Transcriber's notes:

Four typographical errors have been corrected: Page 88, "seemes" changed to "seems" (it seems such a wasteful way to live somehow, ) Page 162, "Ellen" changed to "Ellen, " ("I'm very glad you feel that way about it, Ellen, ") Page 199, "accomodating" changed to "accommodating" (He felt his mind accommodating to) Page 252, "Weatherall" changed to "Weatheral" (Mr. Weatheral had some papers)

THE LOVELY LADY

_By the same author_

A WOMAN OF GENIUS

THE ARROW MAKER

THE GREEN BOUGH

CHRIST IN ITALY

[Illustration: _"It was one thin web of rose and gold over lakes ofburnished light. .. . "_]

THE LOVELY LADY

BY MARY AUSTIN

[Illustration: ]

_Frontispiece by Gordon Grant_

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1913

_Copyright, 1913, by_

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

_All rights reserved, including that oftranslation into Foreign Languages, including the Scandinavian. _

To

J. AND E. 

THE COMPANIONS OF THE GONDOLA

CONTENTS

 PAGE

PART ONE

In which Peter meets a Dragon, and the LovelyLady makes her appearance. 3

PART TWO

In which Peter becomes invisible on the way togrowing rich. 37

PART THREE

In which Peter becomes a bachelor. 59

PART FOUR

In which the Lovely Lady makes a final appearance. 107

ILLUSTRATIONS

"It was one thin web of rose and gold over lakes ofburnished light. .. . "

PART ONE

IN WHICH PETERMEETS A DRAGON, ANDTHE LOVELY LADYMAKES HER APPEARANCE

PART ONE

IN WHICH PETER MEETS A DRAGON, AND THELOVELY LADY MAKES HER APPEARANCE

I

The walls of the Wonderful House rose up straight and shining, palegreenish gold as the slant sunlight on the orchard grass under the appletrees; the windows that sprang arching to the summer blueness let in thescent of the cluster rose at the turn of the fence, beginning to riseabove the dusty smell of the country roads, and the evening clamour ofthe birds in Bloombury wood. As it dimmed and withdrew, the shining ofthe walls came out more clearly. Peter saw then that they were all ofcoloured pictures wrought flat upon the gold, and as the glow of itincreased they began to swell and stir like a wood waking. They leanedout from the walls, looking all one way toward the increasing light andtap-tap of the Princess' feet along the halls. 

"Peter, oh, Peter!"

The tap-tapping grew sharp and nearer like the sound of a crutch on awooden veranda, and the voice was Ellen's. 

"Oh, Peter, you are always a-reading and a-reading!"

Peter rolled off the long settle where he had been stretched and put thebook in his pocket apologetically. 

"I was just going to quit, " he said; "did you want anything, Ellen?"

"The picnic is coming back; I thought we could go down to the turn tomeet them. Mrs. Sibley said she would save me some things from theluncheon. "

If there was a little sting to Peter in Ellen's eagerness, it wasevidence at least, how completely he and his mother had kept her fromrealizing that it was chiefly because of their not being able to affordthe well-filled basket demanded by a Bloombury picnic that they had notaccepted the invitation. Ellen had thought it was because Bet, the mare, could not be spared all day from the ploughing nor Peter from hoeingthe garden, and her mother was too busy with the plaid gingham dress shewas making for the minister's wife, to do any baking. It meant to Ellen, the broken fragments of the luncheon, just so much of what a picnicshould mean: the ride in the dusty morning, swings under the trees, easygames that she could play, lemonade, pails and pails of it, pink hamsandwiches and frosted cake; and if Ellen could have any of these, shewas having a little piece of the picnic. What it would have meantparticularly to Peter over and above a day let loose, the arching elms, the deep fern of Bloombury wood, might have been some passages, perhaps, which could be taken home and made over into the groundwork of new andinteresting adventures in the House from which Ellen had recalled him. There was a girl with June apple cheeks and bright brown eyes at thatpicnic, who could have given points to princesses. 

He followed the tapping of his sister's crutch along the thick, bittersmelling dust of the road, rising more and more heavily as the dewgathered, until they came to the turn by the cluster rose and heardbelow them on the bridge, the din of the wheels and the gay laughter ofthe picnickers. 

"Hi, Peter!"

"Hello, Ellen!"

"Awful sorry you couldn't come . .. Had a bully time. .. . Killed acopperhead and two water snakes. "

"Here, Ellen, catch ahold of this!"

And while she was about it the June apple girl leaned over the end-boardof the wagon, and spoke softly to Peter. 

"We're going over to Harvey's pasture next Wednesday afternoon, berrying, in the Democrat wagon with our team; Jim Harvey's going todrive. We made it up to-day. Surely you can get away for an afternoon?"That was what the voice said. "To be with me, " the eyes added. 

"I don't know. .. . I'd like it. .. . "

It was not altogether the calculation as to how much earlier he wouldhave to get up that morning to be able to take an hour off in theafternoon, that made Peter hesitate, but the sudden swimming of hissenses about the point of meeting eyes. "I'll tell you what, " he said, "you come by for Ellen, and I'll walk over about four and ride home withyou. "

"Oh, " said the girl; she did not know quite whether to triumph at havinggained so much or to be disappointed at so little. "I'll be expectingyou. "

The horses creaked forward in the harness, the dust puffed up from underthe wheels and drowned the smell of the wilding rose, it fell thick onthe petals and a little on Peter's spirit, too, as he followed Ellenback to the house, though it never occurred to him to think any more ofit than that he had been working too long in the hot sun and was verytired. It did not, however, prevent his eating his share of the picnicdainties as he sat with his mother and Ellen on the veranda. Then as thesoft flitter of the bats' wings began in the dusk, he kissed them bothand went early up to bed. 

Peter's room was close under the roof and that was close under the elmboughs; all hours he could hear them finger it with soft rustlingtouches. The bed was pulled to the window that gave upon the downslopeof the hill; at the foot of it one saw the white bloom-faces of thealders lift and bow above the folded leaves, and the rising of the riverdamp across the pastures. All the light reflected from the sky aboveBloombury wood was no more than enough to make a glimmer on the glass ofa picture that hung at the foot of Peter's bed. It served to show thegilt of the narrow frame and the soft black of the print upon whichPeter had looked so many times that he thought now he was still seeingit as he lay staring in the dusk--a picture of a young man in brightarmour with loosened hair, riding down a particularly lumpy and swollendragon. Flames came out of the creature's mouth in the immemorialfashion of dragons, but the young man was not hurt by them. He sat therelightly, his horse curvetting, his lance thrust down the dragon's throatand coming out of the back of his head, doing a great deed easily, theway people like to think of great things being done. It was a verynarrow picture, so narrow that you might think that it had something todo with the dragon's doubling on himself and the charger's forefeetbeing up in the air to keep within the limits of the frame, and theexclusion from it of the Princess whom, as his father had told him thestory, the young knight George had rescued from those devouring jaws. Itcame out now, quite clearly, that she must have had cheeks as red asJune apples and eyes like the pools of spring rain in Bloombury wood, and her not being there in the picture was only a greater security forher awaiting him at this moment in the House with the Shining Walls. 

There was, for the boy still staring at it through the dusk, somethingparticularly personal in the picture, for ever since his father haddied, three years ago, Peter had had a dragon of his own to fight. Itsname was Mortgage. It had its lair in Lawyer Keplinger's office, fromwhich it threatened twice yearly to come out and eat up his mother andEllen and the little house and farm, and required to have its mouthstopped with great wads of interest which took all Peter's laboriousdays to scrape together. This year, however, he had hopes, if the gardenturned out well, of lopping off a limb or a claw of the dragon by wayof a payment on the principal, which somehow seemed to bring thePrincess so much nearer, that as Peter lay quite comfortably staring upat the glimmer on the wall, the four gold lines of the frame began tostretch up and out and the dark block of the picture to recede until itbecame the great hall of a palace again, and there was the Princesscoming toward him in a golden shimmer. 

There was just such another glow on the afternoon when Peter walked overto the berrying and came up with the apple-cheeked girl whose name wasAda, a good half mile from the others. As they climbed together overuneven ground she gave him her hand to hold, and there was very littleto say and no need of saying it until they came to the hill overlookingthe pasture, yellowing toward the end of summer, full of late bloom andmisty colour passing insensibly into light. Threads of gossamer caughton the ends of the scrub or floated free, glinting as they turned andbellied in the windless air, to trick the imagination with the hint ofrobed, invisible presences. 

"Oh, Peter, don't you wish it would stay like this always?"

"Like this, " Peter gave her hand the tiniest squeeze to show what therewas about this that he would like to keep. "It's just as good to look atany season though, " he insisted. "I was here hunting rabbits lastwinter, in February, and you could find all sorts of things in therunways where the brambles bent over and kept off the snow; bunches ofberries and coloured leaves, and little green fern, and birds hopping inand out. "

Ada spread her skirts as she sat on a flat boulder and began stickingleaves into Peter's hat. 

"Peter, what are you going to do this winter?"

"I don't know, I should like to go over to the high school at Harmony, but I suppose I'll try to get a place to work near home. "

"We've been getting up a dancing and singing school, to begin inOctober. The teacher is coming from Dassonville. It will be once a week;we sing for an hour and then have dancing. It will be cheap ascheap--only two dollars a month. I hope you can come. "

"I don't know; I'll think about it. " He was thinking then that twodollars did not sound much, but when you come to subtract it from theinterest it was a great deal, and then there would be Ellen to pay for, and perhaps a dress for her, and dancing shoes for himself and singingbooks. And no doubt at the dances there would be basket suppers. 

"I should think you could come if you wanted to. Jim Harvey's getting itup. .. . He wants to keep company with me this winter. " Ada was a littlenervous about this, but as she stole a glance at Peter's face as he laybiting at a stem of grass, she grew quite comfortable again. "But Idon't know as I will, " she said. "I don't care very much for JimHarvey. "

Peter picked up a stone and shied it joyously at a thrush in the bushes. 

"And I don't know as I want you to, " he declared boldly. "I'll come tothat dancing school if I possibly can, Ada, and if I can't you'll knowit isn't because I don't wish to. "

"You must want to with all your might and that'll make it come true. Youcan wish it on my amethyst ring. "

"You won't take it off until October, Ada?"

"I truly won't. " And it took Peter such a long time to get the ring onand held in place while the wish was properly made, that it waspractically no time at all until the others found them on the way homeas they came laughing up the hill. 

As it happened, however, Peter did not get to the dancing school oncethat winter. The first of the cold spell Ellen had slipped on the ice, to the further trying of her lame back, and there were things to be doneto it which the doctor said could not possibly be put off, so ithappened that the mortgage dragon did not get his payment and Peter gaveup the high school to get a place in Greenslet's grocery at Bloombury. And since there were the books to be made up after supper, and as Bet, the mare, after being driven in the delivery wagon all day, could not belet stand half the night in the cold at the schoolhouse door, it turnedout that Peter had not been once to the dancing school. In the beginninghe had done something for himself in the way of a hall for dancing, thrown out from the House of the Shining Walls, in which he and thePrincess Ada, to lovely, soundless strains, had whirled away, and foundoccasion to say things to each other such as no ballroom couldafford;--bright star pointed occasions which broke and scattered beforethe little hints of sound that crept up the stair to advise him thatEllen was stifling back the pain for fear of waking him. They had movedEllen's bed downstairs as a way of getting on better with thepossibility of her being bedridden all that winter, and the tinywhispered moan recalled him to the dread that as the half yearly termcame around, what with doctor's bills and delicacies, the mortgagedragon would have not even his sop of interest, and remain whole andthreatening as before. 

When Ellen was able to sit up in bed the mother moved her sewing inbeside it. Then Peter would sit on the other side of the lamp with abook, and the walls of the House rose up from its pages gilded finely, and the lights would come out and the dancing begin, but before he couldget more than a word with the Princess, he would hear Ellen:

"Peter, oh, Peter! I wish you wouldn't be always with your nose in abook. I wish you would talk sometimes. "

"What about, Ellen?"

"Oh, Peter, you are the _worst_. I should think you would take someinterest in things. "

"What sort of things?" Peter wished to know. 

"Why, who comes in the store, and what they say, and everything. "

"Mrs. Sleason wanted us to open a kit of mackerel to see if she'd likeit, " began Peter literally, "and we persuaded her to take two cans ofsardines instead. Does that interest you?"

"Have you sold any of the blue tartan yet?"

"Ada Brown bought seven yards of it. "

"Oh, Peter! And trimmings?"

"Six yards of black velvet ribbon--yes, I forgot--Mrs. Blackman is tomake it up for her. I heard Mrs. Brown say she would call for thelinings. "

"She's having it made up for Jim Harvey's birthday, " Ellen guessedshrewdly. "He's twenty-one, you know. .. . People say she's engaged tohim. "

Peter felt the walls of the House which had stood out waiting for himduring this interlude, fall inward into the gulf of blackness. Nobodysaid anything for two or three ticks of the large kitchen clock, andthen Ellen burst out:

"I think she's a nasty, flirty, stuck-up _thing_; that's what I think!"

"Shs--hss! Ellen, " said her mother. 

"Peter, " demanded Ellen, "are you reading again?"

"I beg your pardon, Ellen. " Peter did not know that he had turned apage. 

"Don't you ever wish for anything for yourself, Peter? Don't you wishyou were rich?"

"No, Ellen, I don't know that I ever do. "

But as the winter got on and the news of Ada Brown's engagement wasconfirmed, he must have wished it a great many times. 

One evening late in January he was sitting with his mother very quietlyby the kitchen stove, the front of which was opened to throw out theheat; there was the good smell of the supper in the room, for though hehad a meal with the Greenslets at six, his mother always made a point ofhaving something hot for him when he came in from bedding down themare, and the steam of it on the window-panes made dull smears of thereflected light. The shade of the lamp was drawn down until the ceilingof the room was all in shadow save for the bright escape from thechimney which shone directly overhead, round and yellow as twentydollars, and as Peter leaned back in his chair, looking up, it mighthave been that resemblance which gave a turn to his thoughts and led himto say to his mother:

"Why did my father never get rich?"

"I hardly know, Peter. He used to say that he couldn't afford it. Therewere so many other things he wished to do; and I wished them, too. Whenwe were young we did them together. Then your father was the sort of manwho always gave too much and took too little. I remember his saying oncethat no one who loved his fellowman very much, _could_ get rich. "

"Do you wish he had?"

"I don't know that either. No, not if he was happier the way he was. Andwe _were_ happy. Things would have come out all right if it hadn't beenfor the accident when the thresher broke, and his being ill so longafterward. And my people weren't so kind as they might have been. Yousee, they always thought him a little queer. Before we were married, before we were even engaged, he had had a little money. It had been lefthim, and instead of investing it as anybody in Bloombury would, he spentit in travel. I remember his saying that his memories of Italy were thebest investment he could have made. But afterward, when he was introuble, they threw it up to him. We had never got in debt before . .. And then just as he was getting round, he took bronchitis and died. "

She wiped her eyes quietly for a while, and the kettle on the stovebegan to sing soothingly, and presently Peter ventured:

"Do you wish I would get rich?"

"Yes, Peter, I do. We are all like that, I suppose, we grown-ups. Thingswe manage to get along without ourselves, we want for our children. Ihope you will be a rich man some day; but, Peter, I don't want you tothink it a reflection on your father that he wasn't. He had what hethought was best. He might have left me with more money and fewer happymemories--and that is what women value most, Peter;--the right sort ofwomen. There are some who can't get along without _things_: clothes, andfurniture, and carriages. Ada Brown is that kind; sometimes I'm afraidEllen is a little. She takes after my family. "

"It is partly on account of Ellen that I want to get rich. "

"You mustn't take it too hard, Peter; we've always got along somehow, and nobody in Bloombury is very rich. "

Peter turned that over in his mind the whole of a raw and sleetyFebruary. And one day when nobody came into the store from ten tillfour, and loose winds went in a pack about the village streets, castingup dry, icy dust where now and then some sharp muzzle reared out of thepress as they turned the corners, he spoke to Mr. Greenslet about it. Itwas so cold that day that neither the red apples in the barrels nor thecrimson cranberries nor the yellowing hams on the rafters couldcontribute any appearance of warmth to the interior of the grocery. Akind of icy varnish of cold overlaid the gay lables of the cannedgoods; the remnants of red and blue tartan exposed for sale lookedcoarse-grained with the cold, and cold slips of ribbons clung to theglass of the cases like the tongues of children tipped to the frostedpanes. Even the super-heated stove took on a purplish tinge ofchilblains, roughed by the wind. 

A kind of arctic stillness pervaded the place, out of which the two menhailed each other at intervals as from immeasurable deeps of space. 

"Mr. Greenslet, " ventured Peter at last, "are you a rich man?"

"Not by a long sight. "

"Why?" questioned Peter. 

"Not built that way. "

The grocer lapsed back into the silence and seemed to lean against itmeditatively. The wolf wind howled about the corners and cast snow likepowdered glass upon the windows contemptuously, and time went by with alarge deliberate movement like a fat man turning over, before Peterhailed again. 

"Did you ever want to be?"

Mr. Greenslet reached out for the damper of the stove ostensibly toshake down the ashes, but really to pull himself up out of the soundlessspaces of thought. 

"When I was your age, yes. Thought I was going to be. " The shaking ofthe damper seemed to loosen the springs of speech in him. "I was up inthe city working for Siegel Brothers; began as a bundle boy and meant tobe one of the partners. But by the time I worked up to fancy goods Irealized that I would have to be as old as Methuselah to make it at thatrate. And Mrs. Greenslet didn't like the city; she was a Bloombury girl. It wasn't any place for the children. "

"So you came back?"

"We had saved a little. I bought out this place and put in a few notionsI'd got from Siegel's. I'm comfortably off, but I'm not rich. "

"Would you like to be?"

"I don' know, I don' know. I'd like to give the boys a better start thanI had, but I'm my own boss here and one of the leading men. That'salways something. "

Peter went and looked out of the smudged windows while he consideredthis. The long scrapes of the wind in the loose snow were like thescratches of great claws. It was now about mail time and a few peoplebegan to stir in the street; the clear light and the cold gave them apoverty-bitten look. 

"Does anybody ever get rich in Bloombury?"

"Not that I know of. There's Mr. Dassonville in Harmony--DaveDassonville, the richest man in these parts. "

"I suppose he could tell me how to go about it?"

"I suppose he would if he knows. Mostly these things just happen. "

Peter did not say anything more just then; he was watching a man and agirl of about his own age who had come out of a frame house farther downthe street. The young man was walking so as to shield her from the wind, her rosy cheek was at his shoulder, and she smiled up at him over hermuff, from dark, bright eyes. 

"What's set you on to talk about riches? Thinking of doing something inthat line yourself?"

"Yes, " said Peter, kicking at the baseboard with his toes. "I don't knowhow it is to be done, but I've got to be rich. I've just simply got to. "

II

It was along in the beginning of spring on a day full of wet cloud andclearing wind, that Peter walked over to Harmony to inquire of Mr. DavidDassonville the way to grow rich. It was Sunday afternoon and the airsweet with the sap adrip from the orchards lately pruned and the smellof the country road dried to elasticity by the winds of March. 

Between timidity and the conviction that a week day would have beenbetter suited to his business, he drew on to the place of his errandvery slowly, for he was sore with the raking of the dragon's claws, andunrested. It had been a terrible scrape to get together the lastinstalment of interest, and since Ellen had shattered it with the gossipabout Ada Brown's engagement, there had been no House with Shining Wallsfor Peter to withdraw into out of the dragon's breath of poverty; aboveall, no Princess. 

He did not know where the House had come from any more than he knew nowwhere it had gone. It was a gift out of his childhood to his shy, unfriended youth, but he understood that if ever its walls should waverand rise again to enclose his dreams, there would be no Princess. Neverany more. Princesses were for fairy tales; girls wanted Things. Therewas his mother too--he had wished so to get her a new dress this winter. It was an ache to him to cut off yards and yards of handsome stuffs atMr. Greenslet's, and all the longing in the world had not availed to getone of them for his mother. Plainly the mastery of Things wasaccomplished by being rich; he was on his way to Mr. Dassonville to findout how it was done. 

It was quite four of the clock when he paused at the bottom of theDassonville lawn to look up at the lace curtains at the tall Frenchwindows. Nobody in Bloombury was rich enough to have lace curtains atall the windows, and the boy's spirit rose at the substantial evidenceof being at last fairly in the track of his desire. 

He found Mr. Dassonville willing to receive him in quite a friendly way, sitting in his library, keeping the place with his finger in the book hehad been reading to his wife. Peter also found himself a little at aloss to know how to begin in the presence of this lady, for heconsidered it a matter quite between men, but suddenly she looked up andsmiled. It came out on her face fresh and delicately as an apple orchardbreaking to bloom, and besides making it quite spring in the room, discovered in herself a new evidence of the competency of Mr. DavidDassonville to advise the way of riches. She looked fragile andexpensive as she sat in her silken shawl, her dark hair lifted up in ahalf moon from her brow, her hands lying in her lap half-covered withthe lace of her sleeves, white and perfect like twin flowers. He sawrings flashing on the one she lifted to motion to the maid to bring achair. 

"If you have walked over from Bloombury you must be tired, " she said, "and chilled, perhaps. Come nearer the fire. "

"No, thank you, " Peter had managed, "I am quite warm, " as in fact hewas, and a little flushed. He sat down provisionally on the edge of thechair and looked at Mr. Dassonville. 

"I came on business. I don't know if you will mind its being Sunday, butI couldn't get away from the store on other days. "

"Quite right, quite right. " Mr. Dassonville had lost his place in thebook and laid it on his knee. "Private business? My dear, perhaps----"

"Oh, no--no, " protested Peter handsomely. "I'd rather she stayed. Itisn't. At least . .. I don't know if you will consider it private ornot. "

"Go on, " urged Mr. Dassonville. 

"I just came to ask you, " Peter explained, "if you don't mind tellingme, how you got rich?"

"But bless you, young man, " exclaimed Mr. Dassonville, "I'm not rich. "

This for a beginning, was, on the face of it, disconcerting. Peterlooked about at the rows of books, at the thick, soft carpet and theleather-covered furniture, and at the rings on Mrs. Dassonville's hand. If Mr. Dassonville were not rich, how then--unless----

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I thought--that is, everybody says you arethe richest man in these parts. "

"As to that, well, perhaps, I have a little more money than myneighbours. "

Peter breathed relief. The beautiful Mrs. Dassonville's rings were paidfor, then. 

"But as to being _rich_, why, when you come to a really rich man allI've got wouldn't be a pinch to him. " Mr. Dassonville illustrated withhis own thumb and fingers how little that would be. "We don't havereally rich men in a place like Harmony, " he concluded. "You have to goto the city for that. "

"You've got everything you want, haven't you?"

Mr. Dassonville looked over at his wife, and the smile bloomed again; hesmiled quietly to himself as he admitted it. "Yes, I've got everything Iwant. "

They were quiet, all of them, for a little while, with Peter turning hishat over in his hands and Mr. Dassonville laying the tips of his fingerstogether before him, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair. 

"I wish, " said Peter at last, "you would tell me how you did it. "

"How I got more money than my neighbours? Well, I wasn't born with it. "

This was distinctly encouraging. Neither was Peter. 

"No two men, I suppose, make money in the same way, " went on the man whohad, "but there are three or four things to be observed by all of them. In the first place one must be very hard-working. "

"Yes, " said Peter. 

"And one must never lose sight of the object worked for. Not"--as if hehad followed the boy's inward drop of dismay--"that a man should thinkof nothing but getting money. On the contrary, I consider it veryessential for a man to have some escape from his business, some changeof pasture to run his mind in. He comes fresher to his work so. What Imean is that _when_ he works he must make every stroke count toward theend he has in view. Do you understand?"

"I think so. " The House and the Shining Walls were safe, at any rate. 

"And then, " Mr. Dassonville checked off the points on his fingers, "hemust always save something from his income, no matter how small it is. "

"I try to do that, " confessed Peter, "but what with Ellen's back beingbad, and the interest on the mortgage, it's not so easy. "

"Is there a mortgage? I am sorry for that, for the next thing I wasgoing to say is that he must never go into debt, never on any account. "

"My father was sick; it was an accident, " Peter protested loyally. 

"So! I think I remember. Well, it is unfortunate, but where there is adebt the only thing is to reduce it as steadily as possible, and if thismortgage teaches you the trick of saving it may not be such a bad thingfor you. But when a man works and saves for a long time without gettingany sensible benefit, he sometimes thinks that saving and working arenot worth while. You must never make that mistake. "

"Oh, no, " said Peter. It seemed to him that they were getting on verywell indeed. 

"There is another thing I should like to say, " Mr. Dassonville went on, "but I am not sure I can put it plainly. It is that you must not try tobe too wise. " He smiled a little to Peter's blankness. "I believe inHarmony it is called looking on all sides of a thing, but there isalways one side of everything like the moon which is turned from us. Youmust just start from where you are and keep moving. "

"I see, " said Peter, looking thoughtfully into the fire, in imitation ofMr. Dassonville. And there being no more advice forthcoming he began towonder if he ought to sit a while from politeness, as people did inBloombury, or go at once. Mrs. Dassonville got up and came behind herhusband's chair. 

"Don't you think you ought to tell him, David, that there are otherthings worth having besides money; better worth?"

"You, perhaps. " Mr. Dassonville took the hand of his wife laid on hisshoulder and held it against his cheek; it brought out for Petersuddenly, how many years younger she was, and what he had heard of Mr. Dassonville having married her from among the summer folk who came toHarmony for the pine woods and the sea air. "Ah, but I'm not sure I'dhave you without a great deal of it. It takes money to raise rare plantslike you. But I ought to say, " still holding his wife's hand to hischeek and watching Peter across it, "that I think it is a very good signthat you are willing to ask. The most of poor men will sit about andrail and envy the rich, but hardly one would think to ask how it isdone, or believe if he were told. They've a notion it's all gouging andluck, and you couldn't beat that out of them if you tried. Very few ofthem understand how simple success is; it isn't easy often, but it isalways simple. "

Peter supposed that he really ought to go after that, though he did notknow how to manage it until Mrs. Dassonville smiled at him over herhusband's shoulder and asked him what sort of work he did. "Oh, if youknow about gardens, " she interrupted him, "you can help a little. Thereare such a lot of things coming up in mine that I don't know the namesof. "

It flashed out to Peter long afterward that she had simply provided aneasy way for him to get out of the house now that his visit wasterminated. She held the white fold of her shawl over her head with onehand and gathered the trailing skirts with the other. They rustled asshe moved like the leaves of the elms at night above the roof, as sheled him along the walk where little straight spears of green and bluntflower crowns faintly tinged with colour came up thickly in the borders. So by degrees she got him down past the hyacinth beds and the noddingbuds of the daffodils to the gate and on the road again, walking home inthe chill early twilight with the pricking of a pleasant excitement inhis veins. 

It was that, perhaps, and the sense of having got so much more out of itthan any account of his visit would justify, that kept Peter from sayingmuch to his mother that night about his talk with the rich man; he askedher instead if she had ever seen Mrs. Dassonville. 

"Yes, " she assured him. "Mr. Dassonville drove her over to Mrs. Tillinghurst's funeral in October. They had only been married a littlewhile then; she is the second Mrs. Dassonville, you know; the first diedyears ago. I thought her a very lovely lady. "

"A lovely lady, " Peter said the phrase under his breath. The sound of itwas like the soft drawing of silken skirts. 

His mother looked at him across the supper table and was pleased to seethe renewal of cheerfulness, and then, motherlike, sighed to think thatPeter was getting so old now that if he didn't choose to tell her thingsshe had no right to ask him. "Your walk has done you good, " was all shesaid, and it must have been the case, for that very night as soon as hishead had touched the pillow he was off again, as he hadn't been sinceEllen fell ill, to the House of the Shining Walls. It rose statelyagainst a blur of leafless woods and crocus-coloured sky. The gardenbefore it was all full of spring bulbs and the scent of daffodils. ThePrincess came walking in it as before, but she was no Princess now, merely a woman with her dark hair brushed up in a half moon from herbrow and her skirts drawing after her with a silken rustle; her face wasdim and sweet, with only a faint, a very faint, reminder of Ada, and hername was the Lovely Lady. 

