Love in the Afternoon

LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON Rose Burghley

Stephen Lestrange, aged thirty-seven, had reached the afternoon of his life before he decided to get married. Rich, attractive, a highly successful portrait painter living a glamorous life in Paris, having his own way in everything, could such a man settle down to marriage with a quiet little thing like Lucy? Particularly when, as she was aware, he had married her on the rebound? But Lucy had resources of her own, and when the lovely, unscrupulous Helga came back into Stephen’s life with the clear intention of remaining there, the two girls were more evenly matched than an outside observer might have thought ...

CHAPTER ONE LUCY stepped out of the lift into the red-carpeted corridor, and the liftman directed her to a short flight of stairs at the end of the corridor. "Up those, miss, and you'll see Mr. Lestrange's door immediately in front of you. He's right on the top; you can't go any farther. I always tell him he won't get much nearer heaven," grinning as if the joke was particularly apt. Lucy smiled back a little uncertainly. "It is rather a long way up, isn't it?" she murmured. "But the view must be wonderful when you finally arrive!" "Oh, it is, miss. Trust Mr. Lestrange to find that out before he signed the lease!" As she negotiated the final flight of stairs Lucy thought that she knew three things about Stephen Lestrange. He suffered from indigestion; he might find it a little difficult to get into heaven by the road he was at present pursuing; and he was shrewd. He considered all the advantages before he signed such a thing as a lease. As for the indigestion, she had the remedy for that under her arm. Dr. Phillimore had left it on his desk with a note: Please drop this in at Charrington Mansions on your way home. I promised to do so three days ago, but forgot. That was so like poor old Dr. Phillimore. He was getting a little past things, but he never forgot anything important, so the case was quite obviously not serious. Lucy recognized the mixture at once, white and soothing and sedative, and she knew that it could work miracles

under certain circumstances, particularly when the circumstances involved over-indulged stomachs. On the top floor she stood outside a white-painted door and waited before she pressed the bell. Sunlight flooded the corridor, streaming through a window that was made up of many different panes of brilliantly coloured glass, so that the effect was rainbow and dazzling. Lucy's short fair hair discovered a golden aureole, and her pale skin became flushed with rose. Her pink cotton dress turned to challenging violet and the rest of her was an entrancing shade of green. She pressed the bell, but the result was so negligible that she had to press it again, after waiting perhaps half a minute. Then she waited a full minute before applying her finger to the glittering pushbutton, and this time she could hear the summons shrilling all round the flat. She was turning away, having decided that the sufferer was not actually- sitting waiting for his medicine, and that the best thing she could do was hand it over to the liftman for delivery in the right quarter later on, when the door was whipped open, and a masculine voice said protestingly: "Don't go! Not if you've some legitimate reason for wasting my time, that is!" Lucy turned back and regarded him in surprise. The only other thing she knew about Stephen Lestrange was that he was what is known as a fashionable portrait-painter, and she was prepared for a certain amount of eccentricity, but not definite rudeness. This man was most decidedly rude, exercising so little control over the impatience that obviously possessed him that his voice was harsh and imperious, and his eyes simply flamed with irritation. But they were such lustrous hazel eyes that she blinked for a moment as she stared back into them. His hair appeared to be full of burnished lights - unless it was the effect of the coloured fanlight immediately above his head - and

lay close to his scalp like a metal cap, save where the ends turned back on themselves in an intrepid desire to curl crisply. He was wearing a white silk shirt filled in at the neck with a spotted handkerchief, and black corduroy trousers. The trousers were paintsmeared, and as explanation of why they were paint-smeared he waved a palette at Lucy. "Well! Hurry up, what is it? We can't stand here all night, and, as you can see, I'm in a hurry!" "I rang three times," Lucy remarked, somewhat unnecessarily as it turned out. "I'm all too painfully aware of it." The hazel eyes gleamed menacingly. "When I think that you might have chosen any other time ... any other night but tonight!" Then, looking hard at her: "In any case, you wouldn't be the slightest use to me as a model. There's nothing sufficiently unusual about your face, and your figure's below average. That short fringe makes you look too young, and your bone formation is quite ordinary. Apart from your eyes ..." He had another good look at her eyes, and then stood aside from the doorway. "Well, you can come in if you like!" "I don't like," Lucy replied, very firmly indeed, and handed over his medicine. "I've brought you this. From Dr. Phillimore," she explained. "Three days ago you were apparently in need of it!" "What!" He stared at the bottle in his hand, and then his whole face crinkled up in laughter. It was a devastatingly attractive face when he laughed, thin, dark, a little hollow about the cheeks, a little puckish about the way the intensely black eyebrows shot upwards at the corners. There were signs of dissipation around the mouth, but his

teeth were as white as blanched almonds, and his eyelashes must have been at least half an inch long. Lucy knew instinctively that here was a much, much too attractive male creature, and that by rights he ought to wear a placard: Keep off! You have been warned! I am a menace to every susceptible female who comes within range! "A bottle of old Phillimore's prize stomach settler! But it was three days ago that I needed it." "All the same, you might possibly need it again quite soon." "Too true." He grinned at her. "As a matter of fact, I'm going somewhere tonight ..." And then he changed his mind, and tried a coaxing note to induce her to come inside. "Come in and get your breath after being whirled up in that lift. It's rather like an American lift, and travels fast. And then you had the stairs to climb." "It will be easier going down." "But only if you allow me to offer you a tiny spot of refreshment before you even think of making the descent." "I don't want any refreshment, Mr. Lestrange," she told him very clearly — a soft clarity of tone that was already beginning to intrigue him a little — "And I wouldn't dream of wasting your time." "As if a pretty girl like you could be in any sense of the word a timewaster!" Somehow he managed to insinuate himself behind her, and before she properly realized what was happening she was inside his small hall, and the door was closed. She both looked and sounded annoyed. "A few moments ago you told me that my bone formation was all wrong!"

"Ah, but that was because the light was poor - those bits of coloured glass overhead can create the most extraordinary illusions. And, in any case, I was in a very bad humour, and I wanted to get on. I was temporarily inspired, and I knew that the inspiration might desert me and not return again for another forty-eight hours. But now that I know you come on an errand of mercy I feel distinctly ashamed of myself." He led her into a huge and beautiful room, carpeted in plain gold, with several deep divans, low coffee-tables, and a dais at the far end where his models posed. All around the room canvases stood either with their faces to the wall, or in a position to be admired. From the enormous window there was, as Lucy had known there would be, a superb view. "And in that Quaker-like dress, with that wide white collar, you might be a little Florence Nightingale yourself!" But Lucy had walked straight to the window and was almost gasping with pleasure. It seemed to her that the whole of London was spread out for her to gaze at, London with its spires, its grey roofs, its distant dome of St. Paul's. And close to her was the river, molten gold in the evening light, slipping beneath its bridges, with the gardens on the opposite bank also picked out with little gleaming golden threads where the rays of the westering sun fastened like a magnet on everything that flowed or was static in an ornamental basin. Battersea Power Station was huge and black against the light, but the delicately greening trees in the Embankment gardens, the shapes of tugs and barges on the river, were all touched with the evening's gold. In fact, everything seemed to swim in it. Lestrange crossed the room to a corner cabinet and then put a glass in Lucy's hand. She looked down at it. "But I - " "It's only sherry - quite innocuous. The usual thing at this hour of the day, when somebody drops in."

"But I'm not dropping in. I merely brought you your medicine." "True." But he insisted on putting her into a chair, and then perched himself on the arm of another chair facing her, and sat openly studying her. In a good light - particularly that swimming golden light - it would have been quite wrong to say that she was merely ordinary. He had been quite right about her figure, because it was as slight and undeveloped as a schoolgirl's, but her complexion was as pale and clear as a pearl, and her eyes were a strange dark gold, like honey. He had never seen eyes quite like them before, so singularly straightgazing and unwavering, and so unaware. The white eyelids didn't flutter, as he was accustomed to seeing feminine eyelids flutter, and the sweeping eyelashes remained upraised. Her mouth was too large for beauty, and she hadn't learned to wield a lipstick with dexterity or she was chary of using a really bright and vivid lipstick, which would have suited her. And her nose had one or two freckles on the tip of it. Oddly enough, they suited her. She was plainly very young indeed, and he thought, looking at her unawakened eyes, and her mouth that would one day be capable of quite a lot of ardour: "Eve with a berry halfway to her lips!" "I thought you said you were inspired," she reminded him, looking round for an easel. But it was at the far end of the room, and she couldn't make out what it held. "Aren't I driving the inspiration farther and farther away?" "It doesn't matter," he replied, offering her a cigarette from a fine platinum case. "The reason why I was so bad-tempered was that I have already been working for too many hours at a stretch, and I

shan't put in another brush-stroke tonight. Now tell me how, and in what way, you come to be involved with Dr. Phillimore?" "I work for him," she answered. "I'm his secretary." "I shouldn't have thought old Phillimore could have afforded a secretary." "All doctors have to have someone to help them," she replied sedately. "And Dr. Phillimore is old! That's his trouble. He'll have to retire soon." "And what will happen to you then?" "I'll work for someone else." "Another doctor? Another dispenser of soothing bismuth?" "My father was a doctor, so I seem to fit into that role quite naturally. I assisted my father for five years after I left school." "Good heavens," he exclaimed. "Then how old are you now?" "Twenty-three." She seemed to smile demurely down at her hands. "You obviously enjoy putting a lot of questions, Mr. Lestrange; but since I'm drinking your sherry I don't mind answering them. I don't even mind volunteering a few bits of information about myself in order to prevent you from asking further questions." "Go on," he said, smiling in a jaded one-sided fashion. "I don't mind admitting I thought you w-ere about eighteen, but now I know you're somewhat older the questions had better be a little less probing. Or you can be less informative, whichever you prefer." "I don't think there's any real question of preference." She took a sip at her sherry. "You asked me inside, and I'm endeavouring to be

polite - which, incidentally, you weren't when you first came to the door!" "I'm seldom polite," he told her, "unless I'm in a very amiable mood. Now, to begin with, whom would I ask for if I decided I needed another bottle of medicine, and telephoned Dr. Phillimore's house." "Dr. Phillimore." His lustrous eyes expressed sleepy approval. "That's bright, but not helpful, and shows you don't appreciate the sherry." "But, as a matter of fact, I do. It's sweet, and not dry, and I hate dry sherry." "And I would ask for Miss -?" "Martin. Lucy Martin." "Are you quite sure it's not Lucille, or Lucinda?" "Quite sure." "Pity," shaking his head. "Lucia would suit you, with those eyes." "I'll fill in the rest," she said. "My father died six months ago, and Dr. Phillimore, who was one of his oldest friends, offered me the job with him. I have a tiny one-room flat not far from here, and I'm only just beginning to get used to London after the heart of the country." "Which part of the country?" "Lincolnshire."

"Very rural," he commented. "And of course you find London exciting?" "Not particularly.'" "Many friends?" "One or two." "Boyfriends?" "None." His eyebrows arched. "Not in twenty-three years?" "I'm dull, aren't I?" she remarked, and gazed at him with her honeygold, still pools of eyes. Still, tranquil pools, he decided. "But truthful. Very truthful!" "I wonder how you know that?" she asked, mildly perplexed; but he merely stood up and started to drift rather aimlessly about the room, as if already she was beginning to bore him a little, and his attention was wandering from her. He came to a halt in front of a canvas that was one of those exposed to view, and he stood looking down on it with a brooding look on his dark face - a brooding, cynical, frustrated look. Lucy came up behind him and admired the canvas. "Oh, but that's wonderful! She's absolutely exquisite, isn't she?"

"Is she?" He didn't remove his eyes from the canvas, which was propped up on an easel, so that it was on eye level. "You don't by any chance think that I've flattered her?" "I shouldn't think so. Unless you've given extra depth to her colouring, which seems a little unbelievable. That wheat-gold hair ... is it really wheat-gold? And her skin has a golden tinge to it, too, as if she likes lying about on sun-soaked beaches. And her eyes ... are they blue or green?" "Blue in some lights, green in others." "A sort of kingfisher blue?" "You could call it that." "She's exquisite," she repeated, with a sigh. "Of course, I don't know who she is, but she's exquisite!" "Her name is Helga - the Baroness Helga - and she's Austrian." He turned the portrait to face the easel with an economical, decisive movement. "Well, that's enough of her for one evening! Exquisite women are like everything else that is heady - they have to be absorbed in small doses! Otherwise you find yourself driven to people like Dr. Phillimore, who can't always dish out the right sort of corrective medicine!" He put his hand on her shoulder and drew her towards the door. "Well, young woman, you'd better be running along now. I've got to get changed." "I didn't ask to come in," she reminded him, setting down her halffinished drink on the first convenient little table they came to. "And I've got my own evening ahead of me."

"Good." But his voice was absent. "Don't let it be too hectic. You're only young." He had forgotten altogether that she had confessed that she hadn't a single man friend. As she went running down the short flight of stairs to the lift she heard his door close firmly behind her. Well! ... she thought. What an extraordinary man! Rude, fascinating, friendly, inquisitive. And his hair really was burnished! Very dark in the main, with coppery gleams where the ends sought to curl. And his eyes were a greenishgrey ... not greenish- blue, like the woman in. the portrait!

CHAPTER TWO A FEW evenings later she saw him again. She had been having tea with one of the few friends she had made since she came to London, who had a little house off the King's Road, and as it was a very warm evening, and her duties had concluded at twelve that day, and she had absolutely nothing to do with her free time, she had decided to saunter back to her own microscopic apartment. All day the London streets had been giving back unexpected May warmth, and now that the night was near the air was soft and caressing as a velvet mantle. Scent stole out from window-boxes, and Lucy found it vaguely exciting, and the tall chestnut candles whispered above her head as she cut through the comparatively noiseless squares. When she reached the main thoroughfare lights were appearing in the windows of the popular restaurants, and waiters were rearranging the flowers on the gay checked cloths. Lucy glanced at those windows for an instant, and thought it would be fun to eat out tonight, and then remembered that she had no one to eat out with, and concentrated on a twinkling, far-away star instead. A long cream car drew up beside her, and Stephen Lestrange reached across to open the door. "Get in, Lucia," he said. Lucy obeyed him, overcoming her surprise, and subsided on to the seat beside him. She was wearing a pale linen suit, and no hat, and she looked a little like a ghost in the gloom. "How are you doing, Lucia?" Stephen asked, smiling at her onesidedly. "I'm doing very well, thank you, Mr. Lestrange," she replied. "And my name is Lucy."

"Yes, I remember, but it doesn't suit you. Lucy is a name for a housemaid." "Thank you," she said. She was a little overawed by the size of the car, overcome by the comfort of the superbly sprung seat, and not in the least familiar with the man who sat beside her. Tonight he was attired in an elegant lounge suit and a flowing tie - later she was to recognise it as Old Etonian - and his linen was almost painfully immaculate. His hair gleamed in the early starshine. "Where shall we go?" he asked, driving very slowly, his shapely brown hands resting almost negligently on the wheel. "Since we're neither of us dressed it had better be somewhere quiet, I suppose." "What do you mean?" "Dinner," he responded. "What else? Unless you've already been fed?" "No, I haven't. But I don't expect you -" "Don't talk," he said, patting her knee as if she was a child whom he had suddenly decided to reward with an unexpected treat, and whom as a consequence he expected to be good. "Leave it to me, and I'll think of somewhere." "But-" "I said 'don't talk'! If you do, I'll call you Lucy for the rest of the evening!" She lay back against the seat, getting the better of an uprush of amusement and vexation. He was full of whims, and he was taking her out to dinner, and only a few nights ago he had practically pushed

her out of his flat after inviting her into it. Well, let the wind blow where it listeth... for tonight, at any rate! She had been wanting to have a meal with someone, in surroundings that were different, and now she was going to have a meal with Stephen Lestrange, fashionable portrait-painter! He had decided upon it. Why, she wouldn't attempt to ask. He helped her out of the car, when it stopped at last, and inside the restaurant he was as attentive as if she was someone special he was taking out for the evening. The head waiter and the wine waiter were both deferential, as if they knew him very well indeed, and he consulted the latter about a suitable wine for Lucy, who hadn't a very experienced palate. Lucy said afterwards that water would have done quite well for her, and he frowned at her rebukingly. "When I take a young woman out to dinner I don't regale her with water! What sort of response would I get from her if I did?" He smiled at her crookedly, attractively. "I'm very glad I caught sight of you on the pavement, Lucia. I was feeling definitely at a loose end, even downright bored and dissatisfied with life; and then there you were, walking along with that will-o'-the-wisp air of yours, wearing a pale green suit that might have been part of the new spring foliage! You're rather like a dryad, you know, Lucia. You ought to live in the greenwood and peep out at unsuspecting travellers with those enormous eyes of yours that are exactly like the eyes of a fawn." She smiled, and toyed with the roll on her plate. "What has happened to your 'inspiration'?" she asked. "Haven't you been seized by it any more?" "No, you drove it finally away. I haven't done a thing since I saw you last."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, and looked so genuinely sorry that he' laughed aloud, showing all his beautiful white teeth. "You needn't be, little one! It was on the point of drying up when you arrived, and that was partly why I was so angry. I'd been working very well for weeks, and then suddenly I knew a barren period was approaching. Short of a miracle happening the immediate future held nothing but starvation!" Her golden eyes grew very serious as she studied him. "There is nothing about you that suggests that you even know what the word starvation means," she told him. He grinned. "Well, as a matter of fact, it isn't as hopeless as all that. I've enough money to pay for this meal tonight, and breakfast tomorrow morning ... and after that we'll see!" But she knew very well that he was merely enjoying himself at her expense, having almost certainly a very comfortable bank balance that permitted him such luxuries as his flat in an ultra-modern block, his car, and his impeccable style of dress ... or the impeccable style he had adopted this evening. But even when she had first seen him his white silk shirt had looked heavy and expensive, and his black cord trousers had merely been a trifle ill-used. "What sort of salary do you earn, little Lucy?" he asked. "Enough to live in one room, and keep myself respectable. That's about all," she admitted. "But you're happy?" "Oh, yes ... yes! Yes, I suppose I'm happy."

"You could be a little more definite about it." He put his head on one side and regarded her. "When you said that your father died six months ago, did you mean that that left you without any parents at all?" "Yes, I'm afraid it did." He could see the shadow that crossed her face. "But I expect, like me, you've got hordes of relatives?" "No, as a matter of fact, I haven't." "No one near and dear?" "No one near and dear." "Poor little Lucy!" His thin brown fingers slid across the table and covered hers. "I'm sorry about that. So you're really and truly alone?" She nodded. She couldn't trust herself to speech, for she never really stopped to think about the loss of her father without experiencing an appalling sensation of desolation. And tonight, for some reason, the desolation, as it rushed upon her, was very acute. Stephen Lestrange sat watching her, thoughtfully. "Really and truly alone in the world," he murmured.

But when he drove her home she was no longer aware of desolation. She had been expensively dined and wined, and it had been an unexpectedly pleasant evening; in fact a very pleasant evening. Her eyes were luminous with pleasure as she looked up at him through the dimness that filled the inside of the car, and he could see the pearly pallor of her skin, and the soft scarlet shape of her mouth. She

must have been feeling a little reckless tonight, for she had used more lipstick than usual, and the outline of that mouth fascinated him. "Did I say there was nothing unusual about you?" he remarked, as he lighted a cigarette. "I think I was wrong there. You're not precisely unusual, but you're not altogether usual." "Does that mean that when I feel the need to make some extra money and come knocking at your door to be taken on as a model you'll engage me?" "No." He shook his head quite decidedly. "I shall never paint you." "Why not?" "Because I only paint - a certain type of woman!" "Beautiful women?" "They're mostly beautiful." She sighed. "And I'm not in the least beautiful." He patted her hand, that was delicate and sensitive like the rest of her. "You're very nice." Suddenly she laughed a little wryly. "That sound like assuring a plate of cold custard that it's almost as good as ice-cream." But he didn't smile.

"Will you be free tomorrow afternoon?" "Oh, no! I shan't be free now until Saturday." "All right, Saturday will do. I want to take you to meet my aunt, whom I think I can safely promise you'll like. She's one of those comfortable Victorian survivals who lives in an atmosphere of pet lapdogs and potted palms, and although she never thought a brilliant thought in her life she's kindly and charitable. She'll almost certainly take to you." "But why should you want her to take to me?" "Simply because I do want her to do so. And you'll probably meet my Uncle Joe." "Your Uncle Joe?" "Sir Joseph Lestrange. He's her brother. One of these days, when poor old Joe shuffles off this mortal coil, I'll be Sir Stephen Lestrange." "I see!" she said. "I don't think you see very much beyond that small nose of yours. It's tip-tilted, and it probably gets in the way." He gave her a hand out on to the .pavement, and she once more looked up at him with her luminous eyes. There was no doubt about it, a glass and a half of the right sort of wine, plus one very small liqueur, had lent them an extraordinary depth and brilliance, and he knew she was wondering whether he expected her to permit him to kiss her as a reward for taking her out for the evening. He smiled with amusement and laid a long index finger along her cheek, and warned her not to keep him waiting on Saturday afternoon.

"The one thing I won't put up With from any sort of woman beautiful or plain - is unpunctuality! I decline to be kept either waiting or dangling." Many weeks later she was to remember those words very clearly. "And now run along in and see that you don't miss your beauty sleep. Until Saturday, Lucia mia!" On Saturday afternoon, far from keeping him waiting, Lucy was on the steps when his handsome cream car slid to a standstill at the foot of them. She had been ready for at least half an hour, and she had a queer fluttery feeling of excitement inside. It was a bright sunshiny afternoon, the bells of the church round the corner had been pealing joyfully because a wedding was taking place inside the church, and it seemed to her that there was a queer sort of magic and excitement abroad. Rather like in the old days, when she was still a schoolgirl, and a rich uncle who spent most of his life wandering abroad turned up and she knew he was going to present her with a whole pound note to take back to school. Unfortunately now that uncle was dead, and he hadn't been in the least rich when he died, and there was no one to present her with a pound note, or even a fifty-pence piece. But that didn't matter. The sensation was the same; the eager flowing of her blood, the slight catchiness of her breath, the trembling of her hands. Stephen looked up at her from behind the wheel of the car and smiled. She knew how to dress, he thought, this slight, willowy young woman who wasn't either pretty or plain. Today she wore navy blue and white, and it emphasized her slimness and made her appear poised. Her hair was shaped like a bell, and as sleek and shining as a golden silk, and she hugged a huge white handbag under her arm. As she stepped into the car he made a joke about the handbag and the number of knick-knacks that were scattered about his aunt's drawing-room, and he saw the colour rise in a lovely tide to her face.

He stared at it for a moment as if frankly amazed. "I must make you blush more often," he said. But Lucy was in a mood to be teased, and a mood to blush, without minding very much. Why should she mind, when it was such a brilliantly fine afternoon ; and when they slid out of the square the newly married pair were emerging from the church, and everyone was throwing confetti over everyone else. Flower-like frocks were blowing in the breeze, and dainty head-dresses were being threatened by that same stiff breeze that was coming straight off the river where the tugs and the barges were idling away a Saturday afternoon. The bride was all in white, and clinging to her very new husband's arm, and Lucy felt her whole being leap in sympathy with her. She was so radiant... surely nothing would ever dim that radiance? Lucy swallowed, but Stephen smiled cynically. "To have and to hold, from this day forward!" he quoted, his voice as cynical as his smile. "They'll probably be divorced in about a year from now." "You have to stay married for at least two years before you can get a divorce," she remarked. "Oh, do you? Well, that'll give them time to ponder, won't it? And when the two years are up they'll be so delighted to see the back of one another that they won't have room for a single regret!" "I think that's - a horrible thing to say!" Lucy got out, in a choked voice. He sent her a quizzical sideways look, and then his fingers closed over hers for a moment and gave them a tight squeeze.

