LITMIR.BIZ

      XXVI

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      ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON fell into abeyance. It was so abundantly clear that the cultivation of Robert Louis Stevenson was in no way necessary for the furthering of Mr. Pontisbury's admiration—nay, might not impossibly detract from it.

      Robert Louis Stevenson, after all, stood for an idea— to be quite accurate, for an attitude—though Zella did not admit this to herself; whereas the homage of Mr. Pontisbury was a gratifying fact that coloured Zella's days, and brought her well into the limelight in full view of an admiring audience.

      Zella's lack of perspective was never more apparent than in the brilliant summer days before her birthday, when she acted as triumphant hostess to half a dozen people.

      James brought his Oxford friend, having selected, with characteristic perversity and to the indignation of his mother, a penniless young man who could gain scholarships with ease, but could not play tennis.

      Alison St. Craye, who had accepted Zella's rather diffident invitation, determinedly sustained her character for unconventionality by demanding an invitation for her friend the Comte de St. Algers, and was accordingly followed by a small dark-eyed Frenchman who spoke half a dozen languages with equal facility, and sang French songs with incredible verve and admirable discrimination.

      And Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, warmly as she disapproved of almost every guest in the house, could afford to patronize the Comte, repress Alison with gentle firmness, and put James's friend in his place—a socially ignominious one— with perfect politeness, in the triumphant success of her schemes for Zella's welfare.

      Providence had ably seconded her efforts, and Stephen Pontisbury had definitely fallen in love with Zella.

      From his height of six foot one, in a strange aloof way that was most oddly characteristic of the man, he had fallen in love with Zella's brown hair, her pretty, delicate face, and her ready adaptability, which he instantly and irrevocably mistook for an intellectual affinity with himself.

      Zella admired his physique, which was magnificent, knew that he must be of those who Understand (with a capital U) when he told her that they had met one another in a former life, and enjoyed the outward and visible signs of his devotion the more for the half-dozen spectators to whom she was the central figure on her little stage.

      Stephen told her a good deal about his boyhood, and so little about his manhood, and that little in tones of such skilfully indicated cynicism, that Zella knew instantly that he needed a woman in his life.

      "Given that one is fearless and strong-willed, there is such a thing as influence," said Zella to herself.

      The influence of a mother and two adoring sisters she naturally discounted.

      "My relations, after the manner of relations, do not understand me," Stephen told her, sitting on the terrace one evening. "I was horribly lonely as a child; I remember talking to the moon, from the window of my nursery, when I was a small kid. More congenial than the people inside, I suppose." He gave a curt laugh, slightly bitter.

      Zella looked up at him with expressive, sympathetic grey eyes.

      "Tell me what you used to say to the moon when you were small," she said softly.

      "Oh, a lonely child's fancies, I suppose." He threw away his unfinished cigarette with an abrupt gesture of dismissal, and accidentally caught his knuckles on the edge of the step where he sat.

      "(Confound!) You can imagine the sort of thing, I dare say—needn't put it into words." He flapped his injured hand to and fro behind his back.

      "One knows," Zella murmured gently; "I was very lonely too."

      Perhaps the last words were so softly spoken that Mr. Pontisbury did not hear them. At all events, he began to recapitulate the thoughts of his solitary infancy in abrupt, almost saccadés phrases for Zella's benefit.

      "Wondering if anybody would ever care to understand a little chap of my sort, I suppose. The others were, somehow, so awfully different, don't you know; absolute dears, my sisters, both of them, but just thinking about their lessons, and dolls, and being good little girls, you know—just as now they think about their housekeeping and their babies . . . they've never grown up, I sometimes think. Why, I believe at ten years old I was older than they are now."

      "Some children are like that."

      "By Jove, it's wonderful how you understand! Why didn't you and I know each other sooner, I wonder— just so that we could have lent one another a hand at the bad bits—though, I expect, I've known more of those than you have," he added, looking tenderly at her drooping profile.

      Zella, not altogether flattered by the implication that only sheltered ways had been hers, chose to ignore the latter part of his speech, but answered the former by a graceful, expressive French gesture, the merest hint of shrugged shoulders and extended palms.

      "Fate, I suppose," she murmured.

      "That's it," said Stephen with conviction. "Fate." He repeated the word thoughtfully, as though he had been searching for it. "Fate's always been against me, somehow. As a boy I used to think I'd make a fine thing of my life—fame and glory, don't you know, all that sort of romantic day-dream."

      "I know," said Zella eagerly. "One plans splendid adventures, and always oneself as the hero or heroine. And I've always wondered if anybody else did that too."

      "I expect so. Anyhow, I did. I expect that's one reason why we understand one another so well."

      He looked at her, and Zella's subconscious self noted with satisfaction that her heart was beating a shade faster than usual.

      "I believe in affinities, don't you 1 Not that I've met mine—yet," he added with a short laugh and a side-glance which Zella saw without raising her eyes.

      "I once thought I had, for a little while, and lived in a fool's paradise."

      "I know," gently said Zella, who didn't.

      "It's beastly egotistical of me really, I expect, to go on jawing about my own concerns

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