THE WHEEL OF LIFE

by

ELLEN GLASGOW

New YorkDoubleday, Page & Company

1906

By the Same Author

 THE DELIVERANCE THE BATTLE-GROUND THE FREEMAN, AND OTHER POEMS THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET THE DESCENDANT

CONTENTS

PART I. Impulse

CHAPTER I. In Which the Romantic Hero is Conspicuous by His Absence II. Treats of an Eccentric Family III. Apologises for an Old-fashioned Atmosphere IV. Ushers in the Modern Spirit V. In Which a Young Man Dreams Dreams VI. Shows That Mr. Worldly-Wise-Man May Belong to Either Sex VII. The Irresistible ForceVIII. Proves That a Poor Lover May Make an Excellent Friend IX. Of Masques and Mummeries X. Shows the Hero to Be Lacking in Heroic Qualities XI. In Which a Lie Is the Better Part of Truth

PART II. Illusion

 I. Of Pleasure as the Chief End of Man II. An Advance and a Retreat III. The Moth and the Flame IV. Treats of the Attraction of Opposites V. Shows the Dangers as Well as the Pleasures of the Chase VI. The Finer Vision VII. In Which Failure Is Crowned By FailureVIII. "The Small Old Path" IX. The Triumph of the Ego X. In Which Adams Comes Into His Inheritance XI. On the Wings of Life

PART III. Disenchantment

 I. A Disconsolate Lover and a Pair of Blue Eyes II. The Deification of Clay III. The Greatest of These IV. Adams Watches in the Night and Sees the Dawn V. Treats of the Poverty of Riches VI. The Feet of the God VII. In Which Kemper Is PuzzledVIII. Shows That Love Without Wisdom Is Folly IX. Of the Fear in Love X. The End of the Path

PART IV. Reconciliation

 I. The Secret Chambers II. In Which Laura Enters the Valley of Humiliation III. Proves a Great City to Be a Great Solitude IV. Shows That True Love Is True Service V. Between Laura and Gerty VI. Renewal

PART I

IMPULSE

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH THE ROMANTIC HERO IS CONSPICUOUS BY HIS ABSENCE

As the light fell on her face Gerty Bridewell awoke, stifled a yawn withher pillow, and remembered that she had been very unhappy when she wentto bed. That was only six hours ago, and yet she felt now that herunhappiness and the object of it, which was her husband, were of lessdisturbing importance to her than the fact that she must get up andstand for three minutes under the shower bath in her dressing-room. Witha sigh she pressed the pillow more firmly under her cheek, and laylooking a little wistfully at her maid, who, having drawn back thecurtains at the window, stood now regarding her with the discreet andconfidential smile which drew from her a protesting frown of irritation. 

"Well, I can't get up until I've had my coffee, " she said in a voicewhich produced an effect of mournful brightness rather than of anger, "Ihaven't the strength to put so much as my foot out of bed. "

Her eyes followed the woman across the room and through the door, andthen, turning instinctively to the broad mirror above her dressingtable, hung critically upon the brilliant red and white reflection inthe glass. It was her comforting assurance that every woman looked herbest in bed; and as she lay now, following the lines of her charmingfigure beneath the satin coverlet, she found herself wondering, notwithout resentment, why the possession of a beauty so conspicuous shouldafford her only a slight and temporary satisfaction. Last week a womanwhom she knew had had her nose broken in an automobile accident, and asshe remembered this it seemed to her that the mere fact of herundisfigured features was sufficient to be the cause of joyfulgratitude. But this, she knew, was not so, for her face was perfectlyunharmed; and yet she felt that she could hardly have been moremiserable, even with a broken nose. 

Here she paused for an instant in order to establish herself securely inher argument, for, though she could by no stretch of the imaginationregard her mind as of a meditative cast, there are hours when even tothe most flippant experience wears the borrowed mantle of philosophy. Abstract theories of conduct diverted her but little; what she wantedwas some practical explanation of the mental weariness she felt. Whatshe wanted, she repeated, as if to drive in the matter with a finalblow, was to be as happy in the actual condition as she had told herselfthat she might be when as yet the actual was only the ideal. Why, forinstance, when she had been wretched with but one man on the box, shouldthe addition of a second livery fail to produce in her the contentmentof which she had often dreamed while she disconsolately regarded asingle pair of shoulders? That happiness did not masquerade in liveryshe had learned since she had triumphantly married the richest man sheknew, and the admission of this brought her almost with a jump to thebitter conclusion of her unanswerable logic--for the satisfaction whichwas not to be found in a footman was absent as well from the imposingfigure of Perry Bridewell himself. Yet she told herself that she wouldhave married him had he possessed merely the historical penny, and therestless infatuation of those first months was still sufficiently aliveto lend the colour of its pleasing torment to her existence. 

Lying there, in her French embroidered night dress, with her brilliantred hair pushed back from her forehead, she began idly to follow thehistories of the people whom she knew, and it seemed to her that each ofthem was in some particular circumstance more fortunate than she. Butshe would have changed place with none, not even with her best friend, Laura Wilde, who was perfectly content because she lived buried away inGramercy Park and wrote vague beautiful verse that nobody ever read. Laura filled as little part in what she called "the world" as GramercyPark occupied in modern progress, yet it was not without a faint impulseof envy that Gerty recalled now the grave old house mantled in browncreepers and the cheerful firelit room in which Laura lived. The peacewhich she had missed in the thought of her husband came back to her withthe first recollection of her friend, and her hard bright eyes softeneda little while she dwelt on the vivid face of the woman to whom sheclung because of her very unlikeness to herself. Gradually out of themist of her unhappiness the figure of Laura rose in the mirror beforeher, and she saw clearly her large white forehead under the darkwing-like waves of hair, the singular intentness of her eyes, and therapt expectancy of look in which her features were lost as in a generalvagueness of light. 

Though it was twenty years since she had first seen Laura Wilde as achild of ten, the meeting came to her suddenly with all the brightclearness of an incident of yesterday. She remembered herself as a weak, bedraggled little girl, in wet slippers, who was led by a careless nurseto a strange German school; and she felt again the agony of curiositywith which, after the first blank wonder was over, she had stared at thechildren who hung whispering together in the centre of the room. As shelooked a panic terror seized her like a wild beast, and she threw up herhands and turned to rush away to the reassuring presence of grown upcreatures, when from the midst of the whispering group a little darkgirl, in an ugly brown frock, ran up to her and folded her in her arms. 

"I shall love you best of all because you are so beautiful, " said thelittle dark girl, "and I will do all your sums and even eat your sausagefor you. " Then she had kissed her and brought her to the stove and kneltdown on the floor to take off her wet slippers. To this day Gerty hadalways thought of her friend as the little girl who had shut her eyesand gulped down those terrible sausages for her behind her teacher'sback. 

The maid brought the coffee, and while she sat up to drink it the doorof her husband's dressing-room opened and he came in and stood, large, florid and impressive, beside her bed. 

"I'm afraid I shan't get back to luncheon, " he remarked, as he settledhis ample, carefully groomed body in his clothes with a comfortableshake, "there's a chap from the country Pierce has sent to me with aletter and I'll be obliged to feed him at the club, but--to tell thetruth--there's so little one can get really fit at this season. "

To a man for whom the pleasures of the table represented the largershare of his daily enjoyment, this was a question not without a seriousimportance of its own; and while he paused to settle it he stood, squaring his chest, with an expression of decided annoyance on hishandsome, good-humored face. Then, having made a satisfactory choice ofdishes, his features recovered their usual look of genial contentment, and he felt carelessly in his pocket for the letter which he presentlyproduced and laid on Gerty's pillow. His life had corresponded so evenlywith his bodily impulses that the perfection of the adjustment hadproduced in him the amiable exterior of an animal that is never crossed. It was a case in which supreme selfishness exerted the effect ofpersonality. 

Leaving the letter where he had placed it, Gerty sat sipping her coffeewhile she looked up at him with the candid cynicism which lent a piquantcharm to the almost doll-like regularity of her features. 

"You did not get three hours sleep and yet you're so fresh you smell ofsoap, " she observed as an indignant protest, "while I've had six and I'mstill too tired to move. "

"Oh, I'm all right--I never let myself get seedy, " returned Perry, withhis loud though pleasant laugh. "That's the mistake all you womenmake. "

Half closing her eyes Gerty leaned back and surveyed him with a curiousdetachment--almost as if he were an important piece of architecturewhich she had been recommended to admire and to which she was patientlytrying in vain to adjust her baffled vision. The smaller she screwed hergaze the more remotely magnificent loomed his proportions. 

"How you manage it is more than I can understand, " she said. 

Perry stared for a moment in an amiable vacancy at the coffee pot. Thenshe watched the animation move feebly in his face, while he pulled athis short fair moustache with a characteristic masculine gesture. Physically, she admitted, he had never appeared to a better advantage inher eyes. 

"By the way, I had a game of billiards with Kemper and we talked prettylate, " he said, as if evolving the explanation for which she had notasked. "He got back from Europe yesterday you know. "

"He did?" Her indifferent gaiety played like harmless lightning aroundhis massive bulk. "Then we may presume, I suppose, on Madame Alta forthe opera season?"

He met the question with an admiring chuckle. "Do you really mean youthink he's been abroad with her all this time?"

"Well, what else did he get his divorce for?" she demanded, with theutter disillusion of knowledge which she had found to be her mosteffective pose. 

Perry's chuckle swelled suddenly into a roar. "Good Lord, how womentalk!" he burst out. "Why, Arnold has been divorced ten years and henever laid eyes on Jennie Alta till she sang over here three years ago. There was nothing in it except that he liked to be seen with acelebrity--most men do. But, my dear girl, " he concluded in a kind ofawful reverence, "what a tongue you've got. It's a jolly good thing forme that I'm your husband or you wouldn't leave me a blessed patch ofreputation to my back. "

His humor held him convulsed for several minutes, during which intervalGerty continued to regard him with her piquant cynicism. 

"Well, if it wasn't Madame Alta it was somebody who is voiceless, " sheretorted coolly. "I merely meant that there must have been a reason. "

"Oh, your 'reasons'!" ejaculated Perry. Then he stooped and gave theletter lying on Gerty's pillow a filip from his large pink forefinger. "You haven't told me what you think of this?" he said. 

Picking up the letter Gerty unfolded it and read it slowly through fromstart to finish, the little ripple of sceptical amusement crossing andrecrossing her parted lips, RAVENS NEST, Fauquier County, Virginia, December 26, 19--. 

 _My Dear Perry_: Nobody, of course, ever accused you of being literary, nor, thank Heaven, have I fallen under that aspersion--but since the shortest road to success seems to be by circumvention, it has occurred to me that you might give a social shove or two to the chap who will hand you this letter sometime after the New Year. 

 His name is St. George Trent, he was born a little way up the turnpike from me, has an enchanting mother, and shows symptoms of being already inoculated with the literary plague. I never read books, so I have no sense of comparative values in literature, and consequently can't tell whether he is an inglorious Shakespeare or a subject for the daily press. His mother assures me that he has already written a play worthy to stand beside Hamlet--but, though she is a charming lady, I'm hardly convinced by her opinion. The fact remains, however, that he is going to New York to become a playwright, and that he has two idols in the market place which, I fancy, you may be predestined to see demolished. He is simply off his head to meet Roger Adams, the editor of _The_--something or other I never heard of--and--remember your budding days and be charitable--a lady who writes poems and signs herself Laura Wilde. I prepared him for the inevitable catastrophe by assuring him that the harmless Mr. Adams eats with his knife, and that the lady, as she writes books, isn't worth much at love-making--the purpose for which woman was created by God and cultivated by man. Alas, though, the young are a people of great faith!

 Commend me to Mrs. Bridewell, whom I haven't seen since I had the honour of assisting at the wedding. 

 Yours ever, BEVERLY PIERCE. 

As she finished her reading, Gerty broke into a laugh and carelesslythrew the letter aside on the blue satin quilt. 

"I'm glad to hear that somebody has read Laura's poems, " she observed. 

"But what in thunder am I to do with the chap?" enquired Perry. "Godknows I don't go in for literature, and that's all he's good for I daresay. "

"Oh, well, he can eat, I guess, " commented Gerty, with consoling irony. 

"I've asked Roger Adams to luncheon, " pursued Perry, too concerned toresent her lack of sympathy, "but there are nine chances to one that hewill stay away. "

"Experience has taught me, " rejoined Gerty sweetly, "that your friendAdams can be absolutely counted on to stay away. Do you know, " sheresumed after a moment's thought, "that, though he's probably thebrainiest man of our acquaintance, I sometimes seriously wonder what yousee in him. "

A flush of anger darkened Perry's clear skin, and this sudden changegave him an almost brutal look. "I'd like to know if I'm a blamed fool?"he demanded. 

Her merriment struck pleasantly on his ears. 

"Do you want to destroy the illusion in which I married you?" she asked. "It was, after all, simply the belief that size is virtue. "

The flush passed, and he took in a full breath which expanded his broadchest. "Well, I'm big enough, " he answered, "but it isn't Adam's faultthat he hasn't got my muscle. "

With a leisurely glance in the mirror, he settled his necktie in place, twisted the short ends of his moustache, and then stooped to kiss hiswife before going out. 

"Don't you let yourself get seedy and lose your looks, " he said as heleft the room. 

When he had gone she made a sudden ineffectual effort to rise from bed;then as if oppressed by a fatigue that was moral rather than physical, she fell back again and turned her face wearily from the mirror. So themorning slipped away, the luncheon hour came and went, and it was notuntil the afternoon that she gathered energy to dress herself and beginanew the inevitable and agonising pursuit of pleasure. The temptation ofthe morning had been to let go--to relax in despair from thefruitlessness of her endeavor--and the result of this brief withdrawalwas apparent in the order which she gave the footman before the opendoor of her carriage. 

"To Miss Wilde's first"--the words ended abruptly and she turnedeagerly, with outstretched hand, to a man who had hurried toward herfrom the corner of Fifth Avenue. 

"So you haven't forgotten me in six months, Arnold, " she said, with asweetness in which there was an almost imperceptible tone of bitterness. 

He took her hand in both of his, pressing it for an instant in a quickmuscular grasp which had in it something of the nervous vigor that lenta peculiar vibrant quality to his voice. 

"And I couldn't have done it in six years, " he replied, as a singularlycharming smile illumined his forcible rather than regular features, andbrought out the genial irony in his expressive light gray eyes. "If I'dgone to Europe to forget you it would have been time thrown away, but Ihad something better on my hands than that--I've been buying Frenchracing automobiles--"

As he finished he gave an impatient jerk to the carriage door, amovement which, like all his gestures, sprang from the nervous energythat found its outlet in the magnetism of his personality. Peoplesometimes said that he resembled Perry Bridewell, who was, in fact, hisdistant cousin, but the likeness consisted solely in a certain evidentpossession of virile power--a quality which women are accustomed todescribe as masculine. He was not tall, and yet he gave an impression ofbigness; away from him one invariably thought of him as of unusualproportions, but, standing by his side, he was found to be hardly abovethe ordinary height. The development of his closely knit figure, thesplendid breadth of his chest and shoulders, the slight projection ofhis heavy brows and the almost brutal strength of his jaw and chin, allcombined to emphasise that appearance of ardent vitality which hasappealed so strongly to the imagination of women. Seen in repose therewas a faint suggestion of cruelty in the lines of his mouth under hisshort brown moustache, but this instead of detracting from the charm heexercised only threw into greater relief the genial brightness of hissmile. 

Now Gerty, glancing up at him, remembered a little curiously, thewhispered reason for his long absence. There was always a woman in thewind when it blew rumours of Kemper, though he was generally consideredto regard the sex with the blithe indifference of a man to whom femininefavour has come easily. How easily Gerty had sometimes wondered, thoughshe had hardly ventured so much as a dim surmise. Ten years, she wouldhave said, was a considerable period from which to date a passion, andshe remembered now that ten years ago Kemper had secured a divorce fromhis wife in some Western court. There had been no particular scandal, nodamning charges on either side; and a club wit had remarked at the timethat the only possible ground for a separation was the fact that Mrs. Kemper had grown jealous of her husband's after-dinner cigar. Since thenother and varied rumours had reached Gerty's ears, until finally therehad blown a veritable gale concerning a certain Madame Alta, who sangmelting soprano parts in Italian opera. Then this, too, had passed, and, with the short memory of city livers, Gerty had forgotten alike thegossip and the heroines of the gossip, until she noted now the lines ofdeeper harassment in Kemper's face. These coming so suddenly after sixmonths of Europe caused her to wonder if the affair with the prima donnahad been really an entanglement of the heart. 

"Well, I may not be as fast as an automobile, " she presently admitted. 

"But you're twice as dangerous, " he retorted gaily. 

For an instant the pleasant humour in his eyes held her speechless. 

"Ah, well, you aren't a coward, " she answered coolly enough at last. Then her tone changed, and as she settled herself under her fur rugs shemade a cordial inviting gesture. "Come in with me and I'll take you toLaura Wilde's, " she said; "she's a genius, and you ought to know herbefore the world finds her out. "

With a protesting laugh Kemper held up his gloved finger. 

"God forbid!" he exclaimed with a shrug which struck her as a slightlyforeign affectation. "The lady may be a female Milton, but Perry tellsme that she isn't pretty. "

He touched her hand again, met her indignant defence of Laura with a nodof smiling irony, and then, as her carriage started, he turned rapidlydown Sixty-ninth Street in the direction of the Park. 

In Gerty the chance meeting had awakened a slumbering interest which shehad half forgotten, and as she drove down Fifth Avenue toward Laura'sdistant home she found herself wondering idly if he would let many daysgo by before he came again. The thought was still in her mind when thecarriage turned into Gramercy Park and stopped before the old brownhouse hidden in creepers in which Laura lived. So changed by this time, however, was Gerty's mood that, after leaving her carriage, she stoodhesitating from indecision upon the sidewalk. The few bared trees in thesnow, the solemn, almost ghostly, quiet of the quaint old houses and thedeserted streets, in which a flock of sparrows quarrelled under thefaint sunshine, produced in her an odd and almost mysterious sense ofunreality--as if the place, herself, the waiting carriage, and Lauraburied away in the dull brown house, were all creations of some gossamerand dream-like quality of mind. She felt suddenly that the sorrows whichhad oppressed her in the morning belonged no more to any existence inwhich she herself had a part. Then, looking up, she saw her husbandcrossing the street between the two men with whom he had lunched, andeven the impressive solidity of Perry Bridewell appeared to herstrangely altered and out of place. 

He came up, a little breathless from his rapid walk, and it was a minutebefore he could summon voice to introduce the cheerful, fresh-colouredyouth on his right hand. 

"I've already told Mrs. Bridewell about you, Mr. Trent, " he said atlast, "but I'm willing to confess that I haven't told her half thetruth. "

Gerty met Trent's embarrassed glance with the protecting smile withwhich she favoured the young who combined his sex with his attractions. Then, when he was quite at ease again, she turned to speak to RogerAdams, for whom, in spite, as she laughingly said, of the distinctionbetween a bookworm and a butterfly, she was accustomed to admit a morethan ordinary liking. 

He was a gaunt, scholarly looking man of forty years, with broad, singularly bony shoulders, an expression of kindly humour, and a plain, strong face upon which suffering had left its indelible suggestion ofdefeated physical purpose. Nothing about him was impressive, nothingeven arresting to a casual glance, and not even the shooting light fromthe keen gray eyes, grown a little wistful from the emotional repressionof the man's life, could account for the cordial appeal that spokethrough so unimposing a figure. As much of his personal history as Gertyknew seemed to her peculiarly devoid of the interest or the excitementof adventure; and the only facts of his life which she would have founddeserving the trouble of repeating were that he had married animpossible woman somewhere in Colorado, and that for ten years he hadlived in New York where he edited _The International Review_. 

"Perry tells me that Mr. Trent has really read Laura's poems, " she saidnow to Adams with an almost unconscious abandonment of her cynicalmanner. "Have you examined him and is it really true?"

"I didn't test him because I hoped the report was false, " was Adams'answer. "He's welcome to the literary hash, but I want to keep the_caviar_ for myself. "

"Read them!" exclaimed Trent eagerly, while his blue eyes ran entirelyto sparkles. "Why, I've learned them every one by heart. "

"Then she'll let you in, " responded Gerty reassuringly, "there's nodoubt whatever of your welcome. "

"But there is of mine, " said Perry gravely, "so I guess I'd betterquit. "

He made a movement to turn away, but Gerty placing her gloved hand onhis arm, detained him by a reproachful look. 

"That reminds me of the mischief you have done to-day, " she said. "I metArnold Kemper as I left the house, and when I asked him to come with mewhat do you suppose was the excuse he gave?"

"The dentist or a twinge of rheumatism?" suggested Adams gravely. 

"Neither. " Her voice rose indignantly, and she enforced her reprimand bya light stroke on Perry's sleeve. "He actually said that Perry had toldhim Laura wasn't pretty. "

"Well, I take back my words and eat 'em, too, " cried Perry. 

He broke away in affected terror before Trent's angry eyes, while Gertygave a joyful little exclamation and waved her hand toward one of thelower windows in the house before which they stood. The head of a woman, framed in brown creepers, appeared there for an instant, and then, almost before Trent had caught a glimpse of the small dark eager figure, melted again into the warm firelight of the interior. A moment later theouter door opened quickly, and Laura stood there with impulsiveoutstretched hands and the cordial smile which was her pricelessinheritance from a Southern mother. 

"I knew that you were there even before I looked out of the window, " sheexclaimed to Gerty, in what Adams had once called her "Creole voice. "Then she paused, laughing happily, as she looked, with her animatedglance, from Gerty to Trent and from Trent to Adams. To the younger man, full of his enthusiasm and his ignorance, the physical details of herappearance seemed suddenly of no larger significance than the palebronze gown she wore or the old coffee-coloured lace knotted upon herbosom in some personal caprice of dress. What she gave to him as shestood there, looking from Adams to himself with her ardent friendlyglance, was an impression of radiant energy, of abundant life. 

She turned back after the first greeting, leading the way into thepleasant firelit room, where a white haired old gentleman with aninteresting blanched face rose to receive them. 

"I have just proved to Mr. Wilberforce that I could 'feel' you coming, "said Laura with a smile as she unfastened Gerty's furs. 

"And I have argued that she could quite as well surmise it, " returnedMr. Wilberforce, as he fell back into his chair before the wood fire. 

"Well, you may know in either way that my coming may be counted on, "said Gerty, "for I have sacrificed for you the society of the mostinteresting man I know. "

"What! Is it possible that Perry has been forsaken?" enquired Adams inhis voice of quiet humor. In the midst of her flippant laughter, Gertyturned on him the open cynicism of her smile. 

"Now is it possible that Perry has that effect on you?" she asked withcuriosity. "For I find him decidedly depressing. "

"Then if it isn't Perry I demand the name, " persisted Adams gayly, "though I'm perfectly ready to wager that it's Arnold Kemper. "

"Kemper, " repeated Laura curiously, as if the name arrested her almostagainst her will. "Wasn't there a little novel once by an ArnoldKemper--a slight but striking thing with very little grammar and a greatdeal of audacity?"

"Oh, that was done in his early days, " replied Adams, "as a kind ofoutlet to the energy he now expends in racing motors. I asked Funsten, who does our literary notices, if there was any chance for him again infiction, and he answered that the only favourable thing he could say ofhim was to say nothing. "

"But he's gone in for automobiles now, " said Gerty, "they're so muchbigger, after all, he thinks, than books. "

"I haven't seen him for fifteen years, " remarked Adams, "but I recognisehis speech. "

"One always recognises his speeches, " admitted Gerty, "there's a stampon them, I suppose, for somehow he himself is great even if his careerisn't--and, after all, " she concluded seriously, "it is--what shall Icall it--the personal quantity that he insists on. "

"The personal quantity, " repeated Laura laughing, and, as if thedescription of Kemper had failed to interest her, she turned theconversation upon the subject of Trent's play. 

CHAPTER II

TREATS OF AN ECCENTRIC FAMILY

When the last caller had gone Laura slid back the folding doors whichopened into the library and spoke to a little old gentleman, with a verybald head, who sat in a big armchair holding a flute in his wrinkled andtrembling hand. He had a simple, moonlike face, to which his baldnesslent a deceptive appearance of intellect, and his expression was of suchbland and smiling goodness that it was impossible to resent the tediousgarrulity of his conversation. In the midst of his shrivelledcountenance his eyes looked like little round blue buttons which hadbeen set there in order to keep his features from entirely slippingaway. He was the oldest member of the Wilde family, and he had lived inthe house in Gramercy Park since it was built by his father some sixtyyears or more ago. 

"Tired waiting, Uncle Percival?" asked Laura, raising her voice a littlethat it might penetrate his deafened hearing. 

As he turned upon her his smile of perfect patience the old gentlemannodded his head quickly several times in succession. "I waited to playuntil after the people went, " he responded in a voice that sounded likea cracked silver bell. "Your Aunt Angela has a headache, so she couldn'tstand the noise. I went out to get her some flowers and offered to sitwith her, but this is one of her bad days, poor girl. " He fell silentfor a minute and then added, wistfully, "I'm wondering if you would liketo hear 'Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon'? It used to be your mother'sfavourite air. "

Though he was an inoffensively amiable and eagerly obliging old man, bysome ironic contradiction of his intentions his life had become a seriesof blunders through which he endeavoured to add his share to the generalhappiness. His soul was overflowing with humanity, and he spentsleepless nights evolving innocent pleasures for those about him, buthis excess of goodness invariably resulted in producing petty annoyancesif not serious inconveniences. So his virtues had come to be regardedwith timidity, and there was an ever present anxiety in the air as towhat Uncle Percival was "doing" in his mind. The fear of inopportunebenefits was in its way as oppressive as the dread of unmeritedmisfortune. 

Laura shook her head impatiently as she threw herself into a chair onthe other side of the tall bronze lamp upon the writing table. On thestem of an eccentric family tree she was felt to be the perfect flowerof artistic impulses, and her enclosed life in the sombre old house hadnot succeeded in cultivating in her the slightest resemblance to anartificial variety. She was obviously, inevitably, impulsively theoriginal product, and Uncle Percival never realised this more hopelesslythan in that unresponsive headshake of dismissal. Laura could be kind, he knew, but she was kind, as she was a poet, when the mood prompted. 

"Presently--not now, " she said, "I want to talk to you awhile. Do youknow, Aunt Rosa was here again to-day and she still tries to persuade usto sell the house and move uptown. It is so far for her to come fromSeventieth Street, she says, but as for me I'd positively hate thechange and Aunt Angela can't even stand the mention of it. " She leanedforward and stroked his arm with one of her earnest gestures. "Whatwould you do uptown, dear Uncle Percival?" she inquired gently. 

The old man laid the flute on his knees, where his shrunken little handsstill caressed it. "Do? why I'd die if you dragged me away from myroots, " he answered. 

Laura smiled, still smoothing him down as if he were an amiable dog. "Well, the Park is very pleasant, you know, " she returned, "and it isfull of walks, too. You wouldn't lack space for exercise. "

"The Park? Pooh!" piped Uncle Percival, raising his voice; "I wouldn'tgive these streets for the whole of Central Park together. Why, I'veseen these pavements laid and relaid for seventy years and I rememberall the men who walked over them. Did I ever tell you of the time Istrolled through Irving Place with Thackeray? As for Central Park, ithasn't an ounce--not an ounce of atmosphere. "

"Oh, well, that settles it, " laughed Laura. "We'll keep to our ownroots. We are all of one mind, you and Aunt Angela and I. "

"I'm sure Angela would never hear of it, " pursued Uncle Percival, "andin her affliction how could one expect it?"

For a moment Laura looked at him in a compassionate pause before shemade her spring. "There's nothing in the world the matter with AuntAngela, " she said; "she's perfectly well. "

Blank wonder crept into the old gentleman's little blue eyes and heshook his head several times in solemn if voiceless protest. Forty yearsago Angela Wilde, as a girl of twenty, had in the accustomed familyphrase "brought lasting disgrace upon them, " and she had dwelt, as itwere, in the shadow of the pillory ever since. Unmarried she had yieldedherself to a lover, and afterward when the full scandal had burst uponher head, though she had not then reached the fulfilment of a singularlycharming beauty, she had condemned herself to the life of a solitaryprisoner within four walls. She had never since the day of her awakeningmentioned the name of her faithless or unfortunate lover, but her silentmagnanimity had become the expression of a reproach too deep for words, and her bitter scorn of men had so grown upon her in her cloistralexistence that there were hours together when she could not endure eventhe inoffensive Percival. Cold, white, and spectral as one of the longslim candles on an altar, still beautiful with an indignant and woundedloveliness, she had become in the end at once the shame and the romanceof her family. 

"There is no reason under the sun why Aunt Angela shouldn't come down todinner with us to-night, " persisted Laura. "Don't you see that byencouraging her as you did in her foolish attitude, you have given herpast power over her for life and death. It is wrong--it is ignoble tobow down and worship anything--man, woman, child, or event, as she bowsdown and worships her trouble. "

The flute shook on Uncle Percival's knees. "Ah, Laura, would you haveher face the world again?" he asked. 

"The world? Nonsense! The world doesn't know there's such a person init. She was forgotten forty years ago, only she has grown so selfish inher grief that she can never believe it. "

The old man sighed and shook his head. "The women of this generationhave had the dew brushed off them, " he lamented, "but your motherunderstood. She felt for Angela. "

"And yet it was an old story when my mother came here. "

"Some things never grow old, my dear, and shame is one of them. "

Laura dismissed the assertion with a shrug of scornful protest, andturned the conversation at once into another channel. "Am I anythinglike my mother, Uncle Percival?" she asked abruptly. 

For a moment the old man pondered the question in silence, his littlered hands fingering the mouth of his flute. 

"You have the Creole hair and the Creole voice, " he replied; "but forthe rest you are your father's child, every inch of you. "

"My mother was beautiful, I suppose?"

"Your father thought so, but as for me she was too little andpassionate. I can see her now when she would fly into one of her spasmsbecause somebody had crossed her or been impolite without knowing it. "

"They got on badly then--I mean afterward. "

"What could you expect, my dear? It was just after the War, and, thoughshe loved your father, she never in her heart of hearts forgave him hisblue uniform. There was no reason in her--she was all one flutteringimpulse, and to live peaceably in this world one must have at least agrain of leaven in the lump of one's emotion. " He chuckled as he endedand fixed his mild gaze upon the lamp. Being very old, he had come torealise that of the two masks possible to the world's stage, the comic, even if the less spectacular, is also the less commonplace. 

"So she died of an overdose of medicine, " said Laura; "I have never beentold and yet I have always known that she died by her own hand. Something in my blood has taught me. "

Uncle Percival shook his head. "No--no, she only made a change, " hecorrected. "She was a little white moth who drifted to anothersphere--because she had wanted so much, my child, that this earth wouldhave been bankrupt had it attempted to satisfy her. "

"She wanted what?" demanded Laura, her eyes glowing. 

The old man turned upon her a glance in which she saw the wistfulcuriosity which belongs to age. "At the moment you remind me of her, " hereturned, "and yet you seem so strong where she was only weak. "

"What did she want? What did she want?" persisted Laura. 

"Well, first of all she wanted your father--every minute of him, everythought, every heart-beat. He couldn't give it to her, my dear. No mancould. I tell you I have lived to a great age, and I have known greatpeople, and I have never seen the man yet who could give a woman all thelove she wanted. Women seem to be born with a kind of divination--asecond sight where love is concerned--they aren't content with the merehusk, and yet that is all that the most of them ever get--"

"But my father?" protested Laura; "he broke his heart for her. "

A smile at the fine ironic humour of existence crossed the old man'ssunken lips. "He gave to her dead what she had never had from himliving, " he returned. "When she was gone everything--even the man's lifefor which he had sacrificed her--turned worthless. He always had theseeds of consumption, I suppose, and his gnawing remorse caused them todevelop. "

A short silence followed his words, while Laura stared at him with eyeswhich seemed to weigh gravely the meaning of his words. Then, risinghurriedly, she made a gesture as if throwing the subject from her andwalked rapidly to the door. 

"Aunt Rosa and Aunt Sophy are coming to dine, " she said, "so I mustglance at the table. I can't remember now whether I ordered the oystersor not. "

The old man glanced after her with timid disappointment. "So you haven'ttime to hear me play?" he asked wistfully. 

"Not now--there's Aunt Angela's dinner to be seen to. If Mr. Bleekercomes with Aunt Sophy you can play to him. He likes it. "

"But he always goes to sleep, Laura. He doesn't listen--and besides hesnores so that I can't enjoy my own music. "

"That's because he'd rather snore than do anything else. I wouldn't letthat worry me an instant. He goes to sleep at the opera. "

She went out, and after giving a few careful instructions to a servantin the dining-room, ascended the staircase to the large square room inthe left wing where Angela remained a wilful prisoner. As she opened thedoor she entered into a mist of dim candle light, by which her aunt waspacing restlessly up and down the length of the apartment. 

To pass from the breathless energy of modern New York into this quietconventual atmosphere was like crossing by a single step the divisionbetween two opposing civilisations. Even the gas light, which Angelacould not endure, was banished from her eyes, and she lived always in afaint, softened twilight not unlike that of some meditative Old-Worldcloisters. The small iron bed, the colourless religious prints, the paledrab walls and the floor covered only by a chill white matting, allemphasised the singular impression of an expiation that had become aspitiless as an obsession of insanity. On a small table by a couch, whichwas drawn up before a window overlooking the park, there was a row oflittle devotional books, all bound neatly in black leather, but beyondthis the room was empty of any consolation for mind or body. Only thewoman herself, with her accusing face and her carelessly arrangedsnow-white hair, held and quickened the imagination in spite of hersuggestion of bitter brooding and unbalanced reason. Her eyes lookingwildly out of her pallid face were still the beautiful, fawn-like eyesof the girl of twenty, and one felt in watching her that the old tragicshock had paralysed in them the terrible expression of that one momentuntil they wore forever the indignant and wounded look with which shehad met the blow that destroyed her youth. 

"Dear, " said Laura, entering softly as she might have entered a deathchamber. "You will see Aunt Rosa and Aunt Sophy, will you not?"

Angela did not stop in her nervous walk, but when she reached the end ofthe long room she made a quick, feverish gesture, raising her hands topush back her beautiful loosened hair. "I will do anything you wish, Laura, except see their husbands. "

"I've ceased to urge that, Aunt Angela, but your own sisters--"

"Oh, I will see them, " returned Angela, as if the words--as if anyspeech, in fact--were wrung from the cold reserve which had frozen herfrom head to foot. 

Laura went up to her and, with the impassioned manner which she hadinherited from her Southern mother, enclosed her in a warm and earnestembrace. "My dear, my dear, " she said, "Uncle Percival tells me thatthis is one of your bad days. He says, poor man, that he went out andgot you flowers. "

Angela yielded slowly, still without melting from her icy remoteness. "They were tuberoses, " she responded, in a voice which was in itselfeffectual comment. 

"Tuberoses!" exclaimed Laura aghast, "when you can't even stand thescent of lilies. No wonder, poor dear, that your head aches. "

"Mary put them outside on the window sill, " said Angela, in a kind ofresigned despair, "but their awful perfume seemed to penetrate theglass, so she took them down into the coal cellar. "

"And a very good place for them, too, " was Laura's feeling rejoinder;"but you mustn't blame him, " she charitably concluded, "for he couldn'thave chosen any other flower if he had had the whole Garden of Eden toselect from. It isn't really his fault after all--it's a part offatality like his flute. "

"He played for me until my head almost split, " remarked Angela wearily, "and then he apologised for stopping because his breath was short. "

A startled tremor shook through her as a step was heard on thestaircase. "Who is it, Laura?"

Laura went quickly to the door and, after pausing a moment outside, returned with a short, flushed, and richly gowned little woman who wasknown to the world as Mrs. Robert Bleeker. 

More than twenty years ago, as the youngest of the pretty Wilde sisters, she had, in the romantic fervour of her youth and in spite of theopposition of her parents, made a love match with a handsome, impecunious young dabbler in "stocks. " "Sophy is a creature ofsentiment, " her friends had urged in extenuation of a marriage which wasnot then considered in a brilliant light, but to the surprise ofeverybody, after the single venture by which she had proved the mettleof her dreams, she had sunk back into a prosperous and comfortablemediocrity. She had made her flight--like the queen bee she had soaredonce into the farthest, bluest reaches of her heaven, and henceforth shewas quite content to relapse into the utter commonplaces of the hive. Her yellow hair grew sparse and flat and streaked with gray, herpink-rose face became over plump and mottled across the nose, and hermind turned soon as flat and unelastic as her body; but she wasperfectly satisfied with the portion she had had from life, for, havingweighed all things, she had come to regard the conventions as of mostenduring worth. 

Now she rustled in with an emphatic announcement of stiff brocade, andenveloped the spectral Angela in an embrace of comfortable arms andbosom. Her unwieldy figure reminded Laura of a broad, low wall that hasbeen freshly papered in a large flowered pattern. On her hands and bosoma number of fine emeralds flashed, for events had shown in the end thatthe impecunious young lover was not fated to dabble in stocks in vain. 

"Oh Angela, my poor dear, how are you?" she enquired. 

Angela released herself with a shrinking gesture and, turning away, satdown at the foot of the long couch. "I am the same--always the same, "she answered in her cold, reserved voice. 

"You took your fresh air to-day, I hope?"

"I went down in the yard as usual. Laura, " she looked desperatelyaround, "is that Rosa who has just come in?" As she paused a knock cameat the door, and Laura opened it to admit Mrs. Payne--the eldest, therichest and the most eccentric of the sisters. 

From a long and varied association with men and manners Mrs. Payne hadgathered a certain halo of experience, as of one who had ripened frommere acquaintance into a degree of positive intimacy with the world. Shehad seen it up and down from all sides, had turned it critically aboutfor her half-humorous, half-sentimental inspection, and the frankcynicism which now flavoured her candid criticism of life only added thespice of personality to her original distinction of adventure. As thewife of an Ambassador to France in the time of the gay Eugénie, andagain as one of the diplomatic circle in Cairo and in Constantinople, she had stored her mind with precious anecdotes much as a squirrelstores a hollow in his tree with nuts. Life had taught her that the oneinfallible method for impressing your generation is to impress it by adifference, and, beginning as a variation from type, she had ended bycommanding attention as a preserved specimen of an extinct species. Long, wiry, animated, and habitually perturbed, she moved in a continualflutter of speech--a creature to be reckoned with from the little, flat, round curls upon her temples, which looked as if each separate hair washeld in place by a particular wire, to the sweep of her black velvettrain, which surged at an exaggerated length behind her feet. Her facewas like an old and tattered comic mask which, though it has been flungaside as no longer provocative of pleasant mirth, still carries upon itscheeks and eyebrows the smears of the rouge pot and the pencil. 

"My dear Angela, " she now asked in her excited tones, "have you reallybeen walking about again? I lay awake all night fearing that you hadover-taxed your strength yesterday. Mrs. Francis Barnes--you never knewher of course, but she was a distant cousin of Horace's--died quitesuddenly, without an instant's warning, after having walked rapidlytwice up and down the room. Since then I have always looked uponmovement as a very dangerous thing. "

"Well, I could hardly die suddenly under any circumstances, " returnedAngela, indifferently. "You've been watching by my death-bed for fortyyears. "

"Oh, dear sister, " pleaded Mrs. Bleeker, whose heart, was as soft as herbosom. 

"It does sound as if you thought we really wanted your things, "commented Mrs. Payne, opening and shutting her painted fan. "Ofcourse--if you were to die we should be too heart-broken to care whatyou left--but, since we are on the subject, I've always meant to ask youto leave me the shawl of old rose-point which belonged to mother. "

"Rosa, how can you?" remonstrated Mrs. Bleeker, "I am sure I hope Angelawill outlive me many years, but if she doesn't I want everything she hasto go to Laura. "

"Well, I'm sure I don't see how Laura could very well wear a rose-pointshawl, " persisted Mrs. Payne. "I wouldn't have started the subject foranything on earth, Angela, but, since you've spoken of it, I onlymention what is in my mind. And now don't say a word, Sophy, for we'llgo back to other matters. In poor Angela's mental state any littleexcitement may bring on a relapse. "

"A relapse of what?" bluntly enquired honest Mrs. Bleeker. 

Mrs. Payne turned upon her a glance of indignant calm. 

"Why a relapse of--of her trouble, " she responded. "You show a strangelack of consideration for her condition, but for my part I am perfectlyassured that it needs only some violent shock, such as may result froma severe fall or the unexpected sight of a man, to produce a seriouscrisis. "

Mrs. Bleeker shook her head with the stubborn common sense which was thereactionary result of her romantic escapade. 

"A fall might hurt anybody, " she rejoined, "but I'm sure I don't see whythe mere sight of a man should. I've looked at one every day for thirtyyears and fattened on it, too. "

"That, " replied Mrs. Payne, who still delighted to prick at the oldscandal with a delicate dissecting knife, "is because you have onlyencountered the sex in domestic shackles. As for me, I haven't the leastdoubt in the world that the sudden shock of beholding a man after fortyyears would be her death blow. "

"But she has seen Percival, " insisted Mrs. Bleeker; and feeling that herillustration did not wholly prove her point added, weakly, "at least hewears breeches. "

"I would not see him if I could help myself, " broke in Angela, withsudden energy. "I never--never--never wish to see a man again in thisworld or the next. "

Mrs. Payne glanced sternly at Mrs. Bleeker and followed it with anemphatic head shake, which said as plainly as words, "So there's yourargument. "

"All the same, I don't believe Robert would shock her, " remarked Mrs. Bleeker. 

"Never--never--never, " repeated Angela in a frozen agony, and, rising, she walked restlessly up and down again until a servant appeared toinform the visiting sisters that dinner and Miss Wilde awaited thembelow. 

CHAPTER III

APOLOGISES FOR AN OLD-FASHIONED ATMOSPHERE

As soon as dinner was over Uncle Percival retired with Mr. Bleeker intothe library, from which retreat there issued immediately the shrillpiping of the flute. Mr. Bleeker, with an untouched glass of sherry athis elbow and an unlighted cigar in his hand, sank back into the placidafter-dinner reverie which is found in the rare cases when old age hasencountered a faultless digestion. The happiest part of his life wasspent in the pleasant state between waking and sleeping, while as yetthe flavour of his favourite dishes still lingered in his mouth--just asthe most blissful moments known to Uncle Percival were those in which hepiped his cherished airs upon his antiquated instrument. The eldestmember of the Wilde family was very old indeed--had in fact successfullyrounded some years ago the critical point of his eightieth birthday, andthere was the zest of a second childhood in the animation with which hehad revived the single accomplishment of his early youth. That youth wasnow more vivid to his requickened memory than the present was to hisenfeebled faculties. The past had become a veritable obsession in hismind, and when he fingered the old flute strength came back to hishalf-palsied hands and breath returned to his shrunken little body. Hisown music was the one sound he heard in all its distinctness, and hehung upon it with an enjoyment which was almost doting in its childishdelight. 

So the fluting went on merrily, while Mrs. Payne and Mrs. Bleeker, afterfidgeting a moment in the drawing-room, decided that they would returnfor a word or two with Angela. "It is really the only place in the housewhere one can escape Percival's music, " declared Mrs. Payne, who franklyconfessed that she had reached the time of life when to bore her was thechief offence society could commit, "so, besides the comfort I afforddear Angela, it is much the pleasantest place for me to pass theevening. I've always been a merciful woman my child, " she pursuedshaking her little flat, false gray curls above her painted wrinkles, "for never in my life have I cast a stone at anyone who amused me; butas for Percival and his flute! Well, I won't say a disagreeable word onthe subject, but I honestly think that a passion at his age isabsolutely indecent. "

She was so grotesquely gorgeous with her winking diamonds and her oldpoint lace, which yawned over her lean neck, that the distinction shehad always aimed at seemed achieved at last by an ironic exaggeration. 

"At least it is a perfectly harmless passion, " suggested her husband, abeautiful old man of seventy gracious years. 

"Harmless!" gasped Mrs. Payne. "Why, it has wrecked the nerves of theentire family, has given me Saint Vitus' dance, has kept Laura awake fornights, has reduced Angela to hysterics, and you actually have the faceto tell me it is harmless! Judged by its effects, I consider it quiteas reprehensible as a taste for cards or a fancy for a chorus girl. Those are vices at least that belong to our century and to civilisation, but a flute is nothing less than a relic of barbarism. "

"Well, it's worse on me than on anyone else, " said Laura, with thedominant spirit which caused Mr. Payne to shiver whenever she tiltedagainst his wife. "My room is just above, and I get the benefit of everynote. "

The tune issuing from the library had changed suddenly into "The Land o'the Leal, " and by the lamp light Uncle Percival could be seen, warm andred and breathless but still blissfully fluting to the sleeping Mr. Bleeker, whose face, fallen back against the velvet cushions, wore abroad, beatific smile. 

"He gets his happiness from it at least, " persisted Laura. "I supposeit's a part of his life just as poetry is a part of mine, and to behappy at eighty-two one is obliged to be happy in an antedated fashion. "

Then, as the two aunts swept from the room to join Angela, Laura seatedherself at Mr. Payne's side and caught the hand which he outstretched. Of all the family he had been her favourite since childhood, and shesometimes told herself that he was the only one who knew her as shereally was--who had ever penetrated behind her vivid outside armour ofpersonality. He was a man of great unsatisfied tenderness, who indulgeda secret charity as another man might have indulged a vicious taste. Allhis inclinations strained after goodness, and had he possessed thecourage to follow the natural bent of his nature toward perfection hemight have found his happiness in the peaceful paths of exalted virtue. But the constant dropping of cynicism will extinguish an angel, and, instead of becoming a shining light to his generation, he had dwindledinto a glow-worm beneath the billows of his wife's velvet gown. 

Now, as Laura held his hand, she bent upon him one of her long, meditative looks. "Uncle Horace, of all this queer family is Aunt Rosathe queerest or am I?"

Mr. Payne shook his silvered head. "I don't think you're a match forRosa yet, my dear, " he answered with his gentle humour. "Wait tillyou've turned seventy--then we'll see. "

"But I'm not like other women. I don't think their ways. I don't evenwant the things they want. "

The old man's smile shone out as he patted her hand. "That means, Isuppose, that you don't want to be married. Who is it this time? Ah, mychild, you are born to be adored or to be hated. "

Without replying to his question, Laura lifted her full, dark eyes tohis face. As he met the intellectual power of her glance, he toldhimself that he understood the mysterious active principle of herpersonality--how the many were repelled while the few returned toworship. One felt her, was repulsed or possessed by her, even in hermuteness. 

"I don't see how any one who has ever dreamed dreams, " she said at last, "could fall in love and marry--it is so different--so different. "

"So you have refused Mr. Wilberforce? Well, well, he has reached the agewhen a poor lover may make an excellent friend--and besides, to becomeRosa's mouthpiece for a moment, he is very rich. "

"And old enough to be my father--but it isn't that. Age has nothing todo with it, nor has congeniality--it is nothing in real life that comesbetween, for I am fond of him and I don't mind his white hairs in theleast, but I can't give up my visions--my ideal hopes. "

"Ah, Laura, Laura, " sighed the old man, "the trouble is that you don'tlive on the earth at all, but in a little hanging garden of theimagination. "

"And yet I want life, " she said. 

"We all want it, my child, until we've had it. At your age I wanted it, too, for I had my dreams, though I was not a poet. But there areprecious few of us who are willing in youth to accept the world on itsown terms--we want to add our little poem to the universal prose ofthings. "

"But it is life itself that I want, " repeated Laura. 

"And so I wanted Rosa, my dear, every bit as much. "

"Rosa!" There was a glow of surprise in the look she turned upon him. 

"You find it hard to believe, but it is true nevertheless. I had mygolden dream like everyone else, and when Rosa loved me I told myself ithad all come true. Well, perhaps, in a measure it has, only, after all, Rosa turned out to be more suited to real life than to poeticmoonshine. "

"I can't imagine even you idealizing Aunt Rosa, " said Laura, "but that Isuppose is the way life equalises things. "

"That way or another, and the worst it can do for us is to return us ourown dreams in grotesque and mutilated forms. That will most likely beyour portion, too, my child, for life has hurt every poet since theworld began, and it will hurt you more than most because you are so biga creature. "

Laura stirred suddenly and, after gazing a moment at the fire, turnedupon him a face which had grown brilliant with animation. "I want totaste everything, " she said. "I want to turn every page one after one. "

"And yet you live the life of a hermit thrush--you have in reality aslittle part in that bustling turmoil of New York out there as has poorAngela herself. "

"But my adventures will come to me--I feel that they will come. "

"Then you're happy, my dear, for you have the best of your adventures asyou call them in your waiting time. "

She leaned toward him, resting her cheek on his gentle old hand, andthey sat in silence until Mrs. Payne swept down upon them in her sablewraps and demanded the attendance of her husband. 

The hall door closed upon the sisters before Laura had quite come backfrom her abstraction, which she did at last with a sigh of relief atfinding herself alone. Then, leaving Uncle Percival nodding in thelibrary, she went upstairs to the cosy little study which opened fromher bedroom on the floor above. The wood fire on the brass andirons wasunlighted, and striking a match she held it to the little pile ofsplinters underneath the logs, watching, with a sensation of pleasure, the small yellow flames lick the crumpled paper and curl upward. Risingafter a moment, she stood breathing in the soft twilight-colouredatmosphere she loved. The place was her own and she kept it carefullyguarded from a too garish daylight, while the beloved familiarobjects--the shining rows of books, the dull greenish hangings, thecostly cushioned easy-chairs, the few rare photographs, the spaciouswriting table and the single Venetian vase of flowers--were alwayssteeped in a softly shadowed half-tone of light. 

As she looked about her the comfort of the room entered into her likewarmth, and, opening her arms in a happy gesture, she threw herselfamong the pillows of the couch and lay watching the rapid yellow flames. Even in the midst of her musing she laughed suddenly to find that shewas thinking of the phrase with which Funsten had dismissed the name ofArnold Kemper: "The only favourable thing one can say of him is to saynothing. " Was it really so bad as that she wondered, with a dim memorythat somewhere, back in an obscure corner of her bookshelves, lay hisfirst thin, promising volume published now almost fifteen years ago. Rising presently, she began a hasty search among a collection of littlenovels which had been banished ignominiously from the light of day, and, coming at last upon the story, she brought it to the lamp and commenceda reading prompted solely by the moment's impetuous curiosity. Utterlydevoid as it was of literary finish or discerning craftsmanship, thebook gripped from the start by sheer audacity--by its dominant, insistent, almost brutal and entirely misdirected power. It was less thestory that struck one than the personal equation between the lines, andthe impression she brought away from her breathless skimming was thatshe had encountered the shock of a tremendous masculine force. 

Her head fell back upon the cushions, and she lost herself in the vaguewonder the book aroused. Life was there--the life of the flesh, of vividsensation, of experience that ran hot and swift. The active principle, so strong in the predestined artist, stirred suddenly in her breast, andshe felt the instant of blind terror which comes with the realisation ofthe fleeting possibilities of earth. Outside--beyond her--existence inits multitudinous forms, its diversity of colour, swept on like somevast caravan from which she had been detached and set apart. Lying thereshe heard the call of it, that tremendous music which shook through herand loosened a caged voice within herself. Her own poetry became for herbut a little part of the tumultuous, passionate instinct for life withinher--for life not as it was in its reality but as she saw ittransfigured and enkindled by the imagination that lives in dreams. 

Suddenly from the darkened silence of the house below a thin sound rosetrembling, and then, gaining strength, penetrated into the closedchambers. Uncle Percival was at his flute again; he had arisen in thenight to resume his impassioned piping; and, rising hurriedly, Laura lither candle and went out into the hall, where a streak of light beneathAngela's door ran like a white thread across the blackness. Listening amoment, she heard inside the nervous pacing to and fro of tired yetrestless feet, and after a short hesitation she turned the knob andentered. 

"Oh, Aunt Angela, did the flute wake you?" she asked. 

For answer the long white figure stopped its frantic movement and turnedupon her a blanched and stricken face out of which two beautiful hauntedeyes stared like living terrors--terrors of memory, of silence, of theunseen which had taken visible forms. 

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" cried Angela breathlessly, raising herquivering hands to her ears. "I have heard it before! I have heardit--long before!"

She paused, gasping, and without a word Laura turned and ran down thedark staircase, while with each step the air that Uncle Percival playedsounded louder in her ears. 

The door of the library was open, and as she entered she called out in avoice that held a sob of anger, "Uncle Percival, how could you?"

His attentive, deafened ears were for his music alone, and, letting theflute fall from his hands, he turned to look at her with the pathetic, innocent enquiry of a good but uncomprehending child. At the sight ofhis smiling, wrinkled face, his gentle blue eyes and the wistful droopof disappointment at the corners of his mouth, her indignation changedsuddenly to pity. It seemed to her that she saw all his eighty yearslooking at her from that furrowed face out of those little wanderinground blue eyes--saw the human part of him as she had never seen itbefore--with its patience of unfulfilment, its scant small pleasures, its innocent senile passion at the end; saw, too, the divine part, hidden in him as in all humanity--that communion of longing which boundhis passionate fluting, Angela's passionate remorse and her ownpassionate purity into the universal congregation of unsatisfied souls. 

The sharp words died upon her lips and, kneeling at his side, she tookhis shrivelled little hands into her warm, comforting clasp. "Dear UnclePercival, I understand, and I love you, " she said. 

CHAPTER IV

USHERS IN THE MODERN SPIRIT

"So you have seen her, " Adams had remarked the same afternoon, as hewalked with Trent in the direction of Broadway. "Do you walk up, by theway? I always manage to get in a bit of exercise at this hour. "

As Trent fell in with his companion's rapid step, he seemed to be movingin a fine golden glow of enthusiasm. A light icy drizzle had turned thesnow upon the pavement into sloppy puddles of water, but to the youngman, fresh from his inexperience, the hour and the scene alike were ofexhilarating promise. 

"I feel as if I had been breathing different air!" he exclaimed, withoutreplying directly to the question. "And yet how simple she is--howutterly unlike the resplendent Mrs. Bridewell--"

He stopped breathlessly, overcome by his excitement, and Adams took upthe unfinished sentence almost tenderly. "So far, of course, she ismerely a beautiful promise, a flower in the bud, " he said. "Hergenius--if she has genius--has not found itself, and the notes shestrikes are all mere groping attempts at a perfect self-expression. Yet, undoubtedly, she has done a few fine things, " he admitted withprofessional caution. 

"But if, as you say, her emotional self does not go into her poems, whatbecomes of it?" enquired Trent, with a curiosity too impersonal to bevulgar. "For she, finely tempered as she is, suggests nothing so much asa beautiful golden flame. "

Adams started, and flashed upon the other a glance as incisive as asearch-light. 

"Then you, too, recognise her beauty?" he asked in a tone which had akindly jealousy. 

"Am I a fool?" protested Trent, laughing. 

'You heard Kemper?"

"I heard him proclaim himself an ass. Well, let him, let him. Would youhand out one of your precious first editions to the crowd?"

"You're right, you're right, " assented Adams, and followed his remarkwith a sudden change of subject. "I am interested, Mr. Trent, in whatyou yourself have come to do. "

"I--Oh, I have done nothing, " declared Trent. 

"In your aims, then, let us say, I understand that you intend to try thedrama?"

"Well, I confess to having done a play that I think isn't bad, " repliedTrent, blushing over all his fresh, smooth-shaven face. "Benson haspromised me a hearing. "

"Ah, I know him--he's always eager for new blood. Perhaps you wouldn'tmind my speaking a word or two to him?

"Mind!" exclaimed the younger man, his voice shaking. "Why, I can't tellyou how happy it would make me. "

They had reached Eighteenth Street, and Trent paused a moment on thecorner before turning off to the big red-brick apartment house where hewas temporarily placed. "I'd like to walk up to Thirty-fifth with you, "he added, "but my mother is expecting me and it makes her nervous when Istay out after dark. She's just from the country, you know, and she getsconfused by the noise. " He hesitated an instant and then finished withembarrassment. "I wish so much that she could know you. '

"It is a pleasure I hope for very shortly, " responded Adams. "How doesshe like New York, by the way?"

Under the electric light Trent's eyes seemed to run entirely tosparkles. "Ah, well, it's rather lonely for her. She misses the callersat home who used to come to spend the day. "

"We must try to change that, " said the other as he moved off, whileTrent noted that despite his genial sympathy of manner there had been nomention of Mrs. Adams. Where was she? and what was she? questioned theyounger man in perplexity, as he crossed to his apartment house at thecorner of Fourth Avenue. 

At Twenty-third Street Adams had turned almost unconsciously into FifthAvenue, for so detached was the intellectual remoteness in which helived that he might have been, for all his immediate perceptions of hissurroundings, strolling at dusk along a deserted Western road. He was soused to dwelling on the cool heights of a dearly bought, a hardly wrung, philosophy that he had become at last almost oblivious of the mereexternal details of life. To live at all had been for him a matter offine moral courage, and his slight, delicate emaciated, yet dauntless, figure was in itself the expression of a resolute will to endure as wellas to resist. When a man has faced death at close range for fifteenyears he is, in a measure, bound to become either indifferent satyr orpartial saint, and even in the extremity of his first revolt hispersonal ideal had stood, like the angel with the flaming sword, betweenAdams and the quagmire of bodily materialism. He was not, perhaps, asyet even so much as a deficient stoic, but he had wrung from suffering acertain high loyalty to human fellowship and a half humorous, if whollygallant, determination to keep fast at any cost until the very end. Whyhe had made the fight he did not ask himself, nor could he haveanswered. His ambition, his marriage, even the ordinary sensuousenjoyments of life, had crumbled as the mythical Dead Sea apples uponhis lips, yet the failure of his own mere individual pursuit ofhappiness had in no-wise soured the sweet and finely flavored optimismof his nature. 

The fragrance from the violets worn by a passing woman struck himpresently, and he looked outside of himself almost with a start. Aroundhim many women were walking briskly under raised umbrellas, and someshowed pretty faces freshened like flowers by the icy rain. He himselfhad forgotten the rain, had forgotten even the cold which pierced hischest, and, suddenly remembering the directions of his physician, hefastened his overcoat more closely and hastened across the street, passing rapidly in and out among the moving vehicles until he gained, over the sloppy crossing, the safety of the opposite sidewalk. Here heturned in the direction of Madison Avenue and finally, drawing out hislatchkey, entered one of the dingy, flat-faced, utterly conventionalbrown houses which make up so large a part of the characterlesscomplexion of New York life. 

The interior was brilliantly lighted, and he was shrinking noiselesslyinto his study at the back when he heard his name called from thedrawing-room threshold and saw his wife standing there while she put ona long white evening cloak over a filmy effect of cream-coloured lace. She was a small, pretty woman, with a cloud of fluffy, artificiallyblonde hair and large, innocent, absolutely blank blue eyes. A year agoshe had resembled, if one might imagine the existence of such a being, aperfectly worldly wise and cynically minded baby, but twelve months oflate suppers and many plays had already blighted her rose-leaf skin andsown three fine, nervous little wrinkles between her delicately archedeyebrows. She was very vivacious, but, as Gerty Bridewell had observed, it was a vivacity that was hardly justified, since possessing neitherthe means nor the manner exacted by the more exclusive circles, she hadbeen compelled to compromise with a social body which made up in memberswhat it lacked as an organism. Her dash and her prettiness sufficed toplace her comfortably here, but beyond a speaking acquaintance withGerty, who confessed that she was too charitable to be exclusive she hadnot as yet approached that small shining sphere whose inmates boast thelarger freedom no less than the finer discrimination. The largerfreedom, it seemed at times, was all of it that she was ever to attain, for, venturing a little too boldly once or twice with a light head, shehad at last found herself skating gingerly over a veritable sleet ofscandal. She got herself rumoured about so persistently that from beingmerely improbable, she had become, in Gerty's words again, "one of thevery last of the impossibilities. " And of late Adams' friends had begunto ask themselves quite seriously, "why in the deuce he didn't keep ahand upon his wife. " How much he knew or how much there was, in reality, to know had become in a limited circle almost the question of the hour, until Perry Bridewell had demanded in final exasperation "whether Adamswas ridiculously ignorant or outrageously indifferent?"

But if the curious had been permitted to observe the object of theiruncertainty as he stood under the full glare before his festive wifethey would have found neither ignorance nor indifference in his manner. He regarded her with a frank, fatherly tolerance, in which there washardly a suggestion of a more passionate concern. 

"Wrap up well, " he said, as his glance shot over her, "there's a bitingwind outside. "

Connie screwed up her delicate eyebrows and the fine little wrinklesleaped instantly into view. There was a nervous irritation in her look, which recoiled from her husband as from a blank and shining wall. 

"I'm dining at Sherry's with the Donaldsons, " she explained. "I knew youwouldn't come, so I didn't even trouble you to decline. "

"You're right, my dear, " he rejoined gayly. 

"Mr. Brady has called for me, " she went on with the faintest possiblehesitation in her voice, "and as we're all going to the theatreafterward I shall probably be late. Don't bother about sitting up forme--I have a key. "

"Well, take care of yourself, " responded Adams pleasantly, adding to ayoung man who appeared in the drawing-room doorway, "How are you, Mr. Brady? Please don't let Mrs. Adams be so foolish as to stand outside inthe wind. I can't make her take care of her cold. "

"Oh, I'll promise to look out for it, " replied Brady, standing slightlybehind Connie, and arranging by a careless movement the white fur on hercloak. His handsome wooden features possessed hardly more character thanwas expressed by his immaculately starched shirt front, but he was notwithout a certain wholly superficial attraction, half as of a sleek, well-groomed animal and half as of a masculine conceit, naked andunashamed. 

Connie tinkled out her nervous, high-pitched, vacant little laugh, whichshe used to fill in gaps in conversation much as a distinguishedvirtuoso might interlude his own important efforts with selections oflight vocal strains. 

"Roger is always worrying about my health, " she said, "but the truth isthat it's so good I'll never begin to value it until it's gone. " Herexcited, fluttering manner blew about her almost with a commotion of theatmosphere, and reminded Adams at times of a tempestuous March breezeshaking a fragile wind flower. It was unnatural, overdone, unbecoming, but it seemed at last to have got quite beyond her control, and thepretty girlish composure he remembered as one of her freshest charms, was lost in her general violence of animation. Of late he knew that shehad fought off her natural exhaustion by the frequent use of stimulants, and it seemed to him that he saw their immediate effects in her flushedcheeks and too brightly shining eyes. 

"Don't stay out late, " he urged again; "you've been rushing like madthese last weeks and you need rest. "

"But I never rest, " rejoined Connie, still laughing, "and I honestlyhope that I shan't come to a stop until I die. "

She fastened her cloak under the fall of lace, and, when Brady hadslipped into his overcoat, Adams turned back to open the hall door, which let in a biting draught. 

"Ta-ta! don't sit up!" cried Connie breathlessly, as, more than everlike a filmy wind flower in a high wind, she was blown down the steps, across the slushy sidewalk, and into the hired carriage. 

When they had gone Adams went into the dining-room and dined alonewithout dressing, as he had done almost every evening for the last fewmonths. The Irish maid waited upon him with a solicitude in which heread his pose of a deserted husband, and he tried with a forcible, though silent, bravado to dispel her very evident assumption. Connie hadcertainly not deserted him against his will, and when her absence hadbegun to show as so incontestable a relief it seemed the basestingratitude to force upon her reckless shoulders the odium of anentirely satisfying arrangement. After a day of mental and physicalexertion the further effort of a conversation with her was somethingthat he felt to be utterly beyond him, and the distant Colorado dayswhen she had played the part of a soft, inviting kitten and he hadresponded happily to the appeal for constant petting, now lay very farbehind them both--buried somewhere in that cloudless country they hadleft. Neither of them wanted the petting back again, and as he rose fromhis simple dinner and entered his study at the end of the hall he heaveda sigh of conscious thankfulness that it was empty. 

While he lighted his pipe his eyes turned instinctively to his preciousfirst editions of which Trent had spoken, and then straight as an arrowto a photograph of Laura which stood with several others upon hiswriting table. The eyes of most men would have lingered, perhaps, on oneof Connie, which was taken, indeed, at her best period and in aremarkably effective pose, but Adams' glance brushed it with anindifference only unkind in its mute sincerity, while he sought thetroubled gaze of Laura, who wore in the picture a shy and startled look, like that of a wild thing suddenly trapped in its reserve. He had never, even in his own mind, analysed his feeling for the woman whom he wascontent to call his friend--he hesitated to condemn himself almostbecause he feared to question--but whenever he entered alone his emptyroom he knew that he turned instinctively to draw strength and couragefrom her pictured face. It was a face that had followed after the idealbeauty, and in her spiritual isolation, as of one devoted to an innervision, he had always found the peculiar pathetic quality of her charm. Into her verse, chastened and restrained by the sense for perfectionwhich dwelt in her art, she had put, he knew, this same cloistral visionof an unrealised world--a vision which had expanded and blossomed inthe luxuriant if slightly formal garden of her intellect. The world shelooked upon was a world, as Adams had once said, "seen through the hazeof a golden temperament"--the dream of an imaginative mysticism, of aconventual purity, a dream which is to the reality as the soul of a manis to the body. And it was this inspired divination, this luminousidealism, which had caused Adams to exclaim when he put down her firstsmall gray volume: "Is it possible that we can still see visions?"

A little later, when he came to know her, he found that the vision shelooked upon had coloured not only her own soul, but even the outwarddaily happenings of her life. For him she was from the first compactedof divine mysteries, of exquisite surprises, and he loved to fancy thathe could see her genius burning like a clear flame within her andshining at vivid moments with a still soft radiance in her face. Healways thought of her soul as of something luminous, and there wereinstants when it seemed to touch her eyes and her mouth with an edge oflight. Beyond this her complexities remained for him as on the day whenhe first saw her--if she was obscure it was the obscurity of a star seenthrough a fog--and the desire to understand lost itself presently in thebewilderment of his misapprehension. At last, however, he had put her, as it were, tentatively aside, had relinquished his attempt to reduceher to a formula with the despairing admission that she was, take her asyou would, a subtlety that compelled one to a mental effort. The effortwhich he had up to this time associated with the society of women hadbeen of anything but a mental character. There was the effort ofputting one's best physical foot in advance, the effort of keeping one'sperson conspicuously in evidence and one's intellect as unobtrusively inabeyance--the material effort of appearing always in one's besttrousers, the moral effort of presenting always one's worstintelligence. It had seemed to him until he met Laura--and his opinionwas the effect of a limited experience upon a large philosophicignorance--that the female sex played the part in Nature which isperformed by the chorus in a Greek tragedy--that it shrilly voiced thehorrors of the actual in the face of a divine indifference--andstrenuously insisted upon the importance of the eternal detail. FromConnie he had gathered that the feminine mind tended naturally toward amaterial philosophy--toward a deification of the body, a faith in thefugitive allurement of the senses, and because of his earlier initiationhe had taken Laura's intellectual radiance as the shining of a virtuallydisembodied spirit. His own senses had led him, he recognised now, todisastrous issues; his love for Connie had been the prompting of merephysical impulse, and he had emerged from it with a feeling of escapinginto freedom. Too much Nature he had learned during those months ofmental apathy is in its way quite as destructive as too little--theremust be a soul in desire to keep it alive, he understood at last, or theperishing body of it will decay for lack of a vital flame in the veryhour of its fulfilment. A colder man might have come to such knowledgealong impersonal paths, a coarser one would never have gone beyond it, but in Adams the old fighting spirit--a survival of the uncompromisingPuritan conscience--had brought him up again, soul and body, to struggleafresh for a cleaner and a sharper air. Life had meant more to him inthe beginning than a mere series of sensations--more even than anybodily conditions, any material attainment; and it was the final triumphof his austere vision that it should mean most of all when it seemed toa casual glance to contain least of actual value. 

CHAPTER V

IN WHICH A YOUNG MAN DREAMS DREAMS

Since coming to New York Mrs. Trent had taken a small apartment in a bigapartment house, where she lived with her son a perfectly provincial aswell as a strictly secluded life. She was a large, florid, motherly oldlady who still wore mourning for a husband who had been killed while foxhunting twenty-five years ago. Her face resembled a friendly andauspicious full moon, and above it her shining hair rolled like aparting of silvery clouds. Day or night she was always engaged inknitting a purple shawl, which appeared never to have been finishedsince her son's infancy, for his earliest recollection was of the plump, soft balls of brilliant yarn and the long ivory knitting needles whichclicked briskly while she worked with a pleasant, familiar sound. Tothis day the clicking of those needles brought to his mouth the taste oflarge slices of bread and jam, and to his ears the soothing murmur ofBible stories told in the twilight. 

She was always, too, serene gossip that she was, full of a monotonous, rippling stream of words, and if her days in New York were trying to herbody and burdened with homesickness for her heart, no one--not even St. George himself--had ever surprised so much as a passing shadow upon herface. The young man's untiring pursuit of managers and of players hadleft her continually alone, but she busied herself cheerfully about herhousekeeping, and found diversion in yielding to an inordinate curiosityconcerning her neighbours. Once or twice she had questioned him abouthis absence, and this was especially so the morning after his meetingwith Laura Wilde. 

"You didn't tell me where you were yesterday, St. George, " she observedat breakfast; "did you meet any one who is likely to be of use? Iremember Beverly Pierce told me that everything had to come throughintroductions in the North. "

He looked at her steadily a moment before replying, taking in all thelovely details of her appearance behind the coffee tray--the morningsunlight on her white hair and on the massive, hand-beaten, old silverservice, the solitary rose he had purchased in the street standingbetween them in a slender Bohemian vase, brought from the rare old chinain the press just at her back, the dainty hemstitching on her collar andcuffs of fine thread cambric, and lastly the vivid spot of color made bythe knitting she had laid aside. 

"I met Laura Wilde, " he answered presently, "but as you never readpoetry you can't understand just what it means. "

As she held the cream jug poised above his coffee cup Mrs. Trent smiledback at him with a placid wonder. 

"Who is she, my son? A lady--I mean a _real_ one?"

"Oh, yes, sterling. "

"But she writes verse you say! Is it improper?"

His eyes shone with amusement. "Improper! Why, what an idea!"