"All right, my cherisher of illusions — which you obviously are! - I take it all back! I'm sure they'll be living blissfully together fifty years from now, and their children and grandchildren will be thick as morning mist before the sun gets at it." But Lucy wasn't capable of smiling until a full five minutes later, and then she relaxed against the seat and once more told herself that this was a lovely afternoon. London was always attractive when the business crowds had deserted it, and particularly that extremely salubrious corner of once very fashionable London which she didn't enter very much herself - an oasis of big squares where the houses now served the purpose of impressive embassies, and that sort of thing, but were still linked together by one or two houses that even in these difficult days were privately owned. The London home of Stephen's Aunt Miriam was just such a one, and beside the front door there was even an empty link-holder that made Lucy think swiftly of the days when liveried footmen had helped powdered and patched beauties to alight from sedan- chairs. Nowadays young women like herself were casually assisted to reach the pavement by detached male escorts like Stephen Lestrange who didn't always bother to get out first themselves, but reached across them to swing open the door. But Stephen didn't do this today. He went round and held open the door for Lucy and told her not to be afraid of Aunt Miriam, because she was as meek as a lamb. "As a matter of fact, she purrs like a kitten when she's pleased. I'm expecting her to purr this afternoon, because you're right up her street." His eyes glinted lazily into Lucy's. "Right up her street! And it's a one-way street!" Lucy had no idea at all what he meant by that.

CHAPTER THREE BUT she took to Aunt Miriam immediately. Lady Bannister was a widow, and she had no children of her own, so she adored her nephew Stephen. The adoration was obvious when she looked up at him and chided him gently for neglecting her lately. "You don't come and see me nearly as much as you might do, Stephen. I know you have frantically busy periods, but you're not always painting pictures, and you're not always going away somewhere out of town. You could drop in sometimes and make certain I'm alive." "My dearest Aunt Miriam," he returned light- heartedly, "if your life was in danger I should be here before the doctor had made the pronouncement that you were not long for this world!" He put his fingers under her smooth white chin, and kissed her powdered cheek, but she still looked at him reproachfully. "It might be too late," she said. "I might be gone before you arrived!" Someone in the background roared with laughter. "Not you, Miriam! You'd hang on until the boy got here!" Uncle Joe came forward. Apparently he spent a lot of time with Lady Bannister, and most of his week-ends were devoted to her. He was a spare, dapper man with a pointed beard - he had been in the Navy for several years - and there were all sorts of fob pockets in his waistcoat. His watch-chain jangled, and he wore a bunch of seals, and he used a monocle. He looked at Lucy very deliberately through the latter, and then beamed at her.

"Upon my word, but you're not a bit like Stephen's usual lady friends! Where in the world did he run into you? Must have been when he was off his regular course!" "Joseph!" Lady Bannister protested, from the depths of a Chesterfield couch, and amidst a positive nest of cushions. "We don't want any of your nautical observations here!" Then she patted the vacant space beside her - the space, that is, that was not occupied by a couple of pekinese and an extremely diminutive pug. "Do sit down, my dear, and tell me all about yourself. " She smiled with a sweet placidity at Lucy, and the girl thought she wasn't altogether unlike a soft and woolly lamb. Her hair was white and arranged in soft curls, and she had a fleecy little woollen wrap around her shoulders to protect them from the first whisper of a draught. "You look so young, and it isn't like Stephen to have young lady friends. Although," shooting a disapproving glance at her brother, "I wouldn't discuss his friends in the way that Joseph does!" Lucy felt her lips twist a little wryly at the assumption that she was one of their nephew's lady friends. She could have informed Lady Bannister that they were no more than the barest acquaintances, but she thought it best not to do so. It might seem odd if she laboured such a point, and in any case Stephen himself was watching her with an amused look, as if he wondered whether she was going to pursue a policy of strict truthfulness, all the time he was talking to Sir Joseph. "What adorable little dogs," she said, lifting the pug on to her lap. "My mother had one like this once, but I understand the breed is dying out. Is that really true, do you think?" "They don't live very long, you know," Lady Bannister said regretfully. "And possibly that discourages people from wanting to breed them. But your mother obviously agreed with me that they are

worth keeping, even if we can only have them for a little while." Her eyes continued to dwell rather fascinatedly on Lucy, and she asked her about her mother and her home, and when the girl admitted that she possessed neither of those advantages nowadays her sympathy was immediate. "My poor child! How very lonely it must be for you! How lucky that you should know Stephen! ..." And then her eyes rested on Stephen as if she wasn't, perhaps, so certain of that after all. Stephen, it was plain, had built himself up a reputation for fickleness,' and since no one could imagine his Aunt Miriam being fickle, it was obviously a cause of something like pain to her. Sir Joseph, having once been a man of the sea, wasn't so nice about such things - and he obviously didn't take his sailing orders from his sister! - and he returned more than once to the subject of Stephen having ventured, as he phrased it, into strange waters, and very likely being becalmed at the moment. "You'll have to put salt on his tail, young lady!" he told Lucy. "Or, in more appropriate language, befoul his anchor! Don't let him get away! Unless," looking at her rather anxiously, "you don't mind if he gets away?" Lucy felt so confused because Stephen was still leaning against the white marble mantelpiece and looking at her across the lovely Aubusson carpet that for the second time that day she felt the colour simply flood her cheeks. Stephen deserted the support of the mantelpiece and came across to her. "What are you saying to Lucia, Uncle, to make her blush like that?" he wanted to know curiously. "She only does it when someone accuses her of buying an outsize handbag for a deplorably doubtful purpose." His uncle barked at him.

"Why do you call her Lucia? Lucy's a good English name, and I don't hold with Italian fancy names. Used to know a little Italian girl myself..." He glanced towards his sister, and regretfully decided to withhold the reminiscence. "I used to know an English girl called Lucy, too, and as a matter of fact I nearly married her. Lucy Lestrange would have tripped very nicely off the tongue, but the trouble with me in those days was that I couldn't make up my mind." He sighed. "And the upshot of it was that I never married at all. Got stuck with a bachelor's life sentence." "What happened to Lucy?" Stephen wanted to know. "She married someone else - a landlubber!" His disdainful expression gave place to one of slight wistfulness. "And now she's got a nice little family of grandchildren growing up around her." "Ah, well," Stephen cheered him, "we haven't all got the makings of first-class grandparents. Maybe you wouldn't have fitted very comfortably into the role." "Maybe not," Sir Joseph agreed. "But I stood godfather to pretty nearly every one of Lucy's brood just the same." He stuck his thumbs in two of his fob pockets and shook his head. "No, marriage is a good thing, but we Lestranges don't seem to be cut out for it. I never married, and now you're following the same road, Stephen. You'll end up with nothing but a nephew to comfort you in your old age if you don't do something about it soon." Stephen smiled enigmatically, and lifted one of the Pekinese away from a plate of sandwiches which the elderly manservant who had just wheeled a tea trolley into the room had set down on an occasional table close to Lady Bannister's elbow. "Greedy little horror," he admonished the peke, and then looked slightly mockingly at his uncle. "I'd hate to have a nephew to comfort

me in my old age - I'd rather make do with a peke! But it's on the cards I won't even have to make do with one of these objectionable samples of the lapdog tribe!" Whereupon Lady Bannister rose to the defence of her pets, and the conversation took a different turn altogether, and nobody apparently was in the slightest degree impressed by Stephen's vague threat - or was it a promise? — to get married one day after all. When the time came for them to take their departure Lucy was quite sorry to leave the comfortable, flower-filled, dog-filled room. Lady Bannister pressed her to call and see her whenever she felt like it, and Sir Joseph said heartily that he couldn't think what there was to prevent Stephen bringing her along to dinner one night. Stephen made absolutely no reply to this, and outside on the pavement, with the sun's rays still falling goldenly from a clear heaven, he said to Lucy: "And now how do you react to the idea of changing the tempo a little? Something more up to the minute after all that strawberry jam and china tea?" Lucy looked at him in faint bewilderment as he held open the car door for her. "What do you mean?" "A party ... not far from here." "What sort of a party?" He smiled at her expression of innocence. "The kind where you're lucky if you can find a spare window-seat to sit down on, and where they drift around with dishes of salted almonds and stuffed olives and ruin your drinks with cocktail

cherries on the end of sticks. Know the sort of thing? Slightly hysterical chatter, and no one ever thinking to introduce anyone else." "It doesn't sound very - friendly," Lucy said. "Cocktail parties are never friendly, but this one will give us a boost after an afternoon with Aunt Miriam and Uncle Joe. By the way, they took to you, as I said, as a duck takes to water. Uncle Joe is almost certainly talking, about you at this very moment." "I think he's a pet," Lucy remarked, because that was what she had thought. "And I liked your Aunt Miriam." "Good," Stephen said briefly, and concentrated on his driving. Just before they drew up outside a modern block of flats Lucy heard herself thank him rather shyly. "It was nice of you to take me." "Eh? Oh - er - yes! I mean, don't be silly... they were the ones who enjoyed it." It was obvious his thoughts were wandering, as they had wandered once before when she was with him; but just now she felt a little nervous because she was about to be thrust uninvited into the midst of a collection of people not one of whom she could possible hope to know, and in his present state of abstraction he might forget such an all-important item as presenting her to their host or hostess. Although, as it turned out, she need not have worried. The hostess didn't appreciate people being presented to her. The flat was on the first floor of a beautifully designed block with a forecourt that was simply banked with flowers. They went up in a lift that was rather like a gilded cage, and even before it stopped they could hear the overflow of noises from the party that was taking

place on that floor. Shrill bursts of feminine laughter, masculine hawhaws, a thinly playing record player or radio. And above all, as soon as they stepped in at the open front door, the constant chinking of ice against glasses. Lucy shrank closer to Stephen, but he didn't even notice it. He went ahead, forcing a way through the crush, over the exotic black carpet, round pyramids of flowers, under a dividing arch beyond which were congregated the cream of the guests. There was a glittering arrangement like a bar, which widened Lucy's eyes, and behind the bar a white-coated bartender who was assisted by a young woman wearing a frilly apron, and with a white camellia stuck in her hair. The bartender caught sight of Stephen, and made a movement with his thumb to indicate the space behind him; and in that space comparatively uncluttered - a little group seemed to be paying homage to the one who stood in their midst. Stephen broke up the group by the simple expedient of making use of his shoulder, and Lucy heard a feminine voice with a vague, exciting accent say rebukingly: "You shouldn't do that, Stephen!" The way she said it it sounded like "Stefan." "You weren't even invited!" "Nevertheless, I came along." There wasn't even a hint of an apology in Stephen's voice. "Which, of course, I knew you would." The time the owner of the husky, fascinating, drawling voice laughed.

The others drew back, and finally they melted away altogether, like a well-trained chorus who were well versed in their cues. Lucy stood completely forgotten, and completely alone, looking on at the woman whose portrait she had seen and described as exquisite - only in the flesh the Baroness Helga was ten times more exquisite. She was dressed simply enough in black, but it was plainly very expensive black, and it served as a foil to emphasise the golden loveliness of her looks. Lucy thought of golden ornaments, of golden roses, golden fruit like apricots. She saw the Mona Lisa-like smile that was painted on the still, perfect face, the shadow of the eyelashes that were golden at the tips, the full, ripe curve of the mouth that in spite of being full and ripe was cool and disdainful and flower-like. And she caught the kingfisher blue gleam from the eyes as they flickered towards her. But Stephen didn't attempt to introduce Lucy, and the Baroness's interest in the slight young woman in navy blue linen that was well cut but might have been bought in any London store evaporated almost before it was born. She didn't even acknowledge Lucy's presence by so much as a nod, and when Stephen took her arm and led her away through a second arch Lucy was left entirely alone, with not a single soul around her who wanted to get to know her even temporarily. The bartender was the only one who seemed to possess normal human instincts. After a full minute, during which time she didn't know whether to retreat or advance towards the bar, seek a chair or disappear altogether, he smiled a blunt, inviting smile and held up a glass. Lucy took it thankfully, although she hadn't the least idea what it contained, and certainly cared less. All she knew was that it had a cherry on a stick emerging from the centre of it, and she remembered what Stephen had said about cocktail cherries spoiling drinks.

She extracted the cherry with a shaking hand and nibbled at it while the bartender remarked: "Don't think I've seen you before, miss." "No," she answered. She stared at him. "No." "Don't think you'll see Mr. Lestrange for a while." He grinned. "Bit of a lad, what?" Lucy swallowed the cherry, which had a sharply unpleasant taste, and then sampled the drink itself; but she found that even less to her taste, and set it down on the bar counter. She stared at the gold curtains that filled the arch through which her recent escort and a woman she knew to be an Austrian Baroness had vanished together, and when ten minutes later there was no sign of either of them reappearing, or intending to reappear, she took advantage of a spurt of sudden, brisk trade at the bar to withdraw towards one of the windows. To her relief she found a spare window-seat and as the curtains were long and full she was able to conceal herself behind them. She waited a full three-quarters of an hour, during which time no one came towards her, and no one even noticed that she hadn't a glass in her hand, and was apparently completely overlooked, and then when a clock chimed she decided to wait no longer. She stood up and melted into the crush - thinning a little by this time - and then found her way out into the hall and the lift, and was finally safely and securely in the street. But the street was no longer flooded with sunshine, and the evening shadows were falling. The sky above the rooftops was a rapidly paling turquoise, and the air was slightly flushed with rose, the sole reminder of the sunset.

Lucy had no real idea where she was, but there were plenty of taxis cruising about. The dinner rush was over, the rush for the theatres only just about to begin. Lucy stepped out into the middle of the road and hailed a taxi, and only narrowly escaped being driven down by it; then when she had given the taxi- man her address she lay back and closed her eyes in the gloom of the taxi. The thing that had happened to her that night was a thing she had sometimes feared might happen to her, and shrunk from the very thought of its happening because it would be too humiliating. Being thrust into the heart of a concourse of people and being ignored by them - all of them, except a single, solitary barman with a wide, blunt, boxer-like smile. He had known she was out of her element, and he had felt sorry for her. She had seen it in his eyes. He had also been trying to puzzle out the reason why Stephen Lestrange - possibly of all the men he could think of the least likely to attach himself to anyone like herself - had taken her there at all. She couldn't think herself why he had done so. His relatives were just a little different, because he had known she would get on with them, whereas he must have known she would have nothing at all in common with those laughing, chattering, fashionable people he had thrust her amongst... and abandoned her to! That was the thing that made her feel not only bewildered, but sore. Sore as if she had cut her finger, and no one had attended to it, although it was dripping blood all over the place. She bit her lip. It was the second time Stephen Lestrange had wanted to be rid of her and got rid of her! - and there wouldn't be a third time. She would see to it that there wouldn't be a third time.

CHAPTER FOUR BUT SO weak is human flesh that a bare ten minutes after that she was not only making it possible for him to abandon her for the third time, but she was conscious of an extraordinary sensation of pleasure because he hadn't entirely abandoned her the second time. His car drove up behind her taxi just as she was paying the taximan, and although she turned as if she fully intended to go indoors and ignore him she didn't exactly spurn him when he ran up the steps behind her and caught at her arm. "Why in the world did you run away like that?" he demanded irritably. "Couldn't you Wait?" "What for?" she asked quietly, lifting her clear eyes to his face as she stood on the steps beside him. He shrugged slightly. "Me, of course. You knew I'd come back." "I knew nothing of the kind." Although that strange relief was coursing through her blood she kept her voice very level and cool. "I naturally concluded that you'd found someone far more amusing, and that I had become a little in the way, to say the least. And I don't like being left alone for a solid hour among a lot of people who made it so obvious that they didn't want to know me, that if I'd had any selfrespect I'd have left earlier." His eyes twinkled, but she thought that his mouth looked drawn and depressed. And for the first time she realized how tall and dominant he was by contrast with her own lack of inches and distressing vulnerability.

"I'm sorry about that, Lucia, but it wasn't my •intention to cast you adrift. And you don't have to bother about Helga's friends ... They're all of the same bad vintage, and not worth troubling your head about." "Was that the Baroness Helga's flat?" "Yes." "And she was the hostess?" "People like Helga don't bother to act hostess when they throw a party to a mob like that. But forget them - forget Helga! Come for a drive with me." "At this time of night?" She looked primly up at the first stars that were twinkling in the blue above them. "It's not late yet. And we could have a meal somewhere." "I'm not hungry." "Then come for a drive." His voice was coaxing, his eyes rather pleading and warm. "Please, Lucia mia!" "I-- " "Please," he said, still more softly. He slipped his fingers under her elbow again, and she felt them close tightly over the thinness of her arm. "You did enjoy this afternoon, didn't you? You liked my aunt and uncle?"

"Oh, yes," she admitted, "I liked them very much indeed." "Then, as a reward for introducing you to people you liked, come and get into the car." "All right," she said, after a few more moments of indecision, and followed him down to the car. Never afterwards did she have any really clear idea where, and for how long, they drove. She knew that beside her at the wheel, his slender artist's hands gripping it almost convulsively, was a man who had been violently upset that evening about something that was miles away above her head - something that, possibly, she could never understand. And if she could understand it, it wouldn't enable her to help him. Every time the lights of another car bathed them, or they passed beneath a succession of eerily brilliant street lamps, she could see that his dark, thin face was actually haggard, and she knew that he talked nonsense because it was a kind of safety- valve. They drove beneath the trees of the park. She could see the shimmer of water as the moonlight silvered it, and the scent of fresh growing things came at them through the windows. He asked her whether she had ever been kissed in the park, and when she said "No", in her prim little voice, threw back his head and laughed at her. And then he asked her whether she had ever been kissed at all, and she was silent so long that he pretended to accept it that she had had a very dark and involved past, and her indignant denials made him laugh afresh. Then he stopped the car and switched off his side lights, and picked up her hands and played with them. "Will you marry me, Lucia?" he asked. For an instant she wondered whether that half of a solitary cocktail that she had consumed had had the effect of deranging her mental

equipment a little ... a sort of delayed-action effect. It might have been very potent, and she ought to have refused it altogether. "M-marry you?" she stammered. "If you think you could bear it, Lucia. I wasn't cut out to be an ideal husband for any woman, but this afternoon I knew I was going to ask you if... well, I was pretty certain I was going to ask you!" "Because the Baroness Helga refused you?" It wasn't necessary, she thought, to be immensely shrewd to feel quite certain about what had happened to him between tea in St. James's Square and a visit to a lavish modern flat. "Helga," he said shortly, "isn't the marrying type." "And you are?" she asked quietly. "No ... perhaps not, but - I want to marry you, Lucia! I'm thirtyseven, and you're twenty-three, I think you told me, and I've a curious kind of conviction that we could make a go of it. Possibly a much better go than a lot of people who arrive in a bemused fashion at the altar because they're one hundred per cent certain they're in love for life, and of course the love flies out of the first available window within a few weeks of being married and discovering all the snags and just what they've let themselves in for. A man who doesn't look nearly so good with a growth of beard on his chin in the early mornings, and a woman who couldn't cook if you stood over her with a cookery book! And both of them forced to live in each other's pockets and account for everything they do ... every single little thing they do! What chance has love to survive?"

"And you're not pretending you're in love with me?" Lucy said, in perhaps the smallest, strangest, quietest voice she had ever used in her life. He gave the hands he was holding a fierce squeeze. "I like you, Lucy. And perhaps, as this is a very serious moment, I'd better call you Lucy! Uncle Joe wasn't very lucky with his Lucy, but I want to be luckier with mine. And one day - who knows? - we might find ourselves surrounded by all those grandchildren !" Lucy determinedly removed her hands, although it required a considerable physical effort on her part to set them free. "Quite apart from everything else - " she said, "apart from the amazing thing that you should pick on me for a likely wife! - if those are your views of marriage, and as an institution it obviously doesn't appeal to you, why do you imagine that you and I, living in each other's pockets, could even begin to make a 'go' of it? It is true that I can cook, but I've never seen a man unshaven in the mornings, and you haven't the faintest idea how much I should expect you to account for." She paused. "We know nothing about each other, and you haven't the slightest reason to suppose that we could live together happily if we were married. So don't you think it would be better if you were really honest with me?" She thought he looked faintly shamefaced, nevertheless there was a queer sullen determination in his eyes - not very easily made out in the light of the dashboard, and the faint, shimmering light of the moon that was partially obscured for them by the thickness of the trees. "All right." She did manage to make out and reassure herself on one point, and that was that he had an excellent square chin. "The woman who would have made me desperately unhappy if she'd agreed to

marry me has finally told me that she doesn't want anything serious to do with me. She's a fly-by-night-a fabulous creature of moonlight and mirage, and I ought to be thanking the special Providence that looks after me that she isn't going to marry me. However, I'm in the mood to marry someone - to get the urge out of my system - and I've decided that I'd like nothing better than to marry you, little Lucy Martin who hasn't anyone at all to take care of her! What's wrong with that?" "Nothing ... except that you'll almost certainly regret it - or would regret it, if I were agreeable - and in any case you're cutting off your nose to spite your face." "You seem to forget, young woman, that it's my nose." "But you're asking me to marry you !" "Precisely. And if you won't marry me I'll never marry anyone ... Lucy!" He put out his hands towards her again and tried to draw her into his arms. "At least you can find out whether you like my kissing you! Quite honestly, I felt the temptation to to do that from the moment I saw you, and recognized what an eminently kissable mouth you had, and such unawakened eyes! Lucy!"' His voice was not quite so detached. "Come here!" But she held herself firmly away from him, although her heart was beating suddenly with sledgehammer strokes. The knowledge that his hands were groping for her filled her with an extraordinary sensation like exquisite panic because at any moment they might capture her and she wouldn't have the will to resist him. "Lucia," very softly, "I want to marry you because I'd enjoy looking after you, and I hate the thought of you in a miserable little one-room flat... you who once lived in the country, and were free as the birds! You've got that look in your eyes, although they're so tranquil at

times, as if you've been caught and imprisoned, and you can't see any hope of escape. But I can free you, Lucy; give you material things, and at least a comfortable flat to live in, and even take you travelling round the world if you feel like it! Lucy, why shouldn't we go travelling - adventuring! - together?" This time his hands caught her, and she was drawn tightly against him. He could feel how her heart was beating, and how every instinct she possessed - every sensible instinct, that is - urged her to fight against him. But every primitive, young- blooded instinct urged her to capitulate. "Lucy, my sweet - " and already his lips had found her mouth, and the feel of it under his set his own pulses leaping (more wildly than he would have believed possible because it was such an inexperienced mouth) - "can you deny that you like me a little?" "I-" "And I can promise you, here and now, that one day you'll like me a lot!" She trembled and felt helpless as a piece of driftwood. The blood was pounding through her veins, and she wanted to cry out to him that already she liked him - liked him ... But the warning thought darted through her brain that she must never fall in love with him. Never, never! "Oh, Stephen!" she gasped, and felt his mouth close purposefully over hers — purposefully, masterfully, and just a little ruthlessly. And then she didn't mind anything so long as he didn't remove his mouth, so long as he wouldn't deprive her of it in the future.

