THE

ROSE-GARDEN HUSBAND

BY

MARGARET WIDDEMER

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

WALTER BIGGS

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT 1914, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

COPYRIGHT 1915, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PUBLISHED, JANUARY 27, 1915

SECOND PRINTING, FEBRUARY 6, 1915

THIRD PRINTING, MARCH 12, 1915

FOURTH PRINTING, APRIL 23, 1915

FIFTH PRINTING, JUNE 10, 1915

SIXTH PRINTING, AUGUST 6, 1915

SEVENTH PRINTING, OCTOBER 21, 1915

EIGHTH PRINTING, MAY 1, 1916

NINTH PRINTING, OCTOBER 30, 1916

 * * * * *

[Illustration: "YOU KNOW, I MARRIED YOU PRINCIPALLY FOR A ROSE-GARDEN, AND THAT'S _LOVELY_!"

_Page 172_]

 * * * * *

IN LOVING MEMORY

OF

HOWARD TAYLOR WIDDEMER

 * * * * *

THE ROSE-GARDEN HUSBAND

I

The Liberry Teacher lifted her eyes from a half-made catalogue-card, eyed the relentlessly slow clock and checked a long wriggle of purest, frankest weariness. Then she gave a furtive glance around to see if thechildren had noticed she was off guard; for if they had she knew thewhole crowd might take more liberties than they ought to, and have to bespoken to by the janitor. He could do a great deal with them, because heunderstood their attitude to life, but that wasn't good for the LiberryTeacher's record. 

It was four o'clock of a stickily wet Saturday. As long as it isanything from Monday to Friday the average library attendant goes aroundthanking her stars she isn't a school-teacher; but the last day of theweek, when the rest of the world is having its relaxing Saturday off andcoming to gloat over you as it acquires its Sunday-reading best seller, if you work in a library you begin just at noon to wish devoutly thatyou'd taken up scrubbing-by-the-day, or hack-driving, or porch-climbingor--anything on earth that gave you a weekly half-holiday!

So the Liberry Teacher braced herself severely, and put on herreading-glasses with a view to looking older and more firm. "LiberryTeacher, " it might be well to explain, was not her official title. Herdescription on the pay-roll ran "Assistant for the Children'sDepartment, Greenway Branch, City Public Library. " Grown-up people, whenshe happened to run across them, called her Miss Braithwaite. But"Liberry Teacher" was the only name the children ever used, and she sawscarcely anybody but the children, six days a week, fifty-one weeks ayear. As for her real name, that nobody ever called her by, _that_ wasPhyllis Narcissa. 

She was quite willing to have such a name as that buried out of sight. She had a sense of fitness; and such a name belonged back in an old NewEngland parsonage garden full of pink roses and nice green caterpillarsand girl-dreams, and the days before she was eighteen: not in a smuttycity library, attached to a twenty-five-year-old young woman withreading-glasses and fine discipline and a woolen shirt-waist!

It wasn't that the Liberry Teacher didn't like her position. She notonly liked it, but she had a great deal of admiration for it, because ithad been exceedingly hard to get. She had held it firmly now for a wholeyear. Before that she had been in the Cataloguing, where your eyes hurtand you get a little pain between your shoulders, but you sit down andcan talk to other girls; and before that in the Circulation, where ithurts your feet and you get ink on your fingers, but you see lots offunny things happening. She had started at eighteen years old, at thirtydollars a month. Now she was twenty-five, and she got all of fiftydollars, so she ought to have been a very happy Liberry Teacher indeed, and generally she was. When the children wanted to specify herparticularly they described her as "the pretty one that laughs. " But atfour o'clock of a wet Saturday afternoon, in a badly ventilated, badlylighted room full of damp little unwashed foreign children, even themost sunny-hearted Liberry Teacher may be excused for having thoughtsthat are a little tired and cross and restless. 

She flung herself back in her desk-chair and watched, with brazenindifference, Giovanni and Liberata Bruno stickily pawing the coloredBird Book that was supposed to be looked at only under supervision; sheignored the fact that three little Czechs were fighting over the wailinglibrary cat; and the sounds of conflict caused by Jimsy Hoolan's desireto get the last-surviving Alger book away from John Zanowski moved hernot a whit. The Liberry Teacher had stopped, for five minutes, beinggrown-up and responsible, and she was wishing--wishing hard andvengefully. This is always a risky thing to do, because you never knowwhen the Destinies may overhear you and take you at your exact word. With the detailed and careful accuracy one acquires in library work, shewas wishing for a sum of money, a garden, and a husband--butprincipally a husband. This is why:

That day as she was returning from her long-deferred twenty-minutedairy-lunch, she had charged, umbrella down, almost full into a prettylady getting out of a shiny gray limousine. Such an unnecessarily prettylady, all furs and fluffles and veils and perfumes and waved hair! Hercheeks were pink and her expression was placid, and each of herwhite-gloved hands held tight to a pretty picture-book child who waswriggling with wild excitement. One had yellow frilly hair and one hadbrown bobbed hair, and both were quaintly, immaculately, expensivelykissable. They were the kind of children every girl wishes she couldhave a set like, and hugs when she gets a chance. Mother and childrenwere making their way, under an awning that crossed the street, to thematinee of a fairy-play. 

The Liberry Teacher smiled at the children with more than her accustomedgoodwill, and lowered her umbrella quickly to let them pass. The mothersmiled back, a smile that changed, as the Liberry Teacher passed, topuzzled remembrance. The gay little family went on into the theatre, andPhyllis Braithwaite hurried on back to her work, trying to think who thepretty lady could have been, to have seemed to almost remember her. Somebody who took books out of the library, doubtless. Still the prettylady's face did not seem to fit that conjecture, though it still worriedher by its vague familiarity. Finally the solution came, just as Phylliswas pulling off her raincoat in the dark little cloak-room. She nearlydropped the coat. 

"Eva Atkinson!" she said. 

Eva Atkinson!... If it had been anybody else but _Eva_!

You see, back in long-ago, in the little leisurely windblown New Englandtown where Phyllis Braithwaite had lived till she was almost eighteen, there had been a Principal Grocer. And Eva Atkinson had been hisdaughter, not so very pretty, not so very pleasant, not so very clever, and about six years older than Phyllis. Phyllis, as she tried vainly tomake her damp, straight hair go back the way it should, rememberedhearing that Eva had married and come to this city to live. She hadnever heard where. And this had been Eva--Eva, by the grace of gold, radiantly complexioned, wonderfully groomed, beautifully gowned, andlooking twenty-four, perhaps, at most: with a car and a placidexpression and _heaps_ of money, and pretty, clean children! The LiberryTeacher, severely work-garbed and weather-draggled, jerked herself awayfrom the small greenish cloak-room mirror that was unkind to you at yourbest. 

She dashed down to the basement, harried by her usual panic-strickentwenty-minutes-late feeling. She had only taken one glance at herself inthe wiggly mirror, but that one had been enough for her peace of mind, supposing her to have had any left before. She felt as if she wanted tobreak all the mirrors in the world, like the wicked queen in the Frenchfairy-tale. 

Most people rather liked the face Phyllis saw in the mirror; but to herown eyes, fresh from the dazzling vision of that Eva Atkinson who hadbeen dowdy and stupid in the far-back time when seventeen-year-oldPhyllis was "growin' up as pretty as a picture, " the tired, twenty-five-year-old, workaday face in the green glass was _dreadful_. What made her feel worst--and she entertained the thought with awhimsical consciousness of its impertinent vanity--was that she'd had somuch more raw material than Eva! And the world had given Eva a chancebecause her father was rich. And she, Phyllis, was condemned to be tidyand accurate, and no more, just because she had to earn her living. Thatface in the greenish glass, looking tiredly back at her! She gave alittle out-loud cry of vexation now as she thought of it, two hourslater. 

"I must have looked to Eva like a battered bisque doll--no wonder shecouldn't place me!" she muttered crossly. 

And it must be worse and more of it now, because in the interval betweentwo and four there had been many little sticky fingers pulling at hersleeves and skirt, and you just _have_ to cuddle dear little librarychildren, even when they're not extra clean; and when Vera Aronsohnburst into heartbroken tears on the Liberry Teacher's blue woolenshoulder because her pet fairy-book was missing, she had caught severalstrands of the Teacher's yellow hair in her anguish, much to the hair'sdetriment. 

It was straight, heavy hair, and it would have been of a dense andfluffy honey-color, only that it was tarnished for lack of the constantsunnings and brushings which blonde hair must have to stay its bestself. And her skin, too, that should have been a living rose-and-cream, was dulled by exposure to all weathers, and lack of time to pet it withcreams and powders; perhaps a little, too, by the very stupid things toeat one gets at a dairy-lunch and boarding-house. Some of the assistantsdid interesting cooking over the library gas-range, but the LiberryTeacher couldn't do that because she hadn't time. 

She went on defiantly thinking about her looks. It isn't a noble-mindedthing to do, but when you might be so very, very pretty if you only hada little time to be it in--"Yes, I _might_!" said Phyllis to hershocked self defiantly.... Yes, the shape of her face was all rightstill. Hard work and scant attention couldn't spoil its pretty oval. Buther eyes--well, you can't keep your eyes as blue and luminous andchildlike as they were back in the New England country, when you havebeen using them hard for years in a bad light. And oh, they had beensuch _nice_ eyes when she was just Phyllis Narcissa at home, so long andblue and wondering! And now the cataloguing had heavied the lids andetched a line between her straight brown brows. They weren't decorativeeyes now ... And they filled with indignant self-sympathy. The LiberryTeacher laughed at herself a little here. The idea of eyes that criedabout themselves was funny, somehow. 

"Direct from producer to consumer!" she quoted half-aloud, and wipedeach eye conscientiously by itself. 

"Teacher! I want a liberry called 'Bride of Lemon Hill!' demanded asmall citizen just here. The school teacher, she says I must to haveit!"

Phyllis thought hard. But she had to search the pinned-up list ofrequired reading for schools for three solid minutes before she bestowed"The Bride of Lammermoor" on a thirteen-year-old daughter of Hungary. 

"This is it, isn't it, honey?" she asked with the flashing smile forwhich her children, among other things, adored her. 

"Yes, ma'am, thank you, teacher, " said the thirteen-year-old gratefully;and went off to a corner, where she sat till closing time entranced overher own happy choice, "The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, " with coloredpictures dotting it satisfactorily. The Liberry Teacher knew that it washer duty to go over and hypnotize the child into reading something whichwould lead more directly to Browning and Strindberg. But she didn't. 

"Poor little wop!" she thought unacademically. "Let her be happy in herown way!"

And the Liberry Teacher herself went on being unhappy in _her_ own way. 

"I'm just a battered bisque doll!" she repeated to herself bitterly. 

But she was wrong. One is apt to exaggerate things on a workadaySaturday afternoon. She looked more like a pretty bisque figurine; slimand clear-cut, and a little neglected, perhaps, by its owners, anddressed in working clothes instead of the pretty draperies it shouldhave had; but needing only a touch or so, a little dusting, so to speak, to be as good as ever. 

"Eva _never_ was as pretty as I was!" her rebellious thoughts went on. You think things, you know, that you'd never say aloud. "I'm sick ofelevating the public! I'm sick of working hard fifty-one weeks out offifty-two for board and lodging and carfare and shirtwaists and theoccasional society of a few girls who don't get any more out of lifethan I do! I'm sick of libraries, and of being efficient! I want to be areal girl! Oh, I wish--I wish I had a lot of money, and a rose-garden, and a _husband_!"

The Liberry Teacher was aghast at herself. She hadn't meant to wish sucha very unmaidenly thing so hard. She jumped up and dashed across theroom and began frantically to shelf-read books, explaining meanwhilewith most violent emphasis to the listening Destinies:

"I didn't--oh, I _didn_'t mean a _real_ husband. It isn't that I yearnto be married to some good man, like an old maid or a Duchess novel. I--I just want all the lovely things Eva has, or any girl that _marries_them, without any trouble but taking care of a man. One man _couldn't_but be easier than a whole roomful of library babies. I want to belooked after, and have time to keep pretty, and a chance to makefriends, and lovely frocks with lots of lace on them, and just monthsand months and months when I never had to do anything by aclock--and--and a rose-garden!"

This last idea was dangerous. It isn't a good thing, if you want to becontented with your lot, to think of rose-gardens in a stuffy citylibrary o' Saturdays; especially when where you were brought uprose-gardens were one of the common necessities of life; and moreespecially when you are tired almost to the crying-point, and have allthe week's big sisters back of it dragging on you, and all its littlesisters to come worrying at you, and--time not up till six. 

But the Liberry Teacher went blindly on straightening shelves nearly asfast as the children could muss them up, and thinking about thatrose-garden she wanted, with files of masseuses and manicures and Frenchmaids and messenger-boys with boxes banked soothingly behind every bush. And the thought became too beautiful to dally with. 

"I'd marry _anything_ that would give me a rose-garden!" reiterated theLiberry Teacher passionately to the Destinies, who are rather cattyladies, and apt to catch up unguarded remarks you make. "_Anything_--solong as it was a gentleman--and he didn't scold me--and--and--I didn'thave to associate with him!" her New England maidenliness added inhaste. 

Then, for the librarian who cannot laugh, like the one who reads, issupposed in library circles to be lost, Phyllis shook herself andlaughed at herself a little, bravely. Then she collected the mostuproarious of her flock around her and began telling them stories out ofthe "Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. " It would keep the children quiet, and her thoughts, too. She put rose-gardens, not to say manicurists andhusbands, severely out of her head. But you can't play fast and loosewith the Destinies that way. 

"Done!" they had replied quietly to her last schedule of requirements. "We'll send our messenger over right away. " It was not their fault thatthe Liberry Teacher could not hear them. 

II

He was gray-haired, pink-cheeked, curvingly side-whiskered andimmaculately gray-clad; and he did not look in the least like amessenger of Fate. 

The Liberry Teacher was at a highly keyed part of her narrative, andeven the most fidgety children were tense and open-mouthed. 

"'And where art thou now?' cried the Stranger to Robin Hood. And Robinroared with laughter. 'Oh, in the flood, and floating down the streamwith all the little fishes, ' said he--" she was relating breathlessly. 

"_Tea_-cher!" hissed Isaac Rabinowitz, snapping his fingers at her atthis exciting point. "Teacher! There's a guy wants to speak to you!"

"Aw, shut-_tup_!" chorused his indignant little schoolmates. "Can't yousee that Teacher's tellin' a story? Go chase yerself! Go do a tangoroun' de block!"

Isaac, a small Polish Jew with tragic, dark eyes and one suspender, received these and several more such suggestions with all the calmimpenetrability of his race. 

"Here's de guy, " was all he vouchsafed before he went back to theunsocial nook where, afternoon by faithful afternoon, he read away at afat three-volume life of Alexander Hamilton. 

The Liberry Teacher looked up without stopping her story, and smiled afamiliar greeting to the elderly gentleman, who was waiting a littleuncertainly at the Children's Room door, and had obviously been lookingfor her in vain. He smiled and nodded in return. 

"Just a minute, please, Mr. De Guenther, " said the Liberry Teachercheerfully. 

The elderly gentleman nodded again, crossed to Isaac and his ponderousvolumes, and began to talk to him with that benign lack of haste whichusually means a very competent personality. Phyllis hurried somewhatwith Robin Hood among his little fishes, and felt happier. It wasalways, in her eventless life, something of a pleasant adventure tohave Mr. De Guenther or his wife drop in to see her. There was usuallysomething pleasant at the end of it. 

They were an elderly couple whom she had known for some years. They wereso leisurely and trim and gentle-spoken that long ago, when she was onlya timorous substitute behind the circle of the big charging-desk, shehad picked them both out as people-you'd-like-if-you-got-the-chance. Then she had waited on them, and identified them by their cards asbelonging to the same family. Then, one day, with a pleased littlequiver of joy, she had found him in the city Who's Who, age, profession(he was a corporation lawyer), middle names, favorite recreation, andall. Gradually she had come to know them both very well in a waiting-onway. She often chose love-stories that ended happily and had coloredillustrations for Mrs. De Guenther when she was at home havingrheumatism; she had saved more detective stories for Mr. De Guentherthan her superiors ever knew; and once she had found his black-rimmedeye-glasses where he had left them between the pages of the Pri-Zuzvolume of the encyclopedia, and mailed them to him. 

When she had vanished temporarily from sight into the nunnery-promotionof the cataloguing room the De Guenthers had still remembered her. Twiceshe had been asked to Sunday dinner at their house, and had joyouslygone and remembered it as joyously for months afterward. Now that shewas out in the light of partial day again, in the Children's Room, sheran across both of them every little while in her errands upstairs; andonce Mrs. De Guenther, gentle, lorgnetted and gray-clad, had been shownover the Children's Room. The couple lived all alone in a great, handsome old house that was being crowded now by the business district. She had always thought that if she were a Theosophist she would try toplan to have them for an uncle and aunt in her next incarnation. Theysuited her exactly for the parts. 

But it's a long way down to the basement where city libraries are apt tokeep their children, and the De Guenthers hadn't been down there sincethe last time they asked her to dinner. And here, with every sign ofhaving come to say something _very_ special, stood Mr. De Guenther!Phyllis' irrepressibly cheerful disposition gave a little jump towardthe light. But she went on with her story--business before pleasure!

However, she did manage to get Robin Hood out of his brook a little morequickly than she had planned. She scattered her children with a swiftexecutive whisk, and made so straight for her friend that she deceivedthe children into thinking they were going to see him expelled, and theybanked up and watched with anticipatory grins. 

"I do hope you want to see me especially!" she said brightly. 

The children, disappointed, relaxed their attention. 

Mr. De Guenther rose slowly and neatly from his seat beside the ratherbored Isaac Rabinowitz, who dived into his book again with alacrity. 

"Good afternoon, Miss Braithwaite, " he said in the amiably precise voicewhich matched so admirably his beautifully precise movements and hisimmaculate gray spats. "Yes. In the language of our young friend here, 'I am the guy. '"

Phyllis giggled before she thought. Some people in the world always makeyour spirits go up with a bound, and the De Guenther pair invariably hadthat effect on her. 

"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" she said, "I am shocked at you! That's slang!"

"It was more in the nature of a quotation, " said he apologetically. "Andhow are you this exceedingly unpleasant day, Miss Braithwaite? We haveseen very little of you lately, Mrs. De Guenther and I. "

The Liberry Teacher, gracefully respectful in her place, wriggled withinvisible impatience over this carefully polite conversational opening. He had come down here on purpose to see her--there must be somethinggoing to happen, even if it was only a request to save a seven-day bookfor Mrs. De Guenther! Nobody ever wanted _something_, any kind of asomething, to happen more wildly than the Liberry Teacher did thatbored, stickily wet Saturday afternoon, with those tired seven years atthe Greenway Branch dragging at the back of her neck, and the seventimes seven to come making her want to scream. So few things canpossibly happen to you, no matter how good you are, when you work by theday. And now maybe something--oh, please, the very smallest kind of asomething would be welcomed!--was going to occur. Maybe Mrs. De Guentherhad sent her a ticket to a concert; she had once before. Or maybe, sinceyou might as well wish for big things while you're at it, it might evenbe a ticket to an expensive seat in a real theatre! Her pleasure-hungry, work-heavy blue eyes burned luminous at the idea. 

"But I really shouldn't wish, " she reminded her prancing mind belatedly. "He may only have come down to talk about the weather. It mayn't any ofit be true. "

So she stood up straight and gravely, and answered very courteously andholding-tightly all the amiable roundabout remarks the old gentleman wasshoving forward like pawns on a chessboard before the real game begins. She answered with the same trained cheerfulness she could give herlibrary children when her head and her disposition ached worst; and evenwarmed to a vicious enthusiasm over the state of the streets and thewetness of the damp weather. 

"He knows lots of real things to say, " she complained to herself, "whydoesn't he say them, instead of talking editorials? I suppose this ishis bedside--no, lawyers don't have bedside manners--well, his barsidemanner, then----"

It is difficult to think and listen at the same time: by this time shehad missed a beautiful long paragraph about the Street-CleaningDepartment; and something else, apparently. For her friend was holdingout to her a note addressed to her flowingly in his wife's English hand, and was saying, "--which she has asked me to deliver. I trust you have no imperativeengagement for to-morrow night. "

Something _had_ happened!

"Why, no!" said the Liberry Teacher delightedly. "No, indeed! Thank you, and her, too. I'd love to come. "

"Teacher!" clamored a small chocolate-colored citizen in a Kewpiemuffler, "my maw she want' a book call' 'Ugwin!' She say it got a yellowcover an' pictures in it. "

"Just a moment!" said Phyllis; and sent him upstairs with a note askingfor "Hugh Wynne" in the two-volume edition. She was used to translatingthat small colored boy's demands. Last week he had described to her aplay he called "Eas' Limb", with the final comment, "But it wan't nogood. 'Twant no limb in it anywhar, ner no trees atall!"

"Do you have much of that?" Mr. De Guenther asked idly. 

"Lots!" said Phyllis cheerfully. "You take special training in guessworkat library school. They call them 'teasers'. They say they're good foryour intellect. "

"Ah--yes, " said Mr. De Guenther absently in the barside manner. 

