Well might Harry Belfield be subject to fits of temper and impatience! Well might he show signs of wear and tear not to be accounted for by the labours of a mild political campaign, carried on under circumstances of great amenity! He had fallen into a state of feeling which forbade peace within, and made security from without impossible. He was terribly at war in his soul. If he could have put the case so simply as that, being pledged to one girl, he had fallen in love with another, he would have had a plain solution open to him: he could break the engagement, facing the pain that he gave and the discredit that he suffered. His feelings admitted of no such straightforward remedy. The beliefs and the aspirations with which he had wooed Vivien were not dead; they were struggling for life against their old and mighty enemy. For him Vivien still meant happiness, and more than happiness – a haven for anything that was good in him, a refuge from all that was bad. With all his instincts of pure affection, of loyalty and chivalry, still he loved her and clung to her. She it was still who had power to comfort and soothe him, to send him forth able to do his work again. She was the best thing in his life; she seemed to him well-nigh his only chance against himself. Was he to throw the last chance away?

Then why not be true? Why deceive when he loved? Every day, nay, every hour, that question had to be asked in scorn and answered in bitterness. His happiness lay with one; the present desire of his eyes was for another. His mind towards Isobel was strange: often he hardly liked her; sometimes his hatred for what she was doing to his life made him almost hate her; always his passion for her was strong and compelling. Since the stolen kiss had set it aflame, it had spread and spread through him, fed by their secret interviews, till it seemed now to consume all his being in one fierce blaze. How could affectionate and loyal instincts stand against it? Yet he hated it. All the good of his nature his kindliness, his amiability, his chivalry – hated it. He was become as it were two men; and the one reviled the other. But when he reviled the passion in him as the murderer of all his happiness, it answered with a fell insinuation. Why these heroics and this despair? Why talk of happiness being murdered? There was another way. "Don't murder happiness for me," passion urged slyly. "I am violent, but I am a passing thing. You know how often I have come to you, and raged, and passed by. There's another way." That whisper was ever in his ears, and would not be silenced. That it might gain its end, his passion subtly minimized itself; it sought to enter into an unnatural alliance with his better part; it prayed in aid his purer love, his tottering loyalty, his old-time chivalry. A permanent reconciliation with these it could not, and dared not, ask; but a modus vivendi till it, transitory thing as it was, should pass away? So the tempter tempted with all his cunning.

Avoiding plain words for what that way was, he was seduced into asking whether it were open. He could not answer. Through all the stolen interviews, through other stolen kisses, he had never come to the knowledge of Isobel's heart and mind. He could read no more than she chose to let him read. She allowed his flirtation and his kisses, but almost scornfully. When he declared his state to be intolerable, she told him it was easy to end it – easy to end either the engagement or the flirtation at his option. She had not owned to love. A certain sour amusement seemed to lie for her in the affair. "We're a pair of fools," her eyes seemed to say when he embraced her, "but it doesn't much matter; nothing can come of it, and it'll soon be all over." When he saw that look, his old desire for conquest came over him; he was impelled at any cost to break down this indifference, to make his sway complete. Of her relations towards Wellgood she had flatly refused to say another word. "The less we talk about that just now the better." In some such phrase she always forbade the topic. There again he was left in an uncertainty which stung his pride and bred a fierce jealousy. By what she gave and what she withheld, by her silence no less than by her words, she inflamed his passion. She yielded enough to fill him with desire and hope of a full triumph; but even though she yielded, though her voice might falter and her eyes drop, she did not own love's mastery yet.

Thus torn and rent within, from without he seemed ringed round with enemies. Eyes that must needs be watchful were all about him. There was Andy Hayes with his chance knowledge of the first false step; Wellgood, who must have a jealous vigilance for the woman whom he had at least thought of making his wife; his own father, with his shrewd estimate of his son and acquaintance with past histories; Vivien herself, to whom he must still play devoted lover, with whom most spare hours must still be spent. To add to all these, now there came this girl from London! She had knowledge of past histories too; she had the sharpest of eyes; he feared even the directness of her tongue. Andy had seen, but not spoken; he did not trust Doris, if she saw, not to speak. He was terribly afraid of her. Small wonder that the suggestion of her stay at the Lion had called forth no enthusiasm from him! She took rank as an enemy the more. And Billy Foot was to be at Halton! She and Billy would lay their heads together and talk. Out of talk would come suspicion, out of suspicion more watchfulness. It was no business of theirs, but they would watch.