CHAPTER FIVE THEY were married exactly three weeks later, in one of London's oldest churches. Incidentally, it was one of London's most fashionable churches, but the wedding was not in any sense of the word a fashionable wedding. Sir Joseph was disappointed, because he would have liked to have kissed a bride all radiant in white, with sheaves of white lilies and orange blossom and all the rest making up an unforgettable picture. And he would have liked to have worn striped trousers and a top hat and had a flower in his own buttonhole, but that was not the sort of wedding it was. When it came to the point he wasn't even allowed to give the bride away, for old Dr. Phillimore did that. As Lucy's only really close acquaintance, and an old friend of her father, he had a sort of right. Lady Bannister was much more sensible about everything being quite simple. Being a woman, she possibly received more accurate impressions than her nautically minded brother, and there was nothing about Stephen in the days before his marriage that suggested a bridegroom who could, hardly wait for the ring to be placed on his bride's finger. Lucy was plainly bemused, not altogether certain about what was happening to her. And sometimes Lady Bannister thought she even looked a little frightened, as if there were moments when she realized that what she was contemplating doing might have the most unlooked-for results. But in spite of the absence of pre-nuptial excitement the wedding took place, and there was a luncheon at the Savoy, and toasts were drunk in champagne. Uncle Joseph grew sentimental and talked about his own long-lost Lucy, and dropped one or two tears into his fourth or fifth glass of champagne because nothing like this could ever possibly happen to him now. And Aunt Miriam found it necessary to wipe away a tear when she helped Lucy into the neat

travelling-suit in which she was flying to Paris. She had been married in mist blue, and although she hadn't carried a bouquet Lady Bannister was certain she had never seen a more touchingly lovely bride. Young and vulnerable and nervous, with enormous eyes under a little hat, and that attractive soft whisper of fringe she wore on her white forehead. And slim fingers that shook when Stephen held them. Stephen had looked almost beautiful - if masculine attractions can ever deserve that epithet - in a faultlessly cut suit, and his Old Etonian tie. By this time Lucy knew that it was an Old Etonian tie, and she guessed that his shirtmaker and shoemaker and so forth looked upon him as a very valuable client because on all occasions when he wasn't sitting at the feet of his muse he liked to be impeccably turned out. In the dimness of the church, and the glory that streamed through the stained-glass windows, his hair seemed to flame, and she thought of it as a flame that inevitably with time would curl itself tightly about her heart. She herself arrived in Paris with a very modest wardrobe, but Stephen saw to it that its deficiencies were quickly remedied. He seemed to know Paris almost, as well as he knew the King's Road, Chelsea, and he had so many friends and acquaintances in the right quarter that it was the easiest thing in the world to get Lucy more suitably equipped with as little delay as possible. Exclusive establishments on the Rue de la Paix and in the Place Vendome had everything that she needed, and the cost didn't apparently trouble Stephen. He sat on small gilt chairs in orchid-coloured salons and smiled with amusement at her perturbed face every time a price tag got in her way, or someone inadvertently mentioned a price in her hearing.

She formed the habit of working things out swiftly in her mind, changing francs into pounds with the minimum loss of time, and frequently she heard herself gasping in consternation. She protested that she didn't really need it, and once she even mentioned currency restrictions, which caused the elegant black- eyed Frenchwoman who was attending to her — assisted by a positive bevy of vendeuses, or so it seemed to Lucy - to exchange such an open look of amusement with Stephen that Lucy blushed as if she knew she had committed something in the nature of a faux pas. "You silly little owl," Stephen said to her afterwards. "What do you imagine a honeymoon costs in Paris with the pound in the state that it is? Our hotel bill would be colossal even- if we only stayed a week." "B-but," Lucy stammered, "but - how -?" He looked down at her and smiled as if he was smiling at an infant, and then took her arm and led her along to a perfume shop. "Leave things like finance to me, my child, and everything will run smoothly," he told her. "But if it's any comfort to you my interests are more or less international; and that's quite true because I've painted people in every country in Europe - or practically." "I see," she said, and wondered whether she ought to apologize for appearing to doubt his integrity. And that night she wore a golden net dress that, with her shining fair hair and her golden eyes, made her look quite unlike the Lucy Martin who had climbed the stairs to Stephen's penthouse flat. And, in any case, Lucy Martin no longer existed, for she was Lucy Lestrange.

She would never forget her first night in Paris with Stephen, when she had nothing but a very ordinary dress to change into. Or it had seemed very ordinary to her, after she had had a glimpse of the fashionable people who thronged the hotel. She had been a little nervous on the flight from London, because it was her first air trip, and nothing seemed quite real in any case. Stephen sat beside her and fastened and unfastened her safety-belt for her, and all the time his eyes were watching her as if she was a new interest he had discovered that yielded the most unexpected entertainment dividends. The way she tried not to be aware of the brand new wedding ring on her finger, and the huge square- cut emerald that flashed above it. The emerald was almost too large for her slender hand, but he had insisted on giving her an emerald because of her colouring. And every time the friendly air stewardess gave them a knowing smile she flushed. "Do you suppose that she guesses we were only married this morning?" she whispered once. Stephen crushed out the end of his cigarette in the ashtray, and then summoned the stewardess and asked her to bring them some tea. He was completely casual, and as leisurely in his movements and behaviour as if instead of acquiring a wife that morning he had been presented with some tickets for the Folies Bergere. "Perhaps if you didn't change colour so easily, and didn't so noticeably try to avoid looking at that bright gold band on your finger, she wouldn't have guessed," he said. And then he smiled as he saw the look of consternation that overspread her face. She was terrified of behaving naturally, and she

was very, very youthful, and very, very attractive, he thought; and unseen by the stewardess he squeezed her fingers. Lucy remembered how a sudden squeeze from his fingers had saved her from a moment of utter panic in church. It was the moment before the ring was actually placed on her finger, and Stephen said the words: "With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow." For one dreadful second of searing clarity and certain knowledge she was aware that she was doing the wrong thing, and not merely the wrong thing but a wicked and wanton thing. She was marrying a man who did not love her - who admitted that he loved another woman! - and whom she was by no means certain that she loved, although it seemed that she couldn't escape from some fatal fascination that he had for her. His worldly goods meant nothing, nothing, to her! At least she could be exonerated on that score; but she was permitting him to say things like "with my body I thee worship", when the only feeling he had for her was an amused and tolerant affection - if, indeed, after such a short acquaintance, he could have any real affection for her! And to say them in a building where the echoes had stored up such promises for centuries, and would not add this one to its store that was possibly the hollowest and most insincere that had ever been uttered there! As she stared at the officiating clergyman his white surplice seemed to blur before her eyes, and the stained-glass window behind him became a fantastic blob of colour. She could hear an organ pealing, and saw an orthodox bride and bridegroom emerging from another church beside the river, and heard Stephen say as he slowed his car: "They'll probably be divorced in about a year from now!" Lucy swallowed, but the sudden lump in her throat felt as if it was going to choke her, and the clergyman's white surplice seemed to be floating towards her - prepared to engulf her in its folds - as he took the ring and then handed it to Stephen to slip on to her finger. And

then Stephen must have felt her start to tremble like an aspen leaf, for it was at that precise moment that his fingers closed over hers so tightly that in normal circumstances he would have hurt them, and just before they sank to their knees he looked down at her. She could have gulped with relief because his grey-green eyes were suddenly cherishing and tender. "It's all right, Lucia," she knew he was saying to her silently. "There's no reason to panic. None at all! And in any case we're over the hurdle now!" And in the aircraft, when he looked at her and surreptitiously pressed her hand, she felt as if he was saying the same thing. And she felt that he added: "Silly little mutt!" When they arrived at their hotel she was overawed by its splendour, and it was then that she started to think of the deficiencies of her wardrobe. She had two evening dresses, a black and a simple white cotton and she was surprised when Stephen said decisively that she must wear the white. "You are not sophisticated enough for black - not yet! And, in any case, this is your marriage night. You're a bride, my golden-eyed Lucia, and you must look like a bride. I absolutely insist that you must look as bride-like as possible." He was wearing a paisley silk dressing-gown, and had just come in from the bathroom to find her in a state of utter indecision over her limited choice. And not only was she in a state of indecision; when she saw him, in that casual dressing-gown, and realized that she herself was only partially clothed, and that her dressing-gown was a flimsy thing that could rightfully be described as a neglige- and, incidentally, was a present from Aunt Miriam - she backed to the dressing-table and looked round wildly for something more concealing to wrap round herself.

But Stephen laughed, softly and with honest amusement. "Lucia, you're a baby! And you talk about wearing black! ... Come here!" He held out his' arms, but she clung to the edge of the dressing-table, and he had to move forward a few steps until he was close to her. "Come here, Lucia, and give me a wifely kiss!" Lucy's eyes started to look faintly distended - or the velvety dark pupils did. Since the night he had amazed her by asking her to marry him he had contented himself with bestowing light kisses on her occasionally, and there had been no repetition of that long experimental kiss in the car. Now, all at once, she was aware that the era of light kisses was over, and that, alarmingly, she was a wife. A wife and utterly unprepared for it! A wife with a husband who didn't look at her with passion, or even with a normal sort of desire; but with something strange and gleaming under his thick black eyelashes - something that caused her heart to start knocking as if it were attached loosely to the end of a string. He put his hands on her shoulders when she refused to move, and looked down almost lazily into her eyes. "Why do you look at me like that?" he asked. "Why, Lucia?" "How - how am I looking at you?" "As if you were a rabbit afraid of a stoat!" he smiled. "And I'm merely a very new husband!" He saw the muscles of her throat contract as she swallowed. He ran a finger down the slender line of her throat - rather like a pale flower stem, he thought. He could see the little hollow at the base of her neck, and the pulse that was beating away wildly, and he pushed from her shoulder the rather absurd peignoir thing his aunt had thought so absolutely right for a bride and bent and pressed his lips to

the creamy skin. Then, without lingering over the caress, he took her face between his hands and kissed her mouth firmly, but without anything approaching fire or desire. "Come on," he said, "since you're not very sure that you like being a wife. Let's get dressed and go down and have some dinner, shall we? I don't think you had much lunch, and I know I didn't. Uncle Joe's sentiment upset my appetite." They went down, and Lucy was never very clear afterwards how the rest of that evening passed. She knew she was alternately excited and slightly appalled by the thought of who she was, and where she was, and that Stephen ordered champagne with their meal - their first dinner alone together as husband and wife - and advised her about all the dishes. He was patient and kindly as an elder brother while the meal lasted, only occasionally teasing her because her French was a little worse than execrable, and her knowledge of fine foods and wines non-existent. She was thrilled because she had never been to Paris before - in fact, she had never been abroad before - but depressed because her white cotton dress, with the unsophisticated tucked bodice and high collar, didn't seem to compare favourably with any of the dresses in the great dining-room. And whenever she looked at Stephen she knew beyond any shadow of doubt that he was the best-looking man, wearing the most perfectly tailored dinner jacket, beneath the lights and the gilded scrolls that ornamented the ceiling. And he was her husband, her husband, her husband ! She kept saying it over and over again to herself, in order to try and make herself believe it. She was Mrs. Stephen Lestrange. ...

He asked her what she would like to do after dinner, and she said she would rather leave it to him. So he hailed a taxi and they went on a round of Paris night life - the politer aspects of it, that is. They danced in a rather crowded night-club - or, rather, they tried to dance, because there wasn't much room on the floor - and they sat in a distinctly cellar-like night-club in Montmartre, and Lucy was repelled by the primitiveness of Apache dancers, and sipped another glass of champagne which she didn't really want. Stephen smoked a cigarette and watched her through the smoke, and suddenly told her that she needn't go on struggling with her drink if she didn't want it, and smiled strangely when she flashed him a grateful look. The band started to play a tango, and he led her out on the floor, and they stayed for another tango and a mamba, and then left the place behind them. Lucy had enjoyed dancing with him, but she had not been unaware of the fact that he held her very possessively. His arms sent frightening little thrills up and down her spine, and the smell of his shaving cream in her nostrils made her blood race; but she had the knowledge that she belonged to him, and that belonging to him she couldn't escape him even if she wanted to do so, and a kind of sick terror started to build itself up in her mind until it was as much as she could do to keep her hand steady when he offered her a cigarette. And all the time his eyes, she knew, were watching her.... Outside in the quiet night she felt better. The atmosphere was clean and cool and fresh, alive with all the heady scents of spring that was merging into summer, and pricked with the inquisitive brilliance of stars. The streets of Montmartre were eerily light in the gloom; Sacre Coeur was a miracle of lightness above them, and the sky above Sacre Coeur was a velvet mantle. "Let's walk," said Stephen quietly; and they walked until he could feel her flagging beside him, and her small high-heeled shoes started

to falter. Then he stopped another taxi and they were borne down to the river, where the lights were like strings of pearls and dancing fireflies on the opposite bank. And as they stood listening to the water lapping, couples passed close to them under the protective warm canopy of the night, couples with clinging hands and arms, whose movement were as one. Stephen put his own arm about Lucy, and she rested against him from sheer weariness; but when the arm tightened she stiffened instinctively, and the blissful sensation of being tenderly supported vanished. At least a dozen warning bells started to clang at the same time inside her head, and her heart thudded so that she could scarcely breathe. Stephen's eyes gleamed, not too pleasantly, when he felt her resistance, and he overcame it by making use of his free arm and clamping her against him so that she could feel the steely hardness of his body. Then he forced her head back against his shoulder and, for the third time since their relationship had shifted from the impersonal to the personal, covered her mouth with his. But this time she felt no desire at all for him to go on kissing her. She felt panic rise in her like the rising of a spring, and tears pricked at the backs of her eyes. His kiss was experienced, fierce and demanding, and there was no tenderness in it whatsoever. There was something so opposite to tenderness that, although she knew it was completely unreasonable, she started to struggle. "Please!" she whispered imploringly. "Please!...' "No, Lucia," he whispered back, anger in the barely audible sound. "You're my wife!" After that she didn't exactly melt into his arms, but she ceased to resist him. At last he took her back to their hotel, and once inside their room he stood looking at her as she tremblingly approached the dressing- table and put her brocade evening bag down on the top. Her

own face in the mirror startled her. Her lipstick was smudged, her eyes were dully gold and enormous, and in spite of the flushed lighting effects her cheeks were absolutely colourless. Stephen came up behind her and stood looking down at her. "Lucia!" he said. Her eyes sought his appealingly. "There's a dressing-room next door, and I'll take my things and I needn't disturb you any more tonight." His vice was harsh. "I hope you have a good night." He went round the room, collecting his things, and she watched him with her .hands locked tightly together. His pyjamas, of heavy purplish silk, were lying side by side with her nightdress on the turned- down sheet of the low French bed. It was a bed with a quilted head-board, creamily pink like the heart of a china rose, and the matching satin coverlet was folded neatly over the back of a chair. Beside the bed there was an ivory telephone, and beside the telephone a bowl of real but slightly waxen-looking roses. Stephen picked up his pyjamas, and unhooked his dressing-gown from the back of the door. He went through into the dressing-room and threw them on to the bed, and then returned for his hair-brushes, which were disposed on the dressing-table top. "Goodnight," he said coldly to Lucy. Her hands started to tremble as they clung to each other, and the palms were moist. A hopeless, defeated look crossed her face. "Goodnight," she whispered.

And then as she once more lifted her eyes to his face the tears blurred them. They were like a child's eyes, jewel-bright and distressed, appealing and wistful and beseeching and utterly lost all at the same time. Stephen cast aside his hair-brushes and went to her. His arms slid round her and he held her protectively, and he crooned over her. "Silly little Lucy! ... Darling little Lucy!" He kissed the top of her head as it burrowed against him, and then he tenderly stroked the silky hair itself. He picked her up in his arms and carried her over to the bed, and he bent over her and dropped warm understanding kisses on her cold cheeks and her quivering eyelids and her tremulous mouth. The kisses on the mouth grew warmer as the seconds passed, and she finally slipped her arms about his neck and held him close, and although a smile appeared in his eyes she couldn't see it, and in any case it was tender as well as triumphant. "Darling," he breathed. "Darling, darling, darling little Lucy!" And Lucy felt lapped about by a happiness too exquisite to be anything she had ever dreamed of, and she couldn't think why she had ever resisted him. His arms were the reason she had been born, and his mouth was like a passport to paradise. As his hands caressed her she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again his were full of little leaping fires that started a fire deep down inside her own being. "Stephen," she breathed. "Darling, darling, darling Stephen!" His mouth closed ruthlessly over hers, but she no longer recognized it as ruthlessness. *

Much later that night she lay in his arms and watched the moonlight falling across the furniture. Outside, Paris still seemed to be wakeful, although the wakefulness was muted, and inside the hotel it was very still and hushed, as if the thickness of the carpets muffled all sound. Stephen was asleep, and his arm across her was relaxed. She tried to put back her head and look up at him so that she wouldn't disturb him, and the squareness of his chin brushed against her hair. Every sensitive nerve in her body thrilled to the thought that he was her husband, and she knew that whatever happened in the future, for good or ill, she loved him. And she would go on loving him. There was no escape now. Something had warned her that she must never love him, but she had ignored the voice, and now it was too late. Too late, too late! But she was so blissfully happy that it didn't matter. She stole up a hand and touched his cheek, unable to resist the urge to do so, and he opened his eyes and blinked at her in the moonlight. "Go to sleep, Lucia," he said drowsily. She snuggled down deep into his arms, and the only thing she wished was that he wouldn't call her Lucia. "Unless," he murmured into her ear, "you don't feel like going to sleep ...?"

CHAPTER SIX A WEEK later she sat on the terrace of the hotel at the hour when everyone started to sip aperitifs, and watched him weaving his way across the wide thoroughfare towards her. He had an English evening paper in his hand, and as he dropped into a chair beside her he lowered it to her lap. "A day old," he told her, "and with nothing of the smallest degree of interest in it in any case. Why do we hunger for home news when we're on the Continent?" "Because we're away from home, I suppose," she replied, and smiled at him. "But this is, the first time I've ever been on the Continent, and quite honestly I haven't been hungering for home news." He extracted his cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette and looked at her with a quizzical gleam in his eyes. "Have you been hungering for anything at all apart from your devoted husband, Lucia?" he asked. The way he said "devoted husband" caused her to wince a little, secretly, for she knew quite well he wasn't devoted to her, but he had developed an affection for her. She was almost certain it was a genuine affection. "What would you like me to say to that?" she counter-questioned. His hand closed over hers, and as always the warmth of his touch dissipated a tiny chill about her heart. "Nothing but the truth, Lucia mia." He smiled at her caressingly. "That you don't regret being rushed into marriage, and that you're as

happy as you look nowadays ... if you're not putting on an act to deceive me! And somehow I don't think you are." "I'm not," she said softly. He retained his hold of her hand, and his unusually brilliant greenishgrey eyes studied her. "In that yellow silk suit you look quite exotic," he said. And, as a matter of fact, she did. It was tea- rose yellow, and by contrast with it her eyes were almost, tawny-gold. Her cheeks seemed to have lost the slight look of hollowness that had made her look rather fragile before, and although she would never have very much natural colour they were continually warmed by a soft entrancing flush. Her mouth looked full and soft and inviting. Stephen's eyes lingered on it. "Do you know, Lucia, you're really quite lovely! One of these days I might even feel the urge to paint you." But she shook her head. "You told me you only paint beautiful women. I shall never be beautiful." "As your husband I feel tempted to disagree with you," he told her, and something about the lazy tones of his voice, the caressing look in his eyes, made her flush more noticeably than ever. He looked amused. "Don't you realize that a husband sees far more of a woman than a masculine acquaintance? You have a delicious figure, sweetheart, and you're as tender as a young spring chicken. That tender innocence - not so innocent nowadays! - provides the greatest charm of your face." She averted her face instantly, and he laughed.

"Darling, I won't tease you - not here on the terrace, anyway. It isn't fair. Besides, you look so adorable when you blush that I might see too many admiring eyes turning towards you!" Actually, eyes were watching them, and there were admiring eyes amongst them. They looked so unmistakably English, the pair of them, and the man was almost insolently handsome. To a European woman that was an order of handsomeness that was practically irresistible. The dark sheen of his hair, the way it emphasized the arrogant shape of his head, and drew attention to the well-held shoulders. The dark, tanned skin and the thick exciting eyelashes. The gleam of the greenish eyes between the eyelashes. And he had beautiful hands, and an air of cool condescension and complete selfassurance. The Englishman's belief in his own superiority when he was outside his own country sat well on him, and it was so well established a belief that there was nothing brash about it. The girl who wore his wedding ring on her finger was not nearly so poised - in fact, she was hardly poised at all - but it was quite obvious she adored him. The way she always turned to look at him when she believed he was not looking at her was a little pathetic. "Tell me some more about yourself, poppet," Stephen said. "I know you were the doctor's only daughter, and that you used to put up his medicines for him - thereby decimating a large proportion of the population round about. But that isn't very much to know about a wife." She laughed. "I didn't dispense medicines. I was only beginning to learn a little bit about dispensing when he died." "Then you didn't put up that bottle you brought along to me?"

"Of course not." It seemed so long ago that she could hardly believe it now - that day when she had known three things about him only. And did she know so much more about him even now? She glanced at him sideways, wondering, wondering, as she so often wondered about him. He had shown her the house on the Left Bank where he had once had an apartment, told her about his couple of years in Paris, and his days as an art student. He had never had to struggle like many art students because he had always possessed an allowance, which had later become a settled and comfortable income. One day he would step into Sir Joseph's shoes, and the big house in Wiltshire would be his. It was too big for Sir Joseph, who shut up most of it, and Stephen was quite certain he would never want to live in it; but it was there, and it would be theirs one day. Lucy could be mistress of a wonderful period gem of a manor house if she wantedto be, and play Lady Bountiful to all the villagers. But somehow Lucy didn't see herself in the role, and she couldn't see Stephen rusticating for long in the country. Chelsea would undoubtedly be their permanent home. And the thought of sharing a permanent home with Stephen made her feel a little light-headed sometimes. A woman who had been sitting watching them closely for a full ten minutes suddenly rose to her feet and came across and spoke to Stephen. "I wonder whether you remember me?" she said. Stephen stood up. He looked at her with instant recognition in his eyes.

"Loraine, of course!" he said. "How would I forget?" She smiled with her brilliantly reddened mouth, and her large dark eyes sparkled with amusement. She had hair of a vivid shade of red and was exquisitely dressed. "How like you, Stephen," she said softly. "Always the flatterer!" "You know very well that I never flatter," Stephen corrected her composedly, and she had to admit that he was right. "No; that is true. If a woman has not the looks, then you are not interested. If she has the looks - then you wish to paint!" She had such undeniable looks that she could afford to gaze confidently at him. "You will introduce me to Madame, your wife?" she said. "It is so obvious that she is a very new wife, for her eyes go often to that bright new wedding ring, and she does not yet know you quite so well as I perhaps once knew you myself." There was nothing particularly meaningful in the observation, but Lucy thought that behind the cool confident amusement in the dark eyes was a faint suggestion of contempt. This woman had recognized at once that she had no looks, and therefore Stephen would not want to paint her. Why, then, she must be wondering, had he married her? Stephen was not wondering about anything, apart from the slight unexpectedness of running into a woman he had once known reasonably well for a time. He looked at her with appreciation because she had the sort of bone structure he admired - a face that was ageless in its beauty, and quite inexplicable in its charm. The deep-lipped eyes, the sensuous mouth, the short patrician nose, the full figure had once earned him considerable sums of money because in addition to everything else she was the absolutely perfect model. She could maintain a pose for any length of time he wished, and she looked well against almost any background - ancient or modern. He

had painted her as Salome, and he had painted her as a nude study against a background of rocks and sea. And he knew she would look well in a tiara, as a duchess, if he wanted her to look like a duchess. "It must be at least five years since we met, Loraine," he said. "How time flies!" "And now you are married," she murmured. "You have still not made your wife and me known to one another." He smiled with amusement, and made the necessary introductions. "Lucia, this is Loraine Gautier. Or she was Loraine Gautier when I saw her last. Not married, Loraine?" She shook her head. "For me, I do not fancy the idea of marriage. I prefer that I shall be free." "And this is my wife, as you have guessed. We are on what is usually described as a honeymoon." "A honeymoon in Paris, madame," Loraine murmured. "That should be exciting! You know Paris?" "No," Lucy admitted, "this is my first visit." "Then it must be that much more exciting!" But her eyes, as they flickered over Lucy, and took in all the details of her chic silk suit, remained dismissing and faintly contemptuous. She obviously did not think that Stephen had done well for himself. "It is so strange to think of Stephen married. He is not the type." "No?" Lucy said.

