Short Fiction

To
E⁠⸺⁠h
Amicissima

I

It was not until Miss Menemon’s engagement to John Usselex was made public that the world in which that young lady moved manifested any interest in her future husband. Then, abruptly, a variety of rumors were circulated concerning him. It was said, for instance, that his real name was Tchurchenthaler and that his boyhood had been passed tending geese in a remote Bavarian dorf, from which, to avoid military service, he had subsequently fled. Again, it was affirmed that in Denmark he was known as Baron Varvedsen, and that he had come to this country not to avoid military service, but the death penalty, which whoso strikes a prince of the blood incurs. Others had heard that he was neither Bavarian nor Dane, but the outlawed nephew of a Flemish moneylender whose case he had rifled and whose daughter he had debauched. And there were other people who held that he had found Vienna uninhabitable owing to the number of persistent creditors which that delightful city contained.

In this conflict of gossip the real facts were as difficult of discovery as the truth about Kaspar Hauser, and in view of the divergence of rumors there were people sensible enough to maintain that as these rumors could not all be true, they might all be false. Among the latter was Usselex himself. His own account of his antecedents was to the effect that his father was a Cornishman, his mother a Swiss governess, and that he had been brought up by the latter in Bâle, from which city he had at an early age set out to make his fortune. Whether or not this statement was exact is a matter of minor moment. In any event, supposing for argument’s sake that he had more names than are necessary, has not Vishnu a thousand? And as for debts, did not Caesar owe a hundred million sesterces? But however true or untrue his own account of himself may have been, certain it was that he spoke three languages with the same accent, and that a decennary or so after landing at Castle Garden his name was familiar to everyone connected with banks and banking.

At the time contemporaneous to the episodes with which these pages have to deal John Usselex had reached that age in which men begin to take an interest in hair restorers. In his face was the pallor of a plaster-cast, his features were correct and coercive, in person he was about the average height, slim and well-preserved. He carried glasses rimmed with tortoiseshell. He wore a beard cut fan-shape and a moustache with drooping ends. Both were gray. In moments of displeasure he smiled, but behind the glasses no merriment was discernible; when they were removed his eyes glowed luminous and shrewd, and in them was a glitter that suggested a reflection caught from the handling and glare of gold. In the financial acceptation of the term he was good; he was at the head of a house that possessed the confidence of the Street, his foreign correspondents were of the best, but in the inner circles of New York life he was as unknown as Ischwanbrat.

Miss Menemon, on the other hand, had no foreign correspondents, but in the circles alluded to she was thoroughly at home. Her father, Mr. Petrus Menemon, was not accounted rich, but he came of excellent stock, and her mother, long since deceased, had been an Imryck. Now, to be an Imryck, to say nothing of being a Menemon, is to be Somebody. Miss Menemon, moreover, was not quite twenty-two years of age. To nine people out of ten she represented little else than the result of the union of an Imryck and a Menemon; but to the tenth, particularly when the tenth happened to be a man, she was as attractive a girl as New York could produce. As a child she had not been noticeably pretty, but when, as the phrase is, she came out, she was assuredly fair to see. She was slight and dark of hair, her face was like the cameo of a Neapolitan boy, but her eyes were not black, they were of that sultry blue which is observable in the ascension of tobacco-smoke through a sunbeam; and about her mouth and in the carriage of her head was something that reminded you of the alertness and expectancy of a bird. She was not innocent, if innocence be taken in the sense of ignorance, but she was clean of mind, of eye, and of tongue. She had been better instructed than the majority of society girls, or, if not better instructed, at least she had read more, and this perhaps, because on emerging from the nursery her father’s first care had been to make her unafraid of books.

Petrus Menemon himself was a tall, spare man, scrupulous as to his dress, and quiet of manner. In his face was the expression of one who is not altogether satisfied, and yet wishes everyone else to be content. He had an acquired ignorance which he called agnosticism. He enjoyed the formidable reputation of being well-read; but it is only just to explain that he was well read chiefly in the archaic sense⁠—in the bores and pedants of antiquity. Yet, if his taste was stilted, he made no effort to inculcate that taste in his daughter; he gave her the run of the library and allowed her to drag from the Valhalla of the back bookshelves what friends and relatives she chose. Indeed, his attitude to her was one of habitual indulgence. By nature she was as capricious as a day in February, a compound of sunlight, of promise, and of snow; and when she was wilful⁠—and she was often that⁠—he made no effort to coerce, he argued with her as one might with a grown person, seriously, and without anger. And something of that seriousness she caught from him, and with it confidence in his wisdom and trust in his love. To her thinking no one in all the world was superior to that gentle-mannered man.

When she left the nursery she was supplied with a governess, and as she grew older, with masters of different arts and tongues. But as a child she was often lonely, and the children whom she saw playing in the streets were to her objects of indignant envy. On Sunday it was her father’s custom to take her to morning service, and afterward to her grandmother, a lady who lived alone in a giant house in South Washington Square, in the upper rooms of which the child was persuaded that coffins lay stored in heaps. During these visits, which were continued every Sunday until the old lady died, an invariable programme was observed: the child repeated the catechism, recited a verse from the hymnal, after which she was gratified with sponge-cake and a glass of milk, and then was permitted to look at the pictures in a large Bible, in which, by way of frontispiece, was an engraving of a man with a white beard, whom her grandmother said was God. Such, with the exception of tiresome promenades on Second Avenue, where her father’s house was situated, such were her relaxations.

And so it came about that in the enforced loneliness of her childhood she ransacked a library in which the Picara Justina of Fray Andrs Perez stood side-by-side with the Kalevala, a library in which works stupid as the Koran and dead as Coptic touched covers with the Idyls of the King and the fabliaux of medieval France. Soon she had made friends with the heroes and heroines that are the caryatides of the bookshelves. In their triumphs she exulted; by their failures she was depressed. At the age of thirteen she spoke of King Arthur as though he were her first cousin. The next year she was in love with Amadis of Gaul.

A little later she hung on the wall of her bedroom a bit of embroidery of her own manufacture, a square piece of watered silk, on which in bold relief stood the characters 60 H, a device understood by no one but herself, one which her imagination had evolved out of the aridity of a French copybook, and which each night and each morning said to her, Sois sans tache.

Indeed, her brain had been the haunt of many an odd conceit, the home of fays and goblins. Her imagination was always a garden to her except when it happened to be a morass. She had not only castles in Spain, she had dungeons as well; and of them she was architect, mason, and inhabitant too. It was her mood⁠—a circumstance aiding⁠—that dowered her fancy with wings. Now she would be transported to new horizons where multicolored suns battened on intervales of unsuspected charm, now she would be tossed into the opacity of an abyss where there would not be so much as a goaf for resting-place. Now Pleasure would lord the day, now the sceptre would be held by Pain. As often as not the intonation of a voice, the expression of a face, any incident however trivial would suffice, and at once a panorama would unroll, with no one but herself for spectator. As she grew older her mind became more staid, its changes and convolutions less frequent. The goblins were replaced by glyptodons, Perrault by Darwin. But the prismatic quality of her fancy remained unimpaired. She garmented everyone with its rays. Those who were nearest to her enjoyed the gayest hues; in others she looked steadfastly for the best. And yet, in spite of this, or precisely on that account, no one was ever better able to distort trifles into nuclei of doubt. In brief, she was March one minute and May the next. Apropos of some misunderstanding, her father said to her jestingly one day, “Eden, did you ever hear of such a thing as hemiopia?” The girl shook her head. “Well,” he continued, “there is a disease of that name which affects the eye in such a manner that only half the object looked at is seen. Don’t you think you had better consult an oculist?”

Meanwhile her education had been completed by Shakespeare. Love she had learned of Juliet, jealousy of Othello. But of despair Hamlet had been incompetent to teach. She was instinct with generous indignations, enthusiastic of great deeds, and through the quality of her temperament unable to reason herself into an understanding of the base. When she “came out” she found herself unable to share the excited interest which girls of her age exhibited in Delmonico balls. At the dinners and dances to which she was bidden, she was chilled at the discovery that platitude reigned. As a rule, the younger men fought shy of her. She acquired the reputation of making disquieting answers and remarks of curious inappositeness. But now and then she met people that found her singularly attractive and whose hearts went out to her at once, yet these were always people with whom she fancied herself in sympathetic rapport.

Among this class was a man who succeeded Amadis. His name was Dugald Maule; he was six or seven years her senior, and by profession an attorney and counsellor-at-law. It should be noted, however, that he did not look like one. He looked like an athlete that had taken honors, a man to be admired by women and respected by men. In private theatricals he was much applauded. He had studied law in the hope of being judge, and in being judge of pronouncing the death sentence. He could imagine no superber role than that. To him, after months of self-examination, Eden Menemon surrendered her heart. The surrender was indeed difficult, but as surrenders go it was complete.

The threads by which he succeeded in attaching her to him it is unnecessary to describe. Suffice it to say that little by little she grew to believe that in him the impeccable resided. She had accustomed herself to consider love in the light of a plant which if rightly tended would bloom into a witherless rose. She had told him this, and together they had watched the bud expand, and when at last it was fulfilled to the tips he saw it in her eyes. That evening, when he had gone, the sense of happiness was so acute that she became quasi-hysterical. The joy of love, slowly intercepted and then wholly revealed, vibrated through the chords of her being, overwhelming her with the force of an unexperienced emotion, and throwing her for relief into a paroxysm of tears. Then followed a day of wonder, in which hallucinations of delight alternated with tremors of self-depreciation. It seemed to her that she was unworthy of such an one as he. For, to her, in her inexperience, he was perfection indeed, one unsulliable and mailed in right. And then, abruptly, as such things occur, without so much as a monition, she read in public print that he had been summoned as a corespondent. To overwrought nerves as were hers, the announcement was rapider in its effect than a microbe. A fever came that was obliterating as the morrow of steps on the sand. For a week she was delirious, and when at last she left her room the expression of her face had altered. She felt no anger, only an immense distrust of the validity of her intuitions. Had Dugald Maule been in trouble, she would have, if need were, forsaken life for his sake; but the Dugald Maule for whom she would have been brave had existed only in her own imagination. It was this that brought the fever, and when the fever went, disgust came in its place. It was then that the expression of face altered. She looked like one who is done with love. Presently, and while she was still convalescent, her father sent her abroad with friends, and when she returned, Dugald Maule had to her the reality of a bad dream, a nightmare that she might have experienced in the broad light of an earlier day.

In the course of that winter it so happened that her father one evening brought in to dinner a man whom he introduced as Mr. Usselex. Eden had never seen him before and for the moment she did not experience any notable desire to see him again. She attended, however, with becoming grace to the duties of hostess, and as the conversation between her father and his guest circled in and over stocks, she was not called upon to contribute to the entertainment. When coffee was served she went to her own room and promptly forgot that Mr. Usselex existed.

But in a few days there was Crispin again. On this occasion Eden gave him a larger share of attention than she had previously accorded. There were certain things that she noticed, there was an atmosphere about him which differed from that which other men exhaled. In the tones of his voice were evocations of fancies. He seemed like one who had battled and had won. There was an unusualness in him which impressed and irritated her simultaneously. It was annoying to her that he should intrude, however transiently, into the precincts of her thought. And when he had gone she took her father to task: “What do you have that man to dinner for?” she asked. “Who is he?”

Mr. Menemon, who was looking out of the window, announced that it was snowing, then he turned to her. “Eden,” he said, “I am sorry. If you object he need not come again. Really,” he continued, after a moment, “I wish you could see your way to being civil to him.”

“Surely I am that,” she answered.

To this Mr. Menemon assented. “The matter is this,” he said. “While you were abroad I became interested in a mine; he is trying to get me out of it. He is something of a prophet, I take it. Though, as yet,” he added despondently, “his prophecies have not been realized.”

“Then he is a philosopher,” said Eden, with a smile; and her father, smiling too, turned again to interview the night.

Thereafter Mr. Usselex was a frequent guest, and presently Eden discovered that her annoyance had disappeared.

The people whom we admire at first sight are rarely capable of prolonging that admiration, and when circumstances bring us into contact with those that have seemed antipathetic, it not infrequently happens that the antipathy is lost. It was much this way with Eden. Little by little, through channels unperceived, the early distaste departed. Hitherto the world had held for her but one class of individuals, the people whom she liked. All others belonged to the landscape. But this guest of her father’s suggested a new category; he aroused her curiosity. He left the landscape; he became a blur on it, but a blur on which she strained her eyes. The antipathy departed, and she discovered herself taking pleasure in the speech of one who had originally affected her as a scarabaeus must affect the rose.

She discerned in him unsuspected dimensions. He was at home in recondite matters, and yet capable of shedding new light on threadbare themes. During discussions between him and her father at which she assisted she gained an insight into bimetallism, free trade even, and subjects of like import, the which hitherto she had regarded as abstract diseases created for the affliction of politicians and editorial hacks. He was at home too in larger issues, in the cunning of Ottoman tactics and the beat of drums at Kandahar. Concerning King Arthur he was vague, but he had the power to startle her with new perspectives, the possibilities of dynamics, the abolition of time, the sequestration and conquest of space. And as he spoke easily, fluently, in the ungesticulatory fashion of those that know whereof they speak, more than once she fell to wondering as to the cause of that early dislike. In such wise was Desdemona won.

It so happened that one evening she chanced to dine with a friend of hers, Mrs. Nicholas Manhattan by name, a lady whose sources of social information were large. Among other guests was Alphabet Jones, the novelist.

“Did you ever hear of Mr. Usselex?” Eden asked, over the sweets.

Mrs. Manhattan visibly drew on the invisible cap of thought. “Never heard of him,” she presently exclaimed, as one who should say, “and for me not to have heard argues him unknown.”

But Jones was there, and he slipped his oar in at once. “I know him,” he answered. “He is the son of a shoemaker. No end of money! Some years ago a cashier of his did the embezzlement act, but Usselex declined to prosecute.”

“Yes, that is like him,” said Eden.

“Ah! you know him, then?” and Jones looked at her. “Well,” he continued, “the cashier was sent up all the same. He had a wife, it appeared, and children. Usselex gave them enough to live on, and more too, I believe.”

“He must have done it very simply.”

“Why, you must know him well!” Jones exclaimed; and the conversation changed.

Meanwhile winter dragged itself along, and abruptly, as is usual with our winters, disappeared. In its stead came a spring that was languider than summer. Fifth Avenue was bright with smart bonnets and gowns of conservatory hues. During the winter months Mr. Menemon’s face had been distressed as the pavements, but now it was entirely serene.

It was evident to Eden that Mr. Usselex was not a philosopher alone, but a prophet as well. Concerning him her store of information had increased.

Toward the end of May her father spoke to her about him and about his success with the mine. He seemed pleased, yet nervous. “I saw him this afternoon,” he said; “he is to be here shortly. H’m! I am obliged to go to the club for a moment. Will you⁠—would you mind seeing him in my absence?” For a moment he moved uneasily about and then left the room. Eden looked after him in wonder, and took up the Post. And as her eyes loitered over the columns the bell rang; her face flushed, and presently she was aware of Usselex’ presence.

“What is this my father tells me?” she asked, by way of greeting.

“What is it?” he echoed; he had found a chair and sat like Thor in the court of Utgarda.

“About the mine and all that.”

The man eyed her enquiringly for an instant and picked at his cuff. “Let me ask you a question,” he said: “Did your father say nothing except about the mine?”

“No, not that I remember, except to imply that you⁠—that he⁠—no, he said nothing worth repeating.”

“In finding you alone I supposed he had told you that⁠—”

“That the mine⁠—”

“That I love you.”

In the corner of the room was a great colonial clock. Through the silence that followed it ticked sleepily, as though yawning at the avowal. Mr. Usselex had bent forward; he watched the girl. She was occupied in tearing little slips from the paper which lay in her lap. She did not seem to have heard him at all.

“Miss Menemon,” he continued, “I express myself badly. Do not even take the trouble to say that you do not care for me. It is impossible that you should. You know nothing of me; you⁠—”

“Oh, but I do though,” the girl exclaimed. “The other day, a month or two ago, I have forgotten, someone said your father was a shoemaker, and whatnot about you beside. Oh, I know a great deal⁠—”

“Then, Miss Menemon, you must know the penalty which is paid for success.” He straightened himself, the awkwardness had left him, and he seemed taller than when he entered the room. “Yes,” he continued, “the door to success is very low, and the greater is he that bends the most. Let a man succeed in any one thing, and whatever may be the factors with which that success is achieved, Envy will call a host of enemies into being as swiftly as Cadmus summoned his soldiery. And these enemies will come not alone from the outer world, but from the ranks of his nearest friends. Ruin a man’s home, he may forget it. But excel him, do him a favor, show yourself in any light his superior, then indeed is the affront great. Mediocrity is unforgiving. We pretend to admire greatness, but we isolate it and call that isolation Fame. It is above us; we cannot touch it; but mud is plentiful and that we can throw. And if no mud be at hand, we can loose that active abstraction, malice, which subsists on men and things. No; had I an enemy I could wish him no greater penance than success⁠—success prompt, vertiginous, immense! To the world, as I have found it, success is a crime, and its atonement, not death, but torture. Truly, Miss Menemon, humanity is not admirable. Men mean well enough, no doubt; but nature is against them. Libel is the tribute that failure pays to success. If I am slandered, it is because I have succeeded. But what is said of my father is wholly true. He did make shoes, God bless him! and very good shoes they were. Pardon me for not having said so before.”

Eden listened as were she assisting at the soliloquy of an engastrimuth. The words he uttered seemed to come less from him than from one unknown yet not undevined. And now, as he paused for encouragement or rebuke, he saw that her eyes were in his.

“Miss Menemon,” he continued, “forget my outer envelope; if you could read in my heart, you would find it full of love for you.”

“Perhaps,” she said, and smiled as at a vista visible only to herself. “I will tell my father what you say,” she added demurely.

With that answer Mr. Usselex was fain to be content. And presently, when he had gone, she wondered how it was that she had ever cared for Dugald Maule.

A week later the engagement of Miss Menemon to John Usselex was announced. Much comment was excited, and the rumors alluded to were industriously circulated. But comment and rumors notwithstanding, the marriage took place, and after it the bride left her father’s dingy little house on Second Avenue for a newer and larger one on Fifth. Many people had envied Usselex his wealth; on that day they envied him his bride.

II

It was late in November before Eden found herself in full possession of her new home. Shortly after the ceremony she had gone to Newport, and when summer departed she made for Lennox, which she deserted for Tuxedo. It was therefore not until the beginning of winter that the brown hollands were removed from her town residence.

During the intervening months she had been wholly content. She had not led the existence of which at sixteen she had dreamed in the recesses of her father’s library, nor yet such an one as Dugald Maule had had the ability to suggest. On the other hand, she had for her husband something that was more than love. She regarded him as one of the coefficients of the age. Among the rumors which her engagement created was one to the effect that she was to be used as Open Sesame to doors hitherto closed to him; and this rumor, like the others, some fair little demon of a friend had whispered in her ear. But the possibility of such a quid pro quo had left her undisturbed. If a privilege paltry as that were hers to bestow, there was indeed no reason why she should begrudge it.

It so happened, however, that she was not called upon to make the slightest effort in that direction. Everybody discussed the marriage, and at the wedding, as is usually the case, the front seats were occupied by those who had said the most in its disfavor. At Newport there was a fleeting hesitation. But the exclusion of the bride from entertainments being practically impossible, and moreover, as it is not considered seemly to invite a wife and overlook a husband, both were bidden; and to the surprise of many it was discovered that Usselex had not only as fine an air as many of the foreign noblemen that passed that way, but that he even possessed a keener appreciation of conventionalities. Added to this his wealth was reported to be fabulous. What more could Newport ask? If his origin was more or less dubious, were there not many whose origins were worse than dubious, whose origins were known? Indeed, not everyone was qualified to throw a stone, and gradually any thought of stone-throwing was dismissed. His opponents became his supporters, and after the villeggiatura at Lennox and at Tuxedo no further question was raised.

In returning to town therefore, Eden was wholly content. She had married a man of whom she was proud, a man who, while subservient to her slightest wish, had taught her what love might be. Altogether, the world seemed larger, and she felt fully prepared to do her duty in that sphere of life to which God had called her.

That sphere of life, she presently discovered, was to be co-tenanted by her husband’s secretary. Usselex had mentioned his existence on more than one incidental occasion, but after each mention the actuality of that existence had escaped her; and a week or so after her return to town she found herself mediocrally pleased at learning that he would probably be a frequent guest at her dinner-table.

In answer to the query which her eyebrows took on at this intelligence, Usselex explained that now and then, through stress of business, he was in Wall Street unable to provide the individual in question with his fullest instructions, and for that reason it was expedient for him to have the man of an evening at the house. Immediately Eden’s fancy evoked the confidential clerk of the London stage, a withered bookkeeper, shiny of garment, awkward of manner, round of shoulder, square of nail, explosive with figures, and covered with warts, and on the evening in which the secretary was to make his initial appearance she weaponed herself with a vinaigrette.

But of the vinaigrette she had no need whatever. The secretary entered the drawing room with the unembarrassed step of a somnambulist. His manner was that of one aware that the best manner consists in the absence of any at all. His coat might have come from Piccadilly, and when he found a seat Eden noticed that the soles of his shoes were veneered in black. In brief, he looked well-bred and well-groomed. He was young, twenty-three or twenty-four at most. His head was massive, and his features were pagan in their correctness. The jaw was a masterpiece; it gave the impression of reservoirs of interior strength, an impression which was tempered when he spoke, for his voice was low and unsonorous as a muffled bell. His eyes were of that green-gray which is caught in an icicle held over grass. And in them and about his mouth something there was that suggested that he could never be brutal and seldom tender.

At table he made no remark worthy of record. He seemed better content to watch Eden than to speak. He ate little and drank less, and when the meal was done and Eden left him to her husband and the presumable cigar, she made up her mind that he was stupid.

“He is a German,” she reflected; “with such a name as Adrian Arnswald he must be. H’m. The only German I ever liked was a Frenchman, the author of the Reisebilder. Well, there seems to be no bilder of any kind in him.” She picked up the Post and promptly lost herself in a review of the opera. “There,” she mused, “I forgot Wagner. After all, as someone said of the Scotch, you can do a good deal with a German if you catch him young. Mr. Arnswald does not appear to have been caught in time.” She threw the paper from her and seated herself at the piano. For a moment her fingers strayed over the keys, and then, in answer to some evoking chord, she attacked the Ernani involami, than which few melodies are richer in appeal. Her voice was not of the bravura quality, the lower register was not full, and the staccati notes were beyond her range; a professor from a conservatory would have disapproved of her method as he would have disapproved of that of the ruiseñor. But then the ruiseñor sings out of sheer wantonness, because it cannot help it; and so did she.

And as she sang, anyone who had chanced that way would have accounted her fair to see. Her gown was black, glittered with jet, about her throat was a string of pearls, her arms were bare, the wrists unbraceleted, and in her face that beauty of youth and of fragility which refinement heightens and which eclipses the ruddier characteristics of the buxom models of the past. An artist might not have given her a second glance, a poet would have adored her at the first. And as she still sang, Arnswald entered the room and approached the piano at which she sat.

She heard his steps and turned at once expectant of Usselex. Then, seeing that he was alone, “What have you done with my husband?” she asked.

“Nothing,” the young man answered. “Nothing at all. A gentleman, a customer, I fancy, sent in his card, and I left him to him.” He found a seat and eyed her gravely. “If I disturb you⁠—”

“Oh, you don’t disturb me in the least. What makes you look as though you came from another planet?”

“What makes you look as though you were going to one?”

Mr. Arnswald is passably impertinent, thought Eden; but the expression of his face was so reassuringly devoid of any non-conventional symptom that she laughed outright at the compliment. “Do you care for music?” she asked.

“Surely, Mrs. Usselex.”

“Yes, of course. I forgot. All Germans do. Tell me, how long have you been in this country? How do you come to speak German without an accent?”

“I was born here, Mrs. Usselex.”

“You were born here! I thought you were a German. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You did not do me the honor to ask.”

“But your father was, wasn’t he?”

“No, my father was a Russian, I think.”

“You think? Why do you say you think? Don’t you know? I never knew anyone so absurd.”

“My father died when I was very young, Mrs. Usselex. I do not remember him.”

“But your mother could have told you⁠—”

“If she didn’t, Mrs. Usselex, it was because she had a good excuse.”

“What was that?”

“She died also.”

“Mr. Arnswald, I am sorry. I had no right to ask such thoughtless questions. My mother died too. I do not remember her either. Truly you must forgive me.” And as she spoke she rose from the piano and reseated herself at the lounge which she had previously vacated. “Tell me about yourself,” she added. “I am not asking out of idle curiosity.”

“You are very good to express any interest, Mrs. Usselex. But really there is little to tell. I used to live in Massachusetts, in Salem, with my grandparents and my sister. You can see Salem from here, and you can understand what a boy’s life in such a place must be. Afterwards I was sent to school, and later I went abroad. When I returned Mr. Usselex took me in his office. I have been there ever since. He has been very kind to me, Mr. Usselex has.”

“He says⁠—how is it he puts it?⁠—oh, he says you have the genius of finance.”

“I can only repeat that he is very kind.”

To this Eden assented. “Yes, he is that,” she said, and hesitated for a moment. “Tell me,” she added. “You said you were fond of music. Will you go with us on Monday to the opera?”

This invitation was accepted with the same readiness as that with which it was made. And presently the young man took his leave. When the portiere fell behind him, Eden felt a momentary uneasiness at the unpremeditated invitation which she had just extended. One doesn’t need to be a German to be stupid, she mused, and felt sure that her husband would disapprove. But when she told him he expressed himself as well pleased.

The next day happened to be Sunday, and on that afternoon Mr. Arnswald came to pay his dinner-call. Meanwhile Eden’s imagination had been at work. Now imagination is a force of which the action is as varied as that of volition. There are organizations which it affects like a dissolvent, there are others which it affects like wine. In some it needs a spur, in others a curb. Give it an incident for incubator, and according to the nature of the individual it will soar full-feathered into space or addle in its own inaction. In Eden its gestation was always abrupt. With a fact for matrix it developed as rapidly as a spark mounts into flame. The fact in this instance was Arnswald.

When he left her the night before, she had gone again to the piano, her fingers had fluttered like butterflies over the keys, then in answer to some strain, an aria from the Regina di Golconda had visited her⁠—the “Bel paese, ciel ridente,” which she had hummed softly to herself, unconscious of any significance in the words. But presently she fell to wondering about the fair land, the fairer sky which the song recalled. Something there was that kept telling her that she had met Adrian before. In his voice she had caught an inflection that was not unfamiliar to her. In the polar-light of his eyes was a suggestion of earlier acquaintance. His infrequent gestures brought her the shadow of a reminiscence. And in his face there was an expression that haunted her. For a while she struggled with memory. But memory is a magician that declines to be coerced. Now and then it will pull its victim by the sleeve, as it had pulled at Eden, yet turn to interrogate and a dream is not more evanescent. But still she struggled with it. A silence, an attitude, a combination purely atmospheric had evoked a charm, and though memory declined to return and undo the spell, still she labored until at last, conscious of the futility of the effort, or else wearied by the endeavor, she consoled herself as in similar circumstances we all of us have done with the mirage of anterior life.

The possibility of recognition she then put behind her, but the man remained. There was a magnificence about him which disconcerted her, an air that appealed. In some way his evening dress had seemed an incongruity. She told herself that he would look better in a silken pourpoint, and better still in the chlamys-robe of state. She decided that he needed a dash of color, some swirling plume of red, and fell to wondering what his life had been. It was evident to her that he had been gently bred. About him the feminine influence was discernible, one no doubt which begun at the cradle had continued ever since. In the absence of a mother there had been someone else, a sister, perhaps, and a procession of sweethearts to whom he had been swain. But the latter possibility she presently dismissed. Lovemaking is the occupation of those that have none, and Arnswald’s hours were seemingly well-filled. In Salem he might have left a combustible maiden, he might even have found one in New York, but in that case Eden felt tolerably sure that he had little time in which to apply the match. And then at once her fancy took a tangential flight; a little romance unrolled before her⁠—the mating of Arnswald to some charming girl whom she would herself discover, and the lifelong friendship that would ensue.

On the following afternoon therefore, when the young man put in an appearance, he was received with unaffected cordiality.

“I have been thinking about you,” Eden announced, when he found a seat. “I am glad you came, I want you to tell me more of yourself.”

“I reproached myself for having exhausted your patience last evening,” he answered.

“Then you deserve to be punished. You go with us to the opera tomorrow, do you not? Very good, you must dine with us first. There is a friend of mine whom you will meet there. I want you to like her.”

“If she resembles you in any way that will not be difficult.”

“He begins well,” mused Eden, and a layer of cordiality dropped from her. But presently she recovered it. Arnswald had been looking in her face, and the change in its expression had not passed unobserved.

“I mean,” he continued, “that there are people that make you like them at first sight and you, Mrs. Usselex, are one of those people. When I left you last evening I told myself that you exhaled a sympathy which is as rare as it is delightful. I have met few such as you. As a rule the people I have been brought in contact with have been hard and self-engrossed. You are among the exceptions, and it is the exception⁠—”

Eden interrupted him. “Now that is nonsense,” she said severely. “The people whom we can like are not as infrequent as all that. Do you mean to tell me that there is no one for whom you really care?”

Arnswald shook his head and smiled. “No, Mrs. Usselex,” he answered, “I don’t mean to say that. There are some for whom I care very much. There is even one for whom were it necessary I would lay down life itself.”

At this Eden experienced a mental start. The possibility of mating him to some charming girl whom she was herself to discover had suddenly become remote. But she nodded encouragingly to the confidence.

“Yes,” he continued, and into his polar-eyes came a sudden flicker. “Yes, there is one whom I have recently come to know and who is to me as a prayer fulfilled. Were I called upon to make a sacrifice for her, no matter what the nature of that sacrifice might be, the mere doing of it would constitute a wellspring of delight.”

Eden smiled at the dithyramb as were she listening to some fay she did not see. Arnswald had been looking at her, but now, as though ashamed of the outburst, he affected a little laugh and dropped back into the conventional. Presently he rose and took his polar-eyes away. When he had gone Eden smiled again. “He may have the genius of finance,” she mused, “but he has the genius of love as well.”

III

Eden had but recently returned to town and the claims of mantua-makers and milliners were oppressive. They took her time, they came to her in the morning, and she, with the courtesy of kings, returned the visit in the afternoon. But to little purpose. They were vexatious people, she discovered. They deceived her wantonly. They promised and did not fulfill. The livelong day they had irritated her, they had obtained her confidence by false pretences, and now, after a round of interviews each more profitless than the last, on reaching her house the dust of shops was on her mantle, and she could have gone in a corner and sworn.

Moreover it was late, dinner would presently be served. Arnswald, she learned, had already arrived, he was in the parlor with her husband, and as she hurried to her room she told herself that she would have to dress in haste, an operation which to her was always fertile in annoyance. An entire hour was never too much. But her maid was agile, dexterous of hand, and before the clock marked seven she was fully equipped, arrayed for dinner and the opera as well.

On leaving the room, Eden left her vexation behind her. It had been fleeting and inoffensive as the anger of a canary. And now, on descending the stairs, she was in great good spirits again, the crimes of mantua-makers and milliners were forgotten, and she prepared to meet her husband and her guest. Halfway on her journey to the drawing room, however, she discovered that she was empty-handed; she had omitted to take a fan and she called to her maid to bring her one. And as she called the front doorbell rang. She hesitated a second, and called again. But presumably the maid did not hear. Thereupon Eden re-ascended the stairs and went back to her room.

The maid was busying herself in a closet and the fan was on the table; Eden picked it up, and as she did so she noticed that one of the sticks was broken. It took several minutes to find another which suited her gown, and when she again descended the stair some little time had intervened.

On reaching the parlor she drew the portiere aside and peered into the room. At the furthermost end stood Arnswald, his back turned to her, and near him in a low armchair was her husband. He seemed to be reading something, and it was evident that her entrance had been unobserved either by him or by his guest.

For a second’s space Eden stood very still. There was much of the child in her nature, and during that second she meditated on the feasibility of giving them both some little surprise. Then at once, as though impelled by invisible springs, she crossed the room very swiftly, very noiselessly, her fan and the fold of her dress in one hand, the other free for mischief, and just when she reached the chair in which her husband sat, she bent over him, from his unwarned fingers she snatched a note, and with a rippling laugh that was like the shiver of sound on the strings of a guitar, she waved it exultingly in the air.

Mr. Usselex looked up at once, but he had looked too late; the note had gone from him. He started, he made a movement to repossess himself of it, but Eden, with the ripple still in her voice, stepped back, laughed again, and nodded to Arnswald, who had turned and bowed. “What is it?” she cried; “what have you two been concocting? No, you don’t,” she continued. Her voice was unsteady with merriment, her eyes wickedly jubilant. Usselex had made another attempt to recapture the letter, and flaunting it, Tantalus-fashion, above her head, she defied and eluded him, gliding backwards, her head held like a swan’s, a trifle to one side. “No, you don’t,” she repeated, and still the laughter rippled from her.

“Eden!” her husband expostulated, “Eden⁠—”

“You shall not have it, sir; you shall not.” And with a pirouette she fluttered yet further away, the bit of paper held daintily and aloft between forefinger and thumb. “Tell me this instant what you have been doing all day. There, you needn’t look at Mr. Arnswald. He won’t help you. Will you, Mr. Arnswald? Of course you won’t.”

Usselex, conscious of the futility of pursuit, made no further effort. In his face was an anxiety which his fair tormentor did not see. Once he turned to Arnswald, and Arnswald gave him an answering glance, and once his lips moved, but whatever he may have intended to say the words must have stuck in his throat. And Eden, womanlike, seeing that she was no longer pursued, advanced to a spot just beyond his reach, where she hovered tauntingly, yet wary of his slightest movement and prepared at the first suspicion of reprisal to spread her wings in flight.

“And who do you suppose was here at lunch today? You must guess or you shan’t have your letter back. I’ll give you just one minute. Oh! I saw Laura Manhattan at Fantasia’s. Don’t forget that we are to dine with her tomorrow. She came in to row about a dress. I was rowing, too. You have no idea what a day I have had. You will have to give Fantasia a talking to. Look at the frippery I have on. And she promised that I should have something for tonight. There ought to be some punishment for such people. Don’t you think so, Mr. Arnswald? When people in Wall Street don’t keep their promises, they are put in jail, aren’t they? Well, jail is too good for that horrid old French-woman of a dressmaker, she ought to have the thumbscrews, the rack, and the hot side of the fagot. I will never believe her again, no, not even when I know she is telling the truth. She is the most ornamental liar I ever encountered. It is my opinion she would rather lie than not. Laura told me⁠—but here, the minute’s up⁠—you must guess, you must guess rightly, and you can only guess once.”

And Eden waved the letter again and laughed in her husband’s beard.

The gown which she wore, and which she had characterized as frippery, was an artful combination of tulle and of silk; it was colorless, yet silvery, and in it Eden, bare of arm and of neck, looked a water nymph garmented in sheen and foam. From her hair came an odor of distant oases. In her eyes were evocations of summer, and beneath them, on her cheeks and on the lobes of her ears, health had placed its token in pink. The corners of her mouth were upraised like the ends of the Greek bow, and now that she was laughing her lips suggested a red fruit cut in twain. She was the personification of caprice, adorably constructed, and constructed to be adored. Arnswald evidently found her appearance alluring, for his eyes followed her every movement.

“Hurry up,” she continued, as merrily as before; “the minute’s gone.”

Usselex may have been annoyed, but he affected to enter into the jest. “Your father⁠—” he hazarded, and stretched his hand for the note.

But Eden again retreated. “You have lost,” she cried; “no one was here.” And finding herself at a safe distance, “I am a better guesser than you,” she added, “I can tell what is in this letter without reading it. Now answer me, what will you give me if I do? What ought he to give me, Mr. Arnswald? Prompt him, can’t you? I have never seen anyone so stupid.”

“Give it to me, Eden; you shall make your own terms⁠—”

“Ah! you capitulate, do you? It’s too late! It’s too late!” she repeated in ringing crescendo. “You ought to have guessed;” and for greater safety she held the letter behind her. “It’s about stocks, Kansas-back bonds, seven sights offered and nothing bid⁠—I have guessed right, have I not?”

“Eden⁠—”

“Answer me; I have guessed right, I know I have.” And laughing still, she whisked the letter from behind her and held it to her eyes. “Why, it’s from a woman,” she cried. “What is this? ‘You have filled my life with living springs.’ Whose life have you filled?”

The merriment had deserted her lips, the color had gone from her cheeks. The hand which held the letter fell with it to her side. In her face was the contraction of pain. She looked at her husband. “Whose life is it that you have filled?” she asked, and her voice, that had rippled with laughter a moment before, became suddenly chill and subdued.

In the doorway before her the butler appeared in silent announcement that dinner was served.

Arnswald made a step forward. “The letter is mine, Mrs. Usselex,” he said, “I⁠—”

“Oh,” she murmured, with a sigh that might have been accounted one of relief. “Oh, it is yours, is it?” And eying him inquisitorially for a second’s space, she placed the letter in his hand.

“We may as well go in to dinner,” she added at once, and with a glance at her husband she led the way.

IV

In Dogian days there was a Libro d’Oro in which the First Families of Venice were inscribed in illuminated script. In New York there is also a Golden Book, unwritten, yet voiced, and whoso’s name appears thereon has earned the cataloguing not from the idlesse of imbecile forefathers, but from shrewdness in coping with the public, forethought in the Stock Exchange, and prescience in the values of land and grain.

At the opera that night the aristocrats of the New World were in full force. Among them were men who could not alone have wedded the Adriatic but have dowered her as well. Venice in her greatest splendor had never dreamed such wealth as theirs. There was Jabez Robinson, his wife and children, familiarly known as the Swiss Family Robinson, the founder of their dynasty having emigrated from some Helvetian vale. A lightning calculator might have passed a week in the summing up of their possessions. There was old Jerolomon, who through the manipulation of monopolies exhaled an odor of Sing Sing, the which had been so attractive to the nostrils of an English peer that he had taken his daughter as wife. There was Madden, who controlled an entire state. There was Bucholz, who declared himself Above the Law, and who had erupted in New York three decades before with the seven sins for sole capital. There was Bleecker Bleecker, who each year gave away a pope’s ransom to charity and pursued his debtors to the grave. There was Dunwoodie, whose coat smelled of benzine and whose signature was potent as a king’s. There was Forbush, who lunched furtively on an apple and had given a private establishment to each one of his twelve children. There was Gwathmeys, who had twice ruined himself for his enemies and made a fortune from his friends. There was Attersol, who could have bought the White House and whose sole pleasures were window-gardening and the accord of violins.

On the grand-tier was Mrs. Besalul, on whom society had shut its door because she had omitted to close her own. In an adjoining box was Mrs. Smithwick, the bride of a month, fairer than that queen whose face was worth the world to kiss, and who the previous winter had written a novel of such impropriety that when it was published her mother forbade her to read it. There was Miss Pickett, a debutante, who possessed the disquieting ugliness of a monkey and who had announced that there was nothing so immoral as ennui. There was Mrs. Bouvery, who claimed connection with everyone whose name began with Van. Mrs. Hackensack, one of the few surviving Knickerbockers. The Coenties twins, known as Dry and Extra Mumm. And there were others less interesting. Mrs. Ponder, for instance, famous for her musicales, which no one could be bribed to attend. Mrs. Skolfield, who was so icy in her manner that a poet who had once ventured her way, had caught a cold in his head which lasted a week. Mrs. Nevers, mailed in diamonds; Mrs. Goodloe, mailed in pearls; and a senator’s wife in a bonnet.

The only empty box in the house was owned by Mr. Incoul, then abroad on his honeymoon.

And in and out through these boxes sauntered a contingent of men, well-groomed, white of glove, and flowered as to their buttonholes. Among them was Harry Tandem, who had inaugurated silver studs. Brewster, who had invented a new figure for the cotillion, and with him Harrison Felton, the maestro of that decadent dance. There was George Rerick, who stuttered to the débutantes as he had stuttered to their mothers before them. Furman Fellowes, who told fairy tales to impressionable young girls, and who would presently get drunk in Sixth Avenue. Jack Rodney, M.F.H., and Alphabet Jones, the novelist, in search of points.

As Eden entered the vestibule of her box the curtain had parted on the second act. A Miss Bolten and her mother whom she had invited had already arrived, and Arnswald, she noticed, went immediately forward to salute them; then returning, he assisted her with her wrap. In a moment the vestibule was invaded by Jones; and Eden, after a word or two to her guests, settled herself in the front of the box and promenaded her opera-glass about the house. The promenade completed, she lowered it to the stalls. Near the orchestra a woman sat gazing fixedly at her. There was nothing remarkable about the woman. She was as well dressed, as young, and as pretty as were the majority of those present; it was the singularity of her attitude that arrested Eden’s attention. But that attention she was not permitted to prolong. The adjoining box, the occupants of which she had not yet noticed, was tenanted by Mrs. Manhattan, who now claimed her recognition with some little feminine word of greeting. On one side of Mrs. Manhattan was an elderly man whom Eden did not remember to have seen before, and behind her stood Dugald Maule.

“Eden,” whispered Mrs. Manhattan, “I want you to know Mr. Maule’s uncle; he has been minister abroad you know;” and so saying, with a motion of her head, she designated the elderly man at her side. “He says,” she added, “that you are the most appetizing thing he has seen.”

At the brusqueness of the remark Eden started as from a sting. The old gentleman leaned forward.

“Don’t be annoyed, my dear,” he mumbled; “I was in love with your mother.”

Then with an amiable commonplace the old beau bowed and moved back.

Maule bowed also, and presently, taking advantage of a recitative, he left Mrs. Manhattan and entered Eden’s box. He seemed at home at once. He shook Mr. Usselex by the hand, saluted Miss Bolten and her mother, ignored Jones, and dislodging Arnswald, took his seat.

“The season promises well,” he whispered confidentially to Eden.

Jones, who had not accorded the slightest attention to Maule, was discoursing in an animated fashion with Miss Bolten. On the stage in a canvas forest a man stood, open-mouthed, raising and lowering his right arm at regular intervals; and next to her Eden caught the motion of Mrs. Manhattan’s fan.

“No,” she heard Jones say, “I have every reason to doubt that Shakespeare was the author of Hamlet. In the first place⁠—”

“Ah!” murmured Miss Bolten. She did not appear particularly interested in Jones or in the man on the stage. She was occupied in scrutinizing the occupants of the different boxes. “And whom do you suspect?” she asked, her eyes foraging an opposite baignoire.

“Another man with the same name,” Jones answered, and laughed a little to himself.

Eden tapped him on the sleeve. “Mr. Jones.”

“Yes, Mrs. Usselex.”

“Look in the orchestra, in the third row, the aisle seat on the left.”

“Yes, Mrs. Usselex.”

“There is a woman looking up here. She has just turned her head. Do you see her?”

“That woman with the blonde hair?”

“Yes; do you know her?”

“No, I can’t say I know her. But I know who she is⁠—”

“Who is she?”

“She has an apartment at the Ranleigh. Her name is Mrs. Feverill. She is a grass widow; rather fly, I fancy⁠—”

“H’m;” said Eden, “I am sure I don’t know what you mean by ‘fly.’ There, it isn’t necessary to explain⁠—” She turned her head⁠—“Mr. Arnswald, would you mind getting me my cloak, there seems to be a draught.”

Arnswald, who had been loitering in the rear of the box, went back into the vestibule in search of the garment.

On the stage the tenor in green and gold was still gesticulating, open-mouthed as before, and presently there came a blare of trumpets, a shudder of brass, dominated by the cry of violins, and abruptly the curtain fell.

Arnswald advanced with the cloak, and Jones stood up. The latter said some parting word to Miss Bolten and to her mother, bent over Eden’s hand and left the box. Arnswald dropped in the seat which he had vacated. It was evident at once that he and Miss Bolten had met before. He had leaned forward, and was whispering in her ear.

“Eden,” Maule began, “do you remember that ring you gave me?”

“Mr. Maule, you forget many things⁠—”

“Why do you call me Mr. Maule? there was a time⁠—”

“Yes, there was a time, as you say; but that time is no longer.”

“You have something against me.”

“I? Nothing in the world.”

“Ah, but Eden, you have, though; that is evident: when I last saw you⁠—”

“The next day I learned your reputation. It is deplorable.”

“When I last saw you you gave me a ring. A serpent with its tail in its mouth. You said it meant eternity.”

“Yes, I know I did; but⁠—”

“Did it mean nothing as well?”

“A circle represents zero, does it not?”

“Eden, Eden, how cruel you can be! Will you not let me see you?”

“Certainly, I am at home on Saturdays.”

“Yes, I know⁠—Saturday is Fifth Avenue day. Eden, tell me, do you remember Second Avenue?”

From the orchestra came a murmur, a consonance of harps and of flutes. The curtain had parted again.

“No,” she answered; “I have forgotten.”

“Surely⁠—”

“Yes, I have forgotten. It is good to forget. This is the last act, is it not?”

“No, it is the prologue.”

The speech was as significant as her own. For a second he was silent, and bit his underlip. Then, as Jones had done before, he stood up.

“I will come,” he muttered in her ear, “but not on Saturday.”

“Good night, Mr. Maule.”

“Good night, Mrs. Usselex.”

With a circular salute to the other occupants, Maule left the box. Presently it was invaded by other visitors of whom no particular mention is necessary. At last there was a wail and final crash in the orchestra. The opera was done.

On the way home Usselex questioned his wife. “Who is that man Maule?” he asked.

“Miss Bolten is interested in him, I believe.”

“I hope not,” Usselex returned; “he has a bad face.”

V

The next morning Eden awoke in her great room that overlooked Fifth Avenue. The night had been constellated with dreams, and now as they faded from her there was one that lingered behind. Through a rift of consciousness she had seen herself talking with feverish animation to Arnswald, on some subject of vital importance, the which, however, she was unable to recall; it had gone with the night, leaving on the camera of memory only the tableau behind. For a little space she groped after it unavailingly, and then dismissed it from her. But still the tableau lingered until it became obscured by her own vexation. She felt annoyed as at an impertinence. What right had Arnswald to trespass in her dreams?

She rang the bell, and when in answer to the summons her maid appeared, she gave herself up to the woman’s ministrations. The annoyance faded as the dream had done, and she fell to thinking of the day and of her husband. At one there was a luncheon at which she was expected, and in the evening there was a dinner at Mrs. Manhattan’s. Her husband, she knew, had gone to his office hours ago and would not return until late. It had occurred to her before that he worked harder than his clerks; even Arnswald seemed to have more leisure than he. But on this particular forenoon, when her equipment was completed, but one idea channeled her ruminations, and that was that if her husband worked harder than his clerks, it was because of her.

She smiled a little at the thought, and then at herself in the mirror. Truly the guests at the luncheon might have been recruited from the four quarters of the globe, and few could be fairer than she. She was contented with her appearance, not in any sense because it might eclipse that of other women, but because he was proud of it, and because his pride and laborious days were all in all for her. She gave to her gown and to the arrangement of her hair that coup de maître which no maid, however expert, is able to administer, and presently had herself driven up the avenue to the house at which she was to be entertained.

The luncheon, as the phrase is, went off very well. Made up of fresh gossip and new dishes, it was stupid yet agreeable, as women’s luncheons are apt to be. But on leaving it Eden felt depressed. It was the first of the kind which in her quality of married woman she had attended, and as her carriage rolled down the avenue again, she wondered were it possible that such things as she heard could be true, the story that had been told about Viola Raritan, for instance, and the general agreement following it that married men were the worst.2 Surely, she told herself, they might be, all of them indeed save one, who was above reproach. As for her recent companions, they discredited virtue in seeming to possess it. At the memory of things they had implied, the color mounted to her cheeks.

On the opposite sidewalk a girl was loitering. For a second, Eden, through the open window, eyed her gown. She raised some flowers to her face, and when she put them down again her face was white. Through the window she had seen a cab pass, and in the cab her husband and a woman.

In a conflict of emotions such as visit those who learn the dishonor and the death of one they cherished most, Eden reached her door. She left the carriage before the groom had descended from the box, and hurried into the house. There she entered the drawing room and sought for a moment to collect her thoughts. It was impossible, she kept telling herself, that such a thing could be. She had been mistaken; it was not her husband that she had seen, and if it were her husband then was he on some errand as innocent as her own. But it was her husband. The effort she was making to deceive herself was useless as broken glass. And as for the woman with whom he was driving, what had he to do with her or she with him? She was certain she had seen her face before.

In her nervousness she rose from her seat and paced the room, tearing her gloves off and tossing them from her as she walked.

In the lives of most of us there are hours of such distress that in search of a palliative we strive as best we may to cheat ourselves into thinking that the distress is but a phase of our own individual imagination, close-locked therein, barred out of real existence, and unimportant and delusive as the creations of dream. And as Eden paced the room she tried to feel that her distress was but a figment of fancy, an illusory representation evoked out of nothing. She had been enervated by the gossip of the lunch-table; a child startled by the possible horrors of a dark closet was never more absurd than she. It was nonsense to suppose that a man such as her husband could be capable of a vulgar intrigue.

On the mantel a clock ticked dolently, as though in sympathy with her woe, and presently to her inattentive ears, it rang out four times. In an hour, she reflected, in two hours at most, he would return. She would ask him where he had been, and everything would be explained. It was nonsense for her to torment herself. Of course it would be explained, and meanwhile⁠—

And as she determined that meanwhile she would give the matter no further thought the butler entered the room, bearing a note on a salver, which he gave to her and withdrew. The superscription was in her husband’s handwriting and she pulled the envelope apart, confident that the explanation for which she sought was contained therein. But in it no explanation was visible. It was dated from Wall Street. “Dearest Eden,” it ran, “I am detained on business. Send excuses to Mrs. Manhattan. In haste, as ever, J. U.”

“Detained on business,” she repeated aloud very firmly and pressed her hand to her head. She was calm, less agitated than she had been before. It behooved her to determine what she should do. Seemingly, but one course was open to her, and suddenly she perceived that she had stopped thinking. Night had seized and surrounded her; it was of this, perhaps, that she had spoken to Arnswald in her dream.

In the morning her faith had been unobscured, confident as a flower at dawn. Then doubt had come, and now, as the afternoon departed, so did all belief as well. It was no more hers to recall than the promise of an earlier day. She had done her best to detain it, she had clutched it; but she had questioned, and faith is impatient of coercion and restless if examined. Save its own fair face it brings no letter of introduction; welcome it for that, and it is at once at home; but look askance, and it dissolves into a memory and a reproach. Eden had startled it, unwittingly perhaps; but she had startled it none the less. It had watched its opportunity as a guest illy treated may watch for his; and when suspicion, like the lackey that it is, had held the door ajar, it had eluded her and gone.

Automatically, as though others than herself guided her movement, Eden touched a bell. “Harris,” she said, when the man appeared, “go to Mrs. Manhattan’s and say that Mr. Usselex and myself are unavoidably prevented from dining with her tonight. That will do.” And this order delivered, she resumed her former seat. Down the street she marked advancing dusk. The sun had sunk in cataracts of champagne. Westward the sky was like the apotheosis in Faust, green-barred and crimson, with background of oscillant yellow. The east was already grey. Overhead was a shade of salmon which presently disappeared. Then dusk came, and with it a colorless vapor through which Night, cautious at first as misers are, displayed one sequin, then another, till taking heart it unbarred all its treasury to the world.

For some time after the man had gone Eden remained in the drawing room. She found her gloves and drew one on again, but the other she tormented abstractedly in her hand. In her enforced inaction she fell to consoling herself as children do, arguing with discomfiture as though its shadow was ineffectual, as though trouble and she were face to face, and yet too far removed one from another to ever really meet. An hour passed, and still she sat unassured, restless of thought and conscious only that an encroaching darkness had obscured a vista on which her eyes had loved to dwell.

Truly the heart has logic that logic does not know, and as Eden let the incidents of the afternoon and of the previous evening parade in dumb show before her, something there was that kept whispering that she was taking appearances for facts. She strove to listen to the whisper, but the fantoches were froward and insistent; the sturdier her effort to dispel them the closer they swarmed. Sometimes of their own accord they would leave her, she would think herself done with them, her eyes filled in testimony to her deliverance, and abruptly back they came. But still the whisper persisted, it was growing potent, and its voice was clear. It kept exhorting to patience, it exorcised appearances, and advanced little pleas of its own.

Eden was only too willing to be guided. “I am impatient,” she mused, “but I will wait.”

Another hour limped away, and though an hour limps it may leave a balm behind. The lamps in the drawing room had been lighted, but the servant had come and gone unobserved. Eden was still closeted in herself. “Surely, by eleven at the latest he will return,” she reflected, “and then all will be explained. It is a thankless task this of building imaginary dungeons. There are hours in which I let fancies resolve themselves into facts and the facts fossilize into skeletons.” An episode of her girlhood came back to her and she smiled. “Perhaps father was right; I may have hemiopia, after all.”

She stood up from her seat and was about to leave the room when she heard the front door open, and in a second her husband’s step.

Eden drew the portiere aside and looked out in the hall. Usselex had his back to her. He was taking off his overcoat. She spoke to him and he turned at once, one arm still unreleased. At last he freed himself and came to her.

“You got my note, did you not?” he began. “I am sorry about this evening. Could you not go to Mrs. Manhattan’s without me? Something always seems to turn up at the last moment.”

“I hardly expected you so early,” Eden answered. “I sent word to Laura.” She was looking at her husband, but her husband was not looking at her. He seemed preoccupied and nodded his head abstractedly.

“Yes, yes,” he muttered, with singular inappositeness. “Yes, of course. But there,” he added and turned again to the door, “I must hurry.”

“Whom were you with this afternoon?” Eden asked.

It was as though she had checked him with a rein. He stopped at once and glanced at her.

“Did you see me?” he inquired; and accepting her silence for answer he continued at once: “It’s a long story; I have hardly time to tell it now.”

Eden put her hand on his sleeve. “Tell it me,” she pleaded.

For the moment he stood irresolute. “Tell me,” she repeated, and moved back, motioning him to a chair.

Usselex took out his watch. “I must hurry,” he said again. “But there,” he added tenderly, “since you wish it, a moment lost is small matter, after all.”

Again he glanced at her and hesitated as though expectant of a respite. Eden had her everyday air; outwardly she was calm, but something in her appearance, the twitch of an eyelid, the quiver of a nostril perhaps, revealed her impatience.

Usselex shrugged his shoulders, and for a second, with a gesture that was habitual to him, he plucked at his beard. “No,” he repeated, “a moment is small matter, after all. H’m. Eden, some years ago I went abroad. During my absence a cashier whom I trusted, and whom I would trust again, speculated with money that passed through his hands. It was not until my return that I learned of the affair. But meanwhile, as is usual in such cases, he was on the wrong side of the market. The money which he had taken had to be accounted for. I had a partner then, and the cashier confessed the defalcation to him; it was the only thing he could do, and he promised, I believe, that if time were given him he would make good the loss. The amount after all was not large⁠—fifteen thousand perhaps, or twenty at the outside. But my partner was not lenient. He came of a line of New England divines, and had, if I remember rightly, at one time contemplated studying for the ministry. In any event he was then an elder in some uptown Presbyterian church. But virtue is not amiable. Without so much as communicating with me he put the matter in the hands of the authorities, and when I returned the cashier was in Sing Sing. Eden, you will hardly understand how sorry I was. He had a wife dependent on him⁠—he had children. He had been with me longer than my partner had, and I liked him. Of the two I liked him the better. What he took I have never been able to view as a theft. It was what might be called a forced loan. Had I been here it would have been different; but my partner was obdurate. You see, the fault, if fault there were, was mine. The salary I gave him was small, and each day I allowed temptation to pass between his hands. People say that we should resist temptation. I agree with them; temptation should be resisted; but when a rich man preaches that sermon to the poor, he forgets that where temptation is vague to him it may be potent to his hearer. Oh, I don’t mean to uphold derelictions, but to my thinking Charity is the New Testament told in a word. I think that forgiveness is the essence of the teaching of every founder of an enduring creed. However, that is not to the point. The fact remained, the cashier was sent to Sing Sing, and since then I have done what I could to get him out. It was his wife that I was with today. Poor girl! I have been sorry for her; she is but little older than you, and she has had trials to bear such as might have sent another to worse than the grave.” He paused, and plucking again at his beard, he looked down at the rug. Eden needed no assurance to feel that his words were heart-whole and sincere. She moved to where he stood and touched him on the arm.

“Don’t tell me any more,” she said, and as she spoke there came to her voice a tremulousness that was as unusual as it was sweet. “You must let me help her, too.”

“Yes, Eden, that I will. It is good of you to speak that way. It is not only good, it is Edenesque. But let me tell you the rest. Governor Blanchford is in town. I went yesterday to the Buckingham, where he is stopping. He could only see me for a moment then, and this afternoon I went again with her. I am to dine with him this evening. When he returns to Albany I think the pardon will be signed.” Again he paused and looked at his watch. “I must dress,” he added; “will you forgive me⁠—?”

“Forgive you!” she cried, “it is your turn, now: forgive me.”

Usselex moved from her, her hand still in his, and when their arms were fully outstretched, he turned and holding her to him he kissed her on either cheek.

As he left the room Eden could have danced with delight. She ran to the piano and with one hand still gloved she struck out clear notes of joy. Presently, she too left the room, and prepared for dinner. When the meal was served she ate it in solitude, but the solitude was not irksome to her; it was populous with recovered dreams. Among the dishes that were brought her was one of terrapin, which she partook of with an art of her own; and subsequently, in a manner which it must have been a pleasure to behold, she nibbled at a peach⁠—peaches and terrapin representing, as everyone knows, the two articles of food which are the most difficult to eat with grace.

Later, when the meal was done, Eden returned to the drawing room. Mrs. Manhattan was unregretted. The summer had been fertile enough in entertainments to satiate her for a twelvemonth. She had come and gone, eaten and fasted, danced and driven, with no other result than the discovery that the companionship of her husband was better than anything else. To her thinking he needed only an incentive to conquer the ballot. There was no reason why he should not leave Wall Street for broader spheres. She had met senators by the dozen, and he was wiser than them all. He might be Treasurer of State if he so willed, or failing that, minister to the Court of St. James. Even an inferior mission such as that to the Hague or to Brussels would be better than the Street. It was inane, she told herself, to pass one’s life in going down town and coming up again merely that another million might be put aside. An existence such as that might be alluring to Jerolomon or Bleecker Bleecker, but for her husband there were other summits to be scaled.

And as Eden, prettily flushed by the possibilities which her imagination disclosed spectacular-wise for her own delight, sat companioned by fancies, determining, if incentive were necessary, that incentive should come from her, the portiere was drawn aside and the butler announced Mr. Arnswald.

“I ventured to come in,” he said, apologetically, “although I knew Mr. Usselex was not at home. I wanted⁠—”

“One might have thought your evenings were otherwise occupied,” Eden interrupted, a little fiercely. The intercepted note of the preceding evening rankled still. That the young man should receive a letter from a strange woman was, she admitted to herself, a matter which did not concern her in the slightest. But it was impertinent on his part to suffer that letter to be sent to him at her house.

“This evening, however, as you see⁠—” he began blandly enough, but Eden interrupted him again.

“What did you think of it last night?” she asked, with the inappositeness that was peculiar to her.

“You are clairvoyant enough, Mrs. Usselex, to know untold what I thought. It was of that I wished to speak to you. It is rare that such an opportunity is given me.”

“To hear Wagner?”

“No, not to hear Wagner particularly.” He hesitated and looked down at his pointed shoes, and at the moment Eden for the life of her could not help thinking of a dissolute young god arrayed in modern guise. After all, she reflected, it is probably the woman’s fault.

“No, not that,” he continued, and looked up at her again, his polar-eyes ablaze with unexpected auroras. “Not that; but think what it is for a man to love a woman, to divine that that love is returned, and yet to feel himself as far from her as death is from life. Think what it must be for him to love that woman so well that he would not haggle over ten years, no, nor ten hundred years of years, could he pass an hour with her, and then by way of contrast to find himself suddenly side by side with her, listening to such music as we heard last night.”

“Mr. Arnswald, you are out of your senses,” Eden exclaimed. A suspicion had entered her mind and declined to be dismissed.

“Am I not?” he answered. “Tell me that I am. I need to be told it. Yet last night, for the first time, it seemed to me that perhaps all might still be well. It was hope that I found with you, Mrs. Usselex; it was more than hope, it was life.”

And as his eyes rekindled, Eden told herself that his attitude could have but one signification.

“I’ll not play Guinevere to your Lancelot,” she murmured. And turning her back on him she left the room.

VI

The following day was unstarred by any particular luncheon, or at least by none at which Eden was expected. Her own repast she consumed in solitude, and as she rose again from the table, Mrs. Manhattan was announced.

Mrs. Manhattan was a woman of that class which grows rarer with the days. She was very clever and knew how to appear absolutely stupid. According to the circumstances in which she was placed, she could be frivolous or sagacious, worldly, and sensible. In fact, all things to all men. Born in Virginia, a Leigh of Leighton, she had married a rich and popular New Yorker. After marriage, and on removing to Fifth Avenue, she had the tact to leave her accent and her family tree behind. Her husband’s great-grandfather was lost in the magnificence of myth; her own figured in Burke. If Nicholas Manhattan had been a snob⁠—which he was not⁠—that fact would have constituted his sole grievance against her. But from Laura Leigh, of a North country descent and a feudal castle in Northumberland, never an allusion could be wrung. In marrying a New Yorker she espoused all New York, its customs, its prejudices, its morals, its vices, everything, even to the high pitch of its voice; and so well did she succeed in identifying herself with it and with its narrow localisms, that in a few years after her arrival, not to visit and be visited by Mrs. Nicholas Manhattan was to argue one’s self out into the nethermost limbo of insignificance.

Had Mrs. Manhattan been any other than herself, Eden would have sent back some femininely prevaricatory excuse. She was enervated still by the emotions of the preceding day, and her desire for companionship was slight. But Mrs. Manhattan was not only Mrs. Manhattan, she was a woman for whom Eden entertained a quasi-filial, quasi-sororal affection. She went forward therefore at once, her hands outstretched to greet.

On ordinary occasions it was Mrs. Manhattan’s custom to salute Eden with a kiss, but on this particular afternoon she contented herself with taking the outstretched hands in her own, holding Eden, as it were, at arms length.

“You abominable little beauty,” she began, “what did you mean by leaving me in the lurch last night? I came here expecting to find you in bed with the doctor. Mais pas du tout. Madame s’embellit à vu d’œil.”

“Laura, dear,” Eden answered, when they had found seats, “don’t be annoyed at me. I wanted very much to come. But you know the proverb: man proposes⁠—”

“⁠—And woman accepts. Yes, I know; go on.”

“Well, I simply couldn’t help it.”

“Couldn’t help it! What do you mean by saying you couldn’t help it? Don’t sit there with your back to the light; I want to look at you. Eden, as sure as my name is Laura Leigh, something has gone wrong with you. What business have you, at your age, to have circles under your eyes?”

“Presumably because I was unable to get to your dinner. I am really sorry, Laura. Did you have many people?”

“Of course I didn’t. Nicholas won’t let me give large dinners. There were only eighteen of us. I suppose I could have got the Boltens to come and take your place. But then you know how people are. Unless you invite them a fortnight in advance they think they are asked to fill up⁠—as they are. H’m! I was mad enough. Nicholas was to have taken you in, and by way of compensation you were to have had your old flame, Dugald Maule, on the other side of you. Parenthetically, it is my opinion that he loves you still⁠—beyond the tomb, as they love in Germany. However, that is not to the point; the dinner was a failure. Afterwards we all went to the Amsterdams; all of us, that is, except Jones, who said he had an engagement, which meant I suppose, that he was not expected.”

“Jones, the novelist?”

“Yes, Alphabet Jones. Personally he is as inoffensive as a glass of lemonade, but I can’t bear his books. He uses words I don’t understand, and tells of things that I don’t want to. Nicholas, however, will have him.”

And at the thought of her husband’s tyranny, Mrs. Manhattan shrugged her shoulders and gazed complacently in her lap.

“Laura, I don’t believe your dinner was a failure.”

“Well, not exactly a failure perhaps, but it is always upsetting to have people at the last moment send word that they can’t come. It is not only upsetting, it’s dangerous. It takes the flavor of the soup away. It makes everything taste bad.” And as Mrs. Manhattan said this she glared at Eden with the ferocity of an irritated Madonna. “Now tell me,” she continued, “what was the matter with you?”

“Really, Laura, it was nothing. I can’t tell you.” She hesitated a second and into the corners of her exquisite mouth there passed a smile. “I saw my husband in a cab with⁠—with⁠—”

“A woman?”

Eden stared at her friend with the astonishment of a gomeril at a contortionist. The smile left her lips.

“Did you see him too?” she asked.

“Why, no, you little simpleton, I didn’t see him; but I haven’t got a husband of my own for nothing.”

“Do you mean that your husband deceives you?”

“Deceives me? no, not a bit of it. He only thinks he does. Is that what has been the matter with you?”

“Laura⁠—”

“And was it because you caught your husband in a cab that you couldn’t come to dinner? But, heavens and earth! if other women were to act like you no one would even dare to attempt to entertain. As it is,” Mrs. Manhattan grumbled to herself, “the Mayor ought to pass an ordinance on the subject. He has little enough to do in return for his double lampposts.”

“No, Laura, how absurd you are!” Eden exclaimed. “John was detained on business.”

“Ah! I see.” And Mrs. Manhattan looked at her in a gingerly fashion out of the corner of one eye.

“Yes, he sent me word that he was detained on business and for me to send word to you.”

“That was most thoughtful of him. And it was after you got the note that the cab episode occurred?”

“No, it was just before.”

“Yes, yes, I can understand.” Mrs. Manhattan paused a moment. To anyone else save Eden the pause would have been significant. “H’m,” she went on, “business may mean other men’s money, or it may mean other men’s wives. I do hope, though, you were sensible enough not to mention anything about the lady and the cab.”

“Oh, but indeed, I did. He explained the whole thing at once.”

“From the cab window?”

“When he came back, I mean⁠—in the evening.”

“Some little time must have intervened.”

“Yes, two hours, I should judge.”

Mrs. Manhattan nodded. “Well,” she said, with an air of profound sapience, “no man ever talks to a woman for two hours unless he keeps saying the same thing all the time.”

“Laura, that is not like you. You know perfectly well that friendship can exist between a man and a woman without there being any thought of lovemaking.”

“Oh, I know what you are going to say. But there is the difference between love and friendship. To those who have witnessed a bullfight, the circus I hear is commonplace.”

“You mean to imply that my husband was enjoying a bullfight?”

“I don’t mean anything of the sort. But what a way you have of reducing generalities to particulars! No, I don’t mean that at all. I am speaking in the air. What I meant to imply was that love has consolations which friendship does not possess.”

“Laura, you don’t understand. It is not a question of that. This woman’s husband has got into trouble and John was trying to get him out.”

Mrs. Manhattan eyed her again in the same gingerly fashion as before. “He said that, did he?”

Eden nodded.

“I hope you pretended to believe him.”

“Pretended! Why, I did believe him. I believed him at once.”

“Yes, that’s a good way.” Mrs. Manhattan tormented the point of her nose reflectively. “I used to too,” she added. “Now I simply don’t see. That I find even better. It makes everything go so smoothly. No arguments, no recriminations, perfect peace. Nicholas, as you know, is the most delightful man in the world. I have the highest respect for him. If he took it into his head to leave the planet and me behind, I should feel it my duty as a Christian woman to see that the trappings of my woe were becoming to his memory. But⁠—but, well, I should feel that I had been vaccinated. I should feel that a minor evil had protected me from a greater one. In other words, I would not marry again. It is my opinion, an opinion I believe which is shared by a good many other people, that a woman who marries a second time does not deserve to have lost her first husband. Now, as I say of Nicholas, I have the greatest respect for him. He is charming. I haven’t the vaguest idea how he would get along without me. I do everything for him, but I am careful not to exact the impossible. We get along splendidly together. He makes the most elaborate efforts to throw dust in my eyes, and I aid him to the best of my ability, but I always know what he is up to. I can tell at a glance where he is in any affair. The moment he gives up his after-dinner cigar I can hear the fifes in the distance⁠—he is making himself agreeable to someone with whom he intends to pass the evening. The second stage is when he comes in of an afternoon with a rose in his buttonhole. That means that he has been sending flowers and that the siege is progressing. The third stage is when he begins to smoke again. That means that the castle has capitulated and further diplomacy is unnecessary. The fourth and final stage is when he says in an offhand way, ‘Laura, I saw some stones this afternoon at Tiffany’s.’ That means remorse and reward⁠—remorse at his own wickedness, and reward for my noninterference. There is nothing in the world that a man appreciates more than that. Yes, I certainly do my duty. Nicholas, as you know, was a widower when I married him. By his first wife he had one child and a great deal to put up with. Whereas, now⁠—why, Eden, what are you crying about?”

“I am not crying.” In a moment Eden had choked back a sob. Her eyes flashed the more brilliant for their tears, but her voice had lost its former gentleness, it had grown vibrant and resolute. “Laura, if he has deceived me, I will leave him.”

“If who has deceived you? Surely Nicholas⁠—”

“Laura, I am in no mood for jest. Last night I believed my husband, today I do not. If I can get proof, I leave him.”

“That is what we all say, but we don’t.”

“If he has deceived me⁠—”

“Eden, how foolish you are! No, but, Eden, you are simply childish. You are sunshine one minute and tornado the next. Why, I haven’t a doubt in the world but that Mr. Usselex was trying to get the cab-lady’s husband out of trouble. I haven’t the faintest doubt of it.”

“Nor had I before you came.”

“Oh, Eden, forgive me. What I said was idle chatter. There, do be your old sweet self again.”

Eden stood up and pinioned her forehead with her hands. “I wonder,” she exclaimed, “I wonder⁠—Laura, do you know that it is of a thing like this that hatred comes?”

“My dear, I had no idea that you were so much in love.”

But as she spoke there came into Eden’s face an expression so new and unlike her own, that Mrs. Manhattan started. “Sit down,” she said coaxingly. “Do sit down.” She took the girl’s hands in hers and drew her gently to the lounge on which she was seated. “Eden,” she continued, after a moment, “between ourselves, I think you are⁠—how shall I say?⁠—a little⁠—” And Mrs. Manhattan touched her forehead and nodded significantly.

“I? Not a bit.”

“So much the worse, then. It would be an excuse. Now listen to me. They say that when a woman gets to be thirty the first thing she does is to ignore her age, and that by the time she is forty it has escaped her memory entirely. I am not forty yet, but I am old enough⁠—well, I am old enough to be wiser than you, and I say this⁠—you can contradict it as much as you please, but I will say it all the same⁠—you have more pride in yourself than love for your husband.”

“Which means?”

“I mean this, that when pride gets the upper hand, love is bound to be throttled. In some, pride is a screen; behind it they rage at their ease: in others it is a bag of wind; prick it and behold, a tempest. With you, just at present, it is a screen; haven’t I seen you torment your rings ever since I came in? Well, torment them, but for goodness sake don’t change the screen into a balloon. There is nothing as bad form as that, and nothing as ineffectual. My dear, if you want to keep your husband, think of yourself not first, but last, or, if you can’t think in that way, act as though you did.”

“And be a hypocrite.”

“Eden, you are impossible. Be a hypocrite? Why, of course you must be a hypocrite. Hypocrisy is Christianity’s most admirable invention. Banish it, and what do you find? Not skeletons in the closet, but catacombs of distasteful things. No, Eden, be a hypocrite. We all are; everyone prefers it. There was a man once who got up in the morning with the idea of telling everybody the truth. By sunset he was safe in an asylum. People don’t want the truth; they content themselves with sighing for it; they know very well that when they get in its way, it bites. It is vicious, truth is. It makes us froth at the mouth. If you haven’t had the forethought to cuirass yourself with indifference, truth can cause a hydrophobia for which the only Pasteur is time. No, hypocrisy has had the sanction of pope and prelate. Let us hold to it; let us hold to what we may and not try to prove anything.”

“What are you talking about then?”

“How irritating you are, Eden! I am talking about you. I am trying to give you some advice. No one gave me any. I had to gather it on the way. I come here, and finding you melancholy as a comic paper, I try to offer the fruit of two decades of worldly experience, and instead of thanking me, you ask what I am talking about.” Mrs. Manhattan sank back in her ample folds and laughed. “Don’t you have any tea in this house?”

“You are right, Laura; I am irritating, I am absurd.” As she spoke, she left the lounge. The tragedy-air had departed. She rang the bell, gave the order for tea, and during the remainder of Mrs. Manhattan’s visit, comported herself so sagaciously that she succeeded in casting dust in that lady’s eyes in a manner which would have thrown that lady’s husband into stupors of admiration.

When her friend at last decided to take herself and her experience away, Eden remained in the drawing room. Down the adjacent corner she saw the sun decline. On the horizon it left an aigrette of gold. Then that disappeared. Day closed its window, and Night, that queen who reigns only when she falls, shook out the shroud she wears for gown.

How long Eden sat alone with her thoughts she could not afterwards recall. For some time she was conscious only of a speck of dust which Mrs. Manhattan had brought from the outer world and forgotten to remove. It was such a little speck that at first Eden had pretended not to see it, but when Mrs. Manhattan had been gone a few minutes it insisted on her attention. She could not help eying it, and the more closely she eyed it, the larger it grew. From dust it turned to dirt, from minim into mountain. And presently it obscured her sight and veiled her mind with shadows.

Strive as she might, she could not argue it away. She tried to reason with herself, as a neurosthene, aware of his infirmity, may reason with the phantasm which he himself has evoked. But this was a phantasm that no argument could coerce. Did she say, “You are unreal,” it answered, “I am Doubt.” At each effort she made to rout it, it loomed to greater heights.

In the tremor that beset her she groped in memory for a talisman. She recalled her husband’s wooing of her, his attitude and indulgent strength. Yet had not Mrs. Manhattan implied that men are double-faced? She thought of his laborious days, yet had not Mrs. Manhattan defined business as often synonymous with other men’s wives? She recalled his excuse and was mindful of Mrs. Manhattan’s interpretation.

At each new effort the doubt increased, and still she kept arguing with herself, until suddenly she perceived that she had stopped thinking. Doubt was pushing her down into an abyss where all was dark, and still she struggled, and still she struggled in vain; she was sinking; strength was leaving her, for doubt is masterful, till with a start she felt that she was safe. It was not in memory she found a talisman, but in her heart. It was her love that worked the spell. Love, and confidence in him whose name she bore. The mountain dissolved into minim, the dirt into dust, and she took the speck and blew it back into the shadows from which it had come.

VII

That evening Eden and her husband dined alone. But it was not till coffee was served and the servants left the room that either of them had an opportunity of exchanging speech on matters other than such as were of passing interest. For the rout which both were to attend that night Eden had already prepared. It was the initial Matriarch’s of the season, and rumor had it that it was to be a very smart affair. On this occasion the waiters, it was understood, were to be in livery; and an attempt had been made to give the rooms something of the aspect and aroma which appertains to a private house. As a consequence those of the gentler sex who were bidden had given some thought to their frocks, while those who were not had garmented themselves in their stoutest mantles of indifference.

On receiving the large bit of cardboard on which the invitation was engraved, Eden had at first determined to word and dispatch a regret. Entertainments of that kind had ceased to appeal to her. At gatherings of similar nature which she attended she had long since divided the male element into the youths who wished to seem older than they looked, and the mature individuals who wished to appear younger than they were; while as for the women, they reminded her of Diogenes looking for a man. On receiving the invitation she had, therefore, determined to send a regret, but on mentioning the circumstance to her husband he had expressed the desire that she should accept. He liked to have her admired, and moreover, though the function itself might be tiresome, still she owed some duty to society, and there were few easier ways in which that duty could be performed. Accordingly an acceptance was sent, and as a reward of that heroism Usselex had brought her a plastron of opals.

That plastron she now wore. Her gown, which was cut a trifle lower on the back than on the neck, was of a hue that suggested the blending of sulphur and of salmon. Her arms were cased in suede, into which she had rolled that part of the glove which covers the hand. Save for the wedding-token her fingers were ringless. She had nothing about her throat. But from shoulder to shoulder, from breast to girdle, was a cuirass of gems, flecked with absinthe and oscillant with flame. It was barbaric in splendor, Roman in beauty; it startled and captivated. And in it Eden looked the personified spirit of Bysance, a dream that had taken form. Her husband let his eyes have all their will of her. Even the butler was dazzled.

During the progress of the meal the presence of that person and of his underlings prevented any conversation of reportable interest. But while the courses were being served Eden noticed that her husband was in an unusually sprightly mood. He touched on one topic of the day, presently on another, and left that for a third. To each he gave a new aspect. It was as though he were tossing crystal balls. Now, when an educated man is not a pedant he can in discoursing about nothing at all exert a very palpable influence. Mr. Usselex talked like a philosopher who has seen the world. To many a woman there is nothing more wearisome than the conversation of a man who has nothing to desire and nothing to fear. That man is usually her husband. But with Eden it was different. She listened with the pleasure of a convalescent. She was just issuing from the little nightmare of the afternoon, and as he spoke, now and then she interrupted with some fancy of her own; but all the while deep down in the fibres of her being she felt a smart of self-reproach that mingled with exultation. Her suspicions had vanished. They had been born of the dusk and creatures of it. And she looked down through the opals into her heart and over at her husband and smiled.

The butler and his underlings had departed. The meal was done. Usselex smiled too. He left his seat and went behind her. He drew her head back, bent over, and kissed her on the lips; then mirroring his eyes in hers, he kissed her again, drew a chair to her side, and took her hand in his.

“Look at me, Eden,” he said. “I love your eyes. Speak to me. I love your voice. They say that at twenty a man loves best. They are wrong. Youth is inconstant. It is with age a man learns what love can be. Do you not think I know? Look at me and tell me. Eden, joy frightens. Sometimes I wonder that I had the courage to ask you to be my wife. Sometimes I fear you think me too old. Sometimes I fear you may regret. But you must never regret. Any man you might have met could be more attractive than I, but no one could care for you more; no one. Tell me; you believe that, do you not?”

And Eden, turning her head with the motion of a swan, answered, “I know it.”

