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The house we had come to see proved, like so many others, to be quite uninhabitable. Its owner, in fact, was living in his lodge. “Too big for me these days,” he said of the house which, when he opened it to us, gave the impression of having been designed as a small villa and wantonly extended, as though no one had remembered to tell the workmen when to stop and they had gone on adding room to room like cells in a wasp-nest. “I never had the money to spend on it,” the owner said gloomily, “you could make something of it with a little money.” We went upstairs and along a lightless passage. He had been showing people over this house since 1920, he said, and with the years he had adopted a regular patter. “Nice little room this, very warm in the winter..... You get a good view of the downs here, if you stand in the corner..... It’s a dry house. You can see that. I’ve never had any trouble with damp..... These used to be the nurseries. They’d make a nice suite of spare bedroom, dressing room and bath if you didn’t ...” and at that point, remembering Lucy, he stopped abruptly and in such embarrassment that he scarcely spoke until we left him. “I’ll write to you,” I said. “Yes,” he said with great gloom, knowing what I meant, “I sometimes think the place might do as a school. It’s very healthy.” So we drove back to Lucy’s relatives. They wanted her to dine in bed or, anyway, to go to her room and lie down until dinner. Instead she came out with me into the evening sunlight and we sat in what Lucy’s relatives called their “blue garden,” reconstructing a life history of the sad little man who had shown us his house. Lucy’s relatives thought us and our presence there and our whole expedition extremely odd. There was something going on, they felt, which they did not understand, and Lucy and I, infected by the atmosphere, became, as it were, confederates in this house which she had known all her life, in the garden where, as a little girl, she had once, she told me, buried a dead starling, with tears. After this expedition Lucy remained in London, spending more and more of her time indoors. When I finally found a house to suit me, I was alone. “You might have waited,” said Lucy. It seemed quite natural that she should reproach me. She had a share in my house. “Damn this baby,” she added. III In the last week before the birth of her child, Lucy began for the first time to betray impatience; she was never, at any time, at all apprehensive—merely bored and weary and vexed, past bearing, by the nurse who had now taken up residence in the house. Roger and Miss Meikeljohn had made up their minds that she was going to die. “It’s all this damned prenatal care,” said Roger. “Do you realize that maternal mortality is higher in this country than it’s ever been? D’you know there are cases of women going completely bald after childbirth? And permanently insane? It’s worse among the rich than the poor, too.” Miss Meikeljohn said: “Lucy’s being so wonderful. She doesn’t realize.” The nurse occupied herself with extravagant shopping lists; “Does everyone have to have all these things?” Lucy asked, aghast at the multitude of medical and nursery supplies which began to pour into the house. “Everyone who can afford them,” said Sister Kemp briskly, unconscious of irony. Roger found some comfort in generalizing. “It’s anthropologically very interesting,” he said, “all this purely ceremonial accumulation of rubbish—like turtle doves brought to the gates of a temple. Everyone according to his means sacrificing to the racial god of hygiene.” He showed remarkable forbearance to Sister Kemp, who brought with her an atmosphere of impending doom and accepted a cocktail every evening, saying, “I’m not really on duty yet,” or “No time for this after the day.” She watched confidently for The Day, her apotheosis, when Lucy would have no need for Roger or me or Miss Meikeljohn, only for herself. “I shall call you Mrs. Simmonds until The Day,” she said. “After that you will be my Lucy.” She sat about with us in the drawing room, and in Lucy’s bedroom where we spent most of the day, now; like an alien, sitting at a café; an alien anarchist, with a bomb beside him, watching the passing life of a foreign city, waiting for his signal from the higher powers, the password which might come at once or in a very few days, whispered in his ear, perhaps, by the waiter, or scrawled on the corner of his evening newspaper—the signal that the hour of liberation had come when he would take possession of all he beheld. “The fathers need nearly as much care as the mothers,” said Sister Kemp. “No, not another thank you, Mr. Simmonds. I’ve got to keep in readiness, you know. It would never do if baby came knocking at the door and found Sister unable to lift the latch.” “No,” said Roger. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t.” Sister Kemp belonged to a particularly select and highly paid corps of nurses. A baby wheeled out by her, as it would be daily for the first month, would have access to certain paths in the Park where inferior nurses trespassed at the risk of cold looks. Lucy’s perambulator would thus be socially established and the regular nurse, when she took over, would find her charge already well known and respected. Sister Kemp explained this, adding as a concession to Lucy’s political opinions, “The snobbery among nurses is terrible. I’ve seen many a girl go home from Stanhope Gate in tears.” And then, esprit de corps asserting itself, “Of course, they ought to have known. There’s always Kensington Gardens for them.”