And then, sitting calmly with his silvery head against a Washington'sBirthday poster so that three scarlet cherries stuck above him in themanner of a scalp-lock, he said something else remarkably real:

"I have--we have--a little matter of business to discuss with youto-morrow night, my dear; an offer, I may say, of a different line ofwork. And I want you to satisfy yourself thoroughly--thoroughly, my dearchild, of my reputableness. Mr. Johnstone, the chief of the citylibrary, whose office I believe to be in this branch, is one of myoldest friends. I am, I think I may say, well known as a lawyer in thismy native city. I should be glad to have you satisfy yourself personallyon these points, because----" could it be that the eminently poised Mr. De Guenther was embarrassed? "Because the line of work which I wish, orrather my wife wishes, to lay before you is--is a very different line ofwork!" ended the old gentleman inconclusively. There was no mistakeabout it this time--he _was_ embarrassed. 

"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" cried Phyllis before she thought, out of thefulness of her heart, catching his arm in her eagerness; "Oh, Mr. DeGuenther, _could_ the Very Different Line of Work have a--have a_rose-garden_ attached to it anywhere?"

Before she was fairly finished she knew what a silly question she hadasked. How could any line of work she was qualified to do possibly haverose-gardens attached to it? You can't catalogue roses on neat cards, orimprove their minds by the Newark Ladder System, or do anything at alllibrarious to them, except pressing them in books to mummify; and theLiberry Teacher didn't think that was at all a courteous thing to do toroses. So Mr. De Guenther's reply quite surprised her. 

"There--seems--to be--no good reason, " he said, slowly and placidly, as if he were dropping his words one by one out of a slot;--"whythere should not--be--a very satisfactory rose-garden, oreven--_two_--connected with it. None--whatever. "

That was all the explanation he offered. But the Liberry Teacher askedno more. "_Oh!_" she said rapturously. 

"Then we may expect you to-morrow at seven?" he said; and smiledpolitely and moved to the door. He walked out as matter-of-coursely asif he had dropped in to ask the meaning of "circumflex, " or whoinvented smallpox, or the name of Adam's house-cat, or how long it wouldtake her to do a graduation essay for his daughter--or any such littlethings that librarians are prepared for most days. 

And instead--his neat gray elderly back seemed to deny it--he had leftwith her, the Liberry Teacher, her, dusty, tousled, shopworn PhyllisBraithwaite, an invitation to consider a Line of Work which was somysteriously Different that she had to look up the spotless De Guentherreputation before she came!

One loses track of time, staring at a red George Washington poster, andwondering about a future with a sudden Different Line in it.... It wasten minutes past putting-out-children time! She stared aghast at theruthless clock, then created two Monitors for Putting Out at one royalsweep. She managed the nightly eviction with such gay expedition that italmost felt like ten minutes ago when the place, except for thepride-swollen monitors, was cleared. While these officers watched thecommonalty clumping reluctantly upstairs toward the umbrella-rack, theLiberry Teacher paced sedately around the shelves, giving the books thatroutine straightening they must have before seven struck and the horderushed in again. It was really her relieving officer's work, but theLiberry Teacher felt that her mind needed straightening, too, and thisalways seemed to do it. 

She looked, as she moved slowly down along the shelves, very much likemost of the librarians you see; alert, pleasant, slender, a littledishevelled, a little worn. But there was really no librarian there. There was only Phyllis Narcissa--that dreaming young Phyllis who had hadto stay pushed out of sight all the seven years that Miss Braithwaitehad been efficiently earning her living. 

She let her mind stray happily as far as it would over the possibilitiesMr. De Guenther had held out to her, and woke to discover herself tryingto find a place under "Domestic Economy--Condiments" for "Five LittlePeppers and How They Grew. " She laughed aloud in the suddenly emptyroom, and then lifted her head to find Miss Black, the night-duty girlthat week, standing in the doorway ready to relieve guard. 

"Oh, Anna, see what I've done!" she laughed. Somehow everything seemedmerely light-hearted and laughable since Mr. De Guenther's mostfairy-tale visit, with its wild hints of Lines of Work. Anna Black came, looked, laughed. 

"In the 640's!" she said. "Well, you're liable to do nearly everythingby the time it's Saturday. Last Saturday, Dolly Graham up in theCirculation was telling me, an old colored mammy said she'd lost hermittens in the reading-room; and the first they knew Dolly was huntingthrough the Woollen Goods classification, and Mary Gayley pawing thedictionary wildly for m-i-t!"

"And they found the mittens hung around her neck by the cord, " finishedthe Liberry Teacher. "I know--it was a thrilling story. Well, good-bytill Monday, Anna Black. I'm going home now, to have some lovely prunesand some real dried beef, and maybe a glass of almost-milk if I canpersuade the landlady I need it. "

"Mine prefers dried apricots, " responded Miss Black cheerfully, "but shenever has anything but canned milk in the house, thus sparing us theembarrassment of asking for real. Good-by--good luck!"

But as the Liberry Teacher pinned her serviceable hat close, andfastened her still good raincoat over her elderly sweater, neitherprunes nor mittens nor next week's work worried her at all. After all, living among the fairy-stories with the Little People makes thatpleasant land where wanting is having, and all the impossibilities cancome true, very easy of access. Phyllis Braithwaite's mind, as shepicked her way down the bedraggled street, wandered innocently off in adream-place full of roses, till the muddy marble steps of herboarding-place gleamed sloppily before her through the foggy rain. 

She sat up late that night, doing improving things to the white netwaist that went with her best suit, which was black. As her needlenibbled busily down the seams she continued happily to wonder about thatEntirely Different Line. It sounded to her more like a reportership ona yellow journal than anything else imaginable. Or, perhaps, could shebe wanted to join the Secret Service?

"At any rate, " she concluded light-heartedly, as she stitched the lastclean ruching into the last wrist-covering, sedate sleeve, "at any rateI'll have a chance to-morrow to wear mother's gold earrings that Imustn't have on in the library. And oh, how lovely it will be to have adinner that wasn't cooked by a poor old bored boarding-house cook or ashiny tiled syndicate!"

And she went to bed--to dream of Entirely Different Lines all the colorsof the rainbow, that radiated out from the Circulation Desk liketight-ropes. She never remembered Eva Atkinson's carefully prettiedface, or her own vivid, work-worn one, at all. She only dreamed that farat the end of the pink Entirely Different Line--a very hard one towalk--there was a rose-garden exactly like a patchwork quilt, where shewas to be. 

III

When Phyllis woke next morning everything in the world had alight-hearted, holiday feeling. Her Sundays, gloriously unoccupied, generally did, but this was extra-special. The rain had managed to clearaway every vestige of last week's slush, and had then itself mostunselfishly retired down the gutters. The sun shone as if May had come, and the wind, through the Liberry Teacher's window, had a springy, pussy-willowy, come-for-a-walk-in-the-country feel to it. She found thatshe had slept too late to go to church, and prepared for a joyful dashto the boarding-house bathtub. There might be--who knew but thereactually might be--on this day of days, enough hot water for a realbath!

"I feel as if everything was going to be lovely all day!" she saidwithout preface to old black Maggie, who was clumping her accustomedbed-making way along the halls, with her woolly head tied up in herSunday silk handkerchief. Even she looked happier, Phyllis thought, than she had yesterday. She grinned broadly at Phyllis, leaningsmilingly against the door in her kimona. 

"Ah dunno, Miss Braithways, " she said, and entered the room and took apillow-case-corner in her mouth. "Ah never has dem premeditations!"

Phyllis laughed frankly, and Maggie, much flattered at the happyreception of her reply, grinned so widely that you might almost havetied her mouth behind her ears. 

"You sure is a cheerful person, Miss Braithways!" said Maggie, and wenton making the bed. 

Phyllis fled on down the hall, laughing still. She had just rememberedanother of old Maggie's compliments, made on one of the rare occasionswhen Phyllis had sat down and sung to the boarding-house piano. (Shehadn't been able to do it long, because the Mental Science Lady on thenext floor had sent down word that it stopped her from concentrating, and as she had a very expensive room there was nothing for the landladyto do but make Phyllis stop. ) Phyllis had come out in the hall to findold Maggie listening rapturously. 

"Oh, Miss Braithways!" she had murmured, rolling her eyes, "youcertainly does equalize a martingale!"

It had been a compliment Phyllis never forgot. She smiled to herself asshe found the bathroom door open. Why, the world was full of a number ofthings, many of them funny. Being a Liberry Teacher was rather nice, after all, when you were fresh from a long night's sleep. And if thatMental Science Lady _wouldn't_ let her play the piano, why, herthrilling tales of what she could do when her mind was unfettered wereworth the price. That story she told so seriously about how the pipesburst--and the plumber wouldn't come, and "My dear, I gave those pipesonly half an hour's treatment, and they closed right up!" It was quiteas much fun--well, almost as much--hearing her, as it would have been toplay. 

... All of the contented, and otherwise, elderly people who inhabitedthe boarding-house with Phyllis appeared to have gone off without usinghot water, for there actually was some. The Liberry Teacher found thatshe could have a genuine bath, and have enough water besides to wash herhair, which is a rite all girls who work have to reserve for Sundays. This was surely a day of days!

She used the water--alas for selfish human nature!--to the last warmdrop and went gayly back to her little room with no emotions whateverfor the poor other boarders, soon to find themselves wrathfullyhot-waterless. And then--she thoughtlessly curled down on the bed, andslept and slept and slept! She wakened dimly in time for the one o'clockdinner, dressed, and ate it in a half-sleep. She went back upstairsplanning a trolley-ride that should take her out into the country, wherea long walk might be had. And midway in changing her shoes she lay backacross the bed and--fell asleep again. The truth was, Phyllis was aboutas tired as a girl can get. 

She waked at dusk, with a jerk of terror lest she should have overslepther time for going out. But it was only six. She had a whole hour toprink in, which is a very long time for people who are used to being inthe library half-an-hour after the alarm-clock wakes them. 

 * * * * *

Some houses, all of themselves, and before you meet a soul who lives inthem, are silently indifferent to you. Some make you feel that you arenot wanted in the least; these usually have a lot of gilt furniture, andwhat are called objects of art set stiffly about. Some seem to be havingan untidy good time all to themselves, in which you are not included. 

The De Guenther house, staid and softly toned, did none of these things. It gave the Liberry Teacher, in her neat, last year's best suit, afeeling as of gentle welcome-home. She felt contented and _belonging_even before quick-smiling, slender little Mrs. De Guenther came rustlinggently in to greet her. Then followed Mr. De Guenther, pleasant andunperturbed as usual, and after him an agreeable, back-arching gray cat, who had copied his master's walk as exactly as it can be done with fourfeet. 

All four sat amiably about the room and held precise and pleasantconverse, something like a cheerful essay written in dialogue, aboutmany amusing, intelligent things which didn't especially matter. TheLiberry Teacher liked it. It was pleasant beyond words to sit nestlinglyin a pluffy chair, and hear about all the little lightly-treatedscholarly day-before-yesterday things her father had used to talk of. She carried on her own small part in the talk blithely enough. Sheapproved of herself and the way she was behaving, which makes very muchfor comfort. There was only once that she was ashamed of herself, andthought about it in bed afterwards and was mortified; when her eyesfilled with quick tears at a quite dry and unemotional--indeed, rather asarcastic--quotation from Horace on the part of Mr. De Guenther. But shesmiled, when she saw that they noticed her. 

"That's the first time I've heard a Latin quotation since I came awayfrom home, " she found herself saying quite simply in explanation, "andFather quoted Horace so much every day that--that I felt as if an oldfriend had walked in!"

But her hosts didn't seem to mind. Mr. De Guenther in his carefulevening clothes looked swiftly across at Mrs. De Guenther in hergray-silk-and-cameo, and they both nodded little satisfied nods, as ifshe had spoken in a way that they were glad to hear. And then dinner wasserved, a dinner as different--well, she didn't want to remember in itspresence the dinners it differed from; they might have clouded themoment. She merely ate it with a shameless inward joy. 

It ended, still to a pleasant effortless accompaniment of talk aboutbooks and music and pictures that Phyllis was interested in, and hadfound nobody to share her interest with for so long--so long! She felthappily running though everything the general, easy taking-for-grantedof all the old, gentle, inflexible standards of breeding that she hadnearly forgotten, down in the heart of the city among her obstreperous, affectionate little foreigners. 

They had coffee in the long old-fashioned salon parlor, and then Mr. DeGuenther straightened himself, and Mrs. De Guenther folded her veined, ringed old white hands, and Phyllis prepared thrilledly to listen. Surely now she would hear about that Different Line of Work. 

There was nothing, at first, about work of any sort. They merely beganto tell her alternately about some clients of theirs, a Mrs. Harringtonand her son: rather interesting people, from what Phyllis could makeout. She wondered if she was going to hear that they needed a librarian. 

"This lady, my client, Mrs. Harrington, " continued her host gravely, "isthe one for whom I may ask you to consider doing some work. I say may, but it is a practical certainty. She is absolutely alone, my dear MissBraithwaite, except for her son. I am afraid I must ask you to listen toa long story about them. "

It was coming!

"Oh, but I want to hear!" said Phyllis, with that quick, affectionatesympathy of hers that was so winning, leaning forward and watching themwith the lighted look in her blue eyes. It all seemed to her tired, alert mind like some story she might have read to her children, anArabian Nights narrative which might begin, "And the Master of theHouse, ascribing praise unto Allah, repeated the following Tale. "

"There have always been just the two of them, mother and son, " said theMaster of the House. "And Allan has always been a very great deal to hismother. "

"Poor Angela!" murmured his wife. 

"They are old friends of ours, " her husband explained. "My wife and Mrs. Harrington were schoolmates. 

"Well, Allan, the boy, grew up, dowered with everything a mother couldpossibly desire for her son, personally and otherwise. He was handsomeand intelligent, with much charm of manner. "

"I know now what people mean by 'talking like a book, '" thought Phyllisirreverently. "And I don't believe any one man _could_ be all that!"

"There was practically nothing, " Mr. De Guenther went on, "which thepoor lad had not. That was one trouble, I imagine. If he had not beenhighly intelligent he would not have studied so hard; if he had not beenstrong and active he might not have taken up athletic sports sowhole-heartedly; and when I add that Allan possessed charm, money andsocial status you may see that what he did would have broken down mostyoung fellows. In short, he kept studies, sports and social affairs allgoing at high pressure during his four years of college. But he wasyoung and strong, and might not have felt so much ill effects from allthat; though his doctors said afterwards that he was nearly at thebreaking point when he graduated. "

Phyllis bent closer to the story-teller in her intense interest. Why, it_was_ like one of her fairy-tales! She held her breath to listen, whilethe old lawyer went gravely on. 

"Allan could not have been more than twenty-two when he graduated, andit was a very short while afterwards that he became engaged to a younggirl, the daughter of a family friend. Louise Frey was her name, was itnot, love?"

"Yes, that is right, " said his wife, "Louise Frey. "

"A beautiful girl, " he went on, "dark, with a brilliant color, and fullof life and good spirits. They were both very young, but there was nogood reason why the marriage should be delayed, and it was set for thefollowing September. "

A princess, too, in the story! But--where had she gone? "The two of themonly, " he had said. 

"It must have been scarcely a month, " the story went on--Mr. De Guentherwas telling it as if he were stating a case--"nearly a month before thedate set for the wedding, when the lovers went for a long automobileride, across a range of mountains near a country-place where they wereboth staying. They were alone in the machine. 

"Allan, of course, was driving, doubtless with a certain degree ofimpetuosity, as he did most things.... They were on an unfrequented partof the road, " said Mr. De Guenther, lowering his voice, "when thereoccurred an unforeseen wreckage in the car's machinery. The car wasthrown over and badly splintered. Both young people were pinned underit. 

"So far as he knew at the time, Allan was not injured, nor was he in anypain; but he was held in absolute inability to move by the car abovehim. Miss Frey, on the contrary, was badly hurt, and in suffering. Shedied in about three hours, a little before relief came to them. "

Phyllis clutched the arms of her chair, thrilled and wide-eyed. Shecould imagine all the horror of the happening through the old lawyer'sprecise and unemotional story. The boy-lover, pinioned, helpless, condemned to watch his sweetheart dying by inches, and unable to helpher by so much as lifting a hand--could anything be more awful not onlyto endure, but to remember?

"And yet, " she thought whimsically, "it mightn't be so bad to have one_real_ tragedy to remember, if you haven't anything else! All _I'll_have to remember when I'm old will be bad little children and goodlittle children, and books and boarding-houses, and the recollectionthat people said I was a very worthy young woman once!" But she threwoff the thought. It's just as well not to think of old age when all theidea brings up is a vision of a nice, clean Old Ladies' Home. 

"But you said he was an invalid?" she said aloud. 

"Yes, I regret to say, " answered Mr. De Guenther. "You see, it was foundthat the shock to the nerves, acting on an already over-keyed mind andbody, together with some spinal blow concerning which the doctors arestill in doubt, had affected Allan's powers of locomotion. " (Mr. DeGuenther certainly did like long words!) "He has been unable to walksince. And, which is sadder, his state of mind and body has becomesteadily worse. He can scarcely move at all now, and his mental attitudecan only be described as painfully morbid--yes, I may say _very_painfully morbid. Sometimes he does not speak at all for days together, even to his mother, or his attendant. "

"Oh, poor boy!" said Phyllis. "How long has he been this way?"

"Seven years this fall, " the answer came consideringly. "Is it not, love?"

"Yes, " said his wife, "seven years. "

"_Oh!_" said the Liberry Teacher, with a quick catch of sympathy at herheart. 

Just as long as she had been working for her living in the big, dustylibrary. Supposing--oh, supposing she'd had to live all that time insuch suffering as this poor Allan had endured and his mother had had towitness! She felt suddenly as if the grimy, restless Children's Room, with its clatter of turbulent little outland voices, were a safe, sunnyparadise in comparison. 

Mr. De Guenther did not speak. He visibly braced himself and was visiblyill-at-ease. 

"I have told most of the story, Isabel, love, " said he at last. "Wouldyou not prefer to tell the rest? It is at your instance that I haveundertaken this commission for Mrs. Harrington, you will remember. "

It struck Phyllis that he didn't think it was quite a dignifiedcommission, at that. 

"Very well, my dear, " said his wife, and took up the tale in her swift, soft voice. 

"You can fancy, my dear Miss Braithwaite, how intensely his mother hasfelt about it. "

"Indeed, yes!" said Phyllis pitifully. 

"Her whole life, since the accident, has been one long devotion to herson. I don't think a half-hour ever passes that she does not see him. But in spite of this constant care, as my husband has told you, he growssteadily worse. And poor Angela has finally broken under the strain. Shewas never strong. She is dying now--they give her maybe two months more. 

"Her one anxiety, of course, is for poor Allan's welfare. You canimagine how you would feel if you had to leave an entirely helpless sonor brother to the mercies of hired attendants, however faithful. Andthey have no relatives--they are the last of the family. "

The listening girl began to see. She was going to be asked to act asnurse, perhaps attendant and guardian, to this morbid invalid with theinjured mind and body. 

[Illustration: "NO, " SAID MRS. DE GUENTHER GRAVELY. "YOU WOULD NOT. YOUWOULD HAVE TO BE HIS WIFE"]

"But how would I be any better for him than a regular trained nurse?"she wondered. "And they said he had an attendant. "

She looked questioningly at the pair. 

"Where does my part come in?" she asked with a certain sweet directnesswhich was sometimes hers. "Wouldn't I be a hireling too if--if I hadanything to do with it?"

"No, " said Mrs. De Guenther gravely. "You would not. You would have tobe his wife. "

IV

The Liberry Teacher, in her sober best suit, sat down in her entirelycommonplace chair in the quiet old parlor, and looked unbelievingly atthe sedate elderly couple who had made her this wild proposition. Shecaught her breath. But catching her breath did not seem to affectanything that had been said. Mr. De Guenther took up the explanationagain, a little deprecatingly, she thought. 

"You see now why I requested you to investigate our reputability?" hesaid. "Such a proposition as this, especially to a young lady who has noparent or guardian, requires a considerable guarantee of good faith andhonesty of motive. "

"Will you please tell me more about it?" she asked quietly. She did notfeel now as if it were anything which had especially to do with her. Itseemed more like an interesting story she was unravelling sentence bysentence. The long, softly lighted old room, with its Stuarts andSullys, and its gracious, gray-haired host and hostess, seemed only apicturesque part of it.... Her hostess caught up the tale again. 

"Angela has been nearly distracted, " she said. "And the idea has come toher that if she could find some conscientious woman, a lady, and aperson to whom what she could offer would be a consideration, who wouldtake charge of poor Allan, that she could die in peace. "

"But why did you think of asking me?" the girl asked breathlessly. "Andwhy does she want me married to him? And how could you or she be surethat I would not be as much of a hireling as any nurse she may havenow?"

Mrs. De Guenther answered the last two questions together. 

"Mrs. Harrington's idea is, and I think rightly, that a conscientiouswoman would feel the marriage tie, however nominal, a bond that wouldobligate her to a certain duty toward her husband. As to why we selectedyou, my dear, my husband and I have had an interest in you for someyears, as you know. We have spoken of you as a girl whom we should likefor a relative----"

"Why, isn't that strange?" cried Phyllis, dimpling. "That's just whatI've thought about you!"

Mrs. De Guenther flushed, with a delicate old shyness. 