"Oh, most decidedly no! I would have said," her eyes going to Stephen and deliberately seeking to anchor his, "that he had decided long, long ago that it was unnecessary." Stephen's eyes gleamed with amusement. "And what sort of interpretation do you think my wife is going to put on that, Loraine?" he asked. She shrugged. Her gorgeous eyes were almost avidly striving to prevent his from wandering away from her, and there was something so nakedly inviting about those eyes that Lucy felt herself go cold inside. "Does it matter?" she said. "A wife cannot make you any different from that which you are, and a wise woman would not seek to alter that which is unalterable. What is it you say in English? ... a quotation that you have about the leopard and its spots?" "The leopard cannot change its spots," Stephen said smoothly, but a certain amount of the amusement faded from his eyes. He became aware of Lucy sitting beside him as remote as if she and he were already dwelling on separate planets - he and Loraine sharing the amenities of their own chosen environment - and a tiny frown crossed his brows as he looked down at her. "There are leopards and leopards, Loraine," he observed, "and spots and spots! And now won't you sit down and have a drink with us?" "No, thank you, Stephen." Her slow smile was excitingly regretful. "I have an engagement for the evening, and already I am late. But I could not see you and not speak to you. And, perhaps, before you leave Paris, if you should wish to talk over old times - or decide to do a little work while you are here - you will contact me? Yes? I am still at the old address!"

"You must have dinner with us one night, Loraine," he replied; but he did not suggest any particular night, and he did not say how long they were remaining in Paris. When she had left them alone Stephen dropped down into the chair beside his wife, and for several seconds neither of them said anything at all. Then he picked up her half-finished drink and put it into her hand. "Knock that back, you abstemious child, and we'll go up and dress, shall we? What are we going to do with ourselves this evening? There's a harmless straight play on at the Comedie-Francaise. Or would you prefer something amusing? We could dine and dance at the Lido, or we might visit the circus." He smiled. "I am in your hands." "It doesn't matter," she said, an she meant it. "I don't mind where we go." He looked at her shrewdly. "In that case I think we'll go somewhere amusing, shall we?"

The following morning she was still in the same quiet mood, and his shrewd looks had given place to an occasional slight twitching of the lips, and a faint raising of the eyebrows. He rallied her while they were sharing a Continental breakfast-tray together on the balcony outside their room. "You have a brooding look, Lucia. You are obviously still thinking about Loraine, and wondering just how unspeakably dark my Paris past was!" She studied him gravely across the rolls and the coffee.

"Honestly, I haven't been thinking about your past, Stephen. But I am wondering about your future. Wondering just how soon you'll grow tired of me, and wish, perhaps, that you'd never even seen me." "My good woman, haven't I promised to be faithful to you for the rest of my life? What would it avail me if I did grow tired of you?" She paused with the coffee-pot poised above his cup. "That sounds too much like a penance for marrying me." He looked at her curiously. "That's an odd thing for a young wife of two weeks to say," he remarked. She felt herself colouring, and her hands trembled. "Oh, no, I don't think so. Not really." "I see. How soon are you expecting me to be unfaithful to you, Lucy? How long do you think this marriage of ours is going to last?" "Did you honestly expect it to be something quite permanent?" she asked, still with the utmost gravity in her eyes as she gazed at him. "When you first proposed to me, I mean?" "I don't know. I don't suppose I thought about it in that way. But I don't like impermanent things." His eyes were gleaming, and strange. His voice sounded irritable. "Lucy, you're a most peculiar infant! And I'd swear there have been moments since we married - when you were in my arms - when you weren't thinking about the termination of our marriage ! And since I like holding you in my arms why should I think thoughts that you have no room for?"

For moments that caused her heart to beat like a caged thing they hung upon each other's eyes across the table, and then he went round and very deliberately lifted her face and kissed it. "You're sweet, Lucy - sweet, sweet, sweet!" he said. "And I won't have you dwelling upon eventualities that make your eyes look too large for your face!" He kissed each one of them in turn. "They're delicious golden eyes that look even more delicious when you're happy, and that's the way I want them. Understand?" He tip-tilted her chin. "I won't have them shadowed and groping after unwholesome answers to unwholesome questions!" "Oh, Stephen!" she whispered, and he went down on his knees beside her and took her into his arms. She felt small and soft in her white candlewick bathrobe, and he held her closely, protectively. "I love you, Stephen!" she confessed, and then turned her face and hid it against him, because it was the first time she had allowed herself to say such a thing, and she didn't know whether he would be embarrassed. But he smiled as he held her. "Darling," he said. That day they drove out to the Chateau of Versailles, and spent an extraordinarily happy and carefree afternoon roaming about amongst its mirrors and marbles, and in the beautiful Petit Trianon that adjoined it. Stephen had seen it all before, but he took an obvious pleasure in showing it to Lucy, and when she expressed her preference for the gardens of the Petit Trianon, was content to stay there with her while the sun westered, and the green glades took on an enchanting air of unreality as the light slipped lower and lower. "This is the sort of background against which I might be able to paint you," he told her, after watching her appreciatively for a considerable

while; but she didn't want to talk about painting, or art, or anything of that sort, on a day when they seemed to be discovering something new. Stephen was remembering how she had whispered to him that she loved him, and although he had made no response he felt that he wanted to take an extra special care of her and cherish her. His hand held hers tightly and possessively, and more than once she saw his eyes resting on the gold band on her finger, and her heart pounded because she wondered what he was thinking. She didn't for one moment delude herself by imagining he was thinking about Loraine, but the exquisite Baroness Helga couldn't always be far from his thoughts. He never mentioned her, and naturally Lucy avoided doing so, but the thought of her was like a shadow across her heart whenever it intruded like a pungent scent in a garden of more delicate scents. And Stephen had admitted he loved her, so how could he avoid thinking of her? Possibly he thought of her often. Possibly she was at the back of his thoughts all the time! But in the gardens of the Petit Trianon he seemed to be dwelling upon Lucy, to the exclusion of everyone and everything else. Not for the first time he noticed her grace, but for the first time he admitted it to be peculiarly her own - something that stamped her and set her apart. The shyness into which she retreated at times had a dignity about it that touched him, and the knowledge that she was .young and vulnerable perturbed him. He thought of her as a piece of china that could shatter if he was careless enough to drop it or mislay it. And once a piece of delicate china lay shattered you couldn't put it together again. His artistic soul revolted at the thought of anything that was rather rare being wantonly damaged.

"I think we've had enough of Paris, don't you?" he said, thinking of Loraine on the terrace of their hotel the night before. "Shall we push on?" "Where will we push on to?" she asked. He smiled. "The world is wide ... or Europe is wide! We have the car, and you've seen so little, Lucy, that you must see a great deal more. There's no reason why we should hurry back, and I'm enjoying the novelty of opening your eyes to new things. Discovering how you react to fresh experiences." "Are you?" But always there was that tinge of doubt in her tones when he said something she couldn't quite believe. "But what about your work? Haven't you any urgent commissions?" "Nothing that can't wait." He regarded her quizzically in the strange, greenish light beneath the trees. "I'm not a poor man, Lucy, and you must get used to the idea that we won't starve if I don't do any work for a few months. And, besides, I've earned a holiday. I've worked very hard and consistently for a long time now." "And this - this is the sort of holiday you - you enjoy?" she asked shyly. He laughed, and swept her into his arms. "Oh, Lucy, you're quaint - you're deliciously quaint! This is my honeymoon, and you ask me whether it's the sort of holiday I enjoy!" Suddenly he sobered, and rubbed, his cheek against hers. "Lucy, you mustn't be so humble. You've got a lot to offer a man. A lot that you probably haven't even offered me yet!"

She was silent, not daring to confess that she was afraid to offer him all she had in case he spurned it. But suddenly he looked down almost curiously into her eyes. "Lucy, you've got to trust me. You've got to believe that this marriage of ours was - well, ordained, shall we say? We met, when there was no sound reason why we should meet apart from the fact that I had a fancied attack of indigestion and you brought along something to alleviate it a little late in the day, and I suddenly decided it would be a good plan to take a wife. Well, you are my wife, and I don't think any man could have a nicer! A more amenable, pliable, comfortable little wife! And I want us to make a go of it, Lucy!" It wasn't exactly a declaration of love, but at least he had stopped calling her Lucia. And she certainly wanted to "make a go of it." "Darling," he said softly, lifting her face and kissing her on the mouth in the tender, heart-jolting way he did sometimes, "try and overlook my obvious faults, accept me as I am, love me a little, and everything will work out splendidly." He looked at her gravely when she didn't answer. He stroked her cheek with his long index finger. "But don't love me too much, Lucy. You mustn't love me too much," he warned.

CHAPTER SEVEN FOR Lucy, however, the warning had come too late. Or perhaps it isn't possible to control these things, otherwise she would never have married him. She would have listened to the voice of common sense when he suggested marriage, and told him that he must look elsewhere for someone to help him forget an ill-starred love affair. But having married him she sank, like a poor swimmer, into a bottomless trough of love. She travelled with him across Europe during weeks of early summer. They crossed Bavaria and entered Austria, and then dipped down into Italy and spent a short time in Rome as well as Naples, and a slightly longer time in Venice, where they rented an apartment. Lucy fell in love with Venice, and she knew she would never forget the canals and the bridges and the Lido, where she acquired an attractive golden tan. She knew also that she would never forget the mornings in the crumbling old palace on a slightly odorous- waterway, with a brighteyed Italian maid bringing them in their breakfast and missing none of the appeal of Lucy's glamorous French nightwear, or Stephen's inescapable British charm. She would set their tray on a little table near the window, and then help Lucy into her dressing-gown and leave them as if she was leaving a couple of love-birds in a nest, and it delighted her to know they were lovebirds. Not that Stephen betrayed very much sentiment while the Italian girl was in the room, but frequently once she had left it he would decide that a cup of coffee was all that he needed and pull Lucy back into his arms and make violent love to her at an hour of the morning when the palaces on the opposite bank were still flushed by the warmth of the sunrise, and the splendour of a new day seemed to be hanging like an exciting promise right above the canal.

The flowers in their hanging baskets would be swinging gently in the lightest of breezes, a gondolier would be singing softly under their window, and Teresa would go running down the marble stairs with her shopping-basket to do their marketing for them. But Stephen would say with truth that they had nothing in the world to hurry for, and in any case they were on honeymoon. The little flame-like lights in his greenish-grey eyes that Lucy was beginning to recognize would start leaping up and down under his thick eyelashes, and it would seem to the girl who was so newly a wife that her husband didn't merely enjoy kissing her and taking possession of her slim body, but that he was beginning to be mildly surprised because he enjoyed it so much. More than once she caught him looking at her oddly, a trifle quizzically, as if he was asking himself a question, and it wasn't particularly easy to answer. Sometimes those betraying fires in his eyes were softened by a look that didn't often appear, but each time it appeared it was growing stronger, unless Lucy's imagination was running away with her. It wasn't a passionate look, and it wasn't a tender look, but it could have been somewhere in between. A look of awareness, of possession, of gratification because she belonged to him. And Lucy felt her heart beat quicker whenever she saw it, and a wild hope started to grow in her that one day ... one day it might be more easily recognizable and identifiable! He would hold her close and whisper to her, tell her that her nose was adorable, the freckles on it fairies' kisses, and her mouth as heady as vintage wine. And then one day he surprised her by taking her face in both his hands and looking at her earnestly. "One day we'll start a family, Lucy mine, shall we? Would you like that? A boy for you, and a girl for me!" She stared at him as if he had astounded her so much that she didn't know how to reply. But actually she was thinking that she didn't want

to start a family until her husband loved her. And if he never loved her ...? He shook her gently. "Don't you want a family, Lucia?" How she hated that name, and she was shrewd enough to recognize that her failure to respond immediately had for some curious reason piqued him a little. The lustrous eyes looked whimsical and yet not too pleased, and this surprised her afresh, for up till then they had studiously avoided all mention of children, and she had received the impression that the very last thing he would want was the inconvenience of a child in their home ... the Chelsea flat to which they would return one day. "I could have sworn you were the type to want something small to cherish sooner or later." Lucy moistened her lips, and looked away from him. "There's plenty of time," she heard herself murmur. "That's what you think." Fiercely and unexpectedly he kissed her, and all at once there was considerable dissatisfaction in the hazel eyes. "You're a strange, elusive, evasive, creature, Lucy! I can hold you in my arms and not be certain your heart and mind are with me.... Sometimes I wonder how much of yourself you hold back. You've never let yourself go entirely, and I know it's because you think this marriage of ours is not entirely normal. Isn't that it?" "No," she denied, still avoiding looking at him. "No!" "I don't believe you." He shook her again. "You decline to give unless you can be certain you also receive, and that isn't the way to receive!"

He was moody for the rest of that day, and when a handsome Venetian boatman looked at her with somewhat indiscreetly unveiled admiration when he helped her out of a gondola he bit his head off. He also rebuked Lucy for accepting the boatman's hand instead of his own. "Don't be silly," Lucy said gently. "I'm not silly!" He sulked all through dinner, but Lucy didn't seem to be in a sulking mood at all, for the night was so fair, the restaurant was so discreetly lighted, and the violins of the musicians throbbed with such a vaguely exciting promise of delights she had never tasted, which might one day be in store. She sat with a half-dreamy smile on her lips, a strangely anticipatory light in her eyes, and a forgetfulness of her husband on the other side of the table, or so it seemed to him. He was moved to protest. "Come down to earth, Lucy, and remember my existence. I dislike being overlooked." She smiled at him. "I was listening to the music." "If music takes you away from me we'll have our meals without it. We'll find a fresh restaurant." And once again all she said was, gently, chidingly: "Don't be silly." But on the way home she melted, and he kissed her almost hungrily as they sat in the stern of the boat, and the water lapped, the gondolier sang to the stars, and the last salmon-pink flush of the

sunset faded away. He kissed her with a kind of agonized insistence that she should become aware of him and nothing else, and every fibre of her being responded. "Darling little Lucy," he whispered, as they slid beneath the stars. "Darling little Lucy!"

But these moments of emotional intensity were few and far between, and mostly they laughed and were good companions - surprisingly good companions considering the fundamental difference of their outlooks. Stephen took a kind of delight in teasing Lucy, especially when his teasing could bring a blush to her cheeks, and make plainer than ever how very young and inexperienced she was, and how almost painfully shy at heart. When they first took over the apartment in Venice the magnificence of the bathroom charmed her, but she never neglected to lock the door so that Stephen couldn't see her looking like Aphrodite in the sunken bath. So one morning he followed her into the bathroom and insisted on doing a sketch of her while she was in the bath. He tucked a flower behind her ear, and gave her another flower to hold, and by the time she stepped from the water and grabbed at a bathtowel she was as pink as the blossoms she had left floating behind her. But Stephen's eyes were gleaming with appreciation as he bent above his sketch-book. He whisked away the bath-towel and made her stand for a further five minutes in front of him while he worked away at a second lightning sketch, and then with an odd note of excitement in his voice assured her that she might yet prove the perfect model. "There's something about you, Lucy ... something strangely perfect!"

"It's taken you some time to recognize it," she couldn't resist saying, as she draped herself determinedly in the bath-towel, and her expression suggested that she was anything but gratified. He glanced up at her, his mouth curving a little humorously, his eyes glinting. "Who knows what I might yet discover about you, little one? You might prove to be the exciting second volume of a two-volume novel... the first just a little difficult to get into!" "That doesn't sound exactly flattering." "No; but I've never flattered you, have I?" His eyes roved over her with the old insolent look of speculation. "You're by no means all on the surface, Lucy. I'm finding that out." "You mean I'm not a Loraine?" She bit her lip as soon as she had shot out the question, but he merely smiled as if he understood. "You most certainly are not a Loraine! I wouldn't have married you if you had been!" "You mean she wasn't respectable enough to marry? Otherwise you might have married her?" "Unlike you I have never been obsessed with the thought of marriage," he returned, and added a few more calm, controlled touches to his sketch. "Until you met the Baroness Helga," she flashed, tightening the bathtowel round her. "You thought of it then, didn't you?" "Yes," he admitted, looking up at her with remote eyes. "I thought of it then."

She turned swiftly to leave the bathroom, but he caught at an end of the towel and dragged her back. "Lucy - " rising and gripping her by the shoulders - "both Helga and Loraine are behind me, and you would be wise to accept that. They are a part of my past." "If they stay in your past," she whispered. He caught her into his arms and gave her a close, warm, affectionate hug. "Of course they'll stay in my past," he assured her. "How can they do otherwise when you are my wife?" He sketched her quite a number of times after that, especially when they returned to Austria, and it was high summer in the mountains. They spent a night in Vienna, and then another in Innsbruck, after which they arrived at a remote mountain inn. Lucy had the strangest feeling when she first caught sight of the inn, or Gasthaus, as it was called, with its sloping roof and flower-smothered balconies. The flowers were so gay, and the wooden walls of the building were so joyously ornamented, and so richly carved. A steep flight of steps led up to the front door, and a man was standing at the head of them, leaning on a slender ebony cane. He was wearing an English tweed hacking jacket, and grey flannel trousers, and his hair was as black as a raven's wing. Lucy had an impression of a dark, haughty, handsome face looking down on them; and then he had withdrawn inside the Gasthaus, and there was nothing but the bright musical-comedy facade, with the snows whispering above the green mountain wall, and an unbelievably pure sky stretched like a piece of tight blue gauze above the sugar-loaf peaks. On the other side of them, as she and Stephen sat in. the car, was the whole wide width of the valley, with flowery meadows falling away

like flowery-patterned skirts to pine woods, and thickets of larch and juniper. On the floor of the valley there were toylike churches, and the silver thread of the Inn twisting and turning like a bright silver snake, with here and there a gleaming lake, and another dense thicket of woodland. There were toylike cows that might have been part of a theatre backcloth, and an occasional figure that moved in a dreamlike atmosphere, farmhouses and pocket-handkerchief fields of grain. And more mountains that enclosed the valley, shutting it in as if they were all part of a giant fortification scheme, and imprisoning the scent of recently scythed hay. "Well?" Stephen said, as he looked at Lucy. "How's this for a night? Perhaps even a night or so?" "It's absolutely wonderful," she breathed. And then her eyes returned to the inn. For one moment she knew a temptation to say "No, let's go on!" But she didn't do so, because the inn was so attractive, and she wanted quite badly to stay in it - with Stephen! He smiled at her, a new and very recent extra tenderness making his eyes look soft as he did so. She was so enchanting in her simple gingham dress, with a wide white belt and off-the-shoulder neckline; her brown toes peeping out of white sandals. So en- chantingly and engagingly Lucy! "I'll make certain that we can get a room, and then we'll pick up a lunch hamper and go for a picnic, shall we? In one of those coollooking woods." "That," Lucy agreed, "would be heavenly." She watched him walk away, her heart in her eyes, and when he returned she didn't have to ask whether everything was all right.

"All fixed up," he said in a satisfied tone. "We can stay a week if we want to. And now I'm going to put the car away, because there's a wood behind the house where we can picnic, and I've had enough of driving for one morning. Want to slip up and titivate yourself? Although I can assure you it isn't necessary," studying her in that smiling way that was beginning to take her breath away every time she noticed it. "I'll be in the bar when you come down, or what serves for a bar. Or if you're a very long time I'll probably be in the wood with the hamper." "I won't be a long time," she assured him. "But I would like to look at the room and have a wash." "O.K., little one!" This time it was he who watched her walk away, and although she couldn't see his eyes as they followed her she took a comforting warm glow with her into the coolness of the Gasthaus because she could feel his eyes on her slender back. She hurried up to their room, which an apple- cheeked maid showed her, and washed her face and hands at a china basin and ewer in a corner. Modern facilities, like running hot and cold water in every bedroom, hadn't yet been installed in this remote inn, although there was a bathroom of which the landlady was very proud, and one paid an additional charge in order to enjoy a bath. Lucy powdered her face very lightly, used a coral- coloured lipstick that went beautifully with her tan, and combed her short fair hair. She also freshened herself up with some touches of cologne at the corners of her mouth and behind her ears and at her temples, and when she went downstairs she left a delicate trail of fragrance behind her. The man who stood watching her in the doorway to the dining-room thought that in spite of her sun-kissed appearance, and her brown eyes, she was quite unmistakably English, and he no sooner caught a whiff of her perfume than the thought took on a strange pleasureableness - pleasurableness and something else!

"Your pardon, Fraulein" he said, when her handkerchief fluttered downwards from her partly open bag, and he stepped forward to rescue it and return it to her. "But you dropped this." "Oh! ... Oh, thank you!" Lucy recognized him at once as the aristocratic dark man she had seen standing at the head of the steps, and she realized that he had been leaning on a cane because he limped slightly. He was elegant and suavely handsome and in some vital way fascinating, but he dragged one foot, and to her instant concern one sleeve was empty. She felt a rush of typically feminine pity to her heart. He smiled at her, and she knew that only one other smile had ever had the power to charm her. "It was my pleasure, Fraulein." And then his eyes went to the gold ring on her finger. "I beg your pardon, I should have said Frau!" "It's quite all right." She felt shy all at once, and a little awkward at the same time. "My husband and I are here together. ... We - we're on holiday." She couldn't bring herself to say honeymoon. "It's glorious up here in the mountains, isn't it?" "Glorious," he agreed, almost gravely. They stood there regarding one another in a fashion that would have struck her as strange under any other circumstances; but the circumstances being what they were she didn't think it in the least strange. She had the oddest sensation, amounting to a conviction, as her wide eyes stared into his night- black ones, that but for something freakish — such as the wrong movement of a pawn on a chessboard that was really the chessboard of her life and his - this meeting of theirs would have been but the beginning of all sorts of possibilities and eventualities. It would have led on and on to bigger and far more

important things, and moreover she knew an additional certainty that he was aware of it. Just as she was aware of it! And yet that was quite ridiculous! ... Quite! "Sprechen Sie deutsch?" he asked suddenly, surprising her. She shook her head. "I'm afraid not. I - at least, only a few words. And my French is even worse, according to my husband." "Perhaps your husband is not patient enough to help you towards improvement," he suggested, and she felt confused. "Oh, I don't know about that. He's a very good linguist himself." And you, she thought, looking at him, are almost certainly an excellent linguist. His English was beautiful if measured, she felt quite certain that he chattered French like a native, and he was almost certainly Austrian. His fine dark face had the aloof air of one who was aware of noble ancestry, and he walked partially cloaked in a mantle of aristocratic segregation. Whatever he was, or was not, he had the manners of a gentleman. And something about his face reminded her of... she didn't know what it reminded her of. Someone she had met? She couldn't think of anyone she had met with that exquisitely courteous way of returning a simple thing like a pocket-handkerchief. "But I mustn't detain you, madame." He withdrew into the shadows of the doorway. "Your husband is "waiting for you." She smiled uncertainly. "I hope you will enjoy your holiday, madame!"

