THE TOUCHSTONE

By Edith Wharton

I

Professor Joslin, who, as our readers are doubtless aware, is engaged inwriting the life of Mrs. Aubyn, asks us to state that he will be greatlyindebted to any of the famous novelist's friends who will furnishhim with information concerning the period previous to her coming toEngland. Mrs. Aubyn had so few intimate friends, and consequently so fewregular correspondents, that letters will be of special value. ProfessorJoslin's address is 10 Augusta Gardens, Kensington, and he begs us tosay that he "will promptly return any documents entrusted to him. "

Glennard dropped the Spectator and sat looking into the fire. The clubwas filling up, but he still had to himself the small inner room, withits darkening outlook down the rain-streaked prospect of Fifth Avenue. It was all dull and dismal enough, yet a moment earlier his boredom hadbeen perversely tinged by a sense of resentment at the thought that, asthings were going, he might in time have to surrender even the despisedprivilege of boring himself within those particular four walls. It wasnot that he cared much for the club, but that the remote contingency ofhaving to give it up stood to him, just then, perhaps by very reasonof its insignificance and remoteness, for the symbol of his increasingabnegations; of that perpetual paring-off that was gradually reducingexistence to the naked business of keeping himself alive. It was thefutility of his multiplied shifts and privations that made themseem unworthy of a high attitude; the sense that, however rapidly heeliminated the superfluous, his cleared horizon was likely to offer nonearer view of the one prospect toward which he strained. To give upthings in order to marry the woman one loves is easier than to give themup without being brought appreciably nearer to such a conclusion. 

Through the open door he saw young Hollingsworth rise with a yawnfrom the ineffectual solace of a brandy-and-soda and transport hispurposeless person to the window. Glennard measured his course with acontemptuous eye. It was so like Hollingsworth to get up and look out ofthe window just as it was growing too dark to see anything! There wasa man rich enough to do what he pleased--had he been capable ofbeing pleased--yet barred from all conceivable achievement by his ownimpervious dulness; while, a few feet off, Glennard, who wanted onlyenough to keep a decent coat on his back and a roof over the head of thewoman he loved, Glennard, who had sweated, toiled, denied himself forthe scant measure of opportunity that his zeal would have converted intoa kingdom--sat wretchedly calculating that, even when he had resignedfrom the club, and knocked off his cigars, and given up his Sundays outof town, he would still be no nearer attainment. 

The Spectator had slipped to his feet and as he picked it up his eyefell again on the paragraph addressed to the friends of Mrs. Aubyn. Hehad read it for the first time with a scarcely perceptible quickening ofattention: her name had so long been public property that his eye passedit unseeingly, as the crowd in the street hurries without a glance bysome familiar monument. 

"Information concerning the period previous to her coming toEngland.... " The words were an evocation. He saw her again as she hadlooked at their first meeting, the poor woman of genius with her longpale face and short-sighted eyes, softened a little by the grace ofyouth and inexperience, but so incapable even then of any hold uponthe pulses. When she spoke, indeed, she was wonderful, more wonderful, perhaps, than when later, to Glennard's fancy at least, the consciousof memorable things uttered seemed to take from even her most intimatespeech the perfect bloom of privacy. It was in those earliest days, ifever, that he had come near loving her; though even then his sentimenthad lived only in the intervals of its expression. Later, when tobe loved by her had been a state to touch any man's imagination, thephysical reluctance had, inexplicably, so overborne the intellectualattraction, that the last years had been, to both of them, an agony ofconflicting impulses. Even now, if, in turning over old papers, his handlit on her letters, the touch filled him with inarticulate misery.... 

"She had so few intimate friends... That letters will be of specialvalue. " So few intimate friends! For years she had had but one; onewho in the last years had requited her wonderful pages, her tragicoutpourings of love, humility, and pardon, with the scant phrases bywhich a man evades the vulgarest of sentimental importunities. Hehad been a brute in spite of himself, and sometimes, now that theremembrance of her face had faded, and only her voice and words remainedwith him, he chafed at his own inadequacy, his stupid inability to riseto the height of her passion. His egoism was not of a kind to mirror itscomplacency in the adventure. To have been loved by the most brilliantwoman of her day, and to have been incapable of loving her, seemed tohim, in looking back, the most derisive evidence of his limitations; andhis remorseful tenderness for her memory was complicated with a sense ofirritation against her for having given him once for all the measure ofhis emotional capacity. It was not often, however, that he thus probedthe past. The public, in taking possession of Mrs. Aubyn, had eased hisshoulders of their burden. There was something fatuous in an attitude ofsentimental apology toward a memory already classic: to reproach one'sself for not having loved Margaret Aubyn was a good deal like beingdisturbed by an inability to admire the Venus of Milo. From hercold niche of fame she looked down ironically enough on hisself-flagellations.... It was only when he came on something thatbelonged to her that he felt a sudden renewal of the old feeling, thestrange dual impulse that drew him to her voice but drove him from herhand, so that even now, at sight of anything she had touched, his heartcontracted painfully. It happened seldom nowadays. Her little presents, one by one, had disappeared from his rooms, and her letters, kept fromsome unacknowledged puerile vanity in the possession of such treasures, seldom came beneath his hand.... 

"Her letters will be of special value--" Her letters! Why, he must havehundreds of them--enough to fill a volume. Sometimes it used to seemto him that they came with every post--he used to avoid looking in hisletter-box when he came home to his rooms--but her writing seemed tospring out at him as he put his key in the door--. 

He stood up and strolled into the other room. Hollingsworth, loungingaway from the window, had joined himself to a languidly convivial groupof men to whom, in phrases as halting as though they struggled to definean ultimate idea, he was expounding the cursed nuisance of living ina hole with such a damned climate that one had to get out of it byFebruary, with the contingent difficulty of there being no place to takeone's yacht to in winter but that other played-out hole, the Riviera. From the outskirts of this group Glennard wandered to another, wherea voice as different as possible from Hollingsworth's colorless organdominated another circle of languid listeners. 

"Come and hear Dinslow talk about his patent: admission free, " one ofthe men sang out in a tone of mock resignation. 

Dinslow turned to Glennard the confident pugnacity of his smile. "Giveit another six months and it'll be talking about itself, " he declared. "It's pretty nearly articulate now. "

"Can it say papa?" someone else inquired. 

Dinslow's smile broadened. "You'll be deuced glad to say papa to ITa year from now, " he retorted. "It'll be able to support even you inaffluence. Look here, now, just let me explain to you--"

Glennard moved away impatiently. The men at the club--all but those whowere "in it"--were proverbially "tired" of Dinslow's patent, and nonemore so than Glennard, whose knowledge of its merits made it loom largein the depressing catalogue of lost opportunities. The relations betweenthe two men had always been friendly, and Dinslow's urgent offers to"take him in on the ground floor" had of late intensified Glennard'ssense of his own inability to meet good luck half way. Some of the menwho had paused to listen were already in evening clothes, others ontheir way home to dress; and Glennard, with an accustomed twinge ofhumiliation, said to himself that if he lingered among them it was inthe miserable hope that one of the number might ask him to dine. MissTrent had told him that she was to go to the opera that evening with herrich aunt; and if he should have the luck to pick up a dinner-invitationhe might join her there without extra outlay. 

He moved about the room, lingering here and there in a tentativeaffectation of interest; but though the men greeted him pleasantly noone asked him to dine. Doubtless they were all engaged, these men whocould afford to pay for their dinners, who did not have to hunt forinvitations as a beggar rummages for a crust in an ash-barrel! Butno--as Hollingsworth left the lessening circle about the table anadmiring youth called out--"Holly, stop and dine!"

Hollingsworth turned on him the crude countenance that looked like thewrong side of a more finished face. "Sorry I can't. I'm in for a beastlybanquet. "

Glennard threw himself into an arm-chair. Why go home in the rain todress? It was folly to take a cab to the opera, it was worse folly to gothere at all. His perpetual meetings with Alexa Trent were as unfair tothe girl as they were unnerving to himself. Since he couldn't marry her, it was time to stand aside and give a better man the chance--andhis thought admitted the ironical implication that in the terms ofexpediency the phrase might stand for Hollingsworth. 

II

He dined alone and walked home to his rooms in the rain. As he turnedinto Fifth Avenue he caught the wet gleam of carriages on their way tothe opera, and he took the first side street, in a moment of irritationagainst the petty restrictions that thwarted every impulse. It wasridiculous to give up the opera, not because one might possibly be boredthere, but because one must pay for the experiment. 

In his sitting-room, the tacit connivance of the inanimate had centredthe lamp-light on a photograph of Alexa Trent, placed, in the obligatorysilver frame, just where, as memory officiously reminded him, MargaretAubyn's picture had long throned in its stead. Miss Trent's featurescruelly justified the usurpation. She had the kind of beauty that comesof a happy accord of face and spirit. It is not given to many to havethe lips and eyes of their rarest mood, and some women go through lifebehind a mask expressing only their anxiety about the butcher's bill ortheir inability to see a joke. With Miss Trent, face and mind had thesame high serious contour. She looked like a throned Justice by somegrave Florentine painter; and it seemed to Glennard that her mostsalient attribute, or that at least to which her conduct gave mostconsistent expression, was a kind of passionate justice--the intuitivefeminine justness that is so much rarer than a reasoned impartiality. Circumstances had tragically combined to develop this instinct into aconscious habit. She had seen more than most girls of the shabby side oflife, of the perpetual tendency of want to cramp the noblest attitude. Poverty and misfortune had overhung her childhood and she had none ofthe pretty delusions about life that are supposed to be the crowninggrace of girlhood. This very competence, which gave her a touchingreasonableness, made Glennard's situation more difficult than if he hadaspired to a princess bred in the purple. Between them they askedso little--they knew so well how to make that little do--but theyunderstood also, and she especially did not for a moment let him forget, that without that little the future they dreamed of was impossible. 

The sight of her photograph quickened Glennard's exasperation. He wassick and ashamed of the part he was playing. He had loved her now fortwo years, with the tranquil tenderness that gathers depth and volumeas it nears fulfilment; he knew that she would wait for him--but thecertitude was an added pang. There are times when the constancy of thewoman one cannot marry is almost as trying as that of the woman one doesnot want to. 

Glennard turned up his reading-lamp and stirred the fire. He had a longevening before him and he wanted to crowd out thought with action. Hehad brought some papers from his office and he spread them out on histable and squared himself to the task.... 

It must have been an hour later that he found himself automaticallyfitting a key into a locked drawer. He had no more notion than asomnambulist of the mental process that had led up to this action. Hewas just dimly aware of having pushed aside the papers and the heavycalf volumes that a moment before had bounded his horizon, and of layingin their place, without a trace of conscious volition, the parcel he hadtaken from the drawer. 

The letters were tied in packets of thirty or forty. There were a greatmany packets. On some of the envelopes the ink was fading; on others, which bore the English post-mark, it was still fresh. She had been deadhardly three years, and she had written, at lengthening intervals, tothe last.... 

He undid one of the earlier packets--little notes written during theirfirst acquaintance at Hillbridge. Glennard, on leaving college, hadbegun life in his uncle's law office in the old university town. It wasthere that, at the house of her father, Professor Forth, he had firstmet the young lady then chiefly distinguished for having, after twoyears of a conspicuously unhappy marriage, returned to the protection ofthe paternal roof. 

Mrs. Aubyn was at that time an eager and somewhat tragic young woman, of complex mind and undeveloped manners, whom her crude experience ofmatrimony had fitted out with a stock of generalizations that explodedlike bombs in the academic air of Hillbridge. In her choice of a husbandshe had been fortunate enough, if the paradox be permitted, to light onone so signally gifted with the faculty of putting himself in the wrongthat her leaving him had the dignity of a manifesto--made her, asit were, the spokeswoman of outraged wifehood. In this light she wascherished by that dominant portion of Hillbridge society which wasleast indulgent to conjugal differences, and which found a proportionatepleasure in being for once able to feast openly on a dish liberallyseasoned with the outrageous. So much did this endear Mrs. Aubyn to theuniversity ladies that they were disposed from the first to allow hermore latitude of speech and action than the ill-used wife was generallyaccorded in Hillbridge, where misfortune was still regarded as avisitation designed to put people in their proper place and make themfeel the superiority of their neighbors. The young woman so privilegedcombined with a kind of personal shyness an intellectual audacity thatwas like a deflected impulse of coquetry: one felt that if she had beenprettier she would have had emotions instead of ideas. She was in facteven then what she had always remained: a genius capable of theacutest generalizations, but curiously undiscerning where her personalsusceptibilities were concerned. Her psychology failed her just where itserves most women and one felt that her brains would never be a guideto her heart. Of all this, however, Glennard thought little in the firstyear of their acquaintance. He was at an age when all the gifts andgraces are but so much undiscriminated food to the ravening egoism ofyouth. In seeking Mrs. Aubyn's company he was prompted by an intuitivetaste for the best as a pledge of his own superiority. The sympathyof the cleverest woman in Hillbridge was balm to his craving fordistinction: it was public confirmation of his secret sense that he wascut out for a bigger place. It must not be understood that Glennard wasvain. Vanity contents itself with the coarsest diet; there is nopalate so fastidious as that of self-distrust. To a youth of Glennard'saspirations the encouragement of a clever woman stood for the symbolof all success. Later, when he had begun to feel his way, to gain afoothold, he would not need such support; but it served to carryhim lightly and easily over what is often a period of insecurity anddiscouragement. 

It would be unjust, however, to represent his interest in Mrs. Aubyn asa matter of calculation. It was as instinctive as love, and it missedbeing love by just such a hair-breadth deflection from the line ofbeauty as had determined the curve of Mrs. Aubyn's lips. When they metshe had just published her first novel, and Glennard, who afterward hadan ambitious man's impatience of distinguished women, was young enoughto be dazzled by the semi-publicity it gave her. It was the kind of bookthat makes elderly ladies lower their voices and call each other "mydear" when they furtively discuss it; and Glennard exulted in thesuperior knowledge of the world that enabled him to take as a matter ofcourse sentiments over which the university shook its head. Stillmore delightful was it to hear Mrs. Aubyn waken the echoes of academicdrawing-rooms with audacities surpassing those of her printed page. Herintellectual independence gave a touch of comradeship to their intimacy, prolonging the illusion of college friendships based on a joyousinterchange of heresies. Mrs. Aubyn and Glennard represented to eachother the augur's wink behind the Hillbridge idol: they walked togetherin that light of young omniscience from which fate so curiously excludesone's elders. 

Husbands who are notoriously inopportune, may even die inopportunely, and this was the revenge that Mr. Aubyn, some two years after her returnto Hillbridge, took upon his injured wife. He died precisely at themoment when Glennard was beginning to criticise her. It was not thatshe bored him; she did what was infinitely worse--she made him feel hisinferiority. The sense of mental equality had been gratifying to his rawambition; but as his self-knowledge defined itself, his understanding ofher also increased; and if man is at times indirectly flattered by themoral superiority of woman, her mental ascendency is extenuated by nosuch oblique tribute to his powers. The attitude of looking up is astrain on the muscles; and it was becoming more and more Glennard'sopinion that brains, in a woman, should be merely the obverse of beauty. To beauty Mrs. Aubyn could lay no claim; and while she had enoughprettiness to exasperate him by her incapacity to make use of it, sheseemed invincibly ignorant of any of the little artifices whereby womencontrive to palliate their defects and even to turn them into graces. Her dress never seemed a part of her; all her clothes had an impersonalair, as though they had belonged to someone else and been borrowed in anemergency that had somehow become chronic. She was conscious enough ofher deficiencies to try to amend them by rash imitations of the mostapproved models; but no woman who does not dress well intuitively willever do so by the light of reason, and Mrs. Aubyn's plagiarisms, toborrow a metaphor of her trade, somehow never seemed to be incorporatedwith the text. 

Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair. The fame that came to Mrs. Aubyn with her second book left Glennard'simagination untouched, or had at most the negative effect of removingher still farther from the circle of his contracting sympathies. We areall the sport of time; and fate had so perversely ordered the chronologyof Margaret Aubyn's romance that when her husband died Glennard felt asthough he had lost a friend. 

It was not in his nature to be needlessly unkind; and though he wasin the impregnable position of the man who has given a woman no moredefinable claim on him than that of letting her fancy that he lovesher, he would not for the world have accentuated his advantage by anybetrayal of indifference. During the first year of her widowhood theirfriendship dragged on with halting renewals of sentiment, becoming moreand more a banquet of empty dishes from which the covers were neverremoved; then Glennard went to New York to live and exchanged the fadedpleasures of intercourse for the comparative novelty of correspondence. Her letters, oddly enough, seemed at first to bring her nearer than herpresence. She had adopted, and she successfully maintained, a note asaffectionately impersonal as his own; she wrote ardently of her work, she questioned him about his, she even bantered him on the inevitablepretty girl who was certain before long to divert the current of hisconfidences. To Glennard, who was almost a stranger in New York, the sight of Mrs. Aubyn's writing was like a voice of reassurance insurroundings as yet insufficiently aware of him. His vanity found aretrospective enjoyment in the sentiment his heart had rejected, andthis factitious emotion drove him once or twice to Hillbridge, whence, after scenes of evasive tenderness, he returned dissatisfied withhimself and her. As he made room for himself in New York and peopled thespace he had cleared with the sympathies at the disposal of agreeableand self-confident young men, it seemed to him natural to infer thatMrs. Aubyn had refurnished in the same manner the void he was notunwilling his departure should have left. But in the dissolution ofsentimental partnerships it is seldom that both associates are able towithdraw their funds at the same time; and Glennard gradually learnedthat he stood for the venture on which Mrs. Aubyn had irretrievablystaked her all. It was not the kind of figure he cared to cut. He hadno fancy for leaving havoc in his wake and would have preferred to sowa quick growth of oblivion in the spaces wasted by his unconsideredinroads; but if he supplied the seed it was clearly Mrs. Aubyn'sbusiness to see to the raising of the crop. Her attitude seemed indeedto throw his own reasonableness into distincter relief: so that theymight have stood for thrift and improvidence in an allegory of theaffections. 

It was not that Mrs. Aubyn permitted herself to be a pensioner on hisbounty. He knew she had no wish to keep herself alive on the smallchange of sentiment; she simply fed on her own funded passion, and theluxuries it allowed her made him, even then, dimly aware that she hadthe secret of an inexhaustible alchemy. 

Their relations remained thus negatively tender till she suddenly wrotehim of her decision to go abroad to live. Her father had died, she hadno near ties in Hillbridge, and London offered more scope than New Yorkto her expanding personality. She was already famous and her laurelswere yet unharvested. 

For a moment the news roused Glennard to a jealous sense of lostopportunities. He wanted, at any rate, to reassert his power before shemade the final effort of escape. They had not met for over a year, butof course he could not let her sail without seeing her. She came toNew York the day before her departure, and they spent its last hourstogether. Glennard had planned no course of action--he simply meant tolet himself drift. They both drifted, for a long time, down the languidcurrent of reminiscence; she seemed to sit passive, letting him pushhis way back through the overgrown channels of the past. At length shereminded him that they must bring their explorations to an end. He roseto leave, and stood looking at her with the same uncertainty in hisheart. He was tired of her already--he was always tired of her--yet hewas not sure that he wanted her to go. 

"I may never see you again, " he said, as though confidently appealing toher compassion. 

Her look enveloped him. "And I shall see you always--always!"

"Why go then--?" escaped him. 

"To be nearer you, " she answered; and the words dismissed him like aclosing door. 

The door was never to reopen; but through its narrow crack Glennard, asthe years went on, became more and more conscious of an inextinguishablelight directing its small ray toward the past which consumed so littleof his own commemorative oil. The reproach was taken from this thoughtby Mrs. Aubyn's gradual translation into terms of universality. Inbecoming a personage she so naturally ceased to be a person thatGlennard could almost look back to his explorations of her spirit as ona visit to some famous shrine, immortalized, but in a sense desecrated, by popular veneration. 

Her letters, from London, continued to come with the same tenderpunctuality; but the altered conditions of her life, the vistas of newrelationships disclosed by every phrase, made her communications asimpersonal as a piece of journalism. It was as though the state, theworld, indeed, had taken her off his hands, assuming the maintenance ofa temperament that had long exhausted his slender store of reciprocity. 

In the retrospective light shed by the letters he was blinded totheir specific meaning. He was not a man who concerned himself withliterature, and they had been to him, at first, simply the extension ofher brilliant talk, later the dreaded vehicle of a tragic importunity. He knew, of course, that they were wonderful; that, unlike the authorswho give their essence to the public and keep only a dry rind for theirfriends, Mrs. Aubyn had stored of her rarest vintage for this hiddensacrament of tenderness. Sometimes, indeed, he had been oppressed, humiliated almost, by the multiplicity of her allusions, the wide scopeof her interests, her persistence in forcing her superabundance ofthought and emotion into the shallow receptacle of his sympathy; buthe had never thought of the letters objectively, as the production of adistinguished woman; had never measured the literary significance of heroppressive prodigality. He was almost frightened now at the wealth inhis hands; the obligation of her love had never weighed on him likethis gift of her imagination: it was as though he had accepted from hersomething to which even a reciprocal tenderness could not have justifiedhis claim. 

He sat a long time staring at the scattered pages on his desk; and inthe sudden realization of what they meant he could almost fancy somealchemistic process changing them to gold as he stared. He had thesense of not being alone in the room, of the presence of another selfobserving from without the stirring of subconscious impulses that sentflushes of humiliation to his forehead. At length he stood up, andwith the gesture of a man who wishes to give outward expression to hispurpose--to establish, as it were, a moral alibi--swept the letters intoa heap and carried them toward the grate. But it would have taken toolong to burn all the packets. He turned back to the table and one by onefitted the pages into their envelopes; then he tied up the letters andput them back into the locked drawer. 

III

It was one of the laws of Glennard's intercourse with Miss Trent thathe always went to see her the day after he had resolved to give her up. There was a special charm about the moments thus snatched from thejaws of renunciation; and his sense of their significance was onthis occasion so keen that he hardly noticed the added gravity of herwelcome. 

His feeling for her had become so vital a part of him that her nearnesshad the quality of imperceptibly readjusting his point of view, sothat the jumbled phenomena of experience fell at once into a rationalperspective. In this redistribution of values the sombre retrospectof the previous evening shrank to a mere cloud on the edge ofconsciousness. Perhaps the only service an unloved woman can render theman she loves is to enhance and prolong his illusions about her rival. It was the fate of Margaret Aubyn's memory to serve as a foil to MissTrent's presence, and never had the poor lady thrown her successor intomore vivid relief. 

Miss Trent had the charm of still waters that are felt to be renewedby rapid currents. Her attention spread a tranquil surface to thedemonstrations of others, and it was only in days of storm that one feltthe pressure of the tides. This inscrutable composure was perhaps herchief grace in Glennard's eyes. Reserve, in some natures, implies merelythe locking of empty rooms or the dissimulation of awkward encumbrances;but Miss Trent's reticence was to Glennard like the closed door to thesanctuary, and his certainty of divining the hidden treasure made himcontent to remain outside in the happy expectancy of the neophyte. 

"You didn't come to the opera last night, " she began, in the tone thatseemed always rather to record a fact than to offer a reflection on it. 

He answered with a discouraged gesture. "What was the use? We couldn'thave talked. "

"Not as well as here, " she assented; adding, after a meditative pause, "As you didn't come I talked to Aunt Virginia instead. "

"Ah!" he returned, the fact being hardly striking enough to detach himfrom the contemplation of her hands, which had fallen, as was theirwont, into an attitude full of plastic possibilities. One felt them tobe hands that, moving only to some purpose, were capable of intervals ofserene inaction. 

"We had a long talk, " Miss Trent went on; and she waited again beforeadding, with the increased absence of stress that marked her gravercommunications, "Aunt Virginia wants me to go abroad with her. "

Glennard looked up with a start. "Abroad? When?"

"Now--next month. To be gone two years. "

He permitted himself a movement of tender derision. "Does she really?Well, I want you to go abroad with ME--for any number of years. Whichoffer do you accept?"

"Only one of them seems to require immediate consideration, " shereturned, with a smile. 

Glennard looked at her again. "You're not thinking of it?"

Her gaze dropped and she unclasped her hands. Her movements were so rarethat they might have been said to italicize her words. "Aunt Virginiatalked to me very seriously. It will be a great relief to mother and theothers to have me provided for in that way for two years. I mustthink of that, you know. " She glanced down at her gown which, under arenovated surface, dated back to the first days of Glennard's wooing. "Itry not to cost much--but I do. "

"Good Lord!" Glennard groaned. 

They sat silent till at length she gently took up the argument. "As theeldest, you know, I'm bound to consider these things. Women are such aburden. Jim does what he can for mother, but with his own children toprovide for it isn't very much. You see, we're all poor together. "

"Your aunt isn't. She might help your mother. "

"She does--in her own way. "

"Exactly--that's the rich relation all over! You may be miserable inany way you like, but if you're to be happy you've got to be so in herway--and in her old gowns. "

"I could be very happy in Aunt Virginia's old gowns, " Miss Trentinterposed. 

"Abroad, you mean?"

"I mean wherever I felt that I was helping. And my going abroad willhelp. "

"Of course--I see that. And I see your considerateness in putting itsadvantages negatively. "

"Negatively?"

"In dwelling simply on what the going will take you from, not on whatit will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course, to getaway from a life like this. " He summed up in a disparaging glance thebackground of indigent furniture. "The question is how you'll likecoming back to it. "

She seemed to accept the full consequences of his thought. "I only knowI don't like leaving it. "

He flung back sombrely, "You don't even put it conditionally then?"

Her gaze deepened. "On what?"

He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came back and pausedbefore her. "On the alternative of marrying me. "

The slow color--even her blushes seemed deliberate--rose to her lowerlids; her lips stirred, but the words resolved themselves into a smileand she waited. 

He took another turn, with the thwarted step of the man whose nervousexasperation escapes through his muscles. 

"And to think that in fifteen years I shall have a big practice!"

Her eyes triumphed for him. "In less!"

"The cursed irony of it! What do I care for the man I shall be then?It's slaving one's life away for a stranger!" He took her handsabruptly. "You'll go to Cannes, I suppose, or Monte Carlo? I heardHollingsworth say to-day that he meant to take his yacht over to theMediterranean--"

She released herself. "If you think that--"

"I don't. I almost wish I did. It would be easier, I mean. " He broke offincoherently. "I believe your Aunt Virginia does, though. She somehowconnotes Hollingsworth and the Mediterranean. " He caught her handsagain. "Alexa--if we could manage a little hole somewhere out of town?"

"Could we?" she sighed, half yielding. 

"In one of those places where they make jokes about the mosquitoes, " hepressed her. "Could you get on with one servant?"

"Could you get on without varnished boots?"

"Promise me you won't go, then!"

"What are you thinking of, Stephen?"

"I don't know, " he stammered, the question giving unexpected form to hisintention. "It's all in the air yet, of course; but I picked up a tipthe other day--"

"You're not speculating?" she cried, with a kind of superstitiousterror. 

"Lord, no. This is a sure thing--I almost wish it wasn't; I mean if Ican work it--" He had a sudden vision of the comprehensiveness of thetemptation. If only he had been less sure of Dinslow! His assurance gavethe situation the base element of safety. 

"I don't understand you, " she faltered. 

"Trust me, instead!" he adjured her, with sudden energy; and turning onher abruptly, "If you go, you know, you go free, " he concluded. 

She drew back, paling a little. "Why do you make it harder for me?"

"To make it easier for myself, " he retorted. 

IV

Glennard, the next afternoon, leaving his office earlier than usual, turned, on his way home, into one of the public libraries. 

He had the place to himself at that closing hour, and the librarianwas able to give an undivided attention to his tentative request forletters--collections of letters. The librarian suggested Walpole. 

"I meant women--women's letters. "

The librarian proffered Hannah More and Miss Martineau. 

Glennard cursed his own inarticulateness. "I mean letters to--to someone person--a man; their husband--or--"

"Ah, " said the inspired librarian, "Eloise and Abailard. "

"Well--something a little nearer, perhaps, " said Glennard, withlightness. "Didn't Merimee--"

"The lady's letters, in that case, were not published. "

"Of course not, " said Glennard, vexed at his blunder. 

"There are George Sand's letters to Flaubert. "

"Ah!" Glennard hesitated. "Was she--were they--?" He chafed at his ownignorance of the sentimental by-paths of literature. 

"If you want love-letters, perhaps some of the French eighteenthcentury correspondences might suit you better--Mlle. Aisse or Madame deSabran--"

But Glennard insisted. "I want something modern--English or American. Iwant to look something up, " he lamely concluded. 

The librarian could only suggest George Eliot. 

"Well, give me some of the French things, then--and I'll have Merimee'sletters. It was the woman who published them, wasn't it?"

He caught up his armful, transferring it, on the doorstep, to a cabwhich carried him to his rooms. He dined alone, hurriedly, at a smallrestaurant near by, and returned at once to his books. 

Late that night, as he undressed, he wondered what contemptible impulsehad forced from him his last words to Alexa Trent. It was bad enough tointerfere with the girl's chances by hanging about her to the obviousexclusion of other men, but it was worse to seem to justify his weaknessby dressing up the future in delusive ambiguities. He saw himselfsinking from depth to depth of sentimental cowardice in his reluctanceto renounce his hold on her; and it filled him with self-disgust tothink that the highest feeling of which he supposed himself capable wasblent with such base elements. 

His awakening was hardly cheered by the sight of her writing. He toreher note open and took in the few lines--she seldom exceeded the firstpage--with the lucidity of apprehension that is the forerunner of evil. 

"My aunt sails on Saturday and I must give her my answer the day afterto-morrow. Please don't come till then--I want to think the questionover by myself. I know I ought to go. Won't you help me to bereasonable?"

It was settled, then. Well, he would be reasonable; he wouldn't standin her way; he would let her go. For two years he had been living someother, luckier man's life; the time had come when he must drop back intohis own. He no longer tried to look ahead, to grope his way throughthe endless labyrinth of his material difficulties; a sense of dullresignation closed in on him like a fog. 

"Hullo, Glennard!" a voice said, as an electric-car, late thatafternoon, dropped him at an uptown corner. 

He looked up and met the interrogative smile of Barton Flamel, whostood on the curbstone watching the retreating car with the eye of a manphilosophic enough to remember that it will be followed by another. 

Glennard felt his usual impulse of pleasure at meeting Flamel; butit was not in this case curtailed by the reaction of contempt thathabitually succeeded it. Probably even the few men who had known Flamelsince his youth could have given no good reason for the vague mistrustthat he inspired. Some people are judged by their actions, others bytheir ideas; and perhaps the shortest way of defining Flamel is to saythat his well-known leniency of view was vaguely divined to includehimself. Simple minds may have resented the discovery that his opinionswere based on his perceptions; but there was certainly no more definitecharge against him than that implied in the doubt as to how he wouldbehave in an emergency, and his company was looked upon as one of thosemildly unwholesome dissipations to which the prudent may occasionallyyield. It now offered itself to Glennard as an easy escape from theobsession of moral problems, which somehow could no more be worn inFlamel's presence than a surplice in the street. 

"Where are you going? To the club?" Flamel asked; adding, as the youngerman assented, "Why not come to my studio instead? You'll see one boreinstead of twenty. "

The apartment which Flamel described as his studio showed, as its oneclaim to the designation, a perennially empty easel; the rest of itsspace being filled with the evidences of a comprehensive dilettanteism. Against this background, which seemed the visible expression of itsowner's intellectual tolerance, rows of fine books detached themselveswith a prominence, showing them to be Flamel's chief care. 

