I

“I told my father that you expected to make a hundred thousand this year. He said he didn’t believe in miracles.”

It was Mrs. Carol Nevius who, from the head of the dinner-table, addressed her husband.

“Did he though! That’s odd, seeing that it has taken a succession of them to keep him out of Sing Sing.”

Mrs. Nevius laughed. She was a pretty little woman, very well dressed, with a noticeably good manner. And as she laughed it was evident that her father was not one who inspired respect.

“But if you do,” she insisted, “if you make a lot, you will let me entertain, won’t you?”

Nevius shook his head. No, not though it were millions. In the now remote bachelor days he had his fill of society, and while it is colloquial to maintain that those who do not care for society are those for whom society does not care, in his case the argument was invalid. He was too busy to fatigue himself further with futilities and late hours.

His wife was not. She was essentially social, schemingly so, with a dream unfulfilled, yet, perhaps still fulfillable of leadership in the upper four, and so exasperating did her husband’s disinclination for any form of entertainment seem to her, that had you confessed her privately and apart she would have declared illicit commerce as nothing in comparison.

But this was natural. Not until her engagement was announced did society become aware of her existence. Born a Snaith, her people were believed to be rich and known to be common. Her father was an old person of both sexes⁠—possessed of all the vices of woman and none of the virtues of man⁠—a Wall Street rat who told untenable stories and insisted on morning prayers. His wife, it was rumored, was of better stock, and in reviewing the documents, it seems difficult for her not to have been. But she had little to boast of. She was a bloodless creature, with a deprecatory manner and a total inability to look you in the face.

To these people two children had been born, both girls. The elder, Frances, became in time the wife of young Montrion who promptly landed her in a set which, while not censorious, has a curious habit of closing its doors on women who leave their own wide open. In what manner and through what circumstances Mrs. Montrion became negligent in regard to her vestibule is not a matter with which the telling of the accompanying episode need be delayed. Suffice it to say that after being urged from one end of the avenue to the other the sufficiency of that urging ceased.

This occurred at the hour when her sister, Hilda, was about to make some form of début. That the latter was thereby materially handicapped goes without phrases. Apart from a handful of school friends, their brothers and lovers, the girl knew no one. It was Mrs. Montrion on whose offices she relied to join the since defunct F.C.D.C., and to tread Assembly floors. It was through her she was to be smiled upon by the Bleeckers, Rewicks and Wainwarings. It was through her she was to grasp those two potential fingers with which Mrs. Amsterdam sealed the advent of the debutante, and just when the frocks were ordered, presto! up and down Fifth Avenue one door after another was closing on Mrs. Montrion’s back.

It was hard on the girl, very. But she held her tongue, and the frocks which were to have been worn at routs she wore quite graciously at home. Now and again when her father could be induced to secrete himself, the handful of friends, their brothers and lovers, were asked to break bread at the house; and in return now and again her friends asked her to their own abodes. It was on one of these occasions that she met Carol Nevius.

Nevius was then in his twenty-fourth year. As men go his appearance was not distressing, he was neither effeminate nor beefy, his chin may not have been one which Lavater would have praised, but his features were good, he held himself well, and he dressed as those do who put themselves in West-End hands, and then dismiss the subject. A little before he had taken honors at the Law School, and had been welcomed to the bar by judges to whom his name was evocative of old New York and the early history of Manhattan. Of immediate relatives he had none. His income, derived from a small bundle of bonds and the rental of the Nevius house in Tenth Street, was sufficient to enable him to live without toil though not without debts. An existence of that kind not being to his liking he had fought for spurs and won them, so notably even that the cigars he smoked while digesting the Code were paid for from the emoluments of his profession.

His initial encounter with Miss Snaith occurred at a dinner. As the conversation expanded he found himself taking pleasure in the sound of her voice, and presently he discovered that her eyes were so blue they dazzled; that her mouth was perfect, the poise of her head delightful; that though slight of figure, she was adorably constructed; that her wit was nimble and her manner subdued. She seemed to exhale all that is good in woman⁠—simplicity, sympathy, sweetness ard strength; manifestly she was pure of mind, of eye and tongue, and before the dinner was done he told himself that her beauty was the least of her charms.

These impressions he kept to himself, but on learning that at her house a cup of tea was to be had any afternoon for the asking, he thanked her with much gratitude and took her at her word the next day.

But was it tea she gave him? Surely there was a philter in that samovar. It was February then, but by the time Lent had come and gone and the spring’s bold emissaries were in the air, such was the potency of that brew that only her people and his poverty prevented him from praying her to become his wife. Try as he might, he could not reconcile himself to her family, and try too as he was able, he could discern none of the cohorts of advancing wealth. And yet the girl was so radiantly fair, so graceful in speech, so gracious in bearing and apparently so unexpectant either of love or betrothal, that he saw no reason why he should cease to quaff that cup. Nor did he cease till spring had gone and summer jumped upon the town.

At the first monition of impending heat the Snaiths were accustomed to desert Fifth Avenue for a red chalet at Bronx, a roomy structure standing on grounds that leaned to the water’s edge. Sometimes a poor connection could be lured that way, and sometimes a friend of the girl’s would come unwarned and then take flight, abashed by the speech of that coarse old man, unnerved by the stealthy air and cattish smile of the mother. But as a rule guests were infrequent.

By what means Mr. Snaith was induced that year to try the waters of Sharon is not a part of history, but try them he did, and during his absence Nevius was asked to Bronx. Over that invitation he hesitated and continued to hesitate until after a minute review of recent events he was able to affirm that not once had the girl even alluded to engagement rings. Then he went, and as Mrs. Snaith kept herself aloof, very pleasant he found it.

Of a morning there would be a skurry on horseback through bye-lanes and hedges; when the sun was oppressive there were the poets⁠—Meredith, Bailey, Rosetti, Blunt and Swinburne too; in the late afternoons there were decorous drives over dusty roads, but in the evening there was the moon, the gurgle of waters, the caresses of a midsummer night. There were strains too from that duo in which we have all taken part, and there were monologues, spaced with silence. The moon, the waters, the hush of locusts, the sorceries of the poets, these things are sworn accomplices to adventurous desires, and one morning Nevius awoke, wondering at fate, appalled by it, overcome by a remorse into which a sweetness filtered and declined to go.

When he sought the girl she was not immediately discoverable. It was not until he set out through the grounds that he discerned the white and buttercup of muslin beyond. As he approached she rose from a bed of flowers, and, as he took her hand, her lips parted and she smiled. Never had she looked more fair. Beneath the blue splendors of her eyes were the faintest of circles, but in the gay sunlight she was as fragrant as the flowers she held.

“Wish me good morning,” she admonished. And that office performed she led him to another parterre, where she gathered more flowers and joined them with the first.

“They will do for the table, don’t you think?”

“Hilda, will you marry me?”

She turned to him, a quick, glad look on her face.

“You know that I love you,” he added. “You must know that, or⁠—or⁠—”

Lamely he hesitated. But the girl must have divined his meaning; she made a gesture that dispensed with needless explanations; a little color came to her cheeks, yet her eyes rested bravely in his own.

“Yes, I know, and you too must know how I love you. Carol, I have always loved you; that line in Festus was made for me: ‘My love was perfect from the first, it did not grow as meaner things mature.’ ”

There was no riding that day. Later the girl made avowals sweeter still. To all intents and purposes her life had been but a waiting for him, the preparation and prelude of his coming. There were many things over which she had wondered, but now they were all made clear. She understood music and its meaning. She understood the witcheries of spring, the ripple of the rain, the breath of brooks. She understood at last why the stars had filled her with unrest. She understood when they first met why a bird in her heart had burst into song. It was love, always love; her love appealing to his.

This was very pretty, and of such avowals Nevius became thoroughly avaricious. He, too, was in the festival of youth, and apart from the three or four episodes which inevitably occur to one who moves in certain circles and whose appearance is not distressing, he might have repeated to her everything she said to him. His heart at least was as virginal as her own. If he had taught her the meaning of love, she had shown him the meaning of life. Heretofore he had been ambitious to make a name for himself. Now at once he was ambitious to make a name for her. And with a little perplexity, a little embarrassment, he told her of himself. There was the house, the meager income and his professional hopes.

In view of the fact that the Snaith household was kept on a footing of perhaps fifty thousand a year, and by no means lavishly at that, the girl might readily have dismissed so indigent a suitor. Then, too, in spite of the sweetness and simplicity which she exhaled, she was not one to contemplate with enjoyment such pleasures as are said to reside in surburban flats. But she had faith, less in her lover’s success perhaps than in the possibilities of her father’s money. At the moment, however, she seemed quite content, and a day or two later informed him that her father had arrived and had been approached.

“You are to speak to him after dinner,” she said. “If you were a broker he would love you.” At that period brokers made money. “But you are a lawyer, and he says lawyers are tricky. Come.”

Nevius looked down and away. In regard to trickiness Mr. Snaith’s reputation was indeed above reproach, but in this respect, it surpassed it. Yet, after all, it was not the father he was to marry, nor yet the mother, it was the girl he loved. The entire catalogue of distasteful things which her family represented, faded at thought of her. He looked up and followed her from the veranda to where her people were.

At the entrance of the lovers Mr. Snaith grunted and made for the dining-room beyond. His wife stroked a bloodless hand and asked did it look like rain.

“When I am with Hilda,” Nevius answered, “the sky is always fair.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the lady, by whom that phenomenon had evidently passed unobserved. “Ah! indeed!”

Nevius turned to the girl, she was smiling, the red tip of her tongue just visible, and so adorable was her expression that it was only a proper appreciation of form which prevented him from catching her and smothering her with kisses in his arms.

But in the dining-room the enthusiasm of the moment was forgot. Mr. Snaith broke a raw egg into his soup and refreshed himself with whisky and lithia, a beverage that he declared was tip-top for gout, which statement passing unchallenged he entered into a long tirade against physicians in general and professional men in particular. They were either idiots or scoundrels. “Yes, sir, every damn one of them.” To all of which Mrs. Snaith assented. Then he relapsed into a domineering silence, and some attempt was made at more amiable forms of talk but without sufficient success to cause any needless prolongation of the repast.

When the bowls were brought and the women had gone, Nevius turned to his host. All over him was written the fact that he had seen worse days and never intended to see them again. He was short and obese, with a face like a brandied cherry, and as terrible as vulgarity and ready-made clothes could make him. He looked exactly what he was and nothing worse could be said of him.

“I believe you are aware that I have asked your daughter to be my wife.”

“She has made her bed and she can lie in it,” Mr. Snaith replied.

“Am I to infer that I have your consent?”

“Infer? I don’t know what you infer. She’s got a good home, I don’t see what she wants to leave it for.”

“Doubtless,” answered Nevius, “for the same reason that Mrs. Snaith left her own.”

“That’s nothing to do with it. She’s not fit to be married, I’ve told her mother so. But let’s cut it short. What’s your income?”

“Forty-six hundred.”

“I’ll give her the same as long as I can afford it and not a damn cent more.”

“Perhaps in a year or two it won’t be necessary for you to give anything.”

“So much the better for me then.”

And with that Mr. Snaith left the table and hobbled from the room.

Had Nevius been other than himself, he too would have left the room, Bronx as well. Even the law had not brought him into contact with a boor such as that. For a second it seemed to him that in spite of Hilda and the irreparable he must wash his hands of the whole affair, but in that second Hilda was at his side and led him out to where the red moon was, the gurgling waters, the locust’s hush.

Before the red moon waned white he was reconciled. A girl such as she possesses enchantments which dull regret. And during the prenuptial honeymoon which ensued the only regret he could maintain was that which concerned his position toward her. But for what was the marriage service invented? In the autumn their loves were consecrated by a diligent bishop, and for a while they loitered among the quick of Paris and the ghosts of Rome. When they returned, the house in Tenth Street was made habitable, and Nevius threw himself into work as another plunges into dissipation.

A year passed, another, a third, six in all, yet on this particular evening, as Mrs. Nevius from the head of the table questioned him in regard to the possibilities of future income, she was, if not a bounder, as the word is used, still as far from the inner sanctuaries of upper fourdom as when the doors were closing on her sister’s back.

At the time being she had no opportunity of expatiating on this wrong. A servant appeared and announced that Mr. Ablaut was in the drawing room.

Mrs. Nevius rose from her seat, and her husband, punishing a yawn with a tap of the finger, made for the library.

“If it were Jenny now,” his wife called after him, her eyes half-closed, her chin upraised, “you wouldn’t be in such a hurry, would you?”

II

“I would rather have written Salammbô than have built the Brooklyn Bridge. It was more difficult, and besides it will last longer.”

Mr. “Alphabet” Jones, the novelist, a thimbleful of champagne in his throat, was discoursing to the guests whom Mrs. Nevius had assembled.

“Yes, of course,” interjected Mrs. Anderson, a young woman with the face and manner of a cocotte. “Ah, yes,” and she smiled with an air entendu; “but does literature pay?”

With elaborate manifestations of bewilderment, Jones threw himself back in his chair.

“Pay, Mrs. Anderson? Pay, did I understand you to say? Why, look at Bradshaw. Year in, year out, he clears ten thousand pounds sterling.”

“Bradshaw? Bradshaw?” Mrs. Anderson shook her head vaguely. “Oh, yes, the author of Ben Hur.”

“Ce qu’elle est idiote,” muttered Nevius to Miss Jenny Adulam, who sat at his side.

“Ce qu’elle m’ennuie,” responded that young woman. But her eyes said more than the words conveyed: they complimented Mrs. Anderson with a look of absolute abhorrence.

“What is it?” Nevius asked, who had seen but not understood. “What has she done?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“But you must, Jenny.”

“I can’t; I told Hilda and that’s enough.”

“No, dear Mrs. Anderson,” Jones was saying. “Not Ben Hur; you are thinking of Mr. Gunter. Bradshaw is the author of Rabelais, Tristram Shandy and The Bride of Lammermoor.”

“Yes, yes of course, but then you see I thought he was dead.”

“Not dead, dear Mrs. Anderson, and that is just the point I was seeking to convey. Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies. But how well Scalchi sang last night. Don’t you think her voice must have been changed in the cradle?”

From across the dinner-table Clayton Anderson, a fat man with a beard that concealed the total absence of chin, labored to the rescue of his wife.

“By the way, Jones, that was a nasty criticism the Saturday Review had of your book. Stupid sheet, isn’t it?”

“Stupid? not a bit. Only the year before last it had a most excellent article on manure. It is admirably edited, I assure you.”

“By gad,” snorted Anderson, an appreciative smile on his sodden, good-natured, face. “If I had the editor’s address I’d drop him a line and tell him what you say.”

“Drop it in the sewer, it will get to him in time,” Jones answered, and began anew at Anderson’s wife.

Ablaut, who sat at Mrs. Nevius’ left⁠—James Ablaut, Jr., a large redheaded man, who dripped platitude and exhaled stupidity from every pore, yet the son of a Patriarch and as such supposed to be possessed of social power⁠—grinned contentedly at his truffles.

Mrs. Nevius turned to the novelist: “Tell me,” she said, in reference to an episode which was then occupying not only society but the newspapers of two worlds as well⁠—a husband who, surprising his wife with her lover, had killed the latter almost in the woman’s arms. “Tell me, what do you think of the Ex affair. Is it not terrible?”

“Terrible in its selfishness, yes,” Jones answered. “And still more terrible in its bad taste.”

“We men of the world⁠—” Ablaut, anxious to get an oar in, began, but Jones was too quick for him.

“There’s a plural that is singular. Now, Mrs. Carol, since you do me the honor to ask my opinion, I think it was Ex’s duty to have made himself more attractive to his wife than anyone else could, but having failed, having seen that he failed, the dog-in-the-manger act which he committed was abominable. If any shooting was necessary it was himself he should have shot. But all that sort of thing is out of date and bad form too. A man of the world never sees or hears anything that was not intended for him.”

“You think he ought not to have made a fuss then? Well, perhaps; but when a man surprises his wife in that way⁠—”

“He should apologize for the intrusion.”

“And do nothing?”

“Oh, if he really feels the need of satisfaction, he might express some astonishment and say to the lover, ‘Is it possible, sir, that you are embracing that lady without being obliged to?’ A little remark of that kind can be as effective as a bullet and has the advantage of not raising the roof.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” objected Anderson pompously. “This man was a snake in the grass. He was Ex’s friend and under cover of that friendship he led his wife astray. In Ex’s place I should have done the same thing.”

From where Mrs. Anderson sat came a ripple of laughter which silenced her husband strangely. Jones turned to him with serious mien:

“No, dear boy, permit me. A woman is never led astray. She trots, or gallops or bolts astray, but never is she led. Lovelace, Faust, Don Juan, rolled into one, are helpless where virtue is. Besides, in these days a man never makes the first advances, he hasn’t time. It is the woman, always the woman, who⁠—”

“Dear me!” Mrs. Nevius was making a fine show of indignation. “Dear me, are all women as bad as those in your books? Haven’t you ever met any with a conscience?”

“Plenty, Mrs. Carol. Plenty. Some even with two.”

And as the novelist through his shrewd, tortoise-rimmed glasses gazed at his hostess, that lady lowered her eyes.

At the other end of the table Nevius was chatting inaudibly with Miss Adulam, a girl less pretty than fetching, small of feature, with the flush of youth still in her face and about her that intangible something discernible only in the end-of-the-century virgin of higher New York life, that air which, while indicating total incapacity for wrongdoing, indicates also a perfect comprehension that wrongdoing exists; in short, a girl to whom a man may talk without the disheartening dread of seeming to say more than he means. Nevius had known her when she was in short frocks, and a few years previous, encountering her haphazard in Paris, had made her acquainted with his wife. Since then the two had been much together, Mrs. Nevius, who understood perfectly the advantages which a married woman possesses in the companionship of a decorative young woman that can be relied upon to hold her tongue, having grappled her to her heart with hooks of steel.

“So you are not going to Tuxedo,” the girl was saying, though less for information perhaps than for conversation’s sake.

“No, why should I?”

“Hilda goes tomorrow with the Andersons and Ablaut.”

“Ah! I knew nothing of it. I did not even know they were to be here tonight. You either, for that matter. Hilda only told me when I got uptown. But what is this about Tuxedo?”

The girl shrugged a shoulder. “Some party they have made up. You don’t mind?”

“It wouldn’t matter much if I did, I fancy. Though if I seem to, it is only because of Mrs. Anderson, who is common as⁠—as, well, let us say Narragansett Pier.”

“She is your guest,” Miss Adulam murmured.

“Very true.” And for the moment Nevius subsided.

Presently there was a general move to the adjoining room. There Nevius sat with the girl, Jones occupying himself for literary purposes in drawing Mrs. Anderson out, the other men dividing their hostess’ attention. But by eleven, husband and wife were alone.

As the front door closed for the last time, Nevius went over to where his wife was seated.

“I have been having a chat with Jenny.”

“So I saw.”

“What is it that Mrs. Anderson has been doing to her?”

Mrs. Nevius opened her great blue eyes in wonder.

“Doing to her? I am sure I don’t know. What do you mean?”

“Jenny said she had told you.”

“Oh, what nonsense. Dulcibella happened to be a little friendly with her and she went to work and imagined all sorts of things.”

Nevius stared at his wife very blankly.

“I don’t understand. What did she imagine?”

“How do I know? She’s probably got her head farcie with the Deux Amies or some similar twaddle and is capable of imagining anything. Give me a cigarette will you? It’s not worth talking about.”

Nevius went back to the dining-room, but when he returned his face was grave.

“Do you know, Hilda, I wish you would drop that woman. What you tell me is not reassuring, but, independent of that, she has neither manners, breeding nor brains. And how should she! Her grandfather was a Tweedringer, her father the receiver of stolen goods, and yet in the List she has got her maiden name down as Wainwaring; why she is no more a Wainwaring than you are.”

