ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE

by Willa Cather

ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE by Willa Cather

CHAPTER I

Late one brilliant April afternoon Professor Lucius Wilson stood at thehead of Chestnut Street, looking about him with the pleased air of a manof taste who does not very often get to Boston. He had lived there as astudent, but for twenty years and more, since he had been Professor ofPhilosophy in a Western university, he had seldom come East except totake a steamer for some foreign port. Wilson was standing quite still, contemplating with a whimsical smile the slanting street, with its wornpaving, its irregular, gravely colored houses, and the row of nakedtrees on which the thin sunlight was still shining. The gleam of theriver at the foot of the hill made him blink a little, not so muchbecause it was too bright as because he found it so pleasant. The fewpassers-by glanced at him unconcernedly, and even the children whohurried along with their school-bags under their arms seemed to find itperfectly natural that a tall brown gentleman should be standing there, looking up through his glasses at the gray housetops. 

The sun sank rapidly; the silvery light had faded from the bare boughsand the watery twilight was setting in when Wilson at last walked downthe hill, descending into cooler and cooler depths of grayish shadow. His nostril, long unused to it, was quick to detect the smell of woodsmoke in the air, blended with the odor of moist spring earth and thesaltiness that came up the river with the tide. He crossed CharlesStreet between jangling street cars and shelving lumber drays, and aftera moment of uncertainty wound into Brimmer Street. The street was quiet, deserted, and hung with a thin bluish haze. He had already fixed hissharp eye upon the house which he reasoned should be his objectivepoint, when he noticed a woman approaching rapidly from the oppositedirection. Always an interested observer of women, Wilson would haveslackened his pace anywhere to follow this one with his impersonal, appreciative glance. She was a person of distinction he saw at once, and, moreover, very handsome. She was tall, carried her beautiful headproudly, and moved with ease and certainty. One immediately took forgranted the costly privileges and fine spaces that must lie in thebackground from which such a figure could emerge with this rapid andelegant gait. Wilson noted her dress, too, --for, in his way, he had aneye for such things, --particularly her brown furs and her hat. He gota blurred impression of her fine color, the violets she wore, her whitegloves, and, curiously enough, of her veil, as she turned up a flight ofsteps in front of him and disappeared. 

Wilson was able to enjoy lovely things that passed him on the wing ascompletely and deliberately as if they had been dug-up marvels, longanticipated, and definitely fixed at the end of a railway journey. Fora few pleasurable seconds he quite forgot where he was going, and onlyafter the door had closed behind her did he realize that the young womanhad entered the house to which he had directed his trunk from the SouthStation that morning. He hesitated a moment before mounting the steps. "Can that, " he murmured in amazement, --"can that possibly have been Mrs. Alexander?"

When the servant admitted him, Mrs. Alexander was still standing in thehallway. She heard him give his name, and came forward holding out herhand. 

"Is it you, indeed, Professor Wilson? I was afraid that you might gethere before I did. I was detained at a concert, and Bartley telephonedthat he would be late. Thomas will show you your room. Had you ratherhave your tea brought to you there, or will you have it down here withme, while we wait for Bartley?"

Wilson was pleased to find that he had been the cause of her rapid walk, and with her he was even more vastly pleased than before. He followedher through the drawing-room into the library, where the wide backwindows looked out upon the garden and the sunset and a fine stretchof silver-colored river. A harp-shaped elm stood stripped against thepale-colored evening sky, with ragged last year's birds' nests in itsforks, and through the bare branches the evening star quivered in themisty air. The long brown room breathed the peace of a rich and amplyguarded quiet. Tea was brought in immediately and placed in front of thewood fire. Mrs. Alexander sat down in a high-backed chair and began topour it, while Wilson sank into a low seat opposite her and took his cupwith a great sense of ease and harmony and comfort. 

"You have had a long journey, haven't you?" Mrs. Alexander asked, aftershowing gracious concern about his tea. "And I am so sorry Bartley islate. He's often tired when he's late. He flatters himself that it isa little on his account that you have come to this Congress ofPsychologists. "

"It is, " Wilson assented, selecting his muffin carefully; "and I hope hewon't be tired tonight. But, on my own account, I'm glad to have a fewmoments alone with you, before Bartley comes. I was somehow afraid thatmy knowing him so well would not put me in the way of getting to knowyou. "

"That's very nice of you. " She nodded at him above her cup and smiled, but there was a little formal tightness in her tone which had not beenthere when she greeted him in the hall. 

Wilson leaned forward. "Have I said something awkward? I live very farout of the world, you know. But I didn't mean that you would exactlyfade dim, even if Bartley were here. "

Mrs. Alexander laughed relentingly. "Oh, I'm not so vain! How terriblydiscerning you are. "

She looked straight at Wilson, and he felt that this quick, frank glancebrought about an understanding between them. 

He liked everything about her, he told himself, but he particularlyliked her eyes; when she looked at one directly for a moment they werelike a glimpse of fine windy sky that may bring all sorts of weather. 

"Since you noticed something, " Mrs. Alexander went on, "it must havebeen a flash of the distrust I have come to feel whenever I meet any ofthe people who knew Bartley when he was a boy. It is always as if theywere talking of someone I had never met. Really, Professor Wilson, itwould seem that he grew up among the strangest people. They usually saythat he has turned out very well, or remark that he always was a finefellow. I never know what reply to make. "

Wilson chuckled and leaned back in his chair, shaking his left footgently. "I expect the fact is that we none of us knew him very well, Mrs. Alexander. Though I will say for myself that I was always confidenthe'd do something extraordinary. "

Mrs. Alexander's shoulders gave a slight movement, suggestive ofimpatience. "Oh, I should think that might have been a safe prediction. Another cup, please?"

"Yes, thank you. But predicting, in the case of boys, is not so easy asyou might imagine, Mrs. Alexander. Some get a bad hurt early and losetheir courage; and some never get a fair wind. Bartley"--he dropped hischin on the back of his long hand and looked at her admiringly--"Bartleycaught the wind early, and it has sung in his sails ever since. "

Mrs. Alexander sat looking into the fire with intent preoccupation, andWilson studied her half-averted face. He liked the suggestion of stormypossibilities in the proud curve of her lip and nostril. Without that, he reflected, she would be too cold. 

"I should like to know what he was really like when he was a boy. Idon't believe he remembers, " she said suddenly. "Won't you smoke, Mr. Wilson?"

Wilson lit a cigarette. "No, I don't suppose he does. He was neverintrospective. He was simply the most tremendous response to stimuli Ihave ever known. We didn't know exactly what to do with him. "

A servant came in and noiselessly removed the tea-tray. Mrs. Alexanderscreened her face from the firelight, which was beginning to throwwavering bright spots on her dress and hair as the dusk deepened. 

"Of course, " she said, "I now and again hear stories about things thathappened when he was in college. "

"But that isn't what you want. " Wilson wrinkled his brows and looked ather with the smiling familiarity that had come about so quickly. "Whatyou want is a picture of him, standing back there at the other end oftwenty years. You want to look down through my memory. "

She dropped her hands in her lap. "Yes, yes; that's exactly what Iwant. "

At this moment they heard the front door shut with a jar, and Wilsonlaughed as Mrs. Alexander rose quickly. "There he is. Away withperspective! No past, no future for Bartley; just the fiery moment. Theonly moment that ever was or will be in the world!"

The door from the hall opened, a voice called "Winifred?" hurriedly, and a big man came through the drawing-room with a quick, heavy tread, bringing with him a smell of cigar smoke and chill out-of-doors air. When Alexander reached the library door, he switched on the lightsand stood six feet and more in the archway, glowing with strengthand cordiality and rugged, blond good looks. There were otherbridge-builders in the world, certainly, but it was always Alexander'spicture that the Sunday Supplement men wanted, because he looked as atamer of rivers ought to look. Under his tumbled sandy hair his headseemed as hard and powerful as a catapult, and his shoulders lookedstrong enough in themselves to support a span of any one of his tengreat bridges that cut the air above as many rivers. 

After dinner Alexander took Wilson up to his study. It was a large roomover the library, and looked out upon the black river and the row ofwhite lights along the Cambridge Embankment. The room was not at allwhat one might expect of an engineer's study. Wilson felt at oncethe harmony of beautiful things that have lived long together withoutobtrusions of ugliness or change. It was none of Alexander's doing, ofcourse; those warm consonances of color had been blending and mellowingbefore he was born. But the wonder was that he was not out of placethere, --that it all seemed to glow like the inevitable background forhis vigor and vehemence. He sat before the fire, his shoulders deep inthe cushions of his chair, his powerful head upright, his hair rumpledabove his broad forehead. He sat heavily, a cigar in his large, smoothhand, a flush of after-dinner color in his face, which wind and sun andexposure to all sorts of weather had left fair and clear-skinned. 

"You are off for England on Saturday, Bartley, Mrs. Alexander tells me. "

"Yes, for a few weeks only. There's a meeting of British engineers, andI'm doing another bridge in Canada, you know. "

"Oh, every one knows about that. And it was in Canada that you met yourwife, wasn't it?"

"Yes, at Allway. She was visiting her great-aunt there. A most remarkableold lady. I was working with MacKeller then, an old Scotch engineer whohad picked me up in London and taken me back to Quebec with him. He hadthe contract for the Allway Bridge, but before he began work on it hefound out that he was going to die, and he advised the committee to turnthe job over to me. Otherwise I'd never have got anything good so early. MacKeller was an old friend of Mrs. Pemberton, Winifred's aunt. He hadmentioned me to her, so when I went to Allway she asked me to come tosee her. She was a wonderful old lady. "

"Like her niece?" Wilson queried. 

Bartley laughed. "She had been very handsome, but not in Winifred's way. When I knew her she was little and fragile, very pink and white, witha splendid head and a face like fine old lace, somehow, --but perhaps Ialways think of that because she wore a lace scarf on her hair. She hadsuch a flavor of life about her. She had known Gordon and Livingstoneand Beaconsfield when she was young, --every one. She was the first womanof that sort I'd ever known. You know how it is in the West, --old peopleare poked out of the way. Aunt Eleanor fascinated me as few young womenhave ever done. I used to go up from the works to have tea with her, andsit talking to her for hours. It was very stimulating, for she couldn'ttolerate stupidity. "

"It must have been then that your luck began, Bartley, " said Wilson, flicking his cigar ash with his long finger. "It's curious, watchingboys, " he went on reflectively. "I'm sure I did you justice in thematter of ability. Yet I always used to feel that there was a weak spotwhere some day strain would tell. Even after you began to climb, I stooddown in the crowd and watched you with--well, not with confidence. Themore dazzling the front you presented, the higher your facade rose, themore I expected to see a big crack zigzagging from top to bottom, "--heindicated its course in the air with his forefinger, --"then a crash andclouds of dust. It was curious. I had such a clear picture of it. Andanother curious thing, Bartley, " Wilson spoke with deliberateness andsettled deeper into his chair, "is that I don't feel it any longer. I amsure of you. "

Alexander laughed. "Nonsense! It's not I you feel sure of; it'sWinifred. People often make that mistake. "

"No, I'm serious, Alexander. You've changed. You have decided to leavesome birds in the bushes. You used to want them all. "

Alexander's chair creaked. "I still want a good many, " he said rathergloomily. "After all, life doesn't offer a man much. You work like thedevil and think you're getting on, and suddenly you discover that you'veonly been getting yourself tied up. A million details drink you dry. Your life keeps going for things you don't want, and all the whileyou are being built alive into a social structure you don't care a rapabout. I sometimes wonder what sort of chap I'd have been if I hadn'tbeen this sort; I want to go and live out his potentialities, too. Ihaven't forgotten that there are birds in the bushes. "

Bartley stopped and sat frowning into the fire, his shoulders thrustforward as if he were about to spring at something. Wilson watched him, wondering. His old pupil always stimulated him at first, and then vastlywearied him. The machinery was always pounding away in this man, andWilson preferred companions of a more reflective habit of mind. He couldnot help feeling that there were unreasoning and unreasonable activitiesgoing on in Alexander all the while; that even after dinner, when mostmen achieve a decent impersonality, Bartley had merely closed the doorof the engine-room and come up for an airing. The machinery itself wasstill pounding on. 

Bartley's abstraction and Wilson's reflections were cut short by arustle at the door, and almost before they could rise Mrs. Alexander wasstanding by the hearth. Alexander brought a chair for her, but she shookher head. 

"No, dear, thank you. I only came in to see whether you and ProfessorWilson were quite comfortable. I am going down to the music-room. "

"Why not practice here? Wilson and I are growing very dull. We are tiredof talk. "

"Yes, I beg you, Mrs. Alexander, " Wilson began, but he got no further. 

"Why, certainly, if you won't find me too noisy. I am working on theSchumann `Carnival, ' and, though I don't practice a great many hours, I am very methodical, " Mrs. Alexander explained, as she crossed to anupright piano that stood at the back of the room, near the windows. 

Wilson followed, and, having seen her seated, dropped into a chairbehind her. She played brilliantly and with great musical feeling. Wilson could not imagine her permitting herself to do anything badly, but he was surprised at the cleanness of her execution. He wondered howa woman with so many duties had managed to keep herself up to a standardreally professional. It must take a great deal of time, certainly, andBartley must take a great deal of time. Wilson reflected that he hadnever before known a woman who had been able, for any considerablewhile, to support both a personal and an intellectual passion. Sittingbehind her, he watched her with perplexed admiration, shading his eyeswith his hand. In her dinner dress she looked even younger than instreet clothes, and, for all her composure and self-sufficiency, sheseemed to him strangely alert and vibrating, as if in her, too, therewere something never altogether at rest. He felt that he knew prettymuch what she demanded in people and what she demanded from life, and hewondered how she squared Bartley. After ten years she must know him;and however one took him, however much one admired him, one had to admitthat he simply wouldn't square. He was a natural force, certainly, butbeyond that, Wilson felt, he was not anything very really or for verylong at a time. 

Wilson glanced toward the fire, where Bartley's profile was stillwreathed in cigar smoke that curled up more and more slowly. Hisshoulders were sunk deep in the cushions and one hand hung large andpassive over the arm of his chair. He had slipped on a purple velvetsmoking-coat. His wife, Wilson surmised, had chosen it. She was clearlyvery proud of his good looks and his fine color. But, with the glow ofan immediate interest gone out of it, the engineer's face looked tired, even a little haggard. The three lines in his forehead, directly abovethe nose, deepened as he sat thinking, and his powerful head droopedforward heavily. Although Alexander was only forty-three, Wilson thoughtthat beneath his vigorous color he detected the dulling weariness ofon-coming middle age. 

The next afternoon, at the hour when the river was beginning toredden under the declining sun, Wilson again found himself facing Mrs. Alexander at the tea-table in the library. 

"Well, " he remarked, when he was bidden to give an account of himself, "there was a long morning with the psychologists, luncheon with Bartleyat his club, more psychologists, and here I am. I've looked forward tothis hour all day. "

Mrs. Alexander smiled at him across the vapor from the kettle. "And doyou remember where we stopped yesterday?"

