could guard his wife. "In life there are really only two broad issues—right and wrong. Whatever we may say, whatever we may profess to believe, we know that our action is always a choice between right and wrong. A month ago—a week ago—I would have despised a man who could talk like this—and have thought myself strong for despising him. Now I know that strength is something more than the trampling of others into the dust that we ourselves may have a clear road; that it is something much harder and much less triumphant than that—that it is standing aside to let somebody else pass on. Eve," he exclaimed, suddenly, "I'm trying to do this for you. Don't you see? Don't you understand? The easy course, the happy course, would be to let things drift. Every instinct is calling to me to take that course—to go on as I have gone, trading on Chilcote's weakness and your generosity. But I won't do it! I can't do it!" With a swift impulse he loosed his arms and held her away from him. "Eve, it's the first time I have put another human being before myself!" Eve kept her head bent. Painful, inaudible sobs were shaking her from head to foot. "It's something in you—something unconscious—something high and fine, that holds me back—that literally bars the way. Eve, can't you see that I'm fighting—fighting hard?" After he had spoken there was silence—a long, painful silence—during which Eve waged the battle that so many of her sex have waged before; the battle in which words are useless and tears of no account. She looked very slight, very young, very forlorn, as she stood there. Then, in the oppressive sense of waiting that filled the whole room, she looked up at him. Her face was stained with tears, her thick, black lashes were still wet with them; but her expression, as her eyes met Loder's, was a strange example of the courage, the firmness, the power of sacrifice that may be hidden in a fragile vessel. She said nothing, for in such a moment words do not come easily, but with the simplest, most submissive, most eloquent gesture in the world she set his perplexity to rest. Taking his hand between hers, she lifted it and for a long, silent space held it against her lips. <h2> XXXIII </h2> For a while there was silence; then Loder, bitterly aware that he had conquered, poignantly conscious of the appeal that Eve's attitude made, found further endurance impossible. Gently freeing his hand, he moved away from her to the fireplace, taking up the position that she had first occupied. "Eve," he said, slowly, "I haven't finished yet. I haven't said everything. I'm going to tax your courage further." With a touch of pained alarm, Eve lifted her head. "Further?" she said. Loder shrank from the expression on her face. "Yes," he said, with difficulty. "There's still another point to be faced. The matter doesn't end with my going back. To have the situation fully saved, Chilcote must return—Chilcote must be brought to realize his responsibilities." Eve's lips parted in dumb dismay. "It must be done," he went on hurriedly, "and we have got to do it—you and I." He turned and looked at her. "I? I could do nothing. What could I do?" Her voice failed. "Everything," he said, "you could do everything. He is morally weak, but he has one sensitive point—the fear of a public exposure. Once make it plain to him that you know his secret, and you can compel him to whatever course of action you select. It was to ask you to do this—to beg you to do this—that I came to you to-night. I know that it's demanding more than a woman's resolution—more than a woman's strength. But you are like no woman in the world! "Eve!" he cried, with sudden vehemence, "can't you see that it's imperative—the one thing to save us both?" He stopped abruptly as he had begun, and again a painful silence filled the room. Then, as before, Eve moved instinctively towards him, but this time her steps were slow and uncertain. Nearing his side, she put out her hand as if for comfort and support; and, feeling his fingers tighten round it, stood for a moment resting in the contact. "I understand," she said at last, very slowly. "I understand. When will you take me to him?" For a moment Loder said nothing, not daring to trust his voice; then he answered, low and abruptly. "Now!" he said. "Now, at once! Now, this moment, if I may. And—and remember that I know what it costs you." As if imbued with fear that his courage might fail him, he suddenly released her hand, and, crossing the room to where a long, dark cloak lay as she had thrown it on her return home, he picked it up, walked to her side, and silently wrapped it about her. Then, still acting automatically, he moved to the door, opened it, and stood aside while she passed out into the corridor. In complete silence they descended the stairs and passed to the hall door. There Crapham, who had returned to his duties since Loder's entrance, came quickly forward with an offer of service. But Loder dismissed him curtly; and with something of the confusion bred of Chilcote's regime, the man drew back towards the staircase. With a hasty movement Loder stepped forward, and, opening the door, admitted a breath of chill air. Then on the threshold he paused. It was his first sign of hesitation—the one instant in which nature rebelled against the conscience so tardily awakened. He stood motionless for a moment, and it is doubtful