“Eden,” he continued, “my life has not been pleasant. I have told you little of it. In the lives of everyone there are incidents that are best left buried. If I have been reticent it has not been from lack of confidence; it has been because I feared to distress you. For years I did not understand; the reason of pain is seldom clear. At times I thought my strength overtaxed. I accused fate; it had been wilful to me. It had beckoned me to pleasant places; when I reached them the meadows disappeared, the intervales were quagmires, and the palace I had espied was a prison, with a sword for bolt. I accused justice as I had accused fate. Eden, men are not always sincere. There are people who do wrong, who injure, wantonly, in sport. And so I accused justice: I had expected it to be human; but justice is straight as a bayonet, and her breasts are of stone. It was long before I understood, but when I saw you I did. What I had suffered was needful; it was a preparation for you. No, justice is never human, but sometimes it is divine.”

He had been speaking in a monotone, his voice sinking at times into a whisper, as though he feared some other than herself might hear his words. Eden’s hand still lay within his own, and now he stood up and led her, waist-encircled, to the outer room. There they found other seats, and for a moment both were silent.

“If I have not questioned you,” Eden said, at last, “it has been for a woman’s reason. I am content. Had you a grief, I would demand to share it with you. It would be my right, would it not? But of what has gone before I prefer to remain in ignorance. It is not that I am incurious. It is that I prefer to think of your life as I think of my own, that its beginning was our wedding-day. I too am some times afraid. There are things of which I also have been reticent. I remember once thinking that to be happy was a verb that had no present tense. I do not think so now,” she added, after a moment; and to her exquisite lips the smile returned. “There are so many things I want to tell,” she continued. “Before I met you I thought myself in love. Oh, but I did, though. And it was not until after I had known you that I found that which I had taken for love was not love at all. How did I know? Well⁠—you see, because that is not love which goes. And that went. It was for the man I cared, not the individual. At the time I did not understand, nor did I until you came. Truly I don’t see why I should speak of this. Every girl, I fancy, experiences the same thing. But when you came life seemed larger. You brought with you new currents. Do you know what I thought? People said I married you for money. I married you because⁠—what do you suppose, now? Because I loved you? But at that time I told myself I had done with love. No, it was not so much for that as because I was ambitious for us both. It was because I thought Wall Street too small for such as you. It was because I discerned in you that power which coerces men. It was because I believed in the future; it was because I trusted you. Yes, it was for that, and yet this afternoon⁠—What is it, Harris?”

A servant had entered the room, bearing a letter on a tray.

“A letter for you, sir,” he said.

Usselex took the note, opened the envelope, which he tossed on the table, and possessed himself of the contents.

“Is the messenger waiting?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. Say I will be there immediately.”

The man bowed and left the room.

“I am sorry, Eden⁠—”

“What is it?”

“Nothing of any moment⁠—a matter of business to which I must attend.” He glanced at the clock. “It is after ten,” he added. “You will not want to leave for Delmonico’s before half-past eleven, will you? Very good; I will be back long before then.” He had risen from his seat, and now he bent over and took her hand in his. “I am sorry I have to go. It is so seldom we have an evening together. And I had counted on this.”

Eden raised a finger warningly. “If you are not back in time,” she said, “I will send for Arnswald and go with him.”

“I can trust him with you,” he answered, and left the room. In a moment he returned, hat in hand. “By the way, Eden, I forgot to ask⁠—you have sent out cards, have you not?”

“Yes, the world is informed that Mrs. John Usselex is at home on Saturdays.”

“Would you mind sending that announcement to someone whom you don’t know? It’s just for the civility of the thing.”

“Certainly. Who is it?”

“A Mrs. Feverill.”

“Feverill? Mrs. Feverill.” Eden contracted her eyebrows. “Where have I heard that name before?”

“I don’t think you have ever heard it.”

Eden laughed. “She wears blue velvet, I am sure; but I will send the card. Where does she live?”

Usselex bent over and touched her forehead with his lips. “That is good of you,” he said. “She will take it very kindly.” And with that he moved to the door.

“But what is the address?” Eden called after him.

“The Ranleigh,” he answered; and from the hall he added, in a louder tone, “I will be back in less than an hour.”

“The Ranleigh,” she repeated to herself. “The Ranleigh!” And then suddenly the wall of the room parted like a curtain; to her ears came a cry of violins, dominated and accentuated by a blare of brass. Mrs. Manhattan was at her elbow. Behind her was Jones; beneath was a woman, her face turned to hers. She caught the motion of Mrs. Manhattan’s fan. Beyond, in a canvas forest, stood a man, open-mouthed, raising and lowering his right arm at regular intervals. And between the shiver of violins and the shudder of trumpets, she heard someone saying, “Mrs. Feverill, that is⁠—rather fly. Stops at the Ranleigh.” At once the music swooned. The opera-house dissolved into mist, and Eden was in a carriage, eying through the open window the cut of a passer’s gown. In her lap were some flowers; she raised them to her face, and as she put them down again, a cab drove past, bearing her husband and the woman who was considered fly. And this was the woman he wished her to receive! She caught and pinioned her forehead in her hands. In the distance the shadow of the afternoon loomed again, but this time more monstrous and potent than before. And nearer and nearer it came⁠—blacker than hate and more appalling than shame; in a moment it would be on her; she would be shrouded in it forevermore, and no defense⁠—not one.

“No, no,” she murmured. Her hands left her forehead. She clutched her throat as though to tear some invisible grasp away. “No, no,” she murmured, “it cannot be.”

“Look at me, Eden,” someone was saying; “look at me; I love your eyes. Youth is inconstant. It is with age⁠—”

It was her husband reassuring her even in his absence. “Speak to me; I love your voice.” And memory, continuing its office of mercy, served as aegis and exorcised advancing night. In her nervousness at the parried attack, she left her seat and paced the room, the opals glittering on her waist. “But he told me,” she mused, “he told me that the woman’s husband was in trouble⁠—that he was endeavoring to aid them both. What did I hear when I first met him? There was a clerk or someone in his office, a man whom he trusted who deceived him, who was imprisoned, and to whose people he then furnished means for support. It is criminal for me to doubt him as I have. Do I not know him to be generous? have I not found him sincere?”

She shook out a fold of her frock impatiently. “A child frightened at momentary solitude was never more absurd than I.” For a little space she continued her promenade up and down the room, leaving at each turn some fringe of suspicion behind. And presently the entire fabric seemed to leave her. To the corners of her mouth the smile returned. She went back to the sofa and was about to resume her former seat when her eyes fell on the envelope which her husband had tossed on the table. Mechanically she picked it up and glanced at the superscription. The writing was thin as hair, but the lettering was larger than is usual, abrupt and angular. To anyone else it would have suggested nothing particular, save, perhaps, the idea that it had been formed with the point of a tack; but to Eden it was luminous with intimations. Into the palms of her hands came a sudden moisture, the color left her cheeks, for a second she stood irresolute, the envelope in her trembling hold, then, as though coerced by another than herself, she ran to a bell and rang it.

In a moment the butler appeared. To conceal her agitation Eden had gone to the piano. There were some loose sheets of music on the lid and these she pretended to examine. “Is that you, Harris?” she asked, without turning her head. “Harris, that man that brought the note for Mr. Usselex this evening was the one that came on Monday with the note for Mr. Arnswald, was it not?”

“I beg pardon, ma’am.”

Eden reconstructed the question and repeated it.

“It was a young person, ma’am,” Harris answered. “A lady’s maid, most likely. She was here before on Monday evening, just before dinner, ma’am. She brought a letter and said there was no answer. I gave it to Mr. Usselex.”

“To Mr. Arnswald, you mean.”

“No, ma’am; it was for Mr. Usselex.”

Eden clutched at the piano. Through the sheet of music which she held she saw that note again. The handwriting was identical with the one on the envelope. But each word it contained was a separate flame, and each flame was burning little round holes in her heart and eating it away. It was very evident to her now. She had been tricked from the first. She had been lied to and deceived. It behooved her now to be very cool. It was on business indeed that he had left her! Unconsciously she recalled Mrs. Manhattan’s aphorism about business and other men’s wives, and to her mouth, which the smile had deserted, came a sneer.

He is with her now, she told herself; well, let him be. In a sudden gust of anger she tore the sheet of music in two, and tossing it from her, turned.

At the door the butler still stood, awaiting her commands.

“You may go,” she said, shortly. The shadow which twice that day she had eluded was before her. But she made no effort now to escape. It was welcome. She eyed it a moment. Her teeth were set, her muscles contracted. Then grasping it as Vulcan did, she forged it into steel.

About her on either side were wastes of black, and in the goaf, by way of clearing, but one thing was discernible, the fealty of Adrian. To save her from pain he had taken the letter on himself; he had accepted her contempt that he might assure her peace of mind. Through the dismal farce which had been played at her expense his loyalty constituted the one situation which was deserving of praise. With a gesture she dismissed her husband; it was as though he had ceased to exist. It was not him that she had espoused; it was a figure garbed in fine words. She had detected the travesty, the mask had fallen, with the actor she was done. She had never been mated, and now she was divorced. And as she stood, her hands clenched and pendant, the currents of her thought veering from master to clerk, the portiere furthermost from her was drawn aside, the butler appeared an instant in the doorway, he mumbled a name, Dugald Maule entered the room, and the portiere fell back.

“I made sure of finding you,” he announced jauntily, as he approached.

He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. In his buttonhole was a flower, and in his breath the odor of crème de menthe. It was evident that he had just dined. “Your man tells me that Mr. Usselex is not at home,” he continued. “I fancied he might be going to the assembly too. I see that you are. You look like a queen of old time. No, but you are simply stunning.”

He stepped back that he might the better enjoy the effect. Eden had sunk on the lounge again. In and out from her skirt a white slipper, butterflied with gold, moved restlessly.

“But you are pale,” he added. “What is it?” He had scanned her face⁠—its pallor was significant to him; but it was the nervousness of the slipper that prompted the question. To his thinking there was nothing more talkative than the foot of a pretty woman.

Eden shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t expect you,” she said; “I am sure that I wouldn’t have received you if I had.”

“Ah, that is hardly gracious now.”

“Besides, your reputation is deplorable.”

“No one has any reputation, nowadays,” Maule answered, with the air of a man describing the state of the weather. “You hear the most scandalous things about everyone. Who has been talking against me? A woman, I wager. Do you know what hell is paved with?”

“Not with your good intentions, I am positive.”

“It is paved with women’s tongues. That is what it is paved with. What am I accused of now?”

“As if I knew or cared. In my opinion you are depraved, and that is sufficient.”

“Why do you call me depraved? You are not fair. Depravity is synonymous with the unnatural. Girls in short frocks don’t interest me. Never yet have I loitered in the boudoir of a cocotte. Corydon was not a gentleman whom I would imitate. Neither was Narcissus. On the other hand, I like refined women. I have an unquestionable admiration for a pretty face. What man whose health is good has not? If capacity for such admiration constitutes depravity, then depraved I am.” He paused. “H’m,” he muttered to himself, “there’s nothing of the Joseph about me.”

But he might have continued his speech aloud. Eden had ceased to hear, her thoughts were far away. He looked at her inquiringly.

“Something is the matter,” he said at last. “What has happened?”

Eden aroused herself ever so little from her reverie. “Nothing,” she answered. “I wish you would go away.”

“Something is the matter,” he insisted. “Tell me what is troubling you. Who is there to whom you can turn more readily than to me? Eden, you forget so easily. For months I was at your side. And abruptly, a rumor, a whisper, a wind that passes took you from me. Eden, I have not changed. Nor have you ceased to preside over my life. It is idle and useless enough, I know. With your aid it would have been less valueless, I think; but such as it is, it is wholly yours. Tell me, what it is that troubles you.”

And Eden, influenced either by the caress of the words or that longing which in moments of mental anguish forces us to voice the affliction, though it be but to a wall, looked in his face and answered:

“A hole has been dug in my heart, and in that hole is hate.”

“Hate? Why, hate is a medieval emotion; you don’t know what it means.” And as he spoke he told himself she was mad.

“Do I not? Ah, do I not?” She beat a measure on her knee with her fingers, and her eyes roamed from Maule to the ceiling and then far into space. “There is one whom I think of now; could I see him smitten with agony such as no mortal ever felt before, his eyes filled with spectres, his brain aflame⁠—could I see that and know it to be my work, I should lie down glad and willing, and die of delight.”

She stood up and turned to him again. “Do I not know what hatred means?”

“Eden, you understand it so well that your conception of love must be clearer still.”

“Love, indeed!” She laughed disdainfully. “Why, love is a fever that ends with a yawn. Love! Why, men used to die of love. Now they buy it as they buy their hats, ready-made.”

“Then I am in that fever now⁠—Hush! here is your husband. The tenor wasn’t half bad, I admit. Mr. Usselex, I am glad to see you.”

Maule had risen at Usselex’s entrance and made a step forward to greet him. “I stopped on my way to Delmonico’s,” he added, lightly. “I made sure you were both going.”

“Yes,” Usselex answered. “The carriage is at the door now. We can give you a lift if you care to.”

He turned to Eden. “Shall I ring for your wrap?”

For one second Eden looked her husband straight in the eyes. And for one second she stood dumb, impenetrable as Fate, then gathering the folds of her dress in one hand, she answered in a tone which was perfectly self-possessed, “I have changed my mind,” and swept from the room.

VIII

On reaching her room Eden bolted the door. The maid rapped, but she gave no answer. Without was a whistling wind that parodied her anger. For a moment she looked through the darkness for that lighthouse which is Hope, but presumably she looked in vain. Then there came another rap, and she heard her husband’s voice. Misery had offered her its arm, and she was silent. Her husband rapped again, entreating speech with her, and still she made no answer. Presently she caught the sound of retreating footsteps. She removed the opals, disrobed, undid her hair, and accepting the proffered arm, she took Misery for bedfellow.

It was hours before she slept. But at last sleep came. In its beneficence it remained until the morning had gone; then at noonday it left her, and she started with a tremor like to that which besets one who awakes from a debauch. The incidents of the preceding days paraded with flying standards before her. They were victors indeed. “Vae soli!” they seemed to shout. They had been pitiless in their assault, and now they exulted at her defeat. They jeered at their captive; and Eden, with that obsession which captives know, thought only of release. In all the chartless future, freedom was the one thing for which she longed. Her wounds were many; they had depleted her strength; but in freedom is a balm that cures. Her strength might be irrevocable and the cicatrices not to be effaced, yet give her that balm, and come what sorrow could. As for resignation, the idea of it did not so much as visit her. Resignation is a daily suicide, and she had not enough to outlast the night.

The hours limped. The afternoon was on the wane, and still she toyed with sorrow until suddenly she bethought herself of the need of immediate action. Usselex would presently return, but when he came again to her room, he should find it empty. At once, then, she made her preparations, and telling the startled maid to complete them, and to follow with the boxes to her father’s house, she started out on foot, her wardrobe packed, and ready for removal.

As Eden hurried through the streets, she was conscious only that freedom was her goal. Everything else she put from her. It was to her father she turned; it was through him that freedom would be obtained; and as she hurried she pictured the indignation with which he would hear her tale. He, indeed, was one on whom she could lean. Whatever other men might be, he, at least was above reproach. Had he not for twenty years been faithful to a memory. Surely her mother when she lived must have enjoyed that gift of gifts, perfect confidence and trust.

So far back in the past as her memory extended she saw him always considerate, gentle of manner, courteous to inferiors, deferential to women, unassuming, and exemplary of life. In very truth there was none other in the world like him. And when at last she entered his house she told herself she was safe, and when the door closed, that she was free.

She knew without inquiry where to find him, and hastened at once to the library, breathless when she reached his chair. He had been dozing over a book, but at the rustle of her gown, he started and rubbed his eyes.

“It’s good of you to come,” he said, by way of greeting. “Why, Eden, I haven’t seen you for two days. Sit down there and let me look at you. It’s odd; I was going to you after the funeral. You know about General Meredith, don’t you? He went off like that. He is to be buried this afternoon.”

Mr. Menemon stood up and hunted for a match with which to light a lamp. “Yes,” he continued, “he was only ill for twenty-four hours. Think of that, now! To tell you the truth, I haven’t been very bright myself. I wanted to speak to you about it. All last winter I was more or less under the weather, and for some time I have been planning a trip abroad. Now that you have an establishment of your own, Eden, you won’t want me.” And as he said this, he smiled.

“Father, I have more need of you than ever.”

“Yes,” he answered, “I was jesting. I know you will miss me; but I will come back with the violets.”

He had succeeded in lighting the lamp and, still smiling, he turned and looked at her. “The father-in-law element,” he continued, and then stopped abruptly, amazed at the expression of his daughter’s face. “What is it, Eden?” he asked at last.

“If you go abroad, I go with you.”

For a moment he eyed her, as though seeking, untold, to divine the meaning of her words.

“Nothing has gone wrong, has it?” he asked.

“He has deceived me.”

“Usselex?”

“Who else is there whose deception I would notice?”

“You are mistaken, Eden; it is my fault; he consulted me in the matter⁠—”

“He consulted you? But how is such a thing possible. He never could have consulted you, and if he had you would not have listened.”

“Ah! but I did though. Between ourselves I thought it not uninteresting. After all, it was not his fault. I thought it unadvisable that you should learn of it before marriage, and afterwards, well, afterwards, it was immaterial whether you did or whether you didn’t.”

“Father, either it is not you that speak, or I am demented.”

“There, my dear, don’t take it so seriously. I can’t call it an everyday matter, of course, but such things do happen, and as I said before, a man’s a man for all of that. If he said nothing it was because⁠—well, Eden, how could he? Ask yourself, how could he?”

“You knew of this before my marriage and you permitted the marriage to take place?”

“Well⁠—er, yes, Eden. Frankly now, it was a difficult matter to discuss with you. You see, it was this way: a young girl like yourself, brought up as you have been, is apt to have prejudices which men and women of the world do not always share. And this is a case in point. Even now that you are married I can understand your disapproval, but⁠—”

“Disapproval! Is that what you call it? Have you no other term? Father, it seems to me that you are worse than he. Had anyone told me that you could countenance such a thing I would have denied his sanity.” She hid her face in her hands and moaned dumbly to herself, “I am desolate,” she murmured, “I am desolate, indeed.”

“No, Eden, not that, not that. Eden, listen to me; there, if you only listen to me a moment. Eden, it is not a thing that I countenance, nor is it one of which I approve. But the fault is not his. It is in the nature of some women that such things should be. It is a thing to be deplored, to be overlooked. The old law held that the sins of the father should be visited on the son; but we are more liberal now. Besides, it is part of the past; what use is there⁠—”

“Part of the past? I saw him with her the day before yesterday, and⁠—”

“Why, she is dead.”

“Father, of whom are you speaking?”

“Of his mother, of course; and you?”

“I am speaking of his mistress, whom he wishes your daughter to entertain.”

“Eden, it is impossible. I misunderstood you. What you say is absurd. Usselex is incapable of such infamy.”

“He is, then, and he has the capacity to have me share it too.”

“But tell me, what grounds have you for saying⁠—”

“On Monday I was at the opera. In the stalls was a woman that stared at me⁠—”

“Many another I am sure did that.”

“And the next afternoon I saw him with her. He sent me a note saying he was detained on business. When he returned he made some lame excuse, which I, poor fool, believed. Previously I had intercepted a letter⁠—”

“A letter?”

“Yes, a letter such as those women write. He pretended it was not for him, and for the moment I believed that too. Oh, I have been credulous enough.”

“Eden, you must let it pass.”

“Not I.”

“Ah, but Eden, you must; you must let it pass. I will speak to Usselex.”

“That you may, of course; but as for me, I never will.”

“My child, you are so wrong. What can I say to you? Eden⁠—”

“Father, he has deceived me. Wantonly, grossly, and without excuse. Speak to him again, I never will⁠—”

“Eden⁠—”

“⁠—And if I ever see him it will be in court. It was for victims like myself that courts were invented.”

At this speech Mr. Menemon stood up again, and paced the room; his head was bent, and he had the appearance of one in deep perplexity. From time to time he raised his hand and stroked his back hair. And as he walked Eden continued, but her tone was gentler than before:

“Father, you can never know. As you say, there are things of which it is not well to speak. But let me tell you: In marrying I thought my husband like yourself, one whom I could believe, whom I could honor, and of whom I should be proud. He was too old for me, people said. But my fear was that I should seem too young for him. Others insisted that I knew nothing of him, and all the while I hoped that he would not find me lacking. I wanted to aid, to assist. I was ambitious. He seemed possessed of the fibres of which greatness is the crown. I saw before him a future, a career which history might note. I dreamed that with the wealth which he had acquired and the power that was in him, he could win recognition of men and fame of time. It would be pleasant, I thought, to be the helpmate of such an one. How did it matter that he was an alien if I were at home with him? Father, I was proud of him. I was glad to be younger than he. What better guide could I find? Yes, I was glad of his years, for I had brought myself to think that when two people equally young and equally favored fall in love, it is nature that is acting in them. Whereas I loved not the man, but the individual, and that, I told myself, that is the divine. That is what I thought before marriage, and now I detect him in a vulgar intrigue. Is it not hideous? It took him six months to walk through my illusions, and one hour to dispel them. See, I have nothing left. Nothing,” she added pensively, “except regret.”

She remained silent a little space, then some visitation of that renegade Yesterday that calls himself Tomorrow, seemed to stir her pulse.

“Father,” she pleaded, “tell me; I can be free of him, can I not? You will keep him from me? you will get me back my liberty again?”

Mr. Menemon had resumed his former place at the table, and sat there, his head still bent. But at this appeal he looked up and nodded abstractedly, as though his attention were divided between her and someone whom he did not see.

“You are overwrought,” he said. “Were you yourself, you would not speak in this fashion about nothing.”

A sting could not have been more sudden in its effect. She gasped; a returning gust of anger enveloped her. She sprang from her seat as though impelled by hidden springs. “Nothing?” she cried. “You call it nothing to unearth a falsehood where you awaited truth, treachery where honesty should be, deceit instead of candor! You call it nothing to harbor a knight and discover him a knave, to give your trust unfalteringly and find that it has reposed on lies! Nothing to be jockied of your love, cozened of your faith! To wage a war with blacklegs and mistake that war for peace! Do you call it nothing to drown a soul, to make it a sponge of shadows that can no longer receive the light? Is it nothing to hold out your arms and be embraced by Judas? Is it nothing to be loyal and be gammoned for your innocence? Is it nothing to be juggled with, to be gulled, cheated, and decoyed? Is it nothing to grasp a hawser and find it a rope of sand? To pursue the real and watch it turn into delusion? Nothing to see the promise vanish in the hope? Is it nothing to take a mirage for a landscape, nothing to be hoodwinked of your confidence, to see high noon dissolve into obscurest night, a diamond into pinchbeck? Tell me, is it nothing to have trust, sincerity, and love for heritage, and wake to find that you have pawned them to a Jew? Do you think it nothing to be mated to a living perjury, a felony in flesh and blood? Is this what you call nothing? Is this it? Then tell me what something is.”

For a moment she stared at her father, her lips still moving, her small hands clenched, then, exhausted by the vehemence of her speech, she sank back again into the chair which she had vacated.

“No, Eden, not that,” her father answered; but he spoke despondently, with the air of a man battling against a stream, and conscious of the futility of the effort. “No, not that; you misunderstand. I mean this: you have confounded suspicion with proof. Whoever this woman is, Usselex’s relations with her may be irreproachable. Mind you, I don’t say they are; I say they may be. I will question him, and he will answer truthfully.”

“Truthfully? You expect him to answer truthfully. In him nothing is true, not even his lies.”

“Eden, I will question him. If it is as you expect, he will tell me and you will forgive.”

“Forgive? yes, it is easy to forgive, but forget, never! Besides, he will not tell the truth; he will deceive you, as he has deceived me.”

“No, Eden,” Mr. Menemon answered, “you are wrong.” For a moment he hesitated and glanced at her. “I suppose,” he continued, “I may tell you now. Perhaps it will help to strengthen your confidence.”

Again he hesitated; but presently something of his former serenity seemed to return. “H’m,” he went on, “it’s a long story and an odd one. Previous to your engagement, Meredith was here. I wish, instead of lying across the square in a coffin, he could be here now. However, he came to see me one day. I happened to mention Usselex’s name, and he told me certain rumors about him. The next afternoon I went to Usselex on the subject. ‘I have already written to you on the matter,’ he said; and sure enough, when I got back here, I found the letter waiting. Would you like to see it?”

Eden tossed her head. What had the letter to do with her?

“I will read it to you, then.”

Mr. Menemon left his chair, went to a safe that stood in a corner, unlocked it, and after a fumble of a moment, drew out a manuscript, which he unfolded, and then resumed his former seat.

“It is not very long,” he said, apologetically, and he was about to begin to read it aloud when Eden interrupted him.

“Tell me what is in it, if you must!” she exclaimed; “but spare me his phrases.”

She had risen again and was moving restlessly about the room. Her father coughed in sheer despair.

“Well, I will tell it to you,” he said. “But Eden, do sit down. Do wait at least until I can give you the gist of what he wrote.”

“Go on; go on. Nothing matters now.”

Hesitatingly and unencouraged, half to his daughter, and half to some invisible schoolmaster, whose lesson he might have learned by rote, Mr. Menemon fluttered the letter and sought some prefatory word.

“You see, Eden,” he began, “this was sent me just before he spoke to you, and just after he had acquainted me of his intentions. You understand that, do you not?”

“Go on,” she repeated.

“Well, from what I had heard, and what he practically substantiates here, Usselex is a trifle out of the common run. His earliest recollections are of Cornwall, some manufacturing town there; let me see⁠—” and the old man fumbled with the letter and with his glasses. “Yes, yes; Market Dipborough, to be sure. Well, he was brought up there by his mother, who was of Swiss extraction, and by his father, who was at the head of a large shoe factory. I say his father and mother; but⁠—However, he was brought up there. Well, to make a long story short, it appears that he was given a very good education; his people evidently were people of some means, and it was expected that he would study for the bar. He was put at some public school or other, the name is immaterial, and when he was on the point of entering Oxford, the Swiss lady or her husband, I forget which⁠—at any rate, somebody died. Do you follow me, Eden? Well, he then learned that instead of being the son of the people by whom he had been brought up, he was not their son at all. And now comes the curious part of it. It seems that the Swiss lady had been, in years gone by, companion or governess, or something of that sort, to the Grand-Duchess Thyra of Gothland, who, as you know, became the wife of the King of Suabia. She died, by the way, a year or two ago. However, the Swiss lady was her companion or something of the kind, and in consequence was placed in close relations with her. In fact, she was, I suppose, what you might call a confidante. In any event, the Grand-Duchess happened to have for music-teacher a good-looking young German who took her fancy. The result of it all was that the Swiss lady agreed to pretend that the offspring was her own, and was handsomely rewarded for her pains. She left Gothland with the child, and it was not until she died that Usselex learned that instead of being her son, he was grandson of the Emperor. He had the bar-sinister, of course, but the ancestry was there all the same. I don’t know that I or any other man would envy him it; but perhaps it is better than none. However, as soon as Usselex learned the facts, he packed up and came over here. Now you have that part of his existence in a nutshell. What do you say to it?” And Mr. Menemon coughed again, and glanced inquiringly at his daughter.

“I say he is so base I might have known he was of royal blood.”

“Eden, you are singularly unjust.”

“But what does his birth matter to me?” she cried. “It was not for the presence or absence of forefathers that I put my hand in his. It was for the man himself, for what he seemed to me, and when I find that I have been mistaken in him, when in return for my love I get deceit, when he leaves me for another woman, and has the infamy to ask me to receive that woman, then I say, that whether he be the son of a serf or the son of a king, our ways divide⁠—”

“Eden⁠—”

“Yes, our ways divide.”

Urged by her irritation, she still paced the room, graceful as a leopard is, and every whit as unconstrained. But now, abruptly she halted before a portrait that hung from the wall. For a moment she gazed at it, then pointing to it with arm outstretched, she turned.

“Tell me,” she asked, her sultry eyes flashing with vistas of victory. “Tell me how my mother would have acted, had such an indignity been put on her. Tell me,” she repeated, “and through your knowledge of her, so will I act. Yes,” she added, and then paused, amazed at the expression of her father’s face. It was as though some unseen hand had stabbed him from behind. The mouth twitched in the contraction of sudden pain, the nostrils quivered, and he bowed his head; then, his eyes lowered and turned from her, he answered in a voice that trembled just a little and yet was perfectly distinct:

“It was such a thing as this that marred your mother’s life; let it not mar your own.”

For the moment Eden could not credit her hearing. The words seemed meaningless. She had caught them in a crescendo of stupor. “It is impossible,” she murmured. She stared at her father, her eyes dilated, her heart throbbing, and every sense alert. “It is impossible,” she repeated, beneath her breath. And as she stared, her father’s attitude accentuated the words, reiterating that the avowal which had been wrung from him was not the impossible, but the truth. No, there was no mistake. She had heard aright, and presently, as the understanding of it reached her, she moved back and away from him. For the first time that day the tears came to her eyes. “I have drunk of shame,” she sobbed; “now let me drink of death.”

IX

For some time father and daughter were silent. Eden suppressed her sob, and Mr. Menemon fidgeted nervously in his chair. The funeral across the way, he told himself, would be gayer than this, and for the moment he regretted that he had not taken time by its bang and gone to other lands. Grief was always distressing to him, and the grief of his daughter was torment. The idea that Usselex had been derelict, he put from him. He had an interpretation of his own for the incidents on which he had been called to sit in judgment. Trivialities such as they left him unaffected. His enervation came of an inability to cope with Eden. She treated an argument like a cobweb. And besides, had he not in a spasm of discouragement disclosed a secret which for two decades he had kept close-locked and secure?

Truly, if Eden had come to him with a valid complaint, he would have taken arms in an instant. He was by no means one to suffer a child of his to be treated with contumely. The bit of lignum vitae which served him for a heart was all in all for her. A real grievance would have enraged him more than anyone else. In spite of his apparent indifference there was much of the she-wolf in his nature. He would have fought for Eden, he would have growled over her, and shown his false teeth at any assailant that might happen that way. But of danger there was not a trace. Listen as he might he could not catch the faintest rumor of advancing foes. And because she had met her husband in the street, because a woman had stared at her and some idiotic note had come into her hands, high-noon must change to night, and laughter into tears.

“She is her mother all over again,” the old gentleman muttered. And in his discomfiture he regretted the funeral, the confidence that he had made, and fidgeted nervously in his chair.

And as he fidgeted, glancing obliquely the while at his daughter, and engrossed in the torturing pursuit of some plea that should show her she erred, and bring her to her senses again, Eden’s earlier griefs crackled like last year’s leaves. In this new revelation they seemed dead indeed. Of her mother she had not the faintest recollection; but there had been moments when a breath, a perfume, something which she had just read, a sudden strain, the intoning of a litany, an interior harmony perhaps, or an emotion, had brought to her a whisper, the sound of her own name; and with it for one second would come the shadowy reminiscence of an anterior caress. For a second only would it remain with her, departing as abruptly as it had come, but leaving her to stroll for hours thereafter through lands where dreams come true. And at such times she was wont to feel that could she but clutch that fleeting second and detain it long enough to catch one further glimpse of the past, the key of memory would be in it, and the past unlocked. But that second was never to be detained; it was from her father only that she was able to learn something of that which was nearest to her heart, and again and again she had sat with him listening to anecdotes, absorbing repetitions and familiar details with a renascent interest and a delight that no other chronicles could arouse. On the subject of her mother she had indeed been insatiable; she had wished to know everything, even to the gowns she preferred and the manner in which she had arranged her hair; and her father had taken evident pleasure in telling of one who had been wife to him and mother to her, and whose life she now learned for the first time he had marred.

Mr. Menemon meanwhile was still in pursuit of the plea; but nothing of any cogency presented itself. In truth he had builded better than he knew. Anger burns itself out; already its force was spent, and the revelation he had made had affected his daughter like a douche. In his ignorance, however, the safest and surest course that occurred to him was to hold his tongue, send for Usselex, and leave him to settle the matter as best he might. This course he was about to adopt, and he got out some paper preparatory to wording the message when a servant appeared with a card on a tray.

He picked it up, glanced at it, and then over at his daughter. She was still leaning against the bookcase, her back was turned, and her face hidden in her arms. It seemed probable to him that she was unaware of the servant’s presence.

“Very good,” he murmured, and motioned the man away. Again he glanced at his daughter, but she had not moved, and noiselessly, that he might not disturb her, he left the room.

Eden indeed had heard nothing. The revelation had been benumbing in its unexpectedness, and as she leaned against the bookcase, an immense pity enveloped her, and she forgot her sorrow and herself. Her own distress was trivial perhaps in comparison to what her mother had suffered, and yet surely her father had repented. As she entered the house had she not told herself that for twenty years he had been faithful to a memory. So far back as she could remember, she had seen him compassionate of others, striving, it may be, through the exercise of indulgence to earn some little of it for himself. And should she refuse it now? He had grieved; the stamp of it was on his face. She needed no one to remind her of that, and that grief perhaps had effaced the fault. And if his fault was effaceable, might not her husband’s be effaceable as well? If he would but come to her and let her feel that this misstep was one that he regretted, she might yet forgive. It was as good to forgive as it was to forget; and how beautiful the future still might be!

The indignation which had glowed so fiercely subsided; one by one the sparks turned grey; the last one wavered a little and then disappeared. She turned, her sultry eyes still wet, to where her father had sat. And as she turned Mr. Menemon reentered the room. She made no effort to account for his absence; she was all in all in her present idea, and she went forward to him at once.

“Did she forgive you?” she asked.

“Who?”

“My mother.”

Mr. Menemon made no answer, but his face spoke for him.

“Then I will,” she cried, and wound her arms about his neck. “I will forgive you for her.”

“There is another whom you must forgive as well,” he answered, gently.

“But you assured me he had done no wrong.”

“Nor has he, I think.” He hesitated a second. “Come downstairs,” he added; “we can discuss it better there.” And taking her hand in his he led her from the room.

On reaching the parlor below, he drew the portiere aside that she might pass, and then, as they say in France, he eclipsed himself. Eden entered unattended. Her father, she supposed, was following her, and she was about to address some remark to him, when before her, in the dim light of twin candelabras, she perceived her husband.

Usselex was standing bolt upright, in the position of one who has come not to render accounts, but to demand them. In his attitude there was nothing of the repentant sinner, and at sight of him Eden felt herself tricked. She turned in search of her father, but he had gone. Then, seeing herself deserted, and yet disdaining retreat, she summoned the princess air which was ever at her bidding, and crossed the room.

“Why have you left the house?” he began, abruptly.

To this Eden made no answer. She lowered the yellow shade of one candle and busied herself with another.

“Why did you leave me last night?” he continued. And as she made no reply, “Why,” he asked, “why are you here?”

But still she was silent. To his questions she was dumb. It was as though she had shut some door between him and her.

“Will you not speak?” he muttered.

And then, for the first time, she looked up at him, measuring him as it were with one chill glance from head to heel. “If I remember rightly,” she said, from the tips of her lips, “you left me for your mistress.”

“It is false⁠—” Usselex exclaimed. Presumably he was about to make further protest, but the portiere was drawn aside and he was interrupted.

X

As it afterwards appeared, Dugald Maule, on leaving the Usselex house the preceding evening, had gone directly to the Assembly. On arriving, he went up through the ferns to the vestiary, left his coat and hat, and while putting on his gloves, gazed down from the balcony which Lander occupies to the ballroom below.

A quadrille was in progress; a stream of willowy girls, fresh for the better part, well-dressed and exceptionally plain, were moving about the floor. They seemed serene and stupid, chattering amiably through pauses of the dance; and beneath, on the dais, Maule divined the presence of Mrs. Manhattan, Mrs. Hackensack, Mrs. Bouvery, the Coenties, and other ladies of maturer years. He was sure they were smiling and fanning themselves. They always were. And presently, when his gloves were buttoned, he fell to wondering what he was doing there. The incidents of the evening had supplied him with a quantum of thought which he had no desire to dispense in platitude. He was not at all in a mood to mingle with those whose chiefest ambition was to be ornate. In another minute he recovered his coat, and to the surprise of the doorkeeper went down through the ferns again. In the memory of man no one before had ever come to a subscription-ball and deserted it two minutes later. He must be ill, Johnson reflected, and went on collecting tickets.

Maule, however, was not in any sense indisposed, and as evidence of it he walked far up Fifth Avenue, and on through the outskirts of the Park. It was his intention, self-avowed and dominant, that he would come to some decision in regard to Eden before that walk was done.

Like many another before and since, he found his brain most active when his legs were in motion. In working up a case for a client, many a time during an entire day he had reviewed dust-bound books of yellow hue, but the one point, the clinching argument that was to arrest attention and win the cause, came to him in the exhilaration of the open air. The inspiration that was to coordinate conflicting data rarely visited him at his desk. It was in the fatigue of the flesh that his mind became clairvoyant. It was then that he found the logic for his brief. And on this particular evening, as he strode along he kept telling himself that in all his practice there had been nothing to him as important as this. It was his own case that he was preparing; and did it result in failure, how could he venture to undertake one in which the interest would be feigned and the recompense coin? If he could not plead his own case and win, then might he take his shingle down.

The facts, such, at least, as they appeared to him, were evangelical in their simplicity. Here was a girl who had given him her heart’s first love, a girl who had exalted him into an ideal, and then, suspecting him of infidelity to her, had married the next comer out of pique. No sooner did he have a chance of exchanging speech with her than she confessed that she hated her husband.

“Now,” he reflected, “when a woman takes a man sufficiently into her confidence to admit that she hates her husband, that admission is tantamount to an avowal of love for him. Such admission she has made to me. Nothing conceivable could have been more explicit than her words.” And at the memory of them he nodded sagaciously to himself. “No other girl,” he continued, “no other in all the world, is as desirable as she. St. Denis would have hypothecated his aureole to possess her. As I sat with her tonight I felt medieval from ears to heel. If our age were a century or two younger I would have carried her off to a crenelated castle, let down the drawbridge, and defied the law. But my apartment in the Cumberland is hardly a donjon; a hansom is not a vehicle suited to an elopement; Lochinvar is out of fashion; and besides, she would not have gone. No, she would not have gone; so the other objections are immaterial. But then, there are girls who will not go at the asking, but who will come without instigation. And Eden, I take it, is one of them. It was six months before she would so much as let me touch the tips of her fingers; she was afraid of a kiss as of a bee; and at the very moment when I had given her up she threw herself in my arms: it is true, she never repeated the performance, which was a pity; though had it not been for that little affair of mine, we should in all probability be man and wife tonight. After all, it is for the best, I suppose.” And again he nodded sagaciously.

“Yes,” he repeated, “it is for the best. Someone⁠—Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Tupper, or Chauncey Depew⁠—said that there were some good marriages, but none that were delicious; and I daresay that whoever said it was right. Yes, certainly it is for the best. It may be sweet and decorous, as I used to write in my copybook, to die for one’s native land; but I will be shot if it is sweet and decorous to marry for it. And practically that is what it amounts to. Men marry for the sake of others, rarely for their own, and as for women, whatever their reasons may be, plaudite sed cavite, cives! Eden, I am positive, married out of pique. It is nonsense to think that she could have any large affection for a man twice her age; and now that she is not only tired of him, but hates him to boot, he ought to be gentlemanly enough not to play the dog in the manger. No, it isn’t that. I will admit that he is well enough in his way, provided that way is out of mine. The difficulty is that he doesn’t seem to keep out of hers. Major premise, then⁠—Eden hates Usselex. Minor premise⁠—Usselex keeps her from me. Ergo. Eliminate Usselex, and she is mine. The logic of that is admirable; the only fault with it is that it doesn’t give a hint as to the manner in which Usselex is to be eliminated. He may eliminate himself, it is true; but that is a possibility that it is hardly worth while to count on. And, meanwhile, I know Eden well enough to be aware that until he does she will decline to listen to me.”

Maule had reached the upper part of the Avenue. The night was chill and clear as our December nights are apt to be. There was a foretaste of snow in the air, and in that foretaste a tonic. And suddenly the cathedral loomed, huge, yet unsteepled, as though the designers had lost heart in its carcass and faith as well. The sky seemed remote and unneighborly. In the background the moon glinted in derision, and directly overhead was a splatter of callous stars.

The scene did not divert the channel of his thoughts. He walked steadily on, leaving behind him the dogma that time had fossilized and man had forgot. He was indifferent to creeds. The apathy of the stars told him nothing of worlds to which our own is unknown. In the derision of the moon he did not see the sneer of a sphere that is dead. The foretaste of snow in the air brought him no memory of the summer that had gone, and when he reached the park the leafless trees that spring would regarment left him unimpressed. The identity of birth and death, the aimlessness of all we undertake, were matters to which he had never given a thought. And had the beggar who presently accosted him been a thinker capable of explaining that life is an exhalation, that we respire, aspire, and expire, unconscious as is the tree of the futility of it all, Dugald Maule would have dismissed him with the same indifferent shrug. He was instinct with aims that end with self. His mind was centered on Eden, and until he solved the problem she had suggested, he had no thought of time that life devours or of time that devours life.

And as he tried to devise some form of campaign, suddenly he was visited by an idea which he grasped and detained. It was, that if Eden hated her husband a cause for that hatred must exist, and could he but discover it he would then have something tangible wherewith to work. Certainly, he told himself, it could not be money; nor did Usselex look like a man that drank. “I wonder,” he mused, “whether it can be that he treats her badly. H’m. I know very little about Usselex. He may be Chesterfield one hour and Sykes the next. There are plenty of men of that stamp. If he is, that poor little thing deserves consolation. No, it can hardly be that⁠—Eden is too high-spirited to submit to brutality. She would leave him at once, and everyone would approve. Whereas, if Usselex has got himself entangled by some woman, Eden, out of sheer pride, would remain where she is. Nothing can be more galling than the pity which is manifested for a woman whose husband disports himself abroad. It is shameful, the world says; and inwardly the world thinks, when a woman wins a man and fails to hold him, the fault is not his, but hers. Eden understands that, of course, and if there is a woman in the matter, that is the reason why she continues to reside on the sunnyside of Fifth Avenue. But then, it may not be that. I may be miles away. Though if it is, nothing could be more favorable. It would be becoming of Eden to keep her misfortune to herself, but it would be unwomanly on her part not to desire revenge; and what better revenge could she have against the man whom she married out of pique than in the arms of the man by whom that pique was excited? But, bah! All this is pure conjecture. I haven’t a fact to go on. I know little or nothing of Usselex, and I doubt very much whether Eden would be willing to supply me with any information. The only thing for me to do is to cull a few facts, season them to suit her taste, and serve hot. At this stage a false step would be fatal. I must be careful of my cookery. Tomorrow, in the absence of facts, I will see what I can do in the way of condiments; et alors, en route pour Cythère.”

So mused Mr. Maule; then, having reached the end of his tether, he turned back again in the direction of his home.

The next morning, however, the plan of campaign which he had been devising was not a whit more tangible to him than it had been during his midnight stroll. He drank some coffee hopefully, and tried to lose himself in a damp copy of the Times. But in vain. The coffee brought him no comfort, and through the columns of the paper came the sultriness of Eden’s eyes. The obituary of a famous general failed to detain his attention. The intelligence that an emperor was moribund lent no zest to the day. Mechanically his eyes scanned the Court Calendar; a case in which he was to appear was numbered therein, but he let it pass unnoticed. And presently, finding himself occupied in memorizing the advertisement of a new soap, he tossed the paper from him and started on his way down town.

It was late when he reached his office. In the corner of the room a fat little man sat patiently twirling his thumbs, and on a desk were a number of letters.

“What do you want?” Maule asked. His voice was gruff and inhospitable.

The fat little man started, and then fumbled in a pocket. “Dere was dot morhgige⁠—” he began.

“Come again, then,” Maule interrupted; “I am busy.”

“Dot morhgige⁠—” the little man persisted.

“Go to hell with your mortgage,” Maule shouted, and slammed a door in his face.

This rite accomplished, he felt better. The brutality which he had displayed to the corpulent dwarf pleasured him. He only regretted that the man had not insisted further, that he might have kicked him down the stairs. What was a mortgage to him, forsooth, when he had Eden for a goal? The episode, trivial though it was, had stirred his pulse and left the effect of a tonic. He smiled, and opened his letters. As he read them his clerk appeared. With him he consulted for a minute and then started for court. On his return there was the little fat man again, and beating a tattoo on the window was Reginald Maule, ex-Minister to France.

“Well, Uncle Regy,” he exclaimed, “how are you? Mr. Driscoll,” he called out to the clerk, “attend to that Dutch beast, will you? Uncle Regy, step this way.”

He led Mr. Maule into the inner office and graciously accepted a cigar. He was in great good-humor again. While in court a luminous idea had visited him, a plan of campaign which he proposed to elaborate at his ease. It was alluring as spring, and instinct with promises of success. Already he roamed in dreams forecast.

“Dugald,” the uncle began, “I did not see you at the Matriarch’s, last night.”

Until recently Maule had not seen his uncle for several years. But during these years the uncle had not changed. He had the same agreeable manner, the same way of seating himself, the same sarcastic fold about his lips which Maule remembered of old. Even the cut of his waistcoat was unaltered. Apparently nothing had happened to him; he had contented himself with continuing to be.

“No,” the nephew answered, and flicked the ashes from his cigar. “No, something else turned up and⁠—”

“Exactly. If I had met you there I should not have come here. Now, I want a word with you in regard to the estate. Are you busy?” And the ex-Minister settled himself in his chair with the air of a man confident that, whatever else might demand attention, his own affairs would take precedence.

Thereupon, for some little time, nephew and uncle discussed matters of personal and common interest; and when at last these matters had been satisfactorily determined, the afternoon had begun to wane. At last the ex-Minister stood up to go.

“By the way,” he said, his hand on the door, “who was it that Petrus Menemon’s daughter married? I looked for her last night. When I saw her at the opera I could have sworn it was her mother. Same type, same eyes, same carriage of the head. She made me feel twenty years younger, I give you my word she did.”

“She is pretty,” Maule answered, negligently.

“Pretty? She is more intoxicating than the dream of a fallen angel. She is better looking than her mother. Hum, hum. You don’t see such women in France. What did you say her name is?”

“She married a man named Usselex.”

“Usselex? What Usselex?”

“What Usselex I can’t tell you. But there seems to be only one, and she caught him. He has more money than Incoul, Jerolomon, and Bleecker Bleecker put together.”

“You don’t mean John Usselex, the banker?”

“Oh, but I do, though.”

The ex-Minister opened the door and looked out into the outer room, then, assured that no one was listening, he resumed his former seat, crossed his legs, and meditatively beat his knee. In his face was an expression which a psychologist would have admired, a commingling of the vatic and the amused, accentuated by sarcasm.

“Well, what of it?” Maule asked shortly, perplexed at the mummery.

The ex-Minister leaned forward and for four or five minutes addressed his nephew in a monotone. As he spoke Maule’s perplexity changed to surprise, then to bewilderment, and ultimately into jubilation. “Are you positive of this?” he exclaimed. “Tell me that you are. You must be positive!”

“I give you the facts⁠—”

“I am off, then;” and he sprang from his seat. “I haven’t a minute to lose,” he added; and taking his uncle by the arm he led him from the office.

In the outer room the corpulent dwarf still sat. “Dere was dot morhgige⁠—” he stammered.

“Accepted,” Maule shouted, and turned to the clerk. “Look over the papers, will you? If they are right, get a check ready. As for you, my slim friend,” he said to the German, “remember that business men have business hours.” And laughing as though he had said something insultingly original, he hurried down the stairs, and jumping into a hansom, he presently rolled up town.

In a trifle over half an hour he was at Eden’s door. “There is no time like the present,” he told himself, as he rang the bell. But when, in answer to his ring, a servant appeared, he learned that Eden was not at home.

“Does Mrs. Usselex dine out, do you know?” Maule asked.

“I don’t think Mrs. Usselex is coming back, sir,” was the answer.

“You mean that Mrs. Usselex will not return until late, I suppose.”

To this the man made no reply; he scratched the end of his nose reflectively. In his face was an expression that arrested Maule’s attention.

“What do you mean?” he asked, a sudden suspicion entering his mind.

But still the man made no answer. He raised his arms, the elbows crooked, and assumed the appearance of an idiot.

“It is worth five dollars,” Maule continued. “Here they are;” and with that he extended a bill of the nation, which the servant took, and then, glancing over his shoulder, whispered:

“Mrs. Usselex has gone to her father’s, sir. I distrust something’s hup.”

“That man ought to be dismissed,” Maule decided, as he hurried down the steps. “I say, cabby,” he called to the hansom; “Second Avenue and Stuyvesant Square.”

“Damn it all,” he muttered, as he seated himself in the vehicle. “I am afraid I am late for the ball.”

It took the hansom but a few minutes to reach its destination, and presently the door of Mr. Menemon’s house was opened. As Maule entered he caught the sound of Eden’s voice. “I want to see Mrs. Usselex,” he said, and without waiting for a reply, he pushed the portiere aside.

“It is false,” he heard Usselex exclaim.

For a second Maule hesitated. He would have preferred to have found Eden alone. Indeed, the possibility of encountering her husband had not occurred to him; but he felt that it was too late to recede, and visited by that prescience which comes to the alert, he divined that the blow which he intended to strike must be struck then or never. He let the portiere fall, and taking his courage in both hands, he stepped forward. As he did so, Eden, in annoyance at the intrusion, moved back, and Usselex, with a query on his tongue, turned to him. But before the latter could frame his words, Maule had spoken.

“Mr. Usselex,” he said, with the air of one ventilating a conventional platitude, “are you aware that a man who insults a woman is a coward?”

At this speech Eden’s hands fluttered like falling leaves; she made as would she speak, but Usselex motioned to her to be silent, and flicking a speck of dust from his sleeve as though the speck represented the reproof, he answered in a tone as conventional as Maule’s. “And are you aware, sir, that a man who permits himself to interfere between husband and wife is⁠—”

But whatever he may have intended to say, the sentence remained unfinished. Maule did not wait for its completion. He advanced yet nearer to where Usselex stood, he looked him in the face, and without raising his voice, he said: “This lady, Mr. Usselex, is not your wife, nor are you her husband.” Then, turning to Eden, he added with the grace of a knight-errant, “Miss Menemon, allow me to present my congratulations.”

The old legends tell of disputants ossified by one glance of Jove’s avenging stare; and when Maule made his melodramatic announcement, both Usselex and Eden stood transfixed and motionless with surprise. Of the little group Maule alone preserved any semblance of animation. The palms of his hands were moist, and he felt unable to control one of the muscles of his face. But his emotion was not apparent. Outwardly he was perfectly self-possessed, and admonished by that instinct which at times warns us that every trace of feeling should be disguised, he succeeded in heightening the illusion by means of his moustache, to which he proceeded to give a negligent twirl.

And as he twirled it Eden seemed to recover from her stupor. To her face, which had been blanched, the color returned. In her eyes came a gleam as from a reflection caught from without. Her lips moved, and she glanced from accuser to accused. And as she glanced, dumb and ineffectual of speech, Mr. Menemon crossed the room.

“What is it you say?” he asked.

It was evident at once that of the scene⁠—which if long in the telling had in reality not outlasted a moment⁠—he had stood as witness.

“What is it you say?” he repeated.

“I say that this man is a bigamist.” And as Maule spoke he tossed his head as though inviting possible contradiction. “I say,” he continued, “that Mr. John Usselex has a wife living in Paris.”

Mr. Menemon smoothed the back of his head reflectively. “Dear me!” he said; “that may all be. I daresay there are hundreds of John Usselexes. You don’t expect them to remain bachelors because one of their namesake gets married, do you?” And with that he nodded and turned with a smile to his daughter. “He can’t expect that, Eden, can he?”

But Eden’s eyes were fixed on Usselex. Her attention was wholly centered in him. Seemingly her father’s words were unheeded. And the old gentleman turned again to Maule.

“What evidence have you that this John Usselex is the John Usselex of whom you speak?” he asked; and with the hand with which he had smoothed the back of his head, he now began to caress his chin.

But before Maule could answer, Eden caught her father by the arm. “His face!” she whispered quickly. “You can see it in his face.” She pointed to him; in her eyes was conviction, and in her voice no tremor of doubt. “Look at him,” she cried; “it is he.”

Usselex turned to her in a manner which to those present was uninterpretable, then his eyes sought Mr. Menemon’s, and finally he lowered them to the ground. His attitude was tantamount to admission, and as such Eden construed it.

“Thank God!” she exclaimed. “O God! I thank you. I am free.” She still clutched her father’s arm, and Maule made a movement toward her.

“Yes,” he said, as he did so, “yes, Miss Menemon⁠—”

But before he could reach her, Usselex barred the way. “By what right, sir⁠—” he began, very firmly, but Eden interrupted him.

“I told you once that I thought Miss Bolten was interested in him. Let me tell you now he is in love with me.”

“Eden, Eden⁠—” her father murmured, reprovingly. Into Usselex’ face came an expression that a demon might have envied. For a second he fronted Maule, his hand clenched. Then the fingers loosened again. The demon was transformed into a quiet, self-possessed man, that looked like a monk, a trifle valetudinarian at that.

“Madam,” he said, “when a woman speaks in that way to the man whose name she bears, there is but one thing for him to do, and that is to withdraw.” He bowed, and without further comment left the room.

“I don’t bear your name,” Eden called after him, but he had gone. “I don’t bear your name; I throw it to the mud from which it sprang.”

“And you are right, Miss Menemon,” Maule echoed. “You are right to do so.” And again he moved to her.

“Don’t touch me,” the girl cried; she was trembling. Evidently the excitement had been too much for her. “Don’t touch me,” she repeated; and drawing from him as from a distasteful thing, she added, with a look of scorn that an insulted princess might have exhibited: “Though you have not a lackey’s livery, you have a lackey’s heart.”

“Eden, I beg of you⁠—” Mr. Menemon began. But the girl had turned her back, and divining the uselessness of any admonition, the old gentleman addressed himself to Maule. “You will permit me to say, sir,” he continued, “that whatever your motive may have been, and whatever evidence you may have, your announcement might have been conveyed a trifle less unceremoniously. I bid you good afternoon.”

“But⁠—”

“I bid you good afternoon.”

Maule twirled his moustache for a second, and then, with a glance at Eden, he too left the room.

Hardly had he gone, when Eden threw herself on a lounge. In her ears was the roar of water displaced. The flooring turned from red to black. Then all was still; she had fainted.

XI

As Eden, through thunderclaps, and zigzagged flames of light, groped back to consciousness again, it was with the intuition that some calamity was waiting to greet her. Into the depths of her being, a voice which refused to be hushed had been whispering, “Come.” And Eden, clinging to the fringes of night, strove to still the call. But the phantom of things that were persisted and overcame her; it loomed abruptly, with arms outstretched, forcing her against her will, to reason with that in which no reason was.

For the moment she was benumbed, outwearied with effort and enervated by the strain and depletion of force. She wished herself unconscious again, and looked back into the absence of sentiency from which she had issued, as a pilgrim reentering the desert may recall the groves of Mekka and the silence of the Khabian tomb. It had been less a swoon to her than a foretaste of peace, the antithesis of life compressed into a second; and she longed for a repetition of the sudden suffocation of its embrace. But memory had got its baton back, and the incidents of the hour trooped before her gaze. She could not be free of them; they beat at her heart, filling her thoughts to fulfillment itself. In their onslaught they brought her new strength, the courage that comes to the oppressed; and rising from the lounge on which she had fallen, she left her father and his ministrations, and redescended into the past with anger for aigrette and hatred for spur.

It was the room that she had occupied during her girlhood to which she then went, and in the presence of the familiar walls, something reminded her of the days in which she had believed that the ignoble bore a stigma on their brow, that infamy of thought or deed left a visible sign. She recalled the old legends with which her childhood had been charmed, the combats of heroes with monsters, the struggles of lords with lies. In those days indeed, evil had been to her an abstraction, a figure of speech beckoned out of the remotest past, and unencounterable as the giant bat that darkened the nights of prehistoric time. Then had come a nearer acquaintance with it, the shudders that chronicles brought, and the intimations of the fabliaux; but still it had been distant, a belonging of the past incompetent of survival. And it was not until within recent years that she learned that it had indeed survived. Even then the tidings that reached her had as much consistency to her mind as the news of cholera in Singapore. She could not picture that Orient port, and the cholera she was sure would never attack her in her father’s house.

And now suddenly she was contaminated. She felt as one may feel who had been lured into a lazar of lepers. Turn which way she might she could never wash herself clean. She was degraded in her own sight, and tricked by those whom she had trusted best. And no issue, not one. The dishonor into which she had been trapped was a thing that clamored for redress, and to that clamoring of her heart no answer was vouchsafed. “O God,” she moaned, “is justice dead? Where are the thunderbolts you used to wield? Have you wearied of vengeance? have you left it, Jehovah, to us?”

Her forehead was throbbing as it had never throbbed before. Above it each individual hair seemed to be turning red. Her sultry eyes were dilated; she was quivering from shoulder to heel. And as in her restless anger she paced the room, before her on the wall glowed the device her own hands had made⁠—Keep Yourself Pure. For a second she stared at it, the color mounting and retreating from her cheeks, and suddenly she tore it down and trampled it under foot.

“Vengeance is there,” she cried; and without even the hesitation of a hesitation she bent over a table, and finding a sheet of paper, she scrawled across it⁠—In telling you of Maule’s love for me I omitted to tell you of my own for Adrian. This she addressed and then rang the bell.

And as she stood waiting for a servant to come, there was a rap on the door and her father entered. He looked at her for an instant and rubbed his hands. “It is chilly here, Eden,” he said; “had you not better come downstairs?”

“Is it worth while? It must be late. Where is Parker? has she not come with my things?”

“Yes; it is almost six o’clock. Parker⁠—”

“Six! I thought it was midnight. How long have I been here?”

“Three or four minutes at most. I had a note to write. So soon as I could do so I followed you at once. You are quite yourself again, Eden, are you not?”

“I can understand,” mused Eden, “that there are years that count double when there are moments that prolong themselves as have these.” “Yes,” she answered, aloud. “I am better. I will come with you.”

She picked up the message she had written and left the room. In the hallway was the servant for whom she had rung. “Take this to Fifth Avenue,” she said. “There is no answer, but see that it is delivered in person.”

XII

“It is pleasanter here, is it not, Eden?” Mr. Menemon asked, when they reached the sitting-room. “It makes one think of old times, doesn’t it? Do you remember⁠—” And Mr. Menemon rambled on with some anecdote of days long past.

Eden gazed at him wonderingly. His words passed her by unheeded. It was bewildering to her that he could accept the tragedy so lightly, and as he spoke she kept repeating to herself that Virginius was part of a world long dead and derided. Truly, she could not understand. He seemed conscious of no wrong doing. The position in which she was placed excited him so little that he was able to discourse in platitudes. She was not wife nor maid nor widow, and for the man who had taken her from her home and inflicted on her a wrong that merited the penitentiary, her father expressed no indignation, no sorrow even. He did not even attempt to condole with her. And it was to him she had turned. Truly, she was helpless indeed. Yet still she gazed at him, expectant of some sudden outbreak, some storm of anger which, though it parodied her own, would at least be in unison with it. Her fingers were restless and her mouth was parched, a handkerchief which she held she twisted into coils, it seemed to her that were no word of sympathy forthcoming she would suffocate, as the traveler in the desert gasps beneath the oppression of fair and purple skies.

And still Mr. Menemon rambled on. “I should have gone to his funeral,” he said, “had you not come in. He is to be buried in Washington I hear. Well, well! he was a brave man and a staunch friend. Yes, he was all of that. Really, Eden, I ought to have gone. I suppose they will escort the body to the station. Did you hear the drums when you went upstairs? It makes a man of my age feel that his turn may be next.”

Mr. Menemon crossed the room and looked out of the window. “See, Eden,” he continued; “there must be a whole regiment. Not his own, though. The better part of that went down at Gettysburg. You remember, don’t you⁠—”

With this Mr. Menemon turned with a haste he strove to conceal. “It’s almost dinner time,” he added, inconsequently. “I will just change my coat.” And immediately he left the room.

For a moment Eden thought she heard his voice in the hall. Then all was still again. She was wholly alone. She envied her father’s friend who lay in some catafalque across the square. And presently the sense of desolation grew so acute that she threw herself prostrate on the lounge, and clasping a cushion in her arms, she buried her face in its silk.

From the square beyond came a muffled roll, and on her shoulder the touch of a hand. It was her father, she was sure. She half turned, her cheeks wet with tears. “What is it?” she sobbed. “Father⁠—”

“It is I, Eden.” And through a rift of understanding there filtered the sound of Usselex’s voice. With the flutter of a bird surprised, she looked up. She started, and would have risen, but the hand weighed her down. She tried to move, and raising her arm as though to shield her eyes from some distasteful sight, suddenly she extended it, and motioned him back.

“Eden,” he began.

“Don’t speak to me!” she cried; and shaking herself from his hold, she stood up and dashed the tears away. “Don’t speak to me!” she repeated; “and if anywhere within the purlieus of your being there is a spark of shame, leave me, and never⁠—”

“Eden, you are unjust.”

“Ah, I am unjust, am I not? I am unjust, because I believed in you. I am unjust, because I discover you in some coarse intrigue, I am unjust, because I thought myself your wife. I am unjust, am I? Did you get my note? Is it for that that you are here?”

“Eden, if you will listen a moment⁠—”

“I have listened too long. Where is my father? Why is it you pursue me here? Are you not satisfied with your work? You meet a girl who only wishes to trust, and before her eyes you unroll a panorama of deceit. Oh! you chose her well⁠—”

“It cannot be that you believe that man, Eden⁠—”

“The man I believed was you. What matters the testimony of others when I find myself deceived⁠—”

“Eden, you have deceived yourself. Last night I told you there were things I had not wished to tell, not from lack of confidence, but because⁠—”

“Because you knew that did I hear them I would go.”

“No, not that; but because I did not wish to cause you pain.”

“Yes, protest. My father said you would. But the protest comes too late. Besides, I do not care to listen.”

And thereat she made a movement as though to leave the room. But this Usselex prevented. He planted himself very firmly before her. His attitude was arrestive as an obelisk and uncircuitable as a labyrinth. Attention was his to command, and he claimed it with a gesture.

“You shall not go,” he said; “you shall hear me.”

She stepped back to elude him, but he caught her by the wrist.

“Look at me,” he continued. “It took fifty years to make my hair gray; one day has made it white.”

Eden succeeded in disengaging herself from his grasp, and she succeeded the more easily in that a servant unobserved by her, yet seen by Usselex, had entered the room. He loosed his hold at once and glanced at the man.

“What is it?” he asked. “No one rang.”

“A letter, sir,” the man answered; “it was to be delivered to you.”

Usselex took the note and held it unexamined in his hand. Eden caught a glimpse of the superscription. The writing was her own. It was, she knew, the note which she had dispatched a half hour before. Meanwhile the servant had withdrawn.

“When I came home this afternoon,” Usselex continued, “and found that you had gone, I could not understand⁠—”

“You might have gone to the Ranleigh for information. Let me pass!”

“Why to the Ranleigh? surely⁠—”

“To Mrs. Feverill, then, since you wish me to be explicit. Let me pass, I say.”

“It was of her I wished to tell you⁠—”

“Was it, indeed? You were considerate enough, however, not to do so.”

“Let me tell you now?”

“Rather let me go. I prefer your reticence to your confidence.”

“Eden⁠—”

“No, I have no need to learn more of your mistress⁠—”

Usselex stepped aside. “She is my daughter,” he said, sadly. “Go, since you wish to.”

—“Nor of your wife,” she added, as he spoke.

“I have no other wife than you,” he answered, and with the note which he held in his hand he toyed despondently. As yet he had not so much as glanced at the address.

Something, a light, an intonation, and influence undiscerned yet sentiable, stayed her steps. She halted in passing and looked him in the face. And he, seeing that she hesitated, repeated with an accent sincere as that which is heard in the voice of the moribund, “No other wife than you.”

“You say that Mrs. Feverill is your daughter?” she exclaimed. It may be that the average woman, conscious of her own mobility, is more inattentive of the past than of the present. But however that may be, the assurance which Eden had just received seemed to affect her less than the preceding announcement. “You say that she is your daughter,” she repeated. “Why, you told me⁠—You said⁠—”

“I have told you nothing. Will you sit a moment and let me tell you now?”

Coerced and magnetized, the girl moved back and sank down again on the lounge. Usselex still toyed absently with the note, and as he too found a seat, for the first time she recalled its contents. Then a shudder beset her.

“I ought perhaps,” he began, “to have been franker in this matter. But my excuse, if it be one, is that I was dissuaded by your father. Before I ventured to ask you to marry me, I told my story to him, and he counselled silence. What I say to you now he will substantiate. Shall I ring and ask him to come here?”

His words reached her from inordinate distances, across preceding days, and out of and through the note which he held in his hand; and with them came the acutest pain. “He is telling the truth,” she reflected, “and I deserve to die.”

“Shall I ring?” he repeated.

She started and shook her head. “No, no,” she replied. “Go on.”

“I thank you,” Usselex returned. “I can understand that enough has occurred to shake your confidence. In the circumstances, it is good of you to be willing to receive my unsupported word. But bear with me a moment. You will see, I think, that I have done no wrong.”

As he spoke she had but one thought, to repossess herself of the note. Could she but get it and tear it and set it aflame, out of the cinders life might re-arise.

“You may remember,” he continued, “what I said of myself, ‘things have not always been pleasant with me.’ You knew as a child what it is to lose a mother, but think what it must be to have a mother and have that mother ignore your existence. Such a thing is hard, is it not? But of her I will not speak; she is dead, poor woman; I hope she never suffered as have I. The people by whom I was brought up I looked upon as my parents. They had been paid to adopt me. When I discovered that, I was old enough to make my own living. With that view I came to this country. New York was different then. I should not care to land here now and attempt to make a fortune without a penny to start with. But it is true, I was young. I was a fair linguist, a rarity in those days, and it was not long before I found a situation. When I had a little money put by, I learned of an opening in Boston, and started in business there for myself. Shortly after I became acquainted with a girl. She was very beautiful; more so, I thought, than anyone I had ever seen. So soon as I was in a position to marry she became my wife. We lived together for three years. During that time I thought her affection as unwavering as my own. She was an excellent musician, and much sought after, not alone because of her talent, but because of her beauty as well. The entertainments which she frequented I was often unable to attend. But I was glad to have her go without me. I was proud of the admiration which she aroused. One evening she left me, and did not return. For some time her disappearance was unexplained. Ultimately I discovered that she was in New York. She had deserted me for another man. I followed her and obtained a divorce. Afterwards the man deserted her as she had deserted me. Then she went abroad. Of her life there I can only judge by hearsay. I believe that at one time she figured in an opera troupe. Now and then she wrote, asking for money; but latterly she has ceased. It is a surprise to me that she calls herself by my name. Perhaps she has done so because she heard that I had prospered. The reflection of that prosperity may have been of advantage to her. That, however, can easily be stopped. But I am sorry, Eden, that you should have learned of it. Even the children do not know; they think her dead. When she deserted me, I left them with their grandparents. In so doing I sought to separate myself from everything connected with her, and I stipulated that I would provide for their maintenance on condition that they were kept in ignorance of their mother’s existence and of mine. Some years ago, however, first the grandfather, then the grandmother, died. I was obliged to appear more prominently. My daughter had married; I took her husband into my employ. It was of him I spoke the other day.”

He hesitated and paused, his eyes fixed in hers. The phrases had come from him haltingly, one by one, but each he had dowered with an accent that carried conviction with it. With the note which he held in his hand, he still toyed abstractedly.

“You understand now, do you not?” he asked. “You understand and forgive?”

And Eden, as one who has weathered a storm and sees shipwreck imminent in port bowed her head. “It is truth,” she told herself. “If he reads that note, he will kill me.”

“You understand now, do you not?” he repeated. His voice was sonorous and caressing as an anthem, and he bent nearer that he might see her face.

“Too late!” she answered.

“No, Eden, not that. Look at me. You must not hide your eyes. In all the world there are none as fair as they. Look at me, Eden. Tell me that you forgive. I have pained you, I know; I have been stupid; but the pain has been unwitting and the stupidity born of love. Look at me, Eden. See,” he continued, and bent at her side, “See, I ask forgiveness on my knees. Can you not give it me?”

“To you, yes, but never to myself.” She spoke hoarsely, in a voice unlike her own; her eyes were not in his, they were staring at something in his hand, and as she stared, she seemed to shrink. The muscles of her face were rigid. And Usselex, perplexed at the fixidity of her gaze, followed the direction which her eyes had taken and saw that they rested on the note which he still held, crumpled and forgotten. For a second he looked at it wonderingly, “Why, it is from you,” he exclaimed.

In that second, Eden, with the prescience that is said to visit those that drown, went forward and back, into the past and into the future as well. Amid her scattered yesterdays she groped for a promise. Of the unanswering morrows she called for release, and as her husband stood up, preparing to read what she had written, she felt herself the depository of shame.

The next instant she was at his side. “Give it me,” she murmured. Her voice trembled a little, but she strove to render it assured. “Give it me,” she pleaded.

Usselex turned to her at once. “Certainly, if you wish it,” he said. “What is it about?”

He held the note to her, and she, with an affected air of indifference, took it from him and tossed it into the grate.

“Nothing,” she answered, and then, as though ashamed of the falsehood, she looked him bravely in the face. “It was about your clerk.”

“Adrian?” he asked. And as she nodded, tremulous still and unprepared for further questions, he added, “I hope you like him.”

“You hope I like him?”

“Yes, he is my son.”

Eden’s hands went to her throat and her eyes to the grate. The note was already in a blaze.

“Yes,” Usselex continued, “I have a bit of news for you. He is engaged to Miss Bolton. For a long time her parents objected, but last night they consented. It may be because he was at the opera with you. How small people can be!” he added. “She is a nice girl, though. Adrian told me this morning that he tried to speak to you about her the night I dined with Governor Blanchford, but that you did not seem interested.”

“God in Heaven!” gasped Eden, beneath her breath. “If these are your punishments, what then are your rewards?”

Usselex had led her to a seat and taken her unresisting hand in his. For some little time he talked to her, very gently, as it behooves the strong to address the weak. And as he spoke, Mr. Menemon entered, and seeing them hand-locked and side-by-side, he smiled cheerily to himself with the air of a man who learns that all is well.

Usselex stood up at once, but for a little space Eden sat very still, surprised as February at a violet, then rising, she went forward to the window and looked out at the night. From the square beyond came the beat of drums, and on the breeze was borne to her the shrill treble of retreating fifes. And as she loitered at the window, conscious only of a sense of happiness such as she had never known before, her father called to her. She turned at his bidding. In the opposite doorway a servant stood.

“Dinner is served,” he said.

And presently Mr. Menemon, as was his custom, mumbled a grace and thanksgiving to God.

To
Helen.

I

The quiet of the morning was punctuated by a housemaid who, aware that the master was astir, was singing, for his benefit, “Jesus loves me,” in a treble of irritating insistence. Already the carriage had arrived, and as Gonfallon drew on his gloves he wondered by what token he should recognize the sister of his wife. He had the vaguest memory of her, a slip of a girl who years before had sat opposite him at dinner, the eyes lowered, the hair in pendent plaits. And as his thoughts went back to earlier days, Ruth called to him from the floor above, “If you don’t see her at once, ask the captain: she is in his charge.”

Gonfallon was not a whit more unselfish than the best of us, yet that morning, his routine upset, his coffee undigested, the paper barely skimmed, and, paramount of all, Ruth’s neuralgia which forced him to the wharf alone, made him conscious that, momentarily, for all of him, in the captain’s charge the girl might remain.

But he assented smilingly, as was his wont; and when, after a long sweep down the Avenue and a brisk drive through hideous little streets, he caught a sniff of salt water, his equanimity returned, and as the carriage rolled into the domed and creaking peninsula the momentary annoyance was forgot.

Already the Bourgogne was in the offing, and Gonfallon had but a few moments in which to kick his heels before the great ship was moored and the gangplank let down. As the vessel swung round he had gazed up at the faces that lined the rail, trusting to his own intuition to recognize the girl unprompted; but as yet among the passengers he saw no one that in any way resembled the shy little maid whom he had come to meet.

“H’m,” he mused, “I dare say she has recognized me and is too timid to make a sign.” And, reflecting that after all, in view of his cloth, it would be more dignified to make inquiry of someone than to stand staring women out of countenance, he descended in the caverns of memory and recovered a sentence in French.

“Where is the purser to be found?” he asked of an official at his side.

“Le voilà,” the man answered, not over-suavely, and nodded towards an individual bebraided with gold who stood within hailing-distance.

Gonfallon turned to the person thus designated, and presently succeeded in catching his eye. “Would you be good enough⁠—” he began, and, as the purser leaned forward the better to catch his speech, Gonfallon added, “I am looking for Miss Bucholz.”

The purser lifted his arms and assumed an expression of the civilest and most amiable perplexity. “Really, sir, I regret, perhaps⁠—” And as he shrugged his shoulders and bowed, as who should say, “It is a grief that I cannot serve you,” a young man dressed Piccadilly-fashion touched him on the arm.

“I beg pardon: Dr. Gonfallon, I believe. My name is Mr. Yarde. Miss Bucholz is yonder.”

And as Gonfallon, in obedience to the summons, turned again, he heard the purser, presumably to a sympathetic ear, exclaim, “Ah, çà! Does he think I have his Miss Bucholz in my pocket?”

But Gonfallon had no opportunity of meditating on the variation of demeanor which is peculiar to the French: a moment or two later the guide which Providence or his sister-in-law had sent, had led him through coils of descending passengers to a corner of the deck, which, so nearly as his vision permitted him to discern, was occupied by but one person, a pouting, good-looking lad, such as one may see any day at Eton during term-time, who stood leaning against the back of a steamer-chair in such a manner that only the head and shoulders were visible.

“Here,” said the guide, greatly to Gonfallon’s astonishment, “here is your quest.⁠—Miss Bucholz, can I be of further assistance?”

Immediately the pout disappeared, and a hand gloved in suede was extended. “Is Ruth not with you?”

And then for the first time Gonfallon realized that he was in the presence of her whom he sought.

“Yes,” he answered⁠—“no, I mean. She is at the house⁠—” In amusement at his own surprise, he smiled a little. “I have a carriage, though⁠—”

The girl turned to the young man who had introduced himself as Mr. Yarde. “You may go,” she said, abruptly, and to her lips the pout returned.

The young man made as would he speak, but evidently he thought better of it, and, raising his hat, took himself off. As he moved away, Gonfallon glanced at him, and as he glanced there bubbled within him that unmotived, instinctive dislike of which antipathy is born.

“Detestable little cad!” the girl muttered, and issued from her barricade.

Gonfallon eyed her curiously. Whatever manner of gown she wore was covered by an ulster. On her head was a sailor-hat, about her neck was a high white collar, the ends bent, and beneath it was a scarf such as is worn by men. She was worse than pretty. In her skin was the hue of that white rose which has a sulphur heart. Her features had the surety of an intaglio, her head was small, the brow low; in her hair, which was short and curled, was the glisten of gold-leaf shown to the sun. Her eyes were of porcelain-blue, the under lids retreating and shorter than the upper. The effect of her mouth, now that the pout had gone, was that of lips untouched and unaware of love. In height she was a trifle taller than the average New York girl. She held herself with the erectness of one accustomed to the saddle. And when again she spoke, Gonfallon felt the charm of that undulant intonation which is the sweetest heritage of English speech.

“Father, I suppose, was too busy to meet me, was he not?” she asked.

Too busy, indeed! Gonfallon thought of the sodden mortal he had seen the week before ambling down a side-street, the estray of millions and of health, and then, remembering that Claire was as yet uninformed of the successive disasters in which he had foundered, he nodded cheerily and smiled.

“Yes, yes, of course. Ruth would have come too, but she is a martyr⁠—no, but really a martyr, you know.” For a second he paused, as though in some dumb fashion he might console the girl for the absence of those she loved. “You had a pleasant trip, I hope?” he added. “If you will come with me I will put you in the carriage and see to your traps. Have you the keys?”

An hour later, without further incident necessary of record, the house was reached, and Gonfallon, leaving the girl to her sister’s ministrations, went to his study to sandpaper an address for the morrow. But, whether because his routine had been disturbed, or because he was personally out of trim, certain it is that he felt in no mood for the chastening of homilies that noon. For a little while he still fingered the manuscript, striving to coerce his thoughts, until, conscious of the futility of the endeavor, he abandoned further effort and lounged back into the past.

At the time contemporaneous to the episodes with which these pages have to deal, Christopher Gonfallon was in his fortieth year. Across his forehead was a sabre-cut which thought had dealt, near the temples was a suspicion of gray, on either side of his nostrils were the beginnings of furrows, but otherwise the years had been gentle. In his face and bearing was the fragrance of the fields. He wore no beard, his lip was unmoustached. His eyes were of that green-black which is noticeable in dysodile coal. His profile suggested sensitiveness, the full-face strength. Lavater would not have praised his chin. At first sight you would have taken him for a maker of songs and of laws, but his coat betrayed him. By profession he was an ecclesiastic, a priest of the Episcopal Church.

On the conferment of orders he had accepted a call at Bronx, a somnolent New England hamlet, and there during an entire decade he had wasted his fervors on a collection of cattle, surreptitiously beloved the while by a procession of parochial maids.

Throughout the parish, however, there was at most but one person capable of appreciating the imageries of his speech, and that person, the Countess of Cinq-Cygne, was deaf. To this lady his subsequent and metropolitan success was indirectly due.

The countess, born a Chisolm-Jones, lived in a great stone house that overlooked the village and patches of the surrounding country as well. And this stone house each summer and autumn she was accustomed to populate with detachments and reinforcements of guests. The winter she passed in meditation, though not, presumably, of the count. For de Cinq-Cygne, who had enjoyed the formidable reputation of being the handsomest member of the Jockey, had, after marrying the heiress of Bronx, as the countess was known in her youth, and promenading her through the Tuileries, returned with her to the New England hamlet from which he one day disappeared companioned by his wife’s nearest friend. It was rumored that he had returned to the Tuileries and the Jockey Club. But from the countess no mention of him could be wrung. After Sedan she put on black, and it was taken for granted that the count had fallen with the eagle and the imperial bees. Of the fate of the companion of his flight her kinsfolk never asked.