Glennard glanced with the eye of untrained curiosity at the lines ofwarm-toned morocco, while his host busied himself with the uncorking ofApollinaris. 

"You've got a splendid lot of books, " he said. 

"They're fairly decent, " the other assented, in the curt tone of thecollector who will not talk of his passion for fear of talking ofnothing else; then, as Glennard, his hands in his pockets, began tostroll perfunctorily down the long line of bookcases--"Some men, " Flamelirresistibly added, "think of books merely as tools, others as tooling. I'm between the two; there are days when I use them as scenery, otherdays when I want them as society; so that, as you see, my libraryrepresents a makeshift compromise between looks and brains, and thecollectors look down on me almost as much as the students. "

Glennard, without answering, was mechanically taking one book afteranother from the shelves. His hands slipped curiously over the smoothcovers and the noiseless subsidence of opening pages. Suddenly he cameon a thin volume of faded manuscript. 

"What's this?" he asked, with a listless sense of wonder. 

"Ah, you're at my manuscript shelf. I've been going in for that sort ofthing lately. " Flamel came up and looked over his shoulders. "That's abit of Stendhal--one of the Italian stories--and here are some lettersof Balzac to Madame Commanville. "

Glennard took the book with sudden eagerness. "Who was MadameCommanville?"

"His sister. " He was conscious that Flamel was looking at him with thesmile that was like an interrogation point. "I didn't know you cared forthis kind of thing. "

"I don't--at least I've never had the chance. Have you many collectionsof letters?"

"Lord, no--very few. I'm just beginning, and most of the interestingones are out of my reach. Here's a queer little collection, though--therarest thing I've got--half a dozen of Shelley's letters to HarrietWestbrook. I had a devil of a time getting them--a lot of collectorswere after them. "

Glennard, taking the volume from his hand, glanced with a kind ofrepugnance at the interleaving of yellow cris-crossed sheets. "She wasthe one who drowned herself, wasn't she?"

Flamel nodded. "I suppose that little episode adds about fifty per cent. To their value, " he said, meditatively. 

Glennard laid the book down. He wondered why he had joined Flamel. He was in no humor to be amused by the older man's talk, and arecrudescence of personal misery rose about him like an icy tide. 

"I believe I must take myself off, " he said. "I'd forgotten anengagement. "

He turned to go; but almost at the same moment he was conscious of aduality of intention wherein his apparent wish to leave revealed itselfas a last effort of the will against the overmastering desire to stayand unbosom himself to Flamel. 

The older man, as though divining the conflict, laid a detainingpressure on his arm. 

"Won't the engagement keep? Sit down and try one of these cigars. Idon't often have the luck of seeing you here. "

"I'm rather driven just now, " said Glennard, vaguely. He found himselfseated again, and Flamel had pushed to his side a low stand holding abottle of Apollinaris and a decanter of cognac. 

Flamel, thrown back in his capacious arm-chair, surveyed him througha cloud of smoke with the comfortable tolerance of the man to whom noinconsistencies need be explained. Connivance was implicit in the air. It was the kind of atmosphere in which the outrageous loses its edge. Glennard felt a gradual relaxing of his nerves. 

"I suppose one has to pay a lot for letters like that?" he heard himselfasking, with a glance in the direction of the volume he had laid aside. 

"Oh, so-do--depends on circumstances. " Flamel viewed him thoughtfully. "Are you thinking of collecting?"

Glennard laughed. "Lord, no. The other way round. "

"Selling?"

"Oh, I hardly know. I was thinking of a poor chap--"

Flamel filled the pause with a nod of interest. 

"A poor chap I used to know--who died--he died last year--and who leftme a lot of letters, letters he thought a great deal of--he was fondof me and left 'em to me outright, with the idea, I suppose, thatthey might benefit me somehow--I don't know--I'm not much up on suchthings--" he reached his hand to the tall glass his host had filled. 

"A collection of autograph letters, eh? Any big names?"

"Oh, only one name. They're all letters written to him--by one person, you understand; a woman, in fact--"

"Oh, a woman, " said Flamel, negligently. 

Glennard was nettled by his obvious loss of interest. "I rather thinkthey'd attract a good deal of notice if they were published. "

Flamel still looked uninterested. "Love-letters, I suppose?"

"Oh, just--the letters a woman would write to a man she knew well. Theywere tremendous friends, he and she. "

"And she wrote a clever letter?"

"Clever? It was Margaret Aubyn. "

A great silence filled the room. It seemed to Glennard that the wordshad burst from him as blood gushes from a wound. 

"Great Scott!" said Flamel, sitting up. "A collection of MargaretAubyn's letters? Did you say YOU had them?"

"They were left me--by my friend. "

"I see. Was he--well, no matter. You're to be congratulated, at anyrate. What are you going to do with them?"

Glennard stood up with a sense of weariness in all his bones. "Oh, Idon't know. I haven't thought much about it. I just happened to see thatsome fellow was writing her life--"

"Joslin; yes. You didn't think of giving them to him?"

Glennard had lounged across the room and stood staring up at a bronzeBacchus who drooped his garlanded head above the pediment of an Italiancabinet. "What ought I to do? You're just the fellow to advise me. " Hefelt the blood in his cheek as he spoke. 

Flamel sat with meditative eye. "What do you WANT to do with them?" heasked. 

"I want to publish them, " said Glennard, swinging round with suddenenergy--"If I can--"

"If you can? They're yours, you say?"

"They're mine fast enough. There's no one to prevent--I mean there areno restrictions--" he was arrested by the sense that these accumulatedproofs of impunity might precisely stand as the strongest check on hisaction. 

"And Mrs. Aubyn had no family, I believe?"

"No. "

"Then I don't see who's to interfere, " said Flamel, studying hiscigar-tip. 

Glennard had turned his unseeing stare on an ecstatic Saint Catherineframed in tarnished gilding. 

"It's just this way, " he began again, with an effort. "When letters areas personal as--as these of my friend's.... Well, I don't mind tellingyou that the cash would make a heap of difference to me; such a lot thatit rather obscures my judgment--the fact is if I could lay my hand on afew thousands now I could get into a big thing, and without appreciablerisk; and I'd like to know whether you think I'd be justified--under thecircumstances.... " He paused, with a dry throat. It seemed to him at themoment that it would be impossible for him ever to sink lower in his ownestimation. He was in truth less ashamed of weighing the temptation thanof submitting his scruples to a man like Flamel, and affecting to appealto sentiments of delicacy on the absence of which he had consciouslyreckoned. But he had reached a point where each word seemed to compelanother, as each wave in a stream is forced forward by the pressurebehind it; and before Flamel could speak he had faltered out--"You don'tthink people could say... Could criticise the man.... "

"But the man's dead, isn't he?"

"He's dead--yes; but can I assume the responsibility without--"

Flamel hesitated; and almost immediately Glennard's scruples gave wayto irritation. If at this hour Flamel were to affect an inopportunereluctance--!

The older man's answer reassured him. "Why need you assume anyresponsibility? Your name won't appear, of course; and as to yourfriend's, I don't see why his should, either. He wasn't a celebrityhimself, I suppose?"

"No, no. "

"Then the letters can be addressed to Mr. Blank. Doesn't that make itall right?"

Glennard's hesitation revived. "For the public, yes. But I don't seethat it alters the case for me. The question is, ought I to publish themat all?"

"Of course you ought to. " Flamel spoke with invigorating emphasis. "Idoubt if you'd be justified in keeping them back. Anything of MargaretAubyn's is more or less public property by this time. She's too greatfor any one of us. I was only wondering how you could use them to thebest advantage--to yourself, I mean. How many are there?"

"Oh, a lot; perhaps a hundred--I haven't counted. There may be more.... "

"Gad! What a haul! When were they written?"

"I don't know--that is--they corresponded for years. What's the odds?"He moved toward his hat with a vague impulse of flight. 

"It all counts, " said Flamel, imperturbably. "A longcorrespondence--one, I mean, that covers a great deal of time--isobviously worth more than if the same number of letters had been writtenwithin a year. At any rate, you won't give them to Joslin? They'd fill abook, wouldn't they?"

"I suppose so. I don't know how much it takes to fill a book. "

"Not love-letters, you say?"

"Why?" flashed from Glennard. 

"Oh, nothing--only the big public is sentimental, and if they WERE--why, you could get any money for Margaret Aubyn's love-letters. "

Glennard was silent. 

"Are the letters interesting in themselves? I mean apart from theassociation with her name?"

"I'm no judge. " Glennard took up his hat and thrust himself into hisovercoat. "I dare say I sha'n't do anything about it. And, Flamel--youwon't mention this to anyone?"

"Lord, no. Well, I congratulate you. You've got a big thing. " Flamel wassmiling at him from the hearth. 

Glennard, on the threshold, forced a response to the smile, while hequestioned with loitering indifference--"Financially, eh?"

"Rather; I should say so. "

Glennard's hand lingered on the knob. "How much--should you say? Youknow about such things. "

"Oh, I should have to see the letters; but I should say--well, if you'vegot enough to fill a book and they're fairly readable, and the book isbrought out at the right time--say ten thousand down from the publisher, and possibly one or two more in royalties. If you got the publishersbidding against each other you might do even better; but of course I'mtalking in the dark. "

"Of course, " said Glennard, with sudden dizziness. His hand had slippedfrom the knob and he stood staring down at the exotic spirals of thePersian rug beneath his feet. 

"I'd have to see the letters, " Flamel repeated. 

"Of course--you'd have to see them.... " Glennard stammered; and, withoutturning, he flung over his shoulder an inarticulate "Good-by.... "

V

The little house, as Glennard strolled up to it between the trees, seemed no more than a gay tent pitched against the sunshine. It had thecrispness of a freshly starched summer gown, and the geraniums on theveranda bloomed as simultaneously as the flowers in a bonnet. The gardenwas prospering absurdly. Seed they had sown at random--amid laughingcounter-charges of incompetence--had shot up in fragrant defiance oftheir blunders. He smiled to see the clematis unfolding its punctualwings about the porch. The tiny lawn was smooth as a shaven cheek, and acrimson rambler mounted to the nursery-window of a baby who never cried. A breeze shook the awning above the tea-table, and his wife, as he drewnear, could be seen bending above a kettle that was just about to boil. So vividly did the whole scene suggest the painted bliss of a stagesetting, that it would have been hardly surprising to see her stepforward among the flowers and trill out her virtuous happiness from theveranda-rail. 

The stale heat of the long day in town, the dusty promiscuity of thesuburban train were now but the requisite foil to an evening of scentedbreezes and tranquil talk. They had been married more than a year, and each home-coming still reflected the freshness of their first daytogether. If, indeed, their happiness had a flaw, it was in resemblingtoo closely the bright impermanence of their surroundings. Their love asyet was but the gay tent of holiday-makers. 

His wife looked up with a smile. The country life suited her, and herbeauty had gained depth from a stillness in which certain faces mighthave grown opaque. 

"Are you very tired?" she asked, pouring his tea. 

"Just enough to enjoy this. " He rose from the chair in which he hadthrown himself and bent over the tray for his cream. "You've had avisitor?" he commented, noticing a half-empty cup beside her own. 

"Only Mr. Flamel, " she said, indifferently. 

"Flamel? Again?"

She answered without show of surprise. "He left just now. His yacht isdown at Laurel Bay and he borrowed a trap of the Dreshams to drive overhere. "

Glennard made no comment, and she went on, leaning her head back againstthe cushions of her bamboo-seat, "He wants us to go for a sail with himnext Sunday. "

Glennard meditatively stirred his tea. He was trying to think of themost natural and unartificial thing to say, and his voice seemed to comefrom the outside, as though he were speaking behind a marionette. "Doyou want to?"

"Just as you please, " she said, compliantly. No affectation ofindifference could have been as baffling as her compliance. Glennard, oflate, was beginning to feel that the surface which, a year ago, hehad taken for a sheet of clear glass, might, after all, be a mirrorreflecting merely his own conception of what lay behind it. 

"Do you like Flamel?" he suddenly asked; to which, still engaged withher tea, she returned the feminine answer--"I thought you did. "

"I do, of course, " he agreed, vexed at his own incorrigible tendency tomagnify Flamel's importance by hovering about the topic. "A sail wouldbe rather jolly; let's go. "

She made no reply and he drew forth the rolled-up evening papers whichhe had thrust into his pocket on leaving the train. As he smoothed themout his own countenance seemed to undergo the same process. He ran hiseye down the list of stocks and Flamel's importunate personality recededbehind the rows of figures pushing forward into notice like so manybearers of good news. Glennard's investments were flowering like hisgarden: the dryest shares blossomed into dividends, and a golden harvestawaited his sickle. 

He glanced at his wife with the tranquil air of the man who digestsgood luck as naturally as the dry ground absorbs a shower. "Things arelooking uncommonly well. I believe we shall be able to go to town fortwo or three months next winter if we can find something cheap. "

She smiled luxuriously: it was pleasant to be able to say, with an airof balancing relative advantages, "Really, on the baby's account I shallbe almost sorry; but if we do go, there's Kate Erskine's house... She'lllet us have it for almost nothing.... "

"Well, write her about it, " he recommended, his eyes travelling onin search of the weather report. He had turned to the wrong page; andsuddenly a line of black characters leapt out at him as from an ambush. 

"'Margaret Aubyn's Letters. ' Two volumes. Out to-day. First edition offive thousand sold out before leaving the press. Second edition readynext week. THE BOOK OF THE YEAR.... "

He looked up stupidly. His wife still sat with her head thrown back, her pure profile detached against the cushions. She was smiling a littleover the prospect his last words had opened. Behind her head shiversof sun and shade ran across the striped awning. A row of maples anda privet hedge hid their neighbor's gables, giving them undividedpossession of their leafy half-acre; and life, a moment before, hadbeen like their plot of ground, shut off, hedged in from importunities, impenetrably his and hers. Now it seemed to him that every maple-leaf, every privet-bud, was a relentless human gaze, pressing close upon theirprivacy. It was as though they sat in a brightly lit room, uncurtainedfrom a darkness full of hostile watchers.... His wife still smiled; andher unconsciousness of danger seemed, in some horrible way, to put herbeyond the reach of rescue.... 

He had not known that it would be like this. After the first odiousweeks, spent in preparing the letters for publication, in submittingthem to Flamel, and in negotiating with the publishers, the transactionhad dropped out of his consciousness into that unvisited limbo to whichwe relegate the deeds we would rather not have done but have no notionof undoing. From the moment he had obtained Miss Trent's promise notto sail with her aunt he had tried to imagine himself irrevocablycommitted. After that, he argued, his first duty was to her--she hadbecome his conscience. The sum obtained from the publishers by Flamel'sadroit manipulations and opportunely transferred to Dinslow's successfulventure, already yielded a return which, combined with Glennard'sprofessional earnings, took the edge of compulsion from their way ofliving, making it appear the expression of a graceful preference forsimplicity. It was the mitigated poverty which can subscribe to a reviewor two and have a few flowers on the dinner-table. And already ina small way Glennard was beginning to feel the magnetic quality ofprosperity. Clients who had passed his door in the hungry days soughtit out now that it bore the name of a successful man. It was understoodthat a small inheritance, cleverly invested, was the source of hisfortune; and there was a feeling that a man who could do so well forhimself was likely to know how to turn over other people's money. 