"Perfectly. I was going to show you a picture. But I doubt whether Ihave color enough in me. Bartley makes me feel a faded monochrome. Youcan't get at the young Bartley except by means of color. " Wilson pausedand deliberated. Suddenly he broke out: "He wasn't a remarkable student, you know, though he was always strong in higher mathematics. His workin my own department was quite ordinary. It was as a powerfully equippednature that I found him interesting. That is the most interesting thinga teacher can find. It has the fascination of a scientific discovery. Wecome across other pleasing and endearing qualities so much oftener thanwe find force. "

"And, after all, " said Mrs. Alexander, "that is the thing we all liveupon. It is the thing that takes us forward. "

Wilson thought she spoke a little wistfully. "Exactly, " he assentedwarmly. "It builds the bridges into the future, over which the feet ofevery one of us will go. "

"How interested I am to hear you put it in that way. The bridges intothe future--I often say that to myself. Bartley's bridges always seem tome like that. Have you ever seen his first suspension bridge in Canada, the one he was doing when I first knew him? I hope you will see itsometime. We were married as soon as it was finished, and you will laughwhen I tell you that it always has a rather bridal look to me. It isover the wildest river, with mists and clouds always battling about it, and it is as delicate as a cobweb hanging in the sky. It really wasa bridge into the future. You have only to look at it to feel that itmeant the beginning of a great career. But I have a photograph of ithere. " She drew a portfolio from behind a bookcase. "And there, you see, on the hill, is my aunt's house. "

Wilson took up the photograph. "Bartley was telling me something aboutyour aunt last night. She must have been a delightful person. "

Winifred laughed. "The bridge, you see, was just at the foot of thehill, and the noise of the engines annoyed her very much at first. Butafter she met Bartley she pretended to like it, and said it was a goodthing to be reminded that there were things going on in the world. Sheloved life, and Bartley brought a great deal of it in to her whenhe came to the house. Aunt Eleanor was very worldly in a frank, Early-Victorian manner. She liked men of action, and disliked youngmen who were careful of themselves and who, as she put it, were alwaystrimming their wick as if they were afraid of their oil's giving out. MacKeller, Bartley's first chief, was an old friend of my aunt, andhe told her that Bartley was a wild, ill-governed youth, which reallypleased her very much. I remember we were sitting alone in the duskafter Bartley had been there for the first time. I knew that AuntEleanor had found him much to her taste, but she hadn't said anything. Presently she came out, with a chuckle: `MacKeller found him sowingwild oats in London, I believe. I hope he didn't stop him too soon. Lifecoquets with dashing fellows. The coming men are always like that. Wemust have him to dinner, my dear. ' And we did. She grew much fonderof Bartley than she was of me. I had been studying in Vienna, and shethought that absurd. She was interested in the army and in politics, andshe had a great contempt for music and art and philosophy. She used todeclare that the Prince Consort had brought all that stuff over out ofGermany. She always sniffed when Bartley asked me to play for him. Sheconsidered that a newfangled way of making a match of it. "

When Alexander came in a few moments later, he found Wilson and his wifestill confronting the photograph. "Oh, let us get that out of the way, "he said, laughing. "Winifred, Thomas can bring my trunk down. I'vedecided to go over to New York to-morrow night and take a fast boat. Ishall save two days. "

CHAPTER II

On the night of his arrival in London, Alexander went immediately to thehotel on the Embankment at which he always stopped, and in the lobby hewas accosted by an old acquaintance, Maurice Mainhall, who fell upon himwith effusive cordiality and indicated a willingness to dine with him. Bartley never dined alone if he could help it, and Mainhall was a goodgossip who always knew what had been going on in town; especially, heknew everything that was not printed in the newspapers. The nephew ofone of the standard Victorian novelists, Mainhall bobbed about among thevarious literary cliques of London and its outlying suburbs, careful tolose touch with none of them. He had written a number of books himself;among them a "History of Dancing, " a "History of Costume, " a "Key toShakespeare's Sonnets, " a study of "The Poetry of Ernest Dowson, " etc. Although Mainhall's enthusiasm was often tiresome, and although he wasoften unable to distinguish between facts and vivid figments of hisimagination, his imperturbable good nature overcame even the people whomhe bored most, so that they ended by becoming, in a reluctant manner, his friends. In appearance, Mainhall was astonishingly like theconventional stage-Englishman of American drama: tall and thin, withhigh, hitching shoulders and a small head glistening with closelybrushed yellow hair. He spoke with an extreme Oxford accent, and when hewas talking well, his face sometimes wore the rapt expression of a veryemotional man listening to music. Mainhall liked Alexander because hewas an engineer. He had preconceived ideas about everything, and hisidea about Americans was that they should be engineers or mechanics. Hehated them when they presumed to be anything else. 

While they sat at dinner Mainhall acquainted Bartley with the fortunesof his old friends in London, and as they left the table he proposedthat they should go to see Hugh MacConnell's new comedy, "Bog Lights. "

"It's really quite the best thing MacConnell's done, " he explained asthey got into a hansom. "It's tremendously well put on, too. FlorenceMerrill and Cyril Henderson. But Hilda Burgoyne's the hit of the piece. Hugh's written a delightful part for her, and she's quite inexpressible. It's been on only two weeks, and I've been half a dozen times already. I happen to have MacConnell's box for tonight or there'd be no chance ofour getting places. There's everything in seeing Hilda while she's freshin a part. She's apt to grow a bit stale after a time. The ones who haveany imagination do. "

"Hilda Burgoyne!" Alexander exclaimed mildly. "Why, I haven't heard ofher for--years. "

Mainhall laughed. "Then you can't have heard much at all, my dearAlexander. It's only lately, since MacConnell and his set have got holdof her, that she's come up. Myself, I always knew she had it in her. Ifwe had one real critic in London--but what can one expect? Do you know, Alexander, "--Mainhall looked with perplexity up into the top of thehansom and rubbed his pink cheek with his gloved finger, --"do you know, I sometimes think of taking to criticism seriously myself. In a way, itwould be a sacrifice; but, dear me, we do need some one. "

Just then they drove up to the Duke of York's, so Alexander did notcommit himself, but followed Mainhall into the theatre. When theyentered the stage-box on the left the first act was well under way, thescene being the interior of a cabin in the south of Ireland. As they satdown, a burst of applause drew Alexander's attention to the stage. MissBurgoyne and her donkey were thrusting their heads in at the half door. "After all, " he reflected, "there's small probability of her recognizingme. She doubtless hasn't thought of me for years. " He felt theenthusiasm of the house at once, and in a few moments he was caught upby the current of MacConnell's irresistible comedy. The audiencehad come forewarned, evidently, and whenever the ragged slip of adonkey-girl ran upon the stage there was a deep murmur of approbation, every one smiled and glowed, and Mainhall hitched his heavy chair alittle nearer the brass railing. 

"You see, " he murmured in Alexander's ear, as the curtain fell onthe first act, "one almost never sees a part like that done withoutsmartness or mawkishness. Of course, Hilda is Irish, --the Burgoynes havebeen stage people for generations, --and she has the Irish voice. It'sdelightful to hear it in a London theatre. That laugh, now, when shedoubles over at the hips--who ever heard it out of Galway? She savesher hand, too. She's at her best in the second act. She's reallyMacConnell's poetic motif, you see; makes the whole thing a fairy tale. "

The second act opened before Philly Doyle's underground still, withPeggy and her battered donkey come in to smuggle a load of potheenacross the bog, and to bring Philly word of what was doing in the worldwithout, and of what was happening along the roadsides and ditches withthe first gleam of fine weather. Alexander, annoyed by Mainhall's sighsand exclamations, watched her with keen, half-skeptical interest. AsMainhall had said, she was the second act; the plot and feeling alikedepended upon her lightness of foot, her lightness of touch, upon theshrewdness and deft fancifulness that played alternately, and sometimestogether, in her mirthful brown eyes. When she began to dance, by way ofshowing the gossoons what she had seen in the fairy rings at night, thehouse broke into a prolonged uproar. After her dance she withdrew fromthe dialogue and retreated to the ditch wall back of Philly's burrow, where she sat singing "The Rising of the Moon" and making a wreath ofprimroses for her donkey. 

When the act was over Alexander and Mainhall strolled out into thecorridor. They met a good many acquaintances; Mainhall, indeed, knewalmost every one, and he babbled on incontinently, screwing his smallhead about over his high collar. Presently he hailed a tall, beardedman, grim-browed and rather battered-looking, who had his opera cloakon his arm and his hat in his hand, and who seemed to be on the point ofleaving the theatre. 

"MacConnell, let me introduce Mr. Bartley Alexander. I say! It's goingfamously to-night, Mac. And what an audience! You'll never do anythinglike this again, mark me. A man writes to the top of his bent onlyonce. "

The playwright gave Mainhall a curious look out of his deep-set fadedeyes and made a wry face. "And have I done anything so fool as that, now?" he asked. 

"That's what I was saying, " Mainhall lounged a little nearer and droppedinto a tone even more conspicuously confidential. "And you'll neverbring Hilda out like this again. Dear me, Mac, the girl couldn'tpossibly be better, you know. "

MacConnell grunted. "She'll do well enough if she keeps her pace anddoesn't go off on us in the middle of the season, as she's more thanlike to do. "

He nodded curtly and made for the door, dodging acquaintances as hewent. 

"Poor old Hugh, " Mainhall murmured. "He's hit terribly hard. He's beenwanting to marry Hilda these three years and more. She doesn't take upwith anybody, you know. Irene Burgoyne, one of her family, told me inconfidence that there was a romance somewhere back in the beginning. Oneof your countrymen, Alexander, by the way; an American student whom shemet in Paris, I believe. I dare say it's quite true that there's neverbeen any one else. " Mainhall vouched for her constancy with a loftinessthat made Alexander smile, even while a kind of rapid excitement wastingling through him. Blinking up at the lights, Mainhall added inhis luxurious, worldly way: "She's an elegant little person, and quitecapable of an extravagant bit of sentiment like that. Here comes SirHarry Towne. He's another who's awfully keen about her. Let me introduceyou. Sir Harry Towne, Mr. Bartley Alexander, the American engineer. "

Sir Harry Towne bowed and said that he had met Mr. Alexander and hiswife in Tokyo. 

Mainhall cut in impatiently. 

"I say, Sir Harry, the little girl's going famously to-night, isn'tshe?"

Sir Harry wrinkled his brows judiciously. "Do you know, I thought thedance a bit conscious to-night, for the first time. The fact is, she'sfeeling rather seedy, poor child. Westmere and I were back after thefirst act, and we thought she seemed quite uncertain of herself. Alittle attack of nerves, possibly. "

He bowed as the warning bell rang, and Mainhall whispered: "You knowLord Westmere, of course, --the stooped man with the long gray mustache, talking to Lady Dowle. Lady Westmere is very fond of Hilda. "

When they reached their box the house was darkened and the orchestrawas playing "The Cloak of Old Gaul. " In a moment Peggy was on the stageagain, and Alexander applauded vigorously with the rest. He even leanedforward over the rail a little. For some reason he felt pleased andflattered by the enthusiasm of the audience. In the half-light he lookedabout at the stalls and boxes and smiled a little consciously, recallingwith amusement Sir Harry's judicial frown. He was beginning to feel akeen interest in the slender, barefoot donkey-girl who slipped in andout of the play, singing, like some one winding through a hilly field. He leaned forward and beamed felicitations as warmly as Mainhall himselfwhen, at the end of the play, she came again and again before thecurtain, panting a little and flushed, her eyes dancing and her eager, nervous little mouth tremulous with excitement. 

When Alexander returned to his hotel--he shook Mainhall at the door ofthe theatre--he had some supper brought up to his room, and it was latebefore he went to bed. He had not thought of Hilda Burgoyne for years;indeed, he had almost forgotten her. He had last written to her fromCanada, after he first met Winifred, telling her that everything waschanged with him--that he had met a woman whom he would marry if hecould; if he could not, then all the more was everything changed forhim. Hilda had never replied to his letter. He felt guilty and unhappyabout her for a time, but after Winifred promised to marry him he reallyforgot Hilda altogether. When he wrote her that everything was changedfor him, he was telling the truth. After he met Winifred Pemberton heseemed to himself like a different man. One night when he and Winifredwere sitting together on the bridge, he told her that things hadhappened while he was studying abroad that he was sorry for, --one thingin particular, --and he asked her whether she thought she ought to knowabout them. She considered a moment and then said "No, I think not, though I am glad you ask me. You see, one can't be jealous about thingsin general; but about particular, definite, personal things, "--hereshe had thrown her hands up to his shoulders with a quick, impulsivegesture--"oh, about those I should be very jealous. I should torturemyself--I couldn't help it. " After that it was easy to forget, actuallyto forget. He wondered to-night, as he poured his wine, how many timeshe had thought of Hilda in the last ten years. He had been in Londonmore or less, but he had never happened to hear of her. "All the same, "he lifted his glass, "here's to you, little Hilda. You've made thingscome your way, and I never thought you'd do it. 

"Of course, " he reflected, "she always had that combination of somethinghomely and sensible, and something utterly wild and daft. But I neverthought she'd do anything. She hadn't much ambition then, and she wastoo fond of trifles. She must care about the theatre a great deal morethan she used to. Perhaps she has me to thank for something, afterall. Sometimes a little jolt like that does one good. She was a daft, generous little thing. I'm glad she's held her own since. After all, we were awfully young. It was youth and poverty and proximity, andeverything was young and kindly. I shouldn't wonder if she could laughabout it with me now. I shouldn't wonder-- But they've probably spoiledher, so that she'd be tiresome if one met her again. "

Bartley smiled and yawned and went to bed. 

CHAPTER III

The next evening Alexander dined alone at a club, and at about nineo'clock he dropped in at the Duke of York's. The house was sold outand he stood through the second act. When he returned to his hotel heexamined the new directory, and found Miss Burgoyne's address stillgiven as off Bedford Square, though at a new number. He remembered that, in so far as she had been brought up at all, she had been brought up inBloomsbury. Her father and mother played in the provinces most of theyear, and she was left a great deal in the care of an old aunt who wascrippled by rheumatism and who had had to leave the stage altogether. Inthe days when Alexander knew her, Hilda always managed to have a lodgingof some sort about Bedford Square, because she clung tenaciously to suchscraps and shreds of memories as were connected with it. The mummyroom of the British Museum had been one of the chief delights of herchildhood. That forbidding pile was the goal of her truant fancy, andshe was sometimes taken there for a treat, as other children are takento the theatre. It was long since Alexander had thought of any ofthese things, but now they came back to him quite fresh, and had asignificance they did not have when they were first told him in hisrestless twenties. So she was still in the old neighborhood, nearBedford Square. The new number probably meant increased prosperity. Hehoped so. He would like to know that she was snugly settled. He lookedat his watch. It was a quarter past ten; she would not be home for agood two hours yet, and he might as well walk over and have a look atthe place. He remembered the shortest way. 

It was a warm, smoky evening, and there was a grimy moon. He wentthrough Covent Garden to Oxford Street, and as he turned into MuseumStreet he walked more slowly, smiling at his own nervousness as heapproached the sullen gray mass at the end. He had not been inside theMuseum, actually, since he and Hilda used to meet there; sometimesto set out for gay adventures at Twickenham or Richmond, sometimes tolinger about the place for a while and to ponder by Lord Elgin's marblesupon the lastingness of some things, or, in the mummy room, upon theawful brevity of others. Since then Bartley had always thought of theBritish Museum as the ultimate repository of mortality, where all thedead things in the world were assembled to make one's hour of youththe more precious. One trembled lest before he got out it might somehowescape him, lest he might drop the glass from over-eagerness and see itshivered on the stone floor at his feet. How one hid his youth under hiscoat and hugged it! And how good it was to turn one's back upon all thatvaulted cold, to take Hilda's arm and hurry out of the great door anddown the steps into the sunlight among the pigeons--to know thatthe warm and vital thing within him was still there and had not beensnatched away to flush Caesar's lean cheek or to feed the veins of somebearded Assyrian king. They in their day had carried the flaming liquor, but to-day was his! So the song used to run in his head those summermornings a dozen years ago. Alexander walked by the place very quietly, as if he were afraid of waking some one. 

He crossed Bedford Square and found the number he was looking for. Thehouse, a comfortable, well-kept place enough, was dark except for thefour front windows on the second floor, where a low, even light wasburning behind the white muslin sash curtains. Outside there were windowboxes, painted white and full of flowers. Bartley was making a thirdround of the Square when he heard the far-flung hoof-beats of ahansom-cab horse, driven rapidly. He looked at his watch, and wasastonished to find that it was a few minutes after twelve. He turned andwalked back along the iron railing as the cab came up to Hilda's numberand stopped. The hansom must have been one that she employed regularly, for she did not stop to pay the driver. She stepped out quickly andlightly. He heard her cheerful "Good-night, cabby, " as she ran up thesteps and opened the door with a latchkey. In a few moments the lightsflared up brightly behind the white curtains, and as he walked awayhe heard a window raised. But he had gone too far to look up withoutturning round. He went back to his hotel, feeling that he had had a goodevening, and he slept well. 

