Robin | Page 9

hideously. It was not the kind of a thing a little chap usually feels--it
was something different--something more. And to-night it actually all
came back. I saw her again, mother."
He was so absorbed that he did not take in her involuntary movement.
"You saw her again! Where?"
"The old Duchess of Darte was giving a small dance for her. Hallowe
took me--"
"Does the Duchess know Mrs. Gareth-Lawless?" Helen had a sense of
breathlessness.
"I don't quite understand the situation. It seems the little thing insists on
earning her own living and she is a sort of companion and secretary to
the Duchess. Mother, she is just the same!"
The last words were a sort of exclamation. As he uttered them, there
came back to her the day when--a little boy--he had seemed as though
he were speaking as a young man might have spoken. Now he was a
young man, speaking almost as if he were a little boy--involuntarily
revealing his exaltation.
As she had felt half frightened years before, so she felt wholly
frightened now. He was not a little boy any longer. She could not
sweep him away in her arms to save him from danger. Also she knew
more of the easy, fashionably accepted views of the morals of pretty
Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, still lightly known with some cynicism as
"Feather." She knew what Donal did not. His relationship to the Head

of the House of Coombe made it unlikely that gossip should choose
him as the exact young man to whom could be related stories of his
distinguished relative, Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and her girl. But through
the years Helen Muir had unavoidably heard things she thought
particularly hideous. And here the child was again "just the same."
"She has only grown up." His laugh was like a lightly indrawn breath.
"Her cheek is just as much like a rose petal. And that wonderful little
look! And her eyelashes. Just the same! Do girls usually grow up like
that? It was the look most. It's a sort of asking and giving--both at
once."
There it was! And she had nothing to say. She could only sit and look
at him--at his beautiful youth all alight with the sudden flame of that
which can set a young world on fire and sweep on its way either
carrying devastation or clearing a path to Paradise.
His own natural light unconsciousness was amazing. He only knew that
he was in delightful high spirits. The dancing, the music, the early
morning were, he thought, accountable for it.
She bent forward to kiss his cheek and she patted his hand.
"My dear! My dear!" she said. "How you have enjoyed your evening!"
"There never was anything more perfect," with the light laugh again.
"Everything was delightful--the rooms, the music, the girls in their
pretty frocks like a lot of flowers tossed about. She danced like a bit of
thistledown. I didn't know a girl could be so light. The back of her slim
little neck looks as fine and white and soft as a baby's. I am so glad you
were awake. Are you sure you don't want to go to sleep again?"
suddenly.
"Not in the least. Look at the sun beginning to touch the tips of the little
white clouds with rose. That stir among the leaves of the plane trees is
the first delicious breath of the morning. Go on and tell me all about the
party."

"It's a perfect time to talk," he laughed.
And there he sat and made gay pictures for her of what he had seen and
done. He thought he was giving her mere detail of the old Duchess'
dance. He did not know that when he spoke of new tangos, of flowers,
of music and young nymphs like tossed blossoms, he never allowed her
for a moment to lose sight of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' girl. She was the
light floating over his vision of the happy youth of the assembly--she
was the centre--the beginning and the ending of it all.
CHAPTER II
If some uncomplex minded and even moderately articulate man or
woman, living in some small, ordinary respectable London house and
going about his or her work in the customary way, had been prompted
by chance upon June 29th, 1914, to begin to keep on that date a
day-by-day diary of his or her ordinary life, the effects of huge historic
events, as revealed by the every-day incidents to be noted in the streets,
to be heard in his neighbours' houses as well as among his fellow
workers, to be read in the penny or half-penny newspapers, would have
resulted--if the record had been kept faithfully and without any
self-conscious sense of audience--between 1914 and 1918 in the
gradual compiling of a human document