Dinny wrote them down. “This is the town one at my uncle, Sir Lawrence Mont’s, in Mount Street; and this is my country one at Condaford Grange in Oxfordshire. One or the other is almost sure to find me. And thank you ever so. It takes a load off my mind.”

“And off mine, miss. Mr. Desert has every call on me. And I want the best for him. He’s not everybody’s money, but he’s mine.”

“And mine, Stack.”

“I won’t bandy compliments, miss, but he’ll be a lucky one, if you’ll excuse me.”

Dinny smiled. “No, I shall be the lucky one. Good-bye, and thank you again.”

She went away, treading, so to speak, on Cork Street. She had an ally in the lion’s mouth; a spy in the friend’s camp; a faithful traitor! Thus mixing her metaphors, she scurried back to her aunt’s house. Her father would almost certainly go there before returning to Condaford.

Seeing his unmistakable old bowler in the hall, she took the precaution of removing her own hat before going to the drawing-room. He was talking to her aunt, and they stopped as she came in. Everyone would always stop now as she came in! Looking at them with quiet directness, she sat down.

The General’s eyes met hers.

“I’ve been to see Mr. Desert, Dinny.”

“I know, dear. He is thinking it over. We shall wait till everyone knows, anyway.”

The General moved uneasily.

“And if it is any satisfaction to you, we are not formally engaged.”

The General gave her a slight bow, and Dinny turned to her aunt, who was fanning a pink face with a piece of lilac-coloured blotting-paper.

There was a silence, then the General said:

“When are you going to Lippinghall, Em?”

“Next week,” replied Lady Mont, “or is it the week after? Lawrence knows. I’m showing two gardeners at the Chelsea Flower Show. Boswell and Johnson, Dinny.”

“Oh! Are they still with you?”

“More so. Con, you ought to grow pestifera—no, that’s not the name—that hairy anemone thing.”

“Pulsatilla, Auntie.”

“Charmin’ flowers. They want lime.”

“We’re short of lime at Condaford,” said the General, “as you ought to know, Em.”

“Our azaleas were a dream this year, Aunt Em.”

Lady Mont put down the blotting-paper.

“I’ve been tellin’ your father, Dinny, that it’s no good fussin’ you.”

Dinny, watching her father’s glum face, said: “Do you know that nice shop in Bond Street, Auntie, where they make animals? I got a lovely little vixen and her cubs there to make Dad like foxes better.”

“Huntin’,” said Lady Mont, and sighed. “When they get up chimneys, it’s rather touchin’.”

“Even Dad doesn’t like digging out, or stopping earths, do you, Dad?”

“N-no!” said the General, “on the whole, no!”

“Bloodin’ children, too,” said Lady Mont. “I saw you blooded, Con.”

“Messy job, and quite unnecessary! Only the old raw-hide school go in for it now.”

“He looked so nasty, Dinny.”

“Yes, you haven’t got the face for it, Dad. It wants one of those snub-nosed, red-haired, freckled boys, that like killing for the sake of killing.”

The General rose.

“I must be going back to the Club. Jean picks me up there. When shall we see you, Dinny? Your mother—” and he stopped.

“Aunt Em’s keeping me till Saturday.”

The General nodded. He suffered his sister’s and daughter’s kiss with a face that seemed to say, ‘Yes—but—’

From the window Dinny watched his figure moving down the street, and her heart twitched.

“Your father!” said her aunt’s voice behind her. “All this is very wearin’, Dinny.”

“I think it’s very dear of Dad not to have mentioned the fact that I’m dependent on him.”

“Con IS a dear,” said Lady Mont; “he said the young man was respectful. Who was it said: ‘Goroo—goroo’?”

“The old Jew in David Copperfield.”

“Well, it’s what I feel.”

Dinny turned from the window.

“Auntie! I don’t feel the same being at all as I did two weeks ago. I’m utterly changed. Then I didn’t seem to have any desires; now I’m all one desire, and I don’t seem to care whether I’m decent or not. Don’t say Epsom salts!”

Lady Mont patted her arm.

“‘Honour thy father and thy mother,’” she said; “but then there was ‘Forsake all and follow me,’ so you can’t tell.”

“I can,” said Dinny. “Do you know what I’m hoping now? That everything will come out tomorrow. If it did, we could be married at once.”

“Let’s have some tea, Dinny. Blore, tea! Indian and rather strong!”

Dinny took her lover to Adrian’s door at the museum the next day, and left him there. Looking round at his tall, hatless, girt-in figure, she saw him give a violent shiver. But he smiled, and even at that distance she felt warmed by his eyes.

Adrian, already notified, received the young man with what he stigmatised to himself as ‘morbid curiosity,’ and placed him at once in mental apposition to Dinny. A curiously diverse couple they would make! Yet, with a perception not perhaps unconnected with the custody of skeletons, he had a feeling that his niece was not physically in error. This was a figure that could well stand or lie beside her. Its stringy grace and bony gallantry accorded with her style and slenderness; and the darkened face, with its drawn and bitter lines, had eyes which even Adrian, who had all the public-school-man’s impatience of male film stars, could see would be attractive to the feminine gender. Bones broke the ice to some degree; and over the identity of a supposed Hittite in moderate preservation they became almost cordial. Places and people whom they had both seen in strange conditions were a further incentive to human feeling. But not till he had taken up his hat to go did Wilfrid say suddenly:

“Well, Mr. Cherrell, what would YOU do?”

Adrian, who was looking up, halted and considered his questioner with narrowed eyes.

“I’m a poor hand at advice, but Dinny is a precious baggage—”

“She is.”

Adrian bent and shut the door of a cabinet.

“This morning,” he said, “I watched a solitary ant in my bathroom trying to make its way and find out about things. I’m sorry to say I dropped some ashes from my pipe on it to see what it would do. Providence all over—always dropping ashes from its pipe on us to observe the result. I’ve been in several minds, but I’ve come to the conclusion that if you’re really in love with Dinny—” a convulsive movement of Wilfrid’s body ended in the tight clenching of his hands on his hat—“as I see you are, and as I know her to be with you, then stand fast and work your way with her through the ashes. She’d rather be in the cart with you than in a Pullman with the rest of us. I believe”—and Adrian’s face was illuminated by earnestness—“that she is one of those of whom it is not yet written, ‘and they twain shall be one SPIRIT.’” The young man’s face quivered.

‘Genuine!’ thought Adrian.

“So think first of her, but not in the ‘I love you so that nothing will induce me to marry you’ fashion. Do what she wants—when she wants it—she’s not unreasonable. And, honestly, I don’t believe you’ll either of you regret it.”

Desert took a step towards him, and Adrian could see that he was intensely moved. But he mastered all expression, save a little jerky smile, made a movement of one hand, turned, and went out.

Adrian continued to shut the doors of cupboards that contained bones. ‘That,’ he was thinking, ‘is the most difficult, and in some ways the most beautiful face I’ve seen. The spirit walks upon its waters and is often nearly drowned. I wonder if that advice was criminal, because for some reason or other I believe he’s going to take it.’ And he returned to the reading of a geographical magazine which Wilfrid’s visit had interrupted. It contained a spirited account of an Indian tribe on the Amazon which had succeeded, even without the aid of American engineers at capitalistic salaries, in perfecting the Communistic ideal. None of them, apparently, owned anything. Their whole lives, including the processes of nature, were passed in the public eye. They wore no clothes, they had no laws; their only punishment, something in connection with red ants, was inflicted for the only offence, that of keeping anything to themselves. They lived on the cassava root variegated with monkey, and were the ideal community!