During the last months of winter Gonfallon was a frequent guest at the house on the hill. The countess was too infirm to attend services with any satisfaction to herself, but she was devout, and the visits of the pastor were grateful to her. She was appreciative, and, despite her encroaching deafness, pleasant and intelligent of speech. She had a smile of singular indulgence, and, though her beauty was that of a city raised from the ground, still, you divined among the vestiges the seductions of earlier charm. By repute she had been indeed a belle; and as for her manner, time had coped with it in vain: she was still the high-bred woman who had shown the pinchbeck maréchales and marchionesses of the Tuileries how to walk, and who, when the Emperor on learning that her baptismal name was Helen had exclaimed, “Ah that I were Paris!” had answered, “Sire, you are France.”

Of connections she had many, yet of relations but one, a nephew, Mr. A. B. Fenwick Chisolm-Jones by name, familiarly known as Alphabet, a young gentleman of literary promise which thus far he had failed to fulfil. To the aunt in the sultriness of the summer months the nephew came, and with him anyone else who could be lured that way. But in the winter the great house was almost uninhabited; and so it came about that in the soundless dusks the one man in the village who could speak English correctly was made welcome there and at home.

The countess, as has been intimated, was devout. In the old cosmogony she had the amplest faith. To her, heaven was just beyond the stars, and hell beneath the ferrule of her crutch. To the truth of any miracle she would have testified on oath. Had anyone so much as hinted before her that the precepts of the synoptic gospels were due to Socrates and the Socratics, she would have routed the blasphemer with the sign of the cross. It was rumored that in youth she had been less orthodox. But with age religion held her like a vice; it was her ultimate refuge; and as Gonfallon penetrated its abysses he fell to wondering whether his own creed might not be as futile as was hers. Yet to argue with her would have been profitable as the chiding of a river. As a consequence, he held his peace, perplexed at times, but endeavoring in the saddle, in long stretches over bleak, unfrequented roads, to starve his thoughts into submission and sponge his mind of doubt.

Meanwhile, the tenor of his discourses remained unchanged. Long since he had discovered that to move his congregation he needed not spirituality of metaphor, but powder and shot; and yet, through that obstinacy which inhibits the poet from writing to the crowd, he continued to preach, not to his listeners, but to the lintels above. And to them his lessons bore no trace of the dogmatic. Now and then would come a warning, but the detached and terrible maledictions in which the provincial divine delights were never voiced by him. It was to souls he did not see he spoke, and in his speech were exhortations to virtue and pictures of the perfect peace of conscience at rest. His weapons were parables; the groundwork of his instruction was built on compassion. Did he plead, it was for patience, for abnegation of self; did he exhort, it was to charity, to forgiveness of sin.

Christopher Gonfallon did not preach to the lintels wholly in vain. One green afternoon in June, while he was engaged with the litany, a little man, rather stout, rather pompous, yet shrewd of eye, an individual unknown to the villagers, entered the church and dropped into the first convenient pew, the which, thereupon, apparently interested him no further. During the services he remained apathetic; during the sermon that followed he did not once take his eyes from the preacher. And when, to the accompaniment of the usual “Let your light so shine,” the warden handed him, tentative fashion, the plate, that gentleman was bewildered at the receipt, not of the fraction of a dollar which he had expected, but of the most majestic contribution which he had as yet borne to the rail.

In a village a bit of gossip seems rather to permeate the air than to circulate from mouth to mouth: it reaches the sojourner whether he will it or not. Before teatime that evening everyone in Bronx knew that the little man was Bucholz the monopolist, a visitor, with his daughters, at the house on the hill, piloted there, it was rumored, by the countess’s nephew, Alphabet Jones.

To the house on the hill that evening Christopher Gonfallon was bidden. In summer it was the custom of the countess not to sup, but to dine; and when the doors of the semi-baronial hall were thrown open and a servant announced that her ladyship was served, Gonfallon discovered that it was his privilege to lead to the repast one of the two daughters of the monopolist alluded to. She was, he presently observed, a very fetching young woman. Her skin was eburnean in its clarity, her eyes of iserine, and in her features something there was that suggested a pastel of a politer age, an Eve on a fan. Across the table her sister sat, an undeveloped slip of a girl, at whom Gonfallon glanced but once. It was to the elder that he gave his attention, and it took him but a moment to perceive that that attention was not thrown away. She was breezy of speech, though not of manner, and she was garmented in a mode and texture which her neighbor did not remember to have remarked before. When he addressed her, he detected her thought running just in advance of his own, completing it as it were with little embroideries of home manufacture; and when in turn she led the talk, she seemed, in comparison to his parochial dames and damsels, the visitant from a larger world. Beside her he felt himself the rustic: for a little space he fancied that he must seem awkward, a fancy which did not tend to an increase of confidence, and when, later on, he journeyed over the yellow road to the parsonage, he noted with a pang of mortification that unconsciously he had been envying the easy assurance of Alphabet Jones.

The Bucholz family disappeared noiselessly as they had arrived; and when the stifle of summer disappeared as well, one of that family was still remembered in Bronx. Now and then, in some leaf-bound quietude that was stirred if at all but by the call of some ruffian bawling to the cows, Gonfallon had caught himself wishing for the wider spheres that lay beyond the hills and musing through fringes of melancholy on the desolateness of his life. Thus far the feminine had been apart from his existence. In the first fervors of the calling which he had adopted, the celibacy of the priesthood in the Mother Church had seemed to him obligatory on whomso devoted his energies to Christ, and unprompted he had paraphrased a familiar dictum⁠—a cleric married is a cleric marred. As an adolescent he had been of too shy and vibrant a nature to consort in comfort with the combustible maidens of the Massachusettsian town in which his boyhood had been passed, and at the university the mysticism of the spirit had dulled the virility of the flesh. But now the first fervors had gone. He had weighed the Mother Church; her laws had no hold on him. The mysticism with which he had spurned the earth had faded like spilt wine; while of his energies, nothing, apparently, had resulted. In his pastorate he was not disliked, but he was not appreciated. His predecessor had been oafish as his charges, and by that very oafishness the good will of the parish had been won⁠—he had been of themselves; whereas Gonfallon was of a clay so fine that they felt him above them, a fact which in itself was a reproach. Moreover, he was a bachelor: save his mother, their womenfolk had no one to receive them did they perpetrate a contribution-party, and about the stove in the village store the misdeeds of unmarried divines to which the press gave prominence had been chuckled over with envious and suspicious glee.

Presently the summer spent itself, the stifle departed; but before the earliest frost had used its palette on the leaves there came an invitation from the metropolis beyond. The Church of Gethsemane⁠—nicknamed that of the Holy Bilk⁠—that edifice which from the corner of Fifty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue projects sheer up into carolling azure the brownest and steepest of steeples, was in need of a new incumbent. The former rector⁠—an exegete and eschatologist of more than passing note, a scholar possessed of rare controversial ability, and, parenthetically, English by birth, a man whose mere attitude and manner were pervasive with a seduction so alluring that through it depopulated pews had been repeopled and filled⁠—suddenly had come to grief. In spite of the wage, ten thousand a year paid quarterly and in advance, he had managed to run up a hillock of debts which if not fabulous in size had been noisy and unseemly of utterance. At the initial clamor there had been a hush, then a murmur and an effort to suffocate the scandal in its cradle, but inarticulate whispers floated the facts abroad, the rector vanished, and Gethsemane, dubbed there and then the Church of the Holy Bilk, witnessed a procession of clerics ascending and descending the pulpit stair. But apparently no one of them had more than momentarily pleased. Then a call, prompted by Bucholz, had been voiced in Gonfallon’s ears. If he hesitated, not even his mother knew it. The dust of Bronx he shook from him. He came, he preached, and when the benediction was given, the rectorship was his.

At the hour when that intelligence was conveyed to him he escaped into solitude and with a finger beat a tattoo on his teeth. During that tattoo his thoughts went forward and back. He reviewed the negligent years, he interrogated the future. Behind him were bundles of baseless appearances, the mysticism which had shrouded his youth, the akosmism into which Berkeley had led him, then the long halt, the lintels of the village church; but now Fifth Avenue lay at his feet, beyond were the insignia of the episcopate, while in him pulsed that strength which brings the strophium to the conqueror. And as he peered at the stranger that was himself, anyone who had chanced that way would have discerned, not a man, but an aim. That day he called on Bucholz, and, not finding him at home, gave an hour to his daughter Ruth.

Gonfallon’s metropolitan success was immediate. He made no attempt to theorize with history; he did not meddle with Paul; the expounding of the gospels he left to others. With a set of people that fancied themselves in possession of advanced views and were still in the Middle Ages, he achieved the impossible: he not only consoled, he flattered, he persuaded and fascinated as well. In a word, he detained attention, not with home truths, however, but with issues and questions which few have energy enough to probe for themselves, and of which everyone wishes to be informed. And therewith he could be austere, stern even, and he could wield an epigram like a glaive. He was in earnest, too.

It was towards the close of a political contest that he first donned the rector’s gown. On that occasion the President happened to be in the middle aisle. Gonfallon, however, with an apposite text for foreword, took up the question at once. For three-quarters of an hour he held the most indifferent congregation in New York with the topic for which they cared the least. And at the close, with a gesture that swept the church, “Not politics,” he cried, “but religion is the nation’s soul.” It was in this wise that the congregation was won.

Incidentally he did not neglect Bucholz, nor yet Bucholz’ daughter. The girl was shyly willing; as for Gonfallon, he was wholly in love. The dream of celibacy faded, as dreams ever do. He asked, and with sweet reluctance it was given. His mother, who had migrated with him from Bronx, departed to the Massachusettsian homestead; and after the brief honeymoon he settled down to his pastorate charge.

Meanwhile, Bucholz’ younger daughter, Claire, had been sent abroad in search of masters of foreign arts and tongues; and abroad for four years she remained⁠—in fact, until Bucholz, caught in a mousetrap which that arch-hunter Jerolomon had set for him, saw the amassments of his own booty, twenty million at least, evaporate in a night. Six weeks later Claire landed in New York.

And now, the morning of her arrival, as Gonfallon lounged back through the past, the episodes of his career paraded unsummoned before him. He saw himself on the singing sands of the Beverly coast, he saw the elms of the village street, he heard the unprompted prayers of his youth and the sound of his own voice vibrating for the first time through the aisles of Gethsemane. Faces long forgotten returned to him and smiled. Incidents that were trivial ousted others that were grave⁠—the trick the countess had of polishing the handle of her crutch, the vividness of certain dreams, one in particular that had haunted him, sporadically, for years⁠—the idea that he had ascended the pulpit in pajamas and was unable to hide⁠—the tennis-match in which Ruth had played, and which, a sunstroke and a check of perspiration aiding, had resulted in the neuralgia which kept her to her room.

At the thought of her he drew a breath that resembled a sigh. For Ruth, in her enforced seclusion, seemed to have resigned herself to invalidism and the matter-of-fact. The breeziness which had won him to her had gone, gone too the impromptu of her speech, the savors that had so allured. Three years of marriage, and in place of the sensitive, high-strung girl there was a languid woman who each day at stated intervals consumed a furtive pill. His love for her, that love which he had accounted measureless, and which in the earliest transports of the unexpected had thrown him at her feet, impelling him in the belief there was none that could fill his life as she, and prompting him in the utterance, Non hodie solum, sed in aeternum te adorabo⁠—that love which in the possibilities of its expansion had seemed a contingent of the infinite had narrowed into an unsuggestive bond. Where is the Vandal that invented marriage? Gonfallon put to himself no such query. Unquestionably he was happy in his household; but to the happiest of households there comes a moment of regret.

II

Claire transplanted took root at once. It was only now and then, in a bow not from the neck but from the waist, in an intonation, in a haphazard phrase, that you divined the foreign-bred girl. A month had not spent itself before she was in possession of a list. Each day was marked by scrawls from people she had met no one knew how or when. In the evening and in the late afternoons the sitting-room of the rectory, a room which Gonfallon in the earliest awkwardness of prosperity had fitted in that lovable Latin fashion which excludes everything but the necessary and inhibits every adornment introduced for ornament’s sake⁠—the bare tableless sitting-room, with its infrequent chairs and pedestalled lamps, was peopled with guests astonished enough to find themselves in so sedate a home. Mrs. Manhattan, on the wing from Newport to New Jersey, had happened in twice, a signal mark of favor from one as socially occupied as she. And with her, or without her, yet inevitably in her train, were other ladies of lesser note⁠—Miss Nevers, for instance, a young woman who had preferences for everybody and attractions for none; Miss Pickett, whom Claire had encountered in that vague region which is known as Abroad; Mrs. Usselex, a parishioner of Gonfallon’s, the bride of a year, more familiarly known as Eden; the Pondirs, mère et fille, recruiting, as usual, for their musicales; Miss Raritan, with whom scandal had been busy and who ignored that scandal as only the virtuous may; the Duchesse de la Dèche, born a Wainwaring, very fetching in her widow’s weeds, now courted, it was rumored, by Mr. Incoul. And with these ladies there was a contingent of men⁠—Dugald Maule, a young lawyer who dreamed of the bench, famous for the art with which he abandoned a sweetheart and preserved her good will; Harry Tandem, a youth of such lively taste in dress that the previous winter on asking Nicholas Manhattan to suggest a costume that he might wear to the Amsterdams’ fancy-ball he had been answered, “Go as you are, Harry; you are fancy enough as it is;” George Rerick, a young man so vacuous of expression that he had been nicknamed It; Trement Yarde, Claire’s fellow-passenger on the voyage over, a scion of the house of Yarde and Company, bankers; and, last and least, Alphabet Jones the novelist.

The sudden infatuation of these people for his sister-in-law was a phenomenon which Christopher Gonfallon was at a loss to explain. Everything about her, the innocence of her eyes, the purity of her lips, the atmosphere which she exhaled, everything, even to the ripple of her laugh, seemed at variance with such as they. That she should be admired was a thing which he accepted as a matter of course: she was, he had already discovered, admirable in manifold respects. But she was not a catch; the recent disasters of her father must have bespattered her not a little; she was not, never had been, and in all probability never would be, in what is colloquially known as the swim; and yet, seemingly, without an effort on her part, a bouquet of the flowers of the upper four was claiming her as its own. Truly he could not make it clear. Now and then on returning to the rectory he had loitered a second at the sitting-room door, surprised at the murmur of voices, the hum of a conversation that seemed to flutter from ear to ear, interrupted, if at all, by a laugh, or the click of a fan furled suddenly; and through it he would catch Claire’s intonation, undulatory yet vibrant as a child’s, and he would see her, behind the teacups, in her face the flush of the rose, in her expression the guilelessness of one too young to be aware of wrong.

Once only, on the impulse of the moment, he had ventured in, but his cloth must have jarred, for immediately there had been an escape, delayed only by Mrs. Manhattan’s superior tact, which had led him into a corner and forced him into platitudes on the subject of the Bond of Hope, a benevolent institution for deserving poor, over which as rector he presided.

Ah, yes, the Bond of Hope was doing famous work. And even as he asserted it he remembered a smothered scandal of the month before⁠—Ah, yes, the Bond of Hope indeed! But as he smiled assuringly he caught in Mrs. Manhattan’s congratulations an inflection which told him she was not the fool she looked; and when Mrs. Manhattan had taken her Directoire coat away and the other visitors had departed, he himself had lingered, refreshed by Claire’s limpid smile, the guilelessness of her face.

Guileless she was⁠—so guileless, so pure and chaste of face and way, that a day or two later, when Gonfallon, outwearied with the effort of setting new thoughts into archaic frames, dropped his pen, determining, if need were, that he would exhume a sermon from the package he had brought from Bronx, the charm was upon him. Already he had discerned in her something of the confidence of a flower, a flexibility which a passing wind might disarray, that innocence which a breath will tarnish and which it was for him who stood quasily in loco parentis to preserve unsullied by the world. For a moment he pondered on the possibility of mating her to some earnest young cleric, Mr. Qualms, for instance, one of his own assistants, a recent graduate of Trinity, a sturdy servant of Christ who possessed a look of feverish determination and trousers that bagged at the knee. Yet, somehow, the idea seemed incongruous and unpleasant; this thought took a tangential flight, and he fell to musing as to what Claire could have in common with her guests and they with her.

So far as the feminine element was concerned, little there was to be said. Mrs. Manhattan was indeed a butterfly of fashion⁠—rather mature and stout, but still a butterfly⁠—yet did she not each Sunday occupy a pew that fronted the pulpit, under the very drippings of the sanctuary as were, and was not her husband warden of the church? Miss Nevers, he understood, had been taxed with inconsequences; but society he knew to be censorious. Besides, was she not the originator of the Girls’ Friendly Aid Association?⁠—and, moreover, when after some sudden peroration he had extended his arm, with that gesture with which all New York was familiar, and asked the congregation, as though it embodied a unit, Are you one of those miserable sinners? he had watched Miss Nevers and marked that not so much as an eyelid had quivered at the taunt. With Miss Pickett no fault whatever could be found: her attendance at communion had the exactitude of an eclipse. And so far as the duchess was concerned, albeit on marrying a Frenchman she had renounced the Episcopal Church, was there not, poor, errant lamb, a chance of winning her back to the fold?

But of the men he was by no means so sure. Jones, certainly, apart from the ribaldry of his fiction and a mania he had for collecting plots, was harmless as a strawberry festival, and an old friend to boot. Maule was of a different class: he had a coarse mouth, and his reputation was sour. Rerick was not a bit better. Tandem he dismissed with an epithet⁠—popinjay. But Yarde detained his thoughts. Concerning him he had obtained information⁠—information which the young man’s appearance refuted, for he was fragrant, colorful, and grateful to the eye, evidence, however, which Gonfallon was not inclined to accept in his favor. And in declining he was logical; for if Satan be not seductive how can he ever enthrall?

As he thought of Yarde his perplexity increased. He was welcomed from one end of Fifth Avenue to the other. Outwardly he was not ill-behaved, a little effeminate perhaps, but not actually offensive, and yet about him was an atmosphere which Gonfallon could not breathe. It seemed to him that beneath the affectations of a peacock he concealed the beak and talons of a bird of prey⁠—the sort of man that ought to have the danger-signal hoisted wheresoever he went. But still, if Claire chose to receive him, what manner of complaint could be made? Because he himself happened to be of the cloth there was little reason why he should expect his wife’s sister to be exclusive as a nun. Were the girl under any other roof than his own, no form of remonstrance could be voiced. Nevertheless he felt that some remonstrance should be forthcoming. That afternoon he had seen Yarde’s brougham at the door; he had seen it there the day previous, and the day before that. He felt vexed at Claire, at himself⁠—the more so, perhaps, in that he was unable to put his finger on the exact cause of the vexation and display it guardian-wise to her. The only plank that drifted to him seemed to inhibit speech. Claire was so evidently innocent-minded that did he venture to warn her, either she would not understand, in which case explanations would be impossible, or in comprehending she might feel herself aggrieved. In consequence, but one course seemed open to him⁠—to speak to Ruth and ask her to catechise the girl in his stead.

Despite the lancinating neuralgia which imprisoned her for days at a stretch, Ruth preserved the disposition of a sundial: it was only serene hours of which she took count. There was nothing dolent in her tone; her manner, if languider than before, was unwarped by pain. About her husband, the parish, everything in fact, down to the minutiae of domestic economy, she was still alert. The servants adored her. In moments when the agony of her temples was acute enough to turn each individual hair above them red, when a pang would scatter through the cheekbones, loiter under the teeth, and then distend in zigzags and spirals through every nerve of the face, a moan might come from her, but never a complaint. Dr. McMasters, who attended her⁠—a physician who had passed his prime among the poor, and whom the resuscitation of a stockjobber encountered by chance had lifted from the purlieus of Abingdon Square to the precincts of Fifth Avenue⁠—expressed full confidence in her recovery; but meanwhile he marvelled not alone at her self-control, but at the solicitude which she was able to maintain in those of his indigent patients whom he had not the heart to abandon, and whose sufferings, if less acute than her own, poverty rendered more poignant. In these, as in many others, Ruth’s interest was unrelaxing, and her assistance life. While as to her pleasures, the which indeed had become scanty of late, the greatest, the uniquest of all was the touch of her husband’s hand. To her he was always the perfect lover whose charm had won her heart and the attention of all New York. She was proud of him as only a woman can be whose love has idealized a man into something more than flesh. And when, with the selfishness of those who know themselves adored, he would come to her in some momentary depression, it was joy to her to encourage him anew. To her individualism rarely an allusion did she make, and then so casually that you would have thought her discussing the momentary malaise of some stranger whose indisposition rumor had brought to her, or else so hopefully that you expected on the morrow to find her with health restored. Indeed, she was self-abnegatory, fretting only at the imprisonment which kept her from her husband’s side, supervising from her chair everything, even to the coal in the cellar, and in her darkened room clairvoyant as a nyctalope and weariless in thoughts and devices for him.

And this evening as he entered the room, “Chris!” she murmured, “it is so good of you!”

In her smile, in her gesture, in the expression which her lips took on, there was an ambient gratitude, a welcome, and a delight.

“You are better, are you not?”

“All day I thought if I could only get away from the pain; but see, you come, and the wish is fulfilled. Yes, I am better now. And you? Were you at the Bond today?”

“I was; and as I came from it I saw Yarde’s brougham at the door. What does Claire have him for?”

“Really, Chris, it is not her fault. He insists on coming. But if you object I will speak to her.”

“It is she that should object, not you, nor I.”

“Yes, Chris, it is for us. Claire!⁠—why, she is a child yet: anyone can see that. Besides, she does not like him: she told me so.”

“H’m! she has an odd way of showing it, then.”

“Do you know, Chris, she really does dislike him? When she met him in Paris, she was taken, oh! just a little, as a girl might be⁠—it appears that there are no young men in Paris⁠—and so, as he seemed nice and agreeable, she was a little flattered, and, I suppose, just a little bit pleased as well. It is so easy to please a young girl! Well, from what she told me, he did not act right. He met Miss Pickett, Claire even introduced him, and then, how ever it came about I don’t know, but the attention which he had previously given to Claire he bestowed on her friend. He sees his mistake now, that is evident; but Claire will have none of him.”

“She has him here every day.”

“Chris, really, I think she hates him. She admitted as much the other night. When he comes here she snubs him. On the ship she was barely civil.”

“He hasn’t enough reputation to last overnight. Jones told me any number of things about him. It is an outrage that he should pursue her here. As for hating him, that’s all stuff and nonsense: she is too sweet-tempered to hate anyone. Besides, even if she did, it would only show that she was dead in love with him.”

“That is not like you, to be cynical.” And into Ruth’s face a sudden sadness came.

“There, sweetheart, forgive me. I am irritated today. I would not vex you: you know that. I will speak to Claire myself.” As he spoke, he took her hand in his, and Ruth, comforted by the caress and by the title, smiled anew.

“Yes, Chris, speak to her; and I will speak to her too.”

For a while husband and wife sat together, discussing matters of common interest, the illness of the bishop, the condition of Ruth’s father, the possibility that before the winter set in she herself would be able to assume the duties in the sphere to which she had been called; and when at last he rose to go, she declared that every ill had vanished. When a woman loves a man, his mere presence is a tonic.

As Gonfallon descended the stair, however, his thoughts were not of his wife. The brougham which had stood before the rectory that afternoon had in departing carried his fancy afar. It had roamed in and out of the possibilities of that young man’s career, and it had not roamed with approval.

According to Jones, Trement Yarde was hardly such an one as a young girl should know. Among women he had the reputation of a freebooter; the men, Jones asserted, were more lenient. But, then, are not men always that? Provided their own family be secure from attack, at deeds of a certain kind they were apt to wink, and approvingly too. Moreover, though the young man had a number of zeros behind him, those zeros were fronted with figures. The house of Yarde and Co. was, with that of Usselex, foremost in the Street. Of course the men were lenient⁠—and the women as well. Gonfallon was not a fool. He knew that everything, virtue, genius, beauty⁠—everything can be talked away, but never wealth. He had not lived under the shadow of the Bleeckers for nothing. But now, as he descended the stair, even that was forgot. One thing was present with him⁠—his antipathy to Yarde, and the warning he must give. That young man, he decided, might disport himself wheresoever he listed, but Claire he should not approach. And with this decision, to which, since his conversation with Ruth, he made certain the girl would concur, he entered the room where she sat.

Claire was lounging on one of those sofas in which the occupant can fall asleep without being preached to. At Gonfallon’s entrance she looked up, and a book which she held fell from her. Her head was on one cushion and her feet on another.

Leïlah swinging in a hammock in a garden of Ispahan was less clothed, perhaps, but not more indolent, than she. At sight of her he seemed to catch some echo of ghuzlas and cithars. From above the lamplight shuttled her curls. On one ankle which the negligent fold of her frock disclosed, glittered a gold thread, the clockwork of the stocking. As he approached there came to greet him the clean odor of acorns and of pines.

Suddenly the curtain must have claimed his attention, for for a moment he busied himself with it. Then he turned again to where she lay.

“Did you ride this morning?” he asked, and, without waiting for an answer, he added at once, “You don’t get this Indian summer over there, do you? H’m. Rather close, though, don’t you think? By the way,”⁠—he had been talking at the wall, but now he looked at her⁠—“by the way, Claire, whose trap was that at the door this afternoon? Rather neat, I thought.”

And Claire, with that inappositeness which constitutes one of the crimes which the law cannot reach, murmured from the tips of her lips, “I say, would you mind lowering that wick?”

Gonfallon did as he was bidden, adding, as he moved to the lamp, “That brougham, I mean. The man on the box had two pair of reins; I counted them.”

“Is Ruth coming down?”

“I think not. She is expecting McMasters. Whose affair did you say it was?”

“The brougham, you mean?⁠—bottle-green, with yellow wheels? Yarde’s, I fancy.”

“Ah, yes⁠—that young fellow that crossed in the steamer with you. I thought⁠—h’m⁠—however⁠—Claire, do you know he is not at all the kind of a man for you to know? Someone happened to speak of him the other day. To oblige Ruth and myself, I wish the next time he calls you would send word you are not visible. You see⁠—”

The girl interrupted him with a yawn: “It was that lamp over there I meant.” And as she spoke she covered her mouth with her hand.

“You see, Claire,” Gonfallon continued, after he had attended to her behest⁠—“you see, while I presume that this young man is not in any way personally offensive, yet, er⁠—well, he is not of a class that we care to have you associate with.”

“Ah?”

“Not of that class at all.”

Claire raised herself a little on the lounge and looked up at Gonfallon. “And what class is it that you prefer?” she asked.

“H’m. Well, Claire, this Mr. Yarde is notoriously a loose fish. It is unnecessary that I should particularize; but we prefer that you only see men whose intentions are honorable.”

Claire laughed. “There aren’t any,” she answered, and let her head fall back on the cushion.

III

For a moment Gonfallon stared, open-mouthed, astonished as a yokel at a thimble-rigger. And as Claire picked up the book which she had dropped at his entrance, he stood quite still, groping among the obscurities of her speech. But it was impossible, he told himself, that a girl so fragrant of innocence should wittingly make a remark as paradoxically unanswerable as was that. It was a mistake; he had not heard her words aright, or else she had uttered them as a child utters haphazard a phrase caught up and retained. But something in her attitude, the manner in which she turned the page, the carriage of her head, the abandonment of the body, the indiscretion of a foot uptilted on a cushion, the contraction of the underlip betokening a smile suppressed and suggestive of merriment aroused not by the book she held but by some picture which memory had just disclosed⁠—these things, intercepted in a glance, revealed a Claire unknown and wholly undivined.

Noiselessly as he had entered he turned and left the room. Across the hall was his study; and as he sank on the ample lap of an easy-chair in which it was his custom to scaffold his homilies, suddenly his pulse was stirred. At the moment he made no attempt to dominate, he sat in wonder at himself, the will refractory and perverse. But presently he was on his feet again, his teeth set, and in his eyes that expression which the horseman has when he masters with curb and with knee.

On the mantel before him was a mirror, a convenience serviceable on those occasions when, surprised by some unawaited visit, it was necessary to filch a reflection for the adjustment of neckcloth or of hair. But now in the surprise at a visitant such as he had never encountered before he fronted the mirror, his teeth still set, the jaw unrelaxed; and as he stood the rumor of the inward conflict moved his lips. “Ah, Tartuffe!” he muttered, “is it for this you toiled?”

In his ears a ripple of laughter still rang, a laugh that was sylvan, the laugh of a young faun made merry by the sorceries of spring. “Ah, Tartuffe!” he repeated. And still the ripple continued, insistent, insinuating, jubilant in wantonness, clear and heady as the upper notes of a flute. “Is it for this?”

With the grimace of a hound at a vagabond he glared at his image. He was angered and distraught at the intussusception of a presence more terrible than that which Luther outfaced in his cell. “Do you think,” he cried in menace at himself, “do you think that I have fear of you?” At the unanswering mirror he raised his hand. “What have you to do with her, or she with you?” And as his arm fell again to his side some fume of disgust must have mounted to his brain, for he added, in a murmur, “I am as a Jesuit: I argue with myself.”

“Did you call, Chris?”

Gonfallon turned with a start of a subject awakening from a trance. In the doorway was Ruth.

“Did you call?” she repeated.

He blinked, but made no answer. And Ruth, gazing at him from the doorway, one hand on the woodwork, the other upholding the curtain, her eyes full of interrogations, her lips just parted, her head nimbused with the jonquil of her hair, had about her a suggestion of that grace with which Boucher pleasured the Pompadour. To one as myope as her husband, the lines that extended from the edge of the nostril, the circles that shadowed the cheekbones like inverted circumflexes over an i, were unperceived. Through the saffron shade of the lamp she appeared younger, more tentative, than she had for months, and in her voice which now seemed to reach him across inordinate distances was the caress he had loved so well. But he was still imprisoned in himself. He shook his head and blinked as one does who passes from darkness into light.

“No,” he said, at last, “no⁠—”

“Oh, Chris, you are composing your sermon! Forgive me: I did not mean to interrupt.”

With a finger she threw him an apology and a kiss. The curtain fell again, and she was gone.

Sermon, indeed! The sermon was in that patient face that just had disappeared. He sat down again on the chair, and let his thoughts roam back again to Bronx and the wooing of his wife. When first she had put her hand in his it was as though life were fulfilled to its tips: he had conceived no greater earthly joy than the possibility of calling her his own, to his after-days she had brought the blithest airs, and now, after three years of marriage, if nothing remained save that friendship which is born of love and which the fabulist has declared to be better than love itself, if of the ardors which he had believed inextinguishable only cinders remained, was the fault his own? Surely he had been sincere. It is a maxim in law that against a promise to do something in the future no charge of fraud can lie. And if the maxim hold good in law, why not in love as well? When before God and man he had promised to love her always, had he not as fully intended to keep that promise as the honest trader does who makes a note? If bankruptcy intervene and the note be protested, it is humiliating, no doubt, but conscience at least is undisturbed. And yet an elenchicism such as this one with which, as was his duty, he would have dulled the remorse of any parishioner who had come to him in similar strait, left him rudderless and derelict. Truly the advice we give is rarely that to which we hold. Gonfallon sounded its sophistry with a sneer. He would have given hope itself to be able to touch Ruth’s hand and feel again the electricity which it had once communicated, that spasm which in days gone by had seized him between the shoulder-blades and gone pulsing down the spinal cord, leaving him during the moment that followed quasi-dumb, and ineffectual of speech; indeed he would have given much could the old thrill have outlasted satiety, and, though it were through the very force of love that satiety had been begot, he wondered could the fault be nature’s, not his own.

To Ruth he had brought his firstfruits, and in the bringing he had deemed them imperishable as the apples of the Hesperides. He had revelled in the offering of them; he had laid them glistening at her feet; he had marvelled at the blossoms with which she crowned the gift; he had thought them both enduring as the stars; he would have staked his soul that their twin hearts made one would mount, inseparate, into those realms no eye has scanned, but which the gracious Christ, his Master, has vouchsafed to whomso does believe in Him. These things had been the securest tenets of his marriage-pact. And then, as sometimes happens with those mated over-hastily, he awoke one day to the knowledge that it was the woman he had loved, not the individual⁠—the bottle, not the wine.

Of sweeter than she, one fairer and more gentle, a woman kindlier, juster, yet more debonair, it was not within his power to conceive. She was still to him admirable in each respect, a woman whom as sister he would have adored, as another’s sister he would have envied, but who as wife left him as marble is, unmalleable, and chilling to the touch. Where had the emotions gone? Where were the roses of the yesteryear? Where was the vision he had sought to clasp? Though the flutter of her kiss still hovered, ambient, in the air, he told himself that her love had departed like his own, that between them but one thing subsisted⁠—the sanctity of the marriage-vow, unbreakable by either. Of her, in that regard, he had, of course, no fear. And it was perhaps that very confidence, that security and facility in love, that had brought him to his present pass. Whoso has nothing to desire has nothing left to dread. But for himself he had trembled indeed. Claire had exhaled an atmosphere headier than the headiest breath of spring. There was about her an attraction, undiscerned till that night, but which, latent perhaps for days gone by, had suddenly enveloped and coerced him with its force. But now that too was gone.

Ah, yes, it was gone indeed; and he cracked the joints of his fingers in testimony to his deliverance from its spell. For a second he had been weaker, more unstable than water; and now, as he smiled a trifle grimly at the remembrance, he bethought him of the legends of the saints, of Saint Anthony, Saint Dominick, Saint Maur. It was a disaster which overtook all men. But it needed strength to combat⁠—he would have added faith, but something choked the utterance down⁠—it needed strength; and that strength was his. Again he smiled. He would have no need to cope again. Yet, for the moment, he wondered what sudden invocation of the flesh could have oppressed him so. Nothing, he could have sworn, in connection with that girl that lay sprawled on the sofa across the hall. No, it was not that: it was one of those ills which had afflicted and would continue to afflict many another more steadfast than he. Besides, independent of that, what had he of all men to do with such a thing? aside from his cloth, were not his temples gray? and, save spectacles, what better guarantee against love can there be?

In thought he had really tried to trick himself, but in an instant he was at the mirror again. At school, at the seminary, even so recently as the preceding summer, he had been spoken of as That Handsome Gonfallon. And as he sprang from his seat he remembered a bit of gossip that had been brought him, an anecdote culled in the vestibule of the church, a conversation overheard and apposite to the infatuation of his parishioners, in which the first speaker was reported to have said something about Dr. Gonfallon’s congregation, while the second, interrupting, had interjected a remark unreportable here.

But now, as he stood again before the glass, it was as though it pictured not the present alone but the past as well. He saw a lithe, dark-eyed lad, clear of feature and of mind, hurrying to some distant goal, arrested by a mirror that showed him back not youth, but age.

Through the window a moon luminous as sulphur shone. Beyond, the spires of Gethsemane pierced the night. The street was quiet. From afar came the accent of the Elevated, rushing, dragon-wise, in midair, lulling the neighborhood with the strain of its incessant surge. After a dusk in dead rose, the sky had become visibly blue.

And as he stood, interviewing the night, determining that the pulses should subside with years, from the hall came the rustle of a dress. For a second’s space he clutched at the wainscot. The glass gave him forty years, his blood nineteen. Then at once he was at the door, drawing the curtain on its rings aside.

“H’m,”⁠—he affected a little cough, and held himself as though an accident had brought him there⁠—“h’m, Claire, is that you? I thought you had gone to bed.”

“Going,” the girl answered, negligently, and yawned as she spoke. “One has to come to New York to go to bed early.”

Then, something that he could not afterwards explain, some one of those unanalyzed causes that transform the gentle to the brute, claimed him as its own. His cloth, his vows, the rectory itself, everything, even to the presence of Ruth on the floor above, vanished as had they never been. With a spring his arm was about her neck, his lips were on hers, the odor of her hair, of her face, the moisture of her mouth, were his, and just as he strove to clasp her closer yet, with an undulant movement the girl slipped from his embrace.

“There, don’t hurt a fellow,” she exclaimed; and as she retreated, smiling yet breathless, to a step beyond his reach, she added, with her faun-like ripple, “I say, Chris, you seem to like the breed.”

From strength to weakness there is but a kiss. During the moments that followed, Gonfallon felt as were he astride a runaway horse. At first, as he plunged through unimagined thickets, striving as best he could with knee and curb to stay the flight, a stirrup went, then another; the beast had got its head, and as with ever-increasing speed it bore him over quagmires, obstacles, and intervales, at last his own brain caught fire, and he urged with incitements of spur and of whip. In the distance was everything he had held most dear, the route was strewn with his illusions, gone were his unprompted vows, the truths that had been savors of life unto life fell from him undetained, the white assumptions of conscience at rest vanished with retiring landmarks. And, still in fancy propelled, suddenly he discerned a sense of that freedom which is the synonyme of joy. It was good to feel one’s self untrammelled, delivered of the compunctions of the herd; with every breath he drew came a foretaste of larger life, his lungs expanded with fresh odors, beyond was a new horizon, brutally beautiful, wholly solid, dreamless and real, and in it, fairer than the desire of a fallen god, was Claire, her arms outstretched.

IV

The morrow was a blank. Gonfallon attended to his duties with the air of a somnambulist. In the morning at the meeting of the Church-Workers, in the afternoon at the Friendly Aid, the echo of Claire’s laughter rippled through the tidings which it was his office to proclaim; and when the last rite had been performed he shook from him a young licentiate who fain would have passed a moment in Christian converse, and strode out into the gathering dusk and on to the outlying regions of the Park.

Above him was a sky of zinc. Beyond, to the west, the sun had slashed the horizon with belts of amber and agonizing green. The air was chill: he raised the collar of his coat, and as he hurried on unimpressed, unobservant even of the salutations of acquaintances whom he chanced to encounter, never yet had he felt more averse to his cloth. Yet did he relinquish it, what was there left? He was too old to begin life afresh: he lacked that energy which permits and even forces some men to turn from one calling to another; he had a wife to support, and down in a Massachusettsian village was his mother dependent on his wage. Truly it was easier to keep up a brave face and draw ten thousand per annum than to pull a wry one and advertise in the papers for an occupation suited to a man of scholarly attainments. If Bucholz had not gone under, there, indeed, would be a different guitar: he could have leaned on him, he could have entered, if need were, into his employ. As it was, instead of the opulence which Ruth might one day have inherited, it seemed not improbable that he would be called upon to contribute to Bucholz’ support. Not later than the previous day a whisper, a breeze that loiters, had told him that his father-in-law passed his hours in extracting, and not painlessly, either, small loans from former companions of his banditti-days.

No, that dream had gone. There was no one to whom he could turn. However unfitted he might be, the pastorate was a refuge still. Yet, even supposing, for argument’s sake, he relinquished it and another cleric mounted the pulpit in his stead, would the congregation be bettered by the change? He knew his parishioners through and through. Half of them were superstitious as ballads, the other half sceptical as himself. There were those who sat very erect and said “Amen” to impress their neighbors, and there were those who allowed themselves to be impressed thereby; there was a collection of boys and girls to whom the church was indeed a meetinghouse, there was also an assortment of neurosthenes; and did he leave these people, in what manner would their salvation be affected?

The mere query was puerile. He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance at himself. Eastward, a splatter of stars, some livid, some as lights seen through canvas slit, betokened the advance of night. He turned, and, musing still, retraced his steps. When he reached the rectory his eyes were eager and his face was flushed.

The hall was silent, the sitting-room untenanted. He put his hat and coat aside, and ascended the stair. To the left was Claire’s room, the door ajar. At the threshold he lingered a moment and listened. Then, hearing no sound, he pushed the door and entered in.

On the sofa some raiment was strewn⁠—a gown, a petticoat, a corset; from the latter a white string hung pendent, the steel tip idling on the floor. At his feet a rose had fallen. On a table beneath the gas-jets utensils were scattered, instruments for the hands in stained ivory, brushes with silver backs, quaint little boxes, curious of form, a rumpled sachet, stamped Cordova leather, four bonnet-pins, a curling-iron, and a collar. In the air was the aroma which women exhale.

Beyond was a bed, the coverlet smooth as an anapest, surmounted by monogrammed pillows. It was white, virginal as its owner, alluring as spring; and as Gonfallon gazed at it the flush on his face increased. “What am I doing here?” he mused, and held his head as one who listens, fearful of surprise. From afar came the rumble of the Elevated, but the house itself was dumb. For a moment he loitered, his eyes fumbling the counterpane, his pulse fluttering like a bird ensnared, and presently, as he stole from the room, he was conscious of that elation of spirit which had visited him in his youth when on the Beverly sands he had crouched close, yet never close enough, to the swoon and the surge of the sea.

That evening Gonfallon broke bread in solitude. Claire had been bidden somewhere⁠—to Miss Pickett’s, the housemaid thought; and Ruth, whom neuralgia had seized again, was lying in darkness, waiting the release of sleep. By his plate was a telegram, which he pushed aside, his thoughts occupied with other things; but when the maid removed the dishes he opened it and read the message it contained:

“We are sorely visited,” it ran. “The Bishop entered into rest this noon. Your brother in Christ,

The yellow slip fell from him undetained. It was so pregnant with intimations that the restless current of his thought was changed. For the time being he forgot all things, even to Claire, and sat, one finger just separating the lips, staring after the retreating past and far out into the chartless morrow. The bishop he had known well. He was one of the few whom he had really revered, a man simple and sincere, earnest for the best, indulgent to the worst, a man who had but one creed, Charity, but one text, Goodwill⁠—a man whose face was so luminous with spiritual reflections that whoso saw him thought he truly walked with God. And now he was gone. The grave would open and close again: tomorrow he would be forgot.

“I wonder,” mused Gonfallon, “that He who made space for the infinite and eternity for time should not have created a being capable of mounting sheerly to some fringe of His mantle of stars, instead of a groping phantom incompetent to leave behind so much as a shadow on a wall. I wonder⁠—”

And as he mused he was visited by an idea which at first he repulsed and then beckoned back. It was that however ephemeral life might be, it was yet clothed with radiant possibilities. Throughout the length and breadth of the diocese there was no ecclesiastic more prominent than himself: it was he who would be nominated for the bishopric. While he still mused, the door opened, and Claire appeared.

“Did you miss me, Chris?”

She was in street-costume, a trim skirt, a cloth jacket descending to her waist, her hands cased in suede, her face unveiled, and on her head a low-crowned hat of felt.

“Did you miss me, Chris?”

As she spoke, her lips parted as a flower opens to the sun: he could see the edges of her teeth, and in the lamplight they seemed to reflect the rose of her mouth and tongue.

“And Ruth? Is she no better?”

Her hat she removed and tossed pin-pierced aside. Her jacket she had already unbuttoned, and as she raised her arm to divest herself of it Gonfallon sprang to her aid.

“There, let me help you,” he said.

As he caught at the sleeve, he touched her wrist. From her hair came the clean smell of acorns and of pines that had greeted him the night before; and as he bent to aid her, there was a cleft in her neck which might have tempted a saint.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” he added.

“Thanks, put it anywhere. Oh, didn’t you? I have a key, you know. Pickett came in this afternoon and wanted me to dine with her: her people have gone to Lakewood, and she was alone. What of Ruth?”

She had turned to Gonfallon, who stood, her jacket in his hand. At the question he made a gesture indicative of discouragement.

“Give it me,” she continued. “I will go to her now.” And as she stretched her hand, Gonfallon caught it in his own.

“Sit with me a moment, Claire.”

“I might have a cigarette, don’t you think? Pickett,”⁠—and she ushered a memory with the ripple of her laugh⁠—“Pickett was afraid to have me smoke, on account of the servants.”

She moved from him and drew out a case, a toy of fair gold, on the mirror-like surface of which she glanced at her own reflection.

“Try one,” she added, and extended the case.

“No, Claire, I do not smoke, nor should you. But there,” he continued, hastily, for on the girl’s lips a sudden pout had appeared. “Do as you will.”

“What’s gone wrong? The ten commandments are gayer than you, sir.” And to her lips, from which the pout had retreated, a smile returned.

“You were not annoyed at me last night, were you, Claire?” And as the girl, answering nothing, stood gazing at him, her virginal eyes a trifle dilated, her lips just parted, her head drawn back, he added, huskily, “You know I love you,” and hesitated⁠—for encouragement, perhaps, or else rebuke.

Then, as she seemed about to move from him, he detained her with a gesture that was at once an apology and a plea, the gesture of a mendicant accustomed to rebuff. “Claire, let me tell you. I know, none better, that it is wrong for me to speak to you as I do. I have no excuse. Yet when you came⁠—see, it is but a month ago⁠—you brought a gladness and a sorcery. At first I did not understand, but last night it was as a sense recovered: I knew that all my life I had hungered for you. You were the odor of a feast at which I had longed to sit, the shadow of a hope which I had dreamed to claim. Claire, listen to me. It is not years that make our age: I was old at twenty, I am young today, and it is youth that loves best and most. Let me love you. There, I will ask nothing in return, but I have such need of you! Each emotion I compressed expands to you, every illusion that I lost you can restore. You are to me the fulfilment of an anterior promise, the requital of an earlier mistake. Were I free I would speak to you less gravely, but I am bound as never Tantalus was. I can ask nothing, I can take nothing, I can only give. And there the misery of it is; for my power of giving is slight indeed. Were I master of fate instead of slave, and had you a wish, like a spaniel that wish should nestle at your feet. But this is idle speech; forgive it me. The fact remains, I love you, not alone with all my heart, but as no other has loved you yet, as no other can love you now.”

The initial phrases of this address had come from Gonfallon haltingly, but as he warmed to the work they fell from him in rounded periods, as they were wont to when he preached. And that magnetism which was in him, the electricity which he diffused and which had made him what he was, the foremost ecclesiastic in the largest of provincial cities, seemed now to be coercing the girl, despite herself, to his mood. Her eyes drooped, her lips were compressed, in her cheeks the color rose and subsided, vacillating as it were with retroacting and contending currents. And Gonfallon, as he scanned her face, felt an exultant throb. With a movement of the arm that would have encircled an oak he caught her in his embrace. The jacket had gone from her, the gold toy had disappeared. For a second that was an eternity he was conscious of her emollient mouth on his, his fingers intertwisted with her own. In that second he really lived⁠—perhaps he really loved.

Undulantly she disengaged and freed herself. She stooped for her jacket, and when she stood up again there was no sign of vacillation in her face. The back of her hand she drew across her lips, but whether to brush away the kiss that had been placed on them, or the smile that hovered in their moisture, Gonfallon was unable to decide. She had retreated a little, and he made a step to her, but as he moved she retreated yet farther away.

“Claire⁠—” he murmured.

“Oh, I say, Chris,” she interrupted, “drop all that.” The curtain parted, and she had gone.

In a second he was in the hall, but already she had reached the floor above, and, foreseeing the futility of pursuit, he entered his study and threw himself on a chair.

For a while he sat palpitant in alternations of elation and remorse. His path, doubtless, was straight, but it was by no means clear. The mystic penumbra of accepted tenets was still about him, yet through them shone the wonder of landscapes undivined. He was as one who awakes at dawn and finds the night still there. And as he alternately detained and dismissed now elation, now regret, he was aware of that confusion of purpose which visits those that puzzle over a problem they are in haste to solve. The signification of his own attitude was that which stirred him most. At the moment it seemed to him impossible that he should have acted to the girl as he had, and not impossible alone, but cowardly as well. Of the two, was not he the stronger? was it not for him to guide, to protect her, if need be, even from herself? And yet, without even the excuse of celibacy, without receiving from her so much of an invitation as can be conveyed in the quiver of an eyelid, he had performed the most ignoble role that man can play. Had it been love that had impelled him, some excuse might there be. But it was not that. Love would have slit his lips to the ears rather than let him touch her own. There would have been no elation then, no remorse, only an abandonment in spirit, the escape of a dream that might have come true, and then oblivion which is the novitiate of death. But no; it was not that. He needed no one to prompt him that in his heart were none of those choirs which love awakes; not a hymn had been summoned, not a harmony evoked. No, it was not that; it was the beast that is in us all, lashed down, kept cowering and hidden in the deepest cavern of our being, till in the inadvertent moment it leaps into light and claims its prey at last.

Through the silence of the house he heard a door open and another shut. From above, overhead, came the faint fall of moving feet. She had left Ruth, he knew; she had gone to her room. Now she had latched the door; now she was at the window, he heard the shutters close. The footfalls seemed to cross the room, and for the moment he pictured her standing as he had seen her once, before the glass, her arms raised, the fingers interlocked behind her head. What was it, after all, he wondered, that had impressed him so? It was not the refinement of her nature: there were times when he thought her almost coarse. Her mind was a rendezvous of platitudes; and as for her beauty, he could have sent a prayerbook skimming from the pulpit and in whatever aisle of Gethsemane it chanced to fall would be a girl fairer, more feminine, more appetizing yet, than she. But would there, though?

An almost imperceptible footfall from the room above aroused him from his revery. The sound was fainter than before; the feet that stirred were unshod, stockingless perhaps. Their faint tinkle ushered a fresh vision into the chambers of his mind: he saw her in a fabric so delicate of texture that it could be drawn through a ring, a garment immaterial as a moonbeam, her neck uncovered, and about her half-closed eyes and red moist lips the subtle smile of a faun.

In anger at himself he sprang to his feet. On the table before him was a heap of the manufactures of rationalist, of sophist, and of sage. Every one of those who have taken the nimbus from a god and pointed to an eternal grave had left a textbook there. For some time they had been accumulating on back bookshelves; but the day before, with some sermon in view, he had got them within reach. It is good to be valiant in the pulpit, it is good to confute; and the privilege of demolishing any doctrine that conflicts with Christianity, particularly when there is not the slightest danger of being answered back, is a pleasure in itself. But each time Gonfallon had handled a materialist, zest in his own creed declined. An Englishman, Clifford, who described the universe as an immense Sir Roger de Coverley, in which the dancers were atoms and the ballroom space, had the power to take him into an abyss so dank that the candle of faith was snuffed. A Frenchman, Flavet, had shown him the provenance of the parables. In Assyro-Accadian myth, Schrader, a German, had displayed to him the fabric of the Pentateuch.

An idle task, Voltaire has said, an idle task it is, this pulling down of enchanted castles. It is better far to examine truths than lies. But where are the truths? Gonfallon had asked himself the same thing not once, but many times. As yet no answer had been vouchsafed.

And now, in anger at himself, in an effort to banish Claire, he picked up the book that lay nearest to his hand. “Comprends,” it shouted at him, “comprends que tu portes ton paradis et ton enfer en toi-même.”

“Perhaps,” he muttered.

He put the book down and took another. It happened to be one of Renan’s melodious fumisteries; and as he opened it a phrase jumped out and stabbed him in the eyes: “La vertu est une suprême illusion.”

“Perhaps,” he repeated.

A third volume, a summary of German metaphysics, lay within reach. “The heavens are void,” it insisted. “There has been nothing, there is nothing, there will be nothing, save a constant evolution, a continuous development, with death for a goal.”

“Nothing?”

He left the table and its blasphemies, and turned to the window. His anger had gone, his thoughts of Claire as well, and in their train seemed to have departed the strength⁠—or the weakness, was it?⁠—which had visited him the preceding night. Yet as he looked up into the taciturn sky, something must have rebelled within him; for he groaned to the stars, “O Chaos, take that Nothing back and give us Satan in its stead!”

V

Decidedly the days were shorter. As Gonfallon let himself in with a latchkey, it was barely five, yet already night had come. The hall was dark; and as he drew off his gloves, straightening and folding them methodically as was his custom, he told himself that Jane must have forgotten the gas.

From the sitting-room came a murmur, and through the portiere a thread of light. “It is Ruth,” he reflected. For that morning she had appeared at breakfast, declaring that she had rested well, and that for the time being at least she was free of pain. “It is Ruth and some visitor,” he reflected⁠—Mr. Qualms, perhaps⁠—and he made to enter the room, but at once he drew back. The glimpse which he caught had shown him not Ruth, but Claire, and at her side Trement Yarde. They were standing a little apart from each other, their backs turned to the door, and for a moment Gonfallon hesitated, his hand on the curtain’s fringe.

Since the preceding night he had not seen the girl. She had breakfasted, as she usually did, in her room, and, shortly after the morning meal, matters connected with the bishop’s decease had demanded his presence abroad, detaining him until now.

And as he hesitated, Yarde, who had been speaking in a monotone, pitched his voice in higher keys. Gonfallon’s fingers tightened on the fringe. He hated the man, he hated his looks, the cut of his coat, his intonation, everything, even to his manner and the trick he had of contemplating his fingernails.

“This is the third time I have asked you,” Gonfallon heard him say.

“If it is the last,” Claire answered, “there must be luck in odd numbers, after all.”

“You are decided, then?”

“Fully.”

“Very good. It remains to me⁠—there, listen a moment, won’t you?”

During the pause that followed Gonfallon fancied the young man eying the polished tips of his fingers.

“It is this. Some day you may be in need of assistance. If you are, believe me, there is no one to whom you can turn more readily than to me. You know where I live, and, parenthetically, I can assure you that the walls of my apartment are dumb⁠—”

“Leave the room.”

The command reached Gonfallon with the resonance of a bell.

“Certainly, since you wish it. In fact, I was on the point of doing so. Save at your invitation, I will not venture to enter it again.”

It was evident that Yarde had turned. Gonfallon dropped the fringe, and groped back into the shadows.

“I am sorry to have annoyed you,” the young man added. He had reached the threshold, and Gonfallon moved yet farther away.

“If you do not leave I will ring.”

“And I must assure you,” he continued, “that I would not have made this suggestion had I not⁠—unless, h’m, well⁠—I saw my father this afternoon. He is in Wall Street, you know. Good night, Miss Bucholz.”

There was a rush of light, the curtain fell again, the front door opened and closed.

Gonfallon still stood in the darkness, one arm extended along the wall, the other pendent at his side. His head was bent, his eyes fixed on the stair. From the adjoining room came the sound of Claire’s uneasy tread: she seemed to be pacing the room, restless as a panther is, lashing the furniture with her skirt.

What manner of girl was she, that Yarde should permit himself such a speech? And what manner of man was he, that he should suffer such a speech to pass unpunished? Gonfallon’s hand clinched, and the arm which had extended along the wall he raised in anger. But it was himself he could have struck: he was humiliated at his own attitude. He knew, none better, that it had been his duty to interrupt, to protect, and to force that libertine from the door.

And Claire! He heard her cross the room again, and felt that the indignity was smarting still. If she had repulsed the man at first, might it not be because of him?

He left the shadows; in a moment he was with her. The promenade had ceased: she had thrown herself on a lounge, and sat, her feet crossed, her virginal eyes upturned and pensive.

“I saw that man Yarde go out,” he began, abruptly. “What was he doing here?”

Claire lowered her eyes from the ceiling to the wall. “Really,” she answered; “I took no note of his action. He spoke of the weather, I believe, and⁠—let me see; oh, yes, he quoted a passage from Horace, which if I understood I would repeat, and⁠—and asked after you. Ruth seems better today, doesn’t she?”

Gonfallon’s breath came quicker. The change in Claire, a change which since the preceding night was greater than that of an August displaced by March, the flippancy of her indifference, the enervations of the day, the conflicts with himself, the conversation overheard and uninterpreted, the unexplained presence of a man whom he loathed and whom he could give himself no valid reason for loathing⁠—these things had put him in a state of irritation which is comparable only to that which comes of a sudden depletion of force. But of the inward ferment there was little if any outward show. He eyed her narrowly, his lip austere.

“At your age, Ruth would have felt herself contaminated by such a man,” he said, at last, and paused expectant of some reply.

But Claire answered nothing. Her eyes had gone up again to the ceiling. From beneath her skirt a patent-leather shoe, narrow and pointed, moved in and out.

“Did you not hear me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, with her negligent drawl⁠—“yes, I heard; but you see, Chris, customs have changed since the fall of Troy.”

To this Gonfallon feigned assent, his lip austerer than before.

“Very true,” he said. “Yet, if I may not admonish you, it is at least my duty to inform your father that you receive a ruffian to insult you in my house.”

“Ah!” As though battle were imminent, she straightened herself. Her expression had lost its flippancy; it had become frosty and brilliant. “Do you know, I thought you were listening? In regard to father, do as you like; only don’t tell him you mistook his daughter for⁠—”

The speech unfinished was like a bugle blown through the crimson of an autumn eve. It was harmonious, it was inspiring, but it jarred. It awoke Gonfallon from a trance. Claire’s eyes were no longer pensive; they had the chill and glitter of steel. And now as she laughed her voice was hard and metallic as her eyes.

“There, Chris,” she added, in lighter tone; “I am not one of your congregation yet.”

She had arisen, and was about to pass him by, but something in his face seemed to detain her steps. Through one of those influences occult yet recognized, her lips took on their former sweetness, her eyes glowed, and she smiled.

“Claire⁠—” he murmured, and would have caught and held her, perhaps, but a voice in the hall, unheard by him, must have alarmed her: she eluded him, and disappeared in the dining-room beyond.

“Mr. Bucholz, sir, and can he see you?” It was Jane the housemaid, angular as a hendecagon and prim as a Puritan Sunday.

Gonfallon started. He was as an aeronaut dropped from colorless ether into some dank moraine.

“He says it’s most important,” the woman added, and patted her apron flat.

As yet he was not wholly himself; the variety and multiplicity of emotions had not had the effect of a sedative; but he nodded gravely enough, and presently he caught a whiff of alcohol: Mr. Bucholz was before him.

“Take a seat,” said Gonfallon, mechanically.

“Thanks, I’ve just had one.”

The tone in which he spoke arrested attention. For a second Gonfallon eyed him suspiciously. Could it be that Claire⁠—But no; such a supposition was absurd.

“Gonfallon, I want a moment with you. Are you busy?” Mr. Bucholz spoke with the air of one to whom the possible occupation of his host was a matter of no importance.

To Gonfallon’s hands came a sudden moisture. “No,” he replied.

Mr. Bucholz had a forehead that was wide yet low, the forehead of a murderer. His face was thin, his body obese. Since his disasters his complexion had assumed the hue of a brandied cherry. He looked shabby, and he was unshorn. His manner was a compound of alternate pompousness and jocularity. To Gonfallon he was revolting. To Jane, and possibly to others, it was a matter of wonder that such a man could be the father of a girl like Claire.

“You are well, I hope?” Gonfallon added.

At this Mr. Bucholz laughed aloud; but his laugh was nervous, yet unsonorous as a muffled bell⁠—a laugh that came wholly from within, a laugh which frightened and which chilled.

“See here, parson, I want you to do something for me⁠—something⁠—how shall I put it? Well, let us call it ad majorem Dei gratiam. That is technical, is it not?”

“And concise.”

“And concise, as you say. By the way, I think I will change my mind. Suppose you sit down too.”

Mr. Bucholz found a seat, and Gonfallon, relieved of his sudden panic, followed suit.

“You remember,” Mr. Bucholz continued, “that when Jerolomon got me in that corner everything went. Twenty million; not a penny less. The place at Irvington, the house on Fifth Avenue, the yacht, the stable, stocks, bonds, all the tra-la-la of wealth, evaporated in a night. I lost my grip. The few hundred thousand that remained followed in a fortnight. The last fifty-dollar bill I could call my own I dropped in a bucket-shop. Curious, isn’t it?” And Mr. Bucholz put his hand to his head and for the moment seemed to lose himself in thought.

“Well?”

“Ah, yes.” And Mr. Bucholz looked up again. “Well, after that, as you know, Usselex gave me his gold-business. It was good of Usselex, for I had squeezed him once myself. Jerolomon, I have reason to believe, suggested it to him. However, it was four thousand a year⁠—just the salary I paid the gardener who did picturesque geometry for me at Irvington: why, you get almost three times as much yourself. Or rather,” he added, in an undertone, as though reflecting on the point of the speech, “or rather I got it for you. But that’s as may be. A week ago I learned, accidentally as I then thought, that Jerolomon was engineering another corner in wheat. I went to him and asked a loan. He laughed at me. I told him he had taken everything I had. ‘Bucholz,’ he answered, ‘I took back at compound interest what you once took from me. I am not lending money today: I am paying off old scores. Good morning to you.’ And he turned on his heel. In the course of the afternoon I got ten thousand dollars: I went in and bought. Yesterday the market fell: the ten thousand were wiped out.”

“Dear me!”

“And now,” continued Bucholz, “that ten thousand must be repaid.”

“Of course it must be. Only⁠—”

“Only you haven’t got it, I suppose. Not even ad majorem Dei gratiam. Well, sir, you have got to get it.”

As he spoke, he rose from his seat and fronted his host. His face had changed. Up to this it had conveyed the varying shades of indifference, apathy, and disgust, but now it was resolute, it expressed a determination menacing and inflexible as a bayonet, and of which Gonfallon seemed to feel the point and the chill.

“You have got to get it,” he repeated, “and before Saturday at that.”

And as Gonfallon made no answer, Bucholz bent over him until his face almost touched his listener’s ear. “I put Usselex’ name on the check,” he whispered, and drew himself up.

“You⁠—you say you put Usselex’ name on the check?”

And as Bucholz nodded encouragingly, invitingly even, to the dawn of understanding which he discerned breaking in Gonfallon’s eyes, the latter cowered in his chair. “Why, that is forgery!” he gasped.

“Be still,” hissed Bucholz; “be still.” Then, seeing that the shot had told, he nodded again, and added, with a negligent, musing air, “Yes, that, I believe, is what it is called.” He laughed a little⁠—or was it a laugh?⁠—a sound that had in it the ghoulish mock of the graphophone, a tone that runs cracked and thin, like a man’s laughter, as Swinburne puts it, heard in hell, far down.

Gonfallon still cowered in his chair. Bucholz assumed a graver mien, and, affecting to ignore his son-in-law’s attitude, monologued at the wall. “There was a time,” he said⁠—“but bah! what is the use? Why, I couldn’t turn a block that someone didn’t rush to me with hands outstretched: ‘Oh, my dear Mr. Bucholz, how are you?’ Today the same people⁠—and to every man jack of them I have been of use⁠—the very same ones, people whom I lifted not out of the dust alone, but out of the mud, will not loan me a dollar. After all, they are only human, I suppose. What is that line in the catechism? However, that is not to the point. I am sorry about it all, but it was not for myself I worked, it was for Ruth and for Claire. It was for them I made myself rich, respected, famous even. It was for them I got into that trap of Jerolomon’s. It was for them I did this thing. Ruth you can always look after, but Claire⁠—well, I used to think she would be the richest girl in the land. The hope of a parvenu, you will say. I grant it; but it was for her I cared, for her and for Ruth, not for myself.”

“I can do nothing,” said Gonfallon. In his eyes was the look of one who has sounded an abyss. “No, nothing. The very utmost I could raise would not cover a quarter of the⁠—the⁠—”

“Forgery is the word, but theft will do.”

“Of the amount,” he continued, in a dogged effort to pass the interruption unheeded. “And there is no one to whom I could go,” he added, reflectively, “save perhaps to Nicholas Manhattan. And if I went to him I would have to explain; which of course is impossible.”

“Not impossible in the least,” said Bucholz, very gravely; “not impossible in the least. I don’t see at all why you should say so. Nothing could be more proper. Mr. Manhattan is your parishioner; he is even a warden, isn’t he? I haven’t the pleasure of knowing him personally, and yet I am quite sure that he wouldn’t let a trifle like ten thousand weigh with him if he knew your good repute and that of Gethsemane was concerned.”

“My good repute! My good repute has nothing to do in the matter.”

“You are mistaken, dear boy; it has. When I am promenading a striped suit through the corridors of Sing Sing, it were facetious indeed did my son-in-law continue to officiate in the Church of the Holy Bilk⁠—I mean Gethsemane. Your parishioners in whom you have instilled so well all the beautiful precepts of Christian charity will show you the difference between theory and practice. Not an atom of charity will you get from them. Why, dear boy, you might just as well begin to pack up at once. If this thing gets out, never will they let you preach again. Really they won’t. I think you can take my word for that⁠—Why, Claire, where did you spring from?”

Unobserved by either, the girl had entered the room. To her father’s query she made no direct answer; she hastened towards him and gave him a fleeting caress.

Then, turning to Gonfallon, “Ruth wants you,” she explained.

“Can she have heard?” he wondered. He scanned her face; it was untroubled, and as she spoke, her voice assured.

“She has not heard,” he decided, and, waving at Bucholz, “I will be back presently,” he said.

“Saturday is the first of the month,” that gentleman announced. “The bank-account will be balanced then.”

But Gonfallon had already left the room. As he ascended the stair, he felt as though it were giving way beneath him. On each side were threatening hands. Yet above no haven was discernible, while below was an abyss.

“Of us two,” he muttered, “the nobler still is he;” and then, mentally, he bolted at the eccentricity of his own thought. “I am daft,” he told himself.

The stair, however, did not give way beneath him, the threatening hands did not detain his steps; he reached his wife in safety and sank in a chair at her side.

“Were you busy, Chris?” she asked. “I could have waited. It is merely a line from Mrs. Manhattan: she wants us all to dine with her on the 12th. I, of course, cannot go. But you will take Claire, will you not?”

“No, no,” he answered, impatiently. The 12th, indeed! He would be in little mood for dining then. “No,” he repeated. “Send a regret.”

“But, Chris, Claire will want to go. Do⁠—”

“Then let her go alone: as for me⁠—” He halted abruptly: an expression in Ruth’s face warned him that he was betraying an obsession of which no sign should be conveyed. “I am tired,” he added, inconsequently.

“Chris, you work so hard⁠—”

To this, with a despondent air, he assented remotely.

“And a little gayety will do you good. Besides⁠—”

“If I could only get away,” he thought. “Is there no place where I can hide?”

“It is one of your duties to go about among your parishioners. I believe it is even a canon in ecclesiastical law.” Ruth laughed as she spoke, and gave her husband a look in which pride and love commingled.

“There,” he said, “do as you will.”

After all, what did it matter? When the time came, Mrs. Manhattan would expect neither him nor Claire. And through his thoughts but one thing fluttered⁠—the longing for a place to hide.

“That is sweet of you, Chris. I will write to Mrs. Manhattan at once.⁠—Come in.”

Someone had rapped on the door, and in a moment Jane entered. “A letter for you, sir,” she said, and extended a note on a salver.

Instinctively he shuddered. It was about that accursed check, he knew. But the superscription reassured him. “It’s from Jones,” he mumbled, and tore the envelope apart.

“Dear Gonfallon,” it ran⁠—“I have just received a telegram from Bronx. My aunt is dying. She begs you to come to her. I go down in the eight-o’clock train. Will you not meet me at the Grand Central?

“It is there,” thought Gonfallon, “there that I can hide.” He turned to the servant and handed the note to Ruth.

“Is anyone waiting? Very good. Tell him to say to Mr. Jones that I will be there.”

He stood up, and added, in an undertone, “Tell Mr. Bucholz⁠—” But whatever message he had wished to send was lost.

“He’s gone, sir,” the woman interrupted.

And Ruth, intent on the note, murmured, as Jane withdrew, “To think that it was in her house we met! It seems but yesterday to me.”

“I must hurry,” said Gonfallon: “it is seven now.”

VI

It was midnight when the train halted at Bronx. During the journey Jones had been loquacious and Gonfallon dumb. To the one the illness of the countess represented an eternal farewell to the exigencies of syndicates and publishers; to the other, a refuge from the scandal with which New York would presently resound.

Jones, enveloped in an Inverness, wandered out into voluptuous anticipations of wealth to be. “I can go to Constantinople,” he confided to his companion, “or, like Stevenson, I can sail the Southern seas. I can lounge in Quaritch’s, or on the Grand Canal. I can go to Ecuador and foment a revolution. I can turn Buddhist and penetrate Tibet. From an editor’s chair I can bombard my friends and caress my enemies. I will have time to be noble, to be just, and to forgive. I can disappear as though the earth had swallowed me, or I can write a book to please myself. I can live, as Baudelaire wanted to, in a grot of basalt surrounded by slaves whose sole duty it will be to discover the secret of my immense ennui. Like Flaubert, I can call to a chimera to lift me on its wings. Like the Chimera, I can whisper to the Sphinx, ‘O Unknown, I am amorous of thine eyes.’ On the fingers of my sweethearts I can put the crystallized essence of banknotes. I can even pay my debts⁠—some of them, at least. I can⁠—”

And while Jones rambled on, discounting his inheritance in advance, Gonfallon’s thoughts had also taken him afar. In the abruptness of the departure he had no time to make so much as an effort to stay the approaching joust; and now, as he tormented himself with its possibilities, some breath of the philosophies to which the preceding night had been given rose to him, graciously as a balm. “Whatever will be, is,” he mused. “No one can combat the inevitable. If it is written that Bucholz is to founder in the mire and bespatter us all with the mud, no act of mine can prevent it.” But, even as his fancy was comforted, abruptly before him the reef to which he was veering loomed, and in the wreck which it menaced he saw the bishopric gone forever, Gethsemane lost as well. He saw himself a wanderer in unfamiliar parishes, the pulpit loaned on trial, the subsidence in some Western town, and then that most terrible trial of all, the attempt to begin life anew.

In his misery he moaned, dumbly and vaguely afflicted. In an effort to console himself he reflected that Jesus had been a vagabond too⁠—one who had not where to lay his head. Yet Jesus, he instantly remembered, had conquered the world, while he could not conquer himself.

Presently his thoughts deserted father for daughter, and as the train flashed through the night, something in the roll of the car seemed to echo the music of her voice. The irritation which had visited him in the afternoon faded, as irritation ever does. He closed his eyes: he was alone with her again, in his ears was the bubbling ripple of her laugh, his lips were on hers, his were the savors of her skin, his the wonders and caresses of her hair.

Yes, the poets were right: nothing in all the world imitated happiness more perfectly than did love. And if only that nightmare would disappear! If the memory of Bucholz and of his visit would vanish, life, full surely, would be a pleasant gift. But Bucholz declined to be dismissed. He surged like a partition between happiness and Claire. He dominated and appalled. It was all very well to rememorate the precepts of the masters, yet in the rememoration Gonfallon recalled that speech of the warrior Frederick, “Against the ills of the past or of the future philosophy is the best of remedies, but against the ills of the present it is without effect.” And as the train cleft the darkness he blamed himself for his cowardice, for his haste, for the weakness which had made him accept the first excuse for flight, and wished himself back in town, imploring aid there of Usselex, of Manhattan, of Jerolomon even, of anyone who had the power to throttle this thing at its birth. Again he groaned and writhed as Laocoön did.

“It is Wednesday,” he told himself: “by tomorrow noon I can be back in town. Cost what it may, I will get that money, and everything may yet be well. Surely Manhattan will not refuse; and if he does, and Jerolomon declines, then will I mortgage the homestead. H’m, it is odd I should have thought of that last. Meanwhile⁠—”

“Bronx!” The door before him had opened, and a brakeman was bawling in his face.

“We are punctual as a comet,” he heard Jones exclaim.

Gathering their traps, they descended into the night. At the station but one vehicle was discernible, and that, from a loutish driver who stood dandling his whip, they presently discovered was for them. “You ought to have come earlier,” he remarked, with the affectionate familiarity which is peculiar to the New-Englander. “It was sundown when she died.”

“Well,” said Jones, when they had seated themselves in the carriage, “she was a good woman, and a Christian. It’s deuced rough I couldn’t have got here in time. I was her favorite relative,” he added, meditatively. And with that he drew out a large cigar, which he lighted with infinite care.

Through the window Gonfallon gazed at the frostbitten road which he knew so well. Over there, to the right, was the parsonage he had occupied. And here, to the right, was Sever’s house. How small it looked! And as the carriage rattled over the ruts one after another, he recalled the names of retreating structures.

“Yes, indeed,” he answered; “yes, indeed.”

“A woman,” Jones continued, “who may have been misunderstood, as good women often are, but who was never the subject of gossip. I was in knickerbockers when her husband ran off, but I can see him now. He looked like a young emperor of old Rome. And from her never a murmur could be wrung. She did not so much as mention him, or her friend, even, who disappeared at the same time⁠—Mira Wheat her name was, the Admirable Miranda I remember she was called, a famous beauty, and a catch to boot. The count went down at Gravelotte, but what ever became of his travelling companion no one ever heard. It’s odd, those abrupt disappearances. You knew of the Besaluls, didn’t you? There’s a case in point. Besalul married a girl⁠—a Miss Forbush, I think: to all intents and purposes they were dead in love with each other. Two months afterwards, when Besalul, after bringing his wife home from some reception, was sitting in the parlor over the Post, the butler announced dinner. ‘Go upstairs,’ said Besalul, ‘and tell my wife.’ The butler went up and came down: Mrs. Besalul was undiscoverable. They searched the house. In her room were the mantle and bonnet which she had worn at the reception, but of the lady herself not a trace. The night changed to morning, and morning into noon, and still no sign of the absentee. No one had heard her leave the house, and it seemed impossible for her to have done so unobserved. Detectives were summoned, rewards were offered, but all in vain. Three or four years later, when she was practically forgotten, a friend of Besalul’s happened in journeying through France to stop at Toulouse, and while wandering about the town recognized my lady in a rose-garden. She had run off with a man with whom no one knew she was even acquainted.”

And Jones, flicking the ashes from his cigar, added, “I would have worked it up into a novel, but somehow it lacked the dramatic. I never seemed to get a climax. Ah! here we are.”

A servant, a pensioner rather, Rebecca Hays by name, a woman white of face and of hair, whom Gonfallon remembered well, met and led them into the hall. Grief or excitement seemed to have made her vague of speech. The lids of her eyes were watery and pink, her lips twitched spasmodically.

“Elle est devenue idiote,” Jones remarked. “I suppose we had better go up.”

And, motioning to the woman to precede them, the novelist, followed by the clergyman, mounted the creaking stair.

It was a large room which they presently entered, a room that leaned to the south. Across one wall was a stretch of tapestry, not Gobelins, but Gothic, and pictorial of the visit of the Magi. The angle was bare, the other walls cut by windows that gave on the valley below. The floor was of lacquered wood, the centre protected by a rug. Between the rug and the tapestry was a bed draped with curtains that fell from a panoply affixed to the ceiling above. On either side of the bed was a chest of oak. And on these chests candles had been placed.

Very reverently Gonfallon drew one of the curtains aside, and then, as he took one of the candles and held it aloft that he might see the better, Jones peered over his shoulder.

Death had dealt gently with the occupant of that bed. The hue of the skin was little different from what it had been, the folded hands not a whit more transparent than before. Even the expression of the face had not altered: in the elevation of the brow which death had not lowered, in the resignation of the mouth which it had been impotent to distort, the countess looked in the shroud as she had looked in life⁠—as though under her something had been killed, a hope, an illusion, or a dream.

“ ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ ” Gonfallon through sheer force of habit repeated, and turned to his companion; but Jones had already left him; he stood a little beyond, reading some paper which the white-haired woman who hovered in the doorway presumably had brought.

Ah, yes, the resurrection and the life! He let the curtain fall, and moved to a window. Save for the uncertain rustle of the paper which Jones was reading, the house was so still that one might have thought the countess had already elected it for her tomb. The air, too, was still. Gonfallon looked out into the shadows. To the left some leafless trees crossed their arms, beyond them others, blurred by the night, seemed to crouch in suspense, while beneath in the valley was the shimmer of a lake in which the hillside had turned upside down and the moonbeams danced with the ripples.

“The resurrection and the life, indeed! Where is the faith to which I clung? Gone are its flowers,” he mused, and with a finger beat a muffled tattoo on the windowpane. “Well do I remember the days when death to me was an illusion, a mask of the continuity of life. Now, what is it? At most a chasm into which the stars fall and nations disappear, a depth from which no spar returns, a silence from which no cry ascends. Is there in its darkness a flicker, an intimation even other than that of the ephemeralness of man? There may be. Yes, there may be, but to me no sign is vouchsafed. The countess who died steadfast in the unalterableness of her perfect faith must at the last have caught the flutter of angels’ wings. The grace which⁠—eh?”

“Read that.” And Jones, who had approached him, thrust a letter in his hand.

Gonfallon crossed the room to the candles and leaned on one of the chests. The paper which Jones had given him was undated, but evidently it was old: the ink had faded a little, the writing was not wholly legible, and from the paper itself came a faint odor of must and of decay. So nearly as Gonfallon could discern, it ran as follows:

“Should you, my dear nephew, survive me, as I trust you may, you will find by my will that your wants are provided for. In return for this, I wish to ask of you a last favor. In my bedroom, where this letter, should you ever receive it, will be given you, are two chests clamped with iron. These chests I beg you to carry, with Rebecca’s aid, to the dining-hall below. They contain nothing of value; merely a few odds and ends, mementos of my late husband, that are of interest to no one but myself. When I die, they can be burned, and no one will be the poorer. Take them, then, unopened, to the dining-hall: they are not too large to go in the fireplace, and by putting in one at a time they can be easily destroyed. I rely on you, Fenwick, to do as I bid.

And beneath, by way of postscriptum, though evidently of more recent date, was written⁠—

“Rebecca seems to be failing. If possible, get Dr. Gonfallon to assist.”

“Well?” said Jones.

Gonfallon had read the letter, and stood eying the superscription. “Well,” he answered, “there is a law, whether common or statute I am uncertain, but there is a law which inhibits just such a thing as this. To oblige your aunt is an easy matter. The question is⁠—”

“The law be blowed! The question is whether you will assist me. Whether or not the mementos consist in the frippery of a dead soldier, what does it matter, after all? My aunt speaks of her late husband: who knows what she meant? Women have odd circumlocutions. It is my duty to do as she bids, and do it I will.”

As he spoke he turned to one of the chests, and, removing the candles, drew it to the centre of the room. “See,” he added, “if it were packed with tracts it couldn’t be lighter.” And the gesture which he made was so cynical yet so sincere that Gonfallon, divining the uselessness of argument, nodded his assent.

“Now,” continued Jones, “if you will take one end I will take the other. Yet wait a second.” He left the room, and presently returned. “The way is clear. The sooner we get them down, the better.”

At once then, the chest between them, they moved out into the hall. From the floor above came the faint waver of a light. Beneath, a lamp was burning. As they moved, the flooring creaked; the great house was alive with echoes.

On the landing Jones stopped and lowered his end of the chest. “I will get a candle,” he said, as he did so. But his movement must have been ill calculated or over-abrupt⁠—both, perhaps⁠—for the added and unexpected weight which Gonfallon was then called upon to maintain found his fingers unprepared; the chest slipped from him and with the reverberation of thunder bounded down the giant stair. Barely had it started in its tumultuous descent before it seemed to leap sheer into the air and fall with a final crash on the floor below. Yet even in that infinitesimal space of time, above the reverberations soared the anguish of a woman’s cry; and for one second, leaning on the banister above them, in the uncertain flicker, both caught a glimpse of the white-haired retainer, her eyes dilated and mouth agape. Then, at once, you could have heard a lizard move.