"I'm sure I don't know how it is, " responded his mother, carefullymeasuring with her eye the correct allowance of cream, "but somehowwomen always seem to get immodest when they take to verse. It's as ifthey went into it for the express purpose of airing theirimproprieties. "

"I say!" he exclaimed, with gentle mockery, "have you been reading'Sappho' at your age?"

She continued to regard him blandly, without so much as a flicker ofhumour in her serene blue eyes. "Your grandfather used to be very fondof quoting something from 'Sappho, '" she returned thoughtfully, "or wasit from Mr. Pope? I can't remember which or what it was except that itwas hardly the kind of thing you would recite to a lady. "

Trent laughed good-humouredly as he received his coffee cup. 

"Well you can't point a moral with Miss Wilde, " he rejoined, "you'd beat liberty to recite her to anybody who had the sense to understandher. "

"Is she very deep?"

"She's profound--she's wonderful--she's a genius. "

Mrs. Trent shook her head a little doubtfully. "I don't see that a womanhas any business to be a genius, " she remarked. "And I can't help beingprejudiced against women writers, your father always was. It's as ifthey really pretended to know as much as a man. When they publish booksI suppose they expect men to read them and that in itself is a kind ofconceit. "

Trent yielded the point as he helped himself to the cakes brought in byan old negro servant. 

"Well, I shan't ask Miss Wilde to call on you, " he laughed, "so youwon't be apt to run across the learned of your sex. "

"Oh, I shouldn't mind myself, " responded the old lady, with amiability, "but I do hate to have you thrown with women that you wouldn't meet athome. "

"I certainly shouldn't meet Miss Wilde at home if that is what youmean. "

"It's bad enough to live in a partitioned cage like this, " resumed Mrs. Trent, in her soft, expressionless voice, "and to dry your clothes onyour neighbour's roofs, but I can bear anything so long as we are notforced to associate with common people. Of course I don't expect to findthe manners of Virginia up here, " she added as a last concession, "but Imay as well confess that the people I've come across don't seem to me tobe exactly civil. "

"Just as we don't seem to them to be particularly worldly-wise, I daresay. "

She nodded her head, almost without hearing him, while her even tonesrippled on over her quaint ideas, which shone to her son's mind likelittle silver pebbles beneath the shallow stream. 

"I'm almost reconciled to the fact that old ladies wear colours andflowers in their bonnets, " she pursued, "to say nothing of low-neckdresses, but it does seem to me that they might show a little ordinarypoliteness. I met the doctor coming out of the apartment downstairs, soin common decency I went immediately to enquire who was sick, andcarried along a glass of chicken jelly. The woman who opened the doorwas rather rude, " she finished with a sigh. "I don't believe such athing had ever happened to her before in the whole course of her life. "

Trent gave her a tender glance across the coffee service. 

"Probably not, " he admitted, "but I wouldn't waste my jelly if I wereyou. "

"I sha'n't" she determined sadly, "and that's the thing I miss most ofall--visiting the sick. "

"You might devote yourself to the hospitals--there are plenty of them itseems. "

Her resignation, however, was complete, and she showed no impulse toreach out actively again. "It wouldn't be the same, my dear--I don'twant strange paupers but real friends. Do you know, " she added, with adespair that was almost abject, "I was counting up this morning thepeople I might speak to if I met them in the street, and I got them ineasily on the fingers of one hand. That included, " she confessed after ahesitation, "the doctor, the butcher's boy and the woman who comes toscrub. It would surprise you to find what a very interesting woman sheis. "

Trent rose from his chair and, coming round to where she sat, gave her aboyish hug of sympathy. "You're a regular angel of a mother, " he saidand added playfully, while he still held her, "even then I don't see howyou make it five. "

She put up her large white hand and smoothed his hair across hisforehead. "That's only because I made an acquaintance in the elevatoryesterday, " she replied. 

"In the elevator! How?"

"The thing always makes me nervous, you know--I can't abide it, and I'dmuch rather any day go up and down the seven flights--but she met me asI started to walk and persuaded me to come inside. Then she held my handuntil I got quite to the bottom. "

"Indeed, " said Trent suspiciously; "who was she?"

"Her name is Christina Coles, and she came from Clarke County. I knewher grandfather. "

"Thank Heaven!" breathed Trent, and his voice betrayed his happyreassurance. 

"She's really very pretty--all the Coles were handsome--her great-auntwas once a famous beauty. Do you remember my speaking of her--Miss BettyColes?" He shook his head, and she proceeded with her reminiscence. 

"Well, she was said to have received fifty proposals before hertwenty-fifth birthday, but she never married. On her last visit to me, when she was a very old lady, I asked her why--and her answer was: 'Purefastidiousness. '" She had picked up her purple shawl, and the long ivoryknitting needles began to click. 

"But I'm more interested in the young lady of the elevator--What is shelike?"

"Not the beauty that Betty was, but still very pretty, with the sameblue eyes and brown hair, which she wears parted exactly as her aunt didfifty years ago. I fear, though, " she finished in a whisper, "I reallyfear--that she writes. "

"Is that so? Did she tell you?"

"Not in words, but she carried a parcel exactly like your manuscripts, and she spoke--oh, so seriously--of her work. She spoke of it quite asif it were a baby. "

"By Jove!" he gasped, and after a moment, "I hope at any rate that shewill be a comfort. "

With her knitting still in her hands, she rose and went to the window, where she stood placidly staring at the sunlight upon the blackenedchimney-pots. "At least I can talk to her about her aunt, " she returned. Then her gaze grew more intense, and she almost flattened her noseagainst the pane. "I declare I wonder what that woman is doing out thereon that fire-escape, " she observed. 

After he had got into his overcoat Trent came back to give her a partingkiss. "Find out by luncheon time, " he returned gaily. 

When presently he entered the elevator he found it already occupied by ayoung lady whom he recognised from his mother's description as ChristinaColes. She was very pretty, but, even more than by her prettiness, hewas struck by her peculiar steadfastness of look, as of one devoted to asingle absorbing purpose. He noticed, too, that the little tan coat shewore was rather shabby, and that there was a small round hole in one ofthe fingers of her glove. When she spoke, as she did when leaving thekey with the man in charge of the elevator, her voice sounded remarkablyfresh and pleasant. They left the house together, but while she walkedrapidly toward Broadway he contented himself with strolling leisurelyalong Fourth Avenue, where he bent a vacant gaze on the objectsassembled in the windows of dealers in "antiques. "

But his thoughts did not so much as brush the treasures at which hestared, and neither the hurrying crowd--which had a restless, workadaylook at the morning hour--nor the noisily clanging cars broke into theexquisitely reared castle of his dreams. Since the evening before hisimagination had been thrilling to the tune of some spirited music, flowing presumably from these airy towers, and as he went on over thewet sunlight on the sidewalk, he was still keeping step to the exaltedif unreal measures. Never in his life; not even in his wildest literaryecstasies, had he felt so assured of the beauty, of the bountifulness, of his coming years--so filled with a swelling thankfulness for the merephysical fact of birth. He was twenty-five, he believed passionately inhis own powers, and he was, he told himself with emphasis, in love forthe first and only time. In the confused tangle of his fancy he sawLaura like some great white flower, growing out of reach, yet notentirely beyond endeavour, and the ladder that went up to her was madeby his own immediate successes. Then the footlights before his play swamin his picture and he heard already the applause of crowded houses andfelt in his head the intoxication of his triumph. Act by act, scene byscene, he rehearsed in fancy his great drama, seeing the players throngbefore the footlights and seeing, too, Laura applauding softly from astage box at the side. He had had moments of despondency over his idea, had grovelled in abject despair during trying periods of execution, butnow all uncertainty--all misgivings evaporated like an obscuring fogbefore a burst of light. The light, indeed, had at the moment the fullradiance of a great red glow such as he had seen used for effectivepurposes upon the stage--and just as every object of scenery had taken, for the time, a portion of the transfiguring suffusion--so now theexternal ugly details among which he moved were bathed in the highcoloured light of his imagination. 

But if the end is sometimes long in coming, it comes at last even to thevisions of youth, and when his tired limbs finally dragged his soaringspirit to earth, he took a passing car and came home to luncheon. Theglamour had faded suddenly from his dreams, as if a bat's wing hadfluttered overhead, and in his new mood, he felt a resurgence of his oldself-consciousness. He was provoked by the suspicion that he had shownless as a coming dramatist than as a present fool, and he contrasted hisown awkwardness with Adams' whimsical ease of manner. Did a woman everforget how a man appeared when she first met him? Would any amount offame to-morrow obliterate from Laura's memory his embarrassment ofyesterday? He had heard that the surface impression was what counted inthe feminine mind, and this made him think enviously, for a minute, ofPerry Bridewell--of his handsome florid face and his pleasant animalmagnetism. Perry was stupid and an egoist, and yet he had heard thatMrs. Bridewell, for all her beauty and her wit, adored him, while heopenly neglected her. Was the secret of success, after all, simply anindifference to everyone's needs except one's own? or was it rather thecourage to impress the world that one's own were the only needs thatcounted?

He was late for luncheon but his mother had waited for him, and he foundwhen he entered the drawing room that Christina Coles was with her. Thegirl still wore her hat, but she had removed her jacket, and it lay witha little brown package on the sofa. As she spoke to him he was struckafresh by the singular concentration of her expression. 

"Your mother tells me that you've written a play, " she began, a littleshyly; "she says, too, that it is wonderful. "

"'She says' is well put, " he retorted gaily, "but I hear that you, also, are among the prophets. "

"I am nothing else, " she answered earnestly. "It is everything to me--itis my life. "

Her frankness startled him unpleasantly, and but for her girlishprettiness, he might have felt himself almost repelled. As it was hemerely glanced appealingly at his mother, who intervened with a gestureof her knitting needle. "She writes stories, " explained the old lady, appearing to transfix her subject on the ivory point; "it is just as Iimagined. "

The girl herself met his eyes almost fiercely, reminding him vaguely ofthe look with which a lioness might defend her threatened young. 

"I've done nothing yet, " she declared, "but I mean to--I mean to if ittakes every single hour I have to live. " Then her manner changedsuddenly, and she impressed him as melting from her hard reserve. "Oh, she tells me that you've met Laura Wilde!" she said. 

The sacred name struck him, after his impassioned dreaming, like a sharpblow between the eyes, and he met the girl's animated gesture with alook of blank aversion. 

"I've met her--yes, " he answered coldly. 

But her enthusiasm was at white heat, and he saw what he had thoughtmere prettiness in her warm to positive beauty. "And you adore her workas I do?" she exclaimed. 

After a moment's hesitation his ardour flashed out to meet her own. "Oh, yes, I adore her work and her!" he said. 

CHAPTER VI

SHOWS THAT MR. WORLDLY-WISE-MAN MAY BELONG TO EITHER SEX

Several afternoons later Trent was to have further light thrown on thecharacter of Christina Coles by a chance remark of Roger Adams, intowhose office he had dropped for a moment as he was on his way to makehis first call upon Mrs. Bridewell. 

After a few friendly enquiries about the young man's own work, and thereport of a promising word from the great Benson, Adams took up a letterlying loose among the papers on his big littered desk. 

"Half the tragedy in New York is contained in a letter like this, " heobserved. "Do you know, by the way, that the mass of outside literaryworkers drawn in at last by the whirlpool constitutes almost apopulation? Take this girl, now, she is so consumed by her ambition, forheaven knows what, that she comes here and starves in an attic ratherthan keep away in comfort. That reminds me, " he added, with a suddenrecollection, "she's from your part of the country. "

"Indeed!" An intuition shot like a conviction into Trent's mind. "Couldher name, I wonder, by any chance be Coles?"

"You know her then?"

"I've met her, but do you mean to say that ability is what she hasn'tgot?"

"For some things I've no doubt she has an amazing amount, only she'smistaken its probable natural bent. She strikes me as a woman who wasborn for the domestic hearth, or failing that she'd do admirably, I daresay, in a hospital. "

"It's the literary instinct, then, that's missing in her?"

"Not the instinct so much as the literary stuff, and in that she's notdifferent from a million others. She is evidently on fire with theimpulse to create, but the power--the creative matter--isn't in her. Lether keep up, and she'll probably go on doing 'hack' work until herdeath. "

"But she's so pretty, " urged Trent with a chivalric qualm--and heremembered her smooth brown hair parted over her rosy ears, her blueeyes, fresh as flowers, and the peculiar steadfastness that possessedher face. 

"The more's the pity, " said Adams, while the muscles about his mouthtwitched slightly, as they always did when he was deeply moved, "it's abigger waste. I wrote to her as a father might have done and begged herto give it up, " he went on, "and in return, " he tapped the open sheet, "she sends me this fierce, pathetic little letter and informs me grandlythat her life is dedicated. Dedicated, good Lord!" he exclaimedcompassionately, "dedicated to syndicated stories in the Sunday pressand an occasional verse in the cheaper magazines. "

"And there's absolutely nothing to be done?" asked Trent. 

Adams met the question with a frown. 

"Oh, if it would make it all come right in the end, I'd go on publishingher empty, trite little articles until Gabriel blows his trumpet. "

"It wouldn't help, though, after all. "

"Well, hardly--the quick way is sure to be the most merciful, " helaughed softly with the quality of kindly humour which never failed him, "we'll starve her out as soon as possible, " he declared. 

As if to dismiss the subject, he refolded the letter, slipped it in itsenvelope, and placed it in one of his crammed pigeon-holes. "Thank God, your own case isn't of the hopeless kind!" he exclaimed fervently. 

"Somehow success looks like selfishness, " returned Trent, showing by histone the momentary depression which settled so easily upon his variablemoods. 

At the speech Adams turned upon him the full sympathy of his smile, while he enclosed in a warm grasp the hand which the young man held out. 

"It's what we're made for, " he responded cheerily, "success in one wayor another. "

His words, and even more his look, remained with Trent long afterwards, blowing, like a fresh strong wind, through the hours of despondencywhich followed for him upon any temporary exaltation. The young man hada trick of remembering faces, not as wearing their accustomed dailylook, but as he had seen them animated and transfigured by any vividmoment of experience, and he found later that when he thought of Adamsit was to recall the instant's kindly lighting of the eyes, the flickerof courageous humour about the mouth and the dauntless ring in theusually quiet voice. He realised now, as he walked through the hummingstreets, that success or failure is not an abstract quantity but arelative value--that a man may be a shining success in the world's eyesand a comparative failure in his own. To Trent, Adams had for yearsrepresented the cultured and scholarly critic--the writer who, in hislimited individual field, had incontestably "arrived. " Now, for thefirst time, he saw that the editor looked upon himself as a man of smallachievements, and that, inasmuch as his idea had been vastly more thanhis execution, he felt himself to belong to the unfulfilled ones of theearth. 

When, a little later, he reached Mrs. Bridewell's house in Sixty-ninthStreet the servant invited him, after a moment's wait below, into hersitting-room upstairs, and, following the man's lead, he was finallyushered into a charming apartment upon the second floor. A light cloudof cigarette smoke trailed toward him as he entered, and when he paused, confused by broken little peals of laughter, he made out a group ofladies gathered about a tiny Oriental table upon which stood a tray ofTurkish coffee. Gerty rose from the circle as he advanced, and moved asingle step forward, while the pale green flounces of her train rippledprettily about her feet. Her hair was loosely arranged, and she gave himan odd impression of wearing what in his provincial mind he called a"wrapper"--his homely name for the exquisite garment which flowed, straight and unconfined, from her slender shoulders. His mother, heremembered, not without a saving humour, had always insisted that a ladyshould appear before the opposite sex only in the entire armour of her"stays" and close-fitting bodice. 

Gerty, as she mentioned the names of her callers, subsided with herebbing green waves into the chair from which she had risen, and held hercigarette toward Trent with a pretty inviting gesture. Her delicategrace gave the pose a piquant attraction, and he found himself watchingwith delight the tiny rings of smoke which curled presently from herparted lips. As she smoked she held her chin slightly lifted, andregarded him from beneath lowered lids with an arch and careless humour. 

"If you'd been the Pope himself, " she remarked, as an indifferentapology, "I'd hardly have done more than fling the table-cover over myhead. Even you, after you'd spent a morning trying on a velvet gown, would require a lounge and a good smoke. "

He admitted that he thought it probable, and then turned to one of thecallers who had spoken--a handsome woman with gray hair, which producedan odd effect of being artificial. 

"I wish I'd done nothing worse than try on clothes, " she observed, "butI've been to lunch with an old lover. "

"Poor dear, " murmured Gerty, compassionately, as she passed Trent a cupof coffee, "was he so cruel as to tell you you'd retained your youth?"

"He did worse, " sighed the handsome woman, "he assured me I hadn't. "

"Well, he couldn't have done more if he'd married you, " declared Gerty, with her gleeful cynicism. 

"He was too brutally frank for a husband, " remarked a second caller asshe sipped her coffee. "You showed more discretion, Susie, than I gaveyou credit for. "

"Oh, you needn't compliment me, " protested Susie; "in those days hehadn't a penny. "

"Indeed! and now?"

"Now he has a great many, but he has attached to himself a wife, and I ahusband. Well, I can't say honestly that I regret him, " she laughed, "for if he has lived down his poverty he hasn't his passion for red--hewore a red necktie. Why is it, " she lamented generally to the group, "that the male mind leans inevitably toward violent colours?"

"Perhaps they appeal to the barbaric part of us, " suggested Trent, becoming suddenly at ease amid the battle of inanities. 

"Have you a weakness for red, too, Mr. Trent?" enquired Gerty. 

The sparkle in his eyes leaped out at her challenge. 

"Only in the matter of hair, " he retorted boldly. 

She regarded him intently for a moment, while he felt again as he hadfelt at Laura Wilde's, not only her fascination--her personalradiance--but the conviction that she carried at heart a deep disgust, aheavy disenchantment, which her ostentatious gayety could not conceal. Even her beauty gave back to him a suggestion of insincerity, and hewondered if the brightness of her hair and of her mouth was asartificial as her brilliant manner. It was magnificent, but, after all, it was not nature. 

"Because I warn you now, " she pursued, after the brief pause, "that ifyou bind your first play in red I shall refuse to read it. "

"You can't escape on that ground, " rejoined Trent, "I'll make it green. "

"Well, you're more civilised than Perry, " declared Gerty, with one ofher relapses into defiant ridicule, which caused Trent to wonder if shewere not acting upon an intuition which taught her that a slight shockis pleasantly stimulating to the fancy, "and I suppose it's myassociation with him that convinces me if we'd leave your sex alone itwould finally revert to the savage state and to skin girdles. "

"Now don't you think Perry would look rather nice in skins?" enquiredthe handsome woman. "I can quite see him with his club like the manin--which one of Wagner's?"

"It isn't the club of the savage I object to, " coolly protested Gerty, "it's the taste. Perry has been married to me five years, " shecontinued, reflectively, "a long enough period you would think to teacheven a Red Indian that my hair positively shrieks at anything remotelyresembling pink. Yet when I went to the Hot Springs last autumn heactually had this room hung for me in terra-cotta. "

Trent cast a blank stare about the tapestried walls. 

"But where is it?" he demanded. 

"It's gone, " was Gerty's brief rejoinder, and she added, after a momentdevoted to her cigarette, "now that's where it pays to have the wisdomof the serpent. I really flatter myself, " she admitted complacently, "that I've a genius, I did it so beautifully. Your young innocent wouldhave mangled matters to the point of butchery and have gloried like amartyr in her domestic squabbles, but I've learned a lesson or two frommisfortune, and one of them is that a man invariably prides himself uponpossessing the quality he hasn't got. That's a perfectly safe rule, " sheannotated along the margin of her story. "I used to compliment an artistupon his art and an Apollo upon his beauty--but it never worked. Theyalways looked as if I had under-valued them, so now I industriouslypraise the folly of the wise and the wisdom of the fool. "

"And the decorative talent of Perry, " laughed one of the callers. 

"You needn't smile, " commented Gerty, while Trent watched the littlegreenish flame dance in her eyes, "it isn't funny--it's philosophy. Imade it out of life. "

"But what about the terra-cotta?" enquired Susie. 

"Oh, as I've said, I did nothing reckless, " resumed Gerty, relaxingamong her cushions, "I neither slapped his face nor went intohysterics--these tactics, I've found, never work unless one happens tobe a prima donna--so I complimented him upon his consideration and satdown and waited. That night he went to a club dinner--after thebeautiful surprise he'd given me he felt that he deserved a littlefreedom--and the door had no sooner closed upon him than I paid thebutler to come in and smoke the walls. He didn't want to do it at all, so I really had to pay him very high--I gave him a suit of Perry'sevening clothes. It's the ambition of his life, you know, to look likePerry. "

"How under heaven did he manage it?" persisted Susie. "The smoke, Imean, not the resemblance. "

"There are a good many lamps about the house and we brought them allin, every one. The butler warned me it was dangerous, but I assured himI was desperate. That settled it--that and the evening clothes--and bythe time Perry returned the room was like an extinct volcano. "

"And he never found out?" asked Susie, as the callers rose to go. 

"Found out! My dear, do you really give him credit for femininepenetration? Well, if you will go--good-bye--and--oh--don't look at mygown to-morrow night or you'll turn blue with envy, " then, as Trentstarted to follow the retreating visitors, she detained him by agesture. "Stay awhile, unless you're bored, " she urged, "but if you'rereally bored I shan't say a word. I assure you I sometimes bore myself. "

As he fell back into his chair Trent was conscious of a feeling ofintimacy, and strange as it was, it dispelled instantly his engrossingshyness. 

"I'm not bored, " he said, "I'm merely puzzled. "

"Oh, I know, " Gerty nodded, "but you'll get over it. I puzzle everybodyat first, but it doesn't last because I'm really as clear as runningwater. My gayety and my good spirits are but the joys of flippancy, yousee. "

"I don't see, " protested Trent, his eyes warming. 

She laughed softly, as if rather pleased than otherwise by the franknessof his admiration. "You haven't lost as yet the divine faith of youth, "she said, carelessly flicking the ashes of her cigarette upon the littletable at her elbow. Then, tossing the burned end into a silver tray, shepushed it from her with a decisive movement. "I've had six, " sheobserved, "and that's my limit. "

"What I'm trying to understand, " confessed Trent, leaning forward in hisearnestness, "is why you should care so greatly for Miss Wilde?"

Gerty flashed up suddenly from her cushions. "And pray why shouldn't I?"she demanded. 

"Because, " he hesitated an instant and then advanced with the audacityborn of ignorance, "you're as much alike as a thrush and a paroquet. "

She laughed again. 

"So you consider me a paroquet?"

"In comparison with Laura Wilde. "

"Well, I'd have said a canary, " she remarked indulgently, "but we'll letit pass. I don't see though, " she serenely continued, "why a paroquetshouldn't have a feeling for a thrush?"

He shook his head, smiling. "It seems a bit odd, that's all. "

"Then, if it's any interest to you to know it, " pursued Gerty, with aburst of confidence, "I'd walk across Brooklyn Bridge, every step of theway, on my knees for Laura. That's because I believe in her, " she woundup emphatically, "and because, too, I don't happen to believe much inanybody else. "

"So you know her well?"

"I went to school with her and I adored her then, but I adore her evenmore to-day. Somehow she always seems to be knocking for the good inone, and it has to come out at last because she stands so patiently andwaits. She makes me over every time she meets me, shapes me after someideal image of me she has in her brain, and then I'm filled withdesperate shame if I don't seem at least a little bit to correspond withit. "

"I understand, " said Trent slowly; "one feels her as one feels a strongwind on a high mountain. There's a wonderful bigness about her. "

"It's because she's different, " explained Gerty, "she's kept so apartfrom life that she knows it only in its elemental freshness--she has akind of instinct for truth just as she has for poetry or for beauty, andour little quibbles, our incessant inanities have never troubled her atall. "

The servant entered with a card as she finished, and after reading thename she made a quick movement of interest. 

"Ask him to come up, " she said to the man, adding immediately as Trentrose to go, "it's Arnold Kemper. Will you stay and see him?"

Trent shook his head, while he held out his hand with a laugh. "I won'tstay, " he answered; "I don't like him. "

She looked up puzzled, her brows bent in an enquiring frown. "Not likehim! Why, you've never met. "

"What has that to do with it?" he persisted lightly. "One doesn't haveto meet a man to hate him. "

"One does unless one's a person of stupid prejudices. "

"Well, maybe I am, " he admitted, "but I have my side. "

As the portières were drawn back, he turned hastily away, to come faceto face with Gerty's caller the next instant upon the threshold. Keen ashis curiosity was he took in, at his brief glance, only that Kemperpresented a bright and brave appearance and walked with a peculiarlyenergetic step. 

CHAPTER VII

THE IRRESISTIBLE FORCE

Gerty was leaning forward among her cushions and as her visitorapproached she held out her hand, still faintly scented with cigarettes. "Will you have coffee, " she asked, "or shall I ring for tea?"

He sat down in the chair from which Trent had risen and replied with agesture of happy physical exhaustion. "Let me have some coffee, " heanswered, "I've been out golfing all the morning, and if you don't provementally stimulating I shall fall asleep before you. How many holes doyou think I played to-day?"

Gerty shrugged her shoulders over the little coffee pot. "I don't knowand it doesn't interest me, " she retorted. "After six months of Europedo you still make a god of physical exertion?"

The genial irony of his smile flashed back at her, and his eyes, halfquizzical, half searching, but wholly kind, wandered leisurely down herslender figure. Even as he lazily sipped his coffee, with his closelyclipped, rather large brown head lying against the chair-back, she wasmade to feel, not unpleasantly, the compelling animal magnetism--the"personal quantity, " as she had called it--that lay behind the masculinebluntness of manner he affected. "Aren't you rather tumbled?" heenquired, with an animated glance, and, though he was fond of boastingthat he was the only man he knew who never flattered women, Gerty wasconscious of a sudden flush and the pleased conviction that she must belooking her very best. It was a trick of his, she knew, to flatter, asit were, by paradox, to deal with delicate inuendos and to compliment bypleasant contradiction. She had not been a woman of the world withoutreaping the reward of knowledge, and now, as she leaned back and smiledbrilliantly into his face, she knew that, despite the apparentabruptness of his beginning, they would descend inevitably to the playof personal suggestion. His measure had been taken long ago, she toldherself, and lay tucked away in the receptacle which contained thevaried neatly labelled patterns of her masculine world; but at the sametime she was perfectly aware that within five minutes he would piqueafresh both her interest and her liking. "You can't warm yourself byfireworks, " she had once said to him, and a moment later had paused towonder at the intrinsic meaning of a daring phrase which he had spoken. 

Still sipping his coffee, he regarded her with the blithe humour whichlent so great a charm to his expression. 

"I don't see why you object to exercise when it saves my life, " heobserved as he took up a cigarette and then bent forward to hold it tothe flame of the alcohol lamp. 

"I don't object except when it bores me out of mine, " responded Gertylightly. 

He was still smiling when he raised his head. 

"You used to like it yourself, " he persisted. 

"I used to like a great many things which bore me now. "

"Yes, you used to like me, " he retorted gaily. 

She had so confidently expected the remark, had left so frank an openingfor it, that while she watched him from beneath languid eyelids a littlecynical quiver disturbed her lips. The game was as old as the Garden ofEden, she had played it well or ill from her cradle, and at last she hadbegun to grow a trifle weary. She had found the wisdom which is hiddenat the core of all Dead Sea fruit, and the bitter taste of it was stillin her mouth. The world for her was a world of make-believe--of lies sofutile that their pretty embroidered shams barely covered the uglytruths beneath, and, though she had pinned her faith upon falsehood andhad made her sacrifice to the little gods, there were moments still whenthe undelivered soul within her awoke and stirred as a child stirs inthe womb. Even as she went back to the game anew, she was conscious thatit would be a battle of meaningless words, of shallow insincerities--yetshe went back, nevertheless, before the disgust the thought awoke hadpassed entirely from among her sensations. 

"I believe I did, " she confessed with a charming shrug. 

"But you turned against me in the end--women always do, " he lamentedmerrily, as he flicked away the ashes of his cigarette. Then, with aperceptible start of recollection, he paused a moment and leaned forwardto look at her more closely. "By the way, I had a shot at your friendto-day, " he said, "the lady who looks like an old picture and doesverse. Why on earth did she take to poetry?" he demanded impatiently. "I hate it--it's all sheer insanity. "

"Well, some few madmen have thought otherwise, " remarked Gerty, addingimmediately, "and so you met Laura. Oh, you two! It was the irresistibleforce meeting the immovable body. What happened?"

He regarded her quite gravely while his cigarette burned like a littlered eye between his fingers. 

"Nothing, " he responded at last. "I didn't meet her--I merely glimpsedher. She has a pair of eyes--you didn't tell me. "

Gerty nodded. 

"And I forgot to mention as well that she has a nose and a mouth and achin. What an oversight. "

"Oh, I didn't bother about the rest, " he said, and she wondered if hecould be half in earnest or if he were wholly jesting, "but, by Jove, Iwent overboard in her eyes and never touched bottom. "

For a moment Gerty stared at him in blank amazement, in the midst ofwhich she promptly told herself that henceforth she would be preparedfor any eccentricities of which the male mind might be capable. A hotflush mantled her cheek, and she spoke in a voice which had a new andwomanly ring of decision. 

"You would not like her, " she said, "and she would hate you. "

With an amused exclamation he replaced his coffee cup upon the table. "Then she'd be a very foolish woman, " he observed. 

"She believes in all the things that you scoff at--she believes in thesoul, in people, and in love--"

He made a protest of mock dismay. "My dear girl, I've been too hard hitby love not to believe in it. On the contrary, I believe in it so firmlythat I think the only sure cure for it is marriage. "

At her swift movement of aversion his laughing glance made a jest of thewords, and she smiled back at him with the fantastic humour which hadbecome almost her natural manner. It was a habit of his to treatsportively even the subjects which he reverenced, and in reality she hadsometimes felt him to be less of a sober cynic than herself. He took hispleasures where he found them, and there was a touch of pathos in thegenerous eagerness with which he was ready to provide as well for thepleasures of others. If he lacked imagination she had learned by nowthat he did not fail in its sister virtue, sympathy, and his keen grayeyes, which expressed so perfectly a gay derision, were not slow, sheknew, to warm into a smiling tenderness. 

"Laura is the most earnest creature alive, " she said after a moment. 

"Is that so? Then I presume she lacks a sense of humour. "

"She has a sense of honour at any rate. "

With a laugh he settled his figure more comfortably in his chair, andwhile she watched the movement, a little fascinated by its easy freedom, she felt a sudden impulse to reach out and touch his broad, strongshoulders as she might have touched the shoulders of a statue. Were theyreally as hard as bronze, she wondered, or was that suggestion of latentpower, of slumbering energy, as deceptive as the caressing glance hebent upon her? The glance meant nothing she was aware--he would haveregarded her in much the same way had Perry been at her side, would haveshone quite as affectionately, perhaps, upon her mother. Yet, in spiteof her worldly knowledge, she felt herself yielding to it as to adelicate flattery. Her eyes were still on him, and presently he caughther gaze and held it by a look which, for all its fervour, had an edgeof biting irony. There was a meaning, a mystery in his regard, but hiswords when at last they came sounded almost empty. 

"Oh, that's well enough in its way, " he said, "but as a safeguardthere's no virtue alive that can stand against a sense of humour. Aninstinct for the ridiculous will keep any man from going to the devil. "

She shot her defiant merriment into his face. "Has it kept you?"

"I?--Oh, I wasn't bound that way, you know--but why do you ask?"

For a breath she hesitated, then, remembering her mystification of aninstant ago, she felt a swift desire to punish him for something whicheven to herself she could not express--for too sharp a prick ofunsatisfied curiosity, or was it for too intense a moment ofuncertainty?

"Oh, one hears, you know, " she replied indifferently. 

"One hears! And what is it that one hears?"

His voice was hard, almost angry, and she despised herself because thefierce sound of it made her suddenly afraid. 

"Do you know what a man said to me the other day, " she went on with acool insolence before which he became suddenly quiet. "Whom the godsdestroy they first infatuate--with an opera singer. "

She delivered the words straight from the shoulder, and as she finishedhe rose from his chair and stood looking angrily down upon her. 

"Did you let me come here for _this?_" he demanded. 

"O Arnold, Arnold!" the gayety rang back to her voice, and she made acharming little face of affected terror. "If you're going to be a bearI'll run away. "

She stretched out her hand, and he held it for an instant in his own, while he fell back impatiently into his chair. 

"The truth is that I was clean mad about her, " he said, "about MadameAlta--but it's over now, and I abominate everything that has ever setfoot on the stage. "

"Was she really beautiful?" she enquired curiously. 

He laughed sharply. "Beautiful! She was flesh--if you mean that. "

An angry sigh escaped him, and Gerty lighted a fresh cigarette and gaveit to him with a soothing gesture. The nervous movements which werecharacteristic of him became more frequent, and she found herselfwondering that they should increase rather than diminish the impressionof virile force. For a while he smoked in silence; then, with his eyesstill turned away from her, he asked in a changed voice. 

"Tell me about your friend--she interests me. "

"She interests you! Laura?"

"There's something in her that I like, " he pursued, smiling at herexclamation. "She looks human, natural, real. By Jove, she looks as ifshe were capable of big emotions--as if, too, you could like her withoutmaking love. She's something new. "

Gerty's amazement was so sincere that she only stared at him, while herred lips parted slightly in a breathless and perfectly unaffectedsurprise. Something new! Her wonder faded slowly, and she told herselfthat now at last she understood. So he was still what he had alwaysbeen--an impatient seeker after fresh sensations. 

"I thought you were too much like Perry to care about her, " she said. 

His amused glance made the remark appear suddenly ridiculous. "I'mdifferent from Perry in one thing at least, " he retorted. "You didn'tmarry me. "

"Well, I dare say it's a good thing you never gave me the chance, " shetossed back lightly. "I don't let Perry rave, you know, even over Laura. Not that I'm unduly jealous, but that I'm easily bored. "

"I can't imagine you jealous, " he commented, keeping as usual close tothe intimate intention. 

"And of Perry! I should hope not!" Her gesture was one of amusedindifference. "Jealousy is the darling virtue of the savage, and I maynot be a saint, but at least I'm civilized. Give me food and a warm fireand clothes to my back, and I'm quite content to let the passions go. "

"Even love?" he asked, still smiling. 

She shrugged her shoulders--gracefully as few women can. "Love among therest--I don't care--why should I? Make me comfortable. "

An impulse which was hardly more than a consuming interest inhumanity--in the varied phenomena of life--caused him to draw quicklynearer. 

"You say that because you've 'arrived, '" he declared. "You've 'arrived'in love as your friend has in literature. The probationary stage afterall is the only one worth while, and you've gone too far beyond it. "

"I've gone too far beyond everything, " she protested, laughing. "I'm agraduate of the world. Now Laura--"

The name recalled his thoughts and he repeated it while she paused. "Laura--it has a jolly sound--and upon my word I haven't seen a woman inyears who has had so much to say to me before I've met her. Do you know, I already like her--I like her smooth black hair, without any of yourfussy undulations; I like her strong earnest look and the strength inher brow and chin; I even like the way she dresses--"

Gerty's laugh pealed out, and he broke off with a movement ofirritation. "Is it possible that Laura is an enchantress, " she demanded, "and have I followed the wrong principle all my life? Has my honestintention to please men led me astray?"

"Oh, you may be funny at my expense if you choose, " he retorted, "butI've had enough of fluff and feathers, and I like the natural way shewears her clothes--" Again he smoked in an abstracted silence, and thenasked abruptly: "Will you take me some day to see her?"

She shook her head. 

"Take you? No, you've missed your opportunity. "

"But I'll make another. Why not?"

"Because I tell you frankly she would hate you. "

"My dear girl, she wouldn't have a shadow of an excuse. No woman hasever hated me in my life. "

"Then there's no use seeking the experience. You'd just as well acceptthe fact at once that Laura couldn't bear you--"

A laugh followed from the door while the words were still in the air, and turning quickly they saw Laura pausing upon the threshold. 

"And pray what is it about Laura?" she asked in her cordial contraltovoice. "A person who has borne living in the house with a flute may besaid to have unlimited powers of endurance. "

She moved forward and Kemper, while he sprang to his feet and stoodwaiting for the introduction, became swiftly aware that with herentrance the whole atmosphere had taken a fresher and a finer quality. The sophistication of the world, the flippant irony of Gerty's voicegave place immediately before her earnest dignity and before the look oflarge humanity which distinguished her so vitally from the women whom heknew. He felt her sincerity of purpose at the same instant that he feltGerty's shallowness and the artificial glamour of the hot-house air inwhich he had hardly drawn breath. There was an appeal in Laura's facewhich he had never seen before--an expression which seemed to him todraw directly from the elemental pulse; and he felt suddenly that therewere depths of consciousness which he had never sounded, vividexperiences which he had never even glimpsed. "She is different--but howis she different?" he asked himself, perplexed. "Is she simply a biggerpersonality, or is she really more of a woman than any woman I have everknown? What is it in her that speaks to me and what is it in myself thatresponds?" And it seemed to him both strange and wonderful that heshould be drawn by an impulse which was not the impulse of love--that awoman should attract him through qualities which were independent of theallurement of sex. A clean and perfectly sane satisfaction was theimmediate result; he felt that he had grown larger in his own eyes--thatthe old Adam who had ruled over him so long had become suddenly dwarfedand insignificant. "To like a woman and yet not to make love to her, " herepeated in his thoughts. "By Jove, it will be something decent, something really worth while. " Then he remembered that he had neverknown intimately a woman of commanding intellect, and the noveltyinspired him with the spirit of fresh adventure. 

She had bowed to him over the large muff she carried, and he spokelightly though his awakened interest showed in his face and voice. "Iwas the unfortunate subject of Gerty's decision, " he said. "Is there noappeal from it?"

Her answering smile was one of indifferent kindliness; and he liked, even while he resented her sincerity of manner. "Appeal! and to whom?"she enquired. 

"To you--to your mercy, " he laughed. 

She glanced at Gerty with a look which hardly simulated a curiosity sheapparently did not feel. 

"But why should you need my mercy?" she demanded, as she sat down on alittle sofa heaped with cushions. 

His gaze, after resting a moment on the smooth black hair beneath hervelvet hat, turned to the exquisite shining waves which encircledGerty's head. 

"Ask my cousin, " he advised with merriment. 

Whatever Gerty's reason for not caring to bring them together may havebeen, she concealed it now beneath a ready acceptance of the situation. 

"Oh, he tried to make me promise to take him to see you, " she explained, "but I've told him you'd show him no quarter because he hasn't read yourpoems. "

Laura raised her eyes to his face, and he had again the sensation oflooking into an unutterable personality. 

"I'm glad you haven't read them, " she rejoined, "for now you won't beable to talk to me about them. "

"So you don't like to have one talk about them?"

She met his question with direct simplicity. "About my verse? Ishouldn't like to have you do it. "

"And why not I?" he demanded, laughing. 

"Oh, I don't know, " she returned, her eyes lighting with the humour ofher frankness, "can one explain? But I'm perfectly sure that it's notthe kind of thing you'd like. There's no action in it. "

"So Gerty has told you that I'm a strenuous creature?"

"Perhaps. I don't remember. " She turned to Gerty, looking down upon herwith a tenderness that suffused her face with colour. "What was it thatyou told me, dearest?"

"What did I tell you?" repeated Gerty, still clasping Laura's hand. "Oh, it must have been that he agrees with some dreadful person who said thatpoetry was the insanity of prose. "

Laura laughed as she glanced back at him, and he contrasted her deepcontralto notes with Gerty's flute-like soprano. 

"Well, he may not be right, but he is with the majority, " she said. 

Her indifference piqued him into the spirit of opposition, and he feltan immediate impulse to compel her reluctant interest--to arouse heradmiration of the very qualities she now disdained. 

"Well, I take my poetry where I find it, " he rejoined, "and that'smostly in life and not in books. "

From the quick turn of her head, the instant's lifting of her emotionalreserve, he saw that the words had arrested her imagination--that forthe first time since her entrance she had really taken in the fact ofhis existence as an individual. 

"Then you are not with the majority, but you are right!" she exclaimed. 

"Is it not possible to be both?" he asked, pleased almost more than hewould admit by the quickening of her attention. 

"I think not, " she answered seriously, "don't you?"

"I never think, " he laughed with his eyes upon hers, "I live. "

The animation, which was like the glow from an inner illumination, shonein her face, and he thought, as Trent had thought before him, that hersoul must burn like a golden flame within her--a flame that reachedtoward life, knowledge and the veiled wonders of experience. 

"And so would I if I were a man, " she said. 

She rose, clasping the furs at her throat, then folding Gerty in herarms she kissed her cheek. 

"I stopped for a moment to look at you, nothing more, " she confessed. "It was a choice between looking at you and at the Rembrandt in theMetropolitan, and I chose you. " As she held Gerty from her for aninstant and then drew her into her embrace again, Kemper saw that herdelight in her friend's beauty was almost a rapture, that her friendshippossessed something of a religious fervour. 

"Do stay with me, " pleaded Gerty; "I want you--I need you. "

"But you dine out. "

"Oh, I forgot. Wait, I'll break it. I'll be ill. "

Laura smiled her refusal and, stooping, picked up her large, fluffymuff. 

"I'll come to-morrow, " she returned, "and it won't cost us a lie. Goodbye, my bonnie, what do you wear?"

Gerty waved her hands in a gesture of unconcern. 

"It rests with the fates and with Annette, " she replied. "Green, blue, white; I don't care. "

"But I do, " persisted Laura; "let it be white. " She looked at Kemper andbowed silently as she turned toward the door; then, hesitating aninstant, she came back and held out her hand with a cordial smile. "Ithas been very pleasant to meet you, " she said. 

"Mayn't I at least see you down?" he asked. "How do you go?"

"There's really no need to trouble you, " she answered, "I shall go apart of the way in the stage. "

She went out, and as he followed her down the staircase he asked himselfagain the puzzling question: "She is different from other women--but howis she different?" And still he assured himself with confidence thatwhat he liked in her was her serene separateness from the appeal ofpassion. "This is the thing that lasts--that really lasts for alifetime, " he said in his thoughts. 

CHAPTER VIII

PROVES THAT A POOR LOVER MAY MAKE AN EXCELLENT FRIEND

That night in her sitting-room, while she corrected the proof-sheets ofher new book of verse, Laura remembered Kemper's face as he sat acrossfrom her on the long seat of the almost empty stage. Beyond him was thehumming city, where the lights bloomed like white flowers out of theenveloping dusk, and when he turned his profile, as he did once, againsta jeweller's window, she saw every line of his large, strongly markedfeatures silhouetted with distinctness on a brilliant background. Twiceduring the ride down she had been conscious, as when they left Gerty'shouse together, that he was more masculine than any man she had knownclosely in her life, and at first she had told herself that his nervousactivity--the ardent vitality in his appearance--was too aggressive tobe wholly pleasing. She had been used to a considerate gentleness frommen, and his manner, though frankly sympathetic, had seemed to heralmost brusque. 

Even now, while she laid her work aside to think of him, she was hardlysure that his genial egoism had not repelled her. Her instinct told herthat he could be both kind and generous, that he was capable ofunselfish impulses, and full, too, of a broad and tolerant humanity, yet there was something within her--some finer spiritualdiscernment--which rose to battle against the attraction he appeared topossess. He was not mental, he was not even superficially bookish, andyet because of a certain magnetic quality--a mere dominant virility--shefound herself occupied, to the exclusion of her work, with the words hehad uttered, with the tantalising humour in his eyes. 

"I am glad that I did not ask him to call, " she thought as she took upher pencil. "He does not interest me and very likely I shall never seehim again. He was pleasant certainly, but one can't make acquaintancesof every stranger one happens to meet. " Then it seemed to her that shehad been distant, almost rude, when he had bidden her good-night, and asshe remembered the engaging frankness of his smile, the eager yet humblelook with which he had waited at her door for the invitation she did notgive, she regretted in spite of herself that she had been so openlyinhospitable. After all there was no reason that one should turn a manfrom one's door simply because his personality didn't please one'sfancy. For a moment she dragged her mind for some word, some look inwhich she might have found a shadow of excuse for the dislike she felt. "No, he said nothing foolish, " she confessed at last, "he was only kindand friendly and it is I who have offended--I who have allowed myself tofeel an unreasonable aversion. " All at once an irritation againstherself pervaded her thoughts, and she determined that if she met himagain she would be more cordial--that she would force herself to show aparticular friendliness. The recollection of his love for Madame Altacame to her, and she felt at the same time a sharp curiosity and a deepdisgust--"A man like that must love with madness, " she thought, andnext, "but how do I know if it were love between them and why should Ijudge?" Her clasped hands went to her eyes and she prayed silently:"Keep me apart, O Lord, keep me pure and apart!"

For a while she sat with bowed bead, then, as her hands fell into herlap, she broke into a little tender laugh at herself. "What a fool I am, after all, " she lamented; "here I have seen a man whom I do notlike--once, for an hour--and he has so troubled my quiet that I cannotput my mind upon my work. What does it matter, and why should a strangerwho displeases me have power to compel my thoughts? It was but atrifle--the distraction of an hour, nothing more--and, whether I likehim or not, by to-morrow I shall have forgotten his existence. "

But she remembered his face as he sat across from her in the dimlylighted stage, and she felt again, with a start, that he was the firstman she had ever known. "Yet he does not attract me, and I shall neversee him again, " she thought after a moment. She took up a littlereligious book from her desk and tried in vain to fix her wanderingattention. Life appeared all at once very full and very beautiful, andas she thought of the thronging city around her it seemed to her thatshe herself and the people in the street and the revolving stars wereheld securely in the hand of God. The belief awoke in her that she wasshielded and set apart for a predestined good, an exalted purpose, andshe wondered if the purpose were already moving toward her out of thecity and if its end would be only the fulfilling of the law of her ownnature. Then she thought of Angela in her closed chamber. Had she beenshielded? Was she also set apart? But the thought did not disturb her, for she herself seemed of a larger growth, of a braver spirit, thanAngela or than her aunts or than Uncle Percival, who had missed lifealso. They had been defeated, but was it not because they had lacked inthemselves the courage to attain?

The next morning, after she had had her tea and toast in her room, shewent, as was her custom, into Angela's chamber. Early as it was, Mrs. Payne had already apparelled herself in her paint and powder and drivendown. Seen by the morning sunlight, her smeared face with its brilliantartificial smile revealed a pathos which was rendered more acute by itseffect of playful grotesqueness. She was like a faded and decrepitactress who, fired by the unconquerable spirit of her art, forces herwrinkled visage to ape the romantic ecstasies of passion. Age which isbeautiful only when it has become expressive of repose--of serenerenouncement--showed to Laura's eyes only as a ghastly and comictravesty of youth. 

Angela was having her breakfast at a little table by the window, and atLaura's entrance she turned to her with a sigh of evident relief. 

"Rosa has come down to speak to you particularly, " she explained. "Thereis something she has very heavily on her mind. "

Mrs. Payne had wheeled herself about at the same instant; and Laura, after regarding her uncertainly for a moment, impressed a light caressupon her outstretched jewelled fingers. 

"I didn't sleep a wink, my dear, " began the old lady in her mostconciliatory tones, "not a blessed wink after Horace told me. "

The questioning stare in Laura's face had the effect of jerking her upso hurriedly that the words seemed to trip and stumble upon her lips. 

"I might have had it from yourself, of course, " she added with anaggrieved contortion of her features, "but as I was just telling Angela, I would not for worlds intrude upon your confidence. "

"But what has he told you?" asked Laura, curiously, "and what, afterall, did I tell Uncle Horace?"

Mrs. Payne settled herself comfortably back in her chair, and, pickingup a bit of Angela's toast from the tray, nibbled abstractedly at thecrust. 

"What under heaven would he have told me but the one thing?" shedemanded. "Mr. Wilberforce has at last proposed. "

"At last!" echoed Laura, breaking into a laugh of unaffected merriment. "Well, he _was_ long about it!"

At the words Angela leaned toward her, stretching out her frail hands ina pleading gesture. 

"Don't marry, Laura, " she entreated; "don't--don't marry. There is onlymisery from men--misery and regret. "

"I believe he has millions, " remarked Mrs. Payne, in the tone in whichshe might have recited her creed in church, "and as far as a husbandgoes I have never observed that there was any disadvantage to be foundin age. My experience of the world has taught me that decrepitude is theonly thing which permanently domesticates a man. "

Laura sat down across from her, and then clasping her hands togethermade her final determined stand. 

"You needn't try to persuade me, Aunt Rosa, " she answered, "for Iwouldn't marry him--no, not if he had billions. "

For a brief interlude Mrs. Payne returned her gaze with silent yetexpressive dignity. 

"There's really no occasion to become violent, " she observed at last, "particularly in the presence of poor Angela. "

"But I like it! I like it, " declared Angela, "it is her marriage that Icouldn't bear. "

Mrs. Payne turned her reproachful look for a moment upon the weakersister. 

"I am very sure, my dear, that we can bear anything the Lord chooses tosend, " she remarked, "especially when we feel that our cross is foranother's good. Is there any reason, " she wound up to Laura again, "forthe obstinate position you appear to take?"

Laura shook her head. 

"I don't take any position, " she replied, "I simply decline to be madeto marry him, that's all. "

"But you like him--I've heard you say so much with my own ears. "

"You never heard me say I liked him for a husband. "

"It would have been highly indelicate if I had, " observed Mrs Payne, "but since he has proposed I may as well impress upon you that any kindof liking is quite sufficient argument for a marriage which would be sosuitable in every way. And as to the romantic nonsense--well it allcomes very much to the same thing in the long run, and whether you beginby loving a man or by hating him, after six months of marriage you canask nothing better than to be able to regard him with Christianforbearance. "

Laura turned away impatiently as Uncle Percival put his bland, child-like face in at the open door. 

"I hope you had a quiet night, Angela, " he said in his high, pipingvoice; "the morning is a fine one and I've already had my turn. " Then, holding his coat closely over a small bundle which he carried, hegreeted Mrs. Payne with a deprecating smile. "You're down early, Rosa;it's a good habit. "

Mrs. Payne surveyed him with an intolerant humour. 

"I'm not undertaking to cultivate a habit at my time of life, " sheresponded, raising her voice until it sounded harsh and cracked; thenshe became a prey to a devouring suspicion. "What is that under yourcoat?" she demanded sternly. 

Uncle Percival's flaccid mouth fell open with a frightened droop, and hetook instantly the demeanour of a small offending schoolboy. 

"It--it's only a little present for Angela, " he replied. "I thought itmight interest her, but I hardly think you would care for it, Rosa. "

"What is it?" persisted Mrs. Payne in her unyielding calmness. 

The object moved beneath his coat, and, pulling it out with a timid yettriumphant gesture, he displayed before their astonished eyes asquirming white rabbit. 

"I hoped it might interest Angela, " he repeated, seeking in vain forsympathy in the three amazed faces. 

The rabbit struggled in his grasp, and after holding it suspended amoment by the nape of its neck, he cuddled it again beneath his coat. "Awoman was selling them in the street, " he explained in a suppressedvoice. "She had a box filled with them. I bought only one. "

"That was fortunate, " returned Mrs. Payne, severely, "for you will haveto carry the creature back at once--or drown it if you prefer. "

"But I thought Angela would like it, " he said with a disappointed look. 

Angela closed her eyes as if shutting out an irritating sight. 

"What in the world would I do with a white rabbit?" she enquired. 

"But I could take care of it, " insisted Untie Percival. "I should liketo take care of it very much. "

Laura drew the rabbit from his coat and held it a moment against herbosom. 

"It's a pretty little thing, " she remarked carelessly, and added, "whynot keep it for yourself, Uncle Percival?"

As he glanced up at her the light of animation broke in his face. 

"Why shouldn't I, indeed, why shouldn't I?" he demanded eagerly, andhurried out before Mrs. Payne, with her Solomonic power of judgment, could bring herself to the point of interference. 

"I hope that will be a lesson to you with regard to men, " she observedas a parting shot while she tied her bonnet strings. 

An uncontrollable distaste for her family swept over Laura, and she feltthat she could suffer no longer the authority of Mrs. Payne, thesenility of Uncle Percival or the sorrows of Angela. As she looked atMrs. Payne she was struck as if for the first time by her ridiculousgrotesqueness, and she experienced a sensation of disgust for the oldlady's stony eyes and carefully painted out wrinkles. 

Without replying to the moral pointed by Uncle Percival and the whiterabbit, she left the room and hastily dressed herself for her morningwalk. The house had grown close and oppressive to her and she wanted theJanuary cold in her face and limbs. At the moment she was impatient ofanything that recalled a restraint of mind or body. 

When she came in two hours later, after a brisk walk in the park, shefound Mr. Wilberforce awaiting her in the drawing-room downstairs. Helooked older she thought at the first glance in the last few days, butthere was a cheerfulness, a serenity, in his face which seemed to lenditself like a softening light to his beautiful pallid features. He was aman who having fought bitterly against resignation for many years comesto it peacefully at last only to find that he has reaped from it aportion of the "enchantment of the disenchanted. " Her intuition told herinstantly that he had given up hope of love, but she recognized also, through some strange communion of sympathy, that he had attained thepeace of soul which follows inevitably upon any sincere renouncement ofself. 

"I am so glad, dear friend, " she said, holding his hand for a moment asshe sat beside him. 

He looked at her silently with his brilliant eyes which burned in themidst of his blanched and withered face like two watch-fires that arekept alive in a scorched desert. 

"For a while I thought it might be, " he replied after a long pause. "Iasked you to give me what I have never had--my youth. You could not doit, " he added with a smile, "and at first it seemed to me that thereremained only emptiness and disappointment for the future, but presentlyI learned wisdom in the night. " He hesitated an instant and then addedgravely, "I saw that if you couldn't give me youth, you could at leastmake my old age very pleasant. "

"I can--I will, " she answered in a broken voice, and it seemed to herthat all the bitterness had turned to sweetness in his look. Was thedivine wisdom, after all, she wondered, not so much the courage whichturned the events that came to happiness as the greater power whichcreated light where there was nothing. Only age had learned to do this, she knew, and she was conscious of a quick resentment against fate thatonly age could put into passion the immortal spirit which youth cravedin vain. 

"I asked a great deal, " he said, "but I shall be content with a verylittle. "

"With my whole faith--with all my friendship, " she replied; and as shespoke the words, her heart contracted with a spasm which was almost thatof terror of the unknown purpose to which she felt, with a kind ofsuperstitious blindness, that she was pledged. Fate had offered herthis one good thing, and she must put it from her because she waited inabsolute ignorance--for what? For love it might be, and yet her woman'sinstinct taught her that the only love which endures is the love of agethat has never been young for youth so elastic that it can never growold. Then swift as the flash of self-revelation she saw in imaginationthe eager yet humble look with which Arnold Kemper had waited before herdoor, and, though she insisted still that the picture displeased herfancy, she knew that passion to meet response in her must come to herclothed in a virile strength like his. 

"I wish from my soul that it might have been, " she murmured, but evenwith the words she knew that she had all her life wished for a differentthing--for a love that was wholly unlike the love he offered. 

"It has been, " he answered, while his grave gentleness fell like dew onthe smouldering fire in his eyes. "It has been, my dear, and it will bealways until I die. "

CHAPTER IX

OF MASQUES AND MUMMERIES

In the afternoon of the next day Laura received by a special messengeran urgent appeal from Gerty Bridewell. 

"Come to me at once, " said the note, which appeared to have been writtenin frantic haste. "I am in desperate trouble and I need you. "

The distress of the writer was quite as apparent as the exaggeration, and while Laura rolled rapidly toward her in a cab, she prepared herselfwith a kind of nervous courage to bear the brunt of the inevitablescene. Perry was at the bottom of it she knew--she had answered suchsummonses often enough before to pre-figure with unerring insight thenature of the event. He had shown his periodical inclination to a freshaffair, his errant fancy had wandered in a particular direction, andGerty's epicurean philosophy had failed as usual to account for theconcrete fact. To Laura the amazing part was not so much Perry'sfickleness, which she had brought herself to accept with tolerantaversion, as the extraordinary value Gerty placed upon an emotion whichwas kept alive by an artifice at once so evident and so ineffectual. There was but one thing shorter lived than his repentance she knew, andthat was the sentiment of which he was charitably supposed to haverepented. By nature he was designed a lover, and it seemed, broadlyviewed, the merest accident of circumstances that he should tend towardvariety rather than toward specialisation. 

A man passing in the street bowed to her as the cab turned a corner, and, as she recognised Arnold Kemper, she wondered vaguely if he hadaught in common with his cousin. A slight resemblance to Perry Bridewelloffended her as she recalled it, and, while her resentful sympathy flewto Gerty, she felt almost vindictive against the masculine type heappeared physically to represent. 

"O Lord, keep me apart!" she prayed fervently, as she had prayed in thenight, for it appeared to her that the shield of faith was the oneshield for the spirit against the besieging vanities of life. Gerty'sfaith had fallen from her long ago, and, as she remembered this, Laurafelt a jealous impulse to snatch her friend away from the restlessworldliness and the inordinate desires. The pitiable soul of Gertyshowed to her suddenly as a stunted and famished city child strugglingfor life in an atmosphere which carried the taint of death, and in herimagination the picture was so vivid that she saw the face of the childturned toward her with a wistful, imploring look. 

The cab stopped with a jerk, and in a little while she was knockingsoftly at the closed door of Gerty's chamber. Almost immediately itopened and the French maid came out. 

"Madame is ill with a headache, " she explained, pointing to the closedshutters, "she refuses to eat. "

Putting her impatiently aside, Laura closed the door upon her, and thencrossing to the windows threw back the shutters to let in the latesunshine. 

"A little light won't hurt you, dearest, " she said, with a smile. 

Gerty, still in her nightgown with a Japanese kimono flung carelesslyabout her and her hair falling in a brilliant shower upon her shoulders, was sitting before her bureau making a pretence of sorting a pile ofbills. In spite of this pathetic subterfuge, her beautiful green eyesheld a startled and angry look, and her face was flushed with anexcitement like that of fever. 

"I was sorry I sent for you the moment afterward, " she said, hardlyyielding to Laura's embrace, while she nervously tore open a bill sheheld and then tossed it aside without glancing over it. "It's the samething over again--there's no use talking about it. I shall die. "

"You cannot--you cannot, " protested Laura, still holding her in herarms. "You are too beautiful. You were never in your life lovelier thanyou are to-day. "

"And yet it does not hold him, " broke out Gerty, in sudden passion, "andit will never be any better, I see that. If it's not one it's another, but it's always somebody. A year ago he promised me that I should neverhave cause for jealousy again--he swore that and I believed him--and nowthis--this--"

Her anger choked her like a sob, and she tore with trembling fingers atthe papers in her lap. Then suddenly her brow contracted withresolution, and she went through a long list of items as if the mostimportant fact in life were the amount of money she must pay to herdressmaker. 

"Of course you know what I think, " murmured Laura with her lips atGerty's ear. 

"That he isn't worth it, " Gerty nodded, while her indignant andhumiliated expression grew almost violent. "Well, I think so, too. Ofcourse he isn't, but that doesn't make it any better--any easier. "

"You mean you couldn't give him up?"

"When I'm dead I may, not before. " She closed her eyes and a longshudder ran through her body. "It has been nothing but a fight since Imarried--a fight to keep him. I used to think that marriage meant rest, contentment, but I know now that it means a battle--all the time--everyinstant. I've never had one natural moment, I've never since thebeginning been without a horrible suspicion--and I see now that I nevershall be. He likes me best I know--in his heart he really puts mefirst--but there are others and I won't have it. I'll be alone, I'll bethe only one or nothing. I said I wouldn't be beaten the first time, andI won't--I won't be beaten. " She paused an instant to draw breath. "AndI haven't been, " she wound up in bitter triumph. 

"You'll never be, darling, " declared Laura; "who is there on earth toshine against you?"

The violence faded from Gerty's face, yielding to an expression ofdisgust, of spiritual loathing--the loathing of a creature that hatesthe thing it loves. 

"But it isn't worth it, it isn't worth it, " she moaned, pushing thepapers away from her with an indignant gesture, and rising from herchair to walk hurriedly up and down the floor. "It isn't worth it, butI'm bound to it--I can't get away. I'm bound to the wheel. Do you thinkif I could help myself--if I could be different--that I would turn intoa mere bond-slave to my body? Why, a day labourer has rest, but Ihaven't. There's not a moment when I'm not doing something for mybeauty, or planning effects, or undergoing a treatment. I never sleep asI want to, nor bathe as I want to, nor even eat what I like. It's allsomebody's system for preserving something about me. I've lived oncelery and apples to keep from growing fat and taken daily massage tokeep from getting thin--and yet I never wake up in the morning that Idon't turn sick for fear I'll discover my first wrinkle in the glass. Now imagine, " she finished with a cynical laugh, "Perry going upon adiet for any sentimental reasons, or sacrificing terrapin in order toretain my affection!"

"I can't, " confessed Laura bluntly, "it's beyond me, but I wish youwouldn't. I wish you'd try to hold him by something different--somethinghigher. "

"You can't hold a person by what he hasn't got, " returned Gerty with theflippant ridicule she so desperately clung to--a ridicule which she usedas unsparingly upon herself as upon her husband. Then, after a pause, she resumed her bitter musing in the same high-strung, reckless manner. "A wrinkle would kill me, " she pursued; "I'd rather endure anyagony--I'd be skinned alive first like some woman Perry laughed about. Yet they must come--they're obliged to come in fifteen--ten--perhaps infive years. Perhaps even to-morrow. Do you suppose, " she questionedabruptly, with a tragic intensity worthy of a less ignoble cause, "thatwhen one gets old one really ceases to mind--that one dies out allinside--the sensations I mean, and the emotions--before the husk beginsto wither?" She paused a moment, but as Laura continued to regard herwith a soft, compassionate look she turned away again and, touching anelectric button in the wall, flooded the room with light. The change wasso startling that every object seemed to leap at once from twilightvagueness into a conspicuous prominence. On a chair in the corner wascarelessly flung a white chiffon dinner gown, and a pair of little satinslippers had been thrown upon the floor beside it, where they layslightly sideways, with turned-out toes, as they had fallen from thewearer's feet. The pathos which seems so often to dwell in triflinginanimate objects spoke to Laura from the little discarded shoes, andagain society appeared to her as a hideous battle in which the passionspreyed upon the ideals, the body upon the soul. She thought of PerryBridewell, of his healthy animalism, his complacent self-esteem, whileher heart hardened within her. Was love, when all was said, merely asubjection to the flesh instead of an enlargement of the spirit? Did itdepend for its very existence upon the dress-maker's art and theprimitive instinct of the chase? Had it no soul within it to keep itclean? Could it see or hear only through the eye or the ear of sense?

"O Gerty, Gerty, " she said, "if I could only make you see!"

But Gerty, with one of those swift changes of humour which made hermoods at once so unexpected and so irresistible, had burst into a pealof mocking laughter. 

"I'm prepared to conquer or to die, " she said merrily; and going to alarge white box on the bed, she opened it and dangled in the air agorgeous evening gown of silver gauze shot with green. "This cost me athousand dollars, " she commented in the hard, business-like tones Laurahad begun to dread. "I was keeping it for the ball next week, butthere's no call like the call of an emergency. The horrid creature hefancies will be there, " she added, surveying her exquisite armful withan admiring, unhappy glance, "and it will be war to the death betweenus, if it costs him every cent he has. " She fell thoughtfully silent, tobreak out at the end of a minute or two with a remark which had thevalue of an imparted confidence: "She--I mean the creature--wore onesomething like it, only not nearly so handsome--last night--and it madeher look frightfully gone off--even Perry noticed it. "

Spreading the gown carefully upon the bed, she went to the mirror andregarded herself with passionate scrutiny. 

"Will you wait and see me dress?" she asked; "Annette has my cold bathready. I must have a colour, but I shan't be a minute in the tub. "

"Do you mean that you are really going out to-night?" asked Laura, remembering the despairing note of a few hours ago. 

Gerty nodded. "To a dinner and a dance. Do you think that I will playthe neglected wife?"

A glow had sprung to her eyes that was like the animation with which anintrepid hunter might depart upon a desperate chase--and through all herelaborate toilette--the massaging of her face, the arranging of herhair, the perfuming of her beautiful neck and arms--she chatted gayly inthe same flippant yet nervous voice. When at last the maid had withdrawnagain, Gerty, pausing before Laura in a shimmer of silver gauze thatreminded one of a faintly scented moonlight, bent over and touched hercheek with feverish lips. 

"It is war to the knife, " she laughed; and the peculiar radiance ofcolour, which gave her beauty a character that was almost violent, madeher at the moment appear triumphant, exultant, barbaric. To Laura shehad never seemed more beautiful nor more unhappy. Then suddenly hermanner underwent a curious change, and her accustomed mask--the smilingsurface of a woman of the world--settled as if by magic upon her face. Perry Bridewell was at the door, and she opened it for him with anunconcern at which Laura wondered. 

"Come in if you want to, " she said coolly, "Laura doesn't mind. "

She drew back into the middle of the room, fastening her glove withinsolent indifference, while his startled gaze hung upon her in anamazement he lacked the mental readiness to hide. 

"By Jove, are you going out?" he asked. "I thought you were downrightill and I was about to call up the doctor. I'm jolly glad--I declare Iam, " he added humbly. 

From the sincere anxiety in his voice, Laura surmised at once thatGerty's exasperation had preceded by some hours her cooler judgment. Helooked as uncomfortable as it was possible for a man of his optimistichabit of mind to feel, and an evident humiliation was traced upon hiscountenance as if by several hasty touches of a crayon pencil. 

But his features were intended so manifestly to wear a look of cheerfulself-esteem that his dejection, honest as it was, produced an effect ofinsincerity, and it seemed to Laura that his other and more naturalexpression was still lying somewhere beneath this superficial remorse. Considered as physical bulk he was impressive, she admitted, in a large, ruddy, highly obvious fashion; then he appeared suddenly so stupid andchild-like in his discomfiture that she felt her heart softening inspite of her convictions. At the instant he resembled nothing so much asa handsome, good-humoured, but disobedient, dog patiently awaiting areprimand. 

"On my word I'm jolly glad, " he repeated, and stopped because he couldthink of nothing further to say that did not sound foolish in his ownperturbed mind. 

"Oh, I'm not utterly lacking in humanity, " retorted Gerty, "and one hasto be not to admit a moral obligation to one's hostess. Besides, " sheconfessed, with smiling pleasantry, "I shall rather enjoy Ada Lawley'sface when she sees my gown. She told me last night that she would neverbe caught wearing silver gauze again until she wanted to look every dayas old as she really is. It was rather hard on her, poor thing, forArnold says she'd rather lose her character any day than hercomplexion--not that she has very much of either left by now, " shecorrected with her cutting laugh. 

Before the studied insolence of her attack Perry drew back quickly insurprise, and his eyelids winked rapidly as if a lighted candle hadflashed before them. Then, with that child-like need of having his eyesopened, of being made to _see_, his attention was fastened upon thebrilliant figure of his wife, and her beauty seemed at the moment toburn itself into his slow-witted brain. 

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, and again, "By Jove!"

"I'm glad you like it, " replied Gerty, with a careless shrug. "I may notbe a model woman from a domestic point of view, but at least I'vemanaged to keep both my colour and my reputation. " She crossed to thebureau, and opening a drawer took out a green and silver fan. "I reallyneedn't trouble you to come, you know, " she remarked indifferently. "Arnold will be there and I dare say he'll be willing to come back in mycarriage. "

"I dare say he will, " observed Perry, not without a jealous indignation, "and I dare say you'd be pleased enough if I'd let him. "

Gerty laughed as she closed the drawer with a bang. "Well, I shouldn'texactly mind, " she rejoined. 

Reconciliation, such as it was, the brief reunion of suspicion andbroken faith was apparently in rapid progress, and, filled with a pitynot unmixed with disgust, Laura put on her fur coat and went slowly downthe staircase. The last sound that followed her was the flute-like musicof Gerty's laugh--a little tired, heart-sick, utterly disillusionedlaugh. 

A man was going by on the sidewalk as she went out, and when the closingof the house door caused him instinctively to look up, she saw that itwas Roger Adams. He stopped immediately and waited for her until shedescended the steps. 

"Are you bound now, " he asked, "for Gramercy Park?"

She nodded "But I'd like to walk a block or two. I've been shut up allthe afternoon with Gerty. "

"She's not ill, I hope, " he remarked, as he fell into step at her side. "I've always had a considerable liking for Mrs. Bridewell, and forPerry, too. He's a first-rate chap. "

For a moment Laura walked on rapidly, without replying. It seemed to herabominable that Adams should confess to an admiration for PerryBridewell, and the generous humanity which she had formerly respected inhim now offended her. 

"He is not a favourite of mine, " she commented indifferently; then movedby a flitting impulse, she added after a pause, "By the way, do youknow, I've met his cousin. "

Adams looked a little mystified as he echoed her remark. 

"His cousin?" But in an instant further light broke upon him. "Oh, youmean Arnold Kemper!"

"I met him at Gerty's, " explained Laura, "but I can't say honestly thathe particularly appealed to me. There's something about him--I don'tknow what--that runs up against my prejudices. "

Adams laughed. 

"I rather fancy the prejudices are more than half gossip, " he observed. 

"I'd forgotten what I'd heard about him, " rejoined Laura, shaking herhead. 

They had reached a crossing, and he dropped a little behind her whileshe walked on with the flowing yet energetic step she had inherited fromher Southern mother. On the opposite corner he came up with her againand resumed the conversation where they had let it fall. 

"I never see Kemper now, " he said, "but I still feel that we are friendsin a way, and I believe if I were to run across him to-morrow he'd bequite as glad to see me as if we hadn't parted fifteen years ago. Thelast time I saw much of him, by the way, we roughed it together oneautumn on the coast of Nova Scotia, and I remember he volunteered thereto go out in the first heavy gale to bring in some fishermen who hadbeen caught out in the ice. They tied a rope around his waist and hewent and brought the men in, too, though we feared for a time that hishands would be frozen off. "

"Oh, I dare say he has pluck, " observed Laura, and though her voice wasconstrained, she was conscious of a sudden moral exhilaration, such asshe sometimes experienced after reading a great poem or seeing aShakespearian tragedy upon the stage. The lights and the noises and thepeople in the street became singularly vivid, while she moved on in anexcitement which she could not explain though she felt that it waswholly pleasurable. Kemper was present to her now in a nobler, almost aglorified, aspect, and she began, though she herself was hardly aware ofit, to idealise him with the fatal ardour of a poet and a dreamer. Therewas a splendour to her in his old heroic deed--a glow that transfigured, like some clear northern light, the storm and the danger and even theice bound fishermen--and she told herself that it would be impossibleever to atone to him for her past rudeness. 