But it was in the more intimate reward of his wife's happiness thatGlennard tasted the full flavor of success. Coming out of conditions sonarrow that those he offered her seemed spacious, she fitted into hernew life without any of those manifest efforts at adjustment that areas sore to a husband's pride as the critical rearrangement of the bridalfurniture. She had given him, instead, the delicate pleasure of watchingher expand like a sea-creature restored to its element, stretching outthe atrophied tentacles of girlish vanity and enjoyment to the risingtide of opportunity. And somehow--in the windowless inner cell of hisconsciousness where self-criticism cowered--Glennard's course seemedjustified by its merely material success. How could such a crop ofinnocent blessedness have sprung from tainted soil?

Now he had the injured sense of a man entrapped into a disadvantageousbargain. He had not known it would be like this; and a dull angergathered at his heart. Anger against whom? Against his wife, for notknowing what he suffered? Against Flamel, for being the unconsciousinstrument of his wrong-doing? Or against that mute memory to which hisown act had suddenly given a voice of accusation? Yes, that was it;and his punishment henceforth would be the presence, the unescapablepresence, of the woman he had so persistently evaded. She would alwaysbe there now. It was as though he had married her instead of the other. It was what she had always wanted--to be with him--and she had gainedher point at last.... 

He sprang up, as though in an impulse of flight.... The sudden movementlifted his wife's lids, and she asked, in the incurious voice of thewoman whose life is enclosed in a magic circle of prosperity--"Anynews?"

"No--none--" he said, roused to a sense of immediate peril. The paperslay scattered at his feet--what if she were to see them? He stretchedhis arm to gather them up, but his next thought showed him the futilityof such concealment. The same advertisement would appear every day, forweeks to come, in every newspaper; how could he prevent her seeing it?He could not always be hiding the papers from her.... Well, and what ifshe did see it? It would signify nothing to her, the chances were thatshe would never even read the book.... As she ceased to be an element offear in his calculations the distance between them seemed to lessenand he took her again, as it were, into the circle of his conjugalprotection.... Yet a moment before he had almost hated her!... Helaughed aloud at his senseless terrors.... He was off his balance, decidedly. 

"What are you laughing at?" she asked. 

He explained, elaborately, that he was laughing at the recollectionof an old woman in the train, an old woman with a lot of bundles, whocouldn't find her ticket.... But somehow, in the telling, the humor ofthe story seemed to evaporate, and he felt the conventionality of hersmile. He glanced at his watch, "Isn't it time to dress?"

She rose with serene reluctance. "It's a pity to go in. The garden looksso lovely. "

They lingered side by side, surveying their domain. There was not spacein it, at this hour, for the shadow of the elm-tree in the angle of thehedge; it crossed the lawn, cut the flower-border in two, and ran up theside of the house to the nursery window. She bent to flick a caterpillarfrom the honey-suckle; then, as they turned indoors, "If we mean togo on the yacht next Sunday, " she suggested, "oughtn't you to let Mr. Flamel know?"

Glennard's exasperation deflected suddenly. "Of course I shall let himknow. You always seem to imply that I'm going to do something rude toFlamel. "

The words reverberated through her silence; she had a way of thusleaving one space in which to contemplate one's folly at arm's length. Glennard turned on his heel and went upstairs. As he dropped into achair before his dressing-table he said to himself that in the last hourhe had sounded the depths of his humiliation and that the lowest dregsof it, the very bottom-slime, was the hateful necessity of havingalways, as long as the two men lived, to be civil to Barton Flamel. 

VI

THE week in town had been sultry, and the men, in the Sundayemancipation of white flannel and duck, filled the deck-chairs of theyacht with their outstretched apathy, following, through a mist ofcigarette-smoke, the flitting inconsequences of the women. The partwas a small one--Flamel had few intimate friends--but composed of moreheterogeneous atoms than the little pools into which society usuallyruns. The reaction from the chief episode of his earlier life hadbred in Glennard an uneasy distaste for any kind of personal saliency. Cleverness was useful in business; but in society it seemed to him asfutile as the sham cascades formed by a stream that might have been usedto drive a mill. He liked the collective point of view that goes withthe civilized uniformity of dress-clothes, and his wife's attitudeimplied the same preference; yet they found themselves slipping moreand more into Flamel's intimacy. Alexa had once or twice said that sheenjoyed meeting clever people; but her enjoyment took the negative formof a smiling receptivity; and Glennard felt a growing preference for thekind of people who have their thinking done for them by the community. 

Still, the deck of the yacht was a pleasant refuge from the heat onshore, and his wife's profile, serenely projected against the changingblue, lay on his retina like a cool hand on the nerves. He had neverbeen more impressed by the kind of absoluteness that lifted her beautyabove the transient effects of other women, making the most harmoniousface seem an accidental collocation of features. 

The ladies who directly suggested this comparison were of a kindaccustomed to take similar risks with more gratifying results. Mrs. Armiger had in fact long been the triumphant alternative of those whocouldn't "see" Alexa Glennard's looks; and Mrs. Touchett's claims toconsideration were founded on that distribution of effects which is thewonder of those who admire a highly cultivated country. The third ladyof the trio which Glennard's fancy had put to such unflattering uses, was bound by circumstances to support the claims of the other two. Thiswas Mrs. Dresham, the wife of the editor of the Radiator. Mrs. Dreshamwas a lady who had rescued herself from social obscurity by assuming therole of her husband's exponent and interpreter; and Dresham's leisurebeing devoted to the cultivation of remarkable women, hiswife's attitude committed her to the public celebration of theirremarkableness. For the conceivable tedium of this duty, Mrs. Dreshamwas repaid by the fact that there were people who took HER for aremarkable woman; and who in turn probably purchased similar distinctionwith the small change of her reflected importance. As to the otherladies of the party, they were simply the wives of some of the men--thekind of women who expect to be talked to collectively and to have theirquestions left unanswered. 

Mrs. Armiger, the latest embodiment of Dresham's instinct for theremarkable, was an innocent beauty who for years had distilleddulness among a set of people now self-condemned by their inabilityto appreciate her. Under Dresham's tutelage she had developed into a"thoughtful woman, " who read his leaders in the Radiator and bought thebooks he recommended. When a new novel appeared, people wanted to knowwhat Mrs. Armiger thought of it; and a young gentleman who had made atrip in Touraine had recently inscribed to her the wide-margined resultof his explorations. 

Glennard, leaning back with his head against the rail and a slit offugitive blue between his half-closed lids, vaguely wished she wouldn'tspoil the afternoon by making people talk; though he reduced hisannoyance to the minimum by not listening to what was said, thereremained a latent irritation against the general futility of words. 

His wife's gift of silence seemed to him the most vivid commentary onthe clumsiness of speech as a means of intercourse, and his eyes hadturned to her in renewed appreciation of this finer faculty whenMrs. Armiger's voice abruptly brought home to him the underratedpotentialities of language. 

"You've read them, of course, Mrs. Glennard?" he heard her ask; and, inreply to Alexa's vague interrogation--"Why, the 'Aubyn Letters'--it'sthe only book people are talking of this week. "

Mrs. Dresham immediately saw her advantage. "You HAVEN'T read them? Howvery extraordinary! As Mrs. Armiger says, the book's in the air; onebreathes it in like the influenza. "

Glennard sat motionless, watching his wife. 

"Perhaps it hasn't reached the suburbs yet, " she said, with herunruffled smile. 

"Oh, DO let me come to you, then!" Mrs. Touchett cried; "anything for achange of air! I'm positively sick of the book and I can't put it down. Can't you sail us beyond its reach, Mr. Flamel?"

Flamel shook his head. "Not even with this breeze. Literature travelsfaster than steam nowadays. And the worst of it is that we can't anyof us give up reading; it's as insidious as a vice and as tiresome as avirtue. "

"I believe it IS a vice, almost, to read such a book as the 'Letters, '"said Mrs. Touchett. "It's the woman's soul, absolutely torn up by theroots--her whole self laid bare; and to a man who evidently didn't care;who couldn't have cared. I don't mean to read another line; it's toomuch like listening at a keyhole. "

"But if she wanted it published?"

"Wanted it? How do we know she did?"

"Why, I heard she'd left the letters to the man--whoever he is--withdirections that they should be published after his death--"

"I don't believe it, " Mrs. Touchett declared. 

"He's dead then, is he?" one of the men asked. 

"Why, you don't suppose if he were alive he could ever hold up hishead again, with these letters being read by everybody?" Mrs. Touchettprotested. "It must have been horrible enough to know they'd beenwritten to him; but to publish them! No man could have done it and nowoman could have told him to--"

"Oh, come, come, " Dresham judicially interposed; "after all, they're notlove-letters. "

"No--that's the worst of it; they're unloved letters, " Mrs. Touchettretorted. 

"Then, obviously, she needn't have written them; whereas the man, poordevil, could hardly help receiving them. "

"Perhaps he counted on the public to save him the trouble of readingthem, " said young Hartly, who was in the cynical stage. 

Mrs. Armiger turned her reproachful loveliness to Dresham. "From the wayyou defend him, I believe you know who he is. "

Everyone looked at Dresham, and his wife smiled with the superior air ofthe woman who is in her husband's professional secrets. Dresham shruggedhis shoulders. 

"What have I said to defend him?"

"You called him a poor devil--you pitied him. "

"A man who could let Margaret Aubyn write to him in that way? Of courseI pity him. "

"Then you MUST know who he is, " cried Mrs. Armiger, with a triumphantair of penetration. 

Hartly and Flamel laughed and Dresham shook his head. "No one knows; noteven the publishers; so they tell me at least. "

"So they tell you to tell us, " Hartly astutely amended; and Mrs. Armigeradded, with the appearance of carrying the argument a point farther, "But even if HE'S dead and SHE'S dead, somebody must have given theletters to the publishers. "

"A little bird, probably, " said Dresham, smiling indulgently on herdeduction. 

"A little bird of prey then--a vulture, I should say--" another maninterpolated. 

"Oh, I'm not with you there, " said Dresham, easily. "Those lettersbelonged to the public. "

"How can any letters belong to the public that weren't written to thepublic?" Mrs. Touchett interposed. 

"Well, these were, in a sense. A personality as big as Margaret Aubyn'sbelongs to the world. Such a mind is part of the general fund ofthought. It's the penalty of greatness--one becomes a monumenthistorique. Posterity pays the cost of keeping one up, but on conditionthat one is always open to the public. "

"I don't see that that exonerates the man who gives up the keys of thesanctuary, as it were. "

"Who WAS he?" another voice inquired. 

"Who was he? Oh, nobody, I fancy--the letter-box, the slit in the wallthrough which the letters passed to posterity.... "

"But she never meant them for posterity!"

"A woman shouldn't write such letters if she doesn't mean them to bepublished.... "

"She shouldn't write them to such a man!" Mrs. Touchett scornfullycorrected. 

"I never keep letters, " said Mrs. Armiger, under the obvious impressionthat she was contributing a valuable point to the discussion. 

There was a general laugh, and Flamel, who had not spoken, said, lazily, "You women are too incurably subjective. I venture to say that most menwould see in those letters merely their immense literary value, theirsignificance as documents. The personal side doesn't count where there'sso much else. "

"Oh, we all know you haven't any principles, " Mrs. Armiger declared; andAlexa Glennard, lifting an indolent smile, said: "I shall never writeyou a love-letter, Mr. Flamel. "

Glennard moved away impatiently. Such talk was as tedious as the buzzingof gnats. He wondered why his wife had wanted to drag him on such asenseless expedition.... He hated Flamel's crowd--and what business hadFlamel himself to interfere in that way, standing up for the publicationof the letters as though Glennard needed his defence?... 

Glennard turned his head and saw that Flamel had drawn a seat to Alexa'selbow and was speaking to her in a low tone. The other groups hadscattered, straying in twos along the deck. It came over Glennard thathe should never again be able to see Flamel speaking to his wife withoutthe sense of sick mistrust that now loosened his joints.... 

Alexa, the next morning, over their early breakfast, surprised herhusband by an unexpected request. 

"Will you bring me those letters from town?" she asked. 

"What letters?" he said, putting down his cup. He felt himself ashelplessly vulnerable as a man who is lunged at in the dark. 

"Mrs. Aubyn's. The book they were all talking about yesterday. "

Glennard, carefully measuring his second cup of tea, said, withdeliberation, "I didn't know you cared about that sort of thing. "

She was, in fact, not a great reader, and a new book seldom reached hertill it was, so to speak, on the home stretch; but she replied, with agentle tenacity, "I think it would interest me because I read her lifelast year. "

"Her life? Where did you get that?"

"Someone lent it to me when it came out--Mr. Flamel, I think. "

His first impulse was to exclaim, "Why the devil do you borrow books ofFlamel? I can buy you all you want--" but he felt himself irresistiblyforced into an attitude of smiling compliance. "Flamel always has thenewest books going, hasn't he? You must be careful, by the way, aboutreturning what he lends you. He's rather crotchety about his library. "

"Oh, I'm always very careful, " she said, with a touch of competence thatstruck him; and she added, as he caught up his hat: "Don't forget theletters. "

Why had she asked for the book? Was her sudden wish to see it the resultof some hint of Flamel's? The thought turned Glennard sick, but hepreserved sufficient lucidity to tell himself, a moment later, that hislast hope of self-control would be lost if he yielded to the temptationof seeing a hidden purpose in everything she said and did. How muchFlamel guessed, he had no means of divining; nor could he predicate, from what he knew of the man, to what use his inferences might be put. The very qualities that had made Flamel a useful adviser made him themost dangerous of accomplices. Glennard felt himself agrope among alienforces that his own act had set in motion.... 

Alexa was a woman of few requirements; but her wishes, even in trifles, had a definiteness that distinguished them from the fluid impulses ofher kind. He knew that, having once asked for the book, she would notforget it; and he put aside, as an ineffectual expedient, his momentaryidea of applying for it at the circulating library and telling her thatall the copies were out. If the book was to be bought it had better bebought at once. He left his office earlier than usual and turned in atthe first book-shop on his way to the train. The show-window was stackedwith conspicuously lettered volumes. "Margaret Aubyn" flashed backat him in endless repetition. He plunged into the shop and came on acounter where the name reiterated itself on row after row of bindings. It seemed to have driven the rest of literature to the back shelves. Hecaught up a copy, tossing the money to an astonished clerk who pursuedhim to the door with the unheeded offer to wrap up the volumes. 

In the street he was seized with a sudden apprehension. What if he wereto meet Flamel? The thought was intolerable. He called a cab and drovestraight to the station where, amid the palm-leaf fans of a perspiringcrowd, he waited a long half-hour for his train to start. 

He had thrust a volume in either pocket and in the train he dared notdraw them out; but the detested words leaped at him from the folds ofthe evening paper. The air seemed full of Margaret Aubyn's name. Themotion of the train set it dancing up and down on the page of a magazinethat a man in front of him was reading.... 

At the door he was told that Mrs. Glennard was still out, and he wentupstairs to his room and dragged the books from his pocket. They layon the table before him like live things that he feared to touch.... Atlength he opened the first volume. A familiar letter sprang out athim, each word quickened by its glaring garb of type. The little brokenphrases fled across the page like wounded animals in the open.... It wasa horrible sight.... A battue of helpless things driven savagely out ofshelter. He had not known it would be like this.... 

He understood now that, at the moment of selling the letters, he hadviewed the transaction solely as it affected himself: as an unfortunateblemish on an otherwise presentable record. He had scarcely consideredthe act in relation to Margaret Aubyn; for death, if it hallows, also makes innocuous. Glennard's God was a god of the living, of theimmediate, the actual, the tangible; all his days he had lived in thepresence of that god, heedless of the divinities who, below the surfaceof our deeds and passions, silently forge the fatal weapons of the dead. 

VII

A knock roused him and looking up he saw his wife. He met her glance insilence, and she faltered out, "Are you ill?"

The words restored his self-possession. "Ill? Of course not. They toldme you were out and I came upstairs. "

The books lay between them on the table; he wondered when she would seethem. She lingered tentatively on the threshold, with the air of leavinghis explanation on his hands. She was not the kind of woman who could becounted on to fortify an excuse by appearing to dispute it. 

