Vision House. Williamson Charles Norris

the stage," he added. "And you're right. I'm not what your friend Lord Severance calls a gentleman. I know what he does call me, and I am that, I guess, anyhow when he's within gunshot. He brings out all that's worst in me. There's a lot of it – so much, that if that thing on shipboard was to do over again, I'd do it without a qualm. I suppose there's where the 'cad' element he talks about in me shows up. If he was here now – "

      "Ze Earl of Severance, Mademoiselle," announced Céline.

      Whether Garth had meant to boast or belittle himself Marise would never know. Nor did she care. All her faculties concentrated upon how to account to Severance for the man. It was a suffocating moment. She feared a scene between the two. The situation called for a stroke of genius. Was she equal to it? She must be, for Garth's sake and for her own, even more than for Tony's, and what he would think.

      Severance came in. Suddenly Marise felt as she had felt on the stage when something went wrong with the play. She had often had to save situations by sheer, quick mother wit. Never had she failed her fellow actors in a crisis. She ought to be ready for this!

      Her nerves ceased to jump. She was calm and confident. As Severance's darkening gaze fell on Garth, she heard herself glibly explaining the latter, as if to an audience.

      "Major Garth is a friend of Miss Marks, my secretary. She has gone out for a few minutes with mother, but he is waiting for her. She'll soon be back."

      Speaking, she smiled at the V.C., and her eyes pleaded excuses for the fib. "It's only a white one," they said. "And it saves our secret. I know you'd hate me to tell him you'd sent the presents, and I never, never will. That is sacred, between us two. So is all the rest. And I'm trying to straighten things out for us both."

      Garth appeared to be astonished, but not shocked. His silk hat (a size too small) lay on a table in a pool of water from an upset vase, he having flung it there to free his hands for hers. Now he made a move to retrieve his damaged property, but a second thought gave him pause. Marise read his mind as if it worked under glass. Her fib about Miss Marks had doomed him to the part of Casabianca, while the ship of his pride burned.

      The "lion-look" she had seen in the man's eyes that day at sea was in them again. Poor brute at bay, caged with Severance! The girl pitied him. But things must take their course. Luckily for the success of her lie, Miss Marks was not returning with Mums. She – Marise – need only say, when the latter arrived alone, what a pity it was! Thus Samson would automatically obtain his release.

      The men nodded to one another, as polite enemies must sullenly do in a woman's drawing-room. Then Severance turned to Miss Sorel with the air of sponging Garth's mean existence off the earthly slate. "I'm early," he explained, "because the hotel people sent me a cable to Belloc's place. I told them to do so, if one came. My Uncle Constantine Ionides is ill, and I'm afraid I shall have to go back by the first ship I can catch. I hoped to be in time for a few words with you before your friends began to drop in."

      This was hard on the intruder, forced against his will to turn a "company" into a "crowd," and Marise's kind heart might have resented the slap if her mind had been free. But it was instantly preoccupied with Tony's news. He was going home! He wanted to talk with her alone. This could mean only one thing. She supposed that he wished her to understand as much; and either he took Garth for a dunce or intended him to understand it too. It was as if he said to the bounder: "You're welcome to what you can find in your own class: Miss Marks and her set. But eyes down and hands off this girl. She's mine."

      The hint was too broad, the position too humiliating, for Garth's temper to bear in patience. Like the caged brute in Marise's simile, he searched the bars for some way of breaking through. But he could not leave her in the lurch. Practically, she'd ordered him to "stand by," and he'd have to do it, unless some look of hers gave him leave to bolt. The look did not come, however, and he could not guess that the girl was merely too absent-minded to give it. She had suddenly become as self-absorbed as a hermit-crab when he pulls every filament of himself inside his ample shell. As Miss Sorel questioned Severance about the telegram, Garth was left to his own resources. He felt gigantic in the small, pretty salon, where Chinese jars and ribboned pots of flowers left hardly room for a clumsy fellow like him to turn among frail chairs and tables. He knew that Severance knew how he writhed in spirit, and that Severance knew he knew. How much worse was this ordeal than a petty barrage of ginger-beer! Severance was scoring heavily now. Garth thought in dumb rage that he would give a year of life for some way to pay him back. And the girl, too! He loved her with a burning love, but at this moment the difference between love and hate was as imperceptible as that between the touch of ice and a red-hot poker. She was being very cruel. Garth felt capable of punishing her – with Severance – if he could.