"Perhaps I was unjust, " she remarked presently, "but one is never proofagainst intuitive impressions, and after all it does not greatlymatter. "

Then she looked at Roger Adams as he walked in the electric light besideher. She saw how haggard were the lines in his face, that he was bent inthe shoulders as if from some mental burden, and the delicacy of hislong, slender figure appeared to her almost as a physical infirmity. Itoccurred to her at the instant that his bodily defects had never beforeshowed so plainly to her eyes, and it was with a flash of acuteself-consciousness--a flash as from a lantern that has been turnedinward--that she realised that she was comparing him with Arnold Kemper. 

CHAPTER X

SHOWS THE HERO TO BE LACKING IN HEROIC QUALITIES

When he had parted from Laura Adams walked down Fifth Avenue toThirty-fifth Street and then turned east in the direction of his ownhouse. He found upon entering that Connie, as usual, was dining out, andafter he had eaten his poorly served dinner alone in the dining-room, hewent upstairs with the intention of slipping into his smoking jacket andreturning to his study for a peaceful smoke. The electric lights wereblazing in Connie's bedroom, and when he went in to extinguish them, moved by some instinct of economy, he found that the room was in evengreater disorder than that to which he had grown, after years ofuncomplaining discomfort, outwardly if not inwardly resigned. Of anaturally systematic habit of thought, Connie's carelessness had beenfor him one of those petty annoyances of daily life to meet which he hadalways felt that philosophy had been especially designed; but to-nightthe chaos struck him so forcibly that he found himself vaguelyquestioning if it were possible for a human creature to sleep in such aspot? Picking up several gowns from the middle of the floor, he returnedthem to the wardrobe, and set himself to clearing the bed of an array ofsatin shoes. Her silver hair brushes had fallen on the hearth rug, andin replacing them upon the bureau his eye fell on a small, half-emptyphial lying beneath a pile of lace-edged handkerchiefs. Looking at it alittle closer he found that it contained a solution of cocaine. 

For a moment surprise held him motionless; then as if to refute andexplain away any ordinary reason for her possession of the drug, heremembered, in a comprehensive flash the recent violent changes in hercharacter--her uncontrollable attacks of nervousness, her spasmodicmovements and her sudden flowing, almost hysterical, volubility ofspeech. His heart contracted with a sensation like that of terror, andhe was turning away again when his glance was arrested by a heap ofcrumpled bills lying loosely in one corner of the open drawer. Recollecting that she had complained the day before of the smallness ofher allowance, he drew out the papers for a casual examination--but itneeded much less, in fact, than this to assure him that her expenses hadnot only gone immeasurably beyond her own limited allowance, but thatthey had considerably exceeded his slightly larger income. Her debts hadevidently run up to a sum which she had lost the courage to confess evento herself, and, while the gravity of the situation entered into him, hesmoothed out the torn and crumpled sheets and went with them to hisstudy. Until to-night he had looked upon Connie's extravagance merely asan innocent childish failing, resulting from an inherent incapacity, asshe laughingly said, "to do sums, " but now as he sat under the greenlamp shade, anxiously multiplying item after item, it seemed to him thatthis recent recklessness involved not only her private happiness buthis own personal honour. He was a hot-tempered man by nature, and atfirst the very absurdity of her expenditures, the useless, costlytrifles which made up the amount, produced in him an unreasoning passionof anger. Had she been in the house he would have gone to her in thefirst shock of his temper, but her ceaseless pursuit of pleasure had puther beyond his reach, so he sat silently staring at the neatly arrangedheap of papers while his exasperation cooled within him. 

Presently, still sitting motionless in his chair, he felt the absolutequiet of the room take effect upon his mood, and with the peculiartolerance confirmed as much by balked ambition as by years of enforcedand bitter patience he began with a philosophic and impersonal leniencyto soften in his judgment of Connie's case. At the moment there was notenderness, he told himself, in the view he took, and he gave to hermerely the distant, habitual charity that he would have extended to thestranger in the street. To give to her in the very least seemed to himsuddenly almost impossible when he remembered that from a forlornlyfoolish caprice she had plunged him into a debt of several years. He hadworked hard, with broken health, in a profession of small financialreturns, but to his own simple tastes his income might have brought notonly perfect material ease, but the enjoyment of comparative luxury. Still there was Connie--he had always in every situation remembered thatthere was Connie--and in order to insure her present comfort as well asto provide for her future livelihood, he had contrived to limit hisexpenses to the merest necessities. One only gratification he hadallowed himself--his eyes travelled gloomily round his preciousbook-lined walls and he found himself wondering if those particulartreasures would bring their full value in the open market? He regardedthem meditatively, almost religiously, with the impassioned eye of thecollector who is born not cultivated. Yet there were among them nohigh-priced, particular rarities, for he had always counted the costwith the deliberation which he felt to be the better part of impulse. Financially they did not represent a great deal, he admitted; then, asif flinching before a threatened sacrilege, he looked away again, whilehe remembered with a quick recognition of the ludicrous, that among thearticles for which Connie had not paid was a pair of pearl ear-rings. The item had taken a prominence oddly out of keeping with itssignificance, and he found that it irritated him more than the thoughtof objects of a decidedly greater cost. That any woman, that his wife inparticular, should want a pair of ear-rings appeared to him little shortof the barbaric. 

But the incident was trifling, and a minute later it had faded entirelyfrom his reflections. As he sat there in his easy-chair in the lamplight his thoughts turned slowly backward, travelling over the tragicyet uneventful history of his life. He remembered his childhood on alittle Western farm, the commonplace poverty of his people, and his ownburning, agonised ambition, which had sent him through college on apittance, swept the highest honours from his graduation year, andwrecked at last what had been at his starting out a fairly promisingphysical constitution. He recalled, too, the sleepless enthusiasm ofhis last term at Harvard, the terrible exhaustion which had made hisfinal triumph barren, and the long illness which had brought him in theend, with shattered health, to the door of the great specialist in lungdiseases. At this day he could shut his eyes and summon back withdistinctness the smallest detail of the interview. He went over againhis tedious wait in the outer office--the scattered magazines upon thetable, the utterly inartistic prints upon the wall, the ticking of thetall bronze clock on the mantel, and even the number of the page he hadbeen reading in a periodical, for--following a methodical habit--he hadunconsciously made a mental note of the figures when he laid themagazine aside to face the examination behind the folding doors. Withthe patient attention to minutia which was a part of his literaryinstinct, his memory followed the great man across the ugly yellowsquares in the carpet and fixed itself upon a row of small green bottlesstanding in a wooden rack upon the table. Through the half hour of hisvisit, which brief as it was casually dismissed him to his death, thoseslender green phials seemed to his fancy to hold an absurd and grotesqueprominence. "In a climate like this I'd give you three years--maybe alittle longer--yes, I think I may grant a little longer, " the great manhad remarked, with what seemed to Adams a ridiculous assumption ofyielding a concession. "In a dryer air you might even be good, we maysay, until thirty-five or forty. " He shrugged his shoulders with agesture intended to convey his sympathy but which succeeded only inexpressing his personal importance, and Adams had walked out from thestuffy little ether-smelling office with a feeling curiously like thathe had known as a boy when during a school game of football, he foundhimself suddenly thumped upon the heart. On the doorstep he had stoppedand laughed aloud, struck by the persistency with which the greenbottles dominated his impressions. 

After this there had come a blank of a few weeks--a blank of which heremembered nothing except that he had struggled like an entrapped beastagainst his fate--against his fruitless labour, his sacrificed ambition, the unavailing bitterness of his self-denial--against the world, destiny, life, death, God! But the very intensity of his rebellion hadbrought reaction, and it was in the succeeding apathy of spirit that hehad packed his few belongings and started for the Colorado country. Behind him he was leaving all that made life endurable in his eyes, andyet he was leaving it from some half animal instinct which caused him topreserve the mere naked strip of existence that he no longer valued. Hehated himself for going, yet he went that he might hate himself the morebitterly with each step of the journey. 

The lamp on his desk flared up fitfully and as he turned to lower thewick his eyes fell on Connie's picture. The uplifted babyish face cameback to him as he had first seen it under floating cherry-coloredribbons, and his anger of the last half-hour melted and vanished utterlyaway. For the sake of those few months, when the waning fire within himhad leaped despairingly toward the flame of life, he knew that he couldnever quite put Connie from his heart--for the sake of his shortromance and for the sake, too, of his child that had lived three hours. The thin, heavily veined hand on the arm of his chair quivered for aninstant, and he felt his pulses throb quickly as if from acute physicalpain. From the pitiable failure of his marriage, from his loneliness anddisillusionment there came back to him the three hours when he hadlooked upon the face of his living child--the hours of his profoundestemotion, his completest reconciliation. He had never regarded himself asan emotionally religious man, yet ten years ago, on the night that hisboy died, he had felt that an immortal and indissoluble part of himselfhad gone out into the void. For the first time he had come to the deeperreality of life--through the flowing of the agonised longing withinhimself toward that permanent universal consciousness of which all humanlongings are but detached and wandering forms. From that time death hadheld for him a more personal promise; and the obligation to live, tofulfil one's present opportunities, had become charged with anothermeaning than he had been used to read into what he called his mereanimal responsibility. The boy who had died was for him in a close, anintimate relation, still vitally alive; and with one of those quaint yetpathetic blendings of memory with imagination the little undevelopedsoul had blossomed, not invisibly, incommunicably, but into actual dailycompanionship with his thoughts. 

Sitting there under the green lamp, he himself showed as aninsignificant figure to possess an ear for the divine silences, an eyefor the invisible beauty. His long, gaunt body lay relaxed and inertupon the leather cushions, and his knotted, bony hands--the hands of ascholar and a thinker--were stretched, palms downward, on the rolledarms of his chair. There was nothing in his appearance--nothing in hisworn, humorous face under the thin brown hair, to suggest the valiantlover, the impressionable dreamer. Yet in the innermost truth of his ownnature he was both, and his grief, of which in his strange, almostsavage, reserve he had never spoken even to his wife, had softenedgradually into the gentlest of his dreams as well as the profoundest ofhis regrets. "The little chap, " as he always called the child, in histhoughts, had grown for him into an individuality which for all itsnearness was yet clearly distinct from his own. Adams had lived day byday with him, had sat face to face with him in his lamp-lighted room, had carried him successfully through the first childish books that hemight have studied, had even launched him into the Latin he might havelearned. A boy to train, to educate, a mental companionship such as heloved to fancy he would have found in a young, eager mind, had since hismarriage become the one burning desire of his heart, and even to-nightsitting, as he so often did, alone in his house, his thoughts dwelt witha playful tenderness upon the boy who might have brought his _Cĉsar_ tohis footstool. He was a man of instinctive moral cleanness, and even inhis imagination he had always kept the riotous senses severely in thecheck of reason. In the domain of the affections he had wanted nothingdesperately, he told himself, except his child; and so intense had thisyearning of fatherhood become in him that there were moments of bitterloneliness when he seemed almost to feel the touch of the boy's handupon his knee. He had strange hours, even when his dream became morevivid to him than the pressing reality of events. 

The clicking of the latchkey as it was put into the lock aroused himpresently, and immediately afterward he heard the closing of the outerdoor, a brief "Good-night!" in Connie's high-pitched voice, and herrapid steps as they crossed the carpet in the hall. While he waited, hesitating to follow her upstairs, his door opened and shut quickly, andshe came in and threw herself into a chair beside the lamp. Her blondehead fell heavily back upon the cushions and the light, streamingdirectly upon her face, revealed to his startled eyes all the intenserangularities produced by the last twelve months--angularities whichseemed, somehow, to belong less to the features themselves than to therestless intelligence which lay behind them. Connie's features hadalways appeared too small for expression; too correctly formed for anydeviating individuality, but the impression made upon Adams now was thatthey had grown so thin--so transparent in their fineness--that he lookedthrough them to the nervous animation confined and struggling in herfragile body. The same animation throbbed like a pulse in her emaciatedbosom, which only the extreme smallness of her bones kept still lovelyin its low-cut evening gown. She was devoured, consumed by the agony ofrestlessness which shook through her, directing and controlling herslender judgment like a perpetual and imperfectly subdued convulsion ofpassion. 

For an instant he looked at her in attentive silence, then, as herfingers wrestled uncertainly with the cords of her evening wrap, he rosefrom his chair and bent forward to assist her. 

"It's in a hard knot, " she said irritably. "I can't undo it. "

While he released the fastening and drew back his glance fell upon thelittle bluish hollows in her temples, over which the light curls wereskilfully arranged, and as he realised fully her wasted physicalresources, it seemed to him that an allusion to anything so sordid as amere financial difficulty would sound not only trivial but positivelyindecorous as well. With a whimsical trick of memory he recalledabruptly a man under sentence of death in a Western gaol who hadreceived the night before his execution a bill for a dozen bottles ofchampagne. Connie's extravagance appeared to him suddenly but a kind ofmoral champagne--the particular _hasheesh_ that she had chosen fromunhappy consciousness. To live at all one must live with a dream, heknew, and to his present flashing vision it seemed that Connie's ecstasyof possession and his own ecstasy of desire served a like end when theytransfigured for a little while the brutal actuality from which therewas no escape except by the way of a man's own soul. 

"You're ill, " he said at last in a compassionate voice, "and there'snothing for you but to get out of New York as soon as possible. "

She looked disconcerted, almost incensed, by the suggestion. 

"You can't send me to Florida, " she returned, "and that's whereeverybody goes at this season. "

A trembling like that of faintness which is fought off by an effort ofwill ran over her, and he watched the pale, unsteady quiver of hereyelids. 

"I will send you there--I'll send you anywhere, " he said, "if you willpromise me--"

The words were hard to come, and while he stumbled over them she lookedup with a startled exclamation. Her glance travelling to his face, sweptover the desk beside which he stood and was arrested by the pile ofunpaid bills, which he had pushed, as he spoke, further away from thelamp light. A hot, angry flush overspread her face, and she made anervous movement that brought her to her feet with a spring. 

"You had no right to look at them, " she burst out sharply, "they are allwrong. Half of them were not meant for me. "

The lie was so foolish, so ineffectual and without excuse, that heflinched and turned his eyes away--for the shame of it seemed to belongless to her than to himself. At the instant he was conscious of astinging sensation in his veins as of a man who realises for the firsttime that he has fallen into dishonour. 

"I did not mean to mention that--at least not now, " he said quickly. "We'll call it off and try to keep clean out of debt in the future. Ifear your allowance does seem rather shabby to you, but it can't behelped. It takes every cent of the balance to run the house and pay mylife insurance. "

He waited an instant, hoping that his matter-of-fact statement of thesituation--his freedom from implied reproach--might call forth someexpression, however slight, of her appreciation. But her glance flashedover him, critical, disapproving, and he became aware, through a wonderof intuition, that even at the moment she was possessed by her passionfor externals, was weighing his personal details as he stood in the lamplight, and deciding impartially that he made but a poor physicalshowing. Her unfavourable verdict was impressed upon him so stronglythat it produced a revulsion of anger. He felt, somehow, that theirpositions were reversed, that she had him now at her mercy, and failingto reduce him by flattery, had chosen to wither him by contempt. 

"There's not a woman I know who could dress decently on what I have, "she rejoined, skilfully adjusting him into the necessity of defence. 

He gathered up the papers, and placing them in a drawer of his desk, closed it sharply. There was a sordid indecency about the discussionwhich stung him like the stroke of a whip. 

"I am sorry, " he returned coolly, "but I have done my best. There isnothing more to be said. " His eyes lingered for a moment on her thinbosom where the bones were beginning to be faintly visible through theivory flesh. Then he looked at her sharpened face and saw that the threelittle wrinkles were stamped indelibly between her eyebrows. As hewatched her she lifted her head with the babyish tilt he had first seenunder cherry-coloured ribbons. "I will find the money to send you toFlorida, " he said slowly, "if you will promise me--to give up drugs. "

She gathered her wraps about her and made a movement as if to leave theroom. "Drugs! Why, how ridiculous!" she exclaimed with a laugh, thoughhe felt the cold edge of hatred in her voice. 

Still laughing, she went out and up the staircase, and a few minutesafterwards he heard her nervous step in the room above. He took out thebills again and spent half the night in the effort to realise the exactamount of his indebtedness. 

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH A LIE IS THE BETTER PART OF TRUTH

At breakfast Connie did not appear--she had seemed to be asleep when hewent into his dressing-room--and it was not until one o'clock that hehad a chance to speak to her again. Luncheon was already on the tablewhen he entered the dining-room, and Connie, in a green velvet gown anda little green velvet hat ornamented by a twinkling aigrette, wasstanding by the window looking out restlessly at the falling snow. As hecame in she went over to the table and began making tea with nervoushands. She was apparently in the highest spirits, and while she fumblednoisily with the cups and saucers she rambled on in her expressionlessvoice with tinkling interludes of her shrill, falsetto laughter. As hewatched her in shamed silence he remembered with astonishment that ithad taken him almost ten years to find out that Connie was vulgar. Nowat last his eyes were opened--he had achieved a standard of comparisonand he felt her commonness with an awakening of his literary instinct, quite as acutely, he told himself, as he should have felt it had shebeen presented to him in the form of a printed page. The sense ofremoteness, of strangeness, grew upon him at each instant; he realisedthe uselessness of his good intentions toward her--the utterimpossibility of snatching her or any human creature from the clutch oftemperament. 

Her day was filled with engagements, she told him at the end of luncheonwhen she rose to hurry off while he still lingered over his coffee; "andI shan't be here to dine, either, " she added, as an after thought. "GusBrady will come for me--there's the opera and a supper afterwards, soyou needn't trouble to sit up. "

"But whom are you going with?" he enquired, filled for the first timewith a painful curiosity concerning the social body in which Conniemoved. 

She shook her head with a gesture of irritation, while the aigrette inher hat sent out little iridescent flashes of blue and green. "Oh, youwouldn't know if I told you, " she answered impatiently, and left theroom so hastily that he felt she had meant to wriggle away from therepeated question. What did it mean? he wondered for a minute as heslowly sipped his coffee. Even if she should go with Brady alone, wherewas the harm of it? and why should she avoid so innocent an admission. He was of a candidly unsuspicious nature, and since in his own mind hehad seen no particular reason for infringing upon the conventions ofsociety they had never given him so much as an unquiet thought. Certainly to dine at a restaurant or attend so public a function asgrand opera with a person of the opposite sex, seemed to him asingularly harmless choice of indiscretions, and had she made a carelessavowal of her intention the matter would probably have dropped at themoment from his thoughts. But the very secretiveness of her manner--thesuggestion of a hidden motive which dwelt in her nervous movements andeven quivered in the little scintillating aigrette on her blondehead--aroused in him if not a positive distrust, still a bewildering anddecidedly unpleasant confusion of ideas. He felt, somehow, vaguelyimpelled to action, yet for the life of him, he admitted after a moment, he could see no single direction in which action with regard to his wifewould not savor of the indiscreet, if not of the ridiculous. Theattitude of an aggrieved husband had always showed to him as somethinglaughable, and an explosion of jealousy had never appeared more vulgarthan it did while he sat patiently conjecturing if such a domesticcyclone might be counted upon to shake Connie to her senses. In the endhe gave it up as a farce which he felt it would be beyond the power ofhis gravity to sustain. "I'll do anything in reason, heaven knows, " hefound himself confessing, after the instant's reflection, "but I'll behanged before I'll set out in cold blood to play the fool. "

The front door, closing with a bang, brought him instantly to his feetand, glancing through the window, he saw Connie about to step into a cabwhich she had signalled from the sidewalk. Her velvet gown trailedbehind her, and she appeared perfectly unconcerned by the fact that shehad sunk above her ankles in the heavy snowdrifts. A moment later, whenshe lifted her train to enter the cab, he discovered to his amazementthat she was wearing low kid shoes with the thinnest of silk stockings. Then, before he could raise the window for a protest, the cab rolled offin the direction of Fifth Avenue, and, wet feet and twinkling feather, she was out of sight. 

By the time he had got into his overcoat and followed her into thestreet, the snow had begun to fall more rapidly in large powderyflakes, which soon covered him in a thick, frosty coating from head tofoot. As he walked briskly toward his office, he noticed with aquickened attention the women who like Connie, with nervous facesshowing above elaborate gowns, were borne swiftly past him in hiredcabs. Something, he hardly knew what, had opened his eyes to thatglittering life of the world of which he had always been profoundlyignorant, and it seemed to him suddenly that the distance betweenhimself and his wife had broadened to an impassable space in a singlenight. Connie was no longer the girl whom he remembered undercherry-coloured ribbons. She came in reality no closer to him than didthe tired, restless women, with artificially brightened faces, whoappeared to his exhausted eyes to whirl past him perpetually in cabs. Apassionate regret seized him for the thing which Connie was not andcould never be again--for the love he had never known and for thefatherhood that had been denied him. 

He had turned, still plunged in his thoughts, into a quiet cross streetwhere a crowd of ragged urchins were snowballing one another in a noisybattle; and as he paused for an instant to watch the fight he noticedthat a man, coming from the opposite direction, had stopped also andstood now motionless with interest upon the sidewalk. The peculiarconcentration of attention was the first thing which Adams remarked inthe stranger--from his absorbed level gaze it was evident that mentallyat least he had thrown himself for the moment into the thickest of thebattle, and there was a flush of eager enjoyment in the face which waspartially obscured by the falling snow flakes. Then, quick as a flash oflight, something pleasantly familiar in the watching figure, grippedAdams with the memory of a college battle more than fifteen years ago, and he burst out in an exclamation of pleased surprise. 

"You're Arnold Kemper and I'm Roger Adams, " he said, laying his handupon the other's arm. 

Kemper wheeled about immediately, while the smile of placid amusement inhis face broadened into a laugh of delighted recognition. 

"Well, by Jove, it's great!" he responded, and the heartiness of hishandshake sent a tingling sensation through Adams' arm. "I don't knowwhen I've been so pleased for years. Been to luncheon?"

"I've just had it, " laughed Adams, remembering that fifteen years ago, when he last saw him, Kemper had extended a similar invitation with thesame grasp of hearty good fellowship. Was it possible that the man hadreally kept his college memories alive? he wondered in a daze ofadmiration, or had he himself merely awakened by his reappearance atrain of associations which had lain undisturbed since their lastparting. Let it be as it might, Adams felt that the encounter was of thepleasantest. 

"I'm driven like a slave back to office drudgery, " he added, "and I'mhalf inclined to envy you your freedom and your automobiles. "

Kemper's eyes shot back an intimate curiosity. "So you're editor of _TheInternational Review_, I hear, " he said. "Do you know I've had it in mymind for years to look you up, but there's such a confounded temptationto let things drift, you know. "

"I know, " rejoined Adams, smiling. "I've drifted with them. "

"Well, I'm jolly glad that you've drifted my way at last. So you've beento luncheon, have you?" Kemper enquired again, as he unfastened a buttonof his overcoat and drew out his watch. "I wish you hadn't--I'vepromised to meet a man at the club and it's past the hour. I say, lookhere, " he added hastily as he was about to hurry off, "I've some ratherdecent rooms of my own now where I sometimes manage to get a quietmorsel. Will you come to dine to-morrow at half-past seven, sharp?"

It took Adams hardly an instant to consider and accept the invitation. Though he rarely dined out he felt a positive pleasure at the thought, and when, a minute later, he walked on again, repeating the number ofthe address which the other had pressed upon him, he found that Kemper'sgreeting had left a trail of cheerfulness which lingered for at least ahalf hour after the man himself had gone on his genial way. If, as GertyBridewell had once declared in a fit of exasperation, "Arnold Kemperconsisted of a surface, " he managed at least to present those mystifyingripples of personality which suggest to the imagination depths ofpleasantness as yet undiscovered. Adams had lived to his present age bythe help of few illusions--and he realised even now that the thing heliked in Kemper was an effect of manner which implied an impossiblesubtlety--that the power one saw in the man was produced simply by sometrick of pose, by a frankness so big that one felt intuitively theremust be still bigger qualities behind it. Whether it was all a blusterof affectation Adams had never as yet decided in his own mind, butthere were moments when, in listening to stories of the masculinefreedom in which Kemper lived, he felt inclined to acknowledge that theforce, whatever it was, had spent itself in wind. In a profession theman would inevitably have become a figure, he thought now with a touchof friendly humor--in law or medicine he would have gone in for theinvincible "grand style, " and the picturesqueness of his person wouldhave served to swell the number of his clients. It was a shabby turn offortune, Adams admitted, which in supplying Kemper with a too liberalbank account, had made of him at the same time a driver of racing motorcars instead of the ornament of a more distinguished field. There werecompensations doubtless, and he wondered if in this instance they hadcentred in the fascinations of an operatic Juliet?

Upon reaching his office he found that he was late for an interview hehad appointed with a famous Russian revolutionist, who had promised himan article for the _Review_. It was the time of the month when they weremaking up the forthcoming number, and he was kept late over a discussionof the leading paper, which, owing to the sudden death of a literarypersonage of distinction, he had been compelled to replace at the lastmoment. 

His office was a small, dingy room on the eighth floor of a building inUnion Square, and his privacy was guarded by the desks of hissecretaries placed directly beyond the threshold. These assistants wereyoung men of considerable promise, he liked to think--college graduatesand temperamental hero-worshippers, who adored him with an ardour whichhe found at once disconcerting and ridiculous. He had been used, however, to so little personal appreciation in his life that he hadgrown of late to look forward, with pathetic eagerness, to the heartymorning greeting of his fellow-workers--for one of whom, afresh-coloured youth named Baldwin, he had come to cherish a positiveaffection. It was stimulating to feel that somewhere he counted forsomething in his bodily presence--even though the scene of hisimportance was confined to the little smoke-stained office among thechimney pots. 

When, at the end of the day, he came out into the street again andcrossed to Fifth Avenue for his accustomed walk, he found that the snowhad ceased to fall, though a bitter wind was scattering the heavy driftsin a succession of miniature blizzards. After the heated office thetempestuous gale struck agreeably upon his face, and his mind, which hehad kept closely upon his work until the hour of release, began almostwith difficulty to detach itself from the fortunes of the _Review_. Inthe effort to compel rather than seek distraction, he put hisimagination idly on the scent of the people in the street--ran down infancy the history of a woman in a purple velvet gown and a bedraggledpetticoat, catalogued an athletic young Englishman who tugged at hisheels a reluctant bulldog, and wove a tragic romance around a prettygirl in a shabby coat who stood in a staring ecstasy before a windowfilled with imitation jewels. Then two men, smoking cigars, came upsuddenly behind him and he amused himself with guessing at the brand ofthe tobacco, which had a remarkably fragrant aroma. 

"The only thing I know against her, " said one of the men with a laugh ashe went by, "is that she dines alone with Brady If you see nothing inthat beyond the simple act of dining--"

Reaching a corner they turned off abruptly down a cross street and therest of the sentence passed with the speaker into an obscurity of fog. For an instant it did not occur to Adams to connect the phrase with anallusion to his wife; then as he repeated it mechanically in histhoughts, there sprang upon him, like some sinister outward visitation, an indefinable horror--a presentiment which he dared not whisper even tohimself. Pshaw! there were perhaps, a dozen women who dined with Brady, he insisted reassuringly, and for the matter of that, there wereprobably a dozen Bradys. The name was common enough, and the only decentthing to do was to get rid of the suspicion and to apologise to Conniein his thoughts. To impute a low motive to a simple action had alwaysseemed to him the vulgarity of littleness, and littleness in a man hehad come to look upon as a kind of passive vice. So until the eventproved the necessity of action, he was determined that there should beno "black bats" among his thoughts. Had he loved Connie there might havebeen perhaps more passion and less conscience in his treatment of thesituation, but the humour of the philosopher had for many years replacedin his nature the ardour of the lover. What he gave to her was theinflexible code of honour which he observed in his association with hisown sex. 

At Fortieth Street he was about to turn back again when he was arrestedby the sound of his own name called by a passing voice, and looking uphe saw Perry Bridewell spring from a cab which had hastily driven up tothe sidewalk. 

"Wait a bit, will you, Adams?" said Perry, waving one heavily glovedhand while he reached up with the other to pay the driver. "You're thevery man I'm after, " he added an instant later as he turned from thecurbing, "so if you don't mind I'll walk a couple of blocks in yourdirection. I'd just got into my dinner clothes, " he explained, fasteninghis fur-lined overcoat more snugly across his chest, "when I found thatMiss Wilde was going down alone to Gramercy Park. That's where I've comefrom, and now I'm rushing back to keep an engagement Gerty has made fordinner. I'll be hanged if I know where she's taking me--it's all one tome, half the time I forget to ask whose house we're going to until Ibolt into the drawing-room. Beastly life, this everlasting eating inother people's houses. "

His tone was one of amiable discontentment, but there was a look ofpositive annoyance upon his handsome face, and he turned presently toregard his companion with an enquiry which might have been darklyfurtive had not the luminous publicity in which he moved rendered thesmallest of his mental processes so brilliantly overt. It wasimmediately plain to Adams that the jerky sentences were shot out atrandom in order that Perry's slow mind might gain a larger space inwhich to grope for the word he really wanted. There was somethingevidently behind it all, and until the situation should disclose itselfthey walked on in an embarrassed and waiting silence. In his top hat andhis mink-lined overcoat Perry presented an ample dignity which hiscompanion found almost overpowering in its male magnificence. Thathesitation should manifest itself amid such a pageantry of personalityreminded Adams of the beggars in the old nursery rhyme who had come totown sporting velvet gowns. Everything about Perry Bridewell was builton so opulent a scale that in thinking of him one found oneself usingalmost unconsciously a Romanesque and florid diction. 

"There is something you'd like to say to me, " suggested Adams presently. "I'm in no hurry, of course, but isn't this as good a time as anyother?"

"By Jove, that's just what I was thinking, " returned Perry, with a burstof confidence, "but it isn't really anything, you know--that is, I mean, it isn't anything that--that's real business. "

A pretty woman passed suddenly under the electric light, and even in hisembarrassment, which was great, he followed her with the animated glancewhich he instinctively devoted to vanishing feminine beauty. 

"Thank God, there's no real business between us, " retorted Adams, "andthat's why it's a rest to spend a half-hour with you--because you don'tknow a piece of literature from a publisher's advertisement. "

"We're such old friends, you know, " pursued Perry, forgetting the momentwhich he had wasted upon the pretty woman, "that when there's a thing onmy mind I feel--well, I feel a--a deuced queer fish not to tell you. "

Adams laughed good naturedly. 

"For heaven's sake don't remain long in a fishy sensation, " herejoined. "Let's have it out and over. By the way, may I ask if itconcerns you or me?"

Perry shook his head as he tugged nervously at his fair moustache. "Lookhere, old man, " he said at last, "I know, of course, that Mrs. Adams isas innocent as a baby--Gerty's just like her and there are plenty ofwomen made that way. It's the men who are such confounded brutes, " hecommented with pensive morality. 

"Oh, is that it?" responded Adams, and he turned upon the other a lookthat was coolly interrogative. "Come, now, we'll take it quietly. You'reone of the best friends I have, and I want to know what they're sayingabout my wife. "

"It's that damned Brady!" exclaimed Perry, while he felt for hishandkerchief, and blew his nose with violence. 

"All right--it's that damned Brady?" repeated Adams. 

"If I didn't think more of you than of any man on earth I'd be shotbefore I'd tell you, " protested Perry, and added with a desperate rushunder fire. 

"He had too much champagne last night--though, as for that matter, I'veseen him upset by a cocktail--and afterward at billiards he told Skinkerthat--that Mrs. Adams--you understand, old chap, it's all his rot--wasgoing to supper alone with him to-night--in his rooms after the opera. Of course he was drunk and I wouldn't bet a cent on his word even whenhe's sober. He's the kind of fool that tells of his conquests at theclub, " he wound up with scathing contempt. 

For a moment Adams, looking away from him, stared silently into a shopwindow before which he stood--intent apparently upon the varied displayof antique silver. Then he turned squarely to Perry Bridewell and brokeinto a short, hard laugh. 

"Well, Brady lied, " he said. "I promised Mrs. Adams that I would bringher home from the opera. " It was no hesitation in his own voice, but thejoyful relief which shone at him from Perry's face that brought himsuddenly to a stop. "You were a first-rate fellow to come to me, " hewent on more quietly. "Of course, you know, our Western conventions aremuch more elastic than your New York ones. All the same--"

"I merely wanted to let her know the kind of man he is, " explainedPerry. "What do women understand about the men they meet--why, we alllook pretty much alike upon the surface. " Then his righteous anger gotthe better of his philosophy and he broke out in a heartfelt oath. "Damnhim! I'd like to thrash him clean out of his skin!"

"I am glad you told me, " was all Adams said, but there was a reservedstrength in his voice which made the explosive violence of the othersound the merest bravado. As he spoke the light flashed in his face, andPerry saw that it was the face of an old and a tired man. There was ashrinking in his eyes as of one who has stumbled unexpectedly upon arevolting sight. 

Of the many and varied emotions which had entered Perry's life, thecleanest, perhaps, was his loyal regard for Roger Adams. It had begunwith his college days, had strengthened with his manhood, and hadlasted, in spite of the amiable contempt in which he held allliterature, with a constancy which had certainly not belonged to hisaffairs with representatives of the opposite sex. Now as he looked atAdams' haggard face under the electric light, he felt the tugging of asympathy so strong that it seemed to hurt him somewhere in his expansivechest. 

"Look here, old chap, come and dine with me at Sherry's, " he burst out, "and I'll telephone Gerty that I've thrown over that beastly dinner. "

To offer something to eat to the afflicted was the solitary form inwhich consolation appeared to him invested with solidity; and so earnestwas the generous impulse by which he now felt himself to be prompted, that before Adams could reply to the invitation he had begun already torun over mentally the courses he was prepared to order. For a colossal, a consolatory, an unforgettable dinner he was determined that it shouldbe--such a dinner as he permitted himself only upon the rare occasionswhen one of his intimate friends had lost heavily in stocks or beenabandoned by his wife. "Come to Sherry's, " he urged again, halting inthe ecstatic working of his mind, "and I promise you that we will makean evening. "

But the sly incarnate devil which lurked in Adams in the form of anironic spirit asserted itself with an explosion which shook theplethoric gravity with which Perry contemplated an orgy of indigestion. The universal scheme appeared planned to fulfil the law of a Titanichumour, and his own credulity and Connie's indiscretions showed suddenlyto Adams as mere mote-like jests which circled in a general convulsionof Nature's irony. 

"Well, you are a capital fellow, " he stammered, after a moment, whilethe spasm of his unholy laughter rocked him from head to foot. "I--I'dlike it of all things--but I can't. The fact is it is all so funny--thewhole business of life. "

Even as he uttered the words he realised that to Perry they would conveyan infamous lightness, but at the thought his hysterical humourredoubled in its energy. It was as if he stood outside--afar off--andwatched as a god the little tangled eccentricities of earth. And they_were_ little, even though Perry should continue to regard the situationwith such large magnificence. 

By the time, however, that he had parted from Perry Bridewell and turnedin at his own door, the gravity of the occasion had grown almostoppressive in his reflections. Connie had gone an hour before--he wastoo late to have detained her upon a pretext--and while sittingspeechless before the dinner he could not eat--his heated imaginationwove visions of horror in which his wife was entangled as a fly in aspider's web. What if Connie were really possessed by the influence ofsome drug which rendered her incapable of willing rationally? What if hemissed her at the entrance to the opera? Or what if--most desperatesupposition--she should, in the event of his finding her, refuse toaccept his manufactured excuse to recall her home? She was capable, heknew, of any recklessness, but he had never for an instant conceived heras walking open eyed into dishonour, and he felt again the awful, ifpartly comforting conviction that she was not herself--that an infernaldrug was working in her and bending her to some particular uses of thedevil. Why had she wasted her beauty and even her life? he wonderedbitterly--and did the moment's mad exhilaration compensate for the slowdeliberate eating away of her moral consciousness? He recalled again theviolent flutter of her manner, the excitement as of intoxication in hervoice, the yellow tinge which had crept gradually over the ivory of herskin; her spasmodic movements and the ineffectual lies which deludedneither of them for an instant. The tragedy of life rose before him asvividly as the humour of it had done an hour ago--a tragedy which washideous because it was ignoble, in which there was neither the beauty ofresignation nor the sublimity of defiance. Had there been theleast--even the smallest redeeming honesty in the situation he felt thathe might have faced it, if not with positive sympathy yet with atolerant, a merciful comprehension. Love he might have understood--forwomen needed it, he knew, and he was burdened by no delusion concerningthe place he occupied in Connie's horizon. But before the breathlesschase of excitement in which she lived, the frenzied invocation ofpleasure that filled her thoughts, he found himself groping blindly forsome meaning which would explain the thing it could not justify. 

The hours dragged so heavily that by ten o'clock he put on his overcoatand snow-shoes and went out again into the street. He was possessed atthe moment by a growing fear of missing Connie, and as he walked towardthe opera house he had sense of a premonition almost occult in powerthat the terrible destiny which had her in its clutch was gatheringenergy for some pitiless catastrophe With characteristic patience hesearched his own conscience, the incidents of his daily life, and heldhimself rather than his wife to account. After all, he was the strongerof the two, and yet when had he put forth his strength or his pity onher behalf? In the closer human relations mere indifference showedsuddenly as sin, and the sluggish spirit which had controlled hismarried life appeared in his memory as a form of moral apathy. Was ahuman soul so small a thing that it could perish at his side and he benone the Wiser? What was his boasted intellect worth if it couldparalyse the human part of him and exhaust the fount of his compassion?In his widening vision he saw that in the spirit of things humanity isone and indivisible, a single organism held together by a common pulseof life. To live or to die apart he realised, is beyond the scope of anindividual destiny, for in the eye of God each man that lives is thekeeper not of his own but of his brother's soul. 

The self reproach which moved in his heart impelled him so rapidly uponhis way that when he reached the doors he had still an hour to waitbefore the opera ended. Remembering that if he were so fortunate to findConnie he must take her home, he went to a livery stable for a carriage, and then coming back, walked nervously up and down upon the frozenpavement. His mind was divided between the fear that she might leave byanother entrance--that he might miss her altogether--and the morehorrible dread that in seeing her he should be unable to prevail uponher to come away. She might, he felt, demand a reason, exact from himthe meaning of his unexpected appearance; there was even a hideouspossibility that she might fly into a temper. 

The wind was bitter and he went into the lobby, where a few men werehurrying out to secure their carriages. Then at last came the crowd inevening dress, and it seemed to him that the acuteness of his perceptionwas reinforced by an almost unnatural power of vision. Out of the movingthrong the face of each woman stood forth distinctly as if relieved by aspectral illumination; and he saw them clearly one after one, fair ordark, plain or beautiful, until from among them there shone toward himthe elaborately arranged blonde head of Connie, under a winking diamondwhich shed over her an unbecoming light. He had hoped to the last thatshe would be with several others, but he perceived when she came out atBrady's side, with her babyish chin tilted upward and her thin featuresworking in a forced and unhealthy animation, that they were alone andwould probably be alone for the remainder of the evening. 

Standing beyond the entrance, and watching her unseen, while she pausedfor an instant in the crowded lobby, Adams felt again the strange stirof emotion he had experienced when he looked at her the evening beforeunder the lamplight in his study. In a single vivid instant he saw herwinking diamonds, her rouged cheeks, the nervous flutter that shook herfragile figure, and the consuming fire which was destroying theappealing prettiness of her face. Then he looked deeper still to thenaked terrified soul of her, caught in a web from which, because of herweakness, there could be no escape. 

There was no room in his heart now for any other feeling than one ofagonised compassion, and as she came through the doorway he touched herarm and spoke in a voice which had the sound of a caress. "I've just hadbad news, Connie, so I came to find you. "

She started violently, her hand dropped from her companion's arm, andshe stood trembling from head to foot like a blade of grass that isshaken by a high wind. "What do you mean? What is it?" she demanded. 

After lifting his hat to Brady he had not noticed him again, and now hebent upon his wife a look of gentle, if unyielding, authority. "I'lltell you presently--in the carriage, " he said, drawing her wrap moreclosely about her throat. "I have one waiting at the corner. "

He saw her look at him in a frightened hesitation; saw, too, that evenin the quiver of her alarm she had taken in the unflattering details ofhis appearance--- his ordinary business overcoat, the blue silk mufflerabout his neck, and even the bespattered condition of his rubber shoes. For an instant she glanced uncertainly at Brady's immaculate eveningdress showing beneath his open fur-lined overcoat, and knowing her as hedid, Adams read her appreciation of the contrast as plainly as if it hadbeen written in her face. 

But he was not moved by the knowledge of her criticism, nor did it shakehim in the least from that penetrating vision he had attained. Theinstinct for battle was alive and quick within him--if Connie was to besaved he knew that he must fight single-handed with the powers of evilfor her soul. And fight he would--it was the end for which a man wasborn--that he might overcome and so justify the spirit about the brute. 

Her hand hung at her side, and taking it in his, he slipped it under hisarm with a possessive air, while she made to Brady some hurried excusesin a trembling voice. For a moment still she hung back, but Adams drewher gently with him, and after the first few steps, she recoveredherself and walked rapidly to the waiting carriage. Inside she shrankback immediately into a corner from which, when they had rolled off, shesent forth a nervous question. "What is it? Tell me what it is?" sheasked. 

The tremor that shook her limbs, her utter helplessness before him, touched his heart with a compassion beside which his old emotion for hershowed as a small and trivial thing. All that was divine in him awokeand responded to the horror that looked from her face, and he feltsuddenly that until this instant he had never loved her. Now she wasreally his because now she needed him; but for him she would standalone, deserted and afraid, in that future to which she had turned withsuch pitiable and childlike ignorance. She and the fight were both inhis hands, and he was bracing himself to resist until the end. 

"I'll tell you if you wish, " he said, "but you mustn't let it give you asleepless night. "

As they turned a corner an electric light flashed into the darkness ofthe carriage lighting up her blonde hair and the sparkling diamondswhich made her blue eyes look dull and lifeless. "It is--is it anythingabout money?" she asked with a movement toward him. 

"It's about nothing more important than that consummate ass you werewith, " he answered, laughing as he reached out and took her hand in hiswith a friendly pressure. "I've just found out that he's a blackguard, and I thought you were too precious to be left an instant longer in hiscompany. We must be careful, dear, " he added. "God knows I'll do my bestto help you--but we must be careful"

"Oh!" she cried out sharply, in a high voice. "Oh!" and she shrank fromhim as if he had hurt her by his touch. It was all she said, but theword quivered in his ears with a suppressed emotion. Was it thankfulnessfor her escape? he wondered, or was it anger at the part that he hadplayed?

PART II

ILLUSION

CHAPTER I

OF PLEASURE AS THE CHIEF END OF MAN

On the morning after his meeting with Adams, Arnold Kemper awoke atthree minutes of nine o'clock, and lay for exactly the three minutesthat were needed to make up the hour watching the hand as it moved onthe face of the bronze clock upon his mantel. The clock, like everythingin his rooms, was costly, a little ornate, and suggestive of an ownerwhose intention aimed frankly at the original. 

Lying in his large mahogany bedstead, with his body outstretched betweensoft yet crisply ironed linen sheets, and his head placed exactly in thecentre of the pillows, he waited, yawning, until the expected hourshould strike. If by an effort of will he could have put back the minutehand for another quarter of an hour he felt that it would have beenpleasant to doze off again, shutting his eyes to the sunlight whichstreamed through the window on the Turkish rug, and inhaling agreeablythe aroma of boiling coffee which reached him through the open door ofhis sitting-room. With the thought he closed his eyes, stretched himselfagain and clasped his hands sleepily above his head; then, withoutwarning, the clock struck in a deep, bronze-like tone, and with avigorous movement, he sprang out of bed, flung his dressing-gown acrosshis shoulders, and passed quickly to the cold plunge in hisdressing-room. When he reappeared there was a fresh, healthy glow in hisface, and the smile with which he knotted his green figured necktiebefore the mirror, stuck his black pearl scarf pin carefully in place, and twisted the short ends of his brown moustache, was that of a man whobegins his day in a blithe and friendly humour. 

In the dining-room, which opened from his sitting-room next door, hisbreakfast was already awaiting him, and beside his plate he foundseveral letters and the morning papers. He read the letters first, butwith a single exception they proved to be bills, and after glancing atthese with a suspicious frown he tossed them aside and turned to thelittle square white envelope, which contained an invitation to dine froma woman whom he detested because she bored him with domestic complaints. His heavy brows gathered darkly over his impatient gray eyes, and hepushed the mail carelessly away to make room for his coffee, to whichhis man was adding a precise amount of cream and sugar. 

"Don't let me forget to answer that, Wilkins, " he said, in an annoyedtone; "the response must be sent this afternoon, too, without fail. "

"I don't think you wrote the notes you spoke of yesterday, sir, "observed Wilkins, with an English accent and a manner of respectfulintimacy. 

"Hang it all! I don't believe I did, " returned Kemper, as he drew hischair up to the table and tapped his egg shell. "That comes of letting athing you hate to do go over. I say, Wilkins, if I attempt to leave thisroom before I've answered those letters, you're to restrain me byforce, do you hear?"

"Yes, sir; certainly, sir, " replied Wilkins, as he went out to bring inthe toast. 

Kemper laid his napkin across his knees, leaned comfortably back in hischair, and unfolded one of the morning papers beside his plate. As hedid so he expanded his lungs with a deep breath, while his glancetravelled rapidly to the column which contained the day's reports of thestock market. He knew already that the Chericoke Valley Central in whichhe had invested had jumped thirty points and was still advancing, but heread the printed statements with the exhaustless interest with which alover might return to a love letter he had already learned by heart. Hisfaith in the Chericoke Valley Central stock was strong, and he meant tokeep a close grip on it for some time to come. 

Turning a fresh page presently, his eyes wandered leisurely over thestaring headlines, and came suddenly to a halt before a trivial iteminserted among the Western news. It was a brief notice of his divorcedwife's marriage, and to his amazement the announcement caused him anannoyance that was almost like the ghost of a retrospective jealousy. Itwas quite evident to him that he did not want her for himself, yet hesuffered a positive displeasure at the thought that she should nowbelong to another man. After the ten years since they had separated wasshe still so "awfully splendid?" he wondered, had she kept her figure, which was long, athletic, with a military carriage, and did she stillwear her hair in the fashion of a German omelette? "Thank heaven I'mwell out of it at any rate, " he commented with feeling. "That comes of aman's marrying before he's twenty-five. He's turned cynic before he getsto forty"; and marriage appeared to him in his thoughts as a detestableand utterly boring institution, which interfered continually with aman's freedom and exacted from him a perpetual sociability. The mostblissful sensation he had ever known, he told himself, was that of hisrecovered liberty; then his sincerity of nature compelled him to anhonest contradiction--he had known one emotion more blissful still andthat was the madness which had prompted him to his unfortunate marriage. 

Oh, he had been very much in love without a doubt! and while he satpeacefully drinking his two cups of coffee, eating his two eggs and hisfour pieces of toast with orange marmalade, he remembered, with amelancholy which in no wise affected his appetite, the first occasionupon which he had kissed the woman who had been his wife. The memory ofher tall, erect figure, with its dashing military carriage, aroused inhim an agreeable and purely physical regret--the kind of regret which isstrong enough only to sweeten the knowledge of past pleasures; and headmitted with his accustomed frankness that if he had never kissed heragain he should probably have continued to regard her with a charming, if impractical, sentiment. But marriage had brushed off the bloom ofthat early romance; and as he recognised this, he felt a keen resentmentagainst nature which had cheated him into believing that the illusion oflove would not vanish at the first touch of reality. 

He had lived upon the surface of things and the surface had contented ifit had not satisfied him. It had never entered his thoughts to questionif he had had from life the best that it could offer, but he hadsometimes wondered, in moments of nervous exasperation against smallevents, why it was that there could be no end under the sun to a man'spursuit of the fugitive sensation. When he looked back now over thebreathless years of his life, he saw, almost with indignation, thatwhatever punishment fate had held in reserve for him, the avenger hadinevitably appeared in the form his own gratified desire. He hadwithheld his hand from nothing; the thing that he had wanted he hadtaken without question--impulse and possession had flowed for him with arhythmic regularity of movement--and yet in glancing back he could placehis finger upon no past events and say of them "this brought mehappiness--and this--and this. " In retrospect his pleasures showed cheapand threadbare--woven of perishable colours, of lost illusions--and hefelt suddenly that he had been cheated into a false valuation of life, that he had been deluded into a childish yet irretrievable error. 

As he sat there over his paper, he remembered his impatient early love, his ecstatic marriage, and then the long years during which he hadlived, as he put it to himself, in a "mortal funk" of the divorce court. Not moral obligation, but social cowardice, he admitted, had held him ina bondage from which his wife had at last liberated him by a singleblow. Well, it was all over! he heaved a sigh of relief, emptied hiscoffee cup, and dismissed the subject, with its oppressive train ofassociations, from his mind. 

But his temperamental blitheness had suffered in the chill ofrecollection, and he frowned down upon the staring headlines whichornamented the open page before him. His face, which recorded unerringlythe slightest emotional change through which he passed, grew suddenlyheavy and was over clouded by a momentary fit of gloom. He had not seen, had hardly thought of his former wife, once in the ten years since theirseparation, yet he found almost to his annoyance that the mere printedletters of her name reinvoked her image from the darkness in which hissentimental skeletons were laid. Two brief lines in a newspaper sufficedto produce her as an important factor in his present life. 

And despite this she was nothing to him, had no proper business in hismind. He tried to think of the other women whom he had loved andremembered, or of the more numerous ones still whom he had loved only toforget. Well, he had lived a man's life, and the deuce of it was thatwomen should have come into it at all. He had never wanted sentiment inthe abstract, he told himself half angrily; he was bored to death by thedeadly routine of what in his own mind he alluded to as "the business oflove. " It had always come to him without his sanction--even against hiswill, and he had never failed to combat the feeling with shallowcynicism, to exhaust it speedily in racing motors. There was nosatisfaction in sentiment, of this he was quite convinced; and heremembered the voice of Madame Alta, with her peculiar high note ofpiercing sweetness, which entered like wine and honey into his blood. The hold she still kept upon his senses through his memory wasstrengthened by the knowledge which fretted him to the admission thatshe had wearied first--that while her fascination was still potent towork its spell upon him, she had fled in a half lyric, half devilishpursuit of the flesh she worshipped. To live life thoroughly, to get outof it all that it contained of pleasure or of experience, this was thegerm of his applied philosophy; and it was only by some fortunate mentalpower of selection, some instinctive sense for comeliness, for awell-ordered, healthful physical existence, which had left him at theend of his forty years of pleasure with a perfectly sound and activemind and body. He himself was accustomed to declare that though he hadlived gayly, he had lived decently, too, and he was even inclined attimes to flatter his vanity rather upon the things which he had leftundone than upon those more evident achievements which had stamped himto his social world. A religious instinct, which was hardly definiteenough for a conviction, still survived in him, and it was entirelycharacteristic of the man that he should find cause for shame, notcongratulation, in his old relations with Madame Alta. 

The last remaining bit of toast and marmalade had vanished from hisplate, and as he never allowed himself more than his usual number ofslices, he carefully brushed the crumbs from his coat, and pushing backhis chair, rose from the table. The movement, slight as it was, servedto dispel his passing dejection, and as he gathered up his papers andpassed into the adjoining sitting-room, he smiled at Wilkins with suchgenial brightness that the man was almost deluded into attributing thechanged atmosphere to his own personal attentions instead of to theagreeable sensation following upon digestion. When he left thedining-room Kemper was already humming a little Italian air, and it wasnot until he was seated, with his cigar, in an easy chair upon hishearthrug, that he suddenly recognised the music as a favourite aria ofMadame Alta's. He had heard her sing it a hundred times, and he recallednow that she had a trick of throwing her head back as the notes issuedfrom her round, white throat, until her beautiful, though coarsenedface, was seen in an admirable foreshortening, while her eyes wereshadowed by her drooping lids, which were faintly tinted to look likerose-leaves. With the memory his expression was again overcast. Then apleased smile chased the heaviness from his eyes, for he rememberedsuddenly that he held a firm grip on the promising Chericoke ValleyCentral stock. He lighted his cigar, tossed the match into the emptyfireplace, and pushing the papers from his knees, relapsed for twentyminutes into an agreeable vacancy of mind. 

The room in which he sat was essentially a man's room, furnished forcomfort rather than for beauty, and one saw in it an unconsciousstriving after large effects, a disdain of useless bric-a-brac as ofsmall decorations. On the mantel the solitary ornament was an exquisitebronze figure of a wrestler at the triumphant instant when he subdueshis opponent, a spirited and virile study of the nude male figure, andjust above it hung a portrait in oils of Madame Alta, painted in a largeblack hat with a falling feather which shadowed the golden aureole ofher hair. Kemper seldom looked at the picture, and when he did so it waswith the casual glance he bestowed upon a piece of household furniture;his emotion had been so bound up with the concrete fact of a fleshlypresence that in the continued absence of the prima donna he had foundit difficult even to realise the condition of her unchanged existence. In his whole life the past had never engrossed him to the immediateexclusion of the present. 

When he had finished his cigar, he rose slowly to his feet, shookhimself with an energetic movement as if to settle his body morecomfortably in his clothes, and went into the hall to put on hisovercoat before going out. Here he was overtaken by a remonstrance fromWilkins. 

"You aren't going to the office, I hope, sir, until you've written thosenotes?"

Kemper stared at him silently an instant, one arm still in the sleeve ofthe overcoat he was putting on. 

"Oh, I say, Wilkins, I'll do them at the club, " he replied at last. 

Wilkins shook his head with decision written in every line of hissmooth-shaven English profile. He was faithful, he was evenaffectionate, but he had been in Kemper's service for fifteen years andhe knew his man. 

"You'd better get them off now, sir, " he urged in a persuasive voice, "it won't take you a minute, and unless I post them myself, they arelike to lie over. "

"Well, I suppose you'll have your way with me, Wilkins, " remarkedKemper, as he withdrew his arm from his overcoat, which his servantpromptly took from him. "Most people do, you know. " Then he turned backinto his sitting-room and placing himself at his desk, took up his penand accepted three invitations out of the round dozen he had to answer. This accomplished, the discreet Wilkins gave him his hat and coat andpermitted him to depart rapidly upon his way. 

By eleven o'clock he was due at the office of the Confidential LifeInsurance Company, of which he was one of the directors, and as hewalked toward Broadway with his brisk and energetic step, he kept hismind closely upon the business affairs which were immediately beforehim. This peculiar ability to concentrate his whole being upon a singleinstant, to apply himself with enthusiasm to the thing beneath his eyes, was the quality of all others which had worked most not only for hispresent worldly success, but for his personal happiness as well. When hecame out of his rooms the brief despondency of the morning had vanishedas utterly as if it had never been, and until his wife's name stared athim anew from a printed page, it was hardly probable that she wouldoccur again to his thoughts. A feeling of peace, of perfect charitypervaded his breast, and had he been asked on the spot for an expressionof his religious creed, he would, perhaps, have answered withouthesitation, "to live in pleasure and let live with pleasantness. "Naturally of a quick and humane heart there were moments when he felt anurgent desire to give out happiness, to add his proper share to thegeneral sum of earthly contentment. He was a man, in fact, who might beinfallibly counted on for the "generous thing, " provided always thatthe "generous thing" was also the thing which he found it agreeable toperform. In ancient Rome he would have been, without doubt, a popularpolitician, in Greece a Cyrenaic philosopher, in the Middle Ages achurchman conspicuous for his purple, and during the American Revolutiona believer in the cause that wore the most gold lace. It was not that hewas lacking in patriotism, but that his patriotism responded best to aspectacular appeal. 

At the luncheon hour, when he came out of his office to go to his club, he remembered that he had neglected to send roses to a woman with whomhe had dined the week before she went to a hospital for a seriousoperation, and though the stop delayed his luncheon for half an hour, heleft his car at the corner of Twenty-third Street to leave an order withhis florist. Then, after a simple meal, he put in a pleasant hour at theclub, during which he managed to interest a great occulist in a chap heknew who was threatened with blindness but too poor to pay for theoperation necessary to his recovery. It was this conversation thatrecalled to him a friend who was ill with pneumonia in chambers justaround the block, and he rushed off to enquire after him, before heattended to the unpacking of a new French motor car, and hurried to keepan engagement he had made with Gerty Bridewell to call on Laura Wilde. Aweek ago, when the engagement was made, he had been urgent with Gertyabout going, but now that the hour drew near he began to feel thenecessity of the visit to be a bore. Like all of his sensations, theimpression Laura had made upon him had been vivid but easily effaced, and he was almost surprised at the disappointment he felt when, uponreaching the house, he found that she was not at home. 

"It's too hard, " commented Gerty, standing upon the front steps andglancing wistfully up at him from under the white feathers in her hat, "but there's no help for it unless you care to call on Uncle Percival. "

"Uncle Percival?" he repeated, impatiently twirling his walking stick;"who's he?"

"He's a curiosity. "

"What kind of curiosity? A live one?"

She nodded. "The kind of curiosity that plays a flute. "

He began his descent of the steps, not replying until he stood with herupon the sidewalk before her carriage. "I might have put up with apoet, " he remarked with his foreign shrug, "but I'm compelled to drawthe line before a piper. "

"Well, I thought you would, " confessed Gerty, "or I shouldn't havesuggested it. "

"It seems, by the way, to be a family that runs to talent, " he laughed, while she paused a moment before entering her carriage. 

"I don't know that Uncle Percival is exactly a person of talent, " sheobserved, "he plays very badly, I believe. Can't I drop you somewhere?Do let me. "

He shook his head with a quizzical humour. "To tell the truth horsesmake me nervous, " he returned. "I'm afraid of them--You never know whatintentions they have in mind. No, I'll walk, thank you. " His gaze wason her and she saw his eyes flash with admiration of her beauty. 

"Oh, your dreadful, soulless automobiles!" she exclaimed, with disgust. "By the way, Laura hates them--she says they have the devil's energywithout his intellect. "

He laughed indifferently. "Does she? I'll teach her better. "

Gerty looked back to protest as she stepped into her carriage. "Butyou'll never have a chance, " she said. 

"I'll make one, " he persisted, gayly. 

From the midst of her fur rugs she leaned out with a provoking littlelaugh, while he watched her green eyes narrow in an arch and fascinatingmerriment. "What would you say if I told you she was at home all thetime?" she asked. Then before he could remonstrate or reply, she rolledoff leaving him transfixed and questioning upon the sidewalk. 

Was Laura Wilde really at home? The suspicion piqued him into acuriosity he could not satisfy, and because he could not satisfy it hefound himself dwelling with a reawakened interest upon the woman who hadavoided him. If she had in truth refused to receive his visit it couldmean only that she entertained a dislike for his presence, and for adislike so evident there must be surely some foundation either in factor in intuition. No woman, so far as he could remember--and so unusualan occurence would not easily have slipped his memory--had ever begunhis acquaintance with a distinctly expressed aversion, and the verystrangeness of the experience was not without attraction for his eagerand dominant temperament. What a queer little oddity she was, hethought as he glanced up at the grave old house before turning rapidlyaway--as light and sensitive as thistle-down, as vivid as flame. Hetried to recall her delicately distinguished figure and profound darkeyes, but her charming smile seemed to come between him and herfeatures, and her face was obscured for him in a mysterious radiance. Her features taken in themselves were plain, he supposed, certainly theywere not beautiful, yet of her whole appearance his memory held only thefervent charm of her expression. It was a face with a soul in it, hethough--all the mystery of flame and of shadow was in her smile, so whatmattered the mere surface modelling or the tinting of the skin which wasless ivory than pale amber. An hour ago he had been absolutelyindifferent, almost forgetful of her existence, but his vanity if nothis heart was stung now into an emotion which had in it something of theprimitive barbarian ardour of pursuit. He cared nothing--less thannothing--for Laura Wilde herself, yet it was not in his nature that heshould suffer in silence before a sudden and unreasonable affront. 

Some hours later, when he sat with Adams at dinner, the subject occurredto him again, and he broke in upon a discussion of the varied fortunesof their fellow classmen to allude directly to the cause of hisinquietude. 

"By the way, I had the pleasure of meeting a protegée of yours the otherafternoon, " he said. 

Adams met the remark with his whimsical laugh. "Of mine? Thank heaven Ihaven't any, " he retorted, "but I suppose you mean young Trent, who hasjust come up from Virginia. "

"I've heard something of him from Mrs. Bridewell, I believe, " answeredKemper across the centrepiece of red carnations, "but I haven't met himas yet--I was thinking of Miss Wilde when I spoke. I wish you'd try thissherry--it's really first rate--I brought it over myself. "

When Wilkins had filled his glass, Adams lifted it against the light andlooked at the colour of the wine a moment before drinking. "Firstrate--I should say so. It's exquisite, " he observed as he touched it tohis lips in answer to Kemper's glance of enquiry. "Yes, she's done somerather fine things, " he resumed presently, returning to the subject ofLaura, "but she'll hardly make a popular appeal, I fancy, unless sheturns her talent to patriotic airs. The only poetry we tolerate to-dayis the poetry that serves some definite material purpose--it must eithersend us into battle or set us to building churches. The simple spirit ofcontemplation we've come to regard as a pauperising habit and it puts usout of patience. Great poetry grows out of quiet and nobody is quiet anylonger--a thought no sooner creeps into our head than we begin to talkabout it at the top of our voice. "

The branched candlestick at the end of the table shed a glimmering, pearly light upon his face, and Kemper, as he watched him critically, was struck suddenly by the fact that Adams was no longer young. He couldnot be over forty, yet his features had the drawn and pallid look of aman who has known, not only ill health, but the shock of emotionalcatastrophes. Physically he appeared worn to the point of exhaustion, but if there was pathos in the slight, elastic figure, there was also animpression of power for which the other found it impossible to account. By mere bodily force Kemper could have thrown Adams from the window withone hand, he realised with a perfectly amiable self-congratulation--yetin Adams' presence he invariably felt himself to be the weakerman, and the attitude he unconsciously adopted showed an almostboyish recognition of a superior intelligence. Something in RogerAdams--a quality which was neither brute strength nor imperiouspersonality--exerted a power which Kemper generously admitted to begreater even than these. Nothing in the man was conspicuous--heexercised no dominant magnetism--but the invisible spirit whichcontrolled his life, controlled also, in a measure, the thoughts ofthose who came directly beneath his influence. Was it true, Kemper nowwondered, as Perry Bridewell had once declared with unspeakable mirth, that the thing he liked in Adams was, after all, merely simple goodnessin a manifest form? Goodness in a masculine personality had alwaysappeared to Kemper to be ridiculously out of place--a masqueradingfeminised virtue--but at this instant as he drank to Adams' healthacross the carnations, he felt again the power of an attraction whichpossessed a sweetness that made his past "wine and honey" sicken in hismemory. "Is it possible that what I admire in this man is the quality Ihave laughed at all my life?" he found himself asking suddenly; and thepower of self-restraint, the grace of denial, the strength which coulddo without, though it could not take the thing it wanted, the quietnessof sacrifice, the sweetened humour that is learned only in sorrow--theseshowed to him at the moment in a singularly new and vivid light. "I knownothing of his life except that he has had courage, " he thought again, "yet because of this one thing--and because, too, of a quality which Irecognise, though I cannot name it, I would trust him sooner than anyman or woman whom I know--sooner, by Jove, than I would trust myself. "Among his many generous traits was the ability to appreciate keenlywhere he could not follow, to apprehend almost instinctively the finerattributes of the spirit, and though he himself preferred the pleasuresof the senses to the vaguer comforts of philosophy, he was not without aprofound admiration for the man who, as he believed, had deliberatelychosen to forfeit the joy of life. Roger Adams impressed him to-night asa peculiarly happy man--not with the hectic happiness he himself hadsought--but with a secure, a reposeful, an indestructiblepossession--the happiness which comes not through the illusion ofdesire, but which is bound up in the peace of an eternal reconciliation. The man beyond the carnations, he knew by an intuition surer thanknowledge, had never even for an hour dallied in the primrose path wherehis own pursuit of delight had begun and ended--he could not imagineAdams' control yielding to a fleeting impulse of passion--yet had notthe very power he recognised come to his friend in the stony placesthrough which he had been constrained to walk with God? Sitting thereKemper was brought suddenly for the first time in his life face to facewith the profoundest truth that lies hidden in the deeps ofknowledge--that renunciation may become the richest experience in theconsciousness of man; that to renounce for the sake of goodness is notmerely to refrain from sin but to achieve virtue; and that he who givesup his happiness and is still happy has gained not only the beauty ofhis forfeited joys, but has added to his own a strength that is equal tothe strength of his unfulfilled desire. Kemper had always believedhimself strong because he had attained, yet he knew now that Adams wasstronger than he inasmuch as he had gone without for the sake of his ownsoul. 

From his reflections, which were dimly like these, Kemper came backabruptly to his memory of Laura. "Do you know, " he said, speaking tohimself rather than to his companion, "that she really interests me verymuch indeed. "

"Well, she is interesting, " laughed Adams, "in spite of the fact thatPerry finds her rather dull. He complains that she doesn't talk like abook, which is a trifle odd when you consider that he has never readone. "

"What I like about her is that she's different, " said Kemper. "She is, isn't she?"

"Different from other people? Yes, I dare say she is, but all the Wildesare that, you know. She comes of an eccentric stock. Did you ever happento meet her aunt, Mrs. Payne?"

Kemper nodded as he leaned forward to make a division in the centre ofthe intervening carnations, "The old lady who looks like a chorus girlin her dotage? Yes, I've had the pleasure and I found her decidedlybetter than she looked. Her husband, by the way, is a great old chap, isn't he? He held the biggest share in iron last spring and I guess hehas made a pretty figure. "

"He's a philosopher who got into the stock market by mistake, " observedAdams. "I believe he would have been perfectly happy if he could haveowned a single farm, a cow or two and a pair of horses to his plough, but he's condemned to bear the uncongenial weight of millions, and Ihear that he has even to give his charities in secret. I never look athim that I don't think of Marcus Aurelius oppressed by the burden of thewhole Roman Empire. "

Kemper was peeling a pear, which he had taken from a dish upon thetable, and he laid down his knife for a moment to push aside his cup ofcoffee. 

"Has he any children?" he asked abruptly. 

"Two--both sons and gay young birds, I'm told. "

"Then Miss Wilde will hardly come in for a share of the burden?"

"Hardly. The sons will probably dissipate a good half of it before itreaches them. "

"It's a pity, " said Kemper thoughtfully; and having finished his pear, he dipped his fingers in his finger bowl, moistened his short moustache, and turned to take a cigar from the little silver tray which Wilkinsheld before him. "Do you know I can't imagine a greater happiness thanthe quick accumulation of wealth, " he observed in his hearty voice. 

Adams laughed aloud with a merriment that was almost boyish. "Well, Idare say you come in for your part of it, " he returned, while heflicked the ashes from his cigar. 

"I?" Kemper shook his head without a smile. "Oh, I accumulate nothingexcept habits. I make and I spend--I win and I lose--and on my word I'mno richer to-day than I was ten years ago. I've made a fortune in aday, " he added regretfully, "to lose it in an hour. "

A glow had sprung to his face, and as he spoke he leaned his elbow onthe table, and closing his eyes inhaled the delicious aroma of hiscigar. Finance interested him always--wealth in its material mass had atremendous attraction for him, and he loved not only the sound offigures but the clink of coin. Though he was a lavish liver when itsuited his impulses, the modern regard for money as a concretepossession--a personal distinction--was strong in his blood; but here, as in other ways, he was redeemed from positive vulgarity by the verycandour with which he confessed his weakness. He drifted presently intostocks, and they sat talking until eleven o'clock, when Adams, afterglancing in surprise at the hour, remarked, with a laugh, that he hadforgotten he no longer boasted the constitution of his college days. Ithad been a pleasant evening to both, and as Kemper threw off his coat alittle later, he found himself reflecting, not without wonder, that thequiet--the absolute inaction of the last few hours had refreshed ratherthan bored him. On the whole he was inclined to admit that he likedAdams better than any man he knew--liked his assured self-possession, his indifference to small creature comforts; liked, too, the quiettolerance which characterised his human relations--and he impulsivelydetermined that he would arrange to see him often during the next fewyears. It was time now, he concluded with an admirable midnightresolution, while he struggled in exasperation to unfasten his collar, that he himself should begin to pay a due regard to his health--torestrict his indulgences; and he drew an agreeable picture of theconsolation that Adams' friendship might afford to an abstemious man ofmiddle age. "By Jove--confound this button--there, I've twisted it likethe deuce--by Jove, it is refreshing to be thrown with a chap who isinterested in something besides women and horses--who finds otherobjects--or subjects if you choose--suffice for his entertainment. " Forthe first time in his life he found himself wishing regretfully that atleast a share of his own enjoyments had assumed a character whichbelonged less exclusively to the external world. The joy in knowledge, the delight in contemplation were unknown to him, though he was dimlyaware that for another man they might prove to be an unfailing, apermanent solace. But his virtues were the magnificent virtues of theanimal, and amid the many warring impulses of the body there was butlittle room for a more gracious development of the soul. He had livedfor the world and the world had repaid him as she repays all her loverswith the fruit which is rarely bitter before the fortieth year. 

Adams, meanwhile, had walked rapidly home, thinking with enthusiasm thatKemper was a thoroughly good fellow. His social pleasures were few, andhe had enjoyed the fine wine and the choice cigars as a man enjoys ataste for luxury which he seldom gratifies. He had expected to findConnie still out, but to his surprise there was a sound on the staircaseas he entered the front door, and she came rapidly to meet him, herblonde hair hanging upon her shoulders and the soiled white silkdressing-gown she wore trailing on the carpeted steps behind her. 