"Thank you," she said, and then made her way out into the sunshine and frowned because she was still trying to catch up with something elusive, something that would have explained him to her. Stephen was not in the bar, and the apple- cheeked maid told her that he had already taken over the picnic-basket, and she would find him in the wood. As she walked towards the wood Lucy still looked abstracted, and when Stephen emerged from the coolness of the pines and walked to meet her he, too, was frowning. "What in the world have you been doing?" he demanded, drawing her into the resinous smell between the straight trunks. "I've been waiting ages, and I thought you must be changing your outfit, or having a bath, or something of the sort. But," and he touched the childish check dress, "you're still wearing this thing." "I'm sorry," she said, and she smiled up at him apologetically. "But I ran into someone." "Who?" "A man - a dark man who was standing in the main verandah when we arrived." "I don't think I noticed him," Stephen said, and frowned. "Oh, yes, I did! An arrogant-looking bloke who watched us drive up, and wore a Tyrolean hat with a feather in it. But he disappeared." "He reappeared when I dropped my handkerchief at the foot of the stairs. And he called me Fraulein!" "He did, did he?" Stephen's frown became a positive cleft between his brows. "What infernal cheek, when you're wearing your halter around your finger! Must I label you 'this young woman is my wife'?" She smiled more faintly.

"Oh, he apologized." "Then you got into conversation?" "He asked me whether I spoke German." Stephen's greenish eyes gleamed. "To which you responded, I hope, that you speak it like a native, but not to him?" Her eyes danced suddenly, and she dropped down on to the rug he had spread beneath the trees, and started to peer eagerly into the picnic-hamper. "As a matter of fact, I told him the truth, that any language apart from my own refuses to come trippingly to my lips. And now let's have some of this crisp-looking salad, shall we? And new rolls ... practically hot! How wonderful! And one of those enormous cheese tarts!" But he dropped down on to the rug beside her, and prevented her from seizing a knife and starting buttering the rolls. "Lucy," he said, in a voice she had never yet heard from him, and with a most peculiar mixture of resentment, pleading, humbleness and uncertainty in his expression. "I won't have a perfect stranger assuming that you're an unmarried woman, and calling you Fraulein - or Mademoiselle, or Miss, or anything that denies you the dignity of what you are, a wife! My wife!" He drew her passionately close to him, and his arms were very hard and possessive. "Lucy, adorable, you do like being my wife, don't you?" "Of course," she answered.

"And you always will?" She smiled at him tenderly, and touched his cheek. "I always will." His green eyes acquired new depths, and her breath caught. "There are moments when I realize that you're very young, but nowadays you're so different.... You've found out what it's like to love and be loved, haven't you, Lucy?" "Have I?" But the doubt in her eyes made him shake her a little. "Have you? Come out of it, Lucy! Am I, or am I not, your loving husband?" "Are you?" she whispered, and he thought that the soft mouth trembled. "I am, my darling!" He folded her protectively close. "Whatever I might have been in the beginning and whatever you might have been in the beginning, if it comes to that! - I now love you so much that -well, it sometimes, hurts!" - and he smiled at her crookedly. "Sometimes it hurts surprisingly !" "Oh, Stephen, is that really the truth?" she whispered, and he kissed the luminous golden eyes. "Nothing but the truth, dearest!" For a moment they remained looking at one another, and then their lips came together in a kind of anguish of love and longing that had never attacked them both together before. And when at last they drew apart Stephen was pale. But he was capable of rallying her.

"What about buttering those rolls, woman? Don't you know your husband is starving?"

CHAPTER EIGHT FOR the rest of that afternoon they remained in the cool gloom of the pinewood, and Stephen lay with his head in his wife's lap. On the unprotected hillside beyond the shelter of the trees the sunlight scorched down, and the cattle browsed knee-deep in a perfumed sweetness that was made up of all the flowers of high summer that grow in those Alpine meadows. The little cascades running down from the heights barely murmured because of the intense heat of the afternoon. Only the snows were cool, and the inviting depths of the pinewood, where the aromatic scent of the needles was like incense on the still, moist air. Stephen lay stretched out at full length, wearing a thin silk shirt and slacks, and Lucy kept his head in her gingham lap, and played with the ends of his dark, curling hair. He murmured, as he occasionally caught and kissed her fingers: "This is the life, Lucy! Absolutely nothing to do, and someone like you to do it with! But one day soon, I'm afraid, we'll have to go home." "I won't mind that," Lucy reassured him contentedly. "You won't mind living in Chelsea?" He turned over and watched her face. "You may find it a little dull at first, especially when I'm working." "I still won't mind it," she murmured. His eyes grew quizzical. "You won't be jealous when I'm shut up for hours with a beautiful model? When I may seem to forget you altogether?" "So long as you don't really forget me."

He pressed his face against her. "No, little love, I won't do that. Now that you've come into my life I shall never forget you — completely. You're like one of those perfumes that never fade away altogether, but cling to an old wardrobe or a chest. Sandalwood is one of the most tenacious of perfumes, so we'll say you're rather like sandalwood. And now that we're practically at the end of our honeymoon let's do something to make the last few days really memorable." "What can we do?" she barely breathed, and the words seemed to hang suspended in the silence of the pinewood. His eyes regarded her broodingly. "Let's love each other so much that it will be quite impossible to forget one another," he suggested, and then sprang nimbly to his feet and held out a hand to her. "Come along, darling, let's go back and have a bath and change and spend a wonderful evening! The stars will be very bright tonight, up here in the mountains, and there may be a moon. ... I seem to remember that there's the very last quarter of a moon. We could sit up and watch for it. On our balcony!" "That would be wonderful," she agreed. "And I'll tell you your eyes are brighter than star- shine, and your lips sweeter than honey." He looked into her eyes, and her heart thudded, as if he was promising her something more precious than rubies, more heady than the effects of champagne. "If you're a good girl," he concluded teasingly, as he gathered up the remnants of their picnic lunch and stowed them away in the basket. She went ahead of him through the trees, and then all at once she twisted her ankle on a gnarled tree root, and her sharp cry of pain caused him to drop the basket and go quickly to her assistance. The

slim ankle started to swell up almost immediately, and he picked her up in his arms and carried her the remainder of the way, leaving the basket to be collected later on. Outside the Gasthaus there was an enormous pale blue and silver car, and beside it the tall dark man seemed to be taking a kind of farewell of the innkeeper's wife. She looked as if it would need only the smallest amount of encouragement to cause her to drop him a low curtsy, and the expression on her face could hardly have been more deferential as she gazed up at him. "Ja, Excellency!" she was saying, as Stephen emerged from the wood with his wife in his arms. "That is so, Excellency!" And then, as Stephen approached the foot of the steps: "You have but to make your wishes known ..." The tall man stepped forward - or rather, limped forward - and accosted the Englishman. "But what has happened to Madame?" There was no doubt about the concern on his infinitely dark face. "She has met with an accident? Yes?" "A very slight accident," Stephen returned brusquely. "Just a twisted ankle." "But a twisted ankle can be extremely painful. And it must be dealt with at once!" His Excellency called sharply to the woman in the dirndl and the thick worsted stockings. "Bring water and bandages, Frau Steiber! Hot water, and if you have it an adhesive bandage - that is the finest support for a sprained ankle! And hurry!" "Ja, ja, Hen Baron" she answered him with alacrity, and sped away into the house to do his bidding with the minimum of delay. Lucy

found herself such a centre of interest that confusion welled over her, and never in her life could she remember receiving so much concerned attention before. Frau Steiber knelt beside the couch in the main dining- room-living-room of the inn on which Lucy had been placed, and Stephen looked on with an odd expression on his face while her sandal was removed with the utmost tenderness and the first hot compress was applied. The Baron limped up behind her with a tiny glass of neat spirit in his hand and urged her in a gentle voice to drink it, and once more when she looked into his eyes she had the feeling that this was ordained - something that had to be. Wherever they had been wandering in the world they would have met eventually, and now that they had met she hardly knew whether to be most peculiarly perturbed, or strangely regretful. His night-dark eyes were pools of the utmost consideration and something much, much more besides, and in spite of the close presence of her husband, he looked deep into her own eyes and a curious sweetness stole round his mouth whenever he addressed her. "That is better, madame? The pain is easing a little?" "But it never really hurt. ..." And then she broke off and bit her lip, and admitted that it had hurt when she twisted it. "But, in any case, it's nothing," she insisted. "It will be nothing when the swelling has subsided," the Baron agreed with her smoothly, and bent over and gently probed the puffy flesh above her instep with a long and flexible and exquisitely gentle forefinger. "I know a little about these things, madame," he explained softly, as he went on looking at her, "for there was a time when I practised medicine in Vienna. But an accident put an end to my ambitions in that direction. And nowadays I do nothing of any real value to anyone."

"Oh, but I'm sure you do!" she said, and she was amazed at her own anxiety to convince him that that couldn't possibly be so. "I'm sure you do," she repeated shyly. He smiled at her. "You are kind, madame. And I would recommend that you rest this foot for a few days. After which it will be as good as new." "What a fuss!" Stephen exclaimed, once the Baron had departed in his gleaming blue and silver car - chauffeur-driven - and he had Lucy ensconced on an old-fashioned settee in their own room. "Anyone would think you'd broken every bone in your ankle, instead of giving it a slight wrench. Not that I'm unsympathetic, as you know" - sitting down on the settee beside her and giving her a hug to convince her of his sympathy. "But I object to a perfect stranger giving orders for my wife's well-being." Lucy looked detached, and thoughtful. "I can't get over the feeling that I've seen him somewhere before," she admitted at last. He tilted her chin and looked at her. "Someone out of your dark past? Someone you've never told me about?" "Of course not." But her eyes were puzzled, a little bewildered. "Stephen, don't you ... isn't there anything about him that is familiar to you?" "Sorry, my pet, I can't say there is. At least ..." Then he shook his head decisively. "No; I'm quite certain I've never seen him before."

"It's strange," she murmured, looking down at her ankle, and seeing once more the elegant, dark- haired baron bending so concernedly above it. "It's not so much strange," Stephen told her severely, lighting himself a cigarette, "as disturbing to a husband of a few weeks to come upon a man who falls so headlong for his wife that he can't resist availing himself of the excuse of a swollen ankle to touch her! And our unknown Excellency was consumed by a desire to touch you, if only for a moment! I was watching him, and his face was quite revealing!" "Don't be absurd!" Lucy said, but she felt herself flushing, and she knew that Stephen was right. It hadn't been possible for her to study the Austrian's face, but from the very first moment when he addressed her her instincts had warned her that it was because she attracted him that he limped forward so quickly to recover her handkerchief. Not merely because he had been brought up in the old tradition of behaving with gallantry. Stephen's expression grew serious, and just a shade resentful. "You blushed!" he said. "And that, too, was revealing. However, if we're going to be haunted by that fellow with a limp we'll push on somewhere else as quickly as possible. I'll ask Frau Steiber tonight if she knows who he is - and I'm pretty certain she does - but for the time being we'll forget him." He smiled at her warmly, and rearranged the cushion behind her back, and the one that had been placed beneath her, ankle to support it. "We'll have dinner up here, where no one can get at us, and you won't have to go downstairs again tonight. If you want to change into something I'll help you. That's what husbands are for - to be of assistance when their wives are temporarily handicapped!" He waited on her as if she really was suffering from a broken ankle instead of a sprain that was subsiding rapidly, and she couldn't help'

smiling as she watched his absorbed face as he did the little things for her that she couldn't do herself without suffering a few twinges. He helped her into a housegown, and brought her her make-up things, and mixed her a drink after having the ingredients sent up from the bar. And then he carried her out on to the balcony and once more rearranged cushions so that she had the maximum of comfort, and could watch the sun slipping behind the mountain peaks, and the temporary splendour that it left behind. In an afterglow that was like the lemon light of a new day, with the whole of the valley falling away below them filled with a soft bloom like the bloom on grapes, and the clangour of milking-pails reaching them from somewhere behind the inn, they sat very close to one another, and hardly said a word, because they were strangely content. And although they didn't sit up to watch the moon rise they stayed to watch the stars burn forth like fires above the lonely folds of the valley, with its little woods and its streams and its tiny farms, and its splendid wall of mountains that confronted them. Silver peak after silver peak, reflecting that light of the stars. "I'm not going to let you stay up late, because you're small, and you've hurt yourself, and you must rest," Stephen said, his voice a little husky. And he carried her back into the room behind them, and helped her into her misty nylon nightdress edged with lace, and saw her into the huge bed with its vast square pillows and feather-filled eiderdown that was quite unnecessary on such a breathlessly warm night. Lucy fell asleep with his arms about her, and before she fell asleep he whispered to her: "I wish it had been like this in Paris. I wish it had been like this from the beginning. Oh, Lucy, I love you so! I ought to have loved you from the moment I saw you, but I didn't, and now I'm frightened because this sort of love can get out of hand. It can make one

perpetually afraid. And I don't want to be afraid of the future! I want it to be perfect for us!" "It will be," she assured him, her arms holding him close. "Stephen, darling, of course it will be!" "Say you love me, Lucy! Say you love me so much that nothing I could possibly do would stop you loving me!" She was silent for an infinitesimal second, and then she confessed: "Whatever you did, I wouldn't stop loving you!" "Darling," he breathed triumphantly. "Oh, darling!" They clung together, and although they were so supremely happy, there was a certain desperation about their happiness, a deep-sunk knowledge that there were shadows behind the substance at which they both grasped, and that shadows had an unwholesome method of encroaching sometimes. Shadows could, in time, blot out the substance.... Like the mist when it swept down from the mountains and blotted out the whole of the valley. The valley that was so fair and velvety tonight, smelling of new-mown hay and alpine roses. Lucy clutched at Stephen, and his arms held her fiercely. It was his instant response to the fear he sensed in her. "Go to sleep, darling," he crooned. "We've reached the peak of our happiness, and we're going to stay on the peak!" But Lucy knew that once you had reached the peak you could climb no higher. You could only descend. "Oh, Stephen," she whispered, "we will stay there, won't we?"

"There isn't a doubt in the world, sweetheart," He kissed her in a way she couldn't have imagined him kissing her six weeks ago. "Don't forget that I'm not precisely a young man, even if you're only an infant. I didn't fall in love with you in my comparatively carefree morning -I waited until it was afternoon! Some people might say that it was mid- afternoon ! And it's going to carry me on until the evening, and right through into the twilight of my existence! I know it is!" "But I fell in love with you in the morning," she whispered, against his chest. "Morning, afternoon, evening," he replied. "It doesn't matter! We're in love! We're going to stay in love!" Inconsequentially- extraordinarily inconsequentially - a thought chased itself across her brain. "Where have I seen that man before? Why is his face so familiar? And it ought not to be dark! I know it ought not to be dark!"

CHAPTER NINE THE following morning, about eleven o'clock, the mystery was explained, when the same blue and silver car drove up once more to the front of the inn, and the man whom Frau Steiber had addressed as Excellency alighted. He held open the rear door for someone who had accompanied him to alight also, and Lucy, who was sitting on the main verandah with her foot propped slightly in front of her, gasped and turned cold at the same time. Although it was such a brilliantly fine morning she went quite cold inside. Stephen, who had been ordering a drink for himself and coffee for her, returned just as the car drove up. Lucy felt him stiffen. The Baroness Helga ascended the steps gracefully towards them. "I have a bone to pick with you, Stephen," she said prettily, showing all her flawless teeth, as she smiled chidingly. "Not merely do you get married, but you do not notify me so that I may send you a present! And on top of that you come here, here to my very own mountains, and stay in a simple inn when you might have become our guests! It was left to Ebhart to come upon you by accident, and he and I are both agreed that you are very vexatious. We must do something about this!" Stephen recovered from his surprise with such apparent completeness and rapidity that Lucy, stealing a glance at him, was amazed. "Of all the people to run into so far from where I saw you last, you are the most astonishing, Helga!" he told her. He held out his hand. " The most astonishing!" She pouted.

"But I am an Austrian. This is my country. And, naturally, I come to it sometimes! And now let me present my brother, although I understand you have already met. My brother, the Baron von Rosegger. Ebhart, this is Stephen Lestrange and his very new wife." For an instant her eyes dwelt on Lucy. The Baron bent over Lucy's hand and looked his concern into her eyes. "Your ankle, madame? It is better? Ah, yes, I see that the swelling has gone down. I am very much relieved." Stephen said dryly: "The swelling subsided last night. It was not, as I thought at the time, a very bad sprain." "But, nevertheless, when one is on honeymoon …"The way Helga said it sounded exciting and out of this world, and yet her expression belied the breathless warmth of her voice. Her expression was uncannily controlled and composed. "Such a small accident is rather more than unfortunate. You will allow me to sit beside you, madame?" "Why - why, yes, of course!" Lucy answered. "Of course." Stephen said, even more dryly: "Why be so formal? Her name is Lucy." "Then from now on I shall call you Lucy," Helga said. Lucy wondered whether she remembered her, and whether she had made any impression at all on the night of the cocktail party. "And we have come to invite you to lunch with us, or to have dinner with us tonight, whichever you would prefer. Our schloss is quite close, and the journey is quickly accomplished in a car, so it will not be in the

least tiring for Lucy. And we will of course either take you back with us now, or send for you tonight, according to which invitation you decide to accept." She sounded as if it had all been well discussed beforehand between herself and her brother, and they were not prepared for such a thing ,as a refusal. "Well, Stephen?" - with sweetness, and a level look from kingfisher blue eyes. "Which is it to be?" Stephen's face was hard, and strangely set. "Ask Lucy," he said. "For my part I think I ought to make it clear that neither of us is feeling particularly social just now." "But that is understood." Amusement stole into the blue eyes. "When one is on honeymoon one wishes to be segregated - to be left alone! But your honeymoon must be near its close, unless it is to be prolonged indefinitely? And Ebhart and I are most anxious to entertain you while the opportunity is ours. Nicht wahr, Ebhart?" He bowed. "Most anxious," he said. Lucy saw him looking straight at her, his dark, mystic, fluid eyes practically seeking to compel her. "Then it's up to you, Lucia," Stephen observed, and not merely did she feel herself jarred by his use of the name she disliked after discarding it for several weeks, but perturbation rushed over her because the onus had been thrust on her. And he didn't even look at her when he thrust it on her.

"I - we..." she stammered. "It is very kind of you both to - to invite us. ... And we could hardly expect you to send a car for us tonight. ..." "Then you decided that it shall be lunch, Mrs. Lestrange?" the Baron murmured. "And perhaps tomorrow you will dine with us!" "You - you're rather overpowering us with invitations," she laughed awkwardly. "Not at all. This place is primitive, and our house is near, and naturally we wish you to avail yourselves of its facilities." He looked across at his chauffeur, and nodded. "My man will carry you to and from the car, so there will be no need for you to do any walking." "If anyone's going to carry Lucy, I will," Stephen said bluntly. His prospective host bowed again. "As you wish, of course." "And if I'm going out to lunch I must change," Lucy exclaimed, becoming aware all at once of the costliness of the Baroness's ivory silk suit, and the Parisian elegance of her huge white cartwheel hat. Beneath the hat her golden hair was smooth and banded and shining, and the lovely face was cameo- perfect. Lucy, in one of the simple cottons that became her very well indeed, felt as ordinary as a piece of homespun by comparison. Upstairs in their room, to which she had been assisted by Stephen, she looked at him for a moment as if she was seeking for some sort of guidance or direction, but he merely shrugged his shoulders in an exaggerated Continental gesture, and his mouth twisted.

"Of all the things to happen! Well, it won't hurt us to have lunch, and tomorrow we'll take flight. We don't want our last few days spoilt by outsiders." But Lucy couldn't help wondering: Was that the way he really looked upon Helga these days - as an outsider? When only six weeks ago he had been madly in love with her! What sort of love was it that took wings so quickly? She hadn't much time to think the question over, for on the verandah of the Gasthaus two people were waiting for them, and her fingers felt like thumbs as she started to dress. She rejected garment after garment in her wardrobe, and when they finally rejoined the others she was wearing sky-blue linen, and her accessories were as virginally white as those of the Baroness. The Baron put her into the front seat beside the chauffeur, because he declared she would feel the jolts and jars of the mountain road less there than in the back; and on the back seat Helga looked like a white-and-gold goddess seated between two devotees. But one of the devotees had a detached look on his face - he was thinking of the girl in the front of the car - and Stephen was almost unapproachably grim.

The road wound upwards, climbing through the dimness of the woods and skirting the edges of precipitous ledges, and reappearing in patches of brilliant sunshine where the morning was all golden and sweet on the mountain. The noise of cowbells stole upwards from the floor of the valley, and the scented air was perpetually disturbed by the voices of the little streams that came hurrying down from the heights, and flashed like silver ribbons in the sunshine. The blueness of the River Inn was miraculous in that unclouded atmosphere.

Then they dipped a little, tunnelled through another of the blue-black pinewoods, and emerged in a courtyard that was as feudal as anything Lucy had ever seen. To reach it they had to cross an immensely strong stone bridge beneath which was a raging torrent, and one fascinated glance down into the abyss convinced her that if by some unfortunate chance the bridge developed a flaw, or as a result of reckless driving the protective parapet was proved a little too low, there would be no hope of survival for the victims who were plunged into the depths. The courtyard was surrounded by high grey walls, and the schloss itself seemed to be perched on the edge of eternity. An implacable wall of mountain rose behind it, and in front of it the earth dropped away. From the terrace on to which the windows of an immense dining-hall opened Lucy had a better opportunity to appreciate just how breathtaking was that drop, and how unspeakably beautiful and altogether superb a world of jagged peaks and green valleys and imprisoned lakes and rivers could be. Beside her the Baron tried to explain his own feeling for Rosegger. "It is always the same, and nothing we do can ever change it. Our lives make as little impact on it as sunlight on shadow. The shadow is always there once the sunlight has gone." Lucy looked up at him with a bright sparkle of appreciation in her eyes, and at the same time there was a faint suggestion of wonder because he had spoken so soberly. "Yet you love it?" she asked. "Oh, yes, I love it. Of course I love it!" "Because it is your home, or because it is so cut off?"

"Because my family have lived here for generations, and when the time comes for me to die I hope I shall die here!" He smiled down at her, the seriousness vanishing as he noted the wide wonder in her eyes. They were so golden and clear that they dazzled him a little, and her tan was no more than a creamy overlay beneath which the young blood leapt and played revealingly. "But why talk to you of dying on a morning like this, little Madame Lucy? I will not call you Frau Lucy because it does not quite fit you, somehow, and we have agreed that there is to be no Mrs. Lestrange. Is it permitted that I call you Lucy?" "Why, yes, if you - if you want to!" Lucy answered, and the young blood surged softly over her cheekbones. "Although we hardly know one another, do we?" "I felt that I had known you all my life, when I saw you for the first time yesterday," he told her, and she couldn't make any comment because that was exactly the way she had felt about him, although she couldn't let him know that they had shared similar impressions. She stared down at the drink he had put into her hand. "Sometimes, for some reason, people seem familiar," she said. "But you weren't merely familiar. You were inevitable." And then he realized that in her eagerness to see the view she had risen from her chair and was still standing, and he put her back into it with a concern and a tenderness that were both a little overpowering. "How reprehensible of me to allow you to stand! And you with an ankle that must still be very painful!" "But I can assure you it isn't in the slightest degree painful any longer."

But he smiled dismissingly, and summoned the old manservant who had brought a tray of drinks out on to the terrace, and tried to persuade her to accept another of the decidedly ambrosial cocktails. "I seldom if ever drink more than one," she said. "My husband will tell you that I am what he calls 'remarkably abstemious.'" But the Baron didn't look as if he was interested in her husband's observations. "If you wish to be abstemious then it is outside the province of anyone to urge you to do something you do not desire to do." He flickered a glance towards Stephen, who was admiring the view from the opposite end of the terrace with Helga at his elbow, that was quite unreadable, but definitely cold, and then once more smiled at her. "Has anyone ever told you, Lucy, that although your eyes are unEnglish, you yourself are very English?" "Are my eyes un-English?" "They have the warmth of the south about them, and therefore the answer is yes. Definitely yes!" "But my father and mother were both English." "That doesn't mean a thing." She looked at him, and at her obvious perplexity he smiled with a touch of indulgence - gentle indulgence. "Leave it, madame! Perhaps I should not have departed from formality with you so soon, but as I have already explained there has not been a moment since yesterday morning when I felt that you and I were really strangers." A deep-toned, mellow- booming gong summoned them to lunch, and he escorted her into the great dininghall.