“H’m,” muttered Jones, with an uncomfortable shrug; “let’s ask the other chest to be good enough not to be in such a hurry.”

“Look!” Gonfallon exclaimed; “it has either split in two or the lid has been wrenched open.”

The novelist extracted a monocle from his waistcoat and gazed into the shadows.

“Serves it right,” he answered, and leisurely descended the stair. “ ‘And of the remnants⁠—’ ” he continued, but midway in the quotation he halted. On the floor at his feet was something that sent a thrill down his spine, an object but a trifle larger than a Dutch cheese, one that had ossified and turned from dull red to dingy white, an unpleasant thing that had no business there.

He stooped and eyed it. Near the base was the rictus which the New-England lad cuts in the face of a pumpkin, and above it near the top was a fissure that resembled the signature of an axe. By it a scrap of paper had fluttered, and just beyond, the chest lay yawning and empty.

When Jones stood up again the paper was in his hand⁠—a square bit of parchment stamped with ensigns armorial, under which for legend ran the splendid device, Malgré tout. Beneath, three or four lines had been written.

“ ‘This,’ ” he read aloud, “ ‘This is the head of Jean-Renest-Marie, Count of Cinq-Cygne, Seigneur of Dol, at one time second lieutenant in the 19th Dragoons. May God have mercy on his soul!’ ”

He tossed the paper in the chest, and turned to Gonfallon. The latter was livid. “What do you say to that?” he asked. And then, as his friend steadied himself against the wall, “I will wager,” he continued, “that a companion-piece is in the other chest, another memento like that on the floor, and another document couched perhaps somewhat as follows: ‘This is the head of Mira Almer Wheat, daughter of Arthur Percy Wheat, of New York, esquire;’ and for epitaph, ‘Wheat is not quickened except it die.’ ”

“Hush! for heaven’s sake, hush! Someone may hear you.”

“Bah! The servants sleep in the wing; in this part of the house there is no one but Rebecca⁠—an accomplice I presume, an imbecile I am sure. And to think,” Jones added, after a moment, “to think that for twenty years that aunt of mine should not only have jockeyed the world, but that each night of those twenty years those chests should have been on either side of her, the last things she saw before closing her eyes, the first she saw on awakening! Why, Gonfallon, they were with her sleeping or waking; they were in her dreams, in her nightmares; she had made the dead her life, revenge a sustenance. What a plot! Shade of Balzac, what a plot!”

“Jones,” expostulated Gonfallon, “you are indecent.”

“Ah! I am indecent, am I? Well, perhaps⁠—perhaps. But if you knew what a trade fiction is! Whoso enters there leaves every blush behind.”

He picked up the skull, and, turning it in his hand, half to it half to his shuddering companion, he continued in a lower tone, “I am not a whit worse than another, and yet the desire for exact representation is such that if I hold a girl in my arms I study her abandonment; does she weep, I seek a simile in her tears; in her smile is the possibility of a metaphor; I even count my own pulse. To one in my trade nothing imaginable comes amiss. When a fellow adopts letters he must analyze his own sensations. Has he an emotion, he detains it; a grief, he enjoys it; a pleasure, he torments it into a phrase. He lives not alone in his own individual skin, but in that of everyone he encounters. The expression of a face is significant as a panic on the Exchange. A bow in the street will tell him as much as a page of Montaigne. He is in pursuit of the evanescent, a seeker after the key of the little dramas we all of us live and all of us conceal. If need be, he will hold his own linen to the cackle of the public. He is the comedian of the pen: it is his duty to amuse, to entertain⁠—or else to hold his peace. No wonder the critics bark; though, to be sure, they have nothing better to do. No, a viler profession never was. I hate it, I love it. It sends you rummaging where you have no business to be, it burns your fingers, it destroys your eyesight, alienates your friends, bars you from the sunlight, and for reward it offers⁠—what? A back bookshelf and a reproach. Ah, Gonfallon, preach to your congregation, but not to me. No sermon ever delivered is worth one of my aspirations. Yet see, I am indecent no longer.” And, shoving the skull back in the chest, he murmured, with the grimace of an East-Side actor, “Alas! poor Yorick!”

“And now,” he added, “let us get these odds and ends away.”

VII

At the breakfast-table on the morrow Jones was taciturn and Gonfallon white. When a little before in the dim baronial hall the flames had lapped at the climax of three lives, there had come to them unawares one of those emotions that are as potent for good as the conglomerate precepts of sayers of sooth. It was not that sin had appalled, for that it always does: it was that forgiveness had been impossible to one they deemed a saint. And before their vision, as the drama unrolled, each had pictured it according to his nature, but both had dreamed.

To Gonfallon it had displayed another of the uncircuitable labyrinths of the human heart. To Jones it had been a document. Gonfallon had imagined the countess pleading with her husband, pleading with her friend, until forbearance had been warped and the deed was done. Jones had evoked the jealousy of a woman accustomed to reign; he had seen, as in a glass, the first suspicion, the affected cecity, the studied calm, the uncertainty, the vigilance, yet still the smile, the laughing yet observant eyes, then the accumulating trifles, some partial evidence, the lure, the surprise, the axe, and death.

Where Gonfallon had been perplexed at the absence of a tenet which he strove to hold paramount, that tenet which the Christ instilled, which turned the pagan into the knight, founded courtesy and banished the boor, charity to the failings of others and abnegation of self, where he had been perplexed at the absence of this sweetest virtue in one whom he thought little short of perfection itself, Jones had seen the artist in life, one who, having tried every means to retain supremacy and failing, had not hesitated to crush. And as both pondered on the two decenniums in which the countess, with her skulls in her bedchamber and her skeletons in the cellar, had fronted the world without once betraying her secret⁠—that secret which now was theirs⁠—“It is hideous,” thought Gonfallon: “It is great,” thought Jones. And both were wrong, and both were right.

And now, as they sat together, one was taciturn and the other white. Gonfallon broke his bread absently. Into the horrors through which he had strayed, there surged the lancinating dread of the scandal at home, and by way of accompaniment to his thoughts was the memory of Claire. Already he meditated some plan of escape. Truly the office for which he had been summoned was fulfilled, and was he not free to go?

“Jones,” he ventured, at last, “it is the same to you, is it not, if I leave today?”

At this the novelist started with the air of a man awakened abruptly, and Gonfallon felt himself called upon to address the question again.

“Absolutely,” Jones answered, as its meaning reached him, and at once relapsed into dream. Apparently, to him, everything had ceased to be.

Gonfallon left the room and interviewed the coachman. Then, his valise repacked, his preparations completed, he descended the stair and rejoined his host. But during his absence a mourner had come, a little old lady, her face full of wrinkles and benevolence, a friend of the deceased, and a former parishioner of his own. Jones, seemingly, was annoyed at the intrusion, for he sat gnawing his thumb, his face one great scowl.

“Oh, doctor!” the lady exclaimed, as Gonfallon entered, “is it not sad? What shall we ever do without her? And Mr. Jones! Oh, doctor, don’t let him sit there eating his tears; tell him that in the midst of life we are in death, tell him he should not grieve, tell him his dear aunt has gone to a better world, tell him⁠—”

“Gag that woman, can’t you?” Jones muttered in an aside to his friend; and, rising from his seat, he nervously paced the room.

At this the poor lady, anxious only to console, nay, even to distract, waded through the feeble channels of her thought till she encountered her son, a young man who was endeavoring to become one of the ten thousand lawyers with whom New York is blessed.

“And Alfred!⁠—Mr. Jones, the countess always liked him so much: she even promised to give him a case⁠—one of her tenants who kept sending her bills for repairs. Do you ever see him, Mr. Jones? He is very studious; he works I forget how many hours. But the law is slow, is it not?”

“And so is the turtle,” snarled Jones, “but it gets in the soup all the same.”

“Oh, Mr. Jones, you do say such encouraging things! I must write that to Alfred. He will value it coming from you. You know he is a great admirer of yours, Alfred is. I haven’t read any of your works myself, but he says they are great. Tell me, Mr. Jones, do you write, as he does, with a quill?”

And Jones, almost brutally, with a shrug of the shoulders that was tantamount to a slap in the face, answered, “No, madam, I write with my nerves,” and stalked from the room.

Gonfallon lingered a moment with the benevolent lady, and then, with a murmured apology, followed his host. Already the carriage had arrived, and on the porch was Jones.

“You will be back for the funeral, will you not?” he asked. “I would rather you officiated than the ignoramus that is here. Besides,” he added, “it would be more becoming.”

Gonfallon flicked from his sleeve a speck of dust. To the sensitive there are few things as contagious as irritation, and the irritation which Jones exhaled had not left him unruffled. But immediately he recovered himself. Because Jones happened to be vicious there was little reason why he should imitate him.

“I will be back, of course,” he answered, sedately. “But, Jones, if I were you I wouldn’t let this thing⁠—h’m, you know what I mean: it’s bad enough, in all conscience, and I can understand that you are upset, but⁠—”

“Upset? You think I am upset? Is that what you call it? I am in a rage beside which the anger of Achilles was a fleeting annoyance. Upset, indeed! Gonfallon, this morning⁠—no, let me begin aright, last night I was imbecile enough to build the usual castle in Castile: I had a right to, hadn’t I? I was my aunt’s favorite relative. She had forty⁠—fifty thousand a year. With an income like that, and strict economy, a man can go far. I intended to. I saw myself in Tahiti, in Japan, at the same time even. There is not an inviting shore in the world that I did not propose to visit⁠—in my own yacht at that, and with a picked orchestra in the forecastle. And this morning, before I was so much as able to get the taste of last night out of my mouth, Tapling turned up⁠—”

“The attorney, you mean?”

“Yes, the attorney; and, from what I could squeeze out of him, that dear aunt of mine, for whom I am guilty of compounding a felony, has left me this⁠—this cemetery and eighteen hundred a year to keep it up with. Eighteen hundred a year, Gonfallon; fancy the infamy of that!”

“And the rest?”

Jones gave his head the shake which a bull gives at a toreador. “To the devil⁠—to some other Jones⁠—to you, perhaps. As if I cared. It’s gone: that’s the end of it.”

“I am sorry; really I am. I can understand⁠—”

“Yes,” replied Jones, “I am sorry too.” He paused and gazed at the points of his patent-leather shoes. His anger seemed to have spent itself.

“You have no plans, have you?” Gonfallon asked, as a servant appeared with his valise.

“No,” Jones answered, pensively. “No; for the moment, none at all. I may stay in the country and raise hexameters, or return to town and dabble in experimental physiology. But as for Tahiti and Japan, I must give them up. Hereafter I can travel, as I have hitherto, on the map.⁠—Well, I am sorry you have to go. Remember me to your wife.”

“And now,” murmured Gonfallon, as the carriage swept down the hill, “to the rescue.”

VIII

But for that day the rescue was of necessity postponed. Shortly after leaving Bronx the train in which Gonfallon was seated hesitated and halted, barricaded by the derailment of the Boston Express. And there between open fields for four mortal hours Gonfallon sat and twirled his thumbs. Instead of arriving in town at noon, the encroachments of dusk had begun before the station was reached.

As he drove to the rectory he weighed the feasibility of bearding Usselex in his house or of waylaying Manhattan at his club. On Jerolomon no attempt could be made, for that vulture took wing each night to an eyry on the Palisades whither pursuit were futile. The cab moved slowly; a stream of carriages was descending from the Park, and suddenly the rumble of the Avenue was punctuated by a stroke of brass, the trailing cry of a horn, and a coach swept by displaying for a second’s space a panorama of high hats, smart bonnets, and grooms the arms folded, impassible, correct. In its wake came a landau, the panel decorated with a coat of arms that was haughtier than a closed crown, and for occupant a brewer’s mistress. And behind it, interrupted by drays and hansoms, came traps from the stables of Robinson, of Madden, Dunwoodie, Forbush, and Attersol, men whose signatures could ransom popes, to whose daughters princes offered their hands, not the left either, but both, and whose wives could not find houses large enough for the plenitude and atrocities of their taste.

These people Gonfallon passed on his way to the rectory, and as the cab turned into Fifty-Second Street an omnibus lumbered by, and in it he caught a glimpse of Bleecker Bleecker, the richest man out of mythology, who sat caressing his chin, his coat-collar turned up, and in his face that vacuity which only omnipotence can bring.

It was to these people that each Sunday he spoke. At their marriages he officiated; when death came among them, so did he. It was he that baptized their children, it was he that gave them Bread and Wine at the Supper of Our Lord, it was he that counselled and that warned. He was their spiritual guide, their friend as well, one whom they welcomed and feasted and in whose converse they took delight. Yet did he in the direness of his distress go to any one of them now, what metamorphoses might he not encounter, interest changed to apathy, cordiality to rebuff, and, for climax, the door! As he stepped from the cab there came to him the giddiness of a sudden fall. On one side he saw the frayed coat of the mendicant priest, and in it an outcast that was himself; on the other gleamed the rochet, the satin robe, the insignia of the episcopate. It was for him to choose; and as he let himself into the rectory, about the muscles of his jaw there seemed to rise the stamp of that force which is known as Will.

“That money shall be got,” he muttered, “ay, though I dig it from the earth with my teeth.” And as he threw his coat from him, raging at the pusillanimity which had sent him careering over the country, losing him hours of which each moment was a treasure, and determining that, however late it might be, he would not sit himself down until the means of intercepting that forgery were obtained, his eye fell on a telegram that lay awaiting him on the table. “More about the bishop, I suppose.” And thereat he opened it with a stab of the thumb.

“God will reward you,” it ran. “I have only thanks.” And for signature⁠—Bucholz.

Gonfallon read the message twice, gazing at it the while with the air and attitude of a lunatic who thinks himself the proprietor of the asylum in which he dwells. For the moment it even occurred to him that Bucholz through some sympathetic intussusception might have divined the current of his thought and was expressing in advance his gratitude for the effort about to be made in his behalf.

“He is mad,” he muttered. “What can he mean?”

“Chris!”

Rumpling the telegram, he turned.

“Chris!” From the floor above, Ruth’s voice descended, and as he looked he saw the jonquil of her hair.

“Yes,” he answered, “in a moment.” And presently, the telegram in his pocket, his gloves withdrawn and folded, he mounted, still perplexed, to where she stood. “He is mad,” he kept repeating.

“Oh, Chris, I am so glad you are come! I hardly expected you today.” As she spoke, her voice wavered, as though she too were thinking of other things.

“Your father has been here, has he not?” he asked, abruptly.

“No,” she replied; “no one has been here. Is she better?”

Evidently she was referring to the countess, and by way of answer Gonfallon made a vague gesture. But the question seemed to have slipped from her, and to the gesture she gave no heed. She turned and appeared to listen.

“What can he mean?” he repeated to himself. “What new abomination is he at?”

“Come with me,” she continued, and motioned him to her room.

“I must go to him,” he thought, “or I must write.” But he followed her, and when he found a seat he added, aloud, “She died before we got there.”

“Ah!”

“Yes; and I must get back for the funeral⁠—that is, if I can manage it. How is your head?”

“Oh, as for my head!⁠—” And she made a movement as though her head and she were separate, as were it a thing that existed only when other things ceased to be. She went to the door and closed it, and then at once, still standing, she turned to where he sat.

In her attitude, in the expression of her eyes, was a fixidity so unusual that mentally Gonfallon gasped. For the time being Bucholz passed from his thoughts and the telegram was forgot. “She knows all,” he reflected. “Claire has confessed.” But of the inward perturbation his face gave no sign, and for the moment, as the earlier danger sank in sight of this newer one, he told himself, “If she believes it, she will leave me.”

“Yes,” he repeated, “she died before we got there. I suppose I should have remained; but the bishop, you know⁠—” and thereat he nodded, as though the death of that prelate had absolved him from every tie. And as he nodded he eyed her, prepared at the first accusation to affect an appearance of speechless indignation under cover of which he could not only stalk from the room but slam the door as well.

Her lips trembled; she shook her head, almost absently it seemed to him, and one hand which had detained the fold of her gown she now raised, and, drawing it palm foremost across her brow, let it fall again to her side.

“Chris, listen to me. Last evening⁠—you had barely gone⁠—Claire rang for a messenger⁠—she often does, you know⁠—and sent some note. I thought nothing of it, and asked no questions. For a while she sat here talking about a habit she was trying to get, and a little later, it was barely ten o’clock, she said something about being tired, and went to her room. H’m. I think I must have fallen asleep. In any event, I heard a noise such as the front door makes. At first I thought you might have returned. I listened a moment, and then went out in the hall. There was no sound. I went to Claire’s room and tapped: she did not answer. I tried the door: it was locked. ‘She is asleep,’ I told myself, and listened again; but I heard nothing more, and, deciding that I had been mistaken, I came back here and tried to read. But I must have dozed off; for suddenly I awoke again with a start: I was sure I had heard that noise a second time. In a moment I was in the hall, and there, on the stairs, was Claire.”

“Claire!”

“Yes, Claire; it was then after one. She had been out at least two hours⁠—perhaps even three.”

“But where? Where had she been?”

“I asked her, and she said she had been to Miss Pickett’s.”

“But she is often there. She was there only the other night.”

“Yes, I know. She told me that Miss Pickett was having a dance, and that she thought she might as well go. The messenger, she explained, was for the cab.”

“Really, Ruth, it was unconventional, I admit, and you must tell her not to go out in that way again, but, aside from that⁠—no, really, I see no cause for anxiety.”

As his wife had spoken, a great load had been lifted from him⁠—one, however, that was immediately replaced by another. “I must attend to Bucholz at once,” he decided.

“No, perhaps not,” Ruth answered, pensively. “Only she did not seem to be in ball-dress, and⁠—”

But Gonfallon had no time to listen further. “Ruth,” he exclaimed, “I have many things to attend to. If you don’t mind, I will get Jane to give me a bite, and then I must go. Don’t sit up for me; and there,” he added, “I will see that the front door does not creak.”

She had fallen on a lounge, and, bending to her, he brushed her forehead with his lips and left the room.

IX

“Did you ever see a ventriloquist? The ventriloquist speaks, a mannequin answers. The questions are so adroit, the answers so natural, that everyone, even to the mannequin, thinks that the dialogue is real. Such, Miss Raritan, is love⁠—a duo in which one of the vocalists grimaces while the other sings for two.”

“Mr. Jones, I knew your wit was copyrighted, I did not know it was profound.”

For centrepiece that evening the dinner-table had blue lilies afloat in a silver pond. About it were a handful of people, a dozen or fourteen at most, who had assembled at the bidding of Mrs. Manhattan partly to greet Mrs. Jerold Fox, a lady who some years before had deserted New York for the allurements of Paris and the Mediterranean coast, and partly to enjoy the primeur of a bishop en herbe. Mrs. Manhattan, be it said, was just the person to do things by halves.

And there, at the hostess’s right, as Gonfallon, expressing in eye and in mien the indulgence which comes of dishes perfectly served, sat listening to the conversation that fluttered about him, attentive the while to Mrs. Manhattan, affecting even to chide her for a jest which she had invented for the evening and which consisted in bestowing on him the title of Lord which the English give to their bishops, it was apparent that he was at peace with the world.

The episcopate, indeed, was not yet his, but during the fortnight that had elapsed since the terrible journey from Bronx, many things had happened which pointed directly to him as its future possessor. Moreover, the nightmare which Bucholz induced had vanished as abruptly as it had come. An anonymous benefactor, one whom Bucholz fancied to be none other than Gonfallon, had sent him the amount in time. And that anonymous benefactor, whom, in the earliest perplexity which beset them when Gonfallon on the evening of his return from Bronx learned from Bucholz’ own lips that the money had been brought to him and Bucholz learned from Gonfallon that he knew nothing of the sender, that anonymous benefactor, at first unimaginable as Abistek, they ultimately decided must surely be Jerolomon, and, presto! in the eyes of both, the vampire changed to a dove.

Relieved of this burden, Gonfallon had returned to Bronx, departing only when the grave had closed and the last rite had been performed, but not, however, before his old parishioners, radiating in the presence of the now famous cleric who once had been their own, had insisted on his delivering one of his spiritual harangues again. Then, the dust of Bronx barely shaken from him, his mother had been taken ill, and he had been forced to journey to the prim Massachusettsian village in which she dwelt, and to linger there until through an unexpected turn in the malady his mother had been declared out of danger and he was suffered to return to his pastorate in town. Meanwhile, he had caught but infrequent glimpses of Claire; indeed, during his absence such a mass of duties had accumulated, so many parochial matters demanded his attention, that until this evening he had had barely a moment which he could call his own.

But now as he sat at his hostess’s right, interrupting the conversation that fluttered about him now with one of those pleasantries which the popular divine can permit himself, now interjecting some apposite sally⁠—sounding as he did so that resonant accent with which his famous phrase, “Religion, not politics, is the nation’s soul,” had been fired point-blank at the President⁠—he looked once again a maker of songs and of laws and every inch a prelate. With Bucholz inoffensive and the bishopric full in sight, he could well afford to be himself. It was good to smile, and his smile was contagious. There was but one thing that jarred.

On the opposite side of the table, at the farther end, between Mrs. Fox and Miss Raritan, Jones was seated, his recent mourning noticeable only in two microscopic studs of onyx, or of sapphire, the which, parenthetically, give the same effect. On the other side of Miss Raritan was Trement Yarde, and next to him was Claire. To Nicholas Manhattan, the gentlest yet the most easily bored of men⁠—and to whomsoever else would listen⁠—Mrs. Fox was relating a few of her triumphs. Her conversation, such of it at least as reached Gonfallon’s ear, was a glittering spangle of noble names. During her sojourn abroad, seemingly with no one of lesser degree than a baronet had she ever exchanged a word. Her speech was striated with foreign idioms, and occasionally she lapsed wholly into French.

But it was not Mrs. Fox that jarred on Gonfallon: it was Claire and Yarde. From the first, through one of those illogical processes which often hold the core of logic itself, Gonfallon had detested the young fellow; everything about him, from the part of his hair to the soles of his St. James Street shoes⁠—everything, even to the trick he had of contemplating his fingertips, was antipathetic in the extreme. Later, when Yarde had become a visitor at the rectory, haunting it as it were with his unwelcome presence, the antipathy had changed to detestation; and now that he was talking to Claire, and talking to her moreover in a voice so modulated that no one save the girl herself could hear him, Gonfallon’s detestation addled into rage. For the moment he pitied the girl, and sorrowed for her that she should have for neighbor a man she loathed. But suddenly his pity was shot with wonder, his anger with surprise. During the early part of the meal Claire had chatted amiably enough to the man seated between Mrs. Manhattan and herself, and Yarde had delivered himself up to the fascinations of Miss Raritan. But now the conversation had changed, and Yarde was devoting himself to Claire.

That the former should address the girl whom he had taken in to dinner was a thing which, however objectionable in the abstract, was in the circumstances perfectly proper. Indeed, Gonfallon told himself that although Claire in that conversation which he had overheard had snubbed the fellow right roundly, still the dinner-table of a third person must and should interrupt the continuity of a quarrel subsisting between a man and a woman whom the hostess has placed side by side. And now, in spite of that snubbing, did Yarde not address Claire, and did Claire not respond, it would be unmannerly of the one and unseemly of the other. Platitudes are easy of utterance, and the weather, however beastly, has never caused a shipwreck yet.

But as Gonfallon watched them it was clear to him that no exchange of commonplaces was taking place. When he had last seen the two together, Claire’s attitude had been that of an insulted princess, in her voice had been a threat; now disdain had vanished; where the menace had been was now a smile. On her part the transformation was greater than any regard for the proprieties demanded; while as for Yarde, in place of the sulk of a whipped spaniel there had come an air of confidence which was insolent to a degree. Through some jugglery which Gonfallon felt himself incompetent to fathom, he seemed to be engaged in filching from him a thing which after⁠—nay, with⁠—the episcopate was more precious than all things else. And at this jugglery, at this open pillage of his own chattels, conventionality compelled him to assist, inhibiting him even from so much as warning the marauder off, and demanding that he should laugh, that he should jest, that his flow of small-talk should not tarry.

“Don’t you agree with me, doctor?”

In the little drama Gonfallon played the hero’s role. Of the jealousy which had sprung into being within him, that jealousy which spends itself not in a scene but in a crime, of the revulsion of feeling, of the anger and surprise, he gave no outward sign; not an eyelid had twitched, not a muscle of his face had altered. His observations, however long in the telling, had in reality not outlasted a moment; and Mrs. Manhattan, who had been expressing her views on some subject which was doubtless of importance, never dreamed that the guest who appeared to be giving her his fullest attention had in that moment traversed the world, unconscious of her presence, deaf to her speech.

“Perfectly, my dear Mrs. Manhattan,” he answered. “I agree with you in every respect.”

From the other end of the table came the falsetto laugh which Mrs. Fox used as fanfare to sound the retreat of some noble personage from her speech. She was in great good spirits, and looked around, for admiration perhaps, at Jones. Presumably she had been informed of his calling, one which doubtless was to her incompatible with the usages of the selectest set, for over the oysters she had ignored him entirely, over the roast she had given him a glance which she was prepared on the instant to bestow on someone else. But with the sweets she was surprised into remarking that he looked enough like the secretary of the Austrian Legation to be that gentleman’s brother.

“Who did you say he was?” she asked of her host.

“I call him Alphabet,” Manhattan answered, “but his name is Chisolm-Jones.”

“Not a nephew of Madame de Cinq-Cygne?”

“Her nephew.”

The questions and answers Gonfallon garnered unconsciously. He was in the cerebral condition of a chess-player whom the remark of a bystander addressed during the absorption of the game reaches only when the move is made. Do what he might, his attention was centred on Claire; and through that attention filtered the conversation of the other guests.

Miss Raritan was talking across the table, praising Massenet and the inspiration which that composer displays. Mrs. Manhattan had turned to the man on her left. For the moment both Claire and Yarde were silent. Mrs. Fox was captivating Jones.

“And that dear countess! How is she?”

“Better than she has been for some time,” Jones answered. “She is dead.”

“I am so glad,” Mrs. Fox rejoined: it was evident that only the initial sentence had reached her. “I am so glad. There are few whom I have known⁠—among my own compatriots, of course⁠—who speak French as well as she. Do you know, it is really difficult for me now to accustom myself to my own tongue? You must have experienced the same thing yourself.”

“Often, Mrs. Fox.”

“I was sure of it. Nous autres, n’est-ce pas? Mais tout le monde parle Français maintenant. Figurez-vous qu’à Cannes, l’hiver passé, j’étais vraiment étonnée de trouver ma langue dans la bouche du Prince de Galles!”

“Son Altesse aussi sans doute,” Jones answered, with a sniff.

“What do you think of her?” asked Miss Raritan, in a whisper.

“Fox et praeterea nihil,” he replied; a jest which the young lady did not wholly grasp, but at which, as was her wont, she smiled approvingly.

“And now, do tell me,” Mrs. Fox continued⁠—“you know I have been away so long⁠—what is the last scandal?”

“The last scandal? Let me see.” And the novelist seemed to meditate. “Ah, yes. You remember Mrs. Gwathmeys, don’t you?”

“Cynthia Van Dam that was?”

“Exactly. Well, the other day her husband picked her pocket.”

“Mr. Chisolm-Jones!”

“You don’t understand. It was a pleasantry on his part. He saw a bit of paper peeping out of her bodice, and snatched it from her.”

“You said her pocket.”

“Isn’t a bodice a woman’s pocket? However, Gwathmeys seized the paper, and suddenly he cried, ‘What is this? My love, my chosen, but not mine, I send my whole heart to you in these words I write.⁠—Who is it wrote that?’ ‘Owen Meredith,’ his wife answered.”

“The shameless thing!” interjected Mrs. Fox.

“ ‘I will kill him!’ shouted Gwathmeys.” As Jones spoke he imitated the voice of an ogre in a fairytale.

“And quite right, too.”

“As you say.”

“And did he?”

But Jones’s answer was lost. Mrs. Manhattan had moved, and at that signal her guests rose from the table. When the men, after accompanying the womenfolk into the drawing room, returned for coffee and liqueurs, the novelist seemed absorbed. He took little part in the conversation, and, until his host suggested that it might be well to join the ladies, he sat now puffing at a huge cigar, now flicking the ashes on the floor.

The drawing room which they then entered, the smallest of the three which the house contained, was so cunningly furnished with everything that you would have expected most, that it was even comfortable and unsuggestive of a sheriff’s sale. At one end a screen served as a partition between two sofas. Near to one of the sofas was a mantel, near to the other a piano. Throughout the room other nooks had been arranged. It was one of the few places where a tête-à-tête can be enjoyed in a crowd.

When the men entered, Miss Raritan was at the piano. On the sofa nearest the mantel Claire had just seated herself. The other women were in a group. Gonfallon at once took up a position by the mantel, on which he leaned, his back turned to his sister-in-law; Manhattan lounged near the piano; and Trement Yarde sat himself next to Claire.

For a moment the room was resonant with that accent which is peculiar to the after-dinner speech. Then, as Miss Raritan’s fingers strayed over the keys, there was a lull. Presently the girl’s voice sounded, low as yet, for she was heating her throat; then suddenly it rose, and dilating filled the room, and, as she sang, each note was evocative of fancies, each word clear as the token on a coin.

Baise-moy, mignonne, cent fois rebaise-moy.

The refrain of her song drifted from her in a murmur of applause. When she had finished, Jones crossed the room to where Gonfallon stood, and, leaning against the mantel, for a moment he gazed at Claire, still seated with Yarde on the sofa just beyond, and plucked at his yellow beard.

With an effort Gonfallon roused himself from a revery into which he had sunk. “She sings well, does she not?” he remarked. “I wish I could induce her to join the choir.” And, as Jones answered nothing, he added, after a moment, “You are the last person I expected to meet tonight.”

“Because of my aunt? What nonsense! Though, to be sure, after the manner in which I was treated one might easily expect me to be in sackcloth. No, Mrs. Manhattan asked me before the Bronx episode occurred, and, having accepted her invitation, I saw no reason to back out. Yesterday I got together a change of linen and a metaphysical theory, and here I am. It is ghastly in the country. If it were not for my man, I give you my word, I believe I would keep myself full as a harvest-moon.”

“Your man?”

Jones had been speaking in the leisurely growl that was usual to him, in a voice in which a drawl and a snarl seemed to struggle for prominence. But now his face lit up, he straightened himself, and, with a glance at the sofa as though to assure himself of the inattention of its occupants, he plucked again at his beard and continued in a clearer key:

“Yes, the one luxury that my aunt’s munificence has permitted me. I have only had the beggar a week, but I have told him that if he behaves himself I will promote him from valet to secretary. His life has been a magic-lantern: he has visited all sorts of impossible places; he has been to Bokhara, to Quito, to Boston⁠—to Mars, for all I know. If I had had a fraction of his adventures I could busy a room-full of stenographers with the dictation of plots. He keeps me in a fever with his anecdotes; he⁠—”

“Is he an Englishman?”

“No; he is a Swiss, or a Pole⁠—both, perhaps. However, I wouldn’t rely on his veracity. He tells me he has only been in this country a few weeks, two of which he passed as servant to some young man here who sent him adrift because he couldn’t marrowbone his boots.”

“H’m.”

“Yes, so he said. He told me something odd about him, too⁠—rather typical, I thought. The substance of it, I fancy, he must have obtained through the keyhole and his master’s correspondence⁠—a supposition which may account for his dismissal. But to come to the point. It appears that the young man, after the fashion of his kind, was smitten in a certain quarter. The object of his affections, poor, parenthetically, but presumably virtuous, would have none of him. In fact, she detested him as only a girl can who has nothing better to do. It may be⁠—”

Gonfallon had ceased to listen; his thoughts had wandered to the dinner-table, and then, returning, settled on the occupants of the sofa at his back. At the earliest possible moment he determined to take Claire and go.

“It may be,” Jones continued, “that the young fellow, in the vivacity which youth will cause, had played some little trick on her which she resented. Joseph⁠—my man⁠—described her as haughty as a Wittelsbach, and of course, as such, not one to take things lightly. Be that as it may, one afternoon our hero sauntered forth, his boots radiant though unboned, a flower in his coat, and the smell of iris on his linen. It was evident to Joseph that he intended to conquer or to die. An hour or so later our hero⁠—h’m, his name was⁠—er⁠—no, Joseph told me, but I have forgotten⁠—however, our hero returned, looking blacker than Cain, abused Joseph about the first thing that came in his head, and shut himself up in his room. Joseph, as a good servant should, loitered within call. Presently, a ring at the bell, a messenger and a note. No sooner did our hero read it than his face changed from Cain’s to Abel’s. It was then eight o’clock. Ten minutes later he was in evening dress. ‘I will dine at the Club,’ he said: ‘meanwhile, do you go to Klunder’s and get all the flowers he has in his shop cover the room with them, cover the carpet, fill the vestibule if you can.’ Joseph did as he was bid. He secured a hundred dozen roses, a basket of mignonette, and yards of smilax. When his master returned, the apartment had the breath of the Fortunate Isles. I mentioned that he lived in an apartment, didn’t I?”

At the question Gonfallon looked up. Jones seemed to be speaking less to him than to an audience behind his back. Mechanically he turned: apparently Claire and Yarde were talked out, for they sat as though listening to the novelist. Gonfallon felt for his watch and consulted it furtively: five minutes more and his cab would be at the door. “Yes, yes, of course,” he answered, absently. “Well, what then?”

“Then our hero dismissed Joseph for the night; but Joseph must have preferred to await developments. He declares that he had some brushing up to attend to, over which he fell asleep, and on awakening did not wish to make his presence known. But my own opinion is that during his master’s absence he found the note that had been brought, and that that note so piqued his curiosity that he hid in some closet in the hall. However, to make a long story short, just before midnight he heard the bell ring, and presently the sound of a girl’s voice. It was evident that she was excited. She entered the apartment like a tempest, and as she spoke her words came from her by jerks, as though wrenched by the effort of one whose patience or whose breath is gone. ‘See,’ said our hero, attempting to soothe her, ‘these roses are in welcome of you.’ ‘It is not for roses I come, but for money⁠—I am here.’ Then the door of the room which they entered was closed. For a moment there was a murmur, then an exclamation. Immediately the door reopened, and Joseph heard them pass out. This time the girl’s voice was assured. ‘Will you ever forgive me?’ she asked. ‘Will you think better of me than before?’ he answered. Seemingly⁠—”

Gonfallon, weary of Jones and of his tiresome tale, consulted his watch again. Down the room some of the guests had encircled Mrs. Fox. At the piano Miss Raritan was still seated, her exquisite face upturned to some man who was fingering a sheet of music. From behind, Gonfallon heard a rustle, Jones ceased speaking, and abruptly the room was in commotion.

Miss Raritan, rising from her seat, hurried forward, followed by Mrs. Manhattan, and in a moment by the other guests.

Gonfallon started and turned. On the sofa, Claire, her eyes closed, her head on her shoulder, her face but little less white than her frock, seemed to have sunk into a heap. “She’s fainted,” he heard Miss Raritan exclaim, and saw Mrs. Manhattan raise the girl up and beat her small hands with her own. Almost immediately the girl opened her eyes, and Gonfallon rushed to her aid. Yarde, who had stood up, glanced down at her and then over at Jones.

“There, I am right enough,” she lisped.

Again Yarde glanced at her, and then, as though assured of her well-being, he moved to where the novelist stood and looked him in the face. “You brute⁠—”

Jones caught him by the arm. “Listen to me, Trement. There, don’t struggle: she’s over it already. Besides, Gonfallon has his eye on you. Did you ever hear of Balzac? Of course not. Well, Balzac was a machine that blackened paper. One day, or rather one night, someone said to him, ‘There’s a pretty girl.’ He answered, ‘You mean a plot.’ Not a novel did he write that he had not dug from a woman’s heart. For a week I have been hunting for a climax. This evening I tried an experiment; it succeeded. I have my climax now. Call me a brute if you care to, but be good enough to understand that I am perfectly domesticated and thoroughly well trained. I always mask my heroine. There, Miss Bucholz is motioning to you.”

And with that Jones turned on his heel and adjusted his cravat. “I wonder,” he mused, “I wonder what that little imbecile would think of Vernet, who lashed himself to a masthead that he might study a storm?”

X

The drive from Mrs. Manhattan’s to the rectory was always a short one, but on this occasion it was brief indeed. The noise of the wheels brought to Gonfallon the echo of Miss Raritan’s song; and as in a constant resummons of the same refrain it beset and pursued him, forcing him whether he willed it or not into a lunatic duo with the vehicle in which he sat, a disorganized lamppost caught and detained the obsession, and he fell to wondering whether electricity was preferable to gas.

Then at once the query departed of itself. Jones was standing opposite, relating less to him than to an audience behind his back some endless story of nothing at all. And that story, to which five minutes before he had accorded only the show of interest which civility exacts, suddenly became poignant and fraught with interest.

At Mrs. Manhattan’s, in the earliest surprise at the unexpected, he had attributed Claire’s collapse to fatigue, to the heat of the room and the strain of her stays; but now, in fumbling about for the logic of Jones’s anecdote, he recalled the novelist’s significant forgetfulness of his hero’s name, the manner in which he had talked at the occupants of the sofa recurred to him, he remembered the epithet which Yarde had blurted out, and at once a panorama unrolled. He had not been the auditor of a pointless tale; he had assisted at the fabulization of a masquerade; but the clock had struck, the dominos had fallen, the masks were raised.

In a confusion of visions he saw Claire dismissing her suitor like a lackey, the interview between Bucholz and himself, interrupted by her and indubitably overheard; he divined the conflict within her, the rememoration of Yarde’s offer, the knowledge of her father’s guilt. Then one after another he comprehended the first incitement, the inward revolt, the renewed assault, the rebellion in her of all that was best, the martyrdom that ensued, the self-crucifixion, the tension of nerves, the defeat that was a victory, the agony over the wording of the note, the despatch of the message, the comedy played for Ruth, the suffocation hid with a smile, the anguish of the preparation, the dread, perhaps the hope, of detention, the horror of the unlighted stairs, the tragedy of the cab that waited there, the agony of her thoughts as she was driven away, her hysterical entrance into Yarde’s apartment, and then, to the man she loathed, her offer in payment of her father’s shame. No, it was more than noble; it was Greek.

Of her possible contempt of him, Gonfallon gave no thought. And as his fancy veered from Claire to Yarde it was with a little undercurrent of applause. Truly he had misjudged the man, not much perhaps, but still misjudgment there had been. He could have throttled him on that afternoon when he had heard him, in anger at his rejection, make that offer which he had coupled with the insulting assurance that the walls of his rooms were dumb. Yes, he could have throttled him then with delight. And yet, when Claire, in her haste to rescue her father, had in her helplessness knocked at his door, he had been better than his word: assistance had been accorded unexactingly, and so soon as rendered, immediately he had let her go. However the episode might be viewed, in this respect at least Yarde’s conduct had in it a dash of the talon rouge. No wonder Claire’s attitude had changed: it were ungracious of her had it not. But there the matter should rest. Claire should be under no further obligation to smile at this subtler Lovelace. The money he would find means of repaying. As for Jones, he could be hushed with a word.

The cab had stopped, but it needed a movement from his companion to remind him that the journey was done. He got out, aided her to alight, and unlatched the door. As yet, neither had spoken. On entering the house Claire made directly for the stairs.

“Don’t go up yet; I want a word with you,” he muttered, and glanced at the banisters above.

“What is it?” She halted and turned. The cheeks were still pale, and the white fur of her wrap increased the pallor of her face.

He put his hat and coat aside, and, raising the curtain of the sitting-room, motioned her to enter.

For a second she hesitated and looked at him inquisitorially, the brow contracted; then, gathering a fold of her frock, she obeyed the gesture, and, entering the room, she stood, her wrap drawn about her, her head thrown back, one foot beating a measure impatiently on the floor.

Gonfallon glanced again at the banisters and let the curtain fall. “Claire,” he began, “there is but one explanation of what occurred this evening. The fault, perhaps, is partly mine. I had intended on my return from Bronx to take immediate action in regard to your father, but you forestalled me. You forestalled me, moreover, in a manner which⁠—which⁠—well, of which the least said the better. Fortunately, matters are not as bad as they might be. You have been exceedingly imprudent, and I have been remiss. As for that young man, his mere presence is sufficient to tarnish a dawn. From your own demeanor, from things which Ruth has let fall, I understand that he is as objectionable to you as he is to me. The obligation which he has placed us all under must of course be cancelled, and to that I will attend; but hereafter it is impossible for you to see him again. You agree with me, do you not?”

In and about the girl’s mobile lips a sneer hovered like a bee on a rose. Leisurely she undid her cloak. “Not in the least,” she answered.

“But you know I dislike him; you know⁠—”

“And why should you?” Her head, which had been thrown back, she now held a trifle to one side. “And why should you? Has he ever done you a kindness?” She paused a second, and added, “You dislike my father too, don’t you?”

The thrust was keen and venomous as the tooth of a rat. But on her mouth the sneer was so quickly effaced by a smile that one might have thought that in her heart a bird had suddenly burst into song.

At the change in her expression Gonfallon forgot to heed the taunt. “He is unprincipled, Claire⁠—”

“Ah! He is unprincipled, is he? And what of it? You have no principles of your own to boast of. No, Chris, you have none.”

She pointed at him. On the end of her finger were all sorts of pretty gestures, and in her face, to which some trace of color had returned, was the mimic of a child saying, Fi! “You must find a better reason than that.”

At the movement of her hand the wrap fell from her. She was bare of neck and of arm. Her frock was after that English model which gives some freedom to the limbs yet keeps the waist well girt. It was colorless yet scintillant, and in it, with the white of the fur at her feet, it needed little imagination to fancy her a statue of Injustice vacating its niche.

The slender finger still extended seemed to pierce him like a gibe. “You must find a better reason than that,” she repeated; “you must, indeed.” Her smile had bubbled into a ripple, her eyes laughed, and she flushed.

Gonfallon’s breath came faster. He had been staring at her. “It is because I love you, Claire,” he whispered. And in a moment he caught her to him and pressed her lips of silk to his. At their emollient touch his anger evaporated as utterly as had it never been. “Sweetheart,” he murmured, “it is because you are more than all the world to me.”

He gazed into her deep eyes’ depth. Instead of an answering gleam, there was in them an apathy, stagnant and unmoved. “Sweetheart,” he repeated, and as he did so the eyes into which he gazed dilated as at some sudden dread. From behind him came a smothered cry. His arms fell again to his side, and he wheeled about. In the doorway Ruth stood, her face barred by a shadow. Claire stooped for her cloak, and Gonfallon bit his lip.

Ruth advanced to where they stood. Her face now they could see had on it the stamp of unvanquishable pain, seared in, immutable and already cold. She glanced from one to the other.

“Claire,” she said, and as she spoke her words fell from her very swiftly, unseparated by intervals, as though in speech relief might be⁠—“Claire, our mother died when you were born. The first thought I ever had was of your good. The earliest effort I ever made I made for you. I tried to be not a sister alone, I tried to replace the mother you had lost. I have failed.”

Claire made as though to speak, but already Ruth had turned to Gonfallon.

“Christopher, the first dream of my girlhood belonged to you. The only thoughts I did not give to Claire were those I gave to you. You took so many, Christopher! I gave you my whole heart; I thought you gave me yours. I was wrong.”

“Wrong?” cried Claire; “you are stark, staring mad, that is what is the matter with you, Mrs. Gonfallon.”

“I am sure,” Gonfallon hazarded, “I don’t see⁠—”

“I did,” said his wife. The monosyllables fell like a sentence.

“Well, Ruth,” Claire broke in, “if you object to Chris kissing me on an occasion like this⁠—”

“Like this? What occasion can it be?”

“Why, Chris was congratulating me on my engagement. Don’t you think you are absurd?”

A light as from some new dawn seemed to break in Ruth’s eyes. She turned to Claire again.

“I am engaged to Trement Yarde,” the girl added.

Gonfallon felt the blood mount to his temples. “It is a lie,” he told himself. “Or if by chance she is telling the truth, then⁠—”

“He asked me again tonight,” Claire continued. “It was the fourth time; I was afraid he might not ask again⁠—”

“Is this true, Christopher?” Ruth’s voice was almost joyous.

“It is true,” he answered, and ground his nails into his flesh.

“But you don’t love him!” And already Ruth’s arm had wound itself about her sister’s waist.

Claire nodded eagerly. “Oh, but I do, though⁠—lots and lots⁠—corner lots.”

“Claire, dear,” expostulated Ruth, “you said you hated him.”

“H’m, perhaps. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

Ruth turned again from her sister to her husband. “Chris, Claire has forgiven me: will not you?”

Gonfallon answered nothing. He tried to give his face some suitable expression, and evidently he succeeded, for Ruth, with the dawn still in her eyes, led her sister away.

When they had gone, Gonfallon dropped on a chair and mopped his forehead. “Hatred, indeed!” he muttered. “It is I that hate.” It was monstrous, he told himself, that she should treat him as she had. From a delight she had changed into a reproach. The desire which she had inspired, and against which he had struggled with all the feebleness of his strength, the hope unformulated yet sentient which she had evoked and against whose luminousness he had hid his eyes, these things had passed, the one into a mockery, the other into a taunt. The innocence which she exhaled, the guilelessness which she displayed, that savor and fragrance of youth which in alluring him despite himself had made him forget his office and his vows, was an acquired, a premeditated trick. Everything about her, even to the serpentine movement of her neck, was the understudy of a lie. And it was such an one as she that had the power to stir his pulse and leave him for hours after to dally with the protocols and uselessness of regret! It was she who had brought him visions of larger life, of new horizons and fresher creeds; it was she with whom he had seen himself straying beyond the conventional, far out of reach of the matter-of-fact to that ultimate meadow where the flowers distil the reason of love! And this was she! Full surely then he had been bereft.

He raised his hand to his head and let his head fall back. He was tired, outwearied by the emotions of the night, and for a little while he toyed absently with a handkerchief, rumpling it into a ball and moulding it with forefinger and with thumb. “I am no longer a lover,” he mused, “I am a judge.” His eyelids drooped, he sank yet farther in the chair, and sighed. “Of heart,” he continued, “she has none. Beneath her stays is some flesh on a stone.”

A little longer he rested, then, slowly, with the hesitant air of one perplexed, he rose from his seat, the handkerchief still rumpled in his hold. “She is an adder!” he exclaimed, and, throwing the bit of cambric from him, he repeated, in yet louder tone, “An adder⁠—that I will fang.”

The next moment, without conscious effort on his part, he found himself at her door. Should he knock? he wondered. But no; the time for ceremony was gone. With a wrench at the knob and a blow at the panel he entered in. Claire was before the mirror. She had removed her frock, but her arms and neck were no longer bare: she had some loose wrapper on, and in it all trace of the mannishness which she affected disappeared. At the sudden noise she started and turned. Gonfallon was livid. As she stared at him he gazed at her, and in that gaze he put something that was like a knee pressed on a breast.

“Wanton!” he hissed.

The girl’s hands fluttered like falling leaves. “Christopher,” she cried, “what are you doing here?”

“Wait; you shall see.”

He made towards her, and as he approached the girl drew back.

“Christopher,” she moaned, “you frighten me.”

“Is it my face that frightens? Could you see my heart!”

And still the girl retreated. Her back now was against the wall, her eyes agonized with fear. With a bound he was upon her, and, catching her wrist in his hand, he threw her on the floor. Vainly she struggled; the grip on her wrist was a vice.

“What are you going to do?” she gasped.

And Gonfallon, still holding her down, turned his head towards the table and across the room as though seeking for something of which he had immediate need.

“I do not know,” he answered; “but say your prayers.”

“Help!” she cried, her voice soaring to its uttermost tension. “Help!”

And as Gonfallon placed his hand over her mouth to hush the cry, the crouching form faded from before him. He felt an undefinable sensation of discomfort. In his ears was the roar of water displaced. With an effort he looked about him. He was still in the chair in which he had dropped asleep, and through rifts of returning consciousness he heard a loving voice: “Chris, are you not coming up? See, it is after one.”

It was Ruth, bending over him, entreating him to rise.

XI

Already a handful of guests had filled the sitting-room. In the study, across the hall, Gonfallon, robed in full canonicals, stood motionless and alone. Once only at the champing of bits and the noise of hoofs he had turned to the window. It was Miss Pickett, garmented in that terra-cotta which affects the eye as a pistol-shot affects the ear. He had heard her rustle past the door and her laugh mingle with Mrs. Manhattan’s. Then a brougham had stopped, and Tandem, in a cutaway coat, a flower in his buttonhole, had alighted and loitered an instant until Yarde had alighted too. For the moment, Gonfallon, at the possibility of their entering the room where he stood, had knit his brow; but Tandem, in his quality of best man, had convoyed the groom to some other refuge. From above came the sound of hurrying feet. The rectory was articulate, its quiet stirred with vocables. In the room overhead he pictured Claire standing before the glass, her head held sidewise, eying the last touches to her gown. Beyond, somewhere, through the walls he saw Yarde contemplating his fingertips, and to the prayerbook which he held Gonfallon gave a tighter clasp.

Since the dinner and its epilogue Gonfallon had barely seen his sister-in-law. The day after she had gone with the Picketts to Washington, and before returning to New York had managed to pass a full month with Yarde’s relatives in the South. Since then her hours had been given to the trousseau. Today she was to be married, and at the ceremony, at her mating to that man, instead of forbidding the banns he was to officiate. It was through him the Church was to sanction a thing against which every fibre of his being rebelled. In an effort to gain some mastery over the expression of his face, he turned again to the street.

There had been a flurry of snow an hour before, but now in the sunlight high noon rang everywhere. On the pavement was an eager glitter like that of broken glass, and at the corner the spires of Gethsemane pointed to a gulf of blue.

“And not a reason for refusing,” he muttered⁠—“not one.” During the preceding weeks he had told himself that this thing should never be. The touch of her lips had sealed her to him. He had felt the willingness, the courage even, to abandon the rochet already in his grasp, his high estate, his reputation, his cloth, Ruth, everything, even to honor, and carry the girl to some one of those lovely lands to which we never go, but which beckon to us, ceaselessly, from afar. In conflicts with himself conscience vanquished had been impotent to coerce. His ordinary duties he had performed with the perfunctoriness of a somnambulist. In his eyes but one light shone, and that light was Claire. And in that light all else slipped by, and he had relied now on the girl herself, now on a whim of chance, and again on some effort of his own, on something, he knew not what, but still on something that should happen in the nick of time and sunder this hateful pact.

In more rational moments he had reflected that, distasteful as the engagement was, it was rendered doubly so by the fact that the other contracting party was one whom of all others in the world he loathed the most; and into that loathing, as though to mock him, there would creep at times the knowledge⁠—banished again and again, but ever returning⁠—that between him and Yarde a girl such as Claire would not hesitate for a second’s space. What chance have forty years, however well carried they may be, against the fragrance and seductions of youth?

And as Gonfallon had thought of this, he would have, had he dared, clapped there and then on that fragrance some one of those masks which disfigure and distort. He would have corroded and blasted. And instead of that he was called upon to stand, the sacerdos, and consecrate his nuptials with Claire. Instead of maiming he was to marry, instead of cursing he was to bless. Could this cup pass from him! But he had no excuse⁠—not one. It was for him to deliver the girl he loved into the arms of the man he loathed. And as he gazed down at the eager glitter of the street there came to his face an expression which Goya would have given to a gibbeted fiend. Was it not a woman that changed into Satan the angel that was Lucifer?

“Doctor, the bride is coming down.”

It was Tandem hailing him from the doorway. Gonfallon drew one long breath and turned; and as he turned he thrust his hate back in him as a soldier sheathes his sword.

“I am ready,” he answered; and to himself he added, “Calvary was easy of ascent.”

Tandem had already gone. Gonfallon drew the portiere aside, and, crossing the hall, his head bent, the prayerbook in his hand, he entered the sitting-room beyond. At his entrance the voices subsided and ceased. The guests parted into twin rows, and between them Gonfallon advanced to a mirror, before which two cushions had been placed. There he turned and stood, his head still lowered, waiting the coming of the bride.

Presently, in the lull, Yarde entered, led by Tandem, and, bowing to Gonfallon⁠—a salute which, parenthetically, was not returned⁠—he took up a position on the right. From beneath his lowered eyelids Gonfallon saw him fumble at a pocket. “He is feeling for the ring,” he reflected, and straightened himself just a little. Then came a rustle, a murmur, and Claire entered, leaning on her father’s arm. Gonfallon raised his eyes, Yarde stepped forward to greet, Bucholz in a worthy parental manner dropped his daughter’s arm, and the two young people stood before him who was to make them one.

“ ‘Dearly beloved,’ ” began Gonfallon, in that voice which those present knew so well⁠—“ ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God.’ ”

And as he repeated from memory the subsequent phrases of the opening formula, he looked down at the bride. In her cheeks that hue of the white rose which has the sulphur heart was untouched by the faintest flush. The porcelain blue of her eyes was untroubled, and her mouth still looked inviolate and unaware of love. From the tangles of her curls came the breath of brooks. She was in street-dress, but unbonneted and ungloved.

“ ‘I require and charge you both, as you will answer at the dreadful day of judgment⁠—’ ”

His eyes were still on hers, but as he delivered the warning which is customary he lowered his own beneath the directness of her gaze.

“Trement,” he continued, “wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live⁠—”

“I will,” the young man interjected, and flushed at his precipitance.

“Together after God’s ordinance in the holy state of matrimony? Wilt thou love her⁠—” And as the questions fell from him, Gonfallon, outwardly impassible, clutched tighter at the book he held. For a second his voice wavered, and, turning to the bride⁠—

“Claire,” he continued, “wilt thou take this man?”

Again his eyes were on her, and so convulsed were they that to a weaker than she, dismay would have come. He paused, and Claire, as though her thoughts had preceded and interpreted his own, in a voice quasily defiant, her head held like a challenge, her eyes a trifle contracted, and fixed maliciously on his own, made the conventional response.

“Who giveth this woman⁠—”

In speaking he caught an expression in Yarde’s face, a look of smothered mirth as though the mute dialogue had been intercepted and enjoyed. Willingly would he have hurled the prayerbook at his teeth and with his two hands about his throat crushed out his hated life. He bit his lip until it bled, and with an effort dominated himself again.

Bucholz had stepped forward, and, after making a gesture, moved back. He seemed so pompous, so spruce, and yet so unnecessary, that Gonfallon, detecting another quiver in Yarde’s expression, understood his mirth, and in his semi-hysterical condition felt his own lips twitch with a smile.

The troth then plighted, bride and groom kneeled on the cushions at his feet, and, the prayer delivered, rose up again.

“Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. For inasmuch⁠—” he continued, and, mumbling the archaic phrases that follow, he added, with a gasp, “Amen.”

The next moment Claire was in her sister’s arms and Tandem was shaking Yarde energetically by the hand. The twin ranks of the company fused into a solid square that bore down on bride and groom. Gonfallon watched his opportunity, and escaped to the study beyond.

Thus far he had held himself well. Not one of those present had divined the rebellion that was in him. But now the farce was done, and, tearing the canonicals from him, he rumpled and tossed them in a heap on the floor. The prayerbook which he had held fell from him, and he sank on a chair. Into his mouth had come a sour taste. He raised his handkerchief to his lips, and, looking at it, saw that it was flecked with red. He passed his hand across his eyes; they were dry and hot; and, suddenly, remembering Bucholz, he chuckled and tried to laugh.

The hubbub of sixty people talking at once came to him from across the hall. For a fraction of an hour he listened unhearingly. But presently something stirred him from his mental swoon. He had heard Claire’s voice, he was sure. He started and moved to the door: yes, it was she. He drew the portiere ever so little and peered into the hall. Before him the bride stood exchanging a farewell with Miss Pickett. Then the two separated, Miss Pickett turning to the sitting-room and Claire to the stairs. For a moment he waited; then, seeing that he could leave the study unobserved, he hurried out into the hall. Already the girl had reached the floor above, but he called to her, and she stopped.

“What is it?” she asked, and looked down at him from over the rail. Without a word he mounted to where she stood. “Claire,” he whispered, and strove to take her hand, “tell me, you do love me, do you not?”

And the girl, drawing from him, answered almost sadly, with a gesture that was pathetic in the sorrow it conveyed, “Love you, Gonfallon? It is not I that love you; it is Ruth.”

A door closed, and she was gone.

Gonfallon steadied himself and gazed blankly enough at the door which had shut in his face. “And it was for this I toiled,” he mused. For the moment everything seemed to disappear; then, mindful as he always was of Form, and arguing with himself as to what he was doing there, he got into his study again, and roamed about it, likening his restlessness to that of a gyrfalcon in a cage; striving not only to forget, but to cease to think as well.

Beyond, the hubbub still continued. A luncheon was in progress, and he knew that his absence would be remarked. Yet still he could make no effort to leave the room. From time to time he passed his hand across his face and let it fall again to his side. And presently the voices approached: it was evident that the guests were assembling in the hall. From the window he could see a trim brougham, bottle-green, the straw-colored wheels picked out with black, and by it a miniature groom, in his lapel a bunch of white flowers, while at the ear of the horse nearest the rectory Gonfallon noticed that a similar bunch had been placed.

“Chris, where are you?”

It was Ruth calling to him, as Tandem had done, from the uplifted fringe of the curtain.

“Chris! They are coming. Hurry!”

Again he moved out into the hall, bowing this time right and left to the guests that had assembled there. Mrs. Manhattan was prompt at nabbing, and she had him at once.

“How sweet Claire looked!” she murmured.

“Very,” Gonfallon answered, and smilingly caressed his chin.

“Such a good match, too,” she added, “you ought to be tickled to death.”

“Yes, yes, he is a splendid young fellow.”

“Just the man for her. Nicholas was so sorry he couldn’t come. Trement, you know, is a connection of ours. I even had a hand in his bringing up.”

“I was sure of it.”

“And how impressive you did make the service! Ah! here they are.”

About the corner bride and groom had turned. The face of the latter was flushed as were he the sacrifant; the former held her head erect, and her mouth seemed at the slightest provocation prepared to bubble into laugh.

There was a gurgle, a hum, an undulant shout, and they had gone. Through the open doorway Miss Pickett threw a slipper which hit the coachman on the cheek. Tandem had obtained a handful of rice, which he scattered lavishly in the air. And as the brougham drove off, Yarde was seen, his head bent, fumbling at the nape of his neck for a furtive grain that had lodged in his collar.

For a while yet the guests lingered, companioned by Gonfallon and Ruth. Then, little by little, the handful diminished and shrunk, until husband and wife were alone.

“It will be dreary without Claire, will it not?” Ruth remarked as the ultimate loiterer passed from the house. There was no doubt about it⁠—Dr. McMasters was not only a physician, but a sorcerer as well. The neuralgia which had fed upon her had been exorcised long since.

In the adjoining room the maid was busy with the detritus of the wedding-feast.

“Will it not?” she repeated, and, without waiting for an answer, suddenly her arm had wound about him, and for a moment her head rested on his breast. Then, conscious, seemingly, of the presence of the maid, she moved from him, and Gonfallon, turning on his heel, entered the study again.

On the floor before him the prayerbook lay, and he stooped to pick it up. It was not large⁠—hardly bigger than a good resolution⁠—but as prayerbooks go it was a gem. The text was illuminated, and for binding it had tortoiseshell clamped with gold. In the morning Ruth had brought it to him with the request that he would use it at the service which was to be. And now as he raised it from the floor it opened in his hand. On the flyleaf was an inscription in characters thin as hair: “To Ruth, from her loving sister. Christmas, 1879.” And as he read it he understood why the request had been made.

Idly he turned the pages. Between the covenants of the marriage-pact a blue flower had been pressed. During the agitations of the ceremony it had been unnoticed, but now something about it seemed to evoke a memory, and he went back again to the slopes and intervales of Bronx. Idly still he turned the leaves. Before the psalm “With my whole heart thy praise I will proclaim” another flower had been placed, but this one was yellow, as though the hope of the first betokened had mellowed with fulfilment. And as he turned again, facing the collect for Ash-Wednesday he found a clipping from some Poets’ Corner, a bit of schoolgirl verse:

I wait for the story: the birds cannot sing it,
Not one, as he sits on the tree,
The bells cannot ring it, but long years, oh, bring it,
Such as I wish it to be.

He read it twice, and very gently, almost reverently, he put the book aside. Anger seemed to take itself visibly away; he saw it leaving him, and made no effort to detain. Already hatred was departing, and in its train an illusion had unmasked. “It is not I that love you,” someone was saying; “it is Ruth.”

He had fallen in a chair, and sat, his face buried in his hands. Back again from the past one memory after another came to him unreproached: first his wooing of her, her shy willingness, the sweet profanation, the earliest reluctant kiss, then the altar-rail, the blush of girlhood abandoned, the wifely solicitude, the unalterable charm with which illness had coped in vain, the tenderness of her nature, the unwavering allegiance, the trust, the belief, the pride in him.

“It is I,” he mused, “with whom she covenanted, it is I whose praise she proclaimed. I am the story she waited.” And, raising his face from his hands, he added, “If that story were only true!”

Already the afternoon had taken itself off. And as the light decomposed and decreased, something that was like to weariness seemed to fill the room. On the ceiling an uncertain dimness gathered. Here and there a gilt nail on the woodwork detained as with a pin a fringe of the mantle of day, but in the background was a somnolence in which objects disappeared mysteriously, one by one. In the corners shadows came and crouched. Under the chairs pits had formed, and out of them crept an obscurity which effaced and devoured the floor. On the ceiling the dimness deepened, the crouching shadows elongated and lapped the walls. A rumble from the street put an accent on the gloom, and presently, by way of vespers, the voice of the housemaid chanting “Jesus loves me” climbed on a treble from the regions below.

For a little space Gonfallon moved uneasily. Then, when night had wholly come, he found his way from the study, and groped through the darkness to Ruth.

I

Since the Koenig Wilhelm, of the Dutch East India Service, left Batavia, the sky had been torpidly blue, that suffocating indigo which seems so neighborly that the traveller fancies were he a trifle taller he could touch it with the ferule of his stick. When night came, the stars would issue from their ambush and stab it through and through, but the glittering cicatrices which they made left it bluer even, more persistent than before. And now, as the ship entered the harbor, there was a cruelty about it that exulted and defied. The sun, too, seemed to menace; on every bit of brass it placed a threat, and in the lap of the waters there was an understanding and a pact. Beyond, to the right, was one long level stretch of sand on which the breakers fawned with recurrent surge and swoon. Behind it were the green ramparts of a forest; to the left were the bungalows and booths of Siak; while in the distance, among the hills and intervales, where but a few years before natives lurked beneath the monstrous lilies and clutched their kriss in fierce surmise, a locomotive had left a trail of smoke.

“Sumatra, too, has gone the way of the world,” thought one who lounged on deck.

He was a good-looking young fellow, browner far than he had been when he left New York, and he was garbed in a fashion which would have attracted the notice of the most apathetic habitué of Narragansett Pier. Save for a waistband of yellow silk, he was clad wholly in that dead white which is known as fromage à la crême. Had his cork hat been decorated with a canary bird’s feather, you would have said a prince stepped from a fairy tale. At his heels was a fox terrier, which he had christened Zut. When he wished to be emphatic, however, Zut was elongated into Zut Alors.

“The general’s compliments, sir, and are you ready?”

It was the polyglot steward addressing him, with that deference which is born of tips.

Tancred Ennever⁠—the only son of Furman Ennever, who, as everyone knows, is head and front of the steadiest house in Wall Street⁠—turned and nodded. “Got my traps up?” he asked, and without waiting for a reply sauntered across the deck. He had met the general⁠—Petrus van Lier, Consul of the Netherlands to Siak⁠—at the Government House at Batavia, and although the trip which he had outlined for himself consisted, for the moment at least, in making direct for that sultry hole which is known as Singapore, yet the general had so represented the charms and pleasures of Sumatra that he had consented to become his guest. In extending the invitation the general may have had an ulterior motive, but in that case he let no inkling of it escape.

And now, as Tancred crossed the deck, the general stretched his hand. He was a man whose fiftieth birthday would never be fêted again. He had the dormant eyes of his race, those eyes in which apathy is a screen to vigilance, and his chin had the tenacity of a rock. His upper lip was furnished with a cavalry moustache of indistinctest gray, the ends upturned and fierce. In stature he was short and slim. It should be added that he was bald.

Though the ship had barely halted, already it was surrounded by prahus and sampans, the indigenous varieties of skiff, and among them one there was so trim it might have come from a man-of-war. In the bow a fluttering pennon proclaimed it a belonging of the Dutch. The coxswain had already saluted, and sat awaiting the orders of his chief.

The general motioned with a finger, the coxswain touched his forehead, and in a moment the boat was at the slanting ladder. Tancred and the general descended, there was a sullen command, and the oarsmen headed for the shore.

“We are so late my people will be worried,” confided the consul, as the landing was reached. “Usually⁠—” and, as he ran on dilating on the unpunctuality of the service, Tancred remembered to have heard that his host was about to be married to an English widow, who, with her brother, was then stopping at the consul’s bungalow.

“Be still, Zut,” ordered Tancred, for the dog was yelping like mad at a fawn-colored butterfly that floated, tantalizingly, just out of reach. It was as big as a bird, and its eyes were ruby. “Be still.”

On the wharf a crowd of Malays and Chinese impeded the way, the Celestials garbed in baggy breeches and black vests, the Malays, nakeder, wickeder, darker, and more compact. Beyond was an open square, a collection of whitewashed booths, roofed with tiles of mottled red, and cottages of thatched palm. In the air was the odor of spices and cachous.

Guided by his host, Tancred entered an open vehicle that waited there. Then, after a brisk drive through the town, a long sweep through a quiet lane that was bordered now by rice-fields, now by giant trees festooned by lianas and rattans, and again by orchards of fruit and betel-nut, at last, in a grove of palms, a house was reached, a one-story dwelling, quaint, roomy, oblong, and still. An hour later the general and his guest were waiting dinner in the balé-balé of the bungalow.

Presently from the panoplied steps came the tinkle of moving feet. The general rose from his chair.

“My future wife,” he announced, in an aside. “Mrs. Lyeth,” he continued, “this is Mr. Ennever.”

She was a woman such as the midland counties alone produce, one whom it would be proper to describe as queenly, were it not that queens are dowds. She just lacked being tall. Her hair was of that hue of citron which is noticeable in very young children, and it was arranged in the fashion we have copied from the Greeks, but her features were wholly English, features that the years would remold with coarser thumb, but which as yet preserved the freshness and the suavity of a pastel. One divined that her limbs were strong and supple. She held herself with a grace of her own, on her cheeks was a flush, her mouth seemed to promise more than any mortal mouth could give; in short, she was beautiful, a northern splendor in a tropic frame.

Tancred, who had risen with the general, stared for a second and bowed.

“Muhammad’s prophecy is realized,” he murmured; and as Mrs. Lyeth eyed him inquiringly, “At sunset,” he added, “I behold a rising sun.”

And moving forward he took her wrist and brushed it with his lips.

“One might fancy one’s self at Versailles,” Mrs. Lyeth replied, and sank into a wicker chair.

“Olympus, rather,” Tancred corrected, and found a seat at her side.

“H’m,” mused the lady; but evidently nothing pertinent could have occurred to her, for she hesitated a moment and then graciously enough remarked, “The general tells me he knows your father.”

“Yes, it may even be that we are connected; there was a Sosinje van Lier who married an Ennever, oh, ages ago. The general, however, thinks she was not a relative of his.”

“I have forgotten,” the general interjected, and glanced at his future bride. “Is Liance never coming?”

From without came the hum of insects, a hum so insistent, so enervating, and yet so Wagnerian in intensity that you would have said a nation of them celebrating a feast of love. Presently the murmurs were punctuated by the beat of a wooden gong, and as the reverberations fainted in the night, a young girl appeared.

The general left his chair again.

“My daughter,” he announced; and as Tancred bowed he remembered that the general had been a widower before he became engaged to the divinity that sat at his side.

“You’re an American, aren’t you?” the girl asked.

There was nothing forward in her manner: on the contrary, it was languid and restrained, as though the equatorial sky had warped her nerves. But her eyes had in them the flicker of smoldering fire; they seemed to project interior flames. Her complexion was without color, unless indeed olive may be accounted one. Her abundant hair was so dark it seemed nearly blue. At the corners of her upper lip was the faintest trace of down. Her frock was like the night, brilliant yet subdued; it was black, but glittering with little sparks; about her bare arms were coils of silver, and from her waist hung cords of plaited steel. She looked as barbaric as Mrs. Lyeth looked divine.

“Yes,” Tancred answered, smilingly; but before he could engage in further speech, the general’s “boy” announced that dinner was served.

“What do you think of it there?” asked Mrs. Lyeth, whose arm he found within his own.

And as they passed from the balé-balé, as an uninclosed pavilion is called, to the dining-room beyond, Tancred answered:

“What does one think of the Arabian Nights?”

But there was nothing Arabesque about the meal of which he was then called upon to partake. It began with oysters, rather brackish but good, and ended with cheese. Save for some green pigeons with their plumage undisturbed, and a particularly fiery curry, it was just such a dinner as the average diner-out enjoys on six nights out of seven. There were three kinds of French wine and a variety of Dutch liqueurs. During its service the general held forth, as generals will, on the subject of nothing at all. And when the meal was done, for several hours the little group, reunited in the balé-balé, exchanged the usual commonplace views. During that interchange Tancred kept himself as near as he could to Mrs. Lyeth, and when at last the party broke up and he found himself alone in his room he drew a breath which might have been almost accounted one of relief.

Through the open windows came a heaviness, subtle as the atmosphere of a seraglio. Beyond, some palms masked a cluster of stars, but from above rained down the light and messages of other worlds. In the distance was the surge of the sea, sounding afar the approach and retreat of the waves. Beneath, in the underbrush, fireflies glittered, avoiding each other in abrupt ziz-zags and sudden loops of flame. The moon had not yet risen, but the sky still was visibly blue.

And as Tancred dropped on a seat he loosened his neckcloth with a thrust of the thumb. “That claret was heady,” he told himself, and with a bit of cambric he mopped his brow. But was it the claret? For a little space he sat gazing at the invitations of the equator. In his ears the hum of insects still sounded, and to his unheeding eyes the stars danced their saraband. The sea seemed to beckon and the night to wait.

Thus far his life had been precisely like that of any other well-nurtured lad of twenty-two. He had been educated at Concord, he was a graduate of Harvard; but during his school and college days the refinement of his own home had accompanied him afar. He was one of those young men, more common now than a few years since, who find it awkward to utter one word that could not be said aloud in a ballroom. And in this he was guided less perhaps by good breeding⁠—for breeding, like every varnish, may cloak the coarsest fibre⁠—than by native comeliness of thought. He shrank from the distasteful as other men shrink from the base. His parents had had the forethought to provide him with two sisters, one a year older than himself, one a year his junior; and these girls, who at the present hour suggest in our metropolitan assemblies the charm and allurements of a politer age, had taken their brother in hand. They had taught him what is best left undone, the grace of self-effacement, and they had given him some breath of the aroma which they themselves exhaled. To this his parents had added a smile of singular beauty, and features clear-cut and sure. In short, his people had done their best for him. And now that he was seeing the world in that easiest way, which consists in travelling around it, his letter of credit was not only in his pocket, but in his face and manner as well.

“I must go tomorrow,” he continued. And as he tried to map his departure, the tinkle of a footfall across the hall routed and disturbed his thoughts. Unsummoned there visited him a melody, heard long since, the accompaniment of a song of love. With a gesture he forced it back. Had he not understood⁠—? No; he remembered now there was no boat from Siak for several days. He might engage a prahu, though, and in it effect a crossing to Perang; he could even take the train and journey to another place. Indeed, he reflected, he might readily do that. And as he told himself this, from across the hall a tinkle fainter than before reached his ear. He heard a whispering voice, a door closed, and someone beat upon a gong of wood. It was midnight, he knew.

He threw his coat aside and stared at the stars. They were taciturn still, yet more communicative than ever before. One in particular, that shone sheer above the balé-balé, seemed instinct with lessons and sayings of sooth. And to the precepts it uttered, its companions acquiesced, and smiled. Everything, even to the immaterial, the surge of the sea, the trail of the fireflies, and the glint of a moonbeam, now aslant at his feet, conspired to coerce his will. The very air was alive with caresses, redolent with the balm and the odors of bamboo.

Slowly he undid the lachets of a shoe.

“It is wrong,” he muttered, and a breeze that loitered answered, “It is right.” “I will go,” he continued, and the great stars chorused, “You will stay.”

Meditatively still he continued to disrobe; but in spite of the stars and the moonbeams the light must have been insufficient, for presently he lit a candle, monologuing to himself the while. And as he monologued he was aware of that fettering, overmastering force which visits youth but once⁠—the abnegation of self before that which is.

In that struggle in which we lay our arguments down and rejoice in defeat he had wrestled with all the weakness of his years. And now, as he flung himself on the bed, he clasped a pillow in his arms and sighed. He hoped for nothing, he expected nothing; but it was bliss to be conquered and enchained. The contest was done. During the coming week his captor would move before him, a luring melody, a clear accord sounded for his own delight, and then he would go, leaving the melody undisturbed, yet bearing a strain of it to feed on, a memory of enduring joy.

From without the hum of insects still persisted, and the waves were noisier than before. His eyes closed, and he smiled. For a moment that may have outlasted an hour he dreamed of the fabulous days in which goatherds dared to fall in love with goddesses. And such is the advantage of a classical education, that he mumbled a line from a Greek pedant, another from a Roman bore. In the dactyls and the spondees he caught the rhythm of tinkling feet; and as the measures sank him into deeper sleep a monstrous beetle shot through the casement and put the candle out.

The whir of wings disturbed him ever so little. For an instant he was bending over sandals, caressing a peplum’s hem. Then all was blank.

“Tuan! Tuan!”

It was a Malay servant, hailing the foreign lord, admonishing him to rise.

The room was filled with sunlight, and on a palm tree opposite Tancred caught a glimpse of a red monkey scratching his knee, chattering and grimacing at a parakeet.

II

At tiffin, that noon, the general was absent. It was usually so, his daughter explained; the duties of the consulate at Siak claimed the clearer hours of the day, and it was only now and then, on high days and festivals, that he permitted himself the surcease of a siesta at home.

“He is indefatigable,” she added, and shook her peerless head.

During the morning Tancred had explored the grounds; he had idled on the red-road and lost himself among the invitations of a green ravine. A grove of tamarinds had called to him, a stretch of aroids had entreated him that way, the sky had imprisoned him beneath a palm, a brook had murmured to him, a lake had coaxed him to its cool embrace. And then, Zut sniffing at his heels, he had returned in time for luncheon at the bungalow.

In pauses of the stroll he had promised himself that during the afternoon he would endeavor to find an opportunity in which to say something of that which was on his mind. This, however, an accident prevented. Miss Van Lier announced that she and her future stepmother were obliged to attend the funeral of a neighbor, a function at which of course it were idle for him to assist. He watched their departure without a protest, and gave a few more hours to the wonders of the woods. When the sun went down his forbearance was rewarded. The general was detained at Siak. Tancred and the ladies dined as they had lunched⁠—alone.

That evening Mrs. Lyeth seemed even more magnificent than the night before. And beside her the sultry insouciance of the maiden heightened the matron’s charm. They were sheerly dissimilar, daughters of antipodal climes and race⁠—the one loquacious and at ease, the other taciturn and absorbed. But it was in eyes they differed most. Those of the general’s bride-elect were moist as some blue flower plucked at dawn; the dew seemed still upon them. Those of the general’s daughter were sidereal, not white nor cobalt, but something that combined the two. To a lapidary they would have suggested gems.

As Tancred’s attention wavered between the charm of the one and the beauty of the other, Mrs. Lyeth had been describing some of the surprises in which Sumatra abounds; but her speech had been lost to him, and it was only the rising inflection with which she terminated a phrase that prompted him to reply.

“In the States, I fancy, you have nothing like it?”

“In the States, no; but in Mexico I believe⁠—”

And Tancred was about to draw on his imagination when a servant offered him some sweets. He would have let them pass, but this Mrs. Lyeth prevented.

“You should try one,” she said. “Liance”⁠—and at this she glanced at the girl⁠—“Liance is the inventor; she will be offended if you⁠—”

And, as she again glanced, Liance arched her brows. At the moment it occurred to Tancred that the relations between Mrs. Lyeth and her future stepchild might be a trifle strained.

With the aid of a silver prong Tancred helped himself to a confection. It was yellow of hue, and, he presently discovered, agreeable to the mouth. It had the flavor of honey and of meal, but it was slightly acid, as though the rind of a lemon had been mixed therewith.

“I will give one to Zut, if I may,” he said, and thereat he tossed one, which the dog caught on the fly and swallowed with the discreetest blink. And then, with the appreciation of a gourmet, Tancred added:

“It is excellent; may I have another?”

The dish again was passed to him. Before he rose from the table the majority of the sweets had disappeared. It was evident that both master and dog had a taste for just such comestibles as these. As he devoured one and then another, he noticed that Liance was watching him.

“The general was in Mexico some years ago,” Mrs. Lyeth added, inconsequently. “I have heard him speak of the beauty of the women. But in New York they are more beautiful still, are they not?”

“Yes, they are pretty enough,” Tancred answered.

“I hear they propose to the men,” Liance interjected.

“Ah, that is a libel. In leap-year, perhaps, and in jest, such a thing may occur, but⁠—”

“They are well behaved, then?”

“Yes, indeed. I remember, though, one girl⁠—her name was⁠—there, I have forgotten it. However, a young fellow was evidently taken with her, and she, as evidently, was taken with him. But for some reason or other he never seemed to get to the point. One afternoon, when he was drinking tea with her, the heat of the room⁠—our houses, you know, are fearfully hot⁠—must have affected her. She went off like that! The young fellow was at his wits’ end. It may be that he had never seen anyone faint before. ‘What shall I do? what shall I do?’ he exclaimed, and he was about to scream for assistance, when the girl in her swoon murmured: ‘Kiss me.’ He did so and she recovered at once. H’m⁠—they were married last spring.”

During the telling of this anecdote Tancred noticed that the girl’s eyes were still on his. But as the ultimate phrase dropped from him she rose and left the room.

“She is exquisite,” Tancred confided in a whisper to Mrs. Lyeth. To this that lady assented. “But you⁠—” he added, and then stopped short.

“Let us go to the pavilion, it is cooler there.” Mrs. Lyeth had risen, and Tancred, hesitant still, followed as she led the way.

