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Dave relinquished the ginger-beer stopper as hopeless. He stared at the smoke which continued to rise from Mat Dekker's lips, in big convulsive puffs, floating away above the candle-flames. Persephone gulped down the whiskey and held out her glass for more.

“It's good, Will,” she murmured gratefully. “It's better than food.” They exchanged a long, entranced look. He filled her glass again; and again she emptied it in a few quick gulps. Her brown eyes had a dazed, ensorcerised film over them as she sank back in her chair. “I do love him. He cares nothing about anything,” she thought. “He's just like me.” The drink kept mounting and mounting to her brain.

Zoyland drank out of her glass and then refilled it for her for the third time. He made an automatic motion of passing the bottle to Dave, who shook his head. He had ignored Mat Dekker completely all that evening, since they had first entered, and he continued to ignore him. His eyes were as luminous with excitement now as Percy's were languid with enchantment. They sat opposite each other, and as they drank they stared at each other; and more and more it seemed to both of them that they were each other's true love. They kept drinking out of the same glass, which might have been drugged for them by that same Dame Brisen, who, in the days when love was all, brought Launcelot du Lac to the bed of young Elaine.

Dave as he looked now from one to another of this distracted company, said to himself in his heart—"And this sort of thing is what they call a personal life! These people are thinking of nothing else but their own personal emotions; and they are proud of it. And while they are wasting their time like this, the men from Crow's Dye Works, the men in Bove Town, in Edmund's Hill Road, in Benedict Street, in Paradise, are sleeping soundly and freely, without any fuss.

“If I can keep Trent from spoiling it all with his anarchism, I'll teach these good friends of mine how to be impersonal! These people think that their feelings are the only serious thing in the world. Their feelings! When, at this very moment in China, in India, in New York, in Berlin, in Vienna—Good God! . . . their feelings! When, at this moment, if all the pain in the world caused by this accursed personal life, by this accursed individual life were to rise up in one terrific cry ... it would-------” The little Henry's crying—as if to round off Dave's

thoughts—rose to a pitch that was distressing to hear. And yet Nell did not move to go to the child. Her forehead was knitted into an intense frown and her eyes continued to stare straight in front of her.

“Damn that child!” cried Zoyland, jumping suddenly to his feet. “Here! I'll give him his cup. That will stop him!” He snatched the little cup of gold from the centre of the table, and flinging open the staircase door, rushed upstairs.

Nell instinctively sprang to her feet too; but sat down again immediately, her head remaining turned towards the staircase and a queer, distorted, rather unnatural smile on her face.

Whatever Zoyland may have done when he reached the top of the stairs, he was evidently completely successful in soothing the child; for the listeners at that candlelit table—and none of them spoke a word—were aware of the baby's cries suddenly dying down. Little gurgling whimperings followed; and then a profound hush; a hush that was broken finally by the voice of Zookey, uttering the words: “God be on us!”—which was the woman's favorite commentary upon the ways of Providence, when thoroughly surprised by any curious occurrence.

Apparently satisfied that the personal manias of his troublesome relatives had reached some kind of temporary surcease, and made aware by the look of their countenances that objective conversation was for the moment suspended, Dave Spear slipped his hand into his side pocket and brought out his book on Atlantis. He was too polite to read in company, but the sight of the volume, laid on the table by the side of his plate, gave him a sort of reassurance that speculative thought upon serious matters was not wholly impossible, even in Whitelake Cottage!

Thud . . . Thud . . . Thud . . . “What on earth,” thought Dave, “is this bearded drunkard doing now? ”Stop! stop, Master Zoyland!" the agitated voice of Mrs. Pippard and her shuffling scramble in pursuit revealed the nature of the bastard's action. He was carrying the baby downstairs! His appearance with the child in his arms was a signal for them all, except Dave, to rise from their seats. Nell rushed straight up to him, and without a word spoken, snatched the infant from his hands and set herself smoothing its rumpled clothes.

She took it to the couch under the brown curtains by the window and began rocking it on her lap, swaying her body backward and forward, as she did so, and murmuring to the child apologetic whisperings.