PART TWO

IN WHICH PETERBECOMES INVISIBLE ON THEWAY TO GROWING RICH

PART TWO

IN WHICH PETER BECOMES INVISIBLE ONTHE WAY TO GROWING RICH

In the late summer of that year Peter went up to the city with Mr. Greenslet to lay in his winter stock and remained in canned goods withSiegel Brothers' Household Emporium. That his mother had rented thefarming land for cash was the immediate occasion of his setting out, butthere were several other reasons and a great many opinions. Mr. Greenslet had a boy of his own coming on for Peter's place; Bet, themare, had died, and the farm implements wanted renewing; in spite ofwhich Mrs. Weatheral could hardly have made up her mind to spare himexcept for the opportune appearance of the cash renter. With that andthe chickens and the sewing, she and Ellen could take care of themselvesand the interest, which would leave all that Peter could make to countagainst the mortgage. 

They put it hopefully to one another so, as they sat about the kitchenstove, all three of them holding hands, on the evening before hisdeparture. But the opinions, which were rather thicker at Bloombury thanopportunities, were by no means so confident as Peter could have wishedif he had known them. Mr. Greenslet thought it couldn't be much worsethan Peter's present situation, and the neighbours were sure it wasn'tmuch better. The minister had a great deal to say of the temptations ofa young man in the city, which was afterward invalidated by the city'sturning out quite another place than he described it. 

It was left for Ellen and Mrs. Jim Harvey to make the happyprognostication. "You can trust Peter, " Ada was confident. 

"But you got to be mighty cute to get in with those city fellows, " herhusband warned her, "and Peter's so dashed simple; never sees anythingexcept what's right in front of him. Now a man"--Jim assumed this estatefor himself in the right of being three months married--"has got to lookon all sides of a thing. "

As for Ellen, she hadn't the slightest doubt that Peter was shortly tobecome immensely wealthy and she was to go up and keep house for him. 

"There'll be gold chairs in the parlour and real Brussels, " sheanticipated. Peter affected to think it unlikely that she could bespared by the highly mythical person who was to carry her off to keephouse for himself. Somehow Peter could never fall into the normalBloombury attitude of thinking that if you had hip disease, your lifewas bound to be different from everybody's and you might as well say soright out, flat-footed, and be done with it. 

With all this, finally he was got off to the city in the wake of Mr. Greenslet, and the first discovery he made there was that outside ofSiegel Brothers, and a collarless man with a discouraged moustache whoappeared in the hall of his lodging-house when the rent was due, he waspractically invisible. As he went up and down the stairs sodden withscrub water which never by any possible chance left them scrubbed, nobody spoke to him. Nobody in the street saw him walking to and fro inhis young loneliness. There were men passing there with faces like Mr. Dassonville's, keen and competent, and lovely ladies in soft becomingwraps and bright winged hats--such hats! Peter would like to have hailedsome of these as one immeasurably behind but still in the way, seized ofthat precious inward quality which manifests itself in competency andbrightness. He would have liked to feel them looking on friendlily athis business of becoming rich; but he remained, as far as any word fromthem was concerned, completely invisible. He came after a while to theconclusion that most of those who went up and down with him were in thesame unregarded condition. 

The city appeared quite habituated to this state of affairs; hordes ofthem came and went unconfronted between banked windows of warmth andloveliness, past doors from which light and music overflowed into thedim street in splashes of colour and sound, where people equally underthe prohibition lapped them up hungrily like dogs at puddles. Sometimesin the street cars or subways he brushed against fair girls from whomthe delicate aroma of personality was like a waft out of that countryof which his preferences and appreciations acknowledged him a native, but no smallest flutter of kinship ever put forth from them to Peter. The place was crammed full of everything that anybody could want andnobody could get at it, at least not Peter, nor anybody he knew atSiegel Brothers. And at the lodging house they seemed never to haveheard of the undiminished heaps of splendour that lay piled behind plateglass and polished counters. It was extraordinary, incredible, that hewasn't to have the least of them. 

As the winter closed in on him, the restrictions of daily living rose sothick upon him that they began to prevent him from his dreams. He couldno longer get through them to the House with the Shining Walls. Often ashe lay in his bed trying to believe he was warm enough, he would set offfor it down the lanes of blinding city light through which the scream ofthe trolley pursued him, only to see it glimmer palely on him throughimpenetrable plate glass, or defended from him by huge trespass signsthat appeared to have some relation to the fact that he was not yet sorich as he expected to be. Times when he would wake out of his sleep, it would be to a strange sense of severances and loss, and though he didnot know exactly what ailed him, it was the loss of all his dreams. After a while the whole city seemed to ache with that loss. He would liein his narrow bed and think that if he did not see his mother andBloombury again he would probably die of it. 

Then along in the beginning of April somebody saw him. It was in thedusk between supper and bed time, walking on the viaduct where he hadthe park below him. There was a wash of blue still in the sky and a thinblade of a moon tinging it with citron; here and there the lightglittered on the trickle of sap on the chafed boughs. It was just herethat he met her. She was about his own age, and she was walking oddly, as though unconscious of the city all about her, with short pickedsteps, and her hat with the tilt to it of a girl who knows herselfadmired. She had a rose at her breast which she straightened now andthen, or smoothed a fold of her dress and hummed as she walked. Hercheeks were bright even in the dusk, and some strange, quick fear keptpace with her glancing. Peter was walking heavily himself, as the youngdo when the dreams have gone out of them, and as they passed in thelight of the arc that danced delicately to the wandering air, the girl'slook skimmed him like a swallow. She must have turned just behind him, for in a moment she drifted past his shoulder. 

"Hello!" she said. 

"Hello!" said Peter, but, in the moment it had taken to drag that upfrom under his astonishment, she had passed him; her laugh as she wentbrushed the tip of his youth like a swallow's wing. It remained with himas a little, far spark; it seemed as if a dream was about to spin itselfout from it. He went around that way several times on his evening walksin hopes that he might meet her again. 

As though the spark had lightened a little of the blank unrecognitionwith which the city met him, he was seen that day and in no unfriendlyaspect by "our Mr. Croker" of Siegel Brothers. The running gear of agreat concern like the Household Emporium pressed, in the days ofPeter's apprenticeship, unequally at times on its employees, and thegalled spot of the canned goods department was Blinders the bundle boy. His other name was Horace and he was chiefly remarkable for pimpleswhich he seemed to think interesting, and for a state of activeresentment against anybody who gave him anything to do. The world forHorace was a dark jungle full of grouches and pulls and privilege anddevious guile. 

That the propensity which Peter had developed for inquiring every halfhour or so if he hadn't got that done yet, could be nothing else but acabal directed against Blinders' four dollars and a half a week, he wasconvinced. In all the time that he could spare from his pimples, Horacerehearsed a martyr's air designed to convey to Mr. Croker that though hewould suffer in silence he was none the less suffering. It beingprecisely Mr. Croker's business to rap out grouches as an expertmechanician taps defective cogs, it happened the day after Peter'smeeting with the girl that the worst hopes of Horace were realized. 

"Aw, they're always a pickin' on me, Mr. Croker, that's what they are, Mr. Croker, " Horace defended himself, preparing to snivel if theoccasion seemed to demand it, by taking out his gum and sticking it onthe inside of his sleeve. "I can't handle 'em no faster, Mr. Croker. "

"Not the way you go at it, " Peter assured him. Anybody could have toldby the way he included Mr. Croker in his cheerfulness that there wassomething between them. "You turn 'em over too many times and you usetoo much paper and too much string. " Suddenly Peter reddened withembarrassment. "Not that that makes any difference to a big firm likethis, " he apologized, "but in a small place every little counts. " Heturned the package deftly and began to illustrate his method. "Whenyou're tying up calico with one hand and taking in eggs and butter withthe other and telling three people the price of things at the sametime, " he explained, "you have to notice things like this. "

"I see, " said Mr. Croker. "You try it, Blinders. "

"Aw, what's the matter with the way I was doin' it?" wailed Horace. 

"If you don't feel quite up to it----" Mr. Croker hinted. Horace did, hewrapped with alacrity and Peter showed him how to hold the string. 

"You come along with me, Weatheral, " Mr. Croker commanded. Horace tookhis gum out of his cuff and made dark prognostication as to what wasprobably to be done to Peter. 

What Peter thought was that he should probably become very unpopularwith his fellow clerks. Croker took him across to dry goods, where girlswere tying bundles in little cages over the sales ladies' heads, and hadhim repeat the method of handling string. Except that he thought heshould get to like Mr. Croker, the incident made no particularimpression on Peter--so dulled were all his senses for want ofdreams, --and passed wholly out of mind. 

It was two or three days after that he saw the girl again, nearer theend of the viaduct, where four or five streets poured light andconfusion into Venable Square. She was going on ahead, hurrying andpretending not to hurry to overtake a man to whom she wished to speak. She was quite close to him, she was speaking, and suddenly he gave alittle outward jerk with his elbow which caught hers unexpectedly andwhirled her back against the parapet. The little purse she was carryingfell from her hand. The man gave a quick laugh over his shoulder andploughed his way across the street. 

"The skunk!" Peter's list of expletives was not extensive. He picked upthe flat little purse and handed it back to her. "Shall I go after him?Did you know him?"

The girl was holding on to the parapet with a little choky laugh. "Oh, yes, I know that kind. No, I don't want him!"

"He ought to have a good thrashing, " Peter was convinced. The girllooked up at him with a sudden curiosity. 

"You're from the country, ain't you? I thought so the other night. I canalways tell. "

"I guess you're from the country yourself, " Peter hazarded. She wasprettier even than he had thought. Her glance had left his, however, andwas roving up and down the hurrying crowd as though testing it for someplunge she was about to make. 

"If you wanted me to see you home----" Peter hinted; he did not knowquite what was expected of him. She answered with a little sharp noisewhich ended in a cough. 

"I guess you're real kind, " she admitted, "but I ain't goin' home justyet. I got a date. " She moved off then, and since it was in thedirection he was going, there was nothing for Peter to do but move withher, on the other side of the wide pavement. At the turn she driftedback to his side again; it seemed to Peter there was amusement in hertone. 

"You got anything to do Saturday about this time?" Peter hadn't. "Well, I'll be here--savvy?" But before he could make her any assurance shelaughed again and slipped into the crowd. 

Peter knew a great many facts about life. There were human failings evenin Bloombury, and what Peter didn't know about the city had been largelymade up to him by the choice conversation of J. Wilkinson Cohn, instaples, at the next counter to him. Anybody who listened long enoughto J. Wilkinson's personal reminiscences would have found himself fullyinstructed for every possible contingency likely to arise between agentleman of undoubted attractions and the ladies, but there are forcesin youth that are stronger than experience. It is a very old, old way ofthe world for young things to walk abroad in the spring and meet oneanother. 

Peter strolled along the viaduct Saturday and felt his youth beat in himpleasantly when he saw her come. She had on a different hat, and theearlier hour showed him the shining of her eyes above the raddledcheeks. 

"We could go down in the park a piece, " he suggested as they turned intogether along the parapet. There was a delicate damp smell coming upfrom it on the night, like the Bloombury lanes. 

"You're regular country, aren't you?" There was an accent of impatiencein her tone, "I haven't had my supper yet. "

"Well, what do you say to a piece of roast beef and a cup of coffee?"Peter had planned this magnificence as he came along fingering his payenvelope. He knew just the place, he told her. The feeling of his propermale ascendency as he drew her through the crowd was a tonic to him; theman tossing pancakes in the window where he hesitated looking for theladies' entrance seemed quite to enjoy doing it, as though he had knownall along there was to be company. 

"Oh, I don't care for any of these places. " Peter felt her pull at hiselbow. "I'll show you. " They went along then, brushing lightly shoulderto shoulder until they came to one of those revolving doors from whichgusts of music issued. There was a girl standing up to sing as they satdown and the whole air of the place was beyond even the retailedsplendour of J. Wilkinson. The girl threw back her wraps and began toorder freely. Peter, who had a glimpse of the card, stiffened. 

"I--I guess I'm not so very hungry, " he cautioned. She looked up fromthe menu sharply and her face softened; she made one or two deft changesin it. 

"This is Dutch, you know, " she threw out. "Oh, I know you invited me, but you didn't think I was one of the kind that let a strange gentlemanpay for my dinner, did you?" Peter denied it, stricken withembarrassment. She seemed in the light, to take him in more completely. 

"Say, would you have licked that fellow the other night, honest?"

"Well, if he was disrespectful to a lady----" Peter began. 

"Oh, _excuse_ me!" She turned her head aside for a moment in her longgloves. "You _are_ country!" she said again, but it seemed not todisplease her. "I don't care so much for her voice, do you?" She turnedon the singer. They discussed the entertainment and the dinner. Theywere a long time about it. The orchestra played a waltz at last, andEthel--she had told him to call her that--put her arms on the table andleaned across to him, and though Peter knew by this time that her cheekswere painted, he didn't somehow mind it. 

"What's it like up in the country where you lived?" she wished to know. 

"Hills mostly, little wooded ones, and high pastures, and the appleorchards going right up over them. .. . "

"I know, " she nodded. "I guess it's them I been smelling . .. Orlaylocks. "

"Things coming up in the garden, " Peter contributed: "peonies, and longrows of daffodils. .. . " He did not realize it, but he had described toher no place that he had known but the way to the House. The girl cuthim off. 

"Don't!" she said sharply. "You know, " she half apologized, "you kind ofremind me of somebody . .. A boy I knew up country. It was him that gotme here----" She made her little admission quietly, the horror of itlong worn down to daily habit. "That first time I saw you, it seemedalmost as if it was him . .. I ain't never blamed him--much. He didn'tmean to be bad, but when the trouble came he couldn't help none. .. . Iguess real help is about the hardest thing to find there is. "

"I guess it is. "

"Oh, well, we gotta make the best of it. " She glanced at Peter with herhead on one side as she twiddled her fingers across the cloth to thetune of the orchestra. 

They went out at last and walked in the least frequented streets, andPeter held her hand; the warmth of it ran with a pleasant tingling inhis veins. He seemed to have touched in her palm the point at which thecity came alive to him. They walked and walked and yet it seemed thatsomething lacked to bring the evening to a finish; it was incredible toPeter that after all his loneliness he should have to let her go. 

"We could go up to my place, " Ethel suggested. "It's up here. " He hadn'tsuspected that she had been guiding him. 

"I guess not to-night. " Peter's blood was singing in his ears. In thedark of the unfrequented street he could feel her young body leaningtoward his. 

"Say, you know I ain't after the money the way some girls are; I likeyou . .. Honest----"

"I guess I'd better go home. " But they went on up the side street alittle farther. "Good-bye, " he said, but he did not let her go. 

She shook her hand free at last. 

"Oh, well, of course, if you don't want to. .. . " He felt her soft handsfumbling at his face; she drew him down to a kiss. Suddenly she sprangaway, laughing. "Go, you silly!"

"Ethel!" he cried, but he lost her in the dark. He should have let hergo at that; he knew he should. In spite of her paying half, his dinnerhad cost him more than two ordinary dinners . .. And besides. .. . Hecouldn't help, however, walking around by the viaduct for severalevenings the next week, and at last he saw her. She was going by withoutspeaking, but he got squarely in front of her. 

"Ethel!"

She pretended just to have recognized him. 

"Oh, you here? I thought you'd gone back to the country!"

"You aren't mad with me about . .. The other night?" He did not quiteknow how to express the quality of his desertion. 

"Who? Me?" airily. "Oh, I guess there's just as good fish in thesea----" She changed all at once under his young hunger forcompanionship. "You're good, " she said; "you're the real thing. "

"You're good, too, " he was certain, "when you're with me. "

"Oh, it rubs off. Say, kid, I guess you got folks at home you're sendingmoney to and all that, and you got to get ahead in the world. Well, youdon't want to have nothing to do with my kind, and that's straight. " Thedeviltry she put on toward him failed pitifully. "Chase yourself, kid; Ijust ain't good for you any more. " Nevertheless they moved along theparapet to the dark interval between the lights and there they kissedagain, this time with no undercurrent. 

"Good-bye, Ethel. "

"Good-bye, boy. " The little spark was out. 

PART THREE

IN WHICH PETERBECOMES A BACHELOR

PART THREE

IN WHICH PETER BECOMES A BACHELOR

I

The day before leaving for his summer vacation Peter was notified thathe was wanted in his private office by the younger Siegel Brother. Though he couldn't quite fall in with the dark prognostications ofBlinders that he was about to be mulcted of his salary by a plot whichhad been plainly indicated by the marked partiality of our Mr. Croker, the incident gave him some uneasiness. The young Siegel Brother musthave been younger than somebody of course, though it couldn't have beenby more than a scratch, and he might have been any age without betrayingit, so deeply was he sunk in the evidence of the surpassing quality ofthe grocery department. However, there was something surprisingly younglooking out at Peter from the junior brother's red and white rotundity, at which he took heart immensely. 

"Weatheral, Peter, canned goods, recommended by Mr. Greenslet, " SiegelBrother ticked him off from a manilla envelope. "Just a littlehonorarium, Mr. Weatheral, we are in the habit of distributing to suchof our employees as make practical suggestions to the advantage of thebusiness. " Contriving to make his hands meet in front of him by claspingthem very high up on his chest, Siegel Brother assumed that he hadfolded his arms, and waited to see what Peter would do about it. 

"We have also a little savings bank for the benefit of our employeeswhich pays 3 per cent. , yet I believe we have you not among ourdepositors. " There was the slightest possible burr to his speech asthough it were blunted by so much fatness. 

"Well, you see, sir--there's a mortgage. " Peter was afraid he shoulddamage himself by the admission, but the firm heard him out. 

"How much?"

"It was a thousand, but we've got it down to seven hundred--six hundredand sixty, " Peter corrected himself with a glance at his honorarium. 

"And the farm, it is worth----" Siegel Brother parted his hands slightlyto admit of any valuation. 

"Two thousand. "

"So! Well, Mr. Weatheral, that is not so bad, and if I were you, when Ihad occasion to speak of it I would say, not 'I am paying a mortgage, 'that is dead work, Mr. Weatheral, but 'I am buying a farm. ' It goeseasier so. "

"Thank you, sir, I'll remember. " He supposed his employer was done withhim, but as he turned to go he heard his name again. 

"You will report to our Mr. Croker when you return, Mr. Weatheral; hethinks he can use you. "

Two weeks later when he came back rested from Bloombury, Peter foundhimself visible to at least ten persons, all of whom pertained to theboarding-house of the exclusive Mrs. Blodgett, where, by the advice ofJ. Wilkinson Cohn, he engaged a small room on the third floor with awindow opening some six feet from the rear wall of a wholesalestationery, and one electric light discreetly placed to discourage thehabit of reading in bed. 

From this time on he was visible to Mrs. Blodgett and Aggie and MissThatcher, whom he already knew as the pure food demonstrator in dairyproducts, to two inconsiderable young women from the wholesalestationer's, and a gentleman from a shoe store, the whole of whosephysiognomy appeared to be occupied with the effort to express anengaging youthfulness which the crown of his head explicitly denied. Hewas occasionally visible to the representative of gentlemen's outfitterswho was engaged to Aggie and took Sunday dinners with them, and he wasparticularly and pleasingly visible to J. Wilkinson Cohn and Miss MinnieHavens. The rest of his fellow boarders were so much of a likeness, akind of family likeness that spread all over Siegel Brothers and suchparts of the city as Peter had been admitted to, that it was a relief toPeter to realize from his profile that J. Wilkinson's last name probablyought to have been spelled Cohen. The determinedly young gentlemanexplained to him that J. Wilkinson's intrusion into the exclusiveness ofBlodgett's was largely a concession to Aggie's being as good as marriedand not liable to social contamination, and to the fact that the littleJew was amusing and pretty near white, anyway. 

Miss Minnie Havens did typewriting and stenography in a downtown officeand was understood to be in search of economic independence, rather thanunder the necessity of making a living. She had a high fluffy pompadourand a half discoverable smile which could be brought to a very agreeablelaugh if one spent a little pains at it. J. Wilkinson Cohn appeared tofind it worth the pains. 

The particular advantage of Blodgett's, besides the fact that you couldhave two helps of everything without paying extra for it, was that itwas exclusive and social. Mrs. Blodgett had collected her family ofboarders on the principle of not having anybody who wasn't a suitablecompanion for Aggie. There was also a pianola which gave the place atone. 

There was fire and light in the dining-room at Blodgett's from seven tonine always, and in the parlour with the pianola on Saturday eveningand all day Sunday. Sometimes, even on week days after supper, J. Wilkinson would open the door into the darkened room, push away thepianola and sing topical songs to his own accompaniment until hisstiffened fingers clattered on the keys. Other times he would giveimitations of popular stage celebrities until Blodgett's shouted withlaughter. At all times they appeared to have a great many engagements. Peter was advised to join this or that organization, and to enter uponsocial occasions that unfortunately presented themselves in the light ofoccasions to spend money. Apparently there were no dragons tracking thepath of Blodgett's boarders. Miss Havens did better than any of them forhim. She explained to him how to get books from the circulating library, and let him read hers until he could arrange for a card. She said it wasa pleasure to think there was going to be somebody in the house who wascongenial. It wasn't that she had anything against Miss Thatcher and therest of them--they just didn't have the same tastes. She thought aperson ought to spend some of the time improving their minds. Althoughthe expression was ambiguous, it served as a sort of sedative to theaching vacuity of the hours which Peter spent away from Siegel Brothers. He found himself spending as many as possible of them with Miss Havens. She had a way of making the frivolling talk of the supper table appear awarrantable substitute for the things that Peter knew, even while heechoed her phrases, that he wasn't getting. He found himself skidding onthe paths of self-improvement and the obligations of seeing life, alongthe edges of desolation. He immersed himself as far as possible in theatmosphere of Blodgett's in order that he needn't have any time left inwhich to consider how far it fell short of what he had come to find. Forthis reason he was usually the last at the supper table, but there wereoccasions when he found it discreet to slip away as early and quietly aspossible. 

It was one evening about two months after his instalment at Blodgett's. Peter was sitting in his room when he heard them yammering at his doorwith so much hilarious insistence that he found himself getting up toopen it, without giving himself time to put down the book he was readingor to take off the overcoat he had put on for want of a fire, andfinding himself in some embarrassment because of the misapprehensionwhich this fact involved. 

"Ready, Peter?"

"Come along, Peter!"

"I . .. I'm not going, " said Peter. 

"What? Not going to the rink with us to-night? Why, you said----" Thebright group of his fellow boarders hung upon the narrow landing likebees at the threshold of a hive. 

"I said I'd go if I could--" protested Peter, "and I can't. "

"Gee! What's the matter with you?"

"Don't be a beastly stiff!"

"Come on, fellows, we'll miss the car. Let him be a stiff if he wantsto. "

Peter heard their feet retreating on the stairs, and then he saw thatMinnie Havens still hesitated at the landing. She had on her best silkwaist and her blond pompadour was brushed higher than ever. Her eyes, which were blue, were fixed directly on him with something in themeeting that gave him the impression, gaspingly, of being about to stepoff into space. He seemed suddenly to see a path opening directlythrough the skating rink and the Saturday Social Club to the House ofthe Shining Walls, and Minnie Havens walking in it beside him. Hewrenched his mind away forcibly from that and fixed it on the figure ofhis weekly salary. 

"Couldn't you?" she persuaded. 

"No, " said Peter. "I'm much obliged to you, but I really couldn't. "

But before he had time to take up his reading, which somehow he was notable to do immediately, he heard Mrs. Blodgett, who made a point ofbeing as kind to her boarders as she could afford to be, tapping at hisdoor. 

"I thought you'd be going to the rink to-night. "

"No, " said Peter. 

"You don't think it's wrong, or anything?"

"Oh, no, not in the least. "

"Well, Mr. Weatheral, I've seen a power of young folks, comin' andgoin', in my business and it don't pay for 'em to get too stodgy like. They need livenin' up. " She hung upon the door as Peter waited for herto go. "Miss Havens is a nice girl, " she ventured. 

Peter admitted it. "I've my mother and sister to think of, " he told her, and presently he found he had told her a great deal more. 

"Well, " commented Mrs. Blodgett, "you do have a lot to carry. .. . Was youreadin' now, Mr. Weatheral? . .. Because it's warmer down in my sittin'room, and there's only Aggie and me sewin'. .. . Besides, " she arguedtriumphantly, "it's savin' light. "

First and last he heard a great deal about saving at Blodgett's. Aggie, who was making up her white things, had something to tell every eveningalmost, about the price of insertion. But it was saving for a purpose;they were in the way, most of them, of being investors. J. Wilkinson hadsixty dollars in his brother's cigar stand on Fifty-fourth street. Heused to let his brother off for Sunday afternoons with quite aproprietary air. The shoe gentleman, whose very juvenile name was WallyWhitaker, didn't believe in such a mincing at prosperity. He talkedfreely about tips and corners and margins and had been known to maketwenty-seven dollars in copper once. He offered Peter some exclusiveinside information in B and C's before he had been in the house a month. 

"Well, you see, " Peter explained himself, "I'm buying a farm up ourway!" His fellow boarders laid down their forks to look at him; he couldsee reflected from their several angles how he had placed himself by themere statement of his situation. He felt at once the resistance it gavehim, the sense of something to pull against, of having got his feetunder him. It was the point at which the conquest of the mortgage dragonbegan to present itself to him as a thing accomplished rather than athing escaped. 

It must have been this feeling of release which opened up for him, frompictures that he saw occasionally with Miss Havens on Sundays, frombooks he read and discussed with her, avenues that appeared to lead moreor less directly to the House. There were times when he found himselfwalking in them with Miss Minnie Havens, and yet always curiouslyexpecting the Lovely Lady when they found her there, to be quite anotherperson. He came within an inch of telling her about it on the occasionon which she presented him with an embroidered hat marker for Christmas, and when he took her to the theatre with tickets the floor walker hadpresented to him on account of Mrs. Floor Walker not feeling up to it. It appeared, further, that Miss Havens had a way of falling intoprofound psychological difficulties which required a vast amount oftalking over, and a great many appeals to Peter's disinterested judgmentto extract her, not without some subtle intimations of dizzying escapesfor himself. Peter supposed that was always the way with girls. It cameto a crisis later where Miss Havens' whole destiny hung upon the pointas to whether she could accept a situation offered her in her own town, or should stay on in the city and see what came of it. 

"You'd get more salary there, and be able to live cheaper?" Peter wishedto know. 

"Oh, yes. " The implication of her tone was that she didn't see whatthat had to do with it. It was toward the end of June, and she waslooking very pretty in a white dress and a hat that set off herpompadour to advantage, and there was no special reason, as they had theafternoon before them, why they should not have taken some of theby-paths that the girl perceived to lead out from the subject intobreathless wonder. She had ways, which were maidenly and good, ofopening up to Peter comfortable little garden plots of existence which, though they lay far this side of the House and the Lovely Lady, had inthe monotony of the long climb up the scale of Siegel Brothers, momentsof importunate invitation. 

"And you came up to the city, " Peter went on in the gravelled walk offact, "just to improve yourself in shorthand so you could get such asituation? I don't see why you hesitate. "

Miss Havens could hardly say why herself. 

"There were so many ways of bettering one's self in the city. I've agreat many friends here, " she hinted. 

"Not so many, " Peter reminded her, "as you'd have where you were broughtup. "

"You are staying in the city?" Miss Havens suggested. 

"That's different. I have to. " He had already told her about Ellen andalso about his mother. 

"And are you always going to stay on here like this, working and workingand never taking any time for yourself? Aren't you ever going to . .. Marry?"

"I know too much what poverty is like to ask any woman to share it, "Peter protested. 

"Suppose she should ask you?"

"They don't do that; the right sort. "

"I don't see why . .. If some girl . .. Cared . .. And if she saw . .. Anybody struggling along under burdens she would be glad to share, andshe knew because of that he didn't mean to ask her . .. You think sheought not to let him know?"

"I think it wouldn't be best, " said Peter. 

"You think the man would despise her?"

"Not that; but if he liked her a little . .. He might consent to it . .. Just because he liked her and was tired maybe . .. And that wouldn't begood for either of them. "

"Well, anyway, it doesn't concern either of us, " said Miss Havens. 