whether even Eve fully fathomed the bitterness of his renunciation—the blackness of the night that stretched before his eyes. Behind him was everything; before him, nothing. The everything symbolized by the luxurious house, the eagerly attentive servants, the pleasant atmosphere of responsibility; the nothing represented by the broad public thoroughfare, the passing figures, each unconscious of and uninterested in his existence. As an interloper he had entered this house; as an interloper—a masquerader—he had played his part, lived his hour, proved himself; as an interloper he was now passing back into the dim world of unrealized hopes and unachieved ambitions. He stood rigidly quiet, his strong figure silhouetted against the lighted hall, his face cold and set; then, with a touch of fatality, Chance cut short his struggle. An empty hansom wheeled round the corner of the square; the cabman, seeing him, raised his whip in query, and involuntarily he nodded an acquiescence. A moment later he had helped Eve into the cab. "Middle Temple Lane!" he directed, pausing on the step. "Middle Temple Lane is opposite to Clifford's Inn," he explained as he took his place beside her. "When we get out there we have only to cross Fleet Street." Eve bent her head in token that she understood, and the cab moved out into the roadway. Within a few minutes the neighborhood of Grosvenor Square was exchanged for the noisier and more crowded one of Piccadilly, but either the cabman was overcautious or the horse was below the average, for they made but slow progress through the more crowded streets. To the two sitting in silence the pace was wellnigh unbearable. With every added movement the tension grew. The methodical care with which they moved seemed like the tightening of a string already strained to breaking-point, yet neither spoke—because neither had the courage necessary for words. Once or twice as they traversed the Strand, Loder made a movement as if to break the silence, but nothing followed it. He continued to lean forward with a certain dogged stiffness, his clasped hands resting on the doors of the cab, his eyes staring straight ahead. Not once, as they threaded their way, did he dare to glance at Eve, though every movement, every stir of her garments, was forced upon his consciousness by his acutely awakened senses. When at last they drew up before the dark archway of Middle Temple Lane, he descended hastily. And as he mechanically turned to protect Eve's dress from the wheel, he looked at her fully for the first time since their enterprise had been undertaken. As he looked he felt his heart sink. He had expected to see the marks of suffering on her face, but the expression he saw suggested something more than mere mental pain. All the rich color that usually deepened and softened the charm of her beauty had been erased as if by a long illness; and against the new pallor of her skin her blue eyes, her black hair and eyebrows, seemed startlingly dark. A chill colder than remorse, a chill that bordered upon actual fear, touched Loder in that moment. With the first impulsive gesture he had allowed himself, he touched her arm. "Eve—" he began, unsteadily; then the word died off his lips. Without a sound, almost without a movement, she returned his glance, and something in her eyes checked what he might have said. In that one expressive look he understood all she had desired, all she had renounced—the full extent of the ordeal she had consented to, and the motive that had compelled her consent. He drew back with the heavy sense that repentance and pity were equally futile—equally out of place. Still in silence she stepped to the pavement and stood aside while Loder dismissed the cab. To both there was something symbolic, something prophetic, in the dismissal. Without intention and almost unconsciously they drew closer together as the horse turned, its hoofs clattering on the roadway, its harness jingling; and, still without realization, they looked after the vehicle as it moved away down the long, shadowed thoroughfare towards the lights and the crowds that they had left. At last involuntarily they turned towards each other. "Come!" Loder said, abruptly. "It's only across the road." Fleet Street is generally very quiet, once midnight is passed; and Eve had no need of guidance or protection as they crossed the pavement, shining like ice in the lamplight. They crossed it slowly, walking apart; for the dread of physical contact that had possessed them in the cab seemed to have fallen on them again. Inquisitiveness has little place in the region of the city, and they gained the opposite footpath unnoticed by the casual passer-by. Then, still holding apart, they reached and entered Clifford's Inn. Inside the entrance they paused, and Eve shivered involuntarily. "How gray it is!" she said, faintly. "And how cold! Like a graveyard." Loder turned to her. Far one moment control seemed shaken; his blood surged, his vision clouded; the sense that life and love were still within his reach filled him overwhelmingly. He turned towards Eve; he half extended his hands. Then, stirred by what impulse, moved by what instinct, it was impossible to say, he let them drop to his sides again. "Come!" he said. "Come! This is the way. Keep close to me. Put your hand on my arm." He spoke quietly, but his eyes were resolutely