"I was all alone and I've been so frightened, " she said with a sob. 

He took her hand, which felt dead and cold, and grasped it warmly whilehe turned to fasten the outer door. 

"Why, I thought you were at the theatre, " he responded. "I've been todine with Kemper, but heaven knows I'd have stayed at home if you'd toldme you meant to keep me company. "

A shudder ran through her, and he saw when he turned to look at her, that her face was pinched and blue as if from cold. In her white gown, under her tangled fair hair, she had a ghastly look like one justawakened from a fearful dream. But she was very little--so little in herterror and her blighted prettiness that his heart contracted as it wouldhave done at the sight of a suffering child. 

"I say, little girl, what is it all about?" he asked gently, and as sheswayed unsteadily, he put his arm around her and drew her against hisside. "Wait a minute while I turn out the light, " he added cheerfully, pressing the electric button with his free hand. Then holding her closerin a steadying support, they ascended together the darkened staircase. 

"I went to the theatre, but I was so ill I couldn't stay, " she said, andhe felt the heavy breaths that laboured through the thin figure withinhis arm. "Oh, I am in agony--in agony and I am so afraid. "

She began crying in loud, uncontrollable sobs as a child cries when itis hurt, protesting that she was afraid--that she was fearfully afraid. He felt her terror struggling like a live thing within her--like animprisoned animal that could not find an escape into the light. Herhysteria was almost akin to madness, and the form it took was one of ablind presentiment of evil--as if she felt always in the air about herthe presence of an invisible, unspeakable horror. Half dragging, halfcarrying her, he crossed the hall to her room, and laid her upon thebed, which was tumbled as if she had lain tossing wildly there forhours. Every electric jet was blazing high, and Connie's evening clotheswere lying in a huddled heap upon the floor. There was a sickening smellof perfume in the room, and he saw that she had broken a bottle ofextract and spilled its contents upon the carpet. 

"Tell me what it is--tell me, Connie, " he commanded, rather thanpleaded, sitting beside the bed and laying his hand upon her shudderingbody. 

"It is nothing--but it is everything, " she gasped, clutching his handwith fingers which were cold and moist. "I am not in pain--at least notphysically, but I feel--I believe--I know that I am going mad. I seehorrible things and I can't keep them away--I can't--I can't. They comein flashes--in coloured flashes, all red and green, and there issomething dreadful about to happen to me. Oh, don't let it, don't letit!"

She clung to him, shuddering, sobbing, imploring, moaning again that shewas afraid, beseeching him to keep off the horror--not to let it comeany nearer--not to let it look her in the eyes. The spasm ended at lastin a wild burst of tears, while she shrieked out frantically in a terrorthat was pitiable and abject. Her hallucinations seemed to have gotentirely beyond the control of reason, and as she crouched, with drawnup knees and quivering arms, among the pillows she looked like somesmall helpless, distracted mortal in the grasp of the avenging furies. At the moment she seemed to him less his wife than his child. 

"Listen to me, Connie, " he said presently in a voice whose quietauthority silenced for an instant her despairing moans. "You haven't atrouble on earth that I am not willing to share and I am sharing this--Ihave made it mine this very minute. Whatever there is to face, I'll faceit for you, so get this into your head and go to sleep. Nothing can getto you--neither man nor devil--until it has first passed by me. There, now--don't sob so; don't, you'll hurt yourself. There's nothing to cryabout--it's all a false alarm. "

"I'm so afraid, " she repeated over and over again, as she clung to him. "Promise not to leave me an instant--not to take your hands off of me. If I am left alone again I shall die of fear. "

"You shall not be alone, I swear it, " he answered with cheerfulassurance. "Lie quiet and I'll sit here the whole blessed night if it'sany comfort. "

"It is a comfort, " she answered; and her words entered his ears with apiercing sweetness, which was not unlike the sweetness of love. Love itwas indeed, he knew now, but a love so sexless, so dispassionate thatits joys were like the joys of religion. The tenderness that flooded hisbreast was less the emotion of man for woman than of the soul for thesoul, and the wife whom he had ceased to love in the world's way wasnearer to him, more closely, more divinely his, than she had been in thehour of his greatest ecstasy. The appeal she made to him now, lyingthere helpless, distraught and unlovely, was an appeal which is woven ofthe strongest fibres in the heart of man--the appeal to the immortalsoul to arise and discover its immortality. Connie cried out to him tosave her--to save her from the world, from herself, from the hoveringpowers of evil, and he knew now that his joy in the hour of hersalvation would be as the joy of the angels in heaven. He would fightfor her as he had never fought for his own life, and he felt suddenlythat there was nothing upon the earth nor in the sky that was strongenough to contend against the power of his compassion. All lesserdesires or emotions shrank before it and vanished utterly away--hisambition, his longing for health wherewith to work, the increasingardour of his love for Laura--these were as naught before the bond whichunited him to the terrified, small soul that trembled beneath his hands. And immediately that goodness at which Kemper or Perry Bridewell wouldhave laughed--the goodness which is spirit, which both builds anddestroys, which knows no law except the divine law of its own being; inwhich there is neither the whitened surface nor the loudself-glorification of the Pharisee--the goodness which is a pure flame, a consuming passion--this appeared to his eyes in all its alluringbeauty. The way of it was hard, he knew, a way of service, ofself-sacrifice, and yet the one way of happiness as well. This lesson hehad learned from himself--for it is the thing that no man can teachanother--and because it had come to him from himself he knew that it hadcome to him from God. 

"I made a plan on the way home to-night, " he said, keeping his firmtouch upon her throbbing temples. "To-morrow I shall arrange for afortnight's absence at the office and the next day I'll take you South. There you'll stay out of doors and get well again. The flesh will comeback to your body and the colour to your cheeks. 

"I shall never be pretty again--never, " she moaned, as he held her. 

"Nonsense. You're a trifle pale and fagged that's all--but we'll haveyou a beauty again before two weeks are up. "

And so through the long night he sat with his touch, which compelledquiet, upon her body, for when, after she had fallen at last into afitful slumber, he arose and lowered the lights, she started up with ascream and called out that she was "alone--fearfully alone!" Then, as hereturned to his chair, she reached for him in the darkness and clungdesperately to his outstretched arm, drawing it presently across hershoulders until she lay as if shielded by the soothing familiarpresence. 

CHAPTER II

AN ADVANCE AND A RETREAT

It was the day after this, while Laura was still in Kemper's thoughts, that he ran across her as she came out of a church in Twenty-ninthStreet. At the first glance she appeared a little startled, but thedisturbance was so slight that it passed swift as a shadow across herface, and the next instant the illumining smile which he had thought ofas her one memorable beauty shone from her eyes and lips. 

"At first I hardly recognised you, " she explained, "you don't look quiteas I remembered you. "

His amused glance lingered upon her face. "So you did remember me?" hesaid and the retort was so characteristic of the man that GertyBridewell would have paused waiting for it after she had spoken. Ifthere was the smallest loophole apparent in the conversation throughwhich the personal intention might be made to enter, he took to it asinstinctively as the fox takes to the covert. The mere uttered wordswere what he might have responded to any woman who unconsciously gavehim the opportunity, yet as he looked down upon Laura, in her velvet hatand black furs, at his side, he was filled with amazement at theinterest aroused in him by her slender, though delicately suggestivefigure. He felt the magnetic touch of her through the very flutter ofher skirts--felt the fervour of her soul, the warmth of her personality, and he found himself attracted by her as by the mystery of a bright anddistant flame. The intensity of life--the radiant energy ofintellect--was in her look, in her voice, in her smile--and he knewinstinctively that she was capable of larger issues--of higher heightsand deeper depths--than any woman he had ever known. She puzzled himinto a sympathy which quickened with each fresh instant of uncertainty, and it seemed to him, while she moved by his side, that the illusion ofmystery was the one perennial charm a woman could possess--a mysterywhich lay not only in the flame and shadow of her expression, but in theintenser irregularities of her profile, in the curved darkness of hereyebrows, in the fulness of her mouth, in the profound eloquence of hereyes, in the pale amber of her skin, which was like porcelain touched bya flame, in her gestures, in her walk, in her delicate bosom and slenderswaying hips, in her voice, her hands, her words, and in the blacknessof her abundant hair braided low upon the nape of her slender neck. Andthis illusion--stronger than the illusion of beauty because more subtle, more tantalisingly inexplicable, caught and held his attention with avivid and irresistible appeal. 

At his words she had turned toward him with an animated gesture, whileher hand in its white glove slipped from the large muff she held. 

"It would be a poor memory that could not hold three days, " she laughed. 

"Three days?" He raised his eyebrows with a blithe interrogation whichlent a peculiar charm to his expression. "Why, I thought that I hadknown you forever!"

She shook her head in a merry protest, though she felt herself flushslowly under the gay deference in his eyes. 

"Forever is a long day. There are few people that it pays to knowforever. "

"And how do you know that you are not one of them--for me?" he asked. 

"How do I know?" she took up the question in a voice which even in herlightest moments was not without a quality of impassioned earnestness. "The one infallible way of knowing anything is to know it without reallyknowing how or why one knows. My intuitions, you see, are my deeperwisdom. "

"And what do your intuitions have to say in regard to me?"

"Only, " she responded, smiling, "that it would be dangerous for us toattempt an acquaintance that should last forever. "

"Dangerous!" the word excited his imagination and he felt the sting ofit in his blood. "What harm do you think would come of it?"

"The harm that always comes of the association between opposites, " sheanswered quickly, and the laughter, he was prompt to notice, had diedfrom her voice, "the harm of endless disagreements, of lost illusions. "

"Why should our illusions, if we were so fortunate as to have them, inevitably be lost?" he asked, provoked into an assurance of hisinterest by the serene disinclination she displayed. 

"Because they invariably are if they are illusions?" she responded, "and you and I could never be absolute realities to each other, since toreach the reality in a person one must not only apprehend but comprehendas well. I doubt if there can be any permanent friendship between peoplewho are totally unlike. "

Half angrily he swung the stick he carried at his side. "Then whatbecomes of the attraction of opposites?" he insisted. 

"A catastrophe usually, " she returned. 

Her composed indifference irritated him more than he was willing toadmit even to himself. Never in his recollection had he encountered awoman who showed so marked a disinclination for his society; and thewonder of her avoidance challenged him into the exercise of the personalmagnetism he had always found so invincible in its attraction. Had shemet his advances with unaffected feminine eagerness, he would haveparted, probably, from her at the next corner, but her politeindifference kept him, though indignant, still at her side. Of adulationhe was weary, but a positive aversion promised a new and exhilaratingexperience of life. 

"But why are you so sure that we are opposites?" he enquired presently. 

"How am I sure that you prefer fair women--and adore an ample beauty?"she retorted lightly. "My intuitions again!"

"Your intuitions are so numerous that they must be sometimes wrong, " heremarked. 

"Oh, my intuitions are helped out by Gerty's observation, " she laughedin response. 

"Ah, I see, " he said: and it seemed to him that he understood now heropen avoidance, her barely concealed dislike, and the distant reticencewhich made her appear to him as remote as a star. Gerty had whispered ofhis affairs--perhaps of Madame Alta, and in Laura's unworldly vision hisdelinquencies had showed strangely distorted and out of drawing. Hisanger blazed up within him, yet he knew that the attraction of the womanbeside him was increased rather than diminished by his resentment. 

"So my pretty cousin has given me a bad character, " he observed, and hisannoyance roughened his usually genial voice. 

"On the other hand she admires you very much, " Laura hastened to assurehim; "she sings your praises with unflagging energy. "

"Then, this, I suppose, you have counted a curse to me, " he quoted alittle bitterly. 

As she walked beside him she felt the contact of the nervous irritationshe had provoked, and she found suddenly that almost in spite of herselfshe was rejoicing in the masculine quality of his presence--in hismuscular strength, in the vibrant tones of his voice and in the ardentvitality with which he moved. But the force of his personality was aforce against which she felt that she would struggle until the end. 

"I'm not sure about the curse, " she answered, "but Gerty's heroes andmine are rarely the same, you know. "

"Then, I suppose, it's virtue that you are after, " he remarked. 

She looked gravely up at him before she bowed her head in assent. "Ilike virtue, " she responded quietly. "Don't you?"

"God knows, I do, " he replied without hesitation in the grandiloquenttone he loved to assume upon occasions. "But do you think, " he addedpresently, "that a man can acquire virtue unless it has been born inhim?"

"I think it is another name for wisdom, " she replied, "and that is oftenfound late and in hard places. "

He looked at her with an attention which had become absorbed, exclusive. "Do you know, I thought virtue was what women didn't care about in men?"he said, and his voice was tense with curiosity. 

"Perhaps you mistake the conventions for virtue, " she rejoined; "menusually do. " Then after a moment she added frankly, "But I know verylittle of what women like or don't like. I've never really known but twobesides my aunts--and one of these is Gerty. "

"And you are very fond of Gerty?" he enquired. 

As she looked up at him it seemed to him that her smile was a miracle oflight. "I love her more than anyone in the whole world, " she said. 

Again she perplexed him, and with each fresh perplexity he was consciousof an increasing desire to understand. "But I thought all women hatedone another, " he observed. 

"That's because men have ruled the world in two ways, " she returned, andher protest was not without a smothered indignation; "they have made thelaws and they have made the jokes. "

Her championship of her sex amused even while it attracted him--he sawin it a kind of abstract honour which he had always believed to belacking in the feminine mind--and at the same instant he remembered therancorous jealousy which had controlled Madame Alta's relations withother women, the petty stings he had seen dealt at Gerty by her lesslovely acquaintances, and the thousand small insincerities he heardaround him every day. The very enthusiasm with which she spoke, theintensity in her face, the decision in her voice, impressed him in amanner for which he was utterly unprepared. In the world in which hemoved an enthusiasm which was not at the same time an affectation wouldhave appeared awkwardly out of place. Women whom he knew werevivaciously excited over their winnings or losses at bridge whist, buthe could not recall that he had ever seen a single one of them stirredto utterance by any impersonal question of injustice. To be sure therewere charitable ones among them, he supposed, but he had always tendedby a kind of natural selection toward the conspicuously fair, and theconspicuously fair had proved invariably to be the secretly selfish aswell. His social life appeared to him now, as he walked by Laura's side, to have been devoid of sincerity as of intelligence, and he recalledwith disgust the exquisite empty voice of Madame Alta, her lyricsensuality, and the grossness of her affairs with her many lovers. Wasit the after taste of bitterness in his "wine and honey" which caused itto turn suddenly nauseous in his remembrance?

"And so women can really like one another without jealousy?" hequestioned, laughing. 

"What is there to be jealous of?" she retorted quickly. "For after allone is one's self, you know, and not another. Gerty is beautiful and Iam not, but her loveliness is as keen a delight to me as it is toher--keener, I think, for she is sometimes bored with it and I never am. And she is more than this, too, for she is as devoted--as loyal as sheis lovely. "

"To you--yes, " he answered slowly, for he was thinking of the Gerty whomhe had known--of her audacious cynicism, her startling frankness, hersuggestive coquetry. Was it possible that this creature of red and whiteflesh, of sweetness and irony, was really a multiple personality--thepossessor of divers souls? Had he seen only the surface of her becauseit was to the surface alone that he had appealed? Or was it that Laura'screative instinct had builded an image out of her own ideals which shehad called by Gerty's name? He did not know--he could not even attemptto answer--but the very confusion of his thoughts strengthened theemotional interest which Laura had aroused. And as each new and vividsensation effaces from the mind every impression that has gone beforeit, so at this moment, in the ardent awakening of his temperament, thereexisted no memory of the past occasions upon which other women hadallured as irresistibly his inflamed imagination. So far as hisimmediate reflections were concerned Laura might have been the solitarywoman upon a solitary planet. If he had paused to remember he might haverecalled that he had fallen in love with the girl whom he afterwardmarried between the sunset and the moonrise of a single day--that hispassion for Madame Alta leaped, full armed, into being during hersinging of the balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet"--but he did not pauseto remember, for with that singular forgetfulness which characterisesthe man of pleasure, the present sensation, however small, was stillsufficient to lessen the influence of former loves. 

They strolled slowly down to Gramercy Park, and this time, as they stoodtogether before her door, she asked him, flushing a little, if he wouldnot come inside. 

"I only wish I could, " he answered, taking out his watch, "but I'vepromised to meet a man at the club on the stroke of five. If you'llextend the privilege, however, I'll take advantage of it before manydays. "

His words ended in a laugh, but she felt a moment afterward, as sheentered the house and he turned away, that he had looked at her as noman had ever done in her life before. She grew hot all over as shethought of it, yet there had been nothing to resent in his easy freedomand she was not angry. The gay deference was still in his eyes, butbeneath it she had been conscious for an instant that the whole magneticcurrent of his personality flowed to her through his look. That theglance he had bent upon her was one of his most effective methods ofimpressing his individuality she did not know. Gerty could have told herthat he resorted to it invariably at the psychological instant--and so, perhaps, could Madame Alta had she chosen to be confidential. As aconscious or unconscious trick of manner it had served its purpose inmany a place when words appeared a difficult or dangerous medium ofexpression--but to Laura in her almost cloistral ignorance it was atonce a revelation and an enlightenment. When it passed from her shefound that the face of the whole world was changed. 

Indoors Mr. Wilberforce and Gerty Bridewell were awaiting her, but itseemed to her that her attitude toward them had grown lessintimate--that she herself, her friends, and even the ordinarysurroundings of her life were different from what they had been onlyseveral hours before. She wanted to be alone--to retreat into herself insearch of a clearer knowledge, and even her voice sounded strangelyaltered in her own ears. 

"You look as if you had been frightened, Laura; what is it?" askedGerty, pressing her hand. 

"It is nothing, " returned Laura, with a glance; "it is only that my headaches. " She pressed her hands upon her temples, and the throbbing of herpulses against her finger tips confirmed her words. When, after a fewsympathetic questions, they rose to go, she was aware all at once of agreat relief--a relief which seemed to her an affront to friendship sodevoted as theirs. 

"Roger tells me that we are to have the new book on Wednesday, " said Mr. Wilberforce, as he stood looking down upon her with the peculiar insightwhich belongs to the affection of age. Then it seemed to her suddenlythat he understood the cause of her disturbance and that there were bothpity and disappointment in his eyes. 

"I hope so, " she answered, smiling the first insincere smile of herlife, for even as she uttered the words she knew that she no longer feltthe old eager, consuming interest in her work, and that the making ofbooks appeared to her an employment which was tedious and without end. Why, she wondered vaguely, had she devoted her whole life to a pursuitin which there was so little of the pulsation of the intenser realities?She felt at the instant as if a bandage had dropped from before hereyes, and the fact that Kemper as an individual did not enter into herthoughts in no wise lessened his tremendous moral effect upon herawakening nature. Not one man, but life itself was making its appeal toher, and for the first time she realised something of the intoxicationthat might dwell in pleasure--in pleasure accepted solely as a pursuit, as an end in and for itself alone. Then, a moment later, standing by herdesk in her room upstairs, she remembered, in an illuminating flash, thelook with which Kemper had parted from her at her door. 

CHAPTER III

THE MOTH AND THE FLAME

Several weeks after this, on the day that Trent's first play wasaccepted, he dropped in to Adams' office, where the editor was busilygiving directions about the coming _Review_. 

"I know you aren't in a mood for interruptions, " began the younger man, in a voice which, in spite of his effort at control, still quivered witha boyish excitement, "but I couldn't resist coming to tell you thatBenson has at last held out his hand. I'm to be put on in the autumn. "

Adams laid down the manuscript upon which he was engaged, and turnedwith the winning smile which Trent had grown to look for and to love. 

"Well, that is jolly news, " he said heartily, "you know without mysaying so that there is no one in New York who is more interested inyour success than I am. We'll make a fine first night of it. "

"That's why I dropped in to tell you, " responded Trent, while hisyouthful enthusiasm made Adams feel suddenly as old as failure. "I cameabout a week ago, by the way, but that shock-headed chap at the doortold me you were out of town. "

Adams nodded as he picked up the manuscript again. 

"I took Mrs. Adams south, " he replied. "Her health had given way. "

"So I heard, but I hope she's well again by now?"

"Oh, she's very much better, but one never knows, of course, how longone can manage to keep one's health in this climate. I hate to make youhurry off, " he added, as the other rose from his chair. 

"I want to carry my good news to Miss Wilde, " rejoined Treat. "Do youknow, she was asking about you only the other day. "

"Is that so? I've hardly had time for a word with her for three weeks. Mrs. Adams has not been well and I've kept very closely at home eversince I got back. Will you tell her this from me? It's a nuisance, isn'tit, that life is so short one never has time, somehow, for one's realpleasures? Now, Laura Wilde is one of my real pleasures, " he pursued, with his quiet humour, "so when there's a sacrifice to be made, itsalways the pleasure instead of the business that goes overboard. Oh, it's a tremendous pity, of course, but then so many things are that, youknow, and its confoundedly difficult, after all, to edit a magazine andstill keep human. "

The winning smile shone out again, and Treat noticed how it transfiguredthe worn, sallow face under the thin brown hair. 

"Well, you may comfort yourself with the reflection that it's easy to behuman but hard to edit a magazine, " laughed the younger man, adding, ashe went toward the door and paused near the threshold, "I haven't seenyou, by the way, since Miss Wilde's last poems are out. Don't you agreewith me that her 'Prelude' is the biggest thing she's done as yet?"

"The biggest--yes, but there's no end to my belief in her, you know, "said Adams. "She'll live to go far beyond this, and I'm glad to see thather work is winning slowly. Every now and then one runs across a rareadmirer. "

"And she is as kind as she is gifted, " remarked Trent fervently. Then hemade his way through the assistant editors in the outer office, andhastened with his prodigious news to Gramercy Park. 

Laura was alone, and after sending up his name he followed the servantto her study on the floor above, where he found her working with apencil, as she sat before a brightly burning wood fire, over amanuscript which he saw to his surprise was not in verse. At his glanceof enquiry she smiled and laid the typewritten pages carelessly aside. 

"No, it's not mine, " she said. "They're several short stories which Mr. Kemper did many years ago, and he's asked me to look over them. I find, by the way, that they need a great deal of recasting. "

"Is it possible, " he exclaimed in amazement, "that you allow people tobore you with stuff like that?"

The smile which flickered almost imperceptibly across her lips mystifiedhim completely, and he drew his chair a little nearer that he mightbring himself directly beneath her eyes. 

"Oh, well, I don't mind it once in a while, " she returned, "though hehasn't in the very least the literary sense. "

"But I wasn't aware that you even knew him, " he persisted, puzzled. 

"It doesn't take long to know some people, " she retorted gayly; then asher eyes rested upon his face, she spoke with one of her sympatheticflashes of insight: "You've come to bring me good news about the play, "she said. "Benson has accepted it--am I not right?"

"I'm jolly glad to say you are!" he assented with enthusiasm. "It willbe put on in the autumn and Benson has suggested Katie Hanska for theleading rôle. "

His voice died out in a joyous tremor, and he sat looking at her withall the sparkles in his young blue eyes. 

"I am glad, " said Laura, and she stretched out her hand, which closedwarmly upon his. "I can't tell you--it's useless to try--how overjoyed Iam. "

"I knew you'd be, " he answered softly, while his grateful glancecaressed her. The triumph of the day--which seemed to him prophetic ofthe triumph of the future--went suddenly to his head, and in somestrange presentiment he felt that his emotion for Laura was bound up andmade a part of his success in literature. He could not, try as hewould--disassociate her from her books, nor her books from his, and ashe sat there in ecstatic silence, with his eyes on her slender figure inits soft black gown, he told himself that the morning's happy promiseunited them in a close, an indissoluble bond of fellowship. He saw heralways under the literary glamour--he felt the full charm of the poeticgenius--the impassioned idealism which she expressed, and it becamealmost impossible for him to detach the personality of the woman herselffrom the personality of the writer whom he felt, after all, to be themore intimately vivid of the two. 

"I knew you'd be, " he repeated, and this time he spoke with a passionateassurance. "If you hadn't been I'd have found the whole thingworthless. "

She looked up still smiling, and he watched her large, beautifulforehead, on which the firelight played as on a mirror. "Well, one'sfriends do add zest to the pleasure, " she returned. 

For a moment he hesitated; then leaning forward he spoke with adesperate resolve. "One's friends--yes--but you have been more than afriend to me since the beginning--since the first day. You have beeneverything. I could not have lived without you. "

He saw her curved brows draw quickly together, and she bent upon him alook in which he read pity, surprise and a slight tinge of amusement. "Oh, you poor boy, is it possible that you imagine all this?" she asked. 

"I imagine nothing, " he answered with a wounded and despairingindignation, "but I have loved you--I have dreamed of you--I have livedfor you since the first moment that I saw you. "

"Then you have been behaving very foolishly, " she commented, "for whatyou are in love with is a shadow--a poem, a fancy that isn't myself atall. The real truth is, " she pursued, with a decision which cut him tothe heart, "that you are in love with a literary reputation and youimagine that it's a woman. Why, I'm not only older than you in years, I'm older in soul, older in a thousand lives. There is nothing foolishabout me, nothing pink and white and fleshly perfect--nothing that aboy like you could hold to for a day--"

She broke off and sat staring into the fire with a troubled and broodinglook--a look which seemed to lose the fact of his presence in some moreabsorbing vision at which she gazed. He noticed even in his misery thatshe had suffered during the last few weeks an obscure, a mysteriouschange--it was as if the flame-like suggestion, which had alwaysbelonged to her personality, had of late gathered warmth, light, effectiveness, consuming, as it strengthened, whatever had been passiveor without definite purpose in her nature. Her face seemed to him morethan ever to be without significance judged by a purely physicalstandard--more than ever he felt it to be but a delicate and sympatheticmedium for the expression of some radiant quality of soul. 

"I did not know--I would not have believed that you could be so cruel, "he protested with bitterness. 

"I can be anything, " she answered slowly, drawing her gaze with aneffort from the fire. "Most women can. "

The glory of the morning passed from him as suddenly as it had come, andhe told himself with the uncompromising desperation of youth that forall he cared now his great play might remain forever in oblivion. Lifeitself appeared as empty--as futile as his ambition--so empty, indeed, that he began immediately in the elastic melancholy which comes easilyat twenty-five--to plan the consoling details of an early death. When heremembered his buoyant happiness of a few hours ago it seemed to himalmost ridiculous, and he experienced a curious sensation ofdetachment, of having drifted out of his proper and peculiar place inlife. "I shall never be happy again and I am no longer the same personthat I was yesterday--or even a half hour ago, " he thought with adetermination to be completely miserable. Yet even while the words werein his mind he found himself weighing almost instinctively the literaryvalue of his new emotion, and to his horror the situation in which henow stood began slowly to take a dramatic form in his mental vision. Thevery attitude into which he had unconsciously fallen--as he paused withhis face averted and his hand tightening with violence upon a book hehad picked up--showed to his imagination as a bit of restrainedemotional acting beyond the footlights. 

"Then there's nothing I can do but go straight to the devil, " hedeclared with resolution, and at the same instant he found to hissupreme self-contempt that he was wondering how the speech would soundin the mouth of an actor in his drama. 

"Or write another play, " suggested Laura, while he started quickly andturned toward the door. 

"I'll never write another, " he said in a voice of gloom, which he triedwith all his soul to make an honest expression of his state of mind. "Iwish now I hadn't written this one. I wouldn't if I'd known. "

"Then it's just as well that you didn't, " she returned with a positivemotherly assurance. "My poor dear boy, " she added soothingly, "you arenot the first man of twenty-five who has mistaken the literary mania forthe passion of love, and I fear that you will not be the last. Thereseems, curiously enough, to be a strange resemblance between the twoemotions. If you'd only look at me plainly without any of your lovelyglamour you'll see in a minute what nonsense it all is. Why, you are allthe time in your heart of hearts in love with some little blonde thingwith pink cheeks who is still at school. "

He turned away in a passion of wounded pride; then coming back again hestood looking moodily down upon her. 

"I'll prove to you if it kills me that I've spoken the truth, " hedeclared, and it seemed to him that the words were not really what hemeant to say--that they came from him against his will because he hadfitted them into the mouth of an imaginary character. 

"Oh, please don't, " she begged. 

"I suppose I may still see you sometimes?" he enquired. 

"Oh, dear, yes; whenever you like. "

Then while he stood there, hesitating and indignant, the servant broughther a card, and as she took it from the tray, he saw a flush that waslike a pale flame overspread her face. 

"It's Mr. Kemper now, " she said. "Why will you not stay and be good andforget?"

"I'd rather meet the devil himself at this minute, " he cried in a boyishrage that brought tears to his eyes. "It seems to me that I spend halfmy life getting out of his way. "

"But don't you like him?" she enquired curiously. "Every one likes him, I think. "

"Well, I'm not every one, " he blurted out angrily, "for I think him aconsummate, thickheaded ass. "

"Good heavens!" she gayly ejaculated, "what a character you give him. "Then, as he was leaving the room, she reached out, and taking his hand, drew him against his will, back to his chair. "You shall not go likethis--I'll not have it, " she said. "Do you think I am a stone that I canbear to spoil all your beautiful triumph. Here, sit down and I promiseto make you like both him and me. "

As she finished, Kemper came in with his energetic step and his genialgreeting, and she introduced the two men with a little flattering smilein Trent's direction. "You have the honour to meet our comingplaywright, " she added with a gracious gesture, skilfully turning theconversation upon the younger man's affairs, while she talked on with asweetness which at once distracted and enraged him. He listened to herat first moodily and then with an attention which, in spite of hisresolution, was fixed upon the fine points of his play as she made nowand then friendly suggestions as to the interpretations of particularlines or scenes. The charming deference in her voice soothed his ruffledvanity and it seemed to him presently that the flattering intoxicationof her praise sent his imagination spinning among the stars. 

Kemper listened to it all with an intelligent and animated interest, andwhen he spoke, as he did from time to time, it was to put a sympatheticquestion which dismissed Trent's darling prejudice into the region ofdeparted errors. To have held out against the singular attraction of theman, would have been, Trent thought a little later, the part of aperverse and stiffnecked fool. It was not only that he succumbed toKemper's magnetism, but that he recognised his sincerity--his utter lackof the dissimulation he had once believed him to possess. Then, asKemper sat in the square of sunlight which fell through the bow window, Trent noticed each plain, yet impressive detail of his appearance. Hesaw the peculiar roughness of finish which lent weight, if not beauty, to his remarkably expressive face, and he saw, too, with an eye trainedto attentive observation, that the dark brown hair, so thick upon theforehead and at the back of the neck, had already worn thin upon thecrown of the large, well-turned head. "In a few years he will begin tobe bald, " thought the younger man, "then he will put on glasses, and yetthese things will not keep him from appealing to the imaginary ideal ofromance which every woman must possess. Even when he is old he willstill have the power to attract, if he cannot keep the fancy. " But thebitterness had gone out of his thoughts, and a little later, when heleft the house and walked slowly homeward, he discovered that a hopelesslove might lend a considerable sweetness to a literary life. After all, he concluded, one might warm oneself at the flame, and yet neitherpossess it utterly nor be destroyed. 

His mother sat knitting by the window when he entered the apartment, andhe saw that the table was already laid for dinner in the adjoining room. 

"I ordered dinner a little earlier for you, " she explained as she laidaside the purple shawl while the ball of yarn slipped from her short, plump knees and rolled under the chair in which she sat. Never in hisrecollection had he seen her put aside her knitting that the ball didnot roll from her lap upon the floor, and now as he stooped to followthe loosened skein, he wondered vaguely how she had been able to fillher life with so trivial and monotonous an employment. 

"I wish you could get out, " he said, as he sat down on a footstool ather feet and leaned his head affectionately against her knees. "I don'tbelieve you've had a breath of air for a month. "

"Why, I never went out of doors in the snow in my life, " she responded, "at least not since I was a child--and it always snows here except whenit rains. Do you know, " she pursued, with one of her mild glances ofcuriosity through the window, "I can't imagine how the people in thatbig apartment over there ever manage to get through the day. Why, thewoman stays in bed every morning until eleven o'clock and then the maidbrings her something like chocolate on a tray. She wears such beautifulwrappers, too, I really don't see how she can be entirely proper, andthen she seems to fly in such rages with her husband. There are somechildren, I believe, " she went on with increasing animation, "but theyare never allowed to set foot in her room, and this afternoon when shedressed to go out I saw her try on at least four different hats andevery single one of them green. "

"Poor creature!" observed Trent, with a laugh, "it must be worse thanliving under the omnipresent eye of Providence. By the way, I told theman to come up and have a look at the radiator. Did he do it?"

She laid her large, plump hand upon his head with a touch that was assoft as her ball of yarn. 

"The manager came himself, " she replied, "but we got to talking andafter I found out how much trouble he had had in life--he lost his wifeand two little boys all in one year--I didn't like to say anything aboutthe heating. I was afraid it would hurt his feelings to find I had acomplaint to make--he seemed so very nice and obliging. And, after all, "she concluded amiably, "the rooms do get quite warm, you know, justabout the time we are ready to go to bed, so all I need to do is to wearmy cloak a little while when I first get up in the morning. It will be avery good way to make some use of it, for I never expect to go out ofdoors again in this climate. "

"You'll have to go once, " he said gayly, "to the first rehearsal of myplay. You can't afford to miss it. "

"Oh, I'll muffle up well on that occasion, " she answered. "Did you seeMr. Benson this morning? and what did he say to you?"

"A great deal--he was quite enthusiastic--for _him_, you know. "

"I wonder what he is like, " she murmured with her large, sweetseriousness. "Is he married, and has he any children?"

"I didn't investigate. You see I was more interested in my own affairs. He wants Katie Hanska to take the leading part. You may have seen herpicture--it was in one of the magazines I brought you. "

"Did you enquire anything about her?" she asked earnestly, "I mean abouther character and her bringing up. I couldn't bear to have the partplayed by any but a pure woman, and they tell me that so many actressesaren't--aren't quite that. Before you consent I hope you'll find outvery particularly about the life she has led. "

"Oh, I dare say she's all right, " he remarked, with the affectionatepatience which was one of his more amiable characteristics. "At any rateshe has the mettle for the rôle. "

"I hope she's good, " said his mother softly, and she added after amoment, "do you remember that poor Christina Coles I was telling youabout not long ago?"

"Why, yes, " replied Trent; "the pretty girl with the blue eyes and theuncompromising manner? What's become of her, I wonder?"

"I fear, " began his mother, while she lowered her voice and glancedtimidly around as if she were on the point of a shameful disclosure, "Ihonestly fear that she is starving. "

"Starving!" exclaimed St. George, in horror, and he sprang to his feetas if he meant to plunge at once into a work of rescue. "Why, how longhas she been about it?"

"I know she has stopped coming to see me because her clothes are soshabby, " returned Mrs. Trent, with what seemed to him a calmness thatwas almost cruel, "and the charwoman tells me that she lives on next tonothing--a loaf of baker's bread and a bit of cheese for dinner. Ittakes all the little money she can rake and scrape together to pay herroom rent--for it seems that the papers have stopped publishing herstories. "

"For God's sake, let's do something--let's do it quickly, " exclaimedTrent, in an agony of sympathy. 

"I was just thinking that you might run up and see if she would comedown to dine with us, " said the old lady; "it really makes me miserableto feel that she doesn't get even enough to eat. "

"Why, I'll go before I dress--I'll go this very minute, " declared theyoung man. "Shall I tell her that we dine in half an hour or do youthink, if she's so very hungry, you might hurry it up a bit?"

"In half an hour--she'll want a little time, " replied his mother, andshe added presently, "but she's so proud, poor thing, that I don'tbelieve she'll come. "

The words were said softly, but had they been spoken in a louder tone, Trent would not have heard them for he had already hastened from theroom. 

In response to his knock, Christina opened her door almost immediately, and when she recognised him a look of surprise appeared upon her face. 

"Won't you come in?" she asked, drawing slightly aside with a politenesswhich he felt to be an effort to her, "my room is not very orderly, butperhaps you will not mind?"

She wore a simple cotton blouse, the sleeves of which were a littlerumpled as if they had been rolled up above her elbows, and her skirt ofsome ugly brown stuff was shabby and partly frayed about the edges--butwhen she looked at him with her sincere blue eyes, he forgot thedisorder of her dress in the touching pathos of her gallant littlefigure. She was very pretty, he saw, in a fragile yet resolute way--likea child that is possessed of a will of iron--and because of herprettiness he found himself resenting her literary failures with anacute personal resentment. The tenderness of his sympathy seemed toincrease rather than diminish his hopeless love for Laura, and while hegazed at Christina's flower-like eyes and smooth brown hair, which shonelike satin, there stole over him a poetic melancholy that was altogetherpleasant It was as if he had suddenly discovered a companion in hisunhappiness, and he thought all at once that it would be charming topour the sorrows of his love into the pretty ears hidden so quaintlyunder the smooth brown hair. Love, at the moment, appeared to himchiefly as something to be talked about--an emotion which one might turneffectively into the spoken phrase. 

She drew back into the room and he followed her while his sympatheticglance dwelt upon the sleeping couch under its daytime covering ofcretonne, upon the small gas stove on which a kettle boiled, upon thecupboard, the dressing table, the desk at which she wrote, and the tornand mended curtains before the single window. Though she neitherapologised nor showed in her manner the faintest embarrassment, he feltinstinctively that her fierce maidenly pride was putting her to torture. 

"I came with a message from my mother, " he hastened to explain as hestood beside her on the little strip of carpet before the gas stove, "she sends me to beg that you will dine with us this evening as aparticular favour to her. She is so much alone, you know, that a youngvisitor is just what she needs. "

Christina continued to regard him, as she had done from the first, withher sincere, unsmiling eyes, but he saw a flush rise slowly to her facein a wave of colour, turning the faint pink in her cheeks to crimson. 

"I am very much obliged to her, " she said, in her fresh attractivevoice, "but I am just in the middle of a story and I cannot break offjust now. I write, " she added positively, "every evening. "

As she finished she picked up some closely written sheets from the deskand held them loosely in her hand, enforcing by a gesture theunalterableness of her decision. "I hope you will give her my love--mydear love, " she said presently, with girlish sweetness, "and tell herhow sorry I am that it is impossible. "

"You are writing stories, then--still?" he asked, lingering in the faceof her evident desire to be rid of him. 

"Oh, yes, I write all the time--every day. "

"But do you find a market for so many?"

She shook her head: "The beginning is always hard--have you never readthe lives of the poets? But when one gives up everything else--when onehas devoted one's whole life--"

Knowing what he did of her mistaken ambition, her fruitless sacrifices, the thing appeared to him as a terrible and useless tragedy. He saw thethinness of her figure, the faint lines which her tireless purpose hadwritten upon her face--and he felt that it was on the tip of his tongueto beg her to give it up--to reason with her in the tone of aphilosopher and with the experience of the author of an accepted play. But presently when he spoke, he found that his uttered words were not ofthe high and ethical character he had planned. 

"She will be very much disappointed, I know, " he said at last; andthough he told himself that a great deal of good might be done by alittle perfectly plain speaking, still he did not know how to speak itnor exactly what it would be. 

"Thank her for me--I--I should love to see her oftener if I had thetime--if it were possible, " said Christina. And then he went to the doorbecause he could think of no excuse sufficient to keep him standinganother minute upon the hearthrug. 

"I hope you will remember, " he said from the threshold, "that we arealways down stairs--at least my mother is--and ready to serve you at anymoment in any way we can. "

The assurance appeared to make little impression upon her, but shesmiled politely, and then closing the door after him, sat down to eather dinner of cold bread and corned meat. 

CHAPTER IV

TREATS OF THE ATTRACTION OF OPPOSITES

As soon as Trent had left the room Laura felt that the silence becameoppressive and constrained. For the first time in her life she foundherself overwhelmed with timidity--with a fear of the too obviousword--and this timidity annoyed her because she was aware that she nolonger possessed the strength with which to struggle against it. That itwas imperative for her to lighten the situation by a trivial remark, shesaw clearly, yet she could think of nothing to say which did not soundfoolish and even insincere when she repeated it in her thoughts. Had shedared to follow her usual impulse and be uncompromisingly honest, shewould have said, perhaps: "I am silent because I am afraid to speak andyet I do not know why I am afraid, nor what it is that I fear. " In herown mind she was hardly more lucid than this, and the mystery of herheart was as inscrutable to herself as it was to Kemper. 

Then, presently, a rush of anger--of hot resentment--put courage intoher determination, and raising her head, with an impatient gesture, shelooked indifferently into his face. He was still sitting in the squareof sunlight, which had almost faded away, and as she turned toward him, he met her gaze with his intimate and charming smile. Though his wordswere casual usually and uttered in a tone of genial raillery, thissmile, whenever she met it, seemed to give the lie to every triflingphrase that he had spoken. "What is the use of all this ridiculousfencing when you fill my thoughts and each minute of the day I thinkonly of you, " said his look. So vivid was the impression she receivednow, that she felt instantly that he had caressed her in hisimagination. Her heart beat quickly, while she rose to her feet with anindignant impulse. 

"What is it?" he asked and she knew from his voice that he was stillsmiling. "What is the matter?"

Picking up his typewritten manuscript, she returned with it to herchair, drawing, as she sat down, a little farther away. 

"I merely wanted to look over this, " she returned, "Mr. Trentinterrupted me in my reading. "

"Then you've something to thank him for, " he remarked gayly, and addedin the same tone, "I noticed that he is in love with you--and I ambeginning to be jealous. "

For an instant she looked at him in surprise; then she remembered hisaffected scorn of what he called "social cowardice"--his natural orassumed frankness--and she shook her head with a laugh of protest. 

"He in love! Well, yes, he's in love with his imagination. He's tooyoung for anything more definite than that. "

"A man is never too young to fall in love, " he retorted, "I had it atleast six times before I was twenty-one. "

The laughter was still on her lips. "You speak as if it were themeasles. "

"It is--or worse, for when you've pulled through a bad attack of themeasles you may safely count yourself immune. With love--" he shruggedhis shoulders. 

"Do you mean, " she asked lightly, "that one can keep it up likethat--forever. "

He shook his head. 

"Oh, I think a case is rare, " he replied, "after seventy-five. Oneusually dies by then. "

"And is there never--with a man, I mean--really one?"

"Oh, Lord, yes, there's always one--at a time. "

His laughing eyes were probing her, and as she met them, questioningly, she found it impossible to tell whether he was merely jesting or indeadly earnest. With the doubt she felt a sharp prick of curiosity, andwith it she realised that in this uncertainty--this flashing suggestionof all possibilities or of nothing--dwelt the singular attraction thathe had for her--and for others. Was he only superficial, after all? Ordid these tantalising contradictions serve to conceal the hidden depthsbeneath? Had she for an instant taken him entirely at his word value, she knew that her interest in him would have quickly passed--but theforce which dominated him, the lurking seriousness which seemed alwaysbehind his laughter, the very largeness of the candour hedisplayed--these things kept her forever expectant and foreverinterested. 

"I hate you when you are like this, " she exclaimed, almost indignantly. 

"A woman always hates a man when he tells her the truth, " he retorted. "She has a taste for sweets and prefers falsehood. "

"It may be the truth as you have seen it, " she answered, "but that afterall is a very small part of the whole. "

"It's big enough at least to be unpleasant. "

"Well, it's your personal idea of the truth, all the same, " sheinsisted, "and you can't make it universal. It isn't Gerty's forinstance. "

"You think not?" he made a face of playful astonishment. "Well, howabout its hitting off our friend Perry?"

"Perry!" she replied disdainfully. "Do you know if he weren't so simple, I'd detest him. "

"But why?" His eyebrows were still elevated. 

"Because he thinks of nothing under the sun but the sensations of hisgreat big body. "

"Well, that may not be magnificent, " he paraphrased gayly, "but it isman. "

"Then, thank heaven, it isn't woman!" she exclaimed. 

"Do you mean to tell me, " he leaned forward in his chair and she wasconscious suddenly that he was very close to her--closer, in spite ofthe intervening space, than any man had ever been in her life before, "do you honestly mean to tell me that women are different?"

The expression of his face altered as it always did before anapproaching change in his mood, and she saw in it something of thesatiety--the moral weariness--which is the Nemesis of the soul that isled by pleasure. It was at this moment that she felt an exquisiteconfidence in the man himself--in the man hidden behind the cynicism, the affectation, the utter vanity of words. 

"Oh, they can't devote themselves to their own sensations when they haveto think so much of other people's, " she responded merrily; and she feltagain the strange impulse of retreat, the prompting to fly before theearnestness that appeared in his voice. While he was flippant, herintuitions told her that she might be serious, but when the banterpassed from his tone, she turned to it instinctively as to a defence. 

"But those that I have known"--he stopped and looked at her as if heweighed with an experienced eye the exact effect of his words. 

She laughed, but it was a laugh of irritation rather than humour. "Perhaps you did not select your examples very wisely, " she remarked. 

Her look arrested him as he was about to reply, and he spoke evidentlyupon the impulse of the moment. "Did Gerty tell you about Madame Alta?"he enquired. 

She shook her head with an evasion of the question, "I don't rememberthat it was Gerty. "

"But you have heard of her?"

"I've _heard_ her, " she answered. "It is a very beautiful voice. "

He frowned with a nervous irritation, and she saw from his impatientmovements that he was under the influence of a disagreeable excitement. 

"Well, I was once in love with her, " he said bluntly. 

She made an indifferent gesture. 

"And now I hate her, " he added with a sharp intonation. 

"Is that the ordinary end of your romances?" she questioned withoutinterest. 

"It wasn't romance, " he replied bitterly; "it was hell. "

Again she caught the note of satiety in his voice, and it stirred her toa feeling of sympathy which she despised in herself. 

"At least you worked out your own damnation, " she returned coolly. 

"One usually does, " he admitted. "That's the infernal part of it. ButI'm out of it now, " he pursued with an egoism which rejoiced in its ownstrength. "I'm out of it now with a whole skin and I hope to keep decenteven if I don't get to heaven. You might not think it, " he concludedgravely, "but I'm at bottom as religious a chap as old John Knox. "

"You may be, " she observed without enthusiasm, "but it's the kind ofreligion which impresses me not at all. "

"Well, it might have been better, " he said, "but I never had a chance. I've known such devilish women all my life. "

Humour shone in her eyes, making her whole face darkly brilliant withexpression. "Do you know that you show a decided family resemblance toAdam, " she observed. 

"It does sound that way, " he laughed, "but there's some hard sense init, after all. A woman has a tremendous effect on a man's life--I meanthe woman he really likes. "

"Wouldn't it be safer to say the 'women'?" she suggested. 

"Nonsense. I was only joking. There is always one who is more than theothers--any man will tell you that. "

"I suppose any man will--even Perry Bridewell. "

"Why not Perry?" he demanded. "You can't imagine how he used to bore thelife out of me about Gerty--but Gerty, you know, " he added in a burst ofconfidence which impressed her as almost childlike, "isn't exactly thekind of woman to a--a lift a fellow. "

Before his growing earnestness she resorted quickly to the defence offlippancy. "Nor is Perry, I suppose, exactly the kind of man that islifted, " she observed, with a laugh. 

He looked at her a moment with a smile which had even then an edge ofhis characteristic genial irony. "You are the sort of woman who could dothat, " he said abruptly. 

"Could lift Perry? Now, God forbid!" she retorted gayly. 

"Oh, Perry be hanged!" he exclaimed, with the candid ill-humour which, strangely enough, had a peculiar attraction for her. "If I had known youfifteen years ago I might be a good deal nearer heaven than I amto-day. "

The charm of his earnestness was very great, and she felt that thesudden sensation of faintness which came over her must be visible in herfluttering eyelids and in her trembling hands. 

"I haven't faith in a salvation that must be worked out by somebodyelse, " she said, in a voice she made cold by an effort to render itmerely careless. 

An instant before he had told himself with emphasis that he would go nofurther, but the chill remoteness from which she looked at him stirredhim to an emotion that was not unlike a jealous anger. She seemed to himthen more brightly distant, more sweetly inaccessible than she had doneat their first meeting. 

"Not even when it is a salvation through love?" he asked impulsively, and at the thought that she was possibly less indifferent than sheappeared to be, he felt his desire of her mount swiftly to his head. 

Her hand went to her bosom to keep down the wild beating of her heart, but the face with which she regarded him was like the face of a statue. "No--because I doubt the possibility of such a thing, " she said. 

"The possibility of my loving you or of your saving me?"

"The possibility of both. "

"How little you know of me, " he exclaimed, and his voice sounded hurt asif he were wounded by her disbelief. 

She raised her eyes and looked at him, and for several seconds they satin silence with only the little space between them. 

"It is very well, " she said presently, "that I believe nothing that yousay to me--or it might be hard to divide the truth from the untruth. "

"I never told you an untruth in my life, " he protested angrily. 

"Doesn't a man always tell them to a woman?" she enquired. 

For an instant he hesitated; then he spoke daringly, spurred on by herindifferent aspect. "He doesn't when--he loves her. "

"When he loves her more than ever, " she returned quietly, as if hisremark held for her merely an historic interest, "Perry Bridewell lovesGerty, I suppose, and yet he lies to her every day he lives. "

"That's because she likes it, " he commented, with a return of raillery. 

"She doesn't like it--no woman does. As for me I want the truth even ifit kills me. "

"It wouldn't kill you, " he answered, and the tenderness in his voicemade her feel suddenly that she had never known what love could be, "itwould give you life. " Then his tone changed quickly and the old pleasanthumour leaped to his eyes, "and whatever comes I promise never to lie toyou, " he added. 

She shook her head. "I didn't ask it, " she rejoined, with a sharpbreath. 

"If you had, " he laughed, "I wouldn't have promised. That's a part ofthe general contrariness of men--they like to give what they are notasked for. "

"Well, I'll never ask anything of you, " she said, smiling. 

"Is that because you want to get everything?" he enquired gayly. 

A pale flush rose to her forehead, and the glow heightened the singularillumination which dwelt in her face. "Would the best that you couldgive be more than a little?"

"It would be more than a woman ever got on earth. "

"Well, I'm not sure that I would accept your valuation, " she remarked, with an effort to keep up the light tone of banter. 

"Then make your own, " he answered, as he rose from his chair, but hiseyes and the strong pressure of his hand on hers said more than this. 

"When I've read through the manuscript I'll talk to you about it, " sheobserved, as he was leaving "If you really want them published, though, they must be considerably altered. "

"Oh, do it yourself, " he returned, with an embarrassed eagerness. "Doanything you please--put in the literary stuff and all that. "

He spoke with an entire unconsciousness of the amount of work he askedof her, and she liked him the better for the readiness with which hetook for granted that she possessed the patience as well as the will toserve him. 

"Well, we'll talk about it later, " she said, and then for the first timeduring the conversation she raised upon him, in all its mystery ofsuggestion, that subtle fascination of look which he felt at the instantto be her transcendent if solitary beauty. Through the afternoon he hadwaited patiently for this remembered smile--had laid traps for it, hadsought in vain to capture it unawares, and had she been a worldlycoquette bent upon conquest, she could not have used her weapons with afiner or more decisive effect. After more than two hours in which herremoteness had both disappointed and irritated him, he went away at lastwith her face at its most radiant moment stamped upon his memory. 

CHAPTER V

SHOWS THE DANGERS AS WELL AS THE PLEASURES OF THE CHASE

When Kemper looked at his watch on Laura's steps, he found that he hadtime only to pay a promised call on Gerty Bridewell before he must hurryhome to get into his dinner clothes. In his pocket, carelessly thrustthere as he left his rooms, was a note from Gerty begging him to drop inupon her for a bit of twilight gossip; and though the request was madewith her accustomed lightness, he knew instinctively that she had soughthim less for diversion than for advice, and that her reckless pen hadbeen guided by some hidden agitation. When he thought of her it was witha sympathy hardly justified by the outward brilliance of herlife--wealth, beauty, power, all the things which he would have calleddesirable were hers, and the vague compassion she awoke in him appearedto him the result of a simple trick of pathos which she knew how toassume at times. To be sorry for Gerty was absurd, he had always lookedupon a hunger for married romance as a morbid and unhealthy passion, andthat a woman who possessed a generous husband should demand a faithfulone as well seemed to him the freak of an unreasonable and exactingtemper. "Men were not born monogamous"--it was a favourite cynicism ofhis, for he was inclined to throw upon nature the full burden of herresponsibility. 

Then, as he signalled a cab at the corner of Fifth Avenue, and afterseating himself, clasped his gloved hands over the crook of his walkingstick, his thoughts returned, impatient of distraction, to thedisturbing memory of Laura. 

He had gone too far, this he admitted promptly and withoutconsideration--another minute of her bewildering charm and he felt, witha shiver, that he might have blundered irretrievably into a declarationof love. What a fool he had been, after all, and where was the result ofhis painfully acquired caution--of his varied experiences with manywomen? Before entering her doors he had told himself emphatically thatthe thing should go no further than a pleasant friendship, and yet anhour later he had found his thoughts fairly wallowing in sentiment. Tolike a woman and not make love to her--was that dream of his purerdesires still beyond him--still in the distant region of the happierimpossibilities? Marriage had few allurements for him--the respect hefelt for it as an institution was equalled only by the disgust withwhich he regarded it as a personal condition; and a shudder ran throughhim now as he imagined himself tied to any woman upon earth for theremainder of his days. Without being unduly proud in his own conceit, hewas clearly aware that he might be looked upon through worldly eyes as adesirable match--as fair game for a number of wary marriageable maidens;and it did not occur to him that even Laura herself might by any choiceof her own, still stand hopelessly beyond his reach. The thing thattroubled him was the knowledge of his own impetuous emotions--with theshield of Madame Alta withdrawn was it not possible that a suddenpassion might plunge him headlong even into the abyss of marriage?

"What a consummate, what an unteachable ass I am, " he thought as hestared moodily at the passing cabs, "and the odd part of it is that thenewest attraction always brings with it a fatal belief in its ownpermanence. I have been madly in love a dozen times since I left collegeand yet it seems impossible to me that what I now feel has ever had abeginning or can ever have an end. By Jove, I could almost swear thatI've never gone through this before. " Then he remembered suddenly one ofLaura's most characteristic movements--the swift turn of her profile asshe averted her face--and he tried to imagine the quickened sensationwith which he might have stooped and kissed the little violet shadow onher neck. "Pshaw!" he exclaimed with angry determination, "does a mannever get too old for such rubbish? Am I no better than one of thedotards who hold on to passion after they have lost their teeth?" But inspite of his contemptuous cynicism it seemed to him that he was more inearnest than he had ever been in his life before. There had been nothingso grave--nothing so destructive as this in the impulse which had drivenhim to Madame Alta. 

Gerty was awaiting him alone in her sitting-room upstairs, and as heentered, she stretched out her hands with a gesture of reproachfuleagerness. 

"You're so late that I've barely a half hour before dressing, " she said. 

"Why, in heaven's name, didn't you write me sooner?" he enquired, as hethrew himself into a chair beside the couch on which she lay half buriedamid cushions of pale green satin, "it was a mere accident that I hadthis spare time on my hands. Where's Perry?"

She shook her head with the piquant disdain he knew so well. "Amusinghimself doubtless, " she replied, adding with one of her uncontrollableflashes of impulse, "Do you, by the way, I wonder, ever happen to seeAda Lawley now?"

The question startled him, and he sat for a minute staring under bentbrows at her indignant loveliness; though she had shrieked out hersecret in the tongues of men and of angels, she could have added nothingfurther to his knowledge. The wonderful child quality which stillsurvived in her beneath all her shallow worldliness dawned suddenly inher wide-open, angry eyes, and he saw clearly at last the hidden cankerwhich was eating at her impatient heart. So this was what it meant, andthis was why she had reminded him at times of a pierced butterfly thathides a mortal anguish beneath the beauty of its quivering wings?

"Oh, she isn't exactly the kind to blush unseen, you know, " he respondedlightly. 

"But what is her attraction? I can't fathom it, " persisted Gerty, with aburning curiosity. "Is it possible that men think her handsome?"

He laughed softly at her impatience, and then leaning back in his chair, took up her question in a quizzical tone. "Is she handsome? Well, thatdepends, I suppose, upon one's natural or acquired taste. Some peoplelike caviar--some don't. "

Though she choked down her eagerness, he saw it still fluttering in herbeautiful white throat. "Then I may presume that she is caviar to therespectable?" she said with a relapse into her biting sarcasm. 

He made a gesture of alarmed protest: "You are to presume nothing--it isnever wise to presume against a woman. "

"Then I won't if you'll tell me, " she returned, "if you'll tell me quitehonestly and sincerely all that you think. "

Before the mockery in his eyes she fell back with a sigh ofdisappointment, but he answered the challenge presently in what she hadonce described as his "paradoxical humour. "

"Oh, well, my views have all been distant ones, " he said, "but I shouldjudge her to be--since you ask me--a lady who insists upon a remarkablenatural beauty with a decidedly artificial emphasis. "

He paused for a moment in order to enjoy the flavour of his epigram; butGerty was too much in earnest to waste her animated attention uponwords. 

"Oh, of course she makes up, " she retorted, "they all do that--men likeit. "

His puzzling smile dwelt on her for an instant. "Well, I'd rather awoman would be downright bad any day, " he said, "it shows less. "

"But is she bad?" asked Gerty, almost panting in her pursuit ofinformation. "That's what I want to know--of course she's artificial onthe face of it. "

"On the face of _her_, you mean, " he corrected, and concluded promptly, "but I've never said anything against a woman in my life and it's toolate to begin just as I'm getting bald. Doesn't it suffice that the Ladyhas kept her pipe tuned to the general melody?"

"You mean she's careful?"

"I mean nothing--do you?"

With a determined movement she sprang into a sitting position, anddrawing the cushions beneath her arm, rested her elbow, bare under theflowing sleeve, upon the luxurious pile of down. He saw the dent made byher figure in the green satin covers, and it gave him a sensation ofpleasure while he watched it fade out slowly. 

"I--oh, I mean a great deal, " she responded in her reckless voice, "I'mas clear, I've always said, as running water, and what you mistake forflippancy is merely my philosophy. "

"A philosophy!" he laughed, "then you've gone too deep for me. "

"Oh, it isn't deep--it's only this, " she rejoined gayly, "he laughs bestwho laughs most. "

"And not who laughs last?"

She shook her head as she played nervously with the lace upon hersleeve. "No, because the last laugh is apt to be a death rattle. "

"You give me the shivers, " he protested, with a mock shudder, "do youknow you are always clever when you are jealous?"

"But I am not jealous, " she retorted indignantly; "there's nobody onearth that's worth it--and besides I'm too happy. I'm as happy as thevery happiest human being you know. Who's that?"

He thought attentively for a moment: "By Jove, I believe it's RogerAdams, " he replied, amazed at his discovery. 

For a while Gerty leaned back upon her pillows and considered thequestion with closed eyes. "I think you're right, " she admitted at last, "but why? Why? What on earth has he ever got from life?"

"He has got a wife, " he retorted, with his genial irony. 

"Well, I suppose he congratulates himself that he hasn't two, " was herflippant rejoinder. 

Kemper laughed shortly. "I'm not sure that she doesn't equal a good halfdozen. "

"And yet he _is_ happy, " said Gerty thoughtfully. "I don't know why andI doubt if he knows either--but I truly and honestly believe he's thehappiest man I've ever met. Perhaps, " she concluded with a quick returnto her shallow wit, "it's because he doesn't divide his waking hoursbetween dressmakers and bridge whist. "

"But why do you if it bores you so, " protested Kemper, "I'd be hangedbefore I'd do it in your place. "

The little half angry, half weary frown drew her eyebrows together, andshe sat for a minute restlessly tapping her slippered foot upon thefloor. "Oh, why do women lie and cheat and back-bite and strangle thelittle souls within them--to please men. Your amusements are built onour long boredom. "

Was it merely the trick of pathos again, he wondered, or did theweariness in her voice sound as true as sorrow? Was she, indeed, asLaura so ardently believed, capable of larger means, of finer issues, and was her very audacity of speech but a kind of wild mourning for thesoul that she had killed? A month ago he would not have asked himselfthe question, but his feeling for Laura had brought with it, thoughunconsciously, a deeper feeling for life. 

"All the same I wouldn't bore myself if I were you, " he returned, "and Idon't think frankly men are worth it. "

She laughed with an impatient jerk of her head. "Oh, it's easy tomoralise, " she remarked, "but I have enough of that, you know, fromLaura. "

"From Laura? Then she is with me?"

"She thinks so, but what does she know of life--she has never lived. Why, she isn't even in the world with us, you see. " A tender littlelaugh escaped her. "I've even seen her, " she added gayly, "read Plotinusat her dressmaker's. She says he helps her to stand the trying on. "

The picture amused him, and he allowed his fancy to play about it for amoment. "I can't conceive of her surrendering to the vanities, " he saidat last. 

"You can't?" Gerty's tone had softened, though she still spoke merrily. "Well, I call no woman safe until she's dead. "

His imagination, always eager in pursuit of the elusive possibility, sprang suddenly in the train of her suggestion, and he felt the sting ofa dangerous pleasure in his blood. 

"Do you mean that it is only her outward circumstances, her worldlyignorance, that has kept her so wonderfully indifferent?" he asked. 

"So she is indifferent?" enquired Gerty with a smile. 

"To me--yes. "

"Oh, I didn't know that--I suspected--" her pause was tantalising, andshe drew it out with an enjoyment that was almost wicked. 

"You suspected--" he repeated the words with the nervous irritationwhich always seized him in moments of excitement. 

"I honestly believed, " she gave it to him with barely suppressedamusement, "that she really disliked you. "

His curiosity changed suddenly to anger, and he remembered, while hechoked back an impulsive exclamation, the rage for mastery he had oncefelt when he found a horse whose temper had more than matched his own. "Did she tell you so?" he demanded hotly. 

"Oh, dear, no--she wouldn't for the world. "

"Then you're wrong, " he said with dogged resolution; "I can make herlike me or not just as I choose. "

"You can?" she looked lovely but incredulous. 

"Why do you doubt it?"

"Because--oh, because you are too different. Do you know--and this is assecret as the grave--if I thought Laura really cared for you it woulddrive me to despair. But she won't--she couldn't--you aren't half--youaren't one hundredth part good enough, you know. "

In spite of his smile she saw that there was a tinge of annoyance in thelook he fixed upon her. "By Jove, I thought you rather liked me!" heexclaimed. 

"I do--I love you--I always have. " She stretched out her hand until thetips of her fingers rested upon his arm. "You are quite and entirelygood enough for me, my dear, but I'm not Laura, and strange as it mayseem I honestly care a little more for her than for myself. So if youare really obliged to fall in love again, suppose you let it be withme?"

"With you?" He met her charming eyes with his ironic smile. "Oh, Icouldn't--I was brought up on your kind, and perfect as you are, youwould only give me the tiresome, familiar society affair. There isn'tany mystery about you. I know your secret. "

"Well, at least you didn't learn it from Madame Alta, " she retorted. 

"From Madame Alta! Pshaw! she was never anything but a vocalinstrument. "

"Do you remember the way she sang this?" asked Gerty; and springing toher feet she fell into an exaggerated mimicry of the prima donna's pose, while she trilled out a languishing passage from "Faust. " "I alwayslaughed when she got to that scene, " she added, coming back to thecouch, "because when she grew sentimental she reminded me of a love-sicksheep. "

"Then why do you resurrect her ghost?" he demanded. "So far as I amconcerned she might have lived in the last century. "

"And yet how mad you used to be about her. "

"'Mad'--that's just the word. I was. " He drew out his watch, glanced atit, and rose to his feet with an ejaculation of dismay, "Why, you'veactually made me forget that we aren't living in eternity, " he said. "I'll be awfully late for dinner and it's every bit your fault. "

"But think of me, " gasped Gerty, already moving in the direction of herbedroom, "I dine at Ninety-first Street, and I must get into a gown thatlaces in the back. " She darted out with a bird-like flutter; and runningquickly down the staircase, he hurried from the house and into a passingcab. During the short drive to his rooms his thoughts were exclusivelyengrossed with the necessity of making a rapid change and framing asuitable apology for his hostess. The annoyance of the rush served moreeffectually to banish Laura than any amount of determined oppositionwould have done. 

CHAPTER VI

THE FINER VISION

So far as Connie was concerned the trip South had been, to all outwardappearance at least, entirely successful. Adams had watched her bloomback into something of her girlish prettiness, and day by day, in thequiet little Florida village to which they had gone, the lines ofnervous exhaustion had faded slowly from her face. For the first twoweeks she had been content to lie motionless in the balmy air beneaththe pines, while she had yielded herself to the silence with aresignation almost pathetic in its childish helplessness. But with herreturning vigour the old ache for excitement awoke within her, and tostifle her craving for the drug which Adams had denied her, she hadturned at last to the immoderate use of wine. So, hopelessly but withunfailing courage, he had brought her again to New York where he hadplaced her in the charge of a specialist in obscure diseases of thenerves. 

Except for the hours which he spent in his office, he hardly left herside for a minute day or night, and the strain of the close watching, the sleepless responsibility, had produced in him that quiveringsensitiveness which made his self-control a bodily as well as a mentaleffort. Yet through it all he had never relaxed in the fervour of hiscompassion--had never paused even to question if the battle were notuseless--if Connie herself were worth the sacrifice--until, almost tohis surprise, there had come at last a result which, in the beginning, he had neither expected nor desired. A closer reconciliation with life, a stronger indifference to the mere outward show of possession, a deeperconsciousness of the reality that lay beyond, above and beneath themanifold illusions--these things had become a part of his mentalattitude; and with this widening vision he had felt the flow in himselfof that vast, universal pity which has in it more than the sweetness, and something of the anguish of mortal love. In looking at Connie he sawnot her alone, but all humanity--saw the little griefs and the littlejoys of living creatures as they were reflected in the mirror of hersmall bared soul. Though he had schooled himself for sacrifice he foundpresently that he had entertained unawares the angel of peace--for itwas during these terrible weeks that the happiness at which GertyBridewell had wondered possessed his heart. 

On the afternoon of Trent's visit, Adams left his office a littleearlier than usual, for he had promised Connie that he would take her tosee a new ballet at her favourite music hall. When he reached his houseshe was already dressed, and while he changed his clothes in hisdressing-room, she fluttered restlessly about the upper floor, lookingremarkably fresh and pretty in a gown of delicate blossom pink. From alittle distance the faint discolour of her skin, the withered linesabout her mouth and temples were lost in a general impression of rosyfairness; and as he watched her hurried movements, through the door ofher bedroom, Adams found it almost impossible to associate thissparkling beauty with the half-frenzied creature he had nursed two weeksago. One of her "spells of joy, " as she called them was evidently uponher; and even as he accepted thankfully the startling change in herappearance, there shot into his mind an acute suspicion as to theimmediate cause. 

"Connie, " he said, standing in front of her with his hair brush in hishand, "will you give me your word of honour that you have taken nothingto-day except your proper medicine?"

A quick resentment showed in her eyes, but she veiled it a momentafterward by a cunning expression of injured innocence. "Why, how couldI?" she asked, in a hurt voice, "the nurse was with me. "

It was true, he knew--the nurse had been with her all day, and yet as helooked more closely at her animated face and brilliant eyes thesuspicion hardened to absolute conviction in his mind. The change fromthe fragile weakness of the morning to this palpitating eagerness couldmean only the one thing, he knew--Connie had found some secret way togratify her craving and the inevitable reaction would set in before manyhours. 

Turning away again he finished his dressing to the accompaniment of herhigh-pitched ceaseless prattle. Her conversation was empty and almostinconsequent, filled with rambling descriptions of the newest gowns, with broken bits of intimate personal gossip, but the very rush of wordswhich came from her served to create an atmosphere of merriment atdinner. A little later at the music hall she insisted upon talking toAdams in exaggerated whispers, until the pointless jokes she made aboutthe arms or the legs of the dancers, sent her into convulsions ofnoiseless hysterical laughter. Through it all Adams sat patientlywondering whether he suffered more from the boredom of the ballet orfrom the neuralgia caused by a draught which blew directly on the backof his neck. That the show amused Connie was sufficient reason forsticking it out until the end, but there were moments during the longevening, when he felt, as he sat with his blank gaze fixed upon theglancing red legs on the stage, that every stifled yawn was but anunuttered exclamation of profanity. 

"Now really and truly was it worth it?" he asked, with a laugh, whenthey stood again at their own door. 

"But didn't you think it lovely?" enquired Connie, irritably, as sheentered the hall and paused a moment under the electric light. Theexcitement had faded from her face, leaving it parched and wan as from aburned out fire, and the sinister blue shadows had leaped out in thehollows beneath her eyes. 

"I think you were, " he answered merrily, following her as she turnedaway and went slowly up the staircase. 

A smile at the compliment flickered for an instant upon her lips; thenas she reached her bedroom, her strength failed her utterly, and with alittle moaning cry she swayed forward and fell in a huddled pink heapupon the floor. As he lifted her she begged piteously forwine--brandy--for anything which would drive away the terriblefaintness. 

"It is like falling into a gulf, " she cried, "I am slipping away and Ican't hold myself--"

He measured a dose of cognac and gave it to her with a little water, butwhen, after swallowing it eagerly, she begged for more, he shook hishead and began undressing her as he would have undressed a child. Atouch at the bell, he knew, would bring her maid, but a powerfuldelicacy constrained him as he was about to ring; these were sceneswhose very hideousness made them sacred, and with Connie's distractedraving in his ears, he became suddenly thankful for the absoluteloneliness, for the empty house around him. As she lay upon the bedwhere he had placed her, looking, he thought even then, like a crushedblossom in her gown of pale pink chiffon, he bent over her in an anguishof pity which oppressed him like a physical weight. The very hatred inher eyes as she looked up at him made the burden of his sympathy theheavier to bear. Had she loved him it might have been easier for her, but he knew now that in her sanest days she felt no stronger sentimentfor him than tolerant gratitude. And during her frantic nights theviolence of her detestation was but an added torture. There were timeseven, and this was so now, when she sought by bodily force to gainpossession of the drug which she had hidden under the carpet or beneaththe pillows of the couch, and in order to control her struggles, he wasobliged to resort to his greater physical strength. After this shelooked up and cursed him with a wonderful florid, almost orientalsplendour of language, while throwing off his coat, he brushed from himthe hanging shreds of the torn pink chiffon gown. 

