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Both the ladies glanced nervously at the taxi window. Yes. Solly Lew had spoken no less than the truth! There, just inside, her face actually touching the glass of the window, and her eight bony knuckles pressed against the bottom of the window-frame, was the wild, staring countenance of Mad Bet.

She wore a grander hat than usual, all decorated with artificial forget-me-nots, in honor of Easter Monday; but as she stretched her thin neck forward to stare at the two ladies this appendage tilted a little sideways, betraying to their astonished eyes the fact that her skull was as smooth and white as an uncracked egg.

The girls had moved towards the window of the taxi—Nell with her trembling hand on Percy's wrist—for Mad Bet was now making obscure signs to them both, while Solly Lew was gazing in melancholy interest at Mrs. Spear's car, when three figures came round the corner from the old house. Crummie was supporting the invalid woman on the left while Sam held her up on the right.

The girls hurried to meet them; as did also the agitated taxi-driver. A look of aggrieved bewilderment crossed Sam's face when he learned of this new complication. It had been an effort to deal with Tittie but this was really too much! However, evidently there was nothing for it but to take Mad Bet along. To thwart her now seemed worse than any agitation later on.

“But surely,” protested Nell, “we can't, we cant all intrude upon Mrs. Legge! It's too much to expect that anyone could welcome so many complete strangers.”

Percy intervened again. “You simply don't know Glastonbury, Nell,” she whispered eagerly into Nell's ears while Sam was helping the sick woman into the Ford. “Mother Legge's Easter Monday parties are as fixed a custom as the Lord Mayor's show! The fact that she has a house next door full of bedrooms, with Young Tewsy as door-opener, doesn't prevent her from entertaining all the world in her own house. It certainly . . .”

She was interrupted by Sam, who came hurriedly across the dark cobblestones from the Ford to the taxi, anxious to make a start. “I've got the woman into your car, Mrs. Spear,” he said. “She's in great pain and I doubt if she ought to go.”

No sooner, however, had he opened the taxi door than Mad Bet came scrambling out of it.

“Where be the other gentleman?” she cried wildly, seizing Sam by the arm. “Where be me sly heart, me high heart, me pretty laddie, me pecking sparrow, me proper dilly-darling? Where be the other gentleman? Thee knows who I do mean, Mr. Sam? The one who did dancy and prancy wi' Bessie when moon were full? The one who wanted to hurt poor Bessie under thik Tree of Life, on Wirral Hill?”

“You mean Mr. John Crow, Bet?” replied Sam with the grave, punctilious consideration of the faithful naturalist, whose specimens must be treated with respect under all conditions. “Well, jump in here, with me and Mrs. Zoyland and perhaps we'll find Mr. Crow at Mrs. Legge's party.”

The two conveyances at last were really in motion; Persephone Spear driving Crummie and Mrs. Petherton in her Ford while Solly Lew took Sam and Nell, along with Mad Bet, in his taxi.

In many quarters of Glastonbury, as six o'clock of this holiday Monday drew near, there were searchings of heart as to who should go, and who should not go, to this famous party in Paradise. It was indeed the fantastic opinion of Mr. Evans that there was a non-moral tradition about this part of Somerset that went back to very old days. He declared that this Easter Monday party was the last surviving relic of some ancient Druidic custom of Religious Prostitution; that there was even something of the kind in the Arthurian days; that the Grail itself was always guarded by virgins who were no virgins; and that Arthur's sister, the famous Morgan Le Fay, was not much better in her time than old Mrs. Legge today.

Mother Legge never invited anyone. Her personal relatives in the town, of whom there were many and who were mostly pooret as well as more respectable than she was, flocked naturally there en masse. It thrilled them to observe the manners of the srentrv who came and the dresses of the ladies, and though Mother Lesse was notoriously stingy over the food, she was fairlv liberal— perhaps on general professional grounds—over the drink!

Red Robinson together with his pious mother, the ex-episcopal servant, were among those whose minds were focussed on Paradise that afternoon. Red was too poor to go to Weyrnouth or to Weston-super-Mare for the day as so many of the working men did, for the municipal factory, where he was now employed, was not yet able to compete with the Crow Dye-Works in the amount paid their workers. As soon as she had cleared away their midday meal Mrs. Robinson began talking about Mrs. Legge's party. Not being Glastonbury people, both she and her son were thoroughly puzzled, in fact completely nonplussed, in presence of this social phenomenon. This queer mingling of rich and poor, of respectable and disreputable, at a party given by a person who was—as Percy had told Nell—not very different from a “Madame,” was an inexplicable thing to this family from London.

