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THE GAY REBELLION

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[Illustration: "She looked at him almost insolently. . . . 'Presently, ' she said. " [Page 82]]

_The_

GAY REBELLION

_By_ ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

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ILLUSTRATED BY

EDMUND FREDERICK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANYNEW YORK AND LONDON: MCMXIII

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BYROBERT W. CHAMBERS

Copyright, 1911, by the COLUMBIAN-STERLING PUBLISHING CO. 

Printed in the United States of America

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TO

SUZANNE CARROLL

 _Though J. H. Jeer And "Smith" incline to frown, I do not fear To write these verses down And publish them in town. The solemn world knows well that I'm no poet; So what care I if two gay scoffers know it?

 Buck up, my Muse! Wing high thy skyward way, And don't refuse To let me say my say As bravely as I may. To praise a lady fair I father verses, Which Admiration cradles, Homage nurses. _

 _For you, Suzanne, Long since have won my heart; You break it, too, And leave the same to smart full sore Whenever you depart for Baltimore. You're charming;--and in metre I endeavour To say you are as winsome as you're clever. _

 _Winsome and wise, Subtle in maiden's lore, With wondrous eyes-- Alas for Baltimore, That grows this rose no more! As for Manhattan, that benign old vulture Wins one more prize in fancy horticulture. _

 _So now to you I dedicate this tale; It's neither new Nor altogether stale, -- Nor can completely fail, For your bright name as sponsor for my story Assures the author of reflected glory. _ _R. W. C. _

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PREFACE

THESE stories, mademoiselle, as your intuition tells you, are forold-fashioned young people only; and should be read in the Golden Future, some snowy evening by the fire after a home dinner à deux. Yourpredestined husband, mademoiselle, is to extend his god-like figure upona sofa, with an ash-tray convenient. You are to do the reading, curled upin the big velvet wing-chair, with the lamp at your left elbow and thefender under your pretty feet. As for me, I shall venture to smile at younow and then from the printed page--but with discretion, mademoiselle, not inconveniencing your party à deux. For, to be rid of me, you havemerely to close this book. 

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FOREWORD

The attention of the civilized world is, at present, concentrated uponThe Science of Eugenics. The author sincerely trusts that this importantcontribution to the data now being so earnestly nosed out and gathered, may aid his fellow students, scientifically, politically andanthropologically. 

 * * * * *

Miris modis Di ludos faciunt hominibus!

R. W. C. 

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"Facta canam; sed erunt qui me finxisse loquantur. "--OVID. 

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

 FACING PAGE

"She looked at him almost insolently . . . 'Presently, ' she said" _Frontispiece_"'To begin, ' he said, 'I came here fishing'" 46"Only one fleet-footed young girl remained at his heels" 184"'Pray, observe my unmatched eyes'" 246

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I

THE year had been, as everybody knows, a momentous and sinister year forthe masculine sex; marriages and births in the United States alone hadfallen off nearly eighty per cent. ; the establishment of SuffragetteUnions in every city, town, and village of the country, their obedienceto the dictation of the Central National Female Franchise Federation; thefinancial distress of the florists, caterers, milliners and modistesincident to the almost total suspension of social functions throughoutthe great cities of the land, threatened eventually to paralyse thenation's business. 

Clergymen were in a pitiable condition for lack of fees and teas; themarriage license bureau was open only Mondays and Saturdays; the socialcolumns of the newspapers were abolished. All over the Union young menwere finding time hanging heavy on their hands after business hoursbecause there was little to do now that every town had its FranchiseClubs magnificently fitted with every requisite that a rapidly advancingsex could possibly demand. 

The pressure upon the men of the Republic was becoming tremendous; but, as everybody knows, they held out with a courage worthy, perhaps, of abetter cause, and women were still denied the franchise in the face ofimpending national disaster. 

But the Central Federation of Amalgamated Females was to deliver a moredeadly blow at man than any yet attempted, a blow that for cruelty andaudacity remains unparalleled in the annals of that restless sex. 

As everybody now knows, this terrible policy was to be inaugurated insecret; a trial was to be made of the idea in New York State; neitherthe state nor federal governments had the faintest suspicion of whatimpended; not a single newspaper had any inkling. 

Even Augustus Melnor, owner and editor of that greatest of New York dailynewspapers, the _Morning Star_, continued to pay overwhelming attentionto his personal appearance, confident that the great feminine revolt wason its last shapely legs, and that once more womankind would be kind toany kind of mankind, and flirt and frivol and marry, and provide progeny, and rock the cradle as in the good old days of yore. 

So it happened one raw, windy day in May, Mr. Melnor entered his privateoffice in the huge _Morning Star_ building, in an unusually cheerfulframe of mind and sent for the city editor, Mr. Trinkle. 

"An exceedingly pretty girl smiled at me on my way down town, Trinkle, "he said exultantly. "That begins to look as though the backbone of thissuffragette strike was broken. What?"

"You've got a dent in your derby; it may have been that, " said Mr. Trinkle. 

Mr. Melnor hastily removed his hat and punched out the dent. 

"I'm not so sure it was that, " he said, flushing up. 

Mr. Trinkle gazed gloomily out of the window. 

For an hour they talked business; then Mr. Melnor was ready to go. 

"How are my nephews getting on?" he asked. 

"Something rotten, " replied Mr. Trinkle truthfully. 

"What's the matter with 'em?"

"Everything--except a talent for business. "

"You mean to say they exhibit no aptitude?"

"Not the slightest. "

Mr. Melnor seized his overcoat from the hook. 

Mr. Trinkle offered to hold it for him. The offer irritated the wealthyowner of the _Star_, who suspected that the city editor meant to intimatethat he, Mr. Melnor, was too old to get into his own overcoat withoutassistance. 

"Never mind!" he said ungratefully. He fussed at the carnation in hisbuttonhole, picked up his doggy walking stick, glanced over his carefullypressed trousers and light coloured spats, strolled across to the mirror, and leisurely drew on his new gloves. 

"Mr. Trinkle, " he began more complacently, "what I want you to alwaysbear in mind is that my pup nephews require a thorough grilling! I wantyou to bully 'em! Suppress 'em! Squelch, nag, worry, sit on 'em!"

"I have, " said the city editor with satisfaction. "They loathe me. "

"Do it some more, then! I won't permit any nepotism in this office! Ifyou don't keep after 'em they'll turn into little beastly journalistsinstead of into decent, self-respecting newspaper men! Have either of mynephews attempted to write any more poetry for the Saturday supplement?"

"Young Sayre got away with some verses. "

"Wha' d'ye do with 'em?" growled Mr. Melnor. 

"Printed 'em. "

"_Printed_ them! Are--you--craz-y?"

"Don't worry. Sayre got no signature out of me. "

"But _why_ did you print?"

"Because those verses were too devilish good to lose. You must have readthem. It was that poem _Amourette_. "

"Did _he_ do _that_?"

"Yes; and the entire sentimental press of the country is now copying itwithout credit. "

"My nephew wrote _Amourette_?" repeated Mr. Melnor with mingled emotions. 

"He sure did. That poem seemed to deal a direct blow at this suffragettestrike. Several women subscribers sent in mash notes. I had a mind totake advantage of one or two myself. "

Pride and duty contended in the breast of Augustus Melnor; duty won. 

"That's what I told you!" he snapped; "those pups will begin to write forthe magazines if you don't look out!"

"Well _I_ tell _you_ that they've no nose for news--no real instinct--andthey might as well write for the backs of the magazines. "

"They've got to acquire news instinct! Bang it into 'em, Trinkle! Rubtheir noses in it! I'll have those pups understand that if ever theyexpect to see any inheritance from me they'll have to prepare themselvesto step into my shoes! They'll have to know the whole business--fromwindow-washer to desk!--and they've got to like it, too--every bit of it!You keep 'em at it if it kills 'em, Trinkle. Understand?"

"It'll kill more than those gifted young literary gentlemen, " saidTrinkle darkly. 

"What do you mean by that?"

"It will kill a few dozen good stories. We're going to murder a big onenow. But it's your funeral. "

"That Adirondack story?"

"Exactly. It's as good as dead. "

"Trinkle! Listen to me. How are we going to make men of those pups if wedon't rouse their pride? I tell you a man grows to meet the opportunity. The bigger the opportunity the bigger he grows--or he blows up! Put thoseboys up against the biggest job of the year and it's worth five years'liberal education to them. That's my policy. Isn't it a good one?"

Mr. Trinkle said: "It's your paper. _I_ don't give a damn. "

Mr. Melnor glared at him. 

"You do what I tell you, " he growled. "You start in and slam 'em aroundthe way they say Belasco slammed Leslie Carter! I'll have no nepotismhere!"

He went out by a private entrance, walking with the jaunty energy thatcharacterised him. Mr. Trinkle looked after him. "Talk of nepotism!" hemuttered, then struck the desk savagely. 

To the overzealous young man who came in with an exuberant step hesnarled:

"Showemin! And don't you go volplaning around this office or I'll destroyyou!"

A moment afterward the youthful nephews of the great Mr. Melnor appeared. They closed and locked the door behind them as they were tersely bidden, then stood in a row, politely and attentively receptive--well-bred, pleasant-faced, expensive-looking young fellows, typical of themetropolis. Mr. Trinkle eyed them with disfavour. 

"So at last you're ready to start, eh?" he rasped out. "I thought perhapsyou'd gone to Newport for the summer to think it over. You are ready, areyou not?"

"Yes, sir, we hope to----"

"Well, dammit! 'yes' is enough! Cut out the 'we hope to'! And try not tolook at me patiently, Mr. Sayre. I don't want anybody to be patient withme. I dislike it. I prefer to incite impatience in people. Impatience isa form of energy. I like energy! Energy is important in this business. The main thing is to get a move on; and then, first you know, you'llbegin to hustle. Try it for a change. "

He continued to inspect them gloomily for a few moments; then:

"To successfully cover this story, " he continued, "you both _ought_ to beexpert woodsmen, thoroughly inured to hardship, conversant with woodcraftand nature. Are you?"

"We've been reading up, " began Langdon confidently; "we have a dozenpocket volumes to take into the woods with us. "

"Haven't I already warned you that every ounce of superfluous luggagewill weigh a ton in the woods?" interrupted the city editor scornfully. "Are you two youthful guys under the impression that you can strollthrough the wilderness loaded down with a five-foot shelf of assortedjunk?"

"Sayre arranged that, " said Langdon. "He has invented a wonderfulsystem, Mr. Trinkle. You know that thin, white stuff, which resemblessheets of paper, that they give goldfish to eat. Well, Sayre and I tastedit; and it wasn't very bad; so we had them make up twelve thousand sheetsof it, flavoured with vanilla, and then we got Dribble & Co. , thepublishers, to print one set of their Nature Library on the sheets andbind 'em up in edible cassava covers. As soon as we thoroughly master avolume we can masticate it, pages, binding, everything. William, show Mr. Trinkle your note-book, " he added, turning to Sayre, who hastily produceda pad and displayed it with pardonable pride. 

"Made entirely of fish food, sugar, pemmican, and cassava, " he saidmodestly. "Takes pencil, ink, stylograph, indelible pencil, crayon, chalk--"

The city editor regarded the two young men and then the edible pad inamazement. 

"What?" he barked. "Say it again!"

"It's made of perfectly good fish-wafer, Mr. Trinkle. We had it analysedby Professor Smawl, and he says it is mildly nutritious. So we addedother ingredients----"

"You mean to say that this pad is fit to eat?"

"Certainly, " said Langdon. "Bite into it, William, and show him. "

Sayre bit out a page from the pad and began to masticate it. The cityeditor regarded him with intense hostility. 

"Oh, very well, " he said. "I haven't any further suggestions to offer. Your uncle has picked you for the job. But it's my private opinion thathere is where you make good or hunt another outlet for your genius--evenif your uncle does own the _Star_. "

Then he rose and laid his hands on their shoulders:

"It's a wild and desolate region, " he said, with an irony they did notimmediately perceive; "nothing but woods and rocks and air and earth andmountains and madly rushing torrents and weird, silent lakes--nothing buttrails, macadam roads, and sign-posts and hotels and camps and tourists, and telephones. If you find yourself in any very terrible solitudes, abandon everything and make for the nearest fashionable five-dollar-a-dayigloo. It may be almost a mile away, but try to reach it, and God blessyou. "

As the dawning suspicion that they were being trifled with became anembarrassed certainty, the city editor's grim visage cracked into agrimmer grin. 

"_I_ don't think that you young gentlemen are cut out for a newspapercareer, but _you_ do, and others higher up say to let you try it. Soyou're going in to find at least one of those four men, dead or alive. The police haven't been able to find them, but you will, of course. Thegame-wardens, fire-wardens, guides, constables, farmers, lumbermen, sheriffs, can't discover hair or hide of them; but no doubt you can. Thewild and dismal state forest is now full of detectives, amateur andprofessional; it's full of hotel keepers, trout fishermen, and privatecamps which are provided with elevators, electric light, squash courts, modern plumbing, and footmen in knee-breeches; and all of these dinkyginks are hunting for four young and wealthy men who have, at regularintervals of one week each, suddenly and completely disappeared from theface of nature and the awful solitudes of the Adirondacks. I take it forgranted that you have the necessary data concerning their several andrespective vanishings?"

"Yes, sir, " said Langdon, who was becoming redder and redder under thebland flow of the Desk's irony. 

"Suppose you run over the main points before you dash recklessly out intothe woods via Broadway. "

"William, " said Langdon with boyish dignity, "would you be kind enough torun over your notes for Mr. Trinkle?"

"It will afford me much pleasure to do so, " replied Sayre, also very redand dignified. 

Out of his pocket he drew what appeared to be an attenuated ham sandwich. Opening it with a slight smile of triumph, as Mr. Trinkle's eyesprotruded, he turned a page of fish-wafer paper and read aloud thepencilled memoranda:

"May 1st, 1910. 

"Reginald Willett, a wealthy amateur, author of _Rough LifePhotography_, _Snapshots at Trees_, _Hunting the Wild Bat with theCamera_, etc. , etc. , left his summer camp on the Gilded Dome, takingwith him his kodak for the purpose of securing photographs of the wilderflowers of the wilderness. 

"He never returned. His butler and second man discovered his camera inthe trail. 

"No other trace of him has yet been discovered. He was young, well built, handsome, and in excellent physical condition. "

Sayre turned the page outward so that Mr. Trinkle could see it. 

"Here's his photograph, " he said, "and his dimensions. "

Mr. Trinkle nodded: "Go on, " he said; and Sayre resumed, turning thepage:

"May 8th: James Carrick, a minor poet, young, well built, handsome, andin excellent physical condition, disappeared from a boat on Dingman'sPond. The boat was found. It contained a note-book in which was neatlywritten the following graceful poem:

 "While gliding o'er thy fair expanse And gazing at the shore beyond, What simple joys the soul entrance Evoked by rowing on Dingman's Pond. The joy I here have found shall be Dear to my heart till life forsake, And often shall I think of thee, Thou mildly beauteous Dingman's Lake. "

"Stop!" said Mr. Trinkle, infuriated. Sayre looked up. 

"The poem gets the hook!" he snarled. "Go on!"

"The next, " continued young Sayre, referring to his edible note-book, "isthe case of De Lancy Smith. On May 16th he left his camp, taking with himhis rod with the intention of trying for some of the larger, wilder, andmore dangerous trout which it is feared still infest the remoter streamsof the State forest. 

"His luncheon, consisting of truffled patés and champagne, was found by asearching party, but De Lancy Smith has never again been seen or heardof. He was young, well built, handsome, and----"

"In excellent physical condition!" snapped Mr. Trinkle. "That's the thirdAdonis you've described. Quit it!"

"But that is the exact description of those three young men----"

"Every one of 'em?"

"Every one. They all seem to have been exceptionally handsome andhealthy. "

"Well, does that suggest any clue to you? Think! Use your mind. Do yousee any clue?"

"In what?"

"In the probably similar fate of so much masculine beauty?"

The young men looked at him, perplexed, silent. 

Mr. Trinkle waved his hands in desperation. 

"Wake up!" he shouted. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that every one ofthem so far has been Gibsonian perfection itself? Doesn't that seemfunny? Doesn't it suggest some connection with the present Franchisestrike?"

"It _is_ odd, " said Langdon, thoughtfully. 

"You notice, " bellowed Mr. Trinkle, "that no young mandisappears who isn't a physical Adonis, do you? No thin-shanked, stoop-shouldered, scant-haired highbrow has yet vanished. You noticethat, don't you, Sayre? Open your mouth and speak! Say anything! Say pip!if you like--only say _something_!"

The young man nodded, bewildered, and his mouth remained open. 

"All right, all right--as long as you _do_ notice it, " yelled the cityeditor, "it looks safe for you; I guess _you_ both will come back, allright--in case any of these suffragettes have become desperate and havestarted kidnapping operations. "

Langdon was rather thin; he glanced sideways at Sayre, who wore glassesand whose locks were prematurely scant. 

"Go on, William, " he said, with a crisp precision of diction whichbetrayed irritation and Harvard. 

Sayre examined his notes, and presently read from them:

"The fourth and last victim of the Adirondack wilderness disappeared veryrecently--May 24th. His name was Alphonso W. Green, a wealthy amateurartist. When last seen he was followed by his valet, who carried a whiteumbrella, a folding stool, a box of colours, and several canvases. Afterluncheon the valet went back to the Gilded Dome Hotel to fetch somecigarettes. When he returned to where he had left his master painting apicture of something, which he thinks was a tree, but which may have beencows in bathing, Mr. Green had vanished. . . . Hum--hum!--ahem! He wasyoung, well built, handsome, and----"

"Kill it!" thundered the city editor, purple with passion. 

"But it's the official descrip----"

"I don't believe it! I won't! I can't! How the devil can a whole bunch ofperfect Apollos disappear that way? There are not four such men in thisState, anyway--outside of fiction and the stage----"

"I'm only reading you the official----"

Mr. Trinkle gulped; the chewing muscles worked in his cheeks, thencalmness came, and his low and anxiously lined brow cleared. 

"All right, " he said. "Show me, that's all I ask. Go ahead and find justone of these disappearing Apollos. That's all I ask. "

He shook an inky finger at them impressively, timing its wagging to hisparting admonition:

"We want two things, do you understand? We want a story, and we want toprint it before any other paper. Never mind reporting progress and thenatural scenery; never mind telegraphing the condition of the localcolour or the dialect of northern New York, or your adventures withnature, or how you went up against big game, or any other kind of game. Idon't want to hear from you until you've got something to say. All you'reto do is to prowl and mouse and slink and lurk and hunt and snoop andexplore those woods until you find one or more of these Adonises; andthen get the story to us by chain-lightning, if, " he added indifferently, "it breaks both your silly necks to do it. "

They passed out with calm dignity, saying "Good-bye, sir, " in haughtilymodulated voices. 

As they closed the door they heard him grunt a parting injury. 

"What an animal!" observed Sayre. "If it wasn't for the glory of being onthe _N. Y. Star_----"

"Sure, " said Langdon, "it's a great paper; besides, we've got to--if wewant to remain next to Uncle Augustus. "

It _was_ a great newspaper; for ethical authority its editorials mightbe compared only to the _Herald's_; for disinterested principle the _Sun_alone could compare with it; it had all the lively enterprise and virile, restless energy of the _Tribune_; all the gay, inconsequent, and frothysparkle of the _Evening Post_; all the risky popularity of the _Outlook_. It was a very, very great New York daily. What on earth has become of it!

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II

LANGDON, very greasy with fly ointment, very sleepy from a mosquitofulnight, squatted cross-legged by the camp fire, nodding drowsily. Sayrefought off mosquitoes with one grimy hand; with the other he turnedflapjacks on the blade of his hunting-knife. All around them lay thedesolate Adirondack wilderness. The wire fence of a game preserveobstructed their advance. It was almost three-quarters of a mile to thenearest hotel. Here and there in the forest immense boulders rearedtheir prehistoric bulk. Many bore the inscription: "Votes for Women!"

"I tell you I _did_ see her, " repeated Sayre, setting the coffee-pot onthe ashes and inspecting the frying pork. 

"The chances are, " yawned Langdon, rousing himself and feebly sucking athis empty pipe, "that you fell asleep waiting for a bite--as I did justnow. Now I've got my bite and I'm awake. It was a horse-fly. Aren't thoseflapjacks ready?"

"If you're so hungry, help yourself to a ream of fish-wafer, " snappedSayre. "I'm not a Hindoo god, so I can't cook everything at once. "

Langdon waked up still more. 

"I want to tell you, " he said fiercely, "that I'd rather gnaw circles ina daisy field than eat any more of your accursed fish-wafer. Do yourealise that I've already consumed six entire pads, one ledger, and twonote-books?"

Sayre struck frantically at a mosquito. 

"I wonder, " he said, "whether it might help matters to fry it?"

"That mosquito?"

"No, you idiot! A fish-wafer. "

"You'd better get busy and fry a few trout. "

"Where are they?"

"In some of these devilish brooks. It's up to you to catch a few. "

"Didn't I try?" demanded Sayre; "didn't I fish all the afternoon?"

"All I know about it is that you came back here last night with afarthest north story and no fish. You're an explorer, all right. "

"Look here, Curtis! Don't you believe I saw her?"

"Sure. When I fall asleep I sometimes see the same kind--all winners, too. "

"I was _not_ asleep!"

"You said yourself that you were dead tired of waiting for a trout tobecome peevish and bite. "

"I was. But I didn't fall asleep. I did see that girl. I watched her forseveral minutes. . . . Breakfast's ready. "

Langdon looked mournfully at the flapjacks. He picked up one which wasonly half scorched, buttered it, poured himself a cup of sickly coffee, and began to eat with an effort. 

"You say, " he began, "that you first noticed her when you were talkingout loud to yourself to keep yourself awake?"

"While waiting for a trout to bite, " said Sayre, swallowing a lump offood violently. "I was amusing myself by repeating aloud my poem, _Amourette_:

 "Where is the girl of yesterday? The kind that snuggled up? In vain I walk along Broadway-- Where is the girl of yesterday, Whose pretty----"

"All right! Go on with the facts!"

"Well, that's what I was repeating, " said Sayre, tartly, "and it's asgood verse as you can do!"

Langdon bit into another flapjack with resignation. Sayre swallowed a cupof coffee, dodging an immersed June-beetle. 

"I was just repeating that poem aloud, " he said, shuddering. "The woodswere very still--except for the flies and mosquitoes; sunlight lay warmand golden on the mossy tree-trunks----"

"Cut it. You're not on space rates. "

"I was trying to give you a picture of the scene----"

"You did; the local colour about the mosquitoes convinced me. Go on aboutthe girl. "

An obstinate expression hardened Sayre's face; the breeze stirred a lockon his handsome but prematurely bald forehead; he gazed menacingly at hiscompanion through his gold pince-nez. 

"I'll blue-pencil my own stuff, " he said. "If you want to hear how ithappened you'll listen to the literary part, too. "

"Go on, then, " said Langdon, sullenly. 

"I will. . . . The sunlight fell softly upon the trees of the ancientwood; bosky depths cast velvety shadows----"

"What is a bosky depth? What _is_ boskiness? By heaven, I've waited yearsto ask; and now's my chance? You tell me what 'bosky' is, or----"

"Do you want to hear about that girl?"

"Yes, but----"

"Then you fill your face full of flapjack and shut up. "

Langdon bit rabidly at a flapjack and beat the earth with his heels. 

"The stream, " continued Sayre, "purled. " He coldly watched the literaryeffect upon Langdon, then went on:

"Now, there's enough descriptive colour to give you a proper mentalpicture. If you had left me alone I'd have finished it ten minutes ago. The rest moves with accelerated rhythm. It begins with the cracking of astick in the forest. Hark! A sharp crack is----"

"Every bum novel begins that way. "

"Well, the real thing did, too! And it startled me. How did I know whatit might have been? It might have been a bear----"

"Or a cow. "

"You talk, " said Sayre angrily, "like William Dean Howells! Haven't you_any_ romance in you?"

"Not what _you_ call romance. Pass the flapjacks. "

Sayre passed them. 

"My attention, " he said, "instantly became riveted upon the bushes. Istrove to pierce them with a piercing glance. Suddenly----"

"Sure! 'Suddenly' always comes next. "

"Suddenly the thicket stirred; the leaves were stealthily parted;and----"

"A naked savage in full war paint----"

"Naked nothing! A young girl in full war paint and a perfectly fittinggown stepped noiselessly out. "

"Out of what? you gink!"

"The bushes, dammit! She held in her hand a curious contrivance which Icould not absolutely identify. It might have been a hammock; it mighthave been a fish-net. "

"Perhaps it was a combination, " suggested Langdon cheerfully. "Good idea;she to help you catch a trout; you to help her sit in the hammock;afterward----"

Sayre, absorbed in retrospection, squatted beside the fire, a burntflapjack suspended below his lips, which were slightly touched with atenderly reminiscent smile. 

"What are you smirking about _now_?" demanded Langdon. 

"She was _such_ a pretty girl, " mused Sayre, dreamily. 

"Did you sit in the hammock with her?"

"No, I didn't. I'm not sure it was a hammock. I don't know what it was. She remained in sight only a moment. "

"Didn't you speak to her?"

"No. . . . We just looked. She looked at me; I gazed at her. She was sounusually pretty, Curtis; and her grave, grey eyes seemed to meet mineand melt deep into me. Somehow----"

"In plainer terms, " suggested Langdon, "she gave you the eye. What?"

"That's a peculiarly coarse observation. "

"Then tell it your own way. "

"I will. The sunlight fell softly upon the trees of the ancient wood----"

"Woodn't that bark you!" shouted Langdon, furious. "Go on with the dollydialogue or I'll punch your head, you third-rate best seller!"

"But there was no dialogue, Curt. It began and ended in a duet ofsilence, " he added sentimentally. 

"Didn't you say anything? Didn't you try to make a date? Aren't you goingto see her again?"

"I don't know. I am not sure what sweet occult telepathy might havepassed between us, Curtis. . . . Somehow I believe that all is not yetended. . . . . Pass the pork! . . . I like to think that somehow, someday, somewhere----"

"Stop that! You're ending it the way women end short stories in thethirty-five-centers. What I want to know is, why you think that yourencounter with this girl has anything to do with our finding ReginaldWillett. "

There was a basin of warm water simmering on the ashes; Sayre used it asa finger-bowl, dried his hands on his shirt, lighted his pipe, and thenslowly drew from his hip pocket a flat leather pocket-book. "Curt, " hesaid, "I'm not selfish. I'm perfectly willing to share glory with you. You know that, don't you?"

"Sure, " muttered Langdon. "You're a bum cook, but otherwise moralenough. "

Sayre opened the pocket-book and produced a photograph. 

"Everybody who is searching for Willett, " he said, "examined the fewclues he left. Like hundreds of others, you and I, when we first enteredthese woods, went to his camp on Gilded Dome, prowled all over it, andexamined the camera which had been picked up in the trail, didn't we?"

"We did. It was a sad scene--his distracted old father----"

"H'm! Did you see his distracted old father, Curt?"

"I? No, of course not. Like everybody else, I respected the grief of thataged and stricken gentleman----"

"_I_ didn't. "

"Hey? Why, you yellow dingo----"

"Curt, as I was snooping about the Italian Garden I happened to glance upat the mansion--I mean the camp--and I saw by the window a rather jollyold buck with a waxed moustache and a monocle, smoking a good cigar andperusing his after-breakfast newspaper. A gardener told me that thistranquil old bird was Willett Senior, who had arrived the evening beforefrom Europe via New York. So I went straight into that house and Idisregarded the butler, second man, valet, and seven assorted servants;and Mr. Willett Senior heard the noise and came to the dining-room door. 'Well, what the devil's the matter?' he said. I said: 'I only want toask you one question, sir. Why are you not in a state of terrible mentalagitation over the tragic disappearance of your son?'

"'Because, ' he replied, coolly, 'I know my son, Reginald. If thenewspapers and the public will let him alone he'll come back when he getsready. '

"'Are you not alarmed?'

"'Not in the least. '

"'Then why did you return from Europe and hasten up here?'

"'Too many newspaper men hanging around. ' He glanced insultingly at thesilver. 

"I let that go. 'Mr. Willett, ' I said, 'they found your son's camera onthe trail. Your butler exhibits it to the police and reporters and tellsthem a glib story. He told it to me, also. But what I want to know is, why nobody has thought of developing the films. '

"'My butler, ' said Mr. Willett, eyeing me, 'did develop the films. '

"'Was there anything on them?'

"'Some trees. '

"'May I see them?'

"He scrutinised me. 

"'After you've seen them will you take your friend and go away andremain?' he asked wearily. 

"'Yes, ' I said. 

"He walked into the breakfast room, opened a silver box, and returnedwith half a dozen photographs. The first five presented as many views offoliage; I used a jeweller's glass on them, but discovered nothing else. "

"Was there anything to jar you on the sixth photograph?" inquiredLangdon, interested. 

Sayre made an impressive gesture; he was a trifle inclined toward thepicturesque and histrionic. 

"Curt, on the ground under a tree in the sixth photograph lay somethingwhich, until last evening, did not seem to me important. " He pauseddramatically. 

"Well, what was it? A bandersnatch?" asked Langdon irritably. 

"Examine it!"

Langdon took the photograph. "It looks like a--a hammock. "

"What that girl held in her hand last night resembled a hammock. "

"Hey?"

Sayre leaned over his shoulder and laid the stem of his pipe on theextreme edge of the photograph. 