For the next few days Alexander was very busy. He took a desk in theoffice of a Scotch engineering firm on Henrietta Street, and was at workalmost constantly. He avoided the clubs and usually dined alone at hishotel. One afternoon, after he had tea, he started for a walk down theEmbankment toward Westminster, intending to end his stroll at BedfordSquare and to ask whether Miss Burgoyne would let him take her to thetheatre. But he did not go so far. When he reached the Abbey, he turnedback and crossed Westminster Bridge and sat down to watch the trails ofsmoke behind the Houses of Parliament catch fire with the sunset. Theslender towers were washed by a rain of golden light and licked bylittle flickering flames; Somerset House and the bleached gray pinnaclesabout Whitehall were floated in a luminous haze. The yellow light pouredthrough the trees and the leaves seemed to burn with soft fires. Therewas a smell of acacias in the air everywhere, and the laburnums weredripping gold over the walls of the gardens. It was a sweet, lonely kindof summer evening. Remembering Hilda as she used to be, was doubtlessmore satisfactory than seeing her as she must be now--and, after all, Alexander asked himself, what was it but his own young years that he wasremembering?

He crossed back to Westminster, went up to the Temple, and sat down tosmoke in the Middle Temple gardens, listening to the thin voice of thefountain and smelling the spice of the sycamores that came out heavilyin the damp evening air. He thought, as he sat there, about a great manythings: about his own youth and Hilda's; above all, he thought of howglorious it had been, and how quickly it had passed; and, when it hadpassed, how little worth while anything was. None of the things he hadgained in the least compensated. In the last six years his reputationhad become, as the saying is, popular. Four years ago he had been calledto Japan to deliver, at the Emperor's request, a course of lecturesat the Imperial University, and had instituted reforms throughout theislands, not only in the practice of bridge-building but in drainage androad-making. On his return he had undertaken the bridge at Moorlock, in Canada, the most important piece of bridge-building going on inthe world, --a test, indeed, of how far the latest practice in bridgestructure could be carried. It was a spectacular undertaking by reasonof its very size, and Bartley realized that, whatever else he might do, he would probably always be known as the engineer who designed the greatMoorlock Bridge, the longest cantilever in existence. Yet it was to himthe least satisfactory thing he had ever done. He was cramped in everyway by a niggardly commission, and was using lighter structural materialthan he thought proper. He had vexations enough, too, with his work athome. He had several bridges under way in the United States, and theywere always being held up by strikes and delays resulting from a generalindustrial unrest. 

Though Alexander often told himself he had never put more into his workthan he had done in the last few years, he had to admit that he hadnever got so little out of it. He was paying for success, too, in thedemands made on his time by boards of civic enterprise and committeesof public welfare. The obligations imposed by his wife's fortuneand position were sometimes distracting to a man who followed hisprofession, and he was expected to be interested in a great many worthyendeavors on her account as well as on his own. His existence wasbecoming a network of great and little details. He had expected thatsuccess would bring him freedom and power; but it had brought only powerthat was in itself another kind of restraint. He had always meant tokeep his personal liberty at all costs, as old MacKeller, his firstchief, had done, and not, like so many American engineers, to become apart of a professional movement, a cautious board member, a Nestor depontibus. He happened to be engaged in work of public utility, but hewas not willing to become what is called a public man. He found himselfliving exactly the kind of life he had determined to escape. What, heasked himself, did he want with these genial honors and substantialcomforts? Hardships and difficulties he had carried lightly; overworkhad not exhausted him; but this dead calm of middle life whichconfronted him, --of that he was afraid. He was not ready for it. It waslike being buried alive. In his youth he would not have believed such athing possible. The one thing he had really wanted all his life was tobe free; and there was still something unconquered in him, somethingbesides the strong work-horse that his profession had made of him. Hefelt rich to-night in the possession of that unstultified survival;in the light of his experience, it was more precious than honors orachievement. In all those busy, successful years there had been nothingso good as this hour of wild light-heartedness. This feeling was theonly happiness that was real to him, and such hours were the only onesin which he could feel his own continuous identity--feel the boy he hadbeen in the rough days of the old West, feel the youth who had workedhis way across the ocean on a cattle-ship and gone to study in Pariswithout a dollar in his pocket. The man who sat in his offices in Bostonwas only a powerful machine. Under the activities of that machine theperson who, in such moments as this, he felt to be himself, was fadingand dying. He remembered how, when he was a little boy and his fathercalled him in the morning, he used to leap from his bed into the fullconsciousness of himself. That consciousness was Life itself. Whatevertook its place, action, reflection, the power of concentrated thought, were only functions of a mechanism useful to society; things that couldbe bought in the market. There was only one thing that had an absolutevalue for each individual, and it was just that original impulse, thatinternal heat, that feeling of one's self in one's own breast. 

When Alexander walked back to his hotel, the red and green lights wereblinking along the docks on the farther shore, and the soft white starswere shining in the wide sky above the river. 

The next night, and the next, Alexander repeated this same foolishperformance. It was always Miss Burgoyne whom he started out to find, and he got no farther than the Temple gardens and the Embankment. Itwas a pleasant kind of loneliness. To a man who was so little givento reflection, whose dreams always took the form of definite ideas, reaching into the future, there was a seductive excitement in renewingold experiences in imagination. He started out upon these walks halfguiltily, with a curious longing and expectancy which were whollygratified by solitude. Solitude, but not solitariness; for he walkedshoulder to shoulder with a shadowy companion--not little HildaBurgoyne, by any means, but some one vastly dearer to him than she hadever been--his own young self, the youth who had waited for him upon thesteps of the British Museum that night, and who, though he had tried topass so quietly, had known him and come down and linked an arm in his. 

It was not until long afterward that Alexander learned that for him thisyouth was the most dangerous of companions. 

One Sunday evening, at Lady Walford's, Alexander did at last meet HildaBurgoyne. Mainhall had told him that she would probably be there. Helooked about for her rather nervously, and finally found her at thefarther end of the large drawing-room, the centre of a circle of men, young and old. She was apparently telling them a story. They wereall laughing and bending toward her. When she saw Alexander, she rosequickly and put out her hand. The other men drew back a little to lethim approach. 

"Mr. Alexander! I am delighted. Have you been in London long?"

Bartley bowed, somewhat laboriously, over her hand. "Long enough to haveseen you more than once. How fine it all is!"

She laughed as if she were pleased. "I'm glad you think so. I like it. Won't you join us here?"

"Miss Burgoyne was just telling us about a donkey-boy she had in Galwaylast summer, " Sir Harry Towne explained as the circle closed up again. Lord Westmere stroked his long white mustache with his bloodless handand looked at Alexander blankly. Hilda was a good story-teller. She wassitting on the edge of her chair, as if she had alighted there for amoment only. Her primrose satin gown seemed like a soft sheath for herslender, supple figure, and its delicate color suited her white Irishskin and brown hair. Whatever she wore, people felt the charm of heractive, girlish body with its slender hips and quick, eager shoulders. Alexander heard little of the story, but he watched Hilda intently. Shemust certainly, he reflected, be thirty, and he was honestly delightedto see that the years had treated her so indulgently. If her face hadchanged at all, it was in a slight hardening of the mouth--still eagerenough to be very disconcerting at times, he felt--and in an addedair of self-possession and self-reliance. She carried her head, too, alittle more resolutely. 

When the story was finished, Miss Burgoyne turned pointedly toAlexander, and the other men drifted away. 

"I thought I saw you in MacConnell's box with Mainhall one evening, butI supposed you had left town before this. "

She looked at him frankly and cordially, as if he were indeed merely anold friend whom she was glad to meet again. 

"No, I've been mooning about here. "

Hilda laughed gayly. "Mooning! I see you mooning! You must be thebusiest man in the world. Time and success have done well by you, youknow. You're handsomer than ever and you've gained a grand manner. "

Alexander blushed and bowed. "Time and success have been good friends toboth of us. Aren't you tremendously pleased with yourself?"

She laughed again and shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, so-so. But I want tohear about you. Several years ago I read such a lot in the papers aboutthe wonderful things you did in Japan, and how the Emperor decoratedyou. What was it, Commander of the Order of the Rising Sun? That soundslike `The Mikado. ' And what about your new bridge--in Canada, isn't it, and it's to be the longest one in the world and has some queer name Ican't remember. "

Bartley shook his head and smiled drolly. "Since when have youbeen interested in bridges? Or have you learned to be interested ineverything? And is that a part of success?"

"Why, how absurd! As if I were not always interested!" Hilda exclaimed. 

"Well, I think we won't talk about bridges here, at any rate. " Bartleylooked down at the toe of her yellow slipper which was tapping the rugimpatiently under the hem of her gown. "But I wonder whether you'd thinkme impertinent if I asked you to let me come to see you sometime andtell you about them?"

"Why should I? Ever so many people come on Sunday afternoons. "

"I know. Mainhall offered to take me. But you must know that I've beenin London several times within the last few years, and you might verywell think that just now is a rather inopportune time--"

She cut him short. "Nonsense. One of the pleasantest things aboutsuccess is that it makes people want to look one up, if that's what youmean. I'm like every one else--more agreeable to meet when things aregoing well with me. Don't you suppose it gives me any pleasure to dosomething that people like?"

"Does it? Oh, how fine it all is, your coming on like this! But I didn'twant you to think it was because of that I wanted to see you. " He spokevery seriously and looked down at the floor. 

Hilda studied him in wide-eyed astonishment for a moment, and thenbroke into a low, amused laugh. "My dear Mr. Alexander, you have strangedelicacies. If you please, that is exactly why you wish to see me. Weunderstand that, do we not?"

Bartley looked ruffled and turned the seal ring on his little fingerabout awkwardly. 

Hilda leaned back in her chair, watching him indulgently out of hershrewd eyes. "Come, don't be angry, but don't try to pose for me, or tobe anything but what you are. If you care to come, it's yourself I'llbe glad to see, and you thinking well of yourself. Don't try to wear acloak of humility; it doesn't become you. Stalk in as you are and don'tmake excuses. I'm not accustomed to inquiring into the motives of myguests. That would hardly be safe, even for Lady Walford, in a greathouse like this. "

"Sunday afternoon, then, " said Alexander, as she rose to join herhostess. "How early may I come?"

She gave him her hand and flushed and laughed. He bent over it a littlestiffly. She went away on Lady Walford's arm, and as he stood watchingher yellow train glide down the long floor he looked rather sullen. Hefelt that he had not come out of it very brilliantly. 

CHAPTER IV

On Sunday afternoon Alexander remembered Miss Burgoyne's invitation andcalled at her apartment. He found it a delightful little place and hemet charming people there. Hilda lived alone, attended by a very prettyand competent French servant who answered the door and brought in thetea. Alexander arrived early, and some twenty-odd people dropped induring the course of the afternoon. Hugh MacConnell came with hissister, and stood about, managing his tea-cup awkwardly and watchingevery one out of his deep-set, faded eyes. He seemed to have made aresolute effort at tidiness of attire, and his sister, a robust, floridwoman with a splendid joviality about her, kept eyeing his freshlycreased clothes apprehensively. It was not very long, indeed, before hiscoat hung with a discouraged sag from his gaunt shoulders and his hairand beard were rumpled as if he had been out in a gale. His dryhumor went under a cloud of absent-minded kindliness which, Mainhallexplained, always overtook him here. He was never so witty or so sharphere as elsewhere, and Alexander thought he behaved as if he were anelderly relative come in to a young girl's party. 

The editor of a monthly review came with his wife, and Lady Kildare, the Irish philanthropist, brought her young nephew, Robert Owen, who hadcome up from Oxford, and who was visibly excited and gratified by hisfirst introduction to Miss Burgoyne. Hilda was very nice to him, and hesat on the edge of his chair, flushed with his conversational effortsand moving his chin about nervously over his high collar. Sarah Frost, the novelist, came with her husband, a very genial and placid oldscholar who had become slightly deranged upon the subject of the fourthdimension. On other matters he was perfectly rational and he was easyand pleasing in conversation. He looked very much like Agassiz, andhis wife, in her old-fashioned black silk dress, overskirted andtight-sleeved, reminded Alexander of the early pictures of Mrs. Browning. Hilda seemed particularly fond of this quaint couple, andBartley himself was so pleased with their mild and thoughtful conversethat he took his leave when they did, and walked with them over toOxford Street, where they waited for their 'bus. They asked him to cometo see them in Chelsea, and they spoke very tenderly of Hilda. "She's adear, unworldly little thing, " said the philosopher absently; "more likethe stage people of my young days--folk of simple manners. There aren'tmany such left. American tours have spoiled them, I'm afraid. They haveall grown very smart. Lamb wouldn't care a great deal about many ofthem, I fancy. "

Alexander went back to Bedford Square a second Sunday afternoon. He hada long talk with MacConnell, but he got no word with Hilda alone, andhe left in a discontented state of mind. For the rest of the week he wasnervous and unsettled, and kept rushing his work as if he were preparingfor immediate departure. On Thursday afternoon he cut short a committeemeeting, jumped into a hansom, and drove to Bedford Square. He sent uphis card, but it came back to him with a message scribbled across thefront. 

 So sorry I can't see you. Will you come and dine with me Sunday evening at half-past seven?

 H. B. 

When Bartley arrived at Bedford Square on Sunday evening, Marie, the pretty little French girl, met him at the door and conducted himupstairs. Hilda was writing in her living-room, under the light of atall desk lamp. Bartley recognized the primrose satin gown she had wornthat first evening at Lady Walford's. 

"I'm so pleased that you think me worth that yellow dress, you know, " hesaid, taking her hand and looking her over admiringly from the toes ofher canary slippers to her smoothly parted brown hair. "Yes, it's very, very pretty. Every one at Lady Walford's was looking at it. "

Hilda curtsied. "Is that why you think it pretty? I've no need forfine clothes in Mac's play this time, so I can afford a few duddies formyself. It's owing to that same chance, by the way, that I am able toask you to dinner. I don't need Marie to dress me this season, so shekeeps house for me, and my little Galway girl has gone home for a visit. I should never have asked you if Molly had been here, for I remember youdon't like English cookery. "

Alexander walked about the room, looking at everything. 

"I haven't had a chance yet to tell you what a jolly little place Ithink this is. Where did you get those etchings? They're quite unusual, aren't they?"

"Lady Westmere sent them to me from Rome last Christmas. She is verymuch interested in the American artist who did them. They are allsketches made about the Villa d'Este, you see. He painted that group ofcypresses for the Salon, and it was bought for the Luxembourg. "

Alexander walked over to the bookcases. "It's the air of the whole placehere that I like. You haven't got anything that doesn't belong. Seems tome it looks particularly well to-night. And you have so many flowers. Ilike these little yellow irises. "

"Rooms always look better by lamplight--in London, at least. ThoughMarie is clean--really clean, as the French are. Why do you look at theflowers so critically? Marie got them all fresh in Covent Garden marketyesterday morning. "

"I'm glad, " said Alexander simply. "I can't tell you how glad I am tohave you so pretty and comfortable here, and to hear every one sayingsuch nice things about you. You've got awfully nice friends, " he addedhumbly, picking up a little jade elephant from her desk. "Those fellowsare all very loyal, even Mainhall. They don't talk of any one else asthey do of you. "

Hilda sat down on the couch and said seriously: "I've a neat little sumin the bank, too, now, and I own a mite of a hut in Galway. It's notworth much, but I love it. I've managed to save something every year, and that with helping my three sisters now and then, and tiding poorCousin Mike over bad seasons. He's that gifted, you know, but he willdrink and loses more good engagements than other fellows ever get. AndI've traveled a bit, too. "

Marie opened the door and smilingly announced that dinner was served. 

"My dining-room, " Hilda explained, as she led the way, "is the tiniestplace you have ever seen. "

It was a tiny room, hung all round with French prints, above which ran ashelf full of china. Hilda saw Alexander look up at it. 

"It's not particularly rare, " she said, "but some of it was mymother's. Heaven knows how she managed to keep it whole, through all ourwanderings, or in what baskets and bundles and theatre trunks it hasn'tbeen stowed away. We always had our tea out of those blue cups when Iwas a little girl, sometimes in the queerest lodgings, and sometimes ona trunk at the theatre--queer theatres, for that matter. "

It was a wonderful little dinner. There was watercress soup, and sole, and a delightful omelette stuffed with mushrooms and truffles, and twosmall rare ducklings, and artichokes, and a dry yellow Rhone wine ofwhich Bartley had always been very fond. He drank it appreciatively andremarked that there was still no other he liked so well. 

"I have some champagne for you, too. I don't drink it myself, but I liketo see it behave when it's poured. There is nothing else that looks sojolly. "

"Thank you. But I don't like it so well as this. " Bartley held theyellow wine against the light and squinted into it as he turned theglass slowly about. "You have traveled, you say. Have you been in Parismuch these late years?"