"Where have you been?" Glennard asked, moving forward so that heobstructed her vision of the books. 

"I walked over to the Dreshams for tea. "

"I can't think what you see in those people, " he said with a shrug;adding, uncontrollably--"I suppose Flamel was there?"

"No; he left on the yacht this morning. "

An answer so obstructing to the natural escape of his irritation leftGlennard with no momentary resource but that of strolling impatiently tothe window. As her eyes followed him they lit on the books. 

"Ah, you've brought them! I'm so glad, " she exclaimed. 

He answered over his shoulder, "For a woman who never reads you make themost astounding exceptions!"

Her smile was an exasperating concession to the probability that it hadbeen hot in town or that something had bothered him. 

"Do you mean it's not nice to want to read the book?" she asked. "It wasnot nice to publish it, certainly; but after all, I'm not responsiblefor that, am I?" She paused, and, as he made no answer, went on, stillsmiling, "I do read sometimes, you know; and I'm very fond of MargaretAubyn's books. I was reading 'Pomegranate Seed' when we first met. Don'tyou remember? It was then you told me all about her. "

Glennard had turned back into the room and stood staring at his wife. "All about her?" he repeated, and with the words remembrance came tohim. He had found Miss Trent one afternoon with the novel in her hand, and moved by the lover's fatuous impulse to associate himself in someway with whatever fills the mind of the beloved, had broken throughhis habitual silence about the past. Rewarded by the consciousness offiguring impressively in Miss Trent's imagination he had gone on fromone anecdote to another, reviving dormant details of his old Hillbridgelife, and pasturing his vanity on the eagerness with which she receivedhis reminiscences of a being already clothed in the impersonality ofgreatness. 

The incident had left no trace in his mind; but it sprang up now like anold enemy, the more dangerous for having been forgotten. The instinctof self-preservation--sometimes the most perilous that man canexercise--made him awkwardly declare--"Oh, I used to see her at people'shouses, that was all;" and her silence as usual leaving room for amultiplication of blunders, he added, with increased indifference, "Isimply can't see what you can find to interest you in such a book. "

She seemed to consider this intently. "You've read it, then?"

"I glanced at it--I never read such things. "

"Is it true that she didn't wish the letters to be published?"

Glennard felt the sudden dizziness of the mountaineer on a narrow ledge, and with it the sense that he was lost if he looked more than a stepahead. 

"I'm sure I don't know, " he said; then, summoning a smile, he passedhis hand through her arm. "I didn't have tea at the Dreshams, you know;won't you give me some now?" he suggested. 

That evening Glennard, under pretext of work to be done, shut himselfinto the small study opening off the drawing-room. As he gathered up hispapers he said to his wife: "You're not going to sit indoors on such anight as this? I'll join you presently outside. "

But she had drawn her armchair to the lamp. "I want to look at my book, "she said, taking up the first volume of the "Letters. "

Glennard, with a shrug, withdrew into the study. "I'm going to shutthe door; I want to be quiet, " he explained from the threshold; and shenodded without lifting her eyes from the book. 

He sank into a chair, staring aimlessly at the outspread papers. How washe to work, while on the other side of the door she sat with that volumein her hand? The door did not shut her out--he saw her distinctly, felther close to him in a contact as painful as the pressure on a bruise. 

The sensation was part of the general strangeness that made him feellike a man waking from a long sleep to find himself in an unknowncountry among people of alien tongue. We live in our own souls as inan unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for ourhabitation; while of the nature of those nearest us we know but theboundaries that march with ours. Of the points in his wife's characternot in direct contact with his own, Glennard now discerned hisignorance; and the baffling sense of her remoteness was intensified bythe discovery that, in one way, she was closer to him than ever before. As one may live for years in happy unconsciousness of the possessionof a sensitive nerve, he had lived beside his wife unaware that herindividuality had become a part of the texture of his life, ineradicableas some growth on a vital organ; and he now felt himself at onceincapable of forecasting her judgment and powerless to evade itseffects. 

To escape, the next morning, the confidences of the breakfast-table, hewent to town earlier than usual. His wife, who read slowly, was given totalking over what she read, and at present his first object in life wasto postpone the inevitable discussion of the letters. This instinct ofprotection in the afternoon, on his way uptown, guided him to the clubin search of a man who might be persuaded to come out to the country todine. The only man in the club was Flamel. 

Glennard, as he heard himself almost involuntarily pressing Flamel tocome and dine, felt the full irony of the situation. To use Flamel asa shield against his wife's scrutiny was only a shade less humiliatingthan to reckon on his wife as a defence against Flamel. 

He felt a contradictory movement of annoyance at the latter's readyacceptance, and the two men drove in silence to the station. As theypassed the bookstall in the waiting-room Flamel lingered a moment andthe eyes of both fell on Margaret Aubyn's name, conspicuously displayedabove a counter stacked with the familiar volumes. 

"We shall be late, you know, " Glennard remonstrated, pulling out hiswatch. 

"Go ahead, " said Flamel, imperturbably. "I want to get something--"

Glennard turned on his heel and walked down the platform. Flamelrejoined him with an innocent-looking magazine in his hand; but Glennarddared not even glance at the cover, lest it should show the syllables hefeared. 

The train was full of people they knew, and they were kept apart tillit dropped them at the little suburban station. As they strolled up theshaded hill, Glennard talked volubly, pointing out the improvementsin the neighborhood, deploring the threatened approach of an electricrailway, and screening himself by a series of reflex adjustments fromthe imminent risk of any allusion to the "Letters. " Flamel suffered hisdiscourse with the bland inattention that we accord to the affairs ofsomeone else's suburb, and they reached the shelter of Alexa's tea-tablewithout a perceptible turn toward the dreaded topic. 

The dinner passed off safely. Flamel, always at his best in Alexa'spresence, gave her the kind of attention which is like a beaconing lightthrown on the speaker's words: his answers seemed to bring out a latentsignificance in her phrases, as the sculptor draws his statue from theblock. Glennard, under his wife's composure, detected a sensibility tothis manoeuvre, and the discovery was like the lightning-flash across anocturnal landscape. Thus far these momentary illuminations had servedonly to reveal the strangeness of the intervening country: each freshobservation seemed to increase the sum-total of his ignorance. Hersimplicity of outline was more puzzling than a complex surface. One mayconceivably work one's way through a labyrinth; but Alexa's candorwas like a snow-covered plain where, the road once lost, there are nolandmarks to travel by. 

Dinner over, they returned to the veranda, where a moon, rising behindthe old elm, was combining with that complaisant tree a romanticenlargement of their borders. Glennard had forgotten the cigars. He wentto his study to fetch them, and in passing through the drawing-room hesaw the second volume of the "Letters" lying open on his wife's table. He picked up the book and looked at the date of the letter she had beenreading. It was one of the last... He knew the few lines by heart. Hedropped the book and leaned against the wall. Why had he included thatone among the others? Or was it possible that now they would all seemlike that... ?

Alexa's voice came suddenly out of the dusk. "May Touchett was right--itIS like listening at a key-hole. I wish I hadn't read it!"

Flamel returned, in the leisurely tone of the man whose phrases arepunctuated by a cigarette, "It seems so to us, perhaps; but to anothergeneration the book will be a classic. "

"Then it ought not to have been published till it had become a classic. It's horrible, it's degrading almost, to read the secrets of a woman onemight have known. " She added, in a lower tone, "Stephen DID know her--"

"Did he?" came from Flamel. 

"He knew her very well, at Hillbridge, years ago. The book has made himfeel dreadfully... He wouldn't read it... He didn't want me to read it. I didn't understand at first, but now I can see how horribly disloyal itmust seem to him. It's so much worse to surprise a friend's secrets thana stranger's. "

"Oh, Glennard's such a sensitive chap, " Flamel said, easily; and Alexaalmost rebukingly rejoined, "If you'd known her I'm sure you'd feel ashe does.... "

Glennard stood motionless, overcome by the singular infelicity withwhich he had contrived to put Flamel in possession of the two pointsmost damaging to his case: the fact that he had been a friend ofMargaret Aubyn's, and that he had concealed from Alexa his share in thepublication of the letters. To a man of less than Flamel's astutenessit must now be clear to whom the letters were addressed; and thepossibility once suggested, nothing could be easier than to confirm itby discreet research. An impulse of self-accusal drove Glennard to thewindow. Why not anticipate betrayal by telling his wife the truth inFlamel's presence? If the man had a drop of decent feeling in him, sucha course would be the surest means of securing his silence; and aboveall, it would rid Glennard of the necessity of defending himself againstthe perpetual criticism of his wife's belief in him.... 

The impulse was strong enough to carry him to the window; but therea reaction of defiance set in. What had he done, after all, to needdefence and explanation? Both Dresham and Flamel had, in his hearing, declared the publication of the letters to be not only justifiable butobligatory; and if the disinterestedness of Flamel's verdict might bequestioned, Dresham's at least represented the impartial view of theman of letters. As to Alexa's words, they were simply the conventionalutterance of the "nice" woman on a question already decided for her byother "nice" women. She had said the proper thing as mechanically as shewould have put on the appropriate gown or written the correct form ofdinner-invitation. Glennard had small faith in the abstract judgmentsof the other sex; he knew that half the women who were horrified bythe publication of Mrs. Aubyn's letters would have betrayed her secretswithout a scruple. 

The sudden lowering of his emotional pitch brought a proportionaterelief. He told himself that now the worst was over and things wouldfall into perspective again. His wife and Flamel had turned to othertopics, and coming out on the veranda, he handed the cigars to Flamel, saying, cheerfully--and yet he could have sworn they were the last wordshe meant to utter!--"Look here, old man, before you go down to Newportyou must come out and spend a few days with us--mustn't he, Alexa?"

VIII

Glennard had, perhaps unconsciously, counted on the continuance of thiseasier mood. He had always taken pride in a certain robustness of fibrethat enabled him to harden himself against the inevitable, to converthis failures into the building materials of success. Though it did noteven now occur to him that what he called the inevitable had hithertobeen the alternative he happened to prefer, he was yet obscurelyaware that his present difficulty was one not to be conjured by anyaffectation of indifference. Some griefs build the soul a spacioushouse--but in this misery of Glennard's he could not stand upright. Itpressed against him at every turn. He told himself that this was becausethere was no escape from the visible evidences of his act. The "Letters"confronted him everywhere. People who had never opened a book discussedthem with critical reservations; to have read them had become a socialobligation in circles to which literature never penetrates except in apersonal guise. 

Glennard did himself injustice, it was from the unexpected discovery ofhis own pettiness that he chiefly suffered. Our self-esteem is apt tobe based on the hypothetical great act we have never had occasion toperform; and even the most self-scrutinizing modesty credits itselfnegatively with a high standard of conduct. Glennard had never thoughthimself a hero; but he had been certain that he was incapable ofbaseness. We all like our wrong-doings to have a becoming cut, to bemade to order, as it were; and Glennard found himself suddenly thrustinto a garb of dishonor surely meant for a meaner figure. 

The immediate result of his first weeks of wretchedness was the resolveto go to town for the winter. He knew that such a course was just beyondthe limit of prudence; but it was easy to allay the fears of Alexa who, scrupulously vigilant in the management of the household, preservedthe American wife's usual aloofness from her husband's business cares. Glennard felt that he could not trust himself to a winter's solitudewith her. He had an unspeakable dread of her learning the truth aboutthe letters, yet could not be sure of steeling himself against thesuicidal impulse of avowal. His very soul was parched for sympathy; hethirsted for a voice of pity and comprehension. But would his wife pity?Would she understand? Again he found himself brought up abruptly againsthis incredible ignorance of her nature. The fact that he knew wellenough how she would behave in the ordinary emergencies of life, thathe could count, in such contingencies, on the kind of high courage anddirectness he had always divined in her, made him the more hopeless ofher entering into the torturous psychology of an act that he himselfcould no longer explain or understand. It would have been easier hadshe been more complex, more feminine--if he could have counted onher imaginative sympathy or her moral obtuseness--but he was sure ofneither. He was sure of nothing but that, for a time, he must avoid her. Glennard could not rid himself of the delusion that by and by his actionwould cease to make its consequences felt. He would not have cared toown to himself that he counted on the dulling of his sensibilities: hepreferred to indulge the vague hypothesis that extraneous circumstanceswould somehow efface the blot upon his conscience. In his worst momentsof self-abasement he tried to find solace in the thought that Flamel hadsanctioned his course. Flamel, at the outset, must have guessed towhom the letters were addressed; yet neither then nor afterward had hehesitated to advise their publication. This thought drew Glennard tohim in fitful impulses of friendliness, from each of which there was asharper reaction of distrust and aversion. When Flamel was not at thehouse, he missed the support of his tacit connivance; when he was there, his presence seemed the assertion of an intolerable claim. 

Early in the winter the Glennards took possession of the little housethat was to cost them almost nothing. The change brought Glennard theimmediate relief of seeing less of his wife, and of being protected, inher presence, by the multiplied preoccupations of town life. Alexa, whocould never appear hurried, showed the smiling abstraction of a prettywoman to whom the social side of married life has not lost its novelty. Glennard, with the recklessness of a man fresh from his first financialimprudence, encouraged her in such little extravagances as her goodsense at first resisted. Since they had come to town, he argued, theymight as well enjoy themselves. He took a sympathetic view of thenecessity of new gowns, he gave her a set of furs at Christmas, andbefore the New Year they had agreed on the obligation of adding aparlour-maid to their small establishment. 

Providence the very next day hastened to justify this measure by placingon Glennard's breakfast-plate an envelope bearing the name of thepublishers to whom he had sold Mrs. Aubyn's letters. It happened to bethe only letter the early post had brought, and he glanced across thetable at his wife, who had come down before him and had probablylaid the envelope on his plate. She was not the woman to ask awkwardquestions, but he felt the conjecture of her glance, and he was debatingwhether to affect surprise at the receipt of the letter, or to pass itoff as a business communication that had strayed to his house, when acheck fell from the envelope. It was the royalty on the first edition ofthe letters. His first feeling was one of simple satisfaction. Themoney had come with such infernal opportuneness that he could not helpwelcoming it. Before long, too, there would be more; he knew the bookwas still selling far beyond the publisher's previsions. He put thecheck in his pocket and left the room without looking at his wife. 

On the way to his office the habitual reaction set in. The money he hadreceived was the first tangible reminder that he was living on thesale of his self-esteem. The thought of material benefit had beenovershadowed by his sense of the intrinsic baseness of making theletters known; now he saw what an element of sordidness it added to thesituation and how the fact that he needed the money, and must use it, pledged him more irrevocably than ever to the consequences of his act. It seemed to him, in that first hour of misery, that he had betrayed hisfriend anew. 

When, that afternoon, he reached home earlier than usual, Alexa'sdrawing-room was full of a gayety that overflowed to the stairs. Flamel, for a wonder, was not there; but Dresham and young Hartly, grouped aboutthe tea-table, were receiving with resonant mirth a narrative deliveredin the fluttered staccato that made Mrs. Armiger's conversation like theejaculations of a startled aviary. 

She paused as Glennard entered, and he had time to notice that his wife, who was busied about the tea-tray, had not joined in the laughter of themen. 

"Oh, go on, go on, " young Hartly rapturously groaned; and Mrs. Armigermet Glennard's inquiry with the deprecating cry that really she didn'tsee what there was to laugh at. "I'm sure I feel more like crying. Idon't know what I should have done if Alexa hadn't been home to give mea cup of tea. My nerves are in shreds--yes, another, dear, please--" andas Glennard looked his perplexity, she went on, after pondering onthe selection of a second lump of sugar, "Why, I've just come from thereading, you know--the reading at the Waldorf. "

"I haven't been in town long enough to know anything, " said Glennard, taking the cup his wife handed him. "Who has been reading what?"