To Lucy, dazzled by the sunshine, and unused to the shadows, it had the immensity of a banqueting- hall, and its solemn grandeur was something she had never experienced before. The table would have accommodated a regiment, but because there were only the four of them places were laid at one end only. But, even so, the glass and the silver had a fabulous shimmer, and there was an enormous highpiled dish of fruit that provided a welcome splash of colour. The old manservant waited on them, assisted by a younger who wore a somewhat faded livery, and it was obvious the Von Roseggers liked to maintain a certain amount of state. Helga looked the part, with her normally rather disdainful expression, and Lucy didn't miss the fact that she declined to help herself to anything that could not be placed in front of her by one of the servants. She never said thank you, and she never appeared in the slightest degree grateful. If one of the guests' needs was temporarily overlooked her voice issued an icy reproof, and Lucy wanted to say or do something that would soften the effect of the cutting criticism. Her brother sat in an enormous chair with a coat of arms above it, and although he, too, had an air of hauteur, it was neither so withering nor so much a part of him as that which at times almost entirely cloaked his sister's femininity. In fact, of the two, he was by far the gentler and the more human, and although she was fair as an angel while he was dark as a gypsy the contrast in colouring was not nearly so striking as the contrast in dispositions, or so Lucy decided after she had got to know them both a little better. As for Stephen, she was unable to make up her mind what he was thinking and feeling as he sat there at the lavishly appointed table and was regaled with the choicest wines and the most expensive foodstuffs. Occasionally he met her eyes, and she thought he smiled wryly; and occasionally he looked at his host as he bent towards Lucy and he didn't smile at all, only looked down at his plate and concentrated on it just a little sullenly.

But, more often than not, he was talking to Helga, who directed most of her conversation at him. And although he was careful not to meet her eyes, or not for longer than a few unavoidable seconds, he did seem to relax slightly as the long meal finally drew to its close. After lunch they had coffee served to them on the terrace, from which that unforgettable view was obtained, and Helga suggested to her brother that he show Lucy their English rose-garden. "Being English you are almost certainly very keen on roses," the Baroness remarked, looking for the first time rather long and thoughtfully at Lucy. "And our grandmother started our garden here. She had a certain amount of English blood in her veins," Lucy looked towards Stephen, but he appeared to be having some trouble in getting his cigarette to draw properly. The Baron placed his fingers under Lucy's elbow. "Come along," he said softly, "and I will show you a little bit of England!" It wasn't merely "a little bit of England", it was sheer perfection. There seemed to be almost every variety of rose, from old-fashioned mauvish-red ones with a wonderful perfume to some of the more recent strains that were choice and delicate as blown china. The paths were littered with fallen petals, red, yellow, and white, and there was a rectangular pool in the centre of the quiet, shut-in place in which ornamental fish disported themselves. Seclusion was afforded by high, clipped hedges of velvety green, and behind them the green of the mountainside rose up steeply. The Baron kept his hand beneath Lucy's elbow until they arrived at a marble bench, and then he suggested that they sat down and watched the fish leaping. Lucy sank on to the bench beside him, and she became overwhelmingly conscious of his empty sleeve, which

brushed against her. She wanted to ask him about his accident, but was suddenly too shy to do so. And when he spoke his words made her forget his empty sleeve. "Forgive me, madame, but you do realize that my sister was anxious to be left alone with your husband? She and he are old friends." Lucy felt as if the sunshine all round them became a little dimmed, and the constant, happy murmur of water rushing down from the melting snows didn't seem nearly so happy. "Y-yes," she said. "I am aware of that." He offered her a cigarette from his handsome gold case, embellished with a crest; but she refused. She knew that he was looking at her keenly. "Helga is very attached to Stephen, but she couldn't bring herself to marry him. You understand?" he asked. "I - I ..." She bit her lip. "Do we have to discuss their friendship?" "I think so," he returned gently. "I think it is most important. Sooner or later they were bound to meet again - either here or in London, when you returned to it - and almost I am convinced that it is better here. You are, I am certain, a wise young woman, and you must not read more into glances than their owners themselves intend. You must not, in short, allow your imagination to run away with you." They sat absolutely silent for several seconds, and the fish started to leap again playfully, and a bee hummed drowsily amongst the roses. Suddenly he touched her clasped hands with his one hand.

"You should not have rushed into marriage, little Lucy," he told her reproachfully. "At your age you could have waited. . . . And it is never wise to be precipitate!" She could say nothing, and for her the magic of this place kept alternately retreating and advancing before her. "Shall we go back now?" he asked, at last. "You must have English tea before you return - English tea with milk and sugar! I'm afraid we take it with lemon." Did it really matter, she asked herself a little wildly. With milk or with lemon! ... The important thing was that they should not return too soon, before Helga and Stephen had said all that they had to say to each other!

CHAPTER TEN WHEN the blue and silver car carried them away from the schloss they had promised to have dinner there the following evening. Stephen said he had left it to Lucy to think up an excuse, and Lucy replied that the excuse that they were returning to London should surely have been enough. Stephen frowned at the chauffeur's back, and complained that the Baron was very high-handed, and he really hadn't left them any room for an excuse. He amplified his dislike of the Baron by adding: "The way he calls you 'little Lucy' makes me sick! What right has he got to call you Lucy, in any case? You met yesterday morning for the very first time, and now an outsider would think you'd known one another for years! A tender way of bending over you, a look in his eyes there's no mistaking! ... That's all part of a deliberate campaign to annoy me, or so anyone would think. I don't like the chap." "I don't think I like the Baroness Helga," she returned. He turned to her instantly, and slipped his arm round her. "Poor darling, I don't altogether blame you. But Helga's no longer of the slightest importance to me, and there's nothing for you to worry your silly little head over. And this time next week we'll be back in London, and it won't matter to either of us what Helga and her noble brother are doing!" He removed her hat and put it on the seat beside him, and ran his fingers through her short fair hair. "Are you looking forward to seeing Chelsea again? Chelsea, and the river - and Battersea Power Station! We mustn't leave that out!" She nestled against him, but her eyes were wistful as she looked up at him.

"Are you looking forward to going home, Stephen? To sharing your flat with me?" He grinned at her. "I've never shared a flat before with a woman, and mine was equipped for masculine occupation only. But we'll soon put that part of it right, and let you have your few feminine touches. So long as you won't want to revolutionize the place entirely." "Of course not," she sighed. "And if you find it a bit out of the world we'll look for something lower down. ... But all that's in the future! For the present we've got a few more days here, and are committed to dinner at the Schloss Rosegger tomorrow night!" She looked out of the car window. "It's a wonderful place," she said. Stephen looked out of the opposite window. "It certainly is," he agreed. His eyes wandered up to the high peaks and remained there. "A magnificent place! But I always knew Helga was vulgarly wealthy." "And her brother is very wealthy, too, of course?" "Slightly more so than Helga. They had joint fortunes left to them, but his was the larger. In addition he owns the schloss, and his word is law up there. I'd never met him before this, of course, but I've always known about him." "It's very sad that he should have lost an arm."

"H'm," he said. "I think it was a riding accident ... or, no, as a matter of fact, it was a car crash. But he's got a lot to compensate him for the loss of his arm, and that limp. That house, and these mountains ..." His eyes continued to dwell on them, and when Lucy spoke to him he didn't seem to hear her for several seconds. Then he looked down at her and smiled. "What did you say, poppet?" "I asked you whether you would like to live in the mountains? Whether they inspire you?" "I would like to escape to them fairly often, and I'd like to paint you in a dirndl and a muslin blouse, sitting on a green hillside." He cuddled her close to him. "Perhaps I'll have a shot at it before we go back." "There won't be time." "We could always make time." "Meaning that we could - stay a little longer? That we don't have to go back quite so quickly as we planned?" "Well, we're free agents, more or less!" And then he saw, or suspected, the shadow at the back of her eyes, and said hastily: "But don't worry, darling, we're going back next week. Early next week!" And that, as Lucy realized, was a slight extension of the stay in the mountains they had planned. Only a very slight extension - but an extension.

The following evening she wore her golden net dress, and the Baron's eyes came so close to lighting up that she felt a little uncomfortable for several minutes after their arrival.

The Baroness Helga once more wore white - a narrow, sheath-like dress of gleaming brocade - and about her neck was an unusual necklace of turquoise and silver. She wore matching bracelets, and her shell-like ears looked more shell-like than ever by contrast with turquoise earrings. Her eyes were a very deep turquoise under the entrancing eyelashes. The Baron appropriated Lucy from the moment she began to recover from her confusion, and although it was quite natural that he should take her into dinner, and pay her every possible attention since she was the only woman guest, it was not quite so natural or normal that he should practically ignore her husband. Stephen he left to his sister, and although Helga declined to give the impression that she was in any way appropriating the male guest, she in turn had little to say to Lucy. Once Lucy overheard her remarking to Stephen, with a definitely amused note in her voice: "My brother is a collector of beautiful pieces - pictures, china, glass and your wife's unusual charm has overcome him a little. You must not be jealous, Stephen, for I have never known him to be seriously interested in a woman - as a woman!" Lucy couldn't hear what Stephen's reply was, but later in the evening she caught him looking at Helga as if he was suddenly either interested in her necklace, or the long, smooth column of her throat. Something sparkled with a queer sort of derisiveness in the Austrian woman's eyes, and Stephen's own eyes were raised to them. The two stared at each other for the length of time it would take for a stone that was cast into a pool to spread its ripples; and then Helga's lips parted slightly - the softly flushed lips that were full and ripe as a pomegranate - and her eyelashes lowered. Stephen turned abruptly away.

The Baron took Lucy out to the terrace to watch the last of the light lingering on the high peaks. They watched until the late-rising moon appeared above the peaks across the valley. One moment there was an infinite blackness, and then as if somebody had swung a lantern aloft with great suddenness the peaks were illuminated, and the little world enclosed by mountain walls because a place of silvery light. The hoary walls of the schloss took on a strange, unearthly beauty, the terrace was no longer just a platform in space, but a platform between the stars and the solid earth. Something barely substantial. Lucy looked about her wonderingly. "If I lived here," she said, "I don't think I should ever want to leave it." "In winter," the Baron informed her, "you would be cut off from the rest of the world when the passes were blocked. And the winter can be very long." "And the summer very beautiful," she said dreamily. "So, summer and winter, you would stay here if you could?" He smiled down at her. "You would elect to do that if it were possible?" "If it were possible," she answered. And she added silently: "But only with Stephen!" His face grew a little harsh in the moonlight. "Your husband would very quickly tire of such a remote spot as this," he told her, as if he read her mind with ease. "For a time he would be happy reproducing our mountains on his canvases, and perhaps painting you, too, in our flowery meadows. But the urge would soon pass, and he would want to move on."

"You think so?" she asked wistfully, looking up at him as he kept his hand lightly beneath her elbow. "I am certain of it. It is the same with my sister. This is somewhere she loves to come back to, but if she had to remain here she would die of ennui." "And you think that - people with similar tastes - attract each other?" she asked quietly. This time he did not look down at her as he answered her question. "I think that people without similar tastes can never share any lasting interests." And she felt a tiny cold feeling about her heart. The next day the pale blue and silver car drove up to the inn, and Helga announced blithely that they had come to take them to Innsbruck. They would spend the day there seeing the sights, have lunch, and do some shopping, if Lucy felt the need to buy anything. Lucy replied that they had done so much shopping in the various capitals they had passed through - particularly Paris - that she couldn't with a clear conscience add anything more to her wardrobe, but Helga looked at her with a strange mixture of amusement and contempt in her eyes. "When one has a man whose admiration requires to be chained, then one cannot be neglectful of one's wardrobe," she said. "Always it must contain something new - something to captivate and hold!" And once again Lucy felt her whole inner being grow cold, as if the Baroness had the malevolent intention of making her uneasy about the chains she had attached to Stephen, and she knew it. And not for the first time she had the feeling that the golden beauty didn't merely

dislike her, but that she found fresh fuel for her dislike every moment of every hour that passed, but she concealed it behind her strange emotionless smile. Nevertheless, Lucy enjoyed the day in Innsbruck, and she delighted in the quaint mediaevalism of the town imprisoned by mountains. She wondered whether there was any other town in the whole world that had the foot of a mountain coming right down into its main street, and where the atmosphere was so much like Grimm's Fairy Tales brought up to date. Taverns that belonged to the world of fairy, streets and shops and houses where Time had stood still, and yet where everything and everyone was designed to tempt the tourist and the tourist's pocket! Stephen bought her a handbag that she liked, and a carved wooden house that also took her fancy. Helga bought a sophisticated bracelet that would look well on her graceful wrist, and Ebhart bought Lucy a charm to hang on her charm bracelet. It was only a simple cowbell of silver and enamel, but Lucy blushed with pleasure when she received it. Stephen scarcely glanced at it, and retaliated by buying Helga an enormous armful of flowers in one of the choicest flowershops. "They won't last as long as Lucy's charm," he said a little oddly, "but you look very nice holding them." "And I can also press one in a book," she suggested, giving him one of her meaning looks from under thick eyelashes. The Baron took Lucy by the arm and led her off to inspect the facade of one of the oldest houses. She was grateful, because she had been unhappily aware that Stephen was annoyed, and had wanted deliberately to hurt her. When they got back to their inn that night she looked at the charm, and then at him.

"Don't you like it?" she asked quietly. "I don't like Ebhart's manner of taking possession of you, or the way he paws you," he snapped. "In fact, I don't think I like him at all! Or, shall we say, I could dispense with him?" She nodded slowly. "I fed that way about Helga!" Suddenly he snatched her into his arms, and hugged her violently. "We're a couple of mutts," he said. "If we go on like this we'll soon start acknowledging that we're actively jealous!" But they did go on like it, and they went on seeing the Baron von Rosegger and his sister every day. Every day they either lunched or dined as a quartet, and as a quartet they explored the surrounding countryside. They picnicked in woods and climbed narrow paths almost to the snowline, and when Lucy proved that she hadn't such a head for heights as the other three the Baron took charge of her, and saw to it that she never missed her footing, or went over such a dangerous thing as an edge. In spite of his physical handicap dizzy drops had no terrors at all for him, and he was amazingly agile. Helga and Stephen were like a couple of mountain goats, always going on ahead. The days were long and filled with heat, the nights starry - but sometimes a little estranged where Stephen and his wife were concerned. It was then that they remembered how little they had seen of each other during the day, and Stephen remembered particularly the Baron's protective tenderness to Lucy. Lucy ceased to wonder that Stephen had ever been violently in love with Helga. Whatever she was like deep at the heart of her - whether she was capable of warm feelings, or no more capable of them than an exquisite plaster

cast of a woman-she was so lovely that it was a delight to sometimes watch her. Even Lucy delighted in watching her, but she grew to like her less with every day that passed - every day that lengthened their stay in the mountains. And inevitably, at last, they found themselves guests in the schloss itself. Brother and sister urged that it was quite ridiculous that they should suffer the discomforts of a mountain inn when there were empty rooms in the schloss that could receive them. Rooms with running hot and cold water in the bathrooms adjoining, and up-tothe-minute furnishings. No horsehair sofas and carved wooden beds, but low French beds with satin bedspreads, and satin draperies drawn up into a gilded apex above the head of each bed. Wardrobes to accommodate Lucy's lovely French dresses, and deep drawers for her piles of flimsy underwear. In actual fact a suite was allocated to the newly- weds once the decision was taken to accept the constant and pressing invitations they received, and they even had a balcony that was entirely private for the occasions when they wished to be private. They had a bathroom between their two rooms that was all black and silver and rosy-pink bath towels, and their sitting-room had a pale rose carpet, and festoons of rose-coloured draperies at the windows. It reminded Lucy of a stage set, and was, she decided, luxury running wild. Yet the Baron's apartments, she was to discover later, were severe to the point of austerity. A rare print or a rare binding for his bookshelves, or a piece of delicate porcelain, were his only concessions to beauty in his strictly personal surroundings. The afternoon they packed up at the inn and removed to the schloss Lucy felt as if she was beginning an entirely new chapter in her life. There had been the chapter before she met Stephen, the brief, whirlwind chapter after she met him, the strangely perfect honeymoon chapter, and now - a new chapter! It was the end of the

honeymoon, but not the beginning of their real life together - the real, earnest, married life she wanted to savour with Stephen! Anything could happen now, and it might not be what either of them wanted.... But they had been unable to refuse the invitation. They could have gone home - according to their programme they should have done so - but the Von Roseggers had caused them to change their minds. Why, Lucy asked herself. Were they both weak, or were the Von Roseggers such dominant personalities that it was impossible to refuse them anything? She scarcely looked at Stephen as she fastened the lid of her dressing-case, and knew that he was cramming down the lid of one of the heavier suitcases. He seemed to be behaving rather clumsily about it, and she heard him swear softly. She went to him and touched his arm gently. "Can I help?" "No, thanks, darling." He grimaced round at her strangely. "I'm getting rather tired of packing and unpacking. Be good when we get home, won't it?" "Yes." "We could go home now, you know!" She looked him straight in the eyes. There was a fearful look in her own. "Stephen, do you think we're doing a wise thing in going to the schloss? You don't think we might - might regret it one day?" He put his hands on her shoulders and looked earnestly back into her face.

"How is it possible we could regret it?" he asked. "We're merely accepting an invitation that has been unusually pressing, I'll admit, but there's no reason at all why we should rush home. Good heavens, Lucy! How many times have I got to tell you that we won't starve if I don't go back and start working on commissions again? There are still weeks of good weather ahead of us, and why shouldn't we take advantage of it? Why shouldn't I take back to London a wife who is as brown as a berry? - in fact, browner than a berry, for you're devastatingly gipsyish and attractive already!" She smiled faintly. "Supposing you never took me back to London, Stephen? Supposing we never lived together in your Chelsea flat?" "Lucia!" His hands gripped her shoulders so hard that she winced. "You're not implying that Ebhart is planning to steal you from me, are you? I believe he would, without conscience, if you were agreeable !" But her clear eyes rebuked him. "Ebhart is a gentleman," she told him quietly, "and when I married it was with the intention of remaining married if you didn't want to break away from me yourself. If we ever separate, Stephen, it will be you - and you alone - who will be responsible for the separation." "Then, my darling, foolish, stupid, adorable little Lucy," he said, kissing her with great tenderness, "we shall be together until the last Trumpet sounds - or our last Trumpet sounds! And that much I can promise you!" Yet, when they arrived at the schloss, and Helga herself showed them to their rooms, the expression on her face as she did so - so like that of a cat who had finally worked its way into the dairy, and discovered

not merely a saucer of cream, but a whole inviting panful - gave Lucy so much pause that she started to be uneasy afresh. Helga's kingfisher blue eyes were almost startlingly vivid and gleaming, the smile on her scarlet mouth quirked upwards at the corners, as if she was both satisfied and complacent. She touched the bowl of roses on an occasional table in the sittingroom, and looked sideways at Stephen. "I've got an idea," she told him. "I think it's quite an excellent idea. Do you remember you never finished painting my portrait that you began in Chelsea?" "Of course I remember," he answered. "You refused to give me enough sittings, and I couldn't go on with it. At the present moment it's in my studio, with its face turned to the wall, and I'd marked it off as a sort of Unfinished Symphony!" She nodded. "I think we also argued about the eye colour. I insisted it was a little too green. Well, now you can start painting me afresh, and the commission shall be your very first since your marriage!" She glanced for an instant at Lucy. "You can name whatever fee you like! And you can paint me here, in my rightful setting!..; Or, rather the background can be filled in afterwards, for I've a studio all fixed up upstairs where you can do the actual painting." Stephen looked at her very peculiarly and rather long. "Supposing I don't feel the urge to paint you?" he suggested. She flickered that meaningful look at him from under her eyelashes. "Don't be absurd, Stephen. You know that you couldn't resist, now that I'm once more offering you the opportunity. You know that you'd love nothing more than to walk into Burlington House and see

me looking down at you - the picture of the year! As if any artist of your quality could resist!" Stephen sent her another' long look, and then walked up and down the room. "And Lucy?" he asked. "What is Lucy to do while I'm devoting my time to painting?" "Ebhart will look after her. He's already dying to show her a set of miniatures he's unearthed, and which he knows will delight her very much. You can safely leave Lucy and Ebhart to amuse one another, for their tastes are very similar, and they'll discuss antiques and period furniture and so on, and never have a dull moment, while you and I get down to the business of establishing your reputation." "It is already established," Stephen said dryly. "But there will be no one quite like Stephen Lestrange once you've painted my portrait! You know that, don't you, Stephen?" she said softly. "And this time I'll give you all the sittings you need!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN So, although Stephen protested a good bit in private to Lucy that he had no urge to start serious painting while they were in Austria, the sittings began, and gradually Lucy saw that rapt look come back into her husband's face that had been there when he first showed her that earlier unfinished portrait of the Baroness Helga. Only then he had looked frustrated as well as rapt, and now there was no frustration. Stephen, when he got down to it, was a dedicated artist, and his work was brilliant. He had no need to paint - with that comfortable private income of his he had no need to earn money - but he loved the acclaim when he was singled out for doing something surpassingly well. And he loved painting Helga. There was no doubt about it. Even the early grumblings were merely a cover-up for increased excitement, and increasing satisfaction as the work progressed. Lucy saw less and less of her husband, and more and more of Ebhart. He showed her rooms in the schloss that she had never previously dreamed existed, rooms where past grandeurs were locked away as memories, and protected with dustsheets. Magnificent crystal chandeliers were encased in linen bags, English Hepplewhite furniture was sewn into similar coverings. The English grandmother of the Von Roseggers - or rather, the grandmother with English blood in her veins - was responsible for the Hepplewhite furniture being where it was, and it was she who was the last to give really splendid balls at the schloss, and who had delighted in large house parties. In addition to creating a garden for herself she had filled the place with beauty, and Lucy was shown the casket that contained some of her priceless jewellery, and the portrait of her wearing one or two of the more fabulous pieces that were also hidden away in one of the locked rooms.

"All this seems such a waste," she deplored regretfully, as she stood beneath the portrait and admired it, seeing in it Helga's golden loveliness, but Ebhart's greater warmth. The eyes were Ebhart's, the mouth had the same serious sweetness that distinguished his mouth, especially when he stood looking down on Lucy's small fair head, and realized that she barely reached to his shoulder. "Surely you need not lock it away so much?" The Baron shrugged slightly. "What else can we do with rooms that are never used? And we have to protect the contents." "But surely the contents should be seen - admired?" "Nowadays so few people come here who are likely to wish to admire them that the only sensible thing to do is to keep them locked away for safety." "But you have friends, you and Helga." Again the shrug. "Neither of us is married, and we do not often bring our friends here." "Then you should marry - you should both marry!" He looked down at her with his deep, mystical eyes. "Helga may one day marry, but I - I shall never marry. Unless a miracle happens!" "What sort of a miracle?" she enquired gently, wondering whether perhaps he was thinking of his physical handicap, and recognizing that nothing short of a miracle could refill that empty sleeve of his.

