as the rich hate the poor as insect things that will struggle out of the crannies which are their decent home and introduce ugliness to the light of day. And Kitty said in a voice shaken with pitiless

ness:

I know ex

"You are impertinent. actly what you are doing. You have read in the 'Harrow Observer' or somewhere that my husband is at the front, and you come to tell this story because you think that you will get some money. I've read of such cases in the papers. You forget that if anything had happened to my husband the War Office would have told me. You should think yourself very lucky that I don't hand you over to the police.' She shrilled a little before she came to the end. "Please go!"

"Kitty!" I breathed. I was so ashamed that such a scene should spring from Chris's peril at the front that I wanted to go out into the garden and sit by the pond until the poor thing had removed. her deplorable umbrella, her unpardonable raincoat, her poor frustrated fraud. But Mrs. Grey, who had begun childishly and deliberately, "It 's you who are being" and had desisted simply because she realized that there were no harsh notes on her lyre, and that she could not strike these chords that others found so easy, had fixed me with a certain wet, clear, patient gaze. It is the gift of animals and those of peasant stock. From the least regarded, from an old horse nosing over a gate or a drab in a workhouse ward, it wrings the heart. From this woman- I said checkingly:

"Kitty!" and reconciled her in an undertone. "There 's some mistake. Got the name wrong, perhaps. Please tell us all about it."

Mrs. Grey began a forward movement like a curtsy. She was groveling after that purse. When she rose, her face was pink from stooping, and her dignity swam uncertainly in a sea of half-shed tears. She said:

"I'm sorry I've upset you. But when you know a thing like that it is n't in flesh and blood to keep it from his wife.

I am a married woman myself, and I know. I knew Mr. Baldry fifteen years. ago." Her voice freely confessed that she had taken a liberty. "Quite a friend of the family he was." She had added that touch to soften the crude surprisingness of her announcement. It hardly did. "We lost sight of each other. It 's fifteen years since we last met. I had never seen nor heard of him nor thought to do again till I got this a week ago."

She undid the purse and took out a telegram. I knew suddenly that all she said was true; for that was why her hands had clasped that purse.

"He is n't well! He is n't well!" she said pleadingly. "He 's lost his memory, and thinks-thinks he still knows me.”

She passed the telegram to Kitty, who read it, and laid it on her knee.

"See," said Mrs. Grey, "it 's addressed to Margaret Allington, my maiden name, and I've been married these ten years. And it was sent to my old home, Monkey Island, at Bray. Father kept the inn there. It's fifteen years since we left it. I never should have got this telegram if me and my husband had n't been down there last September and told the folks who keep it now who I was."

Kitty folded up the telegram and said in a little voice:

"This is a likely story.'

Again Mrs. Grey's eyes brimmed. People are rude to one, she visibly said, but surely not nice people like this. She simply continued to sit.

Kitty cried out, as though arguing: "There's nothing about shell-shock in this wire."

Our visitor melted into a trembling shyness.

"There was a letter, too."

Kitty held out her hand.
She gasped:

"Oh, no, I could n't do that!"

"I must have it," said Kitty.

The caller's eyes grew great. She rose and dived clumsily for her umbrella, which had again slipped under the chair.

"I can't," she cried, and scurried to the open door like a pelted dog. She would

have run down the steps at once had not some tender thought arrested her. She She turned to me trustfully and stammered, "He is at that hospital I said," as if, since I had dealt her no direct blow, I might be able to salve the news she brought from the general wreck of manners. And then Kitty's stiff pallor struck to her heart, and cried comfortingly across the distance, "I tell you, I have n't seen him for fifteen years." She faced about, pushed down her hat on her head, and ran down the steps to the gravel. "They won't understand!" we heard her sob.

For a long time we watched her as she went along the drive, her yellowish raincoat looking sick and bright in the sharp sunshine, her black plumes nodding like the pines above, her cheap boots making her walk on her heels, a spreading stain on the fabric of our life. When she was quite hidden by the dark clump of rhododendrons at the corner, Kitty turned and went to the fireplace. She laid her arms against the oak mantel-piece and cooled her face against her arms.