“That is one of her middle names, I think,” Mrs. Nevius answered remotely. “But even otherwise, what does it matter? How can you be so old-fashioned? Nowadays people don’t expect a patent of nobility in everyone they meet; what they do expect is money. Bella has a hundred thousand a year and no one would object if she called herself a Knickerbocker. Besides, is it her fault about her grandfather? I dare say if we got down to bottom facts the original Nevius was no better.”

“The original Nevius was a Latin poet, but that’s neither here nor there. I won’t have her at dinner. She’s a woman with preferences for everybody and attractions for none.”

“She is nothing of the sort, she is very pretty, and anyway there is no use in your picking up Alphabet Jones’ cigarette stumps. He never means a word he says; he talks and talks just for effect. I am tired and sick of him. Did you notice the way he spoke to Ablaut tonight? He doesn’t seem to be aware of the difference in their positions.”

Nevius smiled helplessly and tugged at his moustache. “I think he is, but I am quite sure he would not try to wound Ablaut by referring to it. Here, Michette!”

A black monster, amber of eye, the neck furred like a ruff, the tail fluttering like a banner, gazed through the portiere. Leisurely it promenaded a haughty stare, interrogating the escritoire, the pedestalled lamps, the yellow shaded candles, the grave hangings, capacious chairs, cushioned lounges, plants, flowers and knicknacks with which the high-ceiled room was provided. Then, assured that all intruders had gone, it stepped gingerly and circuitously to where Nevius sat and with a sudden purr bounded to his side.

“There Michette, I know all about it. You don’t like strangers any more than I do. Do you, you lobster?”

Michette opened and closed his eyes and purred profusely.

“And you have not the remotest desire to go to Tuxedo, have you?”

A thin smile came and vanished in the corners of Mrs. Nevius’ mouth.

“Did Jenny tell you that, too?”

“That Michette⁠—”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Yes, she said you were all off tomorrow. I do hope you won’t be gone long.”

“But, Carol, when I am here you see nothing of me. You come in just in time for dinner, and after that you are either talking business or writing letters. Oh, I know what you are going to say⁠—that you are trying to make a fortune⁠—but what good does that do me? I want to go out. I want to entertain and be entertained. I want to lead the life that my friends do; and, instead of that, I might just as well be at Bronx. You won’t go to the opera, you won’t go to the assemblies; last winter you would not even take me to Mrs. Bleecker’s. If once in a century I ask people to dinner, unless you have Jenny on one side of you and Jones within call, you don’t speak. And if it were my friends alone that you snubbed! But you won’t even speak to my own family. There was a time when my mother used to beg me to bring you there. Now she never mentions your name. My father says you cut him in the street. But don’t you know that you are making yourself very well hated? The lecture you have read me about Bella Anderson is all very well, but it would be the same thing in regard to anyone else; it always has been. You objected to Viola Raritan, to the Yardes, to the Jerolomons, to this woman, that man and the other. Do you know what I think?”

And Mrs. Nevius, in spite of her manifest indignation, smiled frostily.

“Do you know what I think? You want a wife simply for domestic purposes; to pay the bills, talk to tradesmen, see that the machinery runs smooth; to be your housekeeper by day and your mistress at night.”

“At least I want no other wife than you. It may be selfish of me to act as I do; no doubt it is, but since I have got into these companies I haven’t a moment.”

Mrs. Nevius, whose cigarette had gone out, relighted it, and for a while puffed meditatively. Presently the cigarette was put aside, her features relaxed, and she looked up at her husband with great amiability.

“There, Carol, forgive me. I am out of sorts. I know you work hard; say the word, and I won’t go to Tuxedo.”

“But Hilda, I am delighted to have you go if it amuses you. The only thing is⁠—”

“Well, what?”

“Your companions.”

“What a goose you are. The Andersons are received. Whatever you may say. Belle is perfectly presentable.”

“Oh I don’t mean to imply that she eats sweets with a spoon; nor was it so much of her I was thinking. Ablaut is all very well in his way, but don’t you think he is too much in yours? Don’t you think if he is tagging after you down there that people will gossip?”

Mrs. Nevius gave a twist to her skirt and laughed for sheer joy.

“You dear thing, are you jealous? Tell me, Carol, are you?”

Nevius tormented the tip of his nose reflectively and glanced at his wife. She looked the embodiment of merriment, of coquetry too, of grace as well, and prettier even, more tantalizing and tentative than in the old prenuptial days. No, he was not jealous and said so.

“Now see,” she continued, straightening herself and distributing wide breezes from an enormous fan. “See how little jealous I am. Every evening while I am away, Jenny is to dine with you.”

“You don’t mean that you asked her!”

“I did then, and she said she would like nothing better.”

“But won’t the servants think it odd?”

Mrs. Nevius gave him a curious, investigating look.

“What are the servants’ thoughts to you?”

“Nothing. It was Jenny I was considering.”

“She cares as little as you do. If I ask her, who is to object?”

“Not I, certainly. Jenny is very sweet, I am very fond of her, and if she comes I shall take it as very kind of her, but she is not you. It is you I want.”

He leaned forward; there was a light in his eyes which she saw and recognized, but before he could reach her she was on her feet.

“There, Carol, behave. I am tired, and besides, anyone would think we were on our honeymoon still.”

III

“This is really delightful of you. I had hardly ventured to hope⁠—”

“If you are going to be formal, Carol, I won’t stay.”

Miss Adulam, preceded by Michette, was entering the drawing room. Such outer wraps as she may have worn had been laid aside, but her frock, cut sufficiently low in the neck to be suitable for evening wear, had none of the insignia of festival.

And now, as she stood holding a hand to him, there was about her a little simple air of dignity which a princess might seek and got not.

“I won’t be called formal. I am not formal.” And Nevius, raising the hand, touched the wrist with his lips.

From between the curtains at the end of the room a servant appeared, annunciant of dinner.

“But it is good of you,” he continued. “It is worth while to be a bachelor to have such compensation as this.”

Miss Adulam withdrew the hand.

“If Hilda had not insisted I should not be here,” she said; “but she has been so good to me that it seemed stupid to refuse, particularly as it appeared, sir, that if I had, you would not have let her go.”

“Aha! I’m a tyrant now, am I? All the same, Miss, I wish you would try to imply that you are here just a little for me.”

“But I am,” the girl exclaimed. “Really I am. If I were not very fond of you do you suppose I should be here at all?”

“There, that’s something like, that’s my dear old Jenny. Now let’s go in and see what we are to have to eat. But afterward you must play. When I was younger, oh! ever so much younger, I swore a great oath that I would never marry a girl that did not. And Hilda, who did play at the time, has not touched a piano since. Her hand is no longer big enough for the octaves, if you please. That’s the way we men get cheated. There!”

Nevius had seated his guest and taken the seat at her side.

“Put my things here,” he called to the servant, for his place had been arranged at the other end. “And what is there to drink? Champagne and claret? No, I want moselle and seltzer. Serve the champagne to Miss Adulam. You won’t have claret, will you? By George, I believe these are Mumford coves. I take that as being very thoughtful of Hilda. Maintenant,” he added with just a glance to where the servant stood. “Causons. Et nos amours?”

“That’s hardly the expression, is it?” The girl answered in French. “But after all he is so nice that call it what you like.”

“He’s a deuced lucky fellow, that’s all I have got to say about him.”

“Not so lucky, Carol. Not a penny, not one.”

“And what of it? When I married I hadn’t a penny either. But it’s idiocy of him to stick in Texas. He won’t make anything in cattle. That day has gone. This is the era of syndicates and New York is their home. Make him come back, Jenny. I can put him up to any number of things. Nevius and Tredegar! How does that sound?”

“Beautifully, Carol. But Jack won’t do it. You know how obstinate he is; once an idea in his head and only a surgical operation could get it out.”

“And his heart?”

Miss Adulam smiled demurely.

“Anyway,” Nevius persisted, “you have something of your own.”

“Eventually I shall have something; a hundred thousand, perhaps, but not more.”

“But that’s very neat. You could live comfortably on it in Paris and luxuriously in Florence. Of course it’s not much here, and nothing at all in London. And you wouldn’t care to live anywhere else, would you? After all, New York would be a mighty nice place, if it were not for the New Yorkers. Don’t you think so?”

“Here,” he called in English to the servant. “Give Miss Adulam some more champagne, and I want some more seltzer. What is there after this? Quails? I hate quails. Never have them again.”

He turned to the girl.

“Does he write often?”

“Who? Jack? Every day.”

“And what does he say?”

“Mais, Monsieur, vous me demandez des choses!”

“I didn’t mean that.” And Nevius shook with laughter. “Though I can fancy, of course,” he added after a pause, which he purposely made significant.

“You are very impertinent, sir, and I am going home.”

“Yes, of course. And that is just the odd thing; it is always an impertinence to divine a woman’s thoughts. Her wishes passe encore.”

“Why, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” and the girl turned on him a look which was meant to be quite severe yet was not. “I am afraid Alphabet Jones is corrupting your good manners.”

“Do you know, Hilda said something of the sort last night. By the way, she intimated the other evening that Ablaut was in love with you.”

“Carol!”

“She said something to the effect that he came here more to see you than anyone else. I shall tell Jack, Miss Jenny, mind that.”

With an inappositeness which afterward was to occur to Nevius as curious in the extreme, the girl became abruptly barometric.

“Wasn’t it nice this afternoon, so cold and brisk!”

“Cold? yes, it was certainly that, but I don’t know what your idea of niceness is. It rained pitchforks down town, didn’t it rain here? Why, Jenny, you are crying!”

But not a bit. The phantoms of twin tears had come and gone. Miss Adulam was mistress of herself at once.

“Poor Jack,” she murmured.

“Why, you foolish thing,” expostulated Nevius with much noise and indignation. “Damn Jack. No, forgive me, I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I meant. I was only jesting anyway.”

“What’s all this,” he cried furiously at the servant. “Carry it all away and serve the coffee in the other room.”

“Come, Jenny,” he added in another tongue and milder tone. “Let’s have a cigarette in English.”

Michette, who lay, a ball of fur, before the fire, stared indolently at their approach, then, his back arched, his tail full as a bludgeon, made crab-like zigzags across a rug.

“I know what you want, you lobster, you want some music to dance to.”

And presently, the coffee disposed of, Nevius and Miss Adulam took seats at the piano and played a succession of resounding duets.

Whether Michette accompanied them with pirouettes and entrechats is not a part of history. The duets continued until, during a wonderful series of resounding accords, there came a ring, and Miss Adulam stood up.

“Thank you, Jenny. That went off very well, didn’t it? And you will come tomorrow? You are sure it doesn’t bore you?”

In a brotherly fashion he drew the girl to him and kissed her pure brow.

“Miss Adulam’s maid.”

A portiere had been drawn. The servant entered and disappeared.

“Yes, certainly, I will come.”

Nevius followed her to the hall, aided her with her cloak, accompanied her to the cab, and, as he reentered the house, told himself that it would not be a bad idea at all to see what effect a letter from him might have on the obstinacy of Miss Adulam’s lover.

IV

A week passed. Once Nevius read of his wife’s presence at the country club to which she had gone, and once she wrote. But the letter was brief, relating mainly to household affairs and conveying but meager details as to the writer’s occupation and environments.

Meanwhile Miss Adulam had been almost as good as her word. She had dined at Tenth Street twice and on the intervening Sunday had lunched there as well.

On that evening Nevius dined with Michette. The cat was loquacious, but its loquacity was not of the interruptive order, and as it monologued interminably on what seemed to be the same subject, Nevius felt bored. As a relief, the cloth removed, he wrote to his wife.

That pleasure at an end, the boredom returned, loneliness as well, and for companionship’s sake he looked in at the Athenaeum club where he ran into Alphabet Jones and managed to kill an hour.

“I hear you are making money,” the novelist between two whiffs remarked. “I hear you have enough to burn.”

“I wish I had. No, I may have to go to Chicago in a day or two, I am afraid even that I may have to go abroad.”

“It wouldn’t frighten me a bit if I had to. Will your princess go too?”

“Oh, of course.” And Nevius nodded with an air of assured conviction. “But how is the Muse? What are you writing now?”

“Cheques, dear boy,” Jones answered negligently. “Cheques, that’s all.”

“I thought you had something on the stocks.”

“Stocks is the word. The pillory comes later.”

“Your books are too confounded cynical. Alphabet. The public don’t like it.”

“But did I invent human nature?” And the novelist looked at his friend with an air ruminant and bovine in its innocence.

“I don’t believe,” retorted Nevius, “I don’t believe at all that it is human nature for women to act as they do in your books. Anyone might think that New York was peopled with demireps.”

“Perhaps. But then you see everyone isn’t blessed as you are.”

“No, that’s a fact, I admit. But even so, what is the use in choosing such subjects?”

“I choose a subject! Why, dear boy, a writer, if he happens to be worth his syndicate, never chooses a subject. The subject chooses him. He writes what he must, not what he might. That’s a thing that the public can’t understand. The secret of any work of value lies in the harmony existing between the subject and the author. And even then his one chance of success consists not only in yielding to the subject but in caressing it. Every artist knows that. Flaubert has rung his changes on it a thousand times.

“Oh, well, if you bring up your heavy artillery I surrender. After all I don’t mean to abuse you.”

“But I love to have you. The next time you have a moment skim over a history, and then come and tell me the name of one man of ability who has not been abused. And the greater the ability, the greater the abuse. It is the tribute that failure pays to success. Mediocrity is never discussed, and, being unforgiving, resents it. As for my books, if they please no one, doubtless they are poor, but if they pleased everybody I should consider them rot. Vox populi, vox stulti. The majority is always wrong. What would a Scotch and soda say to you?”

“That I am vile and vicious I suppose. No thanks. I think I will be getting home.”

“By the way, if you and Madame go abroad, will Ablaut and Miss Adulam join you?”

“No, why should they?”

Jones lit a match and fumbled for a cigarette. “Are you sure you won’t have anything? Where is that devilish case gone now! Ah, yes, here it is.”

“Why did you ask?” Nevius repeated.

Jones glanced about the room. “For no reason, dear boy,” he murmured apologetically. “For no reason. I had got to look upon you all as a family party, don’t you see, and it occurred to me that⁠—that⁠—it occurred to me⁠—”

Irritated by this mummery and hesitation. Nevius got from his seat. “I don’t know what can have occurred to you, but if you fancy for one instant that anything, even platonism, exists between Ablaut and Jenny Adulam, I may just as well tell you that you are off, ‘way off.’ ”

“I should think so;” and Jones smiled in his beard. “No, indeed. Wait a second, dear boy. No, indeed, I never gave the matter a thought. But that subject of platonism now is really very interesting. Speaking in the abstract of course, I believe in it, but not as you do. I think that the affection a nice girl may have for a man who is neither her brother nor her lover, a man I mean with whom she is constantly thrown in contact, is often of that order. But it is different with the man. It seems to me that however pure at heart he may be, however honest in intention, nature is apt to resent that negation of sex. And it is for that reason that platonic affection, or, more exactly, reciprocal platonism, is discoverable only among married people. Nature having had her way, has no slights to resent, and occupies herself, if at all, in directing the attention of the parties to the possibility of other enterprises. In such circumstances there are women who, noting in their husbands a decreasing desire for the pleasures of the tête-à-tête, appeal to the courts. There are others astute enough to understand that it is not in the nature of man to subsist on a single dish, and sufficiently refined not to give that bit of information to the newspapers. But there are also women whose fastidiousness is such that they are the first to desire a change in the menu. When this occurs there are husbands that return to the animal state and shriek for blood; there are others of finer breed who collaborate with their wives in an effort to observe the courtesies and amenities of civilized life while agreeing that individual tastes shall suffer no interference. Now there you have true platonism, the ideal state in which the ancients instructed us, the⁠—”

“Ideal state of pigsty,” Nevius gruffly interrupted. “What’s all this rubbish you are rehearsing on me?”

Amused and vatic, Jones set about polishing an eyeglass.

“Rubbish, is it, dear boy? Well, perhaps; but then we have been merely exchanging ideas. Do have a liquor.”

“No. I’m off. Good night.”

Jones watched him go and nodded confidentially to himself. “Le ménage a trois, c’est encore joli. Mais à quatre! Non, c’est d’un pur!”

V

Mrs. Carol’s return was unheralded. One evening after a dinner at the Downtown Club. Nevius found her entrancing as an angel, but far better garbed, outstretched in the drawing room. From beneath the hem of the skirt the gold clockwork of a stocking glistened, the blue eyes that met his own were languid and sultry, and as he bent over to kiss her there rose to greet him the fresh odors of iris and of health.

“There, don’t muss me up.”

Unabashed Nevius drew a chair to where she lay, and taking her hand held it in his own.

“I can never tell you how glad I am. And I have wanted you so. You enjoyed yourself, I hope. Tell me all about it. Are you glad to be back?”

Mrs. Nevius withdrew the hand he held, and with two fingers patted a yawn.

“Of course I am glad to be back. Carol, do be careful,” she admonished, for he had bent toward her again. “There’s someone there. Of course I am glad to be back. I hate living in a trunk. What is it, Rebecca?”

The servant had entered; a note on a tray.

“A letter for you, mem. And there’s an answer, mem.”

Nevius moved his chair. His wife stood up and went forward to a lamp. There she turned.

“You are not going out, are you?”

And as Nevius shook his head, she made a motion to the servant.

“I will ring.”

The woman left the room, and Mrs. Nevius, seating herself at the escritoire, busied herself with pen and paper.

“Whom is it from, Hilda?”

The question must have entangled her thoughts. She took the sheet on which she was writing, tore it up and tossed it aside.

“How can I write if you keep talking to me?” she asked almost piteously. “It’s from Frances.”

Frances was her sister, Mrs. Montrion, and as Nevius gathered up the Post and tried to lose himself in the advertisements, the name evoked a series of incidents that were not at all to his taste. There was the liaison with a dyspeptic boor, which, however, had interested him remotely, if at all, until Mrs. Montrion took it into her head to have herself and the cavaliere servente chaperoned by Hilda during a trip abroad. At that he had rebelled, and his rebellion had not been lessened on learning the object, which was to enable the Snaiths, during Mrs. Montrion’s absence, to secure evidence against that lady’s husband, whereby she might obtain a divorce and marry her lover. But the plot had fallen through. Montrion was not a man to be trifled with, and his wife grew timorous of results. Then, too, the cavaliere servente after the fashion of his kind, had bestowed his services elsewhere. The subject was not agreeable, and to dismiss it Nevius tried to lose himself in the columns of the Post. Before he succeeded, the answer was written, dispatched as well, and Hilda returned to the sofa.

Nevius threw the paper aside. “If you are glad to be back,” he began with a bad attempt at banter, “at least you are not enthusiastic.”

“But what do you expect? Here I am tired out, and besides after what you wrote I thought you would be on your way to Chicago.”

“Yes, I remember. But I found it was not necessary and I am glad now it was not. I only wish you had wired. If I dined down town it was only because it is less appalling than the house when you are gone.”

Mrs. Nevius smiled with bright frostiness.

“But you have had Jenny all the time. Dear me, Carol, what do you want? A seraglio?”

And as though in challenge, she raised a fan and unfurled it with a sudden click.

Nevius shook his head.

“It is not nice of you to speak that way. It’s not like you either. You know that I want no one but yourself.” As he spoke he bent toward her, but before he could touch her, Mrs. Nevius moved, and shoving him gently enough aside, sat upright, smiling still.

“Listen to me, Carol, how long have we been married? Nearly seven years. Now, tell me, don’t you think that in seven years a woman may get just a little tired of that sort of thing.” In her great blue eyes interrogations floated, and in the corners of her mouth was a candor which would have delighted Greuze. “For I am. And if you are not,” she added with a gesture so wide that it took in all New York, “there are so many other women who would like nothing better.”

Nevius was on his feet. Into his face had come a look which his wife had seen before, and at which, mentally, she retreated. But before he could speak, she was at his side, her arms about his neck, her lips on his.