“She'd forgotten him . . . she had! She'd forgotten her baby in her bad, bad thoughts! There . . . there . • . there ... go to sleep my precious ... go to sleep . . . there . - . there . . . there . . .” Both Zoyland and Persephone were already under the power of what they had drunk; but he now filled their glasses again from the oblong flat-sided bottle he had brought down from his room, and once more they resumed their seats opposite each other. With each drink she took, the tall girl's entrancement increased. Her dark eyes were swimming now with a newly awakened desire for the man's embraces.

She watched every movement he made; and her whole body as she lay back in her chair cried out to him in wordless yearning: “We are yours!” her child-breasts cried. “We are yours!” her long relaxed limbs answered. “We are yours!” whispered her warm neck and her glowing curls. “We are yours!” echoed her sinuous waist and her boy-hips. Meanwhile, Mrs. Pippard had begun to clear away the supper things.

Each time she took anything from the table she threw a disapproving, disgusted glance at the state Persephone was in, and did her best to catch the deep-set sombre eyes of the Vicar of Glastonbury. But Mat Dekker had no eyes for anyone but Nell. The man's inmost nature was seething, fermenting, heaving, upheaving, beyond restraint. Of the bastard and Percy he noticed nothing. They made part of a hateful burden of enemies, all of whom, including even poor Dave with his Atlantis book, the pages of which the indignant revolutionary was now permitting himself to turn, were to his mind persecuting, outraging, tormenting his divinely enduring lady and her sweet child!

When the table was clear of everything except the small golden cup, Zookey Pippard stretched out her hand to seize upon this, so that she might fold up and carry away the tablecloth. But Zoyland intervened.

"Christen little Harry's christening-mug!'* he cried in a thick drunken voice; and rising to his feet he snatched the thing up and began pouring raw whiskey into it, out of the bottle. Having achieved this much of sacrilege with his shaky hand, what must the bearded rogue do but forget his first intention—whatever that may have been—and hand the shining mug to Percy, who, without a second's hesitation, raised it in the air, preparatory to pressing it to her lips.

This sight was more than Nell could stand. “Zookey!”* she called out in a voice that rang through the room. The old woman, who had been standing like a glaring Phorkyad of secular Judgment in the doorway, hurried to her side.

“Here, take him! Hold him!”

She transferred the child to Mrs. Pippard's arms and came forward towards the table. “Mr. Dekker!” she murmured, from a mouth that looked like a sword-cut in a linen sheet spread over a scarlet counterpane, “Mr. Dekker!”

It may be believed that the passionate Quantocks nature was uppermost at that appeal and that the priest was forgotten.

“Yes, my dear?” he murmured huskily . . . and then, under his breath, “Oh, my darling!”

But whatever the impulse had been that made her call out to him, it died away now when she saw the fatal devotion burning beneath his bushy eyebrows, and she sank down at the end of the table and covered her face with her hands.

Persephone, who had only just touched the liquor in the golden cup with her lips, pushed the thing impatiently away from her at the sight of Nell covering her face like that. But Mat Dekker had reached the end of his tether. The point had come, as he stood there, while Zoyland, pushing hurriedly past him, began talking wild nonsense to the child in Zookey's arms, when he must either tear the priest's mask from him and cover that bowed head with more than a religious consolation, or get away from her . . . leave her . . . get home to his son ... to his aquarium ... to his dead wife—to his God . . . The heavily built man stood there panting, like a great dog whose mistress has gone down one path and his master down another. His greenish-black trousers remained so still above his square-toed muddy boots that to a whimsical eye—only there was no whimsical eye just then in Whitelake Cottage—they became objects quite distinct from his head and shoulders; objects that hung, like a drowned man's trousers, on a post by the wharf.

It was the way her knuckles looked, half-buried in her wavy hair, that he couldn't endure another second. If only she would speak to him he could choke down this feeling! He shut his eyes and pressed his clenched hands against the flapping coat-tails which hung down on each side of those baggy trousers.

“If I don't get out of here at once,” he thought, “I shall forget myself completely.”

Behind his closed eyes he forced himself into a mood in which his feeling for Nell turned into anger against her enemies: “Damn that drunken whore! She drank out of the christening cup!” It was finally by the aid of a self-tyrannous auto-flagellation which it now becomes only too clear his son had inherited from him that he decided to leave Whitelake Cottage at once. “Damn that tipsy bitch!” he said to himself before he made any move; hitting out at poor Percy just as a child, suffering from a nettle-sting, might have beaten the grass^

“Good-night, my dear Nell!”