At seven o'clock in the morning when the nurse came to relieve him, hewas still sitting, as he had sat all night, in a chair beside Connie'sbed. 

"So she has had one of her bad attacks, I feared it, " said the nurse, with a sympathetic glance directed less at Connie than at her husband. 

"Yes, it was bad, " repeated Adams quietly; and then rising to his feethe staggered like a drunken man into his bedroom across the hall. Stillwearing his evening clothes he flung himself heavily upon the sofa andfell at once into the profound sleep of acute bodily exhaustion. Twohours later when he awoke to take the coffee which the kindly nursebrought to him, he found that his slumber, instead of refreshing him, had left him sunk in a sluggish melancholy with a clogged and inactivebrain. 

"She is very quiet now, " said the woman, a tall, strong person of middleage, "and strangely enough the spell has hardly weakened her at all--shehas had her breakfast and speaks of going out for a little shoppingafter luncheon. "

"Well, that's good news!" exclaimed Adams heartily, as he hastilyswallowed his black coffee. Then, holding out his cup to be refilled, heshook his head with the winning humorous smile which was his solitarybeauty. "This coffee will have to write two pages in my magazine, " hesaid, "so pour abundantly, if you please. "

Sitting there in his dishevelled evening clothes, with his thin, sallowface under his rumpled hair, he made hardly an impressive figure evenwhen viewed in the effulgent light of romance as a devoted husband. There was nothing of the heroic in his appearance; and yet as the nurselooked down upon him she felt something of the curious attraction he hadfor men like Arnold Kemper or Perry Bridewell--men whose innateprinciples of life differed so widely from his own. It was impossible tobuild a sentimental fiction about him, she thought--he had no placeamong the broad shouldered, athletic gentlemen who bewitched her in thepages of the modern novel--but she recognised, for the first time, asshe stood gravely regarding him, that there could be a love founded uponother attributes than these. To be loved as he loved Connie seemed toher at the instant a very beautiful and perfect thing. 

"I think you have suffered more from it than your wife has, " sheobserved, as she replaced the cup upon the tray. 

Adams broke into his whimsical laugh. "You don't judge fair, " heretorted, "wait until I'm washed and in my right clothes again. Ifthere's anything on earth that turns a man into a corpse, it is anevening suit by daylight. "

Then, as she went out with the tray, he endeavoured, while he changedhis clothes, to pull himself, by an effort of will, into proper shape tomeet the day's work before him. 

An hour afterward, as he walked through the morning sunlight to hisoffice, he found that his unusual melancholy had vanished before thefirst breath of fresh air. A sense of detachment--of world-lonelinesscame over him as he looked at the passing crowd of strangers, but therewas no sadness in the feeling, for he felt within himself the source aswell as the renewal of his peace. He had never regarded himself as whatis called a religious man--it was more than ten years since he hadentered a church or heard a sermon--yet in this very relinquishment ofself, was there not something of the vital principle, of the quickeninggerm of all great religions? Though he had never said in his thoughts "Ibelieve this" or "I hold by this creed or that commandment, " his naturewas essentially one in which the intellect must be supreme either forgood or for evil; and in his soul, which had been for so long thebattlefield of a spiritual warfare, there had dawned at last thatcloudless sunrise of faith in which all lesser creeds are swallowed upand lost. If he had ever attempted to put his religious belief intowords, he would probably have said with his unfailing humour that it"sufficed to love his neighbour and to let his God alone. "

Now, as he passed rapidly through the humming streets, his thoughts wereso anxiously engrossed by Connie's condition that, when his name wasuttered presently at his elbow, he started and looked up like oneawakening uneasily from a dream. The next moment the air swam before himand he felt his blood rush in a torrent from his heart, for the voicewas Laura's, and he discovered when he turned that she was looking upeagerly into his face. 

"Nothing short of a meditation on the seven heavens can excuse suchabsorption of mind, " she said. 

"You came like a spirit without my suspecting that you were near, " heanswered, smiling. 

She laughed softly, giving him her full face as she looked up with herunfathomable eyes and tremulous red mouth. At the first glance henoticed a change in her--an awakening he would have called it--and for aminute he lost himself in a vague surmise as to the cause. Then allother consciousness was swept away by pure delight in the mere physicalfact of her presence. For the instant, while they walked togetherthrough the same sunshine over the same pavement, she was as much hisown as if they stood with each other upon a deserted star. 

"It has been so long since I really saw you, " she said, after a moment'spause, "I wondered, at first, if you were ill, but had that been so Iwas sure you would have written me. "

Even her voice, he thought, had altered; it was fuller, deeper, moreexquisitely vibrant, as if some wonderful experience had enriched it. 

"Connie was ill, not I, " he answered quietly. "I took her South for afortnight, and since getting back I've hardly been able to go anywhereexcept to the office. "

She glanced at him with a sympathy in which he detected a slightsurprise--for so long as Connie had been well and happy he had rarelymentioned her name even to his closest friends. 

"I hope, at least, that she is better by now, " responded Laura withconventional courtesy. 

"Oh, yes, very much better, " he replied; "but tell me of yourself--Iwant to hear of you. Is there other verse?"

For a minute she looked away to the rapidly moving vehicles in thestreet; then turning quickly toward him, she spoke with one of theimpulsive gestures he had always found so charming and socharacteristic. 

"There is no verse--there will never be any more, " she said. "Shall Itell you a secret?"

He bent his head. "A dozen if you like. "

"Well, there's only one--it's this: I wasn't born to be a poet. It wasall a big mistake, and I've found it out in plenty of time to stop. I'drather do other things, you know; I'd rather live. "

"Live, " he repeated curiously; and the incidents of his own life flashedquickly, one by one, across his mind. Marriage, birth, death, theillusion of desire, the disenchantment of possession; to place one'sfaith in the external object and to stake one's happiness on theaccident of events--did these things constitute living for such as she?

"When you say 'life' do you not mean action?" he asked slowly. 

"Oh, I want to be, to know, to feel, " she replied almost impatiently. "Iwant to go through everything, to turn every page, to experience allthat can be experienced upon the earth. "

A smile was in his eyes as he shook his head. "And when you haveaccomplished all these interesting things, " he said, "you will havegained from them--what? The lesson, learned perhaps in great sorrow, that the outward events in life are of no greater significance than thefalling of the rain on the growing corn. Nothing that can happen or thatcannot happen to one matters very much in the history of one'sexperience, and the biggest incident that ever came since the beginningof the world never brought happiness in itself alone. It may be, " headded, with a tenderness which he made no effort to keep from his voice, "that you will arrive finally at the knowledge that all life isforfeiture in one way or another, and that the biggest thing in it issometimes to go without. "

His tone was not sad--the cheerful sound of it was what impressed hermost, and when she looked up at him she was almost surprised by thesmiling earnestness in his face. 

"Do you mean that this is what you have learned?" she asked. 

Her seriousness sent him off into his pleasant laugh. "Whatever I havelearned it has not been ingratitude for a meeting like this, " heresponded gayly. "It is one of my unexpected joys. "

"And yet it's a joy that you take small advantage of, " she remarked. "I'm almost always at home and I'm very often wishing that you wouldcome. As a last test, will you dine with me to-morrow night?"

While she spoke, for the briefest flicker of her eyelashes, she saw himhesitate; then he shook his head. 

"I fear I can't, " he replied regretfully, "the nurse goes home, you see, and there's no one left with Connie. When she's well again I'll comegladly if you'll let me. "

Her face flushed a little. "I'm sorry I asked you, " she said; "I oughtto have thought--to have known. "

He felt the wrench within him as if he had torn out a living nerve, forit was the end between them and he had meant that it should be so. Lifewould have no compromises with illusions, he knew--not even with thelast and the most beautiful of desires. 

"On the other hand your wish made me very happy, " he returned. 

She had stopped when they reached a corner, and he realised, with apang, that the chance meeting was at an end. As she stood there in thepale sunshine, his eyes hung upon her face with an intensity whichseemed to hold in it something of the tragedy of a last parting. At themoment he told himself that so far as it lay in his power he wouldhenceforth separate his life from hers; and as he made the resolution heknew that he would carry her memory like a white flame in his heartforever. 

An instant afterward he went from her with a smile; and as she turned tolook after him, moved by a sudden impulse, she felt a vague stir of pityfor the gaunt figure passing so rapidly along the crowded street. Whileshe watched him she remembered that there were worn places on the coathe wore, and with one of the curious eccentricities of sentiment, thistrivial detail served to surround him with a peculiar pathos. 

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH FAILURE IS CROWNED BY FAILURE

At one o'clock, when Adams left his office to go home to luncheon--acustom which he had not allowed himself to neglect since Connie'sillness--he found Mr. Wilberforce just about to enter the building fromthe front on Union Square. 

"Ah, I've caught you as I meant to, " exclaimed the older man, with thecordial enthusiasm which Adams had always found so delightful. "It'sbeen so long a time since I had a talk with you that I hope you'll comeout somewhere to lunch?"

"I only wish I could manage it, " replied Adams, "but I must look in fora minute on Mrs. Adams--she's been ill, you know. "

He saw the surprise reflected in his companion's face as he had seen ita little earlier in Laura's; and at the same instant he felt a sensationof annoyance because of his inability to act upon his impulse ofhospitality. He would have liked to take Mr. Wilberforce home with him;but remembering the probable quality of the luncheon which awaited him, he repressed the inclination. 

"Is that so? I'm sorry to hear it, " remarked the other in theconventional tone in which Adams' friends always spoke of Connie. "Well, I'll walk a block or two with you in your direction, " he added as theyturned toward Broadway. "Laura told me, by the way, that she was sofortunate as to have a glimpse of you this morning. "

Adams nodded and then looked quickly away from the other's searchingeyes. "Yes, we met rather early in the street, " he responded; "she seemsto me to be looking very well, and yet she's altered, somehow--I can'tsay exactly how or where. "

"Then you've noticed it, " returned Mr. Wilberforce, with a sigh, and heasked almost immediately: "Does she appear to you to be happier than shewas?"

"Happier? Well, perhaps, but I hardly analysed the impression sheproduced. There was a change in her, that was all I saw. "

"Did she speak to you, I wonder, of her book?"

Adams laughed softly. "She spoke of it to say that she was tired of it, "he answered, "but that is only the inevitable reaction of youth--it's apart of the universal rhythm of thought, nothing more. "

Mr. Wilberforce shook his head a little doubtfully. "I wish I could feelso confident, " he returned, while a quick impatience--almost a contemptawoke in Adams' mind. Was it possible that this man beside him, with hiswhite hairs, his blanched skin, his benign old-world sentiments, was, like Trent, a mere worshipper of the literary impulse in its outwardaccomplishment? Did he love the poet in the woman rather than the womanin the poet? As Adams turned to look at him, he thought, not without acertain grim humour, that he beheld another victim to the vice ofsentimentality; and in his mental grouping he placed his companion amongthose who, like Connie, were in bondage to the images of theirimaginations. 

"And yet even if she should cease to write poems she will always liveone, " he added lightly. 

"Yes, she will still be herself, " agreed Mr. Wilberforce, but his wordscarried no conviction of comfort; and when he turned at the corner totake his car, it was with the air of a man oppressed by the weight ofyears. 

When Adams reached home he found Connie, dressed in her blue velvet withthe little twinkling aigrette, on the point of starting for an afternoondrive with her nurse in the Park. The events of the night had beenentirely effaced from her mind by the newer interests of the day; and ashe looked at her in amazement, it seemed to him that she bore a greaterresemblance to the rosy girl he had first loved than she had done formany weary and heart-sick months. When he left her, presently, to goback to his office, it was with a feeling of hopefulness which enteredlike an infusion of new blood into his veins. The relapse might havebeen, after all, less serious than he had at first believed, andConnie's cure might become soon not only a beautiful dream, but anaccomplished good. He thought of the sacrifices he had made for it--notbegrudgingly, but with a generous thankfulness that he had beenpermitted to pay the cost--thought of the sleepless nights, theneglected work, the nervous exhaustion which had followed on the brokenlaws of health. At the moment he regretted none of these things, becausethe end, which he already saw foreshadowed in his mental vision, seemedto him to be only the crowning of his last few weeks. Even the bodilyand moral redemption of Connie appeared no longer difficult in theillumination of his mood; for his compassion, in absorbing all that wasvital in his nature, seemed possessed suddenly of the effectiveness of adynamic force. 

"Already she is better, " he thought, hopefully; "I see it in herface--in her hands even, and when she is entirely cured the craving forexcitement will leave her and we shall be at peace again. Peace will bevery like happiness, " he said to himself, and then, with the framing ofthe sentence, he stopped in his walk and smiled. "Peace is happiness, "he added after a moment, "for certainly pleasure is not. " With the wordshe remembered the bitter misery of Connie who had lived for joyalone--the utter disenchantment of Arnold Kemper, who had made gratifiedimpulse the fulfilling of his law of life. Back and forth swung theoscillation between fugitive desire and outward possession--between thecraving of emptiness and the satiety of fulfilment--and yet where wasthe happiness of those who lived for happiness alone? Where was even themere animal contentment? "Is it only when one says to Fate 'takethis--and this as well--take everything and leave me nothing. I can dowithout'--that one really comes into the fulness of one's inheritance ofjoy? Was this what Christ meant when he said to His disciples 'Seek yefirst the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these thingsshall be added unto you?' In renunciation was there, after all, not theloss of one's individual self, but the gain of an abundance of life. "

The afternoon passed almost before he was aware of it, and when hefinished his work and drew on his overcoat, he saw, as he glancedthrough his office window, that it was already dusk. As he reached theentrance to the elevator, he found Perry Bridewell awaiting him inside, and he kept, with an effort, his too evident surprise from showing inhis face. 

"Why, this is a treat that doesn't happen often!" he exclaimed withheartiness. 

"I was passing and found you were still here, so I dropped in to walk upwith you, " explained Perry, but there was a note in his voice whichcaused the other to glance at him quickly with a start. 

"Are you ill, old man?" asked Adams, for Perry appeared at his firstlook to have gone deadly white. "Is there anything that I can do? Wouldyou like to come up and talk things over?"

Perry shook his head with a smile which cast a sickly light over hislarge, handsome face. "Oh, I'm perfectly well, " he responded, "I need tostretch my legs a bit, that's all. "

"You do look as if you wanted exercise, " commented Adams, as they leftthe building; "too much terrapin has put your liver wrong, I guess. "

At the corner, they passed a news-stand, and as Adams stopped for hisevening paper, he noticed again the nervous agony which afflicted Perryduring the brief delay. 

"Look here, what's up, now?" he enquired, holding his paper in his handwhen they started on again, "are you in any trouble and can I help toget you out? I'll do anything you like except play the gallant, and Ionly draw the line at that because of my temperamental disability. So, something _is_ wrong?" he added gayly, "for you haven't even observedthe pretty woman ahead there in the pea-green bonnet. "

"Oh, I'm not in any mess just now, " replied Perry, with a big, affectionate shake like that of a wet Newfoundland dog. 

Adams threw a keener glance at him. "No scrape about a woman, then?" heasked, with the tolerant sympathy which had made him so beloved by hisown sex. 

"Oh, Lord, no, " ejaculated Perry, with a fervour too convincing to beassumed. 

"And you haven't lost in Wall Street?"

"On the other hand I made a jolly deal. "

"Well, I give it up, " remarked Adams cheerfully; then as he spoke, theglare from an electric light fell full upon the headlines of the foldedpaper in his hand, and he came to a halt so sudden that Perry, fallingback to keep step with him, felt himself spinning like a wound up top. 

"My God!" said Adams, in a voice so low that it barely reached Perry'sears. An instant later a quick animal passion--the passion of theenraged male--entered into his tone and he walked quickly across thepavement to the sheltering dusk of a cross street. "May God damn him forthis!" he cried in a hoarse whisper. 

Following rapidly in his footsteps, Perry caught up behind him, and madean impulsive, nerveless clutch at the unfolded paper. "I knew you'd seeit; so I wanted to be along with you, " he said in a voice like that of atragic schoolboy. 

Adams turned to him immediately, with a restraint which had succeededhis first quivering exclamation. "So you knew that Brady's wife meantto sue for a divorce?" he asked. 

Perry bowed his head--in the supreme crisis of experience he had alwaysfound the simple truth to be invested with the dignity of an elaboratelie. "I had heard it rumoured, " was what he said. 

"And that my wife--"

"I'll swear I never believed it, " broke in Perry, with a violentassurance. 

From the emotion in his voice one would have supposed him, rather thanAdams, to be the injured husband; and the fact was that he probablysuffered more at the instant than he had ever done in the whole courseof his comfortable life. 

"Well, I suppose I ought to be very much obliged to you, " replied Adams, with an agonised irony to the injustice of which Perry was perfectlyindifferent, "but I can't see that it matters much so long as the thingis true. "

"But it's a lie, " protested Perry with energy. "I mean the whole damnedbusiness. "

"What isn't?" demanded Adams bitterly, as he stuffed the crumpled paperinto the pocket of his coat. Then, stopping again as they reached acrossing, he held out his hand and enclosed Perry's in a cordial grip. 

"I'm very grateful to you, " he said; "but if you don't mind, I thinkI'll walk about a bit alone. I've got to think things over. " Hehesitated a moment and then added quietly, "I know you'll stand by mewhatever comes?"

"Stand by you!" gasped Perry, and the sincere response of his wholeimpressionable nature brought two large, round tear drops to his eyes;"by Jove! I'd stand it for you!"

For an instant Adams looked at him in silence, while his familiar smileflickered about his mouth. Then he reached out his hand for anothergrip, before he turned away and walked rapidly into the dim light of thecross street. 

"I must walk about and think things out a bit, " he found himself sayingpresently in his thoughts; "there's a tangle somewhere--I can't pull itout. "

Stopping under a light he drew the newspaper from his pocket, but as heunfolded it, one of Connie's wild letters to Brady flashed before hiseyes; and crushing the open sheet in his hand, he flung it from him outinto the gutter. The darkness afforded what seemed to him a physicalshelter for his rage, and as he turned toward it, he felt his firstblind instinct for violent action give place to a kind of emotionalchaos, in which he could barely hear the thunder of his own thoughts. Heknew neither what he believed nor what he suffered; his power to willand his power to think were alike suspended, and he was conscious onlyof a curious deadness of sensation, amid which his ironic devil, standing apart, asked with surprise why he did not suffer more--why hisanger was not the greater, his restraint the less? His philosophy, atthe moment, had turned to quicksand beneath his feet; and it was thisutter failure of himself which forced upon him the anguish ofreadjustment, the frenzied striving after a clearer mental vision. As hehurried breathlessly along the narrow, dimly lighted street into whichhe had turned, he felt instinctively that he was groping blindly forsome way back into his former illumination, for some finer knowledge ofspirit, which at present he did not appear to possess. Not to act uponbrute impulse, but to listen in agony until he heard the voice of reasonabove the storm of his passion--until he heard the soul speaking beyondthe senses--this was the one urgent need he felt himself to be awareof--the one intelligent purpose that remained with him through hisflight. 

"No--I have failed and it is all over, " was the first distinct thoughtthat he framed. "By her own act she has put the last barrier between us. She is my wife no longer, for, through herself, she has brought disgraceupon us both. " Again he remembered the sacrifices he had made for her, not with the generous rejoicing of the morning, but with a fiercebitterness which was like a bodily hurt. "She is no longer my wife, " herepeated; "nor am I her husband--for by her own sin she has made mefree. " Yet the word carried no conviction to his conscience, and heknew, in spite of his assurance, that nothing had happened sinceyesterday to change the relations between Connie and himself--that if hehad pitied her then there was only the double reason why he should pityher now. Had this added wrong made her less helpless? had it put moralfibre into her heart? "All this had happened yesterday--had happenedeven six months ago, yet last night I sat by her bed--I was filled withsympathy--and was it only because I was in ignorance then of somethingwhich I know now? Yesterday I sacrificed for her both my rest and mywork, but was she worthier of pity at that hour than she is at this. Shehas not changed since, nor has the thing which I have just discovered;it is only I who am different because it is I alone who have come intoknowledge of the evil. "

He thought of the hideousness of it all--of the punishment that awaitedher, of her convulsed face, of her violent gestures, and even of thepale pink chiffon gown, which made her resemble a crushed blossom as shelay upon the bed. That was only last night, and yet in the reality ofexperience a thousand years had intervened in his soul since then. 

The next instant he remembered again, with a throb of exhilaration thathe was free. By her own act she had given him back his freedom--she hadreturned him to his life and to his work. As for her if she chose tofall back into her old bondage, who was there in heaven or on earth thatcould hold him to account? Every law that had been made by man since thebeginning of law was upon his side; and every law declared to him thathe was free. Free! The word went like the intoxication of joy to hishead; then, even while the exhilaration lasted, he shivered and cameabruptly to a halt. 

From the light of the crossing a woman had come close to him and touchedhim upon the arm, making her immemorial appeal with a sickening coquetryin her terrible eyes. She was, doubtless, but the ordinary creature ofher class, yet coming as she did upon the brief rapture of his recoveredliberty, she appeared as a visible answer to the question he had askedhis soul. He shook his head and walked on a few steps; then coming backagain he gave her the money that was in his pocket. 

"Is this the message?" he put to himself as he turned away. "Is thisthe message, or is it only the ugly hallucination of my nerves?" With aneffort he sought to shake the image from him, but in spite of his closedmind it still seemed to him that he saw Connie's future looking back athim from the woman's terrible eyes. "And yet what have I to do with thatwoman or she with Connie?" he demanded. "I have so far as I am awarenever injured either in my life, nor by any act of mine have I helped tomake my wife what she is to-day--one with that creature in the streetand with her kind. The law acquits me. Religion acquits me. My ownconscience acquits me more than all. " But the argument was vain andempty so long as he saw Connie's future revealed to him through the eyesof the harlot he had left at the crossing. The helplessness ofignorance, of the will that desired to will the good, came over him atthe moment and he could have cried aloud in his terror because his soulhad reached the boundaries between its angel and its devil. In hisdecision he appeared to himself to stand absolutely solitary anddetached--put away from all help from humanity or from human creeds. Thelaw courts told him nothing, nor did religion--then, at the instant ofhis sharpest despair of knowledge, there came back to him, as in avision of light, the scene two thousand years ago in Bethany at thehouse of Simon the leper. The people passing about him in the streetbecame suddenly but shadows, even the noise of the cars no longer brokein confusion upon his ears; and in the midst of the silence in which hestood, he heard the Voice as Simon had heard it then: "I have somewhatto say unto thee. "

A moment afterward the vision was gone, and he looked round him dazed bythe flashing of the lights. "What does it matter about my life which isalmost over?" he asked. "I will help Connie, so far as I have strength, to bear her sin against me--and as for the rest it is nothing to me anymore. " Then, as the resolution took shape in his mind, he was consciousof a feeling of restfulness, of a relief so profound that it pervadedhim to the smallest fibre of his being. The whole situation had changedat the instant; his offended honour was no longer offended, nor was hisrighteous anger still righteous. Though the naked truth must face him inall its brutishness, he knew, from the feeling within him, that by anact of thought, which was not an act, he had drawn the sting of thepoisoned arrow from his wound. Not only had the bitterness passed fromhis shame, but there had come, with the relinquishment of the idea ofpersonal wrong, a swift rush of exaltation, like a strong wind, throughhis soul. Almost unconsciously he had yielded his will into the hands ofGod, and immediately, as in the prophecy "all these things had beenadded" unto the rest. 

Turning at once he walked rapidly in the direction of his house, while aclock in a tower across the way pointed to the stroke of nine o'clock. The bodily exertion had begun to wear upon him during the last fewminutes. His feet ached and there was a bruised feeling in all hismuscles. When he came at last to his own door the sensation of fatiguehad blotted out the acuteness of his perceptions. 

The lights were blazing in the hall; there was evidently an unusualcommotion among the servants; and as he entered, Connie's nurse came tomeet him with a white and startled face. 

"Have you seen Mrs. Adams?" she asked hastily. "She separated from me ina shop and though I searched for her for hours, I could not find her. "

For a breathless pause he stared at her in bewildered horror; then hiseyes fell upon a note lying conspicuously on the hall table, and he tookit up and tore it open before he answered. The words on the paper werefew, and after reading them, he folded the sheet again and replaced itin the envelope. For an instant longer he still hesitated, swallowingdown the sensation of dryness in his throat. 

"She will not come back to-night, " he said quietly at last; "she hasgone away for a few days. "

Then turning from the vacant curiosity in the assembled faces, he wentinto his study and shut himself alone in the room in which the memory ofhis dead child still lived. 

CHAPTER VIII

"THE SMALL OLD PATH"

"Her letters of course gave her away, " observed Gerty thoughtfully, asshe smoothed her long glove over her arm and looked at Laura with thebrilliant cynicism which belonged to her conspicuous loveliness, "Arnoldsays it is always the woman's letters, and I'm sure he ought to know. "

"Why ought he to know?" asked Laura, turning with an impatient movementfrom the desk at which she sat. Her gaze hung on the soft white creasesof kid that encircled Gerty's arm, but there was an abstraction in herlook which put her friend at a chilling distance. 

Gerty laughed. "Oh, I mean he's a man of the world and they always knowthings. "

For an instant Laura did not respond, and during the brief silence hereyes were lifted from Gerty's arm to Gerty's face. "I sometimes thinkhis worldliness is only a big bluff, " she said at last. 

"Well, I wouldn't trust his bluff too much, that's all, " retorted Gerty. 

A smothered indignation showed for a moment in Laura's glance. "But howdo you know so much about him?" she demanded. 

"I?--oh, I've had my fancy for him, who hasn't? He's like one of thoseéclair vanille one gets at Sherry's--they look substantial enough onthe surface, but when one sticks in the fork there's nothing there butfroth. He's really quite all right, you know, so long as you don't stickin the fork. "

"But I thought you liked him!" protested Laura, pushing back her chairand rising angrily to her feet. 

"I do--I love him--but that's for myself, darling, not for you. "

"Do you mean me to think, " persisted Laura in a voice that was tensewith horrified amazement, "that you are jealous of _me_?"

A long pause followed her words, for Gerty, instead of replying to thequestion had turned to the window and was staring out upon the baredtrees in Gramercy Park. The quiet of it for the moment was almost likethe quiet of the country, and the two women who loved each other seemedsuddenly divided by miles of silent misunderstanding. Then, with aresolute movement, Gerty looked full into Laura's face, while the lightflashed upon a mist of tears that hung over her reproachful eyes. 

"Oh, Laura, Laura!" she said softly. 

With a cry of remorse Laura threw herself upon her knees beside thewindow, kissing the gloved hands in Gerty's lap. 

But Gerty had wiped her tears away and sat smiling her little worldlysmile of knowledge. "I am jealous of you, but not in the way you meant, "she answered. "I am jealous for myself, for the one little bit of methat is really alive--the part of myself that is in you. I am afraid togo over again with you the old road that I went over with myself--theold wanting, wanting, wanting that ends in nothing. "

"But why should I go over it?" asked Laura, from her knees, and theflush in her face coloured all her manner with a fine deception. 

Gerty's mocking gayety rang back into her voice. "You might as well askme why I am still fool enough to be in love with Perry, " she returnedwith her flippant laugh, "it's a part of what Arnold calls 'the damnablecontradiction of life. ' You might as well ask Connie Adams why she wasborn bad?"

"Was she--and how do you know it?" demanded Laura. 

"I don't know. " Gerty's shrug was exquisitely indifferent. "But it'smore charitable, I fancy, to suppose so. Have you seen Roger, by thebye?"

Laura shook her head. "I would rather not. There is nothing one couldsay. "

"Oh, I don't know--one might congratulate him on his liberation, andthat's something. I dare say he'll have to get a divorce now, thoughPerry says he hates them. "

"Then I don't believe he'll do it, he doesn't live by the ordinaryethics of the rest of us, you know. Will she marry Brady, do you think?"

"Marry Brady? My blessed innocent, Brady wouldn't marry her. He hasabout as much moral responsibility as a fig tree that puts forththistles--and besides who could blame him? She's half crazy already fromcocaine, and no man on earth could stand her for a month. "

No man on earth! Laura leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes, forshe remembered the figure of Roger Adams as he moved away from herthrough the sunlight in the crowded street. She saw his worn clothes, his resolute walk, and the patience which belonged to the infinitestillness in his face; and, for one breathless moment, she seemed tofeel the approach of the spirit which worked silently amid the hummingmaterial things that made up life. 

Gerty had risen and was fastening her white furs at her throat. "I mustgo to Camille's, " she said, "for she has just got in some new Frenchgowns and she has promised to give me the first look. Of course, onecan't really trust her, " she added suspiciously, "and I shouldn't be inthe least surprised to find that she'd let Ada Lawley get ahead of me. It is simply marvellous how that woman always manages to produce astriking effect. She was at the opera last night in peacock blue whenevery other woman was wearing that dead, lustreless white. Do you know Isometimes wonder if I follow the fashion almost too closely. "

"You could never look like any one else so it doesn't matter. "

"And yet I spend two-thirds of my time trying to extinguish the littleindividuality I possess, " laughed Gerty, as she turned upon thethreshold. "I wear the same wave in my hair, the same colour in my gown, the same length to my gloves. Oh, you fortunate dear, thank heaven youhave never kept a fashion!"

She went out with her softened merriment, while Laura, throwing herselfinto the chair beside the window, looked down upon the carriage whichwas waiting before the door. After a moment she saw Gerty come out andcross the sidewalk, lifting her velvet skirt until she showed abeautifully shod foot and a glimpse of black embroidered stocking. Shegave a few careless directions to the footman who arranged her rugs, andthen as the carriage door closed, she leaned out with her brilliantsmile and waved her hand to Laura at the window above. The wintersunlight seemed to pass away with her when at last she turned thecorner. 

With a sigh Laura's thoughts followed the carriage, envying the beautyand the fashion of her friend for the first time in her life. A strangefascination enveloped the world in which Gerty lived, and the oldfamiliar atmosphere through which she herself had moved so tranquillywas troubled suddenly as if by an approaching storm. The things whichshe had once loved now showed stale and profitless to her eyes, whilethose external objects of fortune, to which she had always believedherself to be indifferent, were endowed at the moment with anextraordinary and unreal value. It was as if her whole nature hadundergone some powerful physical convulsion, which had altered not onlyher outward sensibilities but the obscure temperamental forces whichcontrolled in her the laws of attraction and repulsion. What she hadliked yesterday she was frankly wearied of to-day. What she had formerlyhated she now found to be full of a mysterious charm. Books bored her, and her mind, in spite of her effort at restraint, dwelt longingly uponthe trivial details which made up Gerty's life--upon those bodilyadornments on which her friend had staked her chance of marriedhappiness. The endless round of dressmakers, shops, and feverishemulation appeared strangely full of interest; and her own quiet lifeshowed to her as utterly destitute of that illusory colour of romancewhich she found in her vision of Gerty's and of every other existenceexcept her own. She beheld her friend moving in a whirl of colour, through perpetual laughter, and the picture fascinated her, though sheknew that in the naked reality of things Gerty was far more unhappy thanshe herself. Yet Gerty's unhappiness appeared to her to be distinguishedby the element of poetry in which her own was lacking. 

A terrible _ennui_ possessed her, the restless desire for a change thatwould obliterate not only the circumstances in which she was placed, buteven the personal fact of her own identity. She wanted an experience sofresh that it would be like a new birth--a resurrection--and yet shecould tell neither what this experience would be nor why she wanted it. All that she was clearly aware of was that her surroundings, her family, her friends, the small daily events of her life and her owndissatisfaction, had become stale and repugnant to her mood, and shethought of the day before her as of a gray waste of utterly intolerablehours. 

"Nothing will happen in it that has not happened every twenty-four hourssince I was born, " she said; "it is always the same--everything is thesame, and it is this monotony that seems to me insupportable. As I sithere at this window I feel it to be impossible that I should ever dragmyself through the remainder of this afternoon, and through the eveningwhich will be like every other evening that I have spent. Aunt Rosawill repeat her exhaustless jokes, Aunt Angela will make her oldcomplaints, Uncle Percival will begin to play upon his flute. " And thesethings when she thought of them--the stories of Mrs. Payne, the despairof Angela, the piping of Uncle Percival's flute--appeared to her toexact a power of moral endurance which she felt herself no longer topossess. A disgust more terrible than grief seized upon her--a revoltfrom the commonplace which she knew to be worse than tragedy. 

Then in the midst of her depression she remembered that on the followingafternoon she would see Arnold Kemper, and the hours appeared instantlyto open into the light. The end of everything was there just twenty-fourhours ahead, and she felt, like a physical agony, the necessity tostifle the consciousness of time, to kill the minutes, one by one, asthey crept slowly into sight. She thought of the meeting in this veryroom, of the gown that she would wear, of the words that she wouldspeak, of the curious exquisite mixture of attraction and repulsion, ofthe ardent tenderness she would find in his look. This tenderness, shefelt, was the solitary expression of the real man--of the man whom Gertyhad never known, whom Madame Alta had not so much as glimpsed; and theassurance produced in her a secret rapture which was all the sweeter forbeing exclusively her own. She wondered where he was at the instant--howhe would pass the hours which dragged so heavily for her--and theinterest which had vanished so strangely from her own existence attacheditself immediately to his. The people he knew, the club he went to, even the motor cars he drove, were surrounded in her thoughts with afresh and vivid charm. Apart from this there was no longer anycharm--hardly any animation about the life she led. A single idea hadenlarged itself at the cost of all the others, and she had a sense ofstanding amid a desert waste, in the drab miles of which a solitarypalm-tree flourished. 

"And yet why should I hunger for his presence and what is there in itwhen it comes that is worth this wanting?" she asked in dismay of herown longing. "When I am away from him I think of nothing except of thehour when I shall see him again, and yet when the meeting comes I am nothappy and he is always a little different from what I hoped that hewould be. I have no particular satisfaction when I see him, but when hegoes the longing and the dream begin again and I build up other idealsof him which he will destroy the first time that we come together. Is itbecause I have never really got to the thing that he is eternally--tothe soul of him--that he creates in me this agony of expectancy and ofdisappointment? When I meet him to-morrow may it not happen that for thefirst time he will fulfill all the ideals of him that I have made?"

And it seemed to her almost impossible that she should wait thetwenty-four intervening hours before making her final discovery--thatshe should exist a day and a night in utter vacancy while the ultimatemoment still beckoned her from to-morrow. Would time never pass? Wasthere no way of strangling it before it came to birth? She picked up herfavourite books from her desk--Spinoza, Shelley, "The Imitation ofChrist"--but the throbbing vitality in her own breast caused the printedpages to turn chill and lifeless. 

A mirror was placed over the mantel and she looked closely into it, meeting her profound gaze and the poetic charm which hung like anatmosphere about her delicate figure. She felt at the instant that shewould have given her life--her soul even and its infinitepossibilities--for an exterior of Gerty's brilliant beauty. Theblackness of her hair, the prominence of her brow, the faint amberpallor of her skin, provoked her into a sensation of anger; and sheturned away with an emotion that was almost one of bitterness. A minutelater it seemed to her that the afternoon would pass more quickly if shespent it out of doors, and as she slipped into her walking clothes shethought with relief of the crowded streets and of the noises that woulddrown the consciousness of her own thoughts. When Angela called to heras she passed along the hall it was with a movement of irritation thatshe turned the handle of the door and entered the invalid's room, wherethe pale winter sunshine fell over the tall white candles and uncarpetedfloor. 

Mrs. Payne, in her black velvet and old rose point, sat by the windowreading aloud in her shrill voice extracts from a society paper whichshe had brought for the purpose of entertaining her sister. In theconventual atmosphere in which Angela lived the biting scandals andmalicious gossip of the worldly old woman always produced upon Laura animpression of mere vulgar insincerity. To have lived over seventy yearsand still to find one's chief interest in the social indiscretions ofone's neighbours was a fact which would have been pathetic had it beenless ridiculous. Tottering reluctantly to her grave, in the centre of auniverse filled with a million mysteries of dead and living suns, shewas absorbed to the exclusion of all larger matters in the question asto whether or not "Tom Marbury had compromised Mrs. Billy Pearce?"

"As if it mattered, " sighed Angela from her couch. "As if it reallymattered to me in the least. "

Mrs. Payne fixed upon her a painted pair of eyes set in lustrelessvacancy between two flashing diamond earrings. "That's because you liveso out of the world, my dear, " she observed, "that you have ceased tofeel any longer a rational interest in life. "

"But is life all somebody's impropriety?" enquired Angela, with themeekness of a child. 

"It is that--or charities, " returned Mrs. Payne. "You may take yourchoice between the two. It was only after I failed to interest you inour day nursery that I turned to the social news. "

"But you haven't tried the sports, " suggested Laura, with a laugh, whileshe felt the presence of her aunts to have become an intolerable burden. 

Mrs. Payne raised her blackened eyebrows, and sat smoothing out thecrumpled paper with her claw-like jewelled fingers. It seemed to Laurathat she wore her body to-day as if it were a tattered, yetindustriously mended garment for which her indomitable spirit would soonhave no further use. Everything about her was youthful except the fleshwhich wrapped her, and that was hideously, was grotesquely ancient. Yetshe had once been both a beauty and a belle, famed for her quickaffairs and her careful indiscretions; and as Laura watched her she sawin this living decay but the inevitable end and weariness of pleasure. Of her many lovers, which remained to her to-day? With the multipliedsensations of her youth what had her loveless age to do? She had hardlylaid up even a sweetness of memories, or why did she feast uponuncovered scandals as a vulture upon carrion?

"What poor dear Angela needs is an object in life--a passion, " remarkedMrs. Payne, picking up her gold-rimmed eye glasses which hung on alittle jewelled chain from her bosom. "I used to say that when I got tooold for an emotion I wanted to be chloroformed, but I found, thankheaven, that with care one's emotions may last one pretty well to one'seightieth year. When men fail one cards are left, and after cards, Idaresay, there would come gossip. It is for this reason, " she pursuedwith conviction, "that I am trying to persuade Angela to take up alittle bridge. "

"A little bridge!" gasped Laura, and from sheer amazement she sat downon the foot of Angela's couch. 

"I was considering the moral support of it, of course, " resumed Mrs. Payne. "First of all I would advise some inspiring religious conviction, but as religion does not appeal to her, I suggested bridge. "

"It might as well be white rabbits, I don't see the difference, "protested Angela, rolling over upon her side with a despairing movementof fatigue. 

"The difference, my dear, is that white rabbits are dirty littlebeasts, " observed the elder woman. 

Angela lay back upon her sofa and regarded her sister with a smile sharpand cold as the edge of a knife. "I wonder why you were more fortunatethan I, Rosa, " she said, after a pause, "for in my heart I was always abetter woman. "

Mrs. Payne laughed her hard little mirthless laugh, and stretched outher withered hand with a melodramatic gesture. "But I was never a fool, my dear, " was her retort, "and there are few women of whom it can besaid with truth that they were never at any time, from the beginning tothe end of their career, a fool. Nobody is a fool always, but there arevery few people who escape it throughout their lives. "

"Oh, I was, " sighed Angela submissively, "I know it, but I waspunished. "

"It is the one thing for which we can count quite certainly upon beingpunished in this life, " remarked Mrs. Payne, with a kind of moralsatisfaction, as of one who was ranged upon the side of worldliness ifnot of righteousness. "Other sins are for eternity, I suppose, but Ihave never yet seen a fool escape the deserts of his folly. It is theone reason which has always made me believe so firmly in an overrulingProvidence. Are you going out, my child?" she asked, as Laura rose. 

"I am stifling for want of air, " replied the girl, shrinking away fromthe unnatural flash of her aunt's eyes. "I'll read to aunt Angela when Icome in, but just now I must get out. " Then as Mrs. Payne still soughtto detain her, she broke away and ran rapidly down into the street. 

But she was no sooner out of doors than it seemed to her that she oughtto have stayed in her room--that the minutes would have passed moreswiftly in unbroken quiet. Her senses were absorbed in the single desireto have the day over--to begin to-morrow; and it seemed to her that whenonce the night was gone, she would be able to collect her thoughts withclearness, that the morning would bring some lucid explanation of thedisturbance that she felt to-day. Then it occurred to her that she wouldfollow Gerty's example and seek a distraction in the shops, and she tooka cab and drove to her milliner's, where she tried on a number ofabsurdly impossible hats. She bought one at last, to realise immediatelyas she left the shop that she would never persuade herself to wear itbecause she felt that it gave her an air of Gerty's "smartness" whichsat like an impertinence upon her own individual charm. Glancing at herwatch she found that only two hours had gone since she left the house, and turning up the street she walked on with a step which seemedstriving to match in energy her rapid thoughts. 

"You have effaced every other impression of my life, " he had said to heryesterday; and as she repeated the words she remembered the quiver ofhis mouth under his short brown moustache, the playful irony of thesmile that had met her own. Had he meant more or less than the spokenphrase? Was the strength of his handclasp sincere? Or was the caressingsound of his voice a lie, as Gerty believed? Was he, in truth, fightingunder all the shams of life for the liberation of his soul? or was thereonly the emptiness of sense within him, after all? She felt his burninglook again, and flinched at the memory. "Every glance, every gesture, every word speaks to me of things which he cannot utter, which areunutterable, " and yet even with the assurance she felt as if she wereliving in an obscure and painful dream--as if the element of unrealitywere a part of his smile, of his voice, of the feverish longing fromwhich she told herself that she would presently awake. It was as if shemoved an illusion among illusions, and yet felt the unreal quality ofherself and of the things outside. 

CHAPTER IX

THE TRIUMPH OF THE EGO

He came punctually at three o'clock on the following afternoon, and evenas he entered the room, she was conscious of a slight disappointmentbecause, in some perfectly indefinable way, he was different from whatshe had hoped that he would be. 

"This is the first peaceful moment I have had for twenty-four hours, " heremarked, as he flung himself into a chair before the small wood fire;"a man I knew was inconsiderate enough to die and make me the guardianof his son, and I've had to overhaul the chap's property almost beforethe funeral was over. "

A frown of nervous irritation wrinkled his forehead, but as he turned toher it faded quickly before the kindling animation in his look. "ByJove, I've thought of you every single minute since I was here, " hepursued. "What a persistent way you have of interfering with a fellow'speace of mind. I've known nothing like it in my life. "

"I hope at least I didn't damage the property, " she observed, and almostwith the words she wondered why she had longed so passionately yesterdayfor his presence. Now that he had come she felt neither the delight ofrealised expectation nor the final peace of renouncement. 

"Well, it wasn't your fault if you didn't, " he replied, leaning his headagainst the chair-back and looking at her with his intimate and charmingsmile. "I had to fight hard enough to keep you out even of the stocks. Was I as much in your way, I wonder?"

She shook her head. "In my way? I wouldn't allow it. Why should I?"

"Why, indeed?" his genial irony was in his glance and he held her gazeuntil she felt the warm blood mount swiftly to her forehead. "Why, indeed unless you wanted to?" he laughed. 

His eyes moved to the window, and she followed the large, slightlycoarsened features of his profile and the fullness of his jaw which lenta suggestion of brutality to his averted face. Was it possible that shefound an attraction in mere animal vitality? She wondered; then hiscaressing glance was turned upon her, and she forgot to ask herself theuseless question. 

"So I must presume, then, that I haven't disturbed you?" he enquiredgayly. 

Her eyes lingered upon him for a moment before she answered. "Oh, no, itwasn't you, it was Gerty, " she replied. 

He drew nearer until the arm of his chair touched her own. "I thought atleast that my character was safe with Gerty, " he exclaimed, not withoutthe annoyance of an easily aroused vanity. 

"I don't know what you'd think about the danger, " she returned withseriousness, "but I simply hate the kind of things she told me. "

His frown returned with gathered energy. "Is that so? What were they?"

"Oh, I don't know--nothing definite--but about women generally. "

"Women! Pshaw! You're the only woman. There isn't any other on theearth. "

Her hand lay on the arm of her chair, and he reached out and grasped herwrist, not gently, but with a violent pressure. "I'll swear there isn'tanother woman in existence, " he exclaimed. 

An electric current started from his fingers through the length of herarm; she felt it burning into her flesh as it travelled quickly from herwrist to her heart. For one breathless moment she was conscious of hispresence as of a powerful physical force, and the sensation came to herthat she was being lifted from her feet and swept blindly out intospace. Then, drawing slightly away, she released herself from his grasp. 

"I give you fair warning that if you repeat that for the third time, Ishall believe it, " she retorted coolly. 

"I'm trying to make you, " he returned in a strained voice. "Why are yousuch a sceptic, I wonder, " he added as he fell back into his chair. "Can't you tell the real thing when you come across it?"

"The real thing?" Her words were almost a whisper. 

"Are you so used to shams that you don't recognise a man's love when yousee it?"

She leaned toward him, her black brows drawn together with the sombrequestioning look which had always fascinated him by its strangeness. Beyond the look, what was there? he asked with an intense and eagercuriosity. What passionate surprises existed in her? What secretsuggestions of a still undiscovered charm? The wonder of her temperamentrose before him, exquisite, remote, alluring, and he felt the appeal shemade thrill like the spirit of adventure through his blood. Again hestretched out his hand, but with a frown he drew it back before ittouched her. 

"Can't you see that I love you?" he said with an angry hoarseness. 

His face, his voice, the gesture of his outstretched hand startled herinto a quick feeling of terror, and she shrank back with a childlikemovement of alarm. Where was her dream, she demanded with an instinctiverepulsion, if this was the only living reality of love? Then his facechanged abruptly beneath her look, and as the strong tenderness of hissmile enveloped her, she was conscious of a sudden ecstasy of peace. 

"Did I frighten you?" he asked, smiling. 

She shook her head, resting her fingers for an instant upon his hand. "Idon't believe you could frighten me if you tried, " she answered. 

He raised his eyebrows with his characteristic blithe interrogation, "Well, I shouldn't like to try, that's all. "

"I give you leave--my courage is my shield. "

"But I don't want to frighten you. " His voice was softer than she hadever heard it. "We aren't afraid of those we love, you know. "

"Why should I love you?" she enquired gayly. 

His pleasant irony was in his laugh. "Because you can't helpyourself--you're obliged to--it's your fate. "

She frowned slightly. "I have no fate except the one I make for myself. "

He bent toward her and this time his hand closed with determination uponhers. "Well, you may make me what you please, " he said. 

Her hand fluttered like an imprisoned bird in his grasp, but he held itwith a pressure which sent the blood tingling sharply to the ends of herfingers. His strength hurt her and yet she found a curious pleasure inthe very acuteness of her sensations. 

"There's no use fighting, " he said with a short laugh, "we can't helpourselves. You'll have to marry me, so you may as well give in. "

His tone was mocking, but she felt his tenderness as she had felt it amoment before, resistless and enveloping. As she smiled up at him, hebent quickly forward and kissed her brow and eyes and mouth, thenlifting her chin he kissed, also, the soft fulness of her throat. Whenshe put up her hands in protest, he crushed them back upon her bosom bythe strength of his lips. 

She closed her eyes, yielding for one breathless instant to the passionof his embrace. Her dream and her longing melted swiftly intorealisation, and she told herself that the agony of joy was sharper thanthat of grief. This was like nothing that she had imagined, and she feltan impulse to fly back into the uncertainty that she had left--to gaintime in which to prepare for the happiness which she told herself washers. Yet was it happiness? Her soul trembled as if from some almostimperceptible shock of disillusionment, and she knew again the sense ofunreality which had come to her in the street on the day before. Againshe felt that she was in the midst of a singularly vivid dream fromwhich she would presently awake to life--and this dream seemed theresult of her dual nature, as if even her emotions belonged less to herreal existence than to an unconscious projection of thought. 

The impulse to escape re-awoke in her, and yet she was clearly awarethat she would no sooner fly from him than her insatiable longing woulddrive her back anew. His attraction appeared strangely the greater asshe withdrew the further from his actual presence, and she knew that ifhe were absent from her for a day the uncertainty that he aroused wouldbecome intolerable. "Does the soul that I see in him--the soul of whichmine is but the reflection--really exist, or have I created an image outof mere emptiness?" she asked; and even with the thought it seemed toher that she saw a new seriousness--a profounder meaning in his face. Gerty had never touched the hidden springs, nor had any other womanexcept herself, and the knowledge of this gave her an ecstaticconsciousness of power. 

When she raised her eyes she saw that he had fallen back into his chairand was watching her intently with a puzzled and ardent look. 

"You won't keep me hanging on for an eternity, " he said, with thenervous contraction of his forehead she knew so well. "If we must go tothe scaffold, let's go at once. "

"To the scaffold?" She smiled at him for the purpose of prolonging thethrill of the uncertainty. 

"Oh, I hate marriage, you know, " he returned impatiently, "there's notanother woman on earth who could get me into it. "

She nodded. "Well, that is to be hoped if not believed. "

He made an impulsive movement toward her. "Believe it or not, so long asyou marry me, " he exclaimed. 

His flippancy grated upon her, and she turned from his words to theelusive earnestness which mocked at her from his face. If she might onlyarrest and hold this earnestness, then surely she might reach the depthsof his nature and be at peace. 

"It never seemed possible to me that I should marry a man who has hadanother wife, " she said, with an emotion which was almost a regret forthe old ideal of conduct from which she had slipped away. 

"A wife! Nonsense!" She saw the indignant flash of his eyes and thenervous quiver of the hand with which he pulled at his short moustache. Though he did not touch her she felt instinctively that his personalityhad been put forth to overmaster her. "She was nothing but a schoolboy'sfolly, and I've forgotten that I ever knew her. She's safely marriedagain now, so for heaven's sake, don't be foolish!"

"And how do you know that in ten years you will not have forgotten me?"she asked. 

For a brief pause he did not reply; then he bent toward her and she hungfor a rapturous instant upon the passionate denial in his face. The lookthat she loved and dreaded was in his eyes, and she struggled blindly inher own helplessness before it. He was so close to her that it seemed asif the breath were leaving her body in the intensity of the atmosphereshe breathed. 

"Forget you, my own sweetheart!" he exclaimed, and the trivial wordswere almost an offence against the emotional dignity of the moment. 

She rose to her feet, stretching out her hand until she stood as ifkeeping him at a distance by the mere fragile tips of her fingers. 

"If I love you, I shall love you very, very much, " she said. 

With a laugh he bent his lips against her hand. "You'll never love mehalf so much as I love you, you bit of thistledown, " he answered. 

"It will be either a great happiness or a greater misery, " she went on, hesitating, retreating, as she withdrew her hands and pressed them uponher bosom. 

"There's no misery any more--it is the beginning of life, " he rejoined. 

She laughed softly, a little tender, yielding laugh; then at the veryinstant when he would have caught her in his arms, she slipped quicklyback until her desk came between them. 

"You must give me time--I must think before I let myself care too much, "she said. 

In the end she gave him her promise and he went from her with a rare andvivid feeling of exhilaration. For the time he told himself that hewanted her more than he remembered ever to have wanted anything in hiswhole life; and his sated emotion of a man of pleasure, responded withall the lost intensity of youth. Was it credible that he was alreadymiddle-aged--was already growing a little bald? he demanded, with agenuine delight in the discovery that his senses were still alive. 

On his way up to his rooms, he dropped, by habit, into his club, andafter a word or two with several men whom he seldom met, he crossed overto join Perry Bridewell, who sat in an exhausted attitude in a leatherchair beside the window. Outside a stream of carriages, containingrichly dressed women moved up Fifth Avenue, dividing as it approachedthe mounted police at the corner, and Perry, as Kemper went up to him, was following with a dulled fish-like glance the pronounced figure of alady who held the reins over a handsome pair of bays. 

"That's a fine figure of a woman--look at her hips, " he observed, withrelish, as Kemper stopped beside him. 

"I saw her yesterday. Gerty says she's terrific form, " commented Kemper, gazing to where the object of their admiration vanished in a crush ofvehicles. 

"Oh, they always say that of a woman with any figure to speak of, "remarked Perry. "Unless she's as flat as an ironing board, somebody issure to say she's vulgar. For my part I like shape, " he concluded withemphasis. 

A vision of Gerty's slender, almost boyish figure, with its daringcarriage, rose before Kemper, and he bit back the cynical laugh upon hislips. Did one require, after all, a certain restraint in life, acultured abstinence before one could really appreciate the finer flavourof the aesthetic taste? His old aversion to marriage returned to him ashe looked at Perry, sunk in his domestic satiety, and his exhilarationof a moment ago gave place to a corresponding degree of depression. Hehad done the irrevocable thing, and, as usual, it was no soonerirrevocable than the joyous seduction of it fled from his fancy. Marriage was utterly repugnant to him, and yet he knew not only thatthere was no withdrawing from his position, but that he would not wishto withdraw himself if he had the power. The instant that thepossibility of losing Laura occurred to him, he felt again the full, resurgent wave of his desire. He wanted her, and if to marry her was theone way to possess her, then--the devil take it--marry her he would!

A tinted note was brought to Perry Bridewell, who, after reading it, sattwirling it between his fingers with a bored and discontented look onhis handsome florid face. 

"Take my advice, and when you get clear of an affair, keep out, " heremarked, in a disgusted voice. "By Jove, I'm sometimes tempted to wishthat I were as cold blooded as old Adams. "

"Old Adams?" Kemper repeated the name, with a quickened interest. "Well, I'd hardly envy him his experience with the sex, " he exclaimed. 

"You would if you saw him--he simply never thinks about a woman so faras I know, and at least he's well enough rid of his wife, at last. She'son Brady's hands, thank heaven!"

Kemper shrugged his shoulders. "It serves her right, I suppose, but Ishouldn't care to be on Brady's hands, that's all. "

"Oh, he'll chuck her presently, you'll see. "

"And afterward--" Kemper was leaning over Perry while he criticallyexamined a pretty woman who was passing under the window. 

"There's no afterward, " laughed Perry; "you know how such women end. "

As he glanced at the note again, the bored and discontented look cameback upon his face, and he tore the envelope carelessly across and flungit with a jerk into the waste basket. 

"Pshaw! it's all a confounded nuisance--the whole business of sex, " heremarked as he rose to his feet. Then while the disgust still lingeredin his expression, a servant entered and handed him a second notewritten upon the same faintly tinted paper. Immediately as if by magichis face was transfigured by the animated satisfaction of the conqueror, and instinctively his hand wandered to the ends of his fair moustache, to which he added an eloquent upward twirl. From the condition of a meresullen and dejected animal--he sprang instantly into the victoriousswagger of the complacent male. 

"Sorry, but I'm in an awful hurry, " he remarked in his usual heartyvoice. "Look me up later in the evening and we'll have a game ofbilliards. "

He went out, still twirling the fine ends of his moustache, and Kemperfollowed, after a short delay, to where his newest French motor car waswaiting before the door. 

A little later as he moved slowly amid the crush of vehicles in FifthAvenue, it occurred to him that since Perry was so agreeably engaged, hemight himself come in for a share of Gerty's society, and stoppingbefore her door, he sent up a request that she would come with him for ashort quick run up Riverside. Next to Laura herself he felt that hepreferred Gerty because he knew that she would enter into a livelybanter upon the subject that filled his thoughts, and his emotion was sofresh that there was a piquant charm in her sprightly allusion to themere fact of its existence. When she came down at the end of a fewminutes, wearing her long tan motoring coat and a fluttering whitechiffon veil, he felt a quick impatience of the first casual phraseswith which she leaned back in the car and settled her hanging draperiesabout her. 

"Go as fast as you like, " he said to the chauffeur, and then reachinginto his pocket, he drew out his glasses and offered her a pair. 

She shook her head, with an indignant gesture of refusal. "If I perish Iperish, but I won't perish hideously!" she exclaimed. 

With a laugh he slipped the elastic over his cap. "What a bore it mustbe always to keep beautiful, " he remarked. "You can't imagine thepositive delight there is in the freedom of ugliness. "

"I dare say. " She had turned her head to look at a passing carriage, andhe saw the lovely delicacy of her profile through the blown transparentfolds of her veil. "I shall know it some day, " she added presently, "forafter I've safely passed my fiftieth birthday, I mean never to look intoa glass again. Then I'll break my mirrors and be really happy. "

"No, you won't, my dear cousin, " he rejoined, "for you'll continue tosee yourself in Perry's eyes. "

He watched with a sensation of pleasure the graceful shrug of hershoulders under her shapeless coat. 

"Oh, there's no chance of that, " she assured him; "he is always in themhimself?"

The vague curiosity in his thoughts took form suddenly in words. "Where's he now, by the way, do you know?"

Her musical, empty laugh was as perfect as the indifferent glance shegave him. "Enjoying himself, I hope, " she answered. "He hung around meuntil I sent him out in the sheer desperation of weariness. "

Though her lashes did not quiver, he knew not only that she lied, butthat she was perfectly aware of the assurance and extent of hisknowledge. The hopeless gallantry of her deception appealed to thefighting spirit in his blood, and he found himself wondering foolishlyif Laura could have played with so high an air the part of a neglectedwife. To a man of his peculiarly eager temperament there existed acurious fascination in the idea of pushing to its limit of endurance anunalterable constancy. Would Laura have uttered her futile lies with soexquisite an insolence? or would she have acted in tears the patientGriselda in her closet? The virtue of truthfulness was the one he hadmost nearly associated with her, and it seemed to him impossible thatshe should stoop to shield herself behind a falsehood. Yet he could notdispel his curiosity as to how she would act in circumstances which hefelt to be impossible and purely imaginary. 

He wanted to speak of her to Gerty, but a restraint that was almostembarrassment kept him silent, and Gerty herself could not be induced toabandon her flippant satirical tone. So Laura was not mentioned betweenthem; and he felt when at last he brought Gerty to her door again that, on the whole, the drive had been a disappointment. He had meant to seekher sympathy with his love for her friend, and instead he had been metby a fine, exquisite edge of cutting humour. For once he had felt theneed to be wholly in earnest, and Gerty had taken nothing seriously, least of all the hint which he had dropped concerning the ultimatestability of his emotion. If she had got her heartache from his sex, hesaw clearly that she meant to have her laugh on it as well; and the onlyremark from which she had let fall even momentarily her gay derision wasin answer to some phrase of his in which had occurred the name of RogerAdams. 

"Roger Adams!" she had echoed with a fleeting earnestness, "do you knowI've always had a fancy that he is meant for Laura in another life. "

"In another life?" he questioned merrily. 

"Oh, things went crosswise here, you see, " she answered, "but somewhereelse, who knows? They may all be straightened out. "

The question of Laura's possible fate in "another life" failed somehowto disturb him seriously; but as he drove presently down the darkeningstreet, under the high electric lights, he found himself wonderingvaguely why Gerty had so persistently associated her friend with RogerAdams. 

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH ADAMS COMES INTO HIS INHERITANCE

Five minutes had hardly passed after Laura was alone before the servantbrought up the name of Roger Adams, and an instant later he was holdingher hand in his cordial grasp. At his appearance she had for a moment asense of the returning reality of things--the vigour of his hand clasp, the strong, kindly look of his face, the winning, protective tendernessof his smile, these gave her an impression of belonging to the permanentinstead of to the merely evanescent part of life. When he sat down inthe big leather chair from which Kemper had risen, and removing hisglasses, fixed upon her the attentive gaze of his narrow, short-sightedeyes, she felt immediately the first sensation of peace that she hadknown for many weeks. His hand, long, heavily veined, muscular, and yetfinely sensitive, lay outstretched upon the mahogany lid of her desk, and she found herself presently contrasting it with the square, brown, roughly shaped hand of Kemper. Her senses, her brain, her heart werestill full of her lover, yet she was able to feel through some strangeenfranchisement of her dual nature, that there was a mental directness, an impassioned morality about the man she did not love in which the manshe loved was entirely lacking. But the knowledge of this curiouslyenough, served to increase rather than to diminish the persistentquantity of her emotion, and the few minutes during which Kemper hadbeen absent from her had sufficed to exaggerate his image to a statuethat was heroic in its proportions. It was as if her heart--she wasstill lucid enough to think in a figure of speech--were an altardedicated to the perpetual flame before a deity who had already showedhimself to be both terrible and obscure. 

Now as she sat looking, with her rapt gaze, at the man before her, shewas thinking how absolutely and without reservation was her surrender tothose particular qualities which Roger Adams did not represent. Here, atthis approaching crisis in her experience, it might have been supposedthat her sense of humour would have lent something of its brilliance asa safeguard, but the weakness of her temperament lay in the very factthat her humour entered only into those situations where it couldornament without modifying the actual conditions of thought--that shedevoted to her passion for Kemper, as to the other merely temporaryphenomena of the senses, a large intensity of outlook which only theeternal could support with dignity. 

Her gaze dropped back from the heights, and he felt that she became lesselusive and more human. 

"I've thought of you so often and so much, " she remarked with her smileof cordial sweetness. 

"Not so often as I've thought of you. " He laid, as he spoke, a foldedpaper upon the desk, "There's an English review of the poems. It'srather good so I thought you might care to see it. "

She unfolded the paper; then pushed it from her with an indifferentgesture. "It seems so long ago I can hardly believe I wrote them, " shereturned, conscious as she uttered the mere ordinary words of a subduedyet singularly vivid excitement, which seemed the softer mental radianceleft by an illumination which was past. 

"I wonder why it should seem long to you, " said Adams slowly. "Iremember you used to complain that one was obliged to fly through phasesof thought in order to test them all. "

"I'm not sure that I want to test them all now, " she replied. "When onegets to a good place one would better stop and rest. "

"Then you are in a good place?" he asked, looking at her intently fromhis short-sighted eyes, which appeared to contract and narrow since hehad taken off his glasses. 

"I don't know, " she evaded the question with a smile, "but if I am, Iwarn you, I shall stand still and rest. "

He laughed softly. "I dare say you're right, if there's such a state asrest on the earth, " he answered. 

The cheerful sound of his voice brought the tears suddenly to her eyes, and she remembered a man whom she had once seen in a hospital, smilingafter a frightful accident through which he had passed. 

"Are you yourself so tired?" she asked. 

"I?" he shook his head. "Oh, I was using the glittering generalitiesagain. "

"And yet you seldom take even the smallest of vacations, " she insisted. 

"One doesn't need it when one is broken in as I am. There's a joy ingetting one's work behind one that the luxury of idleness does notknow. "

"All the same I wish you'd stop awhile. " Then she gave him one of herlong, thoughtful looks and spoke with the beautiful, vibrant note in hervoice which he had called its "Creole quality. " "We have been such old, such close, such dear friends, " she went on, "that I wonder if I maytell you how profoundly--how sincerely--"

She faltered and he took up her unfinished sentence with the instinct toput her embarrassment at ease. "I knew it all along, God bless you, " hesaid. "One feels such things, I think. "

"One ought to, " she responded. 

"It's been hard, " he pursued frankly; and she was struck by the utterabsence of picturesqueness, of the whining tone of the victim in histreatment of the situation. There was no appeal to her sympathy in hismanner, and he impressed her suddenly as a man who had come intopossession of a power over the results of events if not over the passageof events themselves. "It's been harder, perhaps, than I can say--poorgirl, " he added quickly. 

With a start she sat erect in her chair. "And you can stop to think ofher?" she demanded. 

The hand lying on the arm of his chair closed and unclosed itselfslowly, without effort. "Can't you?" he asked abruptly. 

"Not sincerely, not naturally, " she answered. "I think of you. "

She saw a spasm of pain pass suddenly into his face, a too ardentleaping, as it were, of the blood. 

"You would understand things better, " he said presently, after a pausein which she felt that she had witnessed a quick, sharp struggle, "ifyou had ever watched the slow moral poisoning of cocaine--or had everbeen, " he added with a harsh, grating sound in his usually quiet voice, "at the mercy of such a damned brute as Brady. "

His sudden rage shook her like a strong wind, and she liked him thebetter for his relapse into an elemental passion in the cause ofrighteousness. 

"I'm glad you cursed him, " she remarked simply. "I like it!"

He smiled a little grimly. "So do I. "

"And yet how terrible it is, " she said, with an effort to work herselfinto a sentiment of pity for Connie which she did not feel. "It makesthe whole world look full of horror. "

"Well, it's a comfort to think I never argued that it wasn't a hardroad, " he returned, with the whimsical humour which seemed only todeepen her sense of tragedy. "I've merely maintained that the onlyexcuse for living is to make it a little easier. "

He rose as he spoke and held out his hand with a smile. "So long asyou're happy, don't bother to think of me, " he said; "but if there evercomes a time when you need a sword-arm, let me know. "

Would she ever find that she had need of him? he asked himself presentlyas he walked rapidly homeward through the streets. Was it in theremotest probability of events that he should ever know the delight ofputting forth his full strength in her service? Like a beautiful dreamthe thought stayed by him for many minutes, and his mind dwelt upon itas upon some rare, cherished vision that lies always behind the actualenergies of life. He thought of her dark, eloquent eyes, of theimaginative spirit in her look, and of that peculiar blending ofstrength with sweetness which he had found in no woman except herself. It was a part of the power she exercised that in thinking of her thephysical images appeared always to express a quality that was not inthemselves alone. 

Then, because he must let her go forever, he set himself patiently todetach her presence from his memory. To think of her had become, heknew, the luxury of weakness, and in order to test his strength forrenouncement, he brought his mind deliberately to bear upon theimmediate necessity before him. It was useless to say to himself that hecould as soon give up his dream as his desire. The endurance of hiswill, he realised, was equal to whatever sacrifice he was called upon tomake and live. 

"I can do without--take this--take all and leave me nothing, " he hadsaid in the hour of his deepest misery; and with the knowledge of hisstrength to renounce all that which lay outside himself had come alsothe knowledge of his power to possess whatever was within his soul. Lifewas forfeiture and he had given up the world that he might gain himself. Since the night when he had distractedly sought God through the city, hehad become gradually aware that he moved in the midst of a largeunspeakable peace, for in willing as God willed he had entered, hefound, into a happiness which was independent and almost oblivious ofthe external tragedy in which he lived. Neither sickness nor poverty, nor the shame of Connie's sin, nor the weakness of his own flesh, hadpower to separate him from the wisdom which had come to him under theeyes of the harlot at the crossing. In seeking the essential thing hehad wandered for years in a circle which had led him back at last to hisown soul. Beyond this, he saw there was little further to be lost andnothing to be learned. "Give me more light, my God!" he had prayed inagony of spirit; and the answer had come in a mental illumination whichhad made the crooked places plain and the obscure meanings clear. Atlast he was happy, for at last he had learned that the man who loses allelse and has God possesses everything. 

His loneliness--surely there was never a man more alone since thebeginning of time--had failed suddenly to disquiet him; and as he lookedfrom his remote vision upon the people about him, there flowed throughhis mind that ultimate essence of knowledge which enables a man torecognise himself when he encounters the stranger in the street. 

Several weeks later he heard from Gerty Bridewell of Laura's engagementto Arnold Kemper. He had dropped in to see Perry one afternoon upon aninsignificant piece of business, and Gerty in her husband's absence, hadinsisted upon receiving his call. 

"I'll reward you with a bit of news, " she said, with a nervous andtroubled gesture. "Laura will be married in the autumn. "

"Married?" He looked at her a little blankly, for after having armouredhimself to meet an expected blow, he was almost surprised to find thathe was not insensible to the shook. "Married! and to whom?"

"To Arnold, of course. Didn't you suspect that it would happen?"

He shook his head. "Of all men he's the last I'd ever have thought of. "With the words a vision of Kemper rose before him, robust, virile, sensual, with his dominant egoism and his pleasant affectations, halfhero and half libertine. 

"Well, of all men he's probably the only one that could have done it, "replied Gerty; "he's positively wild about her, there's some comfort tobe got from that--and Laura--"

"And Laura?" he repeated the name for she had broken off quickly afterhaving uttered it. 

"Oh, Laura is very much in love, it seems. I don't believe she herselfknows exactly why--but then one never does. "

"Well, let's wish them happiness with all our hearts, " he said, andadded a little wistfully, "If it could only come by wishing. "

"Ah, if it could!" was Gerty's plaintive echo; then her voice droppedinto a sigh of perplexity, and she leaned toward him in a flatteringconfidential manner. "Do you know there are some men who are cads onlyin their relations to women, " she observed; "leave out that element fromtheir make-up and they're all round first-rate fellows. "

"I dare say you're right, " he answered, and thought of Perry Bridewell, "but why do you select this instant, " he added humorously, "to formulateyour philosophy of sex?"

Her earnestness fled and she leaned back in her chair laughing. "Oh, Idon't know--perhaps--because one doesn't like to lose an aphorism evenif it pops into one's head at the wrong time. "

Then as he rose to go she pressed his hand with a grip that was almostboyish. "How I wish you liked me half as much as I like you, " she said. 

"I do--I shall always, " he responded in his whimsical manner. "There'sabsolutely no limit to my liking--only I know it would be the surest wayto bore you to death. "

She laughed a little wearily. "It would be so nice to be really liked, "she pursued. "Nobody likes me. A good many have loved me in one way oranother, but I want to be just liked. "

He saw the pathetic little frown gather between her brows, and in spiteof the pain in his own heart, he felt a profound and pitiful sympathy. "Well, we'll make a compact upon it, " he declared, holding her hand foran instant in his hearty grasp. "I promise to like you until you tell mefrankly that you're bored. "

The eager child quality he seldom saw was in her look and she was aboutto make some impulsive answer to his words, when there was the sound ofa heavy step outside the door and they heard the next instant Perry'shilarious voice. 

"Well, I'm jolly glad you kept him, Gerty, but, by Jove, I wonder howyou hit it off. He's not your sort, you know. "

The child quality vanished instantly from her face, and Adams watchedthe mocking insolence creep back upon her lips. 

"On the other hand we're perfectly agreed, " she said. "I don't confinemy admiration to your type, you know. "

"You don't, eh? Well, that's a good joke!" exclaimed Perry, with a breakinto his not unpleasant, though sensual laugh. As he stood, squaring hishandsome chest, in the centre of the room, Adams felt that the mereanimal splendour of the man had never been more impressive. 