Political campaigning amidst all this! Well, in part it was a relief. The speeches and their preparation perforce occupied his mind for the time; on his platforms he forgot. Yet to go away – to leave Nutley for so many hours – seemed to his overwrought fancy a sore danger. What might happen while he was away? To what state of things might he any evening come back? Vivien might have revealed suspicions to Wellgood, or Wellgood might have challenged Isobel and compelled an answer. Once when Andy did not come to the meeting, he made sure that he had stayed behind on purpose to reveal his knowledge to Vivien or her father, and the evening was a long torture which no speeches could deaden, no applause allay.

In this fever of conflict and of fear his days passed. At this cost he bought the joy of the stolen interviews – that joy so mixed with doubt, so tainted by pain, so assailed by remorse. Yet for him so tense, so keen, so surcharged with the great primitive struggle. Ten minutes stolen once a day – it seldom came to more than that. Now and then, when he had no political excursion, a second ten, late at night, after his ostensible departure from Nutley. When he had "gone home," when Vivien had been sent to bed, and Wellgood had repaired to his pipe in the study, Isobel would chance to wander down the drive, looking into the waters of the lake, and he, lingering by the gate, see her and come back. Whether she would saunter out or not he never knew. Waiting to see whether she would seemed waiting for the fate of a lifetime.

One night – a week after the Fyfold Green meeting, a day after the Nun had taken possession of her quarters at the Lion – Harry had dined at Nutley and – gone home.

Isobel stole stealthily out; she had a quarter of an hour before doors would be locked. She strolled down the drive, a long dark cloak hiding the white dress which would have shown too conspicuously. As she went she dropped a letter; coming back she would pick it up. If any one asked why she had come out, the answer was – to find that letter, accidentally dropped. There had never been need of the excuse yet; it was still available.

Harry came swiftly, yet warily, back from the gate. For a fleeting instant all his being seemed satisfied. But she stretched out her arms, holding him off.

"No, I want to say something, Harry. This – this has gone on long enough. To-morrow I want you to know – only Miss Vintry!" There was the break in her voice; it was too dark to see her eyes.

"That's impossible," he answered, very low.

"Everything else is impossible, you mean." Her voice faltered again – into a tenderness new to him, filling him with rapture. "You're dying of it, poor boy! End it, Harry! I watched you to-night. Oh, you're tired to death – do you ever sleep? End it, Harry – because I can't."

So she had broken at last, her long fencing ended, her strong composure gone. "I can't bear it for you any longer. Have the strength. Go back to – " She broke into tremulous laughter. "Go back to duty, Harry – and forget this nonsense."

"Come to me, Isobel!"

"No, I daren't. From to-morrow there is – nothing."

He caught the arms that would have defended her face. "You love me?"

Her smile was piteous. "Not after to-night!"

His triumph rose on the crest of passion. "Ah, you do!" He kissed her.

"That's good-bye," she said. "I shall go through it all right, Harry. You'll see no signs. Or would you rather I went away?"

"What made you tell me you loved me to-night?"

"So many things are tormenting you, poor boy! Must I go on doing it? Oh, I have done it, I know. It was my self-defence. Now my self-defence must be forgetfulness." The clock over the stables struck a quarter past ten. "I must go back. I've told you."

"Do you see Wellgood before you go to bed?"

"Yes, always."

"What happens?"

"Don't, don't, Harry! What does it matter?"

"Are you going to marry him?"

"You're going to marry Vivien! I must go – or the door will be locked." A smile wavered at him in the darkness. "It's back to the house or into the lake!"

"Swear you'll manage to see me to-morrow!"

"Yes, yes, anything. And – good-bye."

He let her go – without another kiss. His mind was all of a whirl. She sped swiftly up the avenue. He made for the gate with furtive haste.