"If you should decide that you and Stephen have make a mistake, and let him have his freedom," he told her with unusual abruptness. "If you should come to your senses before it is too late, and before Stephen has wrecked your life for you! Then I will marry, and we will remove all the dust-covers, and unlock all the rooms, and everything shall be as you would want it to be!" They had wandered out into the garden, and down through the woods to the edge of the cascade that roared down from the heights and thundered beneath the stone bridge that was the only means of entrance to the castle. Here they were many feet lower than the stone bridge, and a less solid affair of wood crossed it at this level, and beyond it a path led on into further woods. It was like a gorge in the midst of leafy greenwood, and the fierce heat of a particularly sunscorched day barely reached them. Spray from the cascade as it rushed on its way wetted their faces, and down in the frightening depths to which it plunged the noise was like the angry gurgling of a giant as he swallowed with thirsty vigour. Lucy, who had hesitated to cross the wooden bridge, but had done so when Ebhart put his one good hand beneath her elbow, and she ceased to feel afraid, paused in the shade of the larch trees on the other side, and looked up at him, startled. "Do you think you are being very fair to Stephen?" she asked quietly. Ebhart's dark eyes seemed to burn, but his mouth was suddenly hard, and almost ruthless. "It does not concern me whether I am being fair to Stephen," he replied. "He is not a type I admire - in fact, he is a type I am inclined to despise! - and my only interest in him is founded on the concern which you and your happiness arouse in me. If I were absolutely certain he would make you lastingly happy I might be content to let matters go on as they are, and say nothing to you at all of the love I

feel for you. But I know that Stephen will not make you happy perhaps not for longer than a few more weeks! - and I - I would devote my life to your happiness!" Lucy was conscious of shock, concern - and suddenly a wild, utterly disconcerting leap of her pulses. She looked up into Ebhart's face and saw that it was grave as if he was at that very moment dedicating his life to her, and the beautiful sweetness of his mouth now that it was once more softened sent a warm, comforting glow to her heart, and excited her at the same time. She knew then beyond any doubt at all that if there had been no Stephen Lestrange, who lived in Chelsea, and had made her his wife - if Stephen Lestrange had never crossed her path at all - then this man who stated so simply that he was in love with her would have won from her the wildest and most complete response. She could have loved him back - perhaps even more completely than she loved Stephen. But it was too late now. Stephen had crossed her path, and she did love him. She supposed she would love him all the rest of her life, and possibly beyond it. Her face was working a little as she looked up at Ebhart, and her eyes were compassionate. "You know that whether what you say is true or false, nothing can be done about it now?" she said. "On the contrary, something can and must be done about it before it is too late!" He seized her hand, holding it so fiercely that he hurt her. Oh, you foolish child, don't you understand that you are doomed to be disillusioned? Helga has been working for your disillusionment for weeks, ever since you played right into her hands by coming here to Austria! Don't ask me whether your husband knew about the Schloss Rosegger. Personally I am convinced he must have done.

Otherwise, why did you both come here? When the world is so wide!" Stephen's own words, Lucy thought soberly. The world is so wide, Lucia! ... There is no need for us to hurry back! "And ever since he started to paint this second portrait of my sister the battle has been lost to you. It was lost in any case, but the portrait has hastened matters. All day, and day after day, they are in each other's company. ... Stephen is not painting all the time. He would be exhausted- if he attempted anything as intensive as that, and Helga is too restless to pose for him for many hours at a stretch. But they are together. ... And even at meal times he watches her. Have you noticed that he cannot take his eyes off her, and they gleam in the way a man's eyes gleam when he is beginning to become a slave to something ... or to a woman!" Lucy moistened her lips, for this was so true that she could not dispute it. Stephen was beginning to think and talk about nothing apart from Helga's portrait, which was going to be the best portrait he had ever painted. And when Lucy ventured to remonstrate with him sometimes, because she saw so little of him, he was inclined to snap at her. "Good heavens, Lucy," he explained once, "don't you understand that when one is inspired one simply can't think of other things? For the time being they are unimportant" (presumably, for the time being, she was unimportant!). "And this is going to mean so much to me that you ought to be enthusiastic as I am. Helga's portrait is going to be acclaimed as nothing of mine has been acclaimed before, and as a result of all the acclaim Stephen Lestrange will be able to demand almost any fee he thinks fit for any portrait he paints in future! And as' you are Mrs. Stephen Lestrange you ought to be planning what to do with all the money when it starts rolling in!"

"But I thought you said we had enough money." He had no answer to that, and she knew that if she pressed for one he would grow more impatient still. The Baron studied her upturned face, and understood all that was going on behind the golden eyes, and he lifted one of her hands to his lips and kissed it. "Does it mean nothing to you, my precious little one," he asked, "that I love you?" And there was so much pleading in his voice that she refrained from snatching away her hand. "It means that you are being very unwise," she told him gently, "because you have not kept it to yourself. And I am unwise because I have listened to you." It was that very evening that Stephen had an unmistakable smear of lipstick on his face when he came up to their suite, and Lucy didn't pretend that she didn't notice it. She offered him her handkerchief to wipe it away. "It's rather noticeable," she said. Stephen flushed, and within a matter of seconds the flush was an angry one. "It could be a smear of paint," he said. He glanced into the mirror, and she saw how annoyed his eyes were. "It's almost certainly a smear of paint!" "Except that it doesn't look like a smear, and it's exactly the same colour as Helga's lipstick," his wife pointed out. "The one she uses in the daytime!"

Stephen scrubbed at his cheek, and glared at himself in the mirror. "All lipsticks are alike, and ... oh, well! What are you going to make of it?" he demanded, whipping round on her suddenly. This time he glared angrily at her, but he was still a little on the defensive, "Are we going to live the sort of life I once predicted, and be everlastingly watching one another? I don't enquire whether you allow Ebhart to kiss you, but it's pretty obvious he's mad to do so! You live in one another's pockets from dawn till dusk, so how do I know what you get up to?" "You don't know," she returned quietly: "but knowing me, I imagine you are fairly well able to guess." "Oh, darling!" he said, with quick repentance. "You're making a mountain out of a quite insignificant molehill, and of course I know you wouldn't let Ebhart kiss you!" He made to take her in his arms, but she held back from him. "But a man is rather different, and I don't think you ought to be quite so censorious - or look censorious — about a mere kiss! A little rush of enthusiasm for a supremely beautiful model, and for a moment I was carried away! But it didn't mean a thing. Not a thing!" "Probably not," Lucy agreed, and turned away to the dressing-table to begin her preparations for the evening. "But you admit that she is supremely beautiful, and you once told me I hadn't any real beauty at all!" "Oh, poppet, what a little owl you are!" Stephen exclaimed tenderly, and would have forced her into his arms but for the fact that she reminded him hurriedly that they were already late, and dinner at the schloss was served with the utmost punctuality. Stephen could not dispute this, and he dropped a penitent kiss on the top of her head, and then watched her hasten to the wardrobe to select a suitable

dress, and told her that he would make up to her after dinner for any slight unhappiness he had caused her before it. But Lucy felt a mounting revulsion every time she remembered that undignified mark of lipstick on her husband's face, and although she didn't really mean to be cool to him, she couldn't refrain from withdrawing herself from him a little, and her quietness as they went down to dinner at last caused him to feel injured, and he started to sulk. He sulked until Helga deliberately cajoled him out of it, and after that he didn't seem to care what his wife thought of him, and devoted himself to Helga as if he had always been her slave, and didn't mind who knew it. She had just received a selection of new gramophone records, and they disappeared into the music-room together to play them over while Lucy strolled for a short time on the terrace with Ebhart. Once the gramophone records had all been tried out the Baroness and Stephen reappeared and announced that they were going for a stroll in the moonlight, and Stephen looked slightly challengingly at Lucy, while Helga regarded her with nothing more than a faint gleam of amusement. Lucy excused herself and went up to bed early - she knew Ebhart was perfectly well aware of why she wanted to be alone - and she pretended to be asleep when Stephen came up at last. He stood for a short while beside her bed, watching her, and because she felt she couldn't bear to open her eyes and once more see something revealing in his face (although it was hardly likely he would be so indiscreet a second time) she kept her eyes tight shut and feigned sleep beautifully, and she felt him stoop and give her cheek the merest brush with his lips, and go on to his own room. They didn't always make use of that second bedroom, but tonight he was not going to disturb her, and she was glad.

In the morning he discovered that he was short of artists' materials, and said that he would have to make a trip to Innsbruck to obtain some. He looked rather pleadingly at Lucy. "Helga's driving me, but there's no reason why you shouldn't come too, darling. I believe Ebhart's got to go off somewhere on his own as well, so if you don't come you'll be alone all day." "It will be rather nice to have a day quite by myself," Lucy replied, with a small inscrutable smile, and instantly Stephen started to look sullen again, and she was conscious of having made a mistake. And when he went off without another word, following in the wake of Helga, she became more firmly convinced that she had done the wrong thing in allowing him to go off like that, believing she was still annoyed with him. She wasn't annoyed by him; she was hurt by him; and in spite of Ebhart's insistence that there was nothing but disillusionment in store for her, she believed that Stephen still loved her very much indeed. There was no doubt about it, Helga had once more started to exercise a kind of spell over him, but it was a spell that might be combated if she, his wife, behaved wisely. If for a short while she turned a blind eye - until, at least, the picture was finished, and she could get him away from Helga - then the fascination might once more fade, and Stephen would end up by feeling rather ashamed of himself - perhaps very ashamed of himself! In which case she would have him back again, and all would be well. And, in any case, she had married him knowing that he didn't love her.... She kept trying to reassure herself along these lines all day, while she had the schloss to herself save for the servants, but by evening she was beginning to get anxious again. In fact, she felt definitely worried when the dinner hour arrived, and Helga and Stephen had not

returned. Ebhart had returned from whatever business it was that had taken him away for the day, and he looked rather hard at Lucy when they met in the great salon before the meal was served. "We can postpone it if you like," he said gently. "It's quite likely they've had some trouble with the car, and in any case they're not greatly overdue. Would you prefer to wait?" But she shook her head. "No, if they come in in the middle of it it won't matter. Your servants are not the type to object to keeping a few dishes warm, and I don't imagine they'll be very long." The Baron nodded. "No," he agreed, and put a drink into her hand, which he insisted that she disposed of before they entered the huge room that was so like a, ceremonial banqueting-hall. Lucy always remembered that night, the stars outside the window, the snows whispering above the violet mountain wall, the flickering of the candles in the massive silver candelabra on the dining-table. Ebhart at the head of the table, dark and handsome — and, above all, amazingly distinguished, in spite of his empty sleeve - in his evening things. Every time she met his eyes they told her that this was an experience they could share for the rest of their lives if she said, the word; if she recognized the futility of something she had done when she wasn't very old, or very wise. But she couldn't say that word. All she could do was keep her ears strained for the return of Helga and Stephen. But, in spite of various dishes being kept hot for some considerable while, Helga and Stephen admitted that they didn't require them when they came in at last. It was long past midnight, and they had

dined. They had dined at a little inn in one of the villages they had had to pass through on the way back from Innsbruck. There was no talk of a car breaking down - in fact, no excuses. And only Stephen's eyes had a faintly abject look in them when they looked towards Lucy, but she refused to meet the look. She had been sick with anxiety for many hours, visualizing the car bouncing off some precipitous ledge, and both her husband and Helga being hurled into the depths of some lonely valley. But now she knew they were safe, and they had had no trouble with the car, and Helga was not in the least repentant. Stephen was silent, and waited for the moment when Lucy would look at him. But she didn't look. That night he didn't stand beside her bed in order to discover whether she was really asleep, and she heard him go quietly to his room and close the door shortly after she closed and locked her own door. He must have been hard on her heels when she ascended the stairs, and she was certain he heard her lock the door, but in the morning he said nothing about it, although he looked grim and a bit haggard. What he did offer her was something in the nature of an apology, although he didn't follow it up with an explanation. "Lucy, I wish yesterday hadn't happened. I expect you worried, didn't you?" "Being your wife I naturally wondered what had happened to you," she replied, while she occupied herself with running a buffer over her nails. "You went to do some uncomplicated shopping, but you obviously decided to make a day of it. Ebhart returned quite early, however, so I wasn't alone all the time."

"And no doubt Ebhart made the remainder of your waiting hours pass quite pleasantly?" he suggested, with great dryness. For the first time for many hours she lifted her eyes to his face and regarded him steadily. "Because you have a guilty conscience there is no need to infer that I have one, too," she said. "But I don't think Ebhart expected you to be back before it got really late. And, if I'm honest, I don't think I did, either!" His face flushed rather darkly. , "You have a very low opinion of me, haven't you, Lucy? - All at once!" "Not all at once," she replied. "Ever since we came to the schloss" "I wish we'd never seen the schloss!" he burst out passionately. He started to pace up and down the floor of their sitting-room, as if his mind was in torment. "Lucy, I promise you that in a matter of a fortnight, or less, we'll be far away from the schloss! Just let me finish Helga's portrait - " "And then she'll follow you to London and share the adulation that's poured out over you because it's such a wonderful likeness!" Her voice rasped with sarcasm, and the buffer moved like lightning over her delicate pink nails. "How wonderful! Mr. Stephen Lestrange, the eminent portrait-painter, and the lovely Baroness who has proved to be his most successful model! ... The Baroness and Mr. Lestrange were at one time believed by their friends to be contemplating matrimony, but he married a plain little thing called Lucy, whose bone formation is all wrong, and who wouldn't make an artist's reputation in a hundred years! ..."

"Lucy!" Stephen said, with a note of authority in his voice. She made a weary gesture with her shoulders. "Oh, don't try and stop me! I can see it all, just as if I was seeing it in a teacup, or a crystal ball, or something! I know what's going to happen, and I can't honestly complain, because you did marry me on the rebound, as they say, and without deceiving me in the very slightest. You told me you were in love with Helga, and you wouldn't fall out of love with anyone as beautiful as she is in a matter of a few months! You might be lulled into a sense of believing that you could forget her, but that's all. I've always known that what we've been calling a honeymoon was just a phase - that you would grow tired of..." "Lucy!" he said again, very quietly this time, and he had turned rather pale. She put the buffer away, and tried to prevent her hands from shaking as she examined her nails. "It's perfectly all right, Stephen," she said, in a conversational tone of voice. "Only I'd rather you didn't make any more pretence. Just let me know when you and Helga have come to some sort of a decision about your future lives, and if necessary I'll fade right out of the picture. In any case, I'll have to fade out of it before long, because we couldn't go on like this, could we?" - looking at him levelly. "You mean," bitterly, "that so long as we go on like this you are not free to be made the mistress of the Schloss Rosegger, as Ebhart yearns for you to be made?" She continued to regard him with that strange levelness. "You simply cannot leave Ebhart out of it, can you?" she remarked. "But as our marriage can't be annulled - unfortunately for you it has been a real marriage! - and it will be three years before you will be

free to make Helga your wife, as I once warned you is the case with modern marriages, it's you who are going to suffer because you behaved a little too rashly!" "Just tell me one thing," he asked her, between his teeth. "Does the Baron want to make you mistress of the schloss?" For several seconds she hesitated, and then she admitted: "If it were possible - yes!" "He has asked you to marry him?" "He couldn't ask me to marry him, because I happen to be married to you." "But he would like to marry you?" "Y-yes," she admitted, and then watched him walk quickly to the door. Over his shoulder he said once more, passionately: "If only we'd never seen the schloss! Or the Baron! Or run into Helga! The three things seem to be working together to separate us!" But Lucy shook her head sadly. Only Stephen himself, and Helga, were doing that. And she felt in her bones that it was only, a matter of time before the separation would be an actual, established fact.

CHAPTER TWELVE FOR the next few days, although they were guests in the same house, and shared the same suite of rooms, Lucy and Stephen had very little to say to one another. They went quietly to their own rooms at night, tapped politely on the bathroom door in order to make sure it was not already occupied when they wanted to occupy it, and addressed each other distantly at meals while the other two looked on. They never went for walks together, or sauntered in the garden, and most of the time Stephen was occupied in his studio. It was a huge room that Helga had had fitted up for him, and inside it he worked feverishly on the portrait of the Baroness. The latter expressed herself as delighted with the results so far, and Lucy knew that Stephen was immensely satisfied with his own work. He couldn't conceal from the rest of them that he was well aware that he was doing something superbly, and in spite of the cloud that hung between him and Lucy there was a vaguely excited look in his face when he emerged each evening from his studio. It could have been attributable to the fact that he had been closeted for so long with Helga, for when she wasn't actually posing for him she lay curled up on a divan in the window and watched him. Neither Lucy nor Ebhart knew for how many hours each day she lay watching Stephen, or how many hours she posed for him, but they did know that she, too, looked thoroughly well satisfied with herself more than ever like a cat who had found access to large vats of cream - when she emerged from the studio. The portrait was not to be seen or admired by the others until it was completed, but when the word went forth that it was completed they went quietly to the vast room with its great windows that had provided such magnificent lighting, and duly looked their appreciation. Impossible to do other than feel a great rush of admiration for Stephen, and in Lucy's case the admiration was so

intense that it made something tight about her heart feel as if it would remorselessly close in and squeeze the breath out of her altogether. She had thought the earlier unfinished portrait astounding and perfect, but this one would arouse a storm. There would be those who would say that the subject was too beautiful, and that her expression was too feline. But Lucy, who knew her so well by this time, knew that at heart she was feline -feline and unfeeling! Only Stephen himself could make, her kingfisher blue eyes soften sometimes, and for Stephen she could behave like a woman in love. She would draw near to him and touch his arm, gently, caressingly. And she would look into his eyes as if she would compel him to return the storm of possessive emotion he had the power to arouse in her. On these occasions Lucy would wish herself anywhere but where she was, in the same room with them. But when asked for her opinion of the portrait, by a Stephen who seemed to be waiting anxiously for it, and whose eyes seemed to hang a little appealingly on hers, she gave it at once, and ungrudgingly. "It must be the very finest thing you've done, Stephen. It's - superb!" "Spare a moment of praise for the model," Helga said, a little plaintively. "I've been very good, haven't I, Stephen? Giving you such lots and lots of my time!" - enclosing his shirt-sleeved arm with her slim white fingers that were so blatantly scarlet at the tips. "You've been wonderful," Stephen agreed, a little shortly. And then he looked once more at his wife. "You really like it, Lucy?" "I do like it," she answered, with absolute truth. "My breath is taken away by it!"

Stephen had a look on his face that was rather like the look on the face of an eager small boy, when he knew he had achieved something. And Lucy's heart was badly shaken. "It's - wonderful, Stephen!" she said, and for the first time for days she smiled at him. Ebhart turned away without offering any opinion, and Helga was summoned to deal with some domestic problem, so Lucy and Stephen were left alone together in the studio. He turned the portrait carefully to the wall, and explained that the only thing left to be done now was to have it packed up and transported to London, and that was a task he would supervise himself. Then he faced round suddenly to Lucy and said with that rather diffident gleam of pleasure in his eyes: "I'm so glad you were able to give me some honest praise, Lucy. I've been wanting you to see the portrait for days, but Helga preferred to wait until the thing was finished. Some idea about the shattering effect of the completed article." "It's shattering all right," Lucy agreed. Stephen moved closer to her. "Lucy, we can't go on like this. Not you and I! We've been so happy, and now everything is - well, it's completely changed!" He took her hand urgently. "Lucy, why are you accepting this change as if it wasn't only perfectly natural, but inevitable?" She looked into his eyes and felt suddenly rather tired, and immeasurably sad. "Don't let's discuss it, Stephen, until we get away from the schloss. We can't discuss it here, in this atmosphere."

"What atmosphere?" "The atmosphere of - oh, nothing!" She had wanted to say, "You and Helga! You and Helga together!" "Perhaps, when we get away from here, everything will seem more normal." "It won't - if you refuse to allow it to be normal!" He gripped both of her shoulders tightly. "You're not a very good .fighter, are you, Lucy?" he said rather wistfully. "You'd rather let a thing go than make any attempt to hang on to it!" She gazed at him wonderingly. "You mean that I should fight for you?" She looked amazed. "But why should I? If you're not a willing victim, then the last thing I desire is an unwilling victim being forced to put up with me because he married me, and go on living with me." She shook her head quite vigorously. "I once thought I could make do with second-best, but now I know I couldn't. I can't! If it's me you want, Stephen, well, that's all right. But if - " He dropped his hands from her shoulders. "You won't fight?" Once more she shook her head. "No." He picked up both her hands and examined them intently. There was something rather desolate in his voice as he said: "We'll wait, then, until we get away from the schloss. ... Perhaps you're right that the place has an atmosphere. We should never have

come here, never been pressed into accepting an invitation against our will!" "How soon do you suppose we will get away now?" she asked, with sudden eagerness, because the forlornness in his voice smote her, and she longed to do something to comfort him. "Oh, in a few days' time, I should think. ..." His eyes narrowed and grew very grave as he looked at her. "Lucy, I love you. You may not believe that, but it's true. I'm prepared to swear it!" Her heart leapt so that it threatened to choke her, and her fingers trembled suddenly in his. He lifted them to his lips and kissed them and held them there. "Darling, tonight there's going to be some sort of a celebration because the picture's finished - a special dinner, or something of the sort. Afterwards we may roll back the carpets and dance ... there's a couple of friends of Helga's arrived at the Gasthaus, and they're coming up, and the village singers. The idea is to make it quite an evening, but once it's over there will only be one or two more evenings. ..." "You're sure of that?" she whispered. "I promise you," he returned, and just as he was kissing her small fingers again rather hungrily the door opened and Helga came sinuously and quickly back into the room. Stephen dropped his wife's hands. Helga's jewel- blue eyes gleamed with amusement. "Am I interrupting something very domestic and touching?" she said. Then, without waiting for a reply: "I've just had a telephone call from those two American friends of mine at the inn. They'll be delighted to swell our numbers tonight, and the singers will be arriving in strength. Frau Steiber will see to that. It should be quite an evening, and at dinner we'll all drink to your genius in champagne, Stephen,

darling!" The way she said "darling" - slowly, drawlingly, meaningly - always made something deep inside Lucy curl up, and she felt for some time afterwards as if her teeth had been put on edge. "Now I'm going to look out something suitable to wear to justify my portrait!" The "something suitable" was an exquisite confection in rosecoloured brocade, and by contrast with her, Lucy in a demure, dress of cloudy black chiffon, felt dull and drab and unsophisticated. The American couple were very pleasant, the dinner was a huge success, and the little band of singers when they arrived were at the very top of their form. They went through all the usual dances - log-sawing and hand-clapping and foot-stamping - and looked very picturesque in their leather shorts and dirndls, and their yodelling brought the mountain echoes into the great hall of the schloss, which was where they gave their performance. Afterwards, when the wine had been allowed to circulate, the dancing became a little more wild - in fact, it developed into a kind of free- for-all, and the Baroness allowed the leader of the singers to whirl her out on to the floor. She danced with the utmost good humour, and increasing excitement, with each man in turn after that; and finally, when she was flushed and breathless and laughing, besought Stephen to take her away somewhere to get cool. Stephen took her away, and then they returned and danced together the same wild Austrian dances - and the American couple also found themselves irresistibly attracted to the dance floor. Ebhart, with only one arm and a slightly lame foot, couldn't offer to partner Lucy, but her husband partnered her twice, after which she declared she would be happy to sit on the edge of the floor and watch. She insisted, in order that Ebhart shouldn't feel entirely left out, that such abandoned and vigorous dancing was not altogether to her taste, and that she would prefer to take things more easily; and he showed his gratitude in a smile that was the sort of smile a man bestows on a woman only when she is very precious.