"If you look long enough and hard enough, " he said, "you will just beable to make out the vague outline of a slender human hand among theleaves, holding the end of the hammock. See it?"

Langdon looked long and steadily. Presently he fished out a jeweller'sglass, screwed it into his eye, and looked again. 

"Do you think that's a human hand?"

"I do. "

"It's a slim one--a child's, or a young girl's. "

"It is. _She_ had be-u-tiful hands. "

"Who?"

"That girl I saw last evening. "

Langdon slowly turned and looked at Sayre. 

"Well, what do you make of it?"

"Nothing yet--except a million different little romances. "

"Of course, you'd do that anyway. But what scientific inference do youdraw? Here's a thing that looks like a hammock lying on the ground. Oneend seems to be lifted; perhaps that _is_ a hand. Well, what about it?"

"I'm going to find out. "

"How?"

"By--fishing, " said Sayre quietly, rising and picking up his rod. 

"You're going back there in hopes of----"

"In hopes. "

After a silence Langdon said: "You say she was unusually pretty?"

"Unusually. "

"Shall I--go with you, William?"

"No, " said Sayre coldly. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

III

SAYRE had been fishing for some time with the usual result when theslightest rustle of foliage caught his ear. He looked up. She wasstanding directly behind him. 

He got to his feet immediately and pulled off his cap. That was too bad;he was better looking with it on his head. 

"I wondered whether you'd come again, " he said, so simply and naturallythat the girl, whose grey eyes had become intent on his scanty hair witha surprised and pained expression, looked directly into his smiling andagreeable face. 

"Did you come to fish this pool?" he asked. "You are very welcome to. _I_can't catch anything. "

"Why do you think that I am out fishing?" she asked in a curiously clear, still voice--very sweet and young--but a voice that seemed to grow out ofthe silence instead of to interrupt it. 

"You are fishing, are you not? or at least you came here to fish lastevening?" he said. 

"Why do you think so?"

"You had a net. "

He expected her to say that it was a hammock which she was trailingthrough the woods in search of two convenient saplings on which to hangit. 

She said: "Yes, it was a net. "

"Did my being here drive you away from your favourite pool?"

She looked at him candidly. "You are not a sportsman, are you?"

"N--no, " he admitted, turning red. "Why?"

"People who take trout in nets are fined and imprisoned. "

"Oh! But you _said_ you had a net. "

"It wasn't a fish net. "

He waited. She offered no further explanation. Sometimes she looked athim, rather gravely, he thought; sometimes she looked at the stream. There was not the slightest hint of embarrassment in her manner as shestood there--a straight, tall, young thing, grey-eyed, red-lipped, slim, with that fresh slender smoothness of youth; clad in grey wool, hatless, thick burnished hair rippling into a heavy knot at the nape of thewhitest neck he had ever seen. 

The stiller she stood, apparently wrapped in serious inwardcontemplation, the stiller he remained, as though the spell of her sereneself-absorption consigned him to silence. Once he ventured, stealthily, to smack a mosquito, but at the echoing whack there was, in her slowlyturned face, the calm surprise of a disturbed goddess; and he felt likesaying "excuse me. "

"Do they bite you?" she asked, lifting her divine eyebrows a trifle. 

"Bite me! Good heavens, don't they bite you? But I don't suppose theydare----"

"What?"

"I didn't mean 'dare' exactly, " he tried to explain, feeling his earsturning a fiery red, and wondering why on earth he should have made sucha foolish remark. 

"What _did_ you mean?"

"N--nothing. I don't know. I say things and--and sometimes, " he added ina burst of confidence, "they don't seem to _mean_ anything at all. " Tohimself he groaned through ground teeth: "What an ass I am. What on earthis the matter with me?"

She considered him in silence, candidly; and redder and redder grew hisears as he saw that she was quietly inspecting him from head to foot withan interest perfectly unembarrassed, innocently intent upon herinspection. 

Then, having finished him down to his feet, she lifted her eyes, caughthis, looked a moment straight into them, then sighed a little. 

"Do you know, " she said, "I ought not to have come here again. "

"Why?" he asked, astonished. 

"There's no use in my telling you. There was no use in my coming. Oh, Irealise that perfectly well now. And I think I'd better go----"

She lingered a moment, glanced at the stream running gold in theafternoon light, then turned away, bidding him good-bye in a low voice. 

"Are you g-going?" he blurted out, not knowing exactly what he wassaying. 

She moved on in silence. He looked after her. A perfectly illogicalfeeling of despair overwhelmed him. 

"For Heaven's sake, don't go away!" he said. 

She moved on a pace, another, more slowly, hesitated, halted, leisurelylooked back over her shoulder. 

"What did you say?" she asked. 

"I said--I said--I said----" but he began to stammer fearfully and couldget no farther. 

Perhaps she thought he was threatened with some kind of seizure; anyway, something about him apparently interested her enough to slowly retraceher steps. 

"What is the matter, Mr. Sayre?" she asked. 

"Why, _that's_ funny!" he said; "you know my name?"

"Yes, I know your name. "

"Could--would--should--might----" he could get no farther. 

"What?"

"M-might I--would it be--could you----"

"Are you trying to ask me what is _my_ name?"

"Yes, " he said; "did you think I was reciting a lesson in grammar?"

Suddenly the rare smile played delicately along the edges of her upcurledmouth. 

"No, " she said, "I knew you were embarrassed. It wasn't nice of me. But, "and her face grew grave, "there is no use in my telling you my name. "

"Why?"

"Because we shall not meet again. "

"Won't you ever let me--give me a chance--because--you know, somehow--seeing you yesterday--and to-day--this way----"

"Yes, I know what you mean. "

"Do you?"

"Yes. _I_ came back, too, " she said seriously. 

A strange, inexplicable tingling pervaded him. 

"You came--came----"

"Yes. I should not have done it, because I saw you perfectly plainlyyesterday. But--somehow I hoped--somehow----"

"What!"

"That there had been a mistake. "

"You thought you knew me?"

"Oh, no. I knew perfectly well I had never before seen you. That made nodifference. It wasn't that. But I thought--hoped--I had made a mistake. In fact, " she said, with a slight effort, "I was dishonest with myself. Iknew all the time that it was useless. And as soon as I saw you with yourcap off----"

"W-what!" he faltered. 

A slight blush, perfectly distinct in her creamy skin, grew, then waned. 

"I am sorry, " she said. "Of course, you do not understand what I amsaying; and I can not explain. . . . And I think I had--better--go. "

"Please don't. "

"That is an added reason for my going. "

"What is?"

"Your saying 'please don't. '"

He looked at her, bewildered, and slowly passed his hand across his eyes. 

"Somehow, " he said, "this is all like magic to me. Here in the wildernessI hear a stick crack----"

"I meant you to hear it. I could have moved without a sound. "

"And, looking up, I see the most beautif--I see--you. Then I dream ofyou. "

"_Did_ you?"

"Every moment--between mosquitoes! And then to-day I returned, hoping. "

She lost a trifle of her colour. 

"Hoping--what?"

"T-t-to s-s-see you, " he stammered. 

"I _must_ go, " she said under her breath, almost hurriedly; "this muststop _now_!"

"Won't you--can't you--couldn't I----"

"No. No--no--no--Mr. Sayre. "

He said: "I've simply got to see you again. I know what I'masking--saying--hoping--wishing--isn't usual--conventional--advisable, b-b-but I can't help it. "

Standing there facing him she slowly shook her head. 

"There is no use, " she said. "It is perfectly horrid of me to have comeback. I somehow was afraid--from the expression of your faceyesterday----"

"Afraid of what?"

She hesitated; then, lifting her grey eyes, fearlessly:

"Afraid that you might wish to see me again. . . . Because I felt thesame way. "

"Do you mean, " he cried, "that I--that you--that we--Oh, Lord! I'm noteloquent, but every faltering, stuttering, stammering, fool of a word I_do_ say means a million things----"

"Oh, I know it, Mr. Sayre. I know it. I have no business here; I _must_not remain----"

"If you go, you know I'll do some absurd thing--like poking my head underwater and holding it there, or walking backward off that ledge. Do youknow--if you should suddenly go away now, and if that ended it----"

"Ended--what?"

"You know, " he said. 

She may have known, for she stood very still, with head lowered anddowncast eyes. As for Sayre, what common sense he possessed had gone. Thethrilling unreality of it all--the exquisite irrational, illogicalintoxication of the moment--her beauty--the mystery of her--and of thestill, sunlit woods, had made of them both, and the forest world aroundthem, an enchanted dream which he was living, every breath a rapture, every heart-beat an excited summons from the occult. 

"Mr. Sayre, " she said, with an effort, "I shall not tell you my name; butif you ever again should happen to think of me, think of my name as thename of the girl in that poem which I heard you reciting yesterday. "

"Amourette?"

"Yes. That was the name of the poem and of the girl. You may call meAmourette--when you are thinking of me alone by yourself. "

"Did you like that poem?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because--I wrote it. "

"You!" She lost a little of her colour. 

"Yes, " he said, "I wrote it--Amourette. "

"Then--then I had better go away as fast as I can, " she murmured. 

With an enraptured smile verging perilously upon the infatuated, if notfatuous, he repeated her name aloud; and she looked at him out of softgrey eyes that seemed at once fascinated and distressed. 

"Please let me go, " she said. 

He was not detaining her. 

"Won't you?" she asked, pitifully. 

"No, I won't, " said William Sayre, suddenly invaded by an instinct thathe possessed authority in the matter. "We must talk this thing over. "

"Oh, but there isn't any use--really, truly there isn't! Won't youbelieve me?"

"No, " he said as honestly as he could through the humming exaltation thatsang in him until, to himself, he sounded like a beehive. 

There was a fallen log all over moss behind her. 

"We ought to be seated to properly consider this matter, " he said. 

"I must not think of it! I must go instantly. "

When they were seated, and he had nearly twisted his head off trying tomeet her downcast eyes, he resumed a normal and less parrot-like posture, and folded his arms portentously. 

"To begin, " he said, "I came here fishing. I heard a stick crack----"

She looked up. 

"_That_ was my fault. It was all my fault. I don't know how I ever cameto do it. I never did such a thing in my life. We merely heard that youand Mr. Langdon were in the woods----"

"_Who_ heard?"

"We. Never mind the others. I'll say that _I_ heard you were here. And--and I took my--my net and came to--to----"

"To what?"

"To--investigate. "

"Investigate what? _Me_?"

"Y-yes. I can't explain. But I came, honestly, naturally, unsuspiciously. And as soon as I saw you I was quite sure that you were not what--whatcertain people wanted, even if you were the author of _Amourette_----"

[Illustration: "'To begin, ' he said, 'I came here fishing. '"]

"_I_ was not what _you_ wanted?" he repeated, bewildered. 

"I mean that--that you were not what--what _they_ required----"

"They? Who are _they_? And what, in Heaven's name, did 'they' require?"

"I don't want to tell you, Mr. Sayre. All I shall say is that I knewimmediately that they didn't want _you_, because you are not up to theUniversity standard. And you won't understand that. I ought to have gonequietly away. . . . I don't know why I didn't. I was so interested inlistening to you recite, and in looking at you. I loved your poem, _Amourette_. . . . And two hours slipped by----"

"You stood there in the bushes looking at _me_ for two hours, _and_listening to my poem--and _liking_ it?"

"Yes, I did. . . . I don't know why. . . . And then, somehow, without anyapparent reason, I wanted you to see _me_ . . . Without any apparentreason . . . And so I stepped on a dry stick. . . . And to-day I cameback . . . Without any apparent reason. . . . I don't know what on earthhas happened to make me--make me--forget----"

"Forget what?"

"Everything--except----"

"Except what?"

She looked up at him with clear grey eyes, a trifle daunted. 

"Forget everything except that I--like you, Mr. Sayre. "

He said: "That is the sweetest and most fearless thing a woman ever said. I am absurdly happy over it. "

She waited, looking down at her linked fingers. 

"And, " he said, "for the first time in all my life I have cared more forwhat a woman has said to me than I care for anything on earth. "

There was a good deal of the poet in William Sayre. 

"Do you mean it?" she asked, tremulously. 

"I mean more. "

"I--I think you had better not say--more. "

"Why?"

"Because of what I told you. There is no use in your--your findingme--interesting. "

"Are you married?" he asked, so guilelessly that she blushed and deniedit with haste. 

His head was spinning in a sea of pink clouds. Harps were playingsomewhere; it may have been the breeze in the pines. 

"Amourette, " he repeated in a sort of divine daze. 

"I am--going, " she said, in a low voice. 

"Do you desire to render me miserable for life?" he asked so seriouslythat at first she scarcely realised what he had said. Then blush andpallor came and went; she caught her breath, looked up at him, beseechingly. 

"Everything is wrong, " she said in the ghost of a voice. "Things arehurrying me--trying to drive me headlong. I must go. Let me go, now. "

And she sat very still, and closed her eyes. A second later she openedthem. 

"Why did you come?" she asked almost fiercely. "There was no use in it!Why did you come into these woods for that foolish newspaper? By thistime the Associated Press, the police, and the families of the men youare looking for have received letters from every one of the four missingyoung men, saying that they are perfectly well and happy and expect toreturn--after their honeymoons. "

Flushed, excited, beautiful in her animation, she faced the astoundedyoung man who stared at her wildly through his eye-glasses. 

After a while he managed to ask whether she wished him to believe thatthese four young men had each eloped with their soul mates. 

She bit her lip. "To be accurate, " she said in a low voice, "somebodyeloped with each one of them. "

"How? I don't understand!"

"I don't wish you to. . . . Good-bye. "

"You mean, " he demanded, incredulously, "that four girls ran away withthese four big, hulking young men?"

"Practically. "

"That's ridiculous! Besides, it's impossible! Besides--women don't runmen off like cattle rustlers. Man is the active agent in elopements, woman the passive agent. "

She did not answer. 

"Isn't she?"

She made no reply. 

He said: "Amourette, shall I illustrate what I mean--with you as thepassive agent?"

The girl bent over a little, then with a sudden movement she dropped herhead in her hands. A moment later he saw a single tear fall between herfingers. 

He looked east, west, north, south, and finally up into the sky. Seeingnobody, the silly expression left his otherwise interesting face; agraver, gentler light grew in his eyes. And he put one arm around hersupple waist. 

"Something is dreadfully wrong, " he said; "all this must beexplained--our strange encounter, our speaking, our talking at crosspurposes, our candid interest in each other--the sudden, swift, unfeignedfriendship that was born the instant that our eyes encountered----"

"I know it. It _was_ born. Oh, I know it. I _know_ it, and I could nothelp it--somehow--somehow----"

"It--it was almost like--like--love at first sight, " he whispered. 

"It was--something like it--I am afraid----"

"Do you think it _was_ love?"

"I don't know. . . . Do you?"

"I don't know. . . . You mustn't cry. Put your head down--here. Youmustn't be distressed. "

"I am, dreadfully. "

"You mustn't be. "

"I can't help it--now. "

"Could you help it if you--loved me?"

"Oh, no! Oh, no! It would distress me beyond measure to--to love you. Oh, it must not be--it must not happen to me----"

"It is already happening to _me_. "

"Don't let it! Don't let it happen to either of us! Please--please----"

"But--it _is_ happening all the while, Amourette. "

She drew a swift, startled sigh. 

"Is _that_ what it is that is happening to me, too, Mr. Sayre?"

"Yes. I think so. "

"Oh, oh, _oh_!" she sobbed, hiding her face closer to his shoulder. 

"Amourette! Darling! Dea----"

"L-listen. Because now I've got to tell you all about the disappearanceof those perfectly horrid young specimens of physical perfection. Andafter that you will abhor me!"

"Abhor _you_! Dearest--dearest and most divine of women!"

"Wait!" she sobbed. "I've got myself and you into the most awful scrapeyou ever dreamed of by falling in love with you at first sight!"

And she turned her face closer to his shoulder and slipped one desperatelittle hand into his. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

IV

ABOUT two o'clock that afternoon Sayre rushed into camp with his scantyhair on end. 

Langdon, who had been attempting to boil a blank-book for dinner, gazedat him in consternation. 

"What is it? Bears, William?" he asked fearfully. "D-d-don't bef-f-frightened; I'll stand by you. "

"It isn't bears, you simp! I've just unearthed the most colossalconspiracy of the century! Curtis, things are happening in these woodsthat are incredible, abominable, horrible----"

"_What_ is happening?" faltered Langdon, turning paler. "Murder?"

"Worse! They've got Willett and the others! She admitted it to me----"

"Hey?"

"Willett and Carrick and the others!" shouted Sayre, gesticulating. "They've caught 'em all! She said so! I----"

"They? She? Who's caught what? Who's 'they'? What it is? Who's 'she'?What are you talking about, anyway?"

"Amourette told me----"

"Amourette? Who the deuce is Amourette?"

"I don't know. Shut up! My head's spinning like a gyroscope. All I knowis that I want to marry her and she won't let me--and I believe she wouldif I had a reliable hair-restorer and wasn't near-sighted--but she ranaway and got inside the fence and locked the gate. "

"Are you drunk?" demanded Langdon, "or merely frolicsome?"

"_I_ don't know. I guess I am. I'm about everything else. What do I knowabout anything anyway? Nothing!"

He began to run around in circles; Langdon, having seen similar symptomsin demented cats, regarded him with growing alarm. 

"I tell you it's an outrageous social condition which tolerates suchdoings!" shouted Sayre. "It's a perfectly monstrous state of things! Ninehandsome men out of ten are fatheads! I told her so! I tried to point outto her--but she wouldn't listen--she wouldn't listen!"

Langdon stared at him, jaw agape. Then:

"Quit that ghost-dancing and talk sense, " he ventured. 

"Do you think that men are going to stand for it?" yelled Sayre, wavinghis hands, "ordinary, decent, God-fearing, everyday young men like youand me? If this cataclysmic cult gains ground among American women--ifthese exasperating suffragettes really intend to carry out any suchprogramme, everybody on earth will resemble everybody else--like thosewax figures marked 'neat, ' 'imported, ' and 'nobby'! And I told Amourettethat, too; but she wouldn't listen--she wouldn't lis--My God! _Why_ am Ibald?"

He swung his arms like a pair of flails and advanced distractedly uponLangdon, who immediately retreated. 

"Come back here, " he said. "I want to picture to you the horrors that aregoing on in your native land! You ought to know. You've got to know!"

"Certainly, old man, " quavered Langdon, keeping a tree between them. "Butdon't come any closer or I'll scream. "

"Do you think I'm nutty?"

"Oh, not at all--not _at_ all, " said Langdon soothingly. "Probably thewafers disagreed with you. "

"Curtis, wouldn't it rock any man's equilibrium to fall head over heelsin love with a girl inside of ten minutes? I merely ask you, man to man. "

"It sure would, dear friend----"

"And then to see that divine girl almost ready to love you in return--seeit perfectly, plainly? And have her tell you that she could learn to carefor you if your hair wasn't so thin and you didn't wear eye-glasses? ByJinks! That was _too_ much! I'll leave it to you--_wasn't_ it?"

Langdon swallowed hard and watched his friend fixedly. 

"And then, " continued Sayre, grinding his teeth, "_then_ she told meabout Willett!"

"Hey?"

"Oh, the whole thing is knocked in the head from a newspaper standpoint. They've all written home. They're married--or on the point of it----"

"What!"

"But that isn't what bothers me. What do I care about this job, or anyother job, since I've seen the only girl on earth that I could ever stayhome nights for! And to think that she ran away from me and I'm never tosee her again because I'm near-sighted and partly bald!"

He waved his arms distractedly. 

"But, by the gods and demons!" he cried, "I'm not going to stand for hergoing hunting with that man-net! If she catches any insufferable pup init I'll go insane!"

Langdon's eyes rolled and he breathed heavily. 

"Old man, " he ventured, kindly, "don't you think you'd better lie downand try to take a nice little nap----"

Sayre instantly chased him around the tree and caught him. 

"Curt, " he said savagely, "get over the idea that there's anything thematter with me mentally except love and righteous indignation. I _am_ inlove; and it hurts. I'm indignant, because those people are treating mysex with an outrageous and high-handed effrontery that would bring theblush of impotent rage to any masculine cheek!"

"What people?" said the other warily. "You needn't answer till you getyour wits back. "

"They're back, Curt; that twelve-foot fence of heavy elephant-proof wirewhich we noticed in the forest day before yesterday isn't the fencing toa game park. It encloses a thousand acres belonging to the New RaceUniversity. Did you know that?"

"What's The New Race University?" asked Langdon, astonished. 

"You won't believe it--but, Curtis, it's a reservation for the--thep-p-propagation of a new and s-s-symmetrically p-p-proportioned race ofg-g-god-like human beings! It's a deliberate attempt at cold-bloodedscientific selection--an insult to every bald-headed, near-sighted, thin-shanked young man in the United States!"

"William, " said the other, coaxingly, "you had better lie down and let memake some wafer soup for you. "

"You listen to me. I'm getting calmer now. I want to tell you about theseNew Race women and their University and Amourette and Reginald Willettand the whole devilish business. "

"Is there--is there really such a thing, William? You would not tell me abind like that just to make a goat of me, would you?"

"No, I wouldn't. There _is_ such a thing. "

"Did you see it?"

"No, I----"

"How do you know?"

"Amourette told me--shamelessly, defiantly, adorably! It was organised insecret out of the most advanced and determined as well as the mosthealthy, vigorous, and physically beautiful of all the suffragettes inNorth America. One of their number happened to own a thousand acres herebefore the State took the rest for its park. And here they have come, dozens and dozens of them--to attend the first summer session of the NewRace University. "

"Is--is there actually a University in these woods?"

"There is. "

"Buildings?" demanded Langdon, amazed. 

"No, burrows. Isn't that the limit? Curt, believe me, they live in caves. It's their idea of being vigorous and simple and primitive. Their cult isthe cave woman. They have classes; they study and recite and exercise andcook and play auction bridge. Their object is to hasten not onlypolitical enfranchisement, but the era of a physical and intellectualequality which will permit them to mate as they choose and people thisrepublic with perfect progeny. Every girl there is pledged to mate onlywith the very pick of physical masculine perfection. Their pledge is tobuild up a new, god-like race on earth, which ultimately will dominate, crush out, survive, and replace all humanity which has becomedegenerate. Nothing mentally or physically or politically imperfect ispermitted inside that wire fence. My eye-glasses bar me out; your shanksexclude you--also your politics, because you're a democrat. "

"That's monstrous!" exclaimed Langdon, indignantly. 

"More monstrous still, these disciples of the New Race movement aremilitant! Their audacity is unbelievable! Certain ones among them, adeptsin woodcraft, have now begun to range this forest with nets. What do youthink of that! And when they encounter a young fellow who agrees with theremorseless standard of perfection set up by the University, they stalkhim and net him! They've got four so far. And now it's Amourette's turnto go out!"

Langdon's teeth chattered. 

"W-w-what are they g-going to do with their captures?"

"Marry them!"

"Willett? And Carrick and----"

"Yes. Isn't it awful, Curt?"

"Was she the girl with the net in the photo? I mean, was that her hand?"

"No; that was a friend of her's who bagged Willett. Amourette started outyesterday for the first time after--well, I suppose you'd call it 'biggame. ' She saw me, stalked me, got near enough to see my glasses, and letme go. And to-day, thinking that she might have been mistaken and thatperhaps I only wore sun-glasses, she came back. But I was ass enough totake off my cap to her, and she saw my hair--saw where it wasn't--andthat settled it. "

"What a mortifying thing to happen to you, William. "

"I should think so. There's nothing unusual the matter with me. Cæsar wasbald. It's idiotic to bar a man out because he has fewer hairs than thenext man. And the exasperating part of it is that I believe I could winher if I had half a chance. "

"Of course you could. If she's any good as a sport, she'd rather haveyou, hairless myopiac that you are, than a tailor's dummy. "

Sayre said: "Isn't it a terrible thing, Curtis, to think of that sweet, lovely young girl pledged to a scientific life like that? P-pledged top-p-propagate p-p-perfection?"

"What a mean-spirited creature that fellow Willett must be, " observedLangdon in disgust; "and the other three--Ugh!"

"Why?"

"To tamely submit to being kidnapped and woo'd and wed that way--endurethe degradation of a captivity among all those young girls----"

Sayre said: "Would _you_ call for help if kidnapped?"

Langdon gazed into space: "I wonder, " he murmured. 

Sayre looked at him searchingly. 

"I don't believe you'd make the welkin ring with your yelps. It'sprobably the same with those four men. "

"Probably. "

"I don't suppose those suffragettes of the New Race University reallyrequire any fence there to keep those men in. "

"No; only to keep the rest of us out. "

"The chances are that Willett and that poet Carrick and De Lancy Smithand Alphonso W. Green couldn't be chased out of that University. "

"Those _are_ the chances. How I hate those four men. It's curious, William, that no man can ever tolerate the idea of any other man evergetting solid with any looker. I always did dislike to see another manwith a pretty girl. . . . William?"

"What?"

"Think of the concentrated beauty in that University! Think of that richround-up of creamy dreams! Consider that mellifluous marmalade! And--wecan't have any--because _you_ are slightly bald and near-sighted and _I_am thin and scholarly!" He ran at the camp-kettle and kicked it. 

After a painful silence Sayre said timidly: "Don't laugh, but _is_ thereany known substance which will bring in hair?"

"You mean bring it out?"

"Well, dammit, grow it! Is there?"

"There are too many bald monarchs and millionaires to prove the contrary. Nor is there anything that can make my thin shanks fatter. "

"--I'd be willing to go about without glasses, " said Sayre humbly. "Itold her so. "

"Couldn't you deceive her with a wig? It wouldn't matter afterward. Afteryou're once married let her shriek. "

"Amourette _saw_ my head. " And he hung it in bitter dejection. 

"Come on, " said Langdon cheerily. "Let's peek through their fence and seewhat happens. Much has been done with a merry eye in this world ofhaughty ladies. "

As they turned away into the woods Sayre clenched his fists. 

"I'd like to knock the collective blocks off those four young men insidethat fence. And--to think--to _think_ of Amourette going out againto-morrow, man hunting, with her net! I can't endure it, Curt--I simplycan't. "

Langdon looked at his friend in deep commiseration. 

"I wish I could help you, William--but I don'tsee--I--don't--exactly--see----" He hesitated. "Of course I _could_ go toUtica and pay a wig-maker and costumer to make me up into the kind ofCharlie-Gussie they're looking for at that University. . . . And whenyour best girl goes out hunting, she'll see me and net me, and you can bein hiding near by, and rush out and net her. "

In their excitement they seized each other and danced. 

"Why not?" exclaimed Langdon. "Shall I try? Trust me to come back aspecimen of sickening symmetry--the kind of man women write about anddraw pictures of--pink and white and silky-whiskered! Shall I? And I'llbring you a net to catch her in! Is it a go, William?"

Sayre broke down and began to cry. 

"Heaven bless you, friend, " he sobbed. "And if ever I get that girlinside a net she'll learn something about natural selection that theyp-p-probably forgot to teach in their accursed New Race University!"

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

V

ONE week later Curtis Langdon sat on the banks of a trout stream fishing, apparently deeply absorbed in his business; but he was listening so hardthat his ears hurt him. 

A few yards away, ambushed behind a rock on which was painted "Votes forWomen, " lurked William Sayre. A net lay on the ground beside him, fashioned with ring and detachable handle like a gigantic butterfly net. 

He, too, tremendously excited, was listening and watching the humanbait--Langdon being cast for the bait. 

Perfect and nauseating beauty now marked that young gentleman. Featuresand figure were symmetrical; his eyebrows had been pencilled into exactarcs, his mouth was a Cupid's bow, his cheeks were softly rosy, and asilky and sickly moustache shadowed his rosy lips. Under his fashionableouting shirt he wore a rubber chest improver; his cunningly paddedshoulders recalled the exquisite sartorial creations of Mart, Haffner, and Sharx; his patent puttees gave him a calf to which his personalshanks had never aspired; thick, golden-brown hair, false as a woman'svows, was tossed carelessly from a brow, snowy with pearl powder. And hewore a lilac-edged handkerchief in his left cuff. 

Both young men truly felt that if any undergraduate of the New RaceUniversity was out stalking she'd have at least one try at such a bait. Nothing feminine and earnest could resist that glutinous agglomeration ofcharms. 

But they had now been there since before dawn; nothing had broken thesun-lit quiet of forest and water, not even a trout; and they listenedin vain for the snapping of the classical twig. 

Lunch time came; they ate a pad apiece. Neither dared to smoke, Sayrebecause it might reveal his hiding place, Langdon because smoking mightbe considered an imperfection in the University. 

Sunlight fell warm on the banks of the stream, the leaves rustled, bigwhite clouds floated in the blue above. Nothing came near Langdon excepta few mosquitoes, who couldn't bite through the make-up; and a small andinquisitive bird that inspected him with disdain and said, "cheep--che-ep!" so many times that Langdon took it as a personal commentand almost blushed. 

He thought to himself: "If it wasn't that William is actually becomingill over his unhappy love affair I'm damned if I'd let even a dicky-birdsee me in this rig. Ugh! What a head of hair! The average girl's ideal iswhat every healthy man wants to kick. I wouldn't blame any decent fellowfor booting me into the brook on sight. "

He bit into his pad and sat chewing reflectively and dabbling his line inthe water. 

"Poor old William, " he mused. "This business is likely to end us both. Ifwe stay here we lose our jobs; if we go back William is likely toincrease the nut crop. I never supposed men took love as seriously asthat. I've heard that it sometimes occurred--what is it Shakespeare says:'How Love doth make nuts of us all!'"