averted from her face as they crossed the dim, silent court. Entering the gloomy door-way that led to his own rooms, he felt her fingers tremble on his arm, then tighten in their pressure as the bare passage and cheerless stairs met her view; but he set his lips. "Come!" he repeated, in the same strained voice. "Come! It isn't far—three or four flights." With a white face and a curious expression in her eyes, Eve moved forward. She had released Loder's arm as they crossed the hall; and now, reaching the stairs, she put out her hand gropingly and caught the banister. She had a pained, numb sense of submission—of suffering that had sunk to apathy. Moving forward without resistance, she began to mount the stairs. The ascent was made in silence. Loder went first, his shoulders braced, his head held erect; Eve, mechanically watchful of all his movements, followed a step or two behind. With weary monotony one flight of stairs succeeded another; each, to her unaccustomed eyes, seeming more colorless, more solitary, more desolate than the preceding one. Then at last, with a sinking sense of apprehension, she realized that their goal was reached. The knowledge broke sharply through her dulled senses; and, confronted by the closeness of her ordeal, she paused, her head lifted, her hand still nervously grasping the banister. Her lips parted as if in sudden demand for aid; but in the nervous expectation, the pained apprehension, of the moment no sound escaped them. Loder, resolutely crossing the landing, knew nothing of the silent appeal. For a second she stood hesitating; then her own weakness, her own shrinking dismay, were submerged in the interest of his movements. Slowly mounting the remaining steps, she followed him as if fascinated towards the door that showed dingily conspicuous in the light of an unshaded gas-jet. Almost at the moment that she reached his side he extended his hand towards the door. The action was decisive and hurried, as though he feared to trust himself. For a space he fumbled with the lock. And Eve, standing close behind him, heard the handle creak and turn under his pressure. Then he shook the door. At last, slowly, almost reluctantly, he turned round. "I'm afraid things aren't quite quite right," he said, in a low voice. "The door is locked and I can see no light." She raised her eyes quickly. "But you have a key?" she whispered. "Haven't you got a key?" It was obvious that, to both, the unexpected check to their designs was fraught with danger. "Yes, but—" He looked towards the door. "Yes—I have a key. Yes, you're right!" he added, quickly. "I'll use it. Wait, while I go inside." Filled with a new nervousness, oppressed by the loneliness, the silence about her, Eve drew back obediently. The sense of mystery conveyed by the closed door weighed upon her. Her susceptibilities were tensely alert as she watched Loder search for his key and insert it in the lock. With mingled dread and curiosity she saw the door yield, and gape open like a black gash in the dingy wall; and with a sudden sense of desertion she saw him pass through the aperture and heard him strike a match. The wait that followed seemed extraordinarily long. Listening intently, she heard him move softly from one room to the other. And at last, to her acutely nervous susceptibilities, it seemed that he paused in absolute silence. In the intensity of listening, she heard her own faint, irregular breathing, and the sound filled her with panic. The quiet, the solitude, the vague, instinctive apprehension, became suddenly unendurable. Then all at once the tension was relieved.. Loder reappeared. He paused for a second in the shadowy door-way; then he turned unsteadily, drew the door to, and locked; it. Eve stepped forward. Her glimpse of him had been momentary—and she had not heard his voice—yet the consciousness of his bearing filled her with instinctive alarm. Abruptly, and without reason, their hands turned cold, her heart began to beat violently. "John—" she said below her breath. For answer, he moved towards her. His face was bereft of color; there was a look of consternation in his eyes. "Come!" he said. "Come at once! I must take you home." He spoke in a shaken, uneven voice. Eve, looking up at him, caught his hand. "Why? Why?" she questioned. Her tone was low and scared. Without replying, he drew her imperatively towards the stairs. "Go very softly," he commanded. "No one must see you here." In the first moment she obeyed him instinctively; then, reaching the head of the stairs, she stopped. With one hand still clasping his, the other clinging nervously to the banister, she refused to descend. "John," she whispered, "I'm not a child. What is it? What has happened? I must know." For a moment Loder looked at her uncertainly; then, reading the expression in her eyes, he yielded to her demand. "He's dead," he said, in a very low voice. "Chilcote is dead." <h2> XXXIV </h2> To fully appreciate a great announcement we must have time at our disposal. At the moment of Loder's disclosure time was denied to Eve; for scarcely had the words left his lips before the thought that dominated him asserted its prior claim. Blind to the incredulity in her eyes, he drew her swiftly forward, and—half impelling, half supporting her—forced her to descend the stairs. Never in after-life could he obliterate the remembrance of that