young man."

"It's hardly my intimacy with him that's made Elaine accept him,"
said Comus.

Francesca realised the futility of further upbraiding. Through the
tears of vexation that stood in her eyes, she looked across at the

handsome boy who sat opposite her, mocking at his own misfortune,
perversely indifferent to his folly, seemingly almost indifferent

to its consequences.
"Comus," she said quietly and wearily, "you are an exact reversal

of the legend of Pandora's Box. You have all the charm and
advantages that a boy could want to help him on in the world, and

behind it all there is the fatal damning gift of utter
hopelessness."

"I think," said Comus, "that is the best description that anyone
has ever given of me."

For the moment there was a flush of sympathy and something like
outspoken affection between mother and son. They seemed very much

alone in the world just now, and in the general overturn of hopes
and plans, there flickered a chance that each might stretch out a

hand to the other, and summon back to their lives an old dead love
that was the best and strongest feeling either of them had known.

But the sting of disappointment was too keen, and the flood of
resentment mounted too high on either side to allow the chance more

than a moment in which to flicker away into nothingness. The old
fatal topic of estrangement came to the fore, the question of

immediate ways and means, and mother and son faced themselves again
as antagonists on a well-disputed field.

"What is done is done," said Francesca, with a movement of tragic
impatience that belied the philosophy of her words; "there is

nothing to be gained by crying over spilt milk. There is the
present and the future to be thought about, though. One can't go

on indefinitely as a tenant-for-life in a fools' paradise." Then
she pulled herself together and proceeded to deliver an ultimatum

which the force of circumstances no longer permitted her to hold in
reserve.

"It's not much use talking to you about money, as I know from long
experience, but I can only tell you this, that in the middle of the

Season I'm already obliged to be thinking of leaving Town. And
you, I'm afraid, will have to be thinking of leaving England at

equally short notice. Henry told me the other day that he can get
you something out in West Africa. You've had your chance of doing

something better for yourself from the financial point of view, and
you've thrown it away for the sake of borrowing a little ready

money for your luxuries, so now you must take what you can get.
The pay won't be very good at first, but living is not dear out

there."
"West Africa," said Comus, reflectively; "it's a sort of modern

substitute for the old-fashioned OUBLIETTE, a convenient depository
for tiresome people. Dear Uncle Henry may talk lugubriously about

the burden of Empire, but he evidently recognises its uses as a
refuse consumer."

"My dear Comus, you are talking of the West Africa of yesterday.
While you have been wasting your time at school, and worse than

wasting your time in the West End, other people have been grappling
with the study of tropical diseases, and the West African coast

country is being rapidly transformed from a lethal chamber into a
sanatorium."

Comus laughed mockingly.
"What a beautiful bit of persuasive prose; it reminds one of the

Psalms and even more of a company prospectus. If you were honest
you'd confess that you lifted it straight out of a rubber or

railway promotionscheme. Seriously, mother, if I must grub about
for a living, why can't I do it in England? I could go into a

brewery for instance."
Francesca shook her head decisively; she could foresee the sort of

steady work Comus was likely to accomplish, with the lodestone of
Town and the minor attractions of race-meetings and similar

festivities always beckoning to him from a conveniently attainable
distance, but apart from that aspect of the case there was a

financialobstacle in the way of his obtaining any employment at
home.

"Breweries and all those sort of things necessitate money to start
with; one has to pay premiums or invest capital in the undertaking,

and so forth. And as we have no money available, and can scarcely
pay our debts as it is, it's no use thinking about it."

"Can't we sell something?" asked Comus.
He made no actualsuggestion as to what should be sacrificed, but

he was looking straight at the Van der Meulen.
For a moment Francesca felt a stifling sensation of weakness, as

though her heart was going to stop beating. Then she sat forward
in her chair and spoke with energy, almost fierceness.

"When I am dead my things can be sold and dispersed. As long as I
am alive I prefer to keep them by me."

In her holy place, with all her treasured possessions around her,
this dreadfulsuggestion had been made. Some of her cherished

household gods, souvenirs and keepsakes from past days, would,
perhaps, not have fetched a very considerable sum in the auction-

room, others had a distinct value of their own, but to her they
were all precious. And the Van der Meulen, at which Comus had

looked with impious appraising eyes, was the most sacred of them
all. When Francesca had been away from her Town residence or had

been confined to her bedroom through illness, the great picture
with its statelysolemnrepresentation of a long-ago battle-scene,

painted to flatter the flattery-loving soul of a warrior-king who
was dignified even in his campaigns - this was the first thing she

visited on her return to Town or convalescence. If an alarm of
fire had been raised it would have been the first thing for whose

safety she would have troubled. And Comus had almost suggested
that it should be parted with, as one sold railway shares and other

soulless things.
Scolding, she had long ago realised, was a useless waste of time

and energy where Comus was concerned, but this evening she unloosed
her tongue for the mere relief that it gave to her surcharged

feelings. He sat listening without comment, though she purposely
let fall remarks that she hoped might sting him into self-defence

or protest. It was an unsparing indictment, the more damaging in
that it was so irrefutably true, the more tragic in that it came

from perhaps the one person in the world whose opinion he had ever
cared for. And he sat through it as silent and seemingly unmoved

as though she had been rehearsing a speech for some drawing-room
comedy. When she had had her say his method of retort was not the

soft answer that turneth away wrath but the inconsequent one that
shelves it.

"Let's go and dress for dinner."
The meal, like so many that Francesca and Comus had eaten in each

other's company of late, was a silent one. Now that the full
bearings of the disaster had been discussed in all its aspects

there was nothing more to be said. Any attempt at ignoring the
situation, and passing on to less controversial topics would have

been a mockery and pretence which neither of them would have
troubled to sustain. So the meal went forward with its dragged-out

dreary intimacy of two people who were separated by a gulf of
bitterness, and whose hearts were hard with resentment against one

another.
Francesca felt a sense of relief when she was able to give the maid

the order to serve her coffee upstairs. Comus had a sullen scowl
on his face, but he looked up as she rose to leave the room, and

gave his half-mocking little laugh.
"You needn't look so tragic," he said, "You're going to have your

own way. I'll go out to that West African hole."
CHAPTER XIII

COMUS found his way to his seat in the stalls of the Straw Exchange
Theatre and turned to watch the stream of distinguished and

distinguishable people who made their appearance as a matter of
course at a First Night in the height of the Season. Pit and

gallery were already packed with a throng, tense, expectant and
alert, that waited for the rise of the curtain with the eager

patience of a terrier watching a dilatory human prepare for outdoor
exercises. Stalls and boxes filled slowly and hesitatingly with a