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“There's something almost awful,” he said to himself, using those exact words, "about my power of enjoyment. I believe I could enjoy smelling a bunch of violets if I were on the rack.'1 He began lazily throwing into his retorts to Dave's careful logic a little spice of this savage aplomb; and as his roving hlue eyes caught the fact that the treacherous girl was listening, and even encouraging him, they commenced to darken in the candlelight with feline zest. But the sense of having carried the proletarian gonfalon into the very heart of the enemy's camp was inspiring Dave Spear that evening beyond his wont, and it was not long before both of the women, as well as the life-loving adventurer, were gazing at him in reluctant respect, ft was when he dropped his logic and became oracular that this crop-headed, prosaic young man swept the field.

“Nature is on our side,” he was saying, “and the dark, blind, non-moral creative tidal wave. The inarticulate masses of mankind are only beginning to wake up. The millions of the Orient are only beginning to wake up. We use reason and we are prepared to use force without a shred of compunction. But in reality we are only the 'mediums' of destiny. Communism is the destined next phase of evolutionary, planetary life. Nothing can stop it. That is why the stupidest, the silliest, the clumsiest among us has something that you vainglorious individualists completely lack. We are the still, small voice of the next phase. We may be unimaginative, undistinguished, lacking in all sense of humour. We may even be inhuman. We can afford to be what no one else can afford to be; for the simple reason that we are the solidifying of the intention of evolution”

. While this argument was going on in the most perfect of upper-middle-class drawing-rooms, in the equally perfect kitchen a somewhat similar discussion was proceeding. Destiny found its voice here, however, in the dreamy, sentimental utterances of Lily Rogers. Louie and Emma both strongly upheld the view that the longer the existence of Nelly Morgan was kept secret from Mrs. Crow the better it would be for all. Lily, on the other hand, advanced the startling and disturbing doctrine that “since things which are hid are fated to become known, and things which are dark are fated to be made clear”—this, was the girl's own phraseology—-“it would be kinder to make Mrs. Crow acquainted with the sad truth.” This “kindness” presented itself to the temporising, Mendip-bred mind of Emma Sly as plain cruelty, and a controversy began between them that almost spoilt the taste of Emma's famous pear-ginger jam in the connoisseur-mouth 0j Louie. Thus, in both drawing-room and kitchen of The Elms tW gathered on the horizon certain clouds of danger to the master q{ the house. In the one case, these vanguards of evil omen were held off by Lord P/s bastard; in the other case, by the daughter 0{ Amos Sly, Lord P.'s shepherd, but in neither case, for all tk closing of shutters against the blue twilight, were the clou^ altogether dispelled. They did not advance; but night fell leav* ing them undispersed.

Perhaps the two persons in all Glastonbury who caught most fully the essence of this cool blue twilight, falling at the end of so unnaturally warm a day, were Mat Dekker and Miss Elizabeth Crow. The Vicar, upon whose conscience it was to enter every house in the town, had invaded the domain of Doctor Sodbury, the parson of St. Benignus. Miss Elizabeth had already done what she said she would do at the reading of the will in North-wold Rectory. She had taken one of the smallest of all the Town Council's workmen's houses—a tiny little place with a tinier little garden with the word “Rosemary” inscribed on the top of the wooden gate. Here she lived with a little maid of eighteen, called Tossie Stickles, the plumpest as well as the most good-tempered young woman who ever put on an apron. She paid Tossie five shillings a week, and every penny of this Tossie put into the savings bank, “to bide there till she were bedded or buried.”

Miss Elizabeth had seen Mat Dekker's tall figure passing down the street ^id had sent Tossie to call him in to partake of an early tea. No one but Mat Dekker himself knew the effort that it cost him to accept this thoughtful invitation. He particularly wanted to finish his visiting in Benedict Street in one afternoon and Penny expected him back to his own high tea—for they dined early—at half-past six. He was counting on an afternoon quite free from visiting on the morrow, for a treasured walk with Sam over to Butleigh Wood, beyond the village of Street, which was a favorite objective of his; and this summons from Rosemary meant not only the spoiling of his appetite for his evening's meal, which he enjoyed more than any other, but made it likely enough that in place of this excursion he would have to return tomorrow to this row of little houses. Once launched, however, in a deep colloquy with his old friend he began to feel that neither of these sacrifices was wasted. Miss Crow was the only woman he could confide in, in all Glastonbury, on the point where he most wanted feminine advice, and he found himself, as he sat opposite her in the bow-window side by side with boxes of yellow pansies, talking more freely to her than he had done to anyone for years.