"That lovely girl from the South--Georgie--Georgie what's her name--Mrs. Dresham's protegee--unless she's YOURS, Mr. Dresham! Why, the bigball-room was PACKED, and all the women were crying like idiots--it wasthe most harrowing thing I ever heard--"

"What DID you hear?" Glennard asked; and his wife interposed: "Won't youhave another bit of cake, Julia? Or, Stephen, ring for some hottoast, please. " Her tone betrayed a polite satiety of the topic underdiscussion. Glennard turned to the bell, but Mrs. Armiger pursued himwith her lovely amazement. 

"Why, the 'Aubyn Letters'--didn't you know about it? The girl read themso beautifully that it was quite horrible--I should have fainted ifthere'd been a man near enough to carry me out. "

Hartly's glee redoubled, and Dresham said, jovially, "How like you womento raise a shriek over the book and then do all you can to encourage theblatant publicity of the readings!"

Mrs. Armiger met him more than half-way on a torrent of self-accusal. "It WAS horrid; it was disgraceful. I told your wife we ought all tobe ashamed of ourselves for going, and I think Alexa was quite right torefuse to take any tickets--even if it was for a charity. "

"Oh, " her hostess murmured, indifferently, "with me charity begins athome. I can't afford emotional luxuries. "

"A charity? A charity?" Hartly exulted. "I hadn't seized the full beautyof it. Reading poor Margaret Aubyn's love-letters at the Waldorf beforefive hundred people for a charity! WHAT charity, dear Mrs. Armiger?"

"Why, the Home for Friendless Women--"

"It was well chosen, " Dresham commented; and Hartly buried his mirth inthe sofa-cushions. 

When they were alone Glennard, still holding his untouched cup of tea, turned to his wife, who sat silently behind the kettle. "Who asked youto take a ticket for that reading?"

"I don't know, really--Kate Dresham, I fancy. It was she who got it up. "

"It's just the sort of damnable vulgarity she's capable of! It'sloathsome--it's monstrous--"

His wife, without looking up, answered gravely, "I thought so too. Itwas for that reason I didn't go. But you must remember that very fewpeople feel about Mrs. Aubyn as you do--"

Glennard managed to set down his cup with a steady hand, but the roomswung round with him and he dropped into the nearest chair. "As I do?"he repeated. 

"I mean that very few people knew her when she lived in New York. Tomost of the women who went to the reading she was a mere name, tooremote to have any personality. With me, of course, it was different--"

Glennard gave her a startled look. "Different? Why different?"

"Since you were her friend--"

"Her friend!" He stood up impatiently. "You speak as if she had had onlyone--the most famous woman of her day!" He moved vaguely about the room, bending down to look at some books on the table. "I hope, " he added, "you didn't give that as a reason, by the way?"

"A reason?"

"For not going. A woman who gives reasons for getting out of socialobligations is sure to make herself unpopular or ridiculous. 

The words were uncalculated; but in an instant he saw that they hadstrangely bridged the distance between his wife and himself. He felt herclose on him, like a panting foe; and her answer was a flash that showedthe hand on the trigger. 

"I seem, " she said from the threshold, "to have done both in giving myreason to you. "

The fact that they were dining out that evening made it easy for him toavoid Alexa till she came downstairs in her opera-cloak. Mrs. Touchett, who was going to the same dinner, had offered to call for her, andGlennard, refusing a precarious seat between the ladies' draperies, followed on foot. The evening was interminable. The reading at theWaldorf, at which all the women had been present, had revived thediscussion of the "Aubyn Letters" and Glennard, hearing his wifequestioned as to her absence, felt himself miserably wishing that shehad gone, rather than that her staying away should have been remarked. He was rapidly losing all sense of proportion where the "Letters" wereconcerned. He could no longer hear them mentioned without suspectinga purpose in the allusion; he even yielded himself for a moment tothe extravagance of imagining that Mrs. Dresham, whom he disliked, hadorganized the reading in the hope of making him betray himself--for hewas already sure that Dresham had divined his share in the transaction. 

The attempt to keep a smooth surface on this inner tumult was as endlessand unavailing as efforts made in a nightmare. He lost all sense of whathe was saying to his neighbors and once when he looked up his wife'sglance struck him cold. 

She sat nearly opposite him, at Flamel's side, and it appeared toGlennard that they had built about themselves one of those airy barriersof talk behind which two people can say what they please. While thereading was discussed they were silent. Their silence seemed to Glennardalmost cynical--it stripped the last disguise from their complicity. Athrob of anger rose in him, but suddenly it fell, and he felt, witha curious sense of relief, that at bottom he no longer cared whetherFlamel had told his wife or not. The assumption that Flamel knew aboutthe letters had become a fact to Glennard; and it now seemed to himbetter that Alexa should know too. 

He was frightened at first by the discovery of his own indifference. Thelast barriers of his will seemed to be breaking down before a flood ofmoral lassitude. How could he continue to play his part, to keep hisfront to the enemy, with this poison of indifference stealing throughhis veins? He tried to brace himself with the remembrance of his wife'sscorn. He had not forgotten the note on which their conversation hadclosed. If he had ever wondered how she would receive the truthhe wondered no longer--she would despise him. But this lent a newinsidiousness to his temptation, since her contempt would be a refugefrom his own. He said to himself that, since he no longer cared forthe consequences, he could at least acquit himself of speaking inself-defence. What he wanted now was not immunity but castigation: hiswife's indignation might still reconcile him to himself. Therein layhis one hope of regeneration; her scorn was the moral antiseptic that heneeded, her comprehension the one balm that could heal him.... 

When they left the dinner he was so afraid of speaking that he let herdrive home alone, and went to the club with Flamel. 

IX

HE rose next morning with the resolve to know what Alexa thought of him. It was not anchoring in a haven, but lying to in a storm--he felt theneed of a temporary lull in the turmoil of his sensations. 

He came home late, for they were dining alone and he knew thatthey would have the evening together. When he followed her to thedrawing-room after dinner he thought himself on the point of speaking;but as she handed him his coffee he said, involuntarily: "I shall haveto carry this off to the study, I've got a lot of work to-night. "

Alone in the study he cursed his cowardice. What was it that hadwithheld him? A certain bright unapproachableness seemed to keep him atarm's length. She was not the kind of woman whose compassion could becircumvented; there was no chance of slipping past the outposts; hewould never take her by surprise. Well--why not face her, then? What heshrank from could be no worse than what he was enduring. He had pushedback his chair and turned to go upstairs when a new expedient presenteditself. What if, instead of telling her, he were to let her find out forherself and watch the effect of the discovery before speaking? In thisway he made over to chance the burden of the revelation. 

The idea had been suggested by the sight of the formula enclosingthe publisher's check. He had deposited the money, but the noticeaccompanying it dropped from his note-case as he cleared his table forwork. It was the formula usual in such cases and revealed clearly enoughthat he was the recipient of a royalty on Margaret Aubyn's letters. Itwould be impossible for Alexa to read it without understanding at oncethat the letters had been written to him and that he had sold them.... 

He sat downstairs till he heard her ring for the parlor-maid to put outthe lights; then he went up to the drawing-room with a bundle of papersin his hand. Alexa was just rising from her seat and the lamplight fellon the deep roll of hair that overhung her brow like the eaves of atemple. Her face had often the high secluded look of a shrine; and itwas this touch of awe in her beauty that now made him feel himself onthe brink of sacrilege. 

Lest the feeling should dominate him, he spoke at once. "I've broughtyou a piece of work--a lot of old bills and things that I want you tosort for me. Some are not worth keeping--but you'll be able to judge ofthat. There may be a letter or two among them--nothing of much account, but I don't like to throw away the whole lot without having them lookedover and I haven't time to do it myself. "

He held out the papers and she took them with a smile that seemed torecognize in the service he asked the tacit intention of making amendsfor the incident of the previous day. 

"Are you sure I shall know which to keep?"

"Oh, quite sure, " he answered, easily--"and besides, none are of muchimportance. "

The next morning he invented an excuse for leaving the house withoutseeing her, and when he returned, just before dinner, he found avisitor's hat and stick in the hall. The visitor was Flamel, who was inthe act of taking leave. 

He had risen, but Alexa remained seated; and their attitude gave theimpression of a colloquy that had prolonged itself beyond the limits ofspeech. Both turned a surprised eye on Glennard and he had the sense ofwalking into a room grown suddenly empty, as though their thoughts wereconspirators dispersed by his approach. He felt the clutch of his oldfear. What if his wife had already sorted the papers and had told Flamelof her discovery? Well, it was no news to Flamel that Glennard was inreceipt of a royalty on the "Aubyn Letters. "... 

A sudden resolve to know the worst made him lift his eyes to his wifeas the door closed on Flamel. But Alexa had risen also, and bending overher writing-table, with her back to Glennard, was beginning to speakprecipitately. 

"I'm dining out to-night--you don't mind my deserting you? Julia Armigersent me word just now that she had an extra ticket for the last Ambroseconcert. She told me to say how sorry she was that she hadn't two--but Iknew YOU wouldn't be sorry!" She ended with a laugh that had the effectof being a strayed echo of Mrs. Armiger's; and before Glennard couldspeak she had added, with her hand on the door, "Mr. Flamel stayed solate that I've hardly time to dress. The concert begins ridiculouslyearly, and Julia dines at half-past seven--"

Glennard stood alone in the empty room that seemed somehow full ofan ironical consciousness of what was happening. "She hates me, " hemurmured. "She hates me.... "

The next day was Sunday, and Glennard purposely lingered late inhis room. When he came downstairs his wife was already seated at thebreakfast-table. She lifted her usual smile to his entrance and theytook shelter in the nearest topic, like wayfarers overtaken by a storm. While he listened to her account of the concert he began to think that, after all, she had not yet sorted the papers, and that her agitation ofthe previous day must be ascribed to another cause, in which perhaps hehad but an indirect concern. He wondered it had never before occurred tohim that Flamel was the kind of man who might very well please a womanat his own expense, without need of fortuitous assistance. If thispossibility cleared the outlook it did not brighten it. Glennard merelyfelt himself left alone with his baseness. 

Alexa left the breakfast-table before him and when he went up to thedrawing-room he found her dressed to go out. 

"Aren't you a little early for church?" he asked. 

She replied that, on the way there, she meant to stop a moment ather mother's; and while she drew on her gloves, he fumbled among theknick-knacks on the mantel-piece for a match to light his cigarette. 

"Well, good-by, " she said, turning to go; and from the threshold sheadded: "By the way, I've sorted the papers you gave me. Those thatI thought you would like to keep are on your study-table. " She wentdownstairs and he heard the door close behind her. 

She had sorted the papers--she knew, then--she MUST know--and she hadmade no sign!

Glennard, he hardly knew how, found himself once more in the study. Onthe table lay the packet he had given her. It was much smaller--she hadevidently gone over the papers with care, destroying the greater number. He loosened the elastic band and spread the remaining envelopes on hisdesk. The publisher's notice was among them. 

X

His wife knew and she made no sign. Glennard found himself in the caseof the seafarer who, closing his eyes at nightfall on a scene he thinksto put leagues behind him before day, wakes to a port-hole framing thesame patch of shore. From the kind of exaltation to which his resolvehad lifted him he dropped to an unreasoning apathy. His impulse ofconfession had acted as a drug to self-reproach. He had tried to shifta portion of his burden to his wife's shoulders and now that she hadtacitly refused to carry it, he felt the load too heavy to be taken upagain. 

A fortunate interval of hard work brought respite from this phase ofsterile misery. He went West to argue an important case, won it, andcame back to fresh preoccupations. His own affairs were thriving enoughto engross him in the pauses of his professional work, and for overtwo months he had little time to look himself in the face. Notunnaturally--for he was as yet unskilled in the subtleties ofintrospection--he mistook his temporary insensibility for a gradualrevival of moral health. 

He told himself that he was recovering his sense of proportion, gettingto see things in their true light; and if he now thought of his rashappeal to his wife's sympathy it was as an act of folly from theconsequences of which he had been saved by the providence that watchesover madmen. He had little leisure to observe Alexa; but he concludedthat the common-sense momentarily denied him had counselled heruncritical acceptance of the inevitable. If such a quality was apoor substitute for the passionate justness that had once seemed tocharacterize her, he accepted the alternative as a part of that generallowering of the key that seems needful to the maintenance of thematrimonial duet. What woman ever retained her abstract sense of justicewhere another woman was concerned? Possibly the thought that he hadprofited by Mrs. Aubyn's tenderness was not wholly disagreeable to hiswife. 

When the pressure of work began to lessen, and he found himself, in thelengthening afternoons, able to reach home somewhat earlier, he noticedthat the little drawing-room was always full and that he and his wifeseldom had an evening alone together. When he was tired, as oftenhappened, she went out alone; the idea of giving up an engagement toremain with him seemed not to occur to her. She had shown, as a girl, little fondness for society, nor had she seemed to regret it during theyear they had spent in the country. He reflected, however, that he wassharing the common lot of husbands, who proverbially mistake the earlyardors of housekeeping for a sign of settled domesticity. Alexa, at anyrate, was refuting his theory as inconsiderately as a seedling defeatsthe gardener's expectations. An undefinable change had come over her. Inone sense it was a happy one, since she had grown, if not handsomer, at least more vivid and expressive; her beauty had become morecommunicable: it was as though she had learned the conscious exercise ofintuitive attributes and now used her effects with the discrimination ofan artist skilled in values. To a dispassionate critic (as Glennard nowrated himself) the art may at times have been a little too obvious. Herattempts at lightness lacked spontaneity, and she sometimes raspedhim by laughing like Julia Armiger; but he had enough imaginationto perceive that, in respect of the wife's social arts, a husbandnecessarily sees the wrong side of the tapestry. 

In this ironical estimate of their relation Glennard found himselfstrangely relieved of all concern as to his wife's feelings for Flamel. From an Olympian pinnacle of indifference he calmly surveyed theirinoffensive antics. It was surprising how his cheapening of his wife puthim at ease with himself. Far as he and she were from each other theyyet had, in a sense, the tacit nearness of complicity. Yes, they wereaccomplices; he could no more be jealous of her than she could despisehim. The jealousy that would once have seemed a blur on her whitenessnow appeared like a tribute to ideals in which he no longer believed.... 

Glennard was little given to exploring the outskirts of literature. Healways skipped the "literary notices" in the papers and he had smallleisure for the intermittent pleasures of the periodical. He hadtherefore no notion of the prolonged reverberations which the "AubynLetters" had awakened in the precincts of criticism. When the bookceased to be talked about he supposed it had ceased to be read; and thisapparent subsidence of the agitation about it brought the reassuringsense that he had exaggerated its vitality. The conviction, if it didnot ease his conscience, at least offered him the relative relief ofobscurity: he felt like an offender taken down from the pillory andthrust into the soothing darkness of a cell. 

But one evening, when Alexa had left him to go to a dance, he chanced toturn over the magazines on her table, and the copy of the Horoscope, towhich he settled down with his cigar, confronted him, on its firstpage, with a portrait of Margaret Aubyn. It was a reproduction of thephotograph that had stood so long on his desk. The desiccating air ofmemory had turned her into the mere abstraction of a woman, and thisunexpected evocation seemed to bring her nearer than she had ever beenin life. Was it because he understood her better? He looked long intoher eyes; little personal traits reached out to him like caresses--thetired droop of her lids, her quick way of leaning forward as she spoke, the movements of her long expressive hands. All that was femininein her, the quality he had always missed, stole toward him from herunreproachful gaze; and now that it was too late life had developedin him the subtler perceptions which could detect it in even this poorsemblance of herself. For a moment he found consolation in the thoughtthat, at any cost, they had thus been brought together; then a flood ofshame rushed over him. Face to face with her, he felt himself laid bareto the inmost fold of consciousness. The shame was deep, but it was arenovating anguish; he was like a man whom intolerable pain has rousedfrom the creeping lethargy of death.... 