"Thank you, dear child, " she said. "I was about to add that we have notseen you at your work all these years without knowing you to have thekind heart and sense of honor requisite to poor Angela's plan. We feelsure you could be trusted to take the place. Mr. De Guenther has askedhis friend Mr. Johnston, the head of the library, such things as weneeded to supplement our personal knowledge of you. You have everythingthat could be asked, even to a certain cheerfulness of outlook whichpoor Angela, naturally, lacks in a measure. "

"But--but what about _me_?" asked Phyllis Braithwaite a littlepiteously, in answer to all this. 

They seemed so certain she was what they wanted--was there anything inthis wild scheme that would make _her_ life better than it was as thetired, ill-paid, light-hearted keeper of a roomful of turbulent littleforeigners?

"Unless you are thinking of marriage--" Phyllis shook her head--"youwould have at least a much easier life than you have now. Mrs. Harrington would settle a liberal income on you, contingent, of course, of your faithful wardership over Allan. We would be your only judges asto that. You would have a couple or more months of absolute freedomevery year, control of much of your own time, ample leisure to enjoy it. You would give only your chances of actual marriage for perhaps fiveyears, for poor Allan cannot live longer than that at his present stateof retrogression, and some part of every day to seeing that Allan wasnot neglected. If you bestow on him half of the interest and effort Ihave known of your giving any one of a dozen little immigrant boys, hismother has nothing to fear for him. "

Mr. De Guenther stopped with a grave little bow, and he and his wifewaited for the reply. 

The Liberry Teacher sat silent, her eyes on her slim hands, that wereroughened and reddened by constant hurried washings to get off the dirtof the library books. It was true--a good deal of it, anyhow. And onething they had not said was true also: her sunniness and accuracy andstrength, her stock-in-trade, were wearing thin under the pressure oftoo long hours and too hard work and too few personal interests. Heryouth was worn down. And--marriage? What chance of love and marriage hadshe, a working-girl alone, too poor to see anything of the class of menshe would be willing to marry? She had not for years spent six hourswith a man of her own kind and age. She had not even been specially inlove, that she could remember, since she was grown up. She did not feelmuch, now, as if she ever would be. All that she had to give up intaking this offer was her freedom, such as it was--and those flutteringperhapses that whisper such pleasant promises when you are young. But, then, she wouldn't be young so _very_ much longer. Should she--she putit to herself crudely--should she wait long, hard, closed-in years inthe faith that she would learn to be absolutely contented, or that someman she could love would come to the cheap boarding-house, or the littlechurch she attended occasionally when she was not too tired, fall inlove with her work-dimmed looks at sight, and--marry her? It had nothappened all these years while her girlhood had been more attractive andher personality more untired. There was scarcely a chance in a hundredfor her of a kind lover-husband and such dear picture-book children asshe had seen Eva Atkinson convoying. Well--her mind suddenly came upagainst the remembrance, as against a sober fact, that in her passionatewishings of yesterday she had not wished for a lover-husband, nor forchildren. She had asked for a husband who would give her money, andleisure to be rested and pretty, and--a rose-garden! And here, apparently, was her wish uncannily fulfilled. 

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" inquired the Destinies withtheir traditional indifference. "We can't wait all night!"

She lifted her head and cast an almost frightened look at the DeGuenthers, waiting courteously for her decision. In reply to the look, Mr. De Guenther began giving her details about the money, and theleisure time, and the business terms of the contract generally. Shelistened attentively. All that--for a little guardianship, a littlekindness, and the giving-up of a little piece of life nobody wanted anda few little hopes and dreams!

Phyllis laughed, as she always did when there were big black problems tobe solved. 

"After all, it's fairly usual, " she said. "I heard last week of a womanwho left money along with her pet dog, very much the same way. "

"Did you? Did you, dear?" asked Mrs. De Guenther, beaming. "Then youthink you will do it?"

The Liberry Teacher rose, and squared her straight young shoulders underthe worn net waist. 

"If Mrs. Harrington thinks I'll do for the situation!" she saidgallantly, --and laughed again. 

 * * * * *

"It feels partly like going into a nunnery and partly like going into afairy-story, " she said to herself that night as she wound her alarm. "But--I wonder if anybody's remembered to ask the consent of thegroom!"

V

He looked like a young Crusader on a tomb. That was Phyllis's firstimpression of Allan Harrington. He talked and acted, if a moveless mancan be said to act, like a bored, spoiled small boy. That was hersecond. 

Mrs. Harrington, fragile, flushed, breathlessly intense in herwheel-chair, had yet a certain resemblance in voice and gesture to Mrs. De Guenther--a resemblance which puzzled Phyllis till she placed it asthe mark of that far-off ladies' school they had attended together. There was also a graceful, mincing white wolfhound which, contrary tothe accepted notion of invalids' faithful hounds, didn't seem to carefor his master's darkened sick-room at all, but followed the one sunnyspot in Mrs. Harrington's room with a wistful persistence. It was such asmall spot for such a long wolfhound--that was the principal thing whichimpressed itself on Phyllis's frightened mind throughout her visit. 

Mrs. De Guenther convoyed her to the Harrington house for inspection acouple of days after she had accepted some one's proposal to marry AllanHarrington. (Whether it counted as her future mother-in-law's proposal, or her future trustee's, she was never sure. The only sure thing wasthat it did not come from the groom. ) She had borrowed a half-day fromthe future on purpose, though she did not want to go at all. But thereality was not bad; only a fluttering, emotional little woman who clungto her hands and talked to her and asked useless questions with anervous insistence which would have been nerve-wearing for a steadything, but was only pitiful to a stranger. 

You see strange people all the time in library work, and learn to placethem, at length, with almost as much accuracy as you do your books. Thefact that Mrs. Harrington was not long for this world did not preventPhyllis from classing her, in her mental card-catalogue, as a veryperfect specimen of the Loving Nagger. She was lying back, wrapped insomething gray and soft, when her visitors came, looking as if thelifting of her hand would be an effort. She was evidently pitifullyweak. But she had, too, an ineradicable vitality she could summon atneed. She sprang almost upright to greet her visitors, a hand out toeach, an eager flood of words on her lips. 

"And you are Miss Braithwaite, that is going to look after my boy?" sheended. "Oh, it is so good of you--I am so glad--I can go in peace now. Are you sure--sure you will know the minute his attendants are the leastbit negligent? I watch and watch them all the time. I tell Allan to ringfor me if anything ever is the least bit wrong--I am always begging himto remember. I go in every night and pray with him--do you think youcould do that? But I always cry so before I'm through--I cry and cry--mypoor, helpless boy--he was so strong and bright! And you are sure youare conscientious----"

At this point Phyllis stopped the flow of Mrs. Harrington's conversationfirmly, if sweetly. 

"Yes, indeed, " she said cheerfully. "But you know, if I'm not, Mr. DeGuenther can stop all my allowance. It wouldn't be to my own interestnot to fulfil my duties faithfully. "

"Yes, that is true, " said Mrs. Harrington. "That was a good thought ofmine. My husband always said I was an unusual woman where business wasconcerned. "

So they went on the principle that she had no honor beyond working forwhat she would get out of it! Although she had made the suggestionherself, Phyllis's cheeks burned, and she was about to answer sharply. Then somehow the poor, anxious, loving mother's absolute preoccupationwith her son struck her as right after all. 

"If it were my son, " thought Phyllis, "I wouldn't worry about anystrange hired girl's feelings either, maybe. I'd just think abouthim.... I promise I'll look after Mr. Harrington's welfare as if he weremy own brother!" she ended aloud impulsively. "Indeed, you may trustme. "

"I am--sure you will, " panted Mrs. Harrington. "You look like--a goodgirl, and--and old enough to be responsible--twenty-eight--thirty?"

"Not very far from that, " said Phyllis serenely. 

"And you are sure you will know when the attendants are neglectful? Ispeak to them all the time, but I never can be sure.... And now you'dbetter see poor Allan. This is one of his good days. Just think, dearIsabel, he spoke to me twice without my speaking to him this morning!"

"Oh--must I?" asked Phyllis, dismayed. "Couldn't I wait till--till ithappens?"

Mrs. Harrington actually laughed a little at her shyness, lighting uplike a girl. Phyllis felt dimly, though she tried not to, that throughit all her mother-in-law-elect was taking pleasure in the dramatic sideof the situation she had engineered. 

"Oh, my dear, you must see him. He expects you, " she answered almostgayly. The procession of three moved down the long room towards a door, Phyllis's hand guiding the wheel-chair. She was surprised to findherself shaking with fright. Just what she expected to find beyond thedoor she did not know, but it must have been some horror, for it waswith a heart-bound of wild relief that she finally made out AllanHarrington, lying white in the darkened place. 

A Crusader on a tomb. Yes, he looked like that. In the room's half-duskthe pallor of his still, clear-featured face and his long, clear-cuthands was nearly the same as the whiteness of the couch-draperies. Hishair, yellow-brown and waving, flung back from his forehead like acrest, and his dark brows and lashes made the only note of darknessabout him. To Phyllis's beauty-loving eyes he seemed so perfect an imagethat she could have watched him for hours. 

"Here's Miss Braithwaite, my poor darling, " said his mother. "The younglady we have been talking about so long. "

The Crusader lifted his eyelids and let them fall again. 

"Is she?" he said listlessly. 

"Don't you want to talk to her, darling boy?" his mother persisted, halfout of breath, but still full of that unrebuffable, loving energy andinsistence which she would probably keep to the last minute of herlife. 

"No, " said the Crusader, still in those empty, listless tones. "I'drather not talk. I'm tired. "

His mother seemed not at all put out. 

"Of course, darling, " she said, kissing him. She sat by him still, however, and poured out sentence after sentence of question, insistence, imploration, and pity, eliciting no answer at all. Phyllis wondered howit would feel to have to lie still and have that done to you for a termof years. The result of her wonderment was a decision to forgive herunenthusiastic future bridegroom for what she had at first been ready toslap him. 

Presently Mrs. Harrington's breath flagged, and the three women wentaway, back to the room they had been in before. Phyllis sat and letherself be talked to for a little longer. Then she rose impulsively. 

"May I go back and see your son again for just a minute?" she asked, andhad gone before Mrs. Harrington had finished her permission. She dartedinto the dark room before her courage had time to fail, and stood by thewhite couch again. 

"Mr. Harrington, " she said clearly, "I'm sorry you're tired, but I'mafraid I am going to have to ask you to listen to me. You know, don'tyou, that your mother plans to have me marry you, for a sort ofinterested head-nurse? Are you willing to have it happen? Because Iwon't do it unless you really prefer it. "

The heavy white lids half-lifted again. 

"I don't mind, " said Allan Harrington listlessly. "I suppose you arequiet and trustworthy, or De Guenther wouldn't have sent you. It willgive mother a little peace and it makes no difference to me. "

He closed his eyes and the subject at the same time. 

"Well, then, that's all right, " said Phyllis cheerfully, and started togo. Then, drawn back by a sudden, nervous temper-impulse, she moved backon him. "And let me tell you, " she added, half-laughing, half-impertinently, "that if you ever get into my quiet, trustworthyclutches you may have an awful time! You're a very spoiled invalid. "

She whisked out of the room before he could have gone very far with hisreply. But he had not cared to reply, apparently. He lay unmoved andunmoving. 

Phyllis discovered, poising breathless on the threshold, that somehowshe had seen his eyes. They had been a little like the wolfhound's, asort of wistful gold-brown. 

For some reason she found that Allan Harrington's attitude of absolutedetachment made the whole affair seem much easier for her. And when Mrs. Harrington slipped a solitaire diamond into her hand as she went, instead of disliking it she enjoyed its feel on her finger, and theflash of it in the light. She thanked Mrs. Harrington for it with realgratitude. But it made her feel more than ever engaged to marry hermother-in-law. 

She walked home rather silently with Mrs. De Guenther. Only at the footof the De Guenther steps, she made one absent remark. 

"He must have been delightful, " she said, "when he was alive!"

VI

After a week of the old bustling, dusty hard work, the Liberry Teacher'svisit to the De Guenthers' and the subsequent one at the Harringtons', and even her sparkling white ring, seemed part of a queer story she hadfinished and put back on the shelf. The ring was the most real thing, because it was something of a worry. She didn't dare leave it at home, nor did she want to wear it. She finally sewed it in a chamois bag thatshe safety-pinned under her shirt-waist. Then she dismissed it from hermind also. There is very little time in a Liberry Teacher's life formeditation. Only once in a while would come to her the vision of thewistful Harrington wolfhound following his inadequate patch of sunlight, or of the dusky room where Allan Harrington lay inert and white, andlooking like a wonderful carved statue on a tomb. 

She began to do a little to her clothes, but not very much, because shehad neither time nor money. Mr. De Guenther had wanted her to take somemoney in advance, but she had refused. She did not want it till she hadearned it, and, anyway, it would have made the whole thing so real, sheknew, that she would have backed out. 

"And it isn't as if I were going to a lover, " she defended herself toMrs. De Guenther with a little wistful smile. "Nobody will know what Ihave on, any more than they do now. "

Mrs. De Guenther gave a scandalized little cry. Her attitude wasdeterminedly that it was just an ordinary marriage, as good an excusefor sentiment and pretty frocks as any other. 

"My dear child, " she replied firmly, "you are going to have one prettyfrock and one really good street-suit _now_, or I will know why! Therest you may get yourself after the wedding, but you must obey me inthis. Nonsense!--you can get a half-day, as you call it, perfectly well!What's Albert in politics for, if he can't get favors for his friends!"

And, in effect, it proved that Albert was in politics to some purpose, for orders came up from the Head's office within twenty minutes afterMrs. De Guenther had used the telephone on her husband, that MissBraithwaite was to have a half-day immediately--as far as she could makeout, in order to transact city affairs! She felt as if the angels hadtold her she could have the last fortnight over again, as a favor, orsomething of the sort. A half-day out of turn was something nobody hadever heard of. She was even too surprised to object to the frock part ofthe situation. She tried to stand out a little longer, but it's a verystoical young woman who can refuse to have pretty clothes bought forher, and the end of it was a seat in a salon which she had alwaysconsidered so expensive that you scarcely ought to look in the window. 

"Had it better be a black suit?" asked Mrs. De Guenther doubtfully, asthe tall lady in floppy charmeuse hovered haughtily about them, expecting orders. "It seems horrible to buy mourning when dear Angela isnot yet passed away, but it would only be showing proper respect; and Iremember my own dear mother planned all our mourning outfits while shewas dying. It was quite a pleasure to her. "

Phyllis kept her face straight, and slipped one persuasive hand throughher friend's arm. 

"I don't believe I _could_ buy mourning, dear, " she said. "And--oh, ifyou knew how long I'd wanted a really _blue_ blue suit! Only, it wouldhave been too vivid to wear well--I always knew that--because you canonly afford one every other year. And"--Phyllis rather diffidentlyvoiced a thought which had been in the back of her mind for a longtime--"if I'm going to be much around Mr. Harrington, don't you thinkcheerful clothes would be best? Everything in that house seems sombreenough now. "

"Perhaps you are right, dear child, " said Mrs. De Guenther. "I hope youmay be the means of putting a great deal of brightness into poor Allan'slife before he joins his mother. "

"Oh, don't!" cried Phyllis impulsively. Somehow she could not bear tothink of Allan Harrington's dying. He was too beautiful to be dead, where nobody could see him any more. Besides, Phyllis privatelyconsidered that a long vacation before he joined his mother would beonly the fair thing for "poor Allan. " Youth sides with youth. And--theclear-cut white lines of him rose in her memory and stayed there. Shecould almost hear that poor, tired, toneless voice of his, that was yetso deep and so perfectly accented.... She bought docilely whatever herguide directed, and woke from a species of gentle daze at theafternoon's end to find Mrs. De Guenther beaming with the weary raptureof the successful shopper, and herself the proprietress of a turquoisevelvet walking-suit, a hat to match, a pale blue evening frock, a palegreen between-dress with lovely clinging lines, and a heavenly whitecrepe thing with rosy ribbons and filmy shadow-laces--the negligee ofone's dreams. There were also slippers and shoes and stockings and--thiswas really too bad of Mrs. De Guenther--a half-dozen set of lingerie, straight through. Mrs. De Guenther sat and continued to beam joyouslyover the array, in Phyllis's little bedroom. 

"It's my present, dearie, " she said calmly. "So you needn't worry aboutusing Angela's money. Gracious, it's been _lovely_! I haven't had such agood time since my husband's little grand-niece came on for a week. There's nothing like dressing a girl, after all. "

And Phyllis could only kiss her. But when her guest had gone she laidall the boxes of finery under her bed, the only place where there wasany room. She would not take any of it out, she determined, till hersummons came. But on second thought, she wore the blue velvetstreet-suit on Sunday visits to Mrs. Harrington, which became--she neverknew just when or how--a regular thing. The vivid blue made her eyesnearly sky-color, and brightened her hair very satisfactorily. She wastaking more time and trouble over her looks now--one has to live up to aturquoise velvet hat and coat! She found herself, too, becoming verygenuinely fond of the restless, anxiously loving, passionate, unwisechild who dwelt in Mrs. Harrington's frail elderly body and had almostworn it out. She sat, long hours of every Sunday afternoon, holding Mrs. Harrington's thin little hot hands, and listening to her swift, italicised monologues about Allan--what he must do, what he must not do, how he must be looked after, how his mother had treated him, how hiswishes must be ascertained and followed. 

"Though all he wants now is dark and quiet, " said his mother piteously. "I don't even go in there now to cry. "

She spoke as if it were an established ritual. Had she been using herson's sick-room, Phyllis wondered, as a regular weeping-place? She couldfeel in Mrs. Harrington, even in this mortal sickness, the tremendousdriving influence which is often part of a passionately active and notvery wise personality. That certitude and insistence of Mrs. Harrington's could hammer you finally into believing or doing almostanything. Phyllis wondered how much his mother's heartbroken adorationand pity might have had to do with making her son as hopeless-minded ashe was. 

Naturally, the mother-in-law-elect she had acquired in such a strangeway became very fond of Phyllis. But indeed there was something very gayand sweet and honest-minded about the girl, a something which gavepeople the feeling that they were very wise in liking her. Some peopleyou are fond of against your will. When people cared for Phyllis it waswith a quite irrational feeling that they were doing a sensible thing. They never gave any of the credit to her very real, though almostinvisible, charm. 

She never saw Allan Harrington on any of the Sunday visits. She was surethe servants thought she did, for she knew that every one in the great, dark old house knew her as the young lady who was to marry Mr. Allan. She believed that she was supposed to be an old family friend, perhaps adistant relative. She did not want to see Allan. But she did want to beas good to his little, tensely-loving mother as she could, and reassureher about Allan's future care. And she succeeded. 

It was on a Friday about two that the summons came. Phyllis had thoughtshe expected it, but when the call came to her over the librarytelephone she found herself as badly frightened as she had been thefirst time she went to the Harrington house. She shivered as she laiddown the dater she was using, and called the other librarian to take herdesk. Fortunately, between one and four the morning and evening shiftsoverlapped, and there was some one to take her place. 

"Mrs. Harrington cannot last out the night, " came Mr. De Guenther'sclear, precise voice over the telephone, without preface. "I havearranged with Mr. Johnston. You can go at once. You had better pack asuit-case, for you possibly may not be able to get back to yourboarding-place. "

So it was to happen now! Phyllis felt, with her substitute in her place, her own wraps on, and her feet taking her swiftly towards her goal, asif she were offering herself to be made a nun, or have a hand or footcut off, or paying herself away in some awful, irrevocable fashion. Shepacked, mechanically, all the pretty things Mrs. De Guenther had givenher, and nothing else. She found herself at the door of her room withthe locked suit-case in her hand, and not even a nail-file of the thingsbelonging to her old self in it. She shook herself together, managed tolaugh a little, and returned and put in such things as she thought shewould require for the night. Then she went. She always remembered thatjourney as long as she lived; her hands and feet and tongue going on, buying tickets, giving directions--and her mind, like a naughty child, catching at everything as they went, and screaming to be allowed to goback home, back to the dusty, matter-of-course library and the drearylittle boarding-house bedroom!

VII

They were all waiting for her, in what felt like a hideously quietsemicircle, in Allan's great dark room. Mrs. Harrington, deadly pale, and giving an impression of keeping herself alive only by force of thatwonderful fighting vitality of hers, lay almost at length in herwheel-chair. There was a clergyman in vestments. There were the DeGuenthers; Mr. De Guenther only a little more precise than his every-dayhabit was, Mrs. De Guenther crying a little, softly and furtively. 

As for Allan Harrington, he lay just as she had seen him that othertime, white and moveless, seeming scarcely conscious except by aneffort. Only she noticed a slight contraction, as of pain, between hisbrows. 

"Phyllis has come, " panted Mrs. Harrington. "Now it will be--all right. You must marry him quickly--quickly, do you hear, Phyllis? Oh, peoplenever will--do--what I want them to----"

"Yes--yes, indeed, dear, " said Phyllis, taking her hands soothingly. "We're going to attend to it right away. See, everything is ready. "

It occurred to her that Mrs. Harrington was not half as correct in herplaying of the part of a dying woman as she would have seen to it thatanyone else was; also, that things did not seem legal without thewolfhound. Then she was shocked at herself for such irrelevant thoughts. The thing to do was to keep poor Mrs. Harrington quieted. So shebeckoned the clergyman and the De Guenthers nearer, and herself sped themarrying of herself to Allan Harrington. 