He chewed his pad and swung his feet, philosophically. 

"Why the devil doesn't some girl come and try to steal a kiss?" hemuttered. "It might perhaps be well to call their attention to myhelpless presence and unguarded condition. "

So he sang for a while, swinging his legs: "Somebody's watching andwaiting for me!" munching his luncheon between verses; and, as nobodycame, he bawled louder and louder the refrain: "Somebody's darling, darling, dah-ling!" until a hoarse voice from behind the rock silencedhim:

"Shut up that hurdy-gurdy voice of yours! A defect like that will countten points against you! Can it!"

"Oh, very well, " said Langdon, offended; "but everybody doesn't feel theway you do about music. "

Silence resumed her classical occupation in the forest; the streamcontinued to sparkle and make its own kind of music; the trout, havingbecome accustomed to the queer thing on the bank and the baited hookamong the pebbles, gathered in the ripples stemming the current withwinnowing fins. 

A very young rabbit sat up in a fern patch and examined Langdon withdark, moist eyes. He sat there for several minutes, and might haveremained for several more if a sound, unheard by Langdon and by Sayre, had not set the bunch of whiskers on his restless nose twitching, andsent him scurrying off over the moss. 

The sound was no sound to human ears; Langdon heard it not; Sayre, drowsyin the scented heat, dozed behind his rock. 

A shadow fell across the moss; then another; two slim shapes movedstealthily among the trees across the brook. 

For ten minutes the foremost figure stood looking at Langdon. Occasionally she used an opera glass, which, from time to time, shepassed back over her shoulder to her companion. 

"Ethra, " she whispered at last, "he seems to be practically perfect. "

"I'm wondering about those puttees, dear--shanks in puttees aredeceptive. "

"Those are exquisite calves, " said Amourette sadly. "I'm sure they'llmeasure up to regulation. And his chest seems up to proof. "

"What beautiful eyebrows, " murmured Ethra. 

But Amourette found no pleasure in them, nor in the golden-brown hair, nor the bloom of youth and perfect health pervading their unconsciousquarry. Perhaps she was thinking of a certain near-sighted, thin-hairedyoung man--and how she had slammed the gate of the wire fence in hisface--_after_ their first kiss. 

She drew a deep, painful breath and lifted her head resolutely. 

"I suppose I'd better begin to stalk him, Ethra, " she said. 

"Yes; he's a very good specimen. Be careful, dear. Strike a circle andcome up behind him. When you're ready, mew like a cat-bird and I'll lethim catch a glimpse of me. And as soon as he begins to--to rubber, " shesaid, with a haughty glance at the unconscious angler, "steal up and nethim, and I'll come across and help tie him up. "

Amourette sighed, standing there irresolute. Then she straightened herdrooping shoulders, seized her net very firmly, and, with infinitecaution, began to stalk her quarry. 

Once the stalking had fairly begun, the girl became absorbed in the game. All memory of Sayre, if there indeed had been any to make her falter inher purpose, now departed. She was a huntress pure and simple, silent, furtive, adroit, intent upon her quarry. There came a kind of fiercenessinto her concentration; the joy of the chase thrilled her as she creptnoiselessly through the woods, describing a circle, crossing the streamfar above the sleepy fisherman, gliding, stealing nearer, nearer, untilat length she stood in the thicket behind him. 

For a moment she waited silently, freeing her net and gathering it in herright hand ready for a deadly cast. Then, pursing up her red lips, shemewed like a cat-bird, three times. 

Instantly, across the stream, she saw Ethra step out of the willows intoplain view; saw Langdon wake up, stare, get up, and regard the beautifulvision across the stream with concentrated and delighted attention. 

Then Amourette stole swiftly forward over the moss, swinging the heavysilken net in her right hand, closer, closer. Suddenly the net whistledin the air, glistened, lengthened, and fell, enmeshing Langdon; and, atthe same instant something behind her whistled and fell slap; and shefound herself struggling in the folds of an enormous butterfly net. 

"Ethra! Help!" she cried, terrified, trying to keep her balance in theweb which enveloped her, striving to tear a way free through the meshes;but she was only wrapped up the tighter; two brutal masculine arms liftedher, held her cradled and entangled, freed the handle from the net, andbore her swiftly away. 

"Darling, " whispered William Sayre, "d-don't kick. "

"_You_!" she gasped, struggling frantically. 

"The real thing, dearest of women! The old-fashioned, original cave man. Will you come quietly? There's a license bureau in the next village. Orshall I be obliged to keep right on carrying you?"

"Oh, oh, _oh_!" she sobbed; "what disgrace! what humiliation; what shame!Oh, Ethra! Ethra! What in the world am I to do?"

"That's where the mistake arose, " said William gently; "_you_ don't haveto do anything--except put both arms around my neck and--be careful notto knock off my glasses. "

"_Glasses_! Ethra! Ethra! Where are you? Don't you see what is becomingof me? You--you had b-better hurry, too, " she added with a sob, "becausethe man who is carrying me off is the man I told you about. _Ethra_!Where are you?"

A convenient echo replied in similar terms. Meanwhile Sayre was walkingfaster and faster through the woods. 

For a while she lay motionless and silent, cradled in his arms. And aftera long, long time she tried feebly to adjust the disordered ondulationson her hair. 

Then a very small, still voice said:

"Mr. Sayre?"

"Darling!"

She seemed to recognise this as her name. 

"Mr. Sayre, w-what are you going to do with me?"

"Marry you. "

"B-b-by f-f-force?"

"That is up to you, darling. "

"Against my will?"

"That also is up to you. "

"And--and my inclination?"

"No, not against that, Amourette. "

"Do you dare believe I love you?"

"I should worry. "

"Do you know you are hurting me, physically, spiritually, mentally?"

"I suppose I am. "

"Do you realise that you are a brute?"

"I sure do. We're all of us a little in that line, Amourette. "

After a long silence she turned her face so that it rested against hisshoulder--nestled closer, and lay very still. 

[Illustration]

VI

ALL over the United States conditions were becoming terrible, hundredsand hundreds of thousands of militant women, wives, widows, matrons, maidens, and stenographers had gone on strike. Non-intercourse with manwas to be the punishment for any longer withholding the franchise;husbands, fathers, uncles, fiancés, bachelors, and authors held franticmass meetings to determine what course to pursue in the imminence ofrapidly impending industrial, political, and social disaster. 

But, although men's sufferings threatened to be frightful; although formonths now nobody of the gentler sex had condescended to pay them theslightest attention; although their wives replied to them only withmonosyllables and scornful smiles, and their sweethearts were never athome to them, let it be remembered to their eternal credit that not onethought of surrender ever entered their limited minds. 

And so it was with young Langdon, who was left in a condition neitherdignified nor picturesque--a martyr to friendship and a victim to his ownrather frivolous idea of practical humour. 

Hopelessly entangled in the net which enveloped him from head to foot, heflopped about among the dead leaves on the bank of the stream, strugglingand kicking like a fly in a cobweb. This he considered humorous. 

The lithe figure across the brook continued to view his gyrations withmingled emotions. 

She was a boyish young thing with a full-lipped, sensitive mouth, eyeslike bluish-black velvet, and clipped hair of a dull gold colour thatcurled thickly all over a small and beautifully shaped head in littleburnished _boucles d'or_--which description ought to hold the reader fora while. 

She wore gray wool kilts, riding breeches laced in about the knee, suedeputtees and tan shoes; and she carried a Russian game pouch beautifullyembroidered across her right shoulder. 

For a minute or two she watched the entangled young man, eyes still widewith the excitement of the chase, full delicate lips softly parted; andher intent and earnest face reflected modest triumph charmingly modifiedby an involuntary sympathy--the natural tribute of a generous sportswomanto the quarry successfully stalked and bagged. 

Cautiously, now, but without hesitation she advanced to the edge of thestream, picked her way cleverly across it on the stones, and, leapinglightly to the bank, stood looking down at Langdon, who had ceased hiscontortions and now lay flat on his back, gazing skyward, a grin on hisotherwise attractive countenance. 

He smiled up at her through the meshes of the net when he encountered hercurious eyes, expecting immediate release. 

There was no answering smile from her as she coolly examined hissymmetrical features and perfect physical proportions through the foldsof the net. 

No, there could be no longer any doubt in her mind that this young manwas what the New Race University required for breeding purposes. 

No such specimen as this could hope to escape instant marriage. Here werefeatures so mathematically flawless that they became practicallyfeatureless; here was bodily balance so ideal that the ultimate standardsof Greek perfection seemed lop-sided in comparison. No, there could be nodoubt about it; this young man was certainly required for the purpose ofscientific propagation; willy-nilly he was destined to be one of theancestors of that future and god-like race which must, one day, peoplethe earth to replace the bigoted and degenerate population which atpresent encumbered it. 

She regarded him without the slightest personal interest now. Hissymmetry wearied her profoundly. 

"When are you going to let me out?" he asked cheerfully. 

She looked at him almost insolently under slightly lifted brows. 

"Presently, " she said; and began to fumble in her satchel. In a fewmoments she produced two bottles, a roll of antiseptic cotton, and ahypodermic needle. 

"Will you come with me voluntarily?" she inquired, stepping nearer andlooking down at him, "or must I use force?"

He might have been humorously willing to go; he really desired to seethis amusing adventure to the finish. But man resents coercion. 

"Force?" he repeated. 

"Exactly, " she replied, displaying her pocket pharmacy. 

"What are those things you have in your hand?" he asked, trying to see. 

"Chloroform and a hypodermic needle. If you do not wish to come with mevoluntarily you may take your choice. "

He laughed long and loud and derisively. 

"That's ridiculous, " he said. "Be kind enough to undo this net. I mighthave been willing to go with you and look 'em over--your friends, youknow; but I don't care for your idea of humour. "

"Your reply is typically man-like and tyrannical. For centuries man hasenjoyed and abused the option of doing what he pleased. Now men are goingto do what _we_ please, whether or not it suits them. "

"So I've understood, " he said, laughing; "but this revolt has been on fora year and I haven't noticed any men doing what they did not wish to do. "

"We have four who are doing it. They are in training for theirhoneymoons. You are to be the fifth to begin training, " she said coolly. 

He laughed again derisively, and lay watching her. She walked up closebeside him and seated herself on the rock marked "Votes for Women. "

"I suppose, " she said, tauntingly, "that you were rather astonished towake up from your fishing nap, and find yourself----" she considered theeffect of her words, gazing at him insolently from under slightlylowered lashes--"find yourself all balled up in a fish net. "

He only grinned at her. 

"What are you laughing at?" she demanded, unsmiling. 

"Lying here flat on my back, I am smiling at Woman! at every individualwoman on earth! at this ridiculous feminine uprising, this suffragetterevolution--at your National Female Federation Committee; the thousandsof local unions; this strike of your entire sex; this general boycott ofmy sex! What has it accomplished?" He tried to wave his hand. 

"You parade and make speeches in the streets, throw bricks, slap thefaces of a few State Congressmen, and finally proclaim a general strikeand boycott. 

"And what's the result? All social functions and ceremonies aresuspended; caterers, florists, confectioners, cabmen, ruined; theatres, restaurants, department stores, novelists, milliners, in financialthroes; a falling off of over eighty per cent. In marriages andbirths--and you are no nearer a vote than you were before the greatstrike paralysed the business of this Republic. "

The young lady had been growing pinker and pinker. 

"Oh! . . . And is that why you are laughing?" she asked. 

"Yes. It's the funniest strike that ever happened to a serious-mindedsex. Because you know your sex, as a sex, is a trifle destitute of asense of humour----"

"That expression, " she cut in with bitter satisfaction, "definitelydetermines _your_ intellectual and social limits, Mr. Langdon. You arewhat you appear to be--one of those dreary bothers whose stock phrase is'a sense of humour'--the kind of young man who has acquired a floridimitation of cultivation, a sort of near-polish; the type of person whouses the word 'brainy' for 'capable, ' and 'mentality' for 'intelligence';the dreadful kind of person who speaks of a subject as 'meaty' instead ofproperly employing the words 'substance' or 'material'; the sort of----"

Langdon, red and wrathful, sat up on the ground, peering at her throughthe enveloping net. 

"Never in my life, " he said, "have I been spoken to in such terms offeminine contempt. Stop it! Can't you appreciate a joke?"

"Mr. Langdon, the day is past when women will either countenance or takepart in any disrespectful witticisms, slurs, or jests at the expense oftheir own sex. Once--and that not very long ago--they did it. Comicpapers made my sex the subject of cartoons and witticisms; the stagedared to spread the contemptible misinformation; women either smiled orremained indifferent. The impression became general and fixed that womenwere gallinaceous, that a hen-like philosophy characterised the sex; thatthey were, at best, second-rate humans, tagging rather gratefully at theheels of the Lords of Creation, unconcerned with the greater and vitalquestions of the world. 

"Now your sex has discovered its mistake. After countless centuries ofintellectual and physical bondage Woman has calmly risen to assertherself--not as the peer of man, _but as his superior_!"

"What!" exclaimed Langdon, angrily. 

"Certainly. Since prehistoric times man has attempted to govern andshape the destinies of all things living on this earth. He has made ofhis reign a miserable fizzle. It is our turn now to try our hands. 

"And so, at last, woman steps forward, tipping the symbols of despoticpower--sceptre and crown--from the nerveless hand and dishonoured brow ofher recent lord and master! And down he goes under her feet--where hebelongs. "

Langdon, unable to endure such language, attempted to sit up, but the netinterfered and he lay clawing at the meshes while the girl calmlycontinued:

"The human race, as it is at present, is a disgrace to the world itinhabits. We women have now decided to repeople the earth scientificallywith a race as wholesome in body as our instruction shall render it inmind. Those among us women who are adjudged physically and mentallyperfect for this great and sacred work have pledged ourselves to thesacrifice--_pro bono publico_. 

"We shall pick out, from your degenerate sex, such physically perfectindividuals as chance to remain; we shall regard our marriages with themas purely scientific and cold-blooded affairs; we have begun, for thepurposes of re-populating the world by capturing four symmetrical youngmen. You are the fifth. The Regents of the New Race University willselect for you several girls who, theoretically, are best qualified tobecome the mothers of your----"

"Stop!" shouted Langdon, tearing violently at the net. "I don't want youto talk that way to me!"

"What way?"

"You know perfectly well, " he retorted, blushing vividly. "I won't standit!"

"What a slave to prudery and smug convention you are, " she observed withamused contempt. "Nobody in the University is going to shock yourmodesty. "

"Well, what _are_ they going to do?"

"Turn you loose in the preserve after the Regents have inspected you. "

"And then?"

"Oh, I suppose two or three girls will be selected. "

"To do w-what?"

"To pay you marked attention. "

"M-m-marked _what_?"

"Attention. Two or three girls will begin to court you. "

"How?"

"Oh, the usual way--by sending you flowers and books and bon-bons, andasking permission to call on you in your cave, " she said carelessly. 

There was an embarrassed pause, then:

"Will _you_ be one of those--those aspirants to my hand?" he inquired. 

She said indifferently: "I hope not. I'm sure I don't desire to be themother of----"

"Stop! I tell you to stop conversing on such topics!" he yelled, struggling and squirming and finally rolling over, all fours in the air. 

"I want to get up!" he shouted. "My position is undignified! Anybody'dthink I was a prize animal. I don't like this poultry talk! I'm a _man_!I'm no bench-winner. And if ever I marry and p-p-produce p-p-progeny, itwill be somebody _I_ select, not somebody who selects _me_!"

The girl looked at him sternly. 

"No, " she said. "For centuries man has mated from sentiment and filledthe earth with mental and physical degeneracy. Now woman steps in. It isher turn. And she flings aside precedent, prejudice, and sentiment--forthe good of the human race! and joining hands with Science marchesforward inexorably toward the millennium!"

The girl was so earnest, so naïve, so emotionally stirred by the pictureevoked that she enacted in pretty gestures the allegory of womanhoodtrampling upon sentimental emotion and turning toward Science with armsoutstretched. 

Langdon, who had managed to sit up, regarded her with terrified interest. 

"Would you be amiable enough to remove this net?" he asked, shivering. 

"I shall take you before the Board of Regents of the New Race University. They will assign you a cave. "

"This joke has gone far enough, " he said. "Please take off this net. "

"No. I am going to show the Regents what I caught. "

"_Me?_"

"Certainly. "

"But, my poor child, " he said, "I am not what I seem. The joke isentirely on woman--poor, derided, deluded, down-trodden, humourlesswoman! Why, all this symmetry of mine--all these endearing young charms, are--are----"

He hesitated, looked at her, reflected, wavered. She was _so_pretty--somehow he didn't want to tell her. He felt furtively of hisrubber chest improver, his flexible pneumatic calves, his golden brownwig, his pencilled brows, silky moustache, and carefully fashionedrosebud mouth. . . . A sudden and curious distaste for confessing to herthat all the beauties were unreal came over him. 

Meanwhile, paying him no further attention for the moment, she was tryinghard to uncork the bottle of chloroform. 

When she succeeded, she soaked the roll of antiseptic cotton, folded itin a handkerchief, and re-corked the bottle. Then, eyeing him coldly, holding the saturated handkerchief with one hand, her pretty nose withthe other, she said with nasal difficulty:

"Dow, Bister Lagdod, bake up your bind dot to struggle----"

"Are you actually going to do it?" he asked, incredulously. 

"I ab!" she replied firmly. 

"Nonsense! _You_ are not accustomed to give chloroform!"

"Do; but I've read up od the subject----"

"What!" he exclaimed, horrified. "Look out what you're doing, child!Don't you dare try that on me!"

"I've got to, " she insisted. "Please dod bake be dervous or we bay havead accidend----"

"Take that stuff away!" he yelled. "You'll give me too much and then Iwon't wake up at all!"

"I'll be as careful as I cad, " she promised him. "Dow be still----"

"But this is monstrous!" he retorted, flopping about in the leaves like astranded fish and frantically endeavouring to dodge the wet and reekinghandkerchief. 

"Let go of my nose! Help! He--he--hah--h--um! bz-z-z-z----" and hesuddenly relaxed and fell back a limp, loose-limbed mass among theleaves. 

Pale and resolute the girl knelt beside him, freed him from the net, and, bending nearer, gazed earnestly into his unconscious features. Stillgazing, she drew a postman's whistle from her satchel, set it to herlips, and was about to summon the student on duty at the distant gate tohelp bring in the quarry, when something about the features of therecumbent young man arrested her attention. 

The postman's whistle fell from her pretty lips; her startled eyeswidened as she bent closer to examine the perfections which hadcaptivated her from a scientific standpoint. 

At that instant consciousness began to return; he gave a sudden spasmodicand comprehensive flop; there was a report like a pistol. His chestimprover had exploded. 

Terrified, trembling, she dropped on her knees beside him; never beforehad she heard of a young man being blown to pieces by chloroform. Then, almost hysterical, she ran to the stream, filled her leather satchel withwater, and, running back again, emptied it upon his upturnedcountenance. 

Horror on horror! His golden brown hair--his very scalp seemed to beparting from his forehead--eyebrows, silky moustache, lips--his entireface seemed to be coming off; and, as she shrieked and tottered to herfeet, he began to sputter and kick so violently that both pneumaticcalves blew up like the reports of a double-barreled shotgun. 

And Ethra reeled back against a tree and cowered there, covering hershocked eyes with shaking fingers. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

VII

IT is a surprising and trying moment for a girl who throws water upon ayoung man's face to see that face begin to dissolve and come off, featureby feature, in polychromatic splendour. 

She did not faint; her intellect reeled for a moment; then she droppedher hands from her eyes and saw him sitting up on the ground, blinking ather gravely from a streaked and gaudy countenance. His wig was tiltedover one eye; rouge and pearl powder made his cheeks and chin very gay;and his handsome, silky moustache hung by one corner from his upper lip. It was too much. She sat down limply on a mossy log and wept. 

His senses returned gradually; after a while he got up and walked down tothe edge of the brook with all the dignity that unsteady legs permitted. 

Fascinated, she watched him at his ablutions where he squatted by thewater's edge, scrubbing away as industriously as a washer-racoon. It didnot occur to her to flee; curiosity dominated--an overpowering desire tosee what he really resembled in _puris naturalibus_. 

After a while he stood up, hurled the damp wig into the woods, wiped hishands on his knickerbockers and his face on his sleeve, and, bendingover, examined his collapsed calves. 

And all the while, as the fumes of the chloroform disappeared and hebegan to realise what had been done to him, he was becoming madder andmadder. 

She recognised the wrath in his face as he swung on his heel and cametoward her. 

"It is your own fault!" she said, resolutely, "for playing a silly tricklike----" But she observed his advance very dubiously, straightening upto her full slender height to confront him, but not rising to her feet. Her knees were still very shaky. 

He halted close in front of her. Something in the interrogative yetfearless beauty of her upward gaze checked the torrent of indignanteloquence under which he was labouring, and, presently, left him evenmentally mute, his lips parted stupidly. 

She said: "According to the old order of things a well-bred man would askmy pardon. But a decently-bred man, in the first place, wouldn't havedone such a thing to me. So your apology would only be a paradox----"

"What!" he exclaimed, stung into protest. "Am I to understand that afternetting me and chloroforming me and nearly drowning me----"

"My mistake was perfectly natural. Do you suppose that I would even dreamof trailing _you_ as you really are?"

He gazed at her bewildered; passed his unsteady hand over hiscountenance, then sat down abruptly beside her on the mossy log andburied his head in his hands. 

She looked at him haughtily, sitting up very straight; he continuedbeside her in silence, face in his hands as though overwhelmed. Nothingwas said for several minutes--until the clear disdain of her gazechanged, imperceptibly; and the rigidity of her spinal column relaxed. 

"I am very sorry this has happened, " she said. There was, however, nosympathy in her tone. He made no movement to speak. 

"I am sorry, " she repeated after a moment. "It is hard to sufferhumiliation. "

"Yes, " he said, "it is. "

"But you deserved it. "

"How? I didn't fashion my face and figure. "

She mistook him: "_Somebody_ did. "

"Yes; my parents. "

"What!"

"Oh, I don't mean that silly make-up, " he said, raising his head. 

"What _do_ you mean?"

"I mean my own face and figure. What you did to me--your netting me, doping me, and all that wasn't a patch on what you said afterward. "

"What do you mean? What did I say?"

"You asked me if I supposed that you would dream of netting a man with aface and f-figure like----"

"Mr. Langdon!"

"Didn't you?"

"I--you--we----"

"You did! And can any man suffer any humiliation to compare with wordslike those? I merely ask you. "

With eyes dilated, breath coming quickly, she stared at him, scarcely yetcomprehending the blow which her words had dealt to one of the lords ofcreation. 

"Mr. Langdon, " she said, "do you suppose that I am the sort of girl todeliberately criticise either your features or your figure?"

"But you did. "

"I merely meant that you should infer----"

"I inferred it all right, " he said bitterly. 

Perplexed, not knowing how to encounter such an unexpected reproach, vaguely distressed by it, she instinctively attempted to clear herself. 

"Please listen. I hadn't any idea of mortifying you by explaining thatyou are not qualified by nature to interest the modern woman in----"

He turned a bright red. 

"Do you suppose such a condemnation--such a total ostracism--is agreeableto a man? . . . Is there anything worse you can say about a man than toinform him that no woman could possibly take the slightest interest inhim?"

"I didn't say that. I said the modern woman----"

"You're all modern. "

"It is reported that there are still a few women sufficientlyold-fashioned to----"

"They don't interest me. " He looked up at her. "What _you've_ saidhas--simply--and completely--spoiled--my life, " he said slowly. 

"What _I_ said?"

"Yes. "

"What have--what could--what I--how--where--who is----" and she checkedherself, eyes on his. 

"Yes, " he repeated with a curious sort of satisfaction, "you have spoiledmy entire life for me. "

"What an utterly--what a wildly absurd and impossible----"

"And you _know_ it!" he insisted, with gloomy triumph. 

"Know what?"

"That you've spoiled----"

"Stop! Will you explain to me how----"

"Is it necessary?"

"Necessary? Of course it is! You have made a most grave and seriousand--and heartless charge against a woman----"

"Yes, a heartless one--against you!"

"I? _Heartless?_"

"Cold, deliberate, cruel, unfeeling, merciless, remorseless----"

"Mr. Langdon!"

"Didn't you practically tell me that no woman could endure the sight of aface and figure like mine?"

"No, I did not. What a--a cruel accusation!"

"What _did_ you mean, then?"

"That--that you are not exactly--qualified to--to become an ancestor ofthe physically perfect race which----"

"What _is_ wrong with me, then?"

She looked at him helplessly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean where am I below proof? Where am I lacking? What points count meout?"

Her sensitive underlip began to tremble. 

"I--I don't want to criticise you----" she faltered. 

"Please do. I beg of you. There are beauty doctors in town, " he addedearnestly. "They can fix up a fellow--and I can go to a gymnasium, andtake up deep-breathing and----"

"But, Mr. Langdon, do _you_ want to--to be--captured----"

He looked into her bright and melting eyes. 

"Yes, " he said. "I'd like to give you another chance at me. "

"Me? After what I did to you?"

"Will you?"

"Why, what a perfectly astonishing----"

"Not very. Look me over and tell me what points count against me. I knowI'm not good-looking, but I'd like to go into training for the bench--Imean----"

"Mr. Langdon, " she said slowly, "surely _you_ would not care to developthe featureless symmetry and the--the monotonous perfection necessaryto----"

"Yes, I would. I wish to become superficially monotonous. I'm too varied;I realise that. I want to resemble that make-up I wore----"

"That! Goodness! What a horrid idea----"

"Horrid? Didn't you like it well enough to net me?"

"I--there was nothing expressive of my personal taste in my capturingyou--I mean the kind of a man you appeared to be. It was my duty--apurely scientific matter----"

"I don't care what it was. You went after me. You wouldn't go after me asI now appear. I want you to tell me what is lacking in me which wouldprevent you going after me again--from a purely scientific standpoint. "

She sat breathing irregularly, rather rapidly, pretty head bent, apparently considering her hands, which lay idly in her lap. Then shelifted her blue eyes and inspected him. And it was curious, too, that, now when she came to examine him, she did not seem to discover anyfaults. 

"My nose doesn't suit you, does it?" he asked candidly. 

"Why, yes, " she said innocently, "it suits me. "

"That's funny, " he reflected. "How about my ears?"

"They seem to be all right, " she admitted. 

"Do you think so?"

"They seem to me to be perfectly good ears. "

"That's odd. What _is_ there queer about my face?"

She looked in vain for imperfections. 

"Why, do you know, Mr. Langdon, I don't seem to notice anything that isnot entirely and agreeably classical. "

"But--my legs are thin. "

"Not very. "

"Aren't they too thin?"

"Not _too_ thin. . . . Perhaps you might ride a bicycle for a fewdays----"

"I will!" he exclaimed with a boyish enthusiasm which lighted up his faceso attractively that she found it fascinating to watch. 

"Do you know, " she said slowly, "the chances are that I would have nettedyou anyway. It just occurred to me. "

"Without my make-up?" he asked, in delighted surprise. 

"I think so. Why not?" she replied, looking at him with growing interest. "I don't see anything the matter with you. "

"My chest improver exploded, " he ventured, being naturally honest. 

"_I_ don't think you require it. "

"Don't you? That is the nicest thing you ever said to me. "

"It's only the truth, " she said, flushing a trifle in her intenseinterest. "And, as far as your legs are concerned, I really do notbelieve you need a bicycle or anything else. . . . In fact--in fact--_I_don't see why you shouldn't go with me to the University if--if you--careto----"

"You darling!"

"Mr. Langdon! Wh-what a perfectly odd thing to s-say to me!"

"I didn't mean it, " he said with enthusiasm; "I really didn't mean it. What I meant was--you know--don't you?"

She did not reply. She was absorbed in contemplating one small thumb. 

"I'm all ready to go, " he ventured. 

She said nothing. 

"Shall we?"

She looked up, looked into his youthful eyes. After a moment she rose, atrifle pale. And he followed beside her through the sun-lit woods. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

VIII

AT the gate of the New Race University and Masculine Beauty Preserve thepretty gate-keeper on duty looked at Langdon, then at his fair captor, inunfeigned astonishment. 

"Why, Ethra!" she said, "is _that_ all you've brought home?"

"Did you think I was going to net a dozen?" asked Ethra Leslie, warmly. "Please unlock the gate. Mr. Langdon is tired and hungry, and I want theRegents to finish with him quickly so that he can have some luncheon. "

The gate-keeper, a distractingly pretty red-haired girl, regarded Langdonwith dubious hazel eyes. 

"He'll never pass the examination, " she whispered to Ethra. "What onearth are you thinking of?"

"What are _you_ thinking of, Marcella? You must be perfectly blind not tosee that he complies with every possible requisite! The Regents'inspection is bound to be only a brief formality. Be good enough to unbarthe gates. "

Marcella slowly drew the massive bolts; hostile criticism was in the gazewith which she swept Langdon. 

"Well, of all the insignificant looking young men, " she murmured toherself as Ethra and her acquisition walked away along the path, side byside. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

IX

THE collective and individual charms of the Board of Regents so utterlyover-powered Langdon that he scarcely realised what was happening to him. 

First, at their request, he sat cross-legged on the ground; and theywalked round and round him, inspecting him. Under such conditions no mancould be at his best; there was a silly expression on his otherwiseattractive face, which, as their attitude toward him seemed to waverbetween indifference and disapproval, became unconsciously appealing. 

"Kindly rise, Mr. Langdon, " said Miss Challis, chairman of the board. 