Not only did Miss Elizabeth forbid Tossie to touch the window-blinds, but she even opened one of the windows when she saw her friend arrested by the beauty of the evening. Thus together they sipped their tea, inhaled the fragrance of the yellow pansies and were soothed by the mystical blueness in the air.

“It's exactly the colour those early Venetians always used,” said Miss Crow, “for the Madonna's dress. I shouldn't be surprised if it had some peculiar effect on human nerves, this particular blue.”

“I've seen it in many places, Betty,” said Mat Dekker, “but never as deep a shade as here in Glastonbury. It's nice to think we live in a place that's famous for its twilights.”

Miss Elizabeth adored to be called “Betty,” and here, sitting opposite her in her bow-window, was the only person she would have allowed to do it.

“By the way, what's this I hear about Philip turning away some of his hands and threatening to close up one of his mills? Why can't he come to terms with his men? All the old wives I've been talking to in Benedict Street say that their husbands don't want to strike and it's only this Barter fellow who's making the trouble. What's up with Philip, Bett? Is he getting under this fellow's thumb?”

Miss Elizabeth tossed up her head. Every woman, old and young alike, has certain gestures, whether of anger or surprise or sad« ness or detachment, that only one or two persons in the world are permitted to see, and this smile of hers now with her head held high up and a little back, and her eyes half closed, was one of Miss Crow's gestures that no one in the world, except her mother and Mat Dekker, had ever seen.

“It's no good coming to me again to interfere between Philip and his hands,” she said. “You remember how angry he got when I did it before and how it hurt the men rather than helped them? My advice to both sides would always be—come to terms.”

“Do you think Philip realises what a lot of feeling there is in the town against him?” wTent on Mat. “They told me today that there's a movement going on to elect a new Mayor; and, of all people in the world, do you know who it's to be?”' Miss Elizabeth shook her head. “Your father's Mr. Geard!”

“No, no—Mat! You're fooling.”

“Yes, I say yes . . . Mr. Geard!”

“Impossible, Mat Dekker!”

“Ask any of your neighbors and you'll soon see!”

“Does Philip know this? Does Mayor Wollop know this?”

“I can't tell what Philip knows. Old Wollop certainly knows for he told me himself.”

She made an impatient movement with her hands. “I'm tired of town politics,” she said.

Mat's face assumed the rather sulky expression that is natural to a man when his interlocutor changes the conversation. But it was then that she soothed this sulkiness away by beginning to talk of Sam.

“Has he been over there lately?” she asked.

“Not since the woman began living with her husband again,” said Mat Dekker; “but now they tell me Zoyland's going to leave her alone out there while he's at Wookey Hole.” He sighed deeply. “I like the girl, Betty,” he added gravely.

Miss Elizabeth smiled. “I have seen that for a long time,” she said. “But you wouldn't like her so well if she made him carry her off.”

He frowned and sighed deeply again. “No, I suppose not,” he said, “though one feels ashamed sometimes at interfering with a real love-affair. I'm a believer in love, Bett, my dear. All passion, I know, is not love, and lechery, of course, is lechery. But all the same there is such a thing as love and I have a fixed and rooted notion that when a man and woman really love each ^her it becomes, Bett, my dear------” He lowered his voice.

“What does it become, Mat?” she asked, moving his cup a little further from the edge of the tray and brushing off with her fingertips a few crumbs which were adhering to its beautiful pattern of inlaid mother-of-pearl.

“It becomes a transaction ... a transaction . . .” He broke off with a shrug.

“What kind of a transaction?” she enquired in a calm, controlled voice.

“I only meant,” he said, "that just as what I call the Mass is an act that belongs to more than one plane of existence, so any great love between two people may have an importance beyond the world we know/'

Miss Crow's hands began nervously fidgetting among the objects on the tray. Her portly figure had erected itself very straight as she sat in her chair, but it seemed as if her fingers found it difficult to be as reserved and as dignified as their mistress.

“I cannot imagine what Sam is feeling or thinking these days,” Mat Dekker went on. “His mind is working it all out in its own way, I think, but I am quite in the dark how he's working it out.”