... When you are being married to a Crusader on a tomb, the easiest wayis to kneel down by him. Phyllis registered this fact in her mind quiteblankly, as something which might be of use to remember in future.... The marrying took an unnecessarily long time, it seemed to her. It didnot seem as if she were being married at all. It all seemed to concernsomebody else. When it came to the putting on of the wedding-ring, shefound herself, very naturally, guiding Allan's relaxed fingers to holdit in its successive places, and finally slip it on the wedding-finger. And somehow having to do that checked the chilly awe she had had beforeof Allan Harrington. It made her feel quite simply sorry for him, as ifhe were one of her poor little boys in trouble. And when it was all overshe bent pitifully before she thought, and kissed one white, cold cheek. He seemed so tragically helpless, yet more alive, in some way, since shehad touched his hand to guide it. Then, as her lips brushed his cheek, she recoiled and colored a little. She had felt that slight roughnesswhich a man's cheek, however close-shaven, always has--the _man_-feel. It made her realize unreasonably that it was a man she had married, after all, not a stone image nor a sick child--a live man! With thethought, or rather instinct, came a swift terror of what she had done, and a swift impulse to rise. She was half-way risen from her knees whena hand on her shoulder, and the clergyman's voice in her ear, checkedher. 

"Not yet, " he murmured almost inaudibly. "Stay as you are till--tillMrs. Harrington is wheeled from the room. "

Phyllis understood. She remained as she was, her body a shield beforeAllan Harrington's eyes, her hand just withdrawing from his shoulder, till she heard the closing of the door, and a sigh as of relaxed tensionfrom the three people around her. Then she rose. Allan lay still withclosed eyelids. It seemed to her that he had flushed, if ever sofaintly, at the touch of her lips on his cheek. She laid his hand on thecoverlet with her own roughened, ringed one, and followed the othersout, into the room where the dead woman had been taken, leaving him withhis attendant. 

The rest of the evening Phyllis went about in a queer-keyed, almostlight-hearted frame of mind. It was only the reaction from thelong-expected terror that was over now, but it felt indecorous. It wasjust as well, however. Some one's head had to be kept. The servants wereupset, of course, and there were many arrangements to be made. She andMr. De Guenther worked steadily together, telephoning, ordering, guiding, straightening out all the tangles. There never was a wedding, she thought, where the bride did so much of the work! She evenremembered to see personally that Allan's dinner was sent up to him. Theservants had doubtless been told to come to her for orders--at any rate, they did. Phyllis had not had much experience in running a house, but agood deal in keeping her head. And that, after all, is the main thing. She had a far-off feeling as if she were hearing some other young womangiving swift, poised, executive orders. She rather admired her. 

After dinner the De Guenthers went. And Phyllis Braithwaite, the littleLiberry Teacher who had been living in a hall bedroom on much less moneythan she needed, found herself alone, sole mistress of the greatHarrington house, a corps of servants, a husband passive enough tosatisfy the most militant suffragette, a check-book, a wistfulwolfhound, and five hundred dollars, cash, for current expenses. Thelast weighed on her mind more than all the rest put together. 

"Why, I don't know how to make Current Expenses out of all that!" shehad said to Mr. De Guenther. "It looks to me exactly like about tenmonths' salary! I'm perfectly certain I shall get up in my sleep and tryto pay my board ahead with it, so I shan't have it all spent before theten months are up! There was a blue bead necklace, " she went onmeditatively, "in the Five-and-Ten, that I always wanted to buy. Only Inever quite felt I could afford it. Oh, just imagine going to theFive-and-Ten and buying at least five dollars' worth of things youdidn't need!"

"You have great discretionary powers--great discretionary powers, mydear, you will find!" Mr. De Guenther had said, as he patted hershoulder. Phyllis took it as a compliment at the time. "Discretionarypowers" sounded as if he thought she was a quite intelligent youngperson. It did not occur to her till he had gone, and she was alone withher check-book, that it meant she had a good deal of liberty to do asshe liked. 

It seemed to be expected of her to stay. Nobody even suggested apossibility of her going home again, even to pack her trunk. Mrs. DeGuenther casually volunteered to do that, a little after the housekeeperhad told her where her rooms were. She had been consulting with thehousekeeper for what seemed ages, when she happened to want some pinsfor something, and asked for her suit-case. 

"It's in your rooms, " said the housekeeper. "Mrs. Harrington--the lateMrs. Harrington, I should say----"

Phyllis stopped listening at this point. Who was the present Mrs. Harrington? she wondered before she thought--and then remembered. Why--_she_ was! So there was no Phyllis Braithwaite any more! Of coursenot.... Yet she had always liked the name so--well, a last name was asmall thing to give up.... Into her mind fitted an incongruous, sillystory she had heard once at the library, about a girl whose last namewas Rose, and whose parents christened her Wild, because the combinationappealed to them. And then she married a man named Bull.... Meanwhilethe housekeeper had been going on. 

... "She had the bedroom and bath opening from the other side of Mr. Allan's day-room ready for you, madam. It's been ready several weeks. "

"Has it?" said Phyllis. It was like Mrs. Harrington, that carefulplanning of even where she should be put. "Is Mr. Harrington in hisday-room now?"

For some reason she did not attempt to give herself, she did not want tosee him again just now. Besides, it was nearly eleven and time a verytired girl was in bed. She wanted a good night's rest, before she had toget up and be Mrs. Harrington, with Allan and the check-book and theCurrent Expenses all tied to her. 

Some one had laid everything out for her in the bedroom; the filmy newnightgown over a chair, the blue satin mules underneath, her plaintoilet-things on a dressing-table, and over another chair the exquisiteivory crepe negligee with its floating rose ribbons. She took a hastybath--there was so much hot water that she was quite reconciled for amoment to being a check-booked and wolf hounded Mrs. Harrington--andslid straight into bed without even stopping to braid her loosened, honey-colored hair. 

It seemed to her that she was barely asleep when there came an urgentknocking at her door. 

"Yes?" she said sleepily, looking mechanically for her alarm-clock asshe switched on the light. "What is it, please?"

"It's I, Wallis, Mr. Allan's man, Madame, " said a nervous voice. "Mr. Allan's very bad. I've done all the usual things, but nothing seems toquiet him. He hates doctors so, and they make him so wrought up--pleasecould you come, ma'am? He says as how all of us are all dead--oh, _please_, Mrs. Harrington!"

There was panic in the man's voice. 

"All right, " said Phyllis sleepily, dropping to the floor as she spokewith the rapidity that only the alarm-clock-broken know. She snatchedthe negligee around her, and thrust her feet hastily into the blue satinslippers--why, she was actually using her wedding finery! And what aneasily upset person that man was! But everybody in the house seemed tohave nerves on edge. It was no wonder about Allan--he wanted hismother, of course, poor boy! She felt, as she ran fleetly across thelong room that separated her sleeping quarters from her husband's, thesame mixture of pity and timidity that she had felt with him before. Poor boy! Poor, silent, beautiful statue, with his one friend gone! Sheopened the door and entered swiftly into his room. 

She was not thinking about herself at all, only of how she could helpAllan, but there must have been something about her of the picture-bookangel to the pain-racked man, lying tensely at length in the room'sdarkest corner. Her long, dully gold hair, loosening from its twist, flew out about her, and her face was still flushed with sleep. There wasa something about her that was vividly alight and alive, perhaps thelight in her blue eyes. 

From what the man had said Phyllis had thought Allan was delirious, butshe saw at once that he was only in severe pain, and talking moredisconnectedly, perhaps, than the slow-minded Englishman could follow. He did not look like a statue now. His cheeks were burning with evidentpain, and his yellow-brown eyes, wide-open, and dilated to darkness, stared straight out. His hands were clenching and unclenching, and hishead moved restlessly from side to side. Every nerve and muscle, shecould see, was taut. 

"They're all dead, " he muttered. "Father and Mother and Louise--andI--only I'm not dead enough to bury. Oh, God, I wish I was!"

That wasn't delirium; it was something more like heart-break. Phyllismoved closer to him, and dropped one of her sleep-warm hands on hiscold, clenched one. 

"Oh, poor boy!" she said. "I'm so sorry--so sorry!" She closed her handstight over both his. 

Some of her strong young vitality must have passed between them andhelped him, for almost immediately his tenseness relaxed a little, andhe looked at her. 

"You--you're not a nurse, " he said. "They go around--like--likea--vault----"

She had caught his attention! That was a good deal, she felt. Sheforgot everything about him, except that he was some one to becomforted, and her charge. She sat down on the bed by him, still holdingtight to his hands. 

"No, indeed, " she said, bending nearer him, her long loose hair fallingforward about her resolutely-smiling young face. "Don't you rememberseeing me? I never was a nurse. "

"What--are you?" he asked feebly. 

"I'm--why, the children call me the Liberry Teacher, " she answered. Itoccurred to her that it would be better to talk on brightly at randomthan to risk speaking of his mother to him, as she must if she remindedhim of their marriage. "I spend my days in a basement, making bad littleboys get so interested in the Higher Culture that they'll forget toshoot crap and smash windows. "

One of the things which had aided Phyllis to rise from desk-assistant toone of the Children's Room librarians was a very sweet and carryingvoice--a voice which arrested even a child's attention, and held hisinterest. It held Allan now; merely the sound of it, seemingly. 

"Go on--talking, " he murmured. Phyllis smiled and obeyed. 

"Sometimes the Higher Culture doesn't work, " she said. "Yesterday one ofmy imps got hold of a volume of Shaw, and in half an hour his auntmarched in on me and threatened I don't know what to a library that'taught chilren to disrespect their lawful guardeens. '"

"I remember now, " said Allan. "You are the girl in the blue dress. Thegirl mother had me marry. I remember. "

"Yes, " said Phyllis soothingly, and a little apologetically. "I know. But that--oh, please, it needn't make a bit of difference. It was onlyso I could see that you were looked after properly, you know. I'll neverbe in the way, unless you want me to do something for you. "

"I don't mind, " he said listlessly, as he had before.... "_Oh, thisdreadful darkness, and mother dead in it somewhere!_"

"Wallis, " called Phyllis swiftly, "turn up the lights!"

The man slipped the close green silk shades from the electric bulbs. Allan shrank as if he had been hurt. 

"I can't stand the glare, " he cried. 

"Yes, you can for a moment, " she said firmly. "It's better than theghastly green glow. "

It was probably the first time Allan Harrington had been contradictedsince his accident. He said nothing more for a minute, and Phyllisdirected Wallis to bring a sheet of pink tissue paper from hersuit-case, where she remembered it lay in the folds of some new muslinthing. Under her direction still, he wrapped the globes in it andsecured it with string. 

"There!" she told Allan triumphantly when Wallis was done. "See, thereis no glare now; only a pretty rose-colored glow. Better than the green, isn't it?"

Allan looked at her again. "You are--kind, " he said. "Mother said--youwould be kind. Oh, mother--mother!" He tried uselessly to lift one armto cover his convulsed face, and could only turn his head a littleaside. 

"You can go, Wallis, " said Phyllis softly, with her lips only. "Be inthe next room. " The man stole out and shut the door softly. Phyllisherself rose and went toward the window, and busied herself in braidingup her hair. There was almost silence in the room for a few minutes. 

"Thank--you, " said Allan brokenly. "Will you--come back, please?"

She returned swiftly, and sat by him as she had before. 

"Would you mind--holding my wrists again?" he asked. "I feel quieter, somehow, when you do--not so--lost. " There was a pathetic boyishness inhis tone that the sad, clear lines of his face would never prepare youfor. 

Phyllis took his wrists in her warm, strong hands obediently. 

"Are you in pain, Allan?" she asked. "Do you mind if I call you Allan?It's the easiest way. "

He smiled at her a little, faintly. It occurred to her that perhaps thenovelty of her was taking his mind a little from his own feelings. 

"No--no pain. I haven't had any for a very long time now. Only thisdreadful blackness dragging at my mind, a blackness the light hurts. "

"_Why!_" said Phyllis to herself, being on known ground here--"why, it'snervous depression! I believe cheering-up _would_ help. I know, " shesaid aloud; "I've had it. "

"You?" he said. "But you seem so--happy!"

"I suppose I am, " said Phyllis shyly. She felt a little afraid of "poorAllan" still, now that there was nothing to do for him, and they weretalking together. And he had not answered her question, either;doubtless he wanted her to say "Mr. Allan" or even "Mr. Harrington!" Hereplied to her thought in the uncanny way invalids sometimes do. 

"You said something about what we were to call each other, " he murmured. "It would be foolish, of course, not to use first names. Yours is Alice, isn't it?"

Phyllis laughed. "Oh, worse than that!" she said. "I was named out of apoetrybook, I believe--Phyllis Narcissa. But I always conceal theNarcissa. "

"Phyllis. Thank you, " he said wearily. ... "_Phyllis, don't let go!Talk_ to me!" His eyes were those of a man in torment. 

"What shall I talk about?" she asked soothingly, keeping the two cold, clutching hands in her warm grasp. "Shall I tell you a story? I know agreat many stories by heart, and I will say them for you if you like. Itwas part of my work. "

"Yes, " he said. "Anything. "

Phyllis arranged herself more comfortably on the bed, for it looked asif she had some time to stay, and began the story she knew best, becauseher children liked it best, Kipling's "How the Elephant Got His Trunk. ""A long, long time ago, O Best Beloved.... "

Allan listened, and, she thought, at times paid attention to the words. He almost smiled once or twice, she was nearly sure. She went straighton to another story when the first was done. Never had she worked sohard to keep the interest of any restless circle of children as sheworked now, sitting up in the pink light in her crepe wrappings, withher school-girl braids hanging down over her bosom, and AllanHarrington's agonized golden-brown eyes fixed on her pitying ones. 

"You must be tired, " he said more connectedly and quietly when she hadended the second story. "Can't you sit up here by me, propped on thepillows? And you need a quilt or something, too. "

This from an invalid who had been given nothing but himself to think ofthis seven years back! Phyllis's opinion of Allan went up very much. Shehad supposed he would be very selfish. But she made herself a bank ofpillows, and arranged herself by Allan's side so that she could keepfast to his hands without any strain, something as skaters hold. Shewrapped a down quilt from the foot of the bed around her mummy-fashionand went on to her third story. Allan's eyes, as she talked on, grewless intent--drooped. She felt the relaxation of his hands. She wentmonotonously on, closing her own eyes--just for a minute, as shefinished her story. 

VIII

"I've overslept the alarm!" was Phyllis's first thought next morningwhen she woke. "It must be--" Where was she? So tired, so very tired, she remembered being, and telling some one an interminable story.... Sheheld her sleepy eyes wide open by will-power, and found that a silentbut evidently going clock hung in sight. Six-thirty. Then she hadn'toverslept the alarm. But ... She hadn't set any alarm. And she had beensleeping propped up in a sitting position, half on--why, it was ashoulder. And she was rolled tight in a terra-cotta down quilt. She satup with a jerk--fortunately a noiseless one--and turned to look. Thensuddenly she remembered all about it, that jumbled, excited, hard-working yesterday which had held change and death and marriage forher, and which she had ended by perching on "poor Allan Harrington's"bed and sending him to sleep by holding his hands and telling himchildren's stories. She must have fallen asleep after he did, and sliddown on his shoulder. A wonder it hadn't disturbed him! She stoleanother look at him, as he lay sleeping still, heavily and quietly. After all, she was married to him, and she had a perfect right to recitehim to sleep if she wanted to. She unrolled herself cautiously, and slidout like a shadow. 

She almost fell over poor Wallis, sleeping too in his clothes outsidethe door, on Allan's day couch. He came quickly to his feet, as if hewere used to sudden waking. 

"Don't disturb Mr. Harrington, " said Phyllis as staidly as if she hadbeen giving men-servants orders in her slipper-feet all her life. "Heseems to be sleeping quietly. "

"Begging your pardon, Mrs. Harrington, but you haven't been giving himanything, have you?" asked Wallis. "He hasn't slept without a break fortwo hours to my knowledge since I've been here, not without medicine. "

"Not a thing, " said Phyllis, smiling with satisfaction. "He must havebeen sleeping nearly three hours now! I read him to sleep, or whatamounted to it. I got his nerves quiet, I think. Please kill anybodythat tries to wake him, Wallis. "

"Very good, ma'am, " said Wallis gravely. "And yourself, ma'am?"

"I'm going to get some sleep, too, " she said. "Call me if there'sanything--useful. "

She meant "necessary, " but she wanted so much more sleep she never knewthe difference. When she got into her room she found that there also shewas not alone: the wistful wolfhound was curled plaintively across herbed, which he overlapped. From his nose he seemed to have been dippinglargely into the cup of chocolate somebody had brought to her, and whichshe had forgotten to drink when she found it, on her first retiring. 

"You aren't a _bit_ high-minded, " said Phyllis indignantly. She was toosleepy to do more than shove him over to the back of the bed. "All--thebeds here are so--_full_, " she complained sleepily; and crawled inside, and never woke again till nearly afternoon. 

There was all the grave business to be done, in the days that followed, of taking Mrs. Harrington to a quiet place beside her husband, anddrawing together again the strings of the disorganized household. Phyllis found herself whispering over and over again:

 "The sweeping up the heart And putting love away We shall not need to use again. Until the Judgment Day. "

And with all there was to see after, it was some days before she sawAllan again, more than to speak to brightly as she crossed their commonsitting-room. He did not ask for her. She looked after his comfortfaithfully, and tried to see to it that his man Wallis was all he shouldbe--a task which was almost hopeless from the fact that Wallis knew muchmore about his duties than she did, even with Mrs. Harrington'spainstakingly detailed notes to help her. Also his attitude to hismaster was of such untiring patience and worship that it made Phyllisfeel like a rude outsider interfering between man and wife. 

However, Wallis was inclined to approve of his new mistress, who wasnot fussy, seemed kind, and had given his beloved Mr. Allan nearly threehours of unbroken sleep. Allan had been a little better ever since. Wallis had told Phyllis this. But she was inclined to think that thebetterment was caused by the counter-shock of his mother's death, whichhad shaken him from his lethargy, and perhaps even given his nerves abetter balance. And she insisted that the pink paper stay on theelectric lights. 

After about a week of this, Phyllis suddenly remembered that she had notbeen selfish at all yet. Where was her rose-garden--the garden she hadmarried the wolfhound and Allan and the check-book for? Where were allthe things she had intended to get? The only item she had bought as yetran, on the charge account she had taken over with the rest, "1 doz. Checked dish-towels"; and Mrs. Clancy, the housekeeper's, pressingdemand was responsible for these. 

"It's certainly time I was selfish, " said Phyllis to the wolfhound, whofollowed her round unendingly as if she had patches of sunshine in herpocket: glorious patches, fit for a life-sized wolfhound. Perhaps he wasgrateful because she had ordered him long daily walks. He wagged histail now as she spoke, and rubbed himself curvingly against her. He wasa rather affected dog. 

So Phyllis made herself out a list in a superlatively neat library hand:

 One string of blue beads. One lot of very fluffy summer frocks with flowers on them. One rose-garden. One banjo and a self-teacher. (And a sound-proof room. ) One set Arabian Nights. One set of Stevenson, all but his novels. Ever so many Maxfield Parrish pictures full of Prussian-blue skies. A house to put them in, with fireplaces. A lady's size motor-car that likes me. A plain cat with a tame disposition. A hammock. A sun-dial. (But that might be thrown in with the garden. ) A gold watch-bracelet. All the colored satin slippers I want. A room big enough to put all father's books up. 

It looked shamelessly long, but Phyllis's "discretionary powers" wouldcover it, she knew. Mrs. Harrington's final will, while full of advice, had been recklessly trusting. 

She could order everything in one afternoon, she was sure, all but thehouse, the garden, the motor, which she put checks against, and theplain cat, which she thought she could pick up in the village where herhouse would be. 

Next she went to see Allan. She didn't want to bother him, but she didfeel that she ought to share her plans with him as far as possible. Besides, it occurred to her that she could scarcely remember what he waslike to speak to, and really owed it to herself to go. She fluffed outher hair loosely, put on her pale-green gown that had clinging lines, and pulled some daffodils through her sash. She had resolved to avoidanything sombre where Allan was concerned--and the green gown was verybecoming. Then, armed with her list and a pencil, she crossed boldly tothe couch where her Crusader lay in the old attitude, moveless and withhalf-closed eyes. 

"Allan, " she asked, standing above him, "do you think you could standbeing talked to for a little while?"

"Why--yes, " said Allan, opening his eyes a little more. "Wallis, get--Mrs. Harrington--a chair. "

He said the name haltingly, and Phyllis wondered if he disliked herhaving it. She dropped down beside him, like a smiling touch of springin the dark room. 

"Do you mind their calling me that?" she asked. "If there's anythingelse they could use----"

"Mother made you a present of the name, " he said, smiling faintly. "Noreason why I should mind. "

"All right, " said Phyllis cheerfully. After all, there was nothing elseto call her, speaking of her. The servants, she knew, generally said"the young madam, " as if her mother-in-law were still alive. 

"I want to talk to you about things, " she began; and had to stop to dealwith the wolfhound, who was trying to put both paws on her shoulders. "Oh, Ivan, _get_ down, honey! I _wish_ somebody would take a day offsome time to explain to you that you're not a lap-dog! Do you likewolfhounds specially better than any other kind of dog, Allan?"

