er...." She
stopped, collected, with all her will, her words, then in a low voice
said, looking at Breton, "I owe you, I suppose--an apology. I owe that
perhaps to you all. My children are wiser in their own generation. I no
longer understand--the way things go--all too confused for my poor
intelligence." She pulled herself together as an old ship rights itself
after a roller's stinging blow. "This has lasted long enough.... We've
all talked--My family are--wiser--it seems."

But she could not go on. "Please, Roddy," she said at length, "I think
it's time--if you'd ring."

"I'm sorry----" he said and then stopped.

Soon Peters and a footman appeared. She leaned heavily upon them and,
staring before her at the door, slowly went out.

CHAPTER IX

RACHEL AND RODDY

"Tell me, Praise, and tell me, Love,
What you both are thinking of?
O, we think, said Love, said Praise,
Now of children and their ways."

WILLIAM BRIGHTY RAND.

I

Breton had gone; the room was empty.

Rachel came and, kneeling on the floor, hid her face in Roddy's coat. He
put his hands about hers.

His only desire now was that there should be peaceful silence. His
hatred for scenes had always been with him an instinct, natural, alert,
untiring, so that he would undertake many labours, forgo many pleasant
prizes, if only emotional crises might be avoided.

This afternoon had showered upon him a relentless succession of
reverberating displays, he had perceived one human being after another
reveal quite nakedly their tumultuous feelings. It was, for him,
precisely as though the Duchess, Rachel, Breton had stripped there
before him and expected him to display no astonishment at their so
doing--that he should have been the author of the business made it no
better; he reflected that he had even looked forward with excitement to
the affair. "If I had only known how beastly...."

He was ashamed--ashamed of his own action in provoking these things,
ashamed of his own lack of understanding, ashamed to have watched the
sharpened tempers of his friends.

He would never, Heaven help him, take part in any such scene again!

But out of it all one good thing had come--he had got Rachel! As she
had looked across the room, meeting his eyes, he had known that at last
his long pursuit of her was at an end....

It never occurred to him that most husbands, after such a declaration as
Rachel had just made, would have stormed, repro