“But you,” he added at last, “you are perfect.”

She had found a seat and he another. A fan which she held she unfurled and shut again with a sudden click. For a moment she toyed with a fold of her frock, but presently her hand fell to her side. He caught it up and kissed the fingertips. At once she drew it from him.

“It is the climate that has affected you,” she said, “not I.”

“It is you,” he muttered, “it is you.”

“Even so, there let it rest.”

“I cannot,” he insisted; “I love you.” As he spoke he started, startled at his own temerity. And as her eyelids drooped he tried to catch her hand again.

“Then, if you love me, say nothing.” She had straightened herself and looked him now in the face. “If the general should even imagine⁠—” A gesture completed the sentence.

Tancred nodded. He seemed confident and assured. Evidently the general had aroused no fear in him.

“It was in Mexico,” she continued. “Liance was in the cradle. Her mother”⁠—and Mrs. Lyeth turned her head and looked cautiously around⁠—“her mother was younger than I am now. She was beautiful, I have understood; more so even than her daughter. The general suspected that she was flirting with the Austrian attaché. He had him out and shot him. His wife he drove to suicide. It is only recently I learned this. And yet it is not for that reason that I fear. I have no intention of flirting with you; you know that. It is because⁠—because⁠—”

“Don’t hunt for a reason. I am willing to be shot.”

Mrs. Lyeth hastened to laugh, but her laugh was troubled. It sounded thin, as forced laughter ever does. She unfurled her fan again, and agitated it with sudden vigor.

“It may not be,” she murmured.

Her voice was so low that even the breeze did not catch it. And now, as she turned to her companion, it seemed to him that her eyes were compassionate, sympathetic even, awake to possibilities yet careless of result.

At the moment there came to Tancred that annoyance which visits us in dream. Before him was a flower more radiant than any parterre had ever produced. With a reach of the arm it could be his, but his arm had lost its cunning. Do what he might, it refused to move. And still the flower glowed, and still the arm hung pendent and quasi-paralyzed at his side. It may be⁠—such things have happened⁠—it may be that of the inward effort Mrs. Lyeth marked some sign. She shut her fan again, and made as though to rise. But this movement of hers, like the clock in the fable, must have dissolved the spell. Abruptly Tancred was on his feet.

“One instant,” he said. “There, you can give me that. Nay, see, if you wish to⁠—go.”

And at this he stood aside, as though to let her pass. The magnetism, however, which youth possesses, may have coerced her. In any event she made no further effort to leave; she sat, her eyes a trifle dilated, a whiteness quivering beneath the lacework at her neck.

“That is good of you,” he added; “I have but a word to say. Listen to it, will you? I was sure you would. Last night⁠—or was it last night?⁠—it seems a year ago. H’m, there are people whom we meet⁠—you must have experienced the same thing⁠—people that disturb us with suggestions of something that has gone before. When I saw you last evening⁠—no, not that; but when I heard your voice, there came with it a reminiscence of earlier and forgotten days. It was not of the present I thought, but of a past I remembered I had dreamed. It was like a tangled skein. One after another the threads unloosed, and as they separated from each parting knot a memory returned. You were not a stranger, you were a friend I had lost. I could have sat with you, and from yesterday I could have led you back from one horizon to another until that posting-house was reached where our destiny changed its horses and our hands were first unclasped.”

This fine speech delivered, he looked down and plucked at his cuff. And presently, as he was about to speak again, Mrs. Lyeth raised her fan.

“After that I have either to thank you or to go!” Her voice was less severe than pained, and she seemed to retreat yet further in her chair. “And I thank you,” she added, after a pause, “but it is you that must go.”

To this Tancred answered nothing. He contented himself with looking insubordinate and cross.

“My poor boy!” she murmured, and sighed⁠—or was it a sigh?⁠—a sound that seemed to come less from the heart than the spirit. “My poor boy! But don’t you know that you are absurd? I have three brothers⁠—one of them, by the way, is here now; he went down the coast on Tuesday with some friends; he will be back, though, tomorrow or the day after. However, each of my brothers has fallen in love with a woman older than himself, and each of them has fallen in love again and again. I am, believe me, grateful for your homage. What you have said is enough to make any woman pleased. And were I younger⁠—well, then, since you will have it so⁠—were I free, I would ask to hear it until I knew the words by heart. It would be pleasant, that. Oh, there might be so very many pleasant things; yet that is one that may not be. Tomorrow, the next day, no matter, presently you will go; a week later you will find some beauty in Madras, and, if you think of me then, it will be but with a smile.”

She had risen at last, and stood now smiling too. For the life of him Tancred could not imagine anything fairer, more debonair, nor yet more just than she.

“If I vex you,” he said, “I will hold my tongue. But at least you might stay. I will promise this⁠—”

But whatever the intended promise may have been it remained unformulated. In the entrance of the balé-balé Liance had suddenly appeared.

“It is late, is it not?” Mrs. Lyeth, for countenance sake, inquired.

The girl shrugged her shoulders. A gong in the distance answered in her stead.

“It is late,” Mrs. Lyeth announced. “We had better go in.”

She moved from the pavilion, and presently all three reached the house. The hallway was unlighted, a flicker from the dining-room beyond serving only to make the darkness more opaque.

“Where is Atcheh?” she asked, and called the “boy” by name.

“There,” said Tancred, “let me try to find a match.”

He groped down the corridor to his room and in a moment or two returned. On the way back he passed someone he took to be Liance.

“I could not find one,” he exclaimed.

So well as he was able to make out, Mrs. Lyeth had not moved. To his speech she answered nothing. He advanced a little nearer and tried to take her hand again, but it eluded him. And in an effort to possess himself of it he approached nearer still. Her face seemed to be in the way; for one fleeting second his lips rested on it, then a noise of hoofs must have alarmed him, for he wheeled like a rat surprised. And presently, after he had reached his room again, he heard Mrs. Lyeth welcoming her future husband on the porch.

III

From his window the next morning Tancred caught a glimpse of Mrs. Lyeth entering the pavilion beyond. He left the house at once and hastened to join her; but Liance must have preceded him. When he reached the pavilion she was already there. On her head was a hat unribboned and broad of brim, in her hand a basket. She struck Tancred as being more restless than usual, but the widow was thoroughly at ease. Apparently the episode in the hallway had not disturbed her in the least. For a few moments there was a common indulgence in those amiable platitudes of which the morning hours are prolific, and then Liance stood up.

“If you are going to the coppice, take Mr. Ennever,” Mrs. Lyeth suggested. “He looks bored to death.”

“Certainly I will,” the girl answered.

Her voice was cordial and her eyes and mouth seemed to invite. Tancred, however, did not on that account experience any notable desire to accompany her. On the contrary, he infinitely preferred to remain where he was. But there was no help for him, not even an excuse. He had his choice between going and being downright rude. Accordingly he smiled, but inwardly he swore.

“Show him the rafflesia,” Mrs. Lyeth added.

“The what?”

“You shall see it; come.”

Liance turned and led the way, and as Tancred followed he marvelled at the widow’s attitude. If he had not kissed her at all she could not have appeared more unconcerned.

To the left was a grove of betel-nut palms, to the right a patch of aroids, broad and leathery of leaf. Save for a whir of pheasants in the distance, and the hum of insects, the hour was still. Even the sea was silent; and had it not been for the odors of strange plants Tancred could have closed his eyes and fancied himself in some New England intervale, loitering through a summer noon. It needed but the toll of a bell to make it seem a Sabbath. A mosquito alighted on his hand, and he slaughtered it with a slap. Presently he found himself in a part of the plantation which he had not yet visited, a strip of turf, the background defended by trees. And there, in the centre, was an object such as he had never seen before. He turned inquiringly to Liance; her eyes were on his own.

“The rafflesia,” she lisped, and nodded.

And as he moved to get a nearer view she caught him by the arm.

“Be careful,” she added, and warned him with a glance.

But Tancred was not one to fear the immobile; he moved yet nearer to it, the girl hovering at his side. And as he moved there came to greet him a heavy, sullen odor, a smell like to that of an acid burning and blent with rose.

“The heart is poisonous,” the girl continued; “don’t touch it without gloves.”

The admonition, however, was unnecessary. Tancred was motionless with surprise. Before him was a flower, its petals of such consistency and of such unpleasant hue that they resembled huge slabs of uncooked veal. The chalice was deep enough to hold two gallons of liquid, the pistil was red, and the supporting stem was gnarled and irruptive with excrescences. In appearance it suggested an obese and giant lily, grown in a nightmare and watered with blood. It was hideous yet fascinating, as monstrosity ever is. And as Tancred stared, a page of forgotten botany turned in his mind, and he remembered that he had read of this plant, which Sumatra alone produces, and in whose pistil lurks a poison swifter than the cantarella of the Borgias, deadlier than the essences of Locuste.

The odor, more pungent now, drove him back a step. At the moment it seemed to carry with it a whiff of that atmosphere of creosote and tooth-wash which is peculiar to the dentist’s chair. And slaughtering another mosquito, he moved yet further away.

“What do you think of it?” asked Liance.

“It would hardly do for the buttonhole, would it?” he answered.

The girl nodded appreciatively. Evidently she was of the same mind as he.

“There are few of them here,” she continued. “This is the only one in Siak, but back there,” and she pointed to the mountains, “they are plentiful. When a Malay prepares for war he slashes the pistil with his kriss. The wound that that kriss makes is death.”

“H’m,” mused Tancred, with an uncomfortable shrug, “if I happened to fall out with a Malay⁠—”

“Don’t.”

The monosyllable fell from her like a stone.

“I will do my best,” he said.

She turned again and led him back through the coppice. The air was sultrier than ever, heavy with fragrance and enervating with forebodings of a storm. And now, as the girl preceded him, her step seemed more listless than before. She is tired, he reflected. These noons are fierce.

“You are to be with us some time, are you not?” Liance asked.

“No, a day or two at the most. When the next steamer goes, so must I.”

“Could you not stay longer?” She stopped and looked at him, the little basket swaying to and fro.

“I should like to, really I should like to very much,” he replied. The episode with Mrs. Lyeth was still oppressing him, and in answer to the oppression he added aloud, “But perhaps it is better I should not.”

Liance lowered her eyes, and with the point of her shoe tormented a tuft of grass.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because⁠—well, because I feel an intruder.”

The girl raised her eyes at once, her lips quivered.

“You are wrong, so wrong.”

And then, curiously enough, as such things happen, Tancred⁠—who was not a bit stupider than the rest of us⁠—felt an oracle within him. It was more than probable, he told himself, that widow and maid, being nearly of an age, had, in their Sumatran idleness, become the fastest friends; and at once, with that logic which is peculiar to those that love, he decided that, being friends, they must be confidantes as well, and he concluded that two fair heads had come together and determined he should remain. That woman is variable, was a song he knew by heart, and he also knew that woman is apt to do one thing and mean another⁠—to dismiss, for instance, the very man whom she wishes most at her feet.

These ruminations, however long in the telling, did not in reality outlast a moment’s space. It was all very clear to him now, and his blood pulsed quickly.

“If you tell me so, I must indeed be wrong,” he answered. “And let me add,” he continued, impetuously, “it is a boon to know it.”

To his face a flush had come, and his eyes were eager. He had never been accounted anything else than good-looking, but now he was attractive as well.

“You will not be in haste to go, then?”

“In haste to go⁠—” His face completed the sentence. “Tell her from me,” he was about to say, when from the girl’s loosening fingers the basket fell; she drooped like a flower, her eyes half closed, and he had but the time to hold out his arm when she sank unconscious on it.

The grass seemed an inviting couch, and very gently he let her from him. “It is the heat,” he reflected, and kneeling at her side he took her small hand and beat it with his own. “What shall I do?” he wondered. Her cheeks were colorless, though her lips were red, and as, in his perplexity, he gazed at them, he saw them move. “Kiss me,” they seemed to say. Her eyes opened and she smiled.

And still he stared. “Merciful heaven!” he thought; “she thinks I am in love with her;” and feigning that the invitation had passed unheard he sprang to his feet.

“Help me,” she murmured, smiling still; and as he bent again to aid her, before him in the coppice stood Mrs. Lyeth. Already the girl was on her feet. Whether she had been aware of Mrs. Lyeth’s approach, who shall say? She patted out a rumpled fold of her frock, and picking the basket up, glanced over at her father’s choice.

“I almost fell,” she announced. “Mr. Ennever was gallant enough to prevent me.”

In single file all three then returned to tiffin at the bungalow.

IV

The afternoon slipped by like a chapter in a fairy tale. It promised but it did not fulfil, and at dinner the champagne sparkled, but the conversation was flat. When the cloth was removed the general manifested a desire to look over some papers, and Tancred and the ladies retreated to the pavilion beyond. Yet even there the wheels of talk were clogged. Mrs. Lyeth indeed discoursed amiably enough on the subject of nothing at all, and now and then Liance interjected an apposite sally; but Tancred was taciturn. He divided his time between biting his moustache and bidding Zut be still. And when at last through some channel of thought Mrs. Lyeth anchored herself in the shallows of Anglo-Saxon verse, for a moment the young man fancied that the girl was about to go. Liance made a movement, but whether some signal from her future stepmother detained her, or whether of her own accord she reconsidered her purpose, Tancred was unable to decide. The girl resumed her seat, and, one arm extended on the woodwork, the other pendent at her side, her feet crossed, her head thrown back, she sat staring at the stars in that abstracted attitude which powder and shot are alone qualified to disturb.

There is much in an opportunity that might be and is not. In recollection it appears more fecund in possibilities than any other opportunity ever enjoyed. And later on, when Tancred, without having had the opportunity to exchange in private so much as a word with Mrs. Lyeth, found himself in his room, he ravened at fate and at his own ill-luck. Nothing that he could imagine would have been sweeter to him than to have sat the evening through alone with that human flower. There would have been no need of speech; the languors of the night, the caress of the stars, the scent of palms and of orchids, the accent of the waves beyond, these things would have spoken for him more subtly than words could do. Through their silence the breeze would have whispered, and who does not know what a breeze can say? Though they sat apart, the stars that the old gods used as go-betweens were there to join their hands. They might be timid, but is not the surge of the sea a call that stirs the pulse? And the palms had their secrets to tell, and they would have told them, too; nay, the very fireflies would have conspired together and made the night more dark. And, instead of a communion such as that, there had been an aimless chitchat, an awkwardness that was sentient, and an embarrassment terminated only by a chill “Good night.” Truly Zut, who had treed a hedgehog, was to be envied. His evening at least had not been squandered and misspent.

The morrow differed from the day preceding merely in this, that not for one instant during it did Tancred have an opportunity of seeing either Mrs. Lyeth or Liance alone. After tiffin they were inseparate. And Tancred, who had made plans for the afternoon, then made plans for the evening. But the hope which buoyed him was idle. The evening which followed was a counterpart of the one that had gone before, save in this, the general, having no papers to look over, held forth as generals will, and Zut searched for a hedgehog in vain. That night, for the first time, Tancred entered fully into the feelings of Tantalus and those of Sisyphus too. He was dumbly exasperated, the more so perhaps in that he divined that to one cleverer than he no obstacle would exist. If a woman has an ear, and as a rule women have, there is always a way to get at it. Unfortunately for Tancred, the way in this case was by no means clear, and what helped to confuse him was the fact that he was impatient to find it at once, no, but there and then, and without delay. And as in his exasperation he dashed his head against the pillow, he told himself that he had been abrupt, that he had unmasked his batteries too soon, that he had frightened where he had meant to charm. Of Liance he gave no thought whatever, except to decide that she was a nuisance. And such is the selfishness of man, that he wished she would topple over again and sprain a joint; in short, that anything might happen which would keep her to her room and out of the way of Mrs. Lyeth. The idea that the general’s bride-elect might be keeping her purposely at her side was one that never occurred to him. She is a nuisance, he decided, and dismissed her from his thoughts.

Before he fell asleep his mind was clear as to one thing; to wit, that in a small household it is more difficult to be alone with one particular person than in a household where there are many. Whether he was correct or not is a matter of the smallest possible importance. The next morning, when Atcheh appeared with coffee and fruit, he was aware that he had wandered through an assortment of dreams in which the rafflesia and the general were confusedly connected; at one moment the general had changed into that unhallowed flower, at another the rafflesia had bristled with the moustaches of his host. And as he rose from these fancies to his coffee he encountered a scheme which he detained and examined. It was not particularly shrewd, yet at the moment it seemed luminous to him. It was to the effect that if he were inhibited from private speech with Mrs. Lyeth, there was no reason in the world why he should not write. And as he mused, from the porch beyond rose the sound of her voice.

He was too far away to hear what she was saying, and, parenthetically, had he been nearer he would not have listened. But now the intonation, the trailing accent of her speech affected him as a balm. The irritation faded, as irritation ever does; he found some paper, and as, to the accompaniment of her voice, he prepared to write one of those letters in which punctuation is disregarded and sequence of idea forgot, he heard her waving inflection cut by a harsher note. It was the general, he knew. For the moment he wondered why he had not already gone to the consulate, but presently the noise of hoofs, the creak of wheels, a shrill cry, and the hiss of a whip seemed to announce that the conveyance which took the consul each morning to Siak was at the door.

Tancred’s window did not give on the road, but on the coppice and the pavilion, yet when again he caught the creak of wheels it demanded little imagination on his part to picture the general sitting bolt upright in a gharry, driving to the sun-smitten town beyond. And as the clatter of hoofs fainted in the distance, Tancred took up the pen again. The letter which he then succeeded in producing was one similar to what we have all of us written and all of us received⁠—a clear call of love, in which the words are less jotted than shaken from the end of the pen. Its transcription here is needless.

A love-letter which can pleasure anyone save the recipient proceeds not from the heart but the head. Moreover, when Tancred began it he had not the faintest idea what he intended to say, and when it was finished he did not remember what he had written. Oh, sweethearts and swains! mind ye of this: when a love-letter differs from that, it emanates from a poet or a fraud. Tancred was neither. He was simply a young man suddenly enthralled by the charm of a woman older than himself. He intended no wrong, and if you or I or any other implacable moralist had happened that way and told him, as would have been our duty, that he was betraying the sacredest of trusts, the confidence of a host, he would have exhibited the surprise of a child frowned at for innocent prattle. Bear with him then; of wrong he intended none. It is the essence of crime that it be committed with malice aforethought, that the intention to commit it be clear. In the present case the intention was wholly lacking. Tancred was carried along by one of those unreasoning impulses which the psychologist recognizes and cannot explain. And that impulse, after throwing him at Mrs. Lyeth’s feet and dictating a letter to her, left his conscience unruffled and at peace.

His pulse, however, still was stirred. And, the letter completed, he was not in a greater hurry to do anything else than to get it safely in her hand. The manner in which this was to be accomplished was another matter. He might offer it to her in person, or he might leave it in her room. He might even watch his opportunity and slip it into her hand; but, for that, he immediately reflected he would have to wait the opportunity⁠—a tedious operation at best; and, moreover, was he not in haste? And as he mused he remembered that Dugald Maule, a New Yorker like himself, finding himself in similar strait, had, under the very nose of a duenna, deliberately abstracted a handkerchief from his inamorata’s pocket, and, wrapping a letter up in it, handed it back with the civilest inquiry as to whether she had not just let the handkerchief fall? That was a remarkably neat trick, Tancred told himself, but somehow it seemed to demand a degree of assurance of which he felt unpossessed. Besides, it was a trick, and as such distasteful to him. And as he twirled his moustache, vaguely perplexed, undecided in what way to act, determining that it were better perhaps to leave it all to chance, he caught a glimpse of Mrs. Lyeth entering the pavilion alone. She was in white from head to foot, alluring as spring, and doubtless every whit as fragrant; she moved easily, her body erect and unswayed, and as Tancred caught sight of her he would have taken his chances then and there, but almost simultaneously he saw Liance following behind. In the annoyance he filliped forefinger and thumb together, and tried to possess his soul with patience. It was not impossible that in a moment the girl might go, and then his time would come. Meanwhile it behooved him to be careful and to remain unseen. But no, Liance must have seated herself at the other side of the pavilion, for he could hear Mrs. Lyeth address her, and the murmurs of the girl’s replies. Presumably they would remain together until tiffin, and if before tiffin the note was not delivered, another afternoon, the evening too, perhaps, would be wasted and lost.

And as he thought of this, behind him he divined rather than heard Atcheh’s noiseless tread. He turned at once. Another idea had come to him, one on which he determined to act at once. The “boy” was already retreating, a tray in his hand.

“Dja keno,” Tancred called.

On shipboard he had not been altogether idle. The Malay tongue is as easy to speak badly as Italian, and Tancred had found slight difficulty in acquiring enough mouthfuls for ordinary needs. “Dja keno⁠—come here.” The sultry savage wheeled and obeyed.

“Ba gnio inong⁠—take this to the lady.” And as Tancred spoke he pointed through the lattice to Mrs. Lyeth.

The Malay took the note and bowed.

“Baë, Tuan,” he answered. “Your lordship, it is well.”

In a moment the man had gone, and in another moment Tancred saw him approach Mrs. Lyeth and place the letter in her hand. He could see that she was eying it, wonderingly no doubt, for now she turned her head, but already the Malay had disappeared. And as she still looked about her, holding the letter unopened before her, Tancred felt as though something were clutching at his throat. From out the coppice, not a dozen yards distant, the general had suddenly emerged.

In a state similar to that mental paralysis which visits us in dream, Tancred marked his advance. It seemed perfectly natural that he should be there; without an effort he recalled the fact, forgotten albeit until now, yet still the unaccountable fact that it was Sunday; and presently, as the general halted, his thin figure erect, a bamboo switch in his hand, his cavalry moustache more bristling than ever, and proprietor-fashion surveyed the grounds, it was to Tancred as though he had been there for all of time. Then at once the cerebral swoon departed, in a confusion of visions, with that thing still clutching at his throat and his heart beating like mad, he saw on one side Mrs. Lyeth open the letter, and on the other the general decapitate a poppy with his switch.

Already Mrs. Lyeth had turned the initial page; she had read the second and was beginning at the last, when the general, to whose presence behind her she was obviously oblivious, advanced on tiptoe to where she sat. Tancred saw him raise a warning finger to his lips, beneath the moustache he divined a smile, invisible to him, yet apparent, doubtless, to Liance, at whom the warning gesture must have been made, and then, bending over his fiancée’s shoulder, he peered at the letter which she held. Yet before he could have deciphered so much as a line of it, Mrs. Lyeth started, as we all do when taken unaware. In an instant, however, she recovered her self-possession. She turned to the general, her mouth compressed into a pout.

“Do you know,” she said, from the tips of her lips, “you are as bad as Atcheh. A cat would make more noise.”

At this reproof the general laughed aloud, and, as though in sheer excess of glee, beat his leg with the switch. Tancred could see it was, indeed, a merry jest to him.

“My bonny Kate!” he gurgled. “I frightened her, did I not?” And again he beat his leg and laughed. “And whom is the missive from?” he asked. “I heard the gharry’s wheels an hour ago. Will you pay me if I wager and I win? Will you pay me? I wager it is from⁠—h’m⁠—let me see. I wager it is from that coffee planter’s wife you met at Singapore.”

And Mrs. Lyeth, with her bravest smile, answered:

“You have lost.”

“From whom is it then? There is no European mail today.” He eyed her, laughing still. “From whom is it?” he repeated. And as he spoke he bent again and looked down at the letter, which still lay open in her hand. “Tancred Ennever!” he exclaimed. “Why, what has he to write to you about?”

“Don’t ask me,” she answered, airily; and then, presumably, she must have understood the uselessness of further parry, for she added, carelessly enough, “It is to Liance, not to me.”

From the window Tancred could see the general turn to where his daughter sat. And as he watched he saw the girl issue from the shadow, take the letter from Mrs. Lyeth, and escape with it to the house. During the entire scene she had not uttered a word. She had been a witness, not an actor, and now as she crossed the lawn, the letter rumpled in her hold, there was an alertness in her step and such expectance in her face that you would have thought her hastening to a rendezvous. It was evident that she, too, had taken the fib for truth.

Tancred moved back. When he again peered out, the general and his bride-elect had disappeared.

V

Over the luncheon to which Tancred was presently summoned a foreboding hovered, ambient in the air. Mrs. Lyeth was not present, confined by a headache, Liance explained, to her room. The girl herself preserved her everyday attitude, and Tancred did his best to engage her in speech; but she did not second his endeavors. When he addressed her she answered, if at all, with her eyes, and in them she put something that resembled a monition. Save for the reference to her future stepmother, she broke bread in silence. As for the general, Cruikshank would have taken him to his heart; he was both jocose and irritable; he feigned a glutton interest in his plate; he loaded the soft Malay tongue with curious oaths, which he exploded at the servant; he alternately praised and reviled the food, and from beneath his bushy eyebrows he glanced in the kindliest fashion now at his daughter and now at his guest. And so well did he succeed in heightening the enervation of the latter that it was not until the acrid caramels were passed that Tancred even pretended to eat. Then, remembering that it was Liance that made them, he ventured to compliment the girl, and, as she answered nothing, acknowledging the tribute only by an inclination of the head, he saw in the expression of her face that she was even more emotionalized than he. Presently a burning coal and some cigars were brought. Liance rose from the table, and Tancred, rising too, accompanied her to the door. There, it may be, she had some message to impart; her lips moved, yet before Tancred could grasp its import the general called him, and he was obliged to turn. The girl wandered out on the veranda, and Tancred resumed his seat.

“Will you smoke?” the general asked. His tone was so friendly that Tancred felt more miserable than before. “Take one,” he continued. “Sumatran tobacco ranks nearly with the Havanese.”

For a fraction of time which seemed immeasurable the two men smoked in silence. But in a moment the general gave a poke at the coal, and looked up at his guest.

“Mrs. Lyeth tells me that you have done us the honor to ask for my daughter’s hand.”

Tancred glanced at the point of his cigar, and discovered that it was out.

“May I trouble you?” he murmured.

The general shoved the brasier toward him, and watched the relighting with evident solicitude.

“It’s the dampness,” he announced. “H’m. Am I correctly informed?”

Tancred gave a puff or two, and then, withdrawing the weed, he held it contemplatively between forefinger and thumb; but he answered not a word.

The general knocked the ashes from his own cigar and eyed the burning coal.

“H’m, let me ask you, did you write to my daughter this morning?”

And Tancred, with that long-drawn breath we take when we prepare for the worst, answered shortly:

“I did.”

To this avowal the general nodded encouragingly. Tancred, however, seemed averse to further confidences; he kept looking at his cigar as though it were some strange and uncanny thing.

“H’m, well⁠—er⁠—did you, did you begin the letter with a term of endearment?”

“Yes, general.”

Tancred had tossed his cigar⁠—a cigar that ranked nearly with a Havanese⁠—into the finger-bowl. He straightened himself and looked his host in the face.

“Yes, general, and I am sorry for it. I have no excuse, not one. It was a piece of unpardonable ill-breeding. I had no right to send the note; I had no encouragement to write it. The only amend in my power is an apology. I make one now to you; let me beg that you will convey another to your daughter.”

The general half rose from his seat and hit the table with his fist. His face was convulsed. He was hideous.

“But, bandit that you are,” he cried, “she loves you.”

“No, general, you are wrong.”

“Ah, I am wrong, am I? Not an hour ago she told me so of her own accord.”

“General, it was a jest.”

“A jest! You call it a jest to surprise a girl in the dark”⁠—

“To what?” gasped Tancred. “To what?”

“There, you know well enough what I mean. I refer to the other evening.”

“Merciful heaven!” groaned Tancred, “it was she then that I kissed.”

“It is a jest to do a thing like that, to write impassioned letters, and to win a heart. Is it a jest you call it, sir, or did I misunderstand your words?”

“No general, not that. What I meant was that it was impossible for Miss Van Lier to have confessed to any love for me⁠—”

The lattice at the window was thrust aside. For a second the girl’s sidereal eyes blazed into the room.

“He is right, father: I do not love; I hate.”

The lattice fell again. She had gone.

During the moment that followed you could have heard a lizard move. Tancred fumbled at his collar, and General Van Lier sank back in his chair.

“Mr. Ennever,” he said, at last, “you are my guest.”

The tone in which he spoke was low and self-restrained, but in it there was an accent that was tantamount to a slap in the face.

Tancred was on his feet at once.

“If you permit me, I will leave today.”

General Van Lier moved to the door.

“There is a boat from Siak at five,” he answered.

“General,” Tancred hesitated; he was humiliated as he had never been, and rightly humiliated, he knew. He was trying to say something that would express his sense of abasement, and a fitting speech was on the end of his tongue.

“General⁠—”

“After you, sir.” The general was pointing to the door.

“General⁠—”

“Nay, sir, after you. I insist.”

Tancred bowed and passed out. A moment later he was in his room.

In a corner was a trunk. In another a shirt-box. Tancred gathered his traps together, and tossed some into the one, some into the other, a proceeding at which Zut yelped and fawned with delight. Evidently on him at least the attractions of the bungalow had begun to pall.

“Yes, Zut, we are going.”

And at this the dog yelped again and curveted sheer across the room.

“But you must be quiet,” Tancred added. “There, be still.”

He was thinking of Mrs. Lyeth, and wondering whether he should see her before he went. If he could exchange but one word with her, surely, he told himself, she would understand. He lounged to the window and leaned on the sill.

It was one of those afternoons, brutal and terrible in beauty, which only the equator provides. The sky was like the curtain of an alcove, the sun a vomiter of living glare. Beyond was a riot of color such as Delacroix never dreamed, a combination more insolent than the Quetzal possesses, all the primaries interstriated, a rainbow of insolent hues. And there, in white, a parasol over her head, a basket dangling from her wrist, Liance appeared, emerging, as her father had, from the coppice beyond.

Instinctively he drew back: he had no wish to see her eyes charged with hate again. She was not one to forgive, he knew; the beauty of the equator was in her, and its pitilessness as well. And yet, he reflected, if I could but tell her not alone how she and I have erred, but how sorry I am for it all. But no; manifestly an explanation was impossible. Did he attempt one it might inculpate another. He was not alone solely to blame, he was blockaded in his own disgrace. He told himself this; he repeated it even in varying keys; but beneath it all he felt that some redress should be. The idea that the house he had entered as an honored guest would see him depart in shame had already brought the blood to his cheeks. And that blood now was leaving a stain that years would not efface. “I must write,” he decided; “I must write some word.” And he was about to seat himself at the table, when Atcheh appeared.

“Tuan,” he murmured, in the soft vocables of his tongue. “The gharry waits your lordship.”

At this Zut, who was surprisingly polyglot of ear, yelped with renewed delight. Tancred pointed to his effects, and waited until they had been removed. It was possible, he reflected, that he might meet Liance or Mrs. Lyeth in the hall. Yet should he not do so, then, he told himself, he would write from Singapore.

But when he reached the veranda, only the general was there. Beyond, the gharry stood in readiness, and by it was Atcheh, the trunk and shirt-box already strapped in place. Tancred stretched his hand.

“General⁠—”

“I wish you a pleasant journey, sir,” that gentleman answered, and lifted his hat.

Mechanically Tancred raised his own.

“I thank you,” he said. And with a backward glance he called to Zut and entered the conveyance.

A whip cracked, the gharry started; in a moment it was on the road. Tancred turned to take another and a parting look. Already the general had disappeared, but from a window he caught a glimpse of someone robed in white. A curve was rounded and the bungalow disappeared.

For an hour over a road beside which the Corniche is commonplace indeed, the gharry rolled on. To Tancred, however, its beauties were remote and undiscerned. If he noticed them at all it was only as accessories. He was wholly absorbed in his own discomfiture, and the gharry drew up and halted at the wharf before he was aware that Siak had been reached and the journey was done.

About him was the same assortment of fat-faced Celestials and gaunt Malays that he had noticed before. Apparently nothing had happened to them; they had contented themselves with continuing to be. Before him was a glistening sea, a limitless horizon. To the left the shore extended, fairer and more brilliant than the courtyard of a royal domain. Just beyond, one of the ships of the Dutch East India service was moored, her funnels lengthening and fading in spirals of smoke. And when Tancred had attended to the transfer of his luggage, and was about to step into the sampan that was to convey him to the steamer, there came a clatter of horse’s hoofs, and on a black and panting pony Atcheh suddenly appeared.

“Tuan,” he cried, and waved something in the air. “Tuan, a moment more.”

In that moment he had sprung from the pony and run to where Tancred stood.

“From the little lady, Lord,” he said, and, handing a basket to his master’s guest, bowed to the ground.

Tancred found a bit of gold.

“For you,” he said, and the Malay bowed again. “To the lady, give my thanks.”

And at once his heart gave an exultant throb; his departure was regretted. As he lowered himself into the boat his excess of joy was so acute he nearly fell. Truly, if it be pleasant to appreciate, it is also pleasant to be appreciated. He still clutched at the basket, his hands moist with excitement, his face aglow, and it was not until the ship was reached that he noticed that Zut was sniffing at it.

“Behave,” he ordered. But his voice was so kindly that the little fellow only sniffed the more. It was easy to see that he was jubilating too.

On deck Tancred experienced some difficulty in securing a cabin. But for what were rupees coined and tips invented? The steward consulted the purser, the purser consulted the first officer, and in five minutes the cabin of the latter functionary was at Tancred’s disposal. It was roomy and cool; or perhaps it would be more exact to say that it was fully as large as a closet and that the thermometer did not mark one degree above ninety. In short, Tancred had every reason to consider himself in luck. He shut the door and throwing himself on a wicker settee he opened the basket, which until now he had kept tight clasped in his hand.

It was, he saw, filled with sweetmeats such as he had eaten at the bungalow. On top, pinned to the interior of the basket, was a slip of paper that contained a single line⁠—Souvenir et bon voyage⁠—and for signature, Liance. He read the message twice, and, it may be, he would have repeated the message aloud, but Zut kept bothering him with little hungry yelps. To quiet the dog be tossed him a sweet and put the basket down.

In some mysterious manner his joy had taken itself away. It was not from Liance he had expected a remembrance. When Atcheh placed the basket in his hand, he had told himself that, whatever it might contain, it was at least a gift from Mrs. Lyeth, a token expressive of her regret at his departure. And instead of that there was a handful of bonbons that might have been sent to a child, and a meaningless message from one to whose solicitude he was indifferent. The disappointment, indeed, was great. For a while he let it intensify within him. But presently he stood up: it was getting dark; long since the sob of water displaced had told him that the ship had started; a turn on deck might do him good, he thought; and as he moved to the door he called to his dog.

“Zut!”

And as the dog did not immediately appear, Tancred wondered could he have got out. But no, the door was closed.

“What the dickens can have become of him?” he muttered, and turning again he caught sight of Zut stretched on the floor. “Hello!” he exclaimed, “there you are. Why don’t you come when you’re called?”

Even at this, however, the dog did not move. Tancred bent over and touched him, and then suddenly kneeled down. “Why, what is the matter with him? A moment ago he was right enough; it is impossible that⁠—Zut! Zut Alors!”

And raising the dog’s head up he stared at it. The eyes were convulsed, the tongue was swollen and distorted. “He is dead,” he murmured. “He is dead. But how?”

To this question no answer was vouchsafed. In his bewilderment he stood up again and leaned at the porthole. Already Siak had faded. Above was a splatter of callous stars, beneath was the sea, black now and almost chill.

“But how?” he repeated. Then at once he clutched at the woodwork; his eyes had fallen on the basket; he remembered the sweet he had tossed to the dog. The cabin seemed to be turning round.

At his side the door opened, and the steward looked in. “Supper is ready, sir; will you come?”

“The rafflesia!” Tancred gasped at him. But what he meant by that absurd reply the steward did not think it necessary to ask.

“Very good, sir,” he answered, and shut the door.

To
John A. Rutherfurd

Part I

Part II

I

“Three to one on Scarlet!”

Throughout the brand-new circus were the eagerness, the gesticulations, shouts, and murmurs of an impatient throng. On a ledge above the entrance a man stood, a strip of silk extended in his fingertips. Beneath, on either side, were gates. About him were series of ascending tiers, close-packed, and brilliant with multicolored robes and parasols. The sand of the track was very white: where the sunlight fell it had the glitter of broken glass. In the centre was a low wall; at one end were pillars and seven great balls of wood; at the other, seven dolphins, their tails in the air. The uproar mounted in unequal vibrations, and stirred the pulse. The air was heavy with odors, with the emanations of the crowd, the cloy of myrrh. Through the exits whiffs of garlic filtered from the kitchens below, and with them, from the exterior arcades, came the beat of timbrels, the click of castanets. Overhead was a sky of troubled blue; beyond, a lake.

“They are off!”

The strip of silk had fluttered and fallen, the gates flew open, there was a rumble of wheels, a whirlwind of sand, a yell that deafened, and four tornadoes burst upon the track.

They were shell-shaped, and before each six horses tore abreast. Between the horses’ ears were swaying feathers; their manes had been dyed clear pink, the forelocks puffed; and as they bounded, the drivers, standing upright, had the skill to guide but not the strength to curb. About their waists the reins were tied; at the side a knife hung; from the forehead the hair was shaven; and everything they wore, the waistcoat, the short skirt, the ribbons, was of one color, scarlet, yellow, emerald, or blue: and this color, repeated on the car and on the harness, distinguished them from those with whom they raced.

Already the cars had circled the hippodrome four times. There were but three more rounds, and Scarlet, which in the beginning had trailed applause behind it as a torch trails smoke, lagged now a little to the rear. Green was leading. Its leadership did not seem to please; it was cursed at and abused, threatened with naked fist; yet when for the sixth time it turned the terminal pillar, a shout that held the thunder of Atlas leaped abroad. Where the yellow car, pursued by the blue, had been, was now a mass of sickening agitation⁠—twelve fallen horses kicking each other into pulp, the drivers brained already; and down upon that barrier of blood and death swept the scarlet car. In a second it veered and passed; in that second a flash of steel had out the reins, and, as the car swung round, the driver, released, was tossed to the track. What then befell him no one cared. Stablemen were busy there; the car itself, unguided, continued vertiginously on its course. If it had lagged before, there was no lagging now. The hoofs that beat upon the ring plunged with it through the din down upon Emerald, and beyond it to the goal. And as the last dolphin vanished and the seventh ball was removed, the palm was granted, and the spectators shouted a salutation to the giver of the games⁠—Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee.

He was superb, this Antipas. His beard was like a lady’s fan. On his cheeks was a touch of alkanet; his hair, powdered blue, was encircled by a diadem set with gems. About his shoulders was a mantle that had a broad purple border; beneath it was a tunic of yellow silk. Between the railing of the tribune in which he sat one foot was visible, shod with badger’s skin, dyed bloodred. He was superb, but his eyelids drooped. He had a straight nose and a retreating forehead, a physiognomy that was at once weak and vicious. He looked melancholy; it may be that he was bored. At the salutation, however, he affected a smile, and motioned that the games should continue. And as the signals, the dolphins and the seven balls, appeared again, his thoughts, forsaking the circus, went back to Rome.

Insecure in the hearts of his people, uncertain even of the continued favor of the volatile monster who was lounging then in his Caprian retreat, it was with the idea of pleasing the one, of flattering the other, that he had instituted the games. For here in his brand-new Tiberias, a city which he had built in a minute, whose colonnades and porticoes he had bought ready-made in Rome, and had erected by means of that magic which only the Romans possessed⁠—in this capital of a parvenu was a mongrel rabble of Greeks, Cypriotes, Egyptians, Cappadocians, Syrians, and Jews, whose temper was uncertain, and whose rebellion to be feared.

Annonâ et spectaculis indeed! Antipas knew the dictum well; and with an uprising in the yonderland, and a sedition under his feet, what more could he do than quell the first with his mercenaries, and disarm the second with his games? Tiberius, whom he emulated, never deigned to appear at the hippodrome; it was a way he had of showing his contempt for a nation. Antipas might have imitated his sovereign in that, only he was not sure that Tiberius would take the compliment as it was meant. He might view such abstention as the airs of a trumpery tetrarch, and depose him there and then. He was irascible, and when displeased there were dungeons at his command which reopened with difficulty, and where existence was not secure. Ah, that sausage of blood and mud, how he feared and envied him! An emperor now, a god hereafter, truly the dominion of this world and a part of the next was a matter concerning which fear and envy well might be.

And as Antipas’ vagabond fancy roamed in and out through the possibilities of the Caesar’s sway, unconsciously he thought of another monster, the son of a priest of Ascalon, who had defied the Sanhedrim, won Cleopatra, murdered the woman he loved the most, conquered Judaea and found it too small for his magnificence⁠—of that Herod in fact, his own father, who gave to Jerusalem her masterpiece of marble and gold, and meanwhile, drunk with the dream of empire, had made himself successor of Solomon, Sultan of Israel, King of the Jews, and who, even as he died, had vomited death and crowns, diadems and crucifixions.

It was through his legacy that Antipas ruled. The kingdom had been sliced into three parts, of one of which Augustus had made a province; over another a brother whom he hated ruled; and he had but this third part, the smallest yet surely the most fair. Its unparalleled garden surrounded him, and its eye, the lake, was just beyond. In the amphitheatre the hills formed was a city of pink and blue marble, of cupolas, porticoes, volutes, bronze doors, and copper roofs. Along the fringe of the shore were Choraizin and Bethsaïda, purple with pomegranates, Capharnahum, beloved for its honey, and Magdala, scented with spice. The slopes and intervales were very green where they were not yellow, and there were terraces of grape, glittering cliffs, and a sky of troubled blue, wadded with little gold-edged clouds.

Yes, it was paradise, but it was not monarchy. It was to that he aspired. As he mused, a rancid-faced woman decked with paint and ostrich-plumes snarled in his ear:

“What have you heard of Iohanan?”

And as with a gesture he signified that he had heard nothing, she snarled again.

Antipas turned to her reflectively, but it was of another that he thought⁠—the brown-eyed bride that Arabia had given him, the lithe-limbed princess of the desert whose heart had beaten on his own, whom he had loved with all the strength of youth and weakness, and whom he had deserted while at Rome for his brother’s wife, his own niece, Herodias, who snarled at his side.

Behind her were her women, and among them was one who, as the cars swept by, turned her head with that movement a flower has which a breeze has stirred. Her eyes were sultry, darkened with stibium; on her cheek was the pink of the seashell, and her lips made one vermilion rhyme. The face was oval and rather small; and though it was beautiful as victory, the wonder of her eyes, which looked the haunts of hope fulfilled, the wonder of her mouth, which seemed to promise more than any mortal mouth could give, were forgotten in her hair, which was not orange nor flame, but a blending of both. And now, as the cars passed, her thin nostrils quivered, her hand rose as a bird does and fluttered with delight.

On the adjacent tiers were Greeks, fat-calved Cypriotes, Cappadocians with flowers painted on their skin, red Egyptians, Thracian mercenaries, Galilean fishermen, and a group of Lydians in women’s clothes.

On the tier just beyond was a man gazing wistfully at the woman that sat behind Herodias. He was tall and sinewy, handsome with the comeliness of the East. His beard was full, unmarred at the corners; his name was Judas. Now and then he moistened his underlip, and a Thracian who sat at his side heard him murmur “Mary” and some words of Syro-Chaldaic which the Thracian did not understand.

To him Mary paid no attention. She had turned from the track. An officer had entered the tetrarch’s tribune and addressed the prince. Antipas started; Herodias colored through her paint. The latter evidently was pleased.

“Iohanan!” she exclaimed. “To Machaerus with him! You may believe in fate and mathematics; I believe in the axe.”

And questioningly Herodias looked at her husband, who avoided her look, yet signified his assent to the command she had given.

The din continued. From the tier beyond, Judas still gazed into the perils of Mary’s eyes.

“Dear God,” he muttered, in answer to an anterior thought, “it would be the birthday of my life.”

II

“O Prophet Iohanan, how fair you are!”

Iohanan was hideous. His ankles were in stocks, a chain about his waist was looped in a ring that hung from the wall. About his body were tattered furs, his hair was tangled, the face drawn and yellow. Vermin were visible on his person. His lips twitched, and his gums, discolored, were as those of a camel that has journeyed too far. A tooth projected, green as a fresh almond is; the chin projected too, and from it on one side a rill of saliva dripped upon the naked breast. On the terrace he was a blur, a nightmare in a garden.

“Ah, how fair!”

Tantalizing as temptation, Mary stood just beyond his reach. Her eyes were full of compliments, her body was bent, and, the folds of her gown held back, she swayed a little, in the attitude of one cajoling a tiger. She was quite at home and at her ease, and yet prepared for instant flight.

Iohanan, or John⁠—surnamed, because of practices of his, the Baptist⁠—beckoned her to approach. In his eyes was the innocence that oxen have.

“My body is chained, but my soul is free!”

Mary made a pirouette, and through the terrace of the citadel the rattles on her ankles rang.

It was appalling, this citadel; it dominated the entire land. Perched on a peak of basalt, it overhung an abyss in which Asphalitis, the Bitter Sea, lay, a stretch of sapphire to the sun. In the distance were the heights of Abraham, the crests of Gilead. Before it was the infinite, behind it the desert. At its base a hamlet crouched, and a path hewn in the rock crawled in zigzags to its gates. Irregular walls surrounded it, in some places a hundred cubits high, and in each of the many angles was a turret. Seen from below it was a threat in stone, but within was a caress, one of those rapturous palaces that only the Orientals build. It was called Machaerus. Peopled with slaves and legends, it was a haunt of ghosts and fierce delights.

And now as Mary tripped before the prophet the walls alone repelled. The terrace was a garden in which were lilies and sentries. For entrance there was a portal of red porphyry, above which was a balcony hemmed by a balustrade of yellow Numidian stone.

Against it Antipas leaned. He had been eyeing the desert in tremulous surmise. The day before, he had caught the glitter of lances, therewith spirals of distant smoke, and he had become fearful lest Aretas, that king of Arabia Petraea whose daughter he had deserted, might be meditating attack. But now there was nothing, at most a triangular mass speeding westwards, of which only the edges moved, and which he knew to be a flight of cranes.

He took heart again and gazed in the valley below. It was the anniversary of his birth. To celebrate it he had invited the stewards of his lands, the notables of Galilee, the elect of Jerusalem, the procurator of Judaea, the emir of Tadmor, mountaineers and Pharisees, Scribes and herdsmen.

But in the valley only a few shepherds were visible. Along the ramparts soldiers paced. At the further end of the terrace a group of domestics was busy with hampers and luggage. The day was solemnly still, exquisitely clear; and between two hills came a glare of gold projected from the Temple of Jerusalem.

Through the silence rang the tinkle of the rattles that Mary wore. The prophet was beckoning her.

“And Martha?” the tetrarch heard him ask.

The pirouette ceased awkwardly. Mary’s eyes forgot their compliments. Her brows contracted, and, as though perplexed, she held her head a little to one side.

“There,” he added, “there, I know you well. It was at Bethany I saw you first. Yes, yes, I remember perfectly; you were leaving, and Martha was in tears. Only a little since I had speech with her. She spoke of you; she knew you were called the Magdalen. No,” he continued, for Mary had shrunk back, “no, I will not curse. There is another by whom you will be blessed.”

Mary laughed. “I am going to Rome. Tiberius will give me a palace. I shall sleep on the down the Teutons bring. I shall drink pearls dissolved in falernian. I shall sup on peacocks’ tongues.”

“No, Mary, Rome you will never see. The Eternal has you in His charge. Your shame will be washed away.”

“Shame to you,” she interrupted. “Shame and starvation too.” She made as though she were about to pirouette again. “Whom are you talking of?”

“One whose shoes I am unworthy to bear.”

For a moment he seemed to meditate; then, with the melancholy of one renouncing some immense ambition, he murmured, half to himself, half to the sky, “For him to increase I must diminish.”

“As for that, you are not much to look at now. I must go. I must braid my hair; the emir’s eyes are eager.”

“Mary,” he hissed, and the sudden asperity of his voice coerced her as a bit might do, “you will go to Capharnahum, you will seek him, you will say Iohanan is descended into the tombs to announce the Son of David.”

Through the lateral entrance to the terrace a number of guests had entered. From the balcony above, Antipas leaned and listened. Someone touched him; it was Herodias.

“The procurator is coming,” she announced. “You should be at the gate.”

“Ah!”

He seemed indifferent. What Iohanan had said concerning the Son of David stirred him like the point of a sword. He felt that there could be no such person; his father had put a stop to all that. And yet, if there were!

His indifference surprised Herodias.

“What are you staring at?” she asked; and to assure herself she looked over the balustrade. “That carrion? You should⁠—”

Her hand drawn across her throat completed the sentence.

The tetrarch shook his head. There was no hurry. Then, too, the prophet was useful. He reviled Jerusalem, and that flattered Galilee. But there was another reason, which he kept to himself. Iohanan affected him as no one had done before.

He feared him, chained though he was, and into that fear something akin to admiration entered. In his heart he wished he had let him alone. No, there was no hurry. As he assured her of that the prophet looked up.

“Jezebel!”

The guests approached. Their number had increased. There were Greek merchants from Hippos and Sepphoris, Pharisees from Jericho, and Scribes from Jerusalem. Herodias clapped her hands. A negro, naked to the waist, appeared.

“Take him below.”

But the guests surrounded Iohanan. The Pharisees recognized him at once. He was the terror of the hierarchs.

As he cried out at Herodias he seemed as though he would rise and wrench his bonds and mount to where she was. His eyes had lost their pathos; they blazed.

“Woe unto you!” he shouted, “and woe unto your barren bed! Though you hid in the bowels of the earth, in the uttermost depths of a jungle, the stench of your incest would betray you. Woe unto you, I say; the swine will turn from you, the Eternal will rend you, and the heart of hell will vomit you back!”

Herodias shook with anger. She was livid. Murmurs circulated through the increasing throng.

The Pharisees edged nearer. On their foreheads were slips of vellum on which passages of the Law had been inscribed. About their left arms other slips extended spiralwise from the elbow to the end of the third finger. They were in white; where their garments had become soiled, the spots had been chalked.

To them the prophet showed his teeth. “And woe unto you too, race of vipers, bladders of wind! As the fire devours the stubble, and the flame consumes the chaff, so your root will be rottenness and your seed go up as dust. Fear will engulf you like a torrent. The high peaks will be broken, the mountains will sever, and night be upon all. The valleys and hills will be strewn with your corpses, the rocks will run with your blood, the plain will drink it, and the vultures feast on your flesh. Woe unto you all, I say, that call good evil, and evil good!”

The invective continued. It enveloped the world. Everything was to be destroyed. Presently it subsided; the voice of the prophet sank lower; his eyes sought the sky, the pupils dilated; and the dream of his nation, the triumphant future, the sanctification of the faithful, the magnificence that was to be, poured rapturously from his lips.

“The whole land will glow with glory. The sky will be a rose in bloom. The meadows will rejoice, and the earth will be filled with men and maidens singing and kneeling to Thee, Immanuel, whom I await.”

The vision would have expanded, perhaps, but the chain that bound him was loosed, sinewy arms were dragging him away. As he went, he glared up again at Herodias. His face had lost its beatitude.

“You will be stripped of your purple, Jezebel; your diadem will be trodden under foot. The pains of a woman in travail will be as joys unto yours. There will be not enough stones to throw at you, and the abomination of your lust will bellow, Accursed, even beyond the tomb.”

The anathema fainted in the distance. The Scribes consulted between their teeth. By the Pharisees Antipas was blamed. A merchant from Hippos did not understand, and the Law was explained. That a man should marry his brother’s wife was a duty, only in this instance it had not occurred to the brother to die beforehand. Then, again, by her first husband Herodias had a child, and in that was the abomination.

The merchant did not wholly grasp the distinction, but he nodded as though he had.

“There was a child, was there?”

A captain of the garrison answered: “A girl, Salomè.”

He said nothing further, but the merchant could see that his mouth watered at the thought of her.

The crowd had become very dense. Suddenly a trumpet blared. At the gate was Pontius Pilate. On his head was a high and dazzling helmet. His tunic was short, open at the neck. His legs were bare. He was shod with shoes that left the toes exposed. From his cuirass a gorgon’s head had, in deference to local prejudice, been effaced; in its stead were scrolls and thunderbolts. From the belt rows of straps, embroidered and fringed, fell nearly to the knee. He held his head in the air. His features were excellent, and his beard hung in rows of short overlapping curls.

Behind him was his bodyguard. Before him Antipas stood, welcoming the Roman in Greek.

In the sky now were the advancing steps of night; in crevices of the basalt the leaves of the baaras weed had begun to flicker. It was time for the festival to begin; and, preceding the guests, Antipas passed into a hall beyond.

It was oblong, curved at the ends, and so vast that the roof was vague. On the walls were slabs of different colors, marble spotted like the skin of serpents, and onyx flecked with violet. On two sides were galleries supported by columns of sandstone. A third gallery formed a semicircle. Opposite, at the further end, on a dais, was the table of the tetrarch.

Antipas faced the assemblage. At his left was the procurator, at his right the emir of Tadmor. Curtains were looped on either side. Above were panels; they separated, and flowers fell. On a little stool next to the couch on which the emir lay was a beautiful boy with curly hair. The couch of the procurator was covered with a dim Babylonian shawl. That of the tetrarch was of ivory incrusted with gold. All three were cushioned.

As the guests entered they were sprinkled with perfume. Throughout the length of the hall other tables extended, and at these they found seats and food: Syrian radishes, melons from the oases near the Oxus, white olives from Bethany, honey from Capharnahum, and the little onions of Ascalon. There were candelabra everywhere, liquids cooled with snow, cheeses big as millstones, chunks of fat in wooden bowls, and behind the tables, slaves with copper platters. On the platters were quarters of red beef, breams swimming in grease, and sunbirds with their plumage on. In the semicircular gallery musicians played, three notes, constantly repeated.

The tetrarch’s table was spread with a cloth of byssus striped with Laconian green. On it were jars of murrha filled with balsam, Sidonian goblets of colored glass, jasper amphorae, and watermelons from Egypt. Before the procurator was a dish of oysters, lampreys, and boned barbels, mixed well together, flavored with cinnamon and assafoetida; mashed grasshoppers baked in saffron; and a roasted boar, the legs curled inward, the eyes half-closed. The emir ate abundantly of heron’s eggs whipped with wine into an amber foam. When his fingers were soiled, he wiped them in the curls of the beautiful boy who sat near by.

The smell of food filled the hall, mounted to the roof. The atmosphere was that of a bath, and the wines were heady. Already discussions had arisen. A mountaineer and a Galilean skiffsman had been dragged away, the one senseless, the other with features indistinguishable and masked in blood. It was a great festival, and the tetrarch was entertaining, as only he could, his friends, his enemies, and whoever chanced that way.

“As a child he rubbed his body with the leaves of the cnyza, which is a preservative of chastity.” It was a little man with restless eyes and a very long white beard detailing the virtues of Iohanan. “But,” he added, “he must have found cold water better.”

His neighbors laughed. One pounded the table.

“Jeshua⁠—” he began, but everyone was talking at once.

“Jeshua⁠—” he continued; yet, as no one would listen, he turned to a passing eunuch and caught him by the arm⁠—“Jeshua does more; he works miracles, and not with the cnyza either.”

The eunuch eluded him and escaped. However, he would not be balked; he stood up and, through the din, he shouted at the little man:

“Baba Barbulah, I tell you he is the Messiah!”

His voice was so loud it dominated the hubbub, and suddenly the hubbub ceased.

From the dais Pontius Pilate listened indifferently. Antipas held his hands behind his ears that he might hear the better. The emir paid no attention at all. On his head was a conical turban; about it were loops of sapphire and coils of pearl. He wore a vest with scant sleeves that reached to the knuckles, and trousers that overhung the instep and fell in wide wrinkles on his feet; both were of leopard-skin. Over the vest was a sleeveless tunic, clasped at the shoulders and girt at the waist. His hair was long, plentifully oiled; his beard was bushy, blue-black, and specked with silver.

Mary had approached. From the lessening waist to the slender feet her dress opened at either side. Beneath was a chemise of transparent Bactrianian tissue. From girdle to armpits were little clasps; on her ankles, bands; and above the elbow, on her bare white arm, two circlets of emeralds from the mines of Djebel Zabur.

The emir spoke to her. She listened with a glimpse of the most beautiful teeth in the world. He put out a hand tentatively and touched her: the tissue of her garment crackled and emitted sparks. He raised a goblet to her. The wine it held was yellower than the marigold. She brushed it with her lips; he drank it off, then, refreshed, he looked her up and down.

In one hand she held a cup of horn, narrower at the top than at the end; in it were dice made of the knee-joints of gazelles, and these she rattled in his beard.

“That beautiful Sultan, will he play?”

With an ochre-tipped finger she pointed at the turban on his head. The eyes of the emir vacillated. He undid a string of gems and placed them on the table’s edge. Mary unclasped a coil of emeralds and rattled the dice again. She held the cup high up, then spilled the contents out.

“Ashtaroth!” the emir cried. He had won.

Mary leaned forward, fawned upon his breast, and gazed into his face. Her breath had the fragrance of his own oasis, her lips were moist as the pomegranate’s pulp, her teeth as keen as his own desire.

“No, beautiful Sultan, it is I.” With the back of her hand she disturbed the dice. “I am Ashtaroth, am I not?”

Questioningly the emir explored the unfathomable eyes that gazed into his.

On their surface floated an acquiescence to the tacit offer of his own. Then he nodded, and Mary turned and gathered the jewels from the cloth of byssus where they lay.

“I tell you he is the Messiah!” It was the angry disputant shouting at the little man.

“Who is? What are you talking about?”

Though the hubbub had ceased, throughout the hall were the mutterings of dogs disturbed.

“Jeshua,” the disputant answered; “Jeshua the Nazarene.”

A Pharisee, very vexed, his bonnet tottering, gnashed back: “The Messiah will uphold the law; this Nazarene attacks it.”

A Scribe interrupted: “Many things are to distinguish his advent. The light of the sun will be increased a hundredfold, the orchards will bear fruit a thousand times more abundantly. Death will be forgotten, joy will be universal, Elijah will return.”

“But he has!”

Antipas started. The Scribe trembled with rage. But the throng had caught the name of Elijah, and knew to whom the disputant referred⁠—a man in tattered furs whom a few hours before they had seen dragged away by a negro naked to the waist, and someone shouted:

“Iohanan is Elijah.”

Baba Barbulah stood up and turned to whence the voice had come:

“In the footprints of the Anointed impudence shall increase, and the face of the generation shall be as the face of a dog. It may be,” he added, significantly⁠—“it may be that you speak the truth.”

The sarcasm was lost. The musicians in the gallery, who had been playing on flute and timbrel, began now on the psalteron and the native sambuca. Behind was a row of lute-players; but most in view was a trignon, an immense Egyptian harp, at which with nimble fingers a fair girl plucked.

In the shadow Herodias leaned. At a signal from her the musicians attacked the prelude of a Syrian dance, and in the midst of the assemblage a figure veiled from head to foot suddenly appeared. For a moment it stood very still; then the veil fell of itself, and from the garrison a shout went up:

“Salomè! Salomè!”

Her hair, after an archaic Chanaanite fashion, was arranged in the form of a tower. Her high bosom was wound about with protecting bands. Her waist was bare. She wore long pink drawers of silk, and for girdle she had the blue buds of the lotus, which are symbols of virginity. She was young and exquisitely formed. In her face you read strange records, and on her lips were promises as rare. Her eyes were tortoiseshell, her hair was black as guilt.

The prelude had ceased, the movement quickened. With a gesture of abandonment the girl threw her head back, and, her arms extended, she fluttered like a butterfly on a rose. She ran forward. The sambuca rang quicker, the harp quicker yet. She threw herself to one side, then to the other, her hips swaying as she moved. The buds at her girdle fell one by one; she was dancing on flowers, her hips still swaying, her waist advancing and retreating to the shiver of the harp. She was elusive as dream, subtle as love; she intoxicated and entranced; and finally, as she threw herself on her hands, her feet, first in the air and then slowly descending, touched the ground, while her body straightened like a reed, there was a long growl of unsatisfied content.

She was kneeling now before the dais. Pilate compared her to Bathylle, a mime whom he had applauded at Rome. The tetrarch was purple; he gnawed his underlip. For the moment he forgot everything he should have remembered⁠—the presence of his guests, the stains of his household, his wife even, whose daughter this girl was⁠—and in a gust of passion he half rose from his couch.

“Come to me,” he cried. “But come to me, and ask whatever you will.”

Salomè hesitated and pouted, the point of her tongue protruding between her lips.

“Come to me,” he pleaded; “you shall have slaves and palaces and cities; you shall have hills and intervales. I will give you anything; half my kingdom if you wish.”

There was a tinkle of feet; the girl had gone. In a moment she returned, and balancing herself on one foot, she lisped very sweetly: “I should like by and by to have you give me the head of Iohanan⁠—” she looked about; in the distance a eunuch was passing, a dish in his hand, and she added, “on a platter.”

Antipas jumped as though a hound under the table had bitten him on the leg. He turned to the procurator, who regarded him indifferently, and to the emir, who was toying with Mary’s agate-nailed hand. He had given his word, however; the people had heard. About his ears the perspiration started; from purple he had grown very gray.

Salomè still stood, balancing herself on one foot, the point of her tongue just visible, while from the gallery beyond, in whose shadows he divined the instigating presence of Herodias, came the grave music of an Hebraic hymn.

“So be it,” he groaned.

The order was given, and a tear trickled down through the paint and furrows of his cheek. On the hall a silence had descended. The guests were waiting, and the throb of the harp accentuated the suspense. Presently there was the clatter of men-at-arms, and a negro, naked to the waist, appeared, an axe in one hand, the head of the prophet in the other.

He presented it deferentially to Antipas, who motioned it away, his face averted. Salomè smiled. She took it, and then, while she resumed her veil, she put it down before the emir, who eyed it with the air of one that has seen many another object such as that.

But in a moment the veil was adjusted, and with the trophy the girl disappeared.

The harp meanwhile had ceased to sob, the guests were departing; already the procurator had gone. The emir looked about for Mary, but she also had departed; and, with the expectation, perhaps, of finding her without, he too got up and left the hall.

Antipas was alone. Through the lattice at his side he could see the baaras in the basalt emitting its firefly sparks of flame. From an adjacent corridor came the discreet click-clack of a sandal, and in a moment the head of the prophet was placed on the table at which he lay. The tetrarch leaned over and gazed into the unclosed eyes. They were haggard and dilated, and they seemed to curse.

He put his hand to his face and tried to think⁠—to forget rather, and not to remember; but his ears were charged with rustlings that extended indefinitely and lost themselves in the future; his mind peopled itself with phantoms of the past. Perhaps he dozed a little. When he looked up again the head was no longer there, and he told himself that Herodias had thrown it to the swine.

III

In the distance the white and yellow limestone of the mountains rose. Near by was a laughter of flowers, a tumult of green. Just beyond, in a border of sedge and rushes, a lake lay, a mirror to the sky. In the background were the blue and white terraces of Magdala, and about a speaker were clustered a handful of people, a group of laborers and of fishermen.

He was dressed as a rabbi, but he looked like a seer. In his face was the youth of the world, in his eyes the infinite. As he spoke, his words thrilled and his presence allured. “Repent,” he was saying; “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And as the resplendent prophecy continued, you would have said that a bird in his heart had burst into song.

A little to one side, in an attitude of amused contempt, a few of the tetrarch’s courtiers stood; they were dressed in the Roman fashion, and one, Pandera, a captain of the guard, wore a cuirass that glittered as he laughed. He was young and very handsome. He had white teeth, red lips, a fair skin, a dark beard, and, as he happened to be stationed in the provinces, an acquired sneer. Dear old Rome, how vague it was! And as he jested with his comrades he thought of its delights, and wished himself either back again in the haunts he loved, or else, if he must be separated from them, then, instead of vegetating in a tiresome tetrarchy, he felt that it would be pleasant to be far off somewhere, where the uncouth Britons were, a land which it took a year of adventures to reach; on the banks of the Betis, whence the girls came that charmed the lupanars; in Numidia, where the hunting was good; or in Thrace, where there was blood in plenty⁠—anywhere, in fact, save on the borders of the beautiful lake where he happened to be.

It was but the restlessness of youth, perhaps, that disturbed him so, for in Galilee there were oafs as awkward as any that Britannia could show; there was game in abundance; blood, too, was not as infrequent as it might have been; and as for women, there at his side stood one as appetizing as Rome, Spain even, had produced. He turned to her now, and plucked at his dark beard and showed his white teeth; he had caught a phrase of the rabbi in which the latter had mentioned the kingdoms of the earth, and the phrase amused him.

“I like that,” he said. “What does he know about the kingdoms of the earth? Mary, I wager what you will that he has never been two leagues from where he stands. Let’s ask and see.”

But Mary did not seem to hear. She was engrossed in the rabbi, and Pandera had to tug at her sleeve before she consented to return to a life in which he seemingly had a part.

“What do you say?” he asked.

Mary shook her head. She had the air of one whose mind is elsewhere. Into her face a vacancy had come; she seemed incapable of reply; and as the guardsman scrutinized her it occurred to him that she might be on the point of having an attack of that catalepsy to which he knew her to be subject. But immediately she reassured him.

“Come, let us go.”

And, the guardsman at her side, the others in her train, she ascended the little hill on which her castle was, and where the midday meal awaited.

It was a charming residence. Built quadrangularwise, the court held a fountain which was serviceable to those that wished to bathe. The roof was a garden. The interior façade was of teak wood, carved and colored; the frontal was of stone. Seen from the exterior it looked the fortress of some umbrageous prince, but in the courtyard reigned the seduction of a woman in love. From without it menaced, within it soothed.

Her title to it was a matter of doubt. According to Pandera, who at the mess-table at Tiberias had boasted his possession of her confidence, it was a heritage from her father. Others declared that it had been given her by her earliest lover, an old man who since had passed away. Yet, after all, no one cared. She kept open house; the tetrarch held her in high esteem; she was attached to the person of the tetrarch’s wife; only a little before, the emir of Tadmor had made a circuitous journey to visit her; Vitellius, the governor of the province, had stopped time and again beneath her roof; and⁠—and here was the point⁠—to see her was to acquire a new conception of beauty. Of human flowers she was the most fair.

Yet now, during the meal that followed, Mary, the toast of the tetrarchy, she whose wit and brilliance had been echoed even in Rome, wrapped herself in a mantle of silence. The guardsman jested in vain. To the others she paid as much attention as the sun does to a torch; and when at last Pandera, annoyed, perhaps, at her disregard of a quip of his, attempted to whisper in her ear, she left the room.

The nausea of the hour may have affected her, for presently, as she threw herself on her great couch, her thoughts forsook the present and went back into the past, her childhood returned, and faces that she had loved reappeared and smiled. Her father, for instance, Theudas, who had been satrap of Syria, and her mother, Eucharia, a descendant of former kings.

But of these her memories were slight⁠—they had died when she was still very young⁠—and in their place came her sister, Martha, kind of heart and quick of temper, obdurate, indulgent, and continually perplexed; Simon, Martha’s husband, a Libyan, born in Cyrene, called by many the Leper because of a former whiteness of his skin, a whiteness which had long since vanished, for he was brown as a date; Eleazer, her brother, younger than herself, a delicate boy with blue pathetic eyes; and with them came the delight of Bethany, that lovely village on the oriental slope of the Mount of Olives, where the rich of Jerusalem had their villas, and where her girlhood had been passed.

From the lattice at which she used to sit she could see the wide white road begin its descent to the Jordan, a stretch of almond trees and oleanders; and just beyond, in a woody hollow, a little house in which Sephôrah lived⁠—a woman who came from no one knew where, and to whom Martha had forbidden her to speak.

She could see her still, a gaunt, gray creature, with projecting cheekbones, a skin of brick, and a low, insinuating voice. The fascination which she had exercised over her partook both of wonder and of fear, for it was rumored that she was a sorceress, and as old as the world. To Mary, who was then barely nubile, and inquisitive as only fanciful children are, she manifested a great affection, enticing her to her dwelling with little cakes that were sweet to the tooth and fabulous tales that stirred the heart: the story of Stratonice and Combabus, for instance, which Mary did not in the least understand, but which seemed to her intensely sad.

“And then what?” she would ask when the tale was done; and the woman would tell her of Ninus and Semiramis, of Sennachereb, of Sardanapalus, Belsarazzur, of Dagon, the fish-god of Philistia, by whom Goliath swore and in whose temple Samson died, or of Sargon, who, placed by his mother in an ark of rushes, was set adrift in the Euphrates, yet, happily discovered by a water-carrier, afterwards became a leader of men.

“Why, that was Moses!” the child would exclaim.

“No, no,” the woman invariably answered, “it was Sargon.”

But that which pleasured Mary more highly even than these tales were the legends of Hither Asia, the wonderlands of Babylon, and particularly the story of the creation, for always the human mind has wished to read the book of God.

“Where did they say the world came from?” she would ask.

And Sephôrah, drawing a long breath, would answer: “Once all was darkness and water. In this chaos lived strange animals, and men with two wings, and others with four wings and two faces. Some had the thighs of goats, some had horns, and some had horses’ feet, or were formed behind like a horse and in front like a man; there were bulls with human faces, and men with the heads of dogs, and other animals of human shape with fins like fishes, and fishes like sirens, and dragons, and creeping things, and serpents, and fierce creatures, the images of which are preserved in the temple of Bel.

“Over all these ruled the great mother, Um Uruk. But Bel, whom your people call Baal, divided the darkness and clove the woman asunder. Of one part he made the earth, and of the other the sun, the moon, the planets. He drew off the water, apportioned it to the land, and prepared and arranged the world. The creatures on it could not endure the light of day and became extinct.

“Now when Bel saw the land fruitful yet uninhabited, he cut off his head and made one of the gods mingle the blood which flowed from it with earth and form therewith men and animals that could endure the sun. Presently Chaldaea was plentifully populated, but the inhabitants lived like animals, without order or rule. Then there appeared to them from the sea a monster of the name of Yan. Its body was that of a fish, but under its head another head was attached, and on its fins were feet, and its voice was that of a man. Its image is still preserved. It came at morning, passed the day, and taught language and science, the harvesting of seeds and of fruits, the rules for the boundaries of land, the mode of building cities and temples, arts and writing and all that pertains to civilized life, and for four hundred and thirty-two thousand years the world went very well.

“Then in a dream Bel revealed to Xisuthrus that there would be a great storm, and men would be destroyed. He bade him bury in Sepharvaim, the city of the sun, all the ancient, medieval, and modern records, and build a ship and embark in it with his kindred and his nearest friends. He was also to take food and drink into the ship, and pairs of all creatures winged and four-footed.

“Xisuthrus did as he was bidden, and from the ends of heaven the storm began to blow. Bin thundered; Nebo, the Revealer, came forth; Nergal, the Destroyer, overthrew; and Adar, the Sublime, swept in his brightness across the earth. The storm devoured the nations, it lapped the sky, turned the land into an ocean, and destroyed everything that lived. Even the gods were afraid. They sought refuge in the heaven of Anu, sovereign of the upper realms. As hounds draw in their tails, they seated themselves on their thrones, and to them Mylitta, the great goddess, spake: ‘The world has turned from me, and ruin I have proclaimed.’ She wept, and the gods on their thrones wept with her.

“On the seventh day Xisuthrus perceived that the storm had abated and that the sea had begun to fall. He sent out a dove, it returned; next, a swallow, which also returned, but with mud on its feet; and again, a raven, which saw the corpses in the water and ate them, and returned no more. Then the boat was stayed and settled upon Mount Nasir. Xisuthrus went out and worshipped the recovered earth. When his companions went in search of him he had disappeared, but his voice called to them saying that for his piety he had been carried away; that he was dwelling among the gods; and that they were to return to Sepharvaim and dig up the books and give them to mankind. Which they did, and erected many cities and temples, and rebuilt Babylon and Mylitta’s shrine.”

“It is simpler in Genesis,” Mary said, the first time she heard this marvellous tale. For to her, as to Martha and Eleazer, the khazzan, the teacher of the synagogue, had read from the great square letters in which the Pentateuch was written another account of the commingling of Chaos and of Light.

At the mention of the sacred canon, Sephôrah would smile with that indulgence which wisdom brings, and smooth her scanty plaits, and draw the back of her hand across her mouth.

“Burned on tiles in the land of the magi are the records of a million years. In the unpolluted tombs of Osorapi the history of life and of time is written on the cerements of kings. Where the bells ring at the neck of the camels of Iran is a stretch of columns on which are inscribed the words of those that lived in Paradise. On a wall of the temple of Bel are the chronicles of creation; in the palace of Assurbanipal, the narrative of the flood. It is from these lands and monuments the Thorah comes; its verses are made of their memories; it gathered whatever it found, and overlooked the essential, immortal life.”

And Sephôrah added in a whisper, “For we are descended from gods, and immortal as they.”

The khazzan had disclosed to Mary no such prospect as that. To him as to all orthodox expounders of the Law man was essentially evanescent; he lived his little day and disappeared forever. God alone was immortal, and an immortal being would be God. The contrary beliefs of the Egyptians and the Aryans were to them abominations, and the spiritualistic doctrine inaugurated by Juda Maccabaeus and accepted by the Pharisees, an impiety. The Pentateuch had not a word on the subject. Moses had expressly declared that secret things belong to the Lord, and only visible things to man. The prophets had indeed foretold a terrestrial immortality, but that immortality was the immortality of a nation; and the realization of their prophecy the entire people awaited. Apart from that there was only Sheol, a sombre region of the under-earth, to which the dead descended, and there remained without consciousness, abandoned by God.

“Immortal!” Mary, with great wondering eyes, would echo. “Immortal!”

“Yes; but to become so,” Sephôrah replied, “you must worship at another shrine.”

“Where is it?”

Sephôrah answered evasively. Mary would find it in time⁠—when the spring came, perhaps; and meanwhile she had a word or two to say of Baal to such effect even that Mary questioned the khazzan.

“However great the god of the Gentiles has been imagined,” the khazzan announced, “he is bounded by the earth and the sky. His feet may touch the one, his head the other, but of nature he is a part, and, to the Eternal, nature is not even a garment, it is a substance He made, and which He can remould at will. It is not in nature, it is in light, He is: in the burning bush in which He revealed Himself; in the stake at which Isaac would have died; in the lightning in which the Law was declared, the column of fire, the flame of the sacrifices, and the gleaming throne in which Isaiah saw Him sit⁠—it is there that He is, and His shadow is the sun.”

Of this Mary repeated the substance to her friend, and Sephôrah mused.

“No,” she said at last⁠—“no, he is not in light, but in the desert where nature is absent, and where the world has ceased to be. The threats of a land that never smiled are reflected in his face. The sight of him is death. No, Baal is the sun-god. His eyes fecundate.”

And during the succeeding months Sephôrah entertained Mary with Assyrian annals and Egyptian lore. She told her more of Baal, whose temple was in Babylon, and of Baaltis, who reigned at Ascalon. She told her of the women who wept for Tammuz, and explained the reason of their tears. She told her of the union of Ptah, the unbegotten begetter of the first beginning, and of Neith, mother of the sun; of the holy incest of Isis and Osiris; and of Luz, called by the patriarchs Bethel, the House of God, the foothold of a straight stairway which messengers ceaselessly ascended and descended, and at whose summit the Elohim sat.

She told her of these things, of others as well; and now and then in the telling of them a fat little man with beady eyes would wander in, the smell of garlic about him, and stare at Mary’s lips. His name was Pappus; by Sephôrah he was treated with great respect, and Mary learned that he was rich and knew that Sephôrah was poor.

When the Passover had come and gone, Sephôrah detected that Mary had ceased to be a child; and of the gods and goddesses with whose adventures she was wont to entertain her, gradually she confined herself to Mylitta; and in describing the wonderlands which she knew so well, she spoke now only of Babylon, where the great tower was, and the gardens that hung in the air.

It was all very marvellous and beautiful, and Sephôrah described it in fitting terms. There was the Temple of the Seven Spheres, where the priests offered incense to the Houses of the Planets, to the whole host of heaven, and to Bel, Lord of the Sky. There was the Home of the Height, a sheer flight of solid masonry extending vertiginously, and surmounted by turrets of copper capped with gold. In its utmost pinnacle were a sanctuary and a dazzling couch. There the priests said that sometimes Bel came and rested. For the truth of that statement, however, Sephôrah declined to vouch. She had never seen him; but the hanging gardens she had seen, long before they were demolished. She had walked in them, and she described their loveliness, and related that they were erected to pleasure a Persian princess whose eyes had wearied of the monotony of the Babylonian plain.

Once when Pappus was present⁠—and latterly he had been often there⁠—she passed from the gardens to the grove where the temple of Mylitta stood. At the steps of the shrine, she declared, were white-winged lions, and immense bulls with human heads. Within were dovecotes and cisterns, the emblems of fecundity, and a block of stone which she did not describe. Without, among the terebinths and evergreens, were little cabins and an avenue bordered by cypress trees, in which men with pointed hats and long embroidered gowns passed slowly, for there the maidens of Babylon sat, chapleted with cords, burning bran for perfume, awaiting the will of the first who should toss a coin in their lap and in the name of Mylitta invite them to perform the sacred rite.

“That,” said Sephôrah, “is the worship Mylitta exacts.” As she spoke she drew herself up, her height increased, an unnatural splendor filled her eyes. “I,” she continued, “am her priestess. I sacrificed at Byblus, but you may sacrifice here. There is a dovecote, yonder is a cistern, beyond are the cypress and the evergreens that she loves. Mary, do you wish to be immortal? Do you see the way?”

Mary smiled vaguely, and with the serenity of one worshipping a divinity she suffered the fat Jerusalemite to take her in his arms.

And now as she lay on her great couch these things returned to her, and subsequent episodes as well. There had been the lamentable grief of Martha, the added pathos in her brother’s eyes. The estate of her father had been divided, and the castle of Magdala had fallen to her share. Meanwhile she had been at Jerusalem, and from there she had journeyed to Antioch, where she had heard the beasts roar in the arena. She had looked on blood, on the honey-colored moon that effaced the stars, and everywhere she had encountered love.

Since then her hours had been grooved in revolving circles of alternating delights, and delights to which no shadow of regret had come. To her, youth had been a chalice of aromatic wine. She had drained it and found no dregs. Day had been interwoven with splendors, and night with the rays of the sun. Where she passed she conquered; when she smiled there were slaves ready-made. There had been hot brawls where she trod, the gleam of white knives. Men had killed each other because of her eyes, and women had wept themselves to death. For her a priest had gone mad, and a betrothed had hid herself in the sea. In Hierapolis the galli had fancied her Ashtaroth; and at Capri, where Tiberius lounged, a villa awaited her will.