The next evening as Peter was letting himself in at his own door--he hadmoved to the second floor front by this time--Mrs. Blodgett stopped him. 

"Miss Havens left her regards for you, " she explained. "She wentto-day. "

"Oh, " said Peter, "wasn't it sudden?"

"Sort of. She'd been considerin' of it for some time, and last night shemade up her mind. But I did think, " said Mrs. Blodgett, "that she'd havesaid good-bye to _you_. " And not eliciting anything by way of a reply, she added: "Miss Havens is a nice girl. I hate to think of her slavin'her life out in an office. She'd ought to get married. "

"A girl has ever so many more chances in her home town, " Peter offeredhopefully. 

"Yes, I suppose so. " Mrs. Blodgett sighed. "Is there anything I can dofor you, Mr. Weatheral?"

"Nothing, thank you. " He was lingering still on the landing on Mrs. Blodgett's account, but he found his finger slipping between the leavesof the volume he had brought from the library. 

"Ah, " she warned him, "readin' is an improvin' occupation, but there's abook we hadn't any of us ought to miss, and that's the Book of Life, Mr. Weatheral. " And somehow with that ringing in his ears, Peter spentseveral minutes walking up and down in his room before he could settleto his book again. 

II

It was a week or ten days after Miss Havens left, before Peter went downto Bloombury for his midsummer vacation, a week in which he had thegreatest difficulty in getting back to the House of the Shining Walls. He set out for it almost immediately with a feeling akin to the releasewith which one returns to daily habit after the departure of anunexpected guest. But his thought would no sooner strike into theaccustomed paths than Miss Minnie Havens would meet him thereunaccountably, to begin again those long intimate conversations whichled toward and about the House, but never quite to it. Peter foundhimself looking out for those meetings with some notion of dodging them, and yet once they were fairly off, he owned them a great relief fromBlodgett's. Now that it was withdrawn, he realized in the girl's brightcompanionship the effect of the rose-red glow of the shade that Aggiedrew down over the front parlour lamp on the evenings when theGentlemen's Outfitter called. It had prevented his seeing until now, that the chief difference between himself and his fellow boarders, wasthat for most of them, this was a place where they had come to stay. Having let Miss Havens go on alone to the place she was bound for, hehad moments of dreadful sinking, as it occurred to him to wonder if hehadn't made a mistake in the nature of his own destination. Suppose, after all, he should find himself castaway in some oasis of determinedsprightliness with Wally Whitaker in whose pocket pretenses of tips andmargins he began to discern a poorer sort of substitute for the House. He was as much bored by the permanently young shoe-salesman after thisdiscovery as before it, but obliged to set a watch on himself lest in amoment of finding himself too much in the same case, he should make themistake of inviting Wally to Bloombury for his vacation. 

He was relieved, when at last he had got away without it, to be savedfrom such a misadventure, for he found his mother not standing the heatwell, and Ellen anxious. He had never definitely shaped to himself theidea that there could anything happen to his mother; she was as much apart of his life as the aging apple trees and the hills that climbed, with low, gnarled pines to the sky's edge beyond the marshes, a pointfrom which to take distance and direction. He began to note now thegraying hair, the shrunken breast and the worn hands, so blue veined forall their brownness, and he could not sleep of nights because of thesweat that was on his soul, for fear of what might come to her. He wouldlie in the little room under the roof and hear the elms moving like theriffle of silence into sound, thinking of his mother until at last hewould be obliged to rise and move softly about the place, as if by themere assertion of himself he could make her safer in it. He wishednothing so much as not to disturb her, but she must have been lyingawake often herself, for the second or third time this happened, shecalled to him. He came, half dressed as he was and drew the covers upclose about her shoulders, and was exceedingly gay and tender with her. 

"There's nothing troubling you, son?"

"Nothing--except to be sure there's nothing troubling _you_. "

She gave a little, low laugh like a girl. 

"That's so like your father. I remember he would get up in the nightwhen you were little, and go prowling about . .. He used to say he wasafraid the roof tree would fall in and kill you. And yet here youare. .. . " She reached out to give him a little pat, as if somehow toreassure him. The low dropping moon made a square block of light onthe uncarpeted floor; outside, the orchard waited for the dawn, andthe fields brimmed life up to their very doors. 

"You're like him in other ways, " she went on. "Somehow it's brought himback wonderfully the last two or three days, and especially at nightwhen I'd hear you creaking down the stair. There's a board there whichalways does creak, and I'd hear you trying to remember which it was, thesame as _he_ used to----"

"I haven't meant to keep you awake, mother. "

"I've been awake. When you're getting along like, you don't sleep much, Peter. Sleep is for dreaming, some of it, and the old don't dream. "

"You're not to go calling yourself old, mother!"

"And me with a son going twenty-three! We weren't so young either whenwe were married, your father and I . .. But I want you should sleep, Peter, and dream when you can. You have pleasant dreams, son?"

"Any amount of them. " He was going off into one of those brightfantasies of what he should do when he was rich as he meant to be, withwhich he had so often beguiled Ellen's pain, but she kissed him and senthim to bed again lest Ellen should hear them. 

It was not more than a day or two after that the minister's wife caughtyoung Mr. Weatheral walking with his mother in the back pasture with hisarm about her, and was slightly shocked by it, for though it was thoughthighly commendable in him to have paid off the mortgage and managed asilk dress for her and Ellen besides, Bloombury was not habituated to alively expression of family affection. Peter had consented to gather thehuckleberries which Ellen insisted were of a superior flavour in theback pasture, on the sole condition that his mother should come withhim, and the minister's wife had just stepped aside on her way to theTillinghurst's to gather the southerwood which grew there, for theminister's winter cough, when she caught sight of them. 

"She couldn't have stared more if she'd caught me with a girl. " Peterprotested. 

"It's only that she'd have thought it more likely, " his motherextenuated. "I hope you aren't going to be a girl-hater, Peter. I wantyou should marry some time, and if I haven't seemed anxious about itbefore now, you mustn't think it's because I want to keep you for Ellenand me. What I don't want is that you should take to it just _because_there's a girl. Not but what that's natural, but there's more to it thanthat, Peter. For you, " she supplemented. She sat down on a gray, roundstone while Peter stripped the bushes at her feet, and watched to see ifhis colour rose while she talked, or his gaze failed to meet hers at anypoint. 

"I'd have liked to have Ellen marry, " said Ellen's mother, "she's thatkind. Having a man of her own, most any kind of a man so as he would begood to her, would mean such a lot. If Ellen can have a little of whateverybody's having, she's satisfied. But there are some who can get agreat deal more out of it than that . .. And if they don't the rest of itis a drag and a weariness. " He left off stripping the bushes and turnedcontentedly against her knees. 

"You're my home, Mumsey. "

"And not even, " she gently insisted, "when I'm not here to make it foryou. There's a kind of life goes with loving; it's like--like thelovely inside colour of a shell, and somehow, this winter I've wonderedif you'd got to the place where you knew what that would be like if youshould find it. " She turned his face up to her with a tender anxiety andyet with a little timidity; they did not talk much of such things inBloombury. 

"I know, mother. "

"Yes. .. . " after a long look, "you would; you're so like your father. Butif you know, you mustn't ever be led by dullness or loneliness intoanything less, Peter. Not that I'm afraid you'll be led into anythingwrong . .. But there are things that are almost more wrong than downrightwickedness. .. . 

"I've been thinking a great deal lately about when I was your age, andthere didn't seem anything for me but to marry one of the neighbour'sboys that I'd known always, or a long plain piece of school teaching. Itwasn't easy with everybody egging me on--but I stuck it out, and at thelast along came your father . .. I'd like you to have something likethat, Peter, --and your son coming to you the way you came to me, likeit was through a cloud of glory. .. . " He looked up presently on hersilence, silver tipped now with the hope of renewal, and he saw her as aman sometimes when he is young and clean, sees his mother, the SacredDoor . .. And he did not observe at all that her hands were berry stainedand the nails broken, nor that her cheek had fallen in and her hair grayand wispy. But being a young man and never good at talking, it made nodifference with him except that as they walked home across the pastureshe was more than ever careful of her and teased her more whimsically. 

He forgot, after he had settled in his room again at Blodgett's, thatMiss Minnie Havens had ever walked with him in the purlieus of theHouse, for he was quite taken up with a new set of rooms he had thrownout from it for his mother. She was always there with him now until theday of her death and long after, made a part of all his dreaming by thetouch with which she had limned in herself for him, the feature of allLovely Ladies. 

He would write her long letters into which crept much that had beenuttered only in the House, which that winter became an estate inFlorida, moved there because of Mrs. Weatheral's need of mild climate. They went abroad after the Christmas Holidays in which she had coughedmore than usual and consented to have her breakfast brought up to bed, setting out every evening from Peter's reading-lamp and arriving veryshortly at Italian Cathedrals and old Roman seaport towns that smelledof history. 

Dreaming of lovely ladies who have no face or form other than theyborrow from the passing incident is a very pleasant way of passing thetime, and does not necessarily lead to anything; but when a man goesabout afraid lest his mother should die for lack of something he mighthave got for her, he dreams closer at home. More than ever since therevelation of his mother's frailness, Peter dreamed of being rich, andsince there was nothing nearer to him than the way Siegel Brothers hadmanaged it, he devoted so much time to the scrutiny of their methodsthat he passed in a very short time from being head of the deliverydepartment to the right hand of Mr. Croker. Even Blinders could notrecall, in the three years he had been bundle boy, so marked an exampleof favouritism. 

"They don't make partners any more out of underlings, " Croker let himknow confidentially. "What do you think you're headed for?" Peterexplained himself. 

"I wanted to find out how they did it. "

"And when you find out, " Croker wagged at him, "you won't be able to doanything with it. You have to have capital. Look at the time I've beenwith them!"

"How long is that?" Peter was interested. 

"Twenty years. " Croker told him. 

"In twenty years, " Peter was confident, "a man ought to be able to findsome capital. " After that he began to observe Mr. Croker. 

It is probable at this time that if he had not been concerned for hismother's health, he might have grown as dry and uninteresting as atBlodgett's they began to think him. 

He was a thin young man with hair of no particular colour, and eyesthat were good and rather shy about women. He went out very little andhad not, Miss Thatcher who sat opposite him was sure, a mind above hisbusiness. Aggie had married her Outfitter, and J. Wilkinson Cohn, whohad become a full partner in his brother's cigar stand, had moved out toFifty-fourth Street, so that there was nobody who could havecontradicted her. But lying awake planning how he might piece out lifefor his mother with comforts, and hearing in every knock the precursorof what might have happened to her, his heart was exercised as it isgood for the heart to be even with pain and anxiety. And beyond theheart stretching there was always the House. He could seldom get away toit in his waking hours, but he knew it was there for him, and visitingit in dreams he kept in spite of the anxiety and Mr. Croker, his youngresiliency. Along in December, about two weeks before his midwinterholiday, Ellen sent for him. 

"It's not as if there hadn't been time for everything. You must think ofthat, Peter. And your being able to come down every Saturday since thefirst stroke. There's plenty that are hurried away without a good-bye oranything. "

"I know, Ellen. "

"And it isn't as if there hadn't been plenty to say, either. Six weekswould have been too long for anybody less loving than mother. Theywouldn't have known how to go through your life and say just the thingsyou'll be glad to remember when the time comes for them. You've got tokeep your mind on those things, Peter. "

"Yes, Ellen. "

The front room had been well rid up after the funeral and everybody atEllen's earnest entreaty had left them quite alone. Although there wasfire in the base burner, they were sitting together by the kitchenstove, the front of which was thrown open for the sake of the warm glowof the coals. By and by the kettle began to sing and the bare tips ofthe lilac scratched on the pane like a live thing waiting to be let in. The little familiar sounds refilled for them the empty room. 

Outside it was every way such a day as a well-spent life might slipaway in; the tracks in the deep-rutted February snow might have beenworn there by the habit of sixty years. There was no hint of the springyet, but here and there in the bare patches on the hills and the frayedicy edges of the drifts, the sign that the weight of the winter wasbehind them. There would be a little quiet time yet and then theresurrection. The brother and sister had taken it all very quietly. Nobody had ever taken anything in any other way in the presence of Mrs. Weatheral, and that she was there still for them, that she would alwaysbe present in their lives, a warm determining influence, was witnessedby that absence of violence which empties too soon the cup of grief. Theloss of their mother had at least brought them no sense of leaving herbehind. They were going on with their life so soon because she was goingwith them. 

"That was why I wanted them all to go away, " Ellen took up the thoughtagain. "I've been thinking all day about mother being with father andhow glad he'll be to see her, and yet it seems as if I can feel herhere. I thought if we kept still a while she'd make us understand whatshe wanted us to do. "

"About what, Ellen?"

"About my going up to the city with you to board--it seems such awasteful way to live somehow, just sitting around!"

"It isn't as expensive as keeping house, " Peter told her, "and I wantyou to sit around, Ellen; women in Bloombury don't get enough of thatI'm afraid. "

"They don't. Did you see Ada Harvey to-day? Four children and two teethout, and her not thirty. I guess you'd take better care of me than that, Peter, --only----"

"You think _she_ wouldn't like it for you?"

"She thought such a lot of keeping up a home, Peter. It was like--likethose Catholics burning candles. It seemed as if she thought you'd getsomething out of it if it was just going on, even if you didn't visit itmore than two or three times a year. Lots of women feel that way, Peter, and I guess there must be something in it. "

"There _is_ something in it, " Peter assured her. 

"And if I go and board with you we'd have to break up everything----"She looked about on all the familiar mould of daily habit that was herworld, and tears started afresh. "And we've got all this furniture. " Shemoved her head toward the door of the front room and the parlour setthat had been Peter's Christmas gift to them two years ago. "For all itwas such a comfort to her to have it, it's as good as new. It seemed asif she thought you were the only one good enough to sit in it. "

"Don't, Ellen. "

"I know, Peter. " They were silent a while until the deep wells of griefhad stilled in the sense of that sustaining presence. "I only wanted tobe sure I wouldn't be going against her, breaking up the home. It seemslike anything she set such store by oughtn't to stop just because sheisn't here to take care of it. " They had to come back to that the nextday and the next. 

"I only want to do what is best for you, Ellen. "

"I'd be best off if I was making you happy, Peter--and I'd feel such aburden somehow, just boarding. "

"The rents _are_ cheaper in the suburbs, " Peter went so far as to admit. It was all so inarticulate in him; how could he explain to Ellen thefeeling that he had, that settling down to a home with her would somehowput an end to any dreams he had had of a home of his own, persistent butunshaped visions that vanished before the sudden brightening of Ellen'sface at his least concession. 

"We could have somebody in to clean, " she reminded him, "and I hardlyever have to be in bed now. "

The fact was that Peter had the very place in mind; he had often walkedout there on Sundays from Blodgett's; he thought the neighbourhood had aclean and healthy look. He went up on Tuesday to see what could be doneabout it. 

Lessing, who rented him the apartment, made the natural mistake about itthat Peter's age and his inexperience as a householder invited. He saidthe neighbours were all a most desirable class of people, and Petercould see for himself that the city was bound to build out that way in afew years. As for what Pleasanton could do in the way of climate, well, Lessing told him, with the air of being only a little less interestedthan he credited Peter with being, look at the perambulators. 

They were as fine a lot of wellfilled vehicles as could be produced byany suburb anywhere, and Ellen for one was never tired of looking atthem. But Peter couldn't understand why Ellen insisted on walking homefrom church Sunday morning the wrong way of the pavement. 

"I suppose we do get in the way, " she admitted after he had explained toher that they wouldn't be crowded off so frequently if they moved withthe nurse-maid's parade and not against it, "but if we go this way wecan see all the little faces. "

"I didn't know you cared so much for babies. "

"Well, you see it isn't as if I was to have any of my own----" Somethingin the tone with which she admitted the restraining fact of heraffliction brought out for Peter how she had fitted her life to it, likea plant growing hardily out of a rock, climbing over and around itwithout rancour or rebellion. As he turned now to look at her long, plain face in the light of what had been going on in himself lately, herecalled that the determining influence which had drawn her thick hairinto that unbecoming knot at the back of her neck had been the pain ithad given her when she first began to put up her hair, to do it higher. 

She was watching the bright little bonneted heads go by with the samedetachment that he had learned to look at the shop windows, withoutthinking of appropriating any of their splendour for himself, and whenshe spoke again it was without any sensible connection with the presentoccasion. 

"Peter, do you remember Willy Shakeley?"

"Shakey Willy, we used to call him. I remember his freckles; they werethe biggest thing about him. " He waited for the communicating thread, but nothing came except what presently reached him out of his own youngrecollections. "He wasn't good enough for you, Ellen, " he said at lastfor all comment. 

"He was kind, and he wouldn't have minded about my being lame, but a manhas to have a healthy wife if he's a farmer. " How completely she hadaccepted the deprivation for herself, he saw by her not wasting a sighover it; she had schooled herself so long to go no further in herthought than she went on the crutch which tapped now on the pavementbeside him. As if to stop his going any further on her account shesmiled up at him. "Peter, if you were to meet any of the things youthought you'd grow up to be, do you suppose you'd know them?"

At least he could have told her that he didn't meet any of them on hisway between Siegel Brothers and the flat in Pleasanton. 

There are many things which if a young man goes without until he istwenty-five he can very well do without, but the one thing he cannotleave off without hurting him is the expectation of some time doingthem. The obligation of the mortgage and Ellen's lameness had been asort of bridge for Peter, a high airy structure which engaged the bestof him and so carried him safely over Blodgett's without once lettinghim fall into the unlovely vein of life there, its narrowness, itscommonness. He had known, even when he had known it most inaccessible, that there was another life which answered to every instinct of his forbeauty and fitness. He waited only for the release from strain for hisentry with it. Now by the shock of his mother's death he found himselfprecipitated in a frame of living where a parlour set out of SiegelBrothers' Household Emporium was the limit of taste and understanding. The worst thing about Siegel Brothers' parlour sets was that he soldthem. He knew it was his particular value to Siegel Brothers that he hadalways known what sort of things were acceptable to the out-of-towntrade. He had selected this one distinctly with an eye to the pleasurehis mother and Ellen would get out of what Bloombury would think of it. He hadn't expected it would turn and rend him. That it was distinctlybetter than anything he had had at Blodgett's was inconsiderable besidethe fact that Blodgett's hadn't owned him. That he was owned now by hissister and the furniture, was plain to him the first time he sat down tofigure out the difference between his salary and what it would cost himto let Ellen be a burden to him in the way that made her happiest. Notthat he thought of Ellen in that way; he was glad when he thought of itat all articulately, to be able to make life so little of a burden toher. But though he saw quite clearly how, without some fortunateaccident, the rest of his life would be taken up with making a home forEllen and making it secure for her in case anything happened to him, hesaw too, that there was no room in it for the Lovely Lady. The worst ofall this was that he did not see how he was to go on without her. 

He had fled to her from the inadequacy of all substitutes for her thathis life afforded, and she had ended by making him over into the sort ofman who could never be satisfied with anything less. Something he owed, no doubt, to that trait of his father's which made his memories of Italymore to him than his inheritance, but there it was, a world Peter hadbuilt up out of books and pictures and music, more real and habitablethan that in which he went about in a gray business suit and a pleasantready manner; a world from which, every time he fitted his key in thelatch of the little flat in Pleasanton, he felt himself suddenlydispossessed. 

It was not that he failed to get a proper pleasure out of being ahouseholder, in being able to take a certain tone with the butcher anddiscuss water rates and rents with other householders going to and froon his train. Ellen's cooking tasted good to him and it was verypleasant to see the pleasure it gave her to have Burnell of thehardware, out to supper occasionally. He made friends with Lessing, whose natty and determinedly architectural office with its air of beingsomehow akin to Wally Whitaker, occupied the corner where Peter waitedevery morning for his car. Lessing began it by coming out on the veryfirst occasion to ask him how his sister did, in an effort to correctany impression of a want of perspicuity in his first estimate of Peter'ssituation. He kept it up for the reason perhaps that men friends aremeant for each other from the beginning of time quite as much as we areaccustomed to thinking of them as being meant for the lovely ladies whomthey so frequently miss. Lessing was about Peter's own age and had largeand cheerful notions of the probable increase of real-estate values inPleasanton, combined with a just appreciation of the simple shrewdnesswhich had so recommended Peter to his employers. 

"You'd be a crackerjack to talk to the old ladies, " Lessing generouslypraised him. "I scare 'em; they think I'm too hopeful. " That he didn't, however, have the same effect on young ladies was apparent from the verypretty one whom Peter used to see about, especially on early closingSaturday afternoons, helping him to shut up the office and get off tothe ball game. He couldn't have told why, but those were the days whenPeter allowed the car to carry him on to the next block, beforealighting, after which he would make a point of being particularly kindto Ellen. It would never do for her to get a notion that the tapping ofher crutch beside him had scared anything out of Peter's life which hemight think worth having in it. 

Along toward Thanksgiving time, on an occasion when Peter had justmissed his car and had to wait for another one, Lessing--J. B. On thedoor sign, though he was the sort that everybody who knew him calledJulian--came quite out to the pavement and stood there with his handsin his pockets and his hair beginning to curl boyishly in the dampness, quite brimming over with good fortune. Singularly he didn't mention itat once, but began to complain about the low state of the market in realestate. 

"Not but that the values are all right, " he was careful to explain;"it's just that they _are_ all right makes it so trying. If a fellow hada little capital now, he could do wonders. The deuce of a chap like meis that he hasn't any capital unless there's some buying. "

"You think it's a good time then to lay out a little money?"

"Good! _Good!_ Oh, Lord, it's so good that if a fellow had a fewthousands just put around judiciously, he wouldn't be able to sleepnights for hearing it turn over. " He kicked the gravel in sheerimpatience. "How's your sister?"

It was a formula that he had kept on with because to have dropped itimmediately might have betrayed the extenuating nature of its inception, and besides there were so many directions in which one might startconversationally off from it. He made use of it now without waiting forPeter's habitual "Very well, thank you, " by a burst into confidence. 

"You see I'm engaged to be married--yes, I guess you've seen me withher. Fact is, I haven't cared how much people have seen so long as she'sseen it, too; and now we've got it all fixed up, naturally I'm on themake. I'm dashed if I don't think I'll have to take a partner. "

"I've been wanting to speak to you about some property of mine, " Peterventured. "It's a farm up country. "

"What's it worth?"

"Well, I've added to it some the last ten years and made considerableimprovement. I ought to get three thousand. "

"That's for farming? For summer residence it ought to bring more thanthat. Any scenery?"

"Plenty, " Peter satisfied him on that score. "I've been thinking, " helet out shyly, "that if I could put the price of it in some place whereI could watch it, the money would do me more good. .. . "

Lessing turned on him a suddenly brightening eye. 

"That's the talk--say, you know I think I could get you forty-fivehundred for that farm of yours anyway. " They looked at one another onthe verge of things hopeful and considerable. As Peter's car swungaround the curve, suddenly they blushed, both of them, and reached outand shook hands. 

That evening as Peter came home he saw Lessing buying chrysanthemums atthe florist's with a happy countenance, and to master the queer pang itgave him, Peter got off the car and walked a long way out on the dim wetpavement. He was looking at the bright picture of Lessing and thegirl--she was really very pretty--and seeing instead, himself, quite thebachelor, and his lame sister taking their blameless dull way in theworld. He couldn't any more for the life of him, get a picture ofhimself without Ellen in it; the tapping of her crutch sounded even inthe House when he visited it in his dreams. It was well on this occasionthat he had Ellen beside him, for she showed him the way presently totake it, as he knew she would take it as soon as he went home and toldher--as another door by which they could enter sympathetically in thejoyousness they were denied. She would be so pleased for Julian's sake, in whom, by Peter's account of him, she took the greatest interest, andso pleased for the girl to have such a handsome, capable lover. It made, for Ellen, a better thing of life if somebody could have him. 

Peter went back after a while with that thought to the florist's andbought chrysanthemums, taking care to ask for the same kind Mr. Lessinghad just ordered. He was feeling quite cheerful even, as he ran up thesteps with them a few minutes later, and saw the square of light underthe half-drawn curtain, and heard the tap of Ellen's crutch coming tomeet him. 

That night after he had gone to bed a very singular thing happened. ThePrincess out of the picture visited him. It was there at the foot of hisbed in a new frame where Ellen had hung it--the young knight riding downthe old, lumpy dragon, but with an air that Peter hadn't for a long timebeen able to manage for himself, doing a great thing easily the way oneknew perfectly great things couldn't. The assistant sales manager ofSiegel Brothers had been lying staring up at it for some time when thePrincess spoke to him. He knew it was she, though there was no face norform that he could remember in his waking hours, except that it wasfamiliar. 

"Ellen is right, " she told him; "it doesn't really matter so long assomebody finds me. "

"But what have _I_ done?" Peter was sore with a sense of personalslight. "It wasn't in the story that there should be a whole crop ofdragons. "

"All dragons are made so that where one head comes off there are sevenin its place; and you must remember if somebody didn't go about slayingthem, I couldn't be at all. " This as she said it had a deep meaning forPeter that afterward escaped him. "And you can hold the dream. It takesa lot of dreaming to bring one like me to pass. "

"I'm sick of dreams, " said Peter. "A man dies after a little who is fedon nothing else. "

"They die quicker if they stop dreaming; on those that have the gift forit the business of dreaming falls. Listen! How many that you know havefound me?"

"A great many think they have; it comes to the same thing. "

"The same for them; but you must see that I can never really _be_ untilI am for those outside the dream. The trouble with you is that you'dwake up after a while and you would _know_. "

"Yes, " Peter admitted, "I should know. "

"Well, then, " she was oh, so gentle about it, "yours is the better part. If you can't have me, at least you're not stopping me by leaving off forsomething else. In the dream I can live and grow, and you can grow tome. Do you remember what happened to Ada Harvey? I've saved you fromthat at any rate. "

"No, " said Peter, "it was the dragon saved me. I thought you were she. It's saved me from lots of things, now that I think of it. "

"Ah, that's what we have to do between us, Peter, we have to save you. You're worth saving. "

"Save me for what?" Peter cried out to her and so strongly in hisloneliness that he found himself starting up from his bed with it. Hecould see the dragon spitting flames as before, and the pale light fromthe swinging street lamp gilding the frame of the picture. Though hedid not understand all that had happened to him, as he lay down again hewas more comforted than he had been at any time since he had made up hismind that he was to be a bachelor. 

PART FOUR

IN WHICH THE LOVELYLADY MAKES AFINAL APPEARANCE

PART FOUR

IN WHICH THE LOVELY LADY MAKES AFINAL APPEARANCE

I

On the day that the silver-laced maple, then in fullest leaf, had passedby the space of three delicate palm-shaped banners the sill of thethird-story office window, Lessing, of Weatheral, Lessing & Co. , Brokersin Real Estate, crossed over to his partner's desk before sitting downat his own, and remained quietly leaning against it and looking out ofthe window without a word. He remained there staring out over the new, orderly growth of the suburb, toward the river, until the stenographerfrom the outer room had come in with the vase which she had been fillingwith great golden roses, and gone out again, after placing it carefullyin the exact middle of the top of the junior partner's desk. By thattime Lessing's rather plump, practical hand had crept out along the rimof the desk until it was covered by Peter's lean one, and still neitherof them had said a word. The roses had come in from Lessing's countryplace that morning in Lessing's car, and Lessing's wife had gatheredthem. There were exactly seventeen, full-blown and fragrant, and onesmall bud of promise which Peter presently removed from its vase to hisbutton hole. The act had almost the significance of a ritual, a thingdone many times with particular meaning. 