"I find to my great pleasure that Mrs. Bridewell and I are very goodfriends, " remarked Adams, after a moment in which he had taken inPerry's full magnificence with his humorous short-sighted gaze, "and shehas promised on the strength of it to extend to me the favour of herprotection. No, I can't stay now, " he added, in answer to Perry'sprotestations. "I'll see you again to-morrow--there's really not thefaintest need to hurry. "

And with a feeling that he was stifling in the over-heatedflower-scented rooms, he went quickly from the house into the street. 

There was no reason why the news of Laura should disquiet him--by nopossible twist of his imagination could he bring the event of hermarriage into any direct bearing on his own life, yet as he walked athis rapid, nervous pace toward his home in Thirty-fifth Street, he felta burning sore like a great jagged wound in his breast. That merelyhuman part of him, which was mixed so vitally into the intellectualfervour of his love, suffered from the loss almost as if it had beensome fresh physical hurt. Was it possible that his avowal ofrenunciation had sought to keep back some particular treasure? somedarling frailty? Or was his suffering at the moment but the firstinvoluntary quiver of the nerves which would pass presently leaving himat one with his fate again? "Was I content to give her up only so longas she belonged to no other man?" he asked. "Could I have relinquishedher friendship so easily had I known that her love was not for me, butfor Kemper?" Again the image of Kemper appeared to him, genial, impulsive, sensual--and he felt that if it had been another and adifferent man, he could have borne the loss of Laura with a finercourage. 

Then the unworthiness of his mental attitude forced itself upon hisreflections, and he realised that with his first return to his old stateof selfish blindness, the illumination that had shone in his soul wasgradually obscured. Could it happen to him that he should again lose thelight? Again walk in darkness? His thoughts were no longer clear withthat crystalline clearness of the day before, and it seemed to himsuddenly that the key to all wisdom, which he had found so lately, hadfailed at the critical moment to unlock the fortified doors. Thattemporary and purely human reaction, which is the inevitable fleetingshadow cast on the mind by any spiritual irradiation, appeared in hispresent mood to contain within itself the ultimate abyss of failure. Thesingle instant when he lost hold on God stretched itself into aneternity of nothingness through his soul. 

He had walked rapidly and far, and looking up at his first almostautomatic stop, he found that he had not only passed by his own house, but that he had come as far down as the corner of Twentieth Street andBroadway. The afternoon had waned before he knew it, and the streetswere now filled with people returning from their day's work in officesor in shops. On one side a newsboy was offering him the evening papers, and on the other a man had thrust a bunch of half-faded violets into hisface. 

As he stood now, hesitating for a moment beside the crossing, he becamedimly aware that he had passed quickly from one state of consciousnessinto another, from the brief period of dream into the briefer transitionwhich precedes the awakening--and that there was a distinct gap betweenhis former and his present frame of mind. He _was_ awakening--this herealised as he watched the crowd which surged rapidly by on eitherside--and there came to him almost with the conviction a vividpresentiment that the full return of his senses would bring at the sametime a clearer and a deeper conception of life. His short unhappinessshowed suddenly as a nightmare, and while he looked at the men and womenamong whom he stood, he felt that the egoism of his love for Laura hadbroadened into a generous stream of humanity which filled the world. Thepersonal had passed suddenly into the universal; the spirit of desirehad showed itself to be one with the spirit of pity; and the very agonyof the rebellion through which he had come appeared as he looked backupon it to have enriched his consciousness of the tragedy in otherlives. To live close to mankind, to make a little easier the old wornroad, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the labourer at his toil, thesewere the impulses which sprang like a new growth from his past selfishlonging. "Let me feel both the joy and the sorrow among which I move, "was the prayer he now found strength to utter. 

With renewed energy he turned to go onward, when, as he stepped upon thecrossing by which he stood, he saw that a woman at his side was weepingsoftly, without noise, as she walked. Something of his old restraint, his old embarrassment, checked him for a moment; then he saw that shewas poor and middle-aged and plainly clad, and he turned to speak toher, though still with a slight hesitation. 

"I wish you would do me the kindness to tell me your trouble, " he said. 

She stopped short in her walk and looked up with a nervous squint of hereyes, while the undried tears were still visible on her large mottledcheeks. As she stood there, timid and silent, before him, he saw thatthe basket contained a squirming mass of gray fur, and stooping to lookat it more attentively, he found that the fur belonged to a number ofsmall animals, huddled asleep on the fragment of a red and white plaidshawl. He liked the woman's face and he liked, too, the little creaturesin the basket; and more than this he felt the great need of helping asthe one means to bridge the extreme spiritual isolation in which hestood. To give one's self! Was not this final surrender of the soul thebeginning of all faith as of all love?

"I believe that you need help, " he said, in the winning voice which hadalways had a strange power to open out the hearts of others, "and I knowthat I need to give it. "

In the midst of the crude noises of the street, surrounded by thescreaming newsboys and the clanging cars, he saw that she paused for aninstant to cast a quick, frightened glance about her. 

"If you'll believe what I say, " she replied, in a voice which had gainedthe assurance of a heartfelt conviction, "I was just praying for help tocome, but somehow it always seems to take one's breath clean away whenthere's an answer. I've been trying to sell some of the littlecreatures, " she went on, "but they don't go well to-day and I guess Jimwon't be able to hold out till I get the money for his funeral. "

"And Jim is your husband?" he asked quietly. 

"I married him more than thirty years ago, " she answered, stooping towipe her eyes with a hard rub on the sleeve of her jacket, "and he wasalways a good worker until this sickness came. I've never known him tomiss a day's work so long as he had his health, " she added proudly, "andthat, too, when so many other husbands were soaking themselves indrink. "

"And he's ill now?" asked Adams, as she paused. 

"He's been dying steadily for a week, sir, " she answered with the simpledirectness of the grief which takes account only of the concrete fact, "and I've been working day and night to make up his burial money by thetime he needs it. If he'd only manage to last a day or two longer Imight lay up enough to keep him out of the paupers' lot, " she finishedwith a kind of awful cheerfulness. 

It was this cheerfulness, he found, glimmering like some weirddeath-fire over the actual horror, which made his realisation of thetragedy the more poignant, and lent even a certain distinction to thepoverty which she described. Here, indeed, was the supreme vulgarity ofsuffering--and before it his own personal afflictions appeared asunsubstantial as shades. At least he had had the empty dignity ofreceiving his sorrow with a full sense of its importance, but with thiswoman the very presence of grief was crowded out by the brutalobligation to meet the material demands of death. Death, indeed, hadbecome but an incident--a side issue of the event--and the funeral hadusurped the place and the importance of a law of nature. 

"Let me go home with you--I should like it, " he said when they hadstarted to walk on again; and then with an instinctive courtesy, he tookthe basket from her and slipped it over his own arm. A little later, when following her directions, they entered a surface car for the WestSide, he placed the basket on his knees and sat looking down at thesmall gray kittens that awaking suddenly began to play beneath his eyes. The jostling crowd about him, the substantial panting figure of thewoman beside him, and more than all the joyous animal movements of thekittens in his lap, seemed somehow to return to him that intimaterelation to life which he had lost. He no longer felt the sensation ofdetachment, of insecurity in his surroundings; for his own individualexistence had become in his eyes but a part of the enlarged universalexistence of the race. 

As the car stopped the woman motioned to him with an imperative gesture, and then as they reached the sidewalk, she pointed to a fruiterer'sstand on the outside of a tenement near the corner. 

"It is just above there--on the third floor, " she said, threading herway with a large determined ease through the children playing upon thesidewalk. 

When he mounted presently the dimly lighted staircase inside, it seemedto Adams that the whole house, close, poorly-lighted, dust laden as itwas, was filled to the echo with the ceaseless voices ofchildren--laughing voices, crying voices, scolding voices, voices liftedas high in joy as in grief. So strong was his impression of the numberof the little inmates that he was almost surprised when the woman pushedopen a door on the third landing and led the way into a room whichappeared deserted except for the occupant of the clean white bed by thewindow. 

The whole place was scrupulously neat, he saw this at the firstglance--saw the well swept floor, the orderly arrangement of the chairs, the spotless white cambric curtains parted above the window sill, onwhich a red geranium bore a single blossom out of season. Several largegray cats arose at the woman's entrance and came crying to the kittensin the basket; and she motioned to Adams to put the little creatures onthe floor. Then going to the bed she stooped over the man who laythere--outstretched and perfectly motionless as if wrapped in a profoundand quiet slumber. One iron-stained misshapened hand lay on the outsideof the coverlet and as Adams looked at it, he saw in it a symbol of thewhole tragedy upon which he gazed. The face of the sleeper was hiddenfrom him, but so expressive was the distorted, toil-hardened hand, withthe fingers fallen a little open as if in relief from a recently droppedtool, that the voice of the woman sounding in his ears merely put intowords his own unspoken knowledge. 

"Ah, he's gone, " she said. "He promised me he'd hold out if he could, but I guess he couldn't manage it. "

Then standing there in the bare, cleanly swept room, bright with thevoices of children which floated in from the staircase, Adams wasconscious, with a consciousness more vital and penetrating than he hadever felt before, that the place, the universe and his own soul werefilled to overflowing with the infinite presence of God. 

CHAPTER XI

ON THE WINGS OF LIFE

It was on the morning after Gerty's conversation with Adams that Lauracarried the news of her engagement to Uncle Percival. 

"I've something really interesting for you this morning, " she began, taking his withered little hand in hers as she sat down on the highfootstool before his chair. 

His wandering blue eyes fixed her for a moment, then, turningrestlessly, travelled to his flute which lay silent on the table on hiselbow. 

"Ah, but I'm ahead of you for once, " he remarked with his amiabletoothless smile, "there's a new batch of rabbits in the yard and I'vealready seen 'em. Don't tell Rosa, my dear, " he cautioned in a whisper, "or she'll be sure to drown 'em everyone. "

Releasing his hand from her clasp, he reached for his flute, and, with apathetic delight in the presence of his enforced listener, raised themouth of the instrument to his lips. The tune he played was "The LastRose of Summer, " and Laura sat patiently at his side until the end. Withthe final note, even as he laid the flute lovingly across his knees, shesaw that the music had strengthened and controlled his enfeebled mind. 

"I want to tell you that I shall be married in the autumn, dear UnclePercival, " she said with a renewed effort to penetrate the senileabstraction in which he lived. 

"Married!" repeated the old man, with an indignant surprise for whichshe was entirely unprepared. "Married! Why, what on earth makes you do aridiculous thing like that? It's out of the question, " he continued withan angry vehemence, "it is utterly and absurdly out of the question. "

For an instant it seemed to Laura that she had absolutely no response tooffer. 

"But almost everyone marries in the end, you know, " she said at last. 

"I have lived very comfortably to be eighty-five, " retorted UnclePercival, "and I never married. "

"Oh, but you never fell in love, " persisted Laura. 

"In love? Tush!" protested the old man with scorn, "and why should you?I have never felt the need of it. "

"Well, I don't think one can help it sometimes, " remonstrated Laura, alittle helplessly. "One doesn't always want it, but it comes anyway. "

"Then if I didn't want it I wouldn't let it bother me, " said UnclePercival, adding immediately. "What does Rosa think of this state ofthings, I wonder--Rosa is a very sensible woman. "

"Oh, she's heartily pleased--everybody is pleased but you. "

Uncle Percival shook his head in stubborn disapproval. "People arealways pleased at the mistakes of others, " he observed, "it's humannature, I suppose, and they can't help it, but I tell you I've seen agreat deal too much of love all my life--and it's better left alone, it's better left alone. "

Rising dejectedly, he wandered off to his rabbits, while Laura, as soonas the curtains at the door had fallen together again behind hisshrunken little figure, forgot him with that complete forgetfulness oftrivial details which is possible only to the mind that is in thepossession of an absorbing emotion. All hesitation, all uncertainty, alldisappointment, had been swept from her consciousness as if by adestroying and purifying flame; and for the past few weeks she had livedwith that passionate swiftness of sensation which gives one an ecstaticsense of rushing, like a winged creature, through crawling time. Life, indeed, was winged for her at the moment; her soul flew; and she felther happiness beating like a caged bird within her breast. The agony ofthe imprisoned creature was there also, for she loved blindly withoutunderstanding why she loved--and yet it was this hidden mystery of herpassion, this divine miracle which attended its conception, that filledthe world about her with the invisible, announcing hosts of angels. Shecould explain nothing--life, death, birth, the ordinary incidents ofevery day were but so many signs and portents of 'the unseen wonders;and every breath she drew seemed as great a miracle to her as theraising of Lazarus from the tomb. 

Closing her eyes she thought of the afternoon before when she had goneout with her lover in his automobile. Life at the instant had condenseditself into a flash of experience, and his face as he looked at her hadbeen clear and strong as the wind which rushed by them. "Faster! faster!let us go faster!" she had begged, "let me live this one hour flying, "and even with the words she had wondered if the same rapture would everenter into her love again? Was it possible to touch the highest point ofone's being twice in a single lifetime? Was it given to any humancreature to repeat perfection? And he? Would he ever know it again? shequestioned, with an uncertainty sharp as a sword that pierced herthrough. Would she ever find in his eyes a look that would be anythingbut a shadow of the look she had seen on the day before? Was happiness, after all, as fluid a quantity as the emotion which gave it birth?

Standing beside the table, she leaned her cheek for a moment upon theroses in the Venetian vase; and it seemed to her, as the petals brushedher face, that she felt again his eager kisses fall on her eyes andthroat. The memory sent her blood beating to her pulses; and she saw hisface in her thoughts as she had seen it on that afternoon, transfiguredand intensified by the peculiar vividness of her perceptions. 

"There has been nothing like this in my life before, " he had said in apassion of sincerity, "there has been nothing in my life but you fromthe beginning. " The irony was gone then from his voice; she had found nohint of even the satirical humour in his eyes; and as she rememberedthis now it seemed to her that she had there for the first time--for theone and only moment since she had known him--succeeded in holding by hertouch that deeper chord of his nature for which she had always feltherself to be instinctively groping. 

She was still brooding over the rapture of yesterday, when the dooropened quickly and Kemper came in with the eager haste in which heappeared to live every instant of his life. At the first glance she sawthat the ardour of the last afternoon was still in his eyes, and thenext moment she found herself yielding to his impatient kisses. 

"I was trying to decide whether I love you more when you are with me orwhen you are away, " she said with a joyful laugh. 

"Well, as for me, I love you exactly a hundred times more when I seeyou, " he retorted gayly. 

His words seemed, as she repeated them, an affront to her insatiabledesire for the perfection of love. 

"Then if you never saw me again you would be able to forget me?" sheasked a little wounded. 

He laughed easily with a quick return to his pleasant banter, "I hopeso. What's the use of loving when nothing comes of it?"

When nothing comes of it! A cloud dimmed the radiant clearness of hermorning; then she met the strong tenderness in his eyes, and with aneffort, she thrust her disappointment aside, as she had thrust it asideat every meeting since the beginning of her love. 

"I have always wondered if happiness were as happy as people thought, "she said gravely, "and now I know, I know. "

"And is it really?" he asked, with the confident smile which piqued hereven while it fascinated. 

For answer she lifted to him "the seraphic look" which he had never seenin any face but hers; and as he met her eyes it appeared to him that allother women whom he had loved were but tinted shadows--that they wereone and all utterly devoid of the mystery by which passion lives. Herein her face he saw at last the charm and the wonder of sex madeluminous; and while he watched her emotion quiver on her lips, he beganto ask himself if this were not the assurance in his own heart of afeeling that might endure for life? Would this, too, change and perishas his impulses had changed and perished until to-day?

"Shall I tell you what I have been thinking since last night?" shequestioned in a voice that was like a song to his ears, "it is that Ihave been all my life a plant in a dark cellar, groping toward the lightand never finding it--always groping, groping. "

She leaned toward him, placing her hands, the lovely, delicate hands heloved, upon his shoulders, "I've grown to the light! I've grown to thelight!" she whispered joyously. 

He raised her hand to his lips, and his teeth closed softly over eachslender finger one by one. 

"So I am the light?" he enquired with tender humour. 

She shook her head. "Not you, but love. "

A short laugh broke from him. "But where, my dear sweetheart, " heretorted? "would love be without me?"

"I don't dare to think, " she was too earnest to take his jest withlightness, "it is strange, isn't it?--that but for you I should neverhave known--this. "

"Who can tell? There might have come along another fellow and you'dprobably have made love quite as prettily to a substitute. "

"Never!" she shook her head with an indignant protest, "and you?" sheadded softly after a moment. 

"And I? What?"

"Without me could you have felt it quite like this?"

She waited breathlessly, but the ironic spirit had got the better of histenderness. 

"My dear girl, " he rejoined, "what a question?"

"But could you?-tell me, " she implored in sudden passion. 

"Well, I devoutly hope so, " he answered lightly, "it's a thing Ishould'nt like to have missed, you know. "

He leaned back closing his eyes; and immediately, without warning andagainst his will, there rose before him the seductive face of MadameAlta, and he recalled her exquisite voice, with its peculiar high noteof piercing sweetness. Then he remembered his wife, and, one by one, theother women whom he had loved and forgotten or merely forgotten withoutloving. They meant so little in his existence now, and yet once, each inher own bad time had engrossed utterly his senses. In what rare qualityof sentiment could this love differ from those lesser loves that hadgone before?

But he was not given to introspection, and so the disturbing questionleft him almost as readily as it had come. When one attempted to thinkthings out, there was no hope of escaping the endless circle with aclear head. No, he wasn't analytical, thank Heaven!

While he was still rejoicing in what he called his "practical turn ofmind, " he remembered suddenly an appointment at his club which he hadmade a week ago and then overlooked in the absorbing interest of hisengagement. 

"By Jove, you'll get me into an awful scrape some day, " he remarkedcheerfully as he hurried into his overcoat. "I might have lost fiftythousand dollars by letting this thing slip. "

His manner had changed completely with the awakened recollection; andfinance in all its forms--the look of figures, the clink of coin--hadassumed instantly the position of romance in his thoughts. For themoment Laura was crowded from his mind, and she recognised this with apang sharp and cold as the thrust of a dagger. 

"If you only knew how much you'd nearly cost me, " were his last words ashe ran down the steps. 

At the corner he met Gerty's carriage and in response to her invitinggesture, he gave an order to the coachman as he sprang inside. 

"Well, this is a godsend, " he observed with a grateful sigh while hewrapped the fur rug carelessly about him. "A drive with a pretty womanleaves a surface car a good many miles behind. And you are unusuallypretty this morning, " he commented with a touch of daring gallantry. 

"I ought to be, " returned Gerty defiantly, "for heaven knows I taketrouble enough about it. Oh, I _am_ glad to see you!" she finishedgayly, "how is Laura?"

He met her question with his genial smile. "She makes a pretty goodpretence at happiness, " he answered. 

"And so she's really over head and ears in love?"

"Does it surprise you that she should find me charming?" he asked, laughing. 

She nodded with unshaken candour. 

"I was never so much surprised in all my life. "

If his smile was ready it did not fail to betray a touch of vanity thatwas almost childlike. 

"And yet there was a time when you yourself rather liked me, " heretorted with his intimate and penetrating glance. 

"Was there?" She avoided his look though her tone was almost insolent, "my dear fellow, I never in my life liked you better than I like you atthis minute--but we are speaking now of Laura's liking not of mine. Oh, Arnold, Arnold, I am in a quake of fear. "

"About Laura? Then get over it and don't be silly. "

"And you are honestly and truly and terribly in earnest?"

"My dear girl, I'm going to marry her--isn't that enough? Does a mancommit suicide except when he's sincere?"

Her shallow cynicism had dropped from her now, and she turned toward himwith an unaffected anxiety in her face. 

"Then it will last--it must. "

"Last!" An expression of irritation showed in his eyes, and he shruggedhis shoulders with an impatient movement. "Of course it won'tlast--nothing does. If you want the eternal you must seek it ineternity. "

"So in the end it will be like--all the others?"

Because the question annoyed him he responded to it with a franknessthat was almost brutal. "Everything is like everything else, " hereturned, "there's nothing new, least of all in the emotions. "

For a minute she looked at him in silence while the steady green flameappeared to him to grow brighter in her eyes. Was it contempt orcuriosity that he saw in her face?

"Poor Laura!" she said at last very softly. "Poor happy Laura!"

At her words his dissenting laugh broke out, but he showed by hisanimated glance a moment later that it was of herself rather than ofLaura that he was thinking. 

"Is it such a terrible fate, after all, to become my wife?" he enquired. 

His look challenged hers, and lifting her insolent bright eyes, shereturned steadily the smiling gaze he bent upon her. 

"Oh, dear me, yes, " she answered merrily, "it is almost if not quite asbad as being Perry's. " The carriage had stopped at the door of his club, and his mind was already at work over the approaching interview. 

"Well, you escaped the lesser for the greater ill, " he respondedpleasantly, as he gave her hand a careless parting pressure. 

PART III

DISENCHANTMENT

CHAPTER I

A DISCONSOLATE LOVER AND A PAIR OF BLUE EYES

With that strange hunger of youth for the agony of experience, Trentallowed the news of Laura's engagement to plunge him into an imaginarydespondency which was quite as vivid as any reality of suffering. For aweek he persistently refused his meals, and he was even seized with akind of moral indignation when his perfectly healthy appetite asserteditself at irregular hours. To eat with a broken heart appeared to him anact of positive brutality; and yet he was aware that, in spite of thesting of his wounded pride, the tragic ending of his first romanceproduced not the slightest effect upon his physical enjoyment. It was aninstance where a purely ideal sentiment struggled against a perfectlynormal constitution. 

"You could never have cared for me, of course I always knew that, " heremarked one day to Laura, "but I can't help wishing that you hadn'tfallen in love with anybody else. "

From the bright remoteness of her happiness she smiled down upon him. "But doesn't such a wish as that strike you as rather selfish?"

"I don't care--I want you back again just as you used to be--and now, "he added bitterly, "you've even given up your writing. "

"I shall never write again, " she answered, quietly, without regret. Itwas a truth which she felt only intuitively at the time, for her reasonas yet had hardly taken account of a fact that was perfectly evident tothe subtler perceptions of her feeling. She would never write again--herart had been only the exotic flowering of a luxuriant imagination andshe had lost value as a creative energy while she had gained inexperience as a human soul. 

"I was too young, that was the trouble, " pursued Trent, "there were fiveyears between us. "

"My dear boy, " she laughed merrily, "there was all eternity. "

His bitterness, he felt, grew heavily upon him while he watched her. Anew beauty had passed into her face; the mystery of a thousand lives wasin her look, in her gestures, in her voice; and she appeared to him notas herself alone, but as the embodied essence of all former loves ofwhich he had dreamed--of all the enchanting dead women of whom the poetswrote. Then he thought of Arnold Kemper, with his exhausted emotions, his superficial cleverness, his engrossing middle-age, and especially ofhis approaching baldness. Was love, after all, he questioned, only are-quickened memory in particular brain cells as modern scientistsbelieved? Was physical heredity, in truth, the fulfilling of the law oflife? and was the soul merely a series of vibrations by which matterlived and moved?

All the way home his angry scepticism boiled over in his thoughts, andat the luncheon table, a little later, he met his mother's placidenquiries with an explosion of boyish despair. 

"There's no use trying to persuade me--I can't eat, " he said. 

"But, my dear son, I fear you'll work yourself into an illness, "returned Mrs. Trent, with her unshaken calm. 

"I don't care, " replied the young man desperately, "whether I die now orlater, it is all the same. "

"I suppose really it is, " admitted his mother; but she added after apause in which she had dipped mildly into a philosophic curiosity, "Theway being in love effects one has always seemed to me the very strangestthing in life. I remember your uncle Channing lived exclusively ononions for a whole month after Mattie Godwin refused his offer. Why heselected onions I could never explain, " she concluded, "unless it wasthat he had never been able to endure the taste of them, and he seemedbent upon making himself as miserable as it was possible to be. "

While she went on placidly eating her hashed chicken, Trent tossed off aglass or two of claret, which he was perfectly aware, taken on his emptystomach, would immediately produce a racking headache. Since his passionwas not sincere, it occurred to him that it might at least becomedramatic; but he saw presently, with aggrieved surprise, that theimpression made upon his mother by his violent behavior was far slighterthan he had brought himself to expect. When next she spoke her thoughtsappeared to have strayed utterly from the subject of his appetite. 

"I couldn't sleep last night for thinking of that poor Christina Coles, "she said, "the char-woman told me yesterday that the child had beenobliged to go out and pawn some of her things in order to get the moneyto pay her room rent. "

With a start his mind swung back from the dream life to the actual. Hehad not seen Christina for more than a week, and the thought of herpierced his heart with a keen reproach. 

"Good God, has it come to that?" he exclaimed. 

"What hurts me most is not being able to do anything to help her, "resumed Mrs. Trent, "she's so proud that I don't dare even ask her to ameal for fear she'll take offence. "

"But if it's so bad as that why doesn't she go home--she must have ahome. "

"Oh, she has--but to go back, she feels, would mean that she's given up, and the char-woman declares that she'll never give up so long as she'salive. "

"Well, she's a precious little fool, " observed Trent, as he drank anextra glass of claret. 

But the thought of Christina was not to be so lightly put from him, andbefore the afternoon was over he went up to the eighth landing andknocked in vain at her door. She was still out, as the little pile ofrejected manuscript lying on her threshold bore witness; and he turnedaway and came down again with a disappointment of which he felt himselfto be half ashamed. An hour later he ran against her when he was goingout into the street, and as she turned with her constrained little bowand looked at him for an instant with her sincere blue eyes, he wasalmost overcome by the rush of pity which the sight of her evoked. Howpale and thin she had grown! how shabby her little tan coat looked inthe daylight; and yet what a charming curve there was to her brownhead! He realised then for the first time that brown--warm, living brownwith glints of amber--was the one colour for a woman's hair. 

The next morning he rushed off indignantly to upbraid Adams. 

"The girl's starving, I tell you--we can't let her starve, " he exclaimedin an agony of remorse. 

"Oh, yes we can, " returned Adams with a cheerful brutality which enragedthe younger man. "Starving isn't half so bad as writing trash. But youneedn't look at me like that, " he added, "she doesn't come here anylonger now. She told me fiction was the field she meant to dig in. "

"Well, you'll kill her among you, " was Trent's threatening rejoinder;and filled with a righteous fury against literature he went back againto knock at the door of Christina's empty room. Once his mother came upalso, but the girl, it appeared, was always out now, while the rejectedmanuscript thickened each morning upon the threshold. Several times Mrs. Trent arranged a little tray of luncheon and sent it up stairs by theold negro servant, but the message brought back was always thatChristina was not at home. And then gradually, as the weeks went by, thedignity and the pathos of her struggle were surrounded in Trent's mindby a romantic halo. Her beauty borrowed from his poetic fancy thepeculiar touch of atmosphere it lacked, and his thoughts dwelt more andmore upon her slender, girlish figure, her smooth brown hair, and theflower-like sweetness of her face. 

Then just as he had grown almost hopeless of ever seeing her again, hefound her one evening in the elevator as he went up to his mother'srooms. The touch of her cold little hand on his sent a sudden shock tohis heart, and while he looked anxiously into her face, he saw her godeadly pale and bite her lip sharply as if to bring back herconsciousness by the sting of pain. 

"You are ill, " he said eagerly; "don't deny it, for haven't I eyes? Yes, you must, you shall come with me in to mother. "

Even then she would have turned proudly away, but with his impulsive, lover's sympathy he led her from the elevator upon the landing on whichhe lived. "She is waiting for you--she wants you, " he urged withpassion; "and can't you see--oh, Christina, I want you, too!"

But his fervour only left her the more cold and shrinking, and she shookher head with a refusal that was almost angry. 

"How dare you? Why did you make me come out?" she asked. "I must goback--I am not well--oh, I must go back!"

Over the angry tones of her voice he saw her entreating eyes shininglike wet flowers, and as he looked into them it came to him in arevelation of knowledge that the meaning of everything that had been wasmade clear at last. He knew now why he had succeeded where Christina hadfailed--he knew why Laura had refused his love, and why, even in hismisery, her refusal had left his heart untouched. And beyond all thesethings, he realised that now his boyhood was over and that from theexperience of this one moment he had become a man. 

CHAPTER II

THE DEIFICATION OF CLAY

Not until a month after the announcement of Laura's engagement did shecome face to face for the first time with the ugly skeleton which lieshidden beneath the most beautiful of dreams. The spring had passed in atroubled rapture; and it was on one of the bright, warm days in earlyJune that she found awaiting her on the hall table when she came in fromher walk a letter addressed in a strange handwriting and bearing astrange foreign postmark. Beside this was a note from Kemper explaininga broken engagement of the day before; and she read first her lover'sletter, which ended, as every letter of his had ended since thebeginning of their love, "Yours with my whole heart and soul, Arnold. "

With an emotion which repetition could never deaden, she stooped to kissthe last sentence he had written, before she turned carelessly to takeup the strange foreign envelope, which she had thrown, with her veil andgloves, on the chair at her side. For a moment she ponderedindifferently the address; then, almost as she broke the seal, the firstwords she read were those which lay hidden away in the love letterwithin her hand, "Yours with my whole heart and soul, Arnold. "

In her first shock, even while the blow still blinded her eyes, sheturned to seek wildly for some possible solution; and it was then thatshe discovered that the letter, in Kemper's handwriting, was addressedevidently to some other woman, since it bore the date of a day in Junejust three years before she had first met him. Three years ago he haddeclared himself to belong, heart and soul, to this other woman; andto-day, with no remembrance in his mind, it seemed, of that formerpassion, he could repeat quite as ardently the old threadbare avowal. How many times, she asked herself, had he used that characteristicending to his love letters?--and the thing appeared to her suddenly tobe the veriest travesty of the perfect self-surrender of love. 

She was a woman capable of keen retrospective jealousy, and as she satthere, beaten down from her winged ecstasy by the blow that had struckat her from the silence, she told herself passionately that her life waswrecked utterly and her brief happiness at an end. Then, with thatrelentless power of intellect, from which her emotions were neverentirely separated, she began deliberately to disentangle the true factsfrom the temporary impulses of her jealous anger. 

"I am wounded and yet why am I wounded and by what right?" she demanded, with a pathetic groping after the self-condemnation which would acquither lover, "he has lived his life, I know--I have always known it--andhis letter has only brought forcibly before me a fact which I haveaccepted though I have not faced it. " And it occurred to her, with thebitter sweetness of a consoling lie, that he could not have been falseto her three years ago, since he was not then even aware of herexistence. To dwell on this thought was like yielding to the power ofan insidious drug, and yet she found herself forcing it almostdeliriously against her saner judgment. "How could he wrong me so longas I was a stranger to him?" she repeated over and over. "On the daythat he first loved me, his old life, with its sins and its selfishpleasures, was blotted out. " But her conscience, even while shereasoned, told her that love could possess no power like this--that theman who loved her to-day, was the inevitable result of the man who hadloved other women yesterday, and that there was as little permanence inthe prompting of mere impulse as there was stability in change itself. So the voice within her spoke through the intolerable clearness of herintellect; and in her frantic desire to drown the thing it uttered, sherepeated again and again the empty words which her heart prompted. Yetshe knew even though she urged the falsehood upon her thoughts, that itwas less her argument that pleaded for Kemper than the memory of a lookin his face at animated instants, which rose now before her and appealeddisturbingly to her emotions. 

Three ways of conduct were open to her, she saw plainly enough. Wisdomsuggested that she should not only put the letter aside, but that sheshould banish the recollection of its existence from her life. But, while she admitted that this would be the most courageous treatment ofthe situation, she recognised perfectly that to act upon such a decisionwas utterly beyond her strength. Though she were to destroy the object, was the memory of it not seared indelibly into her brain? and would notthis memory return to embitter long afterward her happiest moments?"When he kisses me I shall remember that he has kissed other women and Ifeel that I shall grow to hate him if he should ever write to me againin those lying words. " But she knew intuitively that he would use thesame ending in his next letter, and that she would still be powerless tohate him, if only because of his disturbing look, which came back to herwhenever she attempted to judge him harshly. "I might really hate him solong as he was absent from me, and yet if he came again and looked at mein that way for a single instant, I know that, in spite of myresolution, I would throw myself into his arms. " And she felt that shedespised herself for a bondage against which she struggled as hopelesslyas a bird caught in a fowler's net. 

Of the two ways which remained to her, she chose, in the end, the coursewhich appeared to her to be the least ungenerous. She would not read theletter--the opening and the closing sentences she had seen byaccident--for, when all was said, it had not been written for her eyes;and it struck her, as she brooded over it, that there would be positivedisloyalty in thus stealing in upon the secrets of Kemper's past. No, she would place it in his hands, she determined finally, still unread;and in so doing she would not only defeat the purpose of the sender, butwould prove to him as well as to herself that her faith in him was asunalterable as her love. After all to trust was easier than to distrust, for the brief agony of her indecision had brought to her the knowledgethat the way of suspicion is the way of death. 

And so when he came a little later she gave the letter, at which shehad not again looked, into his hands. "Here is something that reached meonly this morning, " she said. "It is not worth thinking of, and I haveread only the first and the last sentence. "

At her words he unfolded the paper, throwing a mere casual glance, as hedid so, upon the thin foreign envelope, which appeared to convey to himno hint of its significant contents. 

Then, after a hurried skimming of the first page, he turned back againand carefully studied the address in a mystification which was piercedpresently by a flash of light. 

"By Jove, so she's heard it!" he exclaimed; and the instant afterward headded in a kind of grudging admiration, "Well, she's a devil!"

The incident appeared suddenly to engross him in a manner that Laura hadnot expected, and he stooped to examine the postmark with an attentionwhich gave her, while she watched him, a queer sense of being left outquite in the cold. 

"But why, in thunder, should she care?" he demanded. 

"She?" there was no trouble in her voice, only an indifferent question. 

"Oh, it's Jennie Alta, of course--she's perfectly capable of such athing. " Then, reaching out, he drew Laura into his arms with aconfidence which had the air, she thought, of taking the situationalmost too entirely for granted--of accepting too readily her attitudeas well as his possession of her. "My darling girl, what a regular brickyou are!" he said. 

Though she realised, as he spoke, that this was the reward of hersilence and her struggle, she told herself, in the next breath that, insome way, it was all inadequate. She had expected more than a phrase, and the very fact that the note of earnestness was absent from his voicebut made her desire the sound of it the more passionately. Again shefelt the baffled sensation which came to her in moments of their closestintimacy. Had his soul, in truth, eluded her for the last time? And wasthere in the profoundest emotion always a distance which it was foreverimpossible to bridge? Yet the uncertainty, the very lack of a fullerunderstanding only added fervour to the passion that burned in herheart. 

"It's all over now, so we may as well warm ourselves by the failure ofher deviltry, " he observed presently, as he flung the crumpled paperinto the fire. "I'm downright sorry she'll never know how little harmshe's done. "

"It might, I suppose, have been worse, " suggested Laura. 

"Well, I suppose so--and you mean me to believe that you didn't evenread it?" he enquired with tender gayety. 

She gave him her eyes frankly as an answer to his appeal for faith. "Whyshould I? I love you, " she replied. 

For an instant--a single sufficing instant--he met her look with anearnestness that was equal to her own. The man in him, she almost criedout in her exultation, was touched at last. 

"May God grant that your confidence will never fail me, " he rejoined alittle sadly. 

"When that comes it will be time to die, " was her answer. 

Taking her hand in his he held it in a close pressure for severalminutes. Then the earnestness she had arrested fled from her touch, andwhen he spoke again she could not tell whether his words were utteredsincerely or simply as the outcome of his sarcastic humour. 

"If you were a flesh-and-blood woman instead of an eccentric sprite, " heremarked, "I suppose you'd want me to make a clean breast of the wholeaffair, but I can't because, to tell the truth, I've forgotteneverything about it. "

"Then you didn't honestly love her, so it doesn't matter. "

"Love her! Pshaw!" Though he laughed out the words there was an angryflush in his face. "Do you think I'm the kind of man to love a meresinging animal? And besides, " he concluded with a brutal cynicism whichrepelled her sharply, "I'm of an economical turn, you know, and the loveof such women comes too high. I've seen them eat up a fellow's income asif it were a box of Huyler's. " The words were no sooner uttered than hismood changed quickly and he was on his feet. "But I didn't mean to giveyou the whole morning, sweetheart, I merely looked in to say that Iwanted you to come out with me in the car this afternoon. There's a finebreeze blowing. "

For a thoughtful moment she hesitated before she answered. "I told RogerAdams that I should be at home, " she returned, "but I dare say he won'tmind not seeing me. "

"Oh, I dare say, " he retorted gayly. "Well, I'll pick you up, then, onthe stroke of five. "

As he left the room she went over to the window, and when he came out alittle later, he turned upon the sidewalk to glance up at her and wavehis hand. She was happy, perfectly happy, she told herself, as shelooked eagerly after the last glimpse of his figure; but even while sheframed the thought into words, she was conscious that her heart throbbedhigh in disappointment and that her eyes were already blind with tears. 

When Adams sent up his card, at twenty minutes before five o'clock, shelingered a few moments before going downstairs in her motoring coat andveil. In response to her embarrassed excuses, he made only a casualexpression of regret for the visit he had missed. 

"It's a fine afternoon--just right for a run, " he remarked, adding aftera brief hesitation. "It's the proper thing, I suppose, to offer youcongratulations, but I'm a poor hand, as you know, at making prettyspeeches. I wish you happiness with all my heart--that's about all thereis to say--isn't it?"

"That's about all, " she echoed, "and at least if I'm not happy I shallhave only myself to blame. "

The silence that followed seemed to them both unnatural and constrained;and he broke it at last with a remark which sounded to him, while heuttered it, almost irrelevant. 

"I've never seen much of Kemper, but I always liked him. "

"I know, " she nodded, "you were chums at College. "

"Oh, hardly that, but we knew each other pretty well. He's a lucky chapand I hope he has the sense to see it. "

"There's no doubt whatever of his sense!" she laughed. Then, growingsuddenly serious, she leaned toward him with her old earnest look. "Noone has ever known him, I think, just as I do, " she went on, "because noone understands how wonderfully good he really is. He's so good, " shefinished almost triumphantly, as if she had overcome by her assertion apoint which he disputed, "that there are times when he makes me feelpositively wicked. "

Having no answer ready but a smile, he gave her this pleasantly enough, so that she might take it, if she chose, for a complete agreement. Though his heart was filled with repressed tenderness, there was nothingfurther now that he could say to her, for he realised as he looked intoher face, that there was little room in her happiness either for histenderness or for himself. An aversion, too, to meeting Kemper awoke inhim, and so, after a few minutes of trivial conversation, he rose andheld out his hand. 

"I'm very busy just now, so I may not see you again for quite awhile, "he said at parting, "but remember if ever you should want me that I amalways waiting. "

A little later, as he walked up the street in the June sunshine, he sawKemper's new automobile spinning rapidly from the direction of FifthAvenue. 

CHAPTER III

THE GREATEST OF THESE

For a minute after Kemper had passed in his car, Adams turned back andstood looking down the long street filled with pleasant June sunshine. In the distance a hand-organ was grinding out a jerky sentimental air, and beside him, at the corner by which he stood, a crippled vender offruit had halted his little cart of oranges and apples. 

A year ago Adams might have told himself, in the despair of ignorance, that since Laura had given her love to Kemper she was lost to himforever. But he had learned now that this could not be true--that shewas too closely knit into his destiny to separate herself entirely fromit; and there came to him, while he stood there, a strange mysticassurance that she would some day feel that she had need of him again. His love had passed triumphantly through its first earthly stages, andin the large impassioned yearning with which he thought of her therewas, so far as he himself was conscious, but little left of a sharperpersonal desire. All desire, indeed, which has its root in the physicalcraving for possession seemed to have gone out of him in the last fewmonths; and since the earliest dawn of that deeper consciousness withinhis soul, he had almost ceased to think of himself as an isolatedindividual life. 

To let go the personal was to fall back again on the Eternal; betweenthe soul and God, he had learned in his deepest agony, there is room fornothing more impregnable than the illusion of self. As Roger Adams--as amere separate existence, he was a failure. The things which he haddesired in life he had not possessed; the things which he had possessedhe had ceased very soon, in any vital sense, to desire. Of his life'swork, so big at the beginning, he saw now that he had made but a smallachievement--a volume of essays on the writings of other men and a fewyears editing of a magazine which had absorbed his strength withoutyielding him the smallest return of fame. On every side, from allavenues of hope or of mere impulse, there had crowded upon him, headmitted smiling, but disappointment and disillusion. He had played forhappiness as every man plays for it from the cradle, he had staked histhrow as boldly, he had made his resolves as desperately, as any of hisfellows, and yet at the end of his forty years he had not a singleobject to put forward as his reward. Nothing remained to him! As theworld counts success he could show only failure. 

But the larger vision was still before him, and he knew that all thesethoughts were the cheapest falsehood. In spite of appearances, in spiteof the outward emptiness of his existence, he had not failed; and in thehour that he had put life aside he had for the first time in his wholeexperience begun really to live. In surrendering his own smallindividual being he knew that he had entered into the possession of abeing immeasurably larger than his own. 

He looked at the fruit vender smiling, and the man's answering smilecame to him like the clasp of fellowship. "Did he, too, understand?" wasAdams' unspoken question, "had he, also, found the key that unlocked hisprison?" and there flowed into his heart something of the rapture withwhich Laura had cried: "I've grown to the light!" In each exclamationthere was ecstasy, but in hers it was the short, troubled ecstasy of thesenses, which hears its doom even in the hour of its own fulfilment;while from his finer joy there shone forth that radiant energy, in whichis both warmth and light, both rest and action, which illumines not onlythe soul within, but transfigures and refines the mere dull ordinaryfacts of life. 

As he stood there the car passed him again, and Laura and Kemper bothturned, smiling, to look back at him. When Laura's long white veil waslost, with a last flutter, in the sunshine, he nodded to the fruitvender, and crossing to Broadway started in the direction of his home. 

He had asked Trent to dine with him--the boy looked fagged he thought, and it might do him good to talk freely about his play. Then he recalledseveral letters that he had put aside for the sake of seeing Laura; andretracing his steps, he went back to his office and sat down before hisdesk. It surprised him sometimes to find how little irksome suchuninteresting details had become. 

They talked late over their cigars and coffee, and when at last Trentrose, with a laughing reminder of his mother, and went out into the hallto put on his overcoat, Adams passed by him, after a final handshake, and entered his darkened study at the end of the hall. He heard thedoor close quickly as Trent left the house, and his mind was still fullof the boy's dramatic ambitions, as he paused beside his desk and bentdown to raise the wick of the green lamp. He had fallen into the habitof sitting up rather late now, and there was a paper on his blotting-padwhich he was preparing for the coming issue of his magazine. Afterglancing hastily over, he found that the last few sentences wererearranging themselves in his thoughts, and he had set himself patientlyto the redraughting of the paragraph, when a slight sound at the doorcaused him to look up suddenly with the suspended blue pencil still, inhis hand. It was too late for the maids, he knew--they had already goneto bed before Trent left--and he knew also that the person who enteredat this hour must have opened the outer door by means of a latch-key. The soft, slow movement outside sent a nervous shiver through him; hewas aware the next instant that he gripped the pencil more closely inhis hand; and then, rising to his feet with a breathless impulse to beface to face at once with the inevitable moment, he made a single stepforward, while he watched the knob turn, the door open slowly, andConnie cross the threshold and pause confusedly as if blinded by thelamplight. 

The pencil dropped from his hand; he heard it fall with a thud upon thecarpet; and then he heard nothing else except the beating of his ownarteries in his ears. Time seemed to stop suddenly and then to whirlmadly forward while he stood rooted to his square of carpet, with hisuseless hands hanging helplessly at his sides. It was the supremeinstant his life that was before him, and yet he was as powerless tomeet it as the infant in the womb to avert the hour of its birth. Dumband petrified by very force of the will within him, he waited immovableon the spot of carpet, while his eyes saw only the visible wreck of thewoman who stood upon his threshold. His dreams of her had been visionsof horror, but the most pitiable of them had fallen far short of thereality as he saw it now. From her streaked blonde hair, alreadypowdered with gray, to her exhausted bedraggled feet, which seemedhardly to support her trembling body, she stood there, terrible and fullof anguish, like the most tragic ghost of his imaginary horrors. Face toface with each other they were held speechless by the knowledge thatthere was no word by which the past might be justified or the futuremade any easier for them to meet; and as in all great instants of lifethe thing that was said between them was uttered at last in an unbrokensilence. 

Then as they stood there a slight sound changed the atmosphere of theroom. The shade of the lamp, which Adams had raised too high, crackedwith a sharp noise and fell to the floor in broken pieces; and at theshock Connie gave a hysterical shriek and lifted to Adams the frightenedglance of her ignorant blue eyes. 

"I--I had nowhere to go and I am very tired, " she said, in her old toneof childish irritation, "I don't think I was ever so tired in my lifebefore. "

Her voice snapped the icy constraint which held him and he knew now thathe was ready to face the hour on its own terms. His will was as thestrength of the strong, and he felt standing there, that he would askno quarter of his fate. Let it be what it would, he knew that it waspowerless to close on him again the door of his prison. 

"Then you did right to come back; Connie, " he said quietly, "you didright to come back. "

His words rang out almost exultantly, but the moment afterward he wasterrified by their immediate effect--for Connie--throwing herselfforward upon the floor, burst wildly into one of her old spells ofweeping, calling upon God, upon himself, and upon the man whom she hadloved and hated. The frenzied beating of her small, helpless hands, thestreaming of her tears, the quiver of her wrecked, emaciated body, theconvulsed agony that looked at him from her face--these things madetheir appeal to that compassion by which he lived, and he found that theway which he had thought difficult had become to him as familiar as thebreath he drew. 

"It is all over now--there is nothing but quiet here, " he said. 

She lay still instantly at his words, her face half hidden in thecushions of the sofa; and turning from her he went into the dining-roomand brought back a glass of wine and some bread and milk. As he fed her, she opened her lips with a little humble, tired movement which wasutterly unlike the Connie whom he remembered. Was it possible that inher degradation she had learned the first rare grace of spirit which ismeekness?

"Take it all, every drop, " he said once, when she would have pushed thespoon away; and turning obediently, she swallowed the last drops ofmilk. 

"It is very good, " she murmured as he rose to put down the emptiedbowl. The words brought a quick moisture of recollection to his eyes, and he found himself asking if the time had come at last when Conniecould find pleasure in the taste of bread and milk?

After this she lay motionless on the floor until he carried her upstairsand placed her upon the bed as he had done so often on her past recklessnights. But there was no remembrance in his mind now of that formerservice; and as he turned on the electric light and drew the blanketsover her shivering body, he was hardly surprised even by the readinesswith which events, left perfectly alone, had managed to adjustthemselves. Why he had acted as he had done, he could not have told; hadhe stopped to think of it he would probably have said that he had seenno other way. Connie as his wife, as the mother even of his dead child, had come to mean nothing to him any more; but Connie as something fardeeper than this--as the object of inexhaustible compassion, as thetragedy of mortal failure--possessed now a significance which no humanrelation could cover by a name. Beyond the abandoned wife, he couldsee--not less clearly than on that night when he had waited in the snowoutside the opera house--the small terrified soul caught in a web ofcircumstance from which there was no escape. 

Standing at daybreak in the centre of his study floor, he remembered thelast humble look with which she had closed her eyes; and he saw in it agratitude that was like the first faint dawning of the daybreak. For thefirst time in his life he had watched in Connie's eyes the struggle forconsciousness which was as the struggle of an animal in whom a soul hadcome painfully to birth; and the memory of it sent a strange, an almostdivine happiness to his heart. Was it possible that the will of God hadmoved here while he slept? Was it possible, he asked himself in anecstasy of wonder, that in spite of all sin, all failure, alldegradation, all despair, he had really won Connie's soul?

CHAPTER IV

ADAMS WATCHES IN THE NIGHT AND SEES THE DAWN

For a week after her home-coming Connie lay ill and almost unconsciousin her chamber. Since her first wild outburst on the night of her returnshe had allowed no hint of remorse or gratitude to break through theobstinate silence upon her lips; and the impression she gave Adams, onhis occasional visits to her room, was of a soul and body too exhaustedfor even the slightest emotional activity. She had made of her life whather desire prompted; and she seemed to suggest now, lying there wreckedand silent, that the end of all self-gratification is in utter wearinessof spirit. 

Then gradually, as the long June days went by, life appeared feebly torenew itself and move within her. At first it was only a look, raised toAdams, when he bent over her, with something of the pathetic, expectantwonder of a sick child; then a helpless expressive gesture, and at lasthe found in her eye a clearer and fuller recognition of her surroundingsand of himself. The gratitude he had seen on that terrible nightsurprised him again one day as he spoke to her; and after this he beganto watch for its reappearance with an eagerness which he himself foundit difficult to understand. Of all virtues gratitude was most lackingin the woman who had been his wife; and this slow, silent growth of it, showed to him as no less a miracle than the coming of the spring or theresurrection of the dead earth beneath the rain. There were momentseven, when he felt that he must move softly, lest he disturb the workingof those spiritual forces which make for righteousness by strange andwonderful ways. Strange and wonderful, indeed, he had found, beyond allmiracles were the means by which the soul might be brought back to theknowledge of its immortal destiny. Was it not under the eyes of a harlotthat he, himself, had seen the mystery which is God's goodness? and somight he not find that Connie had learned, in the depths of herself-abasement, that the light which surrounds the pleasures of thesenses is full of enchantment only for the distant, deluded vision?

But there were other hours when he asked himself if he were strongenough for the thing which he had before him--strong enough, not for theswift, exalted moment of the sacrifice, but for the daily fret andtorment of a perfectly unpoetic self-denial. Would the light go outagain and the exaltation fail him before many days? Then he rememberedthe pathos of her struggling smile, the timid groping of her hands, thedeprecating gratitude he found in her look; and it seemed to him whenall other resources were exhausted--when his energy, his duty, hisreligion flagged--that his compassion would still remain in his heart torender possible all that was impossible to his will alone. Compassion!this, he came to find in the end, was the true and the necessary key toany serious understanding of life. 

He was still putting these questions to himself, when, coming in oneafternoon from his office, he found Connie, wearing a loose fittingwrapper of some pale coloured muslin, awaiting him in an easy chairbeside her window. It was the first time that she had left her bed; andwhen he offered a few cheerful congratulations upon her recoveredstrength, she looked up at him with a face which still showed signs ofthe hideous ravages of the last few months. In her hollowed cheeks, inher quivering unsteady lips, and in the dull grayness of her hair, fromwhich the golden dye had faded, he could find now no faint traces ofthat delicate beauty he had loved. At less than thirty years she lookedthe embodiment of uncontrolled and reckless middle-age. 

"It isn't that I'm really better--not really, " she said, in answer tohis look almost more than to his words, "but the doctor told me that Imust get up and dress to-day. He wants me to go to the hospital thisafternoon. "

Her voice was so composed--so unlike the usual nervous quiver of herspeech--that at first he could only repeat her words in the vagueblankness of his surprise. 

"To the hospital? Then you are ill?"

"I asked him not to tell you, " she replied, with a tremor of the lipswhich had almost the effect of a smile, "he didn't understand--hecouldn't, so I wanted you to hear it first from me. I'll never be anybetter--I'll never get really well again--without such an operation--andhe thinks, he says, that it must be at once--without delay. "

As she spoke she stretched out her hand for a glass of water that stoodat her side, and in the movement her wedding ring slipped from her thinfinger and rolled to a little distance upon the floor. Picking it up hehanded it back to her, but she placed it indifferently upon the table. Her attitude, with its dull quiet of sensation, impressed him at theinstant almost more than the greater importance of what she told him. Was it this acceptance of the thing, he wondered, which appeared to robit of all terror in her mind? and was the dumb resignation in her faceand voice, merely an expression of the physical listlessness of despair?There was about her now that peculiar dignity which belongs less to thehuman creature than to the gravity of the moment in which he stands; andhe remembered vividly that he had never watched any soul in the supremecrisis of its experience without the stirring in himself of a strangesentiment of reverence. Even the most abandoned was covered in thatexalted hour by some last rag of honour. 

"Then you have suffered great pain?" he asked, because no other wordscame to him that he could utter. 

"Weeks ago--yes--but not now. It does not hurt me now. "

"And you thought, yourself, that it was so serious as this?"

She shook her head. "Oh, no, I never thought of it. When it came I droveit off with brandy. "

The absence in her of any appeal for pity moved him far more than theloudest outcry could have done. 

"Poor girl!" he said, and stopped in terror, lest he had obtruded thepersonal element into a situation which seemed so devoid of feeling. 

"It was a pity, " she returned to his surprise very quietly; and withoutlooking at him, she spoke presently in a voice which struck him ashaving a strange quality of hollowness, "it was a pity; but it can't behelped. You might try and try because you're made that way, but itwouldn't, in the end, do the very least bit of good. If I live tillto-morrow and get well and come out of the hospital, it will all be overjust exactly what it was before. Not at first, perhaps--oh, I know, notat first!--but afterward, when things bored me, the taste would comeback again. "

"Hush!" he said quickly, with a forward movement, "hush! you shall notthink such things!"

"The taste would come back again!" she repeated, with a kind of savagesternness. "I am not strong and the doctor told me long ago that therewas no cure. "

"Then he lied--there is always a cure. "

"There is not--there is not, " she insisted harshly, dwelling upon thewords because in them she found a keen agony which relieved her lethargyof bitterness, "I am different now for a while, but it would not last. Iam very tired, but after I have rested--"

"What would not last?" he broke in, as she hesitated over her unfinishedsentence. 

For a long pause she waited, searching in vain, he saw, for some phrasewhich might describe the thing she had not as yet thought out clearly inher own dazed mind. Then, at last, she spoke almost in a whisper, "thefreedom. "

The word gave him a sudden shock of gladness. "Then you are freeto-day--you feel it now?"

She raised her hand, pushing back her faded hair, as if she would lookmore closely at an object which rose but dimly before her eyes. 

"I want you to know all--everything, " she went on slowly, "I want you tounderstand how low I sank--to what fearful places I came in the end. Atfirst it was merely discontent, and I felt that it was only happiness Iwanted. I loved him--for a time, I think, I really loved him--you knowwhom I mean--but at last, when I began to weary him, when he knew what Itook, he cursed me and left me alone in the street one night. Then adevil was let loose within me--I wanted hell, and I wentfurther--further. "

Her voice was still lifeless, but while she spoke he felt his teeth biteinto his lips with a force which stung him to the consciousness of whatshe said. There awoke in him a triumph, almost a glory in the rage hefelt, and he knew now why men had always believed in a hell--why theyhad even come at last to hope for it. 

"I never meant to come back, " she began again, after a pause in whichthe tumult of his feeling seemed to fill the air with violence, "but Ihad reached the end of wretchedness, I was tired and hungry, and nothingthat happened really mattered. If you had told me to go away I don'tthink that I should have cared. I meant, in that case, to sell my coatfor a bottle of brandy, and to put an end to it all while I had thecourage of drink. "

Her bent disordered head trembled slightly, but she appeared to him tohave passed in her misery beyond the bounds where any human sympathycould be of use. She was no longer his wife, nor he her husband; she wasno longer even a fellow mortal between whom and himself there might besome common ground of understanding. Absolutely alone andunapproachable, he knew that she had reached the ultimate desolation ofher soul. 

"It was because you did not send me away that I have told you, " she saidquietly. "It is because, too, I want you to know that I--understand. "

To the end her thoughts were but poor faltering, half-developed things;yet he knew what she meant to say, though she, herself, had divined itonly through some pathetic, dumb instinct. 

"I think I know what you mean, " he said presently, when it appeared tohim that her confession was over; but after he had spoken she took upher sentence with the dead calm in which she had come to rest. 

"There's no use saying that I'm sorry and yet--I am sorry. "

Her look of weariness was so great that with the words she seemed tolose instantly her remaining strength; and he gathered in her silence, an impression that she was reaching blindly out to him for help. 

"Promise me that you will stay with me as long as they will let you?"she implored, with a quick return to her convulsion of childish terror. 

He promised readily; but when the time came for her to go, she hadentirely recovered her aspect of listless fortitude, and during theshort drive to the hospital, she talked, without stopping, of perfectlyindifferent subjects--of the dust in the street, the deserted look ofthe closed houses, and of the wedding present she wished to buy for amaid who was to be married in the coming week. 

"Let it be something really thee, " she asked, and this single requestmarked for him, as she uttered it, a change in Connie greater than anyhe had seen before. 

At the hospital he expected a relapse into her hysterical dread, but, tohis surprise, she watched the surgical preparations with a calmness inwhich there was a kind of passive curiosity. While the nurse laid outher nightdress on the small white iron bed, and braided her hair in twolong, slender braids, she assisted with a patient attention to suchdetails which seemed hardly to account for the terrible event for whichthey prepared. Her hair, he noticed, was combed straight back from herforehead in the fashion in which she might have worn it as a littlegirl; and this simple change gave her an expression which was almost oneof injured innocence. Age and experience were suddenly wiped out of herface, not by any act of mental illumination, but merely by the rufflesof her white nightdress and the simple childish fashion in which theyhad combed her hair. 

When they came to take her upstairs to the operating room upon the roof, he would have gone also, but after reaching the top landing, she turnedto him upon the threshold and told him that she would rather he came nofarther. 

"I can bear everything better alone now, " she said; and so when theycarried her inside he turned away and entered the little waiting roomat the other end of the hail. The place stifled him with the odours ofchloroform and ether, and going to the window, he threw open the blindsand leaned out into the street. With the first breath of air in hisface, he realised that it was he, and not Connie, who had turned cowardat the end; and he wondered if it were merely waning vitality which hadassumed in her an appearance of such natural dignity. She had lived herlife in terror of imaginary horrors and now in presence of the actualsuffering she could show herself to be absolutely unafraid. Not she buthe, himself, now shivered at the thought of her unconscious body in thesurgeon's hands, and he felt that it would be a positive relief tochange places with her at the instant--to confront in her stead eitherthe returning pangs of consciousness or the greater mystery of herunawakening. 

In the small, newly painted room, which smelt of chloroform and varnish, he sat staring through the half open door to the hail where a surgeon, wearing a shirt with roiled-up sleeves, had just hurried by. A nursepassed carrying a basin from which a light steam rose; then a youngdoctor with a brown leather bag, and presently a second surgeon, whowalked rapidly, and turned up his cuffs over his fat arms, just beforehe reached the threshold. 

Connie was no longer his wife, Adams had told himself; and yet this factseemed not in the least to lessen the importance of the news which heawaited. For the first time he understood clearly how trivial are anymere social relations between man and woman. 

Then, while he watched the hand of the clock on the mantel drag slowlyaround the great staring face, he compelled his thoughts gradually todetach themselves from her helpless body, as it lay outstretched on thetable across the hail, and to regather about the girlish figure he hadfirst seen under cherry coloured ribbons. The old vibrant emotion wasbut ashes; try as he would he could bring back but a pale memory of thatgolden moment; and this emptiness where there had once been life, lessened forever in his mind the value of all purely human passion. Buthis personal attitude to her was lost suddenly in his wider regret thatsuch tragedies were possible--that the girl with the delicate babyishface could have become a creature to whom vice was a desired familiarthing. 

"Did the outcome lie in my hands? and might I have prevented it?" hedemanded. "If I had stood in the way of her impulse, would it haveturned aside from me at the last?" And the salvation of the worldappeared to him to depend upon just this courageous coming between eviland the desire which it invited--for had not the soul of the weak, beendelivered, in spite of all moral subterfuge, into the power of thestrong?

Then his vision broadened, and he looked from Connie's life to the livesof men and women who were more fortunate than she; but all humanexistence, everywhere one and the same, showed to him as the ceaselessstruggle after the illusion of a happiness which had no part in anypossession nor in any object. He thought of Laura, with the radiance ofher illusion still upon her; of Gerty, groping after the torn andsoiled shreds of hers; of Kemper, stripped of his and yet making thepretence that it had not left him naked; of Perry Bridewell, dragginghis through the defiling mire that led to emptiness; and then of all themiserable multitude of those that live for pleasure. And he saw them, one and all, bound to the wheel which turned even as he looked. 

The door across the hail opened and they brought Connie out, breathingquietly and still unconscious. He followed the stretcher downstairs; butafter they had placed her upon the bed, he came back again and sat down, as before, in the little stuffy room. Presently he would go home, hethought, but as the night wore on, he became too exhausted for furthereffort, and closing his eyes at last, he fell heavily asleep. 

When he awoke the day was already breaking, and the electric lightburned dimly in the general wash of grayness. About him the atmospherehad a strangely sketchy effect, as if it had been laid on crudely with afew strokes from a paint brush. 

The window was still open, and going over to it he leaned out and stoodfor several minutes, too tired to make the necessary effort to collecthis thoughts, while he looked across the sleeping city to the pale amberdawn which was beginning to streak the sky with colour. The silence wasvery great; in the faint light the ordinary objects upon which hegazed--the familiar look of the houses and the streets--appeared to himless the forms of a material substance than the result of some shadowyprojection of mind. All the earth and sky showed suddenly as belongingto this same transient manifestation of thought; and gradually, as hestood there, his perceptions were reinforced by a sense which is notthat of the eye nor of the ear. He neither saw nor heard, yet he feltthat the spirit had moved toward him on the face of the dawn; and the"I" was not more evident to his illumined consciousness than was the"Thou. " He beheld God, with the vision which is beyond vision; the lightof his eyes, the breath of his body were less plain to him than was themystery of his soul. And the universal life, he saw--spirit and matter, fibre and impulse, vibration of atom and quiver of aspiration--was butan agonised working out into this consciousness of God. With therevelation his own life was changed as by a miracle of nature; rightbecame no longer difficult, but easy; and not the day only, but hiswhole existence and the end to which it moved were made as clear to himas the light before his eyes. 

Again he thought of Laura, still under the troubled radiance of herillusion, and his heart dissolved in sympathy, not for her only, but forall mankind--for Kemper, whom she loved, for Gerty, for Connie, forPerry Bridewell. "They seek for happiness, but it is mine, " he thought;"and because they seek it first, it will keep away from them forever. Itis not to be found in pleasure, nor in the desire of any object, nor inthe fulfilment of any love--for I, who have none of these things, amhappier than they. "

He turned away from the window toward the door, and it was at thisinstant that one of the nurses ran up to him. 

"We thought you had gone home, " she said, "so we have rung you up bytelephone for an hour--" She stopped and paused hesitating for aninstant; then meeting the quiet question in his look, she added simply, "Your wife died, still unconscious, an hour ago. "

CHAPTER V

TREATS OF THE POVERTY OF RICHES

On the morning of Connie's death, Gerty, dropping in shortly beforeluncheon, brought the news to Laura. 

"Do you know for once in my life my social instinct has failed me, " sheconfessed in her first breath, "I am perfectly at a loss as to how thesituation should be met. Ought one to ignore her death or ought one notto?"

"Do you mean, " asked Laura, "that you can't decide whether to write tohim or not?"

"Of course that's a part of it, but, the main thing is to know in one'sown mind whether one ought to regard it as an affliction or a blessing. It really isn't just to Providence to be so undecided about thecharacter of its actions--particularly when in this case it appears tohave arranged things so beautifully to suit everybody who is concerned. "

"It was, to say the least, considerate, " remarked Laura, with thecynical flavour she adopted occasionally from Kemper or from Gerty, "andit is certainly a merciful solution of the problem, but does it everoccur to you, " she added more earnestly, "to wonder what would havehappened if she hadn't died?"

"Oh, she simply had to die, " said Gerty, "there was nothing else thatshe could do in decency--not that she would have been greatlyinfluenced by such a necessity, " she commented blandly. 

"I'd like all the same to know how he would have met the difficulty, forthat he would have met it, I am perfectly assured. "

"Well, I, for one, can afford to leave my curiosity unsatisfied, "responded Gerty; then she added in a voice that was almost serious. "Doyou know there's really something strangely loveable about the man. Isometimes think, " she concluded with her fantastic humour, "that I mighthave married him myself with very little effort on either side. "

"And lived happily forever after on the _International Review?_"

"Oh, I don't know but what it would be quite as easy as to live onclothes. I don't believe poverty, after all, is a bit worse thanboredom. What one wants is to be interested, and if one isn't, life ispretty much the same in a surface car or in an automobile. I don'tbelieve I should have minded surface cars the least bit, " she finishedpensively. 

"Wait till you've tried them--I have. "

"What really matters is the one great thing, " pursued Gerty with apositive philosophy, "and money has about as much relation to happinessas the frame has to the finished picture--all it does is to show it offto the world. Now I like being shown off, I admit--but I'd like it allthe better if there were a little more of the stuff upon the canvas. "

"If you were only as happy as I am!" said Laura softly. 

For a moment Gerty looked at her with a sweetness in which there was analmost maternal understanding. "I wish I were, darling, " was what sheanswered. 

Her hard, bright eyes grew suddenly wistful, and she looked at Laura asif she would pierce through the enveloping flesh to the soul within. Ofall the people she had ever known Laura was the only one, she hadsometimes declared, who had never lied to her. The world had lied toher, Kemper had lied to her, Perry had lied to her more than all; andshe had come at last to feel, almost without explaining it to herself, that the truth was in Laura as in some obscure, mystic sense thesacrament was in the bread and wine upon the altar. Though she herselfwas quite content to slip away from her ideals, she felt that to believein somebody was as necessary to her life as the bread she ate. It madeno difference that she should number among the profane multitude whofound their way back to the fleshpots, but her heart demanded that herfriend should remain constant to the prophetic vision and the promisedland. Laura was not only the woman whom she loved, she had become to herat last almost a vicarious worship. What she couldn't believe Laurabelieved in her stead; where she was powerless even to be good, Laurabecame not only good but noble. And through all her friendship, fromthat first day at school to the present moment, she remembered now thatno hint of jealousy had ever looked at her from Laura's eyes. "A thrushcould hardly borrow the plumage of a paroquet, " Trent had said; and thebrilliant loveliness which had disturbed the peace of other women shehad known, had produced in Laura only an increasing delight, a morefervent rapture. As she looked on the delicate, poetic face of thewoman before her, she found herself asking, almost in terror, if it werepossible that her friend was not only reconciled but positivelyenamoured of the world? Had Laura, also, entered into a rivalry whichwould be as relentless and more futile than her own? Would she, too, waste her life in an effort to give substance to a shadow and to renderpermanent the most impermanent of earthly things? But the question cameand went so abruptly that the minute afterward she had entirelyforgotten the passage of it through her mind. 

"What a bore of a summer I shall have, " she observed lightly, with oneof those swift changes of subject so characteristic of her restlesstemperament. "The doctor has ordered me back to camp in the Adirondacks, and unless Arnold and yourself take pity on me heaven knows whether I'llbe any better than a fungus by the autumn. "

She was arranging her veil before the mirror as she spoke, and shepaused now to survey with a dissatisfied frown one of the large blackspots which had settled across her nose. "I told Camille I couldn'tstand dots like these, " she remarked with an equally irrelevant flash ofirritation. 

"Of course I'll come for July if you ask me, " replied Laura, ignoringthe question of the veil for the sake of the more important issue, "Ican't answer for Arnold, but I think it's rather what he's lookingforward to. "

"Oh, he told me yesterday that he'd come if I could persuade you. Hedidn't have the good manners to leave me in doubt as to what theattraction for him would be. "

Laura's happy laugh rewarded her. "This will be the first summer he'sspent in America for ten years, " she replied, "so I hope he'll find meworth the sacrifice of Europe. "

"Then he's really given up his trip abroad for you?"

"There's hardly need to ask that--but don't you think it a quitesufficient reason?"

"Oh, I guess so, " returned Gerty carelessly. "Once I'd have been quitepositive about it, but that was in the days when I was a fool. Now I'mnot honestly sure that you're doing wisely to let him stay. A man isperfectly capable of making a sacrifice for a woman in the heat ofemotion, but there are nine chances to one that he never forgives herfor it afterward. Take my advice, my dear, and simply _make_ himgo--shove the boat off yourself if there's no other way. He'll probablylove you ten times more while he's missing you than he will be able todo through a long hot summer at your side. "

"Gerty, Gerty, how little you know love!" said Laura. 

"My dear, I never pretended to. I've given my undivided time andattention to men. "

"Well, he doesn't want in the least to go--he'll tell you so himselfwhen you see him--but I do wish that your views of life weren't quite soawful. "

Gerty was still critically regarding her appearance in the mirror, andbefore answering she ran her hand lightly over the exquisite curve ofher hip in her velvet gown. 

"I'm sorry they strike you that way, " she responded amiably, "becausethey are probably what your own will be five years from now. Then I maypositively count on you both for July?" she asked without the slightestchange in her flippant tone, "and I'll try to decoy Billy Lancaster forAugust. He's still young enough to find the virgin forest congenialcompany. "

"But I thought Perry hated him!" exclaimed Laura, in surprise. 

"He does--perfectly--but I can't see that you've made an argument out ofthat. Billy's really very handsome--I wish you knew him--he's one of thefew men of my acquaintance who has any hair left on the top of hishead. "

Her flippancy, her shallowness left Laura for a minute in doubt as tohow she should accept her words. Then rising from her chair, she laidher restraining hands on Gerty's shoulders. 

"My darling, do be careful, " she entreated. 

The shoulders beneath her hands rose in an indifferent shrug. "Oh, I'vebeen careful, " laughed Gerty, "but it isn't any fun. Perry isn't carefuland he gets a great deal more out of life than I do. "

"A great deal more of what?" demanded Laura. 

For an instant Gerty thought attentively, while the mocking gayetychanged to a serious hardness upon her face. 

"More forgetfulness, " she answered presently. "That's what we all wantisn't it? Call it by what name you will--religion, dissipation, morphia--what we are all trying to do is to intoxicate ourselves intoforgetting that life is life. "

"But it isn't what I want, " insisted Laura, "I want to feel everythingand to know that I feel it. "

"Well, you're different, " rejoined Gerty. "What I'm after is to behappy, and I care very little what form it takes or what kind ofhappiness mine may be. I've ceased to be particular about the detailseven--if Billy Lancaster is my happiness I'll devour him and never wastean idle moment in regret. Why should I?--Perry doesn't. "

"So there's an end to Perry?"

"An end! Oh, you delicious child, there's only a beginning. Perry's cultis the inaccessible--present him with all the virtues and he will runaway; ignore him utterly and he'll make your life insupportable by hispresence. For the last twenty-four hours I assure you he's stuck tome--like a briar. "

"Then it's all for Perry--I mean this Billy?" asked Laura. 