He rose next morning to as fresh a sense of life as though his hour ofmute communion with Margaret Aubyn had been a more exquisite renewalof their earlier meetings. His waking thought was that he must see heragain; and as consciousness affirmed itself he felt an intense fear oflosing the sense of her nearness. But she was still close to him; herpresence remained the sole reality in a world of shadows. All throughhis working hours he was re-living with incredible minuteness everyincident of their obliterated past; as a man who has mastered the spiritof a foreign tongue turns with renewed wonder to the pages his youth hasplodded over. In this lucidity of retrospection the most trivial detailhad its significance, and the rapture of recovery was embittered toGlennard by the perception of all that he had missed. He had beenpitiably, grotesquely stupid; and there was irony in the thought that, but for the crisis through which he was passing, he might have lived onin complacent ignorance of his loss. It was as though she had bought himwith her blood.... 

That evening he and Alexa dined alone. After dinner he followed her tothe drawing-room. He no longer felt the need of avoiding her; he washardly conscious of her presence. After a few words they lapsed intosilence and he sat smoking with his eyes on the fire. It was not that hewas unwilling to talk to her; he felt a curious desire to be as kindas possible; but he was always forgetting that she was there. Her fullbright presence, through which the currents of life flowed so warmly, had grown as tenuous as a shadow, and he saw so far beyond her--

Presently she rose and began to move about the room. She seemed to belooking for something and he roused himself to ask what she wanted. 

"Only the last number of the Horoscope. I thought I'd left it on thistable. " He said nothing, and she went on: "You haven't seen it?"

"No, " he returned coldly. The magazine was locked in his desk. 

His wife had moved to the mantel-piece. She stood facing him and as helooked up he met her tentative gaze. "I was reading an article in it--areview of Mrs. Aubyn's letters, " she added, slowly, with her deep, deliberate blush. 

Glennard stooped to toss his cigar into the fire. He felt a savage wishthat she would not speak the other woman's name; nothing else seemed tomatter. "You seem to do a lot of reading, " he said. 

She still earnestly confronted him. "I was keeping this for you--Ithought it might interest you, " she said, with an air of gentleinsistence. 

He stood up and turned away. He was sure she knew that he had taken thereview and he felt that he was beginning to hate her again. 

"I haven't time for such things, " he said, indifferently. As he moved tothe door he heard her take a precipitate step forward; then she pausedand sank without speaking into the chair from which he had risen. 

XI

As Glennard, in the raw February sunlight, mounted the road to thecemetery, he felt the beatitude that comes with an abrupt cessation ofphysical pain. He had reached the point where self-analysis ceases;the impulse that moved him was purely intuitive. He did not even seeka reason for it, beyond the obvious one that his desire to stand byMargaret Aubyn's grave was prompted by no attempt at a sentimentalreparation, but rather by the vague need to affirm in some way thereality of the tie between them. 

The ironical promiscuity of death had brought Mrs. Aubyn back toshare the narrow hospitality of her husband's last lodging; but thoughGlennard knew she had been buried near New York he had never visitedher grave. He was oppressed, as he now threaded the long avenues, by achilling vision of her return. There was no family to follow her hearse;she had died alone, as she had lived; and the "distinguished mourners"who had formed the escort of the famous writer knew nothing of the womanthey were committing to the grave. Glennard could not even remember atwhat season she had been buried; but his mood indulged the fancy that itmust have been on some such day of harsh sunlight, the incisive Februarybrightness that gives perspicuity without warmth. The white avenuesstretched before him interminably, lined with stereotyped emblems ofaffliction, as though all the platitudes ever uttered had been turned tomarble and set up over the unresisting dead. Here and there, no doubt, afrigid urn or an insipid angel imprisoned some fine-fibred grief, as themost hackneyed words may become the vehicle of rare meanings; but forthe most part the endless alignment of monuments seemed to embody thoseeasy generalizations about death that do not disturb the repose of theliving. Glennard's eye, as he followed the way indicated to him, hadinstinctively sought some low mound with a quiet headstone. He hadforgotten that the dead seldom plan their own houses, and with a pang hediscovered the name he sought on the cyclopean base of a granite shaftrearing its aggressive height at the angle of two avenues. 

"How she would have hated it!" he murmured. 

A bench stood near and he seated himself. The monument rose before himlike some pretentious uninhabited dwelling; he could not believe thatMargaret Aubyn lay there. It was a Sunday morning and black figuresmoved among the paths, placing flowers on the frost-bound hillocks. Glennard noticed that the neighboring graves had been thus newlydressed; and he fancied a blind stir of expectancy through the sod, asthough the bare mounds spread a parched surface to that commemorativerain. He rose presently and walked back to the entrance of the cemetery. Several greenhouses stood near the gates, and turning in at the first heasked for some flowers. 

"Anything in the emblematic line?" asked the anaemic man behind thedripping counter. 

Glennard shook his head. 

"Just cut flowers? This way, then. " The florist unlocked a glass doorand led him down a moist green aisle. The hot air was choked with thescent of white azaleas, white lilies, white lilacs; all the flowers werewhite; they were like a prolongation, a mystical efflorescence, of thelong rows of marble tombstones, and their perfume seemed to cover anodor of decay. The rich atmosphere made Glennard dizzy. As he leanedin the doorpost, waiting for the flowers, he had a penetrating sense ofMargaret Aubyn's nearness--not the imponderable presence of his innervision, but a life that beat warm in his arms.... 

The sharp air caught him as he stepped out into it again. He walked backand scattered the flowers over the grave. The edges of the white petalsshrivelled like burnt paper in the cold; and as he watched them theillusion of her nearness faded, shrank back frozen. 

XII

The motive of his visit to the cemetery remained undefined save as afinal effort of escape from his wife's inexpressive acceptance of hisshame. It seemed to him that as long as he could keep himself alive tothat shame he would not wholly have succumbed to its consequences. Hischief fear was that he should become the creature of his act. His wife'sindifference degraded him; it seemed to put him on a level with hisdishonor. Margaret Aubyn would have abhorred the deed in proportion toher pity for the man. The sense of her potential pity drew him back toher. The one woman knew but did not understand; the other, it sometimesseemed, understood without knowing. 

In its last disguise of retrospective remorse, his self-pity affected adesire for solitude and meditation. He lost himself in morbid musings, in futile visions of what life with Margaret Aubyn might have been. There were moments when, in the strange dislocation of his view, thewrong he had done her seemed a tie between them. 

To indulge these emotions he fell into the habit, on Sunday afternoons, of solitary walks prolonged till after dusk. The days were lengthening, there was a touch of spring in the air, and his wanderings now usuallyled him to the Park and its outlying regions. 

One Sunday, tired of aimless locomotion, he took a cab at the Park gatesand let it carry him out to the Riverside Drive. It was a gray afternoonstreaked with east wind. Glennard's cab advanced slowly, and as heleaned back, gazing with absent intentness at the deserted paths thatwound under bare boughs between grass banks of premature vividness, hisattention was arrested by two figures walking ahead of him. This couple, who had the path to themselves, moved at an uneven pace, as thoughadapting their gait to a conversation marked by meditative intervals. Now and then they paused, and in one of these pauses the lady, turningtoward her companion, showed Glennard the outline of his wife's profile. The man was Flamel. 

The blood rushed to Glennard's forehead. He sat up with a jerk andpushed back the lid in the roof of the hansom; but when the cabman bentdown he dropped into his seat without speaking. Then, becomingconscious of the prolonged interrogation of the lifted lid, he calledout--"Turn--drive back--anywhere--I'm in a hurry--"

As the cab swung round he caught a last glimpse of the two figures. Theyhad not moved; Alexa, with bent head, stood listening. 

"My God, my God--" he groaned. 

It was hideous--it was abominable--he could not understand it. The womanwas nothing to him--less than nothing--yet the blood hummed in his earsand hung a cloud before him. He knew it was only the stirring of theprimal instinct, that it had no more to do with his reasoning selfthan any reflex impulse of the body; but that merely lowered anguishto disgust. Yes, it was disgust he felt--almost a physical nausea. Thepoisonous fumes of life were in his lungs. He was sick, unutterablysick.... 

He drove home and went to his room. They were giving a little dinnerthat night, and when he came down the guests were arriving. He looked athis wife: her beauty was extraordinary, but it seemed to him the beautyof a smooth sea along an unlit coast. She frightened him. 

He sat late that night in his study. He heard the parlor-maid lock thefront door; then his wife went upstairs and the lights were put out. His brain was like some great empty hall with an echo in it; one thoughtreverberated endlessly.... At length he drew his chair to the table andbegan to write. He addressed an envelope and then slowly re-read what hehad written. 

"MY DEAR FLAMEL, "

"Many apologies for not sending you sooner the enclosed check, whichrepresents the customary percentage on the sale of the Letters. "

"Trusting you will excuse the oversight, "Yours truly, "STEPHEN GLENNARD. "

He let himself out of the darkened house and dropped the letter in thepost-box at the corner. 

The next afternoon he was detained late at his office, and as he waspreparing to leave he heard someone asking for him in the outer room. Heseated himself again and Flamel was shown in. 

The two men, as Glennard pushed aside an obstructive chair, had amoment to measure each other; then Flamel advanced, and drawing out hisnote-case, laid a slip of paper on the desk. 

"My dear fellow, what on earth does this mean?" Glennard recognized hischeck. 

"That I was remiss, simply. It ought to have gone to you before. "

Flamel's tone had been that of unaffected surprise, but at this hisaccent changed and he asked, quickly: "On what ground?"

Glennard had moved away from the desk and stood leaning against thecalf-backed volumes of the bookcase. "On the ground that you sold Mrs. Aubyn's letters for me, and that I find the intermediary in such casesis entitled to a percentage on the sale. "

Flamel paused before answering. "You find, you say. It's a recentdiscovery?"

"Obviously, from my not sending the check sooner. You see I'm new to thebusiness. "

"And since when have you discovered that there was any question ofbusiness, as far as I was concerned?"

Glennard flushed and his voice rose slightly. "Are you reproaching mefor not having remembered it sooner?"

Flamel, who had spoken in the rapid repressed tone of a man on theverge of anger, stared a moment at this and then, in his natural voice, rejoined, good-humoredly, "Upon my soul, I don't understand you!"

The change of key seemed to disconcert Glennard. "It's simple enough--"he muttered. 

"Simple enough--your offering me money in return for a friendly service?I don't know what your other friends expect!"

"Some of my friends wouldn't have undertaken the job. Those who wouldhave done so would probably have expected to be paid. "

He lifted his eyes to Flamel and the two men looked at each other. Flamel had turned white and his lips stirred, but he held his temperatenote. "If you mean to imply that the job was not a nice one, you layyourself open to the retort that you proposed it. But for my partI've never seen, I never shall see, any reason for not publishing theletters. "

"That's just it!"

"What--?"

"The certainty of your not seeing was what made me go to you. Whena man's got stolen goods to pawn he doesn't take them to thepolice-station. "

"Stolen?" Flamel echoed. "The letters were stolen?"

Glennard burst into a coarse laugh. "How much longer to you expect me tokeep up that pretence about the letters? You knew well enough they werewritten to me. "

Flamel looked at him in silence. "Were they?" he said at length. "Ididn't know it. "

"And didn't suspect it, I suppose, " Glennard sneered. 

The other was again silent; then he said, "I may remind you that, supposing I had felt any curiosity about the matter, I had no way offinding out that the letters were written to you. You never showed methe originals. "

"What does that prove? There were fifty ways of finding out. It's thekind of thing one can easily do. "

Flamel glanced at him with contempt. "Our ideas probably differ as towhat a man can easily do. It would not have been easy for me. "

Glennard's anger vented itself in the words uppermost in his thought. "It may, then, interest you to hear that my wife DOES know about theletters--has known for some months.... "

"Ah, " said the other, slowly. Glennard saw that, in his blind clutch ata weapon, he had seized the one most apt to wound. Flamel's muscles wereunder control, but his face showed the undefinable change producedby the slow infiltration of poison. Every implication that the wordscontained had reached its mark; but Glennard felt that their obviousintention was lost in the anguish of what they suggested. He was surenow that Flamel would never have betrayed him; but the inference onlymade a wider outlet for his anger. He paused breathlessly for Flamel tospeak. 

"If she knows, it's not through me. " It was what Glennard had waitedfor. 

"Through you, by God? Who said it was through you? Do you suppose Ileave it to you, or to anybody else, for that matter, to keep my wifeinformed of my actions? I didn't suppose even such egregious conceit asyours could delude a man to that degree!" Struggling for a foothold inthe small landslide of his dignity, he added, in a steadier tone, "Mywife learned the facts from me. "

Flamel received this in silence. The other's outbreak seemed tohave reinforced his self-control, and when he spoke it was with adeliberation implying that his course was chosen. "In that case Iunderstand still less--"

"Still less--?"

"The meaning of this. " He pointed to the check. "When you began to speakI supposed you had meant it as a bribe; now I can only infer it wasintended as a random insult. In either case, here's my answer. "

He tore the slip of paper in two and tossed the fragments across thedesk to Glennard. Then he turned and walked out of the office. 

Glennard dropped his head on his hands. If he had hoped to restore hisself-respect by the simple expedient of assailing Flamel's, the resulthad not justified his expectation. The blow he had struck had bluntedthe edge of his anger, and the unforeseen extent of the hurt inflicteddid not alter the fact that his weapon had broken in his hands. Hesaw now that his rage against Flamel was only the last projection of apassionate self-disgust. This consciousness did not dull his dislike ofthe man; it simply made reprisals ineffectual. Flamel's unwillingness toquarrel with him was the last stage of his abasement. 

In the light of this final humiliation his assumption of his wife'sindifference struck him as hardly so fatuous as the sentimentalresuscitation of his past. He had been living in a factitious worldwherein his emotions were the sycophants of his vanity, and it was withinstinctive relief that he felt its ruins crash about his head. 

It was nearly dark when he left his office, and he walked slowlyhomeward in the complete mental abeyance that follows on such a crisis. He was not aware that he was thinking of his wife; yet when he reachedhis own door he found that, in the involuntary readjustment of hisvision, she had once more become the central point of consciousness. 

XIII

It had never before occurred to him that she might, after all, havemissed the purport of the document he had put in her way. What if, inher hurried inspection of the papers, she had passed it over as relatedto the private business of some client? What, for instance, was toprevent her concluding that Glennard was the counsel of the unknownperson who had sold the "Aubyn Letters. " The subject was one not likelyto fix her attention--she was not a curious woman. 

Glennard at this point laid down his fork and glanced at her between thecandle-shades. The alternative explanation of her indifference was notslow in presenting itself. Her head had the same listening droop aswhen he had caught sight of her the day before in Flamel's company; theattitude revived the vividness of his impression. It was simple enough, after all. She had ceased to care for him because she cared for someoneelse. 

As he followed her upstairs he felt a sudden stirring of his dormantanger. His sentiments had lost all their factitious complexity. He hadalready acquitted her of any connivance in his baseness, and he feltonly that he loved her and that she had escaped him. This was now, strangely enough, his dominating thought: the consciousness that he andshe had passed through the fusion of love and had emerged from it asincommunicably apart as though the transmutation had never taken place. Every other passion, he mused, left some mark upon the nature; but lovepassed like the flight of a ship across the waters. 

She sank into her usual seat near the lamp, and he leaned against thechimney, moving about with an inattentive hand the knick-knacks on themantel. 

Suddenly he caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She waslooking at him. He turned and their eyes met. 

He moved across the room and stood before her. 

"There's something that I want to say to you, " he began in a low tone. 

She held his gaze, but her color deepened. He noticed again, with ajealous pang, how her beauty had gained in warmth and meaning. It wasas though a transparent cup had been filled with wine. He looked at herironically. 