"Somehow, " Peter said as he fastened it with a pin underneath his lapel, "seventeen years seems a shorter time to look back on than to lookforward to. "

"Well, when we've put twenty-five years of work into it--and that'snothing to what we'll get into the next seventeen. " Lessing's tone keyedadmirably with the bright ample day outside, the rapid glint of theriver and the tips of the maple all a-tremble with the urgency of newgrowth. The senior partner's eye roved from that to the restrainedrichness of the office furniture from which the new was not yet worn, and returned to the contemplation of the towering white cumuli beginningto pile up beyond the farther bank of the river. "There's no end to whata man can lift, " he asserted confidently, "once he's got his feet underhim. "

"We've carried a lot, " Peter assented cheerfully, "and sometimes it wasrather steep going, but now it's carrying us. The question is"--and herehis voice fell off a shade and a slight gathering appeared between hiseyes--"the real question is, I suppose, what it is carrying us _to_. "

"Where's the good of that?" Julian protested. "It's only a limitation toset out for a particular place. The fun is in the going. You keep rightalong with the procession until old age gets you. The thing is just tokeep it up as long as you can. " He swung himself into a sitting postureon the edge of the desk and noted that the slight pucker had not lefthis partner's eyes. "What's the idea?" he wished affectionately to know. 

"Oh, nothing much, but I sort of grew up with the idea ofDuty--something you had to do because there was nobody else to do it. You had not only to do it but you had to like it, not because it waslikable, but because it was your duty. It was always right in front ofme: I couldn't see over or around it; I just had to do it. "

"Well, you did it, " Lessing corroborated. "Clarice says the way you'vetaken care of Ellen----"

"And the way Ellen has taken care of me--but then Ellen was all thewoman I had. " He caught himself up swiftly after that; it was seldomeven to his partner that anything escaped him in reference to theinterior life of dreams which had gone on in him, quite happily behindhis undistinguished exterior. "But somehow it hasn't seemed to come outanywhere. I've done my duty . .. And when I'm dead and Ellen's dead, where is it? After all, what have I done?"

"Ah, look at Pleasanton, " Julian reminded him; "do you call thatnothing?" They looked together toward the esplanade along the river, beginning at this hour to be flecked with the white aprons ofnurse-maids and their charges. "We've given them clean water to drinkand clean streets, and a safe place for the children to play in. Thefight we had with the city council for _that_. .. !" He waved his armagain toward the well-parked river front. "Ever since I sold your farmfor you and you began putting your money into the business, we've walkedright along with it. Even before you left Siegel Brothers and we used tosit up nights with the map, planning where to put our money like achecker-board, we saw things like this for the town, and now we've made'em true. And you say we've done nothing!" The senior partner wastouched a little in his tenderest susceptibilities. 

"Oh, well, " Peter admitted with a shamed laugh, "I suppose man is anincurable egotist. I was thinking of something more personal, something_mine_, the way a book or a picture belongs to the man who makes it. "

"The game isn't over yet, " Lessing reminded him, with a glance at theunfolding bud which Clarice had sent as a symbol of the opening year;"you're only forty. And, anyway, the money's yours; you made it. "Something in the word recalled him to a thought that had been earlierin his mind. "Clarice wanted me to ask you to-day if you had any ideahow much you are worth. "

Peter's attention came back from the window with a start. "Does thatmean the Fresh Air Fund or the Association for the Protection ofOwnerless Pups?"

Julian grinned. "Ownerless bachelors rather. Clarice has an idea you arewell enough off to marry. "

"If it were a proposition of my being married to Clarice I shouldconsider myself well enough off without anything else----" Peter droppedthe light, accustomed banter for a sober tone. "How well off does yourwife think I ought to be?"

"She's got it figured out that all you've spent on making Ellencomfortable for life isn't a patch on what she and the boys cost me, soit's high time you set about your natural destiny of making some womanhappy. "

"Look here, Julian, _is_ it an object for a man to live for, making somewoman happy?"

"Well, it keeps you on the jump all right, " Lessing assured him. "Whatelse is there? It's a way of making yourself happy when you come tolook at it; keeping her and the kids so that you leave the world betteroff than you found it. It suits _me_. " He was looking, indeed, particularly well suited, in spite of a disposition to portliness and asuspicion of thinning hair, with what the seventeen years just past hadbrought him. A warm appreciation of what those things were touched hisregard for his companion with a sober affectionateness. "I reckonClarice is right: a wife and a couple of kids is the prescription foryour case. That's why she wanted me to remind you that you could afford'em. "

"And has she named the day?" Peter wished to know whimsically. 

"Oh, I say, Weatheral----"

"My dear Julian, if I hadn't been able to see what Clarice has been upto for the last six months, at least I could have depended on Ellen tosee it for me. "

"She doesn't object, does she?"

"Oh, if you think the privilege of being aunt to your children has madeup to her for not being aunt to mine----"

"The privilege is on the other side. But anyway, I'm glad you got on toit. I didn't want to be a spoil sport. I suppose women's instincts canbe trusted in these things, but I hated to see Clarice coming it overyou blind. "

Peter wondered to himself a little, which of the charming ladies to whomhe had been introduced lately, Clarice had selected for him. He wasn't, however, concerned about her coming it blind over anybody but the seniorpartner who got down now from the desk, whistling softly and walkingwith a wide step as a man will in June when affairs go well with him, and he feels that if there are still some things which he desires he isable to get them for himself. 

"Don't forget you're coming to us on Saturday; and we dine togetherto-night as usual. "

"As usual. " Always on the anniversary of their beginning businesstogether Weatheral and Lessing, who were still, in spite of seeing oneanother daily for seventeen years, able to be interested in one another, dined apart from their families, savouring pleasantly that essentialessence of maleness, the mutual power of work well accomplished. It wasthe best tribute that Clarice and Ellen could pay to the occasion thatthey understood that, much as their several lives had profited by thepartnership, they were still and naturally outside of it. 

On this occasion, however, it was impossible for Peter to keep Mrs. Lessing out of the background of his consciousness, because of the parther suggestion of the morning played in new realization of himself asthe rich Mr. Weatheral of Pleasanton. He credited her with sufficientknowledge of his character to have egged Julian on to the reminder as apart of the game she had played with him for the past two or threeyears, by which Peter was to be instated in a life more in keeping withhis opportunities. 

It was a game Clarice played with life everywhere, coaxing it to yieldits choicest bloom to her. She had an instinct for choiceness like ahummingbird, darting here and there for sweetness. Her flutterings werenever of uncertainty but such as kept her in the perfect airy poise. Ifshe wanted marriage for Peter it was because she could imagine nothingbetter for anybody than a marriage like hers, and if she chose thistime for letting him know that she was thinking of it, it was because inthose terms she could bring closest to him his new-found possibilities. If she could have reached Peter with the personal certainty of riches byexplaining to him how far his dollars would stretch end to end, or howmany acres of postage stamps he could buy with them, she might havethought less of him on that account, but she would have helped him tounderstanding even on those terms. You couldn't have made ClariceLessing believe that whatever their limitations, people weren't entitledto help simply because they needed it. 

It had come upon Peter by leaps and bounds during the last two or threeyears, both the wealth and the necessity of putting it to himself interms of personal expression. During the first ten years of thepartnership, the only use for money the simple needs of Ellen andhimself had established was to put it back into the business; a usewhich had become almost an obligation during the time when both childrenand opportunity were coming to Julian faster than the cash to meet them. It was due to the high ground that Clarice had made for them all out ofwhat she and the children stood for, that Peter's superior cashcontribution to the firm had become a privilege. They had had, he andEllen, their stringent occasions; it had been Clarice's part to see thatsince they endured the pinch of poverty they should at least getsomething human out of it. It came out for Peter pleasantly as he walkedhome through the mild June evening, just how much they had had. Much, much more than they would have been able to buy with the money theymight in strict equity have withdrawn from the business. Nothing, he hadlong admitted, that he could have purchased for his sister would havebeen so satisfying as what Clarice contributed, pressing the full cup ofher motherhood to Ellen's thirsty lips. They might have grown sleek, heand Ellen, without exceeding a proper ratio of expenditure, and if inthe end they had been a little less rich, they would still have hadenough to go on being sleek and comfortable to the end. That he wasstill fit, as Mrs. Lessing's transparent efforts to marry him to herfriends guaranteed him to be, he felt was owing greatly to the terms onwhich Clarice had admitted him to the adventure of bringing up a family. That a special fitness was required for admission to Mrs. Lessing'scircle he would have guessed even without the aid of print whichconsistently described it as Our Best Society, for it was a Bestattested to by all the marks by which Clarice herself expressed theessential fineness of things. 

One couldn't have told, from anything that appeared on the surface ofthe Lessing's social environment, that life did not proceed there as itdid between Clarice and the Weatherals, by means of its subtlersympathies, and proceed, at least so far as the women were concerned, ona still higher plane of grace and harmony. It moved about her table andacross the lawns of Lessing's handsome country place, with suchsoundless ease and perfection as it had glided for Peter through theHouse with the Shining Walls. Or at least so it had seemed on thoseoccasions during the last few years when he had found himself wondrouslyinside it. 

It had been accepted by Ellen on the mere certainty of Clarice's motherhaving been one of the Thatcher Inwoods, that Clarice should enlargeher social borders with Lessing's increasing means until they includedpeople among whom Ellen would have been miserably shy and out of tune. But not Ellen herself guessed how much of Peter's admission to itsinaccessibility was owing to the returns from hardly snatched optionsand long-nursed opportunities, coming in in checks of six figures. Perhaps Clarice herself never knew. It was one of the things that wentwith being a Thatcher Inwood, wherever an occasion presented a handle ofnobility, to seize by that and maintain it in the face of any contingentsmallness. Clarice wouldn't have introduced Peter to her friends if hehadn't been fit, and it was part of the social creed of women likeClarice Lessing, which takes almost the authority of religion, that hewouldn't have been in a position to be introduced if he hadn't been fit. So it had happened for the past two years that Peter had found himselfskirting the fringe of Best Society, and identifying it with the life hehad lived so long, sitting with his book open on his knees in theirlittle flat, with Ellen across the fire from him knitting white thingsfor Julian's children. But the idea that having come into thisneighbourhood of fine appreciations he was to take up his home and livethere, opened more slowly. It required more than one of Clarice's swifthummingbird darts, more than the flutter of suggestion to brush itspetals awake for him. 

It lay so deep under all the years, the power of loving. He knew almostnothing about it except that he had had it once, and that marriagewithout it would be unthinkable, even such a marriage as Mrs. Lessinghad let him see was now possible to him. She had called with all herdelicate friendly skill, on something which only now under that summonshe began to miss. It was like a lost word in every sentence in which theordinary hopes of men are to be read, and he felt that until he found itagain all the help Mrs. Lessing could afford him would not enable him tothink of marriage as a thing desirable in itself. It was missing in himstill, when he came that night rather late to the apartment where onlythe Japanese houseboy awaited him. One of the first things he had donefor Ellen with his increasing means, had been to buy back for her thehouse at Bloombury with the garden and a bit of the orchard. She hadbeen there now since Decoration Day, retiring more and more into thekindly village life as a point of vantage from which to mark with pridethe social distance that Peter travelled from her. It had beenunderstood from the beginning that she wasn't to go with him. Thetapping of her crutch was no more to be heard in the new graciousexistence than in the House where she had never followed him. Life forEllen was lived close at hand. There were hollyhocks and currant bushesin her garden and Julian's children overran it. 

It was not Ellen then that Peter missed as he sat alone in the housethat night with his back to the lowered light and his gaze seeking theriver and the flitting shapes of boats that went up and down on it, freighted with young voices and laughter. He missed the Lovely Lady. Heknew now why he had not been able to think of marriage in the wayClarice held it out to him, as a happy contingency of his now being asrich as he had intended to be. It was because he had not thought of herclearly for a long time. 

There had been a period in the beginning of his life with Ellen, whenthe lady of his dreams had been so near the surface of all his thinkingthat she took on form and likeness from anything that was lovely andyoung in his neighbourhood, but as things lovely and young drifted fromhim with the years; and as the business took deeper and deeper hold onhis attention, she had become a mere floating figment, a live flutteringspark in the very core of all his imaginings. 

She had been beside him, a pleasant, indeterminate presence in the longjourney she travelled from the printed page to the accompanying click ofEllen's needles. Sometimes at the opera she took on a gossamer tint fromthe singer's face, and longer ago than he could afford operas, he hadunderstood that all the beauty of the world, bursting apple buds, thegreat curve of the surf that set the beaches trembling, derived somehowits pertinence from her. Now at the age of forty he had ceased to thinkvery much about the Lovely Lady. 

It occurred to him that this might have something to do with his failureto get a new relation to life out of his new wealth. 

It had struck Peter rather forlornly during the past few years thatthere was little use he could put money to, except to make more money. He could see by turning his head to the room behind him how little therewas there of what he had fancied once riches would bring him. The linesof the room were good, the amount of the annual rent assured that tohim, the furniture was good and the rugs expensive. Ellen believed thatmoney in rugs was a good investment, particularly if the colours werestrong and would stand fading. There were some choice things here andthere, a vase and pictures which Peter had chosen for himself, though hewas aware, as he took them in under the dull glow, that Ellen hadarranged them in strict reference to the size of the frames, and thatthe whole effect failed of satisfaction. He thought his life might besomewhat like that room, full of good things but lacking the touch thatshould set them in fruitful order. It stole over him as persuasively asthe warm growing smell of the park below him that the something missedmight be the touch and presence of the Lovely Lady. 

II

It was the late end of the afternoon when Peter stepped off the train atthe Lessing's station and into the trap that was waiting for him. Helearned from Lessing's man that the family had been kept by the tennismatch at Maplemont and he was to come on to the house at his leisure. That being the case, Peter took the reins himself and made a long detourthrough the dust-smelling country roads, so that it was quite six whenhe reached the house, and everybody dressing for the early dinner. 

He made so hasty a change himself in his fear of being late, that whenhe came down to the living-room in a quarter of an hour there was no onethere to meet him. Absorbed particles of the bright day gave off in thedusk and made it golden. There were honeysuckles on the pergola outside, and in the room beyond a girl singing a quiet air, half-trilled andhalf-forgotten. He heard the singer moving toward him through the vacanthouse, of which the doors stood open to the evening coolness, and theclick of the electric button as she passed, and saw the rooms burst oneby one into the bloom of shaded lights. So she came, busy with thehummed fragments of her songs, and turned the lamp full on Peter beforeshe was aware of him, but she was not half so much disconcerted. 

"You must be Mr. Weatheral, " she said. "Mrs. Lessing sent me to say sheexpected you. I am Miss Goodward. "

She gave him her hand for a gracious moment before she turned to whathad brought her so early down, the arrangement of two great bowls ofwild ferns and vines which a servant had just placed on either end ofthe low mantlepiece. 

"We brought them in from Archer's Glen on the way home, " she told himover her shoulder, her hands busy with deft, quick touches. She was allin white, which took a pearly lustre from the lamps, and for the momentshe was as beautiful as Peter believed her. A tiny unfinished phrase ofthe song floated half consciously from her lips as a bubble. "They lookbetter so, don't you think?" As she stood off to measure the effect, itseemed to Peter that the Spirit of the House had received him; it was somen dream of home-coming, without sensible displacement of a life goingon in it, lovely and secure, as a bark slips into some still pool to itsmoorings. He yielded himself naturally to the impersonal intimacy of herwelcome and all the sordid ways of his life led up to her. 

It was not all at once he saw it so. He kept watching her all thatevening as one watches a perfect thing, a bird or a dancer, sensing inthe slim turn of her ankle, the lithe throat, the delicate perfume thatshe shook from her summer draperies, so many strokes of a master hand. She was evidently on terms with the Lessings which permitted heracceptance of him at the family valuation, but the perfection of hermethod was such that it never quite sunk his identity as the juniorpartner in his character of Uncle Peter. 

This was a nuance, if Peter had but known it, which Eunice Goodwardcould have no more missed than she could have eaten with her knife. Shehad been trained to the finer social adjustments as to a cult: Clarice'sgame of persuading life to present itself with a smiling countenance, played all in the key of personal relations. It was as if Nature, havingtried her hand at a great many ordinary persons, each with one gift ofsympathy or graciousness, had culled and compacted the best of them intoEunice Goodward; which was precisely the case except that Peter throughhis unfamiliarity with the Best Society couldn't be expected to knowthat the intelligence which had put together so much perfectness was noless calculating than that which goes to the matching of a string ofpearls. All that he got from it was precisely all that he was meant toreceive--namely, the conviction that she couldn't have charmed him sohad she not been altogether charming. 

And as yet he did not know what had happened to him. He thought, when heawoke in the morning to a new realization of the satisfactoriness ofliving, that the fresh air had done it, the breath of the nearbyuntrimmed forest, the loose-leaved roses pressed against the panebeginning to give off warm odours in the sun. Then he came out on theterrace and saw Eunice Goodward, looking like a thin slip of the morningherself, in a blue dress buttoned close to her figure with wide whitebuttons and a tiny froth of white at the short sleeves and open throat. Across her bosom it was caught with a blue stone set in dull silver, which served also to hold in place a rose that matched the morning tintof her skin. She was talking with the Lessings' chauffeur as Peter cameup with her and all her accents were of dismay. They were to have drivenover to Maplemont that afternoon, she explained to Peter, for the lastof the tennis sets, and now Gilmore had just told her that the car mustgo to the shop for two or three days. She was so much more charming inthe way she forgave Gilmore for her evident disappointment that he, being a young man and troubled by a sense of moral responsibility, wasquite overcome by it. 

"But, nonsense"; Peter was certain "there is always something can bedone to cars. " There was, Gilmore assured him, but it took time to doit, and to-morrow would be Sunday. "If you'd only thought to come downin the motor yourself, sir----" the chauffeur reproached him. The truthwas that Peter hadn't a car of his own and Gilmore knew it. There was anelectric runabout which had gone down to Bloombury with Ellen, and aserviceable roadster which was part of the office equipment, but therich Mr. Weatheral had never taken the pains to own a private car. Now, as he hastily drew out his watch, it occurred to him that Lessing'schauffeur was a fellow of more perspicuity than he had given him creditfor. The two men communicated wordlessly across the cool width of theterrace steps. 

"At what hour, " Peter wished to know, "would we have to leave here toreach Maplemont in good time? Then if you can be ready to leave themoment my car gets here. .. . " He excused himself to go to the telephone;half an hour later when he joined the family at breakfast he haddiscovered some of the things that, besides making more money with it, can be done with money. 

The knowledge suited him like his own garment, as if it had been lyingready for him to put on when the occasion required it, and now becamehim admirably. He perceived it to be a proper male function to produceeasily and with precision whatever utterly charming young ladies mightreasonably require. He appreciated Miss Goodward's acceptance of it asshe came down from the house bewilderingly tied into soft veils for theafternoon's drive, as a part of her hall-marked fineness. If shecouldn't help knowing, taking in the car's glittering newness from pointto point, that its magnificence had materialized out of her simple wishfor it, she at least didn't allow him to think it was any more than shewould have expected of him. So completely did he yield himself to thisnew sense of the fitness of things that it came as a shock to have her, as soon as they had joined themselves to the holiday-coloured crowd thatstreamed and shifted under the bright boughs of Maplemont, reft from himby friendly, compelling voices, and particularly by Burton Henderson, who played singles and went about bareheaded and singularlyself-possessed. It was unthinkable to Peter that, in view of herrecently discovered importance in putting him at rights with himself, that he hadn't arranged with her that they were to be more together. Forthe moment it was almost a derogation of her charm that she shouldn'therself have recognized by some overt act her extraordinary opportunity. And then in a moment more he perceived that she had recognized it. Hehad only to wait, as he saw, and he would find himself pleasantly besideher, and at each renewal of the excluding companionship, he was moresubtly aware that it was accorded not to anything he was but to what shehad it in her power so beautifully to make of him. 

So perfectly did she strike the key with him, when, in the intervals ofthe afternoon's entertainment they found themselves sitting or walkingtogether, that he could not have imagined her to have been out of it, not even in a rather long session after tea with Burton Henderson amongthe rhododendrons, in which it was apparent from the young man's mannerthat she hadn't at least been in tune with him. It occurred just as theywere leaving and served in the flutter of delay it occasioned to fixthe attention of all their party on Eunice coming out of the shrubberywith young Henderson in her wake, batting aimlessly at the grass-topswith the racquet which he still carried. There was an air of sulkinessabout him which caused Mrs. Lessing enigmatically to say that Eunice wasaltogether too good to that young man. To which Lessing's "Well, if sheis, he doesn't seem to appreciate, " served also to confirm Peter in therôle which the effect she produced on himself had created for him. He atleast appreciated the way in which she had made him feel himself theDistributer of Benefits, to a degree which made it almost obligatory ofher to go on with it. 

Successfully as Miss Goodward had kept for Peter during the day his newrelation to his wealth on the one hand and society on the other, sheseemed that evening quite to have abandoned him. While the family washaving coffee on the terrace after dinner, she slipped away from them toreappear lower down among the rose trees, her white dress gathering allthat was left of the lingering glow. The junior partner, feeling himselfnever so much junior, though he knew it was but a scant year or two, sat on through Lessing's inconsequential comment on business and theday's adventures, hearing not a word; now and then his chair creakedwith the intensity of his preoccupation. It grew dusk and the lampsblossomed in the house behind them; presently Clarice slipped away tothe children and the evening damp fell over the rose garden. Peter couldendure it no longer. He believed as he rose suddenly with a stretchingmovement that he meant merely to relieve the tension of sitting bypacing up and down; it was unaccountable therefore that he should findhimself at the edge of the terrace. He wondered why on earth Claricecouldn't have helped him a little, and then as if in response to hisdeep instinctive demand upon her, he heard her call softly to herhusband from the door of the house. At the scrape of Julian's chair onthe terrace tiling, Peter cast away his cigar and hurried into the duskof the garden. 

He found her at last by the herbacious border, keeping touch with theflight of a sphinx-head moth along the tall white rockets of phlox. Peter whipped out his handkerchief and dropped it deftly over thefluttering wings. In a moment he had stilled them in his hand. MissGoodward cried out to him:

"You've spoiled his happy evening!"

"He's not hurt. .. . " Peter laid the moth gently on a feathery flowerhead, and the tiny whispering whirr began again. "I thought you wantedhim. "

"I did--but not to catch him, " Miss Goodward explained. "I wanted justto want him. "

"Ah, I'm afraid I'm one of those people with whom to want a thing is togo after it, " Peter justified himself. 

"So one gathers from what one hears. " She brushed him as lightly withthe compliment as with the wings of a moth. "I wasn't really wanting himso much as I was wanting to _be_ him for a while. Just to pass from onelovely hour to another and nothing to pay! But we humans have always topay something. "

"Or some one pays for us. "

"Well, isn't that worse . .. Taking it out of somebody else?"

"I'm not so sure; some people enjoy paying. It's not a bad feeling, Iassure you: being able to pay. Haven't you found that out yet?"

"Not in Trethgarten Square. " Mrs. Lessing had managed to let him knowduring the day that her guest had been reared within the sacred pale ofthose first families in whom the choice stock of humanness is refined bybeing maintained at precisely the same level for at least threegenerations. 

"In Trethgarten Square, " Peter reminded her, "we are told that yousettle your account just by _being_; that you manage somehow to becomesomething so superior and delectable that the rest of us are willing topay for the privilege of having you about. " He would have liked to addthat recently, no later in fact than the evening before, he had come tothink that this was so, but as she hesitated in her walk beside him, hesaw that she was concerned in putting the case to herself quite as muchas to him. 

"It's not that exactly; more perhaps that our whole thought about lifeis to live it so that there won't be anything to pay. We have to manageto add things up like a column of figures with nothing to carry. Perhaps that's why we get so little out of it. "

"Don't you?"--he was genuinely surprised, "get anything out of it, Imean. "

"Oh, but I'm a selfish beast, I suppose! I want more--more!" They swungas she spoke into a broad beam of yellow light raying out from thelibrary window, and he saw by it that with the word she flung out herarms with a lovely upward motion that lifted his mood to the crest ofaudacity. 

"If you keep on looking like that, " Peter assured her, "you'll get it. "He was struck dumb immediately after with apprehension. It soundeddaring, like a thing said in a book; but she took it as it came lightlyoff the tip of his impulse, laughing. "Yes . .. The great difficulty ischoosing which of so many things one really wants. " They walked on thenin silence, the air darkling after the sudden shaft of illumination, thelight folds of her scarf brushing his sleeve. Peter was considering howhe might say, without precipitation, how suddenly she had limited anddefined all the things that he wanted by expressing them so perfectlyin herself, when she interrupted him. 

"There's our moth again, " she pointed; "he settles it by taking all ofthem. It's a possibility denied to us. "

"Even he, " Peter insisted, "has to reckon with such incidents as mydropping on him just now. I might have wanted him for a collection. "

"Oh, if he takes us into account it must be as men used to think of thegods walking. " Suddenly the familiar beds and hedges widened for Peter;they stretched warm and tender to the borders of youth and the unmatchedWonder. .. . It was so they had talked when they walked together in theGarden which was about the House. .. . 

For some time after Miss Goodward left him Peter remained walking up anddown, thinking of many things and unable to think of them clearlybecause of a pleasant blur of excitement in his brain. As he camefinally back to the house he heard the Lessings talking from behind oneof the open windows. 

"My word, that car was never out of the shop before, " Julian was saying. "He's a _goner!_"

"And that lovely, dusty, brown colour that goes so well with her hair!Who would have thought Peter would be so noticing. "

"It couldn't have cost him a cent under seven thousand. " Julian wascertain, "and carrying it off with me the way he did--bought the sixcylinder after all, he had. .. . I'll bet old Peter don't know a cylinderfrom a stomach pump. "

Clarice was evidently going on with her own line of thought. "It will bethe best thing that ever happened to Eunice if she can only be got tosee it. "

"Well, if she don't her mother will see it for her. " Lessing's voicedied into a subdued chuckle as Peter passed under it on the dew-damplawn, but there was no revelation in it for the junior partner. He hadalready found out what was the matter with him and what he meant to doabout it. 

III

Whatever the process of becoming engaged to Eunice Goodward lacked ofdramatic interest, it made up to Peter by being such a tremendousadventure for him to become engaged to anybody. 

He had gone through life much as his unfriended youth had strayedthrough the city streets, aching for the walled-up splendour--all theworld's chivalries, tendernesses, passions--known to him only byglimmers and reflections on the plain glass of duty. Now at a word theglass dissolved and he was free to wander through the rooms crammed withimperishable poets' wares. He walked there not only as one who has theprice to buy, but himself made one of the splendid things of earth bythis same word which her mere being pronounced to him. 

He paid himself for years of denials and repressions by the discovery ofbeing able to love in such a key. For he meant quite simply to marryEunice Goodward if she would have him, and it was no vanity which gavehim hope, but a tribute to her fineness as being able to see herself soabsolutely the one thing his life waited for. He knew himself, modestly, no prize for her except as he was added to by inestimable passion. Whatever she saw in him as a man, for her not to recognize the immortalworth of what he was able to become under her hand, was to subtractsomething from her perfections. In her acceptance would lie the Queen'stouch, redeeming him from all commonness. 

He made his first venture within a week after their first meeting, in acall on Miss Goodward and her mother in Trethgarten Square, where hefound their red brick, vine-masked front distinguishable among half ahundred others by being kept open as late as the middle of June. Totheir being marooned thus in a desert of boarded-up doors and shutteredwindows, due, as Eunice had frankly and charmingly let him know, totheir being poor among their kind, he doubtless owed it that no othercallers came to disturb the languid afternoon. Seen against her properbackground of things precious but worn, and in the style of a precedinggeneration, the girl showed even lovelier than before, with the rich, perfumed quality of a flower held in a chipped porcelain vase, a flowermoreover secure in its own perfectness, waiting only to be worn, disdaining alike to offer or resist. Her very quietness--she left him, in fact, almost wholly to her mother--had the air of condoning hisstate, of understanding what he was there for and of finding it somehowan accentuation of the interest they let him see that he had for them. He found them, mother and daughter, more alike, in spite of theirnatural and evident difference of years, more of a degree than he wasaccustomed to find mother and daughters in the few houses where thebusiness of growing rich had admitted him, as though they had beencarved out of the same material, by the same distinguished artist, atdifferent times in his career. 

It contributed to the effect of his having found, not by accident, butby seeking, a frame of life kept waiting for him, kept warm andconscious. Presently Eunice poured tea for them, and the intimacy of herremembering as she did, how he took it, had its part in the freedomwhich he presently found for offering hospitality on his own account, not at his home, as he explained to them, his sister being away, but saya dinner at Briar Crest to which they might motor out pleasantlySaturday afternoon, returning by moonlight. He offered Briar Cresttentatively on the strength of the Lessings having once given a dinnerthere, and was relieved to find that he had made no mistake. 