Her life had indeed been full, yet that morning its nausea had mounted to her heart. At the words of the rabbi the horizon had expanded, the dream of immortality returned. It had been forgot long since and abandoned, but now, for the first time since her childhood, something there was which admonished her that perhaps she still might stroll through lands where dreams come true. The path was not wholly clear as yet, and as in her troubled mind she tried to disentangle the past from the present the sun went down behind the castle, the crouching shadows elongated and possessed the walls.

An echo came to her, “Repent,” and the prophecy continuing danced in her ears; yet still the way was obscure. In the echo she divined merely that the past must be put from her like a garment that is stained. The rest was vague. Then suddenly she was back again in Machaerus, and she heard the ringing words of John. Could this be the Messiah her nation awaited? was there a kingdom coming, and immortality too?

Her thoughts entangled and grew confused. There was a murmur of harps in the distance, and she wondered whence it could come. Someone was speaking; she tried to rouse herself and listen. The room was filled with bats that changed to butterflies. The murmur of harps continued, and through the wall before her issued a litter in which a woman lay.

A circle of slaves surrounded her. She was pale, and her eyes closed languorously. “I am Indolence,” she said. “Sleep is not softer than my couch. My lightest wish is law to kings. I live on perfumes; my days are as shadows on glass. Mary, come with me, and I will teach you to forget.”

She vanished, and where the litter had been stood a eunuch. “I am Envy,” he said, and his eyes drooped sullenly. “I separate those that love; I dismantle altars and dismember nations. I corrode and corrupt; I destroy, and I never rebuild. My joy is malice, and my creed false-witnessing. Mary, come with me, and you will learn to hate.”

He disappeared, and where his slime had dripped stood a being with fingers intertwisted and a back that bent. “I am Greed,” it said. “I sap the veins of youth; I drain the hearts of women; I bring contention where peace should be. I make fathers destroy their sons, and daughters betray their mother. I never forget, and I never release. I am the master. Mary, come with me, and you shall own the world.”

The fetor of the presence went, and in its place came one whose footsteps thundered. “I am Anger,” he declared. “I exterminate and rejoice. I batten on blood. In my heart is suspicion, in my hand is flame. It is I that am war and disaster and regret. My breath consumes, and my voice affrights. Mary, come with me, and you will learn to quell.”

He dissolved, and in the shadows stood one whose hands were ample, and whose wide mouth laughed. “I am Gluttony,” he announced, and as he spoke his voice was thick. “I fatten and forsake. I offer satrapies for one new dish. I invite and alienate, I welcome and repel. It is I that bring disease and disorders. I am the harbinger of Death. Mary, come with me, and you shall taste of Life.”

He also disappeared, and two heralds entered with trumpets on which they blew, and one exclaimed, “Make way for Assurbanipal, ruler of land and of sea.” Then, with horsemen riding royally, Sardanapalus advanced through the fissure in the wall. On his head a high and wonderful tiara shone with zebras that had wings and horns. His hair was long, and his beard curled in overlapping rings. His robe dazzled, and the close sleeves were fastened over his knuckles with bracelets of precious stones. In one hand he held a sceptre, in the other a chart.

“I,” he cried⁠—“I am Assurbanipal; the progeny of Assur and of Baaltis, son of the great king Riduti, whom the lord of crowns, in days remote prophesying in his name, raised to the kingdom, and in the womb of his mother created to rule. The man of war, the joy of Assur and of Istar, the royal offspring, am I. When the gods seated me on the throne of the father my begetter, Bin poured down his rain, Hea feasted the people. My enemies I destroyed, and their gods glorified me before my camp. The god of their oracles, whose image no man had seen, I took, and the goddesses whom the kings worshipped I dishonored.”

He paused and looked proudly about, then he continued:

“That which is in the storehouse of heaven is kindled, and to the city of cities my glory flies. The queens above and below proclaim my glory. I am Glory, and I am Pride. Mary, come with me, and you shall disdain the sky.”

But Mary gave no sign. The clattering horses vanished, and two men dressed in women’s clothes appeared. They bowed to the ground and chanted:

“The holy goddess, our Lady Mylitta, whose sacrificants we are.”

Then came a form so luminous that Mary hid her face and listened merely.

“I,” said a voice⁠—“I am Desire. In Greece I am revered, and there I am Aphrodite. In Italy I am Venus; in Egypt, Hathor; in Armenia, Anaitis; in Persia, Anâhita; Tanit in Carthage; Baaltis in Byblus; Derceto in Ascalon; Atargatis in Hierapolis; Bilet in Babylon; Ashtaroth to the Sidonians; and Aschera in the glades of Judaea. And everywhere I am worshipped, and everywhere I am Love. I bring joy and torture, delight and pain. I appease and appal. It is I that create and undo. It is I that make heaven and people hell. I am the mistress of the world. Without me time would cease to be. I am the germ of stars, the essence of things. I am all that is, will be, and has been, and my robe no mortal has raised. I breathe, and nations are; in my parturitions are planets; my home is space. My lips are blissfuller than any bloom of bliss; my arms the opening gates of life. The Infinite is mine. Mary, come with me, and you shall measure it.”

When Mary ventured to look again the vision had gone. They had all gone now. She had made no effort to detain them. They were tempters of which she was freed, in which she believed, and which were real to her. The wall through which they had come and departed was vague and in the darkness remote, but presently it dissolved again, and afar in the beckoning distance was one breathing a soul into decrepit rites. “Come unto me, all ye that sorrow and are heavy-laden,” she heard him say; and, as with a great sob of joy she rose to that gracious summons, night seized her. When she awoke, a newer dawn had come.

IV

In the gardens of the palace the tetrarch mused. The green parasols of the palms formed an avenue, and down that avenue now and then he looked. Near him a Syrian bear, quite tame, with a sweet face and tufted silver fur, gambolled prodigiously. Up and down a neighboring tree two lemurs chased with that grace and diabolic vivacity which those enchanting animals alone possess. Ringed-horned antelopes, the ankles slender as the stylus, the eyes timid and trustful, pastured just beyond; and there too a black-faced ape, irritated perhaps by the lemurs, turned indignant somersaults, the tender coloring of his body glistening in the sun.

“It is odd that Pahul does not return,” the tetrarch reflected; and then, it may be for consolation’s sake, he plunged his face in a jar of wine that had been drained, in accordance with a recipe of Vitellius, through cinnamon and calamus, and drank abundantly.

Long since he had deserted Machaerus. The legends that peopled its corridors had beset him with a sense of reality which before they had never possessed. The leaves of the baaras glittered frenetically in the basalt, and in their spectral light a phantom with eyes that cursed came and went. At night he had drunk, and in the clear forenoons he paced the terrace fancying always that there, beyond in the desert, Aretas prowled like a wolf. Machaerus was unhealthy; men had gone mad there, others had disappeared entirely. It was a haunt of echoes, of memories, of ghosts also, perhaps too of reproach. And so, with his court, he returned to his brand-new Tiberias, where the air was serener, and nature laughed.

And yet in the gardens that leaned to the lake the tranquillity he had anticipated eluded and declined to be detained. Rumors that Herodias collected came to him with the stamp of Rome. One of his brothers was plotting against him; another, though in exile, was plotting too. It was the Herod blood, his wife said; and, with the intemperance of a woman whose ambition has been deceived, she taunted him with his plebeian descent. “Your grandfather was a sweep at Ascalon, a eunuch at that,” she had remarked; and the tetrarch, by way of reply, had been obliged to content himself by asking how, in that case, he could have been grandfather at all.

But latterly a new source of inquietude had come. At Magdala, Capharnahum, Bethsaïda, there, within the throw of a stone, was a Nazarene going about inciting the peasants to revolt. It was very vexatious, and he told himself that when an annoyance fades another appears. Life, it occurred to him, was a brier with renascent thorns. And now, as he gargled the wine that left a pink foam on his lips, even that irritation lapsed in the perplexing absence of Pahul.

Pahul was a butler of his, a Greek whom he had picked up one adventurous night in Rome, who had made himself useful, whom he had attached to his household, whom he consulted, and on whom he relied. Early that day he had sent him off with instructions to run the demagogue to earth, to listen, to question if need were, and to hurry back and report. But as yet he had not returned. The day was fading, and on the amphitheatre which the hills made the sun seemed to balance itself, the disk bloodred. The lemurs had tired, perhaps; their yellow eyes and circled tails had gone; the bear had been led away; only the multicolored ape remained, gnawing now with little plaintive moans at a bit of fruit which he held suspiciously in his wrinkled hand.

Presently a star appeared and quivered, then another came, and though overhead were streaks of pink, and, where the sun had been, a violence of red and orange, the east retained its cobalt, night still was remote⁠—an echo of crotals from the neighboring faubourg, the cry of elephants impatient for their fodder, alone indicating that a day was dead.

In the charm of the encroaching twilight the irritation of the tetrarch waned and decreased. He lost himself in memories of the princess who had been his bride, and he wondered were it possible that, despite the irrevocable, he was never to see, to speak, to hold her to him again. Truly her grievance was unmeasurable, the more so even that she had not deigned to utter so much as a reproach. At the rumor of his treachery she had betaken herself to the solitudes, where Aretas her father was king, and had there remained girt in that unmurmuring silence which nobility raises as a barrier between outrage and itself, and which the desert is alone competent to suggest.

“It is he!”

The tetrarch started so abruptly that he narrowly missed the jar at his side. On noiseless sandals Pahul had approached, and stood before him nodding his head with an air of assured conviction. The ape had fled and a stork stepped gingerly away.

“It is he,” the Greek repeated⁠—“John the Baptist.”

Antipas plucked at his beard. “But he is dead,” he gasped; “I beheaded him. What nonsense you talk!”

“It is he, I tell you, only grown younger. I found him in the synagogue.”

“Where? what synagogue?”

Pahul made a gesture. “At Capharnahum,” he answered, and gazed in the tetrarch’s face. He was slight of form and regular of feature. As a lad he had crossed barehanded from Cumae to Rhegium, and from there drifted to Rome, where he started a commerce in Boetican girls which had so far prospered that he bought two vessels to carry the freight. Unfortunately the vessels met in a storm and sank. Then he became a hanger-on of the circus; in idle moments a tout. It was in the latter capacity that Antipas met him, and, pleased with his shrewdness and perfect corruption, had attached him to his house. This had occurred in years previous, and as yet Antipas had found no cause to regret the trust imposed. He was a useful braggart, idle, familiar, and discreet; and he had acquired the dialect of the country with surprising ease.

“There were any number of people,” Pahul continued. “Some said he was the son of Joseph, the son of⁠—”

“But he, what did he say? How tiresome you are!”

“Ah!” And Pahul swung his arms. “Who is Mammon?”

“Mammon? Mammon? How do I know? Plutus, I suppose. What about him?”

“And who is Satan?”

“Satan? Satan is a⁠—He’s a Jew god. Why? But what do you mean by asking me questions?”

Pahul nodded absently. “I heard him say,” he continued, “that no man could serve God and Mammon. At first I thought he meant you. It was this way. I got into conversation with a friend of his, a man named Judas. He told me any number of things about him, that he cured the sick⁠—”

“Bah! Some Greek physician.”

“That he walks on the sea⁠—”

“Nonsense!”

“That he turns water into wine, feeds the multitude, raises the dead⁠—”

“Raises the dead!” And the tetrarch added in the sotto voce of thought, “So did Elijah.”

“That he had been in the desert⁠—”

“With Aretas?”

“No; I questioned him on that point. He had never heard of Aretas, but he said that in the desert this Satan had come and offered him⁠—what do you suppose? The empire of the earth!”

Antipas shook with fright. “It must have been Aretas.”

“But that he had refused.”

“Then it is John.”

“There, you see.” And Pahul dandled himself with the air of one who is master of logic. “That’s what I said myself. I said this: ‘If he can raise the dead, he can raise himself.’ ”

“It is John,” the tetrarch repeated.

“I am sure of it,” the butler continued. “But he did not say so. Judas didn’t either. On the contrary, he declared he was not. He said John was not good enough to carry his shoes. I saw through that, though,” and Pahul leered; “he knew whom I was, and he lied to protect his friend. I of course pretended to believe him.”

“Quite right,” said the tetrarch.

“Yes, I played the fool. H’m, where was I? Oh, I asked Judas who then his friend was, but he went over to where a woman stood; he spoke to her; she moved away. Some of the others seemed to reprove him. I would have followed, but at that moment his friend stood up; a khazzan offered him a scroll, but he waved it aside; then someone asked him a question which I did not catch; another spoke to him; a third interrupted; he seemed to be arguing with them. I was too far away to hear well, and I got nearer; then I heard him say, ‘I am the bread of life.’ Now, what did he mean by that?”

Antipas had no explanation to offer.

“Then,” Pahul continued, “he said he had come down from heaven. A man near me exclaimed, ‘He is the Messiah;’ but others⁠—”

“The Messiah!” echoed the tetrarch. For a moment his thoughts stammered, then at once he was back in the citadel. On one side was the procurator, on the other the emir of Tadmor. In front of him was a drunken rabble, wrangling Pharisees, and one man dominating the din with an announcement of the Messiah’s approach. The murmur of lutes threaded through it all; and now, as his thoughts deviated, he wondered could that announcement have been the truth.

“But others,” Pahul continued, “objected loudly. For a little I could not catch a word. At last they became quieter, and I heard him repeat that he was the bread of life, adding, ‘Your fathers ate manna and are dead, but this bread a man may eat of and never die.’ At this there was new contention. A woman fainted⁠—the one to whom Judas had spoken. They carried her out. As she passed I could see her face. It was Mary of Magdala. Judas held her by the waist, another her feet.”

Antipas drew a hand across his face. “It is impossible,” he muttered.

“Not impossible at all. I saw her as plainly as I see you. The man next to me said that the Rabbi had cast from her seven devils. Moreover, Johanna was there⁠—yes, yes, the wife of Khuza, your steward; it was she, I remember now, who had her by the feet. And there were others that I recognized, and others that the man next to me pointed out: Zabdia, a well-to-do fisherman whom I have seen time and again, and with him his sons James and John, and Salomè his wife. Then, too, there were Simon Barjona and Andrew his brother. Simon had his wife with him, his children, and his mother-in-law. The man next to me said that the Rabbi called James and John the Sons of Thunder, and Simon a stone. There was Mathias the tax-gatherer, Philip of Bethsaïda, Joseph Barsaba, Mary Clopas, Susannah, Nathaniel of Cana, Thomas, Thaddeus, Aristian the customhouse officer, Ruth the tax-gatherer’s wife, mechanics from Scythopolis, and Scribes from Jerusalem.”

The fingers of Antipas’ hand glittered with jewels. He played with them nervously. The sky seemed immeasurably distant. For some little time it had been hesitating between different shades of blue, but now it chose a fathomless indigo; Night unloosed her draperies, and, with the prodigality of a queen who reigns only when she falls, flung out upon them uncounted stars.

Pahul continued: “And many of them seemed to be at odds with each other. They wrangled so that often I could not distinguish a word. Some of them left the synagogue. The Rabbi himself must have been vexed, for in a lull I heard him say to those who were nearest, ‘Will you also go away?’ Judas came in at that moment, and he turned to him: ‘Have I not chosen twelve, and is not one of you a devil?’ Judas came forward at once and protested. I could see he was in earnest, and meant what he said. The man next told me that he was devoted to the Rabbi. Then Simon Barjona, in answer to his question, called out, ‘To whom should we go? Thou art Christ, the Son of God.’ ”

Antipas had ceased to listen. At the mention of the Messiah the dream of Israel had returned, and with it the pageants of its faith unrolled.

Behind the confines of history, in the naked desert he saw a bedouin, austere and grandiose, preparing the tenets of a nation’s creed; in the remoter past a shadow in which there was lightning, then the splendor of that first dawn where the future opened like a book, and in the grammar of the Eternal the promise of an age of gold.

Through the echo of succeeding generations came the rumor of that initial impulse which drew the world in its flight. The bedouin had put the desert behind him, and stared at another. Where the sand had been was the sea. As he passed, the land leapt into life. There were tents and passions, clans not men, an aggregate of forces in which the unit disappeared. For chieftain there was Might; and above, the subjects of impersonal verbs, the Elohim from whom the thunder came, the rain, light and darkness, death and birth, dream too, and nightmare as well. The clans migrated. Goshen called. In its heart Chaldaea spoke. The Elohim vanished, and there was El, the one great god, and Isra‑el, the great god’s elect. From heights that lost themselves in immensity the ineffable name, incommunicable and never to be pronounced, was seared by forked flames on a tablet of stone. A nation learned that El was Jehovah, that they were in his charge, that he was omnipotent, and that the world was theirs.

They had a law, a covenant, a future, and a god; and as they passed into the lands of the well-beloved, leaving tombs and altars to mark their passage, they had battle-cries that frightened and hymns that exalted the heart. Above were the jealous eyes of Jehovah, and beyond was the resplendent tomorrow. They ravaged the land like hailstones. They had the whirlwind for ally; the moon was their servant; and to aid them the sun stood still. The terror of Sinai gleamed from their breastplates; men could not see their faces and live. They encroached and conquered. They had a home, they made a capitol, and there on a rockbound hill Antipas saw David founding a line of kings, and Solomon the city of god.

It was in their loins the Messiah was; in them the apex of a nation’s prosperity; in them glory at its apogee. And across that tableau of might, of splendor, and of submission for one second flitted the silhouette of that dainty princess of Utopia, the Queen of Sheba, bringing riddles, romance, and riches to the wise young king.

She must have been very beautiful, Antipas with melancholy retrospection reflected; and he fancied her more luminous than the twelve signs of the zodiac, lounging nonchalantly in a palanquin that a white elephant with swaying tail balanced on his painted back. And even as she returned, with a child perhaps, to the griffons of the fabulous Yemen whence she came, Antipas noted a speck on the horizon that grew from minim into mountain, and obscured the entire sky. He saw the empire split in twain, and in the twin halves that formed the perfect whole, a concussion of armies, brothers appealing against their kin, the flight of the Ideal.

Unsummoned before him paraded the regicides, convulsions, and anarchies that deified Hatred until Vengeance incarnate talked Assyrian, and Nebuchadnezzar loomed above the desert beyond. His statue filled the perspective. With one broad hand he overturned Jerusalem; with another he swept a nation into captivity, leaving in derision a pygmy for King of Solitude behind, and, blowing the Jews into Babylon, there retained them until it occurred to Cyrus to change the Euphrates’ course.

By the light of that legend Antipas saw an immense hall, illuminated by the seven branches of countless candelabra, and filled with revellers celebrating a monarch’s feast. Beyond, through retreating columns, were cyclopean arches and towers whose summits were lost in clouds that the lightning rent. At the royal table sat Belsarazzur, laughing mightily at the enterprise of the Persian king; about him were the grandees of his court, the flower of his concubines; at his side were the sacred vases filled with wine. He raised one to his lips, and there on the frieze before him leapt out the flaming letters of his doom, while to the trumpetings of heralds Cyrus and his army beat down the city’s gates.

It passed, and Antipas saw Jerusalem repeopled, the Temple rebuilt, peace after exile, the joy of bondage unloosed. For a moment it lasted⁠—a century or two at most; and after Alexander, in chasing kings hither and thither, had passed with his huntsmen that way, Isis and Osiris beckoned, and the descendants of the bedouin belonged to Goshen again, and so remained until Syria took them, lost them, reconquered them, and might have done with them utterly had not Juda Maccabaeus flaunted his banner, and the Roman eagles pounced upon their prey. Once more the Temple was rebuilt, superber than ever, and from the throne of David, Antipas saw the upstart that was his father rule Judaea.

With him the panorama and the kaleidoscope of its details abruptly ceased. But through it all the voices of the prophets had rung more insistently with each defeat. The covenant in the wilderness was unforgetable; in the chained links of slavery they saw the steps of a throne, the triumph of truth over error, peace over war, Israel pontiff and shepherd of the nations of the world.

The expectation of a liberator who should free the bonds of a people and definitively recreate the land of the elect possessed them utterly; his advent had been constantly awaited, obstinately proclaimed; the faith in him was unshakeable. Palestine was filled with believers praying the Eternal not to let them die before the promise was fulfilled; the atmosphere itself was charged with expectation.

And as the visions rushed through his mind, Antipas fell to wondering whether that covenant was as meaningless as he had thought, or whether by any chance this rabbi who had been arguing at Capharnahum could be the usher of Israel’s hope. If he were, then indeed he might say goodbye to his tetrarchy, to his dream of a kingdom as well.

“Yes,” Pahul repeated, “the Son of God!”

Antipas had been so far away that now he started as one does whom the touch of a hand awakes. To recover himself he leaned over and plunged his face in the jar. The wine brought him courage.

He must be suppressed, he decided.

“But,” the butler continued, “I⁠—”

The frontal of the palace was set with lights. The parasols of the palms had turned from green to black, the stars seemed remoter, the sky more dark. From beyond came the call and answer of the sentinels.

Antipas stood up. A fringe of his tunic was detained by a rivet of the bench on which he had sat; he stooped to loose it; something moist touched his fingers, and as he moved to the palace the black-faced ape sprang at his side and nibbled at the jewels on his hand.

V

The house of Simon Barlevi was gray, and in shape an oblong. It had a flat roof laid with a plaster of lime, about which was a fretwork of open tiles. Beneath, for doorway, was a recess, surmounted by an arch and covered with a layer of mud. On each side was a room.

In the recess, sheltered from the sun and visited by the breeze, Simon stood. His garments were white, and where they were not they had been neatly chalked. On the border of his skirt and sleeves were the regulation fringes, and on his forehead and about his left arm the phylacteries which Pharisees affect. He was not pleasant to the eye, but he was virtuous and a strict observer of the Law.

In the room at his left were mats and painted stools, set in the manner customary when guests are awaited. For on that day Simon Barlevi was to give a little feast, to which he had bidden his friends and also a rabbi whom he had listened to in the synagogue, and with whose ideas he did not at all agree. Save for the mats and stools, and a lamp of red clay, the room was bare.

In front of the house was a bit of ground enclosed by a hedge of stones; and now as Simon stood in the recess a guest appeared.

“Reulah!” he exclaimed, “the Lord be with you.”

And Reulah answering, as etiquette required, “Unto you be peace, and to your house be peace, and unto all you have be peace,” the two friends clasped hands raised them as though to kiss them, then each withdrawing kissed his own hand, and struck it on his forehead.

Singularly enough, host and guest looked much alike. Simon had the appearance of one conscious of and strong in his own rectitude, while Reulah seemed humbler and more effaced. Otherwise there was not a pin to choose between them.

To Simon’s face had come an expression of perplexity in which there was zeal.

“I was thinking, Reulah,” he announced, “of the rabbi who is to break bread with us today. His teaching does not comfort me.”

Reulah was unlatching his shoes. “Nor me,” he interjected.

“On questions of purity and impurity he seems unscrupulously negligent. I have heard that he is a glutton and a wine-bibber. I have heard that he despises the washing of the hands.”

“Whoso does,” Reulah threw back, “will be rooted out of the world.”

Simon nodded; a smile of protracted amiability hovered in the corners of his mouth. For a moment he played with his beard.

“I think,” he added, “that he will find here food in plenty, and counsel as well.”

Reulah closed his eyes benignly, and Simon, in a falsetto which he affected when he desired to impress, continued in gentle menace:

“But I have certain questions to put to him. Whether water from an unclean vessel defiles that which is clean. Whether the flesh of a dead body alone defiles, or the skin and bones as well. I want to see how he will answer that. Then I may ask his opinion on points of the ritual. Should the incense be lighted before the high-priest appears or as he does so. Is or is not the Sabbath broken by the killing of the Paschal lamb? Why is it lawful to take tithe of corn and wine and oil, and not of anise, cummin, and peppers? In swearing by the Temple, should one not first swear by the gold on the Temple? and in swearing by the altar, should one or should one not first swear by the sacrifices on it? These things, since he preaches, he must know. If he does not⁠—”

And Simon looked at his friend as who should say: What is there wanting in me?

“If I may be taught another duty I will observe it,” said Reulah, sweetly.

At this evidence of meekness Simon grunted. Two other guests were approaching. On the edges of their tallîth were tassels made of four threads which had been drawn through an eyelet and doubled to make eight. Seven of these threads were of equal length, but the eighth was longer, and, twisted into five knots, represented the five books of the Law. The right hand on the left breast, they saluted their host, and placing in turn a hand under his beard, they kissed it. A buzz of inquiries followed, interrupted by the coming and embracing of newer guests, the unloosing of sandals, the washing of feet.

As they assembled, one drew Simon aside and whispered importantly. Simon’s eyes dilated, astonishment lifted him, visibly, like a lash, and his hands trembled above his head.

“Have you heard,” he exclaimed to the others⁠—“have you heard that the Nazarene whom I invited here, and who pretends to be a prophet, allowed his followers to pluck corn on the Sabbath, to thresh it even, and defended and approved their violation of the Law? Have you heard it? Is it true?”

Reulah quaked as one stricken by palsy. “On the Sabbath!” he moaned. “On the Sabbath! Why, I would not send a message on Wednesday, lest perchance it should be delivered on the Sabbath day. Surely it cannot be.”

But on that point the others were certain. They were all aware of the scandal; one had been an eyewitness, another had heard the Nazarene assert that he was “Lord of the Day.”

“This is monstrous!” Simon cried.

“He declared,” the eyewitness continued, “that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

“It is monstrous!” Simon repeated. “The command to do no manner of work is absolute and emphatic. The killing of a flea on the Sabbath is as heinous as the butchering of a bullock. The preservation of life itself is inhibited. Moses had the son of Shelomith stoned to death for gathering sticks on it. Shammai occupied six days of the week in thinking how he could best observe it. It is unlawful to wear a false tooth on the Sabbath, and if a toothache it is unlawful to rinse the mouth with vinegar.”

“Yet,” objected Reulah, “it is lawful to hold the vinegar in the mouth provided you swallow it afterward.”

No one paid any attention to him. Simon’s indignation increased. Of the thirty-nine Abhôth he quoted twelve; he showed that the Nazarene had violated each one of these prohibitions against labor; he showed, too, that by his subsequent speech and bearing he had practically scoffed at the Toldôth, at the synagogue which had drawn it up as well.

“If the Sadducees were not in power, Jerusalem should hear of this. As it is⁠—”

Whatever resolution he may have intended to express remained unuttered. A silence fell upon his lips; his guests drew back. At the step stood the Nazarene, behind him his treasurer, Judas of Kerioth. For a second only Jesus hesitated. He stooped, undid his shoes, and moved to where Simon stood. The latter bowed constrainedly.

“Master,” he said, “we awaited you.”

At this his friends retreated into the little room. Reulah reached the middle seat of the central mat first and held it, his nostrils quivering at the envy of the others.

Preceded by their host, Jesus and Judas found places near together, and, the usual ablutions performed, the customary prayers recited, lay, the upper part of the body supported by the left arm, the head raised, the limbs outstretched.

On the stools were dishes of stewed lentils, milk, and cakes of mashed locusts. Reulah ate with the tips of his lips, greedily, like a goat. Judas, too, ate with an air of hunger. The Master broke bread absently, his thoughts on other things. These thoughts Simon interrupted.

“Rabbi”⁠—and to his wide mouth came the sneer of one propounding a riddle already solved⁠—“it is not meet, is it, to thresh on the Sabbath day? Yet since you permit your followers to do so, how are we to distinguish between what is lawful and what is not?”

The Master raised his eyes. The dawn was in them, high noon as well.

“Show yourself a tried money-changer. Choose that which is good metal, reject that which is bad.”

Simon blinked as at a sudden light.

“But,” he persisted, “in seeking to observe the Law, there is not a jot or tittle in it that can be rejected.”

With an acquiescence that was both vague and melancholy, Jesus looked the Pharisee in the face.

“Seek those things that are great, and little things will be added unto you⁠—”

He would have said more, perhaps, but a woman who had entered from the recess approached circuitously, and kneeling beside him let a tear, long as a pearl, fall upon his unsandalled feet.

Judas’ heart bounded; he glared at her, his eyes dilating like a leopard preparing to spring. At once he was back in the circus, gazing into the perils and the splendors of a woman’s face, telling himself with reiterated insistence that to hold her to him would be the birthday of his life; and here, within reach of his hand, was she whom in the din of the chariots he had recognized as the one woman in all the world, and who for one moment the day before had lain unconscious in his arms.

Reulah sat motionless, his mouth agape, a finger extended. “The paramour of Pandera,” he stammered at last; and lowering his eyes, he looked at her covetously from beneath the lids.

Simon, too, sat motionless. There was rage in his expression, hate even⁠—that hatred which the beautiful excites in the base. Time and again he had seen her; she was a byword with him; from the height of her residence she looked down on his mean gray walls; her luxury had been an insult to his abstinence; and with that zest which a small nature takes in the humiliation of its superior, he determined, in spite of her manifest abjection, to humiliate her still more.

“If this man,” he confided to his neighbor, “has in him anything of that which goes to the making of a prophet, he will divine what manner of woman she is. If he does not, I will denounce them both.” And nourishing his hate he waited yet a while.

The Master seemed depressed. The great secret which in all the world he alone possessed may have weighed with him. But he turned to Mary and looked at her. As he looked she bent yet lower. The marvel of her hair was unconfined; it fell about her in tangling streams of gold and flame, while on his feet there fell from her tears such as no woman ever shed before. In the era of primitive hospitality the daughters of kings had not disdained to unlatch the sandals of their fathers’ guests; but now, at the feet of Mercy, for the first time Repentance knelt. And still the tears continued, unstanched and undetained. Grief, something keener still perhaps, had claimed her as its own. She bent lower. Then Misery looked up at Compassion.

The Master stretched his hand. For a moment it rested on her head. She quivered and clutched at her throat; and as he withdrew that hand, in which all panaceas were, from her gown she took a little box, opened it, and dropping the contents where the tears had fallen, with a sudden movement she caught her hair and poured its lava on his feet.

An aroma of beckoning oases filled the small room, passed into the recess, mounted to the roof, pervaded and penetrated it, and escaped to the sky above.

And still she wept. Judas no longer saw her tears, he heard them. They fell swiftly one after another, like the ripple of the rain. A sob broke from her, but in it was something which foretokened peace, the sob which comes to those who have conceived a despairing hope, and suddenly intercept its fulfilment. Her hands trembled; the little box fell from her and broke. The noise it made exorcised the silence.

The Master turned to his host. “I have a word to say to you.”

Simon stroked his beard and bowed.

“There was once a man who had two debtors. One owed him five hundred pence, the other fifty. Both were poor, and because of their poverty the debt of each he forgave.”

For an instant Jesus paused and seemed to muse; then, with that indulgence which was to illuminate the world, “Tell me, Simon,” he inquired, “which was the more grateful?”

Simon assumed an air of perplexity, and glanced cunningly from one guest to another. Presently he laughed outright.

“Why, the one who owed the most, of course.”

Reulah suppressed a giggle. By the expression of the others it was patent that to them also the jest appealed. Only Judas did not seem to have heard; he sat bolt upright, fumbling Mary with his violent eyes.

The Master made a gesture of assent, and turned to where Mary crouched. She was staring at him with that look which the magnetized share with animals.

“You see her?”

Straightening himself, he leaned on his elbow and scrutinized his host.

“Simon, I am your guest. When I entered here there was no kiss to greet me, there was no oil for my head, no water for my feet. But this woman whom you despise has not ceased to embrace them. She has washed them with her tears, anointed them with nard, and dried them with her hair. Her sins, it may be, are many, but, Simon, they are forgiven⁠—”

Simon, Reulah, the others, muttered querulously. To forgive sins was indeed an attribute which no one, save the Eternal, could arrogate to himself.

“⁠—for she has loved much.”

And turning again to Mary, who still crouched at his side, he added:

“Your sins are forgiven. Go now, and in peace.”

But the fierce surprise of the Pharisees was not to be shocked into silence. Reulah showed his teeth; they were pointed and treacherous as a jackal’s. Simon loudly asserted disapproval and wonder too.

“I am amazed⁠—” he began.

The Master checked him:

“The beginning of truth is amazement. Wonder, then, at what you see; for he that wonders shall reign, and he that reigns shall rest.”

The music of his voice heightened the beauty of the speech. On Mary it fell and rested as had the touch of his hand.

“Messiah, my Lord!” she cried. “In your breast is the future, in your heart the confidence of God. Let me but tell you. There are those that live whose lives are passed; the tombs do not hold all of those that are dead. I was dead; you brought me to life. I had no conscience; you gave me one, for I was dead,” she insisted. “And yet,” she added, with a little moan, so human, so sincere, that it might have stirred a Caesar, let alone a Christ, “not wholly dead. No, no, dear Lord, not wholly dead.”

Again her tears gushed forth, profuser and more abundant than before; her frail body shook with sobs, her fingers intertwined.

“Not wholly dead,” she kept repeating. “No, no, not wholly dead.”

Jesus touched his treasurer.

“She is not herself. Lead her away; see her to her home.” And that the others might hear, and profit as well, he added, in a higher key, “Deference to a woman is always due.”

And to those words, which were to found chivalry and banish the boor, Judas led Mary from the room.

VI

“Are you better?”

The road that skirted the lake had branched to the left, and there an easy ascent led to the hill beyond. On both sides were carpets of flowers and of green, and slender larches that held their arms and hid the sky. Above, an eagle circled, and on the lake a sail flapped idly.

“Yes, I am better,” Mary answered.

From her eyes the perils had passed, but the splendors remained, accentuated now by vistas visible only to herself. The antimony, too, with which she darkened them had gone, and with it the alkanet she had used on her cheeks. Her dress was olive, and, contrary to custom, her head uncovered.

“You are not strong, perhaps?”

As Judas spoke, he thought of the episode in the synagogue, and wished her again unconscious in his arms.

“I have been so weak,” she murmured. And after a moment she added: “I am tired; let me sit awhile.”

The carpet of flowers and of green invited, and presently Judas dropped at her side. About his waist a linen girdle had been wound many times; from it a bag of lynx-skin hung. The white garments, the ample turban that he wore, were those of ordinary life, but in his bearing was just that evanescent charm which now and then the Oriental possesses⁠—the subtlety that subjugates and does not last.

“But you must be strong; we need your strength.”

Mary turned to him wonderingly.

“Yes,” he repeated, “we need your strength. Johanna has joined us, as you know. Susannah too. They do what they can; but we need others⁠—we need you.”

“Do you mean⁠—”

Something had tapped at her heart, something which was both joy and dread, and she hesitated, fearing that the possibility which Judas suggested was unreal, that she had not heard his words aright.

“Do you mean that he would let me?”

“He would love you for it. But then he loves everyone, yet best, I think, his enemies.”

“They need it most,” Mary answered; but her thoughts had wandered.

“And I,” Judas added⁠—“I loved you long ago.”

Then he too hesitated, as though uncertain what next to say, and glanced at her covertly. She was looking across the lake, over the country of the Gadarenes, beyond even that, perhaps, into some infinite veiled to him.

“I remember,” he continued, tentatively, “it was there at Tiberias I saw you first. You were entering the palace. I waited. The sentries ordered me off; one threw a stone. I went to where the garden is; I thought you might be among the flowers. The wall was so high I could not see. The guards drove me away. I ran up the hill through the white and red terraces of the grape. From there I could see the gardens, the elephants with their ears painted, and the oxen with the twisted horns. The wind sung about me like a flute; the sky was a tent of different hues. Something within me had sprung into life. It was love, I knew. It had come before, yes, often, but never as then. For,” he added, and the gleam of his eyes was as a fanfare to the thought he was about to express, “love returns to the heart as the leaf returns to the tree.”

Mary looked at him vacantly. “What was he saying?” she wondered. From a sea of grief she seemed to be passing onto an archipelago of dream.

“The next day I loitered in the neighborhood of the palace. You did not appear. Toward evening I questioned a gardener. He said your name was Mary, but he would tell me nothing else. On the morrow was the circus. I made sure you would be there⁠—with the tetrarch, I thought; and, that I might be near the tribune, before the sun had set I was at the circus gate. There were others that came and waited, but I was first. I remember that night as never any since. I lay outstretched, and watched the moon; your face was in it: it was a dream, of course. Yes, the night passed quickly, but the morning lagged. When the gate was open, I sprang like a zemer from tier to tier until I reached the tribune. There, close by, I sat and waited. At last you came, and with you new perfumes and poisons. Did you feel my eyes? they must have burned into you. But no, you gave no heed to me. They told me afterward that Scarlet won three times. I did not know. I saw but you. Once merely an abyss in which lightning was.

“Before the last race was done I got down and tried to be near the exit through which I knew you must pass. The guards would not let me. The next day I made friends with a sentry. He told me that you were Mirjam of Magdala; that Tiberius wished you at Rome, and that you had gone with Antipas to his citadel. In the wine-shops that night men slunk from me afraid. A week followed of which I knew nothing, then chance disentangled its threads. I found myself in a crowd at the base of a hill; a prophet was preaching. I had heard prophets before; they were as torches in the night: he was the Day. I listened and forgot you. He called me; I followed. Until Sunday I had not thought of you again. But when you appeared in the synagogue I started; and when you fainted, when I held you in my arms and your eyes opened as flowers do, I looked into them and it all returned. Mary, kiss me and kill me, but kiss me first.”

“Yes, he is the Day.”

Of the entire speech she had heard but that. It had entered perhaps into thoughts of her own with which it was in unison, and she repeated the phrase mechanically, as a child might do. But now as he ceased to speak, perplexed, annoyed too at the inappositeness of her reply, she came back from the infinite in which she had roamed, and for a moment both were silent.

At the turning of the road a man appeared. At the sight of Judas he halted, then called him excitedly by name.

“It is Mathias,” Judas muttered, and got to his feet. The man hurried to them. He was broad of shoulder and of girth, the jaw lank and earnest. His eyes were small, and the lids twitched nervously. He was out of breath, and his garments were dust-covered.

“Where is the Master?” he asked; and at once, without waiting a reply, he added: “I have just seen Johanna. Her husband told her that the tetrarch is seeking him; he thinks him John, and would do him harm. We must go from here.”

Judas assented. “Yes, we must all go. Mary, it may be a penance, but it is his will.”

Mathias gazed inquiringly at them both.

“It is his will,” Judas repeated, authoritatively.

Mary turned away and caught her forehead in her hands. “If this is a penance,” she murmured, “what then are his rewards?”

VII

On the floor of a little room Mary lay, her face to the ground. In her ears was the hideousness of a threat that had fastened on her abruptly like a cheetah in the dark. From below came the sound of banqueting. Beyond was the Bitter Sea, the stars dancing in its ripples; and there in the shadow of the evergreens was the hut in which that Sephôrah lived to whom long ago Martha had forbidden her to speak. Through the lattice came the scent of olive-trees, and with it the irresistible breath of spring.

In its caress the threat which had made her its own presently was lifted, and mingling with other things fused into them. The kaleidoscope of time and events which visits those that drown possessed her, and for a second Mary relived a year.

There had been the sudden flight from Magdala, the first days with the Master, the gorges of the Jordan, the journey to the coast, the glittering green scales of that hydra the sea. Then the loiterings on the banks of the sacred Leontes, the journey back to Galilee, the momentary halt at Magdala, the sail past Bethsaïda, Capharnahum, Chorazin, the fording of the river, the trip to Caesarea Philippi, the snow and gold of Hermon, the visit to Gennesareth, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and the return to Bethany.

Her recollections intercrossed, scenes that were trivial ousted others that were grave; the purple limpets of Sidon, the shrine of Ashtaroth, the invective at Bethsaïda, the transfiguration on the mountain height, the cure of lepers, and the presence that coerced. Yet through them all certain things remained immutable, and of these, primarily her contact with the Christ.

To her, Jesus was not the Son of man alone, he was the light of this world, the usher of the next. When he spoke, there came to her a sense of frightened joy so acute that the hypostatical union which left even the disciples perplexed was by her realized and understood. She had the faith of a little child. And on the hills and through the intervales over which they journeyed, in the glare of the eager sun or beneath the wattled boughs, the emanations of the Divine filled her with transports so contagious that they affected even Thomas, who was skeptical by birth; and when, after the descent from Hermon, two or three of the disciples mused together over the spectacle which they had seen, the rhyme of her lips parted ineffably. She too had seen him aureoled with the sun, dazzling as the snowfields on the heights. To her it was ever in that aspect he appeared, with a radiance so intense even that there had been moments in which she had veiled her eyes as from a light that only eagles could support. To her, marvels were as natural as the escape of night. At Beth-Seân she had heard him speak to dumb beasts, and never doubted but that they answered him. At Dan she had seen a short-eared hare rush to him for refuge, and follow him afterwards as a dog might do. At Kinnereth he had called to a lark that from a treetop was pouring its heart out to the morning, and the lark had fluttered down and nestled in his hand. At Gadara he had tamed wild doves, and a swarm of bees had stopped and glistened in his hair. At Caesarea, when he began to speak, the thrushes that had been singing ceased; and when the parables were delivered, began anew, louder, more jubilant than before, and continued to sing until he blessed them, when they mounted in one long ascending line straight to the zenith above. At his approach the little gold-bellied fish of the Leontes had leaped from the stream. In the suburbs of Sidon the jackals had fawned at his feet. The underbrush had parted to let him pass, and where he passed white roses came and the tenderness of anemones. At times he seemed to her immaterial as a shadow in a dream, at others appalling as the desert; and once when, in prayer, she entered with him into the intimacy of the infinite, she caught the shiver of an invisible harp whose notes seemed to fall from the night. And as she journeyed, her love expanded with the horizon. She loved with a love no woman’s heart has transcended. In its prodigality and ascending gammes there was place for nothing save the Ideal.

The little band meanwhile lived as strangers on earth. Out of her abundant means their simple wants were supplied. She was less a burden than a sustenance; her faith bridged many a doubtful hour; and when, as often occurred, they disputed among themselves concerning their future rank and precedence, Mary dreamed of a paradise more pure.

One evening, near the rushes of Lake Phiala, where the Jordan leaps anew to the light, a Greek merchant who had refused them shelter at Seleucia ambled that way on an ass, and would have stopped, perhaps, but one of the band scoffed him, and he rode on, and disappeared in the haze of the hills.

Unobserved, the Master had seen and heard; presently he called them to where he stood.

“Do not think,” he admonished⁠—“do not think that because you imitate the Pharisees you are perfecting your lives. They fast, they pray, they weep, and they mortify the flesh; but to them one thing is impossible, charity to the failings of others. Whoso then shall come to you, be he friend or foe, penitent or thief, receive him kindly. Aid the helpless, console the unfortunate, forgive your enemy, and forget yourselves⁠—that is charity. Without it the kingdom of heaven is lost to you. There, there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female; nor can it come to you until the garment of shame is trampled under foot, until two are as one, and the body which is without is as the soul within.”

Thereat, with a gesture of exquisite indulgence, he turned and left them to the stars.

Mary had heard, and in the palingenesis disclosed she saw space wrapped in a luminous atmosphere, such as she fancied lay behind the sun. There, instead of the thrones and diadems of the elect, was an immutable realm in which there was neither death nor life, clear ether merely, charged with beatitudes. And so, when the disciples disputed among themselves, Mary dreamed of diaphanous hours and immaculate days that knew no night, and in this wise lived until from the terrace of Jerusalem’s Temple the Master bade her return to Bethany and wait him there.

Obedience to that command was bitter to her. She did not murmur, however. “Rabboni,” she cried, “let me but do your will on earth, and afterwards save me or destroy me as your pleasure is.”

With that she had gone to her sister’s house, and to the bewildered Martha poured out her heart anew. There could be no question of forgiveness now, of penitence even; her sins, such as they were, had been remitted by one to whom pardon was an attribute. And this doubtless Martha understood, for she took her in her arms unreproachfully and mingled her tears with hers.

Where all is marvel the marvellous disappears. To the accounts which Mary gave of her journeys with the little band that followed the Master, Martha listened with an attention which nothing could distract. With her she sailed on the lovely lake; with her she visited cities smothering in the scent of cassia and of sugarcane; with her she passed through glens where panthers prowled, and bandits crueller than they. With her eyes she saw the listening multitudes, with her ears she heard again the words of divine forgiveness; and, the lulab and the citron in her hands, she assisted at the Feast of the Tabernacles, and watched the vain attempt to charm the recalcitrant Temple and captivate the inimical town.

For in Jerusalem, in place of the reassuring confidence of peasants, was the irritable incredulity of priests; instead of meadows, courts. Besides, was not this prophet from Galilee, and what good had ever come from there? Then, too, he was not an authorized teacher. He belonged to no school. The followers of Hillel, the disciples of Shammai, did not recognize him. He was merely a fractious Nazarene trained in the shop of a carpenter; one who, by repeating that it was easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, flattered basely the mob of mendicants that surrounded him. The rabble admired, but the clergy stood aloof. When he was not ignored he was disdained. Save the pleb, no one listened.

Presently he spoke louder. Into the grave music of the Syro-Chaldaic tongue he put the mutterings of thunder. Where he had preached, he upbraided; in place of exquisite parables came sonorous threats. He blessed but rarely, sometimes he cursed. That mosaic, the Law, he treated like a cobweb; and to the arrogant clergy a rumor filtered that this vagabond, who had not where to lay his head, declared his ability to destroy the Temple, and to rebuild it, in three days, anew.

A rumor such as that was incredible. Inquiries were made. The rumor was substantiated. It was learned that he healed the sick, cured the blind; that he was in league, perhaps, with the Pharisees.

The Sanhedrim took counsel. They were Sadducees every one. The Pharisees were their hereditary foes. Both were militant, directing men and things as best they could. The Sadducees held strictly to the letter of the Law; the Pharisees held to the Law, and to tradition as well. But the Sadducees were in power, the Pharisees were not. The former endeavored in every way to maintain their authority over the people; and against that authority, against the aristocracy, the priesthood, and the accomplices of foreign dominion, the Pharisees ceaselessly excited the mob. In their inability to overthrow the pontificate, they undermined it. With microscopic attention they examined and criticised every act of the clergy; and, with a view of showing the incompetence of the priests, they affected rigid theories in regard to ritualistic points. Every detail of the ceremonial office was watched by them with eyes that were never pleased. They asserted that the rolls of the Law from which the priests read the Pentateuch were made of impure matter, and, having handled them, the priests had become impure as well. The manner in which the incense was made and offered, the minutiae governing the sacrifices, the legality of hierarchal decisions⁠—on each and every possible subject they exerted themselves to show the unworthiness of the officiants, insinuating even that the names of the fathers of many of the priests were not inscribed at Zipporim in the archives of Jeshana. As a consequence, many of those whose rights the Pharisees affected to uphold saw in the hierarchy little more than a body of men unworthy to approach the altar, a group of Herodians who in religion lacked every requisite for the service of God, and who in public and in private were bankrupts in patriotism, morality, and shame.

The possibility, therefore, that this fractious demagogue had found favor with the Pharisees was grave. He was becoming a force. He threatened many a prerogative. Moreover, Jerusalem had had enough of agitators. People were drawn by their promises into the solitudes, and there incited to revolt. Rome did not look upon these things leniently. If they continued, Tiberius was quite capable of putting Judaea in a yoke which it would not be easy to carry. Clearly the Nazarene was seditious, and as such to be abolished. The difficulty was to abolish him and yet conciliate the mob.

It was then that the Sanhedrim took counsel. As a result, and with the hope of entrapping him into some blasphemous utterance on which a charge would lie, they sent meek-eyed Scribes to question him concerning the authority that he claimed. He routed the meek-eyed Scribes. Then, fancying that he might be seduced into some expression which could be construed as treason, they sent young and earnest men to learn from him their duty to Rome. The young and earnest men returned crestfallen and abashed.

The elders, nonplussed, debated. A levite suspected that the casuistry and marvellous cures of the Nazarene must be due to a knowledge of the incommunicable name, Shemhammephorash, seared on stone in the thunders of Sinai, and which to utter was to summon life or beckon death. Another had heard that while in Galilee he was believed to be in league with Baal-Zebub, Lord of Flies.

To this gossip no attention was paid. Annas, merely⁠—the old high-priest, father-in-law of Caiaphas, who officiated in his stead⁠—laughed to himself. There was no such stone, there was no such god. Another idea had been welcomed. A festival was in progress; there was gayety in the neighborhood, drinking too; and as over a million of pilgrims were herded together, now and then an offence occurred. The previous night, for instance, a woman had been arrested for illicit commerce.

Annas tapped on his chin. He had the pompous air of a chameleon, the same long, thin lips, the large, protruding eyes.

“Take her before the Galilean,” he said. “He claims to be a rabbi; he must know the Law. If he acquit her, it is heresy, and for that a charge will lie. Does he condemn her he is at our mercy, for he will have alienated the mob.”

A smile of perfect understanding passed like a vagrant breeze across the faces of the elders, and the levites were ordered to lead the prisoner to the Christ.

They found him in the Woman’s Court. From a lateral chamber a priest, unfit for other than menial services because of a carbuncle on his lip, dropped the wood he was sorting for the altar and gazed curiously at the advancing throng, in which the prisoner was.

She must have been very fair, but now her features were distorted with anguish, veiled with shame. The blue robe she wore was torn, and a sleeve rent to the shoulder disclosed a bare white arm. She was a wife, a mother too. Her name was Ahulah; her husband was a shoemaker. At the Gannath Gate, where her home was, were two little children. She worshipped them, and her husband she adored. Some hallucination, a tremor of the flesh, the flush of wine, and there, circled by a leering crowd, she crouched, her life disgraced, irrecoverable forevermore.

The charge was made, the usual question propounded. The Master had glanced at her but once. He seemed to be looking afar, beyond the Temple and its terraces, beyond the horizon itself. But the accusers were impatient. He bent forward and with a finger wrote on the ground. The letters were illegible, perhaps, yet the symbol of obliteration was in that dust which the morrow would disperse. Again he wrote, but the charge was repeated, louder, more impatiently than before.

Jesus straightened himself. With the weary indulgence of one to whom hearts are as books, he looked about him, then to the dome above.

“Whoever is without sin among you,” he declared, “may cast the first stone.”

When he looked again the crowd had slunk away. Only Ahulah remained, her head bowed on her bare white arm. From the lateral chamber the priest still peered, the carbuncle glistening on his lip.

“Did none condemn you?” the Master asked.

And as she sobbed merely, he added: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”

To the elders this was very discomforting. They had failed to unmask him as a traitor to God, to Rome even, or yet as a demagogue defying the Law. They did not care to question again. He had worsted them three times. Nor could they without due cause arrest him, for there were the Pharisees. Besides, a religious trial was full of risk, and the cooperation of the procurator not readily to be relied on. It was that cooperation they needed most, for with it such feeling as might be aroused would fall on Rome and not on them. As for Pilate, he could put a sword in front of what he said.

In their enforced inaction they got behind that wall of prejudice where they and their kin feel most secure, and there waited, prepared at the first opportunity to invoke the laws of their ancestors, laws so cumbersome and complex that the Romans, accustomed to the clearest pandects, had laughed and left them, erasing only the right to kill.

At last chance smiled. Into Jerusalem a rumor filtered that the Nazarene they hated so had raised the dead, that the suburbs hailed him as the Messiah, and that he proclaimed himself the Son of God. At once the Sanhedrim reassembled. A political deliverer they might have welcomed, but in a Messiah they had little faith. The very fact of his Messiahship constituted him a claimant to the Jewish throne, and as such a pretender with whom Pilate could deal. Moreover⁠—and here was the point⁠—to claim divinity was to attack the unity of God. Of impious blasphemy there was no higher form.

It were better, Annas suggested, that a man should die than that a nation should perish⁠—a truism, surely, not to be gainsaid.

That night it was decided that Jesus and Judaism could not live together; a price was placed upon his head, and to the blare of four hundred trumpets excommunication was pronounced.

Of all of these incidents save the last Mary had been necessarily aware. In company with Johanna, the wife of Herod’s steward, Mary, wife of Clopas, and Salomè, mother of Zebedee’s children, she had heard him reiterate the burning words of Jeremiah, and seen him purge the Temple of its traffickers; she had heard, too, the esoteric proclamation, “Before Abraham was, I am;” and she had seen him lash the Sadducees with invective. She had been present when a letter was brought from Abgar Uchomo, King of Edessa, to Jesus, “the good Redeemer,” in which the potentate prayed the prophet to come and heal him of a sickness which he had, offering him a refuge from the Jews, and quaintly setting forth the writer’s belief that Jesus was God or else His Son. She had been present, also, when the charge was made against Ahulah, and had comforted that unfortunate in womanly ways. “Surely,” she had said, “if the Master who does not love you can forgive, how much more readily must your husband who does!” Whereupon Ahulah had become her slave, tending her thereafter with almost bestial devotion.

These episodes, one after another, she related to Martha; to Eleazer, her brother; to Simon, Martha’s husband; to anyone that chanced that way. For it was then that the Master had bade her go to Bethany. For a little space he too had forsaken Jerusalem. Now and then with some of his followers he would venture in the neighborhood, yet only to be off again through the scorched hollows of the Ghôr before the sun was up.

These things it was that paraded before her as she lay on the floor of the little room, felled by the hideousness of a threat that had sprung upon her, abruptly, like a cheetah in the dark. To Martha and to the others on one subject alone had she been silent, and now at the moment it dominated all else.

From the day on which she joined the little band to whom the future was to give half of this world and all of the next, Judas had been ever at her ear. As a door that opens and shuts at the will of a hand, his presence and absence had barred the vistas or left them clear. At first he had affected her as a scarabaeus affects the rose. She knew of him, and that was all. When he spoke, she thought of other things. And as the blind remain unawakened by the day, he never saw that where the wanton had been the saint had come. To him she was a book of ivory bound in gold, whose contents he longed to possess; she was a book, but one from which whole chapters had been torn, the preface destroyed; and when his increasing insistence forced itself upon her, demanding, obviously, countenance or rebuke, she walked serenely on her way, disdaining either, occupied with higher things. It was of the Master only that she appeared to think. When he spoke, it was to her as though God really lived on earth; her eyes lighted ineffably, and visibly all else was instantly forgot. At that time her life was a dream into whose charmed precincts a bat had flown.

These things, gradually, Judas must have understood. In Mary’s eyes he may have caught the intimation that to her now only the ideal was real; or the idea may have visited him that in the infinite of her faith he disappeared and ceased to be. In any event he must have taken counsel with himself, for one day he approached her with a newer theme.

“I have knocked on the tombs; they are dumb.”

Mary, with that grace with which a woman gathers a flower when thinking of him whom she loves, bent a little and turned away.

“Have you heard of the Buddha?” he asked. “Babylon is peopled with his disciples. One of them met Jesus in the desert, and taught him his belief. It is that he preaches now, only the Buddha did not know of a heaven, for there is none.”

And he added, after a pause: “I tell you I have knocked on the tombs; there is no answer there.”

With that, as a panther falls asleep, his claw bloodred, Judas nodded and left her to her thoughts.

“In Eternity there is room for everything,” she said, when he came to her again.

“Eternity is an abyss which the tomb uses for a sewer,” he answered. “Its flood is corruption. The day only exists, but in it is that freedom which waves possess. Mary, if you would but taste it with me! Oh, to mix with you as light with day, as stream with sea, I would suck the flame that flickers on the walls of sepulchres.”

She shuddered, and he saw it.

“You have taught me to love,” he hissed; “do not teach me now to hate.”

Mary mastered her revolt. “Judas, the day will come when you will cease to speak as you do.”

“You believe, then, still?”

“Yes, surely; and so do you.”

“The day will come,” he muttered, “when you will cease to believe.”

“And you too,” she answered. “For then you will know.”

The dialogue with its variations continued, at intervals, for months. There were times, weeks even, when he avoided all speech with her. Then, abruptly, when she expected it least, he would return more volcanic than before. These attacks she accustomed herself to regard as necessary, perhaps, to the training of patience, of charity too, and so bore with them, until at last Jerusalem was reached. Meanwhile she held to her trust as to a fringe of the mantle of Christ. To her the past was a grammar, its name⁠—Tomorrow. And in the service of the Master, in the future which he had evoked, she journeyed and dreamed.

But in Jerusalem Judas grew acrider. He had fits of unnecessary laughter, and spells of the deepest melancholy. He quarrelled with anyone who would let him, and then for the irritation he had displayed he would make amends that were wholly slavish. His companions distrusted him. He had been seen talking amicably with the corrupt levites, the police of the Temple, and once he had been detected in a wine-shop of low repute. The Master, apparently, noticed nothing of this; nor did Mary, whose thoughts were on other things.

At Bethany one evening Judas came to her. The sun, sinking through clouds, placed in the west the tableau of a duel to the death between a titan and a god. There was the glitter of gigantic swords, and the red of immortal blood.

“Mary,” he began, and as he spoke there was a new note in his voice⁠—“Mary, I have watched and waited, and to those that watch how many lamps burn out! One after another those that I tended went. There was a flicker, a little smoke, and they had gone. I tried to relight them, but perhaps the oil was spent; perhaps, too, I was like the blind that hold a torch. My way has not been clear. The faith I had, and which, I do not know, but which, it may be, would have been strengthened, evaporated when you came. The rays of the sun I had revered became as the threads of shadows, interconnecting life and death. In them I could see but you. In the jaw of night, in the teeth of day, always I have seen you. Mary, love is a net which woman throws. In casting yours⁠—there! unintentionally, I know⁠—you caught my soul. It is yours now wholly until time shall cease to be. Will you take it, Mary, or will you put it aside, a thing forever dead?”

Mary made no answer. It may be she had not heard. In the west both titan and god had disappeared. Above, in a field of stars, the moon hung, a scythe of gold. The air was still, the hush of locusts accentuating the silence and bidding it be at rest. In a house near by there were lights shining. A woman looked out and called into the night.

Then, as though moved by some jealousy of the impalpable, Judas leaned forward and peered into her face.

“It is the Master who keeps you from me, is it not?”

“It is my belief,” she answered, simply.

“It was he that gave it to you. Mary, do you know that there is a price upon his head? Do you know that if I cannot slake my love, at least I can gorge my hate? Do you know that, Mary? Do you know it? Now choose between your belief and me; if you prefer the former, the Sanhedrim will have him tomorrow. There, your sister is calling; go⁠—and choose.”

It was with the hideousness of this threat in her ears that Mary escaped to the little room where her childhood had been passed and flung herself on the floor. From beyond came the sound of banqueting. Martha was entertaining the Lord, his disciples as well; and Mary knew that her aid was needed. But the threat pinioned and held her down. To accede was death, not of the body alone, but of the soul as well. There was no clear pool in which she might cleanse the stain; there could be no forgiveness, no obliteration, nothing in fact save the loss never to be recovered of life in the diaphanous hours and immaculate days of which she had dreamed so long.

For a little space she tried to comfort herself. Perhaps Judas was not in earnest; perhaps even he had lied. And if he had not, was there not time in plenty? The desert was neighborly. She could follow the Master there, and minister to him till the sky opened and the kingdom was prepared. And the threat, coupled with that perspective, charmed, and for the moment had for her that enticement which the quarrels and kisses of children equally possess. She would warn him secretly, she decided, for surely as yet he did not know; she would warn him, and before the sun was up he could be beyond the Sanhedrim’s reach, and she preparing to follow. For a moment she lost herself in anticipation; then, the threat loosening its hold, she stood up, her face very white in the starlight, her eyes brave and alert. Already her plan was formed; and, taking a vase that she had brought with her from Magdala, she hurried to the room below.

The Master; the disciples; Eleazer, her brother; Simon, her sister’s husband, were all at meat. Martha was serving, and as Mary entered Judas stood up. She moved to where the Master was, and on him poured the contents of the vase. Thomas sniffed delightedly, for now the room was full of fragrance. The Master turned to her and smiled; the homage evidently was grateful. Mary bent nearer. Thomas and Bartholomew joined in loud praises of the aroma of the nard, and under cover of their voices she whispered, “Rabboni, the Sanhedrim has placed a price on⁠—”

The whisper was drowned and interrupted. Judas had shoved her away. “To what end is this waste?” he asked; and as Mary looked in his face she saw by the expression in it that her purpose had been divined and her warning overheard.

“It is absurd,” he continued, with affected anger. “Ointment such as that has a value. It might better have been saved for the poor.”

Thomas chimed in approvingly; placed in that light it was indeed an extravagance, unnecessary too, and he looked about to his comrades for support. Eleazer and Peter seemed inclined to view the matter differently. A discussion would have arisen, but the Master checked it gently, as was his wont.

“The poor are always with you, but me you cannot always have.”

As he spoke he turned to Judas with that indulgence which was to be a heritage.

Could he know? Judas wondered. Had he heard what Mary said? And, the Master’s speech continuing, he glanced at her and left the room.

The moon had mowed the stars, but the sky was visibly blue. Behind the shoulder of Olivet he divined the silence of Jerusalem, the welcome of the Sadducees, the joy of hate assuaged. There was but one thing now that might deter; and as his thoughts groped through that possibility, Mary stood at his side.

“Judas⁠—”

He wheeled, and, catching her by the wrists, stared into her eyes.

“Is it yes?”

A shudder seized her. There was dread in it, anguish too, and both were mortal. He had not lied, she saw, and the threat was real.

“Is it yes?” he repeated.

There may be moments that prolong, but there are others in which time no longer is; and as Mary shrank in the blight of Judas’ stare, both felt that the culmination of life was reached.

“No!”

The monosyllable dropped from her lips like a stone, yet even as it fell the banner of Maccabaeus unfurled and flaunted in her face; the voice of Esther murmured, and a vision of Judith saving a nation visited her, and, continuing, made spots on the night.

Judas had flung her from him. She reeled; the violence roused her. Who was she to consider herself when the security of the Master was at stake? How should it matter though she died, if he were safe?

“It is my soul you ask,” she cried. “Take it. If I had a thousand souls, I would give each one for Him.”

But she cried to the unanswering night. Where the road curved about the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, for one second she saw a white robe glisten. Agonized, she called again, but there was no one now to hear.

A little later, when the followers of the Lord issued from the house, Mary lay before the door, her eyes closed, her head in the dust. They touched her. She had fainted.

VIII

“They have him, they are taking him to Pilate.”

It was Eleazer calling to his sister from the turn of the road. In a moment he was at her side, dust-covered, his sandals torn, his pathetic eyes dilated. He was breathless too, and, in default of words, with a gesture that swept the Mount of Olives, he pointed to where the holy city lay.

To Mary the morrow succeeding her swoon was a pall. Love, it may be, is a forgetfulness of all things else, but despair is very actual. It takes a hold on memory, inhabits it, and makes it its own. And during the day that followed, Mary lay preyed upon by the acutest agony that ever tortured woman yet. Early in the night, before her senses returned, the Master had gone without mentioning whither. His destination may have been Ephraïm, Jericho even, or further yet, beyond the hollows of the Ghôr. Then, again, he might have loitered in the neighborhood, on the hill perhaps, in that open-air solitude he loved so well, and for which so often he forsook the narrowness of roofs and towns. But yet, in view of the Passover, he might have gone to Jerusalem, and it was that idea that tortured most.

It was there the keen police, the levites, were, and their masters the Sadducees, who had placed a price on his head. Did he get within the walls, then surely he was lost. At the possibilities which that idea evoked her thoughts sank like the roots of a tree and grappled with the under-earth. To her despair, regret brought its burden. A moment of self-forgetfulness, and, however horrible that forgetfulness might have been, in it danger to him whom she revered would have been averted, and, for the time being at least, dispersed utterly as last year’s leaves. It had been cowardice on her part to let Judas go; she should have been strong when strength was needed. There were glaives to be had; the head of Holofernes could have greeted his. The legend of Judith still echoed its reproach, and recurring, pointed a slender finger of disdain.

To the heart that is sinking, hope throws a straw. Immaterial and caressing as a shadow, came to her the fancy that if the Master were in the neighborhood, at any moment he might appear. In that event it was needful that she should be prepared to aid him at once beyond the confines of Judaea. Were he already beyond them, presently she must learn it, and then could warn him of the danger of return. But meanwhile, for security’s sake, had he gone by any chance to Jerusalem, someone must be there to warn him of the plot. She thought of her sister, and dismissed her. Martha was too feather-headed for an errand such as that. She thought of Ahulah, but some of those well-intentioned friends that everyone possesses had told of the misadventure to her husband, and the latter, cruel as a woman, had spat upon her, and now through the suburbs she wandered, distraught, incompetent to aid. Her brother occurred to her. It was on him she could rely. His devotion was surpassed only by her own. Thereupon she sought him out, instructed him in his duty, and sent him forth to watch and warn.

The green afternoon faded in the hemorrhages of the setting sun. Twilight approached like a wolf. Night unfurled her great black fan; the moon came, fumbling the shadows, checkering the underbrush with silver spots. Once a caravan passed, and once from the hillside came the bark of a dog, caught up and repeated in some farm beyond; otherwise the night was unstirred; and as Mary stared into the immensities where lightning wearies and subsides, a lethargy beset her, her body was imprisoned; but her soul was free, and in a moment it mounted sheerly to a fringe of the heavens and bathed in space.

When it descended, another day had come, and Eleazer was calling to her from the turn of the road. At once she was on earth and on her feet, and as the brother gasped for breath the sister’s strength returned. There must be no more weakness now, she knew; it was time to act. She got drink, water for the feet; then Eleazer, refreshed, continued:

“I ran through the ridge and up to where the two cedars are. I looked among the cypresses beyond, in the pines where the descent begins, through the olive groves below and the booths and tents beneath. There was no trace of him anywhere. I crossed the brook and sat awhile at the Shushan gate, watching those that entered. The crowd became so dense that it was impossible to distinguish. I thought I might hear of him in the Temple. The porch was thronged. I roamed through the Mountain of the House into the Woman’s Court, and out of it on the Chel. But they were all so filled with pilgrims that had he been there only accident could have brought me to him. It was on that I counted, and I went out on Zion and Acra, where the crowd was less. It was getting late. Beth-horon was dim. I could see lights in Herod’s palace. Someone said that the tetrarch of Galilee was there, the guest of the procurator. I went back by way of Antonia to Birket Israil and the Red Heifer Bridge. I had given up; it seemed to me useless to make further attempt. Suddenly I saw Judas in the angle of the porch. With him was a levite. I got behind a pillar, near where they stood, and listened. The only thing I distinctly heard was the name of Joseph of Haramathaïm. I fancied, though I was not certain, that Judas spoke as though he had just left his house. They must have moved away then, for when I looked they had gone. I knew that Joseph was a friend of the Master’s, and it struck me that he might be at his house. It is in the souk of the Perfumers, back of Ophel. I ran there as fast as I could. It was unlighted. I beat on the door: there was no answer. I felt that I had been mistaken, anyway that I could do no more. I went down again into the valley, crossed the Kedron, and would have returned here at once perhaps, but I was tired, and so, on the slope where the olive-presses are, I lay down and must have fallen asleep, for I remembered nothing till there came a tramping of men. I crouched in the underbrush. They passed very close; some had torches, some had spears. Judas was leading, and as an ape munches a flower he was muttering the Master’s name.”

Eleazer paused and looked at his sister. She was standing erect, her face wan, the brow contracted, the rhymes of her lips tight-pressed. Then, with a glance at Olivet, he continued:

“For a little space I waited. They had ascended the slope and halted. There was a shout, the waving of torches, then a silence. In it I heard the Master’s voice, followed by a cry of pain. I hurried to where they were. They had him bound when I got there. I saw a soldier raising a hand to his ear and looking at the palm; it was red. Peter was running one way, Thomas another. I got nearer. Someone, a levite I think, caught me by the coat. I freed myself from it and escaped up the hill.

“From there I looked down. They were going away. When they had gone, I went back and found my cloak. While I was putting it on, John appeared. ‘They are taking him to Caiaphas,’ he said; ‘I shall follow. Come with me if you wish.’ I went with him. On the way we met Peter; he joined us. We walked single-file, John leading. Beyond I could see the lights of the torches, the glint of steel. No one spoke. Peter whimpered a little. We crossed the Kedron and got up into the city. The soldiers went directly to where Annas lives; they entered in a body, and the door closed. John rapped: it was opened. He said something to the doorkeeper, who admitted him. The door closed again. Peter and I waited a little, not knowing where to turn. Presently the door reopened, and John motioned us to come in. In the court was a fire; about it were servants and khazzans. I stopped a moment to warm my hands; Peter did the same. John had disappeared. I heard one of the khazzans say that they had taken the Master to Annas, and the others discuss what he would probably do. While I stood there listening, and wondering what had become of John, I saw the Master being led across the court to the Lishcath ha-Gazith. I left Peter, and followed. In the hall were the elders, ranged in a semicircle about Caiaphas. They must have been prepared beforehand, for the clerks of acquittal and of condemnation were there, the crier too, and a group of levites and Scribes. In a corner were some of Annas’ servants. I got among them and stood unnoticed.

“The Master’s hands were bound. On either side of him was a soldier. Caiaphas was livid. He looked him from head to foot.

“ ‘You are accused,’ he said, ‘of inciting sedition, of defying the Law, of blasphemy, and of breaking the Sabbath day. What have you to answer?’

“The Master made no reply.

“Caiaphas pointed to the levites. ‘Here,’ he continued, ‘are witnesses.’

“He motioned; one of them stepped forward and spoke.

“ ‘I testify that this man has incited to sedition by denouncing the members of this reverend council as hypocrites, wolves in sheep’s clothing, blind leaders of the blind; and I further testify that he has declared no one should follow them.’

“ ‘What have you to say to that?’ Caiaphas snarled. But the Master said nothing.

“The first levite moved back, and at a gesture from the high-priest another stepped forward.

“ ‘I testify that I have seen that man eat, in defiance of the Law, with unwashed hands, and consort with publicans and people of low repute.’

“ ‘And what have you to say to that?’ Caiaphas asked again. But still the Master said nothing.

“The second levite moved back, and a third advanced.

“ ‘I testify that I have heard that man blaspheme in calling God his father, and in declaring himself to be one with Him.’

“ ‘Is that blasphemy or is it not?’ Caiaphas bawled. But the Master’s lips never moved.

“The third levite gave way to a fourth.

“ ‘I testify that that man has broken the Sabbath in healing the sick on that day, and further that he has seduced others to break it. On the Sabbath I have heard him order a cripple to take up his bed and carry it to his home. I have heard him also declare that he could destroy the Temple and rebuild it, in three days, anew.’

“Caiaphas turned to the Master. ‘Do you still refuse to answer?’ he asked. ‘Do you think that silence can save you? Have you heard these witnesses?’

“And as the Master still made no reply, Caiaphas lifted his hand and cried, ‘I adjure you by the Eternal to answer, Are you the Messiah, the Son of God?’

“In the breathless silence Jesus raised his eyes. He looked at the high-priest, at the levites, the Scribes. ‘You have said it,’ he murmured, and smiled with that air he has.

“Caiaphas grew purple. He caught his gown at the throat and ripped it from neck to hem. The elders started. I heard them mutter, ‘Ish maveth.’ The high-priest glanced toward them. ‘You have heard this ragged blasphemy?’ he exclaimed; and, turning to where the Scribes stood, ‘What,’ he asked, ‘does the Law decree concerning the Sabbath-breaker?’

“One of them, the book unrolled in his hand, advanced and read:

“ ‘Ye shall keep the Sabbath holy. Whoso does any work thereon shall be cut off from his people.’

“ ‘And what of blasphemy?’

“The Scribe glanced at the roll and repeated from memory: ‘He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord shall be put to death. The congregation shall stone him, as well the stranger as he that was born in the land.’

“Caiaphas closed the fingers on the palm of his left hand, and, raising it, turned again to the elders. ‘Ish maveth,’ they repeated, closing their fingers as he had done.

“I knew then that he was condemned. After all”⁠—and Eleazer looked wearily to the ground⁠—“it was legal enough. Each moment I expected him to give some sign, but, save to affirm the charge of blasphemy, during the entire time he kept silent. Yes, it was legal enough. From where I stood I heard the Scribes say that he would be sentenced at sunrise, and then Pilate would have a word with him. I could do nothing. Caiaphas still fumed. I went out in the court again. In the corridor was Judas. Peter was wrangling with the servants. I did not wait for more. I got away and into the valley and up again on the hill. A cock was crowing, and I saw the dawn. O Mary, the pity of it!”

He looked at his sister. There was no weakness now in her face, nor beauty either. Age must have passed her in the night.

“And I will have a word with Pilate too,” she said.

As a somnambulist might, she drew her mantle closer, and, moving to the wayside, ascended the hill. The silver and green of the olives closed around her, and with them the branching dates. Above, a star left by the morning glimmered feebly. In a myrtle a bird began to sing, and a lizard that had come out to intercept the sun scurried as she passed. Upward and onward still she went, and, the summit reached, for a moment she stopped and rested.

To the east the Dead Sea lay, a stretch of silk. At its edge was the flutter of ospreys feasting on the barbels and breams of the Jordan, which as they enter, die. Beyond was a glitter of white and gold, the scarp of Moriah and its breast of stone, the Tyrian bevel of Solomon, the porphyry of Nehemiah, the marble that Herod gave; ascending terraces, engulfing porticoes, the splendor of Jerusalem at dawn. Between the houses nearest was the dimness that shadows cast; those further away had a scatter of pink; about it all was a wall surmounted by turrets; beneath was a ravine in which was a brook, and a city of booths and tents, grazing camels and fat-tailed sheep.

Through the pines and cypresses Mary passed down to where the olives were. The brook sent a message to her; the blood that had flowed from the sacrifices was in it, and in the fresh morning it reeked a little, as such brooks do. It was here, she thought, the Master had been taken, and for a second she stopped again. The sun now was rising behind her; the color of the sky shifted. Beyond Jerusalem a mountain was melting in excesses of vermilion, and the ravine that had been gray was assuming the tenderest green. The star had disappeared, but from each tree broke the greeting of a bird.

A rustle of the leaves near by startled her, and she looked about, fearful, as women are, of some beast of prey. A white robe was there, a white turban, and beneath it the swart face of one whom she had known.

To her eyes came massacres. “Judas!” she exclaimed, and looked up in that roof of her world where day puts its blue and night puts its black. “Judas!” she repeated. Her small hands clenched, and the rhymes of her mouth grew venomous.

Then the woman spoke in her. “Why did you not kill me first?”

Judas swayed like an ox hit on the forehead. The motion distracted and irritated her. “Can’t you speak,” she cried, “or does hell hold you, tongue and all?”

He raised a hand as though he feared another blow. The gesture was so human and yet so humble that Mary looked into his face. Time, which turns the sweet-eyed girl into a withered spectre, must have touched him with its thumb. His eyes were ringed and cavernous, his cheeks empty.

“You have heard, then?” he said; but he evinced no curiosity. He spoke with the apathy of one who takes everything for granted, one with whom fate is to have its will. “I have just come from there,” he added, with a backward gesture. “I never thought that such a thing could be. No, I swear it, I never did.” Then, in answer perhaps to some inner twinge, perhaps also because of the expression of Mary’s lips, he continued: “If there is a new oath, one that has never been used before, prompt me, and I will swear again, I never did. I thought⁠—”

Mary interrupted him savagely: “There are ten kinds of hypocrisy. You have nine of them; you will develop the tenth and invent a new one besides.”

At this Judas made a pass with his hands and stared absently at the ground. “Mary,” he said, “life is a book which man reads when he dies. During the last hour I have been unrolling it. In its scroll I found existence a wine-shop where the guest fares so badly that he would go at once were it not that he fears to call for the reckoning. The reckoning, Mary, is death. I have called for it. I am about to pay. Let me tell you. I have no excuse to offer, no forgiveness now to await. My heart was a meadow: you made it stone. There were wellsprings in it: you dried them, Mary. When I first saw you, you were a dream fulfilled. Others had brought echoes of life; you brought its song. It was then that I heard the Master speak. I followed him, and tried to forget. It must be that I failed, for when I saw you in Capharnahum my blood danced, and when you spoke I trembled. It was love, Mary; and love, when it is not death, is life. It was that I sought at your side. You would not listen. Innocence is a garment. You seemed to have wrapped it about you. I tried to tear it away. There was my fault, and this my punishment. Your right was inflexible as a prison-door, and yet always behind it was the murmur of a mysterious Perhaps. The others turned to me; I turned to you. I forgot again, but this time it was my duty, my allegiance, and my faith. Mary, I loved the Master more wholly even than I loved you. He was the Spirit; you were the flesh. In him was the future; in you the tomb. I thought to conquer both. While I mixed my darkness with his light, I pursued you as night pursues the day. On the light I have cast a shadow, and to you I have brought a blight. But, Mary, both will disappear. The one consolation I cling to now is that belief. When I delivered him up, it was myself I betrayed, not him. I am forever dead, and he forever living. While I bargained with the priests and pretended that my aim was coin, when I led the levites and the Temple-guard just here to where he stood, during all the hours since I left you, I tried to escape from that cage we call Fate. Mary, there is something about us higher than our will. The revenge I sought on you forsook me before I reached the city’s gate. It is the intangible that has brought me where I am. I have sworn to you I never thought this thing could be. I swear it now again. In carrying out the threat I made, I thought to make you fear my hate and make him greater than he was. His enemies, I had seen, were many. Those that had believed in him grew daily less. In Jerusalem his miracles had ceased, and I thought that, when the levites and the Temple-guard approached, he would speak with Samuel’s thunder, answer with Elijah’s flame. I thought the stars would shake, the moon grow red; that he would produce the lost Urim, the vanished Ark, and so forever silence disbelief. I was wrong, and he was right. Belief is in the heart, not in the senses; the visible contradicts, but faith is not to be confuted. No, Mary, the tombs are not dumb. I said so once, I know, but they answer, and mine will speak. On it perhaps a caricature may be daubed, and about it prejudice will uncoil. I deserve it. Yet though you think me wholly base, remember no man is that. Since I met you my life has been a battlefield in which I have fought with conscience. It has conquered. I am its slave; it commands, and I obey.”

He drew a breath as though he had more to add, and turned to where she stood. There was no one there. From an olive-branch a redstart piped to the morning; over the buds of a pomegranate a bee buzzed its delight; across the leaves of a myrtle a blue spider was busy with its web, but Mary was no longer there. He peered through the underbrush, and wandered to the grove beyond. There was no one. He looked to the hilltop: there was the advancing sun. He looked in the valley: there were the pilgrims’ booths, the grazing camels and fat-tailed sheep.