Whether Stephen saw the smile or not Lucy didn't know, but when later on Ebhart suggested showing her something rare in the library, and they stood up to disappear from the hall, Stephen called to her peremptorily: "Don't go, Lucy! This isn't going on for ever, and we'll put on some gramophone records that you can dance to more sedately once Helga's got all this feverish excitement out of her blood!" But as Helga showed no signs of getting the feverish excitement out of her blood, and the Baron looked at Lucy with slightly raised brows, she nodded, after a few moments of indecision, and admitted: "I find it hot in here, and it will be nice and cool in the library." It was, and he put her into one of the most comfortable chairs the room contained, where she could lie back and shut her eyes and not bother about conversation. He was the most understanding man she had ever met, and because he loved her so much he was happy just to be near to her. And his sympathy for her was boundless - she could feel it wrapping itself about her, and whenever she opened her eyes his smile was gentle and commiserating. "One of these days," he said quietly, just before they left the blissfully reposeful room behind them, "you and I will sit here like this ... and I shall have a right to watch over you! You will be my wife!" But she shook her head. Never, never, she thought, would that day dawn. But she was sorry for his sake. When they returned to the great hall the singers had gone, the American couple had just left, and Helga was clinging to Stephen's

arm and informing him that what she needed more than anything else was a quiet stroll in the moonlight. "I'm utterly exhausted!" she announced, her eyes so brilliantly blue and so feverishly bright, that it was obvious she was anything but exhausted. "I've never danced so continuously in my life, and my poor toes have never been so badly trodden on! Not by you, darling," looking up into his face reassuringly, and with the blue blaze in her eyes plainly confusing him a little, "but by those great oafs from the village. But now they've gone we can relax and be ourselves. What do you say?" - her voice dropping to such a low, sweet key that it was like a siren call. Stephen gazed into her eyes for a moment as if compelled, and then looked at Lucy. She saw the rebuke in his glance, realized that he was once more feeling slightly sullen. "You disappeared with Ebhart," his look said, "and I particularly requested you not to do so! How can you reasonably object if I disappear with Helga?" Lucy returned her husband's look without any special meaning in her own, and then she said quietly that if no one had any objections to raise she would like to go to bed. Ebhart bowed at once in his punctilious fashion, but Helga smiled a little mockingly. The smile also had in it an ingredient of contempt, and behind it Lucy sensed there was a cold and growing dislike. Or perhaps it had grown so much it couldn't grow any more! "You are very young, my dear Lucy," she said softly, "young in many ways! And the young need sleep!" Then she led Stephen towards the open window. "But we two are not so young, and perhaps we are even older in experience!" She glanced up at him sideways, caressingly, meaningly. "We cannot afford to waste more time than is absolutely necessary in sleep!"

Lucy went up the great staircase without looking at Ebhart, but she was sure that if she had looked at him she would have seen pronounced dislike for his sister - and perhaps something stronger for Stephen! - on his dark, handsome face. Once she reached her room Lucy hesitated for a moment, and then left her door unlocked. Just before she got into bed, however, she had a mental picture of Stephen and Helga wandering together out there in the moonlight, and she stole across the room and turned the key in the lock. She felt better once she had done so. More as if she had taken some sort of decisive step, although it was one that gave her no pleasure. However, Stephen knew how she felt. So long as they remained in the schloss, and Helga seized every opportunity to appropriate him openly, there must be this barrier between them. But just before she fell asleep - and it was no use lying listening for Stephen to enter his room next door, for that might not be for hours she heard the handle of her door rattle slightly as someone turned it, and Stephen's voice came to her a little anxiously through the unyielding barrier. "Lucy, are you asleep?" But Lucy was silent. She lay very still with a thumping heart, and found it impossible to answer. "Lucy!" The voice was imperative, urgent, and the door shook slightly. "If you're not asleep, open the door!" But Lucy found that in spite of every instinct urging her to rush to the door and open it, and admit her lawful wedded husband, something far stronger than her instincts refused to allow her to move. She lay very still in the huge bed, with its great, square, Germanic type of

pillows, on which her small head looked like a small grey shadow, and held her breath. And after a few more seconds Stephen moved away, and she heard his footsteps retreating along the corridor. Then she sat up in her bed and horror smote her like a tidal wave. Stephen was not going to his own room. That was next door, on the other side of the beautifully-equipped bathroom that separated them. And the corridor led to the Baroness Helga's apartments ! ... Oh, no, she thought, as she heard a door open and close with the click of finality. Oh, no, no! She was still lying wakeful and tormented when the footsteps returned along the corridor as the dawn light was just entering the sky. It was well past midnight when she had gone to bed, and at this time of the year dawn was around four o'clock, so whichever room it was that had received Stephen he had been inside it for about a couple of hours. And now the footsteps were as brisk as if he didn't mind who heard him returning, and obeying, this time, her instincts, Lucy leapt out of bed and flung open her door. Stephen, still wearing his dinner jacket, and looking considerably surprised, came to a halt and stood staring at her. For an instant she thought he even looked hopeful. Then a door behind him, at the far end of the corridor - the one that had undoubtedly clicked before - was flung open, and Helga, in something filmy and gorgeous, called to him in a husky, penetrating whisper: "Stephen! Try not to arouse the entire house! Remember, other people are supposed to be sleeping, and it would never do if..." Then she realized that Lucy had already been aroused, and with a resigned shrug - a resigned fatalistic, or gratified shrug? - she

retreated inside her room, and once more the door clicked as it closed decisively. Stephen stood staring at his wife with an utterly inscrutable look on his face, and Lucy made one attempt to say something to him. But her voice dried up before ever she opened her lips. She looked about her vaguely, as if she had been sleeping heavily, and wasn't properly awake. And then, after a terrible half minute of silence, she went back into her room and closed the door much more quietly than Helga had done, and for some time she stood leaning against it and clinging to the doorknob.

In the morning Ebhart found her down on the rickety wooden bridge that spanned the violence of the cascade as it came roaring down from the heights. Her face was chalk white, and her eyes had absolutely no life in them. She looked like someone who had been stricken. Ebhart - terrified at first when he realized she was standing on the bridge that scared her so much, and looking down into the depths as if they fascinated her - limped forward hurriedly until he was at her side, and she was grateful for the warm, strong arm he put round her. She leaned against him and her face quivered, and her small cold fingers came out and clung to him, "Oh, Ebhart," she said childishly, "I'm so glad you came! I was feeling too frightened to move!" "It's all right, Liebling," he said gently, reassuringly. "I'm here, and you're absolutely safe, and nothing - nothing! - is going to hurt you!" She could smell the tweed of his jacket, that was the peaty smell of tweed woven in crofters' cottages in far away Scotland - another land where there were mountains - and it felt almost deliciously rough to

her cheek as she rested it against it. "Nothing is going to hurt you," Ebhart repeated. She thought dully that in future nothing would have the power to hurt her. She had been numbed too much by the hurt that had already been dealt her. "So you know about last night?" Ebhart said, after several seconds of absolute silence, while she stood within the crook of his one arm. Lucy shut her eyes and made a bare movement of her face against him. The Baron said broodingly: "If these were different days - if this had happened a hundred, or even fifty years ago - I could have dealt very satisfactorily with that husband of yours! I could have called him out, and I've no doubt at all I would have been remarkably handy with a sword, or a duelling pistol - even with only one arm! And it would have solved your problems so easily!" Lucy opened her eyes and looked up at him and gasped in horror. "Oh, no!" she said. "Oh, yes!" the Baron said, with so much vicious- ness in his voice that she wondered whether she had ever really known him. On the way back to the schloss they met Stephen, and at sight of Lucy his white, haggard face seemed to grow momentarily relieved. "Lucy!" he cried. "Oh, Lucy, I've been searching everywhere for you!" "What for?" the Baron asked, with arctic coldness.

Stephen shot him a resentful look. "Because she is my wife, of course, and I wanted to talk to her!" "In future," the Baron recommended disdainfully, "I think it will be as well if you refrain from attempting to communicate with your wife save through her solicitors. That will be most satisfactory from her point of view, and should be quite satisfactory from yours!" Stephen's face blanched whiter than ever. In the early morning sunlight his dark hair gleamed, and Lucy had a poignant recollection of the way it had gleamed in the church at their wedding. And she had known, then, that this dark man would take possession of her heart!... But now her heart felt small and dead, like a stone, and the fact that Stephen's mouth was bitterly unhappy, and his lustrous eyes had no lustre this morning, meant nothing at all to her. She was incapable of feeling pity for Stephen, when even her own misery seemed numb and unreal - as if someone else's misery had been thrust on her. "Lucy!" Stephen's voice was not particularly steady. "Is that really your wish? Or are you allowing the Baron to interpret your wishes for you?" Lucy turned away her head. "Lucy?" Stephen pleaded. "Have you nothing at all to say to me?" A quick shake of the small head answered him. "And I would be glad if you would free me of the embarrassment of entertaining you as my guest," the Baron von Rosegger said with great distinctness. Stephen turned back towards the house, that was grey and calm and implacable against the mountain wall, with the white peaks rising

above it, and the sunshine pouring serenely over the peaks like molten gold. "I'll pack up my things straight away," he said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN A YEAR later, almost to the day, Lucy descended the steps of Lady Bannister's house in St. James's Square and stood in the sunshine on the pavement trying to make up her mind about something. She had been having tea with Lady Bannister, and of course the dogs had been very much in evidence, and the large room was as full of potted plants and palms as it had been when Lucy saw it for the first time. Sir Joseph had dropped in, and declared that the sight of her made his day for him; and he had invited her to have dinner with him the following week, and do a show, and she had promised to do her best to get up to town, although it wasn't always easy these days. She was working in the country as secretary- companion to a very pleasant elderly lady - not unlike Lady Bannister - but, although wonderfully treated, she didn't get a great deal of spare time. But in life, she had discovered, it was inevitable that one had to put up with something, and free time didn't mean very much to her these days. Whenever she had any she spent it with Lady Bannister, or made Sir Joseph's day for him by consenting to have lunch, or something of the sort. It was a little pathetic, she thought sometimes, how the two of them and she had grown so very, very fond of them! - avoided the very mention of Stephen's name, unless some accident caused it to crop up. When that accident occurred Uncle Joe grew pop-eyed and horrified, but Aunt Miriam didn't always adopt a new topic immediately. Today, while waiting for the China tea to draw, and preventing one of the pekes from sniffing the pastries, she had introduced the subject of the summer exhibition at the Royal Academy, and observed vaguely that Stephen had something rather special "on the line" that seemed to be attracting large numbers of people. She hadn't seen it herself, but she had been told that there were always large groups obstructing other people right in front of it,

and it must be rather good because so far the critics hadn't attacked Stephen as they nearly always attacked an artist who had painted a popular portrait on view at the summer exhibition. Lucy said nothing, but she felt herself going rather rigid as she accepted a crumpet. Aunt Miriam peered into the teapot, announced with satisfaction that she thought it had been standing long enough, and poured out. She looked quickly at Lucy as she handed her her cup, and then away.; "You - you know that he was involved in an accident, I expect, my dear?" she said. "Nothing serious, but he's been in a nursing-home for the past fortnight, and I think he was a bit shaken and shocked and so forth. I expect he'll soon be coming out of the nursing-home." Lucy swallowed a piece of crumpet, and she knew that her hand was shaking as she reached for her teacup. "I - I didn't know," she said. Lady Bannister shot her another quick look, and then concentrated on admonishing one of the pekes. "I didn't expect you would hear, tucked away in the country as you are." Then she wanted Lucy's opinion of some hats she had seen advertised in a magazine. "So unlike the comfortable things one just tugs down over the ears!" she said. "Really, fashion is quite extraordinary! I'm glad I no longer have to keep pace with it, and that I can wear just what 1 like. ..." She smiled gently at Lucy. "But you, dear child, you always look so very, very charming, and Joseph agrees with me. If only you had a little more colour in your cheeks..." She took the lid off the hot-water jug hastily. "You need a holiday. Perhaps the three of us could go off somewhere together; you and Joseph and I."

Just before Lucy took her departure she summoned up every ounce of her courage, and asked a question of Lady Bannister. "You said that Stephen is in a nursing-home. Do you know which nursing-home it is?" Lady Bannister told her, pretending to be not in the least surprised, and as Lucy went down the steps to the pavement she watched her go and felt sadder, perhaps, than she had ever felt in her life before. "Poor Lucy! Poor little Lucy!" And because she was devoted to her nephew, she added silently: "Poor Stephen!" Lucy hailed a passing taxi and with only a few minutes to spare before the Academy closed, she was standing in front of Stephen's picture. There was no crowd to obstruct her view - the crowds had all melted away - and not even a uniformed official saw her look of utter stupefaction. For the portrait that had defied the critics to do their worst, and kept them silent, was a portrait of herself ... Lucy Lestrange, as she had looked when she was so poignantly happy that she couldn't look any happier, the sun in her hair, her cheeks and bare shoulders creamily tanned, her eyes golden and serene and utterly unshadowed. Stephen had painted her against a background of Austrian meadow, with a great shoulder of mountain rising behind her, and a glimpse of a snowy peak. She wore a white muslin blouse and a dirndl, and her lap was full of flowers ... the Alpine flowers she had loved to gather, and which she had often carried back with her to Frau Steiber's Gasthaus. Lucy stood looking at the portrait until she began to be afraid that someone would notice her absorption, and perhaps remark the likeness between her and the girl who hung "on the line". She felt shattered because Stephen had laboured so lovingly with nothing but

his memory to serve him, and as she moved out of Burlington House she moved like one in a dream. In the sunlight of late afternoon she mixed with the crowds, and continued to move in a dream. In the long, long year that had passed since she and Stephen saw one another for the last time there had been no communication of any sort between them, save through solicitors. There could be no question of divorce, but their parting was quite final. Stephen had wanted to make her an allowance - in fact, through his solicitors, he had striven frantically to make her a ridiculously generous allowance - but she had declined absolutely. She was quite capable of supporting herself, and the necessity to support herself was a wonderful thing in itself, for it left her with little time to dwell upon her broken life. You couldn't work as someone's secretary-companion, and serve them well, and think constantly of your own unhappiness ... which, in the inevitable moments when she did dwell upon it, was ten times greater than it had been at the beginning. She had loved Stephen with the whole of her heart, and having once given her heart she was not the type who could give it again. Ebhart von Rosegger had come very sadly to recognize that, and he, like Stephen, had wanted to do so much for Lucy. ... But there was nothing he could do. Lucy had made that very plain to him, as well as to Stephen. Now, with one half of her brain dazed by what she had just seen, the other half began to come to life. Over and over again to herself she said the address of the nursing-home where Stephen was convalescing ... Arford House, Arford House, Arford House, Kensington ... and then she saw the newsboy, and heard something about "Famous Artist goes home after car crash ..." And instantly she bought a paper, was rewarded by the sight of Stephen, with one arm in what looked like a sling; being helped down some steps to a taxi,

and very nearly got run over herself because she stepped impulsively right out into the road and hailed a taxi. She never quite knew what came over her just then. She only knew that, with the evening paper crushed in her hand, and Stephen's photograph right under her gloved fingers, she had to get to him - she had to see him. It didn't matter about the year that had passed. Nothing mattered. She had to see him! "Stephen, Stephen!" she whispered to herself. "Oh, Stephen, you look so thin!" She was literally shaking with excitement and the extreme urgency of her mission when the taxi deposited her outside the same block of flats where Stephen had once offered her a glass of sherry, and then hastened her departure without ceremony. There was a different liftman, and of course he didn't recognize her, but he told her Mr. Lestrange was alone in his flat. He added the observation that in his opinion it wasn't quite right when he'd only just come out of a nursing-home. Lucy pressed the bell of Stephen's top-floor flat, and for the second time in her life she heard it shrilling all round the flat. For the second time in her life the evening sunshine poured upon her through the stained-glass window that was right beside Stephen's door, and when he opened it to her at last she was once more bathed in all sorts of colours. Stephen stood holding on to the door of the flat as if for support, and when he penetrated the rainbow hues and made out who it was, he made a movement with the arm that was in a sling, as if he needed the support of the lintel as well. But Lucy prevented him.

"No, no," she said, quickly, "you mustn't! ...." Then she was inside the tiny hall, clutching at his good arm as if she would give him all her strength, and she guided him back into the sitting-room. The same gold carpet covered the floor, but there was no unfinished portrait on an easel, or any evidence of recent work of any kind. Most of the canvases had gone from the wall where they were usually stacked, and the room looked bare and empty. Stephen allowed himself to be more or less thrust into a chair, and all the time his eyes were looking at Lucy as if he knew she was not real. As if he was quite, quite certain she was not real. He was so thin and white and comfortless and alone that Lucy flung herself down on her knees beside him, and her whole face revealed the depths of her concern, while something very close to mother-love shone in her eyes. "Oh, Stephen," she whispered, in a choked voice, "oh, Stephen!" Stephen put an unsteady hand up over his eyes, and gave his head a slight shake. Then he looked at her again. He had been feeling like death - had even thought it would have been a good thing if his accident had proved fatal, and not just condemned him to a nursinghome for a couple of weeks, and then let him loose upon the world again with that bitter burden of unhappiness in his heart. The unhappiness that gnawed at him day and night. But now, unless he was seeing things, Lucy - his precious little Lucia! - was here beside him, and her love for him was shining out through every pore of her being. His golden-eyed Lucy! He said her name rather hoarsely, and she clasped her fingers once more about his good arm. "Stephen, I had to come! I'm so glad I came!"

"Why?" he asked, and there was a lot of doubt in the word. "Because I'm your wife, of course. And because - " she rested her head against his sleeve - "because I love you so!" She put back her head and looked up at him. It was true. She loved him, and she would never stop loving him - whether he wanted her love or not! And it no longer mattered that he had ever done anything to hurt her - it no longer mattered in the slightest. "Stephen, I saw my portrait today. Stephen, I knew when I saw it that - that - " "Yes?" he enquired, very quietly. "That you had loved painting it! Oh, Stephen!" "Of course I loved painting it - every minute of it!" He looked down at her with a curiously gentle expression on his face, as if she was a bewildered child. "But I hated parting with it. Oh, Lucia, it's all I've had of you for so long !" Her eyes smiled into his tenderly. "You've got me now - the real me, and for ever and always, if that's what you want. Stephen, I haven't any pride, and if you don't want me I'll go. But if you do want me - I'll stay!" He tightened his one arm about her. "Dearest, it isn't a question of wanting you! I don't think I could go on without you!" His thin face, bereft of every shred of tan, or even healthy colour, quivered. "For the past year I've managed to get on somehow without you, but now I wouldn't have the courage. I just feel as if I'm at the end of my tether. ... And five minutes before you rang that bell I was wondering why I was so unlucky as to come out of a car crash alive! I was appalled by the thought that I'd got to go

on and on and on - week after week, month after month, year after year — without you!" "And now we're together again," she said, with a tired little sigh of happiness. "And neither of us has to go on - alone!" "No, darling." He struggled to get his other arm out of the sling, but once again she prevented him. "Lucy, I want so much to hold you properly! - and to kiss you!" he begged. "Oh, Lucy, I'm simply starving for the feel of you close in my arms!" In response she wound her own two slim arms about him and strained him to her, and put back her head for his kiss. "Stephen, Stephen," she whispered. "Stephen, my darling, my darling!" Later he looked down at her broodingly, and stroked her cheek with his good hand. "Lucy, this wonderful reunion mustn't make you forget one thing. You're convinced that I failed you, aren't you?" She sighed tremulously, as if it was of no importance. "Stephen, it doesn't matter what you did. I long ago made the discovery that one doesn't love, or fall out of love, with a man, because of any single thing he does, but simply and solely because he is what he is. You are the man I married, and who made me so happy - who taught me about happiness I'd never even dreamed of! And that's the only important thing so far as I am concerned." But he shook his head. "No, darling," he said, gravely. "That isn't the only important thing. The only important thing is that one can be true to one's love, and I

was true to you. Helga's beauty fascinated me, and I wanted to paint her. I did paint her, and in order to gain her utmost co-operation I made light love to her occasionally, but I swear to you it was never anything more than light love - a few kisses in the studio, and in the moonlight! Oh, I realize now that my behaviour was caddish, and for it I've been justly punished. But wild horses wouldn't have made me forget that you were my wife,' and that I loved you with every beat of my heart. I wanted the best of two worlds - just for a short time, until I could be finished with Helga, and my reputation as a painter would be established. But Helga was cleverer than I was, and that last night at the schloss - " He paused, as if the very memory of it was a nightmare - "that last night she framed me so beautifully that there was nothing I could do about it!" Lucy was regarding him with wide, wondering eyes, and he went on doggedly, determined that the truth should be known now at last: "After we came in from the garden she went to her room, and I went to the library for a last cigarette. Then I came up to your room and tried the door, but it was locked, and feeling too upset to go to bed by that time I was beginning to realize that I was likely to reap the whirlwind! -1 went on down the corridor with the intention of making my way out on to the upper terrace, where I could prowl about restlessly until I felt able to go to bed. But Helga opened her door as I passed, and although I didn't pause she stood there for a moment or two in one of those glamorous negliges of hers, and she looked at me mockingly as I made for the outer door. When I returned, after remaining on the terrace for over an hour, she heard you open your door, and threw open hers at once. The words she called after me were so obvious that you shouldn't have believed them for a moment, but I'm afraid I'd made it impossible by that time for you to disbelieve them." Lucy nodded her head abjectly.

"I'm afraid I'm not very clever." "No, thank heaven you're not, my darling - " Stephen said with fierce thankfulness, "not in that way! And now will you believe me when I tell you that I've not seen Helga from that day to this, and never will do so again willingly? If by some unfortunate chance I do meet her then I think the loathing I feel for her will be so unmistakable that she won't willingly cross my path again! Or yours!" Lucy sighed, and clung to him. "If she ever crosses our path again, Stephen, I shall not be afraid," she told him. "And what of Ebhart?" he asked. "Poor Ebhart," she said, with gentleness in her eyes. "If you'd never come into my life, Stephen, I might have been able to love Ebhart. But since you did come into my life — since you have become the whole of my life! - that's all there is to it!" "Sweetheart," he said, and then their lips came together with a tender anguish of love and longing that was greater than anything they had ever known before. When at last Lucy remembered that Stephen was still only convalescent, and that by rights he should probably be in bed, he was looking much more like a well man. And when she pleaded with him anxiously to know just how serious were the scars of his accident, and how soon his arm would be free of its sling, he smiled at her as if he hadn't a single, solitary care in the world, and even a permanently damaged arm wouldn't be counted by him as a serious - disability. "My little love," he told her - so much like the old Stephen that her heart grew really light at last - "my arm will be quite all right within a

week or so; and as for me, I'm one hundred per cent fit already! The doctor couldn't have prescribed a more glorious tonic than you! But I think you should know that I don't intend to paint any more portraits. I might try my hand at landscape-painting, or murals, but I shall never again paint a beautiful woman. Not even my wife!" "You have painted your wife," she said, with a look of utter happiness on her face. "Yes, sweetheart, and it's the best thing I ever did. But I shall accept no commissions because of it. As a matter of fact - " "Yes?" she enquired, her heart in her eyes as she gazed up at him. "I think I might lend Uncle Joe a hand on his farm. He runs one of those so-called 'model' farms. It will be ours one day, in any case." But Lucy couldn't see Stephen as a- farmer. "No, darling," she said, laughing softly, against him. "I think I should stick to murals!" He tilted her chin and looked warmly and adoringly into her eyes. "And presenting Uncle Joe with those grandchildren?" he suggested. "What do you say, my Lucy?" She said nothing, because she couldn't, and Stephen seemed to understand, for he went on: "I feel like a man who has been dying of thirst in the desert!" "Then you'll never feel thirsty again," she promised. "Never, never again," he echoed. "Say it, Lucy!"

"Never, never again!" she repeated obediently. Her golden eyes were swimming with love. "Never, never again!"