“Dear,” she murmured. “Couldn’t you see that I was jesting. Don’t you know it, Carol? Don’t you know that if I thought you could look at another woman it would break my heart?”

With both hands on his shoulders she held him a little from her, and with a pathos that seemed charged with love and grief eternal, gazed into his face.

“Tell me?”

“I suppose so,” he answered, though with a thoroughly masculine sigh. “But then, whatever I may do or leave undone, you come always first.”

Mrs. Nevius’ eyes lighted visibly. She led him back to where they had sat and for a while very sweetly discussed with him matters of common interest. At last she stood up again, declaring that it was late.

“I am going,” she announced. “Are you coming presently?”

Nevius led her to the door and drew the portiere that she might pass.

“And Carol, when you come don’t forget the gas.”

The portiere fell again. Nevius returned to the Post. There was an editorial which he read unheedingly. From a cablegram he learned of an epidemic in the Orient. From another that an English duke had died without an heir. A paragraph in the financial column interested him. There was a statement which concerned his own interests. He got out a notebook and studied some figures; an idea in connection with them occurred to him, and at the desk he jotted down some memoranda which he recopied and tearing up the draft put the copy in his pocket. He looked at the clock, the half hour which he had given himself had gone and he went upstairs, the gas forgot.

The following afternoon, on returning to the house, he went directly to his own room. At the office he had found that the memoranda were not in his pocket. In ordinary circumstances he would have recalled the substance of any such paper unaided, but in this instance subsequent episodes had driven the purport from his mind. Not in his bedroom, however, nor in his dressing-room, was the paper to be found. He questioned the housemaid; she had no information to impart. Where is the housemaid that ever had? After all, he reflected, it was not a matter of life or death, and if it were lost, was it not as Hilda had often said, because he was fiendish in his carelessness? And he was about to give the matter up when he remembered that he had first made a draft which he had torn and thrown aside. There was a chance that the housemaid had left the scrapbasket undisturbed and, presently, after getting into evening dress, he went to the drawing room below.

The lights were lit, on the table was the Post; there, against the wall, was the escritoire of lacquer work and brass on which he had written, and beside it a basket of beribboned velvet. One glance was sufficient, the contents had not been touched, and, emptying them, he began to arrange them on the desk. Yes, they were all there. In a moment he had them not only in proper position, but with three pieces of paper to spare. These he would have brushed away, but something on one of them caught his eye⁠—Dearest J⁠—, written in his wife’s hand. But what preceded the adjective, or what had followed the J, there was nothing to tell. The second scrap was larger, and on it was written he has not go⁠—; on the third were two words and a fraction that must have come from the middle of a sentence⁠—can’t see y⁠—.

Nevius stared at these little papers and, as he stared, all interest in his own memoranda evaporated.

He looked again in the basket. It was quite empty. Whether the other bits of that letter had fallen, not in the basket, but on the floor, and had then been swept away, he did not try to determine. Enough remained. The J, of course, was Ablaut⁠—Jimmy, as he was familiarly called. As for the rest, a child could have supplied the missing words⁠—He has not gone to Chicago; I can’t see you tonight.

And this was Hilda! For a while he sat, staring at the scraps, conscious only that he was suffering, endeavoring even to delude himself into a belief that some explanation might set this horrible thing aright. But little by little, as the impossible merged into the actual, the understanding came to him that the worst that could be done had been done, and he ceased to suffer. It was time to act.

From the stair came a rustle of silk, the sound of a footfall that he knew. As yet he had no plan. But as he became aware that Mrs. Montrion’s sister was entering the room he stood up. His lips may have been a trifle compressed, but otherwise he had his everyday air; he looked well groomed, sedate, anxious, if at all, merely that dinner should not be too long delayed.

Mrs. Nevius passed through the curtains, the light shuttling her hair, illuminating the rose of her mouth. In her blue eyes were evocations of summer, and beneath them, on her cheeks, on the lobes of her ears, health had placed its token in pink. She was adorably dressed, adorably constructed, and dressed and constructed to be adored. In one hand was a fan, in the other a fold of her gown. At sight of her husband she smiled.

Nevius stayed her with a question.

“What was it that Frances had to say that was so important last night?”

With that motion which a swan has, Mrs. Nevius turned her head and for a moment seemed lost in the query. But at once she must have recollected.

“Nothing. The address of a milliner. How are tilings in the Street?”

“And you gave her the address, did you?”

“Of course, I did. Why? But what do you mean by asking all these questions?”

“And you found it necessary to add that I had not gone to Chicago, and that you couldn’t see her, didn’t you?”

Mrs. Nevius’ big blue eyes seemed to grow bigger and bluer, but to her face came a flush with which health had nothing to do.

“You found it necessary to add that, didn’t you?”

The fan she held, she opened and closed.

“I am sure,” she said at last, “I don’t understand⁠—”

“Look.”

At the invitation, at the gesture which accompanied it, she crossed the room, peered down at the scraps, at the basket from which they had come, at the rug and floor. When she raised her head she turned on her husband a look of absolute scorn and, straightening herself, confronted him.

“You, you, Carol Nevius, condescend to rumble through waste papers! A scullery-maid might do such a thing, a gentleman⁠—never.”

“Ah? Perhaps. But it was not for sociological information that I asked you to look at these things. It is because they are addressed to Ablaut, who, I see, is your lover.”

Mrs. Nevius stepped back. In her face had come an expression which a princess might assume to a lackey who had dared to question her. Then at once, as in a storm, a sky of buttercups and forget-me-nots will suddenly appear, the indignation vanished and she laughed outright.

“Why, you great goose, that was written to your Jenny.”

And as Nevius contented himself with staring at her. “But how,” she cried, “how is it possible for anyone to be such an idiot as you are!”

“I don’t see⁠—”

“Then you shall. On our way to town Mrs. Manhattan offered me a box for next Friday. I thought I could get you to take both Jenny and myself. Last night before you came in I sat down to write to her. I told her of the offer, and referring to you I said, ‘If he has not got anything on hand I can’t see yet but that we may persuade him.’ Then I heard you at the door, and determined I would ask you first. But did you give me time? Did you? Was ever a woman mauled as I was? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? No, but aren’t you?”

“Will you forgive me?”

He was very penitent, very meek, very happy, and as his wife pretended to look as though she were not quite sure whether forgiveness could be granted to such a sinner, he caught her in his arms.

“Oh Carol!” muttered that aggrieved little woman, freeing herself as best she might. “How can you be so dreadful! Someone’s there.”

Between the curtains Rebecca stood in silent announcement of dinner.

VI

For several days Nevius saw little of his wife. At no time had she been visible when he left the house, and now when he returned there seemed to be always someone at dinner. The cloth removed, he sought the library, a room on the second floor which separated his apartment from hers. By day it was gloomy, for light reached it from above but at night it was pleasant and very still. Lined on three sides with books, it was furnished with a wide table, easy chairs, a hanging lamp, and a sofa large as a bed. Here Nevius passed his evenings. Time was valuable to him just then; he had more documents to examine than he could handle at his office, and many a letter to read and write. Later, the work at an end, he would go in search of his wife, but in those days she must have been overfatigued; her door was locked.

This regimen made him morose. That the effect was noticed is presumable. One evening he was gratified with the intelligence that he was to dine alone with Hilda, and incidentally that there was a surprise in store. What was it? Ah, voilà! If she told, where would the surprise be?

In his delight at recovered companionship Nevius promptly forgot all about that surprise; during the service of the courses he talked of his plans and projects as he had not had the chance to talk for ages before, and when the meal was done and they had gone to the other room there was a caress in his manner which Mrs. Nevius understood.

“Now, Carol,” she admonished, as he took a seat at her side. “Do behave, it’s immoral, there’s no other word for it.”

“Immoral!”

“If it is not immoral then, it’s worse. It is bourgeois.”

From the past there floated to him memories of the old prenuptial days, when there had been no question of ethics, no question of customs, nothing in fact save a frank abandonment to love and life. But to those days he was incapable even of an allusion.

“It is not nice of you to talk like that,” he answered. “You accused me some time ago of picking up Jones’ cigarette stumps; a speech such as yours smacks of Mrs. Anderson a mile away. I have begged you so to drop her.”

“Oho! I’m not nice, eh?” And Mrs. Carol nodded and smiled seductively. “Wait till you see. Now tell me, how have you been passing your evenings?”

“Very badly.”

“But how, I mean. What have you been doing?”

“Writing letters.”

“And how long has it taken you?”

“Two or three hours.”

“Precisely. Now if by any combination of circumstances I were able to shorten those two or three hours into one, and mind I only say If, but if I were, would I be nice or would I not?”

To these propositions Nevius assented.

“Very good, will you come with me for a moment.”

Mrs. Nevius led him to the floor above and threw open the library door. Seated at the table was a young woman of that type of blonde beauty which only a sight of creates in the average man a desire to jump straight down the possessor’s throat. As the door opened she rose from her seat, and with a gesture, perhaps of embarrassment, her hand went to the side of her head and busied itself with a curl.

Mrs. Nevius looked at the girl, and in a little voice, which was used only on particular occasions, affably, from the tips or the lips, she murmured:

“This is Mr. Nevius, Miss Vührer.” Then with a glance that stripped Miss Vührer from neck to heel, she turned to her husband.

“Miss Vührer is a stenographer. Oh, quite an expert, I believe. Miss Vührer thinks she can be of great assistance to you. If you have any letters tonight, why not let Miss Vührer show you her abilities?”

Whether or not this projection of peaches and cream into the privacy of the library caused Nevius pleasure or displeasure, not even a lady who was eying him could decide.

“Certainly,” he answered, but he spoke in the matter-of-fact way which he brought into all business transactions. “Certainly, I make no doubt that Miss Vührer is competent, and I shall be glad of her assistance. Let me see. Yes, I have several letters. Perhaps⁠—”

“I will leave you then.”

With a sweet little bow to the young woman, Mrs. Nevius backed from the room and closed the door.

“Perhaps you will sit down, Miss Vührer. Yes, you might sit there, please. You have everything you require?”

Miss Vührer, a pad in her hand, a row of sharpened pencils before her, resumed her seat. Nevius dropped on the sofa, and after a glance at some papers, which he had taken from his pocket, began:

“Waters and Rivers, Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, Dear Sirs:⁠—In reply to yours of the 18th I have to inform you that⁠—”

And so on and so forth. For an hour the dictation continued uninterrupted, save by pauses of thought, and the tick of the clock on the mantel. Once Nevius heard the door bell ring, and once he found himself scrutinizing this blonde young creature, who rarely turned her eyes to him. The letters done, he stood up.

“Thank you, Miss Vührer, that will do. If you will copy out what you have, I can sign later on.”

He left the room and went down the stairs. On the way he caught the sound of a voice, which, musical as the squawk of a bicycle he recognized at once, and on reaching the hall, picked up his hat and coat. But his step had been heard, his movements perhaps divined, there was a jostle of portiere rings, and before he had got his arms well into the coat, Mrs. Carol was at his side.

“You are not going out, are you? Do come in. It’s only Ablaut, you don’t mind him.”

“Not in the least, but I do mind his carrying off my best umbrella every time it rains, and I wish you would tell him so too.”

“Oh, pooh! Who’s afraid of you? Tell me,” and Mrs. Carol came closer to her husband. “What do you think of her?”

“Miss Vührer? She is very pretty.”

“Is she really!”

The air of surprise which Mrs. Nevius assumed could not have been dissimilar to that which the Duchess of Burgundy exhibited, when she learned that other women had five fingers like herself.

“Is she really! I didn’t notice. How queer men are! But do come in.”

“No, not just now. I have an odd feeling in my head, a walk will do me good.”

And bending toward his wife he received from that lady a rapid and noiseless peck.

When Nevius returned Miss Vührer was about to leave. The drawing room was dark and untenanted. He opened the door for the girl, wished her good night, and went in search of his wife. But Mrs. Nevius must have already retired. There was no answer to his knock.

VII

Meanwhile nothing further had been said about Mrs. Manhattan’s box. Mrs. Carol may have abandoned the project, and as for Nevius, the matter had passed from his mind. He had other things to think of. One evening he returned to the house later than usual; he was tired and looked cross. On entering the drawing room he found his wife already there. At the moment he said nothing, contenting himself with staring at her. Her gown was an artful combination of silk and tulle, colorless yet silvery, and in it, with a large fan and a low bodice, very delightful she was to behold. About her were the incendiary and not altogether definable emanations which the well sent-out of her sex not infrequently exhale, but of which she had made a study. There are women, few indeed, but there are women who merely in raising their arms define the reason of love, and Mrs. Nevius was one of them. The costume, however, and its attendant charms were not, Nevius understood, intended solely for his own delectation. A festival of some kind was imminent.

“Aren’t you going to dress?”

As Mrs. Nevius spoke, the tips of her lips just moving, her chin a trifle advanced, her eyebrows arched, the blue splendors of her eyes dilating, she might have sat for Spring pouting at Winter.

With the sans-gêne of a married man, Nevius dropped in a chair.

“Anyone would think I had shot you,” she added, after a pause which she made populous with interrogations.

Nevius straightened himself.

“How long will it take you to pack?”

“Two months.”

“Hilda! do be serious.”

“Two months I tell you. Not a minute less. But what has happened? I give you my word you look as though you had been studying the extradition treaty. What’s gone wrong?”

“I go to Paris tomorrow and I want you to go too.”

To this Mrs. Nevius made no reply unless the click of a fan may be so accounted.

“The Board of the Interocean Canal met today and they want me to go. In fact I have to. The stockholders, in spite of De Lesseps, are all there, and the Board needs more money. How much God only knows, and when I say God only I exaggerate⁠—”

“Don’t be coarse,” Mrs. Carol interjected, but she spoke mechanically, her thoughts afar.

“I have the ticket, a cabine de luxe; it is big enough for three. Rebecca could get such things as you need in shape in no time. And it would be so sweet,” he added.

This conclusion was allowed to pass unnoticed. With a gesture which was habitual to Mrs. Carol when called upon to think quickly, she raised a hand to her forehead. On one finger a great jewel glistened, but not more so than the fingertip. When she lowered it her face was almost apathetic.

“It would be so sweet of you, Hilda.”

Mrs. Nevius dropped her fan, patted a fold of the skirt, and, as though reflecting still, crossed to where he sat.

He was on his feet at once.

“I knew you would!” he cried, and caught her to him.

“How long are you to be gone?”

“Oh,” he answered eagerly, “the time to get there and turn around.”

Mrs. Carol freed herself.

“Dinner has been announced. Let us go in.”

“Yes, and let’s have some champagne. Do you remember the St. Marceau we used to get? Do you remember the little restaurant we went to one night on the other side of the Seine? Do you remember⁠—”

The memories of other days returned, too abundant, too fragrant, too sacred even, for enumeration while the servant was there. But during the progress of the meal there was plenty of animation in that room, many a jest and many a laugh. The jests, however, came from him. Mrs. Carol smiled and nodded, and nodded and smiled, but otherwise her contributions to the gaiety were slight. At last they moved again to the adjoining room. There, when they had got seated, she took his hand in hers.

“Carol, I can’t go.”

Surprise, annoyance too, lifted him from the seat.

“Now wait.” With but a gesture she had him back again. “If you insist I will obey you, but⁠—”

“Obey me, why⁠—”

“But it will be very selfish of you. I am not a bagman’s wife, Carol. I can’t leave New York at a moment’s notice. In spite of your attitude I have some small position in society. I have engagements to keep, duties to which I must attend. I have my friends, my family. What would they all say? But supposing I were to go. Who would look after the house? When I got back it would be in rack and ruin. You’re to be gone but a few weeks. Surely after nearly seven years you can do without me for that space of time. And I would only be in your way. But look at it from a different point. Supposing, as many a woman has, I not only refused to go, but refused to let you. Whereas I am going to do everything to get you off comfortably, and not only that, but I shall be on the dock to welcome you home. Only on one condition though⁠—”

And as he manifested no earthly interest in the condition, as he looked sulky and very cross, she twisted about in such a manner that he was obliged to notice her, and repeated tentatively and seductively:

“Only on one condition though⁠—”

“Well, what condition then?” he finally snarled.

But Mrs. Carol was very patient that evening; very tender. She stroked him much as she might a big baby.

“That you promise, no, but faithfully and honestly promise to be back in six weeks.”

By way of answer Nevius bit his lip.

“And see,” she continued, “I was going to Mrs. Usselex’ tonight. I was going to make you take me too. Yes, whether you liked it or not. But Mrs. Usselex have to do without me. Why, Carol, I wouldn’t leave you tonight, no not to sup with the queen.” She touched a bell.

“Rebecca,” she ordered when the servant appeared. “There was a cab to be here at eleven. Countermand it, and tell Miss Vührer not to wait.”

These commands distributed she turned again to her husband.

A glance was enough to tell her that his annoyance had gone, that presently he would accept the situation, its logic as well, and with some inward approbation of her own prowess she stood manfully to the guns.

“You can do so many little things for me, too, Carol. I want corsets of that woman in the Rue de la Paix. I want gloves from the Louvre and lingerie from Doucet. If you tell the corset woman I want six more like the last she will understand. And you must order them as soon as you get there. Corsets take forever. And the gloves⁠—but I had best make a list. You won’t lose it, will you? Oh, if it were April now how I would jump at the chance. In the winter Paris gives me the horrors. You must be good, though; no flirtations, rien des horizontales. Do you hear?”

Yes, he had heard; he gave the required promise, but absently, his eyes on the rug.

“And you must take good care of yourself, too. You mustn’t tire yourself out, and catch one of those horrid Paris fevers. If you did, though,” she added after a moment, “how I would fly to you!”

The words were nothing. But in the intonation, in the expression of anxiety her face took on, there was a tenderness, a solicitude, an affection so sincere and abiding that Nevius felt ashamed.

It was selfishness, he reflected, to wish her to accompany him on a disagreeable trip, and it was surly of him now that he saw the selfishness of the wish to sit staring at the intricacies of the rug. But still, though he said nothing, his face spoke for him and presently when he put his arm about her Mrs. Nevius felt that the battle was won.

VIII

Save in New York, and in the antipodes, the early winter is rarely pleasant. But when Nevius reached Paris the sky was white as tin and in the air that sparkle which Fifth Avenue knows in March.

He descended, to use an idiom of the land, at a small hotel in the Rue Castiglione, where he was greeted as only those are who are magnificent with small coin.

“Seigneur! I who dreamed of Monsieur the night of the day before yesterday. No, it does good to the eyes to again see Monsieur. And Madame? She carries herself always well? Ah, how I am content! God of gods, to say that I of it have dreamed!”

It was the janitress, obese and fulsome, welcoming him in the excesses of her tongue.

“And Baptiste? It is there he is. The trunks of Monsieur to the number 12, and let it not loiter. And hey!” she cried with much haughtiness to an interloper who had opened the cab-door and was now officious in the transfer of the luggage, “And hey, species of calf’s head marined in mud, go, I pray you, a little that way and see if I there am.”

Number 12, in which Nevius presently found himself, was a yellow suite, where he had brought his wife on each of their visits to Paris. Though two years had passed since the last trip, apparently nothing had happened to it, it was as ornate and trivial as before. He had but to close his eyes and fancy her calling to him, as she was wont to do from the room beyond, and, for a while, in an absurd, canary-covered armchair he sat reminiscent.

The journey over had been uneventful, as such journeys ever are. There was the usual number of merry commercial gentlemen in the smoking-room, and on deck, blanketed in sedan-chairs, the usual quota of unalluring dames. Apart from a man whom he remembered but whose name he could not recall, he had barely exchanged a word with anyone. But then, he had not been well. On the second day out the curious sensation of a lancinating burn had come and gone, leaving him perplexed as to the cause, yet mindful of an anterior, though less acute attack. On the morrow there was nothing, a heavy feeling merely, which he attributed to the effects of the sea, and which remained with him until the voyage was done.