Langdon got up, and his ears turned red with a sudden and burningself-consciousness. 

"Please walk past us two or three times, varying your speed. "

He walked in the various styles to which he had been accustomed, changingspeed at intervals and running the entire gamut between a gracefulboulevard saunter and a lost-dog sprint. 

"Now, " said the beautiful chairman, "be good enough to run past usseveral times. "

He complied and they studied his kangaroo-like action. Miss Vining evenbent over and felt of his ankles doubtfully, and to his vivid confusionMiss Darrell strolled up, made him sit down on a log, placed one soft, white finger on his mouth, and, opening it coolly, examined the interior. Then they drew together, consulting in whispers, then Miss Challis camewith a stethoscope and listened to his pneumatic machinery, while MissVining carelessly pinched his biceps and tried his reflexes. After whichMiss Darrell pushed a thermometer into his mouth, measured his pulsesand blood pressure, tested his sight and hearing and his sense of smell. The latter was intensely keen, as he was very hungry. 

Then Miss Challis came and stood behind him and examined, phrenologically, the bumps on his head, while Miss Vining, seated at hisfeet, read his palm, and Miss Darrell produced a dream book and a pack ofcards, and carefully cast his horoscope. But, except that it transpiredthat he was going to take a journey, that somebody was going to leave himmoney, and that a dark lady was coming over the sea to trouble him, nothing particularly exciting was discovered concerning him. 

Miss Challis, relinquishing his head, produced a crystal and gazed intoit. She did not say what she saw there. Miss Vining tried to hypnotisehim and came near hypnotising herself. Which scared and irritated her;and she let him very carefully alone after that. 

And all the while Ethra sat on a tree stump, hands tightly clasped in herlap, looking on with pathetic eagerness and timidly searching the prettyfaces of the Board of Regents for any hopeful signs. 

Presently the Board retired to a neighbouring cave to confer; and Langdondrew a deep breath of relief. 

"Well, " he said, smiling at Ethra, "what do you think?"

"It will be horrid of them if they don't award you a blue ribbon, " shesaid. 

"Good heavens!" he faltered, "do they give ribbons?"

"Certainly, first, second, third, and honourable mention. It is thescientific and proper method of classification. "

Fury empurpled his visage. 

"That's the limit!" he shouted, but she silenced him with a gesture, nodding her head toward the surrounding woods; and among the trees hecaught sight of scores and scores of pretty girls furtively observing theproceedings. 

"Don't let them see you display any temper or you'll lose their goodwill, Mr. Langdon. Please recollect that there is no sentiment in thisproceeding; it is a scientific matter to be scientificallyrecorded--purely a matter of eugenics. "

Langdon gazed around him at the distant and charming faces peeping athim from behind trees and bushes. Everywhere bright eyes met hismischievously, gaily. An immense sense of happiness began to invade him. The enraptured and fatuous smile on his features now became almostidiotic as here and there, among the trees, he caught glimpses of stillmore young girls strolling about, arms interlacing one another's waists. The prospect dazzled him; his wits spun like a humming top. 

"Are--are many ladies likely to come and--and court me?" he asked timidlyof Ethra. 

A quick little pang shot through her; but she said with a forced smile:"Why do you ask? Are you a coquette, Mr. Langdon?"

"Oh, no! But, for example, I wouldn't mind being rushed by that willowyblonde over there. I'd also like to meet the svelte one with store puffsand sorrel hair. She _is_ a looker, isn't she?"

"She is certainly very pretty, " said Ethra, biting her lips withunfeigned vexation. 

He gazed entranced at the distant throng for a while. 

"And that little grey-eyed romp--the very young and slim one, " hecontinued enthusiastically. "Me for a hammock with her in the goosy-goosymoonlight. . . . And I hope I'm going to meet a lot more--every one of'em. . . . _What_ on earth is _that_?" he exclaimed, changing countenanceand leaning forward. "By Jinks, it's a _man_!"

"Certainly. There are four men here. You knew that. "

"I forgot, " he said, glowering at the unwelcome sight of his own sex. 

Ethra said: "Oh, yes, there are those first four men we caught--Mr. Willett, Mr. Carrick, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Green. " She added carelessly: "Ihave been paying rather marked attention to Alphonso W. Green. "

"To whom?" he asked, with a disagreeable sensation drenching out thesparks of joy in his bosom. 

"To Alphonso W. Green. . . . And I've jollied De Lancy Smith withbon-bons a bit, too. They are having a lot of attention paid them--andthey're rather spoiled. But, of course, any girl can marry any one ofthem if she really wants to. "

Langdon gazed miserably at her; she seemed to be pleasantly immersed inher own reflections and paid no further heed to him. Then he cast ascowling glance in the direction of the young man who was gathering wildflowers and arranging them in a little basket. 

"Ethra, " he began--and stopped short under the sudden and unexpectedunfriendliness of her glance. "Miss Leslie, " he resumed, reddening, "Iwouldn't have come here unless I thought--hoped--believed--that you wouldpay _me_ m-m-marked----"

"_Mr. Langdon!_"

"What?"

"Men do not assume the initiative here. They make no advances; they waituntil a girl pays them attentions so unmistakable that----"

"Well, I _did_ come here because of you!" he blurted out angrily. 

"That is an exceedingly indelicate avowal!" she retorted. "If the Regentshear you talk that way you won't be permitted to receive any girlunchaperoned. "

He gazed at her, bewildered; she stood a moment frowning and looking inthe direction of the cave whither the Board of Regents had retired. 

"They're calling me, " she exclaimed as a figure appeared at the caveentrance and beckoned her. 

"I won't be long, Mr. Langdon. I am perfectly confident that you havepassed the inspection!" And she walked swiftly across to the edge of thethicket where the three Regents stood outside their cave. 

As she came up one of them put her arm around her. 

"My poor child, " she said, "that man will never do. "

"W-what!" faltered the girl, turning pale. 

"Why, no. How in the world could you make such a mistake?"

Ethra looked piteously from one to another. 

"What is the matter with him?" she asked. "I can't see anything thematter with him. If his legs are a trifle--refined in contour--a bicyclewill help----"

"But, Ethra, this is not a hospital, dear. This is not a sanitarium. Wedon't want any imperfect living creature inside this preserve. "

"W-w-what is your decision?" asked the girl; and her underlip began toquiver, but she controlled it. 

"The first vote, " said Miss Challis, "was for his instant eviction, MissVining dissenting. The second vote was for his expulsion with theprivilege of taking another examination in three months--Miss Darrelldissenting----"

"I think he's the limit, " said Miss Darrell. 

"Why, Jessica!" exclaimed Ethra, swallowing a sob. 

"The next vote, " continued Betty Challis, "was whether he might notremain here a day or two for closer observation. Jessica hasn't votedyet, but Phyllis Vining and I are willing----"

"Oh, Jessica!" pleaded Ethra, catching her hands and pressing them to herown breast, "I--I beg you will let him remain--if only for a few days!Please, please, dear. I _know_ his calves will grow if scientificallymassaged; and if he is hygienically fed he will improve----"

Miss Darrell looked curiously at her; under her hands the girl's heartwas beating wildly. 

"Well, then, Betty, " she said to Miss Challis, "I vote we keep him underobservation for a day or two. Give him the yellow ribbon. " And, bending, she kissed Ethra lightly on the lips, whispering:

"I'm afraid we won't be able to keep him, dear. But if you'd like to havea little fun with him and jolly him along, why--why, I was a flirt myselfin the old days of the old regime. "

"That is all I want, " said Ethra, dimpling with delight. "I want to seehow far I can go with him just for the fun of it. "

Miss Darrell smiled tenderly at the girl and strolled off to join theother Regents; and Ethra, her thoughtful eyes fixed on Langdon, cameslowly back, the yellow ribbon trailing in her hand. 

Langdon leaped to his feet to meet her, gazing delightedly at the yellowribbon. 

"I qualified, of course!" he said joyously. "When is it customary tobegin the courting?"

"You haven't qualified, " said the girl, watching the effect of her wordson the young man. "This is merely the probation ribbon. "

An immense astonishment silenced him. She drew the big orange-colouredribbon through his button-hole, tied it into a bow, patted it out intoflamboyant smartness, and, stepping back, gazed at him without anyparticular expression in her dark blue eyes. 

"Then, then I may be chased away at any moment?" he asked unsteadily. 

"I am afraid so. "

Thunderstruck, he stared at her: "What on earth are we to do?" hegroaned. 

"_We?_"

"You and I?"

"How does it concern _me_?" asked the girl coldly. 

"Doesn't it?"

She looked him calmly in the eye and shook her head. 

"No, Mr. Langdon. However, as you are to remain here for a day or twounder observation, no doubt you will receive _some_ attention. "

"Ethra! Isn't it possible that you might learn to care----"

"Hush! That is no way to talk!"

"Well--well, I can't wait for you to----"

"You _must_ wait! You have nothing to say about such things until somegirl asks you. And that isn't very likely. Those four perfectly handsomeyoung men have been here for weeks now, and, although they have receivedlots of attention, not one girl has yet made any of them an actualdeclaration. The girls here are having too good a time to do anythingmore serious than a little fussing--just enough to frisk a kiss now andthen and keep the men amused----"

"_That_ is monstrous!" said Langdon, very red. "When a man's really inlove----"

"Nonsense! Men are flirts--every one of them!"

She laughed, made him a little gesture of adieu, refused to let himfollow her, and coolly sauntered off among the trees, heedless of hisremonstrances at being left to himself. 

He watched her until she disappeared, then, with misgivings, walkedtoward a tennis court, where the four men were playing a rather dawdlingand indifferent game and keeping a lively eye out for the advent of somegirl. 

They appeared to be rather good-looking fellows, not in any wayextraordinary, remarkable neither for symmetry of feature nor of limb. 

Langdon stood at the edge of the court looking at them and secretlycomparing their beauty with such charms as he was shyly inclined toattribute to himself. There could be no doubt that he compared favourablywith them. If he was some, they were not so much. 

One, a tall young fellow with blond, closely clipped hair, noddedpleasantly to him, and presently came over to speak to him. 

"I suppose you are a new recruit. Glad to see you. We're all anxious tohave enough men captured to get up two ball nines. My name is ReginaldWillett. "

"Mine is Curtis Langdon. "

"Come over and meet the others, " said Willett pleasantly. 

Langdon followed him, and was presently on excellent terms with JamesCarrick, De Lancy Smith, and Alphonso W. Green, amiable, clean cut, everyday young fellows. 

To them he related the circumstances of his capture, and they all laughedheartily. Then he told them that he was here merely on probation for aday or two, naïvely displaying the yellow ribbon. 

Willett laughed. "Oh, that's all right. They usually say that. We allcame in on probation; the Regents couldn't agree, and some girl alwaysswings the deciding vote as a special favour to herself. "

"You don't think they'll kick me out?"

"Not much!" laughed Willett. "First of all, your captor would object--notnecessarily for sentimental reasons, but because she caught you; you arehers, her game; she says to herself: 'A poor thing, but mine own!' andhangs to you like grim death. Besides, no woman ever lets any man loosevoluntarily. And women haven't changed radically, Mr. Langdon. Don'tworry; you can stay, all right. "

"Here comes Betty Challis, " said Carrick, glancing at Alphonso W. Green. "It's you for a stroll, I guess. "

Mr. Green looked conscious; more conscious still when the pretty MissChallis strolled up, presented him with a bouquet, and stood for a fewmoments conversing with everybody, perfectly at her ease. Other girlscame up and engaged the young men in lively conversation. Presently MissChallis made a play for hers:

"Would you care to canoe, Mr. Green?" she asked casually, turning to himwith a slight blush which she could not control. 

Green blushed, too, and consented in a low voice. 

As they were departing, Miss Vining rode up on horseback, leading anotherhorse, which De Lancy Smith, at her request, nimbly mounted; and awaythey galloped down a cool forest road, everybody looking after them. 

Miss Darrell cut out and roped Willett presently and took him to walk inthe direction of a pretty cascade. 

A charming girl, a Miss Trenor, arrived with a hammock, book, andbon-bons, and led Carrick away somewhere by virtue of a previousagreement, and the remaining girls pretended not to care, and strolledserenely off in pretty bunches, leaving Langdon standing, first on onefoot, then on the other, waiting to be spoken to. 

Abandoned, he wandered about the tennis court, kicking the balls moodily. Tiring of this, he sat down under a tree and twirled his thumbs. 

Once or twice some slender figure passed, glancing brightly at him, andhe looked as shyly receptive as he could, but to no purpose. Gloomsettled over him; hunger tormented him; he gazed disconsolately at theyellow ribbon in his button-hole, and twiddled his thumbs. 

And all the while, from the shadow of a distant cave, Ethra was watchinghim with great content. She knew he was hungry; she let him remain so. Byabsent treatment she was reducing him to a proper frame of mind. 

The word had been passed that he was Ethra's quarry; mischievous brighteyes glanced at him, but no lips unclosed to speak to him; little feetstrolled near him, even lingered a moment, but trotted on. 

His sentiments varied from apathy to pathos, from self-pity tomortification, from hungry despair to an indignation no longer endurable. 

He had enough of it--plenty. Anger overwhelmed him; hunger smotheredsentiment; he rose in wrath and stalked off toward a girl who wasstrolling along, reading a treatise on eugenics. 

"Will you be good enough to tell me how to get out?" he asked. 

"Out?" she repeated. "Have you a pass to go out?"

"No, I haven't. Where do I obtain one?"

"Only the girl who captured you can give you a pass, " she said, amused. 

"Very well; where can I find her?"

"Who was it netted you?"

"A Miss Leslie, " he snapped. 

"Oh! Ethra Leslie's cave is over in those rocks, " said the girl, "amongthose leafy ledges. "

"Thanks, " he said briefly, and marched off, scowling. 

Ethra saw him coming, and his stride and expression scared her. Notknowing exactly what to do, and not anticipating such a frame of mind inhim, she turned over in her hammock and pretended to be asleep, as hisfigure loomed up in the mouth of the cave. 

"Miss Leslie!" His voice was stentorian. 

She awoke languidly, and did it very well, making a charming picture asshe sat up in her hammock, a trifle confused, sweet blue eyes scarcelyyet unclosed. 

"Mr. Langdon!" she exclaimed in soft surprise. 

He looked her squarely, menacingly, in the eyes. 

"I suppose, " he said, "that all this is a grim parody on the past whenwomen did the waiting until it was men's pleasure to make the next move. I suppose that my recent appraisement parallels the social inspection ofa debutante--that my present hunger is paying for the wistfulintellectual starvation to which men once doomed your sex; that myisolation represents the isolation from all that was vital in the timeswhen women's opportunities were few and restricted; that my probationamong you symbolises the toleration of my sex for whatever specimen ofyour sex they captured and set their mark on as belonging to them, and onview to the world during good behaviour. "

He stared at her flushed face, thoughtfully. 

"The allegory is all right, " he said, "but you've cast the wrong man forthe goat. I'm going. "

"Y-you can't go, " she stammered, colouring painfully, "unless I give youa pass. "

"I see; it resembles divorce. My sex had to give yours a cause forescape, or you couldn't escape. And in here you must give me a pass tofreedom, or I remain here and starve. Is that it?"

She crimsoned to her hair, but said nothing. 

"Give me that pass, " he said. 

"If I do every girl here will gossip----"

"I don't care what they say. I'm going. "

She sat very still in the hammock, eyes vacant, chin on hand, considering. It was not turning out as she had planned. She had starvedhim too long. 

"Mr. Langdon, " she said in a low voice, "if it is only because you arehungry----"

"I'm not; I'm past mere hunger. You disciplined me because I took a humanand natural interest in the pretty inhabitants of this new world. And I_told_ you that I never would have entered it except for you. But youmade me pay for a perfectly harmless and happy curiosity. Well, I'vestarved and paid. Now I want to go. . . . Either I go or there'll besomething doing--because I won't remain here and go hungry much longer. "

"S-something--doing?" she faltered. 

"Exactly. With the first----"

"You can go if you wish, " she said, flushing scarlet and springing out ofthe hammock. 

He waited, jaws set, while she seated herself at a table and wrote outthe pass. 

"Thank you, " he said, in such a rage that he could scarcely control hisvoice. 

She may not have heard him; she sat rigid at the table, looking very hardinto space--sat motionless as he took a curt leave of her, never turningher head--listened to his tread as he strode off through the ferns, thenlaid her brow between snowy hands which matched the face that trembled inthem. 

As for him, he swung away along the path by which he had come, unstrungby turns, by turns violently desiring her unhappiness, and againanticipating approaching freedom with reckless satisfaction. 

Then a strange buoyancy came over him as he arrived in sight of thegate, where the red-haired girl sat on a camp stool, yawning and knittinga silk necktie--for eventualities, perhaps; perhaps for herself, Lordknows. She lifted her grey eyes as he came swinging up--deep, clear, greyeyes that met his and presently seemed ready to answer his. So his eyesasked; and, after a long interval, came the reply, as though she hadunconsciously been waiting a long, long while for the question. 

"I suppose you will wish to keep this, " he said in a low voice, offeringher the pass. "You will probably desire to preserve it under lock andkey. "

She rose to her slender height, took it in her childish hands, hesitated, then, looking up at him, slowly tore the pass to fragments and loosedthem from her palm into the current of the south wind blowing. 

"That does not matter, " she said, "if you are going to love me. "

There was a moment's silence, then she held out her left hand. He tookit; with her right hand, standing on tiptoe, she reached up and unbarredthe gates. And they passed out together into the infernal splendour ofthe sunset forest. 

[Illustration]

X

THE riots in London culminated in an episode so cataclysmic that itsobered the civilised world. Young Lord Marque, replying to a question inthe House of Lords, said: "As long as the British peerage can summonmuscular vigour sufficient to keep a monocle in its eye and extractsatisfaction from a cigarette, no human woman in the British Empire shallever cast a bally ballot for any bally purpose whatever. What!"

And the House of Lords rose to its wavering legs and cheered him with anenthusiasm almost loud enough to be heard above ordinary conversation. 

But that unwise and youthful and masculine defiance was the young man'sswan-song. A male suffragette rushed with the news to Miss PondoraBottomly; Lord Marque was followed as he left the house; and that veryafternoon he was observed fleeing in a series of startled and gracefulbounds through Regent Park, closely pursued by several ladies of birth, maturity, and fashion carrying solid silver hair-brushes. 

_The Queen_, chronicling the somewhat intimate and exclusive affair aweek later, mentioned that: "Among those present was the lovely LadyDiana Guernsey wearing tweeds, leather spats, and waving a DirectoireBanner embroidered with the popular device, 'Votes for Women, ' in brightyellow and bottle green on an old rose ground;" and that she had faroutdistanced the aged Marchioness of Dingledell, Lady Spatterdash, theHon. Miss Mousely, the Duchess of Rolinstone, Baroness Mosscroppe, andothers; and that, when last seen, she and the Earl of Marque were headedwestward. A week later no news of either pursuer or pursued having beenreceived, considerable uneasiness was manifested in court and suffragettecircles, and it was freely rumoured that Lady Guernsey had made a ratherrash but thoroughly characteristic vow that she would never relinquishthe trail until she had forced Lord Marque to eat his own words, writtenin frosting upon a plum cake of her own manufacture. 

Marque may have heard of this vow, and perhaps entertained lively doubtsconcerning Lady Diana's abilities as a pastry cook. At any rate, he keptstraight on westward in a series of kangaroo-like leaps until darknessmercifully blotted out the picture. 

Remaining in hiding under a hedge long enough to realise that London wasextremely unsafe for him, he decided to continue west as far as theUnited States, consoling himself with the certainty that his creditorswould have forced his emigration anyway before very long, and that hemight as well take the present opportunity to pick out his dollarprincess while in exile. 

But circumstances altered his views; the great popular feminine upheavalin America was now in full swing; the eugenic principle had beendeclared; all human infirmity and degenerate imperfections were to beabolished through marriages based no longer upon sentiment and personalinclination, but upon the scientific selection of mates for the purposeof establishing the ideally flawless human race. 

This was a pretty bad business for Lord Marque. The day after his arrivalhe was a witness of the suffragette riots when the Mayor, the Governor, and every symmetrical city, county, and State official was captured andled blushing to the marriage license bureau. He had seen the terriblepanic in Long Acre, where thousands of handsome young men were beingchased in every direction by beautiful and swift-footed suffragettes. From his window in the Hotel Astor he had gazed with horror upon thisbachelors' St. Bartholomew, and, distracted, had retired under his bedfor the balance of the evening, almost losing consciousness when abell-hop knocked at his door with a supply of towels. 

Only one thought comforted him; the ocean rolled majestically between theLady Diana, her pastry, and the last of the house of Marque. 

Never should that terrible and athletic young woman discover hiswhereabouts if he had to remain away from London forever; never, neverwould he eat that pastry!

As he lay under his bed, stroking his short moustache and occasionallysneezing, he remembered with a shudder his flight from those solid silverhair-brushes through Regent's Park; he recalled how, behind him, longafter the heavier feminine aristocracy had given up the chase, oneyouthful, fleet, supple, and fearsome girl had hung to his trail--a tall, lithe, incarnation of her goddess namesake. 

She had been too far away for him to distinguish her features; only inLiverpool, where one dark night he ventured out to buy a copy of the_Queen_ and eagerly read the details of the function, did he learn thename of his closest pursuer. 

Later, furtively haunting the smoking room on the _Caramania_, he learnedfrom the gossip there of Lady Diana's vow that she would never rest untilLord Marque had eaten her plum cake with its frosted inscription--thisinscription consisting of the flippant words of his own rash speechdelivered in the upper house of Parliament. 

Now, lying on his back under the bed, while outside in Long Acre thedreadful work was going on, he lighted a cigarette and pondered thesituation. He didn't believe that Lady Diana would attempt to trail himto America. That was one comfort. But, in view of the suffragettedisturbances going on outside his windows, he saw little prospect of adollar princess for the present. Meanwhile, how was he to exist?

The vague and British convictions concerning the rapid accumulation ofwealth on a "ranch" of any kind comforted Marque. He also believed them. 

And three months later he had managed to survive a personal acquaintancewith the following episodes:

First, one large revolver bullet through hat with request to answeraffably when addressed by white men. 

Second, one infuriated cow. 

Third, one indigestion incubated by cumulative series of pie andcomplicated by attentions from one large centipede. 

Fourth, one contusion from a Montana boot with suggestion concerningmonocle. 

Fifth, one 45-70 Winchester projectile severing string of monocle, accompanied by laughter and Navajo blanket. 

Sixth, comprehensive corporal casualties incident upon internationalaltercation concerning relative importance of Guy Fawkes and July 4th. 

Seventh, physical debility due to excessive local popularity followingpersonal encounter with one rustler. 

Eighth, complete prostration in consequence of frequent attempts torender thanks for toasts offered him at banquet in celebration of hisimpending departure for the East. 

Ninth, general collapse following bump of coal and forcible ejection fromfreight train near Albany, New York. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XI

THE duties of young Lord Marque, the new man on the Willett estate atCaranay, left him at leisure only after six o'clock, his day being almostentirely occupied in driving a large lawn mower. 

Life, for John Marque--as he now called himself--had become exquisitelysimple; eating, sleeping, driving a lawn mower--these three manly sportsso entirely occupied the twenty-four hours that he had scarcely time todo much weeding--and no time at all to sympathise with himself because hewas too busy by day and too sleepy at night. 

Sundays he might have taken off for the purpose of condoling withhimself, had it not been for the new telephone operator. 

She was a recent incumbent at the railroad station--a tall, clear-skinned, yellow-haired girl of twenty-five who sat at herdesk all day saying in a low, prettily modulated voice, "hello--hello--hello--hello" to unseen creatures of whom John Marquewotted not. 

Three things concerning her he had noticed: She wore pink gingham; shenever seemed to see him when he came down to the little sunburnt platformand seated himself on the edge, feet dangling over the rails; he hadnever seen her except when she was seated at the pine table which wasornamented by her instrument and switchboard. She had a bed-room andkitchen in the rear. But he never saw her go into them or emerge; neversaw her except seated at her switchboard, either reading or sewing, or, with the silvery and Greek-like band encircling her hair and supportingthe receiver close to her small ears, repeating in her low, modulatedvoice: hello--hello--hello--hello. 

He wondered how tall she might be. He had never seen her standing orwalking. He wondered what her direct gaze might be like. Only herprofile had he yet beheld--a sweet, youthful, profile nobly outlinedunder the gold of her hair; but under the partly lowered lashes as shesat sewing or reading or summoning centrals from the vast expanses ofNorth America, he divined eyes of a soft lilac-blue. And he chewed hispipe-stem and kicked his feet and thought about them. 

Few trains stopped at Caranay except for water; the station, an old-timefarm house of small dimensions, overlooking the track and Willow Brook, contained ticket office, telephone, and telegraph in one--all presidedover by the telephone operator. Sometimes as many as two people in a weekbought railroad tickets; sometimes a month would pass without anybodyeither sending or receiving a telegram. Telephone calls were a littlemore frequent. 

So the girl had little to do there at her sunny open window, wheremignonette and heliotrope and nasturtiums bloomed in pots, and the bigbumble bees came buzzing and plundering the little window garden. And, except on Sundays, Marque had little leisure to observe her, although inthe long late June evenings it was still light at eight o'clock, and hehad, without understanding how or why, formed the habit of coming down tothe deserted station platform to smoke his pipe and sometimes to fish inthe shallow waters of Willow Brook, and watch the ripples turn from goldto purple, and listen to a certain bird that sat singing every day atsunset on the tip of a fir-balsam across the stream--a black and whitebird with a rosy pink chest. 

So lovely the evening song of this bird that Marque, often watching thegirl askance, wondered that the surprising beauty of the melody nevercaused her to lift her head from book or sewing, or even rise from thetable and come out to the doorway to listen. 

But she never did; and whether or not the bird's singing appealed to her, he could not determine. 

Nobody in the little gossiping hamlet of Caranay seemed to knowmore than her name; he himself knew only a few people--men who, like himself, worked on the Willett place with hoe and rake andspraying cart and barrow--comrades of roller and mower and weed-fork andmole-trap--dull-witted cullers of dandelion and rose-beetle. And mostlytheir names were Hiram. 

These had their own kind in the female line to "go with"--Caranay beingfar from the metropolis, and as yet untroubled by the spreading femininerevolution. Only stray echoes of the doings had as yet penetrated toCaranay daisy fields; no untoward consequences had as yet ensued exceptthat old Si Dinglebat's wife, after reading the remains of a New Yorkpaper found on the railroad track, had suddenly, and apparently in a fitof mental aberration, attacked Si with a mop, accompanying the onslaughtwith the reiterated inquiry: "Air wimmen to hev their rights?"

That was the only manifestation of the welt-weh in Caranay--that and theother welt on Si's dome-like and knobby forehead. 

He encountered Marque that evening after supper as that young man, inclean blue jeans, carrying a fish-pole and smoking his pipe, waswandering in circles preparatory to a drift in the general direction ofthe railroad station. 

"Evenin', neighbour!" he said. 

"Good evening, " said the young man. 

"Goin' sparkin'?" inquired Si, overflowing with natural curiosity andtobacco. 

"What?"

"Be you goin' a-sparkin'?"

"Nonsense!" said Marque, reddening. "I don't know any girls in Caranay. "

"Waal, I cal'late you know that gal down to the depot, don't ye?"

"No, I don't. "

"Hey? I'm a leetle deef. "

"No!" shouted Marque, "I don't. "

"Don't what?"

"Don't know her, dammit!"

"Aw, quit yer cussin', " said Si, with a gummy wink. "Folks has beentalkin' ever since the fustest time you set onto that there platform andthat Eden gal fooled ye with her lookin' glass. "

"What are you talking about?" said Marque impatiently. 

"Issy Eden and her pretendin' not to see nobody--an' her a lookin' intothe leetle glass behind her table and a seein' of ye all the time! I knowshe kin see because she ketched Hi Orville's boy a-hookin' apples outenthe bar'l that--"

"You mean she is able to see _anybody_ on the platform, " said Marque, confused and astounded. 

"You bet she kin. I know because I peeked in the winder an' I seen hera-lookin' at you when you was fishin'----"

But the young fellow had recovered himself: "All right, " he interrupted;"that isn't your business or mine. Who gave you that crack on the lid?"

"By gum, " he said, "Hetty done it. I was that took! Forty year, and sheain't never throwed s'much as a dish pan at me. I wa'n't lookin' for nosech thing at my time o' life, young man. So when I come in to wash upfor supper, I sez to my woman, 'Hello, Het, ' sez I, an' she up an'screeched an' fetched me a clip. 

"'Lord a'mighty!' sez I. 'Look out what ye doin', ' sez I. 'Air wimmen tohev their rights?' sez she, makin' for me some more. 'Is wimmen to befree?' she sez. 

"'Yew bet, ' sez I, grabbin' onto her. 'I'll make free with ye, ' sez I. An' I up an' tuk an' spanked Hetty--the first time in forty year, youngman! An' it done her good, I guess, for she ain't never cooked like shecooked supper to-night. God a'mighty, what biscuits them was!"

Marque listened indifferently, scarcely following the details of thedomestic episode because his mind was full of the girl at the station andthe amazing discovery that all these days she could have seen himperfectly well at any moment if she had chosen to take the trouble, without moving more than her dark, silky lashes. Had she ever taken thattrouble? He did not know, of course. He would like to have known. 

He nodded absently to the hero of the welt-weh clash, and, pipe in onehand, pole in the other, walked slowly down the road, crossed the track, and seated himself on the platform's edge. 