Miss Elizabeth looked her friend straight in his troubled eyes. “You've changed yourself, Mat,” she said, “over all this. You seem prepared to let them go off. Surely it would mean disaster to you if they did?”

He rubbed his great, ruddy face with both his bony hands, as if to rub off the sticky remnants of a discarded mask.

“I thought it was just a wanton child's caprice, her taking up with him,” he said, letting his hands drop down heavily on the table. “But I soon found, when I talked to her, that it was much more than that.”

Elizabeth shot a quick, sharp glance at him. “You've not gone and fallen in love with that woman yourself, Mat, have you?”

He rose from his chair noisily, making the contents of the tray rattle. “Shut up, do, Bett!” he groaned. “I'm worried by all this. It's too serious to jest about. But I must be off now. You know what our Penny is!”

He went over to get his hat and stick from her little parlour sofa. She opened the door for him and held out her hand. “I wasn't jesting, Mat,” she said. “I believe you are a liule bit in love with that girl.”

An electric shock of fury made his big frame tremble from head to foot “I won't . . . allow . . . anyone ... to talk to me like that!” The words burst from him before he had the remotest idea that he was going to be seized by this rush of blind anger. He experienced a little difficulty in the gathering dusk over the latch of the small gate.

Miss Crow was soon standing by his side. “I didn't mean to tease you, Mat. I ought to have known better,” she whispered.

He bowed his head so that she could see only his rough eyebrows sticking out beneath the frontal corrugations, like those of a Neanderthal skull, of his heavy forehead. He regained his composure by staring at a minute ant that was making a dead moth move as if it were alive upon the ground under the gate. He swallowed his saliva in a fierce gulp and raised his head with a jerk. “We are a pair of old fools, Elizabeth,” he said, “and that's the long and short of it. You're much too good to me, and don't you ever think I don't know it! Well! Take care of yourself and don't 'ee carry that heavy coal-scuttle any more. Tossie's got twice the strength you've got. I suppose you carry your own water upstairs too?”

“Not always, Mat dear; not often! Good night and God bless you.” And she turned and re-entered her door.

While Mat Dekker, the father, was parting from Elizabeth Crow to return to the kingdom ruled over by Penny Pitches, Sam Dekker, the son, was unwillingly tearing himself away from the lodgings of John Crow, Elizabeth's erratic nephew.

It was John, now the salaried secretary of Mr. Geard, who had made the advances. It was part of his new job to make advances in every direction. John had already “approached” nearly a third of the educated citizens of Glastonbury and it had become time to approach the younger Dekker. He had given Sam tea in his new room, and Sam too, like his father, had cursed himself for eating so much bread and butter while the despotic Penny waited for him in the offing. And he had cast a complete glamour over Sam. Sam, unlike his father in this, had no living soul to whom he could tell his troubles. His heavy, brooding nature had been gathering emotional, volcanic lava for three days, and this night—the night of Zoyland's airtrip to Wookey Hole—his whole being was seething and fermenting with contending passions. While the father sat in Miss Crow's bow-window on Benedict Street, the son stood at John's casement-window at the back of Northload Street. The window looked across a level meadow and across Dye House Lane to the fields lying north of the district called “Paradise,” and from it could be seen not only the Polden Hills but, rising up against the horizon, beyond the Bridgewater fens, the far-off blue ridge of the Quantocks. The heavy, powerful youth and the lean, emaciated man were standing side by side looking out upon this scene. A cheerful fire was burning in John's little grate and something about his shelves, his chairs, his books, his pots and pans, his gas-stove, his couch-bed with cushions on it, his few cheap prints, his yet cheaper rug, his shining fender, bore witness to the hand and brain of Mary; while the fact that he was there at all, with everything so comfortable round him, bore witness to the liberality of Bloody Johnny.

“Fm not saying Fve ever practised or ever could practise what I'm talking about,” Sam was asseverating in an excited voice. “All I'm saying is that there's no life that frees anyone so completely from unhappiness as does the mystic life. If you give up possession, if you give up trying to possess what attracts you, a lovely, thrilling happiness flows through you and you feel you're in touch with the secret of everything. There are only two mortal sins in the world; one of these is to be cruel and the other is to possess, and they are both destructive of happiness.”