n a special act of
creation. Her parents had got impasted into the vagueness of that
background, out of which she had come floating into his life.

The position, however, was a difficult one for him. He could scarcely
chide her for borrowing, grotesque as the borrowing was. The maid, he
learnt, was leaving her that same afternoon and was to be married
soon. What helped him to decide was the great curiosity that had come
upon him to make the acquaintance of the people who had given her to
the world. Something of his old attitude came back to him. The desire
to see what strange thing was to follow next stirred in him again. But
this time a greater bitterness was mixed with it, a better grip on the
wholeness of life, an active consciousness that, though he might now
derive a grim sort of enjoyment from watching the unfolding of
circumstance, the experience would be nevertheless real, would
represent so much of his personal life. No longer would it be a mere
desperate submission to idle drifting amid the scenes of a dreamland;
though the same temperament as before was at the back of his decision.
Of course, his general determination to face the full responsibility
of his relation to Cleo likewise counted for a good deal in his
assenting to accompany her on this visit she purposed to her parents.

He questioned her about her family, and she told him that her father
was a printer at Dover; that her mother was simply her mother; that
she had a brother and two sisters, all unmarried, all living at home.
She was barely eighteen when she had left Dover, but she had ceased
communicating with her family as soon as she had made Ingram's
acquaintance. However, in anticipation of a great success, she had
written to them again a few weeks back, informing them of her marriage
and of the theatre of her own which she was to have immediately. Her
father, in reply, had written her a cordial letter, and had, in fact,
suggested she should bring her husband to see them if she should ever
find a suitable opportunity. They would therefore be likely to meet
with a warm welcome, and they could stay at Dover till her plans were
mature, which would be very shortly. What these plans were likely to
be he could not elicit, though he gathered some vague millionaire was
connected with them, and that they would enable her to clear off all
the debts almost immediately. But since, at the moment, they were
entirely without resources, it would be useless, sh