right at once. I fear that a younger element has obtruded itself into the firm of Wadham, an element which scarcely grasps the true position. I will see these people, Marcia."
"You are not to worry about it," she begged softly. "To tell you the truth—"
Marcia was a brave woman, and the moment had come up to which she had been leading for so long, which for many months, even years, had been in her mind. And when it came she faltered. There was something in the superb, immutable poise of the man who bent a little courteously towards her, which checked the words upon her lips.
"It will be no trouble to me, Marcia, to set this little affair right," he assured her. "I am only glad that your circumstances have been such that you have not been inconvenienced. At the same time, is it entirely necessary for you to manipulate that hideous machine yourself?" he enquired, inclining his head towards the typewriter.
"There are times," she confessed, "when I find it better. Of course, I send a great deal of my work out to be typed, but my correspondence grows, and my friends find my handwriting illegible."
"I have never found it difficult," he remarked.
"Well, you've had a good many years to get used to it," she reminded him.
His hand rested for a moment upon her shoulder. He drew her a little towards him. She suddenly laughed, leaned over and kissed him on both cheeks, and jumped up. The trim little parlourmaid was at the door with tea.
"Yes," she went on, "you have learned to read my handwriting, and I have learned how you like your tea. Just one or two more little things like that, and life is made between two people, isn't it? Shall I tell you what I think the most singular thing in the world?" she went on, pausing for a moment in her task. "It is fidelity to purpose—and to people, too, perhaps. In a way there is a quaint sort of distinction about it, and from another point of view it is most horribly constraining."
"I interrupted you this afternoon, I imagine," he observed, "in the construction of some work of fiction."
"Oh, no!" she replied. "What I write isn't fiction. That's why it sells. It's truth, you see, under another garb. But there the fact remains—that I shouldn't know how to make tea for another man in the world, and you wouldn't be able to read the letters of any other woman who wrote as badly as I do."
"The fact," he remarked, "seems to me to be a cause for mutual congratulation."
She stooped down to place a dish of muffins on a heater near the fire, graceful yet as a girl, and as brisk.
"I can't imagine," she declared, "why it is that my sex has acquired the reputation for fidelity. I am sure we crave for experience much more than men."
The Marquis helped himself to a muffin and considered the point. There were many times when Marcia's conversation troubled him. He was by no means an ill-read or unintellectual man, only his studies of literature had been confined to its polished and classical side, the side which deals so much with living and so little with life.
"Are you preparing for a new work of fiction, Marcia," he asked, "or are you developing a fresh standpoint?"
"Dear friend," she declared, lightly and yet with an undernote of earnestness, "how can I tell? I never know what I am going to do in the way of work. I wish I could say the same about life. Now I am going to ask you a great favour. I have to attend a small meeting at my club, at the other end of Piccadilly, at half-past five. Would you take me there?"
"I shall be delighted," he answered, a little stiffly.
She went presently to put on her outdoor clothes. The Marquis was disappointed. He realised how much he had looked forward to that quiet twilight hour, when somehow or other his vanity felt soothed, and that queer weariness which came over him sometimes was banished. He escorted Marcia to the car when she reappeared, however, without complaint.
"I see your name in the papers sometimes, Marcia," he observed as he took his place by her side, "in connection with women's work. Of course, I do not interfere in any way with your energies. I should not, in whatever direction they might chance to lead you. At the same time, I must confess that I have noticed with considerable pleasure that you have never been publicly associated with this movement in favour of Woman's Suffrage."
She nodded.
"I should like a vote myself," she admitted simply, "but when I think of the number of other women who would have to have it, and who don't yet look at life seriously at all, I think we are better as we are. Is it my fancy," she went on, a little abruptly, "or are you really troubled about the return of—of Richard Vont?"
"As usual, Marcia," he said, "you show a somewhat extraordinary perception where I am concerned. I am, as you know, not subject to presentiments, and I have no exact apprehension of what the word fear may mean. At the same time, you are right. I do view the return of this man with a feeling which you, as a novelist, might be able to analyse, but which I, as a layman, unused to fresh sentiments, find puzzling. You remember what a famous Frenchman wrote in his memoirs, suddenly, across one blank page of his journal—'To-day I feel that a great change is coming.'"
She smiled reassuringly.
"Personally," she told him, "I believe that it is just the call of England to a man who lived very near the soil—her heart. I think he wants the smell of spring flowers, the stillness of an English autumn, the winds of February in the woods he was brought up in. It is a form of heart-sickness, you know. I have felt it myself so often. It is scarcely possible that after all these years he is still nursing that bitter hatred of us both."
The car had reached the great building in which Marcia's club was situated. The Marquis handed her out.
"I trust that you are right," he remarked. "You will allow me to leave the car for you?"
She shook her head.
"There are so many women here with whom I want to talk," she said. "I may even stay and dine. And would you mind not coming until Wednesday? To-morrow I must work all day at an article which has to be typed and catch the Wednesday's boat for America."
"Exactly as you wish," he assented.
She waved her hand to him and ran lightly up the steps. The Marquis threw himself back in his car and hesitated. The footman was waiting for an address, and his august master was suddenly conscious that the skies were very grey, that a slight rain was falling, and that there was nowhere very much he wanted to go.
The man waited with immovable face.
"To—the club."
CHAPTER V
Messrs. Wadham, Son and Dickson were not habited in luxury. Theirs was one of those old-fashioned suites of offices in Lincoln's Inn, where the passages are of stone, the doors of painted deal, and a general air of bareness and discomfort prevails. The Marquis, who was a rare visitor, followed the directions of a hand painted upon the wall and found himself in what was termed, an enquiry office. A small boy tore himself away with apparent regret from the study of a pile of documents, and turned a little wearily towards the caller.
"I desire," the Marquis announced,