"Not particularly, " said Allan, patting the dog languidly as he put hishead in a convenient place for the purpose. "Mother bought him, shesaid, because he would look so picturesque in my sick-room. She wantedhim to lie at my feet or something. But he never saw it thatway--neither did I. Hates sick-rooms. Don't blame him. "

This was the longest speech Allan had made yet, and Phyllis learnedseveral things from it that she had only guessed before. One was thatthe atmosphere of embodied grief and regret in the house had been Mrs. Harrington's, not Allan's--that he was more young and natural than shehad thought, better material for cheering; that his mother's devotionhad been something of a pressure on him at times; and that he himselfwas not interested in efforts to stage his illness correctly. 

What he really had said when the dog was introduced, she learned laterfrom the attached Wallis, was that he might be a cripple, but he wasn'tgoing to be part of any confounded tableau. Whereupon his mother hadcried for an hour, kissing and pitying him in between, and his nighthad been worse than usual. But the hound had stayed outside. 

Phyllis made an instant addition to her list. "One bull-pup, convenientsize, for Allan. " The plain cat could wait. She had heard of publicitycampaigns; she had made up her mind, and a rather firm young mind itwas, that she was going to conduct a cheerfulness campaign in behalf ofthis listless, beautiful, darkness-locked Allan of hers. Unknowingly, she was beginning to regard him as much her property as the check-book, and rather more so than the wolfhound. She moved back a little, andreconciled herself to the dog, who had draped as much of his body aswould go, over her, and was batting his tail against her joyfully. 

"Poor old puppy, " she said. "I want to talk over some plans with you, Allan, " she began again determinedly. She was astonished to see Allanwince. 

"_Don't!_" he said, "for heaven's sake! You'll drive me crazy!"

Phyllis drew back a little indignantly, but behind the couch she sawWallis making some sort of face that was evidently intended for awarning. Then he slipped out of the room, as if he wished her to followsoon and be explained to. "Plans" must be a forbidden subject. Anyhow, crossness was a better symptom than apathy!

"Very well, " she said brightly, smiling her old, useful, cheering-a-bad-child library smile at him. "It was mostly about things Iwanted to buy for myself, any way--satin slippers and such. I don'tsuppose they _would_ interest a man much. "

"Oh, that sort of thing, " said Allan relievedly. "I thought you meantthings that had to do with me. If you have plans about me, go ahead, foryou know I can't do anything to stop you--but for heaven's sake, don'tdiscuss it with me first!"

He spoke carelessly, but the pity of it struck to Phyllis's heart. Itwas true, he couldn't stop her. His foolish, adoring little desperatemother, in her anxiety to have her boy taken good care of, had exposedhim to a cruel risk. Phyllis knew herself to be trustworthy. She knewthat she could no more put her own pleasures before her charge's welfarethan she could steal his watch. Her conscience was New-England rock. But, oh! suppose Mr. De Guenther had chosen some girl who didn't care, who would have taken the money and not have done the work! She shiveredat the thought of what Allan had escaped, and caught his handimpulsively, as she had on that other night of terror. 

"Oh, Allan Harrington, I _wouldn't_ do anything I oughtn't to! I knowit's dreadful, having a strange girl wished on you this way, but truly Imean to be as good as I can, and never in the way or anything! Indeed, you may trust me! You--you don't mind having me round, do you?"

Allan's cold hand closed kindly on hers. He spoke for the first time asa well man speaks, quietly, connectedly, and with a little authority. 

"The fact that I am married to you does not weigh on me at all, my dearchild, " he said. "I shall be dead, you know, this time five years, andwhat difference does it make whether I'm married or not? I don't mindyou at all. You seem a very kind and pleasant person. I am sure I cantrust you. Now are you reassured?"

"Oh, _yes_, " said Phyllis radiantly, "and you _can_ trust me, and I_won't_ fuss. All you have to do if I bore you is to look bored. Youcan, you know. You don't know how well you do it! And I'll stop. I'mgoing to ask Wallis how much of my society you'd better have, if any. "

"Why, I don't think a good deal of it would hurt me, " he saidindifferently. But he smiled in a quite friendly fashion. 

"All right, " said Phyllis again brightly. But she fell silent then. There were two kinds of Allan, she reflected. This kind of Allan, whowas very much more grown-up and wise than she was, and of whom she stillstood a little in awe; and the little-boy Allan who had clung to her innervous dread of the dark the other night--whom she had sent to sleepwith children's stories. She wondered which was real, which he had beenwhen he was well. 

"I must go now and have something out with Mrs. Clancy, " she said, smiling and rising. "She's perfectly certain carpets have to come upwhen you put down mattings, and I'm perfectly certain they don't. "

She tucked the despised list, to which she had furtively added herbull-pup, into her sleeve, took her hand from his and went away. Itseemed to Allan that the room was a little darker. 

IX

Outside the sitting-room door stood Wallis, who had been lying in wait. 

"I wanted to explain, madam, about the plans, " he said. "It worries Mr. Allan. You see, madam, the late Mrs. Harrington was a great one forplans. She had, if I may say so, a new one every day, and she'd argueyou deaf, dumb, and blind--not to speak ill of the dead--till you werefair beat out fighting it. Then you'd settle down to it--and next daythere be another one, with Mrs. Harrington rooting for it just as hard, and you, with your mouth fixed for the other plan, so to speak, wouldhave to give in to that. The plan she happened to have last always wentthrough, because she fought for that as hard as she had for the others, and you were so bothered by then you didn't care what. "

Wallis's carefully impersonal servant-English had slipped from him, andhe was talking to Phyllis as man to man, but she was very glad of it. These were the sort of facts she had to elicit. 

"When Mr. Allan was well, " he went on, "he used to just laugh and say, 'All right, mother darling, ' and pet her and do his own way--he wasalways laughing and carrying on then, Mr. Allan--but after he was hurt, of course, he couldn't get away, and the old madam, she'd sit by hiscouch by the hour, and he nearly wild, making plans for him. She'd spendweeks planning details of things over and over, never getting tired. Andthen off again to the next thing! It was all because she was so fond ofhim, you see. But if you'll pardon my saying so, madam"--Wallis wasresuming his man-servant manners--"it was not always good for Mr. Allan. "

"I think I understand, " said Phyllis thoughtfully, as she and thewolfhound went to interview Mrs. Clancy. So that was why! She hadimagined something of the sort. And she--she herself--was doubtless theoutcome of one of Mrs. Harrington's long-detailed plans, insisted on toAllan till he had acquiesced for quiet's sake! ... But he said now hedidn't mind. She was somehow sure he wouldn't have said it if it had notbeen true. Then Wallis's other words came to her, "He was alwayslaughing then, " and suddenly there surged up in Phyllis a passionateresolve to give Allan back at least a little of his lightness of heart. He might be going to die--though she didn't believe it--but at least shecould make things less monotonous and dark for him; and she wouldn'toffer him plans! And if he objected when the plans rose up and hit him, why, the shock might do him good. She thought she was fairly sure of anally in Wallis. 

She cut her interview with Mrs. Clancy short. Allan, lying motionless, caught a green flash of her, crossing into her room to dress, anotherblue flash as she went out; dropped his eyelids and crossed his hands todoze a little, an innocent and unwary Crusader. He did not know it, buta Plan was about to rise up and hit him. The bride his mother had lefthim as a parting legacy had gone out to order a string of blue beads, abull-pup, a house, a motor, a banjo, and a rose-garden; as she went sheadded a talking machine to the list; and he was to be planted in thevery centre of everything. 

"Seems like a nice girl, Wallis, " said Allan dreamily. And the discreetWallis said nothing (though he knew a good deal) about his mistress'sshopping-list. 

"Yes, Mr. Allan, " he conceded. 

 * * * * *

It was Phyllis Harrington's firm belief that Mr. De Guenther couldproduce anything anybody wanted at any time, or that if he couldn't hiswife could. So it was to him that she went on her quest for therose-garden, with its incidental house. The rest of the items shethought she could get for herself. It was nearly the last of April, andshe wanted a well-heated elderly mansion, preferably Colonial, not toounwieldily large, with as many rose-trees around it as her discretionarypowers would stand. And she wanted it as near and as soon as possible. By the help of Mr. De Guenther, amused but efficient, Mrs. De Guenther, efficient but sentimental; and an agent who was efficient merely, shegot very nearly what she wanted. Money could do a great deal more than acountry minister's daughter had ever had any way of imagining. By itsaid she found it possible to have furniture bought and placed inside afortnight, even to a list of books set up in sliding sectional cases. She had hoped to buy those cases some day, one at a time, and gettingthem at one fell swoop seemed to her more arrogantly opulent than thepurchase of the house and grounds--than even the big shiny victrola. Shehad bought that herself, before there was a house to put it in, going onthe principle that all men not professional musicians have a concealedpassion for music that they can create themselves by merely winding upsomething. And--to anticipate--she found that as far as Allan wasconcerned she was quite right. 

"But why do you take this very radical step, my dear?" asked Mrs. DeGuenther gently, as she helped Phyllis choose furniture. 

"I am going to try the only thing Allan's mother seems to haveomitted, " said Phyllis dauntlessly. "A complete change of surroundings. "

"Oh, my dear!" breathed Mrs. De Guenther. "It may help poor Allan morethan we know! And dear Angela did discuss moving often, but she couldnever bear to leave the city house, where so many of her dear ones havepassed away. "

"Well, none of _my_ dear ones are going to pass away there, " saidPhyllis irreverently, "unless Mrs. Clancy wants to. I'm not even takingany servants but Wallis. The country-house doesn't need any more than acook, a chambermaid, and outdoor man. Mrs. Clancy is getting them. Itold her I didn't care what age or color she chose, but they had to becheerful. She will stay in the city and keep the others straight, insomething she calls board-wages. I'm starting absolutely fresh. "

They were back at Mrs. De Guenther's house by the time Phyllis was donetelling her plans, Phyllis sitting in the identical pluffy chair whereshe had made her decision to marry Allan. Mrs. De Guenther sprang fromher own chair, and came over and impulsively kissed her. 

"God bless you, dear!" she said. "I believe it was Heaven that inspiredAlbert and myself to choose you to carry on poor Angela's work. "

Phyllis flushed indignantly. 

"I'm undoing a little of it, I hope, " she said passionately. "If I canonly make that poor boy forget some of those dreadful years she spentcrying over him, I shan't have lived in vain!"

Mrs. De Guenther looked at Phyllis earnestly--and, most unexpectedly, burst into a little tinkling laugh. 

"My dear, " she said mischievously, "what about all the fine things youwere going to do for yourself to make up for being tied to poor Allan?You should really stop being unselfish, and enjoy yourself a little. "

Phyllis felt herself flushing crimson. Elderly people did seem to be sosentimental!

"I've bought myself lots of things, " she defended herself. "Most of thisis really for me. And--I can't help being good to him. It's only commonhumanity. I was never so sorry for anybody in my life--you'd be, too, ifit were Mr. De Guenther!"

She thought her explanation was complete. But she must have saidsomething that she did not realize, for Mrs. De Guenther only laughedher little tinkling laugh again, and--as is the fashion of elderlypeople--kissed her. 

"I would, indeed, my dear, " said she. 

X

Allan Harrington lay in his old attitude on his couch in the darkenedday-room, his tired, clear-cut face a little thrown back, eyeshalf-closed. He was not thinking of anything or any one especially;merely wrapped in a web of the dragging, empty, gray half-thoughts ofweariness in general that had hung about him so many years. Wallis wasnot there. Wallis had been with him much less lately, and he hadscarcely seen Phyllis for a fortnight; or, for the matter of that, thedog, or any one at all. Something was going on, he supposed, but hescarcely troubled himself to wonder what. The girl was doubtless makingherself boudoirs or something of the sort in a new part of the house. Heclosed his eyes entirely, there in the dusky room, and let the web ofdreary, gray, formless thought wrap him again. 

Phyllis's gay, sweetly carrying voice rang from outside the door:

"The three-thirty, then, Wallis, and I feel as if I were going to stealCharlie Ross! Well----"

On the last word she broke off and pushed the sitting-room door softlyopen and slid in. She walked in a pussy-cat fashion which would havesuggested to any one watching her a dark burden on her conscience. 

She crossed straight to the couch, looked around for the chair thatshould have been by it but wasn't, and sat absently down on the floor. She liked floors. 

"Allan!" she said. 

No answer. 

"Allan _Harrington_!"

Still none. Allan was half-asleep, or what did instead, in one of hisabstracted moods. 

"_All-an Harrington!_"

This time she reached up and pulled at his heavy silk sleeve as shespoke. 

"Yes, " said Allan courteously, as if from an infinite distance. 

"Would you mind, " asked Phyllis guilelessly, "if Wallis--we--movedyou--a little? I can tell you all about everything, unless you'd rathernot have the full details of the plan----"

"Anything, " said Allan wearily from the depths of his gray cloud; "onlydon't _bother_ me about it!"

Phyllis jumped to her feet, a whirl of gay blue skirts and cheerfullytossing blue feathers. "Good-by, dear Crusader!" she said with a catchin her voice that might have been either a laugh or a sob. "The nexttime you see me you'll probably _hate_ me! Wallis!"

Wallis appeared like the Slave of the Lamp. "It's all right, Wallis, "she said, and ran. Wallis proceeded thereupon to wheel his master'scouch into the bedroom. 

"If you're going to be moved, you'd better be dressed a little heavier, sir, " he said with the same amiable guilelessness, if the victim had butnoticed it, which Phyllis had used from her seat on the floor not longbefore. 

"Very well, " said Allan resignedly from his cloud. And Wallis proceededto suit the action to the word. 

Allan let him go on in unnoticing silence till it came to that totallyunfamiliar thing these seven years, a stand-up collar. A shiningly newlinen collar of the newest cut, a beautiful golden-brown knit tie, agray suit----

"What on earth?" inquired Allan, awakening from his lethargy. "I don'tneed a collar and tie to keep me from getting cold on a journey acrossthe house. And where did you get those clothes? They look new. "

Wallis laid his now fully dressed master back to a recliningposition--he had been propped up--and tucked a handkerchief into theappropriate pocket as he replied, "Grant & Moxley's, sir, where youalways deal. " And he wheeled the couch back to the day-room, over to itsvery door. 

It did not occur to Allan, as he was being carried downstairs by Wallisand Arthur, another of the servants, that anything more than a change ofrooms was intended; nor, as he was carried out at its door to a longclosed carriage, that it was anything worse than his new keeper'smistaken idea that drives would be good for him. He was a littleirritable at the length and shutupness of the drive, though, as his cothad been swung deftly from the ceiling of the carriage, he was notjarred. But when Wallis and Arthur carried the light pallet on which helay swiftly up a plank walk laid to the door of a private car--why thenit began to occur to Allan Harrington that something was happening. And--which rather surprised himself--he did not lift a superciliouseyebrow and say in a soft, apathetic voice, "Very we-ell!" Instead, heturned his head towards the devoted Wallis, who had helped twoconductors swing the cot from the ceiling, and was now waiting for thestorm to break. And what he said to Wallis was this:

"What the deuce does this tomfoolery mean?" As he spoke he felt theaccumulated capacity for temper of the last seven years surging uptoward Wallis, and Arthur, and Phyllis, and the carriage-horses, andeverything else, down to the two conductors. Wallis seemed ratherrelieved than otherwise. Waiting for a storm to break is rather wearing. 

"Well, sir, Mrs. Harrington, she thought, sir, that--that a little movewould do you good. And you didn't want to be bothered, sir----"

"Bothered!" shouted Allan, not at all like a bored and dying invalid. "Ishould think I did, when a change in my whole way of life is made! Whogave you, or Mrs. Harrington, permission for this outrageousperformance! It's sheer, brutal, insulting idiocy!"

"Nobody, sir--yes, sir, " replied Wallis meekly. "Would you care for adrink, sir--or anything?"

"_No!_" thundered Allan. 

"Or a fan?" ventured Wallis, approaching near with that article andlaying it on the coverlid. Allan's hand snatched the fan angrily--andbefore he thought he had hurled it at Wallis! Weakly, it is true, for itlighted ingloriously about five feet away; but he had _thrown_ it, witha movement that must have put to use the muscles of the long-disusedupper arm. Wallis sat suddenly down and caught his breath. 

"Mr. Allan!" he said. "Do you know what you did then? You _threw_, andyou haven't been able to use more than your forearm before! Oh, Mr. Allan, you're getting better!"

Allan himself lay in astonishment at his feat, and forgot to be angryfor a moment. "I certainly did!" he said. 

"And the way you lost your temper!" went on Wallis enthusiastically. "Oh, Mr. Allan, it was beautiful! You haven't been more than to saysnarly since the accident! It was so like the way you used to throwhair-brushes----"

But at the mention of his lost temper Allan remembered to lose it stillfurther. His old capacity for storming, a healthy lad's healthy younghot-temperedness, had been weakened by long disuse, but he did fairlywell. Secretly it was a pleasure to him to find that he was alive enoughto care what happened, enough for anger. He demanded presently where hewas going. 

"Not more than two hours' ride, sir, I heard Mr. De Guenther mention, "answered Wallis at once. "A little place called Wallraven--quitecountry, sir, I believe. "

"So the De Guenthers are in it, too!" said Allan. "What the dickens hasthis girl done to them, to hypnotize them so?"

"But I've heard say it's a very pretty place, sir, " was all Wallisvouchsafed to this. The De Guenthers were not the only people Phyllishad hypnotized. 

He gave Allan other details as they went on, however. His clothes andpersonal belongings were coming on immediately. There were twosuit-cases, perhaps he had noticed, in the car with them. The youngmadam was planning to stay all the summer, he believed. Mrs. Clancy hadbeen left behind to look after the other servants, and he understoodthat she had seen to the engagement of a fresh staff of servants for thecountry. And Allan, still awakened by his fit of temper, and fresh fromthe monotony of his seven years' seclusion, found all the things Walliscould tell him very interesting. 

 * * * * *

Phyllis's rose-garden house had, among other virtues, the charm of beingnear the little station: a new little mission station which hadapparently been called Wallraven by some poetic young real-estateagency, for the surrounding countryside looked countrified enough to bea Gray's Corners, or Smith's Crossing, or some other such placid oldcountry name. There were more trees to be seen in Allan's quick passagefrom the train to the long old carryall (whose seats had been removed tomake room for his cot) than he had remembered existed. There were sleepybirds to be heard, too, talking about how near sunset and their bedtimehad come, and a little brook splashed somewhere out of sight. Altogetherspring was to be seen and heard and felt, winningly insistent. Allanforgave Wallis, not to speak of Phyllis and the conductors, to a certaindegree. He ordered the flapping black oilcloth curtain in front rolledup so he could see out, and secretly enjoyed the drive, unforeseenthough it had been. His spine never said a word. Perhaps it, too, enjoyed having a change from a couch in a dark city room. 

They saw no one in their passage through the long, low old house. Phyllis evidently had learned that Allan didn't like his carryingsabout done before people. 

Wallis seemed to be acting under a series of detailed orders. He andArthur carried their master to a long, well-lighted room at the end ofthe house, and deftly transferred him to a couch much more convenient, being newer, than the old one. On this he was wheeled to his adjoiningbedroom, and when Wallis had made him comfortable there, he left himmysteriously for a while. It was growing dark by now, and the lightswere on. They were rose-shaded, Allan noticed, as the others had been athome. Allan watched the details of his room with that vivid interest inlittle changes which only invalids can know. There was an old-fashionedlandscape story paper on the walls, with very little repeat. Over it, but not where they interfered with tracing out the adventures of thepaper people, were a good many pictures, quite incongruous, for theywere of the Remington type men like, but pleasant to see nevertheless. The furniture was chintz-covered and gay. There was not one thing inthe room to remind a man that he was an invalid. It occurred to Allanthat Phyllis must have put a good deal of deliberate work on the place. He lay contentedly, watching the grate fire, and trying to trace out thestory of the paper, for at least a half-hour. He found himself, atlength, much to his own surprise, thinking with a certain longing of hisdinner-tray. He was thinking of it more and more interestedly by thetime Wallis--trayless--came back. 

"Mr. And Mrs. De Guenther and the young madam are waiting for you in theliving-room, " he announced. "They would be glad if you would have supperwith them. "

"Very well, " said Allan amiably, still much to his own surprise. Thetruth was, he was still enough awake and interested to want to go onhaving things happen. 

The room Wallis wheeled him back into was a long, low one, wainscotedand bare-floored. It was furnished with the best imitation Chippendaleto be obtained in a hurry, but over and above there were cushionedchairs and couches enough for solid comfort. There were more cheerfulpictures, the Maxfield Parrishes Phyllis had wanted, over thegreen-papered walls. There was a fire here also. The room had no moreperiod than a girl's sentence, but there was a bright air of welcomenessand informality that was winning. An old-fashioned half-table againstthe wall was covered with a great many picknicky things to eat. Anothertable had more things, mostly to eat with, on it. And there were the DeGuenthers and Phyllis. On the whole it felt very like a welcome-home. 

Phyllis, in a satiny rose-colored gown he had never seen before, cameover to his couch to meet him. She looked very apprehensive and youngand wistful for the rôle of Bold Bad Hypnotist. She bent towards himwith her hand out, seemed about to speak, then backed, flushed, andacted as if something had frightened her badly. 

"Is she as afraid of me as all that?" thought Allan. Wallis must havegiven her a lurid account of how he had behaved. His quick impulse wasto reassure her. 

"Well, Phyllis, my dear, you certainly didn't bother me with plans_this_ time!" he said, smiling. "This is a bully surprise!"