She was at her desk, reading. And the young man felt himself turning redas he realised that, if she had chosen, she could have seen him sittinghere every evening with his eyes fixed--yes, sentimentally fixed upon theback of her head and her pretty white neck and the lovely contour of herdelicately curved cheek. 

All by himself he sat there and blushed, head lowered, apparently fussingwith his line and hook and trying to keep his eyes off her, without muchsuccess. 

His angling methods were simple; he crossed the grass-grown track, sethis pole in position, and returned to seat himself on the platform'sedge, where he could see his floating cork and--her. Then, as usual, herelapsed into meditation. 

If only just once she had ever betrayed the slightest knowledge of hispresence in her vicinity he might, little by little, cautiously, and bydegrees, have ventured to speak to her. 

But she never had evinced the slightest shadow of interest in anything asfar as he had noticed. 

Now, as he sat there, the burnt out pipe between his teeth, watchingalternately his rod and his divinity, the rose-breasted grosbeak began tosing in the pink light of sunset. Clear, pure, sweet, the song rangjoyously from the tip of the balsam's silver-green spire. He rested hishead on one hand and listened. 

The song of this bird, the odour of heliotrope, the ruddy sunlightnetting the ripples--these, for him, must forever suggest her. 

He had curious fancies about her and himself. He knew that, if she everdid turn and look at him out of those lilac-tinted eyes, he must fall inlove with her, irrevocably. He admitted to himself that already he was inlove with all he could see of her--the white neck and dull gold hair, thefair cheek's curve, the glimpse of her hand as she deliberately turned apage in the book she was reading. 

But that evening passed as had the others; night came; she lowered hercurtain; a faint tracery of lamplight glimmered around the edges; and, asalways, he lighted his pipe and took his fish, and shouldered his poleand went home to die the little death we call sleep until the sun of toilshould glitter above the eastern hills once more. 

A few days later he decided to make an ass of himself, having been sentwith a wagon to Moss Centre, a neighbouring metropolis. 

First he sent a telegram to himself at Caranay, signing it William Smith. Then he went to the drug store telephone, and called up Caranay. 

"Hello! What number, please?" came a far, sweet voice; and Marquetrembled: "No number. I want to speak to Mr. Marque--Mr. John Marque. "

"He isn't here. "

"Are you sure?"

"Perfectly. I saw him driving one of Mr. Willett's wagons across thetrack this morning. "

"Oh, that's too bad. Could I--might I--ask a little information of you?"

"Certainly. "

"What sort of a fellow is this John Marque? He doesn't amount to much Iunderstand. "

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I might want to employ him, but I don't believe he is the sort ofman to trust----"

"You are mistaken!" she said crisply. 

"You mean he is all right?"

"Absolutely. "

"Honest?"

"Of course. "

"Capable?"

"Certainly. "

"Sober?"

"Perfectly. "

"M-moral?"

"Unquestionably!" she said indignantly. 

"Are you sure?"

"I am. "

"How do you know?"

"I have means of information which I am not at liberty to disclose. Whois this speaking?"

"William Smith of Minnow Hollow. "

"Are you going to take Mr. Marque to Minnow Hollow?"

"I may. "

"You can't. Mr. Willett employs him. "

"Suppose I offer him better wages----"

"He is perfectly satisfied here. "

"But I----"

"No! Mr. Marque does not care to leave Caranay. "

"But----"

"I am sorry. It is useless to even suggest it to him. Good-bye!"

With cheeks flushed and a slightly worried expression she resumed hersewing through the golden stillness of the afternoon. Now and then theclank of wagon wheels crossing the metals caused her to glance swiftlyinto her mirror to see what was going on behind her. And at last she sawMarque drive up, cross the track, then, giving the reins to the boy whosat beside him, turn and walk directly toward the station. And her heartgave a bound. 

For the first time he came directly to her window; she saw and heard him, knew he was waiting behind the mignonette and heliotrope, and went onserenely sewing. 

"Miss Eden?"

She waited another moment--time enough to place her sewing leisurely onthe table. Then, very slowly she turned in her chair and looked at himout of her dark lilac-hued eyes. 

He heard himself saying, as in a dream:

"Is there a telegram for me?"

And, as her delicate lifted brows questioned him:

"I am John Marque, " he said. 

She picked up the telegram which lay on her table and handed it to him. 

"Thank you, " he said. After he had gone she realised that she had notspoken. 

[Illustration]

XII

WHENEVER he went to Moss Centre with the wagon he telephoned andtelegraphed to himself, and about a month after he had begun this idiotperformance he ventured to speak to her. 

It occurred late in July, just before sunset. He had placed his rod, lighted his pipe, and seated himself on the platform's edge, when, all ofa sudden, and without any apparent reason, a dizzy sort of recklessnessseized him, and he got up and walked over to her window. 

"Good evening, " he said. 

She looked around leisurely. 

"Good evening, " she said in a low voice. 

"I was wondering, " he went on, scared almost to death, "whether you wouldmind if I spoke to you?"

After a few seconds she said:

"Well? Have you decided?"

Badly frightened, he managed to find voice enough to express hiscontinued uncertainty. 

"Why did you care to speak to me?" she asked. 

"I--we--you----" and he stuck fast. 

"Had you anything to say to me?" she asked in a lower--and he thought agentler--voice. 

"I've a lot to say to you, " he said, finding his voice again. 

"Really? What about?"

He looked at her so appealingly, so miserably, that the faintest possiblesmile touched her lips. 

"Can I do anything for you, Mr. Marque?"

"If--if you'd only let me speak to you----"

"But I am letting you. "

"I mean--to-morrow, too----"

"To-morrow? To-morrow is a very, very long way off. It is somewherebeyond those eastern hills--but a very, very long way off!--as far asthe East is from the West. No; I know nothing about to-morrow, so how canI promise anything to anybody?"

"Will your promise cover to-day?"

"Yes. . . . The sun has nearly set, Mr. Marque. "

"Then perhaps when to-morrow is to-day you will be able to promise----"

"Perhaps. Have you caught any fish?"

After a moment he said: "How did you know I was fishing? You didn't turnto look. "

She said coolly: "How did you know I didn't?"

"You never do. "

She said nothing. 

At her window, elbows on the sill, the blossoms in her window-boxbrushing his sunburnt face, he stood, legs crossed, pipe in hand, thesunset wind stirring the curly hair at his temples. 

"Did you hear the bird this evening?" he asked. 

"Yes. Isn't he a perfect darling!"

Her sudden unbending was so gracious, so sweet that, bewildered, heremained silent for a while, recovering his breath. And finally:

"I never knew whether or not you noticed his singing, " he said. 

"How could you suppose any woman indifferent to such music?" she askedindignantly. She was beginning to realise how her silence had starved herall these months, and the sheer happiness of speech was exciting her. Into her face came a faint glow like a reflection from the pink cloudsabove the West. 

"That little bird, " she said, "sings me awake every morning. I can hearhis happy, delicious song above the rushing chorus of dawn from everythicket. He dominates the cheery confusion by the clear, crystallinepurity of his voice. "

It scarcely surprised him to find himself conversing with a cultivatedwoman--scarcely found it unexpected that, in her, speech matched beauty, making for him a charming and slightly bewildering harmony. 

Her slim hands lay in her lap sometimes; sometimes, restless, theytouched her bright hair or caressed the polished instruments on the tablebefore her. But, happy miracle! her face and body remained turned towardhim where he stood leaning on her window-sill. 

"There is a fish nibbling your hook, I think, " she said. 

He regarded his bobbing cork vaguely, then went across the track andsecured the plump perch. At intervals during their conversation he caughtthree more. 

"Now, " she said, "I think I had better say good-night. "

"Would you let me give you my fish?"

She replied, hesitating: "I will let you give me two if you really wishto. "

"Will you bring a pan?"

"No, " she said hastily; "just leave them under my window when you go. "

Neither spoke again for a few moments, until he said with an effort:

"I have wanted to talk to you ever since I first saw you. Do you mind mysaying so?"

She shook her head uncertainly. 

He lingered a moment longer, then took his leave. Far away into the duskshe watched him until the trees across the bridge hid him. Then thefaint smile died on her lips and in her eyes; her mouth drooped a little;she rested one hand on the table, rose with a slight effort, and loweredthe shade. Listening intently, and hearing no sound, she bent over andgroped on the floor for something. Then she straightened herself to herfull height and, leaning on her rubber-tipped cane, walked to the door. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XIII

HE came every day; and every day, at sundown, she sat sewing by thewindow behind her heliotrope and mignonette waiting. 

Sometimes he caught perch and dace and chub, and she accepted half, nevermore. Sometimes he caught nothing; and then her clear, humorous eyesbantered him, and sometimes she even rallied him. For it had come to passin these sunset moments that she was learning to permit herself afriendliness and a confidence for him which was very pleasant to herwhile it lasted, but, after he had gone, left her with soft lips droopingand gaze remote. 

Because matters with her, with them both, she feared, were not tendingin the right direction. It was not well for her to see him everyday--well enough for him, perhaps, but not for her. 

Some day--some sunset evening, with the West flecked gold and the zenithstained with pink, and the pink-throated bird singing of Paradise, andthe brook talking in golden tones to its pebbles--some such moment at theend of day she would end all of their days for them both--all of theirdays for all time. 

But not just yet; she had been silent so long, waiting, hoping, trusting, biding her time, that to her his voice and her own at eventide was ahappiness yet too new to destroy. 

That evening, as he stood at her window, the barrier of mignonettefragrant between them, he said rather abruptly:

"Are you ill?"

"No, " she said startled. 

"Oh, I am relieved. "

"Why did you ask?"

"Because every Tuesday I have seen the doctor from Moss Centre come inhere. "

In flushed silence she turned to her table and, folding her hands, gazedsteadily at nothing. 

Marque looked at her, then looked away. The big, handsome young physicianfrom Moss Centre had been worrying him for a long while now, but herepeated, half to himself: "I am very much relieved. I was becoming alittle anxious--he came so regularly. "

"He is a friend, " she said, not looking at him. 

He forced a smile. "Well, then, there is no reason for me to worry aboutyou. "

"There never was any reason--was there?"

"No, no reason. "

"You don't say it cheerfully, Mr. Marque. You speak as though it mighthave been a pleasure for you to worry over my general health andwelfare. "

"I think of little else, " he said. 

There was a silence. Between them, along the barrier of heliotrope andmignonette, the little dusk moths came hovering on misty wings; the sunhad set, but the zenith was bright crimson. Perhaps it was the reflectionfrom that high radiance that seemed to tint her face with a softercarmine. 

She looked out into the West across the stream, thinking now that forthem both the end of things was drawing very near. And, to meet fate halfway with serenity--nay, to greet destiny while still far off, with asmile, she unconsciously straightened in her chair and lifted her proudlittle head. 

"Lord Marque, " she said quietly, "why do you not go back to England?"

For a moment what she had said held no meaning for him. Thencomprehension smote him like lightning; and, thunderstruck, he remainedas he was without moving a muscle, still resting against her window-sill, his lean, sun-browned face illuminated under the zenith's fiery glory. 

"Who are you?" he said, under his breath. 

"Only an English girl who happened to have seen you in London. "

"When?"

She turned deliberately and, resting one arm across the back of herchair, looked him steadily in the eyes. 

"I am twenty-five. Since I was twenty your face has been familiar tome. "

They exchanged a long and intent gaze. 

"I never before saw you, " he said. 

"Perhaps. "

"_Have_ I?"

"Who can know what a fashionable young man really looks at--through amonocle. "

"I don't wear it any more. I lost it out West, " he said, reddening. 

"You lost your top hat once, too, " she said. 

He grew red as fire. 

"So you've heard of that, too?"

"I saw it. "

"You! Saw me attacked?" he demanded angrily, while the shame burnt hotteron his cheeks. 

"Yes. You ran like the devil. "

For a moment he remained mute and furious; then shrugged: "What was I todo?"

"Run, " she admitted. "It was the only way. "

He managed to smile. "And you were a witness to that?"

She nodded, eyes remote, her teeth nipping at the velvet of her underlip. He, too, remained lost in gloomy retrospection for a while, but finallylooked up with a more genuine smile. 

"I wonder whatever became of that fleet-footed girl who hung to my heelslong after the more solidly constructed aristocracy gave up?"

"Lady Diana Guernsey?"

"That's the one. What became of her?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because she gave me the run of my life. She was a good sport, that girl. I couldn't shake her off; I took to a taxi and she after me in another;my taxi broke down in the suburbs and I started across country, she afterme. And the last I saw of her was just after I leaped a hedge and she wascoming over it after me--a wonderful athletic young figure in midairsilhouetted against the sky line. . . . That was the last I saw of her. Ifancy she must have pulled up dead beat--or perhaps she came a cropper. "

"She did, " said the girl in a low voice. 

"Is that so?" he said, interested. "Hope it didn't damage her. "

"She broke her thigh. "

"Oh, that's too bad!" he exclaimed. "If I'd guessed any such thing I'dhave come back. . . . The poor little thing! I mean that, though she wasnearly six feet, I seem to think of her as little--and, of course, I'msix--two and a half. . . . Good little sport, that Diana girl! She gotover it all right, I hope. "

"It lamed her for life, Lord Marque. "

Shocked, for a moment he could find no words to characterise hisfeelings. Then:

"Oh, dammitall! I say, it's a rotten shame, isn't it? And all on accountof me--that superb young thing taking hedges like a hunter! Oh, come now, you know I--it hurts me all the way through. I wish I'd let her catch me!What would she have done to me? I wouldn't mind being pulled about abit--or anything--if it would have prevented her injury. By gad, youknow, I'd even have eaten her plum cake, frosting and all, to have savedher such a fate. "

The girl's eyes searched his. "That was not the most tragic part of it, Lord Marque. "

"God bless us! Was there anything more?"

"Yes. . . . She was in love with you. "

"With--with _me_?" he repeated, bewildered. 

"Yes. As a young, romantic girl she fell in love with you. She was acurious child--like all the Guernseys, a strange mixture of impulse andconstancy, of romance and determination. If she had fallen in love withSatan she would have remained constant. But she only fell in love withyoung Marque. . . . And she loves him to this day. "

"That--that's utterly impossible!" he stammered. "Didn't she become asuffragette and carry a banner and chase me and vow to make me eat my ownwords frosted on a terrible plum cake?"

"Yes. And all the while she went on loving you. "

"How do you know?" he demanded, incredulously. 

"She confided in me. "

"In _you_!"

"I knew her well, Lord Marque. . . . Not as well as I thought I did, perhaps; yet, perhaps better than--many--perhaps better than anybody. . . . We were brought up together. "

"You were her governess?"

"I--attempted to act in a similar capacity. . . . She was difficult toteach--very, very difficult to govern. . . . I am afraid I did not do mybest with her. "

"Why did you leave her to come here?" he asked. 

She made no reply. 

"Where is she now?"

She looked out into the cinders of the West, making no answer. 

He gazed at her in silence for a long time; then:

"Is she really lame?"

"Yes. "

"Very?"

"It is hip disease. "

"But--but that can be cured!" he exclaimed. "It is now perfectly curable. Why doesn't she go to Vienna or to New York----"

"She is going. "

"She ought to lose no time!"

"She is going. She only learned the nature of her trouble very recently. "

"You mean she has been lame all this time and didn't know what threatenedher?"

"She was--too busy to ask. Finally, because she did not get well, shecalled in a physician. But she is a very determined girl; she refused tobelieve what the physician told her--until--very recently----"

"See here, " he said, "are you in constant communication with her?"

"Constant. "

"Then tell her you know me. Tell her how terribly sorry I am. Tell--tellher that I'll do anything to--to--tell her, " he burst out excitedly, "that I'll eat her plum cake if that will do her any good--or amuseher--or anything! Tell her to bake it and frost it and fill it full ofglue, for all I care--and express it to you; and I'll eat every crumb ofthat silly speech I made----"

"Wait!" she exclaimed. "Do you realise what you're saying? Do you realisewhat you're offering to do for a girl--a lame girl--who is already inlove with you?"

His youthful face fell. 

"By gad, " he said, "do you think I ought to marry her? How on earth can Iwhen I'm--I'm dead in love with--somebody myself?"

"You--in love?" she said faintly. 

He gazed across the brook at the darkening foliage. 

"Oh, yes, " he said with a pleasant sort of hopelessness, "but I fancy shecares for another man. "

"W-why do you think so?"

"He comes to see her. "

"Is that a reason?"

"She won't talk about him. "

"When a woman won't talk about a man is it always because she cares forhim in _that_ way?"

"Isn't it?"

"No. "

They had lifted their heads now, facing each other in the violet dusk. Between them the scent of heliotrope grew sweeter. He said:

"I've been all kinds of a fool. For all I know women have as many rightson earth as men have. All I wish is that the plucky girl who took thathedge, banner in hand, were well and happy and married to a really decentfellow. "

"But--she loves you. "

"And I"--he looked up, encountering her blue eyes--"am already hopelesslyin love. What shall I do?"

She said under her breath: "God knows. . . . I can not blame you for notwishing to marry a lame girl----"

"It isn't that!"

"But you wouldn't anyhow----"

"I would if I loved her!"

"You _couldn't_--love a--a cripple! It would not be love; it would bepity----"

He said slowly: "I wish that _you_ were that lame girl. Then you'dunderstand me. "

For a while she sat bolt upright, clasped hands tightening in her lap. Then, turning slowly toward him, she said:

"I am going to say good-night. . . . And thank you--for Diana's sake. . . . And I am going to say more--I am going to say good-bye. "

"Good-bye! Where are you going?"

"To New York. "

"When?"

"Before I see you again. "

"There is no train until----"

"I shall drive to Moss Centre. "

"Where that--that doctor lives----"

"Yes. I am going to New York with him, Lord Marque. "

He stood as though stunned for a moment; then set his teeth, clenched hishands, and pulled himself together. 

"I think I understand, " he said quietly. "And--I wish you--happiness. "

She stretched out her hand to him above the heliotrope. 

"I--wish it--to you----" suddenly her voice broke; again her teeth caughtat her underlip like a child who struggles with emotion. "You--_don't_understand, " she said. "Wait a little while before you--come toany--unhappy--conclusions. "

After a moment she made a slight effort to disengage herhand--another--then turned in her chair and dropped her head on thetable, her right hand still remaining in his. Presently he released it;and she placed both hands on the edge of the table and her forehead uponthem. 

"I am coming in, " he said. 

She straightened up swiftly at his words. 

"Please don't!" she said in a startled voice, still tremulous. 

But he was gone from the dark window, and, frightened, she bent over, caught up her walking stick, and took one impulsive step toward the door. And stood stock still in the middle of the floor as he entered. 

His eyes met hers, fell on the supporting cane; and she covered her facewith her left arm, standing there motionless. 

"Good God!" he breathed. "_You!_"

She began to cry like a child. 

"I didn't want you to know, " she wailed. "Oh, I didn't want you to know. I thought there was no use--no hope--until yesterday. . . . I--wanted togo to New York with the doctor and be made all sound and well againb-before--before I let you love me----"

"Oh, Diana--Diana!" he whispered, with his arms around her. "Oh, Diana--Diana--my little girl Diana!"

Which was silly enough, she being six feet--almost as tall as he. 

"Turn your back, " she whispered. "I want to go to my desk--and I can'tbear to have you see me walk. "

"You darling----"

"No, no, no! Please let them cure me first. . . . Turn your back. "

He kissed her hands, held her at arm's length a second, then turned onhis heel and stood motionless. 

He heard her move almost noiselessly away; heard a desk open and close;heard the chair by the window move as she seated herself. 

"Come here, " she said in a curious, choked voice. 

He turned, went swiftly to her side. 

"Great heavens!" he said. "When did you bake that cake?"

"Y-yesterday. "

"Why?"

"B-because I was going away to New York and would never perhaps see youagain unless I was entirely cured. And I meant to leave this for you--soyou would know that I had followed you even here--so you would know I hadmade a plucky try at you--through all these months--"

"You--you corker!"

"D-do you really mean it?"

"Mean it! I tell you, Diana, you women put it all over the lords ofcreation--or any lord ever created! Mean it! You bet I do, sweetness!I'll take back everything I ever said about women. They're _the_ realthing in the world! And the best thing for the world is to let them runit!"

"But--dear----" she faltered, lifting her beautiful eyes to him, "if menare going to feel _that_ way about it, we won't want to run anything atall. . . . It was only because you wouldn't let us that we wanted to. "

He said in impassioned tones:

"Let the bally world run itself, Diana. What do we care--you and I?"

"No, " she said, "we don't care now. "

Then that rash and infatuated young man, losing his head entirely, drewfrom his jeans a large jack-knife, and, before she could prevent him, hehad sliced off an enormous hunk of plum cake heavily frosted with his ownwords. 

"Don't, dear!" she begged him. "I couldn't ask _that_ of you----"

"I will!" he said, and bit into it. 

"Don't!" she begged him; "please don't! I haven't had much experiencewith pastry. It may give you dreadful dreams!"

"Let it!" he said. "What do I care for dreams while you remain real!Diana--Diana--huntress of bigger game than ever fled through the age offable!"

And he bolted a section of frosting and began to chew vigorously uponanother, while she slipped both hands into his, regarding him with tendersolicitude. 

"Have no fears for me, dearest, " he said indistinctly; "fortified bymonths of pie I dread no food ever prepared by youth and beauty. Even thesecret dishes of the Medici----"

"John!"

"W-what, darling?"

"After all--I don't cook so badly. "

So, in the gloaming, he swallowed the last crumb and gathered her intohis strong young arms, and drew her golden head down close to his. 

"Take it from me, " he whispered, relapsing into the noble idioms of hisadopted country, "you're all to the mustard, Diana; your eats were bullyand I liked 'em fine!"

[Illustration]

XIV

THE situation in Great Britain was becoming deplorable; the HomeSecretary had been chased into the Serpentine; the Prime Minister and adozen members of Parliament had taken permanent refuge in the vaults ofthe Bank of England; a vast army of suffragettes was parading the streetsof London, singing, cheering, and eating bon-bons. Statues, monuments, palaces were defaced with the words "Votes for Women, " and it was not anuncommon sight to see some handsome young man rushing distractedlythrough Piccadilly pursued by scores of fleet-footed suffragettes of theeugenic wing of their party, intent on his capture for the purposes ofscientific propagation. 

No young man who conformed to the standard of masculine beauty set by theeugenist suffragettes was safe any longer. Scientific marriage betweenperfectly healthy people was now a firmly established principle of thesuffragette propaganda; they began to chase attractive young men on sightwith the avowed determination of marrying them to physically qualifiedindividuals of their own sex and party, irrespective of social oreducational suitability. 

This had already entailed much hardship; the young Marquis of Putney waschased through Cadogan Place, caught, taken away in a taxi, and marriedwilly-nilly to a big, handsome, strapping girl who sold dumb-bells in thenew American department store. No matter who the man might beprofessionally and socially, if he was young and well-built and athletiche was chased on sight and, if captured, married to some wholesome andathletic young suffragette in spite of his piteous protests. 

"We will found, " cried Mrs. Blinkerly Dank-some-Hankly triumphantly, "aperfect human race and teach it the immortal principles of woman'srights. So, if we can't persuade Parliament to come out for us, we'lltake Parliament by the slack of its degraded trousers, some day, andthrow it out!"

This terrible menace delivered in Trafalgar Square was cabled to the_Outlook_, which instantly issued its first extra; and New York, alreadyin the preliminary throes of a feminine revolution, went wild. 

That day the handsome young Governor of New York, attended by hisornamental young Military Secretary in full uniform, had arrived at theWaldorf-Astoria to confer with the attractive young Mayor of themetropolis concerning a bill to be introduced into the legislature, permitting the franchise to women under certain conditions. And on thesame day a monster suffragette parade was scheduled. 

Some provisions of the proposed measure, somehow or other, had becomeknown to the National Federation of Women; and as the Governor, hisMilitary Secretary, and the Mayor sat in earnest conference in a privateroom at the Waldorf, the most terrible riot that New York ever saw beganon Fifth Avenue just as the head of the parade, led by the suffragetteband of 100 pieces, arrived at the hotel. 

The Governor, Mayor, and Secretary rushed to the windows; acres ofbanners waved wildly below; cheer after cheer rent the raw Marchatmosphere; in every direction handsome young men were fleeing, pursuedby eugenists. Under their very windows the shocked politicians beheld anexceedingly good-looking youth seized by several vigorous and beautifulsuffragettes, dragged into a taxi, and hurried away toward a scientificmarriage, kicking and struggling. This was nothing new, alas. More thanone attractive young man had already been followed and spoken to inManhattan. 

Mr. Dill, president of the Board of Aldermen, and the handsomestincumbent of the office that the city ever beheld, had been courted sopersistently that, fearful of being picked up, he remained in hidingdisguised as a Broadway fortune teller, where the Mayor came at intervalsto consult him on pretense of having his palms read. 

But now the suffragettes threw off all restraint; men, frightened andconfused, were being not only spoken to on Fifth Avenue, but were beingseized and forcibly conducted in taxicabs toward the marriage licensebureau. 

It was a very St. Bartholomew for bachelors. 

"John, " said the Governor to his capable young Military Secretary, "takeoff that uniform. I'm going to flee in disguise. "

"What does your excellency expect me to flee in--dishabille?" stammeredthe Military Secretary. 

"I don't care what you flee in, " said the Governor bluntly; "but I willnot have it said that the Governor of the great State of New York wasseized by a dozen buxom eugenists and hurried away to become the founderof a physically and politically perfect race of politicians. Get out ofthose gold-laced jeans!"

"I'll flee disguised as a chambermaid, " muttered the handsome, rosy-cheeked young Mayor. And he rang for one. 

While the Governor and his Secretary were exchanging clothes they heardthe Mayor in the hallway arguing with a large German chambermaid in anearnest and fatherly manner, punctuated by coy screams from the maid. 

By and by he came back to the room, perspiring. 

"I bought her clothes, " he said; "she'll throw them over the transom. "

The clothing arrived presently by way of the transom; the Governor andthe Secretary tried to aid the Mayor to get into the various sections ofclothing, but as they all were bachelors and young they naturally werenot aware of the functions of the various objects scattered over thefloor. 

The Governor picked up a bunch of curls attached to a cup-shaped turbanswirl. 

"Good heavens!" he said. "The girl has scalped herself for your sake, John!"

"I bought that, too, " said the Mayor, sullenly. "Do you know which way itgoes on, George?"

They fixed it so that two curls fell down and dangled on either side ofhis Honour's nose. 

Meanwhile the unfortunate Military Secretary had dressed in the top hatand cutaway of the Governor. 

He said huskily, "If I can't outrun them they'll catch me and try tostart raising statesmen. "

"It's your duty to defend me, " observed the Governor. 

"Yes, with my life, but not with my p-progeny--"

"Then you'd better run faster than you've ever run in all your life, "said the Governor coldly. 

At that moment there came a telephone call. 

"Lady at the desk to speak to the Governor, " came a voice. 

"Hello, who is it?" asked his excellency coyly. 

"Professor Elizabeth Challis!" came a very sweet but determined voice. 

At the terrible name of the new President of the National Federation ofAmerican Women the Governor jumped with nervousness. Anonymous lettershad warned him that she was after him for eugenic purposes. 

"What do you want?" he asked tremulously. 

"In the name of the Federation I demand that you instantly destroy thedraft of that infamous bill which you are preparing to rush through atAlbany. "

"I won't, " said the Governor. 

"If you don't, " she said, "the committee on eugenics will seize you. "

"Let 'em catch me first, " he replied, boldly; and rang off. 

"Now, John, " he said briskly, "as soon as they catch sight of you in mytop hat and cutaway they'll start for you. And I advise you to leg it ifyou want to remain single. "

The unfortunate Military Secretary gulped with fright, buttoned hiscutaway coat, crammed his top hat over his ears, and gazed fearfully outof the window, where in the avenue below the riot was still in livelyprogress. Terrified young men fled in every direction, pursued byvigorous and youthful beauty, while the suffragette band played andthousands of suffragettes cheered wildly. 

"Isn't it awful!" groaned the Mayor, arranging the lace cap on histurban-swirl and shaking out his skirts. "The police are no use. Thesuffragettes kidnap the good-looking ones. Are you ready for the sortie, Governor?"

The Governor in the handsome uniform of his Military Secretary adjustedhis sword and put on the gold-laced cap. Then, thrusting the draft of theobnoxious bill into the bosom of his tunic, he strode from the room, followed by his Secretary and the unfortunate Mayor, who attempted invain to avoid treading on his own trailing skirts. 

"George, " said the Mayor, spitting out a curl that kept persistentlygetting into his mouth every time he opened it, "I'll be in a pickleunless I can reach Dill's rooms. . . . Wait! There's a pin sticking intome----"

"Too late, " said the Governor; "it will spur you to run all the faster. . . . Where is Dill's?"

The Mayor whispered the directions, spitting out his curl at intervalswhen it incommoded him; the Governor walked faster to escape. 

Down in the elevator they went, gazed at by terror-stricken bell-hops andscared porters. 

As the cheering and band playing grew louder and more distinct theSecretary quailed, but the Governor admonished him:

"You've simply _got_ to save me, " he said. "_Pro_ _bono publico!_ Comeon now. Make a dash for a taxi and the single life! One--two--three!"

The next moment the Secretary's top hat was carried away by a brick; theMayor's turban-swirl went the same way, amid showers of confetti and ayell of fury from a thousand suffragettes who saw in his piteous attemptto disguise himself, by aid of a turban-swirl, an insult to womanhood theworld over. 