And now, as he sat in the little sitting-room, he felt he was ill, yet after the fashion of men to whom illness exists only through hearsay, he refused to admit it. He would dine, he told himself, and look in at the Comédie. For though he objected to theatres in New York, there was no weariness to him in that home of perfect acting and perfect French.

Contrary to precedent, the prescription did him good. On the morrow he awoke, if not alert, at least refreshed, and after a breakfast of coffee and the Figaro⁠—in which he learned that Mr. Cleveland had the Constitution of the United States tattooed on his back⁠—he went to the corset woman, across the way to Doucet, afterward in search of gloves to the Louvre, and it was only these matters attended to, that he bethought him of the duties which had brought him to France.

Business in that country is not transacted with the same dash which has made the success of our own. The agents whom Nevius visited were not to be hurried. There was a preliminary plenitude of form to be observed, punctuated, it is true, with abundant promises. But the Canal Company, albeit in its quality of corporation, without a soul, had, nevertheless, a stomach, and Nevius was fully aware that that stomach was not to be fed and be filled on the faith of tomorrow’s baked meats. Yet beautifully clear was it made to him that it was precisely on food of that kind that the company would have to subsist until a general meeting could be called and terms arranged. Meanwhile, the agents would be only too glad to have him breakfast with them, dine with them and sup, as well.

Under the diligent supervision of friends encountered and recovered, a week was helped away without any abuse of these offers. The corset woman, he found, was not as dilatory as she had been represented; already a package of her wares had come, another from Doucet, too. As for the gloves, long since they had been in his keeping. The machinery in the agent’s office was at last at work, and in a fortnight, so far as he was then capable of determining, there would be nothing to prevent his return.

On the morning of the ninth day after his arrival there came to him, with the coffee and the Figaro, a batch of letters postmarked New York. Among them was one of blue paper, stamped with the Nevius crest, directed in his wife’s familiar hand. Oh, he had been awaiting it, calculating when it would arrive, devoured by impatience, hoping even that tide and weather favoring, it might reach him the day before. But now it had come, and letting the other letters lay where they were, he opened it, his eyes glad and eager.

“Dear Carol:

“I have bad news for you, or, at least what seems bad to me. Your whole affair with that woman has come out. My father has been told, and he says that if I do not come to him at once he will disinherit me. Precisely what course he will pursue I do not know; indeed since I first learned of your conduct I have been so dumb and crushed that the family have seen that I am incapable of acting for myself, and have taken the matter entirely out of my hands. But, independent of them, I know that you will agree with me, that it is best that we should part. For years we have led different lives; you never would take me anywhere; your pleasures were your own, not mine. But I will not reproach you. I know your nature, and how you resent interference. Hereafter there will be no one to bother you. A bachelor’s life, without ties or duties, is what you prefer. As for myself, I may tell you that a more wretched, brokenhearted woman does not exist. In separating myself from you, I say goodbye to so much⁠—to my wasted years, to my ruined youth, to love, to happiness and to life. But it must be said, and in such grief as you would pity could you see, I say it. So soon as I am able I leave this empty and dishonored house; there are other women that will come to you in it, be truer to them than you have been to me. I can write no more, my eyes are blinded with my tears.

When Nevius finished this curious communication he neither changed color nor fainted away. But he did rumple it a little and then smoothed it out and read it again. It is a trick, he told himself, a forgery, a practical joke. But where was the trickster capable of perpetrating a jest such as that? “She must be mad,” he reflected. “What affair of mine has come out? Why must she go to her father. Why is she dumb and crushed? Why⁠—why⁠—why⁠—?”

But ask questions of canary-colored furniture in a Paris hotel and see how communicative it is. Yet to the soul that is sinking Hope throws a straw. With the idea that something in the other letters might convey a clue to the mystery he ran them over. One was from the Canal Company. He threw it down. Another was from his broker; he tossed it aside. A third was from Chicago; he let it lie unopened. But the fourth was more promising; in one corner it bore the neat imprint of the Athenaeum Club and it was covered with the oblique scrawl with which Alphabet Jones was accustomed to distress his publishers and confuse his friends.

“Dear Reprobate:

“It is the way of this envious world to hate an adulterer. The brute has had such a confounded good time that the rest of us are jealous⁠—an apothegm which you won’t have to read twice to understand that I have been interviewed by Mrs. Carol. Yesterday I was sent for and I at once precipitated myself to renew the expression of my homage. Your princess was looking remarkably well, but of you and of one who shall be nameless she did not speak as she looked, in fact, it would be hyperbole to say that she was complimentary. Of course I reasoned with her as best I could. I told her that accidents increased the best of families; that woman proposes and a poor devil accepts; that matrimony is paved with improper attentions. But my arguments were treated like cobwebs. I was told that you had gone abroad to avoid trouble, and though I intimated that I should do the same thing, and moreover that disappearances were deceptive, I was warmly urged to advise you to remain where you are. As a consequence I advise you to do nothing of the sort, though, between ourselves, it is always stupid to come back and explain things which need no explanation, and as for exoneration only sinners feel the need of that. Perhaps then your best course is to study the maxims of that Hindu philosopher whose name is I Dhont Kare; try not to be any more particular than you have been in the observance of the XI commandment; and, in any event, Tace et Memento. Divorces, as you may be aware, are quite modish this year. They are of all shades of green, cut low and behold, with or without frills as personal taste dictates, and are worn en train, sans pudeur et avec reproche.

“N.B.⁠—Your wife would rather be dead than out of the fashion.

“With this for carte du pays, choose your own route. But which ever way you go, don’t talk back, it is middle-class to begin with, and besides an insult ignored insults the insulter more than the insulted.

In a crescendo of bewilderment Nevius turned to the furniture again. “Am I asleep?” he asked. “Is this real, or a nightmare? Is it actual or am I insane? Who is it that shall be nameless? What is this rubbish about divorce? What is this obesity of the mind which Jones mistakes for wit? What does he mean by suggesting that I should remain where I am? Remain where I am! The steamer isn’t built that can carry me fast enough. One word with Hilda, only one, and this farce will end?”

Yet would it? Presently, with a remorse that was childish in its poignancy, one by one he recalled the numberless instances in which he had refused to take her to this function and to that, the embargo he had placed on certain of her associates, the mortification which she must have felt because of his attitude to her family, his surliness to her friends, the utter perversity with which he had thwarted the one poor little wish she had ever expressed, the natural, feminine desire to entertain and be entertained in turn.

Ah, indeed, if it were because of these things she was to leave him, he had no defence, not one. He could only raise his hat and speed her on her way. No doubt she would be happier, oh, much happier without him.

But was such a thing possible? Could it be that the one being in all the world whom he loved, whom he had loved for seven years with a seven times seven increasing love, whom he loved now with a prodigality of affection of which he had been previously unaware, could it be possible that she was to leave him because of this?

The accusation in regard to the woman perplexed, he knew it to be a delusion, one which he could rout with a word. That which presently affected him was the suffering Hilda must endure because of her belief in it. In similar circumstances what would his sufferings be! Why they would drive him mad. But apart from that the thing which moved him most was the fact that she could condemn him unheard, that she could go to others for her knowledge of him. It was not a thing he could have done to her. Of that he was quite sure. But on what, after all, had the condemnation been based? He was not a saint, far from it. In spite of his present perplexity, there had been moments when his deportment to others had not been licit. But never, as the phrase is used, had there been an affair, fancies merely which at best, or at worst, had not outlasted a week. What was it then that had come out? Why was she dumb and crushed?

And then, suddenly as intuitions visit us unaided by anything more tangible than that intangible operation which has been christened unconscious cerebration, a clue appeared and vanished.

“By the living God! I believe it is some nastiness of that Mrs. Anderson. If it is⁠—”

He had sprung to his feet; his hand clenched menaced the gilding of the cornice, the filmy yellow of the curtains, the world that lay beyond.

But the sound of his voice must have startled him; he crossed the room, ashamed of the outburst, and presently, aided by the understanding that if ever calm were required of him it was then, he sat down again and strove to think.

This was Monday. There would be no ship from Havre till the end of the week, but on Wednesday there was a choice of boats that sailed from Southampton and Liverpool. It was now high noon. At three the Club-train left for London. By midnight he could be there. On the morrow he could engage passage. The day after he could sail. A week later he would be in New York, and one hour after he put foot on shore this nightmare would be dissipated and Hilda in his arms. Was he not sure of her, and how few the words that would serve to make her sure of him?

Closing his eyes he saw her again, as he had seen her the morning of his departure, her dark hair falling about the sweetness of her face, and in a voice that seemed tremulous with emotion, imploring him to remember his promise to return to her soon.

Yes surely, that promise he would keep, and with a lunge at a tasseled cord, presently he had Baptiste attending to his traps.

“Not the trouble to come to take oneself off so swift, is it not, my sir? But my sir will re-come, very sure. The America, it is far however. Beautiful land, eno says, and rich! Ah, how I wish my sir me would lead with him!”

Baptiste pottered away, mumbling to himself. But Nevius had gone. There was a trinket at the jeweler’s opposite which would look well on Hilda’s throat. Then, too, there was a telegram to be sent to the Canal Company. These things accomplished, he was able to eat an omelette, and get to the remote Gare du Nord in time to catch the train.

The next morning he awoke bewildered. What had happened to the Rue Castiglione? Why was it so hushed? Where were the birdlike trills of the hawkers? What had been done to the roar and rumble of Paris? And that sky of glittering tin, a pall had been stretched across it.

The Rue Castiglione no doubt was as noisy and as bright as ever. It was in Jermyn Street that he had awaked, in a room which overlooked the ghostliness of mews that lay dumb and hidden beneath a fog of leprous brown.

It was by candle that he dressed, and when at last he was able to set out for the steamship office his teeth chattered with the rawness of the air. Hell is supposed to be hot, but fancy it cold, and there can not be a pin to choose between it and London in December.

The steamship office was in Cockspur Street, the throw of a stone beyond, but Nevius felt too numb and depressed to get there unfortified. He went back to the hotel, ordered some drink, and in the gloom of the coffee-room sat a while, a copy of the Times before him. But since when had that serious sheet appeared in pink?

Before he could account for such levity, the paper disappeared, the room as well, and when, long after, he issued from a terrible struggle with rushing waters he was lying on a bed; at his side was a little man with white whiskers.

Nevius opened his eyes wider:

“I must have fainted, didn’t I?”

The little man nodded confidentially, with an air of approval.

“And a dom fine one it was altogether. Be easy a bit now, you’re not to get up this day.”

“But I’ve got to,” Nevius answered. “I’ve got to get my ticket.” Then he lost sight of the little man, and when the white whiskers again appeared it was after another combat with thunderclaps and torrential streams.

The little man was prophetic as a ballad. Nevius did not get up that day, nor on the morrow, either, though for a while he was permitted to look out at the dinginess of the empty mews. But he looked with little pleasure; he was weak and confused, and on his forehead above the left eye, a hot iron seemed to be searing the bone.

“What is it?” he asked.

“We’ve been kicking over the traces, haven’t we?” the little man asserted with the same confidential approving air.

“Not a bit.”

“And dom stupid it would be if we couldn’t.”

“But I haven’t. I have been good as gold. I don’t know what fiend of a microbe has battened on me. I don’t know what can be the matter with my head.”

“And we’ve been angry, too. Anger is a poison. We didn’t know that, did we? Strychnine congests the brain, anger congests the liver.”

“I don’t see why you say that.”

“When we go gunning for a lady in our sleep, we know what has happened when we were awake, don’t we? We’ve got our system upset, we’ve got something on our mind, and as for that pain in our head, it’s a taste of neuralgia that will leave us with a bit of quinine.”

Nevius took the quinine, and to the burn in his forehead was added a roar in his ears. The night was white; barely did he close his eyes; to the agony of his temples was joined the agony of his thoughts. He tried to sleep, but the dual agony banished that benison, until at last he remembered the porter and through his aid succeeded in drugging himself with drink.

On the morrow, the little man changed the medicine; he ordered exalgine, and the burn in the forehead went. But not on that day was Nevius able to take ship, nor on the morrow, either. A week went by before he could go. Yet, meanwhile he had cabled to Hilda, telling her of his illness, imploring her from across the sea to remain where she was until he could reach her and show her that it was she he loved and none other.

This despatched he secured a prescription for a solution of opium, chloral and chloroform which did away with any further need of arousing the porter, and of which, when sleepless and in pain, he was to take one-half of one ounce.

It was on Thursday that he sailed. Eight days later, at six in the evening, he landed at Hoboken and drove to his house.

IX

The house was empty as a vacant bier, barred and bolted, unlighted, and to his repeated summons dumb. None the less, through that curious optimism which will visit even the condemned, Nevius told himself that he was but the victim of some accident, presently to be explained. He was disheartened indeed, during the trip across he had done little but prefigure the almost instant reunion, which must occur when he stood once again face to face with his wife, yet in spite of the agony of the disappointment, as he descended the steps he affected, through that duality common to certain natures, to make light of the whole thing, and wondered what had become of Michette.

“Drive to the Brevoort,” he ordered.

But before the cab reached the avenue, the current of his thought had veered, and countermanding the first order, told the man to drive to the Snaiths. For it was there she must be. And, a cigarette between his lips, he threw himself back and resolutely dispossessed his mind of thought.

The cigarette done, he began on another. Before he had finished it, the carriage stopped at that corner of Madison Avenue where, years before, he had sipped the brew whose effect was potent still. Through the glass above the door came a light from the hall beyond. The windows of the drawing room, too, were lighted, and from the rooms on either side of the entrance there came also a filter of gas. Yes, she was there. And he rang the bell, not violently, but with a certain energy of his own.

“Where is Mrs. Nevius?”

The woman who had opened the door, started as at a malefactor, but immediately she recovered herself.

“I don’t know, sir. Would you wish to see Mrs. Snaith?”

Nevius nodded. For the life of him he could not question the servant further. He entered a reception room and stalked to and fro, though whether for one minute or fifty, he afterward forgot. The intermediate was submerged and forever lost when Mrs. Snaith appeared. But the cabman remembered, and for the purpose of these pages that may suffice.

“Where is Hilda?” he asked, and, prompted by the teachings of an earlier education, he raised her hand to his lips.

Mrs. Snaith withdrew the hand and for a moment eyed him strabismally, then in the deprecatory manner which was peculiar to her, addressed the floor.

“We thought⁠—that is, we heard⁠—Hilda said that⁠—you were to remain abroad.”

“Where is she? I must see her.”

Mrs. Snaith fluttered her pallid hands.

“She is not well. She is not well at all. In fact, she is too ill to see you.”

“Too ill to see me. What nonsense. I shall see her. Is she upstairs?”

As he spoke he turned. Mrs. Snaith made no attempt to detain him.

“Hilda is away,” she remarked. “Mr. Snaith is upstairs if you care to see him, but won’t the lawyers do?”

“Lawyers? What lawyers?”

Through sheer surprise Mrs. Snaith for the first time in her life looked him in the face.

“When did you get here?”

“An hour ago.”

“And don’t you know that the suit has been begun?”

Nevius had been standing, but at this statement he dropped into a chair and covered his eyes.

In a musing, contemplative way the lady gazed at him, and presently, with a sort inquiring defiance, she added⁠—

“Of course you won’t contest it.”

Nevius looked up. There was such bewilderment in his expression that the lady grew bolder.

“The lawyers say that it is a clear case,” she announced a little loftily.

“A clear case of what? Do tell me what you mean.”

“Hilda wrote to you I am sure.”

“Hilda wrote nothing. She told me that an affair of mine had come out. That she was a brokenhearted woman because of it. The instant I got her letter I started to come here. If I have not got here sooner, it’s through no fault of mine. But I cabled her; didn’t she get it?”

Mrs. Snaith shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s all very well to send cablegrams from London. What you ought to have done was to have behaved yourself in New York. And it’s all very well for you to look at me that way. You know better than anyone. It took Hilda a long time before she could believe such a thing possible of either of you. But I knew what kind of a creature she was the first time I set eyes on her.”

“But can’t you tell me,” Nevius cried, “can’t you tell me whom you mean?”

Mrs. Snaith’s thin lips filled with abundant scorn.

“Why, your mistress, of course, that Adulam girl⁠—”

Nevius was on his feet by this time, the expression in his face was not pleasant to behold, he was quite white beside; and when he confronted the lady, as he instantly did, his voice was not wholly assured.

“I have never contradicted a woman in my life, never to my knowledge have I been uncivil to one, but⁠—”

He hesitated, and with a gasp which must have been the escape of rage compressed, abruptly he mastered himself.

“Nor will I begin with you.”

There was a bell on the table, he turned and touched it.

“But it is my duty to Miss Adulam to say⁠—”

A servant appeared, and interrupting himself, he addressed her.

“Tell Mr. Snaith I wish to see him.” And as the servant disappeared he added:

“It is my duty to her to say that your accusation would be monstrous were it not absurd.”

The lady smiled stealthily. Such a remark could be treated with disdain. And, smiling, left the room.

Nevius neither saw nor heeded. He stood, his head bowed, his hands behind his back, till there came a shuffle of feet in the hall, and an obese dwarf with an erysipeliptic skin halted in the doorway.

“Well? What do you want? I’ll teach you to cut me in the street.”

Nevius reached for his hat and put it on.

“Your wife has charged Miss Adulam⁠—”

“My wife? My wife isn’t in the habit of making charges⁠—”

“Permit me, you are wrong, she is. It is not so long ago she hired a parcel of detectives to manufacture evidence against Montrion, and if Mrs. Montrion didn’t use it, it was only because, as she told me herself, she was afraid Montrion would shoot her.”

“It’s a lie.”

“What your wife says in regard to Miss Adulam may be so described. She knows it and so do you. What Hilda thinks I have yet to learn.”

“If you don’t know already, more fool you. If you have come here with any intention of contesting this suit, you might as well go back. The lawyers have daughters of their own and they say they’ll make an example of you.”

“Ah! you may tell them from me that I will contest it until the last armed court of appeal expires⁠—which I suppose is just what they want.”

“By God then, if you do, I’ll ruin you.”

“And you may say, too, that I shall be at the Brevoort until I can get into my own house, and meanwhile whenever they take a fancy to serve the summons⁠—”

“You’ve been served,” the dwarf shouted. “You’ve been served by publication. When I employ lawyers I get my money’s worth. The papers are full of it.”

Nevius ripped a glove in two.

“Do you mean that you have got Miss Adulam’s name in connection with mine?”

In his voice were such angers, in his bearing such threats, that the dwarf wheeled like a rat surprised.

“Then you ought to be trampled under foot,” Nevius gnashed, and striding after him cried, “In Hebrew there are four words for reptile, in my vocabulary there is but one⁠—Snaith.”

The old man squirmed to the stairs, shrieking obscenities, fearful of attack.

But the front door opened and closed. Nevius had gone.

X

“Carol, this is the saddest thing that ever happened to me.”

On reaching the hotel, Nevius, after securing rooms, had sent for the papers. On the first page of the one he first examined was his name in leaded type, and beneath it, written in that reporter spirit which stops not even at a column, was an account of the last sensation, the petition of Mrs. Carol Nevius for divorce on the ground of her husband’s adultery with Janet Adulam and Gertrude Vührer. Though he had eaten nothing since noon, he sickened as he read, and was obliged to put the page down. The remainder of the article declared that after a painful scene at his house he had confessed his misconduct and fled abroad. The other papers contained articles of similar tenor, though one, more enterprising perhaps, stated that the correspondents were the housemaid and the cook.

An hour passed before Nevius could hold a pen, then he had sent a message to Jones, and now, as the novelist, cloaked in an Inverness, the white of his neckcloth just visible, entered the room, there was no cynicism in his voice, a sympathy merely, abiding and sincere.

“The saddest,” he repeated with just a glance at where the papers lay. “If there are words of consolation I do not know them.”

“It is hideous,” Nevius muttered. “I don’t wonder you advised me to remain where I was⁠—”

“Did I suppose⁠—could anyone suppose such a thing possible? When I read that drivel I was in a rage beside which the anger of Achilles was a fleeting annoyance. Your wife ought to be tarred and feathered.”