Hilda lowered one of the candle-shades carefully. "Oh, yes, I go over toParis often. There are few changes in the old Quarter. Dear old MadameAnger is dead--but perhaps you don't remember her?"

"Don't I, though! I'm so sorry to hear it. How did her son turn out? Iremember how she saved and scraped for him, and how he always lay abedtill ten o'clock. He was the laziest fellow at the Beaux Arts; andthat's saying a good deal. "

"Well, he is still clever and lazy. They say he is a good architect whenhe will work. He's a big, handsome creature, and he hates Americans asmuch as ever. But Angel--do you remember Angel?"

"Perfectly. Did she ever get back to Brittany and her bains de mer?"

"Ah, no. Poor Angel! She got tired of cooking and scouring the coppersin Madame Anger's little kitchen, so she ran away with a soldier, andthen with another soldier. Too bad! She still lives about the Quarter, and, though there is always a soldat, she has become a blanchisseuse defin. She did my blouses beautifully the last time I was there, and wasso delighted to see me again. I gave her all my old clothes, even my oldhats, though she always wears her Breton headdress. Her hair is stilllike flax, and her blue eyes are just like a baby's, and she has thesame three freckles on her little nose, and talks about going back toher bains de mer. "

Bartley looked at Hilda across the yellow light of the candles and brokeinto a low, happy laugh. "How jolly it was being young, Hilda! Do youremember that first walk we took together in Paris? We walked down tothe Place Saint-Michel to buy some lilacs. Do you remember how sweetthey smelled?"

"Indeed I do. Come, we'll have our coffee in the other room, and you cansmoke. "

Hilda rose quickly, as if she wished to change the drift of their talk, but Bartley found it pleasant to continue it. 

"What a warm, soft spring evening that was, " he went on, as they satdown in the study with the coffee on a little table between them; "andthe sky, over the bridges, was just the color of the lilacs. We walkedon down by the river, didn't we?"

Hilda laughed and looked at him questioningly. He saw a gleam in hereyes that he remembered even better than the episode he was recalling. 

"I think we did, " she answered demurely. "It was on the Quai we metthat woman who was crying so bitterly. I gave her a spray of lilac, I remember, and you gave her a franc. I was frightened at yourprodigality. "

"I expect it was the last franc I had. What a strong brown face she had, and very tragic. She looked at us with such despair and longing, outfrom under her black shawl. What she wanted from us was neither ourflowers nor our francs, but just our youth. I remember it touched meso. I would have given her some of mine off my back, if I could. I hadenough and to spare then, " Bartley mused, and looked thoughtfully at hiscigar. 

They were both remembering what the woman had said when she took themoney: "God give you a happy love!" It was not in the ingratiatingtone of the habitual beggar: it had come out of the depths of the poorcreature's sorrow, vibrating with pity for their youth and despairat the terribleness of human life; it had the anguish of a voice ofprophecy. Until she spoke, Bartley had not realized that he was in love. The strange woman, and her passionate sentence that rang out so sharply, had frightened them both. They went home sadly with the lilacs, backto the Rue Saint-Jacques, walking very slowly, arm in arm. When theyreached the house where Hilda lodged, Bartley went across the court withher, and up the dark old stairs to the third landing; and there he hadkissed her for the first time. He had shut his eyes to give him thecourage, he remembered, and she had trembled so--

Bartley started when Hilda rang the little bell beside her. "Dear me, why did you do that? I had quite forgotten--I was back there. It wasvery jolly, " he murmured lazily, as Marie came in to take away thecoffee. 

Hilda laughed and went over to the piano. "Well, we are neither of ustwenty now, you know. Have I told you about my new play? Mac is writingone; really for me this time. You see, I'm coming on. "

"I've seen nothing else. What kind of a part is it? Shall you wearyellow gowns? I hope so. "

He was looking at her round slender figure, as she stood by the piano, turning over a pile of music, and he felt the energy in every line ofit. 

"No, it isn't a dress-up part. He doesn't seem to fancy me in finefeathers. He says I ought to be minding the pigs at home, and I supposeI ought. But he's given me some good Irish songs. Listen. "

She sat down at the piano and sang. When she finished, Alexander shookhimself out of a reverie. 

"Sing `The Harp That Once, ' Hilda. You used to sing it so well. "

"Nonsense. Of course I can't really sing, except the way my motherand grandmother did before me. Most actresses nowadays learn to singproperly, so I tried a master; but he confused me, just!"

Alexander laughed. "All the same, sing it, Hilda. "

Hilda started up from the stool and moved restlessly toward the window. "It's really too warm in this room to sing. Don't you feel it?"

Alexander went over and opened the window for her. "Aren't you afraidto let the wind low like that on your neck? Can't I get a scarf orsomething?"

"Ask a theatre lady if she's afraid of drafts!" Hilda laughed. "Butperhaps, as I'm so warm--give me your handkerchief. There, just infront. " He slipped the corners carefully under her shoulder-straps. "There, that will do. It looks like a bib. " She pushed his hand awayquickly and stood looking out into the deserted square. "Isn't London atomb on Sunday night?"

Alexander caught the agitation in her voice. He stood a little behindher, and tried to steady himself as he said: "It's soft and misty. Seehow white the stars are. "

For a long time neither Hilda nor Bartley spoke. They stood closetogether, looking out into the wan, watery sky, breathing always morequickly and lightly, and it seemed as if all the clocks in the worldhad stopped. Suddenly he moved the clenched hand he held behind himand dropped it violently at his side. He felt a tremor run through theslender yellow figure in front of him. 

She caught his handkerchief from her throat and thrust it at him withoutturning round. "Here, take it. You must go now, Bartley. Good-night. "

Bartley leaned over her shoulder, without touching her, and whispered inher ear: "You are giving me a chance?"

"Yes. Take it and go. This isn't fair, you know. Good-night. "

Alexander unclenched the two hands at his sides. With one he threw downthe window and with the other--still standing behind her--he drew herback against him. 

She uttered a little cry, threw her arms over her head, and drew hisface down to hers. "Are you going to let me love you a little, Bartley?"she whispered. 

CHAPTER V

It was the afternoon of the day before Christmas. Mrs. Alexander hadbeen driving about all the morning, leaving presents at the houses ofher friends. She lunched alone, and as she rose from the table she spoketo the butler: "Thomas, I am going down to the kitchen now to see Norah. In half an hour you are to bring the greens up from the cellar and putthem in the library. Mr. Alexander will be home at three to hang themhimself. Don't forget the stepladder, and plenty of tacks andstring. You may bring the azaleas upstairs. Take the white one to Mr. Alexander's study. Put the two pink ones in this room, and the red onein the drawing-room. "

A little before three o'clock Mrs. Alexander went into the library tosee that everything was ready. She pulled the window shades high, forthe weather was dark and stormy, and there was little light, even inthe streets. A foot of snow had fallen during the morning, and the widespace over the river was thick with flying flakes that fell and wreathedthe masses of floating ice. Winifred was standing by the window whenshe heard the front door open. She hurried to the hall as Alexander camestamping in, covered with snow. He kissed her joyfully and brushed awaythe snow that fell on her hair. 

"I wish I had asked you to meet me at the office and walk home with me, Winifred. The Common is beautiful. The boys have swept the snow off thepond and are skating furiously. Did the cyclamens come?"

"An hour ago. What splendid ones! But aren't you frightfullyextravagant?"

"Not for Christmas-time. I'll go upstairs and change my coat. I shall bedown in a moment. Tell Thomas to get everything ready. "

When Alexander reappeared, he took his wife's arm and went with her intothe library. "When did the azaleas get here? Thomas has got the whiteone in my room. "

"I told him to put it there. "

"But, I say, it's much the finest of the lot!"

"That's why I had it put there. There is too much color in that room fora red one, you know. "

Bartley began to sort the greens. "It looks very splendid there, but Ifeel piggish to have it. However, we really spend more time there thananywhere else in the house. Will you hand me the holly?"

He climbed up the stepladder, which creaked under his weight, andbegan to twist the tough stems of the holly into the frame-work of thechandelier. 

"I forgot to tell you that I had a letter from Wilson, this morning, explaining his telegram. He is coming on because an old uncle up inVermont has conveniently died and left Wilson a little money--somethinglike ten thousand. He's coming on to settle up the estate. Won't it bejolly to have him?"

"And how fine that he's come into a little money. I can see him postingdown State Street to the steamship offices. He will get a good manytrips out of that ten thousand. What can have detained him? I expectedhim here for luncheon. "

"Those trains from Albany are always late. He'll be along sometime thisafternoon. And now, don't you want to go upstairs and lie down foran hour? You've had a busy morning and I don't want you to be tiredto-night. "

After his wife went upstairs Alexander worked energetically at thegreens for a few moments. Then, as he was cutting off a length ofstring, he sighed suddenly and sat down, staring out of the window atthe snow. The animation died out of his face, but in his eyes there wasa restless light, a look of apprehension and suspense. He kept claspingand unclasping his big hands as if he were trying to realize something. The clock ticked through the minutes of a half-hour and the afternoonoutside began to thicken and darken turbidly. Alexander, since he firstsat down, had not changed his position. He leaned forward, his handsbetween his knees, scarcely breathing, as if he were holding himselfaway from his surroundings, from the room, and from the very chair inwhich he sat, from everything except the wild eddies of snow above theriver on which his eyes were fixed with feverish intentness, as if hewere trying to project himself thither. When at last Lucius Wilson wasannounced, Alexander sprang eagerly to his feet and hurried to meet hisold instructor. 

"Hello, Wilson. What luck! Come into the library. We are to have a lotof people to dinner to-night, and Winifred's lying down. You willexcuse her, won't you? And now what about yourself? Sit down and tell meeverything. "

"I think I'd rather move about, if you don't mind. I've been sitting inthe train for a week, it seems to me. " Wilson stood before the fire withhis hands behind him and looked about the room. "You HAVE been busy. Bartley, if I'd had my choice of all possible places in which to spendChristmas, your house would certainly be the place I'd have chosen. Happy people do a great deal for their friends. A house like thisthrows its warmth out. I felt it distinctly as I was coming throughthe Berkshires. I could scarcely believe that I was to see Mrs. Bartleyagain so soon. "

"Thank you, Wilson. She'll be as glad to see you. Shall we have tea now?I'll ring for Thomas to clear away this litter. Winifred says I alwayswreck the house when I try to do anything. Do you know, I am quitetired. Looks as if I were not used to work, doesn't it?" Alexanderlaughed and dropped into a chair. "You know, I'm sailing the day afterNew Year's. "

"Again? Why, you've been over twice since I was here in the spring, haven't you?"

"Oh, I was in London about ten days in the summer. Went to escape thehot weather more than anything else. I shan't be gone more than a monththis time. Winifred and I have been up in Canada for most of the autumn. That Moorlock Bridge is on my back all the time. I never had so muchtrouble with a job before. " Alexander moved about restlessly and fell topoking the fire. 

"Haven't I seen in the papers that there is some trouble about atidewater bridge of yours in New Jersey?"

"Oh, that doesn't amount to anything. It's held up by a steel strike. Abother, of course, but the sort of thing one is always having to put upwith. But the Moorlock Bridge is a continual anxiety. You see, the truthis, we are having to build pretty well to the strain limit up there. They've crowded me too much on the cost. It's all very well ifeverything goes well, but these estimates have never been used foranything of such length before. However, there's nothing to be done. They hold me to the scale I've used in shorter bridges. The last thing abridge commission cares about is the kind of bridge you build. "

When Bartley had finished dressing for dinner he went into his study, where he found his wife arranging flowers on his writing-table. 

"These pink roses just came from Mrs. Hastings, " she said, smiling, "andI am sure she meant them for you. "

Bartley looked about with an air of satisfaction at the greens and thewreaths in the windows. "Have you a moment, Winifred? I have just nowbeen thinking that this is our twelfth Christmas. Can you realize it?"He went up to the table and took her hands away from the flowers, dryingthem with his pocket handkerchief. "They've been awfully happy ones, allof them, haven't they?" He took her in his arms and bent back, liftingher a little and giving her a long kiss. "You are happy, aren't youWinifred? More than anything else in the world, I want you to be happy. Sometimes, of late, I've thought you looked as if you were troubled. "

"No; it's only when you are troubled and harassed that I feel worried, Bartley. I wish you always seemed as you do to-night. But you don't, always. " She looked earnestly and inquiringly into his eyes. 

Alexander took her two hands from his shoulders and swung them back andforth in his own, laughing his big blond laugh. 

"I'm growing older, my dear; that's what you feel. Now, may I show yousomething? I meant to save them until to-morrow, but I want you towear them to-night. " He took a little leather box out of his pocket andopened it. On the white velvet lay two long pendants of curiously workedgold, set with pearls. Winifred looked from the box to Bartley andexclaimed:--

"Where did you ever find such gold work, Bartley?"

"It's old Flemish. Isn't it fine?"

"They are the most beautiful things, dear. But, you know, I never wearearrings. "

"Yes, yes, I know. But I want you to wear them. I have always wantedyou to. So few women can. There must be a good ear, to begin with, anda nose"--he waved his hand--"above reproach. Most women look silly inthem. They go only with faces like yours--very, very proud, and just alittle hard. "

Winifred laughed as she went over to the mirror and fitted the delicatesprings to the lobes of her ears. "Oh, Bartley, that old foolishnessabout my being hard. It really hurts my feelings. But I must go downnow. People are beginning to come. "

Bartley drew her arm about his neck and went to the door with her. "Nothard to me, Winifred, " he whispered. "Never, never hard to me. "

Left alone, he paced up and down his study. He was at home again, amongall the dear familiar things that spoke to him of so many happy years. His house to-night would be full of charming people, who liked andadmired him. Yet all the time, underneath his pleasure and hopefulnessand satisfaction, he was conscious of the vibration of an unnaturalexcitement. Amid this light and warmth and friendliness, he sometimesstarted and shuddered, as if some one had stepped on his grave. Something had broken loose in him of which he knew nothing exceptthat it was sullen and powerful, and that it wrung and tortured him. Sometimes it came upon him softly, in enervating reveries. Sometimes itbattered him like the cannon rolling in the hold of the vessel. Always, now, it brought with it a sense of quickened life, of stimulatingdanger. To-night it came upon him suddenly, as he was walking the floor, after his wife left him. It seemed impossible; he could not believe it. He glanced entreatingly at the door, as if to call her back. He heardvoices in the hall below, and knew that he must go down. Going over tothe window, he looked out at the lights across the river. How could thishappen here, in his own house, among the things he loved? What was itthat reached in out of the darkness and thrilled him? As he stoodthere he had a feeling that he would never escape. He shut his eyes andpressed his forehead against the cold window glass, breathing in thechill that came through it. "That this, " he groaned, "that this shouldhave happened to ME!"

On New Year's day a thaw set in, and during the night torrents of rainfell. In the morning, the morning of Alexander's departure for England, the river was streaked with fog and the rain drove hard against thewindows of the breakfast-room. Alexander had finished his coffee andwas pacing up and down. His wife sat at the table, watching him. She waspale and unnaturally calm. When Thomas brought the letters, Bartley sankinto his chair and ran them over rapidly. 

"Here's a note from old Wilson. He's safe back at his grind, and says hehad a bully time. `The memory of Mrs. Bartley will make my whole winterfragrant. ' Just like him. He will go on getting measureless satisfactionout of you by his study fire. What a man he is for looking on at life!"Bartley sighed, pushed the letters back impatiently, and went over tothe window. "This is a nasty sort of day to sail. I've a notion to callit off. Next week would be time enough. "

"That would only mean starting twice. It wouldn't really help you out atall, " Mrs. Alexander spoke soothingly. "And you'd come back late for allyour engagements. "

Bartley began jingling some loose coins in his pocket. "I wish thingswould let me rest. I'm tired of work, tired of people, tired of trailingabout. " He looked out at the storm-beaten river. 

Winifred came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. "That'swhat you always say, poor Bartley! At bottom you really like all thesethings. Can't you remember that?"

He put his arm about her. "All the same, life runs smoothly enough withsome people, and with me it's always a messy sort of patchwork. It'slike the song; peace is where I am not. How can you face it all with somuch fortitude?"