      He took his hat from the table, and rubbing the wet silk with his glove, stained the yellow kid. Incidentally he made the hat worse. He wandered to a window looking over the park, and longed to jump out. In his awkward misery, the man's raw sensitiveness suffered to exaggeration. Staring jealously at the crowd below – walking, driving, spinning past in autos – he knew the emotions of one penned at the top of a house on fire, gazing down at the safe, comfortable people free to pursue their daily business of life, and love, and work. Behind him, Marise and her friend jabbered (that was the word in his head, even for her sweet voice) as if he were invisible. Desperation seized him. He turned, and down went a stand with a statuette and the Sèvres box the "Unknown" had sent Miss Sorel. It was poetic justice that his gift should be the thing smashed!

      Marise said "Oh!" Severance said nothing. He stood still, fingering his miniature moustache with the air of a man who expects a lackey to repair damage. Garth saw red; and if he had picked up a piece of the broken box it would have been to hurl it at the dark, sneering face. But Heaven sometimes tempers the wind to shorn lions as well as lambs: and if Providence did not order the entrance of two women at that instant, who did?

      It was Mrs. Sorel who appeared and (Marise gasped) Miss Zélie Marks. Out of her shell in self-defence, the actress would have rushed to save this scene, as she had saved the last – somehow, anyhow! But to her bewilderment Garth took one great stride towards Miss Marks and snatched her hand as drowning men are said to snatch at straws. "How do you do?" he exclaimed eagerly.

      "Miss Marks and Major Garth are friends," Marise rattled off to her mother. And to herself she added, "How smart of him to guess who she was! Or – did he know?"

      The secretary's cheeks were stained carnation, and she was handsomer in an instant than Marise had thought she could be in a year. Her black eyes were twinkling. Did she guess that she was a pawn in a game, and had she so keen a sense of humour as to laugh? Marise was more interested than ever in this young woman: and Mrs. Sorel, not knowing the plot of the play, was yet warned by her famous "instinct" that something queer, something dangerous, was in the air.

      She was a woman who prided herself on presence of mind. Marise hadn't expected her secretary to return, therefore it seemed unlikely she would have encouraged the Bounder to wait for Miss Marks. And as for that, why was the Bounder here? Being here, the further he could be kept from Marise and Severance the better. She herself had no time to weave spells for him. Miss Marks must do that, and take him away with her when she went. Without appearing to pause after Marise's announcement, Mary Sorel smiled at Miss Marks. "Talk to Major Garth, my dear," she patronised, "while I explain to my daughter why we tore back in such a rush."

      Zélie Marks took the lady at her word, and drew her "friend" apart. By the remotest window the two halted, standing confidentially close, the girl looking up at the man, the man looking down at the girl. As the conversation was now only of Valinski's dress designs, not Severance's plans, Marise had a sub-eyelash glance or so to spare for the couple. Well, certainly Samson was a creditable actor, or else…

      "They were all so lovely I dared not choose," Mums was expatiating. "I said to Miss Marks, 'Suppose we run back in the taxi and let my daughter select? Or, she may want to order more than one of the gowns.' So I slipped the designs back into the portfolio Mr. Valinski had taken them from, and asked permission to borrow the lot. Lord Severance must tell us which he prefers. He's such a good judge! And Miss Marks can carry back the portfolio, with a note from me to Valinski, when she goes."

      The three heads – Tony's glossy black, Marise Sorel's glittering gold, her mother's a rich, expensive