Nevius raised a hand in protest. “It is not her fault. It’s that father-in-law of mine.”

“Father-at-law you mean. But that’s neither here nor there. The thing is done, and a more abominable iniquity never was committed. That your wife should wish a divorce, passe encore. But that in her effort to get it she should put a young girl into leaded type, a girl who was her intimate friend; a girl whose people were governors of New York at a time when the Snaiths, if they existed, were cleaning the streets; no, in the entire history of civilized life there is no parallel for it. And who is this other correspondent? Why didn’t she stick to her and let Miss Adulam out?”

“Hilda had nothing to do with it!” Nevius answered dejectedly. “Don’t say anything against her. I can’t and won’t permit it.”

“Bosh.”

But the novelist spoke in an undertone. From a box on the table he took a gold-tipped cigarette, at which article of London luxury he sniffed, and for a while there was silence in that room.

But presently Nevius, who had sat, his face in his hands, looked wearily up at his friend. “What do they say?”

“Who? People in general? Everyone seems to be very well pleased. Some of the men are indignant at the publicity, knowing how, in similar circumstances, they would feel themselves. Others are indignant, too, but their indignation is partly envy, partly disgust, at having no such chances themselves. As for the women, that is a different guitar. You have got one of their sacred sex into trouble, and as a body they won’t forgive. Though individually, were you not rather compromising at present, you might toss monogrammed cambrics as before. On the whole, then, I may say that people in general are rather pleased than otherwise. There is a land where there is much joy over the sinner that repents. In the world we live in the joy is at his detection.”

Nevius leaned across the table.

“Do you mean to say that it is believed?”

“Well, you know⁠—” And for a second the unembarrassable Jones actually hesitated. “You see, Carol, to be frank with you, more or less, don’t you know, for some time past people have connected Miss Adulam’s name with yours. And they say, you know, that there were times when she⁠—well, when she came to see you.”

Nevius sank back.

“But even so,” he queried. “Even so⁠—”

“Oh, if you put it in that light, in any light for that matter, I am with you. Of course it was sufficient for me to see it stated that you had made a confession, to know that you had done nothing of the sort. It is what we don’t do that gets into the papers, never what we have done, which after all,” the novelist added to himself, “is sufficient for most of us. The point is here, however, people had doubts, now they have none. Naturally you will declare Miss Adulam innocent, and the world will treat her as though you had never opened your head. But tell me, what sort of evidence have they?”

“Evidence! As God is my witness that girl is as straight as your sister.”

The reply came so abruptly, in a voice so indignant, and yet so earnest, that the novelist stared. Not for a moment had he doubted but that the facts were as Mrs. Nevius stated them.

His anger, his sympathy, too, were due to the knowledge that people of ordinary refinement do not permit certain forms of publicity. That Miss Adulam had taken a step aside, that Nevius had aided and abetted in the taking of that step, were matters which concerned him not in the least. To his thinking the wantonness of the whole affair consisted in the fact that Mrs. Nevius, in her desire for a divorce, had not gone about it in such a way that no one, not even the attorneys, could suspect that there was so much as a shred of linen which needed the services of a laundress. Men and women of decent breeding sunk their private grievances and separated with mutual delight, no doubt, but also with common courtesy. The act which Mrs. Nevius had committed was the act of a scullion, at best of a young person in Harlem. No matter how outraged she had felt, refinement should have inhibited her from disgracing a girl before the eyes of the multitude. It was that which had aroused his wrath, not once had the suspicion come to him that the charge might not be true.

But now as he stared at Nevius he saw that it was false. He was far too old a bird to be caught with chaff. He was far too good a critic of private theatricals not to know the true ring when he heard it, and as he saw in Nevius’ face, in his bearing and attitude, that transfiguring innocence which only the guiltless can display, he pounded the table with his fist.

“By George then, if that’s the case this whole matter is more damnable than it was before. Why, Carol, Bernhardt isn’t in it with your wife.”

“It isn’t my wife, I tell you, it’s her people. You know how they acted in regard to Montrion. They have done the same thing to me, with this difference, Fanny Montrion was behind the scenes, and Hilda knew nothing until they got their trumped charges in shape. It must have nearly killed her, though, puzzle as I may, I don’t see how they ever got her to believe them, and what’s more, I don’t believe they have. When I see her tomorrow it will take me just one minute to disabuse her mind. Her mother says she is ill, and God knows I am too.”

“You’ve seen the mother, have you?”

“Yes, she wouldn’t tell me where Hilda was, she kept repeating that she was too ill to see anyone.”

“She was at the opera tonight”; said Jones very quietly.

“Impossible!”

“You may well say that, but I saw her. She was with the Andersons in their box. I asked Anderson how she could show herself when the papers were dripping with the scandal she had made⁠—”

“Well?”

“He laughed. ‘She has come to enjoy her revenge!’ he told me.”

Nevius got up, went to the sideboard and pouring out a glass of whisky drank it off.

Jones watched him. When he turned the novelist added:

“In the circumstances I wouldn’t try to see her. She has left you, it should be beneath your dignity to approach her in any way.”

Nevius shook his head helplessly.

“How dense you are! You don’t or won’t understand. She is a woman after all, and no matter how she may suffer she has too much pride to show it. I think she ought not to have gone to the opera tonight, whether she believed this thing or whether she didn’t, and I think too the Andersons alone could have had the bad taste to invite her. But none the less I make every excuse for her. Supposing our position reversed, what is there that I might not do?”

“He has the faith of a little child,” the novelist mused, “it’s pathetic.”

“But tell me, what did she say when you saw her?”

“Nothing very pleasant. To be candid, she doesn’t seem to have the same good opinion of you that you have of her.”

And Jones, knocking the ashes from his cigarette, added meditatively:

“But then you may be both in error.”

This little conclusion may not have reached Nevius; he was pacing the floor.

“I know I have been selfish,” he muttered. “Damn selfish. But I can’t understand⁠—”

“See here, dear boy. I will go to her tomorrow. If she is to be argued with, I think I can handle her. But do you get to bed; it’s after two, and you look like the devil. Leave the matter in my hands.”

Nevius stopped short in his walk and gazed at his friend.

“Do you know I don’t realize it? I can’t realize it. But if by any chance I were convinced that she was not to return to me⁠—”

A gesture completed the sentence.

“Bah!” And the novelist smiled complacently. “Suicide is out of fashion, dear boy, and vulgar too. Now listen to me. Tomorrow the Snaiths will probably let you into your house. From what you said in your note I suppose you will want servants. I will attend to that. Now get to bed. I told you you looked like the devil, I should have said⁠—you did. The devil is a very fascinating person, Carol, and unless you take some care of yourself you will entirely cease to resemble him.”

Oh, no doubt; and the novelist gone, the care which Nevius proceeded to take of himself consisted in more whisky, and on top of it a draught of the London drug.

XI

The morrow was charming, half spring, half autumn, with just that touch of frostiness which makes the blood beat fast. Nevius shivered, his eyes were heavy, his mind dull, his face yellow and blotched, the mouth drawn. He had looked at a mirror and had not looked again. Whisky bloats and opium disfigures. The ice water of a bath had brought a glow, but that had gone; he was trembling; it was a stimulant he needed, no doubt, and he called for absinthe.

With the drink a hall-boy came. There was a gentleman below with some keys and a message. Should he come up?

Nevius, his hand uncertain and vacillant, swallowed the absinthe before he spoke.

“Yes, he may come. And⁠—what was it I wanted?⁠—oh, fetch the morning papers.”

But the drink did him good. And presently, at a knock, he opened the door.

Before him stood a stout, young Jew, revolting as uncleanliness and vulgarity could make him. Yet, who vaguely, despite his nose and his youth resembled Mr. Snaith.

“Is your name C. Nevius? Well, here’s some keys and a summons.”

Nevius closed the door, the keys and summons in his hand. By whom could he be summoned now? But the mandate was perfectly legible. The complainant was Hilda Nevius, and did he not in twenty days appear or answer, judgment for relief demanded would be taken by default. Signed, Tooth and Tooth.

Tooth and Tooth? Ah, yes, the divorce sharks. Service by publication was not sufficient then. Apparently these gentlemen were in haste. And to think that Hilda could be capable⁠—

The boy had come with the papers, but his coming and going passed unmarked. For an hour, that seemed a minute, Nevius sat wondering at his wife. A man who suffers is never bored.

But what did the hall-boy want now? Mr. Harding, of the Chronicle, was below, was he? And Mr. Robinson, of the Despatch, and Mr. McGrath, of the Evening Star? Well, below, deeper down even, for all of him they might remain. And yet, had he only Hilda to consider? Was there not Jenny, too?

“Show them up,” he ordered, and passing into the bedroom changed his dressing suit for morning garb. When he returned, the representatives of the press were there. Mr. Harding, who was sharpening a pencil, took the matter on himself.

“Mr. Nevius, I believe? Mr. Nevius, I have come to ask what you have to say in reply to the charges in yesterday’s papers? You have seen them, I suppose?”

“Yes, I have seen it stated that I made a confession, and then, to escape the consequences, fled abroad. I had no confession to make; I made none, and the fact that I am here should, I think, be evidence that consequences do not intimidate me. To this I have nothing to add, except that the charges brought against the young women named in the complaint are absolutely without foundation.”

“Shall you contest the suit?” inquired Mr. Robinson.

“If it is not withdrawn, as I am convinced it must be, I certainly shall.”

“What have you to say in regard to Mrs. Nevius?”

“Mrs. Nevius does not enter into the matter. There is no need for any mention of her name.”

“You think then,” began the representative of the Star, “that the suit was instigated by third parties?”

“I think nothing about it. I know. But this gentleman⁠—” and Nevius indicated Mr. Harding, “⁠—asked if I had any statement to make. I have made one. If you will publish that and nothing else you will oblige me.”

“But⁠—”

“At this moment, I regret, I am occupied. I must ask you to excuse me.”

The door behind him was open, and through it he retreated, angry with himself, angry with fate, angry with the world.

When he returned, there was the hall-boy again. This time with a note from Jones to the effect that he had secured servants and would look in later on.

“I send you the keys.” Nevius scribbled in reply. “Tell the servants to meet me at the house, and do come before midnight.”

The answer despatched, he sat down and tried to think, to forget rather and not to remember.

XII

Already the afternoon had taken itself off. A sun, red as ceiling-wax burned and subsided, leaving a sky of dead rose and water-green. Then shadows came, lapping the walls, devouring the furniture, creating abysses into which objects disappeared, mysteriously, one by one.

When night was wholly there, Nevius groped for his hat and gloves. Presently he was in the street, in a few minutes at his house. Yes. Jones had been as good as his word. There were lights in the windows and the outer door of the vestibule was open. With a latchkey he let himself in. The hall was chill, bleak too, sonorous beneath his tread. But where were the hangings and tapestries, where were the plants, the pedestalled lamps, the silken cushions, the candles with their yellow shades, all the attributes of ease that six weeks before had filled the drawing room? Surely this was not his house, or else had the sheriffs passed that way. But it was his house, and why was it dismantelled? Where had the scent of the iris gone? Ah, yes; he remembered. These things were Hilda’s, all of them, even to the scent of the iris, and in leaving him, necessarily she had taken her chattels too.

And the floor above! Truly were it not for the chill he might have thought it summer time and Hilda off to the seashore, so properly had little familiar things been put away. But what was that on her bureau from which everything else had gone? Nothing, a picture of himself merely, overlooked, no doubt, and forgotten. Yet was it a picture of himself? At least if he had ever had the youth and alertness with which the picture credited him, never would he have them again.

The library which so long and well had separated her room from his had, out of gratitude, perhaps, been left untouched. There were the yellow shelves of law, the darker tomes of history, and here, in smooth maroon, stamped with the Nevius crest, were the classics of Greece and Rome. Beyond were the caryatides of literary France, Corneille, Racine, Molière, dusty and undisturbed. But this empty space beneath? Surely Hilda never could have taken away the little gifts she had made him before she bestowed that great gift which was herself. The Owen Meredith from which in the gardens of Bronx she had repeated to him:

Since we parted yester eve,
I do love thee, love, believe,
Twelve times dearer, twelve times longer,
One dream deeper, one night stronger,
One sun surer, thus much more
Than I loved thee, love, before.

The Aldrich from which he had read to her:

But there will come a time, my love,
When if I read our stars aright
I shall not linger at your side
With my adieux. Till then, good night.
You wish that time were now? And I!
You do not blush to wish it so?
You would have blushed yourself to death
To own as much a year ago.

And the Sonnets of Proteus:

What shall it matter, when our heads are gray,
Whether we loved, or did not love today?

And the Swinburne:

A little while and we die: shall life not thrive as it may?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.

But though the rhymes returned unprompted, where were the books? Where was the Festus, the Rosetti, the Tennyson? Surely she could not have taken these gifts away. But then, what had she done with herself? And why did the gas burn so dimly? Or was it a mist that had got to his eyes?

“I beg pardon, sir⁠—”

Nevius started. At the door a man stood, coatless, looking at him. “I am Patrick, sir; my wife is in the kitchen, would you⁠—”

“Yes, of course. I know. Let me see⁠—suppose you go to the Brevoort and get my tilings. Tell them to send the bill to my office. And what time is it? No, I can’t eat anything, but if there is any whisky lying about, you might bring it up.”

“Yes, sir; thank you, sir. Mr. Jones is in the parlor. Shall I ask him here?”

But before the novelist entered the room, Nevius lit a cigarette and hid his face in smoke.

“Well?”

“Well, I have seen your princess, and so far as I am concerned I can dispense with the honor of seeing her again. Calumny is to her what venom is to the adder, a sole defence. A harder, an unjuster woman I have never met, no not even in the masquerades of my own fiction. Her entire accusation has no other foundation than the tattle of the servants’ hall.”

“She is annoyed, Alphabet. So would I be. Don’t say anything against her. You don’t know her as I do. You don’t know the letter she wrote me. Her heart is breaking. But when I see her tomorrow⁠—”

“See her! You’ll never see her till you meet in court. She is furious, not at all because of this thing, but because you have returned. Her attorney told her they would get a divorce in short order and here you are declaring you will contest it. You have upset her calculations. She fancied she could be free at once.”

“Yes, but then she didn’t understand. I assure you she will be very sorry when she learns the truth, very sorry indeed⁠—”

“H’m,” the novelist sniffed and smiled. “When she is, I send my resignation to psychology. She knows the truth, she has always known it. Never for a second has she believed the charge she has made.”

“It is not Hilda; I have told you that. She wrote me that she was so dumb and crushed that her people took the matter entirely out of her hands.”

On the table at which Jones had seated himself, was a pile of bills and letters. On the topmost was the imprint of the District Messenger Service. Leisurely the novelist reached for it. In the envelope were the vouchers of the month before. Jones drew out one, then another.

“Tell me,” he presently asked, “when did you sail for Europe?”

“The second of December.”

“Your wife’s attorneys are Tooth and Tooth, are they not? So I thought. Will you look at this? It is dated 2nd of December and addressed to Tooth and Tooth, who you will see detained the messenger one hour and an answer which seems to have been received by somebody who signed herself H. Nevius. Is it your wife’s writing?”

The ticket he tossed across the table.

“Here is another, same date, same address. Here is another dated the 4th. Here is another dated the 5th. For a lady who was dumb and crushed, whose affairs had been taken entirely out of her hands, it seems to me that not only she was very agile with the pen but⁠—”

Nevius sprang at him fiercely.

“But what? It is on evidence of that kind she has condemned me. Poor child, she knew no better. But you, who have accused her of listening to the tattle of the servants’ hall, do you expect me to descend the back stairs, too? Give me those tickets.”

Seizing and mutilating them he flung them at his feet, and in the same hot wrath blurted:

“If you have anything else to say against my wife, say it, but do you say it to me.”

Reflectively the novelist contemplated his fingertips, joined them, separated them, and joined them again.

“There is a little operation I must perform on you, Carol. One which will pain, but which is necessary and charitable.”

Mystified by this preamble, Nevius stared.

Jones stood up, closed the door, and whispered to his friend.

The latter shrank, his eyes dilated, his mouth agape.

“No, no, tell me; she never said that!”

“She has then, not to me alone, but to everyone. That sweet little friend of hers, Mrs. Anderson, with whom she is stopping, fairly revels in it. There isn’t a man in town, nor a woman either, that won’t hear it tomorrow.”

When Jones got the scalpel in his hand he knew where and how to cut. But then in this instance he was a trifle annoyed at the slur on his friend.

“When I heard it,” he continued, “I did not see the object. I have since. Mrs. Carol understands what a mess she has made of it all, and she is trying to exculpate herself at any cost. If there is a single thing believable or unbelievable that she and Mrs. Anderson are capable of inventing to your discredit, invent it they will, and proclaim it too.”

Nevius bowed his head. The hot wrath must have gone.

“How sorry she will be,” he muttered. “How sorry, how sorry, how sorry she will be.”

What was there in that for Jones to laugh at? Yet laugh he did.

“My little Hilda!” Covering his face, Nevius leaned down and rested his arms on the table. When he again looked up his eyes may have been red, but they were steadfast still.

“Wait. Wait until I see her. For she must see me, or⁠—”

“Yes, I told her your ultimatum of last night. Would you like to know what she said? It is not pleasant, but if it removes this cataract of yours I don’t mind. She said, and very affably, mind you, in that little voice which I have heard her affect when she wishes to impress: ‘Tell that man that nothing he might do could cause me greater pleasure, except to send him the pistol with which to do it.’ ”

As in pain which is acute, Nevius dug his nails into the palms of his hands, and for a while his face, tortured with the retroacting currents of conflicting thought, expressed only a suffering, sentient and visible. But gradually the hands relaxed, the expression modified, and you would have said that the cure which Jones had attempted was without effect.

“From what you say,” he ventured at last, “I must believe that Hilda’s condemnation of me is complete. But then I have been horribly selfish⁠—”

“Her condemnation is so complete,” the novelist interrupted “that it absolves you from condemning her. In the total lack not only of justice but of decency which she displays, comfort yourself as you seem disposed to do, by being charitable to her and unjust to yourself. It is not nineteenth century, no, but by gad, its red-heel. Carol, I want you for a book.”

“⁠—So selfish,” Nevius repeated, “that some day when you see her I want you to tell her that I regret it from the bottom of my heart.”

For a moment he looked down and away, but almost immediately, with a smile that was its own apology, he added:

“It’s best to take people as they find us, isn’t it, Alphabet? You have been very good to me, very considerate, and you have borne magnificently with my ill temper. I want to thank you, but I can’t. I am a trifle tired, perhaps⁠—”

“Yes, you had better get to bed. But I want to thank you, and I can, for teaching me that phrase. It is best to take people as they find us. E vero ed é ben trovato. Trovato? E ben Trovatore!”

“What is that saying of Ingall’s?” he mused as he passed down the stair. “ ‘It is just as well to let dynamite alone, particularly when it happens to be intelligent and has a grievance.’ When Nevius understands what I do, he will kill that woman, and by George, when he does, for the first time in my life I shall want to be on the jury.”

“Patrick, is that you?” he interrupted himself to ask. “Patrick, do you keep an eye on Mr. Nevius, he is not at all well. Should he be ill during the night send for me at once, don’t call a messenger, ring up a cab, and tell the driver it’s a fiver if he gets me here in no time.”

With that, this serviceable writer of immoral fiction buttoned his Inverness and left the house.

“Patrick,” said Nevius a little later, “here is a prescription, take it to Asquith’s on the corner, get it filled and tell the druggist I want to speak to him. You found some whisky, did you? Very good, put it there.”

Pouring a little of the liquor out, he drank it off. Under its influence the stupor fell from him. He began a letter, which must have been difficult however: the right words would not always come and there was a blur in his eyes besides. But he got it done, and addressing it to his wife, immediately he began another to Miss Adulam, a third to Tredegar. In writing these also his pen often stopped, hesitant and perplexed, but when at last they were all finished, and on a fresh sheet he began the “Know all men by these presents;” his pen went rapidly enough, as he devised his property, real and personal, of whatever kind, nature and description, to Hilda Nevius, her heirs, executors and assigns forever.

