She was perfectly right. If Rita had been in society or on the stage she probably would have married a peer--not a Duke though, that was Ethel"s inexperience. There are so few dukes that they have not the same liberty of action as other n.o.blemen. The Beauty Market is badly organised--curious fact in an age when to purvey cats" meat is a specialised industry. But the fact remains. The prettiest girls in England don"t have their pictures in the papers and advertise no dentrifice or musical comedy on the one hand, nor St. Peter and St.

George, their fashionable West End temples, on the other. Buyers of Beauty have but a limited choice, and on the whole it is a salutary thing, though doubtless hard upon loveliness that perforce throws itself away upon men without rank or fortune for want of proper opportunity!

"How do I look, Wog dear?" Rita asked.

"Splendid, darling," Ethel answered eagerly--a pretty junior typist in Ethel"s office, who had been snubbed, had once sent her homely senior a golliwog doll, and since then the good-humoured Ethel was "Wog" to her friends.

"I"m so glad. I want to look my best to-night."

"Well, then, you do," Ethel replied, and with an heroic effort forbore further questioning.

She always kept loyally to the compact of silence and non-interference with what went on outside the flat.

Rita chuckled and darted one of her naughty, provocative glances.

"Wog! You"re dying to know where I"m going!"

Some girls would have affected indifference immediately. Not so the simple Wog.

"Of course I am, Cupid," she said.

"I"m going to dine with Gilbert."

"Gilbert?"

"Gilbert Lothian I mean, of course. We are absolute friends, Wog dear--he and I. I haven"t told you before, but I will now. You remember that night I was home so late, nearly a month ago? Yes?--well I had been motoring to Brighton with Gilbert. I met him for the first time at the Amberleys"--but that you know. Since then we have become friends--such a strange and wonderful friendship it is, Ethel! It"s made things so different for me."

"But how friends? Have you seen him often, then? But you can"t have?"

Rita shook her head, impatiently for a moment, and then she smiled gently. How could poor old Wog know or understand!

"No!" she cried, with a little tap of her shoe upon the carpet. "But there are such things as letters aren"t there?"

"Has he been writing to you, then?"

"Writing! I have had four of the most beautiful letters that a poet ever wrote. It took him days to write each one. He chose every word, over and over again. Every sentence is music, every word a note in a chord!"

Ethel went up to her friend and kissed her. "Dear old Cupid," she said, "I"m so glad, so very glad. I don"t understand his poems myself, but Father simply loves them. I am sure you will be very happy. Only I do hope he is a good man--really worthy of my dear! And so"--she continued, with a struggle to get down to commonplace brightness of manner--"And so he"s coming for you to-night! Now I know why you look so beautiful and are so happy."

Two tears gathered in the kind green eyes, tears of joy at her dear girl"s happiness, but with a tincture of sadness too. With a somewhat unaccustomed flash of imagination, she looked into the future and saw herself lonely in the flat, or with another girl who could never be to her what Rita was.

She looked up at Rita again, trying to smile through her tears.

What she saw astounded her.

Rita"s face was flushed. A knot of wrinkles had sprung between her eyebrows. Her mouth was mutinous, her brown eyes lit with an angry and puzzled light.

"I don"t understand you, Ethel," she said in a voice which was so cold and unusual that the other girl was dumb.--"What on earth do you mean?"

"Mean, dear," Ethel faltered. "I don"t quite understand. I thought you meant--I thought ..."

"What did you think?"

"I thought you meant that you were engaged to him, Cupid darling!"

"Engaged!--_Why Gilbert is married._"

Ethel glanced quickly at the flowers, at the photograph upon the piano.

Things seemed going round and round her--the heat, that was it--"But the letters!" she managed to say at length, "and, and--oh, Cupid, what _are_ you doing? He can"t be a good man. I"m certain of it, dear! I"m older than you are. I know more about things. You don"t realise,--but how should you poor darling! He can"t be a good man! Rita, _does his wife know_?"

The girl frowned impatiently. "How limited and narrow you are, Ethel,"

she said. "Have you such low ideals that you think friendship between a man and a woman impossible? Are you entirely fettered by convention and silly old puritanical nonsense? Wouldn"t you be glad and proud to have a man with a wonderful mind for your friend--a man who is all chivalry and kindness, who pours out the treasures of his intellect for one?"

Ethel did not answer. She did not, in truth, know what to say. There _was_ no reason she could adduce why Rita should not have a man friend.

She knew that many singular and fine natures despised conventionality or ordinary rules and seemed to have the right to do so. And then--_honi soit_! Yet, inarticulate as she was, she felt by some instinct that there was something wrong. Mr. Gilbert Lothian was married. That meant everything. A married man, and a poet too! oughtn"t to have any secret and very intimate friendships with beautiful, wilful and unprotected girls.

... "You have nothing to say! Of course! There _is_ nothing that any wide-minded person could say. Ethel, you"re a dear old stupe!"--she crossed the room and kissed her friend.

And Ethel was so glad to hear the customary affection return to Rita"s voice, the soft lips upon her cheek set her gentle and loving heart in so warm a glow, that her fears and objections dissolved and she said no more.

The electric bell at the front door whirred.

Rita tore herself from Ethel"s embrace. There was a mirror over the mantel-shelf. She gazed into it for a few seconds and then hurried away into the little hall.

There was the click of the latch as it was drawn back, a moment of silence, and then Ethel heard a voice with a peculiar vibration and timbre--an altogether unforgettable voice--say two words.

"At last!"

Then there was a murmur of conversation, the words of which she could not catch, interrupted once by Rita"s happy laughter.

Finally she heard Rita hurry into the bedroom, no doubt for her cloak, and return with an excited word. Then the door closed and there was an instant of footsteps upon the stone stairs outside.

Ethel was left alone.

She went to her bookshelf--she did not seem to want to think just now--and after a moment"s hesitation took down "Sesame and Lilies."

Then she sat at the table with a sigh and looked without much interest at the bananas, the sardines and the brown bread.

Ethel was left alone.

CHAPTER II

OVER THE RUBICON

"Inside the Horsel here the air is hot; Right little peace one hath for it, G.o.d wot; The scented dusty daylight burns the air, And my heart chokes me till I hear it not."

--_Swinburne._