Isobel came to a stop. As the shawl had gone once, the letter had gone. Whither? Had the wind taken it? She had heard no tread, but what could she have heard save the beating of her own heart? No use looking for it.

"Ah, miss," said the butler, who had just come to lock up, "so you'd missed it? I saw it blowing about, and went and picked it up. And you've been searching for it, miss?"

"Yes, Fellowes. Thanks. I must have dropped it this afternoon. Good-night."

She went in; the hall door was bolted behind her. The letter had served its purpose, but she was hardly awake to the fact that anything had happened about the letter. She had told Harry! The great secret was out. Oh, such bad tactics! Such a dangerous thing to do! But everybody had a breaking-point. Hers had been reached that night – for herself as well as for his sake. Nobody could live like this any longer.

Now it was good-night to Wellgood; another ten minutes there – the one brief space of time in which he played the lover, masterfully, roughly, secure from interruption.

"I can't do it to-night!" she groaned, leaning against the wall of the passage between drawing-room and study, as though stricken by a failure of the heart.

There she rested for minutes. The lights were left for Wellgood to find his way by when he went to bed; Fellowes would not come to put them out. And there the truth came to her. She could not play that deep-laid game. She could no more try for Harry, and yet keep Wellgood in reserve. It was too hard, too hideous, too unnatural. She dared not try any more for Harry; she had lost confidence in herself. She could not keep Wellgood – it was too odious. Then what to do? To tell Wellgood, too, that from to-morrow there was only Miss Vintry? Yes! And to try to tell Harry so again to-morrow? Yes!

She had sought to make puppets and to pull the strings. Vivien, Wellgood, Harry – all the puppets of her cool, clever, contriving brain. It had been a fine scheme, bound to end well for her. Now she was revealed as a puppet herself; she danced to the string. The great scheme broke down – because Harry had looked tired and worried, because Wellgood's rough fondness had grown so odious.

"I won't go to him to-night. He can't follow me if I go straight upstairs." The thought came as an inspiration; at least it offered a reprieve till to-morrow.

The study door opened, and Wellgood looked out. Isobel was behind her time; he was waiting for his secret ten minutes, his stolen interview.

"Isobel! What the deuce are you doing there? Why didn't you come in?"

The part she had been trying to play, and had backed herself to play, seemed to have become this evening, of a sudden on this evening, more than hopeless. It had turned ridiculous; it must have been caught from some melodrama. She had been playing the scheming dazzling villain of a woman, heartless, with never a feeling, intent only on the title, or the money, or the diamonds, or whatever it might be, single in purpose, desperate in action, glitteringly hard, glitteringly fearless. What nonsense! How away from human nature! She was now terribly afraid. Playing that part, which seemed now so ridiculous because it assumed that there was no real woman in her, she had brought herself into a perilous pass – between one man's love and another man's wrath. She knew which she feared the more; but she feared both. Somehow her confession to Harry had taken all the courage out of her. She felt as if she could not stand any more by herself. She wanted Harry.

She could not tell Wellgood that henceforth there was to be only his daughter's companion, only Miss Vintry; she could not tell him that to-night. Neither could she play the old part to-night – suffer his fondness, and defend herself with the shining weapons of her wit and her provocative parries.

"I – I think I turned faint. I was coming in, but I turned faint. My heart, I think."

"I never heard of anything being the matter with your heart." His voice sounded impatient rather than solicitous.

"Please let me go straight to bed to-night. I'm really not well."

He came along the passage to her. He took her by the shoulders and looked hard in her face. Now she summoned her old courage to its last stand and met his gaze steadily.

"You look all right," he said with a sneer, yet smiling at her handsomeness.

"Oh, of course, yes! At least I shall be to-morrow morning. Let me go now." Really, at the moment, to be let go was her only desire.

"Be off with you, then," he said, smartly tapping – almost slapping – her cheek. "But you'll have to give me twice as long to-morrow."

He turned on his heel. With a smarting cheek she fled down the passage.