“She has gone,” he told himself. “She would not even listen.”

He bent his head. For the first time since boyhood the tears rolled down his face.

“She might at least have heard me,” he thought, and brushed the tears away. Others came and replaced them. When they had fallen, there were more.

“Yes, she might at least have listened. If I had no excuse to offer, at least I had regret.” For a moment he fancied her, cruel as only woman is, hurrying to some unknown goal. The tears he had tried to stanch ceased now abruptly. “She is right,” he mused. “She has left me to conscience and to death.”

He turned again and went back to where he had stood before. As he crossed the intervening space he unloosed the long girdle which he wore, and from which still hung the treasury of the twelve. The bag that held it fell where the bee was buzzing. One end of the girdle he tossed over a branch; the redstart spread its wings and fled. He looked about. There was a stone near by; he got it and with a little labor rolled it beneath the branch. Then he made a noose, very carefully, that it might not come undone, and settling it well under the chin, he tied the other end of the girdle to it and swung himself from the stone.

IX

In the apartment of Claudia Procula, Mary and the wife of the procurator stood face to face.

The apartment itself overlooked Jerusalem. Beneath was an open space tiled with little oblong stones, red, yellow, and blue; the blue predominating. On either side the colossal white wings of the palace stretched to a park, very green in the sunlight, cut by colonnades in which fountains were, and surrounded by a marble wall that was starred with turrets and fluttered with doves. The Temple, which, from its cressets, radiated to the hills beyond a glare of gold, was not as fair nor yet as vast as this. Within its gates an army could maneuver; in its banquet-hall a cohort could have supped. It was Herod’s triumph, built subsequent to the Temple, to show the world, perhaps, that to surpass a masterpiece he had only to conceive another.

To it now and then, for a week or more, the procurator descended from his residence by the sea. He preferred the latter; the day was freer there, life less cramped. But during festival times, when the fanatic Jews were apt to be excited and need the chill of a curb, it was well for him and his soldiery to be on hand. And so on this occasion he had come, and with him his wife, Claudia Procula, and the tetrarch Antipas, who had joined them on the way.

Antipas and his retinue occupied the Aegrippeum, the north wing of the palace, while in the Caesareum, the wing that leaned to the south, was Pilate, his wife and bodyguard.

And now on this clear morning the sweet-faced patrician, Claudia Procula, with perfectly feminine curiosity was looking into the drawn features of the Magdalen, and wondering whence her rumored charm could come.

“I will do my best,” she said, at last, in answer to an anterior request. And calling a servant, she wrote on a tablet a word for Pilate’s eye.

Mary moved to the portico. The variegated tiles of the quadrangle were nearly covered now. A flight of wide, low steps led to the main entrance of the palace, and there a high seat of enamelled ebony had been placed. In it Pilate sat, in his hand the staff of office. Beside him were his assessors, members of his suite, and Calcol, a centurion. On one of the steps Caiaphas stood, near him the elders of the college. Below was the Christ, bound and guarded. Across the quadrangle was a line of soldiery, behind it a mob.

The helmets, glancing mail, short skirts, and bare legs of the Romans contrasted refreshingly with the blossoming garments, effeminate girdles, frontlets, and horned blue bonnets of the priesthood. And in the riot of color and glint of steel the Christ, bound as he was, looked, in the simplicity of his seamless robe, the descendant of a larger sphere. Above, to the left, Antipas, aroused by the clamor, leaned from a portico. Opposite where the sunlight fell Mary held her cloak about her.

Caiaphas, a hand indicating Jesus, his head turned to Pilate, was formulating a complaint. Not indeed that the prisoner had declared himself a divinity. There were far too many gods in the menagerie of the Pantheon for a procurator to be the least disturbed at the rumor of a new one. It was the right to rule, that attribute of the Messiah, on which he intended the gravamen of the charge should rest. But he began circuitously, feeling the way, in Greek at that, with an accent which might have been improved.

“And so,” he concluded, “in many ways he has transgressed the Law.”

“Why don’t you judge him by it, then?” asked Pilate, grimly.

A servant approached with a tablet. The procurator glanced at it, looked up at the man, and motioned him away.

“My lord governor, we have. The Sanhedrim, having found him guilty, has sentenced him to death. But the Sanhedrim, as you know, may not execute the sentence. The Senate has deprived us of that right. It is for you, as its legate, to order it done.”

Pilate sneered. “I can’t very well, until I know of what he is guilty. What crime has he committed⁠—written a letter on the Sabbath, or has he been caught without his phylacteries?”

“He has declared himself Israel’s king!”

“Ah!” And Pilate smiled wearily. “You are always expecting one; why not take him?”

“Why not, my lord? Because it is treason to do so.”

Pilate nodded with affected approval. “I admire your zeal.” And with a glance at the prisoner, he added: “You have heard the accusation; defend yourself. What!” he continued, after a moment, “have you nothing to say?”

Caiaphas exulted openly. The corners of his mouth had the width and cruelty, and his nostrils the dilation, of a wolf.

“My lord,” he cried, “his silence is an admission.”

“Hold your tongue! It is for me to question.” And therewith Pilate gave the high-priest a look which was tantamount to a knee pressed on the midriff. He glanced again at the tablet, then at the prisoner.

“Tell me, do you really claim to be king?”

“Is it your idea of me?” the Christ asked; and in his bearing was a dignity which did not clash with the charge; “or have others prompted you?”

“But I am not a Jew,” Pilate retorted. “The matter only interests me officially. It is your hierarchy that bring the charge. Why have they? What have you done? Tell me,” he continued, in Latin, “do you think yourself King?”

“Tu dixisti,” Jesus answered, and smiled as he had before, very gravely. “But my royalty is not of the earth.” And with a glance at his bonds, one which was so significant that it annulled the charge, he added, still in Latin, “I am Truth, and I preach it.”

Pilate with skeptical indulgence shook his head. Truth to him was an elenchicism, an abstraction of the Platonists, whom in Rome he had respected for their wisdom and avoided with care. He turned to Caiaphas. The latter had been regretting the absence of an interpreter. This amicable conversation, which he did not understand, was not in the least to his liking, and as Pilate turned to him he frowned in his beard.

“I am unable to find him guilty,” the procurator announced. “He may call himself king, but every philosopher does the same. You might yourself, for that matter.”

“A philosopher, this mesîth!” Caiaphas gnashed back. “Why, he seduces the people; he incites to sedition; he is a rebel to Rome. It is for you, my lord, to see the empire upheld. Would it be well to have another complaint laid before the Caesar? Ask yourself, is this Galilean worth it?”

The thrust was as keen and as venomous as the tooth of a rat. Pilate had been rebuked by the emperor already; he had no wish to incur further displeasure. Sejanus, the emperor’s favorite, to whom he owed his procuratorship, had for suspected treason been strangled in a dumb dungeon only a little before. Under Tiberius there was quiet, a future historian was to note; and Pilate was aware that, should a disturbance occur, the disturbance would be quelled, but at his expense.

An idea presented itself. “Did I understand you to say he is a Galilean?” he asked.

“Yes,” Caiaphas answered, expecting, perhaps, the usual jibe that was flung at those who came from there. “Yes, he is a Nazarene.”

“Hm. In that case I have no jurisdiction. The tetrarch is my guest; take your prisoner to him.”

“My lord,” the high-priest objected, “our law is such that if we enter the palace we cannot officiate at the Passover tonight.”

Pilate appeared to reflect. “I suppose,” he said at last, “I might ask him whether he would care to come here. In which case,” he added, with a gesture of elaborate courtesy, “you may remain uncontaminated where you are. Ressala!”

An official stepped forward; an order was given; he disappeared. Presently a massive throne of sandalwood and gold was trundled out. Caiaphas had seen it before, and in it⁠—Herod.

“The justice that comes from there,” he muttered, “is as a snake that issues from a tomb.”

His words were drowned in the clamors of the crowd. The sun had crossed the zenith; in its rays the waters that gushed from the fountain-mouths of bronze lions fell in rainbows and glistened in great basins that glistened too. There was sunlight everywhere, a sky of untroubled blue, and from the Temple beyond came a glare that radiated from Olivet to Bethlehem.

Pilate was bored. The mantle which Mary wore caught his eye, and he looked at her, wondering how she came in his wife’s apartment, and where he had seen her before. Her face was familiar, but the setting vague. Then at once he remembered. It was at Machaerus he had seen her, gambling with the emir, while Salomè danced. She was with Antipas, of course. He looked again; she had gone.

The Sanhedrim consulted nervously. The new turn of affairs was not at all to their liking. The clamors of the mob continued. Once a fanatic pushed against a soldier. There was a thud, a howl, and a mouth masked with liquid red gasped to the sun and was seen no more.

Behind the procurator came a movement. The officials massed about the entrance parted in uneven ranks, and in the great vestibule beyond, Antipas appeared. Pilate rose to greet him. The elders made obeisance. The tetrarch moved forward and seated himself in his father’s throne. At his side was Pahul, the butler, balancing himself flamingowise on one leg, his bold eyes foraging the priests.

Caiaphas formulated the complaint anew, very majestically this time, and, thinking perhaps to overawe the tetrarch, his voice assumed the authority of a guardian of the keys of heaven, a chamberlain of the sceptres of the earth.

Antipas ignored him utterly. He plucked at his fan-shaped beard, and stared at the Christ. He could see now he bore no resemblance to Iohanan. There was nothing of the hyena about him, nor of the prophet either. Evidently he was but a harmless vagabond, skilled in simples, if report were true; perhaps a thaumaturge. And it was he whom he had feared and fancied might be that Son of David for whom a star was created, whom the magi had visited, whom his father had sought to destroy, and whom now from his father’s own throne he himself was called upon to judge! He shook his head, and in the sunlight the indigo with which his hair was powdered made bright blue motes.

“I say⁠—”

Just beyond, where the assessors stood, Mary suddenly appeared. He stopped abruptly; for more than a year he had not seen her. Pahul had told him she had gone to Rome. If she had, he reflected, the journey had not improved her appearance. Then for the moment he dismissed her, and returned to the Christ.

“See here: somebody the other day told me you worked miracles. I have wanted to see one all my life. Gratify me, won’t you? Oh, something very easy to begin with. Send one of the guards up in the air, or turn your bonds into bracelets.”

The Christ did not seem to hear. Pahul laughed and held to the throne for support. Antipas shrugged his shoulders.

“He looks harmless enough,” he said. “Why not let him go?”

Caiaphas glowered, and his fingers twitched. “He claims to be king!”

At this statement the tetrarch laughed too. He gave an order to Pahul, who vanished with a grin.

“He has jeered at the Temple your father built,” Caiaphas continued. “He has declared he could destroy it and rebuild a better one, in three days at that.”

“He is king, then, but of fools.”

“And he has called you a fox,” Caiaphas added, significantly.

“He doesn’t claim to be one himself, does he?”

“He is guilty of treason, and it is for you, his ruler, to sentence him.”

“Not I. The blood of kings is sacred. Pahul, make haste!”

The butler, reappearing, held in his hand the glittering white vestment of a candidate. The tetrarch took it and held it in air.

“Here, put this on him, and let his subjects admire him to their hearts’ content.”

“Antipas, you disgrace your purple!”

At the exclamation, the Sanhedrim, the guards, the assessors, the officials, Pilate himself, everyone save the prisoner, turned and looked. On the colored pavement Mary stood, her face very pale.

The tetrarch flushed mightily; anger mounted into his shifting eyes. For a moment the sky was bloodred; then he recovered himself and answered lightly:

“It seems to me, my dear, that you take things with a high hand. It may be that you forget yourself.”

“I take them from where I am,” she cried. “As for forgetfulness, remember that my grandfather was satrap of Syria, my father after him, while yours⁠—”

“Yes, yes, I dare say. He is not in power now; I am.”

“Not here, Antipas, nor in Rome. I appeal to Pilate.”

The tetrarch rose from the throne. The elders whispered together. Pilate visibly was perplexed. Remembering Mary as he did, he looked upon the incident as a family quarrel, one in which it would be unseemly for him to interfere, and which none the less disturbed the decorum of his court.

Caiaphas edged up to the tetrarch, but the latter brushed him aside.

“The hetaira is right,” he exclaimed. “I am not in power here. If I were, she should be lapidated.”

And, preceded by the butler, Antipas passed through the parting ranks to the vestibule beyond.

The perplexity of the procurator increased. He did not in the least understand. To him Mary stood in the same relation to Antipas that Cleopatra had to Herod. There had been a feud between the tetrarch and himself, one recently mended, and which he had no wish to renew. Yet manifestly Antipas was aggrieved, and his own path in the matter by no means clear.

“Bah!” he muttered, in the consoling undertone of thought, “what are their beastly barbarian manners to me?”

These reflections Caiaphas interrupted.

“We are waiting, my lord, for the sentence to be pronounced.”

The tone he used was not, however, indicative of patience, and in conjunction with the incident that had just occurred it irritated and jarred. Besides, Pilate did not care to be prompted. It was for him to speak first. He strangled an oath, and, gathering some fringe of the majesty of Rome, he announced very measuredly:

“You have brought this man before me as a rebel. I have examined him and find no ground for the charge. His ruler, the tetrarch, has also examined him, and by him too he has been acquitted. But in view of the fact that he appears to have contravened some one or another of your laws I order him to be scourged and to be liberated.”

With that he turned to the prisoner. During the entire proceedings the attitude of Jesus had not altered. He stood as a disinterested spectator might⁠—one whom chance had brought that way and there hemmed in⁠—his eyes on remote, inaccessible horizons, the tongue silent, the head a little raised.

“Scourging, my lord,” Caiaphas interjected, “is fit and proper, but,” he continued, one silk-gloved hand uplifted, “our law prescribes death. Only an enemy to Tiberius would prevent it.”

At the veiled menace Pilate gnawed his underlip. He had no faith at all in the loyalty of the hierarch; at any other time the affection the latter manifested for the chains he bore would have been ludicrous and nothing else. But at the moment he felt insecure. There were Galileans whom he had sacrificed, Judaeans whom he had slaughtered, Samaritans whom he had oppressed, an embassy might even now be on its way to Rome; he thought again of Sejanus, and, with cause, he hesitated. Yet of the inward perturbation he gave no outward sign.

“On this day,” he said at last, “it is customary that in commemoration of your nation’s delivery out of Egypt I should release a prisoner to you. There are three others here, among them Jesus Barabba.”

Then, for support perhaps, he looked over at the clamoring mob.

“I will leave the choice to the people.”

A wind seemed to raise the elders; they scattered through the court like leaves. “Have done with the Nazarene,” cried one. “He would lead you astray,” insinuated another. “He has violated the Law,” exclaimed a third.

And, filtering through the soldiery into the mob without, they exhorted and prayed and coerced. “Ask for Barabba; denounce the blasphemer. Trust to the Sanhedrim. We are your guides. Let him atone for his crimes. The God of your fathers commands that you condemn. Demand Barabba; uphold your nation. To the cross with the Nazarene!”

“Whom do you choose?” shouted Pilate.

And the pleb of Jerusalem shouted back as one man, “Barabba!”

At the moment Pilate fancied himself in an amphitheatre, the arena filled with beasts. There were the satin and stripes of the panther, the yellow of treacherous eyes, the gnash of fangs, the guttural rumble, the deafening yell, the scent of blood, and above, the same blue tender sky.

“What of the prisoner?” he called.

A roar leapt back. “Sekaph! Sekaph! Let him be crucified.”

Pilate had fronted a rabble before, and in two minutes had turned that rabble into so many dead flies, the legs in the air. He shook his head, and told himself he was not there to be coerced.

“Release Barabba,” he ordered. “And as for the prisoner, take him to the barracks and have him scourged.”

“Brute!” cried a voice that lifted him as a blow might from his ebony chair. “Pilate, though you are a plebeian, why show yourself a slave?”

And Mary, with the strength of anger, brushed through the encircling officials and towered before him, robed in wrath.

“Ah, permit me,” he answered; “you are singularly unjust.”

“Prove me so, and countermand the order that you gave.”

As she spoke she adjusted her mantle, which had become disarranged, and looked him from head to foot, measuring him as it were, and finding him, visibly, very small.

Already the prisoner had been led away, and beyond, in the barracks, was the whiz of jagged leather that lacerated, rebounded, and lacerated again.

“I will not,” he answered. “What I have ordered, I have ordered. As for you⁠—”

There had come to her that look which sibyls have. “Pilate,” she interrupted, “you are powerful here, I know, but”⁠—and her hand shot out like an arrow from a bow⁠—“over there vultures are circling; in your power is a corpse. What the vultures scent, I see.”

So abrupt and earnest was the gesture that unconsciously Pilate found himself looking to where she seemed to point. He lowered his eyes in vexation. Wrangling with a woman was not to his taste.

“There, there,” he said, much as one might to a fretful child; “don’t throw stones.”

“I have but one; it is Justice, and that I keep to hurl at you.”

The procurator’s mouth twitched ominously. “My dear,” he said, “you are too pretty to talk that way; it spoils the looks. Besides, I have no time to listen.”

“Tiberius has and will.”

Pilate nodded; it was the third time he had heard the threat that day.

“There are many rooms in his palace,” he answered, with covert significance.

“Yes, I know it. There are many, as you say. But there is one I will enter. On the door stands written The Future, and behind it, Pilate, is your death.”

The Roman, goaded to exasperation, sprang to his feet. An expression which Antipas had used occurred to him. “Away with the hetaira,” he cried; and he was about, it may be, to order her to be tossed to the fierce wild swine in the paddocks of the park when the prisoner and his guards reappeared on the tessellated pavement, and Mary, already dragged from him, was instantly forgot.

A tattered sagum, which had once been scarlet, but which had faded since, hung, detained at the shoulder by a rusty buckle, and bordered by a laticlave, loosely about his form. In his hand a bulrush swayed; on his head was a twisted coil of bear’s-breech, in which, among the ruffled leaves, one bud remained; it was white, the opening edges flecked with pink, perhaps with blood, for from the temples and about the ear a rill ran down and mixed with the purple of the laticlave below. And in this red parody of kingship the Christ stood, unmoved as a phantom, but in his face and eyes there was a projecting light so luminous, so intangible, and yet so real, that the skeptical procurator started, the staff of office pendent in his grasp.

“Ecce homo!” he exclaimed. Instinctively he drew back, and, wonderingly, half to himself, half to the Christ, “Who are you?” he asked.

“A flame below, a soul above,” Jesus answered, yet so inaudibly that the guards beside him did not catch the words.

To Pilate his lips had barely moved, and his wonderment increased. “Why do you not answer?” he said. “You must know that I have the power to condemn and to acquit.”

With that gentleness that was the flower of his parables Jesus raised his voice. “No,” he replied, “you can have no power against me unless it come from above.”

Again Pilate drew back. Unsummoned to his lips had sprung the words, “Behold the man!” and now he exclaimed, “Behold the king!”

But to the mob the vision he intercepted was lost. They saw the jest merely, and with it the stains that torture leaves. The sight of blood is heady; it inebriates more surely than wine. The mob, trained by the elders, and used by them as a bodyguard, fanatic before, were intoxicated now. With one accord they shrieked the liturgy again.

“Sekaph! Sekaph! Let him be crucified.”

In that gust of hatred Pilate recovered. He turned to Caiaphas:

“I have released one prisoner; I will release another too.”

“My lord, be warned by one who is your elder.”

“One whom I can remove.”

“No doubt, my lord; but suffer him while he may to warn you not to cause a revolution on the day of the Paschal feast. You hear that multitude. Then be warned.”

“But your feast is one of mercy.”

The high-priest gazed curiously at his silk-gloved hands. You would have said they were objects he had never seen before. Then he returned the procurator’s stare.

“We know of no such god.”

“Ah!” And the procurator drew a long breath of understanding. “It is that, I believe, he preaches.”

“And it is for that,” Caiaphas echoed, “that he must die. Yes, Pilate, it is for that. There is no such doctrine in the Pentateuch. We have done our duty. We have convicted a rebel of his guilt. We have brought him to you, and we demand his sentence. Pilate, it is not so very long ago you had hundreds massacred without judgment, without trial either, and for what?⁠—for one rebellious cry. You must have a reason for the favor you show this man. It would interest me to learn it; it would interest Tiberius as well. Listen to that multitude. If you pay no heed to our accusation nor yet to their demand, on you the consequences rest. We are absolved.”

“He is your king,” the procurator objected, meditatively.

Caiaphas wheeled like a feather a breeze has caught. One hand outstretched he held to the mob, with the other he pointed to the Christ.

“Our king!” he cried. “The procurator says he is our king!”

As the thunder peals, a roar surged back:

“We have no other king than Caesar.”

“Think of Sejanus,” the high-priest suggested. The thrust was so well timed it told.

Pilate looked sullenly about. “Fetch me water,” he ordered.

A silver bowl was brought, and borrowing a custom from the Jews he loathed, he dipped his fingers in it.

“I wash my hands of it all,” he muttered.

Caiaphas looked at the elders and sighed with infinite relief. He had conquered. For the first time that day he smiled. He became gracious also, and he bowed.

“The blood be upon us, my lord, and on our children. Will you give the order?”

“Calcol!”

The centurion approached. An order was given him in an undertone, and as he turned to the guards, Pilate drew the staff of office across his knee, snapped it in two, tossed the pieces to the ground, and through the ranks of his servitors passed on into the great blue vestibule beyond.

X

In a souk near the Gannath Gate Mary stood. In the distance the palace of Herod defied the sun. Beyond the gate lay the Hennom Valley, the Geia Hennom, contracted by the people into Ge’ Hennom, or Gehenna, and converted by them into a sewer, a place where carrion was thrown, and the filth of a great city. In earlier days children had been immolated to Moloch there, human victims had been burned; it was a place accursed, and to purify the air, as a safeguard against pestilence, the offal was consumed by bonfires that were constantly renewed and never extinguished. At its extremity was an elevation, a hilly contour which to the popular fancy suggested a skull. To the west it fell steeply away. It was called Gülgolta.

The souk in which Mary stood was affected by shoemakers. Against the dwelling of one of them she leaned. The mantle was gone from her now, and the olive robe had a rent, but the splendor of her hair fell unconfined, the perils of her eyes had increased; yet in their depths where love had been was hate. One arm lay along the resisting stone, the other hung at her side; her face was turned to the palace, her thin nostrils quivering, her breath coming and going with that spasmodic irregularity which the consciousness of outrage brings. She laid it all to Judas; he must have returned to Kerioth, she thought. The souk itself was silent, stirred merely by some echo of the uproar in the palace beyond.

From a grilled lattice near by an old man peered out. He had the restless eyes of a ferret, and a white beard that was very long. He too was looking toward the palace. Now and then he muttered inaudibly in Aramaic to himself. In the shadow of a neighboring house a woman appeared; he shook at the lattice as an ape does at the bars of a cage, and spat a bestial insult at her. The woman shrank back. Instinctively Mary turned. In the retreating figure she recognized Ahulah, and at once, without conscious effort, she divined that the dwelling against which she leaned was that of Baba Barbulah, the husband of the woman whom the Master had declined to condemn.

But other things possessed her⁠—the outrage to the Christ, perplexity as to how the trial would result, more remotely the indignity to herself, the slurs of the tetrarch and of the procurator; and with them, sapping her heart as fever might, was that thirst for reparation, unquenchable in its intensity, which comes to those who have seen their own life wrecked and its ideals dispersed.

Already Ahulah was forgot. On the wings of vagabond fancy she was in Rome, demanding vengeance of Tiberius, wresting it from him by the sheer force of entreaty, and with it exulting in the death-throes of the procurator. Oh, to see his nails pulled out, his outer skin removed, his tongue severed, his eyes seared with irons, his wrists slowly twisted till they snapped! to hear him cry for mercy! to promise it and not fulfil!⁠—dear God, what joy was there!

From the alley into which Ahulah had shrunk a man issued. He was sturdy as a bludgeon, and he had a growth of thick black hair that curled about an honest face. In his hand was a basket. At the sight of Mary his steps hesitated, and his eyes followed hers to where the palace lay. Then he crossed the zigzag of the intervening space, but he had to touch her outstretched arm before she noticed him.

“Simon!” she exclaimed, with that start one has when suddenly awaked.

“Yes, Simon indeed;” and through the silence of the souk his clear laugh rang. “I frightened you, did I not?”

Mary interrupted him. “Haven’t you heard? Has not Eleazer told you⁠—”

“When I left Bethany he was sleeping with both fists closed. Martha⁠—”

“The Master is arrested. Last night he was before the Sanhedrim; he is before the procurator now.”

Hurriedly Mary gave an account of what had occurred. As the recital continued, Simon’s expression grew darker than his curling hair, he clutched at the basket which he held, so tightly that the handle severed, the basket fell, and fruit that imprisoned the sunlight rolled on the ground.

“They were for the Master,” he said. “I thought he would sup with us tonight.”

“He may do so yet,” she answered. “Perhaps⁠—”

“Never!” cried a voice from the lattice. “They are leading him to Gülgolta now.”

Beyond, through the palace gate, a mass undulated, the body elongated, expanding as it moved. It was black, but at the sides was the glisten that cobras have. About it dust circled, and from it came the rumble of thunder heard afar. As the bulk increased, the roar deepened; the black lessened into varying hues. To the glisten came the glint of steel; the cobra changed into a multitude, the escort of a squad of soldiery, fronted by a centurion and led by the banner of Imperial Rome.

Behind the centurion, Jesus, in his faded sagum, staggered, overweighted by the burden of a cross. Two comrades in misery were at his side, but they moved with steadier step, bearing their crosses with the brawn of muscular and untired arms. The soldiers marched impassibly, preceding the executioners⁠—four stalwart Cypriotes, distinguishable by the fatness of their calves⁠—while behind was the Sanhedrim, and, extending indefinitely to the rear, the rabble of yelling Jews.

In a cobra’s coils is death, its eyes transfix. Neither Mary nor Simon had spoken, and now, as the soldiery was upon them, they leaned yet nearer the wall. For a moment Mary hid her face. At her feet the Christ had fallen, and from her came one wail, choked down at once. She stooped to aid him, but he stood up unassisted and reached to the wall for support.

The bars of the lattice shook; the old man peered out.

“Don’t touch my house, you vagabond! Move on!” he cried.

Calcol had turned to Simon, who was raising the cross. “Carry it for him,” he commanded.

Baba Barbulah still shook at the lattice. “Move on!” he repeated. “Seducer of the people, remitter of sins, upholder of adultery, move on; don’t touch my house, it will fall down on you! Move on, I say!”

Calcol’s command Simon had anticipated. He shouldered the cross. It was heavier to him than to the Christ, not in weight, perhaps, but in purpose. In the narrowness of the souk the crowd was impeded, but from the rear they pushed, surprised at the halt.

Mary sprang at the lattice. “It is you that shall move on,” she cried; “yes, you; and forever. The desert will call to you, ‘March;’ and the sea will snarl, ‘Further yet.’ The gates of cities will deny you, and the doors of hamlets be closed. The eagles may return to their eyrie, the panthers retreat to their lair, but you will have no home, no rest, and, till time dies, no tomb.”

The old man gnashed back at her an insult more bestial than he used before, and spat at her through the bars. But Mary had turned to the Christ. He was surrounded now by some women who had filtered through the alley above. Johanna, Mary Clopas, the wife of Zebdia, and Bernice, a fragile girl newly enrolled. The latter was wiping from his face the stains of blood and dust. The others were beating their breasts, crying aloud.

Of the disciples there was no trace, nor yet of any of those who had greeted him as the Messiah. It may be that the admiring throngs that had gathered about him had faded before a superior force. It may be they had lost heart, belief perhaps as well. Invective never propitiates. Recently he had omitted to prophesy, he argued. The exquisite parables with which he had been wont to charm even the recalcitrant seemed to have been put aside, and with them those wonders which rumor held him to have worked. But now that pathos and grace which endeared, that perfection of sentiment and expression which exalted the heart, returned to him, accentuated perhaps by the agonies he had endured.

“Weep for me no more,” he entreated. “But weep for yourselves and for your children. The days are coming,” he added, with a gesture at the impatient mob⁠—“the days are coming in which they shall say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us;’ to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if these things are done in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?”

And in this entreaty, in which he exhorted them to view disaster otherwise than from the external and evanescent aspect, the voice of the prophet rang once more.

Mary as yet had not realized the full portent of the soldiery and the mob. When it was approaching it had occurred to her that it might be another triumphal escort, such as she had once seen surround him on his way to a feast. As it advanced, the roar bewildered, and she had ceased to conjecture; then the Master had fallen, and the old Jew had vomited his slime. At the moment it was that, and that only, which had impressed her, and she had answered with the force of that new strength which suddenly she had found. But now at the sight of the women beating their breasts, and the bloodstained face of the Master, an inkling came to her; she stared open-mouthed at the cross, at Calcol, and at the executioners that were there.

Then immediately that horrible longing to know the worst beset her, and she darted to where the centurion stood.

“What is it?” she gasped. “What are you to do with him?”

By way of answer Calcol extended his arms straight out from either side, his head thrown back. He was a good-natured ruffian, with clear and pleasant eyes.

“Not crucify?” she cried. “Tell me, it is not that?”

Calcol nodded. To him one Jew more, one Jew less, was immaterial, provided he had his pay, and the prospect of a return to Rome was not too long delayed. Yet none the less in some misty way he wondered why this woman, with her splendid hair and scorching eyes, should have upbraided the tetrarch and abused the procurator because of the friendless Galilean whom he was leading to the cross. Woman to him, however, was, as she has been to others wiser than he, an enigma he failed to solve. And so he nodded merely, not unkindly, and smiled in Mary’s face.

The horrible longing now was stilled. She knew the worst; yet as the knowledge of it penetrated her being, it seemed to her as though it could not be true, that she was the plaything of some hallucination, her mind inhabited by a nightmare from which she must presently awake. The howl of the impatient mob undeceived her. It was real; it was actual; it was life. She stared at Calcol, her fair mouth agape. There were many things she wanted to say; her thoughts teemed with arguments, her mind with persuasions; but she could utter nothing; she was as one struck dumb; and it was not until the centurion smiled that the spell dissolved and the power of speech returned.

“Ah, that never; you shall kill me first!” she cried. And already she saw herself circumventing the centurion, blinding the soldiery, defying the mob, and leading the Master through byways and underground passages out of the accursed city into the fresh glades of Gethsemane, over the hill, down the hollows to the Jordan, and into the desert beyond. There was one spot she knew very well; one that only a bird could find; one that she would mention to no one, but to which she could take him and keep him hidden there in the brakes till night came, and the fording of the river was safe.

“That never!” she cried. And brushing Bernice off, she caught the Master by the cloak. “Come with me,” she murmured. “I know a way⁠—”

And she would have dragged him perhaps, regardless of the others, but the centurion had her by the arm.

“See here, my pretty friend, your place is not here.”

With a twist he sent her spinning back to Baba Barbulah’s wall.

“March!” he ordered.

The soldiery, disarranged, fell in line. The two robbers picked up their burden. The Master turned to Mary, to the others as well, with that expression which he alone possessed, that look which both promised and assuaged, and, it may be, would have said some word of encouragement, but Mary was at his side again, her hand upon his cloak.

“It shall never be,” she repeated. “They must kill me first.”

Calcol wheeled. His short sword glistened, reversed, and her cheek was laid open by the hilt. She staggered back. The soldiery moved on. The women surrounded her and stanched the wound. To her the blow held the difference between a cut and a cancer; she knew that it could never heal; and, as the blood poured down her face, for the first time she divined the uselessness of revolt.

Presently a wave of the mob caught her, separating her from the other women, and carrying her in its eddy through the gate, into the valley and on to the hillock beyond. On one side were the glimmer of fires, the smell of smoke, of offal too. On the infrequent trees vultures perched. To the right was a nest of gardens and of tombs.

In the eddies Mary lost foothold and lagged a little to the rear. When she reached Gülgolta the soldiery had formed three sides of a square. In it were the executioners, the prisoners, and the centurion. At the place where a fourth side might have been a steep decline began.

Within the square three crosses lay; before them the prisoners stood, stripped of their clothing now, and naked.

The Sanhedrim was grouped about that side of the square which leaned to the south, the horned bonnet of Caiaphas towering its lacework above the others. To the wide and cruel corners of his mouth had come the calm of a cheetah devouring its prey. At the outer angle, to the right, the standard of the empire swayed; and from an oak two vultures soared with a scream into the air, their eyes fixed on the vision of bare white flesh.

Through the ranks an elder passed. In his hand was a gourd, which he offered to one of the thieves.

“Drink of it, Dysmas,” he invited. “In it grains of frankincense have been dissolved.”

To the rear Annas nodded his approval. His lean, lank jaws parted. “Give strong drink,” he announced, authoritatively; “give strong and heady drink to those about to die, and wine to those that sorrow.”

Dysmas drank abundantly of the soporific, and held the gourd to his comrade.

“Take it, Stegas.”

As the second thief raised it to his lips, with a motion of arm and knee an executioner caught Dysmas beneath the chin, behind the leg, and the thief lay on a cross. In a second his wrists were bound, his feet as well. There was the blow of a hammer on a nail, a spurt of blood from the open hand; another blow, another spurt; and the cross, upraised, settled in a cavity already prepared, a beam behind it for support.

Stegas, his thirst slaked, fell as Dysmas had, and the elder caught the gourd and offered it to the Christ. If he had been tempted in the desert, as rumor alleged, the temptation could have been as nothing in comparison to the enticements of that cup. It held relief from thought, from the acutest pain that flesh can know, from life, from death.

He waved it aside. The executioner started with surprise; but he had his duty to perform, and, recovering himself, he caught the Christ, and in a moment he too was down, his hands transfixed, the cross upraised. The blood dripped leisurely on the sand beneath. Across his features a shadow passed and vanished. His lips moved.

“Father,” he murmured, “forgive them; they know not what they do.”

Calcol gave an order. Over the heads of Dysmas and of Stegas the sanis were affixed, wooden tablets smeared with gypsum, bearing the name of the crucified and with it the offence. They were simple and terse; but above the Christ appeared a legend in three tongues, in Aramaic, in Greek, and in Latin:

מלכא דיהודיא.
Ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων.
Rex Judaeorum.

Caiaphas sprang back as from the point of a sword.

“Mâlkâ dî Jehudâje!” he bellowed. “King of the Jews! It is a blasphemy, an iniquity, and an outrage. Centurion, tear it down.”

Calcol shrugged his shoulders, and pointed to the palace. “What the procurator has written he has written,” he answered.

In the tone, in the gesture that preceded it, and in its impertinence Caiaphas read Pilate’s one yet supreme revenge, the expression of his absolute contempt for the whole Sanhedrim and the nation that it ruled.

From the rear the mob jumped at the title as at a catchword. To them the irony of the procurator presumably was lost.

“King of the Jews!” they shouted. “Mâlkâ dî Jehudâje, come down from your cross!”

It was a great festival, and as they jeered at Jesus they enjoyed themselves hugely.

In their vast delight the voice of Stegas was drowned.

“I am a Roman citizen,” he kept repeating, his head swaying, and indicating with his eyes the wounds in his hands, the torture he endured. “Kill me,” he implored. And finding entreaty idle, he reviled the centurion, cursed the soldiery, and would have spat at them, but to his burning throat no spittle came.

The tongue of Dysmas lolled from his mouth. He had not the ability to speak, even if in speech relief could come. Flame licked at his flesh, his joints were severing, each artery was a nerve exposed, and something was crunching his brain. He could no longer groan; he could suffer merely, such suffering as hell perhaps has failed to contrive, that apogee of agony which it was left for man to devise.

Stegas, catching the refrain the mob repeated, turned his eyes from the soldiery to the adjacent cross.

“If you are as they say,” he cried, “save yourself and us.”

As a taunt to Caiaphas, Calcol echoed, “Behold your king!” and raising a stalk of hyssop, on which was a sponge that he had dipped in the posca, the thin wine the soldiers drink, he offered it to the Christ.

The sun was nearing the horizon. Caiaphas gathered his ample folds about him. He had seen enough. The feast, wretchedly embittered, was nearly done. There was another at which he must officiate: the shofar presently would sound; the skewering of the Paschal lamb it was needful for him to superintend. It was time, he knew, to return to the Temple; and as he gave a last indignant look at the placard, the lips of the Christ parted to one despairing cry:

“Elî, Elî, lemâh shebâktanî?”

Caiaphas, nodding to the elders, smiled with satisfaction.

At last the false pretender was forced to acknowledge the invalidity of his claims. The Father whose son he vaunted himself to be had disowned him when his recognition was needed, if ever it had been needed at all. And so, with the smile of one whose labor has had its recompense, Caiaphas patted his skirt, and the elders about him strolled back through the Gannath Gate to the Temple that awaited him.

The multitude meanwhile had decreased. To the crowd also the Temple had its attractions, its duties, and its offices. Moreover, the spectacle was at an end. With a blow of the mallet the legs of the thieves had been broken. They had died without a shriek, a thing to be regretted. The Galilean too, pierced by the level stroke of a spear, had succumbed without a word. Sundown was approaching. Clearly it was best to be within the walls where other gayeties were. The mob dispersed, leaving behind but the dead, the circling vultures, a group of soldiers throwing dice for the garments of the crucified, and, remotely, a group of women huddled beneath a protecting oak.

During the hour or two that intervened, the force which had visited Mary evaporated in strength overtaxed. She was conscious only that she suffocated. The words of the women that had drawn her to them were empty as blanks in a dream; the jeers of the mob vacant as an empty bier. To but one thing was she alive, the fact that death could be. Little by little, as the impossible merged into the actual, the understanding came to her that the worst that could be had been done, and she ceased to suffer. The departing hierarchy, the dispersing mob, retreating before encroaching night, left her unimpressed. To her the setting sun was Christ.

The soldiers passed. She did not see them. Calcol called to her. She did not hear. The women had gone from her; she did not notice it. She stood as a cataleptic might, her eyes on the cross. Once only, when the Christ had uttered his despairing cry, she too had cried in her despair. In the roar of the mob the cry was lost as a stone tossed in the sea. Since then she had been dumb, sightless also, existing, if at all, unconsciously, her life-springs nourished by death.

Though she gazed at the cross, she had ceased to distinguish it. A little group that had reached it before the soldiery left had been unmarked by her. On the platform of her dream a serpent had emerged. In its coils were her immortal hopes. It was that she saw, and that alone. Those moments of agony in which the imagination oscillates between the past and the future, devouring the one, fumbling the other, had been endured, and resignation failed to bring its balm. She had believed with a faith so firm that now in its demolition there was nothing left⁠—an abyss merely, where light was not.

A hand touched her, and she quivered as a leaf does at the wing of a bird. “Mary, come with us,” someone was saying; “we are taking him to a tomb.”

Just beyond were men and women whom she knew. Joseph of Haramathaïm, a close follower of the Master; Nikodemon, the richest man in all Judaea; Johanna, Mary Clopas, Salomè, Bernice, and the servants of the opulent Jew. It was Ahulah who had touched her; and as Mary started she saw before her a coffin which the others bore.

“Come with us,” Ahulah repeated; and Mary crossed the intervening ridge to where the gardens were and the tombs she had already passed.

At the door of a sepulchre the brief procession halted. Within was a room, a little grotto furnished with a stone slab and a lamp that flickered, surmounted by an arch. The coffin, placed on the slab, routed a bat that flew to the arch, and a lizard that scurried to a crevice. In the coffin the Christ lay, his head wrapped in a napkin, the body wound about by broad bands of linen that were secured with gum and impregnated with spices and with myrrh. The odor of aromatics filled the tomb. The bat escaped to the night. A stone was rolled before the opening, the brief procession withdrew, and Mary was left with the dead.

The momentary exertion, the bier, the sepulchre, the sight of the Christ in his cerements, the brooding quiet⁠—these things had roused her. Her mind was nimbler, and thought more active. One by one the stars appeared. They would vanish, she told herself, as her hopes had done. Only they would reappear, and belief could not. It had come as a rainbow does, and disappeared as vaporously, little by little, before the full glare of might. For a minute, hours perhaps, she stood quite still, interrogating the past in which so much had been, gauging the future in which so much was to be. The one retreated, the other fled. Thoughts came to her evanescently, and faded before they were wholly formed. At one moment she was beckoning the unicorns from the desert, the winged lions from the yonderland, commanding them to bear her to the home of some immense revenge. At others she was asking her way of griffins, propounding the problem to the Sphinx. But the unicorns and lions took flight, the griffins spread their wings, the Sphinx fell asleep. There was no answer to her appeal.

Behind the sepulchre the moon rose; it dropped a beam near by. There is light somewhere, it seemed to say; and in that telegram from Above, she thought of Rome. She remembered now, in Rome was Tiberius, and in him Revenge. She smiled at her own forgetfulness. Yes, it was there. She would go to him, she would exact reparation; there should be another crucifixion. Pilate should be nailed to the cross, Judas on one side, Caiaphas on the other. Only it would be at Rome where there was no Passover to interfere with the torture they endured. Things were done better there. Men were crucified, not with the head up, but with the feet; and so remained, not for hours, but for days; and died, not of their wounds alone, but of hunger too.

A chariot of dream caught her, and, borne across the intervening space, she saw herself in a palace where there were gods and monsters, columns of transparent quartz, floors of malachite, roofs of gold. And there, on a dais, the Caesar lay. Behind him a fan, luminous as a peacock’s tail, oscillated to the tinkling of mysterious keys. In his crown was the lividity of uncolored dawns, in his sceptre the dominion of the world. An ulcer devoured his face, and in his ear a boy repeated the maxims of Elephantis. Mary threw herself at his feet, her tears fell on them as rain on leaves. “Vengeance,” she implored; but he listened merely to the boy at his side. “Death is your servant,” she cried. “You command, it obeys.” The ulcer oozed, the face grew vague, he gave no answer. She stood up and menaced him. “Behind you spectres crouch; you may not see them. I do; their name is Tomorrow.” The murmurs of the boy were her sole reply. The roof crumbled, the flooring disappeared, the emperor faded, and Mary stared into space.

The moon that had struck aslant the tomb had gone, but where its beams had fallen the message remained. There is light somewhere, it repeated. Across the heavens a meteor shot like a bee. In the air voices whispered confusedly. It is not in Rome, one seemed to say. It is not on earth, another called.

Mary clutched at her beating breast. The sky now was an opening rose. What the sunset had sown the dawn would reap. In the night that had enveloped, day raised a lattice, and through it came a gust of higher thought. It is not in revenge, a voice whispered. It is not in regret, another called.

“I know it,” Mary gasped. “Yes, yes, I know it now. It is in faith.”

“And in abnegation of self.”

The stone which stood before the sepulchre had rolled away. At her side the Christ stood. In his eyes were golden parables, in his face Truth shone revealed. She stared, dumb with the unexpected joy of belief confirmed, blinded by the sudden light, while he who had rent the bonds of death passed on into the budding day.

When the brief procession of the night before returned to the tomb, it was empty. At the door Mary lay, her arms outstretched and vacant.

I

A year or two ago Hugh Hyrtl was absolutely unknown; if it be different today, it is because of the following curious circumstances:

To begin with, he was an artist⁠—a young artist, a good artist, a good-looking artist⁠—but he was anything but a rich artist, and, as I have intimated, unknown. There were days when he was not certain whether he would dine or not, but, being young, he was hopeful, and, being hopeful, courageous. His atelier, which was also his bedroom and parlor, overlooked the courtyard of a great house on Tompkins Square.

Tompkins Square is not a locality over which Fashion presides, and Hugh, who was dainty in his ways, hated it as thoroughly as it is possible for an honest young fellow to hate anything. But Tompkins Square is perhaps the least expensive residential quarter of New York, and there Hugh was able to achieve the impossible⁠—to dream of Fame and live on a dollar a day.

Meanwhile he was at work on that great picture which everyone has since seen⁠—Heliogabalus smothering men with flowers. The picture had plenty of color, plenty of action, plenty of archaeology, and Hugh was beginning to feel that it might be a success when one fine day, as he happened to be retouching the gold sigma on which the little emperor lounged and laughed, a window opposite his own was thrown open, and the initial incident of the accompanying drama occurred.

Across the court there came a trill, then a burst of song, a roulade of sheer joy such as is always pleasant to intercept, but particularly so when you happen to be in the youth of life and the youth of the year. Hugh looked up. In the opposite window was a girl⁠—a pretty girl; yet when I say pretty I mean that prettiness which, when you see it, makes you want to jump straight down the possessor’s throat. It was the prettiness that comes with the eighteenth year to a girl who has blue eyes, kissable lips and a complexion of roses and cream.

When Hugh looked up the trill trembled and ceased. Four eyes had met. Hugh smiled, which was impertinent of him; the girl blushed, which was modest of her; then an old man appeared, one who neither blushed nor smiled, who looked exceeding cross and shut the window with a bang.

“Caesar, what a beauty!” Hugh exclaimed, and turned to the sigma once more. In a moment he looked across the court. The window was blank. “I wonder,” he mused, and whistled softly to himself; “I wonder if I haven’t got too much ochre stuck on there.” He looked again at the window across the court. “Bah!” he continued, “as if I could have too much ochre. It’s the purple on the laticlave that jars.”

For a little space he painted away very determinedly, the muscles of his jaw close set; then he looked again at the window⁠—there was no one, not even the cross old man.

“Oh, hang it all,” he cried. “I can’t work any more today!”

When an agile young fellow wants to, it doesn’t take him very long to get down six flights of stairs⁠—no, nor seven, either, however steep those stairs may be⁠—and presently Hugh entered a dingy den over which the janitress of the building presided.

The janitress was a fat person, with the voice of an ogre, and a great love for gossip and tenants who paid their way. Hugh never gossiped, but he had a smile which had won her heart, all ogress that she was. She laughed as he entered and flourished a broom.

“Mrs. O’Hassadam,” he began, “you are looking very handsome this morning. I⁠—”

“Don’t be flattering an old lady like meself, Mr. Hyrtl, but say to me just plainly what you want, with no nonsense whatever.”

“Then, Mrs. O’Hassadam, as you love righteousness and abhor mammon, tell me who those people are that live up there on the other side of the court, yes, on the sixth story where the geranium is?”

“No great shakes, Mr. Hyrtl.”

“What!”

“No great shakes, Mr. Hyrtl.”

“But the girl?”

“No great shakes, I keep telling you; a gadabout, that’s what she is, with an ex-convict for a pa.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” cried Hugh, indignantly, “no, not one word.”

“Question a lady’s veracity, Mr. Hyrtl? Where are your manners, Mr. Hyrtl. Mr. Hyrtl, mind what I am telling you. For ten years that old forger has been here, and, since I can remember, not a letter has come for him whatever, not a soul has come to see him and not once has he put his foot out of this door. Question a lady’s word!”

“But⁠—”

“It’s a murderer he is, I am a-thinking, and as for that gal, she’s no better than she should be whatever at all, sitting there where anyone can see her, where I can see her, a-trying to make eyes at you.”

“But⁠—”

“Oh, I know very well you’re forever in your paintbox and pay no attention to likes of her. It’s annoying you, she is, that’s what she’s doing, in a respectable house like this, besides.”

“But⁠—”

“And what is it you want, whatever?” Mrs. O’Hassadam abruptly inquired of a little man, sadly shabby in appearance, who had loomed in the door. “There’s no old bottles today.”

“And if there were I wouldn’t want them,” the little man retorted, defiantly; “unless they were full. It’s lodgings I’m after.”

“It is, is it? Well, then, you’d better try and find them in some nice little place on Fifth Avenue where they’ll only charge you five dollars if you ring the bell and ten dollars if you don’t. This establishment wouldn’t suit you at all.”

And Mrs. O’Hassadam made a skirmish with her broom.

“Lodgings, indeed,” she added, indignantly; “why not chambers, self-contained, with private entrance. Be off, or I’ll call the police. Mr. Hyrtl⁠—”

Hugh had sidled out, pretending not to hear. Presently he was on the sidewalk. Beyond was the Square, deluged by the eager sunlight of a radiant noon; near at hand was a junkshop, and a step or two further on a window in which, temptingly arranged, were coils of sausages, red beefsteak, yellow fowl and a glistening ham. For a second, in sheer perplexity, Hugh stopped; yet, as he loitered there, he saw nothing of the contents of that window⁠—it was what another had held that memory was reproducing, and, as the convolutions of fancy waned and subsided, he found himself staring at the individual whom Mrs. O’Hassadam had ordered to be off.

“Well, sir, do you take me for a freak?”

He was a stout, little man, with a long beard and the restless eyes of a ferret, distressingly shabby, the more so even that in his shabbiness was the unmistakable air of better days.

Hugh started from his reverie.

“Not a bit,” he answered, gently. “I am an artist, and if I stared at you it was because you look like a Roman Senator.”

“Why not a satyr? So you are an artist, eh? Well, where have I seen you before⁠—in Lisbon, Liverpool or Leghorn?”

“Truly,” Hugh answered, “I have never been so far away.”

“You haven’t, haven’t you?” And the little man scrutinized the artist’s face. “All the same, I’ll be blowed if you don’t remind me of someone. Thundering guns, how cold it is!”

“Why, it must be seventy-five, at least.”

“Yes, I dare say⁠—to those who have breakfasted, to those who dined last night and the night before; but when a man hasn’t eaten for forty-eight hours the rarest day of June is colder than Christmas Eve. Thundering guns!”

“You don’t mean to say⁠—”

“Yes, I do mean to say. Now, tell me how I can earn a dollar at once⁠—not tomorrow or tonight, but right now.”

And the little man, who had been looking very fiercely at Hugh, suddenly seemed about to collapse. Hugh caught him by the arm.

“Here, come with me,” he said.

In a moment both were seated at a table of the eating-shop within.

“Take some coffee first,” said Hugh, authoritatively, “and then⁠—”

“Oh, you’re going to treat, are you? Well, now, my name is John Anderson⁠—yes, sir, John Anderson, my Joe John⁠—and it doesn’t rhyme with either beat or sponge. I won’t be treated. I may be indigent, but I am proud. Besides, if I had twopence I could become a millionaire.”

“You will let me,” said Hugh, seductively, “make you a little loan. I have two dollars, here is one. Pay me when you are a millionaire.”

At the sight of the coin the little man turned purple.

“Thundering guns!” he muttered, “yesterday I passed an hour at the Metropolitan Museum looking at a gold piece in a case. Give me your name and address.”

Before the open door of the eating-house a slender figure passed. Hugh jumped from his seat. It was she, he could have sworn. The little man caught him by the arm.

“Your name and address,” he repeated.

Hugh shook himself loose. In a second he was in the street. The slender figure was just turning the corner, but Hugh was right behind. When at last he overtook that slender figure he discovered that it belonged to a sallow brunette.

At the table in the eating-house the little man was muttering:

“But where the deuce have I seen him before?”

II

The next morning Hugh was hard at work gain. The painting before him was a wonder to behold. It represented a hall, similar to the interior of a temple⁠—one in which fluted columns rose and met the dome; about it ran a gallery, and there, Heliogabalus, a painted boy of fifteen, lounged and laughed; near him were the magi come from afar to witness the nuptials of the Sun and Moon; opposite were musicians, and a little beyond a group of slaves were emptying huge baskets of lilies on the assembled guests beneath. Some of the latter, in flowers up to the waist, were trying to escape, but the door was barred. Others, aided by yellow couches, were trying to scale the wall and reach the gallery above, and on these a steady rain of red and white buds descended. In a corner, an avalanche of roses and violets had fallen, and from it men were struggling, their arms crooked, their eyes dilated. From the dome a glare of sunlight smote the purple draperies, danced on the sea of flowers and put a rainbow in the air. It was very gorgeous, a riot of splendid color, and to Hugh it meant nothing less than an encounter with that gracious lady whose name is Fame.

He was at work then on the sigma of gold on which the little emperor lounged, and that gold he was endeavoring to marry harmoniously with the brass of the trumpets and the crocus of the harps. The night before, on his return after a long tramp through Central Park, he had determined not to look again at the window across the court; for to look was to fall in love, and to fall in love meant “Fame, farewell!” and also “Starvation, welcome!” In spite of which, however, no sooner was his light extinguished than he took a look. Save a single star that glowed and glimmered, there was not a thing to be seen. Thereupon, with all the strength of virtuous resolutions, he had wrapped himself in slumber and dreams of her. And now on this particular morning, he had not tried more than ten or a dozen times to see if she were there.

The sigma was done, its gold properly married with the crocus and brass, and Hugh was about to get to work on a heap of lilies and hyacinths when a fresh incident occurred. Someone was knocking at the door.

“Come in!” Hugh cried, without looking round. It was Mrs. O’Hassadam, he was sure.

But though he heard the door open, he heard nothing that indicated the presence of that lady; no rich, loud greeting and rustle of broom. He turned his head. On the threshold stood a man, very gaunt and sickly, a man who looked as though he had a bad digestion and a worse conscience; he seemed feeble, too, timorous and apologetic. His coat would not have caused envy in the heart of a backwoodsman, and his trousers were elaborately patched. One foot was shod with a slipper, the other with a shoe; both were rusty, and the man himself exhaled an indefinable odor of must and decay. At a glance Hugh recognized the cross old person who, the day before, had shut the opposite window with a bang.

“H’m!” he mused. “He’s going to call me to account for flirting with his daughter. Well, let him. Who’s afraid?”

“We are neighbors, sir,” the old man began, with a stealthy air and a covert look about him.

“Take a seat, I pray you,” said Hugh, politely.

“And being neighbors, I thought I would venture to call.”

“A compliment which does me much honor, and one which I trust you will permit me to repay,” Hugh answered, with a fine flourish. “Be seated, I beg of you.”

“You are a stranger here,” the old man added, thoughtfully; “but I have lived in this house for the past ten years.”

“Dear me!”

“Yes; ten years. I came here when my daughter Jenny was eight years old, and she is just eighteen today. She hasn’t always lived here, though. Until a few months ago she was away at school. She is a good girl, sir.”

To this statement Hugh nodded approvingly.

“It’s dull for her, very. She has no friends of her own age. I have not let her associate with the people hereabouts, and, as for myself, I am not much of a companion for a lass like her. Am I?”

Hugh tried his best to look complimentary. He failed, however, and said nothing. But the old man’s eyes were fixed on the floor and he ran on, unheeding:

“No, I am not, and she hasn’t any relatives, either. I am the last of my race. I am a Sisseton, and my brother Paul was killed at my side in the war. My wife, she died before I came here. So it’s dull for her, you see, very; and this being her birthday and you being a stranger, I just thought I might ask would you spend the evening with us?”

“Why, my dear Mr. Sisseton, nothing on earth, no, absolutely nothing could give me greater pleasure.”

“Well, then, that is settled. There will be some cake, and I don’t promise it, but there may be a glass of sweet wine.”

“I adore cake,” Hugh fairly shouted. “As for wine, I never touch it.”

“Don’t you, now?” And the old man looked up very sharply at Hugh. “Well, well, I have heard as much. I have heard⁠—But there, never mind. It’s settled, then, is it? We may expect you at eight?”

“To the minute, Mr. Sisseton.”

But he spoke to the walls. The old man had disappeared as in a trap, closing the door noiselessly as he went, and Hugh returned to his lilies.

The work progressed slowly enough after that, for between the canvas and the brush every now and again a face would appear⁠—one that was neither Roman nor Syrian, a bewilderment of yellow hair, blue eyes, kissable lips and a complexion of roses and cream.

“I am in luck,” Hugh decided. And had he not reached the austere age of three-and-twenty I promise you he would have danced for joy.

The afternoon took itself away. At six o’clock Hugh began touching up the dimmed splendor of a pair of patent-leather pumps which he found wrapped in an old newspaper at the bottom of his trunk. He got out his best coat and brushed it carefully; he got out a very large neckcloth, which he tied with the nicety of a geometrician; there was, he discovered, a crease still in his trousers, there was a pair of gloves that still could be worn, and⁠—though you or I would have expected to be cut dead by our best beloved had we dared to wear such a hat as his⁠—when he went out that evening for dinner no nicer, fresher, handsomer young fellow ever strode through Tompkins Square. Nevertheless, at one minute before eight precisely, when this hero of a midspring night rapped on an old man’s door his hand was trembling and he blushed like a girl.

It sounds like a phrase in a novel to say that the room into which he was then ushered was scrupulously neat, but it would take a maker of dainty ballads to describe its sweetness and simplicity. Barring the old man, who would have been a blur on a desert, there was not a thing in it that jarred. Two windows, which looked on the street, were hung with lace, which was imitation, of course, yet brilliantly white, and these curtains were looped to the wall with strips of canary silk that had probably come from a cigar-box. There were four chairs unconventionally arranged. There was one small table on which there was a large cake. There was another on which there was a lamp and a pink shade. On the walls were two colored lithographs, unframed, that were recognizedly supplements of a London weekly. In the air was the scent of innocence, and on one of the chairs, blushing like mad, sat the prettiest little girl in the world.

Hugh distinguished himself at once by tripping over a mat, and so confused was he that when his host mumbled some form of introduction he awkwardly stretched his hand and as awkwardly withdrew it.

“And are you very well, sir?” the young woman inquired, her head held a trifle to one side and in her eyes a manifest delight at finding him more embarrassed than herself.

Hugh declared that he had never felt better in his life. The young woman, in reply to a question which he then addressed, announced that her own health was perfect; the old man, duly interrogated, answered in the same strain, and then all three earnestly discussed the weather. Presently there was cake and lemonade, which Hugh lauded to the skies. Never had he eaten such ambrosia, never had he sipped such nectar; and, in the enthusiasm of the moment, he consented to play poker for imaginary stakes⁠—a game at which, at the expiration of an hour, he had lost not a penny less than two million dollars. At one moment, however, during the progress of the play he had everything in his own favor. A rap had come on the door, and the old man had jumped as though a dog under the table had bitten him on the leg. “Don’t let anyone in,” he beseeched. “Say I have moved; say I am dead. Here, let me get into the other room.” And with that he had risen, his face contracted, shaking in every limb. But already Jenny had gone to the door. It was a mistake, she announced. A visitor for another tenant. Thus reassured, gradually the old man’s calm returned and the game continued. When it was done, there was more ambrosia, more nectar, more small-talk, and, finally, the inevitable good night.

After Hugh had gone, father and daughter sat awhile in silence. Suddenly Jenny jumped to her feet and threw her arms about the old man’s neck.

“My darling papa, I love you!”

But what she meant by that absurd demonstration she did not wait to explain. She was out of the room and in her own in a second.

The old man heard her door close, and, taking the lamp, went to an anjoining chamber. It contained a bed, a chair, a bureau and a trunk. He put the lamp on the bureau and moved the bed. Then, kneeling down, he raised a plank from the floor and extracted a package wrapped in oilskin. This, with tender care, he opened, and drew out a bill of the nation of the value of one thousand dollars. Presently he drew out another of the game denomination, then a third, a fourth, until finally be had counted eighty-seven. And it would have been curious if he had not, for he had gone through the same operation almost seven thousand three hundred times⁠—that is to say, twice a day for nearly ten years.

III

Once planted, the germ of friendship blooms apace. Barely a fortnight had gone, and here were these three people on the best of terms. In the discreetest manner, Hugh had managed to ingratiate himself with the old man; he was serviceable, and he asked no questions. The timidity, the shrinking fear of strangers, which was the peculiar characteristic of this curious individual, he treated as he would have one of those natural afflictions, such as rheumatism or baldness, to which advanced age is subject and for which there is no cure. Certainly he made no allusion to it, but then he had so much to occupy him that it may be he gave it, if at all, little more than a passing thought.

Ah, yes! he had much to occupy him. Heliogabalus was indeed turned to the wall, but the atelier was bright with different studies of the same lead, luminous with blue eyes, yellow hair and complexions of roses and cream. Yet, for all his art, there was an intangible something in the original, a freshness, a vivacity, a charm that eluded him and escaped.

“I am too much in love to paint her properly,” he declared to himself; and as a matter of fact he was wholly, turbulently, absurdly in love with a girl whom he had known but a fortnight and of whose previous existence he had been absolutely unaware.

Of this state of affairs Jenny was seemingly ignorant. Now and again of an evening he sat with her and her father in that little sky-parlor where he had first tasted the food of the gods, and there, with a sentiment akin to reverence, listened to the sweet music of her words. Sometimes, when the evening happened to be clear, they took a stroll among the factory girls and mechanics in the Square, and sometimes they would sit awhile on one of the benches and discuss subjects in which⁠—by comparison to one, the great one as yet unbroached⁠—the interest was probably feigned; for there were times when their conversation, however animated, would subside and cease, and the wonder of love would be upon them. These silences, painfully awkward, indeed, Hugh would break with snatches of verse⁠—lines of Owen Meredith, that poet of the nineteenth century who died the other day in his beloved France; quatrains of Browning, too; and once the ill-mannered young fellow recited a conceit of Leigh Hunt’s:

“Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief who love to get
Sweets upon your list, put that in⁠—
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that wealth and health have missed me,
Say I’m growing old; but add,
Jenny kissed me.”

At this impertinence, however, the girl’s face took on such mantling hues, that for very shame her companion was obliged to drop into sedater measures, and divert her attention with astronomical hypotheses in regard to the moon, which, at that moment, happened to be suspended above them, a slender sickle of gold.

In parishes like Tompkins Square, that pomp of Satan, which we have agreed to call Etiquette, is not always as punctiliously observed as it is in fairer precincts; and a day or two later when Hugh had related the disadvantages under which he labored, when trying, in the absence of the model, to get a certain face on canvas, not Miss Jenny Sisseton, no, nor her father, either, saw the slightest objection to her sitting in propria persona to this audacious young man. What need had they of our effete survival of the duenna of the past? Theirs was a solitude as harmless, yes, and as fragrant, as that of two flowers on separate stalks.

But one dazzling noon, it so happened, that this young woman, after sitting for at least ten minutes as quiet as a mouse, pouted her pretty lips, and looking straight at Hugh, who was painting them very determinedly, remarked with an air of sweet unconcern:

“Why don’t you tell me something of yourself?”

“Why?” Hugh echoed. “Because there is nothing to tell, I suppose. My life began⁠—” he was about to say, “when I met you,” but he tacked adroitly⁠—“the first time I saw an oil-painting. I was a child then, and ever since I have dreamed of being an artist.”

“But you are.”

“No, an apprentice, merely. And yet when I think of my first efforts, my one grief is that my poor mother could not have lived to see the progress I have made. She never believed much in art, but she did believe in me.”

“Is it long since⁠—”

“Since she died? Yes, it is a long time ago. I was at school in Baltimore; a message came and they sent me to her at once. Our home was in Virginia, a little cottage not far from Richmond. There my mother lived with only an old negress to assist her. When I arrived, she was dead. Some excitement, the receipt of a letter, the old woman said, and she had sent for me, but she had sent too late. After the funeral I barred the windows, locked the door and went back to school. But they did not keep me long. I had no money. The little income which my mother enjoyed died with her, and the cottage could not be sold until I came of age.”

“Did you sell it then?”

“No, indeed. I shall never sell it. My mother was born there and it was there she died.”

“Tell me of her,” Jenny murmured. “Are you like her?”

“No, they used to say not. I take after my father, I believe. He was a sailor, the captain of a merchantman, and was lost at sea. It was a terrible blow for my mother; she was left alone with but myself for consolation. It was that she used to call me, and I⁠—I loved her with all my heart.”

“I would have loved her, too,” Jenny sighed.

“If she could hear you, do you know what she would say?⁠—do you know, Jenny? She would say: ‘My dear child, I love you, too. I love you because you are sweet and good, because you are tenderhearted, because you are the loveliest, best and dearest girl in all the world, because you have filled my boy’s life with living springs, because you are the future to him, and hope and fame.’ That is what she would say to you, Jenny, and she would add, I know: ‘Love him, Jenny, for my sake if you cannot love him for his own.’ ”

“But I do love you,” said the young woman, with great decision. “Didn’t you know it?”

At this unexpected avowal Hugh stood very still, his brush in the air; then the brush fell, and suddenly he was at her side, an arm about the whiteness of her neck, his lips on hers.

“Here! Here! Stop that!”

The two culprits separated so quickly that neither were quite sure whether the kiss had been given or yet returned. Across the court, in the window opposite, Mr. Sisseton glowered, imposing and irate.

“Stop that, I say!” he repeated. “You have no right to do that. No right at all. As for you, young man, go back to your easel. Jenny, don’t you move until I am there.”

In their innocence, a thunderbolt from a clear sky could not have startled more. Jenny hid her face in her hands and Hugh bit his fingers. A minute passed, that seemed an hour long, then another, a third, a fourth; finally there came a shuffle in the hall and the old man entered, this time without the formality of a rap.

“Now, sir⁠—” he began.

“Mr. Sisseton,” Hugh interrupted, “I swear to you it is the first time, and I swear to you, also, it would not have occurred if⁠—if⁠—”

“Well, sir, if what? If I hadn’t brought you together, perhaps. And do you suppose I didn’t do it on purpose?”

“What!”

“Precisely. Now will you be good enough to inform me what your intentions are?”

“My intentions are to marry your daughter, if she will do me the honor to become my wife.”

“Oh, they are, are they? And have you any reason to think that she will consent?”

“He knows that I will,” said that forward young woman.

“It’s come to that pass, has it?” muttered the tyrant. “Very good. Now, Mr. Hyrtl, perhaps you will answer a question. How do you propose to support her?”

Hugh’s answer was in the expression which he then assumed, one pathetic enough to have mollified a tiger. But Mr. Sisseton was either not to be mollified or else he demanded something more explicit than pantomime.

“Well, sir?” he growled.

“Well, sir,” Hugh at last made answer, “I am young, strong, ambitious, and it seems to me⁠—”

“Fiddlesticks! So was I young, strong, ambitious, and it seemed to me that I was quite capable of supporting a wife on just those things for capital. The result was not satisfactory. I have had the experience, though, and on the day when my wife, outworn with privation and misery, died, I swore that my daughter should never marry a pauper.”

Hugh raised a hand in protest.

“Unless,” the old man continued, “unless my daughter happened to be an heiress.”

“Oh, papa, papa,” sobbed Jenny, “how can you be so cruel!”

Mr. Sisseton went to the door, opened it, peered out in the corridor, then closing it again, took a seat in the middle of the room and stared at Hugh as though he had never seen him before.

“What day of the month is it?” he asked, abruptly.

“Really⁠—”

“Come now, a clever young fellow like you ought to tell me like a shot.”

“It’s the 10th,” said Hugh, morosely.

“The 10th of what?”

“The 10th of June,” sobbed Jenny.

“The 10th of June, is it?” the old man repeated, meditatively, “the 10th of June. Dear me, dear me, how time flies! Well, it being the 10th of June⁠—You are quite sure, are you, that it is the 10th of June?”

“Yes, yes,” Hugh and Jenny answered in chorus.

“Well, it being the 10th of June, I may say, in confidence, of course, I may say that my daughter is an heiress.”

“An heiress!” the girl exclaimed.

“As if I cared,” said Hugh.

“Well, you might just as well care, then,” the old man retorted. “For if she were not, she would never be your wife. No, sir, never. However, in the circumstances, and in view of the fact that today is the 10th of June, I may congratulate you. Jenny will have eighty-seven thousand dollars.” And drawing from his pocket a package done up in oilskin, the old man displayed to the startled lovers a roll of banknotes of fabulous size.

“But where did you get them from?” Jenny gasped.

Up to this point the old man had conducted himself with the assurance and bravado of a stockbroker, but that simple little question seemed to have precisely the same effect on him that the prick of a pin has on a toy balloon. He collapsed.

“Why⁠—why,” he stammered at last, “they belonged to your mother.”

“But only a moment ago you said she died of privation and want.”

“I saved them out of my pension, then.”

“Papa! Out of your pension! Fifty pensions like yours wouldn’t make that amount.”

The old man turned upon her, with recovered strength.

“Do you take me for a thief?” he gnashed.

“Perhaps you have a reason of your own,” said Hugh, “for not wishing to tell where the money came from.”

“I have. I have a dozen. I have a thousand.”

“Let us say no more about it, then. For my part, I regard you as above suspicion.”

“So do I,” said Jenny.

“And it’s lucky you do,” bawled the old man, all his former assurance and bravado returning. “It’s mighty lucky you do. You don’t know what a narrow squeeze you’ve had. You don’t either of you know of what I am capable when I’m vexed. But what do you mean, anyway, by asking me questions? Such impudence!”

“There, there, papa,” murmured Jenny.

“Yes, miss, such impudence! Now, you can accept what I choose to give you and accept it, too, with a devilish good grace or⁠—or that’s the end of the marriage. I’ll pack you off to a convent, by gad, that’s just what I’ll do with you.”

And as he made these direful threats the fierce old man fairly chuckled.

“I’ll be good as gold,” said Jenny, seraphically.

“Well, you had better, and so had that lackadaisical simpleton there. Now, let us talk about the wedding. Good Heavens, what’s that?”

There had come on the door a knock that would have waked the dead. The old man jumped as though stung by a wasp.

“Don’t let anyone come in,” he entreated. “Barricade the door, hide me somewhere.”

His hands were trembling so that he could hardly get the oilskin package back in his pocket. His face was haggard and his eyes dilated, and suddenly he assumed the appearance of a hunted beast.

“Hide me,” he implored. “Don’t let anyone in!”

“But before either Hugh or Jenny could make even a pretense at obeying him, the door flew open and a little man with a long beard entered the room.

“Thundering guns!” he exclaimed, “I can’t congratulate you on your stairs.”

“Sir,” said Hugh, stepping forward, “to what do I owe the honor⁠—”

“Do you mean to say that you don’t remember me?”

“I do not, sir; and as I happen to be discussing family matters⁠—”

Mr. Sisseton beckoned frantically to Jenny, and slid like a shadow through the door.

“I will join you in a moment!” Hugh called after them. “Now, sir,” he continued; “what is it?”

“Nice gal, that,” said the stranger, appreciatively. “Why, there she is again, and again,” he added, pointing to the pictures that illuminated the room. “Is the old party her pa?”

“Sir, I am waiting⁠—”

“Thundering guns! so you are, dear boy. Let’s sit down; those stairs of yours would tire a resurrectionist.”

IV

The little man straddled a chair and gave a tug at his beard.

“A nice fellow, you are,” he muttered, with a fine show of indignation. “You save a man’s life and forget all about him. What kind of behavior is that? I was starving last month and you loaned me a dollar. Here it is.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Hugh, a trifle mollified; “I remember you now.”

“I should have repaid it before, but I didn’t have it.”

“Excellent reason; but then there was no hurry. I don’t see how you found me, though.”

“No trouble about that; all I had to do was to ask that fat harridan downstairs; the difficulty was to get the coin. After you bolted I had something to eat and invested the change in pencils, which I peddled at a profit, turned the proceeds into fancy notions; and, here I am, hale and hearty, with the future before me and a cool hundred in my pocket.”

“Bravo!” said Hugh. “I like your grit.”

“Bah! I’ll be a millionaire yet, and buy some of your pictures⁠—that one, for instance; the pretty girl who is to be your wife.”

“And how the dickens did you know that?”

“I’m quick as a flash, that’s what I am. I can catch on quicker than any man you ever saw. But anyone would have known what was going on here. Bless your dear soul, I had only to catch a glimpse of her sweet face to know what was up. You’re not painting her picture for money, I’ll be bound.”

“Sir,” cried Hugh, irritated in spite of himself by the free and easy form of address, “I am very busy, and if⁠—”

“Tut, tut. I have taken a fancy to you and you mustn’t be cross. Besides, it’s only my way. Let me tell you my story.”

“What for?”

“That you may know who I am, of course. I may look seedy, but I’m a man worth cultivating. You never heard of such an extraordinary fellow as I am. I have had a career that is simply marvelous. At twelve I was running a printing press in Toronto. The next year I made a fortune off a patent bit, and lost it in a night bucking the tiger. I have been an aeronaut, a telegraph operator, a nabob and a cook. I have followed a dozen trades⁠—some honest, some not. I have engineered companies out of which millions have been made. I have been a miner in Arizona, in Cape Colony, in Peru I had the concession for lighting St. Petersburg with electricity and the charter for trams in Madras. I have handled cargoes of elephant tusks and smuggled opium in books. I have been a three-card monte man on the Pacific slope and led revivals in Maine. The Wandering Jew is nothing to me. I have been everywhere, seen everything, and, though I am sixty years old, I am strong as an ox. With this hundred I shall open a cigar-shop. When I have a thousand to my credit I’ll take a hack at the Street.”

“With what?”

“With my brains, of course. What is there wonderful about speculating with the ready? Thundering guns! give me fifty thousand today and in a month I’ll quadruple it.”

“Or go broke.”

“Not a bit of it. What will you wager I don’t make a million? I am lucky, not a doubt of it, and I have ideas. My head is full of them. Anything suggests them⁠—a tune from a barrel-organ, a sign in a window, a remark overheard and retained, the first paper I pick up; here, for instance⁠—”

And the little man, leaning forward, picked up a newspaper which lay on the table. It was the one from which, a month before, Hugh had taken his pumps and which, with artistic indifference, he had suffered to remain where it fell.

“Thundering guns!”

With the agility of a clown the little man had sprung to his feet, his eyes glued to the paper. His face was always red, but suddenly it had grown bright purple.

“What is the number of this house?” he blurted.

“Seventeen.”

“Tompkins Square?”

Hugh nodded.

“Is there anyone here by the name of Sisseton?”

“Yes,” Hugh answered, blankly astonished. “But why do you ask?”

“Where does he live? Tell me at once.”

“Over there,” Hugh replied, with a gesture. “It was with him I was talking when you came in.”

“Thundering guns!”

With the bound of a panther the little man sprang at the door and vanished downstairs, crossed the court, mounted the other stairway, the paper still in his hand and Hugh at his heels.

“It is here, isn’t it?” he cried, over his shoulder, and burst into the Sisseton parlor.

Jenny was practicing on a typewriter and her father was beating a tattoo on the window, but at the sudden eruption both started and turned.

“Are you Mr. Rufus Sisseton?” the little man gasped. Mr. Sisseton seemed incapable of reply. He looked as though paralysis was claiming him as its own. It was Jenny who answered in his stead.

“In that case,” the little man announced, “my name is John Anderson and I am⁠—”

He had no time to add more; Mr. Sisseton uttered one faint moan, raised his hands and fell into a chair.

Jenny made a dash at him. “Papa, papa!” she cried, “what is it?”

“The end,” he groaned. “Love, matrimony, everything you have dreamed is over.”

Under Jenny’s ministrations, presently he was again on his feet, and motioning to the little man he went with him into the adjoining room.

The two lovers stared for a second into each other’s eyes. On the floor the paper lay. Hugh caught it up, and after a glance at the headlines turned to the advertisements. One of them, which he read aloud, ran as follows:

“The next of kin of Humphery Anderson, who died the 10th of June, 1880, will learn something to their advantage by addressing Mr. Rufus Sisseton, 17 Tompkins Square.”

V

“Well, sir,” said the little man, when Mr. Sisseton had closed the door. “What am I to learn to my advantage?”

At the moment Mr. Sisseton was enjoying the spectacle of that mental panorama in which the past unfolds and which is said to visit those about to drown. Ten years before, to a day, on a delightful June morning he had taken the express for Boston. Jenny was at school in a suburb of that city, and it was to see her that the excursion had been planned. He was not an accomplished traveler. Thus far his journeys⁠—save that terrible one which we call the War⁠—had been uneventful and few; as clerk in a wholesale grocery-shop his opportunities for travel had been slight; but a pension for which he had diligently petitioned to the Government had been granted, and to celebrate the occasion the firm he served had allowed him a holiday. On that morning he was therefore in the best of spirits, and as the train moved from the Grand Central Station he hummed very contendedly to himself. The distressing ugliness of the outlying districts were passed unmarked; it was the fragrance of Connecticut intervals that first attracted his attention; then he fell to musing about the possible existence of the people who dwelled in the roomy, white homesteads that appeared and vanished, the vocations of the loungers at the trim little stations that starred the route. A desire for life in the country beset him; he began to picture the pleasures he would enjoy on some little farm where Jenny could grow up in health and innocence, and presently his head nodded and he was asleep.

When he awoke, or perhaps it would be more exact to say when he recovered his senses, he was running like a deer across an empty field, fleeing from death and disaster. Then he had gone back, striving as best he could to aid the survivors of that collision, which, for its unparalleled horror, is cited still. There was a woman whom he had dragged from the burning wreck of a car; a child, for whose frail life he had struggled, and finally, by sheer strength, he had torn a man from a twisted seat that was holding him on a grill of flame.

The latter was dying, his face agonized, a leg broken, another charred to the bone, but even in his agony he retained his faculties.

“Take this,” he had said to his rescuer, “and give it yourself to my⁠—”

At that the light had passed from his eyes; he was dead, and in Rufus Sisseton’s hand was a leather pocketbook on which the name Humphery Anderson shone in letters of gold.

When the old clerk reached New York his employers did not recognize him. He not only looked twenty years older, he seemed smitten with palsy. He took what money was due him, resigned his position and moved from the rooms he had occupied in St. Mark’s place to the less expensive region of Tompkins Square. He had but his pension now, and that pocketbook which contained absolutely nothing save a few memoranda and eighty-seven banknotes of the value of one thousand dollars each.

The memoranda related to the sale of a mine, but by whom or to whom there was not a word to indicate, and apart from them there was merely the name in gilt letters to show the ownership of the notes. Who was Humphery Anderson? Where had he come from? Where was he going? To whom had he wished this money to be given? These questions, and dozens of others which trod on their heels, Rufus Sisseton put ceaselessly and unavailingly to himself. The pockets of the man who had died before his eyes had been searched; there was a coarse handkerchief, two cigars, a handful of silver, a roll of small bills, a ticket to Boston, but not a clue to the identity of the deceased. His name, presumably, was Humphery Anderson, and that name Rufus Sisseton had given to the coroner and seen it chronicled in the list of the dead; but when a week went by, and no one claimed the body, the old clerk became uneasy. He put an advertisement in the Herald; there was no reply. He inserted another; the result was the same. It was then he resigned his position and moved to Tompkins Square.

Meanwhile he lived in a state of terror bordering on lunacy; death in the most terrible form had approached so close, the escape had been so narrow, that his nerves, never too strong at their best, had become unstrung. This his employers noticed, and were glad to have him go. But the thing which frightened him most, and of which no one save himself was aware, was the fear of being robbed. Behind every door he divined a possible thief; on every passer he scented a footpad; for as yet, in his uncertainty, he kept the pocketbook by him, sleeping on it at night, clutching it convulsively by day. But in Tompkins Square he felt easier; the idea of removing a plank occurred to him, and beneath his bed, in an oilskin wrapper, he placed the pocketbook. Another would have simplified everything by depositing the money in a bank, but Rufus Sisseton had grown timorous⁠—banks had been known to fail. Therewith was the haunting memory of that agonized face and the words of the dying⁠—“Give this, yourself.”