His words sounded curiously irrelevant in that disturbed room. Indeed, to Nell's ears they sounded as if he had uttered them in an earthquake or a shipwreck. She could not take their meaning seriously.

“You . . . are . » - not . • . going?” she said, raising her head and fixing upon his face her large, tear-wet, reproachful eyes. It seemed impossible to her at that moment that she was going to be deserted by her only real friend in that whole house.

“Yes, I a/?z, Nell dear,” he answered, looking vaguely around for his coat and hat and stick.

Dave Spear closed his book and jumped up. “Ill drive you in a jiffy!” he said. “I've driven twice into town already tonight ... in Percy's car you know . . , t like driving ... I like it very much.”

His words aroused Persephone from the semi-comatose state into which she had fallen and she fixed upon him a tipsy stare.

“Good Dave!” she murmured—just as if he had been a dog —“good, kind, thoughtful Dave! Ties, you fellows, yes it's true —he can drive. He's quite right in saying that. He drives very nicely. / didn't teach him. The Comrades in Bristol taught him. They said he must learn. He didn't like it when he first heard that! But he obeyed them—he always obeys them. He'd obey them if they told him to kill Philip!”

There was no reason why she should have brought in Philip; but something very deep in her nature was drowsily comparing the various people to whom she had given herself up to be enjoyed.

“I'll never . ? . know . . . what love is!” she thought to herself. This thought came to her with such a strong feeling of having made a momentous discovery, that she fancied she had spoken it out loud; and she looked round the room, in a kind of shamefaced challenge, to justify herself for so doing.

Mat Dekker waved his hand for Dave to sit down.

He disregarded Persephone with studied discourtesy. Nell looked at him aghast.

“You don't have to go, Mr. Dekker?'* she cried, beginning to see that he actually was collecting his things. He spoke in a quiet voice now, but a voice that was resolute and final. ”Yes, I've got to be getting home. But I love the walk . . . you know that—don't you, Nell? But Fve got to- be getting home; or Penny and Sam will be coming out to look for me, among the rhynes of Splott's Moor."

This allusion to Sam was a wise and crafty one, worthy of any old Quantock shepherd. It brought their two dwellings near each other and it softened his departure by involving her in his consideration for Sam and Sam's anxiety about him. Nell rose to her feet.

“Well, if you must, you must,” she said. “I shall never forget your goodness to me today and . . . and always!”

Zoyland made a mock bow to the priest as the man passed him, carrying his surplice bag in one hand and his stick and hat in the other.

Nell opened the door to let him out.

“Good-night, little girl!” he murmured. “God bless you. God protect you!” he added huskily as he strode off towards the river.

She closed the door on his retreating figure and drew a miserable sigh.

Percy still sat on in a tipsy daze. As for Will Zoyland, he seemed unable to stop talking nonsense to the sleepy, but thoroughly placated infant Little Harry's long-robed body lay contentedly now in Zookey's arms. She swung him to and fro as she leaned against the wall.

“Harry says his christening-cup hasn't been christened yet,” cried Zoyland suddenly. With one of those impulsive, irrational angers that sometimes seize on drunkards, he turned fiercely upon Nell. “It's my cup. It's my father's cup,” he gabbled. “And / say the cup hasn't been christened yet, Harry's little cup. Harry says it must be christened!” He moved with unsteady steps to the table. Here he picked up the cup and raising it to his mouth, tossed off its contents.

“That's . . . not . . . christening . . . Will . . . that's only . . . that's only . . .” mumbled Persephone in a drowsy voice.

“You're right . . * my girl . . . you're always right! It's wonderful how she's always right, isn't it, little Hal? It's my cup; it's my father's cup. It's got our falcon on it. By God! I'll christen it in river water!” He ran to the door carrying the cup in his hand.

Nell clung frantically to him, calling out repeatedly: “Are you mad, Will? What are you doing, Will? It's not yours . . . it's Harry's. It's Harry's, I tell you, Will! It's Harry's cup!”