Mrs. Maxon Protests. Anthony Hope

      "Then you'd never be able to—to get regular, as long as he lived."

      "I think I should be regular, without getting regular," she answered, smiling.

      "What's the good of defying the world?"

      "Isn't that the only way bad things get altered?"

      "It needs a good deal of courage to do things like that—right or wrong."

      "I should rely on the man I loved to give me the courage."

      Godfrey did not wish to admit that the man whom (as he hoped) she loved lacked courage. The answer irritated him; he sat frowning sulkily, his usual gaiety sadly overcast. Winnie's eyes scanned his face for a moment; then, with a sigh, she looked over the lawn to the valley below. She was disappointed with the reception of her great idea. "Of course the two people would have to be very much in love with one another," she added, with a little falter in her voice.

      He found a way out of his difficulty. "The more a man loved a woman, the less likely he'd be to consent to put her in such a position," he argued. His face cleared; he was pleased with his point; it was good, according to the code.

      "It would be the only honourable position for her," Winnie retorted.

      He rose to his feet in a temper; it was all so unreasonable. "I must go."

      "Are you coming to anything to-morrow?"

      "No, I shall be in town to-morrow. I dare say I shall stay a night or two." This was by way of revenge—or punishment. Let her see how she liked Shaylor's Patch without him!

      She turned to him, holding out her hand; in her eyes was raillery, half-reproachful, half-merry. "Come back in a better temper!" she said.

      "I'm a fool to come back at all." He kissed her hand and looked steadily into her eyes before he went away.

      Himself at once a poor and a pleasure-loving man, Godfrey had the good luck to own a well-to-do and devoted friend, always delighted to "put him up" and to give him the best of hospitality. Bob Purnett and he were old schoolfellows and had never lost sight of one another. Bob had four thousand a year of his own (though not of his own making), and in the summer he had no work to do; in the winter he hunted. He was a jovial being and very popular, except with the House Committee and the cook of his club; to these unfortunate officials he was in the nature of a perpetual Assize Court presided over by a "Hanging Judge."

      He gave Godfrey a beautiful dinner and a magnum of fine claret; let it be set down to his credit that he drank—and gave—fine claret at small dinners. He knew better than to be intemperate. Did he not want to go on hunting as long as possible? Nor was Godfrey given to excess in wine-drinking. Still the dinner, the claret, the old friendship, the liqueur, the good cigar, did their work. Godfrey found himself putting the case. It appeared to Bob Purnett a curious one.

      "But it's rot," he observed. "You're married or you're not—eh?" He himself was not—quite distinctly. "Must be very pretty, or she wouldn't expect you to stand it?"

      Godfrey laughed. There was a primitive truthfulness about Purnett's conversation. He was not sophisticated by thought or entangled in theory—quite different from the people at Shaylor's Patch.

      "She is very pretty; and absolutely a lady—and straight, and all that."

      "Then let it alone," counselled Bob Purnett.

      "I can't help it, old chap." Again the primitive note—the cry that there are limits to human endurance! Godfrey had not meant to utter it. The saying of it was an illumination to himself. Up to now he had thought that he could help it—and would, if he were faced with theories and irrationality.

      "Let's go to a Hall?" Bob suggested.

      "I'd like a quiet evening and just a jaw."

      Bob looked gravely sympathetic. "Oh, you've got it in the neck!" he said, with a touch of reverent wonder in his voice—something like the awe that madmen inspired in our forbears. Godfrey was possessed!

      "Yes, I have—and I don't know what the deuce to do."

      "Well, what the deuce are you to do?" asked Purnett. His healthy, ruddy, unwrinkled face expressed an honest perplexity. "Must be a rum little card—isn't she?"

      "I can't help it, Bob."

      "Dashed awkward!"

      In fact these two adherents of the code—may it be written honest adherents, for they neither invented nor defended, but merely inherited it?—were frankly puzzled. There is a term in logic—dichotomy—a sharp division, a cutting in two, an opposing of contradictories. You are honest or not honest, sober or not sober. Rough reasoning, but the police courts have to work on it. So you are regular or irregular. But people who want to make the irregular regular—that is as great a shock to the adherents of the code as their tenets are to the upholders of a different law. The denial of one's presuppositions is always a shock—because one must start from somewhere. It is a "shock to credit"—credit of some kind—and how are any of us to get on without credit?

      "Bring two more old brandies, Walter," Mr. Purnett commanded. It was the only immediate and practical step.

      "Not for me, old chap."

      Bob nodded accordingly to Walter. His face was inconceivably solemn.

      "I sometimes feel like cutting the whole thing," said Godfrey fretfully.

      "Well, there are other women in the world, aren't there?"

      "No, no. I mean the whole thing. What's the good of it?" The young man's fresh face looked for the moment weary and old; he flung his good cigar, scarcely half-smoked, into the fireplace.

      Bob Purnett knew better than to argue against a mood like that; one might just as well argue against a toothache.

      "Let's go home and have an early bed," he suggested. He yawned, and tried to hide the action. He was devoted to his friend, but his friend had raised a puzzle, and puzzles soon fatigued him—except little ones made of wood, for which he had a partiality.

      For three whole days Godfrey Ledstone fought; really trying to "cut the whole thing," to master again the feelings which had mastered him, not to go back to Shaylor's Patch. On one day he went to see his people, the father, mother, and sister, who were orthodox-thinking, and so fond and proud of him. They lived in Woburn Square. The old gentleman had been an accountant in a moderately good way of business, and had retired on a moderately good competence; at least, he was not old really, but, like some men, he took readily, even prematurely, to old age. Everything in the house seemed to Godfrey preternaturally settled; it even seemed settled somehow that Amy would not marry. And it was odd to think that Mr. and Mrs. Ledstone had once married, had (as it must be presumed) suffered from these terrible feelings, had perhaps doubted, feared, struggled, enjoyed. To-day all was so placid in Woburn Square; the only really acute question was the Income Tax—that certainly was a grievance to Mr. Ledstone. Godfrey appreciated the few hours of repose, the fondness, and the pride. It seemed then quite possible to "cut the whole thing"—yes, the whole of it.

      Bob Purnett went off on a short visit, leaving his comfortable flat at his friend's disposal. Why not stay in London, do a good turn at work, and see some more of his people in Woburn Square? A good and wise programme. But on the fourth day came a gust that blew the good and wise programme clean out of the window—a gust of feeling like a draught of strong wine, heady and overpowering. He flung down his pencil, crying aloud, "It's no use!"

      He was tried beyond that he was able. He laid an indictment, vague and formless, yet charged with poignant indignation, against the general order of things, against what forced a man into folly, and then branded him "Fool" with irons hissing-hot. The old protest, the creature's cry against the injustice of creation! An hour later he was on his way to the country—back to Shaylor's Patch. So far as he was concerned, the thing was settled. He might not realize it; he went, not led by purpose, but driven by craving. But "On my terms if I can, on hers if I must," interprets the confused and restless humming