When at last I followed her she said: "Do you believe her?"

I started. I had forgotten that we had ever disbelieved her.

"Yes," I replied.

"What can it mean?" She dropped her arms and stared at me imploringly. "Think, think of something it can mean which is n't detestable!"

"It's all a mystery," I said; and added madly, because nobody has ever been cross with Kitty, "You did n't help to clear it up."

"Oh, I know you think I was rude," she petulantly moaned; "but you're so slow you don't see what it means. Either it means that he 's mad, our Chris, our splendid, sane Chris, all broken and queer, not knowing us- I can't bear to think of that. It can't be true. But if he is n't-Jenny, there was nothing in that telegram to show he 'd lost his memory. It was just affection-a name that might have been a pet name, things that it was a little common to put in a telegram. It 's queer he should have written such a

message, queer that he should n't have told me about knowing her, queer that he ever should have known such a woman. It shows there are bits of him we don't know. Things may be awfully wrong. It's all such a breach of trust! I resent it."

I was appalled by these stiff, dignified gestures that seemed to be plucking Chris's soul from his body, tormented though it was by this unknown calamity. "But Chris is ill!" I cried. She stared at me.

"You 're saying what she said."

Indeed, there seemed no better words than those Mrs. Grey had used. I repeated:

"But he is ill!"

She laid her face against her arms again.

"What does that matter?" she wailed. "If he could send that telegram, he is no longer ours."

CHAPTER II

I WAS Sorry the next morning that the post comes too late at Harrowweald to be brought up with the morning tea and waits for one at the breakfast table; for under Kitty's fixed gaze I had to open a letter which bore the Boulogne postmark and was addressed in the writing of Frank Baldry, Chris's cousin, who is in the church. He wrote:

DEAR JENNY:

You will have to break it to Kitty and try to make her take it as quietly as possible. This sentence will sound ominous as

a start, but I'm so full of the extraordinary thing that has happened to Chris that I feel as if every living creature was in possession of the facts. I don't know how much you know about it, so I'd better begin at the beginning. Last Thursday I got a wire from Chris, saying that he had had concussion, though not seriously, and was in a hospital about a mile from Boulogne, where he would be glad to see me. It struck me as odd that it had been sent to Ollenshaws, where I was curate fifteen years ago. For

tunately, I have always kept in touch with Sumpter, whom I regard as a specimen of the very best type of country clergymen, and he forwarded it without unnecessary delay. I started that evening, and looked hard for you and Kitty on the boat; but came to the conclusion I should probably find you at the hospital.

After having breakfasted in the town,how superior French cooking is! I would have looked in vain for such coffee, such an omelet, in my own parish,-I went off to look for the hospital. It is a girls' school, which has been taken over by the Red Cross, with fair-sized grounds and plenty of nice dry paths under the tilleuls. I could not see Chris for an hour, so I sat down on a bench by a funny, little round pond, with a stone coping, very French. Some wounded soldiers who came out to sit in the sun were rather rude because I was not in khaki, even when I explained that I was a priest of God and that the feeling of the bishops was strongly against the enlistment of the clergy. I do feel that the church has lost its grip on the masses.

Then a nurse came out and took me in to see Chris. He is in a nice room, with a southern exposure, with three other officers, who seemed very decent (not the "new army," I am glad to say). He was better than I had expected, but did not look quite himself. For one thing, he was oddly boisterous. He seemed glad to see me, and told me he could remember nothing about his concussion, but that he wanted to get back to Harrowweald. He talked a lot about the wood and the upper pond and wanted to know if the daffies were out yet, and when he would be allowed to travel, because he felt that he would get well at once if only he could get home. And then he was silent for a minute, as though he was holding something back. It will perhaps help you to realize the difficulty of my position when you understand that all this happened before I had been in the room five minutes!