She looked at him with that clear gaze which Wilson had so much admired, which he had felt implied such high confidence and fearless pride. "Oh, I faced that long ago, when you were on your first bridge, up at oldAllway. I knew then that your paths were not to be paths of peace, but Idecided that I wanted to follow them. "

Bartley and his wife stood silent for a long time; the fire crackled inthe grate, the rain beat insistently upon the windows, and the sleepyAngora looked up at them curiously. 

Presently Thomas made a discreet sound at the door. "Shall Edward bringdown your trunks, sir?"

"Yes; they are ready. Tell him not to forget the big portfolio on thestudy table. "

Thomas withdrew, closing the door softly. Bartley turned away from hiswife, still holding her hand. "It never gets any easier, Winifred. "

They both started at the sound of the carriage on the pavement outside. Alexander sat down and leaned his head on his hand. His wife bent overhim. "Courage, " she said gayly. Bartley rose and rang the bell. Thomasbrought him his hat and stick and ulster. At the sight of these, thesupercilious Angora moved restlessly, quitted her red cushion bythe fire, and came up, waving her tail in vexation at these ominousindications of change. Alexander stooped to stroke her, and then plungedinto his coat and drew on his gloves. His wife held his stick, smiling. Bartley smiled too, and his eyes cleared. "I'll work like the devil, Winifred, and be home again before you realize I've gone. " He kissed herquickly several times, hurried out of the front door into the rain, andwaved to her from the carriage window as the driver was starting hismelancholy, dripping black horses. Alexander sat with his hands clenchedon his knees. As the carriage turned up the hill, he lifted one hand andbrought it down violently. "This time"--he spoke aloud and through hisset teeth--"this time I'm going to end it!"

On the afternoon of the third day out, Alexander was sitting well to thestern, on the windward side where the chairs were few, his rugs overhim and the collar of his fur-lined coat turned up about his ears. Theweather had so far been dark and raw. For two hours he had beenwatching the low, dirty sky and the beating of the heavy rain uponthe iron-colored sea. There was a long, oily swell that made exerciselaborious. The decks smelled of damp woolens, and the air was so humidthat drops of moisture kept gathering upon his hair and mustache. Heseldom moved except to brush them away. The great open spaces madehim passive and the restlessness of the water quieted him. He intendedduring the voyage to decide upon a course of action, but he held allthis away from him for the present and lay in a blessed grayoblivion. Deep down in him somewhere his resolution was weakening andstrengthening, ebbing and flowing. The thing that perturbed him went onas steadily as his pulse, but he was almost unconscious of it. He wassubmerged in the vast impersonal grayness about him, and at intervalsthe sidelong roll of the boat measured off time like the ticking of aclock. He felt released from everything that troubled and perplexedhim. It was as if he had tricked and outwitted torturing memories, hadactually managed to get on board without them. He thought of nothing atall. If his mind now and again picked a face out of the grayness, it wasLucius Wilson's, or the face of an old schoolmate, forgotten for years;or it was the slim outline of a favorite greyhound he used to huntjack-rabbits with when he was a boy. 

Toward six o'clock the wind rose and tugged at the tarpaulin and broughtthe swell higher. After dinner Alexander came back to the wet deck, piled his damp rugs over him again, and sat smoking, losing himself inthe obliterating blackness and drowsing in the rush of the gale. Beforehe went below a few bright stars were pricked off between heavily movingmasses of cloud. 

The next morning was bright and mild, with a fresh breeze. Alexanderfelt the need of exercise even before he came out of his cabin. When hewent on deck the sky was blue and blinding, with heavy whiffs of whitecloud, smoke-colored at the edges, moving rapidly across it. The waterwas roughish, a cold, clear indigo breaking into whitecaps. Bartleywalked for two hours, and then stretched himself in the sun untillunch-time. 

In the afternoon he wrote a long letter to Winifred. Later, as he walkedthe deck through a splendid golden sunset, his spirits rose continually. It was agreeable to come to himself again after several days of numbnessand torpor. He stayed out until the last tinge of violet had faded fromthe water. There was literally a taste of life on his lips as hesat down to dinner and ordered a bottle of champagne. He was late infinishing his dinner, and drank rather more wine than he had meant to. When he went above, the wind had risen and the deck was almost deserted. As he stepped out of the door a gale lifted his heavy fur coat abouthis shoulders. He fought his way up the deck with keen exhilaration. The moment he stepped, almost out of breath, behind the shelter of thestern, the wind was cut off, and he felt, like a rush of warm air, asense of close and intimate companionship. He started back and tore hiscoat open as if something warm were actually clinging to him beneath it. He hurried up the deck and went into the saloon parlor, full of womenwho had retreated thither from the sharp wind. He threw himself uponthem. He talked delightfully to the older ones and played accompanimentsfor the younger ones until the last sleepy girl had followed her motherbelow. Then he went into the smoking-room. He played bridge until twoo'clock in the morning, and managed to lose a considerable sum of moneywithout really noticing that he was doing so. 

After the break of one fine day the weather was pretty consistentlydull. When the low sky thinned a trifle, the pale white spot of a sundid no more than throw a bluish lustre on the water, giving it the darkbrightness of newly cut lead. Through one after another of those graydays Alexander drowsed and mused, drinking in the grateful moisture. Butthe complete peace of the first part of the voyage was over. Sometimeshe rose suddenly from his chair as if driven out, and paced the deck forhours. People noticed his propensity for walking in rough weather, andwatched him curiously as he did his rounds. From his abstraction and thedetermined set of his jaw, they fancied he must be thinking about hisbridge. Every one had heard of the new cantilever bridge in Canada. 

But Alexander was not thinking about his work. After the fourth nightout, when his will suddenly softened under his hands, he had beencontinually hammering away at himself. More and more often, when hefirst wakened in the morning or when he stepped into a warm place afterbeing chilled on the deck, he felt a sudden painful delight at beingnearer another shore. Sometimes when he was most despondent, when hethought himself worn out with this struggle, in a flash he was freeof it and leaped into an overwhelming consciousness of himself. On theinstant he felt that marvelous return of the impetuousness, the intenseexcitement, the increasing expectancy of youth. 

CHAPTER VI

The last two days of the voyage Bartley found almost intolerable. Thestop at Queenstown, the tedious passage up the Mersey, were things thathe noted dimly through his growing impatience. He had planned to stop inLiverpool; but, instead, he took the boat train for London. 

Emerging at Euston at half-past three o'clock in the afternoon, Alexander had his luggage sent to the Savoy and drove at once to BedfordSquare. When Marie met him at the door, even her strong sense of theproprieties could not restrain her surprise and delight. She blushed andsmiled and fumbled his card in her confusion before she ran upstairs. Alexander paced up and down the hallway, buttoning and unbuttoning hisovercoat, until she returned and took him up to Hilda's living-room. Theroom was empty when he entered. A coal fire was crackling in the grateand the lamps were lit, for it was already beginning to grow darkoutside. Alexander did not sit down. He stood his ground over by thewindows until Hilda came in. She called his name on the threshold, butin her swift flight across the room she felt a change in him and caughtherself up so deftly that he could not tell just when she did it. She merely brushed his cheek with her lips and put a hand lightly andjoyously on either shoulder. "Oh, what a grand thing to happen on araw day! I felt it in my bones when I woke this morning that somethingsplendid was going to turn up. I thought it might be Sister Kate orCousin Mike would be happening along. I never dreamed it would be you, Bartley. But why do you let me chatter on like this? Come over to thefire; you're chilled through. "

She pushed him toward the big chair by the fire, and sat down on a stoolat the opposite side of the hearth, her knees drawn up to her chin, laughing like a happy little girl. 

"When did you come, Bartley, and how did it happen? You haven't spoken aword. "

"I got in about ten minutes ago. I landed at Liverpool this morning andcame down on the boat train. "

Alexander leaned forward and warmed his hands before the blaze. Hildawatched him with perplexity. 

"There's something troubling you, Bartley. What is it?"

Bartley bent lower over the fire. "It's the whole thing that troublesme, Hilda. You and I. "

Hilda took a quick, soft breath. She looked at his heavy shoulders andbig, determined head, thrust forward like a catapult in leash. 

"What about us, Bartley?" she asked in a thin voice. 

He locked and unlocked his hands over the grate and spread his fingersclose to the bluish flame, while the coals crackled and the clock tickedand a street vendor began to call under the window. At last Alexanderbrought out one word:--

"Everything!"

Hilda was pale by this time, and her eyes were wide with fright. Shelooked about desperately from Bartley to the door, then to the windows, and back again to Bartley. She rose uncertainly, touched his hair withher hand, then sank back upon her stool. 

"I'll do anything you wish me to, Bartley, " she said tremulously. "Ican't stand seeing you miserable. "

"I can't live with myself any longer, " he answered roughly. 

He rose and pushed the chair behind him and began to walk miserablyabout the room, seeming to find it too small for him. He pulled up awindow as if the air were heavy. 

Hilda watched him from her corner, trembling and scarcely breathing, dark shadows growing about her eyes. 

"It . . . It hasn't always made you miserable, has it?" Her eyelids felland her lips quivered. 

"Always. But it's worse now. It's unbearable. It tortures me everyminute. "

"But why NOW?" she asked piteously, wringing her hands. 

He ignored her question. "I am not a man who can live two lives, " hewent on feverishly. "Each life spoils the other. I get nothing butmisery out of either. The world is all there, just as it used to be, but I can't get at it any more. There is this deception between me andeverything. "

At that word "deception, " spoken with such self-contempt, the colorflashed back into Hilda's face as suddenly as if she had been struckby a whiplash. She bit her lip and looked down at her hands, which wereclasped tightly in front of her. 

"Could you--could you sit down and talk about it quietly, Bartley, as ifI were a friend, and not some one who had to be defied?"

He dropped back heavily into his chair by the fire. "It was myself I wasdefying, Hilda. I have thought about it until I am worn out. "

He looked at her and his haggard face softened. He put out his handtoward her as he looked away again into the fire. 

She crept across to him, drawing her stool after her. "When did youfirst begin to feel like this, Bartley?"

"After the very first. The first was--sort of in play, wasn't it?"

Hilda's face quivered, but she whispered: "Yes, I think it must havebeen. But why didn't you tell me when you were here in the summer?"

Alexander groaned. "I meant to, but somehow I couldn't. We had only afew days, and your new play was just on, and you were so happy. "

"Yes, I was happy, wasn't I?" She pressed his hand gently in gratitude. "Weren't you happy then, at all?"

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if to draw in again thefragrance of those days. Something of their troubling sweetness cameback to Alexander, too. He moved uneasily and his chair creaked. 

"Yes, I was then. You know. But afterward. . . "

"Yes, yes, " she hurried, pulling her hand gently away from him. Presently it stole back to his coat sleeve. "Please tell me one thing, Bartley. At least, tell me that you believe I thought I was making youhappy. "

His hand shut down quickly over the questioning fingers on his sleeves. "Yes, Hilda; I know that, " he said simply. 

She leaned her head against his arm and spoke softly:--

"You see, my mistake was in wanting you to have everything. I wanted youto eat all the cakes and have them, too. I somehow believed that I couldtake all the bad consequences for you. I wanted you always to be happyand handsome and successful--to have all the things that a great manought to have, and, once in a way, the careless holidays that great menare not permitted. "

Bartley gave a bitter little laugh, and Hilda looked up and read in thedeepening lines of his face that youth and Bartley would not much longerstruggle together. 

"I understand, Bartley. I was wrong. But I didn't know. You've only totell me now. What must I do that I've not done, or what must I not do?"She listened intently, but she heard nothing but the creaking of hischair. "You want me to say it?" she whispered. "You want to tell me thatyou can only see me like this, as old friends do, or out in the worldamong people? I can do that. "

"I can't, " he said heavily. 

Hilda shivered and sat still. Bartley leaned his head in his hands andspoke through his teeth. "It's got to be a clean break, Hilda. I can'tsee you at all, anywhere. What I mean is that I want you to promisenever to see me again, no matter how often I come, no matter how hard Ibeg. "

Hilda sprang up like a flame. She stood over him with her hands clenchedat her side, her body rigid. 

"No!" she gasped. "It's too late to ask that. Do you hear me, Bartley?It's too late. I won't promise. It's abominable of you to ask me. Keepaway if you wish; when have I ever followed you? But, if you come to me, I'll do as I see fit. The shamefulness of your asking me to do that! Ifyou come to me, I'll do as I see fit. Do you understand? Bartley, you'recowardly!"

Alexander rose and shook himself angrily. "Yes, I know I'm cowardly. I'm afraid of myself. I don't trust myself any more. I carried it alllightly enough at first, but now I don't dare trifle with it. It'sgetting the better of me. It's different now. I'm growing older, andyou've got my young self here with you. It's through him that I've cometo wish for you all and all the time. " He took her roughly in his arms. "Do you know what I mean?"

Hilda held her face back from him and began to cry bitterly. "Oh, Bartley, what am I to do? Why didn't you let me be angry with you? Youask me to stay away from you because you want me! And I've got nobodybut you. I will do anything you say--but that! I will ask the leastimaginable, but I must have SOMETHING!"

Bartley turned away and sank down in his chair again. Hilda sat on thearm of it and put her hands lightly on his shoulders. 

"Just something Bartley. I must have you to think of through the monthsand months of loneliness. I must see you. I must know about you. Thesight of you, Bartley, to see you living and happy and successful--canI never make you understand what that means to me?" She pressed hisshoulders gently. "You see, loving some one as I love you makes thewhole world different. If I'd met you later, if I hadn't loved you sowell--but that's all over, long ago. Then came all those years withoutyou, lonely and hurt and discouraged; those decent young fellows andpoor Mac, and me never heeding--hard as a steel spring. And then youcame back, not caring very much, but it made no difference. "

She slid to the floor beside him, as if she were too tired to sit up anylonger. Bartley bent over and took her in his arms, kissing her mouthand her wet, tired eyes. 

"Don't cry, don't cry, " he whispered. "We've tortured each other enoughfor tonight. Forget everything except that I am here. "

"I think I have forgotten everything but that already, " she murmured. "Ah, your dear arms!"

CHAPTER VII

During the fortnight that Alexander was in London he drove himself hard. He got through a great deal of personal business and saw a great manymen who were doing interesting things in his own profession. He dislikedto think of his visits to London as holidays, and when he was there heworked even harder than he did at home. 

The day before his departure for Liverpool was a singularly fine one. The thick air had cleared overnight in a strong wind which brought in agolden dawn and then fell off to a fresh breeze. When Bartley lookedout of his windows from the Savoy, the river was flashing silver and thegray stone along the Embankment was bathed in bright, clear sunshine. London had wakened to life after three weeks of cold and sodden rain. Bartley breakfasted hurriedly and went over his mail while the hotelvalet packed his trunks. Then he paid his account and walked rapidlydown the Strand past Charing Cross Station. His spirits rose with everystep, and when he reached Trafalgar Square, blazing in the sun, withits fountains playing and its column reaching up into the bright air, he signaled to a hansom, and, before he knew what he was about, told thedriver to go to Bedford Square by way of the British Museum. 

When he reached Hilda's apartment she met him, fresh as the morningitself. Her rooms were flooded with sunshine and full of the flowers hehad been sending her. She would never let him give her anything else. 

"Are you busy this morning, Hilda?" he asked as he sat down, his hat andgloves in his hand. 

"Very. I've been up and about three hours, working at my part. We openin February, you know. "

"Well, then you've worked enough. And so have I. I've seen all my men, my packing is done, and I go up to Liverpool this evening. But thismorning we are going to have a holiday. What do you say to a drive outto Kew and Richmond? You may not get another day like this all winter. It's like a fine April day at home. May I use your telephone? I want toorder the carriage. "

"Oh, how jolly! There, sit down at the desk. And while you aretelephoning I'll change my dress. I shan't be long. All the morningpapers are on the table. "

Hilda was back in a few moments wearing a long gray squirrel coat and abroad fur hat. 

Bartley rose and inspected her. "Why don't you wear some of those pinkroses?" he asked. 

"But they came only this morning, and they have not even begun to open. I was saving them. I am so unconsciously thrifty!" She laughed as shelooked about the room. "You've been sending me far too many flowers, Bartley. New ones every day. That's too often; though I do love to openthe boxes, and I take good care of them. "

"Why won't you let me send you any of those jade or ivory things you areso fond of? Or pictures? I know a good deal about pictures. "

Hilda shook her large hat as she drew the roses out of the tall glass. "No, there are some things you can't do. There's the carriage. Will youbutton my gloves for me?"