descent. Fear, such as he could never experience in his own concerns, possessed him. One desire overrode all others—the desire that Eve's reputation, which he himself had so nearly imperilled, should remain unimperilled. In the shadow of that urgent duty, the despair of the past hours, the appalling fact so lately realized, the future with its possible trials, became dark to his imagination. In his new victory over self, the question of her protection predominated. Moving under this compulsion, he guided her hastily and silently down the deserted stairs, drawing a breath of deep relief as, one after another, the landings were successively passed; and still actuated by the suppressed need of haste, he passed through the door-way that they had entered under such different conditions only a few minutes before. To leave the quiet court, to gain the Strand, to hail a belated hansom was the work of a moment. By an odd contrivance of circumstance, the luck that had attended every phase of his dual life was again exerted in his behalf. No one had noticed their entry into Clifford's Inn; no one was moved to curiosity by their exit. With an involuntary thrill of feeling he gave expression to his relief. "Thank God, it's over!" he said, as a cab drew up. "You don't know what the strain has been." Moving as if in a dream, Eve stepped into the cab. As yet the terrible denouement to their enterprise had made no clear impression upon her mind. For the moment all that she was conscious of, all that she instinctively acknowledged, was the fact that Loder was still beside her. In quiet obedience she took her place, drawing aside her skirts to make room for him; and in the same subdued manner, he stepped into the vehicle. Then, with the strange sensation of reliving their earlier drive, they were aware of the tightened rein and of the horse's first forward movement. For several seconds neither spoke. Eve, shutting out all other thoughts, sat close to Loder, clinging tenaciously to the momentary comforting sense of protection; Loder, striving to marshal his ideas, hesitated before the ordeal of speech. At last, realizing his responsibility, he turned to her slowly. "Eve," he said, in a low voice and with some hesitation, "I want you to know that in all this—from the moment I saw him—from the moment I understood—I have had you in my thoughts—you and no one else." She raised her eyes to his face. "Do you realize—?" he began afresh. "Do you know what this—this thing means?" Still she remained silent. "It means that after to-night there will be no such person in London as John Loder. To-morrow the man who was known by that name will be found in his rooms; his body will be removed, and at the post-modern examination it will be stated that he died of an overdose of morphia. His charwoman will identify him as a solitary man who lived respectably for years and then suddenly went down-hill with remarkable speed. It will be quite a common case. Nothing of interest will be found in his rooms; no relation will claim his body; after the usual time he will be given the usual burial of his class. These details are horrible; but there are times when we must look at the horrible side of life—because life is incomplete without it. "These things I speak of are the things that will meet the casual eye; but in our sight they will have a very different meaning. "Eve," he said, more vehemently, "a whole chapter in my life has been closed to-night, and my first instinct is to shut the book and throw it away. But I'm thinking of you. Remember, I'm thinking of you! Whatever the trial, whatever the difficulty, no harm shall come to you. You have my word for that! "I'll return with you now to Grosvenor Square; I'll remain there till a reasonable excuse can be given for Chilcote's going abroad; I will avoid Fraide, I will cut politics—whatever the cost; then, at the first reasonable moment, I will do what I would do now, to-night if it were possible. I'll go away, start afresh; do in another country what I have done in this." There was a long silence; then Eve turned to him. The apathy of a moment before had left her face. "In another country?" she repeated. "In another country?" "Yes; a fresh career in a fresh country. Something clean to offer you. I'm not too old to do what other men have done." He paused, and for a moment Eve looked ahead at the gleaming chain of lamps; then, still very slowly, she brought her glance back again. "No," she said very slowly. "You are not too old. But there are times when age—and things like age—are not the real consideration. It seems to me that your own inclination, your own individual sense of right and wrong, has nothing to do with the present moment. The question is whether you are justified in going away"—she paused, her eyes fixed steadily upon his—"whether you are free to go away, and make a new life—whether it is ever justifiable to follow a phantom light when—when there's a lantern waiting to be carried." Her breath caught; she drew away from him, frightened and elated by her own words. Loder turned to her sharply. "Eve!" he exclaimed; then his tone changed. "You don't know what you're saying," he added, quickly; "you don't understand what you're saying." Eve leaned forward again. "Yes," she said, slowly, "I do understand." Her voice was controlled, her manner convinced. She was no longer