Gerty shook her head while her brows grew slowly together in anexpression of angry bitterness. 

"It was in the beginning, " she responded, "but I'm not sure that it isnow--not entirely at any rate. The boy's worship is incense to mynostrils, I suppose. Yes, I've always been a monument of indifference tomen, but I confess to an increasing enthusiasm for Billy's looks. "

"An enthusiasm which Perry doesn't share?"

The laughter in Gerty's voice was a little sad. "I declare it reallyhurts me that I've ceased to notice. The poor silly man offered to giveup his golf to go motoring with me yesterday afternoon, and I went andwas absolutely bored to death. I couldn't help thinking how much moreinteresting Billy is. "

Her veil was at last adjusted to her satisfaction; and with a lastbrilliant glance, which swept her entire figure, she turned from themirror and paused to draw on her gloves while she bent over and kissedLaura upon the cheek. 

"Goodbye, dear, if Billy turns out to be any real comfort, I'll sharehim with you. "

"Oh, I have a Billy of my own!" retorted Laura; and though her wordswere mirthful there was a seriousness in her look which lasted longafter the door had closed upon her friend. She was thinking of Adams, wondering if she should write to him, and how she should word her note;and whether any expression of sympathy would not sound both trivial andabsurd? Then it seemed to her that there was nothing that she could saybecause she realised that she stood now at an impassable distance fromhim. The connection of thought even which had existed between them wassnapped at the instant; and she felt that she was no longer interestedin the things which had once absorbed them. The friendship was stillthere, she supposed, but the spirit of each, the thoughts, the verylanguage, had become strangely different, and she told herself that shecould no longer speak to him since she had lost the power to speak inany words he might understand. 

"How can I pretend to value what no longer even interests me?" shethought, "and if I attempt to explain--if I tell him that my wholenature has changed because I have chosen one thing from out themany--what possible good, after all, could come of putting this intowords? Suppose I say to him quite frankly: 'I am content to leteverything else go since I have found happiness?' And yet is it truethat I have found it? and how do I know that this is really happiness, after all?"

It seemed to her, as she asked the question, that her whole lifedissolved itself into the answer; and she became conscious again of thetwo natures which dwelt within her--of the nature which lived and of thenature which kept apart and questioned. She remembered the night afterher first meeting with Kemper and the conviction she had felt then thather destiny lay mapped out for her in the hand of God. Her soul on thatnight had seemed, in the words of the quaint old metaphor, a vase whichshe held up for God to fill. The light had run over then, but now, sherealised with a pang, it had ceased to shine through her body, and hervase was empty. Even love had not filled it for her as her dream haddone. 

Again she asked if it were happiness, and still she could find noanswer. The quickened vibration of the pulses, the concentration ofthought upon a single presence, the restless imagination which leapedfrom the disappointment of to-day to the possible fulfilment ofto-morrow--these things were bound up in her every instant, and yetcould she, even in her own thoughts, call these things happiness? Shetold off her minutes by her heartbeats; but there were brief suspensionsof feeling when she turned to ask herself if in all its height and forceand vividness there was still no perceptible division between agony andjoy. 

For at times the way grew dark to her and she felt that she stumbledblindly in a strange place. From the heights of the ideal she had comedown to the ordinary level of the actual; and she was as ignorant of theforces among which she moved as a bird in the air is ignorant of a cage. Gerty alone, she knew, was familiar with it all--had travelled step bystep over the road before her--yet, she realised that she found no helpin Gerty, nor in any other human being--for was it not ordained in thebeginning that every man must come at last into the knowledge of thespirit only through the confirming agony of flesh?

"No, I am not happy now because he is not utterly and entirely mine, "she thought, "there are only a few hours of the day when he is withme--all the rest of the twenty-four he leads a life of which I knownothing, which I cannot even follow in my thoughts. Whom does he see inthose hours? and of what does he think when I am not with him? Next weekin the Adirondacks we shall be together without interruption, and then Ishall discern his real and hidden self--then I shall understand him asfully as I wish to be understood. " And that coming month appeared to hersuddenly as luminous with happiness. Here, now, she was dissatisfied andincapable of rest, but just six days ahead of her she saw the beginningof unspeakable joy. An impatient eagerness ran through her like a flameand she began immediately the preparations for her visit. 

CHAPTER VI

THE FEET OF THE GOD

When Kemper, in an emotional moment, had declared that he would give uphis trip to Europe, he had expected that Laura would see in thesacrifice a convincing proof of the stability of his affection; but, tohis surprise, she had accepted the suggestion as a shade too much in thenatural order of events. Europe, empty of his presence, would have beenin her eyes a desert; and that any grouping of mountains or arrangementof buildings could offer the slightest temptation beside the promisedmonth in the Adirondacks appeared to her as entirely beyond thequestion. If the truth were told he did immeasurably prefer the prospectof a summer spent by her side, but he felt at the same time--though hehardly admitted this even to himself--that in remaining in America hewas giving up a good deal of his ordinary physical enjoyments. It wasnot that he wanted in the very least to go; he felt merely that he oughtto have been seriously commended because he stayed away. Since he hadnever relinquished so much as a day's pleasure for any woman in thepast, he was almost overcome by appreciation of his present generosity. 

For a time the very virtue in his decision produced in him the agreeablehumour which succeeds any particular admiration for one's own conduct. Of all states of mind the complacent suavity resulting from self-esteemis, perhaps, the most pleasantly apparent in one's attitude to others;and no sooner had Kemper assured himself that he had made an unusualsacrifice for Laura than he was rewarded by the overwhelming convictionthat she was more than worth it all. In some way peculiar to theemotions her value increased in direct relation to the amount ofpleasure he told himself he had given up for her sake. 

When at last he had freed himself from a few financial worries he hadlingered to attend to, and was hurrying toward her in the night expresswhich left New York, he assured himself that now for the first time hewas comfortably settled in a state which might be reasonably expected toendure. The careless first impulse of his affection would wane, heknew--it were as useless to regret the inevitable passing of thespring--but beyond this was it not possible that Laura might hold hisinterest by qualities more permanent than any transient exaltation ofthe emotions? He thought of the soul in her face rather than of the merechanging accident of form--of the smile which moved like an edge oflight across her eyes and lips--and this rare spiritual quality in herappearance appealed to him at the instant as vividly as it had done onthe first day he saw her. This charm of strangeness had worn with him asnothing in the domain of the sensations had worn in his life before. Inthe smoking car, when he entered it a little later, he found a man namedBarclay, whom he saw sometimes at his club; and they sat talkingtogether until long after midnight. Barclay was a keen, aggressivelyenergetic person, who lived in a continual rush of affairs, which hadnot kept him from a decided over-development about the waist. He wasmarried to an invalid wife, who, as he now told Kemper, was threatenedwith consumption and condemned to spend the whole year in theAdirondacks. Kemper had seen her once, and though she was neither prettynor intelligent, he remembered her with respect as the owner of aproperty of forty millions. The knowledge of this fact covered her witha certain distinction in his mind, and because of it he condoned almostunconsciously the absence in her of any more personal attraction thanthat of wealth. The marriage, so far as he could judge, had been, fromBarclay's point of view, entirely satisfactory--domestic affairsoccupied no place whatever in the man's existence, which was devotedexclusively to speculation in stocks; and he had solved the eternalproblem of philosophy by reducing life, not to a formula, but to afigure. Of scandal there had never blown the faintest breath about him;he paid apparently as little attention to other women as to his wife;and money, Kemper decided now, not without an irrational envy, appearedto satisfy as well as absorb his every instant. 

"Yes, it's a great thing to get back to the woods now and then, " Barclaywas saying, "I usually manage to run up for Sunday--and then I find timeto look over all the news of the week. "

By "news, " Kemper was aware he meant only the changes in the stockmarket; but his recognition that the man had not so much as a casualinterest above the accumulation of wealth, did not detract in the leastfrom the admiration with which Barclay inspired him. This was a lifethat counted! he thought with generous enthusiasm; and successincarnate, he felt, was riding beside him in the train. 

Barclay had drawn a paper from his pocket, and was following the list offigures with the point of his toothpick. Though there was but onesubject upon which he possessed even the rudiments of knowledge, thefact that he could speak with authority in a single department of lifehad conferred upon him a certain dignity of manner; and so Kemper, as hefell into conversation with him, found himself wishing that he mightarrange to be thrown with him during the month of his vacation. Money, though he himself was ignorant of it, possessed almost as vital anattraction for him as he found in love. 

But the next morning, when he descended from the train and saw Lauraawaiting him against a green background of forest, all recollection ofBarclay and his financial genius, was swept from his thoughts. As helooked at her small distinguished figure, and met her charming eyes, radiant with love, he told himself that he had, indeed, got to the goodplace in his life at last. The pressure of her hand, the surrender inher look, the tremor of her voice, appealed to his inflammable senseswith a freshness which he found as delicious as the dawn in which theystood. 

"To think that I'm only beginning to live when I've past forty years!"he exclaimed, as they rolled in the little cart over the forest road. 

Laura held the reins, and while she drove he flung his arm about herwith a boyish laugh. 

"But this is heavenly--how did you manage it?" he asked. 

"Oh, I came alone in the cart because I wanted these first minutes allto ourselves, " she answered, "I didn't want even Gerty to see how happywe could be. " And it seemed to her as she spoke that all that she haddemanded of happiness was fulfilled at last. 

A week later she could still tell herself that the dream was true. Kemper had thrown himself into his love making with all the zest, as hesaid, of his college days; and there was in his complete absorption init something of the exclusive attention he devoted to a game ofbilliards. It was a law of his nature that he should live each minute toits utmost and let it go; and this romance of the forest was less anidyl to him than a delicious experience which one must enjoy to thefullest and have over. There were moments even when Laura saw histemperamental impatience awake in his face, as if his thoughts werebeginning already to plunge from the fruition of to-day after thecapricious possibility which lies in to-morrow. In the midst of theforest, under the gold and green of the leaves, she realised at timesthat his moods were more in harmony with the city streets and the rushof his accustomed eager life. 

And yet to Kemper the month was full of an enchantment which belongedhalf to his actual existence and half to some fairy stories heremembered from his childhood. It was more beautiful than the reality, but still it was not real; and this very beauty in it reminded him attimes of the vanishing loveliness which results from a mere chanceeffect--of the sunlight on the green leaves or the flutter of Laura'sblue gown against the balsam. In the very intensity of his enjoymentthere was at certain instants almost a terrified presentiment; andfollowing this there were periods of flagging impulse when he askedhimself indifferently if a life of the emotions brought as its Nemesisan essential incapacity for love? If Laura had only kept up the pursuita little longer, he complained once in a despondent mood, if she hadonly fluttered her tinted veil as skilfully as a woman of the worldmight have done. "Yet was it not for this unworldliness--for this lackof artifice in her--that I first loved her?" he demanded, indignant withher, with nature, with himself. She had surrendered her soul, herealised, with the frankness of inexperience; the excitement of thechase was now over forever, and he saw stretching ahead of him only theradiant monotony of love. Was the satiety with which, in these listlessinstants, he looked forward to it merely, he questioned bitterly, theinevitable end to which his life had reached?

Lying in a hammock on the broad piazza of Gerty's camp, he asked himselfthe question while he watched Laura, who stood at a little distanceexamining some decorations for the hall. 

"Oh, I'd choose the green tapestry by all means, " he heard her say; andhe told himself as he listened to the ordinary words that if she hadbeen a perfect stranger to him he would have known her voice for thevoice of a woman who was in love. Was she really lacking, he askedhimself in amusement, in the quality which he called for want of abetter phrase--"the finesse of sentiment?" or was the angelic candour ofher emotion only the outward expression of that largeness of naturewhich inspired him at times with a respect akin to awe? The absence ofany coquetry in her attitude impressed him as the final proof of herinherent nobility; and yet there were instants when he admitted almostin spite of himself, that he would have relished the display of a littleamorous evasion. Laura, he believed, was perfectly capable of a greatemotion, but the great emotion, after all, he concluded humorously, wasless conducive to his immediate enjoyment than was the small flirtation. 

The two women were still discussing the bit of tapestry; and while hewatched them, a ray of sunlight, piercing the bough of a maple besidethe porch, felt with a charming brightness upon Gerty's hair Eachbrilliant red strand he noticed, appeared to leap instantly into lifeand colour. 

It was pure effect, a mere creation of changing light and shade and yet, as he looked, he was aware of a sudden tremor in his blood. The time hadbeen when Gerty had rather liked him, he remembered--or was it, afterall, merely that he had exaggerated the subtle suggestion in her look?Something had passed between them--just what it was, he could hardlyrecall with distinctness--a mere fervent glance, perhaps a half spokenphrase, or at most a cousinly kiss which had contained the passion of alover. The incident had passed, and though he told himself now that ithad vanished entirely from his memory, he felt that it had left behind avague longing that it might some day occur again. 

"I can't for the life of me remember what it was, nor how it happened, "he thought. "It was out of the question, of course, that I should fallin love with Perry's wife--and yet, by Jove, I'd like to know what shefelt about it all. I'm glad, " he added earnestly after a moment, "thatLaura doesn't happen to be the flirtatious kind. " Nevertheless hecontinued to wonder, as he looked at the sunlight on Gerty's hair, ifthere could have been, after all, a grain of truth in those hints shehad so carelessly let fall. 

 * * * * *

Early in August Laura was summoned home by the illness of Angela; andKemper, after a few days spent with her in the city, started upon ayachting cruise which occupied him for two weeks. On the day of hisreturn, when as yet he had not seen Laura he, accidentally ran acrossAdams shortly before the luncheon hour. 

"Look here, old chap, let's lunch together at the club, " he suggested, adding with a laugh, "if I let you go now, heaven knows when I'll be sofortunate as to knock up against you any more. "

Adams readily agreed; and a little later, as they sat opposite eachother at table, he showed, as usual, a sincere enough enjoyment of hiscompanion's society. Though he had never taken Kemper as he said, "quiteseriously, " there were few men whom he found it pleasanter to meet atdinner. 

"I wish you came more in my way, " he observed, while Kemper gave theorder, with the absorbed attention he devoted to such details, "I don'tbelieve I've laid eyes on you but once in the last six months. "

"Oh, you've something better to think of, " returned Kemper carelessly. "Do you know, " he pursued after a moment's thought, "I'm sometimestempted to wish that I could change place with you and get beaten intoshape for some serious work. It's the only thing in life that counts, when you come to think of it, " he concluded with an irritation directedless against himself than against his fate. 

"Well, I can't say I'd object to standing in your shoes for a while, "rejoined Adams, "I've a taste for the particular brand of cigar yousmoke. "

"Oh, they're good enough--in fact everything is good enough--it comestoo easily, that's the trouble. I've never found anything yet that wasseriously worth trying for. "

Adams regarded him for a moment with a smile, to which his whimsicalhumour lent a peculiar attraction. 

"I, on the other hand, have tried pretty hard for some things I didn'tget, " he answered, "the difference between us, I guess, is that I had atough time in my youth and you didn't. A man's middle age is usually areaction from his youth. "

"I've never had a tough time anywhere, " replied Kemper, almost indisgust, "it's' been too soft--that's the deuced part of it. And yetI've got the stuff in me for a good fight if the opportunity would onlycome my way. "

The expression of satiety--of moral weariness--was etched indeliblybeneath the brightness of his smile; and yet, Adams, looking at him, remembered, a little bitterly, that this man had won from him the womanwhom he loved. To Kemper belonged both her body and her spirit; thetouch of her hand no less than the charm of her intellect! At thethought his old human longing for her awoke and stirred restlesslyagain in his heart. 

"Yes, the only thing is to have one particular interest, " resumedKemper, "to occupy oneself with something that is eternally worth while. Now, look at Barclay--I went up in the train with him to theAdirondacks, and, upon my word, I never envied a man more in my wholelife. You know Barclay, don't you?"

Adams nodded. "I'd find a little of his financial ability rather usefulmyself, " he observed. Then he broke into a boyish laugh at arecollection the name aroused, "the last time I had a talk with him wasat the beginning of our war with Spain, and he told me he was interestedin news from the front because he happened to own some Spanish bonds. "

Kemper joined in the laugh. "Oh, he's narrow, of course, " he replied, "but all the same I'd like the chance to get in his place. By Jove, Idon't believe he's ever bored a minute of the day!" And it seemed tohim, as he thought of Barclay, that his own life held nothing for himbut boredom from this time on. 

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH KEMPER IS PUZZLED

Late in October Kemper went South for a couple of weeks shooting; and Itwas not until the first day of November that he parted from hiscompanions of the trip and returned to New York. He had enjoyed everyminute of his absence--until the last few days when the strangenessappeared, somehow, to have worn from his out-door life--and as he drovenow, on the bright autumn afternoon, from the station to his rooms, hewas agreeably aware that he had never felt physically or mentally inbetter shape. After a fortnight spent away from civilisation, he found arefreshing excitement in watching the crowd in Fifth Avenue, the passingcarriages, and particularly the well-dressed figures of the women intheir winter furs. Taken all in all life was a pretty interestingbusiness, he admitted; and he remembered with eagerness that he wouldsee Laura again before the day was over. Though he had barely thought ofher once during the past two weeks, this very forgetfulness served tosurround her with the charm of novelty in his awakened memory. 

A woman in a sable coat rolled past him in an automobile; and his eyesfollowed her with an admiration which seemed strangely mixed with avague longing in his blood--a longing which was in some way produced bythe animated street, the changing November brightness and the crispnessof frost which was in the air. Then he caught sight of a milliner'spretty assistant carrying a hat box along the sidewalk, and his gazehung with pleasure upon her trim and graceful figure in a cheap clothcoat bordered with imitation ermine. A feeling of benevolence, ofuniversal good will pervaded his heart; his chest expanded in a sigh ofthankfulness, and it seemed to him that he asked nothing better than tobe alive. He was in the mood when a man is grateful to God, charitableto himself and generous to his creditors. 

The cab stopped before his door, and while he paid the man, he gavecareful directions to Wilkins about the removal of his shooting traps. Then he entered the apartment house, and passing the elevator with hisrapid step, went gayly humming up the staircase. 

On the third landing he paused a moment to catch his breath, and as helaid his hand, the instant afterward, on the door of his sitting-room, he became aware of a faint, familiar, and yet almost forgotten perfume, which entered his nostrils from the apartment before which he stood. Theperfume, distant as it was, revived in him instantly, with that curiousassociation between odours and visual memory, a recollection which mightotherwise have slumbered for years in his brain--and though he had notthought of Jennie Alta once during the summer and autumn months, thererose immediately before him now the memory of her dressing table withthe silver box in which she kept some rare highly scented powder. Everyincident of his acquaintance with her thronged in a disordered seriesthrough his brain; and it was with an odd presentiment of what awaitedhim, that he entered his sitting room and found her occupying a chairbefore his fireside. When she sprang up and faced him in her coarsenedbeauty, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he shouldaccept the fact of her presence with merely an ironic protest. 

"So you've turned up again, " he remarked, as he held out his hand with asmile, "I was led to believe that the last parting would be final. "

"Oh, it was, " she answered lightly, "but there's an end even tofinality, you know. "

The flute-like soprano of her voice fell pleasantly upon his ears, andas he looked into her face he told himself that it was marvellous howwell she had managed to preserve an effect of youthfulness. Under theflaring wings in her hat her eyes were still clear and large and heavylidded, her thin red lips still held the shape of their sensual curve. Awhite fur boa was thrown carelessly about her neck, and he rememberedthat underneath it, encircling her short throat there was the softcrease of flesh which the ancient poets had named "the necklace ofVenus. "

"Well, I can but accept this visit as a compliment, I suppose, " heobserved with amiable indifference, "it means--doesn't it? that you wonyour fight about the opera contract?"

An expression of anger--of the uncontrolled, majestic anger of ahandsome animal, awoke in her face, and she pulled off her long whiteglove as if seeking to free herself from some restraint of custom. Herhand, he noticed, with a keen eye for such feminine details, was large, roughly shaped and over fleshy about the wrist. 

"I'd starve before I'd sing again by that old contract, " she responded. "No, it's not opera--Parker refused to pay me what I asked and I heldout to the end--I shall sing in concert for the first time, and I shan'tbe happy until I have every seat in the opera house left empty. "

He laughed with an acute enjoyment of her repressed violence. "Oh, you're welcome to mine, " he returned good-humouredly, "but what is theday of your great first battle?"

"Not until December. I'm going West and South before I sing in NewYork. "

"Then you aren't here for much of a stay, after all?"

She shook her head and the orange coloured wings in her hat waved to andfro. 

"Only a few days at a time. After Christmas I sail back again. InFebruary I'm engaged for Monte Carlo. "

Then her expression underwent a curious change--as if personality, colour, passion pulsed into her half averted face--and the hardprofessional tones in which she had spoken were softened as if by anawakening memory. 

"So you still keep my portrait, I see, " she observed, lifting her eyesto the picture above the mantel, "you don't hate me, then, so bitterlyas I thought. "

He shrugged his shoulders with the gesture he had acquired abroad. 

"I did take it down, but it left a smudge on the wall, so I had to putit back again. "

"Then you sometimes think of me?" she enquired, with curiosity. 

"Not when I can help it, " he retorted, laughing. 

His ironic pleasantry stung her into an irritation which showed plainlyin her face; and she appeared, for the first time, to bend herintelligence toward some definite achievement. 

"And is that always easy?" she asked, in a tone of mere flippant banter. 

A petty impulse of revenge lent sharpness to his voice. "Easier than youthink, " he responded coolly. 

"Well, I suppose, I'll have to take the punishment, " she answered, aslightly as before; and then turning to the mantelpiece again, she raisedher glance to the portrait. "I never liked it, " she commented frankly, "he's got me in an unnatural position--I never stood like that in mylife--and there's an open smirk about the mouth. "

He saw her face in the admirable pose which he remembered--the chin heldslightly forward, the cheek rounded upward, the eyes uplifted--and foran instant he waited, half hoping that her voice of wine and honey wouldroll from between her lips. But she was frugal of her notes, he recalledthe instant afterward. 

"I've always considered it a pretty fair likeness, " he remarked. 

"Then you've always considered me pretty hideous, " she flashed back inannoyance. 

As she swung round upon the hearthrug, the white fur boa slipped fromher throat, and he saw "the necklace of Venus" above the string of opalsthat edged her collarless lace blouse. 

"On the contrary I admire you very much when you are in a good humour, "he observed in his genial raillery. 

"Then you thought I had a temper?"

He laughed softly, as if at a returning recollection. "A perfectlyartistic one, " he answered. 

Her annoyance disappeared beneath his gaze, and the smile he had buthalf forgotten--a faint sweet ripple of expression, which seemed lessthe result of an inner working of intelligence than of some outwardfascination in the curve of mouth and chin--hovered, while he watchedher attentively, upon her bright red lips. In the making of her the soulhe recognised had dissolved into the senses; and yet the accident of herone exquisite gift had conferred upon her the effect, if not the qualityof genius. Because of the voice in her throat she appeared to standapart by some divine election of nature. 

"I believe I did slap your face once, " she confessed, laughing, "but Ibegged your pardon afterward--and you must admit that you were sometimestrying. "

"Perhaps--but what's the use of bringing all this up now? It's wellover, isn't it?"

"Isn't it?" she repeated softly; and he had an odd impression that hervoice was melting into liquid honey. The thought made him laugh aloudand at the sound she relapsed quickly into her indifferent attitude. 

"Of course, it's over, " she resumed promptly. "If it were not over--if Ididn't feel myself entirely safe--do you think that I'd ever dare comeback again?"

The absence of any hint of emotion in her words produced in him anagreeable feeling of security, and for the first time he went so closeto her that he might almost have touched her hand. 

"Safe?" he repeated, smiling, "then were you ever really in danger?"

Her glance puzzled him, and she followed it a moment afterward with asentence which had the effect of increasing, rather than diminishing, the obscurity in which he floundered. 

"In danger of losing my head, do you mean?" she asked, "Wasn't thatquestion answered when I ran away?"

But the next instant she burst into a laugh of ridicule, and threwherself back into the chair upon the hearthrug, with the particular fallof drapery by which she delighted the eyes of her audience in the operahouse. 

"I asked your man to bring me tea, for I'm famished, " she remarked; "doyou think he has forgotten it?"

"He had, probably, to go out to buy the cakes, " he replied, with a touchupon the bell which was immediately answered by Wilkins bearing thesilver tray. As she rose to make tea, Kemper took the fur boa from hershoulders and held it for a minute to his nostrils. 

"You use the same perfume, I notice, " he observed. 

She waited until the door had closed upon Wilkins, and then looked up, smiling, as she handed him his cup. 

"There are two things one should never change, " she returned, "a perfumeand a lover. "

With a laugh he tossed the fur upon the sofa. "By Jove, you've arrivedat the conventional morality at last. "

"Is it morality?" she rejoined sweetly, "I thought it was experience. "

"Well, any way, you're right and I'm moral, " he remarked, "the joy ofliving, after all, is not in having a thing, but in wanting it. "

"Which proves, as I have said, " she concluded, "that one love is as goodas a thousand. "

There was a sharp edge of ridicule to his glance; but the words he spokewere uttered from some mere impulse of audacity. 

"I wonder if I taught you that?" he questioned. 

Leaning slightly forward she clasped her large white hands upon herknees; and the position, while she kept it, showed plainly the roundedample length of her figure. 

"I might tell you the truth--but, after all, why should I?" shedemanded. 

An emotional curiosity which was almost as powerful as love flamed inhis face. How much or how little did she feel? he wondered; and thevanity which was the inspiration of his largest as well as his smallestpassion, dominated for the time all other impressions which sheproduced. 

"Would it be possible for you to tell the truth if you tried?" he asked. 

"I never try--all the harm on earth comes from women telling men thetruth. It is the woman who tells the truth who becomes--a door mat. If Iever felt myself in danger of speaking the truth--" she hesitated for aquick breath, while her eyes drew his gaze as by a cord--"I would runaway. "

It was his turn to breathe quickly now. "You did run away--once. "

"I ran because--" her voice was so low that he felt it like a breathupon his cheek. 

"Because?" he echoed impatiently; and the vehemence in his tone wroughtan immediate change in her seductive attitude. With a laugh that wasalmost insolent, she rose to her feet and looked indifferently down uponhim. 

"Oh, that's over long ago and we've both forgotten. I came to-day onlyto ask the honour of your presence at my first concert. "

An impulse to irritate her--to provoke her into an expression of herhidden violence--succeeded quickly the curiosity she had aroused; and hefelt again the fiendish delight with which, as a savage small boy, hehad prodded the sleeping wild animals in their cages in the park. 

"I'm not sure that I can arrange it, " he responded, "I may be off on myhoneymoon, you know. "

"Ah, yes, " she nodded while he saw a perceptible flicker of her heavyeyelids, "but when, if I'm not impertinent, does the interesting eventtake place? I might be able to postpone my concert, " she concludedjestingly. 

He shook his head. "You can't do that because I expect it to lastforever. "

"One usually does, I believe, but it is easy to miscalculate. Have you aphotograph visible of the lady?"

He shook his head, but with the denial, his glance travelled to apicture of Laura upon his desk; and crossing the room, she took it upand returned with it to the firelight, where she dropped upon her kneesin order to study it the more closely. 

"Has she money?" was her first enquiry at the end of her examination. 

"If she has I am not aware of it, " he retorted angrily. 

"Well, I wonder what you see in her, " she remarked, with her attentivegaze still upon the picture, "though she looks as if she'd never let aman go if she once got hold of him. "

Her vulgar insolence worked him into an uncontrollable spasm of anger;and with a smothered oath he wrenched the photograph from her and flungit into the open drawer of his desk. 

"She is too sacred to me to be made the subject of your criticism, " heexclaimed. 

Whether she was frankly offended or unaffectedly amused he could nottell, but she burst into so musical a laugh that he found himselflistening to it with positive pleasure. 

"There! there! don't be foolish--I was only joking, " she returned, "please don't think for one minute that it's worth my while to bejealous of you. "

"I don't think so, " he replied, with open annoyance, "but I wish youwouldn't come here. "

She had taken up her fur and stood now wrapping it about her throat, while her eyes were fixed upon him with an expression he found itimpossible to read. Was it anger, seduction, passion or disappointment?Or was it some deeper feeling than he had ever believed it possible forher face to show?

"It is the last time, I promise you, " she said, "but do you know why Icame this afternoon?"

"Why?--no, and I doubt if you do. "

For a moment she was silent; then he watched the curious physicalfascination grow in her smile. 

"I came because I had a very vivid dream about you on the boat lastnight, " she said, "I dreamed of that evening, during the first winter, in my dressing-room after the second act in 'Faust. ' I thought I hadforgotten it, but in my sleep it all came clearly back again--everyminute and--"

"And?" the word burst from him eagerly as he leaned toward her. 

"I broke a bottle of perfume, do you remember?" her soft laugh shook inher full, white throat, "your coat still smelt of it next day, yousaid. "

Her wonderful voice, softened now to a speaking tone, seemed to endoweach word, not only with melody, but with form and colour. They becameliving things to him while she spoke, and the night he had almostforgotten, stood out presently as in the glow of a conflagration of hismemory. He smelt again the perfume which she had spilled on his coat; hesaw again the fading roses, heaped on chairs and tables, that overflowedher dressing room. It was the night of her great triumph--the eyes withwhich she looked at him still held the intoxication of her ownmusic--and it was to the applause of a multitude, that, alone with herbehind the scenes, he had first taken her in his arms. 

"It's all over, I tell you, " he said angrily; "so what's the use ofthis?"

"It's never over!--it's never over!" she repeated in her singing voice. 

She was very close to him at last; but breaking away with an effort, hecrossed the room and laid his hand upon the door. 

"It was over forever two years ago, " he said, "and now good-bye!"

He held out his hand, but without taking it, she stood motionless whileshe looked at him with her unchanging smile. 

"Then I'll let it be good-bye, " she answered, "but not this way--notjust like this--"

Her voice mocked him; and moved by an impulse which was half daring, half vanity, he closed the door again and came back to where she stood. 

"So long as it's good-bye, I'll have it any way you wish, " he said. 

CHAPTER VIII

SHOWS THAT LOVE WITHOUT WISDOM IS FOLLY

The odd part was, he admitted next morning as he sat at breakfast, thatfrom first to last he had not found one moment's pleasure in the societyof Madame Alta. Pleasure in a suitable quantity he was inclined toregard as sufficient excuse for the most serious indiscretion; but inthis case the temptation to which he had yielded appeared to him, by thelight of day, to be entirely out of proportion to any actual enjoymenthe had experienced. An impulse which was neither vanity nor daring, buta mixture of the two, had swept away his resolve before he was clearlyaware, as he expressed it, "of the drift of the wind. " He had not wantedto go with her and yet he had gone, impelled by some fury of adventurewhich had seemed all the time to pull against his saner inclinations. 

While he ate his two eggs and his four pieces of toast, as he had doneevery morning for the last fifteen years, he remembered, with a mildpang of remorse, that he had not seen Laura since his return. Withoutdoubt she had expected him last evening, had put on, probably, her mostbecoming gown to receive him; and the thought of her disappointmententered his heart with a very positive reproach. This reproach, shortlived as it was, had the effect of enkindling his imaginary picture ofher; and the eagerness with which he now looked forward to his visitcompletely crowded from his mind the recollection that, but for his ownfault, he might have seen her with as little effort on the eveningbefore. 

As he sat there over his breakfast, with an unfolded newspaper on thetable beside him, he realised, in a proper spirit of thankfulness, thathe had never felt himself to be in a more thoroughly domestic mood. Hisface, in which the clear red from his country trip was still visible, settled immediately into its most genial lines, while he expanded hischest with a deep breath which strained the topmost button on the newEnglish waistcoat which he wore. The sober prospect of marriage nolonger annoyed him when he thought of it, and he could even look forwardcomplacently to seeing the same woman opposite to him at breakfast fortwenty years. 

"By Jove, I've come to the place when to settle down and live quietly isthe best thing I can do, " he concluded, as he helped himself tomarmalade. "I've reached the time of life when a man has to pull up andgo easily or else break to pieces. It's all very well to take one'sfling in youth, but middle age is the period for retrenchment. "

Then, while he still congratulated himself upon the expediency ofvirtue, another image appeared in his reflections, and the paternalinstinct, so strong in men of his kind, responded instantly to theargument which clothed his mere natural impulse. Marriage, he toldhimself, would mean a son of his own, and the stability which he hadalways missed in any relation with a woman would be secured through theresponsibility which fatherhood involved. Here was the interest hislife had lacked, after all--here was the explanation of that vacancy hisemotions had not filled; and it appeared to him that his loves hadfailed in definiteness, in any vital purpose, because he had never seenhimself fulfilled in the son which he now desired. 

"I shouldn't wonder if this is what I've been wanting all the time, " hethought; and the generous fervour, the ideal purity, he had never beenable to introduce into his romances, gathered luminously about thecradle of his unborn child. It seemed to him, as he smoked his secondcigar in the face of this paternal vision, that he had stumbled byaccident upon the one secret of happiness which he had overlooked; andit was while the beaming effulgence of this mood still lasted, that hefinished his papers, and determined to look in upon Laura on his waydown town. The memory of last evening was placed at the distance of athousand miles by his sudden change of humour, and it seemed as uselessto reproach himself for an act so far beyond his present area ofpersonality as it would have been to moralise upon an indiscretion inancient history. A little later, as he ascended Laura's steps, he feltserenely assured that he had made the best possible disposition of hisfuture. 

To his surprise she was not in her sitting-room when he entered, and itwas several minutes before she came in, very quietly and with an avertedface. When he would have taken her in his arms, she drew back quicklywith an indignant and wounded gesture. Her eyes were burning, but he hadnever heard her speak in so hard a voice. 

"You were in town last night, " she said, and by her look more than herwords he was brought face to face with the suspicion that she wascapable of a jealous outburst. 

"I wanted to come, but I couldn't, " he answered, with an attempt at hisquizzical humour. "I rushed here as soon as I dared this morning--isn'tthat enough to prove something?"

Again he made a movement to take her in his arms, but her face was sounyielding that his hands, which he had outstretched, fell to his sides. From the look in her eyes he could almost believe that she had grown tohate him in the night; and at the thought his earlier impetuous emotionflamed in his heart. 

"Don't lie to me, " she said passionately, "there's nothing I hate somuch as a lie. "

"I never lied to you in my life, " he answered, as he drew back with anexpression of cold reproach--for it seemed to him that her attack hadoffered an unpardonable affront to his honour. 

"When you did not come I sent a note to you--I feared something hadhappened--I hardly knew what--but something. The note came back. Theytold the messenger--" the words were wrenched out of her as by some actof bodily torture, and, at last, in spite of her struggle, she could gono further. Pausing she looked at him in silence, while her hand pressedinto her bosom as if to keep down by physical force the passion whichshe could no longer control by a mental effort. The violence of temperwhich in a coarser--a more flesh-and-blood beauty--would have beenrepelling and almost vulgar, was in her chastened and ennobled by theethereal quality in her outward form--and the emotion she expressedseemed to belong less to the ordinary human impulses than to some finerrage of spirit which was independent of the gesture or the utterance offlesh. 

"And you suspected what?" he demanded, in a hurt and angry voice, "youwere told some story by a servant--and without waiting for myexplanation--without giving me a decent chance to clear myself--you wereready, on the instant, to believe me capable--of what?"

Her suspicion worked him into a furious resentment; and theconsciousness that he, himself, was at fault was swallowed up by thegreater wrong of her unuttered accusation. While he spoke he washonestly of the opinion that their whole future happiness was wrecked bythe fact that she believed him capable of the thing which he had done. 

"I would die now before I would justify myself to you, " he added. 

Before the unaffected resentment in his face, she was suddenly, andwithout knowing it, thrown into a position of defence. 

"What could I believe? What else was there for me to believe?" she askedin a muffled voice. Then, as she looked up at him, it seemed to her thatfor the first time she saw the man as he really was in the truth of hisown nature--saw his egoism, his vanity, his shallowness and saw, too, with the same mental clearness, that he had ceased to love her. But atthe instant with this vision before her, she told herself that thediscovery made no difference--that it no longer mattered whether heloved or hated her. Afterward, when he had gone, her perceptions wouldbe blunted again and she would suffer, she knew; but now, while shestood there face to face with him, she could not feel that he bore anyvital part in her existence. 

"You must believe whatever your feeling for me dictates, " he retorted. "I shall not stoop to meet a charge of which I am still ignorant--I haveloved you, " he added, "more than I have ever loved any man or woman inmy life. "

"You have never loved me--you do not love me now, " she responded coolly. 

She had not meant to speak the words; they held no particular meaningfor her ears; and yet they had no sooner passed her lips than she had astrange impression that they remained like detached, living things inthe space between them. Why she had spoken as she had done, she couldnot tell, nor why she had really cared so little at the instant when shehad uttered her passionate reproach. Then she remembered a wooden figureshe had once seen on the stage--a figure that walked and moved its armsand uttered sounds which resembled a human voice--and it seemed to herthat she, herself, was this figure and that her gestures and the wordsshe spoke were the result of the hidden automaton within her. 

She saw him pass to the door, look back once, and then leave the roomwith his rapid step, and while her eyes followed him, she felt that theman who had just gone from her with that angry glance was a differentindividual from the man whom she still loved and for whom she wouldpresently suffer an agony of longing. Then as the sound of the hall doorclosing sharply fell on her ears, she passed instantly from thedeadening lethargy of her senses into a vivid realisation of the thingwhich had just happened--of the meaning of the words which she hadspoken and of the look which he had thrown back at her as he went. Apassion of despair rose in her throat, struggling for release until itbecame a physical torture, and she cried out in her loneliness thatnothing mattered--neither truth nor falsehood--so long as she could bebrought again face to face with his actual presence. 

But--if she had only known the truth!--Kemper had never desired her soardently as in the hour when he told himself that, by his own fault, hehad lost her forever; she had never shown herself so worthy to be won aswhen she had looked down upon him from the remoteness of her disdain. Like many men of flexible morality, he entertained a profound respectfor any rigid ethical standard; and had Laura maintained her unyieldingattitude, he would probably have suffered a hopeless passion for her tothe end of his embittered but still elastic experience. Though he washardly aware of it, the only virtues he could perfectly appreciate werethe ones which usually present themselves in a masculine shape--courage, honour, fair play among men and chivalry to women; and it seemed to himthat Laura, in exacting his entire fidelity, was acting upon anessentially masculine prerogative. The more she demanded, the more, unconsciously to himself, he felt that he was ready to surrender--and hecursed now the intervention of Madame Alta with a vehemence he wouldnever have felt had the course of his love flowed on smoothly in spiteof his relapses. 

"What a damned fool I made of myself, " he confessed, as he walkedrapidly away from Gramercy Park. "I got no pleasure from seeing JennieAlta--not an atom of enjoyment even--and yet I've ruined my whole lifebecause of her, and the chances are nine to one that if I had it to goover I'd act the same blooming idiot again. And all the time I'm more inlove with Laura than I've ever been with any woman in my life. Here'sthe whole happiness of my future swept away at a single blow. "

And the domestic dream which Madame Alta had destroyed was mapped outfor him by his imagination, until she seemed, not only to have preventedhis marriage, but, by some singular eccentricity of feeling, to havemurdered the son who had played so large a part in his confidentexpectations. 

"But why should this have happened to me when I'm no worse than othermen?" he questioned, "when I'm even better than a hundred whom I know?I've never willingly harmed any human being in my life--I've nevercheated, I've never lied to get myself out of a tight place, I've neverbreathed a word against the reputation of any woman. " He thought ofBrady, who, although he was a cad and had ruined Connie Adams, was nowreconciled with his wife and received everywhere he went; of PerryBridewell whose numerous affairs had never interfered with either hisdomestic existence or his appetite. Beside either of these men he felthimself to glow inwardly with virtue, yet he saw that his greaterdecency had not in the least prevented his receiving the largerpunishment; and it seemed to him that he must be pursued by some maligndestiny because, though he was so much better than Brady or PerryBridewell, he should have been overtaken by a retribution which they hadso easily escaped. An unreasonable anger against Laura pervaded histhoughts, but this very anger lent fervour to the admiration he now feltfor her. He knew she loved him and if--as in the case of no other womanhe had ever known--her love could be dominated and subdued by herrecognition of what was due her honour, his feeling rather than histhought, assured him that he would be reduced to a moral submissionapproaching the abject. Though he hoped passionately that she wouldyield, he realised in his heart that he would adore her if she remainedimplacable. Love is not always pleased with reverence, but reverence, hesaw dimly through some pathetic instinct for virtue, is the strongestpossible hold that love can claim. He, himself, would always live in theexternal world of the senses, yet deep within him, half smothered by theclouds of his egoism, there was still a blind recognition of that otherworld beyond sense which he had shut out. To this other world, for thetime at least, Laura, with all the enchantment of the distance, appearedto belong. 

The morning, with its unusual burden of introspection, was, perhaps, themost miserable he had ever spent, and after he had lunched at hisclub--when to his surprise he found that his appetite was entirelyundisturbed by his mental processes--he returned to his rooms beforestarting dejectedly for a long run in his automobile. But a letter fromLaura was the first object he noticed upon his desk, and his afternoonplans were swept from his mind with the beginning of her heart-brokenentreaty for reconciliation. While he read it there was recognition inhis thoughts for no feeling except his rapture in her recovery, and hetook up his pen with a hand which trembled in the shock of his reactionfrom despair to happiness. Then, while he still hesitated, in a mixtureof self-reproach and tenderness, there was a knock at his door, itopened and shut quickly, with an abruptness which even in inanimatethings speak of excitement, and Laura, herself, breathing rapidly andvery pale, came hurriedly across the room. 

"I could not stay away--you did not answer my note--it would have killedme, " she began brokenly; and as he stretched out his arms she threwherself into them with a burst of tears. 

"Oh, you angel!" he exclaimed, in a tenderness which was almost anecstasy of feeling; and then, moved by a passion of sympathy, he calledher by every endearing name his mind could catch at or his voice utter. The depth of his nature responded in all its volume, as she lay thereweeping for joy, in his arms, and in her coming to him as she had donehe beheld then only an exquisite proof of her nobility of soul, of theunworldly innocence for which he loved her. In that embrace, for thatone supreme instant, their spirits touched more nearly than they hadever done in the past or would ever do again in the future--for evenwhile he held her the tide of being receded from its violence and theydrew apart. 

"If you had only waited I should have come to you at once, " he said, looking at her in a rapture which, though he himself was ignorant of it, struggled against a disappointment because she had shown herself to becloser to his own level than he had believed. 

Drawing slightly away Laura stood shaking the tear drops from herlashes, while she regarded him with her radiant smile. The mistybrightness of her eyes showed to him in an almost unreal loveliness. 

"I didn't care--nothing mattered to me, " she answered, "it made nodifference what the world said--nor whether I lived or died. "

Though the flattery of her coming moved him strongly, he found himselfwishing while she spoke that she had not proved herself to be soardently regardless of conventions--that she had appeared, for once, less natural and more worldly-wise. 

"Well, I'll take you home now, " he said, smiling; then as he saw hergaze, passing curiously about the room, rest enquiringly upon theportrait of Madame Alta, he broke into a laugh which sounded, for allits pleasantness, a little strained. 

"That goes out of the way as soon as I can get something to cover thespot, " he remarked, adding gayly, "Symonds says he will finish hisportrait of me next week, and I'll hang it there until you claim it. "

Her face had clouded, and without looking at him she moved toward thedoor. "Are you really glad that I came?" she asked abruptly, turningupon the threshold. 

"Glad! My darling girl, I'm simply overjoyed. You gave me the mostmiserable morning of my life. "

It was the truth--he knew it for the truth while he uttered it, but, inhis heart of hearts, he felt without confessing it to himself, that hislove had dropped back from that divine height beyond which mere humanimpulse becomes ideal passion. 

CHAPTER IX

OF THE FEAR IN LOVE

When Laura reached the sidewalk she was seized by one of those reactionsof feeling which are possible only in periods of unnatural andoverstrained excitement. 

"I would rather you didn't come with me now, " she said, "I've promisedGerty to go to her this afternoon, and I'd honestly rather go alone. "

"But I've seen nothing of you at all, " he urged, "put Gerty aside--shewon't mind. If she does, tell her I made you do it. "

She shook her head, shrinking slightly away from him in the street. "Itisn't that, but I want to be alone--to think. Come this evening and I'llbe quite myself again. Only just now I--I can't talk. "

In the end he had yielded, overborne by so unusual a spirit ofopposition; and with a reproachful good-bye he had returned to hisrooms, while she went slowly up the street in the pale autumn sunshine. 

The impulse in which she had gone to him had utterly died down; and sheasked herself, with a curiosity that was almost indifferent, why, sincethe reconciliation she had longed for was now complete, she should feelonly melancholy where she had expected to find happiness? Kemper hadnever been more impassioned, had never shown himself to be morethoroughly the lover--yet in some way she admitted, it had all beendifferent from the deeper reunion she had hoped for; there had come toher even while she lay in his arms that strange, though familiar senseof unreality in her own emotion; and beneath the touch of his hands shehad felt herself to be separated from him by the space of a whole innerworld. Though she appeared to have got everything, she realised, with apang of resentment directed against herself, that she had wanted a greatdeal more than he had had the power to bestow. Could it be that thething she had missed was that finer sympathy of spirit without which allhuman passion is but the withered husk where the flower has neverbloomed?

"Is it true that I must be forever content with the mere gesture oflove?" she thought. "Is it true that I shall never reach his soul, whichis surely there if I could but find it? Has it eluded me, after all, only because I did not know the way?"

This longing for the immortal soul of love seized her like anunquenchable thirst, until it seemed to her that all outward forms ofexpression--all embraces all words--were but dead earthly things untilthe breath of the spirit had entered in to raise them from mere trivialaccidents into eternal symbols. 

Then suddenly she understood, for the first time, that she hadhumiliated herself by going to his rooms, and she felt her cheek burn inremembering a step which she had taken, under the stress of feeling, without an instant's hesitation. It seemed to her now, when she lookedback upon it, that it would have been better to have lost him foreverthan to have lowered her pride in the way that she had done--but beforeseeing him her pride had been nothing to her, and she realised that ifshe felt his affection slipping from her again she would be driven tothe same or even to greater lengths of self-abasement. 

"But I did wrong--I have lowered myself forever in his eyes, " shethought, "he can never feel the same respect for me again, and because Ihave lost his respect I have lost also my power to keep him constant tome in his heart. "

With the confession, she was aware that a spiritual battle took placewithin her, and she thought of her soul, not as one but as multiple--asconsisting of hosts of good and evil angels who warred against oneanother without ceasing. And she felt assured that presently the good orthe evil host would be vanquished and that henceforth she would belongto the victorious side forever--not for this life only, but for athousand lives and an eternal evolution along the course which sheherself had chosen. A passage she had once read in an old book occurredto her, and she recalled that the writer had spoken of God as "the placeof the soul. " If this were so, had she not filled that place which isGod with a confusion in which there was only terror and disorder. 

"Why has it all happened as it has?" she demanded almost in despair. "Why did I love him in the beginning? Why did I humiliate myself in hiseyes to-day?" But her motives, which appeared only as impulses, werestill shrouded in the obscurity of her ignorance; and the one thing thatremained clear to her was that she had struggled breathlessly for thehappiness she had not possessed. Was it this desire for happiness, sheasked, which had returned to her now in the form of an avenging fury?

At the corner of Fifth Avenue, while she stopped upon the sidewalk towait for the stage, she was joined by Mr. Wilberforce, who told her thathe had just come from her house. 

"I was particularly sorry to miss you, " he added, "because I brought abook of poems I wanted to talk over with you--the work of a youngIrishman with a touch of genius. "

"Yes, yes, " she responded vaguely, without knowing what she said. Literature appeared to her suddenly as the most uninteresting pursuitupon the earth, and she longed to escape from the presence of Mr. Wilberforce, because she knew that he would weary her by ceaselessallusions to books which she no longer read. 

"I'm on my way to Gerty's--she made me promise to come this afternoon, "she explained hurriedly, recalling with surprise that she had once foundpleasure in the companionship of this ineffectual old man, with hisplacid face and his interminable discussions of books. Feeling that herimpatience might provoke her presently into an act of rudeness which shewould afterward regret, she held out her hand while she signalled withthe other to the approaching stage. 

"Come to-morrow when I shall be at home, " she said; and though sheremembered that she would probably spend the next afternoon with Kemper, this suggestion of an untruth seemed at the time to make no difference. A moment later as she seated herself in the stage, she drew a longbreath as if she had escaped from an oppressive atmosphere; and therumbling of the vehicle was a relief to her because it silenced forawhile the noise of the opposing hosts of angels that warred unceasinglywithin her soul. 

When she reached Gerty's house in Sixty-ninth Street, she found not onlyher friend, whom she wished to see, but Perry Bridewell, whom she hadtried particularly to avoid. At first she felt almost angry with Gertyfor not receiving her alone; but Gerty, suspecting as much from herchilled look, burst out at once into a comic protest:

"I tried my best to get rid of Perry, " she said, "perhaps you may makethe attempt with better success. "

"I've caught a beastly cold, " responded Perry, from the cushioned chairon the hearthrug, where he sat prodding the wood fire with a small brasspoker, "it's stuck in my chest, and the doctor tells me if I don't lookout I'll be in for bronchitis or pneumonia or something or other of thekind. "

That he was genuinely frightened showed clearly by the unusual pallor onhis handsome face; and with an appearance of giving emphasis to thedanger in which he stood, he held out to Laura, as he spoke, a glassbottle filled with large brown lozenges. 

"He remembers his last illness, " observed Gerty seriously, "which was anattack of croup at the age of two--and he's afraid they will bandage hischest as they did then. "

As he fell back languidly in his easy chair, resting his profile againstthe pale green cushions, Laura noticed, for the first time, a strikingresemblance to Kemper in the full, almost brutal curve of his jaw andchin. Ridiculous as her annoyance was, she felt that it mounted throughher veins and showed in her reddening face. 

"Since you are ill I'll not take Gerty away from you to-day, " she said, rising hastily. 

"Oh, don't think of going on my account, " replied Perry, with a palereflection of his amiable smile, "a little cheerful company is the verything I need. " Then, as a servant entered with a cup of tea and a plateof toast, he sat up, with his invalid air, to receive the tray upon hisknees. "I manage to take a little nourishment every hour or two, " heexplained, as he crumbled his toast into bits. 

"I've racked my brain to amuse him, " remarked Gerty, while she watchedhim gravely, "but he can't get his mind off that possible attack ofpneumonia, and he's even made me look up the death rate from it in thebulletin of the Board of Health. Do you think Arnold would come if Itelephoned him? or shall I send instead for Roger Adams? I have eventhought of writing invitations to his entire club list. "

"Oh, I'll send Arnold myself, " rejoined Laura, "he got back just lastnight, you know. "

"I saw him coming up at five o'clock when I went to the doctor's, "returned Gerty; and this innocent chance remark plunged Lauraimmediately into a melancholy which not only arrested the words upon herlips, but seemed to deaden her whole body even to her hands which heldher muff. An intolerable suspicion seized her that they were aware ofthe return of Madame Alta, that they blamed Arnold for something ofwhich they did not speak, that they pitied her because she was deludedinto an acceptance of the situation. Though her judgment told her thatthis suspicion was a mere wild fancy, still she could not succeed indriving it from her thoughts, and the more she struggled against it, thestronger was the hold it gained upon her imagination if not upon herreason. In the effort to banish this persistent torment, she began totalk fast and recklessly of other things, until the animation with whichshe spoke rekindled the old brilliant fervour in her face. 

She was still talking with her restless gayety, when Adams came in toask after Perry, but with his presence a stillness which was almost oneof peace, came over her. At the end of a few minutes she rose to leave, and a little later as he walked with her along Sixty-ninth Street in thedirection of the Park, she had, for the first time in her life, a vagueintuition that the secret of happiness, after all, might lie for her, not in the gratification but in the relinquishment of desire. 

"I saw Kemper a while ago, " he remarked, as they crossed Fifth Avenue tothe opposite sidewalk which ran along the wall under the bared Novembertrees. "He seemed very much interested in some mining scheme whichBarclay has gone in for. I never saw him more enthusiastic. "

"Was he?" she asked indifferently; and she felt almost a resentmentagainst Kemper because he could pass so easily from the reconciliationwith her to the subject of mining. Since the evening before, when shehad received the news of his absence with Madame Alta, her attitude toher lover had, unconsciously to herself, undergone a change; and hercritical faculty, so long dominated by her feeling, appeared now to haveusurped the place which was formerly held by her ideal image of him. Butthis awakening of her intellect had no power whatever over her love, which remained unaltered, and the one result of her clearer mentalvision was to destroy her happiness, while it did not lessen thestrength of her emotion. 

She glanced up at Adams as he walked beside her in the pale sunshine, and the smile with which he responded to her look, awoke in her theimpulse to confess to him the burden which oppressed her thoughts. Realising that it would be impossible to confide these things to anyhuman being, she changed the subject by asking him a trivial questionabout Trent's play. 

"There's no doubt of his success, I think, " he answered, "but just nowhis mind is absorbed with other things. He's as deep in his love as heever was in his ambition. "

"So he has found her?" enquired Laura, with but little animation. Shewas glad that Trent was happy at last, but she could not force herselfto feel an interest in this love affair which was so unlike her own. 

"Well, he didn't have to look far, " rejoined Adams, laughing, "hediscovered her, I believe, in the same apartment house. Some of us, " heconcluded a little sadly, "go a good deal farther with considerably lesssuccess. "

"It does puzzle one, " said Laura, thinking of Kemper, "that some peopleshould find what they want lying on their very doorstep, while othersmust go on looking for it their whole lives through. "

He smiled at her with a tenderness which seemed, somehow, a part of hisstrength. "But yours was the easier fate, " he said. 

"Is it the easier? I hardly know, " she answered, and the note of pain inher voice entered his heart. "I sometimes think that the best of life isto go on wanting till one dies. "

"Not the best--not the best, " he responded, with a touch of hiswhimsical humour. "I have had my share of wanting and I speak of what Iknow. It all comes right in the end, I suppose, but it's a pretty toughexperience while it lasts, and, after all, we live in the minute not ineternity. "

Her gaze had dropped away from him, but at his words she lifted her eyesagain to meet his look. 

"I wonder what it was you wanted so, " she said--for he impressed hersuddenly as possessing a force of will which it would be not onlyineffectual, but even foolish to resist. The aggressive bulk of PerryBridewell, the impetuous egoism of Kemper showed, not as strength, butas violence compared to the power which controlled the man at her side. Where had he found this power? she wondered, and by what miracle had hebeen able to make it his own?

"If I told you, I dare say it wouldn't enlighten you much, " he answered. "Isn't it enough to confess that I've done my share of crying for themoon?"

"And if it had dropped into your hands, you would have found, probably, that it was made only of green cheese, " she replied. 

For an instant he looked at her with a glance in which his humourseemed to cover a memory which she could not grasp. 

"Oh, well, I'd have risked it!" he retorted almost gayly. 

CHAPTER X

THE END OF THE PATH

Having decided that Laura was to be married on the nineteenth ofDecember, Mrs. Payne had gathered not only the invitations, but theentire trousseau into the house three weeks before the date upon whichshe had fixed. Laura, who had at first entered enthusiastically into thequestion of clothes, had shown during the last fortnight an indifferencewhich was almost an open avoidance of the subject; and the lively oldlady was forced to conduct an unsupported campaign against dressmakersand milliners. 

"It's fortunate, to put it mildly, my dear, that you have me to attendto such matters, " she remarked one day, "or you would most likely havestarted on your wedding journey a dowd--and there can be no happymarriage, " she concluded with caustic philosophy, "which is not foundedupon a carefully selected trousseau. "

"If his love for me depends on clothes, I don't want it, " replied Laurain an indignant voice. 

Mrs. Payne shook her false gray curls, until the little wire hairpinswhich held them in place slipped out and dropped into her lap. 

"It might very well depend upon something more difficult to procure, "she retorted with reason. Then in a last effort to arouse Laura into thepride of possession, she brought out her multitude of boxes andunfolded her treasures of old lace. 

At the time Laura looked on with listless inattention, but two dayslater she returned in a change of mood which put to blush the worldlymaterialism of Mrs. Payne. 

"Aunt Rosa, you're right, " she said, "I haven't paid half enoughattention to my clothes. I believe, after all, that clothes are amongthe most important things in life. "

"I regard it as a merciful providence that you have come to your sensesin time, " observed the old lady, with a sincerity which survived eventhe extravagance into which her niece immediately plunged--for, afterlooking carelessly over the contents of the large white boxes, Lauraturned away as if disappointed, and demanded in her next breath a sablecoat. 

"Arnold admired a woman in a sable coat yesterday, " she said, with agravity which impressed Mrs. Payne as almost solemn. 

But her reaction into the vanities of the world was as short lived asher former disdain of them; and by the time the sable coat arrived shehad almost begun to regret that she had ever asked for it. Since theselection of it she had heard Kemper quite as carelessly expressapproval of an ermine wrap, and her heart had suddenly sickened over thefruitlessness of her ambition. She was still trying on the coat underMrs. Payne's eyes, when Gerty, coming in, as she announced, to deliver amessage, paused in the centre of the room as if petrified into anattitude of admiration. 

"My dear, you're so gorgeous that you look like nothing short of atragic actress. Well, you ought to be a happy woman. "

"If clothes can make me happy, I suppose I shall be, " rejoined Laura. "Aunt Rosa has spared neither her own strength nor Uncle Horace'smoney. "

"That's because I love you better than my ease and Horace loves youbetter than his foundling hospital, " replied Mrs. Payne. 

Standing before the long mirror, Laura looked with a frown at the sablecoat, which gave her, as Gerty had said, the air of a tragic actress. Her dark hair, with its soft waves about the forehead, her brillianteyes, and the delicate poetic charm of her figure, borrowed from thecostly furs a distinction which Gerty felt to be less that of style thanof personality. 

"He will like me in this, " she thought; and then remembering the erminewrap, which was becoming also, she wondered if another woman would buyit, if Kemper would see it at the opera, and if he would, perhaps, admire it again as he had done that day. 

"If he does I shall regret these though they were so much more costly, "she concluded, "and my whole pleasure in them may be destroyed by achance remark which he will let fall. " She understood, all at once, therelentless tyranny which clothes might acquire--the jealousy, theextravagance, the feverish emulation, and the dislike which one womanmight feel for another who wore a better gown. "Yet if I give my wholelife to it there will always be someone who is richer, who is betterdressed and more beautiful than I, " she thought. "Though myindividuality wins to-day, to-morrow I shall meet a woman beside whom Ishall be utterly extinguished. And there is no escape from this; it isinevitable and must happen. " A shiver of disgust went through her, andit seemed to her that she saw her life as plainly as if the glass beforeher revealed her whole future and not merely her figure in the sablecoat. She shrank from her destiny, and yet she knew that in spite ofherself, she must still follow it; she longed for her old freedom ofspirit, and instead she struggled helplessly in the net which her owntemperament cast about her. "Is it possible that I can ever enter intothis warfare which I have always despised?" she asked, "into thisconflict of self against self, of vanity against vanity? Shall I, likeGerty, grow to fear and to hate other women in my foolish effort to keepalive a passion which I know to be worthless? Shall I even come in theend to feel terror and suspicion in my love for Gerty?" But this lastthought was so terrible to her that she lacked the courage with which toface it, and so she put it now resolutely aside as she had learned toput aside at will all the disturbing questions which her conscienceasked. 

"I know that you are over head and ears in it all, " Gerty was saying, "and I shouldn't have dropped in if I hadn't just been called to thetelephone by Arnold. He was, of course, rushing off to a meeting aboutthose everlasting mines--Perry's in it, too, and it's really helped hismind to get the better of his lungs at last. "

"But I thought Arnold was coming this afternoon, " returned Laura, alittle hurt. 

With a laughing glance at Mrs. Payne, who sat counting silk stockings bythe window, Gerty buried her face in her muff while she shook withunaffected merriment. 

"Oh, my dear, what a wife you'll make if you haven't learned to maskyour feelings!" she exclaimed, "but as for Arnold, he wants me to bringyou to his rooms for tea. The Symonds portrait has come and he'd like usto see it before it's hung. He'll hurry back, he says, the minute thatabominable meeting is over-though between you and me he is almost asmuch interested in those mines as he is in his marriage. "

The disappointment in Laura's face was succeeded by an expression ofimpatient eagerness, and a little later as she drove with Gerty throughthe streets she was able to convince herself that the uncertainty of thelast fortnight had yielded finally to the perfect security for which shelonged Sitting there in Gerty's carriage, she felt with a compassionateheart-throb, that out of her own fulness she could look down and pitythe emptiness of her friend's life; and this thought filled her bosomwith a sympathy which overflowed in the smile she turned upon thebrilliant woman at her side. 

"I find myself continually rejoicing because you are to take a house uptown, " remarked Gerty, as she pressed Laura's hand under the fur robe. "When you come back we'll see each other every day, and when you land, I'll be there to welcome you with the house full of flowers and thedinner ordered. "

"There's no use trying to realise it all, I can't, " responded Laura; andthe interest with which she entered immediately into a discussion offurnishing and housekeeping banished from her mind all recollection ofthe despondency, the tormenting doubts, of the last few weeks. Yes, allwould go well--all must go well in spite of everything she had imagined. Once married she would see this foolish foreboding dissolve in air, andwith the wedding ceremony she would enter into that cloudless happinesswhich she had expected so confidently to find in the Adirondacks. Thisnew hope possessed her instantly to the exclusion of all other ideas, and she clung to it as passionately as she had clung to every illusionof the kind which had presented itself to her imagination. 

When they reached his rooms, Kemper had not returned, and while Gertyamused herself by examining every photograph upon his desk and mantel, Laura drew a chair before the portrait, which was a bold, half-lengthstudy painted with a daring breadth of handling. The artist was a newFrench painter, who had leaped into prominence because of a certainextravagance of style which he affected; and his work had taken Kemper'sfancy as everything took it either in art or in life which deviated inany marked eccentricity from the ordinary level of culture or ofexperience. 

"There's something queer about it--I don't like it, " said Laura, withher first glance. "Why, it makes him look almost brutal--there's aquality in it I'll never grow accustomed to. "

Then, as she looked a moment longer at the picture, she saw that thequality in Kemper which the painter had caught and arrested with anexcellent technique upon the canvas, was the resemblance to PerryBridewell which had offended her when she noticed it the other day. Itwas there, evidently--this foreign painter had seized upon it as themost subtle characteristic of Kemper's face--and in dwelling upon it inthe portrait as he had done, she realised that he had attempted toproduce, not so much the likeness of the man, as a startling, almostsinister study of a personality. What he had shown her was thetemperament, not the face of her lover--not her lover, indeed, she toldherself the next instant, but Madame Alta's. 

"I can't get used to it--I'll never like it, " she repeated, and risingfrom her chair, as if the view of the portrait annoyed her, she wentover to the centre table to glance idly over the current fiction withwhich Kemper occupied his leisure hours. Her eyes were still wanderingaimlessly over the titles of the books, when her attention was divertedby the sound of Wilkins' voice, lowered discreetly to an apologeticwhisper; and immediately afterward she heard the softened soprano of awoman, who insisted, apparently, upon leaving the elevator and crossingthe hail outside. The conversation with Wilkins had reached Gerty's earsat the same instant, and she, too, sat now with her enquiring gaze benton the door, which opened presently to admit the ample person of MadameAlta. At sight of them she showed no tremor of surprise, but stoodpoised there, in an impressive stage entrance, upon the threshold, presiding, as it were, over the situation with all the brilliantpublicity which her exquisite gift conferred. Her art had not onlyplaced her below the level of her sex's morality, it had lifted herabove any embarrassment of accident, and as she hesitated for a singlesmiling minute in the doorway, she appeared more at home in hersurroundings than either of the two women who stood, in silence, awaiting her advance. With her ermine, her ostrich feathers, her smile, and her scented powder, she impressed Laura less as extinguishing her bythe splendour of a presence than as smothering her in the softness of aneffect. For it was at Laura that, after the first gently enquiringglance, she levelled her words as well as her caressing look. 

"It was such a happy chance to meet you that I couldn't let it slip, "she said, as she bore down upon her with a large, soft handoutstretched, "Mr. Kemper has been so good a friend to me that I amoverjoyed to have the opportunity of telling you how much I think ofhim. He has been really the greatest help about some speculations, too--don't you think he has quite a genius for that kind of thing?"

For a moment Laura looked at her in a surprise caused less by theother's entrance than by her own inward composure. For weeks she hadtold herself that she hated Madame Alta in her heart, yet, brought faceto face with her, feeling the soft pressure of her hand, she realisedthat she had hated merely a creature of straw and not this woman whosehumanity was, after all, of the same flesh and blood and spirit as herown. By the wonder of her intuition she had recognised in her firstglance the thing which Kemper, for all his worldly knowledge, had missedin his more intimate association, and this was that the soul of thewoman before her had not perished, but was still tossed wildly in thefires of art, of greed, of sensuality. Between her lover and the primadonna she knew that for this one instant at least, she was strongenough to stand absolutely detached and incapable of judgment. And in asudden light, as from a lamp that was turned inward, she saw that if shecould but maintain this attitude of pity, she would place her happinessbeyond any harm from the attacks of Madame Alta or of her kind. She sawthis, yet she felt that the vision was almost useless, for even whileshe stood there the light went out and she knew that it would not shinefor her again. 

"I know but little of that side of him, " she answered, smiling. "It ispleasant to hear that he has a gift I did not suspect. "

"Oh, I dare say he has others, " retorted Madame Alta, "but I came aboutthese very speculations to-day, " she added, "and since he isn't athome--if you'll let me--I'll leave a note on his desk. I start forChicago to-night for a month of continuous hard work. Until you knowwhat it is to race about the country for your life, " she wound upmerrily, "never stop to waste your pity on a day labourer. "

With a smiling apology to Gerty, she crossed to Kemper's desk, where shewrote a short note which she proceeded coolly to place in an envelopeand seal. As she moistened the flap of the envelope with her lips, sheturned to glance at Laura over her ermine stole. 

"I hope you'll remember to tell him that my visit was by no means thrownaway, since I saw you, " she remarked, with her exaggerated sweetness. 

"Why not wait and tell him yourself?" suggested Laura, so composedlythat she wondered why her heart was beating quickly, "he'll probably beback in a few minutes for tea, and in that case it wouldn't benecessary for me to deliver so flattering a message. "

"Oh, but I want you to--I particularly want you to, " insisted the other, creating, as she rose, a lovely commotion by the flutter of her laceveil and her ostrich feathers. "I send him my liveliest congratulations, and the part he'll like best is that I am able to send them by you. "

The door closed softly after her, and Gerty, going to the window, threwit open with a bang which served as an outlet to the emotion she lackedeither the courage or the opportunity to put into words. 

"I don't like her perfume, " she observed, with an affected contortion ofher nostrils, "there's something to be said for the odour of sanctity, after all. "

"Why, I thought it delicious, " returned Laura, as if astonished. "Iteven occurred to me to ask her where she got it. "

"Well, I'm thankful you didn't, " exclaimed Gerty; and she concludeddismally after a moment, "What hurts me most is to think I've wastedbouquets on her over the footlights, for a more perfectly odiousperson--"

"I found her wonderfully handsome, " remarked Laura, in a voice which hada curious quality of remoteness, as if she spoke from some dream-likestate of mental abstraction. "Wonderfully handsome, " she insisted, indignant at the scornful denial in Gerty's look. 

"Well, it's the kind of handsomeness that makes me want to scratch herin the face, " rejoined Gerty, with the unshakable courage of herimpressions. 

Turning away from her friend, Laura went over to the desk as if drawn inspite of her resolution, by the large sealed envelope lying on the whiteblotter. The handwriting of the address, with its bold, free flourish atthe end, appeared to fascinate her eyes, for after looking at itattentively a moment, she took it up and brought it over to the hearthwhere Gerty stood. 

"Yes, she is wonderfully handsome, " she repeated; and her tone was soindifferent that it came with a shock of surprise to Gerty, when shebent over and laid the letter upon the burning logs. Dropping on herknees, she watched the paper catch fire, redden in the flame, turn toashes, and at last dissolve in smoke. Then she leaned forward and pushedthe logs together, as if she wished to destroy some last vestige of thewords which were still visible to her eyes. 

"Laura!" called Gerty sharply. She had made a step forward, but as Laurarose from her knees and faced her, she fell back into her formerattitude. 

"If you want to tell him, " said Laura coldly, "you may do it when hecomes. I shan't mind it in the least. "

"Tell him!" cried Gerty, and her voice shook with a tremor she could notcontrol, "but, oh! Laura, what made you do it?"

She knew that she wanted to go away by herself and weep; but she couldnot tell at the moment whether it was for Laura or for her owndisappointment that she was more concerned. Her whole outlook on lifewas altered by the thing which Laura had done; she felt that she nolonger believed in anybody and that it was impossible for her to go onliving as she had lived until to-day. 

"I don't know, " replied Laura, with a curiosity so vague that it soundedalmost impersonal, "I don't know why I did it. " As she uttered the wordsthe question seemed to absorb her thoughts; then, before Gerty caughtthe sound of Kemper's approaching footsteps, she knew that he must becoming by the abruptness of the change with which Laura spoke. 

"I wonder why it is that men never appreciate the necessity for tea!"she exclaimed, and laughing she went quickly toward the door. "I don'tbelieve you'd have cared if you'd found us starving on your threshold, "she wound up with reproachful gayety. 

"Oh, I hoped you'd ordered it, " said Kemper, "upon my word I'm sorry--Ifear you must have had a stupid wait. "

He entered with his breathless, though smiling, apology, touched thebell for Wilkins as he crossed the room, and offered his hand first toGerty and then to Laura with an equally enthusiastic pressure. The clearred was still in his face, and his eyes beamed with animation as hestood warming himself before the fire. 

"Have you been here long?" he asked, looking at his watch with a slightfrown. "By Jove, I'm a good half hour after time. What did you do withyourselves while you cursed me?"