"A great many of your friends go there, " Mrs. Goodward allowed; "the VanStitarts, Eunice, you remember. "

"The Gherberdings are there now, mamma; I'm sure we shall enjoy it. "

Having crossed thus at one fortunate stroke the frontiers of socialobservance, to which Clarice had but edged her way in the right of beinga Thatcher Inwood, Peter ventured on Friday to suggest by telephone thatsince dinner must be late, the ladies should meet him at what he hadtaken pains to ascertain was the correct one of huge uptown hotels, fortea before starting. It was Mrs. Goodward who answered him and she whomhe met in the white, marble tessellated tea-room, explaining that Eunicehad had some shopping to do--they were really leaving on Saturday--andMr. Weatheral was to order tea without waiting. They had time, however, for the tea to be drunk and for Mrs. Goodward to become anxious in agentle, ladylike way, before it occurred to Peter to suggest that MissGoodward might be lurking anywhere in the potted palm and marblepillared labyrinth, waiting for _them_, suffering equal anxieties, anddreadful to think of in their present replete condition, languishing fortea. His proposal to go and look for her was accepted with just theshade of deprecation which admitted him to an amused tolerance of thegirl's delinquencies, as if somehow Eunice wouldn't have dared to belate with him had she not had reason more than ordinary for counting onhis indulgence. 

"You'll find, " Mrs. Goodward let him know, "that we require a deal oflooking after, Eunice and I. "

"Ah, I only hope you'll find that I'm equal to it. " Peter had answeredher with so little indirection that it drew from the older woman aquick, mute flush of sympathy. For a moment the homeliness of his leancountenance was relieved with so redeeming a touch of what all womenmost wish for in all men that she met it with an equal simplicity. "Formyself I am sure of it, " but lifted next moment to a lighter key, witha smile very like her daughter's dragged a little awry by the use ofyears, "as for Eunice, you'll first have to lay hands on her. "

With this permission he rose and made the circuit of the semi-dividedrooms, coming out at last into the dim rotunda, forested with clusteredporphyry columns, and there at last he caught sight of her. She had butjust stepped into its shaded coolness out of the hot, bright day, andhung for a moment, in the act of furling her parasol, in which he wasabout to hail her, until he discovered by his stepping into range frombehind one of the green pillars, that she was also in the act of sayinggood-bye to Burton Henderson. There was a certain finality in the wayshe held out her hand to him which checked Peter in the hospitableimpulse to include the younger man in the afternoon's diversion. Hestepped back the moment he saw that she was having trouble with herescort, defending herself by her manner from something accusing in his. Not to seem to spy upon her, Weatheral made his way back though thecoatroom without disclosing himself. From the door of it he timed hisreturn so as to meet her face to face as she came up with Mrs. Goodwardand was rewarded for it by the gayety of her greeting and theunaffectedness of her attack of the fresh relay of toasted muffins andtea. 

"Absolutely famished, " she told them, "and the shops are _so_fascinating! You'd forgive me, Mr. Weatheral, if you could see the heapsand heaps of lovely things simply begging to be bought; it seemedpositively unkind to come away and leave any of them. " As she saidnothing whatever about the young man, it seemed unlikely that she couldhave him much on her mind. She had a new way, very charming to Peter, ofsurrendering the afternoon into his hands; let him ask nothing of hershe seemed to say, but to enjoy herself. She built out of their beingthere before her, a very delightful supposition of her mother and Mr. Weatheral, between them having made a little space for her to be gay inand simple and lovely after her own kind. If she took any account ofthem it was such as a dancer might who, practising a few steps for themere joy and pride of it, finds herself unexpectedly surrounded by aninterested and smiling audience. 

If, however, with the memory of that afternoon upon him, Peter had gonedown to Fairport in the latter part of July with the expectation ofresuming the part of impresario to her charm, he suffered a sharpdisappointment. He found the Goodwards, not in the expensive caravansaryin which he installed himself, but in a smaller tributary house set backfrom the main hotel though not quite disconnected with it; for quiet, Mrs. Goodward told him, though he guessed quite as much from economy. 

"It's wonderful, really, what they do with so little, " Clarice, with herfine discriminations in the obligations of friendship, had generouslylet him know. "Eunice hasn't anything, positively not _any_thing incomparison with what people of her class usually have. And with hertaste, you know, there must be things she's just aching for, thatsomehow you can't give her. " You couldn't, indeed. Though Peter madeexcuses enough for giving her the use of his car, and giving it to hershorn even of the implication of his society, there were few occasionswhen he could do even so much as that. He couldn't even give her hisappreciations. 

For at Fairport the Goodwards were quite in the heart of all that Peterhimself failed to understand that he couldn't possibly be. It was notthat he wasn't to the extent at least of sundry invitations given andaccepted, "in" as much of the Best Society as Fairport afforded. Mrs. Goodward saw to that, and there were two or three whom he had met at theLessings' as well as men to whom the figure of his income was the cachetof eligibility. It wasn't indeed that he wasn't liked, and that quite athis proper worth, but that he couldn't somehow manage it so that theBest Society cared in the least whether he liked it. He could see, in away, where Clarice had been at work for him; but the poison that wasdropped in his cup was the certainty that the way for him had to be"worked. " The discovery that he couldn't just find his way to EuniceGoodward's side by the same qualities that had placed him beside themales of her circle in point of property and power, that he couldn'twithout admission to that circle, properly court her, hemmed him inbewilderingly. 

Her method of eluding him, if there were method in it, left him feelingnot so much avoided as prevented by the moves of a game he hadn't meantto play. So greatly it irked his natural simplicity to be banded aboutby the social observances of the place, that it might have led him toirrecoverable mistakes had it not been for the hand held out to him byMrs. Goodward. 

He perceived on closer acquaintance, that this lady's fine serenity ofmanner was due largely to her never admitting to her mind the upsettingpossibility. She thought her world into acceptable shape and held itthere by the simple process of ignoring the eccentricities of its axis. 

Peter would have admired, if his unsophistication had allowed him, thefacility with which she made it revolve now about their mutual pursuitof Eunice through the rattle and cheapness of what was known as "theBurton Henderson set. " As it was against just such social inconsequencethat Peter felt himself strong to defend her, he fell easily into thekey of crediting the girl's sudden, bewildering flight to it as a meremidsummer madness. 

"It's the way with girls, I fancy, " Mrs. Goodward had said to him, strolling up and down the hotel veranda where through the wide Frenchwindows they had glimpses of Eunice whirling away on the ice polishedfloor of the ballroom within; "they cling the more to gayety as they seethe graver things of life bearing down upon them. "

"You think she sees that?"

"Ah, there's much a mother sees, Mr. Weatheral----"

"You would, of course, " he accepted. 

"It's a woman's part, seeing; there's an instinct in us not to see toosoon. " She gave him the benefit of her sweet weighted smile. 

Peter lived greatly on these things. He was so sure of himself, of thereality and strength of his passion; he had a feeling of its being quiteenough for them to go on, an inexhaustible, fairy capital out of whichalmost anything that Eunice Goodward desired might be drawn. It wasfortunate that he found his passion so self-sufficing, for there waslittle enough that Eunice afforded it by way of sustenance. For a weekhe no more than kept in sight of her in the inevitable summer round; hedid not dance and the game of cards he could play was gauged to whatEllen could manage in an occasional quiet evening at the Lessings'. 

"I suppose, " Eunice had said to him on an occasion when he had knownenough to decline an invitation for an afternoon's play to which BurtonHenderson was carrying her away, "that the stakes we play for aren't anytemptation to _you_. "

"I think that they're out of proportion to the trouble you have to be atto win them. "

"Oh, if you don't care for the game----"

"I don't. " And then casting about for a phrase that explained him morehappily, "Put it that I like to cut out my job and go to it. " She gavehim a quick, condoning flash of laughter; the phrase was Lessing's andout of her recognition of it he drew, loverlike, that assurance ofcommon understanding so dear to lovers. "Put it, " he ventured further, "that I don't like to see myself balked of the prize by the way thecards are dealt. "

"Ah, but that's what makes it a game. I'd no idea you were sucha--revolutionist. "

"Evolutionist, " he corrected, happy in having touched the subtler notebehind their persiflage. "I've all science on my side for the mostdirect method. " After all, why should he let even the Best Society dealthe cards for him? Should not a man sweep the boards of whatever kepthim from his natural mate?

That was on Tuesday, and the Thursday following he had asked theGoodwards to motor over to Lighthouse Reef with him. He did not knowquite what he meant to bring about on this occasion; he had so much thefeeling of its being an occasion, the invitation had been so pointedlygiven and accepted, it was with difficulty he adjusted himself to thediscovery on arriving at their hotel with the car, that Eunice had goneto play tennis instead. 

"The time is so short, " Mrs. Goodward apologized; "she felt she mustmake the most of it. " She had to leave it there, not being able to makea game of tennis in the hot sun seem more of a diversion than the steadypacing of the luxurious car along the road which laced the forest tothe singing beaches. She had to let her sidewise smile do what it couldtoward making the girl's bald evasion of her engagement seem the mereflutter and hesitancy of besieged femininity. For the moment she was asmuch "outside" so far as her daughter was concerned as Peter was of theselect bright circle in which she moved. 

The way opened before them, beautiful in late bloom and heavy fern, above which the sea wind kept a perpetual movement of aliveness. 

"Eunice _will_ miss it, " Mrs. Goodward rallied; "such a perfectafternoon!" She gave him the oblique smile again, weighted this timewith the knowledge of all that Peter hadn't been able or hadn't tried tokeep from her. "It isn't easy, is it, " she went on addressing her speechto whatever, at the mention of her daughter's name, hung in the airbetween them, "to stand by and see other people's great moments hoverover them. One would like so to lend a hand. And one is sure of nothingso much as that if they are really to _be_ big, one mustn't. "

"If you feel that, " Peter snatched at encouragement, "that it is reallythe big thing for her--what I'm sure you can't help knowing what Imean--what I hope. "

"What _I_ feel----? After all, it's _her_ feeling, my dear Mr. Weatheral, that we have to take into account. It wouldn't be fair for meto attempt to answer to you for that!"

"And of course if I can't _make_ her feel. .. . " He did not trust himselfto a conclusion. 

They found, however, when the road issued on the coast opposite thegreat bursting bulks of spray, that Eunice's desertion and theextenuation of it to which they had lent themselves, had put them out ofthe mood for the high wind and warring surf of the Reef. Accordinglythey turned aside at Peter's suggestion to have tea at a little countryinn farther back in the hills, where the pound of the sea was reduced toa soft, organ-booming bass to which the shrill note of the needlescountered in perfect tune. The tea garden, the favourite port of callfor afternoon drives from the resorts hereabouts, lay back of thehostelry in a narrow, ferny glen from which springs issued. As Peter ledthe way up its rocky stair, they could hear the light laughter of aparty just rising from one of the round rustic tables. The groupdescending poured past them a summer-coloured runnel down the littleglen, and left them face to face with Eunice, who had lingered, herdress caught on a point of the rustic chair. 

"Mamma--you!" She looked trapped, accused, though sheer astonishmentheld the others dumb. "We finished the game----" she began and stoppedshort; after all, her manner seemed to say, why shouldn't she have teathere with her friends? She made as if to sweep past after them but Mrs. Goodward never moved from the narrow path. She was more embarrassed, Peter saw, than her daughter, and as plainly at bay. 

"Now that we are here----" she began in her turn. 

"Now that you have followed me here, " the girl rang out, "what is itthat you have to say to me?" She was white and a bright flame spotshowed on either cheek. 

"I--oh, " the elder woman by an effort drew the remnant of the grandmanner about her; "it is Mr. Weatheral, I think, who might havesomething to say. " She caught the occasion as it were on the wing. Peterheard the quick breath behind him with which she grasped it. "Now thatyou are here, however, I'll tell your party that you will be drivinghome with us. " She gathered up her draperies and was gone down the pathshe had come before either of the others thought to stop her. Eunice hadnot made a move to do so. She stood clasping the back of the chair fromwhich she had freed her dress, and looked across it mutinously at Peter. 

"And what, " she quivered, "has Mr. Weatheral to say to me?"

"There is nothing, " he told her, "that I would say to you, MissGoodward, unless you wished to hear it. " His magnanimity shamed her alittle. 

"I broke my engagement to you, " she admitted, "broke it to come herewith--the others. I haven't any excuse to offer you. "

"And when, " Peter demanded of her, "have I asked any other excuse of youfor anything that you chose to do except that you chose it. There _was_something I wished to say to you, that I hoped for a more auspiciousoccasion. .. . " He hurried on with it suddenly as a thing to be got overwith at all hazards. "It was to say that I hoped you might not find itutterly beyond you to think of marrying me. " He saw her sway a little, holding still to her chair, and moved toward her a step, dizzy himselfwith the sudden onset of emotion. "But now that it is said, if itdistresses you we will say no more about it. " She waved him back for amoment without altering her strained, trapped attitude. 

"Have you said this to mamma? And has she--has she said anything to you?About me, I mean; how I might take it, or anything?"

"She said that she couldn't answer for you; that it was your feelingthat must be taken into account. She put me, so to speak, on my own feetin so far as _that_ was concerned. " He waited for her answer to that, and none coming, though he saw that she grew a little easier, he went onpresently. "There is, however, much that I feel ought to be said aboutmy feeling for you, what it means to me, what I hoped----" She stoppedhim with a gesture; he could see her lovely manner coming back to her asquiet comes to the surface of a smitten pool. 

"That--one may take for granted, may one not? Since you _have_ asked me, that the feeling that goes to it is all I have a right to ask?"

"Quite, quite, " he assured her. "It may be, " he managed to smile uponher here for the easing of her sweet discomposure, "it may very easilybe that I was thinking too much of my pleasure in saying it. "

"It would, then, be a pleasure?" She had the air of snatching at that assomething concrete, graspable. 

"It would, and it wouldn't. I mean if you were bothered by it. You couldtake everything for granted, everything. "

"Even, " she insisted, "to the point of taking it for granted that youwould take things for granted from me: that you wouldn't expectanything--any expression, anything more than just accepting you?"

"Ah!" he cried, the wonder, the amazement of success breaking upon him. "If you accepted me what more _could_ I expect. " He had clasped the handwhich she held out to check him and held it against his heart firmlythat she shouldn't see how he trembled. 

"I haven't, you know, " she reminded him, "but if I was sure--very surethat you wouldn't ask any more of me than thinking, I . .. Might thinkabout it. " She was trembling now, though her hand was so cold, andsuddenly a tear gathered and dropped, splashing her fine wrist. 

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" he cried, moved more than he had thought itpossible to be; "you can be perfectly sure that there will never beanything between you and me that shall not be exactly as you wish. " Hesuited his action to the word, kissing the wet splash and letting hergo. 

"Why, then, " she recovered herself with the smile that was now strangelylike her mother's, sweeter for being smiled a little awry, "the bestthing you can do is to find poor mamma and let us give her a cup oftea. "

IV

"Peter, have you any idea what I am thinking about?"

"Not in the least, Ellen, " which was not strictly the truth. Hesupposed she must be thinking naturally of the news he had told her notan hour since, of his engagement to Eunice Goodward. It lay so close tothe surface of his own mind at all times that the slightest stir ofconversation, like the wind above a secret rose, seemed always about todisclose it. They were sitting on the porch at Bloombury and the pointedswallows pitched and darted about the eaves. 

"It was the smell of the dust that reminded me, " said Ellen, "and thewild rose at the turn of the road; you can smell it as plain as plainwhen the air lifts a little. Do you remember a picnic that we wereinvited to and couldn't go? It was on account of being poor . .. And Iwas just finding it out. I found out a good many things that summer;about my always going to be lame and what it would mean to us. It wasdreadful to me that I couldn't be lame just by myself, but I had to mixup you and mother in it. "

"We were glad, Ellen, to be mixed up in it if it made things easier foryou. "

"I know . .. Times I felt that way about it too, but that was when I wasolder . .. As if it sort of held us all together; like somebody who hadbelonged to us all and had died. Only it was me that died, the me thatwould have been if I hadn't been lame. .. . Well, I hadn't thought it outso far that first summer; I just hated it because it kept us from doingthings like other people. You were fond of Ada Brown, I remember, and itwas because I was lame and we were so poor and all, that you couldn't gowith her and she got engaged to Jim Harvey. I hope you don't think Ihave a bad heart, Peter, but I was always glad that Ada didn't turn outvery well. Every time I saw her getting homelier and kind of bedraggledlike, I said to myself, well, I've saved Peter from that at any rate. Icouldn't have borne it if she had turned out the kind of a person youought to have married. "

"You shouldn't have worried, Ellen; very few men marry the first womanthey are interested in. "

"There was a girl you used to write home about--at that boarding-house. I used to get you to write. I daresay you thought I was just curious. But I was trying to find out something that would make me perfectly sureshe wasn't good enough for you. She was a typewriter, wasn't she?"

"Something of that sort. "

"Well!" Ellen took him up triumphantly, "you wouldn't have wanted to bemarried to a typewriter _now!"_

"I never really thought of marrying one, Ellen. I'm sure everything hasturned out for the best. "

"That's what I'm trying to tell you. You see I was determined it shouldturn out that way. I said, what was the use of being lame and being aburden to you unless there was something _meant_ by it. I'd have fretteddreadfully if I hadn't felt that there was something to come out of it. And it has come. .. . Peter, you'd rather I'd saved you for this thananything that might have happened?"

"Much rather, Ellen. "

It had surprised him in the telling, to see how accurately his sisterhad gauged the worldly advantage of his marriage. If Eunice Goodward hadbeen a piece of furniture, Ellen couldn't have appraised her better ather obvious worth: beauty and character and family and the mysteriouscachet of society. Clarice had been at work there, too, he suspected. Miss Goodward fitted in Ellen's mind's eye into her brother's life andfortune as a picture into its frame. 

"I'm very glad you feel that way about it, Ellen, " he said again; he wason the point of telling her about the House of Shining Walls. Thematerial from which he had drawn its earliest furnishings lay all aboutthem, the receding blue of the summer sky, the aged, arching appleboughs. The scent of the wilding rose came faintly in from the countryroad--suddenly his sister surprised him with a flash of rare insight. 

"I guess there can't anything keep us from the best except ourselves, "she said. "Being willing to put up with the second best gives us moretrouble than the Lord ever meant for us. Think of the way I've alwayswanted children--but if they'd been my real own, they'd have beensickly, likely, or even lame like me, or just ordinary like the onlykind of man who would have married me. As it is, I've had Clarice's andnow----" She broke off with a quick, old-maidish colour. 

Ellen had gone so far as to name all of Peter's children in the dayswhen nothing seemed so unlikely; now in the face of his recentengagement she would have thought it indelicate. 

"_She_ would have liked you marrying so well, Peter, " she finished witha backward motion of her head toward the room where the parlour set, banished long ago from the town house, symbolized for Ellen the broodingmaternal presence. 

"Yes, she would have liked it. " There came back to him with deepsatisfaction his mother's appraisement of young Mrs. Dassonville, whomust, as he recalled her, have been shaped by much the same frame oflife as Eunice Goodward--the Lovely Lady. The long unused phrase hadrisen unconsciously to his lips on the day that he had brought Euniceher ring. He had spent a whole week in the city choosing it; threelittle flawless, oblong emeralds set with diamonds, almost encirclingher finger with the mystic number seven. He had discovered on the daythat she had accepted him, that it had to be emeralds to match thegreen lights that her eyes took on in the glen from the deep fern, themossy bank and the green boughs overhead. On the terrace at Lessings'under a wide June sky he had supposed them to be blue; but there was noblue stone of that sky colour of sufficient preciousness for EuniceGoodward. 

She had been very sweet about the ring, touched with grateful surprisefor its beauty and its taste. Something he could see of relief, ofassurance, flashed and fell between the two women as she showed it toher mother. They had taken him so beautifully on trust, they couldn'thave known, he reflected, whether he would rise at all to the delicate, balanced observation of life among them; it was evidence, the emeraldcirclet, of how satisfyingly he had risen. The look that passed betweenmother and daughter was like a spark that lighted as it fell, anunsuspected need of him as man merely, the male element, security, dependability, care. His first response to it was that of a swimmer whohas struck earth under him; he knew in that flash where he was, by whatfamiliar shores; and the whole effect, in spite of him was of thesudden shrinkage of that lustrous sea in which his soul and sense hadfloated. It steadied him, but it also for the moment narrowed a littlethe horizon of adventure. It was the occasion that Eunice took to definefor him his status as an engaged man. 

He kept as far as he was able his compact of expecting nothing of her, except of course that he couldn't avoid expecting that their arrangementwould lead in the natural course to marriage. She had met him more thanhalfway in that, agreeing to an earlier date than he had thoughtcompatible with the ritual of engagements in the Best Society. She hadmanaged, however, that Peter should present her with her summer freedom:the engagement was not even to be announced until their return to town. And in the meantime Peter was to find a house. He had offered her travelfor that first year. Europe, which he had scarcely glimpsed, glitteredand allured. But travel, Eunice let him know, went much better when youhad a place to come back to. He saw at once how right was everything shedid. Well, then, a house on Fillmore Avenue?

"Oh--shall we be so rich as that, Peter?" He divined some embarrassmentin her as to the scale in which they were to live. "We'll want somethingin the country, too, " she reminded him. 

"I've a couple of options at Maplemont----"

"Oh, Maplemont----" She liked that also, he perceived. 

"And a place in Florida. Lessing and I bought it the winter the childrenhad the diphtheria. They've a very pretty bungalow; we could put upsomething like it for ourselves--if you wouldn't mind my sisteroccasionally. Ellen isn't happy at hotels. "

"Mind! with all you're giving me! You won't think it's just the money, Peter;" she had a very charming hesitancy about it. "It's what moneystands for, beauty, and suitability--and--everything. " He was verytender with her. 

"It's not that I have such a pile of it either, " he assured her, "thoughI turn over a great deal in the course of a year. It's easier makingmoney than people think. "

"Easier for everybody?" There was a certain eagerness in the look andvoice. 

"Easier for those who know how. I'm only forty, and I've learned;there's not much I couldn't get if I set about it. It's a kind of agift, perhaps, like painting or music, but there's a great deal to belearned, too. "

"And some haven't the gift to learn, perhaps. " For some reason shesighed. .. . He was turning all this over in his mind when suddenly Ellenrecalled him. 

"Have you told Clarice yet?"

"I mean to, Sunday, if you don't mind my not coming down to you. MissGoodward is spending the week end at Maplemont, and by staying atJulian's----"

"Of _course_. " Ellen sympathized. "I shall want to know what Claricesays. " She never did know exactly, for when Clarice gave Peter hercongratulations in the terrace garden after dinner, she missed, extraordinarily for her, the felicitous note. 

"I'm so happy for Eunice, you can't imagine, " she insisted. "I've alwayssaid we've none of us known what Eunice can do until she's had heropportunity. And now with all the background you can give her---- You'llsee!"

He didn't quite know what he was to see except that if Eunice were to bein the picture it was bound to be satisfying. But Mrs. Lessing was notdone with him. "For all her being so beautiful and so well placed, " shewent on, "Eunice has never had any life at all, not what you might calla life. And she might so easily have missed this. It is hard for girlsto realize sometimes that the success of marriage depends on realqualities in the man, in mastery over things and not just over hersusceptibilities. It is quite the most sensible thing I've known Euniceto do. "

"Only, " Peter reminded her for his part, "I'm not just exactly doing itbecause it is sensible. " Her "of course not" was convinced enough tohave stilled the vague ruffling of his mind, without doing it. He didn'tobject to having his qualifications as Eunice Goodward's husband takensolidly, but why dwell upon them when it was just the particulardistinction of his engagement that it had the intensity, the spiritualextension which was supposed to put it out of reach of materialconsiderations. Even Ellen had done better by him than this. 

He was forced, however, to come back to the substance of Mrs. Lessing'scomment a few days later when he was being dined at the club by atwice-removed cousin of the Goodward's, the upright, elderly symbol ofthe male sanction which was the most that his fiancée's fatherlesscondition could furnish forth. The man was cordial enough; he was evenprepared to find Peter likable; but even more on that account to measurehis relation to Miss Goodward in terms of its being a "good thing. "

"It's not, you know, " his host couldn't forebear to remind him, "exactlythe sort of a marriage we expected of Eunice; but if the girl issatisfied----"

"If I hadn't satisfied myself on that point----" Peter reminded him inhis turn. 

"Quite so, quite so . .. Girls have notions sometimes; one never quiteknows . .. You'll keep on with your--just _what_ is it you do suchtremendous things with; one hears of course that you _do_ do them----"

"Real estate, brokerage, " Peter enlightened him. "I shall certainly keepon with it. Isn't one supposed to have all the more need of it whenthere's an establishment to keep up?"

The symbol waved a deprecating hand. "You'll find it rather anoccupation to keep up with Eunice, I'm thinking. I've a notion she'll goit, once she has the chance. "

"If by going it, you mean going out a great deal, seeing the world andhaving it in to see her, well, why shouldn't she, so long as I have theprice?" He could only take it good-naturedly. It was amusing when youcame to think of it, that a man who would contribute to the sum of hiswife's future perhaps, the price of a silver tea salver, should so holdhim to account for it. Nevertheless the talk left a faint savour ofdryness. It was part of his new pride in himself as a possession of hersthat he should in all things come up to the measure of men, but the onething which should justify his being so ticketed and set aside by themas the Provider, the Footer-up of Accounts, was the assurance which onlyshe could give, of his being the one thing, good or bad, which could bemade to answer for her happiness. 

Walking home by the river to avoid as far as possible the baked, oven-smelling streets, he was aware how strangely the whole earth achedfor her. He was here walking, as he had been since his first seeing her, at the core of a great light and harmony, and walking alone in it. Ifjust loving her had been sufficient occupation for his brief courtship, for the present it failed him. For he was not only alone but lonely. Hesaw her swept aside by the calculating crowd--strange that Ellen andClarice should be a part of it--not only out of reach of his livepassion, but beyond all speech. Alone in his room he felt suddenly faintfor the want of her. He turned off the light with which he had firstflooded it, for the flare of the street came feebly in through thesummer leafage, and sat sensing the need of her as a thing to be handledand measured, a benumbing, suffocating presence. As he sat, a sound ofmusic floated by, and a thin pencil of light from a pleasure barge onthe river flitted from window to window, travelling the gilt line of apicture-frame and the dark block of a picture that hung over his bed. And as it touched in passing the high ramping figure of a knight inarmour, the old magic worked. He felt himself flung as it were acrossgreat distances, and dizzy with the turn, to her side. He was there tomaintain in the face of all worldly reckoning, the excluding, spiritualquality of their relation. The more his engagement to Eunice Goodwardfailed of being the usual, the expected thing, the more authority itderived for its supernal sources. It took the colour of true romancefrom its unlikelihood. Peter turned on the light, and drawing paper tohim, began to write. 

"Lovely Lady, " the letter began, and as if the words had been anincantation, the room was full and palpitating with his stored-updreams. They came waking and crowding to fill out the measure of hisunconsummated passion, and they had all one face and one likeness. Late, late he was still going on with it. .. . 

"And so, " he wrote, "I have come to the part of the story that was notin the picture, that I never knew. The dragon is slain and the knighthas just begun to understand that the Princess for whom it was done isstill a Princess; and though you have fought and bled for them, princesses must be approached humbly. And he did not know in the leasthow to go about it for in all his life the knight could never havespoken to one before. You have to think of that when you think of him atall, and of how he must stand even with his heart at her feet, hardlydaring to so much as call her attention to it. For though he knows verywell that it is quite enough to hope for and more than he deserves, tobe able to spend his whole life serving her, love, great love such asone may have for princesses, aches, aches, my dear, and needs acomforting touch sometimes and a word of recognition to make it beatmore steadily and more serviceably for every day. "

He went out that night to post his letter when it was done, for thoughthere was not time for an answer to it, he was going down to her onSaturday, he liked to think of it running before him as a torch to lightthe way which, even while he slept, he was so happily traversing. He wasquite trembling with the journey he had come, when on Saturday she methim, floating in summer draperies and holding out a slim ringed hand, and a cool cheek to glance past his lips like a swallow. 