“The druggist is below, sir.” At the door stood Patrick. “Shall I leave the prescription with you?”

“Yes, put it there. Ask him up. And, Patrick, do you wait.”

A moment, and Nevius rose in greeting of a meager man in a frock coat.

“Mr. Asquith, this is very kind of you. Here is my will. Will you witness it for me?”

“Certainly, anything to oblige.”

“I sign it then in your presence. Put your signature here, please, and your address. Patrick, I want you to witness it too. Thank you both very much.”

“Nothing else, Mr. Nevius, is there?”

No, there was nothing, and presently when he was alone again he repeated that word a little sadly to himself.

“What was that I once heard Jones say?” he queried. “We should prolong life, not death? That is it; and this is death. Well, let me not prolong it.”

Before him was the prescription; opening it he filled a goblet to the brim and tossed it off. How good it was! A little hot to the throat, a little cloying to the palate, but clean to the tongue, fragrant, too.

On the mantel lay his hat, he took it up and seating himself, his head covered, he drew on a glove and buttoned it. But why were the books, the yellow shelves of law, the darker tomes of history, retreating through that little space which he had noticed earlier in the night? Before he could account for anything so strange, the walls, too, had retreated, joy and fear, love and anguish, all had gone and in their stead was oblivion and rest for memory.

XIII

“Imbecile that you are! Don’t you know, Haven’t I told you, haven’t I arch-told you that nothing could cause her greater joy?”

“But what a reason! Am I to live merely because my death might gratify another?”

With an expression that was both furious and indulgent, Jones glowered in amicable rage.

“And truly,” Nevius added, “I don’t thank any of you.”

Long before he had awaked, conscious, if at all, only that people were leaving the room. Presently he had recognized Patrick; at once the episode of the previous night returned, and with it the perception of failure. Later he learned that Patrick, attracted by his breathing, alarmed at his attitude, had sent for a physician, for Jones as well. The physician had been the first to arrive, and after hours of labor, had gone, threatening to prosecute the druggist.

But now, three days later, clothed and in his right mind the resurrected sat talking with his friend.

“No,” Jones answered. “That would be medieval. I mean nothing so Hugoesque. But, dear boy, you have no right to leave the planet until you have shown this accusation to be as false as you and I know it to be. The bare bodkin may be simpler, but it is not at all chivalrous to leave Miss Adulam in the plight she is. Can’t you understand that if this effort had succeeded even her own mother would have believed that the story was true? No, you must live for the reporters, you must live for your wife, and meanwhile get a verdict. When you have got that kill yourself as often as you like. Yet there is just the eccentricity of the whole thing, man never commits suicide twice. If he recovers he has no desire to repeat the experiment, and if he doesn’t that is the end of that. But don’t you have anything to drink in this house?”

Oh, yes. Though little else had been discoverable drink there was in plenty, and presently, comforted by a Scotch and soda, the garrulous novelist ran on:

“But whatever possessed you to do a thing of that sort with your hat on? Do you know, that is what we call a document. I shall have a suicide in my next novel merely for that hat. I would give the whole story, for that matter, were it not so bald. It would not do for New York. Here the reporter can be as pornograph as the Marquess of Sade, if he knows how, and he usually does, but the novelist must be like Marguerite’s home, chaste and pure. We are willing enough to applaud Tristan and Isolde, when it is put to music and sung in a language which is not a court-tongue. But beyond that we won’t go. The unbribable Comstock won’t let us. But even apart from that, I couldn’t handle the thing. No one would think it probable, and to my reputation for realism a long farewell.”

The novelist looked into his glass. “It’s a good subject though. A deuced good subject. I might call it, let me see⁠—I might call it Bagatelles, yes, Bagatelles or One of the Ten Commandments.

“Why not several of them while you are about it?”

“Several of the Ten Commandments? Why, that would be a tip-top title. Take in all classes of readers. Dear boy, if you don’t object I think I will.”

Nevius jumped from his seat.

“If you say one word,” he cried hotly, “one word that a microscopist could detect as referring to my wife, by the Lord Harry I’ll put daylight through you.”

“Dear me!” mumbled Jones, “how was I to suppose that you were in love with her still?”

At that you should have heard Nevius bluster. How he ranted, how he raved! In love with her? The idea! No indeed, not he. And when at last for sheer lack of breath he stopped, of the entire diatribe Jones believed actually not one word.

But, false friend that he was, he nodded as though he did.

“That’s right, that’s the way to talk, that’s the way you must talk to O’Donnell. We went over the whole matter today. He’ll be here now at any moment.”

And, vatic as usual, Mr. Jabez O’Donnell, a member of the bar, still young, yet already famous, a man with the face of a cherub and the guile of a fox, was promptly announced.

“This,” said Jones, as the lawyer entered, “this, my dear O’Donnell, is my friend and brother in Christ, Mr. Carol Nevius. His retainer will be large, his refreshers abundant. Let me earnestly commend him to your care.”

“Devil a bit of a retainer will I take;” the gentleman answered with great cordiality and a little brogue, “I am out for gore, not for coin.”

“Bravely said,” cried Jones, glass in hand, toasting the occasion, toasting everything, toasting illicit commerce. “You are pleased to meet Nevius, I know; and as for him, he radiates with delight.”

And at the way Nevius smiled, anyone might have thought that really he was enjoying himself. Yet, how curious it was that this moment the smile visited his lips, a verse of Byron’s fluttered there too:

“And if I laugh at any mortal thing
’Tis that I may not weep: and if I weep
’Tis that our nature can not always bring
Itself to apathy.”

“Poseur!” sneered Jones, in an indignant aside.

Mr. O’Donnell seemed to appreciate, “I understand you, Mr. Nevius. I understand perfectly. It is a dreadful thing to have one’s name in the papers.”

“And still more dreadful not to.”

This interruption came, of course, from the novelist. No one paid any attention to him. The lawyer continued:

“The outrage in this instance is heightened by the fact that there need have been no publicity at all. Professional etiquette, if nothing else, should have prevented Tooth and Tooth from serving you by publication. They tell me that they did not know you were a member of the bar, and as their acquaintance is limited to those who practice in the General Sessions, that is a thing which I can believe. They also tell me that Mrs. Nevius represented that you would not return to this country. They pretend to be vexed at the mistake, but I have reasons for thinking that they regard the whole business as an excellent advertisement. Now permit me to ask a question. What sort of a man is your father-in-law? They seemed to have been employed by him before. One would hardly think such a thing possible, but is he at all of their class of life?”

“Between the man who pays to have a young girl defamed and the men who take the money and do the job,” Nevius promptly and grimly replied, “honors are easy.”

“That they are, Mr. Nevius, that goes without saying. But if I ask, it is because from what Tooth and Tooth tell me he is not so dogmatic as he was before you returned. It appears that the night you landed he nearly gave up the ghost.”

“He could have had no interest in doing so, however.”

“No, precisely not, and perhaps for that reason he didn’t. But understand me; Jones says that the plaintiff is not to be argued with, and is determined to push the thing to the end. If such be the case, there is no use losing time with her. But if her father were properly approached, might not something be done?”

“Beyond asking him to play pendulum I see nothing.”

The lawyer laughed. “He hasn’t inspired you with much regard, has he?”

“Yes,” Nevius answered. “Yes, to such an extent even that I have put him in my will. Mr. Snaith is a member of the Society for the Protection of Animals, and in recognition of his affection for beasts, I have left him a mirror.”

Jones, rolled over in spasms of delight. “Oh! Carol! how I wish I had said that!”

In unconscious rememoration of the famous retort which in similar circumstances was fired point-blank at another man of letters, Nevius turned to him and consolingly answered; “There, never mind, Alphabet. You will.”

Then with a deprecatory glance at the lawyer, who was laughing still, he prepared to return to facts.

“Forgive me, Mr. O’Donnell. My levity is out of place, in poor taste as well. This is tragedy, not farce. You will believe me when I say that nothing is further from my mind than a desire to jest.”

“I follow you there. I know quite how you feel. Years ago a man called on a physician; ‘I am terribly depressed,’ he said. ‘I want something to stir me up,’ ‘Go and see Grimaldi,’ the physician answered. ‘He will make you laugh.’ ‘I am Grimaldi,’ the patient replied. But to get down to business again. Tooth and Tooth have made a proposition, one however which they declare is made entirely on their own responsibility. It is this. They claim to have all the evidence they require against Miss Adulam, but the evidence against Miss Vührer, while equally plentiful, is not, to use their expression, so convenient. Now they offer to withdraw the charge against Miss Adulam, providing that you will supply them, through a third party of course, with a few additional facts concerning your acquaintance with Miss Vührer. This proposition, they wish me to assure you, is made solely out of deference to you. What shall I tell them?”

“What shall you tell them?” repeated Nevius wearily. “There is naturally no use in telling them that I am incapable of deserting the helpless, for they would not understand. But tell them I say they are shysters, that the suit may be withdrawn, that I have nothing to gain at their hands, and they will understand the message thoroughly.”

“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” the uncrushable Jones threw in. “And by the way, Carol, Dona Ferentes! What a tip-top name for the plaintiff!”

The lawyer nodded to his client. “I might have expected such an answer. But look at it in this light, wouldn’t it be better⁠—”

“There can be no better,” Nevius interrupted. “And no worse. Miss Adulam is a young gentlewoman whom I have known all my life. Could I in any way sacrifice myself for her I would do so, but I can not sacrifice an innocent girl, nor, presupposing I could, would Miss Adulam permit me. Of Miss Adulam’s justification there is no manner of doubt. If Tooth and Tooth, in saying that they have all the evidence against her which they require, speak truthfully, they have been imposed upon, precisely as Mrs. Nevius has been. There can be no evidence. Not a charge can they substantiate. They may have perjury at command, no doubt they have, in which case we shall know how to act when we get it in court. As for Miss Vührer, I did not know her first name, nor how her last was written until I saw it in the complaint. I have seen her but four times in my life. I never knew that she existed until Mrs. Nevius brought her into this room. Were I to act as Tooth and Tooth suggest, what would you think of me? And what should I think of myself?”

The lawyer took a long breath before he spoke.

“They have got something, make up your mind to that, though whether it be perjury or not I can’t say. But they intimate they are in a position to prove a confession made by you to Mrs. Nevius previous to your departure.”

For a moment Nevius fumbled in a drawer of the table.

“Yes, I know,” he answered. “I read something of the kind in the papers. But just look at this. When I sailed Mrs. Nevius gave me a list of things which she wanted me to get for her in Paris. This morning I sent them to her. Here is an acknowledgment from her mother. It is hardly supposable, is it, if I left Mrs. Nevius in the manner which Tooth and Tooth describe, that she should ask me the morning I sailed, to purchase corsets, gloves and lingerie?”

“The morning you sailed?”

“Certainly.”

“And this list is in her handwriting?”

“It is.”

“Why, then,” exclaimed the lawyer, “they can trot out all the perjury they like. That bit of paper stumps them. The alleged offences were condoned.”

To this Nevius assented absently. “There must be no such plea though. The denial of the allegations is all that is required. They can never prove one.”

“No doubt, no doubt.” And the lawyer rose to go. “But I do not need to tell you that the greatest mistake a man can make is to underrate his adversary’s abilities.”

“Unless it be,” laughed Jones, “to overrate his own.”

XIV

Like a lethargic snake disturbed, winter dragged itself away. April came, and with it an eager glitter, the surprise of violets, skies of silk, wadded with films of white cotton, all the caresses and surrenders of spring.

Upper Fifth Avenue was well in the movement, alive with smart traps, Piccadilly accents, gems of bonnets, and grooms, the arms folded, impassible, correct. In all the world prettier women there are not than in that parade which circles through the Park, and descends again just in time to intercept the dusk. No, nor daintier either.

And pretty and dainty as the prettiest and daintiest, Mrs. Carol Nevius looked that spring. On her lips was the pink of the seashell, and in the depths of her sultry blue eyes the faintest petition for that sympathy which imaginary wrongs deserve. Ah, it was a pleasure to see her.

That pleasure was not enjoyed by her husband. But in those days his pleasures were few. Women, whom he had known all his life, forgot to remember him. Men, with whom he had lived on terms of offhand familiarity, had become punctiliously polite.

These things were nothing in comparison to others. The letter which he had sent rather blurred to his wife had been returned through Tooth and Tooth, with the intimation that he was persecuting her. The letter which he had sent to Miss Adulam had been answered by her mother; the girl was lying at the house of her uncle, Erastus Wilberforce, too ill to hold a pen. From Tredegar no answer came, a rumor merely that the boy was drinking himself to death.

Then, too, the divorce required in such haste that service by publication was necessary, languished, moribund and mute. And not at all because of the calendar. On motion it could have gone before a referee at once. But the Snaiths had other matters to attend to, though a girl was dying because of them, and a lad was throwing his life away.

Nevius ceased to be seen. His office was closed. The Canal Company, with perfect civility, dispensed with his services; other corporations for whom he had acted withdrew their business from his hands. That Mr. Snaith had been at work he understood, but it was long before he understood that that gentleman’s object was to attack the sinews of war, and thereby, the law’s delays continuing, to force him to capitulate. When the understanding did come to him, he reflected with some satisfaction that while skies were still fair he had cut that gentleman in the street.

Meanwhile, he stalked, uncompanioned, through the untellable loneliness of that ghastly house, seeking a clue to the mystery that was devastating three lives.

That Hilda had cared for him he had to believe, or else to regard her as an actress more consummate even than Rachel. For where was the actress who could assume a role and hold it, impeccably, not for a season alone, not so many nights a week, but every minute of seven years? That she knew her accusations to be false he was now convinced. With these for premises what conclusion could he draw? It could not be that after years of tenderness she had left him, because there were moments when he was irritable and perverse. No, surely that was not the cause. Nor could it be that she had left him because her father had threatened disinheritance. Judas, indeed, had been bribed, yet, while in the present instance the bribe was greater, still, though times had changed and living become more expensive, Nevius was unable to accept any solution such as that. Beside, not being a bit more heroic than the rest of us, a conclusion of that kind diminished him in his own esteem.

In the night of his perplexity a single ray had come. Jones had enjoyed a second conversation with this lady, in which Mrs. Nevius, after stating that the man whose name she had taken, was heedless beyond the power of words, that he had constantly borrowed her buttonhook, added, by way of summing up, that she had married him uniquely to go into society, and as he had refused to take her, he should bear the consequences without complaint.

That was the ray of light, tremulous and thin no doubt, but which, by reason of the darkness in which he groped, led him ultimately to what he regarded as the day. As stepping-stones he had two facts, one pathological, the other psychological. The pathological fact was this: Women who at recurrent intervals suffer greatly, are afflicted not only physically, but mentally as well. Their minds become the haunt of vagaries, of illusions, sometimes of madness, too. For these sufferings, for these vagaries and illusions, there is but one cure, one to which nature prompts⁠—motherhood. The psychological fact hung like a corollary to the first. When a woman has lived seven years with a man and borne him no child, unintentionally it may be, yet instinctively that man she hates.

At the intervals alluded to, Hilda, he was aware, had suffered for days with an intensity of agony which was pitiful to behold. Moreover, as the years accumulated, the union had remained unblessed. Such maternal affection as she possessed had been given to him, to the cat; but Nature, who is not to be balked, was there and watching, and this was the revenge.

Such was the solution to which at last he arrived. The accusations which she had made had been hatched in the distemper of her brain, and the venomous hatred which she had abruptly displayed was but the working of a natural law.

Logical as it was, this solution did not by any means come at once. Winter had gone, spring was going, and still he groped until, aided by the ray which Jones had intercepted, suddenly he divined the truth. She is insane, he decided, and told himself that of that insanity he would cure her yet.

Thenceforth he had that for an aim. What loyalty, what gentleness, what divine courtesy and affection had not an English gentleman just displayed to a woman who had forever disgraced him, who stood, the whole world looking on, a convicted felon at the dock? And should he, Carol Nevius, be other than loyal, courteous and gentle too? The malady which had prompted that fair English girl to steal was the same, no doubt, as that which had prompted his wife to libel. And when at last the prison door reopened, was not that English gentleman there waiting to take his wife in his arms and carry her off to where health and sanity might be. And when this trial was at an end should not he, too, take his wife in his arms and carry her thence and nurse and guard her until reason returned and love as well? Ah, indeed he would. The cases were not parallel, but if it comforted him to think so, let that comfort be not begrudged.

In this wise months retreated, but with June, presto! a change. Enervated by the delay, possessed, perhaps, of a clearer understanding of resources and temperaments, Mrs. Nevius, in spite of her father and his policy, goaded her attorneys into asking that the matter be brought before a referee.

The day on which that motion was asked and granted, a curious episode occurred. Mr. O’Donnell was offered by an individual whom previously he had never seen, ten thousand dollars in current coin if he would agree to let the suit go against his client, ten thousand more if he carried out the agreement.

“It is not enough,” was O’Donnell’s reply.

On the morrow the offer was doubled, and on the morrow the reply was the same.

XV

The day was hot and humid. In Upper Fifth Avenue green blinds were down, and grey doors were up. In the Park there were still carriages, but latterly smartness had been confined the traps of the cocottes, the ethers had livery stables without, the provinces within. Society had vanished to cool retreats, to country houses, and distant shores. In Wall Street the chief change was the disappearance of the high hat, the frequency of straw. Men walked more leisurely, too, fanning themselves, choosing the shadows; some were unwaistcoated, and some wore handkerchiefs about the neck.

But that little lady with a waist that would fit in a garter, and who, merely in stepping from her carriage, pervaded the Nassau corner with aromas of the Rue de la Paix, she surely should be at Newport. And that obese little man with the look of one to whom Truth is always stranger than Fiction, what was he doing at her side? Surely he belonged on the box.

And who were these females in clothes not made for them who had just got from a cab? Surely they were detectives, and their duty to protect the little lady from the machinations of that unliveried lackey at her side.

And who, too, was this ponderous person that was now addressing them all. Why had he such a terrible twang? And why, as he spoke, did his words sound like wind escaping from a bladder inflated?

Mystery to all but one that passed that way. And he, though it was hot and humid, at sight of them grew cold. To the lady he raised his hat, and passing into the building before which this disparate group was assembled, had, himself, shot like a rocket five stories high and landed in the office of the Hon. John Metuchen, appointed by the court referee in the case of Nevius versus Nevius.

There was O’Donnell, and there, talking to him, was a white-haired gentleman with a patrician bearing to whom the intruder was introduced.

“Mr. Metuchen, permit me, this is my client, Mr. Nevius.”

“Your most obedient servant, sir,” murmured that courtly old man. Thereat lawyer and client passed into an inner room.

Nevius dropped in a chair. “They’re below,” he mumbled. “But what has she come for? She can’t testify.”

“To the fact of the marriage, she must, and that there has been no previous application. But that done, presumably she will go.”

“I did not expect⁠—”

The sentence was never finished. Mrs. Carol had entered, and at sight of her the defendant grew mute. But he rose from his seat, reseating himself only when that ponderous person who followed had found her a chair. Immediately, Mr. Metuchen appeared. Then a man with paper and pencils, then two females, escorted by Mr. Snaith.

The room was large, high-ceiled, yet to Nevius it seemed very small. O’Donnell and he were at the end of a long table, at the other end of which Mr. Metuchen sat down. On the inner side was the stenographer. And beyond, at the window, the others had taken seat, all, in fact, save the ponderous person, who seemed inclined to stand and domineer.

He was saying something, but what? Nevius neither knew nor cared; he was watching his wife who presently, with that air and manner he loved so well, advanced a little and began to tell about one or two things which no one questioned. Then the business of the hearing seemed about to begin.

“Just bring your chair a little nearer, Becky.”