Bartley took her wrist and began to button the long gray suede glove. "How gay your eyes are this morning, Hilda. "

"That's because I've been studying. It always stirs me up a little. "

He pushed the top of the glove up slowly. "When did you learn to takehold of your parts like that?"

"When I had nothing else to think of. Come, the carriage is waiting. What a shocking while you take. "

"I'm in no hurry. We've plenty of time. "

They found all London abroad. Piccadilly was a stream of rapidlymoving carriages, from which flashed furs and flowers and bright wintercostumes. The metal trappings of the harnesses shone dazzlingly, and thewheels were revolving disks that threw off rays of light. The parks werefull of children and nursemaids and joyful dogs that leaped and yelpedand scratched up the brown earth with their paws. 

"I'm not going until to-morrow, you know, " Bartley announced suddenly. "I'll cut off a day in Liverpool. I haven't felt so jolly this longwhile. "

Hilda looked up with a smile which she tried not to make too glad. "Ithink people were meant to be happy, a little, " she said. 

They had lunch at Richmond and then walked to Twickenham, where they hadsent the carriage. They drove back, with a glorious sunset behind them, toward the distant gold-washed city. It was one of those rare afternoonswhen all the thickness and shadow of London are changed to a kind ofshining, pulsing, special atmosphere; when the smoky vapors becomefluttering golden clouds, nacreous veils of pink and amber; when allthat bleakness of gray stone and dullness of dirty brick trembles inaureate light, and all the roofs and spires, and one great dome, arefloated in golden haze. On such rare afternoons the ugliest of citiesbecomes the most poetic, and months of sodden days are offset by amoment of miracle. 

"It's like that with us Londoners, too, " Hilda was saying. "Everythingis awfully grim and cheerless, our weather and our houses and our waysof amusing ourselves. But we can be happier than anybody. We can go madwith joy, as the people do out in the fields on a fine Whitsunday. Wemake the most of our moment. "

She thrust her little chin out defiantly over her gray fur collar, andBartley looked down at her and laughed. 

"You are a plucky one, you. " He patted her glove with his hand. "Yes, you are a plucky one. "

Hilda sighed. "No, I'm not. Not about some things, at any rate. Itdoesn't take pluck to fight for one's moment, but it takes pluck to gowithout--a lot. More than I have. I can't help it, " she added fiercely. 

After miles of outlying streets and little gloomy houses, they reachedLondon itself, red and roaring and murky, with a thick dampness comingup from the river, that betokened fog again to-morrow. The streets werefull of people who had worked indoors all through the priceless day andhad now come hungrily out to drink the muddy lees of it. They stoodin long black lines, waiting before the pit entrances of thetheatres--short-coated boys, and girls in sailor hats, all shiveringand chatting gayly. There was a blurred rhythm in all the dull citynoises--in the clatter of the cab horses and the rumbling of the busses, in the street calls, and in the undulating tramp, tramp of the crowd. Itwas like the deep vibration of some vast underground machinery, and likethe muffled pulsations of millions of human hearts. 

[See "The Barrel Organ by Alfred Noyes. Ed. ] [I have placed it at theend for your convenience]

"Seems good to get back, doesn't it?" Bartley whispered, as they drovefrom Bayswater Road into Oxford Street. "London always makes me want tolive more than any other city in the world. You remember our priestessmummy over in the mummy-room, and how we used to long to go and bringher out on nights like this? Three thousand years! Ugh!"

"All the same, I believe she used to feel it when we stood there andwatched her and wished her well. I believe she used to remember, " Hildasaid thoughtfully. 

"I hope so. Now let's go to some awfully jolly place for dinner beforewe go home. I could eat all the dinners there are in London to-night. Where shall I tell the driver? The Piccadilly Restaurant? The music'sgood there. "

"There are too many people there whom one knows. Why not that littleFrench place in Soho, where we went so often when you were here inthe summer? I love it, and I've never been there with any one but you. Sometimes I go by myself, when I am particularly lonely. "

"Very well, the sole's good there. How many street pianos there areabout to-night! The fine weather must have thawed them out. We've hadfive miles of `Il Trovatore' now. They always make me feel jaunty. Areyou comfy, and not too tired?"

"I'm not tired at all. I was just wondering how people can ever die. Why did you remind me of the mummy? Life seems the strongest and mostindestructible thing in the world. Do you really believe that all thosepeople rushing about down there, going to good dinners and clubs andtheatres, will be dead some day, and not care about anything? I don'tbelieve it, and I know I shan't die, ever! You see, I feel too--toopowerful!"

The carriage stopped. Bartley sprang out and swung her quickly tothe pavement. As he lifted her in his two hands he whispered: "Youare--powerful!"

CHAPTER VIII

The last rehearsal was over, a tedious dress rehearsal which had lastedall day and exhausted the patience of every one who had to do with it. When Hilda had dressed for the street and came out of her dressing-room, she found Hugh MacConnell waiting for her in the corridor. 

"The fog's thicker than ever, Hilda. There have been a great manyaccidents to-day. It's positively unsafe for you to be out alone. Willyou let me take you home?"

"How good of you, Mac. If you are going with me, I think I'd ratherwalk. I've had no exercise to-day, and all this has made me nervous. "

"I shouldn't wonder, " said MacConnell dryly. Hilda pulled down herveil and they stepped out into the thick brown wash that submerged St. Martin's Lane. MacConnell took her hand and tucked it snugly under hisarm. "I'm sorry I was such a savage. I hope you didn't think I made anass of myself. "

"Not a bit of it. I don't wonder you were peppery. Those things areawfully trying. How do you think it's going?"

"Magnificently. That's why I got so stirred up. We are going to hearfrom this, both of us. And that reminds me; I've got news for you. Theyare going to begin repairs on the theatre about the middle of March, andwe are to run over to New York for six weeks. Bennett told me yesterdaythat it was decided. "

Hilda looked up delightedly at the tall gray figure beside her. Hewas the only thing she could see, for they were moving through a denseopaqueness, as if they were walking at the bottom of the ocean. 

"Oh, Mac, how glad I am! And they love your things over there, don'tthey?"

"Shall you be glad for--any other reason, Hilda?"

MacConnell put his hand in front of her to ward off some dark object. Itproved to be only a lamp-post, and they beat in farther from the edge ofthe pavement. 

"What do you mean, Mac?" Hilda asked nervously. 

"I was just thinking there might be people over there you'd be glad tosee, " he brought out awkwardly. Hilda said nothing, and as they walkedon MacConnell spoke again, apologetically: "I hope you don't mind myknowing about it, Hilda. Don't stiffen up like that. No one else knows, and I didn't try to find out anything. I felt it, even before I knew whohe was. I knew there was somebody, and that it wasn't I. "

They crossed Oxford Street in silence, feeling their way. The busses hadstopped running and the cab-drivers were leading their horses. Whenthey reached the other side, MacConnell said suddenly, "I hope you arehappy. "

"Terribly, dangerously happy, Mac, "--Hilda spoke quietly, pressing therough sleeve of his greatcoat with her gloved hand. 

"You've always thought me too old for you, Hilda, --oh, of course you'venever said just that, --and here this fellow is not more than eight yearsyounger than I. I've always felt that if I could get out of my old caseI might win you yet. It's a fine, brave youth I carry inside me, onlyhe'll never be seen. "

"Nonsense, Mac. That has nothing to do with it. It's because you seemtoo close to me, too much my own kind. It would be like marrying CousinMike, almost. I really tried to care as you wanted me to, away back inthe beginning. "

"Well, here we are, turning out of the Square. You are not angry withme, Hilda? Thank you for this walk, my dear. Go in and get dry things onat once. You'll be having a great night to-morrow. "

She put out her hand. "Thank you, Mac, for everything. Good-night. "

MacConnell trudged off through the fog, and she went slowly upstairs. Her slippers and dressing gown were waiting for her before the fire. "Ishall certainly see him in New York. He will see by the papers that weare coming. Perhaps he knows it already, " Hilda kept thinking as sheundressed. "Perhaps he will be at the dock. No, scarcely that; but I maymeet him in the street even before he comes to see me. " Marie placedthe tea-table by the fire and brought Hilda her letters. She looked themover, and started as she came to one in a handwriting that she did notoften see; Alexander had written to her only twice before, and he didnot allow her to write to him at all. "Thank you, Marie. You may gonow. "

Hilda sat down by the table with the letter in her hand, still unopened. She looked at it intently, turned it over, and felt its thickness withher fingers. She believed that she sometimes had a kind of second-sightabout letters, and could tell before she read them whether they broughtgood or evil tidings. She put this one down on the table in front of herwhile she poured her tea. At last, with a little shiver of expectancy, she tore open the envelope and read:--

Boston, February --

MY DEAR HILDA:--

It is after twelve o'clock. Every one else is in bed and I am sittingalone in my study. I have been happier in this room than anywhere elsein the world. Happiness like that makes one insolent. I used to thinkthese four walls could stand against anything. And now I scarcely knowmyself here. Now I know that no one can build his security upon thenobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures(whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. Thebase one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end. 

The last week has been a bad one; I have been realizing how things usedto be with me. Sometimes I get used to being dead inside, but lately ithas been as if a window beside me had suddenly opened, and as if all thesmells of spring blew in to me. There is a garden out there, with starsoverhead, where I used to walk at night when I had a single purpose anda single heart. I can remember how I used to feel there, how beautifuleverything about me was, and what life and power and freedom I felt inmyself. When the window opens I know exactly how it would feel to be outthere. But that garden is closed to me. How is it, I ask myself, thateverything can be so different with me when nothing here has changed?I am in my own house, in my own study, in the midst of all these quietstreets where my friends live. They are all safe and at peace withthemselves. But I am never at peace. I feel always on the edge of dangerand change. 

I keep remembering locoed horses I used to see on the range when I wasa boy. They changed like that. We used to catch them and put them up inthe corral, and they developed great cunning. They would pretend to eattheir oats like the other horses, but we knew they were always schemingto get back at the loco. 

It seems that a man is meant to live only one life in this world. Whenhe tries to live a second, he develops another nature. I feel as ifa second man had been grafted into me. At first he seemed only apleasure-loving simpleton, of whose company I was rather ashamed, andwhom I used to hide under my coat when I walked the Embankment, inLondon. But now he is strong and sullen, and he is fighting for hislife at the cost of mine. That is his one activity: to grow strong. Nocreature ever wanted so much to live. Eventually, I suppose, he willabsorb me altogether. Believe me, you will hate me then. 

And what have you to do, Hilda, with this ugly story? Nothing at all. The little boy drank of the prettiest brook in the forest and he becamea stag. I write all this because I can never tell it to you, and becauseit seems as if I could not keep silent any longer. And because I suffer, Hilda. If any one I loved suffered like this, I'd want to know it. Helpme, Hilda!

B. A. 

CHAPTER IX

On the last Saturday in April, the New York "Times" published an accountof the strike complications which were delaying Alexander's New Jerseybridge, and stated that the engineer himself was in town and at hisoffice on West Tenth Street. 

On Sunday, the day after this notice appeared, Alexander worked all dayat his Tenth Street rooms. His business often called him to New York, and he had kept an apartment there for years, subletting it when he wentabroad for any length of time. Besides his sleeping-room and bath, therewas a large room, formerly a painter's studio, which he used as astudy and office. It was furnished with the cast-off possessions of hisbachelor days and with odd things which he sheltered for friends ofhis who followed itinerant and more or less artistic callings. Over thefireplace there was a large old-fashioned gilt mirror. Alexander's bigwork-table stood in front of one of the three windows, and above thecouch hung the one picture in the room, a big canvas of charming colorand spirit, a study of the Luxembourg Gardens in early spring, paintedin his youth by a man who had since become a portrait-painter ofinternational renown. He had done it for Alexander when they werestudents together in Paris. 

Sunday was a cold, raw day and a fine rain fell continuously. WhenAlexander came back from dinner he put more wood on his fire, madehimself comfortable, and settled down at his desk, where he beganchecking over estimate sheets. It was after nine o'clock and he waslighting a second pipe, when he thought he heard a sound at his door. He started and listened, holding the burning match in his hand; againhe heard the same sound, like a firm, light tap. He rose and crossed theroom quickly. When he threw open the door he recognized the figure thatshrank back into the bare, dimly lit hallway. He stood for a moment inawkward constraint, his pipe in his hand. 

"Come in, " he said to Hilda at last, and closed the door behind her. Hepointed to a chair by the fire and went back to his worktable. "Won'tyou sit down?"

He was standing behind the table, turning over a pile of blueprintsnervously. The yellow light from the student's lamp fell on his handsand the purple sleeves of his velvet smoking-jacket, but his flushedface and big, hard head were in the shadow. There was something abouthim that made Hilda wish herself at her hotel again, in the streetbelow, anywhere but where she was. 

"Of course I know, Bartley, " she said at last, "that after this youwon't owe me the least consideration. But we sail on Tuesday. I saw thatinterview in the paper yesterday, telling where you were, and I thoughtI had to see you. That's all. Good-night; I'm going now. " She turned andher hand closed on the door-knob. 

Alexander hurried toward her and took her gently by the arm. "Sit down, Hilda; you're wet through. Let me take off your coat--and your boots;they're oozing water. " He knelt down and began to unlace her shoes, while Hilda shrank into the chair. "Here, put your feet on this stool. You don't mean to say you walked down--and without overshoes!"

Hilda hid her face in her hands. "I was afraid to take a cab. Can't yousee, Bartley, that I'm terribly frightened? I've been through this ahundred times to-day. Don't be any more angry than you can help. I wasall right until I knew you were in town. If you'd sent me a note, ortelephoned me, or anything! But you won't let me write to you, and I hadto see you after that letter, that terrible letter you wrote me when yougot home. "

Alexander faced her, resting his arm on the mantel behind him, and beganto brush the sleeve of his jacket. "Is this the way you mean to answerit, Hilda?" he asked unsteadily. 

She was afraid to look up at him. "Didn't--didn't you mean even to saygoodby to me, Bartley? Did you mean just to--quit me?" she asked. "Icame to tell you that I'm willing to do as you asked me. But it's no usetalking about that now. Give me my things, please. " She put her hand outtoward the fender. 

Alexander sat down on the arm of her chair. "Did you think I hadforgotten you were in town, Hilda? Do you think I kept away by accident?Did you suppose I didn't know you were sailing on Tuesday? There is aletter for you there, in my desk drawer. It was to have reached you onthe steamer. I was all the morning writing it. I told myself that if Iwere really thinking of you, and not of myself, a letter would be betterthan nothing. Marks on paper mean something to you. " He paused. "Theynever did to me. "

Hilda smiled up at him beautifully and put her hand on his sleeve. "Oh, Bartley! Did you write to me? Why didn't you telephone me to let me knowthat you had? Then I wouldn't have come. "

Alexander slipped his arm about her. "I didn't know it before, Hilda, on my honor I didn't, but I believe it was because, deep down in mesomewhere, I was hoping I might drive you to do just this. I've watchedthat door all day. I've jumped up if the fire crackled. I think I havefelt that you were coming. " He bent his face over her hair. 

"And I, " she whispered, --"I felt that you were feeling that. But when Icame, I thought I had been mistaken. "

Alexander started up and began to walk up and down the room. 

"No, you weren't mistaken. I've been up in Canada with my bridge, andI arranged not to come to New York until after you had gone. Then, whenyour manager added two more weeks, I was already committed. " He droppedupon the stool in front of her and sat with his hands hanging betweenhis knees. "What am I to do, Hilda?"

"That's what I wanted to see you about, Bartley. I'm going to dowhat you asked me to do when you were in London. Only I'll do it morecompletely. I'm going to marry. "

"Who?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter much! One of them. Only not Mac. I'm too fond ofhim. "

Alexander moved restlessly. "Are you joking, Hilda?"

"Indeed I'm not. "

"Then you don't know what you're talking about. "

"Yes, I know very well. I've thought about it a great deal, and I'vequite decided. I never used to understand how women did things likethat, but I know now. It's because they can't be at the mercy of the manthey love any longer. "

Alexander flushed angrily. "So it's better to be at the mercy of a manyou don't love?"

"Under such circumstances, infinitely!"