the girl conquered by strength greater than her own: she was the woman strenuously demanding her right to individual happiness. "I understand it all," she repeated. "I understand every point. It was not Chance that made you change your identity, that made you care for me, that brought about—his death. I don't believe it was Chance; I believe it was something much higher. You are not meant to go away!" As Loder watched her the remembrance of his first days as Chilcote rose again; the remembrance of how he had been dimly filled with the belief that below her self-possession lay a strength—a depth—uncommon in woman. As he studied her now, the instinctive belief flamed into conviction. "Eve!" he said involuntarily. With a quick gesture she raised her head. "No!" she exclaimed. "No; don't say anything! You are going to see things as I see them—you must do so—you have no choice. No real man ever casts away the substance for the shadow!" Her eyes shone—the color, the glow, the vitality, rushed back into her face. "John," she said, softly, "I love you—and I need you—but there is something with a greater claim—a greater need than mine. Don't you know what it is?" He said nothing; he made no gesture. "It is the party—the country. You may put love aside, but duty is different. You have pledged yourself. You are not meant to draw back." Loder's lips parted. "Don't!" she said again. "Don't say anything! I know all that is in your mind. But, when we sift things right through, it isn't my love—or our happiness—that's really in the balance. It is your future!" Her voice thrilled. "You are going to be a great man, and a great man is the property of his country. He has no right to individual action." Again Loder made an effort to speak, but again she checked him. "Wait!" she exclaimed. "Wait! You believe you have acted wrongly, and you are desperately afraid of acting wrongly again. But is it really truer, more loyal for us to work out a long probation in grooves that are already overfilled than to marry quietly abroad and fill the places that have need of us? That is the question I want you to answer. Is it really truer and nobler? Oh, I see the doubt that is in your mind! You think it finer to go away and make a new life than to live the life that is waiting you—because one is independent and the other means the use of another man's name and another man's money—that is the thought in your mind. But what is it that prompts that thought?" Again her voice caught, but her eyes did not falter. "I will tell you. It is not self-sacrifice—but pride!" She said the word fearlessly. A flush crossed Loder's face. "A man requires pride," he said in a low voice. "Yes, at the right time. But is this the right time? Is it ever right to throw away the substance for the shadow? You say that I don't understand—don't realize. I realize more to-night than I have realized in all my life. I know that you have an opportunity that can never come again—and that it's terribly possible to let it slip—" She paused. Loder, his hands resting on the closed doors of the cab, sat very silent, with averted eyes and bent head. "Only to-night," she went on, "you told me that everything was crying to you to take the easy, pleasant way. Then it was strong to turn aside; but now it is not strong. It is far nobler to fill an empty niche than to carve one for yourself. John—" She suddenly leaned forward, laying her hands over his. "Mr. Fraide told me to-night that in his new ministry my—my husband was to be Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs!" The words fell softly. So softly that to ears less comprehending than Loder's their significance might have been lost—as his rigid attitude and unresponsive manner might have conveyed lack of understanding to any eyes less observant than Eve's. For a long space there was no word spoken. At last, with a very gentle pressure, her fingers tightened over his hands. "John—" she began, gently. But the word died away. She drew back into her seat, as the cab stopped before Chilcote's house. Simultaneously as they descended, the hall door was opened and a flood of warm light poured out reassuringly into the darkness. "I thought it was your cab, sir," Crapham explained deferentially as they passed into the hall. "Mr. Fraide has been waiting to see you this half-hour. I showed him into the study." He closed the door; softly and retired. Then, in the warm light, amid the gravely dignified surroundings that had marked his first entry into this hazardous second existence, Eve turned to Loder for the verdict upon which the future hung. As she turned, his face was still hidden from her, and his attitude betrayed nothing. "John," she said, slowly, "you know why he is here.' You know that he has come to personally offer you this place; to personally receive your refusal—or consent." She ceased to speak; there was a moment of suspense; then Loder turned. His face was still pale and grave with the gravity of a man who has but recently been close to death, but beneath the gravity was another look—the old expression of strength and self-reliance, tempered, raised, and dignified by a new humility. Moving forward, he held out his hands. "My consent or refusal," he said, very quietly, "lies with—my wife." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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