Becky? Who was Becky? But as one of the females tilted her seat, Nevius recognized the Rebecca of old. But to what was she to testify?

“Now Becky,” twanged the ponderous person, “what is your name? Rebecca Hawes? Very good. And how old are you, Becky? Very good. Have you ever seen this lady before? Oho! you’ve lived with her, have you? In what capacity? As waitress, eh? And have you ever seen that gentleman? Aha! He is Mr. Nevius, is he? Now Becky, what were your duties as waitress? To wait at table? To serve at meals? Very good, very good. And what else? You answered the door, did you? Aha! You answered the door! Now, Becky, in answering the door, in waiting on the table, did you ever see anyone by the name of Janet Adulam? Oh, you have, have you? Often? Very often, eh? Very good, Becky, very good. Ever heard Mrs. Nevius say anything about her?”

“Ject,” snapped O’Donnell.

“Well, Counsellor,” the ponderous man with great affability retorted, “we won’t quarrel over a little thing like that; I’ll get at it in another way.”

“Now, Becky,” he continued, “Mrs. Nevius, so far as you could see, treated this Adulam girl like a friend, didn’t she⁠—”

Nevius raised a hand.

“I submit, your Honor, that the attorney should not be permitted to refer to this young gentlewoman in the manner which he has done.”

The referee looked up.

“I think, Mr. Tooth, that Mr. Nevius is perhaps right⁠—”

“Oh! oh!” the man protested, “that’s only my way.”

“The way of a cad,” muttered Nevius.

But the attorney, accustomed since boyhood to being so described, caught up the thread unruffled.

“Now, Becky, am I to understand that you regarded this Miss Adulam as a friend of Mrs. Nevius? I am, am I? And why am I? Because she was always coming there, eh? Well, coming where? Oho! to the Nevius house! I see, I see. But you say she was always coming there. You don’t mean that she liked it so much that she used to come when Mrs. Nevius wasn’t at home? Oho, you do, do you? Well, now, Becky, do you remember any particular occasion that she came when Mrs. Nevius was not at home? Lots of them? Why, what could she do there in Mrs. Nevius’ absence? Be kissed by Mr. Nevius! Do you mean to say that you saw Mr. Nevius kissing her? What, you have seen them in each other’s arms! You saw them? you positively swear that you saw them? Very good, Becky, very good. Now, what else did they do? Ate and drank, did they? Well, while they were eating and drinking what did they talk about? You don’t know? Don’t you remember? Oh, you didn’t understand, eh? And why not? Did they talk in whispers so that you couldn’t hear? Oho! They talked in Spanish, did they? Or in Italian! Anyway they talked in some lingo you didn’t understand. Now, then, Becky, when Mrs. Nevius was at home, you have heard Mr. Nevius talking to her, haven’t you? Well tell us then what language he talked to her in? In English did he? No Italian folderols to his wife, eh? Only to Miss Adulam, eh? Very good, Becky, very good indeed. Now, when Mrs. Nevius was at home where did she sit at table? At the head of it, eh? And where did Mr. Nevius sit? At the foot, did he? Well, when this carousing was going on, where did Miss Adulam sit? At the head of the table, too? Took the wife’s place, eh? And where did Mr. Nevius sit? Right beside her! Why, I thought you said he sat at the foot of the table! Oho! he only sat at the foot of the table when his wife was there! I see. But when Miss Adulam came he moved his seat, eh? Sat close to her, I suppose. Well, how close? Close enough, you say. And while they were sitting as close as they could get, they talked in a language you couldn’t understand, did they? Now, when you had finished clearing up in the dining-room where did you go? Downstairs, eh? And when did you come up again? Two or three hours later, eh? Now, what had Miss Adulam and Mr. Nevius been doing in the meantime? You don’t know, you say, but when, at the end of two or three hours, you came upstairs again, you found them in each other’s arms. Is that what I am to understand? Very good. Now when did this occur? On the 10th of November, eh? And was anything of the kind repeated? On the 11th, eh? And on the 12th, and on the 14th? Did you tell anyone of these goings on? Oh, you told Mrs. Nevius! What did she do? She accused her husband, did she? And what did he do? He confessed, eh? Confessed what? Confessed that he had been untrue, eh? Then what? Mr. Nevius went abroad did he? And what did Mrs. Nevius do? Packed up and left Mr. Nevius’ house, eh? Has she seen Mr. Nevius since? Hasn’t, eh? Very good, Becky; that will do for today.”

And with an air of satisfaction that would have been unpardonable in Napoleon at Marengo, Mr. Tooth caressed his chin with one hand and waved the other at O’Donnell.

“Brother O’D, if you have any questions⁠—”

“I have,” O’Donnell answered shortly. “Hawes, look this way. Where are you living now?”

“At Mr. Snaith’s.”

“In what capacity?”

“Er⁠—er⁠—” The woman turned helplessly about, and suddenly spat, “Seamstress.”

“Mr. Referee,” said O’Donnell, “I beg you to remind Mrs. Nevius that she is not permitted to prompt the witness. Hawes,” he continued, “look at me. How do you remember the dates you have given?”

The witness made no answer.

“Come, out with it.”

“I⁠—I⁠—I wrote them down each time Miss Adulam came.”

“With what object?”

“Mrs. Snaith told me to.”

“When did she tell you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Then you have got to remember. Did Mrs. Snaith tell you to keep a memorandum before Miss Adulam began to come to the house or afterward?”

“Afterward, sir.”

“Do you swear to that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought you said you wrote the dates down each time Miss Adulam came.”

“So I did, sir.”

“Why did you?”

“Because Mrs. Snaith told me.”

“A moment ago you said that Mrs. Snaith did not tell you to do so until afterward. Now, look at me, which is it? Did she tell you before or after?”

“Before.”

“Do you swear to that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know what the penalty for perjury is?”

“I object,” threw in Mr. Tooth airily.

O’Donnell turned to Metuchen: “Here’s a witness, your Honor, who swears to two contradictory statements, and as they are material to⁠—”

“They are not material,” retorted Mr. Tooth. “Mrs. Snaith has nothing to do with this suit. I have shown that Miss Adulam called on the defendant in the plaintiff’s absence. I have also shown what occurred. When Mrs. Snaith learned the facts is irrelevant⁠—”

“But not obscure,” answered O’Donnell; “Mr. stenographer, when does witness swear Mrs. Snaith instructed her to take notes. Before Miss Adulam called? Thank you.”

“Now, Hawes,” he continued. “Besides keeping a memorandum for Mrs. Snaith, to whom did you mention these incidents?”

“To Mrs. Nevius, sir.”

“When?”

“When she returned home, sir.”

“When was that?”

“A few days later.”

“That must have been about the 16th or 17th of November, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did Mr. Nevius go abroad?”

“Some time in December.”

“Were you present when Mrs. Nevius accused her husband of being untrue?”

“No, but⁠—”

“I want no buts. Answer yes or no. Did you hear him admit the accusation?”

“Well⁠—he⁠—”

“Answer my question. Did you or did not you?”

“No, sir, I didn’t, I⁠—”

“That’s enough. Of what was the parlor floor composed?”

“Of the dining-room, parlor and butler’s pantry.”

“On the first occasion when Miss Adulam called do you know of her being in any other part of the house than on the parlor floor?”

“No, sir.”

“Can you on any of the subsequent occasions swear that she was in any other part of the house?”

“No, sir.”

“Very good, Becky, that will do for this afternoon.”

Mr. O’Donnell turned to his client, and with the air of one commenting on the weather remarked audibly yet indifferently: “Chops and tomato sauce!”

XVI

Day in, day out, the testimony continued. The cook testified. The waitress recalled, testified anew. The cook testified again, and a third time the waitress took the stand. By common consent objections ceased. Questions inane, idiotic, indecent, passed unchallenged, unrebuked.

Nevius ceased to attend. The coarseness was disgusting enough, but apart from that the presence of one who continued to come perplexed and tormented him. To those who have agreed to be bound by form, no law ever codified is rigider, and but for its shackles, at the first hearing he would have called to her, “Hilda, this is unworthy of you; let us go.” But no remonstrance being possible, it was easier to avoid that chamber where she listened exultingly to each fresh batch of scurrilities concerning himself.

For the exultation was there, one not dissimilar to that which that vestal must have displayed when her lover the gladiator fell and her delicate thumb reversed. It was this that unnerved him. He had fathomed the cause, but the effect he was unable to endure. But soon the exultation, the scurrilities must end, and then in what gentle ways would he woo her back to sanity and herself.

O’Donnell was not so sanguine. “They have got something,” he would insist, “or else Tooth is milking his client. He consumes hours over nothing. Yesterday we learned what you preferred for breakfast. The fact that you drank moselle for dinner was shown to the satisfaction of everyone, the stenographer included. Metuchen went into the other room; I read a paper. No one listened except the plaintiff, and, by the way, did you tell me that she was pretty? Why, she is hideous; never in all my life hare I seen a woman with an expression as malignant as hers.”

“Souvent femme varie,” Nevius inconsequently replied.

“You are well rid of her. And the way she bullies Tooth! Were she a client of mine⁠—however, that’s not the point. Tooth must have something else. Thus far the testimony of the servants has the value of a zero from which the periphery has been eliminated. But even otherwise the testimony of detectives is valueless unless corroborated. Tooth knows that, and he knows, too, that I can show the servants to have been in the pay of Mrs. Snaith. Now who is to corroborate them, for, mark my words, some corroboration there will be. Tooth is waiting for something, he is consuming time with no other object. Now what is it?”

“There is nothing. You have heard all you will ever hear.”

But O’Donnell was skeptical as a ragpicker, and with cause. When he next appeared in Tenth Street the I-told-you-so was in his eye.

“We are sailing very close to the wind,” he announced. “What do you suppose happened today?”

Nevius was not good at conundrums and said so.

“Your friend Miss Vührer appeared,” the lawyer, with a great assumption of indifference, remarked, and then stopped to enjoy his client’s surprise.

“Did she?” that client answered, but with an apathy that was stagnant. “I had forgotten that she lived.”

“I had not, then. Though I admit I was not prepared for what occurred. Yesterday Tooth began with the waitress about her, showed that you were closeted with her for hours and exhibited a hairpin which was found on that sofa where you are sitting now. I had so little difficulty in putting that hairpin straight back into Mrs. Nevius’ hair that even Metuchen laughed.”

“Well?”

“Well, that was merely the prelude. This morning she appeared, as Jones would say, in impropriâ personâ. No, Nevius, she is worse than Becky, though, after all, she must get higher pay. With her was counsel, if you please, retained, of course, by Tooth. Pennell his name is, B. F. Pennell. When I saw him I knew that the surprise was at hand. He is a bad egg, but rottener than I had believed. Do you know, the plaintiff is very clever. It was she, I will take my oath, who put Tooth up to it.”

The apathy which Nevius had displayed was departing, he came nearer to O’Donnell and stood, looking at him, impatient of details and phrases. Was the diagnosis wrong, after all? Was there another explanation of this mystery? Only the day before he had asked himself that question. And now what was the cleverness over which O’Donnell seemed inclined to harp?

“Tooth is fly enough,” the lawyer was saying, “but unaided he would never have thought of this. Pennell got the young woman on the stand, and in no time at all had her white as snow. He had her take off her bonnet and show that in those blonde curls of hers there was not a hairpin to be found, he had her explain at some length that while her relations with you had been most friendly and pleasant, they had been also entirely innocent and that you had invariably treated her like what she called ‘a perfect gentleman.’ Then he turned her over to Tooth.”

“Well?”

“Tooth began very greasily; he asked her a few gentle little questions which gave her an opportunity to repeat all she had said, and finally brought out that a few months ago you had met her in the street and had assured her you were doing everything to serve her interests. Very nice as far it goes, isn’t it? Wait a bit. ‘And what did you say to Mr. Nevius?’ Tooth asked. ‘I asked Mr. Nevius,’ the little beast answered, ‘whether the other young lady was as innocent as I was?’ ‘And what was Mr. Nevius’ reply?’ Tooth inquired. ‘Mr. Nevius’ reply was that unfortunately she was not.’ ”

“That she was not?” gnashed Nevius.

“That is what she swore.”

“Then to the Tombs she goes.”

“There, it’s only your word against hers. You can do nothing.”

“But something must be done.”

“Precisely, and for that purpose I have got an adjournment. Now where is Miss Adulam? She must appear. There is no use in her standing on her dignity any longer. Where is she?”

“In Boston,” Nevius answered. “And she is ill.”

“Though she come on a shutter, come she must. Write her the facts, tell her the moment she arrives to communicate with me, but write to her at once.” With that the lawyer left.

For an hour Nevius sat, uncertain how to act. He tried to write and did, page after page, but the point he was unable to reach. No matter what circumlocutions he attempted, no matter how delicate the shadings, the fact stood out, bald and repugnant, that the accusation must stand unless rebutted by herself. And there had been his pride, could pride there be where only shamelessness was, that this young gentlewomen had answered the accusation in the only manner which it deserved, by making no answer at all. How was he to tell her to unseal her unsullied lips? Though he used arguments that might lure a saint from Paradise, the abomination would still be there, he was asking her to be cross-questioned in regard to her honor by a man such as his wife had employed. No, he could not. Better a thousand times the divorce than that ineffaceable indignity to her. Something else there must be. But what? As a child who plays a game, he felt that something burning yet still withheld. And suddenly it was his.

The letter which he presently wrote was not, however, for Miss Adulam, it was addressed to her uncle, Erastus Wilberforce. And as it lay signed and sealed before him, he covered his face with his hands. When he stood up, an illusion had unmasked, he had looked in his heart, it was empty.

The morrow was blank. Another day went by, during which he wandered through that dismal house from which even a ghost had fled. At noon, on the third day, a wire came:

“Victory! Will be with you at nine.

The message left him strangely unmoved, though one may wonder whether spring is sweeter than summer to a flower once dead. Punctual as a comet, the lawyer appeared. “Look at that!” he exclaimed. “You told me that Miss Adulam was a thoroughbred, but you didn’t tell me she was another Lady Flora Hastings too.”

At the paper he extended Nevius glanced and shuddered. It was a certificate, attested by two physicians that Miss Janet Adulam was virgo intacta.

“Why, Nevius, it is the Hastings affair over again. It will turn Tooth inside out. Outwitted, foiled, cornered, undone is that unholy shyster. Farewell to the Nevius divorce! And I may tell you Metuchen will be tickled to death. So far as he could he intimated he was with us every trip. I think I will take a drink. But what the devil are you looking so glum for? Nevius, listen to me, it was your duty to deny everything, but till I got that certificate, I’ll be shot if⁠—”

Nevius checked him as with a bit. “What will Tooth do?” he asked, and so seriously that O’Donnell’s jubilance evaporated. “What will he do when you produce this thing?”

“Increase the charges on his bill. I suppose. What is there for him to do except to return to his Tombs practice?”

“Do you know,” added Nevius absently, “I would prefer it not to go on record.”

“Are you mad?” O’Donnell snarled. “This is the case. We have won it without calling a witness. Could I have foreseen it, do you suppose I would have bothered over those wenches your wife employed?”

Nevius shook his head, his eyes strange and weary.

“No, and could I have foreseen that my wife⁠—O’Donnell, the point is here. If you show this privately to Tooth he will understand that he has lost. And yet he likes to win, does he not?

“Where is the attorney who don’t? I myself⁠—”

“Yes, I know. You have been very kind, O’Donnell, but there is one thing more you can do. Show this to Tooth, tell him to withdraw the charge against Miss Adulam, to amend his complaint, and if he agrees, assure him that I will not further contest his efforts.”

“I don’t understand.”

“After this Vührer business, he is not above a trick or two, is he? Tell him to invent a corespondent, the servants he can coach to testify to what he wants, and⁠—the divorce is his. I am tired of it all. O’Donnell, do this for me, won’t you?”

Sweet to the profession is the smell of an enemy’s corpse, and just as that fragrance was to be O’Donnell’s why should he be taken afar? He was not at all pleased and said so, but to the loss of the odors for which he had hungered, at last he became reconciled. A fortnight later a report was handed up recommending that divorce be granted to Hilda Nevius, plaintiff, on the ground of her husband’s illicit commerce with a woman unknown. Which report was promptly and properly confirmed.

A day or two and Nevius found his name again in leaded type. Beneath, augmented with new embroideries, was the old story retold. There was the initial accusation of the grief-stricken wife, his own admission of guilt and headlong flight. Then his return, denying everything but doing nothing to defend charges which had just been substantiated in full. According to the reporter the evidence was of such a character that it had to be heard in camera. Nevius had not even had the courage to appear. But every accusation had been proved, and now his poor, wounded wife, who had borne with his infidelities until forbearance had ceased to be a virtue, at last was free. In dissolving the miserable bands the court had granted her permission to assume her maiden name, a permission of which she would at once avail herself. She was the daughter of the wealthy banker, Thomas B. Snaith, and very prominent in society, as were also the corespondents, one of whom was a dashing western widow, the other, one of Saratoga’s reigning belles. And so on and so forth at the rate of eight dollars a column and a tenner for the “beat.” “The Lord loveth a cheerful liar,” Nevius reflected as he put the Chronicle down.

But O’Donnell had not been deprived of certain fragrances for nothing. He wrote a note, the substance of which⁠—that Miss Adulam had been fully exonerated and her name withdrawn⁠—appeared on the morrow in the Chronicle’s obscurest corner and in the Chronicle’s smallest type.

XVII

The paths to happiness are not many, but they are well defined. The finger-posts of the easiest are those which point to health and indifference.

But there are others that have a value, and between them the wayfarer has halted and will halt and conjecture. One leads to religion, and the pilgrim, if he be sorely depressed and temperamentally disposed will find it an excellent route. It may be tortuous, the goal may be remote, there may be ghosts at the crossings, but at least the traveller has that greatest of consolations⁠—the belief that he is still a child, watched over and protected.

Another leads to that pure realm of ideas where individual preoccupations may not enter, where only the mysteries of beauty and of life endure.

But this route, rarely chosen, is adapted but to the student to whom solitude can offer the dual advantage of being with himself and of not being with others.

Nevius selected it. Health had ceased to interest him, temperamentally he was too nervous to acquire and preserve that suspension of judgment of which indifference is the fruit; and mentally he was too agile to accept dogmas unquestioned. He indeed tried to fatigue the mind in the fatigue of the body, but when, after hours of that sponge for thought which the saddle alone supplies, there was a question-mark in waiting. The why and wherefore of the divorce haunted him still. And as law was no longer possible, and his career at an end, he had a choice between drink and study. In the former he tried to drown that interrogation mark. But the interrogation mark knew how to swim. Then he plunged into history.

Between Caesar and Heliogabalus there was a moment when the gods no longer were, when Christ had not come, when man alone existed. In disgust of modernity it was to that epoch that he turned. The classics were at his elbow, and in the splendors which they evoked he reconstructed Rome. Presently the booksellers were at work and he had invoices of curious lore. Before the roses could fade he wreathed himself with them. He had adventures in the Subura, escapades with dazzling young empresses and relived the inimitable life. To the hum of harps he floated on a ship that had gardens, bowers, spangled sails and a jewelled prow. On painted elephants he quarried lions in their African fens. Throbbing through the rushes of the Nile there came to him the grave music of archaic hymns. Serapis whispered to him. Isis visited him unveiled. He sailed the Aegean, scaled Parnassus, lounged in the Academe. He prayed in temples that never heard an atheist’s voice, passed initiate into the mysteries of Eleusis, encountered divinities and monsters, curious superstitions and untenable creeds. He found grace and lust, deformity and magnificence, unimagined depravities, torturesome delights. He wandered from palace to lupanar, from prison to shrine, from forum to camp. There was not a sin nor an altar that he passed unexamined, not a secret that he left unprobed.

When antiquity was his, he rose from its study perplexed. Nowhere had he encountered hypocrisy. Therewith the Why returned.