"You had my letter, dear?"

"Such a lovely letter, Peter, I couldn't think of trying to answer it. "

"Oh, it wasn't to be answered--at least not by another----" He releasedher lest she should be troubled by his trembling. 

"I should think not!" She was more than gracious to him. "It's a wonderto me, Peter, you never thought of writing. You have such a beautifulvocabulary. " But even that did not daunt him, for he knew as soon as hehad looked on her again, that loving Eunice Goodward was enough of anoccupation. 

V

The senior partner of Weatheral, Lessing & Co. , was exactly the sort ofman, when his physicians ordered him abroad for two years, with theintimation that there might even worse happen to him, to make so littlefuss about it that he got four inches of type in a leading paper themorning of his departure and very little more. Lessing would certainlyhave been at the steamer to see him off, except for being so much takenup with adjustments of the business made necessary by Peter's going outof it; and his sister Ellen never went out in foggy weather, seldom sofar from the house in any case. Besides, she declared that if she oncesaw Peter disappearing down the widening water she should never be ableto rid herself of the notion of his being quite overwhelmed by it, whereas if he sent on his trunks the day before, and walked quietly outin the morning with his suitcase, she could persuade herself that he hadmerely run down to Bloombury for a few days and would be back on Monday. And having managed his leave-taking as he did most personal matters, toplease Ellen, who though she had never been credited with animagination, seemed likely to develop one in the exigencies of gettingalong without Peter, he had no sense of having done anything other thanto please himself. He found a man to carry his suitcase as soon as hewas out of the house, and walked the whole way to the steamer; for ifone has been ordered out of all activity there is still a certainsatisfaction in going out on your own feet. 

It was an extremely ill-considered day, wet fog drawn up to the highshouldering roofs and shrugged off, like a nervous woman's shawl. Butwhether it sulked over his departure or smiled on him for remembrance, would not have made any difference to Peter, who, whatever the paperssaid of the reason for his going abroad, knew that there would beneither shade nor shine for him, nor principalities nor powers until hehad found again the House of the Shining Walls. As soon as he hadbestowed his belongings in his stateroom, he went out on the side of thedeck farthest from the groups of leave-taking, and stood staring down, as if he considered whether the straightest route might not lie in thatdirection, into the greasy, shallow hollows of the harbour water, at thevery moment when the Burton Hendersons, over their very late coffee, haddiscovered the item of his departure. 

Mrs. Henderson balanced her spoon on the edge of her cup while herhusband read the paragraph aloud to her. 

"You don't suppose, " she said, as if it might be an interesting even ifregrettable possibility, "that _I_--that our affair--had anything to dowith it?"

"If it did, " admitted her husband, with the air of not thinking itlikely, but probably served him right, "it has taken a long time to getat him. Two years, isn't it, since you threw him over for a better man?"

"Oh, I'm not so sure of your being a better man, Bertie; I liked youbetter----"

Mr. Burton Henderson accepted his wife's amendment with complacency. 

"I don't believe Weatheral appreciated the distinction. Men like thathave a sort of money crust that prevents the ordinary perceptions fromgetting through to them. " This illustration appeared on second thoughtsso illuminating that it carried him a little further. "Perhaps that'sthe reason it has taken him so long to tumble after he has been hit; ithas just got through to him. It would be interesting to know, though, ifhe is still a little in love with you. "

There was a fair amount of speculation in Mr. Burton Henderson's tonethat did not appear to have its seat in any apprehension. 

"Just as if you rather hoped it, " his wife protested. 

"Well, I was only wondering if his health is so bad as the paperssay--it seldom is, you know--but if he were to go off all of a suddenone of these days, whether he mightn't take it into his head now toleave you a legacy. "

"I don't believe it was personal enough with Peter for that. It wasn'tme he wanted so much as just to be married. And, besides, I did comedown on him rather hard. " Mrs. Burton Henderson smiled a littlereminiscently as if she still saw herself in the process of coming downon Peter and thought rather well of it. 

"Well, anyway, " her husband finished, "we could have managed with alegacy. "

"Yes, we do need money dreadfully, don't we, Bertie?" she sighed. "But Idon't believe I had anything to do with it. "

That was all very well for Mrs. Burton Henderson, but Peter's sisterEllen had a different opinion. "Peter, " she had said the evening afterPeter had sent his trunk out of the house and locked up his suitcase tokeep her from putting anything more into it, "you're not thinking of_her_, are you? You're not going to take that abroad with you. "

"No, Ellen, I haven't thought of her for a long time except to wish herhappiness. You mustn't let that worry you. "

"Just the same, " said Ellen, "if anything happens to you over there--ifyou never come back to me, I shall never forgive her. "

"I shall come back. I am sorry you should feel so bitter about it. "

He could not, especially now that it was gone, very well explain toEllen about the House; for all the years that it had stood there justbeyond the edge of dreams with the garden spread around it and a lovelywood before, she had never heard of it. There had been so many ways toit once, paths to it began in pictures, great towered gates of musicgave upon its avenues, and if he had not spoken of it, it was because ashe had made himself believe when she did come, that Eunice Goodwardwould come into it of first right. He could not have blamed her for notwishing to live in it--from the first he had never blamed her. He mighthave managed even had she pulled it about his ears to rebuild it insome fashion, but this was the bitterest, that he knew now for acertainty there had never been any House and the certainty made himridiculous. 

It had been rather the worse that, with all the suddenness of thisdiscovery, he had not been able to avoid the habit of setting out forit, seeking in dreams the relief of desolation in knowing that no dreamscould come. As often as he heard music or saw in the soft turn of acheek or the slender line of a wrist, what had moved him so in hers hefelt himself urged forward on old trails, only to be scared from them bythe apparition of himself as Eunice had evoked it from her brightsurpassing surfaces, as a man unaccomplished in passion, unprovocative. All the gates to the House opened upon dreadful hollows ofself-despising into which Peter fell and floundered, so that he took togoing that way as little as possible, taking wide circuits about itcontinually in the way of business, being rather pleased with himselfwhen at the end of two years he could no longer feel any pang of lossnor any remembering thrill of what the House had been--until hediscovered that also he could not feel some other things, the penbetween his fingers and the rise of the stairs under him. He forgotEunice Goodward, and then one day he forgot to go home after officehours, and they found him sitting still at his desk in the dark, tryingto remember whether he ought to put down the blotting-pad and the paperweight on top of that, or if, on the whole, it were not better to putthe paper weight, as being the heavier article, first. 

It was after that the doctor told him to go as far away from hisbusiness as possible and keep on staying away. 

"But if I am going to die, doctor, " Peter carefully explained, "I wouldmuch rather do it in my own country. "

"Ah, " the doctor warned him, "that's just the difficulty. You won'tdie. "

And that was how Peter happened to be leaning over the forward rail ofan Atlantic steamer on his way to Italy, which he had chosen because thedate of sailing happened to be convenient. But he knew, as he stoodlooking down at the surface of the water, rough-hewn by the wind, thatwhatever the doctor said to Lessing, or Ellen surmised, he would get nogood there except as it showed him the way to the House of the ShiningWalls. 

He did not remember where in the blind pointless ring through which thesteamer chugged and wallowed as though it were a superior sort of waterbeetle and the horizon a circle of its own making, he began to getsufficiently acquainted with his fellow passengers, to understand thatthey were most of them going abroad in the interest of unrealizedestates, and abounded in confidence. To see them forever forward andagaze at the lit shores of Spain and the Islands of Desire, roused inhim the faint savour of expectation. Which, however, did not prevent himfrom finding Naples squalid, and Rome, where he arrived in the middle ofthe tourist season, too modern in a cheap, second-rate sort of way. Hecould remember when Rome had furnished some excellent company for theHouse, and suffered in the places of renown an indeterminable pang likethe ache of an amputated stump. It seemed, on occasion, as if the oldtrails might lie down the hollow of the Forum, under the arch of thatbroken aqueduct, beside the dark Volsinian mere; but when Peter arrivedat any of these places he found them prepossessed by Germans gabblingout of _Baedekers_. The Sistine Chapel made the back of his neck acheand he came no nearer than seven tourists to the noble quietude of theVatican can marbles. 

"I must remember, " said Peter to himself, "that I am a very sick man, and crowds annoy me. "

Then he went into the country and saw the gray of the olives above thespringing grass, like the silver bloom on a green plum, and began toexperience the pangs of recovery. He found Hadrian's Villa and thegarden of the Villa d'Este, and remembered other things. He rememberedthe flat malachite-coloured pools, the definite, pointed cypresses andthe fountain's soft incessant rain--as it had been in the House. As it_was_ in the House. For he understood in Italy what was still the mostbitter to know, that though it might yet be somewhere in the world, hewas never to find it any more. Toward all that once had led him thither, his sense was locked and sealed. He remembered Eunice Goodward--thefact of her--how tall she was as she walked beside him--but not how atthe soft brushing of her hair as she turned, his blood had sung to her;nor all the weeks of their engagement like a morning full of wings. Andhe could not yet recall so much as the bare reasons for her break withhim except that they had been unhappy ones. 

It had been a part of a long plan that he and Eunice should have seenItaly together, but for the moment he did not wish her there. He wassure she would have been in the way of his getting something thatglimmered at him from the coign of castellated walls all awash abouttheir base with purpled shadow, that strove to say itself in intricatefine tracery of tower and shrine, and failed and fell away before thesodden quality of his mind. 

So he drifted northward with the spring, and saw the anemones blowingand the bloomy violet wonder the world, suffering incredible achingintimations of the recrudescence of desire. Afterward he came toFlorence, where he had heard there were pictures, and hoped to have somepeace; but at Florence they were all too busy being painted or prayedto, the remote Madonnas, the wounded Saints, the comfortable plumpVenuses; the lean Christs too stupefied with candle smoke to take anyaccount of an American gentleman in a plain business suit, who lookedhomely and ill and competent. Sometimes in Santa Croce or in the longgallery over the bridge, the noise of the city would remove from him andthe faces would waver and lean out of their frames, as if, had theoccasion allowed, they would have said the word to set him on his way. But there was always a guard about or a tourist stalking someuncatalogued prey and it never came to anything. 

"What you really want, " said a man at his hotel to whom he had halfwhimsically complained of their inarticulateness--one of thoseremarkable individuals who had done nothing so successfully in so manycities of Europe that he was supposed to know the exact month for doingit most delightfully in any one of them--"what you really want isVenice. It's an off season there; you'll meet nobody but Germans, and ifyou go about in your own gondola you needn't mind them. "

So Peter went to Venice, and on the way there he met the Girl from Home. 

VI

He knew at once that she was from Home, though as she sat opposite himwith the fingers of her mended gloves laced under her chin and her faceturned away to miss no point of the cypresses and warm, illumined walls, there was nothing to prove that any one of a hundred towns might nothave produced her. Peter remembered what sort of people wore gloves likethat in Bloombury--the minister's wife, the school teacher, his motherand Ellen--and was instantly sure she would not have been travellingthrough Italy first-class except at the instigation of the large, widowed and distrustful woman with whom she got on at Padua. This lady, also, Peter understood very well. He thought it likely she sat inrocking chairs a great deal at home and travelled to improve her mind. She had, moreover, a general air of proclaiming the unwarrantableness ofrailway acquaintances, which alone would have prevented Peter fromasking the girl, as he absurdly wanted to, if they had painted the newschool-house yet, and if there had been much water that year in Miller'spond. 

As she sat so with her round hat pushed askew by the window-glass, therewas some delicate reminder about her that streaked the rich Italianlandscape with vestiges of Bloombury. 

He looked out of the window where she looked and saw the whitestraight-sided villas change to green-shuttered farmhouses, and fine oldRoman roads lead on to Harmony. It was all there for him in itsunexpectedness, as freshly touching as those reminders of his motherwhich he came upon occasionally where Ellen kept them laid by inlavender; as if the girl had shaken from the folds of her jacket ofunmistakable Bloombury cut, Youth for him--his own--anybody's Youth--nolimp and yellowed keepsake, but all crisply done up and ready forputting on. So sharp for the moment was his sense of accepting theinvitation to put it on with her as the best possible traveller's guise, especially for seeing Venice in, that catching the speculative eye ofthe large lady turned upon him, he quailed sensibly. She had the air ofhaving detected him in an attempt to establish a relation with hercompanion on the ground of their common youngness, and finding herselfmuch more a match for him both in years and in respect to their commonorigin. Whatever passed between the two women, and something did passwordlessly, with hardly so much substance as a look, remained there, notintrusively, but as proof that what he had been seeking was still goingon in some far but attainable place. It was the first movement of anaccomplished recovery, for Peter to find himself resisting theimplication of his appearance in favour of what was coming to him out ofthe retouched, sensitive surfaces of his past. 

He knew so well as he looked at the girl, what had produced her. She wasleaning a little from the window in a way that brought more of her faceinto view, and though from where he sat Peter could have very littlenotion of the points of the nearing landscape, he knew by what he saw ofher, that somewhere across the low runnels in the windy reeds she hadcaught sight of the "sea birds' nest. "

He did not on that account change his position so that he might have aglimpse of the dark hills of Arqua or the towers of Venice repeatingthemselves in the lustrous, spacious sea. Sitting opposite the girl, hesaw in her following eyes the silver trails of water and the dimprocession down them of old loves, old wars, old splendours, much betterthan the thin line of the landscape presented them to his weary sense. He leaned back as far as the stiff seat allowed, watching the Old Worldshine on her face, where the low light, striking obliquely on the water, turned it white above black shoals of weed. For the first time since hisillness his mind slipped the leash of maimed desire, and as if it partedfor him there beyond the window of the railway carriage, struck into thetrail to the House. The walls of it rose up straight and shining, gildedpurely; the windows arching to summer blueness, let in with them thesmell of the wilding rose at the turn of the road and the eveningclamour of the birds in Bloombury wood. 

All this time Peter had been sitting in an Italian railway carriage, knee to knee with a pirate bearded Austrian Jew who gave him thegreatest possible occasion for wishing the window opened, and when thejar of the checked train drew him into consciousness again, he was at aloss to know what had set him off so far until he caught sight of thegirl. She was buttoning on her jacket with fingers that trembled withexcitement as she constrained herself to the recapitulation of the twosuitcases, the hat box and three parcels which her companion in order tohave well in hand, had been alternately picking up and dropping eversince they sighted the tower of San Georgio dark against the seastreaked west. 

"Two and one is three and three is six and the _'Baedeker'_ and theumbrellas, " said the girl. "No, I don't have to look in the addressbook. I have it by heart. Casa Frolli, the Zattera. " Then the roar ofthe train split into the sharp cries of the _facchinos_ that carriedthem forward like an explosion into Venice as it rose statelily from therippling lustre. Around it wove the black riders with still, communicating prows, so buoyant, so mysteriously alive and peering, likesome superior sea creatures risen magically from below the frayedreflection of the station lights. Much as Peter felt that he owed to thevivid presence of the girl, his new capacity to see and feel it so as itburst upon them, he hadn't found the courage to address her. So it waswith a distinct sense of deprivation that he saw her with her companiongrasping the side of the gondola as if by that method to keep it afloat, disappearing down the dim water lanes in the direction of the Zattera. 

VII

It was the evidence of how far he had come on the road to recovery thathe was able, when he woke in his bed at the _Britania_, to allow fullplay to the suggestion that he had experienced nothing more than thenatural reversion of age to the bright vividness of the past. "Though Ididn't expect, " he admitted as he lay fronting in the wide old mirrors, interminable reflections of a pillow dinted by his too-early whitenedhead, "I really did not expect to have it begin at forty-two. " Havingmade this concession to his acceptance of himself as a man done withyoungness of any sort, he lay listening to the lip-lapping of the waterand the sounds that came up from the garden just below him, the clink ofcups and the women's easy laughter, and wondered what it could have beenabout that girl to set him dreaming of all the women who had everinterested him. 

It did not occur to him then, nor in the interval in which the tang ofhis dream intervened between him and the full flavour of Venice, that hehad not thought once of Eunice Goodward, but only of those who hadtouched his life without hurting it. He was so far indeed from thinkingof women again as beings from whom hurts were expected to come, that heblamed himself for not having made an occasion out of their enforcedcompanionship, for speaking to the girl in the train if he should meether again. 

"I must be twice her age, " he told himself determinedly, "and no doubtshe has been brought up to be respectful to her elders. "

He looked out very carefully, therefore, as he drifted about the canals, for a large, widowed lady and a girl in a round hat who might have comefrom Bloombury, but he did not find her that day nor the next, nor theday after, and in the meantime Venice took him. 

The ineffable consolation of its beauty stole upon him like the breathof its gardens, as it rose delicately from its sea station, murmurouslike a shell with the whisper of joyous adventure. It was, as he toldhimself, a part of the sense of renewal which the girl had afforded him, that he was able to accept its incomparable charm as the evidence of thecontinuity of the world of youth and passion. His being able to see itso was a sort of consolation for having, by the illusive quality of hisdreams, missed them both on his own account. 

It was not, however, until the morning of the fourth day that it drewhim as he had known in the beginning it inevitably must, to the core ofVenice, where in the wide piazza full of sleepy light, the great bannersdropped from their staves broad splashes of colour between the slatydroves of doves. High over the door the gold horses of Lysippusbreasted the gold air made shadowless by the approaching _temporale_. Hewas so far then from anything that had to do with his dream that it wasnot for some moments after he had turned into St. Mark's, obsessed ofthe sense of life unconquerable and pervading, that he began to takenotice of what he saw there in the dim wonder. It was first of all thesmell of stale incense and the mutter of the mass, and then as he bowedinstinctively to the elevated Host, the snare of the intricate mosaicpavement; so by degrees appreciation cleared to the seductive polish ofthe pillars, the rows of starred candles, and beyond that to the cleargold of the walls, with all the pictures wrought flatly upon them . .. Asit had been in the House!

It was some time before he was able to draw up out of his boyhoodmemories, so newly made a gift to him, the stray, elucidating fact ofhis father's early visit to this spot and the possibility of his dreamhaving shaped itself about some unremembered account of it. He climbedup to the galleries to give himself room to that wonder of memory whichhad failed to preserve to him any image of how his father looked, andyet had so furnished all his imagination. Which didn't make any less ofa wonder of his knowing as he stood there, Peter Weatheral, of the firmof Weatheral, Lessing & Co. , Real Estate Brokers, what it was all about. 

"It's a picture-book of the heart of man, " he concluded, and no soonerhad he shaped this thought in his mind than he heard it uttered for himon the opposite side of the pillar in a voice made soft by indulgenttenderness, "Just a great picture-book. " He leaned forward at the soundfar enough to have a glimpse of the Girl from Home, and smiled at her. 

"So you've found that out, have you?" It was not strange to find himselfaddressing her friendlily nor to hear her answer him. 

"Just a picture-book, " she repeated. "It explains so much. What thesaints were to them, and the Holy Personages. Monkish tales to prey upontheir superstition, we were taught. But you can see here what theyreally were, the wonder tales of a people, the fairy wonder and theblessed happenings come true as they do in dreams. Oh, it must have beena good time when the saints were on the earth. "

"You believe in them, then?"

"Here in San Marco, yes. But not when I am in Bloombury. "

"Oh!" cried Peter, "are you really from Bloombury? I knew you were fromup country but I hardly dared to hope--if you will permit me----" Hesearched for his card which she accepted without looking at it. 

"You are Mr. Peter Weatheral, aren't you? Mrs. Merrithew thought sherecognized you yesterday. "

"Is that why she glared at me so? But anyway I am obliged to her, thoughI haven't vestige of a recollection of her. "

"She didn't suppose you had. Her husband sold you some land once. But ofcourse everybody in Bloombury knows the Mr. Weatheral who went fromthere to the city and made his fortune. "

"A sorry one, " said Peter. "But if you are really from Bloombury whydon't I remember you? I go there with Ellen every summer, and _she_knows everybody. "

"Yes; she is so kind. Everybody says that. But I'm really from Harmony. I taught the Bloombury school last year. I am Savilla Dassonville. "

"Oh, I knew your father then! Now that I come to think of it, it was hewho laid the foundation of my greatness, " Peter smiled whimsically. "AndI knew your mother; she was a very lovely lady. "

He realized as the girl's eyes filled with tears, that this must havebeen the child at whose birth, he had heard, the mother had died. "But Isuppose we mustn't talk about Bloombury in San Marco, " he blamed hisinadvertence, "though that doesn't seem to want talking about either. When you said that just now about its being a picture-book, I wasthinking how like it was to one of those places I used to go to in myyouth--you know where you go in your mind when you don't like the placewhere you are. So like. I used to call it the House of the ShiningWalls. "

"I know, " she nodded, "mine is a garden. "

"_Is?_" said Peter. "There's where you have the advantage of me. "

"Oh!" she exclaimed, spreading her hands toward the pictured wall andthe springing domes, "isn't this the evidence that it _is_ always. Letus look. "

The mass was over and the crowd departing; they moved from page to pageto the storied wall and identified in it the springs of a commonexperience. 

"It's like nothing so much, " said Miss Dassonville, "as the things I'veseen the children make at school, with bits of coloured stone and brokenchina and rags of tinsel or whatever treasures, laid out in a pattern onthe ground. "

"Something like that, " admitted Peter. 

"And that's why, " said Miss Dassonville, "it doesn't make me feel at_all_ religious. Just--just--maternal. "

It appeared by this time they had become well enough acquainted forPeter to remark that she didn't seem to feel under any obligation toexperience the prescribed and traditional thrill. 

"Well, I'm divided in my mind. I don't want to overlook any of thefacts, and I want to give the poor imprisoned things a chance, if theyhave anything to say that the guide books have missed, to get it offtheir minds. I've always heard that celebrities grow tired of beingforever taken at their public valuation. I've got a _Baedeker_ and a_Hare_ and _The Stones of Venice_ but I neglect them quite as much as Iread them, don't you?"

They had come down into the nave and she went about stroking the fairmarbles delicately as though there sprang a conscious communication fromthe touch. He felt his mind accommodating to the ease of hers with amovement of release. They spent so much time in the church that whenthey issued on the Piazza at last it was with amazement to discern thatthe cloud mass which an hour before had piled ethereal tones of bluenessabove Frauli, lit cavernously by soundless flashes, had dissolved inrain. 

"And I haven't even an umbrella, " explained Miss Dassonville with a realdismay. 

"But I'll take you home in my gondola, " it appeared to himprovidentially provided for this contingency; "it is here at thePiazzetta. "

"Oh, have you a gondola, and is it as much of a help as people say? Mrs. Merrithew hates walking, but we didn't know if we should like it. "

They whisked around the corner under the arcade of the ducal palace, and almost before they reached the _traghetto_ the shower was stayed andthe sun came out on the lucent water. Peter allowed Miss Dassonville togive the direction lest she should think it a liberty of him to havenoticed and remembered it, but he added something to it that caused her, as they swung out into the canal, to enter an expostulation. 

"But this is not the way to the Casa Frolli!"

"It's one way; besides, it isn't raining any more, and if you arethinking of taking a gondola you ought to make a trial trip or two, andit's worth seeing how the palace looks from the canal. "

The rain began again in a little while, whitening the water; the depthof it blackened to the cloud but the surface frothed like quicksilverunder the steady patter. The awning was up and they were safe against awetting, but Peter saw the girl shiver in the slight chill, and lookingat her more attentively he perceived that she might recently have beenill. The likeness to her mother came out then in spite of her plainness, the hands, the eyes, the pleasant way of smiling; it was that no doubtwhich had set him on the trail of his old dreams. He tried, more for thepurpose of avoiding it than for any curiosity, to remember what he hadever heard of David Dassonville that would account for his daughter'steaching school when she evidently wasn't able for it, but he talked ofMrs. Merrithew. 

"I must call on her, " he said, "as soon as she will permit me. But tellme, what business did I do with her husband?"

"It was a mortgage--those poor McGuires, you know, were in such trouble, and you----"

"Yes, I was always nervous about mortgages. I was bitten by one once. But dear me, I did not expect to have my youthful indiscretions comingout like this. What else did she tell you?"

The girl laughed delightedly. "Well, we did rather talk you over. Shesaid you were such a good son. Even when you were a young man on asalary your mother had a best black silk and a second best. "

"Women are the queerest!" Peter commented at large. "It was always sucha comfort to Ellen that mother had a good silk to be buried in. Nowwhat is there talismanic about silk?"

"It's evidence, " she smiled, "and that's what women require most. "

"Well, I hope Mrs. Merrithew will accept it as evidence that I am asuitable person to take you out in a gondola this evening. You haven'tseen Venice by night?"

"Only as we came from the station. I'm sure she would like you to call, and I hope she will like the gondola. "

"Oh, she will like it, " Peter assured Miss Dassonville as he helped herout in front of the Casa Frolli; "it will remind her of a rockingchair. "

Mrs. Merrithew did like the gondola; she liked everything:--the spaciousdark, the scudding forms like frightened swans, the sound of singing onthe water, the soft bulks of foliage that overhung them in the narrow_calle_, the soundless hatchet-faced prows that rounded on them frombehind dim palaces; and she liked the gondola so much that she askedPeter "right out" what it cost him. 

"We would have taken one ourselves, " she explained without waiting, "only we didn't feel able to afford it. Fifty francs a week they wantedto charge us, but maybe that was because we were Americans; they thinkAmericans can do everything over here. But I suppose you get yours cheapat the hotel?"

"Oh, much cheaper. "

"How much?"

"Forty francs, " hazarded Peter. "I'm sure I could get you one for that. Unless . .. If you don't mind. .. . " He made what he hadn't done yet underany circumstances, a case out of his broken health to explain how by notgetting up very early and by taking some prescribed exercise, Giuseppeand the gondola had to lie unused half the mornings, which was very badfor them. .. . "So, " he persuaded them, "if you would be satisfied with itfor half a day, I would be very much obliged to you if you would takeit . .. Share and share alike. " There was as much hesitation in Peter'sspeech as if it had really been the favour he seemed to make it, thoughin fact it grew out of his attempt to fashion his offer by what he sawin the dusk of Miss Dassonville's face. "In the evenings, " he finished, "we could take it turn about. There are a great many evenings when Idon't go out at all. "

"Me, too, " consented Mrs. Merrithew cheerfully. "I get tired easy, butyou and Savilla could go. " The proposal appealed to her as neighbourly, and it was quite in keeping with the character of a successful businessman, as he was projected on the understanding of Bloombury, to wish notto keep paying for a thing of which he had no use. "I think we might aswell close with it at once, don't you, Savilla?"

"If you are sure it's only forty francs----" Miss Dassonville wasdoubtful. 

"Quite sure, " Peter was very prompt. "You see they keep them soconstantly employed at the hotel"--which seemed satisfactorily to makeway for the arrangement that the gondola was to call for the two ladiesthe next morning. 

"Giuseppe, " Weatheral demanded as he stepped out of the gondola at thehotel landing, "how much do I pay you?"

"Sixty francs, _Signore_. "

Peter had no doubt the extra ten was divided between his own man and thegondolier, but he was not thinking of that. 

"I have a very short memory, " he said, "and I have told the _Signora_and the _Signorina_ forty francs. If they ask you, you are to tell themforty francs; and listen, Beppe, every franc over that you tell them, Ishall deduct from your _pourboire_ when I leave, do you understand?"

"_Si, Signore_. "

VIII

A morning or two after the arrangement about the gondola Peter wasleaning over the bridge of San Moise watching the sun on the coppervessels the women brought to the fountain, when his man came to him. This Luigi he had picked up at Naples for the chief excellence of hisEnglish and a certain seraphic bearing that led Peter to say to him thathe would cheerfully pay a much larger wage if he could only be certainLuigi would not cheat him. 

"Oh _Signore!_ In Italy? _Impossible!_"

"In that case, " said Peter, "if you can't be honest with me, be ashonest as you can"--but he had to accept the lifted shoulders and theRaphael smile as his only security. However, Luigi had made himcomfortable and as he approached him now it was without any misgiving. 

"I have just seen Giuseppe and the gondola, " he announced. "They are atthe Palazza Rezzonico, and after that they go to San Georgio degliSclavoni. There are pictures there. "

"Oh!" said Peter. 