"I--I'm glad you like it, " said his wife shyly, still backing away. 

"Of course he'd like it, " said Mrs. De Guenther's kind staccato voicebehind him. "Kiss your husband, and tell him he's welcome home, Phyllischild!"

Now, Phyllis was tired with much hurried work, and overstrung. AndAllan, lying there smiling boyishly up at her, Allan seen for the firsttime in these usual-looking gray man-clothes, was like neither themarble Crusader she had feared nor the heartbroken little boy she hadpitied. He was suddenly her contemporary, a very handsome and attractiveyoung fellow, a little her senior. From all appearances, he might havebeen well and normal, and come home to her only a little tired, perhaps, by the day's work or sport, as he lay smiling at her in that friendly, intimate way! It was terrifyingly different. Everything felt different. All her little pieces of feeling for him, pity and awe and friendlinessand love of service, seemed to spring suddenly together and makesomething else--something unplaced and disturbing. Her cheeks burnedwith a childish embarrassment as she stood there before him in herruffled pink gown. What should she do?

It was just then that Mrs. De Guenther's crisply spoken advice came. Phyllis was one of those people whose first unconscious instinct is toobey an unspoken order. She bent blindly to Allan's lips, and kissed himwith a child's obedience, then straightened up, aghast. He would thinkher very bold!

But he did not, for some reason. It may have seemed only comforting andnatural to him, that swift childish kiss, and Phyllis's honey-colored, violet-scented hair brushing his face. Men take a great deal withoutquestion as their rightful due. 

The others closed around him then, welcoming him, laughing at thesurprise and the way he had taken it, telling him all about it as ifeverything were as usual and pleasant as possible, and the present stateof things had always been a pleasant commonplace. And Wallis began toserve the picnic supper. 

XI

There were trays and little tables, and the food itself would havebetrayed a southern darky in the kitchen if nothing else had. It was thefirst meal Allan had eaten with any one for years, and he found it sointeresting as to be almost exciting. Wallis took the plates invisiblyaway when they were done, and they continued to stay in theirhalf-circle about the fire and talk it all over. Phyllis, tired to deathstill, had slid to her favorite floor-seat, curled on cushions andleaning against the couch-side. Allan could have touched her hair withhis hand. She thought of this, curled there, but she was too tired tomove. It was exciting to be near him, somehow, tired as she was. 

Most of the short evening was spent celebrating the fact that Allan hadthrown something at Wallis, who was recalled to tell the story threetimes in detail. Then there was the house to discuss, its good and badpoints, its nearnesses and farnesses. 

"Let me tell you, Allan, " said Mrs. De Guenther warmly at this point, from her seat at the foot of the couch, "this wife of yours is a wonder. Not many girls could have had a house in this condition two weeks afterit was bought. "

Allan looked down at the heap of shining hair below him, all he couldsee of Phyllis. 

"Yes, " he said consideringly. "She certainly is. "

At a certain slowness in his tone, Phyllis sprang up. "You must be tiredto _death_!" she said. "It must be nearly ten. Do you feel worn out?"

Before he could say anything, Mrs. De Guenther had also risen, and wassweeping away her husband. 

"Of course he is, " she said decisively. "What have we all been thinkingof? And we must go to bed, too, Albert, if you insist on taking thatearly train in the morning, and I insist on going with you. Good-night, children. "

Wallis had appeared by this time, and was wheeling Allan from the roombefore he had a chance to say much of anything but good-night. The DeGuenthers talked a little longer to Phyllis, and were gone also. Phyllisflung herself full-length on the rugs and pillows before the fire, tootired to move further. 

Well, she had everything that she had wished for on that wet Februaryday in the library. Money, leisure to be pretty, a husband whom she"didn't have to associate with much, " rest, if she ever gave herselfleave to take it, and the rose-garden. She had her wishes, as uncannilyfulfilled as if she had been ordering her fate from a department store, and had money to pay for it.... And back there in the city it wassomebody's late night, and that somebody--it would be Anna Black's turn, wouldn't it?--was struggling with John Zanowskis and Sadie Rabinowitzesby the lapful, just as she had. And yet--and yet they had really caredfor her, those dirty, dear little foreigners of hers. But she'd had towork for their liking.... Perhaps--perhaps she could make AllanHarrington like her as much as the children did. He had been so kindto-night about the move and all, and so much brighter, her handsomeAllan in his gray, every-day-looking man-clothes! If she could staybrave enough and kind enough and bright enough ... Her eyelidsdrooped.... Wallis was standing respectfully over her. 

"Mrs. Harrington, " he was saying, with a really masterly ignoring of herattitude on the rug, "Mr. Harrington says you haven't bid him good-nightyet. "

An amazing message! Had she been in the habit of it, that he demanded itlike a small boy? But she sprang up and followed Wallis into Allan'sroom. He was lying back in his white silk sleeping things among thewhite bed-draperies, looking as he always had before. Only, he seemedtoo alive and awake still for his old rôle of Crusader-on-a-tomb. 

"Phyllis, " he began eagerly, as she sat down beside him, "what made youso frightened when I first came? Wallis hadn't worried you, had he?"

"Oh, no; it wasn't that at all, " said Phyllis. "And thank you for beingso generous about it all. "

"I wasn't generous, " said her husband. "I behaved like everything to oldWallis about it. Well, what was it, then?"

"I--I--only--you looked so different in--_clothes_, " pleaded Phyllis, "like any man my age or older--as if you might get up and go tobusiness, or play tennis, or anything, and--and I was _afraid_ of you!That's all, truly!"

She was sitting on the bed's edge, her eyes down, her hands quivering inher lap, the picture of a school-girl who isn't quite sure whether she'sbeen good or not. 

"Why, that sounds truthful!" said Allan, and laughed. It was the firsttime she had heard him, and she gave a start. Such a clear, cheerful, _young_ laugh! Maybe he would laugh more, by and by, if she worked hardto make him. 

"Good-night, Allan, " she said. 

"Aren't you going to kiss me good-night?" demanded this new Allan, precisely as if she had been doing it ever since she met him. Evidentlythat kiss three hours ago had created a precedent. Phyllis colored toher ears. She seemed to herself to be always coloring now. But shemustn't cross Allan, tired as he must be!

"Good-night, Allan, " she said again sedately, and kissed his cheek asshe had done a month ago--years ago!--when they had been married. Thenshe fled. 

"Wallis, " said his master dreamily when his man appeared again, "I wantsome more real clothes. Tired of sleeping-suits. Get me some, please. Good-night. "

As for Phyllis, in her little green-and-white room above him, she wascrying comfortably into her pillow. She had not the faintest idea why, except that she liked doing it. She felt, through her sleepiness, afaint, hungry, pleasant want of something, though she hadn't an ideawhat it could be. She had everything, except that it wasn't time for theroses to be out yet. Probably that was the trouble.... Roses.... She, too, went to sleep. 

 * * * * *

"How did Mr. Allan pass the night?" Phyllis asked Wallis anxiously, standing outside his door next morning. She had been up since seven, speeding the parting guests and interviewing the cook and chambermaid. Mrs. Clancy's choice had been cheerful to a degree, and black, all ofit; a fat Virginia cook, a slim young Tuskegee chambermaid of a palesaddle-color, and a shiny brown outdoor man who came from nowhere inparticular, but was very useful now he was here. Phyllis had seen themall this morning, and found them everything servants should be. Now shewas looking after Allan, as her duty was. 

Wallis beamed from against the door-post, his tray in his hands. 

"Mrs. Harrington, it's one of the best sleeps Mr. Allan's had! Fourhours straight, and then sleeping still, if broken, till six! And stilltaking interest in things. Oh, ma'am, you should have heard himyesterday on the train, as furious as furious! It was beautiful!"

"Then his spine wasn't jarred, " said Phyllis thoughtfully. "Wallis, Ibelieve there was more nervous shock and nervous depression than everthe doctors realized. And I believe all he needs is to be kept happy, tobe much, much better. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he got so he couldmove freely from the waist up? I believe that may happen if we can keephim cheered and interested. "

Wallis looked down at his tray. "Yes, ma'am, " he said. "Not to speak illof the dead, Mrs. Harrington, the late Mrs. Harrington was always saying'My poor stricken boy, ' and things like that--'Do not jar him withill-timed light or merriment, ' and reminding him how bad he was. And shecertainly didn't jar him with any merriment, ma'am. "

"What were the doctors thinking about?" demanded Phyllis indignantly. 

"Well, ma'am, they did all sorts of things to poor Mr. Allan for thefirst year or so. And then, as nothing helped, and they couldn't findout what was wrong to have paralyzed him so, he begged to have themstopped hurting him. So we haven't had one for the past five years. "

"I think a masseur and a wheel-chair are the next things to get, " saidPhyllis decisively. "And remember, Wallis, there's something the matterwith Mr. Allan's shutters. They won't always close the sunshine out asthey should. "

Wallis almost winked, if an elderly, mutton-chopped servitor can beimagined as winking. 

"No, ma'am, " he promised. "Something wrong with 'em. I'll remember, ma'am. "

Phyllis went singing on down the sunny old house, swinging her coloredmuslin skirts and prancing a little with sheer joy of being twenty-five, and prettily dressed, with a dear house all her own, and--yes--a dearAllan a little her own, too! Doing well for a man what another woman hasdone badly has a perennial joy for a certain type of woman, and this waswhat Phyllis was in the very midst of. She pranced a little more, andcame almost straight up against a long old mirror with gilt cornices, which had come with the house and was staying with it. Phyllis stoppedand looked critically at herself. 

"I haven't taken time yet to be pretty, " she reminded the girl in theglass, and began then and there to take account of stock, by way ofbeginning. Why--a good deal had done itself! Her hair had been washedand sunned and sunned and washed about every ten minutes since she hadbeen away from the library. It was springy and three shades more golden. She had not been rushing out in all weathers unveiled, nor washinghastily with hard water and cheap library soap eight or ten times a day, because private houses are comparatively clean places. So her complexionhad been getting back, unnoticed, a good deal of its original countryrose-and-cream, with a little gold glow underneath. And the tiredheaviness was gone from her eyelids, because she had scarcely used hereyes since she had married Allan--there had been too much else to do!The little frown-lines between the brows had gone, too, with the need ofreading-glasses and work under electricity. She was more rounded, andher look was less intent. The strained Liberry Teacher look was gone. The luminous long blue eyes in the glass looked back at her girlishly. "Would you think we were twenty-five even?" they said. Phyllis smiledirrepressibly at the mirrored girl. 

"Yas'm, " said the rich and comfortable voice of Lily-Anna, the cook, from the dining-room door; "you sholy is pretty. Yas'm--a lady _wants_to stay pretty when she's married. Yo' don' look much mo'n a bride, ma'am, an' dat's a fac'. Does you want yo' dinnehs brought into desittin'-room regular till de gem'man gits well?"

"Yes--no--yes--for the present, any way, " said Phyllis, with a mixtureof confusion and dignity. Fortunately the doorbell chose this time toring. 

A business-like young messenger with a rocking crate wanted to speak tothe madam. The last item on Phyllis's shopping list had come. 

"The wolfhound's doing fine, ma'am, " the messenger answered in responseto her questions. "Like a different dog already. All he needed wasexercise and a little society. Yes'm, this pup's broken--in a manner, that is. Your man picked you out the best-tempered little feller in thelitter. Here, Foxy--careful, lady! Hold on to his leash!"

There was the passage of the check, a few directions aboutdog-biscuits, and then the messenger from the kennels drove back to thestation, the crate, which had been emptied of a wriggling six-monthsblack bull-dog, on the seat beside him. 

XII

Allan, lying at the window of the sunny bedroom, and wondering if theyhad been having springs like this all the time he had lived in the city, heard a scuffle outside the door. His wife's voice inquired breathlesslyof Wallis, "Can Mr. Allan--see me?... Oh, gracious--_don't_, Foxy, youlittle black gargoyle! Open the door, or--shut it--quick, Wallis!"

But the door, owing to circumstances over which nobody but the black doghad any control, flew violently open here, and Allan had a flying visionof his wife, flushed, laughing, and badly mussed, being railroadedacross the room by a prancingly exuberant French bull at the end of aleash. 

"He's--he's a cheerful dog, " panted Phyllis, trying to bring Foxy toanchor near Allan, "and I don't think he knows how to keep still longenough to pose across your feet--he wouldn't become them anyhow--he's areal man-dog, Allan, not an interior decoration.... Oh, Wallis, he hasMr. Allan's slipper! Foxy, you little fraud! Did him want a drink, angel-puppy?"

"Did you get him for me, Phyllis?" asked Allan when the tumult and theshouting had died, and the caracoling Foxy had buried his hideous littleblack pansy-face in a costly Belleek dish of water. 

"Yes, " gasped Phyllis from her favorite seat, the floor; "but youneedn't keep him unless you want to. I can keep him where you'll neversee him--can't I, honey-dog-gums? Only I thought he'd be company foryou, and don't you think he seems--cheerful?"

Allan threw his picturesque head back on the cushions, and laughed andlaughed. 

"Cheerful!" he said. "Most assuredly! Why--thank you, ever so much, Phyllis. You're an awfully thoughtful girl. I always did like bulls--hadone in college, a Nelson. Come here, you little rascal!"

He whistled, and the puppy lifted its muzzle from the water, made adripping dash to the couch, and scrambled up over Allan as if they hadowned each other since birth. Never was a dog less weighed down by theglories of ancestry. 

Allan pulled the flopping bat-ears with his most useful hand, and askedwith interest, "Why on earth did they call a French bull Foxy?"

"Yes, sir, " said Wallis. "I understand, sir, that he was the most activeand playful of the litter, and chewed up all his brothers' ears, sir. And the kennel people thought it was so clever that they called himFoxy. "

"The best-tempered dog in the litter!" cried Phyllis, bursting intohelpless laughter from the floor. 

"That doesn't mean he's bad-tempered, " explained master and man eagerlytogether. Phyllis began to see that she had bought a family pet as muchfor Wallis as for Allan. She left them adoring the dog with thatreverent emotion which only very ugly bull-dogs can wake in a man'sbreast, and flitted out, happy over the success of her new toy forAllan. 

"Take him out when he gets too much for Mr. Allan, " she managed to saysoftly to Wallis as she passed him. But, except for a run or so for hishealth, Wallis and Allan between them kept the dog in the bedroom mostof the day. Phyllis, in one of her flying visits, found the littlefellow, tired with play, dog-biscuits, and other attentions, snuggleddown by his master, his little crumpled black muzzle on the pillow closeto Allan's contented, sleeping face. She felt as if she wanted to cry. The pathetic lack of interests which made the coming of a new little dogsuch an event!

Before she hung one more picture, before she set up even a book from theboxes which had been her father's, before she arranged one more articleof furniture, she telephoned to the village for the regular delivery offour daily papers, and a half-dozen of the most masculine magazines shecould think of on the library lists. She had never known of Allan'sdoing any reading. That he had cared for books before the accident, sheknew. At any rate, she was resolved to leave no point uncovered thatmight, just possibly _might_, help her Allan just a little way tointerest in life, which she felt to be the way to recovery. He likedbeing told stories to, any way. 

"Do you think Mr. Allan will feel like coming into the living-roomto-day?" she asked Wallis, meeting him in the hall about two o'clock. 

"Why, he's dressed, ma'am, " was Wallis's astonishing reply, "and him andthe pup is having a fine game of play. He's got more use of that handan' arm, ma'am, than we thought. "

"Do you think he'd care to be wheeled into the living-room about four?"asked Phyllis. 

"For tea, ma'am?" inquired Wallis, beaming. "I should think so, ma'am. I'll ask, anyhow. "

Phyllis had not thought of tea--one does not stop for such leisurelyamenities in a busy public library--but she saw the beauty of the idea, and saw to it that the tea was there. Lily-Anna was a jewel. She builtthe fire up to a bright flame, and brought in some daffodils from thegarden without a word from her mistress. Phyllis herself saw that thevictrola was in readiness, and cleared a space for the couch near thefire. There was quite a festal feeling. 

The talking-machine was also a surprise for Allan. Phyllis thoughtafterward that she should have saved it for another day, but thetemptation to grace the occasion with it was too strong. She and Allanwere as excited over it as a couple of children, and the only drawbackto Allan's enjoyment was that he obviously wanted to take the recordsout of her unaccustomed fingers and adjust them himself. He knew how, itappeared, and Phyllis naturally didn't. However, she managed to followhis directions successfully. She had bought recklessly of rag-timediscs, and provided a fair amount of opera selections. Allan seemedequally happy over both. After the thing had been playing forthree-quarters of an hour, and most of the records were exhausted, Phyllis rang for tea. It was getting a little darker now, and thewood-fire cast fantastic red and black lights and shadows over the room. It was very intimate and thrilling to Phyllis suddenly, the fire-litroom, with just their two selves there. Allan, on his couch before thefire, looked bright and contented. The adjustable couch-head had beenbraced to such a position that he was almost sitting up. The bull-dog, who had lately come back from a long walk with the gratified outdoorman, snored regularly on the rug near his master, wakening enough to bathis tail on the floor if he was referred to. The little tea-table wasbetween Allan and Phyllis, crowned with a bunch of apple-blossoms, whosespring-like scent dominated the warm room. Phyllis, in her green gown, her cheeks pink with excitement, was waiting on her lord and master alittle silently. 

Allan watched her amusedly for awhile--she was as intent as a good childover her tea-ball and her lemon and her little cakes. 

"Say something, Phyllis, " he suggested with the touch of mischief shewas not yet used to, coming from him. 

"This is a serious matter, " she replied gravely. "Do you know I haven'tmade tea--afternoon tea, that is--for so long it's a wonder I know whichis the cup and which is the saucer?"

"Why not?" he asked idly, yet interestedly too. 

"I was otherwise occupied. I was a Daughter of Toil, " explained Phyllisserenely, setting down her own cup to relax in her chair, hands behindher head; looking, in her green gown, the picture of graceful, strong, young indolence. "I was a librarian--didn't you know?"

"No. I wish you'd tell me, if you don't mind, " said Allan. "About you, Imean, Phyllis. Do you know, I feel awfully married to you thisafternoon--you've bullied me so much it's no wonder--and I really oughtto know about my wife's dark past. "

Phyllis's heart beat a little faster. She, too, had felt "awfullymarried" here alone in the fire-lit living-room, dealing so intimatelyand gayly with Allan. 

"There isn't much to tell, " she said soberly. 

"Come over here closer, " commanded Allan the spoilt. "We've both had allthe tea we want. Come close by the couch. I want to see you when youtalk. "

Phyllis did as he ordered. 

"I was a New England country minister's daughter, " she began. "NewEngland country ministers always know lots about Greek and Latin and howto make one dollar do the work of one-seventy-five, but they never haveany dollars left when the doing's over. Father and I lived alonetogether always, and he taught me things, and I petted him--fathers needit, specially when they have country congregations--and we didn't bothermuch about other folks. Then he--died. I was eighteen, and I had sixhundred dollars. I couldn't do arithmetic, because Father had alwayssaid it was left out of my head, and I needn't bother with it. So Icouldn't teach. Then they said, 'You like books, and you'd better be alibrarian. ' As a matter of fact, a librarian never gets a chance toread, but you can't explain that to the general public. So I came to thecity and took the course at library school. Then I got a position in theGreenway Branch--two years in the circulating desk, four in thecataloguing room, and one in the Children's Department. The short andsimple annals of the poor!"

"Go on, " said Allan. 

"I believe it's merely that you like the sound of the human voice, " saidPhyllis, laughing. "I'm going to go on with the story of the Five LittlePigs--you'll enjoy it just as much!"

"Exactly, " said Allan. "Tell me what it was like in the library, please. "

"It was rather interesting, " said Phyllis, yielding at once. "There areso many different things to be done that you never feel any monotony, asI suppose a teacher does. But the hours are not much shorter than adepartment store's, and it's exacting, on-your-feet work all the time. Iliked the work with the children best. Only--you never have any time tobe anything but neat in a library, and you do get so tired of being justneat, if you're a girl. "

"And a pretty one, " said Allan. "I don't suppose the ugly ones mind asmuch. "

It was the first thing he had said about her looks. Phyllis's readycolor came into her cheeks. So he thought she was pretty!

"Do you--think I'm pretty?" she asked breathlessly. She couldn't helpit. 

"Of course I do, you little goose, " said Allan, smiling at her. 

Phyllis plunged back into the middle of her story:

"You see, you can't sit up nights to sew much, or practise doing yourhair new ways, because you need all your strength to get up when thealarm-clock barks next morning. And then, there's always themoney-worry, if you have nothing but your salary. Of course, this lastyear, when I've been getting fifty dollars a month, things have been allright. But when it was only thirty a month in the Circulation--well, that was pretty hard pulling, " said Phyllis thoughtfully. "But theworst--the worst, Allan, was waking up nights and wondering what wouldhappen if you broke down for a long time. Because you _can't_ very wellsave for sickness-insurance on even fifty a month. And the work--well, of course, most girls' work is just a little more than they have thestrength for, always. But I was awfully lucky to get into children'swork. Some of my imps, little Poles and Slovaks and Hungarians mostly, are the cleverest, most affectionate babies----"

She began to tell him stories of wonderful ten-year-olds who wereSocialists by conviction, and read economics, and dazed little atypicalsixteen-year-olds who read Mother Goose, and stopped even that becausethey got married. 