Without flickering an eyelid, quite easily. and naturally, he gave me the surprising information that he was in love with a girl called Margaret Allington, who is the daughter of the man who keeps the inn on

Monkey Island, at Bray on the Thames. He uttered some appreciations of this woman which I was too upset to note. I gasped, "How long has this been going on?" He laughed at my surprise, and said, "Ever since I went down to stay with Uncle Ambrose at Dorney after I'd got my B.Sc." Fifteen years ago! I was still staring at him, unable to believe this barefaced admission of a deception carried on for years, when he went on to say that, though he had wired to her and she had wired a message in return, she had n't said anything about coming over to see him. "Now," he said quite coolly, "I know old Allington 's had a bad season,-oh, I 'm quite well up in the innkeeping business these days,—and I think it may quite possibly be a lack of funds that is keeping her away. I've lost my checkbook somewhere in the scrim, and so I wonder if you'd send her some money. Or, better still, for she 's a shy country thing, you might fetch her."

I stared. "Chris," I said, "I know the war is making some of us very lax, and I can only ascribe to that the shamelessness with which you admit the existence of a long-standing intrigue; but when it comes to asking me to go over to England and fetch the woman- -"He interrupted me with a sneer that we parsons are inveterately eighteenth century and have our minds perpetually inflamed by visions of squires' sons seducing country wenches, and declared that he meant to marry this Margaret Allington. "Oh, indeed!" I said. "And may I ask what Kitty says to this arrangement?" "Who the devil is Kitty?" he asked blankly. "Kitty is your wife," I said quietly, but firmly. He sat up and shouted: 'I have n't got a wife! Has some woman been turning up with a cock-and-bull story of being my wife? Because it's the damnedest lie!"

"I determined to settle the matter by sharp, common-sense handling. "Chris," I said, "you have evidently lost your memory. You were married to Kitty Ellis at St. George's, Hanover Square, on the third, or it may have been the fourth"-you know my wretched memory for dates-"of February, in 1906." He turned very pale and asked what year this was. "1916," I told

him. He fell back in a fainting condition. The nurse came, and said I had done it all right this time, so she at least seemed to have known that he required a rude awakening, although the doctor, a very nice man, Winchester and New, told me he had known nothing of Chris's delusions.

An hour later I was called back into the room. Chris was looking at himself in a hand-mirror, which he threw on the floor as I entered. "You are right," he said; "I 'm not twenty-one, but thirty-six." He said he felt lonely and afraid, and that I must bring Margaret Allington to him at once or he would die. Suddenly he stopped raving and asked, "Is father all right?" I prayed for guidance, and answered, "Your father passed away twelve years ago." He said, "Good God! can't you say he died?" and he turned over and lay with his back to me. I have never before seen a strong man weep, and it is indeed a terrible sight. He moaned a lot, and began to call for this Margaret. Then he turned over again and said, "Now tell us all about this Kitty that I've married." I told him she was a beautiful little woman, and mentioned that she had a charming and cultivated soprano voice. He said very fractiously: "I don't like little women, and I hate anybody, male or female, who sings. O God, I don't like this Kitty. Take her away!" And then he began to rave again about this woman. He said that he was consumed with desire for her and that he would never rest until he once more held her in his arms. I had no suspicion that Chris had this side to his nature, and it was almost a relief when he fainted again.

I have not seen him since, and it is evening; but I have had a long talk with the doctor, who says that he has satisfied himself that Chris is suffering from a loss of memory extending over a period of fifteen years. He says that though, of course, it will be an occasion of great trial to us all, he thinks that, in view of Chris's expressed longing for Harrowweald, he ought to be taken home, and advises me to make all arrangements for bringing him back some time next week. I hope I shall be upheld in this difficult enterprise.

In the meantime I leave it to you to pre

pare Kitty for this terrible shock. I could have wished it were a woman of a different type who was to see my poor cousin through these dark days, but convey to her my deepest sympathy. Indeed, I never realized the horror of warfare until I saw my cousin, of whose probity I am as firmly convinced as of my own, wantonly repudiating his most sacred obligations.

Yours ever,

FRANK.

Over my shoulder Kitty muttered: "And he always pretended he liked my singing." Then she gripped my arm and shrieked in a possessive fury: "Bring him home! Bring him home!"

So, a week later, they brought Chris home.