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That at least is how, in those earliest days, I explained my obsession to myself, but looking at it now, down the long, mirrored corridor of cumulative emotion, I see no beginning to the perspective. There is in the apprehension of woman’s beauty an exquisite, early intimation of loveliness when, seeing some face, strange or familiar, one gains, suddenly, a further glimpse and foresees, out of a thousand possible futures, how it might be transfigured by love; the vision is often momentary and transient, never to return in waking life, or else precipitately succeeded by the reality, and so forgotten. With Lucy—her grace daily more encumbered by her pregnancy; deprived of sex, as women are, by its own fulfilment—the vision was extended and clarified until, with no perceptible transition, it became the reality. But I cannot say when it first appeared. Perhaps, that evening, when she said, about the Composed Hermitage in the Chinese Taste, “I can’t think why John should want to have a house like that,” but it came without surprise; I had sensed it on its way, as an animal, still in profound darkness and surrounded by all the sounds of night, will lift its head, sniff, and know, inwardly, that dawn is near. Meanwhile, I moved for advantage as in a parlour game. Julia brought me success. Our meeting, so far from disillusioning her, made her cult of me keener and more direct. It was no fault of mine, I assured Roger, when he came to grumble about it; I had not been in the least agreeable to her; indeed towards the end of the evening I had been openly savage. “The girl’s a masochist,” he said, adding with deeper gloom, “and Lucy says she’s a virgin.” “There’s plenty of time for her. The two troubles are often cured simultaneously.” “That’s all very well, but she’s staying another ten days. She never stops talking about you.” “Does Lucy mind?” “Of course she minds. It’s driving us both nuts. Does she write you a lot of letters?” “Yes.” “What does she say?” “I don’t read them. I feel as though they were meant for somebody else. Besides they’re in pencil.” “I expect she writes them in bed. No one’s ever gone for me like that.” “Nor for me,” I said. “It’s not really at all disagreeable.” “I daresay not,” said Roger. “I thought only actors and sex-novelists and clergymen came in for it.” “No, no, anybody may—scientists, politicians, professional cyclists—anyone whose name gets into the papers. It’s just that young girls are naturally religious.” “Julia’s eighteen.” “She’ll get over it soon. She’s been stirred up by suddenly meeting me in the flesh after two or three years’ distant devotion. She’s a nice child.” “That’s all very well,” said Roger, returning sulkily to his original point. “It isn’t Julia I’m worried about, it’s ourselves, Lucy and me—she’s staying another ten days. Lucy says you’ve got to be nice about it, and come out this evening, the four of us. I’m sorry, but there it is.” So for a week I went often to Victoria Square, and there was the beginning of a half-secret joke between Lucy and me in Julia’s devotion. While I was there Julia sat smug and gay; she was a child of enchanting prettiness; when I was absent, Roger told me, she moped a good deal and spent much time in her bedroom writing and destroying letters to me. She talked about herself, mostly, and her sister and family. Her father was a major and they lived at Aldershot; they would have to stay there all the year round now that Lucy no longer needed their company in London. She did not like Roger. “He’s not very nice about you,” she said. “Roger and I are like that,” I explained. “We’re always foul about each other. It’s our fun. Is Lucy nice about me?” “Lucy’s an angel,” said Julia, “that’s why we hate Roger so.” Finally there was the evening of Julia’s last party. Eight of us went to dance at a restaurant. Julia was at first very gay, but her spirits dropped towards the end of the evening. I was living in Ebury Street; it was easy for me to walk home from Victoria Square, so I went back with them and had a last drink. “Lucy’s promised to leave us alone, just for a minute, to say good-bye,” Julia whispered. When we were alone, she said, “It’s been absolutely wonderful the last two weeks. I didn’t know it was possible to be so happy. I wish you’d give me something as a kind of souvenir.” “Of course. I’ll send you one of my books, shall I?” “No,” she said, “I’m not interested in your books any more. At least, of course, I am, terribly, but I mean it’s you I love.” “Nonsense,” I said. “Will you kiss me, once, just to say good-bye.” “Certainly not.” Then she said suddenly, “You’re in love with Lucy, aren’t you?” “Good heavens, no. What on earth put that into your head?” “I can tell. Through loving you so much, I expect. You may not know it, but you are. And it’s no good. She loves that horrid Roger. Oh, dear, they’re coming back. I’ll come and say good-bye to you tomorrow, may I?” “No.” “Please. This hasn’t been how I planned it at all.” Then Roger and Lucy came into the room with a sly look as though they had been discussing what was going on and how long they should give us. So I shook hands with Julia and went home. She came to my rooms at ten next morning. Mrs. Legge, the landlady, showed her up. She stood in the door, swinging a small parcel. “I’ve got five minutes,” she said, “the taxi’s waiting. I told Lucy I had some last-minute shopping.” “You know you oughtn’t to do this sort of thing.” “I’ve been here