"First we looked at the portrait--which I hate--then we read the namesof all your silly books, " responded Laura, with a dissimulation sonatural that Gerty was divided between regret for her sincerity andadmiration for her acting. 

"Well, it doesn't do to quarrel not only with our bread and meat, butwith our automobiles, too, " protested Kemper lightly, "It's a good thingI've gone in for, and it all came of my riding up in the train withBarclay to the Adirondacks--otherwise he'd have been too sharp to haveput me on to the tip. " Then his rapid glance travelled to the portraitleaning against a chair, and he put a question with the same eagerinterest he had shown in the subject of mining. "So you've had time tocome to judgment on the French fellow. What do you think of him?"

"It's not you--I won't believe it, " replied Laura merrily, "if he'sright, then I've been deluded into marrying the wrong man. "

"Oh, he goes in for style, of course, " remarked Kemper, closing one eyeas he fell back and examined the picture, "most of the French people do, you know. "

The radiance which belonged to an inner illumination rather than to anyoutward flush of colour, had suffused Laura's face, until she seemed toglow with an animation which revealed itself not only in her look andvoice, but in her whole delicate figure, so fragile, yet so full ofenergy. There was something unnatural, almost feverish in the brightnessof her eyes and in the rapid gestures of her small expressive hands. ToGerty she appeared to resemble a beautiful wild bird, helplessly beatingits wings in the fowler's net. 

"But isn't their style mostly affectation as their strength is onlycoarseness?" she asked eagerly, wondering as she spoke, what her wordsmeant and why she should have chosen these out of the whole Englishlanguage. "Isn't it truth, after all, " she added, with the same excitedemphasis, "that we need in life?" It occurred to her suddenly that shewas repeating words which someone else had said before her, and shetried to remember what the occasion was and who had uttered them. 

Then as she looked at Kemper, she found herself wondering if they wouldbe obliged, in order to make life bearable, to lie to each other everyday they lived? The letter which she had destroyed was her half of thislie, she saw, and it seemed to her that Kemper's share was in his oldlove for Jennie Alta. But, to her surprise, when she thought of this itaroused no torment, hardly any disturbance in her heart, for Kemper andhis love for her appeared to her now in an entirely new and differentaspect, and she realised that because of the lie between them, even theemotion he aroused in her had turned worthless in her eyes. 

PART IV

RECONCILIATION

CHAPTER I

THE SECRET CHAMBERS

Waking in the night, with a start, Laura asked herself why she hadburned the letter. As she lay there in the darkness it seemed to herthat the sudden light shone in her thoughts again, and she saweverything made clear to her as she had seen it while she held JennieAlta's hand. In that instant she had looked beyond the small personalemotions to the woman's soul with its burden of greed and sensuality, and because she had been able to do this, she had felt herself to becomposed and released from hatred. To discern the soul was to feel notonly tolerance, but pity for the flesh, and it appeared to her now thatin that one moment she had ceased to be herself alone, and had shared inthe divine wisdom which the sudden light had revealed to her in herbreast. Yet the instant afterward her personality had triumphed and shehad burned the letter!

The illumination within her faded now, and as she lay there with wideopen eyes, she saw only the surrounding darkness. Her own motives werestill vague to her; when she tried to remember the prompting of herthoughts she could recall only a physical pain which had entered herbosom while she looked at the large white envelope upon the blotter. "Before this I had never lied in my life, " she said, "I had never beencapable of the slightest dishonest act, I had even taken a pride in mytruth like the pride some women take in beauty--and yet I did this thingwithout effort and I do not know now why I did, nor what I thought of atthe time, nor whether I regretted it the moment afterward. "

With a resolution which had seldom failed her, she attempted to banishthe recollection from her mind; and turning her face from the paledarkness of the window, she closed her eyes again and lay breathingquietly. "Why should I worry--it will all come right--everything willcome right if I have patience, " she thought, trying to persuade herselfto sleep. 

But she had no sooner shut her eyes than she began to live over againthe afternoon in Kemper's room; and her heart beat so high that sheheard the muffled sound under the coverlet "Why did Gerty look at meso?" she asked. "Did she really look at me as if she were afraid, or wasit only my imagination?" From Gerty her excited thoughts flew back toKemper and it seemed to her that she had read scorn and suspicion in thebeaming glance he had thrown upon her--in the breathless apology of hisentrance. "Had he met her downstairs? Did he know all the time? and washe only waiting for Gerty's absence to accuse me face to face of mydishonesty? But it was a very little thing, " she argued aloud, as ifjustifying herself to a presence beside her bed, "it was such a littlething that it had almost escaped my memory. " Then, as she uttered thewords, she realised that the justification she attempted was for her ownsoul rather than for her lover; and she saw that whether Kempersuspected or not made no vital difference to her so long as thedishonesty was there. "The unspoken lie is still between us and hisknowledge of it can neither take it away nor undo the fact that it hasbeen. And if I burned the letter might I not be guilty of even greaterthings under the same impulse? Since I trust neither him nor myself whatis there but misery in any future that we may share? Shall I give him upeven now? Can I give him up?" But as she demanded this of herself therereturned to her the look in his eyes at certain animated instants, andshe felt that the charm of his look, which meant nothing, was strongerto hold her than a multitude of reasons. "If I could forget this look inhis face, I might forget him, " she thought, "but though I struggle toforget it I cannot any more than I can forget the letter lying on hisdesk. "

Again she closed her eyes in a fresh effort to shut out consciousness;but when she determined to sleep the darkness seemed to grow suddenlyalive about her, and starting up in a spasm of terror, she lighted thecandle on the table beside her bed. 

"In the morning I shall tell him, " she exclaimed aloud, "I shall tellhim everything and if he looks at me with anger I shall go away and notsee him any more. " At the time it appeared to her very easy, and shefelt that it made no difference to her however things might happen onthe morrow. "It will be as it will be, and I cannot alter it, for in anyevent I shall be miserable whether I marry him or give him up. " Then sheremembered that though she had pardoned Kemper greater sins than this, by the courage of his attitude he had always succeeded in placing herhopelessly in the wrong. "Even after his meeting with Madame Alta it washe who forgave me, " she thought with the strange mental clearness, whichdestroyed her happiness without lessening her emotion, "and through hiswhole life, however deeply he may wrong me, I know that I shall alwaysbe the one to justify myself and seek forgiveness. Is it, after all, only necessary to have the courage of one's acts that one may doanything and not be punished?"

The light of the candle flickering on the mirror gave back her own faceto her as if reflected in the dim surface of a pool. She watched theshadows from a vase, of autumn leaves come and go across it, until itseemed to her that the rippling reflection resembled a drowned face thatwas still her own; and shrinking back in horror, she sat holding thecandle in her hand, so that the light would shine on the walls andfloor. 

"Yes, that is settled--I shall tell him to-morrow, " she said, as ifsurrendering her future into the power of chance or God or whateverstood outside herself, "it will happen as it must, I cannot change it. "For a moment there was some comfort in the fatalism of this thought, andafter blowing out the candle, she turned her face to the wall and fellat last into a troubled sleep. But her sleep even was filled withperplexing questions, which she continued to ask herself with the samepiercing mental clearness that tormented her when she was awake; and shepassed presently into a vivid dream, in which she rescued the letterwith burned hands, from the fire, and carried it to Kemper, who laughedand kissed her burns and threw the letter back into the flames. "It hasnever really happened--you have imagined it all, " he said, "you'vedreamed Jennie Alta and now you're dreaming me and yourself also. Lookup, for you are just beginning to awake. " And when she looked up at hiswords, his face changed suddenly and she saw that it was Roger Adams whoheld her hands. 

From this dream she awoke with a more distinct memory of Adams than shehad had for many days; and she felt again the impulse to unburden herheart to him, which she had resisted on the afternoon they walkedtogether down Fifth Avenue. The dawn had begun to break, and while shewaited impatiently for the growing light, she resolved with one of thosepromptings of wisdom, in which ordinary reason appeared to have no part, that when the morning came she would go to Adams' office before seeingKemper. Then she remembered the distance which had sprung between themin the last few months, and it seemed to her to have grown still moreimpassable since the evening before. But because the visit offered anexcuse to postpone her confession to Kemper until the afternoon, shecaught at it with an eagerness, which hurried her into her hat and coatas soon as her pretence of breakfasting with Angela was at an end. 

The morning was bright and clear, and as she walked through the earlysunshine in the street, she remembered the day, so long ago now, whenshe had met Adams going to his office at this hour, and she recalled, with a smile, that she had pitied him then because of the worn places onhis overcoat. She no longer pitied him now--Gerty, herself, PerryBridewell, even Kemper, she felt, might be deserving of compassion, butnot Adams. Yes, she, herself, in spite of her boasted strength had comeat last to feel the need of being loved for the very weakness she hadonce despised. But she knew that, though Adams might understand andforgive this weakness, in Kemper it would provoke only the scorn whichshe had begun to fear and dread. Yet her intellect rather than her hearttold her that Adams was a stronger man than Kemper and that his widersympathies proved only that he was, also, the larger of the two. Was thedifference between them merely one of goodness, after all, herintellect, not her heart, demanded, and was it true that the perfectlove could not enter except where this goodness had been to blaze theway before it in the soul?

As she walked through the streets fanciful comparisons between the twomen thronged in her brain, but when presently she reached Adams' office, and stood beside his desk, with her hand in his hearty grasp, sherealised all at once that the visit was useless, and that there wasnothing she could say to him which would not sound hysterical andabsurd. 

"So, thank heaven, there's something I can do for you!" he exclaimed, with his cordial smile. "Wait till I get into my overcoat and then we'llsee about it. "

"No--no, " she protested in a terror, which she could not explain even toherself, "don't come out with me--there's nothing you can do. I camebecause I couldn't help myself, " she added, smiling; "and I'll go for nobetter reason, in a little while. "

"Well, I'm ready whenever you say so. If it's to overturn BrooklynBridge, I'll set about it for the asking. "

"It isn't anything so serious--there's nothing really I want done, " sheanswered gayly, though the pain in her eyes stabbed him to the heart, "all I wanted was to make sure of you--to make sure, I mean, that youare really here. "

"Oh, I'm here all right!" he replied, with energy. She looked at himsteadily for a moment with her excited eyes which had grown darklybrilliant. 

"Do you know what I sometimes think?" she said, breaking into a patheticlittle laugh, "it is that I remind myself of one of those angels who, after falling out of heaven, could neither get back again nor reconcilethemselves to the things of earth. "

Her hand lay on his desk, and while she spoke he bent forward andtouched it an instant with his own. Light as the gesture was, itpossessed a peculiar power of sympathy; and she was conscious as helooked at her that there was no further need for her to speak, becausehe understood, not only all that she had meant to put into words, buteverything that was hidden in her heart as well. 

"I can't preach to you, Laura, " he said, "but--but--oh, I can't expresseven what is in my mind, " he added. "I wish I could!"

"It wouldn't help me, " she replied, "because although I am notreconciled with the things of earth I want to be--oh, how I want to be!"

"But you can't be--not you, " he said. "You're of that particular fibrewhich grows stronger through pain, I think--and, in the end, how mucheasier it is to be made all spirit or all clay--it's the combination, not the pure quantity that hurts. "

"I wonder if you ever know what it is?" she rejoined. "Does the earthever pull you back when you want to climb?"

His smile faded, and he looked at her again with the sympathy whichaccepted, without explanation, not only her outward aspect, but the soulwithin. "There's not much in my life that counts for a great deal, Laura, " he said, "but you come in for considerably the larger share ofit. At this moment I am ready to do either of two things, as you maywish--I am ready to stand aside and let your future settle itself as itprobably will, or I am ready, at your word, to hear everything and tojudge for you as I would judge for myself. No--no, don't answer me now, "he added, "carry it away with you, and remember or forget it, as youchoose. "

Though there were tears in her eyes as she looked at him, she turnedaway, after an instant, with a flippant laugh. 

"Why, it all sounds as if I were really unhappy!" she exclaimed, "butyou won't believe that, will you?"

"I'll gladly believe otherwise when you prove it. "

"But haven't I proved it? Don't I prove it every day I live?"

"You prove to me at this minute that you are particularly wretched, " hereturned. 

"I am not--I am not, " she retorted angrily, while a frown drew her darkbrows together. "You have no right to think such things of me--they arenot true. "

"I have a right to think anything that occurs to me, " he correctedquietly, "though I am willing to beg your pardon for putting it intowords. Well, since you assure me that you are entirely happy, I canonly say that I am overjoyed to hear it. "

"I am happy, " she insisted passionately; and a little later when she wasalone in the street, she told herself that a lie had become morefamiliar to her than the truth. The conversation with Adams appeared amistake when she looked back upon it--for instead of lessening it seemedonly to increase the weight of her troubles--so she determined presentlyto think no more either of Adams or of the reasons which had promptedher impulsive visit to him. To forget oneself! Yes, Gerty was right inthe end, and the object of all society, all occupations, all amusements, showed to her now as so many unsuccessful attempts to escape thehaunting particular curse of personality. Gerty escaped it by herfrivolous pursuits and her interminable flirtations, which meantnothing; Kemper escaped it by living purely in the objective world ofsense; Adams escaped it--The name checked her abruptly, and she stoppedin her thoughts as if a light had flashed suddenly before her eyes. Here, at last, was the explanation of happiness, she felt, and yet shefelt also, that it presented itself to her mind in an enigma which shecould not solve--for Adams, she recognised, had mastered, not escaped, his personality. The poison of bitterness was gone, but theeffectiveness of power was still as great; and his temperament, inpassing through the fiery waters of experience, was mellowed into acharm which seemed less a fortunate grace of aspect than the result of apeculiar quality of vision. Was it his own life that had opened his eyesuntil he could look into the secret chambers in the lives of others?

In Gramercy Park she found Mrs. Payne waiting for her with the carriage, and she accepted almost eagerly the old lady's invitation to spend themorning in a search for hats. At the moment it seemed to her that hatsoffered as promising an aid to forgetfulness as any other, and she threwherself immediately into the pursuit of them with an excitement whichenabled her, for the time, at least, to extinguish the fierce hunger ofher soul in supplying the more visible exactions of her body. 

At luncheon Gerty appeared, wearing a startling French gown, which, shesaid, had just arrived that morning. After the first casual greetingthey fell into an animated discussion of the choice of veils, duringwhich Gerty declared that Laura had never selected the particular spotswhich would be most becoming to her features. "You get them too largeand too far apart, " she insisted, picking up a black net veil from apile on Laura's table, "even I with my silly nose can't stand thiskind. "

Laura's eyes were fixed upon her with their singular intensity of look, but in spite of the absorption of her gaze, she had not heard a singleword that Gerty uttered. 

"Yes, yes, you're right, " she said; but instead of thinking of theveils, she was wondering all the time if Gerty had really forgotten herjealousy of Madame Alta and the letter she had burned. 

"I shall tell him this afternoon and that will make everything easy, "she thought; and when, after a little frivolous conversation Gerty hadremembered an engagement and driven hurriedly away, the situationappeared to Laura to have become perfectly smooth again. At theannouncement of Kemper's name, she crossed the room to meet him withthis impulse still struggling for expression. "I shall tell him now, andthen everything will be made easy, " she repeated. 

But when she opened her lips to speak, she found that the confessionwould not come into words, and what she really said was:

"It has been a century since yesterday, for I've done nothing but shop. "

Laughing he caught her hands, and she saw with her first glance, that hewas in one of his ironic moods. 

"I thought I'd netted a wren, " he answered, "but it seems I've caught abird of Paradise. "

"Then it was your ignorance of natural history, and not I, that deceivedyou, " she retorted gayly, "because I didn't spread my wings for you, didyou imagine that they were not brilliant?"

There was a note almost of relief in her voice as she spoke--for sheknew now that, so long as he refused to be serious, she could not tellhim until to-morrow. 

CHAPTER II

IN WHICH LAURA ENTERS THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION

Two weeks later Laura was still able to assure herself that it was thislack of "seriousness" in Kemper's manner which had kept her fromalluding to the burned letter. Since the morning on which she had seenAdams, she felt that she had merely skimmed experience without actuallytouching it; and three days from the date of her marriage she was as farfrom any deeper understanding of the situation as she had been in thebeginning of her love. In the end it was so much easier to ignore herdifficulties than to face them; and it seemed to her now that she wasforced almost in spite of herself into Gerty's frivolous attitude towardlife. To evade the real--to crowd one's existence with little lies untilthere was no space left through which the larger truth might enter--thiswas the only solution which she had found ready for her immediate need. 

Adams she had not met again; once he had called, but impelled by ashrinking which was almost one of fear, she had turned back on thethreshold and refused to see him. Even Gerty she had tried to avoidsince the afternoon in Kemper's rooms, but Gerty, who was in her gayestmood, drove down every day "to overturn, " as she carelessly remarked, "the newest presents. "

"I'm heartily glad you're going to Europe, " she said, "and I hope by thetime you come back you'll have lost that nervous look in your face. Itnever used to be there and I don't like it. "

At her words Laura threw an alarmed glance at the mirror; then sheturned her head with a laugh in which there was a note of bitterness. 

"It came there in my effort to make conversation, " she answered. "I'vebeen engaged to Arnold eight months and we've talked out every subjectthat we have in common. Do you know what it is to be in love with a manand yet to rack your brain for something to say to him?" she finishedmerrily. 

"That's because you ought to have married Roger Adams, as I was the onlyone to suggest, " retorted Gerty, "then you'd have had conversationenough to flow on, without a pause, till Judgment Day. It's a very goodthing, too, " she added seriously, "because the real bug-a-boo ofmarriage is boredom, you know. "

"But how can two people bore each other when they are in love?" demandedLaura, almost indignant. 

The possibility appeared to her at the moment as little short ofridiculous, yet she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she faced, notwithout approaching dread, the thought of those two months in Europe;and she admitted now for the first time that beyond the absorption oftheir love, she and Kemper had hardly an interest which they shared. Even the eyes with which they looked on Europe would be divided by thespace of that whole inner world which stretched between them. Yetbecause of the supremacy of this one sentiment she had striven to crushout her brain in order that she might have the larger heart with whichto nourish the emotion which held them together. In the pauses of thissentiment she realised that their thoughts sprang as far asunder as thepoles, and as she looked from Gerty to the wedding presents scattered insatin boxes on chairs and tables, the fact that the step she took wasirrevocable, that in three days she would be Kemper's wife, that therewas no possible escape from it now, produced a sudden sickening terrorin her heart. Then with a desperate clutch at her old fatalisticcomfort, she told herself that it would all come right if she were onlypatient--that with her marriage everything would be settled and becomeentirely simple. 

Gerty was unpacking a case from a silversmith's when Kemper came in; andhe gave a low whistle of dismay as he glanced about the room strewn withboxes. 

"By Jove, I believe they think we're going to set up a business!" heexclaimed. 

"Oh, you can't imagine how all this comes in for entertaining, " repliedGerty, shaking out her skirt as she rose from her knees. 

Laura's eyes were on Kemper's face, and she saw that it wore a look ofannoyance beneath the conventional smile with which he responded toGerty's words. Something had evidently happened to displease him, andshe waited a little anxiously half hoping for, half dreading herfriend's departure. 

"I trust you'll go through the ceremony more gracefully than Perry did, "Gerty was saying with a teasing merriment, while she broke a whiterosebud from the vase of flowers and fastened it in his coat. "I declarehe quite spoiled the whole effect, he looked so frightened. I neverrealised how little sense of humour Perry has until I saw him at thealtar. "

"Well, it isn't exactly a joke, you know, " retorted Kemper. 

For the first time, as Laura watched him, she remembered that he hadbeen through it all before without her; and the thought entered herheart like a dagger, that even now there was another woman alivesomewhere in the world who had been his wife--who had been almost asmuch loved, almost as close to him as she herself was to-day. Thethought sickened her, and she felt again her blind terror of a step soirrevocable. 

Gerty had gone at last; and Kemper, after walking twice up and down theroom, stopped to examine a silver coffee service with an attention whichwas so evidently assumed that Laura was convinced he might as well havefixed his gaze upon the fireplace. His thoughts were busily occupied inquite an opposite direction from his eyes, for turning presently, helaid down the sugar bowl he had picked up, and went rapidly to themantel piece, where he took down a photograph of Roger Adams. 

"You don't see much of Adams now?" he remarked enquiringly. 

"Not much, " she went over to the mantel and glanced carelessly at thepicture in his hand. "I never shall again. "

"How's that? and why?"

"Oh, I don't know--one never sees much of one's friends after marriage, somehow. To supply the world to me, " she added gayly, "is a part of theresponsibility of your position. "

Though his gaze was fixed intently upon her face, she saw clearly thathe had hardly taken in her words, for while she spoke his hands wanderedto the inside pocket of his coat, as if he wished to make sure of aletter he had placed there. 

"By the way, Laura, a queer thing happened to-day, " he said, frowning. 

She looked up a little startled. 

"A queer thing?"

"I had a letter from Madame Alta asking why I hadn't sold some stock I'dbeen holding for her? She lost a good deal by my not selling and she wasin a devilish temper about it. "

Laura had not lowered her eyes, and as he finished she smiled into hisface. 

"And you did not sell?" she asked. 

"I never got the letter--but the odd part is she says she came to see meabout it the day you were there with Gerty--that she saw you and thatshe left the letter with you to deliver--"

He broke off and stood waiting with a half angry, half baffled look; andthen as she was still silent he picked up a red leather box from thetable, laid it down again and came nearer to where she stood. 

"Is it all a lie, Laura?" he demanded. 

The justification which she had attempted alone in the night came backto her while she stood there with her hands, which felt like deadthings, hanging limp at her sides. "It was so very little that itescaped my memory, " was what she had said to herself in the darkness;but now, face to face with him in the light of day, she could not bringher mind to think these words nor her lips to utter them. 

"No, it isn't a lie--it is true, " she answered. 

"It is true?" he repeated in an astonishment which gave place to angeras he went on. "Do you mean you really met her in my rooms?"

"I met her there--I met her there!" she rejoined in a bitter triumph oftruth which seemed, somehow, a relief to her. 

"And you did not tell me?"

She shook her head. "I'd never have told you. "

"But the letter? What became of the letter?"

She had drawn a step away from him, not in any fresh spirit of evasion, but that she might gain a better view of the look with which heconfronted her. Her eyes had not wavered from his since the firstquestion he had asked, but her hands were nervously knotting andunknotting a silver cord which she had picked up from a jeweller's boxupon the table at her side. 

"Why didn't I get the letter, Laura?" he asked again. 

"Because I burned it, " she answered slowly, "I burned it in the fire inyour room just before you came in--I burned it, " she repeated for thethird time, raising her voice to clearer distinctness. 

A dark flush rose to his face and the sombre colour gave him an almostbrutal look. 

"In God's name why did you do it?" he asked; and she saw the contempt inhis eyes as she had seen it before in her imagination. "I am to presume, I suppose, that you were prompted by jealousy?" he added. "An amiablebeginning for a marriage. "

"I don't know why I did it, " she replied, in a voice which was soconstrained as to sound unfeeling. "I didn't know at the time and Idon't know now. Yes, I suppose jealousy is as good a reason as anyother. "

"And is this what I am to expect in the future?" he enquired, with anirony which he might as well have flung at a figure of wood. "Good God!"he exclaimed as his righteous resentment swept from his mind allrecollection of his own relapses. "Are you willing to marry a man whomyou can't trust out of your sight?"

The force with which he uttered the words drove them so deeply into hisconsciousness that he was convinced by his own violence of the justicein the stand he took. "Have you absolutely no faith in me?" he demanded. 

For a moment the question occupied her thoughts. 

"No, I don't think I have any now, " she answered, "I've tried to makemyself believe I had--I've told a lie to my conscience about it everyday I lived--but I don't think I've ever really had faith in you sincethat night--"

"And yet you are willing to marry me?" he asked, and the scorn in hisvoice stung her like a physical blow. He looked at her with an angryglance, and while his eyes rested upon her, she understood that he hadnever really seen her in his life--that he had never penetrated beyondthe outward aspect, the trick of gesture. 

"No!--No!" she cried out suddenly, as if she had awakened in terror fromher sleep. At the instant she saw herself through his eyes, humiliated, beaten down, unwomanly, and she was possessed by a horror of her ownindividuality which she felt in some way to be a part of her horror ofthe man who had revealed it to her. 

In his perplexity he had fallen back a step and stood now pullingnervously at his moustache with a gesture which recalled his resemblanceto Perry Bridewell. This gesture, more than any words he spoke, shockedher into an acuteness of perception which was almost unnatural in itsvividness. It was as if her soul, so long drugged to insensibility, hadstarted up in the last battle for liberation. 

"No--no--it is impossible!" she repeated. 

"Aren't you rather late in coming to this decision?" he enquired with ashort laugh. 

But his irony was wasted upon her, for she saw only the look in hiseyes, which revealed her deception to her in a blaze of scorn--and shefelt that she hated him and herself with an almost equal hatred. 

"I am sorry, but--but I can't, " she stammered. Feeling her words to beineffectual she cast about wildly for some reason, some explanationhowever trivial--and in the effort she found her eyes wanderingaimlessly about the room, taking in the scattered wedding presents, hisdejected yet angry look, and the fading white rosebud Gerty had pinnedjauntily in his coat. Then at last she realised that there was nothingfurther that she could say, so she stood helplessly knotting the silvercord while she watched the furious perplexity in which he tugged at hismoustache. 

"I can't for the life of me see why you should be so damned jealous, Laura, " he burst out presently, thrust back from the surfaceconventions into a brute impulse of rage. 

"I told you I didn't know, " she answered irritably, "I told you that--"

"Of course, I'm willing to let it go this time, " he went on, with whatshe felt to be a complacent return to his lordly attitude, "there's nouse making a fuss, so we may as well forget it--but, for heaven's sake, don't give me a jealous wife. There's nothing under heaven more likelyto drive a man insane. "

Some elusive grace in her attitude--a suggestion of a wild thing poisedfor flight--arrested him suddenly as he looked at her; and she saw hisface change instantly while the fire of passion leaped to his eyes. 

"Be a darling and we'll forget it all!" he exclaimed. 

He made a step forward, but shrinking back until she appeared almost tocrouch against the wall, she put out her hands as if warding off hisapproach. 

"Don't touch me!" she said; and though she spoke in a whisper, her wordsseemed to shriek back at her from the air. The thought that she wasfighting for the freedom of her soul rushed through her brain, and atthe instant, had he laid his hand upon her, she knew that she would havethrown herself from the window. 

"I don't want to touch you, " he returned, cooling immediately, "butcan't you come to your senses and be reasonable?"

"If you don't mind I wish you'd go, " she said, looking at him with asmile which was like the smile of a statue. 

"If I go now will you promise to get sensible again?" he asked, withannoyance, for it occurred to him that since he had made up his mind tobe magnanimous, she had repulsed his generosity in a most ungratefulfashion. 

"I am sensible, " she responded, "I am sensible for the first time formonths. "

"Well, you've a pretty way of showing it, " he retorted. His irritationgot suddenly the better of him, and fearing that it might break out inspite of his control, he turned toward the door. "For God's sake, let'smake the best of it now, " he added desperately. 

In his nervousness he stumbled against the table and upset the redleather box which contained the coffee service. 

"I beg your pardon, " he said, and stooping to pick it up, he replacedthe silver in the case before he went into the hall and closed the doorbehind him. 

CHAPTER III

PROVES A GREAT CITY TO BE A GREAT SOLITUDE

After he had gone Laura remained standing where he had left her, untilthe sound of the hail door closing sharply caused her to draw a breathof relief as if there had come a temporary lifting of the torture sheendured. Then, with her first movement, as she looked about the room inthe effort to bring order into the confusion of her thoughts, her eyesencountered the array of wedding presents, and the expression of herface changed back into the panic terror in which she had couched againstthe wall before Kemper's approach. She still saw herself revealed in thelight of the scorn which had blazed in his eyes; and the one idea whichpossessed her now was to escape beyond the place where that look mightagain reach her. An instinct for flight like that of a wild thing in ajungle shook through her until she stood in a quiver from head to foot;and though she knew neither where she was going, nor of what use thisflight would be to her, she went into her bedroom and began to dressherself hastily in her walking clothes. As she tied on her veil and tookup her little black bag from the drawer she heard her own voice, whichsounded to her ears like the voice of a stranger, repeating the wordsshe had said to Kemper a little earlier: "No--no--I cant. It isimpossible. " And she said over these words many times because theyinfused into her heart the courage of despair which she needed to impelher to the step before her. When the door closed after her and she wentdown into the street, she was still speaking them half aloud to herself:"No--no--it is impossible. "

The dusk had already settled; ahead of her the lights of the city shoneblurred through the greyness, while above the housetops Auriga wasdriving higher in the east. With the first touch of fresh air in herface, she felt herself inspired by an energy; which seemed a part of thewind that blew about her; and as she walked rapidly through streetswhich she did not notice toward an end of which she was still ignorant, her thoughts breaking from the restraint which held them, rushed in anexcited tumult through her brain. 

"Why did he look at me so?" she asked, "for it is this look which hasdriven me away--which has made me hate both him and myself. " She triedto recall the other expression which she had loved in his face, butinstead there returned to her only the angry look with which he hadresponded to her confession. 

As she thought of it now it appeared to her that death was the onlymeans by which she could free herself and him from this marriage; andthe several ways of dying which were possible to her crowded upon herwith the force of an outside pressure. She might be crushed in thestreet? or walk on till she found the river? But the differentapproaches to death showed to her as so hideous that she knew she couldnot summon the courage with which to select a particular one and followit to the end. "Yet I shall never go back, " she thought, "he does notlove me--he wishes only to spare himself the scandal. If he loved me hecould never have looked at me like that. And I loved him three weeksago, " she added. Her love was gone now, and the memory of it had becomeintolerable to her, yet the vacancy where it had been was so great thatdeath occurred to her again as the only outcome. "Though I hate him itseems impossible that I should live on without him, " she said. 

But the next instant when she endeavored to recall his face she couldremember him only by his casual likeness to Perry Bridewell, and she sawhim standing upon the hearthrug while he pulled in angry perplexity athis moustache. The words he had spoken, the tones of his voice, and herown emotion, were blotted from her recollection as if a thick darknesshad wiped them out, and from the hour of her deepest anguish she couldbring back only a meaningless gesture and the white rosebud he had wornin his coat. What she had suffered then was the dying agony of the thingwithin her which was really herself, and there remained to her now onlythe vacant image from which the passion and the life had flown. "Howcould it make so much difference when I can barely remember it?" sheasked; and it seemed to her at the instant that nothing that couldhappen in one's existence really mattered, since big and little were allequal, and the memory of an emotion faded sooner than the memory of agesture. 

Pausing for a moment on the corner, she watched curiously the facesmoving under the electric lights, and she found herself wonderingpresently if each man or woman in the crowd was loving and hating orseeking an escape from both love and hatred? A stout man wearing a rednecktie, a pretty woman in a purple coat, a pale girl carrying a heavybundle, a bent shouldered clerk who walked with a satisfied and affectedair--as each one passed she saw his features and even his hiddenthoughts in a grotesque clearness which seemed to come partly from anillumination within herself and partly from the glare of the lightswithout. "The man in the red necktie is happy because he has made money;the pretty woman is happy because she is loved--but the pale girl andthe bent shouldered clerk are wretched. They have neither love normoney, and they have not found out how little either is worth. "

For a while she watched them, almost forgetting her own unhappiness inthe excitement of their discovered histories; but wearying suddenly, sheturned away and entered a street where the darkness had alreadygathered. Here she came close upon a pair of lovers who walked arm inarm, but the sight irritated her so she turned again at the next corner. The question whether she should go home or not thrust itself upon her, and it seemed to her that it would be better to die in the street thanto return to the persuasions of Gerty, the reproaches of Mrs. Payne, andthe complacency of Kemper. As she hurried on in the darkness she saw herpast as distinctly as if her eyes were turned backward, and in thisvision of it there showed to her the steep upward way of the spirit, andshe remembered the day when her destiny had seemed to lie mapped out forher in the hand of God. "Was this what God meant?" she demanded, andbecause there was no answer to the question she asked it again and againthe more passionately. "Or perhaps there is no God after all, " sheadded. 

A sob broke from her lips, and a policeman, who was passing, threw firstan enquiring, then a respectful glance at her, and went on again. Achild playing in the street ran up to beg for some money, and she openedher bag and gave him a piece of silver with a smile. 

"Thank you, lady, " he responded, and ran back into the shadows. As hecrossed the street she followed him with her eyes, seeing him hasten, his palm outstretched, to an Italian who was roasting chestnuts in acharcoal burner on the opposite sidewalk. 

The darkness had grown heavier and as she walked rapidly through streetswhich she did not know, her nervous energy failed her, and she began totremble presently from exhaustion. Again she asked herself for the lasttime if it were possible for her to go home and face Mrs. Payne andGerty and marry Kemper in three days. A fantastic humour in thesituation brought a laugh to her lips--for whenever she was confrontedby the hopelessness of her escape, the arguments for her marriagepresented themselves to her in the forms of cases of silver and of herwedding dress in its white satin box. Mrs. Payne had spent theafternoon, she knew, in arranging this silver on covered tables in anempty room, and she could see plainly the old lady's animated movements, the careful eye with which she estimated the value of each gift, andthe expression of approval or contempt with which she grouped itaccording to its importance. Then she thought of Kemper held to his loveby the embarrassment of these presents, by the hopelessness of returningthem, and by his conventional horror of "getting into print, " and at thepicture the laugh grew almost hysterical on her lips. How sordid it allwas! This array of silver, Mrs. Payne's reproachful comic mask, andKemper, pulling his moustache as he stood upon the hearthrug, allwhirled confusedly in the dimly lighted street before her. She felt herknees tremble, and while this weakness lasted it seemed to her that itwould be better to go back and get warm again, and submit to anythingthey forced upon her. Her flesh, in its weakness, would have yielded, but something more powerful than the flesh--the soul within which shehad so long rejected--struggled on after the impulses of the body hadsurrendered. 

The lights grew suddenly blurred before her eyes, and looking up, shefound that she had reached a ferry, and that a crowd from a neighbouringfactory was hurrying through the open doors into the boat which wasabout to put off. For the first time it occurred to her that she mightleave the city; and going inside she bought a ticket and followed thepeople who were rushing across the gangway. Where it would take her shehad no idea, but when after a few minutes the boat had crossed to theother side, she went out again with the crowd, and then turning in thedirection where there appeared to be open country, she walked on morerapidly as if her thoughts flew straight ahead into the broader spacesof the horizon. 

At first there were rows of streets, a few scattered shops in among thehouses, and groups of workmen from the factories lounging upon thesidewalk. A child, with a crooked back, in a red dress, ran across thepavement in front of her and stopped with an exclamation before a windowwhich contained a display of pink and white candy. Then a second childjoined her, and the two fell to discussing the various highly colouredsweets arrayed on little fancy squares of paper behind the glass. AsLaura watched them, pausing breathlessly in her walk, every trivialdetail of this incident seemed to her to possess an equal importancewith all other happenings large or small: for the events of herindividual experience had so distorted her perceptions of the ascendingvalues of life, that her own luckless pursuit of happiness appeared ofno greater importance in her eyes than the child, with the crooked back, making her choice of sweets. Her own emotions, indeed, interested her nolonger, but she was aware of a dull curiosity concerning the crippledchild. Would her whole life become misshapen because of the physicalform which she wore like an outer garment? And she felt, at the thought, that she would like to stand upon the side of the child and upon theside of all who were oppressed and made miserable by the crookednesseither of the body or of destiny. 

While this pity was still in her mind she tried to recall Kemper as shehad first known him, but it was to remember only that he had reddenedwith anger as he spoke to her, and that the sunlight, falling upon him, had revealed the gray hair on his temples. The physical aspect which hadmeant so little in her love was all that the recollection of him couldsuggest to her now, for she found that the visual memory still remainedafter the passion which had informed it with life and colour was blottedout. 

The child interested her no longer, and walking on again, she passed, after a time, the scattered houses, and came out upon the open roadwhich showed white and deserted beneath the stars. Looking overhead, asshe went on, her gaze swept the heavens with that sense of absolutestillness which comes under the solitude of the sky, and standingpresently in the dust of the road, she fixed her eyes upon the Pleiadesshining softly far above the jagged line of the horizon. Her feet achedbeneath her, but her head seemed suddenly spinning through clear spacesamong the stars, and while she stood there, she felt that the distancebetween her and the sky existed only in the hindrance of her body. Withthat laid aside might she not recover her soul and God there as well ashere?

Again she went on, but this time she found that her limbs could make nofurther effort, and struggling step by step, to a bend in the road, shelooked about her in a physical agony which left her consciousness onlyof her desire for rest. A house, set back from the roadside in a clumpof trees, showed to her as she turned, and going through the littlewhitewashed gate and up the path, she knocked at the door and then stoodtrembling before the threshold. 

CHAPTER IV

SHOWS THAT TRUE LOVE IS TRUE SERVICE

On the evening of the day upon which Laura was to have been married, Adams went, as usual, into his study and lit the green lamp upon hisdesk; but his mind was so filled with the mystery of her absence thateven the pretence of distraction became unendurable. Since the news ofher broken engagement and her flight had reached him, he had spent threedays in a fruitless, though still hopeful, search for her; and thenights when he was forced to relax his efforts were filled with agonisedimaginings of her loneliness at so great a distance and yet in realityso near. From the moment that he had heard through Gerty of herdisappearance, there had ceased to exist all uncertainty as to theposition in which he now stood to her; and he reproached himself, as heremembered her visit to his office, because he had failed then to takeinto his hands a decision which from an external view appeared so littleto affect him. 

But the external view, he realised, was nothing to him to-night. On thatlast day he had penetrated beneath the shallow surface of theconventions, and he had read in her tormented heart the whole story ofthe bitter disillusionment which she did not dare to put in words. Herimagination, he saw, had created an ideal lover in Kemper's shape, andin the moment of her awakening she had turned away not from thefalsehood, but from the truth. "Though he is not what I loved yet I willstill love him!" her heart had cried, in a subjection to the old falsefeminine belief that faithfulness to a mistaken ideal is not weaknessbut virtue. Yet in the end she had fled from that ultimate choicebetween the higher and the lower nature. How could she have lived on alie when her spirit had forged so clear a path of truth before her?

Rising from his chair he walked for a few minutes rapidly up and downthe room. How far or how near was she to-night? Had she remembered himin her misery? Would God reveal Himself to her in the most terriblehour? His trust in her final deliverance was so great that even as heput the questions, he knew in his heart that she was one of those who, in the end, "win their own souls through perseverance. " His eyes fell onher picture above his desk, and then turning away rested on Connie'swhich stood where he had placed it in the first years of his marriage. Connie and her life with him was like a half-forgotten dream to him now, yet, looking back upon it, he could not tell himself that there had beenfor him no gain of strength, for Connie no growth of understanding, inthe pitiless failure of their marriage. All was softened in his memoryby that last afternoon when he had seen the shame of experience wipedfrom her face as they combed her hair straight back from her forehead inthe old childish fashion; and he had realised from that instant that asoul had come to birth in the hour before her death. A single ray of thedivine light had dispelled the thick darkness, and her blind eyes wereopened for one minute before she closed them to the body forever. Wasthat one minute not worth every heart throb he had suffered and everydifficult hope for which he had battled in his thoughts? Having lookedthough for a fleeting glimpse only upon the unity of life, was not herspirit's growth measured in the instant of that flashing vision? For Godhad worked here--had worked in the pity of his heart, as well as in theawakening gratitude in Connie's; and because of the deeper insight hehad attained, he could look back over the whole sordid tragedy anddiscern one of those steep and arduous roads by which the spirit mountsto enlightenment through the flesh. And if this were so here--if inugliness such as this he could find beauty, was it not one and the sameover the broad field of human effort? Had not his own life proved to himthat let a man's eyes be opened, and even in the depths of abasement hemay look in his soul and discover God?

And Laura? His heart was flooded with tenderness, and he felt again aconfident, an almost mystic assurance that her destiny was one with his. In this growing conviction his anxiety appeared to him suddenly as apitiable and cowardly denial of his faith--and he was possessed by thecertainty that he had only to send out his will in order to smooth theway of her return to peace. 

The room had become warm, and opening the window he stood looking beyondthe housetops to the stars which shone dimly over the city. The noise inthe streets grew fainter in his ears, and as he stood there with hiseyes on the stars, he could tell himself in the joy of hisreconciliation, that the law by which they moved gloriously towardtheir end was the law which controlled his own and Laura's life. Thesense which is less a belief than an intimate knowledge of immortalitybelonged to him now, and he realised that so far as he lived at all helived not in the hour alone, but in eternity, that so far as he had wonpeace it was bound up in a passionate conviction of the survival of theuniverse within his soul. To-day or to-morrow, in the minute or ineternity, he saw that wherever God is there will always be immortallife. 

Turning back into the room he looked again at Laura's picture with alonging which had not freed itself as yet from the idea of renouncement. Even now he realised that he had been strong enough to live without her, and with the admission, he was aware again of that wider sympathy whichhad been his compensation in a forefeiture of personal love. Hishappiness he had told himself a year ago depended neither uponpossession nor upon any passage of events, yet to-night his heartstrained after her in a tenderness which seemed to bring her visiblepresence before him in the room. His love for her appeared not only as apart of his love for God, but as a part, also, of his sorrows, hisbitter patience, his renouncement and of the compassion which had sprungfrom the agony and the enlightenment of his failure. Sorrow he couldstill feel--the deepest human grief might be his portion to-morrow, butwhile this unfading light shone in his soul, he knew that it wasordained that he should conquer in the end. By this knowledge alone hehad at last won through suffering into the open places of the spiritwhere were joy and freedom. 

A ring at the bell startled him from his abstraction, and with animpatient eagerness for news, he hastened to the door, where a boythrust at him a small folded sheet of paper. As he opened it he feltthat his had trembled, for even before he read the words, he knew thatLaura's appeal to him had come. 

"I need a friend. Will you help me?" was all that she had written. 

He motioned the boy to come inside, and then stood looking at himenquiringly as he got into his overcoat. 

"Do you go back with me?" he asked. 

The boy nodded while he pulled at a scarlet handkerchief about his neck. Adams noticed that though he was stunted and anĉmic in appearance, hewore his shabby overcoat with an almost rakish swagger. His mouth wasfilled with chewing-gum which he rolled aside in his cheek when hetalked. 

"Is it far?" Adams enquired in a hopeless effort to extort informationhowever meagre. 

The boy looked important, almost mysterious. 

"Yep, " he responded, adding immediately, "She's the other side of theferry. "

"Do you mean the lady?" He opened the door, and hurried to the sidewalkwhere he stopped to call a cab from the corner. 

"She's been there three nights, so tired she couldn't move, " replied theboy, as he followed Adams into the cab. "A fine lady, too, " he commentedwith a wink. 

"Well, she's all right now, and I'm much obliged to you, " said Adams, but he asked no further questions until they were seated side by side inthe ferry, when he tried again to draw out the bare facts of Laura'sflight. 

During the walk through the town and along the country road, he learnedthat Laura had reached the house of the boy's mother in an exhaustion ofmind and body which had compelled them to harbour her for the night. Onthe next day her appearance and the money with which she was suppliedhad so won upon the mother's sympathy that her desire to remain a fewdays longer had been met almost with eagerness by the older woman. Whenhe had, with difficulty, extracted this account of what had passed, Adams fell a little ahead of his companion, and they went on in silenceuntil they came, at the end of several miles, in sight of the cottagewithdrawn from the roadside in its clump of trees. A single lightedwindow was visible through the bared boughs, and standing out clearlyfrom the interior, Adams saw a dark figure which his heart recognisedwith a bound. 

The boy pushed back the gate and Adams went up the path inside, andentering the house opened the door of the room in which he had seenLaura standing. She was still there, motionless in the lamplight, and ashe went toward her she lifted her eyes and gazed back at him in the mutedefiance which is the outward expression of despair. 

"Do you think you have been quite just to me, Laura?" he asked, nottenderly, but with a stern and reproachful face. 

Without lowering her eyes she looked at him while she shook her head. 

"I sent for you because I could not help it. I had nowhere to go, " shesaid. 

"Do you think you have been just to me?" he asked again. 

"You? I never thought of you until to-day, " she answered. "I came herebecause I had to go somewhere--it did not matter where. I was too tiredto walk any farther, so they were very good to me. "

"And you have let us search for you three days. " His voice wasconstrained, but as he looked into her wan face between the loosenedwaves of her hair, his heart melted over her in an agony of tenderness. Every drop of blood appeared to have left her body, which was so pallidthat he seemed to see the light shining through her drawn features. 

"So they have been looking for me?" she observed, with but littleinterest. 

"What did you expect?" he questioned in his turn. 

"But I didn't want to be found--I would rather stay lost, " sheresponded. Shrinking away from him she went to the window and stoodthere, pressed closely against the panes, as if in a blind impulse toput the space of the room between them. "I will not go back even now--Iwill not go back, " she insisted. 

As he entered he had closed the door behind him, and leaning against itnow, he looked at her with a flicker of his quiet smile. 

"I'm not talking about going back, am I?" he rejoined. "Heaven knows youmay stay here if you like the place. " He glanced quickly about thecrudely furnished little room hung with cheap crayon portraits. "It'srather hard, though, to fit you into these surroundings, " he remarkedwith a flash of humour. 

She shook her head. "They suit me as well as any other. "

"And the people who live here?--What of them?"

"I like them because they are so near to the ground, " she answered, "they've no surface of culture, or personality, or convention to botherone--they've no surface, indeed, of any kind. "

"Well, it's all very interesting, " he remarked, smiling, "but, in commondecency, don't you think you might have sent me word?"

"I never thought of you an instant, " she replied. 

"You never thought of me in your life, " he retorted, "and yet when I sayI'm better worth your thinking of than Kemper--God knows I don't pretendto boast. "

A weaker man would have hesitated over the name, but he had seen at thefirst glance that the way to save her was not by softness, and his lips, after he had uttered the word, closed tightly like the lips of a surgeonwho applies the knife. 

"Don't speak to me of him!" she cried out sharply, "I had forgotten!"

Her eyes hung upon his in a returning agony, and it was through thisagony alone that he hoped to bring back her consciousness of life. 

"This is not the way to forget, " he answered, "you are not a coward, yetyou have chosen the cowardly means. There can he no forgetfulness untilyou are strong enough to admit the truth to your own heart--to say'there is no mistake that is final, no wrong done that has power tocrush me. '"

"But there is no truth in my heart, " she answered, with sudden energy, "it is all a lie--I am a lie all over, and it makes no differencebecause I have ceased to care. I used to think that people only diedwhen they were put in coffins, but I know now that you can be dead andyet move and walk about and even laugh and pretend to be like all therest--some of whom are dead also. And I didn't die slowly, " she added, with a vague impersonal interest, which impressed him as almostdelirious in its detachment, "I wasn't killed in a year, but in aminute. One instant I was quite alive--as alive as you are now--and thenext I was as dead as if I had been buried centuries ago. "

"And who is to blame for this?" he demanded, white to the lips. 

"Oh, it wasn't he--it was life, " she went on calmly, "he couldn't helpit, nor could I--nobody can help anything. Do you understand that?" sheasked, with the searching mental clearness which seemed always lyingbehind her dazed consciousness, "that we're all drawn by wires likepuppets, and the strongest wire pulls us in the direction in which weare meant to go? It's curious that I should never have known this beforebecause it has become perfectly plain to me now--there is no soul, noaspiration, no motive for good or evil, for we're every one worked bywires while we are pretending to move ourselves. "

"All right, but it's my turn at the wire now, " responded Adams, smiling. 

At his words she broke out into little hard dry sobs, which had in themnone of the softness of tears. "Nobody is to blame for anything, " sherepeated, still striving, in a dazed way, to be just to Kemper. 

Even more than her face and her voice, this pathetic groping of herreason, moved him into a passion of sympathy; and while he looked ather, he resisted an impulse to gather her, in spite of her coldness, against his breast. 

"What is it, Laura, that has made you suffer like this?" he asked. 

But his words made no impression upon her, perhaps because they couldnot penetrate the outer husk of deadness which enveloped her. 

"Do you know what it is to feel ashamed?" she demanded suddenly, "tofeel ashamed, not in a passing quiver, but in a settled state everyinstant that you live? Do you know what it is to have every sensation ofyour body merged into this one feeling of shame--to be ashamed with youreyes and hands and feet as well as with your mind and heart and soul? Icould have stood anything but this, " she added, pressing closer againstthe window. 

An exclamation which was almost one of anger burst from him, and goingto where she stood, he laid his hand upon her arm as if in the effort torecall her reason by physical force. But with his first touch his grasplost its energy and grew gentle, for her anguish appeared to him, as heheld her, to be only the instinctive crying out of a child that is hurt. His hold slipped from her arm, and taking her hands, he bent over andkissed them until they lay quiet in his own. 

"Laura, do you trust my love for you?" he asked. 

"I trust you, yes, " she answered, "but not love--it is only one of thewires by which we are moved. "

"Trust anything you please about me, so long as you trust--that is all Iask, " he let her hands fall from his and looked into her face. "Promiseme that you will be here waiting when I return. "

"There's no place for me to go--I shall be here, " she answered. 

Her eyes followed him with a pathetic child-like fear while he crossedthe room and went out leaving her alone. 

CHAPTER V

BETWEEN LAURA AND GERTY

Did he possess the strength as well as the love that she needed? Adamsasked himself a little later as he walked back under the stars. He sawher as he had just left her--wan, despairing; so bloodless that thelight seemed shining through her features, and then he remembered theradiant smile which she had lost, the glorious womanhood obscured now byhumiliation. An assurance, in which there was almost exultation, floodedhis thoughts, and he was aware that the passion he felt for her had beensuddenly strengthened by an emotion of equal power--by the longing bornin his heart to afford protection to whatever suffered within his sight. 

Never for an instant, since he had entered the room where she retreatedbefore him, had he doubted either his appointed mission or his power ofrenewal. His whole experience, he understood now, had directed him tothis hour which he had not foreseen, and the worldly success for whichhe had once struggled meant to him at last only that he might bring hopewhere there was failure. Even Connie--her love, her tragic history, herpitiable reliance upon him at the end--showed to him in the aspect of ahuman revelation--for his fuller understanding of Connie had confirmedhim in the patience by which alone he might win back Laura to thehappiness which she had lost. 

The road stretching ahead of him was no longer obscured, but shonefaintly luminous out of the surrounding darkness. Not the future alonebut the desert places through which he had come had blossomed, and thebeauty which was revealed to him at last was the beauty in all thingsthat have form or being--in the earth no less than in the sky, in theflesh no less than in the spirit, for were not earth and flesh, afterall, only sky and spirit in the making? The perfect plan, he hadlearned, in the end, is not for any part but for the whole. 

Across the ferry, he found a cab which took him to Gerty's house, and inresponse to his message, she came down immediately, looking excited andperturbed, in an evening gown of black and silver. 

"Have you brought me news of Laura?" she asked breathlessly. "Perry'sdragging me to a dinner, but if she's ill, I can't go--I won't. "

"Don't go, " he answered, "she's not ill, but if she were it would bebetter. Will you come with me now and bring her back with you?"

Without replying to his question, she ran from the room and returned, ina moment, wearing a hat and a long coat which covered her black andsilver dress. 

"The carriage is waiting now, " she said, "we can take it and let Perrygo to his dinner in a cab. "

"But--good Lord, Gerty--what am I to say to them?" demanded Perry whilehe shook hands with Adams. "I never could make up an excuse in my life, you know. "

Then his eyes blinked rapidly and he fell back with merely a mutteredprotest, for Gerty shone, at the instant, with a beauty which neither henor Adams had ever seen in her before. The wonderful child qualitysoftened her look, and they watched her soul bloom in her face like aclosed flower that expands in sunlight. 

"I don't know, my dear, " she responded gently, and with her hand onAdams's arm, she ran down the steps and into the carriage before thedoor. As they drove away, she looked up at him with a tender littlesmile. 

"I am so glad that she has you, " she said. 

"In having you, she has a great deal more. "

"It is you who have done it all--you expected me to have courage, so Ihave it. Had you expected me to be cowardly, I should have been so. "

"Well, I expect you to save her, " he answered quietly. 

"Does she need it? What was it? What does it mean?"

"You'll know to-night, perhaps. I shall never know, but what does itmatter?"

"I saw Arnold to-day, " she said, "he is terribly--terribly--" shehesitated for a word, "cut up about it. Yet he swears he can't for thelife of him see that he was to blame. Had he been to blame, he says, hewould have shot himself. "

"Would he?" he remarked indifferently. 

"He sails for Europe on Saturday--if he hears she's found. "

He bit back an exclamation of anger. 

"What, under heaven, has he to do with it?" he asked. 

"A great deal, one would think. But have you seen her? Tell me of her. "

"Be good to her, " he answered, "she is in a hard place and needs a greatdeal of love. "

"And we can give it to her, you and I?"

"Mine is hers already, if it's any help. "

"Was it hers before she knew Arnold even?"

"Long before--before he or you or I were born. "

"And does she understand?"

"She doesn't know--but what difference does that make?"

Her eyes, in the flickering light, gave him an impression of remotenessas of dim stars. 

"I wonder how it feels to be loved like that?" she said, a littlewistfully. 

"You would never have cared for it, " he answered, with a flash of hispenetrating insight, "for the kind of man who could have loved you inthat way you couldn't have loved. "

"You mean that I was born to adore the god in the brute?" she asked. 

"Oh, well, so long as it's the god!" he retorted laughing. 

But she paid no heed to his remark, and drawing her coat about her as ifshe were cold, she sat in silence until the carriage was driven upon theferry and they began the trip across. 

"She came this way all alone and at night?" she said. 

"How or why we shall probably never know entirely, " he answered. "Idoubt if she realised herself where she was going. "

"It looks meaningless from a distance, but, I suppose, in reality, itwas a courageous flight?"

"Yes, I think there was courage in it, " he responded quietly. 

She turned her eyes away, looking out as they drove through the opencountry upon the black fields and the stars. Neither of them spoke againuntil the carriage stopped and the footman jumped down to ask for somedirections. Then as they drew up presently before the little gate, Adamshelped her out and along the path into the house. 

"She is in there, " he said, pointing to a closed door, "when you see heryou will understand. "

"But you will come, too?" she asked, hesitating. 

He shook his head. "Her heart is bleeding--it's a woman that she wants. "

Then he opened the door, and pushing her gently inside, closed it afterher. 

At first Gerty could see but faintly by the light of a lamp whichsmoked, but as she went quickly forward, Laura rose from the sofa uponwhich she had been lying, and came a step to meet her. 

"Why did you come? I didn't want you--I didn't want anyone, " she said. 

Before the hard tones of her voice, Gerty stood still, shrinkingslightly away in her baffled splendour. Her heart strained toward herfriend, yet when she tried to think of some comforting word that shemight utter, she found only a vacancy of scattered phrases. What wouldwords mean to Laura now? What word among all others was there that shecould speak to her?

For a moment, groping blindly for light, she hesitated; then her armsopened, and she caught Laura into them in spite of her feeble effort atresistance. 

"Dearest! dearest! dearest!" she repeated, for she had found the word atlast. 

Partly because she was a woman and partly because of her bittertriumphs, she had understood that the wisdom in love is the only wisdomwhich avails in the supreme agony of life. Neither philosophy norreligion mattered now, for presently she felt that her bosom was warmwith tears, and when Laura lifted her head, the two women kissed in thatintimate knowledge which is uttered without speech. 

CHAPTER VI

RENEWAL

In that strange spiritual death--which was still death though themembers of her body lived--Laura seemed to lose gradually all personalconnection with the events through which she had passed; and when afterthree months she turned again to look back upon them, she found thatthey stood out, clear, detached, and remote as the incidents of history. She was not only dead herself, but the whole world about her showed toher in a curious aspect of unreality, as if a thin veil obscured it, andthere were moments when even Adams and Gerty seemed to her to be barelyalive To the last she had refused to return to Gramercy Park, and on thenight that she reached Gerty's house she had been aware that she wasslipping away from any actual contact with her former life. Her bodymight breathe and move, but her soul and even her senses had becomeinanimate, and she felt that they had ceased to take part in any wordsshe uttered. 

Though she had persistently denied herself to her aunts, she sent forMr. Payne on the first day that she was able to sit up, and the onlysoftness she showed was in answer to the compassionate kiss he placedupon her forehead. 

"My child, my child, what did I tell you?" he asked gently. 

"It is because of that I wanted to see you, " she said, "because you arethe only person, I believe, who can really understand. "

"I think I can, my dear. "

"You have had beautiful dreams, too, that were false ones?"

"It isn't that the dreams are false, " he replied, "but that the stuff ofthis earth isn't the kind to grow illusions. They must either wither inthe bud or be wrenched up root and branch. "

"And there's only the ugly reality, after all?"

"There's only the reality, but it isn't ugly when one grows accustomedto it. You'll find it good enough for you yet, my child. "

"No--no, " she said, "I've always lived on pretty lies, I see thatnow--I've always had to find an outlet for my imagination, howeverfalse. My poetry was never more than this--it was all quotation--all areflection of the things I had wanted to feel in life. I never wrote asincere line, " she added. 

He pressed her hand--it was his way of showing that he loved her nonethe less because she was not a poet--and then as the unnatural wannessoverspread her face, he went out softly, leaving her in Gerty's care. Bydifferent roads they had come at last to the same place in life--shewith her blighted youth and he with his beautiful old age and hisdisappointed hopes. 

With the beginning of the year Gerty went South with her, but the softair or the cold made little difference to Laura, when, as she said, shecould feel neither. There had been no outburst of grief; since the nightwhen she had wept on Gerty's bosom, she had not shed a tear; and oncewhen Gerty had alluded to Kemper in her hearing, she had listened withthe polite attention she might have bestowed upon the name of astranger. At Gerty's bidding she came or went, admired or disapproved, but of her old impulsive energy there was so little left that Gertysometimes wondered if her friend had really, as she insisted, "turned tostone. " For Laura's face even had frozen until it wore the impassivesmile of a statue, and there was in her movements and her voicesomething of the insensibility of extreme old age. She was no longeryoung, nor was she middle-aged; it was as if she had outlived, not onlythe emotions, but the years of life. 

In April they came back again, and on the morning after their returnGerty paid a dejected visit to Adams in his office. 

"I can do nothing with her--she's turned to stone, " she said. 

"Oh, she'll come alive again, " he responded. "Where is she?"

"In Gramercy Park. It makes no difference to her now where she is, norwhether she sees Mrs. Payne or not. She even sits for hours and listensto Uncle Percival play upon his flute. "

"It will be the death of her, " he answered gravely. "Is there nothing wecan do?"

"Nothing. I've done everything--she's really stone. "

"Well, we'll bring her round, " said Adams cheerfully; but when he sawLaura herself in the afternoon, he instinctively turned his eyes awayfrom the frozen sweetness in her look. He was aware that she made aneffort to be pleasant, but her pleasantness reminded him of anartificial light on a figure of snow. 

"I had hoped you would grow stronger in the South, " he said, though allconversation seemed to him to have become suddenly the most impersonalthing on earth. 

"But I am strong, " she answered, "I am never ill a day. "

"There's something about you, all the same, that I don't like, " heresponded frankly. 

"I know, " she nodded, smiling, "you aren't used to seeing a dead personwalk about. But it's very comfortable when you grow accustomed to it, "she added, with a laugh. 

At this he would have brought a more intimate note into his voice, butshe evaded his first hint of earnestness by a cynical little jest shehad picked up from Gerty. Her intention--if she intended anything--hesaw clearly now was to confine her perceptions to the immediate surfaceof life presented before her eyes. She spoke with animation of thecountry she had left, of Gerty's gayeties, of the wonderful brightnessof the weather; but when by a more serious question he sought topenetrate below this fluency of words, he was repelled again by theimpression of a mere hollow amiability in her manner. After a few casualremarks he left her with the most hopeless feeling he had known formonths, and when, as the days went on, he endeavored fruitlessly toarouse in her a single sincere interest in human affairs, he foundhimself wondering if it were possible for any creature to be still aliveand yet to resemble so closely a figure of marble. Day after day he cameonly to yield at last to his baffled efforts; and the thin cold smilewith which she responded to his words appeared to him sadder than anypassionate outburst of tears. Even Connie on that last afternoon hadseemed to him more human and less unapproachable than Laura now. 

Through the spring he saw her almost every day, and when in June he puther on the train with Gerty for the Adirondacks, he came away with theclutch, as if from a hand of ice, at his heart. He had given her hisbest and yet he had not penetrated by word or look beneath the unnaturalgentleness which enveloped her like an outer covering. Then his hearthardened and he felt that he cursed Kemper for the thing which he hadkilled. 

Back again in the forest, under the green and gold of the leaves, Lauraasked herself why the associations of that last summer failed sostrangely to disturb her as she looked on the familiar road andmountains? A single year or a whole lifetime ago, it was all one to hernow, and while she wandered along the paths down which she had walkedwith Kemper in the most blissful hours of her love, she found herselfalmost regretting that she had ceased to suffer--that since her heartwas broken it had lost even the power to throb. In the city she had feltherself to be a part of the houses and the streets, and as perfectlyindifferent to the passage of life as they; but here with her heartagainst Nature's she would have liked to pulsate with the other livethings in the forest. For the first time for months she began as thedays went by, to quicken to an interest in the songs of the birds, orthe sunsets on the mountains, or the springing up of a new flower besidethe doorstep. And as in every rebound of the emotions from extremedespair, her connection with life came at last through the eye of themind rather than through the heart, and the lesson was taught herneither by Gerty nor by Adams, but through an awakening to the beauty inthe sights and the sounds of the green natural world about her. 

Gerty had left her one afternoon, and as the cart drove away she wentout of the house and sat down in the sun upon the roadside whichbordered the edge of the wood. Behind her was the silence of the forest, and straight ahead the faint purple hills rose against a pale sky abovewhich the white clouds sailed like birds. For a while she gazed withblind eyes at the view for the sake of which the spot was chosen, butthe mountains and the sky left her unmoved, and leaning her armpresently upon the warm earth, she lay looking at a little blue flowerblooming in the sand at her feet. Her shadow stretched beside her in theroad, and it seemed to her that there was as little difference, save inher consciousness, between her and her shadow, as there was between hershadow and the flower. Even her love and her disillusion showed to hernow as of no larger consequence than the wind blowing upon her shadow orthe dew and the storm falling upon the flower. Then as the minutespassed and her gaze did not waver from the blue petals filled withsunshine, she was aware gradually, as if between dream and waking, of apeculiar deepening of her mental vision, until there was revealed toher, while she looked, not only the outward semblance, but the essenceof the flower which was its soul. And this essence of the flower camesuddenly in contact with the dead soul within her bosom, while she feltagain the energy which is life flowing through her body. At thisinstant, by that divine miracle of resurrection she began to liveanew--to live not her old life alone, but a life that was larger andfuller than the one which had been hers. She began to live anew inherself as well as in the sky and in humanity and in the songs of birds;and in this ecstasy of recovered life, she felt her soul to be of onesubstance, not only with God and the stars, but with the flower and thechild in the street as well. For that love which had recoiled from itsindividual object overflowed her heart again until she felt that it hadtouched the boundaries of the world. 

When Adams saw her in the autumn, he discovered the change almost withthe first touch of her hand. Not only the outward form, but theindwelling intellect was alive again, and all that reminded him of herpast anguish were a deeper earnestness in her smile and a faintpowdering of silver on the dark wing-like waves of her hair. That veiledjoy which is the expression of the soul that has found peace shone inher face with a radiance which if less bright was to him more beautifulthan the sparkling energy she had lost. For the life and the passion ofher womanhood were still there, mellowed and ennobled by that shadow ofexperience without which mere beauty of feature had always seemed to hima meaningless and empty shape. His belief was justified forever in thatinstant, and he recognised in her then one of those nobler spirits whoin passing through the tragedy of disillusionment drain from it thestrength without the bitterness that is its portion. 

"I want to work, to help, " she said eagerly, almost with her firstbreath, and while he listened with a tenderness tinged with amusement, she described to him the elaborate plans she had made for going amongthe poor. "It isn't that the poor need help any more than the rich, "she added, "but the poor are the only ones that I can reach. "

He nodded, smiling, while he watched the animated gestures of her hands. Her poetry, her groping for love, her longing at last to give help tothe oppressed, each phase of thought or feeling through which she hadpassed, showed to him only as the effort of the soul within her to findexpression. In this passionate search after the eternal upon earth wasshe not, in reality, only seeking in outward forms the thing which washerself?

"I will help you, of course, " he answered, with a gravity which he foundit difficult afterward to maintain, for from that moment she had thrownher heart into the work of uplifting until her whole existence appearedto round presently about this new point of interest. While he couldfollow her here, he waited almost impatiently for the reaction of hertemperament which would bring her back to him, he felt, as inevitably asthe changes of the seasons would bring the spring again to the earth. 

On Christmas Eve she had arranged for some celebration among the poor onthe East Side, and when they came away together, she asked him to takeher to Gerty's house instead of to Gramercy Park. Then as they walkedalong the cross-town blocks from the elevated road, she alluded for thefirst time to the evening a year ago when he had found her in herdeepest misery. 

"I thought then that my life was over, " she said, "but to-day I have putmy foot upon my old grief and it has helped me to spring upward. Theworld is so full for me now that I can hardly distinguish among so manyvivid interests--and yet nothing in it is changed except myself. Do youknow what it is to feel suddenly that you have found the key?"

"I know, " he replied, "for I have found it, too, and it is love. "

"Love for the world--for all mankind, " she corrected. "No, don't look atme like that, " she added, "I am perfectly happy to-day, but it is thehappiness of freedom. "

For a moment he did not answer; then he turned his eyes upon the brightpallor of her cheek showing above the dark furs she wore, and there wasa smile in his eyes though his voice, when he spoke, was grave. 

"Do you know what I have sometimes thought about that, Laura, " he said, "it is that I all along, from first to last, have known your heartbetter than you knew it for all your desperate certainty. "

"I never knew it, " she responded; "I do not know it now. "

"And yet I think I do, " he answered. 

She shook her head. "It is no longer a mystery--there is only light init to-day. "

"I never thought you loved Kemper, " he went on. "What you built yourdream upon was an imaginary image that wore his shape. In my heart, evenwhen I stood aside--when I was forced to stand aside because of otherclaims upon me--I think I was sure all the time that your love was meantfor me at last. "

"For you? Oh, no, not now, " she answered. 

"It's a bold way of saying it, I suppose, " he pursued, "here I amneither rich nor successful as the world counts these things--in debtprobably for several years to come, and with not so much as an athleticlustre to my name. It's not a cheerful picture I'm drawing, but becausethere's a struggle in it I am not afraid to ask you to come and shareit. I wonder if you know how I have loved you, Laura. "

"I have known since--since that night, " she replied. 

"The one argument I have to offer, " he said, smiling, "is that in spiteof the unpromising outlook, I happen to be the only man on earth whocould make you happy. "

"You might have been once, " she responded. 

"And if once, why not now? Is not forever as good as yesterday?"

"Do you know why?" she answered, turning upon him in sudden passion. "You think I am brave and yet I am afraid--afraid, though I won't admitit, every minute that I live. I walk the streets in terror of a memory. "

"But I do not, " he answered quietly. "Do you doubt my power to keep whatI have won--my dearest?"

At the word the colour rose to her cheek, but as they reached Gerty'sdoor, she stopped and put her hand into the one which he held out. 

"Like everything else it has come too late, " she said. 

He shook his head, and then pressing her hand, let it fall. 

"I can be patient a little longer, " he responded before he turned away. 

His words were still in her thoughts when she entered the house; and asshe went quickly upstairs to Gerty's sitting-room, she wondered whatcounsel of indecision she would content herself with at last? Then asshe crossed the threshold into the warm firelight, she discovered thatGerty was absent and that Arnold Kemper was standing upon the hearthrug. 

As he recognised her he came forward, smiling, and held out his hand. 

"So we've met again, after all, Laura, " he remarked, withoutembarrassment. 

At the sound of his voice there had come a single high throb of herheart and immediately afterward she was aware of an exultation whichshowed in the uplifting of her head and in her shining eyes--for as shelooked into his face she measured for the first time the distance whichdivided her dream from her awakening. 

"One always meets again, you know, " she answered, "but if you're waitingfor Gerty now, she is usually after time. "

"Women always are, " he commented gayly, with his foreign shrug. 

The window was just behind him, and as he glanced out into the street, she looked at him in the puzzled wonder with which one seeks inunchanged features; a discernible justification of a passion which isaltered. Where was the power to-day against which her heart had beat sohelplessly a year ago? Was it possible that she had felt the charm inthis man who was already middle-aged, who was satisfied with the mereconcrete form of life, and in whose eyes she could see now the heavinesswhich grows through self-indulgence? His old intimate smile, hisdisturbing ironic glance, even the quickening of his first passiveinterest into the emotional curiosity which was the strongest impulsehis world-weariness had left alive--each and all of these effects whichshe remembered impressed her as little to-day as did the bulkyfascination of Perry Bridewell. When at last she could escape in theflutter of Gerty's entrance, she left the room and the house with atremor of her pulses which was strangely associated with a delicioussense of peace--for this chance meeting had revealed to her not onlyKemper but herself. 

As she walked slowly toward the golden circle of the sky which wasvisible through the bared trees in the park, she recognised with everyfibre of her body as unerringly as with her intellect that she had comeat last into that knowledge which is the centre of outgoing life. And asAdams had seen in his deeper vision, that all life is an evolution intothe consciousness of God, so she divined now through her mere vagueinstinct for light, that all emotion is but the blind striving of loveafter the consciousness of itself. Her whole experience flashed backbefore her, and in that swiftness of memory which prefigures either anaccession of vitality or a tragic death, she understood that both herillusion and her disenchantment were necessary to the building of thestructure within her soul. She had mounted by her mistake as surely asby her aspiration, and every pang which she had suffered was but therending of the veil between her flesh and spirit. 

Looking up as she walked she saw, without surprise, that Adams wasstanding under the bared trees before her; and with her first glanceinto his face she realised that there are moments charged with so deep ameaning that all explanations, all promises, all self-reproaches becomeonly such vain and barren things as words.