Nor had Mrs. Robinson—so she now explained at some length —“ever met the like of it” in her refined experiences at the great moated palace at Wells.

“Naught 'ud mike me go to see such fantastical doings,” Mrs. Robinson announced. “When high've rested meself a bit, high'll take a stroll down 'igh Street; and maybe drop in and 'ave a cup 'o tie with Mrs. Cole. If it weren't such an 'ellish-looking die high'd sit on one of them 'igh hiron seats on Wirral and wTatch the sights. This 'ere new Mayor ought to 'ave a band playing on Wirral 'ill, same as they does at 'abitable towns; towns that 'ave theayters and Pictures and 'ave some loife in 'em!*”

“Well, Mother, I reckon I'll be getting a move on,” said Red Robinson. “I don't sigh as high'll go to this here fandangle in Paradise any more than you. Reckon high'll 'ave tie out sorne-wheres if you're 'aving it with Granny Cole.”

He got up, took his cap and coat—for the afternoon looked decidedly menacing—nodded to his mother and shogged off.

He made his way to a portion of the town that was on the outskirts of Paradise; and moving rapidly and cautiously down a narrow street into a grim-looking dwelling he paid a visit, not altogether an unexpected visit either, to “that Morgan woman,” as the Western Gazette always called her, about whose existence he had been trying to worry Philip Crow.

Red Robinson certainly was, at heart, more of a Jacobin than a Communist. That is to say, his revolutionary feelings did not run in a calm, implacable, patient, scientific groove, but were feverishly eager to hurt and cause suffering to the enemies of the people, whether it benefited the cause or not!

Red Robinson's hatred of Philip Crow was indeed rapidly growing to the dimensions of a monomania. It was gall and wormwood to him to be rebuked by the new Mayor and have these secret activities of his exposed and sidetracked. He did not like, he did not understand, Mr. Geard—and it was only the sheer pressure of economic necessity that drove him to accept a job in this municipal work-shop. It was hateful to find Barter once more his boss. He detested the artistic and mythological aspects of the work he had to do. He distrusted the success of the scheme. Deep in his heart he pined for a job that had no idealistic nonsense about it. What brought him to pay these increasing visits to Mrs. Morgan was an emotion that was on the road to become an urge beyond his control.

He was trying to persuade the mother of little Nelly—who was still in her way a beautiful woman—to give herself up to his lust. “Lust” was the true word for it, for Red Robinson's heart had been monopolised by Crummie; and Crummie since his misunderstanding with her father had grown shy of him.

But it was a velvety lust, an orchid-spotted lust, a dark, delicious, quivering, maddening lust, which surprised the man himself by its intensity. In his heart he had said—“To hell with them all! As long as I stick to Blackie”—for such was Red's playful and tender nickname for his would-be doxy—“I'll have one day my chance of bringing the bewger down!” But the maniacal and obsessional element in his design soon began to run away with the practical element. Day and night he told himself stories of what it would be like when he persuaded Jenny Morgan to give herself up to him; and these stories were not of a kind that corresponded to any tenderness for the woman. Unfortunately “the Morgan woman” unless she was drunk loathed Red Robinson. And when she was drunk she melted into tearful sentiment ovei the memory of her dead husband. There was not a chance— drunk or sober—that the Morgan woman would allow Red to enjoy her in her own little flat. His only chance was to take her out somewhere. And it was with the idea of taking her out to that house next door to Mother Legge's, rumours of which had excited his cockney lasciviousness, that Red was visiting her today.

He was nervous of the adventure; and it was because he vaguely felt that the general stir of the Easter Monday party would make it natural for him to be taking the woman to that locality, that he chose this afternoon for his attempt.

On reaching her flat Red found that Nelly's mother was only in the early stage of her habitual intoxication. Chance was in his favour so far, anyway! Red wTas in a feverish state of anticipation. The idea of satisfying his lust upon the body of Philip Crow's mistress roused something in him the intensity of which carried him beyond his control and altogether out of his normal depths. Red indeed had brooded so long upon his hatred for Philip and had nourished so passionately the thought of hurting him through his child's mother, that the idea of enjoying the woman herself— even if she were tipsy—made him feel literally sick with excitement. His half-engagement to Crummie Geard. nowT broken off, he hardly knew why, had tantalised his senses while it kept him comparatively chaste. It was an added spice to his purpose this afternoon that he would be—so in his fury he pretended—revenging himself upon Crummie as well as upon Philip if he could only satisfy his tormented desire with this once-handsome drink-confused creature.