"It is a very little way to the San Georgio, " volunteered Luigi as theyremained, master and man, looking down into the water in the leisurelyVenetian fashion. "Across the Piazza, " said Luigi, "a couple of turns, abridge or two and there you are;" and after a long pause, "_The signore_is looking very well this morning. Exercise in the sea air is excellentfor the health. "

"Very, " said Peter. "I shall go for a walk, I think. I shall not needyou, Luigi. "

Nevertheless Luigi did not lose sight of him until he was well on hisway to Saint George of the Sclavoni which announced itself by theramping fat dragon over the door. There was the young knight riding himdown as of old, and still no Princess. 

"She must be somewhere on the premises, " said Peter to himself. "Nodoubt she has preserved the traditions of her race by remainingindoors. " He had not, however, accustomed his eyes to the dusk of thelittle room when he heard at the landing the scrape of the gondola andthe voices of the women disembarking. 

"If we'd known you wanted to come, " explained Mrs. Merrithew heartily, "we could have brought you in the boat. " That was the way she oftenestspoke of it, and other times it was the gon_do_la. 

Peter explained his old acquaintance with the charging saint and hiscuriosity about the lady, but when the custodian had brought a silverpaper screen to gather the little light there was upon the mellow oldCarpaccio, he looked upon her with a vague dissatisfaction. 

"It's the same dragon and the same young man, " he admitted. "I know himby the hair and by the determined expression. But I'm not sure about theyoung lady. "

"You are looking for a fairy-tale Princess, " Miss Dassonville declared, "but you have to remember that the knight didn't marry this one; he onlymade a Christian of her. "

They came back to it again when they had looked at all the others andspeculated as to whether Carpaccio knew how funny he was when he paintedSaint Jerome among the brethren, and whether in the last picture he wasreally in heaven as Ruskin reported. 

"So you think, " said Peter, "she'd have been more satisfactory if thepainter had thought Saint George meant to marry her?"

"More personal and convincing, " the girl maintained. 

"There's one in the Belle Arti that's a lot better looking to mynotion, " contributed Mrs. Merrithew. 

"Oh, but that Princess is running away, " the girl protested. 

"It's what any well brought up young female would be expected to dounder the circumstances, " declared the elder lady; "just look at themfragments. It's enough to turn the strongest. "

"It does look a sort of 'After the Battle, '" Peter admitted. "But Ishould like to see the other one, " and he fell in very readily with Mrs. Merrithew's suggestion that he should come in the gondola with them anddrop into the Academy on the way home. They found the Saint George withvery little trouble and sat down on one of the red velvet divans, looking a long time at the fleeing lady. 

"And you think, " said Peter, "she would not have run away?"

"I think she shouldn't; when it's done for her. "

"But isn't that--the running away I mean--the evidence of her beingworth doing it for, of her fineness, of her superior delicacy?"

"Well, " Miss Dassonville was not disposed to take it lightly, "if awoman has a right to a fineness that's bought at another's expense. Theycan't all run away, you know, and I can't think it right for a woman toevade the disagreeable things just because some man makes it possible. "

"I believe, " laughed Peter, "if you had been the Princess you would havekilled the dragon yourself. You'd have taken a little bomb up yoursleeve and thrown it at him. " He had to take that note to cover aconfused sense he had of the conversation being more pertinent than hecould at that moment remember a reason for its being. 

"Oh, I've been delivered to the dragons before now, " she said. "It'sgoing on all the time. " She moved a little away from the picture as ifto avoid the personal issue. 

"What beats me, " commented Mrs. Merrithew, "is that there has to be ayoung lady. You'd think a likely young man, if he met one of themthings, would just kill it on general principles, the same as a snake ora spider. "

"Oh, " said Peter, "it's chiefly because they are terrifying to youngladies that we kill them at all. Yes, there has to be a young lady. " Hewas aware of an accession of dreariness in the certainty that in hiscase there never could be a young lady. But Miss Dassonville as shebegan to walk toward the entrance gave it another turn. 

"There _is_ always a young lady. The difficulty is that it must be aparticular one. No one takes any account of those who were eaten upbefore the Princess appeared. "

"But you must grant, " said Peter, with an odd sense of defending his ownposition, "that when one got done with a fight like that, one would beentitled to something particular. "

"Oh, if it came as a reward, " she laughed. "But nowadays we've reversedthe process. One makes sure of the Princess first, lest when the dragonis killed she should prove to have gone away with one of thebystanders. "

Something that clicked in Peter's mind led him to look sharply from oneto the other of the two women. In Bloombury they had a way, he knew, ofnot missing any point of their neighbours' affairs, but their facesexpressed no trace of an appreciation of anything in the subject beingapplicable to his. The flick of memory passed and left him wondering whyit should be. 

He caught himself looking covertly at the girl as the gondola swung intoopen water, to discover in her the springs of an experience such as layat the source of his own desolation. He perceived instead under herslight appearance a certain warmth and colour like a light behind abreathed-on window-pane. Illness, overwork, whatever dragon's breath haddimmed her surfaces, she gave the impression of being inwardlyinexhaustibly alight and alive. Something in her leaped to the day, tothe steady pacing of the gondola on the smooth water tessellated by thesun in blue and bronze and amber, to the arched and airy palaces thatrose above it. 

The awning was up; there was strong sun and pleasant wind: from hiddengardens they smelled the oleanders. Peter felt the faint stir ofrehabilitation like the breath of passing presences. 

The mood augmented in him as he drifted late that evening on the lagoonbeyond the Guidecca, after the sun was gone down and the sea and the skyreflected each to each, one roseate glow like a hollow shell of pearl. Lit peaks of the Alps ranged in the upper heaven, and nearer the greatdome of the Saluti signalled whitely; below them, all the islands nearand far floated in twilit blueness on the flat lagoon. There was bytimes, a long sea swell, and no sound but the tread of the oar behindlike a woman's silken motion. It drew with it films of recollection inwhich his mood suspended like gossamer, a mood capable of going onindependently of his idea of himself as a man cut off from thoseexperiences, intimations of which pressed upon him everywhere by lineand form and colour. 

It had come back, the precious intimacy of beauty, with that fullnesssitting there in the gondola, he realized with the intake of the breathto express it and the curious throbbing of the palms to grasp. He wasable to identify in his bodily response to all that charged the decayingwonder of Venice with opulent personality, the source of his boyishdreams. It was no woman, he told himself, who had gone off with thebystanders while he had been engaged with the dragons of poverty andobligation, but merely the appreciations of beauty. There had never beenany woman, there was never going to be. He began to plan how he shouldexplain his discovery and the bearing of it, to Miss Dassonville. Itwould be a pity if she were making the same mistake about it. He leanedback in the cushioned seat and watched the silver shine of the prowdelicately peering out its way among the shadowy islands; lay so stilland absorbed that he did not know which way they went nor what hisgondolier inquired of him, and presently realized without surprise thatthe Princess was speaking to him. 

He felt her first, warm and friendlily, and then he heard her laughing. He knew she was the Princess though she had no form or likeness. 

"But which are you?" he whispered to the laughter. 

"The right one. "

"The one who stayed or the one who ran away?"

"Oh, if you don't know by this time! I have come to take you to theHouse. "

"Are you the one who was always there?"

"The Lovely Lady; there was never any other. "

"And shall I go there as I used?" asked Peter, "and be happy there?"

"You are free to go; do you not feel it?"

"Oh, here--I feel many things. I am just beginning to understand how Icame to lose the way to it. "

"Are you so sure?"

"Quite. " Peter's new-found certainty was strong in him. "I made themistake of thinking that the House was the House of Love, and it isreally the House of Beauty. I thought if I found the one to love, Ishould live in it forever. But now that I have found the way back to itI see that was a mistake. "

"How did you find it?"

"Well, there is a girl here----"

"Ah!" said the Princess. 

"She is young, " Peter explained; "she looks at things the way I used to, and that somehow brought me around to the starting-point again. "

"I see, " said the Princess; the look she turned on him was full of astrange, secret intelligence which as he returned it without knowingwhat it was about, afforded Peter the greatest satisfaction. "Do youknow me now, " she said at last, "which one I am?"

"The right one, I am sure of that. "

"But which?"

"I know now, " Peter answered, "but I am certain that in the morning Ishall not be able to remember. "

It was true as Peter had said that the next morning he was in as muchdoubt as ever about the princesses. He thought he would go and have alook at them but forgot what he had come for once he had entered thespacious quiet of the Academy. Warmed still from his contact of thenight before he found the pictures sentient and friendly. He foundtrails in them that led he knew now where, and painted waters thatlapped the fore-shore of remembrance. 

After an hour in which he had seen the meaning of the pictures emergefrom the frontier of mysticism which he knew now for the reflection ofhis own unstable state, and proceed toward him by way of hisintelligence, he heard the Princess say at his shoulder, at least hethought it might have been the Princess for the first word or two, untilhe turned and saw Miss Dassonville. She was staring at the dim oldcanvases patched with saints, and her eyes were tender. 

"They are not really saints, you know, they are only a sort ofhieroglyphics that spell devotion. It isn't as though they had thebreath of life breathed into them and could come down from theircanvases as some of them do. "

"Oh, " he protested, "did you think of that for yourself? It was thePrincess who said it to me. "

"The Princess of the Dragon?"

"She came to me last night on the lagoon. It was wonderful, --the watershine and the rosy glow. I was wishing I had insisted on your coming, and all at once there was the Princess. "

"The one who stayed or the one who ran away?"

"She declined to commit herself. I suppose it's one of the things a manhas to find out. " He experienced a great lift of his spirit in thegirl's light acceptance of his whimsicality, it was the sort of thingthat Eunice Goodward used to be afraid to have any one hear him say lestthey should think it odd. It occurred to him as he turned and walkedbeside Miss Dassonville that if he had come to Italy with Eunice theremight have been a great deal that she would not have liked to hear. Hecould think things of that sort of her now with a queer lightness as ofease after strain, and yet not think it a merit of Miss Dassonville's soto ease him. They walked through the rooms full of the morning coolness, and let the pictures say what they would to them. 

"It is strange to me, " said the girl, "the reality of pictures; as ifthey had reached a point under the artist's hand where they becamesuddenly independent of him and went about saying a great deal more thanhe meant and perhaps more than he could understand. I am sure they musthave a world of their own of picture rock and tree and stone, where theygo when they are not being looked at on their canvases. "

"Oh, haven't you found them, then?"

"In dreams you mean? Not in Bloombury; they don't get so far from home. One of these little islands I suspect, that lie so low and look so blueand airy. "

"Will you go with me in the gondola to discover it?"

"To-night?"

"To-morrow. " He was full of a plan to take her and Mrs. Merrithew to theLido that same evening to have dinner, and to come home after moonrise, to discover Venice. She agreed to that, subject to Mrs. Merrithew'sconsent, and they went out to find that lady at a bead shop where shespent a great many hours in a state of delightful indecision. 

Mrs. Merrithew proving quite in the mood for it, they went to the Lidowith an extra gondolier--Miss Dassonville had stipulated for one whocould sing--and came home in time to see Venice all a-flower, with thecontinual slither of the gondolas about it like some slim sort of moth. They explored Saint George of the Sea Weed after that, took tea in thepublic gardens and had a day at Torcello. On such occasions when Peterand Mrs. Merrithew talked apart, the good lady who got on excellentlywith the rich Mr. Weatheral grew more than communicative on the subjectof Savilla Dassonville. It was not that she talked of the girl so muchnor so freely, but that she left him with the sense of her ownexasperation at the whole performance. It was a thin little waif of astory as it came from Mrs. Merrithew, needing to be taken in andcomforted before it would yield even to Peter, who as a rich man hadcome to have a fair discernment in pitiable cases, the faint hope of arescue. There had been, to begin with, the death of the girl's mother ather birth, followed by long years of neglect growing out of just thatlikeness to the beloved wife which first excited her father's aversionand afterward became the object of a jealous, insistent tenderness. 

After his wife's death, Dave Dassonville had lost his grip on hisproperty as he had on all the means of living. Later he was visited by astringency which Mrs. Merrithew was inclined to impute to a Providence, which, however prompt it had been in the repayment of the slight to themotherless infant, had somehow failed to protect her from itsconsequences. Savilla's girlhood had been devoted to nursing her fatherto his grave, to which he had gone down panting for release; after thatshe had taught the village school. 

The winter before, tramping through the heavy snow, she had contracted abronchitis that had developed so alarmingly as to demand, by theauthority of the local doctor, "a trip somewhere"--"and nobody, " saidMrs. Merrithew, "but me to go with her. "

"Not, " she added, "that I'm complainin'. Merrithew left me well off, andthere's no denyin' travellin's improvin' to the mind, though at my ageit's some wearin' to the body. I'm glad, " she further confided to Peterat Torcello, "she takes so to Venice. It's a lot more comfortable goin'about in a gondola. At Rome, now, I nearly run my legs off. "

It was later when Savilla had been kept at home by a slightindisposition from a shower that caught them unprepared, she expressedher doubt of a winter in Italy being anything more than a longer stickwith which to beat a dog. 

"She will have spent all her money on it, and the snow will be just asdeep in Bloombury next year. There isn't anything _really_ the matterwith her, but she's just too fine for it. It's like seeing a clumsyperson handlin' one of them spun glass things, the way I have to sitstill and see Providence dealing with Savilla Dassonville. It may besort of sacrilegious to say so, but I declare it gives me the fidgets. "

It ought of course to have given Peter, seeing the interest he took inher, a like uneasiness; but there was something in the unmitigatedhardness of her situation that afforded him the sort of easement he had, inexplicably, in the plainness of her dress. His memory was not workingwell enough yet for him to realize that it was relief from the strain ofthe secondary feminity that had fluttered and allured in EuniceGoodward. 

It was even more unclearly that he recognized that it had been a strain. All this time he had been forgetting her--and how completely he hadforgotten her this new faculty for comparison was proof--he had stillbeen enslaved by her appearance. It was an appearance, that of Eunice's, which he admired still in the young American women at the expensivehotels where he had put up, and admitted as the natural, the inevitablesign of an inward preciousness. But if he allowed to himself that hewould never have spoken to Savilla Dassonville that day at San Marco, ifshe had been to the eye anything that Eunice Goodward was, he toldhimself it was because he was not sure from behind which of thosecharming ambuscades the arrows of desolation might be shot. If he gavehimself up now to the play of the girl's live fancy he did so in thesecurity of her plainness, out of which no disturbing surprises mightcome. And she left him, in respect to her hard conditions, without eventhe excuse for an attitude. Eunice had been poor in her world, and hadcarried it with just that admixture of bright frankness and proudreserve which, in her world, supported such a situation with most charm. She made as much use of her difficulties as a Spanish dancer of hershawl; but Savilla Dassonville was just poor, and that was the end ofit. That he got on with her so well by the simple process of talking outwhatever he was most interested in, occurred to Peter as her naturallimitation. It was not until they had been going out together for a weekor more, in such fashion as his mending health allowed, that he hadmoments of realizing, in her swift appropriations of Venice, richpossibilities of the personal relations with which he believed himselfforever done. Oddly it provoked in him the wish to protect, when thepractical situation had left him dry and bare. 

It was the evening of the _Serenata_. They were all there in thegondola, Mrs. Merrithew and the girl, with Luigi squatting by Giuseppe, not too far from the music float that sprang mysteriously from the blackwater in arching boughs of red and gold and pearly Aladdin's fruit. Behind them the lurking prows rustled and rocked drunkenly with theswell to which they seemed at times attentively to lean. They could makeout heads crowded in the gondolas, and silver gleams of the prows asthey drifted past palaces lit intermittently by a red flare that wipedout for the moment, the seastain and disfiguring patches of restoration. 

They had passed the palace of Camerleigh. The jewel-fruited arbourfolded and furled upon itself to pass the slow curve of the Rialto, andsuddenly, Peter's attention, drawn momentarily from the music, wascaught by that other bright company leaning from deserted balconies, swarming like the summer drift between the pillars of dark loggias. Theywere all there, knights and saints and ladies, out of print and paintand marble, and presently he made out the Princess. She was leaning outof one of the high, floriated windows, looking down on him with pleased, secret understanding as she might have smiled from her palace walls onthe festival that brought the young knight George home with theconquered dragon. It was the compressed and pregnant meaning of her gazethat drew his own upward, and it was then when the Lovely Lady turnedand waved her hand at him that he felt the girl stir strangely besidehim. 

"How full the night is of the sense of presences, " she said, "as if allthe loved marbles came to life and the adored had left their canvases. Icannot think but it is so. "

"Oh, I am sure of it. "

She moved again with the vague restlessness of one stared upon byinnumerable eyes. "How one would like to speak, " she said. "They seem sonear us. "

There was a warm tide of that nearness rising in Peter's blood. As themusic flowed out again in summer fullness, he put out his arm along theback of the seat instinctively in answer to the girl's shy turning, thenatural movement of their common equity in the night's unrealizedwonder. 

IX

"Peter! oh, Peter!"

It was dark in the room when Peter awoke, but he knew it was morning bythe salt smell which he thought came into the room from the cove beyondBloombury pastures, until he roused in his bed and knew it for the smellof the lagoons. He looked out to see the beginning of rose light on theworld and understood that he was called. He did not hear the voice againbut out there in the shimmering space the call awaited him. It might bethe Princess. 

He dressed and got down quietly into the shadowed city and waked afrowsy gondolier asleep in his gondola. They spoke softly, both of them, before the morning hush, as they swung out into the open water betweenthe towers of San Georgio fairily dim, and the pillars of the saints;the city floated in a mist of blueness, the dome of the Saluti faintlypearled. 

"_Dove, Signore?_" The gondolier feathered his oar. 

"_Un giro_"--Peter waved his arm seaward; the dip of the oar had astealthy sound in the deserted dawning. They passed the public gardensand saw the sea widen and the morning quicken. Islands swam up out ofsilver space, took form and colour, and there between the islands he sawthe girl. She had gotten another oar from Giuseppe and stood delightingin the free motion; her sleeves were rolled up, her hat was off, herhair blew out; alive and pliant she bent to the long sweep of it, andher eyes were on the morning wonder. But when she caught sight of Petershe looked only at him and he knew that her seeing him appearing thus onthe shining water was its chief and exquisite wonder, and that she didnot know what he saw. The gondolier steered straight for the girlwithout advice; he had thought privately that the _Signore Americano_was a little mad, but he knew now with what manner of madness. 

They drew close and drifted alongside. Peter did not take his eyes fromthe girl's eyes lest for her to look away ever so slightly from thereto his face would be to discover that he knew; and he did not know howhe stood with himself toward that knowledge. 

"Oh, " she said breathlessly, "I wanted you--I called you--and you came!You did not know where I was and yet you came?"

"I heard you calling. "

She left her oar and sat down; Peter laid his hand on the edge of hergondola and they drifted side by side. 

"May I come with you?" he asked presently. 

She made a little gesture, past all speech. Peter held up a hand full ofsilver toward his gondolier and laid it on the seat as he steppedlightly over. The man slid away from them without word or motion, andtogether they faced the morning. It was one thin web of rose and goldover lakes of burnished light; islands lifted in mirage, floatedmiraculously upon the verge of space. Behind them the mainland bankedlike a new created world over which waited the Hosts of the ranked Alps. Winged boats from Murano slid through the flat lagoons. 

There was very little to say. Peter was aware chiefly, in what came fromher to him, of the wish to be very tender toward it, of having it inhand to support her securely above the abyss into which he felt at theleast rude touch of his, she must immeasurably fall. At the best hecould but keep with her there at the point of her unconsciousness byknowing the truth himself, as he felt amazingly that he did know it withall the completeness of his stripped and beggared past. 

They drifted and saw the morning widen into the working-day. Marketboats piled with fruit, fish in shining heaps, wood boats of Istria, went by with Madonna painted sails. Among the crowded goods the womensat Madonna-wise and nursed their bambini, or cherishing the recurrenthope, knitted interminably. If he wanted any evidence of what headmitted between the girl and himself it flashed out for him in thefaces of the market wives, on whom labour and maternity sat not tooheavily to cloud the primal radiance. It was there in their soft _Buongiorno_ in the way they did not, as the gondola drew beside them, covertheir fruitful breasts from her tender eyes, in the way most fall, theygrasped in the high mood of the _forestieri_ a sublimity untouched bythe niceties of bargaining. A man in the state of mind to which thegirl's visible shine confessed, could hardly be expected to stickle atthe price of the few figs and roses which served as an easy passage fromthe wonder of their meeting to the ground of their accustomed gaypretences. They made of Peter's purchases of fruit and flowers a marketgarden of their own from which they had but just come on hopefulerrands. They made believe again as boats thickened like winged thingsin a summer garden, to be bent upon discovery, and slid with pretendedcaution under the great ships stationed by the Giudecca, from which theyheard sailors singing. They shot with exaggerated shivers past a slimcruiser and suddenly Miss Dassonville clutched Peter by the arm. 

"Oh!" she cried: "Do you see it? That little dark, impudent-looking one, and _the_ flag?"

Peter saw; he was not quite, he reminded her, even in the intoxicationof a morning on the lagoons with her, quite in that state where hecouldn't see his country's flag when it was pointed out to him. Theycame alongside with long strokes, and sniffed deliciously. 

"Ah--um--um----" said Miss Dassonville. "I know what that is. It's hamand eggs. How long since you've had a real American breakfast?"

"Not since I left the steamer, " Peter confessed. "Now if I were to smellhot cakes I shouldn't be able to stand it. I should go aboard her. "

Miss Dassonville saluted softly as they went under the bright banner. 

"'Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light, '" she began to sing andimmediately a large, blooming face rose through a mist of faded whiskerat the prow and they saw all the coast of Maine looking down on themfrom the rail of the _Merrythought_. 

"United States, ahoy?" it said. 

They came close under and Miss Dassonville hailed in return; as soon asthe captain saw her face smiling up at him he beamed on it as the womenin the boats had done. 

"We smelled your breakfast, " she explained, and the man laugheddelightedly. 

"I know what kind these Dagoes give ye. Come up and have some. "

Peter and the girl consulted with their eyes. 

"Are you going to have hot cakes?" she demanded. 

"I will if you come; darned if I don't. "

"We're coming, then. "

It was part of the task that Peter had set himself, to persevere forSavilla Dassonville the film of unconsciousness that lay delicately likethe bloom of a rare fruit over all that was at that moment going on inher, that made him hasten as soon as Captain Dunham had announcedhimself, to introduce her particularly by name. To forestall in thejolly sailor the natural interpretation of their appearance together atthis hour and occasion, he had to lend himself to the only otherreasonable surmise. If they were not, as he saw it on the tip of thegood captain's tongue to propose, newly married, they were in a hopefulway to be. The consciousness of himself as accessory to so delightful anarrangement passed from the captain to Peter with almost theobviousness of a wink, as he surrendered himself to the charm of thegirl's ethereal excitement. 

He understood perfectly that his not being able to feel more of a dropfrom the pregnant mystery of her call and his high response to it, tothe homely incident of breakfast, was due to Miss Dassonville'sobliviousness of its being one. It was for her, in fact, no drop at allbut rather as if they had pulled out for a moment into this little shoalof neighbourly interest and comfortable food, the better to look back atthe perfect wonder of it, as from the deck of the _Merrythought_ towardthe fair front of the ducal palace and the blue domes of St. Mark'sbehind the rearing lion. 

Although he had parted from her that morning with no hint of anarrangement for a next meeting, it had become a part of the day'sperformance for Peter to call for the two ladies in the afternoon, somuch so that his own sense of the unusualness of finally letting thegondola go off without him, and his particular wish at this juncture notto mark his intercourse with any unusualness, led him to send off withit as many roses as Luigi could find at that season on the Piazza. Afterward, as he recalled that he had never sent flowers to MissDassonville before, and as he had that morning furnished her from themarket boats past her protesting limitation, it was perhaps a greateremphasis to his desertion. 

However, it seemed that the roses and nothing but the roses might serveas a bridge, delicate and dizzying, to support them from the realizationof their situation, into which he had no intention of letting MissDassonville fall. He stayed in his room most of that afternoon, knowingthat he was shut up with a very great matter, not able to feel it sobecause of the dryness of his heart, nor to think what was to be doneabout it because of the lightness of his brain. 

It occurred to him at last that at St. Mark's there might be reflectivesilences and perhaps resolution. He felt it warm from the stored-upveneration of the world, and though he said to himself, as he climbed tothe galleries, that it was to give himself the more room to think, heknew that it must have been in his mind all the time that the girl wasthere, as it was natural she should have come to the place where theyhad met. Even before he caught the outline of her dress against thepillar he found himself crossing over to the organ loft the better toobserve her. Knowledge reached him incredibly across the empty space, asto what, over and above the pictured saints, she faced there in thevault, lit so faintly by the shining of its golden walls. The service ofthe benediction going on in the church below furnished him with thefigure of what came to him from her as she laid up her thoughts on analtar before that mysterious intimation of maternity which presages inright women the movement of passion. He felt himself caught up in itpurely above all sense of his personal insufficiency. 

Back in his hotel after dinner he found he had still to let the rosesanswer for him as he sat out on his balcony and realized oddly thatthough he had no right to go to Miss Dassonville again until he hadthought out to its furthermost his relation to her, he could, incontinently, think better in her company. 

It was not wholly then with surprise, since he felt himself so much inneed of some compelling touch, that he heard, after an hour of futilebattling, the Princess speak to him. 

She stood just beyond him in the shadow of the wistaria that went up allthe front of the balcony, and called him by his name. 

"Ah, " said Peter "I know now who you are. You are the one who stayed. "

"How did you find out?"

"Because the one who ran away was the one he would have married. "

He did not look at the Princess, but he saw the shadow of her that themoon made, mixed with the lace of the wistaria leaves, tremble. 

"Well, " said she, "and what are you going to do about it?"

"You know then. .. ?"

"I was there on the water with you this morning. .. . It was I that showedyou the way, but you had no eyes for anything. "

It was the swift recurrent start of what he _had_ had eyes for that keptPeter silent long enough for the Princess to have asked him again whathe was going to do about it, and then----

"The other night--with the music--she knew that I was there?"

"Oh--she!" He was taken all at once with the completeness with which inhis intimate attitude to things, Savilla did know. "She knowseverything. "

"What was there so different about the other one?"

"Everything . .. She was beautiful . .. She was air and fire . .. She madethe earth rock under me. "

"And did you go to her calling?"

"I would have risen out of death and dust at her slightest word . .. Iwould have followed where her feet went over all the world. "

"And why did you never?"

"I suppose, " said Peter, "it was because she never called. "

"This one, " suggested the Princess, "would be prettier if she were notso thin; and she wouldn't have to wear shirtwaists if you married her. She makes them herself, you know. Why did the other one run away?"

"That's just the difficulty. I can't remember. " He wished sincerelywithin himself that he might; it seemed it would have served him somehowwith Miss Dassonville. "I've been very ill, " he apologized. 

"Anyway, you'd be getting what everybody wants. "

"And that is----"

"A woman of your own . .. Understanding and care . .. And children. I wasin the church with you . .. You saw----"

"But I don't want to talk about it. "

"What do you want then?"

"To be the prince in a fairy tale, I suppose, " Peter sighed. 

"Oh, you're all of that to _her_. The half god--the unmatched wonder. When she watched your coming across the water this morning--_I_ know thelook that should go to a slayer of dragons. It seems to me, " said thePrincess severely, "it is you who are running away. "

She was wise enough to leave him with that view of it though it was notby any means leaving him more comfortable. He tried for relief tofigure himself as by the Princess' suggestion, he must seem to SavillaDassonville. But if he was really such to her why could he not then playthe Deliverer in fact, rescue her from untended illness, from meagrenessand waste? Why not, in short, marry her, except for a reason--oh, therewas reason enough if he could only remember it!

He heard Luigi moving softly in the room behind, and presently when thedoor clicked he rose and went in and taking the lamp held it high overhim, turning with it fronting the huge mirror in its gilded frame. Ifthere were a good reason why he couldn't marry Savilla Dassonville, heought to have found it in his own lean frame, the face more drawn thanwas justified by his years, lined about the eyes, the hand that held theaccusing lamp broadened by labours that no scrupulosity of care denied. Weatheral, of Weatheral, Lessing & Co. , unaccomplished, unaccustomed. Heput down the lamp heavily, leaning forward in his chair as he coveredhis face with his hands and groaned in them, fully remembering. 