Though disappointed of his ten minutes, Wellgood was on the whole not ill-pleased. The calm composure, the suppression of emotion which he admired so much in theory – and as exhibited in Vivien's companion – he had begun to find a little overdone for his taste in his own lover. To-night there was a softness about her, a gentleness – signs of fear. The signs of fear were welcome to his nature. He felt that he had taken a step towards asserting his proper position, and she one towards acknowledging it. He was also more than ever sure that he need pay no heed to Belfield's silly hints. The old fellow seemed to assume that his precious son was irresistible! Wellgood chuckled over that. He chuckled again over the thought that, if Isobel were going to be like this, they might have a difficulty in keeping their secret till the proper time.

Isobel's confession to Harry was a confession to herself also. If it left her with one great excuse, it stripped her of all others. She could no longer say that she was making her woman's protest against being reckoned of no account, or that she was merely punishing Harry for daring to think that he could play with her and come off scathless himself. Even the great excuse found its force impaired, because she had brought her state upon herself. Led by those impulses of pride or of spite, she had set herself to tamper with Vivien's happiness; in the attempt she had fatally involved her own.

Some of her old courage – her old hardness – remained, not altogether swept away by the new current. "I shall get over it in time," she told herself impatiently. "These things don't last a lifetime." True, perhaps! But meanwhile – the time before the wedding? To-morrow, when she had promised to meet Harry? Every day after that – when he must come to woo Vivien? There had been protection for her in pretences. Pretences were over with Harry; they had to go on with Vivien and with Wellgood. On both sides of her position she felt herself now in a sore peril; it had become so much harder to blind the others, so infinitely harder to hold Harry back, if it were his mind to advance. Tasks like these perhaps needed the zest of pride and spite to make them possible – to make them tolerable anyhow. She loathed them now.

Next day she kept her room. Courage failed. Wellgood grumbled about women's vapours, but in his caution asked no questions and showed no concern. Harry, coming in the afternoon, in his caution risked no more than a polite inquiry and a polite expression of regret. Yet he had come hot of heart, resolved – resolved on what? To break his engagement? No, he was not resolved on that. To know in future only Vivien's companion, Miss Vintry? No. He had been resolved on nothing, save to see Isobel again, and to hear once more her love. To what lay beyond he was blind; his heart was obstinately set on the one desire, and had eyes for nothing else. But Isobel was not to be seen; he accused her of her old tactics – making advances, then drawing back. The whole thing had begun that way; she was at it again! Was he never to feel quite sure of her? She paid the price of past cunning, she who now lay in simple fear.

Vivien watched her lover's pale face and fretful gestures. Harry seemed always on a strain now, and the means he adopted to relieve it would not be permanently beneficial to his nerves; whisky-and-soda and cigarettes in quick succession were his prescription this afternoon. In vain she tried to soothe him, as she still sometimes could. He was now merry, now moody, often amusing, gay, gallant. He was everything except the contented man he had been in the early days.

"The dear old Rector's a little tiresome, Harry, isn't he? He won't fix the date of his return within a week. And I couldn't be married by anybody else, he'd be so hurt. Naturally he doesn't think a few days one way or the other matter. He doesn't think of my frocks!"

"Nor of my feelings either," said Harry, gallantly kissing her hand.

"Do you mind very much?" she asked shyly.

"I'll do anything you like about it." He caressed her hand gently, kindly. He had at least the grace to feel shame for himself, pity for her – when he was with her.

"Harry, are you quite – quite happy?"

He made his effort. "I should be as happy as the day's long if it weren't for those wretched meetings that take up half my time." His voice grew fretful. "And they worry me to death."

"They'll soon be over now, and then we can have all the time to ourselves together." She looked at him with a smile. "If only you won't get tired of that!"

He made his protest. Suddenly a memory of other protests swept over him – of how they had begun by being wholehearted and vehement, and had sunk first to weakness, then to insincerity, at last to silence. He hoped his present protest sounded all right.

"Oh, you needn't be too vehement!" she laughed, with a little shake of her head. "I know myself, and I believe I know more about you than you think. I'm quite aware that you'll sometimes be bored with me, Harry."

"Who's put that idea in your head?" he asked rather sharply. His mind was on those enemies, that ring of watching eyes.

"Nobody except yourself – who else should?" she asked in surprise. "After all I've seen of you, I ought to know that you have your moods – I suppose clever men have – and that I don't suit all the moods equally well." She squeezed his hand for a second. "But I'm going to be very wise – Isobel's taught me to be wise, among other things, you know – I'm going to be very wise, and not mind that!"