The steady aggravation of his hatred for Philip had indeed so mingled with his lust for Philip's girl that they formed together a completely new passion for which there is at present no name. As he shaved in the morning, as he went to the little wooden privy in his mother's back-garden, as he paused in his wTork at the municipal factory, he wTould mutter to himself half-aloud— "I 'ate Mm! I 'ate 'im! I'll 'ave 'er! Ill 'ave *er!

There can be no doubt that when in his cockney fashion, he used the word “ 'ate” instead of “hate,” this curious difference between two monosyllabic sounds was not without its own faint psychic repercussion upon his nervous organism. Between the human feeling expressed by the word “hate” and the feeling expressed by the same word without the aspirate there may be little difference; and yet there probably was some infinitesimal difference, which a new science—halfway between philology and psychology—may one day elu'cidate. Some would say that when Red muttered to himself, as he washed, as he shaved, as he excreted, as he worked, as he walked, as he lay down, as he rose up, “I 'ate 'im, I 'ate 'im!” what he really focussed in his mind was the emotional state—symbolised as a sensation in his lower jaw— indicated by the dictionary word “hate”; but it seems as if this were too simple and easy a solution of the problem.

However this may be, it can be imagined how the man's heart beat as he stood at last, after a prolonged struggle with the girl— Morgan Nelly's mother was now only about thirty—at the entrance to the house next door to Mrs. Legge's!

The woman was of a much darker complexion and much more foreign appearance than her daughter. Her face was colourless and so ravaged by hard work and drink that it had the particular kind of haggardness in the day which moonlight sometimes produces on human faces. The remains of her beauty were like a shattered arch whose sculptured figures have been defaced by wind and sand. Grey eyes, so large as to give at moments almost a grotesque effect, looked forth from her face contemplating the world with melancholy vacancy. Red derived a curious satisfaction from his endearing nickname for her, which he only dared to use to her face when she was in that early favourable stage of inebriation in which he had succeeded in catching her this afternoon. Even then he did not pronounce the word as he was wont to do in his lascivious dreams of possessing her when he would cry out, “Yes, Blackie! Yes, Blackie! Yes, Blaekie!” over and over again. He now rapped timidly at the knocker of the door in front of him; for there was no bell.

“High know what's what, Blackie! You 'old your noise!”

This courtly quietus was delivered at this point because Blackie—even in her tipsy confusion—began to realise, when she saw herself being stared at by several passers-by, that Mr. Robinson, in his ignorance of local customs, had chosen a most unsuitable hour for their “short time” in this place of resort. After a most uncomfortable period of waiting, the door at last opened a little way; and there stood Young Tewsy in the narrow-aperture! The old man let them in without a word, following his habitual manner—that is to say using a sort of soft rapiditv and opening the door only just wide enough for them to come in and closing it the very second they were inside.

But once in the hallway where there was nothing to calm Red Robinson's nervousness but a small battered bust of an expressionless human head, standing on a rickety table and bearing the word “Peel” upon its pedestal, Young Tewsy became disconcertingly voluble. He began, in fact, explaining, in a hurried apologetic whisper, “that, since it was Missuses party today, the rooms was all being cleaned, and none was to be 'ad; no, not if Lord P. his own self wanted to take one!”

Blackie stared at Young Tewsy in a bewildered daze; while Red, feeling as he looked at the bust of “Peel” that he would like to spit upon it, experienced such a craving for a room, that any room, large, small, cold, warm, carpeted, uncarpeted seemed a dispensation of providence beyond all mortal hope.

Had the half-tipsy Mrs. Morgan been interested in that delicate nerve-region of the human mind, where philology and psychology merge their margins, it would have been fascinating to her to note the minute ways in which the North London bourgeois cockney of Young Tewsy whose bringing up had been in the metropolis differed from the East London proletarian cockney of Red Robinson; but in place of any such observations, all that this sad, old-young woman of thirty felt, as she listened to the prolonged whispering that now went on between these two men in that gloomy and dingy hallway, was a wave of infinite, unspeakable life-weariness. Morgan Nelly's mother, as her dark eyes turned from the bust of Peel to the patched trousers of Young Tewsy, felt indeed just then a very clear and very definite desire to be dead. When a woman was once safely dead there would be no longer any need for bargainings about a room, in which she might be legally and uninterruptedly subjected to indecent usage,