A perfect blizzard of missiles rained on the terrified politicians; theSecretary and the Mayor burst into a frantic canter up Thirty-fourthStreet, pursued by a thousand strikingly handsome women. The Governor ranwest. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XV

THE Governor of the great State of New York was now running up Broadwaywith his borrowed sword between his legs and his borrowed uniform coveredwith confetti--footing it as earnestly as though he were running behindhis ticket with New York County yet to hear from. 

After him sped bricks, vegetables, spot-eggs, and several exceedinglyfashionable suffragettes, their perfectly gloved hands full ofhorsewhips, banners, and farm produce. 

But his excellency was now running strongly; one by one his eager andbeautiful pursuers gave up the chase and fell out, panting and flushedfrom the exciting and exhilarating sport, until, at Forty-second Street, only one fleet-footed young girl remained at his heels. 

The order of precedence then shifted as follows: First, the young andhandsome Governor running like a lost dog at a fair and clutching thedraft of the obnoxious bill to his gold-laced bosom; second, onedistractingly lovely young girl, big, wholesome-looking, athletic, andpink of cheeks, swinging a ci-devant cat by the tail as menacingly asDavid balanced the loaded sling; third, several agitated policemenwhistling and rapping for assistance; fourth, the hoi polloi of the ViaBlanca; fifth, a small polychromatic dog; sixth, the idle wind toyingcarelessly with the dust and refuse and hats and skirts of all Broadway. 

[Illustration: "Only one fleet-footed young girl remained at hisheels. "]

This municipal dust storm, mingling with the brooding metropolitangasoline fog, produced a sirocco of which no Libyan desert needed to beashamed; and it alternately blotted out and revealed the interestingMarathonian procession, until one capricious and suffocating flurry, full of whirling newspapers and derbies, completely blotted out theGovernor and the young lady at his heels. 

And when, a moment later, the miniature tornado had subsided into aseries of playful sidewalk eddys, only the policemen, the hoi polloi, andthe dog were still going; the Governor and the beautiful suffragette hadcompletely disappeared. 

They had, it is true, chosen a very good time and place for such anoccult performance; Long Acre at its busiest. 

Several mounted policemen had now joined in the frantic festivities. Theygalloped hurriedly in every direction. The crowd cheered and pursued thepolice, the small dog barked in eddying circles till he resembled anexpiring pinwheel. 

Meanwhile a curious thing had occurred; the youthful Governor was nowchasing the suffragette. It occurred abruptly, and in the followingmanner:

No sooner had the dust cloud spread a momentary fog around the radiantyoung man--like a hurricane eclipse of the sun--than he darted into thenarrow and dark hallway of an old-fashioned office building devoted totheatrical agencies, all-night lawyers, and "astrologists, " and startedup the stairs. But his unaccustomed sword tripped him up, and as he fellflat with a startling outcrash of accoutrements, there came a flurry ofdelicately perfumed skirts, the type-written papers were snatched fromhis gloved hands, and the perfumed skirts went scurrying away through thedusky corridor which ought to have opened on the next cross street. Anddidn't. 

After her ran the Governor, now goaded to courage by the loss of hispapers, and she, finding herself in a cul-de-sac, turned at bay, launchedthe cat at his head, and attempted to spring past him. But he caught thewhirling feline in one white-gloved hand and barred her way with theother; and she turned once more in desperation to seek an egress whichdid not exist. 

A flight of precipitate and rickety stairs led upward into an obscurityrendered deeper by a single gas jet burning low on the landing above. 

Up this she sprang, two at a time, the young man at her heels; up, up, passing floor after floor, until a dirty skylight overhead warned herthat the race was ending. 

On the top corridor there was a door ajar; she sprang for it, opened it, tried to slam and lock it behind her, then, exhausted, she shrankbackward into the room and sank into a red velvet chair, holding thebunch of papers tightly to her heaving breast. 

There was another chair--a gilt one. Into it fell his excellency, gasping, speechless, his spurred and booted legs trailing, his borroweduniform all over confetti and dust from his tumble on the stairs. 

Minute after minute elapsed as they lay there, fighting for breath, watching each other. 

She was the first to stir; and instantly he dragged himself to his feet, staggered over to the door, locked it, dropped the key into his pocket, returned to his chair, and collapsed once more. 

After a few moments he glanced down at the cat which he was stillclutching. A slight shiver passed over him, then, as he inspected it moreclosely, over his features crept an ironical smile. 

For the cat was not even a ci-devant cat; it had never been a cat; itwas only an imitation of a defunct one made out of floss and chenille, like a teddy-bear; and he smiled at her scornfully and dangled it by itsblack and white tail. 

"Pooh, " he panted; "I suppose even your bricks and vegetables and eggswere cotillion favours full of confetti. "

"They were, " she admitted defiantly. "Which did not prevent their servingtheir purposes. "

"As what?"

"As symbols!"

"Symbols?" he retorted in derision. 

"Yes, symbols! The three most ancient symbols of an insulted people'sfury--the egg, the turnip, and the cat. "

"_Mala gallina, malum ovum_, " he laughed, adjusting his sword and pickingseveral streamers of confetti from his tunic. "Did they hurl spot-eggs inancient Rome, fair maid?"

"They did; and cats--_ex necessitate rei_, " she observed with composure. 

"_Ex nihilo felis fit_--a cat-fit for nothing, " he retorted, flippantly. 

Half disdainfully she straightened out the slight disorder of her ownapparel, still breathing fast, and keeping tight hold of the bundle ofpapers. 

"How soon are you going to let me have them?" he asked good-humouredly. 

"Never. "

"I can't permit you to leave this room until you hand them to me. "

"Then I shall never leave this room. "

"You certainly shall not leave it until I have those papers. "

"Then I'll remain here all my life!" she said defiantly. 

"What do you expect to do when the people who live here return?"

She shrugged her pretty shoulders, and presently cast an involuntary anduneasy glance around the room. 

It was not a place to reassure any girl; gilt stars were pasted all overwalls and ceilings, where also a tinsel sun and moon appeared. Theconstellations were interspersed with bats. 

The remaining decorations consisted of a cozy corner, some pasteboardtrophies, red cotton velvet hangings, several plaster casts of humanhands, and a frieze of half-burnt cigarettes along the mantel-edge. 

"Are you going to give me those papers?" he repeated, secretly amused. 

"No. "

"What do you expect to do with them?"

"Deliver them to Professor Elizabeth Challis, President of the NationalFederation of Independent Women of America. "

"Is this a private enterprise of yours, " he asked curiously, "or justa--a playful impulse, or the militant fruition of a vast and feminineconspiracy?"

She smiled slightly. 

"I suppose you mean to be impertinent, but I shall not evade answeringyou, Captain Jones. I am acting under orders. "

"Betty's?" he inquired, flippantly. 

"The orders of Professor Elizabeth Challis, " she said, with heightenedcolour. 

"Exactly. It _is_ a conspiracy, then, complicated by riot, assault, disorderly conduct, and highway robbery--isn't it?"

"You may call it what you choose. "

"Oh, I'll leave that to the courts. "

She said disdainfully: "We recognize no laws in the making of which wehave had no part. "

"There's no use in discussing that, " said the Governor blandly; "but I'dlike to know what you suffragettes find so distasteful in that proposedbill which the Mayor and--and the Governor of New York have had drafted. "

"It is reactionary--a miserable subterfuge--a treacherous attempt toreturn to the old order of things! A conspiracy to re-shackle, re-enslaveAmerican womanhood with the sordid chains of domestic cares! To drive herback into the kitchen, the laundry, the nursery--back into the dark agesof dependence and acquiescence and non-resistance--back into the degradedepochs of sentimental relations with the tyrant man!"

She leaned forward in her excitement and her sable boa slid back as shemade a gesture with her expensive muff. 

"Once, " she said, "woman was so ignorant that she married for love! Nowthe national revolt has come. Neither sentiment nor impulse nor emotionshall ever again play any part in our relations with man!"

He said, trying to speak ironically: "That's a gay outlook, isn't it?"

"The outlook, Captain Jones, is straight into a glorious millennium. Marriage, in the future, is to mean the regeneration of the human racethrough cold-blooded selection in mating. Only the physically andmentally perfect will hereafter be selected as specimens for scientificpropagation. All others must remain unmated--_pro bono publico_--and soultimately human imperfection shall utterly disappear from this world!"

Her pretty enthusiasm, her earnestness, the delicious colour in hercheeks, began to fascinate him. Then uneasiness returned. 

"Do you know, " he said cautiously, "that the Governor of New York hasreceived anonymous letters informing him that Professor Elizabeth Challisconsiders him a proper specimen for the--the t-t-terrible purposes ofs-s-scientific p-p-propagation?"

"Some traitor in our camp, " she said, "wrote those letters. "

"It--it isn't true, then, is it?"

"What isn't true?"

"That the Governor of the great State of New York is in any danger ofbeing seized for any such purpose?"

She looked at him with a curious veiled expression in her pretty eyes, asthough she were near-sighted. 

"I think, " she said, "Professor Challis means to seize him. "

The Governor gazed at her, horrified for a moment, then his politicalcraft came to his aid, and he laughed. 

"What does she look like?" he inquired. "Is she rather a tough old lady?"

"No; she's young and--athletic. "

"Barrel-shaped?"

"Oh, she's as tall as the Governor is--about six feet, I believe. "

"Nonsense!" he exclaimed, paling. 

"Six feet, " she repeated carelessly; "rowed stroke at Vassar; carried offthe standing long jump, pole vault, and ten-mile swimming----"

"This--this is terrible, " murmured the young man, passing one glovedhand over his dampening brow. Then, with a desperate attempt at a smile, he leaned forward and said confidentially:

"As a matter of fact, just between you and me, the Governor is aninvalid. "

"Impossible!" she retorted, her clear blue eyes on his. 

"Alas! It is only too true. He's got a very, very rare disease, " said theyoung man sadly. "Promise you won't tell?"

"Y-yes, " said the girl. Her face had lost some of its colour. 

"Then I will confide in you, " said the young man impressively. "TheGovernor is threatened with a serious cardiac affection, known asLamour's disease. "

She looked down, remained silent for a moment, then lifted her pure gazeto him. 

"Is that true--Captain Jones?"

"As true as that I am his Military Secretary. "

Her features remained expressionless, but the colour came back as thoughthe worst of the shock were over. 

"I see, " she said seriously. "Professor Challis ought to know of thissad condition of affairs. I have heard of Lamour's disease. "

"Indeed, she ought to be told at once, " he said, delighted. "You'llinform her, won't you?"

"If you wish. "

"Thank you! _Thank_ you!" he said fervently. "You are certainly the mostcharmingly reasonable of your delightful sex. The Governor will betremendously obliged to you----"

"Is the Governor--are his--his affections--to use an obsoleteexpression--fixed upon any particular----"

"Oh, no!" he said, smiling; "the Governor isn't inlove--except--er--generally. He's a gay bird. The Governor never, in allhis career, saw a single specimen of your sex which--well, whichinterested him as much--well, for example, " he added in a burst ofconfidence, "as much even as you interest me!"

"Which, of course, is not at all, " she said, laughing. 

"Oh, no--no, not at all----" he hesitated, biting his moustache andlooking at her. 

"I'll tell you one thing, " he said; "if the Governor ever did getentirely well--er--recovered--you know what I mean?"

"Cured of his cardiac trouble?--this disease known as Lamour's disease?"

"Exactly. If he ever did recover, he--I'm quite sure he would be----" andhere he hesitated, gazing at her in silence. As for her, she had turnedher head and was gazing out of the window. 

"I wonder what your name is?" he said, so naïvely that the colour tintedeven the tip of the small ear turned toward him. 

"My name, " she said, "is Mary Smith. Like you, I am Militant Secretary toProfessor Elizabeth Challis, President of the Federation of AmericanWomen. "

"I hope we will remain on pleasant terms, " he ventured. 

"I hope so, Captain Jones. "

"Non-combatants?"

"I trust so. "

"Even f-friends?"

She bent her distractingly pretty head in acquiescence. 

"Then you'll give me back the papers?"

"I'm sorry. "

"Sorry for taking them?"

"No, sorry for keeping them. "

"You don't mean to say that you are going to keep them, Miss Smith?"

"I'm afraid I must. My duty forces me to deliver them to ProfessorChallis. "

"But why does this terrible and strapping young lady desire to swipe thedraft of this bill?"

"Because it contains the evidence of a wicked conspiracy between theGovernor of New York, the Mayor of this city, and an abandonedlegislature. The women of America ought to know what threatens thembefore this bill is perfected and introduced. And before they will permitit to be debated and passed they are determined to march on Albany, halfa million strong, as did the heroines of Versailles!"

She stretched out her white gloved hand with an excited but gracefulgesture; he eyed her moodily, swinging the chenille cat by its fluffytail. 

"What do they suspect is in that bill?" he said at last. 

"We are not yet perfectly sure. We believe it is an insidious attempt tosow dissension in the ranks of our sex--a bill cunningly devised tocreate jealousy and unworthy distrust among us--an ingenious and inhumanconspiracy to disorganize the National Federation of Free and IndependentWomen. "

"Nonsense, " he said. "The bill, when perfected, is designed to give youwhat you want. "

"What!"

"Certainly; votes for women. "

"On what terms?" she asked, incredulously. 

"Terms? Oh, no particular terms. I wouldn't call them 'terms, '" he saidcraftily; "that sounds like masculine dictation. "

"It certainly does. "

"Of course. There are no terms in it. It's a--a sort of a civil serviceidea--a kind of a qualification for the franchise----"

"Oh!"

"Yes, " he continued pleasantly, "it a--er--suggests that a vote beaccorded to any woman who, in competition with others of that electiondistrict, passes the examinations----"

"_What_ examinations?"

He twirled the cat carelessly. 

"Oh, the examination papers are on various subjects. One is chemistry. "

"Chemistry?"

"Yes--that part of organic chemistry which includes the scientificpreparation of--er--food. "

Her eyes flashed; he twirled the cat absently. 

"Yes, " he said, "chemistry is one of the subjects. Physics isanother--physical phenomena. "

"What kind?"

"Oh, the--the proposition that nature abhors a vacuum. You're to proveit--you're given a certain area--say a bed-room full of dust. Then youapply to it----"

"I see, " she said; "you mean we apply to it a vacuum cleaner, don't you?"

"Or, " he admitted courteously, "you may solve it through the science ofdynamics----"

"Of course--using a broom. " Her eyes were beautiful but frosty. 

"Do you know, " he said, as pleasantly as he dared, "that you, forinstance, would be sure to pass. "

"Because I'm intelligent enough to comprehend the subtleties ofthis--bill?"

"Exactly. " He swung the cat in a circle. 

"Thank you. And what else do these examination papers contain?"

"Physics mostly--the properties of solid bodies. For example, you choosea button--any ordinary button, " he explained frankly, as though takingher into his confidence; "say, for instance, the plain bone button ofcommerce----"

"And sew it onto some masculine shirt, " she nodded as he sank backapparently overcome with admiration at her intelligence. "And that, " sheadded, "no doubt is intended to illustrate the phenomenon of adhesion. "

"You are perfectly correct, " he said with enthusiasm. 

"What else is there?" she asked. 

"Oh, nothing--nothing very much. A few experiments in bacteriology----"

"Sterilizing nursing bottles?"

"How on earth did you ever guess?" he cried, overwhelmed, but perfectlyalert to the kindling anger in her blue eyes. "Why, of course that isit. It is included in the science of embryotics--"

"What science?"

"Embryotics. For instance, you take an embryo of any kind--say a--a baby. Then you show exactly how to dress, undress, wash, feed, and finallybring that baby to triumphant maturity. It's interesting, isn't it, MissSmith?"

She said nothing. He twirled the cat furiously until its tail gave wayand it flew into a corner. 

"Captain Jones, " she said, "as I understand it, this bill is a codifiedconspiracy to turn every woman of this State into a--a washer of clothes, a cleaner of floors, a bearer of children--and a Haus-frau!"

"I--I would not put it _that_ way, " he protested. 

"And her reward, " she went on, not noticing his interruption, "ispermission to vote--to use the inalienable liberty with which alreadyHeaven has endowed her. "

Tears flashed in her eyes; she held her small head proudly and not onefell. 

"Captain Jones, " she said, "do you realize what centuries of suppressionare doing to my sex? Do you understand that woman is degenerating intoan immobility--an inertia--a molluskular condition of receptive passivitywhich is rendering us, year by year, more unfitted to either think or actfor ourselves? Even in the matter of marriage we are not permitted bycustom to assume the initiative. We may only shake our heads until theman we are inclined toward asks us, when he is entirely ready to ask. Then, like a row of Chinese dolls, we nod our heads. I tell you, " shesaid, tremulously, "we are becoming like that horrid, degenerate, wingless moth which is born, mates, and dies in one spot--a livingmechanical incubator--a poor, deformed, senseless thing that has throughgenerations lost not only the use, but even the rudiments of the wingswhich she once possessed. But the male moth flies more strongly andfrivolously than ever. There is nothing the matter with the developmentof _his_ wings, Captain Jones. "

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XVI

IT was now growing rather dark in the room. 

"I'm terribly sorry you feel this way, " he said. 

She had averted her eyes and was now seated, chin in hand, looking out ofthe window. 

"Do you know, " he said, "this is a rotten condition of affairs. "

"What do you mean?" she asked. 

"This attitude of women. "

"Is it more odious than the attitude of men?"

"After all, " he said, "man is born with the biceps. He was made to do thefighting. "

"Not all of the intellectual fighting. "

"No, of course not. But--you don't want him to rock the cradle, do you?"

"Cradles are no longer rocked, Captain Jones. I don't think _you_ wouldbe qualified to pass this examination with which you menace us. "

He began to be interested. She turned from the window, saw he wasinterested, hesitated, then:

"I wish I could talk to you--to such a man as you seem to be--sensibly, without rancour, without personal enmity or prejudice----"

"Can't you?"

"Why, yes. _I_ can. But--I am not sure what _your_ attitude----"

"It is friendly, " he said, looking at her. "I am perfectly hap--I meanwilling to listen to you. Only, sooner or later, you must return to methose papers. "

"Why?"

"The Governor entrusted them to me officially----"

She said smiling: "But you--your Governor I mean--can frame anothersimilar bill. "

"I'm a soldier in uniform, " he said dramatically. "My duty is to guardthose papers with my life!"

"I am a soldier, too, " she said proudly, "in the Army of Human Progress. "

"Very well, " he said, "if you regard it that way. "

"I do. Only brute violence can deprive me of these papers. "

"That, " he said, "is out of the question. "

"It is no more shameful than the mental violence to which you havesubjected us through centuries. Anyway, you're not strong enough to getthem from me. "

"Do you expect me to seize you and twist your arm until you drop thosepapers?"

"You can never have them otherwise. Try it!"

He sat silent for a while, alternately twisting his moustache and thecat's tail. Presently he flung the latter away, rose, inspected the starson the wall, and then began to pace to and fro, his gloved hands behindhis back, spurs and sword clanking. 

"It's getting late, " he said as he passed her. Continuing his promenadehe added as he passed her again. "I've had no luncheon. Have you?"

He poked around the room, examining the fantastic furnishings in alltheir magnificence of cotton velvet and red cheesecloth. 

"If this is Dill's room it's a horrible place, " he thought to himself, sitting down by a table and shuffling a pack of cards. 

"Shall I cast your horoscope?" he asked amiably. "Here's a chart. "

"No, thank you. "

Presently he said: "It's getting beastly cold in this room. "

"Really!" she murmured. 

He came back and sat down in the gilded chair. It was now so dusky in theroom that he couldn't see her very plainly. 

So he folded his arms and abandoned himself to gloomy patience until theroom became very dark. Then he got up, struck a match, and lighted thegas. 

"By Jupiter!" he muttered, "I'm hungry. "

For nearly five minutes she let the remark go apparently unnoticed. Butthe complaint he had made is the one general and comprehensive appealthat no woman ever born can altogether ignore. In the depths of hersomething always responds, however faintly. And in the soul of this younggirl it was answering now--the subtle, occult response of woman to theeternal and endless need of man--hunger of one kind or another. 

"I'm sorry, " she said, so sincerely that the sweetness in her voicestartled him. 

"Why--why, do you know I believe you really are!" he said in gratefulsurprise. 

"I am a great many things that you have no idea I am, " she said, smiling. 

"What is one of them?"

"I'm afraid I'm a--a fool. "

She came forward and stood looking at him. 

"I've been thinking, " she said, "that I can do you no kinder service thanto destroy those papers and let you go home. "

For a moment he thought she was joking, then something in her expressionchanged his opinion and he took a step forward, eyes fixed on her face. 

"Yes, " he said, "it would be the kindest thing you can do for me. Shall Itell you why? It's because I'm hopelessly near-sighted. I wear glasseswhen I'm alone in my study, where nobody can see me. "

"What in the world has _that_ to do with my leaving you?" she asked, colouring up. 

"Suffragettes would never marry a near-sighted man, would they?"

"They ought not to. "

"_You_ wouldn't, would you?"

"Why do you ask--such a thing?"

"I want to know. "

"But how does your myopia concern _me_?" she said faintly. 

"_Couldn't_ it--ever?" he asked, reddening. 

"No, " she said, turning pale. 

"Then we'd better not stay here; and I'm going to be as generous as youare, " he said, advancing toward her. "I'm going to let you go home. "

She backed away, thrusting the papers behind her; his arm slipped aroundher, after them, strove to grasp them, to hold and restrain her, butthere was a strength in her tall, firm young body which matched his own;she resisted, turned, twisted, confronted him with high colour, and lipscompressed, and they came to a deadlock, breathing fast and irregularly. 

Again, coolly, dexterously, he pitted his adroitness, then his sheerstrength against hers; and it came again to a deadlock. 

Suddenly she crook'd one smooth knee inside of his; her arms slid aroundhim like lightning; he felt himself rising into the air, descending--there came a crash, a magnificent display of ocularfireworks, and nothing further concerned him until he discovered himselflying flat on the floor and heard somebody sobbing incoherencies besidehim. 

He was mean enough to keep his eyes shut while she, on her knees besidehim, slopped water on his forehead and begged him to speak to her, andtold him her heart was broken and she desired to die and repose inmortuary simplicity beside him forever. 

Certain terms she employed in addressing what she feared were only hismortal remains caused him to prick up his ears. He certainly was one ofthe meanest of men. 

"Dear, " she sobbed, "I--I have l-loved you ever since your lithographswere displayed during the election! Only speak to me! Only open thosebeloved eyes! I don't care whether they are near-sighted! Oh, please, please wake up!" she cried brokenly. "I'll give you back your papers. What do I care about that old bill? I'm p-perfectly willing to do allthose things! Oh, oh, oh! How conscience does make Haus-fraus of us all!"

His meanness now became contemptible; he felt her trembling hands on hisbrow; the fragrant, tearful face nearer, nearer, until her hot, flushedcheeks and quivering lips touched his. And yet, incredible as it seems, and to the everlasting shame of all his sex, he kept eyes and mouth shutuntil a lively knocking on the door brought him bolt upright. 

She uttered a little cry and shrank away from him on her knees, the tearsglimmering in her startled and wide open eyes. 

"Good heavens, darling!" he said seriously; "how on earth are we going toexplain this?"

They scrambled hastily to their feet and gazed at each other while kicksand blows began to rain on the door. 

"I believe it's Dill, " he whispered; "and I seem to hear the Mayor'svoice, too. "

"Help! Help! For heaven's sake!" screamed the Mayor, "let us in, George!There's a mob of suffragettes coming up the stairs!"

The Governor unlocked the door and jerked it open, just as severalunusually beautiful girls seized Mr. Dill and the Military Secretary. 

The Mayor, however, rushed blindly into the room, his turban-swirl wasover one eye, his skirt was missing, his apron hung by one pin. 

He ran headlong for a sofa and tried to scramble under it, but lovely andvigorous arms seized his shins and drew him triumphantly forth. 

"Hurrah!" they cried delightedly, "we have carried the entire ticket!"

"Hurrah!" echoed a sweet but tremulous voice, and a firm young arm wasslipped through the Governor's. 

He turned to meet her beautiful, level gaze. 

"Check!" she said. 

"Make it check-mate, " he said steadily. 

"Mate _you_?"

"Will you?"

She bent her superb head a moment, then lifted her splendid eyes to his. 

"Of course I will, " she said, as steadily as her quickening heartpermitted. "Why do you suppose I ran after you?"

"Why?" whispered that infatuated man. 

"Because, " she said, naïvely, "I was afraid some other girl would getyou. . . . A girl never can be sure what another girl might do to a man. . . . And I wanted you for myself. "

"Thank God, " he said, "that six-foot Professor Challis will never get me, anyway. "

She bent her adorable face close to his. 

"Your excellency, " she murmured, "_I_ am Professor Challis!"

At that instant a pretty and excited suffragette dashed up the stairs andsaluted. 

"Professor, " she cried, "all over the city desirable young men are beingpursued and married by the thousands! We have swept the State, withBrooklyn and West Point yet to hear from!" Her glance fell upon theGovernor; she laughed glee-fully. 

"Shall I call a taxi, Professor?" she asked. 

An exquisite and modest pride transformed the features of Professor BettyChallis to a beauty almost celestial. 

"Let George do it, " she said tenderly. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XVII

A FEW minutes later, amid a hideous scene of riot, where young men werefleeing distractedly in every direction, where excited young girls weredragging them, struggling and screaming, into cabs, where even the policewere rushing hither and thither in desperate search for a place to hidein, the Governor of New York and Professor Elizabeth Challis might havebeen seen whirling downtown in a taxicab toward the marriage licensebureau. 

Her golden head lay close to his; his moustache rested against herdelicately flushed cheek. A moment later she sat up straight in direconsternation. 

"Oh, those papers! The draft of the bill!" she exclaimed. "Where is it?"

"Did you want it, Betty?" he asked, surprised. 

"Why--why, no. Didn't you want it, George?"

"I? Not at all. "

"Then why on earth did you keep me imprisoned in that room so long if youdidn't want those papers?"

He said slowly: "Why didn't you give them up to me if _you_ didn't reallywant them, Betty?"

She shook her pretty head. "I don't know. . . . But I'm afraid it wasonly partly obstinacy. "

"It was only partly that with me, " he said. 

They smiled. 

"I just wanted to detain you, I suppose, " he admitted. 

"George, you wouldn't expect me to match that horrid confession--wouldyou?"

"No, I wouldn't ask it of you. "

He laid his cheek against hers and whispered: "Darling, do you think ourgreat love justifies our concealing my myopia?"

"George, " she murmured, "I think it does. . . . Besides, I'm dreadfullynear-sighted myself. "

"You!"

"Dear, every one of us has got _something_ the matter with her. MissVining, who caught the Mayor, wears a rat herself. . . . Do you mean tosay that men believe there ever was a perfect woman?"

He kissed her slowly. "_I_ believe it, " he said. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XVIII

AS the extremes of fashionable feminine costume appear first on FifthAvenue in late November, and in early December are imitated in Harlem, and finally in January pervade the metropolitan purlieus, so all thegreat cities of the Union, writhing in the throes of a fashionablesuffragette revolution, presently inoculated the towns; and the townsinfected the villages, and the villages the hamlets, and the hamletspassed the contagion along into the open country, where isolated farmsand dicky-birds alone remained uninfected and receptive. 

It was even asserted by enthusiastic suffragettes that flocks of femininedicky-birds had begun to assault masculine birds of the same variety;and that the American landscape was full of agitated male birds, lackingrear plumage, flying distractedly in every direction or squattingdisconsolately in lonely trees, counting their tail feathers. 

Mr. Borroughs and our late great President were excitedly inclined tobelieve it, but the most famous and calm of explorers, who had recentlyreturned from exile to his camp on top of Mt. McKinley, warned thescientific world on a type-writer not to credit anything that anybodysaid until he had corroborated it in the magazines. And he left that weekfor another trip to the pole to find out what the attitude of thepolecats might be concerning the matter in question. 

Meanwhile the cities were full of trouble and forcibly selectedbridegrooms. From 60, 000 marriages recorded in New York City for thetwelve months of the previous year, in the few months of the eugenicrevolution the number of weddings had reached the enormous figures of180, 000, not including Flatbush. 

Thousands and thousands of marriageable young men were hiding in theirclubs or in the shrubbery of Central Park, waiting for a chance to maketheir escape to the country and remain incognito in hay lofts until theeugenic revolution had ended itself in a dazzling display of divorce. 

Westchester, the Catskills, and even the country farther north were fullof young business men and professional men fleeing headlong from theirjobs in Wall Street, Broadway, and Fifth Avenue, and hiring out tofarmers and boarding house keepers under assumed names. One could jump ayoung man out of almost any likely thicket north of the Bronx; they wereas plentiful and as shy as deer in the Catskills; corn field, scrub, marsh, and almost any patch of woods in the State, if carefully beatenup, would have yielded at least one or two flocks of skulking young men. 

Now, as there was no close season, and marriageable youths in New YorkCity became scarcer, those militant suffragettes devoted to eugenicprinciples began to make excursions into the suburbs in search of beviesand singles--which had escaped the exciting days of the great Long Acredrive and the bachelors' St. Bartholomew. And, as the April days turnedinto May days, and the May days into June days, parties of pretty, laughing, athletic girls penetrated farther and farther into the country, joyously rummaging the woods and routing out and scattering into flightthe lurking denizens. For every den had its denizen, and Diana roamed theearth once more. 

