will over their
pleasures or making other people happy.'

'Do you remember the birds and fishes?'

'Do I not? It was the birds and fishes who introduced you to me.'

'I think this was what Charles meant by them--escape, irrelevance,
holiday.'

'That's quite true. Nothing ought to be as serious as it is, for
nothing is so serious as it looks when you really come to grips with
it. Life always looks like a blank wall until you come up to it and
then there is a little door which was invisible at a distance.... I
found that out when I met you.'

'And did you go through it?'

'Straight through and out to the other side.'

Clara took his hand affectionately, and their eyes met in a happy
smile. They were friends for ever, the relationship most perfectly
suited to his temperament, most needed by hers.

From that she passed on to a frank discussion of her own situation with
regard to Charles, and the hole he was in through the absconding Mr
Clott.

'I knew that fellow was a scoundrel,' said Verschoyle. 'He tried to
borrow money from me, and to pump me about the form of my horses. How
on earth did he ever become secretary to a committee for the
furtherance of dramatic art?'

'He turned up. Everything in Charles's life turns up. _I_ turned up.'

'And is your name really Day?'

'It was my grandfather's name.... I never had any one else. I
remember no one else except an Italian nurse, with a very brown face
and very white teeth. He died in Paris four years ago. My people were
in India.'

'Ah! Families get lost sometimes in the different parts of the British
Empire. It is so big, you know. I'm sure the English will lose
themselves in it one of these fine days.'

He passed over without a word her position as wife and no wife, but
became only the kinder and more considerate. It had eased and relieved
her to talk of it. Every impediment to their friendship was removed,
but sometimes as they walked through fields he would grip his stick
very tight and lash out at a hemlock or a dog-daisy, and sometimes when
he was driving he would jam his foot down on the accelerator and send
the car whirling along. If they had met Charles walking along the road
it would have gone ill with him.

They were six days on their journey up through Shropshire, Cheshire,
and the murk of South Lancashire. They stayed in pleasant inns, and
made many strange acquaintances, bagmen, tourists, young men with
knapsacks on their