"I've never prevented your seeing your friends here, " he broke out. "Whydo you meet Flamel in out-of-the-way places? Nothing makes a woman socheap--"

She rose abruptly and they faced each other a few feet apart. 

"What do you mean?" she asked. 

"I saw you with him last Sunday on the Riverside Drive, " he went on, theutterance of the charge reviving his anger. 

"Ah, " she murmured. She sank into her chair again and began to play witha paper-knife that lay on the table at her elbow. 

Her silence exasperated him. 

"Well?" he burst out. "Is that all you have to say?"

"Do you wish me to explain?" she asked, proudly. 

"Do you imply I haven't the right to?"

"I imply nothing. I will tell you whatever you wish to know. I went fora walk with Mr. Flamel because he asked me to. "

"I didn't suppose you went uninvited. But there are certain things asensible woman doesn't do. She doesn't slink about in out-of-the-waystreets with men. Why couldn't you have seen him here?"

She hesitated. "Because he wanted to see me alone. "

"Did he, indeed? And may I ask if you gratify all his wishes with equalalacrity?"

"I don't know that he has any others where I am concerned. " Shepaused again and then continued, in a lower voice that somehow had anunder-note of warning. "He wished to bid me good-by. He's going away. "

Glennard turned on her a startled glance. "Going away?"

"He's going to Europe to-morrow. He goes for a long time. I supposed youknew. "

The last phrase revived his irritation. "You forget that I depend on youfor my information about Flamel. He's your friend and not mine. In fact, I've sometimes wondered at your going out of your way to be so civil tohim when you must see plainly enough that I don't like him. "

Her answer to this was not immediate. She seemed to be choosing herwords with care, not so much for her own sake as for his, and hisexasperation was increased by the suspicion that she was trying to sparehim. 

"He was your friend before he was mine. I never knew him till I wasmarried. It was you who brought him to the house and who seemed to wishme to like him. "

Glennard gave a short laugh. The defence was feebler than he hadexpected: she was certainly not a clever woman. 

"Your deference to my wishes is really beautiful; but it's not the firsttime in history that a man has made a mistake in introducing hisfriends to his wife. You must, at any rate, have seen since then thatmy enthusiasm had cooled; but so, perhaps, has your eagerness to obligeme. "

She met this with a silence that seemed to rob the taunt of half itsefficacy. 

"Is that what you imply?" he pressed her. 

"No, " she answered with sudden directness. "I noticed some time ago thatyou seemed to dislike him, but since then--"

"Well--since then?"

"I've imagined that you had reasons for still wishing me to be civil tohim, as you call it. "

"Ah, " said Glennard, with an effort at lightness; but his irony dropped, for something in her voice made him feel that he and she stood at lastin that naked desert of apprehension where meaning skulks vainly behindspeech. 

"And why did you imagine this?" The blood mounted to his forehead. "Because he told you that I was under obligations to him?"

She turned pale. "Under obligations?"

"Oh, don't let's beat about the bush. Didn't he tell you it was I whopublished Mrs. Aubyn's letters? Answer me that. "

"No, " she said; and after a moment which seemed given to the weighing ofalternatives, she added: "No one told me. "

"You didn't know then?"

She seemed to speak with an effort. "Not until--not until--"

"Till I gave you those papers to sort?"

Her head sank. 

"You understood then?"

"Yes. "

He looked at her immovable face. "Had you suspected--before?" was slowlywrung from him. 

"At times--yes--" Her voice dropped to a whisper. 

"Why? From anything that was said--?"

There was a shade of pity in her glance. "No one said anything--no onetold me anything. " She looked away from him. "It was your manner--"

"My manner?"

"Whenever the book was mentioned. Things you said--once or twice--yourirritation--I can't explain--"

Glennard, unconsciously, had moved nearer. He breathed like a man whohas been running. "You knew, then, you knew"--he stammered. The avowalof her love for Flamel would have hurt him less, would have renderedher less remote. "You knew--you knew--" he repeated; and suddenly hisanguish gathered voice. "My God!" he cried, "you suspected it first, yousay--and then you knew it--this damnable, this accursed thing; you knewit months ago--it's months since I put that paper in your way--and yetyou've done nothing, you've said nothing, you've made no sign, you'velived alongside of me as if it had made no difference--no difference ineither of our lives. What are you made of, I wonder? Don't you see thehideous ignominy of it? Don't you see how you've shared in my disgrace?Or haven't you any sense of shame?"

He preserved sufficient lucidity, as the words poured from him, to seehow fatally they invited her derision; but something told him they hadboth passed beyond the phase of obvious retaliations, and that if anychord in her responded it would not be that of scorn. 

He was right. She rose slowly and moved toward him. 

"Haven't you had enough--without that?" she said, in a strange voice ofpity. 

He stared at her. "Enough--?"

"Of misery.... "

An iron band seemed loosened from his temples. "You saw then... ?" hewhispered. 

"Oh, God----oh, God----" she sobbed. She dropped beside him and hidher anguish against his knees. They clung thus in silence, a long time, driven together down the same fierce blast of shame. 

When at length she lifted her face he averted his. Her scorn would havehurt him less than the tears on his hands. 

She spoke languidly, like a child emerging from a passion of weeping. "It was for the money--?"

His lips shaped an assent. 

"That was the inheritance--that we married on?"

"Yes. "

She drew back and rose to her feet. He sat watching her as she wanderedaway from him. 

"You hate me, " broke from him. 

She made no answer. 

"Say you hate me!" he persisted. 

"That would have been so simple, " she answered with a strange smile. Shedropped into a chair near the writing-table and rested a bowed foreheadon her hand. 

"Was it much--?" she began at length. 

"Much--?" he returned, vaguely. 

"The money. "

"The money?" That part of it seemed to count so little that for a momenthe did not follow her thought. 

"It must be paid back, " she insisted. "Can you do it?"

"Oh, yes, " he returned, listlessly. "I can do it. "

"I would make any sacrifice for that!" she urged. 

He nodded. "Of course. " He sat staring at her in dry-eyed self-contempt. "Do you count on its making much difference?"

"Much difference?"

"In the way I feel--or you feel about me?"

She shook her head. 

"It's the least part of it, " he groaned. 

"It's the only part we can repair. "

"Good heavens! If there were any reparation--" He rose quickly andcrossed the space that divided them. "Why did you never speak?" heasked. 

"Haven't you answered that yourself?"

"Answered it?"

"Just now--when you told me you did it for me. " She paused a moment andthen went on with a deepening note--"I would have spoken if I could havehelped you. "

"But you must have despised me. "

"I've told you that would have been simpler. "

"But how could you go on like this--hating the money?"

"I knew you would speak in time. I wanted you, first, to hate it as Idid. "

He gazed at her with a kind of awe. "You're wonderful, " he murmured. "But you don't yet know the depths I've reached. "

She raised an entreating hand. "I don't want to!"

"You're afraid, then, that you'll hate me?"

"No--but that you'll hate ME. Let me understand without your tellingme. "

"You can't. It's too base. I thought you didn't care because you lovedFlamel. "

She blushed deeply. "Don't--don't--" she warned him. 

"I haven't the right to, you mean?"

"I mean that you'll be sorry. "

He stood imploringly before her. "I want to say somethingworse--something more outrageous. If you don't understand THIS you'll beperfectly justified in ordering me out of the house. "

She answered him with a glance of divination. "I shall understand--butyou'll be sorry. "

"I must take my chance of that. " He moved away and tossed the booksabout the table. Then he swung round and faced her. "Does Flamel carefor you?" he asked. 

Her flush deepened, but she still looked at him without anger. "Whatwould be the use?" she said with a note of sadness. 

"Ah, I didn't ask THAT, " he penitently murmured. 

"Well, then--"

To this adjuration he made no response beyond that of gazing at herwith an eye which seemed now to view her as a mere factor in an immenseredistribution of meanings. 

"I insulted Flamel to-day. I let him see that I suspected him of havingtold you. I hated him because he knew about the letters. "

He caught the spreading horror of her eyes, and for an instant he hadto grapple with the new temptation they lit up. Then he said, with aneffort--"Don't blame him--he's impeccable. He helped me to get thempublished; but I lied to him too; I pretended they were written toanother man... A man who was dead.... "

She raised her arms in a gesture that seemed to ward off his blows. 

"You DO despise me!" he insisted. 

"Ah, that poor woman--that poor woman--" he heard her murmur. 

"I spare no one, you see!" he triumphed over her. She kept her facehidden. 

"You do hate me, you do despise me!" he strangely exulted. 

"Be silent!" she commanded him; but he seemed no longer conscious of anycheck on his gathering purpose. 

"He cared for you--he cared for you, " he repeated, "and he never toldyou of the letters--"

She sprang to her feet. "How can you?" she flamed. "How dare you?THAT--!"

Glennard was ashy pale. "It's a weapon... Like another.... "

"A scoundrel's!"

He smiled wretchedly. "I should have used it in his place. "

"Stephen! Stephen!" she cried, as though to drown the blasphemy on hislips. She swept to him with a rescuing gesture. "Don't say such things. I forbid you! It degrades us both. "

He put her back with trembling hands. "Nothing that I say of myself candegrade you. We're on different levels. "

"I'm on yours, whatever it is!"

He lifted his head and their gaze flowed together. 

XIV

The great renewals take effect as imperceptibly as the first workings ofspring. Glennard, though he felt himself brought nearer to his wife, was still, as it were, hardly within speaking distance. He wasbut laboriously acquiring the rudiments of their new medium ofcommunication; and he had to grope for her through the dense fog of hishumiliation, the distorting vapor against which his personality loomedgrotesque and mean. 

Only the fact that we are unaware how well our nearest know usenables us to live with them. Love is the most impregnable refuge ofself-esteem, and we hate the eye that reaches to our nakedness. IfGlennard did not hate his wife it was slowly, sufferingly, that therewas born in him that profounder passion which made his earlier feelingseem a mere commotion of the blood. He was like a child coming back tothe sense of an enveloping presence: her nearness was a breast on whichhe leaned. 

They did not, at first, talk much together, and each beat a devioustrack about the outskirts of the subject that lay between them like ahaunted wood. But every word, every action, seemed to glance at it, to draw toward it, as though a fount of healing sprang in its poisonedshade. If only they might cut away through the thicket to that restoringspring!

Glennard, watching his wife with the intentness of a wanderer to whom nonatural sign is negligible, saw that she had taken temporary refuge inthe purpose of renouncing the money. If both, theoretically, owned theinefficacy of such amends, the woman's instinctive subjectiveness madeher find relief in this crude form of penance. Glennard saw that shemeant to live as frugally as possible till what she deemed their debtwas discharged; and he prayed she might not discover how far-reaching, in its merely material sense, was the obligation she thus hoped toacquit. Her mind was fixed on the sum originally paid for the letters, and this he knew he could lay aside in a year or two. He was touched, meanwhile, by the spirit that made her discard the petty luxuries whichshe regarded as the signs of their bondage. Their shared renunciationsdrew her nearer to him, helped, in their evidence of her helplessness, to restore the full protecting stature of his love. And still they didnot speak. 

It was several weeks later that, one afternoon by the drawing-room fire, she handed him a letter that she had been reading when he entered. 

"I've heard from Mr. Flamel, " she said. 

Glennard turned pale. It was as though a latent presence had suddenlybecome visible to both. He took the letter mechanically. 

"It's from Smyrna, " she said. "Won't you read it?"

He handed it back. "You can tell me about it--his hand's so illegible. "He wandered to the other end of the room and then turned and stoodbefore her. "I've been thinking of writing to Flamel, " he said. 

She looked up. 

"There's one point, " he continued, slowly, "that I ought to clear up. I told him you'd known about the letters all along; for a long time, atleast; and I saw it hurt him horribly. It was just what I meant to do, of course; but I can't leave him to that false impression; I must writehim. "

She received this without outward movement, but he saw that the depthswere stirred. At length she returned, in a hesitating tone, "Why do youcall it a false impression? I did know. "

"Yes, but I implied you didn't care. "

"Ah!"

He still stood looking down on her. "Don't you want me to set thatright?" he tentatively pursued. 

She lifted her head and fixed him bravely. "It isn't necessary, " shesaid. 

Glennard flushed with the shock of the retort; then, with a gestureof comprehension, "No, " he said, "with you it couldn't be; but I mightstill set myself right. "

She looked at him gently. "Don't I, " she murmured, "do that?"

"In being yourself merely? Alas, the rehabilitation's too complete!You make me seem--to myself even--what I'm not; what I can never be. I can't, at times, defend myself from the delusion; but I can at leastenlighten others. "

The flood was loosened, and kneeling by her he caught her hands. "Don'tyou see that it's become an obsession with me? That if I could stripmyself down to the last lie--only there'd always be another one leftunder it!--and do penance naked in the market-place, I should at leasthave the relief of easing one anguish by another? Don't you see that theworst of my torture is the impossibility of such amends?"

Her hands lay in his without returning pressure. "Ah, poor woman, poorwoman, " he heard her sigh. 

"Don't pity her, pity me! What have I done to her or to you, after all?You're both inaccessible! It was myself I sold. "

He took an abrupt turn away from her; then halted before her again. "Howmuch longer, " he burst out, "do you suppose you can stand it? You'vebeen magnificent, you've been inspired, but what's the use? You can'twipe out the ignominy of it. It's miserable for you and it does HER nogood!"

She lifted a vivid face. "That's the thought I can't bear!" she cried. 

"What thought?"

"That it does her no good--all you're feeling, all you're suffering. Canit be that it makes no difference?"

He avoided her challenging glance. "What's done is done, " he muttered. 

"Is it ever, quite, I wonder?" she mused. He made no answer and theylapsed into one of the pauses that are a subterranean channel ofcommunication. 

It was she who, after awhile, began to speak with a new suffusingdiffidence that made him turn a roused eye on her. 

"Don't they say, " she asked, feeling her way as in a kind of tenderapprehensiveness, "that the early Christians, instead of pulling downthe heathen temples--the temples of the unclean gods--purified them byturning them to their own uses? I've always thought one might do thatwith one's actions--the actions one loathes but can't undo. One canmake, I mean, a wrong the door to other wrongs or an impassable wallagainst them.... " Her voice wavered on the word. "We can't always teardown the temples we've built to the unclean gods, but we can putgood spirits in the house of evil--the spirits of mercy and shame andunderstanding, that might never have come to us if we hadn't been insuch great need.... "

She moved over to him and laid a hesitating hand on his. His head wasbent and he did not change his attitude. She sat down beside him withoutspeaking; but their silences now were fertile as rain-clouds--theyquickened the seeds of understanding. 

At length he looked up. "I don't know, " he said, "what spirits have cometo live in the house of evil that I built--but you're there and that'senough for me. It's strange, " he went on after another pause, "shewished the best for me so often, and now, at last, it's through her thatit's come to me. But for her I shouldn't have known you--it's throughher that I've found you. Sometimes, do you know?--that makes ithardest--makes me most intolerable to myself. Can't you see that it'sthe worst thing I've got to face? I sometimes think I could haveborne it better if you hadn't understood! I took everything fromher--everything--even to the poor shelter of loyalty she'd trustedin--the only thing I could have left her!--I took everything from her, I deceived her, I despoiled her, I destroyed her--and she's given me YOUin return!"

His wife's cry caught him up. "It isn't that she's given ME to you--itis that she's given you to yourself. " She leaned to him as though sweptforward on a wave of pity. "Don't you see, " she went on, as his eyeshung on her, "that that's the gift you can't escape from, the debtyou're pledged to acquit? Don't you see that you've never before beenwhat she thought you, and that now, so wonderfully, she's made you intothe man she loved? THAT'S worth suffering for, worth dying for, to awoman--that's the gift she would have wished to give!"

"Ah, " he cried, "but woe to him by whom it cometh. What did I ever giveher?"

"The happiness of giving, " she said.