There was excellent sport to be had along the Hudson. Some young ladieswent in automobiles; some in yachts; some by train, to points north, where the landscape looked more promising and wilder--but probably not aswild as the startled masculine countenances peering furtively fromhillside thickets as some gay camping party of distractingly pretty girlsappeared, carrying as excess baggage one clergywoman and a bundle ofmarriage licenses, with the bridegroom's name represented only by aquestion mark. 

It was on an unusually beautiful day in early June that two briar-mangledand weather-beaten young men, bearing every evidence of Wall Street andexcessive fright, might have been seen sitting up like a brace ofstartled rabbits in a patch of ferns which grew along the edges of abrook at the foot of a charmingly wooded slope among the Westchesterhills. In every direction stretched hills, woods, and Italians. The calmremote sky was blue and unvexed by anything except factory smoke; not asound was visible, not a noise was to be seen. 

Bacon was frying unctuously in a pan on the coals beside them; theirsuit-cases lay near. They sat up in the fern patch, coffee cupssuspended, eyes wild, listening intently. 

"Brown, " whispered Vance, "did you hear anything except the hum ofautomobiles?"

"I sure did, " nodded Brown, craning his neck like a turkey in abriar-patch and glaring around. 

"If--if they've got dogs, " said Vance, "they'll flush us before--hark!Great guns! _Look_ at that bench show!"

Brown's hair rose on end. "They _have_ got dogs, " he whispered, "a toybull, a Mexican, a Chow, two Pomms--and, by Jupiter! they've got amarmoset! Look at 'em! Hark! You can hear those unnatural girls laughing!Me for a quick getaway. Come on!"

"They--they may come from some college, " faltered Vance; "they may run usdown. Shall we trust to our protective colouring and squat close?"

"Do you want to stay here until that miserable Chow comes poking hisorange-coloured head into the ferns and laughs at us with his bluetongue?"

Vance wrung his hands, hurling coffee all over Brown in his agonisedindecision. 

"Good heavens!" he moaned. "I don't _want_ to be married! I can't affordit! Do you think those girls can outrun us?"

"If they can, " said Brown, "they'll want me more than I want my liberty. Look out! There's their bat-eared bull! See him sniff! The wretched mutthas winded the bacon! We've got to make a break for it now! Come on! Beatit, son!"

Up out of the covert crashed the two young fellows, and went prancingaway through the woods, suit-cases in hand. A chorus of excited yelps andbarks greeted the racket they made in their flight; a shrill whistle rangout, then a pretty and excited voice:

"Mark! Quick, Gladys! There are two of them! Mark left!"

"Are they any good?" cried Gladys. "Oh, where are they, dear?"

"I only caught a glimpse of them. They looked like fine ones, in splendidcondition. Millicent! Quick, where are you?"

"Here!" came a third voice. "Oh, Constance! one is too perfectly splendidfor anything! Chow-Chow is at his heels! Look out! Mark right!"

"Run!" panted Constance, leaping a fallen log. 

The lovely June woodland was now echoing with the happy cries of thechase, the ki-yi of excited lap-dogs, the breathless voices of the younggirls, the heavy crashing racket of stampeding young men rushing headlongthrough bramble and thicket with a noise like a hurricane amid deadleaves. 

Vance's legs, terror weakened, wobbled as he fled; and after ten minuteshe took to a tree with a despairing scream. 

Brown, looking back from the edge of a mountain pasture, saw the dogsleaping frantically at his friend's legs as he shinned rapidly up thetrunk, and disappeared into the clustering foliage; saw three flushedyoung girls come running up with cries of innocent delight; saw one ofthem release a slender, black, furry, spidery thing which immediately ranup the tree; heard distracted yells from Vance:

"For heaven's sake, take away that marmoset! I can't bear 'em--I hate'em, ladies! Ouch! He's all over me! He's trying to get into my pocket!Take him away, for the love of Mike, and I'll come down!"

But Brown waited to hear no more. Horror now lent him her infernal wings;he fairly fluttered across the mountain side, sailed down the fartherslope, and into a lonely country road. Along this he cantered, observedonly by surprised cattle, until, exhausted, he slackened his pace to awalk. 

Rickety fences and the remains of old stone walls flanked him on eitherhand; the clearings were few, the cultivated patches fewer. Heencountered no houses. On a distant hillside stood a weather-beaten barn, the sky shining blue through its roof rafters. 

Beyond this the road forked; one branch narrowed to a grassy cattle pathand presently ended at a pair of bars. Inside the bars was a stone barn;beside the barn a house of the century before last--a low, square stonehouse, half stripped of its ancient stucco skin, a high-roofed one-storyaffair, with sagging dormers peering from the slates and little oblongloop-holes under the eaves, from which the straw of birds' nestsfluttered in the breeze. 

Surely this ancient place, even if inhabited--as he saw it was--must besufficiently remote from the outer world to insure his safety. For herethe mountain road ended at the barn-yard bars; here the low wooded hillswalled in this little world of house, barn, and orchard, making a silent, sunny place under the blue sky, sweet with late lilac bloom and the humof bees. No factory smoke was visible, no Italians. 

He looked at the aged house. A black cat sat on the porch thoughtfullypolishing her countenance with the back of one paw. Three diminutiveparti-coloured kittens frisked and rolled and toddled around her; andoccasionally she seized one and washed it energetically against thegrain. 

Brown looked at the door with its iron knocker, at the delicately spreadfan-light over it, at the side-lights, at the half-pillars with theirIonic capitals, at the ancient clumps of lilacs flanking the stonestep--great, heavy-stemmed and gnarled old bushes now all hung withperfumed clusters of palest lavender bloom. 

Leaning there on the picket fence he inhaled their freshness, gazing upinto the sunny foliage of the ancient trees, elms, maples, and one oak soaged and so magnificent that, awed, his eyes turned uneasily again towardthe house to reassure himself that it was still inhabited. 

Cat and kittens were comfortable evidence, also a hen or two loiteringnear, and the pleasant sound from a dozen bee-hives, and a wild rose in achina bowl, dimly visible on an inner window-sill. 

There were two characters he might assume; he might go to the back doorand request a job; he might bang on the front door with that ironknocker, shaped like a mermaid, and ask for country board. 

Of one thing, somehow or other, he was convincing himself; this crumblinghouse and its occupants knew as much about the recent high-jinks in NewYork as did the man who built it in the days when loop-holes were anessential part of local architecture, and the painted Sagamore passedlike a spectre through the flanking forests. 

So Brown, carrying his suit-case, opened the gate, walked up the path, seized the knocker, and announced himself with resolution. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XIX

WHILE he waited the cat looked up at him, curiously but pleasantly. "Hello, old lady, " he said; and she arched her back and rubbed lightlyagainst his nigh leg while the kittens tumbled over his shoes and playedfrantically with the frayed bottoms of his trousers. 

This preliminary welcome seemed to comfort him out of all proportion toits significance; he gazed complacently about at the trees and flowers, drew in deep breaths of the lilac's fragrance, and waited, listeningcontentedly for the coming foot-fall. 

He had not heard it when the door opened and a young girl appeared on thethreshold, standing with one hand resting on the inner knob; the othertouching the pocket of her apron, in which was a ball of yarn stuckthrough with two needles. 

She was slim and red-haired and slightly freckled, and her mouth wasperhaps a shade large, and it curled slightly at the corners; and hereyes were quite perfectly made, except that one was hazel-brown and theother hazel-grey. 

Hat in hand, Brown bowed; and then she did a thing which interested him;she lifted the edges of her apron between slender white thumbs andforefingers and dropped him the prettiest courtesy he had ever seen offthe stage. 

"I came to inquire, " he said, "whether you ever take summer boarders. "

"What are boarders?" she asked. "I never heard of them except in navalbattles. "

"Thank heaven, " he thought; "this is remote, all right; and I havediscovered pristine innocence in the nest. "

"Modern boarders, " he explained politely, "are unpleasant people who comefrom the city to enjoy the country, and who, having no real homes, payfarmers to lodge and feed them for a few days of vacation and dyspepsia. "

"You mean is this a tavern?" she asked, unsmiling. 

"No, I don't. I mean, will you let me live here a little while as thoughI were a guest, and then permit me to settle my reckoning in accordancewith your own views upon the subject?"

She hesitated as though perplexed. 

"Suppose you ask your father or mother, " he suggested. 

"They are absent. "

"Will they return this morning?"

"I don't know exactly when they expect to return. "

"Well, couldn't you assume the responsibility?" he asked, smiling. 

She looked at him for a few moments, and it seemed to him as though, inthe fearless gravity of her regard, somehow, somewhere, perhaps in thecurled corners of her lips, perhaps in her pretty and unusual eyes, therelurked a little demon of laughter. Yet it could not be so; there wereonly serenity and a child's direct sweetness in the gaze. 

"What is your name?" she asked. 

"John Brown 4th. "

"Mine is Elizabeth Tennant. Where do you live?"

"In--New York, " he admitted, watching her furtively. 

"I was there once--at a ball--many years ago, " she observed. 

"Not _very_ many years ago, I imagine, " he said, smiling at her youthfulreminiscence. 

"Many, many years ago, " she said thoughtfully. "I shall go again someday. "

"Of course, " he murmured politely, "it's a thing to do and get done--likegoing abroad. "

She looked up at him quickly. 

"Years ago I knew a boy--with your easy humour and your trick of speech. He resembled you otherwise; and he wore your name becomingly. "

He tried to recall knowing her in his extreme youth, but made no definiteconnection. 

"You wouldn't remember, " she said gravely; "but I think I know you now. Who is your father?"

"My father?" he repeated, surprised and smiling. "My father is John Brown3rd. "

"And his father?"

"My grandfather?" he asked, very much amused. "Oh, he was John Brown 2nd. And _his_ father was Captain John Brown of Westchester; but I don't wantto talk D. A. R. Talk to you about my great grandfather----"

"He fought at Pound Ridge, " said the girl, slowly. 

"Yes, " said Brown, astonished. 

"Tarleton's cavalry--the brutal hussars of the legion--killed him on theStamford Road, " she said; "and he lay there in the field all day with onedead arm over his face and his broken pistol in his hand, and theterrible galloping fight drove past down the stony New Canaan road--andthe smoke from the meeting house afire rolled blacker and blacker andredder and redder----"

With a quickly drawn breath she covered her face with both hands andstood a moment silent; and Brown stared at her, astonished, doubting hiseyes and ears. 

The next moment she dropped her hands and looked at him with a tremuloussmile. 

"What in the world can you be thinking of me?" she said. "Alone in thisold house, here among the remoter hills of Westchester. I live so vividlyin the past that these almost forgotten tragedies seem very real to meand touch me closely. To me the present is only a shadow; the past islife itself. Can you understand?"

"I see, " he said, intensely relieved concerning her mental stability;"you are a Daughter of the American Revolution or a Society of ColonialWars or--er--something equally--er--interesting and desirable----"

"I am a Daughter of the American Revolution, " she said proudly. 

"Exactly, " he smiled with an inward shudder. "A--a veryinteresting--er--and--exceedingly--and--all that sort of thing, " henodded amiably. "Don't take much interest in it myself--being a brokerand rather busy----"

"I am sorry. "

He looked up quickly and met her strange eyes, one hazel-grey, onehazel-brown. 

"I--I'll be delighted to take an interest in anything you--in--er--thisRevolutionary business if you--if you don't mind telling me about it, " hestammered. "Evenings, now, if you have time to spare----"

She smiled, opened the door wider, and looked humorously down at himwhere he stood fidgeting on the step. 

"Will you come in?" she asked serenely. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XX

HE went, first depositing his suit-case on the step outside by the cats, and followed her into a large, comfortable sitting room. 

"By jove, " he said, "you know this is really mighty pretty! What acorking collection of old furniture! Where in the world did you find--orperhaps this is the original furniture of the place?"

She said, looking around the room as though slightly perplexed: "Thisfurniture was made to order for me in Boston. "

"Then it isn't genuine, " he said, disappointed. "But it's a very cleverimitation of antique colonial. It is really a wonderful copy. "

"I don't think it is a copy. "

"It certainly doesn't look like it; but it must be if it was made inBoston for you. They're ingenious fellows, these modern makers ofcolonial furniture. Every antique shop in New York is loaded up withexcellent copies of this sort--only not nearly as well done. "

She assented, apparently with no very clear understanding of what hemeant. 

"What a charming setting this old house makes for such things, " he said. 

She nodded, looking doubtfully at the rag carpet. 

"The Manor House was much finer, " she observed. "Come to the window andI'll show you where it stood. They were fine folk, the Lockwoods, Hunts, and Fanchers. "

They rose and she laid one pretty hand on his sleeve and guided him intoa corner of the window, where he could see. 

"Hello, " he said uneasily, "there is a main travelled road! I thoughtthat here we were at the very ends of civilisation!"

"That is the Bedford road, " she said. "Over there, beyond thosechestnuts, is the Stamford road. Can you see those tall old poplars?Beyond the elms I mean--there--where the crows are flying?"

"Yes. Eight tall poplars. "

"The Manor House stood there. Tarleton burnt it--set it afire with allits beautiful furniture and silver and linen! His hussars ran through it, setting it afire and shooting at the mirrors and slashing the silks andpictures! And when the Major's young wife entered the smoking doorway totry to save a pitiful little trinket or two, an officer--never mind who, for his descendants may be living to-day in England--struck her with theflat of his sword and cut her and struck her to her knees! That is thetruth!"

He said politely: "You are intensely interested in--er--colonial andrevolutionary history. "

"Yes. What else have I to think of--here?"

"I suppose many interesting memories of those times cluster around thisold place, " he said, violently stifling a yawn. He had risen early andrun far. Hunger and slumber contended for his mastery. 

"Many, " she said simply. "Just by the gate yonder they captured youngAlsop Hunt and sent him away to the Provost Prison in New York. In theroad below John Buckhout, one of our dragoons, was trying to get awayfrom one of Tarleton's dragoons of the 17th Regiment; and the Britishtrooper shouted, 'Surrender, you damned rebel, or I'll blow your brainsout!' and the next moment he fired a bullet through Buckhout's helmet. 'There, ' said the dragoon, 'you damned rebel, a little more and I shouldhave blown your brains out!' 'Yes, damn you, ' replied John, 'and a littlemore and you wouldn't have touched me!'"

Brown looked at her amused and astonished to hear such free words slip soeagerly from a mouth which, as he looked at it, seemed to him the sweetmouth of a child. 

"Where did _you_ ever hear such details?" he asked. 

"People told me. Besides, the house is full of New York newspapers. Youmay read them if you wish. I often do. Many details of the fight arethere. "

"Reading such things out of old newspapers published at the timecertainly must bring those events very vividly before you. "

"Yes. . . . It is painful, too. The surprise and rout of Sheldon's 2nddragoons--the loss of their standard; the capture, wounding, and death ofmore than two score--and--oh! that young death there in the wheat! theboy lying in the sun with one arm across his face and the broken pistolin his hand! and his wife--the wife of a month--dragging him back to thishouse--with the sunset light on his dead face!"

"To _this_ house?"

She dropped her hand lightly on his shoulder and pointed. 

"Tarleton's troopers came stamping and cursing in by that very door afterthey had burned Judge Lockwood's and the meeting house--but they left heralone with her dead, here on the floor where you and I are standing. . . . She was only seventeen; she died a few months later in child-birth. God dealt very gently with her. "

He looked around him in the pleasant light of the room, striving tocomprehend that such things had happened in such a sleepy, peacefulplace. Sunlight fell through the curtains, casting the wild roses' shadowacross the sill; the scent of lilacs filled the silence. 

"It's curious--and sad, " he said in a low voice. "How odd that I shouldcome here to the very spot where that old ancestor of mine died----"

"He was only twenty when he died, " she interrupted. 

"I know. But somehow a fellow seems to think of any ancestor as a snuffyold codger----"

"He was very handsome, " she said, flushing up. 

There was a silence; then she looked around at him with a glint of humourin her pretty eyes--one hazel-brown, one hazel tinged with grey; and thedelicious mouth no longer drooped. 

"Can't you imagine him as young as you are? gay, humorous, full ofmischievous life, and the love of life? something of a dandy in hisuniform--and his queue tied smartly à la Française!--gallant--oh, gallant and brave in the dragoon's helmet and jack-boots of Sheldon'sHorse! Why, he used to come jingling and clattering into this room andcatch his young wife and plague and banter and caress her till she fledfor refuge, and he after her, like a pair of school childrenreleased--through the bed-rooms, out by the kitchen, and into the garden, till he caught her again in the orchard yonder and held her tight andmade her press her palms together and recite:

 _I love thee_ _I love thee_ _Through all the week and Sunday_

--until for laughing and folly--I--they----"

To his amazement her voice broke; into her strange eyes sprang tears, andshe turned swiftly away and went and stood by the curtained window. 

"Well, by gad!" he thought, "of all morbid little things! affected totears by what happened to somebody else a hundred and thirty odd yearsago! Women are sure the limit!"

And in more suitable terms he asked her why she should make herselfunhappy. 

She said: "I _am_ happy. It is only when I am here that I am lonely andthe dead past lives again among these wooded hills. "

"Are you not--usually--here?" he asked, surprised. "I thought you livedhere. "

"No. I live elsewhere, usually. I am too unhappy here. I never remainvery long. "

"Then why do you ever come here?" he asked, amused. 

"I don't know. I am very happy elsewhere. But--I come. Women do suchthings. "

"I don't exactly understand why. "

"A woman's thoughts return eternally to one place and one person. _One_memory is her ruling passion. "

"What is that memory?"

"_The Place and the Man. _"

"I don't know what you mean. "

"I mean that a woman, in spirit, journeys eternally to the old, oldrendezvous with love; makes, with her soul, the eternal pilgrimage backto the spot where Love and she were first acquainted. And, moreover, awoman may even leave the man with whom she is happy to go all alone fora while back to the spot where first she knew happiness because of him. . . . You don't understand, do you?"

Brown was a broker. He did _not_ understand. 

She looked at him, smiling, sighing a little--and, in spite of her freshand slender youth--and she was certainly not yet twenty--he feltcuriously young and crude under the gentle mockery of her unmatchedeyes--one hazel-brown, one hazel tinged with grey. 

Then, still smiling wisely, intimately to herself, she went away into aninner room; and through the doorway he saw her slim young figure movinghither and thither, busy at shelf and cupboard. Presently she came backcarrying an old silver tray on which stood a decanter and a plate ofcurious little cakes. He took it from her and placed it on a tip-table. Then she seated herself on the ancient sofa, and summoned him to a placebeside her. 

"Currant wine, " she said laughingly; "and old-fashioned cake. Will youaccept--under this roof of mine?"

He was dreadfully hungry; the wine was mild and delicious, the crispcakes heavenly, and he ate and ate in a kind of ecstasy, not perfectlycertain what was thrilling him most deeply, the wine or the cakes or thisslender maid's fresh young beauty. 

On one rounded cheek a bar of sunlight lay, gilding the delicate skin andturning the curling strands of hair to coils of fire. 

He thought to himself, with his mouth a trifle fuller than conventionexpects, that he would not wish to resist falling in love with a girllike this. _She_ would never have to chase him very far. . . . In fact, he was perfectly ready to be captured and led blushing to the altar. 

Once, as he munched away, he remembered the miserable fate of his latecompanion Vance, and shuddered; but, looking around at the young girlbeside him, his fascinated eyes became happily enthralled, and matrimonyno longer resembled doom. 

"What are these strange happenings in New York of which I hear vaguerumours?" she enquired, folding her hands in her lap and lookinginnocently at him. 

His jaw fell. 

"Have _you_ heard about--what is going on in town?" he asked. "I thoughtyou didn't know. "

"They say that the women there are ambitious to govern the country andare even resolved to choose their own husbands. "

"Something of that sort, " he muttered uneasily. 

"That is a very strange condition of affairs, " she murmured, broodingeyes remote. 

"It's a darned sight worse than strange!" he blurted out--then askedpardon for his inelegant vehemence; but she only smiled dreamily andsipped her currant wine in the sunshine. 

"Shall we talk of something pleasanter?" he said, still uneasy, "--er--about those jolly old colonial days. . . . That's rather an oddgown you wear--er--pretty you know--but--_is_ it not in the styleof--er--those days of--of yore--and all that?"

"It was made then. "

"A genuine antique!" he exclaimed. "I suppose you found it in the garret. There must be a lot of interesting things up there behind those flatloop-holes. "

"Chests full, " she nodded. "We save everything. "

He said: "You look wonderfully charming in the costume of those days. Itsuits you so perfectly that--as a matter of fact, I didn't even noticeyour dress when I first saw you--but it's a _wonder_!"

"Men seldom notice women's clothes, do they?"

"That is true. Still, it's curious I didn't notice such a gown as that. "

"Is it _very_ gay and fine?" she asked, colouring deliciously. "I lovethese clothes. "

"They are the garments of perfection--robing it!"

"Oh, what a gallant thing to say to me. . . . Do you truly find me so--soagreeable?"

"Agreeable! You--I don't think I'd better say it----"

"Oh, I beg you!"

"May I?"

[Illustration: "'Pray, observe my unmatched eyes. '"]

Her cheeks and lips were brilliant, her eyes sparkling; she leaned atrifle toward him, frail glass in hand. 

"May not a pretty woman listen without offense if a gallant man praisesher beauty?"

"You _are_ exactly that--a beauty!" he said excitedly. "The mostbewitching, exquisite, matchless----"

"Oh, I beg of you, be moderate, " she laughed--and picked up a fan fromsomewhere and spread it, laughing at him over its painted edge. 

"Pray, observe my unmatched eyes before you speak again of me asmatchless. "

"Your eyes _are_ matchlessly beautiful!--more wonderfully beautiful thanany others in all the world!" he cried. 

Yet the currant wine was very, very mild. 

"Such eyes, " he continued excitedly, "are the most strangely lovely eyesI ever saw or ever shall see. Nobody in all the world, except you, hassuch eyes. I--I am going quite mad about them--about you--abouteverything. . . . I--the plain fact is that I love--such eyes--and--andevery harmonious and lovely feature that--that b-b-belongs to them--andto--to _you_!"

She closed her painted fan slowly, slowly left her seat, took from theblue bowl on the window-sill the wild rose blooming there, turned andlooked back at him, half smiling, waiting. 

He sprang to his feet, scarcely knowing now what he was about; shewaited, tall, slender, and fresh as the lovely flower she held. 

Then, as he came close to her, she drew the wild rose through the lapelof his coat, and he bent his head and touched his lips to the blossom. 

"When she and you--and Love--shall meet at last, you will first know herby her eyes, " she began; and the next instant the smile froze on her faceand she caught his arm in both hands and clung there, white to the lips. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XXI

"LISTEN!" she whispered; "did you hear that?"

"What?" he asked, dazed. 

"On the Bedford road! do you hear the horses? Do you hear them running?"

"W-what horses?"

"Tarleton's!" she gasped, pressing her white face between her hands. "Can't you hear their iron scabbards rattle? Can't you hear their buglehorn? Where is Jack? _Where_ is Jack?"

A flurry of mellow music burst out among the trees, followed by a loudreport. 

"Oh, God!" she whispered, "the British!"

Brown stared at her. 

"Why, that's only an automobile horn--and their tire just blew out, " hebegan, astonished. 

But she sprang past him, calling, "Jack! Jack! Where are you?" and heheard the door fly open and her childish cry of terror outside in thesunshine. 

The next second he followed her, running through the hall and out throughthe door to the porch; and at the same moment a big red touring car cameto a standstill before the house; the chauffeur descended to put on a newtire, and a young girl in motor duster and hood sprang lightly from thetonneau to the tangled grass. As she turned to look at the house shecaught sight of him. 

Brown took an uncertain step forward; and she came straight toward him. 

Neither spoke as they met face to face. He looked at her, passed his handover his eyes, bewildered, and looked again. 

She was slim and red-haired and slightly freckled, and her mouth wasperhaps a shade large, and it curled slightly at the corners, and hereyes were quite perfectly made except that one was hazel-brown and theother a hazel-grey. 

She looked at him, and it seemed to him as though, in the fearlessgravity of her regard, somewhere, somehow--perhaps in the curled cornersof her lips, perhaps in her pretty and unusual eyes--there lurked alittle demon of laughter. Yet it could not be so--there were onlyserenity and a child's direct sweetness in her gaze. 

"I suppose you have come to look at this old-time place?" she said. "People often come. You are perfectly welcome. "

And, as he made no answer:

"If you care to see the inside of the house I will be very glad to showit to you, " she added pleasantly. 

"Is--is it _yours_?" he managed to say, "or--or your sister's?"

She smiled. "You mistake me for somebody else. I have no sister. This isthe old Brown place--a very, very old house. It belonged to my greatgrandmother. If you are interested I will be glad to show you theinterior. I brought the key with me. "

"But people--relatives of yours--are living there now, " he stammered. 

"Oh, no, " she said, smiling, "the house is empty. We are thinking ofputting it in shape again. If you care to come in I can show you thequaint old fireplaces and wainscoting--if you don't mind dust. "

She mounted the step lightly and, fitting the key and unlocking thedoor--which he thought he had left open--entered. 

"Come in, " she called to him in a friendly manner. 

He crossed the threshold to her side and halted, stunned. An empty house, silent, shadowy, desolate, confronted him. 

The girl beside him shook out her skirts and glanced at her dusty gloves. 

"A vacuum cleaner is what this place requires, " she said. "But _isn't_ ita quaint old house?"

He pressed his shaking hands to his closed eyes, then forced them to openupon the terrible desolation where _she_ had stood a moment since--andsaw bare boards under foot, bare walls, cobwebs, dust. 

The girl was tiptoeing around the four walls examining the condition ofthe woodwork. 

"It only needs electric lights and a furnace in the cellar and somekalsomine and pretty wall paper----"

She turned to glance back at him, and stood so, regarding him with amusedcuriosity--for he had dropped on his knees in the dust, groping in an oddblind way for a flower that had just fallen from his coat. 

"There are millions of them by the roadside, " she said as he stumbled tohis feet and drew the frail blossom through his buttonhole with unsteadyfingers. 

"Yes, " he said, "there are other roses in the world. " Then he drew adeep, quiet breath and smiled at her. 

She smiled, too. 

"This was her room, " she explained, "the room where she first met herhusband, the room into which she came a bride, the room where she died, poor thing. Oh, I forgot that you don't know who _she_ was!"

"Elizabeth Tennant, " he answered calmly. 

"Why--how did _you_ know?"

"God knows, " he said; and bent his head, touching the petals of the wildrose with his lips. Then he looked up straight into her eyes--one washazel-brown, one hazel tinged with grey. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XXII

AS they left the house an hour later, walking down the path slowly, shoulder to shoulder, she said:

"Mr. Brown, I _want_ you to like that house. "

A sudden and subtly hideous idea glided into his brain. 

"_You_ don't believe in suffragettes, do you?" he said, forcing a hollowlaugh. 

"Why, I _am_ one. Didn't you know it?"

"_You!_"

"Certainly. Goodness! how you did run! But, " she added with innocentsatisfaction, "I think I have secured every bit as good a one as the oneGladys chased out of a tree with her horrid marmoset. "

[Illustration]

XXIII

THE Eugenic Revolution might fairly be said to have begun with theignominious weddings of Messrs. Reginald Willett, James Carrick, De LancySmith, and Alphonso W. Green. 

Its crisis culminated in the Long Acre riots. But the great suffragetterevolution was now coming to its abrupt and predestined end; thereaction, already long overdue, gathered force with incredible rapidityand exploded from Yonkers to Coney Island, in a furiouscounter-revolution. The revolt of the Unfit was on at last. 

Mobs of maddened spinsters paraded the streets of the five boroughsdemanding spouses. Maidens of uncertain age and attractions who, in thehysterical enthusiasm of the eugenic revolution, had offered themselvesthe pleasures of martyrdom by vowing celibacy and by standing asidewhile physically perfect sister suffragettes pounced upon and married allflawless specimens of the opposite sex, now began to demand forthemselves the leavings among the mature, thin-shanked, and bald-headed. 

In vain their beautiful comrades attempted to explain the eugenisticprinciples--to point out that the very essence of the entire cult lay innon-reproduction by the physically unfit, and in the ultimate extinctionof the thin, bald, and meagre among the human race. 

But thousands and thousands of the love-maddened rose up and denouncedthe Beauty Trust, demanded a return to the former conditions of faircompetition in the open shop of matrimony. 

They were timidly encouraged by thousands of middle-aged gentlemen whodenied that either excessive meagreness or baldness was hereditary; theyeven dared to assert that the suffragette revolution had been a mistake, and pointed out that only an average of one in every hundred women hadtaken the trouble to exercise her privilege at the polls in the recentelection, and that ninety per cent. Of those who voted marked theirballots wrong or forgot to mark them at all, or else invalidated them bywriting suggestions to the candidates on the backs of the ballots. 

A week of terrible confusion ensued, and, in the very midst of it, newscame from London that Miss Pondora Bottomly, who, after throwing bricksall day through the back windows of Windsor Castle, had been arrested bya very thin Scotch policeman, had suddenly seized the policeman andmarried him in spite of his terrified cries. 

A shout of protest arose from every human man in the civilised world; agroan of dismay burst from every human woman. It was the beginning of theend; the old order of things was already in sight; men, long hidden, reappeared in public places; wives shyly began to respond to the cautious"good-mornings" of their long ignored husbands, the wealthy and sociallydesirable but otherwise unattractive plucked up spirits; florists, caterers, modistes, ministers came out of seclusion and began to prowlaround the débris of their ruined professions with a view to startingout again in business; and here and there the forgotten art of flirtingwas furtively resurrected and resumed in the awaking metropolis. 