There was a flash in her eyes that made Alexander's fall. He got up andwent over to the window, threw it open, and leaned out. He heard Hildamoving about behind him. When he looked over his shoulder she was lacingher boots. He went back and stood over her. 

"Hilda you'd better think a while longer before you do that. I don'tknow what I ought to say, but I don't believe you'd be happy; truly Idon't. Aren't you trying to frighten me?"

She tied the knot of the last lacing and put her boot-heel down firmly. "No; I'm telling you what I've made up my mind to do. I suppose Iwould better do it without telling you. But afterward I shan't have anopportunity to explain, for I shan't be seeing you again. "

Alexander started to speak, but caught himself. When Hilda rose he satdown on the arm of her chair and drew her back into it. 

"I wouldn't be so much alarmed if I didn't know how utterly recklessyou CAN be. Don't do anything like that rashly. " His face grew troubled. "You wouldn't be happy. You are not that kind of woman. I'd never haveanother hour's peace if I helped to make you do a thing like that. " Hetook her face between his hands and looked down into it. "You see, youare different, Hilda. Don't you know you are?" His voice grew softer, his touch more and more tender. "Some women can do that sort of thing, but you--you can love as queens did, in the old time. "

Hilda had heard that soft, deep tone in his voice only once before. Sheclosed her eyes; her lips and eyelids trembled. "Only one, Bartley. Onlyone. And he threw it back at me a second time. "

She felt the strength leap in the arms that held her so lightly. 

"Try him again, Hilda. Try him once again. "

She looked up into his eyes, and hid her face in her hands. 

CHAPTER X

On Tuesday afternoon a Boston lawyer, who had been trying a case inVermont, was standing on the siding at White River Junction when theCanadian Express pulled by on its northward journey. As the day-coachesat the rear end of the long train swept by him, the lawyer noticed atone of the windows a man's head, with thick rumpled hair. "Curious, " hethought; "that looked like Alexander, but what would he be doing backthere in the daycoaches?"

It was, indeed, Alexander. 

That morning a telegram from Moorlock had reached him, telling him thatthere was serious trouble with the bridge and that he was needed thereat once, so he had caught the first train out of New York. He had takena seat in a day-coach to avoid the risk of meeting any one he knew, andbecause he did not wish to be comfortable. When the telegram arrived, Alexander was at his rooms on Tenth Street, packing his bag to go toBoston. On Monday night he had written a long letter to his wife, butwhen morning came he was afraid to send it, and the letter was still inhis pocket. Winifred was not a woman who could bear disappointment. Shedemanded a great deal of herself and of the people she loved; andshe never failed herself. If he told her now, he knew, it would beirretrievable. There would be no going back. He would lose the thinghe valued most in the world; he would be destroying himself and his ownhappiness. There would be nothing for him afterward. He seemed to seehimself dragging out a restless existence on the Continent--Cannes, Hyeres, Algiers, Cairo--among smartly dressed, disabled men of everynationality; forever going on journeys that led nowhere; hurrying tocatch trains that he might just as well miss; getting up in the morningwith a great bustle and splashing of water, to begin a day that had nopurpose and no meaning; dining late to shorten the night, sleeping lateto shorten the day. 

And for what? For a mere folly, a masquerade, a little thing that hecould not let go. AND HE COULD EVEN LET IT GO, he told himself. But hehad promised to be in London at mid-summer, and he knew that he wouldgo. . . . It was impossible to live like this any longer. 

And this, then, was to be the disaster that his old professor hadforeseen for him: the crack in the wall, the crash, the cloud of dust. And he could not understand how it had come about. He felt that hehimself was unchanged, that he was still there, the same man he had beenfive years ago, and that he was sitting stupidly by and letting someresolute offshoot of himself spoil his life for him. This new force wasnot he, it was but a part of him. He would not even admit that it wasstronger than he; but it was more active. It was by its energy that thisnew feeling got the better of him. His wife was the woman who had madehis life, gratified his pride, given direction to his tastes and habits. The life they led together seemed to him beautiful. Winifred still was, as she had always been, Romance for him, and whenever he was deeplystirred he turned to her. When the grandeur and beauty of the worldchallenged him--as it challenges even the most self-absorbed people--healways answered with her name. That was his reply to the question putby the mountains and the stars; to all the spiritual aspects of life. In his feeling for his wife there was all the tenderness, all the pride, all the devotion of which he was capable. There was everything butenergy; the energy of youth which must register itself and cut its namebefore it passes. This new feeling was so fresh, so unsatisfied andlight of foot. It ran and was not wearied, anticipated him everywhere. It put a girdle round the earth while he was going from New York toMoorlock. At this moment, it was tingling through him, exultant, andlive as quicksilver, whispering, "In July you will be in England. "

Already he dreaded the long, empty days at sea, the monotonous Irishcoast, the sluggish passage up the Mersey, the flash of the boat trainthrough the summer country. He closed his eyes and gave himself up tothe feeling of rapid motion and to swift, terrifying thoughts. He wassitting so, his face shaded by his hand, when the Boston lawyer saw himfrom the siding at White River Junction. 

When at last Alexander roused himself, the afternoon had waned tosunset. The train was passing through a gray country and the skyoverhead was flushed with a wide flood of clear color. There was arose-colored light over the gray rocks and hills and meadows. Off to theleft, under the approach of a weather-stained wooden bridge, a group ofboys were sitting around a little fire. The smell of the wood smoke blewin at the window. Except for an old farmer, jogging along the highroadin his box-wagon, there was not another living creature to be seen. Alexander looked back wistfully at the boys, camped on the edge of alittle marsh, crouching under their shelter and looking gravely at theirfire. They took his mind back a long way, to a campfire on a sandbar ina Western river, and he wished he could go back and sit down with them. He could remember exactly how the world had looked then. 

It was quite dark and Alexander was still thinking of the boys, when itoccurred to him that the train must be nearing Allway. In going to hisnew bridge at Moorlock he had always to pass through Allway. The trainstopped at Allway Mills, then wound two miles up the river, and then thehollow sound under his feet told Bartley that he was on his first bridgeagain. The bridge seemed longer than it had ever seemed before, and hewas glad when he felt the beat of the wheels on the solid roadbed again. He did not like coming and going across that bridge, or remembering theman who built it. And was he, indeed, the same man who used to walk thatbridge at night, promising such things to himself and to the stars? Andyet, he could remember it all so well: the quiet hills sleeping in themoonlight, the slender skeleton of the bridge reaching out into theriver, and up yonder, alone on the hill, the big white house; upstairs, in Winifred's window, the light that told him she was still awake andstill thinking of him. And after the light went out he walked alone, taking the heavens into his confidence, unable to tear himself away fromthe white magic of the night, unwilling to sleep because longing was sosweet to him, and because, for the first time since first the hills werehung with moonlight, there was a lover in the world. And always therewas the sound of the rushing water underneath, the sound which, morethan anything else, meant death; the wearing away of things under theimpact of physical forces which men could direct but never circumvent ordiminish. Then, in the exaltation of love, more than ever it seemed tohim to mean death, the only other thing as strong as love. Under themoon, under the cold, splendid stars, there were only those two thingsawake and sleepless; death and love, the rushing river and his burningheart. 

Alexander sat up and looked about him. The train was tearing on throughthe darkness. All his companions in the day-coach were either dozing orsleeping heavily, and the murky lamps were turned low. How came he hereamong all these dirty people? Why was he going to London? What did itmean--what was the answer? How could this happen to a man who had livedthrough that magical spring and summer, and who had felt that the starsthemselves were but flaming particles in the far-away infinitudes of hislove?

What had he done to lose it? How could he endure the baseness of lifewithout it? And with every revolution of the wheels beneath him, theunquiet quicksilver in his breast told him that at midsummer he would bein London. He remembered his last night there: the red foggy darkness, the hungry crowds before the theatres, the hand-organs, the feverishrhythm of the blurred, crowded streets, and the feeling of lettinghimself go with the crowd. He shuddered and looked about him at the poorunconscious companions of his journey, unkempt and travel-stained, nowdoubled in unlovely attitudes, who had come to stand to him for theugliness he had brought into the world. 

And those boys back there, beginning it all just as he had begun it; hewished he could promise them better luck. Ah, if one could promise anyone better luck, if one could assure a single human being of happiness!He had thought he could do so, once; and it was thinking of that that heat last fell asleep. In his sleep, as if it had nothing fresher to workupon, his mind went back and tortured itself with something years andyears away, an old, long-forgotten sorrow of his childhood. 

When Alexander awoke in the morning, the sun was just rising throughpale golden ripples of cloud, and the fresh yellow light was vibratingthrough the pine woods. The white birches, with their little unfoldingleaves, gleamed in the lowlands, and the marsh meadows were alreadycoming to life with their first green, a thin, bright color whichhad run over them like fire. As the train rushed along the trestles, thousands of wild birds rose screaming into the light. The sky wasalready a pale blue and of the clearness of crystal. Bartley caughtup his bag and hurried through the Pullman coaches until he found theconductor. There was a stateroom unoccupied, and he took it and setabout changing his clothes. Last night he would not have believed thatanything could be so pleasant as the cold water he dashed over his headand shoulders and the freshness of clean linen on his body. 

After he had dressed, Alexander sat down at the window and drew into hislungs deep breaths of the pine-scented air. He had awakened with all hisold sense of power. He could not believe that things were as bad withhim as they had seemed last night, that there was no way to set thementirely right. Even if he went to London at midsummer, what would thatmean except that he was a fool? And he had been a fool before. That wasnot the reality of his life. Yet he knew that he would go to London. 

Half an hour later the train stopped at Moorlock. Alexander sprang tothe platform and hurried up the siding, waving to Philip Horton, oneof his assistants, who was anxiously looking up at the windows of thecoaches. Bartley took his arm and they went together into the stationbuffet. 

"I'll have my coffee first, Philip. Have you had yours? And now, whatseems to be the matter up here?"

The young man, in a hurried, nervous way, began his explanation. 

But Alexander cut him short. "When did you stop work?" he asked sharply. 

The young engineer looked confused. "I haven't stopped work yet, Mr. Alexander. I didn't feel that I could go so far without definiteauthorization from you. "

"Then why didn't you say in your telegram exactly what you thought, andask for your authorization? You'd have got it quick enough. "

"Well, really, Mr. Alexander, I couldn't be absolutely sure, you know, and I didn't like to take the responsibility of making it public. "

Alexander pushed back his chair and rose. "Anything I do can be madepublic, Phil. You say that you believe the lower chords are showingstrain, and that even the workmen have been talking about it, and yetyou've gone on adding weight. "

"I'm sorry, Mr. Alexander, but I had counted on your getting hereyesterday. My first telegram missed you somehow. I sent one Sundayevening, to the same address, but it was returned to me. "

"Have you a carriage out there? I must stop to send a wire. "

Alexander went up to the telegraph-desk and penciled the followingmessage to his wife:--

I may have to be here for some time. Can you come up at once? Urgent. 

BARTLEY. 

The Moorlock Bridge lay three miles above the town. When they wereseated in the carriage, Alexander began to question his assistantfurther. If it were true that the compression members showed strain, with the bridge only two thirds done, then there was nothing to dobut pull the whole structure down and begin over again. Horton keptrepeating that he was sure there could be nothing wrong with theestimates. 

Alexander grew impatient. "That's all true, Phil, but we never werejustified in assuming that a scale that was perfectly safe for anordinary bridge would work with anything of such length. It's all verywell on paper, but it remains to be seen whether it can be done inpractice. I should have thrown up the job when they crowded me. It'sall nonsense to try to do what other engineers are doing when you knowthey're not sound. "

"But just now, when there is such competition, " the younger mandemurred. "And certainly that's the new line of development. "

Alexander shrugged his shoulders and made no reply. 

When they reached the bridge works, Alexander began his examinationimmediately. An hour later he sent for the superintendent. "I think youhad better stop work out there at once, Dan. I should say that the lowerchord here might buckle at any moment. I told the Commission that wewere using higher unit stresses than any practice has established, andwe've put the dead load at a low estimate. Theoretically it worked outwell enough, but it had never actually been tried. " Alexander put onhis overcoat and took the superintendent by the arm. "Don't look sochopfallen, Dan. It's a jolt, but we've got to face it. It isn't the endof the world, you know. Now we'll go out and call the men off quietly. They're already nervous, Horton tells me, and there's no use alarmingthem. I'll go with you, and we'll send the end riveters in first. "

Alexander and the superintendent picked their way out slowly over thelong span. They went deliberately, stopping to see what each gang wasdoing, as if they were on an ordinary round of inspection. Whenthey reached the end of the river span, Alexander nodded to thesuperintendent, who quietly gave an order to the foreman. The men in theend gang picked up their tools and, glancing curiously at each other, started back across the bridge toward the river-bank. Alexander himselfremained standing where they had been working, looking about him. It washard to believe, as he looked back over it, that the whole great spanwas incurably disabled, was already as good as condemned, becausesomething was out of line in the lower chord of the cantilever arm. 

The end riveters had reached the bank and were dispersing among thetool-houses, and the second gang had picked up their tools and werestarting toward the shore. Alexander, still standing at the end of theriver span, saw the lower chord of the cantilever arm give a little, like an elbow bending. He shouted and ran after the second gang, but bythis time every one knew that the big river span was slowly settling. There was a burst of shouting that was immediately drowned by the screamand cracking of tearing iron, as all the tension work began to pullasunder. Once the chords began to buckle, there were thousands of tonsof ironwork, all riveted together and lying in midair without support. It tore itself to pieces with roaring and grinding and noises that werelike the shrieks of a steam whistle. There was no shock of any kind; thebridge had no impetus except from its own weight. It lurched neitherto right nor left, but sank almost in a vertical line, snapping andbreaking and tearing as it went, because no integral part could bear foran instant the enormous strain loosed upon it. Some of the men jumpedand some ran, trying to make the shore. 

At the first shriek of the tearing iron, Alexander jumped from thedownstream side of the bridge. He struck the water without injury anddisappeared. He was under the river a long time and had great difficultyin holding his breath. When it seemed impossible, and his chest wasabout to heave, he thought he heard his wife telling him that he couldhold out a little longer. An instant later his face cleared the water. For a moment, in the depths of the river, he had realized what it wouldmean to die a hypocrite, and to lie dead under the last abandonment ofher tenderness. But once in the light and air, he knew he should live totell her and to recover all he had lost. Now, at last, he felt sure ofhimself. He was not startled. It seemed to him that he had been throughsomething of this sort before. There was nothing horrible about it. This, too, was life, and life was activity, just as it was in Bostonor in London. He was himself, and there was something to be done;everything seemed perfectly natural. Alexander was a strong swimmer, buthe had gone scarcely a dozen strokes when the bridge itself, which hadbeen settling faster and faster, crashed into the water behind him. Immediately the river was full of drowning men. A gang of FrenchCanadians fell almost on top of him. He thought he had cleared them, when they began coming up all around him, clutching at him and at eachother. Some of them could swim, but they were either hurt or crazed withfright. Alexander tried to beat them off, but there were too many ofthem. One caught him about the neck, another gripped him about themiddle, and they went down together. When he sank, his wife seemed to bethere in the water beside him, telling him to keep his head, that if hecould hold out the men would drown and release him. There was somethinghe wanted to tell his wife, but he could not think clearly for theroaring in his ears. Suddenly he remembered what it was. He caught hisbreath, and then she let him go. 

The work of recovering the dead went on all day and all the followingnight. By the next morning forty-eight bodies had been taken out of theriver, but there were still twenty missing. Many of the men had fallenwith the bridge and were held down under the debris. Early on themorning of the second day a closed carriage was driven slowly along theriver-bank and stopped a little below the works, where the river boiledand churned about the great iron carcass which lay in a straight linetwo thirds across it. The carriage stood there hour after hour, and wordsoon spread among the crowds on the shore that its occupant was the wifeof the Chief Engineer; his body had not yet been found. The widows ofthe lost workmen, moving up and down the bank with shawls over theirheads, some of them carrying babies, looked at the rusty hired hack manytimes that morning. They drew near it and walked about it, but none ofthem ventured to peer within. Even half-indifferent sightseers droppedtheir voices as they told a newcomer: "You see that carriage over there?That's Mrs. Alexander. They haven't found him yet. She got off the trainthis morning. Horton met her. She heard it in Boston yesterday--heardthe newsboys crying it in the street. "

At noon Philip Horton made his way through the crowd with a tray and atin coffee-pot from the camp kitchen. When he reached the carriagehe found Mrs. Alexander just as he had left her in the early morning, leaning forward a little, with her hand on the lowered window, lookingat the river. Hour after hour she had been watching the water, thelonely, useless stone towers, and the convulsed mass of iron wreckageover which the angry river continually spat up its yellow foam. 