That “yourself” which the moribund had uttered the old clerk construed as constituting a sacred trust, and, to observe it as best he might, the advertisements continued. As time passed, and no reply came, his timorousness, instead of declining, increased. The eighty-seven thousand dollars submerged his faculties, he became the prey of fancies which banished both appetite and sleep; he kept to his room as much as possible, and finally so arranged that nothing could disturb his voluntary captivity. Nothing, indeed, except Jenny, who fluttered to him every year for awhile, and then took wing to the Massachusettsian school. When she had gone, he locked the door again and waited the coming of the Anderson heirs.

In this fashion seven years limped by, and Jenny, having received all the education which the school was competent to provide, returned definitely to her father. And it was as well, perhaps, that she did; for the latter, in his self-imposed seclusion, was becoming what Lombroso has recently christened a “mattoid”⁠—a crank on the road to an asylum. Such signs of aberration as he was beginning to manifest the girl’s blithesomeness and beauty banished. She filled the little apartment with laughter, with song, sunshine and life; her winsomeness and beguiling ways awoke and entranced the old man, and in considering her future and its possibilities, the hour came in which he caught himself thinking of the advantages which would accrue if no heir of Humphery Anderson should appear.

That idea once in his head, declined to be dislodged. It was only an hypothesis, it is true; but an hypothesis that became a hope, and in that hope, little by little, the form of his timidity altered; he ceased to fear that the heir might not appear; he began to fear that he would; and abruptly the advertisements ceased.

At the expiration of nine years the old clerk commenced to regard the money as his own. There were little surprises that he planned⁠—the purchase of a country home, trips with Jenny abroad. But the very first time that he counted the banknotes with the idea of appropriating a portion of them, they fell from his hand; he trembled from head to foot, and mentally he denounced himself as a thief. It may be that that same scrupulousness would forever have inhibited him from touching a penny of that trust, had he not discovered that Jenny was head over heels in love with a young artist to whom she had not addressed a single word. The discovery put an end to his hesitations. He made inquiries concerning Hugh, of which the result has been already conveyed; and, half in sorrow, half in joy, determined to give him Jenny, and the money, too.

It was these things that returned to him when the little man exclaimed:

“Well, sir, what am I to learn to my advantage?”

As he spoke, his eyes had the glitter of gems, and he tugged at his beard ferociously.

“I am Humphery Anderson’s next of kin, and in advertising for me I suppose it is because you had property of his in your possession.”

Mr. Sisseton hesitated. He thought of Jenny, of the happiness he had promised and of what must now ensue; but, to save the nation, he could not help being honest.

“Yes, sir,” he answered, dejectedly.

“Ha! ha!” laughed the little man. “I thought so. Well, fire ahead, I’m listening.”

“It is for you to go on, I think. What relation are you to Humphery Anderson?”

At this question the little man turned the color of brick; for a second he lowered his eyes, but immediately he recovered his customary aplomb.

“Thundering guns! why, I am his brother, his last surviving relative!”

“How is it, then, that for ten years you have given no sign of existence?”

“For the best reason in the world⁠—I have not been here. I have been in Mongolia, in Africa, in Peru; anywhere and everywhere except in the States. It is only six weeks ago that I landed. Even then I did not know of my brother’s death. I learned it only this moment.”

“How?”

“Through your advertisement, of course.”

“But I haven’t inserted one for over three years.”

“Then all I can say is that the paper in which I read it was over three years old and not very big for its age. But that is a side issue; how much did he leave?”

“Have you no idea?”

“H’m, let me see. My brother and I were owners of an Arizona claim. We sold out on the 15th of May, 1880. If he died on the 10th of June of that year he must have had somewhere between eighty and ninety thousand concealed on his person.”

“What became of you?”

“We parted at Tucson. I went to San Francisco, where I took ship for Hong Kong, without, of course, suspecting that Humphery was to turn in his chips in Boston.”

“Why do you speak of Boston?”

“It was there he intended to go.”

“Mr. Anderson, I must admit that your answers coincide with the papers in my possession. At the same time I must exact some tangible evidence of your identity.”

“Thundering guns!” the little man shouted, “so you shall. There,” he continued, drawing from his pocket a wallet similar to the one with which Mr. Sisseton had been entrusted. “Here is a Cuban passport, and here are two of Humphery’s letters. Do you know his writing?”

The old clerk glanced at the letters. They began “My dear Brother,” and were signed Humphery Anderson. The handwriting was identical with that on the memoranda. Incontestibly the heir had appeared.

“You have established your identity without a doubt,” he replied. “There remains to me now but one thing to do, and that is⁠—”

“To fork over.”

“To tell you how your brother died⁠—”

“What’s the use? I don’t care a rap. Whether it was paresis or the grip, what difference does it make? He’s dead, isn’t he? Well, that’s the end of it.”

“But,” protested Mr. Sisseton, a trifle scandalized at this manifestation of fraternal indifference. “I must explain how the money came in my possession.”

“All right, but cut it short.”

“He died in my arms,” said Mr. Sisseton, very gravely. “He was killed in a railway accident.”

“The deuce you say. Thundering guns! I thought you were going to tell me he was lynched. Though he was my brother, I am free to admit he was a confounded bad lot.”

“And now,” the old clerk continued, “I will give you what he entrusted to me.”

Therewith he handed out the roll of bills, which the heir carefully counted.

“Eighty-seven thousand!” he exclaimed. “In six months I’m a millionaire. As for you, I won’t insult you with any recompense, particularly as the interest would satisfy anyone.”

“The interest, sir? What do you mean by that? Those bills are the very same ones I received from your brother.”

“And you want me to believe that you kept them all this time in a cubbyhole! Stuff and nonsense!”

“Sir,” Mr. Sisseton, with great dignity, retorted, “Sir, you forget there was nothing to prevent me from keeping them always.”

“By George, that’s true enough! Here, help yourself.”

“I will take one of them, for you owe it me. It’s a trifle less than the amount I paid for advertising. But not another penny.”

“You won’t?”

“No, sir, not a cent.”

In unfeigned astonishment the little man stared at his brother’s executor.

“You are an honest man,” he cried; “no, but hang me if you are not. I won’t forget you. I am going now to take a hack at the Street before the Board closes; but I won’t forget you, mind that.”

Followed by Mr. Sisseton, he opened the door and passed into the other room. Near the window Hugh and Jenny stood locked in each other’s arms. The little man turned and smiled.

“Makes one feel twenty years younger, doesn’t it?”

Already the lovers had separated. Hugh was scowling and the girl’s fair face was wet with tears.

“Mr. Hyrtl,” the old clerk began, “didn’t I tell you that everything was at an end. Didn’t⁠—”

John Anderson, who had been tugging at his beard and grinning like a Cheshire cat, suddenly sprang back as though he trod on a serpent, his entire expression changed, and he grabbed Mr. Sisseton by the arm.

“What did you call that young man? Here,” he cried at Hugh, “is your name Hyrtl?”

“Certainly,” Hugh answered.

“Were you born near Richmond? Was your father a sailor? Was he lost at sea? Why don’t you answer? Thundering guns! are you dumb?”

“Not a bit; but I don’t understand your interest in my private affairs, nor yet your acquaintance with them. However, as I have no cause to make a mystery of my antecedents; I may say that I was born near Richmond, and that my father was lost at sea.”

“Torpedoes and dynamite! And whatever became of your mother? Did she⁠—didn’t she⁠—I mean⁠—I mean what became of her?”

“She is dead,” Hugh answered. “Did you know her?”

“I? I never saw her in my life.”

“Well, then, what do you mean by⁠—”

“What do I mean? What do I mean? I don’t know what I mean. I mean that in my travels I met a man named Hyrtl, and the name was so odd I never forgot it. That’s what I mean and nothing else, except that it’s infernally hot in here and I’m in a hurry.”

“No one is detaining you,” murmured Mr. Sisseton.

“I know that; but⁠—but⁠—see here, young man,” he continued, drawing from his pocket the roll of bills; “I have come into some money today that I didn’t expect, and, as you are going to be married, if three or four thousand are of any use to you, here they are.”

Hugh looked him from head to foot.

“Why do you make this offer?”

“Because I am your friend.”

“I have seen you but twice in my life.”

“Because I knew your father, then; because you did me a kindness; because⁠—because⁠—oh! hang it all, because I want to.”

“Thanks,” Hugh answered. “I am too poor to borrow and too proud to accept a gift. But I wish you would tell me why you spoke of my mother.”

“Will you take three or four thousand? Will you take five?”

“I will not.”

“Goodbye, then; I’m off to my broker.”

With a bound, the little man shot through the door and disappeared as he had come⁠—like the wind⁠—leaving behind him the ruins of a castle in Spain and three people buried beneath them.

Mr. Sisseton was ashen; Jenny pale as a ghost re-arisen; Hugh alone a trifle flushed.

“That man,” he declared, “knew my people, I am convinced.”

“Perhaps so,” Mr. Sisseton muttered; “he appears to have been a great traveler.”

Then at once, without preamble, he told the whole story. Hugh and Jenny listened without interruption. The preceding incidents had made it all quite clear, and when the tale was ended, there was silence in that little room.

Hugh was the first to speak.

“How shall it matter after all? You have returned the money; it was your duty to do so, no one expected you to do anything else, and I am sure you must be convinced that had Jenny and I been married, and the money in our possession, we would have returned it as you have done.”

“I am sure of it,” Mr. Sisseton answered. “I know you to be honest as the day, and I wish, even now, you could be, as I had hoped, my son-in-law.”

“But I shall be.”

“You won’t,” the old man answered, and in his withered face and sunken eyes there was the obstinacy of a mule. “What I have said I have said. Jenny shall not marry a poor man. Would you take her into that rathole of yours and watch privation, sickness, fever and death visit her one by one. No, sir, not while I am alive.”

“If that be the case,” Hugh in fine fury retorted, “what did you come into my rathole for at all?”

“Because Jenny was in love with you.”

“And do you suppose she is going to stop now?”

“I don’t know, but you shan’t have her. You are poor and so is she.”

“But if love and matrimony were only permitted to the rich the earth would crumble.”

“Let her crumble. You shan’t have my daughter. She is as like her mother as two peas. I won’t have her die of want. You shan’t have her, I say.”

“But consider the difference. You were a clerk in a grocery-shop. However hard you may have worked, you couldn’t earn a dollar more than your salary. Whereas I am a painter, and my brush will bring me both fortune and fame.”

“I hope it may, but by that time Jenny will be gray-headed. No, sir, you shan’t have her.”

“I shall.”

“You shall not.”

“Mr. Sisseton, remember this: you can’t help yourself. Your daughter is of age, the law prevents you from interfering.”

“It does, does it? Well, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The law makes this my castle, and I order you hence. Begone!”

“Mr. Sisseton⁠—”

“Begone, I say!”

“Very good, sir, I will go since you command it, but I will return with a summons. Jenny, my love, my chosen, but not mine, be brave.”

And therewith this hotheaded young fellow, his head erect, stalked from the room.

VI

In high indignation at the old man’s mulish obstinacy Hugh strode out into the street and on and beyond into other regions of the city. He was vastly annoyed, and his annoyance was increased by the fact that he had permitted it to be apparent. He should have been calm, he told himself, calm, though authoritative, and he should have displayed, with cogent reasonings, the folly of supposing that at the tail-end of the nineteenth century a young woman could be sequestrated and kept apart from her lover. It was that he should have made manifest, and with it his ability to provide not only for Jenny, but for her father, her grandfather⁠—for as many Sissetons as could be produced. And instead of that, instead of showing the slightest tact, the merest spark of common sense, he had threatened the old man with a summons and made him an enemy for life. There was now but one course left for him to pursue: to apologize as abjectly as he knew how, and that failing, to elope with Jenny on the spot. That she would go with him he did not doubt for an instant, and already he saw himself, another Lochinvar, bearing off the girl of his heart in a green car to the nearest parsonage available.

In dreams forecast he turned and retraced his steps. He would have it out with the old man at once, he determined; and on reaching Tompkins Square he marched straight upstairs and knocked, gently and deferentially at the Sisseton door. Save the beating of his own heart there was not a sound to be heard. He knocked again, a trifle more resolutely, yet still there was no reply. He peered through the keyhole. Not a glimmer of light was to be seen.

“It is I,” he called⁠—“Hugh Hyrtl. Won’t you let me in, Mr. Sisseton? I am sorry for the way I spoke.”

But there was no answer to his appeal. Again he knocked, loudly, boisterously, calling to Jenny, calling to her father and calling in vain. From the floor below a voice mounted bidding him cease that racket. He tried the door; it was locked.

“You must let me in,” he insisted. “I shall stay here until you do.”

Again the protest mounted, with it the fall of a step that he knew, and Mrs. O’Hassadam, a broom in one hand, a candle in the other suddenly appeared.

“My! my!” that lady exclaimed, “if I didn’t think it was the police. They’re after him anyway, and good riddance it is.”

“After whom?”

“The ex-convict, to be sure; who would they be after? He was off like that! But they’re on his track, he can’t have got far at all whatever, he and his blooming daughter. It was wrong you were, Mr. Hyrtl, to consort with the likes of them.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“What do I mean, Mr. Hyrtl? Indeed, and I mean what I say. An hour ago that old forger came downstairs dragging a trunk and his daughter after him. ‘I am going on a trip,’ said he, handing me his key. ‘To Sing Sing, I’ll wager,’ said I to myself. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ he continued. ‘Come, Jenny’; and, would you believe that though she was crying her eyes out, she tried to say something to me on the quiet like? But he grabbed her and whisked her off. At the rate he went it will take the cavalry to catch him. It’s a murder case, sure, Mr. Hyrtl, and a fine reputation whatever it will give to this house.”

“Gone,” Hugh murmured, dejectedly, “it can’t be possible.”

“Here is the key,” cried the janitress, triumphantly. “And if you were to unlock that door the Lord deliver us from the horrors you would find.”

With that statement for prelude, Mrs. O’Hassadam launched forth into voluble digressions and extravagant conjectures; but Hugh was not to be detained, he had no heart to listen further, and dumbly perplexed, he turned and sought his room.

For a fortnight thereafter Hugh ransacked the city, wandering like a lost dog through mazes of streets, interrogating windows, questioning lodging-house keepers, always on the alert and always disappointed. At the end of that period he learned that a secondhand furniture dealer had come, exhibited a bill of sale and carted off the Sisseton belongings. Where to? Ah! that Mrs. O’Hassadam did not know, but she took evident pleasure in losing herself in the wildest surmises.

Thereupon the Odyssey recommenced. The appalling ugliness of the suburbs, the terrors of Long Island, New Jersey wastes, one and all were visited and visited in vain. He had not a clue to work on and not a trace of the missing was to be had. Presently fatigue and disappointment had their way; a low fever overtook him and for a month he lay in bed. Mrs. O’Hassadam had a physician in for him, but Hugh was strong and young, and in spite of the physician the fever departed and the convalescent, very feeble but with clearer mind, rose to his feet. If Jenny had cared for him, he decided, at least she would have sent him a line.

Thereat he got at his easel again and painted with a grim energy which he had never displayed before. Work has the ability to dull the most ardent sorrow, and in that which Hugh undertook, though happiness had fallen by the wayside, art stood revealed. Moreover, chanced favored him. Being indifferent to both fame and fortune, he was necessarily the person whom fame and fortune elected to pursue. A dealer who heretofore had purchased his wares at prices that would have made a mad-dog blush, suddenly increased them. Not only that, he admitted that Hugh’s signature was beginning to acquire an appreciable commercial value, and as a commission for someone whose name he was not at liberty to mention, he took “Heliogabalus” in exchange for two thousand dollars in cash.

Hugh paid the debts he had contracted during his illness and set to work harder than before. He could have taken a studio now in a pleasanter part of the city, or he could have set off on that tour through the ghosts and treasures of Italy of which every artist dreams. But invisible threads detained him, and he remained where he was, consuming his heart with regrets and his strength with fatigue.

Summer passed, the Autumn came, and with it an unstillable longing to get away⁠—to be somewhere where there was youth and companionship, where there were smiles and flowers, the welcome of eyes and fields. His solitude was distressing to him. Week in, week out there was not a soul with whom he could exchange a word. He had not a friend, not a relative even, and his sweetheart he had lost. Wherever he looked was the desert, and in his heart was a blank despair. Had his mother been living, how quickly he would have gone to her. But she was dead, and he could no longer run to her side, as had been his wont, with the troubles of childhood’s years. He was alone, without a tie, a hope or an aim.

At the thought of his mother he recalled the hour when his dearest wish had been to erect a monument on her grave. He had money in plenty to do so now. Though he were forsaken by the living, why should he forsake the dead? The next day he arrived at Richmond, and by evening he was before the cottage which he loved.

Apparently nothing had happened to it. It had contented itself with continuing to be, and in the increasing darkness rose white and solitary as before. Hugh unlocked the door and entered. The shutters, he noticed, had disappeared, the broken windows were curtained with cobwebs, there was an odor and silence of the tomb, but practically it had weathered the years unchanged. Noiselessly, as though in fear of disturbing phantoms, he passed through the little hall to the kitchen beyond. It was chill and damp, but through the window the spire of the village church was just discernible, and nearby was a grave that he knew. For a minute, an hour perhaps, he loitered there, the guest of memories that came one by one and claimed him as their own⁠—the sport he had had with Dinah and his mother’s tender care; episodes long forgotten returned to him, but in that curious fashion that episodes will at times assume, as though they had occurred not to him, but to some Hugh Hyrtl who had existed in an anterior life, one in which he personally had had no part and of which only a hearsay recollection endured. There, for instance, was his mother’s sudden illness and unexpected death. Try as he might, he could not reconstruct that scene. In the dimmest manner only he recalled that one day a cry was said to have rung through the cottage and that Dinah had found his mother fainting on the floor. But what had happened he had never known. The cause was obscure.

From these meditations a gust of wind aroused him. He shivered and turned. In a corner were a few pieces of wood, and with some stray papers in his pocket he determined to make a fire. But the task was not easy; a mass of ashes that for years had rested undisturbed filled the stove. In endeavoring to remove them, he struck a hard object, which, on examination, proved to be a key, curiously formed, long and narrow, that he could have sworn he had seen before. But where? In that anterior existence, perhaps, from which certain recollections come; and he was about to put it aside and continue his work, when abruptly, from the very core of memory, a picture floated⁠—his mother standing at a table locking and unlocking a certain box. That box, he remembered, always stood on a shelf in her room; and at last, the ashes removed, he groped up the creaking stair to see if the box might be there still. The match he held went out. He lighted another and opened the door. On the shelf the box stood covered with immemorial dust. He raised it; it was so light he was sure there was nothing in it. Nevertheless he took it back to the kitchen and inserted and turned the key. Within, a letter lay, discolored and yellow. By the uncertain flicker of the fire, Hugh read from it as follows:

Tucson, Arizona, 15th May, 1880.

Madam⁠—Although I am a stranger to you, I believe it to be my duty to place you in possession of certain information which otherwise you might never obtain.

Nine years ago it was reported that your husband, Humphery Hyrtl, was lost at sea. That report was false. When the ship which he commanded sank, I was with him. Of all on board he and I alone escaped. We were picked up by a passing vessel and taken to South America. On the boat he declared that he was my brother, and, on reaching Rio, caused it to be recorded at the United States Consulate that Humphery Hyrtl and his ship were lost. It did not take me long to discover that he had left in Virginia a wife and child, to whom, for reasons of his own, he did not wish to return. I became so indignant at his conduct that he finally promised to go back to you as soon as he had made enough to live on. Since then we have worked together, sometimes lucky, often the reverse. Today our partnership is dissolved. His share amounts to ninety thousand dollars, and with it he should return to you; but, as he has told me to address his letters to Boston, I presume that it is his intention to dissipate the money which should rightfully go to your support and that of your son.”

I inform you of these facts in order that you may take such steps as seem advisable. He is to leave here tomorrow, and after making a short stop in St. Louis and in Chicago, should be in your neighborhood sometime during the first or second week of the coming month. If he does not appear, you will, by making inquiries concerning him, under his assumed name of Humphery Anderson, surely find him in Boston.

When Hugh had read the letter, for the first time he understood the cause of his mother’s death. The knowledge that the man whom she had loved and mourned was not only alive, but preferred life under an assumed name to life with her, had broken her heart. Truly, he reflected, it was sufficient: the cup was full. And as he mused over the terrible tidings that the letter contained, he saw at once that it was his father who had been killed in the collision, that the money which had been entrusted to Sisseton was the money to which the letter referred; the remarkable chain of circumstances which had permitted John Anderson to represent himself as the brother of the deceased were clear to him and the unaccountable excitement which the little man had manifested when the name of Hyrtl was pronounced easily understood.

“The money was mine,” muttered Hugh. “He knew it, and, by heavens, I will make him disgorge!”

He passed out through the empty hall to the road beyond.

“Ah, Jenny,” he cried, to the stars, “let me but find you now and you shall be rich, indeed!”

VII

A day or two later, when Hugh awoke in his room in Tompkins Square it was with that sense of satisfaction which comes to a man who has done his duty. He had left orders in Richmond that a suitable monument be placed on his mother’s grave, and he had contracted to have the cottage refurnished and rebuilt, for it was there the coming honeymoon was to be passed.

The party essential to the proper passing of that honeymoon was indeed intangible and remote, but what difficulties shall impede a lover armed with courage and mailed in hope? He had absolutely nothing at all to do but to unearth John Anderson, and that accomplished, to find Jenny, and behold!⁠—happiness, lifelong and uninterruptable, would crouch, a spaniel, at his feet.

The unearthing of such a person as John Anderson seemed to Hugh the easiest thing in the world. In the Stock Exchange and its purlieus an individual of such marked peculiarities must by this time have become well known. With Jenny it was different; but though that ruffian of a father of hers had hid her in the depths of a Japanese jungle or immured her behind convent walls, he would find and recover her yet. She should be his; she had promised it, and what shall separate those that love?

These anticipations were interrupted by a rap at the door. At the moment Hugh, in preparation of a visit to Wall Street, was meditatively brushing his hat, but at the rap he put the hat down and went to the door and opened it. There in the corridor’s dim penumbra was John Anderson in person.

Speechless with astonishment, Hugh started back.

“You!”

“Yes, dear boy,” the little man answered. “Whom did you expect? May I come in?”

With that he seized Hugh’s unresisting hand, and entering the room, straddled a chair.

“You’re well, I hope. So much the better. Thundering guns! but I am delighted to hear it.”

“How kind of you!”

“But I am delighted,” the little man insisted, for there was an irony in Hugh’s voice that would hardly have escaped a deaf-mute. “I am delighted, I assure you. Between ourselves, I was a trifle uneasy this morning when I set out for Tompkins Square.”

“And why so?”

“In the first place, because I have neglected you; it must be four months since I was here. Then, too, I have something on my conscience.”

“Ah?”

“Yes, my conscience may be elastic, but it is not gangrened. Hugh, dear boy, I haven’t acted right; no, thundering guns! I’ll be hanged if I have.”

Hugh nodded encouragingly. If he is going to own up, he reflected, I haven’t the heart to be angry.

“Go on,” he said, gently.

The little man pulled at his beard and tormented an ear.

“It’s hard work; if I had my choice I’d rather run for election, I give you my word I would.”

“Don’t, then.” And Hugh smiled benignly. “I know all.”

The little man jumped from his seat.

“Thundering guns!”

“It is about my eighty-seven thousand dollars, isn’t it?”

“ ‘Your’ eighty-seven⁠—Fire and brimstone! You do know all. But how? Who on earth could have told you a thing that no one knew about save myself.”

“It was the one person who knew that told. It was you, Mr. Anderson, that told me. It was you yourself.”

“Torpedoes and dynamite! You’re a mind-reader, chiromancer and telepathist rolled into one.”

“No, nothing of that sort. Look at this.”

And Hugh displayed the letter which he had found in his Virginia home. The little man glanced at it and blushed.

“But four months ago, when I took that money⁠—”

“My money.”

“Yes, your money, I admit. When I took it I can swear you hadn’t seen this letter then.”

“No, I had not,” Hugh answered, and thereupon related the circumstances connected with the finding of the key.

“This is fatality,” said the little man, with a solemn air. “In the long run everything comes out. And to think what a figure I should have cut if I had not been the first to speak!”

“There! It is not the money I regretted the most.”

“I know⁠—I know, and that’s the worst of it. I made inquiries and learned what happened. If it were not for me you would have been married long since.”

“Oh, as to that,” said Hugh, gayly, “everything will go right enough now.”

“What a philosopher you are!” the little man, in manifest surprise, exclaimed. “A fellow annexes your property, prevents your marriage, and, instead of sand bagging him, you treat him as pleasantly as though he had done you a favor.”

At this speech Hugh laughed triumphantly. “I can promise you,” he said, “that if this morning I had run across you unexpectedly I might have taken the law into my own hands. But since of your own free will you come to make restitution. I⁠—”

“Restitution! Thundering guns! we don’t understand each other at all.”

“We don’t?” cried Hugh, whom the wantonness of this reply had roused to sudden fury; “we don’t, eh? And do you mean to tell me⁠—”

“Mean? I mean nothing. Thundering guns! haven’t you taken a look at me yet? Have I the air of a man who has come to restore eighty-seven thousand dollars, let alone ten cents? Why I haven’t a penny in the world. Look at these rags, look at my shoes; did you ever see such shoes? As for my shirt⁠—”

The little man opened his tattered coat. His breast was bare.

Hugh sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. The blow was too cruel.

“I don’t know,” the little man continued, when he saw that the pantomime had had its effect. “I don’t know how it all happened. For everyone this has been a bad year. It began on Friday, do you remember? and what it would have been if it begun on a thirteenth God only knows, and when I say God only I exaggerate. I started by making loads of money; I had enough to burn⁠—it was a nuisance to me. Thundering guns! how I did bellow with the bulls, and suddenly it was the bears that caught me. Everything went, everything, everything. They didn’t even leave me my shirt.”

“My poor Jenny,” moaned Hugh. “My poor, dear Jenny.”

“Yes, indeed,” muttered the little man, with a vicious tug at his beard. “It’s that I should have foreseen. With the money I annexed you could have been happy and prosperous and made yourself a name, whereas now, oh, hang it all! it’s too tough. Why was I ever born? Why don’t you kick me? Why don’t you shoot me? Why don’t you send for the police?”

Hugh raised his eyes; there was a pathos in them, a sorrow for his lost love so great, so manifest, so abiding that John Anderson lowered his own.

“See here,” he added, after a moment, “see here; there’s no use taking on like that. I am down on my luck today, I admit, but tomorrow! Why, you have no idea of the inscrutable possibilities that the future contains. I’ll be on my feet again, I’ll be a millionaire yet. We’ll all be millionaires. Say the word and I’ll draw you a note, at sixty days, for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“It is enough that you have robbed me,” gnashed Hugh, re-overtaken by fury. “There is no need to insult me as well.”

“Insult you!” protested the little man. “Insult you, dear boy! Why I give you my word of honor⁠—”

“Honor!” cried Hugh, a phrase from Dickens returning to him. “Honor, indeed! Bah! Give me something to take the taste out of my mouth.”

“I’ll swear by what you like, then,” the little man, in no wise disconcerted, replied. “I’ll swear that my dearest wish is to see you famous and happy.”

“And you have gone about it the right way, haven’t you?”

“No, you are right there, I haven’t. But just consider the circumstances. Before I knew of your existence the banknotes were in my pocket. Besides, if it hadn’t been for me your father never would have had them; as it was they kept crying to me⁠—‘Carry us off, double us, triple us, quintuple us, repay later, but carry us off now.’ That’s what they kept crying to me, and, thundering guns! I was weak enough to obey. But as I said before, send for the police. State’s prison is too good for me; I ought to be hanged and have my ghost kicked.”

Hugh gave him a look that enveloped him from head to heel.

“I have but one request to make,” he said, measuredly; “and that is that you will go.”

At this, the little man got up and hobbled to the door. There, for a moment, he halted and tormented his beard; then, looking over his shoulder at Hugh, who had turned to the window where he had caught the first glimpse of Jenny’s face, he coughed. Hugh affected not to hear him.

“Mr. Hyrtl!”

Hugh still kept his back turned. The little man made a step toward him.

“Mr. Hyrtl, before I go let me tell you this; it may be a consolation to you. I am in more desperate straits than the day I met you. I had hope then; I have none left now. I am starving, and, as I cannot beg, I am going to throw myself into the river. Goodbye.”

Hugh fumbled in his pocket, and, turning from the window, crossed the room. “Here, take that,” he said. “I give it to you because of the one good action of your life⁠—in memory of my mother, whom you tried to aid.”

With that, he went back to the window, and the little man, his eyes very red and wet, opened the door and disappeared.

VIII

The day passed somehow, the morrow as well; a week took flight, during which Hugh sat in his room, inert and listless, issuing, like a wolf from his den, only when hunger compelled.

On such occasions hunger seemed to vanish when food appeared; he had appetite for nothing; he had lost even zest in life. Another might have betaken himself to the caresses of that yellow fay who lurks in certain bottles; but to Hugh even that palliative was denied; he could not drink; it may be that he was too refined.

He could not work, either; he could not read. With that immobility noticeable in certain forms of dementia, he gazed at the untenanted window opposite hour after hour, until night loosed her draperies and the window was hid. At such times his mind was empty⁠—inhabited, if at all, by spectral shadows, the phantoms of regret. Among our friends and acquaintances are always those who, to our knowledge, have sorrows of their own. But there are others that evolve a world, one that glows, subsides and dies away, unknown to any save themselves. The solitudes of space appall, the solitudes of the heart can be as endless as they. In those which Hugh concealed a universe had had its being and its subsistence⁠—a universe with gem-like hopes for stars, one in which the sun had been so eager it had cast its rainbows in his eyes. But now it was all dispersed; there was nothing left⁠—a desire merely, which, dumb at first, little by little had become articulate⁠—a longing for the grave. Like many another young man who has suddenly found himself balked, Hugh had determined to take his life.

It was preoccupations of this description that a visitor one day interrupted. Hugh had not heard anyone enter, and was made aware of another’s presence only by the sound of his own name. He started with that spring a cat gives when suddenly aroused. Before him stood the picture-dealer who had taken Heliogabalus away. He was a man of noticeable gentility, a man with an acquired smile, a brilliant hat, fabulous trousers and a pea-green stick. At the moment he was diligently smoking a huge cigar.

“Nothing new, eh?” he inquired, with a glance at the empty easel.

Hugh shook his head.

“I have a commission for you,” he continued. “What’s the matter? You look out of sorts.”

To this Hugh made no reply.

“There’s a gentleman who has purchased an elegant house in Irving place; and he wants a high-toned artist to decorate it⁠—he wants it done in first-rate style, and damn the expense. I told him of you, and he says you are to begin at once. His name is⁠—h’m, what is his name? Thurlire, or something like that. However, I’ve got it written down. What do you say?”

“I say he can go to the devil.”

In amazement at this rebuff the dealer dropped the ashes from his cigar all over himself and flushed mightily.

“If that’s the message you expect one gentleman to take to another gentleman I guess you may⁠—”

What in circumstances of that nature he thought Hugh might do will never be known to history. In a rich rustle of vocables and skirt, Mrs. O’Hassadam appeared at the open door, a letter in her hand, which, she announced, with much emphasis and a look of unmollifiable suspicion at the dealer, was for Mr. Hyrtl and for no one else whatever.

Hugh grasped the letter as the man in the legend grasped the straw. It was from Jenny, he was sure. But the handwriting was not of a maidenly description. It was in the bold, free hand of a clerk, and it intimated very tersely that the writer would be obliged for a check in payment of the monument which he had erected on Mrs. Hyrtl’s grave.

“And I haven’t a dollar,” mused Hugh. “One thing is certain: I can’t kill myself until that debt is paid.”

“Is that your answer?” asked the dealer, savagely.

Hugh blinked with the tremor of a somnambulist awaking from a trance. He had been so far away that he had forgot everything, even to the dealer’s presence.

“My answer? My answer to what? Oh, yes, about your friend’s house. Very good, I’ll do it.”

“Now that’s the talk I like. When will you begin? Today? Good enough. Here’s the name and address. Do it up elegant, won’t you? So long.” And with that the dealer took his cigar and pea-green stick away.

Two hours later Hugh was at the house in Irving place. A manservant opened the door, and on learning Hugh’s mission, laughed riotously.

“It’s a good one, isn’t it?” he roared.

And as Hugh only stared, dumbly perplexed, the servant suddenly subsided, and murmured, sepulchrally:

“I beg pardon, sir; I thought as how you were in it!”

“In what, you confounded idiot? Hang your impudence, what do you mean by laughing in my face? If you don’t know your place, your master shall teach you. Where is he?”

The muscles of the man’s face twitched, but he controlled the coming grin by a tight pressure of the lips.

“I beg pardon, sir,” he answered. “He isn’t here yet. I thought you knew he is to be married. If you will step this way, sir.” And fearing perhaps to explode, he drew a portiere aside and Hugh passed into the drawing room.

It was large, high ceiled and furnished in very fair taste. Beyond, another room extended, before which curtains fell. The air was sweet with flowers, and presently, though dusk was approaching, and the light, as is usual in old New York houses, was not plentiful, Hugh perceived that he was not alone. The curtains had parted, and a lady was entering the room. She took a step or two in Hugh’s direction, apparently unconscious of his presence, and then, with a little bleat of surprise, she ran to where he stood.

“Hugh!”

The young man tottered like a drunkard.

“You, Jenny!” he exclaimed, in fine fervor. “Tell me I am not dreaming; tell me it is you.”

His answer was two arms thrown about his neck, two lips on his own, the murmur and gurgle of love and joy.

“Here! here! You’ve no right to do that.”

The curtains had parted again, and on the threshold of the room beyond an old man stood, very cross and disagreeable.

“Stop it, I say!”

And Hugh, more intoxicated than if he had drunk a dozen pints of champagne, looked from Jenny’s blue and sultry eyes into the glowering face of her father.

“Ah! I understand,” he exclaimed⁠—“I understand all now. Thank you, dear Mr. Sisseton; thank you a million times.”

“You!” shrieked the old man. “You! What in the name of a wilderness of gorillas are you doing here?”

“Embracing your daughter.”

“Your conduct is infamous, sir. You lure me here by trick and pretense, and insult me to my face. Stand back, I say.”

“I lure you here? I? Why I didn’t know where you were. I would have given twenty years of my life to find you.”

“Oh, oh!” pouted Jenny. “What about my letters?”

“Letters? I haven’t had one,” answered Hugh, in a crescendo of bewilderment.

“I sent you a dozen at least, and you never took the trouble to answer one of them.”

“Twenty,” snapped the old man. “I have them all in my pocket.”

“Papa, papa!” sobbed the girl, “how could you be so cruel.”

“It must be evident to you,” said Hugh, persuasively, “it must be quite evident to you now, my dear Mr. Sisseton, that I was not the means of bringing you here.”

“Well, then, what in thunder did you come for?”

“Simply to fresco the walls.”

“As I did,” interjected Jenny, “in the hope of securing a position as typewriter.”

“What luck!” the old man growled.

“Luck!” Hugh cried, “It’s the hand of Providence that has led me to you, my dear, dear friend.”

“I forbid you to so address me, sir,” the old man fairly yelped. “You are insane, that’s what you are.”

“Haven’t I had enough to make me?”

“Tell me this, sir⁠—do you still love my daughter?”

“With all my heart.”

“Will you agree not to ask her to marry you?”

“Never in the world.”

“In that case everything between us is at an end. Go to the devil.”

“But⁠—”

“You shan’t have my daughter, that’s flat.”

“But⁠—”

“You shan’t have my daughter⁠—you shan’t have my daughter⁠—you shan’t have my daughter⁠—”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Hugh, with a great show of bluster. “Your daughter is of age and I’ll appeal to the law.”

“You will, will you? It seems to me you said that before. Come, Jenny, we must go at once.”

“Not yet,” called a shrill voice, and suddenly the room was inundated and entered by the glitter of electric lights, and an individual, superbly tailored and groomed, advanced majestically, his fingers in his waistcoat.

“What are you people quarreling about?” he inquired, haughtily. “Don’t you know how to behave? Thundering guns!”

And to the astonishment of those present John Anderson wheeled an armchair before the fire and began the delicate operation of toasting the veneered soles of a pair of patent-leather shoes.

“Draw up,” he said, “these October dusks are chill. Bring a chair for Miss Sisseton, Hugh; bring a chair for yourself.”

In his manner there was an ease, a serenity and self-sufficiency that was simply diabolic. Hugh stared like an oaf at a mountebank, and Mr. Sisseton, gaping with surprise, stood, his crumbling jaws half-parted.

John Anderson looked from one to the other and smiled at Jenny.

“That lover of yours doesn’t appear very grateful to a man who, in spite of wind and weather, has brought him to your side, does he, Miss Sisseton?”

“You don’t mean⁠—” Hugh began and then hesitated, as though he were talking in a dream.

“Yes, I do,” John Anderson answered, encouragingly. “That’s precisely what I do mean.”

“In that case I forgive you.”

“You do, do you? Thundering guns! are we quits on those eighty-seven thousand dollars?”

“Yes,” said Hugh, with an entire absence of heartiness. “Yes, we are, although⁠—”

“Although they would do you a jolly good service just at present, wouldn’t they? And you, Miss Sisseton,” he continued, turning to that young woman, who had approached the fire, her blue eyes filled with wonderment, “won’t you reward an old man, too?”

“Willingly,” she lisped, as she lowered the purity of her brow, “but the most grateful girl in the world⁠—”

“Only offers what she can spare, and I am satisfied with it,” said the old ruffian between two kisses. “Thank you, my little beauty, I feel twenty years younger.”

“Here, here! You’ve no right to do that,” interposed Mr. Sisseton. “Stop it, I say!”

“Where did you get that jag?” John Anderson, in a tone of great interest, inquired. “Now, see here, pard; you, like myself, are a guest in this house, and it is very bad form of you to kick up a rumpus, dreadful bad form. I am surprised at you⁠—”

“Stuff and nonsense!” growled the father.

“Yes, I am⁠—I am surprised at you. A man of your age, too! But thundering guns! what’s that?”

And John Anderson leaned over and peered into the grate.

“Why, it’s a key,” Jenny exclaimed; “here let me get it.”

But Hugh was already at work, and in a moment he had extracted a key not at all dissimilar to one which he had seen before.

“What in the world was it doing there, I wonder?” John Anderson, with a superb assumption of surprise, remarked. “Why, it looks as though it might belong to that box on the table, there. Hugh, suppose you try and see. That box, Hugh, must be like the one from which you disinterred the one good action of my life, isn’t it?”

Hugh nodded. The key fitted perfectly. The box opened without a creak.

“Look and see what’s in it, Miss Sisseton,” the little man continued. “Look and see. A key that falls down the chimney merits attention; it may have been your good fairy that let it fall. Look and see.”

“Here! here!” growled Jenny’s father. “You have no right to do that. What would Mr.⁠—Mr. Whatever-his-name-is say if he saw you?”

“He would say she was doing quite right, partner. Rummage away, Miss Sisseton; rummage away.”

Thus encouraged, Jenny drew out a sheaf of bills.

“Banknotes!” she cried.

“There are eighty-seven of them,” said the little man. “Partner, they are the ones you were to give to your daughter, and, as no better use can be put to them, Mr. Thughlyrh returns them to you. Take them.”

“Take them?” Mr. Sisseton repeated, drawing himself up to his full height. “But what right do you⁠—”

“Take them, I keep telling you; and you, Miss Sisseton, rummage away.”

“Diamonds and pearls!” the girl murmured, in ecstasy.

The little man hummed contentedly:

“ ‘Du hast Diamanten und Perlen,
Du hast⁠—tra la la, tra la laire,
Du ha⁠—hast die schönsten Augen,
Mein Liebling, was willst du noch mehr?’

Go on” he continued, “go on. Those diamonds and pearls are Mr. Thughlyrh’s wedding present to his bride.”

“But tell me, you shall tell me,” barked Mr. Sisseton, the perspiration streaming in the hollows of his cheek, “who is Mr. Thughlyrh? Is he⁠—you, or is he the devil?”

“Neither. Do you wish to see him?”

“Of course, I do.”

“Well, then, the young and attractive Mr. Thughlyrh, who is to marry a beauty; the rich Mr. Thughlyrh, whose guests we are, is⁠—”

“Who?” cried Jenny, while her lover pricked up his ears.

“⁠—Is Hugh Hyrtl.”

“I!”

“Why, of course; I thought you had guessed it before. Thughlyrh is the anagram of your name, and, thundering guns! a hard one it was to make.”

“But the house?” said Hugh, beside himself with excitement.

“Rummage in the box, Miss Sisseton.”

In the box was a brief deed in Hugh’s name⁠—signed, sealed and attested.

“It’s too much,” cried the young fellow, “I can’t accept it.”

John Anderson raised his hand, his face had become grave and serious.

“Dear boy,” he said, “let me, according to my lights, make amends for the past. No doubt I should have have done so sooner, but if I prolonged your sorrow, if I masqueraded in rags in your room, if I pretended to be more indigent than before, it was because I had not yet discovered Miss Sisseton. I wanted to restore her to you when I restored your money. From that test you issued as an angel might. Anyone else would have killed me; you gave me alms. Be generous to the end, Hugh. Don’t refuse what I am well able to give. Don’t leave me to my remorse.”

“So be it,” Hugh answered. “I accept the house on condition I may return it the next time you go broke.”

“Don’t count on that. I am forever cured of speculation. Hereafter I shall live on my income, and play whist with my partner here.”

“But for the love of heaven,” the old clerk implored, “tell me what all this means.”

“It means,” said the little man, rising as he spoke from his seat. “It means that I have encountered two things that I have never encountered before.”

“What are they?”

“Charity and forgiveness,” John Anderson answered, taking Hugh by one hand; “and absolute honesty,” he continued, stretching the other to Jenny’s papa.

“And now, dear lady and sweet sirs,” he added, with a large, old-fashioned bow, “do me the favor to step into the other room; a little feast has been prepared, the feast of betrothal, and from the wall where he laughs and lounges let Heliogabalus shower as many flowers as he may. There, do you hear the corks popping? Thundering guns! I shall drink deep tonight.”

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?

I

One by one the guests had gone, and with Trella now there was but a poet who had elevated rhyme to the dignity of a sport. His name was Villiers. In addition to rhyme and other gymnastics less violent, he cultivated paradox. At the moment, he was twisting his painted fingers, fumbling his hostess with his yellow eyes. Then, pontifically, he addressed her:

“There is but one enduring delight⁠—certainty in love. Certainty that it exists, certainty that it is returned, certainty that it will never diminish.”

Trella looked at him so fixedly that he tacked.

“The idea suggests itself,” he hastened to add, “in connection with the Infanta of whom we were talking at dinner. Nobody seems to recognize that the one to blame for her conduct is her father. Don Carlos is a most ordinary person. He goes about talking, ‘God and my country,’ by day, wrecking households at night, as ignorant of Molière as my masseur. Evil exists only in the noise that it makes.

“ ‘Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l’offense
Et ce n’est pas pécher que pécher en silence.”

“Have you been hearing things about me?” Trella interrupted.

Villiers promptly assumed the appearance of an idiot.

“Do you believe them?” she asked.

He waved his painted fingers. “Dear me!” he exclaimed. “I have heard so many lies concerning myself that how can you expect me to believe the stories I hear of others? No,” he continued, remotely, “had Don Carlos only known enough to cram Tartuffe down the girl’s throat she might not have carried on as she has. And then, again, she might have. Bad taste is in the Bourbon blood. The Princess Isabelle let herself down thirty feet out of a window, and ran off with a Polish mucker. They were caught and married by main strength.”

Trella patted a yawn.

“Tell me of yourself,” he agilely added. “What have you been doing? Or, rather, what have you not been doing? Do you know, I should love so to put my ideas of you in a poem. For private circulation, of course. It would have to be, wouldn’t it, unless it appeared in Latin?”

But, as for all reply she smiled indifferently; the poet stood up, and, balancing himself on his heels, smiled, too.

“ ‘Our Lady of the Immaculate Conversation,’ would, I think, be a very good title for that poem. Bonsoir, belle dame.”

Raising her wrist, he brushed it with his lips. In a moment he had gone.

As he passed from the room a servant entered. On a little tray he had a telegram which he brought her. Dated London and addressed to the Countess of Cloden, Avenue Marceau, Paris, it contained these words: “Will be with you tonight.”

With a gesture, she dismissed the man, and, leaning on a mantel, stared in a mirror, stared through it into the past, stared beyond it into the future, and then at herself, at her royal beauty, at the sunburst of flesh which she was.

In all our great Northwest, her grandfather, Commodore Verelst, had been accounted the richest and hardest of men. As a lad he tracked muskrats in the Michigan marshes. As a man, he constructed and commanded a fleet of lake steamers. As a corpse, he left millions. He had one son, who took them all, took them away to New York, and married. The result of the union was Trella. The original Verelst was a German, his wife was French. There was the gold of the Rhine in the glisten of Trella’s hair. In the faint umber of her skin, in the mobility and droop of her lips there was France. When Teuton and Latin combine there can be some very fetching results. Witness the Venetian. But when to these elements is added the magic of Manhattan the result not merely fetches, it astounds. Trella developed into an astounding young person.

As a girl, she reminded you of what the Argive Helen may have been in her teens. Her mouth seemed to promise more than any mortal mouth could give. Her voice was so insinuating that it conveyed the sensation of a kiss. She had glances as she had intonations, which dispensed a charm quite incandescent. Her eyes were particularly enthralling. They were large and blue, blue as the sea and bluer. Generally, she was prudent enough to keep them half closed. When she opened them they revealed a number of things⁠—curiosity, restlessness and that je-m’en-ficheisme which is mistaken for frankness. When she chose, she could flood them with languors. She just lacked being tall.

In the process of the production and development of these witcheries her father concluded to leave for another world. After a proper period of regret, his widow left for another world, also. But it was Europe she selected. Though a New Yorker by birth, and inordinately rich, she had never succeeded in forcing certain portals. Such things annoy a woman. Hence the migration.

The migration effected, Mrs. Verelst discovered that to be decently lodged, two domiciles are obligatory. Mrs. Verelst took three. One in Paris, one on the Riviera, and one in Normandy. To these she added a fourth. The last was a cemetery. Her residence in that resort was not, however, immediate. She waited for certain things, primarily until her daughter was married.

It was on the Riviera that the preliminaries to this event occurred. Entrance to the penal colony, which is called Society there, is a matter of entire ease. Mrs. Verelst knocked and it was opened. There was a sesame in her dollars. There was another in Trella’s looks.

The particular section of the Riviera which she had selected is, geologically speaking, a Mediterranean cliff; descriptively, it is a sublimate of Paris in a tropic frame; pictorially, it is a fairyland in duodecimo; socially, it is striated with all the variegated hues of beautiful cosmopolitanism, and, familiarly, it is Monte Carlo. You may meet there kings, outlaws, demireps, professional beauties, cheap trippers, and Spanish grandees.

In the air is a smell of vitriol and violets, of vice, patented, prodigal, and perfumed. There is not an old-fashioned virtue in the place. There are tears, though, rivers of them, heightened by the click of the ball on the roulette table, the call of the dealers at trente-et-quarante, the music and monotony of Rien ne va plus. People go mad there. Others kill themselves. Some fall in love. Among the latter was Trella.

This extraordinary event occurred in a commonplace manner. At a rout given by the morganatic widow of an emperor the girl and her mother were present. During a pause in a dance, in a crash and subsidence of the orchestra, an Englishman caused himself to be presented. Before speech was possible there arose from beyond the voice of the world’s best tenor. It was an aria from the Somnambula that he was singing, the “Perche non posso odiarte,” which, for sheer beauty, is perhaps the most entrancing in all of Italy’s enchanting repertory.

The melting measures proceeded. The Englishman looked at the American girl and she at him. As they looked, the madness of the music seemed at first but the accompaniment of their thoughts, and then at once to transmit those thoughts from one to the other. Involuntarily, he moistened his lips. Into the perfection of the girl’s features a flush had come. To use a localism of the land, c’était le coup de foudre.

Trella let her long lashes fall. It was as though she had dropped a curtain. The man turned to her mother. That lady was whispering something. Yet what, he neither knew nor cared. The measures had swooned. The hush was broken by a ripple of applause.

“It is very warm,” Mrs. Verelst announced.

Before anyone could engage with her in meteorological observations, the tenor, by way of encore, was distributing the enchantment of his notes anew.

Back of Trella a balconied window opened on the April night. Already she had investigated its possibilities, and raising those lashes again, she led the Englishman to the stars without. The aria followed them. He never forgot that song. Nor, perhaps, did she.

II

Life is packed with pleasures. One of the most delightful is to awake with the consciousness of being in love. On the morning succeeding the rout Shane Wyvill awoke to just that delight. He was turbulently intoxicated by a girl whom he had never seen before, and whose name he did not know.

But the morning was a replica of others. Moreover, it was a family trait to wake up with that sensation. So far back as the family went, and it went as far back as any of the other families which Mr. Burke has so diligently catalogued, the Shane Wyvills⁠—the Shame Wyvills as custom had corrupted the name⁠—had, in love, been freebooters. Titularly lords of Cloden, typically they were a bad lot.

The last earl, after filling the Continent with the uproar of his debauches, gave up the ghost with a shriek. What visions he beheld he lacked the time to relate. It may be assumed that they were not very cheerful. The youth of the existing incumbent had been what the French call stormy. After the storm, the calm. The past twenty years he had passed at Shane Towers, contemplating the landscape. That landscape had been so successfully postobited that it produced less than would suffice for a sweep.

The wants of the earl were many. But they were entirely spiritual. Pending their attainment he sat in a dressing-gown at peace with all the world, including his nephew, Shane Wyvill, who was incidentally his heir.

In the latter’s father, hereditary characteristics had been so in abeyance that he had been regarded as a nonentity. He had married one of the Villiers girls, and done nothing worse than lose a portion of her portion in the City. Then he had died, she, also, leaving this heir and what was left of her property. The amount was just enough to enable him to get along on.

Apart, then, from the advantage of being in line for an empty earldom and the further advantage of good teeth and good looks, Shane Wyvill had, from the point of view of the world at large, nothing whatever to boast of.

Even otherwise, he was not of a boastful nature. By way of compensation he enjoyed the formidable repute of being the best-dressed man in London. But the repute was unrighteous. He was too sensible to do more than put himself in the hands of the right people and then forget all about them⁠—except their bills, which he paid, as he paid all such things, on presentation. It will be seen, therefore, that if not boastful, at any rate, he was proud. No one is perfect.

But the imperfections of Wyvill will be the better understood through a showing that this mid-April morning, on which he awoke with the consciousness of being in love, was but a return of sundry others. Fed, as every decently educated lad in England is, on the psalms of Aristophanes, he had also taken a course in Theocritus. In the green pastures of a long vacation he encountered a maiden whose studies had been less elaborate. Their defects he undertook to remedy. One noon he read to her an episode from an eclogue. At its close their eyes met. To quote Dante, they read no more that day. Subsequently, he encountered her, not in green pastures, but in Piccadilly, and at an hour nearer midnight than noon. In the interval she had convoluted into a chorus girl. Her salary was precisely twenty-five shillings a week. At no properly conducted London theatre is it permissible for a lady whose salary does not exceed thirty shillings to drive to the stage door in her brougham. The rule may seem arbitrary, but there it is, and in this case there it was. The young person who perhaps had grown luxurious, regarded it not merely as arbitrary, but awkward. For the sake of old times, Wyvill got her higher pay. Then for the sake of old times, also, she blackmailed him pretty nearly out of his boots. Such was his initiation into the charms of love and Leicester Square.

In politer spheres he presently discovered consolations. These consolations lasted until the lady’s husband began uncivil proceedings, from the result of which Wyvill was saved by a succession of events which converted him to a belief in miracles. The lady explained everything so satisfactorily to her husband that the proceedings were withdrawn, whereupon she eloped with another and a richer man. Such was his initiation into the horrors of matrimony and Mayfair.

It is said of those who beheld the mysteries at Eleusis that thereafter they ceased to smile. Wyvill’s experiences were quite as chastening. The pleasure in things that had pleased him waned. He tried hunting, and gave it up. It cost too much. He went forth to shoot in Canada, and returned disillusioned. Yet, in default of wealth, one must have a raison d’être. It was in the search for that raison that he encountered Trella. Her effect on him was instantaneous. Before he slept he was conscious of a new conception of beauty. When he awoke it was to the consciousness of a new conception of life. From the conjunction of these conceptions there mounted like a flame the delight of a dream of possessing the girl.

In fairyland you have but to ask and it is given. Since Perrault lived and labored, Monte Carlo is the nearest approach to that country. In its sorceries are solvents so surprising that you may land there a pauper and leave a plutocrat. You may also reverse the order of things. Where the enchanted rose is, there, too, is the disenchanting thorn.

But on the slopes which a syndicate in collaboration with nature has strewn with diaphanous days and electric lights, such thorns as grew Wyvill passed unheeding, and, in passing, promenaded straight into the domain of a beauty who, however, was not sleeping, but thoroughly wide-awake.

On the way, Wyvill gathered certain facts, which were so many flowers; the domain’s precise position, for instance, its name and the kilometers it took to get there. For even in fairyland, and perhaps particularly in fairyland, there are always mileposts in high hats and others in low neck to provide you with just such information.

In serving Prince Charming they also served the Wide-Awake Beauty. As a consequence, when, in due course, the two met again, had they been first cousins they could not have known more of each other. To Prince Charming the Wide-Awake Beauty was an American heiress, and to the Wide-Awake Beauty Prince Charming was heir to an earldom. What could be more succinct, what more satisfactory? Especially when it is remembered that it had required but one meeting, complicated by nothing more quotable than the melting measures of an aria, for the parties concerned to experience the coup de foudre.

To Trella the coup had all the charm of entire novelty. In New York she had flirted right and left. She liked men, liked admiration and a bold glance, and a squeeze of the hand she was none too shy to return. Apart from a liking for such things, they left her unaffected. After the boldest glance and the tightest squeeze her pulse registered normal. That, however, was less to her credit than to the discredit of the glancers and squeezers. Their seductions were limited to gymnastics.

In Paris and on the Riviera the liking for men continued, but men were scarce. One look at Wyvill had told her that he was of a different breed. Never before had she met anyone with less manner and more ease. Never before had she beheld a human being so perfectly sent out. Never before had a presence impressed her so suddenly and so absolutely. For the first time, her pulse ceased to be normal. For the first time she saw a man, and in that man she saw, also, and for the first time, too⁠—or thought she did⁠—her master. At sight of him she flushed. Why, she did not know. But it seemed to her all very new and inexpressibly delightful.

In spite of which, or, perhaps, precisely on that account, when on the Casino’s esplanade, chance brought these two people face to face again, only an exchange of platitudes resulted. Yet, in circumstances not similar, perhaps, but cognate, people do not say what they think. As a rule, they do not think at all. They occupy themselves as best they may in sparring for wind. Such sparring as then occurred was rendered more vigorous than otherwise it might have been by the presence of the girl’s mother, who stuck to her, not with any un-American view to the observance of the proprieties, but simply because she had come out with her, and objected to being stranded.

The next day matters were more propitious. Wyvill dined with the Verelsts at their villa, took them afterward to the gambling rooms, and accompanied them home again, where he required no urging whatever to remain for a brandy and soda; no urging, either, to dispense with platitudes. After the good old American fashion, Mrs. Verelst made herself scarce, and the two were free to gaze at the Mediterranean moon and then at the avowals of each other’s eyes.

As weeds of the sea loosened by one current, stayed by another, mount slowly yet surely before achieving their gradual yet certain ascent, so did these avowals, arrested now by query, again by an objection, rise from the depths of their being and mount to their lips.

From avowals to action no appreciable time is required. In a moment they were in each other’s arms; in a week they were engaged; in a month they were married. In fairyland lovers don’t dillydally.

It was not, though, of course, at Monte Carlo that the marriage took place. Against its taking place at all Mrs. Verelst protested vehemently. She had an ardent desire to be the mother of a duchess, and the Duca di Cherella, a young Neapolitan, whom Trella treated as part of the landscape, had, in that desire, collaborated as ardently as she. Failing him, there were others. Besides, Mrs. Verelst, who, as the phrase is, had her police, knew that Wyvill’s uncle was capable of living forever. In accordance with a good old American custom, she wanted her money’s worth, and a title in futuro did not in the least satisfy her ideas of What’s What. As a consequence, she protested vehemently. She might just as well have held her tongue. Trella paid not the slightest attention to her. Seeing which, after another American fashion, Mrs. Verelst gave in. The marriage took place in Paris, and after the ceremony, through the scented streets, the bride and groom who had met in fairyland set out for paradise.

III

Love is a fever. Marriage is a febrifuge. That is the rule. This marriage was not an exception. Only its antipyretic effects were not immediately observable. At stations along the route the fever lifted them to chimerical altitudes, sank them to spaceless depths, lowered them deeper, lifted them vertiginously, caught and carried them beyond the earth, beyond the horizons of the known, beyond the confines of the real, disclosing through vistas undivined, those mysterious affinities that similarize the flesh and spirit. In fresh ascensions, the fair, illusory promises of love and life were uttered by them both. In new descents the vain, yet lovely vows, Forever, Never, were interchanged again. And so it went.

The duo is very archaic, but to them it seemed highly original, essentially unique, entirely their own composition. It seemed too capable of infinite variations. Through its interludes the memory of a murmur of other songs once filtered in on Wyvill, and jarred him as an oath will jar. Trella’s memories were less resonant. They were pages that girlhood had left quite blank, and at which along the route now and then she stopped and mused. With the refrain of that duo shaking constant stars in her ears it seemed inconceivable to her that such blankness there could be. Whereupon, after considering the past, she contemplated the future. The perspectives looked very spacious.

Meanwhile, impeded by nothing more than a maid and a valet, and delayed solely by a courier and a cargo of boxes, they journeyed circuitously from the scented Bois to the pink and crocus of Seville, and on through the ghosts and treasuries of Spain to its summer court at San Sebastian.

During the journey wherever Trella had shown herself admiration had been ambient. She had trailed it as a torch trails smoke. To that she had been always more or less accustomed. But in Seville, after the good old Andalusian custom, it was manifested vociferously, in open compliments of her mother’s handiwork, in shouts of Olle tu madre⁠—hurrahs for that absent lady, which infuriated Wyvill, but which, through their fascinating indirection, delighted Trella, as, indeed, every novelty did.

In Castile, the admiration, while quite as fervent, became less noisy, and at San Sebastian so sedate that it would have been colorless had not chance⁠—a function at the palace aiding⁠—embodied it in the Duke of Thule.

The duke, who had an amiable, aimless way, made up in guile what he lacked in sense. Seen across the room, you would have taken him for Teuton; close to, for a fool. Trella saw but the royal. Barring the Regent to whom she had just been presented, she had never met one before. The encounter seemed to her uplifting. It heightened her in her own esteem.

It was at that juncture that she contemplated the future. The more she considered it the more spacious it grew. Then presently, little by little, one after another the delayed effects of the febrifuge appeared. The duo rang less starlike in her ears. The heights began to assume the aspect of the déjà vu, the ascensions to horizons beyond the known acquired the proportions of undertakings, and the affinities, similarizing sufficiently, had nothing more to say.

Everything being possible, it may be that, in the course of time, Wyvill also would have experienced the premonitory effects of the antipyretic, but Trella’s symptoms, at first unnoticed, then misinterpreted, subsequently evident, yet wholly enigmatic, left him perplexed.

Where is the Vandal that invented marriage? Wyvill put to himself some such question, but long after, when San Sebastian was but a halt in the trip and they were back in Paris again.

This occurred in the autumn. At that time, pending the termination of touches on a house which the girl’s mother had bought, Wyvill and Trella were lodged at the Bristol. There, one noon, the duke breakfasted with them. Afterward, Wyvill, with the purchase of some horses in view, joined their owner, the Vicomte de Chose, at a neighboring club, and, by virtue of a previous arrangement, drove with him, at three o’clock, to Saint Cloud, where the horses were stabled. On the way, Trella, looking nice enough to eat, whirled by in a brougham. Wyvill turned and kissed his hand to her. But the salute was unnoticed. She had not seen him, and continuing his way, he reached the stables, saw the horses, put them through their paces, and returned to the Bristol just in time to dress for dinner.

“What did you do this afternoon?” he asked, when the soup had gone. Without waiting for an answer, he told her about the horses. “Ce sont des alezans superbes,” he added⁠—a phrase which he had caught from de Chose.

Trella did not know what alezans were. He explained. Then again he asked what she had done, but indifferently, as a husband may, not out of curiosity, but for the sake of talk.

“Nothing,” she answered. “After you went out my mother came and stayed here with me until nearly 5. Then I took a turn with her in the Bois.”

“Five is rather late nowadays for the Bois, is it not?” he asked, with the same air of indifference.

“The air does me good,” Trella replied, and let the subject drop.

Wyvill stared at her. Her hair made a garland of gold. Her eyes were sultry, her lips were scarlet. About her throat was a diamond collar. Her bodice was sewn with pearls. Between the diamonds and the pearls there glowed the silk of her skin. Never had she looked more beautiful. In the poise of her head, in her appearance and costume, she exhaled a charm almost intolerably aphrodisiac. She seemed created for love, for life at its fullest, and, as it now occurred to Wyvill, for lies.

The dinner proceeded. A maître d’hôtel after presenting a dish for inspection, superintended the serving of it by his underlings. Covers succeeded each other. Of what they consisted Wyvill did not notice. It had been arranged that he and Trella were to go that night to a première and afterward to the Embassy. This arrangement a remark of hers recalled.

Through the flowers and lights on the table he stared over at her again. When a man loves a woman, it is not an excess of ambition on his part to wish to trust her also. And suddenly a solution visited Wyvill. Might she not have accounted for her afternoon as she had, solely to save him and herself the boredom of the narration of some tiresome occurrence?

The solution was so stupid that it soothed. But even in the process of welcoming it there were incidents unconsciously recalled which trooped out and interfered. There was, for instance, a secretiveness which she had recently displayed in regard to such letters as were brought her. Recently, too, it had been obvious to him that she had preoccupations which she did not wish to disclose, thoughts to which he was a stranger. Moreover, there was that change in her, one that had filtered through such subtle gradations that only latterly the portent had perplexed.

Those who have suffered from jealousy know that it is physical, they know that it can no more be argued away than can any other distemper, and they know, too, to their own cost, perhaps, that its most torturesome form comes of thoughts that are hidden, and emotions they may not share.

To Wyvill the lie returned, but unvarnished now, and with it that determination to know which, in certain crises, is as imperious as famine. But of the inward tumult he gave no sign.

“What did your mother say?” he asked, leisurely.

By way of reply, Trella contented herself with shrugging her bare white shoulders.

“And you were here with her until nearly five?”

Trella nodded.

“Why not tell me the truth?”

At this she started. If he had struck her she could not have flushed more highly. But Wyvill omitted to pursue the advantage. At the sight of her confusion there came to him a sense not of anger, but of sorrow for himself and her.

The maître d’hôtel and his underlings had gone. Wyvill got from his chair and moved it nearer to her own.

“Distrust and affection don’t hit it off very well together, Trella. If you thought that I was deceiving you, you would think, too, that I was ceasing to care. It may be that you are ceasing to care for me. In that case, how shall I blame you? We cannot command affection. It commands us. Then, too, the quantity of it being limited, some day or other it must give out. When it does, love ends. No effort can prevent it. You have loved me now for a long time⁠—almost six months. Unfortunately for us both, this is not a love affair, it is a marriage.”

He hesitated, hoping for an interruption, for some explanation or protest, but as she sat, tantalizingly beautiful and irritatingly dumb, he bent forward and, probing her with his eyes, very deliberately he asked:

“Where were you this afternoon?”

“I have told you.”

“No, forgive me, you are mistaken, you have not. You told me you were here until five. At three you passed me in the Rue Royale. Where were you going?”

Trella stood up, and with a little princess air which she could assume very well when she chose, she looked him in the face.

“You appear to be cross-questioning me.”

“Ah!” said Wyvill, rising, too. “Very good. I shall not presume to do so again. But I will presume to call your attention to the fact that you have lied to me. You have lied stupidly, wantonly. Whether the lie was meant to cover something equally stupid and wanton, I do not know. I do, though, know that while a wanton act may be shameful yet human, a wanton lie is shameless and vile.

“What is it, Harris?” he interrupted himself to ask. “No one rang.”

“No, sir, thank you, sir,” his valet, who had entered, answered, producing a dispatch which he had brought. “The carriage is at the door, sir.”

Wyvill opened the message. “Then you may dismiss it,” he ordered.

He turned to Trella. “You cannot go out, with my permission at least. My uncle is dead. I leave for London tonight.”

IV

Wyvill left Paris in a fury, determined to discover what Trella was up to if he had to employ a detective to do it. In the Channel the fury evaporated. When he reached Shane Towers he was glad he had probed no deeper. When the funeral was over he was glad that he had not questioned more.

As to that he was right. To expect some women to tell the truth is as naive as to expect them to go about naked. They simply can’t. Then, too, there are mysteries concerning them which we may determine to solve, but which if time but intervene we prefer to ignore. Wyvill’s attitude was, therefore, perfectly natural. But in upbraiding the lady he had been absurd. There are complaints that are compliments, and reproaches which are testimonies of love.

Some inkling of this Trella probably intercepted. In any event, he was presently urged to return. But to return to what? He was still passionately in love with the girl who but a few months before had become his wife; the beauty and the charm of her were as dear to him as ever, dearer, even, by comparison; for in her place there seemed to have come a woman whom he had never known, and who, though her counterpart in charm, was otherwise a counterfeit.

Presently another letter came. He was urged again to return. But to whom? To Trella? Yes, and at once. The trains and the boats were not built that could take him to her fast enough. But with that stranger who had come in her place he had no concern whatever.

Then more letters came. Some were from his wife, offering to join him, and some were from Mrs. Verelst, whom Trella’s prompt elevation to the rank and attributes of peeress had entirely appeased.

It was then winter. But the winter passed and the spring came before he himself felt appeased. The appeasing was due to a note from the lady, in which she expressed a wish to explain.

As he read the note he could not but recall other explanations of which he had been cognizant. Yet, then, also, he could not but let them go. Time is a strange emollient. In its mysterious potency it softens without our knowledge. We are unaware that it has been acting on us, and suddenly a whisper, a breeze that passes, shows that it has done its work.

That night Trella received the telegram which was brought to her as Villiers was leaving her house.

Meanwhile she had found herself entertaining and being entertained by all that is best and worst in that curious cosmopolis which is called Tout-Paris. Yet there, even the worst have fits of propriety. Society abroad is very much the same as at home. It is not censorious. Provided a woman lives, outwardly, at least, on good terms with her husband; provided, as Villiers had noted, that there is an avoidance of open scandal, a lady is free to be as unladylike as she likes. With the men, at all times everything goes. Yet, now and then they do object to certain associations for their wives.

Of Lady Cloden stories began to be told. To begin with, she was not living with her husband, and it was rumored that, for reasons, which, however interesting, would not look well in print, he did not propose to live with her again. Such things dishearten. Moreover, it is not pleasant for a woman of position to see that position fade. Men acquire with her an easy form of address. They bow to her sometimes when they should not, and again omit to when they should. Matters had by no means come to that pass yet with Trella, but unless a halt were called social dégringolage was on the way.

And now on this particular night, as she stared in the mirror, at the sunburst of beauty which she was, it was of these things that she thought.

A step aroused her. She turned, glanced at the great, bare, brilliant room, then at the telegram which had been brought. Someone was approaching. She turned again. At the door her husband stood. With a little bleat which, if not of joy, was a very good imitation of it, she moved to meet and greet him, and at once, before he could speak, with a volubility to which she had not accustomed him, she acknowledged that she had been at fault, begging his forgiveness, relating things which he had never known, that she had a brother, that the latter had disgraced himself, that he had got into fresh difficulties, that that last afternoon at the Bristol she had gone to aid him, and that if she had hid the truth, it was out of delicacy, and the Lord knows what else, besides.

She paused, for lack of breath, perhaps. At the moment, from the avenue without, through the open window, came pouring the madness of a song of love. Wyvill had heard it somewhere, sometime, a long while ago, yet where or when he could not recall. Then suddenly he was back again in fairyland. The air was scented with flowers, he was speaking to someone, there was an aria that seemed to help his speech, that seemed to multiply the music of the replies. It was from the “Somnambula,” of course. He remembered now. Perhaps so, too, did she.

Pretty as a peach, and just as witty, savorous as a pineapple and with quite as much heart, commonplace in everything except in beauty, that aria in filtering through her pulp, must have stirred a memory, encountered a fiber, awakened an echo, for to her face she raised a hand and from her eyes there fell a tear.

Wyvill saw that tear. At once his arms were about her, his lips on hers. It seemed to him that they had parted only to reunite, that the past was a nightmare, that she loved him, that he loved her, better, even, than on the route to Paradise.

V

There are lakes which a breeze from the valley disturbs, but which the high winds from the summits leave unruffled. Then, for no appreciable reason, they reverse the order of things. There are natures that resemble those lakes. You never know where you are with them.

In attempting to display the cumulative incidents of this drama, no better analogy occurs by which to explain the opposite effects that circumstances, relatively identical, produced on Wyvill.

They were then at Deauville. Meanwhile, the stranger had gone, and with her every doubt of Trella. She was charmful, the more so, perhaps, because she had had what is called an experience with her husband, and it is said that experience teaches. Mrs. Verelst, who had had something in the nature of an experience also, tried to profit by it in offering to restore Shane Towers, and to maintain the place in proper fashion. At this Wyvill protested. It was, he declared, the gloomiest keep in England. Mrs. Verelst paid no attention to his nonsense. Trella, either. Paris had palled on her. For reasons of her own she was glad to evolve from it into what her mother termed her rightful sphere. All this was pleasant to Wyvill. The present was pleasant, also, and the future looked, as the future always does look, even pleasanter. And so the days fell by until, the Grand Prix over, they went down to Deauville.

There Mrs. Verelst contented herself with a suite in a hotel. But for Wyvill and Trella there was a house. This house, known, locally, because of its arrangements, as the Villa Portugaise, squats sumptuously before the sea. It is of two stories. The bedrooms are on the ground floor, the dining and reception-rooms adjoining. Between the two principal suites is a wide hall. One of these suites Trella selected for herself. Wyvill took the other. Both are splendid, and the villa itself is a gem.

It was early in July when they reached there. At that period Deauville is usually delightful. But in August it becomes infernal. The season is then at its height, and to its confluence surges a mob of viveurs and rastas.

Among others who appeared there that year was the Duke of Thule. Yet, owing to an attack of Anglophobia with which France is periodically afflicted, he came incog., as a private gentleman, merely. For the purposes of his sojourn he also had a villa. About it night and day men in plain clothes strolled unobtrusively. So are the mighty guarded.

The royal villa was next to the Villa Portugaise, and there, occasionally, as a friend and neighbor may, the duke dropped in, sometimes in beautiful flannels for a game of tennis, sometimes alarmingly begoggled for a flight in an auto, but always amiable and aimless.

And so the days fell by, punctuated by the diversions of Deauville⁠—dips, drives, dinners, dances, polo matches, hurdle races and baccarat, but particularly by that general deviltry which, in an atmosphere dripping with ammonia and desire, scented with caprices and seaweed, those consorts of Society, wealth and idleness, inevitably produce.

Through the diversions and the deviltry of them the confidences apprehensible were truffled with a sans-gêne quite idyllic. In the flow of these confidences there was, apparently, not an honest woman in the place. Everything being possible, such may have been the case.

One night the possibility occurred to Wyvill. That afternoon the Prix de Deauville had been run. He and Trella had been driven to the course by the duke. At the track he left them for a look in the paddock. On the way back his progress was momentarily impeded. Before him were two men. In a brief halt which a congestion of the crowd occasioned he garnered a snatch of their talk.

“C’est sa maîtresse,” one was saying.

“Ah! ah! Et le mari?”

“Il faut croire qu’il trouve ça charmant.”

But the congestion had diffused, Wyvill passed on, mounted to the tribune, where, looking down, he saw two men looking up. They were raising their hats. Their names he might have remembered, but he had forgotten their faces. He raised his own hat. The duke raised his. There was a clamor, a scurry, a clearing of the track, a careering of thoroughbreds, a riot of color, a shout, the horses were off, the Prix was being run, and the incident forgot.

Truth is an objective phenomenon. It acts in us and on us like a chemical precipitate. You may have given it no thought, and there it is revealed. That night, apropos to nothing, the incident returned to Wyvill. With it, from the depths of his being, there issued an obsession vague and obscure, something opaque and formless, but which, little by little, took shape and changed from an impossibility into a monstrous fact. Wyvill disowned it, disavowed it, would have none of it. But there it was. Presently the disavowals ceased. In certain conditions we get used to monsters. The soul makes itself at home with what it must.

Wyvill was seated in the library. An hour previous Trella, pretexting some one or other of those many malaises which women always have within beck and call, had disappeared for the night. Latterly these malaises and their coincidental disappearances had been frequent, and in considering them the dialogue overheard at the track returned, but freighted now with significance. The soul may accustom itself to what it must, but it will struggle first. We believe less what we should than what we wish.

For relief from the obsession Wyvill got up. He would have gone to Trella. But, presumably, she was asleep. In any event, he divined that her door was locked, and he knew that if she answered his knock at all, it would be but to reproach him with having disturbed her. Even otherwise, what could he say? He had suspected her before, and she had been good enough to overlook that suspicion. She had done more, she had produced a brother. There was nothing to prevent her now from producing a sister. With a lady so resourceful conversation was futile.

Wyvill looked at his watch. It was after two, much later than he had thought. Trella must have been asleep for hours. But the obsession had left him restless as a panther. Through the open window he stepped out to the lawn.

It was a perfect night, starful, silent, serene. From beyond, the recurrent hush and retreating wash of the waves accentuated the quiet, calming him unconsciously, allaying his restlessness, reducing the tension of his nerves. Under their influence he sauntered about the grounds a while, and then, turning back, reached Trella’s window.

Through the curtains a dim light filtered. As he looked at it, there was projected on the curtains a silhouette, faint but defined. If he hesitated, he never knew it. The window, undefended, opened at his grasp, and tearing the curtains aside, he sprang into the room, sprang at a man that was there, and, with a blow that would have felled a bullock, struck him between the eyes, hurling him backward against a mantel where, falling, his head struck. It cracked like a nut.

Satisfied but not satiated, he turned to Trella. Before he could reach her, the window had become a passageway. A cry, “Au secours!” had rent the night, and men in plain clothes that guard the mighty were tumbling into the room.

“Hors d’ici, canaille!” Wyvill shouted. “Out of here, or I’ll brain the lot of you!”

Raising a chair above his head, with all his force he flung it at them, but, deflected in flight, it went crashing against the wall; he was struggling with three men at once, while a fourth, falling at the foot of the mantel, was screaming, “My God! my God! he has killed his Royal Highness!”

“Tant mieux,” Wyvill, struggling still, threw back. But he was struggling with men who had no wish to struggle, who were seeking and uttering words of pacification.

“On ne veut pas faire du mal à Monsieur le Comte,” one kept repeating. “N’est ce pas, Paul? n’est ce pas, Jules? Seulement⁠—”

With a manoevre which Wyvill had acquired in arguments with bargees on the Isis, Paul went spinning one way, Jules another, their mate rolling doubled in a corner.

“Hors d’ici!” he shouted again. “Hors d’ici, canaille, et enlevez votre crapule de prince.”

He turned in search of Trella. In the commotion she had vanished. But a door leading to the hall beyond was open, and leaving the men, in plain, and now tolerably tattered clothes, to their duty, through the door he passed to have a word with her.

Without, were scared and huddling servants. Scattering them to their quarters, Wyvill ransacked the house, searched the grounds. All he discovered was that an obsession had fled, and that Trella had got away through the night to her mother. Then, divining, perhaps, that she would regard any attempt to follow her as an excess of civility, he turned in and went to bed.

It was as well, perhaps. For what shall a man say to a woman who has ceased to care for him? That she has cared for him? It is better to let the subject drop. So, at least, Wyvill decided. Afterward he was glad that he had not tried to pursue the conversation further, glad that the dear departed had dispensed with the formality of farewell. And so, in the end, matters adjusted themselves, as, in the end, all matters do.

The next day the lady, chaperoned by her mother, journeyed from France, proceeded to this country and then to the land of the Dakotas, where, on the entirely justified plea of cruelty, complicated with desertion, she solicited and obtained a divorce.

The decree was received with general satisfaction. As a nation we do not approve of these matches. Moreover, through Mrs. Verelst, everybody knew that Wyvill was a sullen drunkard, with whom no self-respecting woman could live. Trella was more indulgent. She admitted that Wyvill was not, perhaps, all that he might have been, but she declared that she forgave him entirely. That certainly was very nice of her.

Of Thule she never spoke. The press of two worlds gave it out that he died of pneumonia, suddenly, as mortals do die, but decorously, as royals should. Trella never undeceived a soul on the subject. That certainly was nice of her, too.

The People in It

• Gerard Welden, M.F.H., An American sportsman

• Maud Barhyte, a New York girl of the fashionable set

• Sally Malakoff, afterward Mrs. Welden

• The Duc de Malakoff, Sally’s first husband

• Mrs. Kandy, Sally’s mother, a rich widow

• General Barhyte, Maud’s father, a rich widower

• The Comte de Dol, a French sportsman

• The Marquis Aquaviva, an Italian sportsman

• Prince Kara, a Russian sportsman

• Lord Ferrers, an English sportsman

• Mull Cantire, undersecretary, British Embassy, Paris

• Mme. Oppensheim, a mondaine

• Mme. de Cérisy, another mondaine

• The Princesse de Solférino, a third mondaine

• Louis Le Hillel, a swordsman

• Baron Louradour, another swordsman

• Dr. Binet-Valmer, one of the lights of French science

• Society people, maîtres d’hôtel, footmen, chauffeurs, trainers, stable lads, surgeons, lawyers, a coroner, a chief of police