From breakfast-time that day the house was pervaded with a day-before-thefuneral feeling. Although all duties arising from the occasion had been performed, one could settle to nothing else. Chris was expected at one, but there then came a telegram to say he was delayed till the late afternoon. So Kitty, whose beauty was as changed in grief from its ordinary seeming as a rose in moonlight is different from a rose by day, took me down after lunch to the greenhouses and had a snappishly competent conversation about the year's vegetables with Pipe, the gardener. Then Kitty went into the drawing-room and filled the house with the desolate merriment of an inattentively played pianola, while I sat in the hall and wrote letters and noticed how sad dance-music has sounded ever since the war began. that she started a savage raid of domestic efficiency, and made the housemaids cry because the brass handles of the tall-boys were not bright enough and because there was only a ten-to-one instead of a hundredto-one risk of breaking a leg on the parquet. Then she had tea and hated the soda-cake. She was a little, shrunk thing, huddled in the arm-chair farthest from the light, when at last the big car came nosing up the drive through the dark.

After

We stood up. Through the thudding of the engines came the sound of Chris's

great male voice, which always had in it a note like the baying of a big dog. "Thanks, I can manage by myself." I heard, amazed, his step ring strong upon the stone, for I had felt his absence as a kind of death from which he would emerge ghostlike, impalpable. And then he stood in the doorway, the gloom blurring his outlines like fur, the faint, clear candle-light catching the fair down on his face. He did not see me, in my dark dress, or huddled Kitty, and with the sleepy smile of one who returns to a dear, familiar place to rest he walked into the hall and laid down his stick and his khaki cap beside the candlestick on the oak table. With both hands he felt the old wood, and stood humming happily through his teeth.

I cried out, because I had seen that his hair was of three colors now, brown and gold and silver.

With a quick turn of the head, he found me out in the shadows.

makes him wise about all suffering, that it would hurt her if he asked if this was his wife; but his body involuntarily began a gesture of inquiry before he realized that that, too, would hurt her, and he checked it half-way. So, through a silence, he stood before her slightly bent, as though he had been maimed.

"I am your wife." There was a weak, wailing anger behind the words.

"Kitty," he said softly and kindly. He looked round for some graciousness to make the scene less wounding, and stooped to kiss her; but he could not. The thought of another woman made him unable to breathe, sent the blood running under his skin.

With a toss, like a child saying, "Well, if you don't want to, I 'm sure I would n't for the world!" Kitty withdrew from the suspended caress. He watched her retreat into the shadows as though she were a symbol of this new life by which

"O Chris, I am so glad!" I stuttered,

* and then could say no more for shame that I was thirty-five instead of twenty. For his eyes had hardened in the midst of his welcome, as though he had trusted that I at least would have been no party to this conspiracy to deny that he was young, and he said:

"I've dropped Frank in town. My temper 's of the convalescent type." He might as well have said, "I 've dropped Frank, who has grown old, like you." "Chris," I went on, "it 's so wonderful to have you safe."

"Safe," he repeated. He sighed very deeply and continued to hold my hands. There was a rustle in the shadows, and he dropped my hands.

The face that looked out of the dimness to him was very white, and her upper lip Iwas lifted over her teeth in a distressed grimace. It was immediately as plain as though he had shouted it that this sad. mask meant nothing to him. He knew not because memory had given him any insight into her heart, but because there is an instinctive kindliness in him which

darkness outside became filled with the sound like the surf which we always hear at Harrowweald on angry evenings, and his eyes became distant, and his lips smiled. "Up here-in this old place-how one hears the pines!"

She cried out from the other end of the room, as though she were speaking with some one behind a shut door:

"I "ve ordered dinner at seven. I thought you 'd probably have missed a meal or two, or would want to go to bed early." She said it very smartly, with her head on one side like a bird, as if she was pleading that he would find her very clever about ordering dinner and thinking of his comfort.

"Good," he said. "I'd better dress now, had n't I?" He looked up the staircase, and would have gone up had I not held him back; for the little room in the south wing, with the fishing-rods and the old books, went in the rebuilding, absorbed by the black-and-white magnificence that is Kitty's bedroom.

"Oh, I'll take you up," Kitty rang out efficiently. She pulled at his coat-sleeve, so they started level on the lowest step.