"Perfection, " said America's greatest orator on the floor of the Senate, "is endurable only because unattainable. The only things on earth thatmake this world interesting are its sporting chances, its misfortunes, and its mutts!"

And within a month after the delivery of this classic the American nationhad resumed its normal, haphazard aspect. The revolution, the riots onFifth Avenue and Long Acre, the bachelors' St. Bartholomew were allforgotten; Tammany Hall and the Republican State Organization yawned, stretched, rubbed their eyes, awoke, and sat up licking their hungrychops; the gentlemen in charge of the Bureau of Special Privileges openedthe long-locked drawers of that piece of furniture, and looked over theledgers; trusts, monopolies, systems came out of their cyclone cellars;turf associations dredged the dump-docks for charters, whither a femininemunicipal administration had consigned them; all-night cafés, dance-halls, gambling houses reopened, and the electric lights sparkledonce more on painted cheeks and tinted lips. 

The good old days of yore were returning fast on the heels of the retreatof woman; capital shook hands with privilege; the prices of staplessoared; joints, dives, and hospitals were fast filling up; jails andprisons and asylums looked forward to full houses. It was the same oldworld again--the same dear old interesting, exciting, grafting, murdering, diseased planet, spinning along through space--just as far asusual from other worlds and probably so arranged in order that otherworlds might not suffer from its aroma. 

And over it its special, man-designed god was expected to keep watch anddeal out hell or paradise as the man-made regulations which governed thedeity and his abode required. 

So once again the golden days of yore began; congregations worshipped inFifth Avenue churches and children starved on Avenue A; splendidhospitals were erected, palatial villas were built in the country; anddepartment stores paid Mamie and Maud seven dollars a week--but competedin vain, sometimes, with smiling and considerate individuals who offeredthem more, including enough to eat. 

The world's god was back in his heaven; the world would, therefore, govery well; and woman, at last, was returning to her own sphere to mindher own business--and a gifted husband, especially created as herphysical and mental lord and master by a deity universally regarded asmasculine in sex. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

LEFT OVER

XXIV

SHE knew so little about the metropolis that, on her first visit, a yearbefore, she had asked the driver of the taxicab to recommend arespectable hotel for a lady travelling alone; and he had driven her tothe Hotel Aurora Borealis--that great, gay palace of Indiana limestoneand plate glass towering above the maelstrom of Long Acre. 

When, her business transacted, she returned to the Westchester farm, still timid, perplexed, and partly stunned by the glitter and noise ofher recent metropolitan abode, she determined never again to stop atthat hotel. 

But when the time came for her to go again the long list of hotelsconfused her. She did not know one from the other; she shrank fromexperimenting; and, at least, she knew something about the AuroraBorealis and she would not feel like an utter stranger there. 

That was the only reason she went back there _that_ time. And the nexttime she came to town that was the principal reason she returned to theAurora Borealis. But the next time, she made up her mind to go elsewhere;and in the roaring street she turned coward, and went to the only placeshe knew. And the time after that she fought a fierce little combat withherself all the way down in the train; and, with flushed cheeks, hatingherself, ordered the cabman to take her to the Hotel Aurora Borealis. 

But it was not until several trips after that one--on a rainy morning inMay--that she found courage to say to the maid at the cloak-room door:

"Who _is_ that young man? I always see him in the lobby when I comehere. "

The maid cast an intelligent glance toward a tall, well-built youngfellow who stood pulling on his gloves near the desk. 

"Huh!" she sniffed; "he ain't much. "

"What do you mean?" asked the girl. 

"Why, he's a capper, mem. "

"A--a what?"

"A capper--a gambler. "

The girl flushed scarlet. The maid handed her a check for her rain-coatand said: "They hang around swell hotels, they do, and pick upacquaintance with likely looking and lonely boobs. Then the first thingthe lonely boob knows he's had a good dinner with a new acquaintance andis strolling into a quiet but elegant looking house in the West Fortiesor Fifties. " And the maid laughed, continuing her deft offices in thedressing-room, and the girl looked into the glass at her own crimsoncheeks and sickened eyes. 

At luncheon he sat at a little table by a window, alone, indolentlypreoccupied with a newspaper and a fruit salad. She, across the room, kept her troubled eyes away. Yet it was as though she saw him--perhapsthe mental embodiment of him was the more vivid for her resolutelyaverted head. 

Every detail of his appearance was painfully familiar to her--his darkeyes, his smooth face which always seemed a trifle sun-tanned, thefastidious and perfect taste of his dress in harmony with his boyishcharm and quiet distinction--and the youth of him--the wholesome andself-possessed youth--that seemed to her the most dreadful thing abouthim in the new light of her knowledge. For he could scarcely betwenty-five. 

Every movement he made had long since fascinated her; his unconsciousgrace had been, to her, the unstudied assurance of a man of the worldbred to a social environment about which she knew only through reading. 

Never had she seen him but straightway she began to wonder who and whatexalted person in the unknown metropolitan social circle he might be. 

She had often wondered, speculated; sometimes dreamily she had endowedhim with name and position--with qualities, too--ideal qualitiessuggested by his air of personal distinction--delightful qualitiessuggested by his dark, pleasant eyes, and by the slight suspicion ofhumour lurking so often on the edges of his smoothly shaven lips. 

He was so clean-looking, so nice--and he had the shoulders and the handsand the features of good breeding! And, after all--after all, he was agambler!--a derelict whose sinister living was gained by his wits; atrailer and haunter and bleeder of men! Worse--a decoy sent out byothers!

She had little appetite for luncheon; he seemed to have less. But sheremembered that she had never seen him eat very much--and never drinkanything stronger than tea. 

"At least, " she thought with a mental quiver, "he has that to hiscredit. "

The quiver surprised her; she was scarcely prepared for any emotionconcerning him except the natural shock of disillusion and the naturalpity of a young girl for anything ignoble and hopelessly unworthy. 

Hopelessly? She wondered. Was it possible that God could ever find themeans of grace for such a man? It _could_ be done, of course; it were asin for her to doubt it. Yet she could not see how. 

Still, he was young enough to have parents living somewhere; unmarredenough to invite confidence if he cared to. . . . And suddenly it struckher that to invite confidence was part of his business; his charm part ofhis terrible equipment. 

She sat there breathing faster, thinking. 

His charm was part of his equipment--an infernal weapon! She understoodit now. Long since, innocently speculating, she had from the verybeginning and without even thinking, conceded to him her confidence inhis worthiness. And--the man was a gambler!

For a few moments she hated him hotly. After a while there was moresorrow than heat in her hatred, more contempt for his profession than forhim. . . . And _somebody_ had led him astray; that was certain, becauseno man of his age--and appearance--could have deliberately and of his owninitiative gone so dreadfully and cruelly wrong in the world. 

Would God pity him? Would some means be found for his salvation? Wouldsalvation come? It must; she could not doubt it--after she had liftedher eyes once more and looked at him where he sat immersed in hisnewspaper, a pleasant smile on his lips. 

A bar of sunlight fell across his head, striping his shoulder; thescarlet flowers on the table were becoming to him. And, oh! he seemed soharmless--so delightfully decent; there where the sunlight fell acrosshis shoulder and spread in a golden net across the white cloth under hiselbows. 

She rose, curiously weary; a lassitude lay upon her as she left the roomand went out into the city about her business--which was to see herlawyer concerning the few remaining details of her inheritance. 

The inheritance was the big, prosperous Westchester farm where shelived--had always lived with her grandfather since her parents' death. Itwas turning out to be very valuable because of the mania of the wealthyfor Westchester acreage and a revival in a hundred villages of themagnificence of the old Patroons. 

Outside of her own house and farm she had land to sell to the landed andrepublican gentry; and she sold it and they bought it with an aviditythat placed her financial independence beyond doubt. 

All the morning she transacted business downtown with the lawyer. In theafternoon she went to a matinée all by herself, and would have had a mostblissful day had it not been for the unquiet memory of a young man who, she had learned that morning, was fairly certain of eternal damnation. 

That evening she went back to Westchester absent-minded and depressed. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XXV

IT was in early June when she arrived in town again. He was in the lobbyas usual; he lunched at the table by the window as usual. There seemed tobe nothing changed about him except that he was a handsomer man than shehad supposed him. 

She ate very little luncheon. As usual, he glanced at her once--aperfectly pleasant and inoffensive glance--and resumed his luncheon andhis newspaper. He was always quiet, always alone. There seemed to be acurious sort of stillness which radiated from him, laying a spell uponhis environment for a few paces on every side of him. She had felt this;she felt it now. 

Downtown her business was finally transacted; she went to a matinée allby herself, and found herself staring beyond the painted curtain and themummers--beyond the bedizened scenery--out into the world somewhere andinto two dark, boyish eyes that looked so pleasantly back at her. Andsuddenly her own eyes filled; she bent her head and touched them with herhandkerchief. 

No, she must never again come to the Hotel Aurora Borealis. There werereasons. Besides, it was no longer necessary for her to come to town atall. She _must_ not come any more. . . . And yet, if she could only knowwhat became of him--whether salvation ever found him----

The curtain fell; she rose and pinned on her hat, gathered her trifles, and moved out with the others into the afternoon sunshine of Broadway. 

That evening she dined in her room. She had brought no luggage. About teno'clock the cab was announced. 

As she walked through the nearly deserted lobby she looked around forhim. He stood near the door, talking to the hotel detective. 

Halting a moment to button her gloves, she heard the detective say:

"Never mind the whys and whats! You fade away! Understand?"

"By what authority do you forbid me entrance to this hotel?" asked theyoung man coolly. 

"Well, it's good enough for you that I tell you to keep out!"

"I can not comply with your suggestion. I have an appointment here inhalf an hour. "

"Now you go along quietly, " said the detective. "We've had our eyes onyou. We know all about you. And when the hotel gets wise to a guy likeyou we tip him off and he beats it!"

"We can discuss that to-morrow; I tell you I have an appointment----"

"G'wan out o' here!" growled the detective. 

The young man quietly fell into step beside him, but on the sidewalk heturned on him, white and desperate. 

"I tell you I've _got_ to keep that appointment. " He stood aside as thegirl passed him, head lowered, and halted to wait for her cab. "I tellyou I've got to go back----"

"Here, you!" The detective seized his arm as he attempted to pass; theyoung man wheeled and flung him aside, and the next instant reeled backas the detective struck him again with his billy, knocking him halfwayinto the street. 

"You damned dead-beat!" he panted, "I'll show you!"

The young man stood swaying, his hands against his head; porters, cabmen, and the detective saw him stagger and fall heavily. And the next momentthe girl was kneeling beside him. 

"Let him alone, lady, " said somebody. "That bum isn't hurt. "

The "bum, " in fact, was getting to his feet, groping for some support;and the girl's arm was offered and he leaned on it a moment, clearing hiseyes with a gloved hand. Suddenly he made a movement so quick that shenever understood how she wrenched the short, dull-blue weapon from hishand. 

"Pick up your hat!" she gasped. "Do what I tell you!"

He looked at her, dazed, then the blood blotted his dark eyes again. Shestooped swiftly, caught up his hat, and, holding tightly to his arm, opened the other door of the taxicab. 

"They'll kill you here, " she whispered. "Come with me. I've got to talkto you!"

"Lady--are you crazy?" demanded the tall head-porter, aghast. 

But she had got him into the cab. "Drive on, " she said through clenchedteeth. And the chauffeur laughed and started east. 

In the swaying cab the man beside her sat bent over, his face in hishands, blood striping the fingers of his gloves. With a shudder sheplaced the automatic weapon on the cushion beside her and shrank back, staring at him. 

But his senses seemed to be returning, for presently he sat up, found hishandkerchief, staunched the rather insignificant abrasion, and settledback into his corner. Without looking at her he said:

"Would you mind if I thank you? You have been very kind. "

She could not utter a word. 

Presently he turned; and as he looked at her for the first time a faintflicker of humour seemed to touch his eyes. 

"Where are we going--if you don't mind?" he said pleasantly. 

Then the breathless words came, haltingly. 

"I've got to tell you something; I've _got_ to! I can't stand aside--I_can't_ pass by on the other side!"

"Thank you, " he said, smiling, "but Lazarus is all right now. "

"I mean--something else!" Her voice fell to a whisper. "I _must_ speak!"

He looked pleasantly perplexed, smiling. 

"Is there anything--except a broken head--that could possibly permit methe opportunity of listening to you?"

"I--have seen you before. "

"And I you. "

She leaned against her window, head resting on her hand, her heart achaos. 

"Where are you going when--when I leave you?" she said. 

He did not answer. 

"Where?" She turned to look at him. "Are you going back to that hotel?"And, as he made no reply: "Do you wish to become a murderer, too?" shesaid tremulously. "I have your pistol. I ask you not to go back there. "

After a moment he said: "No, I won't go back. . . . Where is the pistol?"

"You shall not have it. "

"I think perhaps it would be safer with me. "

"No!"

"Very well. "

"And--I--I ask you to keep away from that man!" She grew unconsciouslydramatic. "I ask you--if you have any memory which you hold sacred--topromise me on that memory not to--to----"

"I won't shoot him, " he said, watching her curiously. "Is that what youmean?"

"Y-yes. "

"Then I promise--on my most sacred memory--the memory of a young girl whosaved me from committing--what I meant to do. . . . And I thank her verydeeply. "

She said: "I _did_ save you from--_that_!"

"You did--God knows. " He himself was trembling a little; his face hadturned very white. 

"Then--then----" she forced her courage--lifted her frightened eyes, braving mockery and misconstruction--"then--is there a chance ofmy--helping you--further?"

For a moment her flushed face and timid question perplexed him; then thequick blood reddened his face, and he stared at her in silence. 

"I--I can't help it, " she faltered. "I believe in you--and in--salvation. . . . Please don't say anything to--hurt me. "

"No, " he said, still staring, "no, of course not. And--and thank you. Youare very kind. . . . You are _very_ kind. . . . I suppose you heardsomebody say--what I am. "

"Yes. . . . But that was long ago. "

"Oh, you knew--you have known--for some time?"

"Yes. "

He sat thinking for a while. 

Presently they both noticed that the cab had stopped--had probably beenstanding for some time in front of the station; and that severalred-capped porters were watching them. 

"My name is Lily Hollis, " she said, "and I live at Whitebrook Farm, Westchester. . . . I am not coming to New York again--and never again tothat hotel. . . . But I would like to talk to you--a little. "

He thought a moment. 

"Do you want a gambler to call on you, Miss Hollis?"

"Yes, " she said. 

"Then he will do it. When?"

"To-morrow. "

He passed his hand over his marred young face. 

"Yes, " he said quietly, "to-morrow. "

He looked up and met her eyes, smiled, opened the door, and stepped tothe sidewalk. Then he went with her to her train. She turned at the gatesand held out her hand to him; and, hat in hand, he bent his battered headand touched her gloves with twitching lips. 

"To-morrow?"

"Certainly. "

She said, wistfully: "May I trust in you?"

"Yes. Tell me that you trust me. "

"I trust you, " she said; and laid the pistol in his hands. 

His face altered subtly. "I did not mean in that way, " he said. 

"How could I trust you more?"

"With--yourself. "

"That is a--lesser trust, " she said faintly. "It is for you that I havebeen afraid. "

He saw the colour deepen in her cheeks, looked, bit his lip in silence. 

"To-morrow?" she said under her breath. 

"Yes. "

"Good-bye till then. "

"Good-bye. "

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XXVI

THE next day he didn't appear, but a letter did. 

"I merely lied to you, " he wrote. "All gamblers are liars. You shouldhave passed by on the other side. "

Yes, that is what she should have done; she realised it now alone therein the sunny parlour with his letter. 

There was no chance for him; or, if there was, she had not been chosen asthe instrument of his salvation. 

Slowly she turned her head and looked around her at her preparations--thepitiful little preparations for him--the childish stage setting for thescene of his salvation. 

The spotless parlour had been re-dusted, cleaned, rubbed to its old-timepolish. Bible and prayer-book on the mahogany centre-table had beenarranged and re-arranged so many times that she no longer knew whether ornot her art concealed art, and was innocently fearful that he mightsuspect the mise-en-scène and fight shy of her preparations for hisregeneration. 

Again and again she had re-arranged the flowers and books and rumpled theun-read morning newspaper to give to the scene a careless and casualevery-day allure; again and again she had straightened the rugs, thentried them in less symmetrical fashion. She let the kitten in to give amore home-like air to the room, but it squalled to go out, and she had torelease it. 

Also, from the best spare room she had brought Holman Hunt's "Shadow ofthe Cross"--and it had taxed her slender strength to hang it in place ofthe old French mezzotint of Bacchus and Ariadne. 

But the most difficult task was to disseminate among the stiff pieces offurniture and the four duplicate sofa cushions an atmosphere of pleasantand casual disorder--as though guests had left them where they were--asthough the rigid chairs were accustomed to much and intimate usage. 

But the effect troubled her; every formal bit of furniture seemed to bearranged as for an ambuscade; the cushions on the carved sofa sat in arow, like dwarfs waiting; the secretary watched, every diamond pane aglittering eye. And on the wall the four portraits of her parents andgrand-parents were behaving strangely, for she seemed never to be out ofrange of their unwinking painted eyes. 

From other rooms she had brought in ornaments, books, little odds andends--and the unaccustomed concentration of household gods caused hermuch doubt and uncertainty, so fearful was she that his wise dark eyesmight smilingly detect her effort. 

There had been much to do in the short time pending his arrival--thegravel path to be raked, the lawn to be rolled and cut, the carefullyweeded flower beds to be searched for the tiniest spear of green whichdid not belong there, the veranda to be swept again, and all the pottedplants to be re-arranged and the dead leaves and blossoms to be removed. 

Then there were great sheafs of iris to gather; and that, and the cuttingof peonies and June roses, were matters to go about with thought anddiscretion, so that no unsightly spaces in bloom and foliage should beapparent to those dark, wise eyes of his that had looked on so manythings in life--so many, many things of which she knew nothing. 

Also she was to offer him tea; and the baking of old-fashioned biscuitsand sweets was a matter for prayerful consideration. And Hetty, the hiredgirl, had spent all the morning on her grand-mother's silver, and WilliamPillsbury, executor of chores, had washed the doorstep and polished thewindows and swept the maple-pods and poplar silk from the roof-gutters, and was now down on his knees with shears, trimming the grass under thepicket-fence. 

And _he_ was not coming after all. He was never coming. 

For a little while she failed to realise it; there was a numb sensationin her breast, a dull confusion in her mind. She sat alone in theparlour, in her pretty new gown, looking straight ahead of her, seeingnothing--not even his letter in her hand. 

And she sat there for a long while; the numbness became painful; thetension a dull endurance. Fatigue came, too; she rested her head wearilyon the back of the chair and closed her eyes. But the tall clocks tickingslowly became unendurable--and the odour of the roses hurt her. 

Suddenly, through and through her shot a pang of fright; she had justremembered that she had given him back his pistol. 

On her feet now, startled as though listening, she stood, lips slightlyparted, and the soft colour gone from them. Then she went to the windowand looked down the road; and came back to stand by the centre-table, herclasped hands resting on the Bible. 

For a while fear had its way with her; the silent shock of it whitenedher face and left her with fair head bowed above her clasped hands. 

Once or twice she opened the Bible and tried to understand, choosing whatshe cared for most--reading of Lazarus, too. And she read aboutmiracles--those symbolic superfluities attributed to a life which initself was the greatest of all miracles. 

And ever through the word of God glittered the memory of the pistol tillfear made her faint, and she rose, her hands against her breast, andwalked unsteadily out under the trees. 

A bird or two had begun its sunset carol; the tree-trunks were stainedwith the level crimson light. Far away her gaze rested on the blue hills. Beyond them lay the accursed city. 

The dull reiteration in her brain throbbed on unceasingly; she had givenhim his pistol; he had lied to her; she had trusted him; he had lied; andthe accursed city lay beyond those hills--and he was there--with hispistol; and he had lied to her--lied! lied! God help them both!

Across her clover fields the ruddy sunlight lay in broad undulatingbands, gilding blossom and curling trefoil. On every side of her the farmstretched away over a rolling country set with woods; sweet came thefreshening air from the hills; she heard her collie barking at thecattle along the pasture brook; a robin carolled loudly from theorchard; orioles answered; gusts of twittering martins swept and soaredand circled the chimneys. 

Erect, anguished hands clenched, she stood there, wide eyes seeingnothing, and in her shrinking ears only the terrible reiteration of hergrowing fears. 

Then the level sun struck her body with a bar of light; all the worldaround her smouldered rose and crimson. But after a little the shadowsfell through the fading light; and she turned her head, shivering, andwent back to the house--back to the room she had prepared for him, andsat there watching the shapes of dusk invade it; the vague grey ghoststhat came crawling from corners and alcoves to gather at her feet andwait and wait there with her for him who would never come into her lifeagain. 

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XXVII

"MISS LILY?"

She lifted her head from the sofa cushion in the dark, dazzled by thesudden lamp-light. 

"What is it?" she asked, averting her face. 

"There's a gentleman says he'd like to see you----"

The girl turned, still dully confused; then, rigid, sat bolt upright. 

"_Who?_"

"A gentleman--said you don't know his name. Shall I show him in?"

She managed to nod; her heart was beating so violently that she pressedher hand over it. 

He saw her sitting that way when he entered. 

She did not rise; pain and happiness, mingled, confusing her for amoment; and he was already seated near her, looking at her with anintentness almost expressionless. 

"You see, " he said, "what the honour of a gambler is worth. I have liedto you twice already. "

His words brought her to her senses. She rose with an effort and, as hestood up, she gave him her hand. 

"Don't think me rude, " she said. "I was resting--not expecting you--andthe lamp and--your coming--confused me. "

"You were not expecting me, " he said, retaining her hand an instant. Thenshe withdrew it; they seated themselves. 

"I don't know, " she said, "perhaps I was expecting you--and didn'trealise it. "

"Had you thought--much about it?"

"Yes, " she said. 

Then it seemed as though something sealed her lips, and that nothingcould ever again unseal them. All that she had to say to him vanishedfrom her mind; she could not recall a single phrase she had prepared tolead up to all she must somehow say to him. 

He talked quietly to her for a while about nothing in particular. Onceshe saw him turn and look around the room; and a moment afterward hespoke of the old-time charm of the place and the pretty setting such aroom made for the old-fashioned flowers. 

He spoke about gardens as though he had known many; he spoke of trees andof land and of stock; and, as he spoke in his pleasant, grave youngvoice, he noticed the portraits on the wall; and he spoke of pictures asthough he had known many, and he spoke of foreign cities, and ofold-world scenes. And she listened in silence and in such content thatthe happiness of it seemed to invade her utterly and leave her physicallynumb. 

From time to time his dark eyes wandered from her to the objects in theroom; they rested for a moment on the centre-table with its Book, lingered, passed on. For a little while he did not look at her--as thoughfirst it were necessary to come to a conclusion. Whatever the conclusionmight have been, it seemed to make his eyes and mouth alternately graveand amused--but only very faintly amused--as though the subject he wasconsidering held him closely attentive. 

And at last he looked up at her, gently, not all the curiosity yetquenched. 

"You are kind enough to wish to know about me; and too well bred toask--now that the time is come. Shall I speak of myself?"

Her voiceless lips found a word. 

"Then--_It_ began in college--after my uncle died and left nothing for meto go on with. . . . I worked my way through--by my wits. . . . Up tothat time it was only luck and card-sense--and luck again--the ability tohold the best cards at the best time--hold them honestly, I mean. Ithappens--I don't know why or what laws govern it. Some men holdthem--always hold them--with intervals of bad fortune--but onlyintervals. "

He gazed thoughtfully at the rag carpet, passed a well-shaped hand overhis forehead. 

"Yes, it is the truth. . . . And so, Fortune linked arms with me . . . And I drifted into it--gradually--not all at once . . . Lower--always alittle lower--until--what _you_ saw occurred. "

She would not meet his eyes, perhaps with an idea of sparing him. 

He said: "You know nothing of such things, of course. . . . I am--on acommission basis for doing what--they threw me out of that hotel fordoing. . . . Of course, a man can fall lower--but not much lower. . . . The business from which I receive commissions is not honest--a squaregame, as they say. Some games may be square for a while; no games areperfectly square all the time. . . . I have heard of honest gamblers; Inever saw one. . . . There may be some; but I'm afraid they're like goodIndians. . . . And that is the way in which Life and I are situated. "

After a while she managed to look at him. 

"Could you tell me--are you--your circumstances----"

"I am not in want, " he said gently. 

"Then it is not--not necessity----"

"No. It is easier and more interesting than for me to earn a decentliving. "

"Is that the only reason?"

"Yes, I think so. "

"Have you no--regrets?"

"Sometimes. . . . I am not immune to shame. . . . I wonder whether youknow what it cost me to come here. "

A dull flush mounted to his forehead, but he faced her steadily enough. 

"You saw me kicked out of a hotel by an Irish servant because I was notfit to be tolerated among reputable people. . . . And you did not pass byon the other side. . . . Under your clear eyes my spirit died a thousandshameful deaths while I went with you to your destination. . . . Thecontempt of the whole world burnt me; and your compassion drove everyflame into me----" He checked himself, swallowed, forced a smile, andwent on in his low, pleasant voice: "I am afraid I have been dramatic. . . . All I meant to say is that my humiliation, witnessed by you, is aheavier price to pay--a more painful reckoning with Fate, than I hadreally ever looked for. "

"I--I had no contempt for you, " she faltered. 

"You could not escape it; but it is kind of you to say that. "

"You don't understand. I had no contempt. I was--it--the dread of harm toyou--frightened me. . . . And afterward I was only so sorry for you--andwanted to--to help----"

He nodded. "The larger charity, " he said. "You may read all about itthere in that Bible, but--the world takes it out in reading about it. . . . I do not mean to speak bitterly. . . . There is nothing wrong with meas far as the world goes--I mean _my_ world. . . . Only--in the other andreal world there is--you. . . . You, who did not pass by on the otherside; and to whom the Scriptures there are merely the manual which youpractice--for the sake of Christ. "

"You think me better--far better than I am. "

"I know what you are. I know what it cost you to even let me lean on you, there in the glare of the electric light--there where men stood leeringand sneering and misjudging you!--and my blood on your pretty gown----"

"Oh--I did not think--care about that--or the men----"

"You cared about them. It is a growing torture to you. Even in thegenerous flush of mercy you thought of it; you said you would never goback to that hotel. I knew why you said it. I knew what, even then, yousuffered--what of fear and shame and outraged modesty. I know what youstood for, there in the street with a half-senseless crook hanging toyour arm--tugging for a weapon which would have sent two more mongrels tohell----"

"You shall not say that!" she cried, white and trembling. "You did notknow what you were doing----"

He interrupted: "'For they know not what they do. ' . . . You are right. . . . We don't really know, any of us. But few, except such as you, believeit--few except such as you--and the Master who taught you. . . . And thatis all, I think. . . . I can't thank you; I can't even try. . . . It istoo close to melodrama now--not on your side, dear little lady!"

He rose. 

"Are you--going?"

"Yes. "

"Where?"

He turned unconsciously and looked through the windows into the southerndarkness. 

"I--want you to stay, " she said. 

He turned and bent toward her with his youthful and engaging manner. 

"It is sweet and good of you; but you know it is best that I go. "

"Why?"

"Because--it might be that some of your friends would know me. . . . Itis for your sake I am going. "

"I wish you to stay. "

"I know it. It makes me wonderfully happy. "

"_Won't_ you?"

"I must not. "

"What are you going to do in the city?"

There was a silence; then: "The _same_?" she faltered. 

"I am afraid so. "

"Why?"

"What else is there?"

"Everything. . . . And I--ask it of you. "

He looked at her with troubled eyes. 

"I'm afraid you don't know what you are asking----"

"I do know! I ask--your soul of God!"

For a long while he stood there as though turned to stone. Then, asthough rousing from a dream, he walked slowly to the window, looked longinto the south. At last he turned. 

She sat on the edge of the sofa, her face in her hands, deathly silent, waiting. 

"Tell me, " she whispered, not looking up as he bent over her. 

"About that matter of a stray soul?" he said pleasantly. "It's allright--if you care to--bother with it. . . . "

Her hands dropped, and when she looked up he saw the tears standing inher grey eyes. 

"Do you mean it?" she asked, trembling. 

"God knows what I mean, " he said unsteadily; "and I shall never knowunless you tell me. "

And he sat down beside her, resting his elbows on his knees and his headbetween his hands, wondering what he could do with life and with theyoung soul already in his dark keeping. And, after a while, the anxietyof responsibility, being totally new, wearied him; perplexed, he liftedhis head, seeking her eyes; and saw the compassion in her face and theslow smile trembling on her lips. And suddenly he understood which ofthem was better fitted for a keeper of souls. 

"Will you be patient?" he said. 

"Can you ask?"

He shook his head, looking vacantly at the lamp-light. 

"Because I've gone all wrong somehow . . . Since I was a boy. . . . You_will_ be patient with me--won't you?"

"Yes, " she said. 

[Illustration]

ENVOI

 _In all Romances And poet's fancies Where Cupid prances, Embowered in flowers, The tale advances 'Mid circumstances That check love's chances Through tragic hours. _

 _The reader's doleful now, The lover's soulful now, At least a bowlful now Of tears are poured. The villain makes a hit, The reader throws a fit, The author grins a bit And draws his sword!_

 _Strikes down Fate's lances, Avoids mischances, And deftly cans his Loquacious lore 'Mid ardent glances And lover's trances And wedding dances Forevermore. _