"You poor little girl!" said Allan, unheeding. "What brutes they were toyou! Well, thank Heaven, that's over now!"

"Why, Allan!" she said, laying a soothing hand on his. "Nobody was abrute. There's never more than one crank-in-authority in any library, they say. Ours was the Supervisor of the Left Half of the Desk, andafter I got out of Circulation I never saw anything of her. "

Allan burst into unexpected laughter. "It sounds like a Chinese title ofhonor, " he explained. "'Grand Warder of the Emperor's LeftSlipper-Rosette, ' or something of the sort. "

"The Desk's where you get your books stamped, " she explained, "and thetwo shifts of girls who attend to that part of the work each have asupervisor--the Right and Left halves. The one that was horrid hadfavorites, and snapped at the ones that weren't. I wasn't under her, though. My Supervisor was lovely, an Irishwoman with the most floridhats, and the kindest, most just disposition, and always laughing. Weall adored her, she was so fair-minded. "

"You think a good deal about laughing, " said Allan thoughtfully. "Does itrank as a virtue in libraries, or what?"

"You have to laugh, " explained Phyllis. "If you don't see the laugh-sideof things, you see the cry-side. And you can't afford to be unhappy ifyou have to earn your living. People like brightness best. And it's morecomfortable for yourself, once you get used to it. "

"So that was your philosophy of life, " said Allan. His hand tightenedcompassionately on hers. "You _poor_ little girl!... Tell me about thecry-side, Phyllis. "

His voice was very moved and caressing, and the darkness was deepeningas the fire sank. Only an occasional tongue of flame glinted acrossPhyllis's silver slipper-buckle and on the seal-ring Allan wore. It waseasy to tell things there in the perfumed duskiness. It was a great manyyears since any one had cared to hear the cry-side. And it was so dark, and the hand keeping hers in the shadows might have been any kind, comforting hand. She found herself pouring it all out to Allan, thereclose by her; the loneliness, the strain, the hard work, the lack of allthe woman-things in her life, the isolation and dreariness at night, theover-fatigue, and the hurt of watching youth and womanhood sliding away, unused, with nothing to show for all the years; only a cold hope thather flock of little transient aliens might be a little better for theguidance she could give them--

 Years hence in rustic speech a phrase, As in rude earth a Grecian vase. 

And then, that wet, discouraged day in February, and the vision of EvaAtkinson, radiantly fresh and happy, kept young and pretty by unlimitedmoney and time. 

"Her children were so pretty, " said Phyllis wistfully, "and mine, dearlittle villains, were such dirty, untaught, rude little things--oh, itsounds snobbish, but I'd have given everything I had to have a dainty, clean little _lady_-child throw her arms around me and kiss me, insteadof my pet little handsome, sticky Polish Jewess. Up at home everythinghad been so clean and old and still that you always could remember ithad been finished for three hundred years. And Father's clean, still oldlibrary----"

Phyllis did not know how she was revealing to Allan the unconsciousmotherhood in her; but Allan, femininely sensitive to unspoken thingsfrom his long sojourn in the dark--Allan did. It was the mother-instinctthat she was spending on him, but mother-instinct of a kind he had neverknown before; gayly self-effacing, efficient, shown only in its results. And she could never have anything else to spend it on, he thought. Well, he was due to die in a few years.... But he didn't want to. Living wasjust beginning to be interesting again, somehow. There seemed nosatisfactory solution for the two of them.... Well, he'd be unselfishand die, any way. Meanwhile, why not be happy? Here was Phyllis. Hishand clasped hers more closely. 

"And when Mr. De Guenther made me that offer, " she murmured, coloring inthe darkness, "I was tired and discouraged, and the years seemed soendless! It didn't seem as though I'd be harming any one--but I wouldn'thave done it if you'd said a word against it--truly I wouldn't, dear. "

The last little word slipped out unnoticed. She had been calling herlibrary children "dear" for a year now, and the word slipped out ofitself. But Allan liked it. 

"My poor little girl!" he said. "In your place I'd have married thedevil himself--up against a life like that. "

"Then--then you don't--mind?" asked Phyllis anxiously, as she had askedbefore. 

"No, indeed!" said Allan, with a little unnecessary firmness. "I _told_you that, didn't I? I like it. "

"So you did tell me, " she said penitently. 

"But supposing De Guenther hadn't picked out some one like you----"

"That's just what I've often thought myself, " said Phyllis naively. "Shemight have been much worse than I.... Oh, but I was frightened when Isaw you first! I didn't know what you'd be like. And then, when I lookedat you----"

"Well, when you looked at me?" demanded Allan. 

But Phyllis refused to go on. 

"But that's not all, " said Allan. "What about--men?"

"What men?" asked Phyllis innocently. 

"Why, men you were interested in, of course, " he answered. 

"There weren't any, " said Phyllis. "I hadn't any place to meet them, oranywhere to entertain them if I had met them. Oh, yes, there was one--anold bookkeeper at the boarding-house. All the boarders there were old. That was why the people at home had chosen it. They thought it would besafe. It was all of that!"

"Well, the bookkeeper?" demanded Allan. "You're straying off from yournarrative. The bookkeeper, Phyllis, my dear!"

"I'm telling you about him, " protested Phyllis. "He was awfully crossbecause I wouldn't marry him, but I didn't see any reason why I should. I didn't like him especially, and I would probably have gone on with mywork afterwards. There didn't seem to me to be anything to it for anyone but him--for of course I'd have had his mending and all that to dowhen I came home from the library, and I scarcely got time for my own. But he lost his temper fearfully because I didn't want to. Then, ofcourse, men would try to flirt in the library, but the janitor alwaysmade them go out when you asked him to. He loved doing it.... Why, Allan, it must be seven o'clock! Shall I turn on more lights?"

"No.... Then you were quite as shut up in your noisy library as I was inmy dark rooms, " said Allan musingly. 

"I suppose I was, " she said, "though I never thought of it before. Youmustn't think it was horrid. It was fun, lots of it. Only, there wasn'tany being a real girl in it. "

"There isn't much in this, I should think, " said Allan savagely, "except looking after a big doll. "

Phyllis's laugh tinkled out. "Oh, I _love_ playing with dolls, " she saidmischievously. "And you ought to see my new slippers! I have pink ones, and blue ones, and lavender and green, all satin and suede. And when Iget time I'm going to buy dresses to match. And a banjo, maybe, with aself-teacher. There's a room upstairs where nobody can hear a thing youdo. I've wanted slippers and a banjo ever since I can remember. "

"Then you're fairly happy?" demanded Allan suddenly. 

"Why, of course!" said Phyllis, though she had not really stopped to askherself before whether she was or not. There had been so many excitingthings to do. "Wouldn't you be happy if you could buy everything youwanted, and every one was lovely to you, and you had pretty clothes anda lovely house--and a rose-garden?"

"Yes--if I could buy everything I wanted, " said Allan. His voice draggeda little. Phyllis sprang up, instantly penitent. 

"You're tired, and I've been talking and talking about my silly littlewoes till I've worn you out!" she said. "But--Allan, you're gettingbetter. Try to move this arm. The hand I'm holding. There! That's a lotmore than you could do when I first came. I think--I think it would be agood plan for a masseur to come down and see it. "

"Now look here, Phyllis, " protested Allan, "I like your taste in housesand music-boxes and bull-dogs, but I'll be hanged if I'll stand for amasseur. There's no use, they can't do me any good, and the last onealmost killed me. There's no reason why I should be tormented simplybecause a professional pounder needs the money. "

"No, no!" said Phyllis. "Not that kind! Wallis can have orders to shoothim or something if he touches your spinal column. All I meant was a manwho would give the muscles of your arms and shoulders a little exercise. That couldn't hurt, and might help you use them. That wouldn't be anytrouble, would it? _Please!_ The first minute he hurts, you can send himflying. You know they call massage lazy people's exercise. "

"I believe you're really interested in making me better, " said Allan, after a long silence. 

"Why, of course, " said Phyllis, laughing. "That's what I'm here for!"

But this answer did not seem to suit Allan, for some reason. Phyllissaid no more about the masseur. She only decided to summon him, any way. And presently Wallis came in and turned all the lights on. 

XIII

In due course of time June came. So did the masseur, and more floweredfrocks for Phyllis, and the wheel-chair for Allan. The immediate effectof June was to bring out buds all over the rose-trees; of the flowereddresses, to make Phyllis very picturesquely pretty. As for the masseur, he had more effect than anything else. It was as Phyllis had hoped: theparalysis of Allan's arms had been less permanent than any one hadthought, and for perhaps the last three years there had been little morethe matter than entire loss of strength and muscle-control, from longdisuse. By the time they had been a month in the country Allan's use ofhis arms and shoulders was nearly normal, and Phyllis was having wildhopes, that she confided to no one but Wallis, of even more sweepingbetterments. Allan slept much better, from the slight increase ofactivity, and also perhaps because Phyllis had coaxed him outdoors assoon as the weather became warm, and was keeping him there. Sometimeshe lay in the garden on his couch, sometimes he sat up in thewheel-chair, almost always with Phyllis sitting, or lying in her hammocknear him, and the devoted Foxy pretending to hunt something near by. 

There were occasional fits of the old depression and silence, when Allanwould lie silently in his own room with his hands crossed and his eyesshut, answering no one--not even Foxy. Wallis and Phyllis respectedthese moods, and left him alone till they were over, but the adoringFoxy had no such delicacy of feeling. And it is hard to remain silentlysunk in depression when an active small dog is imploring you by everymeans he knows to throw balls for him to run after. For the rest, Allanproved to have naturally a lighter heart and more carefree dispositionthan Phyllis. His natural disposition was buoyant. Wallis said that hehad never had a mood in his life till the accident. 

His attitude to his wife became more and more a taking-for-grantedaffection and dependence. It is to be feared that Phyllis spoiled himbadly. But it was so long since she had been needed by any one person asAllan needed her! And he had such lovable, illogical, masculine ways ofbeing wronged if he didn't get the requisite amount of petting, andgrateful for foolish little favors and taking big ones for granted, that--entirely, as Phyllis insisted to herself, from a sense of combinedduty and grateful interest--she would have had her pretty head removedand sent him by parcel-post, if he had idly suggested his possible needof a girl's head some time. 

And it was so heavenly--oh, but it was heavenly there in Phyllis'srose-garden, with the colored flowers coming out, and the little greencaterpillars roaming over the leaves, and pretty dresses to wear, andFoxy-dog to play with--and Allan! Allan demanded--no, not exactlydemanded, but expected and got--so much of Phyllis's society in thesedays that she had learned to carry on all her affairs, even thehousekeeping, out in her hammock by his wheel-chair or couch. She worelarge, floppy white hats with roses on them, by way of keeping the sunoff; but Allan, it appeared, did not think much of hats except as anornament for girls, and his uncovered curly hair was burned to a sort ofgoldy-russet all through, and his pallor turned to a clear pale brown. 

Phyllis looked up from her work one of these heavenly last-of-June days, and tried to decide whether she really liked the change or not. Allanwas handsomer unquestionably, though that had hardly been necessary. Butthe resignedly statuesque look was gone. 

Allan felt her look, and looked up at her. He had been reading amagazine, for Phyllis had succeeded in a large measure in reviving histaste for magazines and books. "Well, Phyllis, my dear, " said he, smiling, "what's the problem now? I feel sure there is something newgoing to be sprung on me--get the worst over!"

"You wrong me, " she said, beginning to thread some more pink embroiderysilk. "I was only wondering whether I liked you as well tanned as I didwhen you were so nice and white, back in the city. "

"Cheerful thought!" said Allan, laying down his magazine entirely. "Shall I ring for Wallis and some peroxide? As you said the other day, 'I have to be approved of or I'm unhappy!'"

"Oh, it really doesn't matter, " said Phyllis mischievously. "You know, Imarried you principally for a rose-garden, and that's _lovely_!"

"I suppose I spoil the perspective, " said Allan, unexpectedly ruffled. 

Phyllis leaned forward in her blossom-dotted draperies and stroked hishand, that long carven hand she so loved to watch. 

"Not a bit, Allan, " she said, laughing at him. "You're exceedinglydecorative! I remember the first time I saw you I thought you lookedexactly like a marble knight on a tomb. "

Allan--Allan the listless, tranced invalid of four months before--threwhis head back and shouted with laughter. 

"I suppose I serve the purpose of garden statuary, " he said. "We used tohave some horrors when I was a kid. I remember two awful bronze deerthat always looked as if they were trying not to get their feet wet, and a floppy bronze dog we called Fido. He was meant for a Gordonsetter, I think, but it didn't go much further than intention. Louiseand I used to ride the deer. "

His face shadowed a little as he spoke, for nearly the first time, ofthe dead girl. 

"Allan, " Phyllis said, bending closer to him, all rosy and golden in hergreen hammock, "tell me about--Louise Frey--if you don't mind talkingabout her? Would it be bad for you, do you think?"

Allan's eyes dwelt on his wife pleasurably. She was very real and nearand lovable, and Louise Frey seemed far away and shadowy in histhoughts. He had loved her very dearly and passionately, thatboisterous, handsome young Louise, but that gay boy-life she hadbelonged to seemed separated now from this pleasant rose-garden, withits golden-haired, wisely-sweet young chatelaine, by thousands of blackyears. The blackness came back when he remembered what lay behind it. 

"There's nothing much to tell, Phyllis, " he said, frowning a little. "She was pretty and full of life. She had black hair and eyes and agood deal of color. We were more or less friends all our lives, for ourcountry-places adjoined. She was eighteen when--it happened. "

"Eighteen, " said Phyllis musingly. "She would have been just my age.... We won't talk about it, then, Allan ... Well, Viola?"

The pretty Tuskegee chambermaid was holding out a tray with a card onit. 

"The doctor, ma'am, " she said. 

"The doctor!" echoed Allan, half-vexed, half-laughing. "I _knew_ you hadsomething up your sleeve, Phyllis! What on earth did you have him for?"

Phyllis's face was a study of astonishment. "On my honor, I hadn't anotion he was even in existence, " she protested. "He's not _my_ doctor!"

"He must have 'just growed, ' or else Lily-Anna's called him in, "suggested Allan sunnily. "Bring him along, Viola. "

Viola produced him so promptly that nobody had time to remember theprofessional doctor's visits don't usually have cards, or thought tolook at the card for enlightenment. So the surprise was complete whenthe doctor appeared. 

"Johnny Hewitt!" ejaculated Allan, throwing out both hands in greeting. "Of all people! Well, you old fraud, pretending to be a doctor! The lastI heard about you, you were trying to prove that you weren't the manthat tied a mule into old Sumerley's chair at college. "

"I never did prove it, " responded Johnny Hewitt, shaking handsvigorously, "but the fellows said afterwards that I ought toapologize--to the mule. He was a perfectly good mule. But I'm a doctorall right. I live here in Wallraven. I wondered if it might be you byany chance, Allan, when I heard some Harringtons had bought here. Butthis is the first chance a promising young chickenpox epidemic has givenme to find out. "

"It's what's left of me, " said Allan, smiling ruefully. "And--Phyllis, this doctor-person turns out to be an old friend of mine. This is Mrs. Harrington, Johnny. "

"Oh, I'm so glad!" beamed Phyllis, springing up from her hammock, andlooking as if she loved Johnny. Here was exactly what wasneeded--somebody for Allan to play with! She made herself delightful tothe newcomer for a few minutes, and then excused herself. They wouldhave a better time alone, for awhile, any way, and there was dinner toorder. Maybe this Johnny Hewitt-doctor would stay for dinner. He shouldif she could make him! She sang a little on her way to the house, andalmost forgot the tiny hurt it had been when Allan seemed so saddened byspeaking of Louise Frey. She had no right to feel hurt, she knew. It wasonly to be expected that Allan would always love Louise's memory. Shedidn't know much about men, but that was the way it always was instories. A man's heart would die, under an automobile or anywhere else, and all there was left for anybody else was leavings. It wasn't fair!And then Phyllis threw back her shoulders and laughed, as she hadsometimes in the library days, and reminded herself what a nice world itwas, any way, and that Allan was going to be much helped by JohnnyHewitt. That was a cheering thought, anyhow. She went on singing, andordered a beautiful, festively-varied dinner, a very poem of gratitude. Then she pounced on the doctor as he was leaving and made him stay forit. 

Allan's eyes were bright and his face lighted with interest. Phyllis, atthe head of the table, kept just enough in the talk to push the men onwhen it seemed flagging, which was not often. She learned more aboutAllan, and incidentally Johnny Hewitt, in the talk as they lingeredabout the table, than she had ever known before. She and Allan had livedso deliberately in the placid present, with its almost childishbrightnesses and interests, that she knew scarcely more about herhusband's life than the De Guenthers had told her before she marriedhim. But she could see the whole picture of it as she listened now: theactive, merry, brilliant boy who had worked and played all day anddanced half the night; who had lived, it almost seemed to her, two orthree lives in one. And then the change to the darkened room--helpless, unable to move, with the added sorrow of his sweetheart's death, andhis mother's deliberate fostering of that sorrow. It was almost a shockto see him in the wheel-chair at the foot of the table, his face lightedwith interest in what he and his friend were saying. What if he did carefor Louise Frey's memory still! He'd had such a hard time that anythingPhyllis could do for him oughtn't to be too much!

When Dr. Hewitt went at last Phyllis accompanied him to the door. Shekept him there for a few minutes, talking to him about Allan and makinghim promise to come often. He agreed with her that, this much progressmade, a good deal more might follow. He promised to come back very soon, and see as much of them as possible. 

Allan, watching them, out of earshot, from the living-room where he hadbeen wheeled, saw Phyllis smiling warmly up at his friend, lingering intalk with him, giving him both hands in farewell; and he saw, too, Hewitt's rapt interest and long leave-taking. At last the door closed, and Phyllis came back to him, flushed and animated. He realized, watching her return with that swift lightness of foot her long years ofwork had lent her, how young and strong and lovely she was, with therose-color in her cheeks and the light from above making her hairglitter. And suddenly her slim young strength and her bright vitalityseemed to mock him, instead of being a comfort and support asheretofore. A young, beautiful, kind girl like that--it was natural sheshould like Hewitt. And it was going to come natural to Hewitt to likePhyllis. He could see that plainly enough. 

"Tired, Allan Harrington?" she asked brightly, coming over to him anddropping a light hand on his chair, in a caressing little way she haddared lately.... Kindness! Yes, she was the incarnation of kindness. Doubtless she had spoken to and touched those little ragamuffins she hadtold him of just so. 

He had got into a habit of feeling that Phyllis belonged to himabsolutely. He had forgotten--what was it she had said to him thatafternoon, half in fun--but oh, doubtless half in earnest!--aboutmarrying him for a rose-garden? She had done just that. She had nevermade any secret of it--why, how could she, marrying him before she hadspoken a half-dozen words to him? But how wonderful she had been to himsince--sometimes almost as if she cared for him.... 

He moved ungraciously. "Don't _touch_ me, Phyllis!" he said irritably. "Wallis! You can wheel me into my room. "

"Oh-h!" said Phyllis, behind him. The little forlorn sound hurt him, butit pleased him, too. So he could hurt her, if only by rudeness? Well, that was a satisfaction. "Shut the door, " he ordered Wallis swiftly. 

Phyllis, her hands at her throat, stood hurt and frightened in themiddle of the room. It never occurred to her that Allan was jealous, orindeed that he could care enough for her to be jealous. 

"It was talking about Louise Frey, " she said. "That, and Dr. Hewittbringing up old times. Oh, _why_ did I ask about her? He wascontented--I know he was contented! He'd gotten to like having me withhim--he even wanted me. Oh, Allan, Allan!"

She did not want to cry downstairs, so she ran for her own room. Thereshe threw herself down and cried into a pillow till most of the case waswet. She was silly--she knew she was silly. She tried to think of allthe things that were still hers, the garden, the watch-bracelet, theleisure, the pretty gowns--but nothing, _nothing_ seemed of anyconsequence beside the fact that--she had not kissed Allan good-night!It seemed the most intolerable thing that had ever happened to her. 

XIV

It was just as well, perhaps, that Phyllis did not do much sleeping thatnight, for at about two Wallis knocked at her door. It seemed likehistory repeating itself when he said: "Could you come to Mr. Allan, please? He seems very bad. "

She threw on the silk crepe negligee and followed him, just as she haddone before, on that long-ago night after her mother-in-law had died. 

"Did Dr. Hewitt's visit overexcite him, do you think?" he asked as theywent. 

"I don't know, ma'am, " Wallis said. "He's almost as bad as he was afterthe old madam died--you remember?"

"Oh, yes, " said Phyllis mechanically. "I remember. "

 * * * * *

Allan lay so exactly as he had on that other night, that the strangesurroundings seemed incongruous. Just the same, except that hisrestlessness was more visible, because he had more power of motion. 

She bent and held the nervously clenching hands, as she had before. "What is it, Allan?" she said soothingly. 

"Nothing, " said her husband savagely. "Nerves, hysteria--any other sillywomanish thing a cripple could have. Let me alone, Phyllis. I wish youcould put me out of the way altogether!"

Phyllis made herself laugh, though her heart hurried with fright. Shehad seen Allan suffer badly before--be apathetic, irritable, despondent, but never in a state where he did not cling to her. 

"I can't let you alone, " she said brightly. "I've come to stay with youtill you feel quieter.... Would you rather I talked to you, or keptquiet?"