X

He had been sitting just so in his library with the lamp behind him andthe hollow flare of the coals making an excellent starting place for theHouse which was now so near him that the mere exhibition in shop windowsof the stuffs with which it was being modernly renewed, was enough toset him off for it. It was so near now, that since the announcement oftheir engagement in September, he had moved through all its obligationsbenumbed by the white, blinding flash thrown backward from itsconsummating moment, the moment of her cry to him, of their welding atthe core of light and harmony, bounded inevitably by the approachingdate of marriage. It had been, he recalled on some one of thoseoccasions of social approval by which it appeared engagements in theBest Society proceeded, that he had sat thus, waiting until the clockticked on the moment when he might properly join her, sat so full of thesense of her that for the instant he accepted her unannounced appearanceat the darkened doorway as the mere extension of his white-heatedfancy. The next moment as she charged into the circle of the lamp he sawthat the umbra of some strange electrical excitement hung about her. Itfairly crackled between them as he rose hurriedly to his feet. 

"You have come, Eunice! You have come----"

But he saw well enough what she had come for. She laid the case on thetable, but as she tugged impatiently at her glove, the fringe of herwrap caught the clasp of it and scattered the jewels on the cloth. Shetried then to put the ring beside them, but her hand shook so that itfell and rolled upon the floor behind them. Peter picked it up quietly, but he did not offer it to her hand again. 

"I have come, " said Eunice, "to say what in my mother's house I wasafraid of being interrupted in saying; what you must see, what my motherwon't see. "

"I see you are greatly excited about something!"

"I'm not, I'm not. .. . That is . .. I am, but not in the way you think, "she was sharp with insistence; "that is what you and mother always say, that I'm nervous or excited, and all the time you don't _see_. "

"What is it I don't see, Eunice?"

"That I can't stand it, that I can't go on with it, that it is dreadfulto me, --_dreadful!_"

"What is dreadful?"

"Everything, being engaged--being married and giving up. .. . " It wasfairly racked out of her by some inward torture to which he had not thekey. 

"Of course, Eunice, if you don't wish to be married so soon----" Peterwas all at sea. He brought a chair for her, and perceiving that he wouldgo on standing as long as she did, she sat upon the edge of it but keptboth the arms as a measure of defence. The slight act of doing somethingfor her restored him for the moment to reality; he bent over her. "I'venever wanted to hurry you, dearest---- It shall be when you say. " Sheput up her hands suddenly with a shivering movement. 

"Oh, never, never at all; never to you!"

Peter could feel that working its track of desolation inward, but thefirst instinctive movement of his surface was to close over the wound. He took it as he knew he could only take it: as the explosive crisis ofthe virginal resistance which he remembered he had heard came to girlswhen marriage loomed upon them. He took a turn down the room to steadyhimself, praying dumbly for the right word. 

"It isn't as if I didn't respect you"--she was eager in explanation, hurried and stumbling--"as if I didn't know how good you are . .. It isonly, because we are so different. "

"How different, Eunice?"

"Oh . .. Older, I suppose. " She grew quieter; it appeared on the wholethey were getting on. "I care for so many things, you know--dancing--andbridge--_young_ things--and you are always reading and reading. Oh! Icouldn't stand it. "

So it was out now. She was jealous of his books, a little. Well, he hadbeen self-absorbed. It occurred to him dimly that the thing to have doneif he had known a little more about women, had practised with them, wasto have provoked her at this point to the tears which should have sealedthe renewal of his claim to her. What he said was, very quietly:

"Of course I never meant, Eunice, that you shouldn't have everything youwant. "

"Oh, " she seemed to have found a suffocating quality in his gentleness, against which she struck out with drowning gestures, "if you could onlyunderstand what it would mean to me never to have anybody I liked totalk to about things, --anybody I liked to be with all the time!" She waschoked and aghast at the enormity of it. 

"But I thought. .. . " Peter was not able to go on with that. "Isn't thereanybody you like to be with, Eunice?"

"Yes, " said Eunice. "Burton Henderson. "

Mutinous and bright she looked at him out of the chair with a hand oneither arm of it poised for flight or defence. After an interval Peterheard his own voice out of a fog rising to the conventional utterance. 

"Of course, if you have learned to love him----"

"I've loved him all the time. " She was so bent on making this clear tohim that she was careless what went down before her. "From the verybeginning, " she said, "but he had so little money, and mother . .. Ipromised you, I know, but it's not as if I ever said I loved you. "

She should have spared him that! He had not put out a hand to hold herthat he should be so pierced through with needless cruelty. But she wasbent on clearing her skirts of him. 

"Do you think, " she expostulated to his stricken silence, "that if I'dcared in the least I'd have made it so easy for you? Can't you see thatit was all arranged, that we _jumped_ at you?" All the time she satopposite him, thrusting swift and hard, there was no diminution of herappealing beauty, the flaming rose of her cheeks and the soft, darkflare of her hair. As if she felt how it belied at every turn thequality of her unyielding intention, her voice railed against himfeverishly. "I suppose you think I'm mercenary, and I thought I was, too. You don't know how people like us _need_ money sometimes. All thethings we like _cost_ so--all the real things. And poor mamma, sheneeded things; she'd never had them, and I thought that I could standbeing married to you if I could get them that way. .. . Maybe I could, you know, if you'd been different, more like us I mean. But there wassuch a lot you didn't understand . .. Things you hadn't even heard about. I found that out as soon as we were engaged. There wasn't a thingbetween us; not a _thing_. "

It poured scalding hot on Peter's sensitive surfaces: made sensitive bythe way in which even in this hour her beauty moved him. He felt tearsstarting in his heart and prayed they might not come to his face. "Soyou see as we hadn't anything in common it would be better for us not togo on with it even"--she broke a little at this--"even if there hadn'tbeen anybody else. You see that, don't you?" She dared him to deny itrather than begged the concession of him as she gathered herself fordeparture. 

"I see that. "

"You never really belonged to our set, you know----" She rose now and herose blindly with her; he hoped that she was done, but there wassomething still. "It hasn't been easy to go through with it. .. . Motherisn't going to make it any easier. It's natural for her to want me tohave everything that money would mean, and I thought that if you wouldjust keep away from her . .. You owe something to Burton and me for whatwe've been through, I think . .. Just leave it to me to manage in my ownway. .. . "

"I shall never trouble you, Eunice. "

He came close to her then to open the door, seeing that she was to leavehim, and he saw too that she had suffered, was at the very ebb and stonybottom of emotion as she hung for the moment in the doorway searchingfor some winged shaft of separation that should cut her off from theremotest implication of the situation. She found at last the barbedest. All the succeeding time after he closed the door on her was marked forPeter, not by the ticked moments but by successive waves of anguish asthat poisoned arrow worked its way to his secret places. 

"It isn't as if I had ever loved you; I owe it to Mr. Henderson toremind you that I never said I did. .. . You know I never liked to haveyou kiss me. "

He had in the months that succeeded to that last sight of EuniceGoodward, moments of unbearably wanting to go to her to try for a littleto ease his torment in a more tender recognition of it--days when hewould have taken from her, gratefully even if she had fooled him and hehad seen her do it, whatever would have saved him from the certaintythat never even in those first exquisite moments had she been his. Thesharp edge of her young sufficiency had lopped off the right limb of hismanhood. Never, even in his dreams, if life had allowed him to dreamagain, should he be able to see himself in any other guise than themeagre, austere front which his obligation to his mother and Ellen hadobliged him to present to destiny. She had beggared him of all thoseaptitudes for passionate relations, by the faith in which he had kepthimself inwardly alive. The capacity for loving died in him with theknowledge of not being able to be loved. 

Out of the anæsthesia of exhaustion from which Italy had revived him, itrolled back upon him that by just the walled imperviousness that shutEunice Goodward from the appreciation of his passion, he was preventednow from Savilla Dassonville. 

XI

It was odd, then, having come to this conclusion in the middle of thenight, that when he joined the ladies in the morning he should haveexperienced a sinking pang in not being able any longer to be sure whatMiss Dassonville thought of him. There was in her manner, as she thankedhim for the flowers, nothing to ruffle the surface of the bright, impersonal companionship which she had afforded him for weeks past. 

The occasion which brought them together was an agreement entered intosome days earlier, to go and look at palaces, and as they turned pastthe Saluti to the Grand Canal, he found himself wondering if there hadnot been a touch of fatuity in his reading of the incident of themorning before. He had gone so far in the night as to think even ofleaving Venice, and saw himself now forlornly wishing for some renewalof yesterday's mood to excuse him from the caddishness that such aflight implied. 

It came out a little later, perhaps, when after traversing many high andresounding marble halls, with a great many rooms opening into oneanother in a way that suggested rather the avoidance of privacy than itssecurity, they found themselves in one of those gardens of shut delightof which the exteriors of Venetian houses give so little intimation. 

As she went about from bough to bough of the neglected roses, turned allinward as if they took their florescence from that still lighted humanpassion which had found its release and centre there, her face glowedfor the moment with the colour of her quick sympathies. She turned it onhim with an unconscious, tender confidence, which not to meet seemed toPeter, in that gentle enclosure full of warmth and fragrance, to assumethe proportions of a betrayal. 

He did meet it there as she came back to him for the last look from themarble balustrade by which they had descended, covering her hand, thereresting, lingeringly with his own. He was awakened only to theimplication of this movement by the discovery that she had deeply andexquisitely blushed. 

It was a further singularity in view of the conviction with which Peterhad come through the night, that the mood of protectingness which thegirl provoked in him should have multiplied itself in pointing out tohim how many ways, if he had not made up his mind not to marry her atall, such a marriage could be made to serve its primal uses. She hadturned up her cuff to trail her hand overside as they slid through thelucent water, and the pretty feminine curve of it had brought to mindwhat the Princess had told him of the shirt-waists she made herself. Hedecided that she made them very well. But she was too thin for theirseverity--and if he married her he would have insisted on her wearingthem now and then as a tender way to prevent her suspecting that it wason their account he had thought of not marrying her. The revealedwhiteness of her wrist, the intimacy of her relaxed posture, for thoughher mind had played into his as freely as a child in a meadow, she hadbeen always, as regards her person, a little prim with him, had lent totheir errand of house visiting a personal note in which it was absurdlyapt for them to have run across Captain Dunham of the _Merrythought_ atthe door of the Consulate. Mr. Weatheral had some papers which Lessinghad sent him to acknowledge there, and it was a piece of the morning'sperformance, when he had come back from that business, to find that themeeting had taken on--from some mutual discovery of the captain's andMrs. Merrithew's of a cousin's wife's sister who had married one of theApplegates who was a Dunham on the mother's side--quite the aspect of afamily party. It came in the end to the four of them going off atPeter's invitation to have lunch together in a café overhanging the_calle_. He told himself afterward that he would not have done it if hehad recalled in time the friendly seaman's romantic appreciation of thesituation between himself and Miss Dassonville. He saw himself sointrigued by it that, by the time lunch was over, he felt himself in aposition which to his own sensitiveness, demanded that he mustimmediately leave Venice or propose to Miss Dassonville. To see the wayhe was going and to go on in it, had for him the fascination of theabyss. He caught himself in the act even of trying to fix MissDassonville's eye to include her by complicity in the beguilement of thecaptain, a business which she seemed to have undertaken on her ownaccount on quite other grounds. He perceived with a kind of pride forher that she had the ways of elderly sea-going gentlemen by heart. Itwas something even if she had failed to charm Peter, that she shouldn'tbe found quite wanting in it by other men. 

When they had put him back aboard of the _Merrythought_ they had come tosuch a pitch among them all, that as the captain leaned above the railto launch an invitation, he addressed it to Miss Dassonville, as, if notquite the giver of the feast, the mistress of the situation. 

"When are you coming to lunch with me?" demanded the captain. 

"Never!" declared Miss Dassonville. "It would be quite out of thequestion to have hot cakes for luncheon, and I absolutely refuse tocome for anything less. "

"There's something quite as good, " asserted the captain, "that I'll betyou haven't had in as long. "

"Better than hot cakes?" Miss Dassonville was skeptical. 

"Pie, " said the captain. 

"Oh, _Pie!_" in mock ecstasy. "Well, I'd come for pie, " and with thatthey parted. 

Peter had plenty of time for considering where he found himself thatafternoon, for the ladies were bent on a shopping expedition on whichthey had rather pointedly given him to understand he was not expected toattend. He had tried that once, and had hit upon the excellent device, in face of the outrageous prices proposed by the dealers, of having themsettle upon what they would like and sending Luigi back to bargain forit. All of which would have gone very well if Mrs. Merrithew, in thedelight of his amazing success, had not gone back to the shop the nextday to duplicate his purchases. Peter had never heard what occurred onthat occasion, but he had noticed that they never talked in hispresence of buying anything again. Bloombury people, he should haveremembered, had perfectly definite notions about having things done forthem. 

He walked, therefore, on this afternoon in the Public Gardens and triedto reconstruct in their original force the reasons for his not marryingSavilla Dassonville. They had come upon him overwhelmingly in therecrudescence of memory, reasons rooted very simply in his man's hungerfor the lift, the dizzying eminence of desire. He liked the girl wellenough but he did not want her as he had wanted Eunice Goodward, as hewanted expansively at this moment to want something, somebody--who wasnot Eunice--he was perfectly clear on this point--but should be in ameasure all she stood for to him. He had renewed in the night, though inso short a time, not less acutely, all the wounded misery of what Eunicehad forced upon him. He was there between the dark and dawn, and hereagain in the cool of the garden, to taste the full bitterness of theconviction that he was not good enough to be loved. He was not to behelped from that by the thought, which came hurrying on the heels ofthe other, that Savilla Dassonville loved him. He had a moment of almosthating her as she seemed to plead with him, by no motion of her own hewas obliged to confess for those raptures, leaping fires, winged rushes, which should have been his portion of their situation. 

He hated her for the certainty that if he went away now quietly withoutsaying anything, it would be to visit on her undeservedly all that hadcome to him from Eunice. For she would know; she would not, as he hadbeen, be blind to the point of requiring the spoken word. If he left hernow it would be to the unavoidable knowledge that, as the Princess hadsaid of him, he would be running away. He would be running from theevidences of a moneyless, self-abnegating youth, from the plain surfacesof efficiency and womanliness, not hedged about and enfolded, but pushedto the extremity of its use. He had, however, when he had taken that infrom every side, the grace to be ashamed of it. 

He was ashamed, too, of finding himself at their next meeting involvedin a wordless appeal to be helped from his state to some larger grounds. If the girl had but appealed to him he could have done with a finegenerosity what he felt was beyond him to invite. He could have marriedSavilla Dassonville to be kind to her; what he didn't enjoy was puttingit on a basis of her being kind to him. 

Miss Dassonville, however, afforded him no help beyond the negative oneof not talking too much and taking perhaps a shade less interest inVenice. They had two quiet days together in which it was evident, whatever Peter settled with himself as to his relation to the girl, ithad taken on for Mrs. Merrithew the pointedness known in Bloombury as"attentions. " She paid in to the possibilities of the situation thetribute of her absence for long sessions in which, so far as Peter coulddiscover, the situation rather fell to the ground. It began to appearthat he had missed as he was doomed with women, the crucial instant, andwas to come out of this as of other encounters, empty. And then quitesuddenly the girl put out a hand to him. 

It was along about the end of the afternoon they had come out of thechurch of Saint George the Greater, which as being most accessible hadbeen left to the latter end of their explorations. Mrs. Merrithew hadjust sent Giuseppe back for a shawl which she had dropped in thecloister. They sat rocking in the gondola looking toward the fairyarcade of the ducal palace and the pillars of the saints, and suddenlyMiss Dassonville spoke to excuse her quietness. 

"I must look all I can, " she said; "we are leaving the day afterto-morrow. "

If she had retired behind Mrs. Merrithew's comfortable breadth in orderto deliver her shot the more effectively, she missed seeing how plumplyit landed in the midst of Peter's defences and scattered them. 

"Leaving Venice?" he said. "Leaving me?" It took a moment for that fact, dropping the depth of his indecision, to show him where he stood. "But Ithought you understood, " he protested, "that I wanted you to stay . .. Tostay with me. .. . " He leaned across Mrs. Merrithew's broad lap in a greatfear of not being sufficiently plain. "Make her understand, " he said, "that I want her to stay always. "

"I guess, " said Mrs. Merrithew, a dry smile twinkling in the placidityof her countenance, "you'd better take me right home first, and then youcan explain to her yourself. "

XII

"And you are sure, " asked Peter, "that you are not going to mind mybeing so much older?"

"Oh, I'm going to mind it: There will be times when I shall be afraid ofnot living up to it. But the most part of my minding will be, since youare so much better acquainted with life than I am, that in any matter inwhich we shouldn't agree I shall be so much the more sure of your beingright. It's going to be a great help to us, having something like thatto go by. "

"Oh, " said Peter, "you put it very prettily, my dear. "

He was aware as soon as he had said it, that she would have a way alwaysof putting things prettily, and that not for the sake of anyprettiness, but because it was so intrinsically she saw them. It wouldmake everything much simpler that she was always sufficiently to bebelieved. 

"It isn't, you know, " she went on, "as if I should have continually toprop up my confidence with my affection as I might with a man of lessexperience. Oh!" she threw out her arms with a beautiful upward motion, "you give me so much room, Peter. "

"Well, more than I would give you at this moment if we were not in agondola on a public highway!"

He amazed himself at the felicity with which during the three days oftheir engagement he had been able to take that note with her, still moreat the entertainment of her shy response. It gave him a new and enlargedperception of himself as a man acquainted with passion. All that hadbeen withheld from him, by the mere experience of missing, he was ableto bestow with largesse. The witchery and charm that had been done onhim, he worked--if he were but to put his arm about her now, to drawher so that her head rested on his shoulder, with a certain pressure, he could feel all her being flower delicately to that beguilement. Hehad promised himself, when he had her promise, that she should nevermiss anything, and he had a certain male satisfaction in being able tomake good. What he did now, in deference to their being as they were inthe full light of day and the plying traffic, was to say:

"Then if I were to put it to you in the light of my superior experience, that I considered it best for us to be married right away, I shouldn'texpect you to contradict me. "

"Oh, Peter!"

"We can't keep Mrs. Merrithew on forever, you know, " he suggested, "andwe've such a lot to do--there's Greece and Egypt and the Holy Land----"

"But can we--be married in Venice, I mean?"

"That, " said Peter, "is what I'm waiting your permission to find out. "

He spent the greater part of the afternoon at that business without, however, getting satisfaction. "Marriage in Italy, " the consul toldhim, "is a sort of world-without-end affair. Even if you cable for thenecessary papers it will be a matter of a month or six weeks before theceremony could be accomplished. You'll do better to go to Switzerlandwith the young lady. "

For the present he went back to her with a list of the requiredcertificates, and another item which he brought out later as acorrective for the disappointment for the first. 

"My birth and baptismal certificates? I haven't any, " said MissDassonville, "and I don't believe you have either; and I don't want togo to Switzerland. "

"No, " said Peter, "even that takes three weeks. "

"Why can't he marry us himself--the consul, I mean? I thought whereverthe flag went up was territory of the United States. "

"If you will come along with me in the morning we can ask him, " Petersuggested, and on the way there he loosed for her benefit the seconditem of his yesterday's discovery. They slid past the façade of acertain palace and she kissed the tip of her finger to it lightly. "It'sas if we had a secret between us, " she explained, "the secret of thegarden. Besides, I shall always love it because it was there I firstsuspected that you--cared. When did you begin to care, Peter?"

"Since before I can remember. Would you like to live in it?"

"In this palace? Here in Venice?"

"It's for rent, " he told her; "the consul has it. "

"But could we afford it?"

"Well, " said Peter, "if you like it so much, at the rate things arehere, we can pull it up by the roots and take it back to Bloombury. "

They lost themselves in absurd speculations as to the probable effect onthe villagers of that, and so failed to take note as their gondola nosedinto the green shadow under the consulate, of the _Merrythought's_launch athwart the landing, until the captain himself hailed them. 

"This port, " he declared, "is under embargo. I have been waiting heresince half tide and there's nothing doing. Somebody's in there chewingred tape, but I don't calculate to let anybody else have a turn at ituntil I get my bit wound up an' tied in a knot. Now don't tell me you'vegot business in there?"

"We want to find out something. "

"Well, when ye find it, it won't be what ye want, " asserted the captaingloomily. "It never is in these Dago countries. " He motioned his ownboat aside from the landing. "If ye want to go inside and set on achair, " he suggested, "I'll not hender ye. I like the water best myself. I hope your business will stand waiting. "

"To everybody but ourselves, " said Peter. "You see, " he caught thepermission lightly from Miss Dassonville's eyes, "we want to getmarried. "

"Ho!" said the captain, chirking up. "I could 'a' told ye that the fusttime I laid eyes on ye. But I'll tell ye this: ye can't do nothing in ahurry in this country. The only place where a man can do things up assoon as he thinks of 'em is on the blue water. We don't have red tape onshipboard, I can tell you. The skipper's the law and the government. "

"Could you marry people?"

"Well, I ain't to say in the habit of it, but it's the law that Icould. "

"Then if we get tangled up with the consul, " said Peter, "we'll have tofall back on you, " and they took it as an excellent piece of foolingwhich they were later to come back to as a matter of serious resort. 

"Of course, " said the consul, "I could marry you and it would be legalif you chose to count it so at home, but if you are thinking of taking ahouse here and of making an extended residence I shouldn't advise it. Asto Captain Dunham's suggestion, it's not wholly a bad one. Not being inItaly, the Italians can't take exception to it, and if it is properlywitnessed and recorded at home it ought to stand. "

They couldn't of course take it in all at once that they were simply tosail out there into the ethereal blueness and to come back from it withthe right to live together. However, it made for a great unanimity ofopinion as they talked it over on the way home, that, since so much waslacking from Peter's marriage that he had dreamed went to it, and somuch more had come into Savilla's than she had dared to imagine, itmattered very little what else was added or left out. 

"I suppose, " suggested Miss Dassonville, "Mrs. Merrithew will think itdreadful. " But as it turned out Mrs. Merrithew thought very well of it. 

"On a United States boat with a United States minister--there is onehere I've found out--it seems a lot safer than to trust to these foreignways. If you was to be married in Italian I should never be certain youwouldn't wake up some morning and find yourself not married. And thenhow should I feel!" As to the palace plan, she threw herself into itwith heavy alacrity. "I s'pose I've got to see you through, " she said, "and it will give me something to think about. I don't suppose you haveany intention that way, but an engaged couple isn't very good company. "

It transpired that the _Merrythought_ would put out to the high seas onthe twenty-second, and it was in the flutter of their practicaladjustments to meet this date that Peter found the ten days of hisengagement move so swiftly; to engage servants, to interviewtradespeople, to prune the neglected garden--it was Savilla's notionthat they should do this themselves--all the stir of domestic life madeso many points of advantage to support him above that dryness of despairfrom which he had moments of feeling himself all too hardly rescued. Hehad come up out of it sufficiently by the help that Italy afforded, toglimpse once more the country of his dreams, only by this act of hismarriage to turn his back on it forever. Savilla Dassonville was a dearlittle thing; if it came to that, a revered and valued thing, but shewas not, he had never pretended it, the Lovely Lady, and the door thatshut them in as man and wife was to shut _her_ forever out of his life. And yet though this was his accepted, his official position, it wasremarkable even to himself how much less frequently as the preparationsfor his marriage went forward, he found himself obliged to fall backupon it; how much more he projected himself into his future as theadored and protecting male. He recalled in this connection that thePrincess had said to him that he should visit his House no more, and itwas part of the proof of the notion he entertained toward himself as aman done with the imaginative life, that he accepted it with no morefuss about it. He had in fact his mind's eye on a piece of ground whichLessing could buy for him, on the river, an hour from the city, where hecould manage for Savilla at least, a generous substitute for dreams, anda situation for himself for which he began to discover more appetitethan he would have believed. It was likely, he thought, that he wouldhimself take a turn at planning the garden. 

It was very early in the morning when the wedding party which had beenreinforced by the consul, the mistress of Casa Frolli, and the minister, who had turned out to be exactly of Mrs. Merrithew's persuasion, wentaboard the _Merrythought_, blooming out amazingly in bunting and rosesfor the occasion. The morning blueness had drained out from the city andstained the waters eastward as they put out between the red and yellowsails of the fishing fleet. They saw the cypress-towered islands ofromance melt in the morning haze. The steam launch which was to takethem ashore again ploughed alongside, and there was a pleasant sort ofhome smell from the cook's quarters. 

Peter sat forward with the bride's hand tucked under his arm andpresently he heard her laughing softly, delightedly. 

"Peter, do you know what that is, that good smell I mean?"

"What do you think it is?"

"It's pie baking. Truly, don't you think I'm enough of a housewife toknow that?"

"I know you're everything you ought to be. "

"It is pie, there's no doubt about it, but we must pretend to be awfullysurprised when the captain brings it out. But Peter, don't you like it?"

"Pie, my dear?"

"No, but like having everything so homey and--and--so genuine at ourwedding?"

"I hope, " said Peter, "it's genuine pie, but I see what you mean, mydear. "

"It's an omen, almost, that we'll always have the good, comfortable, common things to fall back upon, if our marriage should not prove quiteall we've dreamed it. It's been so perfect up to now; it must drop downout of the clouds some time. "

It seemed rather to have taken a sweep upward when, with sails swellingover them and the beat of the sea under the bows, they stood up to bemarried, and to exhibit capacities of sustaining itself at a level fromwhich not the very soggy and sallow complexioned pie with the cookgrinning behind it, could dislodge the two most concerned in it. It worethrough the day to a contained and quiet gayety at a dinner which tookplace in the _ristoranta_ over the water where they had once lunchedwith the captain, and lasted until Peter had brought his wife home againto the refurnished palace. It had gone, as he told himself, remarkablywell, with every intimation, as he had time to tell himself in his lasthours in the garden with his cigar, of going much better, of becoming asthe place gave him occasion to indulge the figure, an enclosed andfragrant garden, in which if no flaming angel of desire kept the gatefor him, he had at least the promise of refreshment. 

That old passion for Eunice Goodward, all his feelings for all the womenhe had known, served to show him what Savilla had meant when she said he"gave her so much room"--the renewed sense of the spaciousness of life. 

It would be there for his wife at the completest, and if she had, as itseemed, turned him out of the Wonderful House in order to live in itherself, he at least kept the gates. And was not this the properbusiness for a man? He recalled what the Princess had said to him solong ago when he had first begun to think of himself as a bachelor. "Ittakes a lot of dreaming to bring one like me to pass. " Well, he haddreamed and he had slain some dragons. Later there would be childrenplaying in the House, daughters perhaps . .. Lovely Ladies. The worldwould be a better place for them to walk about in because of all that hehad lost and been. 

When he went into the garden he had half expected that the Princesswould speak to him; the place was full of hints of her, faint andpersuasive as the scent of the flowers in the dark, little riffles ofhis pulse, flushed surfaces, the tingling of his palms which announcedher, but she did not speak. He said to himself that he was now a wellman and had seen the last of her. Never before had he felt so verywell. 

He saw the light moving in the palace behind him as his wife moved tocomplete some of her arrangements; he heard her then pacing along themarble floor of the great hall which went quite through the middle ofit--she must be going to her room, and in a little while he would go into her--he heard the light tapping of her feet and then he saw her come, the lit lamp in her hand. 

She had on still the white dress in which she had been married, and overit she had thrown the silver-woven scarf which had been one of his firstgifts to her, and as she came the light glittered on it; it drew fromthe polished walls bright reflections in which, amid the gilded frames, he saw the dim old pictures start and waver--and as he saw her comingso, Peter threw away his cigar and gripped suddenly at the balustrade tosteady him where he stood, against what out of some far spring of hisyouth rushed upon him, as he saw her come--as he had always seen her, ashe knew now he was to see her always--his wife and the Lovely Lady. 

THE END

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THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESSGARDEN CITY, N. Y.