"Those poor women out there, do they blame him very much?" she asked, asshe handed the coffee-cup back to Horton. 

"Nobody blames him, Mrs. Alexander. If any one is to blame, I'm afraidit's I. I should have stopped work before he came. He said so as soon asI met him. I tried to get him here a day earlier, but my telegram missedhim, somehow. He didn't have time really to explain to me. If he'd gothere Monday, he'd have had all the men off at once. But, you see, Mrs. Alexander, such a thing never happened before. According to all humancalculations, it simply couldn't happen. "

Horton leaned wearily against the front wheel of the cab. He had not hadhis clothes off for thirty hours, and the stimulus of violent excitementwas beginning to wear off. 

"Don't be afraid to tell me the worst, Mr. Horton. Don't leave me to thedread of finding out things that people may be saying. If he is blamed, if he needs any one to speak for him, "--for the first time her voicebroke and a flush of life, tearful, painful, and confused, swept overher rigid pallor, --"if he needs any one, tell me, show me what to do. "She began to sob, and Horton hurried away. 

When he came back at four o'clock in the afternoon he was carrying hishat in his hand, and Winifred knew as soon as she saw him that they hadfound Bartley. She opened the carriage door before he reached her andstepped to the ground. 

Horton put out his hand as if to hold her back and spoke pleadingly:"Won't you drive up to my house, Mrs. Alexander? They will take him upthere. "

"Take me to him now, please. I shall not make any trouble. "

The group of men down under the riverbank fell back when they saw awoman coming, and one of them threw a tarpaulin over the stretcher. Theytook off their hats and caps as Winifred approached, and although shehad pulled her veil down over her face they did not look up at her. Shewas taller than Horton, and some of the men thought she was the tallestwoman they had ever seen. "As tall as himself, " some one whispered. Horton motioned to the men, and six of them lifted the stretcherand began to carry it up the embankment. Winifred followed them thehalf-mile to Horton's house. She walked quietly, without once breakingor stumbling. When the bearers put the stretcher down in Horton's sparebedroom, she thanked them and gave her hand to each in turn. The menwent out of the house and through the yard with their caps in theirhands. They were too much confused to say anything as they went down thehill. 

Horton himself was almost as deeply perplexed. "Mamie, " he said to hiswife, when he came out of the spare room half an hour later, "will youtake Mrs. Alexander the things she needs? She is going to do everythingherself. Just stay about where you can hear her and go in if she wantsyou. "

Everything happened as Alexander had foreseen in that moment ofprescience under the river. With her own hands she washed him clean ofevery mark of disaster. All night he was alone with her in the stillhouse, his great head lying deep in the pillow. In the pocket of hiscoat Winifred found the letter that he had written her the night beforehe left New York, water-soaked and illegible, but because of its length, she knew it had been meant for her. 

For Alexander death was an easy creditor. Fortune, which had smiledupon him consistently all his life, did not desert him in the end. His harshest critics did not doubt that, had he lived, he would haveretrieved himself. Even Lucius Wilson did not see in this accident thedisaster he had once foretold. 

When a great man dies in his prime there is no surgeon who can saywhether he did well; whether or not the future was his, as it seemed tobe. The mind that society had come to regard as a powerful and reliablemachine, dedicated to its service, may for a long time have been sickwithin itself and bent upon its own destruction. 

EPILOGUE

Professor Wilson had been living in London for six years and he was justback from a visit to America. One afternoon, soon after his return, heput on his frock-coat and drove in a hansom to pay a call upon HildaBurgoyne, who still lived at her old number, off Bedford Square. Heand Miss Burgoyne had been fast friends for a long time. He had firstnoticed her about the corridors of the British Museum, where he readconstantly. Her being there so often had made him feel that he wouldlike to know her, and as she was not an inaccessible person, anintroduction was not difficult. The preliminaries once over, they cameto depend a great deal upon each other, and Wilson, after his day'sreading, often went round to Bedford Square for his tea. They had muchmore in common than their memories of a common friend. Indeed, theyseldom spoke of him. They saved that for the deep moments which do notcome often, and then their talk of him was mostly silence. Wilson knewthat Hilda had loved him; more than this he had not tried to know. 

It was late when Wilson reached Hilda's apartment on this particularDecember afternoon, and he found her alone. She sent for fresh teaand made him comfortable, as she had such a knack of making peoplecomfortable. 

"How good you were to come back before Christmas! I quite dreaded theHolidays without you. You've helped me over a good many Christmases. "She smiled at him gayly. 

"As if you needed me for that! But, at any rate, I needed YOU. How wellyou are looking, my dear, and how rested. "

He peered up at her from his low chair, balancing the tips of his longfingers together in a judicial manner which had grown on him with years. 

Hilda laughed as she carefully poured his cream. "That means that I waslooking very seedy at the end of the season, doesn't it? Well, we mustshow wear at last, you know. "

Wilson took the cup gratefully. "Ah, no need to remind a man ofseventy, who has just been home to find that he has survived all hiscontemporaries. I was most gently treated--as a sort of precious relic. But, do you know, it made me feel awkward to be hanging about still. "

"Seventy? Never mention it to me. " Hilda looked appreciatively at theProfessor's alert face, with so many kindly lines about the mouth andso many quizzical ones about the eyes. "You've got to hang about forme, you know. I can't even let you go home again. You must stay put, nowthat I have you back. You're the realest thing I have. "

Wilson chuckled. "Dear me, am I? Out of so many conquests and the spoilsof conquered cities! You've really missed me? Well, then, I shall hang. Even if you have at last to put ME in the mummy-room with the others. You'll visit me often, won't you?"

"Every day in the calendar. Here, your cigarettes are in this drawer, where you left them. " She struck a match and lit one for him. "But youdid, after all, enjoy being at home again?"

"Oh, yes. I found the long railway journeys trying. People live athousand miles apart. But I did it thoroughly; I was all over the place. It was in Boston I lingered longest. "

"Ah, you saw Mrs. Alexander?"

"Often. I dined with her, and had tea there a dozen different times, I should think. Indeed, it was to see her that I lingered on and on. I found that I still loved to go to the house. It always seemed as ifBartley were there, somehow, and that at any moment one might hear hisheavy tramp on the stairs. Do you know, I kept feeling that he must beup in his study. " The Professor looked reflectively into the grate. "Ishould really have liked to go up there. That was where I had my lastlong talk with him. But Mrs. Alexander never suggested it. "

"Why?"

Wilson was a little startled by her tone, and he turned his head soquickly that his cuff-link caught the string of his nose-glasses andpulled them awry. "Why? Why, dear me, I don't know. She probably neverthought of it. "

Hilda bit her lip. "I don't know what made me say that. I didn't mean tointerrupt. Go on please, and tell me how it was. "

"Well, it was like that. Almost as if he were there. In a way, he reallyis there. She never lets him go. It's the most beautiful and dignifiedsorrow I've ever known. It's so beautiful that it has its compensations, I should think. Its very completeness is a compensation. It gives hera fixed star to steer by. She doesn't drift. We sat there evening afterevening in the quiet of that magically haunted room, and watched thesunset burn on the river, and felt him. Felt him with a difference, ofcourse. "

Hilda leaned forward, her elbow on her knee, her chin on her hand. "Witha difference? Because of her, you mean?"

Wilson's brow wrinkled. "Something like that, yes. Of course, astime goes on, to her he becomes more and more their simple personalrelation. "

Hilda studied the droop of the Professor's head intently. "You didn'taltogether like that? You felt it wasn't wholly fair to him?"

Wilson shook himself and readjusted his glasses. "Oh, fair enough. Morethan fair. Of course, I always felt that my image of him was just alittle different from hers. No relation is so complete that it canhold absolutely all of a person. And I liked him just as he was; hisdeviations, too; the places where he didn't square. "

Hilda considered vaguely. "Has she grown much older?" she asked at last. 

"Yes, and no. In a tragic way she is even handsomer. But colder. Coldfor everything but him. `Forget thyself to marble'; I kept thinking ofthat. Her happiness was a happiness a deux, not apart from the world, but actually against it. And now her grief is like that. She savesherself for it and doesn't even go through the form of seeing peoplemuch. I'm sorry. It would be better for her, and might be so good forthem, if she could let other people in. "

"Perhaps she's afraid of letting him out a little, of sharing him withsomebody. "

Wilson put down his cup and looked up with vague alarm. "Dear me, ittakes a woman to think of that, now! I don't, you know, think we oughtto be hard on her. More, even, than the rest of us she didn't choose herdestiny. She underwent it. And it has left her chilled. As to her notwishing to take the world into her confidence--well, it is a prettybrutal and stupid world, after all, you know. "

Hilda leaned forward. "Yes, I know, I know. Only I can't help being gladthat there was something for him even in stupid and vulgar people. Mylittle Marie worshiped him. When she is dusting I always know when shehas come to his picture. "

Wilson nodded. "Oh, yes! He left an echo. The ripples go on in all ofus. He belonged to the people who make the play, and most of us are onlyonlookers at the best. We shouldn't wonder too much at Mrs. Alexander. She must feel how useless it would be to stir about, that she may aswell sit still; that nothing can happen to her after Bartley. "

"Yes, " said Hilda softly, "nothing can happen to one after Bartley. "

They both sat looking into the fire. 

 *****

THE BARREL ORGAN by Alfred Noyes

 There's a barrel-organ caroling across a golden street, In the City as the sun sinks low; And the music's not immortal; but the world has made it sweet And fulfilled it with the sunset glow; And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light; And they've given it a glory and a part to play again In the Symphony that rules the day and the night. 

 And now it's marching onward through the realms of old romance, And trolling out a fond familiar tune, And now it's roaring cannon down to fight the King of France, And now it's prattling softly to the moon, And all around the organ there's a sea without a shore Of human joys and wonders and regrets; To remember and to recompense the music evermore For what the cold machinery forgets. . . . 

 Yes; as the music changes, Like a prismatic glass, It takes the light and ranges Through all the moods that pass; Dissects the common carnival Of passions and regrets, And gives the world a glimpse of all The colors it forgets. 

 And there LA TRAVIATA sights Another sadder song; And there IL TROVATORE cries A tale of deeper wrong; And bolder knights to battle go With sword and shield and lance, Than ever here on earth below Have whirled into--A DANCE!--

 Go down to Kew in lilac time; in lilac time; in lilac time; Go down to Kew in lilac time; (it isn't far from London!) And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland; Go down to Kew in lilac time; (it isn't far from London!)

 The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume, The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!) And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world's a blaze of sky The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will sing a song for London. 

 The nightingale is rather rare and yet they say you'll hear him there At Kew, at Kew in lilac time (and oh, so near to London!) The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo And golden-eyed TU-WHIT, TU WHOO of owls that ogle London. 

 For Noah hardly knew a bird of any kind that isn't heard At Kew, at Kew in lilac time (and oh, so near to London!) And when the rose begins to pout and all the chestnut spires are out You'll hear the rest without a doubt, all chorusing for London:--

 COME DOWN TO KEW IN LILAC TIME; IN LILAC TIME; IN LILAC TIME; COME DOWN TO KEW IN LILAC TIME; (IT ISN'T FAR FROM LONDON!) AND YOU SHALL WANDER HAND IN HAND WITH LOVE IN SUMMER'S WONDERLAND; COME DOWN TO KEW IN LILAC TIME; (IT ISN'T FAR FROM LONDON!)

 And then the troubadour begins to thrill the golden street, In the City as the sun sinks low; And in all the gaudy busses there are scores of weary feet Marking time, sweet time, with a dull mechanic beat, And a thousand hearts are plunging to a love they'll never meet, Through the meadows of the sunset, through the poppies and the wheat, In the land where the dead dreams go. 

 Verdi, Verdi, when you wrote IL TROVATORE did you dream Of the City when the sun sinks low Of the organ and the monkey and the many-colored stream On the Piccadilly pavement, of the myriad eyes that seem To be litten for a moment with a wild Italian gleam As A CHE LA MORTE parodies the world's eternal theme And pulses with the sunset glow?

 There's a thief, perhaps, that listens with a face of frozen stone In the City as the sun sinks low; There's a portly man of business with a balance of his own, There's a clerk and there's a butcher of a soft reposeful tone, And they're all them returning to the heavens they have known: They are crammed and jammed in busses and--they're each of them alone In the land where the dead dreams go. 

 There's a very modish woman and her smile is very bland In the City as the sun sinks low; And her hansom jingles onward, but her little jeweled hand Is clenched a little tighter and she cannot understand What she wants or why she wanders to that undiscovered land, For the parties there are not at all the sort of thing she planned, In the land where the dead dreams go. 

 There's an Oxford man that listens and his heart is crying out In the City as the sun sinks low; For the barge the eight, the Isis, and the coach's whoop and shout, For the minute gun, the counting and the long disheveled rout, For the howl along the tow-path and a fate that's still in doubt, For a roughened oar to handle and a race to think about In the land where the dead dreams go. 

 There's a laborer that listen to the voices of the dead In the City as the sun sinks low; And his hand begins to tremble and his face is rather red As he sees a loafer watching him and--there he turns his head And stares into the sunset where his April love is fled, For he hears her softly singing and his lonely soul is led Through the land where the dead dreams go. 

 There's and old and hardened demi-rep, it's ringing in her ears, In the City as the sun sinks low; With the wild and empty sorrow of the love that blights and sears, Oh, and if she hurries onward, then be sure, be sure she hears, Hears and bears the bitter burden of the unforgotten years, And her laugh's a little harsher and her eyes are brimmed with tears For the land where the dead dreams go. 

 There's a barrel-organ caroling across a golden street, In the City as the sun sinks low; Though the music's only Verdi there's a world to make it sweet Just as yonder yellow sunset where the earth and heaven meet Mellows all the sooty City! Hark, a hundred thousand feet Are marching on to glory through the poppies and the wheat In the land where the dead dreams go. 

 So it's Jeremiah, Jeremiah, What have you to say When you meet the garland girls Tripping on their way?

 All around my gala hat I wear a wreath of roses (A long and lonely year it is I've waited for the May!)

 If any one should ask you, The reason why I wear it is, My own love, my true love, is coming home to-day. 

 It's buy a bunch of violets for the lady (IT'S LILAC TIME IN LONDON; IT'S LILAC TIME IN LONDON!) Buy a bunch of violets for the lady; While the sky burns blue above:

 On the other side of the street you'll find it shady (IT'S LILAC TIME IN LONDON; IT'S LILAC TIME IN LONDON!) But buy a bunch of violets for the lady; And tell her she's your own true love. 

 There's a barrel-organ caroling across a golden street, In the City as the sun sinks glittering and slow; And the music's not immortal, but the world has made it sweet And enriched it with the harmonies that make a song complete In the deeper heavens of music where the night and morning meet, As it dies into the sunset glow;

 And it pulses through the pleasures of the City and the pain That surround the singing organ like a large eternal light, And they've given it a glory and a part of play again In the Symphony that rules the day and night. 

 And there, as the music changes, The song runs round again; Once more it turns and ranges Through all its joy and pain: Dissects the common carnival Of passions and regrets; And the wheeling world remembers all The wheeling song forgets. 

 Once more La TRAVIATA sighs Another sadder song: Once more IL TROVATORE cries A tale of deeper wrong; Once more the knights to battle go With sword and shield and lance, Till once, once more, the shattered foe Has whirled into--A DANCE--

 Come down to Kew in lilac time; in lilac time; in lilac time; Come down to Kew in lilac time; (it isn't far from London!) And you shall wander hand in hand with Love in summer's wonderland; Come down to Kew in lilac time; (it isn't far from London!)

 COME DOWN TO KEW IN LILAC TIME; IN LILAC TIME; IN LILAC TIME; COME DOWN TO KEW IN LILAC TIME; (IT ISN'T FAR FROM LONDON!) AND YOU SHALL WANDER HAND IN HAND WITH LOVE IN SUMMER'S WONDERLAND; COME DOWN TO KEW IN LILAC TIME; (IT ISN'T FAR FROM LONDON!)