"Oh, do your wifely duty, whatever it is, " he said.... "It was amistake, the whole thing. You've done more than your duty, child, but--oh, you'd better go away. "

Phyllis's heart turned over. Was it as bad as this? Was he as sick ofher as this?

"You mean--you think, " she faltered, "it was a mistake--our marriage?"

"Yes, " he said restlessly. "Yes.... It wasn't fair. "

She had no means of knowing that he meant it was unfair to her. She heldon to herself, though she felt her face turning cold with the suddenpallor of fright. 

"I think it can be annulled, " she said steadily. "No, I suppose itwasn't fair. "

She stopped to get her breath and catch at the only things thatmattered--steadiness, quietness, ability to soothe Allan!

"It can be annulled, " she said again evenly. "But listen to me now, Allan. It will take quite a while. It can't be done to-night, or beforeyou are stronger. So for your own sake you must try to rest now. Everything shall come right. I promise you it shall be annulled. Butforget it now, please. I am going to hold your wrists and talk to you, recite things for you, till you go back to sleep. "

She wondered afterwards how she could have spoken with that hardserenity, how she could have gone steadily on with story after story, poem after poem, till Allan's grip on her hands relaxed, and he fellinto a heavy, tired sleep. 

[Illustration: "BUT YOU SEE--HE'S--ALL I HAVE ... GOOD-NIGHT, WALLIS"]

She sat on the side of the bed and looked at him, lying still againsthis white pillows. She looked and looked, and presently the tears beganto slide silently down her cheeks. She did not lift her hands to wipethem away. She sat and cried silently, openly, like a desolate, unkindlytreated child. 

"Mrs. Allan! Mrs. Allan, ma'am!" came Wallis's concerned whisper fromthe doorway. "Don't take it as hard as that. It's just a little relapse. He was overtired. I shouldn't have called you, but you always quiet himso. "

Phyllis brushed off her tears, and smiled. You seemed to have to do somuch smiling in this house!

"I know, " she said. "I worry about his condition too much. But yousee--he's--all I have.... Good-night, Wallis. "

Once out of Allan's room, she ran at full speed till she gained her ownbed, where she could cry in peace till morning if she wanted to, with noone to interrupt. That was all right. The trouble was going to be nextmorning. 

But somehow, when morning came, the old routine was dragged throughwith. Directions had to be given the servants as usual, Allan's comfortand amusement seen to, just as if nothing had happened. It was a perfectday, golden and perfumed, with just that little tang of fresh windinessthat June days have in the northern states. And Allan must not loseit--he must be wheeled out into the garden. 

She came out to him, in the place where they usually sat, and sank for amoment in the hammock, that afternoon. She had avoided him all themorning. 

"I just came to see if everything was all right, " she said, leaningtoward him in that childlike, earnest way he knew so well. "I don't needto stay here if I worry you. "

"I'd rather you'd stay, if you don't mind, " he answered. Phyllis lookedat him intently. He was white and dispirited, and his voice waslistless. Oh, Phyllis thought, if Louise Frey had only been kind enoughto die in babyhood, instead of under Allan's automobile! What couldthere have been about her to hold Allan so long? She glanced at hisweary face again. This would never do! What had come to be her dominantinstinct, keeping Allan's spirits up, emboldened her to bend forward, and even laugh a little. 

"Come, Allan!" she said. "Even if we're not going to stay togetheralways, we might as well be cheerful till we do part. We used to be goodfriends enough. Can't we be so a little longer?" It sounded heartless toher after she had said it, but it seemed the only way to speak. Shesmiled at him bravely. 

Allan looked at her mutely for a moment, as if she had hurt him. 

"You're right, " he said suddenly. "There's no time but the present, after all. Come over here, closer to me, Phyllis. You've been awfullygood to me, child--isn't there anything--_anything_ I could do foryou--something you could remember afterwards, and say, 'Well, he didthat for me, any way?'"

Phyllis's eyes filled with tears. "You have given me everythingalready, " she said, catching her breath. She didn't feel as if she couldstand much more of this. 

"Everything!" he said bitterly. "No, I haven't. I can't give you whatevery girl wants--a well, strong man to be her husband--the health andstrength that any man in the street has. "

"Oh, don't speak that way, Allan!"

She bent over him sympathetically, moved by his words. In another momentthe misunderstanding might have been straightened out, if it had notbeen for his reply. 

"I wish I never had to see you at all!" he said involuntarily. In hersensitive state of mind the hurt was all she felt--not the deepermeaning that lay behind the words. 

"I'll relieve you of my presence for awhile, " she flashed back. Beforeshe gave herself time to think, she had left the garden, with somethingwhich might be called a flounce. "When people say things like that toyou, " she said as she walked away from him, "it's carrying being aninvalid a little _too_ far!"

Allan heard the side-door slam. He had never suspected before thatPhyllis had a temper. And yet, what could he have said? But she gave himno opportunity to find out. In just about the time it might take tofind gloves and a parasol, another door clanged in the distance. Thestreet door. Phyllis had evidently gone out. 

 * * * * *

Phyllis, on her swift way down the street, grew angrier and angrier. Shetried to persuade herself to make allowances for Allan, but they refusedto be made. She felt more bitterly toward him than she ever had towardany one in her life. If she only hadn't leaned over him and been sorryfor him, just before she got a slap in the face like that!

She walked rapidly down the main street of the little village. Shehardly knew where she was going. She had been called on by most of thelocal people, but she did not feel like being agreeable, or makingformal calls, just now. And what was the use of making friends, any way, when she was going back to her rags, poor little Cinderella that shewas! Below and around and above everything else came the stingingthought that she had given Allan so much--that she had taken so much forgranted. 

Her quick steps finally took her to the outskirts of the village, to alittle green stretch of woods. There she walked up and down for awhile, trying to think more quietly. She found the tide of her anger ebbingsuddenly, and her mind forming all sorts of excuses for Allan. But thatwas not the way to get quiet--thinking of Allan! She tried to put himresolutely from her mind, and think about her own future plans. Thefirst thing to do, she decided, was to rub up her library work a little. 

It was with an unexpected feeling of having returned to her own placethat she crossed the marble floor of the village library. She felt as ifshe ought to hurry down to the cloak-room, instead of waiting leisurelyat the desk for her card. It all seemed uncannily like home--there waseven a girl inside the desk who looked like Anna Black of her ownGreenway Branch. Phyllis could hear, with a faint amusement, that thegirl was scolding energetically in Anna Black's own way. The wordsstruck on her quick ears, though they were not intended to carry. 

"That's what comes of trusting to volunteer help. Telephones at the lastmoment 'she has a headache, ' and not a single soul to look after thestory-hour! And the children are almost all here already. "

"We'll just have to send them home, " said the other girl, looking upfrom her trayful of cards. "It's too late to get anybody else, andgoodness knows _we_ can't get it in!"

"They ought to have another librarian, " fretted the girl who looked likeAnna. "They could afford it well enough, with their Soldiers' Monumentsand all. "

Phyllis smiled to herself from where she was investigating thecard-catalogue. It all sounded so exceedingly natural. Then that swiftinstinct of hers to help caught her over to the desk, and she heardherself saying:

"I've had some experience in story telling; maybe I could help you withthe story-hour. I couldn't help hearing that your story-teller hasdisappointed you. "

The girl like Anna fell on her with rapture. 

"Heaven must have sent you, " she said. The other one, evidently slowerand more cautious by nature, rose too, and came toward her. "You have acard here, haven't you?" she said. "I think I've seen you. "

"Yes, " Phyllis said, with a pang at speaking the name she had grown tolove bearing; "I'm Mrs. Harrington--Phyllis Harrington. We live at theother end of the village. "

"Oh, in the house with the garden all shut off from the lane!" said thegirl like Anna, delightedly. "That lovely old house that used to belongto the Jamesons. Oh, yes, I know. You're here for the summer, aren'tyou, and your husband has been very ill?"

"Exactly, " said Phyllis, smiling, though she wished people wouldn't talkabout Allan! They seemed possessed to mention him!

"We'll be obliged forever if you'll do it, " said the other girl, evidently the head librarian. "Can you do it now? The children arewaiting. "

"Certainly, " said Phyllis, and followed the younger girl straightway tothe basement, where, it seemed, the story-hour was held. She wondered, as they went, if the girl envied her her expensively perishable summerorgandie, with its flying sashes and costly accessories; if the girlthought about her swinging jewelries and endless leisure with a wish tohave them for herself. She had wanted such things, she knew, when shewas being happy on fifty dollars a month. And perhaps some of the womenshe had watched then had had heartaches under their furs.... 

The children, already sitting in a decorous ring on their low chairs, seemed after the first surprise to approve of Phyllis. The librarianlingered for a little by way of keeping order if it should be necessary, watched the competent sweep with which Phyllis gathered the childrenaround her, heard the opening of the story, and left with an air ofastonished approval. Phyllis, late best story-teller of the GreenwayBranch, watched her go with a bit of professional triumph in her heart. 

She told the children stories till the time was up, and then "just onestory more. " She had not forgotten how, she found. But she never toldthem the story of "How the Elephant Got His Trunk, " that foolish, fascinating story-hour classic that she had told Allan the night hismother had died; the story that had sent him to sleep quietly for thefirst time in years.... Oh, dear, was everything in the world connectedwith Allan in some way or other?

It was nearly six when she went up, engulfed in children, to thecirculating room. There the night-librarian caught her. She hadevidently been told to try to get Phyllis for more story-hours, for shedid her best to make her promise. They talked shop together for perhapsan hour and a half. Then the growing twilight reminded Phyllis that itwas time to go back. She had been shirking going home, she realized now, all the afternoon. She said good-by to the night-librarian, and went ondown the village street, lagging unconsciously. It must have been abouteight by this time. 

It was a mile back to the house. She could have taken the trolley partof the way, but she felt restless and like walking. She had forgottenthat walking at night through well-known, well-lighted city streets, andgoing in half-dusk through country byways, were two different things. She was destined to be reminded of the difference. 

"Can you help a poor man, lady?" said a whining voice behind her, whenshe had a quarter of the way yet to go. She turned to see a big tramp, aterrifying brute with a half-propitiating, half-fierce look on hisheavy, unshaven face. She was desperately frightened. She had beenspoken to once or twice in the city, but there there was always apoliceman, or a house you could run into if you had to. But here, in theunguarded dusk of a country lane, it was a different matter. The longgold chain that swung below her waist, the big diamond on her finger, the gold mesh-purse--all the jewelry she took such a childlike delightin wearing--she remembered them in terror. She was no brown-clad littleworking-girl now, to slip along disregarded. And the tramp did not looklike a deserving object. 

"If you will come to the house to-morrow, " she said, hurrying on as shespoke, "I'll have some work for you. The first house on this street thatyou come to. " She did not dare give him anything, or send him away. 

"Won't you gimme somethin' now, lady?" whined the tramp, continuing tofollow. "I'm a starvin' man. "

She dared not open her purse and appease him by giving him money--shehad too much with her. That morning she had received the check for hermonthly income from Mr. De Guenther, sent Wallis down to cash it, andthen stuffed it in her bag and forgotten it in the distress of the day. The man might take the money and strike her senseless, even kill her. 

"To-morrow, " she said, going rapidly on. She had now what would amountto about three city blocks to traverse still. There was a short way fromoutside the garden-hedge through to the garden, which cut off about ahalf-block. If she could gain this she would be safe. 

"Naw, yeh don't, " snarled the tramp, as she fled on. "Ye'll set thatbull-pup o' yours on me. I been there, an' come away again. You justgimme some o' them rings an' things an' we'll call it square, me finelady!"

Phyllis's heart stood still at this open menace, but she ran on still. Asudden thought came to her. She snatched her gilt sash-buckle--a prettything but of small value--from her waist, and hurled it far behind thetramp. In the half-light it might have been her gold mesh-bag. 

"There's my money--go get it!" she gasped--and ran for her life. Thetramp, as she had hoped he would, dashed back after it and gave her thestart she needed. Breathless, terrified to death, she raced on, tearingher frock, dropping the library cards and parasol she still had held inher hand. Once she caught her sash on a tree-wire. Once her slipper-heelcaught and nearly threw her. The chase seemed unending. She could hearthe dreadful footsteps of the tramp behind her, and his snarling, swearing voice panting out threats. He was drunk, she realized withanother thrill of horror. It was a nightmare happening. 

On and on--she stumbled, fell, caught herself--but the tramp had gained. Then at last the almost invisible gap in the hedge, and she fledthrough. 

"_Allan! Allan! Allan!_" she screamed, fleeing instinctively to hischair. 

The rose-garden was like a place of enchanted peace after the terror ofoutside. Her quick vision as she rushed in was of Allan still there, moveless in his chair, with the little black bull-dog lying asleepacross his arms and shoulder like a child. It often lay so. As sheentered, the scene broke up before her eyes like a dissolving view. Shesaw the little dog wake and make what seemed one flying spring to thetramp's throat, and sink his teeth in it--and Allan, at her scream, _spring from his chair_!

Phyllis forgot everything at the sight of Allan, standing. Wallis andthe outdoor man, who had run to the spot at Phyllis's screams, weredealing with the tramp, who was writhing on the grass, choking andstriking out wildly. But neither Phyllis nor Allan saw that. Whichcaught the other in an embrace they never knew. They stood lockedtogether, forgetting everything else, he in the idea of her peril, shein the wonder of his standing. 

"Oh, darling, darling!" Allan was saying over and over again. "You aresafe--thank heaven you are safe! Oh, Phyllis, I could never forgivemyself if you had been hurt! Phyllis! Speak to me!"

But Phyllis's own safety did not concern her now. She could only thinkof one thing. "_You can stand! You can stand!_" she reiterated. Then awonderful thought came to her, striking across the others, as she stoodlocked in this miraculously raised Allan's arms. She spoke withoutknowing that she had said it aloud. "_Do you care, too?_" she said verylow. Then the dominant thought returned. "You must sit down again, " shesaid hurriedly, to cover her confusion, and what she had said. "Please, Allan, sit down. Please, dear--you'll tire yourself. "

Allan sank into his chair again, still holding her. She dropped on herknees beside him, with her arms around him. She had a little leisurenow to observe that Wallis, the ever-resourceful, had tied the trampneatly with the outdoor man's suspenders, which were nearer the surfacethan his own, and succeeded in prying off the still unappeased Foxy, whoevidently was wronged at not having the tramp to finish. They carriedhim off, into the back kitchen garden. Allan, now that he was certain ofPhyllis's safety, paid them not the least attention. 

"Did you mean it?" he said passionately. "Tell me, did you mean what yousaid?"

Phyllis dropped her dishevelled head on Allan's shoulder. 

"I'm afraid--I'm going to cry, and--and I know you don't like it!" shepanted. Allan half drew, half guided her up into his arms. 

"Was it true?" he insisted, giving her an impulsive little shake. She satup on his knees, wide-eyed and wet-cheeked like a child. 

"But you knew that all along!" she said. "That was why I felt sohumiliated. It was _you_ that _I_ thought didn't care----"

Allan laughed joyously. "Care!" he said. "I should think I did, first, last, and all the time! Why, Phyllis, child, didn't I behave like abrute because I was jealous enough of John Hewitt to throw him in theriver? He was the first man you had seen since you marriedme--attractive, and well, and clever, and all that--it would have beennatural enough if you'd liked him. "

"Liked him!" said Phyllis in disdain. "When there was you? And Ithought--I thought it was the memory of Louise Frey that made you actthat way. You didn't want to talk about her, and you said it was all amistake----"

"I was a brute, " said Allan again. "It was the memory that I was aboutas useful as a rag doll, and that the world was full of live men withreal legs and arms, ready to fall in love with you. 

"There's nobody but _you_ in the world, " whispered Phyllis.... "Butyou're well now, or you will be soon, " she added joyously. She slippedaway from him. "Allan, don't you want to try to stand again? If you didit then, you can do it now. "

"Yes, by Jove, I do!" he said. But this time the effort to rise wasnoticeable. Still, he could do it, with Phyllis's eager help. 

"It must have been what Dr. Hewitt called neurasthenic inhibition, " saidPhyllis, watching the miracle of a standing Allan. "That was what wewere talking about by the door that night, you foolish boy!... Oh, howtall you are! I never realized you were tall, lying down, somehow!"

"I don't have to bend very far to kiss you, though, " suggested Allan, suiting the action to the word. 

But Phyllis, when this was satisfactorily concluded, went back to thegreat business of seeing how much Allan could walk. He sat down againafter a half-dozen steps, a little tired in spite of his excitement. 

"I can't do much at a time yet, I suppose, " he said a little ruefully. "Do you mean to tell me, sweetheart--come over here closer, where I cantouch you--you're awfully far away--do you mean to tell me that all thatailed me was I thought I couldn't move?"

"Oh, no!" explained Phyllis, moving her chair close, and then, as thatdid not seem satisfactory, perching on the arm of Allan's. "You'd beenunable to move for so long that when you were able to at last yoursubconscious mind clamped down on your muscles and was convinced youcouldn't. So no matter how much you consciously tried, you couldn't makethe muscles go till you were so strongly excited it broke theinhibition--just as people can lift things in delirium or excitementthat they couldn't possibly move at other times. Do you see?"

"I do, " said Allan, kissing the back of her neck irrelevantly. "Ifsomebody'd tried to shoot me up five years ago I might be a well mannow. That's a beautiful word of yours, Phyllis, inhibition. What a lotof big words you know!"

"Oh, if you won't be serious!" said she. 

"We'll have to be, " said Allan, laughing, "for here's Wallis, and, as Ilive, from the direction of the house. I thought they carried our friendthe tramp out through the hedge--he must have gone all the way around. "

Phyllis was secretly certain that Wallis had been crying a little, butall he said was, "We've taken the tramp to the lock-up, sir. "

But his master and his mistress were not so dignified. They showed himexhaustively that Allan could really stand and walk, and Allandemonstrated it, and Wallis nearly cried again. Then they went in, forPhyllis was sure Allan needed a thorough rest after all this. She wasshaking from head to foot herself with joyful excitement, but she didnot even know it. And it was long past dinner-time, though every one butLily-Anna, to whom the happy news had somehow filtered, had forgottenit. 

"I've always wanted to hold you in my arms, this way, " said Allan latethat evening, as they stood in the rose-garden again; "but I thought Inever would.... Phyllis, did you ever want me to?"

It was too beautiful a moonlight night to waste in the house, or even onthe porch. The couch had been wheeled to its accustomed place in therose-garden, and Allan was supposed to be lying on it as he often did inthe evenings. But it was hard to make him stay there. 

"Oh, you _must_ lie down, " said Phyllis hurriedly, trying to move out ofthe circle of his arms. "You mustn't stand till we find how much isenough.... I'm going to send for the wolfhound next week. You won't mindhim now, will you?"

"Did you ever want to be here in my arms, Phyllis?"

"Of course not!" said Phyllis, as a modest young person should. "But--but----"

"Well, my wife?"

"I've often wondered just where I'd reach to, " said Phyllis in arush.... "Allan, _please_ don't stand any longer!"

"I'll lie down if you'll sit on the couch by me. "

"Very well, " said Phyllis; and sat obediently in the curve of his armwhen he had settled himself in the old position, the one that looked somuch more natural for him. 

"Mine, every bit of you!" he said exultantly. "Heaven bless thattramp!... And to think we were talking about annulments!... Do youremember that first night, dear, after mother died? I was half-mad withgrief and physical pain. And Wallis went after you. I didn't want himto. But he trusted you from the first--good old Wallis! And you came inwith that swift, sweeping step of yours, as I've seen you come fiftytimes since--half-flying, it seemed to me then--with all your prettyhair loose, and an angelic sort of a white thing on. I expect I was abrute to you--I don't remember how I acted--but I know you sat on thebed by me and took both my wrists in those strong little hands of yours, and talked to me and quieted me till I fell fast asleep. You gave me thefirst consecutive sleep I'd had in four months. It felt as if life andcalmness and strength were pouring from you to me. You stayed till Ifell asleep. "

"I remember, " said Phyllis softly. She laid her cheek by his, as it hadbeen on that strange marriage evening that seemed so far away now. "Iwas afraid of you at first. But I felt that, too, as if I were givingyou my strength. I was so glad I could! And then I fell asleep, too, over on your shoulder. "

"You never told me that, " said Allan reproachfully. Phyllis laughed alittle. 

"There never seemed to be any point in our conversations where it fittedin neatly, " she said demurely. Allan laughed, too. 

"You should have made one. But what I was going to tell you was--I thinkI began to be in love with you then. I didn't know it, but I did. And itgot worse and worse but I didn't know what ailed me till Johnny driftedin, bless his heart! Then I did. Oh, Phyllis, it was awful! To have youwith me all the time, acting like an angel, waiting on me hand and foot, and not knowing whether you had any use for me or not!... And you neverkissed me good-night last night. "

Phyllis did not answer. She only bent a little, and kissed her husbandon the lips, very sweetly and simply, of her own accord. But she saidnothing then of the long, restless, half-happy, half-wretched time whenshe had loved him and never even hoped he would care for her. There wastime for all that. There were going to be long, joyous years together, years of being a "real woman, " as she had so passionately wished to bethat day in the library. She would never again need to envy any womanhappiness or love or laughter. It was all before her now, youth and joyand love, and Allan, her Allan, soon to be well, and loving her--lovingnobody else but her!

"Oh, I love you, Allan!" was all she said.