before. When I knew you were out. I pretended I was your sister and had come to fetch something for you.” “Mrs. Legge never said anything to me about it.” “No. I asked her not to. In fact I gave her ten shillings. You see she caught me at it.” “At what?” “Well, it sounds rather silly. I was in your bedroom, kissing things—you know, pillows, pajamas, hair brushes. I’d just got to the washstand and was kissing your razor when I looked up and found Mrs. Whatever-she’s-called standing in the door.” “Good God, I shall never be able to look her in the face again.” “Oh, she was quite sympathetic. I suppose I must have looked funny, like a goose grazing.” She gave a little, rather hysterical giggle, and added, “Oh, John, I do love you so.” “Nonsense. I shall turn you out if you talk like that.” “Well, I do. And I’ve got you a present.” She gave me the square parcel. “Open it.” “I shan’t accept it,” I said unwrapping a box of cigars. “But you must. You see, they’d be no good to me, would they? Are they good ones?” “Yes,” I said, looking at the box. “Very good ones indeed.” “The best?” “Quite the best, but ...” “That’s what the man in the shop said. Smoke one now.” “Julia dear, I couldn’t. I’ve only just finished breakfast.” She saw the point of that. “When will you smoke the first one? After luncheon? I’d like to think of you smoking the first one.” “Julia, dear, it’s perfectly sweet of you, but I can’t, honestly ...” “I know what you’re thinking, that I can’t afford it. Well, that’s all right. You see, Lucy gave me five pounds yesterday to buy a hat. I thought she would—she often does. But I had to wait and be sure. I’d got them ready, hidden yesterday evening. I meant to give you them then. But I never got a proper chance. So here they are.” And then, as I hesitated, with rising voice, “Don’t you see I’d much rather give you cigars than have a new hat? Don’t you see I shall go back to Aldershot absolutely miserable, the whole time in London quite spoilt, if you won’t take them?” She had clearly been crying that morning and was near tears again. “Of course I’ll take them,” I said. “I think it’s perfectly sweet of you.” Her face cleared in sudden, infectious joy. “There. Now we can say good-bye.” She stood waiting for me, not petitioning this time, but claiming her right. I put my hands on her shoulders and gave her a single, warm kiss on the lips. She shut her eyes and sighed. “Thank you,” she said in a small voice, and hurried out to her waiting taxi, leaving the box of cigars on my table. Sweet Julia! I thought; it was a supremely unselfish present; something quite impersonal and unsentimental—no keepsake—something which would be gone, literally in smoke, in less than six weeks; a thing she had not even the fun of choosing for herself; she had gone to the counter and left it to the shopman—“I want a box of the best cigars you keep, please—as many as I can get for five pounds.” She just wanted something which she could be sure would give pleasure. And chiefly because she thought I had been kind to her cousin, Lucy took me into her friendship. Roger’s engraving showed a pavilion, still rigidly orthodox in plan, but, in elevation decked with ornament conceived in a wild ignorance of oriental forms; there were balconies and balustrades of geometric patterns; the cornice swerved upwards at the corners in the lines of a pagoda; the roof was crowned with an onion cupola which might have been Russian, bells hung from the capitals of barley-sugar columns; the windows were freely derived from the Alhambra; there was a minaret. To complete the atmosphere the engraver had added a little group of Turkish military performing the bastinado upon a curiously complacent malefactor, an Arabian camel and a mandarin carrying a bird in a cage. “My word, what a gem,” they said. “Is it really all there?” “The minaret’s down and it’s all rather overgrown.” “What a chance. John must get it.” “It will be fun to furnish. I know just the chairs for it.” This was the first time I had been to Victoria Square since Julia left. And Lucy said, “I can’t think why John should want to have a house like that.” II Lucy was a girl of few friends; she had, in fact, at the time I was admitted to their number, only two; a man named Peter Baverstock, in the Malay States, whom I never saw, and a Miss Muriel Meikeljohn whom I saw all too often. Peter Baverstock had wanted to marry Lucy since she was seven and proposed to her whenever he came home on leave, every eighteen months, until she married Roger, when he sent her a very elaborate wedding present, an immense thing in carved wood, ivory and gilt which caused much speculation with regard to its purpose; later he wrote and explained; I forget the explanation. I think it was the gift which, by local usage, men of high birth gave to their granddaughters when they were delivered of male twins; it was, anyway, connected with twins and grandparents, of great rarity, and a token of high esteem in the parts he came from. Lucy wrote long letters to Baverstock every fortnight. I often watched her at work on those letters, sitting square to her table, head bowed, hand travelling evenly across the page, as, I remembered reading in some books of memoirs, Sir Walter Scott’s had been seen at a lighted window, writing the Waverley novels. It was a tradition of her upbringing that letters for the East must always be written on very thin, lined paper. “I’m just telling Peter about your house,” she would say. “How can that possibly interest him?”