The true affection rose in him. "Poor little sweetheart!" he murmured. "I'm afraid you haven't taken on an easy job."

"No, I don't think I have," she laughed. "All the more credit if I bring it off! There'd be nothing to be proud of in making – oh, well, Andy Hayes, for instance – happy. He just is happy as long as he can be working at something or walking somewhere – it doesn't matter where – at five miles an hour – in the dust by preference. A girl would have nothing to do but just smile at him and send him for a walk. But you're different, aren't you, Harry?"

"By Jove, I am! Andy's one of the best fellows in the world."

"Yes, but I think – oh, it's only my view – that you're more interesting, Harry. Only, when you are bored, I want you – "

"Now don't say you want me to tell you so! Do let us be decently polite, even if I am your husband."

She laughed. "I won't strain your manners so far as that; I'm proud of their being so good myself. No, I want you just to go away and amuse yourself somewhere else till the fit's over. You may even flirt just a little, if you feel it really necessary, Harry! You needn't be quite so religiously strict all your life as you've been lately."

"Religiously strict? How do you mean?"

"Well, all this time I don't believe you've allowed yourself one good look at Isobel, though she's very good-looking; and I know you haven't called at the Lion yet, though Miss Flower has been there two days, and she such an old friend of yours in London."

"Have you called there?"

"Yes, I went yesterday. I like her so much, and I like that odd friend of hers too."

"Oh, Sally Dutton! I suppose she got her knife into me, didn't she?"

"She got her knife, as you call it, into everybody who was mentioned. Oh yes, including you!" Vivien laughed merrily.

"It's rather a bore – those girls coming down here. I hope we shan't see too much of them." He rose. "I'm afraid I must go, Vivien. We're due at Medfold Crossways to-night, and it's a good long drive, even with the motor. I've got to have some abominable hybrid of a meal at five."

She too rose and came to him, putting her hands in his. Her laughing face grew grave and tender.

"Dear, you really are happy?" she asked softly, yet rather insistently.

He looked into her eyes; they were not veiled or remote for him. "Honestly I believe you're the only chance of happiness I've got in the world, Vivien. Is that enough?"

"I think it's really more than being happy, or than being sure you will be happy." She smiled. "It gives me more to do, at all events."

"And if I made you unhappy?"

"Don't be hurt, please don't be hurt, but just a little of that wouldn't surprise me. Oh, my dear, you don't think I should change to you just because of a little unhappiness? When you've given me all the happiness I've ever had!"

"All you've ever had? Poor child!"

"It wasn't quite loyal to let that slip out. And it was my own fault, of course, mostly. But they – they were sometimes rather hard on me." She smiled piteously. "For my good? Perhaps it was. Without it, you mightn't have cared for me."

"Is it as much to you as that?" he asked, a note of fear, almost of distress, in his voice.

She marked it, and answered gaily, "It wouldn't be worth having if it wasn't, Harry!"

He kissed her fondly and tenderly, praying in his heart that he might not turn all her happiness to grief.

Her presence had wrought on him at last in its old way; if it had not given him peace, yet it had shown him where the chance of peace lay, if he would take it. It had again made him hate the thing he had been doing, and himself for doing it; again it had made him almost hate the woman whom and whom only he had, in truth, that day come to see. It had made the right thing seem again within his reach, made the idea of giving up Vivien look both impossibly cruel to her and impossibly foolish for himself. Yet he was, like Isobel, in great fear – in almost hopeless fear. These two, with their imperious desire for one another, became, each to the other, a terror – in themselves terrors, and the source of every danger threatening from outside.

"She gave me the chance of ending it last night. If only I could take her at her word!"

"Not after to-night!" she had said. He remembered the words in a flash of hope. But he remembered also that his answer had been, "Ah, you do!" and a kiss. If she said again, "Not after to-night!" – aye, said it again and again – would not the answer always be, "Ah, but to-night at least!" Such words ever promised salvation, but brought none; they were worse than useless. Under a specious pledge of the future, they abandoned the present hour.