XVIII

“Yes, I am off for Europe. For centuries I have been travelling on the map, now I am to try another tack. Come with me, Carol. You don’t know what a charming companion I am. No one does. I never open my head.”

Jones, a leg over the arm of a chair, a cigarette in his fingers, a smile of protracted amiability fluttering in and out his tawny beard, was discounting the pleasures of a trip abroad.

“In the autumn we could visit that city from which you have just returned. Mention Egypt and you see a priest, Persia, and you see a king, Greece⁠—a goddess, but Rome was Might Triumphant. And to think that I have never been there⁠—in this existence I mean, for I can swear I have jolted in chariots over those wide white roads. I can swear that I have supped with Lalage and thrown dice with Faustine. When I read history, memories return in floods. Let us go together and see what remains of the temples in which we have lived.”

He puffed at his cigarette. “And such good as it would do you. A change of scene and you would begin to forget. You need to forget. This accursed divorce is assuming the proportions of a pyramid. It is over a year since it ended, and still you brood. You will kill yourself as Tredegar has if you sit moping in this horror of a house. Not but what I appreciate the advantage of sorrow. Che non soffre, non vince⁠—non Leonardo da Vinci. The tragedy of my life is that there has been no tragedy at all. If I have not written a great novel, there is the cause. An artist’s one value consists in his sorrows. They are all aspirations. The world is filled with people whose lives are so puerile, whose aims are so narrow that we should bless the misfortune which makes us nobler than they. Why, grief is a pleasure, it is a joy to weep. But⁠—”

“Si je doute des larmes!” Nevius inconsequently objected. “C’est que je l’ai vu pleurer.”

“Ah, we have been reading de Musset have we? Fort bien, Monseigneur, fort bien, mais écoute:

“N’ es-tu pas jeune, heureux, partout le bien venu,
Et ces plaisirs légers qui font aimer la vie,
Si tu n’avais pleuré, quel cas en ferais-tu?
Lorsqu’au déclin du jour, assis sur la bruyère⁠—
La bruyère c’est ton fauteuil⁠—
Avec un vieil ami⁠—le vieil ami, c’est moi⁠—tu bois en liberté⁠—
Oh, pour ca! Comme un Polonais même⁠—
Dis moi, d’aussi bon cœur lèveras-tu ton verre
Si tu n’avais senti le prix de la gaieté?
Aimerais-tu les fleurs, les prés et la verdure
Les sonnets de Pétrarque et le chant des oiseaux,
Michel-Ange et les arts, Shakespeare et la nature
Si tu n’y retrouvais quelques anciens sanglots?
Comprendrais-tu des cieux l’ ineffable harmonie,
Le silence des nuits, le murmure des flots
Si quelque part, làbas, la fiévre et l’insomnie
Ne t’ avait fait songer a l’ éternel repos?
Plains la donc, plains la donc, cette belle infidèle⁠—”

“Yes, had she been that,” Nevius interrupted, moved in spite of himself by the beauty of lines which he, too, knew by heart. “Had she been infidèle, I could see my way clearer. But though a year has gone by since she got the decree, still I am unable to understand why she asked for it. There was a moment when I thought her insane, when I thought, God forgive me, that this affair at an end I could win her back, reason with her, plead with her, love her again. But there was no insanity in her eyes when we met in court, a malignant exultation merely. And why? That Why is the first thing I find in the morning, the last that leaves me at night. For a year I have been haunted by interrogation marks, they are everywhere, they are in the food I eat. I close my eyes and still I see them. Even in sleep they pursue me, they fill my dreams.”

“It is of course supposable,” Jones, with singular acquiescence, replied, “that in asking for a divorce this lady had a motive. The malignity was due to your effort to thwart her. The exultation came of the prospect of showing that her lies were true.”

“But why drag herself through all that mud? I am a gentleman at least, am I not? If she wanted a divorce why in God’s name didn’t she tell me before I went to Paris. I am not a bit better than another, I have had my little hearts as well as anyone else, and I could have got it for her, without scandal, without disgrace, without the ruin of three lives⁠—Well, Patrick, what is it?”

From the tray which the man held he took a pink card, gilt-edged.

“A lady, sir.”

Jones laughed loud and long. “En avant les amourettes. Va donc, farceur.”

“Blythe Sisseton,” Nevius repeated. “Never heard of her. Patrick, ask her what she wants.”

“That’s Ablaut’s Ex,” said Jones, as Patrick turned, but he bit his tongue as he did so.

“Ablaut’s Ex?”

“Oh, a little chorus girl whom he invited to dance the waltz in Faust. Man proposes you know, and chorus girls accept. But in accepting she meant Forever and he meant Tonight.”

“Well?”

“That’s all. What do you expect? A three-volume novel? He wrote Finis on a cheque ages ago. In the circumstances it would be foolish of you to see her.”

“Foolish of me? What in thunder do you mean? What have I got to do with her? Why should it be foolish of me to see her? But what are you staring at me for?”

“I’m not staring at you;” Jones snapped back. “I am merely giving you a little friendly advice. The girl is probably here out of curiosity, to have a look at the defendant in a cause célèbre. If you are going to make a freak of yourself, run right down and show yourself off. But in your place I would send word that I was out, that I was dead. Now here’s Patrick⁠—”

“She says she won’t detain you but a moment, sir, she⁠—”

Nevius stood up and made for the door. Before he could reach it Jones had him by the arm.

“Carol, let me go.”

Without a word Nevius shook him off and left the room. But what was the meaning of that strange look he had?

“Does he suspect?” The novelist queried. “But when he knows!” He paused and looked about. “Anything would be better than to see the newspapers dripping again with his name. I must suggest something, but what?”

Ten minutes later the front door closed. When Nevius reentered the library Jones was reading Spinoza.

“You knew this!” Nevius blurted. The strange look had gone from his face, but a stranger one had come. He was livid, and the corners of his mouth had widened. “Why have I been gulled on every side? Why could you not tell me?”

“Dear boy, what omniscience is it that you attribute to me?” And Jones tossed aside the book he held and smiled. “The announcement of your lady’s engagement to Ablaut, if it is that to which you refer, was news to me until I read it in the Herald this morning.”

“Bah! Why didn’t you tell me she was his mistress? Why couldn’t you have told me? I committed suicide because of that woman. And look at these letters!”

But Jones had no need to look at those blue, iris-scented communications, each stamped with the Nevius crest, to divine what they contained.

“Look at them,” Nevius repeated. “Months before she began that suit, she was writing to him things like these.”

With a wrench he tore his collar apart.

“Why couldn’t you have told me,” he gasped, “why⁠—why?”

“How could I, dear boy, I didn’t know,” the novelist with splendid mendacity replied. “But supposing, even that suspecting such a thing, I had so much as hinted at it, you would have held me up. ‘Your evidence or your life,’ you would have bawled. And I am not like you, Carol, alone in the world. I have my publishers to support. But now that the cat is out of the bag, the one thing for you to do is to say Schwamm darüber and pray that Ablaut may make an honest woman of her. Do sit down now and be quiet. Write to him, why don’t you? Paper is a splendid conductor for steam. Send him your congratulations. Say that you have just learned of the engagement, and that if the fair betrothed makes him half as happy as she has made you, he is the man of all others to be envied.”

“Yes,” Jones continued with a twist to his beard, but an eye on his host. “A little eighteenth-century politesse of that kind is far better than big words and short phrases. Anything, Carol, anything but a row. I don’t wonder though that you look as if a scrap would be a revel. Divorce is like matrimony, dear boy, a fellow has got to go through it three or four times before he knows how. By the time this lady gets done, what an expert she will be! It is true she is exceptionally gifted, facile principessa, as one might say, but⁠—now give that to me, I am ashamed of you.”

“It is not loaded,” Nevius muttered from between his teeth.

“Even if it is not, it is capable of becoming so I suppose. Were Ablaut in this room and you shot him you would be acquitted⁠—provided these letters were read. But would you permit them to go before a jury? I wouldn’t let the villain in a novel defend himself at the expense of a woman’s honor, and you, Carol, are a gentleman in flesh and blood. You remember that episode at Nice. There the lady showed even less foresight. The husband surprised the lover in her arms, but when he shot, civilization revolted at the medievalism of the act. Legally he was justified, but law and good breeding are not the same.”

Jones gave another twist to his beard and the douche of words continued.

“No, dear boy, you can’t shoot Ablaut. On the contrary, you should be very nice to him. He is in trouble. He has been led astray, and these are the wages of sin. From the announcement of the engagement I suppose he considers that this lady is in honor bound to make reparation, and while I can understand that, I can not understand what induced him to commit the error which makes the reparation needful. No, he deserves your sympathy. A more venomous, soulless little catin than she who is to lead him to the halter⁠—altar, I mean⁠—doesn’t exist, and never has, outside the walls of St. Lazare.”

“H’m⁠—”

Nevius muttered something, but whether in agreement or rebuke, Jones did not care. He drawled on uninterruptedly in the leisurely fashion in which he had begun:

“This morning, when I read the announcement, it took me a moment before I understood why she waited as long as she has. Knowing her, as several of us do, it was quite on the cards that she should bring Ablaut to book the day the decree was signed. But remember on what grounds it was granted. The woman in the amended complaint existed only in Tooth’s imagination, and existed there only at your suggestion. It was the Frick case upside down. Tandems and tally-ho’s could have been driven straight through it⁠—which was the reason, I fancy, when the newspapers were jubilating over your defeat that you held your tongue. And, by the way, do you know who it was that inspired that jubilee? This lady, dear boy, no one else. She had the articles written to order, and she had marked copies sent to everyone she knew. Actually she sent one to me. She did not think it worth while, though, to send O’Donnell’s contradiction. Ah, mais non!” And Jones drew breath.

“But to return to the point, had she led Ablaut to the altar as precipitately as she led you to court, you, had you chosen, could have vitiated her decree, vitiated her marriage, and very neatly turned the tables by applying for a divorce from her. All that you could have done, dear boy, more too, had she been stupid enough to let you. But she wasn’t. The dear little thing knew a trick worth two of that. You had one year in which to appeal, yesterday the year expired; today the engagement is announced. And you can do nothing. Not a thing, dear boy. You can’t even shoot her; no, not any more than you can shoot Ablaut. Put any such idea as that out of your head. She has been malignant as syphilis, I admit; she has disgraced, corroded and destroyed; her conduct has been without parallel, without excuse; that she should be lapidated I admit also; I have nothing but contempt for her; she has unsexed herself, and if you struck her in the face with your glove, you would pay her an honor she does not deserve. But you can’t shoot her. To defend any such act these letters would have to be read. And though you may say now that they could be read, and not only that but all the secrets of this divorce be ventilated, yet when the time came you would permit nothing of the sort, and you would be electrocuted, dear boy, because of this fallatrix for whose sake a skunk is too good to die.”

The novelist paused and contemplated his fingertips. Presently, with a glance that noted the effects of the douche, he began anew:

“No, you are too young, life holds too many possibilities yet, for you to jeopardize it for her or for her maquereau either. Could you kill her, as I have killed many a culprit in my novels, without a suspicion resting on the executioner, I am rather inclined to think I would approve. But the difficulty is that she is not under your roof and not being a cracksman you can’t get under hers. Were she here in Tenth Street, a bit of catgut tied across the head of the stairs, a slight shove, and there you are. The catgut vanishes and another accident in high life is recorded. Failing that, you could try a folding-bed; many a person has been smothered in them, you could imitate Incoul and turn on the gas when she was asleep, you could give her a vibrio in a mushroom, or squeeze a taste of cyanide of potassium into her champagne. Any one of these things, or of a hundred others, you could do if she were here, but luck is hers and she isn’t.

“Now, in view of all the circumstances, were this one of my novels, I would have the injured hero experiment in what will be one of the fine arts of the next century⁠—Execution at a Distance. There are bunglers who send explosives by express, which is well enough in its way when it happens to be successful, but even then the intention is manifest and the police are running right and left. The art of Execution at a Distance, as practiced by the adept, will consist in projecting an agent in such a manner that it kills and leaves no trace either of its purpose or of its advent.

“For instance⁠—by the way, I think I will take a little of that whisky⁠—for instance, a young man is enamoured of a young woman. Difficulties ensue. Correspondence there must be, but how? By invisible ink, let us say, which becomes visible when breathed upon. For a year and a day the young man writes to his Dulcinea with ink of this description. Suddenly she wearies or he does. What does he do, give her aconite pills? He gives a sheet of paper a bath of hydrocyanic, a coating of starch to protect it and drops it in a letter box. When the young woman receives it, she breathes on it to decipher what he has written, and falls dead, a piece of white paper in her hands. Coroner’s verdict: heart disease.

“On the other hand, supposing he has had no time or no need to train her to the advantages of invisible ink. As a love-token he sends her a box of flowers saturated with a similar preparation. She opens the box, the hydrocyanic escapes and she is dead. Verdict: heart failure.”

The novelist emptied his glass and looked at Nevius. But the latter had got his face in the shadow, a hand before it as well.

“All that,” Jones added thoughtfully, “all that is for the Year of our Lord 2001. Nowadays people have such prejudices, and yet if stupidity hurt how many would yell!”

For a while neither spoke, and to amuse himself perhaps, Jones took a sheet of paper and began to scribble. Presently he looked up.

“But what a rattling good story the whole thing would make. And what a lot I could do with you. I could begin with you from the cradle, carry you right through everything, put your hat on and kill you. Suicide is always a good climax. And I could call it⁠—let me see, I should have to find something comprehensive, a title both neat and terse, one that would convey an entire existence.”

His eyes roamed to the ceiling, consulted the pencil, fell again on the paper on which he had written, and lighted sagaciously.

“I have it⁠—From Womb to Tomb. Carol, dear boy, what do you say to that?”

As Nevius seemingly had nothing to say, Jones nodded complacently to himself and rose from his seat.

“I have accomplished my object, beau ténébreux. I have bored you so that your anger is gone. Thank me now and let me go also, but remember I sail on Saturday and you must sail, too.”

For a while longer Nevius sat, a hand before his face. But behind that hand were passing the incidents of the day: the coming of that little girl, the letters which she had found in her lover’s rooms, letters with which she had threatened the lover until threats were idle and his engagement was announced. And these letters, brought to him with the intelligence of that engagement, were written by one who had pretended to love him, whom he had defended, lauded and worshipped, who called herself Mrs. Nevius still and who had wrecked three lives. Back to him crowded the memories of the past. The scraps of the letter found in the basket. That was to Jenny, was it? How clever she had been that day. How cleverly black had been turned to white. How clever, too, had been her tactics in regard to that poor girl. And with what neatness and despatch had she not brought Vührer to the house. Yes, she had been very clever, but the cleverest thing of all was in declaring herself brokenhearted. And this was the little Hilda whom he thought would be so sorry when she learned the truth. The truth indeed! It had been for him to learn it. And now that he had⁠—Madam Sapphira, be on your guard!

He repeated the menace; the echo perhaps aroused him. On the table were the letters, and near them a bit of paper embroidered with pencil-marks, the rough sketch of a tombstone, on which in neat characters was writ:

Here Lies Hilda Snaith,
And That is All She Ever Did.
Requies catin pace.

At this effort of the novelist’s he barely glanced; his eyes were fumbling the shelves. There was a book on chemistry that he wanted, and having got it he opened it, questioned it, and sitting down again interrogated the future and roamed through the past.

XIX

The Why had gone. He was no longer haunted, he knew. There are people to whom doubt is better than certainty and Nevius was one of them. The problem had occupied him; that gone he had nothing left⁠—a duty merely⁠—to which he presently turned his attention.

Of the incidents remote and dismissed which had suddenly returned was one he detained⁠—the memory of a young girl examining her wedding gifts. Among these gifts were two vinaigrettes, and he could see her still, holding one, then the other to the mirror to judge which was the more becoming. The choice made, the rejected vinaigrette had been returned to Tiffany and some exchange effected.

It was the one incident of the old prenuptial days that had jarred, and it had particularly jarred in that the vinaigrette which had been exchanged, was the gift to his bride of one whose hand he had held and whose hand he had loved to hold. Apart, then, from any sentiment which he might have attached to the tribute, the commercial aspect with which it was regarded annoyed, and continued to annoy until, other incidents intervening, it was forgot.

But it had returned, and of an afternoon when the heat was such that man and beast fell dead in the streets he ventured out to shop. There was a scent-bottle, covered with gems, one which it would delight any woman to have and display, which, without any difficulty, he made his own. And there was also a phial of anhydrous prussic acid⁠—but that he did not obtain until he had produced a jumble of Latin and hieroglyphics.

Later, in the quiet of the library, with mouth and nostrils bandaged, his eyes protected, his hands well gloved, he poured the contents of the phial into the jewelled toy, and re-stoppering both bottles, removed the bandage and breathed. It is not every neophyte whose initial effort in laboratory work is attended with such success, and that fact he doubtless appreciated, for having breathed, he smiled. If all else failed, might he not turn chemist? The idea must have amused him, for, as he put the vinaigrette back in its case, the smile was still there, and as he wrapped up the case and directed it, he laughed. But then, chemistry is one of the most delightful pursuits imaginable, and he had been so long unoccupied that a possibility with even less perspective might have charmed.

Yet where, apart from Ceylon, is that prospect which always pleases? An hour had not passed before the vistas disclosed must have lost their allurement. The laughter, the smile had gone. In their place came a look perplexing and enervating, and through the quiet of the house pulsated a throbbing so loud, so loud, that to still it, perhaps, too, to rid his mind of chemistry and its charms, he drank.

It was the drink, no doubt, which on the morrow confined him to his room. But such a sedative is rest that on the succeeding day he was able to get to the floor below and breakfast too. Melon is not unpalatable at any hour, and when he had eaten a little he was quite in the humor to smoke a cigarette and learn the news of the day. It was the Times which he selected for the purpose, and after reading of the Homestead rebellion as he turned from the fourth page where the editorials are to the fifth where the advertisements such as death notices appear, the paper fell from him, the name Nevius had jumped out and stabbed him in the eyes.

He got to the window, the court was deluged with sunshine, and on the fence a piebald cat was enjoying a promenade.

But could it be possible that that package had been sent? Had he not hid it somewhere?

With a sidelong suspicious glance the cat continued its gingerly way.

Could it be possible? he repeated. But what had he done with it? Why could he not collect his thoughts? He went upstairs, and down once more, and up again. Patrick appeared, he fled away. He could not go out, he could not sit still, he could neither write nor speak, nor act nor think, and in his bedroom where he hid at last, he locked the door.

If rest be a sedative, suspense is not. And do what he might, suspense urged him from sofa to armchair, from armchair to sofa, and finally to the library, that he might see for himself if the package were there.

On the table was a telegram. It was from Bronx he knew. But not a bit.

“Touraine sails at noon tomorrow. Your berth retained. Have wired congratulations to Mrs. A.

Congratulations to Mrs. A! Who was Mrs. A? He put the telegram down and looked about. There was no one to reply. But who was Mrs. A? What had he to do with any Mrs. A?

Again he looked about. But still there was no one. Yet he must ask, he must speak, he must know. The bell was there, he rang it but could not wait and ran to the hall.

“Patrick,” he called. “Patrick.”

“Yes, sir, coming, sir.”

“Patrick,” he cried, while the man was yet below. “Patrick, what is there in the papers today?”

“In the papers, sir!”

“Tell me, can’t you. Don’t you see I am going mad. What was in the papers? Who is Mrs. A?”

Perplexed, astounded, the man halted midway on the stair.

“There’s a Mrs. Nevius who has been and married a gentleman whose name I disremember, sir, but⁠—”

“Then why the devil couldn’t you say so before. Come up here. Don’t you hear me? Come up I tell you. I am going to Europe tomorrow and I want you to pack. And Patrick⁠—”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here’s a hundred or more that you may find serviceable.” And as Nevius turned on his heel, gently if incorrectly, he repeated a verset from the Scriptures.

“Beautiful on the hill-slope are the feet of the bearer of glad news.”

But what he meant by that absurdity who shall say?